Owned By My Dangerous Stepbrother

Chapter Three

Isla

— ❀ —

“The man who can destroy your whole life is about to be your stepbrother?” Bex screamed.

“Keep your f*****g voice down.”

She sat cross-legged on my bed in her scrubs, eating Theo’s crisps. Rebecca Nathan had been my best friend since we were eleven. A&E nurse. Mouth like a drain. The only person alive who knew what I really did in the box room, and she had sworn on her mother’s life to take it to the grave.

“The man from the auction,” she said. “The one who broke a stranger’s hand for you.”

“Not for me. Men don’t do things for you, Bex. They do things to you and send the bill later.”

“Is he hot?”

“Bex.”

“It’s a medical question. Dilated pupils, racing pulse.”

“That’s fear.”

“Mm-hm.” She threw me a crisp. “Eat something. And if he touches you tonight, bite.”

“Bex.”

“I work nights in A&E. I know what charming looks like on the way in, and it’s never the one holding the knife who’s rude.” She dug a lipstick out of her pocket and swept it across my mouth. “Red. If he’s going to look, make him pay for the view.”

She hugged me hard, all hand gel and cheap vanilla. “You don’t have to go.”

“Yes, I do. Theo.” That was the whole answer. It always was.

— ❀ —

I had rehearsed a hundred ways of meeting him again. None of them involved roast duck.

The dining room at Ravenscar was bigger than our entire flat. A chandelier hung over the table like a frozen waterfall. Theo gripped my hand, wide-eyed, while Mum floated toward her fiancé, laughing at something that wasn’t funny. I wore my one good dress from a charity shop, and held my head high like I belonged.

Cassian Hale stood at the sideboard.

White shirt open at the throat. No mask, no gloves, a wine glass in a tattooed hand. His eyes passed over me once, slowly, and showed no recognition at all.

It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen.

He shook Theo’s hand gravely, and Theo looked ready to faint with joy. Then he turned to me and held out his palm.

I had to take it.

Warm. Dry. Utterly steady. My pulse skittered under his fingers, and his thumb lay across my knuckles for exactly one second longer than courtesy allowed.

“Miss Marren.”

“Mr. Hale.”

“Cassian. We’re about to be family.”

Dinner was torture. He never looked at me. He asked Theo about football and my mother how she had met his father. A chestnut-haired woman sat at his left with her hand on his sleeve. Celeste, the fiancée. She looked like a trophy that had learned to smile.

Theo beamed at everything. I didn’t. Julian refilled my mother’s glass before it was empty and touched the small of her back as if she were something he’d already bought. His eyes weren’t on her. They were on me.

“Theo, you must come riding,” Julian said. “Ravenscar has stables.”

“Can Isla come?”

“Isla is welcome anywhere.” His eyes stayed on me a moment too long. “Isla’s a restorer,” he said, beaming. “Seventeenth-century Dutch.”

“Mostly,” I said. My mouth had gone dry.

“My favourite period.” Cassian’s eyes met mine at last. Brown. Clear. Patient. A hunter’s eyes. “Who taught you?”

“My father.”

“Daniel Marren. I’ve heard the name.” He raised his glass. “A gifted man. His death was a loss to the trade.”

“Do you paint, Isla?” Celeste tilted her head. “Or only mend?”

“Mend.” It came out smooth. Years of practice. “Other people’s mistakes.”

“How useful.” said Celeste. “Restoring must be such a forgiving trade. If you ruin something, you only make it look old.”

“That’s forgery,” I said. “Restorers don’t get to lie.”

“Of course. How silly of me.” She turned back to her wine.

Julian tapped his glass with a spoon. “Before dessert. Nora and I have an announcement.”

My stomach dropped.

“We’re marrying,” he said. “In nine days.”

Silence.

“Nine days?” It tore out of me. “Mum. You’ve known him four months.”

She didn’t flinch, she only smiled. A soft, secret, practised smile, and she put her hand over Julian’s on the tablecloth.

“I wanted to tell you, darling, but it's great news” she said.

So she had known. She had sat in our kitchen at 2 a.m. and let me think it was a surprise when she had her decision already.

“Can I wear a tie?” Theo shouted. “A real one?”

“A bow tie,” said Julian, laughing. “Four generations of Hales have worn them.”

Across the table, Cassian’s hand tightened around his glass until the knuckles went white. I watched the stem. I waited for it to snap. It didn’t. He set the glass down carefully, with a precision that scared me, and said nothing at all.

Celeste’s smile flickered. For one second only. Then it was back.

Under the table, my nails dug into my skin, cutting half-moons into my palm.

After dessert, while Julian took my mother to see the library, I escaped to a long hall of dark wood and old oil paintings, silent as a church. I pressed my forehead against the panelling. He doesn’t know. You wore a mask. He never saw your face.

“You’re shaking.”

He stood three steps away with his hands in his pockets. I hadn’t heard him come. Of course I hadn’t.

“I’m fine.”

“Then why are you hiding in a corridor?”

“I'm not hiding, I just needed space to process the f*****g news.”

“Give me your hand.”

“No.”

He took it anyway. He turned it palm up, and his thumb traced a slow line across my fingertips, rough and unhurried, and I felt it all the way down in my stomach.

He still smelled of cedar and smoke. My body knew that smell before my brain did. It leaned toward him like a plant to a window. I locked my knees.

“Linseed oil,” he said quietly. “Turpentine. And underneath, lead white.” He lifted my fingers to his face and breathed in. “You must have scrubbed for an hour. It’s in the skin. It never comes out.”

The floor tilted. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“Bloody liar.” He sounded cold and scary. “I know what you're hiding, Isla. You’re very good. But lying still doesn’t end well for anyone.”

He let go. Stepped back. Straightened his cuffs like a man who’d just closed a deal.

“My study. Second floor, end of the hall. Ten minutes.”

“And if I don’t come?”

He smiled for the first time. It was the loveliest, coldest smile I had ever seen.

“Then I tell your mother what her daughter really does for a living.”