Take Me (Lessons in Seduction #2)

by Sophie Holloway

  More than interesting. This person—whoever it was—sounded downright diabolical. “Someone followed her today,” Jack added, shifting in his seat. “He chased her in broad daylight.”

  Max leaned back and nodded. “Well, that doesn’t sound like a petty criminal, does it? This person doesn’t seem afraid to take chances. Do you have any enemies, Eva?”

  Eva spoke without hesitation. “No. Not at all. No one.”

  Jack exhaled. He knew Eva had never met a person she didn’t like, and she was kind to everyone. Personally, Eva hadn’t an enemy in the world.

  But when it came to the Fiorini Group, one could never tell. With all the upheaval lately in finding a new CEO, and the potential takeover, there was a lot to be concerned about. Eva had never gotten involved in the business, so she knew very little about what dangers lurked there.

  “Not personally, no,” Jack added. “But professionally…maybe. Eva’s largely isolated herself from the family business, but I’ve had concerns. The Fiorini Group has its enemies.”

  Eva turned to him, a question on her face. “You never told me that.”

  “I’ve seen the articles, about the rumors of a takeover looming in the near future.” Max shifted some papers in the file and picked up some honest-to-goodness news clippings from Fortune magazine and the New York Times. “Seems that a closer look at the Fiorini Group’s enemies could be a good place to start. You have names?”

  Jack shook his head. “Just rumors. Nothing concrete.”

  Eva was still staring at Jack, a mixture of hurt and fear on her face. “Jack, how could you even think that? Dad and Antonio were two of the most honest men in business. My father was practically a saint. What kind of enemies could they have made? Are you sure about this?“

  Max held up two more articles, photo-copied. Jack caught the headshot Antonio had taken for a seminar two weeks prior to his death, and his pulse raced. The obituaries. “Your father and brother died under suspicious circumstances,” Max said. “Didn’t they?”

  “No, they weren’t suspicious,” Eva protested, jumping to her feet. She started to pace behind them. “Tell him, Jack. Tell him what happened.”

  Jack didn’t answer right away. Before, it had been easy to explain her brother’s and father’s deaths as terrible accidents, nothing more. But now, with this psychopath after Eva…?

  Now, there wasn’t much doubt left in his mind. Someone seemed intent on wiping every last Fiorini off the planet. She had to see that. She had to know she was in danger.

  “Eva, I don’t believe in coincidences,” he said gently. “And it’s time you stopped believing in them, too.”

  “Dad was not…Antonio was not…” She shook her head. “They weren’t…murdered. They can’t have been.” She clutched at her chest, and her shoulders slumped. “Oh, God. This can’t be true, Jack. Can it? Who would do that?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, wishing he could hold her, but not sure she would want that in front of Max. “But we’re going to find out.”

  She slowly walked back to her seat and collapsed into it, head down. She swiped at her eyes, and the next time she spoke, her voice cracked. “All right. Assuming it might be true, what do we do?”

  “We put twenty-four-seven security on you, as soon as possible,” Max said.

  She looked up, and Jack saw the tears in her eyes. “How will that work?”

  “I’ll have a man sent to your building tomorrow morning,” Max said, matter-of-factly. “He’ll accompany you wherever you need to go, and stay outside your office when necessary.”

  “This is insane.” A panicked laugh bubbled from between her lips. “My own private bodyguard? Everyone in my office is going to think I’m out of my mind.“

  “Better safe than sorry,” Max said with a smile. “Now, you two go on home and try to take it easy. I’m going to dig into things a little more, and I’ll keep you up to date on any findings. All right?”

  When they left the office the rain had stopped, but Jack had never seen Eva’s face look quite so stormy. They decided to walk the few blocks to his apartment.

  “I can’t believe that you think that,” she said as they walked down the street. “About Antonio and Dad and the company. Who do you think is responsible?”

