The dial that tells us which floor we’re on is made of a brass arrow and roman numerals. Nothing so coarse as a digital screen could grace this elevator. A low b
ell signals that we’ve arrived. The doors slide open.
It’s someone else walking out of the elevator with a warm hand at her back, another body that manages to put one foot in front of the other in high heels.
A baroque mirror hanging on the wall shows a pretty woman beside a man twice her size, his face set in stern lines. They look well matched in an unexpected way, small against his strength, delicate where he’s broad. People underestimate you because you’re different. He’s right about one thing. We aren’t the same. We’re two different elements: water and stone.
At the end of the hallway we come to my room. It’s cowardice that turns my face down so I can fumble blindly through my small clutch. There are twenty million cards in here, none of them the hotel room key. I’m running out of breath even though I’m standing still.
A hand covers mine, and I freeze. How is he so calm at a moment like this? Has he been to a thousand hotel rooms with a thousand other desperate heiresses?
There are small white marks and raised lines. “Scars?” I whisper.
He knows what I mean. “Sometimes knives. Or barbed wire. A few wild animals have got their teeth in me over the years.”
“Is that a euphemism?” I still can’t bring myself to look him in the eye.
Especially when he laughs, low and rough. “Suppose so. You want to take a piece out of me, Harper St. Claire? I think you just might before you’re done.”
Then I do meet that blue gaze, because he has it wrong. “It’s the other way around. I don’t do… this. Whatever this is. I’m out of my depth here.”
It’s like ripping myself open, being so vulnerable with a man. I learned not to trust them early, from the men my mom married, from my father. Sutton could use this knowledge against me.
Those eyes turn dark with tenderness. And this, I realize, is what makes him different. This is the way that I underestimated him. Where he could have been cold and unfeeling, there’s this humanity to him instead. Humanity, but also pure male desire.
“We’ll start slow,” he says, and then his hand holds my face.
“Why me?” I’ve been pursued by men before, but never like this. “Is this some kind of competition thing? Because of my connection to Christopher?”
He gives a rough laugh. “Jesus Christ. You’re beautiful, smart, funny. Your connection to Christopher is the least interesting thing about you. I don’t give a damn who your stepbrother is.”
“I have to tell you something—” The words catch in my throat. “I think… what I mean to say is… I’m a little hung up on Christopher. I don’t want to be. I didn’t even think I was, but sitting there with you and Hugo and Bea, I realized it’s true.”
He’s laughing, the bastard, a silent, shaking kind of laugh. “Do you think that’s a surprise to me?”
I scrunch my nose. “It’s a surprise to me.”
“For your information I knew it as soon as you walked into the boardroom. It was clear from the way you talked about him, but it wasn’t going to stop me. Do you know why?”
“Because you want to have sex with me.”
A slow shake of his head. “I want to have sex with you so bad it hurts. It’s a distraction, the way my cock gets hard every time I look at you. The way I can’t stop imagining your breasts under those little T-shirts you wear. And that dress at the gala. It took every ounce of strength in me not to rip it apart with my bare hands, the Tanglewood Historical Society be damned.”
My breath catches. “A distraction.”
“A distraction, because I’m not only trying to have sex with you. I’m a direct man, honey. And I’m going to be direct about this. I’m courting you.”
“Courting?” My voice sounds faint. What an old-fashioned word. A lovely word. God, it’s a terrifying word.
“That’s what a man does when he’s determined and serious and wants a woman for his own. So yeah, you’re hung up on another man. You work on that little distraction while I work on one of my own.”
That’s the only warning I get before his lips cover mine. There are seconds that I could use to protest. No, I’m not ready, wait. My mouth is stubbornly silent until he finds it.
I gasp my surprise, but he swallows that down.
It feels good to be wanted, uninhibited, without a million reasons why we can’t be together. Without that unbreakable control that makes Christopher Bardot a man without weakness.
Of course I can’t deny that he’s part of this equation. He’s Sutton’s business partner. He’ll find out what we did, eventually. Will he feel regret? Jealousy? I hope so. Maybe that’s small of me, but there’s a much bigger part of me that wants him to finally, finally notice me.