Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections. Кейт Хьюит
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to change the subject.
‘Maybe yours did, too.’
He stood, did not even attempt a response. ‘Do you want to swim? Or we could head back …’
‘No.’
He was the one resisting now, he was the one who wanted the safety of shore, and she wanted him to stop, wanted him to talk. ‘Maybe she did do her best, Zander.’
‘By selling one child and deserting the other?’ Zander asked. ‘She destroyed my father by leaving. He was a good man, an honourable man, till she left him.’ He stopped but only because she put up her hand.
‘Please, don’t …’ Her hand was shaking. She so badly wanted to know what had happened, but she had forgotten the reason was here, did not want him to confide in her when she would have to betray him. She could not reveal that to him, but Zander was one step ahead of her.
‘You have to tell Nico what I say to you?’
‘How do you know?’
‘Rare, the woman who doesn’t want to talk about feelings.’ She looked up and was surprised to see him smiling. ‘That’s usually all they want to talk about. Tell him what you must, Charlotte, it makes no difference to me.’
‘Why won’t you talk to him?’
‘There’s nothing I want to discuss.’
‘He’s your twin,’ Charlotte said. ‘How can you not want to get to know him? How can you not want to find your mum?’
‘Because neither of them interest me,’ Zander said.
‘I’ll sign the papers, though—if it helps you.’ Which was the reason she was there, yet all she felt was sad.
‘If I were Nico …’ she started, and then stopped, for Zander’s signature was the reason she was there and she had it in her grasp now.
‘Go on.’
She dared to go on, dared to speak her truth, whatever the eventual cost. ‘I wouldn’t want the land. I’d move as far away as I could.’ She looked at the most beautiful man she had ever seen, a man who was capable of so very much but was determined to stay locked in hate. ‘I don’t know why Nico wants to prolong the agony. Why he doesn’t just cut his losses …’ She stopped talking then, because she understood why. For surely Nico loved him, wanted, however painful, contact with him, wanted the hope that things might one day change.
‘You need oil.’ He picked up the bottle and changed the subject, gave her the benefit of that beautiful smile that was, she had found out, just a small part of him. ‘Your shoulders are burning.’
‘Don’t try and seduce me, Zander.’ She must not give into him, must not just bend to his will. ‘I’m not sleeping with you.’
‘I just want to oil you.’
‘Please.’ She shrank away, for she knew what his touch could do. ‘What do you want from me, Zander?’
And always Zander surprised her for, as he unstoppered the bottle, as he poured oil on her shoulders, he told her he wanted more than her body as he put in his bid. ‘I am leaving Xanos tonight—and I want you to come with me.’
HER arms were rigid beside her when she felt the sliver of oil touch her skin.
He traced it across her shoulders; she felt first his fingers then his palms and felt as if she was being gently kneaded, moulded. She attempted to retain her self-possession.
‘You want me to come with you?’
‘Now I know your circumstances, now that I know the truth, we could come to some arrangement that suits.’
‘That suits?’ Her heart seemed to plummet from the dizzy heights it had soared to, and she berated herself for daring to dream, for considering for a foolish moment that he might purely want her.
‘Relax, all I am doing is oiling you.’
‘I don’t trust you,’ she said, for it was true. Neither did her body trust what it might do, for her legs were shaking so much she had to push down her feet to stop them.
‘Lie down,’ Zander said, removing her sunglasses, and she wished he hadn’t for she felt braver behind them.
‘I’ll do your back.’ And as she tensed in resistance, he gave her his word. ‘We will not sleep together again till you trust me,’ Zander said. ‘And you will.’
I won’t, her mind insisted, but he lowered the bars of resistance with velvet-cloaked words and she lay on her stomach and felt the oil drizzle on her back and then the bliss of his fingers.
‘Come with me.’
‘Where?’ His hands were on her rib cage now, stroking in the oil.
‘Anywhere,’ Zander said. ‘Away from Nico. I will take care of you. Whatever he pays you—’
‘You mean you’ll employ me?’ She could feel the tears in her eyes and she squeezed them closed.
‘Turn over,’ he said, and she wanted to see him, she wanted to see him properly so she could understand what he was saying, so she did as he asked.
‘I’m not asking you to work for me.’ He poured oil to her stomach, but not once did his fingers edge towards gold. ‘Just that you do not work for him. I will look after you.’
‘Financially?’ She pushed his hands away, but they were quickly back and she wanted to sob because they changed her, they made the wrong so very right, made all things possible as now they moved to her waist. She wanted him to tear off her bikini and cool her with his mouth. ‘You mean that you’ll pay me to be there for you. There’s another word for that, Zander.’
And he was so loathsome because all he did was smile. He looked at her tears, her anger, and still all he did was smile, because what abhorred her was completely fine with him.
‘If you’re looking for my heart, I warn you,’ he said, ‘I have no heart to give.’
‘Then I don’t want you.’
‘Liar.’
‘I don’t,’ she said, except his hands were at her neck, unfastening the top of her bikini and then moving behind and working the tiny clasp, and so small were her breasts that they barely moved, but she felt sick with excitement and shame. He stared down at them, and she saw the lust in his eyes, the decadent lick of his lips.
‘I can’t …’
‘Can’t or won’t?’ His hands crept to her breasts,
‘Can’t.’ She shuddered, her eyes flashing to his, telling him her truth in the hope it would repel. ‘I’ve told you that I lied. I’m not what you think, I’m not able to travel. It nearly killed me to get away this time.’
‘Because of your mother.’
‘Yes,’ she wept, because the truth should halt his hands, that she was not all she had said she was should have him pause, but his hands moved lower.
‘How about a job with no work hours?’ She frowned up at him. ‘I don’t need another PA, Charlotte.’
‘I don’t want to be kept.’
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘When you’d get the best bits.’ He was more tempting than the devil. She could see the best bits, the thick outline of them in his wet bathers. The lull of the boat beneath her back, the sun on her arms, the cool shade of his body shielding her torso did nothing to cool her.
Was it wrong, to want only the best bits?
Wrong