by Avery Flynn
The first time Henry and Anton had shown up at the adoption day event, they’d spent an hour chatting with Anya. Sylvie had stayed off to the side, not wanting to kill her sister’s opportunity for a family. The need for a chance of her own had squeezed her lungs tight, but she’d loved her sister too much to ruin her chances yet again. The hotdogs and corn on the cob had barely been served when the two men had sought out the adoption counselor.
She’d known the instant the counselor had told them Anya had a sister. Even worse, she’d imagined the counselor saying, it was an older sister who had a learning disability and a temper. The whole world had stopped turning and the bite of hotdog in her mouth lost all flavor. Sylvie had wanted to scream and break things to avoid hearing the rejection again, and having to see the tears in Anya’s eyes. Instead, the strangest thing had happened. Henry had smiled right at her and gave her a little wave from across the picnic grounds. The small, sweet-natured gesture had shattered the boulders chained to her shoulders, and for the first time in a life full of aching disappointment, she’d felt something different.
Hope.
“I promise I didn’t poison the gravy.” Tony’s deep rumble popped her bittersweet memory balloon.
She took a deep breath, regaining her footing in the here and now. “I hope not. That would make you a complete failure as a bodyguard.”
He flinched, a grimace twisting his lips for a second before the expression slid away, replaced by a mask so studiously neutral she wondered what could possibly be lurking behind it.
Her cheeks burned. “Sorry, bad joke.”
He gave her a curt nod and went back to eating.
Searching for something to say and failing miserably, she took a bite of spaghetti dripping in sauce. The oregano, garlic, and tomato mixed together on her tongue like a present from above. “Oh my God, this is so good.”
“You should try my Nonni’s gravy. Puts this to shame.”
She swirled her finger through a red dollop on the plate’s edge and sucked it clean, closing her eyes to fully appreciate the savory goodness. “If it’s better than this, your Nonni should open a restaurant.”
“She says it’s only good when you make it for someone you care about.”
She opened her eyes and sighed. “Ah, a romantic.”
“Something like that.” He laughed and relaxed back into his seat. “Poppi says that when she’s mad at him, she won’t let him have any gravy.”
Sylvie giggled and raised her glass of red wine. “To Nonni.”
“Yes, to Nonni.” Tony clanked his glass against hers.
During dinner they talked about their favorite restaurants, his vintage motorcycle collection, and the bronze fox lamp in the living room she’d found at a flea market in Connecticut. Conversation flew as they devoured crunchy garlic bread and spaghetti. By the time they finished the pasta and a bottle of Malbec, a supercharged relaxation had seeped into her bones, leaving her as contented as an old dog sleeping in the late afternoon sun.
The tension had evaporated from Tony’s body, too. The deep worry lines in his forehead were gone and his full lips had lost their grim line, instead curling up at the corners. He’d pushed up the sleeves of his gray henley, showing off his sinewy forearms dusted with dark hair as he made broad gestures to emphasize his stories. In her world, almost every man she knew had a personal waxer, so the sight of something so undeniably testosterone-driven set off a flare of interest that had her twisting in her seat.
“You know all about my family. Tell me about yours,” she prompted.
He shrugged. “Not much to tell. I grew up in Waterberg with my entire family living within five miles of my Nonni’s front door.”
For the first part of Sylvie’s life it had just been her and Anya. They’d never known their father. She had gossamer-like recollections of their mother. Mostly her soft laugh, punctuated by the memory of their final, terrible night together and the bottomless despair in her mother’s green eyes when she’d shut her daughters in the closet. The gunshot that followed had changed everything.
Sylvie washed the ever-present heartache down with a gulp of red wine. “Brothers? Sisters?”
“Two of each.”
“And they still live here?”
“Yep.”
“What do they do?”
“They’re all cops, like my dad and my uncles—except for one sister.”
“Aren’t you the black sheep,” she mused. “Why not go into the family business?”
His face darkened and his back stiffened against the straight-back chair. “I did. It didn’t work out.”
