by Karina Bliss
He checked his messages, saw the last one was from Trixie, and got nervous. He’d told her about his birth mother and she’d immediately offered to check staff records for women aged thirty-two to thirty-seven, teenagers when he’d been born. That would really help, because it was nearly impossible to tell females’ ages from looking at them.
Maybe Trixie had found something. Taking a deep breath, he listened to her message. “Just to tell you, I’ve printed off the list of names, and while you’re enjoying yourself in the rock star’s mansion, I’ll be cross-referencing all afternoon. But don’t feel bad about it.”
Grinning, Mark replaced the phone in his pocket. She was still pissed that she hadn’t been invited, but when he’d hinted as much to Devin, he’d replied, “Tough. Restful women only.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather be alone with Rachel?” he’d asked.
“Yeah, I would, but she insisted on a chaperone.” When Mark looked doubtful, Devin had laughed. “I’m joking. It’s just a hang-out weekend, buddy. Good food, a little swimming, a couple of jam sessions and my mother’s birthday dinner. Think you can cope?”
Mark had relaxed. “Yeah, your mom’s cool.”
And he was kind of relieved Trixie hadn’t been invited. Although she was a goddess among women, and being in her orbit was still better than floating alone in the universe, a guy liked to be in charge occasionally. Mark had decided he preferred his love unrequited.
As he returned to picking peaches he felt a frisson of excitement along with the old familiar dread. Today could be the day he found out the name of his birth mother.
DEVIN DIDN’T KNOW WHY he was nervous showing Rachel his house. Maybe because this was his retreat, the one place he was truly himself. Maybe it was because he’d decided on the decorating, and having seen Rachel’s neighborhood, he figured she’d hate modernism.
But as always, the librarian surprised him. “Vibrant, colorful, brash and in your face-it’s you.” She held her hands out to the cardinal-red feature wall as though it radiated heat. “I love it.” She wandered through the spacious rooms, admiring his art collection, pausing at the nudes. “Ex-wives?”
“Very funny.” The odd girlfriend maybe.
Rachel walked to the glass wall overhanging the cliff. “I feel like I’m in an eagle’s nest.”
“That was the effect I wanted… Let me show you where you’re sleeping.”
He’d deliberately put her in the bedroom close to his-with Mark shipped to the L-shaped wing at the other end of the house. Rachel frowned as she took in the setup, but Mark was with them so she didn’t comment.
But later, as they lay on sun loungers by the pool, digesting one of Devin’s Tex-Mex specials, while Mark pitted himself against the swim jets, she said, “I’m onto you, Freedman.”
He’d been watching her, lazily thinking her figure was wasted in that polka-dotted one-piece, and wondering if she’d let him buy her a bikini.
He and Mark had spent the past couple of hours messing around with the teenager’s songs in the music room, while Rachel made endless cups of hot tea and sat, knees curled under her, on the white leather couch reading a book and seemingly oblivious.
Except she’d tapped her pink-painted toes to the rhythm and her eyes kept raising to Mark. Devin had realized he was showboating, not his skills but the boy’s. It was a present he could give her, an insight into her son’s talent.
In the end she’d stopped pretending to read and simply listened as Devin fine-tuned Mark’s ideas, while the teenager basked in all the attention. One day, Devin thought, I want her to look at me like that.
He hadn’t had a good morning. Today was the deadline for Zander to respond to his ultimatum, and Devin hadn’t heard anything.
Happy birthday, Mom. First thing Monday, I’m initiating legal proceedings against your eldest son.
Devin had even considered canceling the weekend, but Rachel needed this time with Mark. And now a few hours later here he was, strangely content.
“How are you onto me, Heartbreaker?” Her pale skin was reddening in the sun. He unscrewed the lid on a tube of sunscreen and dotted some on her nose. What was it about this woman that made him feel so protective?
“I can do that.” She took the tube from him. Oh, yeah, her fierce independence. “And I’m onto you because underneath the rock star bluster you’re a kind man-with your mom, with me, with Mark.”
