An Offer He Can't Refuse (16 page)

"You call it coffee," he continued, and this time she knew for sure that he moved closer. "I call it—"

"Maybe we should go inside." Anything to put a little distance between them. Between him, her, and that pool.
Wet and getting wetter
. She cleared her throat. "We can talk in the house where it's cooler."

He stilled, then glanced over his shoulder at the front door. "Not yet. I can't… let's not go in there yet."

"Fine. No problem. Sure." There was no reason for them to go inside, not when this job wasn't going to be hers anyway. Glancing around at the beauty of the pool and then thinking of the potential to be found inside the modern-style house, disappointment sliced through her again.

Damn her family for once more standing between her and her dreams.

Anger went on simmer inside her, but she tried ignoring it as she faced Johnny once more. "So you know, I can't take the job."

His eyes narrowed, his gaze a blue laser beam locking onto hers. "Is that right?" he said softly. "You can't or you won't?"

Suppressing a little shiver, she remembered calling his money manager persona the night before boring. Now she wondered if the occupation might take more steel than she imagined. "I shouldn't, I can't, I won't." She shrugged. "It's really all the same."

"I don't understand."

"You won't want me."

He smiled, making her shiver again. 'Téa, you've got to know by now that's not true."

Oh, good God
. She was going hot again. Fanning her face, she tried her best to stop thinking about what he'd said and focus on what
she
had to say. "Bad choice of words. My family… " Shame and anger edged higher inside of her.

"Your family—?" Johnny prompted.

The right words wouldn't come out. "There was a murder here," she blurted. "Sixteen years ago."

"I know," he said calmly.

She blinked. "You do?"

He nodded. "The realtor told me before I bought the place. But you didn't know?"

He was laser-beamed back onto her again. "No. Not until I saw the blueprints Cal brought over and the name on one of the sets. Giovanni Martelli." The family enemy. The family victim. Both, according to rumor.

Johnny nodded again.

"It doesn't bother you?" Téa asked.

"Not really." His face was smooth, his expression unreadable. "I'm a live-in-the-present, look-forward-to-the-future kind of man."

"That's smart." Why couldn't she live like that? To some extent she tried, it was why she'd refused to move away from Palm Springs, but there were always those whispers following behind her. Those sticky webs reaching out to draw her back to the shadowy world where her grandfather lived.

"It bothers you, though," he said. 'The murder."

"No." If Giovanni Martelli had really whacked her father, wasn't it right that he was dead too? "Yes!" Because being a daughter of the mob didn't necessarily mean she believed in the mob brand of justice. But this ready confusion between right and wrong was just another of the reasons she couldn't live amongst her family again.

Johnny was just looking at her, cool and collected and so handsome that she hated having to tell him the truth.

But she did have to tell him… some of it.

'The thing is, Johnny, rumors are that the man was killed on orders from a member of my family." Heat rushed to her face, shame and another sickening wave of anger that she was forced to make such a confession.

'Téa—"

"You don't understand." She gestured wildly with her hand, arcing a spray of coffee onto the pavement. He couldn't understand or he wouldn't be wearing that neutral expression. No man could understand what growing up with a father in the crime business was like. "The Mafia isn't just the stuff of Scorcese movies and Godfather books. My grandfather heads up California's most notorious crime family, Johnny. The Carusos are mobbed up."

"Okay," he said slowly. "But what does that have to do with you? Is your business—"

"No!" Her arm made another wild gesture, splashing more coffee. "My business has never been anything less than legitimate. You have my word on that."

"So then what does the Mafia have to do with us?" he asked, plucking her coffee from her hand and setting both cups and carton on the ground at his feet. He straightened and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking in control and unperturbed.

"With me working on the house, you mean?"

"It's just a house, Téa. My house now."

"Well, yes, but… "

"But then what's the problem?"

Her shame of their criminal activities was the problem.

Her embarrassment. And her anger. It was beginning to bubble over the edges now.

