“Who’s watering the windowsill plants and Chia Pets while you’re hanging out on the Seychelles?” he asked.
“My budget’s got no room for hired help, so no plant-sitter. If leaving them to fend for themselves turns out to be as selfish as you seem to want me to believe, I’d like to think they’d be forgiving. Two weeks isn’t forever.”
Two weeks, meaning she was expecting to stay on the Seychelles another seven days.
He needed her on a US-bound flight tomorrow afternoon. If Al intended to persuade or pressure her face-to-face to aid in his escape, he’d need to bring his ass back to Las Vegas to get to her.
“Bindi, I can’t let you stay here another week.”
“Didn’t we already establish that I’m free? Free, as in no one has a hold on me. No one has the authority to say what he will or won’t ‘let’ me do.”
“Look at it this way. The FBI, NFL and gaming commission come down on my father and he disappears. No trace of him—just gone. Couple of weeks later, you, his ex-fiancée, dye your hair and skip the country for an island trip he paid for.”
“This vacation was arranged before Al was charged.”
“Is that supposed to make a difference to the media? These people hunt blood. They won’t relent until your every secret’s cracked open and manipulated so well that even you can’t distinguish the truth from the lies. Hell, this ain’t a reality TV show. It’s cold reality and it’s a bastard.” Santino touched her lace-covered shoulder when she started to get up. “Prove you’re not running or hiding. Help me find him.”
“How? Not saying I will…but how?”
“Come back to Las Vegas with me. If he’s after you, let him find you there.”
“Wow. Drop everything, go back to Vegas with you and make myself bait. And when would I do all this?”
“Tomorrow.”
She jerked free of him. “I’m more concerned with tonight. There’s a party waiting for me. I’m not going to sacrifice it for a guy who I heard can’t exactly finish what he starts.”
She could’ve put all her strength behind a slap to his face and it wouldn’t have lodged into him as painfully as her words. But when Bindi lashed out, it usually backfired. Using his weakness as a weapon only shined a light on her desperation.
“I can’t leave this house without an answer, Bindi. Give me that, then we’ll see about finishing what we started.”
*
“Leave the chocolate fountain.”
At the words chocolate fountain, Bindi, who’d returned from the garden to invest her energies into mingling, avoiding Santino Franco and then sending off the stragglers determined to use Villa Soleil as shelter from the rainstorm, stopped dead at the edge of the ornately carved arch in the dividing wall between the living and dining rooms.
Wiggling her ears as if to sharpen their eavesdropping ability, she ducked and peered in. The disheveled furniture and improperly discarded trash were marks of a party hosted well. She’d compensated the serving/cleaning staff in advance to discreetly sweep for condoms and other paraphernalia that suggested guests had taken tonight’s lock-and-key icebreaker and aphrodisiac-themed menu to extreme levels.
As she herself had done with Santino on the veranda, where anyone could’ve seen them. A helluva souvenir that pillar would make—except she was committed to scrubbing her memory clean of his finger teasing her wet core, testing her judgment.
Damn, the man could make her hot.
But they were going to have serious words if he was thinking about going open season on the fountain. She’d pined for the white and dark chocolate streams, but with the house so crowded she hadn’t found a chance to make a pig out of herself.
Faking cheer, she entered the living room and smiled at the headwaiter. “What about the fountain?”
“Le monsieur—”
“I asked him to leave it,” Santino smoothly interrupted. Addressing the waiter, he said, “The hostess has it bad for middle-of-the-night sweets.”
She felt her skin tingle, could almost see a deep pink flush spreading across her cheeks. She had a weakness for chocolate sin, but didn’t usually let herself give in until late at night. Or early in the morning—however anyone wanted to look at it. What did he know about it, though?
“You didn’t bring any marshmallows and graham crackers, did you?” Santino said to the waiter, but he was watching her.
Chocolate, marshmallows, graham crackers. S’mores.
Godiva chocolate s’mores.