Devin hadn’t expected that and wasn’t sure how to respond. “Keep thinking of me as a selfish prick, then I won’t disappoint you,” he said at last.
She finished applying sunscreen to her face and slathered some onto her shoulders, skirting the apple-green halter neck of her retro bathing suit. “For an egomaniac,” she said thoughtfully, “you have a lot of trouble accepting a real compliment.”
He watched Mark splash around the pool. The ego was for music. In his personal life, Devin had never been sure of his identity. People saw whatever image they projected on the famous, and as much as that irked Devin, it also protected him. No one knew who he was. Then he’d stopped drinking and discovered he didn’t, either. Now he was trying to find out, and Rachel’s remark set the benchmark high. He wasn’t used to living up to people’s expectations, wasn’t sure if he always could.
But she made him want to grow. Could he?
Could he reveal himself to be as vulnerable to rejection as other men? Yet he’d never lacked courage. “You asked me on Wednesday why I’m doing this. It’s more than friendship, Rachel. I think I’m in love with you.”
Rubbing sunscreen over her legs, she paused, then her movements became brisk. “Of course you are. I’m the first ordinary woman you’ve spent time with. Understandably, you’re dazzled.” She started screwing the lid back on the tube.
“You don’t like the idea,” he said flatly.
“I don’t exactly fit the Devin Freedman template, do I? For a start, I’m only a B cup.”
Her flippant replies were irritating the hell out of him. Then he noticed Rachel was having trouble screwing the cap on. Taking it from her, he finished the job. “I’ve never met anyone who avoids risk the way you do. You chicken out if you have to. But if I want to love you, I’ll bloody love you, got that?”
“Well, you can’t,” she retorted. “That was never our deal.”
Understanding dawned on him and with it, incredulity. “You’re pissed because I’m suggesting more than a fling? If I didn’t have a rock star-size ego I’d be insulted by that.”
“That’s silly.” But a telltale blush spread across her cheeks.
“Okay, you know what?” Abruptly Devin stood. “I am insulted.”
He dived into the pool to join Mark, making damn sure she got wet.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
RACHEL NEARLY DIVED in after him to apologize, but something stopped her. Probably the cowardice he’d accused her of. But she was still shocked by his casual declaration.
Even her two would-be fiancés had never said the L word-and neither had she. I love you had always seemed too extreme somehow for the calm, steady tenor of her previous relationships. Instead they’d talked about fondness, shared interests and goals. Certainly she’d never heard the word from her parents.
The only person who’d ever said he loved her had run back to college, terrified when she’d told him she was pregnant, and left his zealous parents to clean up the mess. Not love, sex. Teenage hormones.
Picking up a striped beach towel, she dried her arms and legs and watched Devin power into a fast crawl, water rolling off his muscular tanned shoulders as his arms sliced through it. And God knows, hormones played their part here. Now Devin wanted to change the rules? Well, what if she didn’t want to?
The infinity pool gave the illusion of being open-ended, and for a moment it looked as though Devin was going to swim straight over the cliff. Rachel fought the urge to stand and shout a warning. She didn’t want to lose him.
That made her even more afraid.
H
e surfaced, water dripping from his sleek, dark head, and glanced across the diamond-blue pool. “Come play with us, Heartbreaker.” Quick to anger, quicker to forgiveness. Oh, God, I’m in trouble.
“Yeah, come on in, Rach,” Mark called. “I think I saw a beach ball in the pool shed.” He climbed out and, grabbing a towel, disappeared into the small building. She hesitated on the side of the pool.
“Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get your hair wet.”
“Not necessarily.” Rachel slid in up to her waist, felt the prickle of cool water on her sun-warmed skin. Gingerly she fanned her arms through the water. “Maybe I’ll stay in the shallow end.”
“The hell you will.”
Devin ducked under, and the next second a muscular arm wrapped around her waist. As the water closed over her head, Rachel started to protest, then laugh. He released her and she surfaced, coughing and spluttering.
