by Francis Ray
Pierce reached across the table and placed his hand on hers. “If you’ll let us, you’ll have a new cheering squad.”
Warmth she had told herself she wouldn’t feel coursed through her. Pierce easily slipped through her plans to keep him at a distance. She even understood that as well. Like her father, she was by nature outgoing and friendly. It took more effort to keep people at a distance than to accept and enjoy them. That “flaw” had once caused her more pain and heartache than she thought she could stand.
“Sabra?”
Pierce’s deep, compelling voice drew her out of the past. She stared into his dark eyes. What could getting to know each other better hurt? Obviously, they were going to see a lot of each other. Any discord or tension would make it difficult for his mother and for them. It would make more sense if they were amicable to each other. She knew how to handle men. “I’d like that.”
“Good.” He squeezed her hand.
She drew her hand back, determined not to worry about the tingling sensation that radiated up her arm, and began to eat instead of playing with her palm salad. She discovered she was hungry and the food wonderful. “Delicious.”
“Glad you like it.”
“How did the day go?”
“Fine. I gained two new clients, and three more who came in for their annual review were very pleased with their investment growth.”
“They didn’t mind Isabella?”
Pierce smiled. “They probably didn’t notice her. She likes to sleep in the corner by the bookcase and sofa.”
Finished with her salad, Sabra cut into her prime rib and took a bite. “Your brother’s or your sister-in-law’s restaurant?”
Pierce’s lip twitched. “I guess no pots or pans on the stove gave me away.”
She ate another bite of her rare prime rib before answering. “With food that tastes this good, why cook?”
“Exactly what I’ve always thought.” Pierce cut into his meat. “Why Broadway?”
“My dad again. He loved the movies and every Saturday off he and I would go. I dreamed of being onstage, and actually did my first neighborhood production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when I was seven.” She smiled at the memory and sipped her wine. “I used to perform for the family. I always said that one day I’d be onstage.”
“And you are.”
“Easy, pizzy. As I said before, It took six years, countless casting calls, and trying to run down every lead my agent sent me on before I was declared an overnight sensation. That was three years ago.” There was no bitterness in her voice. “I was one of the lucky ones.”
“Sounds as if you know a lot about hard work and not giving up.” He topped off her wine. “I understand better why you purchased the bag, although it was still an unwise buy.”
“Haven’t you ever done anything because it felt good?” she asked, staring at him over her steepled fingertips, her wine forgotten.
“Yes. Having dinner with you.”
Sabra sat up in her seat. She believed him. Honest to a fault, Pierce was a man of many talents. She’d arrived full of self-doubts, and he’d helped her banish them. If she wasn’t careful, she might find herself wondering where the attraction both were dancing around would lead, but she didn’t have affairs. “Good friends, remember.”
“I certainly hope so,” Pierce said.
“Why investment?” she asked, finding she really was interested in the answer, and not just to help her learn the identity of the man her father had business dealings with eight years ago.
“I majored in math in college. One of my assignments was to prepare a stock portfolio with actual stocks.” He polished off his beef. “The assignment challenged my mind. The stocks I picked did well.
By the time I graduated with a master’s in math, I knew what I wanted.”
“How long ago was that?” she asked.
“Almost ten years.” He sipped his tea. “How about you?”
“I only obtained an associate degree in liberal arts to satisfy my mother, I’m afraid, then I was off to New York,” she told him, feeling better that she could scratch Pierce off the list. It would be next to impossible for him to have amassed clients with disposable income of over two hundred thousand dollars in that short period of time. “I talked her into letting me have two years to prove myself and if I didn’t succeed, I’d come home.”
“Savannah.”
“Yes, but in two years I had begun to get small parts. Together, my dad and I were able to talk her into letting me stay. You know the rest.”
“Your father’s faith in you and you in yourself was vindicated,” he said.
“Yes.” She might have known he’d understand it was more than seeing her name in lights, the big contracts. “Just like your family’s faith in you.”
