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Nina’s eyes narrowed. “Would he believe that you’re
still pining for him? After you ran all the way to Brazil to get away from him?
That you’d go all the way back to find him again?”

“No,” I said, agreeing with her doubt and chewing my
lip. “But he would believe I was hurt and angry.” And what did that say about
me? That it was completely believable that I wouldn’t walk two feet for love
but would fly thousands of miles to have it out with a man who had betrayed me.
I’d spent my life like that, a little bundle of suspicions just awaiting
confirmation, never considering myself an angry person when that was the very
core of who I was. Awash in embarrassment, I admitted, “He’d believe I was
there to confront him about something he’d done.”

“You have something in mind? Something…” Nina
hesitated.

“Yes, something besides that mess in the gossip
blogs.”

Jessica.

After ushering Nina out a rear exit used by clients
who didn’t want to be seen walking back through the waiting room, I powered
down everything in my office and paused in the doorway to gaze aimlessly at my
imposing desk, the book-lined shelves, those coveted corner windows. My stomach
bobbed inside me just a little at the thought that this might not be my office
a few days from now. At the thought that I was my mother’s daughter, throwing
out logic and prudence and maybe my whole future for the love of a man I
couldn’t even really call mine.

Damn it all if I couldn’t almost hear her voice in
my throbbing head. “Never worry about how things
should
work. Go with your heart. It’s a force of nature, too.”

I marched back cross the room to pull my framed law
degree down from the wall, to stuff it into my briefcase between the client
files on Adrian, just in case.

At Linda’s desk, the razor-thin, razor-sharp matron
wasn’t having any of my weak excuses that I was taking a few days away from the
office, nor my half-mumbled assertion that the seniors needed me in Brazil.
The dark-haired admin secretary, surprisingly fast in stilettos and
a close-fitting pencil skirt, followed at my heels as I hurried toward the
elevator before I lost my nerve.

“You stop right now, Chloe,” she begged, “whatever
you’re doing.” She wedged her narrow body between the elevator doors and held
them back with remarkably strong arms. “I don’t know what’s been going on with
you since you and Penn broke up, but you can’t keep disappearing from the
office like this. You were gone for
a
month
, and you still don’t have your mind back on your work. Chloe…” Linda
wouldn’t relent, even as I frantically punched at the lobby button. “Chloe,
look at me. You’re going to get yourself fired—or worse.”

I knew she saw the tears in my eyes, her own
softening with concern, as I gasped, “I know, Linda, I do. I just…have to.”
Adrian needed me. Or maybe I needed him, needed to know he and Manuela and Luiz
and Gabriel were going to be okay. Then, then I’d pay for the choices I was
making, once everyone on Ilha de Flor and the island itself were safe. Why
their welfare meant so much to me, I couldn’t have said. It was just…just a
need so deep and so painfully sharp that I’d have done anything to satisfy it.

The hours until my midnight flight out of the city
could have weighed on me and ground down my resolve, so I filled them by
packing too much too early and psyching myself up with too much caffeine. With
one layover, I travelled nineteen hours. In business class, in the layover
terminal, even in the standard white Brazilian taxi as it sped through Natal
toward my hotel, I studied the case files and everything I could find on
Brazilian law.

The legal system in Brazil was notoriously slow, with
many cases taking decades to wind their way through the labyrinthine
combination of federal, state, and special courts. The fact that Adrian had
been indicted in only a month spoke of the weight of political power being
brought to bear behind the scenes, no doubt thanks to both the Ellison family
and Daniel Vaz at IBAMA, the Brazilian environmental police.

Foolish of me, I saw now, to think I could have
cowed the corrupt investigator after he had tried to solicit a bribe from
Adrian and force himself on me. While the revelation that I was an attorney
from an influential firm on the East Coast had prevented Vaz from openly
seeking charges against Adrian for attacking him in my defense, it had
obviously only driven the man underground in his mission to punish Knight for
refusing to pay and play.

