by Jami Alden
Nothing.
Toni stared mindlessly out of the suite’s window, her brain touching on what Toby said about Kara like a tongue exploring a sore tooth.
She tries to act like a good girl, but she’s into all kinds of shit. She wanted to do those pictures. Liked the idea of doing it behind everyone’s back. Especially her dad. Did you know he bought her a Mercedes after she signed the pledge? She loves driving around in that car, still getting away with everything she can.
Toni blew out a sigh. She hadn’t known about Jerry’s bribe, just knew Kara had a nicer car than Toni could ever hope to afford. She hadn’t known about a lot of stuff Kara was doing. But the image of the spoiled-brat Internet Lolita didn’t jibe with the Kara Toni knew.
Regardless, Toni refused to believe the pictures were Kara’s idea. Toni wasn’t so far from seventeen that she couldn’t remember the dumb stuff she’d done, hoping a boy would like her. And Toby had that slick, smug, manipulative thing going that told Toni he got off on using people, getting them to do what he wanted, using money, drugs, whatever he could as leverage.
He reminded her too much of another rich, spoiled asshole. Another who got away with murder, since his A-list defense attorney was able to convince the jury that a wealthy kid from a good family would never have to resort to raping a drug-using slut like Michelle. And he would certainly not have it in him to strangle her when he was through.
Toni shoved the memory away. Kara was not Michelle, and it was unlikely she was going to turn up in a Dumpster. She was a confused kid going through a hard time who had decided to go AWOL for a few days.
She didn’t really believe it, not one hundred percent, but if she didn’t think positively right now she was going to drive herself crazy.
The lights of the Las Vegas strip flashed and pulsed against the sky as dawn broke over the desert. Toni was startled from her reverie by the sound of the bedroom door opening and closing. Ethan had donned his pants but foregone a shirt, and he looked rumpled and male in the red-gold light pouring into the suite.
A little thrill pulsed through Toni’s lower half as she admired the muscular beauty of his chest, arms, and abs. Now that she wasn’t blinded by a haze of lust, she noticed several scars decorating his torso. She wondered what it would be like to trace the marks with her tongue. Her stomach flipped at his lazy, sleepy smile.
She steeled herself against it. No matter how great the sex was, she couldn’t let herself get sucked in further.
“Morning,” he said, his voice sexy and sleep graveled. He turned to look out the window, his back and shoulders rippling as he yawned and stretched. Toni stared at his bare back, fighting the urge to press her lips against the acres of warm, tanned skin. How could he be so casual when she was so keyed up?
He turned and walked over to her. She held her breath as he dropped a kiss to her forehead. “Last night was amazing, Toni.”
She held herself stiff, willing herself not to melt into his kiss, hating herself for the disappointment that surged when he walked away without doing anything else. She didn’t want him to pull her into his arms, hold her against his chest, and kiss her the way he had last night. Like she was the only woman in the universe he’d ever wanted to kiss. “Yeah, I bet you say that to all the girls,” she said, hating how snappish she sounded to her own ears.
Ethan chuckled and gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. The kind he’d give his sister if he had one. “Not all of them,” he said, with a wink that made her jaw clench.
His eyes had none of the intensity or awareness of last night. He smiled without really smiling, his gaze slid by her as if he didn’t really see her.
He was on autopilot, his typical morning-after routine.
She was too smart, too much of a realist for this to hurt as much as it did.
“I’m going to order us some coffee,” he said when she didn’t smile back. “Then I’ll call the airport and see about getting the plane ready.”
“Great idea,” she said and headed for the escape of the shower. Once the hot spray hit her, the events of the last twenty-four hours came crashing down. She leaned against the wall. With the spray of the shower, she could almost convince herself there were no tears running down her face.
God, she was an idiot. There was a reason she didn’t do casual sex. She’d had a single one-night stand in her entire life, and it had left her feeling exactly like this—disappointed and empty.
Scratch that. This felt worse. She’d opened up to him, told him things she didn’t share with anyone. And the sex had been…Mind-blowing didn’t even begin to describe it. Like something inside her had finally ventured out to make a tentative connection with another person.
She suspected that Ethan found a similar connection with anyone in possession of a vagina. She scrubbed hard at her skin, trying to get the smell of sex, the smell of him, off her. But it did no good. While he could apparently dismiss her as easily as a passing acquaintance, it was as if the scent of him, the feel of him, had been permanently branded into the reptilian part of Toni’s brain.
She lathered her hair and closed her eyes. No doubt Ethan was bracing himself for her to hit him with a bunch of expectations, to read too much into their one night of sex. She would show him he had nothing to worry about. She was as capable as he was of putting the sex behind them and working beside him until they found Kara and got her back home.
Ethan hung up the phone as Toni walked out of the bathroom. “The plane will be ready to fly in an hour,” he said, hoping his voice revealed none of the tension and frustration roiling right below the surface. Her eyes met his in an unblinking stare, slightly puffy from behind the lenses of her glasses. Exhaustion gave her fine features a sort of blurred look, but it didn’t stop him from wanting to slide the glasses down her nose and kiss her into oblivion.
