After I’d fled England, I’d told myself that love and marriage was all just a joke, a game that other people played—not me. Women were a toy to be played with, not a possession to be held long term. And I’d enjoyed my playthings, moving from girl to girl like a fly at a picnic. I wouldn’t get caught up in the sort of mess I’d made of my life in London ever again.
But that was all before I’d seen Skylar for the first time.
She’d come out of Ox’s office, not looking where she was going. She’d walked headlong into me, stepping on my toes with those massive combat boots she loved to wear. She’d begun apologizing before she even looked up to see whom she’d smashed into, her words tumbling over one another in a nervous flood that I’d found surprisingly refreshing after all the refined, sophisticated women I’d been gravitating toward during that time. I’d held her shoulders to steady her, chuckling a little at her awkwardness.
“It’s okay. Really,” I’d said.
Her eyes had grown as wide as saucers as they’d come up to my face. And those eyes… so blue they seemed to sparkle even in that harsh fluorescent light.
“You’re English!”
“Yes, I am.”
“Wow! How did you end up here? I mean…” She’d blushed, a hand coming up to cover her pretty mouth. “I’m sorry. I just, I mean, English people come to America all the time. I just… this is a security firm, which I’m sure you already know and everything, but I’m just… I think England is a really cool place. I hope to visit there someday.”
“It is lovely. I think you would enjoy it.”
“Do you? I’m a little worried I might have such high expectations that I’ll be disappointed, but I’m really—oh, I’m sorry! I’m talking your ear off and I stepped on your toes and… I should go!”
She’d dashed around me and jumped into the elevator before I could get her name. I’d found myself laughing, so blindsided by the whole thing that laughter was the only reaction I could manage. I couldn’t stop thinking about her afterward, couldn’t get those eyes out of my head. I still couldn’t get them out of my head.
When I’d talked to an immigration lawyer and he’d suggested marriage might be one way to avoid deportation, Skylar was the first and only woman I’d thought of. If she’d said no, I would have gone home to Hereford. There was no one else I would even consider entering into such a contract with again.
If only Ox hadn’t stolen her heart first, maybe this could have been more than just an arrangement of convenience.
***
I had to dress in my best, which meant a suit. I hated suits, probably because I had to wear far too many of them when I was a child. I could remember ruining a few suits while climbing trees and playing rugby with improvised balls in the dirty alley behind the school. My mum was not happy with me most of the time. Then again, you’d think with having three boys, she’d be used to that sort of thing.
I stood beside Skylar and answered the same questions over and over again, feeling like I was at one of my mum’s luncheons. It was so much the same, what with the tiny sandwiches and the heavy hand on the liquor in the drinks. Skylar was clearly in her element, coming up with all the right names and the right family members and whatever else with each person she spoke to. It was clear where her office-management skills came from. She was the perfect hostess.
I remembered watching my father at these little parties my mother threw, aware that he hated the stiffness of it all as much as we boys did. But he would stand beside Mum and watch her, this look of absolute affection on his face. I hadn’t known what it was at the time, of course. I’d thought he was putting on a brave face the way he’d always told me to do whenever I had to give a presentation at school or church. But now I recognized it for what it was. He was proud of Mum, proud of the woman he’d married. He was proud to be part of something proper and right. I understood that feeling now.
“You must be bored,” Skylar said to me in a moment of quiet.
I shook my head. “I like watching you work a room. Or, in this case, a patio.”
Her eyes sparkled as she looked up at me. “I’m going to accept that as a compliment.”
“It was meant as one.”
She glanced over at her great-gran, her smile growing. “I’m just so relieved that she seems to be doing better. I don’t understand it, but I have no intention of pushing my luck by overanalyzing it.”
“That’s probably a good idea.” I pulled her close to me, sliding my arm around her waist as she pressed her back into my chest. “What about the lawyer?”
“Rescheduled for tomorrow morning.”
“Are you still worried about it?”
She shook her head. “Great-Gran said she thinks it might be about some will she had drawn up. She says it’s not a big deal.”
