by Cherry Adair
The Cutters were taking Callie away from her. Her friend wasn't going to get cold feet this time.
Rydell and Addy and baby Adam were a closed unit.
Peri was on the outside looking in, no matter where she turned.
Oh, get over yourself. She played a mental violin and told herself to snap the hell out of her funk. Everyone was happy. How could she begrudge Callie, or Ry and Addy, every scrap of happiness they deserved?
In the bathroom mirror, Peri saw Bria behind her, arranging the garment over the ironing board, then testing the heat of the iron. "You should see how Finn looks at Persephone."
Peri fought to drag a sip of air into her constricted lungs. "Then you didn't see his face when he walked out earlier."
"Perhaps he had an emergency?"
He had a million people on board at his beck and call who could handle any freaking emergency thrown at him. "Perhaps."
What Bria thought was passion was disgust. Peri would have to have been blind not to see his cold, deadly anger just before he stalked out. It was as though a door, ajar to show a sliver of warmth, had been slammed shut in her face.
Whatever physical attraction Finn had felt for her, had been wiped away when he'd learned who she really was deep down. Someone who sure as hell didn't deserve his love. The room blurred. Her heart, shriveled to dust, was too dry for tears. Tilting her head back, she blinked rapidly to bring the bathroom back into focus.
"Are you okay?" Callie asked softly, wrapping her arms around Peri's waist from behind. Resting her cheek on Peri's shoulder, their eyes met in the mirror. "You look like you're about to cry."
"Have you ever seen me cry?" Peri asked with a smile that felt forced and brittle. Callie didn't seem to notice.
"No. But- Are you all right?"
Enveloped in a cloud of coconut-scented lotion, and memories, Peri hugged Callie's arms against her. "Absolutely. I'm happy for you."
"I love Jonah, Peri. More than I ever thought possible. But I'll never forget Adam."
"I know." It annoyed the hell out of her that Callie's words made her throat ache even more.
Behind them the iron let out a burst, bringing with it the sweet smell of steam, and the crisp scent of hot linen. The elegant Principessa was industriously ironing the white sundress Callie would wear for the ceremony.
Letting her friend go, Peri stepped back and turned around to face this woman who was as much an older sister to her as Ry was her brother. "You deserve this happiness, Cal. You do."
Callie reached to cup her cheek with a cool hand. "I know you're happy for me, please don't look so sad."
She'd feel a hell of a lot better, and be able to think strategy, as soon as she was home and away from all this excessive emotion swirling around her. "Sad? Silly bride-to-be," she teased. "I'm not sad at all. I'm thrilled you're getting the man you love."
She really, really, really needed her old self to kick her butt so she could get back to normal. A new normal. Without Finn.
"I have to go and find more distilled water for the iron," Bria raised her voice. "I'll be right back to finish with your dress, then I can help you with your hair if you like, Callie." The cabin door opened and closed.
"She didn't need to go." Peri tried to smile, but her lips felt tight. "She's already heard everything I had to say. It wasn't pretty."
Callie's brow knit with concern. "What wasn't pretty? I'll repeat and would like an answer this time. Are. You. Okay?"
"I- Yes. I'm still alive. Not sure how long that's going to last. Your arrival was either fortuitous, or inconvenient, depending on who you ask. I was right in the middle of a confession."
"What on earth were you confessing to? That you're Ry's sister? Who cares?"
"That, and I've been stealing from your future in-laws for years."
Callie frowned. "Stealing what?"
Peri told Callie everything she’d told the Cutters.
"Oh, Peri-" Callie turned to hug her. "Does Ry know?"
"Not yet." Peri dreaded that conversation.
"I won't even go into the danger of diving alone. When you were God only knows where, and no one knew who you were. Anything could've happened to you, and we would never have kno- Damn it. Do not make me cry on my wedding day. No one was watching out for you Peri. That was really crazy dangerous. Why did you do it?"
"Honestly? Now that the cat's been let out of the bag, it doesn't make sense to me either." It did in her own convoluted way, but the explanation she'd given wasn't enough to satisfy them. Which was too damn bad, because it was all they'd get, the rest was none of their damn business.
