Take Me

by Caitlin Crews

  “I stay here often when I arrive in Sydney too early to conduct business,” Conrad said, his voice as devoid of emotion as the rest of him.

  Jenny lifted her gaze to his. And even as some part of her told her she didn’t owe him anything, that theirs was an arranged marriage and surely he couldn’t expect anything of her, another part of her cringed in shame. Because she’d promised to marry him, and the promise had meant something to her. And then she’d gone to such lengths to tell herself that promise didn’t matter when she was down here in Australia.

  Was that really who she was now? Just...a liar?

  Once Jenny started questioning the lies she’d told, they all seemed to crowd in on her. Stretching all the way back to a beautiful Irish boy with eyes of the deepest green, who’d appeared in front of her out of nowhere one day when she was barely eighteen.

  And had stolen her heart in an instant.

  But Jenny had never planned on falling in love. It was the one thing her otherwise indulgent father forbade her—and she’d agreed, because she never again wanted to feel the way she had after her mother had died. She’d done everything she could to make sure she never would.

  And yet here she sat, with a cup of tea she didn’t want and a sea of grief inside her anyway.

  Jenny had ended up right where she’d never wanted to go.

  “We have no sexual relationship,” Conrad was saying, his voice as remote as the rest of him. “As little as I might enjoy seeing a woman wearing my ring in the arms of another man, I can’t claim the sight hurt me in any way. I do not feel betrayed.” He studied her for a moment. “I do feel curious, however. Do you plan to continue this affair after our marriage?”

  And somehow, that made it worse. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  She cleared her throat, then tried again. “I haven’t actually given the matter any thought.”

  One of Conrad’s eyebrows rose. “I don’t object. In theory. But there’s the issue of paternity.”

  Jenny could remember, so vividly, standing out there near the Opera House Bar, blithely assuring Dylan that this would all be fine. That even if she fell in love, ha ha ha, she would scamper back off into the arms of the husband her father had arranged for her, and all would be well.

  How had she ever imagined that she could do that?

  She barely knew chilly, controlled Conrad. And she couldn’t imagine, now, allowing a man she barely knew to touch her body. To pull out his cock and put it inside of her. The very notion made her feel ill.

  Which put rather more of a damper on the issue of the paternity of their potential children than she thought he meant.

  And Conrad was a decent man, as she told anyone who dared question her on her choices. Kinder than she’d imagined, if this calm response to finding her with Dylan was any indication. Then again, perhaps that only meant he was significantly more controlled than she’d thought.

  But most of all, he was Erika’s older brother. And even Erika had softened toward him recently, mostly because she happened to be shacked up with Conrad’s best friend.

  Whatever the reason, Jenny found herself leaning forward, over the table between them, so she could take his hands in hers.

  Something flashed over his face and made those cold eyes of his look silver for a moment. She had the shocking notion that there was a different man in him, too. And one she would likely never see.

  “Conrad,” she said softly. “Why do you want to marry me?”

  “You’re Lady Jenny. Who wouldn’t want to marry you?”

  Jenny could think of one person who didn’t want to marry her. One person who’d looked at her with something like torture in his eyes and talked to her about how to let go of him.

  “You mean, because of my father,” she said, concentrating on the man before her. Not the man she’d already lost.

  The faintest shred of amusement moved across Conrad’s face. “If you mean your father’s money, I have my own.”

  “Then why?” Conrad’s hands were warmer than she’d expected. And a whole lot tougher. “If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time you’ve ever really looked at me.”

  Conrad turned her left hand over, and fiddled with the ring he’d put there.

  “In the spirit of this sudden attack of honesty,” he said, and his voice was so dry that she couldn’t tell if he meant to sound that sardonic, or if it was simply a byproduct of the chill, “I didn’t need to look at you. You were good on paper. And I wanted to make the right choice. To live up to what was expected of the head of the Vanderburg family.”

  “Ah, yes,” Jenny said. “Expectations.”

  For a moment, they both stared at her ring.

  “You don’t seem at all angry,” Jenny ventured. She peered up at him. “You don’t even seem mildly irritated, if I’m honest.”

  His gray gaze touched hers and she didn’t know how she kept herself from flinching.

  “I’m not pleased,” he said.

  Jenny blew out a breath. She thought about her father and how disappointed he would be with her.

  But then, that was all about his fear. And she’d let that fear and her own grief hang over her for so long now that she’d accepted that it was simply...how things were. She’d decided long ago she could never be with someone she loved. And she’d never tried, so she’d assumed she could handle a loveless life.

  She knew better now.

  Jenny had no idea if she could make Dylan love her, all these years later. What she did know was that she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try.

  She pulled off the ring that Conrad had given her, and she met his gaze—and held it—as she placed it back in his hand.

  For a moment, he only stared back at her. As unreadable as ever.

  “My sister tells me that Dylan has been your best friend as long as she has,” Conrad said then. “Though she claims she’s your real best friend, because he’s not really a friend at all, is he?”

