An Heiress to Remember (The Gilded Age Girls Club #3) - Maya Rodale Page 0,10

anymore. On the first of June in 1879 he’d wanted her with the heat of a thousand suns. He would have died for her. That was before she accepted the duke, a rebuke to him and what they had shared and who she thought he could become. He had thought she loved him back and believed in him. Clearly not.

Now he only wanted revenge.

He had waited sixteen years; he could wait a few more minutes.

But the moment was interrupted.

By a woman.

For why else would all the men suddenly stand at attention? But for a woman, crashing into a gentlemen’s board meeting, strolling in like she owned the place. She did not even bother with hello.

“Gentlemen. There will be no sale.”

Wes stiffened. He knew that voice, even if he hadn’t heard it in sixteen years, even if it was soft-spoken. Even if her voice trembled. Her voice was inscribed in his soul and haunted his dreams. And if there was any doubt, he knew the way her voice made his heartbeat pick up the pace as if it had somewhere to go, immediately, and that somewhere was in her arms.

You’d think sixteen years would be enough time to forget about it. Apparently not.

My name is Wes Dalton. You stole my love and insulted my honor. I have sworn revenge.

Revenge, he reminded himself. Revenge.

But . . . she was back.

It was inevitable that they would meet again once she returned to Manhattan. The island was a big city and a small town all at once.

Truth be told, he’d expected to see her.

Not like this.

Not here.

Wes would never admit it but he had fantasized about seeing her again. But in his fantasies they were in a ballroom, or in his shop, or some other place where he could display his wealth and his power and the fact that despite all efforts to the contrary, they moved in the same circles now. He was eligible now.

But he didn’t want her anymore. He wanted revenge and he wanted it more than anything.

She might complicate things.

Connor had warned him.

She’d always been the flaw in his plans.

The wrench in his machine.

“There will be no sale,” she repeated as she swept into the room in a rush of dark red skirts, a smartly tailored jacket, and a hat perched upon her upswept blond hair. She stood with her spine straight and chin held high like a duchess. She seemed terrified and ferocious all at once.

But it was still her. The girl. The one with the soft skin and loud laughter. The one with golden hair and passionate kisses and spark that everyone had always tried to dim. She was the one who made him dare to dream of more. She was the reason he was here: rich beyond belief, wildly successful, and about to own the one thing she’d always loved most in the world.

And she was the reason he was lonely.

She was the reason his heart was naught but steel and concrete, like the city she’d left him alone in. He was staring at her—honestly, he couldn’t rip his gaze away—so that’s how he caught the moment that she saw him for the first time in sixteen years.

Confusion.

Widened blue eyes.

A gasp, from her lips.

Because she recognized him—time had been good to him and they’d meant something to each other, there was no denying that—but she didn’t understand what he was doing here. Now. She was looking at him like a complicated algebraic equation or a particularly fraught dinner party seating arrangement.

“Dalton,” she said softly. She remembered him and her expression hardened. And then she put it together. Where they were, why he was likely there. The look she gave was chilling. “Dalton’s.”

He swept into a bow. “Your one and only. Duchess.”

He watched as she put two and two together. He watched as all the implications dawned on her. The poor nobody she’d left behind was now a very rich somebody who was about to buy her store. Her lips pressed into a firm line.

It felt good. Damned satisfying, in fact.

Then Wes smiled at her. Because this was the moment he had been waiting for. All the sweeter that she was here to witness it. He would buy it, the thing she loved most in the world. And he would close it down. The name Goodwin would be a blip on the retail history of this island. While his name and his empire would prevail.

Fortunes reversed.

Beatrice made no move to indicate that they had once known each other.