“You’re a terrible actress,” he replied, far too easily.

He squatted down in front of her chair, still caging her between his strong arms, but now his muscled thighs spread open before her and his face—his mouth—was much too close to hers. She dared not move. He was so big, so male, and as dangerous as he was compelling. She wanted to leap out of the chair and run, screaming, from the room—the inn—the island. But, more than that, she wanted to lean forward and touch him. Both propositions were terrifying.

“Why don’t you just admit what you came for?” His voice was insinuating.

Larissa sucked in a deep breath. And then, because she knew that he would never believe her, that he saw only what he wanted to see—only what she’d worked so hard to show to the world for so long, and never anything else, never anything beneath that mask—she told him the truth.

“I had no idea you’d be here,” she said quietly.

About the Author

CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle school social life. And so began her life-long love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times.

Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice, and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving there.

She currently lives in California, with her animator/comic book artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

Recent titles by the same author:

PRINCESS FROM THE PAST

KATRAKIS’S LAST MISTRESS

MAJESTY, MISTRESS, MISSING HEIR …

PURE PRINCESS, BARTERED BRIDE

Heiress Behind the Headlines

Caitlin Crews

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For all the residents of Low Scatteree

CHAPTER ONE

LARISSA Whitney’s luck ran out with the loud thump of the heavy door that let in the howl and clamor of the wet November winds outside, shaking the rain-soaked windows in front of her.

She looked away from the gray, brooding Atlantic waves that crashed against the rocky shore of the isolated Maine island, glancing without particular interest toward the door of the tiny restaurant that was also the only bar in the only inn on the only stretch of desolate road that could be called a village in this place, so far from the blue skies and sunny days of the summer high season. So far from anywhere—which was why she’d come. She’d expected nothing but the near-total isolation she’d been seeking, and for the past few days, that was exactly what she’d found.

So, naturally, he walked in.

Her stomach dropped with a thud as she took in the man at the door. She blinked, as if he was an apparition and she could banish him back into the depths of her memory that way, but no: Jack Endicott Sutton was still shouldering his way inside, shaking off the weather as he peeled the battered rain jacket from his long, lean frame and hung it on the coatrack.

“Anyone but Jack Sutton …” Larissa whispered to herself, not meaning to speak aloud. Her fingers clenched hard around the mug of coffee she’d been nursing while she brooded about the mess of her life. “Please …” But there was no one listening, and it was no use anyway.

It was him. It could hardly be anyone else.

She recognized him instantly, as she imagined everybody on the planet in possession of two working eyes would. That surprisingly beautiful, richly masculine face was burned into her mind, as familiar to her as that of any major movie star in any glossy magazine, which he’d certainly spent enough time adorning in his day. More familiar to her, perhaps, because she knew him personally. That long, leanly muscled body was famous for the Yale rugby shirt he’d worn as an undergraduate, the Harvard Law gravitas that was said to infuse it later, and, of course, the many beautiful women, starlets and models and socialites without number, that usually clung to it.

Tonight—or was it late afternoon? It was hard to tell the difference so far north—Jack wore a simple black, long-sleeved T-shirt that clung to his celebrated torso over a pair of weathered old jeans that made his lean hips and strong legs into a kind of powerful male poetry, and a pair of what looked to her like incongruous workman’s boots. He should have looked as if he was playing dress up, when she knew that he more commonly viewed Armani as casual wear when he was in his usual element, glittering brightly in the midst of the Manhattan high life. Barring that, he should have blended right in with the other locals who had wandered in while Larissa had nursed her hot coffee in the farthest corner, all of them dressed just as he was—but he didn’t.

She doubted Jack Sutton had ever blended in his life. And it made her heart kick against the walls of her chest. Hard.

Centuries of blood so blue it shone like sapphires coursed in his veins, making him far more than just a shockingly good-looking man with rich dark hair and dark chocolate eyes—though he was certainly that. He wore the whole of his family’s great and glorious history with complete nonchalance, like a mighty weapon he didn’t need to brandish. All those noble Boston Brahmins and lofty Knickerbocker families of Gilded Age Manhattan who peppered his ancestry were evident in the easy way he moved, the power and pure arrogance that emanated from him, as much a part of him as the long, strong lines of the body some regarded as a national treasure. Jack’s hallowed ancestors were all of them captains of industry, leaders and visionaries, kings of philanthropy and canny investors. And he was every inch their heir. Every last muscled, beautiful, proud and dangerous inch.

She knew who he was, where he came from. She came from the same lofty heights, for all her sins. But Larissa knew what else he was: her absolute worst nightmare. And he was blocking her only escape route.

Nice job, Larissa, she told herself, veering somewhere between despair and a kind of bitterness that felt too much like anticipation. You can’t even disappear to the ends of the earth properly.

But there was no point getting hysterical. She slumped down in her seat, and pulled the hooded sweater tighter around her, as if the thick gray wool might camouflage her somehow. As if she could disappear into it the way she’d wanted to disappear from the face of the earth—or at least, from everything she knew. Her “life,” such as it was.

She forced herself to look away from the compelling figure of Manhattan’s Most Eligible Bachelor, back out to the sea, where the merciless waves beat at the craggy coastline, inexorable and fierce. He probably wouldn’t even recognize her, she told herself. She had left New York months ago and had told no one where she was going. And anyway, she was hardly known for spending time in near-abandoned places like this godforsaken island, a million miles from the nearest five-star spa without so much as lip gloss on her face, wearing nothing but jeans and a sweater that could double as a cloak. Not to mention, she’d cut off all her trademark blond tresses before she’d left and dyed what remained of it black for exactly this reason—to avoid being recognized, even by the people who had known her in her long and complicated former life.

Even by ghosts of weekends past, like Jack Sutton, who, she had the uncomfortable feeling, was not the sort of person who was easily fooled. Not even by someone like Larissa, who had been fooling everyone around her for years. Hadn’t she discovered that firsthand? Wasn’t that why the very fact that he was here, in this smaller-by-the-moment restaurant and bar, made her so tense, suddenly? So …wound up?

She ordered herself to breathe, just the way the doctors had taught her to do back in New York. Breathe. He wouldn’t even notice her, and if he did, he certainly wouldn’t realize that she was—

“Larissa Whitney.”

His voice was cool and low, just this side of amused. It moved over her skin like a caress, then moved inside, making her feel as though she was shaking to pieces when she knew she wasn’t moving at all.

Breathe.

But she suspected that was out of the question.

He didn’t wait for an invitation, he simply threw himself into the chair opposite hers, his dark brown eyes gleaming with something she was afraid to identify when she finally dared meet his gaze. His long legs stretched out before him, crowding her under the small table, and she couldn’t help but move hers out of the way. She hated herself for even so slight an indication of weakness, so small an acknowledgment that he got under her skin. Damn him.

Why did it have to be Jack Sutton, of all people? What was he even doing here? He was the one person she’d never quite managed to mislead, not even when he’d been as lost a cause as she was. Why did it have to be him? It had been months since anyone had even known her name, and now she was trapped on an inhospitable island with a man who knew too much. He always had. It was only one of the reasons he was so formidable. So dangerous to her health.

