His presence startled her enough that she almost dropped the rag she was holding. Stepping back, she knocked into the heavy furniture that reminded her of something straight out of the Victorian age.
Goodness.
She’d seen pictures of Devlin in the gossip magazines over the years, but she hadn’t seen him in person during that time.
He looked so much like his father it sent a chill down her spine. Dark hair coifed and styled short. Coldly handsome and completely remote, he was dressed as if he’d just left an important business meeting, wearing trousers and a button-down despite the fact that it was September and still hot as hell.
As a kid, she’d been slightly terrified of the eldest de Vincent brother who now had to be steadily approaching his forties.
Nikki wasn’t a kid anymore, though.
His gaze drifted over Nikki, assessing her in a way that made her feel like a piece of furniture he wasn’t sure he wanted to keep or store away in the attic where important, powerful people couldn’t see it. “Hello, Nikki, it has been a while.”
Nikki forced an easy smile as she clutched the rag. “Hi, Dev.”
Something passed over his face when she used the abbreviated version of his name. Nikki wasn’t sure if it was irritation or amusement. One never knew with Devlin.
“Thank you for stepping in and helping while your mother is out,” he said, his voice as flat as his personality. “I do hope she is starting to feel better.”
“She is . . . she’s hanging in there,” she replied.
“Your mother is a very strong woman. If anyone can beat this, she can.”
That was possibly the nicest thing she’d ever heard come out of Devlin’s mouth.
His gaze roamed over her again. “I know you have been gone for a long time, away at college and all, but I am sure you do remember that our staff wears a uniform and not ragged, hand-me-down jeans?”
Aaand there he went, ruining it by becoming Captain Dickhead de Vincent, who sounded like he was eighty instead of almost forty.
Nikki’s spine stiffened. “These actually aren’t hand-me-downs.”
“You bought them that way?” A smirk appeared. “Perhaps you should ask for your money back.”
Her lips thinned as she resisted the urge to give him the middle finger. “I’m sorry. I was told I didn’t have to wear a uniform.”
Not necessarily true, but whatever.
He inclined his head, a gesture she used to see from his father. “I see. Then maybe you can find something in your closet that doesn’t look like we pay our help below minimum wage? Especially since you are being paid. You’re not doing this for free.”
She sucked in a harsh breath. Help. The house might’ve changed a little and Lucian may be a reformed man-whore, but Devlin was still the same. “I’m sure I can find something that will meet your approval.”
There it was again. A flicker of emotion that was gone before Nikki could even figure out what it was.
Then Devlin was in the very room with her, only a few feet away. Her eyes widened slightly. How in the world did he move so fast and so quietly?
Was he part ghost?
More like part devil. After all, that was his nickname—what the gossip mags called him. The Devil.
Now he was directly in front of her, and Nikki was not a tall woman. Barely pushing five and a half feet, it was hard not to be intimidated when he towered over her. “Do I detect an attitude, Nicolette?”
Oh dear.
Mentally cursing herself and Devlin, she planted the brightest smile she’d ever mustered in her life. “I hope not. I was being serious. I do have nicer pants. Ones that I am sure you would approve of.”
His eyes, the de Vincent eyes, latched onto her. “I am pleased to hear that.”
Okay. He did not sound pleased. At all.
He bent his chin down and she felt the tiny hairs rise all over her body. “I would hate to have to tell your father about your attitude.”
Nikki would, too.
“Do you remember what happened last time? The only time?” he asked. “I do.”
Oh, she remembered. She’d been seventeen and gotten into the liquor cabinet when her mom wasn’t looking, drinking the expensive-as-hell scotch, all to prove she wasn’t a little girl anymore. Looking back, she recognized that she’d been, in fact, a little girl, but that wasn’t the point. She’d mouthed off at Devlin when he’d ordered her to stop following Gabe around like a lost, underfed puppy.
He had such a way with words.