"Rydell asked me to spy on Jonah, remember? I met him under false pretenses and lied my ass off when we first met. In spite of which, he fell in love with me." She gave Peri another hug before disengaging to lean over the sink to draw a cat eye. "He loves me. I love you. He'll convince his brothers not to prosecute. Besides, Rydell will insist on making it right, you know that."
"It's not Ry's job to make this right, Cal." Ry was going to be furious. He'd forgive her, after some time, but she'd have to face his wrath first. Jonah, on the other hand, was disgusted with what she'd done and was more likely to add to the lawsuit his brothers would bring.
Rydell would be bitterly disappointed in her. She'd rather the Cutters threw her in jail before she saw that look on her brother's face. She stiffened her shoulders, turning away to watch the wind whipping up the waves beyond the large, uncurtained window.
She turned to face her friend. "I don't need anyone to fight my battles for me, Callie. I've been fighting my own battles for years. I'll make it right. I'll have all the stolen artifacts delivered to Cutter Cay in a couple of weeks, and I'll make whatever restitution a court finds reasonable. It'll be a relief really, I've been waiting years for this confrontation. I'll deal with whatever they throw at me."
"I'll always stand by you, you know that."
"You'll stand beside your husband, Callie. As you should. And if the rumor of a baby is true-"
Callie laughed. "According to Teal, right? That's because she is, and she thinks we should all have babies together. Nope. Jonah and I haven't changed our minds about going kidless for the foreseeable future. If that ever changes, which we both doubt, we'll adopt. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure the rest of the family will breed like bunnies, so we can be the doting aunt and uncle. I want us to spoil your kids rotten, Magma, so you can't be in jail."
Another piece of Peri's heart shattered as she realized the possibility of someday having Finn's child, was one more thing she'd lost.
Peri's chest ached and her eyes felt scorched and dry. "What I did was wrong, and I deserve whatever the Cutters dish out."
The door opened. Bria came into the cabin followed by a steward bearing a tray. "I brought tea and a few sandwiches to hold you over for a while, Callie. Right over there. Thanks, Sandro."
The steward gave the Princess a smitten smile, deposited the tray and left.
Not a sign of the distilled water she'd gone to find.
"Things are humming along nicely," Bria told Callie. "I think you'll be pleased, sorella." She pulled the desk chair over to the small seating area, then sat down and started to pour the tea into the three waiting cups. "Your future husband can wait a few more minutes to claim you. Let's sit and have a nice cup of tea and a little protein to keep up your strength." Bria smiled wickedly. "Then I'll finish ironing your pretty dress and help you with your hair, so you can go off to start the rest of your life."
Sorella. Sister.
And she'd thought she couldn’t feel any worse...
Everything inside Peri now felt freezer-burnt.
SEVENTEEN
Sitting behind his large desk in his office one deck above the festivities, Finn's heart clenched like a tight fist as he observed Ariel's- no, Persephone's beautiful face, fixed and pale, in his monitor.
"Prosecute the son of a bitch to the fullest extent of the law," he told his lawyer in New York, eyes on th
e feed from the surveillance cameras in the solarium where Jonah and Callie were getting married.
Mentally he swore, unable to look away. She'd thrown him off balance from day one. Turned him on. Infuriated him. Driven him out of his fucking mind to possess her every second of every fucking day.
He knew damn well he should've indicated to her he had to leave the salon to take an urgent call and felt like shit for not doing so. Maybe not excusing himself was a subconscious way of punishing her. Fuck. Was he that small?
No. He was that fucking furious. Disappointed.
His anger had been directed at Derry, but hadn't it also been directed at her?
He felt betrayed. "Asshole."
"Yeah, he is," his lawyer agreed.
Finn didn't correct him.
Flailed by lashes of guilt, and in spite of how he felt about her lies and subterfuge, he couldn't take his eyes off her. Watching her now ripped a small jagged hole in his heart. Her hair rippled down her back in molten splendor. Had she worn it loose to torment him?