“All that worry about nothing.”
“Exactly. What else is new?”
She turned and looked up at me, her smile turning into something else, something a bit more erotic. I could almost taste those lips, could almost feel the stickiness of her lip gloss against my own lips. I could think of nothing more perfect than a kiss here on this somewhat crowded patio, nothing better than holding this woman in my arms.
Someone called her name just as I began to lower my head, and she was off, chatting happily as she crossed the patio. I watched her, snagging a fresh drink off a tray that was passing. Nolan, that ever-present cell phone in his hands, sat off in one corner with a drink of his own. I went to sit beside him, glancing at the phone just as a seriously hot sex scene came to an end on some television show.
“What show is that?”
Nolan looked up, seemingly detached from everything around him. It took him a moment to process what I’d asked.
“You wouldn’t know it. It’s an obscure thing from the late nineties.”
“You seem pretty involved in it.”
“It’s good. It’s about these people who plot to kill their neighbor because they want to take over the land he has that butts up to their place. They convince him to write them into his will, then they slowly start poisoning him.”
“Sounds like an episode of Perry Mason.”
“Sort of. But it’s a lot more intense.”
I nodded, glancing over to where Skylar was still mingling with her great-gran’s friends. “You worked here long?”
“Four years. Ever since Aurora had her stroke.”
“She had a stroke?”
“Yeah. Laid her flat for a couple of months. But she’s a strong lady. She can bounce back from anything.”
“Looks like it. Last night she was on her last legs, and today she’s twenty years younger, ready to take on the world.”
Nolan’s expression took on something of a thoughtful gaze. “Yeah. I’m not quite sure what happened. Must be the new medication the doctor ordered last week.”
“Some medication is capable of this?”
Nolan shrugged. “There have been bigger miracles in the world, pal.”
He turned back to his show, sliding earbuds into his ears as a hint that he was no longer interested in human interaction. I got up and wandered the edge of the patio for a moment, waiting until I felt like no one was paying a whole lot of attention to me. Then I slipped inside and meandered through the large rooms on the first floor, looking for the study that had been transformed into Aurora’s room. I found it without a lot of trouble, surprisingly enough. I guess I was beginning to figure the floor plan out.
The room had once held a desk, a couch, filing cabinets, and walls covered in shelves. Now the shelves were all that was left. The rest of the furniture had been pushed up against the wall to make room for a hospital bed that was still set in a partially reclining position, sheets falling over the side rail. One of the bookshelves had been cleared to hold medical supplies, including prescription medications with Aurora’s name printed on the label.
I studied each of the bottles, reading the name of the drug and examining a pill from each.
I didn’t know much about medicine, but I knew enough to wonder how one change in medication could create such a transformation in a woman Aurora’s age. It didn’t seem likely, no matter how optimistic a person might be.
But luckily for me, I happened to work for Caballo, and Caballo had an impressive investigative team. I took pictures and sent them to Cheryl.
“Would you check these out and give me any information you can find, sweetheart?” I asked in a text accompanying the pics. “I’ll owe you one when I get back.”
Her response was immediate. “Wasn’t doing much of anything today, anyway.”
Nolan was probably right, but it didn’t hurt to check things out.
Chapter 9
Skylar
The pool was like a sheet of glass in the moonlight. I sat at the edge, dangling my feet in the cool water. The party stretched on late into the evening, only ending when Great-Gran grew too tired to continue entertaining her friends. I stayed, courtesy requiring one of us to see each and every guest out the door. Prescott stayed too, more refined in his small talk than I think I’d ever seen him.
“He’s quite a charmer,” more than one older woman had said to me in what they thought was a polite aside but was often a statement made boldly enough that he clearly heard. They inflated his ego, making me wonder if I’d ever hear the end of it.
A glass of champagne dangled itself in front of my face. I leaned back and smiled up at the man of the hour, more pleased than I wanted to admit—even to myself—that he hadn’t disappeared with the last of the guests.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would go on quite that long.”
