An Offer He Can't Refuse Page 4

  “The Hartman house.”

  “Oh.” Her fingers stilled. What more could she say? The Hartmans, who had purchased a home in the part of Palm Springs first settled by movie stars in the 1930s, loved hearts. Demanded hearts. So there were hearts on the handpainted ceilings, hearts as part of the gold- and bronze-leaf-painted moldings, hearts in the pattern of the fabric on the tufted walls. There was even a kitschy heart motif in the side-by-side fur and luggage storage rooms.

  The thought of that project, the thought of more of those types of projects in her future, made her sag against the back bumper.

  “But now you think you’re going to go from clients like the Hartmans to a man like Johnny Magee. That’s quite a leap, isn’t it?”

  Knowing Lois’s reaction would be shared by the desert’s entire design community didn’t soften the sting or silence any of Téa’s own doubts.

  So she turned to open the rear door of the Volvo, preparing to avoid further conversation by busying herself with the materials she’d brought along. After all, she consoled herself, Lois really didn’t know any more than she did about “a man like Johnny Magee.”

  …or did she?

  Téa spun back. “Were you around for the showing of the house?” she asked, nodding toward the rooftop that she could see in the distance.

  “No.”

  But the glint in Lois’s eyes hinted that she knew something more than the single word indicated and Téa wanted to know that something more, desperately. Anything she gleaned about Johnny Magee might help her cinch the job. Glancing at the other cars and then at her watch, she decided there wasn’t time for subtlety.

  “A massage at my mother’s spa for what you know, Lois,” she said quickly, before her pride got in the way of practicality. “On me.”

  Lois’s eyes sparkled brighter. “With Erik.”

  “With Erik?” Erik was the most popular massage therapist at the spa and wedging in an appointment with him would cost her big in the daughter-duty department. She sighed. “Fine, with Erik. Now, what do you know about Johnny, Lois? Have you met him?”

  “I don’t know him,” Lois said. “But on a visit to Las Vegas a couple of years back, a mutual acquaintance introduced us.”

  Téa frowned. “That’s it?”

  “That’s all it took for me to recognize a bad boy.”

  A bad boy? Less than impressed, Téa reached inside her car for her purse, portfolio, and briefcase. “That little insight isn’t worth a pedicure, let alone a massage with the legendary Erik, Lois.” She elbowed shut the door and brushed past the other woman. She’d find the man and make her own estimation.

  “I’m trying to tell you he’s dangerous, Téa.”

  That made her hesitate. Hadn’t he warned her about the trouble he’d cause? But she tossed the idea away and tossed her hair over her shoulders as she set off toward a path that led through more overgrown vegetation in the direction of the house. “I’m pretty sure I can handle him.”

  With her family history, who could doubt it?

  But Lois wouldn’t allow her the last word. “Don’t misunderstand me or underestimate him, Téa,” she called back. “Just remember that a real bad boy isn’t any kind of boy at all.”

  The grounds of the Magee property could have benefited from a gardener’s staging services or at the very least some simple pruning, Téa thought, making her way through unruly hibiscus plants and overgrown oleanders. She knew from the simple layout she’d been faxed that a three-hole golf course separated the main residence from the guest bungalows on the east side, and that on the south, between the stand-alone garage and the house, was a man-made lagoon.

  So when she stepped into a clearing, she wasn’t surprised to see the large body of water ahead of her.

  It was the figure sitting on the wall of half-tumbled, large river rocks surrounding it that caught her off guard.

  His long, thin legs bent like a grasshopper’s, he was hunched over a computer on his lap while another was teeter-tottering on the ledge beside him. He wore crinkled khakis, black canvas high-tops, and a ratty bowling shirt not even a mother could kindly call “vintage.”

  No, Lois. Johnny Magee wasn’t a bad boy.

  He was a bad dresser.

  And the other woman had merely been yanking Téa’s chain. Unless…unless this wasn’t him. Johnny hadn’t sounded like this man looked.

  Yet who else would it be?

  And hadn’t she known from the beginning he’d be a disappointment?

