Falling for Alexander (Corkscrew Bay #2) by Claire Robyns

onto this forehead, that grey gaze unsettling in its intensity.
    George Ashley and his gilt-caged tiger fled her brain. To be accurate, pretty much everything non-Alexander related fled her head.
    “Favourite colour?” Alexander prompted, and she swore he’d deliberately dialled up the sinful in that accent. “Eggs scrambled or boiled? Birds or bees? Sweet or sour? Not your precious town or the nefarious antics of your ancestors. One thing that’s you.”
    Kate sighed. He wasn ’t asking a lot. Orange. A rusty sunburnt orange. Birds were sinister. Sweet and sour, she wasn’t fussy. And she didn’t eat eggs.
    Easy enough.
    So why was she looking at him, looking into that gaze that seemed to be absorbing her breath bit-by-bit, convinced it wasn’t enough? Because she was stuck in a lie? Because she didn’t want that to be all that defined her in those eyes that burnt through her?
    All that, she admitted reluctantly, and he ’d almost kissed her. She wasn’t delusional. Any combustive reaction requires two or more elements. He’d teetered on the edge of that kiss right there alongside her.
    Because she should thank him, not blame him, for summoning the willpower she couldn ’t. Because he had the grace to not add that kiss to the pulp of what he assumed would be left of her once he’d crushed her.
    “ I was born a twin,” she told him, flickering her eyes past him, to the timeless swells of the ocean behind. “We were almost two months premature and my sister—Anne, my parents named her Anne—wasn’t as strong as me, her organs too underdeveloped. Her heart, her lungs… She lived for three days and then she was gone.”
    “ Kate…” The hoarse voice pulled her gaze back to him. “I’m sorry.”
    “ Thank you.” She hadn’t been after the sympathy vote, but she didn’t hold it against him. What else could he say?
    She ’d never had to speak of Anne, not in a town where everyone knew your business without a single question asked. She never specifically thought about Anne. She’d never grieved for the sister she’d never known. It was just who she was.
    “ I never knew Anne,” she said. “I don’t miss her. But there’s a place inside me that’s always been lost. A part of me I miss, even though it was never there.”
    Thank God she ’d never had to explain this to anyone, because it made no sense. And she wasn’t explaining now. She was simply telling it like it was. Peeling away the layers for this stranger, this man who was biding his time to smite her down. Talk about not making sense.
    He looked at her, his eyes darkened to an overcast sky, saying nothing.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “My life is pretty darn perfect, fulfilled and content. You wanted to know one thing about me? Well, here’s the pendulum that makes me tick. I’m the girl with one half missing and yet completely whole. And if that’s possible, then anything and everything is. That ,” she finished quietly, “is who I am.”
    “ I understand,” he said, just as softly.
    And even though he dragged his shades down, hiding that turbulent gaze, she thought that maybe he did.
    Strip back his arrogance and disapproval.
    Stri p back her frustration and anger.
    Strip back the lies.
    The same thread that had compelled her to strip back until she hit the spine of her soul spun deeper, wider, thickening the air with a web that pulsed awareness through her. More than desire. More than the shadows chased by deep, dark, elusive emotions all over the ridges and hollows sculptured into that striking face.
    He dominated every female hormone in her body and he had done so since she ’d first set eyes on him. Scrap that…since she’d first heard his voice. He sent hot shivers down her spine and melted self-preservation.
    He didn ’t take.
    Didn ’t demand.
    The danger with a man like Alexander Gerardo was that he didn ’t need to. He filled a woman with longing, with a desperate want to give, and it wasn’t all