Page 1
Chapter 1
Paulo Ruffino stood at the window, looking out at the woman in his garden. He’d spent years searching for a weakness in her father. The day he found Madelaine, he stopped looking.
She sat in the sunlight, humming softly to herself as she wandered among the flowers. She looked as though she belonged there, as though the world was still kind and safe.
It wasn’t.
Not here. Not with him.
She was the daughter of his enemy. The key to everything he'd wanted for years. And while she smiled at the roses and tilted her face toward the sun, she remained blissfully unaware of the truth.
She was already his prisoner.
She bent over one of his flowerbeds, muttering softly to herself as she arranged fallen twigs into a pattern only she seemed to understand. Paulo scowled. The woman should have been quaking in fear of him, or at least sulking about her captivity. Instead, she hummed, looking as content as if she were in her own backyard.
With a low growl, he turned away from the window and forced himself back to his desk. Reports waited. Numbers, contracts, shipments. Things that required precision and his full attention. Things that didn’t involve a woman with soft curls and sky-blue eyes who acted as if she hadn’t a care in the world. He reached for a file, determined to ignore her.
“Would you mind if I borrowed some paper?”
Paulo looked up, startled by the unexpected voice at his office doorway. Madelaine Keane stood there, her blue eyes shining and her hands filled with those twigs and leaves, nearly vibrating with excitement as if she’d just stumbled upon a treasure chest. He forced himself to look at her face and not the soft jeans and white T-shirt that clung in all the wrong, and all the right, places. She wasn’t the polished, skeletal version of a beauty that paraded down fashion runways. She was lush. Curvy. Voluptuous.
She was freaking perfect!
No, damn it. That wasn’t the reaction he was supposed to have. She was bait. Nothing more.
“Paper?” he repeated gruffly, jerking his chin toward the printer perched on the credenza. “What do you need it for?”
She crossed the room with a bounce in her step that was irritatingly bright. Dark curls spilled down as she flicked her hair back over her shoulder, the movement so unconsciously feminine it annoyed him. Her crystal-clear eyes, eyes that should have been tainted after growing up with a man like Ronan Keane, held no fear. Only mischief.
Which made her more dangerous.
“I’m making something,” she explained airily, as if she were having a casual conversation with a friend instead of conversing with one of the most dangerous men in Detroit.
Paulo leaned back in his chair, watching her pull several sheets of crisp printer paper from the tray. In the days since he had brought her here, after promising Catarina, Madelaine’s closest friend from boarding school, that he would “hide” her from her father, Paulo had tried to read her the way he could read everyone else. But Madelaine Keane refused to be simple. On the surface she radiated optimism, almost a naïve kind of cheer. She should have been furious. She should have been shattered after growing up under Ronan Keane, a man who meted out violence as casually as a handshake. Yet she wasn’t. At least, not in any way she allowed him to see. In other words, Madelaine Keane was a cheerful mystery.
“Any chance you have a pencil?” she asked, flashing a smile that made his chest tighten for no good reason.
His gaze caught on the freckles dusting the bridge of her nose. Freckles. Hell. That wasn’t adorable. Nothing about this woman was adorable. She was trouble wrapped in a deceptively sweet package.
His scowl deepened, but her overly bright smile didn’t waver. That only made his jaw tighten harder. He had promised Sal Romano and his wife, Catarina, that he would keep Madelaine safe when Ronan Keane suddenly demanded she return home. Outwardly, it was protection, nothing more. In reality, bringing her here had served another purpose. One she didn’t know about, and didn’t need to.
But instead of cowering at Paulo’s dangerous reputation, Madelaine breezed through his house with sunshine in her voice and mischief in her eyes, acting less like a woman in danger and more like a breath of fresh air.
“More arts and crafts?” he grumbled, his tone rougher than he intended.
Her head tilted slightly, a spark of defiance flashing in those sky-filled eyes. “I’m only here for a few days, until I figure out a plan that doesn’t involve being handed around like property by my father. In the meantime, I think better when I’m fiddling with things; branches, stones, whatever I can find. It clears my head. So yes, arts and crafts.”
A flash of raw pain peeked through her sunny façade for a moment, and Paulo felt his heart clench. An unwelcome surge of protectiveness caught him off guard, sharp and immediate, and he didn’t like it. She was Ronan Keane’s daughter, raised in the shadow of a man who treated violence like currency. She couldn’t be as untouched by it as she wanted him to believe. Yet some part of him bristled at the thought of her carrying even a fraction of that weight.
At least, that’s what he told himself. Because anything else, that he might actually enjoy her spirit, her anger, her impossible resilience, was far too dangerous to admit.
Did he feel guilty for lying to his best friends? The thought irritated him more than he cared to admit. Sal and Tony trusted him, had believed him when he said he would protect Catarina’s school friend, keep Madelaine hidden and safe until Ronan Keane’s temper cooled. And yes, he would keep her safe. He would never let harm come to her under his roof. But safety wasn’t the only reason he had agreed to host her.
“I have pens,” he muttered, pulling one from a drawer and offering it across the desk. His hand stayed steady, though his mind wasn’t.
She studied it for a long moment, as if she could peel back the layers of his intent. He waited, unflinching, until she finally accepted.
“I guess I can make it work,” she decided, her lips curving with a smile that reached those impossibly blue eyes.
