don’t know her,” he said again, his voice clipped.
“I wonder if you do,” she threw at him. “You’re so busy making excuses for her—you’ve even brought me here to pretend to be her because she betrayed you in yet one more way, and you still want to defend her.”
“I won’t listen to this—”
“You wanted me to study her, and I have,” Becca said, throwing her words out like blows. Wishing they were. Wanting them to land, to hurt. Wanting him to wake up and see the truth—needing him to—though she refused to examine why. She kept on. “The woman you’re carrying around in your mind doesn’t exist, Theo. She never did.”
“You forget yourself.” His voice could have shattered steel. She felt a chill sneak along her neck, her arms, leaving goose bumps in its wake, and she knew she’d pushed him too far. His eyes bored into hers, amber turned glacial.
“Theo.” But he was no longer listening.
“You are the ghost in this room,” he told her, in his most lethal tone, making her grip the chair in front of her to remain upright. “You’re the one playing a part. You only exist insofar as I say you do.”
His face was carved of stone, absent of light. It should have done her serious damage. Instead, she ached for him.
“I suggest you remember your place,” he threw at her, and then he brushed past her and left her standing there, trembling and alone. And as pale as the ghost he’d accused her of being.
BECCA WOKE THE next morning feeling unaccountably fragile.
She moved slowly, sitting up and pushing her hair back from her face carefully, as if suffering from some kind of emotional hangover. Gingerly, she made her way into the vast, luxurious shower that had at first seemed shockingly lush and that she was now already far too comfortable using. She stood under the hot spray for a long, long time, willing the odd tilt and whirl of her feelings away.
Because this was Theo’s world, a carafe of hot coffee waited for her in the elegant blue-and-white bedroom when she walked back into it. She poured herself a mug of the rich, nearly decadent brew, and took several bracing sips before she completed the final step of her morning ritual in this bizarre place and allowed herself to look in the mirror.
Where she saw only Larissa looking back.
She blinked, and saw herself again—and then had to put her hand against her abdomen to ease the knot of panic there away.
Things had gotten far too confused, she thought then, fighting off the odd sense of something like vertigo. It was all too messy, somehow. She was a stranger with her own face. How could that be anything but a mess? But she could change it, surely.
Just because that arrogant man thought he got to decide if she existed or not didn’t make it true, she reminded herself fiercely, shaking off all the echoes of her illegitimate childhood, all of Bradford’s harsh words, that Theo’s comments last night had dredged up. It meant only that he was even more full of himself than she’d previously believed.
And if a hollow ache seemed to gape open behind her ribs and then bloom in the pit of her stomach, well, no one had to know that but her. And she was getting very, very good at burying the things she didn’t want to think about, she thought wryly. Far too good, in fact.
She checked in with Emily quickly, making sure her sister was doing well even as she hurried off the phone—too conscious of the lies she had to tell to linger. But hearing her sister’s voice was like a much-needed wake-up call. She would pack these unwanted emotions away and concentrate on the job at hand. On her purpose for being here—which was not to figure out the mysteries of Larissa or, more to the point, of Theo Markou Garcia. It didn’t matter how intriguing he was, how her body hummed to life at the very thought of his hard mouth, his strong hands. She had to play a part, that was all. Then she would collect her mother’s inheritance—Emily’s future—and leave this empty, shiny life exactly as she’d found it. She would be happy to be rid of it.
That was the plan. That had always been the plan. She should feel happier about it, surely.
She dressed slowly, pulling together the kind of fashionable outfit that she imagined Larissa might wear. She chose a flirty little scarlet dress and a pair of boots, then fashioned her hair in a Larissa-esque slicked-back ponytail, low on her neck. She then sat down at the vanity table and began the laborious process of applying the kind of makeup women like Larissa, apparently, viewed as the bare essentials for everyday wear. She had to live under the expectation that she might be photographed at any moment, she reminded herself, an echo of Theo’s lecturing tone ringing in her head. She had to learn that only in her private bedroom could she drop her defenses and be something other than public property.
Normally, Becca hated every moment of the process. She’d liked a bit of mascara and some judicious eyeliner now and then when she’d been back in her own life, but she’d always erred on the side of practical rather than pretty. Larissa’s seventeen coats of this followed by a dusting of that seemed absurdly excessive to her. But today she found that she was almost grateful for the excuse. For the ability to put on a mask, layer by layer. Coat by coat.
Because last night had left her feeling much too raw, far too exposed. She didn’t want to feel anything even approaching vulnerable. She wanted to lock the soft parts of herself away, because she had to concentrate on her endgame—on Emily—if she was going to make it through this.
It didn’t matter how fascinating he was. It couldn’t.
She had to find a way to remember that.
Theo was all business when she found him again, behind his massive desk in the office suite of the penthouse. He barely spared her a glance when she walked in, and even turned his high leather seat around toward the window to continue his phone conversation. She heard the terms market share and network overhead, and tuned out.
She wondered if he made everyone stand there, like a supplicant, waiting for the great gift of his attention. Why wouldn’t he? Hadn’t he told her last night to remember her place? This was a naked display of power. He was too busy to deal with her the moment she arrived—though the housekeeper had told her to go to his office—and yet she was too insignificant to be kept separated from his conversation. She was meant to feel more and more uncomfortable as she stood there, ignored.
It was shocking to think that he’d learned tricks like this, that they hadn’t been genetically bestowed upon him at birth. Everything about him shouted out his dominance, his masculine arrogance, his mastery of himself and everything around him. Becca found she couldn’t imagine him as a young boy, desperate to acquire even some small part of what was now his. In her mind, he must always have been this way. Larger than life.
“I trust you are not as sentimental today as you were last night,” he said coldly, snapping her attention back to the present. He replaced the phone in its cradle and eyed her from across the wide expanse of his gleaming black desk.
Becca stiffened. “Are you?” she replied. When his dangerous brows arched, she sniffed. “Or is it not my place to ask such questions?”
She could feel the tension in the room skyrocket. It clenched a hard hand around her, like a fist, and squeezed tight,
