by Tawna Fenske
“I met your dad once.”
“Really? When?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. Here’s where I shouldn’t share that his dad hit on me at a bar when I was home on break from grad school. It’s hardly a secret his father was a hound dog, but no guy needs this kind of detail about his dead dad. “At the Astro Lounge,” I say. “He was a nice-looking guy. You have his eyes.”
Eyes that look more than a little troubled right now, though the rest of his expression doesn’t shift. “I suppose that’s a compliment,” he says. “Everyone always made a big deal about Cort Bracelyn’s killer green eyes.”
“Yours aren’t killer.” I study them now, noticing how they’ve shifted from dark evergreen to something lighter. Damp moss, maybe.
“Just icy?” He sounds bemused.
“They’re not even icy,” I tell him. “Not up close, anyway.”
I should stop looking closely. I really should. I need to just get out of here and get back to work. “I’ll let you go.”
I turn around fast, overcome by the urge to flee. “See you around sometime,” I call over my shoulder.
I’m halfway to my truck when his footsteps catch up to me. “Lily, wait.”
I spin around quickly. Quicker than he expected, which is how we end up nose to nose on the path to his house. I stagger with surprise, and also because I’m still dizzy from that weird chemistry that zinged between us back there.
He catches me by the elbows, keeping me upright and also bringing me closer. That’s how it starts.
He doesn’t let go, doesn’t set me back on my feet with a polite pat on the arm. He just stands there staring deep into my eyes with a dazed expression.
My lips start to part. “I’ll just—”
That’s all I get out. Then his mouth is on mine, and he’s kissing me, and I’m wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing him back like I’m starved for it. He’s tall, well over six feet, but I’m no shrinking wallflower, and I’m wearing three-inch heels. We’re well-matched, this towel-clad demigod and I. I rake my fingers through his hair, hungry for the feel of that softness, for the chance to rough it up a little.
James deepens the kiss, grazing my tongue with his, pressing his body into mine. That’s definitely not his keys bumping my thigh and oh my God, the CEO of the freakin’ resort is standing half-naked on his front lawn, kissing me mindless.
He must realize it the same moment I do because he steps back like I’ve just clubbed him with a two-by-four. “I don’t—I’m sorry.” He swallows, dragging a hand over his mouth. “I don’t know what came over me.”
I laugh. “That would be lust,” I tell him, stepping back. “You should let it come over you more often.”
He stares at me without a word and adjusts the towel at his waist. “Right.” He clears his throat, and I take another step back, needing to escape before I throw myself at him again.
“Can I see you again?” He looks as surprised by his question as I am.
“Sure.” I hate how the word comes out breathless and eager without my trademark bravado. “You want my number?”
“Please.” He looks down, possibly noticing for the first time that he’s not wearing pants. He is, however, holding his phone.
He starts to hand it to me but pulls back. “Hang on.” He studies the screen with a frown.
“Making sure there’s nothing incriminating on there?”
I’m totally kidding, but his jaw clenches again as he hands it over. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “That’s me. King of scandal.”
I shiver again, and I’m not sure why. Conscious of those green eyes drilling into me, I key my phone number into his contacts before handing the phone back.
“Thanks for the panties,” I tell him. “And for—” My gaze snags on his mouth, and I lose my train of thought. “For—everything.”
“Everything,” James repeats, his voice as shell-shocked as mine. Like he can’t believe what just happened but might want it to happen again. “Yes, well.” He clears his throat. “Thank you for the wallet. And—everything.”
“My pleasure.”
This time I turn for good, not looking back as I hurry to my truck and jam the key into the ignition. As I peel away, I allow myself one glance behind.
He’s standing barefoot on the cobblestone walkway with the towel askew at his waist. There’s a smear of lipstick beside his mouth and a look of utter befuddlement in his eyes.
He’s not the only one.
I take a shaky breath and hit the gas hard, gravel spinning under my tires as I put some much-needed distance between James Bracelyn and me.
