After Hours Bundle (27 page)

T
HE LIMOUSINE CARRIED
them across the bridge to Key Biscayne and turned down a private drive that took them to the steps of a gargantuan Mediterranean mansion.

Marly had only seen houses like this one in the movies or on a paid tour, such as the time she'd gone to Newport, Rhode Island. She stared at the mansion, expecting Ingrid Bergman or Audrey Hepburn to come gliding down the steps in a tragically chic hat.

But Mike was opening the door and handing
her
out, and Jack took her arm to guide her inside. Even if the place had been decorated by Kmart, it would have been stunning architecturally. The very scale of it, the way the space was designed and the richness of the details took her breath away.

But it wasn't decorated at all—or at least, not beyond the foyer, which was populated by bad reproductions of Roman statues, all heroically endowed and naked as the day they were chiseled. Well, except…

One of the males wore a Marlin's baseball cap, another, a Groucho Marx nose and glasses. The females sported hats, too: one a floppy beach hat and the other a chic vintage cloche.

Marly burst out laughing and turned to Jack, who leaned against a pillar, just watching her. “Is this your house?”

“It will be, once I leave the governor's mansion. As you can tell, it needs a little work. The previous owners had…interesting taste.”

“So,” she said, gesturing at the statues with her thumb, “are they joining us for dinner?”

His lips twitched. “No. The table is only set for two.” He took her elbow again and led her deeper into the house. In the center of the place was a huge open space, surrounded by a picture gallery. Two sets of stairs led down to the lower level of the house, which contained a library, a billiards room, a vast wet bar with room for every kind of liquor imaginable.

What am I doing here?
Marly asked herself, feeling as if she were on the set of a movie. The whole house felt unreal to her. She thought of her parents' home, small and basic and comfortable; her mother's fondness for mass-manufactured knickknacks. Then she felt guilty for contrasting the two homes.

The most spectacular thing on the lower level of this mansion was the view: straight out behind an elegant, patterned, hardwood deck was the ocean. No guardrail marred the expanse of blue-green water, which occasionally lapped up through the planks and swept over them.

On the deck a white-draped table set for two sparkled in the evening sun with china, crystal and silver.

Marly gasped with pleasure as they walked outside. To the left, the deck ran down wide, shallow steps to a snaking river of a swimming pool, twice the length of an Olympic-size one and rimmed by gorgeous landscaping.

“I had the stone cherubs and swans surgically removed,” said Jack. “They were overrunning the place and made all-too-convenient targets for birds.”

“What, no well-endowed, shy nymphs?”

“I ditched the nymphs, too. They were definitely well-endowed, but not shy—in fact, they bordered on pornographic.”

“Money definitely can't buy taste, huh?”

“So true.”

“But, Jack, why didn't you have them all removed at once? Why are the ones in the front hall still there?”

He looked pained. “Because those are actually bolted to the floor, believe it or not. And we're waiting for the new marble to come in before removing them.” He pulled out one of the chairs for her and she sat at the table. He sat opposite her.

Moments later a man in dark slacks and a guayabera shirt appeared with a chilled bottle of white wine in a silver ice bucket, along with two glasses. He poured for both of them and then went back inside.

“Jack, I can't believe I'm sitting here with you.” Marly took a sip of her wine, drinking in the view, too. The ocean breeze blew over her skin like a caress, carrying reality away. She could almost hear her father, though, telling her not to be impressed. That most family fortunes had been built on the backs of the poor and repressed—people like them.

“Why not?” he asked. He smiled at her and she wanted to fall into his warm, open expression, wrap it around her like a blanket. She resisted, feeling guilty.

“Because we live such different lives. I wake up in an apartment each morning. You wake up in the governor's mansion. I cut people's hair. You cut people's taxes. I veto mullets. You veto legislation.”

Jack laughed. “What I love about you is your fresh perspective on things.” He settled lazily back in his chair, his hair lifting off his forehead in the wind. He looked carefree, privileged and faintly decadent. He also looked sexy as hell.

Marly raised her glass to her lips and tried not to notice that aspect of him, but it was more or less impossible. Jack's shirt was open at the neck, and she could see a few dark curly hairs beckoning her closer. She shut her eyes, trying not to remember just how spectacular that chest was, or how she'd been tempted more than once to sweep her fingers through those hairs and sample their texture and the heat of his skin beneath.

When she opened them, Jack was smiling at her. “This date,” he said, “is finally going the way I want it to.”

She supposed he was referring to the awkwardness in the limo, but she wasn't sure. “How, exactly, is that?”

He was saved from having to answer by the appearance of the silent man in the guayabera shirt, who brought them each a delicate plate of hors d'oeuvres.

Jack said, “Thank you, Tomas,” while Marly gazed at the perfect aperitifs on her plate. They looked too pretty to eat. Really, how could she spoil the presentation by touching it?

“You must have slaved in the kitchen for days,” she said in a dry voice. “You shouldn't have.”

“Oh, it was nothing,” Jack assured her, and it was the first time anyone had ever told her that and meant it. Wouldn't it be easy to entertain with panache if you had a chef and a full staff of household help? She'd throw parties all the time.

Again, it served to underline the differences between them, and Marly wondered what the hell she was doing here. She didn't belong in this world. She'd enjoy it for tonight, but after that she needed to go reclaim reality.

“Please eat,” Jack urged her. She picked up a mushroom cap and bit into the divine. Stuffed with an exotic blend of cheeses and delicate spices, it melted on her tongue. Her expression must have conveyed her opinion, because he nodded as if she'd complimented the food out loud.

