Sinful Attraction

by Ann Christopher

  “What if I crash here for a bit? You’ve got plenty of space and it would give me the chance to—”

  “Find yourself?”

  “Precisely.”

  She stared at him, studying him with a detached curiosity as she framed her answer. It was hard to talk to someone with such a skewed perception of reality, sort of like trying to convince someone that the earth wasn’t square—where did you start? What do you mean, you don’t believe in hundreds of years of established science?

  Or maybe Charles’s real problem was the overblown sense of entitlement he seemed to have been born with and that she and Mum had unwittingly nurtured over his lifetime.

  Either way, it ended now.

  “No, Charles. I’m sorry.”

  Charles’s winning smile showed definite signs of strain, but he hung on to it with a valiant effort as he cocked his head. “Pardon me?” he asked pleasantly.

  “You can’t live here with me. Or anywhere with me.”

  “Why the bloody hell not?”

  Ah, there it was. That first hard-edged note in his voice the second it seemed that he might not get his way. “Because I’m emancipating myself. I’m no longer obligated to support or even help a twenty-seven-year-old man who does nothing but drop out of school and drink away my money while I work seventy hours a week trying to build my career. It’s time for you to grow up and for me to worry less about your life and more about mine. I’ve been to university. I’ve worked hard. It’s time for me to focus on me. Because—” she took a deep breath “—I deserve it.”

  Charles gaped at her. Laughed uneasily as though he’d been the victim of an unfortunate practical joke. Finally lost his smile when he realized she was serious.

  “Well, that’s all well and good,” he said, “but what am I supposed to do while you’re ‘focusing on you’?” He punctuated the end of this sentence by making angry quotations marks with his fingers. “What am I going to do for money?”

  “I’ve no idea. I’d assumed you’d figured that out when you bailed on university and blew through my money. I don’t have an endless supply, despite what you seem to think.”

  A wild, desperate light crept into his eyes, making him look unhinged. “I don’t think you understand. I don’t have any money. I have nowhere to stay tonight.”

  “You’re at the Gansevoort, you said.”

  “I left!”

  “Crash with the mates you were drinking with tonight.”

  “I can’t live with them! They all have girlfriends who can barely tolerate the sight of me!”

  Fancy that.

  Claudia shrugged, trying to hang on to her calm-and-detached demeanor, which was incredibly hard given the fact that she knew he really did have limited options and no money. But she also knew that wasn’t her fault, and she hadn’t created—nor could she cure—the situation.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “Stop saying that!” he roared, his voice shrill with disbelief. “You’re turning me out with nothing?”

  “I don’t want to. I think you need help.”

  “You’re damn right I do—”

  “Not financial help,” she added quickly. “Help with your drinking. I think you need to go to rehab.”

  He stilled, his face slackening with silent rage.

  “You...think I need rehab?” he asked, low.

  She kept her shoulders straight, knowing he was about to unleash hell on her—

  There was a knock on the door.

  Marcus! With a wild surge of relief, she hurried to swing the door open for him. He backed into the apartment, his arms full, and pecked her on the cheek as he passed.

  “I got kung pao everything.” He ducked his head as he inventoried the contents of the brown paper bags. “Chicken, scallops and shrimp, because I didn’t know what you liked, and Szechuan noodles— Oh, hey.” He looked up and hesitated, apparently as surprised to see Charles as Charles was to see him. “I didn’t know you had company.”

  Charles’s gaze swung between Claudia and Marcus, his expression contracting into something suspicious and ugly.

  Claudia decided to do the normal thing. “Marcus, this is my brother, Charles. Charles, this is my, ah—”

  She faltered over the correct designation. Good friend? Lover?

  “Boyfriend,” Marcus supplied, giving her a pointed look before he rearranged the bags, extended his hand to Charles and summoned a guarded smile. “Marcus Davies. Great to meet you.”

  Charles glared at Marcus, glared at Marcus’s hand and then turned his back on him.

  “Charles!” Claudia hissed, excruciatingly aware of the way Marcus’s face darkened. “You will not be rude to a guest in my home—”

  “Right.” Charles’s lips arranged themselves into a twisted, humorless smile as he faced her. “Got it. He’s the reason you’re throwing me to the wolves, isn’t he? You start getting laid on a regular basis, and suddenly you don’t have time for your only brother. Have I got it right, sis?”

  Marcus’s face turned to stone. The black flash of his eyes warned of serious danger to come if Charles didn’t learn some manners, and learn them quick.

  “Charles,” he began, his voice deathly soft.

  Claudia held up a hand and shot him a look. Muttering a curse, Marcus paced to the galley and deposited the bags on the counter.

  “Charles,” she said kindly, knowing very well that this could be her first, last and best chance to convince her brother to get the help he needed, “will you please consider rehab?” Marcus pivoted back around, eyes wide with astonishment. “I’ll arrange for everything. I’ve researched several facilities back in London. All you have to do is show up and try—”

  “Why would I try rehab when I’ve already told you a million times that I don’t have a drinking problem?” Charles yelled, veins throbbing and distended in his temple and throat.

