Actually, the woman in it, but the point was crystal clear. “Sorry,” he said. But that didn’t slow her angry steps or make him feel any less like an ass.
Or persuade him to resume his search for his father’s ex-fiancée. His gaze returned to that lace-covered ass, dropped to trace the quirky bow of her hyperextended legs.
Hyperextended? Double-jointed legs weren’t exactly uncommon, but his heart panicked anyway.
Because the only woman he knew who possessed a pair of long, double-jointed pins had worn his father’s ring.
Blending into the cluster circling the buffet, Santino signaled for a waiter carting around a carnal-red platter.
“Des huîtres, monsieur?” the waiter offered, presenting the platter. “Oysters?”
“No.”
“Pomegranate? Strawberry?”
“Question.”
Lowering the platter, the waiter replied, “Si ce n’est pas sur les entrées, je ne puex pas vous aider. I must refer you to the hostess.” Peering around, he indicated the woman with the incredible backside.
The hair must’ve thrown him. When he’d known her, she’d had lighter, blonder hair.
And he’d never stared at her ass the way he had tonight.
Get past that. She’s here. Now get to her.
He fixed his gaze above her waist—which ceased being a smart decision the second she twirled around and rewarded him a perfect view of her more-than-perfect rack.
Getting out of this house, taking the next helicopter to Mahé and returning when he could trade lust for logic was what he wanted. Problem was, he couldn’t afford that kind of delay.
The longer it took to get inside Bindi’s head, the crappier his chances were of establishing an alliance. He hoped he could turn her, get her on his side. He could better protect her that way.
After reading the contents of the envelope he’d taken from Zaf—a man whom he’d learned after some swift, discreet digging of his own was a military specialist last known as Archangel and whose traceable record ended several years ago—he’d determined that Bindi’s life had taken a one-eighty.
The lifestyle she presented for the guests roaming the villa was false. She now lived in one of the more dangerous spots in Las Vegas and had no verifiable income source. She’d been his father’s toy. Aiding him to evade his demons would downgrade her from toy to expendable pawn.
Santino refused to see that happen to her.
Still, he didn’t regret being the one to show up here and prick her luxurious bubble.
“On second thought,” he said to the waiter, “I need a whiskey sour sent to the hostess.”
*
When had the house become so jam-packed? During the crunk song Bindi had danced to in a circle of expensive-suited men whose keys she’d politely rejected? She’d broken away to resume her quest for the man whose Lenny Kravitz look had caught her interest earlier, but where was he?
She stopped to regroup. A gray-haired, sun-darkened waiter penetrated the crowd, greeting her as madame and proffering a glass.
Was he psychic? The fabulous concierge at the island’s resort hotel had highly recommended him and the other servers for this special occasion, but Professor X–style mind reading was a skill the woman hadn’t mentioned.
Mesmerized, Bindi accepted the drink. Admiring the flawlessly sliced orange wheel and plump cherry, she recognized bourbon whiskey and lemon juice as if they were BFFs. “Merci! You read my mind.”
“Ce n’était pas mon idée. It was his request.” He gestured to a man standing near the buffet.
A man straight out of the world she thought she’d escaped.
“Oh, no.”
“C’est vrai.”
Bindi could avoid him—dive into the waiter’s shadow, duck past the couple gyrating perilously close to a curio cabinet stocked with valuable Cora Island knickknacks, shimmy out to the east wing of the veranda and slink her way to the estate’s private, lush tropical garden.
Except her ex-fiancé’s eldest son shared his single-minded, addictive personality, and if Santino Franco was bent on destroying her party, avoidance wouldn’t dissuade him.
Besides that, she had every right to this Seychelles holiday, and he was the trespasser.
When she’d become engaged to Alessandro, neither of his sons had welcomed her into the Franco circle. Okay, she could understand their reluctance to accept her as stepmommy number three. And yes, it might’ve seemed unconventional, since she was several years younger than both Santino and his brother, Nate. But from the get-go their harsh resentment had haunted whatever seedlings of hope she’d harbored of a legit relationship with their father.
