An Offer He Can't Refuse

by Christie Ridgway

  “You’re going to be living here?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  She swung around, frowning at him. “I mean, here here? I thought one of the guest—”

  He was shaking his head.

  “But we’ll be tripping all over each other,” she protested. “I’ll have to be in and out all the time.”

  What a punishment, he thought to himself.

  Her frown deepened and her sloe eyes narrowed. “Did you—” She broke off, her eyes suddenly shifting upward.

  “Oh, my God,” she exclaimed.

  “What?” The hairs on the back of Johnny’s neck jumped on end. “What?” Suppressing a cringe, he looked up, half-afraid and half-expecting to see a ghost.

  No ghost. Relieved, he let out a laugh and let his gaze roam the sight above them. Oh my God was right, he thought, with a low whistle. Overhead, the ceiling was mirrored. Not with a simple XXX-rated motel, over-the-bed mirror, but with reflecting panels that covered the entire 40 × 40 space.

  “There are people etched into the surface,” Téa said, her voice sounding strangled.

  Johnny nodded. “Naked people.” Lots and lots of naked, life-sized people, some in artful, but odd poses, others doing what came naturally when you were naked and well, well-endowed.

  Téa continued to stare upward. With her pretty neck arched, he could see a flush inching up her neck. “Your ceiling, it’s…it’s…”

  “Orgiastic?” he supplied.

  “How elegantly put.”

  He stifled another laugh, he who never expected to find anything humorous in this house. Oh yeah, thank you, Téa. “I’m surprised, that’s all. Who would have thought the Michigan snowbirds had it in them?”

  She glanced over. “You didn’t already know this was here?”

  He shook his head. “I told you, Cal must have let the delivery people in early this morning.”

  Her gaze was back on the ceiling, and she turned to get another view. “I mean before that. Before you bought the house.”

  Uh-oh. “I, well…” She would think it was strange if he confessed to buying the place sight unseen, wouldn’t she?

  She cast another, sharper look at him. “Johnny?”

  The lies were starting to pile up. He gazed upward, hoping for inspiration, and then a grin broke across his face. With any luck, he could distract her. “Check this out,” he said, moving toward the bed.

  She took wary steps after him.

  He flopped down on his back onto the mattress then scooted over to make room for her. “I think I know what those singles in the strange poses are up to,” he said patting the free space beside him. “Let me show you.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why don’t you tell me instead?”

  His grin widened as he redirected his gaze skyward. “Okay, but you asked for it. When I lie just like this,” he folded his hands behind his head, “that little gal with the open mouth in the kneeling position up there appears to be sucking my—”

  “Oh my God!” Her face flushed and she looked up, down, then up again. “You’re making that up.”

  “Try it for yourself.” He loved the blush. “If you’re squeamish about the girl-on-girl thing, there’s a lonely young man right above the recliner in the corner.”

  He loved the expressions chasing across her face. The good girl trying to deny herself all that sweet, sexual sugar. “Looking doesn’t count as calories,” he tempted in a soft voice.

  She bit her bottom lip.

  Oh, man. Even her lips were blushing. They were red and wet and they made him want to whisper naughty things to her while she used them on him just like the etched woman in the mirror overhead.

  His cock was semi-erect as she finally scurried to the corner and sat in the overstuffed recliner. “You will not tell my sisters about this,” she ordered, then pushed down her heels to send the chair into full recline.

  He rose up on his elbows to watch her reaction. Her mouth dropped open in a silent scream.

  Of shock? Of arousal?

  She was so straitlaced he couldn’t tell.

  “Johnny,” she finally choked out, her voice faint. “We have to do something about this.”

  At that moment, if she wasn’t the granddaughter of his enemy, and he wasn’t the type who liked to keep things shallow, he might have fallen hard for her. Beneath the surprise, beneath that spinsterish little dress, was the vulnerable note of a woman who saw something she liked and was afraid someone just might guess that fact.

