“May I be so optimistic as to assume you’re on your way back to Athens?”

She batted overly innocent lashes at him while smiling sweetly.

“I arrived last night for as long as it takes.”

His Adonis mask remained impassive. The man was an absolute robot—if robots came in worn denim and snug T-shirts that strained across sculpted shoulders, with blond hair so closely cropped it gleamed like a golden helmet.

“As long as it takes to what?” she asked, and started again for the kitchen, tingling with uneasy premonition as she scoffed, “Throw me out?”

“See? I knew you weren’t stupid.”

About the Author

DANI COLLINS discovered romance novels in high school and immediately wondered how a person trained and qualified for that amazing job. She married her high school sweetheart, which was a start, and then spent two decades trying to find her fit in the wide world of romance-writing—always coming back to Mills & Boon® Modern™.

Two children later, and with the first entering high school, she was placed in Harlequin’s Instant Seduction contest. It was the beginning of a fabulous journey towards finally getting that dream job.

When she’s not in her ‘Fortress of Literature’, as her family calls her writing office, she works, chauffeurs children to extra-curricular activities, and gardens with more optimism than skill. Dani can be reached through her website at www.danicollins.com

This is Dani’s sizzling sexy debut for Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance!

No Longer
Forbidden?
Dani Collins

www.millsandboon.co.uk

I’ve drafted this first book dedication in my head a thousand times, but the one consistent has always been: For Doug.

There are other treasured people I must thank for their encouragement: my awesome parents, my adored sisters and their terrific spouses, my supportive in-laws, and my cousin who wants me to become famous so she can brag about a connection to someone other than those A-listers she already has.

I have to thank my children, of course, for only interrupting my writing time for blood or flood. I especially have to thank them for finding, when they were very little, a way to let me write. They made friends with the most amazing children who possessed the most amazing parents. I very much have to thank their Other Moms and their families for embracing mine.

CHAPTER ONE

NICODEMUS MARCUSSEN rose to shake hands with his lawyer, his muscles aching with tension as he kept his reaction to all they’d discussed very much to himself.

“I know this is a difficult topic,” his lawyer tried.

Nic shook off the empathy with a cool blink and a private, No, you don’t. Nic trusted Sebastyen, but only within the framework of the media conglomerate Nic had fought to run after Olief Marcussen’s disappearance. Sebastyen had been one of Nic’s first supporters, believing in Nic’s leadership skills despite his inexperience. Nic was grateful, but they weren’t friends. Nic eschewed close relationships of every kind.

“I appreciate your advice,” Nic said with aloof sincerity. Everything Sebastyen had presented was the height of practicality, outweighing any sentiment that might have held Nic back. “It’s definitely time to consider it as the anniversary approaches. I’ll let you know how I’d like to proceed,” he concluded in dismissal.

Sebastyen hovered, appearing to want to add something, but Nic glanced at his watch. His days were busy enough without social chit-chat.

“I only wanted to reiterate that it would be helpful if both next of kin agreed,” Sebastyen blurted.

“I understand,” Nic drawled, keeping his patronizing tone muted but heard. It was enough of a butt-out to have the lawyer nodding apologetically and making haste to leave. Nic was quite sure the entire corporation, along with the rest of the world, followed the escapades of the other next of kin, but he wouldn’t abide open speculation about how he’d gain her cooperation.

The fact was, he already had an idea how he’d accomplish it. He’d been putting things together in his mind even as Sebastyen had been stating his case.

As Sebastyen closed the office door Nic went back to his desk and the courier envelope he’d received that morning. Bills of every description came out by the handful, their disarray as fluttery and frivolous as the woman who’d racked them up. The forget-me-not-blue notepaper was a particularly incongruous touch. He reread the swooping script.

Nic,

My bank cards aren’t working. Kindly sort it out and send the new ones to Rosedale. I’m moving in this weekend for some downtime.

Ro.

His initial reaction had been, downtime from what? But for once Rowan’s self-serving behavior was a convenience to him. Since she hadn’t got the message when he’d stopped her credit cards two months ago, he’d confront her and do what Olief should have done years ago. Make her grow up and act responsibly for a change.

Rosedale.

A warm sense of homecoming suffused Rowan O’Brien as she climbed the hill and looked over the sprawling vineyard surrounding the sturdy house of gray stone and mullioned windows. The turreted Old English mansion was out of place against the white beach and turquoise water, pure folly on a Mediterranean island where white stone columns and flowing architecture typically reigned, but it had been built to indulge a loved one so Rowan adored it with all her heart. And here she was free.

She’d sent the taxi ahead with her things, initially frustrated that her finances had stalled to the point where she’d had to take the ferry from the mainland, but the slow boat had turned out to be therapeutic. As much as she’d ached to see the house again, she had needed the time to brace herself for its emptiness.

With a bittersweet throb in her chest she descended to the lawn, ignored her luggage on the stoop and tried the door, half expecting it to be locked and wondering where she’d put her key. She’d left a message for the housekeeper, but wasn’t sure Anna had received it. Rowan’s mobile had stopped working along with everything else. Very frustrating.

The door was unlocked. Rowan stepped into silence and released a sigh. She had longed to come for ages but hadn’t been able to face it, too aware that the heart of the home was missing. Except …

A muted beat sounded above her. Footsteps crossed the second floor to the top of the stairs. Male, heavy steps …

Before she could leap to the crazy conclusion that by some miracle her mother and stepfather had survived, and were here after all, the owner of the feet descended the stairs and came into view.

Oh.

She told herself her reaction stemmed from the unexpectedness of seeing him face-to-face after so long, but it was more than that. Nic always made her heart trip and her breath catch. And—and this was new, since she’d thrown herself at him in a hideous moment of desperation nearly two years ago—made her die a little of abject mortification.

She hid that, but couldn’t help reacting to his presence. He was so gorgeous! Which shouldn’t matter. She knew lots of good-looking men. Perhaps none combined the blond Viking warrior with the cold Spartan soldier quite the way he did, but marble-carved jaws and chilly, piercing blue eyes were a mainstay among her mother’s film and stage crowd.

Nic’s looks were the least of his attributes, though. He was a man of unadulterated power, physically honed and confident to the point of radiating couched aggression. Nic had always been sure of himself, but now the authority he projected was ramped to new heights. Rowan felt it as a force that leapt from him to catch hold of her like a tractor beam that wanted to draw her under its control.

Reflexively she resisted. There was no room for quiet defensiveness when she came up against this man’s aura. She instinctively feared she’d drown if she buckled to his will, so she leapt straight to a stance of opposition. Besides, he was one of the few people she could defy without consequence. She’d never had anything to lose with Nic. Not even his affection. He’d hated her from day one—something that had always stung badly enough without him proving it on her twentieth birthday by reacting to her kiss with such contempt. She tried very hard not to care that he didn’t like her. She definitely didn’t let herself show how much it hurt.

“What a lovely surprise,” she said, in the husky Irish lilt that had made her mother famous, flashing the smile that usually knocked men off their guard. “Hello, Nic.”

Her greeting bounced off the armor of his indifference. “Rowan.”

She felt his stern voice like the strop of a cat’s tongue—rough, yet sensual, and strangely compelling. It was a challenge to appear as unmoved as he was.

“If you left a message I didn’t get it. My mobile isn’t working.” She hooked the strap of her empty purse on the stairpost next to him.

