Untamed

by Caitlin Crews

  “That’s a great idea. And then I can be him in every possible way.”

  “Or not.” Charlie shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a fan of the guy. But I’m also not exactly crying a river over my circumstances these days. And I wouldn’t have any of the things I do if it wasn’t for the old man’s will.”

  “You’re not the one in danger of turning into Daniel St. George.”

  Charlie’s grin was razor-sharp, reminding Jason that this particular half brother had spent most of his life playing outlaw games in the wilds of Texas, surrounded by far more dangerous men than Jason had ever been.

  “If you don’t want to turn into the old man, brother,” Charlie said quietly, “it’s real simple. Don’t.”

  Jason listened to the business-related part of the call then, but after they hung up, he wandered outside and found himself brooding out at the view. The sky, the sea. And all the impenetrable jungle in between, with chattering birds in the trees and the dance of trade winds over his face.

  All this tropical beauty that didn’t go along with all he thought he knew about the man who’d made him. It was too remote here. Too unspoiled. Too perfect.

  But then again, the real truth was that he didn’t know Daniel St. George at all. He’d never met the man while he was alive. He’d had to read all the same articles and watch the same videos online that the rest of the word had if he wanted to know anything about the guy. The only thing Jason really knew about his father was how he felt about the man’s absence. The stories he’d told himself as a kid to explain that absence. And the understanding he’d come to over time of what that brief affair had done to his mother.

  And yeah, maybe he’d spent a little too much time and energy pushing himself to be the best he could be in everything he was even remotely good at, just to prove something.

  Not to his mama, who had adored him since the day he was born. Not to his actual ohana, his mother’s people spread out over the Hawaiian Islands, who had actually been there for him while his mama worked her butt off and tried to keep him fed and clothed and happy.

  In his football heyday, interviewers had always asked Jason where he’d gotten the drive to pursue the game the way he had. And he’d always told them some bullshit cobbled together from the kinds of things he thought he ought to feel, always bringing it back to his mother’s sacrifices.

  But he knew the truth. And here on this deserted island, with only the pieces of himself Lucinda had left behind, he let himself face it at last.

  He’d spent his entire life trying to get his father to notice him.

  He’d figured if he got a little famous, if he made a little noise, sooner or later his birth father would show up. Tell him how the desertion had been a mistake, or in Jason’s best interest, or something. Maybe even hit him up for money. One way or another, Jason had figured he’d smoke the asshole out.

  But Daniel had never shown up. If he’d been proud of Jason at all, he kept to himself.

  The only thing Jason had of his father was his silence.

  And if his mother was correct, the dedication to losing himself in disposable pussy because that was a hell of a lot easier than connecting with other people.

  In case he had any doubts about that, Lucinda had given him a crash course in what it looked like to experience some crazy, life-altering intimacy and then fall all over herself to pretend it hadn’t been that at all.

  Had that been part of it, too? Had he been afraid that if he stopped roaming around the planet, sleeping with everything that moved, he’d lose the only link he had to a father he was pretty sure he wouldn’t even like?

  That had the ring of unfortunate, uncomfortable truth inside him.

  But the other thing he knew was that when push came to shove, he was far more his mother’s child than his father’s.

  And Leilani Kaoki had suffered exactly one fool, one time. Never before and never since. Daniel St. George had been her one mistake, and she’d spent every day since making sure she raised up a son who knew how to see the truth of everyone he encountered—even himself. Eventually.

  And Jason knew a little something about excuses, sure. And the way a person could hide right there in his own mirror, if there were enough excuses at hand. How that could go on and on for years, but sooner or later, there was only a reflection in that mirror and too much truth to bear.

  Why wouldn’t you build a resort here? Lucinda had asked.

  And Jason grinned now, while the breeze teased his face and the sea sighed its way onto the rocks far below.

  Because that was an excellent question.

  And he knew just how he was going to answer her.

  Lucinda rejoiced in her welcome home to England, four miserable travel days later. She’d had to wait longer than she’d liked in Fiji to get on a plane to Los Angeles, there in the sweltering heat. And had been forced to wait in too-sunny California for a seat on a plane back to London, too, for what had seemed like another eternity.

  But when she’d finally made it onto a red-eye headed for the UK, Heathrow hunched there when they’d finally landed, gray and wet and green, like a song of homecoming.

  She smiled as she surrendered herself to the tender mercies of the Tube that whisked her along beneath the London streets. She told herself she was merry and bright, despite another round of serious exhaustion hanging on her like a cloak, as she walked from the Tube stop back to her flat. She was happy every time she heard a horn, or screeching tires, or the rest of the clattering noise and dismal tumult of London.

  Lucinda was sure she’d never been so happy in her life as she was to let herself into her flat, then find her way to the rain-streaked window in her lounge that looked out over a dingy rooftop and a few brick walls.

  No assaulting sunshine. No complicated blue sky and sea, stretching on toward forever.

  No half-naked man, all temptation and wickedness.

