Her polite smile didn’t dim, and against his will, he was impressed. Each and every one of the wussy little men who’d sweated at him in this very same lobby had looked nauseated and ill at ease by this point. Because douche bags always imagined they could manipulate a big, loud, dumb jock—and they were always surprised and disconcerted to discover that this particular dumb jock was a whole lot more difficult to handle in person.
Not his prissy little redhead, sitting rigid and sure on the old sofa like that painful-looking bun of hers was pulling her spine straight. “I’m Lucinda Graves.”
“Why am I not surprised your name is Graves?” When she frowned, Jason shrugged. Expansively. And noted, with interest, the way her gaze followed the play of muscles in his shoulders. “Maybe you’re too jet-lagged to notice you’re in the South Pacific. Here we dress in pretty flowers and aloha and not a whole lot else. But you came dressed for a funeral.”
She rustled up that smile again, twice as polite this time. He figured she considered it a weapon.
He thought that was cute.
“I’m sorry if my professionalism offends you,” she said coolly. “I’m only trying to treat you with the courtesy due your position.”
“You mean my money, not my position. I don’t think you’d give a rat’s ass about my position if it wasn’t directly in your way. Much less any courtesy.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Kaoki. Manners never go amiss. Especially in trying situations.”
Was she scolding him? Jason thought she was. And even stranger, he found it just as hot.
Which probably said some shit about him, but he had no intention of analyzing it.
He shifted where he lounged there across from her before his unruly cock announced itself. He rubbed absently at his side, and once again her gaze dropped to follow the movement. All over the tattoo he’d gotten when his football scholarship had come through, so he’d never forget where he came from.
And Jason didn’t think she was the type to find ink quite that fascinating.
“I have to be honest, Lucinda.” He made her name a meal and discovered that he was actually good and hungry. Bordering on straight-up starving. “I don’t really think you know how trying this situation could get. Let me know if you want that to change.”
She blinked, but didn’t touch that. Smart girl.
“I represent an international hotel concern,” she started again, but he thought that smile of hers was more strained than before. He interpreted that as progress. “We specialize 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.