Pride (In Wilde Country Book 1) (6 page)

Determinedly, he locked his gaze to hers.

“I have no wish to sell, Mr. Bellini. Get that through your head.”

“In that case, be prepared to spend…” He went through a list of repairs mentally, years of experience coming to his assistance, added a handsome amount to cover what undoubtedly would be problems as yet unknown, reached into his jacket pocket for the small notebook and pen he always had with him, and scribbled a number. “Be prepared to spend at least this, Ms. McKenna, and quite possibly a lot more.”

He held the out the notepad.

She took it from him.

Their fingers brushed and sexual awareness became almost a palpable presence. He knew that she’d felt it, knew it by the way her eyes widened, by the way she caught her breath.

His heart thudded.

Hers had to be thudding, too. He could see the sudden leap of her pulse in the hollow of her throat.

Their eyes met. Held. Then she took another breath and looked at the seven figures he’d scribbled.

“I’ve done a little Googling,” she said. “This is probably accurate.”

“Yes. It probably is.” Her hand was still holding one edge of the notebook. His hand held the other. Once again, the tips of their fingers brushed. This time, he could damn near feel the sizzle. “Cheyenne.” She looked up. Her eyes were more than blue. They were almost midnight black. “This is not about facts or figures or numbers,” he said, in a voice so raw and low he barely recognized it as his own.

The notebook tumbled to the floor.

Luca caught her hand, brought it to his mouth. His lips closed on her fingers; he sucked them into the heat of his mouth and she made a sound that brought him fully, almost painfully erect. Then he let go of her hand and reached for the handle of his door.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to drive,” he said. “There’s got to be an inn or a motel nearby.”

“There’s a motel a couple of miles ahead, just before the next town.” Cheyenne reached for the ignition key. “We can be there in five minutes.” The tip of her tongue swept over her bottom lip. “Two minutes. I’ll drive fast,” she said, and laughed.

“No,” Luca said. “I’ll drive.”

She ignored him. Instead, she checked the mirror, then pulled back onto the road.

Goddammit.

Why did he care which of them drove?

It didn’t matter.

The hell it didn’t.

It mattered, just as it mattered when they pulled into the motel parking lot and she walked ahead of him toward the door marked
Office
.

“Wait a minute,” Luca growled. She kept moving. He caught up to her, grabbed her wrist and spun her toward him. “I’ll get us a room.”

“Fine.”

She said it in a way that made him feel as if he’d just suggested something stupid and she’d been generous enough to acquiesce.

It infuriated him—but not enough to keep him from dragging her into his arms, right there in a very public place, and claiming her mouth with his.

It was a kiss made up of heat and passion, teeth and tongues. He was on fire when it started and by the time it ended, he was blazing like the prior night’s Fourth of July fireworks.

He let go of her, taking some small satisfaction in the way she looked, her face all flushed, her eyes bright and glittery, her lips parted and trembling. He leaned in, kissed her again, nipped her bottom lip. Then he strode to the office.

He was back a minute later, a key in his hand.

He took her elbow, led her to an outside staircase, down a corridor and to a door. The room was clean, but that was all you could say for it. There was no charm to it, nothing attractive or handsome.

It almost stopped him.

He had not taken a woman to a place like this since he was eighteen.

But when he turned to face Cheyenne, he saw that she had already shut the door.

Toed off her boots.

Pulled her T-shirt over her head.

She was wearing a bra, but it was sheer. Her breasts, her nipples, were clearly visible.

She reached for the clasp on her jeans. He caught her hands and stilled them.

“I just realized… I don’t have a condom.”

“I’m on the pill.”

She undid her jeans. Shimmied them down her legs. He wanted to tell her to slow down, that he would undress her, that he would set the pace, but seconds later she was naked.

And he was burning to possess her.

She reached for the buttons on his shirt.

He batted her hands away, damn near tore off the shirt and the rest of his clothes and then they tumbled onto the bed, her hands on him, his on her. She pushed him on his back and straddled him.

