Dare to Surrender
Dare to Love Series #3
Invitation to Eden Multi-Author Series
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Carly Phillips
Author’s Note
Dare to Surrender is the story of my heart. I wrote the first 100 pages during a very down time in my life, when I was losing my father, with whom I was very close. I needed an outlet – a book that I didn’t owe to anyone. One that reflected the types of stories I love to read along with the challenge of first person point of view. Then of course, the characters of Isabelle and Gabe grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. When I was given the opportunity to join in the Invitation to Eden series, I knew immediately this was the chance to finish Isabelle and Gabe as well as to give the Dare siblings some cousins. And Dare to Surrender was born. For those who have asked if Dare to Surrender’s first person point of view means the rest of the Dare series will be in first person too? NO. Ian and Alex and their siblings will be in third person. If there is a good response to Dare to Surrender, Gabe’s siblings, Lucy and Decklan will get their stories too – but those will be in first person. In other words, please leave reviews, email, and let me know! And now I hope you love Isabelle and Gabe as much as I do.
Dedication
To the Invitation to Eden Authors – You made me feel truly Indie. I love the adventure and I’m proud to be in this with you all. Thank you to Janelle Denison (Erika Wilde) for … everything. And a special thank you to Lauren Hawkeye for coming into my life and brightening it … a lot!
Dare to Surrender
by Carly Phillips
Copyright © Karen Drogin 2014
Kobo Edition
CP Publishing 2014
Cover Design: The Killion Group Inc.
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http://www.carlyphillips.com
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After ending a relationship to a cheating, domineering man, Isabelle Masters takes off in her leased Mercedes, only to be arrested for grand theft auto and hauled to a local police station. To her surprise, she is rescued by the most unlikely person possible, Gabriel Dare, a man she’s been attracted to for far too long. Gabe offers Isabelle freedom along with an invitation to Eden, an exclusive island resort where everything and anything is possible.
Although Gabe yearns to possess Isabelle, he knows all too well he must fight his primitive need to bind her to him, and instead help bring out the independent woman she yearns to become – or risk losing her for good.
A woman who needs to run her own life. A man who needs to exert control. Can she surrender to his erotic demands without losing her sense of self once more?
*A unique story connected to both the DARE TO LOVE series and INVITATION TO EDEN. This book can also be read as a stand alone.
* * *
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Invitation to Eden
We are very pleased to issue your Invitation to Eden, an exciting series coming to you in 2014 from 27 of the biggest names in romance. Join us as we take you on an exciting adventure to Eden, where anything… and everything goes!
www.invitationtoeden.com
Prologue
Gabe
Gabriel Dare eyed the beautiful woman with the bright smile that didn’t reach her eyes, hoping his bland expression concealed the intense emotions she roused inside him. Protective instincts the likes of which he’d never experienced before. The desire to sweep her into his arms, breathe in her unique scent no designer could have created, and steal her away from this god-awful staid country club was strong.
He had an endless supply of beautiful women all eager to share his bed, including Naomi, his latest affair, and yet they did nothing for him except accompany him on endless nights like this one. And take the edge off his need. True satisfaction hadn’t existed for him in far too long.
He was bored. Unless he was watching her. Then the perfection and elegance of the Hamptons club vanished, and she was all he saw.
Blonde hair fell down her back in less-than-perfect waves, defying the stick-straight look most women preferred. Her lush, sexy body, so unlike the females he normally bedded, had his hands itching to learn those curves and show her what true pleasure really was. She was unattainable, living with one of Wall Street’s stars, but she could do so much better.
Oddly, it wasn’t her lack of availability that appealed. She was bright, witty, and she could hold her own with just about anyone, making whoever she spoke to feel important. He admired that trait. They hadn’t spent more than a few minutes here and there in each other’s company, but she’d taken his breath away from the first look.
Gabe would do just about anything to attain something he wanted, but he drew the line at poaching on another man’s territory. Still, he had to admit she tested even his willpower, and he’d had practice at being alone. He’d married young and miscalculated badly. Afterwards, he’d been certain that after Krissie’s death, for which he felt responsible, the smart thing would be to keep a safe emotional distance from women.
One look at Isabelle Masters and he’d changed his mind. There was something about her that filled the emptiness inside him. To the point where just watching her was enough to calm his usually restless soul. Unfortunately, they didn’t run into each other nearly often enough.
Gabe ran a hand through his hair, groaning as he caught sight of Naomi making her way toward him, a cocktail plate with one celery stick and a carrot in her hand. His gaze darted to Isabelle as she crossed the room in the opposite direction, careful to avoid him as long as the man she lived with was around.
She was taken, and all he could do was admire. Look and not touch. But if she ever became available, all bets were off.
Chapter One
Isabelle
He begged me not to walk out the door. I did it anyway. The scariest part? How much I wanted to go. I’d spent years of my life fully invested in a relationship I’d thought meant everything to me. How could all the emotion disappear?
