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Aside from just implying that their mother was now sucking down her martinis in pill form every four hours, she supposed he hadn’t. “I really don’t understand,” she stated. “Father left her millions in the settlement. Even so, if she sold off just half her furs and jewelry, she’d regain a nice part of it.”

“Not going to happen.” There was a decisive pause, as if Shane was squaring up his stance. “She’s going to need them. We’re moving forward with a new plan.”

She stifled the urge to let out another laugh, this one not so amused. “Of course we are. Which is why you’re calling.” The impetus for his urgency in reaching her began to crystallize. He wanted to make sure he still had the marionette strings attached to her, the control still wielded.

She shook her head. Control. What a chameleon of a word. She’d hated it all her life, equating it to sleepless nights of pondering Shane’s catalogs of her mistakes at some dinner or agonizing over what shoe Mother would approve of for the charity tea or, in true Eliza Doolittle fashion, wondering what
was
appropriate to yell at one’s horse at the racetrack. In her world, control was about containment, reins, and everything she couldn’t be. But Mark had changed that. In his hands, the term had become a gift, a treasure she gladly gave because of the world he opened in return, tying her in a connection she’d craved forever. Something so different than the irritation now jabbing her, courtesy of the voice on the other end of the line.

“Every minute right now counts, Rose.” Shane’s tone gained a new edge. “Every move we make, all three of us, will count from here. So, yes, that’s why I’m calling.”

She pulled in a deep breath and wished Mark sat beside her right now. She tried to imagine him at least, tawny eyes glittering, and half a smile tugging at his beard. “All right. Let’s have it, then. What’s this spectacular new plan?”

She could almost smell her brother’s anticipation through the line. “Do you remember Tristan Rhodes?”

“Yes.” She said it as if telling a four-year-old that the Earth was really round. “It’s hard to forget one of the founders of your God’s-gift-to-the law firm, Shane.”

Instead of the defensive snort for which she braced, her brother actually laughed. “He’s on the governor’s short list to fill Mark Moore’s seat in the Senate. It was announced yesterday morning.”

Her stomach tightened. True, it was the last thing she expected to hear. But the announcement tripped her less than the tie-in to Mark. Even hearing his name on Shane’s lips…it bridged her old caterpillar to her new butterfly like a tenacious cocoon that wouldn’t fall free from her spirit.

“Okay.” She drew the word out with sarcasm to mask her anxiety. “And?”

“And we’re going to help him land it.”

“Now I’m lost. Help him? He can’t run for a seat in Indiana, can he? And if so, how’s he going to do it with Mother’s furs and jewels?”

“Rose.” Now he sounded like she was the four-year-old. “He’s got a bigger house in Indianapolis than he does in Chicago. And he’s single.”

“Yes. So is Mark Moore.” Her guts took her by surprise again. They definitely didn’t like the sound of that. They also made her wonder, for a split second, if Mark himself would either.

“But he wasn’t when he got elected. A successful candidate needs a good woman.”

Understanding started to glimmer. “And Mother is going to be that woman for Tristan.”

“You mean Senator Rhodes?” He chuckled again. He sounded just like he was eleven again, beating her at backgammon. Only now the playing pieces were people, and the stakes were much higher.

“And what if ‘Senator Rhodes’ doesn’t see her as that woman?”

“That won’t be an option.”

She wanted to roll her eyes, but Shane had ridiculed that out of her years ago. Even in a phone conversation with him, she didn’t dare. “And that’s where the plan comes in.”

She listened to him take a hefty swig of a drink. Since it was just six thirty in Chicago, it was likely his daily cup of custom-blended coffee. Or maybe he’d skipped straight to the celebration-party champagne. “The public devours good love stories, sister. They crave a nice, gooey fairy tale. But with most political candidates, they have to hear about it after the fact. Tristan and Mother are going to let them live the story as it happens. She’s going to become their living, breathing, real-life princess.”

“And as her prince, Tristan rides to the senate.”

“And in a few years, perhaps beyond that.”

She practically saw Shane’s fantasy unfurling now. He’d probably scoped out the floor plan of the White House and already picked out his office. The odd, scary truth was, it wasn’t an unrealistic hope. She remembered rumors of the same thing swirling about Mark himself, last summer.

