CHAPTER ONE
“YOU’RE A LITTLE bit curious though, right?”
Ivy stared across the room, past the women and men in impossibly beautiful dresses and suits, past the carved marble statue of Winston Churchill in all his cherubic glory, to the bay window that jutted out above Queens Gate.
“No,” she lied through her teeth, wondering how someone dressed in a ten thousand pound suit could manage to look so … savage. His size? He was, after all, nothing like the elegant bankers and lawyers that filled out the poker room of the high-end, high-stakes private casino. He was big. Tall and broad, it was a body that could undoubtedly terrorise as well as pleasure with equal strength.
Pleasure?
Her mouth went dry as she turned her attention to his face. Not handsome in a traditional way. He was too angular. Too harsh. Cheekbones that looked set in defiance to his nose, as though his face were constantly at war with itself; eyes that were the colour of battle-hardened steel surrounded by thick, clumped lashes. A mouth that was wide and deliberate sat above a jaw line that was almost square. Okay, maybe he was a little bit handsome in a traditional way.
“You want to get stuffy old whatsisname out of your head once and for all? A night with that guy would do the trick.” Lisette’s accent was broad, shaped by life in Las Vegas. So too were her attitudes.
Although, Ivy had to admit her cousin had a point. Steve certainly hadn’t had any issues in moving on from her in double quick time. His engagement to the stunning in-a-vintage-Kate-Moss-Sienna-Miller-bohemian-off-to-Glasto kind of way had come only two months after he’d moved out of their lovely little home on the edge of the Thames.
Two months! After ten years together, he could have at least had the decency of waiting a bit.
“He is seriously sexy,” Lisette murmured, her blonde head tilted to the side and her eyes busy scraping over him as if mentally removing his suit.
“Yeah, and given the chance he’d choose you over me any day. Men like that always do.”
“Whatever,” Lisette shook her in disagreement.
“You’re all Jessica Rabbit-slash-Marilyn Monroe and I’m …”
“Audrey Hepburn at her Holly Golightly best.” Lisette was emphatic, her eyes sweeping over Ivy’s beautiful face, with her wide-set, almond-shaped eyes, the colour of poured caramel, a nose with a little dip at its end and a tiny hint of freckles across the bridge, and the kind of dimples Lisette had always envied, scored deep into Ivy’s cheeks whenever she smiled or thought mischievous thoughts. Ivy was beautiful, but there was an ethereal grace to her that transcended simple looks. She was elegant and refined, and utterly captivating.
“Come on,” Ivy muttered, shifting her gaze to one of the poker games and watching with no interest and even less comprehension. “This is boring. Let’s go.”
“Nuh uh. How often do you get to come to one of these places?”
“Never, and with good reason,” Ivy couldn’t help laughing. “The drinks are exorbitantly priced, labels I’ve never heard of, I know nothing about poker, and I feel like I’m about to break something!” She lifted the delicate champagne flute she held to emphasise her point. Its cut crystal bowl was so thin it felt almost as though made from lace.
Lisette grinned. “Yeah, well, I’m having fun. And you said this weekend was about me, me, me.”
“Actually, I think I said it was about showing you around.”
“Right,” Lisette nodded. “So show me around here first.”
“Well,” Ivy pretended to think about that. She nodded towards the closest table and lowered her voice. “Here we have some of London’s most pretentious snobs in their natural habitat. That smell in the air is eau de entitlement mingled with lingering notes of the City and just-minted hundred-pound notes.”
Lisette laughed. “You act as though you’re not earning a fortune!”
Ivy shook her head, though it was true, her recent promotion to a management role at GB Radio and TV had earned her a nice little salary hike. “These people sleep on pillows of money and bathe in champagne.”
“Sounds heavenly,” Lisette blinked her long dark lashes and turned her attention back to the room. “He’s looking at you,” she mumbled through lips that were held intentionally still, in a bad attempt at ventriloquism.
“He is not,” Ivy said with a roll of her dark eyes, moving her attention back to the guy with the mop of black hair that fell to the crisped collar of his shirt.
“Oh, shit.”
