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The burn of my cheeks had turned radioactive now, and I couldn’t meet his gaze. “I’ve been kissed once or twice.”
“You’re twenty-eight!”
“I know,” I snapped. To hide my embarrassment, I turned away to grab the oil. He’d had a purely physical reaction, I told myself, the automatic response of his hungry male body to the touch of any female. It wasn’t that he wanted me. Not in particular. It couldn’t be.
Could it?
I did a quick comparison between his perfectly chiseled body, his power and wealth and his incredible masculine good looks—and what I had on offer.
Nope.
If you lose an inch of moral high ground, rush back to it as quick as you can, Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley advised. Clearing my throat, I said reproachfully. “Keep this professional, please.”
“You first,” he said, sounding amused. Leaning his head back against his palms, he closed his eyes, and I remembered how he’d caught me staring.
Feeling foolish, I tentatively massaged the muscles of his chest, his arms, his shoulders. I was gentle with the injuries that still hadn’t completely healed, but even those were starting to disappear. He was no longer wearing bandages of any kind. There was nothing to keep my hands off his skin as I traced over the twisted muscles, the jagged scars. He was powerful, virile, sexy. He’d nearly vanquished the accident that had devastated his body. Heaven only knew what gaping wound still remained in his heart.
I looked down at him on the massage table. His eyes were still closed, but there was a twist to his lips I couldn’t read.
“What are you thinking?” I blurted out. I bit my lip, but there was no taking it back.
His dark blue eyes slit open infinitesimally.
“A dangerous question,” he murmured. “Better perhaps for you not to know.”
Was he thinking about the accident? The woman? Or something else entirely? “That’s silly.” I gave a stilted laugh. “Knowledge is never bad.”
“In that case...” His lips curved sardonically. “I am thinking, Miss Maywood, that it would be amusing to seduce you.”
A shiver ripped through my body. Wide-eyed, I stepped back from the massage table. “I work for you.”
“So?”
“I’m—in love with someone else,” I said weakly.
He abruptly sat up. “Not that it matters, but...” He lifted a dark eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
I stared at him. “Of course I’m sure.”
“You saw their picture, two movie stars gleaming together on the red carpet, entwined, stupid with love. He cheated on you, left you months ago, you never even slept together—but after all this time, you still love him? You’re still faithful? Why?”
Yes, why? My body echoed. Swallowing, I looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”
“It’s true what they say,” he said harshly. “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”
“Really?” I looked at him steadily. “And have all the women you’ve slept with burned the image of her from your brain—the woman you loved? The woman you almost died for?”
His lips curled, and a low growl came from the back of his throat. “Don’t.”
“Love doesn’t just disappear. You know that as well I do.”
“It can. It has. And you’re stupid to let it do otherwise.” Holding the towel around his hips with one hand, he rose to his feet. His eyes narrowed as he went on the attack. “How does it feel, knowing that your stepsister has everything—the career you want, the man you love?” He tilted his head. “And he probably wanted her from the beginning. He was likely using you, to get to her....”
“Shut up!”
“I feel sorry for you. How it must hurt to know they’ll never be punished for hurting you. That while you suffer, they’re making love in oblivious joy.” He snorted, his lip curling. “You’re so meaningless, they’ve forgotten you even exist.”
His face was close to mine, his expression cruel. My heart pounded with grief and pain. Then looking at him, I suddenly understood.
“You’re not talking about me,” I breathed. “You’re talking about yourself.”
The air between us was suddenly cold in a way that had nothing to do with the wintery bluster rattling the leaded windows, and the weak afternoon sun falling behind the bare black trees. His lip curled. He turned away.
“We’re done.”
“No.” Reckless of the danger, I grabbed his arm. “I’m trying to make you better,” I said in a small voice. “How can I, if I don’t understand the depths of your injury?”
Edward looked at me, his jaw tight. “You can see it. You’ve touched it with your hands.”
“Some wounds can’t be seen or touched,” I whispered. I took a deep breath. “Some go deeper. Let me help you, Edward,” I said pleadingly. “Tell me what you need.”
His dark blue eyes stared down at me, haunted. Then they turned cold and cruel as the Arctic. Still holding the towel loosely over his hips with one hand, he wrapped the other around the back of my head.
