A Gentleman in the Street (37 page)

Wikipedia was a freaking
fountain
of information.

“You've played here?”

The question was posed innocently enough, but she thought there was a bite of mockery in it.
You have the means to play in my sandbox?

Her spine stiffened. “No. I've never been here before today. I meant it seems nice.”

“Thank you. You don’t live here, I take it.”

“I live in San Francisco now.”

“San Francisco? That’s far from New England.”

“So’s Las Vegas.”

His lip curled. “Touché. But I had no real ties to the East Coast. I’m surprised you were able to leave your beloved family behind.”

The knot between her shoulders seized up. “I see them on the holidays.”

“That’s enough for them? Hmm.”

The rush of defensive words beat in her head, dying to pour out of her mouth. The girl she’d been would have let them spew. The woman she was now had learned some semblance of self-control. “Yes. We miss each other, but I like living out here.” Plus, she had some newly discovered family within a day’s drive, or a short plane ride. Right here in Vegas, even.
Coincidence, you’re a cruel bitch.

He stared at her, those black eyes unsettling. “You’re looking well.” His glance was a quick one, up and down her body. Her skin still felt seared.

“Thank you.” She fought the urge to fidget with her clothes. The simple grey sheath dress paired with a dark blazer was her go-to classy outfit for when she needed to disguise her normally artsy style and meet with a client or a gallery owner. She’d needed confidence, though, so she’d added one of her favorite necklaces, multiple strands of coiled, interconnected hammered gold that hung between her breasts. “You are as well. Have to say, I never saw you as a businessman. And running a casino, of all things.”

When they’d broken up, he’d been taking college classes part-time, so though he was three years older, academically he’d still been around her level. Every other spare minute he’d had had been spent working: a bookstore, so he could learn during his breaks; construction, so he could fall back on a trade; a waiter, for the free meals. Not to mention anything else he could get his hands on.

Her physicist parents hadn’t been able to stand that.
Tatiana, you need a boy who will put his education first.

“You know how much I like to be unpredictable.”

“How did you get into it?”

He just looked at her.

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “If you don’t mind my asking.” She should probably get down to the purpose of her visit, but small talk wasn’t a bad thing. Plus…she was curious. Wildly curious.

Wyatt shrugged. “I came to Vegas with some guys and won a shitload of cash in a poker game.”

She raised her eyebrows, not expecting that.

He tapped the side of his head. “Turns out I have a knack for cards. Used the money to buy into bigger and bigger games. Ended up meeting some people who had more money than me and an interest in investing in a place here in town. It worked out.”

“Yeah, it did. What luck.” And what a deliberate downplay, she was certain, of the amount of work and energy Wyatt had poured into this venture.

“You make your own luck. This city is good for that sort of thing.”

She sure hoped so.

“And what is it you do?”

The question was no doubt a polite response to her own inquiry. Still, she perked up at his interest. “An artist. I design jewelry.”

He cocked his head. “Really? Last I heard you were a bio major. Big change.”

It had been a big change—and Wyatt knew very well she had only been a bio major to please her adoptive parents. “I dropped out of college during the last semester of my senior year,” she said, keeping her voice even. She refused to fall back into that need to prove him wrong about her so-called slavish devotion to her family.

Even if he had been right all those years ago. No nineteen- or twenty-year-old wanted to be told their parents controlled them.

He turned away from her and walked to the wet bar. He poured a glass of amber liquid and swallowed it back in a single gulp. He immediately helped himself to another serving. Well. Maybe he wasn’t quite as cool as he looked.

He faced her and raised the glass. “Sorry. Drink?”

“No. Thank you.”

Wyatt took another sip, slower this time. “My surprise over what you do for a living is surpassed by the fact that you’re here at all.”

“I know.” She hesitated before launching into the speech she’d carefully prepared on the plane ride over. “Thank you for seeing me. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but I want—”

“Sit.”

“Um.”

He gestured to the brown leather sofas arranged on the far side of the room. “If you like. You can sit.”