Because he was in fact looking at her. More specifically, at her pale skin revealed just above her breasts and shown in its natural ceramic state by the red dress she’d chosen to wear when Lisette had sprung this plan on her at the last minute. His eyes dropped lower then, to the curve of her breasts. Ivy was under no illusions with regards to her figure. Where Lisette was all curves and dimples, Ivy was tall and slim, her cleavage a disappointing non-event.
Except that wasn’t how she felt under this man’s determined, insouciant inspection. Her skin flamed beneath the silk of her dress as his eyes travelled slowly, purposefully lower, to the slight swell of her hips and then, where the dress ended several inches above her knees. Thanking the heavens she’d shaved that morning, it felt almost as though his fingertips were running lightly over her skin. Goosebumps travelled the distance.
His eyes lurched upwards, slicing through hers as though with a blade. She startled and desire pooled in her stomach. Or was it anxiety? She smiled out of habit. When someone made eye contact with you, whether in Waitrose or the post office, you smiled back. Ivy was one of those rare people who even smiled at others on the tube, finding it impossible to curb that natural instinct.
This man apparently didn’t share that sentiment. His lips stayed as they were, a gash in his face that made her wonder what it would be like to be kissed by him. Those lips looked like they knew what they were doing.
The thought bloomed colour in her cheeks.
“He’s really hot,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth, forcing herself to turn away from him, to face Lisette. But she could feel him in her peripheral vision and heat was spreading through her limbs, making her want him, need him, with an intensity that was utterly foreign.
Panicked, she spun around bodily, to block him from view.
And knocked Lisette’s drink in the process, so that ice cold Scotch sloshed out in slow-motion and bloomed across the front of her dress.
“Crap!” Lisette said, loud enough that Ivy felt a ripple of curiosity form in the people closest.
“It’s fine. It was my fault,” Ivy promised. “Now can we go?”
Lisette pulled her lower lip between her teeth, and her pink lipstick was so determined that it didn’t budge from its place as gift-wrap across her mouth. “There’s got to be a bathroom here with a dryer.”
“Great, and I’ll smell like a distillery all night.”
Lisette winked. “That’ll block out the lingering aroma of eau de aristocracy, yeah?”
Ivy shook her head, but her smile was irrepressible. “I’m going to give you one more hour and then we’re going to dinner.”
Lisette rolled her blue eyes. “Not hungry.”
“I know a great Indian place around the corner,” Ivy bribed, pinpointing her cousin’s food weak-spot with ease.
“Yeah, yeah, maybe.” Lisette lifted the remainder of her scotch to her lips and threw it back. “Bring us back drinks when you’re dry.”
Ivy nodded. “I won’t be long.”
She sucked in a breath and turned around, her eyes instantly pinpointing the location of the Gorgeous Man. Disappointment was instant. He wasn’t there.
So? What had she been going to do? Talk to him? As if. She cut through the crowds, her mind distracted.
She lifted a finger and toyed with her earlobe, twirling the diamond earrings Steve had given her while imagining just what she’d have said to that hunk of yum. “You really fill out that suit well.” “You look like a Greek God come to life.” “Let’s go back to your place.”
She shook her head stiffly and stepped into the hallway that had a golden sign indicating the facilities were somewhere down the rabbit hole.
“You’re wet.” The words were a low rumble and she froze immediately, her eyes jerking up from the marbled floor, clashing with his automatically.
Up close, they weren’t just steel. There were flecks of copper and gold around the dark black pupil. They were stunning eyes. “Huh?” His voice had been just like it should have been. Coarse and masculine with a sense of authority even in those two small words.
“You’re all wet,” he drawled with the same sardonic insolence that was conveyed by the way he’d draped his frame casually against the wall.
“Oh. My dress,” she replied belatedly.
“What else?” His lips were lifting in the corner and her stomach rolled.
“You’re laughing at me?”
He nodded, a slow, droll movement that did nothing to settle her nerves. “Partly.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been staring at me all night and now you look like a rabbit in the headlights.” The more he spoke, the more she could detect his accent – Italian? Greek? Spanish? Something summery and spiced, and completely sensual.
Oh, hell. She was lost. She fluttered her eyes closed for a second, sucking in a deep breath, then looked at him with obvious speculation. “Yeah, well, you’re kind of stareable,” she said honestly. “But I guess you know that,” she added for good measure. Because he must, surely, be aware of the effect he had on women.