Okay… She reached across the table and covered his much larger hand with hers. “Well then, I am a very lucky woman, because where would I be now without you?”
The tense muscles in his fingers relaxed beneath hers. Something thickened the oregano-tinged air around them, thickening the moment and sending her heart on a roller-coaster ride. Seemingly of their own accord, her fingers slid between his, wrapping around his strong digits. Sucking on her bottom lip, she looked up to his face.
His brown eyes darkened to deep umber under his heavily fringed lashes, and his broad shoulders slanted forward. His gaze, as tactile as a touch, slid across her skin, leaving a blaze of hunger in its wake that no amount of divine pasta could satisfy.
Her nipples pebbled against her lace bra, so much tighter than it had been a moment ago. The material scratched against her sensitive flesh. Lips parted, hungry for the taste of him, she leaned forward until she was so close that his soft breath caressed her cheek. Only a few inches of charged air separated them and she desperately wanted to breach that chasm. The unyielding table edge pushed against her hips as she stretched forward and her eyelids drooped.
Tony’s chair screeched against the tile floor and his hand jerked away from hers. Her eyes snapped open. He stood next to the table, evidence of his arousal clear from the impressive bulge straining against his zipper. Slowly, her mind processed the deadly grip with which he held his empty plate and the stubborn set to his jaw.
“It’s late. I’ll take care of the dishes.” He pivoted on his heel and beelined it to the sink.
With the effectiveness of double-layered shapewear, mortification squeezed the air out of her lungs. “Look, I’m not sure exactly what happened here.”
“I shouldn’t have moved in like I was going to kiss you earlier. It made you assume that this”—he waved his hand in the air— “could happen. But your life’s on the line, Sylvie, and I can’t afford to lose sight of that.” He shoved a plate into the dishwasher.
Chaos reigned in her thoughts as she regarded him. “The timing sucks, but I don’t understand—”
“You wouldn’t understand.” He whipped around, anger burning in his expression. “Not someone with your charmed existence. But I lost focus once and it cost my partner his life. He died because I didn’t bring my A-game to the job. I can’t let that happen again. I won’t. Boundaries are necessary so I can concentrate on catching this creep.”
Yes, boundaries she understood. All too well. To-do lists, checklists, and memorized lists of appropriate behaviors. Once Henry and Anton had welcomed her home to a pink, girly room with her name stenciled in lemon yellow on one wall, she’d sworn never to disappoint them. Never to let them wonder if they’d made the right decision in adopting her and Anya. For the most part, she’d accomplished that, but the insidious fear of making them shake their heads at their grievous error never completely left her.
Unable to regain their earlier natural ease, and confused as to why it even mattered so much, Sylvie gathered her dishes and deposited them on the counter.
In silence, he rinsed her plate, his jaw as rigid as concrete. The red sauce circled the drain before disappearing as if it had never been there. In two minutes, all evidence of their cozy dinner had been washed away, leaving them uncomfortably alone together in the brightly lit kitchen.
Her chest ached with the finality of his dismissal
and his total lack of understanding of her. Like so many others, he couldn’t see beyond her name to discover the person she really was. She’d been stupid to think he’d be different.
“We’re all broken, Tony,” she said stiffly. “Some of us on the outside. Some of us in the deep, dark places inside where no one can ever reach.” Where no one even tries. She pushed past the tightness in her throat threatening to strangle her words before she could finish. “No one is whole. Not even the supposedly charmed ones. Not in this fucking world.”
Turning, she fled the kitchen.
“Sylvie.” His tortured voice stopped her in the doorway. “I’m sorry.”
Something in his voice hinted at more than just his apology, but she couldn’t stop to question it. She had to get out of there before he saw the wet evidence of how much his misjudgment had hurt.
Chapter Six
“Bravery never goes out of fashion.”
—William Makepeace Thackeray
The Darling House sat across the street from Chantal’s glass-and-steel high-rise on the ever-bustling Louis Street. As always at noon, the Chinese restaurant was packed with the fashion media’s minions picking up takeout for their well-heeled bosses, as well as editors and stylists hungry for a bit of gossip.
