In Bed with the Devil / High-Society Mistress

She’d meant to keep her temper. Honestly she’d even written it on her to-do list. But it was simply impossible.

“Take care of me? Is that what you call disappearing two seconds after Hunter’s funeral? All of you left—all of his friends. I expected it of them but not of you. Hunter told me you would always be there for me no matter what. But you weren’t. You were gone. I was seventeen, Jack. My father was a basket case, I was a total social outcast with no friends and you disappeared. Because that was easier than facing your responsibility.”

He put down his luggage. “Is that why you’re here? To tell me off?”

He had no idea, she thought, still furious and wishing she could breathe fire and burn him into a little stick figure, like in the cartoons.

“That’s only part of the fun.”

“Would it help if I said I was sorry?”

“No, it wouldn’t.” Nothing would change the fact that he’d abandoned her, just like everyone else she’d ever loved.

“Meri, I know we have some history. But if we’re stuck here for a month, we need to find a way to get along.”

“Be friends, you mean?” she said, remembering how he’d said he would always be her friend, right after rejecting her.

“If you’d like.”

She took a deep breath, then released it. “No, Jack. We’ll never be friends. We’ll be lovers and nothing else.”

Two

The next morning Meri woke up feeling much better about everything. After leaving out food for Jack, she’d escaped to her room, where she’d had a bath and a good cry. Some of her tears had been about her brother, but a lot of them had been for herself. For the geek she’d been and the losses she’d suffered.

After Hunter had died, their father had totally lost it. He’d been less than useless to her. Within a year he’d started dating nineteen-year-olds, and in the nine years since, his girlfriends had stayed depressingly young.

She’d been on her own and she’d survived. Wasn’t that what mattered? That she’d managed to get the help she’d needed to move forward and thrive?

She turned on her clock’s radio and rocked her hips to the disco music that blasted into the room. She was sorry she’d missed the disco years—the music had such a driving beat. Of course, she was a total spaz on the dance floor, but what she lacked in style and grace she made up for in enthusiasm.

After brushing out her hair, she braided it, then dressed in a sports bra, tank top and another pair of skimpy shorts. Ankle socks and athletic shoes completed her outfit.

Humming “We Are Family” under her breath, she left her room and prepared to implement the next part of her plan for revenge.

Jack was in the kitchen. She walked up to him and smiled.

“Morning,” she said, reaching past him for the pot of coffee. She made sure she leaned against him rather than going around. “How did you sleep?”

His dark eyes flickered slightly, but his expression never changed. “Fine.”

“Good. Me, too.”

She poured the coffee, then took a sip, looking at him over the mug.

“So,” she said. “A whole month. That’s a long time. Whatever will we do with it?”

“Not what you have planned.”

She allowed herself a slight smile. “I remember you saying that before. Did you always repeat yourself? I remember you being a whole lot more articulate. Of course, I was younger then, and one looks at one’s elders with the idealism of youth.”

He nearly choked on his coffee. “Elders?”

“Time has been passing, Jack. You’re, what, nearly forty?”

“I’m thirty-two and you know it.”

“Oh, right. Thirty-two. Time has been a challenge for you, hasn’t it?”

She enjoyed baiting him too much, she thought, knowing she was being totally evil and unable to help herself. The truth was, Jack looked amazing. Fit, sexy—a man in his prime. The good news was that sleeping with him wouldn’t be a hardship.

“You gave up on seducing me?” he asked.

“Not at all. But this is fun, too.”

“I’m not sleeping with you.”

She glanced around the kitchen, then looked back at him. “I’m sorry, did you say something? I wasn’t listening.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

“But it’s a darned nice ass, isn’t it?” She turned to show him, patted the curve, then faced front again. “Okay, go get changed. I’ll take you to the nearest gym. You can get a thirty-day membership. Then we’ll work out together.”

“There’s no equipment here?”

She smiled. “I guess Hunter didn’t think of everything after all. It’s a good thing I’m around.”

He stared at her. “You think you’re in charge?”

“Uh-huh.”

