by Maya Rodale, Caroline Linden, Miranda Neville, Katharine Ashe
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going.” He held her for a moment longer. “Now.” He released her and left without looking back.
She sprawled back against the hood of the sports car and tried very hard to think and feel nothing at all.
Walking back up to the house fifteen minutes later, Cali met Jane and Duke strolling from the direction of the garden.
“What are you doing out here alone?” Jane asked, looking around as if she expected to see someone else.
“I was looking at the cars in the carriage house. I loved the limo, Jane. Thanks for sending it to the airport for me.”
Jane tilted her head. “I didn’t. Did you, Duke?”
“Nope.”
“Another gift from your friends?”
“Must be.” But she hadn’t told Maggie, Roy, and Masala exactly where she was going. She hadn’t even known it till right before she boarded the plane. To deter paparazzi, Jane and Duke had kept the wedding’s location a secret till the last second. But the limo driver, George, had already known she was going to Brampton. Maybe Zoe had hired the limo. Or Zoe and Mrs. Fletcher combined. After they’d robbed a bank.
She went into the house and joined in the game of charades for a while. But her head was muddled, and glancing around at all the fashionable, successful women, she couldn’t stop thinking that Piers would not come looking for her tomorrow, no matter what he’d said. That he was finished with this hookup or else he wouldn’t have ended it prematurely. And that it was for the best.
Saying good night to everybody, she went to the library. There were no lamps. By the hallway light, she searched through piles of books that someone had neatly stacked beside the bookcase, which had been refitted to the wall. A recent, leather-bound edition of Pride and Prejudice was near the bottom of a stack. What were the odds?
She carried it back to her room, removed the sexy costume she’d worn to entice a man who was completely wrong for her, and curled up in bed with Elizabeth and Darcy.
Piers palmed the phone in his room, went to a chair by the window, and typed in his grandfather’s number. He stared at it.
Then he deleted it and dialed another number.
Miraculously, J.T. answered. “What’s up, bro?”
“I want to quit,” he said aloud for the first time in his life.
“Big surprise.” Calm. Relaxed. Like J.T. always was these days. From the background, an owl’s throaty call came clear across the line. In Montana, where his younger brother had been when they’d last talked, it wasn’t yet dusk.
“Are you at Mom’s?”
“Blue Ridge. Where are you that you’ve had this predictable revelation?”
“England. The revelation didn’t come just now.” Only the urgent need to act on it.
“So why call me tonight, Suit?”
J.T. had called him Suit since he went to Wharton. Until then, since they’d been boys, he’d called him Scope, for stethoscope.
“Dad regretted leaving the company.” Piers stared into the darkness of the English countryside. “Every time the family got together for holidays and he saw Grandfather, it was in his eyes. He wanted to be a good son, and he wanted to give Mom more than he could on his income. And us.”
“She had everything she needed. So did we.”
Sounds from the terrace floated up to the open window, laughter and music.
“Do you ever regret it? Leaving?”
J.T. laughed, a deep, comfortable sound. “You made it so I never had to. My hero.”
Piers could imagine his younger brother now, kicked back before a campfire, jaw scruffy for the first time in years, a cold beer in his hand. J.T. had quit the Secret Service two months earlier and wasn’t showing signs of looking for work at present.
“Seriously, though,” he said.
“I regret it every day,” J.T. said. “For about five seconds. Then I remember how much I hated it and the feeling goes away. Don’t waste your life hating it, Piers. I know you’ve got a real conscience. You always did. Listen to it for once.”
“Do you ever listen to your conscience? Or does the roar of your Harley drown it out?”
“It’s an Isuzu.”
“Right.” Piers’s grin faded quickly. “There’s a woman.”
“A woman?”
“Yeah. She’s pretty special.” Extraordinarily special. Real and honest and sweet-tasting and sexier than any woman he’d known.
His brother laughed.
His shoulders prickled. “What?”
