by Maya Blake
‘What? Papà—’ Her words echoed down a disconnected line. Chills rippled over her. She didn’t realise she’d stumbled to a halt on the sidewalk until Antonio cleared his throat.
‘Miss, is everything okay?’
She forced life into her feet, her steps growing faster as she spotted Javier’s apartment building. She crossed the foyer without looking up and was shaking by the time she let herself back into the penthouse. Her ringing phone a second later made her jump.
Hands trembling, she answered it.
‘What’s wrong?’ Javier demanded.
‘What...how do you know—?’
‘Tell me,’ Javier commanded.
‘My father... I just spoke to him...’ She shook her head to clear it, to find a way to attribute the conversation with her father to anything other than a clear threat. A threat not born in her wildest imagination.
‘And?’
She clamped her mouth shut, the thick cord of guilt she’d never been able to loosen from her heart tightening even further.
‘Carla.’ Javier growled a warning.
‘Please... I’m fine...’
A thick curse ripped through her senses. ‘What did he say to you?’
‘Did you stop the articles in Vita Italia?’ she countered.
‘Yes. I told you I was going to. I wasn’t satisfied with some of the subject matters.’
Dread raked her stomach. ‘I need you to lay off my father, Javier. Please. Until I talk to him again.’
‘No. Tell me what he’s up to and I’ll deal with it.’
‘No, questo è il mio problema. Io ne occupo io, non tu.’
‘I find it adorable that you slip into Italian when you’re fired up, Principessa, but you’re wrong. This is not just your problem. I hate to break it to you if you haven’t already worked it out, but your father is operating from a place of pure greed, just like my father when it suits him. And I guarantee that every misguided decision he makes from now on will impact both of us.’
‘So you’re helping me to fight him?’
‘In this case, protecting you from him also protects my brand, so yes. Now, tell me what he said to you,’ he insisted for the third time.
‘He said something, about...my mother. H-how she died.’
‘How did she die?’
Debilitating pain deadened her limbs. She stumbled to the sofa and dropped into it. ‘That’s just it. I don’t know. I wasn’t there, and he won’t tell me. But I know whatever happened, it had something to do with me.’
‘How is that possible?’ he demanded.
‘It sounds absurd, I know, but, whatever it is, I can’t find out any other way, Javier. Please. Give me time to deal with him my way.’
A harsh exhalation. ‘Sorry, querida, I can make no promises.’
‘Javier!’
For the second time in the space of half an hour, Carla was confronted with a disconnected line.
Rushing to her room, she located her laptop and opened up her email. Typing without the full use of all her fingers was frustrating in the extreme.
My full and final offer—thirty percent of the endorsement proceeds, and the Tuscany villa, in return for the truth about Mamma, and no press involvement. Also, you will no longer be my manager.
She and her father would never have a proper familial relationship. She was better off accepting it now and walking away, no matter much her heart shredded at the thought. Shaking, she pressed send to her father’s private email address, finally accepting that this was her only option if she wanted to draw a line under the acrimony they’d been living with for years.
She held her breath until she received notification that he’d opened it.
His response came within minutes. It reeked with a smugness that made her stomach turn.
Agreed. But I need the first payment within the next fourteen days.
Fine.
She closed her laptop, a wave of despair gripping her. She’d just negotiated her way out of her father’s life. She blinked away the tears that formed and straightened her spine. For years she’d yearned for a father who loved her. Today, she needed to accept that would never happen. For some reason, he was incapable of it.
She paced the penthouse for a full hour trying to come up with a cogent solution. She’d bought herself some time, but the next endorsement payment wouldn’t be for another two months.
Her heart broke as she settled on her next-best option. A quick call later and her mother’s beloved cottage was listed with the estate agent. Praying it was only a stopgap measure she wouldn’t need to use, Carla undressed and went into the bathroom to shower. Careful to keep her cast out of the spray, she shampooed her hair one-handed, the arduous task taking her mind off her turbulent thoughts.
It worked until she turned off the shower, then the memories from three years ago flooded back.
The training for the championship that had taken her away from Tuscany for several weeks. Her row with her father when she’d asked for some time off before the championship. Her appeal to her mother to intervene. Her time in Miami. Her father unexpectedly absenting himself from the tournament afterwards. His equally sudden return for the ceremony of her being crowned champion. His cold announcement that her mother was dead. And his unequivocal refusal to discuss how she’d died.
Carla shuddered, her skin clammy in the vast room where she stood in only a towel. Despite what the death certificate had said, she’d never managed to rid herself of the suspicion that there was more to her mother’s death than she’d been made privy to.
Her father’s thinly veiled comments over the years had only fed that suspicion.
The idea that he would make public whatever secret surrounded her mother’s death threatened to rip her in two. Javier had intimated that she was feeding the monster by giving in to her father. But the alternative was worse. She couldn’t let her mother’s memory be dragged through the mires of social media for the sake of financial gain. The knowledge that it was her own father making that threat wounded her deep and long, but she would suffer it. For the sake of the mother who had loved her for as long as she could.
