Winning Wyatt (The Billionaire Brotherhood Book 1)

by Floyd, Jacie

  His gaze shifted across the sea of faces. He hadn’t seen his outlandish friend in years. He hoped he’d recognize her. If not, Wyatt could count on Dylan to identify the bold woman they’d partied with across Europe.

  Sam’s strong, sculptor’s fingers bit into his forearm and pulled at his attention. Placing an arm around her shoulders, he hugged her against him. “Relax, Sammie. You’re a hit.”

  “But there’s so much at stake.” She spoke so quietly he had to bend down to hear.

  Wyatt shook his head at her lack of confidence. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he looked her in the eye. Not many women around could match him in height. “Your best work is on display in a top-notch New York gallery. Try to enjoy it.”

  “Good advice!” Irma bobbed her head like a pigeon. “However, it wouldn’t hurt for you to mingle with the customers and the press and try to make a good impression.”

  “Don't worry about the critics,” Wyatt continued to soothe. “They’re probably a bunch of dried up old prunes who wouldn’t recognize your kind of style, innovation, and creativity if it bit them in their collective butts.”

  “Not true. Some of them are quite enlightened.” Irma ticked them off on her fingers. “Callie Jones is here, and I spotted Kara Enderley earli—”

  “Kara Enderley?” Wyatt swiveled his head from side to side to see for himself. “But she’s—”

  “Excuse me—” One of Irma’s anemic-looking, overeager assistants interrupted them with a potential buyer in tow. Irma and Sam snapped to attention.

  Wyatt took the opportunity to slip away.

  His inspection of the crowd intensified, but too many people milled around for him to pinpoint Kara or Regina. Frustrated, he focused on the main entrance. For the space of a heartbeat he spotted Kara’s auburn hair.

  There!

  Before he could be sure, a set of broad shoulders blocked his view and a sprite with bright red hair and electric clothing stepped in the way. Kara darted a glance around the room, allowing him a tantalizingly brief view of her delicate features before she ducked outside.

  Wyatt moved swiftly, torn between fury and jubilation. He stood too far away to catch up with her, and though he called her name, noisy conversation drowned him out. When he arrived at the door, Dylan stepped into his path.

  “Wyatt! Great to see you, buddy.” Dylan slapped him on the back.

  “Great to see you, too. Thanks for coming.” Wyatt shook his friend’s hand and gave him a loose-limbed shoulder hug. “I tried to get Ryan to join us, but he’s laid up with another knee surgery.”

  “Yeah, I heard. We should go to Boston tomorrow to see him.”

  “Good idea. Let’s do it. Tomorrow or the next day. I’ll get back to you on that.” He turned to face the woman at Dylan’s side. “And Regina, my love. Been dancing in any Italian fountains lately?”

  She groaned at the memory. “Trust you to bring up sordid episodes from my past. Besides, you were the instigator of that prank, if I remember correctly.” Linking her hands behind his neck, she brushed Euro-air kisses on first one cheek and then the other. “How’s my favorite Renaissance Man? Don’t tell me you’re still friends with this reprobate.” She jabbed Dylan with an elbow.

  “Ouch, that hurts.” Dylan shielded his heart with a hand. “And I thought you wanted me. Bad.”

  “Oh, I do. In the worst way. Tied up, blindfolded. Maybe a little whip-action.” She released her grip on Wyatt’s neck to loop her arm through Dylan’s and nip his ear.

  Dylan patted her on the ass. “Sure, that would work, babe. Give me a call sometime.”

  Wyatt looked from one of them to the other, speculating on the tension that bounced between them. Were they kidding? Or were they serious? Hard to tell. And not his business. Whatever was going on between these two, Wyatt had his own agenda.

  “Wyatt, I definitely want to meet your latest protégé before the evening’s over. Catch up with me later, okay? And Regina darling, I see a tempting tidbit over there I’d love to do—I mean, talk to. If you’ll excuse me...” As she sputtered, Dylan put his hands in his pockets and strolled away.

  “Satyr,” Regina muttered to Dylan’s retreating back.

