Heiress Behind the Headlines by Caitlin Crews Read Free Book Online

ciphers.
    “Maybe I’m trying to reinvent myself,” she said, making sure she smirked as she said it, making sure he couldn’t give her words any weight, any resonance. “Maybe this is simply part of a period of reinterpretation.” She shrugged her shoulders. “A deserted island in the late fall rains. What better place for rediscovery?”
    He shook his head, letting his hands move from the arms of the chair. He touched her, tracing a pattern along her curled-up legs from knees to ankles, making that fire rage and burn anew. Then, unexpectedly, he took her hands between his. Her heart jolted in her chest. So hard she stopped breathing.
    “You’re so pretty when you lie,” he said, almost tenderly, which made the words feel that much more like knives. Sharp and brutal. “You make it into a kind of art. You should be proud of it, I think.”
    She didn’t know why she should feel so heartbroken, so sick, as if he’d ripped her into tiny pieces by acting as she’d known he would—as she’d wanted him to act. What did she expect? That somehow, Jack Endicott Sutton would see through all her layers of defense and obfuscation to what lay beneath? She didn’t want that. She’d never wanted that. So why did it hurt so much that he didn’t do it anyway?
    But she knew why. She’d always known. There was something between them—something that sang in her whenever he touched her, something in the way he looked at her, that made her imagine things could be different. That
she
could be different. She hadn’t been able to cope with the idea of that five years ago. And whatever he’d seen in her then, she’d ruined it. She knew she had, because that was what she did. That was who she was. She ruined whatever she touched.
    Why should Jack be any different?
    “I see,” she said. She looked down at their hands, linkednow, the heat of that connection moving through her in ways she should not allow. But she didn’t move. She angled a look at him. “You are permitted to have a disreputable past, and then change when it suits you. But not me. Is that because you’re a man?”
    “It’s because you’re Larissa Whitney,” he replied, and there was laughter in his gaze then. She wished it warmed her instead of chilling her to the bone. She wished she could drop this act, and make him really, truly believe her. She thought she could, if she dared enough. If she was brave enough.
    But she had never been anything but weak. She doubted she ever would be. She took the easy road, because at least that way she could keep part of herself hidden. Safe. She had always tried too hard to keep something, somewhere, some kind of safe. Surely that counted for something.
    And even if it didn’t, it was all she had.
    “Fine, then,” she said, smiling back at him, even letting out her own little laugh in reply. Letting herself seem complicit—in on the joke. The very idea of her changing was
hilarious,
wasn’t it? Impossible! She should know. She was the one trying to do it.
    “Come have dinner with me.” Jack’s voice was rich and dark, and made her yearn for things she couldn’t have, things she knew he’d never offer. Made her heart beat too fast, her blood pump too quickly through her limbs. He was seduction incarnate, and the worst part, she knew, was that he didn’t really want her. Not
her.
He wanted the projection. The act. He wanted who he thought she was. And still, even knowing that, she wanted him like this. Like she might die if she didn’t taste him again.
    “Said the spider to the fly,” she replied, smiling over the crack in her voice, pretending she was trying to sound husky, alluring.
    “I think we both know that the only one here weaving any webs is you,” Jack said. But he didn’t seem to care about that. There was a cool, assessing glint in his dark gaze, as if he was reading her too closely. He stood up then, pulling her to her feet in an easy, offhand demonstration of his effortless strength, his