She had the sudden, insane urge to pretend she didn’t recognize him. To pretend she was someone else. I have no idea who Larissa Whitney is, she could say, and it wouldn’t even really be a lie, would it? She could simply deny her own existence, and maybe, just maybe, escape the great weight of it that way. Part of her wanted to, with a ferocity that should not have shocked her.

But he was looking at her with those too-knowing eyes of his, and she didn’t dare.

She smiled instead, the perfunctory sort of public smile she had perfected in the cradle. She’d been well into her teens before someone had pointed out to her that smiles were supposed to reach the eyes. She’d been skeptical.

“Guilty as charged,” she said, keeping her voice light, easy. Unbothered. Unaffected by this man, by the sizzling shock of his proximity, of her unexpected response to him—so strong and male and alive. She shifted in her seat, but kept her face smooth. Empty. Just as he’d expect it to be. Just as she worried she truly was.

“So I hear.” He smirked, his eyes never leaving hers, the challenge unmistakable. Or was that a cool dose of contempt? She could hardly tell the difference these days. “I didn’t see any paparazzi swarming over the village like ants. No yachts cluttering up the bay in the middle of a November storm. No clubs heaving with the rich and the terminally bored. Did you somehow mistake the coast of Maine for the south of France?”

“It’s wonderful to see you, too,” she murmured, as if that scathing, judgmental tone didn’t bother her. And why should it? She should have been well-used to it by now, having heard nothing but her whole life. Having, in fact, gone out of her way to court it from all and sundry. “How long has it been? Five years? Six?”

“What are you doing here, Larissa?” he asked, and his voice was not nice. Not polite. This from a man who could charm anyone he pleased—who had been doing so the whole of his privileged life. She knew. She’d seen him in action. She’d experienced exactly how powerfully charming he could be. She repressed a shiver.

“Can’t a girl take a little vacation?” she asked idly. Playfully. As if she felt either. But she knew better than to show him anything else.

“Not here.” His cool eyes narrowed slightly as he watched her, and she pretended she couldn’t feel her own reaction to him, unfolding inside of her. Wariness, she told herself—that’s all it was. But she knew better. “There’s nothing here for you. One general store. This inn. Less than fifty families. That’s it. There are only two ferries to the mainland a week—and that’s weather permitting.” His perfect mouth firmed into a grim line. “There’s absolutely no reason in the world someone like you should be here.”

“It’s the hospitality,” she said dryly, nodding at him as if he’d welcomed her with a song and open arms. “It’s addictive.”

She leaned back in her chair, not sure why her stomach knotted, why her limbs felt weak and traitorous. She’d known Jack all her life. They’d been raised in the same glittering, claustrophobic circles of New York City’s very, very wealthy. The same elite private schools, the same Ivy League expectations. The same attractive and well-maintained faces at all the same parties, in places like Aspen, the Hamptons, Miami and Martha’s Vineyard.

She remembered being a teenager and running into Jack, then in his resplendent twenties, at some desperately chic party one summer. She could still imagine him as he’d been then, golden and gleaming on a private beach in the Hamptons, seeming to outshine the very sun above him. He’d been loose-limbed and easygoing, with a killer smile and that devastating intellect beneath. Everyone she’d known had been desperately in love with him. When she thought of Jack Sutton, that was always how she remembered him. Bright. Inescapably beautiful. All summer in his smile.

But there was no sign of that young man here, now. And she had other memories she’d rather not excavate. The ones from that one weekend she preferred to block out. The ones that featured him a little bit older, and a whole lot more shattering than she cared to remember in any detail. The ones that made it clear that whatever else he was, he was distinctly dangerous to her, personally. All that heat. All that fire. And eyes like bittersweet, decadent chocolate that saw too much, too deep.

The truth was that this man had fascinated her and then terrified her. And all of that was before. Before. Before she’d had her own little resurrection, her own second chance. At what, she might not know. But she did know that the arrival of Jack Sutton was like throwing a bomb into the middle of it. He was uncontrollable. Impossible. And those were two of his better qualities.

She settled back in her chair, assuming the careless, languid sort of position that came to her so easily, like a second skin. The usual Larissa Whitney insouciance she could summon at will, automatically adjusting to his assumptions, to what he no doubt already saw when he looked at her. She was so good at living down to the world’s expectations. She sometimes wondered if it was her only true skill.

“Are you in disguise?” he continued, in that same lethally soft voice that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise. His cool brown gaze flicked over her, made her want to squirm. But she only lounged, making herself look like the very essence of boredom. “Or on the run? Do I even want to know what fantasy you’re playing at here?”

“Why are you so interested?” she asked, letting out a light sort of laugh. “Are you afraid it doesn’t include you?”

“Quite the opposite.” His tone was curt, his eyes hard. As if she’d done something to him, personally. She blinked, taken aback. She certainly could have, of course. She just thought she’d remember it. Jack Sutton wasn’t the sort of man anyone forgot. Repressed, yes. Forgot? Never.

“I heard Maine is lovely this time of year,” she said, forestalling whatever character assassination he might be about to unleash on her. She wasn’t certain she could survive it—not from him. It made her stomach ache just to look at him. “How could I resist?”

She nodded toward the window, inviting him to do the same. The sky had darkened, the clouds moving fast against the swollen pewter clouds. Rain beat at the glass, while below, the rocks withstood the angry assault of the waves. She felt like those rocks, battered and beleaguered, yet somehow still standing—with her own past the tragic, inescapable crash of the sea. Jack, she thought, was just the rain. A cold, depressing insult on top of a far greater injury.

“You’ve had a banner year already, haven’t you,” Jack said, in that way. That knowing way. “Or so I hear.”

It made her feel horribly exposed, naked and vulnerable—things she strove to avoid at all costs, especially around this man, after the last time—and the worst part was that she couldn’t even tell him the real story. She couldn’t defend herself. She had to accept the fiction—and worse, the fact that everyone so easily believed that the fiction was truth. Why did it hurt so much this time? It was no different than any other scandal, was it? It was only that this time around, the fiction wasn’t of her own making.

“Oh, yes,” Larissa agreed, hating him. Hating herself more. “A little tour of duty in rehab, a silly little broken engagement. Thanks so much for reminding me.” What could she say? That wasn’t me. I was in a coma, and there was a woman who masqueraded as me, who ended up with my fiancé … Hardly. Her life was enough of a soap opera without all the gory, patently unbelievable details.

After all, the entire world knew that Larissa Whitney, famous for being nothing more than a worthless party girl and a great embarrassment to her storied family, had collapsed outside of an elite Manhattan club one night some eight months ago. Thanks to the endless scrutiny of the tabloids—and the usual manipulations her media-savvy family was so well versed in—the world also knew what had happened next. Larissa had been packed away to a private rehabilitation center for a while, then paraded around Manhattan on the arm of her long-suffering fiancé, Theo, the CEO of her family’s company. Until Theo had left Larissa and—more shocking by far, given his well-documented ambitions—Whitney Media behind. Everyone blamed faithless, heartless Larissa. And why not? She’d gone out of her way to hurt Theo as publicly and as repeatedly as possible. For years. She was the obvious villain.