“Why’s that, do you suppose?” he asked without moving, his eyes hooded as he looked down on her.

His accent always disconcerted her. It was as worldly as he was. Vaguely American, with a hint of British boarding school, and colored by the time he’d spent in Greece and the Middle East.

“I have no idea.” Needing distance from the inherent challenge in his tone, she slipped out of her light jacket and moved into the lounge to toss the faded denim over the back of a sofa. Her boots clipped on the tiles with a hollow echo, sending a renewed pang of emptiness through her.

It struck her that Nic might be here for the same reason she’d come. She glanced back, searching for homesickness in his carved features, but his face remained impassive. He folded his arms, bunching his muscles into a stance of superior arrogance.

“No, I don’t expect you do,” he remarked with dry disparagement.

“I don’t what?” she asked absently, still hopeful for a sign of humanity in him. But there was nothing. Disappointment poked at her with an itch of irritation. Sometimes she wished … Stop it. Nic was never going to warm up to her. She had to get over it. Get over him.

But how? she wondered, restlessly tugging away the elastic that had kept her hair from blowing off her head on the ferry. She gave her scalp a rub, rejuvenating the dark waves while trying to erase her tingling awareness of Nic.

“Your mobile stopped working along with your cards,” he said, “but the obvious reason hasn’t occurred to you?”

“That everything expired at the same time? It occurred to me, but that doesn’t seem likely. They’ve always managed to renew themselves before.” She used her fingers to comb her hair back from her face, glancing up in time to see his gaze rise from an unabashed appraisal of her figure.

Her pulse kicked in shock. And treacherous delight. The wayward adolescent hormones that had propelled her to the most singularly humiliating experience of her life were alive and well, responding involuntarily to Nic’s unrelenting masculine appeal. It was aggravating that it took only one little peek from him to ramp her into a fervor, but she was secretly thrilled.

To hide her confusing reaction she challenged him, a vaguely smug smile on her face. It wasn’t easy to stare into his eyes and let him know she knew exactly where his attention had been. She’d been drilled from an early age to make the most of her looks. She knew she appealed to men, but she’d never caught a hint of appealing to this one. What an intriguing shift of power, she thought, even as their eye contact had the effect of making her feel as though she stood at a great height, dizzy, and at risk of a long fall.

Deep down, she knew she was kidding herself if she thought she had any power over him, but she let herself believe it long enough to take a few incautious steps toward him. She cocked her hip, aware that her boot heels would make the pose oh-so-provocative.

“You didn’t have to come all this way to bring me new cards, Nic. You seem like a busy man. What happened? Decided you needed a bit of family time?” Again she searched for a dent in his composure, some sign that he craved human contact the way lesser mortals like she did.

His iceman demeanor chilled several degrees and she could almost hear his thoughts. Her mother might have been his father’s lover for nearly a decade, but he’d never once thought of Ro as family.

“I am busy,” he informed her, with his patented complete lack of warmth.

She’d never seen him show affection to anyone, so she ought not to let his enmity bother her, but he always seemed extra frosty toward her.

“I work, you see. Something you wouldn’t know anything about.”

For real? She shifted her weight to the opposite hip, perversely pleased that she’d snared his attention again, even though his austere evaluation was not exactly rich with admiration of her lean limbs in snug designer denim. He just looked annoyed.

Fine. So was she. “These legs have been dancing since I was four. I know what work is,” she said pointedly.

“Hardly what I’d call earning a living, when all your performances involve trading on your mother’s name rather than any real talent of your own. Next you’ll tell me the appearance fee you get for clubbing is an honest wage. I’m not talking about prostituting yourself for mad money, Rowan. I’m saying you’ve never held a real job and supported yourself.”

He knew about the club? Of course he did. The paparazzi had gone crazy—which was the point. She’d hated herself for resorting to it, very aware of how bad it looked while her mother was still missing, but her bank account had bottomed out and she’d had no other choice. It wasn’t as if she’d spent the money on herself, although she wasn’t in a mood to air that dirty little secret. Olief had understood that she had an obligation toward her father, but she had a strong feeling Mr. Judgmental wouldn’t. Better to fight Nic on the front she could win.

“Are you really criticizing me for trading on my mother’s name when you’re the boss’s son?”

He didn’t even know how wrong he was about her mother’s reputation. Cassandra O’Brien had pushed Rowan onto the stage because she hadn’t been getting any work herself. Her reputation as a volatile diva with a taste for married men had been a hindrance to everyone.

“My situation is different,” Nic asserted.

“Of course it is. You’re always in the right, no matter what, and I’m wrong. You’re smart. I’m stupid.”

“I didn’t say that. I only meant that Olief never promoted me through nepotism.”

“And yet the superiority still comes across! But whatever, Nic. Let’s take your condescension as read and move on. I didn’t come here to fight with you. I didn’t expect to see you at all. I was after some alone time,” she added in a mutter, looking toward the kitchen. “I’m dying for tea. Shall I ask Anna to make for two, or …?”

“Anna isn’t here. She’s taken another job.”

“Oh. Oh,” Rowan repeated, pausing three steps toward the kitchen. Renewed loss cut through her. Anna’s moving on sounded so … final. “Well, I can manage a cuppa. Do you want one, or may I be so optimistic as to assume you’re on your way back to Athens?” She batted overly innocent lashes at him while smiling sweetly.

“I arrived last night to stay for as long as it takes.”

His Adonis mask remained impassive. The man was an absolute robot—if robots came in worn denim and snug T-shirts that strained across sculpted shoulders and cropped their blond hair so closely it gleamed like a golden helmet.

“As long as it takes to what?” she asked as she started again for the kitchen, tingling with uneasy premonition as she scoffed, “Throw me out?”

“See? I knew you weren’t stupid.”

CHAPTER TWO

ROWAN swung back fast enough to make her hair lift in a cloud of brunette waves. She was so flabbergasted Nic might have laughed if he hadn’t been so deadly serious.

“You stopped all my credit cards. And closed my mobile account. You did it!”

“Bravo again,” he drawled.

“What a horrible thing to do! Why didn’t you at least warn me?”

Outrage flushed her alabaster skin, its glow sexy and righteous. A purely male reaction of lust pierced his groin. It was a common enough occurrence around her and he was quickly able to ignore it, focusing instead on her misplaced indignance. A shred of conscience niggled that he hadn’t tried to call her, but when dealing with a woman as spoiled as she was reasoning wasn’t the best course. She was too sure of her claim. Far better to present a fait accompli. She had.

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d dropped out of school?” he countered.

If she experienced a moment of culpability she hid it behind the haughty tilt of her chin. “It was none of your business.”

“Neither are your lingerie purchases, but they keep arriving on my desk.”

A blush of discomfiture hit her cheeks, surprising him. He hadn’t thought her capable of modesty.

“This is so like you!” Rowan charged. “Heaven forbid you speak to me. Seriously, Nic. Why didn’t you call to discuss this?”

“There’s nothing to discuss. Your agreement with Olief was that he would support you while you were at school. You chose to quit, so the expense fund has closed. It’s time to take responsibility for yourself.”

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? You’ve always hated me and you’re jumping on this chance to punish me.”

“Punish you?” The words hate and stupid danced in his head, grating with unexpected strength. He pushed aside an uncomfortable pinch of compunction. “You’re confusing hate with an inability to be manipulated,” he asserted. “You can’t twine me around your finger like you did Olief. He would have let you talk him round to underwriting your social life. I won’t.”

