Zander let that all roll over in his mind. “You gather information about your father’s colleagues and expose it to keep your dad in line?”
“I guess. He just…I know he’s a good man down deep but this world he’s in…it’s like poison. I’ve seen it working on him. He’s changed. And I just don’t want him to think that any of these people are his real friends or can be trusted.” She was quiet for a moment. “He won’t just listen to me tell him that. He doesn’t think I know what I’m talking about. So…yeah. I guess I do it to be that voice of conscience for him.”
Zander couldn’t blame her. And he couldn’t deny that he was a little impressed. It was passive-aggressive, sure, but it was also effective. If her goal was to remind her father of the man he was and what he could become if he wasn’t careful, then this was a creative way to do it. Being aggressive and direct could have been a problem anyway. She could have put herself at risk—if not physically, then at least her plans, reputation, or financial standing—if she tried to confront any of these people personally.
Zander believed that her father wouldn’t have listened if she went directly to him with any secrets about his cronies. And unless she wanted to blackmail one of these people into doing something for her or giving her something, what good would it have done if she’d gone to them and told them she had dirt on them or their business?
Leaking secrets and scandals to the media, and occasionally to law enforcement, certainly proved to them all that someone was watching and they weren’t immune to trouble if they crossed certain lines.
“So why’s this different? With the animals?”
“It really doesn’t have anything to do with my dad,” she said. “At least as far as I can tell. I don’t think he’s had anything to do with it at all. In fact, I’m not sure any of his friends have. I think maybe Brantley and Christopher got into this on their own. But once I found out about it, I wanted to stop it, of course, and I wanted to show Dad that getting involved with these people has led Chris down a bad road. But now I’m more concerned with the animals than teaching my dad a lesson. Even if I could go back and take more time to get more information about what’s going on from Brantley or Chris, I wouldn’t. I just want someone to stop this.”
And then she had to be sweet? That was going to be an even bigger problem for Zander. But that was stupid.
He was already attracted to her and it wasn’t like women who loved animals were a major weakness or anything. He was around sweet, animal-loving women day in and day out. Both of his brothers were married to women who worked for the animal park. Jordan, Fletcher’s wife, was the educational director for the park. She was not only sweet and cute with animals but with little kids too. Would he have dated Jordan? Maybe. Would he have ever gotten serious with Jordan? Nope.
Zeke’s wife, Jill, just happened to be a world-renowned expert in endangered penguins and was caring for a colony of Galapagos penguins. Had Zander flirted with Jill when she’d come to town? Unapologetically. Would he have gotten her naked given a chance? If Zeke hadn’t fallen head over ass for her the first night, sure, maybe. Would Zander have gotten serious with her? Nope.
He wasn’t looking for serious. It was that simple.
And women being beautiful and having soft spots for animals hadn’t shaken him before.
There was also Charlotte, and Naomi, and Tori, and Juliet, and Maddie. All gorgeous. All amazing. All animal lovers.
He hadn’t felt one prickle of “uh, oh, she could be trouble”. His heart had never been in jeopardy.
So Caroline Holland being soft for these animals shouldn’t be a turn-on.
But Caroline wanted someone to shut down this animal trafficking thing…he wasn’t sure what exactly to call it…and Zander knew that he would give Spencer all the information and then insist on helping.
He was fascinated by her and he might as well just accept that and be honest with himself about it.
“You never worried about victims in any of the other cases you’ve gathered information about?” he asked Caroline. “The animals are the first time you’ve felt like you needed to advocate?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Then he felt her shift against him. He willed his body to not react. She felt good against him. She was soft and warm and smelled amazing. Was his body urging him to do more? Of course. He could easily roll to the side, pin her beneath him, and kiss her.
But he liked this too. He never cuddled. It wasn’t that he never spent the night with a woman beside him, but he wasn’t much of a hold-them-all-night guy. And he really wasn’t the chatty type. He supposed he could chalk that up to knowing most of the women he took to bed at least well enough to know that their fathers weren’t criminals. But he also just wasn’t that interested in backstory and opinions.
“Sometimes the victims were the company’s board of directors or their shareholders,” she finally replied. “Like in the embezzlement cases. Or the government if it was tax evasion or something. So no, I didn’t worry about the victims. There were a few cases where I exposed them cheating on their wives and that affected their families. And I felt bad for their wives and kids. But I also felt like they were better off knowing and, in the case where they divorced, they were better off without him. But…”
Zander felt her hand move. Her arm had been slung across his stomach, but now she pulled it back, her hand resting on his abs just below his diaphragm. His muscles tensed and he had to consciously relax.
“But?” he prompted, knowing his voice sounded strange, but needing her to talk.
“I don’t think I really let myself think that much about victims. I told myself that the person who was doing the bad thing—whatever it was—should get in trouble and it would make the victims happy that they were punished.”
“But the animals are different.”
Her hand moved back and forth across his shirt but he didn’t think she was truly conscious of the motion. He felt her cheek move against his chest as she nodded.
“Yeah. The animals are innocent and helpless. And…”
She sniffed again and Zander tightened his arm around her even as he moved his hand to rest on the top of hers to stop it moving. The strokes were sending jolts of awareness straight to his cock and it was very interested in doing more than talking.
“…I realize there were innocent, maybe helpless, people involved in some of the other stuff and I should have cared more about them and I should have pushed harder and gone faster and there’s no doubt more going on that I should dig into here. I need to focus on more than just how this affects my father and my family. But I ran out of the wedding and pissed everyone off and getting back in and getting them to trust me is going to be hard. I might have blown it all up.”
Zander’s focus shifted from the ache behind his fly to the clear ache in Caroline’s voice.
Without really thinking, he rolled toward her. She looked startled when her head tipped up so she could meet his eyes but she didn’t pull back.
“Hey,” he said, his voice husky. “No. Stop. I didn’t ask that to make you feel bad. I find what you’ve been doing for and because of your dad interesting and I was poking. But I’m not judging you.”