The Care and Feeding of Unmarried Men (6 page)

E
ve's mouth was softer and hotter than Nash had ever imagined. And despite himself, over the last forty-eight hours of their acquaintance he'd been imagining it a lot. “God,” he murmured against her lips. With his hands on her ass, he pulled her closer, and his thighs clamped hard onto hers.

He swept his tongue along her lower lip. Through both their shirts he felt her nipples tighten and another tremor shake her body.

Because of his kiss…or because of Chili?

She was playing this for the man in the doorway, he reminded himself, or for some game of her own. With that in mind, he eased his hold on her. She didn't take him up on the hint, though. Instead, she speared her fingers in the back of his hair and pressed her sweet little tongue into his mouth.

A fire ignited in his belly and he yanked her to him again, her nipples now as hard as his cock. She slanted her head to change the fit of the kiss and then he took over, sliding into her mouth so that he filled her the way the rest of his body was aching to do.

She trembled again, and he didn't let it stop him from savoring her mouth, her wet heat, the almost-pornographic pleasure of those showstopping tits against his pecs and that perfect ass against his palms. But she wasn't protesting; instead, she was melting against him, like soft butter spread on hot toast.

He had to get her naked.

The imperative need of that thought shocked him free of the sexual haze. This kiss wasn't for real. Looping his thumbs in her back pockets, he jerked her away and lifted his head.

Her eyes were half-closed, her mouth was open and wet.

“Shit,” he muttered. But instead of diving back in like he wanted to, he cast a swift glance over his shoulder. Just as she'd said, two men were standing in the doorway between the lounge and the spa grounds. One was gray-haired, short and wiry, while the other was younger, taller, dark-haired, wearing a khaki-colored designer suit and an expression so cold that Nash figured he must practice it in a mirror every morning.

If the man had been staring at him, he would have stood his ground, but it was Eve who had his focus, and Nash remembered he was supposed to get her out of here. He planted a quick kiss on her mouth, then curled his hands around her waist. “Let's go, Party Girl.”

He boosted her up, and she slid her long, swimsuit-model legs around his waist, leaving his erection
nestled two layers of denim away from heaven.
Jesus,
he thought, stifling a groan. She was going to kill him with lust alone.

Her eyes opened all the way, and her gaze met his. Despite the startling kiss, their provocative pose, and the man in the doorway she wanted to avoid, she was still cool as a cucumber. She could even arch that damn brow. “Apparently you need monster equipment to drive those monster machines.”

“Take it as a compliment,” he said, striding toward the door and the two men he intended to push through without hesitation. “Because what I have to tell you, isn't.”

“What's that?”

He shifted her a little higher and kept his eye on the two men eyeing them. “Darlin', not only are your tits starting to sag,” he murmured in her ear, “but you're getting a bit bottom-heavy, too.”

And whether it was due to her surprised laughter or his brisk pace, the duo at the door parted and let them through without incident.

His stride ate up the path that led from the public areas of the Kona Kai to the gate separating them from the private suites and bungalows. The guard held the wrought-iron open for them, and Nash walked through. He kept going until he heard the clang that signaled it was shut. Then, without warning or ceremony, he dropped the party girl to her pretty feet.

She stumbled a little on landing, but he resisted the urge to hold her up. Hold her again. Kiss her, long, and hot and wet. He couldn't let one fake smooch lead him away from good sense or the questions he wanted answered.

He got right to it. “So what just happened?”

“You hustled me out of there. Thanks.” She tried to put her hands in her front pockets, but those X-rated jeans were so damn tight they only fit her index fingers. “Good night.”

In disbelief, he watched her turn on one pointy toe of those bad-girl pumps. “Where the hell do you think you're going?”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “For two aspirin and a big glass of water, unless you know better hangover prevention.”

There was no need for aspirin or anything else. Something had driven the drunkenness right out of her. That's what he wanted to understand. “Hold it right there.”

