Heiress Behind the Headlines (16 page)

She was his own personal ghost, and he was well and truly haunted.

So he was not particularly surprised, when he heard a low murmur run through the crowd, to turn and see Larissa herself striding into the gala, as if he’d conjured her into being with his
wanting
alone. He felt her presence jolt through him, electric and low, and for the first time that night—in weeks—his smile was not forced at all. Though it felt hard, fierce and entirely focused on her. Much like the rest of him.

She was stunning, but then, he should have expected that. She was not an icon of her generation by accident, and he should have remembered that the Larissa he’d seen in Maine was the unusual version. Hadn’t he thought it was a fake? An attempt to manipulate him? And yet it still took a moment for him to reconcile the image of her he had in his head—heartbreaking face scrubbed clean of cosmetics, faded jeans, his old sweaters—with the incomparable beauty that stood before the assembled throng, smiling her Mona Lisa smile for the photographers as if she had never been more at ease, more delighted to be out in public and once more the focus of all of Manhattan’s salacious attention.

And she had it, as Jack expected she’d known she would.

“Larissa Whitney has nerve, all right,” Elizabeth Shipley Young murmured, in that snippy way that indicated that was no compliment. She let out a catty little giggle that set Jack’s teeth on edge. “You’d never know the truth about her from the way she walks around, would you? Like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

Jack eyed his date for a long moment, fighting the urge to reach over and throttle her. He doubted his grandfather would approve. And besides, he was supposedly a gentleman. He tried to remind himself of that.

“I didn’t realize you knew Larissa,” he said finally. Icily. Elizabeth flushed at his tone, or perhaps it was the way he was looking at her.

“I don’t,” she said, edging away from him in her chair, as if he had slapped her. “Not personally.”

“Then perhaps you don’t know the truth about her at all,” Jack said with barely contained ferocity, the kind that Larissa had routinely laughed at. This woman cringed. “And should therefore think twice before discussing matters that make you look like little more than a small-minded gossip.”

Elizabeth gasped, and turned a bright shade of red. Jack could feel his grandfather’s hard glare on him, but he couldn’t seem to bring himself to care too much about that—or about the date
and
the wedding plans he had just ruined. He was too busy trying to understand why he’d reacted that way to Elizabeth’s comment. Hadn’t he said far worse about Larissa
to
Larissa herself? Why should it bother him so much when someone else concurred?

His eyes found her again as she moved through the crowd, smiling as if she had every expectation of being bathed in adulation, as if she had descended from some great light to grace this party with her presence. She was poured into a spectacular midnight-blue dress that defied gravity, clinging as it did to her perfectly lithe form and making it clear to all that she required no undergarments. Its many glittering beads sparkled in the lights from above, making her seem to glow and shimmer with every breath, every movement. God, she was even more beautiful than he’d remembered. Jack found that he loved the way she’d made herself up, the better to emphasize those unusual eyes and the shocking glory of that short black hair, somehow styled tonight to make her look far more elegant and sophisticated than her old blond locks would have. She
exuded mystery, sensuality, and something else—something new.

And then it clicked. It was her pedigree. Her heritage. All those centuries of the Whitney legacy that she’d never really seemed to accept as her own before, funneled into a certain bedrock confidence.
You might whisper about me,
her very walk seemed to say,
but you will recognize me.

She was who she was. There was only the one of her, and no matter how notorious she might be, she was still a
Whitney.
Seeing it in this woman—
his woman,
that insane part of his brain insisted—made his body hum with that same, familiar electric charge.

Larissa Whitney had come home.

And Jack couldn’t wait to get his hands on her.

Much later, he caught up to her on the iconic steps outside the Museum, high above Fifth Avenue. She was wrapped up against the bitter December cold, but he was still overheated from the long evening spent watching her as she danced with whoever asked her, smiled prettily for whoever approached her, and acted the perfect little heiress, a credit to her family at long last.

He didn’t believe it for a moment. He told himself that disbelief was what fueled him, what made anticipation flood his veins.

