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Tiffany had gotten to him from the start.
Maybe it was because J.D. had always been competitive to the point of being considered cutthroat. Maybe it was because he’d always vied with his brother for his family’s attention. Maybe he just hadn’t liked being second-born. The fact that Philip had been a screwup made it worse.
When Philip had dumped his first wife and kids, J.D. had been furious. He’d nearly beaten the living tar out of Philip, for all the good it had done. In J.D.’s opinion, Philip had failed his wife and kids by getting involved with another woman, and then he’d started to gamble more than he should. It was as if he’d given up all sense of responsibility and jumped feet first into a raging midlife crisis. As soon as his divorce was final, Philip had moved on from that woman and zeroed in on Tiffany, who, in J.D.’s opinion, was far too young and naive for his older brother.
/> His family considered her a gold digger, and maybe she had been, but she’d stuck by Philip, given him another couple of kids, and, to J.D.’s knowledge, had never run around on his brother.
And J.D. had wanted her.
From the get-go.
Badly.
“Forget it,” he snorted, as he heard Stephen tuning up his guitar. Discordant music rose from the room below. Tapping the edges of his real-estate reports on the table, J.D. stuffed them into his briefcase where he spied the deed to the house. Now, there was a problem. One he couldn’t solve. His father owned most of the place. It was J.D.’s unenviable job to determine if the apartment house Tiffany ran and called home was worth the time and effort of keeping it. The old man didn’t necessarily want to cut the mother of his grandchildren out of what was rightfully hers; he just wanted to know if the property was a viable investment. It was Carlo’s contention that Tiffany and the kids could live closer to the family in a more comfortable home. As Carlo was estranged from the grandchildren from Philip’s first marriage and it didn’t seem that J.D. would ever have children, the old man was deeply interested in Stephen and Christina.
But he didn’t give a damn about Tiffany. He’d made that clear on more than one occasion.
Rubbing the area of his thigh that still bothered him, J.D. decided to call it a night. It was after ten and he was beat. He gulped the last of his coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The thrum of guitar chords had stopped, and the house was quiet. He went to the window and stared through the clear panes.
Past the leafy branches of the trees in the backyard, he spied a few stars that were bright enough to defy the lights of the town. Low in the sky was the moon, or half of it. He stretched and glanced down to the lawn where Tiffany was watering a few potted plants.
Her gauzy white dress caught in a breeze that teased at the hem, giving him a few glimpses of her bare legs. Unaware that she was being observed, she bent over each terra-cotta container and sprinkled the showy petunias, pansies and geraniums placed strategically around the drying grass. Her slinky cat wound about her bare feet, rubbing against her calves.
God, she was beautiful. Her black hair was wound into a knot pinned to the back of her head, but strands of hair had escaped to frame her face and nape. Thoughtfully she bit her lower lip, showing off a hint of pearly teeth as she plucked dead blossoms from the plants.
He couldn’t resist. Knowing he was about to step over an invisible but very definite line that he might not ever be able to recross, he set his papers and coffeecup aside and grabbed the neck of a bottle of wine he’d bought earlier in the day. The cabernet was local, and J.D. had decided to check out the competition. Quickly he headed downstairs.
The steps creaked a little, but the second level was quiet with only a night-light in the bathroom offering partial illumination. He hurried down the final staircase to the first floor. A radio was playing softly in the kitchen, but the only light was a glass-encased candle flickering on the table.
Quietly he opened several cupboards before finding the glassware, then plucked two wineglasses from a shelf and didn’t bother to question his motives. The corkscrew was in a drawer with odds and ends of kitchen utensils.
He slipped noiselessly through the screen door and stood on the porch for a second. Tiffany was near the carriage house, refilling her plastic sprinkler at a faucet, and he watched as she watered the planter boxes of impatiens.
Only when she’d turned and faced him, did he step out of the shadows of the porch.
“Oh.” She froze, then recognized him. “For the love of Pete, Jay, you scared me.” Wiping drips of water from her hands, she approached, and he tried not to notice the way her dress hugged her breasts or the slight bit of cleavage that was visible at the neckline. Nor did he concentrate on the way her hips moved beneath the thin fabric.
He lifted up the bottle. “I brought this as a peace offering.”
She stopped only inches from him and lifted a dark, suspicious brow. “Because—”
“Of our disagreement.”
She shook her head and laughed. The sound was musical and vital. “If you buy a bottle of wine every time we disagree, you’re going to go broke fast.”
“You think?”
“No, I know.”
“Then,” he said, placing the glasses on the rail of the porch and beginning to slice the foil surrounding the cork with the tip of the corkscrew, “maybe we should just call a truce.”
“You think that’s possible?”
He skewered her with a look that made her swallow hard. “Anything’s possible, Tiffany. You know that.”
She looked quickly away as he placed the bottle between his knees and pulled the cork.
“It’s late.”
