Vin had called for three Stellas on tap as he made his way to the table, so they all had a mug in front of them before he spoke. “What the hell was that?” he asked, in his oh-so-Vinnie way.
Tim was leaning back, arms over his chest and a stubborn set to his jaw. That was his Tim way.
Ryan took a long pull on his beer and set it down. “I guessing here,” he said, “but I suspect I wasn’t the only one at this table who woke up on the Sunday after Danny’s wedding still tied to a bed. With official Harvard ties.”
Tim didn’t budge, but Vin spewed out his beer.
Ryan laughed, because seeing a buddy spurt beer out his nose never got old. “You don’t remember her, do you?”
Well, he did. Though he hadn’t right off, last month at the wedding. She’d changed a lot in ten years, and he hadn’t put the pieces together until she’d placed that final tie around his right ankle and left it hanging there. Until he’d taken a good look at his bound wrists and realized she’d used Harvard ties. He’d laughed then, too, and shot a grin at her fine ass as she’d hit the door, despite the ridiculousness of the situation. Or because of it. Then he’d settled in to sleep, mildly uncomfortable in a sort of modified corpse pose, and wait until morning when some unfortunate but hopefully sympathetic soul on the hotel’s housekeeping staff would come and discover him. In his naked, dried-cum-splatted glory.
Much, no doubt, as his buddies had sheepishly done that morning, and as Kai Morrison—not that he’d known her name then—had had to do ten years ago.
The three friends had celebrated their graduation in typical, over-the-top Randall style. The old man had brought the yacht up the Charles River. There’d been a barge with fireworks and an evening with food and wine that was tailored to the graduates and their families. When night set in, the families abandoned ship and some serious partying started.
To say Tim had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth would be way understating the case. Vin came from a wealthy New York construction family, and even he occasionally claimed to be stunned by the Randalls’ ability and willingness to throw cash around by the bundles. If rhodium was the earth’s priciest metal, that was what Tim’s spoon had been made of.
Ryan was way out of both leagues. He’d transferred to Harvard on a full financial aid ride after two years in community college. Harvard accepted community college transfers just a little more often than pigs flew. He’d known he was going to be brushing shoulders with students outside his wheelhouse, and Vin was way outside. Tim was in orbit around another planet.
Still, the three had become good friends, and so Ryan found himself on the crazy-wild party boat.
He wasn’t all the way comfortable about it, though, and he’d spotted the pretty girl who looked all the way uncomfortable about it a couple times before he approached her.
There were girls on the boat who weren’t that pretty but were made stunning by the application of expert, high-end style and dress. This one was sort of the opposite. She had dark hair that hung to her shoulders—no sophisticated cut or highlights—and frequently hid her face. Her clothes looked a lot like she spent time shopping at Target.
Which was an observation, not an insult, to Ryan’s mind, because he shopped there plenty himself.
She didn’t smile and make eye contact and engage.
Ryan was pretty sure she was heading for the exit—gangplank no kind of metaphor—the third time he caught sight of her.
Bearing two flutes of champagne, he intercepted.
He felt comfortable with her, more so than he had with a woman in two years.
One more glass of champagne each and an hour later, he had her in bed, in the little room he’d been assigned for the weekend, one deck down on the yacht.
An hour after that, they slept cozily. And sometime later, Vin had opened the door. “Ryan? You in here?”
What happened after that, and after later, too, when Tim came looking for his buddies, was something really quite…unforgettable.
At least, if a guy wasn’t drunk out of his mind. Ryan remembered all of it—not just the foursome that had eventually gotten just short of out of hand, involving every one of the official ties the guys wore, but the…twosome, too. The lovemaking that had been touching-sweet, before it became crazy-wild.
