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“There it is, isn’t it, Chloe?” Penn’s free hand
shot up to tangle in my hair, his thumb roughly stroking my cheek as I wriggled
weakly in protest. “You always believed I thought you weren’t really good
enough, and nothing I said could convince you.” Especially when everything he
did with other women kept slapping me in the face. “But I was going to propose,
Chloe. We had that getaway planned for Paris in May, and it was going to be the
perfect setting.”

And the gleam in his eyes, the damp sheen of emotion
far beyond the usual comfort zone of the charming playboy, took my breath away.
I actually stopped struggling against his hold, as I realized by slow degrees
that…that Penn Ellison really thought he loved me. Maybe he did, as far as love
went with Penn. The possibility that the puppy dog eyes and the confusion over
why I was so upset when that last round of damning photos hit the gossip
circuit… The suggestion that Penn’s reaction had been sincere rather than more
of his standard tactical charm… I could have wept again, but this time for him
rather than over him. Because no matter how much I meant to him, he couldn’t
love me enough not to cheat on me, not to use me as an inside source to throw
his business partner to the sharks, not to sacrifice my happiness on Ilha de
Flor if it meant taking another jab at Adrian.

Which brought me back to the matter
at hand and braced me for what I knew I had to do.
 
I let myself cry, and it was harder than it
might have sounded. Vulnerability in front of Penn had always ended in shame
for me, as he made me feel small and used, childish and inconsequential. His
treasured object but an object, nonetheless. That wasn’t the fuel for my little
emotional display, though. No, that was exhaustion and missing Adrian so badly
it was making me sick.

“Don’t,” Penn muttered as his hold on me shifted to
enclose me in his arms and hug me close. “Don’t, Chloe. We don’t have to do
this. We don’t have to argue about this and agonize over this and go into it
over and over again. Put it behind us. A fresh start…
Paris
in May.
We can still go, Chloe.” And his satiny lips brushed one temple
before trailing down the curve of my tear-streaked cheek toward my mouth.

It was all so clear then how big a failure it was,
my effort to separate lust from love, my heart from my sex and my mind
from…from everything. As Penn Ellison held me and I clung to those sculpted
shoulders and smelled the deep spice of his expensive oriental cologne… As I
felt the pronounced contours of his warm body fitted against mine and the ridge
of his stiffening cock laid hard against my stomach…
As I
gazed up at his full lips and model-perfect cheekbones and too blue eyes…
I didn’t desire him at all. Everything in me longed for silvery brown eyes and
stubble-roughened cheeks and that faint British accent that turned so formal an
address as
Miss Bloom
into the most
intimate of private endearments. Everything inside me demanded Adrian Knight.

Before Penn could kiss me, I wrenched myself away
from him and made a show of smearing the makeup-darkened tears from my cheeks.
“I can’t, Penn. Wait. Please just give me a minute to collect myself.” And I
hurried as best I could in high heels out of the room, through the bedroom door
to the master suite bathroom.

I spent less than a minute washing the streaked
mascara from my face and left my shoes on the tile in front of the sink to pad
quietly back into the bedroom to the small writing desk where Penn’s laptop sat
open and unguarded. He trusted me. That was the weird, nagging, guilty thought
whirling around in the back of my head as I sat down at the desk and used the
laptop touchpad to open Penn’s email. I had thought I’d feel less conflicted
about spying on him, justified by all of my suspicions that he’d done as much
to me, that he had compromised the trust of our relationship just to screw over
Karl Richter,
that
he was driving the effort to
utterly ruin Adrian. But I still felt dirty.