  “You do have a problem!”

  Claudia hesitated, overwhelmed by the situation and sure she was screwing it all up. There were proper ways to hold interventions, and she didn’t know enough about them because she’d only begun to research them a bit last night, when she couldn’t sleep, and she hadn’t had time to get all her thoughts together. “I mean, look at you! You’ve lost weight. You’ve aged terribly, Charles. Your color is yellow, which tells me your liver is compromised. You can’t keep a job, you don’t stay in school—”

  “I’m a loser, then?” Charles’s eyes bulged and his face was turning purple, making him look as though he was on the verge of an apoplectic fit. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying you need help.” Claudia crept toward him, arms out, beseeching. “Let me help you.”

  “That’s easy!” Charles face lit with a wild hope. “If you want to help me, you put me up here and make those calls to find me a job, like you promised.”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said firmly. “I’m not doing that.”

  “You’re not doing that? You’re not doing that?” Charles lashed out, swiping a vase off the console and sending it crashing it to the floor. “Well, what the hell am I supposed to do when you’re not doing that?”

  He raised his hand again, but Marcus was there, materializing from across the room and inserting himself between Charles and Claudia and speaking with a low but implacable voice.

  “You need to keep a lid on your temper, son.”

  “Son?” Charles shouted, spittle flying. “You can bugger off!”

  “Charles!” Claudia ran headlong into her limit. This had gone on long enough, and there’d be no big breakthrough with Charles tonight. She could see that now. That being the case, it was time for him to go, so she crossed to the door and opened it. She wasn’t going to stand by while he insulted Marcus. “My door is always ope
n to you if you decide to get help with your drinking. But, until then...” All her turbulent emotions began to break through her calm facade, forcing her to pause and catch her breath. “It’s time for you to leave.”

  Charles flung his arms wide and succumbed to a wild-eyed panic, probably because he’d never been truly on his own before. “What am I going to do for money?”

  “You’ll figure it out,” Claudia told him, blinking back her tears and swiping under her nose. “Goodbye, Charles.”

  Charles stared at her, panting and disbelieving.

  Then, without warning, he turned on Marcus, snarling.

  “This is your fault!” Charles banged his palms on the console, making the remaining vase jump and wobble. “She’d’ve never’ve found the spine for this before you showed up!”

  Marcus crossed his arms over his broad chest and stood tall and strong. Unsmiling. Unyielding. “Claudia makes her own decisions. I support her. And I’ll support you if and when you decide to get help for your drinking.”

  Charles barked out an ugly laugh. “You support me? You support me? Well, let me tell you something, mate! I’m not the loser here—Claudia is! Do you know how many men she’s been through? Do you think you’ll stick when no one else ever has? I give you a month, tops, and you’ll walk out on her like everyone else has, but I’ll still be here, because I’m the only man who’s stuck in her life!”

  Silence rang through the apartment.

  Claudia discovered, to her mortification, that she was shaking.

  So was Marcus, who cracked his lips open the smallest possible amount as he clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides.

  “Get. Out.”

  Charles seemed to realize he’d gone too far. Turning back to her, he tried one final plea. Tears shimmered in his eyes, but now, finally, she saw them as the manipulations they were rather than evidence of anything genuine. And it infuriated her.

  “Claudia. Sis. Please—”

  “Get out!” she shrieked.

  She and Charles stared at each other for one miserable second.

  And then Charles dropped his head and strode out of her apartment.

  She slammed the door at his back.

  All the emotional pain—years and years of it, congealing in her gut and poisoning her thoughts—surged up her throat and out, emerging as a sob. Clapping her hand over her mouth, she stifled it, an effort that made her bend at the waist and took everything she had. But then she managed it and straightened, swiped the last of the angry tears from her eyes and turned to face Marcus.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she warned. “I don’t want you feeling sorry for me.”

  “Sorry. Try again. This is my look of absolute admiration and adoration.”

  She hadn’t expected that at all. She gave him a watery smile and ruined it by hiccuping with the ongoing effort of not bawling her eyes out.

  “You admire emotional wrecks, do you?”

  “I admire the strongest woman I’ve ever seen.”

  “Funny,” she said, wiping under her eyes again, “I don’t feel that strong at the moment.”

  “The strong ones never do. But you don’t have to put on a strong front for me. Ever. Cry if you want to. I’ve got big shoulders. I won’t think any less of you.”

  “Oh, I plan to have a real crying jag in the shower later,” she assured him brightly. “That’s where I do all my best crying.”

  “Whatever works. You know there are support groups for people dealing with alcoholics, right?”

  “Yeah. I probably need one, don’t I?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt.” He crept closer and held his hand out to her. “Is it okay if I touch you right now? I need it.”

  “I need it, too. But you’re doing it at your own risk. I’m likely to sob all over your lovely starched shirt.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  She took his strong hand and he reeled her in. They stood there together, their fingers intertwined, and stared at each other, assessing the damage. Looking into the unabashed warmth of his brown eyes, Claudia felt as raw and exposed as a newborn kangaroo trying to inch its way to its mother’s pouch.