Sylvie scanned the dimly lit dining room, searching for Ivy Rhodes’s splash of red hair highlighted by the glow of her ubiquitous laptop. Ivy never missed her lo mein lunch.
“This is supposed to be an accidental meet, remember?” Tony’s words tickled her earlobe. “You’re just here for a quick lunch with your new boyfriend.”
Awareness trickled across her skin. He stood so close she couldn’t help but inhale his freshly scrubbed scent. The image of his taut muscles covered in soapsuds, his dark chest hair peeking through the white bubbles, made her mouth go dry. Clenching her jaw, she shoved the mental picture out of her head. He could not have made his intentions—or lack of them—any clearer last night. God, how many times did she have to make an idiot of herself before she stopped chasing men who didn’t want her? Wasn’t her misery box full enough after Daniel?
The hostess picked that moment to pop over, but her hot-pink plaid uniform failed to elicit Sylvie’s usual grin.
“Two for lunch?” the hostess asked.
Tony slipped his hand around Sylvie’s. “Yep. Can we have a table in the back?”
“Sure. Follow me.”
On automatic pilot, Sylvie navigated through the charged environment as the hostess led them through the crowded restaurant. She picked up snippets of stage-whispered snide remarks as they passed women in thousand-dollar shoes scarfing down ten-dollar plates of dumplings.
“Looks like Henry and Anton’s little girl found herself a rebound fuck…”
Sylvie shook her hair back and kept her eyes straight ahead.
“Caught Daniel blowing a waiter. How she didn’t know I’ll never understand…”
She jerked her chin higher.
“That one works fast. Should have expected it from her kind. Total riffraff…”
Tony stopped so abruptly she collided with his strong back. He sent a smoldering gaze down at the bleach-blond size zero pushing iceberg lettuce around on her plate. The testosterone level ratcheted up to a bazillion and the blond practically melted in her seat.
“Hey there.” Tony’s low voice took on a seductive tone that would force a nun to reconsider vocations.
“Hi.” The blond fluttered her eyelashes.
He leaned in closer. “Maybe if you’d been a little faster, you could have gotten me.”
Pleasure pinkened her cheeks.
“But I doubt it.” He tweaked her snub nose. “I don’t much like your kind. As in, a total bitch.”
The blond’s eyes rounded at the echo of her own insult.
Tony pulled Sylvie forward in the hostess’s wake before the other woman could even think to respond.
Strutting with a little extra bounce in her step, Sylvie struggled to remember that this was all a farce. Tony had stuck up for her as any good pretend boyfriend would. Still, she couldn’t turn off the happy bubbling up inside her.
“Thank you.” She smiled as she slid into the curved booth.
He scooted in beside her, his thigh pressed against hers. “Anytime.”
Heat sizzled up her leg, finding a home in the juncture of her thighs. Her brain had a firm grasp on the whole pretend boyfriend thing, but damn, her body had other ideas. Such as sliding her fingers up his muscular thigh until she connected with the hard bulge she’d glimpsed last night.
“So, can I get you something to drink?”
Latching onto the hostess’s question like a lifeline to Sanityville, Sylvie glanced over the menu. “I’ll take a ginger ale.”
“Just a water for me.”
“Great. Your waitress will be right out with those.”
The hostess spun on her four-inch heels, revealing the unmistakable redheaded occupant of the booth across from them. Ivy Rhodes.
“There she is,” Sylvie whispered.
“That’s why I asked for a table back here. I spotted her as soon as we walked in.” Tony angled toward Sylvie in the booth, bringing his lips millimeters from her ear. “So, that’s the former blogging partner who wouldn’t think twice about stabbing you in the back?”
To anyone watching, they were just a couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other. If only that were true.
“That’s the one.” She ignored the catch in her voice and prayed like hell he would, too.
Toying with her hair, he snuggled in closer. “Enough to do it literally?”
And that little reminder of mortality dumped the ice she needed to freeze the lust hardening her nipples. “I don’t think so.”