Her feet stopped moving, but she did the whole eyebrow arch again, from over her shoulder. “What?”

“I just sucked face with you and you think you can walk away without an explanation?”

She winced. “‘Suck face'? I haven't heard that since seventh grade.”

The superbeauty made Nash feel like seventh grade. Flooded with hormones, fascinated by the female half of the world, more than ready to flex brand-new muscles. In seventh grade, Nash's height had jumped from five-and-a-half feet to six, and his father had halted his Monday through Friday threats to beat the crap out of him. He'd waited until the booze-binge weekends instead.

Nash put his mind back to the matter at hand. “I want to know what was going on back there. Who's this Chili, Eve?”

Still keeping her distance, she turned. Shrugged. “Nino Farelle. He's an…associate, I guess we'll say, of my grandfather.”

“Cosimo Caruso. Don of the California Mafia.”

Her mouth curved. “You've been doing your homework. I wasn't sure you believed me.”

Nash strode closer to confront her toe-to-toe. “Are you seeing this Nino? Is that it?” He'd asked her earlier that day if there was a man in her life, and now he realized she'd never answered. “Christ, Eve, did you use me to make him jealous?”

The thought churned like acid in his gut, but he ignored the burn and focused on keeping his hands relaxed at his sides. What did he care about her games, anyway? The answer: He
didn't
care about them.

She brushed her hair off her forehead. “You really don't have a very high opinion of me, do you?”

“The truth is not going to get you out of answering the question.”

She laughed, and damn it, he liked it. Despite himself and everything he could tell about her by just looking at that perfect face and bombshell figure, there were these moments when he actually liked her, too.

“Here's the deal with Nino,” she finally answered. “If I was alone or didn't look…involved, he would have come over to the bar and made it difficult for me to leave.”

Nash wasn't sure she was being honest with him. “You could have just said so. I would have been happy to escort you out of there without all the dramatics.”

“Ah, but then it would have been much more like rescuing me, wouldn't it?” She smiled, full-on and sexy. “And we would have missed out on
this.
”

Then the delectable witch twined her arms around his neck, again. Then she kissed him, again.

She was trying to distract him from his questions. He knew that. He should put a stop to this.

For God's sake, he was bigger, stronger, meaner than she was, but she was so damn wily, with those soft breasts and soft mouth and sweet scent. They overpowered his caution, sucker-punched his common sense, made him forget his own damn name. She tried to stick her tongue between his lips again, but he didn't want to make it easy for her, so he cupped her face in his palms and slid his mouth over her chin and down her neck. There were a few things he didn't want to miss out on either.

“Nash—” she started to protest, but it petered out when he found the scented spot behind her ear. The oversized gold hoop in her lobe brushed coolly against his cheek, but her skin was hot beneath his lips. He traced her ear with his tongue and savored the little shimmy she made against his chest.

Once again, he cupped that incredible ass and tucked her hips more firmly to his. She'd already commented on his “equipment,” so there was no reason to think he'd scare her off with his raging erection.

He figured nothing could scare this woman.

When he made it back to her mouth, she proved to him that a beauty contest wasn't the only place she could come up a winner. She slid her tongue along the insides of his lips as if she wanted to taste him. Her mouth opened to welcome his heavy return thrust. You could tell that some women objected to the intimacy of a soul kiss—and wasn't that a big ol' hint as to what other pleasures they'd object to—but Eve Caruso was born to French. He settled in for the long haul, sliding his fingers into her back pockets as he sucked gently on her bottom lip.

He was going to take his time. She didn't appear to realize that, because she tried taking over, her hands
sliding from around his neck to head south. He warned her off by taking a little nip of that plump lower lip, at the same time tugging upward on those skintight jeans. Eve gasped and he smiled to himself, knowing just where he'd caused the knot of seams to press between her legs.