Chapter 4
JAMES
I stand naked in a towel in my front yard for a lot longer than any sane person would.
What did I just do?
And when can I do it again?
Stabbing my fingers through my hair, I remember I have bigger things to deal with. Bigger things than redheads with lush lips and flashing gray eyes and legs that should be cast in marble and installed in an art gallery.
I stomp back to my cabin before remembering stomping is ill-advised in a towel and no underwear.
Slowing my pace as I head down the hall, I take a moment to wish desperately that I kept a change of clothing in the living room. Or someplace other than the bedroom where my very-much-not-dead father has taken up residence.
Rounding the corner to the master suite, I see the old man calmly smoking a cigar in the black leather armchair in the corner.
“Put that out,” I demand. Snatching my grandmother’s antique silver Fabergé ashtray off the dresser, I dump out the pile of loose change and hand it to my father. “You can’t be here. We had a deal.”
My father takes the ashtray and one more defiant puff. “Hey, I wondered what happened to this when I kicked the bucket. Dates back to 1901, I think. This fucker’s worth more than—”
“We. Had. A. Deal.” My hands ball into fists at my sides, and I try to ignore the fact that they’re shaking.
My father just grins. “That’s my boy. Always thinking about the deal. Chip off the old block.”
I glare daggers at him until he sighs and grinds the cigar out into the ashtray. He sets it back down with a thunk, meeting my glare with a bemused look of his own. “Such a hard-ass for a guy popping wood in a towel.”
I deliberately do not look down. “This is not a game,” I snap. “Do you have any idea what would happen if people found out you’re alive?”
“It’s not illegal.” He grins. “My kid’s a lawyer. He told me so.”
One of many regrets in my life.
For the record, I didn’t tell him that until after I discovered—quite by accident—that he’d faked his own death. Not that the law would have deterred him, but I’ll give the asshole credit. He avoided landmines like life insurance fraud that could have made this worse.
“The law is not the point.” I re-cinch the towel around my waist, not ready to drop the argument so I can put on some damn clothes. “Your family, friends—everyone who mourned your lying ass would be livid to find out you’ve been kicking it in the Caribbean. They’d have questions.”
“I hate questions,” he mutters, casting a forlorn look at his snuffed cigar. “That’s why it’s good to be dead.”
“You are not supposed to be here.” I know I’m belaboring the point, but come on. This was not the agreement.
“Relax.” The man looks utterly unconcerned about being caught in the mother of all scandals amid a life that was basically nonstop scandals. “I was careful.”
“Careful?” I thunder into the walk-in closet and locate boxers and socks. I start to reach for a tie, then remember it’s my day off.
I grab the tie anyway, then toss it aside with a growl. “You’re supposed to be dead,” I snap as I drop the towel and tug on the boxers. “You call showing up at your son’s wedding careful?”
There’s a thump as his feet hit the floor, and he strolls around the corner into the closet. Seeing me sta
nding there in my underwear, he chuckles. “Nice scratch marks on your back.”
Scratch marks?
It takes my Scotch-fogged brain a few seconds to remember. I had an itch last night as Lily tucked me in to bed. I could hardly get my own shirt off, let alone reach the spot between my shoulder blades, so I pleaded with her to lend a hand.
Right there. Oh, yes. Harder. God, yes.
I close my eyes, hating the echo of my own voice in my ears. Why do drunken memories hit like sucker punches when you least expect it?
I ignore my dad’s remark and focus on the more pressing issue. “You were absolutely not careful,” I insist. “That’s bullshit, and you know it.”
My father sighs. “I had a fake beard, prosthetic forehead, blond hair, and colored contacts,” he points out. “I traveled with fake ID, and I’ll get the fuck out of your hair in two days. Yeah, I’d call that careful.”
“I recognized you,” I tell him. “Yesterday at the wedding. I knew it was you.”
“Only because you’re you.” He grins like he’s just paid me a compliment. “You’re the only person in the universe who knows I’m still alive,” he reminds me. “You’re the only one who’d possibly be watching for me.”