“We succeeded.” Pierce lifted his glass in a toast.
“That we did.” Sabra touched her glass to his.
Pierce kept his eyes on Sabra as he sipped, and wondered if he would be successful with her. “If you’re finished, we can go look at the movies I rented.”
Sabra came to her feet and picked up her plate and his. “I’ll help you clean this up first.”
“Bless you.” Pierce picked up the serving dishes. “I detest washing dishes.”
She lifted a brow. “I was planning on letting the dishwasher do that.”
He grinned. “You read my mind.” Working together, they cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher.
Finished, they went to the living area. Sabra stopped abruptly. In front of the black-lacquered entertainment center was a stack of movies at least ten inches high and as wide.
“I couldn’t decide.” He picked up Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Hitch, Deliver Us from Eva, and Die Another Day. “Some movies can get a bit racy. I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression.”
An unsure Pierce was endearing and one she probably wouldn’t see too often. “How about Chicago?”
“Works for me.” Taking the case, he inserted the DVD into the player. “Make yourself comfortable. Take off your shoes if you’d like.”
Pierce sat beside her and toed off his Italian loafers; Sabra slipped off her sling-back pumps and tucked her feet under her. Isabella plopped down at their feet. Pierce casually placed his arm on the back of the sofa. Harmless, she told herself, but as the movie played she wasn’t so sure. She couldn’t concentrate.
She kept expecting Pierce’s fingers to touch her bare skin, trail through her unbound hair, curve around her shoulders. Nothing happened, but that didn’t stop her body from wanting to feel his touch, his lips. When the movie ended, she was up like a shot.
“Thank you, Pierce; I should be getting home. It’s late.”
“I’ll get Isabella’s leash and walk you.” He picked up her heels by the back straps.
She opened her mouth to refuse, then closed it. Pierce was old-fashioned enough to want to see his date home. It wouldn’t matter if “home” was twenty feet away.
“All right.”
“Let me help you with these.” He crouched before her, a shoe in one hand, his other waiting, palm up.
It seemed innocent enough until she extended her foot and his hand curved around her ankle. She began to tremble. She pressed her hand against his shoulder for support, felt the flex of his muscles as he slipped her shoes on, the gentle strength of his hands.
He looked up at her, and she experienced the slow curl of desire and clenched her hands. Letting Pierce touch her was a bad, bad idea. She almost sagged in relief when he finished. But then he pushed to his feet. Their bodies were inches apart, the sexual pull almost irresistible.
He stared at her a long time, then turned away to retrieve the leash and came back to take her arm. “Ready?”
She was more than ready, but that wasn’t what he meant. Or was it? Unable to speak, she nodded. After opening his door, he walked her to her apartment. “Thanks for sharing dinner with me.”
“Thank you and the chef,” she managed. She unlocked the door and tu
rned, nervous, unsure if he might try to kiss her, and even more unsure of her response.
“I have a breakfast and dinner appointment, but my secretary has already said Isabella could stay with her,” Pierce said.
“I’d appreciate your help. My assistant is working on an alternative.”
“Don’t worry about Isabella or the play.” The backs of his knuckles lightly stroked her cheek. “Night.”
“Good night.” Sabra went inside her apartment. As the door closed, her fingertips gently touched her cheek. Pierce had taken her at her word and was keeping their relationship on a friendly basis. It was what she’d asked for, what she thought she wanted.
Wasn’t it?
CHAPTER FIVE
PIERCE STEPPED INTO THE SHOWER AND TURNED IT on full blast. He sucked in his breath as the cold water hit him square in his chest, but it did nothing to ease the ache in his groin. He shouldn’t have touched her. He almost laughed.
Who would have thought Pierce Grayson would be turned on by touching a woman’s ankle? So small, delicate, he’d wanted to slide his hand upward to . . .
Pierce hissed out a breath, then pressed his hands against the black tiled wall. Thoughts like that were what got him into his current predicament. With another woman, he might have given in to the need pulsating through him. He’d changed no to yes in the past. He knew that was the way many women played the game at which he considered himself somewhat of a master.
