by Joss Wood
Levi nodded, locked his teeth and Tanna held the tape tightly. “Okay, here we go... One.”
Tanna ripped the tape, and Levi gasped, and the plastic sleeve fell down his thigh. Tanna stood up, clapped her hands together and grinned. “Done!”
“You are truly evil,” Levi told her. “What happened to counting to three?”
Tanna shrugged. “Lightweight.”
Tanna tossed the tape, folded the plastic sleeve and washed her hands. Then she walked over to the counter and picked up the vine tomatoes she’d been slicing and tossed them into a skillet on the gas stove. The insanely good combination of basil, garlic, tomatoes and olive oil filled the room.
“What are you making?”
“Pasta and vegetables in a tomato sauce,” Tanna replied, leaving the stove to look for spices.
Levi looked disappointed. “Please tell me there’s protein in there, somewhere.”
“Chicken breasts are baking in the oven.”
“There is a God,” Levi murmured, pulling his shirt halfway up his chest to scratch a spot just under his ribs. Tanna noticed his ripped stomach, that fine happy trail and his warm, tanned skin.
“You okay?” Levi asked her, dropping his shirt, and Tanna nearly whimpered her disappointment.
No, I want sex. With you. Now.
I’ll even go on top...
“Fine.”
Liar, liar, thong on fire. Tanna walked back to the stove, stirring the contents of her pan. Needing wine, and to cool down, she opened the fridge and jammed her head inside.
“How was your shower?” Tanna asked, pulling out a bottle of merlot. She also took out a jug of iced tea and poured Levi a glass.
Levi’s smiled flashed and Tanna was sure the earth sighed in appreciation. “It was amazing. It’s so nice to feel properly clean.”
“So, is dirt bike riding a new thing?” Tanna asked, tossing the pasta into a pot of boiling water.
“Within the last eighteen months or so,” Levi replied. “Finn introduced me to the sport.” Levi winced and pulled a face. “Uh, you do know Finn is a bit of adrenaline junkie?”
Tanna shrugged. “I do. I’ve told him I will kill him if he hurts himself doing something stupid.”
His smile tilted the world off its axis again. Tanna tipped her head to look at him. There were fine lines at the corners of his twinkling eyes and his lips stretched into a we-can-melt-steel smile.
Hot. So hot.
“You should smile more often. You’ve got a great smile,” Tanna said, her words falling into the silence of the kitchen.
Tanna felt the urge to backtrack, to tell him she didn’t think their sleeping together sometime in the immediate future was a good idea. Because, oh, too many things...
He was too much, too masculine, too attractive, too able to make her feel things she couldn’t, or didn’t want to, deal with. He made her want, and worst of all, he made her question.
Her past. Her present. And her future.
“Sauce is burning, Murphy.”
Levi’s prosaic statement cut through her panic and Tanna whirled around to see smoke coming off the pan. Cursing, she quickly stirred the sauce, relieved she’d caught it in time.
Now, if she could save herself from falling under Brogan’s spell again, that would be an even better result.
Seven
Tanna topped off her coffee cup and, glancing over her shoulder, saw Levi’s attention was still on the screen of his laptop. Rimless wire glasses made his blue eyes seem darker, look more serious and older than his years. A frown pulled his strong eyebrows together and she smiled as he lobbed quiet insults at his state-of-the-art machine.
After picking up her coffee, she leaned her butt against the marble counter. “Problem?”
Levi lifted his head to look at her. “Payroll, company accounts.”
“For the marina?” She knew Levi owned a majority share in a marina downtown with Noah Lockwood and she recalled one of her brothers telling her he’d revamped the business so it was one of the best, and most technologically advanced, marinas on the East Coast.
“And for the boatyard, and my other two marinas.”
So, how to ask this without causing offense? Everyone knew Ray left the family billions, that neither Levi, Callie nor his sisters needed to work if they didn’t want to. Hell, she was pretty sure their kids and grandkids wouldn’t need to work either.