Maybe she thought it had been an accident, because she tried her takeover move again and again Nash “punished” her with that small sting of a kiss and another little upward jerk on her jeans. She gasped again, her head falling back, and he took the opportunity to slide his mouth down her neck. Her breasts heaved against his chest.

Not ready to move there yet, not when it was so obvious that she was accustomed to having things all her way, he ignored the obvious to stroke his whiskery cheek against the side of her throat. Then he soothed the spot with the slide of his hair. She choked off a sound, and he rubbed against her again.

He wanted her scent all over him. He wanted his all over her.

Uh-oh.
Wrong thought. Wrong woman. The warning pierced his consciousness just as something else pierced the back of his left calf.

His head jerked up. “Ow!” Craning his head over his shoulder, he peered down at his lower leg. “What the hell?”

In the dim glow of a landscape light, Nash could see a shadowy creature behind him, its back feet on the ground, its forepaws—fore
claws
—sunk into his leg, right through his jeans.

He gave his calf a shake. “Scat. Shoo. God damn it, go away.” But the beast hung on.

“Don't!” Eve broke free of Nash's grip. “Don't hurt him!”

The cat's claws dug deeper, and Nash grimaced. “Instead of talking to the ugly thing, do you think you could disengage it or something?”

“I'm talking to
you,
you oaf. Don't hurt Adam.” She kneeled down and petted the ugly bugger, even as it stabbed harder into Nash's flesh. “Let go, my baby,” she crooned. “I won't let the big man hurt either one of us.”

“I won't let the big man hurt either one of us.”

Nash frowned over the odd remark, then it flew from his head as the damn cat flexed once more, forcing him to bite back another curse. Finally the tom released him, slowly though, first delicately lifting one paw, then the other. Nash peered over his shoulder at the new holes in his jeans, then at Eve. “Has that thing had its rabies shot?”

She was standing now, cuddling the tattered beast close to her chest. It stared at Nash with a satisfied cat-smile on its hideous mug. “Don't be such a sissy,” she said, toying with the creature's stump of an ear.

“I'm not kidding.” Beneath his pants, he could feel blood rolling from the wound and into his sock. “When did that thing last see a vet?”

“I don't know. We've just sort of met.”

He rolled his eyes. “Leave it to the Party Girl to pick up any stray male that wanders by.”

Whoops. Her nostrils flared, her back stiffened, and Nash knew he'd just shoved one of his size 15s into the enormous cavern that was his mouth. But damn it, he'd been in the middle of the hottest make-out session of his life with the hottest woman of his life when
he'd been rudely interrupted by a cat—an ugly cat—whom she appeared to like a hell of a lot better than she liked him.

Don't you suppose she might at least try to look as if she regretted the interruption? Instead, she looked as if she regretted the fact that Nash was alive.

Which reminded him that she just might get what that implied. “Look, Eve, you've got to understand. We're talking about a fatal disease. You might not give a hoot about my hide, but I happen to—”

“You get rabies from an animal
bite,
Nash.”

“—feel—” He took a breath. Grimaced. “Like a total ass.”

“Which makes it oh-so-much-easier for me to say good night.” She was all icy superbeauty, and he couldn't think of one more remark to make as she turned away. But wasn't it better this way? He'd already decided she was dangerous to him. Those spectacular kisses? She probably doled those out the way a Mexican restaurant served up tortilla chips—anytime and as many as you wanted. He should be glad she was moving away from him.

Except he didn't feel happy. He felt frustrated and irritated and still aroused. As she sauntered off, the cat snuggled closer to her neck so it could silently laugh at Nash over her shoulder as he stood there alone in the dark.

His calf started stinging like a bitch and he felt more blood roll.
Good,
he told himself,
you deserve it. Maybe then you won't forget that taking pleasure with the superbeauty can only end in pain.

O
nly her younger sister showed up for their wedding-planners' breakfast the next morning. Since it was rare that Téa would be late for any obligation, let alone miss it altogether, Eve expressed concern.

