The Rogue

by J. R. Ward

  He dropped her arm, held his hands up and went for the front door. “I’m sorry…I’m…Yeah, I’m out of here.”

  * * *

  Mad felt positively ill as she heard the Harley roar to life and take off.

  When the thundering din faded, she covered her face with her hands and cursed. That argument just now had been her fault. She’d goaded Spike, taken out her anger on him.

  But the thing was, she’d watched when Amelia had walked into the sunroom. She’d seen him appraise her half sister. And she knew what he saw.

  Amelia was even more beautiful than ever. The past four years had sharpened the woman’s features and incomparable sense of style, elevating her above mere humans, like a priceless figurine on a shelf. Who wouldn’t be enchanted?

  Except unlike Spike, Mad knew what was underneath the fine wrapping: all that calculation, all that casual, careless cruelty that led to a desire to play with other people’s emotions. If Richard was an in-your-face destructive force, Amelia was the kind that came in the back door, taking shots by stealth.

  Which was the only reason the woman had supported Mad going on the corporation’s board. Amelia knew that would drive Richard insane.

  Mad shook herself into focus and headed for the stairs, jogging up them fast. In her room, she changed into her swimsuit and then went down to the pool. As she dove into the water and set a brutal pace, she told herself she could take it. Whatever Richard and Amelia threw at her, she could take it and live.

  As for Spike? She would apologize to him, of course, but she would keep her distance. Last night…last night she’d thought she knew everything that mattered about him, that the present was enough. Now, she wished she’d known him for years because trust took time and experience and they’d had neither. So in the face of having had two men she was with leave her for Amelia, it was hard to believe Spike wouldn’t do the same thing.

  After all, when the second boyfriend of hers had met her half sister, Mad had told herself it couldn’t possibly happen again—she couldn’t possibly have another man she was interested in prefer Amelia. Good heavens, she’d thought back then, what were the chances of it happening twice?

  Damn good, as it turned out. She’d batted two for two at getting left at the side of the road. Adding a third to the tally just didn’t seem that far out of the realm of plausibility.

  As Mad thought about Amelia materializing in the sunroom’s doorway, looking like a queen, she recalled Spike’s yellow eyes going over the woman.

  The pain was so great Mad flubbed her stroke and struggled to fall back into her rhythm. Those betrayals by the two other men seemed minor if she considered what it would be like to have Spike fall into Amelia’s bed. After last night, she’d be ruined if Amelia got her claws into him.

  Chapter Ten

  Mad climbed out of the pool an hour later. She dried herself with her towel, wrapped it around her body and then sat down on a lawn chair. The swimming had been therapeutic, clearing her mind a little, calming her emotions. Now if Spike would just let her apologize—

  “I’m really pissed off at you.”

  Mad jumped and glanced behind her. Spike was standing a couple of yards away on the terrace and his stance made it seem as if he were facing an opponent: his feet were spread apart and his hands were planted on his hips. His eyes were as dark as yellow could get.

  “You have every right to be angry,” she said, shifting around and looking right at him. “I was going to come find you. I’m very sorry I jumped on you like that.”

  He nodded, but his posture didn’t change. “Apology accepted. Now I want to know what’s doing with your sister.”

  “Half sister.”

  “Whatever.”

  “No, the distinction matters to me.” She glanced at the house, noting the many windows that were open to the morning air. She owed him more than an apology, she owed him an explanation, but she had to have some privacy. “Do you mind if we walk a little?”

  “If that’s what you need to talk, I’m all for it.”

  As he crossed the flagstone, she shoved her bare feet into her running shoes and left the laces unbound.

  “You’re going to trip,” he said.

  She bent down and made two hasty knots.

  As they walked over the bright green grass to the flower beds, the sun bore down on them, the heat seeming oppressive rather than soothing.

  “Amelia…” She cleared her throat. “Amelia is…”

  God, she couldn’t find the words.

  “Come on, Mad, do you actually believe I’d make a move on her?”

  She stopped and met him in the eye. “Twice. It’s happened to me twice before. So when a man I…like is around my half sister, my instinct is to cut my losses. Not your fault and I’m honestly sorry.”

  He frowned. “How can you think I’d screw you over like that?”

  “I want to trust you. I really do. It’s just…seeing her this morning made me realize how little I know you. I mean, I wish we’d spent more time together. Or that I had something, some kind of context for you like more details about your life, where you’ve been, what you’ve done.” As his face tightened, she cursed softly, realizing how she must be coming across. “Ah…hell. I don’t mean to put this back on you again. Listen, Amelia and I and Richard, we’re a bad combination and our roles are set like bricks in a wall. I’m very sorry you’re tangled in it.”

  He went over to a group of tea roses and stared down at the fat, rainbow-vivid blooms. Then he took a seat on a marble bench and plugged his elbows into his knees.

  He looked up at her, his eyes burning. “You’re right. We don’t know each other all that well, do we?”

  She sat down beside him, the bench’s stone warm against the back of her legs and her seat.

  In the silence that followed, a crazy impulse took hold of her. She fought it, but ended up losing.

  “There’s a remedy for that whole not-knowing thing.” She cleared her throat. “You could stick around. I could stick around. We could…stick around.”