  Just London, doing its thing. It made her imagine that all she needed was a good sleep and she’d feel like herself again. How hard could it be to forget about her too-brief time on a fairy-tale island? After a good sleep it would feel like nothing more than a dream, she was certain.

  Lucinda staggered off to bed, slept for hours and woke up to treat herself to tea and toast. No platters of dramatic fruit, everything garnished with coconut and soft breezes. Just a proper breakfast on a rainy Thursday morning, like any other.

  She thought about taking another day to settle herself but decided against it. Her endless hours of travel had allowed her to play her time on that island over and over again in her head. She’d relived every touch. Every sound she’d made, on the surfboard or in Jason’s bed. What would lying about her flat do but make it worse?

  She needed to put all of that behind her. Now.

  Lucinda took a certain grim pleasure in her usual routine. The attention to her hair, her makeup. The heels she wore because practicality had its place, but sleek, stylish, wearable weapons were a woman’s best friend.

  And then, telling herself that she was perfectly fine and suffered no ill effects or emotional residue at all, she headed back into work.

  She was so busy congratulating herself on her escape from paradise and the terrifying lure of the most astoundingly beautiful man she’d ever met that it took her entirely too long to notice the way everyone in the office was staring at her.

  “Is there something on my face?” she asked her harried assistant after she’d run the gauntlet of the executive floor. A little more sharply than necessary, perhaps.

  “You’re quite tanned, actually. That’s surprising.” Her usually reliable and practical assistant shook herself, as if she hadn’t meant to say that. “But you’re a legend, Lucinda. That’s the main thing. You did it. You really did it.”

  Lucinda blinked. “What did I do?”

  “You know.” Pandora shook her hea
d, admiringly, as if Lucinda was being coy. And then made it all worse by nudging her with her shoulder, as if they were friends. “They should have known better, shouldn’t they? Lucinda Graves always gets what she wants.”

  Lucinda had the faintest inkling then—but surely not. Surely there was no way. Still, she was too taken back by the possibility to lecture her assistant on proper office decorum.

  Especially when the phone rang and her presence was requested in the executive boardroom. Immediately.

  “Congratulations,” Pandora whispered after she put the phone down.

  Lucinda turned and headed for the boardroom, done in achingly posh wood with gold accents and featuring a priceless view over London. She’d always loved that view. She liked to walk the long way through the office so she could look at it, always visible behind the clear glass walls that invited everyone in the office to see what it looked like when important meetings happened. Who attended and who dominated.

  She had studied that room, and she’d vowed that one day, she would look out to see London at her feet and all of upper management gazing at her as if she was the star.

  And she could see it happening as she walked toward the room. She saw all the men in their suits turn to watch her approach. She lengthened her stride, aware that she looked bulletproof and flawless, just the way she liked it.

  She might not understand this moment, but it was hers, and she’d take it.

  But then the sea of business suits parted, and everything changed.

  Because Jason was here.

  In London. In her office.

  His back to that glorious view of London as if she was the only thing worth looking at.

  And worse, he wasn’t standing in the middle of the executive boardroom with his miraculous chest out and all those acres and acres of brown skin and perfect tattoos on display. Lucinda felt that keenly, like one more betrayal.

  Because Jason was wearing a black, obviously bespoke suit that hugged that big, athletic form of his in a way that made her blood turn molten in her veins. He’d scraped his hair back and fastened it, and that was terrible, too. It made him look like some kind of elegant marauder, and she couldn’t bear the heat of it.

  Much less the way his gaze caught hers through the glass.

  As if he knew all the things she wanted so badly to hide. The anticipation in her belly that was easing its way lower still and changing into fire. The catch in her breath. That damnable weakness in her knees, just because he was near.

  Every single lie she’d told herself over the past few days about how happy she was to get away from him.

  She wanted to run, screaming. She wanted to keep on going, past the boardroom and back out into the gray morning. She wanted to pretend none of this was happening.

  But that was the coward’s way out. And Lucinda was no coward, no matter how much she wished otherwise this morning.

  She lifted her chin to a properly belligerent angle. Then she shoved open the glass door and stepped inside.

  Instantly, it was like the two of them were alone. As if there weren’t all those other faceless executives in between them, judging them. Jason’s gaze slammed into her the way his cock had, over and over, and she knew that he could see an answering heat all over her face.

  She knew that he could see everything.

  Especially all the lies she’d told herself—and him—to get her away from that island in the first place.

  Someone said something, but she didn’t know what. Or care.

  Because even on a dreary, wet Thursday, surrounded by suits and wearing one himself—to blend in—there was nothing but wildness in the man who stood at that window and dared her to come at him. Sheer, untamed wildness, and what was wrong with her that every single thing in her thrilled to it?

  As if she’d been carrying the same kind of wild around inside her, all this time.

  And he knew that, too.

  She could see that he did. She could feel it.

