The Cinderella Rules Read online

  “Be happy,” he finished. He walked up to her, took the papers from her hand, and tossed them on the nearest chair. “Come here.”

  “This is silly,” she said, her lip trembling, her eyes dangerously glassy. “I came to terms with this a long time ago.”

  He pulled her tightly into his arms.

  “Pepper knows why I left, she has no problems with it. In fact, she has quite happily enjoyed my father’s lifestyle. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t need someone to be there for her, in a way my father never could be. Then or now.” She sniffed, rubbed her nose on the sleeve of his robe.

  He nudged her head back, turned her face to his. “Maybe that’s what this is, then.”

  “This?” She frowned as a tear trickled from the corner of her eye.

  Oh, how she must hate losing control, he thought. She who’d had to keep such a tight control on everything since such an early age. He knew all about that, only he’d left it all behind. Because of her sister, she’d taken it with her. And yet, he couldn’t help but think about how spectacularly she’d come apart for him, how willingly she’d relinquished her control. With him. For him. How could that be anything but a good thing?

  He wasn’t going to walk away from that. And if he had anything to say about it, neither was she.

  “Yeah,” he murmured, nipping at her lower lip, then pulling it gently between his teeth. “This,” he said against her mouth, then pulled her into a deep kiss.

  Her hands tightened on his arms and he thought she was going to push him away again, but then she sighed, her fingers loosened into a caress, and she gave herself over to that thing that happened between them every single time they came together. It was beyond a spark, beyond animal attraction. It was more like . . . a welcome home, a discovery of self, or of finding that indefinable thing in another person that you thought only you understood.

  He shook his head and smiled as he lifted his mouth from hers. “It’s not about me wandering and you settling. It’s about us both hiding. We’re both runaways, you and I. It’s just that your hideout is a ranch in Montana. And mine is pretty much anywhere in the world but here.” He caressed her cheeks with his thumbs. “Not so different. And maybe that’s what this is all about. This . . . connection we feel.”

  She smiled then, made all the more potent because her eyes still sparkled with emotion. “And here I thought it was about incredible sex.”

  He brushed her lips with his fingertips. “That kind of incredible sex only happens when something else is going on.”

  “Is this more of that hammock philosophy of yours?”

  He pressed one fingertip past her lips. “Nope, that one I just figured out today.”

  Her eyes widened a little, then drifted shut when he replaced his finger with his mouth and slid his tongue inside her, needing to take her somehow, claim her, make her understand.

  She didn’t pause this time, but accepted him fully. Her fingers raked through his hair and held him tight, so she could take him as fiercely as he wanted to take her, claim him in exactly the way he’d needed to claim her.

  When they finally broke free of one another, both were breathing as if they’d just made love all over again. Oddly enough, he felt like maybe they just had.

  He rested his forehead against hers. “Can we at least agree that you won’t run off before we can talk more about this?”

  She nodded. “Thank you,” she said after a moment.

  “For?”

  “Caring. Enough to push me past my own defenses.” She lifted her head, nodded in the direction of the chair. “Enough to run that report.”

  “It wasn’t just a guy thing.”

  Darby sighed, and moved out of his arms as she scooped her drying hair back from her face. “I know.”

  “They found something on him?” Shane picked up the sheaf of papers and started sorting them back into order.

  “Not really. But that’s mostly because there wasn’t much there for them to find.”

  Shane paused, then looked up. “What does that mean?”

  “According to them, Stefan’s name doesn’t pop. Meaning, when they run him through their normal channels, they get an address and not much else. So they dug a little deeper.”

  “And?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly. He appears to be what he claims, a wealthy businessman with numerous international interests—mostly technological in nature—and a number of Swiss accounts that indicate he might be good at it. Of course, they couldn’t verify what kind of money he had in those accounts, but since I happen to know he flew his own jet over here, I’m guessing it’s more than a few bucks. We Dig It did pick up on one clue about Stefan’s most recent activity, however.” She handed the printouts to Shane. “Some notes he received via E-mail just before leaving Europe.” She gave Shane a look. “And I don’t want to know just how illegal that might have been.”

  “Hey, the Internet can cough up some amazingly private details about the average citizen, I’m told.” Shane glanced down at the printout. “Maybe he’s what he says he is. A businessman here to do a deal with your dad. Not so unusual to keep below the radar. Someone who moves in elite circles like that might make it his business to keep his business private.” He flipped to the notes. “What is his deal with your father about, anyway, do you know?”

  Darby said, “Something to do with gemstones, why?” at the exact same time that Shane’s eyes landed on the last note. And two words came leaping out at him. Emeralds. And Brazil.

  Cinderella Rule #14

  Sometimes it’s good to shake up the status quo. You just have to make sure that when you turn society on its ear, you don’t end up on your couture-covered backside.

