Hot & Bothered Page 14

  It was the dichotomy between her cool classiness and hot sexuality that had been driving him crazy ever since he’d found himself sucked back into her orbit—despite his fierce determination to resist. He didn’t know how to reconcile the bright-eyed woman he’d once watched eat lobster with her bare hands and laugh as butter dripped down her sun-kissed chest with the elegant society princess she appeared to be now.

  But for tonight, for this brief evening out of time, he didn’t feel like worrying it to death. “Hoo-yah,” he breathed. “Excuse me while I roll my tongue back into my head.” He shook his head with self-deprecating humor. “You know, in certain circles I actually have something of a reputation as a silver-tongued devil.” Then, shrugging aside the ineptitude he seemed to display only with her, he reached out to finger a loose tendril of hair near her temple. “Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight? You do, you know. You’re an absolute knockout.”

  Flashing him a demure smile, she touched the back of her hair with the same feminine gesture he’d seen Esme use. “Thank you. You did mention that, but it’s always lovely to hear again. You look very handsome yourself.” She gave him a thorough once-over. “That’s no rented tux,” she finally stated and raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Don’t tell me black tie is one of the things you tossed into your bag on that trip you mentioned taking up to Denver?”

  “All right, I won’t tell you.” He treated her to his finest smile—the one his friend Cooper dubbed the Miglionni Special. But when the slender brow remained elevated, he dropped the attempt to charm. Hell, it wasn’t as if it had ever worked on her, anyhow, except when he wasn’t consciously trying. “You want full disclosure? I needed to check in at the office to sign the payroll checks and see how a couple of cases were going, so I made another trip up there on Friday.”

  “Pretty soon you’ll have more stuff down here than you do in your own place.” She gave him a cool-eyed look. “And interesting how you always manage to avoid mentioning these little trips until well after the fact—or perhaps more to the point, until I pin you down about them. You’re not a real forthcoming guy when it comes to divulging personal information, are you, Rock—”

  “Here’s the happy couple!”

  Made edgy by the direction the conversation was heading, John was pleased by the interruption…until he saw who it was. Great. Miles Wentworth. Just the guy he wanted to see at his engagement party. He didn’t care that the engagement wasn’t real—he still could have gone all night without running into this joker. Especially when he felt Victoria stiffen beside him.

  He eyed Miles from the top of the man’s gleaming blond hair to his impeccably polished dress shoes and gave him a curt nod. “Wentworth.”

  Wentworth mispronounced Miglionni twice before waving a grandly dismissive hand. He promptly staggered in the wake of the motion and had to catch himself. “Whatever. Tricky business, those ethnic names.” Turning to Victoria, he flashed a loose smile and reached for her hand. “You look ravishing, darling. Dump this bum and marry me instead.” Although his diction was precise, he lurched slightly when he bent to press his lips against Tori’s knuckles and John’s eyes narrowed, much too familiar with the signs of inebriation to ever mistake them for anything but what they were.

  It was Victoria, however, who said in a low, cool voice, “You’re drunk.” She extracted her fingers from the other man’s grasp.

  Frowning, Wentworth straightened. “Of course I’m drunk. You would be, too, if you’d been promised—” Snapping his mouth shut, he smoothed his hand over his hair.

  Rocket went on red alert, but again Victoria beat him to the punch. “If you’d been promised what, Miles?” she demanded, her moss-green eyes going frigid. “Did Father promise you something?”

  “Certainly not.” A look of cunning crossed his face, but it vanished in almost the same instant, to be replaced by a mournful puppy-dog expression. “I’m simply bereft that the woman I adore is marrying a man clearly not good enough for her.”

  John was getting tired of the bum/wrong-side-of-the-tracks references. But even as he contemplated showing the stupid fuck exactly how uncivilized a guy trained in all manner of covert warfare could get, Victoria raised her chin and met Wentworth’s gaze with her frostiest You’re the-Peon-and-I’m-the-Queen look.