“Wait,” he said, or would have said, but she lowered herself on his swollen penis, slowly, slowly, so slowly that he hissed with pleasure as he clasped her hips and guided her home.

She rocked against him. Once. Twice. Three times.

And came. Fast. Too fast. Not too fast for him—he had never been as ready to come in his life—but surely, too fast for her.

She moaned. Rocked against him again, and he let go and came so hard that he felt as if he’d been caught up in a whirlwind.

She started to roll off him, but he wrapped his arms around her and brought her down against his chest.

“You can let go of me,” she whispered.

It was what women always said, or words to that effect, as if letting the woman you’d just fucked lie sprawled on top of you was some sort of burden.

Generally, he’d wait a minute or two, then roll to his side with the woman in the curve of his arm because the truth was, lying this way wasn’t really comfortable. Even when a woman was slender, you could feel her weight bearing down on you.

This time, though, he didn’t feel anything except the warmth of Cheyenne’s skin, the whisper of her breath. His arms tightened around her; he stroked her hair, stroked his hand down her spine.

It took a while until he felt her muscles relax.

Her breathing slowed, grew more even.

She was asleep.

Too bad, because he wanted her again with him in charge, with things moving slowly. Slow caresses. Slow kisses. Soft whispers telling him what she liked, how she wanted to be touched and taken because he’d yet to take her.

The truth was, she’d taken him.

Not that he had any objections, he thought, biting back a yawn.

He liked sexually assertive women, but he also liked to conquer.

It was male. Purely, basically male…

Luca yawned again.

His lashes fluttered, drooped.

He was asleep.

* * *

He didn’t sleep long.

A few minutes, maybe a quarter of an hour. He woke lying on his belly, still naked, still on top of the bedspread.

Sunlight streamed over him.

They had never closed the curtains.

Quite a show, had someone been standing outside, he thought, and smiled.

He rolled to his side. No Cheyenne. She was probably in the bathroom. Maybe in the shower.

He smiled again at the thought of surprising her there, joining her under the spray, cupping her ass and drawing her back against him.

Soaping his hands and filling them with her breasts.

He hadn’t even tasted her breasts. Her nipples. He knew they were a dusty rose in color, beautiful and sweet-looking. They’d taste sweet, too.

His erection was instantaneous.

So was his bone-deep need to be inside her.

Luca sat up. Swung his legs to the floor. Padded to the bathroom and knocked at the closed door.

“Cheyenne?”

No answer.

He knocked again.

“Cheyenne?”

She might not hear him, if she was in the shower…but if she were, wouldn’t he hear the sound of running water?

A disquieting thought stirred inside him. He said her name once more and turned the knob.

The door swung open on an empty room. Just to be certain, he drew back the vinyl shower curtains.

Nothing.

His mouth thinned.

He left the small room, walked through the bedroom, peering into corners as if he might locate her in one of them.

He didn’t, of course.

She was gone.

Her clothes were gone.

The only sign that she’d been there was a note scratched on the thin memo pad the motel had provided.

Sorry, but I have an appointment in Dallas. I checked—there’s a phone number for a cab service in the directory on the desk. And thanks for your help.

The initial C was scrawled below.

Could a man actually feel his blood pressure threatening to burst his arteries?

Luca stared at the note.

At that
thanks for your help
.

What was that supposed to mean? His help with her plans for Sweetwater Ranch? Or what had happened here. In this room. In this bed.

She’d had an itch and he’d scratched it.

Was that the ‘help’ she was talking about?

H, made his hand into a fist, then dropped the crumpled pad on the carpet.

His head was pounding. Pounding!

He thought back over the years, to other times he’d been angry. Times he’d been furious. The worst had been when he’d found out that his father was a bigamist, that he’d created four bastard children.

And even then, his anger had not been like this.

He could feel it rising within him, a black cloud of pure rage, wiping out all logical thought, all civilized behavior.