The fact that she had never been in rehab—and that she’d been hidden away for two months in a hospital bed in the family mansion, expected to die while her family engaged in their usual cruel machinations over her comatose body—well, that wasn’t nearly as interesting a story, was it? Not nearly as familiar, as expected.

But he wouldn’t believe her anyway. No one would. And she had no one to blame for that but herself, as usual.

“Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” Jack asked then, as if he’d read her mind. She believed that if anyone could, it was Jack, and the thought made that shiver roll through her again. He shook his head slightly, as if she wearied him unto his soul. “Do you think you’re going to drag me into one of your messes? You might want to think again, Larissa. I stopped playing your kind of games a long time ago.”

“If you say so,” she said, as if she was bored. As if she was not even now struggling to keep herself from jumping to her feet and bolting for the door. Anything to get away from that awful, judgmental look in his eyes—eyes that seemed to look deep into her and see nothing but her darkest secrets. Her shame.

God, she hated him.

But she’d rather die than show him that he’d hurt her. She certainly couldn’t tell him why she was really here, on a pine-studded scrap of land eight miles out from Bar Harbor, in the middle of the lashing wind with only the desolate sea in every direction. She couldn’t tell him she’d ended up on the ferry because she’d been trying so hard to disappear for months now, to really be as invisible as she felt—she wouldn’t even know how to say those things. Or to explain how she felt about this miraculous second chance she’d been given at a life she’d ruined so thoroughly, treated so carelessly, the first go-round. And certainly not to Jack, whom she still thought of as bright and shining and untouchable, no matter the dark, hard look he was training on her now. No matter the power and command he seemed to wear like a second skin.

She had promised herself that she would never lie to herself, not ever again, and she meant to keep that promise. But that didn’t mean she owed him the same courtesy. And there was so little of her left, so little of her she could even identify as her own, and she knew, somehow, that if she gave him even a tiny bit of that he could crush her forever. She just knew.

So she gave him what he wanted. What he already saw. She smiled at him, the mysterious, closemouthed smile she’d learned to give the press a long time ago—the smile that made men crazy, that exuded sex, that made everyone project all their fantasies and wishes and dreams onto her while she simply stood there and was empty. Nothing. Just a screen.

She was good at that, too.

She cocked her head to the side, and met his gaze as if his words had rolled right off her, as if they were nothing at all. As if this was nothing but a flirtation, some delicious kind of foreplay they were both engaging in. She let her brows rise, let her lips part suggestively. She made her voice low, sexy. The expected fantasy. She could produce it by rote, and no one ever suspected a thing.

“Tell me more, Jack,” she purred. “What kind of games do you like to play?”

CHAPTER TWO

SHE looked so fragile. Those delicate, perfect cheekbones that had announced her identity from across the room, even when he’d been unable to imagine what a creature like her, better used to lounging about in Manhattan’s most elite circles surrounded by sycophants and other fashionably bored and useless socialites, could possibly be doing in a place as remote as this island. Those mysterious, always-sad eyes of a haunted, storm-tossed green that hinted at depths she would never, could never, possess.

That was the great lie of Larissa Whitney, he thought with no little distaste—almost aimed more at himself for his susceptibility to that lie than at her for perpetuating it. Almost.

Because he could still feel that maddening electricity crackle through him, though he’d spent a long time denying it had ever existed. Yet it had jolted through him anyway, unmistakable and unwelcome, when he’d looked across the bar and seen her sitting there, looking … oddly bereft.

It roared back through him now, as she flirted with him, her lush lips parting slightly as she ran a deliberate finger along the lower one. Tempting him. Luring him. Making him think back to the sweet perfection of her legs wrapped tightly around his hips. The taste of that perfect, wicked mouth. But he was no longer the kind of man who bowed down to his appetites, especially when they were as self-destructive as this one. Especially when he knew exactly how little a woman like Larissa had to offer to a man in his position, a man who preferred to think about his reputation before his pleasure these days. And her reputation was about as black and dire as they came.

“Nice try,” he said dismissively, as if his body wasn’t hard and ready just looking at her. Not that he would let that matter. “But one taste of that was more than enough.”

He thought he saw something move through her green eyes then, but it was gone with a blink, and she only smiled at him. That dangerous, mysterious smile of hers, like a siren’s song, that tempted him to forget all he knew. That tempted him to simply lean forward, put his hands on her lush little body, yank her mouth to his, and taste her.

“Oh, Jack,” she murmured, her voice little more than a purr, the timbre of it seeming to pool in his groin, then light a path of fire across his skin. “That’s what they all say. At first.”

He wished she wasn’t so good at this. He wished he wasn’t so affected. He wished he could look at her and see what he knew to be the truth of her—instead of that elegant, vulnerable line of her neck, the exposed turn of her delicate jaw, that made him want to comfort her, however insane that urge was. He wished that the short, inky-black hair did not suit her so much more than it should have. It made her seem more serious, more substantial.

But he knew better. He knew what she was. What she’d done. Every dirty detail. He knew everything there was to know about her, and it didn’t matter how small or helpless she might appear on the surface. He knew that she was soulless beneath. Like all the rest of them in that world he’d left behind. Just like he had been, before he’d grown up.

Looking at her was like looking into a mirror he’d deliberately broken five years ago, and he disliked what he saw. He always would. And she’d been the one to hold that mirror up to him in the first place. How could he ever forget that?

“There will be a ferry leaving at dawn on Friday,” he said coldly, abruptly, his voice showing none of the roughness within. “I want you on it.”

She laughed. It was a silvery sound, magical. It made him wish for things that he knew better than to believe in, and he blamed her for that, too.

“Are you ordering me off this island?” she asked, looking delighted at the prospect. And not in the least bit intimidated by him, which, it hurt him to admit, he found more attractive than he should. “How dictatorial. I might swoon.”

Jack eyed her. This was his refuge. His escape. He hid here in the dark, grim winter months when none of the well-heeled tourists and summer residents were around—New England’s and Manhattan’s oldest money in their ancient family homes and compounds, cluttering up the island and hoarding all the summer sunshine for themselves as if it was their rightful due. He preferred it here now, in these forgotten months, when he didn’t have to be Jack Endicott Sutton, too-eligible heir to two magnificent American fortunes, and yet still the bane of his grandfather’s august existence. Here, he did not have to think about his duty. Here, he could breathe without worrying how each exhalation reflected on his suitability to manage the Endicott Foundation, his family’s prominent charitable foundation. Here, tucked away in the worst of the unforgiving Maine weather, shoulder to shoulder with lobstermen and fishermen who respected only the sea—and only sometimes at that—he was just Jack.