  It was a hell of a thing to want to go to bed with a female who was trying to keep her sexual feelings buttoned beneath sand-colored silk.

  It was a hell of a challenge.

  The kind of challenge that was going to keep him sane while living at this house and searching into the past.

  Taking care not to startle her, he rose off the bed and made his way toward her corner of the room. Craning his neck, he saw what intimate act had so caught her attention. And noted it in the back of his mind.

  “We better examine exactly what’s going on here,” he said with authority, lifting her limp hand off the arm of the chair to draw her up. And then, careful not to let a hint of innuendo enter his voice, he took them both on a tour of the room.

  At each stopping place, her eyes got bigger. Twosomes, threesomes, there was a whole daisy chain of differing sexual activities above them that they appeared to join, depending upon where they looked up.

  It could’ve been a hell of a lot more fun sans their clothing, but he was pretty satisfied once he had both of them lying on the bed, their shoes on the pillow end, their heads tilting this way and that to fully make out the scene they now appeared to be participating in.

  “That can’t really be done,” Téa scoffed, pointing a finger at the figures above her. “Nobody could hold a pose like that when…when…”

  She couldn’t say the words, and her face and neck were still pink with—embarrassment? Excitement?

  He rolled over on one elbow to watch her face, which was much more interesting than the lifeless erotica etched above them. Oh, yeah, hustling the contessa into bed was going to be so much fun.

  Which reminded him. Now that he was in the house, and even breathing easy, he had another move to make.

  “Téa—” he said softly, lifting a stray strand of hair off her face with his fingertip, careful not to touch her skin.

  “Hmm?” She angled her head in yet another direction.

  He was smiling again. The fact was, she was damn good for him, getting him to smile, getting him to laugh, getting him hard in this place of such bad memories. It’s just a house, he’d told her, and now he was beginning to believe it.

  “I have another…small request,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “My new neighbors invited me over for cocktails tomorrow night. They said I should bring a date. I’ve only met two women since I’ve come to Palm Springs…”

  She stiffened, just the slightest, but he noticed and slapped his ace onto the table.

  “…so it’s either got to be you or Melissa Banyon.”

  Beautiful, exotic dark eyes slid his way, narrowed. “You don’t have her number.”

  He bit the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. “Missy slid it into my pocket that night. My pants pocket.”

  Téa’s gaze jumped orgy-ward again.

  She had to be tempted. She wanted him too. He knew she did. No more self-denial, baby, he silently urged.

  Her soft mouth pursed. Her fingertips drummed against the comforter. “Well, I guess you won’t need that number. As it happens, I’m free.”

  Johnny smothered any outward sign of triumph. Instead, he lay back on the bed and closed his eyes to savor how well things had gone. He’d made it into the house, no problem. He’d make it with Téa, no problem there either.

  Maybe he’d even sleep again.

  But then…maybe not, he thought with a wry grimace and opened his eyes. With the image of
the Kama Sutra players over his head and Téa in his head, it was possible he’d only made his insomnia just that much worse.

  Twelve

  “Tell Me, Tell Me”

  Ann-Margret

  The Vivacious One (1962)

  “You’re here early.”

  Téa froze, midsquat. Her gaze jumped from her own reflection in the mirror to that of her mother, Bianca, standing behind her. Téa’s cross-trainers wobbled on the inflatable discs she was standing upon. Instinct made her glance down at her feet to stay balanced, but that only made the wiggling worse. She leaped back to the stable rubber flooring of the workout room at the Kona Kai Resort & Spa.

  “I didn’t expect to see you either,” she told her mother. She’d hoped to avoid the women of her family. She had enough to deal with, like how she could have been so foolish as to allow Johnny Magee to goad her into a date, for example. No doubt about it, the man was dangerous.