Prescott grunted as he lowered himself onto the stone pool edge beside me. “Those kinds of parties tend to do that.”
“It was nice of you to stick around.”
“I didn’t have anywhere else to be just then.”
He took off his shoes and peeled away his socks, dipping his feet into the water beside mine. I rested my foot on top of his and he moved it around, our feet dancing around each other for a moment. Then he tugged my thigh, pulling me close to him so that our feet were crossed in the water, comfortably resting together.
“I used to sit out here with this guy from town. He was a gardener’s helper and he would let me hang around him while he worked. It was his job to clean all the debris out of the pool twice a day.”
“Miranda’s brother?”
“How’d you know that?”
He shrugged. “I’m in security. I have this way of finding things out.”
Or more likely a way with beautiful women with big mouths.
I lost interest in whatever story I’d been planning on telling. I pulled my foot away from his and sat forward a little, moving as far from him as I could without actually going anywhere. The champagne was cold and sweet, sliding down my throat in one pleasing gulp.
“Did he ever kiss you by the pool?”
“What? Who?”
“Miranda’s brother.”
I set the glass down carefully, taking my time so that I didn’t actually have to answer him right away. “Does it matter?”
“I’m just curious if I’ll be the first.”
I shot him a look, assuming he was teasing me again. But then his arms came around me and our lips found one another almost like they were homing beacons coming home. I was irritated with him, with his teasing, and then he was kissing me, and it was like nothing mattered but the feel of his lips on mine. I melted, molding myself to him as I opened to his touch, things deep inside of me aching in a way I’d never experienced before. He tasted like cucumber sandwiches and champagne, like coffee and cream, like everything good and wonderful I’d ever put into my mouth. And he did things… Damn, did all men know how to kiss like this?
I shifted, trying to turn more into him, but I was closer to the edge of the pool than I remembered. One second I’m lost in his touch, the next I’m falling through empty space, water rushing up to embrace me. I tried to cry out, but water filled my mouth. I was sinking. Then strong hands were pulling me up, Prescott’s wet but incredibly amused face laughing down at me.
“Oh, hell!” I cried, looking down at myself, at the ruined dress I was wearing.
“Hell? What about damn refreshing?”
Prescott slapped the water, splashing me full in the face. I cried out again, then splashed him back, pushing off the pool’s wall to grab his shoulders, hoping to dunk him with the power of my weight. He saw me coming and ducked out of the way, but then he doubled back and grabbed me around the waist, tossing me up and then back into the water.
“Oh, you’re dead!”
We splashed back and forth, chasing each other through the water, laughing so hard that I had no idea how we managed to keep from drowning. I hadn’t had so much fun in a long time. When we finally dragged ourselves out of the water after I had no idea how much time, I was exhausted. But it was a good sort of exhaustion.
“How are we supposed to get into the house? We can’t drip all over the floors!”
I took Prescott’s hand and led the way to the pool house. The door stuck for a moment, but when it popped open and revealed the dressing-room-styled space, he shook his head.
“Is there nothing these people didn’t think of?” He crossed the room to take a towel from a high stack on a low shelf. He tossed one to me before taking one for himself, using it to dry his face. “Someone could live quite comfortably in here.”
“I practically did one summer. We didn’t have a pool back home, so I spent as much time down here as I could.”
“I can see you here, running around in one of those solid-piece swimsuits that’s cut all the way up to here,” he said, making a slashing motion high on his hip. “That’s something I wouldn’t mind seeing now!”
I blushed, but I’d turned from him in favor of stepping into the long shower space along the side of the room. “Maybe someday!”
“I’m looking forward to it!”
I smiled, finding it almost impossible not to. I pulled a curtain around one of the narrow stalls and slowly began removing my dress. The poor thing was so heavy with chlorinated water that it weighed twice as much as it had before. It fell to the floor with a thunk, leaving me shivering in nothing but a set of soaking-wet underwear.
