There was a note on top.
“Too boring. I made some adjustments. You can thank me later. Love, Audra.”
When had she managed this? Ali had stopped by the resort on her way to the airport. Had Audra performed her sleight of hand then? It didn’t matter. The deed was done.
Ali wanted to wring her twin’s neck, but she found herself murmuring in appreciation instead as she pulled out a little black dress. The cut was simple, timeless. It had capped sleeves and a scoop neck, and a hemline that made the most of Ali’s long legs. Audra had paired it with open-toed calfskin pumps and even included some silver jewelry. The entire ensemble was classic yet sexy in a subdued way.
“I owe you one,” she whispered, slipping out of her khakis.
Luke was on the telephone when she returned to the living room. His back was to her and so Ali could look her fill. He had changed into a pair of lightweight trousers and a tailored sports coat. He was the picture of urban sophistication standing in front of the huge window. He’d come so far since leaving Trillium and she knew geography was the least of it. During the ride from the airport, she’d finally told him how proud she was of him and the look on his face had left Ali humbled.
He turned then, caught sight of her and his expression this time had a more disturbing effect.
Even though he had been in the middle of a sentence, Luke abruptly ended the call. “I’ve got to go. I’ll deal with it on Monday.”
He snapped the cell phone closed and stowed it in the breast pocket of his coat after turning it off.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said.
“You didn’t.”
“It sounded like I did.”
He shrugged. “It’s a matter of priorities.”
His words had her recalling the way Bradley had spent twenty minutes of their date gabbing into his cell.
“Well, then, I’m flattered by your priorities.”
“Only a fool keeps a beautiful woman waiting.” His intimate gaze caressed the length of her. “You look amazing.”
Ali smoothed the dress’s skirt and then rested her hands on her hips, trying not to fidget under Luke’s frank appraisal. “It’s Audra’s doing. She messed with my luggage.”
“God bless her,” he murmured. Then he suggested, “We could eat in.”
“Uh-uh. You promised to show me your city,” she reminded him.
Luke sighed heavily and she couldn’t help but smile.
“So I did.”
They ate at a restaurant just outside the actual boundaries of Hell’s Kitchen at a place that boasted red-and-white checkered tablecloths and lighted candles stuck into old Chianti bottles. It was cliché and perfect and the food better than anything Ali could remember ever having.
“How did you find this place?” she asked as she sipped the last of her wine. It didn’t seem the sort of restaurant a multimillionaire came to eat. It reminded her, oddly enough, of the Sandpiper with its relaxed ambiance.
“Claudio, the owner, hired me when I first got here. I bussed tables for him five days a week.”
“I thought you cleaned offices?”
“That was my night job. I did this during the day.”
“You worked two jobs?”
“Three, actually. I also parked cars for a hotel near Rockefeller Center on the weekends.” He grimaced. “I found out pretty quickly that minimum wage doesn’t go very far in this city.”
“It doesn’t go far anywhere,” she agreed.
“Which is why you wanted me to finish high school.” There was no bitterness in his tone, just acceptance and, surprisingly, maybe a little chagrin.
“I knew the odds of you making a decent living without at least your high school diploma weren’t very good.” She shook her head and laughed then. “As it turns out, what did I know?”
Luke didn’t laugh, though. “No, you were right, Ali. It was a tough way to earn a paycheck. You don’t eat well living on arrogance. I got damned tired of macaroni and cheese before I finally got lucky and could afford steak.”
Something seemed to shift between them. Old wounds finally healing?
“I wouldn’t call it luck,” she said. “You were always smart, hardworking and determined.”
“I believe you called it pigheaded.”
It was her turn to be chagrined. “Whatever I called it, you deserve the success you’re enjoying.”
“I needed to make something of myself. I had a lot to prove.”
“Because of your father,” she guessed.
“I thought so at the time.” He lowered his voice. “I think I also wanted to prove my worth to you.”
That surprised her. “Why?”
“I…I wasn’t much of anything back then.”
“You were to me,” she admitted. Indeed, he’d been her whole world.
They were both quiet for a long moment. Then Luke asked, “Ever wish you could roll back time?”
She nodded. “But there’s really no sense in trying to change the past.”
“That’s my Ali. Always so practical.” He laughed softly and reached over to run his knuckles over the slope of her cheek. She trembled at the contact, and that was before he added, “I guess I’ll just have to keep working on the future then.”
After dinner Luke took Ali on a carriage ride through Central Park as promised. She sat across from him on the faded red vinyl seat, legs crossed demurely at the ankles and hands folded in her lap. She’d done something different with her hair, pulling it back from her face, but not in her usual ponytail since some of it still spilled down her neck. She looked like royalty, like a brunette Grace Kelly touring her new principality. And, to his delight, it appeared she liked what she saw.
Her expression gave away her thoughts. She was by turns impressed, amazed and enthralled—just as Luke had been the first time he’d wandered up Fifth Avenue from the gritty streets of Lower Manhattan and discovered this lush, green oasis amid the skyscrapers and bustle of Midtown.
