One Night to Risk It All(31)

It made him fear that the only thing he’d inherited was the darkness.

* * *

The skin on Rachel’s arms prickled as a breeze blew across the water and over her. She and Alana had just closed up shop after assessing the damage, and Alana had gone with her boyfriend back to their apartment.

Rachel had just been standing out in front of the store, looking across the harbor at the yachts, at where blue sky met blue water, rich colors fading together.

She breathed in deep and the breeze set the hair on the back of her neck on end and brushed a tingling sensation over her, down to her fingertips. It wasn’t fear. But it was something she couldn’t ignore. Something urgent, little bursts of it popping through her until she turned her head.

And then it all made sense.

Alex was walking toward her, hands in his pockets. He was dressed casually, nothing like he’d been that day on the yacht, but still much more relaxed than Alex the Businessman. A pale blue shirt open at the collar and a pair of dark jeans.

“I’m glad to see you’ve not been buried beneath photographers.”

“Oh, well, thank heaven for the off-season. None of the locals would dare break their cool by raising an eyebrow at my presence, much less interrupt their day by setting the paparazzi on me.”

“Thank God for people far too blasé to care for a bit of scandal.”

She laughed. “I suppose.”

The moment was strange. Like that time a month ago in Greece playing over again. Different setting, different time. But the pull was there. Whether she wanted it to be or not, it was there. Engagement ring or not, it had been there. Conniving plot to seduce her to get revenge on Ajax or not, it had been there.

Even now, with the baby and all the baggage, it was there.

She knew he felt it, too. She could see it in those wicked blue eyes. He was thinking of sex and sin and all the wonderful things they’d done together. She didn’t know how she knew it, only that she did. Only that for some reason she had a connection with him that she couldn’t explain. One she didn’t want at all.

Why couldn’t he just be that jerk who’d seduced her? Or, if she couldn’t summon up the rage to think of him as a jerk, why couldn’t he just be the cause of her pregnancy? A distant figure until they had to work out a shared custody agreement? It’s not like he could do anything for her now anyway.

But there was more. She hated that there was more, but there was. This deep, sexual connection that somehow felt like...more. Why did it keep going with him? Why, no matter the depth of feeling she was willing to admit she had with him, did a small voice inside of her keep whispering it’s more?

Stupid small voice inside of her.

“Dinner?” he asked, another echo from the past.

“Yes.” She felt the yes slip off her lips and a deep ache slide down deep inside of her. Her body responding to the consent.

For dinner, you little hussy. Dinner. Down, girl.

He held his hand out, and she didn’t take it. Because if she did, she knew she was really, really sunk. She had no business touching him. No business even flirting with the idea of engaging in intimacy with him again.

The fact that he was a lying liar aside, they had too much going on to confuse it all with more sex.

As if things could get more confused, but whatever.

“Where are we having dinner?” she asked. Because it seemed to her they were just going back toward the hotel.

“I hate to see a perfectly good terrace wasted, so I thought we would dine at the suite.”

“You make it sound so fancy.”

“It is,” he said. “It’s very fancy. And dinner should be waiting for us already. And I will be having juice, along with you.”

“That’s...well, that’s awfully sensitive of you.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I am,” she said, walking next to him, acutely aware of the way they both held their arms at their sides as they walked. Acutely aware of how they weren’t touching when their fingertips were so close.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to work. She was supposed to not touch him and have all the attraction magically resolve. Her shell was supposed to protect her. All those years of self-denial. Of never letting her passion out. Learning to be risk-averse, learning to keep every emotion, every desire, every need shoved down deep and covered by a layer of smooth, impenetrable steel. All of that should have helped her now. Should have preserved her.

But it wasn’t and she couldn’t understand it. How eleven years of hard-won control had just suddenly melted as if it had never been there in the first place.


They walked into the hotel in total silence, then took the elevator to their floor. The double doors to the terrace were open, a wash of pink evening light painting the living area.

She walked through the suite and outside. The table was set for two, a bottle of sparkling grape juice in an ice bucket, wrapped in a linen towel as if it were fine champagne. And their plates were covered with a silver dome, everything set and ready.

As though Alex had wanted to make sure they weren’t disturbed.

“This is romantic,” she said, her tone about as dry as sand.

“Is it?” he looked around as though the notion surprised him. “I just asked for dinner for two and that we not be disturbed. For privacy’s sake, as we are discussing personal matters and you are a bit of a public figure. Romance never came into it.”