Apparently, Kai remembered, too. Maybe they’d exchanged names earlier in the night, but he couldn’t recall it by that morning. Something had happened—Tim’s phone had buzzed, and he’d roused his friends, and they’d just had to get out on deck. There followed a helicopter ride that he really didn’t remember—Tim had a bottle of Redbreast 21 in his hand as he’d pushed his buddies into the helo—and, by the time it struck him, well into the next day, that they’d left a pretty woman tied to his bed, she was gone.
Gone from his bed, gone from the ship, gone from his life.
He didn’t even have her name.
He didn’t know it either, when she’d put that last tie around his ankle a couple weeks back, but he knew it now.
* * * *
“I fucking remember,” Tim said. It wasn’t the sort of thing a person forgot. It hadn’t been quite a smirk on her face when she’d left him tied to that bed, but it had been…something.
“Not the wedding,” Ryan said. “Graduation.”
He noticed that had focused Vin’s attention, too.
Ryan was obviously confident of his audience. Certainly, Tim was all ears.
“My bed,” Ryan said. “One woman. The three of us.”
Those words stirred a memory in him—one very short on detail but heavy on…spectacular.
Vin’s gaze narrowed on Ryan. “Before that crazy pal of Tim’s took us out over the city in his helo?”
Ry nodded and Tim remembered more.
He’d been pretty drunk already and he’d lost track of his buddies. He checked Vin’s room below deck, then Ry’s. There, he’d found the two of them snuggled up asleep with a girl in between.
He did remember what happened next—not the specifics so much, but the powerful sense of satisfaction. Now he’d been reminded, he remembered that.
“That was her?” He looked at his two friends. “We tied her.”
Ryan nodded. “With our ties. Vin and I did her wrists,” he explained. “Then you got her one ankle…”
“Right ankle,” Tim recalled now. “But then we realized we needed a fourth tie for that to make sense, so...”
Vin completed the thought for him. “You stuck your tongue somewhere and we sort of lost our train of thought.”
“It was…”
Vin filled this in, too. “Fucking hot.”
“Yeah. That was her.” Tim thought about it. “I guess we…”
Ryan took over now. “We left her there. Tied. I remembered the next day and went back, but she was gone.”
Yeah, Tim knew something about that. He’d taken quite a bashing from his father for it a couple days later.
The three spent a minute looking at each other.
“I really liked her.” That was Ryan.
“She’s different now,” Vin said. “I remember her as…well, ten years ago, she’d never have gotten all three of us coolly tied to our beds, that’s for sure.”
“I still like her.”
Ryan’s baby blues took turns sending a subtle challenge first to Vin, then to him.
Tim grunted, eyeing him. “And still—fucking hot.”
Ryan knew Tim, so he took a deep breath.
Tim had pretty much had a hard-on every day since that hot, sweet bitch had left him tied to a bed in Montauk. She’d starred in just about every fantasy he’d jacked off to for the last two weeks. The face, the body, the undies…and her hot come-on. Her kisses, her tongue, her very skilled hands.
Now that he was remembering all that had happened that weekend ten years back, he was even more…stirred up. Roused, maybe, was the word.
Typically, he’d never cock block a buddy. Almost never, anyway. But they’d all had her that
night on the yacht, so his claim on her was as good as Ry’s.
That was his thought, anyway. Plus, there was that other deal.
Ry seemed to think different, and maybe Vin agreed, though Tim was sure Vinnie added his two cents reluctantly. “Ryan found her. He had her in his bed when I went looking for him. They were sleeping all cuddled together when I walked in.” Vin turned and looked at Ryan. “I was pretty blitzed. I didn’t even know she was there when I plopped down on the bed. I was just figuring to take a little time out, regroup for another round. But there she was, naked, with you. She smelled good. I remember that. Not expensive, you know, but…good.”
Tim knew Vin was about to wax poetic, so he broke in. “I figure she’s fair game now.” Because he had a bone to pick with the woman, and he was going to enjoy figuring out how best to go about it.
Vin drew back and looked from one man to the other. “I figure she’ll have a lot to say, this time around, about whether any one of us gets her back in bed.”
