Every Breath You Take Read online

  Embarrassed by all the flattery, Kate smiled and said, “I’m following that, tonight, you want me to think I’m wonderful.”

  “You are wonderful. Now, this brings us to Mitchell Wyatt. Sometime in the next couple of hours, you’re going to come face-to-face with him—” Three women, laughing and talking, walked into the lounge to check their makeup, and Holly and Kate both turned to the mirror, pretending they were doing the same thing.

  Kate reached into her purse for her lipstick, but her entire body was in flight mode at the thought of looking into Mitchell’s blue eyes and seeing that hard, handsome face again. He’d made her laugh, he’d made her moan with pleasure, and then he’d held her in his arms as if he never wanted to let her go. Worse, much worse, he’d made her care so much that she thought she was in love with him.

  And then he’d sent her back to break up with Evan, never intending to be there when she returned.

  Viewed with the clarity of hindsight, she realized now that everything Mitchell did from the moment she met him—even sending for an ambulance and doctor to help Max—was done to ensure the accomplishment of his ultimate goal. There was no doubt in her mind now that he’d sent her that Bloody Mary himself and then sauntered into the restaurant to introduce himself. In fact, just thinking about the way he’d made a date with her after she spilled the drink on him made her grind her teeth: “If I were you, I’d offer to take me to dinner …” Of all the egotistical, cocky, overconfident …

  He must have been amazed and very pleased when he introduced himself and she didn’t recognize his name. Her ignorance made it so much easier for him, and so much more fun, as he seduced Evan Bartlett’s witless girlfriend.

  “Stop going over everything he did in your mind!” Holly said urgently, the instant the other women departed. “Just for tonight, you have to forget all the awful details and be completely objective, or you won’t be able to pull this off! The simple reality is this: Mitchell Wyatt is a man with an ego that’s so fragile he needed to seduce you to get even with Evan for knowing his secret.

  “If you’d agreed to jump into bed with him after the two of you had dinner at the villa, it would have been over with that night and you wouldn’t have gotten emotionally involved. Instead, you insisted on knowing something about him first, so he had to come back to you and tell you about his brother; then he had to start actively seducing you in the garden. Once he realized you weren’t going to sleep with him in Evan’s hotel room, he had to get a hotel in St. Maarten. In St. Maarten, he warned you not to have any illusions or false expectations about going to bed with him. He told you he didn’t want complications or ‘magic,’ he just wanted an afternoon of good sex with you. Again, you turned down his offer, so he had to come back at you with that ‘Let’s get complicated—I felt everything you did last night’ routine.”

  “Are you saying that what happened was partly my fault?”

  “God, no! I’m trying to make you see that hurting you wasn’t his actual goal; his goal was to either coerce Evan’s silence or bring Evan down to his level by having a fling with Evan’s girlfriend.”

  Kate shivered at the coldness of his logic and the ruthlessness of his methods.

  “I’ll tell you something I haven’t said before,” Holly continued. “I think that, at some point, Wyatt had a better time with you than he expected. Otherwise, he’d have patted you on the butt when he finished having sex with you the first time and sent you back to the villa.”

  “Why would he do that when I was such an eager, cooperative bed partner?” Kate said with bitter self-recrimination.

  “That’s a good point, but why would he also take you to a casino, and, most revealing of all, why would he sit up in bed with you and watch the sunrise? Guys who only want sex from a woman roll off her afterward and go to sleep.”

  To Kate’s shame, she clutched at that morsel of consolation, not because she believed it, but because she desperately needed something to reduce the humiliation she felt.

  “However,” Holly continued brightly, “that doesn’t change the fact that he’s a cold, calculating bastard with a giant ego and that you’re entitled to exact whatever petty revenge you can tonight.”

  “How can I do that?” Kate asked, leaning back against the vanity table and eyeing Holly with fascination.

  “You have to treat him as if he was nothing but a completely forgettable flirtation.”

  “He’s not going to buy that. He knew how I felt. I left to go and break up with Evan and promised to hurry back.”

  “Yes, but he can’t be one hundred percent sure you did it! Furthermore, he can’t be one hundred percent sure that you weren’t just using him as a temporary stud in Evan’s absence. In fact, he can’t be one hundred percent sure that you didn’t know who he was all along and that your goal wasn’t to pry some juicy details about his life out of him to share with all your friends!”

  “Who would do such a thing?” Kate scoffed.

  “The women in your new social circle—which also happens to be the same social circle he’s accustomed to,” Holly said flatly. “Believe me, I know what they’re like. I grew up in their Temple of Brittle Humor and Barren Hearts. Evan understands instinctively how the game needs to be played; that’s why he wanted you to be here tonight. He’ll make sure Wyatt sees you with him, laughing and talking and holding your head up. In doing that, Evan will be illustrating to Wyatt that he’s so insignificant that nothing he does could possibly matter to either of you.”

  “And to think,” Kate said with a rueful smile, “I’m supposed to be the one with the knowledge of psychology.”

  “They don’t write psychology books to cover the mind-set of the elite few. Anyway, you get the picture now, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So, here is the only emotion you’re allowed to display when you bump into Wyatt tonight. Here is the only emotion that will get you some revenge—”

  “I give up,” Kate said, smiling at Holly’s dramatic pause. “What is it?”

  “Amusement! You are going to treat him with amusement—as if you know an amusing little secret that he doesn’t know.”

  “What sort of secret knowledge could I possibly have?” Kate asked, frustrated.

  “That is the very question he’ll start asking himself. That is the question that will trouble him for a long time.”

  Matt and Meredith exchanged smiling glances with Mitchell as he tried to maneuver his aunt in their direction while she clung to his arm, chattering happily and making him stop every few steps so she could introduce him to someone else. He was over a foot taller than she, and in order to hear her, he had to tip his head way down.

  Matt walked over to the bar and ordered vodka for Mitchell. By the time Matt returned with the drink, Mitchell was finally arriving with his aunt. Holding the drink out to him, Matt said, “Here’s your reward for the successful completion of a long and arduous journey.”

  “I can use it,” Mitchell replied. Lifting the glass to his lips, he glanced up …

  And he saw Kate.

  He froze, staring, his brows drawn together in disbelief that she was here, and that the jean-clad girl with curly red hair who’d kissed him on the balcony in St. Maarten was the glamorous redhead in a sophisticated satin gown strolling casually through the roomful of wealthy socialites, many of whom were drawing her aside to kiss her on the cheek and chat with her.

  “That’s Kate Donovan,” Matt provided, following his gaze. “Her father died recently, and I understand she’s going to try to run his restaurant. Have we ever eaten at Donovan’s when you were here?”

  “No.”

  “We’ll have to do that when you’re here next time.” Drily, he added, “I never had much luck getting reservations with less than two weeks’ notice when her father was alive. Maybe Kate will give us a break.”

  Olivia happily made her own contribution to the discussion. “Did you know Kate just got engaged down in the islands?” she asked Meredith an