Chapter Eight
Everly was trying to kill Tyler. How did he know this? That dress. Seriously.
Traffic had been light, but he’d still been in a car with Everly for just over an hour. That was more than long enough to have the vanilla-and-musk scent of her perfume embed itself in his head. She’d worn a dress—black, of course—made out of some kind of sweater material that clung to her curves and snuck up to mid-thigh when she’d sat down in the passenger seat. It wasn’t that he’d noticed. It was that he hadn’t been able to stop noticing. Add to that the knee-high black boots with silver spikes for heels and the way she’d tucked her black hair into a knot-roll thing at the base of her skull, showing off her long, delicate neck, and it went a long way to explaining why he’d missed the turnoff to Ferranti’s house on Skyview Lane even though the navigation system in his Mercedes had notified him in plenty of time.
“Second time’s the charm,” Everly teased as she flipped the visor down and popped the cap on her lipstick.
Watching her out of the corner of his eye as she opened her mouth into a perfect O and slid the silky red color across her lips almost sent him off-roading in Ferranti’s yard.
Now wouldn’t that make a great impression, dipshit. The guy wouldn’t be able to stop himself from hiring you after you do donuts in his landscaped-to-the-gills front yard.
“There’s nothing to be nervous about,” Everly said, capping her lipstick and dropping it into her purse. “Alberto’s a sweetheart and Carlo is so laid-back he’s like the Italian version of a surfer dude. I haven’t met his fiancée yet, but I’m sure she’s lovely.”
Nervous? She thought he was nervous? His dick sure as hell wasn’t nervous. His right hand just wasn’t the companion either he or his cock was looking for. He needed to get laid. Then he’d stop thinking about his upstairs neighbor and her sexy fucking high heels and killer ass—not to mention he’d stop kissing her every time they spent more than ten minutes together. By the time he pulled into a parking spot near Ferranti’s four-car garage, he was white-knuckling the steering wheel.
“Okay, this quiet no-talking thing is starting to freak me out,” Everly said, twisting in her seat and pulling the soft material of her dress tighter across her tits. Not that he knew it was soft. He’d just spent a good portion of the drive imagining how it would feel, that’s all. “Is this about last night? Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. It wouldn’t—couldn’t—between us. Especially not now that I know you hold my apartment and gallery lease in your fiendishly strong hands. Shit. Fiendish hands. Not fiendishly strong. I don’t know where that adverb came from. Must be the lack of sleep. Not that you caused my lack of sleep, it’s just…I’m shutting up now.”
Damn he was off his game—or too fixated on how being this close to her was wreaking havoc on him to consider he might be doing the same to her. The running commentary on everything from Picasso’s blue period to modern sculpture on the drive here? It was because she was nervous. About the lunch or about him? Like always, he bet on himself. Was he an asshole if he admitted that pumped up his ego? He considered. Yeah, it did. That was okay. He could live with it—especially since he needed an ego the size of Ferranti’s six-bedroom beach house to make this deal happen.
Pivoting in his seat, he looked at the normally unflappable tough chick fidgeting beside him. “It’s going to work out fine. We’re friends and maybe a little more. It’s the truth, so you don’t have to be nervous.”
“I’m not nervous. You’re nervous.” She toyed with her hair and tucked a loose strand behind her ear. “Anyway, saying we’re friends is being pretty generous and saying we’re maybe a little bit more is totally off-the-charts wrong.”
Oh really? That was how she wanted to play this? Like the skin-sizzling need driving those kisses had only been on his end of things? He didn’t think so. “My tongue has been in your mouth twice in the past week.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That’s just an ew way to put it.”
“That’s not how you react when it happens, though.” He leaned toward her, draping his arm across the back of her seat. “You don’t ew, you moan so fucking sweet.” Needing to see her do just that—at least a little—he glided the tip of his finger up the creamy column of her neck to the pulse point below her earlobe. “And you kiss back like a woman who always gets what she wants.”
Her chin went up, and she leveled a challenging look his way. “Ego much?”