"If you want the job, Téa, and you said you did, then why are you turning your back on the opportunity? Life's a lot sweeter if you live it the way you want."

Why did his voice sound like the devil's in her ear? But he was right, of course. There was no real reason to refuse if it didn't bother the client.

Though wasn't working on the house where the man purported to have killed her father once lived weird?

No weirder than her father's family having then killed
him
.

She put her hand to her head, trying to clear her thoughts, trying to tamp down the past that seemed to be rearing its ugly head so often lately.

"Why would you deny yourself something you really want to do?" Johnny asked softly.

He was talking about self-denial again. But it wasn't that. It was bargains she'd made between herself, her conscience, and God. Deals to make up for all the other things she'd done.

But didn't she deserve to have something for herself? And couldn't she, like Johnny, be a live-in-the-present, look-forward-to-the-future kind of person? Doing this design job was that chance for success she'd been waiting for.

It was also her chance to remake the Caruso name. And maybe—just maybe—it was even more fitting to attempt that here.

Coming to the swiftest decision of her life, she held out her hand, palm up.

He cocked an eyebrow.

"Keys," she said. "It's time we go inside."

He reached slowly into his pocket. "Yes," he said. "I suppose it is."

The lock turned easily. She led Johnny across the threshold, never once looking back.

***

"If I believed in wishes anymore, this would fulfill every one of them," Téa declared, taking yet another tour between the kitchen and living room.

Johnny followed, as grateful for her final decision to be his designer as he was for her enthusiasm about the house. With her waxing on about the "simple lines flowing from one room to the next," and the glass walls that "brought the indoors out and the outdoors in," he hoped she wouldn't notice the tension that had stretched his nerves and tightened his muscles the instant he'd crossed the threshold. At any moment he expected this first time in the house to force another flashback on him.

Keeping his attention honed on Téa, he watched her turn a circle, the skirt of her dress rising to show off her legs. The sight was enough to tease him with thoughts of her incredible ass, just a few feet higher up. God, he wished she'd stop with the old-maid clothes. Something a little shorter, something a little tighter, and he wouldn't be able to experience a thing beyond this mine-all-mine lust she seemed to bring out in him.

She was chattering again, but she'd moved from the middle of the room toward the opening that led to the bedrooms. The dim hallway beyond snagged his attention, and he peered in the direction of where he'd once slept.

"I studied the blueprints you gave me," she was saying, and now her voice warred with the heavy backbeat of the Beastie Boys' song, "Fight for Your Right to Party," that was playing in his memory. "The original architecture called for just the L-shaped main house arranged around the patio-pool courtyard. The golf course and the lagoon were put in by… by the next owner."

The next owner
. She meant Giovanni Martelli. The Beastie Boys played louder, never content as quiet background music. The golf course had been playable the summer Johnny had come to visit, he remembered, and the lagoon walls constructed though waiting for water when he'd left.

His palms began to sweat, and he focused on Téa in desperation as she moved to the windows opposite the glass walls that looked onto the pool. "The guest bungalows were built by the second-to-the-last owners, Michigan snowbirds, for the visiting families of their adult children."

The guest bungalows. Okay, the guest bungalows. He could think of them, concentrate on them. "Cal is moving into one of those today," Johnny told Téa.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. "He is? Already? I thought I'd get a chance to—"

"We ordered the bare minimum furnishings to be delivered. Temporary stuff that we'll dispense with once the replacements you order arrive. But we need a place to work and to sleep and hotel rooms get old, fast."

And he had to face the nightmares if he was ever going to make it through the nights.

Nodding, Téa wandered away again, in the opposite direction of his old bedroom. Breathing easier, Johnny followed behind, the Beastie Boys sounding fainter in his head.

"This part of the house is fairly recent construction as well. The Michigan couple wanted a master suite," she said, stepping through the doorway.

Only to make an abrupt stop. He plowed into her, his chest against her shoulder blades, his groin pressed to that glorious swell she tried so hard to hide. His hands palmed her shoulders to steady her. Then, just to make things even, he started to swell too.