“I remember.” Her smile was beginning to fade. “In my defense, I’d been slightly intoxicated and therefore was not wholly responsible for my actions.”
One dark eyebrow rose.
Her shoulders squared. “And I also hadn’t been following your brother around, so I was a little offended.”
“You were attached to my brother like an underage barnacle that had no concept of why a grown man would not be remotely interested in a teenage girl.”
Holy crap, he really just went there! Like totally went there.
“I . . .” Yep. Nikki had no idea what to say to that.
Because it was true. All true.
Ever since Gabe pulled her out of the pool and defended her to Devlin, she’d spent every spare moment basically stalking Gabe and trying to catch his attention. For some dumb reason, when she’d been younger, she hadn’t seen the age difference as being that big of a deal.
God, she had been such an idiot.
She was completely nutso not realizing that the age difference had been a very, very big deal, because it was quite the age difference. He’d been twenty-six when he pulled her out of the pool. Ten years older than her, a full-grown man, and she had been—well, yeah, barely sixteen. Gross.
But she’d figured in her dumb hormone-riddled teenage brain that once she turned eighteen, Gabe would fall head over heels in love with her.
Honest to God, Gabe had never once given her any indication that he’d thought of her in any way that was inappropriate and illegal, but she . . . well, she had been young and dumb and in love for the very first time in her life.
“Can I be honest with you, Nikki?”
She blinked. “Of course.”
“I was not at all happy about you taking your mother’s place while she gets better.”
Wow. What was she supposed to say to that? Thanks?
“You leaving for college was the best thing you could’ve done for yourself, because if you had stayed, you would’ve gotten yourself in a lot of trouble.” He paused. “Or my brother.”
Well, she hadn’t exactly left before that happened.
Her face started to feel like it was on fire.
Devlin dipped his chin. “I do hope you don’t pick up where you left off.”
Nikki’s mouth dried as her heart turned over heavily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Now, you know that’s not the truth.” His voice was deceptively low. “From the moment you realized you liked boys, you pranced around this house every single time Gabe was around.”
Her face was seriously going to burn right off, because that was also true. She’d done just about everything to garner Gabe’s undivided attention. Sometimes it had worked. Usually it hadn’t.
“And those swimming lessons?” he continued, much to her horror. This was not a walk down memory lane she wanted to stroll on. She hadn’t even worked up the nerve to look at the pool yet. “They weren’t that bad when you had the body of an underdeveloped boy.”
Oh my God!
“But the older you got, the skimpier your bathing suits became.” His face was still completely devoid of emotion. “We all saw it whether we wanted to or not. Even though we shouldn’t have.”
Suddenly she was that sixteen-year-old girl again, wanting to drown herself in the pool. “I was just a teenager, Devlin.”
“And you’re just—what? Twenty-two now?” He’d guessed right. “Not exactly that much older. You’re still just a girl,
but one who is actually of legal age now.”
Folding her arms across her chest to stop herself from throwing the rag in his face, she took several deep breaths before she trusted herself not to curse. “I am not a teenage girl pining after an older guy any longer. Trust me.”
“I don’t.”
She stared at him for several moments, unsure of how to even proceed with this. “I don’t know what you want me to say then.” And she really didn’t. “I didn’t come here for Gabe. I came home to help my parents. If being here is going to be such a huge problem, then you need to hire someone else. I’m sure my father will understand.”
Devlin was quiet for a moment. “You know . . . how things work here. You know what is expected.”
“I do.” She wished her face would stop flaming and that this conversation was already over.
The eldest de Vincent watched her intently. “The last thing my brother needs right now is another complication.”
Another complication? What? Her stomach dropped. “What does that mean? Is something wrong with him?”
That was apparently the wrong thing to ask, because his eyes narrowed. She didn’t regret asking the question. While she felt like an utter fool whenever she thought about Gabe and seeing him again was not something she was looking forward to, she still cared for him.
How could she not?
