An Offer He Can't Refuse (20 page)

"Nonsense," Doug replied. "Johnny didn't bring a beautiful woman all the way here to keep her in a corner."

Yes, Johnny did. Or at least he thought it was the smarter place for her. For him. But he grinned at her. "Don't tell me you don't have a soft touch, Contessa."

Which meant they were partners for the first round. They were facing off against Doug and Phillip, though, just the people he wanted to pump for info. He considered how to bring up the subject as they moved into position. Téa walked past him and his head automatically turned, a hound dog following the scent. God, she had a primo ass.

She glanced over her shoulder. "What?"

He'd lost his train of thought again. "I—" Damn it! He was supposed to be planning how to bring up Giovanni. Then he closed his eyes. Double damn it. With Téa six feet to his left, how the hell could he get away with a casual inquiry of a decades-old murder? He'd already told her it didn't bother him.

"I'll serve," Phillip called out.

Johnny took his racket in a firm grip. No problem, he told himself. It was more than fifty-fifty that they'd bump Téa out at the fifth point, leaving her on ice-cube watch.

Their host's shallow lob dropped on the line between her and Johnny. She lunged for it, and he watched, hypnotized by the way her skirt fluttered with the movement, lifting to reveal her round butt cheeks cupped by tight little shorts.

She missed the ball.

He didn't. Because he was still ogling her body, it caught him full on the mouth.

And because his lip was bleeding, the one who got icecube watch was him.

Megan rotated into the game, leaving him with neighbor Clark. Johnny held a cold glass of rum and coconut juice against his mouth and tried making small talk without moving his lips.

His mangled "what is it you do" must have come out "ut is it uu do" because Clark stared at him with a puzzled expression instead of answering.

Johnny tried again. "Ur jod?"
Your job
? Close.

"Your job," the other man said, snapping his fingers. "
That's
how I know you."

"Hm?" Now Johnny was puzzled.

"The World Series of Poker. Champion. Two years running. You're not just Johnny. You're Johnny
Magee
."

Oh, shit
. Like most everyone else who played cards seriously, he went into tournament play with a disguise of sorts. Ball cap and smoky sunglasses to keep his expression as indecipherable as possible. Poker tells weren't only written on the face, but there was a reason that the eyes were called the windows to the soul.

"My God, I recorded your play at the final table last year. I've watched that round a dozen times," Clark crowed. "Damn, and here you are. A professional poker champion."

"You are?" said a new voice. Téa's voice.

Talk about the eyes being the windows to the soul. There was no doubt her soul was surprised… and suspicious.

He quickly shook his head. "No' po. Hoddy." When that sounded completely mangled, even to his own ears, he took the glass away from his mouth. "Not pro," he enunciated. "Hobby."

Megan was calling from the tennis court, forcing Clark to leave the terrace and take his turn. Forcing Johnny to face Téa, alone.

My father cautioned me against gamblers a long time ago
. She'd said that to him, the very first time they'd spoken.

"Hobby," he said again, wincing as he tasted blood welling again.

Her eyes went from suspicious to concerned and she grabbed up a napkin, then stepped close to hold it against his mouth. "I didn't realize it was this bad."

It was good, was what it was, with her exotic face turned up to his, and her stellar breasts dressed in SweeTART green just a breath away. His free hand moved down to cup her ass, all by itself.

"Kiss it better," he whispered.

Her lashes swept down, feathers against the skin of her cheek that glowed in the lights that suddenly switched on as the evening darkened. "Is this the simple part?"

"Yes," he said.
Whatever she wants to call it. Simple. Necessary. Now
.

She went on tiptoe, the curve of her butt snuggling into the palm of his hand. He set his glass aside and cupped the other sweet cheek, pulling her against him. Her mouth gave him one of those prissy kisses, all tiny smack.

He tightened his fingers. "Don't tease."

Her lashes lifted and her eyes were as hot as he felt inside. She smiled. "I'm trying to be gentle. Earlier you questioned my soft touch."

He groaned. Squeezed his fingers again.

He only got another prissy smack. "So what's this about gambling?" she asked.

Careful, Johnny. Careful
, he warned himself. He tried shrugging without losing his hold on her. "I've been living in Las Vegas, Contessa. It's a given. We slip quarters into slot machines like other people put 'em into parking meters."

"Is that right." She slid her tongue across his bottom lip.

Sliding everything but her straight out of his mind. He lifted her higher against him and slanted his head to get himself a real kiss.

A voice called up from the court, stilling his movement. "Johnny? You up to playing?"

Oh, yeah, he was up to playing. With Téa. To hell with sixteen-year-old secrets when until now she'd been hiding that bootylicious butt and let-me-at-'em breasts. He'd play investigator with her all night long.

"Go ahead, Doug," he called back. "I'm still nursing my lip."

"Then we need Téa."

And just like that, the little flirt slipped out of his arms.

Smiling, her skirt twitched over her butt as she sashayed off.

