Claimed (Diamond Tycoons 1)

As she waited for the water to get warm, she made the mistake of looking in the mirror. What she saw there nearly brought her to her knees.

She looked...like she’d spent the night getting ravaged. Her hair was wild; her skin flushed a rosy pink wherever his stubble had touched her. Her mouth was swollen; her eyes dreamy and a little unfocused. And there were bruises. On her throat. On the outer side of her left breast. On her right hip. On the delicate skin of her inner thigh. They were love bites. Hickeys. Small reminders of him sucked into her skin.

As if she needed the reminders. As if she could forget what he’d done to her—what they’d done to each other.

But she needed to forget, she told herself fiercely. She needed to bury the memories of last night somewhere deep inside so she wouldn’t have to think about them every time she walked into her bedroom. Or every time she saw him at the institute. She’d spent six long years hearing his name—her specialty was conflict diamonds, after all, and his company was the biggest conflict-free diamond source in North America—which meant his name came up a lot in her research, her lectures, her papers.

She’d managed to ignore it for a long time, to put distance between what had happened between them and the businessman who was making so many important and exciting decisions in the field. Now that she’d slept with him again, she would have to go back to how it had been in the old days. Ignoring every mention of him, writing her way around him, pretending he didn’t exist. Not forever, mind you, but for a little while. Just until she could get her head on straight. Just until she could breathe again without bleeding inside.

Fake it until you make it, she told herself grimly as she stepped into the shower and scrubbed herself raw in an attempt to erase the memory of his touch from her skin. Wasn’t that the phrase? She’d spent a long time pretending that year in Manhattan had never happened and had finally gotten to a place where she was happy. Healthy. And now, here he was, back again, shaking everything up. Shaking her up. And she was just supposed to go along for the ride.

Cold, hot, cold, hot. Cold.

No. Not this time. And never again. He was too dominant, his moods too mercurial, and she wasn’t going to take the ride with him again. It had been fun once, but that was before she’d had anything to lose but him. She’d been drifting when she met him at that gala all those years ago. Stealing had lost its thrill and she’d had nothing to replace it until him.

That wasn’t the case anymore. Now she had a career. She had friendships. She had a life. And she’d worked too damn hard for that life to let him come in and turn it topsy-turvy because of old mistakes. And even older chemistry.

No, from now on she would ignore Marc whenever she saw him. A quick nod of acknowledgment if she couldn’t get around it, but that was it. No interaction, no arguing, and for God’s sake, definitely no sex.

Because any interaction with Marc would lead to questions from her peers that she couldn’t answer. Questions that would bring up a past she couldn’t talk about.

Because one of the world’s leading experts on diamonds—a woman who was allowed into and left alone in vaults all over the world—couldn’t also be the daughter of the most successful jewel thief who’d ever lived. It didn’t work that way.

And since all she’d had was her work from the moment Marc cast her out on that dirty New York sidewalk, since it was what had saved her when the rest of her world had imploded, there was no way she was risking her career for him. Not now. Not ever again. No matter how powerful the chemistry or how good the sex.

Some things just weren’t meant to be. And her relationship with Marc was obviously one of those things.

Now all she had to do was remember that.

Seven

“We have a problem.”

Marc looked up as Nic blew right past Marc’s assistant and entered his office without so much as a knock—or a hello. “What’s going on?”

His brother slammed his hand down on the desk hard enough to rattle everything resting on top of it—including Marc’s laptop and cup of coffee. For expediency’s sake—and to give him a second to settle the alarm raking through his stomach—Marc grabbed the coffee and put it on the credenza behind him.

When he turned back to face Nic, Marc was completely composed. He had a feeling he would need it, since Nic was not one to fly off the handle over every small thing. He was volatile, sure—the flip side of the charm that made him such a perfect fit for the public side of the company—but he never panicked. But Marc was pretty sure that panic was what he saw in Nic’s eyes right now. And he’d be lying if he said it didn’t make him more than a little nervous.

“Tell me.”

“I just got off the phone with a reporter from the LA Times. She’s doing an exposé on Bijoux and wanted a comment before the article goes to print.”

“An exposé? What the hell does she have to expose?” Marc stood up then, walked around the desk. “Between you and me, we’re in charge of every aspect of this company. Nothing happens here that we don’t know about.”

“That’s exactly what I told her.”

“And?” He ground out the words. “What’s she exposing?”

“According to her, the fact that we’re pulling diamonds from conflict areas, certifying them as conflict free, and then passing them onto the consumer at the higher rate in order to maximize our profits.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I know it’s ridiculous! I told her as much. She says she has an unimpeachable source.”

“Who’s the source?”

Nic thrust a frustrated hand through his hair. “She wouldn’t tell me that.”