Heiress Behind the Headlines

by Caitlin Crews

  The fact that she had never been in rehab—and that she’d been hidden away for two months in a hospital bed in the family mansion, expected to die while her family engaged in their usual cruel machinations over her comatose body—well, that wasn’t nearly as interesting a story, was it? Not nearly as familiar, as expected.

  But he wouldn’t believe her anyway. No one would. And she had no one to blame for that but herself, as usual.

  “Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” Jack asked then, as if he’d read her mind. She believed that if anyone could, it was Jack, and the thought made that shiver roll through her again. He shook his head slightly, as if she wearied him unto his soul. “Do you think you’re going to drag me into one of your messes? You might want to think again, Larissa. I stopped playing your kind of games a long time ago.”

  “If you say so,” she said, as if she was bored. As if she was not even now struggling to keep herself from jumping to her feet and bolting for the door. Anything to get away from that awful, judgmental look in his eyes—eyes that seemed to look deep into her and see nothing but her darkest secrets. Her shame.

  God, she hated him.

  But she’d rather die than show him that he’d hurt her. She certainly couldn’t tell him why she was really here, on a pine-studded scrap of land eight miles out from Bar Harbor, in the middle of the lashing wind with only the desolate sea in every direction. She couldn’t tell him she’d ended up on the ferry because she’d been trying so hard to disappear for months now, to really be as invisible as she felt—she wouldn’t even know how to say those things. Or to explain how she felt about this miraculous second chance she’d been given at a life she’d ruined so thoroughly, treated so carelessly, the first go-round. And certainly not to Jack, whom she still thought of as bright and shining and untouchable, no matter the dark, hard look he was training on her now. No matter the power and command he seemed to wear like a second skin.

  She had promised herself that she would never lie to herself, not ever again, and she meant to keep that promise. But that didn’t mean she owed him the same courtesy. And there was so little of her left, so little of her she could even identify as her own, and she knew, somehow, that if she gave him even a tiny bit of that he could crush her forever. She just knew.

  So she gave him what he wanted. What he already saw. She smiled at him, the mysterious, closemouthed smile she’d learned to give the press a long time ago—the smile that made men crazy, that exuded sex, that made everyone project all their fantasies and wishes and dreams onto her while she simply stood there and was empty. Nothing. Just a screen.

  She was good at that, too.

  She cocked her head to the side, and met his gaze as if his words had rolled right off her, as if they were nothing at all. As if this was nothing but a flirtation, some delicious kind of foreplay they were both engaging in. She let her brows rise, let her lips part suggestively. She made her voice low, sexy. The expected fantasy. She could produce it by rote, and no one ever suspected a thing.

  “Tell me more, Jack,” she purred. “What kind of games do you like to play?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SHE looked so fragile. Those delicate, perfect cheekbones that had announced her identity from across the room, even when he’d been unable to imagine what a creature like her, better used to lounging about in Manhattan’s most elite circles surrounded by sycophants and other fashionably bored and useless socialites, could possibly be doing in a place as remote as this island. Those mysterious, always-sad eyes of a haunted, storm-tossed green that hinted at depths she would never, could never, possess.

  That was the great lie of Larissa Whitney, he thought with no little distaste—almost aimed more at himself for his susceptibility to that lie than at her for perpetuating it. Almost.

  Because he could still feel that maddening electricity crackle through him, though he’d spent a long time denying it had ever existed. Yet it had jolted through him anyway, unmistakable and unwelcome, when he’d looked across the bar and seen her sitting there, looking … oddly bereft.

  It roared back through him now, as she flirted with him, her lush lips parting slightly as she ran a deliberate finger along the lower one. Tempting him. Luring him. Making him think back to the sweet perfection of her legs wrapped tightly around his hips. The taste of that perfect, wicked mouth. But he was no longer the kind of man who bowed down to his appetites, especially when they were as self-destructive as this one. Especially when he knew exactly how little a woman like Larissa had to offer to a man in his position, a man who preferred to think about his reputation before his pleasure these days. And her reputation was about as black and dire as they came.

