An Offer He Can't Refuse Page 12

  Will they be looking for the book again? Téa pictured its soft, glossy cover and could almost smell the faint scent of the apricot rose pressed between its pages. The book’s secrets were sixteen years old, but she doubted their ugliness had diminished. If it came to light, those who had borrowed money, gambled illegally, or had been blackmailed for their peccadilloes would still be embarrassed or exposed.

  And others would be implicated.

  Her mother brushed her hand over Téa’s hair again. “Watch your back, cara,” she whispered.

  The glass behind Téa had been warmed by her body heat, so there was no reason to shudder. But she did anyway, and again, when she found the gaze of Silver Crewcut was trained their way once more.

  “What about him, Mom?” she said, her eyes flickering over her mother’s shoulder. Was it happening already? Was this one of the men her mother was warning her about?

  That non-Botoxed frown appeared again between Bianca’s eyebrows. “Him? You mean the man who checked in last night?”

  “He’s staring at us.”

  Her mother shook her head, smiling a little. “He’s a construction manager from Colorado Springs. We don’t need to see snakes under every rock.”

  But Téa would feel them around her now, she just knew it, in every dark car that slid around her street corner, in every dark Italian eye that looked her way, in the dark shadows of her very own bedroom.

  The opportunity to get out of her house tonight suddenly seemed like manna from heaven.

  “The spa has a tennis racket I can borrow, right?” she asked.

  Her mother nodded. “Of course.”

  “And some tennis-y type outfit in the boutique?”

  Another nod.

  “Not to mention my usual deep discount?”

  Her mother laughed and Téa liked the sound of it. Not that she felt like joining in. But at least she was giving herself something else to think about beyond the Caruso problem tonight.

  Johnny.

  Funny, how in the space of one short conversation, he’d become the least dangerous man in her life.

  Thirteen

  “The Tender Trap”

  Frank Sinatra

  This is Sinatra! (1956)

  At Johnny’s knock on her door, Téa swiped up her purse and the borrowed tennis racket. Then, in the same movement, she opened the door and tried walking past him, already on the way to his car. She was that eager to get out of her house.

  “Wait, wait, wait.” Johnny caught her by the shoulders and pushed her gently back inside. “I made a mistake about the time. We’re not in a rush, actually we’re a little early.”

  The door closing behind him did nothing to calm her jumpy nerves. Tomorrow she’d be better, but today her mother’s warning had lurked in her mind. All morning and afternoon she’d imagined villains staked at her corner or stalking past her windows. “I don’t mind being early,” she said.

  He smiled. “You might want to be dressed.”

  She glanced down at herself—at herself in her enveloping mauve chenille bathrobe—and flushed. It wasn’t that she wasn’t already dressed for tennis, but the teeny tiny outfit she’d brought home from the spa’s boutique might as well have been constructed of wet tissue paper then molded to her skin. The first puff of breeze and the skirt would flutter up to reveal built in “shorts” that hit her legs at hot-pants level. She’d slapped her bathrobe over the getup before too many glimpses of her nothing-left-to-the-imagination figure in the bedroom mirror sent her into hiding forever.

  Gripping the nubby lapels, she looked over at Johnny, who appeared manly yet adequately covered in knee-length navy athletic shorts and a white tennis shirt. “Why do men get to wear clothes that are comfortable and loose-fitting?” she demanded. “How would you like to live a life in Lycra?”

  One corner of his mouth kicked up again and he flicked a long finger against her nose. “I never win these arguments. So I’ll save us both time and apologize right away for everything from Barbie dolls to Playboy centerfolds.”

  “Big apology. They’re the same thing.”

  He laughed, and his finger stroked down her cheek this time. “What’s the big Lycra phobia anyway? You afraid to let me see your body, Téa?”

  Of course she was afraid to let him see her body, she thought, as tingles skittered down her skin from where he’d touched her. I’m the fat sister. The one who battled every calorie from making camp on her hips, her butt, her breasts.

