“Your lot? You have brothers and sisters?” she pressed, even though she knew the answer.
“Two of each, for my sins,” he said with a rueful smile. “And a couple of cousins who are like brothers to me as well.”
“Wow,” Chloe remarked, putting her glass down carefully on the table in front of her. She didn’t want to drink too much and potentially put her foot into what were undoubtedly treacherous waters. “I can’t imagine being part of a large family like that. Were you close as youngsters?”
Miles shrugged. “When my father wasn’t trying to pit us all against one another. Dad was a man driven to succeed, at any cost.”
Yes, even at the cost of another man’s life, Chloe thought bitterly.
“That must have been hard on all of you. Did your mom make up for that?”
“It had its moments,” he said sparingly. “And, actually, Mom isn’t too different. She’s always been driven to succeed and expected the same of all of us. Not the most maternal type.”
He cleared his throat, then went on. “Anyway, after college, I moved to Chicago to make my own way. And I have. Dad died a couple of years back. He never told me that he was proud of what I’d achieved. It wasn’t until after he’d gone that I realized how important that was to me, to actually hear him say the words. Now I’ve decided that his opinion doesn’t matter. I’m here for me. To live my best life. It’s why I go for what I want when I see it and I make no apology for that.”
“And why should you. Isn’t that how we should all live? Striving for what we want? Honestly, as long we don’t do harm to others, isn’t that the way to live our best lives?”
Miles cocked his head and looked at her carefully. “I’m more and more convinced that fate put you on that collision course with me yesterday. Does that sound corny?”
Oh, it was fate all right. A fate that had begun with his father’s ill treatment of hers. She tamped down the bright flare of hurt and anger that burned inside her and painted a smile on her face.
“Maybe it would to anyone else, but it doesn’t to me.”
Of course it didn’t sound corny to her, because she
’d orchestrated their meeting so carefully. She’d plotted and planned and it had almost gone awry. But out of nothing had come this growing connection with Miles Wingate. He was not the man she’d thought he was. After reading all the articles that had talked about how hardheaded he was and how successful his security business had become—she’d tarred him with his father’s brush. Chloe knew that success always came at a cost. Was she prepared to pay the price for hers?
She was powerfully drawn to Miles. It was there in the way her heart raced when she saw him. It was there in the way her body reacted with the age-old pull of desire that drew her insides into a knot at his touch. And that kiss of his? Well, that had stimulated a long-dormant libido that had sent her subconscious into overdrive during last night’s sleep.
If their circumstances had been different, she’d be able to allow herself to enjoy his company more. She wouldn’t have to remain on tenterhooks all the time, wondering if she was going to say or do something that might reveal her true intentions. And what were those exactly? She asked herself the question simply to remind herself to remain on track.
She wanted the entire Wingate family to feel the shame she’d been forced to grow up with. It had started already in the media, with the family’s jewel in the crown, WinJet—their private jet manufacturing company—in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. The scandal would be hurting them, even Miles. They were, historically, a family that couldn’t bear to be seen to be less than perfect. But the cracks were beginning to show, and when she uncovered new information about the family to give to the reporter and he took it—and her father’s story—public, that would blow those cracks wide-open.
Revealing that the patriarch of the Wingate family had driven a business colleague to suicide, then swept in and bought up what was left of that friend’s company in order to consolidate WinJet’s early entry into the aviation industry, would confirm to all the world that the recent incident at the WinJet plant was merely proof that the rot in the family and their companies was systemic.
“You’re not drinking your champagne. Is it not to your taste?” Miles asked, interrupting her reveries.
“It’s delicious. I just want to make it last so I can enjoy it longer.”
“I can make sure you enjoy it all night long. Just say the word.”
Chloe was saved from saying the word that hovered on the edge of her lips by the arrival of a waiter with menus. She took her time poring over the available selections. Her mind was so scattered by Miles’s comment, and her own willingness to say a categorical “yes” to whatever he suggested, that she had to get herself back under control. None of this was turning out how she expected it to.
She sighed. Wearing the vintage cocktail dress she’d picked up in a charity store near one of the more affluent suburbs in Chicago had been a calculated risk. He could have turned up in jeans and a T-shirt, geared up for a casual evening, but the moment she’d spied him through her living room window and seen the cut of his suit and the polish to his shoes, she’d known she’d done the right thing. The dress accentuated her good points and she’d seen the way he’d looked at her when she’d come out to greet him.
It did a woman’s soul good to feel appreciated. And he’d made her soul sing. Not just when he arrived but when he’d made that toast, too. From any other man it might have come across as orchestrated or false, but from Miles it felt right on an entirely instinctive level. She was wildy attracted to him. From his short, dark blond hair and green-eyed gaze, to the way his large, masculine hands so capably did whatever he set out to do.
She looked at those hands now. Remembered the punch of awareness that had rippled through her at his touch. Sex with him would be incendiary. She knew it as well as she knew the sun rose each morning. That pulse of lust deep in her lower belly pulled stronger. She dragged her gaze from his hands. What the heck was she doing thinking about sex with a man who was virtually a stranger to her? A man who was part of a family she’d loathed and envied for nineteen years of her life.
Things aren’t always as they seem.
One of her father’s favorite sayings slid through from the back of her mind, prompting her to wonder why on earth she had thought of that right now. Was it that Miles was not as he seemed? Or maybe it was that he was exactly as he seemed and her perception of his family was the part that was tainted.
Chloe had heard that revenge could be a double-edged sword but she never expected the execution of that revenge would cause her so much confusion. The waiter returned for their orders and she dragged her thoughts back to the menu in her hands.
“Look, I’m hopeless when I’m given too many choices. What do you recommend?” she asked of the young man standing patiently beside her.
“The lobster is always good, ma’am,” he said deferentially.