Powerful and Proud: Beneath the Veil of Paradise / In the Heat of the Spotlight / His Brand of Passion

And maybe he’d get her out of his. He’d spent the afternoon coaxing smiles from her even as he enjoyed himself more than he’d ever thought possible. Every smile, every laugh, had felt like a discovery. A victory.

He thought they were building something—admittedly something fragile and temporary, but still. Something. And the whole time she’d been thinking of some stupid ex.

‘Are you coming?’ she called from below, her voice as taut as her body had been.

Chase’s mouth curved grimly at the unwitting double entendre. ‘You’d better believe it.’

He hauled himself down the ladder and saw that Millie stood in front of the double bed. She turned to him, her chest heaving, her nipples visible beneath the thin, silky material of her bra. She arched her eyebrows and curved her mouth in a horrible rictus smile.

‘All right, Chase. Let’s see what you’ve got.’

He swallowed, acid churning in his gut. How had they got here? The afternoon had been full of tenderness and teasing, and now they were acting like they hated each other.

Millie’s eyes glittered and he knew she wouldn’t back down. She never backed down from a challenge; he’d learned that already.

And hell if he’d back down either. She was the one who had said she didn’t want to get to know him. Wasn’t interested in emotional anything. Right now, right here, he could give her what she wanted. The only thing she wanted.

And, damn it, he’d want it too.

‘Take off your bra.’ A pulse beat hard in the hollow of her throat but she undid it and tossed it to the floor. Her breasts were small and round, high and firm. Perfect. Chase swallowed. ‘And the rest.’ She glared at him as she kicked off her underwear, her chin still tilted high.

‘Is this what you call foreplay?’

He almost laughed. She was magnificent. Naked, proud, defiant, strong. He shook his head. ‘I just like to see what I get in this deal of ours.’

‘Only fair I get the same opportunity, then.’

He arched an eyebrow, aroused in spite of the anger. Or maybe because of it. Hell, he didn’t know anything any more. ‘What are you saying, Scary?’

‘Take off your pants.’

He did.

They stared at each other almost in grim silence, both of them totally naked, nothing between them. The air seemed to crackle with the tension, with the expectation.

Hell.

What now?

Millie folded her arms. Waited. Chase felt like a circus seal, or a damn monkey. She clearly expected him to perform.

He hadn’t wanted it to be this way. He’d wanted to gain her trust, even her affection, and help her to lose control in the most amazing way possible. Right now she was clinging to that precious control with her french-manicured fingernails and it was slipping crazily away from him.

He didn’t want this.

He wasn’t going to back down.

‘Get on the bed.’

She gave him a little smirk, almost as if he were being so predictable, and lay on the bed. She even put her hands behind her head as if she were incredibly relaxed, but she was trembling.

Damn.

Again Chase hesitated. Don’t do this. He didn’t want to ruin what they had by losing her trust, affection, everything, in a bout of absurdly unsexy sex. Except who was he kidding? They didn’t have anything.

This was all they had—this, right here on the bed.

‘Let me tell you,’ Millie drawled, her hands still laced behind her head, ‘this is turning out to be the worst sexual encounter of my life, and forget about mind-blowing.’

Chase saw that she still trembled.

He sat on the edge of the bed and slowly ran his hand from the arch of her foot along her calf to behind her knee, his fingers instinctively seeking further, finding the soft, smooth skin of her inner thigh. More softness. He felt her muscles tense and quiver beneath his touch. Her breath hitched.

‘I’m not going to play this game,’ he said quietly and she stared at him, her whole body going rigid.

‘This was your idea.’

‘Yeah, I’ll grant you that. But you went for it because this is what you want.’

‘You think this is what I want?’

‘There’s no emotional intimacy or getting to know you in this scenario, is there?’ He slid his hand higher, savouring the sweet softness of her thigh. Another couple of inches would be even sweeter.

She stared at him, mesmerised, trapped. He stilled his hand. ‘You know I’m right, Millie.’

In answer she reached up, lacing her fingers behind his head, and pulled him down for a hungry, open-mouthed kiss. Her tongue delved inside and she arched upwards, pressing her body against him.

Shock short-circuited Chase’s brain for a second. Then his libido ramped up and he kissed her back just as hungrily with an instinct he was helpless to repress—even as he acknowledged this wasn’t what he wanted. He didn’t even think it was what Millie wanted, not deep down. She was trying to stay in control, seizing it desperately, and he couldn’t let her.