  “As opposed to someone like you, you mean? Please. You seem to forget I’ve experienced your brand of ‘undying’ love.” Arching the same cynical brow she’d used on Rocket earlier, she demanded, “So what did Father promise you this time to court my favor?”

  Rocket stared at her. This time?

  “It didn’t have a damn thing to do with you,” Wentworth snapped. Clearly recalling his agenda, however, he quickly replaced both the combative tone and sour look with silky inflections and an adoring gaze. “Seeing you again is a separate issue entirely. It simply brings back a host of feelings both wonderful and…painfully embarrassing.”

  She nodded as if understanding implicitly. “Of course it does. It’s been more than a decade, but I have no trouble at all believing you’re awash in unrequited love.” In spite of her coolly mocking tone, however, a flash of pain crossed her face.

  Responding to it, John reached out for her, warming when she promptly slipped her arm through his and hugged it to her side. He treated the other man to a smile that was all teeth and territoriality as he absorbed the warm, plush textures of her breast against his biceps. But his smile softened when he looked down into Tori’s face and without another glance in Wentworth’s direction he said, “Hey, excuse us, won’t you, mate? I believe they’re playing our song.” He turned her away.

  “If this is such a world-class love match,” Miles raised his voice to demand stiffly of their backs, “why isn’t she wearing your ring?”

  Victoria whipped back. “Because we’re still arguing which band to get, the plain one I’m leaning toward or the three-stone one Rocket wants for me. Pass that along, will you? I’m growing a bit weary of answering the question, and as we so recently discovered, you’re very prompt at dishing the latest dirt.”

  Tickled to death with the way she’d snapped up and utilized his earlier fabrication, John threw back his head and laughed. Giving her a squeeze, he ushered her onto the postage-stamp-size dance floor and turned her into his arms. “That’s my girl!”

  Victoria, however, felt a great deal less amused. Her satisfaction at having the lie roll like honey off her tongue faded and, feeling faintly heartsick, she merely rested her head against John’s solid chest.

  As if he somehow understood her feelings, he tipped his chin down to peer at her. “So who the hell is that clown to you, anyway?”

  “Her first love.”

  She jerked her head up to see that Miles had followed them onto the dance floor, where he stood practically on top of them, looking unbearably smug. Complete and utter rage tore a vicious swath through the shock that had momentarily frozen her in place, and damned if she’d allow his slant on their prior relationship to go unchallenged, she transferred her attention back to Rocket. “What he means, John, is that he pretended for a short while to care about me in order to secure my father’s influence.”

  She raked Miles with a contemptuous look. “You were my first infatuation, Slick. My love I saved for someone who actually wanted more from me than my usefulness on his climb up the corporate ladder. Valuing me somewhere along the lines of an expendable pawn wasn’t the way to steal my heart.”

  “Your feelings for me were deeper than infatuation and you know it! I realize I treated you badly, and I’ve regretted it ever since. But you loved me.” Raking her with his gaze, he raised an ash-blond eyebrow. “Otherwise you never would have given me your virginity.”

  “A very big mistake as it turned out.” But how perfectly lovely of you to bring it up. John’s arm had tightened around her at Miles’s revelation and, glancing back up at him, she shrugged as if she weren’t mortified right down to her tensely curled toes that her sexual history was being
aired on a hotel dance floor. “I was seventeen,” she explained, “and it took me a while to comprehend he was playing a game. By the end of the summer, however, I’d learned enough to understand the only result Miles desired from his big seduction was to gain an internship in one of my father’s companies.”

  “That’s not true,” Miles protested. “I was crazy about you.”

  “You were crazy about what Daddy could do for you. I was little more than a means to an end.” And, God, it had hurt. He’d rot in hell before she’d ever admit as much, but she had believed herself in love with him that summer and discovering he’d only been using her in return had broken her heart. That she felt even an echo of that old pain infuriated her and, for an instant, temptation sang a seductive little siren song, beckoning and cajoling and urging her to lean forward and whisper into Miles’s ear that the lawyers said she was worth simply millions and millions of dollars now…and hell would indeed freeze over before he’d ever get his hands on one of them.