Until I found the email from Daniel Vaz, that was. I
scanned it haltingly, disbelieving, then read it again and finally a third
time. The movement against Adrian and his plans for Ilha de Flor was not just a
coincidental convergence of disparate opposing forces. It wasn’t karma catching
up to a ruthless billionaire for so many years of unscrupulous business deals
as much as it was a goddamn high school rivalry taken to ridiculous extremes.
As much as it was business as usual for Penn Ellison, a man I had misjudged
beyond my worst suspicions. From what I could tell from the Vaz email and the
others I skimmed as quickly as possible, Penn had been setting up the owner of
the island for bribery charges even before he’d discovered he was dealing with
Adrian. Was it a safeguard in case the owner hadn’t wanted to sell? Leverage
for blackmail? Or had he always intended to ruin his opponent and pick the
island up for a song after it had been confiscated by the Brazilian government?

A moment of anger swept my cheeks like a flash
fire...but only a moment. I had used up nearly all of the emotion I had for
Penn, even the outrage. It was sputtering out now, embers with nothing to
catch. What little energy I had left after walking out on my career and rushing
across continents…that was all for Adrian and Ilha de Flor. God willing, there
was enough of it left to see me through the next few days.

I had to remind myself I was there looking for very
specific information. The name Buchanan never came up. That would’ve been too
easy, of course. But I did find three vaguely worded messages from an Army
Corps of Engineers officer by the name of Greeley. It would have to do.

After I’d closed down the email and retrieved my
shoes from the bathroom, I emerged from the master suite to find Penn leaning
against the back of the long black sofa with his arms folded and a disturbingly
pensive look to his face. Introspection wasn’t his forte, so the thoughtful
gaze that followed me back into the room also stirred my apprehension that he
knew what I’d been doing.

He held one hand out to me. “Come here.”

God, he really didn’t know—no one knew—how much I
was in love with Adrian. I didn’t want to take Penn’s hand. I didn’t want his
comfort. I didn’t want to feel sorry for falling out of love with him…but I
did. That was all I felt anymore: bad about Penn, bad about my parents, bad
about Adrian, bad about my career. I hadn’t felt good since that night on the
resort balcony with my fingers interlaced with Adrian’s and my every sense
awash in the terrifying and invigorating realization that I was falling in love
with the British expat billionaire.

Oddly, it made me feel a little bit better about
throwing my future away to come here, for Adrian’s sake and for mine. I
couldn’t have gone on like this much longer anyway.

Maintaining a safe distance from Penn, I blew out a
hard breath that stirred loose strands of my wavy hair, and I regarded him
somberly. It was hard to look him square in the face. I couldn’t quite manage.

“I know you love me, despite everything that
happened,” I told him. The declaration was a surprise even to me, and the
subtle relief that softened the lines of Penn’s face churned up fresh guilt in
the pit of my stomach. Sometimes it was like he was two people. One couldn’t
help being a self-absorbed playboy, and the other couldn’t get enough of it. I
couldn’t be with either of them.

“So?” he coaxed.
“Paris in May?
Or at least Natal tonight?”
He wielded that soft, low
voice that used to vibrate along every nerve of my body.

Shaking my head, I sniffled and swallowed hard.
“I’ve learned a lot about us both in the last couple of months, and I don’t
think I know either of us well enough to make any promises right now.”

Ellison came up from his leaning pose, closed the distance
between us,
took
a firm hold of my arm again. “Stop
overthinking this, Chloe.” His lips were at my cheek. “We’re good together.”
Then at the crook of my neck.
“I could remind you just how
good.”
His hands on my hips gathering my skirt upward.
“My dirty girl.”

“No, Penn.” I heard a thread snap as he grew more
insistent, starting to jerk my panties down the curve of my ass. “I said no,” I
repeated louder, with enough force to finally get his attention.

Those blue eyes… So confused… In all his life, there
was nothing Penn Ellison couldn’t have. I knew this made no sense to him, and
again I felt a twinge of pity. This Penn, the one who imagined us walking arm
in arm along the Seine, could still play on my compassion even as the one who
was trying to destroy Adrian had nothing but my disdain. I was almost sorry I
couldn’t stop one without hurting the other.

Still taken aback, unused to me barking the orders,
Penn didn’t force the issue as I withdrew from him and tugged my clothing back
into place. “Chloe, what…?”