The answer came to me as I stood in the dark driveway by my car, the only light coming from the headlights of the vehicle I’d turned on with the push of a remote. The feelings had drained away, diminishing slowly from something I’d hoped would be full and wonderful at the age of twenty-two to something painfully empty by the time I’d reached twenty-five. I wasn’t old, but at this moment, I felt ancient and weary down to my bones.
I glanced up just as the first drop of rain touched my face. Normally I’d pull up a hood and protect my out-of-control curly hair from frizz, worried about how I’d look to Lance and the carefully chosen people with whom he surrounded himself. He called them friends, but none knew the meaning of the word. Instead, I embraced the wildness of the storm that suddenly threatened to release from the heavens. Each warm droplet hit and spread across my cheeks, cleansing my skin and my soul. The wind took flight, lifting my hair, blowing strands onto my face and setting the rest of me free.
“Isabelle!” Lance yelled down from the window he’d opened on the second floor of his Hamptons summer home. It had been too long since I’d considered any part of it mine. If I ever had.
I unwillingly looked up.
“You’ve had your tantrum. Now come back inside, and we’ll talk like civilized people. You don’t want to cause a scene in front of the neighbors.”
Heaven forbid, I thought, sparing a last glance at the place I’d lived for too long. The house was Lance Daltry’s showplace, just as I had been nothing more than an accessory. I may have organized his personal life and thrown obligatory dinner parties, but I’d contributed nothing of substance. He’d never allowed me to spend any of the money I’d earned before I’d quit my interior design job. Unnecessary, he’d said. If I loved him, I’d stay home and take care of the house. More like he’d wanted control, and I’d given it to him.
Luckily for me, I’d saved a good amount from those early days. Not so luckily, I’d let Lance invest my money and maintain control of those accounts. And what were the chances that money would be available for my withdrawal on Monday morning? I closed my eyes at the thought.
Although I’d been in Manhattan for a couple of years by the time I’d met Lance, I was still the naïve girl who’d taken a bus from a small town near Niagara Falls and traveled to the big city alone. Too bad I hadn’t had the street smarts to peg Lance for the phony he’d turned out to be.
“Isabelle!” He yelled down to me again, not bothering to come out in the rain to talk to me, let alone apologize like a man. Not when the rain would ruin his thousand-dollar suit and hundred-dollar haircut.
Not talking, I thought silently, and merely shook my head.
Talk was what had gotten me to remain in a relationship I knew I didn’t want with a man I couldn’t trust; it was what had convinced me that Lance, a Wall Street trader, was my soul mate when, in the deepest part of my heart, I knew there was no such thing. And most humiliating, talk was what had led me to believe his lies, despite knowing I wasn’t truly satisfied with him or in his gilded cage.
I didn’t need therapy to tell me why I’d been so susceptible to Lance’s charm and desire to own me. The childhood I didn’t like to think about held the answers. But having escaped him now, one thing was certain. I wasn’t going back.
“Would you quit being a child and get back here!” Lance tried once more, patronizing me even though he was the one in the wrong. Another favorite ploy of his.
Shaking, I climbed into my beloved car, slamming the door and escaping Lance’s tirade. I started the engine and paused, breathing in deep, the events of the last few minutes rushing through my brain like a bad film.
I’d been on our shared laptop, searching for recipes I’d stored there. Seeing a file I didn’t recognize, I’d clicked. And the graphic, sexual images of a naked and sweaty Lance along with my beautiful neighbor, who’d dared to call herself my friend, had flashed on the screen. Nausea had risen at the visual proof of what I’d only suspected before.
I shivered at the memory of those images, proud of how I’d walked out without a word—or a suitcase. My body was frozen, my heart encased in ice. Although I could turn on the heated seats, the reminder of what it felt like to be numb with betrayal would keep me safe in the future.
I turned on the ignition, but surprisingly, no water works mixed with the dampness from the rain. Instead, adrenaline raced through my veins faster than even my beloved car could take a highway. I ought to be afraid. Panicked. Yearning to turn around and go back to the security I’d known.
My foot pressed the accelerator, and I backed out of the driveway without looking back. I might not know where I’d go or what I’d do, but I was moving forward. At last.
On the satellite radio, the 1980s Bugles song proclaimed that video killed the radio star. Untrue, I thought, as I drove into the dark night. Radio had thrived anyway. And tonight, though video killed my dream of living happily ever after in a life I thought I’d carefully crafted to prevent loneliness, those graphic sexual images of betrayal wouldn’t destroy me. Instead, they’d set me free.
* * *
Isabelle: Out of the Frying Pan
I was arrested a mile outside of Manhattan. Grand theft auto, the cop said. Bullshit, I replied. The baby Benz belonged to me.
