Читать книгу The Dare Collection March 2019 - Rachael Stewart - Страница 16

BEFORE SHE’D SET foot on this island, Lucinda had known exactly what she wanted. It had been a clear path: find Jason Kaoki on his private island, convince him to build the resort of her dreams, ascend to a higher, better level of the life she’d always wanted. And in all those hours of travel, it had never occurred to her that things might go differently—because she was very, very good at getting what she wanted.

That was how she’d risen out of her dreamless, upsetting childhood in the first place.

Now she was running on a combination of fumes and surfing and Jason Kaoki’s dangerous hands all over her might-as-well-be naked body—and that straight, obvious path seemed a good deal less clear.

She ordered herself to get her head on straight, but after all that time tumbling around and around in the sea, she wasn’t sure what direction that was anymore. She followed Jason back up into the dim hotel lobby instead, hanging back as he went into the office and reemerged with a soft pile of dark black that it took her moments to realize were her own clothes.

And surely she should have been embarrassed by the fact that he was now holding her panties and bra in those hands of his... But she was all embarrassed out, it seemed. That was what happened when a person spent hours barely dressed in a string bikini, climbing on and jumping off a surfboard out in the water. She had precious few inhibitions left. Lucinda eyed the clothes in his hands. Then she lifted her gaze to the fire in his and let the flames simmer there between them for another breathless moment that felt a whole lot like forever.

At some point she would have to get used to all this...intensity, wouldn’t she?

Or it will kill you, a dour voice inside her chimed in.

Jason didn’t say a word. He came back around the counter and thrust her clothes into her arms. Though he didn’t explicitly tell her to follow him, Lucinda felt that was his clear intention when he moved toward the doors. She found herself hurrying along behind him, having to work overtime to keep up with his long, deep stride though she’d always considered herself a fast walker. He was just that tall. A saunter on him made her have to think about running.

And there was no reason that innocuous, innocent thought should have made her breath catch again, but it did.

He waited when they reached her bag as she bent down and shoved her armful of clothes into its main compartment. And when she straightened, he swept the bag up in one hand and headed back out into the sun. It struck Lucinda as a kind of thoughtless, matter-of-fact chivalry. As if he hardly knew he was doing it.

And it made her throat ache, because she was used to doing for herself in all matters, great and small. Her father had never carried a thing but his own drink. The many men she’d worked for had never offered any kind of courtesy without strings attached. There were no offhanded displays of chivalric impulses.

Lucinda had to frown ferociously to keep that same ache from flooding her eyes, thank you, sure that this was more evidence that she needed to sleep—and fast—before she became someone else entirely. Someone soft and feminine and fluttery who might actually weep over a man carrying her bag.

The very idea should have made her laugh.

It was surpassingly odd that she didn’t.

She followed him instead. Jason didn’t have any shoes on, but his bare feet were clearly used to the abuse of the old, cracked concrete outside, because he didn’t slow down when he hit it. And by the time Lucinda picked her careful way after him on her soft, complaining toes, he had already gone around the side of the building. He disappeared beneath an overhang she hadn’t noticed on her way in and drove back out again moments later in an open-topped Jeep.

He pulled up beside her, then looked at her like a cautionary tale brought to vivid life. He might as well have been waving a sign that read BEWARE STRANGE MAN IN CAR WHO WILL TURN YOU INSIDE OUT WITHOUT TRYING.

Lucinda assured herself it was no more than another Pacific breeze that trickled down the entire length of her back then, making her want to stiffen against it, then run for her life.

She did neither one of those things. Because she was on a deserted tropical island far, far away from anything and there was nowhere to run, for one thing. And because her feet were burning and walking around without any shoes on was surprisingly uncomfortable, for another.

She ignored the sensation flooding her, from the soles of her feet to her traitorously soft pussy and, higher still, to the heart that was going wild in her chest. At least none of these things showed, or she hoped they didn’t, as she pulled open the passenger door—which took her a moment to locate, as it was on the wrong side of the vehicle—and climbed up beside him.

Very much as if she had her own sign, and it read something like ABSOLUTE IDIOT.

She was then deeply grateful that Jason drove a Jeep, because it was wide open to the island around them. And that meant that when he put it into gear and started driving, it was noisy. Too noisy for any more pointed, barbed conversation with all that fire between each syllable.

Lucinda didn’t have to pretend to be cool, unbothered and aggressively at her ease. There was no conversation at all, so she wasn’t required to watch her tone and mind her words. There was only the wind in her ears, tugging at her hair so that wet strands pulled free and blew all around her. She had seen this coveted spit of land from the air, a stunning little jewel in the middle of all that deep blue water, and she’d seen the pristine beaches all around.

