Tycoon Protector. Elle James

      Chapter Three

      Jackson insisted on driving Ysabel’s compact red car with its sparkling set of rosary beads dangling from the rearview mirror, folding his six-foot-two-inch frame behind the driver’s wheel. After tossing her cookies at the container yard, Ysabel was too shaky and weak to maneuver Houston traffic—or so Jackson reasoned after wrestling the keys from her stubborn, unwilling hands.

      Truth was, his own hands were shaking and he wasn’t feeling so steady. Not that he’d ever admit it. The great Jackson Champion had narrowly missed being blown up and faced the possibility of going to jail all upon return from a two-month sabbatical from his home in Houston. But what had him confused and shaking inside was Ysabel being so violently ill.

      Ysabel, the one constant in his life. The person he’d come to depend on for just about everything. The woman he’d betrayed by taking her to his bed in a fit of rebound sex.

      His hands gripped the wheel so tightly that his knuckles whitened. Late at night the traffic in Houston was almost tolerable. He didn’t have to sit in jammed lines of vehicles and pray his car didn’t overheat in the unrelenting Texas sun.

      “I thought we were going back to the office.” Ysabel sat beside him, her normal color almost returned to her face, back in professional mode and ready to take on any challenge. She was amazing.

      And that was the problem. She didn’t know when to take time out for herself. She’d let him drive her into the dirt before she cried uncle. His lips pressed together. Wasn’t it time to take others into consideration for once? Had he been that incredibly selfish? “I’m taking you back to my place.”

      “No!”

      Her sharp reply made him risk a glance her way. In the light from the dash, her eyes rounded and she gripped her purse like the rail on the edge of a sheer drop-off. Was she scared of him?

      The muscles in his chest pulled tight, especially the big one conducting blood through his system. He’d done that. Made her afraid of him, but that didn’t change the fact she’d thrown up in the container yard and that he didn’t think she should be left alone. “You’re not well.”

      “Now that my stomach is empty, I feel just fine. Let’s get to the office and pull up that information you wanted. I can’t—don’t want to go to your place…” Her voice trailed off and she chewed on her lip.

      Jackson’s teeth ground together. She didn’t trust him to keep his hands to himself. He couldn’t blame her. After all, he’d taken advantage of her giving nature two months ago and taken her to his bed. He shouldn’t expect her to warm to the idea of being alone with him in the place he’d slept with her.

      It had all unraveled because of his stupid, selfish attitude. So his ego had taken a hit after being jilted by his fiancée. He’d had no right to demand Ysabel meet him at his place after office hours. He’d been so obsessed with finding out why he’d been summarily dismissed by Jenna without so much as an explanation. It completely set him aback. Why would any woman walk away from marriage to a billionaire?

      Ysabel tried to make him see that he hadn’t been marrying for the right reasons. Love had never entered the equation with Jenna. He’d decided he needed a wife and Jenna had seemed to fit the bill.

      Ysabel had argued that good breeding stock, with connections in the corporate world wasn’t enough to base a marriage on.

      He’d countered that he didn’t want children nor the messiness and entanglement of love. No one ever won when love was involved. All he wanted was a wife to grace his dinner table when he entertained his important guests.

      Ysabel had been equally passionate that love and family meant everything and that he should be glad Jenna called it off before Jackson had made the biggest mistake of his life.

      Ysabel’s green eyes had flashed with her zeal. Having called her to his condo late at night, she’d come immediately, dressed in a jean skirt and a skimpy camisole.

      For the first time in their five-year relationship as employee and boss, Jackson saw past the professional facade she donned every day, and he was shocked. Shocked and completely and irrevocably turned on. Ysabel wasn’t the sensible, icy exec he’d thought she was. She was fiery and sassy, strong and determined.

      That’s when he’d kissed her. The kiss led to more until he woke up the next morning with her lying next to him in his bed.

      He’d come awake staring down at her, thinking how right she looked with her light brown hair splayed across his pillow, and how he could get used to having her wake up next to him every day of his life.

      Then reality hit him like a rockslide. He’d steered clear of relationships for a reason. They never worked. Divorce happened and kids were abandoned and grew up in broken homes or foster homes. Like him.

      He couldn’t do that to any kid of his, couldn’t bring a child into the world knowing he might not be in his life to give him the love and support he’d need. Knowing that most marriages were doomed to failure.

      “Okay, then, I’m taking you home. You don’t need to be working when you’re sick.”

      “Really, I’m fine.” She reached out and laid her hand on his arm.

      An electric shock ran from where she touched all the way through him, making his heartbeat increase, pumping blood like an overworked piston through his bloodstream. His gaze dropped to where her slender fingers curled around his sleeve.

      As quickly as she’d placed it there, she withdrew her hand and clasped it in her lap, pleating the fabric of her linen skirt, clearly nervous in his company.

      What a mess he’d made of his relationship with the only woman he’d ever trusted. He’d destroyed her trust.

      “I don’t want to go home,” she insisted. “We need to work quickly to get this matter resolved.”

      A heavy lump settled in his gut and his jaw tightened. “So you can resign?” He took a turn a little faster than he’d intended, tires skidding on the still-hot pavement.

      “Madre de Dios, Jackson! Could you slow it down? I’m not partial to getting car sick and I don’t relish being involved in a wreck.”

      “Sorry.” He slowed, taking the turns at a reasonable speed, recognizing the physical effort it took him to keep his foot from ramming the accelerator through the floorboard. Once he’d eased onto Interstate 45 heading into downtown Houston, he willed his fingers to loosen their grip.

      “In answer to your previous question…” She sighed. “Yes. Partly. I want to have this situation resolved before I leave the corporation. More than that I want to stop whoever is using Champion Shipping to smuggle deadly and illegal substances.” Her hands balled into fists. “We need to nail the bastard.”

      A smile pushed Jackson’s lips up on the edges. That was his Ysabel. She had been the most loyal employee on his payroll, doing everything in her power to ensure the success of Champion Shipping.

      “Thanks.” He shot a glance her way. “I guess that’s all I can expect.”

      Her shoulders rose and fell on a deep breath. “Jackson, we need to talk.”

      The lead weight in his gut flipped. “We need to talk” always meant she needed to say something and he wasn’t going to like it. He risked another glance her way, trying to read the expression in her profile and failing miserably. Out of the far corner of his eye, he caught a flash of headlights glaring off his side mirror. Before he could turn and look, a dark sedan raced up beside the compact car and slammed into the driver’s side.

      Having relaxed his grip on the wheel,