Under the Millionaire's Influence

by Catherine Mann

  Damn it, she’d made a successful business for herself and, while she made the arts and crafts for fun, her landscape paintings that she slid into the shop sold well.

  David leaned closer in her silence, the heat of his body reaching to hers with a familiarity that never failed to stir her.

  His mouth skimmed hers, his words heating her skin, as well as her desires. “We can make love in more exotic places than you can imagine.”

  She wanted. How could she not? His plan sounded enticing. But what about when she grew weary of travel and wanted to return home? She knew from David’s infrequent visits that their timetables for travel differed by quite a few months.

  And what about permanence?

  Uh-oh. She was thinking that L word. They’d said it all the time in high school. But didn’t many teens toss the word around with the frequency of their fashion changes?

  Still, she needed to be realistic. This man had held a place in her thoughts, in her world, for over half her life. She would be a fool not to consider the possibility that she might just love the arrogant bastard. And if she loved him, then someday she might want the whole shebang.

  Marriage. Oh, God.

  Kids. Oh, God, oh, God.

  Matching rocking chairs and grandchildren. Where was a paper bag because she was going to hyperventilate any second now.

  This time together hadn’t helped her at all. They’d only complicated things more by opening up all the old wounds from the past. She still wanted him and he was still as committed to his plan to live his life on the road. His whole romantic getaway was nothing more than an elaborate plan to entice her over to his way of thinking.

  Wait. Rather than getting all bent out of shape, maybe it was time to show him she wasn’t the same vulnerable teen he’d been with before. He wanted to show the benefits of his way of living.

  Well, two could play that game.

  Ten

  S triding up the steps to his house, David planted his hand firmly in the small of Starr’s back, reminding himself to be patient. He’d negotiated localized cease-fires between warring militants in hostile territories around the globe. Surely he could talk one woman into giving him a second chance. In the middle of their conversation over brunch, Starr had insisted she wanted to put their discussion on hold until they returned home, and simply enjoy the trip as he’d planned.

  Once they’d returned to Charleston, she’d overheard his mother was at her weekly doctor visit. Starr had insisted she’d wanted a copy of their high-school prom photos. She’d said the copies at Aunt Libby’s house had been damaged when the roof had leaked during a tropical storm. Did he have any left?

  Sure. He thought there were some in a trunk in the attic.

  Time alone was fine by him since he’d already managed to log a quick call to the local police department to check on queries into the Ciminos and debit-card fraud. The mall video footage was on its way to him for ID. Meanwhile, he took comfort in the fact that Starr seemed intent on giving her relatives a wide berth.

  He closed the door behind him and turned to find Starr staring up at the cavernous hallway. She’d been in his house before, but not often. He tried to see the space through her eyes, but could only pull up his own feelings about the place with his mother’s brittle brand of love—her lack of warmth rooted in murky memories David rarely allowed. Echoes of his father’s temper filtered through his head against his will. The reverberation of the slammed front door as his father walked out time after time. His mother’s stifled cries.

  Darkness. That’s all he saw here. Even with all the curtains opened, the house held an innate gloominess he couldn’t find the imagination to dispel.

  Starr pivoted on her heels. “This truly is a beautiful mansion.”

  He grunted, resting his hands on an antique brass Chinese lion head. The stuff childhood nightmares were made of.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “It’s smothering.” He patted the lion on the head, moving on to the lion’s mate.

  “That’s only because your mother insists on staying with the over-cluttered decor theme of heavy velvets and dark brocades.”

  He frowned, reevaluated. She had a point but he still couldn’t imagine a simple coat of paint could chase away his father’s gloomy taint. “What would you do?”

  Starr swept her hands through the air. “Take all those curtains down and replace them with white shutters over there and whispery sheers there. Let the light shine through. Why live on the water if you’re going to deny yourself the view?”

  She hesitated, stopping at a line of posed studio photographs along the mantel and the oil portrait above. More stilted framed pictures lined the antique grand piano that no one played yet his mother insisted made a pivotal focal piece of furniture.

  “Don’t stop,” he said nudging her, enjoying the sound of her voice more than the words per se. He wasn’t convinced the house could be saved, but if anyone could revitalize the space, Starr could. “What else would you do?”

  She tugged one of her ever-present hair scrunchies out of her pocket and pulled back her curls as if prepping herself for the task. “You probably won’t like to hear this but I would ditch half the furniture and recover the rest in a lighter color, stripes I think, rather than those dark cabbage roses.”

  “Streamlining life.” David nodded. She could start with pitching the lions off the dock if it wouldn’t give his mother a heart attack on the spot. “Why wouldn’t I like that?”

  She tapped a finger along a line of photos. “I can’t imagine someone wanting to get rid of their heritage.”

  “Maybe I don’t think of it that way because I’ve always had it.”

  Starr lingered on a photo of him with his parents when he’d been in first grade. “I wish I’d been able to get to know your father.”

