Heiress Behind the Headlines

“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?”