Nate had once been an ally, but generally he’d kept his distance. With Santino, there’d never been any give or compromise or chance of more existing between them than utter distrust. Which was a pity, because he was the type of man she would normally admire. Perhaps she did anyway. Just a bit.
For months they’d lived under the same roof, intertwined their lives, and yet his eyes had always held suspicion when they touched her. Every degrading thing he left unspoken surfaced in that grave, uncompromising gaze.
“Shall I give him your thanks?”
Bindi bussed the waiter’s cheeks. “No, I’ll do it.” Plucking the cherry from the glass, rolling it around in her mouth and relishing its sweetness, she considered her next move.
Somewhere in the silence of Santino’s humorless face, hidden beneath his well-cut clothes and resting behind his steel-muscled frame was the man’s compassion.
Of that she had no doubt.
As she approached, she felt something coast over her like an invisible stroke. She thought she’d felt it before, in the past, but hadn’t tried to place it then.
Was it interest?
“Bindi. You were blonde in Las Vegas.” His voice was even deeper and rougher than she remembered. That stroking sensation swept over her again.
“My father’s a quarter Native American, a quarter Polish and half African-American. My mother was born a half Armenian, half German Jew. I’m not a natural blonde.”
Rather than make some insensitive remark, Santino just nodded—and she appreciated that.
Alessandro Franco was an Italian Catholic, and his first wife, Gloria, an African-American Christian. Their sons had experienced a blended heritage.
Bindi hadn’t.
On paper, she was the other checkbox. The unexplained. It diminished the beauty of her patchwork heritage, but so did plenty of her parents’ deliberate choices. Focus on tomorrow, not yesterday, was Roscoe and Daphne’s mantra. Assimilation, civil wars and debates about anything from places of worship to racial slurs received no respect when there were political opportunities to secure their present and future comforts.
“Sending me this drink. Is this some sort of passive-aggressive gesture—?”
Santino stripped the drink from her grasp and took a swallow. “Damn, that’s some good whiskey.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t want it,” she protested, reclaiming the glass to take a sip herself.
Yum. There weren’t many things she and Santino Franco agreed on, but apparently quality whiskey was one of them.
“How did you know I was here?”
“I remembered,” he said after an uncomfortable stretch of silence during which he simply stared at her. “Dad asked you to plan this trip a while ago. You were happy.”
“Enamored, really,” she said. No part of being a man’s doll, of swapping her self-respect for money and gifts, had ever made her happy.
Toe-to-toe now, she raised her chin to rest her gaze against his. Would he raid the estate, send her guests scrambling off the premises like ants brushed off a cube of sugar? “It’s Valentine’s. Poisoning my guests against me will bring down my V-Day buzz.” It was jokingly said, but when she spoke next, there was nothing to buffer her sincerity. “I don’t know why you’re here, Santino, but these people have nothing to do with you and me. They’re hav
ing a good time. Please don’t ruin this for them.”
“I’m not here to ruin your party.”
She hadn’t expected that, and it took her a moment to regroup. “Why are you here?”
People scooted past, wormed around them in search of refreshments. Nudging, jostling, they created chaos—yet Santino didn’t budge. Until he leaned close to Bindi. “If we were alone, I’d tell you why. Can I do that? Get you alone?”
Absolutely not. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Later.”
“And that’d give you a head start? Your mind got busy figuring out an escape route the second you realized I was here.”
“I—”
“Dare you to lie.”
Damn you, Franco. “I won’t take off,” she decided. “Eat. Drink. See this?” Bindi ensnared his key pendant, tangling her fingers in the chain. “Go find a few locks to put this in. That’s how the game works. You want a connection? Time with someone tonight? Unlock her first.”
“Including you?”
