Dangerous Alliance
Page 29
Which is why I make a point to spend a little time with Braden almost every day. I’m not going to let him push me away. I’m not going to let him come to think of himself as a problem child. That’s simply not going to happen.
The doorbell rings and a moment later Lander enters the room with Lorella. “Ready to go to the movies?” the nanny asks Braden. He grunts his consent and I stand back as Lorella gets both him and Mercedes ready to go out. “So it’s date night at home for you two?” Lorella asks quietly as Braden runs to his room to get his coat. “Nice.”
“Um, no, it won’t be. Not even close,” I correct her.
“Oh . . . so you’re not—”
“Oh no, we are, I’m just saying it’s going to be a lot better than nice.”
Lorella laughs, and moments later she is walking out the door, a child holding each hand.
Lander’s standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a sexy half smile gracing his lips. “You’re good with them,” he notes.
“So are you.” I move over to him and rest my head against his chest.
I feel his hands move up to my hair. “You are so beautiful, Adoncia.”
He pulls back a little, looks down into my eyes. “Will you dance with me?”
I smile my consent and he goes to put on some music, taking just long enough that I know he’s lighting candles in the bedroom.
Sam Smith’s song “Stay with Me” seeps through the speakers. When Lander comes back he wraps me up in his arms, and slowly we start to move. It’s not a formal dance exactly. We’re just moving together, my heart pressed against his heart, his lips by my ear as my lips find his neck. Just being here, swaying.
“Do you like this song?” he asks.
“It’s sad,” I say, breathing my sigh against his skin.
“Is it?”
“He wants her to stay with him, but he says he doesn’t love her. He just needs her. He doesn’t want to be alone.”
Lander pulls back and looks down at me, brushing my hair away from my face. “You used to scare me, you know that?”
“Yes,” I say with a light laugh, “I know that.”
“You wanted to make me your world. I knew I could never be that. I knew I had to let you go for a while, let you learn to stand on your own two feet, learn to live for something that isn’t just revenge and . . . and isn’t just me.”
“You wanted me to live for myself.”
“And other things . . . yes.” He holds my face in his hands. “But I was never going to be able to stay away forever.”
“I know that.”
“Do you know why?”
I look at him long and hard, our bodies momentarily still. “Because,” I finally say softly, “you love me.”
“Because I love you.”
And his lips find mine. I hold him so close I wonder if anyone who saw our silhouette from afar would be able to tell that we aren’t one person. My hand slips under his shirt, moving up his back. He’s so warm, so strong, so real.
And I know that as a real-life, flesh-and-blood man, he will be flawed. He will not be my world. But he will always be part of my world. He will always be part of my everything.
And as Lander lifts me up I’m reminded that you don’t have to be a princess to live the fairy tale.
Slowly he lays me down on the couch and I cry out. Not because of the way he’s touching me, but because there’s a Barbie doll between the cushions and her plastic hands have jabbed my skin.
Lander and I both burst out laughing as we toss the doll to the other side of the room.
“Can you deal with this kind of chaos?”
“Lander, I live for chaos.”
“Then will you move in with me, Adoncia Jiménez?”
“Yes, Lander Gable. I will.”
And as his lips move to my ear, his tongue toying with that one spot that makes me shudder, I know that there are so many reasons to live. There’s revenge, and children, and anger, and happiness and structure and chaos and work and passion . . .
. . . and there’s war
. . . and there’s love.
These days, most of all, I live for love.
acknowledgments
* * *
As usual, I need to thank Cosmopolitan magazine for giving me so many ideas for my sex scenes. Couldn’t have done it without ya. And I continue to be both grateful and indebted to my amazing editor, Adam Wilson, whose guidance and support are truly invaluable to me.
I also want to thank Matt Taibbi for his incredibly well-researched Rolling Stone exposé on the misdeeds and transgressions of HSBC Bank. With the notable exception of the murder of Nick Foley, the vast majority of the crimes of the fictional HGVB Bank (from the scrubbing of Iranian wire transfers to the financial dealings with the cartels and other organized crime families) were heavily based on the actual actions of HSBC as revealed by Taibbi, as well as such journalists and Ben Protess, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and John Burnett. Their reporting was exemplary and succeeded not only in informing the public of what was going on in certain segments of our banking industry but also in giving me the foundation for what I hope is an entertaining novel. And yes, I realize that the former is more important than the latter. My ego isn’t that big.
Last but absolutely not least I need to thank my husband, Rod Lurie, who is a tireless sounding board for my ideas and a constant source of inspiration. I’ll never stop being grateful that the love of my life is also my partner in life. I’m a lucky gal.
The Little Room Studio
KYRA DAVIS is the New York Times bestselling author of Deceptive Innocence, Just One Night, the critically acclaimed Sophie Katz mystery series, and the novel So Much for My Happy Ending. Now a full-time author and television writer, Kyra lives in the Los Angeles area with her son, their leopard gecko, and their lovably quirky Labrador, Sophie Dogz. To learn more, visit KyraDavis.com or follow her on Twitter @_KyraDavis.
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Books by Kyra Davis
Just One Night
The Pure Sin Series
Deceptive Innocence
Dangerous Alliance
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Gallery Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Kyra Davis
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
First Gallery Books trade paperback edition December 2014
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Cover design by Anna Dorfman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Davis, Kyra.
Dangerous alliance / Kyra Davis. — First Gallery Books trade paperback edition.
pages ; cm. — (Pure sin ; book 2)
“Gallery original fiction trade.”
I. Title.
PS3604.A972D36 2014
813'.6—dc23 2014031238
ISBN 978-1-4767-5685-1
ISBN 978-1-4767-5687-5 (ebook)
Contents
* * *
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About Kyra Davis