  His gaze shifted away. When he rubbed his face, she knew with a chill that the next thing he was going to do was shake his head.

  And he did. “It wouldn’t work. I’m not…built for that.”

  Pain lanced through her chest.

  But you knew this about him, she reminded herself. You knew this before you were with him. He couldn’t have been any clearer in front of that café yesterday morning.

  Fine, but it still murdered her.

  “Mind if I ask why relationships don’t interest you?” When he hesitated, she said with an edge, “Or is that too personal?”

  “They’re just not for me.”

  “Why?”

  He looked her in the face. At first, the exhausted light in his eyes offended her because she assumed he was impatient with her question. But then she saw something else: pain. An achy, lonely pain.

  “I wish I had a better answer for you.” He stood up. “Let’s go back to the house, okay?”

  “Now who’s running?” she whispered.

  A vicious word drifted out of his mouth. But then he said, “Yeah…you’re right.”

  He rubbed the top of his head, making his hair stand up even straighter. Then he glanced back at the mansion. As his eyes narrowed, he seemed to be tracing the lines of the massive house as if he were taking mathematical measurements.

  “I’m not…” His voice drifted. “I’m really not worthy of you.”

  She frowned, appalled. “Spike, I don’t care if you didn’t grow up like I did. I’m not into money.”

  “I know.” A shadow of a smile lifted his lips. “Although I do feel compelled to mention that your garage is bigger than the house I was raised in.”

  “Not my garage. My father’s, then my half brother’s. Never mine. And I’d like to point out that your bike is bigger than the bunks I sleep on.”

  Now he really smiled. “Touché.”

  But his expression draine
d away quickly. “If I were a different man, Mad—” He shook his head as if cutting his words off with the motion. “I have no regrets. Well, no regrets in that I wouldn’t change anything. I couldn’t. But I am sorry for how I can’t…do this with you.”

  His conviction and sincerity were so deep, they were written in the very lines of his body: the calmness of his breathing, the steady gaze, the loose hands at his sides.

  Clearly his freedom was important to him, she thought. And considering the way she felt about being out on the ocean, she could respect that. Yet, why couldn’t—

  Stop it, she said to herself. Stop trying to negotiate. He is what he is.

  “Spike, after this weekend, will I ever see you again? And not in the relationship sense. I know that’s not in the cards. I’m talking as…friends?” God, she hated that word.

  His chest expanded as he took a deep breath. Before he could speak, she got up and started for the house.

  “Actually, don’t answer that. I already know what you’re going to say.”

  * * *

  As Mad got ready for dinner in her bedroom, she kept waiting for Spike to knock on the door and tell her he was taking off.

  When the rapping sound finally came, she thought, okay…so this was it.

  She grabbed the loose black skirt she was going to wear, pulled it on and braced herself as she went to open the door.

  The bracing turned out to be a good idea, though not for the reason she’d expected.

  Amelia was standing in the hall. “May I come in, Madeline?”

  Mad was so surprised, she stepped back and let the woman pass.

  Man, check out that dress, she thought absently.

  Amelia was wearing an ice-blue sheath and plenty of aquamarines, looking as if she’d stepped out of the pages of Women’s Wear Daily. As she glanced around, her blond hair shimmered. Positively shimmered.

  “This is different from when you stayed here,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “It doesn’t suit you.” The comment was soft, almost an afterthought, the kind of subtle taunt that had always been Amelia’s stock in trade.

  Mad straightened her spine. “Thank you for pointing that out. But you didn’t come here to talk drapes, did you?”

  Amelia’s eyes drifted over. “The dark red suited you. It was vivid. Strong. This is too weak to be your room.”

  Mad frowned. And the expression stuck as a long silence followed.

  “Amelia…what are you doing here?”

  The woman’s manicured hands traced over the pale blue stones at her throat. On another person, Mad would have thought the gesture was a show of nerves, but not with Amelia. You had to care what people thought to be nervous and Amelia had never given a damn.

  “How have you been?” the woman asked.

  Good Lord, Mad thought. Probably the first time her half sister had ever asked her that question.

  “Ah…I’m the same.” She shook her head as she realized that wasn’t true. “No, I mean, I’m well.”

  More silence.

  “And you?” Mad asked.

  Amelia smiled vacantly. “Very fine, thank you.”

  Mad was not surprised by the social answer.

  Feeling fidgety, she tucked her shirt into her skirt and pushed her feet into the only pair of flats she owned. As she looked down, she had a passing thought that Amelia probably didn’t have any shoes like this, and if she did, they were not five years old and scuffed.

  Mad glanced up. Amelia was staring out of the windows at the garden, completely still. The sight of her absorbed by some distant point was eerie. She was always a whirling dervish of activity, a constant social barometer taking a read on everything around her, assessing, measuring herself, moving on as soon as her conclusion had been reached: always a consumer of the world, though somehow not a participant in life.

  Now, though, she looked unplugged, her drive not in neutral, but extinguished.

  Okay, enough with the psychobabble. This visit was something from the twilight zone and Mad was beginning to seriously freak out.

