by BETH KERY
Slowly, she spun to face him. She wore only the fitted T-shirt she’d had on last night during the storm and a semi-transparent pair of white cotton panties. Instinctively, his gaze dropped over her, trailing along her elegantly sloping shoulders, the full, thrusting breasts that stood in such erotic contrast to her slender limbs and narrow waist and hips. His gaze lingered between her thighs. Alice dyed the hair on her head to an obscuring, near-black color, but her true shade was a dark red-gold, a combination of her father’s blond and her mother’s auburn. He was reminded of that yet again as he spied the triangle of light brownish-red pubic hair visible beneath her thin panties. Despite the tension of the moment, he felt his sex flicker in arousal. There was something about the contrast of Alice’s tough-girl strength and her potent vulnerability that lit a fire in him, something elemental and strong. The paradox was singularly powerful.
He dragged his gaze to her face.
“It must be strange for you, thinking of me living in Addie’s room. Here. In the Durand’s house,” he added, taking another step toward her. It struck him that he was often approaching Alice like he might a half-wild animal forced into some domestic confine, highly aware that she might bolt at any moment.
He was determined to catch her, no matter what move she made.
She shook her head. She wore not a trace of makeup. Without the heavy eyeliner and mascara she often wore to obfuscate or intimidate—or both—her dark blue eyes looked enormous in her delicate face. Jesus, what he’d experienced when she’d walked into that office last May, so awkward and yet so defiant in her inexpensive new interview suit. The truth had slammed home, jarring him, rattling him to the center of his bones, even though he’d taken great pains to hide it. He had seen those eyes before.
But even if it had been the first time Dylan had ever seen her, he suspected he might have been nearly as shaken. No wonder she’d been drawn to the eye-goop. Her eyes would draw men with the noblest intentions.
And the foulest.
“No, it doesn’t seem strange to me at all. I can see you in this room.” Her chin tilted and her eyes sparked in that familiar defiant gesture. “You moved out of it because of me, didn’t you?”
“I didn’t know what to expect. Sidney thought we should cautiously expose you to the surroundings,” he admitted. Sidney was familiar with Adelaide Durand’s history and had been friends with Alan and Lynn. He’d brought his psychological expertise to bear on Alice’s unique situation, once Dylan had finally tracked her down after nearly two decades of searching. It was Sidney who had suggested bringing her to the estate under the pretense of hiring her as a Camp Durand counselor. In that scenario, Dylan could keep an eye on what she recalled and how she would react, monitor her for signs of trauma. If not him personally, then the two Durand security employees Dylan had hired to watch her could do the job.
“I was familiar with Addie Durand’s habits,” he began slowly. “There are a few rooms that I worried might be more likely to trigger something … undesirable. This one. Alan and Lynn’s suite. The den, the original living room … and the dining room. With few exceptions, the entry hall, the kitchen, the terrace gardens, and the media room have been extensively renovated, so I didn’t worry as much about that. Most of the other rooms here weren’t used much—either by the Durands or by me, so they weren’t of any concern.” He hesitated.
“I never imagined you’d inadvertently find your way into the dining room that first night you arrived here at the castle. Or the woods and stables the next day,” Dylan told her, choosing his words carefully. Alice had made it very clear to him that while she would discuss the details of Addie Durand, her kidnapping, and Dylan’s part in the tragedy, she wouldn’t talk about Addie and herself as if they were the same person. The recent revelation still seemed too overwhelming for her to assimilate. Currently, they were treading on dangerous ground.
Her eyelids narrowed slightly, and he knew he’d made some kind of misstep, despite his caution. “You suspected I was going to be in your bedroom, even before I came here? And so you moved suites, in order not to trigger any …” She faded off uncertainly, aware she was skimming close to the fire. Her defiant expression made a quick resurgence. “I thought you said that you hadn’t planned for anything sexual between us … that it just happened that morning in the stables?”
“That’s true. And since you seem to need a reminder, you’re the one who seduced me, Alice,” he said with a hard, pointed glance meant to quash her suspicion immediately. It didn’t work. He mentally damned her defensive posture and angry expression and closed the space between them. Satisfaction went through him when he took her into his arms, and she pressed her front against him.
“If that’s what you want to call the first three seconds of our being together. It was all you after that, baby,” she grumbled under her breath.
“I didn’t hear you complaining.”
Her eyes flashed up at him defiantly.
“I’m telling you the truth, Alice. I didn’t plan for us to be together in the stables that morning. How could I have? I didn’t know you’d show up there. I didn’t plan for us to get involved that way when you came here.”
“Then why would you worry about me being here … in this room? Why did you pack up most of your things and decorate a whole new suite if you didn’t plan on us sleeping together from the first? Why else would I be in Dylan Fall’s bedroom if not for sex?” she demanded.
Dylan suppressed a sigh. Despite the fact that she grasped his waist and lightly pressed her breasts and belly against him in a tempting gesture, her trademark wary expression remained as she stared up at him.
“I didn’t move out because I had plans to seduce you,” he told her with an air of finality, mapping her elegant, supple spine and the tight curve of her hips with his hands. He felt his need for her mount. How would all of this have played out if this powerful attraction hadn’t been there? It was so hard to say, but he would have contrived something to bring her closer to him.
“Why, then?” she insisted, undaunted by a tone that Dylan used regularly to subdue some of the most tried and hard-boiled executives in the world. Of course it didn’t faze Alice. He closed his eyes briefly. Dammit, she could be impossible.
“Dylan?”
“I felt like an interloper, being in here … knowing you were about to come to the Durand Estate.”
“You felt like an interloper?” she asked slowly, looking slightly dazed by his reluctant confession. “Because this was Alan Durand’s house? Because of your history with him?”
