The Care and Feeding of Unmarried Men (25 page)

Flattening his tongue, he ran it up her slender neck. As he bit the lobe of her ear, he thrust a third finger into her body.

“Huh.” She exhaled in a huff. “Nash,
now
.” With urgent hands, she tried pulling him over on top of her, but he ignored her wishes. Instead he went back to kissing her mouth, pulling free of the heated glove of her body to shove off that cotton underwear.

She kicked it away with thrashing legs, then went back to trying to tug him over.

“Nuh-uh,” he said against her mouth. “I want more.”

“More later.” Her hand slid down to his pole-hard cock. “This now.”

He hissed in a breath of air, determined not to give in just yet. A man strong enough to resist plowing his fist into Vince's face could resist the lure of Eve's tight little pussy for a while more. It would be better to take the longer route. To let the desire build, higher and higher.

Or lower, as the case may be. Because suddenly Eve made another frustrated sound and ran her mouth down his body. To his navel, and beyond.

His back bowed. She chuckled as she hooked her fingers into his boxers, then shoved them down his legs. He feebly tried to kick them down as he held his breath…

…then felt her mouth take in the head.

Heat jolted to his balls. Her tongue swirled.

His brain spun.

“Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve.” Closing his eyes, he was ready to promise her pancakes for breakfast, a brand-new car, hell, half his business. Up on her knees, she shifted closer to his thighs. He lifted his lashes and took in the curve of her beautiful, delectable bottom. Oh, God. This must be heaven.

Almost heaven.

As she practiced her new skills on him, he slid further down to flatten himself against the mattress. She followed his movements, her pretty ass twitching in a way that drove him crazy. Then, careful, careful, slow, slow, he slid his palm up the inside of her thigh, from her knee to her Brazilian. It was only another inch or two to find her sweet, hot place.

He filled it with his fingers.

Her mouth sucked him harder.

His thumb found her clitoris and circled in time with her tongue.

They both moaned.

He continued to work his fingers inside of her, his other hand rubbing against the pretty, full curve of her ass. Her flesh heated beneath his hand. The inside of her was wet, creamy. A place he wanted to know more intimately.

With little nudges, he urged her to straddle his body. That gave her more direct access to his cock, and she took advantage of it. He grunted, might have been derailed if not for the destination he had in mind, which was a few, few inches away. Nash shoved a doubled-up pillow beneath his neck.

And drew his tongue along Eve's bare pussy.

Her body jumped as if electrified. He kept one hand's heavy weight on the cheek of her bottom, left
fingers deep inside of her, and gave all the attention of his tongue to the little nubbin that was standing up, begging for his favor.

For his pleasure.

She remained frozen, her mouth around him, as his mouth made love to her.

It would only take seconds, he guessed. So he took advantage of the brief moments, lapping at her flesh, savoring her taste, feeling the climax growing beneath the palm of his hand and the tip of his tongue.

Her back arched, that pretty curve that he'd never forget for his whole life. He caught her clitoris between his teeth. His fingers dove farther into her body.

She released his cock and shook with the power of her orgasm. He took in every shudder, then, oh, God, without warning his own came on. With just the beauty of Eve in his eyes and the taste of her in his mouth, he spurted against his belly.

With gentle hands, he lifted her back on the pillows, then he cleaned himself up in the bathroom. When he returned to the bed, she was staring up in the darkness.

Despite the tracks of tears running down her cheeks, he climbed into the bed and gathered her into his arms. She wasn't going to scare him.

“I love you, Eve,” he said. All the vows he'd made to himself, all the profiles he'd concocted of the kind of woman he wanted had been swept away by this overpowering, God-so-right feeling that he had when he was with her. Her trust tempered his steel. Her tender places introduced him to his own. She was exactly the right woman for him, and he didn't want to hold the truth of that back from her any longer. “I'm so in love with you.”

More tears flowed down her heart-stopping face. “What did you do to me?” she whispered.

He pressed a kiss to her wet temple. “Nothing to worry about. You let me be with all of you this time, nothing held back. I made love to the real Eve.”