“Non, monsieur.”
“No problem. Just leave the fountain,” Bindi said kindly. When he moved on to another task, she eyed Santino.
“Pissed off, huh?” A casual shrug of his solid, broad shoulders. “I didn’t tell him you go buck wild on s’mores.”
“Why reference them at all?”
“I remembered you like them.”
“Then, why did you remember?” Why did he remember catching her in a vulnerable moment? Why did he remember that, struck off guard with embarrassment and a brush of something she’d never analyzed, she’d been friendly to him? “God, Santino, stop. Whatever game or strategy this is—stop.”
He turned, and then he was facing her and her blood was surging hot and she didn’t doubt he knew she was horny.
What if this had nothing to do with the man and everything to do with her? She’d restricted herself with a sex-free engagement. After that ended, she’d become so disgusted with the men from her past who’d damaged her that she’d temporarily lost the appetite for it.
Arousal must’ve been stirring for months, and now it had reached boiling point.
“It’s after midnight and I’m waiting for an answer. Are you going back to Vegas with me?”
Alessandro Franco was once her connection to Las Vegas elite, her ticket to a reality television show. Now his drama threatened to give her hives. She’d almost legally tied herself to a man who’d paid someone to nearly paralyze his son.
“WTF” didn’t even scratch the surface of the questions she asked herself. And here was Santino, demanding answers.
A groan of thunder startled her.
“All right?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I…” Visibly alarmed by his own give-a-damn, he nodded. As if it’d do either of them any favors for him to start thinking he might give a damn about her.
Alessandro and his sons weren’t the most considerate of men. The three of them were dominant, cocky males. See. Want. Take. Move along. That was how they operated, and it wasn’t likely to change for her.
Al and Nate had each extracted her trust, abused it and left her to recover from the scuffs.
Santino would, too. Once he got her embedded in his search for Al, he’d use her, then cut her down.
“The answer’s no. I won’t help you.”
“Hasty decisions can cost a person.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s it going to cost me?”
“Your reputation, for one.”
“Yes, my saintly reputation.” She giggled at the ludicrousness of it. “What else?”
“Protection. If Dad gets you roped into his shit, who’s going to save you?”
She simply wouldn’t get roped in, no matter what promises and money Alessandro offered, but if she hadn’t convinced Santino of that before, she had slim chances of succeeding now.
“Legal defense doesn’t come cheap. There’s the truth, and that does matter. But what the right people think is the truth matters more. Let doubt against you get lodged in deep in folks’ minds, and you’ll have one hell of an expensive battle in front of you.”
“I learned that lesson already. My father’s a politician.”
“Good ol’ Senator Roscoe Paxton. Where was he when you were being questioned about Dad and Gian DiGorgio? Where was he for all your other indiscretions?”
“In Illinois, confident that he raised a self-reliant daughter. I didn’t boo hoo to Daddy and Mommy. As I said before, I can save myself.”
> The lie had come automatically. Bindi wasn’t about to confess that her parents’ anger toward her had reached new heights when she’d called them last summer after news broke about her ex’s illegal deeds. Grudgingly her mother had wired her funds to hire a lawyer.
“We can’t be connected to that man’s crimes. Your father gave away his Bears season tickets because so many reporters have bombarded him for comments about your connection to the Las Vegas Slayers.” Daphne had sounded regretful, as always. Was there anything in her life she didn’t regret? “Bindi, I hate this.”
“Me, too. As soon as I can, I’ll take a flight to Midway.”
“Why?”
“To come home. So you, Daddy and I can start fresh.”
Daphne had sighed. “Oh. Oh, Bindi, no. I meant I hate that I’m your mother. It’s only because we’re not the best parent-child match… Oh, you’re quiet. You’re offended? Oh, don’t get yourself offended. It’s just that you have…issues. Even as a girl you were complicated. And Roscoe and I probably weren’t the best candidates to raise a child with so many issues. My therapist explained it much more articulately.”