“Slow down, Cinderella,” he said when he was close enough to reach out and touch her—but somehow he restrained himself at the last moment. If he touched any part of her, he knew, he would touch all of her. Here, now, the frigid weather be damned.

She whirled around, and he had the very great pleasure of seeing the Larissa
he
knew peek out from behind this exotic creature with the perfect Society mask. He could see
her in the eyes, the faint tremble of her courtesan’s mouth, before she ruthlessly hid it away.

“Jack,” she said, in a flat sort of greeting. She produced a smile, but he believed it cost her, and he liked the idea of that more than he should have. “Do you make it a habit to sneak up on women walking alone in the night in large cities?”

“Where are you going?” He sounded dangerous. He
felt
dangerous, as though something prowled in him and might leap out at any moment and run wild down the city streets. Or simply pounce on her and devour her. He shifted, feeling edgy and restless. He watched her swallow—watched the elegant line of her throat and he wanted to put his mouth there, against the soft sweet skin—

“I didn’t realize my itinerary was your business,” she said, her voice nearly as icy as the air around them. Her eyes were cool too, her face that perfect mask, that
presentation
that he hated nearly as much as her ubiquitous smile, which she aimed at him now. “Do you really want to be seen talking to me? On the steps of the Met for all of Manhattan to see? You don’t want to risk contagion, surely.”

Her voice was sweet, her gaze sharp. He felt each like the slap it was, when his last memory of her was of her head thrown back, crying out her pleasure as she sat astride him and rode them both over the edge. Then she’d fallen against his chest, still making those small, sweet moans, the very recollection of which made him harden. He shoved the memories aside. They were unhelpful, to say the least.

“Here you are, running away from a gala after you went to so much trouble to convince everyone there that you’d left your old ways behind you,” he said, his gaze trained on hers, on that pretty mask she wore. “What a surprise. Is there anything you
won’t
run away from?”

But she was different from the woman he’d thought he’d
known, however shallowly, in Maine. He saw no particular expression in her gaze, no reaction there at all. She only smirked, and he hated it.

“It seems that my interest in unsolicited character assassinations has dimmed somewhat since I last saw you,” she said, her voice like a blade. The smile she showed him then cut as deep. “It’s delightful to see you again, of course, especially when you are not pretending to be one of the locals in your fisherman’s costume but are back to your usual splendor.” She waved a dismissive hand at him, over the exquisitely cut coat that hid the beautiful tuxedo beneath. “But I have somewhere to be.”

“What’s his name?” Jack meant his voice to be soft, easy, and yet somehow he felt as if the menace in it echoed out into the depths of Central Park and rebounded off the avenues. Larissa went very still. He saw the pulse pound in her throat. But she did not look away.

“Do you mean my date?” she asked. Her tone became scathing. “I came alone, Jack. Grown women can do that, you know. All by themselves. Even me.”

“I mean the man you’re running off to meet,” Jack said, and his tone was nothing short of lethal, though she did not seem to notice. “The man you crawled out of my bed for.”

She let out a soundless breath, betrayed by the cold air that turned it into a cloud. Jack smiled. Not nicely. He hardly knew himself, and yet he could not seem to stop.

“Was it that idiot who danced with you four times tonight?” he asked, picturing the dissipated, mean-eyed creature who, he’d felt, had held her far too tightly for far too long. “He looks like a fine choice. I believe he mistook my grandfather for a waiter.”

“Chip Van Housen?” Her voice was dry. “Hardly.” She made a scoffing sound, as if the very idea were insulting.

“Then who?”

She studied him for a moment, that beautiful mouth flattening. “Because there must, of course, be a man,” she said, as if she was coming to a conclusion for both of them, and not a pleasant one. “Given my proclivities. Or is it my profession? I can’t keep it straight.” She threw up a hand when he moved to speak. “Damn you, Jack,” she hissed at him. And then her eyes slammed into his, hard and green. “It’s none of your business either way.”