He pushed up from the wall, taking a single step towards her, his dark eyes locked to hers as if with an actual physical tether. She couldn’t look away. Not that she wanted to.
He was close. So close she caught the slight hint of orange peel and clove and her gut kicked with growing awareness. “You’re pretty stareable, too.”
What was she doing?
Steve swam before her eyes. Steve with his dependable smile. His chubby cheeks. His tuft of blonde hair that he liked to style in a spiky way that had gone out of fashion at least a decade earlier.
“Then I guess I should say it’s a pleasure to stare at you,” she said. It had meant to be a flippant take on ‘nice to meet you’, but his expression was so serious, his body so close, his warmth an actual wall that was beginning to build around her, that nothing felt remotely flippant.
“And if I want to do more than stare?”
Immediately Steve disappeared, like a balloon that had been pricked with a sharp needle. This man was there instead. No suit. Just him. Steve had always been clean-shaven. This guy had a stubbled chin and she wondered absentmindedly if it would feel strange to be kissed by him.
Ivy had no problems with one-night stands. True, she’d never had one, but that was only because she’d met the love of her life while still a high school teenager. In honesty, the thought of going home with someone she hardly knew and using their body for pleasure was all kinds of appealing. Especially given the black hole of recent sexual activity.
One night, and she’d never have to see him again. She didn’t even need to know his name! Wasn’t that how it worked?
I think that’s prostitution, a serious voice chimed in from the still-thinking part of her brain.
“Such as?” She heard herself murmur, moving a step backwards, until she collided with the hard, white wall behind her.
He stepped too, and lifted his hands to either side of her, pressing them against the wall. She was trapped by his body, and she wanted to run her hands over her human cage and feel every single inch of him.
“My apartment is around the corner,” he said, and he brought his mouth close to her ear, so that the warmth of his breath fanned her. “And I think we could do some excellent staring there.”
She swallowed but her throat was thick and dry. He was so good at this; he flirted as though it were an Olympic sport and he the reining gold medallist. “Yeah?”
His laugh was a rumble that sent goosebumps scampering across her body. “Yeah.” And now he dropped a finger to her shoulder and swirled invisible circles over her exposed skin.
She groaned softly at the touch that was both thrilling and confusing. The touch that was completely foreign. Steve had never touched her like this – as though he couldn’t help himself.
Steve.
Steve who had left her.
Steve who was getting married.
Steve who would soon be another woman’s husband.
He’d have a fit to know Ivy had been with someone like this. Someone so intensely masculine and sexy.
Or would he even care?
He’d moved on.
She should too. A tremor of excitement started at the base of her spine, sprinting across her body. She stared at him, and anticipation looped in her stomach.
“Come with me,” he murmured, putting a hand beneath her elbow and guiding her back down the corridor, towards the casino. It was happening so quickly and every cell in her body wanted to go with him, but it was reckless and out of character and she was spending the weekend with Lisette.
“I can’t,” she said, true regret in the statement. “I’m here with someone.”
“The blonde?”
“Yeah. My cousin Lisette.”
“And who are you, Lisette’s cousin?”
“Ivy,” she looked up at him and pulled away a little bit. “I’m going this way.” She nodded down the hallway. “I have to dry this.”
He studied her thoughtfully for a minute. “What are you drinking?”
“Some weird champagne I’ve never heard of.”
Rafe’s lips twisted in subdued amusement. The cru was from his own estate. Only a small vintage was produced each year, and he stocked his small interests with it.
“It was really nice,” she added. “I just hadn’t heard of it. Which is strange, really, because I love champagne.”
“Let me get you another.”
A drink with a stranger? Totally normal. How many times had she gone out with her colleagues and ended up chatting to random strangers as the night wore on? Ivy loved meeting people. This was no different. Except it was, because he was. He was sinfully gorgeous.
“And for your friend?”
“My cousin,” Ivy corrected. “Scotch.” She grimaced as she looked down at her stained dress. “But you don’t have to…”
“It would be my pleasure.” He brought himself closer and lowered his voice to a gravelled whisper. “As would many other things I’m thinking of right now.”
Ivy swallowed. His meaning was clear. He was hers for the taking. Did she want him?
It was a stupid question that mocked her as she stood in the bathroom, crouched at the knees to get her dress in the right position to dry off. It was warm across her chest, and before long, the mark began to fade, leaving only a faint indication of watermark against the silky fabric.