“Bitch,” he said. “Fucking bitch.”

He told himself to calm down. To take it easy. To be reasonable…

“Goddammit,” he snarled, and he reached for the ugly lamp on the ugly table beside the ugly bed, wrapped his hand around it, yanked its electric cord free of the socket and hurled it at the wall across from him.

It shattered into dozens of pieces.

That, at least, was a start.

Then he took a deep breath. A series of deep breaths.

He took his trousers from the floor, pulled his cellphone from his pocket and punched a button.

Matteo answered on the first ring.

“Luca? Where the hell have you been? We’re already on the road, heading for the airport.”

Luca spoke calmly.

Yes, he said, he’d figured that. He apologized for not returning to El Sueño. Something had come up, he said, his mouth thinning at the ugly pun.

“I’ll meet you at the airport,” he told Matteo. “Yes, fine, I’ll be there in plenty of time.”

“Did you finish with the McKenna woman?” Matteo asked.

“No,” Luca said, still calmly, “no, I haven’t finished with her.”

He disconnected. Took a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and left it on top of the lamp shards. Then he pulled out another hundred and placed it on a pillow on the bed.

He phoned the cab company. Took a fast shower. Dressed. And as he paced outside the motel, waiting for his taxi, he thought how much truth there had been in what he’d told Matteo.

He wasn’t finished with Cheyenne McKenna.

Not by a long shot.

CHAPTER THREE

H
e reached the
airport in time.

Not that it really mattered.

The Bellinis were using a private jet; there was no particular schedule to adhere to other than everyone having agreed they wanted to be in New York by nightfall. Matteo and Luca had business functions they had to attend; Bianca was going to a lecture, and Alessandra, as usual, was mysterious about it all.

He made his way down the aisle of the luxuriously appointed Dessault Falcon 50 EX and took a seat. His sisters moved past him to a pair of loveseats in the plane’s midsection. Bianca took an iPad from her oversized purse; Alessandra took a copy of
Vogue
from hers. Matteo chose a seat and opened his laptop.

Luca took out his iPhone. All he could recall about tonight’s commitment was that it involved some kind of charity. He sighed. The last thing he was in the mood for was being in the company of people whose common bond was that they were rich.

Perhaps his P.A. had included some information about the evening in an email.

“Takeoff in two minutes, folks,” the pilot’s disembodied voice said. “Please fasten your seat belts.”

There was nothing from his P.A.

He probably wasn’t being fair to the glittering crowd that would attend tonight’s whatever. His P.A. accepted or declined invitations to such things on his behalf; she’d been with him almost from the start of Bellini Construction—he’d dropped the ‘Wilde’ from his name the day he’d turned twenty-one.

He trusted her judgment.

If he was attending a dinner or a cocktail party or an auction for some charity, it was surely one with a good cause. Jessica had probably filled him in on it, but the craziness of the past couple of days had driven everything else from his head, which wasn’t like him at all.

He prided himself on being organized. On being logical.

His mouth thinned.

There’d been nothing organized or logical about his behavior today…

Forget that.

Today was history.

Concentrate on tonight.

Tux or dark suit? Dark suit. He hated the stodgy formality of tuxes, always half-expected somebody to come up to him and say,
you look good in that tux.
Where’d you rent it?
even though his tux was custom made.

The fact was, his family had been raised knowing they had to spend every
lira
and euro with caution. Had their father’s money gone to the American family he’d acknowledged? Did it really matter?

Maybe Bianca was right.

What was the sense in condemning the children for the sins of the father?

All six of the American Wildes had determinedly made it on their own. They’d worked themselves through school and attained success through their intelligence and determination.

There would be people like that at tonight’s whatever-it-was, people with money but with good instincts. Oh, there’d be the usual contingent who’d want to show the world that they were part of the fabled one or two percent, but most of them had a genuine interest in Doing The Right Thing.

Some few might even hope that an act of charity might cleanse their souls of past transgressions.

Still, he’d bet not one of them had transgressed as he had today.

