ask that you respect my decision to keep my personal life private this time around.”
“This time? I’d say privacy is a permanent state for you, Colette.” The sultry pitch of his voice called up memories she’d spent the last five years trying to eradicate. It made her skin buzz with awareness and brought a terrifying weakness to her knees. His gaze dipped to her mouth, her throat, the scalloped neckline of her dress. “It took me months to excavate even the tiniest crack in that shell of yours.”
Heat burned a fiery path from chest to hairline, and Colette swallowed in an attempt to regain her composure, to quell her body’s response to his nearness. “Yes, well, I let my guard down with you when I shouldn’t have,” she said, clearing her throat. “What we shared was … temporary. We were on a fast track to nowhere. You knew it as well as I.”
His eyes reclaimed hers. “While you made sure we had no detours along the way, didn’t you?”
She hated the accusation in his tone, the unwelcome sting of guilt his words wrought. “Why are you even here, Stephen? You own the Whitfield Grand, and a place like that doesn’t run itself.”
His mouth tipped into a cold, grim curve. “Did I imply it did?”
“You’re not there. What else am I supposed to think?”
“I only own fifty percent of the Grand. And ever since the family’s economic downturn, several other partial owners have taken a renewed interest in its day-to-day operations.” His nostrils flared with palpable annoyance. “I find I don’t like sharing the wheel.”
She stared at him in surprise, unable to envision the Whitfield Grand with anyone but Stephen at the helm. “Surely they’d want you to remain in charge, given how successfully you ran it before?”
“You’d think so, but you’d be wrong.” His controlled expression only hinted at his carefully corralled temper. “The Whitfields and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and it’s proven … interesting, to say the least. Fortunately I’ve spent the past few years expanding my holdings beyond the Grand, and I’ve been able to disengage on occasion.”
“But why New York?” she asked. “I’d have thought you’d be quite content dominating Europe.”
“Don’t be modest,” he said. “You know my interest in America all began with you.”
She flushed and dropped her gaze to the knot of his maroon tie. “Don’t be absurd.”
“I’m not,” he said, with the same whiskey heat of their past, firing her blood with a disconcerting blend of fear and awareness.
She clung to the fear, determined to dispel the memory of his voice caressing her in the dark.
“You didn’t even know I was in New York,” she reminded him as she raised her eyes. “I had nothing to do with your decision to buy the Renaissance.”
A small, triumphant smile crooked his mouth, straying nowhere near his eyes. “Then I guess fate has intervened, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t believe in fate.”
He cocked his head, his gaze flashing with heat before a sweep of dark lashes shuttered his response from view. “You haven’t changed at all, have you? You’re still stubborn. Still secretive. Still confident that you can control everything.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being in charge of my own life.”
“You can’t control the world. Other lives will intercept yours whether you want them to or not.”
“Not if I don’t allow it,” she insisted, scuttling sideways. Away from him.
“I see you’re still good at pushing people away.” He tracked her retreat, robbing her of her equilibrium and the false sense of security her space provided.
She firmed her jaw. “Yes.”
“I wonder how long it’s going to take for you to figure out that I always push back.”
Facing the only man with whom she’d ever lowered her guard, the only man who’d been persistent enough to chip through her walls, she marshaled her defenses anew. She couldn’t allow him to drag her into a discussion of their past. Too much was at stake. “You kept me here to talk about my file,” she reminded him. “So, unless there’s something else you need to discuss, I really am expected elsewhere.”
His intent blue gaze told her he wasn’t to be diverted. “What did you tell Masters about your time in London?”
She scowled, trying desperately to ignore the little flip in her stomach his question elicited. “Why were you discussing me with Bill?”
“I wasn’t. He volunteered things without a single query from me.”
Sucking in a shallow breath, she squared her shoulders and prepared for the worst. “Bill talks