He couldn’t have Larissa Whitney polluting this place, playing God only knew what kind of games in the closest thing he had to a sanctuary. It was unthinkable. And he suspected he could guess what she was doing so far from her preferred glittering, high-end stomping grounds. Down east Maine in the off-season, subject to the treacherous weather and notably bereft of breathless page-six gossip, was no place for a spoiled, pampered, overly indulged party girl. There were no parties here. No press. No screaming, adoring masses on every corner, ready to copy her clothes and sell her secrets to the highest bidder. None of the things someone like Larissa considered basics for survival. He was afraid he could guess what had brought her here, and he didn’t like it at all.

“You haven’t bothered to ask what I’m doing here,” he pointed out, searching the smooth mask of her beautiful face, so adored by so many, for clues, but of course, there was nothing there. There never was. Nothing she didn’t want him to see. Nothing to see at all, he thought. He was annoyed that he even looked for anything more. “Is that your usual self-absorption, or did you expect to see me when you got here?”

“You tossed open the door like a modern-day Heathcliff,” she murmured, as if transported into rapturous daydreams by the very idea. He didn’t believe her for a moment. Like all of her peers, all saddled with names that dated back to the origin of the country, and to the lauded coal, steel and robber-baron fortunes that had built it, she could be a fantastic actress when it suited her. But could she be anything else? And why did he still want to know?

“It’s all very romantic,” she said when he only gazed at her. She shrugged. “I’d hate all the gritty little travel details—your itinerary, my schedule, so boring—to ruin such a delicious moment.”

“I think I know why you’re here,” he said, ignoring her flirtatious little performance. Her games might have worked on him once, he told himself, but they wouldn’t again. His voice lowered. “Did you really think this would work, Larissa? Have you forgotten that I know how you operate?”

She blinked, and he had the impression that for that moment, she truly had no idea what he meant. But then he reminded himself that this—precisely this—was what she was best at.

She leaned forward then, putting her hand high on his thigh and letting her body sway toward his and, no, Jack thought. He’d been wrong. This was what she was best at. This effortless seduction. With just a touch, using only her proximity. She was irresistible and she knew it. Lethal.

So close, her unique fragrance seemed to fill his head, spinning it—a hint of unusual, expensive spices, edgy and intriguing. And the cream of her skin was scented a warm, intoxicating vanilla. He remembered far more than he wanted to, more than he was comfortable admitting even to himself. Her taste, her scent. The wild passion that he’d long since decided he’d imagined, embellished. But there was no imagining this. Her hand burned through his jeans, searing into his flesh, stirring him, reminding him exactly how much he’d wanted her—and still did. But that didn’t mean he had to give into it. Or even like it. Or her.

He stood, watching her hand fall away. Part of him wanted to reach out and put his own hands on her, all over her. Relearn her curves, her cries. Lose himself in her.

But he was no longer that man. He’d graduated from the kind of games Larissa played five years ago, and he wasn’t going back.

“Friday,” he said, his voice commanding. Sure of her instant obedience. “The ferry. Six-thirty in the morning. It’s not a request.”

“I appreciate the update on the ferry schedule,” she said evenly. Once again, he saw something he didn’t understand in her green gaze—something that didn’t make sense. She didn’t look away, and he found he couldn’t decipher her. And surely, she should be an open book, made up of blank pages, shouldn’t she? “But I’ll do what I want, Jack. Not what you tell me to do.”

“Not on this island, you won’t.” He could feel the ferocity of his smile. He was enjoying this too much, suddenly.

Her elegant brows rose, and that smile of hers sharpened. “I hate to point out the obvious to a person whose relatives were on hand to sign the Declaration of Independence and carry on afterward in the streets of Philadelphia,” she drawled, her eyes flashing. “But it remains a free country.”

“Except on this island,” he said. And smiled wider, arrogant and proud. “I own it.”

She was such an idiot.

There was no getting around it, Larissa thought when she was tucked away in her tiny attic room in the inn, neck-deep in the claw-footed tub that she suspected had been there since the 1800s. Endicott Island. She should have known. It was right there in his name.

Although, in her defense, she knew a great many people whose family names were littered about the country—on streets, towns, buildings, bridges. Her own, for example. That didn’t necessarily translate into members of that family appearing wherever they were named, as if called forth by some spell. No one expected to run into members of the Carnegie family when attending a show at Carnegie Hall in New York City, or any Kennedys while flying out of New York’s JFK airport. Apparently, this was just a special Jack Endicott Sutton twist.

Still, she should have put it together when she’d seen him, instead of being so dizzied by her overwhelming reaction to him. She should have done a lot of things, including never surrendering to that reaction, that deadly attraction, in the first place five years ago. Should have might as well be tattooed across her forehead, she thought then, glowering at herself in the cracked mirror as she climbed from the tub and wrapped a towel around herself. It was the story of her life.

She was pulling on a soft T-shirt over a pair of yoga pants when the peremptory knock sounded at the door. Larissa froze, her heart going wild. There was only one person it could be. Only one person she’d spoken more than a few words to since she’d arrived. Only one, and she knew better than to let him in. She’d be safer donning a red cape and wandering through the nearest forest, looking for wolves.

And yet she found herself crossing the small room as if compelled, as if he ordered her to do so simply by his presence on the other side of the door. Her bare feet, still warm from the bath, scuffed against the rough-hewn wood beams in the floor. Her breasts seemed to swell against her shirt, as a kind of glimmering wound low in her belly, and pulsed. She was aware of the cheerful comforter spread across the tidy double bed, the rain and wind buffeting the small round windows that lined the wall above it. She was aware of her own wet hair, her own damp skin. She was suddenly as hot as she’d been in the tub; hotter. As if that simple, demanding knock had set her ablaze.

He did not knock again. He did not have to. She could sense him there, on the other side of the wood. She could see him—that dark, stirring gaze. That absurdly distracting mouth. Those perfect, sculpted cheekbones and that strong nose, the unmistakable stamp of his ancestors and the easy, rangy athleticism that was uniquely his. The towering intellect behind it that had allowed him to transform so easily from black sheep reprobate to the chairman of his family’s foundation—an evolution that had endeared him even more to his legion of admirers. He was beautiful, but he was no pretty boy. He never had been, not even when he’d played the part so easily, so well, for so long. It was yet one more reason he was the most dangerous man she’d ever met.

Five years ago, even in the damaged state she’d been in, she’d known that well enough to walk away from him. So why, now, with so much more of herself to lose, did she do precisely the opposite of what she knew she should?

She was a fool beyond the telling of it, in ways she could not even bear to examine, and even so, she swung open the door. She could not seem to stop herself. She could not seem to want to stop herself.

He loomed there in the doorway, his body too big in the narrow, shadowy hallway, dark and hungry-eyed. She could see the stark, mouthwatering outline of his lean arms as he braced them above the door, the carved beauty of his chest as he hung there as if on display, like some impossible piece of sculpture. And then she met his bittersweet brown gaze and lost her breath completely.

He is much too dangerous and you are far too weak, she railed at herself, but he was right there in front of her, making her heart do cartwheels against her ribs, and she had always been helpless where this man was concerned, no matter what she let on. No matter what stories she told herself. Always.