“Including me.” He was just taunting her, right? He hated her. Bindi let the key drop, because it suddenly felt hot against her skin. Or had the heat only transferred from his chest to her fingers?
“Bindi.”
Walk away, she commanded her feet. But they were working against her. In fact, her entire body was. Whiskey in hand, she froze right there in front of the man she didn’t want on her island or anywhere in her temporary dreamworld.
Santino said her name again, but she felt it more than heard it. The word was an abrasive vibration in her ear, because he was close…
Too close, yet somehow not close enough.
Tanned, large-knuckled fingers brushed her as they sought her necklace. A tug on the silver lock jerked her out of her stupor, but it brought her forward, into his heat.
Had he always been so…hot? Not just a wicked heat source on a February island night, but darkly sexy?
Dressed as though he’d purposely stopped short of polished, he wore designer clothes, but the shirt’s open collar and rolled sleeves offered teasing peeks at crisp chest hair and tattooed, vein-crisscrossed arms. His wavy silver-at-the-temples dark hair was tamed into a short ponytail that she ached to work loose.
The low set of his brow and that crooked nose? She couldn’t imagine him without them. Framing his narrow, dangerous mouth was a beard that loitered at the midway point between five-o’clock shadow and deliberate scruff—just enough whiskers to leave behind a rosy sting on her throat, breasts, thighs…
Don’t go there. Bindi abandoned that train of thought before her mind began drawing erotic pictures of what his strong hands might be capable of. But his key was already nestled tight in her lock.
Twist.
Click.
And she was his. Sort of. It was only a game, and in her reality, fair gameplay didn’t exist.
Disentangling their necklaces, she whispered, “This is the master lock, you could say. Every key unlocks this lock.”
“Who unlocked you?”
As if she’d divulge that he’d been the only man she allowed close enough to try? “You’re here to discuss Al. Your father. My ex-fiancé.” That man had burst all of Bindi’s illusions and had almost taken Santino’s life. He’d brought them together but would always stand between them.
“Bindi, he’s gone. Where is he?”
Casting a sharp glance about them, she growled, “I don’t know.”
Al had disappeared from Nevada over two weeks ago, something she’d found out when investigators had approached her for questioning. Every time someone attached her to his wrongdoings she’d more firmly regretted that she’d let herself fall for his money.
If she could hazard a guess, she’d suggest he was holed up in a safe house on some Mediterranean island, sleeping soundly through heavenly sunrises and toasting the sunsets with wine and fluffy Italian pastries.
“Maybe I don’t believe you.”
“Feel free to not believe me all the way back to Mahé and back to the US.” She turned.
“Bindi.”
She stopped when he said her name as though it were a plea or a prayer. The word was firm yet gentle, his voice completely broken down.
“I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“Yeah. My temper and yours were meant for each other.”
But she wasn’t meant for him, or any man. She was too much trouble, had too many—what was it her mother frequently said?—issues. She had too many issues.
Desperate to settle her focus on anything but Santino, Bindi started to cross the room but saw the man she’d been drawn to earlier tonight—before crunk music and Santino Franco had turned her ’round and ’round.
She put down the whiskey, followed his Afro to the veranda. A temperate breeze and dozens of twinkling tea lights embraced her. “Are you leaving?”
Pausing, the man started to smile—
“I unlocked her.”
Bindi whipped around. Santino!
The stranger gave a lackluster bow and mumbled a polite good-night, then hauled ass off the veranda.
“Why did you interfere?”
“I unlocked you,” Santino said slowly. “If we’re playing your game, that means you’re mine tonight. You owe me time.”
“We’ll discuss Al after the party reaches its natural conclusion.”
“When is that?”
“Usually parties fizzle when either the food or liquor is gone,” she said, selecting a pillar to drop against.
The tea lights teased the shadows as he entered her space.
Countering, “Would it conclude early if I were to walk back in that house and start telling your new friends why I’m here?” he waited for a reaction.
