Dating the Rebel

by Lisa Childs

  Boy...

  That was what she and Blair had dubbed that rain-fresh and musk scent when they were young. But now Miranda called it man—which made her think of Grant. And her heart ached...

  Damn him.

  Even when he wasn’t around, he could spoil her mood. No. She wasn’t going to let him get to her. She was going to her office to work on her laptop before she forgot all the things she wanted to do.

  Then she pushed open her office door to face the thing she most wanted to do: Grant. He sat in her chair, his feet on her desk, his head back as if he was sleeping.

  Her traitorous heart swelled and warmed with desire and something else...something that scared her so much she lashed out. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  But she was so distraught, she held up a hand before he could answer, “No. I know what you’re doing. You’re ignoring what I want. I told you never to come back here—that I never wanted to see you again, and here you are, doing what you want, not caring about what I want.” Which was what her mother had always done. Going from man to man while ignoring her children.

  “You want honesty—”

  “And apparently you can’t give that to me,” she said. “You weren’t really auditioning to join the dating service. You were spying on me to make sure I didn’t mess with Blair and Teo’s relationship.”

  He flinched. “Blair told you...”

  “Yes,” she said, her heart aching with his betrayal. “So all you’ve done is lie to me.” She shook her head. “You need to leave. And this time, stay away!”

  He shook his head and refused to budge from her chair.

  “Grant, I don’t want you in my life anymore.”

  He stood up then and planted his hands on her desk and leaned across it until he was nearly nose to nose with her. “That’s not going to be possible,” he said. “I am now your partner.”

  “What?”

  “I just played your sisters for their shares of the company, and they’re not as good as you are.”

  She shook her head. “No...”

  But he nodded. “Afraid so. I guess I actually own more shares than you do right now.”

  She gasped as shock stabbed her heart. This was the ultimate betrayal...by all of them. And just like all those years ago, Blair was the only one she could truly trust. She had no one else.

  And now she didn’t even have her business. At least not control of it, and control meant everything to Miranda. Grant controlled the business now.

  “Why would you do this to me?” she asked as those damn traitorous tears stung her eyes. “Do you hate me that much?”

  * * *

  Her beautiful face crumpled with a grimace of pain—pain he’d caused her. That pain gripped Grant’s heart, squeezing it so tightly that he thought it might stop beating entirely. “God, no, Miranda.”

  “Then why would you take my company away from me? You must hate me...”

  He shook his head, disgusted with himself for how he’d handled everything. Her sisters had warned him.

  But he hadn’t realized how angry she was until she’d lashed out at him. And then he’d gotten defensive and angry himself. But seeing her like this, so obviously hurt, his anger drained away to shame.

  “I’m not taking it away,” he assured her. “All I want to do is help, and you wouldn’t let me join the service—”

  “You still want to join?” she asked, her voice raw with the betrayal she must have been feeling.

  And he finally realized fully what a fool he’d been. He’d been sleeping with her and telling her that he was only doing it so she would let him date other women. He dragged his hand through his hair and over his face. “No. I never really wanted to join.”

  “Then what was all the auditioning about?” she asked. “Just to have sex with me?”

  He’d had some dangerous missions before, and this reminded him very much of the one where he’d had to navigate through a field of land mines. He didn’t want to make one misstep, because it could cost him so much. It could cost him everything.

  Then he remembered her one request of him: honesty. “I wanted to make you so crazy about me that you would do whatever I wanted you to do,” he admitted. “And I wanted you to leave Blair and Teo alone. That was the reason I sought you out in the first place.”

  “And in the second?” she asked.

  He groaned. “God, it’s easier to lie than to be honest,” he admitted. Because honesty was so dangerous. “I don’t want to say you and the sex were in second place. But...”

  “It’s true,” she said.

  “It started out with me just protecting Blair,” he said. “But then I wanted you, and once I had you, I wanted you more and more.” Like now, he ached for her. But he didn’t dare touch her. She was too angry and too hurt, and he didn’t want to hurt her any more. “I wanted you so much that I forgot what my original mission was...”

  It had all gotten so muddled for him, like now. He was struggling to explain himself to her, struggling to explain what she’d come to mean to him: everything. But the wrong words kept coming out.

  “To destroy me?” she asked. “Is that why you’re taking over my company?”

  “No, Miranda. I want to help you. Your sisters said you won’t let them take out a loan on their own, so I figured the only way I could put money into the business is if I owned part of it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t need you to rescue me, Grant. I need you to respect me. I figured out a way to make the business what I want it to be about.”

  “Fun,” he said.

  Her eyes widened; she must have been surprised that he remembered. “And love,” she said. “Money can’t buy love. It’s just there or it isn’t.”

  Did she have any for him? Or only distrust?

