Not So Snow White (12 page)

* * * * *

M
ax whipped his car through the gates to Wexley House, thankful he didn't have to argue with the guard to gain entry. His name was still on the admittance list from the other night. There were no cars in front of the house, but then, Aurora had mentioned she used Glass Slipper limos to ferry herself about town. She'd offered him use of one, as well, but he'd declined. However, it was highly likely Tess took advantage of the service. She was the limo sort, after all. When she wasn't tooling around in
one of Sir Robin's Jags, anyway.

"Must be nice," he grumbled, even though he knew it was a bit unfair. After all, he wasn't exactly hurting for money. Regardless of how well Gaby performed on tour, Max had long since made sure that their inheritance would continue to work for them for years to come, He just chose to utilize his good fortune in a
less
…
ostentatious way. And he certainly didn't
sponge off of people. Aurora had offered her Glass Slipper services gratis. A favor to an old
family friend. He wouldn't hear
a word of it. Tess, on the other hand, who had to be far more financially secure than he could ever dream of being, seemed to have no problem accepting whatever favors were tossed her way.

He looked up at the broad front to the mansion, seeing it for the first time in the light of day. The marble and stone exterior was every bit as daunting as the collection of art and priceless antiques he knew littered every room inside. Right up Tess's opulent lifestyle alley.

Shaking his head at the decadence of it all, he took the front stairs two at a time. He rapped on the door, then glanced at his watch. "Half past two. She should just be getting up." Whatever the case, he wasn't leaving until he'd spoken with her, even if he had to personally drag her hard-partying backside out of bed.

First he'd make sure she knew how much he appreciated her taking time from her oh-so-busy retired schedule to talk to his sister. Then he'd do whatever it took to make sure she opted out of any more of Aurora's well-meaning, if somewhat alarming schemes. He had enough to worry about the next couple of weeks, watching over Gabrielle. The last thing he needed was to worry about a wild card like Tess Hamilton. Emphasis on the word "wild."

C
ha
pter
9

T
ess set up the ball machine and questioned her sanity for the hundredth time in the past couple of hours. She'd woken up to a cool, gorgeous sunny day and decided to t
ake a walk around the grounds…
only to discover that in addition to a manicured croquet lawn that would make Alice in Wonderland drool, Sir Robin also had a lovely, quite immaculately maintained grass court.

"This is crazy," she muttered as she walked back around the net to her side of the court. She didn't even have her own rackets, for God's sake.
This is so not the way to do this,
she silently cautioned herself. Not that it was going to do any good. She was on a mission now.

Wearing beat-up sneakers, gym shorts, and an oversized Stanford T-shirt of Bobby's, she gripped one of Sir Robin's admittedly decent rackets and took her stance on the baseline. The tension of the strings was all wrong, of course, and the grip
was too big for her hand. The belly was too wide for her taste, and there was no damper on the strings. But despite every possible sign indicating she should seriously reconsider this endeavor, here she stood anyway.

Well,
at least if you make an idiot of yourself, the only person who's going to know is you. And Sir Robin's majordomo.
She absently wondered how long it would take the tabloids to begin hounding the poor man. Not that what she was doing right now would be news. No one cared if Tess Hamilton did or didn't hit tennis balls around anymore. No, this moment only mattered to her.

But as soon as anyone got wind of her financial downfall— and even she knew it was only a matter of time, what with her little plan of fixing her problems while in London not exactly panning out—they would be all over any teeny-tiny tidbit of information that would add to th
eir "how the mighty have fallen"
story.

She aimed the remote at the state-of-the-art machine—go, Sir R!—and clicked the button. "Fuck 'em," she muttered, and, gripping the racket in both hands, bounced back and forth on the soles of her feet, focusing intently on the chute. It wouldn't be the first time she'd smacked the fuzz off a ball as a way of mitigating stress.

The hollow whooshing sound of the first ball shooting toward her coincided exactly with someone calling out her name.

Concentration shattered, the ball whiffed by her as she looked around to see who it was.

"Sorry," Max Fontaine said, looking anything but. He paused outside the fence that surrounded the court.

What in the hell was he doing here? She glanced behind him, but there was no sign of Gabrielle. They weren't supposed to meet until later. And it was supposed to be just her and Gaby
today. Aurora Had said she'd make that happen. Tess could only guess that
big bro had gotten wind of their
little plan and was none too happy about it. Tough.

