An angel in alleyway. It sounded like a poem, and even though Indy still felt as if she might cry, there was something laced through it. Something so beautiful it hurt.
“It doesn’t take much to deserve me,” she told him, though her voice was thick. “I think you’ve already cracked the code.”
But Stefan shook his head again, looking down at where he had his hands braced on the counter. “You have spoken a great deal about how you want to find your passion. I want this for you. And I know who you are, Indy. I know you are not a girl who stays put.”
“Stefan—”
He ignored her, lifting that blue gaze to hers. “But I will. I want you to understand that I’m not afraid of anything you might find out there, or anything you might do. I have never been a patient man, but for you, I will wait.” He managed to indicate the house with one of those shrugs of his. “I will be here. And I know you’ll come back. Maybe more than once. And maybe one day, you will stay.”
Indy stared at him, stricken. That look on his face was doing odd things inside of her. He looked so stoic. So resigned. And yet here he was, making this sacrifice, when she knew there was not one inch of this man who was at all good with either waiting, letting go, or sacrificing himself in any way.
She knew it.
She knew him.
Maybe what she knew most of all was the two of them, together.
“This is what you think will happen?” she asked softly. “You think the passion I want to find involves going back out there and continuing to do what I’ve always done?”
That muscle in his jaw twitched, but his gaze remained steady. “If that is what you want, I won’t be the one to stop you.”
Indy wanted to throw something at him. She wanted to throw herself at him. Hug him a little and maybe shake him while she was at it.
But she didn’t do any of those things.
“Well,” she said. And maybe made a little meal out of the word. “Look at that. You don’t know everything.”
Whatever response he’d expected, that clearly wasn’t it.
Stefan blinked. His head tilted slightly to one side. And she watched those impossible blue eyes change once more.
Taking on a shade she recognized.
Danger, not sacrifice.
Which was to say, him.
“I woke up this morning and everything made sense.” It was her turn to look at him steadily. To hide nothing. “Yesterday was so intense it’s like it was a key in a lock. You wouldn’t let me speak and so I couldn’t make excuses. Not even in my own head.”
“You don’t need to draw this out. You can simply leave. I told you this already.”
“And in the middle of all that intensity, the whole world boiled down to this,” Indy said, ignoring him. “I didn’t think that I was searching for anything, but then I found you. I think you know I’ve had a lot of steamy nights. I don’t normally pay them any attention. They fade away as soon as the sun comes up, and I go on to the next. It was different with you.”
“Maybe it was the gun,” he suggested, with a glimmer of that dry humor she loved.
She smiled at him, and even she knew that it was a real smile. Because it was for him.
“It was you, Stefan. I thought of nothing else for two years, and then I came here to find that you’re everything I had imagined and so much more.” Her heart was thundering at her. She felt almost shaky standing still. But she looked at him and none of that mattered. “You were right—there was part of this that terrified me. I walked away, but really, I think I only did it to see if I could. To see if you’d let me. And you did.”
“I’m doing the same thing now,” Stefan gritted out. “But I should tell you, I was never much of a martyr. The longer you stand here, not leaving, the less I can remember why I’m not convincing you to stay.”
“You can’t convince me to stay,” Indy said softly. “No one could ever convince me to stay. Because a long time ago, I decided that I needed to be a rolling stone. That I could never stay in one place too long. That it would take something from me if I did. Do you know what I think that was?”
Another hint of dryness. “Not daddy issues, I understand.”
“Because I thought I had to be different from how I started. Just like I decided I couldn’t do well in school because my sister did. I had to distinguish myself.” She pulled in a breath. “I took something that might have cut a different girl off at the knees, a dumb older boy taking private things and making them public, and I owned it. And do you know what, Stefan? It felt good. Powerful.”
“As it should.”
“I tasted that at fourteen and all I wanted was more. So I had whatever sex I felt like having. I was a stripper because why not? I liked taking off my clothes, and more than that, I liked people’s reactions when they found out that’s what I did.” Indy had never talked about these things like this. She had never laid out her life, not like this. But it didn’t feel like her life any longer, did it? She focused on him. “And ever since then, I’ve done exactly as I pleased. I’ve gone wherever I wanted, taken lovers and friends as I liked and left them, too, without a qualm. You’re the only man I’ve ever come back to. Twice.”
“This is how I know you will come back again.” His voice was a low, rough sound. “As I have told you, I will wait for you.”
“But yesterday taught me something,” Indy said, as if he hadn’t spoken. “It taught me everything. I already know what my passion is, Stefan. I finally figured it out.”