  “I don’t know.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You know Leonard said something about the rumored takeover coming from the inside. But whoever’s behind it is a complete mystery—some group called Orion Industries that seems to have formed from thin air. I can’t find anything on them, but something shady is definitely going on.”

  “Oh.” Her voice seemed deflated. “I wish you had told me what you were thinking.”

  “I didn’t see any sense in you worrying unless there was something to worry about. You’re angry?”

  “No. I’m…” She shook her head. “I don’t know what to feel. I guess I want to just run away.”

  She slipped her hand into his. It was ice cold. He looked down at her face. He’d seen it a thousand times, but never before had she looked so beautifully fragile.

  “Then let’s run,” he said. “You and me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Eva

  Eva raced about Jack’s bedroom in a flurry, hunting for just the right outfit.

  Jack had told her nothing other than “throw on something comfortable.” If Eva had been in her own apartment that would’ve been no problem, since she practically lived in sweats and jeans. But because she’d known she would be living with Jack, she’d packed only business clothes and a few sexy dresses. Lately she hadn’t seen Jack in anything other than slacks and a button-down shirt, and had planned to pretend she was equally professional at all times.

  Now that decision was biting her in the butt. After rummaging through her bag, she grabbed her one pair of leggings and threw them on with a baby T-shirt she’d intended to wear to bed.

  He emerged from the bathroom wearing jeans and a Red Sox T-Shirt that stretched nicely across his broad chest. And the jeans…holy cow. They defined all the right areas.

  To keep from drooling, she pointed at his chest and said, “You are going to get us killed, wearing that.”

  “Nah. They’ll take pity on me. The Sox suck this year.”

  She arched a brow. “You overestimate us New York fans.”

  His jaw dropped. “No! You? Antonio was a Sox fan.”

  “Last I checked,” she said dryly, “I’m not Antonio.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Traitor.”

  She shrugged, then realized his eyes were captivated by something under her chin. She looked down. Without a bra, her nipples were obvious beneath the flimsy T-shirt. It would only be worse in the cold air. She crossed her arms.

  He opened an ornate chest of drawers and handed her a sweatshirt. “Here.”

  She shook it out and sighed. Red Sox again, of course. “Funny.”

  He took it back from her. “All right. If you don’t mind everyone seeing”—he gestured vaguely to her chest—“all of that, then feel free to leave the shirt here. But don’t be surprised if I try to have my way with you every ten minutes.”

  Grinning, she said, “Is that a threat or a promise?” She snatched the sweatshirt away from him and pulled it over her head. The fabric tumbled past her thighs. She pushed up the sleeves.

  “Beautiful,” Jack murmured, the look in his eyes making her blood run hotter.

  She smiled. “You have a thing for baggy sweatshirts?”

  “I have a thing for you,” he said, taking her hand and making her foolish heart do stupid fluttery things in her chest. But she didn’t have the energy left to tell it to stop fluttering. Instead, she held tighter to Jack’s hand, taking comfort from his strength as he led her out into the rapidly cooling afternoon.

  A few minutes later, they hopped the Q train, headed toward Brooklyn. Eva peered out the window as unfamiliar stops rolled past them. “Where are we going, again?”

  He smiled. “I didn’t tel
l you.”

  Right. She gnawed on the inside of her cheek, a shiver of excitement finding its way under Jack’s big sweatshirt and traveling down her spine. The sweatshirt smelled as delicious as he did, not of any cologne, just of the manly, wonderful scent that was uniquely him. She had to fight the urge to bury her nose in it.

  At the Park Slope stop, he nudged her off the train. As they walked through the trendy neighborhood, she said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been here. Not in my whole life.”

  He dug his hands into his pockets and slowed his pace. She wasn’t sure if she was constantly trailing behind him because he walked too fast, or because she couldn’t get enough of the sight of his sculpted ass in those jeans. “So you’re one of those?”

  “One of…?”

  “Those snobs who refuse to cross the East River. You’ve lived your entire life in the city, Eva, and you’ve never even gone to Brooklyn?”

