Christian and I arrived in Kauai past dinnertime the next night.
Instead of venturing to the hotel’s restaurant, which would take too much effort, we ordered room service and settled in the villa’s living room.
True to form, Christian had taken one look at the room Delamonte booked for me and upgraded us to the last remaining villa.
I snuck a peek at him as we ate in companionable silence.
He lounged against his side of the couch, looking infuriatingly sexy with his rumpled shirt and tousled hair. Neither of us looked our best after traveling all day, but his dishevelment only made him hotter, not less.
“Like what you see?” he drawled.
“Yes.” I made a point of looking around the gorgeous villa. It boasted stunning views of the Pacific, and the living room opened onto a furnished lanai, which in turn led directly to our private beach. “This place is stunning.”
That wasn’t what he was asking, but there was no need to inflate his ego. He knew I knew he was hot, so what was the point of saying it?
Christian’s knowing laugh warmed my stomach like decadent hot chocolate.
There was a certain magic in seeing him outside the confines of D.C. Like at Dante’s dinner, he’d slipped into a more relaxed version of himself.
No suit, easy laughter.
“I like this version of you.” I held my mug close to my mouth. “You’re more…” I searched for the right word. “Approachable.”
A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Am I?”
“Let’s put it this way. D.C. Christian looks like he would murder you if you cut him off in traffic. Hawaii Christian looks like he would give you a ride if he saw your car broken down on the side of the road.”
The rich sound of his amusement filled the corners of the room once more. “We’ve been in Hawaii for less than two hours.”
“Exactly. Imagine what three days in paradise would do to you.” I took a thoughtful sip of tea. “Dancing in a Hawaiian-print shirt? Joining me for sunrise yoga? Giving up red meat? The possibilities are endless.”
“Stella.” He leaned forward, his face serious. “The day I wear a Hawaiian-print shirt is the day cows fucking fly.”
“You never know at the rate technology is progressing. It could happen,” I said, undeterred. “You know what your problem is?”
“Pray do tell. I’m on the edge of my seat.”
I ignored his unhelpful sarcasm. “You take yourself too seriously, and you work too much. You should take more vacations, or at least connect with nature every once in a while. It’s good for the soul.”
“It’s too late for my soul, Stella.”
Despite his light tone, I sensed he wasn’t joking.
My smile faded. “Spoken like a true pessimist.”
“Realist.”
“Cynic.”
“Skeptic.” Christian’s lips tugged up at my frown. “Shall we continue playing thesaurus or move on to a more interesting topic?”
“We’ll move on, but only because I want to spare you the indignity of losing,” I said regally.
“That’s very kind of you.”
I didn’t appreciate the knowing laughter threaded through his voice, but I let it slide. He was paying for this beautiful villa, after all, and he’d saved me from spending ten hours in a cramped airline seat, watching old movies and trying to prevent my legs from falling asleep.
There were few things more uncomfortable than being a tall person in economy.
I sank deeper into the couch and deliberated on a good topic before I said, “Tell me something about you I don’t already know.”
I’d forgiven Christian for shutting me out after Dante’s dinner, but I hadn’t given up trying to pry more personal tidbits out of him. I didn’t care if they were as simple as his favorite superhero growing up; I just wanted something. Knowing things about Christian wouldn’t do much to protect my heart, but we were stuck together for the foreseeable future and I wanted to make the best of it.
Part of me expected him to evade the request per usual, but to my surprise, he answered readily. “I don’t like dessert.”
A horrified gasp rose in my throat. “All dessert?”
“All dessert,” he confirmed.
“Why?”
“I don’t have a sweet tooth.”
“There are non-sweet desserts.”
“Yes, and I don’t like them.” He took a calm bite of his food while I stared at him in disbelief.
“I take back what I said. Your soul is definitely suspect. It’s not normal for someone not to like dessert.” I searched for a plausible explanation. “Maybe you haven’t met the right dessert yet.”
Who could hate baklava, cheesecake, and ice cream? The devil, that was who.
“Perhaps I’ll meet it at the same time I meet my soulmate,” Christian deadpanned.
“You joke, but it could happen. And when it does, I’ll…” I faltered.
Threats weren’t my forte.
“Yes?” He sounded like he was holding back another laugh.
“I’ll never let you hear the end of it.”