The shabby motel room. The quick, no-emotion sex with a woman who was a stranger…

And,
Dio
, what was wrong with him?

Sex with a stranger? He’d done that before. Once at a masked ball in Venice, another time at a dinner high in the clouds at a Manhattan penthouse.

Exciting, each time.

As for what had happened today…

No emotion? There’d been plenty of emotion. Hunger. Heat.

And release.

He was a man, not a boy. Consensual sex of any kind was not a sin.

The jet was picking up speed.

He could feel the plane gathering itself for takeoff, for that power-pulsing climb that would leave the earth beneath its wings.

What had happened between him and the McKenna woman had been like that. The urgency. The rush. The sense of leaving all reality behind. Two people who’d just met, who had treated each other with cold removal…

But there’d been nothing cold about what happened in that room.

The sex had been like fire. Like flame. He had burned for her and he knew damn well that she had burned for him.

She used you.

Well, so what? They’d both gotten what they wanted.

She’d taken control of everything, from start to finish.

Yes, and what about it? He wasn’t a male chauvinist. He believed in gender equality.

Most men he knew would have been elated. Dammit,
he
should have been elated! A beautiful woman had driven him to a motel, torn off her clothes and his, and ridden him into ecstatic oblivion.

Still, there was something incredibly hot about a woman losing control under the stroke of a man’s hand. He thought about what it would be like to undress her with slow deliberation, to watch her eyes blur as he bared her, to hear her moans as he slid his hand between her thighs and felt her turning slick and wet for him…

No.

If he were with her now, he’d take her fast and hard, never mind those images of slow seduction; he’d tear off her jeans, her panties, bend her over the table, push himself into her again and again until she wept for mercy, for release, for him…

“
Merda!
”

Matteo looked up. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Luca said. “I’m fine.”

The hell he was!

The plane was big for a private jet, but not big enough for what he needed. A long walk. A five-mile run. A workout that would shut down his head, his hormones…

His insanity.

He unbelted, rose from the leather chair, went to the bar and poured himself some Johnny Walker Blue. Back in his seat, he sipped at the Scotch. Maybe it would ease the knot of anger lodged in his gut.

Luca turned his head and stared out the window.

The view was perfect. Pale blue sky. Cottony clouds.

Except, all he could see in his mind’s eye was Cheyenne McKenna as she must have looked when she rose from the bed, her expression dismissive, her interest centered on dressing as quickly as possible without waking him so she could sneak away from that small, barren room.

Away from him. From the possibility of his waking and wanting another performance, because that was what the entire incident had been, a performance, a woman wanting quick sex, no strings attached…

His hand tightened around the glass of whisky.

“Luca?”

Wham, bam, thank you ma’am, twenty-first century style.

“Luca!”

He turned toward Matteo. “What?” he snarled.

Matteo raised his eyebrows.

“You hold that glass any tighter, you’ll bust it.”

“What in hell are you talking about?”

Matteo jerked his chin toward Luca’s hand.

“Your knuckles,” he said quietly. “They’re white.”

Luca followed his brother’s gaze
.
His fingers were so tightly wrapped around the glass that he could feel them cramping. Deliberately, he relaxed his muscles and put the glass on the small table beside him.

“I guess that’s what happens when a man finally gets his hands on good Scotch,” he said with what he hoped was a smile.

“I take it that your morning with the McKenna woman was…interesting.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Hey! At least growl before you bite my head off. It meant exactly what I said. That your visit with her was probably interesting.”

“It wasn’t a visit. I offered to stand in for Travis. She accepted.” Luca heard the sharpness in his voice. Carefully, he picked up the glass and took a drink. The whisky was warm, smooth and soothing. “And that was it.”

“It was even money on which one of you would make it through the morning alive,” Matteo said, grinning. “Devoted brother that I am, my money was on you.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Was the property any good?”

“The land was okay.”

“The buildings?”

“One good barn. The other outbuildings, the house—all write-offs.”