  He grunted, not at all eager to linger on this topic of discussion. “Come on.” He gestured toward the lengthy hall, Persian rug running the length. “The attic stairs are this way.”

  “It must have been difficult losing him so young. That put a lot of weight on you to be the man of the house as a teenager.”

  Obviously he hadn’t warded off the topic as easily as he’d wanted. “I guess you could put it that way. But seriously, there’s no need to make a sob story out of it. It’s not like I had to quit school and support the family. He left us with a fat portfolio and an honest executor to look out for things until I was old enough to take over.”

  “When was old enough?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  She hesitated at the base of the attic stairs. “You took over the books on this place when you weren’t even done with college?”

  “I let the executor hang on for about eighteen more months.” He passed her and yanked the dangling chain to turn on the attic light. Three bare bulbs lit the dusty A-frame nook beneath the roof, light from outside streaming in through a circular window at either end of the room. “Then I took the guy to court once he and I started disagreeing on some investments. I felt he was too conservative.”

  “Conservative can be good though.”

  He stared her up and down as she followed him on the narrow staircase to the attic. “I can’t believe I’m hearing that from a woman in a pink fringed jacket and purple jeans.”

  “I happen to be very frugal when it comes to my finances.” She sniffed.

  “That’s good. Very good in fact. But there’s frugal, and there’s sluggish.” He extended a hand to help her maneuver the last step around into the attic. “At the rate he was going, there wouldn’t be enough to keep my mother in the style to which she’d become accustomed. For myself, I don’t give a flying f—uh, fig.”

  He made his way around trunks and enough dusty furniture to fill another house. Passing a family cradle his mother had bugged him more than once about filling, he stopped by the trunk he’d been seeking. “I support myself and the trust fund is just a bonus I was born into but am fully aware I didn’t earn. But I will make
sure my mother is cared for. That’s my duty. My old man owes her after what he put her through.”

  Damn, he’d said too much. He reached for the lock and jimmied it with the special tool he kept on his key chain, a nice perk of his job. He held the door and gestured her inside.

  “What he put her through?” She plunked down onto an old wooden rocking horse. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You meant something or you wouldn’t have said it.” She toyed with the dusty yarn-mane on the horse’s neck. “I thought we were past holding back from each other.”

  He still wondered how she’d ended up at Libby Sullivan’s. He knew he could find the information in a snap by checking out the Ciminos, but he couldn’t escape the need to have Starr tell him.

  “I just meant the long hours he put in at the office.” David kept his head ducked down and worked the trunk lock even though he’d jimmied it free first twist through. “All the parties and support she gave him as he climbed the corporate ladder.”

  “Bull.”

  “What?” Startled, he looked up from the lock.

  “Bull. You’re lying to me.” Her hand stroked absently down the horse’s mane even though she’d long ago swiped it free of dust. “You may be an amazing interrogator. But you’re a crummy liar.”

  “I am not.” He was the number-one agent in his office, damn it. He swung open the trunk lid with extra force. “I can lie my ass off quite well, thank you very much. Many a time my life has depended on my keeping a cover.”

  “Then it must be that you can’t lie to me.”

  That said too much about the two of them and why they always ended up like this, two very different people, working like hell to resolve their differences and beating their stubborn heads against the wall.

  He tugged out a stack of envelopes from the trunk and smacked them on the floor in front of her. How ironic to see labels with his mother’s scrawl indicating memorabilia from his parents’ dating days. He couldn’t envision his autocratic father courting anyone.

  David thumbed through other folders until he finally uncovered the one he’d labeled as theirs after the prom. He passed it to Starr. Her hands shaking ever so slightly, she took it from him, twisted open the metal tines and pulled out a stack of photos with reverent slowness.

  One after the other, she took her time with the candid shots Libby Sullivan had taken of the two of them together in their prom finery. How like Starr to totally ignore the formal portrait shot altogether. And how like his family to have a houseful of formal portraits.

  He reached to gather up the extra copies of the posed picture under a floral arch, both of them so young. Starr’s hair had been longer—he could still remember the thrill of it wrapping around him during sex for the first time. The white dress she wore accented her dusky skin, her dark eyes and hair. It could have been a wedding dress. In those days he’d dreamed of seeing her wear one.

  And of course he wore the standard tuxedo. Had he really owned his own tux at seventeen? His folks had made their plans for him known. Follow in the old man’s footsteps…Except his father had just died, leaving David with a boatload of unresolved feelings about his home life.

  He plopped the prom shots on top of the folders. It was time to stop pounding his head against the wall when it came to Starr. Thoughts of his father made him realize he didn’t want to perpetuate the Reis brand of autocratic coldness in his own life. “My father was a cold bastard. His banking job, the almighty dollar, his clubs and golfing with powerful senators, that’s all that mattered to him. My mother’s family name was merely a means to that end. I was nothing more than the heir to carry on the legacy. His legacy. His name living on.”

  She rested her hands on her knees and leaned forward with earnest intensity. “Except you threw it in his face and went your own way.”

