Dynasties: The Elliotts, Books 1-6

by Various Authors

  She went into the bedroom to find her watch, double-checking that the clock was right. It was.

  Six-thirty came. Anxiety played hide-and-seek in her head.

  Six forty-five. Worry joined the game.

  The phone rang. She almost came out of her skin. He was delayed, that was all, and calling to say so.

  “Hello?” She heard herself, breathless and hopeful.

  “Miss Elliott?”

  Not John. “Yes.”

  “Were you ready for room service?”

  “I need a little more time.” She’d arranged to call them when she was ready but had told them it would probably be about 6:15 p.m. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “Of course, ma’am. Good evening.”

  Scarlet blew out a breath. Where was John? She had left nothing to chance, had even called to alert him about the envelope. Yet now she was left staring at the hotel door, willing him to knock on it, but only silence echoed back.

  Seven o’clock came. Eight. She dimmed the lights and curled up on the sofa.

  He wasn’t coming. Apparently he’d thought about what she said in the note and made his decision. Except that he’d told her he would call, one way or the other, and he hadn’t, and he was usually a man of his word. Maybe she had been too pushy, her expectations too high.

  But he’d called her, too, wanting to talk. He’d said so. What did it all mean?

  At 9:35 p.m. she cancelled room service and turned a chair to the window. Headlights dotted the nightscape as a steady stream of traffic passed below her. They blurred into ribbons of light, red one direction, white the other. Horns honked. Life went on.

  But not hers.

  Why didn’t he want her? Was she too much trouble? Maybe she’d been too bold, undermining him as a man. Maybe he thought she was high maintenance, someone who brought too much drama into a life.

  Okay, perhaps she’d stirred his life up a bit, but she wasn’t exactly a drama queen. She hadn’t changed him. He was still the cool, calm person he’d always been.

  Maybe that was the crux of the problem. She was too intense. He was too calm.

  Fire and ice. Good for a sexual relationship, but not for life.

  She looked blindly around the room, aching disappointment drifting around her. How could he just blow her off like that? Okay, so she hadn’t exactly encouraged him since Summer had discovered them, had actually discouraged him. But he was big on courtesy. He should have at least let her know he wasn’t coming. He’d said he would. He was a promise keeper.

  Unless he was hurt?

  She laughed at the idea, the sound brittle, and wished she’d ordered the champagne to be delivered anyway, so she could toast her fertile imagination. She’d seen An Affair to Remember too many times, that was all. And she’d heard the siren earlier. It had stopped right in front of the hotel, hadn’t it? Had it been an ambulance?

  “Right, Scarlet. He was looking up at the hotel and was hit by a car on his way to meet you.”

  Frustrated, she walked to the window again and looked out, resting her forehead against the cold pane. She just wanted—needed—a reason for why he wasn’t there, that was all. Because her imagination put him in an ER somewhere, bleeding, barely conscious, calling her name, since in some way it was preferable to him ignoring her.

  And that was her wake-up call. She grabbed her things, then left for home, wanting nothing more than to curl up in her own bed, and never see the Ritz-Carlton again.

  In her car she rolled down her car window, felt the chilly air against her cheeks as she drove, trying to erase the memory of the night. The short drive seemed infinite yet instantaneous.

  She reached the town house, hit the garage door opener and saw the spot where she usually parked her car, gaping and empty—a glaring reminder of the state of her life.

  Some welcome home.

  John clutched a Glenfiddich on the rocks in one hand, his first of the night, and a ring in the other, not missing the irony of the déjà vu moment and wishing he was as close to drunk as the other time.

  A small scraping sound made him turn toward the front door. Something flat and white lay there. He slipped the ring into his pocket, walked over, picked up the envelope. Finally, Scarlet’s envelope had arrived. Instinct made him open the door, because the doorman would’ve called first.

  A woman stood at the elevator, her back to him. There was no mistaking her this time.

  “Scarlet?”

  She spun around. “I thought—” She hesitated, looking confused. “Your car is gone.”

  “It’s in the shop.” He waited for her to approach, but she didn’t, which confused him.

  The elevator door opened. She looked into the empty cavern then didn’t step inside. The doors closed quietly.

  He opened the envelope and pulled out a piece of paper. “Obviously we don’t want the same things,” she’d written. “Goodbye.”

  That was it? The big mystery in the envelope? She’d already said goodbye, when she’d returned his apartment key. So what did this goodbye mean? She’d changed her mind, but had changed it again now?

  “Come in,” he said.

  “I’m comfortable here.”

  Leave it to Scarlet to make everything a challenge. She kept him on his toes, and fascinated.

  John held up the paper. “I don’t understand. What do you want that I don’t?”

  She pushed back her shoulders as if gearing for a fight. “I had wanted to continue our relationship.”

  “Continue in what way?”

  “As we had. Just spending time together.”

  As they had? “In private?” he asked, bewildered. “Snatches of time during the week when we can find it? Maybe an overnight on Saturdays? An occasional weekend away?”

