Her heart was pumping harder than before, much harder than when they’d been fighting for conquest. She sensed one of his hands leaving her waist, and then it had moved to the desk, the position more confining.
Alarms sounded and the fluttering ladies in her head started advising again even as his lips turned more gentle. He sucked her bottom lip into his mouth and her knees sagged. She was on the verge of something … of yielding
And that thought galvanized her. She broke from his hold, sweeping her hand against his arm locked on the desktop. Something tumbled to the floor as he moved back.
His gaze fastened on hers. His expression was tight, his pupils dilated. Then his mouth quirked in that familiar, mocking smile. “Uncle?”
Her competitive spirit tried to rally, but her energy was sapped. She couldn’t go another round. Grimacing, she glanced away. “Uncle.”
“Wednesday night.” Satisfaction filled his voice. “Seven o’clock.”
That’s when she realized that the Platt dinner party had been on the line. She should have known he’d not been just playing, but playing for something…
The man was even sneakier than she thought.
The office door opened then closed behind him just as she spied the item that had fallen to the floor. She knelt to retrieve it, surprised to discover it was the smallest of the bride-and-groom wedding cake toppers. She couldn’t figure out how it had come to be on the desk, when its place was on the shelf. Returning it to its position, she decided that it was apropos, though. Rather than being the usual nuptial couple, this was a Mexican Day of the Dead version - both bride and groom were actually skeletons dressed in wedding regalia.
A reminder that when she was playing with Jack, she was playing with lethal fire. And to make it even worse, she decided, as she glanced over at the closed office door, she was unsure if she truly wanted rescue.
*****
Jack couldn’t wait for Stevie to show up at the Platt residence. She’d texted him with the assertion that she would drive herself, and he’d allowed that. But now he hoped like hell she wouldn’t ditch him altogether, because he needed something to distract him from the disapproval that radiated from Senator Platt, her husband, Ned, and Emerson’s two snobby sisters and respective spouses.
Christ, weren’t Americans supposed to have a secret adulation for royalty? Of course, he held dual citizenship himself and his “noble” Ardenian family didn’t strike him as any more or less better than Grandpa Crawford’s neighbors in Fiddlecreek, Georgia.
“My assistant put together a file on you, Jack,” Emerson’s mother, the senator, said. “You have quite a reputation, I see, like the little table-and-chair throwing event at that bar in Brussels.” She handed him the whisky and soda her husband had mixed at the bar in the spacious “family room.” They probably thought of their Napa home in cabin terms, though it had to be over six thousand soaring square feet. And while it was constructed of peeled timber, everything inside it was miles above frontier quality.
He sipped his drink from a crystal highball glass. “You should have gone straight to the FBI,” he said with a smile, though there was a burn in his gut that didn’t come from the booze. “I’ve been told they have an extensive file of their own.” Which was complete bullshit as far as he knew, but he liked the idea of the senator now wondering if he was part of some radical political group instead of merely a man with a reputation as a dilettante, womanizer, and wastrel, with one very real and particularly ugly episode in his past.
Emerson’s brother-in-law, Erik, elbowed Jack, jiggling the ice in his glass. He was a loud, florid man who should get out and play some rounds rather than sitting on his couch watching tournaments on the Golf Channel. “I want to see a file of all those supermodels you dated. Heh heh. Complete with pictures.” His voice lowered, but only enough so that the people in the next county couldn’t hear him. “Did that Melinda really try to take her life over you?”
“Malia,” Jack corrected. “And the last I heard she was out of the hospital but back in Thailand, nursing her crushed heart.”
More BS. From what he understood, Malia was preparing to grace the catwalks during Fashion Week in Milan. But the Platts and company put him in the mood for lies. It was a habit of his - bad, he supposed - that the more someone lifted their eyebrows at his past, the more he was driven to feed their sordid assumptions.
