It's Getting Hot in Heir

by Jenny Gardiner

  Chapter Seven

  This evening was going from bad to worse, and poor Edouardo was practically getting hives from the horror of it all. Okay, so horror might be exaggerating things just a bit, but it pained him to think he could be home enjoying peace and quiet. Instead, first he’d suffered through the car ride—in which he was stuck chauffeuring, no less—with his sister Clementine in the back seat with her mad groper of a boyfriend Sebastian. Edouardo was still grumbling about that one after a video of Sebastian licking body shots off his sister’s half-naked torso had surfaced a few months earlier. While partying on vacation in the Caribbean, the couple had fallen prey to Isabella’s hack of a brother Prince Zander’s smartphone. Nothing worse than opening a text to find footage of some creeper-dude all over your sister like white on rice. Actually, what was worse was that she had clearly been enjoying herself. Ugh.

  And now, here they were at a party he was coerced into attending with people he didn’t want to hang with, not to mention with that Gabriella chick practically throwing herself at him as if she were a slathering dog and he a rubber Kong toy coated in peanut butter.

  His only joy was going to be hulking around Sebastian all evening to ensure he squirmed the night away. It didn’t even matter that Sebastian was Isabella’s cousin, which meant he was somehow in line to the throne and technically gave him street cred. Nor did it matter that these folks all had known each other over the years. He was completely aware that Sebastian was a good guy and treated Clementine wonderfully. But that was beside the point. Fact was, no one was ever going to be good enough to lay a hand on his sister, not if Edouardo had any say in the matter.

  ~*~

  “Penny for your thoughts, sailor,” Gabriella said, approaching Edouardo, who had finally found a quiet corner to hide in. Under the best of circumstances, Edouardo was kind of a shy guy; he just wasn’t the see-and-be-seen type who relished extravagant events like fancy parties with strangers (or acquaintances for that matter). It didn’t help that tonight, as an added detraction, he was deprived of the social lubricant that made it a little easier for him to engage in small talk with people he really didn’t want to chat up. Being the designated driver meant not only that he had to stay until the bitter end—or at least until his sister deemed it was time for him to leave—but he had to do it completely sober. And in a cranky mood. And feeling completely inadequate and valueless and if he was to be honest with himself, totally feeling sorry for his sad-ass self.

  At least there was good food at this thing, and he’d already taken advantage of that a few times over. He was working his way through his second dessert when Gabriella showed up with a painfully cheesy pickup line, something that might have worked with someone about to board a PT boat to storm the shores of Normandy. But it wouldn’t work with a grumpy Edouardo, stuck against his will—and better judgment—in her music room or whatever room he was in. If only cake with French pastry cream worked as a means to loosen up a bit, he’d have been golden. At least then he could have come up with some witty comeback or even some way to give her the subtle hint that he wasn’t in the mood for a relationship with anyone.

  Not even someone sort of curvy and sexy and awfully friendly. But seriously, he was so not going to let his dick dictate anything here. Curvy and sexy was all well and good back then, before, well, before it all fell apart in his world. But now? No woman would ever be satisfied with a man like him, one with no plan, no future to speak of, no anything, really. The sad fact was this: he was so unhappy with himself, how could he ever entertain having to try to make someone else happy as well?

  He nodded at Gabriella. It was all the enthusiasm he could muster. He just wanted to get home to the safety of his sofa and remote control, and yeah, even his boxer shorts. There, he could hide out with that make-believe world of reality TV drama with people who were really even more pitiful than he and just not feel anything. He had chosen to remain emotionally numb, and he was doing a damned good job sticking to his guns.

  “So I was thinking,” Gab said as she sidled up alongside him, taking a loud slurp of her drink, a sure sign she was one cocktail too many into her cups. “We have a history, you and I do, you know.” She waggled her finger between him and her, before drilling it into his chest for emphasis.

  “Oh?” he said, cocking his brow. This ought to be a good one. She better not say he sired her toddler child who’s currently being watched by the governess so Mommy could go out and get her wild on.

