All the things he needed threatened to overwhelm him, to crack his control to pieces, and then what? She would still be a ghost. The reflection of the woman he’d never quite had, and wholly someone else, someone new, all at once.
Becca looked at his hand on her arm for a long moment, then slowly raised her hazel gaze to his.
“I know more about Larissa Page Whitney than I do about myself,” she said. Her brows rose, challenging him. Beckoning him. “But nothing at all about you.”
“I am sure you can read endless articles about me online,” he said, letting his fingers test the smooth, bare flesh of her upper arm. Testing his limits. Testing her response. He angled himself closer, mesmerized by the way her lips parted, by the way her eyes gleamed with heat. “If you find yourself horribly bored and in need of some slight entertainment.”
“I don’t want to know about the CEO of Whitney Media,” she whispered. “I want to know about you.”
He was so close. He needed only to bend his head and he could taste her, finally. He could not remember a time he had not wanted her, desperately. Her, he thought. Not Larissa. But how could that be, when Larissa had been the only thing he’d ever wanted, ever allowed himself to consider wanting—for ages now? When she had so long been the brass ring, just out of reach? Yet he could not seem to stop himself as he knew he should.
He pressed his lips against her cheek, tasting the silken softness of her skin. She was vanilla and cream, and the taste went straight to his sex. He ached. He forgot any woman but this one.
“Ask me anything,” he said, his mouth so close to hers he thought he could already taste the drugging heat of her.
“Who are you kissing?” she asked, her voice a thread of sound, but seeming to pound through him like a drumbeat, loud and sure. As the words penetrated, he lifted his head, and her hazel eyes were too bright as they met his, but brave. “Her or me?”
HE LOOKED AS IF SHE’D slapped him. She felt as if she had.
He stepped back, letting his hand drop from her arm. The stark contrast between his warm palm and the cool air of the dining room around them felt like a sudden punishment. Her cheek burned where he’d kissed her, and she felt that searing heat deep in her core. But she could not take back her question. She was not even sure she wanted to. She still could not figure out which sick part of her had asked it.
Or why she wanted so desperately to hear his answer.
He moved instead to the long table and picked up his wineglass, taking a long pull of the rich red liquid before setting it down, and Becca could not help but notice how easily he moved, how gracefully, even when she suspected he was as off balance as she was.
She was in deep trouble with this man. There was no use denying it. He had just tried to kiss a ghost and she.
It did not bear thinking about. She was not even sure what had come over her in the first place. They had been having dinner. It had been … far too easy. Fine wine, interesting conversation. She had been involved in what he was saying, even relaxing as she’d gazed at him in the gentle glow of the candelabra and the sparkling chandelier above. Maybe that very easiness was what had tipped her over the edge. The dizzy feeling that if she only squinted, if she only let go of herself completely, she could disappear completely into this fantasy world. She could really be the woman who had been meant to sit at this table, with this man. After all, she already looked just like her.
Maybe what had scared her was how little she thought she’d mind.
“I wanted only to use you because you look like her,” he said finally. If he was another man, she might have thought him awkward. Unsure. But he was Theo, and he straightened and faced her, proud and unyielding. “I did not expect anything further than that—an elaborate ruse, perhaps, but just a ruse. I did not anticipate that I would want you.”
“I don’t think you do.” It was so hard to say—but she shrugged when his flashing amber gaze slammed into hers. All that heat made her throb, then ache, then melt. She forced herself to breathe. To continue to say what must be said, or it might explode inside of her. “I think you want her. The more I look like her, the more you look at me. The more you long for her.” She even smiled then, though it hurt more than it should. Far more than she was willing to admit to herself. “It makes sense. She’s your fiancée and she’s lost to you. It would be odd if you did not feel these things.”
His jaw worked for a moment, and then he let out a small, mirthless laugh. It rang hollow through the vast room, like a kind of chill in the air itself.
“You don’t know her,” he said shortly. “You are talking about fantasies and feelings. Games. My relationship with Larissa was nothing like you imagine it to be.”
“Why did you want to marry her?” she asked, shaking her head slightly. Why did she want—so desperately—to see things in him that weren’t there, depths he did not possess? Why did it hurt her to imagine he was exactly who he claimed to be—and why did she want to convince him otherwise? Why did she imagine that she could see a different man inside of him? Her mouth felt dry. “Was it just a merger? A business transaction?”
It wasn’t that she found it hard to believe, in theory. After all, she was nothing more than a business transaction herself. She certainly had no trouble envisioning her loathsome uncle championing exactly that kind of thing—it was Theo she couldn’t imagine succumbing. Why should he marry anyone, for any reason aside from his own desire to do so?
His hard mouth crooked, and he thrust his hands into the pockets of his devastatingly elegant suit. It was the first time she had ever seen him anything even remotely approaching disheveled, and she found she was holding her breath.
“It was clear very early in my career at Whitney Media that I was headed for the top,” he said with a certain matter-of-factness, completely devoid of ego and all the more powerful for its unvarnished honesty. “It was no secret that I wanted nothing less, and soon enough, I came to Bradford’s attention. But Bradford prefers to keep the control of his family’s company within the family.” He gave her a cool look.
“So she was merely your bargaining chip.” Becca tried to keep the disappointment from her voice, her expression. How had she convinced herself that a man like this had fallen in love? That he could? That he was different, somehow, from her uncle? How had she let herself believe it? He, like Bradford, wanted what he could conquer. He wanted what he viewed as his. How had she forgotten for even a moment the circumstances that had brought her here?
This was the man who had ordered her to spin around in front of him for his perusal. This was the man who had kept her from walking out of the Whitney mansion.
What wasn’t this man capable of? And when had she lost sight of that?
“You mistake me yet again,” Theo said in that deadly way of his, that made her shiver deep inside. She called it fear—though something in her knew better, even now. Even after all she’d learned. “She was never my bargaining chip. I was hers.”
“I did not end up at Whitney Media by accident,” Theo heard himself say, somewhat bemused by the fact he was speaking of this at all—of his past. It was something about the way Becca looked at him—as if she thought he owed her this explanation. But why did