“Because you’re determined my style of life should be below yours? Why?”

Her conceit, so unapologetic, made him crack a laugh. “You really think you can play the equality card here?”

“You’re his son; he was like a father to me.”

Her attempt to sound reasonable came across as patronizing. Entitled. And how many times had he buckled to that attitude, too unsure of his place in Olief’s life? He’d adopted the man’s name, but only because he’d wanted to be rid of the one stuck on him at birth. In the end Olief had treated Nic as an equal and a respected colleague, but Nic would never forget that Olief hadn’t wanted his son. He’d been ashamed he’d ever created him.

Then, when Nic had finally been let into Olief’s life, this girl and her mother had installed themselves like an obstacle course that had to be navigated in order to get near him. Nic was a patient man. He’d waited and waited for Olief to set aside time for him, induct him into the fold. Acknowledge him. But it had never happened.

Yet Rowan thought she had a daddy in the man whose blood made Olief Nic’s father. And when it had come down to choosing between them two years ago, Nic recalled with a rush of angry bile, Olief had chosen to protect Rowan and disparage Nic. Nic would never forgive her setting him up for that disgrace.

“You’re the daughter of his mistress.” How Olief could want another man’s whelp mothered by his mistress but not his own child had always escaped Nic. “He only took you on because the two of you came as a package,” Nic spelled out. He’d never been this blunt before, but old bitterness stewed with fresh antagonism and the only person who had kept him from speaking his mind all these years was absent. “You’re nothing to him.”

“They were lovers!”

Her Irish temper stoked unwilling excitement in him. With her fury directed toward him, he felt his response flare stronger than ever before. He didn’t want to feel the catch. She was off-limits. Always had been—even before Olief had warned him off. Too young. Too wrong for him. Too expressive and spoiled.

This was why Nic hated her. He hated himself for reacting this way. She pulled too easily on his emotions so he wanted her removed from his life. He wanted this confused wanting to stop.

“They weren’t married,” he stated coldly. “You’re not his relation. You and your mother were a pair of hangers-on. That’s over now.”

“Where do you get off, saying something like that?” she demanded, storming toward him like a rip curl that wanted to engulf him in its maelstrom of wild passion.

He automatically braced against being torn off his moorings.

“How would you justify that to Olief?”

“I don’t have to. He’s dead.”

His flat words shocked both of them. Despite his discussion with Sebastyen, Nic hadn’t said the obvious out loud, and now he heard it echo through the empty house with ominous finality. His heart instantly became weighted and compressed.

Rowan’s flush of anger drained away, leaving her dewy lips pale and the rest of her complexion dimming to gray. She was close enough that he felt the change in her crackling energy as her fury grounded out and despondency rolled in.

“You’ve heard something,” she said in a distressed whisper, the hope underlying the words threadbare and desperate.

He felt like a brute then. He’d convinced himself that the disappearance hadn’t meant that much to her. She was nightclubbing in their absence, for God’s sake. But her immediate sorrow now gave him the first inkling that she wasn’t quite as superficial as he wanted to believe. That quick descent into vulnerability made something in him want to reach out to her, even though they weren’t familiar that way. The one time he’d held her—

That thought fuelled his unwanted incendiary emotions so he shoved it firmly from his mind. He was having enough trouble hanging on to control as it was.

“No,” he forced out, trying to work out why he’d been able to hold it together in front of Sebastyen, who was closer to him than anyone, but struggled in front of Rowan. He feared she would see too deeply into him at a time when his defenses were disintegrating like a sandcastle under the tide. He couldn’t look into her eyes. They were too anxious and demanding.

“No, there’s been no news. But it’ll be a year in two weeks. It’s time to quit fooling ourselves they could have survived. The lawyers are advising we petition the courts to—” He had to clear his throat. “Declare them dead.”

Silence.

When he looked for her reaction he found a glare of condemnation so hot it gave him radiation blisters.

With a sudden re-ignition of her temper, she spat, “You have the nerve to call me a freeloader, you sanctimonious bastard? Who benefits from declaring them dead? You, Nic. No. I won’t allow it.”

She was smart to fling away from him then, slamming through the door into the kitchen and letting it slap back on its hinges. Smart to walk away. Because that insult demanded retaliation, and he needed a minute to rein in his temper before he went after her and delivered the set-down she deserved.

As Rowan banged through the cupboards for a kettle she trembled with outrage.

And fear. If her mother and Olief were really gone …

Her breath stalled at how adrift that left her. She’d come here to find some point to her life, some direction. She’d made quite a mess of things in the last year, she’d give Nic that, but she needed time to sort it all out and make a plan for her future. Big, sure, heartless Nic didn’t seem to want to give her that, though.

He pushed into the room, his formidable presence like a shove into deeper water. She gripped the edge of the bench, resenting him with every bone in her body. She wouldn’t let him do this to her.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” she seethed. “You don’t have a sensitive bone in your body. You’re made up of icicles, aren’t you?”

He jerked his head back. “Better that than the slots of a piggy bank,” he returned with frost. “It’s not Olief being gone that worries you, but his deep pockets—isn’t it?”

“I’m not the one taking over his offices and bank accounts, am I? What’s wrong? The board giving you a hard time again? Maybe you shouldn’t have been so quick to jump into Olief’s shoes like you owned them.”

“Who else could be trusted?” he shot back. “The board wanted to sell off pieces for their personal gain. I kept it intact so Olief would have something to come back to.”

She’d been aware in those early weeks of him warring with Olief’s top investors, but she’d had her own struggles with rehabilitating her leg. The corporation had been the last thing on her mind.

“I’ve looked for them even while sitting at his desk,” Nic continued. “I paid searchers long after the authorities gave up. What did you do?” he challenged. “Keep your mother’s fan club rabid and frenzied?”

Rowan curled her toes in the tight leather of her boots, stabbed with inadequacy and affront. “My leg was broken. I couldn’t get out in a boat to look for them. And doing all those interviews wasn’t a cakewalk!”

He snorted. “Blinking back manufactured tears was difficult, was it?”

Manufactured? She always fought back tears when she couldn’t avoid facing the reality of that lost plane. Snapping her head to the side, she refused to let him see how talking about the disappearance upset her. He obviously didn’t see her reaction as sincere and she wasn’t about to beg him to believe her.

Especially when she had very mixed feelings—some that scared her. Guilt turned in her like a spool of barbed wire as she thought of the many times she had wished she could be out from under her mother’s controlling thumb. Since turning nineteen she had been waffling constantly between outright defiance that would have cut all ties to Cassandra O’Brien and a desire to stay close to Olief, Rosedale—and, she admitted silently, with a suffocating squeeze of mortification, within the sphere of Olief’s black sheep son.

But she hadn’t wished Cassandra O’Brien would die.

She couldn’t declare her mother dead. It was sick. Wrong. Rowan swiped her clammy palms over the seat of her jeans before running water into the kettle. She wouldn’t do it.

“If you want to run Olief’s enterprise, fill your boots,” she said shakily. “But if all you want is more control over it, and by extension me, don’t expect me to help you.” She set the kettle to boil, then risked a glance at him.

He wore the most painfully supercilious smirk. “I’m willing to forgive your debts to gain your cooperation,” he levied.