He put down his mug, then moved close and stared into her eyes. “Be careful, Meri. You’re playing a game you don’t know how to win. I’m out of your league and we both know it.”

A challenge? Was he crazy? She always won and she would this time. Although there was something about the way he looked at her that made her shiver. Something that told her he was not a man to be toyed with.

But he was just a man, she reminded herself. The sooner she got him into bed, the quicker she could get on with her life.

Jack followed Meri into the large gym overlooking the lake. The facility was light and clean, with only a few people working out. Probably because it was midday, he thought as he took in the new equipment and mentally planned his workout.

Back in Dallas, he worked out in his private gym, built to his specifications. But this would do for now.

“So we can circuit-train together,” she said brightly, standing close and gazing up at him with a teasing smile. “I’m great at spotting.”

She was trying to push his buttons. He was determined not to react, regardless of what she said or did. Meri was playing a game that could be dangerous to her. He might not have taken care of her the way he should have, but he had looked out for her. That wasn’t going to stop just because she was determined to prove a point.

“Want to warm up with some cardio first?” she asked. “We can race. I’ll even give you a head start.”

“I’m not going to need it,” he told her as he headed over to the treadmills, not bothering to see if she followed.

“That’s what you think.”

She stepped onto the machine next to his and set it for a brisk warm-up pace. He did the same, not bothering to look at her speed.

“You didn’t used to exercise,” he said conversationally a few minutes later as he broke into a jog.

Meri punched a few buttons on her treadmill and matched his speed. “I know. I was much more into food than anything else. Not surprising—food was my only friend.”

“We were friends,” he said before he could stop himself. He’d liked Meri—she was Hunter’s little sister. She’d been like family to him.

“Food was the only friend I could depend on,” she said as she cranked up her treadmill again. She was breathing a little harder but barely breaking a sweat. “It didn’t disappear when I needed it most.”

No point in defending himself. She was right—he’d taken off right after Hunter’s funeral. He’d been too devastated by loss and guilt to stick around. A few months later he’d realized he needed to make sure Meri was all right. So he’d hired a P.I. to check in on her every few months. The quarterly reports had given him the basics about her life but nothing specific. Later, when he’d started his own company, he’d gotten his people to keep tabs on her and he’d learned a lot more about her. He’d learned that she’d grown up into a hell of a woman. Obviously she hadn’t needed him around, taking care of things.

“The downside of food as a friend,” she continued, “is that there’s an ugly side effect. Still, I couldn’t seem to stop eating. Then one day I made some new friends and I stopped needing the food so much.” She grinned. “Okay, friends and some serious therapy.”

“You were in therapy?” The reports hadn’t mentioned that.

“For a couple of years. I worked through my issues. I’m too smart and weird to ever be completely normal, but these days I know how to pass.”

“You’re not weird,” he said, knowing better than to challenge her brain. Meri had always been on the high side of brilliant.

“A lot you know,” she said. “But I like who I am now. I accept the good points and the bad.”

There were plenty of good points, he thought, doing his best not to look at her trim body. She had plenty of curves, all in the right places.

They continued to jog next to each other. After another five minutes, Meri increased the speed again and went into a full-out run. Jack’s competitive side kicked in. He increased not only the speed but the incline.

“You think you’re so tough,” she muttered, her breath coming fast and hard now.

“You’ll never win this battle,” he told her. “I have long legs and more muscle mass.”

“That just means more weight to haul around.”

She ran a couple more minutes, then hit the stop button and straddled the tread. After wiping her face and gulping water, she went back onto the treadmill but at a much slower pace. He ran a few more minutes—because he could—then started his cooldown.

“You’re in shape,” he told her as they walked over to the weight room.

“I know.” She smiled. “I’m a wild woman with the free weights. This is where you really get to show off, what with having more upper-body strength. But pound for pound, I’m actually lifting nearly as much as you. Want me to make a graph?”

He grinned. “No, thanks. I can see your excuses without visual aids.”

“Reality is never an excuse,” she told him as she collected several weights, then walked over to a bench. She wiped her hands on the towel she’d brought.

