It was a bet? a voice shrieked in her head. I’m the “fat girl” he slept with on a bet? Her hands went numb, her legs lost strength and sickness rose in a sour tide up her throat.
Dylan stepped to one side, and for the first time she saw Cade, who was lounging on his tailbone looking bored. He glanced at her, and for one crazy, hopeful second, she thought he’d slap the money out of Vanderkamp’s mitt. But he merely raised a languid hand and plucked it from the other boy’s fingers.
“Thanks,” he said and tucked it in the front pocket of his jeans.
Everything inside her turned to ice. At the same time, all those eyes avidly waiting for her reaction seemed to burn pinprick holes everywhere they touched.
But she couldn’t simply stand here, taking shit off Cade’s group of over-entitled Neanderthals. Her chest might feel as if a two-ton rock sat on it, and God knew she desired nothing more than the ability to turn invisible—but she and her friends had always given back as good as they’d gotten from these idiots. Suckered by Gallari’s sweet talk, she’d forgotten for a while who she was dealing with.
She sure as hell remembered now. And, dammit, she would get a handle on herself, if it killed her.
A bitter laugh almost escaped her. Because the treacherous, lying, two-faced bastard had gotten a jump on that, hadn’t he? Still, if she was going down, she’d at least do so dealing a little damage of her own.
“I think I should get part of that,” she managed to drawl past the huge lump in her throat. “One session with Quick Draw McGraw here pretty much put me off sex for life—and if that doesn’t entitle a girl to a cut, I don’t know what does.”
It was the slightest balm to her wounded heart that a few people laughed at Cade’s expense rather than her own. It wasn’t enough—she’d prefer that his dick shrivel up and drop off—but it would have to do. That lump was growing and she couldn’t force out another word.
As if she knew, Poppy placed an unobtrusively supportive hand on her back. “Yeah, what was it she told us, Jane?”
Jane shrugged. “That if she ever got over the trauma of Gallari’s fumbling and worked up the nerve to try it again, it would be with someone who knew what the hell they were doing.”
Cade continued lounging and looking bored, but Ava had the satisfaction of at least seeing a little dull color climb up his razor-sharp cheekbones.
She’d take more pleasure in seeing him experience a fraction of her humiliation, but God, she just hurt so bad. She felt shattered, as if her insides had been torn apart, then put back wrong. She would never, ever forgive him for setting her up this way, for lifting her up—only to slam her down.
Swallowing hard against a rising tide of grief, she turned her back on him, blindly grabbed a bowl of Jell-O and slapped it on her tray. No way would she be able to swallow a bite.
But damned if she intended to turn tail and run from Buttface Gallari. Even if, inside, a piece of her had just died.
CHAPTER ONE
I’m not sure if I just made a really savvy move—or the biggest blunder of my life.
Present day, the ninth of November
THE BASTARD was late. Ava Spencer cursed the man she was waiting on as she paced the front foyer of the Wolcott mansion, alternately hugging herself against the cold and trying to rub some warmth into her arms through her coat sleeves. The place had been closed up for several weeks, and between the wind currently buffeting the mullioned windows and the rainstorm that had blown through earlier, leaving a Seattle-centric damp-to-the-bone chill in its wake, she was freezing her ass off.
She would’ve turned on the heat, but there was little point. If the guy ever deigned to get here, she’d be showing him the mansion from attic to wine cellar. And while Jane kept the front parlor and hidden closet in Miss Agnes’s upstairs sitting room climate-controlled for the preservation of the Wolcott collections that weren’t currently sold or on loan to museums, it would take until noon tomorrow to warm up the rest. And although she had turned on every light in the house, the illusion of warmth from the yellow glow of the lamps and overheads didn’t come close to replacing the real thing.
A laugh that went a little wild escaped her. Like that was the crucial issue here. Because… It’s not some guy, Av. It’s Cade Calderwood Gallari.
Jeez Marie. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to this. So, yes, she was concentrating on the minutiae for all she was worth to keep from thinking about him. Because it was too freaking late to second-guess herself now.
Wasn’t it?
She froze for an arrested second. Hell, no, it wasn’t! The heavy feeling in her stomach lightening, she snatched up her purse and started down the hallway to the kitchen. Its exterior door was the direct route to where she’d parked her Beemer. Cade was late? She was out of here.
Headlights swept the east wall across from the kitchen archway, stopping her dead. “Shit.”
Too late.
She did a little dance in place to shake off the tension that had her tighter than an over-wound watch, throwing in some yoga breathing for good measure. Exhaling a final gusty breath, she nodded to herself. “Okay. Time to pull on your big girl pants.”
She forced herself to shove down her irritation over Cade’s tardiness, over the fact that he breathed, and bury it deep. It’s been thirteen years, girl. He’s a footnote, someone who no longer matters. Who hasn’t mattered for a very long time. So it probably wouldn’t do to snap his head off first thing.
But, oh, boy. The temptation.
She watched him through the back-door window as he climbed the steps and stopped beneath the porch light, and her annoyance surged back with a vengeance. She fought it to a standstill once more, pushed out a final exhalation and reached out to unlock the door.
The knob turned before she could open it, and he blew into the kitchen, shaking himself like a wet dog and sending raindrops flying in all directions from his sun-streaked brown hair. Looking beyond him, Ava saw that it had begun to pour again.
“Man, it’s wet out there!” He flashed her his trademark Gallari smile, white teeth flashing and deep creases bracketing his mouth. Only she noticed that this time the blue, blue eyes glinting between dense, dark lashes held…something. Wariness maybe or…calculation? Something cooler and edgier than the smile that for years had haunted her dreams.
It just bugged the hell out of her that she felt his impact like a cattle prod to the breastbone. Why was it like this every damn time she laid eyes on him: this immediate, visceral one-two to the heart? It was identical to the reaction she’d had around teenaged Cade—and even after everything she knew about him, everything he’d done—seeing him gave her that same hot punch to the solar plexus.
Well, it would be a cold, cold day in hell before she felt the least bit tempted to act on it. She raised an eyebrow. “And you call yourself a Seattle native?”
“I forgot how fast the rain can soak a guy up here.”
She gave him a polite smile. “I suppose living in southern California will do that to a person.” She made a show of glancing at her watch. “Tell me why you think I should give you the time of day—let alone rent you the mansion for a documentary.”
“O-kay. No small talk.” His mouth developed an unyielding slant that somehow looked more at home on his chapped lips than his old smile. “Sorry I’m late. There was a wreck on I-5 and it took a while to get traffic moving again.”
She nodded her acceptance of his apology and watched as he looked around the kitchen. A small pucker of dismay appeared between his dark eyebrows. “It’s been modernized.”
When Ava looked him fully in the face this time, she found it less unsettling. “Surely