  That didn’t change what had to happen next, however. She sucked in a determined breath, then shook back her hair, pressed her lips together to even their color, and finally gave a little shimmy of her hips to straighten out the fall of her skirt. With her appearance the best it could be, she pasted on her most professional smile and continued her approach.

  “Hello,” she said, as she neared him. “I’m Téa Caruso.”

  “Yes, I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, without looking up.

  It was Johnny Magee, all right.

  His fingers continued to race over the keyboard of his laptop. “Could you sit down a minute?” Apparently aware of the precarious balance of the notebook computer beside him, he lifted it up in one hand.

  “Oh, uh, of course,” she replied, eyeing the vacant spot he’d created and the murky depths of the lagoon beyond it. An odd frisson of distaste edged down her back, but she strode forward anyway. Then she set down her portfolio and briefcase and bent her knees to poise just the minimum of her weight and her behind onto the uneven surface of the rock wall.

  Without a word or warning, the man plopped the computer he was holding onto her lap. To give it an adequate resting place, she was forced to settle more fully on the ledge. As her weight shifted, she slid backward along the slick surface and had to dig her heels into the soft ground to keep her seat. Ewww. She felt dampness penetrating the fabric of her dress. A slimy coating of moss covered the rock wall, she realized, and now the backside of her dress as well.

  She grimaced, but her companion didn’t seem to notice her discomfort. As a matter of fact, he didn’t seem to notice anything beyond the contents of the two computers. He shifted the one on her lap to more fully face him and with a hand on each keyboard, proceeded to play them like a virtuoso.

  “I hope you had a good flight,” she ventured after a few moments of uninterrupted tapping.

  He nodded, but whether it was at her or the numbers rolling by on the dual screens, she didn’t know.

  “I have several mock-ups of my designs I’d like to present to you,” she tried again. “I’m looking forward to it. I have a great affinity for mid-century modern.”

  His fingers stilled and his head came up, his eyes magnified by heavy-framed glasses. The thick lenses along with his unkempt hair made it difficult to assess his age, but he was definitely younger than she expected.

  “What is that, anyway?” he asked.

  “Affinity?”

  “Mid-century modern.”

  She blinked. Johnny Magee had seemed settled on the style from the beginning, so she could only assume this was some sort of test. Swallowing, she pressed her knees together and tried for a concise answer. “It refers to post-World War II domestic architecture. At that time, Palm Springs was becoming a luxury resort for the rich, and architects used experimental materials and technologies to create homes for people who wanted something more daring than a cozy cottage with a picket fence.”

  His gaze shifted back to the screens and his fingers returned to clicking the keyboards. “Psychedelic posters and bean bag chairs?”

  “Um, no, not really. That was a bit later. The heyday of mid-century modern was in the 1940s and 50s, when this property was originally developed. The style is characterized by light, flowing interiors and a strong indoor-outdoor relationship.”

  He shrugged. “Too bad. I like bean bag chairs and psychedelic posters.”

  “Well, um, I…” Téa’s voice petered out as the implications o
f his comment sank in. Bean bag chairs and psychedelic posters were Budweiser and Kool-Aid to the martinis and highballs that symbolized sophisticated mid-century modern design. But nobody knew better than Téa that if the client wanted beer and soft drinks, then that’s what she would give him.

  Her shoulders sagged. All the concern over her appearance and the attempts to impress him had come to nothing more than this. She exhaled a small sigh, but that was the only sign of discouragement she allowed herself before setting about retooling her plans on the fly.

  Shag carpet, she thought. The colors of lime and orange. Pet rocks. Okay, so it wasn’t going to revamp her reputation as a designer, but it was probably no worse than the animal-print-everything Saharan sitting room she’d done for Mr. and Mrs. Finkelstein last spring.

  She closed her eyes, hoping to envision a new look for the Magee residence. From what she knew of the house, it was made for the simple, clean lines of mid-century modern. But now, instead of Eames sofas and sunburst clocks, she’d have…

  “Maybe a beanbag sofa in an Andy Warhol-inspired fabric,” she mentioned aloud, trying to picture red-and-white can after red-and-white can of Campbell’s soup without cringing. It made her squirm instead, setting her slime-stained dress to sliding against the slime-covered rock again.

