A Vow of Seduction Page 10

  “Not today. Not because you fell in love. I may have been wrong about him.”

  “I owe him an apology, too. I’ll try to go by his place after work.”

  “Why don’t you consider this one of your days off and go fix your life so tomorrow we can start fresh? You’ve got new to clients to deal with.”

  Chapter 22

  Elina paced in front of Gabe’s door. Back at the office she’d worked out what to say. And it went something like, “Hi, I was an idiot. I love you. Take me back.” Except now that she was here, standing in front of his door, she didn’t know how to do this.

  She was in love. It had happened to her. The one thing she’d always said she didn’t want. But now that she wanted it more badly than she’d ever wanted anything else in her life, she had no idea how to go about getting it. Or keeping it. Had she blown it? Would he still want her after she’d run? No man was that patient.

  She turned to leave. This was a stupid idea. But then her mother’s words rang in her head. “You’re strong. You deal with things.” And that halted her in her tracks. She could be strong. She could tell him that she loved him. What was the worst thing that could happen?

  Oh, you know, he doesn’t love you back? But she needed to do this; otherwise, she’d be doing this her whole life. Just like her mother.

  She turned back around and took a deep breath. As she fought her churning gut, she forced herself to stand strong. She was doing this. It would hurt, but she was going to do this.

  Elina knocked.

  * * *

  Gabe peered through the peephole and his breath caught. Swinging the door open, he stared. She was there. She was okay. “Hi.” He managed to swallow around the emotions welling in his throat.

  She licked her lips, and his gaze focused on the tip of her pink tongue as she ran it over her lips. “Hi. Do you mind if I come in for a minute?”

  “Not at all.” Stepping aside to let her in, he took the opportunity to drink her in. Every strand of her hair, what she wore, how she moved. Everything. He knew why she was here. To end it. If he wasn’t going to get to be with her again, he wanted to remember this moment. “I was worried about you.”

  In his living room, she turned to face him. “I’m sorry about that. I hit the boiling point and I needed to get out for a while.”

  She needed to run from him for a while, was what she really meant. He’d known this was eventually coming, but he hadn’t been prepared for how much it would hurt. “Where’d you go?”

  Elina rolled her lips inward. “To see my mom in Toronto.”

  He raised his eyebrows. That was a surprise. “Oh. Wedding stuff?”

  She shook her head. “No. For once, me stuff. I needed to get my head on straight. And oddly going to Mom seemed like the right solution.”

  Gabe folded his arms. To keep from touching her. He needed to get this over with. “Elina, look—”

  “Gabe, please, I—”

  “I love you, Elina.” The words came tumbling out before he could stop them. “I have been in love with you since that day on the yacht. Since the first day, actually, at the café. I knew you were special.” He had zero control of his mouth right now. It was already out. Might as well finish it. “I know you care about me, but if you’re not willing to try, then I need to leave you alone, because it’s killing me. Every time you run, it carves a piece of my soul out. And I can’t keep doing that to myself.”

  “Gabe, if you just—”

  He interrupted her again in an effort to ward off the pain that was coming. If she didn’t say the words, it wasn’t real, right? “No, I can’t. I can’t just watch you walk away again. I can’t just pretend that this is temporary. Every time we get close you bolt. And I—”

  “I love you,” she said quietly.

  Gabe stared. “Excuse me?”

  Her lips twitched. “I love you. That’s what I’ve been trying to say, but you keep interrupting. I’m also trying to say I’m sorry for running, for not knowing that what I needed was right in front of me... I—”

  Gabe’s skin hummed with excitement and anticipation as he pulled her close, stopping her again with a kiss. “Damn, I missed you,” he whispered against her lips.

  Elina looped her arms around his neck. “I missed you, too. I can’t promise you I won’t be scared again, but I’m a fighter and I will fight for us. I finally know what I want, and it’s to be with you.”

  Gabe nuzzled her nose with his. “Good, because my only plan was to pretty much keep kissing you until you realized you loved me.”

  Elina grinned up at him, and he saw his future in her eyes. She was his. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

  * * * * *

  SEDUCED BEFORE

  SUNRISE

  Jamie Pope

  This book is for my baby brother Jonathan. Just because

  he never thought I would dedicate a book to him.

  Dear Reader,

  Costa Rica is a country that has captivated me since I saw pictures of the vacation my friend took there. Gorgeous beaches, colorful animals and lush rainforests that are so beautiful they seem unreal. Is there a better place to fall in love? I hope you enjoy reading Marcus and Willa’s story as much I enjoyed writing it.

  Jamie

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Epilogue

  Chapter 1

  This place is like Fantasy Island, Willa Arthur thought as she stepped off the tiny plane that had brought her to a remote part of the country. Well, maybe not like Fantasy Island. There were no men in white suits with big smiles to greet her, and she was pretty sure her wildest dreams weren’t about to come true. But she had nothing else to compare this experience to. She had never been to Costa Rica. She had never been anywhere really, except to central Florida to visit her grandparents in their retirement community. There she saw a lot of palm trees and in-ground pools. Billboards for places like Alligator Land and restaurants with all-you-can-eat buffets. As a child that had been infinitely cool to her. But this...