I fought down the rising bile of guilt by reminding
myself I was probably sacrificing the career I’d worked toward most of my life
in my bid to aid Adrian. That should have made up for the trouble I’d caused by
failing to heed his warning to stay away from Vaz. But it didn’t, not really.
Nothing made it
better,
the horror of watching the
haven Adrian had built on Ilha de Flor being assailed now from all sides.

At my hotel, I found a mint, a Brazilian orchid, and
a complimentary copy of The Wall Street Journal on the pillow. Adrian
Knight—aka Adrian Alexander, of the London
Alexanders
—was
front page news. The indictments were nothing if not thorough, covering fraud
and bribery in everything from his immigration status to the purchase of Ilha
de Flor to the development of the resort and the demonstration projects that
were part of Adrian’s dream for an
eco park
project
on the bulk of the island’s twenty thousand acres. At least, I thought, the
story was
under the fold
. I’d take my
encouragement where I could.

I slapped the newspaper down on the glossy side
table and couldn’t help wondering where Adrian was just then.
Seven at night.
Was he back on the island or staying in
Natal for convenience? I imagined him wandering the villa, maybe sitting at his
piano playing the heartrending adagio he had the night Penn had shown up on
Ilha de Flor and I’d lied about working for Adrian because I didn’t want my ex
to know I was…
with
Knight.
That I was Adrian’s submissive.
That I was doing all those
things that, with Penn, had made me feel uncertain and scared and dirty.
Denying Adrian felt worse.

The thought of Adrian all by himself at the villa,
or worse yet, at a hotel without Manuela there to make sure he was eating…led
to the question of where Penn could be staying. At the front desk, I asked the
clerk bluntly which of the hotels in Natal was the most overpriced, overhyped,
ostentatious statement destination she could think of. I knew I’d find Penn
there.

The clerk’s advice didn’t disappoint, as twenty
minutes later I walked into a lobby so thick with the cloyingly sweet scent of
orchids that I would have bet money it was a fake fragrance being pumped
through the vents. “Ilha de Flor doesn’t smell like this,” I grumbled to myself
as I crossed the expansive pink sink-down rugs, past the pale gold leather
lounge furniture, to the imposing check-in desk accented with polished brass
plates along the front.

The desk clerk wouldn’t tell me what suite Penn was
in, of course, or even confirm he was a guest.
Standard
operating procedure.
“I’m going to your restaurant bar for a glass of
wine,” I told the thin, sour-faced man in his plain black suit. “Please let Mr.
Ellison
know
Chloe Bloom is here to see him—and he
will
want to know. If I don’t hear from
you in the next half hour, I’ll be out of your hair. That should be simple
enough.”

I hadn’t finished even half the glass when Mr. Plain
Black Suit came to collect me from the bar and escorted me to an elevator
tucked around a corner from the main set of lifts. He leaned into the car and
ran the small white card hanging from his neck through a reader at the bottom
of the brass plate over the floor buttons. Then he pressed the backlit button
for the penthouse and sent me on my way with, “Have a good evening, miss.”

Unlikely, I thought.

As the penthouse by its very nature took up the
whole of the top floor, I was unsurprised when the elevator opened into a small
foyer with anachronistic eighteenth century French furniture and a gilt door
standing slightly ajar. Smoothing down wrinkles in the burgundy red skirt and
white cashmere sweater I was wearing, I approached the entryway with caution
and a distant realization that I was dressed far too warmly for this season in
Brazil. It hadn’t even occurred to me to change in my hotel room.

Liquid splashing lightly along the inside of a glass
warned me that someone—Penn—was just inside, but I pushed the door open without
allowing myself a moment to gather a breath or entertain doubts. I was really
doing this, walking into Penn Ellison’s suite to spy on him. It seemed like a
surreal dream, the only kind I had lately.

So casually, the golden boy of the Ellison family
cast me a sidelong glance and an impish grin from his position behind the small
bar in the over-the-top black and gold baroque living room. Penn held out a
glass of dark wine. “Shut the door, sweetheart. I’m sure you’re going to want
privacy for this.”

