Blush

by Cherry Adair

  He started as if she’d struck him. “Jesus, Mia.” When she added nothing, merely sat there watching him, he settled back against the counter. “No. I have not.”

  Something in his stance, his face, told her that was the truth. She relaxed slightly. “What should we do about Daisy and her son?”

  “Not a damn thing. Not only is it none of our business, but we’re not even sure she is being abused; she might just be clumsy.”

  “And she might not be clumsy at all. Her dick of a husband might be hurting her. So, yes, we are ninety-nine point nine percent sure he’s hurting her. But you’re right. I’m going to damn well make sure I’ve assessed the situation correctly before I take action.”

  “Fire Latour and you’ll be rid of the problem.”

  “Fire Latour and the problem will be ongoing, and I won’t know about it, so I can’t take action. My God, don’t you have any compassion?”

  “I’ll leave the hearts and flowers to you. I’ve got work to do.”

  Mia stared at his awe-inspiring damned back as Cruz stalked out of the room. Then shook her head as she heard his heavy footfalls disappear down the hallway, followed by the slam of the back door. “Asshole.”

  Chapter Eight

  Long day. Made longer by trying to function with a boner that only pounding into Mia would alleviate. Cruz knew he couldn’t put off killing her any longer. He had to do the job. Shoving his wet hair off his face, he turned on his computer. After he’d spent the afternoon with a steamer, stripping wallpaper, he’d declined her tempting dinner invitation, opting for a cold shower in her downstairs bathroom and time with the information he’d placed on a thumb drive.

  The camper still smelled of the previous owner’s cigarette habit and was cramped as hell. Especially with Oso as close to his feet as possible without actually occupying the same space. Cruz absently leaned over to give the dog an ear rub as his computer booted up.

  The camper, like the dog, were merely props.

  Once the job was done, he’d abandon the camper and return the dog to the pound. He didn’t do attachments. He’d already delayed the inevitable too long.

  Earlier, she’d rattled the doorknob of the bathroom when he was taking a shower. Damn it to hell. He was relieved that he’d thought to engage the lock, at the same time berating himself for being a pussy. The only way he could accomplish this fucking job was to keep his hands off her and his dick where it belonged, and the only guarantee of that was to bolt a flimsy hollow-core door? Yeah. Pussy. With a capital P. Well, this time tomorrow it would no longer be an issue.

  She was the witch with the pretty, shiny red apple. Delilah with the scissors hidden innocently behind her back. The beautiful vampire sleeping at night, mouth closed, fangs covered. It was damn impossible not to want to touch her. And more. Cruz knew fucking her “one more time” could cause him to overshoot his deadline by several years.

  No. More. Sex.

  Kill her now.

  Brazil waited.

  Balance of the money padding an already healthy offshore account.

  No regrets.

  No entanglements.

  She met his stringent criteria, even though she claimed she’d never been to China. He was staring at the proof on his monitor. In the photo, Mia-Amelia stood in the customs line at Beijing International. He compared a side-by-side image of her on arrival in Switzerland a month earlier. Same straight nose, same stubborn chin, same slender throat, same classy chignon, her dark hair swept up off the slender column of her throat. Cruz enlarged each image, then frowned.

  Glancing at the Beijing airport images, Cruz realized something was missing. Where were the three sexy freckles on her collarbone? At this angle he should be able to see them clearly.

  He went back to the Swiss image.

  Three freckles on her creamy skin, evident even on the slightly grainy enhanced version of the airport security tapes.

  Covered with makeup? A doppelgänger for security purposes?

  Absently he brushed a trickle of water off his forehead, then glanced up to see that his damned roof leaked, too. Great. He went back to his file on her and checked out several dozen of the candid shots taken by the paparazzi over the past six months. Three freckles in every one. So she didn’t habitually cover up the small, sexy marks with cosmetics.

  He looked at the screen full of photos.

  All Amelia. But not.