  But bandying about one’s financial worth was crass—not to mention that her newly improved assets were undoubtedly what had prompted his sudden renewed interest in her in the first place. She hadn’t thought they were popular knowledge in the country-club set yet, but she wouldn’t put it past Miles to have somehow seduced the information out of Robert Rutherford’s secretary…even if the woman was sixty if she was a day. Drawing a quiet breath, she pinned him with a gaze of studied indifference.

  Rocket, however, gave him a big feral smile. “There’s first, Wentworth…and then there’s forever. Lots of guys are fast off the mark. It doesn’t mean squat if they don’t stay the course after they’ve crossed the finish line.” Then his eyes went flat. “You’ve outstayed your welcome, chief. It’s time to show yourself out.”

  Miles’s chest rose and fell beneath his tux for a moment as he stared at them. Then he turned on his heel and stalked away. Victoria watched until he disappeared through one of the ballroom doors, then laid her head back down on John’s hard chest. “Interesting little speech,” she murmured. “Considering.”

  “Yeah, I know. Like I’ve got room to talk.” His arms tightened around her. “Still. I may be a bum, darlin’, but that idiot is definitely no gentleman.” He swayed them in time to the bluesy tune for a few moments. Then he bent his head and rubbed his jaw back and forth against her temple. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “The guy’s a jerk, but I imagine you probably cared for him at one time, huh?”

  She thought about it and realized her pride was more bruised than anything. For, as desperately painful as the end of that long-ago affair had been, what she’d felt for Miles truly hadn’t amounted to more than being in love with the idea of love. “I thought at the time it was an undying, transcend-death-into-eternity kind of passion,” she murmured into his lapels. “But it turns out it was only puppy love.”

  “Still hurts when the puppy gets kicked, though.”

  “Yes. It does.” She became aware that they were still pressed tightly together, swaying in place, even though the song had ended. Before self-consciousness could kick in, however, the quartet began another slow, torchy number. She tipped back her head to gaze up at Rocket as they continued to move. “I’d hardly classify you as a bum.”

  He shrugged. “I lived in my share of dives growing up, but never in what anyone would call the ghettos. Still, I imagine my upbringing was a far cry from the guys you usually date.”

  “You just met a representative of the type of guy I’ve been known to date. I doubt I need to tell you you’re ten times the man he is.”

  He laughed and tightened his hold. “There is that.”

  “So what do we do now?” she asked. “Do you go around questioning people?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Nope. We act like we’re crazy in love, and you introduce me to a few folks.”

  “Oh.” Having envisioned something a little more Maltese Falcon–like, she blinked. “That seems easy enough.”

  “That’s the general idea,” he agreed and executed a step that rubbed their torsos together. Neurons deep inside of Victoria started snapping and her eyes went heavy.

  He gazed down at her with a half smile. “Why don’t we start with your friend and her husband?” His hard thigh slipped between hers as he spun them a half turn, then slid away, and her cognitive processes fried.

  “My friend?”

  “You know—Esme’s little buddy’s mom?”

  That jerked her out of the sensual haze that being this close to his body produced and she gaped up at him in alarm. “You don’t think Pam had anything to do with my father’s murder?”

  “No. And a good thing, too, since you’ve told her the truth about us.” He drilled her with the intensity of his dark eyes. “Haven’t you?”

  Guilty heat throbbed in her cheeks, but she met his gaze squarely. “I knew I’d never get an out-of-the-blue engagement to fly past her. You’ve been around Esme long enough to know that within five minutes of seeing Rebecca after your arrival she told her all about Mr. Miglionni, the private detective come to find and bring home her Uncle Jared.” He didn’t utter a condemning word, but still she raised her chin defiantly. “Look, I already told you I’m not much of an actress. And rather than have Pam demanding to know why I’m marrying the private eye in the middle of our engagement party, I told her the truth.”

