“Cruz, is this young woman a friend of yours? How delightful. Come and sit by me so we can natter. I've never been invited to meet a young friend of Cruz's before.”
I led the girl across the expanse of the room.
“Danny?” I whispered. “Did the nurses mix you up at birth with the baby boys?”
“It's short for Danielle.”
I loved the way she lifted herself taller, pressing herself through her anxiety. Her spine pulling erect under my palm as she walked with gathered confidence across the huge opulent room to shake the birdy outstretched hand.
“Of course it is,” Ophelia announced. “Don't be childish Cruz. Danielle is a beautiful French name. My grandson likes to tease. Sit down here, my dear if you don't mind my naked foot. I had a silly accident climbing out of that wonderful machine my grandson drives and it was worth every twinge to ride like the wind. Have you been for a whirl yet?'
“Er, yes. Yes I have, ma'am.”
“Oh my goodness, no need to be ceremonious amongst family. Call me Ophelia.”
Dani
Grandmother? The woman looked no more than fifty, her skin too smooth and glowing. Perhaps it was following an outing with her grandson, who had that effect on women of every age. Oh my freaking god, Cruz is a gazillionaire and an aristocrat. I'd always wondered what was behind the regal doors looking out onto Fifth Avenue and the park and now I know. A gold-leafed museum studded with old masters and antiquities.
“I'm sorry. I took Ophelia out to the beach for lunch and she slipped on the boardwalk,” Cruz said.
When he rested his arm on my back I nearly went into hyperventilation. To be this close to him, even in a room this big his presence sucked all the air out and I could barely breathe. I had to bite down on my lower lip just to assure myself that this was real. I was really with him again and the tingles rushing up and down my body weren't more wishful thinking.
“I do love the beach off-season, after all the crowds have fled and nature takes back her wilderness,” Ophelia said. “Please sit down by me, my dear. I don't bite and I believe Doctor Bashir has even made my foot rather fragrant.”
I did as I was bid. Despite her radiant skin and dancing eyes, Ophelia was a formidable woman, not to be ignored.
“So tell me how do you and my grandson know each other? I do love a romantic story and the meeting is the most uplifting part. So many possibilities, so few years to revel in them.”
I was pretty sure Ophelia had reveled in many encounters and lived an exciting life. I guess I'd never paid much attention to the older generation but this woman I could picture easily as a young woman who sought out adventures in life. I wanted to know her more and hear her stories. And of course I wanted to know any little snippet of information about Cruz. It's so bizarre how falling for a man makes you want to talk about him, even if it was something mundane as the color socks he's wearing. Anything to bring him back into your senses.
“He, um, rescued me actually, from a nasty encounter with my ex.”
I could feel my face coloring livid as the doctor's potion with the memory of my first date with Cruz. Was that even a date? No, a date is where the man invites you out and gets to know you while you check out whether he's the one you'll allow inside. I bypassed all that preliminary stuff and cut straight to the good stuff. Then I paid the price big time. I looked up and caught Ophelia staring at me with those sparkling clear eyes like she could see it all. God, I hoped she wasn’t' clairvoyant or something.
“So this would have been only our second date. We're just getting to know each other. Slowly.”
“I’m so sorry my dear that I've put a squelcher on your burgeoning romance. Cruz will make it up to you.”
Cruz was across the room and I was glad he couldn't hear us clearly. I didn't want him taking fright again before we'd had the chance to—be alone together.
“Please, it isn’t your fault. I was held up at work, well, at my boss's home. We were looking for her housekeeper actually. Harlow needed help trawling through the security tapes in the new system they recently installed trying to find out what happened to Fatou.”
“My what a world we live in now, every move watched by cameras. Even in the safety of our own homes.”
From the prickles rising up my back I could tell Cruz was moving closed to me.
“Horrible isn't it,” I said, my breath croaky. “Although I guess it has its uses. We found the footage of the housekeeper, a lovely girl, a refugee from the Middle east who lost all her family in a terrorist attack and was left for dead.”