  Her mother studied her, cocking her head so that her sleek chin-length bob slid across her slender jaw. In black, calf-length yoga pants and a matching form-fitting T-shirt, the older woman defied the stereotype of an Italian-American mother. Bianca Sabatino Caruso, now back to plain Bianca Sabatino, was no Mama Boy-ar-dee, responding to crises and death by retreating to the kitchen and the parish church.

  Instead, in sixteen years she’d gone from part-time manicurist to manager, then owner, of one of Palm Springs’s premier spas. Expansive and completely enclosed by thick, twelve-foot-high walls, the Kona Kai offered the usual health and beauty services, but was also known for its very private and very pricey guest villas to which the famous or just plain rich withdrew to recover from addiction, plastic surgery, or the convenient catch-all, “exhaustion.”

  Her example of beauty, hard work, and grace under pressure stood firm in the minds of her three daughters. But she rarely cooked. And as far as Téa knew, Bianca hadn’t been to Mass in sixteen years. They’d never once seen her cry.

  “You look tired, cara,” her mother said. “Maybe you should have slept in this morning.”

  Téa grimaced. “I thought I might need a little extra time in the gym to sprain my ankle or pull a hamstring or something.”

  Her mother’s dark eyes widened and she laughed. “What?”

  Shaking her head, Téa spun toward the mirrored wall again and stepped back onto the stability discs. “Only in Palm Springs would a cocktail party revolve around a tennis match,” she grumbled, sinking into another squat while trying to maintain her balance. “Nobody else in the world still plays the game, do they? Except for Serena and Venus, that is.”

  “There’s Jennifer Capriati.”

  Téa made a disgusted face. “Oh, thanks for reminding me. Now my ‘Italians aren’t good with rackets’ excuse is shot to hell.”

  A couple came into the workout area and her mother smiled at them as they took their places on side-by-side treadmills across the room. Then she returned her attention to Téa. “What’s this all about?”

  “Maybe you could give me a real excuse,” Téa said, feeling inspired. “You know, like the ones you used to write to get me out of Sister Franca’s gym class.”

  “If you don’t want to go to this party, then why did you say yes?”

  Téa stalled by making herself complete the set of fifteen squats before answering. She’d been egged into saying yes. For some reason, mention of that plastic-coated predator of a woman, Missy Banyon, got under her skin.

  Not to mention how that mirrored ceiling had…muddled her thinking.

  “I accepted for business reasons,” she lied.

  Johnny wouldn’t have reneged on their design deal if she’d refused him. He’d asked her to be his date because he was out to get her into bed. She wasn’t so foolish that she couldn’t figure that out.

  But she’d been naïve enough to consider herself resistable to the powerful punch of a purely physical lure…and she’d been wrong. So very wrong.

  Oh, God. That pulled hamstring was sounding better and better.

  Her gaze caught on another guest entering the workout area. Somewhere near fifty, the man had a silver brush of short hair, a deep tan, and a boxer’s flattened nose that could benefit from a referral to one of her mother’s plastic surgeon buddies. He was very fit, with a flat belly, and the confident way he headed toward the Cable Cross machine made clear he knew his way around a gym.

  But then his eyes landed on Téa’s mother and she saw his feet trip up. It took him a moment to haul his tongue back in and untangle his Adidas.

  Téa smiled and lowered her voice. “Don’t look now, Mom, but you just made a new conquest.”

  Bianca waited a beat, then took a quick glance over her shoulder. She frowned, creating two shallow grooves in the olive skin between her arching brows. Her mother had yet to go under the Botox needle, though she never said never. “That must be the man who checked in late last night,” she said. “One of our indefinite stays.”

  Which could mean anything from another refugee of “exhaustion” to a patient in need of several pre-rhinoplasty consultations.

  “He’s attractive, Mom.” Despite the nose that dominated his features.

  Her mother gave an indifferent shrug. “I’m not looking for a man.”