“I can’t be too sweaty,” she said. “If my hands are slick, it gets dangerous. About a year ago, I nearly dropped a weight on my face. Not a good thing.”

“You should be more careful,” he said.

“You think? I paid a lot of money for my new nose. You never said anything. Do you like it?”

He’d known about the surgery. She’d had it when she was twenty. He supposed the smaller nose made her a little prettier, but it wasn’t that big a change.

“It’s fine,” he said.

She laughed. “Be careful. You’ll turn my head with all that praise. My nose was huge and now it’s just regular.”

“You worry too much about being like everybody else. Average is not a goal.”

She looked at him. “I haven’t had enough coffee for you to be philosophizing. Besides, you don’t know anything about normal. You were born rich and you’re still rich.”

“You’re no different.”

“True, but we’re not talking about me. As a guy, you have different standards to live up or down to. If you have money, then you can be a total loser and you’ll still get the girl. But for me it was different. Hence the surgeries.”

“You had more than one?” he asked, frowning slightly. He knew only about her nose.

She sat up and leaned toward him. “Breasts,” she said in a mock whisper. “I had breast implants.”

His gaze involuntarily dropped to her chest. Then he jerked his head to the right and focused on the weight bench next to him.

“Why?” he asked, determined not to think about her body and especially not her breasts, which were suddenly more interesting than he wanted them to be.

“After I lost weight, I discovered I had the chest of a twelve-year-old-boy. I was totally flat. It was depressing. So I got implants. I went for a jumbo B—which seemed about right for my newly skinny self.”

She stood and turned sideways in front of the mirror. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think I should have just gone for it and ordered the centerfold breasts. What do you think?”

He told himself not to look, but it was like trying to hold back the tide. Against his will, his head turned and his gaze settled on her chest. Meri raised her tank top to show off her sports bra.

“Are they okay, Jack?”

A guy walking by did a double take. “They’re great, honey.”

She dropped her shirt and smiled. “Thanks.”

Jack glanced at the guy and instantly wanted to kill him. It would be fast and relatively painless for the bastard. A quick twist of the neck and he would fall lifeless to the ground.

Meri dropped her shirt. “I love being a girl.”

“You’re still playing me. I’m going to ignore you.”

“I’m not sure you can,” she teased. “But you can try. Let’s change the subject. We can talk about you. Men love to talk about themselves.”

He grabbed a couple of weights and sat on a bench. “Or we could focus on our workout.”

“I don’t think so.” She lay on her back and did chest presses. “What have you been up to for the last ten years? I know you went into the military.”

“Army,” he said between reps.

“I heard it was Special Forces.”

“That, too.”

“I also heard you left and started your own company dealing with corporations that want to expand into the dangerous parts of the world.”

Apparently he wasn’t the only one who had done some research.

“It’s impressive,” she said. “You’ve grown that company into quite the business.”

“I’m doing okay.” Five hundred million in billing in the past year. His accountants kept begging him to go public. They told him he could make a fortune. But he already had more than he needed, and going public meant giving up control.

“Are you married?” she asked.

He looked over at her. She’d shifted positions and was now doing bicep curls. Her honey-tanned skin was slick with sweat, her face flushed, her expression intense. She was totally focused on what she was doing.

Would she be like that in bed? Giving a hundred percent, really going for it?

The thought came from nowhere and he quickly pushed it away. Meri could never be more than Hunter’s baby sister. She could dance around naked and beg him to take her—they were never going there.

“Jack? You gonna answer the question?”

Which was? Oh, yeah. “No, I’m not married.”

“You’re not gay, are you? Hunter always wondered.”

He ignored her and the question. If he didn’t react, she would get tired of her game and move on to something else.

She sighed. “Okay, that was funny only to me. So there’s no wife, but is there someone significant?”

“No.”

“Ever been anyone?”

“There have been plenty.”

She looked at him. “You know what I mean. A relationship where you’re exchanging more than bodily fluids. Have you ever been in love?”

