Arousal floods through me making my knees weak and my nipples hard.
It’s been difficult enough, trying to put him out of my mind since we spent time alone together yesterday, but looking down at the top of his dark head, at the hair he doesn’t even try to tame, I wonder if he can scent my arousal.
Don’t look up. I don’t think I can hide the emotions swirling through me if he looks up.
His eyes meet mine, and the awareness in them steals my breath. Then he stands, and reaches for my hand.
A shock races up my arm as our skin connects. I can’t stop staring as he focuses his attention at fastening the bracelet around my wrist—taking way longer than is needed to complete the task. His thumb strokes the back of my hand, rubs over the bump of each knuckle in turn.
“Kristie? You coming?” my husband calls. And I am, I nearly am with just the feel of Marco’s casual caress. “Kristie, hello!”
Marco releases my hand and steps back as Montgomery and his companions approach. I’m introduced, and to their credit, his friends do a valiant job of being welcoming and friendly. The need to turn to Marco, to make some sort of contact before he drives the car away, devours me but I have no option but to resist it.
I’m aware of him rounding the car through my peripheral vision. Then an unfamiliar voice calls his name.
“Marco?” A frown marrs the perfection of the sultry redhead’s face. She must have alighted from the car just behind ours. “Is that you?”
“I have to move the car.” His body language is screaming ‘go away’, but the redhead won’t be dismissed so easily.
“I don’t understand...”
“Come, darling.” Montgomery links my arm through his, and ushers me towards the house.
“We’ve been friends with Montgomery for over fifty years.” Alice King, a lofty vision in sugar pink with white cotton-candy hair curled to within an inch of its life, steers me to the wall and corrals me. “We both care a great deal about him.”
She doesn’t say it—she doesn’t need to. Her meaning is clear. Fuck with us at your peril.
“He’s lucky to have good friends like you.” I force a smile but it’s hard going, Alice King is hardwired to hate my guts. “Montgomery’s welfare means everything to me.”
She sniffs. “So he assures me.” She eases back a little and I steal a peek around her. Montgomery’s surrounded by his friends and seems to be having the time of his life. All that crap about protecting me has been easily forgotten.
Not that I’m some special snowflake in need of protection. Anything but.
“I know the family may take some time to accept me...”
Alice’s eyes widen. “That, dear, is one hell of an understatement.”
I shrug. “It would be nicer for Montgomery if they did. He needs happiness in his life, not more drama.”
“Oh, I agree.” She seems to forget that I’m the enemy, and switches to ally mode. “The last thing he needs is Charles going on one of his rants again. And the girls can talk of nothing else...”
Montgomery’s two fifty-something daughters being referred to as girls almost makes me giggle, but I manage to stifle it. “They contacted you, then.”
“Yes. They’ve been on to everyone.” Her gaze dips to my cleavage, then up to my face again.
“Everyone but us.” I take a step sideways, breaking away.
I don’t blame Alice King for challenging me. If I were in my eighties and married to a twenty-something, I’d be damned happy if one of my friends ran a security check and ensured I wasn’t being taken for a ride. But there’s nothing I can do to put her mind at ease without blowing my cover, and she’s not spilling any more family dirt.
“Darling!” I wave to catch Montgomery’s attention, then dart across the room to his side.
The rest of Montgomery’s friends care about him enough to rally around and act as if they really do want to get to know me. Before long, I’m fielding invitations to dinner and explaining that I don’t play bridge or golf but am willing to learn.
I knew there’d be plenty of the other sort. The ones checking me out and gossiping, but the buffer afforded by this small group makes the evening more than bearable. Montgomery is having a great time. Alice King obviously considers she’s done her duty by checking me out, and is busy with her other guests. So it’s easy to cross the room and casually bump into the redhead.
“I’m so sorry!” I hold my glass away from her ivory shift. I didn’t spill wine on her, I’m not a bitch. “That was a close call.”