But then her hand wrapped around him and he stopped thinking about what he couldn’t do. His body was telling him what he could.

‘Millie.’ Her name was a groan against her mouth and he reached up to try to remove her death grip on the back of his head. ‘Wait...’

But she didn’t want to wait. She was all over him, eager, urgent, desperate, making him feel the same way. His self-control was slipping away. How did a man argue for a more emotional experience when the woman beneath him was determined to drive him wild? For the feel of Millie’s hands on him, her legs hooked around his hips as she angled upwards, was making him crazy. Through the fog of his own lust he tried to remember where he’d put the condoms.

‘Quickly...’ Millie whispered, her voice a ragged whimper, and Chase stilled. He heard too much desperation and even sadness in her voice, and he didn’t want that. No matter how much his body screamed otherwise.

‘Millie.’ He pushed away from her a little bit, enough to see her pale, dazed face. ‘Let’s hold on a moment, shall we?’ he said unevenly, even though his greatest desire at that point was to forget emotion and sensitivity, and even a condom, and just drive right into her.

‘No, I don’t want...’ Her face went a shade paler, and then she lurched upwards. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ In one abrupt movement she rolled off the bed and raced to the head. Chase listened to her retching into the toilet in a kind of stunned disbelief.

This was starting to feel like the worst sexual encounter of his life too. He reached for his shorts and pulled them on, grabbed a spare tee-shirt from the drawer and waited on the edge of the bed.

A few minutes later a pale and shaky-looking Millie emerged. From somewhere Chase found a smile. ‘I don’t think that was because of the conch.’

She gave him a rather wobbly smile back, although her eyes were dark with pain. ‘No, it wasn’t.’ Somehow the anger, tension and even the desperation of moments before had evaporated, but Chase didn’t know what was left. He felt bewildered, like someone had skipped ahead in the scene selection on a DVD. He was clearly missing some plot points to this story.

‘Here.’ He handed her the tee-shirt and she slipped it on. Her hair was tousled, the shirt falling to mid-thigh. With a little sigh she sat on the edge of the bed, about as far away from him as possible.

‘Sorry about that.’

‘To which part of the evening are you referring?’ he quipped, parroting her own words from last night back to her.

Millie gave a tiny, tired smile and leaned her head against the wall. She closed her eyes and with a pang of remorse Chase saw how exhausted she looked. Today had been quite the rollercoaster.

‘To the part where I threw up in your bathroom a few minutes ago.’

‘On a boat it’s called a head.’

‘Whatever.’ She opened her eyes. ‘That was another buzz-kill, I suspect.’

‘To say the least.’ They stared at each other, unspeaking, but Chase was surprised at how un-awkward it seemed. Maybe you got to a point with a person where things didn’t seem so embarrassing or strange. If so, he’d got to that point pretty quickly with Millie. ‘You want to tell me what’s going on?’

‘Remember the no-talking clause?’

‘That clause was voided when you threw up. I was about six seconds from being inside you, Millie.’

She bit her lip and he reached over and gently touched those worry marks. ‘You’re going to get a scar from doing that if you don’t cut it out.’

She sighed and shook her head. ‘Maybe this whole thing was a bad idea, Chase.’

He felt a lurch of what could only be alarm. He didn’t like feeling it. At this point, he should be agreeing with her. This was a bad idea. Neither of them needed the kind of mind games this week seemed to play on them. He’d convinced himself he wanted intense, but this? This was way too much.

Yet even so he heard himself saying, ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I’m not ready.’

She’d felt pretty ready beneath him. With effort Chase yanked his thoughts from that unhelpful direction. ‘Ready?’ he repeated.

‘For this. A fling, an affair, whatever you want to call it. I wanted to be ready, I wanted to move on, but I don’t know if I can. I can’t stop thinking—’ She stopped abruptly, shook her head.

It was no more than he’d already guessed, yet he didn’t like hearing it. Didn’t like thinking that some guy still owned her heart and mind so much he couldn’t even get a toe-in. Jealousy. That was what he felt, pure and simple. Determinedly Chase pushed it away. ‘We went about this all wrong, Scary,’ he said. ‘And that was my fault. I’m sorry.’