  While their exchange had roused Wyatt’s curiosity, he had history of his own to explore. He turned to check on Sam’s whereabouts before backing the agent into a corner behind one of Sam’s towering free-forms.

  Regina crossed her arms, leaned against the wall, and cut to the chase. “Okay, gorgeous, what is it you want?”

  He sighed. “What makes you think I want something?”

  “Well, I haven’t seen you since that summer we biked through Italy. How long ago was that?” A skinny eyebrow arched into hiding behind her shock of bangs with pink highlights. “Ten, twelve years? And then I receive your phone call the other day, out of the blue, saying you’re eager to meet with me. So what’s it about?”

  “It’s not that abrupt,” Wyatt objected. “We’ve talked occasionally.”

  “True, but I’ve been the one calling you.”

  “Wanting favors of one sort or another,” he reminded her.

  She drew back then, warier than before. “Not always.”

  “Right.” He pinned a smile to his face. “Actually, this meeting is about one of those favors you wanted. I wondered what happened to that friend you asked me to meet in Los Angeles a couple of years ago.”

  “I don’t know why you’d care about Kara now.” Regina wrinkled her nose with elfin charm. “You only took her to dinner that one time.”

  “I intended to ask her out again, but I had to leave town on business the next day.” Or, that was the story he and Kara had agreed to share with Regina anyway. Kara had been adamant about keeping their steamy affair a secret. Wyatt’s hope that Kara had found a way in the past three years to tell her friend the truth plummeted. “Does she still live in New York? I thought we might get together now that I’m here and kind of at loose ends.”

  Regina hooted her disbelief. “You call Samantha Davenport a loose end? How unchivalrous.”

  He frowned at her assumption that there was something intimate going on between them. “We’re just friends.”

  “Does she know that?” Both of Regina’s penciled-in eyebrows soared upward this time. “Don’t look now, but she’s headed this way and does not look happy.”

  “She’s just nervous about the show.” He steered Regina more deeply into the corner. “Tell me what happened to your friend before Sam reaches us.”

  Regina crossed one elegantly shod foot over the other and crossed her arms. “Remember when I asked you to meet her? She was really depressed about the deaths of her husband and child. Understandable, but still, it had been three years since the accident. I thought a change of scene would do her good, and I got her a temporary writing assignment in L.A.”

  “At The Hansett. Right, I remember some of that.” Wyatt’s patience stretched thin,

  waiting for her to continue.

  “I thought you must have something special in the air or the water out there, because by the time she came back to New York, she glowed with good spirits. I wasn’t sure the improvement would last, but then she went and got herself pregnant. Having a baby seems to have worked wonders.”

  “Pregnant?” His voice cracked on the word. He needed a moment to accept the concept. More than a moment. “She had a baby?”

  “Yeah, can you imagine?” Regina shuddered at the prospect. “Having another child wouldn’t have been my choice. But to each person, their own poison, I always say. She’s a little paranoid about the kid’s safety, but I guess that’s to be expected after what happened with the first one.”

  Although he remained on his feet, he felt like he’d been body slammed to the floor. He gasped to get his breath back. “How—” Wheeze. “What—” Wheeze. “Who—”

  “Um, Wyatt?” Sam interrupted the inarticulate line of questions tripping against one another on his tongue.

  Questions about
the child’s age, gender, and the most important question of all. Who the hell was the father? Questions like that could wait until he had Kara standing in front of him. He wanted her to personally fill him in on the gory details, not Regina.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead. “Do you need something?”

  “Um, yes. I mean, when you have time, could you come with me to talk to some reporters? You know I’m not very good with that kind of thing.”

  “Sure, Sam.” He summoned an encouraging smile for her. “That’s why I’m here.”

  She linked her arm with his, and Wyatt excused himself to Regina. He held Sam’s hand through the question-and-answer session, but his heart and head tumbled with thoughts of Kara. And her baby.

  She lied!

  Speeding through the rain and dark toward Kara’s Connecticut home, Wyatt slammed the heel of his hand against the steering wheel of the rental car his assistant had delivered to the gallery. He hadn’t reserved a car and driver for the night and he needed to get to Kara as quickly as he could.