“I want to show you something, a surprise,” he said, and then tapped the driver on the shoulder and whispered his destination.
A few minutes later, the carriage came to a halt next to a large grouping of bronze statues. Ali’s brows tugged together in puzzlement as she studied them. Then understanding dawned and she laughed in earnest.
“Oh, my God! It’s Alice in Wonderland.”
He laughed, too, relieved that she wasn’t insulted. As much as she hated to be called by her given name, it was common knowledge on Trillium that she owed it to her mother’s fondness for the title character in the children’s classic.
“I thought you might enjoy seeing this. The first time I stumbled across it I thought of you.”
She smiled at him, and he remembered that day half a dozen years ago so clearly. He’d been out jogging at the time and had taken a different route than usual. After that, he’d altered his route so that he passed it during every run. Sometimes he would stop and find a quiet place to sit so that he could watch little kids scramble up on to the rabbit’s head or scale the toadstools to perch in Alice’s lap.
“I feel like that Alice right about now,” she admitted. “Can we take a closer look?”
“Sure.” Luke got out and helped her down. They wandered over and she leaned against a giant bronze toadstool. The Mad Hatter grinned at him over one of her shoulders.
“I wish I had a camera,” Luke said. “This would make a great shot.”
“I have one. It’s in my handbag.”
He retrieved her purse from the seat of the carriage and handed it to her. She fished out the camera for him.
“Smile,” he said, watching her through the viewfinder.
The one she sent him made Luke want to tug her into his arms and get to work on those possibilities he’d mentioned. And yet once they were back in the carriage, something nagged at him. He couldn’t have said why, but even sitting there with her namesake, Ali had seemed out of place. He found himself wondering if a bit o
f transplanted Michigan trillium would be able to grow in Central Park.
It was dark by the time they returned to his apartment building. After the carriage ride, they had walked for several blocks, talking and sightseeing at her insistence. Ali claimed to need to work off some of that dinner, although as far as he could tell she didn’t have an ounce of excess flesh anywhere on her person.
He’d reached for her arm, pulling her back from the curb and possibly saving her from losing her kneecaps to the thick bumper of a speeding taxi whose driver was determined to turn right even though the light had changed to red and pedestrians allegedly had the right of way.
“You need to watch your step around here,” Luke had said when she glanced up to him in question.
She’d regarded him for a long, considering moment. “I can see that,” she’d said at last.
Afterward, he’d let his fingers skim down the inside of her arm and he’d found her hand, weaving his fingers through hers. He hadn’t let go of it since then. Even during the elevator ride to the penthouse he’d held on, stroking his thumb over her knuckles and feeling the heat build and need curl through him as they ascended past floor after floor.
Neither one of them said anything until the doors slid open and they stepped out into his foyer.
“I had a great time tonight, Luke. Thank you.”
She let go of his hand then and stepped away, the implication being that the night was now over. How many years had it been since a date for him had ended in a chaste peck at the doorstep—his doorstep, no less? But that appeared to be what was happening here. Maybe that was for the best, he told himself. He needed to figure out how to proceed without spooking her. As it was he was pretty nervous himself.
“You’re welcome. I had a good time, too. It’s been a while since I played tourist.” He tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. “Well, we probably should call it a night. I booked the first tee-time of the day at Havenhurst and it’s about an hour’s drive to the course.”
She smiled, somehow managing to look relieved and disappointed at the same time. Or maybe it was just Luke’s ego that needed to believe he saw regret before she’d lowered her gaze.
“Then we’d better say good night.”
“I’ll walk you to your door,” he offered, testing himself, testing both of them, since the door in question led to her bedroom.
Ali had thought he was joking, but a moment later they stood at the threshold to the guest room where she would be sleeping.
“Well,” Luke said. “Here we are.”
“Here we are,” she agreed as butterflies catapulted around her stomach.
He was going to kiss her now, Ali was sure of it. She had seen that look in his eyes before, and more than a time or two it had led to far more than kissing.
Possibilities. The word whispered suggestively through her mind. Even so, she planned to resist the temptation he posed. But when he leaned forward she raised her chin, her hasty resolution already forgotten. His mouth hovered over hers for just a moment before he detoured slightly and dropped a light kiss on her cheek.
“Sleep well,” he said afterward.
“You, too.”
“Not likely,” Ali thought she heard him mutter half under his breath as he turned and walked away. And, damn, if she didn’t agree with him.
Since the first time she’d picked up a golf club, Ali had been of the conviction that the game was best played first thing in the morning while the dew was still heavy on the fairways and the only other folks out on the course spoke in low, reverent tones suited to public libraries or churches.
The damp grass didn’t do much to enhance her play, but there was a beauty to it all the same that turned golf into a near religious experience in her opinion.
So as they sat in their cart on the asphalt path next to the first tee-box, Ali glanced down the lush sweep of misty grass and smiled. The hole was a straight par 4 with the green visible from the tee-box, easily reachable in regulation if one stayed in the fairway, which was bounded by trees and gorgeous flowering shrubs on one side and a brutal set of sand-filled bunkers on the other.