  He moved closer, bringing the walls of the room with him.

  She tried stepping back, but he’d hooked his forefinger around the thick belt at her waist. At her next inhale, she drew in Johnny’s scent, tangy and clean. And then just like that, like a wave, like a whiplash, once again heat whooshed over her body. Desire.

  Her heart was tripping all over itself as she tried thinking her way over, through, out of the intensity of it. But her thoughts were as scattered as her breath. She didn’t want this! She didn’t want this sudden yearning that had to be oozing out of her pores, like steam rising from boiling water.

  Because it would control her, and not the other way around.

  “Such a coward,” he scolded softly, “and still into all that useless self-denial.” His head drew closer.

  In slow motion, Téa watched his mouth descend toward hers as her body pulsed at her breasts and between her legs. For Johnny, all for Johnny. God, he was beautiful, she thought, the lack of air in the room putting her into a stupid daze. All-American blue eyes and golden hair and tanned skin. The All-American boy most likely to succeed all grown up.

  Her fingers uncurled from their place on the robe’s lapels and dropped, brushing against hard abs beneath his shirt. He flinched, stilled, then moved in.

  Open your lips, Contessa. Let me have you.

  His voice inside her head broke through her breathless dizziness and sent a cold bucket of self-preservation over her trembling skin. She jerked back, and Johnny’s fingers loosened the tie of her robe. As it slid off, she made a run for the door wearing only the lime-colored V-necked shell and matching tennis skort. “We better go.”

  A long wolf whistle followed her out her front door.

  Johnny didn’t.

  Taking a deep breath, she turned on the walkway to face him. He was standing in the doorway, staring at her. Tingles ran down her arms and up her legs and she felt the back of her neck go hot beneath the thick braid of her hair.

  It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. She wasn’t in the market for a man. And she didn’t have any practice in dealing with this out-of-control, wild…thing for one she barely knew.

  “What are you waiting for?” she demanded, irritated with both of them.

  “A couple of things,” he said, rubbing his hand over his chest in an absent gesture. “First and foremost being the ability to think anything beyond ‘gimme’ when I see you dressed like that.”

  It shut her up and he didn’t say any more until they were both inside his Jag and threading through the late-afternoon traffic on the four-lane section of Palm Canyon Drive. “I’m also waiting for some insight into what you’re so afraid of.”

  Her head whipped toward him. “What?”

  He glanced over. “Do I look like the Big Bad Wolf to you?”

  “You whistle like him.”

  He smiled. “If you saw you through my eyes, you’d forgive me for that.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Let’s just say Lycra is your friend.”

  He was grinning, so she wasn’t sure she believed him. It was hard to redraw her self-image, just as it was hard to see herself with a man like Johnny Magee. She tugged on the hem of the tennis skirt, secretly loving the bright color, not so secretly wishing it would grow another few inches. Or twelve.

  A dark movement in the side view mirror outside her window snagged her attention. A car in the next lane over, nose to their tail. It was a slinky luxury car in the land of slinky luxury cars, but something about the way
it stayed even with Johnny’s back bumper sent a warning signal down her spine.

  Watch your back, cara.

  Téa slipped down in her seat, her head turned just enough to keep her eye on that side view mirror. “I know a shortcut,” she said.

  He frowned. “What shortcut?”

  There was no shortcut. But someone might be following them, set on her trail by a rival don in the California Mafia, or even by her grandfather himself. “Just follow my directions, okay? Take a left at the next light.”

  He maneuvered into the storage lane. So did Slinky.

  Téa drummed her fingers against her left thigh as they waited for the green. Was someone following her? Johnny reached over to still her fingers and she started, his touch distracting her from the car behind them.

  He gave her hand a light squeeze. “You’re avoiding my questions again.”

  The light changed, and he returned his attention to the road, following her directions of four blocks straight—Slinky followed—two blocks right—Slinky followed again. Another right turn, and her neck craned as Slinky continued on without them.

