He knew better than to read a double meaning into her query. With other women—women who might have been aware of their nudity, women he would have had no problems fucking last night—questions like that were swords with edges on all sides. But Becca had always been blissfully free of ulterior motives. She made no promises and even fewer demands. If she wanted to know whether or not he planned on sticking around, it was because she wanted to know whether or not he planned on sticking around. Her meaning was that simple.
It was also a fairly decent indicator that last night’s plan to ingratiate himself into her good graces wasn’t a total bust. Her apartment was a mess and she had duct tape on all her light switches that prevented them from turning off. What had begun as a vaguely appealing idea last night now took over his conscience, rendering it void. Becca clearly needed a roommate to keep her in check and save her electricity bill. Who was to say he wouldn’t make an excellent candidate?
“Yeah,” he said. “If it’s okay with you, I’ll stick around.”
She beamed. “Perfect.”
Without elaborating further, she slipped off her shirt and rummaged around in her piles until she extracted a yellow sports bra-like top, bright and firm. Once again, he found it difficult to look away as she pulled it over her head and manually adjusted each rounded breast to fit inside. Less than six hours ago, he’d refused himself the pleasure of those breasts. And the last time—the only time—they’d fucked, it had been quick and hard and loud, not nearly enough time for him to admire the body that had wrapped around his.
He was mesmerized by it now. Everything about Becca was so neat and compact. Body hair so groomed there was nothing but skin as far as the eye could see. Small breasts with decadently expansive nipples in a dark brownish-pink. Her efficient movements as she covered it all up only added fuel to the fire. He knew she could pull out all the stops and lead a man by his balls, but there was something about her innocent acceptance of her nudity that hit him on a deeper level.
She wasn’t showing off. She wasn’t trying a different tactic after last night’s efforts at seduction failed. She was just Becca—take her or leave her or stand around stupefied while you searched for a third option.
Before he had time to come up with one, she leaned in and dropped a kiss on his lips, her tongue flicking lightly inside his mouth, tasting of strawberry menstrual blood and making him feel that perhaps he’d underestimated her. Maybe the past five minutes had been nothing but a peepshow designed to push him into a hot, bothered corner from which there was only one release.
Last night’s chaste sleepover to the contrary, he was rather fond of that kind of release.
But then she pulled a one-eighty and frowned, looking again like a little girl who’d lost her way. “God, my head hurts.” She touched the side of her face where she’d been punched, no bruise or even a swelling to indicate that anything had happened. It was almost as though Dana knew exactly where to hit a woman without leaving a mark.
“Did I really brawl with Dana Carstairs in the middle of a club last night?”
“Yes. I’m afraid you did.”
“Did I win?”
Jake felt his lips quiver. “I think it might have ended in a tie.”
She didn’t let that get her down. With a quick stab of her fingers under each eye to wipe the smudged makeup away, she offered a wobbly smile and said, “I guess there’s always next time.”
“Is there going to be a next time?”
“There will be if there’s any justice in this world.” She checked the clock—an assortment of oversized Roman numerals hung on the wall with a set of small ticking hands in the middle—and swore. “I gotta run. Max is going to kill me.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“An hour. Two, tops. Be a doll and have the shower waiting for me, won’t you?” She bounded toward the door, a spring in her step and a bounce in her ass. She paused long enough to blow him a kiss over her shoulder. “It’d be even better if you were in it at the time. Preferably naked.”
* * *
Jake doubted Dana would be up at such an ungodly hour of the day, but he headed to the other man’s apartment as soon as Becca and her vigilant trainer jogged out the door. All of the belongings he’d brought to New York were stashed in the sleek guest room he’d called home, however temporarily, and he wasn’t about to spend an entire day in last night’s rumpled leftovers.
He let himself in with the spare key Dana had provided, moving through the hall without much noise. It didn’t take long to pack up the few shirts and slacks he’d brought along, even though he took his time carefully folding them atop one another. Almost a week he’d been here, and he hadn’t left so much as a toothbrush in the bathroom. Dana’s apartment wasn’t the sort that invited a man to make himself at home. Jake appreciated cleanliness as much as the next guy, but living here had been a bit like balancing on a trip wire.
“Your aunt is some kind of fucked up, you know that?”
Jake didn’t turn as Dana’s voice rose from the doorway, gravelly and hoarse and pissed off. He sounded like a man who’d gotten the shit kicked out of him by a girl.
He sounded like a man who’d deserved it.
“I hate to make blanket generalizations, but my whole family is fucked up.” Jake calmly zipped his garment bag closed and folded it over his forearm. “It’s part of our charm.”
He laughed as soon as he saw Dana. His lip was split open on one side, his eye a puffy red from where Becca had jammed her thumb into the orifice. He could only assume, from the stiff way Dana held himself, that she’d gotten a few solid punches to his midsection as well.
Too bad. Jake didn’t care how much Becca had been hitting him. You didn’t hit back. Not if you had an ounce of decency in you.
“I’m glad you find this so amusing, but she’s lucky I don’t press charges. She attacked me out of nowhere. That’s assault.”