  Eva blushed. It wasn’t snobbery that contributed to her narrow perspective. It was her family, constantly sheltering her. She’d wanted to go new places, but her father had always found reasons to keep her at home. “I’ve been to Brooklyn before,” she mumbled.

  Twice. Both times with Antonio to watch over her.

  She didn’t say that, though. “Just not here. You know the Fiorini Group only deals with Manhattan properties.”

  He stared at her, incredulous. “So, what? You’ve never left the city? Seriously?”

  “No. I have. All those times I visited Antonio at school in Boston. And I went to boarding schools in Connecticut for twelve years.” She frowned. “I guess my family was too busy to do much exploring outside our sphere. Dad always had his nose to the grindstone. You know how he was.”

  Or maybe it was something else. Maybe that was one of his ways of protecting her.

  But from what? Or who?

  “There’s a big world out there, Eva. You should see some of it.” They reached the entrance to Prospect Park. Jack presented it to her and said, “It’s not much of an escape, I confess. But it might be good for a couple hours.”

  She smiled. Some fresh air, a couple of hot dogs with extra mustard—that might be just what she needed. “It sounds great.”

  “Have you ever been roller-skating?”

  She froze. “Roller-skating?”

  He laughed. “Yes. You can’t go to Prospect and not go skating.”

  “Oh.” The blush on her face deepened. Her parents had arranged for her to have a host of expensive lessons over the course of her childhood. She’d had eight years of ballet, four years of horsemanship at the Ethel Walker School when she was a preteen, and she could probably hop back on the bench and play a mean Chopin piano etude, even though she hadn’t tickled the ivories in over a decade. But skating?

  “I’ve never even been on skates,” she confessed.

  He pressed his lips together. “If you’d rather, we can go for a walk instead.”

  “No, it’s fine. First time for everything, right? I’m up for it. Totally.” She clapped her hands together in effort to sound more psyched than she felt. Was she really going to embarrass herself by getting on skates for the first time in front of Jack?

  “That’s the spirit.” He smiled and they headed over to the roller skate rentals. As Jack chatted with the attendant, Eva watched children, families, and couples skating by on the enormous rink.

  They all looked like pros, but she tamped down any doubts inside her. The fact was, nothing could be more dangerous than the reality that was waiting for her back in Manhattan.

  They sat on a bench and laced on their roller skates. It didn’t feel real, being here like this with Jack. It was such an ordinary thing to do, but special, like she was being allowed access to a Jack she’d never met before.

  She clutched the side of the rink as he stepped out and did a fast circle, hands behind his back like a pro. Of course. It’s Jack. Since when does he do anything badly?

  He came to an easy stop right in front of her. “You didn’t tell me you were good,” she said, hitting his chest playfully.

  “Yeah, well. I thought that went without saying.” He grinned his irresistible grin. “You think I’d want you to see me falling on my ass?”

  “Oh. So instead you get to see me fall on mine? Great,” she mumbled, still clutching the railing for dear life. Her feet felt like they were encased in cinderblocks. Every time she breathed, they seemed to roll out from under her. “So, how did you become such a master?”

  He executed an effortless figure eight, which made her mouth hang open. He always kept his hair combed back, but now it tumbled over his forehead in a rakish way that forced the breath from her lungs.

  And she’d thought Jack couldn’t look any hotter.

  “In Southie, there was a skate park right across from my grandmother’s house,” he said. “When my dad died, Mom had to sell off pretty much everything to keep me at the Hill. But she let me keep my skates. She figured it would be cheaper in the long run than taking the bus twelve miles, every day. When skates are your only mode of transportation, you get pretty good pretty fast. I would be even better if Antonio hadn’t let me crash in his room so often.”

  She thought about all the times she’d seen his things in Antonio’s room when she came to visit. She’d known that Jack had been on the outs at Belmont Hill because his father had died and left them with a pile of debts, but that was all. “Twelve miles?” She shook her head. “Antonio would’ve let you bunk with him permanently. You know that.”