Surprise flashed across her features, like the first beam of sunlight after a downpour. ‘For what?’

‘For getting angry. I didn’t like the fact that you were thinking of whatever guy did a number on you when I was kissing you.’ He smiled wryly. ‘It’s kind of an insult to, you know, my masculinity.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s OK. I should have got over it. Instead I pushed you—and myself—in a direction I had no intention of going.’

Her mouth curved in the faintest of smiles. ‘Angry sex, huh?’

‘It’s really not that great.’

‘Kind of like sex on a beach.’

‘Exactly. Both overrated.’ He sighed and raked his hand through his hair. ‘Look, let’s hit rewind on this evening. Go back on deck and forget this happened.’

‘Well,’ she said, sounding almost mischievous, ‘I don’t think I’m going to forget the sight of you naked in a hurry.’

Chase grinned. ‘Me neither, Scary. Me neither.’ Still smiling, he reached for her hand and felt a clean sweep of thankfulness when she took it. How bizarre that all that tension, anger and hurt had melted and reformed into something else. Something deeper and truer. Friendship.

‘I hope,’ Millie said as he led her from the cabin, ‘we’re not diving for dinner.’

‘Definitely not.’ He felt himself warm from the inside out, and he gave her hand a squeeze before helping her up the ladder.

* * *

Millie walked to the cushioned bench in the back of the boat on wobbly legs. She felt exhausted, both emotionally and physically, by the events of the day and especially the last hour. Chase Bryant was putting her through the wringer. Or maybe she was doing it to herself, by trying to have the desperate, mindless sex she’d thought she wanted until her body had rebelled and thrown up a whole lot of conch.

Chase was right, of course. It wasn’t the conch that had made her sick. It was the memories. She couldn’t turn her brain off, as much as she wanted to. Couldn’t stop remembering, regretting. She’d wanted to have this fling so she could forget, but it wasn’t happening that way at all. It was making things worse. Chase was opening up things inside her, stirring to life everything she’d wanted to be forgotten and buried, gone.

She watched as he set sail, part of her mind admiring the lean strength of his tanned, muscled body even as the rest whirled and spun in confusion. She hadn’t expected him to become so angry earlier. And she hadn’t expected him to be so understanding just then.

For a moment there on the bed, the cabin silent except for the draw and sigh of their own breathing, she’d actually wanted to tell him things. Confide all her confusion, sadness and guilt. But that would mean telling him about Rob. About Charlotte. And she never spoke about Charlotte. Even now the pain ripped through her, all too fresh even though it had been two years. Two years since the phone call that had torn her world apart, taken everyone she loved.

Shouldn’t two years be enough time for the scars to heal? To finally feel ready to move on?

She felt the cushion dip beneath her and blinked to see Chase sitting next to her. She’d been so lost in her own miserable thoughts she hadn’t seen him coming.

He touched her mouth and even now, after everything that had and hadn’t happened, she felt that quiver of awareness, the remnant of desire. ‘Scars, Scary. I’m serious.’

She let out a trembling little laugh. ‘It’s hard to stop something you’re not even aware you’re doing.’

‘What deep thoughts are making you bite your lip?’

‘They’re not particularly deep.’ She turned a little bit away from him, forcing him to drop his hand. ‘Are we heading back to the resort?’

‘No. To my villa.’

She turned back to him, felt a frisson of—what? Not fear. Not excitement. No, this felt strange and suddenly she knew why. She felt hope. Even after the absolute disaster below deck, Chase was giving her—them—a second chance.

‘What are we going to do there?’

He regarded her speculatively for a moment. ‘I’m going to cook for you while you soak in my jacuzzi. Then we’re going to eat the fantastic meal I’ve whipped up, watch a movie, maybe have a glass of wine. Or sparkling water, as the case may be.’

‘That sounds surprisingly relaxing.’

‘Glad you think so.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we’ll go to sleep in my very comfortable, king-sized bed and I’ll hold you all night long.’

He spoke breezily enough, yet Millie heard the heartfelt sincerity underneath the lightness, and she felt tears sting her eyes. She blinked hard.

‘Why are you being so nice to me?’

‘Hasn’t a man been nice to you before, Millie?’ He spoke quietly, as if he felt sad for her. She shook her head.