“Um, I didn’t think you were so hands-on. I thought you had people to take care of the day-to-day stuff.”
“I do have people who are very capable at running my businesses but I’m a control freak, hadn’t you noticed? I don’t hand over control easily and I like to know what’s happening, every day.”
“I definitely remember the control freak aspect of your personality. I remember you having very definite ideas about what you wanted for our wedding.”
Not meaning to rake up the past and the unpleasantness that went along with it, she waved her comment away. “But I didn’t know you owned so many businesses.”
Levi lifted his uninjured shoulder. “I have a few but it’s a fraction of what my father owned.”
Judging by his flat, offhand comment, Tanna knew there was a story behind his hard statement. “Do you want to own as many businesses as your dad?” she carefully asked.
Levi released an irritated sigh and leaned back in his chair. “My father was a multibillionaire, one of the most successful businessmen in the state. I have a long way to go before I hit such illustrious heights.”
He hadn’t answered her question and his tone oozed sarcasm. She still didn’t understand his subtext. “But do you want to be as successful as him?”
“I’m the son, his heir. He expected it. The world expects it.”
Again, an answer that wasn’t an answer. “But is that what you want?”
Levi glared at her, and without replying, returned to his screen. Okay, so that was his tender spot. She wondered if he had others.
She’d only met Levi’s father a few times after their engagement and she remembered a charming man, with a personality as big as the sun. He walked into the room and immediately dominated it with his loud voice, his raucous laughter and his inimitable charm. His light shone bright and Tanna distinctly remembered Levi’s mental withdrawal with every passing minute they spent with his dad.
The louder Ray got, the quieter Levi became.
Levi wasn’t naturally ebullient; he was, fundamentally, reticent and reserved. Ray had tossed question after question at her, asking her about her accident, her family, how it felt to lose her parents at a young age, whether she thought her brothers had done a good job raising her. Ray didn’t have any boundaries and no tact and she’d been grateful when Levi, with a few words quietly uttered, had shut down the interrogation.
At the time she’d been grateful Levi removed the spotlight from her and had gone on to enjoy her lunch. Now, with a little maturity and hindsight, she could look back on that lunch and see that Levi spoke and Ray had listened. And obeyed.
Tanna wondered if Levi knew how much his father had respected him...
“Tell me about your relationship with your dad,” Tanna said after blowing air across the surface of her hot coffee.
“Trying to work here, Murphy,” Levi retorted and stared at his screen. After a minute, he threw down his pen and leaned back in his chair, his red Henley pulling tight across his biceps as he folded his arms across his wide chest.
Classic defensive pose, Brogan. What are you hiding?
“He was my dad. What’s there to say?”
Behind those glasses there was so much pain in his eyes, and a whole lot of unresolved emotion. And, because this was Levi, it was all covered by a solid layer of don’t-go-there.
“I liked your dad. He was charming. A bit over the top but, yeah, charism
atic,” Tanna quietly told him. “But he wouldn’t be the person I ran to in a crisis.”
Levi linked his hands behind his head, looking interested. “Why do you say that?”
Tanna lifted one shoulder. “Because I sensed that, in geology terms, Callie was the rock, the foundation of your family. Ray, to me, was the pretty streaks of gold or the flash of quartz, the trace of platinum. He provided the flash while Callie provided the stability.”
Levi sent her a hard stare before releasing a long, steady sigh. “Wow. That’s pretty astute of you.”
Tanna half smiled at him. “You want to know what else I think?”
She could see the doubt in his eyes, and wondered whether he’d change the subject, push their conversation in another direction. Years ago, Levi always, always avoided emotional discussions.
He surprised her when he gestured for her to continue. “I think you made your dad feel uncomfortable...”
Levi jerked back, shocked. “That’s not possible, Tanna.”
“I’m sure you did. I think your dad saw something in you he didn’t have.”