“It’s a pretty course, although if you hook it or slice it, you’re going to be in trouble,” she commented.
“Yes, but that’s what makes it golf. Want to make our round a little more interesting?” Luke asked.
“Skins?” she asked dryly.
He had suggested something similar before, although she’d known at the time that what he had in mind was nothing remotely similar to the game in which golfers competed for cash on individual holes.
“In a way.” He reached out and fingered the collar of her shirt and his voice dipped to a near whisper when he asked baldly, “Ever play strip golf? One piece of clothing off every time you wind up in the rough.”
His devilish grin had her tingling from nose to toes, but she managed to laugh anyway, because his suggestion was so outrageous. Completely outrageous. The stuff of…fantasies.
“You’re just hoping to break my concentration,” she accused hoarsely.
“That’s not all I’m hoping, Ali.”
She glanced back to the fairway and decided to play obtuse. “I have no problem sweetening the pot. How about best net total wins and the loser buys a round of drinks in the clubhouse?”
“You call that sweetening the pot?”
“What did you have in mind, besides having the pair of us shed our clothing on our way to each green? That, by the way, would likely get us arrested.”
“Among other things,” he murmured seductively. Then, “I don’t know. Let’s make it winner’s choice. If you were to win, what would you like?”
She shrugged, but a thought came to her and before she could censor it, she blurted out, “A foot massage. I’d want you to, um, rub my feet.”
“Rub…your feet.” A pair of dark brows winged up. “Hmm, what was it that you called it the last time I was massaging your instep?”
Foreplay.
But she said nothing now and he ran a finger along the underside of her jaw. Tipping her chin up, he said, “From where I’m sitting it looks like we both could win if you manage to best me.”
“And if you win?” she asked quietly. “What would you want then?”
The look he gave Ali had her moistening her lips, but his words made her mouth go dry.
“I’d want you.” He held out a hand then. “Deal?”
I’d want you. What exactly did Luke mean? And because the possible interpretations left her as terrified as she was touched, she decided she wanted clarification. “I’m not s-sure I understand.”
“I think you do.”
He reached for her hand, but instead of shaking it, he raised it to his lips and kissed the sensitive center of her palm.
He murmured something against her skin. Had it been her name? Or had it been “Always”?
The details of their bargain wound up being moot. As nice as the day had started, it clouded over by nine o’clock and they wound up being rained out before the last four holes of the eighteen could be played. For the remainder of the day, however, Ali’s thoughts kept straying to their bet and the intense way in which Luke had regarded her when he’d whispered: I’d want you.
They got in late that evening. Luke had taken her out on the town once again, although their destinations were a bit more upscale than they had been the previous night. Thanks to Audra’s meddling efforts, Ali again had something appropriate to wear to dinner at the five-star French restaurant Luke had selected. Afterward, they took in a Broadway show and Luke’s clout managed to get them not only the best seats in the theater but entry to a closed cast party after the curtain fell.
Once more, Luke was the perfect gentleman, walking her to the door of her bedroom, but before he turned to leave this time, he tugged her into his arms and gave her a kiss so heated and urgent she was surprised it hadn’t set off the penthouse’s sprinkler system.
“I want to be with you tonight, Ali,” he sig
hed into her hair as he held her afterward, his fingers drawing lazy circles on the small of her back. She was catapulted back in time to the first time they’d made love.
She’d been eighteen and offering up her virginity as they’d clung together on a blanket on a deserted stretch of beach. Overhead, the stars had winked and the moon had bathed them both in silver. Luke had stilled her inexperienced hands as they’d fumbled with the buttons on his jeans, even though he’d been desperate to be with her.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to regret this,” he’d said.
She hadn’t. Then. But she would now. She was no longer a virgin, but she had plenty to lose where Luke was concerned. And so even as her body burned and begged for release, she said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I’m…I’m leaving in the morning.”
“Stay with me.”
They were three words that made Ali ache, for hadn’t she once asked him the very same thing?
“I can’t.” She stepped away from him. “I need to get home.”
“Home.” He nodded, and something in his expression made her think of the lost young man he’d once been. She reached out a hand to him, but he had already turned and was walking away.
Alone in her room, Ali sank onto the edge of the platform bed, stared at her reflection in the black-framed mirror and called herself a dozen kinds of fool. She’d let the one thing happen that she’d sworn she wouldn’t allow: She’d fallen in love with Luke Banning all over again.
CHAPTER TEN
LUKE was quiet as the limousine took them to the airport the following morning. Ali was going home.
Home.
While taking her around NewYork Luke had discovered a rather painful truth. After years of building a reputation and a career as a savvy businessman, he had precious little to show for his long hours and hard work. Oh, he had lots of things—a pricey collection of modern art, land holdings sprinkled around the globe and enough money to live comfortably even if he never worked another day in his life. But he didn’t have anyone with whom he could share it. He still didn’t have what felt like a permanent place where he could settle in and find peace.
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