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  He faced her and raised the glass. “Sorry. Drink?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  Wyatt took another sip, slower this time. “My surprise over what you do for a living is surpassed by the fact that you’re here at all.”

  “I know.” She hesitated before launching into the speech she’d carefully prepared on the plane ride over. “Thank you for seeing me. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but I want—”

  “Sit.”

  “Um.”

  He gestured to the brown leather sofas arranged on the far side of the room. “If you like. You can sit.”

  “Yes. Okay.” So civilized. They were so very civilized. She crossed to the little seating arrangement and perched on the edge of the loveseat. He strode over, and she tried to not notice how the fabric of his pants clung to his thighs. Tried. And failed.

  Hold steady, girl.

  She breathed in and then out. The material of the couch was warm against the backs of her thighs. Her skirt had ridden up when she sat down. She shifted, wishing she could stand and adjust the fabric but not wanting to call attention to the length of bare leg that was exposed.

  Too late. The attention had been garnered. His gaze dipped over her legs before gliding up over her chest.

  She could easily clear her throat and put him in his place.

  You wanted him to see you still had it…

  So she didn’t.

  He glanced up from his leisurely perusal. Not a trace of shame crossed his face when he realized he’d been caught ogling her. He sat back in his seat. “You were saying?”

  What had she been saying?

  “You want…” he prompted, his voice caressing the two words.

  Yes. She wanted. A hazard of her fair complexion: blushes were too obvious. “I wanted to speak with you. I have a proposition for you.”

  “Is that right?” A slow smile crossed his thin, slightly cruel lips. “That sounds…interesting.”

  “Not that kind of proposition.”

  The smirk spread. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her, on her knees. Hands bound. Him, holding her head steady.

  That kind of proposition.

  She tried to banish the images—the memories—from her mind by focusing on something else. But all she could see was him. His wide shoulders, his powerful legs, the masculine beauty of his face.

  “I found my birth family,” she blurted out in an effort to say something, anything that wasn’t Can I feel your biceps?

  If the abrupt words startled him, he didn’t show it. His gaze turned to his glass. The ice in the drink clinked together.

  “Did you now? Congratulations.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That must have been a big deal for you.” He rolled his glass between his hands. “You spoke of it a lot as a teenager.”

  A lot was an understatement. Her parents, who had adopted her when she’d been a few days old, were as kind and loving as they were infuriating and meddling, but she’d always felt vaguely out of place with them. She was petite; they were sturdy and tall. She was a dreamy, impulsive artist; they were practical scientists. Discovering her roots had been a frequent fantasy.

  “It happened recently. About a year ago. My brother—my biological half-brother—he was the one who found me.”

  “What’s it like to be a sister?”

  The easy conversation, too, was familiar. Tatiana’s stiff posture relaxed as she settled into the luscious couch. “Weird. Normal.”

  “That makes sense.”

  She gave a half laugh and struggled to clarify her answer. “I’ve always been an only child. And then there’s someone in your life who looks like you and automatically cares about you on that basis alone, before they even know you.” Still bemused by it all, she shrugged. “He’s just…family. It was right. New, but right. Know what I mean?”

  “Maybe. I’ve felt that way a time or two.” He studiously avoided looking at her. “Never about blood relatives.”

  Tatiana sobered. The place they’d grown up in was small enough to have a designated town drunk, and Wyatt’s father had been it. After his wife had died, he’d abused his son emotionally until the day Wyatt turned eighteen and moved into his own apartment.

  Talk about his home life had been high on the list of taboo topics. Their fights over him not allowing her to meet or even talk about his dad? Epic.

  All you could freak out about was your hurt over him not sharing. You barely gave a thought to why he would keep something like the pain he’d endured private. Ugh. Relationship hindsight was brutal. Sympathy and regret made her voice scratchy. “Yeah.”

  “So. No other new relatives?”