Guilt didn’t give him a single pinch for spreading stories about Malia, either. Not after her publicist had planted those rumors that the beauty’s overdose had been a response to her unhealthy love affair with Jack, rather than blaming it on her real obsessive relationship - the pills that kept her six feet at 102 scrawny pounds.
On his other side, Roxy touched his arm. “Jack,” she admonished, wearing a nervous smile. “Let’s talk about something else, everyone. Who here makes New Year’s resolutions? Or do you avoid them altogether?”
“By all means, let’s discuss another topic,” Senator Platt said, gesturing for the company to find themselves seats on the grouping of heavy, dark-toned furniture. As all moved to obey the matriarch, he noticed that she snagged his sister’s arm so they sat side by side on a couch positioned against a rustic stone wall under two framed yet tattered flags: Old Glory and the California Bear.
Photographed, it would make a damn fine campaign image. Senator Lois Platt and her daughter-in-law, member of the Ardenian royal family, Princess Roxanne.
Call him cynical.
The senator turned toward his sister. “Roxanne, while I applaud your instinct to divert attention from unpleasant subjects … ”
He was an unpleasant subject now! Charming.
“… as a politician’s wife, there are times when you’ll have to own up to a relative’s unsavory -”
“Wait.” Jack looked from the senator to his sister. “Politician’s wife?”
Clearing his throat, Emerson moved to perch on the arm of the sofa, close enough to place a light hand on Rox’y’s shoulder. “We’re still in the exploratory stages,” he said. “But there’s a congressional seat opening up and I’m considering it.”
Jesus. Jack glanced at his future brother-in-law’s handsome face, then back to Roxy, who was staring into the distance. Her gaze unfocused, she was toying with something in her left hand, turning a narrow, shiny thing over and over.
He stared at it. “Hey, Rox. Did you find my lighter?”
She started, and her fingers squeezed over the metallic item as if to hide it. Then her fist popped open and the object lay in the curve of her palm. “Oh. Oh, yes. I’ve been meaning to return it.”
Leaning down, he scooped up the cheap gadget. “Thanks,” he said, pocketing it. “I didn’t know you were heading for life in the political spotlight, sis.”
“Emerson has considered following in my footsteps for several years,” his mother answered.
“I’m curious to hear what Roxy thinks about it.” Though her opinion was clear without the words. The tense lines of her face spoke volumes and spread a sick feeling in his gut. “There’s a world of difference between supporting a husband in his commercial real estate business and surviving the rigors of a federal campaign and what comes after,” he said.
Karen, one of Emerson’s sisters, waved around her glass of wine. “We all agree that in some ways Roxanne is an unconventional - even inconvenient - choice, for reasons I shouldn’t have to enumerate for you.”
Meaning, exactly, him.
Roxy straightened her spine. “Wait a minute. For your information, my brother has spent the last years as a respected investment banker.”
Emerson’s father, bald and spare, shook his head. “Yes, but there was that little matter of embezzlement.”
Spots of red showed up on his sister’s cheeks. “In the Atlanta office where he worked, true, but in an entirely different department, and the culprit -”
“Was my squash partner on Tuesdays,” Jack inserted smoothly. Somehow that had come out and then the tabloids had t
ried making more of it, adding yet another layer of tarnish to his character. He supposed sterling was highly overrated, but sometimes he got so damn tired of dirt.
“We all know,” Emerson’s mother said, “that the truth isn’t as important as the image. As a matter of fact, image becomes truth. This will be a problem for Emerson and Roxy because of you, Jack. It’s just a fact that to us in the U.S., your European lifestyle seems foreign -”
“So I’m Euro trash.” Jack felt his ire rise again, though he knew he shouldn’t let it. “That’s what you’re saying, since image is truth.”
“Jack…” Roxy started.
He ignored her. “And because the gossip rags and the tabloid sites on two continents regularly say so, reality is that I cause ruckuses in nightclubs, commit fraud at my place of work, treat shabbily the most beautiful women on the planet, not to mention that I was complicit in my and my sister’s -”
“Loss of good manners,” a cheery voice interrupted. Stevie Baci breezed in, her arms embracing a half-dozen bottles of chilled wine. “Though the Platts aren’t innocent this time, either. Is not one of you going to say ‘hello’ to the newest guest?”