“Here’s how you can help me,” he said huskily. “Here’s what I need.”
And he pulled me against him in a hard, hungry kiss.
I didn’t have time to resist, or think; my body tightened, then melted against his. Edward’s lips were like silk, hot and fiery with need, his tongue brushing against mine. He held me against him, towering over me, strong and powerful and nearly naked.
Then his towel fell to the floor, and there was no nearly about it.
I was wearing a zip-up cotton hoodie, a T-shirt and knit workout pants, as always. But his skin scorched right through my clothes.
His hand moved slowly down my back, as the other cradled the back of my head, his fingers moving through my hair. I felt a whoosh and realized he’d pulled out my ponytail. My hair tumbled down my shoulders. He murmured words against my lips, his voice low, almost a growl.
“I want you, Diana,” he breathed, and claimed my lips savagely.
I’d never been kissed like this before. The pallid, tentative kisses of a brief college boyfriend had left me cold. Jason’s kisses, as I said, were pleasant, nothing more. This?
This was like fire.
Edward St. Cyr wanted my body. Not my soul. Not my heart. There was no respect in his embrace, no concern for my feelings. There was no emotion at all—just physical need and reckless desire.
But my hunger matched his. He made me forget everything—the past, my broken heart, my pain. When he kissed me, I almost forgot my name. He brought me to life, like a single hot ember from cold ash. He made my body blaze like the sun.
I gripped his bare shoulders with an answering fervor that belonged to some other bolder woman—someone fearless—and kissed him back. With everything I had.
I heard his low hiss of breath, then a rising growl at the back of his throat as he pulled me tighter against his naked body. His hands ran over me possessively. He kissed my lips hard enough to bruise, then nibbled my lower lip. He flicked his hot tongue in each corner of my mouth before he slowly moved down, kissing my chin. Kissing my neck.
My head fell back, my hair tumbling down my shoulders. The cottage seemed to spin around me, as if I were at the center of a tornado. My skin felt hot, burning like the desert. I squeezed my eyes shut. I couldn’t open my eyes. If I did, I’d see Edward St. Cyr—my handsome, arrogant boss—kissing down my neck to my chest. If I saw that, I was afraid my mind would explode—along with my body....
His hands brushed roughly over my breasts, over hard, aching nipples. He cupped them over my thin cotton shirt and bra, stroking the sensitive tips with his fingers. My breathing became ragged.
“Take it off,” he murmured in my ear, and I felt the flick of his tongue against my ear. Prickles of desire, flashing cold then hot, raced up and down my body. Leaning forward to kiss me, he whispered, “Take it all off.”
His hands were insistent against my naked belly as he reached beneath my T-shirt. He reached higher still, toward my thin cotton bra that barely seemed to contain my breasts, which felt strangely tight and heavy, heaving with every gasp of breath. He kissed my lips hard, filling my mouth with his tongue, as he reached to take a breast in his hand. He squeezed an aching nipple.
Sensation ripped through me, and I gasped, gripping his bare shoulders. Electricity coursed through my veins, and blind raging need that frightened me with its intensity.
“I’ll help you,” he whispered, and pulling on my sweatshirt, he started to push me down, back onto the massage table.
Abruptly, my eyes flew open.
I realized he intended to take me right here. In the gardener’s cottage, surrounded by gym equipment and free weights. Against the massage table. He would ruthlessly help himself to my virginity without any more thought than that he had a hard-on, and I was conveniently available to slake it.
He didn’t want me. He wanted a woman. He intended to make use of me, in the same way I’d scarfed a bag of chips, the times I’d come home from work too starving to wait for a proper meal.
When Edward had kissed me so passionately, when I’d felt his naked body hard and powerful against mine, I’d been overwhelmed with the intensity of sensation. I’d been lost in fantasy and need.
In another moment, I would have let him rip off all my clothes, or—if that was too much trouble—simply pull down my stretchy yoga pants and thrust inside me, like an animal grunting as he took his pleasure, until he left me thirty seconds later, sticky and used upon the table.
None of my romantic dreams had fantasized about that.
I pushed on his shoulders. “No.”
Edward’s heavy-lidded gaze suddenly looked confused. “What?”