“No,” he said flatly. Women tried to get close and he didn’t let them.

“Me, either,” she said with a sigh. “Which is deeply tragic. I want to be in love. I’ve been close. I thought I was in love, but now I’m not so sure. I have trust and commitment issues. It’s from losing my mom when I was young and then losing Hunter. Isn’t it interesting that knowing what the problem is doesn’t mean I can fix it?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. In his world, people didn’t talk about their feelings.

“You lost a brother when you were young,” she said. “That had to have affected you.”

No way he was thinking about that. He stood. “I’m done. I’m going to take a shower.”

She rose and moved close. “Want to take one together?”

He had an instant image of her naked, water pouring over her body. How would she feel? His fingers curled slightly, as if imagining cupping her breasts.

Damn her, he thought. She wasn’t going to win. It was time to stop playing nice.

He moved forward, crowding her. She stepped back until she bumped into a weight bench, then she dropped into a sitting position. He crouched in front of her.

“You do not want to play this game with me,” he told her in a low voice. “I’m not one of your brainy book guys. I have seen things you can’t begin to imagine, I have survived situations you couldn’t begin to invent. You may be smart, but this isn’t about your brain. You can play me all you want, but eventually there will be consequences. Are you prepared for that, little girl?”

“I’m not a little girl.”

He reached behind her and wrapped his hand around her ponytail, pulling just hard enough to force her head back. Then he put his free hand on her throat and stroked the underside of her jaw.

Her eyes widened. He sensed her fighting fear and something else. Something sexual.

He knew because he felt it, too. A pulsing heat that arced between them. Need swirled and grew until he wanted to do a whole lot more than teach her a lesson.

Then she smiled. “I’m getting to you, aren’t I?”

He released her. “In your dreams.”

* * *

Back at the house, Meri went up to her room to change clothes. She didn’t offer to help Jack with his. After their close encounter at the gym, she needed a little time to regroup.

There had been a moment when Jack had touched her that had if not changed everything then certainly captured her attention. A moment when she’d been aware of him as being a powerful man and maybe the slightest bit dangerous.

“I’m not impressed,” she told herself as she brushed out her hair, then slipped into a skimpy sundress that left her arms bare. “I’m tough, too.” Sort of.

Jack was right. He’d been through things she couldn’t begin to imagine. While they’d both changed in the past eleven years, she wondered who had changed more on the inside. Was the man anything like the boy she’d both loved and hated?

Before she could decide, she heard the rumble of a truck engine. A quick glance at her watch told her the delivery was right on time.

“It’s here! It’s here!” she yelled as she ran out of her room and raced down the stairs. “Jack, you have to come see. It’s just totally cool.”

She burst out of the house and danced over to the truck. “Were you careful? You were careful, right? It’s very expensive and delicate and I can’t wait until you set it up. You’re going to calibrate it, right? You know how? You’ve been trained?”

The guy with the clipboard looked at her, then shook his head. “You’re a scientist, aren’t you?”

“Yes. How’d you know?”

“No one else gets that excited about a telescope.” He pointed back at the compact car parked behind the truck. “He calibrates it. I just deliver.”

Jack walked outside and joined her. “A telescope?”

“I know—it’s too exciting for words. It was very expensive, but the best ones are. You won’t believe what we’ll be able to see. And it’s so clear. How long until sunset?”

She looked at the sky. It would be too long but worth the wait.

“You bought a telescope for the house?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“We already have one.”

She wrinkled her nose. “It’s a toy. This is an instrument.”

“But you’re only here for a month.”

Less if her plan went well. “I know, but I want to see the stars. Everything is better when there are stars to look at.”

“You’re leaving it in place, aren’t you?”

“For the families,” she said, watching anxiously as the ramp was lowered on the truck. “I’ll write up some instructions, although it’s computer-guided. They won’t have to do anything but type in what they want to see, then stand back and watch the show. Not that we’ll be using the program. I can find whatever you want to see.”

“I have no doubt.”

She glanced at him. “What?”

“Nothing. Just you.”