“You’re an idiot, Suit. Why do you think Dad left the company?”
Piers thought of his parents together on the boat, or in their little house in Ocean City, or working in his mother’s garden in St. Davids. They’d spent every day together until the day his father died.
“Right,” Piers said into the phone. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” Another moment of silence. “Piers?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you, man. I don’t think I’ve ever said it to you before. But … thanks.”
“Night, J.T.” He set down the phone. As soon as he was stateside on Sunday, he would see his grandfather. It was time.
Chapter Nine
The Park, Pub, Stable, Pool & Garden
Apparently, in order to hunt grouse in England, one had to rise before the stock exchange opened. In Japan.
“They’ll accidentally kill each other unless someone who knows what he’s doing is around,” Duke said to him as the New Yorkers gathered in the misty dawn by a truck swathed in green. Someone had distributed monogrammed flasks to everyone and the guys quaffed liberally while the gamekeeper handed out rifles. “Or they’ll kill themselves,” Duke added in a mumble.
Piers stretched his neck muscles. “I’ve never hunted grouse.” He’d spent the night at his desk putting his current projects in order, composing a series of memos to his secretary, and updating spreadsheets. If he planned to resign from the company when he returned home, he’d leave strong. No unfinished projects.
Now he wanted sleep. But some fool had planned this as Duke’s bachelor party.
“At least you’ve hunted,” Duke said. “I think Knightly has too,” he grumbled, casting Damien Knightly a dark glance. “And Harry, of course. Anyway, it’s more than I can say for these guys. Come on. Let’s go pretend to shoot our dinner.”
Few birds were shot. Much alcohol was consumed. Piers stayed sober. He’d rarely wanted a bed so much—except at the moment when California had said she wouldn’t make love to him in the limousine.
If he were at home and he’d worked all night, he’d drink a pot of coffee and return to his desk. But he had an appointment with a library associate later, and he needed sleep now. This time when he got her alone, he wouldn’t let her go until she knew everything.
Cali wiggled her sparkly manicured fingertips like a movie star. A movie star who’d been dumped by a man she wasn’t even dating. A movie star who’d only wanted a little wild wedding party fun and instead got a “We’re closed, come back tomorrow” sign shoved in her face.
She swiveled her foggy gaze around the pub. It was the Cutest. Pub. Ever. All wood and quaint and Englishy. Everybody was here. Everybody except Philadelphia Big Money. Of all the men who’d gone hunting for Duke’s bachelor party, and even the men who hadn’t, Piers was the only one not now in the pub flirting with Jane’s fashionable, successful, New York City friends with whom she’d toured a gorgeous estate and drunk tea all day. Then Prosecco. Then tequila. Lots of tequila.
But she should be happy he wasn’t flirting with Jane’s friends now. Right? Because he should be flirting with her. He should be feeling her up over her bra and telling her he hadn’t figured her for black lace.
Abruptly she was reminded of the reason for the three empty shot glasses in front of her nose. How could he say things like that and then just … just … abandon her? For almost—she counted on her fingers—nine, ten—she had to recount some of her fingers—seventeen hour
s she’d seen neither hide nor hair of him.
Hide nor hair. She’d never really thought about that expression. Piers Prescott’s hide was very nice. Smooth and firm. Nibbleable. Arms like Apollo. Or Ares, the god of war. Or, really, any god. They all had good arms because, well, gods.
His hair was run-your-fingers-through-it dreamy. He was run-your-fingers-through-him dreamy.
Nibbleable wasn’t a word, maybe. But he was nibbleable. Nibbleable nibbleable nibbleable. All over.
The room spun. She closed her eyes. This was getting her nowhere. If she were her mother, she would find him and throw herself at his feet and beg him to want her. If she were her, on the other hand, which she was, she would find him and give him a piece of her mind for leading her on without coming through. She had expected wedding party sex from him, and by golly he should have delivered.