She twists her neck in a valiant attempt to see behind herself. “Did you...”
“No. No spill.” I extend a hand, and plaster on my widest lets-be-friends smile. “I’m Kristie.”
“I’m Jayne. I saw you when we arrived.” There’s such an intent look on her face, I can almost hear the gears in her head whirring. “You were getting out of that gorgeous Rolls Royce.”
With the gorgeous driver.
“I didn’t see you.” It’s easy to lie; there’s no way she noticed me watching her, Jayne’s entire attention was focused on Marco. “I was distracted by my bracelet falling off. Thank god my driver, Marco retrieved it for me. I dread to think what would have happened if I hadn’t noticed I’d lost it.” I hold out my wrist and let the emeralds and diamonds glitter under the light shed by the crystal chandelier.
She dives into the opening like a baseball player sliding into a home run. “I thought I recognized Marco—I haven’t seen him for...it must be four years now.”
“Did he used to drive for you?”
Her eyes widen. For a moment she’s speechless. Then: “It’s true then, he’s your driver?” She shakes her head quickly, as though denying her words. “I’m sorry, I’m just so surprised. I’d heard things were bad, but I never expected he’d...” She cleared her throat. “I’m being indiscreet. I apologize.” She starts to turn away but I halt her with a touch to her arm.
“Is there something I should know? Some reason we shouldn’t employ him?”
“No. No.” She’s adamant. “Marco is totally trustworthy. It’s just he never used to be a chauffeur, he used to be the one being driven, if anything. I’m presuming you don’t know his family history.”
“He’s filling in for my husband’s regular chauffeur. He came well recommended, but if there’s something you think we should know please tell me.”
She leans closer, the scent of her perfume filling the air between us. “Marco is one of those Vitales. From Vitale Pharmaceuticals.” Her eager eyed perusal hints she expects me to have some idea what she’s talking about, but I don’t. “His grandfather was Salvatore Vitale—the octogenarian who married a gold digging stripper?” Her gaze flicks across the room to where my husband is laughing with his golf buddy, and the look of complete and utter consternation would be funny if it wasn’t so serious. “Uh, no offence.”
“I was a nurse, not a stripper, so none taken.” I straighten my spine and rotate the huge rock gracing my left hand. “So Marco was rich.”
“Stinking. Until his grandfather married that girl and died six months later. He left her everything.”
Chapter Twelve
Marco
I duck through the back door and stride down the corridor heading toward what must be the kitchen. The room is filled with men and women just like me. Drivers waiting while their bosses schmooze, and doing a little schmoozing themselves, by the sound of it.
A couple of people look up when I enter. One gives me a blank stare before turning back to his companion, and the other gifts me with a nod.
There’s an older woman pouring tea at the large pine table in the center of the room. “Hi, I’m Joan, the housekeeper here. Tea? Coffee?”
“Tea, please. I’m Marco. Driving the Pattens.”
“Oh, the Pattens.” Her eyes gleam. “Montgomery and his new wife?”
I blow the surface of my tea. “Yes.”
A guy sitting nearest to the housekeeper scooche
s over and offers me his empty seat. “Bud.” He extends a hand. “Your boss is friends with my employers too, I guess we’ll be seeing each other over the next few months. Robert retired, did he?”
“No. I’m only standing in while he’s on holiday. He’s on a cruise.”
“Lucky bastard.” Bud raised an eyebrow. “I doubt I could afford that on my salary.”
“It was a present. From one of the family. He hasn’t been well, and,” I shrug, “long-time employee, valued—”
“Valued is right.” Bud rubs his fingertips together in the universal gesture for money. “Robert has a sweet deal. Enjoy it while you can.”
Bud introduces me around the table. There’s much speculation about Kristie, and a couple of the drivers ask questions about her I’d be foolish to answer. The last thing I need is for it to be reported back that I gossiped about my employer around the kitchen table. So, I deflect, and lean back on my chair and enjoy the conversation.
