Читать книгу The Dare Collection March 2019 - Rachael Stewart - Страница 21

JASON SET ABOUT living his best life, the way he’d been doing since he’d arrived on this island.

Today was no different. What did it matter that the night had ruined him and there were now blue eyes he couldn’t seem to banish from his head?

Maybe he deserved to be ruined.

“A man isn’t made by the things he collects,” his mother had told him after the will had been read and all the bequests made, as if a hotel mattered from a man who could have been a father but hadn’t bothered to try. Right after she’d compared Jason to Daniel, to really stick that knife in and twist it as only she could. “But by the content of his heart and what he carries there.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he’d replied grumpily, though he’d tried to keep the temper out of his voice because it was his mama talking and she deserved his respect.

“I know you don’t.”

“I don’t have a single thing in common with that—”

“Jason.” That was all it took. Just his name. He’d cut himself off and his mother had shrugged, her dark eyes on his like he was still a kid. Maybe he always would be, as far as she was concerned. “Pa’a ka waha.”

He knew the phrase, Hawaiian for observe, be silent and learn. “If words are exiting your mouth, wisdom cannot come in,” the saying went.

Sometimes it also just meant: shut your mouth.

He’d taken it on board then, and he did now, too. He surfed like it was his job. When he’d done his best to exhaust himself he came in, dried off and drove himself back up to the silent house, where he put in another few, vicious hours in his gym.

Until he sweated the mean out of him. Or tried his best.

And when his phone rang, indicating another one of those damned video calls he’d used to have to suffer through only with his PR people and now had to deal with at least once a week, and with his shiny new family to boot, he took it.

Even though it wasn’t the right time or place for their strained family discussions, mandated by their father’s will and trust.

“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you without palm trees in the background and a shit-eating grin on your face,” his half brother Charlie drawled, all his usual Texas in his voice and a sunny balcony behind him with a different sea entirely in the distance. “I don’t how to process that, brother.”

Jason wiped his face with the nearest T-shirt and produced a grin. “Aloha, dick.”

“Oh, good. There’s that island charm I hear so much about.”

“I’m thinking about burning this house down,” Jason said, conversationally. “The lawyer said Dear Old Dad spent years building it. Almost like he planned to live in it one day, though I know that can’t be true. He wasn’t one to settle down, and particularly not this far out of the limelight. How would he get all that attention he was always jonesing for?”

Charlie’s head tilted slightly to one side, the blue eyes everyone but Jason had shared with Daniel St. George going canny. “I was calling to tell you some deeply boring shit about the hotel industry that Angelique passed on because Thor’s on a plane and I’m nothing if not obedient. But if you’re burning down houses, I’m suddenly way more interested.”

Charlie wasn’t obedient. Fun fact, none of the children Daniel St. George had left littered around in his wake were particularly obedient. Hell, if they’d met under different circumstances, Jason might have considered them friends. Or decent drinking buddies, anyway.

“He left you fuckers hotels,” Jason pointed out now, warming to the topic he’d been turning over in his head while he tried to exhaust himself. “He left me a whole island. Why should I turn it into a hotel? Why should there even be a house here? Maybe the greatest kindness I could do is give this whole place to the jungle again, like the old man never existed in the first place.”

He had the strangest sensation he wasn’t really talking about the island, but he didn’t care to explore that notion. He found himself rubbing at his chest as if his heart hurt again, but he didn’t like that very much, either.

Lucinda was on a plane somewhere. She’d claimed she felt nothing.

He should have felt nothing himself.

“I don’t really get the drama,” Charlie said after a moment. “You don’t have to run the hotel. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t have to stay there if you don’t want. You can just own it and go about your business.”

“That’s a great idea. And then I can be him in every possible way.”

“Or not.” Charlie shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of the guy. But I’m also not exactly crying a river over my circumstances these days. And I wouldn’t have any of the things I do if it wasn’t for the old man’s will.”

“You’re not the one in danger of turning into Daniel St. George.”

Charlie’s grin was razor-sharp, reminding Jason that this particular half brother had spent most of his life playing outlaw games in the wilds of Texas, surrounded by far more dangerous men than Jason had ever been.

“If you don’t want to turn into the old man, brother,” Charlie said quietly, “it’s real simple. Don’t.”

Jason listened to the business-related part of the call then, but after they hung up, he wandered outside and found himself brooding out at the view. The sky, the sea. And all the impenetrable jungle in between, with chattering birds in the trees and the dance of trade winds over his face.