Jack stepped over the threshold, forcing Larissa either to back up or let him bump against her. She chose to move back, deeper into the room, and cursed herself when she saw the faint hint of a smile curve his devastating mouth. Jack, she knew, was a master of power games. He could hardly hold the position he held at the Endicott Foundation, or in their bright and complicated little society world, without that kind of mastery. She jerked her attention away from his distracting mouth.

“You overstated your ownership of this island somewhat,” she said, deciding that offense was far preferable to defense, and pretending she didn’t feel stripped bare despite the fact she was wearing clothes. She had to fight to keep her arms from crossing over her chest, a protective gesture he would read too easily and, she had no doubt, use against her.

It was something about the laser-hot gaze he let drift over her, the way the air around them seemed to tighten, making her feel almost light-headed. Almost dizzy. That, she told herself, was why she felt so off balance around this man. It was chemical. Nothing more. And she was done with chemicals, too.

“I never overstate,” he replied, though his eyes were on her lips, touching them as if he was thinking of kissing her, of claiming her, even then. As if he already had. Her thighs clenched hard against the sudden spike of heat through her core. He met her gaze slowly, insolently. “I don’t have to.”

“Your family owned the island once,” she said crisply, rattling off the results of the search she’d cued up on her smartphone. “But your grandfather gave most of it over to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust some thirty years ago, and some more to the State of Maine long before that. Now you simply sit in your grand old estate, the patriarch that never was, staring out over the land that could have been yours.” She forced a light little laugh. “How sad.”

“I’m flattered,” he said, moving farther into the room. Larissa stood her ground, even though her legs felt wobbly, and the small room seemed to shrink in around him, trapping her. “Did you rush back to your room to research me, Larissa? Or did you already know everything you needed to know about me before you came to the island in the first place?”

“That’s a loaded question, I think,” she retorted, refusing to move even as he drifted closer, even as his shoulders seemed to block out the whole of the far wall. He was not actually growing larger before her very eyes, she told herself sharply. It was just that damned chemical reaction again, her body’s helpless response to him, making her crazy. “I’ve known you since I was a child. There’s very little I don’t know about you, directly or indirectly.” She waved a languid hand as if none of it interested her in the least. “Except for your inner thoughts, of course—assuming you have any of those.” She smirked. “I’ve found that men of your great consequence and vast self-importance most often do not.”

“I think you are confusing the two of us,” Jack replied softly, his dark eyes glittering, as if he could not decide whether he found her amusing or irritating. “I am not the one rumored to be the most vapid creature in all of Manhattan, if not the entire country. Quite a feat, Larissa. How proud you must be.”

She felt a stab of something like pain, like shame, shoot through her and shoved it aside. The tabloids said all that and worse, daily. They had done since she was a teenager, and vapid was practically a compliment in comparison to the things they called her. What should she care if he joined in the chorus? Why should it matter that he did so to her face, with every appearance of believing it? She told herself such things could hardly matter to her any longer. She should be entirely immune.

“Oh, come now,” she said, clucking her tongue. She did not let her gaze drift to that intoxicating hollow between his pectoral muscles, lovingly outlined by his shirt. She did not let her eyes travel further south to investigate that washboard of an abdomen. “You remember—I’ve known you forever. I knew you back before you decided to reinvent yourself, back before you became the most boring man alive. I knew you when you were fun.” She shrugged, knowing she looked careless and amused. Effortless. Blasé. It was her greatest talent. “Back when you were, if I recall it correctly, voted the most dissipated playboy in all of New York City every year for the better part of your twenties.”

She’d run into him, fatefully, at the tail end of that period, she thought, willing those unhelpful and unnecessary memories away. Right when he’d been teetering on the edge of respectability in the wake of his beloved mother’s death. For all she knew, their little weekend tryst had been the straw that broke him. Just one more sin to add to her roster, no doubt. She had given up counting them all.

“Is that why you hate me so much, with so little reason?” she asked then, spurred by some emotion she hardly understood, some small glimpse of something in his expression that she barely comprehended. “Because I knew you when? That hardly seems fair. So does most of Manhattan.”

“I don’t hate you, Larissa,” he said, his voice a rough caress in the small room, abrading her skin, making her arch slightly against it, as if he’d really touched her. “I know you.”

He reached over then, and tracked a leftover droplet from her bath down the side of her neck, across her collarbone, his finger scorching her. Terrifying her. Her gaze was trapped in his. Fire. Anger. And something else, something darker, that she was afraid to explore.

That, God help her, made her want. Yearn.

“What are you doing?” she asked, hating herself for the breathlessness in her voice, the weakness spreading through her. The helpless wanting that even so small a touch could evoke in her. He was an exercise in self-immolation. And he was entirely too addictive, a quick slide into nothing but madness. She’d escaped him once, but she had no reason to believe she would be so lucky again. In fact, she knew better.

But she didn’t move. She didn’t step away.

His lips twitched and a very male triumph lit his dark gaze. She hated that even more.

“It occurred to me that there is very little do here on Endicott Island,” he said, his finger toying with the V-neck of her shirt, teasing her. Yet—still—there was a measuring coolness in his eyes. As if he was testing as much as teasing her. “And we wouldn’t want you bored. I’ve seen what happens when you get bored.” He let out a small laugh. “The whole world has, I imagine.”

“I’m very easily bored, and just as easily photographed, it’s true,” she agreed, forcing the breathlessness back into remission. Covering the hurt she shouldn’t allow herself to feel with a sniff. “I’m bored right now.”

He only smiled.

“While you’re here so unexpectedly,” he said, his fingers drawing out an intoxicating rhythm inside of her, making it pulse deep into her core, “we might as well remind ourselves of the one thing we’re really, really good at, don’t you think?”

She had the urge to play dumb, to ask him what he meant, but the glittering light in his gaze stopped her. She was afraid he would demonstrate what he meant, and how could she possibly survive that? He thought she was the same person she’d been eight months ago, the same person she’d been five years ago. Brittle, hard. Empty. Capable of withstanding anything without truly letting it touch her. Numb. He would treat her like the girl he’d known then, that ghost of herself, that walking shadow. And in so doing, he would ruin whoever she was now, softer and quieter and certainly no match for the likes of him.

She couldn’t allow it. She wouldn’t.

But she also couldn’t let him see that she’d changed. It would end the same way, and she would lose so much more. He would assume it was a trick, a game. He would accuse her of ulterior motives. And Larissa couldn’t defend herself, could she? She couldn’t explain what had happened to her, much less who she’d become—she was still in the process of figuring that out.

And she was so deathly afraid of the answer.

“I thought you said one taste was more than enough,” she tossed back at him lightly, surprised to find that the words still stung. She knew they shouldn’t. What was one more low opinion? She smiled up at him, mysterious, unknowable. The Larissa Whitney promise. Her impenetrable armor. “But no need to worry. Most men, like you, can’t even begin to handle me.”

His smile bordered on feral. She felt it hard in her belly, like a kick, and then his eyes went dark.

She stopped breathing.

“Watch me,” he said hoarsely.

