HiddenDepths (3 page)

Jack laughed. Any girl Carlo set his sights on wouldn’t keep
her virginity for long. Not that he gave a rat’s ass about his companion’s sex
life, but he wanted to be congenial, so he said, “Oh? Who would that be?”

“The
alluring
Miss Prentiss.” He said it as if it was
some kind of a title. “Look at this.” Whipping out his phone, he brought up an
image, showing it as proudly as he would a wedding picture. Pathetic. It was a
shot of a brunette scowling at the camera. She was pretty enough, but
really…what nonsense.

“She’s going to bear my children someday,” Carlo said,
although his attention had drifted from the photo or even the television screen
to a lush redhead who slid into the barstool two down from him. He smiled at
the flesh-and-blood alternative to his goddess and started to slip his phone
back into his pocket.

“Wait a minute.” Something about the woman in the photo
seemed familiar. “Let me see that.”

Carlo handed him the phone, turning to the girl next to him
and saying offhandedly to the bartender, “This lovely woman’s drink is on me.”

Jack stopped paying attention to Bruscinni. The car mogul
was going to blow him off anyway and not invest in Jack’s latest attempt to
heave himself back into the style to which he had been accustomed and had been
sadly lacking due to his personal finances as of late.

He stared at the picture. Jesus, he knew who that looked
like. The high cheekbones, the full lips, even the coloring.

Just
like her.

Not sure what he could do with the observation, but it was
interesting. After a minute more of staring, he handed the phone back to Carlo
and got up. “Perhaps we should speak another time.”

Carlo, not taking his eyes off the redhead, nodded and Jack
left the bar, ignoring the bartender who at the last minute held up his check.
At least he’d stuck Bruscinni with his bar tab.

He was going to pay his old friend Damien Reynolds a visit
tomorrow. He’d see if the resemblance held up in person. And then, who knew?

* * * * *

The penthouse suite at the Wrentham was old-fashioned but
simple. Just as Evan liked things. Or furnishings anyway. Solid-oak floors
without a lot of fussy carpets. Big pieces of dark wood with ample cushion
crafted for utilitarian purposes like sitting and sleeping. And fucking.

He wasn’t old-fashioned about sex, by any means. Up-front
attitudes about sex were one of the few ways in which modern society had
progressed from frontier days in his book. So he wasn’t judging Andrea Prentiss
for hooking up with him. Hell no. He was just pissed she hadn’t told him who
she was and had let him think she was the escort he hired. He felt as if an
elaborate joke had been played on him.

Of course, since the sex was so good, he was willing to
forgive and forget.

He looked at his watch. An hour or two, she had said. It was
three by now. Pushing open the balcony door, he went out into the fresh night
air. Or as fresh as New York air got. It had rained torrentially earlier in the
day but it was dry now, the air moist and the elevation of his balcony isolating
him from some of the deafening block of sound he always noticed when he visited
New York these days. Sound so loud you could hear it through a locked window
until you got up forty stories or so. Sometimes it took higher. He put his
hands on the cold wrought-iron railing and looked down at the blinking lights
of the city. God, he hated New York. He felt lonelier in this place packed wall
to wall with people than he did alone on his island. Trite maybe, but true.
Usually he got laid and left. He couldn’t get out fast enough. But Andrea
Prentiss had kept him here this time. Good thing too, since he would have
wanted to be there for Michael anyway.

But Michael was going to be fine. It was himself he wasn’t
so sure about.

By the time it got to four hours since she had promised to
meet him, he was annoyed. As the only laid-back loner in a family of
domineering males, Evan wasn’t used to being pissed off or impatient,
especially over a woman. He sincerely hoped one more round in the sack with
Andrea Prentiss would get it out of his system and he could go back to the
serenity of his real life.

The doorbell rang. He had left word at the desk to let
Miss
Prentiss
up whenever she arrived. At the sight of her when he opened the
front door to the suite, he forgave her immediately. God, she was lovely, with
white skin and red lips and hair so sable brown it could have been mink. How
had he ever mistaken her for a whore? Class radiated from her, her heart-shaped
chin tilted up slightly.

She had a raincoat on in deference to the previous showers
and when she unbelted it, he was sort of disappointed she wasn’t naked
underneath. But her outfit, like everything else about her, screamed class. A
black satin shift, not too clingy, not too short, and pointy black heels that
made her almost as tall as he was. Her hair was up again, but this time in a
loose knot at her neck.

She swept past him, dropping her expensive Louis Vuitton bag
onto a chair.

“You’re late,” he noted, shutting the door behind her.

