Lifestyles of the Witch & Famous (10 page)

“It’s
girl talk
. Shut up,” Carlotta told him. Her gaze flashed back to Molly’s, probing. Her brows arched higher. “
Ai dios mio
—” She clapped a hand to her mouth, though whether to stifle a scream or a laugh was uncertain. “You were a virgin!”

“
What
?” André roared out a stream of curses in every language he knew, which made it a long stream. “I shall cut off his ears!”

Carlotta snorted, but she did it elegantly. “Really, André, cutting off his ears won’t stop him. You’ll have to aim lower.”

Grinning like a cat, she retrieved from the floor a shoulder bag that matched her shoes, clasped Molly’s hand in hers, and began pulling her up the stairs. “Come. I’m staying in the Blue Room. It has a glorious marble bath. You’ll feel better after a good hot soak.”

“She’s staying in my room.”

Molly stiffened at the voice and nearly stumbled. The figure at the head of the staircase stood there fully dressed again, every dark hair in place. The perfect picture of cool, calm and collected (well, maybe not that cool). One would never guess how he’d just turned her world upside down and inside out.

Carlotta kept climbing without missing a beat, hauling Molly along with her, even as Molly hauled back. When they reached the top, she paused and smiled sweetly. “Out of the way, Tyler. I have a knife in my bag. Don’t make me use it.”

“Nice to see you, too, Carlotta. When did you arrive? Sorry you have to leave again so soon.” Looking anything but sorry, Tyler slipped his hands into his pockets, stepped past them, and headed down the stairs.

His arm brushed Molly’s in passing – deliberately, she was sure – and his eyes touched hers in a look that sizzled her hair roots.

“One hour,” he whispered. “Remember what I said.”

Like she could ever forget? Don’t worry, she’d remember. And never forgive him for it.

“Who says I’m leaving?” Carlotta called after him. “André finds the Ranch most inspiring. We’ll be here all week.”

“Super.” Tyler continued his descent.

“It is
Cinderella
I find inspiring,” André hollered. “And you, Monsieur James, are a” – he rattled off several foreign terms, all of which were probably better left untranslated – “but as you are my host, I will not kill you. Yet.”

“Thanks. I appreciate that.” Tyler glanced back over his shoulder. “Fascinating people you know, Carlotta.”

“Mmm, yes, it keeps life interesting.” With a ripple of laughter, she pushed open the first door they came to in the hall at the head of the stairs, and pulled Molly into the Blue Room. Which for some reason was a frothy confection of cotton candy pink satin and lime green lace. A Barbie doll would have loved it.

Carlotta made a gagging noise and dropped Molly’s hand. “What happened to the beautiful blues? They’ve redecorated, the cretins! Whose brilliant idea was this?” Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the room. “Bambi’s, I’ll bet. That bimbo has even less taste than she does brain cells. Her bra size is bigger than her IQ.”

Uh-huh. Molly waited, staring, as the woman slammed the door with a back kick of a designer heel and hurled her purse to the center of a large canopied bed done up in layers of pink and green striped ruffles.

“I’m supposed to
sleep
in that thing? It looks like a beach cabana,” Carlotta muttered, then caught the stare on her. “Oh, sorry. The bathroom is over there, through the dressing room. Let’s pray they haven’t destroyed that, too.”

She heaved a dramatic sigh, stepped out of her stilettos, which left her not much taller than Molly, and led the way over yards of pink plush carpeting to an entrance curtained by a billow of lime lace trimmed with tiny tassels. She grimaced as she swept it aside.

“Yes, this has ‘Bambi’ written all over it. She was Ty’s last wife, number six. I was
numero uno
, his first victim. And you, I presume” – holding the curtain, she turned to face Molly – “are in line for number seven?” Her brows arched up on the question, and a small grin curved her lovely full lips.

Molly didn’t smile back. “I’m glad you find it amusing, but the situation is no joke. Thanks for the use of your bath.”