I did—slammed it with a flick from the toe of my
shoe. My steps pounded dull and quick as I crossed the room to collect the
proffered glass and emptied a third of it in one swallow. Penn’s luminous,
always mischievous blue eyes never lost their focus on mine.

“And what do you think
this
is?” I asked in a guarded voice, moderating the bitterness I
allowed to seep into my tone.

Unruffled by my manner, Penn sipped from his own
wineglass and came around the bar to stand in front of me. His tailored white
dress shirt and black slacks had that subtle sheen to them that suggested they
were from some ultra-exclusive shop tucked away on a side lane in Paris or
Milan that had no sign over the door and required an appointment even of
royalty. He stood too close and was being far too patient with me to suspect my
true motivation for coming to see him. Bless that Ellison arrogance, this once.

“
This
is
you having a go at me, getting it all out, before we settle down and really
talk the way we should have weeks ago.”

Patronizing, Mr. Ellison,
predictably patronizing.
Let Chloe get emotional and throw
her little fit. Then Penn would pat her on the head and kiss her on the cheek
and pull her into his arms, and she’d forgive him anything and everything. He
didn’t know me half as well as he thought he did. Hell, I didn’t know me
anymore.

And my favorite wine was
Barbera
,
not Cabernet Sauvignon. But I still finished the glass before putting it back
down on the granite-topped bar with explicit care.

“Adrian’s girlfriend,” I began, “the one you went
after in college…”

Penn actually looked away and sighed and bowed his
head a bit at this. Then he turned those blue eyes back up at me from under his
thick black lashes. The ever-present suggestion of an amused smirk and those
trademark dimples faded. “I know, Chloe. Infidelity is a sore point with you,
and I understand why, but I already owned up to that. And I already explained
numerous times that what happened with those girls in February at that party
didn’t mean to me what it did to you. Are we even going to try to understand
each other?
Because that means you trying to see things from
my point of view, as well.”

He put his wineglass down and stepped closer, and I
focused on the strong line of his throat where the warm, smooth skin
disappeared beneath the crisp white material of his shirt. I didn’t think I
could stand this close and look him in the eye without revealing my true
motives for being here. He’d see it in my face, in a tremble of my lips, the
erratic play of my pulse at my throat. When one of his hands came up to sweep
my hair back over my shoulder and his fingertips grazed my neck, I shivered
with both nausea and a flicker of involuntary desire—at the sensory memory of
Adrian’s hand doing the same—before I shirked off his touch and jerked away.

“You forgot to mention you were almost a father.”

For a moment, Penn didn’t move at all, his hand
still suspended in midair,
in media
caress
. “What?” he
mumbled,
his voice slow and
thick like I’d landed a stunning blow. It sounded less like a question than the
rush of breath from an impact, and I tried not to jump too quickly. This had to
play out just right.

“You got her pregnant—Jessica—and then paid for her abortion.”

“Who told you that?” Penn asked. I wasn’t expecting
him to grab my arm, hard enough to bruise, and drag me back toward him.

“I spoke to Adrian Knight two days ago.” I neglected
to mention I’d been in his bed at the time, wrapped in his arms.

“Adrian
Alexander
,”
Penn corrected me with exaggerated enunciation.

“That’s what you want to argue about? Which last
name he uses? You’re not going to deny getting her pregnant? Was it even an
accident, or did you want Adrian to know about the abortion, too?”

“Of course it was an accident. You think I’d just
get some—?” Penn stopped himself and breathed out hard through his nose. My arm
was throbbing now with dull pain from the force of his grip.

“Just get some middle class little nobody pregnant
with an Ellison grandchild?” I finished for him and watched the realization
color his cheeks. It was flawless. Let him think it was my sensitivity over the
difference in our backgrounds fueling my emotional display. It wasn’t a
complete ruse. There was a distance there in experience and values that I’d
never been able to bridge with Penn, one that I’d specifically tried to avoid
addressing with Adrian.