“Looking forward to it.” Christian took pity on me after my lame response and switched subjects. “Time to reciprocate, Butterfly. Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
“Can’t you look up everything you want to know on one of your fancy computers?” I was only half joking.
“I’d rather hear it from you.”
For some reason, that sent a flutter through my chest.
I’d planned on sharing something silly and lighthearted, like how I watched YouTube tarot readings when I felt down because the readers always put such a positive spin on things or how I color-coded my closet for fun because the result was so aesthetically pleasing.
Instead, I said, “Sometimes, I fantasize about finding out I was adopted.”
Shame curdled in my gut. I’d never, ever shared that sentiment with anyone, and hearing it aloud made my skin prickle with guilt.
I didn’t come from a bad family. They were judgmental and had high expectations, but they weren’t physically abusive. They’d paid for my college education in full, and I grew up in a nice house with nice clothes and nice vacations. Compared to a majority of people, I lived an incredibly privileged life.
But our lives were our own. There would always be people who were better and worse off than us. That didn’t make our feelings any less valid. We could acknowledge how good we had it in some respects while criticizing other parts.
To his credit, Christian didn’t condemn me for being an ungrateful brat. He didn’t say anything at all.
Instead, he waited for me to finish with no judgment in his eyes.
“I would freak out if that actually happened, but it’s the fantasy of having another family out there that’s more…like a family, I guess. Less competition, more emotional support.” I traced the rim of my mug with my finger. “Sometimes, I wonder if my sister and I would be closer if my parents hadn’t pitted us against each other so much. They didn’t spend a lot of time with us because they were so busy with work, and the time they did spend with us was focused on whichever child they could brag about the most. The one who had the best grades, the most impressive extracurriculars and college acceptances…Natalia and I were so busy trying to outshine each other growing up that we never connected with each other.”
A sad smile touched my lips. “Now she’s a vice president at the World Bank and I’m unemployed, so…” I shrugged, trying not to picture dozens more family dinners where I sat in shame while my parents gushed over my sister.
That was, if I was even invited to future dinners. After my fight with them, I wasn’t so sure.
“I never fit in with my family even when I was employed, anyway. They’re the practical ones. I’m the one who spent my childhood staring out the window daydreaming about fashion and travel instead of stacking my resume with college-boosting activities. When I was fifteen, I created a manifestation board for Parsons, my dream college, and covered it with photos of the campus and a mock acceptance letter I typed up.”
My smile turned wistful at the memory of my optimistic teenage self. “It worked. I received an actual acceptance letter my senior year, but I had to turn them down because my parents refused to pay for such an ‘impractical degree.’ So I ended up at Thayer.”
I didn’t regret it. If I hadn’t attended Thayer, I would’ve never met Ava, Bridget, and Jules.
Still, sometimes I wondered what would’ve happened had I attended Parsons. Would I have skipped the D.C. Style chapter of my life? Maybe. Would I already be a designer with multiple fashion shows under my belt? Less certain but probably.
“Take this from someone who’s seen plenty of competitors come and go over the years,” Christian said, pulling me out of my thoughts. “You can’t measure your success based on someone else’s progress. And I’ve met your family. Trust me, it’s better that you don’t fit in.”
I let out a small laugh. “Perhaps.”
It felt good to get all that off my chest, and it helped that Christian and I weren’t as close as I was to my girlfriends. It made me less self-conscious about the things I was sharing.
Sleep tugged at the edges of my consciousness, but I didn’t want to go to bed when Christian and I were finally having a real conversation.
The shoot didn’t start until late morning tomorrow anyway.
Just half an hour more. Then I’ll go to sleep.
“What about your family?” I took another sip of tea. “What are they like?”
Christian never talked about his parents, and I hadn’t spotted a single photo of them in his house.
“Dead.”
The tea went down the wrong pipe. I spluttered out a series of coughs while Christian finished his dinner like he hadn’t dropped a bombshell with the casualness of someone mentioning their family was out of town for the weekend.
“I’m so sorry,” I said once I recovered. I blinked away the tears from my coughing fit. “I…I didn’t know.”
It was an inane thing to say because of course I hadn’t known, or I wouldn’t have asked, but I couldn’t think of a better response.
I’d assumed Christian’s parents lived in another city and/or he had a bad relationship with them. I never would have guessed he was an orphan.
“It happened when I was thirteen, so don’t feel too bad for me. It was a long time ago.” Despite his casual tone, his tight jaw and rigid shoulders told me he wasn’t as unaffected as he pretended to be.
