CHAPTER 23 ROHAN

Chapter 23

ROHAN

L eave no stone unturned. It had not escaped Rohan's attention that Jameson Hawthorne had borrowed that line from him, from a game of Rohan's design, one that Jameson had won. Cheeky bastard.

As Rohan searched the rocks, he kept tabs on his competition while they did the same. He knew the instant Odette Morales found something. By the time the old woman had pried it—whatever it was—loose, Rohan was already halfway to her. Automatically, he reviewed the positions of the other players. Gigi, Brady, and Knox had already gone back to the house—and wasn't that interesting?—leaving only Lyra and Savannah, the latter of whom…

Had just spotted Rohan moving toward Odette.

"I don't like your chances with that one, young man," Odette called as Rohan approached. "But if I were sixty years younger, you might have stood a chance with me."

The old woman wanted Rohan to know: He wasn't the only one who could read people.

"You flatter me, Ms. Mora." Rohan closed the last of the space between them.

Odette registered Rohan's use of Mora instead of Morales and snorted. "If I was flattering you, you'd know it."

Rohan looked to her gloved hands. In one, Odette held the opera glasses he'd clocked the moment he'd first seen her tonight. In the other, there was what appeared to be a glass box with a luminescent button inside.

Odette flipped open the box and pressed the button.

For a second, maybe two, it seemed like nothing had happened, and then Rohan realized: the house. An enormous shade was descending, covering the massive Great Room windows on the third floor. Beams of concentrated light from the ground illuminated the shade.

Just for a moment.

Just long enough for Rohan to read the words written on it: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, brEAK GLASS.

The shade began rising once more. The beams went dark. Beside Rohan, Odette hurled the glass box to the ground. It shattered, shards raining down into the crevices of the rocks. In an instant, Savannah was there, on the ground next to Odette, sorting through the carnage.

Rohan made no move to join them. Break glass. If he'd been the one to design this game, that wouldn't have been a reference to the glass box—too obvious. And what is glass , he thought intently, but melted sand?

Gigi had already spent a good chunk of time searching the black sand beach. Lyra was headed that way now. Rohan replayed the moment Jameson had issued their clue. We won't steal too much of your time…

And there it was.

Rohan made for the house. He slipped away unnoticed—for a time. He knew the exact instant Savannah realized where he was heading. She burst after him. Rohan picked up his own pace, shedding stealth for speed. He only allowed himself to look back over his shoulder once, as he began to scale the cliff. There was something almost Amazonian about the way the thick metal links of that chain hugged Savannah's hipbones, a sharp contrast with the ice-blue silk over which she wore it.

Neither the gown nor the chain seemed to slow her down. They should have. They damn well should have, especially on the cliff. You're fast, love. I'll give you that.

But Rohan was faster. He made it to the house first, to the Great Room first, to the hourglass first. Their time was almost up. There was little enough sand left in the top half of the hourglass that Rohan could clearly see the object that resided inside, the one that had been masked by all that black sand before.

A metal disk two-thirds the size of his palm.

Rohan didn't bother picking up the hourglass or trying to smash it. Savannah was incoming, so he held the hourglass with one hand and smashed his other fist straight through the glass, locking his fingers around the disk.

I win.

"You're bleeding." Savannah said those words the way another person might say you have mud on your shoes .

Oh, he really did like her. Rohan pulled a shard of glass from his knuckles. "Price of victory."

Savannah took a step toward him, her eyes on the disk. Woe be , her expression seemed to say, to the person who stands in the way of Savannah Grayson.

Rohan made the disk disappear in a flash, and then he gave himself a moment to read her. The rise and fall of her chest. The slightest clench of her throat. Fury in her silvery gray eyes.

Something clicked into place for Rohan then, something that had as much to do with the punishing pace she'd managed as it did the myriad of ways her body was giving her away now.

"You want this," Rohan murmured.

"Do you make a habit of telling women what they want?"

"The game," Rohan clarified. "You want to win. Badly."

Savannah straightened, standing taller than her nearly six feet. "I do not do anything badly, and I am not in the habit of wanting things. I set goals. I achieve them." End of story.

Rohan took a handkerchief out of the pocket of his tuxedo, wiped the blood off his knuckles, and captured her gaze with his own. "Fair warning, love: I want it more."