And then his hands were on her shoulders, warm and sure. And she was lost.

He pulled her close, his lips twisting slightly into something too hard to be a smile, and then he took her mouth in a searing, impossible kiss.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS worse than she’d remembered, when she’d allowed herself to remember him at all. It was better.

So much better.

Hotter, sleeker, rolling through her like a tornado, tearing her apart, making her shake as the wild passion claimed her. Her hands found his narrow hips, the taut, smooth muscles of his back, and despite herself, she clung. His skin was so warm, so firm, blazing through the tight shirt he wore, making her long to reach beneath it.

She felt him everywhere.

He kissed her again and again, as if he was as swept away in this fire, this madness, as she was. As if he never meant to stop. Her toes curled against the floorboards. Her eyes fell shut, her back arched, bringing her closer to his drugging heat. She ached everywhere he touched her, and ached even more where he did not. She melted. She burned.

She was in so much trouble.

She was not drunk this time, feeling daring and careless and out of control after a long night at a chaotic party. She was not numbed and halfway to dead inside. There was nothing to dull the exquisite force of him or her own helpless, needy reaction, and however dangerous she had believed him to be before, she knew now she had greatly underestimated his power over her.

She was such a fool.

And still she kissed him back, angling her mouth for a better fit, moving closer in his arms, pressing up against the hard wall of his chest. She couldn’t seem to help herself. It was as if he’d been created just for her, carefully constructed to make her lose her mind.

But she was not the same girl he’d once known, however peripherally—not the same person at all any longer, and it was that thought that finally penetrated the delirious fog in her brain. She knew what she was doing here, with him—what she was risking. But he was still playing old games, settling old scores. She knew it, no matter how good he tasted, how perfectly they fitted. She couldn’t let that matter.

She couldn’t lie to herself—hadn’t she made herself that vow?—and pretend that letting this happen would do anything but destroy her.

For good this time. She could feel the truth of that deep inside of her, like some kind of primal feminine knowledge she’d never accessed before.

She tore her mouth from his and backed up then, as she should have done from the start. Better late than never, she told herself. Another mantra that could apply to her whole life these days. It was cold comfort.

“Well,” she said lightly, easily, pretending she couldn’t feel him still, that her whole body did not ache, yearn, need. That her heart was not still thudding, hard and insistent, her blood racing wild and excited through her veins. “Apparently you handle things quite well. But I think I’ll have to decline.”

“Why?” The single word was almost a laugh, arrogant and sure, his gaze frankly incredulous as it seared into hers, invitation and temptation. And that impossible fire that always burned between them, that seductive blaze.

Why, indeed?

But she was not the old Larissa, the heedless Larissa who thought only of a moment’s pleasure—the better to avoid thinking about anything else. She could not play games with this man and skip away unscathed. And she was very much afraid that she had already damaged herself beyond repair.

So she shrugged, pulling the familiar mantle of Larissa Whitney, heartless, careless flirt around her like the armor it was. Her favorite disguise. Because she did not dare let this man see anything more, anything deeper. She did not dare show him anything he could destroy.

“Because you want it too much,” she said airily, turning away from him and drifting toward the fireplace as if she could dismiss him that easily. She closed her eyes for a tight, brief moment—for strength—and then glanced over her shoulder at him, and smiled. Saucily. As if she wanted nothing more than to tease him. “Where’s the fun in that?”

He shouldn’t have done that. He shouldn’t have touched her, much less kissed her. Jack could see the passion in her green eyes, making them luminous. He wanted to make them glaze over with heat. Her mouth was still swollen slightly from his, and he wanted to taste her again. She was narcotic. And still she played her damned games. Lies within lies, like the Russian dolls his mother had collected.

Why was he surprised? That was the real question, and one Jack knew he should investigate. But instead, he watched her.

“I didn’t realize I scared you so much,” he drawled, injecting a note of mockery into his tone, knowing it would get her back up, refusing to question why he wanted that reaction. Any reaction. “I thought nothing could.”

“Bats,” she said immediately, that charming lilt to her voice, the one that made her so impossible to dismiss. The one that made her seem like some latter-day Holly Golightly. “And scorpions.” She gave a mock shudder. “But you? I’m afraid not, Jack. I know that must come as a grave disappointment.”

“I know why you’re here.” It grated out of him, more angrily than it should have. “You can stop all your playacting and simply admit it.”

She glanced back at him again, still standing before the fire, damp and delectable from a bath he could imagine in all-too-graphic detail, her short dark hair slightly mussed and entirely too alluring. He could not seem to reconcile himself to the dissonance—to the fragility of her delicate bones, her waiflike figure, juxtaposed with that cold, heartless core of emptiness he knew was the hidden truth of her, holding her up like a spine. She was indestructible, for all she looked like the next gust of bitter wind against the rattling windows might blow her over.

And those eyes of hers should have been hard as stones, but reminded him instead of the sea. His beloved, unknowable Atlantic, forever complicated by the storms, the island’s rocky shoreline, the towering wall of pines. Shadows chased through her mysterious gaze, then disappeared, leaving him to wonder if he’d imagined them.

“Why don’t you tell me why I’m here?” she suggested, her voice low. She turned back to the fire, dismissal and disinterest stamped along every inch of her aristocratic back, the incline of her elegant neck. “Or we can just pretend that you already did. Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to add in the necessary insults in my memory of the conversation that never was. It will be just like the real thing.”

There was a certain dryness to her tone, a certain dark humor, that he couldn’t quite take in. It spoke to a kind of self-awareness he’d never believed she could be capable of achieving. He wished he could see her expression. If she had been another woman, he might even have entertained the possibility that he’d hurt her feelings. But this was Larissa. She didn’t have any. Not the way other people did. Not unless she could use them as leverage.

He let his gaze travel over her celebrated body, admiring her despite himself. How could he not? She was one of the great beauties of the age, or so the media claimed with predictable regularity. And he had tested the theory with his own hands. He knew all of those fine, patrician lines. The curve of her spine, the swell of her hips, the delectable round thrust of her bottom. He knew that soft place just below her hairline at the nape of her neck. He knew what would happen if he pressed his mouth to it, the little gasp she would make, the way her whole body would arch and then shudder.

He found the simple black pants she wore, the small, snug T-shirt, her feet bare against the floorboards, far more erotic and captivating than any of the many elaborate costumes he’d seen her in before. Almost as if she was not as out of place here as he believed her to be. But he was not likely to share that kind of thought, not with a woman like Larissa, and not when it was no doubt proof of his own abiding insanity. She would only use it against him somehow. Everything was a weapon. Everything and everyone had a use. He knew that better than anyone.

She was some kind of witch, though he knew others preferred a different word to describe her, and he had spent years trying to figure out why he’d fallen so hard beneath her spell. Why she had haunted him when so many other women had failed to make any impression at all. He had a thousand different theories, but he still didn’t have an answer. And it hardly mattered any longer.

