Page 122 of These Summer Storms

The heavy door scraped open.

It was Jack. He wasn’t wearing his jacket or his tie anymore. The top buttons of his shirt were undone, and the cuffs were rolled up in thateffortless way men had—like they didn’t know how it triggered women’s reptilian brains.

Alice’s reptilian brain was busy being angry, thankfully, preventing her from noticing his tanned forearms or the tattoos inked across them. She certainly didn’t remember the feel of the left one with the compass, strong and sturdy as it held her to the cliff wall the other day.

“Are you okay?” The question came quick and gruff, like if he weren’t so unreasonably muscled, he might have been out of breath.

She ignored the curl of something she would not name and reminded herself that she was angry. “Of course it’s you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Only that it’s always you, right there, pretending you’re just…wandering by.”

“You mean, always rescuing you?”

“I don’t need your help, Prince Charming,” she argued. “Go play savior somewhere else.”

That muscle in his jaw that she shouldn’t even notice clenched. “Do you want me to close this again so you can bide your time waiting for the oxygen to run out, or…”

Her brows rose at the edge in his tone, the first time she’d heard him anything but calm in this uneasy house. Something flashed through her. Relief, maybe? Gratitude that he, too, could come unraveled. Desire for it. Willingness to poke the bear.

“The oxygen isn’t going to run out. It’s temperature-controlled, not vacuum-sealed. Sam isn’t a murderer; he’s just an asshole.” She pushed past him, painting in hand, and propped it against her father’s desk.

He waved toward the vault. “Hey, if you’d rather stay in that gilded cage…”

“It’s funny that you think the vault is the cage,” she replied. “You’d better watch out, Jack, because you’re trapped in here with the rest of us, and you’re beginning to act like it.”

He didn’t like that. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Weren’t you the impartial judge? A referee for this stupid game?” He stiffened, sensing the blow before she delivered it. “How was thatgoing to last when you slept with me before it even started? When you accepted Tony’s resignation before Greta could make her own decision?”

“I tried to tell you—”

“Yeah, you worked really hard to tell me,” she said. “I must have missed the part where you told me you were the reason Griffin took off.”

He ignored the words. “Tony’s resignation didn’t impact Greta’s decision. If anything, it would have made it easier for her to refuse to do your father’s bidding.”

“So what, you’re the good guy, now?”

“I never said I was a good guy.”

“Good, because you’re not. And the wild thing is—Iknewit. You’ve been orchestrating this game from the beginning, manipulating us all on behalf of my father, for whom manipulation was like breathing. And still, I thought—”

She cut herself off, and he leaped in. “I wish you would stop doing that.”

“What?”

“Stop yourself from saying what it is you really want to say. Stop yourself from being honest.” Her words remained stuck in her throat, angry and desperate to get out, and Jack pressed on, his own frustration clear. “Say it, Alice. What did you think?”

“I thought—” She stopped again, and this time he let the words hang there, waiting. Listening. And it was too tempting. “I thought there was something between us. Something like the truth.”

He took a step toward where she stood at the corner of her father’s enormous desk, empty of everything but a hunk of glass, some humanitarian award bestowed for millions in tax write-offs.

“But this has never been honest. Not from the moment you got on the train and asked if the seat next to me was taken.”

Except he hadn’t asked that. He’d asked something worse. Something more tempting.

Is someone with you?