“Are there bathrobes?” Prescott asked, his voice very close. I turned and found him watching me, peeking through a slit in the curtain.
“On the shelf above the towels,” I informed him, yanking the curtain more completely closed. But, again, that smile wouldn’t go away.
He’d wanted to see me undressed. He wanted to see me in a bathing suit and he’d purposely peeked at me in my underwear. Did that mean that he… I almost couldn’t finish the thought because the implications were just too impossible to ignore.
I turned toward the wall and carefully stepped out of the rest of my soaked clothing before switching on the water. The chlorine had this nasty habit of drying out my skin, but there was moisturizing soap and shampoo that smelled like lavender, one of Great-Gran’s favorite scents. Miranda once remarked that everything about the pool house smelled like old woman, but I kind of liked the scent.
Prescott took a shower in the stall next to mine, singing into the water as though he wanted to be sure I knew he was there. The song he chose was an Irish ditty about a mother singing a lullaby to her child. He sang it at the top of his lungs, making me laugh each time he came to the chorus.
Two years I’d lived with this man, but I felt like I’d gotten to know him more over the last few days than I had in all that time.
Shower taken, and a little lotion rubbed into my skin from a bottle stashed with the rest of the toiletries, I wrapped myself in my damp towel and stepped out from behind the curtain. Much to my surprise—though I don’t suppose I should have been surprised since it was obviously something Prescott would do—I discovered he was showering without having bothered to pull the curtain closed. He had his back to the corridor, just his
back and buttocks exposed, but it was a view that I found intensely erotic. He was built like a mountain, this man, with all these peaks and valleys and roundness in all the right places. I couldn’t help but stop and stare, my imagination going places it’d never gone before. What would he do if I stepped in there with him, if I soaped up my hands and washed his back? Would he welcome my touch? Or would that be taking things a step too far?
“You’re welcome to join,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at me almost as if he’d known I was there the whole time. “Plenty of room.”
Heat burned over my face. “I was just… a robe… or…”
He chuckled as I rushed away. Was that because his offer hadn’t been serious?
I grabbed a bathrobe and pulled it over my shoulders, dropping the towel as I tugged the ends together and secured the whole thing with the thick belt. I needed to retrieve my dress, but I suddenly just wanted to get out of there. I was headed toward the door when he came up behind me, his hand heavy on my shoulder.
“Where are you going?”
I turned, and he pushed me back, my back pressed hard against the door. He was still wet, the ends of his hair hanging heavy against his forehead and his neck. I reached up and brushed a piece from the curve of his jaw, my fingertip lingering against the rough stubble of his five o’clock shadow.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked, his voice suddenly deep, almost hoarse.
Only when you say it.
He kissed the center of my forehead, then the tip of my nose, pulling back slightly before coming to claim my lips. My heart jumped into my throat the moment he touched me, and insisted on staying there, his touch stealing my breath. Did it feel like this every time a man kissed a woman? Was there just some magic thing that created this rush, this hyper awareness of every touch, of every bit of pleasure? Would it have felt this way if someone else had been the first to offer me a kiss?
Somehow, I didn’t think so.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and he lifted me, his hands sliding under the hem of the short robe. He turned away from the door and carried me to the low chaise longue that occupied the space in the center of the room. We fell, our bodies tangled for a moment in a heap that was impossible to decipher, impossible to tell whose leg belonged where. For that moment we were one person, one complete being, tangled together and content to share the same space. But then his hands began to explore, his lips began to search, and I became this ball of nerves that felt everything all at once. And I wanted to feel more. I slipped my hands under his robe, tugging until the material got the hell out of my way, running my hands over his chest, his abdomen, exploring his shoulders and his back, growing bold enough to explore the roundness of his perfect ass. I wanted to know every inch of his body, wanted to feel every muscle and bone and tendon God had sculpted into this perfect example of masculinity. I wanted what instinct told me was mine to take: this man who was offering this complete intimacy without inhibition.
Caballo Security Box Set Page 54