Page 47 of Glorious Rivals

“I was supposed to be perfect,” Savannah said, “and I was supposed to beliked, and my father never even considered that it might be impossible for a woman or even a little girl to be both of those things.”Savannah made her way farther into the room and took the tuxedo hanger from Rohan’s hand, like she was stripping away a protective barrier between them.“Gigi was enough for our father, just the way she was—but not me.Never me.So if heleft, well… It was clear enough that the person he was really leaving, the person who wasn’t worth staying for, was me.”

“Only your father didn’tleave.”Rohan said it so that she didn’t have to.“And your twin sister let you continue to believe that he did.”

“Gigi was my person,” Savannah said, her voice breaking—just once.“And now she’s not.”She tossed the purple tuxedo onto the bed and took another step toward him.“Where were you just now, Rohan?”

He’d seen that question coming.He’d recognized Savannah’s tactic for exactly what it was from the moment she’d started talking.And still, Rohan found himselfwantingto answer, wanting to give Savannah Grayson just a fraction of what she’d given him.“The day I came to the Mercy.”

What are distractions, Rohan?That lesson had come later, but until now, it had always, always stuck.

“Children generally aren’t taken in by the Devil’s Mercy forgoodreasons,” Rohan said.

“Deep water.”Savannah met his eyes.“Pitch black.You didn’t know how to swim, and it wasn’t the first time.”

Keep your friends close, Rohan thought,and your enemies closer.In the end, they’d be enemies, he and Savannah Grayson.

“The last time,” Rohan told her, “they tied stones to my ankles.”Or they’d tried to.Rohan pulled off his shirt, resolved to tell her nothing else.“I have a tuxedo to put on, love, and you were just leaving.”

Savannah’s gaze traveled down to his abs.

“Unless…,” Rohan said, letting his hands come to rest on the waistband of his pants.“You’d care to assist me?”

Chapter 36

GIGI

The windows, as it turned out, were stormproof.“Seriously,” Gigi huffed, “who puts modern-day stormproof windows in an abandoned lighthouse?”It was madness!Thankfully, Gigi was no stranger to madness.

If at first you don’t succeed, hit harder and refuse to stop!Somewhere around the four-hundredth time, Gigi’s philosophy paid off.One of the splinters in the glass cracked all the way through.

“Victory!”Whack.“Is!”Whack.“Mine!”Gigi welcomed the shattering of stormproof glass with open arms.Figuratively—mostly.Either way, she avoided getting cut.

Even Gigi wasn’t quite optimistic enough to try to scale down a sixty-foot drop in total darkness, so she moved on to the next step of her plan: She bellowed.

Gigi bellowed like she had been born bellowing, like she was training to become a pro bellower, like she was single-handedlykeeping the art of bellowing at the top of one’s lungs alive.She bellowed like her life depended on it.

After all, how long could it possibly take for a person with truly impressive lungs, shouting from their diaphragm, to be—

She heard a sound of a bolt being thrown, and the door to the lighthouse slammed open below.

That was surprisingly quick!Gigi edged toward the ladder and climbed down far enough to see a flashlight beam cut through the dusty air on the ground floor.

“Damn kids.”Based on that voice, Gigi inferred that the person who’d just spoken was male, fairly old, and also impressively cranky.

But who was she to be picky about rescuers?

“Me!”Gigi bellowed.“Up here!I’mdamn kids.”She took to the stairs, going down them faster than was probably wise.

“I oughtta shoot you.”

Gigi slowed to a stop as the flashlight’s beam found her, and she realized that her rescuer was indeed holding a shotgun.“Please don’t?”

The shotgun was in his left hand.It hung by his side.That was a good sign.Right?

“You’re going to break your damn neck coming down those stairs that fast.”

Gigi took her new friend’s concern for her neck bones to be a very good thing and resumed descending, slightly more slowly this time.“I’ll be fine,” she called.“My bones are bendy, and the important thing is that I’ve been kidnapped, and you’re here to rescue me.”

Gigi was used to befuddling people.To his credit, her rescuer didn’t stay befuddled for long.