She was dressed once again in her jeans, T-shirt, and sneakers, the silver Bond Girl dress a long-forgotten memory. Her hair was brushed straight, angling to the clean line of her jaw. His fingers twitched with the need to rake his hands through the black, silky strands the way he had last night.
In an effort to distract himself, he grabbed the carafe of coffee and poured her a cup. She took it with a polite nod, and he felt a shot of heat straight to his groin as he imagined pulling her down on the couch and stroking her until the tension that tightened every line of her body disappeared beneath his fingers.
She was having none of his usual morning-after routine. His gee-that-was-great-maybe-we-can-fuck-again-sometime routine that had done just fine for him in the past. Trust Toni to see right through it. Then again, he wasn’t exactly at the top of his game.
He was restless, jumpy, and, frankly, hornier than he had a right to be after last night. Usually so confident, so sure of his next move, now he didn’t know what to do, wasn’t sure if he wanted to shove her back into the bedroom and damn the consequences or get as far away from her as possible.
Last night, in the dark, buried inside her, it had all gotten a little too real for him to handle. And he didn’t know what to do except act the way he always did the morning after. But he supposed that only worked when he actually felt the way he usually did.
He should be feeling the relaxed satiation he normally experienced after a night of sex, but what he’d shared with Toni wasn’t ordinary sex, and she wasn’t an ordinary woman. She made him feel things too much, too intensely. And the way she looked at him, staring at him with that implacable hazel stare, like she could see straight through the wall of bullshit he’d built so thick it had become like a second skin.
As if she could see straight down to the core of him, to the parts he didn’t even want to see himself. She could see his wounds because she was wounded, too.
Let’s cool it right there, Dr. Phil. What kind of asinine shit was that? Toni didn’t know him. She was different, but not that different. Just because he felt sorry for her and what happened to her family, it didn’t make her any different from all the other wome
n who had come before and who would come after. No more beautiful, no sexier. Her skin wasn’t really smoother and her pussy wasn’t any wetter or tighter. No reason for him to be acting like such an idiot.
His phone buzzed, indicating an incoming text message. He flipped it open to read a message from Danny.
Ubud a waste of time. Dad f/up on lead in Australia. Total f’ing PITA.
No surprise there.
Another message came in as he finished reading, this one also from Danny.
WTF R U doing in Vegas?
Ethan laughed.
Tell U when U get back. Keep ur watch on.
Toni had taken her cup of coffee and retreated to the desk, busily tapping away at her keyboard. Each keystroke needled at him, pulling the muscles of his shoulders tighter and tighter as she continued to ignore him.
“Anything new?” he asked.
“Nope.”
Another five minutes of dead silence passed as he sipped his coffee, searching for something to say.
Finally, her fingers stilled over the keyboard and she took a deep breath as though bracing herself. “Look, we might as well get this out in the open. What happened last night was a really, really bad idea.”
The vehemence grated on his already raw nerves. “You didn’t seem to think it was such a bad idea when I had my tongue between your legs.”
Her face went beet-red as she glared at him over the screen of her laptop. “Be that as it may, it was still a huge mistake, and we can’t let it happen again.”
She was making this easy, letting him know that she had no expectations, exactly what he liked to hear the morning after. Because when it came to his love life, Ethan Taggart didn’t do expectations.
But that didn’t stop him from wanting her again, more than he’d ever wanted a woman, and she’d just made it damn clear she had no intention of letting him back in her bed.
Now, if that wasn’t waving a red cape in front of a bull, he didn’t know what was.
She turned her attention back to her computer, studiously ignoring him as he sauntered up to the desk and rested one palm on the flat surface as he leaned in close. “What’s the matter, Toni? Did I not make you come hard enough? Is that what’s got you so determined not to give me another go?” He leaned close enough for his bare chest to brush her shoulder, and he caught the slight change in her breathing pattern. Mistake or not, she couldn’t hide her reaction, any more than he could keep his cock from hardening from even this slight contact with her. “I mean, maybe three orgasms isn’t enough for you. If that’s the case—”
His phone rang, interrupting him. He looked at the display and saw Jerry’s number. Duty called.
“This is Ethan.”
“Ethan, I have great news. Kara sent me a text message. She’s absolutely fine.”
CHAPTER 10
“I STILL CAN’T BELIEVE that after two days of nothing, she’d just up and text Jerry out of the blue,” Toni said. They were on their way back to the Bay Area, streaking over the harsh, desolate landscape of the Mojave Desert.
According to Ethan, Jerry had received a text message from Kara earlier that morning. Jerry hadn’t forwarded it to Ethan yet, but the gist of it was that she had gone with a friend to a beach house, and that she’d be back in another couple of days.
“Why didn’t she text me back? What friend is she with, anyway?”
Ethan shot her an impatient look. “I didn’t know the first hundred times you asked, and I still don’t.”
Toni stared out the window, watching as parched rocky canyons gave way to the evergreen forest of the mountains. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said again for the dozenth time since Jerry’s phone call. Toni had immediately called Kara, but her call had gone directly into voice mail. A follow-up text had fallen into the same abyss. Marcy hadn’t answered her phone, either.