“Because it was no longer my room. No longer my home. Not since you came. Period.” Regret sliced through him at his harsh tone when he saw her lush lower lip quiver.
“I’m sorry,” he said, frustrated. “It’s just that sometimes you keep pressing. And it’s hard to know when you want the truth and when you don’t.”
“I know,” she said quickly. She, too, looked regretful. “And it’s not true, what you said. Of course Castle Durand is your home. You own it, don’t you? You bought it?”
“Yes, but only because Alan Durand offered the house to me as part of the special contract he created to make it possible for me to purchase Durand shares when he made me CEO. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it at that time in my life if he hadn’t offered me certain concessions.” He exhaled as the memory of their negotiations for his taking over Durand entered his brain. Alan had been so stubborn. So insistent. So generous in contriving a way to set terms that would allow Dylan to smoothly and completely take the helm of Durand Enterprises. “In the olden days, a lord’s title was tied to the land. That’s what Alan explained to me once,” he recalled with fond, wry amusement. “Alan loved his European history. He insisted that I’d be taken more seriously as the head of Durand Enterprises if I was master of the company’s symbolic domain.”
“The castle,” Alice said, a small smile flickering across her lips. She sobered. “And you are the master, Dylan.”
&
nbsp; “No. Not entirely.”
He cupped her jaw, trying to ease her sudden troubled expression … her abrupt fragility. She looked up at him through her spiky bangs, her glance reminding him again of that of a cautious, wild thing.
“It’s just so impossible to believe, Dylan,” she said in a rush, and he knew instinctively she meant his revelation that she was the true daughter of Alan and Lynn Durand. “I mean, it’s not that I think you’re lying. Why would you? It’s just …” Her expression grew a little desperate as she seemingly searched for words to explain. “You can’t just start thinking of the world as round in a second when you’ve thought it was flat for your whole life.” She gave a sharp bark of laughter, as if she’d just absorbed the meaning of her words only upon hearing them. “It’s not a bad analogy, really,” she mumbled to herself. “I sort of feel like I might fall straight off the earth into nothingness every time I think about what you told me.” She looked up at him entreatingly. “Please understand.”
“I do,” he assured quietly, his fingers delving into her thick, short hair. He cupped her head. It was hard to be the rational executive when it came to Alice. It was hard to be clearheaded in this situation, period. But he had to try. So much was at stake.
“What do you think would help you most to make it real, Alice?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know for sure. Just time, I guess.”
He nodded, lowering his head until her upturned face was just inches from his. “Do you think it might help to see tangible proof?”
She blinked. “Like what? More photos?”
He pulled her tighter against him. Her T-shirt felt cool and slightly damp against the naked skin of his torso. Despite the chill of the fabric, it was the sensation of her full breasts pressing against his ribs that made his skin roughen. Her erect nipples were a fierce distraction. He forced his mind to focus.
“Not just photos. You’ve said yourself you don’t experience any connection to photos of Adelaide Durand.”
“What, then?” she asked in a hushed tone.
“Alan and Lynn Durand’s physician still practices at Morgantown Memorial. He still possesses some of their genetic material. They will be able to tell you without a doubt who your parents were.”
She stared up at him blankly. “You want me to go for genetic testing?”
“Only if you’re up for it. It doesn’t have to be now,” he said, caressing her neck. He’d learned from experience in the past week that his touch helped to ground her. Soothe her. Distract her from her phantoms. He wasn’t above using that fact proactively to help her through this process.
He wasn’t above using anything, in that cause.
“You mean … it doesn’t have to be now, but it does have to be sometime.”
He strained to keep his expression impassive, very much aware that he was once again walking through a minefield.
“I don’t need any proof that what I told you is one hundred percent true,” he said firmly, holding her stare.
“But there will be those who will demand it,” Alice added warily.
An imagined vision of a roomful of somber, suspicous Durand executives and attorneys—all the potential doubters and naysayers—flew into his mind’s eye. “There will be plenty who eventually demand it.” He repeated the obvious as calmly as possible.
She bit her lip and glanced aside. Aside from all these bizarre circumstances she found herself in, Dylan knew Alice Reed was typically a practical, down-to-earth young woman with a brilliant brain for mathematics and business. Never let it be said that genes weren’t telling. Alan Durand had possessed one of the finest business minds he’d ever known, and Lynn had been an outstanding scholar. She’d been an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Michigan when Alan had first met her.
Dylan was glad to experience Alice’s sudden, intense focus on the issue at hand.
“I don’t want anything of Addie Durand’s, so why should it matter?”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“I know what I want and don’t want, Dylan.”
“Then do it for yourself,” he suggested without pause. He’d been prepared for her response. He’d been prepared for her stubbornness.
“Myself?”
He nodded. “That’s what I meant before. You need tangible proof. Not just my word. You need evidence you can hold in your hand. It’ll be something solid to grasp on to.”
“A start,” she whispered.
“A start,” Dylan agreed, relief sweeping through him because he’d seen something click in her eyes, and knew she’d go for the genetic testing. He needed that tangible proof for what was surely to come.
He leaned down and brushed his mouth against hers. His kiss was meant to be gentle and reassuring, but Alice was having none of it. She put her hand on the back of his head, pushing him further down to her and going up on her tiptoes. He responded to her invitation as always: wholesale.
Their kiss deepened. His lust flamed higher on the fuel of her reciprocated need.
So sweet.
So Alice-like, to be suspicious and doubting one moment, and then taking him to the center of the flames within two seconds flat. He would have to have her again tonight, experience her melting beneath his touch, laid bare and submitting to the bond between them. He needed it for Alice’s sake.
He required it for his own.
FIND YOUR HEART’S DESIRE …
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