One Night to Risk It All

She reached up and unfastened them as they walked, wadding them up in her shaking hand, holding them down at her side.

“Miss Rachel,” the maid said, announcing her as though she were a duchess of some kind.

Alex stood and her heart squeezed. No matter how angry she was, he never failed to leave her utterly speechless. He was wearing a simple white button-up shirt, unfastened at the collar, the sleeves rolled up past his forearms.

His skin looked a deeper bronze in that color, a glimpse of chest hair visible through the open neck. He looked so effortless. So ridiculously sexy.

It wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that her body was drawn to a man like this. A man who had tricked her, used her and basically had her held captive on an island. What the ever-loving heck was wrong with her? Was she punishing herself for past sins? Or was there something that drew her to men who wanted to...use her?

She sat down, and he took his seat.

“I trust you had a nice rest?” he asked.

“I don’t think you really trust that. I’m sure you know I spent the past hour quietly freaking out in the privacy of my bedroom.”

“I suppose that’s only fair.”

“I’ve just found out I’m having a baby, on top of everything else, so yes, it is only fair.”

“That is why I proposed marriage,” he said. “Not to get Holt away from Ajax, but for the sake of the baby.”

“Great. Fine. But please know that I will not marry you. Not for the baby, not for anything. At the very least not until my sister is married and I am certain, one hundred percent certain, that you won’t get Holt because of my indiscretion. I will not allow you to hurt Ajax or my family in that way.” A startling thought occurred to her. “And if you go after my sister I will be forced to remove your male member from your body with a very dull pocketknife, and don’t think I won’t do it. I might have been spoiled from birth, but I’m also from New York, and we don’t mess around over there.”

“I have no desire to go and seduce your sister,” he said, leaning back in his chair, looking out at the ocean. As though they were discussing the weather, and not her desire to castrate him. “My plans, my priorities, have changed. My loyalty is to the child, not to my vengeance.”

“Well, it’s very early in the pregnancy, and things can go wrong, so, yet again, marriage is off the table.”

“Fine. For you, maybe it is, but not for me. I’ll continue to enter it into the discussion at times I feel are appropriate.”

“You are a massive pain in the rear, do you know that?”

“I absolutely do,” he said, lifting a glass of wine to his lips. Yeah, and he was drinking wine in front of her. He knew he was a pain. And he seemed to revel in it.

“Well, stop it.” She took a sip of water from her glass.

“Probably not. That’s twenty-six years of bad habits you’re asking me to break immediately, and I doubt it’s going to happen.”

“Another good reason to avoid marrying you.”

“Why is it you agreed to come with me?”