‘Don’t pity me, Chase. I’ve—I’ve had a perfectly fine relationship before.’

‘That sounds incredibly boring and unromantic, but OK. Good for you.’

She let out a trembling laugh. He never let up, but then neither did she. ‘This doesn’t sound very intense, though,’ she told him. ‘I thought this week was all about excitement.’

‘There are different kinds of intense. And I think a quiet evening at home will be intense enough for you.’

He rose from the bench and Millie watched as he steered the boat, one hand on the tiller. The wind ruffled his short hair, his eyes narrowed against the setting sun. He paused, his hand still on the tiller, to watch the glorious descent of that orb of fire towards the now-placid sea. Shock jolted through her because for a moment Chase looked like she felt. Desperate. Sad. Longing to hope.

Then he straightened his shoulders and turned back to her with a smile, all lightness restored. ‘Almost there.’

Half an hour later Millie was soaking in the most opulent tub she’d ever seen, huge, sunken and made of black marble. Chase had filled it right to the top with steaming water, half a bottle of bubble bath, and then left not one but two thick, fluffy towels on the side. Then with a smile and a salute he’d closed the door and gone to cook dinner.

When, Millie wondered, had she ever felt so incredibly pampered? So loved?

She froze, even in all that hot, fragrant water. Don’t even think that, she told herself. Don’t go there. The dreaded L-word. She’d loved Rob. She’d loved Charlotte. And here she was, two years later, heartbroken and alone.

She slipped beneath the foaming water and scrubbed the sand from her hair. The thoughts from her mind. She wanted to enjoy this evening, all the lovely things Chase had promised her. It had been so long since she’d had anything like this.

Since she’d felt anything like this.

Don’t think. One week. That was all they had, all she wanted to have. One week of enjoyment, of fun and, yes, of sex. Despite today’s disaster they could still have it. Enjoy it.

And then walk away. Move on, just like she wanted to, because anything else—anything real or lasting—was way too frightening. She’d loved once. Lost once. And it wasn’t going to happen again.

One week suited her perfectly. One intense, wonderful week.

When Millie came out of the bathroom she saw, to her surprise, her suitcase laid out by the bed. How on earth had Chase been able to get into her room and take her stuff?

The answer was obvious: he was a Bryant. For a little while there she’d forgotten; he’d just been Chase. Annoyance and affection warred within her. It was nice to have her clothes, but it was a little too thoughtful. Sighing, she discarded her towel and reached for one of the boring outfits her secretary had chosen, this one a beige linen dress with short sleeves and no shape. She glanced down at it and gave a grimace of disgust. She wished, suddenly and fiercely, that she owned something sexy.

But then she’d never owned anything sexy. She and Rob hadn’t been about sexy. Their sex life had been good enough, certainly, but they had both been so focused. There had been no time or inclination for sexy or silly or fun.

Everything that Chase was.

Was that why she’d chosen him for her first fling? Because, despite initial appearances, he was utterly unlike her husband?

Her thoughts felt too tangled to separate or understand. And maybe, like Chase said, she was over-thinking this. Straightening the boring dress, Millie headed out into the rest of the villa.

It was a gorgeous house, made of a natural stone that blended into its beach-side surroundings, the inside all soaring space and light. She found Chase in the gourmet kitchen that flowed seamlessly into the villa’s main living space with scattered leather sofas and a huge picture-window framing an expanse of sand and sky.

‘That smells delicious.’

‘Chicken with pineapple and mango salsa,’ Chase informed her, whipping a dish cloth from his shoulder to wipe something up on the granite work surface. Millie felt her heart—or something—squeeze at the sight of him. He’d changed into a worn blue tee-shirt and faded jeans, and he looked so natural and relaxed standing there, different bowls and pans around him, the smells of fruit and spice in the air.

She and Rob had never cooked. They’d eaten takeaway every night or ready-made meals from the gourmet supermarket. Why cook, Rob had used to say, if you don’t have to? And she had agreed. After a ten-hour day at work, the last thing she felt like doing was making a meal. And they’d both been proud of the way Charlotte, at only two years old, would eat all the things they ate. Brie and smoked salmon. Spicy curries and pad thai. She’d loved it all.

A knot of emotion lodged in Millie’s throat. Why was she thinking about Charlotte? She never did. She’d closed that part of herself off, shut up in a box marked ‘do not open’. Ever.