A deep ache blossomed in my chest. Thirteen was too young to lose one’s parents. Any age was too young.
I might be upset and frustrated with my family, but if I lost any of them, I would be devastated.
“They were your parents. There’s no time limit to grieving the loss of family,” I said gently. I hesitated, then asked, “Who did you live with after they…”
“My aunt raised me until she died when I was in college.” Christian answered my unfinished question. “I’ve been on my own since.”
The ache spread until every part of me tingled with the need to comfort him.
He wouldn’t respond well to a hug, but words could be just as, if not more, powerful.
“Don’t pity me, Stella,” he said, tone dry. “I prefer being alone.”
“Maybe, but there’s a difference between being alone and being alone.” The former was the absence of physical company; the latter was the absence of emotional and interpersonal support.
I liked being alone too, but only in the first sense of the word.
“It’s okay to feel sad,” I added softly. “I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
I didn’t ask how his parents died. I could tell we were already stretching the limits of his willingness to share, and I didn’t want to destroy the fragile intimacy of the moment.
Christian stared at me with an imperceptible expression.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he finally said, his voice a shade rougher than usual.
I expected him to end the conversation there, but to my surprise, he continued without me prompting him.
“My father was the reason I got into computers. He was a software engineer, and my mother was a school administrator. In many ways, they were the quintessential middle-class American family. We lived in a nice suburban house. I played Little League, and every Friday night, we ordered pizza and played board games.”
I held my breath, so entranced by the rare glimpse into his childhood I was afraid to breathe in case it broke the spell.
“The only thing that didn’t fit into this picture,” Christian said, “was their relationship. My parents loved each other. Madly. Deeply. More than anyone else on the planet.”
Of all the things I’d expected him to say, that didn’t even rank in the top thousand, but I swallowed my questions and let him continue.
“I grew up hearing the crazy tales of their courtship. How my father wrote my mother a letter every day while he was studying abroad and trekked two miles to the post office in the mornings because he didn’t trust the university mailing system. How she ran away from home when her parents threatened to cut her off if she didn’t break up with him because they’d wanted her to marry the son of a wealthy local businessman instead. She eventually made up with my grandparents, but instead of throwing a big wedding, my parents eloped and moved to a little town in Northern California. They had me less than a year later.”
The haze of memories darkened Christian’s eyes. “They settled into what outsiders might consider an ordinary life, but they never lost that fire for each other even after I was born.”
Most people dreamed of the kind of love his parents had, but he spoke about it like it’d been a curse, not a blessing.
“Yet you don’t believe in love,” I said.
How was that possible? Most people’s cynicism toward love came from seeing it stripped down to the barest skeleton of what it once was. Ugly divorces, broken promises, tearful fights. But it sounded like his parents had been a shining example of what it could be.
“No.” The caustic cut of Christian’s smile across his face raised goosebumps on my arms. “Because what my parents had wasn’t love. It was ego and destruction disguised as affection. A drug they kept chasing because it gave them a high they couldn’t get anywhere else. It clouded their judgment to the detriment of themselves and everyone around them, and it gave them cover to do all these irrational things because no one questioned them if it was for love.”
He leaned back, his face hard. “It wasn’t just my parents. Look at the world around us. People kill, steal, and lie in the name of this abstract emotion we’re told is supposed to be our ultimate goal. Love conquers all. Love heals all. Etcetera, etcetera.” The curl of his lip told me how much respect he had for such platitudes. “Alex gave up a multibillion-dollar company. Bridget almost lost a country. And Rhys gave up his privacy, which mattered more to him than any amount of cash. It’s completely illogical.”
“Alex got his company back,” I pointed out. “Bridget made it work, and Rhys didn’t give up all his privacy. Sometimes, sacrifices are necessary for happiness.”
“Why?”
I blinked, so startled by the bluntness of his question that it took me a minute to respond.
“Because it’s the way the world works,” I finally said. “We can’t have everything we want without making some compromises. If humans were robots, I’d agree with your assessment, but we’re not. We have feelings, and if it weren’t for love, the human race wouldn’t survive. Procreation, protection, motivation. It all hinges on that one emotion.”
It was the least romantic and therefore the most effective answer I could’ve given.