  “Yes.”

  He studied her. It wasn’t what he’d expected. He’d thought she would either cut him off altogether as a sacrifice to her relationship with Summer or demand more of him. At the least he’d figured she wanted the one last time in bed they’d missed out on when Summer had surprised them.

  “Nooners?” he asked, stepping into the hall.

  She flinched. “Everything the same as it was the past month,” she said. “Except this time with everyone’s blessings, which they gave.”

  “Even Patrick?”

  “I think he’s mellowing.”

  John didn’t have time to consider the implications of that. “No,” he said.

  Silence stretched out for days, it seemed.

  Finally, she jabbed the down button.

  A door across the hallway opened, and his neighbor looked out, eyeing the both of them.

  “Sorry, Keith,” John said to the man, taking quick strides to get to Scarlet before the elevator arrived and she was swallowed up by it. His neighbor shut his door.

  In a low voice he told Scarlet, “I’m not interested in that proposition, tempting as it sounds on a base level.”

  “I figured that out already. No has no alternate meaning. This conversation is over.”

  “Not even close. But unless you want my neighbors to hear the rest of it, I suggest you come inside.” He put his hand on her arm, urging her toward his apartment.

  “There’s nothing more to say.”

  “There’s a helluva lot more to say.”

  After a moment she went along, although jerking free of his grasp. She walked directly to his couch then didn’t sit.

  “May I take your coat?”

  “I won’t be here long.” She crossed her arms.

  “I’m missing a piece of the communication puzzle, Scarlet. You act as if I should’ve known what you wanted.”

  “If you’d shown up at the hotel, you would know.”

  “What hotel?”

  She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “The Ritz-Carlton, of course.”

  “Of course,” he repeated without any understanding. “I was supposed to be there, I gather.”

  She narrowed her gaze. “It w
as in the envelope.”

  He glanced at her note. Had she lost her mind?

  “Not that envelope,” she said. “The other one.”

  “This is the only one I’ve received.”

  “But…it was delivered five minutes after we talked. The courier confirmed it.”

  He stared at her, baffled. “At my office?”

  “I told you it was coming.” Frustration coated her words and stiffened her body.

  “My father dropped by. He needed to talk to me about some family business, so we went to the bar next door. I called my doorman and told him to contact me when—” He paused. “I assumed you would send it here.”

  “I didn’t.”

  He’d gone crazy sitting at the bar with his father, waiting for a call. “Sit down, please. Can I get you something to drink?”

  She shook her head then perched on the sofa, her hands clenched on her knees. John sat in a chair opposite from her. He wasn’t alone in his loss for words. A comedy of errors, he thought, but not funny at all.

  “You’re wearing one of your new suits,” she said after a moment. “It looks nice.”

  Avoidance. She was trying to regroup. What was in that envelope, anyway? “You were right. I got compliments.”

  “Why are you still dressed up?”

  He ignored her question. “What was in the other envelope, Scarlet?”

  “A key card for a room at the Ritz.”

  “And when I didn’t show up, you thought I’d left you high and dry? Do you know me at all?”

  She looked out the window. “I didn’t know what to think,” she said into the quiet.

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “Because if you were intentionally ignoring me, I didn’t want the humiliation.”

  “So you came in person instead?” He smiled at her, not quite following her logic but appreciating how much her emotions were involved.

  She stood abruptly. “This isn’t going anywhere. Let’s just call it a day. A month. Goodbye, John.” She headed toward the door.

  “When I said no earlier,” he said, following her, “I meant I wasn’t interested in keeping the status quo.”

  She continued toward the door.

  “What I am interested in,” he said, “is a full-time, publicly acknowledged relationship.”

  Her steps slowed.

  “I love you, Scarlet.”

  She stopped and turned around, her gaze meeting his, her expression one of guarded surprise. He caught up with her and slipped his arms around her, but still she didn’t speak.

  “This is the part where you say you love me, too.” His heart thudded. He was taking a leap of faith, based on everything he’d seen in her eyes this past month, heard in her voice, felt in her touch. Still, he wouldn’t know until she said—

  “I fell in love with you a year ago,” she said, her voice just a whisper, as if she were afraid to admit it.

  “A year ago? But—”

  She put a hand over his mouth. “As it turns out, you’re not the man I thought I fell in love with.”

  A year ago. She fell in love with me a year ago. The unbelievable words kept repeating in his head. Then it hit him that she was speaking in the past tense. “Meaning what?” he asked.

  She toyed with his lapels. “You were an ideal, and I loved the ideal without really knowing the man. I hadn’t seen below the surface until this month. Now you’re real. And now my love is real, too.”

  The world righted itself. He pulled her closer, needing to hold her, needing her arms around him, squeezing tight. She pressed her face against his neck.

