CHAPTER THREE

      LUCINDA DIDN’T KNOW what the hell she was doing.

      She had always been about a plan. Making a plan, following a plan and sticking to a plan come hell or high water. She researched, she got herself ready and then she executed said plan without ever straying into too much dangerous spontaneity. That strategy had served her well her whole life—but something about this island made her feel outside herself. Inside out, stretched thin, too hot and too exposed, all at once.

      It’s the jet lag, she told herself. But there was the distinct possibility it had more to do with the man lounging there across from her, watching her with lethal intent, than the island or what it had taken to get here.

      The truth was that while she wasn’t averse to using whatever inducements she could throw at Jason Kaoki, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be the one getting what she wanted out of the bargain if she did.

      He wasn’t like other men.

      He wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met.

      He was too big, in every sense of the term. He was built on a grand scale, sure, but there was also his laugh. His wicked, challenging grin. That steady dark gaze of his that told her in no uncertain terms that he truly didn’t need or want a damned thing from anyone...

      But that he might take it anyway, if it was offered.

      There’s no reason you can’t make him an offer—that offer—right here and now, she told herself stoutly, still holding that simmering gaze of his. The notion made a deep shiver wind its way through her, making her hold herself even more still for fear he’d see exactly what she wanted to give him. What she was willing to trade.

      She didn’t know what she was doing, but she needed to figure it out. And fast.

      Because she needed this. She needed to win. She needed to prove herself, once and for all, in a way that no one could claim was theirs or take away from her or dismiss. Lucinda was so tired of fighting for every last scrap. She didn’t like to admit it to herself, but she knew it was true. After a lifetime of hustling, she was tired. She wanted to be done with the dustups, once and for all. She’d been swinging and scrabbling all her life, and she wanted the big prize this time.

      She wanted to rest on her laurels for a change. She wanted to see what the world looked like when she was sure of her place in it. At last.

      And there was no doubt that landing Jason Kaoki and this jewel of an island would do the trick. It would be the making of her. She could leave her firm in a blaze of glory and go out on her own. Maybe stay in one of the exclusive properties she worked so hard to build, for a start.

      No one back in London thought she could do it.

      “You’re wasting your time,” her direct superior had told her, sighing loudly to make certain Lucinda knew she was bothering him when she’d dutifully told him her plans. He named the much-celebrated president of a rival boutique hotel corporate body, who had only the week before sneered at Lucinda in a trendy gastropub as he’d assured her the Kaoki property was lost to developers. “If he can’t make it happen, no one can.”

      “I can do it,” Lucinda had said with tremendous certainty and confidence.

      It had only been partially feigned.

      Because she’d studied Jason Kaoki. And she hadn’t concentrated only on his investment portfolio like everyone else, all those cold numbers and figures. Lucinda had immersed herself in all his social media accounts. She’d watched old interviews and read articles on his early prowess on the football field.

      She’d convinced herself she knew him.

      “If you can, you’ll be a legend,” her boss had replied, with a laugh. Indicating how unlikely a prospect he thought that was. Because he might like how hard Lucinda worked, but he certainly didn’t think she had it in her to become a legend.

      And it turned out that the scrappy little nobody from that grotty flat in one of Glasgow’s most notorious tower blocks wanted to be a legend. Very badly, in fact. She didn’t want to work for anyone else. She didn’t want to report to her boss, who was decent enough as these things went, but still liked to take credit for her best and brightest ideas like they were owed to him.

      Then laughed at her when she showed her belly by clearly indicating she wanted more.

      Goddamn it, but she wanted this win.

      That was why she’d taken her annual leave and spent her own money to haul herself here to make her own legend, her own way.

      Only to discover that not only was Jason Kaoki as difficult as advertised, he was difficult in a completely different way than she’d anticipated. And more worryingly, she seemed to be someone else when she was in his presence.

      She told herself, once again, that it was the heat. The tropics, bearing down on her relentlessly. The lobby was open to the weather and the breeze that wound its way in one side and out the other did very little to cool her off. Instead, it danced over her, making her feel electric and strange. And aware of too many things she’d prefer to ignore altogether.

      The press of her thighs against each other. The heat her own body generated. The touch of the breeze itself, soft and warm all over her, like a caress.

      “Tell me what it would take,” she said now. Again. She focused on Jason. On the task at hand. “Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

      He looked...sinful and dangerous. Deeply, inarguably dangerous. Alarms went off inside her, one after the next, and she had to fight to repress a shiver of unease. Or whatever that feeling was that nipped at her and made her wonder if a person could spontaneously combust, after all. Right here and now in an ugly, forgotten hotel.

      “I appreciate the offer,” Jason said, in that drawling, suggestive voice of his that danced all over her like a terrible fire. Far worse than any tropical breeze. “But I don’t think you can.”

      She told herself the sun and the heat were getting to her, that was all. She was Scottish and she lived in London. She was built for gray skies and buckets of rain, not white-sand beaches and glaringly blue skies without a stray cloud in sight. There had been entirely too much sunshine on her walk from the dock to this sad old hotel, and she was much too pale to handle it. She was experiencing some kind of prickly heat reaction to the weather, nothing more.

      He happened to be here, but he wasn’t the cause of it.

      It was crazy to imagine otherwise.

      “I