  Her lips twisted. “None that matter. My brother was raised mostly by his father, which from what I understand was a good thing. His—our—mother lives in L.A. She…she wasn’t interested in meeting with me.” Or, really, even speaking to her. Her childish dreams of becoming biffles with her birth mom had died a swift and nasty death. She’d shaken it off, helped by her brother’s delight in getting to know her.

  “I’m sorry.” Wyatt took a sip of his drink. The slight jiggle of his knee caught her attention, unusual for such a controlled guy.

  Now that she thought about it, his shoulders did look tense. That was strange. She was the one who should be anxious.

  She spoke a little faster, some of her ease vanishing. “It’s her loss. But my brother. He’s a sweet boy. He’s got a really big heart and a loving personality. He has a wife and a small baby, and they’ve invited me for Thanksgiving and driven to San Francisco to see me—” She shook her head, unable to express the wonder of this blessing that had unexpectedly come into her life. “They’ve been—are—wonderful.”

  “That’s good. I’m happy for you.” He glanced at his watch. The move was discreet, but Tatiana caught it.

  She needed to get to the point. The poor guy was probably wondering what, if anything, all her bleating had to do with him, and rightly so. Tatiana bit her lip. “Well, you see. It turns out that my little brother—and you’re going to laugh about what a small world this is—his name is Ronald West. I understand he used to work for you.”

  Oh. His fingers tightening around the glass until the knuckles turned white was not a good sign. “Indeed.” His voice was soft. “He not only worked for me. He stole from me.”

  “I know.” She licked her lips. “But if you only knew…his wife’s mother was sick, and they went into debt. He was desperate.” She didn’t understand the level of desperation it would require to commit embezzlement, but despair had been obvious in Caitlin’s voice when the younger woman had called her yesterday, hysterical. It’s all my fault, Tatiana. He did it for me. I don’t know what I’ll do if he goes to jail.

  “I don’t know if you remember this, Tatiana, but I had a few desperate times in my past. Yet I never stole.”

  Tatiana flinched. “I remember. I know. But you have to understand, Ronald’s not like you.” Ronald was actually frighteningly similar to her, with her tendency toward dreaminess and impulsiveness, but magnified about tenfold. Not for the first time, Tatiana was grateful she’d had her strong, pragmatic parents as role models. “He’s not a criminal, not at heart. He knows he made a mistake.” Or at least Tatiana assumed he knew that. It had been hard to understand what he was saying on the phone. His tears kept getting in the way.

  Except his boss’s name. That had come through loud and clear. She’d been disbelieving at first, but a Google search had turned up the fact that yes, her Wyatt Caine was indeed the Wyatt Caine.

  After her third glass of wine, she’d booked her flight to Vegas. Had it been two in the morning? Three? It was a little blurry.

  “He sent you to plead his case.” Wyatt shook his head. “Hiding behind a woman’s skirts? That doesn’t convince me he’s a paragon.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here. Or that we knew each other.” She’d come straight from the airport to see the
man Ron had stolen from. The man she oh so coincidentally had slept with once upon a time.

  “So, what? He told you he was in trouble, so you decided you should use the fact that we’ve fucked before to your advantage—”

  Sorry, had he said something past the word fucked? ’Cause if he had, she hadn’t processed it. The word sounded harsh and vulgar on his lips, the way it should be. The way she liked it.

  Her hands fluttered, and she grasped them together, stilling their motion. “I was surprised to discover who you were. I didn’t know until yesterday.”

  “I wasn’t hiding.”

  “Neither was I,” Tatiana snapped, suddenly annoyed. “Yes, I may have come here instead of going through a lawyer because of our past relationship, but it’s not so crazy that this is the first time we’ve spoken after all these years. It’s not like you ever came looking for me after we broke up either.”

  They froze, and Tatiana wished she could recall the words. Needy, grasping words, just lying between them. Wyatt captured her gaze, his black eyes boring into her soul. “I didn’t realize you wanted me to contact you.”