“And what would that be?”
Tanna tapped the side of her mug with her finger. “When he said something controversial, he looked at you, needing to see your reaction. It was like he was looking for your approval.”
Levi shook his head. “Nope, my dad never listened to anything I had to say, especially in business. If I said black, he said white.”
Maybe that was because Levi always seemed so happy in his skin, so totally and utterly in control. Little rattled him and maybe Ray, who commanded attention from everybody else, wanted his son’s attention more than anyone else’s.
“I think he wanted you to be proud of him.”
Levi rolled his eyes. “If he wanted that, he shouldn’t have taken such enormous risks, shouldn’t have gambled every cent he owned on crazy propositions.”
Surely Levi couldn’t hold that against him? “Your father made billions doing that, Levi.”
“Luckily they panned out. Possibly, I think, because God looks after the stupid.” Levi rested his arms on the kitchen table, his frown pulling his strong eyebrows together, blue eyes troubled.
“Everybody sees him as being this incredible businessman and he was, to a point. But he got lucky more often than he should’ve. There were times, during some of his biggest deals, when I was on the edge of my seat, waiting to hear if we’d lost everything.”
They’d had a lot to lose. “You would’ve still had this house, the cars, personal bank accounts.”
Levi’s smile was cold. “You don’t understand, Tanna. On all of his deals he risked everything. He put everything on the line to raise the cash he needed—this house, all the houses, the investments, our college funds. Everything got tossed into the pot.”
“Wow. That bad, huh?”
“That bad,” Levi confirmed. “That’s why I stopped working for him. I couldn’t make him see reason and I couldn’t control his wild impulses. He was gambling with the company and I could see it going south. I needed to get out and start up something new, so we’d have a source of income when we lost everything.”
Tanna winced. “You were sure that was going to happen?”
“Oh, hell yes. Absolutely positive. When he died...” Levi stopped talking, cursed and waved his words away.
Tanna cursed too when he didn’t continue his explanation, wishing he trusted her enough to complete his sentence.
When he returned his attention to his laptop, Tanna continued to stare at him, her mind whirling.
“So, that’s why you like to be in control, why you like your ducks in a row. Because your father’s ducks were drunk and at a rave.”
Levi lifted his head, frowning until he made sense of her words. Then he smiled. “I suppose that’s a good way to describe him. My dad thrived on chaos. I do not.”
Tanna returned to her earlier thought, that Ray wanted approval from his son. “Maybe he wanted to impress you and he kept doing that by launching into bigger and riskier deals. Maybe he wanted to show you he could do it.”
Levi sighed. “Then he didn’t know me at all. I’m not impressed by flash.”
“Maybe that was all he knew how to be,” Tanna murmured. This was the first time Levi had ever said something this personal, had cracked the door to what went on behind his implacable facade. She wanted to know more, she wanted to know everything.
So when she heard the sharp rap on the kitchen door, she nearly howled in frustration. Tanna darted a look at Levi and he, not surprisingly, looked like a French aristocrat who’d been spared a meeting with Madame Guillotine.
The kitchen door opened and Tanna smiled as Carrick walked in, closely followed by the stunning blonde she’d met at Carrick’s offices.
After giving her a quick hug, Carrick gestured to the blonde. “Meet Sadie. She’s working with us to authenticate what we think might be a lost Winslow Homer. Levi Brogan and my sister, Tanna.”
Tanna sent Carrick an exasperated look. “You introduced Sadie to me at Murphy’s, Carrick. Don’t you remember?”
Probably not since she was convinced his blood had left his brain on seeing the sexy PhD.
Tanna watched Levi’s reaction as Sadie walked over to him to shake his hand. Tanna waited for the flash of attraction in his eyes, the slow smile she knew could melt panties at fifty paces.
Well, huh. Nothing, zip, diddly-squat. They shook hands, exchanged polite smiles and she didn’t even pick up a hint of zing. They were two spectacular-looking humans. How could they not be attracted to each other?