But settled back in the passenger seat of Jason’s Jeep that he navigated with one lazy arm looped over the steering wheel, she finally looked around and saw the island itself. There had once been an active volcano here, leaving the hills steep and covered in green all these years later. The jungle was everywhere, in the thick scent of growing things, the exultant plants and glorious flowers that Lucinda had never seen back home. They were too big here. Too bright, in too many colors.

The road, such as it was, hugged the beaches. Jason drove away from the old hotel, bumping his way over dirt and grass on the rutted track before rounding a point that stretched out into the water, made of the same dark, volcanic rock that burst out from beneath the green everywhere Lucinda looked.

When the road ended a while later, he turned up toward the hills. He wound his way around the side of another steep, green incline, climbing until they were far above the same rocky point they’d passed below.

The jungle opened up over a grassy bluff and the house that sat there, surrounded by gleaming green lawns that edged up against the thick jungle on all sides and nothing else in any direction but the brooding blue sea.

Lucinda caught her breath. It was the most beautiful house she’d ever seen in her life. It was all polished dark wood and windows, somehow looking as if it was meant to be here on the top of this mountain with a view of eternity. As if it had been crafted here, the same as the steep hills around it or the shore below.

The main house sprawled out in an easy sort of U shape, claiming the flattest part of the bluff. But Jason didn’t drive up to the front door. He skirted the side of one wing, then drove a bit farther up the hill to one of several tidy, smaller houses that nestled half in and half out of the jungle.

“Shower, change, whatever,” Jason told her after he’d leaped from the Jeep, carried her bag to the front door of the nearest cottage and swung it open for her. Lucinda trailed after him, feeling more than a little loopy, and telling herself it was the jet lag.

But as he towered there over her, blocking the door to the cutest little cottage she’d ever seen with those wide, sculpted shoulders of his, she acknowledged that maybe the loopiness had nothing to do with air travel or time zones at all.

That maybe, just maybe, it was him.

“Whatever,” she said. Echoing him.

Or possibly, making a choice.

“There’s a fully stocked bar.” His dark eyes gleamed. “Feel free to choose your poison. When you get hungry, come find me.”

She turned because that was easier than holding his gaze. She blinked at the great house that was now below her, and the unbroken expanse of the Pacific in the distance.

“Is it a game of hide-and-seek, then? Will you be tucked away in a closet somewhere?”

“I’m not one for staying in the closet.” He let out a belt of that laughter of his that did things to her defenses that she was afraid to look at too closely. For fear that there would be nothing left but rubble where they’d once stood. “I’m pretty much upright and out loud about everything I do, Lucinda. That I can promise you.”

“If you don’t hear from me for a week, you can assume that I got lost in the west wing of your mansion and likely require medical assistance,” Lucinda replied crisply, because it was that or start wondering what sorts of things he was so up-front about. So out loud. “Or am moldering away in the attic like the family ghost.”

“You won’t have any trouble finding me. If you could make it to the island, I figure you can make it through the house, too.” His mouth curved. “And I don’t believe in ghosts, either. If you want to haunt me, you can do it to my face.”

“That’s not really a haunting, then, is it?”

“Depends on how you do it,” he said, all drawl and heat.

And Lucinda expected some kind of grand exit. Something suitably dramatic while she was still wearing so little, as a fitting end to this wild rush of a day. A fierce kiss, perhaps, to underscore his power—

Or your own longing, something inside her chimed in, much too knowingly.

But all he did was wheel around, then jump back into his Jeep with another display of that mouthwatering, athletic grace that she suspected she’d be replaying in her head for some time to come.

And he drove off, leaving Lucinda to stand there on the threshold of the lovely little cottage, vibrating with need and hunger and all kinds of things she had no intention of doing anything about. Ever. And certainly not with him.

No matter how much she wanted to.

Inside, the cottage had high ceilings with fans to move the air around and was done up in light colors to make it all seem that much breezier. She gave herself a stern talking-to as she wheeled her bag in, then set up in the master bedroom with its high bed and floating canopy, and a view from the windows that made her sigh.

She lectured herself into the bath, where she took a shower to get the salt out and combed her fingers through her hair at last, despairing of the state it would be in when she got out. Then she sat down for a soak in the tub, filling it with lovely potions that turned to bubbles, smelling of coconuts and fruity drinks.