“The house isn’t worth repairing?”

“Not if you’re sane, no.”

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad.”

“How’d she take the news?”

Luca took a long swallow of Scotch. “Not well. She has a mind of her own.”

“Uh huh. We kind of figured she’d give you a rough time.”

Luca looked at his brother. “Were Cheyenne McKenna and I a topic of conversation after we left?”

“No,” Matteo said quickly, “of course not.”

“But you talked about me. About me going with her.”

“Hell, dude, I’m not part of whatever’s biting you.”

Luca felt a muscle jump in his cheek. He raised his glass. It was empty. He got to his feet, went to the bar and refilled it.

“Sorry. I’m tired, that’s all. Still feeling the effects of last night, I guess.”

“Yes.” Matteo leaned into the aisle and looked back at his sisters. Both had fallen asleep, Bianca with her iPad on the floor beside the loveseat, Alessandra with her magazine open and forgotten in her lap. “The girls are completely exhausted,” he said softly.

“It was one hell of a night. And I have to admit, I never imagined it would end with us breaking bread with the Wildes.”

“Breaking blueberry muffins, you mean.”

Luca smiled. “She’s a good cook, that Lissa.”

“She is.” Matteo paused. “They’re nice people. And, like it or not, they’re our brothers and sisters.”

“Half-brothers and half-sisters. But I’m not ready to think of them that way.”

“To be honest, I’m not quite there, either. But it’s a truth we can’t walk away from.”

“A biological truth. The rest will take time.”

Matteo nodded. His email program pinged; frowning, he read the note that had just appeared, typed a quick reply and looked at Luca again.

“One of my clients is divorcing his wife. I told him I don’t like to handle divorces.”

“No. Why would you? All that drama.”

“Exactly. A man loses his grip on reality, says ‘I do’ and pledges his love forever. A few years later he comes to his senses, realizes he’s made a terrible mistake…and the only ones who benefit are the lawyers.”

“Unless the man is the world-famous spy-and-general, John Hamilton Wilde.” Luca sighed. “Sorry. Let’s forget about him for a while. So what did you tell your client?”

“That I’d take the case.” Matteo shrugged. “I’ve known him for years. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him ‘no,’ especially when his greedy, soon-to-be-ex will try to take him for every cent he has.”

Luca raised his glass to his brother. “Who would have known that a lawyer could have a heart?”

Matteo smiled, set aside his computer, rose to his feet and went to the bar.

“And a bank account. Some legal eagle will benefit from this mess. It might as well be me.” The brothers laughed. Matteo poured himself a drink and went back to his seat. “So, after you left, Travis told us he had never seen the ranch the McKenna woman bought, but he didn’t expect it would amount to much. He said the place had been on the market for a couple of years and he’d heard it was because it would take a big infusion of cash to make Running Water, whatever it’s called, operable.”

“Sweetwater,” Luca said, and took another mouthful of whisky.

“Right. Sweetwater. A good name. At least there’s something sweet about the lady.”

But there was more than that that was sweet about Cheyenne McKenna. The feel of her skin. The scent of her hair. The taste of her mouth.

“Besides her looks, I mean.”

Luca grunted. “She’s okay.”

“Okay?” Matteo rolled his eyes. “Did you not see that face? That body? Definitely a woman made to… What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” Luca snapped. “Nothing at all.”

“I only said—”

“I heard what you said! Is that all you can think about? Sex?”

“
Dio!
”
Matteo shot a glance at their sleeping sisters. “Keep it down,” he hissed.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“So what will she do with the property now that you’ve told her it’s a disaster waiting to happen?”

“How would I know?” Luca tipped the glass to his mouth and downed the remaining whisky. “Dynamite and a bulldozer was my advice.”

“And?”

A quick shrug of the shoulders. “And, she doesn’t take advice very well.”

“You think she’ll rebuild anyway?”

“I just told you, I don’t know.”

“If she does, will she contact you?”