The Millionaire's Intriguing Offer

Sparrow

She looked up at him, those golden eyes wide with shock.

"Yes," she whispered. "Hello, Jack."

"Hello, Jack?  What the hell is going on here?" he demanded, and she just stared back at him. God, had his mother been right all along? Catherine had labeled her an opportunist, but it was apparently so much worse.

"So somehow you found out I was in Miami. I'm guessing Mitsy must have mentioned me in passing. The trip, the bid at the bachelor auction, the job application, then acting like you didn't want to be with me. Forcing me to pursue you. Oh, that was clever. You're certainly not stupid."

She stared at him, her face still registering shock. He wasn't buying it. He knew now what a little actress she was. Was anything left of the girl he'd loved all those years ago? He shook his head.

"Listen, you have every right to be mad," she started, and he waived off her words, a cold anger replacing the hot temper of a moment ago.

"I certainly do. But what I can't figure out, Bailey - or is it Crystal Marie - I really can't bring myself to call you Sparrow - what I can't figure out is what your end game was."

"End game? I don't have an end game. Jack, if you'd just let me explain."

He felt like his heart had turned into ice and cracked in two. Who even was this person he had fallen in love with? Everything she'd told him had obviously been a lie.

"Oh, you'll explain all right. We have all night after my grandfather's dinner. But you're not going to ruin that."

Bailey shook her head. "Why would I ruin your grandfather's dinner? Jack, you've got this all wrong."

He heard the tears in her voice, but dismissed them. How could he believe anything she might say? He'd been completely set up, by someone he thought he knew.

"Was it marriage? Is that what the point was? Marry me and have access to the wealth you envied as a child."

She stood up on the dock and faced him, her eyes now flashing with anger where before there had been fear, and maybe shame? Or maybe he was giving her too much credit. He remembered the kind of people her parents had been. Her mother a drug addict and an alcoholic, her father a criminal, always in and out of jail. Two people who obviously never gave a damn about her. He'd never questioned how she could be so good, when she came from something so rotten.

"You bastard. How can you even think something like that?"

"Well if that was your game, Bailey," he said, feeling the coldness in his own voice, "you almost achieved it. I was well on my way to asking you to be my wife."

"That's bullshit, Jack. Our relationship was just pretending. You said so yourself."

"It wasn't pretending for me. I'd have said anything to keep you with me. That's how successful you were in making me love you."

Tears were streaming down her face now, but from her expression they were tears of anger. He supposed she was crushed to have been found out. Luckily for him, just in time. Before he'd done something he'd have regretted for the rest of his life.

"I didn't tell you who I was because you didn't even remember me."

"Bullshit. I didn't recognize you, but I sure as hell remembered you. I tried to find you for years."

"Well, you didn't try very hard. Every time they moved me, I sent you my address. You never answered, Jack. Not even a postcard. And when I told you I was running away - coming here to meet you - you didn't show up. But your mother did. She called social services and they dragged me away."