Page 2 of Tempting as Sin
“She always seems embarrassed,” he said. “Like she doesn’t want to admit she tried. Maybe if you choose it, though, so I’m sure it’s right for her…” He pulled his wallet out of his jeans and started extracting twenties. Why, Lily wondered, in the age of debit, did men still always have cash, and women almost never? Because men were less afraid of being robbed? Or was it a power thing?
This particular powerful man handed over two hundred dollars and said, “I like her best in the sweet stuff. Although if it was short, sort of a silky type of, uh, slip, I guess, like for under a pretty dress, and if there was a garter belt under it…What is it about a garter belt?”
Lily could have told him that undressing a woman ranked high on most men’s list of good times, and that the more decadently different it was from undressing himself and the more fragile the layers he took off, the more of a rush it was. She also knew that the tougher the man, the more delicate he liked his lady’s lingerie. Knowing things like that was part of her job, and she loved her job. On the other hand, there were limits on what you discussed with your sister’s boyfriend, even if youwerean expert. “Peach,” she contented herself with saying. “Apricot. Cream. Very sheer stockings. Something along those lines?”
She could swear his eyes were glazing over, and it wasn’t because he was looking at her. “Silk,” he said. “Lace.”
She smiled. “I think I’ve got it. And this present is from you?”
“Too right it is.” He stood up like he’d forgotten she was there and headed into the kitchen, and Lily thought,Time to go.
By the time two car rental employees had showed up at the repair shop with a new car for him and another to take them back to the office, Rafe was freezing cold, soaking wet, and thoroughly narky. If he wasn’t shivering, that was because he was working hard at it. He posed for selfies, shook hands all around, and drove off with a wave out the window that invited yet more freezing rain to run under the sleeve of his jacket.
All right, so it wasn’t bravery under fire. And, yes, he may have become a bit spoiled. The realization wasn’t making him any happier. He pulled into a McDonalds parking lot once he was out of sight of the garage, got out his phone, and did some online navigation and calling. His assistant of four years, Martin Avondale, could have done it in a quarter of the time, but Martin was on his own holiday in Colorado.
“Four words,” he’d informed Rafe yesterday. “Telluride Gay Ski Week. Tunisia has done absolutely nothing for either my skinormy social life, and if I’m sweating anytime in the next four days, it’s going to be because I’m in the hot tub or otherwise enjoying myself. Also, so we get this out of the way? Much as I love my job, I don’t care if I never see a camel again.” Which was fine. Rafe wasn’t so far gone that he had to interrupt Martin’s brief holiday because he couldn’t make his own hotel booking.
It was going to be a booking rather than surprising Jace today like he’d planned, though, because he was more than three hours behind schedule by now, thanks to a delayed flight and the buggered car. He was also still jet-lagged byninehours, and worn down by three weeks of twelve-hour-plus days on location in the desert, the last week of it enlivened by a brutal heat wave. He needed to be sharper than he felt right now for this next step. He’d get his mojo back, and then they’d see.
He’d texted his brother yesterday morning on his way to the condo.Back in LA. Break coming up. Where are you in the book?That last had come from hard experience. For the final few weeks of writing, Jace would barely know you were there. No point turning up then.
Jace had answered,Making progress. All good,which hadn’t told Rafe much. On the other hand, he’d actually answered, so he hadn’t fully entered Book World yet.
So why hadn’t Rafe told him he was coming? Because he didn’t want Paige Hollander’s shields up, that was why. He needed to know who she really was and how she really felt, and however tough Jace thought he was—in the Land of So-Called Love, Rafe had him beat.
The plan had been forming for a while. As soon as he’d rung off after that other call, in fact.
“I’m going to need you in Queensland at the end of March,” Jace had said on the phone a few weeks ago. When Rafe had already been in Tunisia, unfortunately, or he’d have been on the next plane to San Francisco as soon as he’d heard his brother say, “I’m proposing to Paige, mate,” like a kid looking forward to Christmas. “And I scheduled it for the break in your shooting schedule, so don’t let me down. She doesn’t have any family other than her sister, and her sister’s too far away. I need her to know she has all of mine.”
“Mate,” Rafe had said, “you’re joking. No. You met her in, what? May? June? It’s not even March. Have you even seen her without makeup yet? Never tell me she’s moved in. ‘Caution’ isn’t just a road sign, you know.”
Silence for a moment, and when Jace spoke, his voice was hard. “I didn’t ask your opinion. I asked you to come and be there for me.”
“Too bad,” Rafe said, “because you’re getting my opinion anyway. You haven’t been rich long enough to know how it changes things. And does the word ‘rebound’ mean nothing to you? You don’t get serious about the woman you meet six months after your wife walks out on you.”
“Youmay not,” Jace said. “Fortunately, I’m not you. Serial monogamy isn’t really my thing, much less coloring outside the lines. I’m looking for monogamy, full stop.”
“I could be offended by that,” Rafe said. “Or I could be tactful, except that your head’s too hard for tact to get through, and I’m a realist. So I’m just going to ask you this. How many women were there between Caroline and this one? And how many before Caroline, once you stopped killing people?”
“None of your bloody business.”
“Thought so. Is ‘zero’ the number we’re looking at?” When he got no answer, because the answer was already out there, Rafe said, “Besides, a Special Forces soldier marrying a cop with a tragic backstory is bound to be PTSD City. Tell me you don’t take turns waking up trying to kill each other during a flashback.”
“If you mean that we understand each other,” Jace said, “you’re right. In my world, that’s a positive. Not that I asked your opinion.”
“One more time,” Rafe said. “You need a sweet, stable woman. The loving, giving type who’ll tame the demons.”
“Which you would know because…”
“So I don’t go for that myself,” Rafe said. “That’s because I’m the shallow one. Also not the one scaring his family.”
“I don’t scare my family.”
“Yeah, mate,” Rafe said. This, Jace needed to hear. “You do. We had a bad couple years there.”
A good thirty seconds of silence, like Jace thought Rafe could be pushed by an uncomfortable pause into talking, like he was that much the younger brother still. Finally, Jace said, “When you suddenly decided to spend your time between films in Manhattan, and I happened to be living there myself. Don’t tell me.”
“All right,” Rafe said, “I won’t. I don’t have to. You just found out.”