Joey lowered her latte cup to one of the small tables set up outside the spa dining room. The rain appeared gone for good, and it was a typical winter day in the desert—which was like early summer most anywhere else in the Northern Hemisphere. “You're kidding, right? Don't you remember that Johnny's been out of town for a week? Last night was his and Téa's first chance for catch-up nookie. I imagine they're sleeping in.”

Eve frowned. After yesterday's disturbing meeting with the SEC, she wanted as much normality as possible. “Still, she could have dragged herself out of bed.”

Rolling her eyes, Joey picked up her coffee again. “Have you forgotten the morning after a lover's absence? When was the last time you had sex, Eve?”

She wondered what her sister would say if she told her last night, on the grounds of the Kona Kai, with all her clothes on.

Her hand moved up to touch the collar of the sleeveless turtleneck she was wearing with an old linen skirt and embroidered espadrilles. Goose bumps prickled there, just thinking about the beard burn Nash had left behind. She'd tried calling all the shots, but he'd turned the tables and controlled
her
instead. What he could do by just tugging on her jeans should be outlawed.

That was another reason why she wished Téa were here this morning. One glimpse of her overorganized, über-punctual older sister and perhaps Eve would wake up to find that the world hadn't taken yet another wild left turn and that yesterday was only a bad dream.

Last night, she hadn't nearly orgasmed from the simple sensation of a man's stubbled chin against the side of her neck.

Yesterday afternoon, she hadn't agreed to cooperate with the SEC by getting close to Vince Standish again.

“Hey, no need to look so freaked out,” Joey said. “If you want to see Téa so bad, why don't you go over to her office after breakfast? She'll show up there eventually.”

“No!” If Eve wasn't waking up from this nightmare, then she was going to manage it the best way she could think of—by staying safe within the confines of the Kona Kai.

Closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath of the warm, dry air, scented by green and gardenia and a
faint tinge of chlorine from one of the many pools. The soothing trickle of water from a wall fountain sounded in the distance, and she thought she could even make out the light drone of a blue-winged dragonfly flitting over the surface of a birdbath. She'd be sheltered here. If she played sick and didn't venture beyond these walls, then she couldn't be faulted for not following the SEC's plan for her to make contact with Vince Standish.

That was the deal Eve had made with Sandy. The SEC wouldn't prosecute her for insider trading—no jail time!—if she would get a taped admission from him. Their strategy was for her to first gain his trust during the many social occasions they both routinely attended.

But she was going to have to skip the parties.

Sure, it would make it harder to do her work as a society columnist, but she figured that for the balance of the social season she could find plenty of people to dish about the events she missed. If not, then hell, she'd make up the details. Maybe it went against her journalistic ethics, but those were trumped by the single most important ethic her father had always emphasized: Look out for #1.

Joey set down her coffee cup again. “Hey, I heard stuff about your monster truck man.”

Eve's gaze shot toward her little sister. “My what? Who?”

“I asked one of the guys I golfed with yesterday. Knew all about him.”

From the sly smile her sister was giving her, Eve realized she was expected to pump for the information. So instead, she picked up her latte and blew across the frothy top.

Obviously annoyed, Joey narrowed her eyes but kept her lips firmly closed.

Eve sipped at her drink, then used her napkin to blot her upper lip.

Joey's eyes became mere slits. She was fifteen seconds, max, away from bursting.

Fifteen…fourteen…thir—

“Don't you want to know what I found out?”

Eve shrugged. “If you want to tell me.” Of course Joey wanted to tell her. That was the secret to getting whatever one wished out of the youngest Caruso. She had absolutely zero supply of patience, so it usually took less than half-a-minute's worth of cool nerve and the ability to hide a smile.

“Bitch,” Joey said, without heat.

Now Eve did smile. “Amateur bitch.”

It was just as well Téa wasn't there. Calling each other names always agitated her. Which made Eve smile again, as she propped her elbow on the tabletop. “So tell me everything.”