  “Do you want to know when I started falling in love with you?” he asked, loving the feel of her breath against his skin, warm and unsteady, hinting at intense emotions. “At the country club. In the conference room. When you stopped me from making love with you on the table. That hadn’t been my goal when I got you in there. All I wanted was a kiss, but things escalated. You do that to me.”

  He stroked her hair, enjoying the soft sound of pleasure she made as she snuggled closer. “There is much more to you than I’d guessed, and I want to know it all. I want you.”

  He kissed her, long and lingeringly, putting everything into the kiss that he felt, feeling everything back from her. Then he framed her face with his hands, keeping her close.

  “I want you to marry me, Scarlet. Will you marry me?”

  She smiled; her eyes welled. “Yes,” she said, then repeated it in a stronger voice. “Although one little problem does stand in the way. Summer wants to have a big, splashy wedding. Those take a while to arrange.”

  “What do Summer’s plans have to do with us?”

  “She’d like to have a double wedding.”

  It didn’t surprise him. The twin bond was a powerful force. It did surprise him that they’d discussed it already. “And you? What would you like?”

  “I want to marry you, period.”

  “But you’d like to do the spectacle with your sister. The Cinderella thing.”

  “I promise it won’t be a three-ring circus. It’ll be tasteful and classy and—”

  He kissed her, this time without restraint and with the intent of getting her to think about something else—him. Them. Now.

  He lifted her into his arms and carried her to his bedroom, as he’d done the first night she’d knocked on his door. In his pocket was the ring, nothing as simple as a diamond. She was a complex woman who needed a different kind of engagement ring, something untraditional, something with flair.

  He’d chosen it yesterday, had tried not to think about what he would do if she said no. He would’ve fought for her, though. Fought hard.

  He wouldn’t give her the ring tonight. Tonight he would give her himself, and let himself just enjoy her. Tomorrow, though, he would find a creative way to present the ring to her. His magna cum laude graduation from Woo U wouldn’t go to waste.

  “I love you,” she said, reaching for him.

  There was so much yet to say and do and discover. But it started and ended with one truth. “I love you, too,” he said. “Forever.”

  HEIDI BETTS

  Mr. and Mistress

  Published by Silhouette Books

  America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance

  For Jackie Stephens—thanks for your help with the

  research for this book, and for all the great e-mail chats!

  And always, for Daddy.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Heidi Betts for her contribution to THE ELLIOTTS miniseries.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  One

  “Hello?”

  “I’m in town. Thought I might come over.”

  His voice reached through the telephone wire and slid down her spine like warm maple syrup on a cold winter’s day, into every nook and cranny of Misty Vale’s traitorous body.

  “All right,” she replied softly. “I’ll be waiting.”

  She hung up and quickly began moving around the room, straightening magazines and throw pillows, dimming the lights before heading for her bedroom. Shedding her skintight bike shorts and sports bra, she slipped into a new black teddy she knew Cullen would love.

  If it weren’t for him, she probably wouldn’t own half as many pieces of fancy lingerie. But he liked the sheer, sexy stuff, and she liked wearing it for him.

  She quickly pulled her long, wavy hair out of its ponytail holder and ran a brush through to fluff it up.

  A second later, the doorbell rang. She hurried across the room, glancing around one last time to be sure everything was in order. And then h
er hand was on the chain, releasing it. On the knob, turning it.

  “Hi.”

  He was leaning against the jamb, black hair glistening in the porch light, blue eyes sparkling with barely banked desire. She swallowed hard, wishing she knew how to settle the butterflies flitting around in her belly.

  “Hi. Come on in,” she said, stepping back to allow him entrance.

  She closed the door and refastened the security chain, then turned to find him watching her like a hawk might watch a mouse just before swooping down and carrying it away.

  He was dressed for business in charcoal gray slacks and a white dress shirt, both of which were slightly wrinkled from a long day of meetings and travel. His tie was silk, with pastel swirls that reminded her of a painting she’d seen once in an art gallery. It was pulled away from his neck and hung limply from the collar with the top two buttons undone. The jacket that matched his slacks was folded over one arm.

  He looked tired, and as much as she wanted to drag him straight to the bedroom, she thought he might need to relax a bit first.

  “Do you want anything?” she asked, tipping her head in the direction of the kitchen at his back. “A glass of wine? Something to eat, maybe?”

  With the flick of his wrist, his jacket fell to the floor and he was striding forward, his gaze focused intently on her face.

  “Later,” he growled in a low voice that sent every cell of her being into erotic overdrive. His arms wrapped around her and a second later, his mouth hovered above hers. “Right now all I want is you.”

  As always, his kiss scorched, setting her afire from head to toe. She buried her fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck, caressing his scalp. His lips moved over hers, sucking, biting. His tongue delved inside to lick and stroke.

  Her breasts swelled beneath the satin material of her teddy, pressing against his solid, muscled chest. His hands ran along her spine, over her waist, and finally cupped her buttocks, pulling her into the evidence of his arousal. Misty moaned, holding him tighter and hitching a leg up to hook on the jut of his hip.