  “Nice try,” he said dismissively, as if his body wasn’t hard and ready just looking at her. Not that he would let that matter. “But one taste of that was more than enough.”

  He thought he saw something move through her green eyes then, but it was gone with a blink, and she only smiled at him. That dangerous, mysterious smile of hers, like a siren’s song, that tempted him to forget all he knew. That tempted him to simply lean forward, put his hands on her lush little body, yank her mouth to his, and taste her.

  “Oh, Jack,” she murmured, her voice little more than a purr, the timbre of it seeming to pool in his groin, then light a path of fire across his skin. “That’s what they all say. At first.”

  He wished she wasn’t so good at this. He wished he wasn’t so affected. He wished he could look at her and see what he knew to be the truth of her—instead of that elegant, vulnerable line of her neck, the exposed turn of her delicate jaw, that made him want to comfort her, however insane that urge was. He wished that the short, inky-black hair did not suit her so much more than it should have. It made her seem more serious, more substantial.

  But he knew better. He knew what she was. What she’d done. Every dirty detail. He knew everything there was to know about her, and it didn’t matter how small or helpless she might appear on the surface. He knew that she was soulless beneath. Like all the rest of them in that world he’d left behind. Just like he had been, before he’d grown up.

  Looking at her was like looking into a mirror he’d deliberately broken five years ago, and he disliked what he saw. He always would. And she’d been the one to hold that mirror up to him in the first place. How could he ever forget that?

  “There will be a ferry leaving at dawn on Friday,” he said coldly, abruptly, his voice showing none of the roughness within. “I want you on it.”

  She laughed. It was a silvery sound, magical. It made him wish for things that he knew better than to believe in, and he blamed her for that, too.

  “Are you ordering me off this island?” she asked, looking delighted at the prospect. And not in the least bit intimidated by him, which, it hurt him to admit, he found more attractive than he should. “How dictatorial. I might swoon.”

  Jack eyed her. This was his refuge. His escape. He hid here in the dark, grim winter months when none of the well-heeled tourists and summer residents were around—New England’s and Manhattan’s oldest money in their ancient family homes and compounds, cluttering up the island and hoarding all the summer sunshine for themselves as if it was their rightful due. He preferred it here now, in these forgotten months, when he didn’t have to be Jack Endicott Sutton, too-eligible heir to two magnificent American fortunes, and yet still the bane of his grandfather’s august existence. Here, he did not have to think about his duty. Here, he could breathe without worrying how each exhalation reflected on his suitability to manage the Endicott Foundation, his family’s prominent charitable foundation. Here, tucked away in the worst of the unforgiving Maine weather, shoulder to shoulder with lobstermen and fishermen who respected only the sea—and only sometimes at that—he was just Jack.

  He couldn’t have Larissa Whitney polluting this place, playing God only knew what kind of games in the closest thing he had to a sanctuary. It was unthinkable. And he suspected he could guess what she was doing
so far from her preferred glittering, high-end stomping grounds. Down east Maine in the off-season, subject to the treacherous weather and notably bereft of breathless page-six gossip, was no place for a spoiled, pampered, overly indulged party girl. There were no parties here. No press. No screaming, adoring masses on every corner, ready to copy her clothes and sell her secrets to the highest bidder. None of the things someone like Larissa considered basics for survival. He was afraid he could guess what had brought her here, and he didn’t like it at all.

  “You haven’t bothered to ask what I’m doing here,” he pointed out, searching the smooth mask of her beautiful face, so adored by so many, for clues, but of course, there was nothing there. There never was. Nothing she didn’t want him to see. Nothing to see at all, he thought. He was annoyed that he even looked for anything more. “Is that your usual self-absorption, or did you expect to see me when you got here?”

