When She Was Bad...

Cole watched her pace back and forth in the water. There were wounds there that hadn’t completely healed.

“Peter says that they would have reconciled again. But when my mother learned that she was dying, my grandmother got involved. She got my mother to make my father promise that he would leave me with Grandmother and that he wouldn’t try to contact me until my twenty-fifth birthday. In return, I would be raised as a Pendleton, sent to the best schools, and given everything that money could buy. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I can understand why my mother went along with the plan. She was dying and she wanted the best for me. Besides, my father had the two boys to worry about. She probably felt he had enough on his plate. Intellectually, I can understand it all, but emotionally…”

Cole watched her as she continued to pace. He could see temper and frustration building. The sun beat down on her from behind, waves lapped at her ankles. With her damp spiky hair and those huge almond-shaped eyes, she might have been some sea sprite, sprung from Neptune’s court. She looked magnificent as she kicked water out of her way.

Then she whirled to face him, and Cole’s mind went blank as he stared at her. Seconds, perhaps minutes ticked by before he realized that he’d totally lost the thread of what she was saying. Something about her grandmother.

She was looking at him as if she expected some kind of comment or reaction. He gave it his best shot and nodded.

“Exactly!” She threw up a hand. “I’ve tried to understand her. Really I have. But Grandmother could have released my father from that promise. The thing is she didn’t want him to contact me. And she lied about my mother too. All my life, she held my mother up to me as a paragon that I could never measure up to. It wasn’t until I talked to my father that I learned she wasn’t a paragon at all. She failed at becoming a Pendleton just as much as I did.”

“How so?” Cole asked.

“At seventeen, she ran away with my father. Both families were appalled, but Luke was already on the way. My grandmother has never forgiven my father. I think that’s why she kept me with her all those years—as a kind of revenge. Tit for tat. You took my daughter and now I’ll take yours.”

Once again, Cole found himself clamping down on the urge to reach out and touch her. Not until he learned what he needed to know. “Revenge is a powerful motivator. What about your dad? Why do you think he never went back on his word and tried to get in touch with you earlier the way your aunt did?”

She met his eyes, and he saw a flash of hurt. “It’s pretty obvious. He just didn’t want me.”

“So stealing a Monet and discrediting Rossi Investigations would be a way of getting revenge at last.”

For a moment she simply stared at him. “You think that I—that I would do that to my family? How dare you?” She flew at him, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt. His plate of chicken went flying as he struggled for balance and lost. Wrapping his fingers around her wrists, he twisted his body so that he took the brunt of the impact when they tumbled into the shallow water. Then, anticipating her next move, he rolled with her until he could scissor his legs and trap hers between them.

The struggle was brief. He was bigger and heavier, but she was stronger than he’d expected. When she finally stilled beneath him, they were lying in the shallows with the water lapping against them, staring at each other. Cole could feel that their bodies were already reacting: his own was hardening and hers was growing impossibly soft. She looked like some kind of pixie mermaid staring up at him defiantly.

He’d interrogated witnesses before, but never quite like this. If there’d only been murder he saw in her eyes, he might have had an easier time of it. But he saw the same hot lick of awareness that he was feeling. And he felt the heat, ricocheting from him to her and back again. How often had he fantasized about what it would feel like to have these soft curves, this strong, slender body beneath his? Already his mind was imagining once again what it would feel like to take that hot slippery slide into her.

He held himself perfectly still and tried to keep his brain on task.

“Since you won’t tell me the truth about why you stole the Monet, I’ve had to come up with theories. If you don’t like that one, try this. You resented me from the first day I joined Rossi investigations. For some reason you seem to think we’re in competition.”

“We are,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “Now will you just get off?”

“Not yet. I haven’t finished, and this is my favorite theory so far. You conned someone into helping you steal the painting so that you could recover it and kill two birds with one stone. In one fell swoop, you make me look bad, and you look good. Your brothers fire me and make you a partner.”

She bucked under him, then bit out, “You’re not even close.”

He hadn’t thought he was. “Then set me straight. What are you really doing on this island? Who stole that painting and where is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Anger and frustration rolled through him. They had no place in a good interrogation. But this one hadn’t been going well from the get-go. And he was finding it harder and harder to concentrate. She’d set a fire in him from the moment he’d seen that photo, and what had happened in the Atwells’ penthouse had fanned the flames almost beyond his ability to control them. “Okay. If you’re not going to tell me what’s going on, let’s try this.”

He brushed his mouth over hers. Her lips parted immediately, and without another thought he plunged in.

THE HEAT OF THE KISS exploded inside of her in one glorious wave. It was as if no time at all had elapsed since they’d kissed in the Atwells’ suite. His mouth was hot and hungry, and every hard line, angle and plane of him was pressed tightly against her. All she knew was that she wanted to dive into that heat-filled wave—and to hell with the undertow.

When he cut off the contact and raised his head, she nearly cried out in protest.

“If you don’t want to finish what we started the other night, you have to say so now.”

Every single cell in her body wanted it, wanted him. Desperately, she tried to gather her thoughts. “I—”

He tightened his grip on her wrists. “The truth. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

She tried to draw in a breath, but her lungs were still burning. And she could still taste him. “I want to, but we shouldn’t. There are complications enough without—” She lost the thought and the rest of the sentence when she saw triumph flash into his eyes. And heat.

“This is simple enough,” he said. “I want you and you want me. And I’m tired of waiting. Let’s deal with this part first. Just ask me to kiss you.”

His mouth was a breath from hers when he said the words. She simply couldn’t resist. “Kiss me.” Then she moved to close the small distance between them, and her mouth was as hungry, as desperate, as his. She felt that instantaneous explosion of greed that she’d experienced before. Here was the speed that she’d dreamed about, that she’d craved. Even as the thrill of it poured into her, she pulled her arms free and wrapped them around him.

The worries and fears that had haunted her for the past two days—ever since she’d come to grips with the fact that she’d actually helped her aunt steal that Monet—evaporated. There was no room for them in the floodtide of feelings that he was bringing her.

In between kisses, she said, “Don’t stop. This time, don’t stop.” She’d wanted to shout the words, but they came out on a whispered moan.

“I won’t.” He traced a line of kisses along the line of her jaw.

She tried to arch against him, needed to melt into him. Even as those wants and needs pounded at her, one thrill after another battered her senses.

She was so aware of everything. The sharp bite of the sea shells pressing into her back. The coolness of the water on her skin. And those hands. They were so strong, so demanding, so masterful. When one of them covered her breast, the arrow of pleasure was so intense that it bordered on pain.

Everything was happening so fast—and she wanted so desperately to hang on to each separate sensation. Sunlight filtered through the palms overhead, and she could feel it on her eyelids, see it form into a hazy red mist just before his head blocked it and his mouth covered hers again. She felt like a whirlwind of wants and needs had captured her, leaving her powerless to do anything but be swept away. And still she wanted more. More.

She was driving him crazy. And he wasn’t about to do one thing to stop her. Because he had to have more. Since that first kiss, hadn’t he dreamed day and night of her, of feeling this flash fire of desire again? Hadn’t he known that if he followed her to the island, he would kiss her again? Only this time, he’d been certain that he’d be able to handle his reaction. Certain that lightning couldn’t strike twice.

But it had. Now with her mouth on his, her body arching against him—demanding, searching, offering—he couldn’t think, could barely breathe. The generosity of her response was more than he’d remembered, more than he’d fantasized: the scrape of her nails on his back, the lick of her tongue, the scrape of her teeth on his ear, the moans that vibrated against his lips at her throat. Each sensation battered at him until he wanted nothing more than to swallow her whole.