Sinful Seduction (2 page)

That she didn’t blame him for merely being wounded in the explosion that had killed his twin? That she was sorry? Weren’t they all?

No. There was nothing she could say.

He reached out, skimming the mementos with his long-fingered hand. His touch was so gentle, so reverent, that she knew she was seeing way too much and should look away from this intimate moment between a remaining brother and his ghosts.

But she didn’t. Couldn’t.

And then, without warning, his quiet sadness yielded to something edgier and much more troubling. Wheeling around, Alessandro strode to the console against the wall, reached for a crystal decanter and sloshed some liquor into a tumbler, spilling as much as he poured.

A beat’s hesitation passed.

Then he leaned his head back and drank so deeply that Skylar could almost feel the burn in her own throat. He swallowed hard. Gasped. Rolled his shoulders a couple of times, clearly trying to decide which path to take. Apparently choosing oblivion, he reached for the decanter again and filled it up.

But this time he paused with the glass halfway to his lips, his attention snagged by a framed photograph on the table nearest the sofa. The light was just good enough for her to see that it was Tony’s formal graduation portrait from West Point.

Wearing his dress uniform and the hard stare that soldiers always do when posing for pictures, Tony looked young and proud and, worse, invincible. She had the ridiculous thought that if she could sneak inside that photo and whisper to that young man that he had less than twenty years to live, he would laugh with disbelief and pity at her obvious confusion.

The sight of him was too much for her and, apparently, for Alessandro.

With an angry roar, he raised his arm and lashed out, sending the tumbler crashing into the picture and knocking it to the floor in a spectacular shower of flying glass shards and scotch. Drops of liquor rained down on the furniture for what seemed like forever, and her intrusion, finally, registered with her brain.

She’d seen too much. Gone too far. Stayed too long.

But it was too late.

Alessandro had heard her sharp cry of surprise, or maybe his peripheral vision caught the jerk of her arm as she pressed her hand to her mouth. His head came up and his eyes flashed to the mirror over the mantel, where he finally saw her standing behind him.

Their gazes locked and held.

The intensity of his expression rocked her back on her heels. It was as powerful as the percussion wave from a bomb, and twice as dangerous.

In the mirror, she saw a slow, hard smile pull on one corner of his mouth. Turning, he gave her a mocking little nod that was as insulting as he could make it.

Hating him suddenly, she tried to ignore the way her heartbeat skipped and stuttered when he looked at her, the sudden lack of breathable air in here, and the shivering awareness in her skin.

“Well, well, well.” His deceptively soft voice—deeper than she’d remembered it; more startling—was so heavy with sarcasm that she was surprised the words didn’t drop out of the air and clatter to the floor one by one. “If it isn’t my brother’s beloved ex-fiancée. You’re just in time to join the party.”

Chapter 2

N
ow that the moment was here, Skylar was disturbed to discover that her courage had not made the long trip out to the Hamptons with her after all. Without it, her mouth was dry, her knees weak and her resolve sketchy at best.

She felt, in a word, exposed.

That was the problem with Alessandro; he affected her on some core cellular level that defied explanation. His gaze burned her. His energy, which bubbled beneath the surface of that quiet facade, electrified her. Being in his presence felt equally dangerous and exhilarating, and she’d known it would be this way.

Which was probably why she couldn’t stay away.

The one time she’d met him, all those months ago, was not enough.

The woman in her (and, face it, she was all woman, wasn’t she?) couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to get under this man’s skin and caught up in his arms. What would he do? Driving curiosity had her in a choke hold, despite her clanging nerves. There was passion somewhere deep inside him, and the right woman could tap into it.

And then…

And then, she suspected, all his outer ice would melt into steam.

It was his eyes, which were every bit as intense as she’d remembered. Those brown eyes could change on a dime, and all his expressions were fascinating. Right now, for instance, he’d already locked away the sadness she’d glimpsed a minute ago, and his brows had flatlined into a piercing and chilly stare that told her there’d be hell to pay for showing up here.

Quiet hell, but still hell, because he’d probably hoped never to see her again. Too bad he wasn’t going to get his wish. Not this time.

Riveted by everything about him, her body reacting in secret, feminine ways, she couldn’t speak. She could barely breathe.

Alessandro Davies made her blood surge, her belly tighten and her breasts ache.

She stared. He stared back, arrested and utterly still. Neither of them blinked.

The tension swirled around them, binding them together and spiking until, with sudden and absolute clarity, she realized that they were in a battle of wills, she and Sandro. What was the prize? She had no idea. But she never backed away from a challenge.

Never.

He spoke first, deploying that deep rasp against her. “Cat got your tongue? I asked if you wanted to join me.”