There was a long pause, then another whisper that sounded more like a plea. “Who is that? Because I don't know who she is anymore.”

Nash held her closer, wiped out by the aftermath of adrenaline and the last incredible, unforgettable minutes. “We'll figure it out in the morning,” he said.

But in the morning, she was gone.

N
ash waited twenty-four hours for Eve to return to him at their room in the Swinger's Hideaway.

She didn't.

She didn't call, either. They'd never found a need to exchange cell phone numbers, but she could have called the room. Several times he'd tried hers at the Kona Kai, but she hadn't picked up.

Flat on the mattress, his hands stacked beneath his head, he stared up at the water stain on the ceiling above the bed, studying it as if it might provide a clue to how he'd gotten to this place in his life. It was shaped like a boomerang.

Right back to where he'd started?

But that didn't make sense. He'd never been in love before. God damn, chest-aching, ball-breaking love. Just another black mark on Eve's side of the score card.
Besides having left him at a cheesy motel vehicle-less, the superbeauty had managed to crawl inside his head and inside his heart, not to mention making him go against his very own vows. And then, when he'd told her he loved her, she'd walked out on him.

He'd sworn off women with complications. He'd sworn off women who needed him. But hell and damnation, it pissed him off, big-time, that Eve had the strength to walk away from his love and support on arguably the most vulnerable day of her life.

Couldn't she give a single goddamn inch?

He swung his legs off the mattress and didn't cast one last look back at the bed. His eyes were closed as he stripped the case off Eve's pillow and, in case the guy at the checkout desk would be watching for contraband, folded it into a small square and stuffed it in his front pocket. It smelled like her.

The plan was that later he'd make a voodoo doll out of it or something.

Now the plan was to get the hell out of Palm Springs. Though tonight was Téa and Johnny's wedding, his date seemed to have disappeared.

As he waited on the curb for the taxi he'd called to show up, he noticed that clouds were gathering in the bowl of the valley. There was an undesertlike dampness that chilled both the air and his thoughts. Fine. He allowed himself another few minutes to worry again about how Eve was doing and what she was thinking. It had to be hell to suddenly doubt your identity. He could understand that. He sympathized. He'd sympathized so damn hard over the last twenty-four hours that the feeling had carved a deep, vicious hole in his belly.

But hell, you couldn't tell the man who loved you
that you needed him and then vanish before he did nothing more than lose himself a little more in your body.

Or maybe it wasn't her fault at all. Maybe it was that he wasn't cut out for this love shit and she'd recognized that. She'd moved on to get what she needed from someone else.

Damn it! And without giving him a chance first!

As the yellow taxicab pulled up, Nash reminded himself that loving Eve wasn't a mandate for action. Her leaving, when he thought about it, was actually a reprieve. Now, without a second thought, he could walk away and go on with his life.

No one was holding a gun to his head.

A thought that seemed incredibly ironic when a dark sedan pulled up beside him as he left the cab and crossed through the Kona Kai parking lot. The back door opened as the passenger side's front window slid down. Through it, Nash found himself staring at the barrel of a gun.

Nino Farelle poked his head out the open door. “We'd like to take you to a talk with Mr. Caruso.”

Nash would have run like hell—only jackasses didn't have a healthy respect for metal implements that spit bullets—if the other man hadn't then added, “It's about Eve.”

They drove quickly through the streets, a gun still trained on him, thanks to a wiry older man whom Nash recognized from that night in the Kona Kai bar when he'd first seen Nino. For his part, Nino did nothing but stare out the windows in silence. Nash decided he could be just as stone-faced. He crossed his arms over his chest and watched the world speed by. After pausing at a guardhouse peopled with three armed
men, they came to a stop in the courtyard of a gray-stoned fortress.

There was another guard standing at the front door. Nash shot a look at Nino. “Is that an Uzi?”

The other man smirked. “What, you get your firearm facts from the movies?”