“He wasn't raised with little Miss Hollywood. She's his half sister. When their father and the girl's mom divorced, Dad took Nash, and Mom took the baby starlet.”

Interesting. Some men might look upon the circumstances as a reason to break ties with the other side of his family, but it was obvious that Nash took his brotherly obligations seriously. “The Preacher,” she murmured to herself.

“Yep, that's what they call him on the circuit,” Joey confirmed. “Not because he's holding Sunday services or anything, but because unlike many others, he keeps out of jail on Saturday nights and does his best to keep
the younger guys out along with him. For a man in a high-octane sport, he likes to keep things low-key.”

Well. The good ol' boy was actually
good.
Now why did that make her positively itch to break some commandments with him? Which was so
not
a smart idea when she'd just decided to barricade herself inside the Kona Kai thanks to a “sudden illness.” Nash Cargill was barricaded on her same side of the fence, and it wasn't the time for any manly distractions.

And as if that thought had conjured up its own evidence, a voice sounded from behind her. “Ladies.”

Eve froze. If she didn't know any better, she'd say the birds had stopped singing, clouds had passed over the sun, nearby blades of grass had flattened themselves against the earth.

Joey's gaze flicked over Eve's head, then back to her coffee. “Wow, Nino. I didn't know they opened the coffins this early in the morning.”

Nino Farelle. Eve should have known he wouldn't let her have the last—if unspoken—word last night by running out on him at the bar. Yesterday, he'd come to the Kona Kai expressly to see her, she'd known that. Expected it, actually, since the day she'd given up her condo and moved into the spa.

Though Nino hadn't been her boyfriend for almost a decade, whenever there was some change in her life—from a new haircut to a new lover to a new residence—he always managed to show up not long after to let her know he'd noticed. To let her know he was watching.

“Good morning to you, too, Giuseppina.”

No one called Joey by her full name, their late grandmother's name, except Nino. Perhaps that's why her little sister disliked him so. Joey didn't know about the
beating Nino had given Eve when she'd broken up with him—that was a secret from all but Téa.

“And Eve,” he said. He was closer now, but she refused to turn and look at him. “How are you this beautiful morning?”

The words
after last night
hung in the air beside the question. “I'm well, Nino,” Eve replied.

“Well-satisfied?” His olive-skinned fingers grazed her shoulder.

She fought her revulsion as she fought to remain still. From the corner of her eye she could see the thick scars on his knuckles and wondered if any of those had come from the punch he'd thrown against the wall right before the punches he'd thrown at her face.

“What do you want, Nino?” Joey barked out.

His hand fell away and Eve breathed, blessing her brusque little sister at the same time. As part of the management team at La Vita Buona, their grandfather Cosimo's legitimate business, Joey had more dealings than the other Caruso girls with their grandfather's illegitimate side—and associates. But by and large she turned a blind eye to what she heard and saw. It was Joey who claimed all the crime business was a lot more talk than action, even though it was Joey who visited the various “uncles” and “cousins” who wound up doing stints in county jail or federal prison.

Eve knew her little sister had a soft spot for men, especially those who had a dark and dangerous edge. Nino should have been right up her alley—he was as male, as gorgeous, and as deadly as they came—but Joey was smarter than her older sister, who had once imagined herself in love with him. Joey didn't even try to hide her dislike of the man.

“We'd offer you something to drink,” she apologized
in an insincere voice, “but we don't have any blood suitable for a vampire on the menu.”

“Then I'll just settle for Eve's coffee,” he replied, seating himself between them at the table and pulling her cup his way.

A flush rushed up Joey's golden skin, and her brown eyes snapped.

Eve had left Joey to her own devices once before and still hated herself for it, so she forced herself to turn toward Nino. The sooner he got down to business, the sooner he would get out and leave her safely behind at the Kona Kai. “Is there something we can do for you?”

