One Wild Night with Her Enemy Read online

  Their one wild night had been brought about by pheromones and insanity—on her part, at least—and she hadn’t stopped to think about how it would all play out because she hadn’t really cared at the time. Luke Broussard had unleashed feelings she had never known she was even capable of, and she’d ridden that adrenaline rush to its inevitable car crash conclusion.

  She could see that clearly now. She should never have taken the risks she had with a man she barely knew. A man who clearly had serious trust issues she knew nothing about. But she had at least hoped she might be able to mitigate the worst of the fallout from this disaster when she got back to San Francisco.

  She had come up with a course of action while raiding Mrs Mendoza’s living quarters a second time. She would simply tell Temple the truth—or as much of the truth as was required. That she had lost her objectivity with Luke Broussard, but that she knew he wasn’t interested in attracting investors.

  Temple had in no way been committed to investing in Broussard Tech...this had simply been a fact-finding mission. She still had time to come up with other investment opportunities in the Bay Area, using the contacts he’d given her.

  She had planned to use the flight back to the city to soothe Luke Broussard’s temper and get him to call off his plans to sue. She knew how to handle difficult billionaires after three years working for Temple—although she had to admit Temple was considerably less volatile than Luke. But she’d never been drawn to her boss the way she’d so stupidly been drawn to this man. Surely she could use that, somehow, to make Luke see he was being unreasonable? That following through on his knee-jerk reaction after seeing Ash’s inflammatory text would be expensive and unnecessary if Temple dropped any interest in his company?

  But all her plans would come to nothing if she was stuck on Sunrise Island for any length of time, without being able to contact her boss or do the job he’d sent her to San Francisco to do.

  Not only that, she didn’t think she could hold herself together if she had to spend any more time alone with Luke Broussard.

  A surge of distress at the prospect made her heartbeat ricochet into her throat.

  ‘Yeah, I have a speedboat,’ he said, grinding out the answer as if she had no right to even ask. ‘But the power’s out by the boathouse, which means I’m gonna have to hand-crank the doors to get it out, and I don’t like the look of the weather.’

  He thrust his fingers through his hair, then glanced up at the sky just as a dark cloud crossed over the sun.

  ‘It’s an hour’s ride to the mainland from here,’ he added. ‘And I’m not risking the journey just to please you when another storm could drop any minute.’

  ‘Right...’ she said, feeling her own jaw tightening. Really? Did he have to be quite so much of a pill? Hadn’t he given her enough grief already? ‘So are you saying we might be stuck here for another hour or two?’

  His flat gaze met hers. ‘We’re stuck here until I say it’s safe to leave.’ Each word was drawn out to make it abundantly clear he was the one in charge. ‘Which could be days, not hours.’

  ‘You can’t be serious...’ she murmured, shock reverberating through her body.

  Days? Dear God.

  ‘Don’t get your panties in a twist. This is a hell of a lot worse for me than it is for you,’ he said, disgust dripping from every word.

  ‘How can it be worse for you?’ she began. ‘You’re not the one who has been accused of—’

  ‘Stop bugging me and go back to the house and wait,’ he said, slicing her distressed defence right down to the bone, the way he had done earlier. Without giving her a chance to explain.

  Bugging him? How dare he?

  Her temper sparked and sizzled as she opened her mouth to snap back at him. But when his eyes flared, the challenge in them unmistakable, she swallowed down the retort.

  He wanted her to argue with him. So he could feel superior and vindicated and display more of his temper. She refused to give him the satisfaction.

  As a child she’d always backed down in the face of her father’s disdain, and it had left her feeling hollow and inadequate. But now, as she forced herself to nod and swung round to make her way back to the house, she didn’t feel cowed—she felt righteous. Confronting him about his snotty attitude was not going to help her cause.

  Unfortunately, though, the moment of righteousness didn’t last long as the truth of their situation began to sink in as she climbed the stairs from the dock. Panic and anxiety turned into a brick in the pit of her stomach as she reached the porch and stared out across her island prison.

  The view across the inlet had distress churning under her breastbone.

  Last night’s storm was visible in the bent and broken branches of the lush evergreens which grew from the rocky crags that formed the cove. A rainbow shimmered over the headland as the bright morning sun hit the mist clinging to the shoreline.

  Her throat thickened. The staggering beauty of Luke Broussard’s home drew forth memories from the night before which had been haunting her ever since she woke up.

  Luke’s hands on her, his lips, his mouth, touching, tracing, tempting, tormenting... Helping her to discover pleasures she’d never even known her body was capable of.

  But it wasn’t just the sex that had seduced her, she thought miserably. It was the way he’d held her afterwards, stroking her hair, murmuring nonsense into the darkness...

  Nonsense he probably said to every woman he slept with.

  She blinked and blocked out the staggering beauty of the landscape, attempting to block out the memories still torturing her, too—memories that were all false. She’d imbued last night with a significance it had never had. It had been about sex and only sex. Nothing more than a cataclysmic physical connection which had blindsided her because she had no experience whatsoever of physical intimacy.

  She’d been much more vulnerable than she’d realised last night—which had to explain all the foolish, reckless, wrong decisions she’d made. Decisions which, ultimately, she had to own.

