The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart

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СКАЧАТЬ a hand toward the house, the last Daniel St. George property. The one his sycophants claimed meant the most to him. Why did that notion make Jason want to burn it to the ground?

      “I look at a place like this and I think this is the kind of paradise that normal people want to remember for the rest of their lives. And wanting memories like this becomes the kind of dreams that make normal life worth living. I would happily scrimp and save for a week in a dream come true. I have. Would you?”

      Jason felt as if he’d been waiting years for her. All the hours she’d been asleep, for sure, leaving him prowling around this place with all his rough edges driving him crazy. His mouth was dry. He was practically beside himself, if he was honest, but he could still control that. Or pretend well enough.

      What he couldn’t seem to wrestle into submission was the sensation blowing up his chest, making him want nothing more than to take every dream this woman had ever had and make it come true. Right here, right now.

      And that made him feel ripped in half. Dumb and blindly stupid with all these feelings he didn’t like and didn’t want.

      But he wanted her more.

      “I never would’ve pegged you for starry-eyed optimist,” he managed to say without betraying his own distinct lack of chill.

      Her mouth curved slightly, and the light in those blue eyes didn’t dim. “That’s funny. I’d call myself a realist.”

      “A realist who arranged her life around happily-ever-afters and dreams coming true. Because that’s real practical.”

      “I know you know what it’s like to grow up with nothing,” she said softly. “Lucky to find shoes to put on your feet. Much less ones that fit.”

      “That’s the cool thing about growing up in Hawaii. Shoes are optional.”

      “Everything you have, Jason, you built for yourself. With your brain. With your body. With every shrewd decision and every stellar athletic performance. I didn’t play football. But I did educate myself into a university degree. Just as I’ve performed my way into every position I’ve held. No matter how I got it.”

      His heart was doing weird flips. He rubbed at it, like that could shut it up.

      “I hope that means you have flexible morals and no compunction whatsoever about sleeping your way around.” Jason grinned, wide and maybe a little desperate. He hoped she couldn’t see that part. “Just like me.”

      “I use whatever tools I have at my disposal,” she replied, a faint line appearing between her brows. “And that’s all I’m asking you to do in return.”

      “Fuck a lot?” He leaned back in his seat, despite all the roaring insanity inside him, like he could lounge there forever. Like he was on the verge of terminal boredom. “I can do that.”

      Lucinda started pacing then, back and forth in front of the fire pit. Jason should have found her agitating. Instead, the only word that seemed to dance around inside him was adorable.

      As far as he could tell, it was one more way to make sure he knew he was boned.

      “I’m talking about this island,” she said. “The opportunity to create something truly special.”

      “But again, only for the kind of people who can afford it. And I’m betting every single one of them will remind me a little too much of the giant douche who built this place. Why would I want that?”

      She shot a look at him with Why are you here? written all over it.

      But that wasn’t what she said. “When you create destination fantasies, you might be surprised to discover what sort of people think it’s in their best interests to get there. One way or another.”

      He told himself all that carrying on in his chest was irritation. Not even temper. “Oh yeah? How many luxury properties do you stay at every year?”

      “As it happens, I’m not great at taking all my allotted holiday time. I’m sure you’ve experienced that kind of pressure before. The people I work with are obsessed with status. Which means I have to be, too.”

      She kept making connections between them and Jason didn’t want any part of that. There was only one part of him that liked connecting, and his dick didn’t talk.

      “But you’re not into that, of course. You’re above that kind of thing. Like every other woman who’s chased after me since I got that football scholarship.”

      She did another lap.

      “What interests me about high-status properties are what can be done with them,” she said, as if he was having a serious conversation with her. Instead of acting like a sulky teenager. “And how much of an immersive experience they provide. Because the sad truth about many high-status operations is that they rest on their laurels and don’t offer the paying clients much of anything besides the bill. I prefer experiences. I want clients to forget about the outside world entirely. I want leaving one of my properties to feel like leaving home, and I want it to haunt them once they’re gone.”

      “I told you my position on ghosts.”

      Her gaze met his again, and he was sure she could feel the sizzle. So sure, in fact, that he found himself paying more attention to the way she was walking back and forth in front of him. More quickly each time. And her breath getting more and more shallow with each pass.

      Making it clear to him that he wasn’t the only one feeling crushed in the grip of the tension between them.

      What did it make him that he was actually relieved? When he couldn’t actually recall the last time the faintest sexual urge he’d had wasn’t heartily and enthusiastically requited?

      “I know that you’re a man who likes to do good, Jason.”

      “That’s nothing but a nasty rumor.”

      “I know it’s not only a rumor. The truth is that the kind of conscious luxury experience that I’m talking about will preserve this island. And allow all kinds of people to experience what makes all the Pacific Islands so special in the first place. Of course, tourism can cause its own problems. I don’t deny that. But how can people realize what they ought to help save if they can’t experience it in as close to an unspoiled state as possible?”

      Her face changed when she was truly animated. When she wasn’t buttoning herself up in funeral clothes or beating her hair into submission. She was flushed with this passion of hers, her eyes bright and her voice intent, and he wanted to be inside her with such ferocity that it might have scared him.

      If he wasn’t so sure that it was only a matter of time.

      “I might not be a natural beach person,” she said, sounding fully Scottish and wholly alive as she wedged herself farther beneath his skin with every word. “I might personally prefer the shade of a tree to the glaring heat of white sand midday, I grant you. But this place is seductive. It’s magical. It’s not only that people will never want to leave here. It will make them happy to stay here. I don’t know much about your father, or not much more than anyone else, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that whatever else he was, he certainly wasn’t a happy man. And it seems to me that creating a space for happiness in a place he СКАЧАТЬ