They were here for a purpose—to accidentally run into Ivy and pump her for information. Ivy was one of the handful of people who knew Sylvie was the woman behind the High-Heeled Wonder. If anyone would love to spill the beans, it would be Ivy.
“Why don’t you scoot a little closer, Sylvie honey?” Tony’s voice carried across the aisle.
Ivy raised her gaze from her laptop screen. She smirked, rose, and sauntered over.
“Aren’t you two just way too cute for words.” The redhead stood next to the table, one hip cocked.
Just as her name suggested, Ivy’s thin legs went up forever. She’d mostly stayed behind the cameras after checking herself into rehab a few years ago, but she still carried herself with the overwhelming sense of predatory confidence that had made her a star on the couture runways.
Without waiting for an invitation, Ivy sat down next to Tony. The deep green booth acted as the perfect foil for her red hair and porcelain skin. In the past six months, Sylvie and Ivy hadn’t spoken more than five words—a fact that burned a dime-sized hole in her gut every time she thought about it.
The two of them, along with Drea, had started Killer Style Blogging. Drea had covered all things cosmetic with her Make Me Up blog. Ivy took full advantage of her deep contacts within the modeling and fashion photography world to dig up the best gossip for Catwalk Strut. High-Heeled Wonder completed the blog trifecta with its focus on the latest designs and trends. All three of the blogs did well, but High-Heeled Wonder had become the breakout star, with more than half a million hits a day. About six months ago, Ivy left the group in a jealous huff.
Ivy flipped her hair over one shoulder. “You’re lucky Pippa and Anders are seated in the private VIP dining room. From what I hear, both would love to flay you, cook you, and pretend to eat you.” She turned the full force of her blue eyes on Tony. “You must be the stand-in.”
Sylvie slid her fingers between Tony’s. “Trying to dig up gossip for your blog?”
Arching a perfectly waxed eyebrow, Ivy grinned. “You forget I know you, Sylvie Bissette. Your type runs more…soft? Skinny? Beta? Gay?”
Sylvie’s last thread of patience, strung tighter and tighter since she’d walked into The Darling House, snapped and she g
rabbed Tony’s face in her hands. Without stopping to consider the consequences, she slid her lips over his. His surprisingly soft lips parted beneath hers and his strong fingers curled around her waist. She sucked his bottom lip into her mouth and nibbled.
At the first taste of strong coffee and peppermint she forgot why she’d started kissing him in the first place. All that mattered was the magnet-worthy attraction pulling them together and blocking out the rest of the world. Everything that had been building between them since the night of her sister’s wedding exploded in a tsunami of sexual hunger that left her wet and wanting.
Tony’s hands never left her waist, but his touch managed to weave its way across her body on an electric current that turned everything hard into something soft, hot, and demanding. What she wouldn’t give to be locked in his arms anywhere else.
The clank of glass on the polished wood table acted as an unwelcome reminder that she wasn’t somewhere else. She was sitting in The Darling House, in full view of the biggest fashion gossip of them all, and acting like a giant horndog. Aching for more, she forced herself to relinquish what in those precious seconds had become her most sought-after fantasy.
Condensation dripped down her glass, cooling her hand as she grasped it and drank with the gusto of a Viking at a feast.
“Damn, I need a cigarette.” Ivy fanned herself and winked.
Tony rammed his fingers through his thick, dark hair and mumbled something incoherent as he squirmed in his seat.
Eyeballing the woman who used to be one of her closest friends, Sylvie took stock of the situation. The plan had been to covertly interrogate Ivy for information, but judging by the skeptical gleam in the woman’s eyes, a direct approach would probably be a better option. It was a risk, but so was almost everything in Sylvie’s life right now.
“Someone knows I’m the High-Heeled Wonder.”
Ivy’s gaze locked on the paper straw wrapper she was twisting between her fingertips. “That was bound to happen.” Breaking under the pressure, the wrapper tore in half. The white paper floated down to the table.
“You’re one of the few people who knows the truth,” Tony said.
