Blame It on Paradise (11 page)

Reginald stared dumbly at Jack. “What just happened here?”

“She said no,” Jack snapped.

Reginald took to his heels and hurried after Lina, catching her at the elevators where she was lightly stroking a fingertip over the giant waxy leaf of a tall potted plant adorning the elevator lobby. “Hold on, now, Ms. Marchand,” he chuckled nervously. “You came halfway around the world and now you’re ready to leave without even hearing our offer?”

“Yes,” Lina responded. “I also wish to make it clear that representatives from this firm are most,” her glaze flickered toward Jack, “unwelcome on Darwin.”

“You proved rather elusive for our agents.” Reginald snapped his fingers toward the door of the conference room where Jack, Burke and several other attorneys and vice presidents stood watching the activity at the elevator. Burke scurried forward at Reginald’s bidding. Never one to respond to a snap, Jack hung back.

“Not you!” Reginald angrily waved off Burke. “Jack, I need
you
.”

Lina studied Reginald’s face. Sweat beaded above his upper lip, and his smile was a bit too glassy. “Please, Ms. Marchand,” he said. “At least just listen to our offer. Jackson DeVoy is prepared to present our proposal, aren’t you, Jack?”

Lina shifted her gaze from Reginald to Jack. He could control his body language and facial expression, but he couldn’t stop his eyes from speaking to her. Unless she was imagining things, he was suffering the same chaotic emotions she was.

“I’d love the chance to argue our case before
Ms. Marchand
,” Jack answered.

Reginald gave him a quizzical look. “Yes, well,” he started impatiently. “Hear us out then, Ms. Marchand. We just may change your mind about doing business with Coyle-Wexler.”

Jack couldn’t read her silence, which seemed to last forever, or at least until the express elevator doors finally opened, and she stepped into the car. As the doors slid shut she said, “The penthouse, Harborfront Regency. One hour.”

* * *

“Not you.”

Lina blocked Burke’s path when he and Jack attempted to enter her suite of rooms atop the Harborfront Regency.

“I’m an integral part of this deal, too,” Burke stubbornly protested.

“Mr. Burke, during your brief visit to Darwin you verbally assaulted my receptionist, you attempted to break into my office, you refused to pay for your homestay because—and I quote—‘The bed sheets were scratchy.’ ” Her fists stuck to her hips, Lina stood toe to toe with Burke. She was a head shorter, but Burke retreated a step. “Do I even have to remind you of what you and your companion were caught doing in the restroom of The Crab and Nickel, or how much you were required to pay to have the walls steam cleaned?”

Burke blinked. “I think I’ll just wait in the lobby, Jack,” he mumbled in a rush.

Lina turned and started toward the east side of the penthouse, which housed a full office and a spacious sitting room. Jack followed her. She still wore her sexy suit, but her feet were bare as she padded soundlessly across the thick, burgundy carpeting. She went to the desk, a long, wide, dark-stained affair that gave the room a distinctly masculine feel and dwarfed Lina’s petite figure. When she sat in the matching leather wing chair behind the desk, she took pleasure in neglecting to offer Jack a seat.

“We live in an age where a name is power,” Jack said. “If you know a person’s name, time, effort and the Internet are the only things you need to discover everything about that person.”

“Indeed,” Lina agreed. “Tell me, is cloaking your identity the secret to your success, Mr. DeVoy?”

“I suppose you think you’re entitled to a monopoly on anonymity?” Jack responded with a lift of an eyebrow. “Why did you tell me that your name is Lina?”

“I didn’t tell you my name at all,” she reminded him. “Levora told you. Lina is a nickname I’ve had since childhood. It comes from my first name, ‘Jas-LEEN.’ My parents always called me Lina.” She leaned back in the chair and put her feet on the desk, crossing them at the ankle.

Lina almost smiled at the look of horror on Jack’s face. The Harborfront Regency was probably Boston’s finest hotel and was renowned for the somber Chippendale and Hepplewhite antiques furnishing its penthouse. Lina could easily picture the fussy hotel manager, who had personally handled her check-in, having a conniption at the sight of her bare feet resting upon the priceless desk.

His hands on his hips and his feet wide apart, Jack remained impassive. “Is there something you’d like to tell me?”

