The sun was peeking over the horizon when Colton finally dragged himself out of Harper's bed. What he wanted to do was stay there for a week with Cecelia delivering food and drink to sustain them. But what he was going to do was find Gavin and put an end to the charade of a reality show.

Once he was dressed, he took a minute to watch over Harper, enjoying the peaceful look on her face as she slept. It was another first for him. He'd racked up many in the last few weeks. Hell, just in the last twenty-four hours he'd ridden horses with a woman, joined her on an impromptu picnic, treasured cuddling all night and now dreaded leaving her. All firsts for the confirmed bachelor.

The room smelled like sex, but it was no wonder considering they'd made love every few hours throughout the night. He leaned down to kiss her brow, hoping he could find Gavin and be back before she even woke up.

He pulled the door closed quietly behind him as he took the stairs down to the pool house. The two-story expanse was still dark, making the glow of a cigar stand out. The shadowy silhouette turned into Gavin as Colton got closer.

He was relieved. "I'm glad you're back. We need to talk."

"Damn straight we do. I see you've been busy while I was away."

Colton wondered how the producer even knew he wasn't asleep in his own bed. Regardless, he didn't want to have this conversation so close to the sleeping Harper. He suspected there would be raised voices involved and wanted to spare her.

"Let's go up to the house. We can put on some coffee," Colton suggested.

"No, I think we best stay here. I wouldn't want anyone else to listen in."

"Well, they'll find out soon enough that I'm out. I know you'll need to fine me for breach of contract, but I accept that's what I need to do."

Gavin pinned him with an unreadable glare. "I'm afraid it isn't that simple."

"Sure it is. I was under contract. I'm breaking it. You'll fine me and we'll call it a day."

"Just like that?" he asked flatly. Colton didn't know how to reply, so he kept quiet until Gavin crossed the line. "She must be some piece of ass to throw the whole show down the fucking tube for her."

As the producer's offensive words registered, Colton grabbed him by the collar and yanked him to his feet, easily manhandling the smaller man. "You'd better watch yourself, Wallace, or you'll end up with my fist in your face."

The bastard had the nerve to flash a determined smile. "Go ahead. That'll make for a better show."

"I told you, there is no show." Then it hit him. He glanced around, expecting to find a cameraman lurking in one of the shadows, relieved when they appeared to be alone.

Gavin's grim smile kept him on edge. " You really should have read the fine print better." He paused before adding, "And so should have Harper."

His first alarm bell started going off. Colton shoved the wiry man away from him, trying to intimidate him. "Leave her out of this. This isn't her fault. I never should have signed up for this fucking circus in the first place."

"On that we can agree, but there will be no leaving Harper out. In fact, she's ending up to be the star of the show."

Colt grabbed him again, lifting the shorter man until his feet dangled like a runt about to be beaten up on the school playground. A hot rage he didn't understand coursed through his veins. He had always been competitive, but for the first time in his life, he wanted to do true harm to another human being.

Through gritted teeth, he corrected the producer. "You air anything that hurts Harper and you'll never work in sports journalism again. You said it yourself. I'm sports royalty. You fuck with Harper and I'll call in every favor I need to in order to make sure I destroy you. Got it?"

A drop of perspiration ran down Gavin's forehead. It was the only indication his threats had impacted the other man. The asshole's expression remained blank—unwavering.

"The law is on my side on this one, Colt. I have a binding contract with you and Harper. Every minute of the footage I've collected, both audio and video, are mine to do with as I please."

It took all of his effort to keep from ripping the little weasel's head off his shoulders. Needing space, Colton took a step forward and threw Gavin back into the poolside chair with such velocity the man almost tipped backwards.

The cigar he'd been smoking had fallen to the floor and was rolling away. Colton shuffled forward and stomped on it so hard it crumbled into shreds beneath his grinding shoe.

"That was a damn Cuban, you asshole."

"I'll buy you a fucking truck-load of them if you just walk away from this," Colton offered, appealing to the guy's greed.

"Like I said, it's not that simple. We have airtime we need to fill. Sponsors we've sold prime-time ad space to. They're expecting prime-time numbers. I was panicking, because they sure as shit weren't gonna get viewers with your choir boy routine."

Colton felt trapped. He needed to go to his room and re-read the contract again. There had to be an out clause somewhere. It would be an expensive lesson to learn, but he'd made twenty-two million last season. He could afford it.