  —VIVIAN

  Chapter 14

  Darby tucked her freshly blow-dried hair behind her ears and smoothed her peach silk trousers as she went over the story she’d come up with as to why she was wearing a whole new outfit less than an hour after arriving. Why anyone would give a damn was beyond her, but people would talk. She didn’t care, but she also didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to herself. She was jittery enough about trying to figure out how to pump Stefan for more information on this deal he was setting up with her father. She paused in the downstairs hallway, catching her reflection in a small framed mirror.

  Outfit: fine. Of course Melanie had helped her organize all her purchases into complete outfits, so she took no credit there. Hair: passable. It was dry; it was straight; it was tangle-free. Not much more she could do there. Makeup: . . . well, two out of three wasn’t bad, right? She smiled, remembering Shane’s offer to help her out with her eyeliner. God knows maybe he’d have done a better job, she thought now, looking at the tiny little wobbly lines she’d managed on her upper eyelids. She’d given up outlining her lips. After her first try, she’d looked like a rodeo clown, so she’d gone for just a quick whip of color, blotted on tissue. Then she’d had to do that twice, because Shane had ended up kissing off the first attempt. Who knew makeup application could be construed as foreplay? Her smile turned decidedly content. She’d needed the practice anyway. With the lipstick, that is.

  She pulled her gaze away from the mirror and forced away thoughts of Shane: the way he made her feel, the way he made her want him constantly, and the whole confusing tumble of emotions that went along with it. It was both exciting and terrifying. “And you don’t have time to play dewy-eyed maiden.” She had a job to do. Two of them now.

  She knew all about Alexandra’s apparent intent to dabble in private gemstone mining—or at least everything Shane knew so far. The other reports from We Dig It didn’t reveal much by themselves, but had served to illuminate more of what Shane had found in Alexandra’s private files. It appeared she’d been funding some kind of deal that would allow her to adapt the fossil-fuel extraction technology that Celentrex had developed—and that she’d been about to buy for Morgan Industries to produce and market—and put it to an entirely different use. It seeme
d she’d kept this little discovery out of the press, and from all appearances, out of the deal with Celentrex, too.

  Shane had said that he wouldn’t put it above Alexandra to let Morgan Industries reap the income—and the accompanying international goodwill—of mass-producing the technology for its original intended purpose . . . all the while using her own secret little adapted use to line her personal coffers. He planned to go over the rest of Alexandra’s private files after the party and see what else he could find out.

  In the meantime, they agreed that while they’d found no proof tying Stefan directly to Alexandra or her little side operation, one note of his they’d found was quite an interesting little coincidence. “Brazil site a go. Seams verified for tourmaline, rubellite, and emerald.” So the question was: If Stefan was involved with Alexandra’s private plan before her death, what was his involvement now? That note had only been sent days ago, weeks after Alexandra’s funeral.

  And, Darby thought, her stomach tightening, what role, if any, did her dad play in all this? She shivered a little, thinking about Stefan’s reaction when she’d mentioned diamonds and emeralds. He’d focused on her comment about the diamonds . . . but now she wondered. She’d naturally assumed Pepper had meant the kind of gemstones that were already cut and polished, but now . . . She hated to admit it, but while some nefarious connection between Stefan and Alexandra’s Celentrex deal sounded a bit too James Bond to her, as did her father’s possible involvement, she simply couldn’t discount that there might be more to the whole story, either.

  Which was what her other job was all about.

  Shane had put We Dig It back to work to see if they could find any concrete connection between Stefan and Alexandra, and Darby had tried to call Pepper to see if there was any additional information she might have that would illuminate their father’s involvement in all this. But no one had answered at the villa. So she was going to keep her ears and eyes open for any potential business chatter Stefan might indulge in, and do her best to subtly pump him for more details about this deal he was here to make.

  She hated that she even gave a damn. It wasn’t her problem what Stefan or her father were really up to. But there was Pepper to consider. Not her inheritance. Darby had already come to the conclusion that the best thing for Pepper was to learn to take responsibility for her actions. And the only way that was going to happen was if Darby stopped stepping in front of every bullet meant for her.

  But there was that other little bomb she’d dropped. Her surprising revelation about how desperately she wanted to reunite her family. Had Darby been so busy trying to mother her little sister that she’d missed the obvious? Darby still wasn’t sure how she felt about all that. Her plan had been to bail out the moment her father stepped out of the limo on Sunday, keeping any interaction between the two of them as minimal as possible. But that was before she’d gone home, before all those memories of her past and the time spent with her mother had been wrenched to the surface again. Was her father’s inability to deal with her somehow tied into her similarity to her mother, as Pepper had surmised? She shook her head, as much to negate that possibility as to shake herself free of the train of thought altogether. Like life wasn’t complicated enough at the moment.

  She steeled herself, taking a steadying breath before turning to face the gauntlet. She wasn’t sure she was up to the challenge. Handling all the polite and not-so-polite inquiries about her return. Handling Stefan and the intense undercurrents that seemed to swirl between them every time he got close. Not to mention Shane, and what had just happened upstairs. She’d like to think she could be cavalier about it, think of it as nothing more than hot sex with a willing and very capable partner. But she was discovering that she wasn’t a wild fling kind of girl. Not in the participation end of the deal . . . but she was definitely struggling with keeping her emotions out of it.

