The Dare Collection September 2019. Stefanie London

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      Unexpected shame crept through me.

       She does matter.

      I had no idea why or even how she’d managed it. But that didn’t change the feeling inside me. I didn’t like that I’d hurt her.

      Ellie was looking down at her orange juice, fussing with her straw, and I noticed that her hand was shaking a little. ‘Okay, so anyway,’ she said quickly. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. No worries at all.’

       You bastard.

      Well, technically, I was a bastard. And it had never bothered me before that I acted like a bastard, too, not when caring about other people’s feelings and what they thought of you was a vulnerability I could never allow.

      Except, I was bothered now.

      ‘You want to know where I got these scars from?’ I asked abruptly, following an impulse I never normally listened to.

      She looked up from her drink to the scars on my face. ‘I heard you were a street fighter or something.’

      The media loved my background; the story that I’d been into illegal street fights to get my start-up money was great fodder for them. The reality was a hell of a lot less romantic.

      ‘I was. And one day my opponent brought a knife to what was supposed to be a fist fight.’

      She looked aghast. ‘So...you fought him?’

      ‘Of course.’ I smiled, feeling the pull of the scar. Remembering the pain and the blood, and how everyone had roared my name afterwards. ‘I never backed down from a fight.’

      Her gaze followed the lines of my scars, her hand twitching as if she wanted to touch them. And quite suddenly I wanted her to. Wanted to feel her cool fingers on my hot skin with a desperation that took my breath away.

      The crease between her brows was deep. ‘But you could have been killed.’

      Something pulled inside me, like a muscle that hadn’t been warmed up properly, and it hurt. I wanted to snap at her all of a sudden, the pain and the strange desperation for her touch making me angry.

      But I didn’t want to hurt her, not again, so I bit back my retort. ‘Maybe,’ I said mildly enough. ‘But I was very good at fighting.’

      ‘So...’ Her gaze roamed over my scars again. ‘You won?’

      ‘Oh, yes, I won.’ A ghost of that familiar savage satisfaction echoed through me, the power I got from winning. From pitting myself against the odds and coming out on top. ‘I always won.’

      ‘You didn’t care about getting hurt? Or losing your life?’

      I shrugged. ‘I needed the money. And that was more important.’

      It always had been. For my mother’s sake.

      ‘My brothers like to win, too,’ she said quietly. ‘Which makes sense given that they’re racing car drivers.’

      ‘What about you?’ I watched her lovely face, shadowed by the brim of her cap. ‘Do you like to race cars and win as well?’

      Slowly she shook her head. ‘I don’t race. I like driving, don’t get me wrong, but my talent is design.’ One corner of her mouth lifted in a shy kind of smile. ‘I do like speed, but I’m all about making things go faster more efficiently from the ground up. The whole machine rather than simply putting your foot down.’ There was a certain sparkle in her eyes as she spoke, an excitement that for some reason caught me by the throat and refused to let go.

      ‘Your electric car,’ I said, suddenly desperately curious. ‘Tell me about it.’

      Her smile turned from shy into something a whole lot more forced and fake-looking. ‘No, you don’t want to hear about that. Anyway, you still haven’t told me why you want those islands.’

      But I didn’t want to talk about me. I wanted to talk about her. Because it hadn’t hit me until now what a fascinating collection of contrasts she was. Direct in a way that was very masculine, yet she was sitting primly in a way that was very feminine. She called me mate, pointed out my rudeness, and yet she blushed. Looked horrified at the knife scars on my face and yet had seemed pleased when I’d told her that I’d won.

      She was interesting. But getting interested in her was not at all what I should be doing.

      Which was getting her to agree to be my date.

      Which she still hadn’t.

      ‘Fine.’ I tried to mask my irritation at the change of topic and failed. ‘I took on those fights for a reason. I needed the money.’

      ‘Right. To start up your business.’

      ‘Partly. I also needed it to pay back a debt.’

      She sipped at her drink, watching me. ‘What debt?’

      ‘I already had that start-up money. In fact, by the time I left school, I had a nice little nest egg stashed away. Money I’d saved over the years through jobs here and there.’ My chest tightened but I forced myself to say it. ‘But mostly the money came from my mother, from the retirement savings I convinced her to give me. I was going to invest it in property and by the time she actually had to retire, she’d have millions. At least, that’s what I promised her.’

      She hadn’t wanted to give me that money, either, but I’d convinced her. I’d told her she’d get it back and with interest. And she’d believed me.

      Ellie grimaced. ‘Oh, no. Don’t tell me...’

      ‘I lost it. I lost every penny.’ My jaw ached. Christ, this should not be so hard to say. ‘My half-brother took it all.’

      ‘Hell,’ she muttered. ‘What did he do?’

      I wanted another Scotch, but I ignored the urge, concentrating instead on Ellie’s face. ‘About the only thing my bastard father did for me was to pay for a private school, the same school Sebastian went to. We became close friends and had plans to go into business together. He had money, plenty of it, but I didn’t and so I had to work hard to get my share of the cash together.’ My hands had closed into fists at my sides and I had to take a breath to unclench them. ‘There was a property we were aiming to buy and I thought we’d agreed on it, but soon after we left school, he decided on a different site that he thought would be more profitable. I told him the deal was shady—believe me, growing up on the estate, you get a sixth sense for that kind of thing. But he refused to listen. He went ahead and shelled out the cash without my agreement and, sure enough, the deal fell through and we lost everything.’

      More sympathy flickered in her eyes, making something inside me ache. ‘Oh, that’s awful.’

      ‘I was furious.’ And I had been. I could still feel the rage coursing through my veins to this day, boiling me dry. The sheer betrayal of it. Seb had been my closest friend and he was supposed to have my back. He wasn’t supposed to completely ignore me, treat me like I was just a know-nothing kid from a shitty council estate. He’d been shocked when it had all fallen apart, as if he СКАЧАТЬ