"Fine, I'll go call my lawyer and get him working on burying you." He turned, taking angry strides towards the exit.

Gavin yelled out, taunting, "I sure hope Harper can afford a good lawyer too."

Colt stopped in his tracks, a ball of dread forming in the pit of his empty stomach. He spun, pinning Gavin with a death glare. "I told you to leave her out of this. She has nothing to do…"

"Oh for Christ's sake, how can you keep a straight face as you say that? Harper has everything to do with what's been going on around here. I admit. I didn't see it until you threw the chair through the wall earlier this week defending her. Looking back, it was so obvious, although I had to pay a crew back in the city a small fortune to comb through the hundreds of hours of camera footage looking for encounters we'd missed in the production van. To think, you guys met the very first night."

"How did you…" His voice trailed off.

There are cameras everywhere but in the shitter.

They'd warned him.

"You have cameras in the garage?"

"I admit, we didn't put those there. They were installed for security on the high-end vehicles, but, yeah… there are cameras in the garage."

He had a sinking feeling. "The stables?"

"Of course," Gavin scoffed.

Colton dreaded digging any deeper, but then he realized if he didn't ask now, he could always wait and watch it on national television with millions of other viewers instead.

The men glared at each other, Gavin's expression almost daring him to ask.

"And… the pool house."

"Yes."

He was short of breath, pushing down his anxiety. "I swear to God, if you have a camera in her bedroom, I'm gonna kick your ass."

Gavin made him wait almost thirty seconds, before finally acknowledging, "Actually, there are two there."

Colt’s right fist connected with Gavin's left cheekbone exactly two seconds later. The asshole went down like the pussy he was. Colton wasn't even close to being finished with him, leaning over to pick the prick off the floor just so he could punch him in the stomach.

Before he could move in to deliver a third helping of whoop-ass, two previously unseen guys tackled him from behind and tried to wrestle him to the ground.

Colton fought them off, taking his rage out on them until the men he recognized as his assigned cameramen raised their hands in surrender.

And that was the moment he realized that even their private conversation and the physical altercation from this morning were now memorialized forever on film.

He was going to be skewered by the press for this. Hell, if the three men decided to press charges, Gavin may have to send a camera crew along to the county lockup with him. That ought to garner phenomenal ratings as they chronicled Colton King's travels through the American court system as he was booked for assault and battery.

He needed to think. He needed to get Harper the fuck away from the cameras. He needed to…

"Now that you got that out of your system, why don't you sit down? I have a proposal for you."

"No thanks. I got into this mess listening to one of your crazy proposals."

"It's a bit late now to try to sweep all this under the rug." Gavin's nose was bleeding. He stopped talking long enough to grab a towel from the nearby table, using it to try to stanch the bleeding as he continued. "There's no way we have enough footage worth using to stick with our original plan. Short of Maya's blowjob, you've barely even touched anyone but Harper."

Colton groaned. Of course they had the BJ on tape. Ironically, his first thought wasn't how it would look to the millions of viewers who might potentially see it on an upcoming pornographic episode. Instead, he worried about how Harper would react, knowing it would hurt her.

"Get on with it," he said impatiently, angry that he had to spend another ten seconds listening to the jerk, but not really in a position to walk out either.

"I know it wasn't what we planned, but your time with Harper is like gold for the show. Your time together in the stables, out riding and even the picnic at the lake…"

Fucking hell.

"…only thing better is if you'd had sex out there, but I get it… it was too cold."

Colton interrupted him. "There has to be something. Some other way. I'm not dragging her into this."

"She dragged herself into this. She did everything but poison the women. Don't forget. She signed a similar contract. She knew the score on the cameras."

The ball of anxiety in his gut exploded. Had Harper known there were cameras in all of the places where he'd thought they'd had privacy? Surely she hadn't seduced him on purpose? His heart physically contracted, rejecting the thought of her possible betrayal, but his logical brain wouldn't let the idea go.

The irony of waiting thirty-six years to finally fall hard for a woman, only to have her turn out to be using him like he'd used hundreds of women before her, wasn't lost on him. There had to be a mistake.

"Colton?" Her voice called to him from a few feet away. She sounded so confused… almost fragile. His instinct was to protect her from the bullshit that was going down, but his self-preservation kicked in, throwing up a protective wall between them.

