Powerful and Proud: Beneath the Veil of Paradise / In the Heat of the Spotlight / His Brand of Passion

‘I’m exactly what I seem.’ She sounded defensive. Great.

‘You want to be exactly what you seem,’ he clarified. ‘Which is why you play it that way.’

She felt a lick of anger, which was better than the dizzying combination of terror and lust he’d been stirring up inside her. ‘What did you do, dust off your psychology textbook?’

He laughed and held up his hands. ‘Guilty. I’m bored on this holiday, what can I say?’

And, just like that, he’d defused the tension that had been thickening in the air, tightening inside her. Yet Millie could not escape the feeling—the certainty—that he’d chosen to do it, that he’d backed off because he’d wanted to, not because of what she wanted.

One person at this table was calling the shots and it wasn’t her.

‘So.’ She breathed through her nose, trying to hide the fact that her heart was beating hard. She wanted to take a big, dizzying gulp of air, but she didn’t. Wouldn’t. ‘If you’re so bored, why are you on holiday?’

‘Doctor’s orders.’

She blinked, not sure if he was joking. ‘How’s that?’

‘The stress was getting to me.’

He didn’t look stressed. He looked infuriatingly relaxed, arrogantly in control. ‘The holiday must be working.’

‘Seems to be.’ He sounded insouciant, yet deliberately so. He was hiding something, Millie thought. She’d tried to strike that note of breeziness too many times not to recognise its falseness.

‘So are we actually going to eat?’ He hadn’t pressed her, so she wouldn’t press him. Another deal, this one silently made.

‘Your wish is my command.’

Within seconds a waiter appeared at the table with a tray of food. Millie watched as he ladled freshly grilled snapper in lime juice and coconut rice on her plate. It smelled heavenly.

She waited until he’d served Chase and departed once more before saying dryly, ‘Nice service. Being one of the Bryant boys has its perks, it seems.’

‘Sometimes.’ Again that even tone.

‘Are you staying at the resort?’

‘I have my own villa.’ He stressed the ‘own’ only a little, but Millie guessed it was a sore point. Had he worked for what he had? He was probably too proud to tell her. She wouldn’t ask.

She took a bite of her fish. It tasted heavenly too, an explosion of tart and tender on her tongue. She swallowed and saw Chase looking at her. Just looking, no deliberate, heavy-lidded languor, and yet she felt her body respond, like an antenna tuned to some cerebral frequency. Everything jumped to alert, came alive.

It had been so long.

She took another bite.

‘So why are you on holiday, Millie?’

Why did the way he said her name sound intimate? She swallowed the fish. ‘Doctor’s orders.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, no. Boss’s. I haven’t taken any holiday in a while.’

‘How long?’

That bite of fish seemed to lodge in her chest, its exquisite tenderness now as tough as old leather. Finally, with an audible and embarrassing gulp, she managed, ‘Two years.’

Chase cocked his head and continued just looking. How much did he see? ‘That’s a long time,’ he finally said, and she nodded.

‘So he told me.’

‘But you didn’t want to take any holiday?’

‘It’s obvious, I suppose.’

‘Pretty much.’

She stabbed a bit of rice with her fork. ‘I like to work.’

‘So are you a hedge-fund manager?’

‘Got it in one.’

‘And you like it?’

Instinctively ‘of course I do’ rose to her lips, yet somehow the words didn’t come. She couldn’t get them out, as if someone had pressed a hand over her mouth and kept her from speaking. So she just stared and swallowed and felt herself flush.

Why had he even asked? she wondered irritably. Obviously she liked it, since she worked so hard.

‘I see,’ Chase said quietly, knowingly, and a sudden, blinding fury rose up in her, obliterating any remaining sense and opening her mouth.

‘You don’t see anything.’ She sounded savage. Incensed. And, even worse, she was. Why did this stupid man make her feel so much? Reveal so much?

‘Maybe not,’ Chase agreed. He didn’t sound riled in the least. Millie let out a shuddering breath. This date had been such a bad idea.

‘OK, now it’s your turn.’

She blinked. ‘What?’

‘You get to ask me a personal question. Only fair, right?’

Another blink. She hadn’t expected that. ‘Why do you hate being one of the Bryants?’

Now he blinked. ‘Hate is a strong word.’

‘So it is.’

‘I never said I hated it.’

‘You didn’t need to.’ She took a sip of water, her hand steady, her breath thankfully even. ‘You’re not the only one who can read people, you know.’