“No,” he says. “Look at me, Sylvia. Because I’m not going to say this again. I told you once that I’m a man who goes after what he wants, and I want you in my bed. I want to feel you naked and hot beneath me. I want to hear you cry out when you come, and I want to know that I am the man who took you there.”

My eyes are burning, and I shake my head, as if by simply wishing it to be so, this will all go away.

“I want you, Sylvia. And I will have you.”

“Jackson, please.”

“And you want me, Sylvia. You can deny it, but we both know that you’d be lying.”

“I do want you,” I say, clinging tight to that fragment of truth as I try to turn this to my advantage. “But there is the man and there is the architect. I—I can’t be with the man. But I desperately need the architect.”

“Package deal, princess,” he says, the endearment making me cringe. “You want me on the project, I want you in my bed.”

“Dammit, Jackson,” I say as anxiety creeps through me, its cold fingers banishing the heat. For once, I do not try to force it back, because right now I can use it. “You’re being ridiculous. I mean, who does that?”

“Apparently, I do.” He is level and cool and just arrogant enough to piss me off. I’m grateful—I’d much rather be pissed than unsettled. Or, worse, aroused.

“Is this about revenge?” I demand. “Because it seems like it.”

His lips curve as if in consideration. “Maybe it is,” he says, the confession slicing through me as cleanly and coldly as a well-honed blade. “But if so, revenge never tasted so sweet.”

“Fuck you, Jackson,” I snap, as much in anger as in confusion. “Fuck you and your grudge and your goddamn ultimatum.” I snatch my phone off the table and bolt for the door, the world around me spinning in shades of red and gray.

I grab on to the frame, my back to him, then take a deep breath to steady myself. “I never meant to hurt you,” I say, so softly I’m not even certain he can hear me.

“Maybe not,” he says, his voice equally soft. “But you did. And now if you want me on this project, you’re going to have to pay the price.”

five

Bastard.

He’s a goddamn bastard on wheels and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him use me like that.

I hurry down the stairs, my chest tight, my throat dry. By the time I burst outside into the cool October air, I’m working myself up into a full-blown panic attack.

I want to run—hell, I want to fly. I want to lose myself in the lights and noise of Hollywood Boulevard. I want to race blindly down the street, not toward anything, but away. Away from Jackson. Away from the past.

And away from this horrible sensation of being twisted up inside.

I want to, but I can’t. Because if I try to, I’ll no doubt trip in these damn stilettos, and I’ll end up breaking my nose on Clark Gable’s handprint outside the theater.

Dammit, dammit, dammit.

So I walk instead, wishing there was a way to turn off my thoughts, to push away my emotions.

You want me on the project, I want you in my bed.

Those words had hit me with all the force of a train, and now I’ve lost my grip on everything. My plans for the resort, my hopes for a bump in career.

I’d had everything all worked out, each step on the path so perfectly planned.

And then came Jackson, and the fantasy that I could keep a tight hand.

How could I have been so stupid? Because hadn’t Jackson unraveled me from the first moment I’d laid eyes on him?

Five years ago, I think. Five years almost to the day from when I’d first met him. Five years and two days from the moment I’d asked him to walk away from me.

No, not two days. Two lifetimes. Two eternities. Because there is no way that I could have crammed everything I felt for him—everything I still feel for him—into so short a time.

Except I did. We did.

It started, I remember, with the pandas.

I’d had a truly crap day. I’d just been fired. Or sort of fired. My boss, an Atlanta real estate investor named Reggie Gale, had decided to retire and had chosen to tell me that rather disturbing news while we were driving to a private reception hosted by the Brighton Consortium, a group comprised of various real estate professionals, and of which Gale was a member.

Considering I’d moved from Los Angeles to Atlanta straight after college to work for Gale, and considering I loved both real estate and my job, I wasn’t having the most awesome of days. I was twenty-one years old, I’d been employed by Gale for not quite six weeks, I still hadn’t bought curtains for my apartment. And I wasn’t thrilled about diving back into the job market.