“Poor thing.”
“She was standing in the hallway in the night with a look of the most abject terror I've ever seen, straight from a fright movie, mouthing one word over and over.
“Wolf.”
Chapter TWELVE
I looked up and found Cruz standing behind the sofa where I was chatting far too easily with his amazing grandmother. A look of, what, disgust maybe, smeared across his gorgeous face. Oh damn, did he think I was trying to ingratiate myself with his family, hoping to pull him closer through them?
When Cruz's phone warbled he pulled out a paper thin phone of a brand I'd never seen. It was virtually transparent.
“Sorry, it's my sister, I have to take this.”
“You deal with Kennedy, while Danielle and I get to know each other.”
Thirty seconds later he was back.
“I have to go,” he snapped. Ophelia looked as taken back as I was, although I should have known by now to expect anything from Cruz, the mystery man.
“But Cruz, you have an engagement with Danielle.”
“I'm sorry, Granmama, I've got to deal with Kenn. She's having one of her funny five minutes. Can Dan stay here with you? I won't be long. Then we'll go get a great dinner.”
“Of course. I'd love to have the company now I'm immobilized. You go deal with your sister.”
Cruz took one last look at us, together on the sofa and his face softened just a notch.
“Ask Granmama to tell you the inspiring tale of how she took a bus in the sixties, completely solo, across Europe to India and found herself hanging out at an ashram with The Beatles. I'll be back before you even miss me.”
That I doubted. I hadn't stopped missing Cruz for a moment since I met him. He'd buried himself into my skin and no amount of sloughing would get him out.
The gold dust went out of the room as soon as Cruz left. Although the paneled walls covered with original masters old and new, the exquisite furniture, a mix of priceless antiques and startling modern designers, complete with roaring fire in the massive stone fireplace made the room beyond impressive, Cruz was the glittering centerpiece. He was an energy ball even when still and when he left the room, he took half the atmosphere with him.
“He's a very unusual man isn't he,” Ophelia said. Again reading my mind.
“Yes. I must say I've never come close to anyone like him before.”
“That was how I felt when I found him.”
“Found him? He's not your grandson?”
“As good as. We're as close as any family could be, closer. But blood ties, no. He was left in a basket outside the front door. A tiny baby, starving and cold but not howling or making so much as a whimper. He looked up at me with those iridescent eyes when I pulled back the blanket and I was smitten, almost as bad as you are now.”
“He was abandoned on your doorstep?” I whispered, knowing now the pain he was harboring of coming into the world and immediately unwanted. How he curled into my body looking for warmth and love.
“Yes. Love is exceptionally important to Cruz. He's made it the center piece of his world and that's never a good idea. You have to let love flow like water through your fingers if you want to keep it. You can't clasp water or love to you.”
“You're saying he can't love or he clings too hard when he finds it?”
“Neither. Cruz is exceptionally loving. He loves so deeply that he gets hurt. He can't distinguish th
e women he can trust from those he can't, like his own mother I suppose. So he's walled himself off behind into a safety zone, afraid to let go fully to anyone.”
“That's so sad.”
Like it was yesterday instead of an interminable couple of weeks ago, I felt him curled into me that night when I woke. He'd shifted from holding the length of my back to his solid front, and curled into my breast and stomach with the look of satisfaction. I knew I wanted, no yearned, to hold him there again and make him happy. He could definitely be happy with me to love him.
“Despite all the hip hi-tech, Cruz is a real old-fashioned guy. He believes in unconditional love,” Ophelia liked to talk about her baby as much as I was glad to listen. “He wants total commitment, forever, from someone who will never leave him. Because that's what he needs to give.”
She was looking at me so intently, scouring me to check if I was that girl, or another one from a bar seduced by his looks and body, then that car and the money. I wanted to be that girl. All my life I'd dreamed of finding that kind of love but I didn't know if I could be enough for a man like Cruz.
