It took everything he had not to sic his team of investigators on her, not to have her every move reported back to him, wherever she was now, like the jealous, obsessive fool she’d once accused him of being. He’d been fighting the same near-overwhelming urge for weeks. She’d told him he needed to learn how to lose her, and he’d found it was not a lesson he was at all interested in mastering. The truth was, Cayo had never been any good at losing.
You have to let me go, she’d said. And he had, though it had nearly killed him, kept him up at nights and ruined his days. She was the one thing he’d ever given up on. The one thing he’d let slip through his hands.
And that felt like the greatest failure of all.
Cayo couldn’t forgive himself. For any of it. Or her, for doing this to him. For turning him into this weak, destroyed creature, not at all who he’d believed himself to be, before.
Worst of all, for making him care.
Dru hadn’t had time to collapse into the fetal position under her duvet once she’d made it back to her tiny bedsit in Clapham from the rainy tarmac where she’d last seen Cayo, despite the fact that was all she wanted to do.
Her already-booked flight straight back to Bora Bora had been leaving in two days’ time. She’d met with Cayo’s studiously blank-faced attorneys on the morning before her flight, and she’d signed whatever they’d put in front of her, not caring if it took blood and her firstborn, so long as it ensured her freedom. Finally. It had been the last necessary step.
And more than that, it had meant he was letting her go.
Some part of her had imagined he might pull his Godzilla routine. Roar and smash, grab and hoard. Demand another two weeks. Trap her into that marriage he’d proposed. Something. But he’d let her walk away from him at the airport. There had been nothing but a look in his eyes that she’d never seen before, turning all of that dark amber nearly black and eating her alive inside. The cold, dull, gray English day around them had been so depressingly real life she’d almost wondered if Bora Bora, the yacht in the Adriatic, Milan, and everything that had happened between them had been no more than a fevered dream.
The attorneys had been real, however, sliding papers at her one after the next in the Costa Coffee near Clapham Junction. She’d signed the last five years of her life away with every pen stroke. At his command. With his blessing.
Cayo Vila, who never gave in, who had never heard the word no, had let her go, at last.
Just as she’d told him to do, she’d reminded herself. Just as she’d asked.
And then she’d gone back home, carefully taken the tin that held Dominic’s ashes, taped it shut and wrapped it up, and packed it away in her checked bag.
The trip had been brutal. When she’d finally staggered into her hotel on the southern part of Bora Bora’s main island, far away from Cayo’s private island, it had been impossible not to notice the differences. She’d told herself she didn’t care. That she’d come for a specific reason and to perform a specific task, and when had she become such a princess that she found her rather smallish room that faced a bit of garden depressing? It was still a garden in Bora Bora.
She’d been furious with herself—and with Cayo—
for spoiling her so thoroughly. She’d become used to all of the luxury he surrounded himself with, apparently. It had only served to make her that much more appalled at herself and all the many ways she’d let herself down.
It had taken her a week to get up her nerve—and, if she was honest, to recover a little bit from those two intense weeks she’d spent with Cayo. But finally she’d been ready. One evening, at sunset, she’d taken one of the kayaks out and brought Dominic’s ashes with her. As the sky exploded in oranges and pinks, she’d tipped his ashes out into the beautiful, peaceful lagoon.
And while she’d kept her promise to the first man she’d ever loved, and always would, she’d talked to him.
“I wish I could have saved you,” she’d whispered to the water, the sky, the sea beyond. “I wish I’d tried harder.”
She’d remembered her brother’s delighted laughter that she’d never heard enough of. She’d thought of his wickedly amused gray eyes, so much brighter and more alive than hers—and then, sometimes, so much duller. She thought of his too-lean form, his shaggy dark hair, his poet’s hands, and the tattoo on his shoulder of two hummingbirds that was, he’d once said with his cheeky grin, meant to represent the two of them. Free and in flight, forever.
“I wish I knew what happened to that picture of us as babies,” she’d said, smiling at the memory of the old photograph. “I still don’t know which one of us was which.”
She’d mourned. She’d thought of their mother, so terrified of being on her own that any man had done, no matter how vicious. She’d thought of all those years when it had been Dominic and Dru against the world, and how much she’d miss that for the rest of her life. He’d taken something from her she could never get back, and as she floated out there with jagged Mount Otemanu before her and the world she knew so far away, she’d let herself weep for the family she’d lost, her potential children who would never know their uncle, the whole rest of her life stretching out before her with nothing of her twin in it except what she carried with her. In her.
Which wasn’t enough, she’d thought then, bitterly. It would never be enough.
“You took part of me with you, Dominic,” she’d told him as the inky darkness fell. “And I’ll never forget you. I promise.”
And when all his ashes were gone she’d made her way back to her hotel, where, finally, she’d curled up on the bed, pulled the duvet over her head, and fallen apart.