He dipped his head lower, so close and yet so far away from her perfect red mouth. “It’s not ego if it’s true.”
Fuck. This was crazy. It was all impulse and passion, two things he’d worked to get out of his life. But at this moment? There wasn’t a damn thing he wanted more. He couldn’t make the move, though. This needed to be on her. Miss 3B who wanted to pretend there wasn’t anything more between them when a blind man an ocean away could see it. She fucking sizzled when she was near him, and he couldn’t stay away from her.
“Maybe what we need, sugar, is to get each other out of our systems.”
“Oh yeah?” she asked, her voice a breathy demand and her pupils blown. “You think I should just fuck you in front of Alberto’s house?”
Yes. His dick liked that idea a lot. Down, you horny fucker, it’s not the time or the place for that.
“I like your sense of adventure, but I plan on taking my time when I get you naked, so a quickie in the car doesn’t really work for me.” Even though it just about killed him, he retreated a few inches, dropping his hand to the outside of her thigh. He relished the feel of her smooth skin under his fingers. The little shiver that shook her shoulders was its own kind of reward even if he’d rather be tasting her lips. “However, you should kiss me.”
“Me?” she asked, her dismissive tone betrayed by the way her pink tongue darted out to wet her bottom lip. “Kiss you? Your ego is humongous.”
“That’s not the only thing big about me.” And getting uncomfortably larger by the millisecond.
She let out a shaky breath. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re delaying the inevitable because you are going to kiss me.” All she had to do was lean a little forward. He’d meet her halfway. More than halfway. Shit, his willpower was nonexistent around Everly Ribinski.
She raised one haughty brow. “And why in the world would I do that?”
“If you don’t,” he said softly, his blue eyes glittering knowingly, “you’ll spend the entire lunch wondering when I’m going to kiss you. Because, sugar, it’s going to happen. The question is, do you want to control the where and when, or would you rather leave that up to me?”
She rolled her eyes. “You think I’m so hot for you, I can’t make it through one meal without wanting to jump your bones?”
He smiled. “I think we can’t make it through thirty minutes without fighting about something, and we both know how our arguments are ending lately, regardless of where we are.”
And there it was. “If I do this now, will it shut you up?”
“Probably,” he said, in for a kiss, in for so much more. “It’s hard to talk when my tongue’s busy doing other things.”
Something flickered in her gaze, a decision that he doubted would end his way. “That is true and would be the only thing that would make kissing you worth it.”
And just when he’d prepped himself for her to unsnap her seat belt and reach for the door handle, she surprised him again by closing the distance between them and kissing him. It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t perfunctory. It was hot as hell on the sun. Her tongue was in his mouth, her hands gripping the front of his shirt as if she were afraid she’d fall off the earth if she let go. He knew the feeling. The planet was definitely off-kilter for him, too. Electricity went straight to his dick, and he gripped her thigh. Fuck. More. Just a little more.
He slid his hand up higher, and she widened her legs with a needy whimper. His thumb brushed the damp curls between her legs. God, she was commando. If he’d have known that during the drive, he would have steered them straight off the road while dirty fantasies played in his head. He stroked her curls, not hard enough to part them but enough to make Everly let out a sexy little gasp.
“You naughty girl,” he said, desire thick in his voice. “Where are your panties?”
“Does it matter?” she asked, her breath hot against his neck.
No, it didn’t, not when he was just outside of heaven’s door—when the sound of another car managed to pierce the fog of lust clouding his better judgment. It was enough to remind him of exactly where they were and where his hand was and exactly where he wanted it to be.
It took almost inhuman strength but he pulled back, withdrawing his hand and sitting back against the driver’s seat. Shit. This was an epic case of wrong place, wrong woman if he’d ever experienced one. Sneaking a peek at her out of the corner of his eye, he caught her in nearly the same position as him. Her checks were flushed, her lips swollen, and her eyes closed as she took in a deep breath. Insanity. That was the only explanation, because even knowing he shouldn’t, all he wanted was to do it again.