“I feel suitably chastised,” she said, making him aware of his own brooding silence. She turned around then, her skin flushed from the fire, her eyes darker than they should have been. But her smile was the same as it ever was. That impertinent curve of her lips—as alluring as it was concealing. He should not have this insane urge to try to figure her out. He should not find her so damned fascinating, despite his best intentions.

“See?” Again, that saucy little quirk of her lips. “No need to have the conversation at all. Feel free to let yourself out.”

“The Whitney Media Board of Directors meets next month,” Jack said before he knew he meant to speak. He watched her wince slightly, then check it, and thought he’d landed a blow. He had the impression that she forced herself to resume her usual air of disinterested bonelessness—and felt something move in him in response. He called it cynicism. Weariness. After all, he’d just exposed her little game, hadn’t he?

“You really have become the most tedious man,” she said softly, a light in those captivating eyes he couldn’t read. “I can’t think of anything I would rather discuss less while in the middle of a storm on a lonely little island than Whitney Media.”

“I’ve heard rumors,” he said. He tracked her, his eyes narrowing, as she drifted over to the armchair near the fire and folded herself into it, drawing her knees up beneath her. “Everyone has.”

“Manhattan runs on rumors, I find,” she said in the same easy tone that he found disturbed him in ways he did not care to examine. “The city that never sleeps because it is far too busy whispering salacious tales into every willing ear, stirring up as much dirt as possible before dawn.” She shrugged as if it was no matter to her, the prurient interest of others. “The veracity of said dirt is never important, of course.”

“You need to appear at that meeting, don’t you?” he countered, because he didn’t need to listen to any stories about her—he’d lived them. “You were very smart to stay out of the papers these past months. But now you need to prove to your father and his disapproving cronies that you’ve become truly respectable, or they’ll declare you unfit and appoint a proxy to vote your shares of the company.”

He wasn’t saying anything any businessman wouldn’t know, simply from reading opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal. And yet her emerald gaze seemed to simmer with something that might have been anger, had she been someone else. But then she smiled that Mona Lisa smile at him.

“You say that as if I have been in a pitched battle for control of the company since my eighteenth birthday, like some desperate heroine on a daytime soap opera,” she murmured. One delicate hand went to her neck, as if testing the shape of her collarbone beneath her fingers. In another woman, he would call it a nervous tic, a telling gesture. But this was Larissa. She had no tells, only traps. She met his gaze without apparent distress. “I hate to disabuse you of your melodramatic notions, but I’ve had a proxy vote for me for as long as I can remember.” She made a face. “I can’t really think of anything that would bore me more deeply than a board meeting. Particularly if that board had anything to do with a company I was tired of hearing about before I reached kindergarten.” Her perfectly arched brows rose. Her stormy gaze was cool. Deceptively so, he thought. “As you already know, I really don’t like to be bored.”

“Your father and your former fiancé handled your shares,” Jack said ruthlessly, ignoring her performance. Because what else could it be? What else could bring her here but her own self-interest? He didn’t know why she thought she could hide it—or why she bothered to try. “But your fiancé, who was always your champion, has disappeared and everyone knows you are no favorite of your father’s. This meeting may be your only chance to wrest control of your own inheritance for the foreseeable future.”

That was the squalid little truth, he thought, watching her face now that he’d slapped that down on the table, out in the open, between them. He thought a faint flush rose high on her cheekbones, but it could as easily have been the heat of the crackling fire.

He wanted her to admit it. To admit that this was why she’d turned up here, like his own personal ghost. That he was only the means to an end. He knew exactly what securing him—marrying him, even—would do for Larissa, what it would mean for her reputation and prospects. He should be more sympathetic to her plight. Weren’t his grandfather’s latest decrees about Jack’s duty to marry well, and soon, much the same kind of pressure? Wasn’t he taking this time on the island to come to terms with that inevitability? He really ought to relate.

But Larissa sighed, musical and put-upon all at once, and any sympathy he might have had vanished. They were nothing alike. Jack spent every moment of his day doing his duty, making himself the worthy successor to his family’s legacy. Larissa only wanted unrestricted access to her family’s money, the better to spend her life shopping it all away. He felt his jaw tense.

“I have other sources of income,” she said, waving a hand as if such sources grew thick in the trees. But then, in their world of endless privilege, stretching back across centuries, they often did. “It was Theo who was so obsessed with Whitney Media. He and my father and their high-stakes corporate games. I begin to nod off to sleep whenever the topic comes up. I’m getting remarkably drowsy now.”

Jack laughed then, despite himself, and moved across the room in a few sure steps. He leaned down toward her, bracing himself on the arms of the chair, bringing his face far too close to hers as he trapped her in her seat.

“Let me tell you what I think,” he said, satisfaction surging through him at the faint alarm that flashed across her face. At least it was an honest reaction. Any reaction.

“If you feel you must,” she drawled, but he could see the pulse beat against the tender flesh of her neck, and he knew she was not nearly as unmoved as she pretended. He leaned closer.

“I think that you came to this island in the worst of the fall storms to drag me into this little battle you pretend you don’t care about.” He could smell her scent again, and it made his body harden, though he still held himself just slightly apart from her. There were many forms of revenge, after all, and not all of them required that he betray himself. “As you keep pointing out, I have become so boring, haven’t I? Positively respectable. Not one of your usual doomed bad-boy projects or untrustworthy celebrity lovers. I’d be the perfect ally, wouldn’t I, Larissa? I’d make you look reborn. Your father would eat right out of your hand if you brought him me on a silver platter, wouldn’t he?”

It was a fantastic plan, Larissa thought, her eyes searching his dark, commanding gaze. Brilliant, even. Nothing thrilled her father more than pedigrees that matched and/or exceeded his own. Bradford Whitney cared about nothing at all save the Whitney legacy, by which he meant his own continued wealth and consequence and all that entailed. Larissa had long been a grave disappointment to him in this area.

When she had brought Theo Markou Garcia home as her boyfriend, and had eventually made him her fiancé, she had mostly been interested in the fact that he came from absolutely nothing—a sin she’d been certain Bradford could never overlook. But she had underestimated Theo. He had taken over the company, becoming the son Bradford had never had in the process. That he had finally left her was, Larissa knew, something Bradford would never find it in him to forgive her. Much less the fact that Theo’s near-miraculous ability as CEO to make Whitney Media rake in profits had disappeared with him.

But Jack Endicott Sutton would be exactly the right kind of salve for Bradford’s bruised ego and slightly depressed portfolio. Any suggestion that Larissa, the great disappointment and stain upon the Whitney name, could link herself to a man like Jack? The single heir to two separate great American families, from Mayflower Boston and Upper Ten Thousand New York both—and the vast fortunes that came with each? A man who had transformed himself from notorious if beloved rake to dependable, hardworking, worthy successor to all his family’s innumerable riches? Bradford would be beside himself.

Larissa imagined that somewhere in the depths of the iconic Whitney mansion that sprawled over a whole city block on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, her father was suddenly filled with an unimaginable if unclear joy, simply because the very idea of linking the Gilded Age splendor of the Whitney name to the august Bostonian Endicotts and the clever Sutton robber-barons-turned-bankers had occurred to someone, somewhere. It would be like his personal Christmas.