  He shrugged. “Of course he would have. But I was the man of the house. My mom needed me. My grandmother was sick. And honestly, I wasn’t too welcome with any of the other Hillies, other than your brother.” He glided out toward the center of the enormous roller rink, then skated backward toward her, making it clear that he was just as comfortable on skates as he was with walking. “My real friends were at the skate park. We used to do stunts all over the city. I got arrested once. The look on my grandmother’s face…”

  He grimaced.

  Eva’s eyes widened. She loved hearing these stories about the man she increasingly wanted to spend more and more time with. “Oh, really? What for?”

  “Doing stupid things kids do,” he said, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall. “I was caught on camera riding rails outside one of the big banks downtown. My friends and I bent some of the handrails on their stairs so we were charged with property damage. Got off with a warning and some community service.

  “Speaking of railings, I think it’s time for you to let go of that one.” He glided up close to her, then reached for her hand, prying it from the cold metal.

  She resisted, and her feet nearly slid out from under her. “Oh, no! I’ll fall.”

  “No, you won’t,” he said calmly taking her other hand, skating backward as he towed her away from the safety of the railing. “I’ve got you.”

  I’ve got you. She liked the sound of that.

  He studied her feet. “Put them more like a V. Like mine. Then you’re going to do a duck walk. All right?”

  She couldn’t look down. Instead, she looked straight at his broad chest as he led her slowly to the center of the rink. Everyone else disappeared as he directed her, calmly and patiently. Suddenly, she realized that he was touching her, and for the first time it wasn’t about sex. And it was…nice.

  She liked the feel of his warm hands in hers, the sound of his voice in her ears.

  It lulled her to a place where, for the first time in a long time, she felt safe.

  “So,” he said as he glided with her, moving faster until confidence began to seep into Eva’s limbs. She was surprised at how easy it was, with his arms around her, to forget just about everything. “I’ve always known you didn’t want to follow in your father’s footsteps. But I never asked you why.”

  She blinked at the unexpected question. “Well, I had planned to at one point. Dad didn’t discriminate because I was a girl. He groomed me the way he groomed An
tonio. Thoroughly,” she added with a wry smile.

  “So what changed?” he asked.

  “I interned at a cosmetics company in grad school, and they had all these animals in cages.” Her stomach dropped at the thought. “You should’ve seen it, Jack. It was horrible. I knew I had to do something different with my life. Something meaningful.”

  He didn’t respond, but something flickered behind his eyes. Something like hurt.

  Suddenly she realized what she’d said, and her face blazed. “Oh, God. I didn’t mean it that way. What you do is meaningful, of course it is. I just meant more meaningful to me.“

  He chuckled softly. “It’s all right, Eva. I understand. And I admire the heart you put into your business. But I think you may have broken your father’s a little with that decision.”

  She snorted. “No, I didn’t. He always had Antonio. He never missed me.”

  “You used to come around to the properties with us, though, in the early days. Remember?” Jack chuckled. “He called you his good luck charm. Said you had the best gut for real estate he’d ever seen. You always knew a winner from a loser.”

  She stared at her skates, trying to recall. In the early days of the business, she’d only been in high school. A lot of time had passed since then. But she did remember, around the time her mother passed away, that Pietro had relied on her a lot. “After my mom died, he wanted to keep the family together. I think including me in the business was another way to do that. He never liked to leave Antonio or me home alone, even when we were teenagers.”

  Jack was silent for a long time, still holding her against him. Then he said, “That’s kind of odd. Isn’t it?”

  She mused for a moment. “No. I don’t think so. I mean, not to me. That’s just always the way things were.” She laughed. “Now you know where Antonio got his protective side.”

  “But Antonio wasn’t always like that,” Jack said. “In fact, in high school, he could be downright careless. He used to leave his dorm room door unlocked for me all the time. I used to tell him he was going to get his wallet lifted, but he never listened. It wasn’t until we started working with your father that he became so fixated on your safety.”