“Well, now, that just fires my imagination all to hell,” Greg said. “I’ve been to the kind of club Robert belongs to, and I know what kind of interesting…toys they have there to play with.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Rebecca shook her head. The things the men in her family were knowledgeable about—of which she remained blissfully clueless—were kinkier than she ever could have guessed.
“Why, lover, do you have a little latent Dom in you?” Cody sounded surprised by the prospect. Rebecca’s curiosity was piqued. She waited to see how he’d answer.
“There really is nothing latent about the Dom in me, it’s just controlled and mostly kept out of sight. Just like there’s nothing necessarily latent about the sub in you, babe. But that is a topic for another day.”
I guess Greg knows himself pretty well, too.
“Huh.” Cody seemed to consider what his lover had just said. “You might be on to something there.”
Greg reached over and stroked Cody’s shoulder, sliding the caress down his arm and then clasping his hand.
Rebecca’s body had been humming with arousal since those kisses earlier, both the ones she’d received and the one she’d watched. This tiny display of affection, as well as the visual images she’d imagined to augment them, simply added to that buzz.
Rebecca had taken only two lovers in her life. The most important one, her first, was in this car. And she was about to take her third, a man she really didn’t know all that well at all. Hell, the truth was she really had just met him.
But she possessed really good instincts, and those instincts were telling her that while Cody Harper would never be a simple or easy man to love, he would be worth the effort. This sure as hell would be no one-night stand.
She and Cody shared a connection through their art—both photography and painting were visual mediums, and they’d already communicated on a level a lot of people couldn’t imagine existed. Cody had been wounded, but refused to give in to that, refused, in fact, to see himself as a victim. That was both good and bad.
Most importantly, he loved and was loved by Greg Benedict.
She was all about what it was to love that man.
Rebecca couldn’t deny that she’d been attracted to Cody at first sight. His kiss had taken her in and taken her down very nearly as sexily as Greg’s did, and that was saying a lot because no other man’s had even come close.
Greg caught her gaze in the rearview mirror. She saw the question in his eyes, and nodded.
“So, about our payoff.” He said only that, leaving the degree of what would happen next completely up to her.
“It’s been a pretty stressful day all around, what with you dragging us both where we needed to be but didn’t want to go. After we put the supplies away, why don’t we meet up in the master bath? I think that I’d love a long, hot soak in the Jacuzzi. And you know how perfect an ice breaker bubbling hot water can be. Don’t you?”
Greg raised one eyebrow. “Won’t it take time to get heated?”
Rebecca said, “Oh, did I neglect to mention that I took care of that little thing this morning?”
“You might have done,” Greg said. He shot a look at Cody who met his eyes. Rebecca couldn’t see the look they exchanged nor the expressions on their faces.
Then Cody said, “With, or without bathing suits, Blue Eyes?”
“You can wear one if your modesty demands it,” Rebecca said, “but I’m just bringing my robe, and a smile.”
“And the tattoo?”
How had she known that Greg’s interest would be piqued by her having a tat? Rebecca guessed she knew him better than she thought she did.
“Darling, I can assure you, once I drop my robe, you won’t be able to miss it.”
Chapter 10
Sofia Torres Harris had been married nearly thirteen years, had two children, and worked as an accountant for a mid-sized financial services company in Austin, Texas.
It hadn’t taken Connor long to find her. Melvin called her and arranged for this meeting, which she’d agreed to, albeit reluctantly. At the moment she looked extremely uncomfortable as she listened to him explain to her exactly why he and Connor were there. She sent a glance over his shoulder toward the door of her office, which stood open.
“We have no desire to embarrass you, Mrs. Harris. You should know that the statute of limitations has expired, so no charges can be filed, not against Mr. Baxter, nor against you for whatever role you may have played in his theft of the Rhodes sisters’ inheritance. Neither of you can even be sued in a civil suit by the Rhodes sisters, either.”
Sofia sighed. “I don’t blame you for thinking I had something to do with what he did—with what Ralph Baxter did. But honestly, the only thing I was ever guilty of was being young and incredibly stupid.”
“Why don’t you tell us what happened?” Connor asked. “Our only goal here is to give those two young women some closure. Our finding Baxter, allowing them to confront him, will do that.”
Mel and Connor had been in perfect agreement as they’d prepared for this interview. They wouldn’t mention their suspicion that Baxter had murdered Neil Jackson. They’d wanted to make it as easy as possible for Ms. Torres—now Mrs. Harris—to tell them everything she could recall of that period in her life.
She might not feel as free to do so if she thought there might be a charge of accessory to murder in her future.
“I really didn’t know what Ralph was doing, either before or after that horrible tornado. I’d landed the job with Rhodes and Baxter Real Estate right out of high school. I’d been interviewed by both gentlemen, and they’d both hired me—but it was Ralph Baxter who caught my eye, even if he was more than ten years older than I. Mr. Rhodes, he was a bit older and a nice man. He had pictures of his wife and daughters—he used to call them his girls—on the credenza behind his desk. Sometimes…sometimes I’d go into his office to give him the letters I’d typed for him, and he’d be just sitting there, staring at those pictures. A few times, Mrs. Rhodes came into the office—he acted as if a movie star had come into the room, his face just lit up so.” She smiled, and Mel thought it was a shy smile. “After all these years, despite everything else that happened, that’s my most vivid memory of that time of my life.”
