Heiress Behind the Headlines

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.