Island Fling With The Tycoon. Therese Beharrie

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СКАЧАТЬ across his face, a potent addition to the gorgeousness she was already distracted by.

      ‘Is she trying to set us up?’

      His eyes widened comically, the determined shake of his head following in a similar manner. ‘No. No, of course not.’

      ‘You’re denying this a lot.’

      ‘Doesn’t mean it’s not true.’

      It would probably annoy him if she disagreed—so, of course, that was what she wanted to do. She walked out of the door, closed it behind her. Primly, she folded her hands around her clutch.

      ‘I don’t know. You came to fetch me from the airport. You showed me to my room. Now you’re escorting me to a party. This must be a date of some sort.’

      ‘It’s not a date,’ he said. ‘It’s...being courteous. Which I’m deeply regretting.’

      ‘You’re the least courteous person I’ve met, Caleb. You telling me you regret being courteous proves that.’

      ‘Has anyone ever pointed out how contrary you are?’

       Why can’t you do as you’re told, Piper?

      A question she’d heard far too often in her twenty-six years, in various forms.

      ‘All the time,’ she said lightly. Fighting for that tone. ‘Though you think it an insult. It’s not. I try to be contrary whenever I can, so someone pointing it out to me is a compliment. Shall we?’

      She started walking, not bothering to check if he was following. She could almost hear his irritation with her. It thrilled her in a way it shouldn’t have.

      To be fair, some of what she’d said had been for the sake of contrariness—he was so easily riled!—but some of it had been true, too. She’d spent most of her life obeying people. Her mother had died when she was young, leaving her and her brother with a father who didn’t want to be one. Keaton Evans had never said so, but she could only assume that was the reason for his awfulness. People who wanted children didn’t force them into behaving in certain ways, did they? Surely they allowed their children to become whoever they wanted to be. They let them test the boundaries, drawing them in when the child went too far.

      But not Keaton.

      Keaton had a strict routine for them to follow. So strict, in fact, that if either of them strayed from it they were punished. No outside time. Food in their rooms. Being kept separate from one another. Since they had no friends, not really, Piper and Liam had become friends. At least they had been in those first few years. Not talking to one another was torture then, which their father knew. It was how he’d kept them in line.

      There was no testing the boundaries in the Evans house. There were only the boundaries. If they were broken, Piper or Liam would be punished. At least Keaton had been simple in his cruelty.

      As they’d got older, Liam began to rebel more, and things got bad. Eventually, Liam had got a bursary to university and moved out. Their father had forbidden him from coming back. Forbidden her from seeing him. They’d lost touch, even when she’d joined Liam at university two years later. By then she’d allowed her father to crush her spirit of rebellion. Of independence. She’d only got it back three years later, when Keaton had died.

      Then she’d welcomed another manipulator into her life.

      ‘It’s hard to insult someone who doesn’t have the decency to be insulted by things that normal people are insulted by,’ Caleb commented from beside her. She hadn’t even noticed he’d caught up. Now that she had, she could feel his presence like the light breeze caressing her skin.

      ‘That’s the point,’ she replied. ‘I don’t get insulted, and that way I take away the power from the person trying to insult me.’

      ‘Sounds like you’ve practised it.’

      ‘I have,’ she told him simply, before stopping at the top of a steep decline. She let out a breath. ‘I knew these heels were a bad idea.’

      ‘I wouldn’t say so,’ his voice rumbled.

      Her flesh shot out in goosebumps. And she remembered, for the first time, that she’d forgotten to put on the nipple covers she’d bought for the dress when she’d realised she couldn’t wear a bra with it. She resisted angling her body away so he wouldn’t know the effect his flirtatious remark had on her. It would be giving him power. On principle, she couldn’t allow that.

      ‘Well, I do,’ she said determinedly. ‘How am I supposed to make it down this path without breaking an ankle?’

      ‘Take them off.’

      She wrinkled her nose. ‘Then I’d have dirty feet when I have to wear my shoes again.’

      ‘You could wipe them off.’

      ‘That won’t help.’

      He stared at her for a moment. ‘You’re strange.’

      ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

      ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you do have another option, though I don’t think you’re going to like it.’

      ‘What is it?’

      He turned to face her, his expression so satisfied that she wanted to give him whatever answer he didn’t expect from her. Until she heard his suggestion.

      ‘I could carry you.’

       CHAPTER THREE

      HE’D DONE IT on purpose. He wanted to ruffle her feathers when she seemed so composed. Perhaps not his most honourable decision in life, but he’d been honourable enough. When his father had died thirteen years before, he’d stepped up and taken care of his siblings, who’d been eleven, nine and seven years old. He’d only been eighteen at the time—he’d been the result of a teen pregnancy, the cause of a quickie marriage, and his parents had only had his siblings once they were more settled—and he’d been forced into being a guardian and entrepreneur when he’d taken over his father’s business.

      So he could afford a little dishonour. Particularly when it came to a woman who intrigued him.

      Piper stared at him, those beautiful eyes big and bright and bold against the odd green of her dress. If he’d seen that shade in a store somewhere, he wouldn’t have taken a second look. Or he might have, but only to be offended by it. Now, though, on Piper... It made her skin look as if it had been bronzed. And it flattered a body he’d been trying not to pay attention to since they’d met.

      Her breasts were full and out on display, though he was trying not to pay attention to them either. He wasn’t sure if it was because it would get him into trouble if he did, or if he was trying to be polite. But the straps of her dress rested over smooth, strong shoulders, the waist of it clinging to her ribcage then flaring out. The heels he’d teased her about earlier did excellent things to the legs the dress revealed, though there wasn’t much of them to see.

      She СКАЧАТЬ