  Me neither. Téa envisioned her future like her mother’s: single, celibate, successful. Because what man without his own rap sheet would want to commit to a woman with such strong criminal ties? And what was wrong with a life without sex anyway? From the looks of things, Eve probably took care of the family’s quota all on her own, though Joey undoubtedly hooked up with one of her legion of guy-pals whenever she felt the urge.

  “Your sisters stopped by my office yesterday,” her mother said.

  Maybe mind reading ran in the family.

  “Oh?” Téa stepped onto the discs for her next set of squats. Her sisters wouldn’t have brought up any Caruso business with their mother. When Bianca had reclaimed her maiden name, she’d cut her ties with Cosimo and company. Everyone had always respected her mother’s decision on that.

  Téa grimaced at her reflection as her thigh muscles screamed like she wanted to. Why didn’t people respect her decision on that?

  But she wasn’t going to think about it. Her focus now was Johnny and how she was going to get out of tonight’s date. Common cold? Cold sore? How about just common old cold feet?

  “They told me about your grandfather’s impending retirement.”

  At her mother’s quiet words, Téa did the whole wild wobble and wiggle as her world once again went sideways. She stumbled away from the discs and looked over at her mother, surprised. “They told you about Cosimo?”

  “And the party. And the promise they made to him about you.”

  Téa backed up until her shoulder blades hit the cold surface of the mirror. Silver Crewcut, on the other side of the room, was watching her. When he saw she’d noticed, he glanced away, as if he felt a sudden fascination for the golden-flowered hibiscus hedge lining the nearby window.

  “I don’t want to go to the party, Mom.” Téa sounded twelve years old, so she cleared her throat and tried a second time. “I’m not going to the party.”

  Her mother waved her left hand. She’d once worn an extravagant wedding set, with a three-carat marquis-cut center diamond, fit for the queen who raised Salvatore’s three princesses. When the FBI had confiscated all the cash that was found in the house, she’d sold the ring to pay for their tuition at Our Lady of Poverty, the exclusive and expensive school they’d attended. “It’s not the party I want to talk to you about.”

  Téa pressed closer to the glass behind her, telling herself it was its cold that caused the shiver rippling down her back. Her mother wasn’t going to bring up the past, was she? She never discussed the Carusos or her marriage, and Téa figured it was because it was impossible to explain how she’d ended up with a man who was, at best, a philandering criminal.

  Téa already knew that love defied explanation.

&nb
sp; “We don’t need to talk about anything,” she said quickly

  “You won’t remember how it was before,” her mother went on despite Téa’s protest. “How it was sixteen years ago.”

  “I remember.”

  Her mother briefly closed her eyes. “Then I wish you didn’t.”

  Téa remembered everything about that time. Long days and nights without word from her father. Visits from her father’s “friends,” who wanted to know where Sal might have kept his ledger—the “Loanshark book”—that was actually a handwritten record of all his business activities. Then there were the government-issue cars with the unusual antennas parked near the house twenty-four hours a day. The men sitting inside them, drinking coffee or eating sandwiches, their eyes following Téa, her mother, and sisters as they moved about their own neighborhood.

  And that final, frightening and destructive search of the house by the FBI. “I remember exactly how it was.”

  Bianca took in a deliberate breath. “Still, I want to warn you, cara.”

  More shivers raced down Téa’s back. “Can we talk about this another time, Mom?” Another century, when they were both old and gray and the memories and the fears had finally faded away. “I have to get to work and then I have this big…uh, thing tonight.” She’d walk across hot coals, or even date Johnny Magee to avoid the direction this conversation was taking.

  Her mother drew closer and brushed her palm over Téa’s hair, the soothing gesture in contrast to her scary next words. “Men will be coming into town.”

  “Men?” It was hard to swallow the dry lump in her throat. “What kind of men?”

  “You know the kind I mean. They’ll be coming here soon, and over the next few months, to curry favor with your grandfather, to cement old alliances, to create new ones. They’ll be searching for vulnerabilities in the family and looking for ways to take power.”