Kitabı oku: «The Pearl House»

One

Ben Sabin tossed the keys of his Jeep Cherokee to the parking attendant standing outside the sleek new Messena resort in Miami Beach. After picking up the guest key card that had been left for him at the concierge desk, he strode through the foyer, past the entrance to a large reception room where groups of elegant guests were sipping champagne and eating canapés. He was almost clear when a well-known gossip columnist made a beeline for him.

“Ben Sabin.” Sally Parker couldn’t hide her glee as she positioned her cell to video him. “Did you know the Messena twins are here? Although how could you not, since they’ve been resident in Miami for the last three months.”

Ben’s jaw tightened. Even though he’d known all of that information well in advance, his response was sharp and visceral, which didn’t please him. He should have been over his fatal attraction to spoiled heiress Sophie Messena by now.

And it wasn’t as if he didn’t know what the likely outcome of a liaison with a woman like Sophie would be. At age nine he’d a had front-row seat to the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, which had literally petered out when his father’s Texan oil wells had dried up. He could still hear his father bitterly commenting on how failing to find more oil had cost him his marriage. All Ben had been able to think as he’d watched the rooster tail of dust kicked up by Darcy Sabin’s departing car was that he had lost his mother.

Then six years ago he’d found himself in his father’s predicament when his beautiful, wealthy fiancée had left him within twenty-four hours of a financial crash that had almost bankrupted him.

Years of hard work and calculated risk later, and after an inheritance that had made him an overnight billionaire, suddenly he was back. At least as far as Sophie Messena was concerned.

Sophie Messena. Tall, lithe and athletic, with the kind of slow, fluid walk that would have turned heads even if she hadn’t been gorgeous.

Caught once more in the crosshairs of a woman who seemed more interested in his share portfolio than in who he really was, for Ben, the decision to walk away from the one night they had spent together had been a matter of self-preservation.

But the press had seen things somewhat differently, courtesy of a neat publicity stunt Sophie had pulled a few days later, which had made it look like she had dumped him.

Irritatingly, Sally Parker was still keeping pace with him. His flat “no comment,” as he strode toward a bank of elevators, seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“It’s not the twins, plural, that you’re interested in, though, is it? I hear that you and Sophie Messena were once a hot item, despite the fact that yesterday you were heard to say…now let me get this right.” She frowned and smiled at the same time, as if she was having trouble remembering the headline she’d splashed across multiple social media accounts just hours ago. “Hmm…that the twins are ‘empty-headed and spoiled and that any man would have to be brain-dead to date either of them.’”

Ben came to a halt. Keeping a tight leash on his patience—a patience that had been forged by time in Special Forces, then honed by years spent in the hard-edged construction industry—he stabbed the call button for the high-speed private elevator that led directly to Nick Messena’s penthouse office. His gaze rested on the flashing numbers above the sleek stainless-steel door that indicated the elevator was on its way.

He had not said those words.

If he had, it would mean that a year ago he had been brain-dead and that he still was because, despite walking away from Sophie, nothing had changed: he still wanted her.

He hadn’t said the words, but he had a fair idea who had. The brief conversation he’d had on the way to the airport with his new, brilliant but opinionated business manager, Hannah Cole, was the only possible source of the comment. Clearly it had not been a private conversation.

The gossip columnist, oblivious to the fact that she was being ignored, leaned on the wall. A cat-that-got-the-cream smile played around her mouth. “Strange then, to use a euphemism, that you did ‘date’ Sophie Messena. Now, a year after she ditched you, you’re involved in a business deal with her brother, Nick, and gorgeous Sophie is also in town. So, what’s really going on, Ben? Seems to me you just can’t stay away.”

The doors finally slid open. His expression remote, Ben stepped into the elevator, swiped the key card and punched the button for Nick’s office. Seconds later, he was propelled several stories up to the penthouse. As he stepped into the hushed foyer, Hannah, who had once worked as a PA for his late uncle Wallace, and whom Ben had inherited along with Wallace’s multibillion-dollar construction and real estate business, stepped forward and checked her watch. “You’re almost late.”