  A single driver…a man’s profile…

  A silver crewcut? She couldn’t be sure. And she couldn’t suppress that sense that someone was watching.

  They’ll be searching for vulnerabilities in the family and looking for ways to take power.

  That warning signal edged down her spine again and when Johnny touched her arm, she jolted.

  “Téa. I don’t get why you’re so skittish. Most women like me.”

  “It isn’t—” But it was him as well. With her need to keep her distance from the Carusos and every other Mafioso certain to be prowling Palm Springs in the next few weeks, she didn’t need another man, another complication in her life.

  They hit a stoplight, and while they waited at the red, Johnny dropped her hand to take her chin and turn it toward him.

  “Contessa, I’m not asking for your soul.”

  Then why did it feel as if he was touching it with those hard, warm fingertips?

  “I’m not asking for your secrets.”

  And there. He’d said it. That’s what she was truly afraid of, with him, with every man. It scared her to think that some guy could set a match to her one day and burn down all her defenses. That in the throes of wild sex she’d lose her inhibitions and lose all control, setting free God knows what. Secrets, emotions, a badness this mob daughter had been born to but had bargained heaven to keep caged.

  “I want nothing so dire,” Johnny was saying, his nighttime voice finding its way inside her like sweet, warm smoke. “Nothing so complicated.”

  She lifted her gaze to his, finding all that open blue. “What is it you want then?”

  “Only where this is already leading to.”

  Bed. In was in his eyes, in his voice. She was tingling all over again because she wanted that too. Of course she did. But it was such a new force, such a new drive to deal with that she felt confused and conflicted. Because though all the reason inside her brain said it was a bad idea, she couldn’t be reasonable when she was looking at him, when he was looking at her and that chemistry between them was bubbling like a high school experiment gone bad. “I still don’t think—”

  “Don’t think then,” he said, pinching her chin and letting her go as the traffic ahead of them moved. “If you don’t think so much, it will all fall into place.”

  As they pulled back onto Palm Canyon after their short detour, Téa found herself watching the cars around them again. Then Johnny reached over and put his arm across her shoulders.

  His voice was all smoke and sex again. “Relax, Contessa, and you’ll discover it’s all very, very simple.”

  Simple? God knows she needed some simplicity in her life, Téa thought, tempted by the notion. She rested her head on his arm, just for a second. A test.

  It felt masculine and reassuring and the warnings that had been running down her back were replaced by a wholly different kind of shiver.

  It felt good. A good kind of scary. A straightforward kind of scary that was all about sex and nothing about secrets and suspicions. Maybe she could do this. And if she did, if she went with Johnny to where this was leading, then tonight she wouldn’t have to be alone with the shadows and what might be lingering amongst them.

  Fourteen

  “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”

  Buddy Rich

  Buddy Rich Just Sings (1957)

  It had been his dick talking, damn it, Johnny thought as he turned onto the narrow lane leading up to the estate his neighbors had carved into the mountainside next to his property. Not that he didn’t want Téa in his bed, and not that it mattered a whit whether it was simple or not. But he couldn’t afford to focus on seduction right now. It might distract him from the evening’s more important goal.

  The neighbors had lived in the same location for thirty years, they’d told him when they’d caught him at the bottom of his driveway to extend their invitation. They’d known all the previous owners. Tonight, Johnny planned on pumping them for every scrap of information they had on Giovanni Martelli.

  He braked beneath a piece of arched canvas shading a parking area, then reached into the backseat for his racket. “Ready?” he asked Téa, glancing over at her.

  Feathery dark lashes. Apricot skin. She’d forced her mass of dark hair into a long braid. He tried to leave his gaze there, but still it dropped to the tight top that was hugging a spectacular upper curve that would have put starlet Missy Banyon into everlasting envy. That gimme-gimme greediness was already burning through his blood again, and Tea was still sitting on the asset that fascinated him most. When she’d slipped out of her robe to show off the lime-colored tennis skirt riding along the womanly flare of her ass, he’d flashed on SweeTARTS. He could never decide what he wanted to do with the candy first—a delicious suck or one clean bite.