“Is there something you’d like to say to
me
?” she countered.

He seemed offended. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You used me, Jack.”

He was unsure what bothered him most, her accusation or her breezy delivery. He fired back with, “You
deceived
me.”

Everything he’d planned to say and everything he’d felt in the boardroom seemed to wilt in the heat of his rising anger at both himself and Lina. In the ten blocks between the Coyle-Wexler building and the Harborfront Regency, he’d reviewed his stay on Darwin in fast-forward. He’d been so enthralled by Lina that he hadn’t seen the forest for the trees, and he’d come to hate Kiri and Levora just a tiny bit for allowing him to continually make a fool of himself. So many of Kiri’s pointed comments and Levora’s peculiar remarks and observations made sense now that he’d finally met J.T. Marchand.

Lina.

He’d gone silly in the head because of her. Never before had he let a woman scramble his brains so much that he was blinded to what was right in front of him. Even as his ire grew, he grudgingly admired her ability to have a full, uninhibited life outside the responsibilities of being Jaslyn Thérèse Marchand.

Lina put her feet back on the floor and swiveled in her chair. Boston Harbor filled her view, but she was too angry to appreciate its quaint beauty. The fact that she knew she had no right to be angry only made her angrier. She had pursued Jackson DeVoy, the strapping tourist whose attractiveness went beyond skin. She had volunteered to be in the mess she was in by starting something that had no way of finishing well.

She’d done the very thing she consistently advised Kiri and the other island girls against—she’d fallen in love with a visitor. She squinted her eyes tight and fisted her hands, pressing them to her eyes. She hated admitting it, but only one thing was causing this much toxic anger to flood her system: she was in love with Jack DeVoy.

Seeing him so unexpectedly in the Coyle-Wexler boardroom had only proven what she’d suspected over the past weeks. Her first response to seeing him again hadn’t been rage or hurt but a surge of love so strong that it had made her dizzy. She had been so happy to see him, his awful vanishing act had suddenly lost its lingering sting.

She couldn’t pinpoint exactly when it had happened, the moment she’d fallen for him. It might have been as early as the first sight of him in town, or when he’d spoken to her so openly atop their rock in Tuanui Bay. She knew for sure that her feelings for him had gone from casual to certifiable the afternoon she’d approached him at the café. He’d looked up at her and in that first fleeting moment, she’d felt that snap.

That emotion had grown during their time on the yacht, and had become even more powerful during their dance at the beach party. And when she’d opened her eyes to see him gazing down at her in the hammock after her night in the hospital, she’d known for sure that she was lost. She loved him. Which was a shame, because she hated him, too.

“If anyone has the right to be angry here, it’s me,” Jack said.

Gripping the arms of her chair, she swiveled to face him again. “I stopped being angry right after that grinning idiot Edison Burke left Darwin. And let me make one thing perfectly clear before your ego completely misinterprets this situation. I don’t care that you left. What pissed me off, Jack, is that you didn’t have the decency to say goodbye.” She clamped her jaw until she was sure that she could control the waver in her voice. “I could have settled for goodbye, I’d prepared for it. You left me wondering and wishing and…and wanting you, damn it. I went to the homestay and found that Burke creature.” She grimaced and shuddered. “I’ve never liked surprises, and I like them even less now.”

“You should have told me your name,” Jack muttered coldly.

“You should have told me yours!”

“You deliberately ran around that island half-naked, like a savage, and all along you were the very person I went there to find!”

She leaped to her feet. “I
told
you Darwin was my island!”

“Yeah, and it was like a star laying claim to the night,” Jack yelled. “I thought you were being poetic.”

Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped. “A savage poet. Is that what I am to you?”

“I don’t know what you are.” Jack brusquely rubbed his hand through his hair. “I certainly don’t know
who
you are.”

“Of course you know me, Jack. I held nothing back on Darwin. I wanted to, and I wish now that I had. But I couldn’t. You’d know that if you hadn’t disappeared without so much as a backward glance.”

“That’s unfair.” Jack took a few steps toward her, his finger raised in accusation. “I haven’t stopped thinking about you since—”

She cut him off, unwilling to let go of her anger long enough to hear his explanation. “I’m waiting for your proposal.”