“My debts?” she repeated laughingly. “A few months of credit card bills?” She and her mother had been in worse shape dozens of times. “We’re in dire straits, love. Be a good girl and dance us out.” Appearance fees were a sordid last resort, but Rowan wasn’t above it. “You’ll have to do better than that,” she said coldly.

He leaned a well-muscled arm on the refrigerator. His laconic stance and wide chest, so unashamedly male, made her mouth go dry.

“Name your price, then.”

His confidence was as compelling as his physique, and all the more aggravating because she didn’t possess any immunity to it. She wanted to put a crack in his composure.

“Rosedale,” she tossed out. It was a defiant challenge, but earnest want crept into her tone. This was her home. This was where Olief would return … if he could.

“Rosedale?” Nic repeated.

His frigid stare gave her a shiver of apprehension before she reminded herself she was being crass because he was.

She tensed her sooty lashes into protective slits as she held his intimidating gaze. “Why not?” she challenged. “You don’t want it.”

“Not true. I don’t like the house,” he corrected, shifting his big body into an uncompromising stance, shoulders pinned back, arms folded in refusal. “The location is perfect, though. I intend to tear down this monstrosity as soon as it’s emptied and build something that suits me better. So, no, you may not have Rosedale.”

“Tear it down?” The words hissed in her throat like the steam off the kettle. “Why would you even threaten such a thing? Just to hurt me?”

“Hurt you?” He frowned briefly. Any hint of softening was dismissed in a blink. “Don’t try to manipulate me with your acts of melodrama, Rowan. No, I’m not doing anything to you. You’re not on my radar enough for me to be that personal.”

Of course not. And she shouldn’t let him so far into her psyche that she was scorched by that. But there he was, making her burn with humiliation and hurt.

“Unlike you, I don’t play games,” he continued. “That wasn’t a threat. It’s the truth. The house is completely impractical. If I’m going to live here I want open rooms, more access to the outdoors, fewer stairs.”

“Then don’t live here!”

“Athens has been my base most of my life. It’s a short helicopter or boat trip from here to there. The island’s vineyard is profitable in its own right, which I’m sure is the real reason you want your hands on the place, but I’m not going to hand you a property worth multi-millions because your mother slept her way into having a ridiculous house built on it. What I will do is allow you to take whatever Cassandra left here—if you do it in a timely manner.”

Rowan could only stare into his emotionless blue eyes. His gall left her speechless. Her mind could barely comprehend all he was saying. Rosedale gone? Pick over her mother’s things like she was snatching bargains at a yard sale? Give up hope?

A stabbing pain drove through her, spreading an ache like poison across her chest and lifting a sting into her throat and behind her eyes.

“I don’t want things, Nic. I want my home and my family!”

She was going to cry, and it was the last thing she could bear to do in front of this glacier-veined man. It was more like her to go toe-to-toe than run from a fight, but for the second time in half an hour she had to walk out on him.

After hiking the length of the island in heels, her feet refused a visit to all her favored haunts, so Rowan went as far as the sandy shoreline and kicked off her boots. The water was higher than she’d ever seen it, but she usually only swam in summer, rarely came to the beach in winter, and she hadn’t been looking at the water when she’d followed Nic down here two years ago.

Wincing, she turned her mind from that debacle—only to become conscious of how grim a place the beach was to visit since her mother and Olief had likely drowned somewhere out there in the Mediterranean. One year ago.

She was starting to hate this time of year.

Starting up the beach, she tried to escape the hitch of guilt catching in her, not wanting to dwell on how she’d asked them to come for her when she’d broken her leg. She hadn’t been able to go to them—not physically and, more significantly, because she had feared running into Nic.

Oh, that hateful man! She hated him all the more for having a point. He wasn’t right, but she had to acknowledge he wasn’t completely wrong. She hadn’t expected to find her mother and Olief in residence, but she’d wanted to feel close to them as she faced the anniversary of their disappearance and accepted what he’d come out and said: it was very unlikely they would ever come back and tell her what to do.

The rest of her life stretched before her like the water, endless and formless. Until the dance school had kicked her out she’d never faced anything like this. Logically she knew she ought to celebrate this freedom and opportunity, but it looked so empty.

Her life was empty. She had no one.

Rowan drank salt-scented air as she inhaled, trying to ease the constriction in her lungs. Not yet. She didn’t have to face all that until the year was officially up. Nic could go to hell with his court documents and demands that she face reality.

As she contemplated dealing with his threats against Rosedale a moment of self-pity threatened. Why did he dislike her so much? His cloud of harsh judgment always seemed directed inexorably toward her, but why? They were nothing to each other. He might be Olief’s son, but who would know it? He only ever referred to Olief by name, never even in conversation as “my father,” yet he wanted the rights of a son, full inheritance. That egotistical sense of privilege affronted her. She wanted to stand up for Olief if for no other reason than that Nic didn’t deserve the position of sole heir. He’d never made a proper effort to be part of the family, and he wasn’t looking out for what was left of it: her.

Estranged seemed to be his preferred option in any relationship. That wall of detachment had broken Olief’s heart. And it made Rowan nervous because it made Nic formidable. Her insides clenched at the thought of Rosedale being torn down. She couldn’t lose her home.

Reaching the end of the beach, where a long flat rock created the edge of the cove, she clambered up to a well-used vantage point. The waves were wild, coming in with a wind that tore at her hair and peppered her with sea spray. Barnacles cut into her bare soles while bits of kelp in icy tide pools made for slippery steps in between.

She picked her way to the edge, reveling in the struggle to reach it under the ferocious mood of the sky. Another wave smashed against the rocks under her toes, high enough to spray her thighs and wash bitter swirls of cold water around her ankles before it was sucked back to open water. Uncomfortable, but not enough to chase her away.

Throwing back her head, she sent out a challenge to the gathering storm as if standing up to Nic. “I won’t let you scare me off!”

The words were tossed away on a whistling wind, but it felt good to say them. To stand firm against the crash and gush and pull of a wintry sea that soaked her calves before dragging at the denim in retreat.

It wasn’t until a third monster, higher than all the rest, rolled in and exploded in a wall of water, soaking her to the chest, that she realized she might not be strong enough to win against such a mighty enemy.

If Rowan thought he’d bring her luggage out of the rain or pour her tea while she stamped around outside throwing a hissy fit, she had another think coming. Nic went upstairs to his office and did his best to dismiss her from his mind.

It didn’t go well. That heartbreaking catch in her voice when she’d said, “I want my home and my family,” kept ringing in his mind, making him uncomfortable.

He wasn’t close to his own mother, and after many times hearing Rowan and Cassandra fight like cats in a cage had assumed their relationship was little better than an armed truce. Of course he’d observed over the years that regard for one’s parents was fairly universal, and he obviously would have preferred it if Olief had survived rather than disappeared, but he hadn’t imagined Rowan was feeling deep distress over any of this. Her anguish startled him. Throughout this entire year, as always, he had tried not to think much of her at all—certainly not to dwell on how she was coping emotionally.

He coped by working long hours and avoiding deep thoughts altogether. Getting emotional and wishing for the impossible was a waste of time. Nothing could be changed by angst and hand-wringing.

Moving to the window, he tried to escape doing anything of that sort now, telling himself he was only observing the weather. On the horizon, the haze of an angry front was drawing in. It was the storm that had been promised when he’d checked the weather report, and the reason he’d come over last night on the yacht rather than trying to navigate choppy, possibly deadly seas today.