  Lord knew there was every chance in the world that at some point in his life he had the potential of having done so. What guy hadn’t? Even shy Edouardo had had his bird-dog moments, back in university days. That is, at least until he fell in hot and heavy with Eugenie, the love of his life, who ended up being a gold-digging beyotch who broke his heart by hooking up with an unwitting Zander in a one-night stand, leaving Edouardo unwilling to trust any subsequent women. If you asked him, trust just wasn’t what it was cracked up to be. Much easier to completely steer clear of it.

  “Yes,” she said. “I had this sort of déjà vu moment when we were introduced earlier. And Clem reminded me you were Eddie. And still I was trying to remember what it was about you,” she said, snapping her fingers as if trying to recall. “There was something, but I couldn’t think of it.”

  “Don’t sweat it,” he said. “I’m sure it’s nothing worth worrying your pretty head over.” Oh God, did he just say that horribly clichéd line? What a doofus.

  “Ahhh, but there’s where you’re wrong,” she said, fixing her warm, earthen eyes on his, which gave Edouardo pause. They were particularly smoldering eyes, with flecks of gold that sparkled when she was excited about something. Excitement had become a foreign concept to him over the past year. Nothing really stirred his passion anymore. And yet all of a sudden, he was almost curious what she was talking about, since it clearly mattered to her.

  “Do you remember?” she said. “There were a whole bunch of us out playing hide-and-seek in the woods on your property. I think your brother Darcy was ‘it,’ and he turned around to count to a hundred, and everyone scattered. I had planned to run off with my sister but for some reason she suddenly disappeared with someone else, and I looked around and everyone had started to run. You offered your hand to me to follow you to a place where he’d never find us.”

  Edouardo squinted his eyes against the memory. The little girl who was sort of chubby. The kids called her Flabby. Was she the same person? Had it been Flabby Gabby, only he just knew her as Flabby?

  “It was late in the afternoon, and you led me to this wooded area and then I took off—it was so beautiful, I wanted to explore every square inch of it. It felt like an enchanted forest, as if fairies and trolls and fantastical creatures would come out from behind the trees at any moment. I kept running and you stayed right there with me the whole time, all the while telling me to stop or we would end up lost.”

  Edouardo started to nod. “That was you? Little Flabby?”

  She frowned at the reference. “Yes, but I’d like to think I’ve outgrown the name. Well, maybe outgrow is the wrong verb. Let’s just say I’d prefer to be called Gabriella.”

  Edouardo wrinkled his brows. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you,” he said. “It’s just that I hadn’t made the connection until you started recounting that story.”

  She waved her hands, dismissing that, taking another gulp of her drink. “So then your warnings came true,” she said. “We got lost and it got dark. And once the sun went down it was cold. We shouted for someone to rescue us until we were hoarse. And then I started to cry.”

  Edouardo nodded, everything coming back to him suddenly. The poor thing had been so upset. And he wasn’t the big, strapping man standing before her right now, hadn’t gone through his growth spurt yet but was still a rather diminutive, somewhat scrawny little boy. But he didn’t let that stop him from serving in the role of caretaker. He knew it was his job to be the man in that situation and he had to save that po
or, terrified girl. “You kept saying you heard wolves,” he said. “I tried to tell you they were just our dogs, but you would hear none of it. And when you started to cry—”

  “You took such good care of me. I was hungry, and you rifled around in your pocket and pulled out a chocolate bar and insisted I take it,” she said. “You didn’t even eat one bite of it. Gave it all to me.”

  He shrugged in an aw-shucks kind of way. He wasn’t keen on being the object of someone’s flattery.

  “And not only did you give me your jacket when I started shivering,” she said, “but by the time the moon rose and it was clear no one was going to find us anytime soon, you lay on top of me to keep me warm.”