Add in another sigh or two, a few more gutting insults and a flat-out order to never reach out to Roscoe or Daphne again, and that summed up Bindi’s last conversation with her parents.
Crossing his arms, Santino said, “Beep. Beep. Beep.”
“What the hell?”
“I’ve got a bullshit detector and right now it’s going crazy.”
“Ha. If you had one, it should’ve self-destructed when Al told you the Blues forced him to sell the Slayers. But you believed those lies, just as I did, and now he’s hit the road and you’re begging me for a favor.”
“And if your family had your back, you wouldn’t be growing Chia Pets in a stripper’s apartment.”
Bindi’s eyes narrowed, and she sensed something she didn’t like. “How’d you know about my apartment?”
“You said you live on East Dune. That street’s infested with exotic dancers and porn stars, so that was a guess. A good one.”
And did he judge her for that? She searched for condescension, but saw a stress-beaten man. A sexy stress-beaten man.
“About Al. The answer’s no. Okay?” Before he could get another persuasive word in edgewise, she said, “There aren’t any boat transfers to Mahé this late, and you’re grounded in this storm. A clever guy like you must’ve reserved a room at the hotel…right?”
“No.”
Oh, crap.
“Then an attractive guy like you must’ve unlocked someone who’d let you get in her bed tonight.”
“Seemed an asshole thing to do, getting in another woman’s bed knowing I’d be thinking about you.”
“Me?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Outside the wind entwined with the rain, and the tea lights flickering on the veranda were barely a memory. Indoors were the faint sounds of water running in another room, voices issuing orders back and forth and the footsteps of servers finishing their tasks for the night.
He stepped forward. Directly behind her was a chocolate fountain, so she couldn’t step backward. “Tonight I learned your taste, how soft the skin on your thighs is, what it feels like to open you with my finger. I’m not going to blank slate that by getting in another woman’s bed.”
Oy. Silk wasn’t made to withstand this kind of blunt talk, so her panties were either becoming soaked straight through or were simply dissolving.
“It’s wrong.”
“Gotta be,” he agreed as his mouth found her earlobe and the hard front of him pressed against her. Hard… He was hard. Just like before. It made her wonder if it actually wouldn’t be a problem. “Why does it feel so good to do the wrong thing?”
“Not always.” If he’d ever done wrong—horribly, reprehensibly wrong, as she had—he’d know the greasy, treacherous feeling she battled every day.
Years ago, she’d offered herself, then her father, as media chow. She’d had her desperate reasons then, just as she’d had when she leaked T and A photos of the Las Vegas Slayers’ female athletic trainer. Now she freelanced as a celebrity news rat for food and shelter—and gently used designer clothes on eBay. She sniffed for juicy scandals, he said/she said gossip and dirty pics and vids, then sold her findings to a team of TMZ-wannabe bloggers.
Resisting his closeness, because the man had enough troubles without getting mixed up with someone like her, she said, “We can’t be standing close like this. There are people here, and I don’t perform for audiences. And the answer’s still no. Alessandro saw me as just a gold-digging sex object, not an accomplice or a confidant.”
“He was going to marry—”
“He wasn’t. There was no love in that relationship. None. At most, there was pity and respect and trust—cautious trust, and even that was one-sided. So it’d be pointless to think I could lure him out of hiding.” She almost pressed her palms to his chest, but didn’t want to risk unconsciously unbuttoning his shirt. “He’s got people in Bologna. Go to Italy, appeal to them.”
“I’m appealing to you.”
Yes, you are.
“Reconsider, Bindi.”
She wouldn’t. “Rain hasn’t shut down short-distance travel, so you’re welcome to see if Cora Island’s hotel staff might make a check-in exception for you.”
“Am I welcome to stay?”
“What?”
“Stay. In case one of your guests decides to pay you an unwanted visit tonight.”
