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Rohan was playing a dangerous game, but then, that was the only kind of game he’d ever played.
To this day, Grayson Hawthorne was the only person she’d ever told about the memory, the dreams, her father’s suicide, the fact that she’d been there. And Grayson Hawthorne hadn’t cared. Of course he hadn’t. She was a stranger to him, a nobody, and he was a Hawthorne, an arrogant, cold, above-it-all, asshole Hawthorne who didn’t care how many lives his billionaire grandfather had ruined—or whose.
“Take any book or movie and set it on an island,” Gigi continued, stubbornly cheerful, “and it gets about a thousand times better, no idea why.” “Closed system,” that quiet voice said. Gigi looked again to her new friend/opponent. “Closed system?” “In quantum physics, it’s a system that doesn’t exchange energy or matter with any other system. There are equivalent concepts in thermodynamics and classic mechanics. Chemistry and engineering, too.” He gave a little shrug. “Under those definitions, an island wouldn’t qualify, but the same concept applies. Nothing in, nothing out.” “A closed
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“I’m not wheezing.” Gigi gave herself a little pep talk. “I’m breathing in an almost musical manner.”
“I’m Odette, and you, darling young thing, are observant.” “I’m Gigi,” Gigi said. “And I try.” “You do, don’t you?” Odette replied. “Try. The world just loves women who try.” Odette caught Gigi’s gaze and held it. “Unless and until we try too hard.” With that, the old woman began to make her way slowly back to the ladder. Right before she descended, she spoke again. “I’ll tell you this much, from one woman who tries too hard to another: They were talking about a girl, and, from what I gather, she’s dead.”
“What have we here?” The voice that posed that not-really-a-question was unmistakably male and a little flat. Gigi slung the bag over her shoulder, stood, and turned. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Gigi. I like your eyebrows.” In her defense, they were impressive eyebrows, dark and thick and angled, a key part of an equally impressive scowl on the stranger’s face.
You think you know what I’m capable of, do you, Hawthorne? Rohan did love to make people think again. “Congratulations, by the way,” he called after Nash. “On the babies.”
She stepped back, taking in the look, the feel, the damn aura of the dress, trying to remember that this wasn’t a fairy tale. This was a competition.
His mask was a light and shining silver, the metalwork more befitting a crown. It covered the entire left side of his face but for his eye and extended above his brow and down the temple on his right. The startling asymmetry of the mask made Rohan look, if not broken, then just a little bit twisted. In a good way.
“I’m guessing something happened during your exploration of the island?” Savannah raised an eyebrow. “Did one of the other players actually manage to get on your bad side?” “I don’t have a bad side,” Gigi said pertly. “I believe in rehabilitation.”
“No man is an island, entire of itself,” Rohan murmured. “In other words: No one is doing this alone. Clever.” Savannah’s hand went to the chain encircling her hips, but her face didn’t betray any surprise she felt that he’d already read the words on the lock. Rohan wondered idly what it would take to bring down those walls of hers. Or scale them.
Gigi was a Gigi on a mission.
Disarming people with cheerful goodwill was an art form, and Gigi was an artist.
“The diameter or circumference of the plate could be a unit of measurement. Shatter it, and you could use the shards to cut something—though personally, if I needed to do a slice and dice, I would probably just use the knife strapped to my thigh.” Gigi’s most innocent voice was pretty darn innocent.
Wait, that’s not right. Rohan rolled those words and her query around in his mind, a series of questions rising to the surface. What wasn’t right? How so? And what did a person like Savannah Grayson need with twenty-six million dollars?
Optimism was a choice, so Gigi chose to believe that the time she spent staring at herself in the bathroom mirror was productive.
Grayson bent to block out the rest of the world from her view. “Give me your eyes, sweetheart.”
“Thorough,” Savannah said, and something about the way she said that word made Rohan want to hear her say it again. Dangerous, that.
“Tell, Mr. Hawthorne.” Odette stared Grayson down. “Have I told a single lie?” Grayson’s gaze flicked toward Lyra. “No.” “Then allow me to remind the two of you that you already have my terms. If I am to answer the question of how I knew Tobias Hawthorne, of how I ended up on that capital-L List of his, it will happen if and only if we make it out of the Grandest Escape Room and down to the dock by dawn—which, I might point out, draws ever closer.” “Never trust a sentence with three ifs,” Grayson told Lyra. “Particularly when spoken by a lawyer.”
If you’re not careful, you’re going to get eaten alive in this game.” Gigi thought about sponsors, about the dragon on the island, about the warnings, plural, that Brady had given her about Knox. “I don’t mind,” Gigi said stubbornly. “Being eaten alive, I mean. If you can get them to spit you out, it’s pretty much just a massage.”
“Is that a yes?” Rohan prompted. “On the hint?” Savannah turned toward the panel and laid her palm over the red button. “I should agree to take the hint, so I will.” Her voice was higher now, clear and overtly feminine and pleasant. “After all,” she continued, her eyes like knives, “society is kindest to women who do what they should.”
My predator of a husband got me speaking roles in four movies before I left him. He tried to destroy me.” Odette smiled that eagle-on-a-hunt, grandma-baking-cookies smile.
“You never stopped dancing,” Grayson said behind her. “Every time you move, you dance.” “I do not.” Arguing with him was the easiest thing in the world. “It’s there in the way you hold your head, like there’s music the rest of us can’t hear.” Grayson Hawthorne was a natural debater. “Every step you take, every twist, every turn, every pissed-off whirl.” He could have stopped there and won. He didn’t. “The way you stand,” he continued mercilessly, “one foot slightly in front of the other. The way you lift your heels off the ground when you’re deep in thought, like it’s everything you can do not
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Gigi shimmied up the rope like a person with actual biceps. It wasn’t a feat of athleticism so much as an energy-fueled, near-incandescent need to see what came next.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Rohan challenged. He could practically hear the arch of her brow through the dark. “If I told you every time you were wrong about something, there would hardly be time for anything else.”
As they bolted for the game on the wall, Savannah smiled—not a socialite’s smile, not a wolfish or roguish one. No, her smile was ecstasy and victory and sharp around the edges, and Rohan drank it in like wine.
“I have until noon, right?” Gigi said. Xander grinned. “For the ease of my future compositions, please tell me that whatever you have planned rhymes with Valhalla or cheesesteak.” Gigi gave Xander a look. “You’re not going to ask what I’m up to?” “Like I said, I’m a man of many talents.” Xander slung an arm around her. “Among them, I give excellent platonic snuggles, and I know when not to ask.”
She surged toward him, capturing his lips with hers. Some kisses were just kisses. Some kisses were torture. Some were necessary, the way breathing was. Some kisses made a point.
Lyra didn’t pull back. He was a Hawthorne. That Hawthorne. Your Hawthorne, Odette had said. Lyra thought about the danger of touch. She thought about all the reasons she had not to do this. But as Grayson lowered his lips, Lyra rose up on her toes, tilted her head backward, moving like a dancer, needing this—and him. Her long-held memory of that kiss gave way to this kiss. And this kiss was everything.
