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Didn’t have far to go, though, did she? She had run to that rat-tailed d-bag when her mother was ill and now…now he needed to drown his chatty conscience in a vat of scotch before he did something stupid like race to her apartment and sing to her. Maybe something from Les Miserables this time.
His skin felt like he’d peeled back three layers to the blood-saturated sinew underneath and scoured it with bleach. In his mind’s playback of the night, every word, gesture, and nuance stroked him raw. Had he screwed up? If he had, it wouldn’t be new. Jules leaped to the forefront of his guilt-ridden mind. Always Jules, with his mother’s eyes drowning in accusation.
Only one time had his stepfather brought him to visit her in that rundown hospital, the walls and people worn and sagging like something out of a Dickens novel, the stench of disinfectant doing a miserable job of masking the cloying smell of sickness. Angry with her for some childish reason he could no longer recall, he had refused her pleas to hug him. At twelve, he was too old for maternal affection, too self-absorbed to care for her needs. If he had known it was the last time he would see her, he’d have clasped her frail, cancer-ravaged body to his until they pried him away screaming.
Look after your sister, Jack, she had said in her soft Irish burr to his retreating back.
When his stepfather passed a couple of years later, Jack still had some fuzzy notion of becoming Jules’ guardian once he was of age but he’d had things to do. Trouble to find and a life to plan when trouble found him. The new freedom he felt in the kitchen had trumped duty and a mother’s wish. Wasn’t he doing his sister a favor by putting her in a two-parent home with Pete and Daisy? His peripatetic lifestyle couldn’t be adapted to the needs of a kid.
Now Jules was here to cash in on all those broken promises and she’d come armed with a doozy. He had felt so useless until Lili stepped in. Calm, competent, no fuss Lili with her sultry voice set to salve. A woman who knew the meaning of family and could help translate the code. With her, he felt like he could be a better chef, a better brother, a better man. Just better.
Yeah, she knew the meaning of family all right. She would cheat and lie and use for them.
And his nit-picking conscience answered, What about Gina, idiot?
Two a.m. in the middle of a vibrant, cosmopolitan city. There must be a bar open nearby, something seedy that might turn the boiling self-recrimination in his belly to a surly simmer. He dragged himself off the sofa, wrenched open the door, and got the surprise of his life.
Lili.
One hand clutched her scooter helmet beneath her heaving breasts like a talisman, the other paused in mid-knock. The forbidding set of her full, lush mouth signaled purpose and combined with her cotton cloud hair and orange flip-flops, it made her look like a fiery goddess. Her eyes blazed volcanic, sending trails of lava through him that blew hotter than the ninety-five degree air outside.
Hungrily, he surveyed the rest of her. A turquoise bra strap drooped off her shoulder, a clashing contrast to the yellow sundress that hugged her curves and revealed about ten inches of glorious thigh. As usual, gazing on her legs inevitably led to how they were attached to her other luscious body parts, firing his body like a kiln from the inside out. But flip flops? They seemed like the least appropriate footwear for riding a scooter. Maybe, she should wear a sweater in case she caught a cold.
Stop worrying about her. Because she was clearly capable of taking care of number one.
His hazy focus trickled upward, giving way to a chest pang with a revisit to her face. No more thunder, just her heart, big and beating in her eyes. She bit down on her lip, a move he knew she didn’t intend as erotic, but which registered as unbearably so.
"Lili—” The words clotted in his throat. Never tongue-tied, he always knew what to say.
His hands were his tools, but words came a close second. He was British, for Chrissake.
Finally he managed, “Why are you here?”
“Because I need to fulfill my quota of Brit-accented insults.” She jabbed her helmet in his chest. Hard. “Why do you think I’m here? You got your divo on and accused me of some pretty heinous crimes. We need to sort this out.”
“There’s nothing to sort out. You used me. End of.” The muscles in his jaw clenched he risked grinding his teeth to bony fragments. Less than twenty feet away, a well-dressed couple stood by the elevator, craning their heads, looking suspiciously like opera lovers. It would be all over the hotel, or worse, in minutes.
He yanked her inside and slammed the door. For privacy, he told himself. But now she was close enough to taste, both of them trapped in the small entry about two feet apart. Since meeting her, he’d fooled himself into thinking his body was the traitor, which he now knew to be a blatant fallacy. All the treachery could be lain squarely at the door of his mind. The mind that wanted a woman who didn’t want him.
“You took Marco’s side. He put up that video and he’s guilty of God knows what else.”
“You don’t know he’s behind that.” She didn’t sound convinced. “The salting, yes, but—”
“Still defending him, I see. Still madly in love.”
“I’m not in love with him,” she said, her voice louder, clearer. “I don’t think I ever was. Not really.”
Relief bubbled through his veins but it couldn’t quite overtake the nice head of righteous anger he’d worked up.
“Tell that to him. The way he looks at you—”
“I can’t help how he looks at me,” she said before adding softly, “How does he look at me?” instead of the ‘idiot’ he suspected she really wanted to say.
“Like he can think of nothing but stripping you and stroking your skin. Exploring your body. Making you his.”
Hands trembling, she folded her arms beneath her breasts. Good to know he wasn’t the only one having trouble keeping it together.
“That’s not how he looks at me. That’s how you look at me.”