  She looked around her in awe once again as her taxi took her to the resort. She finally understood what paradise was. It washed over her, and a sense of calm she hadn’t felt before made her sink back in her seat and finally relax. The ocean was on one side of her, and the jungle was on the other. White sand met thick green lushness, and she had to resist the urge to press her nose against the window like a small child and stare at it all. There were no high-rises like in her Manhattan neighborhood. No backed-up highways or honking horns. No fast-food chains or big-box stores littering the landscape. It was just beautiful, clean and quiet. It was like nothing else she had ever experienced before, and somehow it was too much for Willa in that moment. She shut her eyes and leaned back in the seat realizing that before this trip, she hadn’t been more than a block from her apartment in the last month.

  She needed to get out more.

  More than down to the corner store to stock up on coffee and her daily supply of food. She had become a hermit as of late, or a writer on a deadline, as she liked to think of herself. She wrote mystery novels, bestsellers that were gritty and funny at the same time. Her parents hadn’t been thrilled when she told them she was going to quit her well-paying job at the university to write full-time. But she didn’t let her PhD in forensic science go to waste. Writing books helped her combine her loves of science and words. Though writing her books had also hurt her social life.

  Big-time. She lived in New York City. The city that never sleeps. The city where on any given night there were thousands of people looking to make connections, yet
she couldn’t remember the last time she had a real conversation with anybody other than her editor. That’s why she was glad this trip came along. Not just because she was happy to celebrate the wedding of one of her oldest friends, but also because she seriously needed to get out of the house. And get dressed every day. And remember how to carry on a conversation that wasn’t about books and subplots and red herrings.

  She was going to laugh, she told herself. And dance and have a good time celebrating Virginia’s marriage. Or at least she was going to try real hard to. Even in her old job she didn’t see many people. She had spent her days in a lab studying tissue samples and specimens, speaking only to the few other socially awkward biochemists.

  This exotic wedding was a treat for her, her gift to herself for turning in her fifth novel.

  “We’re here, ma’am,” her cabdriver said to her in perfect English.

  “We’re where?” She sat up and stared out the window expecting to see a large beach resort with a poolside bar and some cabanas, but all she saw was a jungle. Thick green trees with a tiny path that looked like it was cleared with just a machete.

  “At your destination, ma’am,” he said to her like she was dim.

  “But—but this can’t be it.” She fumbled in her bag for the confirmation form. “Maybe I gave you the wrong address.”

  “You did not. This is it. The Divino Rain Forest Resort. It is very popular.”

  “Oh.” She looked at the path again, and this time she saw the little wooden sign that marked the resort’s entrance.

  “It is an eco-friendly resort. The owners pride themselves on leaving as small of a footprint on the environment as possible.”

  “Oh,” she said again, and the vision of the luxurious tropical vacation she had been looking forward to evaporated. It was replaced by images of tents, sleeping on the ground, cans of bug spray and campfire cooking.

  She had barely been out of her house lately; she wasn’t sure she could rough it in the jungle for the next five days.

  Hell, she didn’t even have any appropriate clothing for this adventure. She thought about the colorful assortment of sundresses she had in her bag and wondered if any of them could be turned into pants. Then she thought about telling the cabdriver to turn around and head back to the airport.

  She could claim that bad weather in New York had delayed her flight, or that she had some kind of devastating stomach bug that could infect anyone she touched.

  “Ma’am? Are you going to go in?”

  She sighed. This was Virginia’s wedding. And Virginia was her best friend. The only one who got her, who went to the library with her instead of school dances. The girl whose house she slept over at every weekend. The only friend she could spend hours with just talking about books and other nerdy things. She couldn’t go back to New York.

  She would never forgive herself for missing her best friend’s wedding. She steeled herself. “I’m going in.”

  “You’ll have a nice time,” her driver reassured her as he got out to get her bag. She stepped out of the cab and onto the unpaved path that was the hotel’s entrance.

  To her surprise there was a little wooden house just beyond the trees. It was more like a large hut with a thatched roof, but as she got closer she could see how beautiful it was. The reddish-brown wood seemed to gleam in the sunlight that filtered through the trees. The windows were made of thick greenish glass and covered in lattice, and two tree trunks flanked the entryway. The railing on the small porch was intricately carved and looked handmade. It was clear some brilliant carpenter had made this little building look like it had been there for years, as if nature erected it.

  “Welcome to Divino!” A man in a brown uniform came out and greeted her. “You must be Ms. Arthur. We were expecting you.”

  “You were?” she asked dumbly. “I mean, yes. Thank you.”

  “Please allow us to take your bag to your room. There is another wedding guest waiting for the shuttle up to the resort. Let me show you to our Welcoming House.”