Firm-jawed, she dried herself and went into her closet. Vast amounts of white dominated her wardrobe.
Deliberately bypassing the white, she reached into the corner of her closet and dragged out a pair of black leather pants, a gold-threaded black top she’d never worn because the cut had been too risqué and studded black boots. She pulled the top on, her face flaming slightly at the thought of going out without a bra. Catching her hair up, she secured it with a diamond pin that had belonged to her mother. Then she went to town with her make-up.
Where she’d only worn the very lightest shades and gloss, she brushed on smoky eye shadow, cheekbone-enhancing blush, and dark red gloss over her lips.
The end result was dramatic enough to stop her breath. Before the tiny speck of doubt could take hold and ruin her night out, she snatched up her gold lamé clutch and transferred her phone and personal items into it.
The sound of the buzzer brought the relief and shameless inevitability she needed. Answering it, she finished her ensemble with a leather jacket and left the penthouse.
Darren’s double take once she exited the lift buoyed her confidence and she smiled as she crossed the foyer.
‘Wow, you look amazing!’
‘Grazie,’ she murmured. ‘You don’t look so bad yourself.’
‘What, this?’ He indicated his dark grey button-down shirt, black chinos, and the black jacket he wore over it. ‘It’s okay, but hardly the cutting edge of fashion. Not that you’re not worth going cutting edge for,’ he quickly amended. ‘I meant, I prefer to dazzle a woman with my wit, not my attire.’
She laughed, a little of her churning emotions subsiding under the
easy banter. He escorted her outside, then glanced over his shoulder. ‘Umm...will that BFG be accompanying us everywhere tonight?’
Carla grimaced. ‘He’s harmless... I think. And barely noticeable once you get used to him.’ She looked over her shoulder and smiled at Antonio. He cracked a return smile.
‘Right. O...kay,’ Darren responded, his tone a little bewildered. ‘I’m cool with it if you are. The restaurant is a couple of blocks away.’ He glanced at her heeled boots. ‘You don’t mind walking, do you?’
‘Not at all.’ She smiled and received a quick, appreciative one back. They fell into an easy stride, the conversation light and casual. It continued through a delicious meal at an Irish-themed bar and restaurant then out onto an even busier Manhattan street. ‘The first club is Downtown. I have VIP passes.’ He hailed a cab and helped her into it. Antonio took residence in the front seat, his burly presence making the cab driver blink hard before shrugging in defeat. Darren raised his eyebrows at her, and Carla couldn’t help but giggle.
Outside the exclusive Cuban nightclub, limos competed with flashy sports cars for attention. They were shown to a VIP section with plush gold velvet sofas and an unlimited supply of complimentary drinks. Vowing to stick to a two-drink threshold, Carla sipped her first drink slowly. Their easy conversation continued with Darren regaling her with stories of his childhood in Dublin. When the club owner came over to speak to him, she took off her jacket and went down to the edge of the dance floor. She smiled non-committally at a few interested glances, resolutely ignored the more pointed ones, then sighed in relief when Darren joined her a few minutes later.
‘So what do you think?’ He gestured to the club’s interior and dance floor.
The rich, slightly ethnic theme was sensual enough to evoke the spirit of Javier’s brand, while contemporary enough to appeal to the sophisticated urbanite.
She smiled. ‘I like the music, and I think the space will work well.’ During dinner, he’d expanded on the brief of work hard, play harder theme of the shoot, with the primary shoot being on the ice rink and the secondary at the nightclub.
Darren’s hand slid around her waist. ‘Want to try it out?’ He grinned.
Shrugging, she nodded. ‘Why not?’
They descended into the crowd to the tune of throbbing Cuban drums.
Laughing, she entered the fray, throwing her arms above her head partly to keep her wrist from being accidentally re-injured. Darren, a more than adequate partner, stayed close, his appreciative gaze dancing over her body every now and then. After two songs, the tempo changed to a slower, sexier beat. Darren danced closer, but still kept a respectable distance. Catching her forearms, he gently placed them on his shoulders, a small smile playing at his lips as he swayed in time with her.
‘You really are stunningly beautiful, you know that?’ he confessed in her ear.
She blushed, wishing away the sudden embarrassment and the slight discomfiting realisation that perhaps he was more interested in her than he’d let on. ‘Umm...grazie,’ she murmured.
He laughed, the careful hands he’d placed on her waist drawing her closer. ‘I love your accent. In fact I don’t think there’s a single thing about you that I don’t find—’ He froze suddenly, his eyes bulging as he swallowed hard. ‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered.
She blinked in surprise. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Carla.’
Her head whipped round at the barely repressed violence in the deep, low voice that curled over her shoulder.
Javier stood three scant feet away, his nostrils flared in volcanic fury as he stared at them. His chest rose and fell in rapid rhythm, his fists clenched at his sides. The emotions vibrating off him lent him an impossibly overwhelming aura, a fact that transmitted to the nearest clubbers, who’d stopped dancing and were openly staring.
Alarmed at his unexpected presence, she went to step away and stumbled. Darren’s hold tightened on her.