Gabe was completely off-limits, always was and always would be, but they’d been . . . friends once. Even with the age difference, he’d respected her. He’d been kind to her, and he used to bring her smoothies, surprising her with different flavors. Some he’d made himself. Others he picked up from her favorite shop when he was coming back from the city and knew she was there. He’d been there for her, more than once.
But she’d ruined all of that, so Devlin really had no reason to be worried that she had any plans that concerned Gabe. He was not going to welcome her with open arms, and Nikki was going to do everything in her power to avoid him as much as humanly possible.
“I hope we have an understanding,” Devlin said without answering her question.
“We do.”
He hadn’t backed off. “Good to know.”
Nikki nodded slowly, hoping beyond hope this awkward-as-hell conversation was over and she could retreat somewhere for a few moments to repeatedly punch herself in the lady bits for past crimes.
“Dev,” a voice called from the hall. “Where in the hell are you?”
Her heart stopped in her chest when she heard the voice. No. Oh, sweet baby Jesus, no.
“Speak of the devil,” Devlin muttered under his breath. His gaze lifted to the ceiling while Nikki was close to hyperventilating and maybe even passing out. “Gabe. I didn’t know you were coming home today.”
“Change of plans.” The voice neared.
Nikki looked around wildly for a place to hide. Would dive-bombing under the raised couch that no one ever sat in look strange? Yes. Yes, it would, but she was not ready to see Gabe.
Not after this conversation.
But it was too late.
There was nowhere to hide, and Devlin was turning around. She couldn’t see the doorway because of how broad Devlin was, but she squeezed her eyes shut nonetheless.
I can do this.
It’s no big deal.
I’m not a teenage girl anymore.
Her pep talk wasn’t helping her very much.
“What are you doing in here?” Gabe asked, and God, his voice sounded just like she remembered. Deep. Smooth. Lightly accented. “Oh, you have company.” A shocked-sounding laugh came from him. “Sorry to intrude.”
She almost laughed at the idea that she and Devlin could be together, but she managed to squelch it because it would probably sound a bit crazed.
“Yes, I do have company.” Devlin stepped to the side. She didn’t see him, because she still had her eyes closed, but she’d felt Devlin move.
Silence.
And then, “Holy shit.”
Chapter 3
Nikki’s eyes flew open, and she immediately wished they hadn’t, because now she saw him.
It had been forever since she even allowed herself to look at a photo of him. Maybe she should’ve done that, because then she might not simultaneously feel like jumping on him like a rabid monkey and running away from this room.
She couldn’t look away from him.
God, Gabe was . . . he was beautiful in this raw, masculine way. He was as she remembered, but somehow he was more. If anything, he seemed taller and his shoulders broader, his biceps and forearms defined in a way they hadn’t been before.
Age had treated him well. Gabe was thirty-two now, and the only sign was the faint smile lines around the corners of those stunning sea-moss eyes. His cheekbones were classic de Vincent, high and angular as was the blade of the nose and that lush, lush mouth.
Oh man, he was still wearing his hair long. The deep brown, almost black hair just brushed his shoulders. A faint stubble shadowed the strong curve of his jaw as if he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He was dressed much more casually than his brother, wearing a dark pair of jeans and a pale-blue cotton shirt that was loosely tucked in the front. And he was barefoot.
Her lips twitched into a small smile.
Gabe was always barefoot.
“Nic?” He stepped around a chair, staring at her like . . . well, like he wasn’t even sure it was really her.
While Gabe mostly looked the same, Nikki had changed in the last four years. Gone was the eighteen-year-old girl who’d fled from him in tears.
He stopped a few feet from her, still staring at her like she was a figment of his imagination. His gaze swept from the now-messy knot of hair at the top of her head, all the way down to her llama-print Vans. The way he checked her out was nothing like his brother’s earlier perusal. Not when she could practically feel his gaze getting hung up on her now-much-rounder hips and fuller breasts. A sweet, unwanted, and unexpected flush swept through her.
