The night that changed everything…
After being dumped by her fiancé and losing her shot at TV stardom, Bindi Paxton just wants to get out of town. But there’s no escaping the past—not even on the beautiful Seychelles Islands. And when her attraction to former Las Vegas Slayers heir Santino Franco culminates in a night of sizzling passion, she has to fight her feelings for a man who could hurt her deeper than any other has before.
Santino came to the islands to find the man responsible for the injury that ended his pro-football career. Ending up in bed with Bindi is a mistake they both regret. Except he now needs her help to find his fugitive father. And—heaven help him—he’s starting to fall for the stunning Sin City reporter. He can’t change their history…but he’d give anything for one more night, and maybe forever, in her arms.
“You probably shouldn’t kiss me again.”
Bindi waited as the music disappeared into the hot silence, her breath held, her thoughts on pause, watching him. Santino took the bait, his tattooed forearms tensing as he stilled his strong fingers on the piano keys, and sent her a slow, challenging smile. Bindi moved.
She cut away the distance between them, her bare feet soundless on the marble floor as she edged between the piano and the wide, plush bench. Her legs bumped his, forcing him to release the keys and nudge the bench backward.
In front of him, she absorbed that sexy, challenging smile with one of her own, and dropped her butt onto the keyboard. The noise resonated in her ears. “Kissing me like that? Holding me like that? Going there again would be a mistake you don’t want to make, Santino.”
“Is it a mistake you want to make? Is that how you want to play this?”
Caught off guard, she stammered, “This? There is no this. Don’t start thinking there is. What I mean is, you shouldn’t figure a kiss is going to make me more inclined to help you find Al. In fact, I’m less inclined. I’m done with him, and I want to be done with you.”
Santino reached for her lock pendant. With a faint tug, he pulled her forward until her mouth was close enough to sample. “Can you last an entire conversation without lying?”
“Yes.” Possibly.
“My father’s not in this house, and he’s not sitting at this piano. It’s you and it’s me, Bindi.” He released her pendant, only to let his hands glide freely up her thighs and tangle in the lace of her dress. “And I don’t see you walking away.”
Dear Reader,
Ever want to get away? Perhaps to distance yourself from a less-than-ideal situation? Or to just see something new? Many attribute my insatiable wanderlust to personality traits and astrological characteristics. When travel isn’t an option, writing is. New characters often take me away and invite me into their worlds. And sometimes we become so tight so quickly that I bring them back with me.
Which is why Mine Tonight is Bindi Paxton’s story. If you read Night Games, then you know Bindi well. Or you think you do. She’s waited impatiently for me to reveal who she truly is. Despite her gritty past and damaging mistakes, she’s a beautiful person deserving of redemption—much like Santino Franco. Bindi and Santino can’t seem to escape themselves, each other or what awaits them within the Blue Dynasty.
May this book take you away.
XOXO
Lisa Marie Perry
Lisa Marie Perry thinks an imagination’s a terrible thing to ignore. So is a good cappuccino. After years of college, customer service gigs and a career in caregiving, she at last gave in to buying an espresso machine and writing to her imagination’s desire. Lisa Marie lives in America’s heartland, and she has every intention of making the Colorado mountains her new stomping grounds. She drives a truck, enjoys indie rock, collects Medieval literature, watches too many comedies, has a not-so-secret love for lace and adores rugged men with a little bit of nerd.
Books by Lisa Marie Perry
Harlequin Kimani Romance
Night Games
Midnight Play
Just for Christmas Night
Mine Tonight
Visit the Author Profile page at
Harlequin.com for more titles
For my babies—
Whenever I want to be wiser, funnier, stronger or kinder, all I have to do is think of you.
I don’t want a world without you in it.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 1
“Got some info about your father’s ex-fiancée. Bindi Paxton. A sexy little piece. Keep in contact with her?”
Santino Franco knew someone had followed him after he’d left the Las Vegas sports physical therapy clinic that had served as his haven for the past two years. A male in heavy-soled footwear. Combat boots, maybe. Photographer? Reporter? A genuine threat?
Tonight’s rehabilitation evaluation and endurance-centered training session had reset his limits, but the violent adrenaline rush had only sharpened his awareness. Pace slow, senses alert, he’d crossed casually to the parking lot with his duffel bag hooked over one shoulder and his fists hungry for permission to act.
But the name Bindi Paxton had caught him off guard, forced him to engage. Press preyed on him to feed their questions about his father, Alessandro Franco, a prominent member of the one percent who’d fallen from grace and was as of two weeks ago MIA, but this was the first time anyone had used Alessandro’s ex-fiancée as a tactic.
“There’re two ways we can end this game,” he threatened when his tracker remained camouflaged in the shadows offered by the lazy February sunset. “You back off, or I make you back off.”
“Wouldn’t mind the challenge, ’cept the .38 wound in my shoulder burns like a mother.” The stranger stepped into the periphery of a floodlight beam. Tall and dark, his accent and features suggested Middle Eastern descent.
Instinct told Santino to tread on—carefully. “You a fed? Military?”