Unrepentant Devin pinned her against the side of the pool with his body, long and wet. “No wimps allowed.” His gaze caressed her with the softness of a butterfly’s wing. A strange helplessness came over her, as much from fear as exhilaration.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Because she hadn’t considered a future possible with him, she hadn’t put any emotional safeguards in place. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Yes, you can.” He cupped her chin and lowered his head, his lips cool against hers, persuasive. So very persuasive. She surrendered to the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck.
“Man, I only left you guys for a few minutes,” Mark said in disgust.
Mortified, Rachel ducked under Devin’s arm and swam to the side.
“I was drowning,” Devin protested, laughing. “She was bringing me back to life.”
“Yeah, right.”
Rachel climbed out of the pool, avoiding her son’s eyes. “I’ll make us some lemonade.”
“Lots of ice,” Devin suggested wickedly.
She knotted her sarong around her waist.
“Is that a yes?” he said, and she knew he wasn’t talking about lemonade.
“I’ll think about it.”
Except she didn’t want to think, she simply wanted to savor this wonderful lightness, this trembling delight. Thinking would lead to questions like What the hell do you think you’re doing? In the kitchen, Rachel hummed as she cut and squeezed lemons, stirred in sugar and added ice. Lots of ice.
The doorbell rang as she returned to the pool, and she remembered Katherine’s request to ask Devin if his mother could bring a date tonight. Better get on that.
Balancing the tray in one hand, Rachel had the other on the door handle when she caught sight of her reflection in the hall mirror. Dumping the tray on a nearby table, she wiped sunscreen off her nose with one corner of her sarong. The doorbell chimed again-and whoever was there held it down.
“Okay, okay, I’m coming.” Finger-combing her wet hair, she hauled open the oversize door and blinked.
A fleet of shiny black Mercedes were parked in the driveway and a dozen beautiful people spilled across the grass between the cars and the house. A burly guy moved forward, scanning first her and then the interior, before stepping aside.
Behind him, a man in his late thirties ranted on a cell phone decorated in diamonds, so dazzling in the sun that Rachel lifted her hand to shade her eyes. His teeth were almost as white, bared in a snarl. “I don’t give a shit how you do it, just do it.”
A handsome man, he was dressed in white jeans and a white leather waistcoat that oozed like oil over his muscled bronze torso with every irritable gesture he made. A silver chain-link necklace with a padlock hung around his broad neck.
His shaggy blond hair looked to have enough product in it to punch its own hole in the ozone layer, and below his designer sunglasses, his strong, full mouth was currently issuing a stream of obscenities into the phone.
Two gorgeous women in their early twenties, with pneumatic breasts and lips, assessed Rachel as though they were judges in the Miss World pageant and she couldn’t even qualify for Miss Congeniality.
One of them stepped forward. “About time. Is Devin Freedman home?”
Before Rachel could answer, the man rang off, his gaze sweeping over her in the same quick dismissal. It stopped at the sweetheart bodice of her bathing suit. “Holy crap, I feel like I’m on Gilligan’s Island.”
Even if Rachel had been the help, these people needed a lesson in manners. She lifted her chin. “Is Mr. Freedman expecting you?”
The man raised one blond eyebrow and took off his shades to reveal laser-blue, bloodshot eyes. “Don’t you know who-”
“Let me check if he’s available.” Closing the door in his face, she locked it, picked up the drink tray and strolled back to the pool. Devin and Mark were lobbing the ball back and forth with graceful athleticism.
Tempting as it was to dismiss the caller as an encyclopedia salesman, Rachel figured she’d probably caused enough mischief. “There are five Mercedes and approximately fourteen people at the door and on your lawn,” she said to Devin. “I think one of them is your brother.”
“Cool,” Mark said.
“Damn.” Devin absently rotated the ball in his hands, then added cryptically, “So, the SOB is guilty.” With a frown, he climbed out of the pool, wrapped a towel around his waist and padded through the house, not bothering to dry off. Rachel thought it politic to stay where she was.
“What do you think that’s all about?” asked Mark as she put the tray beside the sun loungers.
