One Night to Risk It All

“No. I’m not. I... Can you imagine? The wedding is the social event of the year. Jax is finally going to get Holt. My father will finally have him as a son, which we all know is what both of them want.”

“What about what you want?”

It had been so long since she’d asked herself that question, she honestly didn’t know the answer.

“I...care about Ajax.”

“Do you love him?”

Her eye caught movement out on one of the yachts— a man was on the deck cleaning. He was shirtless, a pair of loose, faded shorts clinging to lean hips. Aided by the sun, the light clinging to the ridges of muscle, the shadow settling in the hollows, she could clearly see the defined, cut lines of his body.

And he took her breath away.

In one moment she had all of the passion, all of the heat, all of the deep longing she’d been growing so certain she was missing—sucked out of her by that horrendous early heartbreak—sweep through her like a wave.

“No,” she said, her eyes never leaving the man on the yacht, “no, I don’t love him. Not—not like you mean. I’m not in love with him. I do love him, it’s just not...that kind.”

It wasn’t a revelation. But coming on the heels of that sudden rush of sensation, it was more disturbing than normal.

She’d sort of thought that maybe it was her fault. Not her and Ajax together, but just the way they were as people. Ajax wasn’t a passionate man, and he never demonstrated passion with her. Quite the contrary, he barely touched her. After all their years together he never went further than a kiss. A nice, deep kiss sometimes. Sometimes a kiss that lasted a long while on the couch in his penthouse. But no clothes were ever shed. The earth was never shattered. It was never hard to stop.

And because he was a very handsome man, she’d assumed that the problem—if it could be called a problem—was with both of them. That she was missing a piece of herself, passion choked out after years of tight control. After letting her passion carry her to the edge of a cliff all those years ago, only to be pulled back just in time, so very aware of the fate she’d been saved from.

Since then, she’d kept it on a tight leash. Which made them sort of an ideal couple, in her mind.

But that wasn’t true. She knew it now. In a blinding flash of clarity, she knew it.

She had passion. It was still there. And she wanted.

“What are you going to do?” Alana asked, sounding heavily concerned now.

Rachel’s face heated. “Um...about?”

“You don’t love him.”

Oh. Of course Alana wasn’t in her head—she didn’t know that Rachel’s world had just been rocked by a man more than one hundred yards away.

She waved a hand. “Yes, but that’s nothing new to me.”

“You’re staring at that man over there.”

Rachel blinked. “Am I?”

“Obviously.”

“Well he’s...”

“Mmm. Yes, he is. Go talk to him.”