She'd changed into a purple dress that hugged her curves and made him aware of what he was missing by sitting in his office talking to his damned lawyer.
"Hell no, I don't give a flying fuck if he's thrown back in jail for another fifteen years. He's had all the chances I'm willing to give him, and then some. Throw the book at him, then fire Chamberlain for not paying attention. We knew the date of Derry's release, Chamberlin should've anticipated that Derry would try something."
Chamberlain, one of Finn's fleet of lawyers had been tasked with keeping an eagle eye on all of Derry's doings. Inside the joint and outside. He hadn't done his job.
His dick for brains foster brother slash ex-business partner, three weeks out of prison for embezzlement, had forged Finn's signature on several of his bank accounts, yesterfuckingday. To the tune of several million dollars. Redirecting the funds into an offshore account. Stupid mick to think Finn didn't watch his every dime like a fucking hawk. He'd been caught red- handed.
Derry business concluded, and annoyed this call had pulled him out of the salon earlier, Finn wanted to wrap things up. Impatience clear, he demanded brusquely, "Anything else?"
Of course there was. He suffered through another seventeen minutes of urgent business. He wouldn't've had to be playing catch up if he hadn't been so distracted, and busy with Ariel- no Persephone. She hadn't lied about that.
He disconnected the call.
On his big screen monitor, he could see every freckle, every micro-expression as if she stood right there in the room with him. But reality was, he didn’t need the high- resolution camera to tell him where the freckles were. He’d memorized every goddamn one, paying as much attention to every inch of her as though he’d been charting a course to Mars.
Standing well back from everyone gathered around the happy couple, she looked starkly alone and, damn it, vulnerable. She wasn't vulnerable, he reminded himself. She'd spent years plotting and scheming to rob the Cutters, with the thinnest of excuses. Nor was she alone in the back of the room. Thiago Núñez stood beside her.
Núñez said something to her, and she lifted her chin and looked straight ahead. Finn had seen that pugnacious chin lift before. When she was put in the hot seat. When she felt judged. Finn's chest ached, and he rubbed his fist over it. God damn it, when she had to defend herself against being hurt. How often had that happened in her life?
His harsh words before he left the salon had been knee jerk A first for him. He was usually meticulous and precise in his words and actions. For that alone, he needed to apologize...
Even though he knew damn well he had a valid reason for leaving, he felt as though he'd made the biggest mistake of his life by doing so at that particular moment. The lawyer had texted him in the middle of Peri's big reveal with an urgent message, and Finn was torn about not signaling to let her know that she hadn't been the cause of his abrupt departure. But that wasn't strictly true.
It wasn't his modus operandi to walk away from a problem. But Persephone Case tied him in knots and skewed his judgement. Two valid reasons for putting her behind him. He hadn't gotten where he was today by being a sucker. He'd learned quickly when to fight, when to hold the course, and when to walk away. With Derry and Erica, he'd done all three. They'd each had multiple opportunities to course correct. Both had chosen poorly.
He'd divorced Erica, and felt zero compunction being instrumental in putting his business partner into the prison system for another fifteen years.
He wasn't about to compromise his principles for a sexy, freckled, redhead, with more bravado than integrity. Persephone Case aka Ariel Andersen was the least defenseless woman he'd ever met.
He knew her to be foolishly fearless, and seemingly invincible.
She'd tried to steal his tablet, withheld that she was already in possession of another, all while holding back the truth about her real motive for being on board Blackstar. Were the words true at all, or had she specifically wormed her way into his heart to take advantage of her position as his lover?
He'd given her more than enough opportunities to tell him what the fuck was going on before she presented it to them. All the hours they’d spent alone and she hadn’t confided in him. That rankled and he added that to his list of warring emotions. She'd opted to be secretive, effectively shutting him out, and rendering any help he might've given her, moot.
He was used to making calculated, incisive decisions and acting on them immediately. He trusted his own goddamn instincts.
How many times had he granted someone a second chance only to get kicked in the head for it? Twice.
So why the hell would he allow a pretty redhead to kick him in the heart?
