Page 60 of Bitter Rival

He thinks about it for a moment, his hand stroking his jaw. “Probably, yes.”

I run my finger down the cracked spine of The Count of Monte Cristo, pull it off the shelf and flip through the yellowed pages.

Holding it close to my face, I breathe in the scent, and it transports me to another time and place.

Beckett was reading this book the summer he was thirteen. I remember how he used to sit down by the creek with his back leaning against the trunk of a willow tree and read for hours.

I would beg him to read aloud, and then I’d reenact the scene, jousting with a stick or strutting around in my pretend cape like I was a count while he laughed at my antics.

“You’re Dantès,” I say. “Driven by revenge.”

Beckett was also my Heathcliff. My Darcy. My Edmund. My first crush. The first boy who ever stole my heart.

I would have followed that boy anywhere.

I had hearts for eyes and flowers blooming from my chest and I wonder if he ever noticed.

“You think that’s the only thing I care about? Revenge?” he asks, and now he’s standing before me, close enough to touch. Close enough to inhale his singular scent. Warm spice. Leather. Pheromones.

“I think it’s the only reason you agreed to this, yes. I don’t think you’re here for the money any more than I am. You want to find a way to make your father pay even though he’s already in the grave.”

His gaze flits over my face. “So clever.”

I return the book to its spot on the shelf and turn to face him. “So what’s your plan?”

“To sell this place to my father’s enemy, of course.” He tilts his head. “Are you going to try to stop me?”

I smile. It feels like another game. “Is that what you’re hoping I do? Save you from yourself?”

“I fully embrace who I am. Who I’ve become. I’m not looking to be saved, Daisy.”

“Well, at least we have one thing in common, Beckett.” I lift my chin. “Neither am I.”

“Good. Because I’m not in the business of saving people. Especially not the daughter of my sworn enemy.”

It sounds like he’s trying to convince himself that it still holds true. His words don’t hold their customary bite.

“The woman who ruined your life,” I remind him, throwing fuel on the fire. “If it’s any consolation, she didn’t treat me much better.”

“It’s not.”

That might be the sweetest thing he’s ever said to me. His words compel me to take another step closer. He doesn’t try to put any distance between us and I don’t move a single muscle.

It feels like the air has shifted and all the molecules have rearranged.

I inhale a breath and exhale a shaky one.

Neither of us moves. The air is still. Quiet except for the sound of our breathing. Mine sounds ragged.

I want him.

It hits me with a sudden force and I nearly stagger from the weight of it.

This has nothing to do with an erotic dream.

I want the guy standing before me. The one made of flesh and bone and muscle.

Beckett Heyward with his arctic eyes and sharp jaw and rippling abs.

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