“Yes. Okay.” So civilized. They were so very civilized. She crossed to the little seating arrangement and perched on the edge of the loveseat. He strode over, and she tried to not notice how the fabric of his pants clung to his thighs. Tried. And failed.

Hold steady, girl.

She breathed in and then out. The material of the couch was warm against the backs of her thighs. Her skirt had ridden up when she sat down. She shifted, wishing she could stand and adjust the fabric but not wanting to call attention to the length of bare leg that was exposed.

Too late. The attention had been garnered. His gaze dipped over her legs before gliding up over her chest.

She could easily clear her throat and put him in his place.

You wanted him to see you still had it…

So she didn’t.

He glanced up from his leisurely perusal. Not a trace of shame crossed his face when he realized he’d been caught ogling her. He sat back in his seat. “You were saying?”

What had she been saying?

“You want…” he prompted, his voice caressing the two words.

Yes. She wanted. A hazard of her fair complexion: blushes were too obvious. “I wanted to speak with you. I have a proposition for you.”

“Is that right?” A slow smile crossed his thin, slightly cruel lips. “That sounds…interesting.”

“Not that kind of proposition.”

The smirk spread. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Her, on her knees. Hands bound. Him, holding her head steady.

That kind of proposition.

She tried to banish the images—the memories—from her mind by focusing on something else. But all she could see was
him
. His wide shoulders, his powerful legs, the masculine beauty of his face.

“I found my birth family,” she blurted out in an effort to say something, anything that wasn’t
Can I feel your biceps?

If the abrupt words startled him, he didn’t show it. His gaze turned to his glass. The ice in the drink clinked together.

“Did you now? Congratulations.”

“Thank you.”

“That must have been a big deal for you.” He rolled his glass between his hands. “You spoke of it a lot as a teenager.”

A lot was an understatement. Her parents, who had adopted her when she’d been a few days old, were as kind and loving as they were infuriating and meddling, but she’d always felt vaguely out of place with them. She was petite; they were sturdy and tall. She was a dreamy, impulsive artist; they were practical scientists. Discovering her roots had been a frequent fantasy.

“It happened recently. About a year ago. My brother—my biological half-brother—he was the one who found me.”

“What’s it like to be a sister?”

The easy conversation, too, was familiar. Tatiana’s stiff posture relaxed as she settled into the luscious couch. “Weird. Normal.”

“That makes sense.”

She gave a half laugh and struggled to clarify her answer. “I’ve always been an only child. And then there’s someone in your life who looks like you and automatically cares about you on that basis alone, before they even know you.” Still bemused by it all, she shrugged. “He’s just…family. It was right. New, but right. Know what I mean?”

“Maybe. I’ve felt that way a time or two.” He studiously avoided looking at her. “Never about blood relatives.”

Tatiana sobered. The place they’d grown up in was small enough to have a designated town drunk, and Wyatt’s father had been it. After his wife had died, he’d abused his son emotionally until the day Wyatt turned eighteen and moved into his own apartment.

Talk about his home life had been high on the list of taboo topics. Their fights over him not allowing her to meet or even talk about his dad? Epic.

All you could freak out about was your hurt over him not sharing. You barely gave a thought to why he would keep something like the pain he’d endured private.
Ugh. Relationship hindsight was brutal. Sympathy and regret made her voice scratchy. “Yeah.”

“So. No other new relatives?”

Her lips twisted. “None that matter. My brother was raised mostly by his father, which from what I understand was a good thing. His—our—mother lives in L.A. She…she wasn’t interested in meeting with me.” Or, really, even speaking to her. Her childish dreams of becoming biffles with her birth mom had died a swift and nasty death. She’d shaken it off, helped by her brother’s delight in getting to know her.

“I’m sorry.” Wyatt took a sip of his drink. The slight jiggle of his knee caught her attention, unusual for such a controlled guy.

Now that she thought about it, his shoulders did look tense. That was strange. She was the one who should be anxious.

She spoke a little faster, some of her ease vanishing. “It’s her loss. But my brother. He’s a sweet boy. He’s got a really big heart and a loving personality. He has a wife and a small baby, and they’ve invited me for Thanksgiving and driven to San Francisco to see me—” She shook her head, unable to express the wonder of this blessing that had unexpectedly come into her life. “They’ve been—are—wonderful.”