Well, uh, yeah. Believe it or not, some good ol' boys didn't like bad ol' guns. But Nash just shut up and let them usher him inside the cold house, the wiry guy still pointing that barrel his way. Their feet clattered loudly on marble floors, and as they reached the double doorway of what appeared to be a study, Joey Caruso jumped to her feet.

“Nash!” A frown pulled down her lips as her gaze shifted from him to the older guy with the gun. “Uncle Tuna, what are you doing?”

“This is the man you last saw with Eve,” he replied, his brows lowering.

“Uncle Tuna, put the gun away.” Joey cast a look at her grandfather, who was sitting behind a massive desk, his expression revealing nothing. “
Nonno,
do something.”

“Put the gun away, Tony,” Cosimo said calmly. “You're upsetting Joey.”

“In case you were wondering,” Nash felt compelled to put in, “I'm a little upset about it too.”

Cosimo's gaze cut to him. “My apologies, then. We're all…” He held up his hands.

Joey materialized beside Nash. She had this rapid way of moving that seemed to take her from place to place in the blink of an eye. “So Eve's not with you?” she demanded.

Nino made a noise. “Obviously not,
bambina
.”

Nash ignored him. “No, we were at a motel, and
then she left. You saw her. She was very upset after what Vince Standish said about the DNA test.”

Joey's head whipped toward Cosimo again. “See? We should have told her. We should have told her the instant the results came back.”

The old man acknowledged this with a nod. “Maybe,
cara
.” Then he gave a very Italian shrug, the movement small and elegant. “We did what we thought was best.”

Nash raised an eyebrow at Joey. “So what he said was true? She's not a Caruso?”

“No! Vince Standish was one-hundred-percent wrong. Eve most definitely
is
a Caruso.” Then the starch seemed to leak out of her spine. “Just not by blood.”

“And no one knew until this DNA test?”

Joey shook her head. “As far as we know, not even my father. One day he came home with this little girl and told my mother she was his. No one doubted him.”

“Your mother didn't? She just raised this daughter without a word of complaint or need for any proof separate from your father's say-so?”

Joey cast another glance at her grandfather, who remained silent. “You have to understand, he had more personality, more confidence, than any ten men put together. And my mother had no reason not to believe Eve wasn't my father's daughter. His…extramarital affairs were well known. Then there was Eve herself. Imagine her at three years old. I was a baby of course, but the way my mother tells it, no one could resist taking her into their heart.”

And Eve would have done what she'd had to, to be loved. Nash could imagine that. Thrust into a new
family, she naturally would have used her beauty and her charm to make a place for herself.
Ah, Eve. Have you ever believed anyone loved you just for yourself?
“How long have you known the truth?”

Joey made a shrug identical to her grandfather's. “A few weeks. We decided that right before the wedding wasn't a good time to spring this on her. We were still debating whether to
ever
tell her.”

Nash couldn't decide what he would do in the Carusos' shoes. He only knew one thing for certain. “That asshole Standish.”

Cosimo lifted a lethal-looking letter opener off his desk and idly turned it over in his hands. “Don't worry about Vince Standish.”

Nash tried to pretend that his blood wasn't running cold as light glinted off the letter opener's blade. Shit. This was the frickin'
Mafia.
He kept forgetting about that. In this case, it was almost a pleasant thought.

“I just wish Eve had picked up her dress for the wedding.” Chewing on her bottom lip, Joey gestured toward a pale gown swathed in cellophane and hanging over a chair. “And that she hadn't missed the rehearsal dinner last night. There's only a few more hours until the wedding.”

Nash shoved his hands in his pockets, his fingers finding the pillowcase. He didn't have any more wishes about Eve, except one—that she'd be easy to forget. She didn't want him. She was handling her problems on her own. “Look, I'm sorry about the situation, but I'm heading back to L.A. today. I'm going to go now, all right?”

The “Uncle Tuna” guy muttered something under his breath, but Nash pretended not to hear the rumbling.
“If someone could give me a ride back to the Kona Kai? Or I can call a cab.”