With firm decision, she pushed herself away from the bar and slid off the backless stool attached to the floor.
“Whoa, Nellie.” Someone caught her and set her on her feet. She blinked to bring him into focus.
“Thanks, Duke. Nice Duke.” Good Duke who was very hot and successful and yet did not string a girl along and then disappear for seventeen hours.
A piece of her mind. She’d give it to him. Stat, as he’d said.
“Do you know where your friend Piers is?”
Duke put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “My friend Piers is back at the house. He was up all night working. Then we left early with the guys. I think he’s sleeping now.”
“Working?” she said. “Hm?”
“Can I find someone to drive you back, Cali? Jane’s looking like she needs my attention right now, or I’d—”
“No, thank you! I don’t need a man to take me anywhere—like walking me up to the house so he can go work—like I believe that—or anywhere else.”
She wended her way through dancing, laughing, happy fashionable people to the door and out into the village. The waning sun made her blink for a sec. Then she set her unsteady feet on the path to the big house.
Piers awoke after several hours of astonishingly satisfying sleep. The sleep of the just, he wanted to believe. At least the about-to-be just.
Informed by Mark that everyone was at the pub and stone drunk, he went to the stable in search of the basketball. He’d no desire to drink and every desire to be as clearheaded as possible when California returned from Jane’s bachelorette party.
Basketball located, he was walking to the door when California appeared in the square of pale light there. In jeans that hugged her hips and a sheer shirt, she looked good.
Really good.
Enough to eat.
“Hey.” He couldn’t manage more.
“Mark said you were here. What are you doing?” Something about her voice was off. She blinked with emphasis and swayed ever so slightly. Drunk.
“I was looking for this.” He gestured with the basketball, then dropped it and walked toward her. “But I was only passing the time until you returned.”
She set her hands on her hips in a fierce stance. “What did you have me figured for?”
“Figured for?”
“You said you didn’t have me figured for black lace. If not that, then what did you have me figured for?”
Unpredictable, women.
“Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing? You fantasized about me naked?”
“By nothing I mean I haven’t really fantasized about you that way.” Much.
Her eyes opened like a wounded doe’s and her lush lower lip seemed suspended. “You haven’t fantasized about me?”
“Of course I have.”
“But you just said—”
“I fantasized about talking to you, California. I fantasized about getting close enough to discover the color of your eyes. I fantasized about learning the scent of your skin. And I fantasized about being alone with you and having your lips under mine. So you see, I already had plenty to occupy my imagination without pondering your underwear preferences.”
She was staring wide-eyed and he’d said far too much. He opened his mouth to tell her—finally, to tell her—and she took the step that closed the space between them, pushed him back against the stable wall, and pulled his head down to press her mouth to his.
She climbed up him like he was a tree. He caught her up with his hands under her ass, tasting tequila on her lips, feeling her thighs clamp around his hips, and hearing the pop of his shirt buttons as she tore them open. Then her hands were on his chest and her sweet tequila tongue was in his mouth.
He got hard fast. There was no way he was going to make love to her in this condition. But he wouldn’t pass up a few minutes of her hands all over him. One hand on the back of his neck, the other on his chest, she gyrated against him and moaned against his lips. Her hand descended and grasped his cock with perfect certainty. Sucking in breath, he let her work him.
Holy hell. A few minutes was going to be too much.
“Wait.” She clambered off him, pushed him away, and held her palms out in a stop gesture. She stumbled back several paces. “I don’t want to do this drunk.”
He made his brain function. “I don’t want you to do this drunk either.”
“I’ll be back later.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t move.”
An intoxicated giggle bubbled from her. “Well, you can move. Just don’t go. Away from the estate. You know. Far.”
“If you’ll be back here sober to make love to me, California, trust me, I’m not going anywhere.”
She bit her lip, gave him an adorably sexy-shy smile, and left. Piers leaned back against the wall and groaned.