  “I want dating to be about getting to know each other, having adventures—”

  “Like us,” Grant said. “We got to know each other. We had fun.” More fun and excitement than he’d ever experienced. “We could figure out some way to incorporate my and Blair’s business, Private Flights, with Liaisons International—arrange dates in exotic locations.”

  “We could,” she agreed—much to his surprise. But then she added, “If I could trust you. But all you’ve done is lie and play games with me. And I have no idea if what you’re telling me now is the truth or if you’re up to something else.”

  He sucked in a breath, but he couldn’t come up with a valid argument to what she’d said. He hadn’t been honest with her. Then.

  “I’m being honest now,” he vowed.

  And she shrugged. “I have no way of knowing.”

  “Miranda...” He came around the desk and reached out to her now.

  But she held him back, her hands out—her arms stiff—as if she didn’t want him anywhere close to her. “I can’t have a partner I can’t trust, in business or in life...”

  He understood what she’d meant about money not being able to buy love. No matter how much money he put into her business, she was never going to love him...because she was never going to trust him.

  Over the years he’d had some missions go bad, but he’d always been able to adapt—to come up with a new plan—so that he had survived. For the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure what to do. Except to give her what she wanted.

  Honesty.

  “I know I screwed up,” he said. “Badly...and I know you’re probably not going to believe me. But it’s the truth...” Grant trailed off, struggling to find the words he’d never said to another woman. They were in his heart, so he pulled them from there and told her, “I love you.”

  She flinched as if he’d slapped her.

  “You don’t believe me,” he said with a weary sigh. “Just think about this. If I really wanted to hurt you, I would have walked away. I wouldn’t care about helping y
ou with your business or about earning back your trust. I would have just left you alone like you wanted, because you wouldn’t have mattered to me. But you matter, Miranda, more than anything...”

  Tears trailed down her face now.

  And his heart wrenched over making her cry. No matter what he’d said to her or how hard he’d been on her when they were younger, he had never made her cry. She was like his sister—tough.

  And independent...

  And his attempts to help her had just hurt and offended her. Just like Blair had felt over his meddling, Miranda felt disrespected.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and his arms ached to reach for her. But he’d already done more than enough damage.

  He’d made her cry.

  “I’ll do what you want from now on,” he promised. “I’ll stay away from you.”

  And before he could act on his selfish desire for her, he turned and walked out of her office.

  And out of her life...

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EVER SINCE SHE’D let him walk away a week ago, Miranda had been kicking herself. She hadn’t been alone in that, either. Her sisters had been kicking her, too. And even Blair...

  This was the first time in a clash with Grant that her best friend had sided with her brother over Miranda.

  “I know he’s an idiot,” Blair said from the cockpit of that two-seater plane Miranda had first flown in with Grant. “But I believe him. He would not lie about loving you. He has never played with anyone’s heart like that.”

  “It feels like all he’s done is play games with me since he first showed up at my office...”

  “Like I said, he’s an idiot, but he’s a well-meaning one,” Blair insisted. “He wanted to protect me.”

  She believed that; he’d always been protective of his younger sister. “What about getting my sisters’ shares of the business away from them?”

  “He wanted to help you,” Blair said. “I know and you know that you didn’t need his help, but that’s what Grant does. Or at least, that’s what I think he does when he disappears like he does. I think he’s rushing off to someone’s rescue. That’s his first instinct.”

  “You’re his sister,” Miranda said. “You idolize him.”

  “So do a lot of other people,” Blair said. “He’s earned it. He’s always taken care of me.”

  But nobody had ever taken care of Miranda. So she wasn’t sure how to accept anyone’s help...even though he’d had damn good ideas for the dating service.

  She cared less about his ideas than him, though. He’d told her he loved her.

  And she hadn’t told him that she felt the same. She’d just let him walk away. She looked out the window on her side of the plane. “Are we almost there?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Blair said.

  But Miranda didn’t know how the pilot could tell for certain when all the aqua-blue water looked the same. She trusted her friend, though.

  That was why she’d asked her to fly her to Rio. To the casino where Grant had signed up to play in a professional match.

  He might be too busy to talk, but hopefully he would find time to listen. She had so many things she needed to say to him. But by the time Miranda arrived at the casino where he was playing, she was too late. The match had ended.

  “Where is he?” she asked one of the players she recognized from the game on Ibiza, at Grant’s hotel there.

  “He should be down here celebrating his victory,” the man replied.

  If she’d missed him...

  If he’d headed out to the airport she’d just left...

  She would have been devastated.

  “But he must have gone upstairs to his suite to count his money,” the man continued.

  “He has a room at the casino?”

  “A suite,” he said and gave her the number for it.