Joey was drumming her fingertips against her thigh. He didn't think she'd heard a word he'd said. Her gaze lifted to meet his. “Did she mention anything about her plans for today? She's not answering her cell, she hasn't been at the spa. If I could just link up with her…”

Nash was already shaking his head. “I told you, I haven't seen her since the morning after the masquerade ball.”

“What?”
Joey's eyes rounded, and she clutched at his arm. “You haven't seen her in over
twenty-four
hours? I thought she was with you until
this
morning.” She looked over at Cosimo, whose expression was suddenly grim.

The old man set down the letter opener, and his gaze shifted. “Nino?”

“I told you it was a possibility, Cosimo,” the younger gangster said. “When she was missing, I told you one of the other families might have taken her as leverage.”

Now it was Nash's turn to go bug-eyed. “What?”

Cosimo picked up the letter opener again. “I'm retiring, Mr. Cargill. The change in circumstances, it causes hotheads to want to grab power in any way they can, you understand?”

Uh, no, he didn't.

Joey moaned. “That's got to be it. Otherwise she would have come to the dinner last night, or at least phoned. Someone has Eve.”

Nash's blood went icy.

Cosimo stood. “I need to make some calls.”

“Are you sure?” Nino asked. “Unfounded accusations, violence, will only escalate tensions.”

The boss of bosses' eyes flashed. “This is my granddaughter. If something happens to her,
my
tension will escalate.”

“Wait a minute.” Nash was trying to calm them and himself at the same time. “What if she just went to the mall or the movies?”

“Overnight?” Joey questioned.

“To a friend's house, then.”

“We've called everyone we can think of.”

Nash tried again. “Maybe she went out to her friend Diana's.”

Joey blinked. “Who?”

“Her friend's house in the desert. She said it was her hideaway.”

Cosimo and Joey, then Cosimo and Nino exchanged looks. “We don't know this Diana,” the old man said.

Nash inhaled a breath. “She took my sister and me to a house in the desert, not more than an hour from here. She told us it was her special place. Her hideaway.”

“Why wouldn't she tell me about her special place?” Joey asked. One of her small hands curled into a fist and she banged it against her thigh. “Damn it. She's been keeping secrets. Mom knew it, Téa knew it, I knew it, but we didn't press her, since we were keeping one ourselves.”

“We should check this friend's house before we do anything else then,” Nino said. “Where is it?”

“It's…” Nash realized he had no idea. And he also realized that though he would like nothing more than to give them directions and then take off for L.A., that wasn't going to happen. “I don't know the directions, but I can get there myself.”

Joey nodded. “Okay, okay. This sounds good. I'll go with you.”

“The wedding,” Cosimo reminded her. “Your sister's expecting you to help her get ready. We can't take the chance that any more of the family won't make it back in time.”

Joey put her hand over her eyes. “
Nonno,
you can't risk missing it either. What are we going to do?”

“I'll go with Cargill,” Nino started. “We—”

“No!” The last person she'd want Nash to bring to her special place was Nino Farelle. “I'll go alone. The instant I spot her, I'll call on my cell phone.”

Joey whirled to grab up the plastic-wrapped garment over the chair. “Bring the dress, too. Bring the dress and then bring her to the wedding wearing it. If you drive fast and you talk fast, you can make it.”

Nash almost smiled. Joey Caruso could give orders as chilling as her grandfather's and with the same kind of implied muscle behind them.

“I'll do my best.” He took hold of the hanger, but Joey didn't let go.

“Are you sure you'll find her there?” she asked, a wealth of worry in her eyes.

“I am.” He couldn't say how he knew, but suddenly he did. That hunch thing again. Eve was definitely there.

But what would her reaction be to his intrusion?

And could he really get her to the church on time?

And then there was the question of his own plans. With his admission regretted (by him) and rejected (by Eve), he needed to be thinking of himself now, too. But later.

“I'll need some wheels,” he said.

Cosimo nodded. “Nino, get him some keys. The Lexus, I think.”

Nash shook his head. “No, I have a better idea.” He looked out the windows. It was starting to rain, and he was going after a woman.

Boomerang.