Either way, I will fight for you.
Either way, all I have and all I am is yours.
Chapter 2
ROHAN
In Rohan’s line of work, there was significant overlap between the art of negotiation and the art of war. If at first you did not succeed, you chose a different pressure point and tried again. Personal matters, however, were a different sort of beast, which was precisely why Rohan had always made it his policy to avoid attachments of any kind.
And then there was Savannah Grayson.
She slammed Rohan back against the wall the moment he stepped into the room she and her twin had claimed aboard the yacht on which all of them had been sequestered for hours.
Savannah’s eyes locked on to Rohan’s. “I told you to stay away from my sister.”
She had indeed—rather forcefully. Technically,Gigiwas the one Rohan had approached about an alliance, the one he’d asked to accompany him back to England, but Savannah had wasted no time in shutting that down, and it was clear from the way she had been standing guard over her sister’s sleeping form that to get to Gigi again, Rohan would have to go through Savannah.
The prospect was not without appeal.
“You told me a lot of things.” Rohan smiled, a pointed smile, one meant to get a rise out of her.
Refusing to take the bait, Savannah dropped her hold on him. “I told yougood-bye.”
In those words, Rohan heard shades of others she’d said to him before.You do not get to decide whether or not I betray you. All you get to decide is whether you are really that scared. Of me.
“I have a proposition for you.” Rohan let his gaze linger on Savannah’s. “One that I would wager you do not want your sister to hear.”
Wagers made. Deals struck.That was how this thing between Rohan and the formidable Ms. Grayson had gone, almost since the beginning.
“The answer,” Savannah said, her voice sharp as diamonds and clear as glass, “is no.”
Rohan glided forward and angled his head down. “Is it?” he murmured. “Because my proposition involves Brady’s sponsor—and what said sponsor offered you.”
What Savannah had been offered was the location of a body. Her father’s, to be specific. And all she’d had to do to earn that information was find a way to take Rohan out of the Grandest Game. Ultimately, Savannah had rather mystifyingly chosen not to betray him, but shehadwon the game. Rohan had lost, and that might be enough to earn Savannah the information she sought.
Having baited the hook, Rohan swept out of the room. As he wound his way through the yacht, as Savannah deigned to follow on his heels, Rohan wondered if she’d even once flashed back to the moment when he’d slipped his dice into her hand. The moment he’d given her the win.
What choice, he’d asked her in the aftermath,did I have? Right from the start, what choice did I have with you?
Rohan had an hour at most to win her back to his side now. The dead of night lasted only so long. One way or another, dawn was coming, and thus, Rohan lost no time leading Savannah back to the last place the two of them had truly been a team: the yacht’s hot tub. Champagne bottles that had been nestled in ice during the game lay at the bottom of the adjacent pool now.
“That’s the thing about ice,” Rohan said without turning around. “Barring freezing temperatures, it always melts.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Savannah said behind him.
“The laws of thermodynamics?” Rohan quipped.
“The melting of ice. A change of heart. Last I checked, neither of us has one to change.”
There you are, winter girl.Rohan turned back to face her. “You’re here, aren’t you?” he said. She’d followed him. This wasn’t over.Theyweren’t.
“I didn’t take you out.” Savannah cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Iwon. Who’s to say Brady’s sponsor would feel she owed me anything for that?”
“Who indeed?” Rohan replied.
“Even if I wanted what she had to offer,” Savannah continued, “even if I thought an argument could be made that I’d earned it, I wouldn’t needyoufor that.”
“You know where to find her, then.” Rohan played along. “Zella.”