Despite the understandable lack of alcohol provided, whiling away the hours in the kitchen with the other drivers is a lot more fun than I’d expected. For all their veneer of professionalism, once they get used to me, the gossip about their employers flows as freely as the endless cups of tea and coffee.
More than one celebrity is on the guest list, and there’s much speculation about who’s sleeping with whom. I laugh at their jokes but keep my own counsel. As the new boy in town, I need to be discreet. Some of the other drivers ask me about Robert—I get the impression he’s well liked. Someone reminiscences about how close he was with the first Mrs Patten, but without malice. If they were having an affair, no one here seems to know about it.
The flirty waitresses bring us plates of appetizers. . This event is way more fun from the other side of the curtain. If I’d known, I would have always snuck off during my grandfather’s parties.
But with a member of the so-called elite sitting amongst them, things would be very different. They’d never open up to the grandson of one of the Fortune 500, no matter how friendly he appeared.
The memory of what happened outside is giving me heartburn. I’m kicking myself for not being more vigilant. After four years, I’d become immune to the possibility of bumping into someone I knew in my old life.
I barely ever think of life back then, but seeing Jayne brings the memories flooding to the surface. There was a job waiting at Vitale Pharmaceuticals for me straight out of college. My father was on the board, and my three brothers and two sisters were already being groomed to take their place in the management of the business started and grown by my grandfather.
I’d resisted joining the family firm. Worked instead for a private investigation firm, specializing in industrial espionage. Wanting to learn the ropes elsewhere before taking over the security side of the family business. The sudden death of my grandfather, and the shocking changes that he’d made to his will changed my plans.
My father, uncle, and siblings contested the will—are still fighting it, but it’s too late. By the careful seeding of bribes, my grandfather’s widow won control of the board and is in the process of damaging the company without repair.
Easy come, easy fucking go. I’ve no interest in reclaiming the family business. Life’s too short. Losing my job, my apartment, and any possibility of a juicy inheritance was the best thing that ever happened to me.
I had the love of a beautiful woman, what else did I need?
Green as fucking grass.
Tonight’s technicolor rerun is courtesy of someone I’d almost forgotten. Jayne.
My ex fiancée’s best friend. Who offered herself up as a consolation prize when the woman I’d proposed to dumped me. As I listened to my ex plead for me to understand that she couldn’t possibly marry me now that things had changed so radically. That there were limits to her love, limits to her tolerance of our new, unbearable situation.
I’d been so in love with her it took me a while to understand. I just stood there staring at her uncomprehendingly while the gears ground in my head. Until I understood that it wasn’t solely my animal magnetism that drew her in, or the foolish idea of love, but the prospect of being one of those Vitales. The rich ones.
Once the money was gone, she was too.
Jayne offered me a pity fuck. I turned her down.
Tonight, was a lucky escape. Kristie and Montgomery were both too involved with greeting his friends to notice anything. If Jayne had got to Kristie, god knows the havoc she could have caused.
As anticipated, I’m one of the first to be called back into service.
The wine has loosened Mr. P’s tongue. He’s full of stories on the drive back to the house, and frequent laughter punctuates the conversation taking place in the back of the car.
There are only a few lights on when I pull up outside the silent house. Kristie walks her husband to the front door, and once he’s inside, she makes some excuse and returns to the car.
“I forgot my bag.”
I open the door and retrieve it for her. “Is that all for tonight?” One last chance to let her change her mind. One last chance to destroy her marriage.
“No.” Her stare is steady. “In one hour, meet me at the pool.”
And before I have a chance to react, she’s gone.
Chapter Thirteen
Kristie
Stephen has the house studded with listening devices, and what I have to say to Marco needs no audience. It takes almost an hour to persuade Montgomery to go to bed—he’s revitalized by the contact with his old friends, and the cares that have plagued him since the attack have faded into the background. He’s fun in this mood. Carefree and interesting.