“We heard he was a man who truly loved his wife and daughters,” Connor said.
“He was. Mr. Baxter—Ralph—for all that he was Donald’s friend as well as partner, wasn’t like him at all. He was single, for one thing, and always ready with a joke or a smile. With hindsight, I can tell you the man was a real salesman. And he certainly sold me—he had me believing that he was in love with me. I thought I’d found my Prince Charming.”
She shook her head. “Now, I look back, and I can’t believe I fell for him—for the lies he told me. I can’t believe I was that stupid, but I was.”
“How old were you at the time?” Mel asked. “Nineteen? Twenty?”
“I was nineteen, and yes, I was naïve even for my age.”
“No one could blame you for believing the man, Mrs. Harris. From what else we’ve heard, he was what you might call a player. You believed he was in love with you because that was exactly what he wanted and needed you to believe. He set out to make you fall in love with him. It made it easier for him to use you.”
“I know that now, but I still feel stupid when I look back on it. I realize now that he needed me to cover for him—I’ve learned since that he gambled a lot, but I don’t think Mr. Rhodes knew about that. I swear to you, I had no idea that he owed so much money to the wrong people—after he disappeared, and after the bank sent the first late payment notice—the business had a mortgage on the building—a couple of men showed up, looking for him.” She sighed. “I didn’t know who they were. By then, I was beginning to understand that I’d been lied to, majorly. I was distraught. I thought, at first, that Ralph was just taking a few days away from work, away from town, on account of everything that happened. I thought he was g
rieving for his friends. But when he didn’t come to the office, and I couldn’t reach him by phone, I went to his apartment. I had a key. I found it empty. It even looked like it had been hastily vacated. I got scared and I called the police. I reported him missing, and I tried to convince myself that something horrible must have happened to him.
“But I knew. In my heart, I knew he’d simply left. And still, I didn’t realize exactly what he’d done, not until those thugs showed up. And then, of course I got the foreclosure notice from the bank.”
“Those thugs didn’t hurt you, did they?” Connor’s voice sounded quiet. Mel realized he was angry.
Likely, he was angry with Baxter for putting his young lover in such an untenable position.
“No. I guess they could see how upset I was. They believed me when I told them I had no idea where Ralph Baxter had gone. I thought they were going to give me a hard time—I remember being scared—and they probably would have, if a very handsome young police detective hadn’t chosen that moment to come into the office.” For the first time since she’d begun to tell her story, Sophia Harris smiled. “Detective Michael Harris was following up on the missing persons report I’d filed. He’d come to tell me that, as far as they could tell, Ralph Baxter had left of his own volition. He also told me that they suspected he’d taken money he wasn’t entitled to.”
“Detective Harris—the man you eventually married?” Connor asked.
“Yes. So I could say something good came of that mess. I met Michael because of Ralph Baxter’s perfidy.” Sofia sighed. “He was—and is—my real Prince Charming.”
“You packed up the office, then, and put everything into storage?” Mel asked.
“I did. I felt as if I’d somehow enabled Ralph to do what he had done. Even though I’d truly had no idea of the crimes he’d committed, I still felt partly responsible. I felt that paying that monthly storage charge was a just penance for what I’d done.”
“Is there anything you can think of, anything else at all that Ralph Baxter was doing in the days after the death of the Rhodeses that seemed odd or unusual at the time?” Mel asked.
“I thought it was strange that he focused so much on work—before that tornado, Ralph wasn’t what you’d call the industrious sort. Mr. Rhodes once remarked that Ralph had a way of charming the birds out of the trees, and that if anyone could sell ice to Eskimos it would be him. When it came to the real work that needed to be done, I knew it was Mr. Rhodes who did that. Mr. Baxter, he was the happy-go-lucky partner, the salesman.”
“But in the days following the deaths of the Rhodeses, he seemed unusually busy?” Connor asked.
“Oh, yes. He was making lists of properties—rural properties that were for sale, all over the central and southern part of the state. This was something that I knew he’d been doing even before Mr. Rhodes died. But now, it seemed as if he’d become almost frantic in his quest. I remember thinking at the time that maybe he was submerging his grief in his work. In hindsight, I have no idea what he was doing, because after he disappeared, no client ever called or appeared wanting those lists.”
Mel looked at Connor. That man raised one eyebrow. He wondered if Connor was thinking the same thing he was, that Baxter had been looking for a place to run to.
“It’s a shame that we can’t get our hands on those files you packed away back then,” Connor said to the woman. “I think they’d have the information we need in them.”
When Mrs. Harris looked like she was confused, Mel explained, “There might have been something there that would have helped us figure out where Baxter headed as soon as he ‘went missing’—or where he is today.”
Sofia Harris met his gaze then and stared at him for a long moment. He thought she came to a decision because she reached for a piece of paper. She scribbled something on the page, and then reached for her purse.
She handed him the paper, and a key.