  Yes, Luke was behaving like a domineering, bad-tempered jerk, but she needed to suck up her disdain and make the best of it. And hope like hell he could find a way off the island quickly... Because spending another night here with him was not something she wanted to contemplate, let alone actually negotiate.

  At least with him busy she would have a little respite from that judgemental glare—and super-snotty attitude.

  Her stomach grumbled as she dumped her borrowed backpack in the entrance hall. She pressed her hand to it. Her rising irritation was not sitting very well with her hunger and her anxiety. First things first: she needed to eat.

  Opening the fridge, she spotted the pancake batter he’d made earlier but never had the chance to use. She blinked away the sting in her eyes, stupidly reminded of his offer to make her breakfast—before he’d spotted Ashling’s text and turned into Cro-Magnon man.

  Ignoring the sealed container, she reached for some cold cuts. She’d never been very good in the domestic sphere. She’d never had to learn more than the absolute basics when it came to home catering—cereal and takeaway—so making pancakes was out. Which was a good thing. Because having a congenial breakfast with the man was also not going to happen now.

  She poured herself a cup of the lukewarm coffee dregs sitting at the bottom of the state-of-the-art coffee maker on the counter. Terrific. She was probably going to need an engineering degree from NASA to figure out how to use that, too.

  After hunting down some sliced rye bread, she began slapping pieces down on the countertop with a lot more force than was strictly necessary, while indulging in a stress-busting fantasy of slapping the bread against Luke Broussard’s granite-hard skull.

  But then an idea occurred to her. And she seized on it for no other reason than it allowed her to feel a little more in control... A little more herself again after twenty
-four hours of losing herself and becoming someone she didn’t even recognise—that crazy lady who had decided to take a motorbike ride and then a plane journey with a guy who fired her senses but had the manners of a Neanderthal.

  The only way to take back control of this disaster was to be the bigger, better person. She was not going to rise to Luke Broussard’s outrageous accusations, or lower herself to the level of having a temper tantrum over something that could not be changed.

  And, to prove it, she would have a magnificent sandwich waiting for him when he came in. Because they would both need to eat before they could take a boat to the mainland...and never see each other again.

  The charm offensive she’d planned for the plane journey was not a good idea until they actually got on their way, because it was going to be a titanic effort to maintain it while he was being so difficult. And, knowing him, he’d probably misconstrue her motives and think she was using her nefarious seduction skills to prise precious information about his company out of him.

  The jerk.

  She scoffed loudly, knowing that no one could hear her. For goodness’ sake—if he only knew how ridiculous that scenario was. How the heck could she be Mata Hari when she had so little experience of sex and no experience of seduction whatsoever? But she’d be damned if she’d defend herself against those ludicrous accusations.

  And the truth was, on careful consideration, she would much rather he cast her in the role of scheming femme fatale than simpering virgin. How much more compromised would she feel right now if he knew she had chosen him to be her first lover? Or how much those moments had meant to her?

  The guy already had an ego the size of Oregon.

  She slapped slices of baloney and cheese onto the bread, then slathered the sandwiches in mayonnaise and mustard, even more determined to take the moral high ground and extend this olive branch to him—thus treating his snotty attitude with the contempt it deserved...even if it killed her.

  Swallowing her temper now, in a way he had been unable to swallow his, wouldn’t just make her the better person, it would show him he hadn’t rattled her or upset her—far from it... Unlike her father, he didn’t have the power to hurt her. All he had the power to do was infuriate her. And if she didn’t show him how infuriated she was, he wouldn’t even have the satisfaction of doing that.

  Ultimately, by rising above his sulky behaviour she could take a huge chunk out of his superiority complex. And on a professional level her strategy was a win-win, too. Because saving her job mattered. Stopping him from suing her or Temple Corp mattered. What had happened last night and what he thought of her did not.

  She finished making his sandwich, then left it with a curt note on the countertop before taking her own sandwich to eat in one of the guest bedrooms.

  She would learn from this experience, and next time she got offered a ride on a seaplane to a private island for one wild night of pleasure, by a volatile, super-hot, brooding billionaire with a chip on his shoulder the size of a redwood, she would run full-tilt in the opposite direction.

  Her stomach continued to churn, though, as she forced herself to consume every bite—while the brick in her belly resolutely refused to go away.

  Please, please, don’t let me be stuck here for another night.

  CHAPTER SIX

  LUKE TRUDGED UP the stairs carved into the rock wall that led from the dock as sunset burst over the horizon. He barely spared a glance for the spectacular light show of reds and oranges bleeding into the cerulean blue of the sky, so dog-tired he was ready to face-plant on every agonising step.

  And more frustrated than he had ever been in his life.

  No way was he getting his overnight guest off the island any time soon.

  He’d managed to crank open the doors to the boathouse, only to discover the boat’s hull had been damaged in last night’s storm too. Not only that, but when his cell service had come back for a half-hour he’d checked the local shipping forecast and seen a number of weather warnings that made any attempt to make it to the mainland in the next couple of days—even if he fixed the boat—not a good idea.