“Or all three of us.” Tim put that in because…well, because, he’d really liked making love to that girl ten years back, but he’d fucking loved pumping into her while his two best friends were doing the same. Some of the details were blurry, but he sure as shit remembered that.
And, again, he remembered the next morning and the days that followed.
“Okay, yeah, but—”
Ryan interrupted Vin. “No, not okay.”
Tim sat forward and looked at Ryan. “You ever, ever had a better time in the sack than that night with the three of us?”
Vin didn’t wait for an answer. “Really. She’s all the way grown up now. And a client. I’m pretty sure she’s in charge.”
She wouldn’t be for long, Tim thought. Kai Morrison figured she’d have a little fun, work out a little payback, tying the three of them to their beds and leaving them there naked. Then showing up a couple weeks later, silently taunting them about it.
Maybe she didn’t know he had a little payback of his own to accomplish. He planned to have a good time while he formulated his strategy. It could be all kinds of fun.
Tim leaned back again and looked at his buddies, already enjoying the possibilities. Then his gaze went to the packet on the table in front of him, and he thought some more about the pieces that didn’t fit. The phone call and the girl, Amaryllis, in the elevator. The kid, Michaela. The space in the CEO’s outline that called for classrooms set up for a high level of connectedness. And a nursery and playroom.
He thought of the fifth floor of Upper East Side Tone.
Mentally, he shrugged. Maybe she was a do-good angel, but she appeared to have a little do-bad devil in her, too. He was going to find out.
“I think we can give the CEO what she wants,” he said.
Chapter Three
A week later, Kai waited for the ReBuild men at the building she now owned near Lexington and 79th.
She shouldn’t be nervous, she told herself. They were just three men—three extremely handsome men. Despite all that had gone before—well, to be more honest, because of all that had gone before—her body quickened the moment she caught sight of them. There was too much testosterone to resist.
They filled the sidewalk, the three of them walking shoulder to shoulder toward her. Tim, in the middle, made her think of a Viking god in his prime—all blond hair, blue-eyes, and powerful physique. He was dressed in casual chic—emphasis on chic—featuring dark jeans, impeccable white shirt, and tailored jacket with, of all things, a silver-striped pocket square. His long-legged stride ended in soft leather boots that only someone whose name included a suffix would wear to a worksite.
At his left, Vin’s frame was shorter, though no less muscled, and totally rocked his straight up business suit. If he bought off the rack, he shopped at Saks, but Kai thought he more likely was dressed at J. Press. Merino wool, she guessed, a summer weight, in a very light gray with a lavender shirt and gray-striped tie. It was all too pretty for a job site, but his confident approach made plain his belief that the site wouldn’t have the nerve to muss him up. His dark brown curls were breaking free of the gel he might have applied that morning, and his brown eyes heated up when he caught her looking. A grin cracked his classic, hollow-cheeked face, and he shot her a wink. Kai thought any woman would melt at that.
Ryan was at Tim’s other side. At six feet, he was exactly between his two friends in height, an inch below Tim and above Vinnie. Of all of them, he looked dressed for the part—rugged jeans that Kai imagined he bought by the half-dozen at Carhartt’s, a close-fitting white tee with an open, plaid, snap-front shirt over it, and honest-to-goodness work boots. With his pretty, light brown hair and blue eyes, he was just the sort of man a woman would want to have working on her…new kitchen. Taking care of her needs with his…tool belt. She could see his damn dimples from half a block away.
Kai sighed, reminding herself they were there for a job and that they really were the best men for her. The best firm for her project, she meant. She was working with them in a professional capacity. She was.
What had gone before, well…
What had happened ten years ago was…what had happened.
And what she’d done a couple weeks past in Montauk was just…to put them—the three guys and her—back on equal footing.
That was all.
She kept telling herself that.
The night she’d spent on the Randall yacht had changed her life.
Well, the better truth was, the night had had quite an influence on her, but the morning after had changed her life.
