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How subtly he’d changed the meaning of her words, she thought, and smiled.
“One more adage, Mr. Bellini. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”
Luca laughed. He walked back to where he’d been sitting, picked up his mug of coffee and drained it dry. Then he put down the empty mug.
“How can I turn down such an enticing offer?” he said, and he followed Cheyenne McKenna from the room.
CHAPTER TWO
Once outside the house, Luca started toward the car the Belllinis had rented at the airport.
Cheyenne McKenna headed for a bright red pickup.
“I have a car,” he said.
“Trucks do better on these roads,” she replied, yanking open the driver’s side door and getting behind the wheel.
He hesitated.
He didn’t like being a passenger. Not in cars, not in life, not in anything.
Women always sensed that, or maybe they liked it. Whatever the reason, if he rode in a woman’s car, she always tossed him the keys
The man was in command, the one who decided on speed, route and destination. That was the unspoken agreement.
Apparently, Cheyenne McKenna wasn’t aware of it.
He thought about telling her that he wanted to drive, thought about how she’d have to provide him with directions and how ridiculous that would be, even assuming she agreed, and instinct told him that she wouldn’t.
“Well?”
He looked up. She’d reached across the cab and flung open the passenger door. “You up for this or not?”
Attitude, and in spades.
He considered turning around and going back into the house, but that was probably what she wanted.
What she expected.
She was impudent, and in-your-face rude.
But it was amusing, especially after the tension of last night.
She stood up to him, and women never did. They were invariably eager to please, almost pathetically so.
“Make up your mind, signore. Are you getting in, or have you changed your mind about what I’m sure is your considerable expertise?”
Changing my mind would probably be smart, he thought…
And he got into the truck.
“Fortunately for you,” he said, “I have not.”
She laughed.
He slammed the door behind him, she turned the key, hit the gas and the truck practically stood on its rear wheels as it shot down the mile-long gravel driveway to the road.
* * *
She drove fast enough to make the scenery blur, and gave no ground for the endless bumps and dips in the gravel. She swerved once, but that was to avoid a coyote that shot out ahead of them.
When they reached the sooth-surfaced main road, it was that American phrase—pedal to the metal.
Luca would have been surprised at anything less.
He took his Ray-Bans from his inside jacket pocket, slipped them on and glanced at her.
Everything about her said that she didn’t believe in taking the easy way. The safe way. She was impetuous, outspoken, arrogant, hot-tempered…
And gorgeous.
And there it was again, that whisper in the back of his brain that said they’d met before.
He thought about asking her if they had. No. He wouldn’t do that. Even though he’d mean it, the line was so old it was a bad joke.
Besides, he had an excellent memory. You had to have a good memory when you spent your time talking numbers with clients.
If they’d met, it would come to him.
For now, he’d concentrate on watching her. The way her one hand rested on the steering wheel and the other lay in her lap. The proud profile. The determined set of her jaw. He couldn’t see her eyes—she’d slipped on a pair of oversized dark glasses—but he could admire her mouth, the fullness of it, the slight overbite.
She was stunning. And interesting. An enigma. So much temperament, such disdain for what most people would call simple civility.
She was, in a word, a puzzle, and he’d always been fascinated by puzzles.
Dammit.
Luca folded his arms and shifted his long legs under the dashboard.
Be honest, man.
What she was, was a woman he wanted to take to bed.
He’d only known her for, what, fifteen minutes? Still, he was fantasizing about having sex with her. He wanted her beneath him, his hands cupping her ass, her mouth lifted to his, her legs wrapped around his hips, all that impudence giving way to submission as he took her.
One thing he’d learned early in life was that it didn’t take long to know you wanted a woman. Pheromones, hormones, whatever, you saw the right woman and the message went from your brain straight to your balls.
Luca frowned.
Still, what was with him and this fixation on a stranger? He came across beautiful women all the time and he often considered what they’d be like in bed—he was a man, after all—but this was a little overdone.
Or maybe not.
He sat back, looked straight ahead and thought about his life these last few months.
Sex was probably what he needed to make a full return to sanity
Ever since his mother’s death, he’d been immersed in a quagmire of ugly secrets and even uglier realities.
For a long time, he and Matteo had suspected that their father was not a government spy. That he led some sort of secret life in the United States. And after looking through a box of old documents when they’d had to make some necessary repairs to the house they’d grown up in, they’d come to the conclusion that their parents’ marriage might not have been legitimate.
Still, they hadn’t delved too deeply into things.
They’d wanted to protect their mother as well as their sisters.
They thought they had kept their suspicions from the girls, but the day of their mother’s funeral, Bianca and Alessandra confronted them. They said they’d long suspected their father was keeping some dark secret and they’d demanded to be part of whatever it took to find the truth.
The following weeks had been spent untangling years of lies, of illusions. They’d devoted their days and nights to the search for facts.
The fact that their father had never really been married to their mother had been the worst shock of all.
Luca had been in the midst of opening his offices in New York. He’d set all that aside. Except for staying in contact with his administrative staff in Rome and his people in Manhattan, he’d pretty much abandoned his own existence. No dinners with friends. No long weekends at his Tuscan ranch.
In other words, when had he last been with a woman?
He actually couldn’t remember. Truth was, he’d all but given up noticing that women existed.
No wonder he couldn’t stop thinking about sex.
About Cheyenne McKenna.
He gave her one last appraising look from behind the anonymity of his Ray-Bans. Then he turned his he
ad and focused his gaze on the outsized Texas landscape rolling past the windshield.
Cheyenne McKenna—and wasn’t that one hell of a name—Cheyenne McKenna was attractive. Under other circumstances, he’d have been interested in seeing where things went. He suspected she might feel the same. He’d sensed a little buzz between them and he was never been wrong about those unspoken messages, but he was expected in Manhattan this evening.
He had no time for sex, or at least for what sex meant to a woman. Drinks. Dinner. Conversation. All the little games that went into an affair, no matter how brief. He was down with that, with seduction, but the last thing he had time for right now were those frills.
So he’d do precisely what he’d offered to do.
Take a look at her land, ask some questions, make some suggestions…
A tree that had been long-ago split by lightning loomed on the side of the road. Cheyenne McKenna turned the wheel hard and zipped past it onto a narrow strip of gravel road. The truck hit a bump and all but flew into the air. The instant of weightlessness would have been enough for him to have banged his head on the roof if he hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt.
“Sorry.”
She didn’t sound the least bit sorry. If anything, she sounded pleased. He shot her a narrow look. Had she deliberately taken the turn too fast?
“I should have warned you this was going to be rough.”
He was certain of it now. She’d spotted that gully and accelerated on purpose. She was playing with him; she’d written him off as an urban cowboy, and she was having fun at his expense.
Luca felt that tightening low in his belly again.
If only he had the time…
But he didn’t, so he said nothing as a handful of buildings came into view and when she slowed the truck, he hardly waited until she shut off the engine before he undid his seatbelt, flung open this door and stepped into the hot Texas morning.
* * *
In some ways, Sweetwater Ranch reminded him of El Sueño,
Endless meadows stretched toward a distant set of hills, low and peaceful under the sun’s fire. The grass was a rich, brilliant green. The house itself was built on a low rise.
That was where the resemblance to El Sueño ended.
The El Sueño house was a mansion.
This house was a disaster waiting to become a wreck.