“Perhaps.” Christian’s shrug expressed the depth of his skepticism more than words could. “But there’s a second issue, which is that people use love so often it’s lost all meaning. They love their dogs, cars, happy hours, and their friend’s new haircut. They say love is this grand, wonderful thing when it’s the opposite. It’s useless at best and dangerous at worst.”
“There are different types of love. The way I love fashion is different from the way I love my friends.”
“Varying degrees of the same disease.” Dark amusement filled his face when I winced at the word disease. “Is this where you’ll try to change my mind? Convince me that love does, in fact, make the world go around?”
“No,” I said truthfully. “You’ve already made up your mind. Nothing I say will change it. The only way you’ll change your mind is through experience, not words.”
Surprise coasted through his eyes before it submerged beneath something heavier, more slumberous.
“And do you think that will happen?” His low drawl condensed the air between us. “That I’ll fall in love and eat my words?”
I shrugged, the casual movement at odds with the rapid beats of my heart. “Maybe. I’m not a fortune teller.”
Secretly, I hoped he would. Not because I had delusions of being the one who could quote-unquote change him, but because everyone deserved to experience true love at least once in their lifetime.
“One of the clauses in our contract,” Christian said, watching me with those all-knowing eyes, “is that I don’t fall in love with you.”
My mouth dried. “Yes.”
“Why did you put in that condition, Stella?”
“Because I don’t want you to fall in love with me.”
He didn’t smile at my quick quip. A long silence passed before he spoke again.
“You and I, we aren’t so different,” he said softly.
A spark ignited and burned up all the oxygen between us. The sound of my pulse faded into a distant whoosh.
Say something, Stella.
But his gaze held my voice captive, and before I could free it, his phone rang and shredded the moment to pieces.
Christian’s eyes lingered on me for a fraction of a second longer before he took the call. He walked out to the lanai, where the distant roar of the waves drowned out his end of the conversation.
The weight on my chest eased, leaving me light-headed and dizzy. I felt like I’d been submerged beneath the ocean for the past hour and only just came up for air.
It was always hard to breathe around Christian.
One night in Hawaii down, two more to go.
I thought the trip would be a simple one. Arrive, do the shoots, leave.
But, as I was quickly realizing, nothing that involved Christian Harper was ever simple.
CHRISTIAN
“Someone hacked into the Mirage’s security system,” Kage said, sounding grim. “Our cyber team confirmed it was the result of a device similar to Scylla.”
I bit back a colorful curse.
The last thing I wanted was to discuss work this late at night in fucking Hawaii. Granted, it was even later for him, but Kage worked all hours and his update was a mindfuck.
I’d developed Scylla two years ago. Named after the legendary Greek monster who devoured men off ships that sailed too close, the device didn’t require a download or a USB port to hack into a system. It only needed to be within a few feet of the target for the owner to remote control into the device and fuck shit up as they saw fit.
No one knew Scylla existed except for the people at Harper Security and Jules, whom I’d lent the device to last year. She didn’t know what it was when she used it, and even if she did, she didn’t have the schematics for it, which meant one thing.
The traitor was still at Harper, and they were somehow connected to Stella’s stalker.
Cold fury rippled through me.
I’d run a second round of checks on everyone I employed after the Mirage surveillance hack with a special focus on those closest to me, including Brock and Kage. They came back clean.
I’d let go of a few mildly suspicious employees, but they hadn’t been high-level enough to know about Scylla.
Plus, unless Stella’s stalker was a developer himself, it should’ve been damn near impossible for them to replicate Scylla’s schematics…unless they got their hands on the blueprint hidden in my office.
My mind spun with a thousand possibilities, but when I spoke, my voice was calm. Rock solid.
“Pull all the security footage from the area around the building. I want video from every single corner and storefront that has a camera within a five-block radius of the Mirage. Unless the hacker can fucking teleport, he had to have gone somewhere after the break-in. Find him.”
I hung up after Kage’s grunt of affirmation.
The footage wasn’t my top priority. My top priority was finding out who in my company was trying to sabotage me, but until I returned to D.C., gathering and screening the footage would give my men something to do while I hunted down the traitor.
Between the Scylla news and the stalled progress on Stella’s stalker, May was shaping up to be a shitty fucking month.
Aggravation mounted in my chest while I calculated my next move.
If I were here for any reason other than Stella, I would fly back to D.C. first thing in the morning, but I couldn’t leave her alone when there was a psycho on the loose targeting her.