  She’d lied about so many things, not just about being out of town this weekend. She’d lied by omission every time she failed to mention a small detail like the birth of a child.

  Although some persistent corner of his brain suggested, maybe her silence on the subject made sense in a weird, convoluted kind of way.

  As much as he hated to acknowledge it, the last time they’d been together, she’d made no secret about how much she wanted to be a mother again. In their conversations since then, he’d been satisfied to hear her voice and know she was all right. They rarely discussed private or personal matters. And he particularly applauded whatever reasoning had kept her from sharing confidences about romantic involvements.

  But she must have known that he appreciated how much having a baby meant to her. Why hadn’t she mentioned something so important? So freaking monumental?

  Over the past three years, she’d provided him with mountains of information about the renovation of her nineteenth-century Victorian house. How she’d scoured estate auctions for the perfect nineteenth-century Austrian crystal chandelier to hang in the dining room. How carefully she’d recreated the house’s original color scheme. How she’d hired a carpenter to repair the authentic railing on the gazebo. He knew how long it had taken to refinish the hardwood floors throughout the lower level of the whole damn house.

  But he knew nothing about her baby.

  Or the baby’s father. Could he be—? No. Tugging on the knot of his necktie, he cut off that thought abruptly. Surely she would’ve told him that!

  He pulled up the circular driveway and parked. Light gleamed through various windows, but not from her tower room office. Was the window on the second floor with a light on the nursery?

  A late model Mustang sat in front of the house. Well, too bad if she had company. He couldn’t wait another second to see Kara. Without conscious effort, he found himself out of the car and stationed on the wide porch.

  But then, he hesitated. What if she wasn’t home yet? What if someone else came to the door? Someone like a babysitter. Or a boyfriend. Or worse, the father of her child. The lucky son of a bitch.

  Wyatt thumped the polished brass doorknocker with intentional force. Once. Twice. And then again. The foyer light blinked on and the door eased opened.

  At last. Kara.

  His gaze feasted on the sight of her. Even with fear banked in her lavender eyes, she looked stronger, less fragile than she had the last time he’d seen her. From the top of her reddish-brown hair pulled into a sophisticated topknot, down the pale silky blouse that shimmered like moonlight, past the slim skirt, to the toes curling against the hardwood floor, she exuded a new confidence and contentment.

  Motherhood obviously agreed with her.

  When she crossed her arms to protect herself from his blatant perusal, she succeeded in drawing attention to breasts that were fuller than they’d been three years ago. That attribute, together with her rounded hips and slender waist, made his hands itch to caress every beautiful inch of her.

  A series of conflicting emotions flickered across her face—pleasure, doubt, guilt, fear—before she dropped her eyelids and hid her feelings behind an impersonal mask. Before the night was done, he intended to slip behind that mask to expose every one of her shuttered emotions.

  He curbed his anger and annoyance, joy and delight, to mimic her pretense of indifference.

  “Well, Miz Kara Enderley, alive and in person.” Leaning a shoulder against the doorframe, he used his purebred Georgian drawl. “Did the boat sink?”

  Although he retained his casual pose and allowed her to assess his appearance as carefully as he’d assessed hers, the wariness remained in the depths of her eyes.

  “Wyatt.” The strained whisper barely reached his ears. “I was afraid you’d show up.”

  “May I come in?” He planted his foot in the door.

  She pursed her lips, but after a moment, she stepped aside. He entered the house and glanced at the evidence of her handiwork, from the gleaming wainscoting and flooring up to the crown molding on the high ceiling and the stained glass sidelight. Their arms accidentally brushed. Even that small contact pulled at Wyatt with the same magnetic force that took hold of him whenever they touched. Kara jumped back as if burned.

  Her irrational fear of him ignited his anger and erased his intention to let her explain at her own pace. If she no longer acknowledged him as a friend, he’d insist she remember him as her lover. He pulled her forward for a persuasive kiss.

  His mouth boldly covered hers in a long-awaited reunion. Her body stiffened against his and her mouth remained still and unresponsive, challenging him to use all his pent up longing and desire to spark her inner fire to life. He slicked his tongue across the seam of her lips and pushed his way inside.

