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Something in Gisella screeched and fishtailed. Rozi was pretty in a wholesome way with thick brunette hair, a creamy complexion and a trim if almost
boyish figure. She didn’t draw men as inexorably as Gisella’s more classic and voluptuous attributes. They had never been rivals for a man and Gisella didn’t want Kaine anyway!
Even so, she felt oddly threatened by her cousin approaching him. If anything, she ought to be worried he would crush tender Rozi even worse than he’d managed to dent Gisella’s more stalwart soul. They had exchanged a few words and one kiss. He shouldn’t have left her feeling so trampled and discarded. She was stronger than that.
Maybe Rozi’s earnest and engaging personality would inspire a kinder response in him. Persuade where she had failed. She ought to let Rozi at least try. For Grandmamma.
“I always thought if I went to Hungary, we’d go together,” Gisella said sullenly.
“Me, too.” Rozi made a face. “I’m dying to learn more about the earrings. And look at this guy.” Rozi pulled her phone from her pocket to show her a photo. “Tell me he’s not reason enough for a ten-hour flight.”
Gisella glanced at the photo under a headline claiming Viktor Rohan was Europe’s most eligible bachelor. He was very handsome, but she noted his good looks the way she recognized that her other male cousins were attractive—objectively and without stirrings of feminine interest. He didn’t produce a fraction of the heat in her blood that merely thinking about Kaine did.
“Have them both,” Gisella said, determined to stop thinking about Kaine. “I’m swearing off men. They’re a waste of my precious time.”
Rozi chuckled and looked at the photo again, voice softening to a dreamy whisper. “What if we could actually get the earrings for Grandmamma, Gizi?”
“I would love that,” she said with equal yearning.
The tale of the earrings had always struck a chord in her. It had been such a huge sacrifice on Grandmamma’s part. Ezti had sold a cherished gift from her lover to buy a fresh start in the New World. That bold move had been the foundation for the abundant life Gisella enjoyed. How could she not be moved and thankful? How could she not want to repay her grandmother by getting back the earrings that should have been hers all this time?
“Let’s do whatever it takes,” Gisella said, growing solemn and holding out her pinkie.
They linked their little fingers the way they’d done a thousand times when making a pact. “For Grandmamma.”
CHAPTER TWO
KAINE MICHAELS WASN’T surprised when he saw Gisella Drummond enter the private lounge where his staff was celebrating his latest app going public. He was furious, of course. She was deliberately misunderstanding him, but he had to admire her moxie.
You’re not the cousin I want to talk to, he had replied to someone named Rozalia when she had tried to set up a meeting a few days ago.
Gisella wasn’t either, but he found he wasn’t disappointed. Maybe he’d even left his wording open to interpretation, curious to see if she’d make another attempt to “persuade” him.
She really ought to be ashamed of herself, walking in here without an invitation, but he doubted she possessed such a thing. For starters, where would she keep it? There was absolutely no room for anything but sex appeal in that little black dress she was almost wearing.
He had thought her stunning when all he’d seen of her was loose waves of caramel hair, a slender back and an ass that could stop traffic atop legs that went for miles.
Tonight, she captivated him just as easily and completely. How? This was California. Beautiful women were low-hanging fruit here. He didn’t have a type, but found himself partial to everything about her. Her height, her buttermilk skin, her elegantly refined bone structure.
In a land where everything was fake from eyelashes to teeth to breasts, she stood out as a natural beauty. She wore makeup, but not a candy coating of it. Hers was applied in subtle shades that accentuated her high cheekbones and glossed her luscious mouth.
Coders in sweatshirts and khakis turned their heads to watch as she wove toward Kaine. The twenty-somethings adjusted their glasses and the forty-somethings sucked in their stomachs. The women in pencil skirts narrowed their eyes with envy.
Her aloof expression took no notice of anyone except him as she moved through mirror-ball sparkles that glittered off glowing white twigs against a bath of purple light cast by black bulbs.
“Gentlemen,” she said as she arrived into his circle. She barely raised her voice above the thump of the DJ’s playlist, neatly interrupting a movie producer trying to talk Kaine into investing in his latest blockbuster. “I need Mr. Michaels.”
Kaine had an idea where her audacity came from. Her father owned a well-respected advertising firm. She’d been raised in upper-class circles thanks to a private education. Even so, she was a goldfish, not a shark. One who still managed to blow a few bubbles and shoo the bigger fish away. They dispersed without hesitation, only looking over their shoulders to catch a glimpse of her slinky black dress and slinkier shoes.
Those tiny black patent belts enclosing her ankles would inspire a fetish in a priest.
Kaine dragged his attention back up her legs, fantasizing about the smoothness of those thighs against his palms and lips. Was she wearing matching midnight underwear beneath that short skirt? A wink of red? Something nude? Perhaps she was nude.
He bit back a groan of craving, dying to find out. And the top of that thing. He could ease it down with a fingertip and discover exactly how warm and round and heavy her perfectly formed breasts were. Lick at her nipples and watch a flush of pleasure stain her skin.
He arrived at cheeks hollow with dismay. Her eyes—green, he recalled, since the surreal lighting made the color indiscernible—shot sparks of indignation.
“You crashed this party, Ms. Barsi,” he pointed out, refusing to apologize for his ogling. “Don’t complain about the reception you receive.” He added a laconic, “Call security,” to the waiter who approached with a tray of champagne.