Was I?
Maybe deep down, I’m always watching for my father.
He does have a point, but I’m not willing to concede it. “You promised,” I remind him. “You gave me your word you wouldn’t do this.”
“I know, I know,” he mutters. “And I’ve kept it. Mostly.”
“Yet here you are.” I yank my jeans up one leg before realizing I’ve got them on backwards. “Do you have any idea how insane everyone would be if they found out? Bree, Sean, Mark—”
“They’re not going to find out.” He sighs. “Look, I know you’re pissed, but we agreed I could get in touch in an emergency.”
“Using specially-encrypted email.” I cinch a belt at my waist, ignoring the memory flash of Lily’s nimble fingers helping me undo it last night. Focus. “The deal was not that you’d show up at a goddamn wedding where half the people in attendance actually knew you.”
He chuckles at that. “That Melody—Sean’s mom? Damn, she’s lookin’ fine. Got herself some new tits and—”
“Jesus, why do I even bother?” I grab a T-shirt and stuff my arms through the holes as I stomp out of the closet and into the bedroom. I start to sit down in the chair my father vacated but change my mind. No sense letting him tower over me.
I straighten up and drag my hands through my hair again, aware that I’ll resemble a porcupine before this is over. “Why are you here? What is this so-called emergency?”
“Your sister,” he says. “There’s a problem.”
All the blood drains from my head. I sit down hard, never mind the towering. “Bree? What’s wrong with Bree?”
“Nah, not Bree. Hey, is she knocked up or something? She kept touching her stomach like—”
“Jesus.” I take a few deep breaths as I struggle to regroup. Bree’s okay. Bree’s okay. “Yeah,” I mumble. “I suppose you’d find out somehow anyway. She’s due at the end of November.”
“I’ll be damned.” My father beams like he’s getting a reach-around. “I’m going to be a grandpa.”
“You’re dead,” I remind him. “You need to focus.” I clap my hands together, trying to bring him back to the emergency he has yet to explain. “So, Isabella. My other sister. The one nobody knows about?”
Saying it out loud floods my gut with a fresh surge of guilt. Remember what I said about secrets I’ve kept for my father?
This is one of them. A big one, obviously.
“Yeah, Izzy.” My dad smiles. “Saw pictures of her. She turned out pretty. Smart, too. She’s involved with—”
“I know.” Neither of us have ever met this mystery sister, but I’ve made it my business to be familiar with everything about her. “I haven’t seen any scandalous headlines or anything. What’s the problem?”
“She knows.”
Fuck.
I mean, wait.
“Knows what?” There are so many damn secrets I can’t keep them straight.
“Knows I’m her daddy.” He chuckles a little. “Well, that some dead guy is her dad and not that douchebag who’s raised her.”
Only my father would call the Duke of Dovlano—one of the richest nations in southern Europe—a douchebag. “How?” I demand.
“Apparently her mother—Duchess Francesca, man, she was a fine piece of ass, with these legs that—”
“Dad,” I warn.
My father sighs. “Anyway, Franny had a little too much to drink at a party and fessed up to old Dukeypoo about our thing. Duke had a paternity test done, yada yada yada, Isabella knows Duke Dickwad isn’t her daddy.”
I suspect there’s a whole lot behind the yada yada yada, but I ignore it for now. “Has this impacted her financial situation?”
Call my father an asshole—Lord knows I have—but he’s made sure none of his offspring have wanted for anything. Monetarily, anyway.
The old man just laughs. “Francesca has more money than God. More than me, even.” He grins. “Franny’s the one with the kickass royal bloodlines, and none of that’s changed. Your sister’s not after your money.”
“That wasn’t my concern.”
“No?” He scrubs his hand over his chin, something Mark does all the time, and I’m gobsmacked by the weirdness of nature versus nurture and the things Cort Bracelyn passed down to his spawn.