  “What’s that?” a voice prompted.

  “Bean bag furniture. Maybe a Twister-inspired area rug. What do you think of a lava lamp or two?”

  “Personally? I’m not inspired by any of them, except, perhaps, the interesting possibilities of that Twister area rug.”

  The voice to her left was deeper now, sexier, more like it had sounded on the phone. Wait—the voice to her left? The man she sat beside was on her right. Her eyes popped open.

  And there he was, another man, a different man, standing to her slight left, one polished loafer propped on the rock beside her. A man approaching his mid-thirties. With broad shoulders, lean hips, and dark blond hair, he was an adult version of the public high school boys who had forever fascinated her as a parochial prep school teenager.

  Speechless, she let her gaze wander over him. His navy blue slacks had a knife-edge pleat and his sports jacket was a tiny blue-and-white check. Beneath it he wore an open-collared shirt in goldenrod that matched his impeccably cut hair. His eyes were sea-blue.

  A natural athlete, he would have headed the varsity squad, Téa thought. She could tell, because he had the same look of every boy that Eve had dated, every boy that Joey had palled around with, every boy that Téa had lusted for from the safe distance of a party-size bag of potato chips.

  His eyes narrowed when he looked amused and now they cut from her face to the man seated beside her. “Were you planning on bringing me my designer anytime soon, Cal?”

  Cal. She’d been wrong. The glasses guy was Cal. And this…this…All-American god of a man was—had to be—Johnny Magee.

  His designer, he’d said. His. The word danced down her spine, and if she didn’t know full well that scary men came dark-haired, dark-eyed, and Italian, then she would consider him dangerous.

  His focus switched back as his hand extended toward her. “Téa Caruso?” He smiled.

  Okay. Here she is, and more beautiful than I bargained for.

  The voice in her head and the outstretched hand had her rising from her seat without thinking, her palm shooting out as quickly as the goose bumps that his white smile sent speeding along her skin. The computer on her lap slipped, and Cal grabbed for it, Johnny grabbed for it, and probably she would have grabbed for it too, except that she recalled the stain on her dress and instead made a hasty drop back to the rocks.

  But she’d forgotten the slimy moss. Her thighs slid, her feet found no purchase on the slick grass, and in her belated efforts to save the computer, she tumbled into the murky pond behind her with an ugly, undignified, bad-first-impression big splash.

  The laptop suffered mere drops.

  Her ego suffered much worse.

  Not that she hadn’t experienced a similar sort of humiliation—self-sabotage?—before. At fifteen, she’d been delegated family photographer when basketball star Rick Richardson had invited her younger sister Eve to the big public high school’s senior prom. Trying to appear invisible behind the tiny Kodak camera, Téa had backed farther away from the posing couple and then farther, and then backed right into the sofa…and over it.

  Rick Richardson hadn’t known what to do.

  Johnny Magee did. Though when her handsome varsity captain of a client hauled her out of the shallow depths—she, whose only captain had heretofore been Captain Crunch—Téa found herself as tongue-tied and knock-kneed as only an overweight teen in a twenty-eight-year-old, dripping-wet body could be.

  “I…well…uh…perhaps we should do this another…” Hyperaware of her sodden skirt and her soggy hair, she ran out of words. Then, because she still had all the savoir faire of fifteen, she mumbled an apology, grabbed her purse, and fled.

  Five

  “What’ll I Do”

  Julie London

  Lonely Girl (1956)

  Johnny followed the designer home. He didn’t have much choice, not after promising himself that today he’d make progress on his plan. Once he’d pulled her from the water, she’d hightailed it for her car, leaving behind her briefcase and a portfolio. He wanted to return them to her.

  He couldn’t let her get away.

  It was because of that hunch he’d had about her from the beginning, he told himself, as he watched her steer onto a narrow lane and then park in the driveway of a small patio home. She was a key to the puzzle of his father’s death, he knew it. He pulled alongside the curb across the street as she climbed out of her car, her shoes in hand.