And kept right on making speeches to herself.

Yes, she’d put on that bikini and pranced around, and she’d definitely encouraged his attention. Not to mention his hands on her.

It had been important to stay in control earlier. To keep herself from coming to prove that she could—and to further prove that he was only as in charge as she wanted him to be. She wasn’t sure she believed that, entirely, but she’d wanted to prove it and she had. But now it was time for the next step. She had no qualm whatsoever with sleeping her way into the resort she wanted. She’d been accused of doing it a thousand times already, because she was a woman who’d risen through the ranks, and so many people imagined that could happen only one way.

It hadn’t.

“Certainly not,” she said out loud as she climbed out of the bath and wrapped herself in a big, fluffy towel, so soft it nearly made her eyes prick with those lurking tears. The very thought of sleeping with her selection of bosses was deeply, deeply unappealing—just as it had always been. “The suggestion was more than enough, thank you.”

Lucinda had always held herself as perfectly willing to use her body to get what she wanted. She’d believed she would, given the right set of circumstances, because why not? It was her body to do with as she pleased.

She simply hadn’t found the right circumstances.

Here in this cozy cottage tucked away in paradise, she worked a comb through the heavy, sodden mass of her hair and wondered if she’d finally found those circumstances. But unlike every other time she’d asked herself if she was ready to cross that line, she couldn’t help but wonder if the fact she was leaning toward a no was about her sudden desire to be as professional as possible with a man who had no interest in rules, or—and something pinged in her when she got there—fear.

Because Jason was nothing like the men who had flirted with her before at all different levels of business. Jason bore no resemblance whatsoever to middle managers or overly familiar VPs.

Lucinda had never been afraid to use whatever weapon she had on hand, which had so far meant there had been no need to pull out the biggest guns. Not when it was so easy to smooth her way into a deal with a suggestive smile, or a bit of banter that Human Resources would likely frown upon.

Jason was different. He was significantly more frank and direct than any of the men she’d known. And she suspected that such frankness would translate into the way he touched her, too.

Hell, she already knew it would. She’d had actual sex with men that was less erotic and carnal than the way Jason had put smoothed sunscreen on her skin. He’d had her trembling on the edge of an orgasm without even touching her nipples or her clit.

Lucinda blew out a breath, aware that was shaky and insubstantial. It made her laugh at herself and all this...tottering she was doing here. As if the sand and the sea had taken her knees out from under her, or he had, and she couldn’t find her way back to solid ground. But she had to, so she would.

Of course she would.

She left her hair in its natural state of despair, curling this way and that down past her shoulders, as she helped herself to one of the decadent robes hanging there in the bathroom suite. She slipped it on, then padded back out to the bedroom, sighing a little—again—as the view captured her. She didn’t dare test out that bed, because she knew she wouldn’t get up again if she lay down, so she moved to the big, French-style windows that made up the length of the cottage’s outside wall, and pushed them open.

Once the windows were thrown wide, the bedroom sprawled out onto its own private lanai, with a trellis on one side covered in flowering vines and that glorious view everywhere else. She moved over to the chaise that had been set at the perfect angle to watch the sea and the sky and sat down for just a moment, pulling her legs up beneath her.

She meant to sit for only a second, to inhale that incredible view and maybe settle herself a bit while she did.

But when she opened her eyes again it was dark.

It was dark. There were more stars than she could make sense of up above her. And all her limbs were heavy, suggesting she’d been asleep for a long while.

Lucinda was confused, but she swung her feet around and got them on the floor again, realizing only as it bounced around her shoulders that her hair had dried on its own. She didn’t have to look in a mirror, she knew what a horror she’d visited upon herself. It would be impossible curls for days, spiraling around all over the place and making her look like a banshee.

And nobody was looking to open a luxury resort with a banshee.

She felt stiff and far older than her twenty-eight years as she rose to her feet. She yawned so hard her jaw cracked and then her heart kicked at her, because she didn’t know what day it was. Or what time it was.

Or if she’d missed her chance with Jason because she’d tumbled off into an unexpected sleep of the dead.

Talk about a rookie move.

Lucinda scrubbed her palms over her face, then staggered back into the bedroom. She swept up her watch from the nightstand where she’d left it, holding it as she kept going so she could peer out the front windows of the cottage. The main house sat there before her, lit up against the night. Better still, there were the perfect tiki torches of her dreams lighting up the path that led down to it.

A glance at her watch told her it was half past nine, coming up on ten.

She had slept for more than eight hours.

Straight. And possibly without moving.