  She knew she was on her way to a better, safer place.

  If only Marcus would tough it out with her for a little longer while she got there.

  But why would he? Why would he think she was worth the trouble?

  “In case you’re wondering,” he told her softly, “I don’t know or care if anything Charles said about you was true or not—”

  A joyous wave of relief swept through her.

  Oh, God, she thought, ducking her head and trying, harder than ever, not to cry. There she went again with the ridiculous waterworks. Was she a mess, or not?

  “—as long as you don’t care that I’ve been with—and this is a conservative estimate—three-fourths of unmarried Manhattan women between the ages of twenty-two and fifty-five since Renee died.” He cocked his head, reconsidering. “Actually, we’d better make that four-fifths.”

  A hysterical burble of laughter shot out of her mouth.

  He pressed her hand and stared at her, unsmiling. “As far as I’m concerned, we’re both starting again. Right now. Okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said, dimpling at him. “Although perhaps you’d like to start again with one of those fresh-faced twenty-two-year-olds. They have so much less baggage than I do.”

  “Maybe, but I’d be bored in a day or two.”

  “I hate to tell you, darling, but you may well be bored with me and my family drama very soon. Because we both know that Charles will be back to put me—”

  “Us,” Marcus amended.

  “—through the wringer again, and probably sooner rather than later.”

  Marcus shrugged as though this prospect was no trickier than cleaning the gutters in the fall. “We’ll manage.”

  She gaped at him in utter disbelief. Was he for real? And, if so, what had she ever done to deserve him? “You’re barking mad, aren’t you? That’s the only explanation for why you aren’t running in the other direction, isn’t it? You’re mentally subnormal, clearly.”

  “Nah.” Pulling her closer, Marcus pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead and breathed her in. “I’m mad about you, but normal otherwise.”

  “Perhaps I should be running in the other direction.”

  He grinned, tightening his grip around her waist. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She eased closer, resting her cheek against the steady thump of his heart and closing her eyes. And then an image of Charles’s traumatized face flashed through her mind’s eye, and she grimaced.

  Marcus, being Marcus, noticed. “What, beauty?”

  “What’s going to happen to him?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But he needs to figure it out for himself.”

  “Did I do the right thing, Marcus?”

  “I think so.”

  Reassured, she nodded. “Well, then,” she said crisply, raising her head and smoothing the front of his black shirt to make sure she hadn’t gotten it too wet with any lingering tears, “shall we eat our kung pao everything and talk about how we’re going to make Judah’s auction a great success?”

  She flicked her gaze up to his and discovered him studying her face with bright eyes and banked heat. With absolute concentration, he traced his fingers over her eyebrows...her nose...her parted lips.

  Low in her belly, desire began to pulse.

  “Marcus...?”

  “Dinner can wait,” he murmured, eyes closing as he leaned in to capture her mouth with his.

  Chapter 16

  “Woo-hoo!” Judah Cross said, in full rock-star regalia. He wore spiked hair, eyeliner, a sequined black jacket over his flowy white shirt and neon
green hot pants, high-heeled purple cowboy boots and, last but not least, a collection of bling—rings, bracelets, necklaces and glittery scarves—that made him damn near impossible to look at beneath the spotlights hitting the stage. He grabbed the mic off the stand, leaned as far back as he could, which, thanks to his yoga-induced flexibility, was pretty far, and let loose with that wolf-howl thing he did. “Woo-hoo! You guys are amazing! Thank you to everyone who made this auction such a great success!”

  Marcus, who was happy with the world and had been for the past two months since he and Claudia came back to New York and began their relationship in earnest, clapped and whistled along with the rest of the raucous black-tie crowd.

  Claudia, who was clapping along with him, leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Our Judah does like his moment in the sun, doesn’t he?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Marcus answered, grinning as he gave her an appreciative once-over. “I can’t take my eyes off you, though.”

  It was true. Claudia had blossomed into an enhanced version of the woman he’d met on the plane, which made her almost more than his poor heart could take. Tonight she wore a strapless black dress with a heart-shaped neckline that dipped low enough to keep him in a sweet state of barely suppressed arousal, a flowing skirt with a slit up to her shapely left thigh and a pair of silvery spiked heels that set off her perfect legs. Her skin glowed, her eyes glittered and she smiled nonstop these days, reflecting his happiness back to him.

  She arched a brow. “Is that so?” she murmured to Marcus, keeping her eyes on Judah.

  “It’s so.”

  “That’s merely because you’re wondering about the state of my knickers tonight.”

  “Well, what did you expect? You wouldn’t let me see them before we left the house.”

  She giggled, and he felt that slow curl of desire again.

  “Will you two lovebirds knock it off?” Cooper, who stood on the other side of Claudia, glowered at the two of them, his hands deep in his pockets. “I’m really not trying to vomit tonight.”

  “Honestly, Cooper, what’s wrong with you?” Claudia eyed him with a concern that Marcus shared, namely because Cooper was in bad shape these days. “I’m worried you’re sickening or something. You’re so thin, and with those bags under your eyes—”