Still, he cuffed me and hauled me to the nearest police station. He said his name was Officer Dare, and he was a dark-haired man, tall, taller than Lance, who prided himself on his height, and broader beneath his uniform, from what I could tell. His intense expression never wavered. All seriousness, all the time, but I sensed he’d be handsome if he smiled. So far, he hadn’t.
Once inside the typical-looking police station—not that I’d seen the inside of one before, but what I’d thought one would look like from watching Law and Order—he sat me beside his wooden desk and cuffed me to the desk.
I ought to be scared, but some stupid part of me had already decided this new part of my life was some grand adventure. At least it was until Officer Dare asked me to empty my pockets and divested me of my last five hundred dollars, cash I’d taken from the extra stash I kept in my nightstand.
He thumbed through the bulging stack of twenties in never-ending silence.
The money represented my lifeline. “I’ll need to eat when I get out of here,” I told my jailer.
He didn’t look up. “You’ll get it back.”
“All of it?” I asked as if I seriously believed a member of the police force would take a down-on-her-luck woman’s chance at food.
He set his jaw in annoyance. “We log it and count it. In front of you. I was just about to do that … ma’am.”
For some inane reason, I burst out laughing. I’d gone from living in denial to homeless and arrested in a ridiculously short time. This whole turn in my life really was absurd.
I rubbed my free hand up and down over one arm. “Don’t I get one phone call?”
He nodded and reached for the telephone on the desk.
I frowned, suddenly realizing I had no one to call. Lance was out of the question, and our friends were really his friends. As for my parents, they didn’t remember my birthday, so something told me a late-night call to pick up their daughter from jail would not be their number-one priority.
“Never mind,” I said softly.
The officer stared at me, confused. “Now you don’t want to use the phone?”
“No thank you.” Because I was totally, utterly alone.
Nausea rose like bile in my throat, and I dug my nails into my palms. When I forced myself to breathe deeply, the familiar burning in my chest returned, and I realized I’d walked away without the one thing I never left home without, and it wasn’t my license.
“Any chance you’ve got some Tums?” I asked.
He ground his teeth together, and I swear I heard his molars scraping. “Okay, yeah. I’ll get right on that,” he muttered and strode off.
“I’ll just wait here,” I called back. I lifted my arm the short distance the cuffs would allow and groaned.
What felt like an endless stretch of time passed, during which I reviewed my options, of which, once again, I had none.
Now what, I wondered, utter and complete despair threatening for the first time. Eventually I forced back the lump in my throat and forced myself to make the best of the situation.
I kicked my feet against the linoleum floor. Leaned back in the chair and studied the cracked ceiling. Hummed along to the tune crackling on the radio in the background. And yeah, I tried not to cry.
“You know, I thought it would take me longer to get you in cuffs.” A familiar masculine voice that oozed pure sin sounded beside me.
It couldn’t be, I thought, but from the tingling in my body, I already knew it was. “Gabriel Dare, what brings you into this part of Mayberry?”
He chuckled, a deeply erotic sound that matched his mention of the handcuffs, but he didn’t answer my question.
Left with no choice, I tipped my head and looked into his self-possessed, dark blue eyes. Eyes too similar to my cop, and suddenly the last name registered. In an unfamiliar place and time, my mind on my arrest and nothing more, I hadn’t made the connection befor
e.
I knew Gabriel Dare from the country club Lance belonged to, but despite the upper-crust connection, there was nothing similar about the two men. Where Lance was sandy-haired and a touch Waspish in looks, Gabe, as his friends called him, possessed thick, dark sable hair and roguish good looks.
Gabe’s very posture and demeanor set him apart from any other man I’d met. His white teeth, tanned skin, and chiseled features were put together in a way that made him extraordinarily handsome. That he owned the space and air around him merely added to his appeal. An appeal that had never been lost on me, not even now, shackled as I was to a desk in a police station.
His stare never wavered, those navy eyes locked on me, and if I hadn’t been sitting, I’d be in a puddle at his feet.
“You look good cuffed,” he said in a deliciously low voice.
Immediate thoughts of me bound and at his mercy assaulted me. My body, which hadn’t been worshiped well in far too long, if ever, had been taken over by the notion of Gabe, his strong touch playing me with an expert hand.
I squeezed my thighs together, but instead of easing, the ache only grew. Heat rushed through me at a rapid pace, my breasts heavy, my sex pulsing in a dull throbbing that begged to be filled. I blinked hard in an impossible attempt to center myself.
He grinned, as if he’d heard every naughty thought in my head.
It had always been this way between us. Any time I ran into him at the club, the attraction had been electric, and when we found ourselves alone, the flirting, outrageous.
One night, Gabe had caught me exiting the ladies’ room. Lance had come upon us then, and once home, he’d accused me of desiring Gabe. I’d denied it, of course.
I’d lied.
Lance knew it, and after catching us talking privately at more than one event, he’d kept a firm lock on my arm. And because I desperately wanted the life I’d chosen to make sense, I’d allowed the possession.
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