My hands pressed harder against his shoulders. I stared up at him in the gray, slanted winter sunlight gleaming dully from the window. Outside, I heard the howl of the wind, the roar of the sea. The barking of a dog. I heard my own thin voice. “I said no.”
Looking bewildered, Edward released me, and we stood facing each other beside the table, my clothes disheveled, his entirely absent. I tried not to look down. Tried not to think about how I’d just nearly given him everything—my hungry body and bruised heart—for the sake of blind passion.
But oh, that passion...my body was still trembling with the pleasure of it, with the desperate need. My body hated me right now for stopping. I wanted him still, desperately.
But he had to want me.
Me, Diana, not just any random woman.
All right, so I wasn’t exactly a beautiful movie star like Madison. That didn’t mean I had to settle for being a stale bag of chips. Not to anyone.
Pulling away, I fisted my hands at my sides. “You are my patient. There are some lines I will never cross.”
“Oh, for...” He gave a low curse. “Surely you’ve crossed lines before.”
I shook my head stubbornly.
“Never broken a single rule?”
“No.”
Reaching out, he brushed tendrils of hair from my face, tracing his fingertips down my temple, to my cheek, to my trembling lips. “Then,” he whispered, “you’ve missed a lot of fun.”
He towered over me, unselfconscious and proud, though utterly naked. While my own body was trembling. Blood rushed through my veins and I was breathing too fast. I didn’t let myself look anywhere but his eyes. Just meeting his hot, hungry gaze was hard enough.
“Let me love you, Diana,” he said in a low voice.
For a second, my heart stopped. Then...
“Love me? You said you’ll never love anyone.”
His breath exhaled on a hiss. “That kind of love is overrated. Hearts and flowers and pledging fidelity forever.” His lip curled. “As if you can make emotion permanent by mummifying it in a vow.” He took a step closer. “I do like you, Diana. I respect you enough to treat you as my equal—”
“Gee, thanks.” My voice was tart.
He placed a finger on my lips. “We both know what is going to happen between us. Pretend otherwise, if you like, but you’re fooling no one. Not even yourself.” He traced his fingertips along my cheek. “I felt how you just kissed me. You want me, as I want you.”
I could hardly deny it. “That doesn’t mean I have to act on it.”
“Why not?”
I struggled to remember, and finally managed, “Jason—”
“Ah yes. Jason Black, the bright flame in your heart,” Edward said mockingly. He shook his head. “Let him keep your heart. I will have your body.” He ran his hand gently down my back. “Very soon. And we both know it.”
His words shocked me. But I feared he was right. Even now, it was all I could do not to turn my face into his caress.
It would be so easy to surrender. Part of me wanted nothing more than to be bold—to be a rule breaker like he was. What had following the rules ever done for me, except leave me brokenhearted and alone?
If your employer’s temptation grows too great, Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley had warned, run as if your life depended on it. It does.
Trembling, I turned and fled.
“Diana—”
I didn’t stop. Tripping over the yoga mat, I wrenched open the door and ran out into the cold garden.
The earlier snowflakes had changed into a chilly, sodden mist that threatened rain. I was nearly crying by the time I made it back to the main house. But the instant I pushed open the heavy oak door, the thick gray walls started to close in on me.
Never broken a single rule?
No.
Then you’ve missed a lot of fun.
Caesar whined at my feet. Wiping my tears savagely, I looked down to see the sheepdog pacing in front of the door. I’d gotten in the habit of taking him for a walk, since his nominal owner, who was actually and surprisingly Mrs. MacWhirter, had little patience for giving him long walks or letting him sleep on the bed. Getting away suddenly felt absolutely necessary. Grabbing my raincoat and Caesar’s leash, I went back out into the rain, the large sheepdog galloping happily beside me.
I walked the opposite direction of the gardener’s cottage, heading for the path that led to the rocky edge of the cliffs. The mist had turned to drizzle, already melting down the thin layer of snow, which I knew overnight would harden into ice. Ice like Edward’s heart.
Some wounds can’t be seen or touched. Some go deeper. Let me help you, Edward. Tell me what you need.
Here’s how you can help me. Here’s what I need.
Oh. Oh, oh, oh. I abruptly stopped on the path, causing Caesar to jump beside me, before he ran ahead with a snuff.