  “Good morning, Lucinda,” Jason said, those dark eyes glinting at her. Challenge and temper and what she very much feared was retribution. “Congratulations. You convinced me to build a resort on my island after all.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “YOU SHOULD LOOK HAPPIER, Scotland,” Jason drawled after he cleared the room. He was standing by the windows in this stuffy, confining office, his dark gaze fastened to Lucinda’s like he could see straight through her. It almost frightened him how much he wanted to believe he could. “You won. You get what you wanted all along. Surely that calls for, if not a celebration, a smile?”

  And her familiar scowl made his heart beat a little faster.

  “This isn’t about winning. This is a highhanded bit of strategy. The best defense is a good offense or whatever you Americans are always ranting on about.” She stood straighter, as if she was seconds away from taking a swing at him. Which he would have welcomed, because he knew how it would end. “When you and I both knew you flew all the way to England because you didn’t like the fact that I left you without your express permission.”

  After the executives had swarmed around Lucinda like ants on a picnic lunch, offering her all kinds of congratulations that didn’t make it to the envy in their eyes, Jason had demanded some privacy. Not that there was much of it in this glass box of a room that might as well have been a fishbowl. The men in their suits all filed out, baring their teeth and murmuring their grudging appreciation Lucinda’s way as they went. Some tried to glad-hand Jason, too, but he stared at them until they slunk away.

  Now it was only the two of them and too much glass. And all he wanted to do was strip those dour clothes right off her. All that relentless, ruthless black. The angrily slicked-back red hair when his mouth watered for her glorious curls. He could see that the shoes she’d worn on the island had been a concession because here, the shoes she wore were skyscraper high, with red on their soles and killer points as heels. She looked mean and sharp, and he loved every inch of it.

  He ached, everywhere, that he didn’t have his hands on her already.

  Especially when she was glaring at him as if his presence here was some kind of betrayal.

  But Jason was holding on to the advice Charlie had given him. Hard. If he didn’t want to be like their father, he didn’t have to be. It was that simple and that complicated.

  Their father would never have chased a woman across the world. Their father had barely managed to remember a woman’s name the next morning, or the location of the children he’d littered about the planet.

  Step number one of not being Daniel St. George was the fact Jason had gotten on that plane. He’d decided that in the final tally, he didn’t really care what happened on that island he’d never wanted and didn’t know what to do with himself. He wasn’t attached to it. He didn’t have any dreams about it one way or another.

  But he wasn’t sure he wanted to go on living the same old life he’d already been living. Not without Lucinda.

  Wasn’t that a kick? She was the one night he never wanted to forget. If he had to chase her down on the other side of the planet, well, he was prepared to do that and more. He was more than happy to hunt her down. Lure her in with the resort she wanted. Keep her close with the one thing he knew she couldn’t resist. Not without removing herself entirely.

  Him.

  “You don’t want to build any kind of resort on that island,” Lucinda was saying, her pale red brows pulled tight. Jason could see the sun on her face in the form of all those cute freckles, but her skin looked pale even so. Her blue eyes were too big, too wide, and her mouth might have been painted in a bright color he very much wanted to taste, but she pressed her lips flat. “You want to keep it as some kind of sulky tantrum. A monument to a man you’re terrified you’ve already become. I understand that.”

  “Yeah. You sound real understanding.”

 
“I’m not going to pretend this is professional, because I think we ripped through that boundary a long time ago.”

  “It was never professional, darlin’.”

  Lucinda’s chin lifted higher, which should have been impossible. “Do you really believe that you’re the only person in the world who has a shit father, Jason? I don’t know how to break this to you, but that doesn’t make you special. It makes you alive, that’s all. You should count yourself lucky that your shit father was considerate enough to ignore you for your entire life. Mine was far less accommodating.”

  She laughed, though there was precious little humor in the sound. “And mine didn’t leave me a luxurious private island, complete with a stately home for my personal use, plonked down in the middle of the sparkling Pacific Ocean as an apology. Last I heard, in fact, my father has drunk his way through several stints in prison, at least as many bouts of liver disease and more lost jobs than you can count. And he’s still going strong, no doubt beating up my mother and terrifying neighbor children just the way he used to do me. So you will forgive me, I hope, if my sympathy for your plight is somewhat dim.”

  “Good rant, Lucinda,” Jason drawled. “Have you been stewing on that one ever since you left Fiji?”

  She looked past him and blinked. Then squared her shoulders as if she’d forgotten that they had an entire audience clustered there on the other side of the glass, pretending that they were going about their business. When she looked back at him, her hands were curled into fists at her side, and Jason knew her well enough now to understand that that storm in her gaze was turmoil. Emotion.

  Not that she’d admit it. Not his stubborn redhead.

  His heart kicked at him again.

  “As a matter of fact, I did not spend a series of unpleasant long-haul flights having fights with people who weren’t there. I do try to avoid that whenever possible.” Lucinda sighed, as if her pissy, prissy voice irritated her, too. “If your goal was to disconcert me, I’m afraid you’ve come all this way for nothing. I don’t know why you suddenly want to develop the island, but if you’re under the impression that I’m going to come over all noble and refuse to do it because you’re so clearly using it as a bargaining chip in whatever psychodrama you have going on in your head, I’m afraid you’re going to be quite disappointed.”