“I don’t know.” She glanced at her son, torn between removing him from Zander’s orbit and staying to support Devin. By the grimness in his expression, he needed it. “Maybe we should catch the ferry back to Auckland and leave them to it?”
“Are you crazy?” Mark punched the ball to the other end of the pool. “Zander Freedman…wow! He might even have some of the band with him. But you can go if you want,” he added generously.
Rachel sat down, committing to the role of watchdog. “Maybe,” she said, “Zander’s here to surprise his mother on her birthday?”
But from the little she’d seen of him, she doubted it.
“I’M HERE TO SURPRISE Mom for her birthday,” Zander said. He met Devin’s eyes with that same “you question my word, I’ll knock the shit out of you,” expression he always had when he was in the wrong.
“Not to confess, then,” Devin replied, and saw a flicker of culpability before Zander put his shades back on.
“I thought we could clear up that little misunderstanding at the same time.” Stepping into the hall, he glanced around and raised his eyebrows. “You downsizing, baby brother?”
“Yep, only five bedrooms, five bathrooms.” Devin looked beyond Zander to where the others stood. “You can stay, but your entourage will need to find accommodation in Oneroa. Expect to rough it-I don’t have live-in staff.”
“Don’t panic, I’ve rented my own place. But there’s only one comfort I really need.” Without looking around, Zander held out his arm and a blonde stepped into it. “Stormy, this is my brother. Devin, my girlfriend.”
Stormy-probably christened Samantha-gave him the rock chick pout. “Hi, I’ve heard so much about you.” He, on the other hand, knew nothing about her. Not that it mattered; she wouldn’t be around long. Zander was thirty-seven, but the age of his girlfriends never rose above twenty-five. It was starting to get sad.
“Nice to meet you,” he said politely.
Another blonde thrust out a hand, staring at his bare wet chest like a long-lashed limpet. “I’m Zander’s P.A., Dimity.” Unconsciously licking her lips, she dragged her eyes to his face. “Let me introduce you to everybody.”
Resigned, Devin shook hands and exchanged pleasantries with all the people who supported his brother’s ego-the stylist, the personal trainer, the publicist, the bodyguard, the dietician, the chef and a couple of buddies and their girlfriends.
He didn’t recognize any of them, b
ut Zander was notoriously hard to work for. Devin did pick up some useful information, though. No lawyer in the bunch, which, considering the legal trouble Zander was facing, was either very cocky or very clever.
“We chartered helicopters from the airport.” Dimity flicked back her hair. “And we’re en route to the estate we’re renting.” She named one of the newer mansions, built as a vacation home by an Auckland banker, and disparaged by locals as “Miami Vice.” “Zander, I’ll go ahead and check that everything’s satisfactory. I’ll leave Security and one of the cars here.”
Exasperated, Devin looked at his brother. “I’ll give you a lift on the Harley when you want one, and you don’t need a bodyguard here.”
Head cocked, Zander was studying one of the nude paintings. “Really? You’ve left some pretty interesting messages lately.” But he nodded.
Dimity clapped her hands and hollered, “Let’s go, people!”
“Stormy, darlin’, you go with them.” Zander encouraged his girlfriend toward the door with a spank on her shapely rear. “I need to spend a little one-on-one with my baby brother.”
“Actually, that’s going to have to wait,” Devin said. “I have houseguests.”
“The uptight broad who opened the door?” Zander laughed. “Hell, you really are downsizing.”
Devin grabbed his brother’s waistcoat as Zander sauntered past. “If you’re going to be an asshole we’ll talk through lawyers.”
“C’mon, where’s your sense of humor?” Breaking Devin’s grip, Zander draped an arm around his bare shoulders and gave him a none-too-gentle shake. “You’re the poster boy for sobriety now. Make it look fun.”
Shrugging off Zander’s arm, Devin led him through the house to the pool, where Rachel and Mark sat on longues, reading. The teenager leaped to his feet as soon as they came into sight, awe on his face. Rachel glanced warily over the top of her book. Seemed she already had his brother’s measure.
Zander walked toward her with hand outstretched and his most charming smile. “So which wife are we up to now? Four?”