That was the reason Edward had kissed me. Not because he wanted me. Not even just because he wanted a woman. Oh no.
He’d kissed me to shut me up. Because I’d been asking about his accident, probing with questions he didn’t want to answer. He’d deflected me the easiest, simplest way he knew how. The way that always worked with any woman.
My cheeks were burning now, my throat aching with humiliation. Tears streaked down my face, leaving cold trails beneath the chill of the wind, as I looked out at the vast gray sea.
Edward St. Cyr was used to riding roughshod over people, especially women. He was used to twisting them all around his finger. I knew this. And I’d still let him do it to me.
I stared out at the ocean, watching the light’s play of sparkle and shadows. My tangled hair flew around me in the chilly wind. Watching the seagulls fly away, I almost wished I could join them. To fly away and disappear and never be seen again.
Penryth Hall was supposed to be my place to hide. How did you hide from a hiding place?
Maybe there was nowhere to hide, I thought suddenly, when the person you were really trying to hide from was yourself.
Sooner or later, I’d have to go back to California. Face the scandal, the pity. Face the two people who’d ripped out my heart. And most of all: face myself.
Picking up a stick, I tossed it down the beach. With an eager yelp, Caesar ran after it. My mouth still felt seared from Edward’s kiss. I touched my bruised lips. They still ached for him. For that one single moment, when I’d thought Edward wanted me—me, the invisible girl, completely unnoteworthy either in looks, intelligence or career—I’d felt like I was worth something. Like I mattered.
I writhed with shame to remember it now.
Caesar barked happily, dropping the stick at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it farther down the rocky shore. I stayed out there, procrastinating for as long as I could. But by the time we were both wet with rain and freezing cold, I’d made up my mind.
I was leaving Penryth Hall.
As the dog raced ahead on the return path, I realized I’d finally found something that frightened me more than going back to California.
Staying here.
Edward didn’t really need me anyway. Not anymore. I’d known that when I’d seen him running on the treadmill today.
“You don’t need me,” I said aloud.
Need me, need me, the wind sighed mournfully in return.
As Caesar hurried ahead of me on the wet path, his tongue lolling out as he raced eagerly to get back home to the castle of gray stone, my steps became slower. When I finally reached the door, my feet turned to the left, and I found myself walking around the house to the front door, procrastinating the moment I’d have to go inside and tell him I was leaving. Once I said it, I’d have to do it.
I stopped in shock.
Two expensive sedans were parked in front of Penryth Hall. Standing next to them were my stepsister’s two bodyguards, Damian and Luis.
I stared at them, goggle-eyed. “What are you...”
“Hello, Diana,” Luis said, smiling. “Long time no see.”
But next to him, Damian glowered down at me. “Miss Lowe and Mr. Black are here to see you.” Seven feet tall, bald, and scowling, he shook his head at me. “And she’s really, really mad at you.”
CHAPTER THREE
WATER DRIPPED NOISILY from my raincoat to the flagstones as I walked nervously into the shadowy foyer of the castle. The thought of facing them all at once scared me to death.
Edward, Madison and Jason.
All at once.
I couldn’t do it. I stopped, clenched my hands at my sides.
Caesar loped up beside me in the foyer. With a sympathetic look, he shook his fur, splattering me with water and mud. I gasped as cold wet dirt hit my face, then gasped again as I looked down at my messed-up hair, my muddy raincoat and sneakers. I hadn’t buttoned the raincoat so even the T-shirt beneath, which Edward had recently groped, now had a splatter of mud across the front.
If I thought I couldn’t face them before...!
With a satisfied snort, Caesar trotted happily down the hall, no doubt intending to plunk himself in his nice spot on the rug in front of the fire. What did he have to fear? He wasn’t facing the firing squad.
I heard voices down the hall, coming from the library. Madison’s high-pitched voice, two lower masculine ones. Sharing tea, or lying in ambush for me?
Maybe I could make a run for it. If I tiptoed down the hall, I’d sneak by the library unseen. Then I’d pack my bag and flee for Tierra del Fuego.
“What are you doing?” Edward said quietly.
