Free Causing a Commotion by Janice Lynn Page A

go of her wrist and laughed. “And you would?”
    “Would what?” She rubbed her wrist. Not that he hurt her, but because the skin tingled from his touch.
    “Recognize the truth if it slapped you upside your thick skull,” he repeated her words.
    “You know nothing about me so you shouldn’t make rash judgments.” Lame answer, but she couldn’t think. Couldn’t do anything but replay the vibration in his chest when he’d laughed, feel the strength in his body, the heat in his eyes.
    “You’re denying that you have a thick skull?” He mocked, daring her to tell him all her secrets with his expression.
    “I’m denying that you know anything about me.” Her words left her feeling like a petulant child. But that had to be better than saying she’d changed her mind and would like to go down on him in the elevator. Or vice versa.
    “I was an investigative reporter for ten years. You think I know nothing about you?”
    The elevator dinged announcing they’d arrived at the eleventh floor. Their floor. So much for going down .
    He put his finger over the button to hold the door closed. To keep them locked in their private alcove.
    Her lids lowered. “Tell me.”
    “I know everything about you. The fact that you have sealed juvenile records, the fact you were arrested for mooning a police officer on your eighteenth birthday, the fact that a few months ago you were engaged to multi-millionaireLarry Pritchard and dumped him, breaking his heart in the process.”
    Jessie bowed back in an instinctively protective move, but her gaze remained locked with Colin’s. “Larry got engaged again last month. I didn’t. Who broke whose heart?” she challenged.
    He stared funnily at her, as if her comment surprised him, but he continued with his tirade.
    “I know you crashed the set of Jane Millionaire and spent the weeks following romancing one of your sister’s bachelors.”
    “Not my sister’s,” she denied. “Mine. Steve never wanted Jill. Not really and definitely not after he met me.”
    “Didn’t he?” Colin’s tone ridiculed, got under her skin and provoked as she enjoyed doing to him. Having him reciprocate was no fun. “Looked that way to me from the footage I watched. I think he wanted her bad. Maybe he just used you to stay close to her?”
    She lifted her hand to hit him, but his gaze dropped, darkened, and she lowered it. When had she become so violent? She’d never wanted to strike a man as much as she wanted to smack the smirk off Colin’s face.
    “You know nothing of my relationship with Steve.” She didn’t want him to know. Some things were private.
    “He asked you to go with him to Washington D.C. and you refused. Why’s that if you were chummy?”
    “So what? Everyone knows that.” Did they really? She hadn’t told except those closest to her. Perhaps Steve told prior to his leaving.
    “Oh? Does everyone know that you were slotted to be the star of Jane Millionaire rather than your sister?”
    He had her there, but she refused to let it show. That was privileged information. Very, very few knew the truth behind the sister swap that had taken place to save her butt.
    Her acting abilities came in handy at times like these.
    “Perhaps that could be the next story we cover on our new show? We could do an expose on me,” she suggested, stepping even closer and glaring directly into his eyes. “Then one on how a man could drink so much he could be completely unaware of his lover overdosing just a few feet away from him?”
    His finger fell from the button. His face paled, the skin drawing tight, his eyes looking bleak. The elevator door slid open. Without a word he walked out, leaving Jessie feeling lost, frigid on the inside.
    She’d no right to say what she had, hated that she’d lost her temper and attacked in cold-blooded vengeance at his weakest spot. Wished she could erase her words. She teased him and tried to push his buttons, but some things were sacred, not to be treaded