  She walked up to the room to find a very tall well-dressed man staring out the window at the side of the house. Even from behind she could tell he was attractive. Just by the way he held himself. His broad shoulders and hard-looking back seemed to take up all the space in the little waiting room. His smell did, too. Spicy and clean. Soapy. Not like some of the expensive cologne she smelled on men recently. She liked the smell, and combined with the clean Costa Rican air, the scent was slightly intoxicating. It made her want to inch a little closer and inhale deeper.

  “Ms. Arthur, would you like some water before you head up to the resort?” the bellman asked, and at the same moment the stranger turned around to face her. Only he wasn’t so strange. The air flew out of her lungs. She knew him. Well. She had thought he was beautiful inside and out when she was still a girl in high school, but he had changed in the fourteen years since she had laid eyes on him.

  All the traces of boy she once knew were gone. Marcus Simpson—Marc as she had called him—was a man now. There was no softness to his face, no innocence. Just a hard jawline, chiseled features and beautiful milk-chocolate-brown skin. His hair was gone, too, replaced by a perfect bald head that very few men could pull off. He was more than beautiful now and he was looking at her directly in her eyes, like she was the only one in the world. He was looking at her the way he used to. The way no one else ever did. It used to make her feel special.

  Now all she wanted to do was punch him in his handsome face.

  Marc Simpson was the guy who’d obliterated her heart.

  “Ma’am? Would you like some water?”

  “Oh.” The bellman’s voice startled her. She was tempted to take the cup, to dump it over her head just to cool her overheated skin. Her face was burning, her chest, her heart. Her reaction to him was strong and unexpected. His presence there was unexpected. She hadn’t seen him since the spring before she went off to college. She vowed never to be in the same room again, vowed never to be around anyone who made her feel small and unworthy. And yet there he was, staring at her with curious intensity. She couldn’t take it. “No—no, thank you.”

  “If you don’t want to wait for the shuttle you could walk up to the resort desk.” The bellman’s eyes narrowed as if he sensed her distress. “It’s only about a ten-minute walk. Our shuttle is electric and as eco-friendly as possible, but we encourage our guests to walk the grounds and be one with nature as much as possible.”

  “That’s a great idea.” She turned for the door. “I’ll walk.” She needed to be out of that room, away from Marc and that suffocating feeling he brought along with him. She had been so in love with him that she didn’t know which way was up. Seeing him now brought back memories. Brought her back to the moment when he humiliated her, to the moment when all of her confidence evaporated with a few cruel words from his lips.

  “I’ll walk, too,” she heard him say as she left the room.

  “Damn it,” she grumbled, and sped up, trying to put as much distance between them as possible. She couldn’t even think, knowing he was around. What was he doing here? It couldn’t just be a coincidence. He just wouldn’t happen to be at the same resort as her in a secluded part of the Costa Rican jungle. But then she remembered what the bellman said. There was another wedding guest waiting. That wedding guest was her high school sweetheart.

  “Hey!” She heard his heavy footsteps behind her. “Wait up.”

  She ignored him, trying to walk faster even though she knew it was useless. Her short legs were no match for his long powerful ones.

  “Damn, you move fast for a little thing.” He came up beside her, grinning as if they were old friends just strolling together. His voice had changed, she noticed. That slight Southern accent he had when he moved to her neighborhood had all but disappeared. She was glad. She used to think his voice was sweet. He didn
’t deserve to have a voice like that anymore. There was nothing sweet about him. “The bellman said that this walk is supposed to take ten minutes, but with the way you’re moving we’ll be there in five.”

  She said nothing, just looked at him. He wasn’t dressed for a trek through the jungle either, in his designer jeans, shirt and blazer. She desperately wished a large bird or monkey or whatever wild animals lived in these parts would drop a present on his pretty clothes.

  “You’re Willow, right?” he asked and the anger she was feeling turned right into a full-blown rage. He didn’t remember her name? He had kissed her lips and whispered her name hundreds of times. He had made love to her. He had told he was in love with her.

  And he didn’t remember her name?

  Maybe it wasn’t rage she was feeling, it was stupidity. She felt stupid for pinning so many hopes on a guy who clearly thought very little of her.

  She opened her mouth to let him have it, but he just went on talking, robbing her of the chance. “When I first pulled up here I was sure I had the wrong place. I had visions of those horror movies where they lure unsuspecting people to resorts, to perform weird experiments on them. For a while I was seriously worried about the state of my organs. Especially since I can’t get my phone to work out here. That’s why I was so glad to see you. It seems more legit now. And if it’s not legit, at least I’ll go missing with somebody I know from high school.”

  Somebody he knew from high school! Now she was just somebody he knew?

  She stopped short, unable to take his stupid chatter any longer. “Shut up, Marc! Shut up! Shut up, shut up! I don’t want to walk with you. I don’t want to hear you ramble. I don’t even want to lay eyes on you. Stay away from me!”

  She walked ahead, leaving him standing there in silence.

  “Why?” she heard from behind her. There was surprise in his deep voice.

  “Why? Why?” She turned around, stopping in front of him. “Should I list the reasons? Number one, you don’t even remember my name. Number two, you’re an asshole. Number three—”