The look in Sabra’s eyes had stopped him.
She’d stared down at him with uncertainty in her chocolate brown eyes. There was desire there as well. He’d known that when he’d felt her tremble at his touch, heard the hiss of her breath when his hand circled her ankle. He could have built on that.
He couldn’t, hadn’t wanted to. When they finally made love, and they would, she would be with him all the way.
The ringing of the telephone finally penetrated through the fog of desire and the rushing water. Shutting the faucet off, he opened the door, snagging two towels from the warming rack. Wrapping one around his lean hips, he rubbed the other through his hair as he picked up the wall phone in the oversized bathroom. “Hello.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Sierra.” Pierce’s hand paused.
“You sound as grumpy as Brandon used to in the morning.”
“Your call could have come at a most inopportune moment,” he said with a hint of annoyance.
“Not your style on first dates.”
Pierce felt his face heat. “Sierra—”
“Before you go all big brother on me, I wanted to let you know that I won’t be able to break away for lunch until around one.”
“You couldn’t have called in the morning?”
“Yes, but I’ll sleep better now. Mama knows all of us. You’ve dated so many women that it will take one very special, even unique, woman to get you.”
Sabra instantly leaped into Pierce’s mind. Beautiful, exotic, the stuff of man’s most secret fantasies. “I think you’re stretching it a bit.”
“Women come and go in your life like a revolving door. If possible, you’ve dated more since Mama started on her quest to marry us all off. Storing up memories, you said.” Sierra snorted. “You should have enough for two lifetimes.”
“I like women,” he said by way of explaining himself.
“I think we’ve already established that fact. Did Mama happen to mention when she invited Sabra?” Sierra asked.
“No.”
“I could be way off here. Sabra has a lot of demands without the complications of adding a man to the mix.”
“Some complications are worth it,” Pierce said, recalling the softness of Sabra’s skin, the jasmine scent that teased and beckoned.
“Is marriage one of them?”
Pierce muttered beneath his breath.
“Sorry. I guess this is making me a bit tense.”
“I must have water in my ears. You’re fearless. That’s why we all hated to babysit you.”
“After Brandon fell in love, I finally realized something: you can’t control how your heart feels, and that makes this dicey.”
Sierra had always been able to see the big picture. None of them, least of all Brandon, had thought he’d fall in love with his best friend’s little sister, a woman he’d teased and bantered with most of his life. “I’m attracted to her, but I’m not falling in love,” Pierce said.
“For some reason, I’d feel better if you’d said her name,” Sierra said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but if it happens—”
“It won’t.” He shot the towel he’d been drying his hair with into the open stainless-steel hamper.
“If it does,” she continued as if he hadn’t interrupted her. “As long as you’re as happy as the rest, I guess I can live with it.”
“Don’t reserve the church yet. We haven’t even kissed.” Pierce meant the words as teasing, but as the silence grew he knew some of the pent-up sexual frustration must have slipped into his tone.
“I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. Night, Pierce. See you at the Red Cactus at one sharp.”
“Night, Sierra.” Pierce hung up the phone, pulled the towel from his waist, and noticed he remained semiaroused. Sabra definitely could be a problem if he let her. He wouldn’t allow that to happen. He wasn’t a one-woman man. She was just different, a challenge. Once she was in his arms and in his bed, he’d stop thinking about her all the time.
In the meantime, he walked back into the shower stall and turned the cold water on full blast.
SIERRA AWOKE A LITTLE AFTER SEVEN THE NEXT morning after a good night’s sleep. As she’d told Pierce, she’d come to the very logical conclusion that she couldn’t control what happened with him and Sabra or any other woman. However, she could and would make double damn sure that no man complicated her life. And despite what Pierce said, for her it would be a complication.