Hoping she’d made clear she didn’t want to discuss the matter, she moved past through a dressing area she scarcely glanced at and into a marble bathroom larger than many people’s entire living quarters.

Carlotta’s voice followed her. “Life is a joke,
chica
. But you impress me. At the beginning, Tyler’s conquests always bubble with enthusiasm. I bubbled once myself. None of us showed the ache I sense in you now until
after
we married him. Could it be he has finally found a woman wise enough to say no?”

“No.” The syllable came out on a croak. Molly cleared her throat and turned to see Carlotta lounging against the doorframe, the expression in her dark eyes anything but amused. “No, I’m afraid refusing him isn’t an option.”

Not with the ultimatum he’d given her. A “compromise” he’d called it. Despicable was what it was.

“I have to marry him,” she said flatly. “There are children involved.”

“Children?” Carlotta’s brow furrowed. “How can there be children? I thought you were a—” She slapped her hand to her head. “
Dios
. I’m so sorry, I should have realized who you are. The woman who’s been caring for Tyler’s nephews. Molly, is it? I met them in the poolroom when we arrived, and Barry told me what happened. Quite a shock. I never even knew Ty had a brother.”

“Yeah, it was a ‘shock’ for a lot of us.” Feeling a sudden stinging in her eyes, Molly turned away to study the blue marble sunken…
Tub?

It was big enough to practice the breaststroke in, with plumbing fixtures so state-of-the-art she couldn’t figure out how to turn on the water. A dolphin-shaped thingy looked like it might be the faucet, but—

“Oh, here, let me.” Carlotta hurried forward, and in seconds there were eight actual faucets pouring out hot water and steam.

Right. There’d have to be several for a bath this size, or it would take forever to fill. Molly blinked back the useless tears. She should have opted for a shower – far less wasteful – but it was too late now. Little waves already lapped at the rim, stirred by some sort of Jacuzzi jets below the surface.

“Are you the shy type?” Carlotta asked. “Or may I stay and talk with you while you soak?”

She received a wry grin in response.

As a Wiccan, Molly was mainly a solitary practioner, as opposed to being an active member of a coven or grove. But she attended group rituals occasionally, and sometimes they were “sky clad” affairs. Sex might have been new to her, but simple nudity wasn’t. The two things weren’t nearly as related as a lot of people thought.

“Um, no, I’m not shy about things like that.”

She slipped out of her clothes and into the bath while Carlotta pulled a small chair away from a vanity table and straddled it, resting her elbows on its back and propping her chin in her hands. A pensive pose.

The woman had added pure, natural rose oil – expensive stuff – to the water, and the heady fragrance surrounded them both. Heat stung newly tender flesh, then relaxed and soothed as Molly’s body adjusted to the temperature. She submerged herself to the neck and leaned back, her hair floating out around her like a mermaid’s. She felt her eyelids begin to droop.

“So…” Carlotta chewed her lower lip, entering the conversation with care. “Barry said you want custody of the boys, and Tyler has been…less than understanding about it.”

“That’s putting it diplomatically. He wouldn’t even talk to me.”

“So I heard. But he’s more than ‘talking’ to you now.”

Molly’s eyes flashed open to shoot her a look. “Don’t remind me. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“Sorry.” Carlotta suppressed a smile. “It’s been so long since I was a virgin, I forget what a first time feels like. But I can imagine that a first time with Tyler James gives new meaning to the expression
Baptism by Fire
. I think I envy you that.”

“Don’t. I’m not in a very enviable position right now.”

“Some women would think you were. Most, in fact.”

“Yeah, and most women aren’t being blackmailed by the threat of never seeing their children again.”

“Ah. So that’s his game. If you want the nephews, you must take the uncle, too?” Carlotta rolled her eyes. “I can’t say I’m surprised. Fair-play is not a word in his vocabulary.”

“You do have a way with understatement, don’t you?”

Their gazes locked for a long moment until Molly broke the contact by closing her eyes again. If only she could close her ears as well. This conversation was wearing thin. So was her patience, and looking at Carlotta didn’t help. The woman was beyond beautiful. She was stunning. Picturing her and Tyler together… It shouldn’t feel as darn irritating as it did.

