Glow Read Free Page B

and decorate a whole new suite, if you didn’t
plan
on us sleeping together from the first? Why else would I be in the CEO of Durand Enterprises’
bedroom
if you didn’t expect us to become lovers?” she demanded.
    Dylan suppressed a sigh. Despite the fact that she grasped his waist and lightly pressed her breasts and belly against him in a tempting gesture, her trademark wary expression remained as she stared up at him.
    â€œI didn’t do it because I had plans to seduce you,” he told her with an air of finality, mapping her elegant, supple spine and the tight curve of her hip with his hands. He felt his need for her mount. How would all of this have played out, if this powerful attraction hadn’t been there? It was so hard to say, but he would have contrived something to bring her closer to him.
    â€œ
Why
, then?” she insisted, undaunted by a tone that Dylan used regularly to cow some of the most tried and hard-boiled executives in the world. Of course it didn’t faze Alice. He closed his eyes briefly. Damn it, she could be impossible.
    â€œDylan?”
    â€œI felt like an interloper, being in here . . . knowing you were about to come to the Durand Estate.”
    â€œYou felt like an
interloper
?” she asked slowly, looking dazed. “Because this was Alan Durand’s house? Because of your history with him?”
    He held her stare. “Because it was no longer my room, Alice. No longer my home, really. Not since you came. Period.”
    Regret sliced through him at his harsh tone when he saw her lush lower lip quiver.
    â€œI’m sorry,” he said, frustrated. “It’s just that sometimes, you keep pressing. And it’s hard to know when you want the truth and when you don’t.”
    â€œI know,” she said quickly. She, too, looked regretful. “And it’s not true, what you said. Of course Castle Durand is your home. You own it, don’t you? You bought it?”
    â€œYes, but only because Alan Durand offered the house to me as part of the special contract he created to make it possible for me to purchase Durand shares when he made me the CEO. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it at that time in my life if he didn’t offer me certain concessions.” He exhaled at the memory of their negotiations for his taking over Durand Enterprises. Alan had been so stubborn. So insistent. So
generous
in contriving a way to set terms that would allow Dylan to smoothly and completely take over the helm of the company. He missed Alan Durand, more than he liked to admit.
    â€œOnce, a lord’s title was tied to the land. That’s what Alan explained to me. Alan loved his European history and traveling,” he recalled with fond, wry amusement. “He insisted that I’d be taken more seriously as the head of Durand Enterprises if I was master of the company’s symbolic domain.”
    â€œThe castle and the estate,” Alice said, a small smile flickering across her lips. She sobered. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard what he died of. Alan Durand.”
    â€œTesticular cancer.”
    He saw a shadow cross her face. He tensed. But she’d asked, hadn’t she? She’d been prepared for that truth? He was wary of her asking more questions. Instead, she inhaled and looked away.
    She’s not ready to discuss their deaths any further yet.
He didn’t know if he should be worried or relieved about that. He did know one thing. If
he
ever made the bizarre discovery that he’d once hada loving mother and father, he wouldn’t be too eager to plunge into the topic of losing them before he’d ever even known them. Her denial was the only way she was coping right now, and he had to try to respect that while she slowly assimilated to a new reality. It’d only been a few days since he’d told her about Addie Durand, after all.
    He felt as if he navigated a minefield with