worked with any woman.
My cheeks were burning now, my throat aching with humiliation. Tears streaked down my face, leaving cold trails beneath the chill of the wind, as I looked out at the vast gray sea.
Edward St. Cyr was used to riding roughshod over people, especially women. He was used to twisting them all around his finger. I knew this. And I’d still let him do it to me.
I stared out at the ocean, watching the light’s play of sparkle and shadows. My tangled hair flew around me in the chilly wind. Watching the seagulls fly away, I almost wished I could join them. To fly away and disappear and never be seen again.
Penryth Hall was supposed to be my place to hide. How did you hide from a hiding place?
Maybe there was nowhere to hide, I thought suddenly, when the person you were really trying to hide from was yourself.
Sooner or later, I’d have to go back to California. Face the scandal, the pity. Face the two people who’d ripped out my heart. And most of all: face myself.
Picking up a stick, I tossed it down the beach. With an eager yelp, Caesar ran after it. My mouth still felt seared from Edward’s kiss. I touched my bruised lips. They still ached for him. For that one single moment, when I’d thought Edward wanted me—me, the invisible girl, completely unnoteworthy either in looks, intelligence or career—I’d felt like I was worth something. Like I mattered.
I writhed with shame to remember it now.
Caesar barked happily, dropping the stick at my feet. I picked it up and tossed it farther down the rocky shore. I stayed out there, procrastinating for as long as I could. But by the time we were both wet with rain and freezing cold, I’d made up my mind.
I was leaving Penryth Hall.
As the dog raced ahead on the return path, I realized I’d finally found something that frightened me more than going back to California.
Staying here.
Edward didn’t really need me anyway. Not anymore. I’d known that when I’d seen him running on the treadmill today.
“You don’t need me,” I said aloud.
Need me, need me, the wind sighed mournfully in return.
As Caesar hurried ahead of me on the wet path, his tongue lolling out as he raced eagerly to get back home to the castle of gray stone, my steps became slower. When I finally reached the door, my feet turned to the left, and I found myself walking around the house to the front door, procrastinating the moment I’d have to go inside and tell him I was leaving. Once I said it, I’d have to do it.
I stopped in shock.
Two expensive sedans were parked in front of Penryth Hall. Standing next to them were my stepsister’s two bodyguards, Damian and Luis.
I stared at them, goggle-eyed. “What are you...”
“Hello, Diana,” Luis said, smiling. “Long time no see.”
But next to him, Damian glowered down at me. “Miss Lowe and Mr. Black are here to see you.” Seven feet tall, bald, and scowling, he shook his head at me. “And she’s really, really mad at you.”
WATER DRIPPED NOISILY from my raincoat to the flagstones as I walked nervously into the shadowy foyer of the castle. The thought of facing them all at once scared me to death.
Edward, Madison and Jason.
All at once.
I couldn’t do it. I stopped, clenched my hands at my sides.
Caesar loped up beside me in the foyer. With a sympathetic look, he shook his fur, splattering me with water and mud. I gasped as cold wet dirt hit my face, then gasped again as I looked down at my messed-up hair, my muddy raincoat and sneakers. I hadn’t buttoned the raincoat so even the T-shirt beneath, which Edward had recently groped, now had a splatter of mud across the front.
If I thought I couldn’t face them before...!
With a satisfied snort, Caesar trotted happily down the hall, no doubt intending to plunk himself in his nice spot on the rug in front of the fire. What did he have to fear? He wasn’t facing the firing squad.
I heard voices down the hall, coming from the library. Madison’s high-pitched voice, two lower masculine ones. Sharing tea, or lying in ambush for me?
Maybe I could make a run for it. If I tiptoed down the hall, I’d sneak by the library unseen. Then I’d pack my bag and flee for Tierra del Fuego.
“What are you doing?” Edward said quietly.
He was standing in the hallway, his face in silhouette. He’d showered and changed from his exercise clothes. His dark hair was still wet, slicked back against his head, and he was actually wearing a jacket and tie, button-up shirt and trousers. It was...sexy. I licked my lips. “Why are you dressed up?”
“We have company.” Flickering firelight from the open doorway of the library cast shadows on his grim face. “Care to join us?”
He was so handsome and sophisticated. Everything I was not. It seemed incredible to me now that he’d kissed me, for any reason whatsoever. I put my hand to my hair. Yup. Just as I thought, it was damp with rain, tangled as a bird’s nest. I put my hand down.
“Well?”
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered. My heart was pounding, my feet ready to take flight. “I thought about it on my walk. After all that’s happened, I’ve realized you don’t need me anymore and maybe it’s time for me to just—”
“Is that you, Diana?” Madison’s voice carried sharply from the library. “Get in here!”
Edward’s eyebrow lifted. He came closer, and I shivered as he pulled my raincoat off my body. I felt the brush of his fingertips. I breathed in his scent, masculine and clean, like a Bavarian forest. Hanging up the wet coat, he turned back to me.
“You’re going to have to face them sooner or later, Diana,” he said quietly. His hand fell bracingly on my shoulder. “Might as well be now.”
His camaraderie made me feel strangely comforted, even strengthened. That brief moment helped me square my shoulders, lift my chin and walk with my head held high into the library.
The firelit room was impossibly elegant, two stories high, with leatherbound books on all sides, a ladder to reach them and an enormous white marble fireplace at one end. Not to mention two movie stars sitting on the white leather sofa near the fire.
Madison looked beautiful as always. Her long blond hair was straight, her eyes huge beneath fake eyelashes, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Even casually dressed in a white cropped jacket of tousled fur, thousand-dollar silk blouse and size 0 toothpick jeans, no one could have mistaken her for anything but a movie star.
Jason sat beside her, his hand protectively on her knee.