Horns complained down in the street. Buses squealed to a stop at the lights along Fifth Avenue, and all around them Manhattan sparkled with light and energy, thousands of lives rushing past them at top speed. And all he could see were her sea-green eyes and the faintest hint of trembling in her lower lip, almost indiscernible. Almost. All he wanted to do was sweep her into his arms and carry her off, and he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to throw her onto his bed or, far more dangerous and confusing, simply hold her for a while. Apologize—for always seeming to hurt her, when that wasn’t at all what he wanted.

But he didn’t know how to say that—and he refused to think about what it might mean. He just concentrated on the woman who haunted him even now, even when she was standing right in front of him.

“Do you really believe that, Larissa?” He moved closer, fiercely glad that she wore those absurdly high heels that let her look him right in the eye, and let him get that much closer to her gorgeous mouth. Close enough to inhale that intoxicating kick of vanilla and
her.
His hands twitched with the urge to touch her. “Do you really think it’s over just because you walk away? Again? Do you think it’s going to be that easy this time?”

“What do you want, Jack?” She wasn’t playing any longer. He could see it—could see the woman he recognized
again in her stormy green eyes, so much like the sea. He could hear it in her voice. He could feel it in his chest.

“I don’t know.” His own voice felt as if it was torn from him, as if he could no more control it than he could her.

“Do you really want to know about Chip Van Housen, of all people?” she asked, her voice hoarse with an emotion he couldn’t name. “I used to enjoy him because being with him hurt Theo. That meant I got to do something to Theo
and
indulge my self-destructive streak—two birds with one stone.” Her mouth twisted and her eyes flashed. “He thinks I owe him something, but then, he’s nothing but an overprivileged bully. He thinks the world owes him something, too.”

“And you don’t?” He eased even closer to her, then indulged himself—and an urge he couldn’t quite explain—by reaching over and brushing one of the slightly longer strands of her hair away from the sweet slope of her forehead. He did not imagine the way she shuddered. He did not fantasize the way her lips parted.

Just as he did not imagine the perfect silk of her skin, or how it felt beneath his fingers.

“What do
you
think I owe you, or the world, or anything else?” she asked, a hitch in her voice. “What price do
you
think I ought to pay? Because clearly, you think I have reparations to make. Why don’t you tell me what you think they are?”

“That’s not what I meant,” he began.

“You’re not the only person in the world who gets to decide they want a better image,” she threw at him, her voice fierce. “It’s just that when you do it, you’re greeted with a ticker-tape parade. Some of us have to reinvent ourselves in the absence of accolades and fawning sycophants.”

“Still with this story of reinvention,” he said, shaking his head, furious with her suddenly. Furious and something
else, something raw, that moved through him and left only scars behind. “Why do you play these games, Larissa? What do you hope to gain?”

For a moment she looked as if he’d hauled off and slugged her, hard in the belly. He saw her breathe, as if it hurt her to try, and then her mask slid back into place. But he couldn’t seem to reconcile that bruised look in her eyes with the master manipulator he kept telling himself that she was. That she had to be, or nothing made sense.

“Your date looks lovely,” she said quietly. Viciously—or that was how it felt to him. Like a hard, deliberate slap. “Speaking of things we have to gain. I’m sure she’ll make the perfect, dutiful little wife for you, just as your grandfather decrees.”

He didn’t care for the way she said that, with that light in her eyes.

“Because you think that you, of all people, know who the perfect wife for me might be?” he asked. He dared her. “Based on what, exactly?”

“She looks sufficiently overawed,” Larissa bit out. “I doubt she’ll even notice when you start having your inevitable affairs, like all the rest of these people do—she’ll no doubt be relieved. She doesn’t strike me as the adventurous type.”

“Not like you,” he said, deliberately. He tilted his head slightly to one side, as if studying her. “Are you offering yourself as my first mistress?”

“No,” she said. “It won’t be me.” Some emotion shone in her eyes, terrible and big, but she didn’t look away. “I’m sure it will be someone, but it won’t ever be me.”

“You’re a liar,” he told her, only aware that he was all but whispering after the words were out. And still that ferocious anger moved through him, and he worried it was not anger at all. “And a coward. Do you really think you
can keep running? Do you think that pretending to be respectable will save you?”