Ben lifted a brow. Hannah was middle-aged, plump, wealthy in her own right and possessed of a dry, no-nonsense sense of humor. Sometimes he wondered if he had made a mistake in employing someone who didn’t need the job and knew just a little too much about him and his checkered family history. But after years of dealing with the tensions of younger, ambitious managers, Hannah’s bluntness worked for Ben. “I ran into some interference.”

“Let me guess,” Hannah grumbled as she moved in the direction of Nick’s office, “the Messena girl?”

Ben pushed back the cuff of his jacket and checked his watch. “The one I’d have to be brain-dead to date?”

Hannah gave him what passed for an apologetic glance, although it was so brief he almost missed it. “Sorry about that. I should have waited until we were out of the taxi before I made that comment.”

Because the taxi driver had clearly taken the quote straight to the press, no doubt for a healthy cash payment.

“You shouldn’t have said it, period. I haven’t seen Sophie for a year.”

Though the very last time he had seen her was still indelibly imprinted on his mind. Her ridiculously long lashes curled against delicately molded cheekbones. Dark hair trailing down the sleek, elegant curve of her naked back. The one slim arm flung across his pillow as she slept.

Sophie Messena had in no way looked like the A-list party girl she was purported to be, and that was what had fooled him. There was a cool directness to her glance, a clear intelligence and a habit of command that should have annoyed him but which he had found more than a little fascinating…

Hannah stopped and pinned him with her brown gaze. “You want my opinion? You should have picked another time to sign this contract. One when Sophie wasn’t around. The fact that you chose a time when she would be around says something. You’re supposed to be getting into bed with The Messena Group, not Sophie Messena.”

Ben repressed the urge to pinch his nose. He remembered a time, pre–Sophie Messena, when the conversations he’d had with business colleagues were about managing risk, contractual obligations, closing out deals and headhunting the right people. Now everyone seemed to have an opinion about his dysfunctional love life. “There’s a new deal to be signed, and this resort is the last project I managed for Nick before I left Messena Construction. I need to be here.”

Hannah made a rude sound. “And that’s another thing. If you get tangled up with Sophie Messena again, Nick is going to react. Big-time. You can kiss any future deals goodbye.”

She trundled past the receptionist’s desk and started toward an open door at the end of a broad corridor. As Ben strolled toward Nick’s office, he noted the lineup of Medinian oil paintings that decorated light-washed walls. The paintings, all from the Mediterranean island of Medinos, were old, priceless and very familiar, because Ben had seen them on a daily basis when they had adorned the office of Nick’s Dolphin Bay Resort in New Zealand.

Despite the Messena family leaving Medinos and most of them settling in New Zealand, their connection to Medinos was still strong. The abiding theme of battle-scarred warrior ancestors was hard to miss, the message clear: don’t mess with Nick Messena or his baby sisters.

Hannah was right, he thought grimly. Nick had overlooked his sleeping with Sophie a year ago because, like everyone else, he thought Sophie had ditched him, and that it was over. Ben was pretty sure Nick had actually felt sorry for him. But if Ben got involved with Sophie again, the gloves would be off. He would have to either cut ties with The Messena Group or marry Sophie Messena.

Given that it would be a cold day in hell before he would make his father’s mistake—a mistake that had led to suicide—and marry a woman as calculating and career-obsessed as Sophie Messena, he would be crazy to take the risk.

Ben stepped into Nick’s swanky office and lifted a hand to Nick and John Atraeus, who was some kind of a distant relative and, now, Nick’s new business partner. As he joined them out on the terrace, he took in the tropical heat, the balmy air and impressive view of Miami as it flowed around the coastline, glittering softly in the night. Broodingly, he conceded that he could have picked another time to meet. Like tomorrow morning, for example, when John and Nick, who were both here for the launch party, would still be around.

But the truth was that, a year on, he was no nearer to forgetting about Sophie than he had been when he had walked out of his hotel suite in Dolphin Bay, leaving her asleep in his bed.

He still wanted her, and the frustration and restless dissatisfaction that had followed that one night had somehow managed to nix his love life completely.

Just to admit that annoyed Ben. It meant he was still affected by the kind of obsessive, addictive desire he had decided would never rule him again.