She watched him gather himself, as if he expected a blow. And she could tell that he was a man used to taking blows, and returning them in kind. Those hands might curl into fists but she knew, deep inside, that he would never strike back when it was her.
“It’s you,” Indy said softly. “My passion is you. And with you, Stefan, I can do anything.”
He let out a sound she didn’t recognize, because it was low, almost animal.
And she didn’t wait. She vaulted onto the counter, and then crawled across it until she was kneeling there in front of him, her face to his. Then she took the jaw that had given him away in her hands, and held him there.
Fully aware that he allowed it.
But this would be their life, she understood then. He would always allow her to leave, and so she would stay. And she would have this power over him, because he let her—and because she would never abuse it.
“You need to be sure,” he said, his voice a mere scrape of sound. But his gaze was loud. “Very, very sure. Because if you choose me, this, now... I will not have it in me to be quite so forgiving as I might have sounded.”
“I don’t want forgiving,” Indy told him fiercely. “I want you, Stefan. I’m not afraid of your darkness. I know all about the light and I think deep down, beneath everything, it turns out I’ve been a jealous, possessive, dark kind of woman all along. Can you handle that?”
His smile was a long time coming, but when he finally surrendered to it, it took over his face. “I can handle it. Can you?”
“You and me,” she said. “No one else. I dare you.”
He was picking her up, holding her in his arms and then lifting her up above, as if he needed to look at her in the sunlight. She gazed down at him, aware only when her cheeks began to ache that she was smiling so hard, so wide, she might as well have been the sun herself.
“I will never understand where you came from that night,” he said, his voice as intent as his gaze.
“All that traveling. All those adventures. All of them were leading me to you.” Indy wrapped her legs around his waist when he let her slide down his body, smiling even brighter when they were face to face. “I love you, Stefan. I thought love at first sight was a myth, but then there you were.”
“I love you,” he replied.
And she kissed him, or maybe he kissed her, and everything was
a tangle of heat and need and better still—best of all—love.
When he pulled away again, neither one of them was breathing steadily.
Indy hoped they never would.
“Now,” he murmured, his bright blue eyes turning wicked. “About that dare.”
Then he showed her how he met a challenge, right there on the counter again. How he would always meet a challenge, especially if it was her.
How they would always find their way back to each other, to that perfect fit that was only theirs.
Their hot, sweet, life-altering love, that was worth changing a world or two.
So they did.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TEN YEARS LATER, Indy shivered in the cold on the front porch of a sweet little old farmhouse she and Stefan had spent the last six months renovating.
Right there on the outskirts of the same little Ohio town where she’d grown up. The town she’d been so certain she would never return to, ever.
She reached down and slid her hand over her gigantic belly, feeling even bigger beneath all the layers she was wearing, smiling. Because life, it turned out, did what it wanted.
Especially when a person finally wised up and stopped living it all in one way.
Her parents had thought that when Indy called home at the end of the summer to announce she’d met a man and oops, had accidentally married him on a beach in Bali, it was more evidence of her well-documented flightiness.
Then they’d met Stefan that Christmas. It had been a banner holiday in the March family. Bristol had come home with Lachlan Drummond, and it had been a strange few days of too many men in a house that had never had that problem.
Lachlan and Stefan had bonded. Bristol and Indy had realized, too late, that this was a potential cause for concern.
“We are brothers now,” Stefan had said, a wicked light in his eyes, there in her childhood bedroom.
Where he’d proceeded to wash away all the ghosts of Jamie Portnoys past.
But quietly, so as to be respectful.
Indy’s parents had been instantly impressed with their new son-in-law. Bill had a few beers with him. Margie had taken Indy aside and told her, with great confidence, that a man like that would settle her down. Eventually.
That wasn’t quite how things had worked.
She and Stefan had followed their passions, whatever they might be. They didn’t need to work, or wander off into think tanks like Bristol and Lachlan, so they indulged their whims instead. And over time, their whims tended to shift back and forth—something worthwhile for every selfish bit of hedonism. Art appreciation and buying trips all over the world. A year of volunteering in the rain forest. A summer scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. A season in Antarctica on a research expedition.
There was no need to waste her time on silly love affairs with men not worth remembering. Not when she had everything she could ever want, and more, in Stefan.
Indy had never wanted to settle. She and Stefan had attended Bristol and Lachlan’s wedding a few years after theirs, and while she’d loved watching her sister so happy, she was even happier that she and Stefan had married in private.