All this tropical beauty that didn’t go along with all he thought he knew about the man who’d made him. It was too remote here. Too unspoiled. Too perfect.

But then again, the real truth was that he didn’t know Daniel St. George at all. He’d never met the man while he was alive. He’d had to read all the same articles and watch the same videos online that the rest of the word had if he wanted to know anything about the guy. The only thing Jason really knew about his father was how he felt about the man’s absence. The stories he’d told himself as a kid to explain that absence. And the understanding he’d come to over time of what that brief affair had done to his mother.

And yeah, maybe he’d spent a little too much time and energy pushing himself to be the best he could be in everything he was even remotely good at, just to prove something.

Not to his mama, who had adored him since the day he was born. Not to his actual ohana, his mother’s people spread out over the Hawaiian Islands, who had actually been there for him while his mama worked her butt off and tried to keep him fed and clothed and happy.

In his football heyday, interviewers had always asked Jason where he’d gotten the drive to pursue the game the way he had. And he’d always told them some bullshit cobbled together from the kinds of things he thought he ought to feel, always bringing it back to his mother’s sacrifices.

But he knew the truth. And here on this deserted island, with only the pieces of himself Lucinda had left behind, he let himself face it at last.

He’d spent his entire life trying to get his father to notice him.

He’d figured if he got a little famous, if he made a little noise, sooner or later his birth father would show up. Tell him how the desertion had been a mistake, or in Jason’s best interest, or something. Maybe even hit him up for money. One way or another, Jason had figured he’d smoke the asshole out.

But Daniel had never shown up. If he’d been proud of Jason at all, he kept to himself.

The only thing Jason had of his father was his silence.

And if his mother was correct, the dedication to losing himself in disposable pussy because that was a hell of a lot easier than connecting with other people.

In case he had any doubts about that, Lucinda had given him a crash course in what it looked like to experience some crazy, life-altering intimacy and then fall all over herself to pretend it hadn’t been that at all.

Had that been part of it, too? Had he been afraid that if he stopped roaming around the planet, sleeping with everything that moved, he’d lose the only link he had to a father he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even like?

That had the ring of unfortunate, uncomfortable truth inside him.

But the other thing he knew was that when push came to shove, he was far more his mother’s child than his father’s.

And Leilani Kaoki had suffered exactly one fool, one time. Never before and never since. Daniel St. George had been her one mistake, and she’d spent every day since making sure she raised up a son who knew how to see the truth of everyone he encountered—even himself. Eventually.

And Jason knew a little something about excuses, sure. And the way a person could hide right there in his own mirror, if there were enough excuses at hand. How that could go on and on for years, but sooner or later, there was only a reflection in that mirror and too much truth to bear.

Why wouldn’t you build a resort here? Lucinda had asked.

And Jason grinned now, while the breeze teased his face and the sea sighed its way onto the rocks far below.

Because that was an excellent question.

And he knew just how he was going to answer her.

Lucinda rejoiced in her welcome home to England, four miserable travel days later. She’d had to wait longer than she’d liked in Fiji to get on a plane to Los Angeles, there in the sweltering heat. And had been forced to wait in too-sunny California for a seat on a plane back to London, too, for what had seemed like another eternity.

But when she’d finally made it onto a red-eye headed for the UK, Heathrow hunched there when they’d finally landed, gray and wet and green, like a song of homecoming.

She smiled as she surrendered herself to the tender mercies of the Tube that whisked her along beneath the London streets. She told herself she was merry and bright, despite another round of serious exhaustion hanging on her like a cloak, as she walked from the Tube stop back to her flat. She was happy every time she heard a horn, or screeching tires, or the rest of the clattering noise and dismal tumult of London.

Lucinda was sure she’d never been so happy in her life as she was to let herself into her flat, then find her way to the rain-streaked window in her lounge that looked out over a dingy rooftop and a few brick walls.

No assaulting sunshine. No complicated blue sky and sea, stretching on toward forever.

No half-naked man, all temptation and wickedness.

Just London, doing its thing. It made her imagine that all she needed was a good sleep and she’d feel like herself again. How hard could it be to forget about her too-brief time on a fairy-tale island? After a good sleep it would feel like nothing more than a dream, she was certain.

Lucinda staggered off to bed, slept for hours and woke up to treat herself to tea and toast. No platters of dramatic fruit, everything garnished with coconut and soft breezes. Just a proper breakfast on a rainy Thursday morning, like any other.