She gave herself a mental slap. “If you think marrying him is such a great thing, why aren’t you still with him yourself?”

A blanket of silence fell between them. Then Carlotta’s voice, soft and sad:

“Because I know how cruel he can be.”

A chill ran down Molly’s spine, something more than fear, something worse. A feeling of doom.

Yes, he was cruel, and selfish and domineering, and utterly shameless about it all. But knowing that didn’t seem to dim her reaction to him. In a way, it strengthened it. A horrible thought, and what it said about her wasn’t a nice thing to consider. The biggest danger here came not from him, but from inside herself.

“If it’s any comfort,” Carlotta offered, “I don’t think he’s cruel deliberately. It isn’t as though he gets pleasure from hurting people. He’s not a sadist.”

“He’s doing a darn good impersonation of one.”

Laughter rippled through the room, echoing the sound of the water. “Molly, you are an innocent in more ways than one, I think. You haven’t lived the life I have, and for that you should be grateful. I’ve known some genuine sadists in my time, and I can tell you with certainty that Tyler is not one of them. The pain he inflicts is of a different sort. But it hurts more perhaps, because it is so unthinking, so blind. Tyler is…” Carlotta’s breath blew out in a sigh. “He is simply a man who fears emotion too much.”

She laughed again, pure irony in the sound. “Many men are at odds with their feelings, but Tyler carries the problem to new levels. He’s been badly scarred, and where scar tissue grows, there is often a deadness to sensation. It’s nature’s way of protecting the wound.”

Molly knew she shouldn’t ask – she really didn’t want to know – but she couldn’t help herself. She opened her eyes once more to meet the dark, steady ones staring over the chair.

“How has he been scarred?”

And why should she care that he was?

“You’re too tender-hearted,”
Steve’s voice mocked in her head. Darling Steve, he’d had a way with understatement, too.

“He had a…difficult childhood,” Carlotta answered slowly. “So did I, for that matter. It’s something he and I share. Maybe that’s why I’ve stayed friends with him all these years, even knowing what a bastard he can be. Because I understand
why
he’s a bastard. He grew up having to fight for what he wanted and never learned how to do things any other way. To him softness means weakness, and to love is to lose. We can blame his mother for that…partly. She left his father when Ty was small – only six, I think – ran off with another man, and he never saw her again.”

Molly’s eyes widened in horror. What kind of woman abandoned her children—

“Oh, I suspect she may have tried to contact him, but his father wouldn’t let her,” Carlotta added. “From what Ty has told me, he sounds like a cold, mercenary man, his papa – abusive – which is probably why his wife left him in the first place. Not that a child would understand that, of course.”

“No, of course not.” The words came out dry as dust. Pain twisted in Molly’s stomach like a knife. This was exactly why she had no choice. Tyler could so easily cut her off from the boys if she refused him. And would Stevie and Jeremy and Josh understand she hadn’t left willingly? Most likely not. They’d think she’d abandoned them, and could end up as scarred as their uncle.

“Mmm, yes, I can see what you’re thinking,” Carlotta murmured. “But even without you, your little charges would have it easier than Tyler did, I believe. He’s abusive in his own way, but not physically so. He’d never beat a child like his father beat him.”

Beat
him?

This was going from bad to worse. The knife stabbed deeper. As angry as she was with the man, Molly ached for the boy he’d once been.

Carlotta continued. “And Tyler is generous with money as his father never was. The boys would never lack for what he could buy them. Himself, he had to wear every pair of shoes until they fell apart, regardless of how small they might have become for his feet by then. Papa James was a wealthy man in his own right, a millionaire. It’s his fortune Tyler has built into the billions, but he never saw a dime of that fortune growing up. That’s why he’s fixated on wealth now, but not for its own sake. Tyler makes money to spend it. His father pinched pennies so tight, he couldn’t let go of enough to decently clothe his own son.”