I’d lied when I’d told her there was no news. I’d intercepted three more notes from him in her mailbox. They contained basic threats, nothing new, and they were still untraceable—for now.
The chances of him following her here were slim, but they weren’t zero.
At least, that was what I told myself.
I returned to the living room and locked the sliding glass door behind me.
It was already midnight. I was wide awake thanks to the adrenaline from Kage’s news, but Stella had passed out on the couch during my call.
I gently pried her empty mug from her hand and set it on the table before I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. She was in such deep slumber she didn’t even stir.
Moonlight cut a silvery swathe through the darkness as I laid her on the bed.
I tucked the comforter tighter around her, the gentleness of the action a sharp contrast to the roar in my blood. It seemed almost obscene to touch Stella while visions of blood and dismemberment crowded my brain, but I couldn’t shut off the part of me that thirsted for vengeance.
The cold shower I took dampened my anger but didn’t erase it completely. And, because I needed an outlet for my frustration that didn’t involve physical release, the first thing I did when I emerged from the bathroom was open my laptop.
I skipped past the open window with an unfinished crossword—I preferred physical puzzles, but I made do with digital versions when necessary—and opened the file I kept specifically for times like these.
I skimmed the list of names before settling on the president of a major multinational bank. He’d never been and would never be a Harper Security client. Contrary to popular belief, I did have fucking standards for the people I associated with, and this guy was a nasty piece of work. Embezzlement, tax fraud, three sexual harassment lawsuits from his former assistants that were settled out of court, and a penchant for slapping around both his wife and the women he cheated on her with. And that was just the tip of the iceberg.
“You’re about to have a very bad day when you wake up,” I told the photo of his red, beady-eyed face.
It took me less than five minutes to hack into his bank accounts and reroute the funds to various charities via anonymous donations and a network of proxy servers. It was almost embarrassing how easy it was. The man’s password was his first car’s model and his birthday, for fuck’s sake.
I left a chunk of money for his wife along with the name of a good divorce lawyer before I forwarded some information to the IRS that the U.S. government would find highly interesting. As the cherry on top, I put his info up for sale on the dark web, sent several humiliating photos from his last visit with his mistress to all two hundred thousand of the bank’s employees and, because the asshole once tried to steal a parking spot from me, I hacked into his car, killed the GPS, and wiped out all the vehicle’s data.
By the time I finished, I felt calm enough to slide into bed next to Stella.
Contrary to what she said earlier about nature, nothing cleansed the soul like a good cyber rampage.
I stilled when Stella let out a mumble and draped her leg over mine. She must’ve liked the warmth because a few seconds later, she wrapped her arm around my waist and snuggled into my chest.
Even though she was already asleep, she released a small yawn that melted into a contented sigh and then…silence.
I stared down at her, waiting for her to wake up or at least shift again.
She didn’t.
Judging from the steady rise and fall of her chest, she’d drifted back into sleep and had no intention of untangling herself from me anytime soon.
I hated cuddling after sex and cuddling without sex even more, but instead of pushing Stella away, I brushed a lock of hair out of her face and examined her in the moonlight peeking through the curtains.
The silvery glow caressed her skin in a way that made her look ethereal. An angel sleeping in the arms of a monster.
Few people trusted me enough to close their eyes when I was in the room, and here she was, cuddling against me like I was a damn teddy bear. Completely unaware of the violence brewing only inches away.
My hand drifted from her hair and onto the elegant curve of her cheekbone. I traced it down to her chin, keeping my touch featherlight so as not to wake her. I wanted to etch every detail of her into my mind until I could close my eyes and picture her as vividly as if she were standing in front of me.
Perhaps then I would understand the hold this woman had on me. How could someone so innocent and pure-hearted have branded herself so deep into my psyche I felt the agonizing burn of it this long after we met?
My touch lingered against Stella’s face before I dropped it.
Invisible traces of the blood coating my hands streaked her cheeks. They were the same hands that fit easily around the metal of a gun and ended lives with the mere press of a button. A liar’s hands at best, a killer’s hands at worst.
I shouldn’t be touching her and tainting her with my crimes, both past and future. She deserved to shine without darkness threatening to consume her, and if I were a better man, I would let her go.
But I wasn’t.
My flickering conscience recoiled at the unseen smears of red against her skin while a twisted, possessive part of me thrilled at the sight.
But if there was one thing both sides agreed on, it was that she was mine.
And now that she was in my life, there was no letting her go.