He swung to confront her, only to find her standing there in a terry cloth robe, looking adorably vulnerable. Her long locks were having a bad hair-day, having been tossed around all night long. But it was her lips that he couldn't stop looking at. They were pink and still swollen from their passionate kissing. They'd looked beautiful stretched wide around his cock around three that morning.

"You should go back upstairs."

"But what's going on? I heard voices and then a crash."

He was aware that the cameramen he'd attacked were no longer in sight which meant they were back behind the lens, hiding away as they taped every word… every syllable.

Colton felt trapped. He needed to be alone, away from prying eyes just to think. There had to be a way out of the mess he'd gotten into.

"You need to go home, Harper. Back to New York."

"New York? What's going on. Why are you sending me away?" Tears spilled down her cheeks in seconds, taking remnants of yesterday's mascara with them. She was either genuinely hurt, or an Oscar-worthy actress. The problem was, he didn't have the time to ferret out the truth right now, and sure as shit, he didn't want to duke things out with the beautiful chef with an audience of millions.

"It seems I didn't read the fine print of the contract well enough. I have a lot of shit to sort out. I don't know what's going on yet, but I will find out." It was a statement, but he failed miserably at hiding his resentment for being put in this position. He didn't miss her flinch as she internalized his words.

Gavin interjected. "I told you, she can't leave. She's under contract."

Colt turned back towards the producer. It was easier to face that man's anger than Harper's tears.

"She's the fucking chef, not one of the contestants."

"Harper signed the same contract that the camera crew and the Finnegans did. Hell, even your agent, Vencinti, had to sign one just in case he was caught up in a scene on one of his visits, I'd have the right to use the footage."

"Goddammit." Colt dragged his fingers through his hair nervously. He felt truly trapped. Had he known what was waiting for him at the bottom of the steps, he might have tied the bed sheets together in Harper's room and had the two of them shimmy down from her window to make a run for it to her Honda.

The sound of Harper crying softly made it impossible to think of anything else but wanting to comfort her, but that wasn't what she needed from him the most in that moment. He knew what she didn't. That their special night spent together in her room would soon be turned into the main attraction of the three-ring circus that was in town. He needed to protect her.

You need to protect yourself, King.

He closed the distance between them, fighting an internal war as he set his half-baked plan into motion.

"I'm sorry things played out this way, Harper. I really am. But, it's for the best that you go back to the city, and let me sort things out here."

"You want me to leave?"

Technically, he wanted them both to leave, but he held his tongue. "I do."

She flinched, visibly shaken. He wanted to believe she was an innocent bystander, caught up in the craziness of the reality show, but even if that were true, it only made what was going to happen when the show aired that much worse.

"Give me your number. I'll be in touch when the dust settles."

Soft cries gave way to her anger as she pushed away from him. "Don't do me any favors. I wouldn't want to mess up your 'one and done' dating philosophy."

It was his turn to flinch at her angry words. He hated the thought of her leaving thinking she'd just been another notch in the bedpost of a playboy. He forced a deep breath, thinking through his options, and realized he hated her staying anywhere near Gavin's cameras even more. They'd given the production crew more than enough fodder for their game. He already faced a hell of a legal battle. He needed to focus on that. It was the best way to protect Harper, even if she didn't understand it at the moment.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, but if that's the way you want it."

"Nothing is the way I want it!" she shouted, pushing away from him with a sob.

He watched her race up the stairs to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. He sensed Gavin in his peripheral view. It took all his willpower to keep from taking his frustration out on the producer, but they'd just delivered a heart-wrenching scene for the cameras. He didn't need to add another assault to his resume.

Colton turned and pinned Gavin with a serious glare. "I'm going back to the main house. I'm grabbing my phone and my copy of the contract, and then I'm going into my bathroom because apparently that is the only place in the entire property I have any assurance of any privacy. I need you to help Harper carry her stuff down to her car, and send her on her way back to New York. You aren't to threaten her. You aren't to touch her. Hell, you aren't even to talk to her. I want her safely away until I get this all sorted out. You got it?"

Gavin was staring at him, that same unreadable look on his face, until he finally nodded. "I sure as hell hope you know what you're doing."

Colt took off for the door, unwilling to verbalize that he hadn't the damnedest clue.