The problem was, he had tried abstinence. That hadn’t worked, so he had tried dating, specifically women who did not look Sophie. That hadn’t worked, either, because none of the pretty blondes he had dated had truly interested him.

Which left one other strategy to get Sophie out of his system. A crazy, risk-taking option that was the military equivalent of picking up an unstable, unexploded bomb.

Getting gorgeous, fascinating Sophie Messena, back in his bed…just one more time.

Hell would freeze over before Sophie would allow Ben Sabin close to her again.

Sophie Messena took the elevator of her brother’s newest resort down to the ground floor. The only reason she was here tonight was for the express purpose of confronting Ben for his horrible behavior in sleeping with her a year ago, then ditching her without so much as a word.

Sophie tensed at the thought of seeing Ben again.

He was six feet two inches of broad, sleek, muscular male, his dark hair cut short, his jaw tough, with the kind of cool blue gaze that regularly made women go weak at the knees.

But not her. Not anymore.

Tonight she was determined to exorcise the last dregs of the fatal attraction to Ben that had dominated her life for two-and-a-half years. Finally she would be able to move on.

It would be over.

Forcing herself to relax, she exited the elevator and strolled into the foyer with barely a hitch to her stride and with a smoothness it had taken weeks of physiotherapy and repetitive exercises to achieve. A faint stiffness was still discernible in her lower back, courtesy of the dislocation injury she had sustained when her SUV swerved off one of Dolphin Bay’s narrow country roads eleven months ago.

That was three weeks after Ben had left her bed following their one tumultuous night together. She had thrown away his brief note thanking her for a “nice” time.

Nice.

As if leading up to that night, there hadn’t been eighteen months of a sultry, electrifying attraction that had made it difficult for her to think about anyone but Ben Sabin. Not to mention the frustrating encounters that had fizzled into nothing, before she had finally made the desperate decision, on Ben’s last night in Dolphin Bay, to go out on a limb and seduce him.

She stopped opposite the reception desk near an alcove decorated with palms at which she had arranged to meet her date for the night. She checked her watch. He was late, which was annoying because it was imperative that she not be seen alone tonight.

For an unsettling moment, she had trouble remembering her date’s name. It wasn’t until she spotted him walking toward her that it came back to her. Since she had met Tobias, a broker who worked for her banker brother, Gabriel, only a couple of times, and both of those times only in passing, when he had been out on a date with her twin, Francesca, maybe that wasn’t surprising.

As she greeted Tobias, the knowledge that she was just minutes away from seeing Ben, made her jaw tighten.

One year ago Ben had walked out on her. Three weeks after that she’d had the accident. Her body had recovered physically. Now, tonight, she would test the mental and emotional healing she hoped she’d achieved after untold hours of very expensive therapy. If the assurances her therapist had given her were anything to go by, she should now be completely immune to him.

Frowning, Sophie scanned the room—which was thronged with a glittering array of guests, local business people and, of course, media. Her stomach tightened ever so slightly when she caught the back of a dark head. By the time the man turned, she had already dismissed him; he was tall enough to be Ben, but his hair wasn’t cut short and crisp, and his shoulders were too narrow. Not broad and sleek and muscular from the time Ben had spent in the military, followed by years of hands-on construction work and long hours working out in his private gym.

She took a deep breath and tried to relax, but in the instant she had thought the man was Ben, her heart had raced out of control and adrenaline had shot through her veins. Now, instead of being relaxed and cool as a cucumber, as she had planned, she was terminally on edge.

“Do you want to, uh, dance?”

Sophie remembered her date for the evening, Tobias. Now an ex-boyfriend of Francesca’s, he was tall, dark, muscled and handsome. He looked super hot but, unfortunately, Sophie couldn’t seem to drum up anything beyond polite interest for him. With any luck, when Ben showed up, he would see her with Tobias and jump to the conclusion that the few passionate hours Sophie had shared with Ben were ancient history and that she was now very occupied with her latest guy.

“Maybe we can dance later.” She sent Tobias an encouraging smile. When Ben arrived it would definitely be good to be seen on the dance floor with Tobias, preferably slow dancing to something romantic.

