An Offer He Can't Refuse (19 page)

"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 die 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.

"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 Téa 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 SweeT ARTS. 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. Wearing 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.