Chapter 8
“What did you do?” Jasper teases from the other side of the bars.
Of course he’s enjoying every second of this.
“None of your business,” I shoot back automatically, ignoring the way my heart jumps when I see him walk in and realize that, even though I hate this entire situation, I’m finally saved.
He doesn’t even blink.
“All right then,” he says, careless as always, and actually starts to turn away.
Shit.
“No! No! Wait!” I blurt before he can take a single step.
I cannot stay here alone. I cannot spend the rest of my night in a Mexican drunk tank.
This bastard is the only lawyer I know, which means I’m forced to accept the reality that, as my lawyer, he actually needs to know the truth. And, most likely, all the details.
Jasper stops and tilts his head in my direction, giving me one more chance to explain.
I take a deep breath, purse my lips, and try to use milder words as I tell him what happened, “I was swimming with Brock Magnus and the wine sales girl in front of a resort… and a bunch of old ladies.”
“And?”
“And…” I stall. “And we were kind of… dressed in a slightly indecent way.”
“Slightly indecent?” he repeats.
Fine. There’s no way to sugarcoat this, so I rip off the Band-Aid, “Naked, Jasper. We were swimming naked.”
Jasper blinks. Zero reaction in his dark eyes. Then blinks again.
Oh my God, is there a slower way to die?
He gives a brief nod to the guard standing a couple of yards away and says,
“You can let her go.”
“Excuse me?” I squint. They can let me go? Just like that?
Jasper shrugs, tongue brushing over his lower lip as he tries – and fails – to hide a wicked smile.
“Oh, I already bailed you out. I was just curious.”
“Curious?”
“Curious about what kind of story you’d make up so you wouldn’t have to admit what actually happened. Never thought you’d tell the truth.”
I could have lied?
I stare at Jasper in stunned disbelief as the guard starts yelling in a mix of English and Spanish, ordering everyone to step back so he can open the gate.
The moment I walk out of the cell, there’s nothing but a feeling of freedom I’ve never felt in my entire life.
Sure, it was a tiny crime, and I probably wouldn’t have stayed locked up for long, but you need to understand, despite some questionable choices in my lifetime I try not to remember, I’d never gotten to this point.
Never been arrested. Never needed a lawyer.
I don’t even know a lawyer besides Jasper Hassmann.
And I didn’t have his number either. I refused – and still do – to have his name written anywhere in my contacts, so I had to beg the station chief to Google his firm in New York and call the office line.
Jasper defends a whole bunch of suspicious rich guys, of course he has a 24-hour emergency line.
It wasn’t even him, it was his assistant who said she would handle it.
Which is probably for the best, because I’m almost certain that if I had called his personal number at this hour, he would have hung up on me.
Compared to Brock Magnus’s attorney, Jasper is practically…
casual. Khaki dress pants that you can tell are tailored just by the way they fit his hips, and a navy shirt worn untucked, sleeves rolled, two buttons undone.
His hair is a bit shorter and, despite me saying he didn’t need to do anything, was completely wrong, because his beard is trimmed too, and now his jawline looks impossibly sharp, like someone carved it with architectural precision.
God. I am still drunk.
“Sign here, chiquitita!” the chief snaps, pulling me out of my Jasper-related hallucinations.
Right. The paperwork.
I sign everywhere there’s an X and hand the form to Jasper. He takes the pen and starts signing too. The expensive watch on his wrist, the large steady hand holding the pen–
Yep. Still very drunk.
The chief stamps my release and mutters, “Next time wear a bikini, chiquitita!”
I hear Jasper choke on a laugh beside me, but I’m already speed-walking toward the exit before either of them can say anything else.
It’s only when we reach the sidewalk that I finally gather the courage to look at him again, mostly because I’ve scanned the parking lot and none of the Carnegie rental cars are here.
“Where’s the car?”
“At home,” he answers, distracted. My eyes widen, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“It’s a fifteen-minute walk. I came on foot.”
Typical.
Typical Assman behavior.
What part of this is an emergency, I am drunk, I am exhausted, I am wearing wet clothes, and I’ve spent eight hours in a prison cell does he not understand?
He would find a way to screw something up, wouldn’t he?
“Why the hell didn’t you take one of the cars?”
“Because, Julie,” Jasper says slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose, “I woke up in the middle of the night to a call from my assistant saying you were in jail. I figured you wouldn’t be thrilled if I turned on an engine in the garage and woke the entire house.
Because, honestly, if this was something you wanted the others to know, you would’ve called Mila, not me. ”
As much as I hate this, he… kind of has a point.
