LITMIR.BIZ

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there in front of her, so dark and impossibly bright-eyed in the vast entry hall, so hopelessly compelling, and she was not sure that there was any way at all to be safe around this man. No matter what her treacherous mind whispered, as if it could discern something in him that was otherwise hidden—as if it wanted her to lay down her defenses then and there, on faith. But she had none. Not while she stood in the Whitney mansion, surrounded by enemies.

      “I doubt that you really mean to compliment me,” she said, searching the angles and planes of his fascinating, addictive face for clues. “I suspect you only do so when you are preparing to throw your weight around.”

      “The difference between me and whoever it is you think I am,” Theo said in that low, disturbingly sensual voice, his mouth crooking slightly, “is that I don’t have to throw my weight around to achieve my ends. My will is usually sufficient.”

      “I’m so sorry to ruin your winning streak,” she murmured with cloying insincerity. “But I prefer my will to yours.”

      He shrugged slightly, as if he could not bother to worry about the force of her will, so puny was it next to his own. “I’m depending on your practicality,” he said quietly. “I suspect it will win out before you make the great mistake of walking out that door.”

      She didn’t know why she stood there so tensely, braced for attack, when he stood a few feet away and looked very nearly idle. In the way that great predators allowed themselves to appear idle moments before they pounced.

      “Is this more of your sales pitch?” she asked. “I’m not interested. You and those people are nothing more than ghouls, waiting for that poor girl to die—”

      “You know nothing about her,” he interrupted her, the rebuke in his voice not at all lessened by the smoothness of the delivery. “Nor about anything else that goes on in this family, or this company.”

      “I don’t want to know anything about any of you!” she retorted, wondering why it should sting to hear him state the simple truth so baldly. Because, of course, he was right. She knew nothing about the family that had categorically rejected her since before her birth. “I don’t want to have another thought about any one of you the moment I walk out that door!”

      He moved closer, his eyes glowing like embers, and she knew then, as her stomach tied itself into an aching knot, that he was truly a devil, this man. And that if she was not careful, he could have a power over her she’d never given anyone. But even so, she did not step back. She did not try to protect herself as she knew she should.

      “The only person I want you to think about is your sister,” he said, in that voice of his, so dark, so sinful, that it seemed to move inside of her without her will.

      “I always think about my sister, thank you,” she managed to say.

      “Can you really pass up the opportunity to secure her future?” he asked, so reasonably. So calmly. “All because it suits you to feel morally superior to the family who denied you for so long?”

      It was a hit straight to the heart, and he knew it. She could see that he knew it as she stared at him, stricken, and his remarkable eyes gleamed.

      “Does it help your sister that you leave here with your righteous indignation firmly in place?” he asked in that same deadly calm way of his. “Or do you suppose, years down the line, that she might be somewhat more grateful for the Ivy League education you will deny her if you walk out now?”

      The cold marble hall seemed to seep into her, chilling her. Her throat felt dusty, and there was that dangerous heat in her eyes. And he was right, damn him. She wanted to feel better about herself, to be better than them, but she wanted Emily’s future—Emily’s happiness—more. She’d promised her mother. She’d promised.

      And wasn’t that why she’d come here in the first place? Wasn’t that why she’d put all of this into motion? How could she back out now, just because she didn’t like the terms? She’d known from the start that she wouldn’t like anything about these people. Why was she running away just because they were confirming her worst opinion of them now?

      “You’ve made your point,” she said finally, when she could not bear the way he looked at her a moment longer—as if he knew exactly what she thought, what she felt. As if he’d manipulated this entire situation to reach this point, because it suited him. He was the most terrifying man she’d ever met—because he was so powerful, but even more because part of her thrilled to it, and wanted to melt right there in front of him. Wanted to surrender to the whispers in her own head, and pretend he might keep her safe rather than crush her.

      But she would never let that happen. Accepting a situation and using it to further her own ends was not the same thing as surrendering. She wouldn’t let it be.

      “I want Emily’s entire education assured,” she said, her voice clipped and tense to her own ears. “Freshman year through a postdoctoral degree, should she want one.”

      “You’ll get your mother’s entire inheritance,” Theo said at once, almost offhandedly. As if he spoke of a minor allowance rather than a stunning fortune. His amber gaze seemed to bore into her, into her darkest, most secret places, taking her breath. “Everything that was taken from her, plus interest, from the day she left to give birth to you.”

      Becca refused to let him see how that got to her, how the guilt still ate at her no matter how she told herself she should not feel it, that Caroline had made her own choices, and so she fought to keep her face, her voice, impassive.

      “In writing, of course,” she clarified. “You’ll understand if I don’t trust you. Anything connected to the Whitney family is tainted.”

      “My lawyers are standing by,” he replied in that deceptively easy way of his, as if this were not her soul they were discussing. “All you need to do is sign.”

      She had the sense that she had gotten lost, somehow, without seeming to stray from the path. That she was in a dark woods, and there was no hope of sunlight. He watched her, his dark face and glowing eyes like some kind of beacon, beckoning to her, and she had the sudden panicked thought that if she did this, if she crossed this line, if she spent even one more second in this man’s company, she might as well write herself off entirely.

      Because he would change her. Not just because he wanted her to pretend to be his comatose fiancée, which was morally questionable enough. But because he was … too much. Too dark. Too powerful. Too outside anything she’d ever experienced. How could she possibly handle this man? She couldn’t even handle this conversation!

      But she thought again of Emily, and knew she had no choice. She had the means to set her sister free. She would do it. She had held her mother’s hand in that hospital bed, looked into her eyes, and she had promised.

      “All right,” she said, and though her voice didn’t quite echo, it seemed to reverberate somehow, as if the world was changing all around her as she spoke. Or perhaps that was just the way his eyes gleamed, with heat and triumph, as he looked at her. As he won. “What do you want me to do?”

      CHAPTER THREE

      “I TRUST YOU were discreet,” Theo said in his intent, focused way, lounging with an indolence she could not quite believe in the back of the car that had met Becca’s flight. “As you agreed to be in the papers you signed.”

      He had given her twenty-four hours to get her affairs in order.

      Twenty-four hours to make sure Emily could stay with her best friend’s family while Becca “went away on business,” which Emily had done many times before while Becca worked on a trial—and this was certainly a kind of trial, wasn’t it? Twenty-four hours to explain to her employers that she needed the time off she’d saved up over the years—and that she needed it immediately, for “family reasons,” and no, she didn’t know when she’d be back.

      She didn’t like to lie, but what could she tell her younger sister? Or the boss who had helped her out time and again while

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