She gave the mess on the floor a pointed glance. “I think I’ll pass. Doesn’t look like much of a party. Happy birthday, by the way.”

His eyes widened. “You remember that?”

“Could I forget?”

Another of those pregnant moments passed. Along the length of her spine and up into her scalp, she felt nerve endings prickle to life. It was all she could do not to shiver.

“Why don’t you call it a night?” she suggested.

His mouth softened a fraction in a precursor to a smile that would probably never come. “I was just getting started.”

“Maybe you should stop. I don’t think you can handle your liquor.”

There it was. Another flash in those shadowed eyes. A sign that she’d…what? Dinged his pride? Irritated him? Infuriated him?

“I see. So you showed up in the middle of the night to criticize me in my own house?”

“No. I came to talk to you, and I was forced to come out here because you’ve been ignoring my phone calls for weeks.” Tired of the oppressive gloom, which wasn’t helping her skittering nerves, she marched to the nearest lamp and clicked it on before turning back to gauge his response. Time to put on her big-girl panties and take charge a little. “Why is it so dark in this house? What’re you—a vampire?”

“Do feel free to make yourself at home.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “And did you forget—it’s my house, too, isn’t it?”

“Could I forget?” He eased closer with a step that was slow and measured, and yet somehow simultaneously—magically—gave the impression that he couldn’t reach her fast enough and planned to tear her limbs from her body when he did. “You reached the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow, didn’t you? That’s pretty good work for an engagement that only lasted, what, ten minutes.”

Ah. There it was. The accusation of moneygrubbing that was the inevitable result of dating a man from a wealthy family when you were the product of a hardworking teacher mom and a preacher dad from Harlem.

The Davies family had, decades ago, parlayed their New York City auction house, Davies & Sons, into a major player in the global art and jewelry market, giving Christie’s and Sotheby’s a run for their money. Not that she’d cared about any of that when she and Tony had made the disastrous choice to romanticize their friendship.

Sandro was assuming a lot of facts not in evidence.

That she’d never truly cared about Tony.

That she’d callously broken his heart right before his final deployment.

That she was happy to have been mentioned in Tony’s will and wanted his wealth.

Sandro believed the worst about her, and it hurt badly enough to leave a mark. It shouldn’t, but it did.

It did not, apparently, matter to him that her little family had worked their asses off, getting Skylar through The Masters School, an exclusive New York boarding school just outside the city, or that Skylar had gone on to college and veterinary school at Ohio State and now had a thriving practice in Boston.

No.

Apparently the only thing that mattered out here, in the rarefied air of the Hamptons, was how blue your blood was and how much money daddy had in the bank.

Well, screw Alessandro Davies and his assumptions.

“Why are you so convinced I’m a gold digger?” Firing up, she pointed a finger right at his haughty face. “Why not give me the benefit of the doubt? What did I ever—”

He studied her with cool disdain, the way she imagined he’d look if he accidentally poured sour milk in his morning cereal. “Maybe it was your whirlwind courtship. What did it take? Two months for you to hook up with my brother and get him to pop the question?”

“Wow.” She arched a brow. “So I’m Bathsheba now? I had no idea I was so seductive or your brother was so gullible. Thanks for the compliment—”

“And then, what—another two months to kick him to the curb and send him spiraling out of control when he went back to Afghanistan? You knew this, right? That he was reckless at the end? Hell, he probably jumped on that IED just to get a little relief from the pain you caused him.”

Bastard.

Blind fury at this injustice made her head spin.

“Did it ever occur to you that I cared about your brother? Or that I thought I was doing the right thing by breaking up with him?” God, her voice was ragged now; she could barely force it to work, and she hated him for reducing her to this mess. “Or that I never asked him to name me in his will? Did it ever cross your mind that I didn’t want to receive his portion of this estate?”

“No.” He stared at her, his rigid face so hard and unforgiving it would have been at home next to a bust of Julius Caesar. “It never did.”

Her mouth twisted with the effort to hold back a snarl. “Wow. It’s amazing to think that a bastard like you could be twins with a—”

“A what? A saint like him?” He shrugged, but the nonchalant gesture didn’t quite fit with the sharp glint in his eyes. There was that crack in his facade again, the only hint that she’d ever get to let her know that he was human, after all, and this conversation affected him. “Ah, well. You can’t explain genetics, can you?”

Some inner voice—or maybe it was a demon—urged her on, and she decided to go with it. He’d stabbed her in the heart with his accusations, and if there was any way for her to punish him back, she was damn sure going to try.

“You know, I’m wondering. Are you so sure that your brother was only lovable because of his money, or is there something about me in particular that gets under your skin?”

He stiffened, and that was answer enough.

Oh, God.