He wore khaki shorts, a navy polo shirt, and leather loafers, no socks. Nonetheless, he managed to look like he'd just stepped off the pages of
Man About Town Monthly.

Another ball whizzed by and she clicked the remote toward the ball machine. So much foT her private return to the sport.

He apparently took that as an invitation and opened the gate.

It was hard to tell with the sunglasses, but he didn't look all that thrilled to see her. So what else was new?

"We need to talk." He walked to the end of the net and stopped beside the pole.

She started to tell him he should have called ahead because she was busy at the moment. But then he'd probably offer to wait while she practiced. Which was so not going to happen.
God
,
how
far the mighty had fallen.
She'd played to crowds numbering in the tens of thousands, with millions more watching from home
…
and thrived on it. Now she was afraid of showing off her r
usty, surgically repaired, less-
than-world-class form in front of one measly person.

She stayed on the baseline. "About?" she asked, shading her eyes from the sun.

"Gabrielle."

Of course. Aurora had been rather vague about Max's feelings on her continued involvement with Gaby, not that Tess really cared one way or the other what he thought. She'd been so impressed with what she'd seen at practice the other day, she'd probably sounded a little gushy when talking about it with Aurora later that night. If she were honest, it was hard to be casual when talking about the teenager's game, In fact, she'd admit
that it had been watching Gaby's intensity and drive during the hour of practice she'd hung around to watch, that had directly reinvigorated her own need to get back out on the court. She could all but taste the power and speed, the feel of the ball coming off her strings, all things she loved and so desperately missed.

"Your sister is quite talented," she said preemptively. "Not that I have to tell you that." She smiled, let it go a shade cocky. "Reminds me of me, actually.
"

He didn't so much as quirk a lip in return. Spoilsport. She was restless. And scared. She needed a diversion, dammit. And if he wasn't going to let her take it out on a few poor tennis balls, then he could suffer being the target instead.

"That's actually my concern, and why I'm here."

"Ah." She twirled her racket on two fingers. "Yeah, it must really suck to have your sister constantly compared to a forme
r
number-one player with a fistful of slam trophies to her credit. Poor you."

"It's not me I'm worried about."

She laughed at that. "Isn't it? From what little I saw and heard, Gaby seems to be holding up just fine. In
fact, she has a pr
etty good head on her shoulders. Better than I did at her age, I'd say. I was all ready to give that credit to you." She propped her racket on her toes and flipped her hair over her shoulder. He really wasn't her type, too uptight. Yet, perhaps he could be interesting as a different kind of diversion. "But if you're going to come out here and interrupt my practice session just so you can insult me on my own tennis court—well, my borrowed court, anyway—I don't know that I'm feeling as generous now."

As flirting went, it was far beneath her usual standards, but she wasn't really on her game at the moment. She'd like to blame him, but she'd been off for quite some time now. In fact, she was out here facing her demons—or trying to—as a means
to yank herself back up again. She hated—hated—feeling anything less than fully in command.

"Somehow I doubt my opinion of you causes you to lose any sleep."

She sighed inwardly. Okay, so maybe he wasn't going to be fun to play with either—too dry and sober for her tastes. Although there was that naughty little devil voice inside her, prodding her to push just a bit harder, serve and volley a little, get him to come into the net, so to speak, set him up for the perfect return winner. Not that she was going to do anything with him when she had him at her mercy, but at the very least she'd have him enamored enough that he'd have to back down from his negative stance on her involvement with his sister.

She walked closer to him, stopped a few feet away, and tapped her racket against the net. "You know, there are times when losing sleep can be a good thing," she ventured. Soft lob. She waited for the return.

"See, that right there is what I mean."

She sighed. So damn serious. And straitlaced. She was beginning to think it was a miracle Gaby had turned pro before she was thirty. "I don't mean to be rude—well, actually I do. After all, you don't seem to mind, so why should I?"

He rocked back on his heels a little, shoved his hands in his pockets. "Meaning?"

"We'll get back to my craven ways in just a moment. First I want to ask you something. Are you this uptight all the time? About everything? I mean, do you have any idea how to have fun?"

He just stared at her. It made her want to yank the sunglasses off his face. Not that it would have automatically made a difference. The guy took stoic to a whole new level.

"What I do with my private time isn't really a concern of yours," he said, sounding even more stuffy than before.