But all of it still confused her in one distinct and disconcerting way.

“Shane, I’m still not sure why you plowed your way through half the phone lines and most of the security team in this place to tell me this.” She picked a nervous finger at the corner of the bed sheet. “It’s not like I’m going to be around to screw things up for you, right?” She held out a tiny hope, which fizzled fast, that
this
time he’d deny the implication, that he’d protest how proud he really was of her for doing this. Sure, and Lake Michigan would sprout real icebergs. “In two weeks, I’ll be almost ten thousand miles away.”

“And Mark Moore is training you to get there, right?”

Her stomach clenched tighter. “Yes. What does he have to do with—”

“He’s your teacher, right? And nothing more?”

She swung a wild stare around the room. Shane’s incisive tone…it made her wonder about hidden cameras they didn’t know about, or even if his question would morph into a laser beam, slicing open the wall and exposing her here, clad in nothing but the sheets Mark had ripped from her body less than two hours ago.

“Wh-what the hell kind of question is that?”

“Listen, Rose. Tying yourself to the headboard for Owen was a tough enough mess to clean up. But this is a new playing field. It’s muddy, it’s brutal, and it’s not for a green nymph to run around in with her knickers at her knees. You’ll get hurt—and this pain will be deep wounds, not knee scrapes. But more importantly, the collateral damage will be insurmountable. The press has already started sniffing around at the firm. Not the glossy tabloids either. This is the
Times
, the nightly news stations, CNN…”

As he droned on, she clawed her hair with a shaking hand. A messy playing field, indeed. She already felt dragged through the mud, though Shane technically hadn’t gotten the details right. She hadn’t really tied herself to the headboard, that fateful night at the Fairmont. She’d never gotten that far.

The memories hit, so clear now, of how dashing Owen had looked when they’d gotten back to their suite after the rehearsal dinner. He’d had a scotch or two more than his norm, and he’d been a bit frisky, especially because she’d put up a playful protest about not “doing the deed” so close to the wedding. She’d looked at his growing erection and his heavy gaze and decided to get bold.
“Have I been a bad girl, my love? Do you need to spank me? Do you need to do it hard?”

He’d bolted from the room thirty seconds later.

She’d never seen him again.

Her face burned with the humiliation again, though time had dulled its impact a little. There was also another strange difference to the memory. She’d always remembered the look on Owen’s face from that moment and assumed it was revulsion. Now, she recognized it for its truth. Fear.

There were a lot of words she could use to describe Mark Moore.
Fearful
was nowhere in the neighborhood of that list.

Then why did her heart pummel at her ribs with a deafening cadence of the stuff?

Why was this entire conversation making her body taut and her head throb…and her heart hurt?

For an answer, she only had to think of the fact that Shane had called, period. Her brother had hunted her down across the miles to remind her of one important fact. To him, to most of the world, she was still—how did it go?—
a green nymph with her knickers around her knees
. God, if he only knew her “knickers” were actually a soaked blob at the bottom of the pool.

Forget it. The point was made. Nothing had really changed, had it? She was still hardwired with the fuck-up chip, programming that didn’t magically get erased by the submissive chip. She’d fail Mark, just as she’d failed Owen. But this time, as Shane had said so damn eloquently, the playing field was muddier.

And this time, she truly cared about the guy holding the ball.
Cared?
Oh God. She wished she was only at cared with Mark. With cared, the twist in her stomach wouldn’t feel like a drain snake dipped in acid. With cared, she wouldn’t be covering the sob in her mouth and the curse she longed to let fly at her brother. Why the hell had he waited to make this call? Had they done this yesterday morning, she’d never have caved to Mark’s invitation or come to the villa. She never would’ve known the ecstasy of letting him turn her body into a thousand electric raindrops, her soul into a bird that gathered those drops and flew to the moon and back with them.

She never would’ve known the misery of now.

She slammed her forehead to her knees. Her gulps lodged like boulders in her throat.

“Rose? Rose, are you still there?”

“Y-yeah. S-sorry.”

“So we have nothing to worry about, right?”

Shit, shit, shit.

“N-no, Shane. It’s cool. Everything’s good here.”

“Perfect. Enjoy paradise, then.”