Maybe he liked her better dressed as a librarian, he thought, downing the damn glass of rum and juice as Phillip bounded

" up the steps to the terrace.

"Let's whip up another batch," the older man said, smiling as if he hadn't just ripped away Johnny's fun.

For the sake of politeness, though, he pretended an interest as Phillip went behind the bar and pulled fruit juices and booze out of a minifridge. 'This is my special recipe," he said, dumping ice in a blender.

"Yeah?" Johnny craned his neck to see how the play was going. With any luck, Téa would be back soon, and in his arms.

"Actually, it came from someone else. A man who lived in your house, as a matter of fact."

"Really," Johnny replied absently, watching Téa bend over to pick up a ball. Her partner Doug was watching her too, and he wondered if the other guy was really gay, or if he might just be straightened out by that one glimpse of such a fine, fine female tush.

Phillip lowered his voice. "His name was Giovanni Martelli."

Johnny closed his eyes, then ground his teeth as the blender pulverized the ice. He'd almost let the opportunity slip away! The blender went silent, and Johnny swung toward the bar. 'The Martelli who was murdered at my house?"

Phillip lifted a brow. "You know?"

"California real estate law. Full disclosure and all that."

The other man continued to fuss with the drinks, so Johnny prodded. "Did you know him well?"

"Well enough. He put in that little course and I'd go over there on Sunday afternoons and play a few rounds with him. Doug, unfortunately, abhors golf."

Phillip wasn't bubbling over with details, but Johnny couldn't tell if it was because he didn't know any more or if he was reluctant to share them. He accepted another frosty glass of the rum concoction, and stared into it. One of his father's other legacies, he thought, besides the mystery behind his death.

He looked up. "This Giovanni, he was a car salesman, is that right?"

Phillip poured out more glasses of the drink. "He appeared to be doing well at a dealership down the valley in La Quinta. Luxury sedans."

Which jived with what Johnny remembered.

"Maybe the motive was robbery then," he wondered aloud, suddenly questioning if the police had thoroughly investigated that angle. At the time, his mother had whisked him back to Yakima, so most of what he knew was secondhand. He'd tried to find the original detective on the case, but the man had long since retired and moved to no-one-knew-where. "Were there other—"

"Nothing was missing," Phillip said, walking nearer. "And we've never had any kind of trouble around here, before or since." Tilting the pitcher, he topped off Johnny's glass. "Is the murder bothering you?"

"No." Not until 1:09:09 that night. "Just curious, is all."

"Me too," Phillip admitted. "Even after the rumors that he was involved with the Mafia and that he assassinated one of their own. I liked Giovanni Martelli. He was impossible
not
to like, especially in the mood he was in during the last few months of his life."

"What kind of mood was that?"

"There was a woman."

Which confirmed what his father had told him as well. "Do you remember her name?"

"I didn't know it. I just knew Giovanni was in love with her."

"Sure doesn't sound to me like a guy who'd take the risk of commiting a crime against the Mafia."
Murder
. That's the part that never seemed to stick. That Johnny didn't want to stick. He couldn't see his father as a murderer.

"Maybe for money? To impress the woman?" Phillip mused. "He was crazy enough about her to do anything, I think. He built her that tiki room on the property you own."

"Huh?"

"The tiki room on your property."

"There's no tiki room on Johnny's property." It was Téa, swinging her racket as she came toward them.

He had the sudden urge to grab her, to hold her, to sink himself into her SweeTART of a body and let it take him away from all this.

"I have all the blueprints," she continued, "and there's no tiki room."

Phillip shrugged, then passed a frosty glass to Téa. "I don't know what to say. Giovanni Martelli told me he was building a tiki room, but I never saw it."

"Giovanni Martelli," Téa echoed. Her gaze cut over to Johnny.

"Phillip was giving me the history of my place," he said, thinking quickly. "As a matter of fact, we were just getting to the snowbirds and their bedroom mirror."

Her gaze dropped. She blushed. And he was pretty certain that one little comment had pushed her concerns about Giovanni Martelli out of her mind.

Leaving him free to lie another day.

But he wasn't going to feel bad about that! There was no reason he should. He had other issues, after all. Though he wished to God it wasn't so, the Mafia connection was no longer coming from some cop with a knee-jerk reaction to an Italian last name. Phillip was someone who had
known
his father and he seemed to believe it was possible.

Meaning Johnny might have to accept his father had been a murderer.

The idea made him want to go to Téa again. He wanted to grab her, hold her, bury his face against her hair and let his dick be the brains of the operation again. But of course, if what he'd learned
was
the truth, she was the last one he should be fucking.

It meant his father had really killed hers.

Not to mention the other lesson he should take away from all this. He may have followed in his father's footsteps and become a gambler, but he sure as hell wasn't going to make Giovanni's other mistake. If Phillip was right, it was a woman who had led Johnny's father to his downfall. So now Johnny had to take extra care not to let a woman be his.