A storm like this had taken down Olief’s plane. He and Cassandra had been off to fetch Rowan from yet another of her madcap adventures. She was the reason Nic had no chance of knowing Olief or grasping the seemingly simple concept she’d bandied about at him so easily: family. Rowan might not be the whole reason, but one way or another she had interfered with Nic’s efforts to get to know his father. She had demanded Olief’s attention with cheeky misbehavior and constant bids for attention, interrupting whenever Nic found a moment with the man and constantly distracting him with her unrelenting sex appeal. He’d had to walk away from progress a thousand times. Away from her.

Prickling with antipathy, he unconsciously scanned the places he’d most often observed her over the years, not aware he was looking for her until he felt a twinge of confusion when he didn’t find her where he usually would. She wasn’t at the gazebo or up the hilltop or on the beach—

He spotted her and swore. Fool.

Bare feet had been a bad idea. Rowan couldn’t move fast across the sharp, uneven rocks to outrun the tide that was coming in with inescapable resolve. She couldn’t even see where she was stepping. The water had come in deep enough to eddy around her knees, keeping her off balance. With her arms flapping, she silently begged her mum and Olief, If you can hear me, please help me get back to shore alive.

The response to her plea was the biggest wave yet, visible as a steel-gray wall crawling up behind her with ominous size and strength. Rowan dug in with her numb toes and braced for impact. Her whole body shuddered as the weight of the water began to climb her already soaked clothes, gathering height as it loomed behind her.

She held her breath.

The wave broke at her shoulders and with a cry she felt herself thrown forward onto what felt like broken glass. Her hands and knees felt the scrape of barnacles as she tried to scramble for purchase, but then she was lifted. Her heart stopped. The wave was going to roll her across these rocks before it dragged her out to die.

Rowan clawed toward the surface long enough to get a glimpse of Nic running flat out down the beach.

“Ni—” Her mouth filled with water.

Nic lost sight of her as the surf thundered into itself. He pushed his body to the limit, tormented anger bubbling like acid inside him. Questions pounded with his footsteps digging across the wet sand. What did God have against him? Why did he have to lose everything? Why her—?

An arm flailed, fighting to stay in the foam that drained off the ledge of rocks. If the retreating wave carried her into deeper water she’d be thrown back into the rocks with the next surge that came in. Rowan fought for her life and so did Nic. He leapt onto the ledge and waded into the turbulence, able to read the terror on her face as she valiantly fought to keep herself from being pulled beyond reach.

At the last second she surged forward enough that he was able to clamp his hand on her wrist. He dragged her up and out of the water, clutching her to his chest as he made for safer ground. The tide poured in with another wave big enough to soak his seat and spatter his back before he reached the sand and finally the grass. He stopped, heart racing with exertion, too close to seeing her die to ease his vice-like grip.

Rowan clung tightly to Nic even as he crushed her, stunned by how close she’d come to being sucked into certain death. She was shocked to the core that he’d arrived at just the right time to help her. Astounded that he’d bothered.

He hadn’t hesitated, though. His clothes were as soaked as her own, his heart pounding as loud and rapidly as hers. As her senses crept back to a functioning state she realized how thoroughly she was plastered to him. They were embracing like soulmates.

She lifted her face from the hollow of his shoulder, but his arms remained iron-hard, pinning her to a chest roped with muscle, holding her so close she could smell faded aftershave and sea spray. Warmth crept into the seam of their bodies, spilling a teasing pleasure under her skin wherever their wet clothes adhered.

Gratitude. She tried dismissing it. But it was more. It didn’t matter that she’d been here two years ago, very close to this place on the beach, and had received a harsh set down on the heels of experiencing this same rush. Nic was the only man to affect her like this, no matter how often she’d dated or tried to let other men arouse her. Nic had set the bar impossibly high when she’d first begun noticing the opposite sex. She had yet to find anyone who measured up. It meant that his arms were the ones she secretly longed to feel around her. Now he was ruining her even more, because the fit of her body to his was so perfect. The flood of tingling awareness so exciting.

His gaze caught her own and stillness came over him. She mentally braced herself, but instead of fury something hot flickered in his eyes. His expression darkened with a flush that almost looked like— Rowan caught her breath, confused. Lust? Impossible. He hated her.

Nevertheless, she could feel an unmistakable male reaction against her abdomen. An answering trickle of desire made her wriggle her hips in embarrassed curiosity.

His arms hardened, holding her still for his penetrating gaze as their mutual reaction became undeniable. He knew she was getting turned on. He was turned on and was forcing her to acknowledge it.

Her mind blanked as her unsteady heart kicked into overdrive. She’d been drunk the last time, and insulated against what had really been happening. The moon behind him had kept his face in shadow. He’d kissed her, angrily, and then had pushed her away as fast as he’d yanked her close.

This hadn’t happened. Rowan was a skilled flirt, ever conscious of the power of her sex appeal, but real sexual need had never ignited in her properly. She’d never felt another man’s arousal and been intrigued and excited. She’d always kept a clear head and been able to put on the brakes.

Not now. She longed to let Nic support her as she melted in abject surrender.

Panicked by her dwindling willpower, she pushed against his chest. “What are you doing?” she sputtered. The power of his spell glinted like fairy dust around her, disorienting her. Perhaps she’d fantasized from afar too long. She was seeing things that weren’t there. Nic had never shown any kind of desire for her. Where had his arousal come from? Why now?

Nic’s half-step back was by his choice, not her forceful shove, and now his grim expression held none of the heat she had thought she’d seen. If anything, he seemed vaguely disgusted. A cloak of reserve fell around him, turning him into the distant, condescending man she’d always known.

“I’m saving your life. What were you thinking, climbing out there when the water is this high?”

“Everyone climbs out there,” she excused, wondering if she’d imagined that brief press of hard male flesh. Wishful thinking? Hardly. Getting into bed with this man would be like climbing into a cage with a tiger. When she finally slept with someone she’d choose a domesticated housecat. “How was I supposed to know the waves would come up like that? It’s never happened before.” She crossed her arms, feeling her soaked clothes and wet hair as the wind cut through her. Her chin rattled and she shivered.

“It’s called a tide table and a weather report, Rowan.” He kept his gaze locked onto the horizon, his jaw like iron.

“Anyone reading tide tables in their leisure time is in danger of drowning in boredom. Who does that?”

“I checked both before bringing the yacht over yesterday,” he said stiffly, barely glancing at her as he added derisively, “Anyone who ignores basic precautions deserves the natural selection that results.”

“Then why didn’t you let nature take its course with me today?” she groused. The bottom of the Med sounded infinitely more comfortable than suffering a lecture while turning into an ice pop.

A barely discernible flinch was gone before she was sure she’d really seen it.

His face hardened into an inscrutable mask as he glared out to sea. “You disappearing along with the others would look suspicious. I have to keep you alive long enough to sign the documents I brought. Since I just did you a very solid favor, you’ll comply.” His blue eyes came back to her with freezing resolve.

“Dream on,” she retorted, but he was already turning away, everything in him dismissive of her and sure of his success.