“Turn on your fucking cell phone.” He lifted her coffee and took a long swallow.

She frowned. Nino liked to conduct his harassment in person. “Have you…have you been trying to call me?”

“Your grandfather has.”

Eve's spine relaxed against her chair, the notion that Nino was on an errand for her grandfather making it that much easier to breathe. The fact that he wanted to move up in the ranks of her grandfather's organization was what had kept him away from her after that beating, and it was what had kept him in check all these years. He knew that if she told Cosimo about those punches, the same would happen to him…or much, much worse.

But she hadn't been silent out of pity for Nino. She'd kept quiet because the inconvenient bastard Caruso daughter hadn't wanted to bring more trouble to the family. It wouldn't have been easy for her grandfather to hurt the young man he'd taken under his wing when he was in his teens. She hadn't—didn't—want to be the cause of that pain.

Eve clasped her hands together in her lap to make sure they wouldn't tremble. Even knowing why Nino was here didn't make her any less wary of him. “What does Grandfather want?” she asked.

“He was going to come himself, but I talked him out of it,” Nino said. “It's not safe for him to be moving about town right now.”

Another reason she'd never ratted on the wiseguy. She believed he was truly loyal to her grandfather, an even more valuable commodity since an arsonist had recently sent Cosimo a threatening message by burning down the original venue for his eightieth birthday party.

“I'll try to get over to his house for a visit…” If Eve was serious about keeping to the Kona Kai—and she was—then she couldn't promise a particular date. “…soon.”

Nino brought her coffee to his mouth again. “That will be too late.”

“What?” Joey interjected. “What the hell are you talking about? Too late for what?”

“Calm down,
bambina.
” Nino was smiling, obviously pleased with metaphorically pulling on Joey's pigtails.

Eve's upper lip started to throb. He'd smiled in just that way after the blood had gushed in her mouth. “Stop messing around,” she said coldly. “Either spit out what you have to say or else—”

“Or else what?” Nino turned his evil smile on her. “You'll let your latest bull loose from between your thighs to turn on me instead? I think I can handle Nash Cargill,
cara,
just fine.”

Nash. She didn't even want Nino knowing the other man's name. And yet now that Nino had said it aloud, Nash was all that she could think of. Big, strong, good
ol' boy Nash, the straightforward Preacher who could sweep in and save her from all this. From Nino, from Vince Standish, from the SEC and their threat to put her in prison.

From all this ugliness of her own making. Nino had been her first bad choice when it had come to men, and Vince Standish had been her last. And didn't Sandy Dailey's ex—Scott Chambers—figure in there somewhere too?

More than once she'd wondered if that snake in Paradise her daddy had warned her about so long ago was none other than herself.

She wanted to set her forehead on the glass tabletop and weep, but crying hadn't gotten her anywhere since her father had disappeared. “Nino, what did my grandfather want you to tell me?”

He seemed to sense she was at the end of her rope. “That the official word is being sent out today. His retirement will go down May first.”

Eve didn't ask if there was going to be a press release. The official word about his retirement from his “official” business had gone out two weeks before. He was stepping down as president of La Vita Buona on that same date. What Nino was talking about was Cosimo's unofficial—illegitimate—businesses run by the California Mafia. There had been speculation that while leaving the food company, he would retain his power within La Cosa Nostra. But it wasn't to be.

Now everyone would know, from New Jersey to Miami, from Palm Springs to Seattle, and all points criminal in between, that leadership would be changing on the West Coast.

“Any word on his successor?” she asked.

“Not yet.” Nino's answer was short, but long enough
for her to be sure that he hoped it was he who would be named boss of bosses.

They were all silent for a moment, all acknowledging, Eve suspected, that whoever was named as the new leader would face in-fighting and out-fighting, from rival families, from rivals within their family, from the federal authorities. The whole California Mafia structure, the Carusos themselves, were going to be at risk.