The tense atmosphere in the room broke. People rose from their seats to greet Stevie, to freshen their drinks, to move as far from Jack as possible. Brooding, he retreated to a corner of the room and watched the interaction. Despite the fact that Emerson and Stevie had been over months before, the Platts appeared friendly enough with her. The small town of Edenville meant they’d probably known the Baci family all their lives.
Once Stevie had divested herself of the bottles she’d brought, he could only stare at what she was wearing. Some pale, slippery material slid over her slender body. The top of her breasts just peeped over the draped neckline. Her shoulders were bare except for skinny straps. If he brushed them down, Jack figured the whole damn dress would fall off, revealing her long torso and even longer legs.
His hand tightened on his highball as he thought about doing just that … and then it was her lips he remembered - those kisses in her office the other day. Her tempestuous mouth, the flagrant grind of her hips against his cock, the flush on her face that said she was as aroused as he.
Hell! Shifting on his feet, he stared into his drink, working on drowning those thoughts in the melting ice. If he didn’t get a handle on himself, his reaction to her would be evident to everyone, including the Platts. Though, why should he care? They already considered him some sort of reprobate - sexual and otherwise. And hadn’t he given up worrying what others thought of him a decade ago?
His gaze was drawn Stevie’s way again. He replayed her entrance a few minutes before, just as he was cataloging the sins the world had assigned to him. I cause ruckuses in nightclubs, commit fraud at my place of work, treat shabbily the most beautiful women on the planet, not to mention that I was complicit in my and my sister’s -
It bothered him that he was glad he’d left the last sentence unfinished. It bothered him more that despite his avowed indifference to others’ opinions of him, he cared that she’d heard any of it at all.
Then He Kissed Me
6
************************************************************************************************
Stevie had anticipated an awkward evening, but awkward turned out to be an understatement. As the meal wound down, she clung to the thought that the Emerson breakup meant any ties she had to the Platts had been severed as well. The clan was as sanctimonious and snobby as they’d ever been and she had to bite her tongue time and again. She’d never been at ease in their world.
Though as she applied herself to a cake layered with white- and dark - chocolate mousse, she blamed Jack for adding to the unpleasant atmosphere of the meal. He either said too little, just sipping his wine and smiling when Duane, Emerson’s brother-in-law, asked him about the time Jack “borrowed” a Swiss police car and crashed it into a St. Moritz fire station. Or he said too much, as when Erik referenced an incident in which a suite of rooms was trashed at a famous Paris hotel. “Swear to God,” Jack told the table-at-large, his hand making a lazy cross over his heart, “I was passed out cold in the bar downstairs that night. Someone stole my key.”
When Roxanne tried protesting that both events had occurred over nine years before, the senator pointed out that in the age of the Internet, nothing seamy or salacious was ever completely laid to rest.
“Lois, baby,” Jack said, addressing a standing U.S. senator with a salute of his goblet, “before now, I didn’t imagine we’d agree on anything.”
The tiny distressed gulp his sister made, perhaps audible only to Stevie, who was seated beside her - yes, Emerson wasn’t the only obtuse Platt, his mother had directed their side-by-side placement - had Stevie scraping back her chair. “It’s time for my contribution to the dinner,” she said. “I’ve brought some bottles of Tanti Baci blanc de blancs for you to sample. Jack will help me pop the corks and pour.”
“Debra will be happy to do it,” the senator’s husband said, referring to the housekeeper who had served the meal.
“I’d like to handle it, if you don’t mind. This is our winery’s special sparkling wedding wine,” she told the guests at the table. “I do hope you’re considering serving it at the wedding reception.”