Turning the lights on, she belatedly realized, had been a mistake. They were toe to toe now, both brimming with agitated aggression, and the flashes of lightning, quickly followed by doomsday booms of thunder, drove up the room’s crackling energy into a zone that could optimistically be called dangerous.

He was handsome. Moodily, wickedly and devastatingly handsome. His hooded eyes were soulful and wounded, his nose and cheekbones were harsh slashes of bone, and his lips were curved and full. If someone could splice the best features of Denzel Washington and a young Marlon Brando together, Alessandro Davies would be the unforgettable result.

And the body—don’t get her started. He was somewhere just under six feet, she thought, and had the tough and lean lines of the soldier he’d been until that career-ending explosion in Afghanistan, the same one that’d claimed his brother. There was something about the way he carried himself that caught the eye—her eye—and held it. Straight and proud, with wide shoulders, a flat belly and the kind of rounded butt and hard thighs she was more used to seeing on NFL running backs. He was a man’s man who did not, she was sure, take any shit from anyone. Ever.

Now that she’d turned on that cursed lamp, she could see all of him, up close and in the kind of high-def detail that emphasized the dark beginnings of tomorrow’s beard under that brown skin. Now that he was this near, she could smell the liquor on his breath and, worse, the sophisticated scent of him, something with spices and leather. Now that their wills were locked in battle, she felt the slow curl of heat deep in her belly.

Her former fiancé, Tony, was Sandro’s twin, yeah, but they’d been fraternal all the way. Tony had possessed none of these arresting features or qualities, or, if he did, they weren’t arranged anything like
this.

The genetics of it didn’t make sense; he was right about that.

“What do you want?” There was a ruthless new quality in his low voice now, a take-no-prisoners finality that told her he wanted her gone and would do whatever it took to make that happen. “You want me to cut you a check with a lot of zeros so I can buy your share of the estate I grew up on? Is that it? Tony’s been dead too long for you to just be discovering you’re pregnant or any nonsense like that—or were you here to announce that you’ve had a secret love child and think you’re entitled to support? Help me out here.”

She flinched, her head full of a frantic buzzing, as though he’d slapped her.

So this was what he thought of her.

Actually, no. His opinion wasn’t about her at all, and she was woman enough and self-confident enough to know that. It was all about the unexpected and guilty chemistry they’d shared the night they met, and the darkness bottled up inside his soul. What kind of pain did he carry around every day? What kind of demons dogged his footsteps?

Staring into those cold eyes, she told him the truth.

“If that’s what you really think, I feel sorry for you.”

He winced and paced away from her, back into the shadows, withdrawing into the cave of his unhappiness and nursing his hurts like a wounded bear.

His silent pain seeped into her bones, and she wished—

Ah, hell. She had no idea what she wished, which was just as well.

He was leaning his elbows on the mantel and had his head in his hands, rubbing his temples with enough force to wipe off his entire face.

Raw emotion propelled her; logical thought never entered into it. Coming up behind him, she rested her hands on his rigid shoulders and squeezed, her aching heart full of apologies.

“Sandro—”

Jerking free, he wheeled around to roar at her with the full might of his fury.

“Don’t touch me!”

His rejection rolled over her in a flattening wave, and she staggered back a step, stunned and hurt. The way he glared at her—with all that bottomless venom—hurt. He’d hurt her again. Everything about him hurt her, and she hated him for it.

A vindictive little voice began to whisper inside her head.

She thought about the reason she’d come all the way out here, the lawyer she’d hired, and the executed paperwork in her purse. She thought about how she’d signed back over her unwanted share of the estate to Sandro, its rightful owner, and how she’d planned to do the right thing.

Well, screw that.

Just because she was mature enough to see that this man was in pain didn’t mean that she could forgive him for the tiny little knives he kept stabbing in her heart.

It’d be a cold day in hell before she gave the papers to him. If he wanted them, he knew where she lived. He could find her at home in Boston, and then he could do a little begging.

The thought did her a world of good.

“Screw you,” she told him.

With that, she grabbed her purse, pivoted and stalked out, back through the saturating darkness the way she’d come, ignoring Alessandro’s sharp “Skylar!” as she went.

“What the hell?” Mickey’s face appeared over the upstairs railing. “I thought you left!”

She kept going, ignoring him, too. From the corner of her eye she noticed another, slighter, figure in the gloom behind Mickey, but she didn’t get a good look.

Was that Alessandro’s son, then? Well, God bless him if it was. Tony had told her all about him. He’d also mentioned how the boy’s mother had abandoned the family when Sandro got home from his first deployment, and now lived somewhere in California. Poor kid. There was no telling what his life was like with his mother three thousand miles away, his father locked behind a layer of permafrost and this living crypt for a home while he struggled with adolescent hormone poisoning.