She’d stayed there for days. She’d cried until she’d felt blinded by her own tears, until she’d made herself retch from the force of her sobs. She’d let it all out, at last, the terrible storm she’d been carrying with her all this time. The grief of so many years, the pain and the fury and all the lies she’d told herself about her motivations. How much she’d loved Dominic and yes, to her shame, how much she’d sometimes hated him, too. His excuses and his promises, his grand plans that never amounted to anything and his pretty, pretty lies that she’d so desperately wanted to believe. She’d wept for everything she’d lost, and how alone she was, and how little she knew what to do with herself now that she had nothing left to survive, no purpose to fulfill, no great sacrifice remaining to build her life around.
But one day she sat up, and opened all the windows.
She let the breeze in, sweet with flowers and the sea. She breathed in, deeply. She had her tea out on the hotel’s pretty beach, and felt born again. Made new. As if she really had put Dominic to rest.
Which meant it was time to face the truth about her feelings for Cayo.
“Am I so scary?” he’d asked so long ago that night in Cadiz. The restaurant had been noisy and crowded, and his arm had brushed against hers as they sat so close together at the tiny table. His unforgettable eyes had still been so sad, but there was a curve to that cruel mouth of his, and Dru had felt giddy, somehow. As if they were both lit up with the magic of this night when everything, she’d been sure, was changing.
“I think you take pride in being as scary as possible,” she’d replied, smiling. “You have a reputation to uphold, after all.”
“I am certain that somewhere beneath it all, I am nothing but clay, waiting to be molded by whoever happens along,” he’d said, that near-smile deepening at the absurdity of a man like him being swayed by anything at all save his own inclination.
“Metal that might, under certain circumstances, be welded, perhaps,” she’d said, laughing. “Never clay.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge,” he’d said, swirling his sherry in his glass, his gaze oddly intent on hers. She’d felt herself flush with heat, and had felt out of control. Reckless. Yet it had felt right, even so. More right than she could remember anything else feeling, maybe ever. He’d leaned close, then murmured close to her ear. “What would I do without
you?”
She knew what he’d do without her, Dru thought now, staring up at the perfect sky and the glorious lagoon, neither of which seemed to be as bright as they’d been before. Without Cayo. He was probably doing it right now—carrying on being Cayo Vila, scary by design, taking whatever he wanted and expanding his holdings on a whim.
But she was distorted by his absence. Disfigured. And it didn’t seem to get any better, no matter how many days passed.
She sat in her cramped seat on an Air Vila flight from Los Angeles to London, staring at the picture of him on the back of the in-flight magazine, and she thought her heart might tear itself apart in her chest.
I can’t do this, she thought then, scraping away the tears before they fell on her snoring seatmate. She couldn’t live out whatever life it was she thought she ought to live, knowing that he was out there, knowing that she would only ever see him in these painful, faraway glimpses. On the telly, perhaps. In the magazines. But never again right in front of her. Never again close enough to touch, to taste, to tease.
She’d been in love with him for so long. She was still in love with him, however hard she wished it away. It hadn’t changed. She was starting to believe it never would. She felt minimized. Diminished, somehow, without him. As if she’d depended on him just as much as he’d depended on her all this time.
Back in her bedsit in London, she tried to tell herself that her whole life was ahead of her. That she need only pick a path to follow and the world was hers. She woke the morning after her return and scanned the papers, looking for clues to her next chapter—but it all seemed cold and empty. Pointless.
She was haunted by Cayo even now, in a tiny flat he’d never visited, on a bright morning that shouldn’t have had anything at all to do with him. Her eyes drifted shut as she stood at her small refrigerator, and she saw him. Dark amber eyes. That fierce, ruthless face, with that blade of a nose and his cruel, impossible mouth. She felt him. She couldn’t breathe without imagining his hands on her skin, his smile, the sound of his voice as he said her name. And that same old fire still burned within her, stubborn and hot, even now.
Did it really matter how he wanted her, as long as he did? Dru found herself pacing the small space that was her kitchen in agitation. She wished he’d handled it differently back in Bora Bora. She wished he’d lied and told her he wanted her, needed her—and not only as his assistant. She might not have believed him, but she’d have wanted to. And maybe it would have been enough.
But she couldn’t marry him when he couldn’t even pretend to love her. It turned out that was her line in the sand. Her single remaining boundary.
“A girl has to have some standards,” she said out loud, shaking her head at herself. At the things she’d clung to all her life, like her belief that she would never be like her mother—and here she was, alone in her flat, halfway to Miss Havisham, arguing her way back to a man who could never love her the way she deserved to be loved.
But that was the problem. Dru didn’t simply want to be loved. She wanted to be loved by Cayo. And she couldn’t see how it made any kind of sense to do without him entirely. Maybe a sliver of Cayo really was better than nothing at all—because nothing else would do. The thought of another man was laughable. What would be the point? Another man wouldn’t be Cayo.
Why couldn’t they continue as they’d been? She considered it now, scowling fiercely into her sink basin, and the truth was, she couldn’t even remember why she’d been so angry with him. Or why she’d been so desperate to get away from him. These weeks were the longest she’d gone without seeing him since she’d started to work for him five years ago. And she hated it. She craved the simple solace of his dark gaze, his impatient voice. Him. She missed him.
He might not want her the way she wished he could. He might only have proposed to her as some last-ditch effort to hold on to something he didn’t want to lose, the same way he might feel about a particularly limited-edition racecar, for example. Dru understood that. And it wasn’t that it didn’t hurt. It was that being without him hurt more.
