been a noted bad influence on her whenever possible.” He did not sound the way Becca thought a man who’d been cheated on should sound. He was too calm. Too measured.
“How modern and forward-thinking of you to be so at ease with their relationship,” she said, sniffing slightly, and then froze when he turned the full force of his gaze on her—his eyes so dark they were hardly amber at all. His mouth twisted, his body tensed, and she knew, suddenly, like a searing bolt of lightning through her heart, that this was the real Theo Markou Garcia. This was who he kept wrapped up beneath the polished exterior and the dizzying displays of wealth. This man—elemental and electric, raw and dangerous.
She should have been afraid. Terrified. But instead she felt … alive. Exhilarated. What did that make her? What did it mean? But she was afraid she knew.
“I am not the least bit modern,” he bit out. His eyes flashed. “But I learned long ago how to pick my battles. You should do the same.”
“This is ridiculous!” she cried several nights later, abruptly pushing away from the gleaming length of the dining room table.
Theo watched her as she rose, noticing the thrum of energy in her body, the roll of her hips—so suggestive, so impertinent—so very different from Larissa’s boneless, bored-looking saunter. He could practically see frustration shimmer from Becca’s skin, and could not help his own immediate reaction to her—she was like a live wire. He shifted in his chair.
“I have told you repeatedly—” he began, but she whirled back around to face him, magnificent in a floor-length gown in a deep, lush shade of chocolate. It made her skin seem to glow, highlighting the delicate lines of her face and her rich, full lips.
“You do nothing but tell me,” she interrupted fiercely. “How to walk, how to stand. How to breathe. And I am having a delightful time playing Eliza Doolittle to your Henry Higgins, but this is too much.”
“Dinner?” he asked dryly, eyeing her over the expanse of silver platters, all of them displaying food he knew was cooked to delectable perfection. She was breathing too hard, he thought. She was far too agitated. He wished that awareness of her did not move through him like a caress. “I will notify the chef of your displeasure.”
“The food is perfect,” she said with a sigh. “It always is. I’m sure you insist upon nothing less.”
He did, of course, but he did not much care for the way she said that—as if that was yet one more flaw she had discovered in him. He did not know why it should matter to him if she’d found a thousand flaws. Why should anything she said or did affect him in the least? And yet it did. She did. More and more with every day, when he should view her as nothing but one more employee. He leaned back in his chair.
“We were having a conversation about local events and the theater,” he said, making sure to sound as bored as he ought to feel, yet did not. “Hardly worth all this carrying on. You could simply have changed the subject if you’d become tired of it.”
Some shadow seemed to move over her face, and when she looked at him, she seemed something very close to sad.
“What’s the point of all this?” she asked. Her voice was softer, but there was still that great darkness in her eyes, belied by the sparkle of the sapphires at her throat, the glorious sweep of her bright hair against the dark windows behind her. “Why are you trying to turn me into a proper Victorian maiden? I think we both know that’s not at all who Larissa was.”
“Do we?” He found her spellbinding, and could not account for it. It was not that she looked so much like Larissa—though she did, and more with every moment—it was that the more she resembled her cousin, the more he could only seem to focus on the things that made her uniquely her.
She moved toward the table again, as if pulled by a force beyond her control. He felt the same way when he looked at her, but could not allow himself to act on it. She did not deserve to be dragged down in this madness, just as Larissa deserved more from him than this casual defection, this unexpected yearning for another woman when he had promised to be better than that. Better, by far, than she had ever been.
“You’re acting as if Larissa was prim and proper,” she said, her gaze flicking over his face as if looking for clues. “Is that what you think? Because she didn’t collapse outside of that club by accident, Theo. And she’s famous for her wild nights of partying, not her intimate, elegant dinner parties for eighteen.”
He was distracted by the sound of his name in her mouth. Had she used it before? He wanted her to taste far more of him. And he hated himself for it.
“You don’t know her,” he said, his voice curt.
“Do you?” she asked, and it was worse that her tone was so even, so quiet. So thoughtful. “Or are you making me into your fantasy of who you think she should have been? Who you wanted her to be?”
That should not have surprised him as much as it did. It should not have cut into him, deep and fierce. She was too incisive, this ghost of his own creation; too intuitive. She saw too much. It was as if the formal dining room around them contracted, and there was only the way she looked at him, as if she knew all of his secrets—and it hurt her.
It made him want her all the more, despite everything.
“Does it matter?” he asked, fighting to keep his voice even. “As long as you get what you want, why should you care what version of her I need you to play?”
She shook her head as if she fought back some harsh emotion, but he could not see why she should—she was the stranger here. She was the only one who would escape unscathed when all of this was over, while Theo would preside over the great bonfire of the hollow victory that would be his. All his, but without the greatest prize of all. But then, he knew better—he knew that even if Larissa had lived, even if she’d married him as she’d promised, she would never truly have been his. They’d ruined that possibility long ago.
“Isn’t being a CEO enough?” she asked, as if she could not make sense of him. As if she wanted to. “Must you own the company, too?”
Theo was on his feet without knowing he meant to move, restlessly closing the space between them, his attention focused on her wary gaze, her resolute expression. Why did he want to touch her when he should want only to put her in her place? Why was he having so much trouble remembering what that place was?
“You have me all figured out, don’t you?” He could not seem to stay an appropriate distance from her, as he knew he should. He felt drawn to her, by the shimmer of emotion in the air, by the shrewd intelligence in her hazel eyes. By the ache of all the things he could never have, not with this woman nor the one she so resembled. The things he’d sacrificed in service to his drive, his ambition. “You’ve judged me and delivered your sentence.”
“Why can’t you just leave the poor girl alone?” she asked, sounding very nearly desperate, but there was a huskiness to her voice that he knew was because he was near. He felt it, too—the surge of electricity, the dance of heat, that arced between them. He was much too close to forgetting why he should continue to ignore it. Betraying himself, betraying Larissa, betraying the promises he’d made and meant, he reached over and captured her slim, toned bicep in his hand. He felt the way she jumped at his touch, felt the way she shivered against his hand.
As if she saw him as a man. A real man. Not a convenient excuse or a bargaining chip in a never-ending battle against an overbearing father.
“Larissa