Linking her arm through Tobias’s to make sure they were seen as a couple, she steered him in the direction of the bar, asked for a glass of sparkling water and took a sip. Anything to distract her from the attack of nerves that had come out of nowhere. Nerves she shouldn’t be feeling because she was over Ben.

“Drowning your sorrows?”

Sophie almost choked on a swallow of water as Francesca waved at Tobias, who had stepped away to speak to an elderly couple. For a split second, Sophie had had trouble recognizing her own twin. “You’ve dyed your hair blond.”

Francesca signaled to the barman that she would like a glass of champagne. “Britney Blonde Bombshell. Do you like it?”

Sophie studied the silvery blond color, which was struck through with honey streaks and darker lowlights. On a purely aesthetic level, she could appreciate that the beach-babe effect was gorgeous, but dying her hair blond held no appeal for her. To put it bluntly, she wouldn’t be seen dead with blond hair, probably because every time she saw a picture of Ben on social media, he had a blonde clinging to his arm. “It’s…different.”

Francesca shrugged. Though identical in appearance with Sophie, she was the polar opposite in terms of personality. “You know me, I like change.”

She sipped her champagne. Her gaze restlessly skimmed the packed dance floor as if she was looking for someone. “Right now I feel like I need to be a little more…definite in my personality. More like you. I love your dress, by the way. You always look so cool and in control in white.”

Francesca glanced down at her own red silk wraparound dress with its starburst pattern at her midriff. She frowned. “Maybe I should try wearing white.”

Sophie set her drink down with a clink. “You don’t wear white.”

White was Sophie’s designated color. It was a twin thing. From around the age of six, when their brains had finally developed enough that they realized the adults were dressing them like robot clones, all in the name of twin cuteness, they had rebelled. There hadn’t been a discussion, just a moment of shared outrage, then, somewhere in the midst of the weird, developing alchemy of being twins, a tacit understanding that they needed to dress differently. Sophie had chosen whites and neutrals; at a stretch she would wear pastels or dark blue. Francesca had gone straight for the hot, wild colors. They had maintained discipline for years with the result that no one ever confused them, although Francesca, with her bolder look, had had to get used to the evil twin jokes.

Francesca’s chin firmed. “I’d wear white if I got married.”

“Married?” Sophie frowned. “Lately, you’re not even dating.”

And she realized that, in itself, was strange. Francesca, who was a free spirit in contrast to Sophie’s ultra-ordered, perfectionist, control-freak existence, usually had a man in tow. None of them ever lasted very long unless she chose to keep them as friends, as she had with Tobias. Since Francesca was softhearted, endlessly forgiving and hated hurting anyone, she had a very long list of male friends. The difference in their personalities was also the reason that Sophie was the CEO of her own fashion retail company, while Francesca preferred to operate as head fashion designer for their own brand. “What’s going on? Have you met someone?”

Francesca ran a fingertip around the rim of her champagne flute. “I’m not sure. Maybe. I’ve got…you know, one of my feelings.”

Now Sophie was worried. Francesca, aside from being outgoing and too compassionate for her own good, was strongly intuitive. Sophie had learned, along with the rest of the family, to pay attention to Francesca’s “feelings” even though she didn’t understand where, exactly, they came from.

A case in point had been when their father had been killed in a car accident years ago. It had been Francesca who had woken their mother up and raised the alarm, insisting there was something wrong. An hour later the wrecked vehicle had been found. It had been too late to save their father, but from that day on they had all paid attention to Francesca’s premonitions.

Francesca took another sip of champagne and stepped away from the bar, her attention once again focused on the colorful, shifting crowd. “I just feel that tonight I could meet that special someone.”

She smiled, although the smile seemed over-bright and a little taut, as she deposited the half-empty flute back on the bar. “Fingers crossed. So far Miami has been a complete washout where men are concerned.” She grinned at Tobias, who was now leaning against the bar, arms crossed over his chest, a rueful expression on his face. “Except for Tobias! Mind if I borrow your date for this dance?”

“Be my guest,” Sophie muttered, her concern for her twin evaporating as she spotted a tall broad-shouldered figure in the crowd. A sharp tingle shot down her spine. He turned, and her attention was riveted by the strong, faintly battered masculine profile, courtesy of the fact that his nose had once been broken, and a rock-solid jaw. It was Ben.