  Her heart pounding, she rushed from the private room, through the lobby to the elevators. Her fingers shook as she pressed the button to his floor—the penthouse floor. The elevator was fast, so fast that she felt light-headed and dizzy when the doors opened onto a wide corridor. She stepped out and approached the double doors marked with the number the man had given her.

  She drew in a breath, bracing herself, before she knocked.

  “Go away,” a gruff voice called out. “I don’t feel like celebrating.”

  He must have thought she was his friend. She wanted to be—his friend, his lover, his everything...

  “It’s me,” she called out.

  The doors jerked open within seconds. “Miranda?” he asked as if he couldn’t believe she was actually standing in front of him.

  She wore his favorite outfit—the leather one Blair had given her.

  Then he cleared his throat and asked, “What do you want?”

  “You,” she replied.

  He stepped back as if she’d punched him. Hard. “What?”

  “I’ll play for you,” she said. “Winner takes all...”

  His forehead furrowed with lines of confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “You just won this championship and you can’t understand the rules of the game?” she asked as she stepped inside the suite and shut the doors behind her. Then she walked around him toward a table near the kitchenette part of the suite. A deck of cards sat on the table, and she picked them up. It was probably his winning deck, so maybe she should have asked for another. But she began to deal those.

  “What are your rules, Miranda?” he asked as he joined her at the table.

  Unlike the game in his hotel suite, this one must have been more formal, because he wore a tuxedo. But the tie was undone, and half the studs were loose on his shirt, leaving it partially open to expose his muscular chest. His scrapes and bruises had healed.

  She had to blink to clear the desire and the confusion from her eyes and focus on his handsome face. Dark circles rimmed his dark blue eyes. He looked exhausted. She raised her hand and stroked his jaw. “Or are you too tired to play me?”

  He shook his head. “I just need to understand what the stakes are,” he said. “Are you trying to win your sisters’ shares back? Because you don’t have to. I’ll just give them to you.”

  “I told you,” she said. “You. I’m playing for you.”

  “But why?”

  She drew in a deep breath; she owed him the truth. He’d given it to her. “Because I love you, too.”

  His eyes widened with shock. “But I thought you couldn’t trust me?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t,” she said, but she smiled to soften her words. “But I will. I trust that you are a good man, Grant Snyder, and you have only the best of intentions for those you love.”

  “And I do love you,” he insisted.

  She nodded. “I know...so pick up your cards. If I win, you will be my partner—in business and life.”

  “And what do I get if I win?” he asked.

  “Whatever you want...”

  * * *

  Grant reached out for the cards, but he never turned them over. He just tossed them aside. “I fold.”

  “You don’t want to play?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” he said, and he lifted her onto the table. “But I already won.”

  “Congratulations on the championship,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I’m not talking about that. I won with you coming here, to me. With you trusting me...” Emotion rushed up to choke him, so he cleared his throat before adding, “With you loving me.”

  “I do love you,” she said, and her smile widened. “I used to have the biggest crush on you.”

  “What? Now who’s not being honest? You couldn’t stand me.”

  “True,” she said. “But even when I thought you were a dick, I thought you were super hot.”

  “And now?”

/>   “You’re still super hot,” she said as she pulled the rest of the studs free on his shirt and pushed it and the tie from his shoulders. Then she reached for the button on his pants.

  But he caught her hands in his and held them. “Do you still think I’m a dick?”

  “You have your moments,” she said.

  And he laughed. She was always honest with him. He wanted to be the same with her. “I do,” he agreed. “I also have some secrets I want to share with you, about something I still do occasionally for the government.” He had a feeling he wouldn’t be accepting as many of those missions, though. But he wanted her to know everything about him. So he told her what he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.

  And when he finished, she was crying again.

  “Damn it!” he said, as he pulled her against his chest. “I hate it when you cry.”

  She pushed her hands against his bare chest and turned her face up to his. “These are happy tears. You weren’t supposed to tell me that, were you?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell anyone,” he admitted.

  “But you shared with me,” she said. “And you didn’t need to... I am going to trust you.”

  “I want to make sure that I never give you any reason to doubt me,” he said. “Or my feelings for you...”

  She leaned forward and brushed her mouth across his. Then she lowered her head and brushed her lips across his chest, over his heart. “I don’t.”

  His skin tingled from her touch, and passion surged through him. He reached for the zipper on her vest and tugged it down to free her beautiful breasts. Then he ran his mouth over them, and his tongue over her nipples. And then lower...

  Her pants came off more easily this time. And she kicked them to the floor.

  He pushed her back onto the table as he moved his mouth lower on her beautiful body. And he tasted her passion for him. She was so sweet, so wet...

  She writhed before her body shuddered and she screamed his name. Then she reached for his pants again. But he stepped back. He wanted her too badly for her to play with him. So he shucked off his pants and rolled on a condom himself. Then he slid deep inside her hot body and groaned.