Yet here she was, memories springing unbidden into her mind, filling up her heart.

‘Millie?’ Chase was glancing at her, eyes narrowed. ‘You OK there, Scary?’

She nodded. Sniffed. How stupidly revealing of her, but she couldn’t help it. She’d thought she could handle this week, but already she was finding she couldn’t. She was thinking too much. Feeling too much. She’d thought Chase would make her forget, but instead he was helping her to remember.

‘That bath was wonderful,’ she said, in a deliberate and obvious effort to change the subject. ‘I could live in it for a week.’

‘The water might get a bit cold.’ Chase reached for a couple of green chilies and began dicing them with practised ease.

‘Fair point.’ She took a breath and decided she needed to get on firmer footing. Find a little distance. ‘As nice as it is to wear my own clothes, I’m not sure how they got in your bedroom.’

‘A very nice bell hop drove them over while you were in the tub.’

‘Don’t you think you could have asked?’

He glanced up, eyebrows arched. ‘Are we still going over this? My terms, remember?’

‘You can’t keep throwing that at me every time I object to something, Chase.’

‘And that is because...?’

She blew out an exasperated breath. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘True.’

‘So?’

‘We’re not playing baseball, Millie. Or Parcheesi. There are no rules.’

She folded her arms. ‘Are you on some huge power trip? Is that what this is about?’

‘Does it seem like it?’ He sounded genuinely curious, and Millie was compelled to an unwilling honesty.

‘No, which is why I don’t get it. I still don’t really get what you want, Chase. Most men would take the sex and run.’

‘Has that been your experience?’

‘Don’t go there. No questions about the past.’

‘I told you what I wanted. One week.’

‘One intense, all-in week.’

‘Only kind that works for me.’

‘Why?’

Chase didn’t answer for a moment. He concentrated on his cooking, taking out some pieces of chicken from the bowl of marinade and tossing them into a pan shimmering with hot oil. Millie listened to the sizzle and spat as they cooked, a delicious aroma wafting up from the pan.

‘Why not?’ he finally said and flipped the chicken. ‘I know it’s easier and simpler on the surface, Millie, just to skim life. Don’t dig too deeply. Don’t feel too much. I’ve been there. That’s most of my misspent youth.’

She swallowed, knowing he was right. Easier, simpler and safer. ‘But now?’

‘I want something more. I want the whole carpe diem thing. Seize life. Suck the marrow from its bones.’

‘For one week.’

‘Yep. That’s about the size of it.’

‘And you decide to do this with me?’ She couldn’t keep the disbelief from her voice. ‘When you must know I’m the exact opposite of all that?’

He gave her a decidedly roguish smile. ‘That makes it more fun. And all the more reason why it has to be on my terms. Otherwise we’d never get anywhere.’

Millie shook her head. How could she argue with him? How could she explain that she was afraid one week with Chase might be enough to peel back all her protective layers, leave her bare, exposed and hurting? She didn’t want to admit the possibility even to herself.

She slid onto a stool and braced her elbows on the counter. ‘So what made you change your mind? To stop skimming?’

He poured the rest of the marinade on top of the chicken, stirring it slowly. ‘I think I might take this opportunity to invoke part B of the no-talking-about-the-past clause, which details that I don’t have to talk about it either.’

‘You have something to hide?’

She almost missed the dark flash in his eyes. She knew he was touchy about his family, but he’d told her the basics about that. Was there something else? Something he didn’t want her to know?

‘Not really,’ he said, taking the lid off a pan of rice and spooning some onto two plates warming on the hob. ‘Just some things I’d rather not talk about.’

‘What about your youth was so misspent?’

‘You trying to get to know me?’

‘Maybe.’

He shrugged. ‘Just the usual, really, for a spoiled rich kid. Expelled from half a dozen boarding schools, crashed my father’s Maserati. The final straw was sleeping with his girlfriend.’ He spoke so very nonchalantly, yet Millie sensed a thread of self-protectiveness in his voice. Maybe even hurt.

‘That’s pretty misspent.’

‘Yeah, well, I like to do things right.’ Now he ladled the chicken in its fragrant sauce over the rice, and Millie had to admit it all looked delicious. The man could cook.

‘And what made you change? I assume you’re not crashing Maseratis now?’