Annoyed beyond measure, she stayed where she was, longing to be stubborn. But it was cold out here. Other sensations were penetrating as well. Her hands and feet burned along with her knee. The denim was torn out of her jeans on her bad leg, exposing bloody, scraped skin. Her palms were rashed raw and cuts on her fingers welled with blood. The bottoms of her feet felt as if they’d been branded.

Sickened, she lifted her head to call Nic, but he was without sympathy, striding away without a backward glance, his wet clothes clinging to his form as he rounded the hedge and disappeared. He didn’t care if she was hurt. He had his own agenda.

Grimly aware she had no one else to call for help, she gritted her teeth and limped her way back to the house.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHY didn’t you let nature take its course with me?” Nic was still sizzling when he left the shower, deeply angered by Rowan’s remark. She was internally programmed to make flippant, provocative comments, so he shouldn’t give her the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him, but today she was under his skin more than ever—and he’d been fighting his attraction toward her since before it had even been sexual.

He paused in hitching a towel around his wet hips, thinking back to those early years when she’d been a nubile sprite, too young for any man let alone one sowing the wild oats of his early twenties. Even so, she’d flitted in and out of his awareness with irritating persistence. He’d been alternately fascinated and annoyed, drawn by her quick wit even while baffled at the way she took it for granted that everyone loved her—especially Olief.

He’d been perversely determined not to fall under her spell, too irritated by how easily everything came to her. At a similar age, Nic had spent his holidays haunting the empty rooms of his boarding school. Olief hadn’t wanted his wife to know about his indiscretion, so Nic hadn’t entered the man’s world until the woman had died and Cassandra had come on the scene. Her indiscretion had had an open invitation to spend school breaks in Olief’s house. As an afterthought Nic had been asked to join them, but he’d been traveling by then, shedding light on the world’s darkest injustices, inexplicably drawn into following Olief’s footsteps into hard-hitting news journalism.

When Nic had come to Rosedale after those stints abroad it hadn’t been for happy family time. In one way, at least, Olief had understood Nic. Olief had recognized Nic’s need to retreat somewhere remote and quiet because Olief had experienced a similar need himself when he’d done that sort of work. The island’s tranquility had kept Nic coming here, but the visits hadn’t been comfortable—not when Olief showered affection on Rowan and she dominated everyone’s attention.

Nic had done everything in his power to ignore and resist her, but she’d still managed to penetrate his shield. He was standing here because of her, wasn’t he? Veering from deep insult that she’d actually thought he would leave her to die to stark fear at how close a call she’d had. That near miss unsettled him more than he wanted to admit. He told himself it was its similarity to the other deaths that made his blood run cold, but on the heels of that thought came the recollection that his blood hadn’t stayed cold. He’d nearly let nature take its course in the form of raw, debaucherous lust.

His groin tightened in remembrance of the feel of her, the press of her hips.

Idiot. Revealing his weakness had been a mistake. He hadn’t meant to, but the cork had popped under the pressure of saving her from danger and finally, after two years of reimagining it, holding her.

Bloody hell—why did she have to feel tailor-made for his form? The perfect height. A slender yet curvaceous shape that could wrap around him without smothering his need for space and autonomy. Her breasts, as natural as God had made them, had crushed against his chest with nipples so hardened by the cold he’d felt them like pebbles through both their shirts. He clenched his fists, still longing to warm those tight peaks with his tongue until they were both hot all through.

Naked, and burningly aroused, he tilted back his head and struggled against the foe that had been stalking him for too long. He didn’t recall when the switch had happened. Sometime between hearing she’d been caught with a boy at school and seeing her climb from the pool at eighteen. Suddenly he’d been unable to ignore her, or the singe in his blood whenever he was around her.

Then she had turned twenty, drunk her way to the bottom of a champagne bottle and, with no other man in the vicinity, turned her wiles on him.

Nic had tried not to let temptation get the better of him. He’d at least gone to the beach to avoid her. She’d followed, determined to get her man.

Nic had rules. Drunk women were never on the menu, no matter how willing they appeared to be. She’d sidled up to him, though, and he’d succumbed to a moment of weakness. One kiss. One warning to a reckless young woman who needed a lesson in putting herself at a man’s mercy. One peek through the door into carnal paradise.

And Olief had seen it from the house. He hadn’t seen Nic push her away, hadn’t heard Nic read her the Riot Act. By the time Olief had reached the beach Rowan had been stumbling her way back to the house, and Nic had finally earned a hard-won moment of privacy with Olief.

It had been punctured by words Nic would never forget. “What are your intentions, Nic? Marriage?”

Olief’s appalled disbelief, sharp with disparagement, had cut through Nic. It had been more than Olief warning off an experienced man from what he considered an impressionable young woman, deluded as that judgment had been. There’d been a fleck of challenge—as if Olief couldn’t believe Nic would dare contemplate marrying into his family; as if he looked down on Nic for imagining it would be allowed. Nic wasn’t good enough to be acknowledged as his son. Did he really imagine Olief would accept him as a son-in-law? Where did he get the nerve even to consider it?

It had been worse than humiliating. It had been hurtful. To this day Nic suspected Rowan had set up the whole thing and he wanted to shake her for it.

And yet when he’d had his hands on her today he’d only wanted to feel more of her. He’d seen the glow of arousal seep under Rowan’s skin and that had been a fresh, sharp aphrodisiac. The volcano of lust pulsing in him refused to abate now he’d caught a glimpse of answering fire in her, hotter and more acutely aware than he’d ever seen it in her before. Damn it, she was—

What?

He opened his eyes but saw nothing, still blinded by hunger even as a shift occurred in his psyche. She wasn’t too young. Not anymore.

Off-limits? By whose standards? Olief’s? He was dead, and if he were alive to know how many men Rowan had had, he wouldn’t defend her as being inexperienced.

As to marriage—well, Nic didn’t want to marry anyone. Especially Rowan. He wanted to slake this hunger and move on with his life.

Nic winced, hearing his rationalizations for what they were, but craving was clawing in his chest, tearing through the walls of resistance he’d kept in place through years of encounters with her. Possibility opened before him with treacherous appeal. What was to stop him? Nothing. There was nothing to keep him from having her. Why shouldn’t he? She’d been throwing herself at him for years.

Nic shuddered with physical need and inner turmoil. He never acted on impulse, yet everything in him longed to hunt her down right now and take. He shook off wild yearning and reached for self-discipline. Cool logic. Self-respect. He loathed her. Coming to Rosedale wasn’t about giving in to an appetite he’d denied for years. It was about gaining what he really wanted: his rightful place as the head of Olief’s media conglomerate. Not because he was the man’s son, but because he’d earned it.

Nic shrugged into a light pullover and faded jeans, trying to ignore his unrelenting want for Rowan, searching for a clear mind while opportunity hung before him, refusing to be disregarded.

What a profound thorn in his vitals she was. She would never sign those papers if she thought she could string him along by torturing his libido.

His body aching with denial, he gathered his wet clothes and faced the inconvenience of Anna’s quitting. Doing the washing and other chores would be a good lesson for Rowan, he decided arrogantly. Perhaps he was looking to punish her after all. She had been tormenting him for years. He was entitled to payback. At the very least she’d learn this wasn’t rent-free accommodation.

He was framing exactly how he’d inform her of that when the bloody footprints in the upper hall stopped him cold.

Rowan jerked her head out of the shower spray. Nic?

“What the hell? Rowan!” His voice grew louder. The bathroom door opened and he was right there on the other side of the steamed glass, glaring like an angry drill sergeant.

