“If you want to analyze me, Ms. Laurent, you’ll have to work a hell of a lot harder than that. In case you’ve forgotten, you’re not here for conversation. You’re here to pose for me and do as I ask for the next few hours that I have you in my studio. Those were the terms of our agreement, were they not?”
“You mean our rules of engagement,” I toss back at him. “Isn’t that how you described them? Battle lines.”
He scowls. “You and I aren’t at war.”
“Are you at war with Daniel?”
Those penetrating brown eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. “Is that what he told you?”
“No. When I asked him about you, he said the two of you hadn’t even met until recently, when you hired his firm for your project. Is he lying?”
“The fact that you have to ask tells me he’s already lost your trust.” He studies me, contemplating for a long moment, perhaps waiting for me to defend Daniel. When I don’t Rush lets go of a short breath. “He told you the truth, at least about this. Until recently, I didn’t even know he existed.”
I should be relieved, but all the confirmation does is bring more questions. “You only recently met, yet somehow in that short time he’s managed to make you hate him?”
“Daniel Hathaway is nothing more to me than a red line to settle in a ledger.” The words are so cold and toneless, I can’t help but believe them. “Once his debt to me is paid to my satisfaction, I’ll be finished with him.”
“What about me, Jared?”
Oh, God. I don’t mean to speak my thoughts out loud, but my blurted reply escapes before I can hold it back. Rush lets it linger between us for a long moment, so long it’s all I can do not to squirm under his deliberate silence.
He tilts his head, his gaze searching mine. “What about you, Melanie?”
My pulse throbs at the sound of my name on his lips, the first time he’s uttered it. Somehow, he’s made those few syllables sound dark and sinful, full of demand even though his voice is as smooth as velvet. Awareness arcs in the small space separating us in the hallway. The current is heavy and pounding, like the coil of heat suddenly blooming in my core.
My heart hammers in my breast, in my temples . . . in all the places Jared Rush’s nearness seems to awaken inside me. I draw in a breath and push the rest of my question out in a raspy whisper. “What am I in all of this?”
His mouth softens, but only at the edges. “That’ll be up to you to decide.”
His gaze travels over me, as palpable as a caress. But he doesn’t touch me.
He doesn’t press his mouth to mine, not even when his eyes drift to my lips and linger there.
On a low growl, he moves away from me, his dark brows furrowing. His hands are down at his sides, his fingers curled into tight fists.
“The studio is the last door at the end of this corridor. I’ll give you a few minutes to get settled and undressed. Be ready to begin when I return.”
14
JARED
A curse explodes off my tongue as soon as I’ve stalked away from her.
My hard stride carries me into the kitchen where the light from the morning sun is practically blinding in its brilliance. A few hundred yards out from the beach house, small blue waves capped in white froth ripple toward the shore. Normally, the sight of the ocean calms me the way nothing in the city ever could. Being here, away from all the noise and the claustrophobic press of skyscrapers and ceaseless noise, reminds me of wide pastures and simpler, easier times.
Normally, being here smooths out all the jagged edges in me. Edges that have only been getting sharper and deeper these past couple of years.
Right now, though, I feel anything but calm.
Not when the woman I crave more than any other in a damn long time is waiting for me at the other end of the house. I look at the endless miles of changeable blue-gray water and I see Melanie’s eyes carving me up with each glance, searching for answers. Looking for truths I’m not ready to give her.
Truths she can never know, not if I have anything to say about it.
I’ve lived my pain and the shame that followed it. I survived it. I buried all of my dead and moved on. So I’d thought.
Until a name I’d never heard before landed in my email, sent by someone I’d hired more than a decade ago to be my eyes and ears. It’s true I hadn’t met Daniel Hathaway before securing his firm for my newest hotel project. It’s also true that the man means nothing to me, outside of what he owes me.
I might have been satisfied with ruining Daniel Hathaway, exposing him as the fraud I know him to be.