  “No,” Jenny said. At last. “I’m afraid Dylan has always been a lot more. Even if he did walk away today.”

  Conrad smiled, then. And his eyes had gone back to that frigid gray. He let the ring roll forward and back in his palm before he closed it up in his fist.

  He stood, tucking the ring away in his pocket. And it struck Jenny as funny, almost, that she was yet again in a supplicant position, staring up a man.

  But not the right one.

  “He wanted to tear me apart with his bare hands,” Conrad said, gazing down at her. “I thought he was going to try to put me through the wall. Instead, he walked away. Why would a man do that?”

  Jenny only stared up at him as her heart began to pound at her like a battering ram.

  “I don’t love you, Jenny,” Conrad continued. His voice was matter-of-fact. “If you married me, I never would. Love is not something I have to offer. But even a blind man could see that your friend does not suffer these same restrictions.” He inclined his head, cool and unbothered, and she couldn’t tell if that made it better or worse. “If you’re not content with our arrangement, if you feel even half the things I can see all over your face, go. Find him. I don’t think you need my blessing, but you have it.”

  And Jenny stayed there, still leaning out over the small table, while the man she’d intended to marry turned and walk from the room.

  She stayed where she was, there beside a lovely tea service she didn’t have the slightest urge to touch.

  She thought about all these years since her first sight of Dylan at Oxford. And it was a temptation to think of them all as wasted. But when she set all those years of friendship next to the past few weeks of absolute joy, she knew, somehow, that she couldn’t have had one without the other. That it had always been leading here.

  What she had to ask herself was whether or not, had Conrad not turned up the way he ha
d today, she would have called off this wedding herself.

  Jenny tried to imagine walking down an aisle in the spring, and seeing Conrad standing at the head of it.

  And it was wrong. It was just...wrong.

  There was only one man she’d ever wanted to see smiling at her, from the head of an aisle or anywhere else.

  Her breath left her in a rush. She dug into the pocket of the coat she hadn’t managed to take off and pulled out her mobile. Then she called a number she knew by heart, though it was ten o’clock at night there and she knew her father didn’t like late night calls.

  And in fact, he sounded typically put out when he picked up the phone.

  “It’s me, Papa,” Jenny said. “I know you’re asleep or on your way. But I have something to tell you and I know you’re not going to like it. I need you to love me anyway.”

  And when her father sputtered, Jenny told him the news.

  Then repeated it when he fell silent.

  “Do you love him?” her father asked. He sounded old, for the first time that she could recall. And it made her sad, but it didn’t make her change her mind. “Do you really love him?”

  “I think I always have, Papa,” Jenny whispered. “But I tried not to. For your sake.”

  “Does he love you?” her father asked, sounding almost severe. As if he couldn’t bear to think about it.

  “That’s the thing,” Jenny said with a quiet conviction she hadn’t known, until now, was there inside her. “I think he’s loved me even longer.”

  And when her father sighed, she knew she’d won. Or that he would support her, anyway. It felt much like the same thing.

  “You don’t have to love him,” she told her father. “I don’t require it.”

  “I love you, Jenny,” her father replied gruffly, and she knew those weren’t words that came easily to him. Bringing with them, as they did, the potential for so much loss. So much grief. But she’d never doubted the truth of it, no matter how little he said it. “If this is what you want, I support it. Your mother would have flayed me alive for making you think you couldn’t love the man you wanted to love.”

  And Jenny didn’t know when she started crying, but she didn’t stop. Not when she ended the call. Not when she sat there a moment, thinking of the mother she’d lost, the father she still had and all these years she’d tried so hard to keep herself from feeling.

  But she couldn’t cry forever, not even if the tears had more to do with the acknowledgement of emotion—and the sheer relief that she was no longer expected to marry a man she hardly knew and didn’t want. She took a deep breath. She wiped at her eyes. She stayed where she was and finally drank her tea.

  And then she set off into Sydney to find the love of her life, and convince him that they had never been meant to be friends.

  By any means necessary.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  DYLAN RAN THE coastal path twice, at a speed and intensity he could only call punishing.

  It didn’t help.

  He slammed his way into his house, and it was starting already. Ghosts everywhere he looked. Memories like an assault. It was hard to believe he’d been so careless. So astonishingly reckless. So certain that it would be worth it, no matter what shape he’d find himself in when she left.

  The door to the guest room mocked him. He pushed his way past it, down the hall, not sure what he was doing but absolutely certain that he didn’t need to go in there. Not yet. He was still too furious about his great bloody sacrifice to tip on over to what waited on the other side of all that black, righteous rage.

  He stormed into his kitchen, not afraid to make noise as he rattled his cupboards. He rummaged around in his refrigerator, throwing together the healthy smoothie he normally drank after his runs, barely paying attention to what he was doing.

  Because what did it matter?

