The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart

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       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

      “YOU SHOULD LOOK HAPPIER, Scotland,” Jason drawled after he cleared the room. He was standing by the windows in this stuffy, confining office, his dark gaze fastened to Lucinda’s like he could see straight through her. It almost frightened him how much he wanted to believe he could. “You won. You get what you wanted all along. Surely that calls for, if not a celebration, a smile?”

      And her familiar scowl made his heart beat a little faster.

      “This isn’t about winning. This is a highhanded bit of strategy. The best defense is a good offense or whatever you Americans are always ranting on about.” She stood straighter, as if she was seconds away from taking a swing at him. Which he would have welcomed, because he knew how it would end. “When you and I both knew you flew all the way to England because you didn’t like the fact that I left you without your express permission.”

      After the executives had swarmed around Lucinda like ants on a picnic lunch, offering her all kinds of congratulations that didn’t make it to the envy in their eyes, Jason had demanded some privacy. Not that there was much of it in this glass box of a room that might as well have been a fishbowl. The men in their suits all filed out, baring their teeth and murmuring their grudging appreciation Lucinda’s way as they went. Some tried to glad-hand Jason, too, but he stared at them until they slunk away.

      Now it was only the two of them and too much glass. And all he wanted to do was strip those dour clothes right off her. All that relentless, ruthless black. The angrily slicked-back red hair when his mouth watered for her glorious curls. He could see that the shoes she’d worn on the island had been a concession because here, the shoes she wore were skyscraper high, with red on their soles and killer points as heels. She looked mean and sharp, and he loved every inch of it.

      He ached, everywhere, that he didn’t have his hands on her already.

      Especially when she was glaring at him as if his presence here was some kind of betrayal.

      But Jason was holding on to the advice Charlie had given him. Hard. If he didn’t want to be like their father, he didn’t have to be. It was that simple and that complicated.

      Their father would never have chased a woman across the world. Their father had barely managed to remember a woman’s name the next morning, or the location of the children he’d littered about the planet.

      Step number one of not being Daniel St. George was the fact Jason had gotten on that plane. He’d decided that in the final tally, he didn’t really care what happened on that island he’d never wanted and didn’t know what to do with himself. He wasn’t attached to it. He didn’t have any dreams about it one way or another.

      But he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on living the same old life he’d already been living. Not without Lucinda.

      Wasn’t that a kick? She was the one night he never wanted to forget. If he had to chase her down on the other side of the planet, well, he was prepared to do that and more. He was more than happy to hunt her down. Lure her in with the resort she wanted. Keep her close with the one thing he knew she couldn’t resist. Not without removing herself entirely.

      Him.

      “You don’t want to build any kind of resort on that island,” Lucinda was saying, her pale red brows pulled tight. Jason could see the sun on her face in the form of all those cute freckles, but her skin looked pale even so. Her blue eyes were too big, too wide, and her mouth might have been painted in a bright color he very much wanted to taste, but she pressed her lips flat. “You want to keep it as some kind of sulky tantrum. A monument to a man you’re terrified you’ve already become. I understand that.”

      “Yeah. You sound real understanding.”

      “I’m not going to pretend this is professional, because I think we ripped through that boundary a long time ago.”

      “It was never professional, darlin’.”

      Lucinda’s chin lifted higher, which should have been impossible. “Do you really believe that you’re the only person in the world who has a shit father, Jason? I don’t know how to break this to you, but that doesn’t make you special. It makes you alive, that’s all. You should count yourself lucky that your shit father was considerate enough to ignore you for your entire life. Mine was far less accommodating.”

      She laughed, though there was precious little humor in the sound. “And mine didn’t leave me a luxurious private island, complete with a stately home for my personal use, plonked down in the middle of the sparkling Pacific Ocean as an apology. Last I heard, in fact, my father has drunk his way through several stints in prison, at least as many bouts of liver disease and more lost jobs than you can count. And he’s still going strong, no doubt beating up my mother and terrifying neighbor children just the way he used to do me. So you will forgive me, I hope, if my sympathy for your plight is somewhat dim.”

      “Good rant, Lucinda,” Jason drawled. “Have you been stewing on that one ever since you left Fiji?”

      She looked past him and blinked. Then squared her shoulders as if she’d forgotten that they had an entire audience clustered there on the other side of the glass, pretending that they were going about their business. When she looked back at him, her hands were curled into fists at her side, and Jason knew her well enough now to understand that that storm in her gaze was turmoil. Emotion.

      Not that she’d admit it. Not his stubborn redhead.

      His heart kicked at him again.

      “As a matter of fact, I did not spend a series of unpleasant long-haul flights having fights with people who weren’t there. I do try to avoid that whenever possible.” Lucinda sighed, as if her pissy, prissy voice irritated her, too. “If your goal was to disconcert me, I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. I don’t know why you suddenly want to develop the island, but if you’re under the impression that I’m going to come over all noble and refuse to do it because you’re so clearly using it as a bargaining chip in whatever psychodrama you have going on in your head, I’m afraid you’re going to be quite disappointed.”

      “I don’t give a shit about the island, darlin’,” Jason said quietly. “If I wake up one morning filled with regret that I developed this one, guess what? I can buy myself another one. As you pointed out, the place itself has no СКАЧАТЬ