  • • •

  With everyone gone, the house was way too quiet, even though she had her iPod attached to her Bose computer speakers. Blasting Pink’s “Raise Your Glass.” Fast and upbeat was exactly what Mia needed tonight. Edgy female rock and roll, fun and upbeat, that she could dance to as she stirred batter. Lemon bars.

  Mia had offered to cook Cruz dinner earlier. He’d politely, too politely, declined. So he was still cranky and adamant on his rejection policy, apparently. So much for his offer to let her be in charge tonight. If she was really in charge, she’d order him to get his naked ass upstairs and wait for her.

  He’d come in when it started to rain in the late afternoon, and had used the steamer on the entry- and hallway’s hideous wallpaper. It had been a pleasure to watch him every time he passed the open door as he worked, his sweaty muscles flexing. At seven he’d taken a shower. Interestingly, when Mia tried the door handle, the bathroom door had been locked.

  Shocked, Mia had stood out in the hallway staring at the door. What man didn’t want sex? Even if he was annoyed about something? And, damn it, shower sex was on the list. She was ready for him when she heard the water turn off.

  Draped in a barely-there purple negligee this time, she’d perched her butt on the chilly kitchen counter, feeling a little silly vamping when he wasn’t even there to see her sexy pose.

  She shook her head as Pink’s “U + Ur Hand” reminded her that she’d been just fine before Cruz Barcelona sauntered into her damn life, and maybe that’s why he’d locked the door. He was taking care of that lovely erection all by himself. Selfish bastard.

  She slid the baking sheet into the oven.

  Without coming into the room, he’d yelled that he was leaving, and slammed out of the house to go to his cramped camper and the company of his dog. Mia had slid off the counter, deflated. Wow. Not very flattering, but clearly he had something serious on his mind. Unless he was no longer interested in having wild monkey sex with her.

  Seriously? He’d lost interest? So soon? Possible, although she’d seen the heat in his eyes when he was watching her earlier. He’d quickly shuttered the look.

  She hummed along to “Perfect” as she removed the fragrant pastry from the oven. She had mastered baking. Time to move on. No more eggs either. She needed new cookbooks pronto. She didn’t need a song to tell her he was less than perfect.

  Hell, maybe she wasn’t as good a judge of character as she’d always believed. Perhaps, being isolated like this from Blush, she was losing her edge. Or maybe it was the heavy humidity that was making her brain soggy and her raging hormones scream for more sex with Cruz that had her brain misfiring.

  She went upstairs to blow out the candles and change into shorts and a tank top. So much for her romantic seduction plan. His loss. Some men didn’t want the challenge of a powerful woman. Maybe he felt threatened. Maybe he didn’t want to jeopardize his job by sleeping with the boss. Maybe she was a big disappointment in the sex department. Who the hell knew what the man was thinking?

  Back in the kitchen, she fixed a salad and put wild monkey sex out of her mind. But her body, constantly on edge when he was around, wasn’t so easy to convince.

  Pink belted out “Blow Me.” “Hmm. Blow me one more kiss? A farewell screw would be even more welcome,” Mia muttered. “But will I get it? No, apparently not!”

  Damn it, she wasn’t asking for love and marriage. All she wanted was more of what he’d already given her. Mindless, awesome, sweaty sex. Was that too damn much to ask?

  “Focus. Think about something else.” She forked a
red, ripe cherry tomato into her mouth and chewed, thinking now of the marks on Daisy’s arms and her alarmed reaction when her little boy had screamed.

  Mia wondered again if she should at least say something as she poured herself a glass of crisp Riesling. She looked kind of pathetic in her reflection in the black windowpane. Sitting alone, eating off fine bone china, drinking good wine from a crystal glass, mooning like a teenager over some itinerant laborer—

  She shook her head. That line of thinking was ludicrous, and she knew it. If the man didn’t want to have sex with her, that was his prerogative. She couldn’t do anything to lead that particular horse to water, but she could do something about Daisy.

