lo-ove him,” he said mockingly.
My throat choked. Madison and Jason were probably making love right now, in their elegant suite at a five-star Parisian hotel. I said in a small voice, “I don’t want to love him anymore.”
“But you do.” He snorted, looking over me with contemptuous eyes. “You’ll probably forgive that stepsister of yours, too.”
“I love them.” I sounded ashamed. And I was. What kind of idiot loves people who don’t love her back? My teeth chattered. “People...can’t choose who they l-love.”
“My God. Just look at you.” Edward stared at me for a long moment. “Even now, you won’t say a word against them. What a woman.”
Silence fell. The wind howled outside, shaking the leaded glass in the thick gray stone.
“You’re wrong, you know,” he said quietly. “You can choose who you love. Very easily.”
“How?”
“By loving no one.”
At those breathtakingly cynical words, I looked at his powerful, injured body. The hard jaw, the icy blue eyes. Edward St. Cyr was the master of Penryth Hall, handsome and wealthy beyond imagining.
He was also damaged. And not just his body.
“You’ve had your heart broken too,” I whispered, searching his gaze. “Haven’t you?”
Edward looked me over in a way that caused my body to flash with heat. He took a step closer, and his muscular, powerful body towered over me in every direction.
“Perhaps that’s the real reason I wanted you here,” he murmured. “Perhaps we are kindred spirits, you and I. Perhaps we can—” he brushed back a tendril of my hair “—heal each other in every way....”
Edward pulled closer to me. I felt the warmth of his breath against my skin and shivered all over. My heart was beating frantically. He started to lower his head toward mine.
Then I saw the sardonic twist of his lips.
Putting my hands on his chest—on his hard, muscular, delicious chest, warm through his shirt—I said, “Stop it.”
“No?” Taking a step back, laughing, he mocked me with my earlier words. “Too soon?”
“You are a jerk,” I choked out.
He shrugged his one-shoulder shrug. “Can’t blame me for trying. You seem so naïve, like you’d believe any line a man told you.” He considered me. “Kind of amazing you’re still a virgin.”
Outrage filled me, and new humiliation. “You claim you’re desperate to be healed—”
“I never used the word desperate.”
“Then you fire your physical therapists, and waste your days getting drunk—”
“And don’t forget my nights having sex,” he said silkily.
“You’re already trying to sabotage me.” Narrowing my gaze, I lifted my chin. “I don’t think you actually want to get better.”
His careless look disappeared and he narrowed his eyes in turn. “I’m hiring you as a physio, Miss Maywood, not a psychiatrist. You don’t know me.”
“I know I came a long way here to have my time wasted. If you don’t intend to get better, tell me now.”
“And you’ll do what? Go back home to humiliation and paparazzi?”
“Better that, than be stuck with a patient who has nothing but excuses, and blames others for his own laziness and fear!”
“You say this to my face?” he growled.
“I’m not afraid of you!”
Edward stared at me blankly.
“Maybe you should be.” He fell back heavily into the chair and stared at the fire. The sheepdog lifted his head, wagging his tail.
“Is that what you want?” I said softly, coming closer. “For people to be afraid of you?”
The flickering firelight cast shadows on the leatherbound books of his starkly masculine study. “It makes things simpler. And why shouldn’t they fear me?” His midnight-blue eyes burned through me. “Why shouldn’t you?”
Edward St. Cyr’s handsome face and cultured voice were civilized, but that was a veneer, like sunlight over ocean. Beneath it, the darkness went deeper than I’d imagined. In spite of my earlier brave words, something shivered in my heart, and I suddenly wondered what I’d gotten myself into.
“Why should I be afraid of you?” I gave an awkward laugh. “Is your soul really so dark?”
“I loved a woman,” he said in a low voice, not looking at me. “So much I tried to kidnap her from her husband and baby. That’s how I got in the accident.” His lips turned flat. “Her husband objected.”
“This is why you wouldn’t allow the agency to give me any details,” I said slowly, “not even your name. You were afraid if I knew more about you, I wouldn’t come, weren’t you?”
His jaw tightened.
“Was anyone hurt?”
His expression suddenly looked weary. “Only me.”
“And now?”
“I’ve left them to their happiness. I’ve found that love, like dreams,” he said the word mockingly, “offers more pain than pleasure.” He turned to me in the firelight, his expression stark. “You want to know about the depths of darkness in my soul?” His lips twisted. “You couldn’t even see it. You, who are nothing but innocence and sunlight.”
I frowned at him. “I’m more than that.” I suddenly remembered my own power, what I could do. The glimmer of fear disappeared. “I can help you. But you must promise to do everything I say. Everything. Exercises, healthy diet, lots of sleep—all of it.” I lifted an eyebrow. “Think you can keep up with me?”
His lips parted. “Can you keep up with me? I’ve broken a lot of physiotherapists,” he said dryly. “What makes you think I can’t break you? I...” He suddenly scowled. “What are you smiling at? You should be afraid.”
I was smiling. For the first time in three weeks, I felt a sense of purpose, even anticipation as I shook my head. The high-and-mighty tycoon didn’t know who he was dealing with. Yes, I was a pathetic pushover in my personal life. But to help a patient, I could be as ruthless and unyielding as the most arrogant hedge fund billionaire on earth. “You are the one who should be afraid.”
“Of you?” He snorted. “Why?”
“You asked for all my attention.”
“So?”
My
