Free Sapphire (Rare Gems Series) by Kathi S. Barton

come out right, but before
he could revise his comment, Justine started in on him. He just let her,
knowing that every word she said to him was no less than he deserved.
    “Train her? I see, and do you want me to
go to your apartment when you return with her and put out a doggie basket and
piddle papers for her? Do you think it’ll be hard to paper train her, or do you
plan to let her out in the yard when she has to pee? Oh wait, that won’t work,
you only have an apartment. At least ‘untrainable’ Sapphire has a home that she
paid for, a truck that she owns, and sisters she’s put through college.” He
opened his mouth to speak when she cut him off. “You’ve lived in the apartment
with the same maid service since I’ve known you, and I bet you my next check
that you have no idea what her name is.”
    He didn’t, he realized. “What the hell
does this have to do with Sapphire and her not listening to me?”
    “You don’t, do you? What about her
sisters? Do you know their names? Do you know her grandmother’s name?” He told
her their names as well as her grandmother. “So in one month you’ve not only
found a mate that you don’t want, you’ve gained the family that comes with her.
And for the life of you you’ve no idea what the woman’s name is that has
cleaned your apartment for the past fifteen years.”
    He closed his phone when she hung up on
him. He leaned back in the limo and tried to think what the fuck he really was
doing. He realized that as much as he needed to prove a point when he left his
office, for the life of him he couldn’t remember what the hell it had been.
    Did he want her? Yes, he did. In his
bed, on the floor, in the shower, anywhere he could have her. Did he need her? That
one was a little harder to answer. No, not really.
    Then why did he pursue her? Why did he
need so desperately to bring her in line? Why did he feel the need to protect
her at all costs? He knew that she was brave. Hell, he thought after what her
sister had told him she was a great deal braver than him. She’d taken more
chances in the little time that he’d known her than he had in the last ten
years.
    He looked up at his driver, a man he
knew was a tiger. “Lucas, are you mated? Do you have a mate at home now?”
    The man looked at him in the mirror,
then back at the road before answering him. “My missus passed some years back. We
had a long, but not nearly long enough life before she left me behind. Why do
you ask, sir?”
    “The woman I’m going after now, she’s my
mate. I don’t want her, I don’t need her, either, but I can’t seem to help
myself in trying to drag her back to me. And she doesn’t seem to want me,
either.” Lucas snorted and glanced at him again. “You think I’m an ass, too,
right? A prick because I don’t want what is supposed to be the other half of
me.”
    “No, sir, I don’t. You got your reasons,
I’m sure. I didn’t want a mate, either, when I met my Clare. She was just the
opposite of me. Outspoken, had an opinion a mile and a half long, and a body
that would stop a train on a runaway track. So, nope, didn’t want her at all. The
harder I pushed her away, the harder she ran from me. Didn’t do her no good,
‘course. I kept sniffing around her until one day I realized it.”
    Blair waited, knowing that he was going
to say something like he realized he loved her or that he found that life
without her was something he didn’t care to contemplate. But when Lucas stopped
at the next light and turned to look at him, he knew it was going to be
something from his heart and the man had shared this with no one else before.
    “I realized then that she didn’t need me
any more than I needed her. That when it was all said and done, like them fates
are saying to us, she was the only one in the world that was going to ever love
me like I wanted to be loved.” The horn blared from behind him, but still he
sat looking at him. “Mr. Henson, that woman you want, she