  Not that her wet, barefoot contessa look wasn’t…compelling all on its own. He’d only made a brief observation of Téa Caruso dry, but he figured she couldn’t be more attractive than she was right now, her damp dark hair rippling in wild waves down her back, her clothes plastered against her hourglass body to flaunt a small waist that flared into an eat-your-heart-out-J.Lo ass.

  He let her get inside, counted to lucky number seven, then strolled to her front door. She answered on the first knock.

  And couldn’t hide her surprise. She pushed at her unruly hair with her hands, then swiped her forefingers beneath the bottom lashes of her sloe eyes. “I—well—I…What are you doing here?”

  Lifting his excuse, her belongings, he smiled. “I thought you might want these.”

  “Oh.” Their fingers brushed during the transfer and a rush of color washed up her neck. “Thank you.”

  She set the items down then looked at him, making it obvious she expected—hoped—he’d leave. Instead, he lingered in the doorway, still smiling. An awkward silence descended. As heartless as it was of him, he let it grow.

  Her naked toes curled against the tiled entry. “I suppose I should have stayed long enough to reschedule,” she finally offered.

  He nodded. “We need to do that.”

  Silence drew out again, and again he did nothing to prevent it. The Texas Hold ’Em table had made him expert at the Buddha-like wait, but he suspected she’d had no such special training.

  He was right. Ten seconds later she capitulated to his unspoken pressure. Her spine lost a little of its starch and she shuffled back, her toes still curled inward. “Would you like to come in?”

  More than he wanted her to know. So he hid his satisfaction behind his poker face and crossed over the threshold. Even if she wasn’t aware of it, she was an opponent of sorts, and he made it his business to study the particular “tells” of the people he played against. Invariably, through dress, body language, environment, or all three, other players gave the essence of themselves away.

  Knowing more about Téa might give him an advantage he could possibly use at some time later in the game.

  Yet in the five steps it took him to reach the living room, he saw that Téa Caruso’s surroundings surrendered very little th
at looked useful. The neutrality of the pale gray walls and darker gray upholstered furniture was only broken by a collection of hand-painted Italian pottery lined like brightly uniformed soldati along the mantelpiece. The overall lack of color and embellishment surprised him, given the contessa’s own exotic, dark-haired and dreamy-eyed looks. It was a cool, controlled sort of room, and the mystery of the contradiction between it and the woman drew his gaze back her way.

  She shuffled. “Please sit down,” she said, plucking at the skirt of her damp dress, as if trying to ease its plastic-wrap fit. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” Really, he didn’t. However, after months of near-sleepless nights his needs were stronger than his scruples.

  “It’s no trouble. Iced tea? Coffee?”

  But that polite yet halfhearted try at hospitality dealt him a painful, guilty pinch anyway. Damn, he thought with an inward grimace. Was this what he had come to? It was never his way to force his company on unwilling women.

  “No, thanks. Nothing.” He shoved one hand in his pocket, feeling for his keys. There was no pressing reason for him to push her so fast, so soon. It probably wasn’t even smart. “On second thought, I won’t hold you up any longer.”

  “Oh.” She blinked those dreamy dark eyes. “All right.”

  And if she considered him crazy for traipsing in then traipsing right back out, she didn’t comment upon it further as she followed him back to her tiny foyer. He paused in the open front doorway, his gaze on his car, parked at the curb of the home across the street. “We’ll talk—”

  Sunlight glinted against the brass numbers nailed on the side of that house. The address. 10909.

  In a blink it altered, blazing across his brain like the numbers on a digital watch. 1:09:09.

  The world altered too.

  Darkness.

  Night.

  The sharp snap of gunfire.

  Pop.

  Pop. Pop.

  Pop. Pop. Pop.

  The past grabbed for him with its powerful claws.

  Resisting with everything he had, Johnny gulped a breath, then spun around. He gripped the doorjamb to anchor himself in present reality before the tires could squeal in his head, before his heart could start jackhammering at his chest wall, before his senses were flooded by the stain and the smell of fresh blood.