  The taunting rhythm of his tongue lured her closer. She inched her arms around him and participated in the embrace. He molded her hips to his, and she moaned, rubbing against the erection that flared between them.

  A sudden crash came from the rear of the house. She tore herself away.

  “Problem?” Reminded of the real reason for his unscheduled visit, he commanded his rampaging libido to retreat. “Something you need to check on? Dog? Cat? Iguana?”

  “Um, no.” Breathless, she darted a look down the hallway and smoothed her hair. She might try to pretend she hadn’t opened up to him like a bank vault to a safecracker, but Wyatt knew better. She directed him to the formal parlor off the entry. “You might as well come in. Have a seat. Please.”

  He lowered himself onto a small rose-patterned sofa and glanced around the Victorian flower box of a room. The one space in the house she had decorated to fit its original style.

  Kara remained in the doorway, a safe distance away. “Can I get you something?”

  He pictured her wielding a tea tray to keep him at bay, but he’d be damned before he’d let her treat him like an unwelcome suitor. He patted the cushion beside him. “Come talk to me, Kara. There are things we need to discuss.”

  “What things?” Skittish as a rabbit, she took a step forward.

  Leaning back, he forced himself to relax instead of bombarding her with accusations. “Let’s start with why you said you were going on a cruise.”

  She straightened the shade on a Tiffany lamp with shaking fingers. Fingers that were devoid of a wedding ring, he noted with relief.

  Sparks shot through the lavender gaze that met his and darted away. “I didn’t want to see you.”

  He ignored the painful twist of his heart. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Her hands fluttered in a vague gesture. “I didn’t know how.”

  “The truth always worked for us before.”

  Her gaze flickered in his direction again, then away. She licked her lips. “Not always.”

  Small, quick footsteps padded toward them. Heavier ones followed. Kara closed her eyes and swallowed. A pint-sized pajama-clad dynamo hu
rled itself against her legs. “Mom-mee!”

  “Sorry, Kara.” A dark-haired young girl stopped in the doorway. “I know you didn’t want to be disturbed, but he wouldn’t wait any longer.”

  “That’s fine, Maria.” Kara swung the child up and settled him on her hip, pulling him into a hug as she did so.

  How old was he? Wyatt wasn’t familiar enough with children to hazard a guess.

  Maria observed Wyatt with bold interest, but Kara dismissed her. “You can go on home now. I’ll put him to bed.” Kara smoothed the toddler’s curls. “Tell Maria good night.”

  “Night-night, ‘Ria.” The little guy followed the words with an awkward wave.

  “Night-night, angel boy.” Maria dropped a kiss on his cheek and backed out of the room. “He’s already had his medicine, Kara. See you two in the morning.”

  Despite Maria’s curiosity, Wyatt had felt oddly isolated throughout the exchange. His interest bounced back and forth between Kara and her son. The boy snuggled against her, his coppery curls resting on her shoulder, a thumb tucked in his mouth. So much live-wire tension emanated from her direction that Wyatt expected her to start generating sparks any second now.

  “If you’ll wait here,” she said, backing out of the room, “I’ll put him to bed.”

  “I’ll come, too.” He wouldn’t let her ditch him that easily.

  Stepping back, she swallowed. “No!” Her son lifted his head and creased his little face into a pucker. Her volume lowered a notch. “Perhaps another time.”

  “I doubt there’ll be another time, Kara.” Wyatt’s annoyance flared. “I’m starting to feel like I’m not welcome here.”

  The boy whimpered. Kara patted him on the back. “He hasn’t been feeling well this week, so he’s a little grumpy. I’ll be back when he’s settled in bed. Wait here.”

  She seemed to expect Wyatt to heel, like a well-trained setter, but he followed her up the stairs. Outside the baby’s room, she glared and gestured for him to wait in the hall. He disobeyed that command, too.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been in a nursery.” Stepping into the room, he observed the nursery rhyme themes, executed in primary colors. “Xander’s the only child in my immediate family, you know, and he’s sixteen now.”