“I had a long trip getting to Natal, and…I’ve been
so angry with you. It was foolish to come here tonight, when I’m this tired.
Right now I just need some sleep.”
And food.
Christ,
I’d missed so many meals since meeting Adrian Knight, and all while surrounded
by some of the most delicious food in the world. “I’ll try to call you in the
morning, first thing.”

Which was a lie, because my first call in the
morning was to Karl Richter to pass on what I knew about Vaz and Greeley,
whispering to the businessman on my cell phone as I strode up the courthouse
steps and wove my way cautiously around the massive white columns of the
building façade to avoid the crowd of media. The reporters snapped photos,
shoved microphones forward, and barked questions to two of the Ferris &
Hale seniors as the attorneys addressed the charges against Adrian at the start
of the second day of discussions with federal prosecutors.

Behind the partners, in the shade,
stood my mentor at the firm, Frank Ullman.
Despite being
in his late fifties, Frank was still built like a football player, thick in the
waist but broad in the shoulders, and his black hair hadn’t grayed so much as
hardened to a steely shade to match his eyes. I caught him about to turn his
head just in time to duck out of his line of sight. The whole complex was a
minefield of people I needed to avoid for as long as possible, and in the midst
of it somewhere was the one person I had to find. Adrian Knight.

***

I knew they were really gunning for me when they
brought in attorneys from the
Ministerio
Publico
. Big political corruption cases, the ones where
they wanted to make examples of everyone involved—that was their specialty.
Which explained why my court of first instance was federal.
Everything hinged on the bribery charges. I’d have felt better if I hadn’t
known the ministry had been behind a recent ten-year prison sentence for a
former presidential aide. Gone, apparently, were the days when only the
destitute and the dark-skinned went to prison in Brazil. Poor little
billionaire, I chided myself.
Poor little Adrian.
I
was getting morose lately, but not without reason.

The conference room was long and narrow and stark,
and it was already stuffy despite the early hour. What the hell, what did I
have to lose? I stripped off my tan suit jacket, loosened my silk tie, folded
back the light blue sleeves of my shirt, and popped open the first button on my
vest. Business in Brazil could be quite formal, but this wasn’t really business
so much as a witch
hunt,
and I could see no reason why
I shouldn’t be comfortable while they dickered over my demise. The prosecutors,
buttoned up and glaring quietly, huddled over coffee at one end of the room
while my lead counsel and the boys from Ferris & Hale clustered around me
at the opposite end. The more relaxed I looked, the deeper the glower from
Holanda, the senior prosecutor. That alone justified my effort.

“We are ready to begin, gentlemen?” Holanda asked as
he approached the table. “We hadn’t quite finished going over the charges
against Mr. Knight when we concluded yesterday.” If his black hair had been
clipped any shorter, he’d have been shaved bald, and if his tie had been any
tighter, he’d have been less tan than blue. The fact that I had at least five
years on him told me he was the office hotshot and he was counting on me to
make his name. That was a lot of pressure, and I was going to make the most of
it, make him earn his fame.

With a chorus of clicks from briefcase latches and
the rustle of copious amounts of paperwork, the room full of attorneys settled
around the table like birds of prey sizing up my carcass. Bribery, fraud,
residency violations, falsifying environmental documents… The charges spanned
more than three years and ten times as many pages. Despite hours of discussion
the day before, it was midmorning before counsel had finished bickering over
the precise wording of the indictments, let alone the proposed penalties and
deals.

Now the prosecutor finally sat back in his hard
wooden chair, same as the ones the rest of us suffered, and let a
self-satisfied grin break over his boyish face. He reined it in slowly, after
he’d been sure to let me see it. “As I’m certain you can see, gentlemen, the charges
against Mr. Knight are substantial, as are the penalties for his crimes. This
office is not particularly inclined to entertain petitions for leniency in this
case, but it would expedite the matter if your client admitted to these charges
and revealed the full extent of the involvement of any other of the principals.
We would take his cooperation into consideration during sentencing.”