“What doesn’t make sense about it? She took off for a few days, finally realized someone might be worried, and decided to get in touch.”
“It all seems too easy,” Toni said, unable to get away from the gut feeling that all was not right yet. “It’s not like Kara to let everyone worry. I’ve said from the beginning, she wouldn’t disappear and let everyone freak out.”
“She did update her FacePlace page,” Ethan said. “And I think that if we discovered anything in the past couple of days, it’s that there’s a lot about your friend Kara that you don’t know.”
He had her there. Still. “I can’t helping thinking there’s something more going on.”
“You know, Toni, sometimes things aren’t nearly as complicated as you’d like to make them.”
She didn’t need her genius IQ to tell her he was talking about more than the situation with Kara. The remembered feel of Ethan’s hands on her skin, his tongue between her legs, his long, thick cock sinking into her as he whispered sexy, dirty things in her ear hit her in a hot rush.
Uncomplicated? Maybe for him.
She stayed quiet for the rest of the trip, leaving him to fly in silence while she considered Kara’s actions from every angle. Toni was a rational, logical person, sometimes to a fault, but she couldn’t get away from the niggling doubt that something was off here. All the evidence pointed to the simplest explanation: Kara took off for a few days and finally deigned to call.
So why couldn’t she let it go?
When they landed, Ethan offered to drop her off before he headed to Jerry’s.
“Hell, no, I’m going with you.”
“Toni—”
She cut him off. “I know Jerry doesn’t like me, but I want to talk to him face-to-face.”
“Fine.” He flipped open his phone and made a call to his brother, telling him to meet them at Jerry’s house.
“What’s she doing here?” Jerry asked sharply when Toni followed Ethan into his office. Another man was already there, a man who could only be Ethan’s twin brother, Derek. While they weren’t identical, the resemblance was strong enough to inspire a twitter of interest. Nothing compared to the raging torrent of hormones unleashed when she got within touching distance of Ethan, but a woman would have to be dead not to find Derek Taggart attractive. He was as big and muscular as his brother, his shoulders nearly spanning the back of the armchair he occupied. His short-cropped hair was lighter than Ethan’s, more gold than brown, and his eyes were deep, dark, intent.
Like Ethan, Derek’s skin was darkly tanned from time spent outdoors, and his features had that same sculpted-in-granite look. He and Ethan had the same sharp cheekbones, blunt chins, and wide, sensual mouths. But while their looks were similar, their demeanors couldn’t have been more different. Where Ethan was all flirty warmth and easy smiles, Derek radiated quiet reserve.
Ethan introduced them, and Derek took her hand in his powerful grip. His smile was nothing more than a slight quirk of his lips, and he studied her with an intensity that made her shift from one sneakered foot to the other.
Toni realized with a sinking feeling that Derek knew exactly what had gone on between her and his brother.
But now was not the moment to wallow in humiliation over what she’d allowed to happen with Ethan.
She turned her attention to Jerry, who glared at her, not bothering to disguise his dislike. “I made Ethan bring me,” she said, not backing down from his hooded look. “Since I hauled my ass all the way to Vegas on Kara’s behalf, I thought I deserve to see her message myself.”
“Fine.” Jerry fiddled with the keypad and passed over his phone.
Toni read the message on the display while Ethan read it out loud over her shoulder.
“Dad, sorry I didn’t call went to a friend’s house at the beach be back in a couple days. Don’t worry. Love you.”
Toni checked the caller ID, verifying it was sent from Kara’s phone. Jerry had probably done that himself, but she wanted to be sure. “What friends of hers have beach houses?” Toni asked.
“I don’t know,” Jerry said. “In any case, you don’t need to worry about
it. You saw for yourself, she’s fine. There’s really no more reason for you to be here.”
“But there are things we should discuss,” she said, “Kara’s recent behavior, the people she’s been hanging out with.” She couldn’t believe a man like Jerry, one who expected such perfect behavior from his children, would let things like the FacePlace profile and photos on Toby Frankel’s Web site slide. “We should talk to her, consider installing software that will monitor her online activity.”
“How I address Kara’s behavior is a private matter,” Jerry said. “And if I need help keeping track of her, I’m confident Gemini can assist me.”
“But Ethan and I have been working together on this—”
“But I didn’t hire you,” Jerry said. “My ex-wife did. And if you don’t mind, I have some things I need to discuss with Ethan and his brother that are confidential.”
“I got a ride with Ethan,” Toni said, grasping at straws, but not ready to be shunted off so quickly. Not when she was even more sure than ever that Jerry had something to hide.
“I’ll have Manuela give you a ride,” Jerry said, already pushing the intercom button.
Toni looked to Ethan for support, only to find him nodding to Jerry.
“Derek and I need to discuss some modifications to the security system,” Ethan said. “It’s not appropriate for you to listen in.”
“But Kara’s not even home yet.”
“You no longer need to concern yourself with my daughter,” Jerry said sharply. “Consider this case closed.”
“As you said, you didn’t hire me, your wife did. And until she tells me otherwise, I’ll consider myself on the clock. I’m sure Ethan feels the same way.”