‘Yeah, I’m sure they do, unless they’re serial killers.’
She grinned, the sparkle in her eyes making him notice again the imperfection she shared with Roman.
‘Luckily I didn’t catch a lift with any of those,’ she said with a jaunty disregard for her own safety.
‘Luckily...’he growled, not sure whether to be horrified or beguiled by her cock-eyed optimism and her faith in human nature. For all her recklessness, and her newfound enthusiasm in discovering the joys of sex, Ellie MacGregor was about as worldly-wise as Bambi. He placed his hands on her neck, stroked the vibrant pulse there and wanted to strangle her, for taking her life into her hands. ‘Eleanor, you could have been raped and murdered.’
‘It’s nice of you to worry,’ she said. ‘But you mustn’t. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. And I don’t need any more overprotective people in my life,’ she finished, but he spotted the sheen of sadness in her eyes before she swung back around. He wondered who she was talking about. Surely it had to be her parents, who had kept her on that island for the whole of her life.
‘Point taken,’ he murmured, stifling the renewed surge of concern.
She was right. She was an adult... Something he’d become intimately aware of in the last thirty-six hours. Plus she wasn’t his responsibility. And he didn’t want her to be.
But even so he couldn’t help asking. ‘Exactly how old are you? When’s your birthday?’
‘June.’ She chuckled. ‘Why, are you planning to throw me a party?’
He laughed too, because they both knew this fling would be over by the summer, but the sound came out raw and forced.
‘No, it’s just...’ There was something pushing at the back of his mind. Something that didn’t make any sense, but he couldn’t seem to let go of it. ‘You said your parents moved to Moira when you were a baby. Do you know where and when you were born? Exactly?’
She glanced over her shoulder at him, the curious smile making him feel kind of dumb. ‘Aye, of course I do. It was a home birth on June twentieth. They were living in a remote area of the Highlands on Scotland’s northern tip, my father was working as a forester in Drummorag National Forest. Why so interested?’
It was dumb and he knew it. No way was she Eloise Fraser. She couldn’t be, because he was already convinced Roman’s kid sister had died in the Highlands over twenty years ago. No baby could have survived that weather for any length of time, and no one could have taken the kid without leaving a trace behind them...
But he couldn’t seem to shake the weird feeling that Eleanor was the same age as Eloise, with that same damn heterochromia that Roman remembered his baby sister having... And if no one had witnessed her birth but her parents... It wasn’t completely outside the realms of possibility. And he needed it to be.
Because surely this was where the niggle of guilt was coming from.
The nasty possibility, however insane, that he might be sleeping with his best pal’s long-lost sister, rather than the even more insane thought that a white-knight complex he had destroyed years ago had suddenly come back to bite him on the butt...
He sucked in a breath, ran his thumb down her cold cheek and murmured, ‘How would you feel about taking a DNA test?’
‘A DNA test...’ Ellie smiled. Surely he had to be joking, but, for the first time since they’d arrived in the Adirondacks, he looked deadly serious.
In the last few days, she’d barely had a chance to breathe, she’d been so overwhelmed by Alex Costa’s energy and purpose and the discovery of a playful, provocative side that had driven her insane with lust.
The man was a sex machine. But it turned out so was she. Who knew? And wasn’t it glorious to discover that as well as the adrenaline rush of great sex, she felt absolutely no guilt about indulging it. Because Alex was so adept at convincing her their chemistry deserved to be indulged at every available opportunity.
Why should she worry about later? When this adventure was the best she’d ever had. She’d certainly made up for the celibacy of her teenage years in the last thirty-six hours. Big time.
She knew it wouldn’t last. In fact, she didn’t need it to last. As well as being a sex god, Alex Costa was also the most guarded man she’d ever met. He was completely unavailable, emotionally. Which meant she’d have to be a fool to fall for him. And one thing she’d never been was a fool.
He’d made it clear, with everything he hadn’t said, that hot nights and hot lazy days were all he had to offer, for a limited time only. So she had decided to grab it with both hands before she had to let it go.
But let it go she would. Because this adventure wasn’t a part of her real life, any more than Alex Costa’s insanely beautiful lakeside retreat.
She wasn’t sure what she’d expected to find when she’d boarded his helicopter in Staten Island. Probably something glaringly modern and expertly designed like his penthouse apartment. But this log ‘cabin’—elegantly built during the ‘Great Camp’ era of the eighteen-nineties for a railroad baron and his family as they pretended to ‘rough it’ in the lap of luxury—was the exact opposite of that style-conscious statement property on Central Park West.
Constructed from wood cut from the local National Forest and firestone mined in nearby quarries—the interior designed to complement a bygone era with hand-crafted rugs and quilts and lovingly restored walnut and beechwood furniture—the cabin with its six bedrooms, three sitting rooms, vaulted living room with open fireplaces and a Shaker-style kitchen the size of a football field, was more like a mansion. The perfectly appointed lakeside setting, complete with jetty and boathouse, had taken her breath away that first morning, when she’d woken up after a night of no-holds-barred debauchery to see the snowflakes tumbling down while Alex’s rampant erection perked up against her backside.
Really the whole experience so far had been nothing short of a sensory overload.
But it felt as if something fundamental had changed in the last few minutes. The disapproving frown on his face when she’d told him about hitchhiking to Glasgow almost as disturbing as the preposterous request.
‘Why on earth would I take a DNA test?’ she said, although she had a sneaky suspicion she knew why. She stepped out of his arms, upset. And not wanting to be. ‘I told you, Alex. I’m not Eloise, nor am I pretending to be. I hope you’re no still...’
‘Hey, I know you’re not.’ He cupped her cheek, his gaze darkening with something that looked disturbingly like regret. ‘It’s just there’s enough about your background that doesn’t add up to make me want to be sure.’