She thought about taking another day to settle herself but decided against it. Her endless hours of travel had allowed her to play her time on that island over and over again in her head. She’d relived every touch. Every sound she’d made, on the surfboard or in Jason’s bed. What would lying about her flat do but make it worse?

She needed to put all of that behind her. Now.

Lucinda took a certain grim pleasure in her usual routine. The attention to her hair, her makeup. The heels she wore because practicality had its place, but sleek, stylish, wearable weapons were a woman’s best friend.

And then, telling herself that she was perfectly fine and suffered no ill effects or emotional residue at all, she headed back into work.

She was so busy congratulating herself on her escape from paradise and the terrifying lure of the most astoundingly beautiful man she’d ever met that it took her entirely too long to notice the way everyone in the office was staring at her.

“Is there something on my face?” she asked her harried assistant after she’d run the gauntlet of the executive floor. A little more sharply than necessary, perhaps.

“You’re quite tanned, actually. That’s surprising.” Her usually reliable and practical assistant shook herself, as if she hadn’t meant to say that. “But you’re a legend, Lucinda. That’s the main thing. You did it. You really did it.”

Lucinda blinked. “What did I do?”

“You know.” Pandora shook her head, admiringly, as if Lucinda was being coy. And then made it all worse by nudging her with her shoulder, as if they were friends. “They should have known better, shouldn’t they? Lucinda Graves always gets what she wants.”

Lucinda had the faintest inkling then—but surely not. Surely there was no way. Still, she was too taken back by the possibility to lecture her assistant on proper office decorum.

Especially when the phone rang and her presence was requested in the executive boardroom. Immediately.

“Congratulations,” Pandora whispered after she put the phone down.

Lucinda turned and headed for the boardroom, done in achingly posh wood with gold accents and featuring a priceless view over London. She’d always loved that view. She liked to walk the long way through the office so she could look at it, always visible behind the clear glass walls that invited everyone in the office to see what it looked like when important meetings happened. Who attended and who dominated.

She had studied that room, and she’d vowed that one day, she would look out to see London at her feet and all of upper management gazing at her as if she was the star.

And she could see it happening as she walked toward the room. She saw all the men in their suits turn to watch her approach. She lengthened her stride, aware that she looked bulletproof and flawless, just the way she liked it.

She might not understand this moment, but it was hers, and she’d take it.

But then the sea of business suits parted, and everything changed.

Because Jason was here.

In London. In her office.

His back to that glorious view of London as if she was the only thing worth looking at.

And worse, he wasn’t standing in the middle of the executive boardroom with his miraculous chest out and all those acres and acres of brown skin and perfect tattoos on display. Lucinda felt that keenly, like one more betrayal.

Because Jason was wearing a black, obviously bespoke suit that hugged that big, athletic form of his in a way that made her blood turn molten in her veins. He’d scraped his hair back and fastened it, and that was terrible, too. It made him look like some kind of elegant marauder, and she couldn’t bear the heat of it.

Much less the way his gaze caught hers through the glass.

As if he knew all the things she wanted so badly to hide. The anticipation in her belly that was easing its way lower still and changing into fire. The catch in her breath. That damnable weakness in her knees, just because he was near.

Every single lie she’d told herself over the past few days about how happy she was to get away from him.

She wanted to run, screaming. She wanted to keep on going, past the boardroom and back out into the gray morning. She wanted to pretend none of this was happening.

But that was the coward’s way out. And Lucinda was no coward, no matter how much she wished otherwise this morning.

She lifted her chin to a properly belligerent angle. Then she shoved open the glass door and stepped inside.

Instantly, it was like the two of them were alone. As if there weren’t all those other faceless executives in between them, judging them. Jason’s gaze slammed into her the way his cock had, over and over, and she knew that he could see an answering heat all over her face.

She knew that he could see everything.

Especially all the lies she’d told herself—and him—to get her away from that island in the first place.

Someone said something, but she didn’t know what. Or care.

Because even on a dreary, wet Thursday, surrounded by suits and wearing one himself—to blend in—there was nothing but wildness in the man who stood at that window and dared her to come at him. Sheer, untamed wildness, and what was wrong with her that every single thing in her thrilled to it?

As if she’d been carrying the same kind of wild around inside her, all this time.

And he knew that, too.

She could see that he did. She could feel it.

“Good morning, Lucinda,” Jason said, those dark eyes glinting at her. Challenge and temper and what she very much feared was retribution. “Congratulations. You convinced me to build a resort on my island after all.”