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spent every moment of his day doing his duty, making himself the worthy successor to his family’s legacy. Larissa only wanted unrestricted access to her family’s money, the better to spend her life shopping it all away. He felt his jaw tense.
    “I have other sources of income,” she said, waving a hand as if such sources grew thick in the trees. But then, in their world of endless privilege, stretching back across centuries, they often did. “It was Theo who was so obsessed with Whitney Media. He and my father and their high-stakes corporate games. I begin to nod off to sleep wheneverthe topic comes up. I’m getting remarkably drowsy now.”
    Jack laughed then, despite himself, and moved across the room in a few sure steps. He leaned down toward her, bracing himself on the arms of the chair, bringing his face far too close to hers as he trapped her in her seat.
    “Let me tell you what I think,” he said, satisfaction surging through him at the faint alarm that flashed across her face. At least it was an honest reaction.
Any
reaction.
    “If you feel you must,” she drawled, but he could see the pulse beat against the tender flesh of her neck, and he knew she was not nearly as unmoved as she pretended. He leaned closer.
    “I think that you came to this island in the worst of the fall storms to drag me into this little battle you pretend you don’t care about.” He could smell her scent again, and it made his body harden, though he still held himself just slightly apart from her. There were many forms of revenge, after all, and not all of them required that he betray himself. “As you keep pointing out, I have become so boring, haven’t I? Positively respectable. Not one of your usual doomed bad-boy projects or untrustworthy celebrity lovers. I’d be the perfect ally, wouldn’t I, Larissa? I’d make you look reborn. Your father would eat right out of your hand if you brought him me on a silver platter, wouldn’t he?”
    It was a fantastic plan, Larissa thought, her eyes searching his dark, commanding gaze. Brilliant, even. Nothing thrilled her father more than pedigrees that matched and/or exceeded his own. Bradford Whitney cared about nothing at all save the Whitney legacy, by which he meant his own continued wealth and consequence and all that entailed. Larissa had long been a grave disappointment to him in this area.
    When she had brought Theo Markou Garcia home as her boyfriend, and had eventually made him her fiancé, she had mostly been interested in the fact that he came from absolutely nothing—a sin she’d been certain Bradford could never overlook. But she had underestimated Theo. He had taken over the company, becoming the son Bradford had never had in the process. That he had finally left her was, Larissa knew, something Bradford would never find it in him to forgive her. Much less the fact that Theo’s near-miraculous ability as CEO to make Whitney Media rake in profits had disappeared with him.
    But Jack Endicott Sutton would be exactly the right kind of salve for Bradford’s bruised ego and slightly depressed portfolio. Any suggestion that Larissa, the great disappointment and stain upon the Whitney name, could link herself to a man like Jack? The single heir to two separate great American families, from Mayflower Boston and Upper Ten Thousand New York both—and the vast fortunes that came with each? A man who had transformed himself from notorious if beloved rake to dependable, hardworking, worthy successor to all his family’s innumerable riches? Bradford would be beside himself.
    Larissa imagined that somewhere in the depths of the iconic Whitney mansion that sprawled over a whole city block on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, her father was suddenly filled with an unimaginable if unclear joy, simply because the very
idea
of linking the Gilded Age splendor of the Whitney name to the august Bostonian Endicotts and the clever Sutton robber-barons-turned-bankers had occurred to someone,