“That’s the address, and the unit number I rented. I think you’re the reason I felt compelled to keep paying my penance all of these years. ”
* * * *
I don’t think I ever really thought about this moment.
Rebecca had had a goal, one that she’d had, really, for a lot longer than the few months since her brush with death in Seattle. She’d even had a plan—sort of—about how she would get herself and Greg and Cody—she’d known his name even before she’d left Seattle—into an intimate situation. But she’d not really given a great deal of thought to the moment when her plan would come to fruition—when she would take that one pivotal action that would be the start of everything.
She’d never given a thought to the moment when she would offer herself to them as a lover.
Rebecca walked into the master bath as far as she could without being seen by them, and stopped just before she stepped around the corner. Just another foot or two and she would be in full view of the two men she could hear talking quietly in the Jacuzzi. Fit into a corner, facing the windows that looked out over the plains of Central Texas, the spa tub was one of her favorite places here at the cabin.
She had one installed for her private use in the house she’d shared with her parents when she’d been eighteen. If she decided to move into her own house here in Lusty—always a possibility—she didn’t have to worry. Most every house came equipped with a large master bedroom and adjoining luxurious bath.
That was a tradition that Grandma Kate once told her had originated with Sarah and Caleb and Joshua Benedict, seconded by Amanda and Adam and Warren Jessop-Kendall, and embraced by darn near every family since.
Even families that weren’t ménage families had a big-ass tub in the master bath.
Some luxuries were of universal appeal.
You’re stalling, Rebecca. What are you, chicken? You need to woman up here.
Her inner imp was always pushing her. One of these days she was going to grab the little bugger and kick it into next week.
Rebecca inhaled deeply, tried to settle her nerves, and stepped around the corner.
Somehow, the steam that rose off the bubbling froth carried the aroma of both men, their masculine scent triggering something feminine and feral deep within her. She inhaled deeply and felt her nipples tighten into hard buds. Moisture seeped out of her cunt.
“There you are,” Greg said. “We were beginning to wonder if you’d gotten cold feet.” He tilted his head to the side. “Bargains aside, you don’t have to take this step yet, Becca, if you’re not ready to.”
“My feet are a bit chilly, but I expect they’ll be warm, soon enough.” She looked from a pair of avid aqua eyes to an equally interested pair of brown ones. Her own gaze flicked, for just a moment, on the white bandage that sat so casually on Cody’s shoulder. Then she met each of their gazes once more. “I want this, for me. I need this, for me.” She stepped closer so they would be able see her.
She wasn’t going to stall any longer, but she did need to make a bit of an explanation first. “I got this tattoo for you.” She met Greg’s gaze. “I’d already decided that I needed to try, with you. Because after all these years, I’m still in love with you. The only possible obstacle was Cody.” She met that man’s gaze. “I didn’t know if you and I would mesh, if my body would respond to you, or if yours would respond to mine.”
“Blue Eyes, get your pretty little self into this tub and I’ll show you how my body responds to you.”
Rebecca smiled. Greg seemed very pleased with Cody’s words—and with hers. He nodded to her. “I’ve never stopped loving you, either. I love Cody, but I love you, too. I don’t know what this is going to be.” He looked at her and then at Cody. “I am afraid of commitment, damn it. But I don’t want to be that way anymore. So let’s try this, let’s see if we can make this work. If we can find the right rhythm, the right…”
“The right simpatico?” Rebecca asked.
“Yeah. The right simpatico. Now lose the robe, Becca.”
Rebecca looked at the men. They’d ranged them
selves in the corner, as far away from the steps in as they could get. She looked at those two steps on the outside leading up to the tub and thought of the visual effect the added elevation would give her. They’d get an eyeful of her tattoo, really up close and personal.
She walked toward them and then took the two steps so that they had to look up to meet her eyes—but not to see the tat.
Then she dropped her robe.
Both men’s gazes swept her body and zeroed in on the tattoo. The bubbles churned, and the only other sound in the room was Greg’s indrawn breath and Cody’s low whistle.
“I think I finally understand that saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’” Greg said.
“Nothing subtle there. For the record, though, Blue Eyes, you didn’t need to paint directions to show the way. Your pussy’s not very hard to find.”
Rebecca raised one eyebrow and looked at Greg.
He smiled, gave her a nod, and turned to Cody. “Remember what Rebecca just said? She’s obviously saying that since I seemed to have so much trouble finding it again, I needed an arrow to point me in the right direction.”
Then he held out his hand to her. She stepped down into the tub and took his hand. The heat of the water slid up her legs to her hips, seducing her into releasing her own tension. The men made room for her between them, and that was the gesture she needed the most. When they each reached for one of her hands, she shivered in pleasure.
“Personally, I usually hate it when folks stand around and discuss what the artist really meant, exactly,” Rebecca said. “But in this case, darling, you got it in one.”
She hoped they thought her flushed face was from of the heat of the water, and not because she was totally naked between two men who were similarly clothed.
“So, Rebecca, do you come here often?” Cody met her gaze and raised his eyebrows twice in a mock leering gesture.
Love Under Two Adventurers [The Lusty, Texas Collection] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 10