  “We’re going to be late for dinner,” she said. “You know how Richard is.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do.” Those gray eyes shifted over. “Madeline, I—”

  “You ready to go downstairs?” Spike’s voice came through the open door before he did.

  He stopped short as soon as he got into the room.

  Mad flushed. “Hi…Ah, yes. I am.”

  Spike glanced at Amelia. “Evening.”

  From out in the hall, the grandfather clock started to strike. Amelia stared at Mad for a moment and then said, “I’ll see you both downstairs.”

  Mad watched the woman go and was glad when she left.

  “Mad?” Spike asked.

  She looked at him. Tonight he had on a black silk shirt and dress slacks. With his jagged hair and his thick silver earring and the tattoos on either side of his neck, he looked dangerously male. Stunningly attractive. She eyed his heavy shoulders and remembered hanging on to them.

  “Mad?”

  She shook herself. “I’m ready to go.”

  * * *

  Over dinner, Spike decided that the Maguire family was a freaking train wreck of dysfunction. Which just proved you could live in the most beautiful house on the planet and your life could still be a mess.

  Man, if it weren’t for the five other couples in the room, the air would have been so oppressive the stuff would have qualified as a solid. Mad hadn’t said more than two words and had barely touched her food. Amelia, who was on Spike’s right, looked like she was going to splinter apart. And meanwhile Richard sat at the head of the table, all simmering satisfaction as he manipulated the conversation.

  Spike had a feeling that if he’d run the scene back about twenty years, this was exactly the way things had been during Mad’s younger years: father figure enjoying his top of the food chain status while everyone else was carefully kept off balance. Richard’s act was obviously a mixture of nature and nurture.

  And all this for what? The money in those supermarkets around the Northeast? It seemed ironic that an investment in bringing sustenance to millions of people had contributed to such an emotional famine in this household.

  He glanced at Mad then shifted his eyes to his water glass.

  All afternoon, he’d thought about leaving. He’d even packed up his clothes. Clearly, things were worse for Mad because he was here, not better. And the awful part was that he was finding it harder and harder not to complicate her situation even more. He’d almost told her about himself when they’d been in the garden. Had been so close. But laying down the details of his past seemed unfair. Like she needed to deal with that crap on top of the compost heap she was already having to shovel herself out from under?

  As he shifted in his chair, Amelia said quietly, “You hate this, don’t you?”

  He glanced at his plate. “Well, the trout could have been better.”

  She smiled a little. “I’m talking about the party, not the protein.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly a tie-and-cuff kind of guy. So formal’s not my bag.”

  “And yet Richard said you’re a French chef.” Her tone was friendly, that smile of hers soft. “Cooking in that manner is very formal.”

  “You ever seen a restaurant kitchen in action? Trust me, even La Nuit became a pit during the dinner service crush.”

  The woman’s head snapped toward him. “La Nuit? You were a chef there?”

  “Yup. My partner, Nate Walker, and I both were.”

  “When?”

  “For me, up until about a year ago.” He frowned, then rubbed his jaw, considering Amelia’s face. “You know, I thought you looked familiar. You used to go there, didn’t you? With Stefan Reichter’s crowd.”

  “Not often.” She looked away and played with her trout.

  “Man, Stefan was wild, wasn’t he? I never expected him to settle down.”

  Her head yanked back in his dir
ection. “Excuse me?”

  “Stefan just got married. Like a week ago. I understand Estella’s pregnant, although the word is he wanted to be her husband anyway.” As Amelia went white as the damask tablecloth, Spike said, “Hey, are you okay?”

  “Oh, yes.” She quickly had some wine. Then a little more. “I’m just fine.”

  “You sure?”

  She nodded. After a moment, her coloring came back and she cleared her throat. “So tell me…You really do like Mad, don’t you?”

  He shrugged, not about to discuss that kind of thing. “What’s not to like?”

  Amelia put down her wineglass. “Be good to her, will you?”

  As the woman seemed to honestly mean what she said, he took the comment at face value. “As much as I can be.”

  Which wasn’t all that good, was it? The secret he kept from Mad turned him into some kind of imposter, didn’t it. And he was leaving tomorrow without looking back, wasn’t he?

  Well, he was leaving at any rate. He couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t look back. This thing with Mad was going to linger…Oh, God, it was all over tomorrow, wasn’t it? The weekend would be over.

  “I’m sorry?” Amelia looked at him with brows raised.

  “What?”

  “I thought you just said something.”

  “Oh…yeah. No. Nothing at all.”

  When the table broke up after dessert, Mad was among the first to leave and he was right behind her. Out in the foyer, he took her arm and dropped his head to her ear.

  “Let’s go for a ride.” He was suddenly desperate for the freedom of the night and her on his bike. Because he didn’t know if he’d ever have her on his Harley again.

  As her spine stiffened, he braced himself for a no.

  But then she said, “All right.”

  They disappeared out of the house and were on the road moments later. He had no idea where he was taking them and didn’t care. His past and his present were colliding and he was trapped in the middle, suspended between bad outcomes: one completed over a decade ago, one impending with tomorrow’s dawn.

  All he could think about was that tonight was his last night with her.