Tanna turned her attention to Carrick and, yep, there she saw what she’d been looking for in Levi’s reaction to Sadie. Carrick’s green eyes, so much like hers, flickered with possession, a hint of jealousy and a healthy dose of irritation. The latter was probably directed at himself for allowing himself to be distracted by the gorgeous blonde.
Well, well, well...this could be interesting.
“Did you come to see me, or Levi?” Tanna asked Carrick.
She was his sister but Levi was his best friend.
“Both of you.”
Tanna gestured to the empty seats at the table. “Can I get you coffee?” They both nodded, shed their coats and took seats next to and opposite Levi, who closed the lid of his laptop. Levi asked Sadie about her career as an art detective and they were soon engaged in a lively conversation about Sadie’s attempts to track down the painting’s provenance.
It all sounded wonderful, and interesting.
“You should document the process, Carrick. Show your clients how you go about authenticating a work of art. They’d be interested, I’m sure. You could do it as a series of vlogs.” Tanna grinned. “It helps you are both pretty.”
Carrick sent her a penetrating stare. “That’s a really good idea. I’ll run it by the owners of the painting and the PR department.” He tipped his head to the side. “When are you going to come and head up our PR department?”
Tanna pretended to think about it. “Uh...never?”
“Damn.” Carrick pulled a face. “Talking of PR, I came up with an idea of my own I’d like your help with. It’s why I’m here, actually.”
Now that sounded intriguing. Tanna, coffee forgotten, gave him her full attention. “I’m listening.”
“Next Friday night, Murphy’s is hosting a cocktail party to promote next week’s sale of, mostly, vintage haute couture and high-end fashion. We have jewelry, accessories and, obviously, some of the once-in-a-lifetime gowns by the most prominent and feted designers of the twentieth century.”
“I know. I saw the collection at Murphy’s. It’s wonderful.”
Carrick cleared his throat. “You might not know this, Levi, but Tanna’s mom, my stepmom, collected amazing ensembles from the twenties through to the eighties.”
“Is Mom’s clothing collection part of the sale?” Tanna demanded, horrified. As a child she’d played dress-up with her outfits and when she was sad, mad or needing her mom, she’d often gone into that spacious closet located in the dance studio at the Beacon Hill house to feel closer to her mother.
Carrick shook his head. “Of course not. It doesn’t belong to me.”
Tanna frowned, confused. As the eldest son, Carrick had inherited the family home and all its contents. When they all became adults and moved into their own places, Carrick had offered to split the contents between the four of them but they all wanted the house to remain the way their parents left it.
“Yes, it does.”
Carrick shook his head. “The collection is yours, Tan. She would’ve wanted you to have it. Besides, I’d look silly wearing a Coco Chanel.”
Tanna blinked back her tears, thinking that it had been too long since she’d seen the collection. As soon as she could, she’d go home and see what she owned.
Carrick cleared his throat and adjusted his already perfect tie. “Anyway, we’re having a cocktail party to show off the sale collection to a very select handful of collectors and fashion editors and Jane, our head of PR, suggested putting up some photos of Mom dressed in some of her designer gowns. I wanted to run it by you first.”
Tanna placed her hand on her chest and sighed. “Aw, I love that. It’s such a great idea.”
“An even better idea would be for Tanna to wear one of her mom’s vintage gowns to the party,” Levi suggested.
Tanna’s surprise was reflected in Carrick’s eyes and on Sadie’s face.
“That’s a really excellent idea.” Carrick quietly agreed.
Levi immediately looked grumpy. “I have them occasionally.” He pushed his hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck before continuing. “Tanna looks a lot like Raeni and if she changed a few times during the cocktail party, showing off different gowns, she would, together with her mom’s photos wearing the same gowns, make a hell of an impact.”
Carrick smiled at his friend. “Want to come and head up my PR department since my sister won’t?”