  “Okay,” he said mildly.

  “Besides, she’s my frien—” It sank in that he hadn’t disagreed, and she swallowed the rest of the argument she’d been prepared to make. “How did you know, anyway?”

  “I’m a detective, darlin’, it’s what I do.”

  She considered pursuing a less flip answer, but decided it didn’t really matter and laid her head on his chest once again. Being in his arms like this took her back and she decided it was probably a good thing that the song ended a moment later because it was foolish, if not outright dangerous, to enjoy his strength, his heat, his scent, this much.

  He took her hand as they left the dance floor but allowed her to lead the way as they wove through elegantly set tables to where her friends stood near the bar. They were stopped several times by well-wishers, but although Victoria smiled and chatted easily, she kept a determined forward momentum going until they reached their destination.

  “Here comes the blushing bride.” Frank, Pam’s stocky, redheaded husband, stepped forward to greet them, a warm grin lighting his florid face. “Tori, you look beautiful.”

  “Aw, you sweet talker, you.” She indicated the men’s flawless tuxedos and Pam’s strapless cream-colored gown. “Although I must say we’re all looking extremely pretty tonight.”

  “Yes, we are.” Then he sobered and reached for her free hand, giving it a gentle squeeze before releasing it. “I’m sorry I missed your dad’s memorial.”

  “I know. Pam told me you were on a business trip.”

  “I was in Nova Scotia, but I regret not being here to lend you my support. Pammy tells me the service was…memorable.”

  “Which part?” John asked drily. “DeeDee’s eulogy or the surprise announcement at the reception?”

  Frank met his gaze. “Both.”

  Recalling her manners, Victoria squeezed John’s hand and slipped her fingers free. “I’m sorry, you haven’t been officially introduced to my friends, have you? Frank, Pam, this is my—” she cleared her throat “—fiancé, John Miglionni. John, meet Pam and Frank Chilworth.”

  He shook hands with the couple and the four of them talked easily for several moments. As a waiter passed, Frank plucked flutes of champagne off his tray. Passing them around, he then raised his own in a toast.

  “To Tori and John and a long and successful…alliance.” After everyone took a sip in acknowledgment, he turned to John. “Do you play golf?”

  “Sure.” Rocket shrugged. “In a hack-divots-from-the-grass, spend-most-my-time-in-the-sand-trap kind of way.”

  “We’ll definitely have to play for money then.”


  John grinned over the top of the flute he’d raised to his lips. “Why do I get the feeling I have Easy Mark written all over me?”

  “Oh, I doubt there’s many who’d mistake you for a mark—easy or otherwise. But that just makes the prospect of taking you to the cleaners all the sweeter.” Frank flashed a smile and shrugged. “What can I say? You gotta love easy money. Seriously, though, we’ll have to work up a foursome one day soon with Frederick Olson and Haviland Carter.”

  John straightened. “Weren’t both of them—”

  “At the infamous last supper, yes,” Frank said, then shot a chagrined glance at Victoria. “Sorry, sweetheart.”

  She smiled as if it didn’t matter, but inside she felt a twinge of pain in the region of her heart.

  As if possessing X-ray vision into Victoria’s emotions, Pam touched her arm. “Well, that was amazingly thoughtless,” she said softly beneath the men’s conversation. “But he wouldn’t hurt you for the world, Tori.”

  “I know. I also know that Father’s soul was probably blacker than the devil’s pockets. Only…”

  “He was still your dad.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “And only I get to bad-mouth him.”

  “That seems to be the way of families, all right,” Pam agreed. “So what was going on between you and John and Miles Wentworth earlier?”

  “I wish I knew. He’s tanked and thought he should share with John that he was my first lover.”

  Pam grimaced. “Classy guy.”

  “Isn’t he? He claims to be carrying a torch for me.”