“Tomas is a magician,” he said. “He makes my life worth living.”

She had to agree, as she slowly sampled everything on her plate and sipped her wine.

“Now this—” Jack spread his hands wide “—is my idea of the perfect evening.”

It was. She pushed away her guilt and discomfort. Just this one perfect evening, this fantasy…Marly nodded.

She'd given herself up to bliss when a thunderous noise destroyed everything. It came from the right, where three teenagers on Jet Skis erupted from the canal between Jack's house and the house next door.

The buildings were by no means on top of each other, and they were screened by rows of trees and hedges—not to mention stucco walls—but nothing could drown the noise. The kids churned up the water, doing figure eights and circles, racing each other and playing chicken.

Jack jumped up from the table and yelled something at them, but of course they couldn't hear. He stalked back to the table and yanked a cell phone from his pocket. Marly heard him yell the words “Rocket” and “call up the damn parents,” but the mood of their dinner was ruined, to say the least.

The kids began to emit war whoops on top of it all, and ignored him when he tried waving his arms to get their attention.

“Don't they know who lives next door to them?” she asked.

Jack looked sheepish. “Unfortunately not,” he admitted. “I bought the house through a trust and I didn't put the word out, since I was trying to guard my privacy. So for all they know, I'm just some cranky businessman out to ruin their good time, the little jerks.”

“We could go inside,” she suggested.

“There's no furniture in there.” He looked genuinely upset that their romantic evening had been spoiled.

She got up and tugged at his hand. “Come on, Jack. Let's get out of here. This ritzy stuff isn't really me, anyway. Tell you what—let's get back in the limo, order a pizza and go eat it on the beach somewhere.”

“Order a pizza?” He looked scandalized. “Do you know what Tomas will do to me?”

“He'll get over it, won't he? Tell him to invite his own friends over to eat and inhale Jet Ski fumes.”

Jack laughed in spite of himself. He hesitated. “Fine. But we're taking the wine with us.”

They startled Mike in the foyer. He'd obviously planned on a long, solitary evening of…scrapbooking? Marly and Jack exchanged glances at the neat rows of photographs arranged to maximum advantage on colorful decorative sheets of acid-free paper.

They'd caught him with a pair of pink edging scissors in his hand, adding the final touches to a page featuring his daughter and her Tinkerbell Halloween costume.

Mike scrambled to his feet. “Sorry, sir—I, uh, thought you'd be a while, so I, um…”

“What
is
all this stuff?” Jack looked perplexed. “Never mind. Just give me the car keys. We're going to order a pizza from the limo.”

It was Mike's turn to look pole-axed. But he dug into his pocket and handed over the keys. “I'll be right there, sir.”

“Take your time.”

Marly and Jack left the house and he unlocked the limo door for her, aiming an evil eye in the direction of the still audible Jet Skis. “Little pissants.”

“Don't growl, Jack.” She slid into the backseat of the limo with a laugh and then froze at the expression on his face. She looked down and saw that her sarong had separated at the side, leaving her leg completely exposed from the upper thigh on down.

She extended a hand to fix it, but he caught it in his own. “Please,” he said. “Don't do that.”

He held up a finger. “Hold that thought. I'll be right back.” And he opened the driver's side door, jammed the keys in the ignition and started the car. Then he got in beside her and hit the lock button.

Marly's breathing quickened. “Jack—”

“I won't do anything you don't want me to do,” he promised. Then he extended a finger and touched it to the exposed skin just under the knot of her sarong.

“I don't want you to—” But she stopped midsentence because it was a lie. The finger he trailed down her thigh left something like a burn in its wake. He caressed her calf with his palm and then stroked the back of her knee.

“You ever made love in a limousine?” he asked her softly, his voice husky and pouring over her nerves like whiskey over ice. She melted under it.

“No,” she whispered.

“Would you like to?”

Yes.
“I'm…not sure.”

Jack moved from sitting beside her to the opposite seat, so they sat knee to knee. He took a sip from the glass of wine he still held, and then set it down.

She felt odd, sitting there with one leg completely covered and the other completely exposed. She also didn't know what exactly he could see under her sarong from that angle. She pressed her knees together.

Jack bent forward, his blue eyes burning into hers. She met him halfway, their mouths searing each other and their tongues mating in a sensual, private dance. She stole his breath and he stole hers, until they broke apart, both gasping for air.

“Marly.” He ran a hand over his face. “We should take this slow.” He traced her lips with his finger while outside their little cocoon, they felt Mike get into the front seat and heard his door close.

“I'm sure he's wondering where the hell we want to go,” Jack said. “Any preferences?”

She shook her head.

“You want to order that pizza?”

“Not at the moment.” She smiled.

“I think we're on the same page.” Jack pressed a button and spoke to Mike. “I think we just want to drive. Anywhere. For a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sorry about your scrapbooking,” Marly added.

Embarrassed laughter. “My wife makes me do it. She says she's no good.”

Jack let go of the button and returned to his exploration of Marly's mouth. “I'm no good, either.”

“Yeah, I think that's what I like about you,” she said, nipping his finger.
What am I doing? I'm about to go down a path that may lead straight to hell…not to mention to the Republican party.
To her, the party of the rich and deceitful and the painful past.

But she didn't care. She sank back into the leather seat and let Jack Hammersmith, forty-fourth governor of Florida, run his hands up and down her bare leg, stopping only a quarter of an inch shy of decency. She let him slip off her sandal, massage her naked foot, and drizzle it with champagne. Then she let him suck it off her silver-painted toes, an indescribable sensation that she'd never experienced before.