She wanted him more than she wanted her self-respect, it turned out, whatever that made her. A fool. Her mother. A very sad woman destined for a sad life of slivers. She supposed she would spend the rest of her life dealing with the fallout of this choice she couldn’t seem to help making today. One way or the other.
But in the meantime, she knew exactly what she had to do.
Dru strode back into his life, and into the center of his office, on an otherwise unremarkable Wednesday afternoon.
She looked casual and chic in tight black trousers tucked into high, gleaming boots with dangerous heels and a very complicated sort of burgundy jumper that tied like a scarf and was somehow carelessly elegant. Her glorious hair was swept back into a low ponytail. She’d clearly spent more time in the sun, and it suited her. She had a healthy glow about her, and her eyes were clear as they met his.
Mine, he thought, with a nearly vicious surge of desire.
He wanted his mouth on her. He wanted to be inside her. He wanted her with a savagery that should have taken him out at the knees. Instead, Cayo thrust his hands into his pockets and stood there behind his desk, watching her, as the fury he’d been tamping down began to boil.
“I know how little you like it when people drop in on you without appointments,” Dru said in that calm, easy voice of hers that had been haunting him for weeks. “I apologize.” She smiled that damned smile of hers. The one he hated. “Your new assistant seems lovely.”
“She is perfect in every way,” Cayo agreed, his voice all but a growl. “A paragon, in fact. Truly the best personal assistant I’ve ever had.”
“I’m delighted to hear that,” she said, so very pleasantly. As if he was just another rich man she had to placate. As if she was working. “Though, if memory serves, you are a bit free with that particular bit of praise. It does render it rather meaningless, I’d say.”
He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t.
“I went back to Bora Bora, as planned,” she told him quietly, her gaze searching his, though he didn’t know for what.
“I hope your flight was pleasant.” He couldn’t help his sardonic tone, or the way his brow lifted. “Fly commercial, did you?”
“It took over forty hours.” There was the hint of a rueful smile on her lips, which was closer, at least, to something real.
He was meant to respond to that, he knew. He should have. Her eyes met his as if she was encouraging him simply to talk to her, as he might have done before. But he couldn’t do it. She’d wrecked him in ways he still didn’t understand. She’d left him. He’d let her leave. He still couldn’t comprehend either one of those things.
And beyond all that, he wanted her. Pure and simple. Despite knowing exactly how much wanting her destroyed him.
“Dru.” He said her name with all the fury and betrayal and longing inside him, letting it pour out of him, not even caring how it hit her. “Why are you here?”
He watched her swallow, hard, as if she was nervous. It became physically painful that he still wasn’t touching her.
“I’ve come to interview,” she said, and her voice didn’t quite shake but still, he heard emotion there beneath it. A better man might not have taken that as some kind of victory—but he had no such pretensions.
“Interview?” he echoed. He could hear the chill in his own voice. “For what?”
Her chin rose, those gray eyes of hers glittered, and once more, she was hiding from him. He could see it.
“My old position, of course.”
He’d dreamed of this. Exactly this. He couldn’t help but smile, and he didn’t have to see her reaction to know it wasn’t a very nice smile at all.
But she didn’t break. Not his Dru.
“I’d like my old job back,” she said, very distinctly. Politely. She folded her hands in front of her like the passive and obedient underling she had only ever pretended she was, and walked straight into his hand
s with her head held high. “I’ve come to beg for it, if necessary.”
CHAPTER TEN
HE looked as though he wanted to take her apart with his teeth. Dru fought to control herself—her pounding heart, her galloping pulse, that heaviness in her stomach that couldn’t decide if it was desire or anxiety. Or some combination of both.
“If you would like to beg, don’t let me stop you,” Cayo bit out after a long moment, though his midnight amber eyes gleamed. “You can begin on your knees.”
She remembered that day in Bora Bora with picture-perfect clarity. She remembered crawling to him across the polished wood floor, smiling up at him from between his strong legs. Wanting him more than her next breath. She still did. Heat flashed over her, and she was afraid she turned bright red. His eyes were narrow and hot, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was remembering the same thing.
“Sweet memories,” he said, deliberately provoking her, but she couldn’t seem to react the way she might have before. She couldn’t seem to breathe past the sheer force of him. It was if she’d dulled the intensity of him in her memory, to protect herself. He was shocking and bold, dark gold eyes and jet-black hair, and all that mouthwatering muscle and masculine grace. His suit was perfectly tailored and made him look sleek. Predatory. But not at all tamed. Not Cayo.
And now she knew what he could do with every last inch of that beautiful body. She found she’d lost her voice completely.
His eyes gleamed even more molten gold than before. He stepped out from behind his desk and roamed around to the front, leaning back against it so he was only a foot or two away from her. She schooled herself not to react, not to step away or show anything on her face, even as the back of her neck prickled in warning. In desperate, mindless want.
“Tell me,” he said in that soft, supremely dangerous voice of his. “What would possess you to reapply for this job you wanted so desperately to leave? What will it look like the next time you decide you hate me, do you think? What will you throw at me then?”
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