It’s not working. I just don’t love you anymore.
The words had been circling through her mind for six damned months. That shock of coming home, planning what she was going to cook for dinner - sea bass with lime butter. Ivy’s biggest predicament had been whether she’d serve it with roast baby potatoes or creamy mash.
I don’t understand. You’ve always loved me.
In fact, Steve had always said how lucky he felt to be with Ivy. You’re too good for me, he’d complained time and time again. Look how bloody hot you are and I’m all paunchy and balding already.
Ivy hadn’t noticed those things.
She’d loved all of him.
The eyes that met hers in the reflection of the bathroom were wet with unshed tears. Her heart was hurting.
Six months!
When would she wake up and not think of Steve? When would she stop waiting for him to realise he’d made a mistake and come home to her? When would she get rid of the knick-knacks that were his? The model DeLorean because he’d loved Back to the Future. The alarm that you stopped by throwing basketballs at its centre. All these things littered her home as though he would come back at any point and life would resume.
But it wouldn’t.
He had a new life.
And he was happy.
She knew because his fiancé was all over social media like a rash and Ivy wasn’t above a bit of a late night, wine-induced trawl. It was always misery inducing, and she always regretted it the next day.
So why not have something different to regret?
Something new and exciting and, she suspected, infinitely more satisfying than stalking her way through loved-up images of the kind of engagement party her Steve would have found insufferably twee?
She was twenty-four years old, and single for the first time in her adult life.
And a really hot guy wanted to take her home.
She stood up straight, and pulled her dark hair over her shoulder. It was a stain on her pale skin and the blood-red dress.
Without giving herself a moment to question the wisdom of what she was about to do, she strode out of the bathroom and back to the main room of the elite casino, desire and lost-pride firing the urgency of her step.
He was talking to Lisette. He’d said something that had made her laugh, because her blonde head was tilted back, her big red lips open in amusement.
Jealousy and uncertainty spread through her gut, but she’d had two glasses of champagne and they were her confidence’s armour. They wrapped her back up, keeping her footing self-assured. When she was close enough, she put a hand lightly on his back. Just enough to draw his interested gaze to her face.
“Something funny?”
“Hey! Rafe Santoro, this is Ivy Hennessey, my delightful cousin and occasional partner-in-crime.”
“Why do I think you two would be quite the formidable crime duo?” He asked with a sexy smile as he reached for a glass of champagne and handed it to Ivy. She took it, purposefully wrapping her fingers across his and enjoying the sizzle of heat that sparked instantly between them.
It was different to how she’d felt with Steve, but then, they’d been together forever. They were comfortable lovers. It had never been steamy. In fact, with the benefit of hindsight, she saw that they’d been more like friends.
“Because you’re obviously very smart,” Lisette winked and then threw her scotch back in one go, wincing as it burned through her. She stood, running a hand down her front and smoothing out the fabric of the black bodycon dress. “Ives, a friend just texted to see if I can meet up. I’m going to head off.”
Ivy shook her head slowly, a smile on her lips. “You really are incorrigible.”
“So I’ve been told.” Lisette leaned closer, pulling her cousin into an embrace and kissing her cheek. “Be safe,” she whispered. “And have fun.”
“You too,” Ivy said as Lisette straightened, and could only watch as the blonde sauntered away, her head bent over her cell as she tapped out a reply to whomever this friend was.
“So…” Ivy looked up at the handsome stranger – no longer a stranger.
Rafe Santoro.
The name was familiar to her, but in a foggy way that might have been just because it suited him so absolutely perfectly.
“So…Let’s go,” he said darkly, his intention formed and set.
Her laugh was a sexy husk. “You literally just got us drinks.”
He reached over and took the flute from her, placing it on the table beside them and then chasing her now-empty hand. He laced his fingers with hers, lifting them to his lips. His breath was warm as he placed a single kiss against the back of her hand. “I know. Let’s go,” he repeated, and a frisson of anticipation warmed her from the inside out. This was the time to decide who she wanted to be.
A woman desperately pining for a man who no longer wanted her?
Or the kind of woman who wasn’t afraid to enjoy life?
“Let’s go,” she nodded, and there wasn’t a single doubt in her mind as she said it.