  Her face felt stiff and frozen. “I didn’t. That is. I never thought about it.” She lifted her chin, determined to get through this. “And I know you never thought about me after we broke up. I moved on. You moved on.”

  “Until now.”

  “Yes. Until now.”

  “So tell me. How exactly were you going to use my nostalgic memories of you to get me to drop the charges against your brother? Was I supposed to be overcome with lust at the sight of your body? Remember the way it felt to sink my cock inside your virgin cunt?”

  She trembled. With outrage. It was totally outrage.

  He leaned closer, placing his glass on the table between them. The clink was too loud, making her flinch. “I do remember that, sweetheart. You were so tight. Your eighteenth birthday, right? I don’t know how I waited that long.”

  No. She wasn’t going to stand here mute while he ripped into her. “You waited that long because my father would have killed you for touching me before that.”

  “It might have been worth it.” He inched forward, farther into her space. “So what’s in the script, Tatiana? Aren’t you supposed to be begging prettily for your brother’s life?”

  She eyed him, trying to draw the tattered remnants of her cool around her. “I came here because I thought you might be reasonable. All I want to do is work out some sort of payment plan. I have savings. I can loan that to Ron, and he can repay his debt. If, in return, you agree to not press criminal charges.”

  “He stole from me. I can’t abide thieves. And fifty thousand dollars is hardly chump change.”

  Oh. My. God. Neither Caitlin nor Ron had gone into the details, beyond saying thousands. Perhaps naively, Tatiana had assumed they had meant, at the most, ten thousand. Ron was a blackjack dealer who would be hard-pressed to find any kind of job if word of this got out. Caitlin stayed at home with the baby. How could he have ever thought he could replace this kind of money? Did he honestly think no one would notice it?

  Anger at her brother overwhelmed her, but she tried to focus. She’d rip the kid a new one later.

  She looked Wyatt in the eye and reached into her bag. Her fingers brushed against those damn letters, but she dug past them to her checkbook. “Fine.” She pulled it out, slid her pen free, and looked up at him. “Give me the exact amount, and we’ll make this right.”

  Oh, she loved the way he eyed her in that superior way. He named a figure, obviously expecting to call her bluff.

  She briskly filled in the blanks, trying not to think of the fact that she’d never put so many zeros on a check. Years of living the life of a starving artist, unwilling to take a dime from her parents after she’d bucked them and left college, had made her appreciate her success when she had achieved it. She’d saved like a squirrel hiding nuts for a cold, hard winter.

  Wintertime was here, she supposed. Family above all. Plus she would get it back, if slowly, from Ron. It was worth it to save her stupid, loveable brother from prison. She made a mental note to transfer the necessary funds from her savings account that evening.

  Wyatt watched her tear the check off and lay it on the coffee table. “You don’t have that kind of money.”

  She capped the pen, tucking it back into her checkbook. “What makes you say that?”

  “Your dress and shoes. If they even came from a department store instead of a supercenter, I’d be surprised.” His gaze dipped to her neck. “The gold in your necklace is real, I’ll grant you, but it’s hardly a liquid asset you can tap into.”

  “Since when did you get so good at women’s fashion?” He was good, too. She’d bought her dress and shoes at Target. On clearance.

  Oh she loved shopping. But not for boring, conservative clothes like these. Floaty fabrics, slinky dresses, impractical shoes, unnecessary accessories. If she splurged, those were her weaknesses.

  “Since my job consists of assessing the depth of my opponent’s pockets.”

  “Is that how you see everyone playing downstairs? Your opponents?”

  “They’re betting against the house, aren’t they? I am the house. And I always win.”

  “Well, you’re wrong this time. The fact that I’m not wearing expensive clothes right now doesn’t mean I don’t have money.” She hooked the necklace in her finger and lifted it. “This is real. Wearable, precious art. And people pay dearly for my creations, Caine.”

  His black eyes glinted with an avaricious gleam as he studied the necklace, as if he was cataloging its weight and price tag. “You’re talented.”