  She reached her arms around him, accidentally splashing a little of her champagne cocktail onto his neck. She took the napkin that had been wrapped around her drink, and moistening it with her tongue, wiped away the sticky drink splatters. Edouardo was transfixed by that sexy gesture, that little pink tongue peeking out, challenging him. He who had no interest in women or relationships or sexy tongues. At least that’s what he thought.

  She set down her drink and started over, locking her hands at the back of his neck. “Now, where were we,” she said as she pulled his head toward hers and placed her lips on his. Her warm, soft, lips. “That’s for being my hero. A great, big, belated thank-you.”

  Edouardo felt his mouth go dry. He cleared his throat to no avail. Finally he reached for her drink and took a swig. One little gulp wouldn’t negatively affect his driving ability. “Really, it was nothing,” he said. “Just doing what my father taught me to do, to be a gentleman.”

  “Well your father taught you well,” she said. “Let’s see what other useful skills you’ve picked up along the way.”

  She pulled him toward her again, this time deepening the kiss with that cursed tongue, which turned out not to be quite so cursed after all, as it explored his mouth, swiping along his teeth before finding his tongue. Suddenly—go figure—he somehow managed to loosen up quite readily. Clearly the next best thing to a drink to get you going was a kiss from a beautiful woman who beyond the shadow of a doubt had one thing on her mind. Somehow, she had succeeded in replacing all thoughts of slothing it on his mother’s sofa and watching television with much more enticing fantasies about partaking in other activities on that sofa with a certain curvy, and somewhat aggressive young woman. Damn, it was gonna be a long night.

  Chapter Eight

  Gabriella had enough sense to know making out with Edouardo in plain sight of a hundred party guests might not be the best segue back into Monaforte’s social circles. Not that there was anything wrong with it, per se, but she didn’t want to leave a mistaken impression. Which was why she instead grabbed Edouardo’s hand and immediately pulled him along a narrow corridor lined on either side with antique oil paintings and down a flight of stairs into one of the guest chambers that was used probably once every ten years. No one, but no one would come looking for them here. She considered it her modern-day version of leading Edouardo off into the wilderness, only with a king-sized bed and a down comforter. A much cozier adventure than their last time.

  She was out of breath by the time they made it to the room. She shut the door and literally pushed him so he fell onto the bed looking a little stunned at her sheer audacity.

  “So, now, where were we?” she said, plunking herself down onto the mattress with a hard bounce, then leaning into Edouardo, grabbing his tie to pull him closer toward her. “I think right about here.” She dragged her tongue along his closed lips, figuring he’d join the fun just as soon as he got the gist of her intentions. Instead, he sort of froze. Gabriella’s hands reached beneath his suit jacket and tried to maneuver it so it might fall off his arms, but it was like trying to undress a stiff Barbie doll with unmovable joints.

  Failing at that endeavor, she shifted her reach to tug up his dress shirt, loosening it from the death grip his belt apparently had on the damned thing. All the while, she tried to insinuate her tongue into his mouth, but it was as though the man had lockjaw. Finally she sat up.

  “Uh, everything okay with you?” she said, scrunching her brow in concern.

  At first he just lay there, unresponsive. Although one look at what he was packing in those pants and she could tell he wasn’t entirely unresponsive. Clearly something was interested.

  “Edouardo? You there?” she waved her hands in front of his face.

  Finally he shifted himself away from her as he started to stand up, tucking his mussed shirt back into his pants.

  “Nothing personal, Gab,” he said, “but this just isn’t a good idea.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. Since when was it ever a bad idea in the eyes of any male in the history of male-dom to have a quickie hookup? Like, was there a man on the planet who wouldn’t go for that at the drop of a hat?

  “What do you mean?” she said. “Do you have a girlfriend or something?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “God, no—”

  Which prompted her lightbulb moment. She banged the heel of her hand against her forehead. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry,” she said, motioning toward his outfit. “So you’re gay? I should’ve known it with that hipster suit you’re wearing.”

  Edouardo’s eyes popped open. “Hipster suit? I’m not bloody gay!” he said as he backed toward the door.