“Anyway, you might get a call,” he says. “Or an email. Or—hell, I don’t know what newfangled crap you young people use to communicate with each other. Snapshit?”
“Snapchat.” I don’t know how I know that, since I’m not a thirteen-year-old girl.
“Sure.” My father grunts. “Anyway, the Duchess has your info, and she knows she’s got my blessing to hand it over to Izzy if it’s necessary. Which it might be.”
“All right.” I wish I could say I’m surprised my father’s philandering and aversion to contraception has caught up to him again, but I’m not. “Assuming she makes contact,” I continue, “you still want me to brief the others?”
There goes the molten lead injection into my chest cavity again. Bree and Sean and Mark and Jonathan—they’re going to flip a gasket when they learn we’ve got a mystery sister.
I do not look forward to that conversation.
“Yeah.” My dad gives a nod of confidence. “You know what to do.”
“Certainly.” Always.
Except, perhaps, when it comes to gorgeous redheads I kiss on my front lawn before thinking through the implications of such a dumbass move.
I swear to God my father reads my thoughts. “That girl at the door—”
“Woman,” I correct, hackles rising.
“Right, woman,” he says. “Redhead, right? Gray eyes and killer t—”
“Do not,” I snap, “feel the need to comment on any part of her anatomy.”
“Tan.” He gives a wolfish grin. “I was going to say tan.”
“She’s a redhead. Her skin is fucking alabaster.”
“Admiring her skin, huh?”
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off, but he beats me to the conversational punch. “I recognized her,” he says. “I never forget a beautiful face, but her especially.”
My blood pressure is through the fucking roof. “She’s half your age.” Why is that the point I’m choosing to make? “And what the hell were you doing looking out the window, anyway? I told you to stay hidden.”
“Don’t worry,” he says, totally ignoring the question to focus on more carnal matters. “I didn’t bang her,” he assures me. “Wanted to, but—”
“Christ, I’m in hell.” I anchor my elbows on my knees and sink my head into my hands. I wish I could go back three days, maybe even three weeks. Back before my father got the idea to rise from the dead and attend his son’s wedding.
Hell, I’d settle for going back three h
ours.
Back to waking up in Lily’s bed with her gray eyes peering down at me, the narrow valley of her cleavage visible in the V of her shirt. Or ten minutes, back to my front lawn with her body lush and warm and her tongue brushing mine as she—
“So you’re nailing her.” My father claps me on the shoulder. “Atta boy. Guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I grit my teeth. “Trust me,” I mutter. “This apple isn’t even in the same damn orchard.”
My father ignores me. “Just like your old man,” he says. “Snapping up the firecrackers. Those head-turning, nail-biting babes who leave you chasing them down the street tripping on your own dick because you’re so far gone you don’t know what hit you.”
“How poetic.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Better watch yourself with that one. She’ll rip your heart out and feed it to you for breakfast.”
My hands clench into fists. “You know nothing about Lily.”
He grins and claps my shoulder again. “Neither do you, boy.”
I refuse to let him see me react. Instead, I stand up straight, so I’ve got an extra inch on him again. That’s never happened before, me being taller than the mighty Cort Bracelyn, who stood at six-three my whole life. I’m not sure whether to thank the aging process or the fact that playing dead takes a toll on a guy’s height.
“You need to go,” I tell him. “If anyone finds you here—”
“Relax,” he says. “No one will. Come on, I’ll be on a plane for Georgetown by Tuesday, and you won’t even remember I was here.”
“I’ll remember.”
I remember everything.
It’s the blessing and the curse of being me.
“That’s my boy.” My dad grins. “Now how about getting me some nicer sheets on that guest bed?”
My father and I are finishing dinner that night when my sister knocks at the front door. I know it’s her without looking, that rappity-rap-rap-rap she always does, followed by the chime of my doorbell.
“Go.” I glare at my father, grabbing his plate and shoving it in the dishwasher. For once he follows directions and hustles back down the hall to the guest room.