  The small compliment smoothed some of her ruffled feathers. “I know.” She allowed the necklace to drop, to lay against her breasts. “I may not be as wealthy as you, but I’ve been as successful in my field as you’ve been in yours.”

  His lashes dipped. “Apparently.”

  She placed her fingers on the check and slid it across the table. “So I can afford to pay back my brother’s debt. I’ll speak with Ron. There’s no need to bring legal pressure against him.”

  “This feels like hush money.”

  “It’s not. It’s restitution.”

  “And if I don’t take it? What then?”

  She met his gaze evenly. “Then maybe I do beg prettily a little.”

  He stilled. She didn’t know how long they were locked in a staring contest. Frankly, she didn’t care. Part of her, a frighteningly large part of her, was enjoying it too much.

  She’d handed him everything, all the power, and he knew it. She could pull out those letters she had as well. Remind him of the things he’d said to her, in his own words. Really strip them both bare.

  Wyatt leaned back on the sofa. “What if I said I would promise not to press charges against your brother…” he spread his legs slightly, putting his palms on his powerful thighs, “…if you spent a night in my bed?”

  Chapter Two

  Her heart stopped. She had to struggle to find words. The right words, the socially appropriate ones. Ones that didn’t betray her illicit spurt of lust. “I would slap your face and tell you I’m not a whore.”

  He cocked his head. “You played one for me occasionally.”

  Ah, yes. She remembered that memorable night. Remembered showing up at his crappy apartment in the fishnets and old trench coat she’d procured at Goodwill. Remembered how she’d begged him to pretend that he’d purchased her for the night, his to use at his will.

  He had used her that night. As much as she’d used him.

  They’d explored each other’s likes and dislikes from their third date onward. No one had told her a teenager wasn’t allowed to fantasize. She’d read dirty books voraciously when her mother wasn’t looking, downloaded smut from the low-tech version of the internet that had existed then, and imagined doing every single dirty, wrong thing with her sexy rebel boyfriend. He had happily complied, both of them learning kink and games turned their cranks hard
. They might have been virgins when they met, but there had been nothing innocent about their relationship.

  “I’m not a real whore,” she said, aware of how ridiculous that sounded. “And I’m certain you don’t want or need a martyr in your bed.”

  “I don’t know. A martyr could be hot. It reminds me of all those coercion scenarios we used to act out.”

  Don’t ask me if I remember those. Don’t.

  “Remember?”

  Christ.

  His voice roughened, deepened. “You dirty little whore. You’ll take my cock and you’ll like it.”

  She knew he was only mocking her by repeating words from their past, words that were probably echoed in those letters of his. She knew she should walk right out of here.

  But she stayed and watched him, her nipples painfully hard.

  “Take those goddamn clothes off,” he taunted. “Before I rip them off you.” His gaze lingered on her throat, aware, she was certain, of every beat of her heart. “You like the way my cock feels, don’t you? I felt you come, you little slut.”

  He wasn’t any more immune to his words than she was. A quick glance down showed her the hard bulge beneath the fine twill of his trousers.

  “Remember?” he asked softly.

  Who was he kidding? She’d always remember Wyatt. That was the problem with having your first lover be spectacular in the sack and so attuned to all your dirty needs. Other men might be equally proficient, but he was the only one with whom she’d felt that particular click.

  Still. She wasn’t really a whore. She only played one in bed sometimes.

  She raised her chin. “The difference is I don’t barter in sex. Um, for real, I mean.”

  He studied her for a beat of time before giving a shrug that was a little too casual for her to believe. “Fair enough. Would it make a difference if I told you I’ve already dropped the charges against your brother?”

  Her mouth fell open, and she straightened. “What. Did. You. Say?”

  “I dropped the charges against your brother earlier today. The publicity would have been an annoyance I can deal without. We agreed to a payment plan, so I won’t need your money.” With that, Wyatt picked up her precious check and ripped it cleanly in half, letting the paper flutter to the table.