  Offer—what? Counseling for her husband? Herself? Shelter? Mia wasn’t sure what, if anything, she should do in this situation. And she and Cruz could be way off the mark. Daisy could just be a shy woman who bruised easily. She could have fallen and someone had broken her fall by grabbing onto her, just as Cruz had grabbed Mia when she nearly fell off the ladder. She looked at her own wrist, not totally sure there wasn’t a bit of bruising there. Or on her neck from their rough lovemaking the other night.

  She ate dinner in lonely, quiet splendor with her pretty china and a crystal wineglass. No music, just the gentle whirring of the ceiling fan and loud rhythmic croaking of the frogs, and all the chirps and cheeps and grunts that the crickets, alligators, and other swamp creatures were making beyond the closed windows. The insects and wild things were content in the heavy night air, while the man who was always on her mind seemed discontented.

  Though he hadn’t been that way last night. She thought of how his eyes smiled when the stern line of his lips didn’t. How the lamplight limned his skin, and how his dark hair brushed against her cheek as he applied his mouth with great deal of attention to detail when kissing her.

  No, the man wasn’t always so angry and unhappy, she reasoned, deciding it was best for her sanity not to think anymore about all the wondrous things his large, callused fingers delicately stroking her breasts did to her.

  Mia shook her head and looked around her mismatched, outdated kitchen and smiled. Better to think about the major remodel. The kitchen was dreadful, with those crazy psychedelic butterflies and hideous Formica countertops and fruity curtains, but it was starting to grow on her.

  Not the décor—that had to go. But the very fact that it was her kitchen to do with as she pleased, without crabby-faced Chef Simon asking what it was she needed. It was homey and comforting, and she needed nothing other than pride in knowing that she could fix herself a decent meal without relaying what she wanted through five people.

  She could count on the fingers of one hand how many times she’d been in the kitchen in her San Francisco home. As beautifully designed as it was, even with every top-of-the-line modern stainless steel appliance, it was unwelcoming and cold.

  She wondered what sex would be like on the large expanse of Carrara marble on the kitchen island in her house in San Francisco. That would certainly put a twist in Chef Simon’s apron. And that led to her thinking about the velvety smoothness of Cruz’s penis in her hands, and the salty taste of his skin. And made her wonder, with a surge of heat, what he tasted like there.

  After cleaning up—which took all of a minute—she went upstairs with her phone, iPod, computer, and notebook. Time to call Todd for an update, and then “It’s you and me, baby,” she told the pole bolted into the floor and ceiling and gleaming in challenge. The uncovered window nearby would serve very well as a mirror should she want to observe herself sliding around all over the place in an ungainly, uncoordinated heap.

  On the other hand, she might be better off using another kind of pole to get rid of her horniness. But business before pleasure. Which reminded her that Cruz had said much the same thing the first time they met.

  And just thinking about that made her hot all over.

  Throwing herself down on the bed, she turned off the music and punched in her cousin’s number. There’d be time later to decide which pole was going to get the workout.

  She didn’t need Cruz Barcelona’s hands and mouth on her. She could bring herself to orgasm easily enough. Had plenty of experience in that department, actually. Problem was, she wanted him, and longing for a particular man was a new experience for her. One that wasn’t on the list.

  Todd’s phone rang three times. “You know it’s midnight here, right?” He didn’t sound the least bit sleepy.

  Rain pounded the black square of the window and formed pretty diamonds as it ran down. She turned onto her stomach and crossed her feet over her butt. “Aw, poor baby, did I wake you?”

  “No, I’m reading what Davis and Kent have to say about the LBO—”

  The leveraged buyout was all but a done deal, which would be finalized at the end of the week. “Why are they saying anything? You have my proxy. You sign on the dotted line on Friday and it’s all done but the champagne toasting and wild frivolity.”

  “You’ve never been frivolous in your life.”

  “Working on it,” Mia assured him.