A hard rap on his window made him jump in his seat and turn toward the noise.
Helene stood outside the car, wry amusement curling up one side of her mouth.
Hoping it didn’t look like what it was, Tyler pressed the button to lower his window.
“If you two are quite done,” Helene said, her tone carefully neutral, “I’d like to go see this fabulous art collection Alberto swears he has.”
And that was that. Without a word to each other, he and Everly got out of the car and walked with Helene to the front door of Ferranti’s house. He opened on the first knock.
“Bellissima.” Ferranti took Helene’s hand, brushing a kiss across her knuckles. “I’m so glad you decided to join us.”
For her part, the older woman glared at the Italian until his head was bent so he couldn’t see her, and then a small little smile curled Helene’s lips. It was enough of a thaw that Tyler opened his mouth to say something, but just at that moment Alberto stood up and the icy frost returned to Helene’s face.
If Alberto noticed the change, he didn’t show it.
Interesting. Tyler tucked away the little factoid about Alberto’s interest in Helene. While there was probably some business use for the information—weak spots could always be exploited—he wouldn’t go that way with it. The Carlyles may not be his family, but they were close, and he wouldn’t pay their kindness back like that. Now if it had been anyone else, he would have taken the information and found a way to use it to further his aims. Great minds weren’t lying when they said that knowledge was power.
Instead, he turned to Tyler and Everly with a huge, welcoming smile. “Please, let’s go into the dining room. Carlo can’t wait to introduce you to his soon-to-be bride, Everly.”
The sun seemed to follow them as they walked from the foyer through a window-filled hall that looked out onto the ocean and into a dining room with gleaming floors, exposed beams, and—of course—massive windows that showed off the best feature of the house, the beach. As they crossed into the room, a tall man who looked like a younger, leaner version of Ferranti hurried over while a woman with a phone pressed to her ear and long dark hair tied in a high ponytail stood near the windows with her back to them. Thanks to the bright rays, he got more of an outline than a full picture of the woman, but something about her set off his warning sirens. It had to be the hair. Ever since he’d walked out of that church, he’d stayed away from any woman who reminded him even vaguely of his ex-fiancée—right up until he stopped being able to keep his lips to himself around Everly.
“It’s been too long. I’m so glad you’re here. I was afraid with my work schedule I wouldn’t get to see you before the wedding,” Carlo said, kissing Everly on both cheeks in a perfectly normal way that still made Tyler want to deliver a Waterbury-style hands-to-yourself message. “You must be Tyler. I’m so happy to meet you after all the good things Papà has said. Let me introduce you to my fiancée, Iren—”
Tyler didn’t need to hear the rest of the name. The dark-haired woman near the windows turned. Her practiced smile cracked the moment she spotted him, but ever the actress, she recovered quickly. Tyler’s palms turned clammy as the rest of him went ice-cold.
“Well, if it isn’t Tyler from across the harbor,” Irena said, her hips swaying as she strutted over from the window. “Why, last I’d heard you’d left Harbor City behind and gone back home. It’s so nice to have you visit us so we can catch up.”
A divot of confusion formed between Carlo’s eyes. “You two know each other?”
“Yes.” It was all he could get out from between his clenched teeth.
For a man who made his living out of seeing what was coming next, he’d never imagined crossing paths with Irena in Alberto Ferranti’s beach house. And she was engaged to his son? Oh, this just got better and better.
There were two ways Irena could go in this situation: be her natural born shrewish self or play the sweetheart. Both had advantages. She could say that he’d done her wrong, which would give her a reason to be a bitch so she could jab the knife in as many times as possible and ruin any hope of Tyler making a deal with Alberto. The advantage for acting as if it had all been mutual and was water under the bridge is that she got to keep her true nature under wraps and keep playing whatever game she had going with Carlo, because there had to be one. He’d been fooled by Irena once, but he’d learned. She’d been born with every advantage money could offer, but a lifetime of being overindulged by her jet-setting parents had turned her selfish and mean early, and she had no interest in being any other way. The truth of it was, Irena liked being a bitch. It really was her happy place.