Bad Nikki. Bad. Bad.
He could stare at her in the way she’d always wanted him and it meant nothing now. All he was to her now was a silly teenage crush. That was all.
So she had to pull it together.
She lifted an empty hand and gave an awkward finger wave once his eyes met hers again. “Hey.”
“Hey?” he repeated, blinking slowly and showing off ridiculously long lashes.
Nikki swallowed hard and tried again. “Hi?”
Beside her, Devlin sighed loudly.
“Is something wrong?” Gabe’s gaze bounced between his brother and her. “Did something happen to Livie?”
Nikki slowly turned to Devlin. He hadn’t told Gabe? What in the hell? “I’m filling in for Mom while she’s getting treatment. You didn’t . . . ?”
It was obvious in the way Gabe stared at her that he had no idea, and Nikki had no clue why Devlin would’ve left him out on that pretty important update.
“No.” Gabe’s tone was short. “I wasn’t told.”
This was beyond awkward. She peeked at Gabe. Unease stirred in the pit of her stomach as she quickly looked away. He was still staring at her.
“I believe that Nikki has a lot of work to get done,” Devlin interjected smoothly.
Grasping onto the cue to make her exit like it was the last life jacket on the Titanic, she got her legs moving and kept her gaze fixed on the doorway. But as she walked past him, she couldn’t help herself. It was like she had no control over her eyeballs.
Nikki glanced over at him, and found that he was still watching. She wasn’t even sure he’d blinked at this point. “It’s good seeing you, Gabe.”
There.
She said it and sounded like she meant it, even though it wasn’t exactly true.
There were only two times in Gabe’s thirty-two years of life that a damn feather could’ve knocked him flat on his ass.
This was one of them.
Gabe still stared at the doorway Nic had walked out of, completely and utter
ly shocked. “Was that really her?”
Dev made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a cough. “Little Nikki isn’t so little anymore, is she?”
Little Nikki hadn’t exactly been little the last time he’d seen her, but she hadn’t looked like that.
Holy shit, she didn’t have that ass or those tits the last time he’d seen her.
What the fuck? Did he seriously just think that?
Disgust churned in his gut. He would not—could not think of her tits or ass. Even acknowledge that she now had them aplenty based on how that shirt was stretched across her chest and how those jeans hugged her—
Damn it.
Didn’t matter that she was now in her twenties—barely in her twenties.
But shit, Nic had always been a cute girl. A scrawny and goofy-as-hell cute girl, but she was . . . she was now fucking beautiful.
He almost laughed.
The whole late-bloomer thing whirled around in his head, but it was true. Her face had filled out during her absence, finally matching those big brown eyes and that wide, expressive mouth.
She’d gone from cute to dangerously stunning.
Gabe couldn’t believe she was here. He forced himself to turn to his brother. “Were we unable to hire someone else?”
Because anyone would’ve been a better choice.
Dev arched a brow as he folded his arms. “As you know, we’ve had a problem retaining staff recently.”
That they did.
“And with what has happened here, I couldn’t help but accept when Richard brought up the idea of bringing Nikki in to fill her mother’s spot. She was already coming home. Plus, she knows how to mind her own business and keep quiet.”
Gabe’s jaw tightened. Nic definitely knew how to keep quiet. Lifting a hand, he dragged it through his hair. What in the hell? He honestly had no clue how to proceed with this newest development. Like he needed another damn issue in his life right now.
He’d honestly believed he was never going to see Nic again, at least not up close. Maybe from a distance, because distances were safe.
Shit.
How old was she now?
He quickly did the math in his head. Twenty-two. Her birthday was coming up. November. She’d be twenty-three then. Fuck. What he remembered of twenty-three was a whole lot of partying and screwing. That was a lifetime ago.
Moonlight Seduction_A de Vincent Novel Page 3