  Congratulations, you pathetic fucker, he growled at himself. You’re a great friend. Lucky you.

  He braced himself on the kitchen bench, but when he looked out toward his million-dollar view, stopped short.

  Because a woman was standing there with her back to him, staring out at the same sea.

  His heart walloped him one. Then another.

  But he was dreaming, of course. He was hallucinating. He’d been up all night, putting out fires and kicking asses all over the globe, and his morning hadn’t exactly gone to plan. If he was lucky, he thought sourly, this was actually him in the midst of his death throes. They’d find his body out there on the path somewhere near Coogee, twitching off into eternity.

  But she turned around, and the wind picked up the ends of her dark hair. Her eyes were soft and brown; he knew how every inch of her tasted, and it was Jenny.

  Of course it was Jenny.

  Everything in him lit on fire.

  He told himself it was pure rage.

  Dylan slammed the glass he was holding down on the countertop, then stormed toward his deck. He flung the glass door open with such force that he was surprised it didn’t shatter.

  “What the hell are you doing here,” he growled.

  And he’d seen a host of different expressions on Jenny’s face since she’d been here. He could have written a book detailing each and every one of them. But the way she looked at him now, some kind of serenity mixed with defiance, was like a slap.

  “I have a key, Dylan.”

  How dare she look amused?

  He was too close to her, but he stopped himself before he put his hands on her. Because he couldn’t do that anymore, could he? Everything was changed again, and he hated it, and it was a whole lot easier to be noble when she wasn’t standing right in front of him.

  “Best give it back, then,” he said. “And fuck off back to England, as planned.”

  Jenny didn’t snap back at him, which he half expected. Maybe he’d wanted it. And she didn’t look upset, either. Instead, she tilted her head to one side, and studied him. “No.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said no, Dylan. If it’s all the same to you, I’m not going to go back to England.”

  His mind reeled as he tried to figure out how that could be. What it meant. He took a step back from her, because that was the exact opposite of what he wanted to do. And then he raked his hands through his hair, because he couldn’t put them on her the way he would have yesterday.

  And that meant he had to use his mouth. To talk.

  “You’re staying in Australia.” It wasn’t a question, really. And when she nodded, he found he was gritting his teeth. “And your man? He’s all right with your relocation? Because that wasn’t the impression I got earlier.”

  “Funny thing about that,” Jenny began.

  But Dylan couldn’t take it. He held a hand up between them, and the truth about all of this, about him, was as clear to him then as the Tasman Sea laid out there before him.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice gruff. Deep. “I don’t care.”

  Because he could stand here and pretend to give a shit about whether or not she was engaged. He could pretend that he was in possession of a moral compass when it came to her, but he wasn’t.

  And sure, he had spent the whole of his life trying his best to be a good man. Because he wanted so badly to differentiate himself from his family. He wasn’t an addict. He wasn’t a liar. He wasn’t a vicious thug, roaming the streets of Dublin and taking out his feelings with his fists. He drank, but never to excess—not any longer.

  Dylan had been in control of himself for as long as he could remember.

  Except when it came to Jenny.

  She was his weakness. She was the one chink in his armor, and if he had to be her dirty little secret, he would do it happily.

  Hell, he’d played her toothless buddy for years. What was the difference? At least a dirty secret got to put his hands on her.


  “I care,” Jenny said, and a different kind of heat flashed across her face.

  She stepped forward and, to his great surprise, hauled off and thunked him one. Right in the chest.

  He stared down at his chest in astonishment, then back at her. “Why did you thump me?”

  “I’m in love with you,” she hurled at him, sounding furious.

  And that was a far harder hit. It took his breath from him.

  “You were absolutely right,” Jenny threw at him, in the same voice, crisp with temper. “I had no idea what having sex—or properly fucking—would do to me. Because it wasn’t the sex, you idiot. It was you. I’ve been in love with you my whole life.”

  Dylan had never had auditory hallucinations before. And if this was more of his death throes, he was fine with it. He would die every day to hear her say these things.

  “Love was the one thing I was never allowed to do, Dylan. It was the one thing I couldn’t allow. Because I was afraid that I would love someone the way my father loved my mother, and I would end up alone. But what good did it do me? All those dates. All those stupid boyfriends. I even agreed to marry a man who I knew didn’t love me.”

  Surely by this point, he’d have hurried up and died. The alternative was that he was alive and this was really happening, and he couldn’t make any sense of it. “Jenny—”

  “I kept telling myself that I was coming to Australia as an experiment, that was all. I knew I wanted you to show me good sex, but I didn’t dare hope for this.” She took the hand she’d used to thump him, hard, and put it over her own heart. “I love you. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, probably because you were never really my friend at all. You’ve always been so much more than that to me.”

  She looked as if she expected him to say something, then, but he couldn’t speak. He was frozen solid in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that she was saying all the things he’d long since given up on ever hearing from her.