As he hung up, she almost laughed. Paradise. Sure, if that’s what you called this. What the hell
was
this? She’d never felt anything like it before. She’d been dying to get off the call so she could release the pressure in her chest, the agony in her body. But now, while everything ached behind her ribs, nothing broke free. Her eyes stung, and her head throbbed, but the cries jammed at the base of her throat. Her bones were stiff as wood. Her lips were dry as sawdust.

Somehow she got herself off the bed and back into her half-soggy clothes. Falling into the chair at the desk in the next room, she focused on wrapping her fingers around the pen in the holder there and pressing letters into the resort stationery. Five minutes later, most of the pad was in the wastebasket, filled with her ridiculous attempts at putting this into words.

Everything was so lovely. Thank you for—

I had a wonderful time. But now—

It’s not going to work out. I think we both know it. I’m not that good at all this, and—

It’s come to my attention that we’d best just—

I want you to know I’ll never forget—

Senator Moore, thank you for a most enjoyable—

“Crap!”

The single word pulled free the cork on her dam of emotion. As the sobs finally came and her anguish flowed, she scribbled the only message that made complete sense.

I’m sorry.

Chapter Thirteen

Mark looked down at the paper in his hand and its two scribbled words and forced himself not to crunch it into a ball and hurl it across the training classroom. The wad was already half-destroyed from the first three times he’d done that. But continuing to vent his fury wouldn’t get him anywhere right now. It wouldn’t gain him any more clarity for the confusion that had hit when he arrived back at the villa, bearing a breakfast feast and a continuing hard-on, to find the bed empty, the trash can full, and the damn note on the table.

He’d instantly tried her cell. And gotten the voice mail he expected. He set the line to redial and let it do that a dozen times as he dumped the trash can and sifted through her first drafts of the note. They were novels by comparison to what she did leave, but no more helpful to his anger, his bewilderment, and his determination to find out just what the
hell
had happened between her whispered
“Yes, Sir”
and her tear-stained
“I’m sorry.”

The trainees starting filing into the room. Brandt Howell was with them, picking his way through the crowd with a determined step. The young man approached with his square jaw taut, but his light blue eyes glittering in victory.

“Senator Moore, sir.”

Mark modulated his voice to a low, careful murmur. “Tell me you have good news, Brandt.”

“You bet your sweet a— Yes, uhhh, I mean I do.” The security expert flashed an easygoing smile at a perky blonde who walked by as he unlocked his phone and showed the screen to Mark. “Since the call to Miss Fabian was routed through me, it was pretty easy to douse a few firewalls and trace the call. It’s the private line of Shane Fabian, out of Chicago, exactly who she told me it would be. Her brother.”

He nodded and handed the phone back to Brandt. “Okay. And what do we know about him?”

“He’s a senior partner at Rhodes, Wright, and Treforth. Purchased a place overlooking the river about six months ago. Likes the swag and the designers, was seen in the social column a lot until the whole bang-bang-pow of Rose’s wedding day. He’s been starting to get back into the swing of things, though; working the connections…”

Mark held up his hand, fixing his thoughts to something in Brandt’s account. “Rhodes, Wright, and Treforth. That’s
Tristan
Rhodes’s firm, right?”

“I believe so, sir.”

“Thank you, Brandt. Really good work.” He nodded at the phone. “Now erase all that.”

Brandt punched a couple of keys, and the screen went black. “Done, sir.”

Mark gave a deferential nod, universal guy code for his gratitude. He worked a finger over his bottom lip, weaving this new piece of information into the tapestry he already knew of his subbie’s psyche. Despite the circumstances, it was a heartening thread to receive. She hadn’t just bolted from the villa of her own accord as he’d originally assumed—and feared. There had been a phone call. Something had pulled at her tapestry all the way from the states and started unraveling it.

Okay, maybe the bastard had gotten beyond
started
. Mark had only been gone from the villa for a half hour, tops. He’d left behind a woman with his beard burn on her cheeks, adoration in her eyes, and a confident smile on her lips. He’d come back to find that note on the table, dunked in a puddle of her tears. Whoever did that to her had done it before. Skillfully. Ruthlessly. Now he had a name for the asshole. And possibly, based on the details Brandt had just supplied, a workable reason for the call too. Not a pretty one, but right now, the only pretty thing he saw about Shane Fabian was the man’s goddamn Gucci-ad hair.