His gaze locked with hers for a searing instant. Her heart sped up, making her feel suddenly breathless, and, out of nowhere, an irresistible thought surfaced. Maybe, the business he was conducting with her brother aside, Ben was here for her. Maybe, after a year of separation, he had finally realized that what they had shared had been special.

Dimly she recognized that this was not the reaction she should have after months of therapy designed to reposition her thinking. She was supposed to be focused on choosing the best for herself, not setting herself up for disappointment again.

All of that was swept away in the sudden realization that Ben was not alone.

Sophie stiffened. Somehow, she hadn’t expected him to be with someone. She had thought that, because her life had ground to a halt while she’d processed the hurt of rejection, he would also be affected in some significant way. That he might even be missing her, or regretting leaving her without a word, without even a phone call—

Her jaw tightened. Of course, that presupposed that Ben had a heart.

Her gaze settled on the woman who was pulling him onto the dance floor. She looked young, barely out of her teens, with tawny blond hair piled in a messy knot, a short turquoise silk dress skimming her curves, a tattoo on one slim shoulder and outrageously high heels.

Sophie’s breath came in sharply. She was only twenty-seven, but looking at the young, vibrant thing in Ben’s arms, she suddenly felt as old as Methuselah and, with her simple white designer dress and low, strappy shoes, just a bit…boring.

However, if she was “old,” then Ben, who was thirty, was ancient and practically cradle snatching.

Though Sophie knew she should drag her gaze away, seeing Ben with the gorgeous blonde made the shock that he had found someone else burn deeper. Even worse, it successfully cheapened the one night they had shared. A night that, for Sophie, had been singularly intense and passionate and seemed to signal the beginning of the kind of deep, meaningful relationship she had thought she might never experience until Ben had strode into her life.

Blindly she turned back to the bar. She was aware of the barman asking her a question. Champagne? Drawing a breath that felt impeded because her throat seemed to have closed up, she dredged up a brilliant smile. “Yes.”

Her fingers closed on the chilled flute. The first sip helped relax her throat, the second made it possible to feel almost normal. Probably because she was focused on something other than the fact that Ben was not the honorable man and exciting dream lover—the dependable, prospective husband—she had foolishly imagined him to be. Instead, he was as shallow as a puddle and a rat to boot. He had utterly betrayed her trust, and the whole situation was made worse by the fact that she had naively given herself to him.

Not that he had noticed that she had been a virgin the night they had made love. That tiny fact had seemed to bypass him completely.

When she had realized he had no clue, she’d felt an odd moment of disconnect, which she should have realized was a sign. Then the warmth of the night and the heady excitement of lying in Ben’s arms had kicked in, and she had dismissed the impulse to tell him. She’d had too many years of warily skirting relationships to let her guard down so easily, and Ben had a formidable reputation with women.

Now she was glad she hadn’t told him the truth, because clearly Ben lacked even the most basic insight into the female psyche. Her virginity was not something she had bestowed lightly. It had been a gift of trust that she had not wanted to see trampled. Sophie had decided that, until they had established an actual relationship, telling Ben that she had been so picky that she had waited making love until him, had seemed too acutely revealing. It would have put her at a disadvantage, and given him entirely too much power.

Finally, she had so not saved herself for him. Sleeping with Ben had just…happened.

She took another sip and checked how much champagne was left in her glass. She hadn’t had that much, maybe a third, but she was already feeling the effects. Not a happy buzz exactly, but the tightness in her stomach had gone and she was definitely starting to feel more kick-ass and in control.

However, the champagne also seemed to be having another effect. Without the normal careful editing of her emotions, the memories were flooding back, bigger, brighter and more hurtful than ever, which was…disappointing. She had gone to a great deal of effort to bury them beneath long work hours and an extremely busy dating life with men who did not remind her of Ben. She took another sip.

Sophie glanced back at the dance floor, which was a mistake, because once she fixed on Ben she couldn’t look away. Now that the initial shock of seeing him with another woman had passed, a weird jagged emotion hit her square in the chest, making it hard to think, making it hard to breathe.