Rowan squeaked in shock and turned her back on him, but she couldn’t ignore the fact she was stark naked in front of him. The underside of her skin began to warm even though she was still frozen at her core. She tensed her buttocks, aware her bottom was on blatant display. Since when did he even know which room she used?

Strategically hugging herself, she cried, “Get out of here!”

“What have you done? It looks like a crime scene out there!”

“Oh, did I stain the precious hardwood you’re planning to tear up? I’ll scrub it once I quit bleeding to death, I promise. Now, get out!”

The door slammed with firm disgust. She sniffed in disdain at his impossible standards and stared at hands that looked worse under the running water. They scorched with protest at the pummel of spray, but they had to be cleaned. Her feet were begging her to get off them, but her leg worried her most. Not the sting on her skin, which was acute enough to make her clench her back molars. No, there was a deeper pain that concerned her. All the walking today hadn’t helped. She was afraid to look but had to. No one else would.

Rolling her eyes at her decline into maudlin self-pity, she switched off the shower and dragged a bathsheet around herself. It wasn’t as if her mother would be any use in this situation so why bother getting weepy? Olief would have been solicitous, though.

Shaking off wistfulness, still deeply chilled, she closed the lid of the toilet and sat down to pat herself dry. The door swung open again.

“Really?” she demanded, instinctively curling her feet in and closing a hand over the knot of her towel. She was in a high enough state of turmoil without Nic accosting her with his potent male energy every ten seconds. He’d already got her all bewildered on the beach, and then seen her naked in the shower. Sitting on a toilet in a bathsheet, shaking off a near-death experience, put her at the worst disadvantage ever.

He hesitated at the door, but it wasn’t with doubt. She had the impression he was gathering himself. Bracing for a challenge.

Odd. She searched his expression for more clues, but he revealed nothing beyond a clinical interest in her hands as he set bandages and disinfectant on the counter. “You scraped yourself on the rocks, I assume?”

“Good work, Holmes. I should have consulted government-issued safe work plans prior to retreating from the tide, I assume?”

A pithy look, then, “It’s a wonder your mother didn’t drown you at birth. Do you want help or not?”

She grudgingly held out a hand. “I don’t even know why you want to help me.”

“I don’t,” he replied flatly, going down on one knee and reaching for supplies. “But I am an adult, and adults take responsibility rather than doing whatever selfish thing they want.”

“Is that a dig? Because I’m almost twenty-two. A fully-fledged adult.” Even to herself she sounded like a petulant child and, really, reminding him it was nearly her birthday was the last thing she ought to do.

“All grown up,” he said, with an ironic twist to the corner of his mouth. Renewed tension seemed to gather in his expression as he smoothed a bandage against her wrist.

“Yes,” she claimed pertly. Her pulse involuntarily tripped under his dispassionate caress, making her subtly catch a breath.

His gaze came up sharply, the blue like the center of a flame.

She was transported back to the feel of his arms as they’d stood wet and trembling on the beach, his arousal hardening against her. Heat flooded into her, chasing away the last of her chill, cooking her alive. She should have felt appalled and disgusted, but to her eternal shame she was energized by the crackle of sexual awareness in the air.

“All grown up,” he repeated, with flint in his tone, and lifted her hand to press his lips against the bandage, a cruelly mocking glint in his eye.

She flinched and pulled her hand away, even though she’d barely felt the pressure of his mouth. That so hadn’t been kiss-and-make-it-better!

Derisive amusement darkened his eyes. “No? That’s not like you, Ro.”

Her heart took a long plunge of disgrace. At the same time she felt herself begin to glow with heated longing and other weakening sensations, even as uncertainty and intrigue muddled her mind. Desperately she reminded herself of how unaffected and ruthless he could be.

“What are you doing, Nic?” she asked, trying unsuccessfully to clear the huskiness from her throat. “Offering a clumsy seduction in hopes of getting what you want out of me?”

“Oh, I’m far from clumsy. I know exactly what I’m doing when it comes to seduction.” The hard tone was coupled with a look that might as well have swept the towel from her body and left her as nude as she’d been in the shower.

Had she really wished over the years for him to notice her? Really notice her? This was a horribly defenseless feeling! Every single occasion of testing a flirty glance or enticing him with a smile came back to her as mortifyingly obvious behavior that was now giving him the chance to get the better of her.

“You’re having a go at me,” she accused, as much to remind herself as to let him know she saw through him. “I’m sure other women wither at your feet when you bring your best game, but I’m not one of them. Act solicitous all you want, but I know you don’t care. You don’t want me. You don’t even like me.”

He took a moment to smooth a plaster over her second palm, finally asking with detached interest, “Do all of those things have to be in place at once?” He met her gaze with a look of cool consideration.

She pressed her lips into a tight line, stung by the implied agreement that he didn’t like her. Yet still wanted her. That shouldn’t excite her, but her blood seemed to slow and thicken in her arteries, making her feel hot and full of power.

“Since when did you even think about me before you decided I was in the way of something you wanted?” she managed, trying to ignore the internal signals bouncing with anticipation inside her.

His shoulders went back and his jaw hardened. “One has nothing to do with the other. I may want you to sign some papers, but that has nothing to do with physical chemistry.”

“Chemistry that cropped up today of all days?” she scoffed, flushing with anger because her reaction to him had been torturing her forever. “It certainly wasn’t there two years ago, was it?” she prodded, thinking, Shut up, Rowan.

“You want to go back to that?” With a flash of the tested anger he’d shown her then, he reached forward to cup the back of her wet head and pulled her forward to meet the crush of his mouth over hers.

“N-n-n …!” She almost got the word out, but it turned into a whimper of surprise, then disintegrated under the assertive rake of his very knowledgeable mouth.

No champagne or the romance of a windswept beach this time. This was raw, unapologetic and incredibly beguiling. He kissed with the same command and purpose that emanated from the rest of his being. He was in control. He would take what he wanted. Their last kiss and the biting lecture that had followed had been a warning she should have heeded. Nic was a powerful, dangerous man.

Who knew how to level a woman with a kiss.

She brought her hands to his wrist and shoulder, overwhelmed yet helpless to the enthralling press of his lips over hers. There was no fighting him as he took her mouth—not because he was stronger, but because he made it so good. She could practically taste his contempt, his selfish demand that she give up everything to him, but there was skill here, too. A wicked appeal to the primitive in her. He drew her into the kiss even when she knew she shouldn’t let herself be drawn.

Her inner being expanded toward him, tendrils of heated pleasure reaching for connection. She moaned, unfamiliar imperatives climbing with primal force in her. This was Nic. He didn’t want her. He was messing with her. But this was Nic. She’d fantasized about him for years.

The light scrape of his teeth suffused her with heat. The proprietorial thrust of his tongue, the captivating taste of his mouth over hers, stabbed excitement through her, nudging her into a dark world of wild sensations and ravenous desire. Her limbs curled toward him like stems toward the sun, wanting more. It was crazy. Distantly she recognized this possession of her mouth had a purpose: arousal. He intended to take her all the way.

Her heart skipped. She shouldn’t let this happen, but she wanted to. And he wasn’t a force to be stopped. He reached to her lower back and pulled her hips toward him, forcing her knees to part and bracket his waist. Her shin struck the register. A ringing pain slashed through her wanton stupor, making her jolt in shock. Her towel slipped.