“Hilarious.” If hilarious was synonymous with dangerous. The attraction between them was vicious, and the more they baited it, the hungrier it became. “There’s a security system.”
“Don’t be naive.”
“I’m not. I’m pointing out what a crappy excuse that is. You never lied to me before. Don’t start now.”
A frown flickered at his mouth.
“What you mean is in case Alessandro decides to pay a visit.” At his silence, she growled, “For the gazillionth time, this isn’t some Bonnie and Clyde story. I’m not involved. But go ahead. Stay here tonight—on the sofa—and find out for yourself.” She edged around him and stalked back into the house. All she wanted to do was send the staff off and go to bed—alone. Once he left Villa Soleil, she could start taking her life in measured, emotionless steps.
After the last of the servers finally left, she returned to the now-neatened living room. Someone had even restocked the fruit, pretzels and marshmallows that waited under glass domes.
“Can a guest call dibs on the pretzels?”
“You were never a guest, and I’m not playing hostess anymore,” she said to Santino as he reentered the room. “I activated the alarm system. Terrace access only. I’m going to bed. But is there something you need?”
“Got caffeine?”
“Lots. There’s TV. And this.” She indicated the piano that sat in a corner. It didn’t resemble the sleek, seductive black baby grand he’d played at the Franco mansion, but it had a quiet regal quality about it. On her first day on the island, she’d returned from a diving excursion, found herself lonely and had kneeled on the oversize bench to tap out a tune. “Play. It deserves a worthy musician to make up for the mess I made of a Yiddish lullaby.”
“A Yiddish lullaby?”
“It was more sophisticated than ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ which I’m kickass good at.” For a moment she heard her grandmother’s voice hum the comforting melody, and something inside her began to hurt. “There’re blankets in the trunk next to the sofa and a three-piece bath before the mudroom.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re thanking me? But I denied you what you wanted.”
“It’s your right to say no.”
Not many of the men she’d had run-ins with would agree with that.
“I’m hoping that when you lock yourself upstairs and get in your bed, you’ll think about the bigger picture and you’ll change you mind.”
“And if I don
’t? What will you do about it?”
“I won’t force you, Bindi. With me, you’ll always get options.”
Yes, she had options. Right now she had the option to stay with him in this room or go upstairs alone. Risk or safety.
Choosing safety, Bindi went upstairs.
Chapter 4
She should’ve taken the chocolate. And the fruit. And the pretzels.
Perhaps if she had, she wouldn’t be pacing her darkened suite barefoot scarcely an hour after putting a flight of stairs and a locked door between Santino and herself. Piano music and the sound of rain striking glass battled for dominance. The piece seemed too aggressive, exposing and gut-wrenching to be called beautiful. The word was overused anyway, and everyone had a different perception of its meaning.
The music didn’t bother her.
Restlessness did.
The Valentine’s Day romance seeping from the luxurious decor was getting on her nerves. The suite’s elegant wine-and-chocolate offerings had met their demise the previous night while she’d binge-watched an English-subtitled French sitcom, so she was in crisis.
No sweets.
One hand clasped the lock pendant resting between her breasts as the other disengaged the lock on the door.
The song’s violently fast tempo, the keys’ response to punishing strike of Santino’s fingers, provoked her to descend the stairs eagerly. Anticipation escorted her through the shadows to the only room that carried any light.
A golden blush draped the piano and extended only as far as the center of the room, leaving the chocolate fountain in semidarkness.
So tidy, the room appeared as though it hadn’t witnessed the havoc of her Valentine’s Day party. But the sofa was disheveled. Throw pillows were disarranged. A blanket trailed from the cushions to the floor.
As she selected a cherry and poked it into the white-chocolate waterfall, she observed him. His fixation on the piano dared her to interfere. Worm her way over and cover his hands, maybe. Or dab some chocolate on his bristly jaw and lick it off. Better yet, undo his wavy hair and tug on it. Would it break his concentration if she did that?
Mine Tonight Page 5