But I have a date. So the moment he decides it’s time to undress and ready himself for bed, I slip from the room, locking the door behind me, and head out into the scented night.
A soft breeze tousles my hair. Lifts the swathe of fabric from my shoulder, and swirls it in the air. The steps from the house to the pool are steep so I take abandon my shoes. Solar lights embedded in the verges of the path glitter in the darkness, lighting my way to the expanse of dark water.
He is lying on a sun lounger a small distance away from the water, and stands at my approach.
“I thought you changed your mind. I’m glad you didn’t.” His heated gaze sweeps every inch of my body. “You look beautiful in that dress.”
I’m not here for sex, but the lure of his midnight dark eyes holds me spellbound. I can’t stop myself walking to him, standing close enough I can feel his body heat, breathe in the scent of him.
He snakes a hand around my waist. “It’s almost a shame to take it off you.” Then his mouth is on mine, and the real reason I’m there fades to sepia.
Nothing matters but the taste of his mouth. The feel of his hands, holding my neck so gently I can almost forget that if he were so inclined he could snap it in an instant. I want this. I need to feel his body against mine.
Warm fingers stroke across the top of my fitted bodice. The hidden zipper stretches from waist to under my arm—there’s no way he can find it without help.
I can’t help moaning as he nips at my lips with his teeth.
“How do I get this thing off?”
His words break through the sensual haze that has me in its grip, and it’s as though I’ve been splashed with cold water, shocking me awake. “I don’t want this.” My hands are flat on his hard chest, forcing a space between us. “This wasn’t why...”
“So, what then?” With gritted teeth he takes a step away, crossing his arms to reveal a swell of biceps. I’ve always wondered what women are going on about when they go into raptures about the muscles on a man, but now—now I get it.
What would he look like naked? Stop. I drop my arms to my sides. Fantasizing about Marco without his clothes is exactly what got me into this mess in the first place.
He looks pissed. And to be honest, I don’t blame him.
“I needed to talk, that’s all. In private.”
; Stephen has spent hours rigging up covert cameras in both of Montgomery’s houses—the only places not surveilled are the gym and the outside areas—and I have no desire to be caught talking to Marco privately on camera.
“It couldn’t wait till morning?”
“No.” I stride to the small table and chairs near the lounger, and sit. “I learned new information about you at the party. Information that I need you to explain to me, right now.”
I can tell by the look on his face that he knows I saw him talking to Jayne, but he doesn’t attempt to explain anything, just takes the seat opposite and waits for me to continue.
“A guest at the party recognized you.”
“I could have worked for her.”
Good try. But I know that’s a lie. In the hour since we returned, I’ve googled his grandfather’s name and acquainted myself with a wealth of information to supplement the story Jayne revealed. “I spoke to Jayne. She was surprised to see you at the party as a driver, she would have expected you to be a guest.”
“So you’ve learned my sad little secret. That I’ve fallen on hard times, and have to work for a living.” His mouth hardens. “You’re my employer, but I don’t owe you an explanation of how I got to this point. Not if I do my job.” He stands. “If that’s all, I’ll say goodnight.”
“Sit down, Marco.”
For a moment, I think he’ll refuse, but then curiosity gets the better of him, and he does as I ask. “You and I both know that’s only half the story. Working for my husband is more than just a job for you, much more. It’s personal. You took this job because of me.”
A dark eyebrow raises.
“Because you think I’m a gold digger.”
“Why exactly would I do that?”
I haven’t worked out his angle yet. “You hate gold diggers ever since your grandfather married one and disinherited his entire family. Maybe seducing me to ruin my marriage was part of your plan all along.” Shit, it sounds ludicrous—like he’s an enforcer, saving the elderly from themselves. “Maybe this is what you do. You’re some sort of vigilante or something, breaking up marriages you deem suspect.”
The Gold Digger Gambit: A Honeytrap Inc. Romance Page 5