  “And if you start going down that path, you’re never going to make it through the next couple of hours,” she muttered beneath her breath.

  She looked out across the rear lawn. There had only been small clusters of guests when she’d arrived, but the grounds were now clogged with people. She rubbed at her arms, certain that the itchy feeling was probably a bout of hives or something brought on by all the stress. “Pepper, you are definitely my barn slave after this.”

  A warm hand at the small of her back made her jump. Then she turned and discovered it was Shane. “Oh, dear God, you scared the—”

  He kissed her gently, so as not to smear her attempt with the lipstick brush. “You’re going to knock them all dead.”

  “If only,” she said darkly, but the itchy feeling began to fade in the face of Shane’s cocky, confidant smile.

  “I can’t believe you care what they think.”

  “I don’t. I’m just not good at being the center of attention.”

  He moved in. “You didn’t seem to mind being the center of mine.”

  She flashed him a look of impatience, but her body stirred at the promise in his eyes. “Which is entirely different.” She put her hands up when he reached for her. “I’m not doing the makeup routine again. Not even for you.” He laughed, but the promise in his gaze remained. And she got itchy all over again, but for entirely different reasons.

  “I’d better get out there. And given the way Stefan and you circled each other last night, maybe it’s best if we do our trolling separately,” she said. It was only then that she really looked at him. All of him. “What on earth are you wearing?”

  He held his hands out and looked down. “What I always wear to a pool party.”

  She stared in shock—and maybe a little admiration—at his white sleeveless T-shirt and the baggy wave-runner beach shorts, which were done in a startling Hawaiian blossom print, that rode low on his hips. “Funny, but the last time I saw you—”

  “I believe I was naked. Now that’s casual and all, but even I have a little modesty.”

  “While I believe that’s debatable”—she smiled when he merely shrugged noncommittally—“I was referring to the trousers and polo shirt you were wearing when I first went into your rooms.”

  “Oh. Those.” He smoothed his T-shirt, drawing her eyes to his flat abs—as no doubt he’d intended to—and nicely defined biceps, and said, “I changed my mind.”

  “So you don’t care about the takeover deal and I can give up spying on Stefan?”

  “No. My feelings on that haven’t changed.” His gaze shifted to the people clustered on the lawn. “I’m just done playing the game by their rules.” He looked back to her. “Alexandra might have dragged me into this mess, but she can’t stop me from being myself while I figure out what the hell I’m doing. I may be a Morgan, but I’m not one of them, Darby. Any more than you are. Or want to be.”

  She smiled. “I doubt anyone out there would have made that mistake, no matter what you wore. But you’ve gone beyond being yourself to thumbing your nose at them. And though I don’t care about their precious social rules any more than you do, surely that’s not going to make things easier on you.”

  He folded his arms, and she tried like hell not to stare at his arms . . . or his chest. Both of which she now had carnal knowledge of. “While you were in the shower, I dealt with not one, but two major crises that had the house staff in a total panic. Would you like to know what these all-important, life-threatening emergencies were about?”

  She dragged her attention to his face. “Not really. But I can guess. The ice sculpture didn’t glisten exactly right in the sunshine, or the water in the toilet bowls isn’t at some predetermined temperature and a few of the guests’ tight asses got an unexpected chill at the wrong moment.”

  Shane’s jaw slowly relaxed, and his eyes danced. “Close. Actually, don’t mention the water thing to any of the staff. It might give them ideas.” His laugh held little humor. “I guess I just can’t conceive of a world in which I’m ever going to care about that kind of shit, you know? I do care about people losing their jobs,
people who need their paycheck to put food on the table.” He blew out a sigh. “And I know that this house, and a great deal of the crap in it, has been here since the dawn of time. That it’s important family history. My history. And if I had a drop of familial pride or integrity in my heart, I would find a way to preserve it.” He looked up at her then, and she was amazed at the helpless—no, hopeless—look in his eyes. “I care about it all in the greater-good sense, in the do-what’s-right-for-the-masses way. But in here?” He tapped his chest. “I can’t relate it to me. Because it’s not about me. This”—he gestured around them—“has never been about me. I’m the last guy who should be responsible for this. I didn’t ask for it. I don’t want it. But how in the hell do I just walk away from it?”

  Darby stood silently, not knowing what to tell him. Not knowing how to deal with the honest, gut-wrenching crisis of conscience he’d revealed to her. It made those dangerous emotions she was trying to ignore all the harder to suppress. She thought about the things he’d said to her in bed. Or on the floor. In the shower she’d decided to chalk them up to the things a person says in the heat of the moment. And God knows, there’d been plenty of heat. Only they weren’t in bed anymore. He wasn’t saying emotional things because he was buried inside of her and wanted to make sure they could climb that peak of sexual intensity again. And again.

  She folded her own arms now, not entirely sure if she was protecting herself from the growing impossibility of shoving her emotions out of this, or holding in the undeniable urge she felt to respond to them. Digging yourself deeper every second, her little inner voice warned.