The digital alarm clock flickered a muted blue 12:04 a.m. when Cali awoke to darkness. Mouth sticky, head heavy, and stomach roiling, she stumbled into the bathroom, drank two glasses of water, swallowed three Ibuprofen pills, and fell onto the bed again.
She hadn’t gotten more than mildly tipsy in years. She’d only gotten truly drunk a few times in her teens, before her father started drinking enough for the whole family. Today she’d drunk for the worst of reasons: because a man had disappointed her. She pressed her face into her palms and wanted to scream. Becoming both her mother and father in the same day was a lifetime low.
Heaving herself off the bed, she stepped into the shower and let hot water run over her, washing away the dumbass woman she’d become for a few hours. Toweling off her hair, she pulled out one of Roxanna’s flippy little miniskirts and a sexy tank top. She chose her bra and panties carefully, tucked several condoms into the skirt’s back pocket, slid her feet into a pair of sequined flip-flops, and went to keep her scheduled wedding-party-sex appointment.
He didn’t answer her knock at his room. Some of the others were still partying downstairs, but she didn’t find him there either. She didn’t have to search for him for long, though.
Only underwater lights illuminated the pool, and a single towel lay on a chair. He was doing laps, his gorgeous arms cutting the water in classic Piers fashion—easy, confident, strong. She got a little light-headed watching.
Mid-lap, he noticed her. He stood up, submerged to his hips. The water glistened on his shoulders, chest, and the tight ripples of his abs.
“I wasn’t that drunk,” she said. “I remember everything I said.”
“I hope so.”
“You didn’t stay in the stable.” She let herself grin, but her lips were wobbly.
“It’s been seven hours. I couldn’t be still. Adrenaline, you know.” He was teasing. But serious. She understood. “You’re sober now?” he said.
“As a judge.”
“Want to come in here?”
“Do condoms work underwater?”
His chest rose and fell roughly. “Pretty sure they do.”
“Let’s not take any chances.”
“All right.” He walked up the steps and over to her. He didn’t pause
to towel off. Taking her face between his hands, he bent his head and kissed her. Cool lips got hot in seconds. Then he was delving, their tongues tangling, their breaths coming hard and fast. The muscles of his arms beneath her hands contracted and he dragged her to him. Water soaked through her skirt. She didn’t care. She pressed against him and felt his erection. Hard already. Wild heat. No more delays. She had to be skin-to-skin with him. This had to happen now.
She pulled off her tank top. A sound of pure masculine pleasure came from his chest. His hands caught her beneath the arms and he flattened her against his bare torso. Her belly came in contact with the hard rock of his abdomen, and she spread her thighs to feel his arousal against hers.
“If we start this here,” he growled, “it’s going to happen here.”
“Bedroom?”
“Boathouse is closer.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along the dark pool deck.
On the path to the lake, her flip-flop caught in the pebbles and she tripped. He grabbed her up in his arms again and they were all over each other in an instant. Mouths frantic. Skin hot. His hands on her waist, then cupping her breasts. Unsnapping the front clasp of her bra. Her hands on his butt.
His palms surrounded her breasts, thumbs passing over the nipples, making her whimper.
“Jesus, Cali,” he said huskily over her lips. “This feels so right.”
She knew it. Everything about him felt right. His hands on her. His mouth and scent and every word he said.
No. Not his words. Words lied. This was just about his body. And lust. Sex. A fling. No emotions. No perfect words that made her heart flutter.
He gripped her waist tight. “Wait, listen, I’ve got to tell you—”
“Don’t talk.” Her hand dove down his swimsuit. “Just do me,” she said, stroking. “Now.”
He scooped her into his arms, but she wanted more than kissing now. She whipped a condom out of her pocket, tore it open, and pressed him back against a tree as she slipped her panties off. The sight of him ready for her made her damp. And hot. She encased him in the condom, wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and let him lift her onto his cock. He fit himself inside her, thick and hard, making her gasp and gulp air.
