said, simple and to the point.
Her refusal lay there for a moment, seeming to fill the elegant room, blocking out the late-afternoon light that poured in through the soaring windows.
“That’s it?” Theo asked softly, not sure he could believe what he’d heard. Not sure when someone had last said no to him, for that matter. Even Larissa had always said yes, no matter what she’d then gone on to do. “That’s all you have to say?”
“That is not, by any stretch of the imagination, all I have to say,” Becca threw back at him, her temper flaring in her that suddenly. It lit up her face, made it suddenly unlike Larissa’s—and yet remarkably, shockingly attractive. “But it is all I plan to say. You’re crazy.” She looked back at her aunt and uncle, her lips curling. “You’re all crazy. I’ve never been happier in my life that you people don’t claim me.”
And then she turned, her spine as straight as a queen’s, her head high, and walked through the door without looking back, more elegant in her ratty clothes than some debutantes looked in their opulent ball gowns. Looking just like Larissa at her haughtiest.
Bradford and Helen broke into a loud, angry noise, but Theo barely heard them.
She was magnificent, and, more to the point, she could be Larissa.
He was not about to let her get away.
Becca knew he would be the one to follow her, so she did not have to turn to identify the speaker when she heard the quiet command from behind her.
“Stop,” he said again.
Once more, she found herself obeying him without meaning to do so. She scowled at the marble floor beneath her feet, as if it was the fault of the stone she had an apparent weakness for this man.
“I do not have to follow your orders simply because you issue them,” she said, as if she had not already done so. “There is no agreement between us.”
“Your tender sensibilities do you credit, I’m sure,” Theo said. His voice was too dark, and wove far too many complicated patterns down the back of her neck, through her stomach, and even down to the soles of her feet. She knew that keeping her back to him was a mistake, that she begged for her own destruction that way.
But when she turned, he was right there in front of her, so dark and impossibly bright-eyed in the vast entry hall, so hopelessly compelling, and she was not sure that there was any way at all to be safe around this man. No matter what her treacherous mind whispered, as if it could discern something in him that was otherwise hidden—as if it wanted her to lay down her defenses then and there, on faith. But she had none. Not while she stood in the Whitney mansion, surrounded by enemies.
“I doubt that you really mean to compliment me,” she said, searching the angles and planes of his fascinating, addictive face for clues. “I suspect you only do so when you are preparing to throw your weight around.”
“The difference between me and whoever it is you think I am,” Theo said in that low, disturbingly sensual voice, his mouth crooking slightly, “is that I don’t have to throw my weight around to achieve my ends. My will is usually sufficient.”
“I’m so sorry to ruin your winning streak,” she murmured with cloying insincerity. “But I prefer my will to yours.”
He shrugged slightly, as if he could not bother to worry about the force of her will, so puny was it next to his own. “I’m depending on your practicality,” he said quietly. “I suspect it will win out before you make the great mistake of walking out that door.”
She didn’t know why she stood there so tensely, braced for attack, when he stood a few feet away and looked very nearly idle. In the way that great predators allowed themselves to appear idle moments before they pounced.
“Is this more of your sales pitch?” she asked. “I’m not interested. You and those people are nothing more than ghouls, waiting for that poor girl to die—”
“You know nothing about her,” he interrupted her, the rebuke in his voice not at all lessened by the smoothness of the delivery. “Nor about anything else that goes on in this family, or this company.”
“I don’t want to know anything about any of you!” she retorted, wondering why it should sting to hear him state the simple truth so baldly. Because, of course, he was right. She knew nothing about the family that had categorically rejected her since before her birth. “I don’t want to have another thought about any one of you the moment I walk out that door!”
He moved closer, his eyes glowing like embers, and she knew then, as her stomach tied itself into an aching knot, that he was truly a devil, this man. And that if she was not careful, he could have a power over her she’d never given anyone. But even so, she did not step back. She did not try to protect herself as she knew she should.
“The only person I want you to think about is your sister,” he said, in that voice of his, so dark, so sinful, that it seemed to move inside of her without her will.
“I always think about my sister, thank you,” she managed to say.
“Can you really pass up the opportunity to secure her future?” he asked, so reasonably. So calmly. “All because it suits you to feel morally superior to the family who denied you for so long?”
It was a hit straight to the heart, and he knew it. She could see that he knew it as she stared at him, stricken, and his remarkable eyes gleamed.
“Does it help your sister that you leave here with your righteous indignation firmly in place?” he asked in that same deadly calm way of his. “Or do you suppose, years down the line, that she might be somewhat more grateful for the Ivy League education you will deny her if you walk out now?”
The cold marble hall seemed to seep into her, chilling her. Her throat felt dusty, and there was that dangerous heat in her eyes. And he was right, damn him. She wanted to feel better about herself, to be better than them, but she wanted Emily’s future—Emily’s happiness—more. She’d promised her mother. She’d promised.
And wasn’t that why she’d come here in the first place? Wasn’t that why she’d put all of this into motion? How could she back out now, just because she didn’t like the terms? She’d known from the start that she wouldn’t like anything about these people. Why was she running away just because they were confirming her worst opinion of them now?
“You’ve made your point,” she said finally, when she could not bear the way he looked at her a moment longer—as if he knew exactly what she thought, what she felt. As if he’d manipulated this entire situation to reach this point, because it suited him. He was the most terrifying man she’d ever met—because he was so powerful, but even more because part of her thrilled to it, and wanted to melt right there in front of him. Wanted to surrender to the whispers in her own head, and pretend he might keep her safe rather than crush her.
But she would never let that happen. Accepting a situation and using it to further her own ends was not the same thing as surrendering. She wouldn’t let it be.
“I want Emily’s entire education assured,” she said, her voice clipped and tense to her own ears. “Freshman year through a postdoctoral degree, should she want one.”
“You’ll get your mother’s entire inheritance,” Theo said at once, almost