  “Yeah, I did.” He met her nose to nose, no dodging her eyes, no shielding his expression from hers. “He had all the paperwork laid out for his alma mater and just expected I would do things his way. We never really talked about anything in our house. Things just ‘happened.’ Except this didn’t happen. I told him no and explained my plan for my life.”

  “What happened?”

  “He backhanded me. Then put the pen in my hand.”

  She gasped. Her mouth opened and closed once, then twice. He waited for the platitudes that would help him distance himself from her…then she simply laid her hand on top of his. Damn it. Her silence and simple touch, the way she looked right into his eye connected in a way far more intense than any words.

  His throat moved in a swallow and a slow clearing. “As I held that pen with my face stinging, I could only think that was the first time my father had touched me in as long as I could remember.”

  Tears streaming down her face, Starr’s arms went around his neck as she slid from his childhood rocking horse into his lap. “Oh, David, I’m so sorry.”

  She pressed her mouth to his before he had time to come up with some lam-ass excuse about how it didn’t matter even though they both knew it really did. Of course it did. How could it not?

  Her tears seared his skin clean through, more leaking and falling until they mingled with the taste of her on his lips.

  He slid his arms around her, gathering her closer and soaking up the familiar feel and comfort of having her close, her hands stroking his face, shoulders, chest with gentle healing. Thank goodness she seemed to have sensed he’d had enough of deep discussion for now. Maybe communicating on a sexual level might be shallow, but the connection offered a hotter forgetfulness he needed so damned much.

  Starr kept exerting pressure with her kiss and her body until he realized she’d leaned him backward onto the floor. The unforgiving hardness of the wood should have bothered him, but with soft and oh-so-giving Starr above him, he didn’t give a crap where he lay so long as she kept on writhing on top of him. Stroking him, murmuring sweet words of affirmation and want.

  “How much longer until your mother returns?”

  “She’s gone shopping. Two more hours at least.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  And just that fast, she’d undone his pants, and he wasn’t slow on the uptake, so he worked her jeans down while she kicked them off.

  Glory be, he did so love the easy access of a thong.

  “Birth control. Condom.”

  She held out his wallet.

  He frowned. “When did you get that?”

  “I’m a pickpocket from way back. Remember? Apparently the touch stays with a person.”

  That shouldn’t have made him laugh, but somehow it did. The incongruity of them always had messed with his mind. He flipped open his wallet, pulled out a condom and sheathed himself.

  Breathless, he thunked his head. “Damn it. I’m worse than a fumbling horny teenager. You probably want a soft bed and foreplay and—”

  Starr clapped a hand over his mouth. “I don’t want foreplay this time. We’ll do foreplay next time.” She panted, staring down at him with heated intensity. “I want you. Hard. Fast. Now.”

  She emphasized the last word with a wriggle of her hips, nothing more than the scant scrap of damp lace of her thong separating them. But not for long.

  He swept aside the skimpy barrier and slid inside her, where he belonged. Her fingers fisted in his shirt, clawing at his skin through the fabric as the wriggle of her hips urged him on.

  Sure, she could say no foreplay but he had to touch her. His hands itched for the feel of her. His fingers crawled up inside her shirt to cup her breasts. She moaned a plea and moved faster above him, their bodies inching along the floor with memorabilia from their past scattered around them, prom tickets and pictures.

  The moist heat of her clenched around him until his head thunked back on the floor and he clenched his jaw with restraint. Tougher and tougher to hang on by the second and not made any easier by the sweet feel of her soft buttocks, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go. Instead, he gripped
her tighter, guiding her against him in grinding rhythm that had her gasping and moaning in time with his own pounding pulse.

  Not much longer. He couldn’t last much longer. But damned if he would finish before she did.

  He slid a hand around between them, finding her tight bud, teasing her for…ah, her tongue peeked out between her teeth in her telltale sign that she was close, thank goodness. Then, she gasped and he forced his eyes to stay open while he waited and watched the seductive vision of her completion wash over her.

  The second she collapsed on top of him, limp, replete, he cut the bonds and let go, the power of his own release tearing a shout from him he couldn’t control.

  But finally he admitted it to himself, he’d never been in total control of his emotions around this woman. If he thought so, he’d only been lying to himself. All he could do was ride the wave until his heart slowed enough for him to hear the sounds around him again.

  Starr breathing against his ear.

  The creak of the wooden horse moving because apparently one of them had kicked it as they’d writhed on the floor.

  An air-conditioner unit kicking on below stairs.

  And as he gathered Starr closer to him, David realized he’d been lying to himself in more ways than one. He’d been certain he could make it all work, his grand plan for her to follow him around the world. With her in his arms, he realized he knew her. Knew the essence of this woman and traveling the world wasn’t what she wanted.

  So where did that leave him?

  Where did that leave them?

  Because for the first time he had to admit the truth to himself. He couldn’t give her up.

  “I give up.” Starr flopped back in her chair, ceding control of the remote to her sister. “There’s nothing decent on television this time of night.”