She hooted. "Question answered, then."

He frowned.

She lifted a hand in a helpless gesture. "Hey, if you're going to slander me all over God's creation without even taking five minutes to get to know me—ever think of working for one of the rags here, by the way? You'd be a natural, trust me." She shrugged, let her hand drop by her side. "All I'm saying is, you're here specifically because you're concerned with how I spend my private time, afraid I'll somehow poison your baby sister's apparent pristine persona. Well, let me tell you, she's not as pristine as you'd like to believe."

His scowl faltered. "What the hell are you talking about? What did she tell you?"

She wanted to laugh at his instant defensive posturing, but couldn't bring herself to do it. He might be a prig, but he was such a damn earnest one. It was clear he really did care about his sister. Thinking about Wade, even for a split second before automatically shoving him right back out of her brain again, she wondered what it would have been like if he'd felt even a fraction of the protective affection for her that Max obviously did for his younger sister. Sure, Bobby and she were tight, but that dynamic had her holding the older sibling card. Not the same thing at all.

Of course, she'd had a set of parents ruling her world in her formative years, at least one of which was a fabulous role model and extremely close to her only daughter. She had no idea what Max's formative years had been like, but she knew Gaby had lost both of her parents when she was quite young. Knowing how hard it had been for Tess to lose her mother as an adult, she couldn't even imagine, Max was all Gaby had.

So really, she should lighten up on the guy. But did he have to make it so damn difficult?

"Did she confide something to you?" Max pressed. "Because, as adults we have a responsibility here. You can't let her talk
you into keeping secrets." He took his sunglasses o
ff and she was treated to a pair
of brown eyes that were really something up close and personal, as it happened. Especially when he was all heated up.

Made a girl wonder what they looked like when the heat came from a different source. How had she not noticed them that first night with Aurora?

"I'm serious, Tess."

"When aren't you?" she responded, having to drag her attention away from his gorgeous baby browns. "And no, she didn't confide secrets. All I'm saying is, given her lifestyle up to now, it's like she's sixteen going on thirty-five. She's traveled, she's seen the world, she's been exposed to various cultures and things that most teenagers could only dream about knowing in a lifetime. No matter how sheltered you've kept her, she's still mature way beyond her years. She has to be, to play the kind of mentally tough game I watched her blast through the other day. And that was just practice. Lord only knows what the kid is like on court when it matters."

There was a brief flicker of
…
something, that crossed his face. Pride. And such love. He couldn't hide it if he wanted to. And that was one of his best, if only, selling points.

"Yeah, I kinda figured," she said, a bit more gently, to his unspoken response. "So why don't you give Gaby some credit here? She's a sponge, soaking up so much right now."

"Exactly."

"What I'm trying to say is that not only is she soaking up this new experience, she's integrating it in a way that is allowing her to grow and become more successful. At least that seems to be her path. So why not trust her to glean what she can from me? Use what helps, discard the rest?" She held her racket up to her face and made a deep breathing sound. "Trust me, Luke," she
said in her best Darth Vader imitation. "I won't take her to the dark side."

If he found her even remotely amusing, he didn't show it. Big shock there. "She idolizes you," he said flatly. "And you've managed to trot around the globe in rather scandalous fashion and still bring home the prize money. She'll think she can do the same. You say you're warning her against the dark side of being a pro on tour. I say you're going to basically hand her a guidebook, whether you mean to or not."

"Well, hey, I guess I should be flattered you're at least giving me that much credit. Would it help if I told you that I don't think it's a wise idea for anyone to carry on as I did?" She stared at him. "Yeah, I didn't think so." She sighed and let her racket drop to her side. "Then I guess since you can't find it in yourself to trust me, you're just going to have to trust Gaby."

She expected him to inform her that he wasn't going to allow Gaby to have that decision. When he merely stood there and silently stared her down, she had to fight to restrain the urge to smile in victory. So that's why he was here. Aurora had somehow gotten him to agree to let her handle things with Gaby. Forcing him to come directly to the source of his angst, in hopes he could get her to agree to let this liaison she was forming with his sister drop.

Ha. Fat chance.

His jaw tensed, then forcibly relaxed. "I'm asking you to please opt out of Aurora's plans for you and Gaby to continue seeing each other over the next week. I'm asking that you trust me to know what is best for my sister."