  She furrowed her brow as she lay sprawled awkwardly across the bed, her pride plummeting precipitously like the red line of a thermometer that was suddenly stuck in a deep freeze. “Well, if you’re not gay, then what do you have against me?” Her lower lip jutted out in a pronounced pout.

  He stared at her, his eyes wide. “I haven’t got a thing against you,” he said. “You’re a perfectly lovely woman. It’s nothing to do with you.” He wiped his brow, where droplets of sweat had started to bead.

  “It’s nothing to do with me, yet you’re racing out of here as if I’d just told you I was recently exposed to Ebola,” she said. “Is it my breath?” She cupped her hand to her mouth and puffed out air, testing it. “Or do I smell?” She turned her head to one side and lifted her arm to sniff under it.

  Edouardo raised his hands in protest. “Look, Gabriella, seriously,” he said, “it’s not you, it’s me.”

  With that, he hastened out of the room as if his pants were on fire, leaving poor Gabriella to marinate in her embarrassment, feeling like the loser-est of losers, after having been completely shunned by a man. All she was looking for was a commitment-free, no-strings-whatsoever-attached good time. She had to be the first woman ever to be ditched by a guy who was being offered a free trip to the well.

  This was not the way she’d hoped to launch her return to Monaforte. Being a reject-loser.

  It’s not you, it’s me.

  Indeed.

  Chapter Nine

  Edouardo was ready to throttle his sister for getting him into this situation. Well, maybe not completely into the snare in which he’d become entangled, but close enough. If only she’d just left him alone, he surely wouldn’t have found himself being suspected of being gay merely because he was unwilling to get down and dirty with that hot little nympho. At least he presumed she was a nympho based on her balls-to-the-wall effort to land him.

  The funny thing was being presumed gay—based on his suit no less—wasn’t the worst of it. What trumped that was he wanted her. Badly. He freaking wanted nothing more than to just cast aside his mind pollution—and at this point, that’s all he could call it, because his head was totally clogged with a lot of trash he needed to somehow discard—and go for it with her. He desired nothing more than to sink himself into her warm and no doubt welcoming body, where he could momentarily forget everything and just be.

  How could he not have wanted to? She was just the type of woman he’d be interested in. That is, if he was going to be interested in a woman (which he wasn’t, thank goodness. He knew all too well what happened when you stupidly fell in love, only to have your heart skewere
d and roasted on an open spit, thanks). She was cute, not gorgeous—and he’d learned from past experience the gorgeous ones were not for him. Great figure—with a little bit of hips you could hold onto, which was the only way, in his estimation. And she was a hell of a kisser based on his minimal experience with her.

  On top of it all, he’d failed to admit something he really should have acknowledged to Gabriella as soon as it all started coming back to him: after that night in the woods, he’d harbored a crush on her for a long time. Somehow that scared little girl had commandeered a piece of his heart that night. Only now, he was too embarrassed to admit such a thing. It was way easier to play nonchalant than to admit to real live feelings about someone.

  So maybe he’d been a little scared off by her fairly forward tactics. Not that there was anything wrong with that. Under normal circumstances, Edouardo would’ve been pretty turned on by a woman who knew what she wanted and went for it. How hot was that? But these weren’t normal times for him. Because clearly, he’d lost his mojo. And with it, his chance for a blowjo, it seemed. Hahaha, that almost made him laugh. Except, crap, that really might have been true. What self-respecting male would turn that down? What the hell was wrong with him?

  Edouardo had sought refuge in one of the many spacious restrooms in the massive manor home in which he seemed to be a prisoner—until such time as his sister would give him a get-out-of-jail card to get the hell out of there. He needed to give that unrelenting hard-on in his pants a chance to settle down before joining the crowd. Turns out hipster suit pants don’t have a lot of room for, er, uh, expansion and would’ve betrayed him in no time flat. After splashing water on his face, he paced back and forth, scrubbing his hands through his hair in between shaking his head over and over again.

  What the hell, man? What the fuck is with you?