If he wanted fear, he wouldn’t get it. No man would wield that power over her again. “You’re not going to do that,” she predicted. “You already said you wouldn’t.”
“How can you trust that I didn’t lie?”
“Lying isn’t in your repertoire,” she said. Lying was an art her parents and their minions had taught her, but recently she’d decided to start telling the truth. Though she reported to tabloid bloggers, she presented perceptions of the truth that were difficult to discredit. She didn’t invent scandal where there was none. Often, there was enough legitimate scandalous material in Nevada and California to make fabrication a wasted effort. “I always liked you for that—your honesty.”
“There are things I always liked about you, too, Bindi.”
“I won’t ask you to list them.”
“Great, because I’m going to, and I don’t want you to think it’s because you asked.”
A former NFL superstar who’d kept himself closed off the entire time she’d known him was going to say what he liked about her?
“I like that you’re still standing after being hurt.”
She had a lot of experience in that department. “I’m resilient. Most people are.”
“You buy novelty stuff.”
“I’m a junk hoarder. According to my mother.”
Watching his face transform as he chuckled almost turned her legs into wet noodles. Mr. Big Bad Strong and Silent could smile like that?
It dazzled her, like one of those rare cosmic events. A meteor shower or solar eclipse.
“Junk hoarder, eh? We can go with that. When you moved out of the house, you left some of your things behind. Key chains, pen sleeves, old-fashioned toys—that kind of stuff.”
“Then you have my wooden tic-tac-toe game?”
“Last time I saw it, the staff were boxing it all up for you. And that was a couple of months ago. There’s only Nadia there now. Everybody else cleared out.”
“Where do you live?”
“Vegas.”
“I didn’t keep tabs.” She broke away from his gaze, busied herself appreciating the flickering of the candlelight against the villa’s pearl-white exterior. “I decided to break away from that environment—the gold-digging a
nd celebrity lifestyle. In measured steps, I’m changing. Change—you can’t absorb it all at once. Bit by bit’s the best way.”
“If you wanted distance from that environment, why are you here, Bindi? My father paid for this vacation.”
She almost hadn’t come, had debated for hours. But the trip had already been paid for, with the equivalent of two million US dollars deposited in a Seychelles bank under her name. Cora Island was supposed to give her the chance to get to know herself again, figure out how she’d survive on her feet instead of her back. “I came here to be alone, Santino.”
He gestured toward the villa’s entrance, indicating the obvious contradiction.
“I didn’t want to be alone on Valentine’s.”
“I get it.”
“Ask Nadia to help herself to what’s in the box, or donate it to charity with my thanks. I won’t be making the drive out to Henderson to get it. I can’t go back to Alessandro’s house.” It held memories of what she thought she’d wanted, in a past life. Once upon a scheme, she’d wanted to marry a wealthy older man, because wealthy older men were all she’d experienced in her young life. She would’ve earned her own fame, starring in a reality TV show based on her life as an NFL team owner’s wife, had Al not sold the team and sold her lies.
But even if she had obtained that life, she’d still cry herself to sleep sometimes. Life was lonely when family closed their doors and friends turned their backs.
“Keep ’em coming—the things you like about me.he said lightly, but the seriousness in his eyes had her heart thudding.
“You’re not as selfish as you pretend to be.” He glanced toward the crowd. “You told me you didn’t want this party ruined for them.”
How strange of him. Gold diggers didn’t have a rep for being altruistic, and often the nuances of a person, the struggles and sacrifices and reasons why never came to light. Labels trumped everything, and Santino had never cared about anything except the label he’d given her before they’d even met.
“I don’t want it ruined for me, either,” she clarified, not exactly sure why she couldn’t just accept his words or think nothing of them. “There was a lot of effort. The regular villa staff helped me organize and decorate. They’re gone tonight, but I’m proud of their hard work and don’t want to see it wasted.”
Mine Tonight Page 3