  “You tossed open the door like a modern-day Heathcliff,” she murmured, as if transported into rapturous daydreams by the very idea. He didn’t believe her for a moment. Like all of her peers, all saddled with names that dated back to the origin of the country, and to the lauded coal, steel and robber-baron fortunes that had built it, she could be a fantastic actress when it suited her. But could she be anything else? And why did he still want to know?

  “It’s all very romantic,” she said when he only gazed at her. She shrugged. “I’d hate all the gritty little travel details—your itinerary, my schedule, so boring—to ruin such a delicious moment.”

  “I think I know why you’re here,” he said, ignoring her flirtatious little performance. Her games might have worked on him once, he told himself, but they wouldn’t again. His voice lowered. “Did you really think this would work, Larissa? Have you forgotten that I know how you operate?”

  She blinked, and he had the impression that for that moment, she truly had no idea what he meant. But then he reminded himself that this—precisely this—was what she was best at.

  She leaned forward then, putting her hand high on his thigh and letting her body sway toward his and, no, Jack thought. He’d been wrong. This was what she was best at. This effortless seduction. With just a touch, using only her proximity. She was irresistible and she knew it. Lethal.

  So close, her unique fragrance seemed to fill his head, spinning it—a hint of unusual, expensive spices, edgy and intriguing. And the cream of her skin was scented a warm, intoxicating vanilla. He remembered far more than he wanted to, more than he was comfortable admitting even to himself. Her taste, her scent. The wild passion that he’d long since decided he’d imagined, embellished. But there was no imagining this. Her hand burned through his jeans, searing into his flesh, stirring him, reminding him exactly how much he’d wanted her—and still did. But that didn’t mean he had to give into it. Or even like it. Or her.

  He stood, watching her hand fall away. Part of him wanted to reach out and put his own hands on her, all over her. Relearn her curves, her cries. Lose himself in her.

  But he was no longer that man. He’d graduated from the kind of games Larissa played five years ago, and he wasn’t going back.

  “Friday,” he said, his voice commanding. Sure of her instant obedience. “The ferry. Six-thirty in the morning. It’s not a request.”

  “I appreciate the update on the ferry schedule,” she said evenly. Once again, he saw something he didn’t understand in her green gaze—something that didn’t make sense. She didn’t look away, and he found he couldn’t decipher her. And surely, she should be an open book, made up of blank pages, shouldn’t she? “But I’ll do what I want, Jack. Not what you tell me to do.”

  “Not on this island, you won’t.” He could feel the ferocity of his smile. He was enjoying this too much, suddenly.

  Her elegant brows rose, and that smile of hers sharpened. “I hate to point out the obvious to a person whose relatives were on hand to sign the Declaration of Independence and carry on afterward in the streets of Philadelphia,” she drawled, her eyes flashing. “But it remains a free country.”

  “Except on this island,” he said. And smiled wider, arrogant and proud. “I own it.”

  She was such an idiot.

  There was no getting around it, Larissa thought when she was tucked away in her tiny attic room in the inn, neck-deep in the claw-footed tub that she suspected had been there since the 1800s. Endicott Island. She should have known. It was right there in his name.

  Although, in her defense, she knew a great many people whose family names were littered about the country—on streets, towns, buildings, bridges. Her own, for example. That didn’t necessarily translate into members of that family appearing wherever they were named, as if called forth by some spell. No one expected to run into members of the Carnegie family when attending a show at Carnegie Hall in New York City, or any Kennedys while flying out of New York’s JFK airport. Apparently, this was just a special Jack Endicott Sutton twist.

  Still, she should have put it together when she’d seen him, instead of being so dizzied by her overwhelming reaction to him. She should have done a lot of things, including never surrendering to that reaction, that deadly attraction, in the first place five years ago. Should have might as well be tattooed across her forehead, she thought then, glowering at herself in the cracked mirror as she climbed from the tub and wrapped a towel around herself. It was the story of her life.