Because she held him firmly by the balls?
Fuckshitdamn.
When the priest indicated the groom should kiss the bride, Peri slipped from the room unnoticed, leaving Núñez behind. With zero interest in the wedding which was winding down, Finn turned off the monitor. There was no reason to watch the Cutters celebrating a private, family moment.
Honest to God, with the tablets and legend of Blackstar, he still wasn't sure if they were building the con to out-con even Derry. Or were they what he'd believed them to be for all the years he'd known them? Like a Rubik's Cube, he tried various scenarios to see if any of them lined up. Thus far nothing did.
Zane must've recognized her as the owner of Sea Witch when he'd checked her out with Finn's binoculars the other morning before breakfast. What was the reason for that lie? Unless he'd been looking at the other redhead on the dive platform on Case's ship?
Leaning back in his swivel chair, he knew it wasn't the Cutters actions that had him absently rubbing his palm across his aching chest. If he lived to be a hundred, he'd never forget the stark expression on Peri's face just before he walked out.
Damn it. He couldn't support her on this. Refused to bring into his well-ordered life a liar. A thief. A con artist. Been there, fucking done that. His reputation had been hard won. His personal code of ethics worked because he'd learned the hard way that to give an inch compromised everything he believed in and lived by.
His expensive divorce, and the dissolution with his business partner, didn't come close to the kick in his gut when he heard Peri blithely confess.
Fucking hell. Fucking, fucking hell.
It seemed that everything she did was calculated, planned. Had 'accidentally' bumping into her at Natural Sciences Museum in Buenos Aires really been a chance meeting? Hell, he didn’t know anymore. Where Persephone was concerned, he’d clearly lost his judgment.
He closed his eyes, then had to quickly open them when, in his mind's eye, her face appeared before him as a tactile after-image. Damn. He couldn’t even escape her in his thoughts.
It was one thing to crush a business rival, quite another to crush the spirit of a woman he'd allowed himself to care about.
"Fool me once- My judgement was skewed the second I saw that hair. Those lying eyes tasted that
soft mouth- Damn it to hell." Shoving the chair away from his sleek glass desk, Finn rose. "I warned her. Didn't I goddamn warn her? No second chances. Don't screw me. Don't lie. Don't steal."
The Cutters had known exactly who she was. Known from the get-go. Which made it all the worse. He felt betrayed by them as well as Peri. The Cutters should've clued him in from the start. The fact that they hadn't indicated that they were inexorably entwined with her in something. And why had they let her swing in the wind like that without confronting her days ago?
Never mind. He now didn't give a flying fuck what or why. None of them had been straight with him. That’s all he asked. Transparency. Honesty. Was that too fucking much?
His captain had orders to pull up anchor the moment it was feasible for Blackstar to depart. Maybe once he put distance between himself and the woman who drove him to the point of madness, Finn would get used to sleeping without her by his side.
How the hell long would it be before he stopped thinking of stripping her naked? Before craving the scent and feel of her skin against his was in the past? How fucking long was it going to take to forget the silky glide of her fiery hair over his body and the taste of her mouth under his?
It had only been a couple of hours since he'd stalked out of the salon and he craved touching her like an addict needed a fix. He paced to erase the visceral memory of her ankles over his shoulders, and the dig of her sharp nails scoring his back. He remembered the feel of being deeply embedded in her slick sheath and her small breathy gasps of pleasure against his ear as he surged inside her.
Yeah. An addict. Only there was no cure. Nothing that could wipe the scent or taste or touch or her from his memory.
He wasn't any more of a drinker than the Cutters, but he was tempted to get blind drunk and stay that way until he could forget every tactile and visual cue.
No second chances.
Finn was a hardass about it. He'd learned that any other way was detrimental to his life, his business, and his heart.
"If I think feeling this way is bad, how would I feel when she lies again?" Because she would. Someone with her track record would lie and steal again. Because that was inevitable, too. What would he do if he'd let himself believe for even a second? When there'd be no fucking hope in hell of getting out the other end alive?