“A jack of a few decent trades. A problem solver, really. Heard you wanted to find your father. I don’t have a badge or nice, neat paperwork. But I’m as legit as they come. Name’s Zaf. Know where Bindi is?”
“If you want to find Bindi, Zaf, try looking behind a few whiskey sours or under any of Vegas’s geriatric millionaires.” Venomous words, but they didn’t spare him the images of Bindi that the phrase “sexy little piece” evoked.
She was sexy. He’d believed it every second of every day he’d shared space with her in the Francos’ Lake Las Vegas mansion. She had a secretive smile, midnight-radio voice and clothes that were figure-hugging enough to distract even a man whose life now consisted of used-to-bes and could’ve-beens.
Struggling with the aftereffects of an injury that had cost him his NFL career—professionals called it post-traumatic stress; he called it hell—he’d used animosity and hostility to fight all the ways she enticed him. And he’d fixated on protecting his family’s interests from her, a serial gold digger who’d worn deceit like a favorite dress, who’d used herself as a commodity, who’d held every intention of becoming his father’s fourth wife.
“About Bindi.” Zaf unzipped his jacket to drag a thick envelope from an interior pocket. Pain distorted his expression at the choppy movement. When Santino glanced down he saw a holstered Glock nestled against his side. “She’s not in Las Vegas.”
“She’s gone?”
Just like his father. Alessandro Franco had been missing for fifteen days, escaping federal charges and an NFL investigation of misconduct during
his reign as owner of the city’s professional football franchise, the Las Vegas Slayers. He’d vanished as though he were a ribbon of smoke uncurling into the air of a crowded club.
What did it mean that Bindi, who’d lost access to certain connections and protections when his father had ended their engagement months ago, was now missing?
“Concerned about her?” Zaf’s voice was neutral.
“A woman disappearing in this city’s a damn good cause for concern, don’t you think?” Especially if she might have been connected to his father’s illegal activities. Perhaps there had been more to their relationship than he’d thought.
Zaf remained silent, reactionless.
“She’s an ex-congressman’s kid. Why isn’t her family all over national news?”
“Let’s say Mommy and Daddy have no comment when it comes to their only offspring. The elite Paxtons of Illinois don’t invite that one home for Sunday dinners. Besides, I know where she is.”
“Where?” Santino hoped he didn’t sound like he cared too much.
“She booked a flight out of McCarran International last week. If she’s downing whiskey or searching for a new sugar daddy, she’s doing it on the Seychelles.”
“She left the country?”
“She got scoped, same as everybody else the feds singled out for a closer look. They figure her hands are clean enough for her to travel. But I’m getting this feeling that when Al comes up for air, he might go straight to her.”
There was no way in hell his father would come to his sons, that was for sure. “He treated her horribly. Dumped her.”
“Money can make some women forgiving. With Franco money, Bindi might be very forgiving.”
She deserves better than that.
Not that Santino could identify better or had any right to decide what his father’s ex did or didn’t deserve, but when it came to being used and dropped, he and Bindi Paxton shared a few scars.
There was a vulnerability about her that common sense warned him to resist. Still, the grand Franco mansion had made for close quarters, and yeah, there’d been moments when common sense had left him hanging.
A moment when he’d walked in on her fixing gourmet s’mores in the middle of the night, and she’d offered him a timid smile and a s’more before charging off to her quarters. A moment when he’d caught her daydreaming at a gala and for a split second figured it hadn’t mattered to him whether she was bored or designing her next scheme—she was so damn beautiful. A moment when he’d found her shuddering with tears in her eyes and he’d wanted to hurt Alessandro for wrecking her.
She’d tempted him to cross lines that shouldn’t be crossed. She was out of his reach now, and he couldn’t let himself miss her magnetism enough to change that.
“How’d you get her whereabouts?”
“Intel,” Zaf replied, tucking the envelope under an arm and awkwardly lighting a cigarette. “My contacts can report back to me anything from the VIN of the convertible she rented on Cora Island to what she packed in her fancy purple luggage.”
“Convertible? Purple luggage?” It sounded as though Zaf was outright stalking Bindi. Probably had been keeping tags on him, too. What game was Zaf playing and for whom? If Zaf could find his father, then he was game to play along until he could figure out what was going on.
“Collecting details is just part of my job.” Zaf exhaled a stream of smoke from the shadows before pitching the cigarette to the ground and snuffing it under a boot. “Quitting. It’s a process.”
Santino ignored the wry aside. “So that’s all you have? Bindi’s on the Seychelles?”
“Those are the highlights. There’s more—a hell of a lot more—in this file. But first, why don’t you tell me how she’d get herself set up on some island, in a villa that has a six-month reservation wait list?”
Six months ago, it’d been August. Alessandro had broken up with Bindi in August. Chances were he hadn’t given her some island getaway as a parting gift, so the villa must’ve been booked while things were still good between them, when he might’ve cared about impressing her.
Realization dawned. It was February. Almost Valentine’s Day, one of many holidays that hadn’t mattered to him since his girlfriend had traded him for a rookie New England Patriot.