He was standing in the hallway, his face in silhouette. He’d showered and changed from his exercise clothes. His dark hair was still wet, slicked back against his head, and he was actually wearing a jacket and tie, button-up shirt and trousers. It was...sexy. I licked my lips. “Why are you dressed up?”
“We have company.” Flickering firelight from the open doorway of the library cast shadows on his grim face. “Care to join us?”
He was so handsome and sophisticated. Everything I was not. It seemed incredible to me now that he’d kissed me, for any reason whatsoever. I put my hand to my hair. Yup. Just as I thought, it was damp with rain, tangled as a bird’s nest. I put my hand down.
“Well?”
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered. My heart was pounding, my feet ready to take flight. “I thought about it on my walk. After all that’s happened, I’ve realized you don’t need me anymore and maybe it’s time for me to just—”
“Is that you, Diana?” Madison’s voice carried sharply from the library. “Get in here!”
Edward’s eyebrow lifted. He came closer, and I shivered as he pulled my raincoat off my body. I felt the brush of his fingertips. I breathed in his scent, masculine and clean, like a Bavarian forest. Hanging up the wet coat, he turned back to me.
“You’re going to have to face them sooner or later, Diana,” he said quietly. His hand fell bracingly on my shoulder. “Might as well be now.”
His camaraderie made me feel strangely comforted, even strengthened. That brief moment helped me square my shoulders, lift my chin and walk with my head held high into the library.
The firelit room was impossibly elegant, two stories high, with leatherbound books on all sides, a ladder to reach them and an enormous white marble fireplace at one end. Not to mention two movie stars sitting on the white leather sofa near the fire.
Madison looked beautiful as always. Her long blond hair was straight, her eyes huge beneath fake eyelashes, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Even casually dressed in a white cropped jacket of tousled fur, thousand-dollar silk blouse and size 0 toothpick jeans, no one could have mistaken her for anything but a movie star.
Jason sat beside her, his hand protectively on her knee. Handsome, broad shouldered and corn-fed like the Texas farm boy he’d once been, he looked different than he had just six months ago. The gloss of success covered him now, like his newly expensive clothes.
Looking at them, my body flashed hot, then cold. Jason started to rise to his feet, but Madison grabbed his hand, keeping him seated beside her.
“Diana,” she said coolly. “It was rude of you to keep us waiting. But I don’t blame you for being afraid to face me after what you did.”
I would have staggered back, except Edward was behind me, his hand supportively on my lower back. I felt his strength and somehow my knees steadied themselves.
“What I did?” I queried dangerously.
“You left me when I needed you most!”
I gaped at her. “I went to California to give the reporter a tour of your house—as you asked me to!”
She waved her hand dismissively. “That? All that happened ages ago. I’m talking about my movie premiere last night. You should have been there for me!”
“Are you kidding?” I breathed.
“You know how nervous I get, being at public events. You promised you’d always be there....”
“Yeah, when I was your assistant.” I swallowed looking between her and Jason. “Before I was completely humiliated in front of the whole world—”
“Are you still trying to punish me for that?” she demanded. “We didn’t mean to fall in love. It was an accident. When it’s right, you just know.” She looked lovingly at Jason, then glared at me. “It’s petty of you, Diana, it really is, and I’m disappointed. You and Jason didn’t even sleep together.”
“You told her that?” I breathed, staring down at him.
Rubbing the back of his blond head, Jason gave me the rueful smile I used to find so irresistible. “You and I were friends, Diana. We dated and yeah, there was a little flirting going on, but hell,” he shook his head, “you never let me touch you. Said you wanted to wait for true love or some such...but this is the twenty-first century. I don’t know what century you’re living in, but as far as I’m concerned, if there’s no sex, there’s no relationship.”
For a second I couldn’t breathe. No relationship? As if I’d imagined it all in my mind? “You—”
And it was then I saw the sparkle on Madison’s left hand.
A huge canary-yellow diamond ring.
On that finger.
With an intake of breath, I covered my mouth with my hand. For a moment, the only sound in the library was the crackle of the fire in counterpoint to the miserable drip-drip-drip of water from my hair as I stood like a mud-splattered, drowned rat in front of my beautiful stepsister, who had a ten-carat engagement ring on one hand, and the man I’d loved holding the other.