Sweeter Than Revenge Read Free

of society for a year, as long as she came out of it a millionaire.
    “Fine,” she said, but she didn’t mean it.
    Maybe she could still weasel her way out of this. Her father might talk a good game, but he’d always been a marshmallow where she was concerned. He hated to see her suffer, and always had. His bark had always been worse than his bite, and that hadn’t changed in the last ten minutes. The thing to do was go to work a couple of times, show him a little effort and a little good faith, and then resume life as she’d known it here by the pool. He’d get distracted by work, like he always did, and pretty soon he’d forget all about his demands and threats. Yeah. That could work. Her spirits lifted.
    “Don’t think you’re going to weasel your way out of this,” Ellis said.
    Her spirits sank. She didn’t care for his pinched, stern face or the note of warning in his voice.
    “I know how your brain works, Maria,” he continued. “You think I’m a marshmallow. But I’m telling you things have changed. There’ll be consequences if you don’t try. Understand?”
    “Perfectly,” she snarled.
    A broad, triumphant smile flashed over his face. “Wonderful. And now I’d like you to meet your new boss.”
    Raising a hand, he signaled to the veranda and someone—she couldn’t see who at first—moved out of the shadows. Then the person leaned both hands on the white rail like a king surveying his domain and she realized, with horror, that it was David Hunt, the man who, four years ago, had taken her heart and smashed it into a billion unrecognizable pieces.
    The world as she’d known it up until now spun out from beneath her.

Chapter 2
    Chapter 2
    Getting back on her unsteady feet, she watched him come closer and wondered how she could possibly survive this encounter with the man who’d loved and left her. Well, lefther, anyway.
    He’d changed—she saw that right away. Once he merely walked, but now he prowled with supreme confidence, owning the ground and the world around him the way Chris Rock owns the stage during one of his shows. He’d thinned down and muscled up, too; the slight breeze pressed his short-sleeved, blue silk shirt against a torso that had not one ounce of body fat on it. The height, the wide shoulders, the narrow waist and the endless long legs—none of that had changed, of course. But flecks of gray dotted the wavy black hair at his temples now.
    And his face. That was different.
    Not the laughing brown eyes or the clean-shaven, deep chocolate skin. His cheekbones—that was it. Before they’d just been high, but now they were sharp and arrogant. So were the heavy, quirked brows and the long, straight nose. Faint, interesting wrinkles bracketed his mouth and lined his eyes, giving him a wiser, more mature air. He looked amused and cynical now, as though the whole world was a joke. As though he’d seen and done it all, and didn’t know what she—or anyone—could possibly say to interest him.
    He stopped in front of her, staring openly. His cool, assessing gaze slid up over her mostly nude body, touching her legs and arms, lingering on her hips and breasts.
    Her face burned but she held still, trying not to fidget under this inspection. Modesty was a worthless virtue, and one she’d never possessed. Hard work in the yoga studio and at the gym kept her body fabulous, and she knew it. But now her near-nakedness made her feel exposed and vulnerable, as if she needed to grab her towel and cover herself.
    Why did she feel this way? David Hunt knew her body better than anyone else on the planet, including, probably, her. There was not one inch of skin, curve, hollow or hair follicle with which he was not intimately familiar. But of course that was the old David Hunt who’d loved her body.
    This David Hunt was a stranger.
    Finally he looked her in the eye. One brow arched skyward and one corner of his mouth inched up in a disquieting half smile.
    “Hello, Maria.”
    The