And with that, the Beastie Boys put down their instruments and went off to find their own women. This is why he needed Téa, Johnny thought. Somehow she tamed the forces eating away at him, and redirected their malevolent energy into something more earthy, pleasant,
present
.

Téa glanced back at him. "There's furniture in here."

So there was, utilitarian stuff that he wouldn't be sorry to see go when the time came. "Thanks to Cal, I guess. I ordered a bed, a recliner, a big-screen TV, and a desk. All present and accounted for. They promised to deliver early." Someone had even made up his king-size bed, complete with a sleek gold comforter. Probably the housekeeping team Cal had arranged to clean the house and the bungalows before their move-in today.

"You're going to be living
here
!"

"That's the plan."

She swung around, frowning at him. "I mean,
here
here? I thought one of the guest—"

He was shaking his head.

"But we'll be tripping all over each other," she protested. "I'll have to be in and out all the time."

What a punishment
, he thought to himself.

Her frown deepened and her sloe eyes narrowed. "Did you—" She broke off, her eyes suddenly shifting upward.

"Oh, my God," she exclaimed.

"What?" The hairs on the back of Johnny's neck jumped on end. "
What
?" Suppressing a cringe, he looked up, half-afraid and half-expecting to see a ghost.

No ghost. Relieved, he let out a laugh and let his gaze roam the sight above them. Oh my God was right, he thought, with a low whistle. Overhead, the ceiling was mirrored. Not with a simple XXX-rated motel, over-the-bed mirror, but with reflecting panels that covered the entire 40 x 40 space.

"There are people etched into the surface," Téa said, her voice sounding strangled.

Johnny nodded. "Naked people." Lots and lots of naked, life-sized people, some in artful, but odd poses, others doing what came naturally when you were naked and well, well-endowed.

Téa continued to stare upward. With her pretty neck arched, he could see a flush inching up her neck. "Your ceiling, it's… it's…"

"Orgiastic?" he supplied.

"How elegantly put."

He stifled another laugh, he who never expected to find anything humorous in this house.
Oh yeah, thank you, Téa
. "I'm surprised, that's all. Who would have thought the Michigan snowbirds had it in them?"

She glanced over. "You didn't already know this was here?"

He shook his head. "I told you, Cal must have let the delivery people in early this morning."

Her gaze was back on the ceiling, and she turned to get another view. "I mean before that. Before you bought the house."

Uh-oh
. "I, well…" She would think it was strange if he confessed to buying the place sight unseen, wouldn't she?

She cast another, sharper look at him. "Johnny?"

The lies were starting to pile up. He gazed upward, hoping for inspiration, and then a grin broke across his face. With any luck, he could distract her. "Check this out," he said, moving toward the bed.

She took wary steps after him.

He flopped down on his back onto the mattress then scooted over to make room for her. "I think I know what those singles in the strange poses are up to," he said patting the free space beside him. "Let me show you."

She crossed her arms over her chest. "Why don't you tell me instead?"

His grin widened as he redirected his gaze skyward. "Okay, but you asked for it. When I lie just like this," he folded his hands behind his head, "that little gal with the open mouth in the kneeling position up there appears to be sucking my—"

"Oh my God!" Her face flushed and she looked up, down, then up again. "You're making that up."

'Try it for yourself." He loved the blush. "If you're squeamish about the girl-on-girl thing, there's a lonely young man right above the recliner in the corner."

He loved the expressions chasing across her face. The good girl trying to deny herself all that sweet, sexual sugar. "Looking doesn't count as calories," he tempted in a soft voice.

She bit her bottom lip.

Oh, man. Even her lips were blushing. They were red and wet and they made him want to whisper naughty things to her while she used them on him just like the etched woman in the mirror overhead.

His cock was semi-erect as she finally scurried to the corner and sat in the overstuffed recliner. "You will
not
tell my sisters about this," she ordered, then pushed down her heels to send the chair into full recline.