“My what?”

“Your offer,” she said tersely. “Coyle-Wexler’s package. Let’s hear it and make quick work of getting out of each other’s lives once and for all.”

His heart pounded hard enough to hurt at the cool indifference of her words. He knew that he deserved her anger, so he accepted it. But the thought of being cut out of her life altogether was so much harder to take.

To buy himself time to think of something to say that would change her mind, Jack set his briefcase on her desk, opened it, and withdrew the package he had structured with Reginald’s approval. Without looking at him, she took the blood-red folder and opened it, pacing the thick carpeting as she read the terms outlined on the thick sheets of ivory letterhead.

No matter what she thought of Jack, Lina had to admit that Coyle-Wexler’s offer was incredible. As owner of Darwin Island and all of its properties and naturally occurring resources, J.T. Marchand would receive a fifty-percent share of all profits, in all markets both domestic and international, from the sale of Darwin mint tea. That was just the start. She would also receive a fifty-fifty partnership in licensing with an equal voice in marketing, advertising and distribution, both domestic and international. She would have use of one of Coyle-Wexler’s private jets, and Reginald Wexler was willing to provide a permanent office for her personal use at Coyle-Wexler’s home base in Boston, as well as an apartment. She would also have full access to the company’s chalet in Zurich and its villa on the Italian Riviera. She harrumphed softly. Switzerland and Italy were nice, but Darwin was paradise, and even better than that, it was home.

Jack studied her face as her eyes scoured the proposal. He knew that she wasn’t impressed even before she snapped the folder shut and said, “Not good enough.”

He rolled his eyes and sighed in frustration. “What more could you possibly want?”

For the briefest instant, her forehead relaxed and Jack saw the open, honest face of the woman he had loved on Darwin. In her clear, lambent eyes he saw the answer to his question. He raised his hand to touch her and his lips parted to speak, but then her longing expression disappeared and the brittle, passionless glare of the lady lawyer returned.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
Both domestic and international,
she was tempted to add.

“The financial arrangement alone will make you millions,” Jack said.

Lina went back to the desk, sat down, and opened her sleek, silver laptop. She slipped on a pair of glasses with heavy black frames and began typing on her keyboard.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” he remarked.

She typed a few more words before peering at him over the top of her Clark Kent glasses. “You’re still here?” she snapped impatiently.

Jack choked back his pride. “Can’t we talk about what happened instead of sniping at each other?”

“You left. That’s what happened.” She turned back to her computer. “End of conversation.”

“I didn’t want to leave,” he angrily confessed. “I went back to my homestay—excuse me,
your
homestay—to find Edison Burke and a one-way ticket to Boston waiting for me. I had less than an hour to pack and get to the airport. I had to come back here, Lina. I had no choice.”

She took off her glasses and set them on the desk blotter before crossing her forearms on the desk and leaning toward him. “You had a choice. In every situation, everyone always has choices. They might not be very good ones, or even the ones you want, but you always have them. You chose wrong. If it’s any consolation, you’re not the only one at fault here. I made the wrong choice, too, when I picked
you
.”

“Now you’re just being cruel.”

She guiltily dropped her eyes.

He braced his hands far apart on the desk and leaned down toward her. “Was it a mistake, everything that happened between us? You can honestly say that?”

She cast her face down and turned her head to avoid his gaze, and she busied her hands by tucking locks of her hair behind her ears. Jack’s stomach growled hungrily as his gaze traced the lyrical line of her jaw, throat and exposed collarbone.

He rounded to her side of the desk, and she stood as if to challenge him. “I made assumptions about you on Darwin,” Jack began apologetically. He was so near her, he could smell the citrusy spice of her hair. “That’s the worst thing a lawyer can do.”

“That’s one of the differences between us, Jack. I saw you as a man, not an occupation. It never occurred to me that you came to Darwin for the same reason as Carol Crowley and Edison Burke and the rest of those parasites.” She laughed sadly. “And to think Levora feared you were there to steal her muffin recipes.”

A slight smile softened Jack’s expression. “They’re worth stealing. I’ve been craving the coconut-lime ever since I got back.”