Mila would have had a heart attack just imagining me doing something irresponsible enough to get arrested the week of her wedding.
Or she’d kill me. Whichever came first.
But both options would be equally bad, since in both scenarios I wouldn’t be able to carry out my one-mile-long maid-of-honor to-do list, so a heart attack seems most likely, considering this one she’d have no control of.
I look down at my poor feet, squeezed inside the stiletto heels I picked this morning to meet Brock Magnus at the wine cellar (back when I still thought he was a civilized athlete).
They were fine while I was sitting in the cell, but it has been a very, very long day, and not even the alcohol can numb the pain anymore.
“I can’t walk fifteen minutes in these heels!” I whine, not even sure what I expect him to do.
As predicted, he just stares at me like he doesn’t understand the problem.
“Then take them off.”
“I’m not walking barefoot on the street, Jasper!”
“You just spent the night in a drunk tank in Mexico. You’re getting picky now?”
Once again, he’s not wrong, but there are limits.
Just because I got arrested for skinny-dipping with a WWE wrestler and a tequila saleswoman then had to call the most insufferable human alive to bail me out, does not mean I’m surrendering myself to total decay.
“Can’t we call an Uber?” I suggest.
Not that I know where my phone is anymore, or whether I ever fixed my international roaming issue.
“You can, sure. At this hour, in the hotel zone, far from downtown, maybe you’ll get someone to pick you up before sunrise,” he says, completely uninterested, as if he’s not even trying to provoke me. Then he turns away, announcing his own plans, “I’m going to bed.”
Fucking asshole.
“Could we at least walk along the beach?” I give the idea.
He looks at me like I’m insane.
Well, I never said it was a good idea.
“At three in the morning? On a dark deserted beach? With a neon sign over our heads that scream ‘stupid tourists’?”
Because he’s a stubborn smug and I’m drunk enough to let him dictate the terms of this conversation, I just declare, “Whatever, Assman. I’ll meet you at the house.”
It doesn’t even seem like that bad of a plan.
The tourist police station is in the resort zone, only two blocks separate the huge Nichupté Lagoon from the ocean.
I just need to walk a bit to reach the beach and the resorts, then walk along the shoreline until I get to the infinity pool of Mila’s rented villa.
I don’t even have to go back to the Callejón Desnudo. I can just sneak in through the wooden gate by the deck.
Simple as that.
But Jasper turns fully toward me and rolls his eyes.
“I’m not letting you walk alone on the beach at this hour.”
Which is the last thing I expected him to say.
“Why not? It’s one of the few chances you’ll ever get for me to be kidnapped and disappear forever.”
He pauses. Considers.
After a few seconds, he sighs, “Mila is not canceling her wedding just because you went missing. She’ll move forward and turn me into her new slave. And we don’t want that, do we?”
“You’re an asshole,” I spit.
Instead of disagreeing, he just presses his lips together and nods.
Then takes a deep breath, rolling his eyes and groaning.
“Take your damn shoes off, Julie. We’ll go by the beach.” He looks down at his own immaculate dress shoes and groans again. “God, I hate you.”
I smile.
“Thank you.”
And for the first time ever, I mean it.
Not that he cares. He just waves a dismissive hand.
“Whatever. Maybe the ocean breeze will sober you up at least a little.”
“I am not drunk! How dare you?” I protest.
“You smell drunk,” he says. Then studies me. “Your hair looks drunk. Your face looks drunk. Can you do a one-leg stand?”
I stand only on my left leg just to spite him, then sweep my arms out and bow for my imaginary applause.
Jasper doesn’t look impressed.
“Can you recite the alphabet backward?”
“I can’t do that even when I’m sober, let alone–” I say, and he’s already smiling before I finish.
Because I already admitted I am not sober with that statement, which gets his point proven.
And Jasper just loooves when his point is proven.
And I should be focusing on that, but his little smug smile makes his jawline look sharp and rough once again, so the drunk gremlin inside me forces me to announce, completely out of nowhere, “You shaved.” Duh.
Obviously. But does it stop? No, of course not, so I go on, “I liked it better longer. Way less prickly.”
Why the hell am I talking about Jasper’s beard at three in the morning?
“Why do you care whether my beard is prickly or not?”
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
My mouth mumbles nonsense as I crab-walk away toward what I think is the beach.
“Wrong way, Julie,” he says in that flat, raspy voice.
The crab pivots.
Jasper sighs, but he starts walking beside me anyway. Heavy, steady steps, and God, why does he have to look so attractive?