“True. But I seem to recall you landed a fairly telling blow of your own last night—and with plenty of witnesses around. I don’t think making an official record of you punching a woman is going to help your image any.”
“She could have killed me.”
“She can’t have been the first woman to try.”
Dana scowled, and Jake adopted a casual air, hoping to get him to elaborate on the subject. There was more to this story than a bad pickup line in a nightclub and a woman with too much alcohol in her system. Becca was unstable, to put it mildly, but he’d never seen her turn violent before.
“What’s with all the hatred between you two, anyway?” he asked. “Did you have a falling out?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve only met her once before. She had no reason to fly off the handle like that.” The way his face flushed, highlighting the bruise under his eye, seemed to indicate he was playing fast and loose with the truth. “If you ask me, it was drugs. You know how those girls get. They don’t eat for days and then stuff their nostrils with anything they can get their—”
“I’d stop there if I were you.”
Dana made a motion as if he wanted to ward off the evil eye. “Everyone knows Rebecca Clare is a walking disaster.”
“She may be a walking disaster, but she’s a walking disaster I happen to be related to. You might be able to saunter away from a fight with her with a split lip and a nasty bruise or two, but you should watch how far you push me.”
Dana scowled but retreated. A wise move.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Jake said coolly, “but I’ve made alternate arrangements for the foreseeable future. You can forward my calls to Becca’s.”
“I’m not your damned secretary,” Dana muttered, but he sighed and dug into his pocket for a slip of paper. “Here. Your brother called this morning and asked you to contact him at this number. Doesn’t he know that normal peop
le are asleep at five-thirty?”
Jake had to laugh. “He does it on purpose. He wants you to know that he’s already been up and working for two hours. You’re supposed to feel ashamed of yourself.”
“Fucking Montgomerys,” he said, and turned on his heel, retreating back into the dark gloom of the hallway. “It’s a good thing you have each other, because no one else can stand you.”
Jake didn’t disagree. That was practically their family motto.
* * *
“Hello, Monty.” Jake let himself back into Becca’s apartment, his cell phone held in the crook of his neck. His wayward hostess hadn’t yet returned from her training session, so he amused himself by removing the tape from all the light switches. It seemed like an awfully dramatic way to keep the lights on. “How kind of you to call. Were you checking up to see how my progress is going?”
“I suppose you think this is funny.”
“I find many things entertaining, so I’m leaning toward yes.”
“It’s all a big joke to you.”
“Again, the odds are good enough that I’m going to have to agree. Was there a point to all this, or did you just want to make sure my sense of humor is intact?”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
He didn’t, but that was hardly anything new where Monty was concerned. While Jake made it a point to get to know other people—study them, watch them, learn from them—Monty existed almost exclusively inside his own head. It wasn’t uncommon for his brother to hold entire board meetings on topics no one knew about but him.
“Not a clue,” he said cheerfully. Some of the tape residue stuck to the light switch in the kitchen, so he looked around for something he could use to scrape it off. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m in an exceptionally good mood today.”
As expected, his positivity goaded Monty into even more gloom. “Oh? I suppose you’re trying to pretend you’re doing fine on your own.”
“That’s because I am doing fine on my own.” He finally found a lone butter knife in one of the drawers. “You told me I wouldn’t last a week on my own without robbing a bank, trading on the family name or coming home with my tail between my legs. Tomorrow marks day eight, and I see nothing but smooth sailing ahead.”
He could practically hear Monty’s scowl. “One week is nothing. You couldn’t find a way to support yourself indefinitely. That would require you finding an actual job.”
“You always think along such narrow lines.” Jake transferred the phone to speaker so he could work on the light switch. “Job. Employment. Time clock. There are other ways to get by in this world, you know.”
“Not legal ones.”
He scraped too hard, and the knife nicked his thumb, causing him to swear. Even though the knife was as dull as a block of wood, he could see blood forming on the tip. Who put duct tape on the light switches in the first place?
“What’s all that noise?” Monty demanded. “What are you doing?”
“Earning my keep,” Jake said. “You know what, Monty? I’m tired of you thinking everyone has to spend as many hours behind a desk as you do, or they’re somehow invalid as human beings. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to be successful without lifting a finger.”
He stuck his own finger in his mouth to stop the bleeding.
“Fine,” Monty said. “Prove it. Make it to the end of the year. See how long you can last without me or dad to prop you up.”
Jake was startled into a laugh. “Are you asking me to place a wager? You do know who you’re talking to, right?”
“It’s three and a half months from now. I’m not worried. Not even you can coast that long.”
There was no denying that Jake had been born with a gambler’s blood. For as long as he could remember, he’d felt a rush at pitting himself against any kind of competitor. He’d raced worms and then bikes and then yachts. He’d played blackjack and then poker and then craps. He’d bet lunch money and then his allowance and then small fortunes.
He didn’t always win, but he always made good on his end of the deal. And no one ever had more fun losing.
“And if I do?” he asked, unable to avoid picking up the gauntlet. “What do I get?”