The night…
She didn’t belong on the yacht, and she knew it. She’d been harangued into going by her best friend, Julia. Julia was still Kai’s best friend, but Kai was not Julia’s, because Julia had moved on. Julia had taken the scholarship she’d earned, attended Harvard, and graduated that May ten years ago.
Besties through high school, the two girls had worked together toward their dream. Kai had earned an acceptance at Harvard, too, and the scholarship. But that summer, her father had been badly injured in a work-related accident at the Philadelphia shipyards. In August, Kai had hugged Julia good-bye and went back to work at her job as a waitress in her South Philly neighborhood. Her mother worked as a clerk in the shipyards, but there were five younger siblings, and her mom’s paycheck and her dad’s disability checks weren’t going to cover the family’s medical and living expenses.
Their lives had diverted, Kai’s and Julia’s. But, four years later, when Julia was invited to the hottest graduation party ever, she’d insisted that Kai would be her plus-one.
Kai had known right away she didn’t fit in. She’d have bet that every woman there had spent more on her party dress than Kai had spent for clothing for the entire year. In some cases, more than her whole family had spent.
The men were bright and brash, and they looked right past her, just like they did the caterers and the ship’s staff.
She’d lost track of Julia for more than an hour when she decided she didn’t want to spend any more time pretending—to be having a good time, to belong. She’d nearly made her way to the exit when she was stopped by a young, handsome man with a glass of champagne in each hand.
She’d noticed him before. With his sweet face, those disarming dimples, and soft blue eyes, he looked like he belonged—up to and including the stupid Harvard tie he wore, loosened, with his dress shirt and pants. But he’d actually made eye contact and given her a small smile, which set him apart from all others on board. Now, he said his name was Ryan and handed her a glass of champagne. They’d spent an hour chatting as he toured her around the ship. They’d each had a second drink and, after he’d placed the empty glasses on a tray, he’d taken her hand. A little later, he’d led her one deck below and, when they were strolling through a passageway with several doors on the port side, he stopped at one.
“This is my room,” he said.
It wasn’t a hard sell. He just stood there, gent
ly holding her hand, softly watching her eyes, and patiently waiting for her to decide.
It wasn’t a hard decision, either. He was sweet and, though she was sure she would never see him again—or, maybe, because of that—she knew she could have a good time with him. It wouldn’t mean much, but it would be a little soothe to the self-pity party she’d started to wallow in.
“I’d like to see it,” she said. She took pleasure in his smile.
He led her in and kissed her softly, slowly, while he undressed her. She regretted the loss of her dress—it was old and had come from her mother’s closet, but she thought it had a somewhat charming, near-vintage look. But her underwear, like her shoes, had come from J.C. Penney.
If he noticed, he didn’t comment. He unwrapped her like she was a cherished Christmas gift, using his lips and tongue on every bit of flesh he bared. He took her to his bed and made love to her, using a condom without asking. He was very thorough about it, making sure she came twice for each time—also twice—that he did.
Kai hadn’t had a lot of experience with sex and none at all with sex like this. He touched her and used his mouth everywhere. He held her and kissed her like she mattered.
They fell asleep together, wrapped in each other’s arms.
She woke to lovemaking sometime later, and Ryan figured out they weren’t alone before she did.
“Vin?” he asked. “What the hell?”
Kai startled, but the man she was kissing—Vin, apparently, not Ryan—soothed her. Soothed them both.
“Shh,” he said, and it might have been to either. “This is good.” Kai realized it was his hand on her breast. “She’s sweet. You’re sweet, honey.”
Ryan held her right hand and rose up to look at her, but Vin had already slipped a finger down to her clit, and she moaned. With her fingers at his mouth, Ryan watched for a minute. Watched as she moaned again and arched, because Vin knew what to do with his fingers. Then Ryan leaned in and took her mouth with his and put his hand on her other breast. He squeezed her nipple, and she moaned and arched some more, and she was making love to two men.
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