reminded herself sharply. So why did she feel so much like an alien, set down into it but never quite of it? That was the milliondollar question, wasn’t it?
The rain pounded down on the roof of the car, washing over the front window despite the energetic efforts of the windshield wipers, drumming into her head, her battered heart, her traitorous limbs. She didn’t know which storm was more dangerous—the one with all the rain and the wind outside the confines of the car, or the far more damaging one inside her.
But she couldn’t let herself think about that. She glared through the window, staring at the blurry, watery house that stood so proud and pretty before her, plump and confident in the dark, wet night.
She didn’t know why she’d let the car drift to a stop like this, gawking up at the place as if she’d never seen a grand old house before. As if she was some poor country mouse on her first trip somewhere special. As if she hadn’t, in fact, grown up in one of the most coveted remaining mansions in New York City, the toast of what was left of the Gilded Age Manhattan lifestyle. Perhaps it was because this particular house was so … private.
Scatteree Pines sat up on the highest part of the hill, its unobstructed view of the whole of the Atlantic Ocean that spread out from the rocks below, its elegant back to the tiny village as if it held itself quietly apart, aloof. The house was a gabled, grand old affair that nodded toward the Victorian style, with a pitched central roof and two sprawling wings that spread away from the arresting front entrance. But it was located down a long and winding private drive in the farthest corner of one of the most remote islands in North America. It was not, like the Whitney summer “cottage” in self-consciously posh Newport, Rhode Island, located squarely on the tourist-ridden and world-famous Cliff Walk, the better to impress the passing unwashed masses with the storied Whitney legacy and its fifty-plus rooms of gilt-edged opulence.
But that shouldn’t matter, Larissa told herself sharply. Scatteree Pines was no more a quiet little “cottage” than Jack himself was the everyday sort of man he’d been masquerading as today. Maybe she’d needed this reminder. Maybe his battered old jeans and casual T-shirt had confused her, making her forget that whatever else Jack was, whatever he seemed to do to her with his slightest glance, he was one of the wealthiest men in the world. He came from a very long line of equally wealthy men, dating back to the original Colonies and before that, to a very elite selection of powerful and well-connected men in England. He was the heir to centuries of power, and he wore it with the carelessness of perfect comfort, evident in every cell and sinew of his well-toned body. She needed to remember that he knew exactly how to wield that power, and would do so—did do so—with absolutely no compunction.
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