“That’s good. I’m happy for you.” He glanced at his watch. The move was discreet, but Tatiana caught it.

She needed to get to the point. The poor guy was probably wondering what, if anything, all her bleating had to do with him, and rightly so. Tatiana bit her lip. “Well, you see. It turns out that my little brother—and you’re going to laugh about what a small world this is—his name is Ronald West. I understand he used to work for you.”

Oh. His fingers tightening around the glass until the knuckles turned white was not a good sign. “Indeed.” His voice was soft. “He not only worked for me. He stole from me.”

“I know.” She licked her lips. “But if you only knew…his wife’s mother was sick, and they went into debt. He was desperate.” She didn’t understand the level of desperation it would require to commit embezzlement, but despair had been obvious in Caitlin’s voice when the younger woman had called her yesterday, hysterical.
It’s all my fault, Tatiana. He did it for me. I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes to jail.

“I don’t know if you remember this, Tatiana, but I had a few desperate times in my past. Yet I never stole.”

Tatiana flinched. “I remember. I know. But you have to understand, Ronald’s not like you.” Ronald was actually frighteningly similar to her, with her tendency toward dreaminess and impulsiveness, but magnified about tenfold. Not for the first time, Tatiana was grateful she’d had her strong, pragmatic parents as role models. “He’s not a criminal, not at heart. He knows he made a mistake.” Or at least Tatiana assumed he knew that. It had been hard to understand what he was saying on the phone. His tears kept getting in the way.

Except his boss’s name. That had come through loud and clear. She’d been disbelieving at first, but a Google search had turned up the fact that yes, her Wyatt Caine was indeed
the
Wyatt Caine.

After her third glass of wine, she’d booked her flight to Vegas. Had it been two in the morning? Three? It was a little blurry.

“He sent you to plead his case.” Wyatt shook his head. “Hiding behind a woman’s skirts? That doesn’t convince me he’s a paragon.”

“He doesn’t know I’m here. Or that we knew each other.” She’d come straight from the airport to see the man Ron had stolen from. The man she oh so coincidentally had slept with once upon a time.

“So, what? He told you he was in trouble, so you decided you should use the fact that we’ve fucked before to your advantage—”

Sorry, had he said something past the word
fucked
? ’Cause if he had, she hadn’t processed it. The word sounded harsh and vulgar on his lips, the way it should be. The way she liked it.

Her hands fluttered, and she grasped them together, stilling their motion. “I was surprised to discover who you were. I didn’t know until yesterday.”

“I wasn’t hiding.”

“Neither was I,” Tatiana snapped, suddenly annoyed. “Yes, I may have come here instead of going through a lawyer because of our past relationship, but it’s not so crazy that this is the first time we’ve spoken after all these years. It’s not like you ever came looking for me after we broke up either.”

They froze, and Tatiana wished she could recall the words. Needy, grasping words, just lying between them. Wyatt captured her gaze, his black eyes boring into her soul. “I didn’t realize you wanted me to contact you.”

Her face felt stiff and frozen. “I didn’t. That is. I never thought about it.” She lifted her chin, determined to get through this. “And I know you never thought about me after we broke up. I moved on. You moved on.”

“Until now.”

“Yes. Until now.”

“So tell me. How exactly were you going to use my nostalgic memories of you to get me to drop the charges against your brother? Was I supposed to be overcome with lust at the sight of your body? Remember the way it felt to sink my cock inside your virgin cunt?”

She trembled. With outrage. It was totally outrage.

He leaned closer, placing his glass on the table between them. The clink was too loud, making her flinch. “I do remember that, sweetheart. You were so tight. Your eighteenth birthday, right? I don’t know how I waited that long.”

No. She wasn’t going to stand here mute while he ripped into her. “You waited that long because my father would have killed you for touching me before that.”

“It might have been worth it.” He inched forward, farther into her space. “So what’s in the script, Tatiana? Aren’t you supposed to be begging prettily for your brother’s life?”