“Ah, you've been hurt too,” Ophelia said. I had to laugh, making her eyes sparkle even brighter.
“Sorry, none of this is funny, it's just amazing how you keep verbalizing my thoughts. Even before I register them.”
“Spirit soul,” the doctor muttered.
I'd forgotten he was still there. Sitting placidly in an upright chair by the window, quiet as a meditating monk.
“Comes with the years lived, babe. And years loved. You begin to feel your soul mates all around you, and we're all soul mates.”
She looked almost like a twenty something as her mind traveled back to those years hanging with rock stars.
“I'm not blind to my grandson's charms or flaws. I see the effect he has on women, the presence that emanates from that perfect physical form. But imagine what that must be like for him to carry around on his back every day. Never knowing whether a woman wants a notch in her Burberry handbag strap at scoring a man like Cruz, or whether she's actually capable of letting him be a real man. A man with flaws and fears that needs support and love from a real woman to be his best self.”
“Maybe that's all any of us want if we step put of playing the roles life pushes us to,” I said.
I was falling fast down the rabbit hole of wishing and praying that real woman could be me. I was ridiculously attracted to Cruz for more than his gorgeous physique and super wealth. I really wanted to make him happy like that brief unforgettable glimpse I had of him sleeping coiled against my body.
“You remind me so much of myself at your age,” Ophelia said and I took that as a compliment.
If I could be like her at eighty I’d be content with life.
“Okay enough gossiping ladies. Granmama how's that ankle?”
I mean literally, the doors flew open faster than the time passing and the room filled with sunshine. I wasn't the only one who felt it, Ophelia also lit up and glowed brighter at Cruz's return. I looked at him in a new light now. Ophelia was very talkative and knew how to weave an engrossing story. Her travels were fascinating but I was really intrigued by what she'd told me about Cruz.
I'd inquired about other family and been allowed to gorge on her reminiscences. How Cruz insisted on doing his turn in the army, perhaps to piss off his father. Kennedy's father really, because when Ophelia took the baby in, it had been her own son and his wife who'd taken the him to raise as their own. Congressman and Mrs de Angelis had been convinced by doctors that they'd never have children of their own. For a couple of years Cruz had been the golden child and heir apparent. And then by the miracles of science, Kennedy had arrived and immediately became her father's precious darling.
I didn't have time to ask more questions or to think more about the bust up with his dad and his disappearance for years when he went AWOL from the army. Cruz was back and claimed he was starving. His eyes seared into mine as he said this, making goosebumps shiver up my arms and the throbbing start between my thighs.
“I'm fine,” Ophelia said. “You two go on out for your date.”
We both demurred and said we'd stay home and order Chinese but she was adamant she wanted to rest now.
“Will you come see me again, Danielle? There's so much more to talk about.” She looked at me with eyes that delved into me with meaning. I was sure she wanted to divulge the secrets to making Cruz happy and I was eager to hear them.
“Yes. I'd be glad to.”
I stole a look at Cruz, hoping he wasn't mad. He smiled at me without any trace of rancor. Good, at least he wasn’t going to be uptight about me getting close to his only family, aside from the odd-sounding Kennedy who for some reason, I was in no big rush to get to know.
Chapter THIRTEEN
Cruz
It was late by the time I got back to Ophelia's pad. The task had taken a little longer than expected with complications around the drop. Dani was on the sofa with Ophelia like they'd known each other a lifetime. Or many lifetimes, as Ophelia would have insisted. Perhaps she was right and we do keep meeting the same people in different incarnations, or perhaps her time with George Harrison years ago had warped her perception. What I know is that there was some stronger connection attaching me to this girl than anyone I'd ever met. That might be enough to persuade me to believe in reincarnations.
