Stolen Hearts (Hearts 1)

Just thinking his name made me blush.

There were moments last night when I hated him as much as I ever hated Jim. But I never wanted a man the way I wanted Ronan.

No man had ever made me so curious. Or reckless.

And the way he seemed to know the power of asking for what I wanted? What was I supposed to do with that kind of man?

“The foundation’s offices are in the Halcyon building. When you’re ready, we will get you all set up.”

I wondered briefly why the offices weren’t in the brownstone, but in the end it didn’t matter. My future was happening.

There was a memory, dim and fragmented, of my two years at college. How I’d ridden my bike around Union, feeling that excited . . . possibility. This feeling in my chest didn’t feel like that, but I wasn’t a girl anymore.

That excitement was behind me. But maybe I had a chance at being useful again. At doing something good. And if I wasn’t excited, I was challenged. Interested. Ready.

From Caroline’s office I went down all the stairways and out the side door. I passed a dozen servants as I went, each of them smiling and following me with their eyes like I’d done something suspicious. Outside the sun was burning off the fog, and I walked across the lawn to the treeline and the small gate that I’d used to get here.

At the sight of a man standing there, I stopped, apprehensive. What was the deal with all this security? I wondered. But then I realized it was Ronan, and my apprehension morphed into something far more complicated. Fear and anger and a desire so strong I felt drunk.

“This is how you got through all the security?” he asked, pushing the wooden gate open and closed. The squeal of its rusty hinges startled birds from the forest behind him.

“How’d you find it?”

He gestured behind me, my dark tracks in the dew spangled grass. “Well, congratulations,” I said. “You caught me infiltrating the compound. Whatever will you do with me?”

He licked his upper lip in a move that was so outrageously sexy, so . . . dirty, I felt my nipples harden under the baggy coat I wore.

“You got a mouth on you,” he said.

The better to bite you with, I thought but definitely didn’t have the balls to say. “What do you want?”

He lifted his eyes.

“You forgot something at the gala,” he said.

My pride?

He held out my clutch. The dark indigo silk beautiful against his skin and the white of his shirt. I took it, careful not to touch him, but he held onto it for a second.

“Poppy,” he said.

“What?”

All that deadly stillness, that careful practiced impenetrable mask he wore every time I saw him since that first meeting here, two years and a lifetime ago, it dropped, and I recognized the beaten, slightly baffled man I’d met in the shadows. The man who wasn’t sure why he was here, or who he was supposed to be inside this house.

You, I thought. I recognize you.

“You need to be careful, Princess,” he said.

“Of you? Lesson learned.”

He tugged on the purse, and I fell off balance towards him. My body collided with his, and I gasped, affronted and unimpressed by his little tricks.

But also stupidly turned on.

“I’m not what’s coming through your door.”

“You’re not coming through anything of mine,” I snapped back at him, and his lips curled, heat settling between us.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered, his breath against my mouth. “If I came through your door, we both know you’d spread your legs for me so fast—”

I grabbed the purse and shoved away from him.

“I survived the monster under my bed,” I said. “And I’m rich now, or haven’t you heard?”

“Your money won’t keep you safe,” he said. “And there is more than one monster in Bishop’s Landing.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m no one, Princess. I’ve told you that.”

“I’m not a fool, Ronan. You were at my house. You talked to the senator. You’re living in Caroline’s pocket. Who. Are. You?”

He stepped closer, and I stood my ground, not about to cower. Those days were over.

“Try it, asshole. See what happens,” I growled at him, and his eyes opened wide for a second as if surprised. As if impressed.

“I’m no one,” he said again. “You need to concentrate on your own life.”

“You need to fuck off.”

He was repeating himself, and if he wasn’t going to bring something new to our conversation I was done. Done with him. Done with who he’d turned me into. The gate was cockeyed and open, and I pushed past him and slipped between it and the fence heading into the forest, down the trail back to my house.

I didn’t turn around despite the fact I could feel the burn of his gaze on the bare skin of my neck. That had to win me some points, right?