Because that kind of happiness, to her, was real.
And it made settling fun. Even the most domestic, hum-drum activity in the world was fun if she did it with Stefan.
“Are you ready?” she asked when she heard him come out of the house behind her. “Christmas morning waits for no one, Stefan. You should know this by now.”
She turned to look at him, this beautiful man of hers. He still looked as dangerous as ever. He still had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
“For you?” Stefan grinned. He did that a lot more now. “I am always ready.”
“You know we Marches take our holidays seriously.” She smiled when he moved his hands over her belly, too. This baby they’d made, a little boy she was already madly in love with, would be joining them at any time. “Just wait until he comes. He’s going to be worse than all my sister’s kids combined.”
Stefan’s hand settled at the nape of her neck, possessive and perfect. The snow had come in last night, but he’d been up early to clear off the steps and the walk to their car. And now he helped her navigate her huge, unwieldy body down the wintry steps.
“My son will be properly reserved and contained,” Stefan told her. “I will teach him myself.”
“You’re not reserved at all, foolish man,” she said softy.
His gaze seared through her. “Not anymore.”
He helped her into the car and she sat there as he rounded the hood, looking at this place they intended to call home, at least for part of the year. So that Indy could be near her mother and the child could be near his grandparents. And they would always be close enough to Columbus that they could fly away at a moment’s notice.
Because she liked to spend a good chunk of her summers in Prague, where they’d become them.
That was what she’d learned. Life was what she made it. It was never all one thing. She and Stefan got more solid by the day, happier and better, and none of that prevented them from playing the kind of games they liked best.
Give and take, year after year.
Carrying their home with them wherever they went, because the two of them, together, were what they needed. That was the passion that made life worth living.
Together they were rooted deep and tangled up in each other.
And yet, when the mood struck—and it always struck—they could fly.
Out of that alley in Budapest into a bright future, laced through with the most delicious darkness, and all for them.
“I love you, foolish girl,” Stefan said when he climbed into the car. He turned the engine over, but didn’t move. He was too busy studying her face.
“I know you do,” she replied. She frowned. “I love you, too. But I think we need to head to the hospital instead of my parents’ house.”
“The hospital—?” But he cut himself off. “Now?”
“I’m pretty sure my water broke.”
They stared at each other. Then both of them grinned, so big and wide it was brighter than the snow outside.
And they might have stayed there forever, but the little contractions she’d been ignoring changed into something she couldn’t have ignored if she’d tried.
“Okay?” Stefan asked, searching her face, when it passed.
“Intense,” she panted at him.
Then she strapped in, because Stefan drove like a man on the run when he liked. She opted not to ask him how or when he’d learned to do that.
Two short hours later, Indy beamed up at him from a hospital bed as he held their son. Stefan looked at her in wonder.
And together, plus the brand new love of their life, they started their greatest adventure yet.
* * *
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Tempting the Enemy
by JC Harroway
CHAPTER ONE
Ava
IF YOU WERE going to gatecrash an office party, the lavish shindig thrown by BLD Global Ventures would be the one to choose. It’s a shame I’m not here for fun. Driven by desperation, I’m hunting Sterling Lombard, head of the New York division of BLD, which is housed in his building, Bold Tower—a gleaming, state-of-the art skyscraper in Manhattan’s financial district. Hopefully, the elusive billionaire, who’s been dodging my attempts to secure a face-to-face meeting, will make an appearance as host of his own staff’s function.
As work parties go, this one is a blast—delicious canapés, an open bar, a band and dancing. It’s what I’d expect from Lombard, one of America’s wealthiest men and one of three partners who head up BLD, or Bold, as it’s often termed.
Just like his partners, Hudson Black and Monroe Dove, the renowned businessman Lombard has the Midas touch. His handsome face regularly peers out from the covers of the Financial Times or Bloomsburg Businessweek—sandy blond hair, piercing green eyes and a smile to rival any male pin-up on the planet. His success is as eye-watering as his good looks and confidence.
But even the little people deserve an audience.
I smooth one palm down the skirt of my little black dress and glug a mouthful of champagne as I scan the cavernous, multi-level room for my enigmatic quarry.
Part of me is impressed that my grandparents’ small logistics company, the company I inherited from them after their recent deaths, attracted the attention of a hard hitter like Lombard. But what were they thinking, signing over so much equity to BLD, which now owns the controlling stake? Times must have been hard, even harder than they are currently under my leadership...
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