Chapter 1
L ITTLE LAKE, RHODE Island
One week later
Winter had enveloped the world outside the quaint-looking cottage at the end of the road, its chilly winds forcing everyone to stay in. Within the cottage, however, was a young woman on the floor, her body bathed in sweat. She moaned.
The man observing her from the chair simply crossed his arms over his chest, unaffected. “Again.” It was just the two of them inside the room, which was bare except for the table and chair next to the window and the full-length mirror nailed to the wall across them.
Mairi Tanner couldn’t believe what she had just heard. They had been doing this for hours. She was so tired she just wanted to close her eyes and sleep. “Are you serious?”
Drake Morrison blinked innocently at her. Unlike Mairi, he looked completely relaxed, and no surprise there since she was the one who did all the work. As always, he was dressed like a preppy trust fund millionaire, a poster boy for All-American gorgeousness with his collared shirt and corduroy pants. Next to him, she felt like a dirty rag.
Mairi glared up at Drake. “You look so nice , so good, but I’m on to you now. You’re the devil in disguise!”
Drake raised a brow. “Why are you complaining about the workout? You chose this.”
“You told me you were going to help me forget! You didn’t tell me I was going to forget because you were out to kill me!”
The temptation to smile was incredible, but Drake managed to rein it in. “Then are you changing your mind about your choice of workouts?” he asked pleasantly. “The offer still stands about doing this in my bed.”
The look in Drake’s eyes made Mairi swallow. It totally unnerved her, the way Drake could be Mr. Sweet Boy Next Door one moment then turn into some mysterious and dangerous stranger the next. One moment, he’d be moving with lazy grace, a man used to a life of leisure, but the next time she blinked he had transformed into someone who seemed to have been born to move in the shadows – and a man who could make a woman cry in the dark for the most sensual reasons.
She said hastily, “You know what? I think I’m good, after all. I’m going to move again—-” She tried to get moving, but her body protested and she fell back to the floor. “—-in a minute.”
He stood up from his seat and nudged her bare leg twice with his foot until she was forced to turn over on her stomach. In an implacable voice, he said, “NOW.”
With a groan, Mairi forced her limbs to work, pushing herself up with a groan.
Arms stretched out, palms down, she slowly lowered herself down until her body was an inch from the floor. “One.” She raised herself up again, and her muscles protested anew at the effort she exerted. She lowered herself. “Two.”
“Good. Eighteen more to go.”
Without stopping her push-ups, Mairi said, “Shut up.”
Since Mairi wasn’t looking up at him, Drake allowed himself a slight smile. A week ago, the young woman on the floor had been lackluster, a fake bright smile never leaving her lips. Her dark eyes had been just as bright, telling him that she would rather commit suicide than shed another tear.
Mairi had not argued when her aunts came to visit and told her that Drake would be living with her as her “life coach”. When her aunts left, she had been very polite to him the way only someone lost in misery could be. But that had only lasted for a few hours since the next day, Drake had forced Mairi out of bed before dawn and gotten her into Day 1 of her training.
Looking back at Mairi, Drake noticed that she was slowing down. “If you don’t finish the rest of your push-ups in thirty seconds, you’ll do twenty more.”
“ARE YOU SERIOUS?”
A scream.
She was really moving on.
“Twenty-eight seconds and counting, Mairi.”
Shit, Mairi thought, but she didn’t bother arguing anymore. She completed her push-ups in the nick of time and dropped herself back to the floor, gasping in exhaustion. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I’m just too tired to prove it.”
Drake crouched down so she could see him smirk at her. “No. You don’t.”
This close, it was impossible to ignore how handsome Drake was. The way he smirked was also intensely appealing, almost sexual, and she hastily looked away. It was stupid to feel like she was betraying someone every time her heart skipped a beat for another man. Stupid but inevitable, like her heart could only belong to just one person – and it was not even Mairi who owned her own heart.
She could feel Drake’s gaze on hers and she tried to ignore the way it lingered on parts of her body that he really wasn’t supposed to stare at. God, sometimes the way he looked at her made Mairi feel like she was naked when it was usually the opposite, like now, with Mairi covered from head to toe in sweats.
Her whole life, she had been basking in the sun in Florida. For the better part of the year, she had been under the Mediterranean sun in Greece. Both experiences had left her ill-prepared to handle the sub-zero temperatures of a New England winter.
“Are you really sure you understand what you’re here for?” she asked in a deliberately light tone, needing a little banter to clear her head. Drake Morrison was still staring at her in a way that made Mairi want to question her aunts for sending him to her.
When Drake didn’t answer, she continued, “Damen Leventis is a threat to my heart . Not my life.” She had to pause after that. It never failed to surprise Mairi – never failed to relieve her that saying his name was getting easier and easier. The pain wasn’t completely gone. She didn’t think it would ever leave. But at least she was coping.
She finally turned her head to meet Drake’s gaze so she could glower at him. “You’re training me like I have to be the next Lara Croft or something.”
In many ways, it was the same , Drake thought. In the past, subjecting himself to the most arduous physical challenges had been the only way Drake was able to beat his feelings for Yanna Everleigh out of his system. If it worked for him, it should, eventually, work for Mairi Tanner, too.
“You need this training,” he told her succinctly, “if only to give you a fighting chance of running away from him when you two eventually meet again.”
She forgot a little about her exhaustion at his words, incensed enough to find the energy to try pushing Drake and make him lose his balance. But he didn’t even budge an inch. Gah!
Mairi told him tightly, “I’m not going to run away from him.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I hate arguing with you. You always answer like you know you’ll have the last say.”
“I just say it like it is and right now, I can see that you’re still not completely convinced you’ll be able to refuse Damen Leventis when you meet again.”
Mairi flipped to her back and threw an arm over her eyes. She said stoically, “It’s truly over between us.”
It wasn’t, but tonight it would be. A part of himself urged Drake to allow Mairi another night to recover, but the sensible and cold-heartedly rational part of him told Drake that it was time to force her to make a choice.
When Mairi no longer spoke, he glanced down and saw that she had fallen asleep. She usually did after the punishing workout he forced her to go through every day, and normally he allowed her to sleep on the floor despite knowing she’d wake up with an aching back. The resulting pain would also be good for her, another way to keep her mind off Damen Leventis until she was completely free of him.
Making a decision, he silently scooped her up in his arms. She did not stir as he carried her to her bedroom. Drake carefully lowered Mairi to her neatly made bed before walking away to lock the door, something ingrained in Drake even though no one in the world except for Mairi’s aunts knew their whereabouts.
When he came back to her side, he slowly lowered himself to sit next to her on the bed.
And then he kissed her.