A Devil in Disguise by Caitlin Crews Read Free Book Online Page B

sleek little vessel for him. The engine roared to life, drowning out whatever she might have said next.
    Dru stopped swimming then and trod water, watching in consternation and no little annoyance as the small craft looped around her, leaving her to bob helplessly in a converging circle of its wake. She got a slap of seawater in the face, and had to scrub at her eyes to clear them. When she opened them again, the engine had gone quiet once more and the boat was much too close. Again. Which in turn meant that
he
was much too close. How could she be in the middle of the sea and still feel so trapped? So hemmed in?
    “You look like a raccoon,” he said in his blunt, rude way. As if he was personally offended by it.
    “Oh,” she replied, her voice brittle. “Did you expectthat I would maintain a perfectly made-up face while swimming for my life? Of course you did. I doubt you even know what mascara
is.
That it requires application and does not, in fact, magically appear to adorn the eyelashes of whatever woman happens to gaze upon you.”
    It took far more strength than it should have to keep from rubbing at her eyes again, at the mascara that had no doubt slid off her own lashes to coat her cheeks.
It doesn’t matter,
she snapped at herself, and found she was surprised and faintly appalled at the force of her own vanity.
    “I don’t want to think about your mascara or your made-up face,” he replied in that deceptively smooth voice of his, the one that made her bones seem to go soft inside her skin. “I want to pretend this day never happened and that I never had to see beyond the perfectly serene mask you normally wear.”
    “Whilst I, Mr. Vila, could not possibly care less about what you want.”
    That amused him. She could see his version of laughter move across that fierce, fascinating face, a kind of light over darkness. She had to swallow against her own reaction, and told herself it was the sea. The salt. The exertion. Not him. Not the aftereffects of a kiss that the water should have long since washed away.
    God, she was such a terrible liar.
    “What you do and do not care about,” he replied in a voice gone smooth and sharp, like finely honed steel, “are among the great many things I do not want to know about you.” His hard mouth crooked into a cold, predatory version of a smile. Dru would have preferred to come face-to-face with a shark, frankly. She reckoned she would have had far more of a chance.“I know you are perfectly capable of discerning my meaning, Miss Bennett. I’ll wait.”
    Dru was treading water again, and while the words she wanted to hurl at him crowded on her tongue, she gulped them back down, a bit painfully, and reviewed her situation. The truth was, she was tired. Exhausted. She had used up all her energy surviving these last years; she had precious little of it left, and what she did have she’d wasted on this contest of wills with Cayo today.
    As if to underscore that thought, another wave crashed into her face, making her choke slightly and then duck down beneath the water. Where, for just a second, she could float beneath the surface and let herself feel how broken she was. How battered. Torn apart by this confusing day. By the long years that had preceded it. By kisses that never should have happened and the brother who never should have left her like this. She felt her body convulse as if she was sobbing there, underwater. As if she was finally giving in to it all.
    It had been too much. Five long years of worrying and working and imagining bright futures that she’d never quite believed in. Not fully. But she’d tried. When Dominic was free of his addictions, she’d told herself. When she worked so hard because she wanted to, not because she had to. She’d dreamed hard, and convinced herself it could happen if she only worked hard enough. She’d dreamed her way out of her rotten childhood into something brighter, hadn’t she? Why not this, too?
    And then had come