Vaguely he recalled Bindi bragging to the sugar-baby socialites she’d run with in Las Vegas that her fiancé had given her carte blanche to plan a Valentine’s vacation.
He’d assumed everything between them had ended with their engagement.
“I remember her planning a trip,” he told Zaf. “My father ate the cost.”
“A honeymoon?”
“Naw—she had ideas about taking a cruise around the world. The island could’ve been for a number of reasons. Could’ve been something my father threw out there to distract her.”
“Damn expensive distraction. Is that why Al told her to step? Upkeep not worth it?”
“Might be part of it.” A bigger part probably had more to do with his father’s compulsion to screw over the people he said he cared about.
But Santino hadn’t wanted to dwell on that negativity. All he wanted was to concentrate on rehab, on his quiet mission to regain control of the career he’d lost. Chasing a comeback that the more pessimistic of his doctors and athletic trainers insisted would be a miracle that’d defy the laws of science or would be the false hope that might get him onto the field but would likely lead to paralysis, he thought he’d get a reprieve from federal investigators, blood-lusting media, his own urge to hunt Alessandro and drag him home to justice that’d be neither clean nor forgiving.
For the umpteenth time since he’d been introduced to the phrase incomplete spinal cord injury, he cursed the tackle that had turned him into a walking dead man.
A Las Vegas Slayers defensive lineman had targeted him two seasons ago, taking him out of the game with an illegal hit—a hit ordered by the man who’d owned the team then.
Alessandro Franco.
It had been a bounty, a call his father had made to fix the game and manipulate a gambling ring.
While Alessandro was running from the repercussions of his crimes, Santino was left to pick up every microscopic piece of his shattered life.
He’d lost more than his place on the Cardinals’ roster and in the NFL. He’d become a prisoner to rehab and revenge, and fear sometimes suggested he was so psychologically jarred that he’d never recover.
“Bindi Paxton’s the means,” Zaf said rationally, “but finding Alessandro Franco is the end.”
“Alive. I want him found alive.”
“Of course.” A flash of white teeth shone in the shadows. “I’d rather see a mouse crawl in a cage than crush its neck in a trap.”
Santino frowned. “No results, no cash.”
“Consider this a good deed. Pro bono.”
“What’s your stake in it?”
“Bringing Alessandro in will look nice on my record. My record needs, uh, redemption, you could say.”
“Zaf—what’s your full name?”
“Just Zaf is all you need to know.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t trust you.”
“Trust is more hassle than it’s worth. Who can anyone trust? Family? Your father sold you out for some sports bets—can you trust him?”
Santino would always love his father. It was a deathbed promise he’d made to his mother. He still honored him, because the “dutiful son” part of him just wouldn’t die. But he’d never trust the man again. It stung like a bitch that this was reality.
“Or your godfather, Gian DiGorgio?” Zaf persisted. “Can you trust him?”
Gian, who ran one of the most exclusive casinos in the country, was Alessandro’s oldest friend and was facing convictions for his alleged facilitation of the gambling ring. “What do you know about Gian?”
“The security at his casino is lax. DiGorgio’s cameras have blind spots, his boys have slow reflexes and the system’s firewalls are laughable.”
“You’ve been getting acquainted with his security systems?”
“Research.”
Unease crawled up Santino’s spine. “How do I know you’re not one of DiGorgio’s boys?”
“Huh—guess you don’t. But think about this. Gian DiGorgio’s playing with a trick deck. He’s got the brains and the balls to rig his casino with bad security. That’s strategy. He’s smart. He’s a liar. And I can guaran-damn-tee his next step is recommending you a PI to find Alessandro. Just to prove he’s one of the good guys.”
Gian was a skilled betrayer. That wasn’t news to Santino. But he didn’t trust Zaf any more than he trusted his godfather.
Zaf shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s talk about your brother. More specifically, his tasty bedmate, Charlotte Blue. She’s more involved in your troubles than you probably think.”
Wasn’t it friggin’ funny how the name Blue kept resurfacing as his world splintered to pieces?
When Alessandro had architected claims that Charlotte’s father, Marshall Blue, had coerced Alessandro to sell the Las Vegas Slayers franchise to him over a year ago, Santino had reacted with vengeance. He’d been the heir apparent, next in line to own the team. The Blues were building a dynasty from his legacy. And he’d single-mindedly wanted to destroy it.
That was before the truth had come down as cold and sharp as a guillotine’s blade.
“Charlotte’s got a friend in DEA. Josephine de la Peña,” Zaf said. “She followed a few bread crumbs, found out your father had made some suspect moves. Which led to the dirt she’s got on your godfather. Did you know that?”
“No.” He’d known that the feds were hunting. He hadn’t known that the woman his brother was currently sleeping with had a friend leading the hunt.
“Gian DiGorgio knows.” Zaf turned the envelope in his hands. “Want to get to Bindi Paxton? Want this file to make it easier? Agree to do what’s necessary to draw out Alessandro, then deliver him to me. I’ll turn him over to the feds—alive and unharmed.”
Mine Tonight Page 1