The growl that rose over the music had several people stepping away, more than a few of them making room and nudging each other as the threat of a salacious confrontation thickened in the air.
‘What are you doing here?’ she croaked.
He didn’t answer. His gaze remained fixed with naked intensity on where Darren’s hands rested on her waist. ‘If you value the use of your limbs, O’Hare, I suggest you remove your hands from her body. Right now.’
Darren released her with comic swiftness. ‘Mr Santino—’
‘Leave. Now.’
Outrage sparked within her. ‘Javier! You can’t do that—’
‘Take your hands off the man, Carla, so he can leave, or I won’t be responsible for what happens next,’ he snarled with a guttural tone that was barely coherent.
But she got the message.
She took her time, though, despite the quaking unfolding alongside the outrage, because she refused to be intimidated. Darren stepped away, his apprehension escalating as he swallowed hard again. He attempted to cast her an apologetic glance. Javier took a single step towards him and he changed his mind, turning in the opposite direction to disappear through the seething crowd.
Javier turned his bristling frame to her. ‘You have two minutes,’ he bit out.
She raised one brow, unwilling to admit the blood strumming urgently through her veins was in any way to do with his sudden dramatic appearance. That would hand him too much power over her. ‘Two minutes for what?’
‘To retrieve whatever you came here with. Or we leave without it.’
‘What makes you think I’m going anywhere with you?’ she challenged.
His eyes gleamed. ‘Principessa, for once in your life, do what is best for you. You do not want to test me right now. I can guarantee you that. You certainly don’t want to do it here, in full view of your captive audience.’
A quick glance around showed they’d drawn even more interested glances now Darren had scurried away. Thankfully, the club had a ‘no photography’ policy, but that didn’t mean their every move wasn’t being recorded by security cameras.
‘They’re not staring at me. You’re the one making a spectacle of yourself.’
Once again he didn’t respond. She got the distinct impression he was holding onto his control by the thinnest thread. The staring contest lasted a full minute.
Then, blood roaring in her ears—with embarrassment only, she was sure—Carla walked off the dance floor and climbed the steps to the VIP area. Antonio handed over her clutch and jacket, then stepped forward to make room as they left the club.
Supremely conscious of Javier’s seething presence behind her, she could barely walk and was thankful when they emerged into fresh air.
She immediately struck out for the busy intersection three blocks away. Less than a handful of steps later, Javier stepped firmly into her path. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ His voice was a razor-sharp blade, lethal and unmistakeable in the semi-darkness.
‘I told you I’m not going anywhere with you.’
‘Think again.’
‘Do me a favour, Javier, and leave me the hell alone!’ She whirled round and tore blindly down a side street.
She noticed two things mere seconds into her flight. One, the alley was smoky and dark with a single yellow bulb strung high above their heads. Two, it terminated in a dead-end a few hundred feet away. She heard Javier snarl a do not disturb instruction to Antonio before his sure, measured footsteps echoed between her frantic ones. A dozen feet from the sheer wall soaring high in front of her, she turned and stood her ground.
He stalked closer, his dark clothes lending him an air of unbridled masculinity and danger.
Despite herself, she shivered. ‘You don’t frighten me, Santino.’
He laughed. ‘I know I don’t. But we both know why you’re running. Rest easy, chiquita
, you’re in luck. I’m in the mood to give you exactly what you want.’
CHAPTER NINE
JAVIER’S EYES NARROWED on her, his senses still grappling with the changes in the woman standing in front of him. Perhaps it was the rage boiling his blood that had him so unbalanced. Or the flaying alarm that had gripped him when he’d returned to the penthouse and found her gone. Either way, he straddled the very edge of control as he watched her sassy mouth tighten.
‘As usual, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t care for whatever it is you think I’m in the mood for.’
‘What the hell are you wearing?’ he sliced at her, his gaze taking in the dramatic beauty of her face, the shiny leather hugging her hips and thighs, and the top that was slashed in too many provocative places to require a bra. The transformation from innocent to sultry siren was playing holy havoc with a libido he’d spent the last forty-eight hours battling. And failing.
‘They’re called clothes, Javier,’ she threw back at him.
He stalked closer. She retreated. Her back touched the damp wall and she froze.
He consciously unclenched his fingers and sucked in a sustaining breath. ‘I returned home to find you gone. No note. No phone call. Had it not been for Antonio, I wouldn’t have had a clue where you were. And when I find you, you give me attitude?’
Her eyes sparked in the dim light. ‘You hung up on me mid-conversation. What did you expect, that I would be curled up in a ball of misery, crying my eyes out?’
‘I was in the middle of a meeting when we talked. I rearranged my schedule and took the rest of the meeting on my flight back from LA. If you’d bothered to answer me when I called you back once my meeting ended, we could’ve finished our conversation.’
She frowned. ‘I got no call from you.’
‘I landed three hours ago. Check your phone.’
Rebellion blazed for a second before she dug through her tiny bag. She activated it, her eyes widening a touch. ‘I was in the nightclub. I didn’t hear it.’