One Night With the Billionaire: Book Four (A Billionaire Romance) by Cassie Cross Page A

his nose. “Just go, please, Elise. I can’t do this tonight. My driver’s waiting for you downstairs. He’ll take you wherever you want to go.”  
    Jason has no family left; Elise is the closest thing he has. Kaia can’t wrap her mind around what could’ve happened to make the situation change so suddenly, and she doesn’t want to let Elise go without giving Jason the chance to cool off. She doesn’t want him to regret anything he says or does here, and if she can possibly keep that from happening, she’s going to.  
    “I’m worried about you,” she tells him. “Let’s just go back up to bed, and sleep on it, okay? Don’t do anything you’re going to regret.”  
    Jason puts his arm around Kaia, and pulls her close, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.  
    “I just need some time.” He looks to Elise, who’s clearly gutted, and repeats the same thing. “I need some time.”  
    Elise gives the two of them a sad smile, and watches the way Jason’s hand slides across Kaia’s shoulder. “Okay. I can give that to you.”  
    “The driver-”
    “Isn’t necessary,” Elise finishes. “I think we both know that now.”  
    “I don’t want you going out alone,” Jason says. “It’s late, and I’ll feel better knowing you got back to your hotel okay.”  
    Elise takes a deep breath, and nods. She stands, and gives Kaia a watery grin. “It was very nice to meet you, Kaia. I hope we’ll get the chance to get to know each other better in the future.”  
    Kaia nods. “I’d like that very much. I enjoyed meeting you, too.”  
    She pauses, like she thinks Jason might change his mind. When he doesn’t, she turns and walks out, shutting the door behind her.  
    Jason sighs heavily, and sits down on the edge of his desk. His shoulders are slumped, his head bowed. Kaia wants nothing more than to be there for him, to be someone he can lean on and talk to, but she doesn’t want to press him.  
    She’d really like it if he’d open up on his own.  
    She steps between his legs, and he grips her hips, moving her forward, close enough so he can rest his forehead against her chest. Kaia reaches up and slides her fingers through his hair, gently scratching his scalp the way she knows he likes.  
    “Are you okay?”  
    Jason lets out an unsteady breath. “No.”  
    Admitting it right away is something new. “Wanna talk about it?” Kaia almost immediately second-guesses herself, following that up with a quick, “It’s okay if you’re not ready, I-”
    “She lied to me.”  
    Kaia expected him to say a lot of things, but that definitely isn’t one of them.  
    “About what?”  
    He swallows, running his hands up and down her sides, and the slide of the cotton against her skin is the only sound in the room for a long time.
    “She lied to me about my parents. About why they were…about why they were killed.”  
    Kaia’s hands still in Jason’s hair as she absorbs what he just told her. He’s built his whole life around his parents’ death, around preventing something like that from happening ever again. He refused to let himself have relationships because of it. Hell, even once he opened up to her, his past had been one of the reasons he nearly lost her.  
    To learn that all of that was based on a lie…
    “Why were they targeted?” Kaia asks.  
    Jason lets out a short, bitter laugh. “Turns out they weren’t the kind of people I thought they were.”  
    The way his voice breaks when he says it, the heartsickness in it, makes Kaia pull Jason a little closer. She remembers the look on his face when he told her about his mother and father, the sheer admiration in his eyes. The pain that they were both taken from him much too soon. She’s so glad she’s here with him. She’s happy he’s letting her in.  
    Kaia rubs Jason’s shoulders, then presses a kiss against the top of his head. He raises his head from where it was cradled against her chest, and she wants to do