The Dare Collection March 2019. Rachael Stewart
in extraordinary properties aimed toward top-tier clientele who expect—and can afford—the best. I’m sure you already know the development potential of this island is astronomical. And I say that as someone not given to exaggeration.”
“The development potential of anything is astronomical if the person who owns it keeps saying hell no to slick offers and obsequious dickheads in ugly suits.” He studied her for a moment, lingering on the flush across her high cheekbones and the freckles that were coming out over her nose. “I’m pretty sure you already know I don’t want to develop shit. You look like the type who would know that kind of thing before you stepped on an airplane to force a meeting. What makes you think you can show up here and convince me when no one else could?”
She blinked again, and her eyes—entirely too blue for his peace of mind—got canny. And Jason might look like a barbarian. He’d cultivated that image, in fact. Wild and loud and nothing but noise, because it suited him to be underestimated. The truth was, he’d always liked women with brains. It made life a hell of a lot more complicated, sure. But complicated was often a whole lot more interesting.
“I’m hoping that I can change your mind.” Her gaze was steady on his. “Why don’t you tell me what you think that would take.”
Jason laughed. It was a big laugh, just like him, and it filled the lobby. One of his more poetic exes had once told him it was like a volcano. As an island boy, born and bred to be respectful of Madame Pele and her works, Jason was more than okay with that comparison.
Especially when it seemed to bother the shit out of the tight-assed corporate creature perched across from him, who stiffened at the sound.
“I’m not going to talk contracts and deals, sweetheart,” he said when his laughter died away. “Fun fact. People don’t move to private islands without names in the middle of the Pacific Ocean if they want to be tracked down. And yet you people are like ants, one after the next, rolling up to ruin my picnic.”
“I don’t want to ruin your picnic,” she said, and he was almost impressed that she managed to get that out through her pursed lips and that attempt at the same polite smile. “I just want to make you a rich man.”
“I’m already a rich man.”
“You can always be richer.”
He laughed at that, too. Because she had hair like fire and skin so pale and resolutely sunless she glowed. And she was dressed in those stiff, dark clothes that looked as sad and dreary as whatever dark, rainy place she came from.
“White people always want to get richer,” he observed. “It’s just money, Lucinda.”
“Spoken like someone who has too much of it, Jason,” she fired back.
And he saw her, then. The real woman tucked away behind the prim and the proper, and she was bright. Sharp and wild. All teeth and snarl, and Jason wanted to tangle himself up in her and see if she left marks.
Something in him uncurled, then heated.
“If you don’t want money,” Lucinda said after a moment, her tone too precise, as if she was wrestling herself into submission—which Jason wanted to do himself, “what do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. And if I did, I’d go get it. I don’t need help from corporate assholes.”
She looked impatient for a second, but wiped it away in the next. “Everybody wants something, Mr. Kaoki. All you have to do is admit it.”
He let the things he wanted settle into him, hot and greedy, and made no particular attempt to hide the burn of it as he regarded her. His reward was a splash of deeper color in her telltale cheeks.
“I don’t need to see your tedious fucking blueprints or pay attention while you yammer at me about secluded coves, lanais for days and forests of tiki torches,” he drawled, aware he was landing hits every time her flush deepened. She was an open book and he was almost positive she didn’t know it. That only made this more fun. “Building some snooty resort here isn’t going to make me happier. So what’s the point? Why would I bother? Hawaii is already occupied. Your fancy clients can go ruin it some more whenever they get the hankering to play colonizer.”
She didn’t miss a beat. Her eyes were a cool, fathomless blue, like the ocean he loved on a tempestuous day—and there was something about that comparison that rubbed him the wrong way. Like it was settling into him. He tried to shake it off, concentrating on what she was saying instead.
“Maybe it’s not your happiness we should be concerned with. Think about all the good you could do if you brought jobs and investment to the area.”
“Baby, I don’t know what you read about me, but my happiness is the only thing I’m concerned with.”
“You give away more money to local charities than most people in the Pacific Islands will ever make.”
“That’s a rumor,” Jason replied lightly. “An unproven rumor because people like to think the best about other people. The truth makes them itchy.”
“People think the best of others? When?” Her laugh made him restless. “I think you’ll find they really don’t.”
“Whatever. I’m a selfish man, darlin’. I amuse myself and that’s about it. And nothing about ruining this island with another bullshit resort that pollutes the place strikes me as all that amusing.”
“I had no idea you were such an environmentalist.”
“I’m not. I’m selfish. I like my beach empty, my jungle wild and my roads clear. The point of a private island is that no one else is on it.”
“Right.” She seemed to take that on board. Her eyes narrowed as she looked him over, like she was trying to find his weaknesses. He gazed back at her, boneless and unconcerned. “But even selfish men want something.”
“There’s nothing I want I can’t get, Lucinda. I don’t need to make bargains with strange women. I don’t even need to have this conversation, but that’s the kind of guy I am. Nice to a fucking fault.”
He grinned at her, letting his edges show again, and he wasn’t entirely surprised when she didn’t look away. She was a lot tougher than the men who’d come here. Or more determined, anyway.
One more thing that shouldn’t have appealed to him. But Jason had always been a sucker for a little grit.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured. “You’re very nice. That’s the word I’d choose to describe you.”
“Feel free to pick a better one.”
But she didn’t take him up on his invitation. Instead, her body language changed, right there in front of him.
Jason watched, fascinated, because she didn’t melt. She didn’t go boneless and seductive, or start fiddling with the buttons on that shirt of hers to start flashing him those perfect breasts. The straight edge of her spine didn’t curve in the slightest.
And yet there was no doubt that something changed.
He could feel it between them, a thick, humming kind of tension. He told himself he was amused by this latest attempt to get at him, but his cock wasn’t laughing. It was fascinated, too.
More than fascinated.
And he was getting hungrier by the moment.
“Are you offering me something?” he asked.
Her gaze had turned speculative. And she was tilting her head to one side in a manner designed to make him rock hard and ready. “My understanding is that in the past, you’ve kicked everyone who came here off this island within hours.”
“Now my buddy just waits at the dock,” Jason agreed, genially enough. “So he can take you right back to Fiji. You can go now, if you want.”
Her smile was a thing to behold. It wasn’t