I took Dan to dinner at a place I know in Chinatown, just to be sure. It was rougher than most, filled with the Triad gangs hanging in the back. I didn't like testing her but the hangout felt comfortable to me and I was so bored with women insisting I escort them to the swanky holes of Manhattan.
She was absolutely perfect. I should have known she wasn't one of them. She ate bird's nest soup and a pile of chow mein with pleasure, entirely focused on the company, rather than the amount of attention she was garnering. In fact at one point she made a comment about understanding why I'd wanted to go back to her place instead of staying in the bar that first night.
“You attract so much interest. It must be awkward being in the limelight all the time with people looking at you. Even the men in here are salivating.”
I laughed and actually relaxed with this girl. She was funny and sexy and smart and so kind. Just real, humanity real. If I didn't have the task to complete, I might even have been able to imagine something longer-lasting.
“It's not me, it's you,” I told her.
“What?” Her face collapsed like a house of cards and her lower lip started trembling. I couldn't resist reaching across the table and stroking across the quivering soft flesh with my thumb pad.
“I mean it's you they're staring at. You're so beautiful I want to kiss you right here in this crowd of inscrutable Chinese gangsters.”
“I'm game if you are,” she whispered, lightly trailing the tip of her tongue across my skin. She sent a blaze of fire into the wood I was already packing with that tiny motion. I was steaming with the need to feel her wrap her mouth around me. That soft tongue tease at my tip. Her lip was still trembling but with a different emotion now. And it looked so luscious, I leaned across and took her mouth in mine. Daggering my fingers into her hair to cup her head and hold her buried inside me across the mess of plates.
My dick pulsed with rage just kissing her and it was all I could do to keep from ripping her clothes off and bending her over the table in full view of the very late night patrons. I wanted to feel that warm tug of her body welcoming me inside her, pulling me in deeper. I needed it with a carnivorous hunger I've never known.
Being with Dan, wanting her bad like this, was not part of the plan. Yeah, she'd been more useful than I'd anticipated tonight, jolting my fogged up memories back into focus, with everything she'd unwittingly divulged in nervous chatter. But after I'd secured the package and with the task close to completion, I could have dropped her back home instead of indulging in this midnight feast. My mind was still a jungle of confusion.
How had I not recognized that housekeep
er kid the night she saw me in the hall at Harlow's? If it hadn't taken me so fucking long to recall who the girl was, I'd have grabbed her the night I busted into their penthouse. For some reason I hadn't been able to align that past task with the current one and never put the scenario together. I can only blame this constant distraction from my dick for the mind fuzz. Dani is doing strange things to my mind. My usual precision clear machine-like thinking is all fogged up with wants and needs I'm completely unaccustomed to. I can't keep my thoughts straight about the job at hand because this girl invades every single one of them. I want her and I have to have her.
I should stop this thing now for so many reasons but I can't, for even more of them. And Dani's already been so useful, she's worth keeping around for what she'll be able to tell me about Cole's business dealings. I just have to control myself and not get in any deeper with her. Those doleful eyes, that pillowy mouth and the rest of her sizzling bod make it tough. But there's something way different about this one. I've known plenty of doe eyes, Angelina lips and Rihanna shapers over the years. This one is working her way into my marrow and I gotta make sure I keep my walls erect before she conquers me completely.
My cock raged at me again, exploding with hunger and demanding to bury inside her naked body. I can't take her back to my suite. Kennedy left for DC finally, but I had to take the Arab princess to my place, for holding until I receive further instructions. No one expected that old mission to suddenly become active again. I have no protocol on where to deposit the package. That fuckwit Cole must have smuggled the girl out of her homeland after the original mission. And he's kept her hidden in his own apartment all this time, the brazen bastard. Got to hand it to him, he gets shit done. All the new clubs, his Illicit business gone to global expansion in a very short time while he hides behind his philanthropist persona with some bullshit charity.
CRUZ: Billionaire Bonded Romance Suspense (Illicit Book 4) Page 6