“Nothing. You’ll be successful. You won’t need anything from me.”
Jake laughed and accepted his brother’s taunt in good form. His favorite bets were always the ones where the only stake was pride. “Then I gladly accept. Prepare to be dazzled, brother dear. I plan to make it to January on my wits alone.”
“Good. And please pick up a newspaper while you’re at it. Your wits are all over the front page again.”
Chapter Five
“I don’t hear the shower going,” Becca said, her words half-groan.
She’d only made it through the front door of her apartment before falling to the ground, her body, mind and soul collapsing together in an exhausted heap. Mean Max had been in a mood this morning. She wasn’t sure if it was his disappointment at her treating her body as anything less than a temple, or if his girlfriend—an explosive, fiery redhead who lived up to her hair color in ways Becca could only be in awe of—had thrown all his stuff out their apartment window again. Either way, Becca had never done so many crunches in her life. She’d thrown up halfway through the morning session, and even that hadn’t stopped him from yelling at her to keep going.
Her abs had better look as good as her ass soon.
She blinked as Jake’s face materialized above her own. He looked as though he’d spent a calm, restful morning brushing his hair, though his packed bags in the hallway indicated he’d been busy.
“And you’re not naked,” she pointed out. “I thought I told you to be naked.”
Clearly, no man had ever wanted to be naked with her less. With a cool kind of appraisal guaranteed to make her aware of every last one of her open and sweating pores, he said, “I’ll tell you what. You get up off that floor right now and take my clothes off for me, and I’ll fuck you any way you want.”
She thought about it for a full twenty seconds, and if Jake had been wearing anything but an Oxford shirt done all the way to the top and pants with an annoyingly complicated belt holding them up, she might have taken him up on the offer. But there were so many buttons. The thought of moving her arms enough to undo each one almost had her throwing up again.
“You’re a bastard.” She rolled onto her side and curled into a ball. There. That was more comfortable. “A real gentleman would lift me off the ground and do all the work himself.”
“Yes, well.” He walked away. “I never pretended to be a gentleman.”
She was pretty sure she could have started snoring right there on the floor. Despite one of the best, most comfortable night’s sleeps she’d had in a long time—or perhaps because of it—the warm cocoon of oblivion beckoned.
Unfortunately, her obligations for the day ahead beckoned harder. Releasing a sigh, she managed to get her arms underneath her and pushed to a sitting position. “You could at least help me up,” she grumbled. Her line of visibility didn’t include a glimpse of Jake, but she could hear him rummaging around in the kitchen. She hoped he wasn’t trying to cook anything. The smell of a piece of toast right now would send her over the edge. She didn’t want to think about what an egg might do.
“Hello?” she called. “I’m a lady in need over here. Heave me to the shower. I’m supposed to be dressed and fit to appear at my mother’s by noon. She wants me to read the tea leaves for her friends. Did you hear I predicted Wesley’s engagement to the oldest Dauphine girl last month? Got the date right and everything. It was in the chamomile.”
Jake’s head emerged from the kitchen doorway. “It was also in the paper. We all saw that one coming.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Spoken like a true Virgo.”
“Spoken like a man who follows rational processes of thought,” he countered. He paused before speaking again, his gaze heavy in a way that signaled he wasn’t looking forward to the conversation to come. People looked at her like that a lot more than she cared to admit—she was practically a leper of modern social discourse. “And before you go to Grandmama Clare’s, there’s something you should probably see first.”
His words drew a laugh out of her, putting her at ease. Her mom hated it when Jake called her Grandmama, which was of course why he continued to make it a habit. It was her mom’s own fault in the first place. What did she expect, encouraging her oldest daughter to fall for a man in his sixties? The Montgomerys were a great family to marry into if you cared about things like breeding and prestige, but Serena was three years older than her now-stepson Jake. And she only had about eight months on Monty. Even Jenna, her youngest stepdaughter, was still older than Becca.
It was weird. And a little bit gross.
“Fine, but you have to carry me to the table. I’m not kidding. I’m not so sure my limbs work anymore.”
Shaking his head, Jake came to help her. His arms were strong as they hoisted her unforgivingly from the ground and planted her on her feet. She realized that was all she was going to get from him as he pushed her in the direction of the kitchen. She had a lovely alcove overlooking the courtyard in there, sun streaming in and hitting the white lacquered dining set with the kind of brilliance she wished she could capture and save for nightfall.
“What did that guy do to you anyway?”
“Sprints. Crunches. Push-ups. Something called a Brazilian Butt Lift.”
He raised an eyebrow in disbelief.
“Go ahead. Touch it.” She turned to give him access to her backside. “He’s a genius when it comes to a woman’s glutes. You could use this thing as a trampoline.”
“I can see that,” Jake muttered, his eyes flashing. But he didn’t touch, not even when she gave an enticing waggle. Sheesh—this man was difficult to penetrate. Or to get to penetrate. He pulled out a chair and pushed her unceremoniously into it. “But you’ve got bigger problems than the elasticity of your ass. You’re going to want to read that.”
When I Fall Page 5