She hurried back into the bedroom, flipping on the lights as she went. Then she stared at herself critically in the big mirror that was propped against the interior wall of the bedroom, no doubt to reflect the sea and the sky back to whoever stood there, the better to feel lost in all that blue.

But tonight she was more focused on the banshee before her and what she could do—and quickly—to sort out her appearance. Her hair would take hours to blow-dry and then straight-iron into submission. And Jason had made his derision about her professional clothes perfectly clear back at the hotel.

She didn’t have to go through her bag to know that what she’d brought with her was little better. Lucinda had an office uniform she preferred and she wore it exclusively. She hadn’t cared that everyone else had stripped down when the company had gone to Spain. She’d maintained her usual look. But for some reason, it all seemed wrong now she was here.

Or she did, now that she’d woken up in all this tropical splendor, with the night air soft and thick against her as she moved. The idea of trying to strap herself into a pencil skirt made her want to cry.

Which was obviously the hunger talking, she told herself sternly. Because despite evidence to the contrary on this island, Lucinda was no crier.

She went over to the closet in the bedroom and wasn’t particularly surprised to find lengths of fabric hanging there when she opened the doors. Because of course every possible detail had been thought of here. This was exactly what she wanted a resort to feel like to its guests. Home, but better.

The fabric before her was as soft as it was appealing. Different sarongs, if she wasn’t mistaken, in bright colors, featuring glorious printed flowers and vaguely tribal patterns. She chose something in blue, wrapping it around her breasts to make a sundress and tying it off with a knot. Her hair was more of a challenge, but she managed to scoop it all up. Then she fashioned a far messier sort of bun than she would ever have been caught dead in elsewhere, piled up high on top of her head.

And found herself breathless yet again, as she stared at the creature before her in that mirror.

She looked bohemian. Wild. She wasn’t sunburned as she’d expected she would be—as she usually was after any exposure—but her skin was no longer its usual shade of shocking white. She almost...glowed. And her freckles had come out, everywhere, making her look near enough to golden. If she squinted.

She hardly looked like herself, really.

And what was scariest about that was that the notion didn’t terrify her the way she knew it would have back in London. She had worked so terribly hard to make herself the very particular, very sternly monitored version of Lucinda Graves that she’d been for years now—all work and very controlled play.

But she was in Jason’s world now. And it didn’t matter whether or not she adhered to her own strict standards. What mattered was that she found a way to work her way into his.

This was nothing more than a costume.

“The proper uniform to get the job done,” she told herself staunchly.

But she was far too aware of the whisper of her thighs against each other as she walked out of the cottage and headed down the path into the sweet, inviting night. She was aware of the movement of her hair on her head, when she preferred to keep it slicked down so tight and so hard that she never felt it at all. She was aware of the air against her skin, the breeze from the sea, carrying salt and green and flowers to swirl all around her. Even the light seemed different here, dancing on the end of the torches as they lit her way. More mysterious. More seductive.

More dangerous, she snapped at herself.

When she made it to the house, it was wide open. What she’d taken to be windows from a distance were simply open spaces that let the night in. Living areas blended one into the next, rolling from one seating area to another, with nothing but high, arched ceilings above, ceiling fans everywhere, and the sense that she wasn’t indoors at all. That this was just another part of the jungle.

Jason had said that it would be easy to find him, so she paused inside the first great room, then followed the only sound that she could hear over the kick of her heart. It was faint, metallic and musical. She made her way through a well-stocked library, a game room and then out onto another terrace arranged around a fire pit that felt as if it had been hewn from the mountain itself.

That was where she found him.

For a moment she could only stare, dimly aware that she’d come to a complete and sudden stop.

Jason looked as if he had been dreamed up by the island, by the jungle and the sea as one. He looked like a raw and elemental part of the same tropical wildness, out there against the night.

He had put on a pair of battered jeans that rode low on his hips, filled with holes and tatters, but nothing else. He held an electric guitar on his lap, but it wasn’t plugged into anything. And he was playing it, picking out a tune as he sat before the lick of the fire, his bare feet propped up on the lip of the wall that surrounded the fire pit.

As if he’d been conjured from the flames.

His hair was down, too long and yet perfect for him. And if Lucinda had thought that he was beautiful with all that sunlight bathing him in brightness before, she had no words to describe what the night did. How the firelight moved all over him, making him look made of poured honey, all male and beautiful.

God help her, he was so absurdly, impossibly beautiful it hurt.

Just like this island.