The senator frowned. “I suggested to Roxanne a wonderful French champagne -”
“But this is our special vintage, reserved exclusively for a bride and groom’s big day,” Stevie said, turning her gaze on the princess. If she was forced into this damn wedding detail, then she was going to eke out every dollar possible for Tanti Baci’s near-empty coffers. “For nearly fifty years, we’ve kept a record of every couple that has served the wine at their wedding, and not one has ever divorced.”
A choking sound drew her eyes to the most annoying, cynical man at the table. “I take that to mean you can’t wait to help me, Jack,” she said, glaring at him. “This way.”
He followed her into the butler’s pantry off the dining room, letting the door swing shut behind him. “You’re kidding about that no-divorce thing, right?”
She was already pulling champagne flutes from a shelf and placing them on a large tray. “Not kidding. It’s written in all our brochures and on the website.”
“But you can’t believe it.”
She’d always wanted to. Like the rumored treasure and the Anne and Alonzo love story, the blanc de blancs legend was part of her childhood. During those slumber parties in the old cottage, she and her friends had poured sparkling cider into juice glasses and pretended it was wedding wine and they were marrying the loves of their lives - usually some silly tween idol who in real life had likely been as shallow and sinful as Jack.
“Hurry and help me with these glasses,” she said. “I just want this evening to be over.”
“I’m a charter member of that club,” he grumbled. “Christ, I thought my sister was smarter than this. Emerson and his -”
“I’ll remind you I was once involved with ‘Emerson and his’ myself,” she put in, shooting him a look over her shoulder. Even annoyed he looked unforgivably handsome. “And it’s not like you’re Mr. Perfect.”
His jaw tightening, he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve never pretended I was.”
Still, he irritated her. “Well, Liam said you were a devoted brother, and you’re sure not living up to that, either.”
“Whoa.” His arms dropped. “What do you mean?”
“Never mind.”
She moved toward the wine cooler, but he caught her bare arms before she could step past him. His grip didn’t bite, but it didn’t give her any wiggle room, either. “I’d never do anything to hurt Roxy again,” he said.
Again? But she let that go, because she didn’t want to prolong the conversation any more than she wanted to extend the evening. “Let go of me, Jack. I need to pour the wine.”
His gaze trained on her face, he shook his head. “Fly in your champagne.”
&
nbsp; “Yeah, yeah, thorn on my rose, I get it.” She hauled in a breath that was warm with the tension smoldering between them. “But you should realize you’re a thorn on Roxy’s rose right now, too.”
He frowned.
Damn. She had no obligation to smooth the princess’s path. But his hold didn’t loosen, and she sighed. “You’re only making it worse out there, Jack.”
“I don’t care -”
“Your sister does. And every smartass remark you make and every cynical smile you give only winds her tighter.”
He released Stevie so abruptly she stumbled a little on her heels. Regaining her balance, she took a hard look at him, but it was impossible to guess what was going on beneath the expressionless set of his face and the cooled silver of his eyes.
Unwilling to take any more time to figure it out, she moved around him, but he caught her hand, halting her again. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
She tried to make light of it as he released her. “What wouldn’t a woman do for her new best friend?” Bending, she reached for the handle on the under-cabinet cooler to retrieve the chilled bottles she’d brought.
“I thought I took back that friends thing,” he said, his voice filled with familiar dry amusement. “I should, anyway, because Liam’s my buddy and he doesn’t tempt me in this way at all.” Something cupped the globes of her behind. Someone.
Stevie jerked straight, hands going to the back of her dress as she whirled to face him. “Stop that.”
“Hey, it’s not my fault. You were bent over. You’re in that dress.”
Her sister Giuliana’s dress. A simple, satiny, slip of a thing. It had looked innocuous enough on the padded hanger, and Jules had assured her that the oyster-shell color would be fine with her own black sandals and matching clutch bag. So Stevie had showered, then straightened her hair so it held a sheen as dark as her patent shoes. Still wrapped in her robe, she’d put on lengthening mascara, a raspberry lip gloss, and an extra-long pair of gold drop earrings that peeked from the bottom edge of her bobbed hair.
Then He Kissed Me Page 7