Oh, God, what was she doing?

Nic checked the urge to overpower Rowan’s recoil and drag her back into the kiss. Into the bedroom or onto the floor. Anywhere. She was flushed, and her breath was stuttering from between glossy kiss-swollen lips. Her eyes were still cloudy with desire, the honeyed taste of her sexual appetite still tangible on his tongue.

The beast ran hard in him, fighting against being steered back into its corral. Nic’s chest heaved and the hot coil of pressure behind his fly demanded release. He had one hand braced on the wall and used the other to reach for her jaw, ignoring the mental warnings trying to penetrate his fog of carnal hunger. This time he’d let it happen.

Before he could tilt Rowan back into the direction they’d been headed, her pale expression and the flash of a worried look downward stopped him. She leaned cautiously to examine her leg, her hand pressing the middle of his chest to push him back.

He followed her gaze and the sight froze him. Not the scrape on her knee. That was little worse than a tumble off a bicycle would produce, but the scars down her shin were horrific.

“What the hell?” He sat back on his heels, physical arousal taking a backseat to shock. The depth of her injury, communicated by the crisscross of thin white lines, revolted him. He reached one hand behind her knee and had to school his clenching muscles to take care as he lifted her ankle in the other hand, studying the full extent of the damage.

Her shin wasn’t the only issue. She had old scars all over her feet, framing knobbly toes with cracked nails that were only partially healed.

Rowan flexed her foot. “Don’t.”

“Hurts?” It had to. The marks spoke of repeated injuries.

She snorted. “I’ve lived with pain at that end of my body for so long I don’t even notice it. I don’t like anyone looking at my feet.” Her lashes swept down in self-conscious dismay. “They’re ugly.”

“They’re not pretty,” he agreed, smoothing the pad of his thumb over an old callus, astounded by the time and effort it would have required to form the thick bump. “This is from dancing?”

“We all get them,” she defended, and attempted to pull from his grip.

He held on. He hadn’t meant to sound so appalled, but he was inexplicably angered. The big scar was bad enough, but at least it was understandable. It had been an accident. These others …

“Why would anyone do this to herself?” he questioned, channeling an unexpected surge of concern into impatience. “I’ve seen foot soldiers coming off a month-long march with better feet.”

She flushed and pushed her damp hair behind her ear. “It’s part of the process. They’ve gotten a lot better since I’ve been off them.”

“Because your leg was broken.” He looked again at the long scar. Everything Rowan did was superficial, but suddenly he couldn’t be dismissive of what she’d been going through. Her remark about being in constant pain echoed in his head along with her old claims of “doing the best I can” to Cassandra’s livid, “How can you not be ready?”

It occurred to him that his impression of Rowan as a slacker was largely based on those overheard accusations that Rowan wasn’t trying hard enough. That perturbed him. He generally formed his own opinions, but he’d been seeing her with a skewed view to hold her at a distance. He didn’t often mislead himself like that.

“How many surgeries have you had?” he asked, setting her cut foot on his thigh.

“Three. I’m a little concerned about the pins, actually,” she confided hesitantly. “I think they’re killing me right now because they got cold. Does anything feel out of place?” She bit her lip, the apprehensive pull of her brow more concerning than her actual words. She was suppressing very real distress.

A chill took him as he carefully felt up and down her calf. The male in him was aware of lean muscle under smooth pale skin, and fascinating shadows beneath the drape of the bathsheet across her thighs. He’d got a too brief glimpse of her through the steamed walls of the shower and was dying for a proper study of her form. He focused on determining whether she’d rebroken something, but that thought filled the pit of his stomach with ashes—not unlike the defeated fury that had taken him as he’d run up the beach, afraid he wouldn’t reach her in time.

He turned his mind from that raw terror.

“It seems okay. Will you dance again?” He already knew the answer, and tension gathered in him, resisting the truth.

She leaned forward to palpate the shin herself, brushing his hands off her calf, remaining silent. He lifted his gaze from watching her massage her torn muscles. Her mink lashes formed a pair of tangled lines.

“On tables,” she finally replied with a tough smile, “but not on the stage.”

Expecting the answer didn’t make it easier to hear. He was taken aback by a surprisingly sharp stab of sympathy. As a journalist, he’d spent his life asking people for their reactions to events, but he had never asked anyone How do you feel about that? He wanted to ask Rowan, but her snarky response grated, compelling him to say, “You never wanted to dance anyway. It was a bone of contention with your mother, wasn’t it? Her insisting you go to that fancy school? You must be relieved.”

She gave a little snort of cynical amusement and dipped her head in a single nod that left her damp hair hanging. “Yes, I can honestly say I was relieved when they finally admitted I would never get back to my old level and asked me to leave so someone with whole bones and genuine passion could take my spot.”

His heart kicked as he disagreed with anyone claiming Rowan lacked passion. He was still tingling from their kiss a minute ago. He didn’t let the sensation escalate, though, sidetracked by her bitter revelation.

“When they admitted?” he repeated. “You wanted to quit and they wanted to rehabilitate you?” He reached for a bandage to cover her knee, aware of his sympathy dwindling. She was a shirker after all.

“Madame is a close friend of Mum’s. She knew Mum wouldn’t want all those years of training to be for nothing, but she also knew as well as I did that I had reached my potential before the accident and that I’d never be good enough. She pushed me anyway, and I tried until my ankle gave out. We finally agreed I was a grand failure and the silver lining was that my mother would never know.”

He didn’t want to be affected by the wounded shadows of defeat lurking behind her sparking eyes and pugnacious chin, but he was. Rowan might have quit, but because she was a realist about her own limitations, not a quitter. He wondered what else he’d failed to see in her before today.

“If you didn’t like dance, why did you pursue it?” he asked.

A brief pause, then a challenging, “Why did you go into the same field as Olief?”

It was a blatant deflection from his own question—one that deepened his interest in her motives. He answered her first, though. His reason was simple enough.

“I was curious about him so I followed his work. You can’t read that many articles on world events and not feel compelled to discover the next chapter.” He shrugged and began patching her other knee. “I wasn’t trying to emulate him. Were you? Trying to emulate Cassandra?”

Rowan made a noise of scorn. “Not by choice. Count yourself lucky that no one knew you were related to Olief when you started out. You were able to prove yourself on your own merit and do it because you wanted to. I was pushed into dancing as a gag. It was a way for my mother to stand out, because she had this little reflection of herself beside her. She was allowed to quit when she and Olief got together, but I still had all this ‘potential’ to be realized.”

Nic had never framed his abandonment by his parents as good fortune, but he’d never taken a hard look at Rowan’s situation and seen it for misfortune either.

He frowned, not enjoying the sense that he’d been blind and wrong. None of Rowan’s revelations changed anything, he reminded himself. He still wanted full control of Marcussen Media. She still needed to sign the petition forms, grow up, and take responsibility for herself—not party her way across Europe at his expense.

Rowan watched Nic’s concentration on her fade to something more familiar and removed and suspected she knew why. She dropped her gaze to the bandaged hands she’d clenched in her lap, the fetid crown of disloyalty making her hang her head. In her wildest dreams she had never imagined Nic would be the person to crack this resentment out of her. She’d anticipated taking her anger to the grave, because only the lowest forms of life said anything against Cassandra O’Brien. A good daughter would certainly never betray her mother when she was gone

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