“Tyler and I were engaged about a million years ago,” Irena said as she hooked her arm through Carlo’s waist and drew in close to him, looking up at the other man as if he were her guardian angel instead of the meal ticket to the land of the rich for the poor heiress who’d burned through her trust in record time. “But don’t get jealous. It was eons ago and it didn’t work out, which was for the best because all that heartbreak led me to you.”
Heartbreak? It took everything he had not to laugh out loud at that bit of theatricality. All she needed was some fake tears and Alberto’s sucker of a son would wrap her up in his arms and carry her off. What a load of crap. Laying out all of Irena’s dirty laundry was tempting, but that wasn’t the Harbor City elite way. As much as he hated seeing the bitch, he couldn’t let it show. That would only endanger the deal. He knew it. She knew it. Movement to his left caught his eye. Helene stood next to Everly looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. The grande dame of Harbor City high society hadn’t ever steered him wrong before. He’d follow her example again—the deal with Alberto was worth more than the satisfaction of causing a scene. He may have grown up with parents who reveled in public spectacle, but he didn’t cause scenes. He’d left that part of his history in Waterbury.
“You’re the ex-fiancée?” Everly asked, stepping away from Helene and toward Irena, her accent thick with disgust and a look on her face that screamed, “You are dead meat.”
Irena’s dark eyes went wide. Obviously, her bitchy cat-fighting skills weren’t up to getting a stomp-walk challenge from an Amazon from a neighborhood in Harbor City that made his blue-collar roots look like a shining beacon on a hill. Okay, there was a part of him that was dying to see what would happen next—maybe a bigger part than he wanted to admit—but it couldn’t happen.
He intercepted Everly before she could make Irena pee in her pants, slipping his arm around her waist. “Everly Ribinski, may I introduce you to Irena Iverson.”
Irena held out her hand, the left one with the gargantuan diamond solitaire on her ring finger. “Is that a Riverside accent? I just love it. Too bad it’s so unusual for this area.” The women shook hands like enemies on the battlefield. It was polite, but just. “Carlo has told me so much about you that I was a little worried, but I see that you’re with Tyler and that’s just perfect. I’m sure you two have so much more in common than Tyler and I ever did.”
Yeah, things like not trying to sleep with your fiancée’s best friend on your wedding night. God, he hoped Carlo didn’t have friends who were richer than him—or then again, maybe he did. The idiot had the same made-stupid-by-love look Tyler had worn before he’d figured out what a deceitful hag Irena was. That’s what happened to a person when emotion and passion mixed: temporary insanity, which was why keeping emotion out of it with the flip of a coin was the right move to make on the chessboard of life.
Everly must have sensed the tension locking his body tight because she softened her own stance, stretched to her tiptoes, and brushed a kiss across his cheek.
“We’re like pasta and sauce; we go together,” she said, her tone as light as the look she sent him was serious. Then she blinked, her face muscles relaxed into an easy grin, and she turned toward the others. “So I guess it was lucky that you two didn’t work out because of…”
Tyler’s heart stopped.
“Reasons,” Everly finished after a pause that lasted a heartbeat longer than necessary.
Alberto may not know the reasons for that extra breath of Everly’s, but he sure picked up on it. He stood next to Helene, his gaze going from Everly to Irena to him. It might take a little digging, but the older man would figure it out. He hadn’t created a hotel empire by being dumb—or letting the rest of the world in on what he was thinking, it seemed, because the expression on his face went back to that of happy host.
“Come, everyone.” He opened his arms and gestured toward the table, already laid out with food. “Let’s sit. Mangia, mangia.”
Tyler made sure to sit directly across from Irena. As Michael Corleone put it, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. It made sense—just as long as he could keep his inner impulse to go all Waterbury tapped down and distract Everly from going into attack mode, then they’d make it through lunch without sinking the mission of connecting with Ferranti. It couldn’t be easier. The devil on his shoulder laughed. Yeah, and Everly isn’t kissable at all.