She drifted closer because she couldn’t seem to help herself, and she didn’t have it in her to interrogate all the ways that should’ve sent her running for the hills. Maybe she’d slept it off. All she knew was that he called to her and he didn’t have to say a word to do it.

“I had no idea you were musical,” she said when she was close to him. Because that hadn’t been in the extensive portfolio she’d compiled.

“I’m not. I just like to mess around.”

He stopped playing, though he still held the guitar across his lap, and he turned that dark gaze to her.

Lucinda had no idea why she submitted herself to his scrutiny. Why she stood there before him and did absolutely nothing while his gaze...had its way with her. He took his time, looking her over from head to toe then back again, as if she was his.

As if she had never been anything but his, and never would.

And when his eyes met hers again, he was smiling.

She expected him to say something off-color. Something suggestive or unnervingly direct.

But instead, he nodded toward a table off to the side. “You look hungry.”

It turned out she was ravenous. So starved, in fact, that she could hardly bother herself to see what he was doing as she went over to table laden high with more food than anyone could possibly have eaten at once, and dug in. She didn’t ask how the hot things were hot and the cold things were cold. This was obviously the sort of place that was actually filled with staff, who were all the more impressive for remaining unseen. Unless...

“Did you cook all this?”

That laugh of his was her answer, and she shivered slightly as it scraped open the night.

“I’m good at a lot of things,” Jason said, his dark, rich tone encouraging her to wonder exactly which things he meant. “But cooking is not one of them.”

Lucinda was so hungry that she left that alone. She ate until she was full, and then she sat back, sighing in delight, and feeling more like herself than she had since she’d woken up in the dark, thick with confusion.

She rose again and picked her way back over to the fire so she could drop down beside him on the low couch where he sat.

“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said as he set his guitar aside. “I apologize. You shouldn’t have had to wait around for me.”

“I didn’t.” His dark gaze touched the side of her face, then returned to the fire. “I do live here.”

And her belly was full. She was dressed like a stranger. There was no backtracking, so she might as well dive ahead.

“And why is that, exactly?” she asked, shifting so she could treat him to her own version of frank directness. “As far as I can tell you have no sentimental attachment to anything that was your father’s.”

“I hate that motherfucker,” Jason agreed. Almost cheerfully, but the fire was full on his face and she could see the way his eyes narrowed. “The only reason I wish he was still alive is so I could tell him that to his face.”

“You would actually tell him you hated him?” She considered. “Before or after you knew he planned to leave you something in his will?”

“I didn’t want any part of that will and I still don’t.” Jason shrugged. “He made my mama cry. That’s not something a man forgives.”

“Did you know him at all when he was alive?”

Jason’s expression grew impatient. “I’m pretty sure that any research on my life at all would give you the answer to that question. But no. I never met him. That was his thing. Get a woman pregnant, disappear and then leave the kid he made some money and a hotel in the will. And if I know anything about rich assholes, he thought that made up for his lack of parenting.”

“Then I don’t understand.” Lucinda kept her voice quiet and her gaze steady. “If you have no sentimental attachment to this island, why not make it into a resort? And why come stay here?”

“This was the last place he built before he died.” Again, that low growl of a voice tumbled over her, making her want to shiver. But she didn’t. “It was suggested to me that whether I liked it or not, I was turning out more like the old man than I was comfortable with. I thought I’d come here, marinate in all things Daniel St. George and see if that was true.”

“Did he spend a lot of time at his various properties alone?”

This time, Jason’s laugh had an edge. “He wasn’t much for alone time when there were so many women eager to keep him company.”

“Let me make sure I’m following this. You hated your father. You hated everything he stood for, and everything he was.”

“Dear old dad,” Jason drawled in agreement. “The dick.”

“So you’re hiding out here, ten thousand miles away from anywhere, to make yourself feel bad. This entire island is a beach-laden hair shirt bristling with palm trees to you.”

“I barely wear a shirt as it is. Certainly not a hair shirt.”

“You must know that hotels were the only thing that Daniel St. George was any good at. And he was very, very good at hotels. Why shouldn’t you reap the benefits of that?” Lucinda kept her gaze trained on him, pretending she didn’t notice the temper that lurked there. The warning that she had already gone too far. “Especially when it’s not as if you’re saving this place as a tender, emotional monument to anything.”

“Lucinda.” And the way he said her name was its own shudder running through her, lighting her up. Reminding her that whatever else this man was, he wasn’t entirely tame. And a smart woman would do well to remember that. “Why the fuck does this mean so much to you?”