  “D and K insist you sign in person. I’m insisting you bloody well don’t. They agreed to a compromise. They’ll send you the paperwork when the time comes, and you get a notary. Get a post office box as far away from you as makes sense and give them the address. They can mail paperwork as soon as that’s in place.”

  “Then can I come home?” As soon as the words were out, she suddenly realized that she didn’t want to return to San Francisco quite yet. Not now, anyway. The house was just starting to come alive. She wanted to restore it to its former beauty, to accomplish something while she was in exile.

  “Sorry. No. Enjoy the sun, use lots of Tropics, SPF fifty, and stay put until Basson gives us the okay.”

  Miles would find whoever was trying to kill her, and he’d take care of it. The head of security had been protective of her father, and had watched out for her as soon as she was old enough to sit at the boardroom table. But Mia had assumed that the threats were in direct relation to the LBO. Once the deal was done and the papers signed, the motivation to kill her would be over. Wouldn’t it?

  “Okay, talk to me.”

  “We leaked the announcement last night that we’re considering selling the company. Korea is interested, to say the least.” His tone was dry. Korea had been trying to buy them out for years. “Company shares rose fourteen point three percent on NASDAQ this morning at opening bell.”

  “That won’t hurt us. Just gives me more clout.”

  “The press is having a field day, however. And everyone is speculating you’re in hiding until the dust settles.”

  “Of course they’re speculating. The press is skeptical because they’re trying to figure out if I’m selling, going under, or reorganizing. They know it means Blush will fund some kind of venture with borrowed money. The shares are going up because we won’t be selling stock to the public, and there’s a feeding frenzy. I’m not worried.”

  “Davis and Kent planned to take the company private for two hundred dollars a share.” There was a pregnant pause. She heard the clink of bottle to glass as Todd poured himself some wine. “They were outbid.”

  Mia’s heart slammed into her ribs and her eyebrows rose. “By who—whom?”

  “Everybody,” Todd said dryly. “All the big dogs want in on the action. Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch—pretty much all of Wall Street. No winners: all bids have been rejected so far.”

  “As long as I win, I don’t give a damn. Question is, how did anyone find out what I’m doing? There’s enough misinformation floating around to muddy the waters. If not, throw more mud. We’ll be fine. But damn it to hell, I want to know who leaked confidential information. Their side or ours?” There were only a handful of people total who knew what she planned.

  “Basson and D and K’s equivalent?”

  “No.” She didn’t want either Blush or the investment company’s security people involved in this. “Get someone smart, effici
ent, neutral, but loyal to us. Call Black Raven Security and have them put their best people on it. And, Todd, while you’re at it, have them see what they can find about this alleged killer who’s after me.”

  “Basson’s already on that.” He paused. “Are you saying after thirty-five years of loyal service, you don’t you trust him?”

  “The only person I trust right now is you.”

  Todd chuckled and took a swallow of whatever it was he was drinking. “Jesus, babe. About fucking time you got paranoid.”

  “I want this over.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure all those cabana boys are wearing you out.” He paused, his voice changing from mocking to serious. “Kidding aside, be careful. I don’t want anything to happen to you. I like being second in command way too much. All the perks, none of the responsibility. Don’t trust anyone, even me. Promise?”

  “I was going to invite you . . . here. For a little vacay.”

  She heard the glass hit a little too hard on the table. “I don’t want to know where you are! For fucksake, Amelia—”

  “When this is over, then?”

  He let out a sigh and she could hear him swallow, ice tinkling against the sides of his glass. So he was drinking something stronger than wine. “It’s a deal.” Todd paused. “But they want more financial data—the buried-deep-down, confidential data that we typically don’t release.”

  Mia tapped her unmanicured fingernail on the back of her phone. Not being there during this crucial pivot point for Blush was irresponsible of her, but what could she do when her life was potentially on the line? It left her feeling exposed on more than one front. “Fine, give them whatever they need. But first have Black Raven plug the leak. And remind them they signed a confidentiality agreement. Things are already volatile enough. Any more stuff in the press and they’ll say it’s not a rumor.”