Dressed in one of her favorite power suits, a Dior black houndstooth that she accessorized with the lustrous double strand of pearls with a diamond clasp her mother had given her when she graduated from high school, she opened her stainless-steel refrigerator to find it as bare as it had been yesterday morning.
She’d been on the run most of yesterday and forgotten to pick up juice and milk, which proved her point. She only had to satisfy herself. Not some man who wanted to run her life.
She was doing a fabulous job of taking care of herself, all by herself, thank you very much. Closing the door, she reached for her calfskin handbag that was free of a designer label on the outside, but aficionados would instantly recognize it as a Manolo Blahnik. The black double-strap shoulder bag with pocket and belt details had set her back two thousand dollars on sale, but it had been worth every penny. A man wouldn’t understand the purchase.
Even Pierce and Morgan, who spent thousands on a suit, thought it wasteful on a handbag. They didn’t understand how wonderful it was to be impractical at times, giving her the little umph in her step when she knew she looked great. Plus, she could afford it.
In minutes she was out the door and in her Mercedes ATV, heading for Casa de Serenidad and breakfast. Perhaps she’d see Faith and Brandon, the two turtledoves. Their feet hadn’t touched the ground since they announced their engagement. Sierra doubted they ever would.
Sierra’s manicured fingers tapped impatiently on the steering wheel at the slow-moving traffic. She’d only had a bag of popcorn to eat the night before. She put on her signal to change lanes, then checked in her rearview mirror and caught a glimpse of a woman with long curly black hair and a big dog coming out of a storefront.
Sabra, and she didn’t look happy.
Instead of moving into the next lane, Sierra cut across two lanes, receiving rude finger gestures and hooked horns. She waved her hand in apology. Sabra was her mother’s guest. It would be rude not to see if there was anything she could do to help. Then, too, she could get a better feel for what was going on between Sabra and Pierce.
/> Not seeing a parking space with a meter, Sierra swung into a no-parking zone. She personally knew the police chief, but Dakota didn’t bend the law for anyone. He’d chew her out, then write her a ticket, if he caught her illegally parked. She didn’t plan on letting him catch her.
Her stiletto sandals clicked loudly on the sidewalk as she ran the forty feet or so to where Sabra still stood. “Good morning. Problems?”
Startled, Sabra swung around, her eyes wide, her curly black hair tumbling around her shoulders. Sierra could see how a man, even a practical one like Pierce, might find it difficult to resist such a woman. She wore a sleeveless coral sweater that complemented her skin tone and coffee-colored ankle-length pants. On her feet were a darling pair of Bruno Magli coffee and coral heeled sandals.
“Sierra. Good morning.” Sabra shoved her wind-tossed hair out of her face. “Isabella is being obstinate this morning.”
Sierra glanced at the storefront they had just come out of, Maxine’s Dog Grooming. “Hero doesn’t like baths, either.”
“The hybrid wolf. Your sister-in-law’s pet?”
“Pierce tell you about him?” Sierra asked. Hybrid wolves’ lives were tenuous at best. They could be euthanized if they bit a human. They weren’t considered easily domesticated. Because of this, the family didn’t talk about Hero. Not even their closest friends knew Catherine kept Hero at her and Luke’s mountain cabin.
“Only that the pet would like to meet Isabella,” Sabra answered.
The way Sabra’s chin lifted, Sierra didn’t think it would happen in this or any other lifetime. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a patrol car. “Can I give you a lift? But it has to be in a hurry; I’m in a no-parking zone.”
Sabra glanced at Isabella. “I might as well. Today has been a washout.”
“Come on.” Sierra took off at a brisk pace with Sabra and Isabella right with her.
“There’s another grooming store on my list, but after three I don’t think a fourth will help.”
Sierra was half-listening. The police car, red lights flashing, had stopped beside her Mercedes. Sierra rounded the hood just as the patrolman got out of his car. Sierra breathed a little easier at seeing Jimmy, a longtime friend and easygoing deputy. “Morning, Jimmy. Moving it now. I stopped to pick up a guest of Mama’s, Sabra Raineau.”