  Exhaustion dragged at his heels and made his shoulders sag.

  Jezebel was a write-off too, until he could get a plane mechanic out here—and that wasn’t happening for the next few days either, because of the weather forecast.

  After confronting that reality he’d kayaked to Pirates’ Cove on the opposite end of the island and taken his daily swim, trying to calm himself down enough to function again. Even in summer the water had been satisfyingly freezing. Then, to keep his mind off the woman now camped out in his house—and his head—he’d spent the rest of the day circumnavigating the island’s ten miles of shoreline to check for any more damage.

  His home was the only major structure on Sunrise, and it had survived unscathed, and he’d repaired some broken shingles on the boathouse roof before heading home to give himself time to think.

  As much as he wanted Cassandra gone, the fact that he couldn’t get her off the island in the next few days meant he had a couple of options. He could take time out from his hard-earned vacation time to repair the boat’s hull himself...or he could do what he’d originally intended to do before he’d met Cassandra James—spend the week getting some much-needed downtime on his private island, and she would just have to stay the hell out of his way.

  His eyes stung as he brushed sea-matted hair off his forehead, and heat pulsed beneath his wetsuit on cue. He drew in a harsh breath and shoved open the door to the mud room. Damn it. Even though he was exhausted, she still had the power to make him ache.

  A vision of her as she had looked ten hours ago in his kitchen—wearing his oversized T-shirt, her hair tied on top of her head in a haphazard knot—blasted back into his brain and he tensed.

  She hadn’t even tried to defend herself. Hadn’t even had the decency to admit what she’d done and apologise. If anything, she’d doubled down on her scheme—which was exactly why he wasn’t going to let her screw over his vacation. She’d already screwed him over enough.

  He could control his desire if he put his mind to it.

  He needed this break before the product launch.

  He and his team had been working on the prototypes for two years, and he hadn’t taken any vacation time in almost as long.

  Indignation seared his throat as he sat down on the bench and tugged off his board shoes, heat still pulsing defiantly in his lap. And the memories he’d managed to keep at bay throughout most of the day, through sheer force of will and hard physical activity, cascaded through his tired body.

  Cassandra draped over his bed, her erect nipples begging for his attention, her eyes dazed with passion, her body flushed with need, her scent intoxicating him as he thrust heavily inside her.

  He shivered violently. But it wasn’t from the cold, clammy neoprene as he peeled it off.

  Jeez, Broussard, forget about last night, already. She’s the enemy now.

  Everything had been fake: the sweet, sultry smile, the forthright expression, the live-wire response which had so intoxicated him, the empathy when he’d let that nugget of information about his past slip, even the possible evidence of her virginity. She’d been playing him the whole time to get what she wanted for her boss.

  The heat pulsed harder and he frowned.

  Okay, maybe not everything had been fake. No one could fake a response like that. She’d been as turned on as he was, the memory of her sex gripping his as she came so vivid it made the ache in his crotch painful.

  Maybe some guys couldn’t tell when a woman was faking an orgasm, but he could tell Cassandra hadn’t been faking that.

  But she’d still played him. And he’d let her.

  He picked up the wetsuit and dumped it into the rinsing sink with a loud splat.

  Get over it.

  It wasn’t as if he’d been emotion
ally invested in their booty call. All he’d wanted out of their night together was great sex, and they’d both got that. So why was his stomach still jumpy and his throat still raw at the thought of her this morning, her chin thrust out, tendrils of wet hair framing her high cheekbones and her translucent skin still reddened from his kisses? Her toned thighs had been rigid with indignation while she’d stared him down and refused to admit how far out of line she was...

  Why should he care if she didn’t have the decency to come clean and beg for his forgiveness? Business could be dirty. He’d done some things himself he wasn’t proud of in the past, to push Broussard Tech to the place it was now.

  Temple was obviously a wolf. He got that. He could be ruthless too, when his business was at stake. But to use an employee to seduce him...

  Unless...

  Was she Temple’s lover?

  His stomach twisted into a knot at the unbidden thought and something dark and violent rushed through him.

  He strode naked into the mud room’s power shower and flicked on the jets. But then the memory of how tight she’d been when he’d entered her that first time came echoing back. And the shock and awe on her face when she’d climaxed. She’d looked overwhelmed.

  He didn’t trust her, but she’d have to be an award-winning actress to fake that response.

  His shoulders relaxed a little.

  The hot, needle-sharp spray pummelled his cold skin, but as he scrubbed away the salt and sweat of the day’s activities the strident erection refused to subside.

  Pressing his forehead against the glass bricks, he took himself in hand, jerking his stiff flesh in fast, efficient strokes. Trying to keep Cassandra out of his head, though, proved impossible, the memory of her body caressing his length still vivid as the seed exploded in his hand.

  He washed away the evidence, feeling like he had as a teenager after those nights making out under the bleachers—used and dirty.

  Not the same thing at all, he told himself. At least those experiences had made him wise to women like Cassandra James ever since. Those girls had shown him that no one could be trusted...that sex was a bargaining chip, just like everything else. He’d finally figured out he didn’t need their approval or their affection. And he didn’t need Cassandra’s.