  Her eyes widened.

  Shit. Was he thinking out loud? Wrenching his gaze away from her, he fumbled with the door handle and stepped into the warm dusk. Téa was out before he could get around to her door.

  “Are you ready?” he said again, trying not to stare at her smooth, naked legs.

  “As long as you’re not expecting an experienced partner.”

  Was that what made Téa so wary? Lack of experience? Gimme-gimme-gimme. He’d be happy to provide all the practice that she needed.

  “You’re looking wolfish again,” she said, poking him in the belly with her tennis racket as he tried stepping closer. “Don’t you want to get to the party?”

  “Yes.” Damn it. She’d meant tennis partner, of course, but his little head was doing all the thinking again. Mad at himself, but just male enough to want to take it out on her, he grabbed her free hand and set off at a brisk pace on the pathway toward the house. Voices and laughter made him veer down a set of steps and he towed Téa behind him, refocusing his thoughts on the real reason he was here.

  Giovanni. His father. His own memories of what the man had been like before his murder were sixteen years old. Luxury car sales. A woman he claimed to love. Neither went along with a man who one day up and decides to agree to execute a dangerous mob hit, the way the old rumors went. The way the old reporter had told him on the golf course.

  A second set of steps led Johnny and Téa to a terrace, where a cabana-style bar was set up along with some tables and lounge chairs. In the distance lay the valley floor and the stark, purple outlines of the Santa Rosa mountains, but here bougainvillea spilled from immense pots and palm trees poked through the flagstoned surface, standing like attendant waiters. A pristine tennis court, with four people standing close to the net, was just another set of steps away.

  “Johnny!” One of the players waved an arm. “Come on down.”

  A flurry of first-name-only introductions followed. Their hosts, Phillip and Doug, he’d already met. From their earlier conversation, it was apparent that the two men were a gregarious, long-committed couple. Wea
ring deep tans and matching tennis wear, they passed out firm handshakes followed by tall glasses of a whipped drink. The other two people were also neighbors, but fortyish Clark and Megan had only moved in a year before, and so wouldn’t have anything to add about the murder.

  Doug explained the game they’d planned for the evening. “We thought four of us at a time would play drop ball instead of regular tennis.” He explained it was doubles, but court play was limited to the first two squares up close to the net. “The ball has to bounce, so it’s about the soft touch and not brute strength. Whoever loses the fifth point will rotate out and one of the waiting players will rotate in. Those that are waiting have bar duty.”

  Téa’s hand went up. “I’m good with ice trays. I can be permanent bartender.”

  Excellent, Johnny thought. Up on the terrace she’d be out of sight. Off his mind.

  “Nonsense,” Doug replied. “Johnny didn’t bring a beautiful woman all the way here to keep her in a corner.”

  Yes, Johnny did. Or at least he thought it was the smarter place for her. For him. But he grinned at her. “Don’t tell me you don’t have a soft touch, Contessa.”

  Which meant they were partners for the first round. They were facing off against Doug and Phillip, though, just the people he wanted to pump for info. He considered how to bring up the subject as they moved into position. Téa walked past him and his head automatically turned, a hound dog following the scent. God, she had a primo ass.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “What?”

  He’d lost his train of thought again. “I—” Damn it! He was supposed to be planning how to bring up Giovanni. Then he closed his eyes. Double damn it. With Téa six feet to his left, how the hell could he get away with a casual inquiry of a decades-old murder? He’d already told her it didn’t bother him.

  “I’ll serve,” Phillip called out.

  Johnny took his racket in a firm grip. No problem, he told himself. It was more than fifty-fifty that they’d bump Téa out at the fifth point, leaving her on ice-cube watch.