Atlas (Billionaire Titans) by Alison Ryan Page B

other word.
    “… You know I’d do anything…” She had a heavy accent, one I couldn’t identify.
    “I just know there’s a connection…” he replied.
    “Maybe if we…” she said, her hand still on his back.
    He shook his head at her response, “No… It has to be more…”
    I had assumed he’d be meeting with a man. Someone in a business suit without the perfect legs and ass that this woman was sporting in a pencil skirt that clung to her supermodel curves.
    I slowly walked away from the salon and back to the cold sheets of my bed, my stomach in knots. Was she his ex-girlfriend? Did he still love her? Was she from here? Maybe Atlas was one of those men that had women in different ports of call all over the world. It would make sense.
    But he’d told me he loved me.
    I hated being jealous. It wasn’t like me, but the thought of him ever wanting anyone but me made me want to throw myself off the pointy top of the Burj Al Arab.
    Ever since I’d been with him I’d barely thought of Spencer Cameron. And I hadn’t been afraid at all once we’d gotten on the plane to Dubai. But now I was a different kind of afraid.
    I was afraid I was the type of girl that could never be enough for someone like Atlas Titan.

Twenty-Five

ATLAS
    T he meeting hadn’t gone well .
    I’d crept back into the bedroom a couple hours after leaving Piper, expecting to find her asleep. I longed to feel her body against mine, to have her again and fall asleep with her as close to me as humanly possible.
    But my mind was also on other things. Spencer Cameron was still searching for us. And some of our mutual colleagues were now in on what was happening. And sure enough it was about much more than Piper. In a way she was just a red herring, a pawn in his game to get back at me for what happened years ago.
    And what was worse, he’d hurt her. Just to get to me. He knew my father would call me to protect her. I suspected he’d known what he would do long before he’d first gotten her phone number at their first encounter. The anger in me over that was hard to contain. He’d used the woman I loved to bait me.
    And it was working.
    How he could have predicted I’d react this way, was hard to know. I suspected he hadn’t expected for me to fall for her as I had, he assumed I was just protecting the closest thing any of my brothers and I had to a sister. Not that I’d ever had any sisterly thoughts about Piper Kipton, even when she actually was my stepsister.
    But either way, the game had begun. Spencer Cameron was in this for the highest of stakes. I’d taken something from him long ago and now it was time for him to extract his revenge.
    And he was more than happy to use Piper to do it.
    She needed to know. I couldn’t hide what was happening any longer. Piper needed to know exactly who I was and what we were dealing with. I wasn’t the man she thought I was. I might have been on the right side of a wrong in this case, but there were so many wrongs in my past, I found it hard to believe she could ever see past them.
    The room was pitch black. I figured she was asleep, I knew she had to be spent from the last couple days of travel and stress. I would do everything in my power to make sure she got rest. Tomorrow we’d eat at Al Mahara. I’d wine and dine her, show her how I felt, something I wasn’t fantastic at. I was better at expressing it on her naked body, something I intended on having one more time tonight before falling into a deep sleep.
    I stripped my clothes off, already hard thinking about being inside her again. The room was barely lit but I reached the bed, waiting to hear her movement, hoping she was awake enough for me to love one more time.
    But as I reached across the bed, I felt nothing. Her side was empty.
    That was strange. The light in the bathroom was still on so I walked in there, thinking maybe she was taking a bath. But as I walked in I could only hear the echoing of my footsteps against the mosaic