The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart
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the next, rolling from one seating area to another, with nothing but high, arched ceilings above, ceiling fans everywhere, and the sense that she wasn’t indoors at all. That this was just another part of the jungle.
Jason had said that it would be easy to find him, so she paused inside the first great room, then followed the only sound that she could hear over the kick of her heart. It was faint, metallic and musical. She made her way through a well-stocked library, a game room and then out onto another terrace arranged around a fire pit that felt as if it had been hewn from the mountain itself.
That was where she found him.
For a moment she could only stare, dimly aware that she’d come to a complete and sudden stop.
Jason looked as if he had been dreamed up by the island, by the jungle and the sea as one. He looked like a raw and elemental part of the same tropical wildness, out there against the night.
He had put on a pair of battered jeans that rode low on his hips, filled with holes and tatters, but nothing else. He held an electric guitar on his lap, but it wasn’t plugged into anything. And he was playing it, picking out a tune as he sat before the lick of the fire, his bare feet propped up on the lip of the wall that surrounded the fire pit.
As if he’d been conjured from the flames.
His hair was down, too long and yet perfect for him. And if Lucinda had thought that he was beautiful with all that sunlight bathing him in brightness before, she had no words to describe what the night did. How the firelight moved all over him, making him look made of poured honey, all male and beautiful.
God help her, he was so absurdly, impossibly beautiful it hurt.
Just like this island.
She drifted closer because she couldn’t seem to help herself, and she didn’t have it in her to interrogate all the ways that should’ve sent her running for the hills. Maybe she’d slept it off. All she knew was that he called to her and he didn’t have to say a word to do it.
“I had no idea you were musical,” she said when she was close to him. Because that hadn’t been in the extensive portfolio she’d compiled.
“I’m not. I just like to mess around.”
He stopped playing, though he still held the guitar across his lap, and he turned that dark gaze to her.
Lucinda had no idea why she submitted herself to his scrutiny. Why she stood there before him and did absolutely nothing while his gaze...had its way with her. He took his time, looking her over from head to toe then back again, as if she was his.
As if she had never been anything but his, and never would.
And when his eyes met hers again, he was smiling.
She expected him to say something off-color. Something suggestive or unnervingly direct.
But instead, he nodded toward a table off to the side. “You look hungry.”
It turned out she was ravenous. So starved, in fact, that she could hardly bother herself to see what he was doing as she went over to table laden high with more food than anyone could possibly have eaten at once, and dug in. She didn’t ask how the hot things were hot and the cold things were cold. This was obviously the sort of place that was actually filled with staff, who were all the more impressive for remaining unseen. Unless...
“Did you cook all this?”
That laugh of his was her answer, and she shivered slightly as it scraped open the night.
“I’m good at a lot of things,” Jason said, his dark, rich tone encouraging her to wonder exactly which things he meant. “But cooking is not one of them.”
Lucinda was so hungry that she left that alone. She ate until she was full, and then she sat back, sighing in delight, and feeling more like herself than she had since she’d woken up in the dark, thick with confusion.
She rose again and picked her way back over to the fire so she could drop down beside him on the low couch where he sat.
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said as he set his guitar aside. “I apologize. You shouldn’t have had to wait around for me.”
“I didn’t.” His dark gaze touched the side of her face, then returned to the fire. “I do live here.”
And her belly was full. She was dressed like a stranger. There was no backtracking, so she might as well dive ahead.
“And why is that, exactly?” she asked, shifting so she could treat him to her own version of frank directness. “As far as I can tell you have no sentimental attachment to anything that was your father’s.”
“I hate that motherfucker,” Jason agreed. Almost cheerfully, but the fire was full on his face and she could see the way his eyes narrowed. “The only reason I wish he was still alive is so I could tell him that to his face.”
“You would actually tell him you hated him?” She considered. “Before or after you knew he planned to leave you something in his will?”
“I didn’t want any part of that will and I still don’t.” Jason shrugged. “He made my mama cry. That’s not something a man forgives.”
“Did you know him at all when he was alive?”
Jason’s expression grew impatient. “I’m pretty sure that any research on my life at all would give you the answer to that question. But no. I never met him. That was his thing. Get a woman pregnant, disappear and then leave the kid he made some money and a hotel in the will. And if I know anything about rich assholes, he thought that made up for his lack of parenting.”
“Then I don’t understand.” Lucinda kept her voice quiet and her gaze steady. “If you have no sentimental attachment to this island, why not make it into a resort? And why come stay here?”
“This was the last place he built before he died.” Again, that low growl of a voice tumbled over her, making her want to shiver. But she didn’t. “It was suggested to me that whether I liked it or not, I was turning out more like the old man than I was comfortable with. I thought I’d come here, marinate in all things Daniel St. George and see if that was true.”
“Did he spend a lot of time at his various properties alone?”
This time, Jason’s laugh had an edge. “He wasn’t much for alone time when there were so many women eager to keep him company.”
“Let me make sure I’m following this. You hated your father. You hated everything he stood for, and everything he was.”
“Dear old dad,” Jason drawled in agreement. “The dick.”
“So you’re hiding out here, ten thousand miles away from anywhere, to make yourself feel bad. This entire island is a beach-laden hair shirt bristling with palm trees to you.”
“I barely wear a shirt as it is. Certainly not a hair shirt.”
“You must know that hotels were the only thing that Daniel St. George was any good at. And he was very, very good at hotels. Why shouldn’t you reap the benefits of that?” Lucinda kept her gaze trained on him, pretending she didn’t notice the temper that lurked there. The warning that she had already gone too far. “Especially when it’s not as if you’re saving this place as a tender, emotional monument to anything.”
“Lucinda.” And the way he said her name was its own shudder running through her, lighting her up. Reminding her that whatever else this man was, he wasn’t entirely tame. And a smart woman would do well to remember that. “Why the fuck does this mean so much to you?”
“I’M SO GLAD you asked,” Lucinda replied in the same slick way she’d said everything since she’d eaten,