had no idea such a sharp blonde could taste so sweet.”
And he had already turned and started back toward his cabin by the time those words fully penetrated all that odd, internal shaking.
Lauren thought she would hate herself forever for the moisture she could feel in her own eyes, when she hadn’t permitted herself furious tears in as long as she could remember.
“Let me make certain I’m getting this straight,” she threw at his back, and she certainly did not notice how muscled he was, everywhere, or how easy it was to imagine her own hands running down the length of his spine, purely to marvel in the way he was put together. Certainly not. “The innkeeper called ahead, which means you knew I was coming. Did he tell you what I was wearing, too? So you could prepare this Red Riding Hood story to tell yourself?”
“If the cloak fits,” he said over his shoulder.
“That would make you the Big Bad Wolf, would it not?”
She found herself following him, which couldn’t possibly be wise. Marching across that clearing as if he hadn’t made her feel so adrift. So shaky.
As if he hadn’t kissed her within an inch of her life, but she wasn’t thinking about that.
Because she couldn’t think about that, or she would think of nothing else.
“There are all kinds of wolves in the forests of Europe.” And his voice seemed darker then. Especially when he turned, training that gray gaze of his on her all over again. It had the same effect as before. Looking at him was like staring into a storm. “Big and bad is as good a description as any.”
She noticed he didn’t answer the question.
“Why?”
Lauren stopped a foot or so in front of him. She found her hands on her hips, the wrap falling open. And she hated the part of her that thrilled at the way his gaze tracked over the delicate gold chain at her throat. The silk blouse beneath.
Her breasts that felt heavy and achy, and the nipples that were surely responding to the sudden exposure to colder air. Not him.
She had spent years wearing gloriously girly shoes to remind herself she was a woman, desperately hoping that each day was the day that Matteo would see her as one for a change. He never had. He never would.
And this man made her feel outrageously feminine without even trying.
She told herself what she felt about that was sheer, undiluted outrage, but it was a little too giddy, skidding around and around inside her, for her to believe it.
“Why did I kiss you?” She saw the flash of his teeth, like a smile he thought better of at the last moment, and that didn’t make anything happening inside her better. “Because I wanted to, little red. What other reason could there be?”
“Perhaps you kissed me because you’re a pig,” she replied coolly. “A common affliction in men who feel out of control, I think you’ll find.”
A kind of dark delight moved over his face.
“I believe you have your fairy tales confused. And in any case, where there are pigs, there is usually also huffing and puffing and, if I am not mistaken, blowing.” He tilted that head of his to one side, reminding her in an instant how untamed he was. How outside her experience. “Are you propositioning me?”
She felt a kind of red bonfire ignite inside her, all over her, but she didn’t give in to it. She didn’t distract herself with images of exactly what he might mean by blowing. And how best she could accommodate him like the fairy tale of his choice, right here in this clearing, sinking down on her knees and—
“Very droll,” she said instead, before she shamed herself even further. “I’m not at all surprised that a man who lives in a shack in the woods has ample time to sit around, perverting fairy tales to his own ends. But I’m not here for you, Mr. James.”
“Call me Dominik.” He smiled at her then, but she didn’t make the mistake of believing him the least bit affable. Not when that smile made her think of a knife, sharp and deadly. “I would say that Mr. James was my father, but I’ve never met the man.”
“I appreciate this power play of yours,” Lauren said, trying a new tactic before she could get off track again, thinking of knives and blowing and that kiss. “I feel very much put in my place, thank you. I would love nothing more than to turn tail and run back to my employer, with tales of the uncivilized hermit in the woods that he’d be better off never recognizing as his long-lost brother. But I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t matter why you’re here in the woods. Whether you’re a hermit, a barbarian, an uncivilized lout unfit for human company.” She waved one hand, airily, as if she couldn’t possibly choose among those things. “If I could track you down, that means others will, as well, and they won’t be nearly as pleasant as I am. They will be reporters. Paparazzi. And once they start coming, they will always come. They will surround this cabin and make your life a living hell. That’s what they do.” She smiled. Sunnily. “It’s only a matter of time.”
“I spent my entire childhood waiting for people to come,” he said softly, after a moment that stretched out between them and made her...edgy. “They never did. You will forgive me if I somehow find it difficult to believe that now, suddenly, I will become of interest to anyone.”
“When you were a child you were an illegitimate mistake,” Lauren said, making her voice cold to hide that odd yearning inside her that made her wish she could go back in time and save the little boy he’d been from his fate. “That’s what Alexandrina San Giacomo’s father wrote about you. That’s not my description.” She hurried to say that last part, something in the still way he watched her making her stomach clench. “Now you are the San Giacomo heir you always should have been. You are a very wealthy man, Mr. James. More than that, you are part of a long and illustrious family line, stretching back generations.”
“You could not be more mistaken,” he said in the same soft way that Lauren didn’t dare mistake for any kind of weakness. Not when she could see that expression on his face, ruthless and lethal in turn. “I am an orphan. An ex-soldier. And a man who prefers his own company. If I were you, I would hurry back to the man who keeps you on his leash and tell him so.” There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes then. “Now, like a good pet. Before I forget how you taste and indulge my temper instead.”
Lauren wanted nothing more. If being a pet on Matteo’s leash could keep her safe from this man, she wanted it. But that wasn’t the task that had been set before her. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“There is no alternative, little red. I have given you my answer.”
Lauren could see he meant that. He had every intention of walking back into this ridiculous cottage in the middle of nowhere, washing his hands of his birthright and pretending no one had found him. She felt a surge of a different kind of emotion at that, and it wasn’t one that spoke well of her.
Because she wouldn’t turn up her nose at the San Giacomo fortune and everything that went along with it. She wouldn’t scoff at the notion that maybe she’d been a long-lost heiress all this time. Far better that than the boring reality, which was that both her mother and father