  She was pulling on a soft T-shirt over a pair of yoga pants when the peremptory knock sounded at the door. Larissa froze, her heart going wild. There was only one person it could be. Only one person she’d spoken more than a few words to since she’d arrived. Only one, and she knew better than to let him in. She’d be safer donning a red cape and wandering through the nearest forest, looking for wolves.

  And yet she found herself crossing the small room as if compelled, as if he ordered her to do so simply by his presence on the other side of the door. Her bare feet, still warm from the bath, scuffed against the rough-hewn wood beams in the floor. Her breasts seemed to swell against her shirt, as a kind of glimmering wound low in her belly, and pulsed. She was aware of the cheerful comforter spread across the tidy double bed, the rain and wind buffeting the small round windows that lined the wall above it. She was aware of her own wet hair, her own damp skin. She was suddenly as hot as she’d been in the tub; hotter. As if that simple, demanding knock had set her ablaze.

  He did not knock again. He did not have to. She could sense him there, on the other side of the wood. She could see him—that dark, stirring gaze. That absurdly distracting mouth. Those perfect, sculpted cheekbones and that strong nose, the unmistakable stamp of his ancestors and the easy, rangy athleticism that was uniquely his. The towering intellect behind it that had allowed him to transform so easily from black sheep reprobate to the chairman of his family’s foundation—an evolution that had endeared him even more to his legion of admirers. He was beautiful, but he was no pretty boy. He never had been, not even when he’d played the part so easily, so well, for so long. It was yet one more reason he was the most dangerous man she’d ever met.

  Five years ago, even in the damaged state she’d been in, she’d known that well enough to walk away from him. So why, now, with so much more of herself to lose, did she do precisely the opposite of what she knew she should?

  She was a fool beyond the telling of it, in ways she could not even bear to examine, and even so, she swung open the door. She could not seem to stop herself. She could not seem to want to stop herself.

  He loomed there in the doorway, his body too big in the narrow, shadowy hallway, dark and hungry-eyed. She could see the stark, mouthwatering outline of his lean arms as he braced them above the door, the carved beauty of his chest as he hung there as if on display, like some impossible piece of sculpture. And then she met his bittersweet brown gaze and lost her breath completely.

  He is much too dangerous and you are far too weak, she railed at herself, but he was right there in front of her, makin
g her heart do cartwheels against her ribs, and she had always been helpless where this man was concerned, no matter what she let on. No matter what stories she told herself. Always.

  Jack stepped over the threshold, forcing Larissa either to back up or let him bump against her. She chose to move back, deeper into the room, and cursed herself when she saw the faint hint of a smile curve his devastating mouth. Jack, she knew, was a master of power games. He could hardly hold the position he held at the Endicott Foundation, or in their bright and complicated little society world, without that kind of mastery. She jerked her attention away from his distracting mouth.

  “You overstated your ownership of this island somewhat,” she said, deciding that offense was far preferable to defense, and pretending she didn’t feel stripped bare despite the fact she was wearing clothes. She had to fight to keep her arms from crossing over her chest, a protective gesture he would read too easily and, she had no doubt, use against her.

  It was something about the laser-hot gaze he let drift over her, the way the air around them seemed to tighten, making her feel almost light-headed. Almost dizzy. That, she told herself, was why she felt so off balance around this man. It was chemical. Nothing more. And she was done with chemicals, too.

  “I never overstate,” he replied, though his eyes were on her lips, touching them as if he was thinking of kissing her, of claiming her, even then. As if he already had. Her thighs clenched hard against the sudden spike of heat through her core. He met her gaze slowly, insolently. “I don’t have to.”

  “Your family owned the island once,” she said crisply, rattling off the results of the search she’d cued up on her smartphone. “But your grandfather gave most of it over to the Maine Coast Heritage Trust some thirty years ago, and some more to the State of Maine long before that. Now you simply sit in your grand old estate, the patriarch that never was, staring out over the land that could have been yours.” She forced a light little laugh. “How sad.”