But, of course, she’d had no such plan. She’d been running away from all of that noise and obligation since the day she’d woken up from her coma, more or less, and she’d had no plans to return to New York City at all—much less to Whitney Media, and she’d certainly had no plans to involve herself in some doomed scheme toward respectability with Jack Sutton.

Jack was the very last man she would ever have sought out. Ever. She couldn’t trust herself anywhere near him, as tonight had already proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. But, of course, in order to explain to him why that was so, she would be forced to admit the kind of power he had always had over her. She couldn’t do it. There was too much to lose—and anyway, she was used to his low opinion of her. It was nothing new. She told herself it hardly even hurt.

“So quiet,” he murmured, taunting her, his voice snapping her back into the tense, dangerous present. Where his mouth was much too close to hers, his eyes were much too knowing, and the banked fire he lit in her was stoked to a worrying blaze already. “Did you really think that you could fool me? Did you imagine that your presence here would be casual in some way? This island is as inhospitable as they come. There can be no reason at all for you to be here at this time of year. None. Save one.”

“You are so conceited,” she managed to say, fighting her voice’s urge toward a much-too-telling tremor.

“You’re a terrible actress,” he replied, far too easily.

He squatted down in front of her chair, still caging her between his strong arms, but now his muscled thighs spread open before her and his face, his mouth, were much too close to hers. She dared not move. He was so big, so male, and as dangerous as he was compelling. She wanted to leap out of this chair and run, screaming, from the room—the inn—the island. But more than that, she wanted to lean forward and touch him. Both propositions were terrifying.

“Why don’t you just admit what you came for?” His voice was mocking. Knowing. Insinuating.

Larissa sucked in a deep breath. And then, because she knew that he would never believe her, that he saw only what he wanted to see—only what she’d worked so hard to show to the world for so long, and never anything else, never anything beneath that mask—she told him the truth.

“I had no idea you’d be here,” she said quietly. Matter-of-factly. Because she found she needed to say it, and it was safe here, now, where she would never be believed. Perhaps not even heard. His expression was already shifting to one of total disbelief. “It never occurred to me that there would be an Endicott in residence on Endicott Island. Why would it, at this time of year? I just put my car on the ferry headed for the most remote place I could find, and here I am. There’s no plot. No grand scheme to prove something to my father. I’ve thought as little about him—and Whitney Media—as possible.”

His mouth flattened, as if she’d disappointed him—again. She was entirely too familiar with that particular expression. And she told herself she was an idiot if she expected anything different, even from him. Even for a second.

“Of course not,” he said sardonically. “Because you’ve suddenly been seized with your typical wanderlust, except for some reason you chose this island instead of, say, Rio. The Amalfi coast. Anywhere in the South Pacific.”

That he didn’t believe her was practically written across him, tattooed onto his smooth warm skin. Flashing before her like all the bright lights of New York City. And, therefore, it was safe for her to tell him truths she would never have dared mention if she’d had the slightest worry he might believe them.

This is who you are, a small voice pointed out inside of her, condemning her. This twisted thing, good for nothing but lies and truths hidden away like ciphers.

“Maybe I’m trying to reinvent myself,” she said, making sure she smirked as she said it, making sure he couldn’t give her words any weight, any resonance. “Maybe this is simply part of a period of reinterpretation.” She shrugged her shoulders. “A deserted island in the late fall rains. What better place for rediscovery?”

He shook his head, letting his hands move from the arms of the chair. He touched her, tracing a pattern along her curled-up legs from knees to ankles, making that fire rage and burn anew. Then, unexpectedly, he took her hands between his. Her heart jolted in her chest. So hard she stopped breathing.

“You’re so pretty when you lie,” he said, almost tenderly, which made the words feel that much more like knives. Sharp and brutal. “You make it into a kind of art. You should be proud of it, I think.”

She didn’t know why she should feel so heartbroken, so sick, as if he’d ripped her into tiny pieces by acting as she’d known he would—as she’d wanted him to act. What did she expect? That somehow, Jack Endicott Sutton would see through all her layers of defense and obfuscation to what lay beneath? She didn’t want that. She’d never wanted that. So why did it hurt so much that he didn’t do it anyway?

But she knew why. She’d always known. There was something between them—something that sang in her whenever he touched her, something in the way he looked at her, that made her imagine things could be different. That she could be different. She hadn’t been able to cope with the idea of that five years ago. And whatever he’d seen in her then, she’d ruined it. She knew she had, because that was what she did. That was who she was. She ruined whatever she touched.

Why should Jack be any different?

“I see,” she said. She looked down at their hands, linked now, the heat of that connection moving through her in ways she should not allow. But she didn’t move. She angled a look at him. “You are permitted to have a disreputable past, and then change when it suits you. But not me. Is that because you’re a man?”

“It’s because you’re Larissa Whitney,” he replied, and there was laughter in his gaze then. She wished it warmed her instead of chilling her to the bone. She wished she could drop this act, and make him really, truly believe her. She thought she could, if she dared enough. If she was brave enough.

But she had never been anything but weak. She doubted she ever would be. She took the easy road, because at least that way she could keep part of herself hidden. Safe. She had always tried too hard to keep something, somewhere, some kind of safe. Surely that counted for something.

And even if it didn’t, it was all she had.

“Fine, then,” she said, smiling back at him, even letting out her own little laugh in reply. Letting herself seem complicit—in on the joke. The very idea of her changing was hilarious, wasn’t it? Impossible! She should know. She was the one trying to do it.

“Come have dinner with me.” Jack’s voice was rich and dark, and made her yearn for things she couldn’t have, things she knew he’d never offer. Made her heart beat too fast, her blood pump too quickly through her limbs. He was seduction incarnate, and the worst part, she knew, was that he didn’t really want her. Not her. He wanted the projection. The act. He wanted who he thought she was. And still, even knowing that, she wanted him like this. Like she might die if she didn’t taste him again.

“Said the spider to the fly,” she replied, smiling over the crack in her voice, pretending she was trying to sound husky, alluring.

“I think we both know that the only one here weaving any webs is you,” Jack said. But he didn’t seem to care about that. There was a cool, assessing glint in his dark gaze, as if he was reading her too closely. He stood up then, pulling her to her feet in an easy, offhand demonstration of his effortless strength, his matter-of-fact physical prowess. It made her feel fluttery. “And who knows? Maybe you can convince me to be a part of your little plot after all. Why not try?”

He was so arrogant. So sure that he saw right through her, that he knew everything. All her games. All her plans. The whole of her shallow little self. She didn’t know if she wanted to punch him—or burst into tears. She wisely decided to do neither. She doubted he would react well to either extreme. And she doubted she would recover.

“Why should I?” she asked lightly, though it cost her to keep up the act. “You appear to already have your mind made up.”

“Convince me,” he said, in that low, stirring voice. His dark eyes were molten hot, so hungry and yet so shrewd, and they made her ache. They made her feel vulnerable, foolish. Lost. And then he smiled, and made everything that much worse. “I dare you.”

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