Which meant what? Not that Jack would tell her if she asked.

“Hunter would have loved this,” she said absently, knowing her brother would have made fun of her, then spent the whole night looking at the sky.

Thinking about her brother was both wonderful and filled with pain. While she appreciated all the memories she had, she still had a hole in her heart from his passing.

“I think about him every day,” she told Jack. “I think about him and wish he were here. Do you think about him much?”

Jack’s expression closed and he turned away. “No. I don’t think about him at all.”

She knew he couldn’t be telling the truth. He and Hunter had been close for a long time. They’d been like brothers. Jack couldn’t have forgotten that.

Her instinct to be compassionate battled with her annoyance. Temper won.

“Most people improve with age,” she said. “Too bad you didn’t. You not only break your word but you’re a liar, as well.”

Three

Jack spent a couple of hours in the loft office, working. He called his assistant back in Dallas.

“They’re building more roads in Afghanistan,” Bobbi Sue told him. “They’re looking at maybe an eighteen-month contract, but we all know those things take longer. And Sister Helena called. They want to take in another convoy of medical supplies.”

His business provided protection in dangerous parts of the world. His teams allowed building crews to get their jobs done and get out. The work was dangerous, often a logistical nightmare and extremely expensive. His corporate clients paid well for what they got.

The corporate profits were channeled into funding protection for those providing relief efforts in places often forgotten. He’d grown up in the shadow of the Howington Foundation, a philanthropic trust that helped the poor. Jack hated having a number after his name and had vowed he would make his own way.

He had. He’d grown his company from nothing, but he couldn’t seem to escape that damn sense of duty. The one that told him he needed to use his profits for something other than a flashy lifestyle.

His critics said he could afford to be generous—he had a trust fund worth nearly a billion dollars. What they didn’t know is he never touched it. Another vow he’d made to himself. He’d grown up with something to prove. The question was whether or not he would have achieved enough to let that need go.

“Get Ron on the contract,” Jack told his assistant. “The usual clauses. Tell Sister Helena to e-mail the best dates for the convoy and we’ll get as close to them as possible.”

“She’s going to want to leave before you’re back from your vacation in Tahoe.”

“I’m not on vacation.”

“Hmm, a month in a fancy house with nothing to do with your time? Sounds like a vacation to me.”

“I’m working.”

“Talk, talk, talk.”

Bobbi Sue had attitude, which he put up with because she was the best at her job. She was also old enough to be his mother, a fact she mentioned on a regular basis, especially when she hounded him on the topic of settling down.

“Someone else will have to take Sister Helena’s team in,” he said. “See if Wade’s available.” Wade was one of his best guys.

“Will do. Anything else?”

“Not from my end.”

“You know, I looked up Hunter’s Landing on the Internet, and the place you’re staying isn’t that far from the casinos.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“So you should go. Gamble, talk to some people. You spend too much time alone.”

He thought about Meri, sleeping in the room next to his. “Not anymore.”

“Does that mean you’re seeing someone?”

“No.”

“You need to get married.”

“You need to get off me.”

Bobbi Sue sighed. “All right, but just in the short term.”

Jack hung up. He glanced at his computer, but for once he didn’t want to work. He paced the length of the spacious bedroom, ignoring the fireplace, the view and the television. Then he went downstairs to confront the woman who seemed determined to think the worst of him.

Not that he cared what she thought. But this wasn’t about her—it was about Hunter.

He found Meri in the kitchen, sitting on the counter, eating ice cream out of a pint-size container.

“Lunch?” he asked as he entered the room.

“Sort of. Not exactly high in nutrition, but I’m more interested in sugar and fat right now.”

He stared at her miniature spoon. “That’s an interesting size.”

She waved the tiny utensil. “It’s my ice-cream-eating spoon. I try to avoid using food as an emotional crutch, but sometimes ice cream is the only solution. I use this spoon because it takes longer to eat and I have a better chance of getting disgusted with myself and stopping before finishing the pint. A trick for keeping off the weight. I have a thousand of them.”