He no longer knew what he saw when he looked at her. It had all become tangled. Knotted and snarled beyond any possible redemption. He had shared things with her he’d never shared with anyone, and he’d tried to slap her back down when it had all become too much—and none of it had helped. And yet he found himself mesmerized by the way she held the heavy silverware in her delicate hands, the way she sneaked glances around her when she thought he wasn’t looking. And why shouldn’t she? This was the restaurant of the moment. Had Theo cared to, he could no doubt have identified most of the other patrons packing the place, as they all had to be very famous, very wealthy, or both, to get in at all.
What was this childish part of him that wanted her to know that? Wasn’t it enough that he knew it?
He had no idea what was happening to him.
“Tell me about your childhood,” he heard himself ask, breaking the silence between them. He toyed with his glass, and could not seem to breathe when she licked her full lips. Was that an indication of her nerves? Or this same fire that burned in him? He decided he didn’t care. Nothing mattered but this lunch, this woman, this moment. Surely.
“Is that an order?” she asked, that challenging look on her face.
“Merely a request.” But he smiled slightly, because she never quit, this woman.
“I hesitate to make myself more human in your eyes,” she continued crisply, cutting into her steak with a certain deliberate precision that he suspected was the only outward sign of her temper, aside from her tone of voice. “That might make me exist independent of your permission to do so, and then where would we be?”
His smile deepened. “The futility of the fight never seems to faze you,” he murmured, as much to himself as to her. She was his very own Don Quixote, tilting wildly at any windmill that caught her attention, and he could not help but admire her passion. Her foolish courage.
She put down her silverware with a thunk and met his gaze. Hers was that color between brown and green, and it called to him. So serious. So sincere. So unreasonably brave.
“Whereas you try to dominate everything you come into contact with,” she countered. “Whether you need to prove something or not.”
“You make me sound like a stray dog, humping your leg,” he said dryly. Her eyebrows rose, and she did not refute it. He laughed then, throwing his head back and letting it pour from him—because she was right. Something about this woman made him feel reckless and untried. As if he had to prove himself. No wonder he was acting like a fool. When he looked at her again, her bright eyes looked almost dazed.
“I didn’t know you were capable of laughter,” she said, clearing her throat. She looked away, then back at him with her cool mask back in place. “I thought it was all gloom and ghosts with you.”
“You don’t know me very well,” he said. He leaned forward, and idly picked up her hand, sliding his palm against hers, reveling in the contact. “But I assure you, I have better technique than a randy dog.”
She pulled her hand away, but not before he felt her tremble, and saw the heat bloom in her cheeks, in her gaze.
“I’ll have to take your word on it,” she said primly. He sat back in his seat and she watched him warily for a moment. “Why this change of heart?” she asked. “Last night you were in a high temper, and now you want to know about my childhood? Why?”
“There is no reason we can’t be friendly, Rebecca,” he said, his voice low. Insinuating. He hadn’t meant to sound as if he meant to seduce her … had he?
“There is every reason,” she said, her voice husky though he could see how she fought it—it was written across her face. She sat straighter in her chair. “For one thing, the fact that you keep calling me by the wrong name. It’s Becca, not Re-becca.”
“Becca is a nickname for Rebecca,” he replied, shrugging.
“It is,” she agreed, smiling tightly. “If your name happens to be Rebecca. But my mother named me Becca. B-E-C-C-A. No nickname. No longer name. Just Becca.” She tilted her head slightly as she looked at him. “Is that part of how you assert control? Play your little dominance games? You don’t like someone’s name so you change it—and they’re too afraid of you to complain?”
“I hear no fear at all, but a great deal of complaint,” he pointed out, still lounging across from her, almost idly. “This tactic cannot be very successful, can it?”
She pressed her lips together, then dropped her hands into her lap. He imagined he could feel the table move, as if her knee was bouncing in its usual agitation, and then it stopped—as if she’d slapped it down with the hands he couldn’t see.
“What is the point of this?” she asked, finally. “You don’t care about my childhood, and you didn’t bring me here, to a restaurant like this, to be friendly. You have an ulterior motive. You always do.”
There was accusation and something else in her voice, something that tugged at him even as it hung between them for a moment, dancing in the bright sunshine yet just out of sight.
“Why must it be one or the other?” he asked, almost forgetting himself.
She smiled. It was a sharp-honed weapon, hardly a smile at all. “Because that’s how you operate,” she said. She glanced around her, flipping her sleek ponytail back over her shoulder. “I suppose this is a decent test run. What did you call it—a field experiment?“ She frowned slightly as her gaze swept the crowded restaurant. “I’ve already seen at least five people take pictures of me—of us—with their cell phones. I assume that’s what you wanted.” Her voice dropped and she swayed forward, revealing her perfect cleavage and the hollow between them. “Larissa Whitney and her long-suffering fiance at a quiet, uneventful lunch, just like normal people.”
He could not deny a single thing she’d said, and yet some part of him wished he could. That there were no ulterior motives at all. That they were simply two people at lunch, learning about each other. Why did he yearn for that with parts of himself he hardly recognized?
“Can’t I enjoy an afternoon with a beautiful woman?” he asked softly. “Can’t I get to know her?”
“No,” she said, low and sure. Fierce. “You can’t.”
He wanted to protest. He wanted to truly forget everything but this moment, this crippling need that raged through him—but he could not quite do that. Not after everything he’d given up to get here. Not now. “Why not?” he asked instead.
“Because my only value to you is my resemblance to someone else,” she said very deliberately, very calmly. Too calmly. “Therefore, my personal information is mine. You don’t get access to it. You don’t get to know me when what you’re really after is her.”
He had spent years planning to run Whitney Media, and then, in due time, to own it. He had focused on nothing but that singular goal, casting everything else aside in pursuit of it. Larissa had liked him when he was her rough-edged lover calculated to irritate her father; she had lost interest in him when he became more of a Whitney than the Whitneys themselves. But even so, they had hammered out their devil’s bargain, their sad little dance toward Theo’s lifelong dream. And he was so close to achieving that dream—the dream that had meant everything to him for almost as long as he allowed himself to remember, last night’s trip down memory lane notwithstanding. He was so close.
And yet he looked across the small table and the city outside faded away, the bustle and chatter of the Manhattan hot spot disappeared, and all he could see was Becca. Her mysterious gaze, like the secret, shaded hollows of some cool, forgotten forest. The intelligence and the challenge. The invitation he was not even sure she knew she was broadcasting. But he knew. He could feel it throughout his body, hardening him, readying him, making his need for her burn like a wildfire through