“Oh my goodness. Is my reservation gone?”

Her comment made him feel petty, especially since he had
probably never complained about anyone being late in his entire adult life. He
was the one who was always late, and if by some miracle the other person he was
meeting was even later, it made no difference to him. He usually felt as if he
had all the time in the world. But waiting for Andrea Prentiss, he had been as
anxious as a kid waiting for the circus—or waiting for his half-assed father to
pick him up to take him there—and he didn’t like the flashback. He tried to
reclaim some of his usual cool as she shrugged out of her raincoat and he hung
it on a hanger in the front closet. “You get up all right?”

“Of course. They know me at the front desk.”

“Do this a lot, do you?” he joked, but it didn’t quite come
off.

She paused. “I mean because of my work with Mr. Reynolds.
I’ve had dealings with all the better hotels.”

“Why do you keep calling Michael ‘Mr. Reynolds’?” he
snapped. “It’s creepy.”

Her chin hiked up a little higher. “I’m not interested in
your impressions of my vernacular. Or in your assessment of ‘creepy’. Some
people might think it was ‘creepy’ to arrange for a prostitute to come service
you at a family party.”

“Not you, though, I guess.”

“On the contrary, I found it heartwarming. I admire
multitasking.”

Her delivery was so deadpan she could have made it as a
stand-up comic and he found himself inadvertently laughing. So in the spirit of
friendlier relations, he pitched an obvious softball. “So what are you
interested in, then?”

She cocked her head. “I thought we’d already established
that. Where’s the bedroom?”

Okay, now nobody could ever say Evan Reynolds wasn’t cool
with anonymous sex. More than cool with it. He preferred it. Even more
specifically, right at this moment, he preferred it with her.

So why was he hesitating?

He had no idea why, but he was rooted to the spot for a
second instead of springing forward to the main act as he should have done at
her question.

She found the bedroom without any help from him, though, just
wandering off in the right direction, and he followed. Once she was by the bed,
she reached for the side zipper of her dress, not looking at him. Stunning
himself, he said, “Hold on a minute.”

She glanced his way.

“Is this your thing?” he asked vaguely.

“Is what my thing?”

He looked her up and down. “Does it turn you on to be
treated like a whore?”

“I don’t know. Does it turn you on to treat a woman like a
whore?”

“Only when she
is
one. When she isn’t—and doesn’t let
me in on the fact—it sort of pisses me off.”

She sat on the bed. “Yes, I’m sure you were quite put out by
the whole episode at your father’s party. Are you planning to lecture me now?”
She slipped off her shoes and crossed her smooth, bare legs, leaning back on
her palms. “Oh no, that’s right. You didn’t ask me here for a lecture. You—how
did you put it so eloquently at the hospital?—you wanted to fuck me again.”

The word on her prim and proper lips turned him on, much
more than if she had actually been the hired escort he had thought her originally.
Not sure what that said about him, he asked the question he really wanted her
to answer. “Why did you go along with it? At the party, I mean.”

“You didn’t give me much of a chance to object, if I
recall.”

The unexpected response infuriated him. “Bullshit. You
could’ve spoken up at any time. Instead you stripped when I told you to strip
and climbed into bed with me and let me fuck you without breathing a word of
who you really were.”

“What difference did it make who I was? I was still a
stranger to you and you were still exceedingly,” she pursed her plush lips
delicately, “
enthusiastic
about the whole process. Does this have
something to do with not paying after all? Do you feel as if you walked out on
the check at a restaurant or some such thing?”

“Wow. Great self-esteem, Miss Prentiss. Really.”

“I have all the self-esteem I need, Evan. All the analysis
too, thanks. But maybe you should try some. Analysis, I mean. I’m starting to
suspect there may be some latent Madonna-versus-whore conflict going on in that
handsome head of yours. Are you worried you defiled me by sleeping with me?
Because I assure you I was perfectly fine with it. I wouldn’t be here
otherwise.”

“Perfectly fine with it.” He snorted, not even touching the
“handsome head of yours” bullshit. “So you just wanted to fuck? Is that it?”

“Is that so hard to believe?”

“Not for me, but I get the feeling you have a pretty uptight
rep.”

She shrugged. “You’ve been listening to gossip, haven’t you?
Let’s just say I don’t like to be approached in the workplace.”

“But at a party where you’re delivering your boss some
papers, it’s okay.”

“You were refreshingly forthright at the party, Evan, but
I’m finding you a touch obtuse right now. What are you trying to get at?”

He looked at her, hard.

“Nothing,” he said disgustedly. What was he getting at
anyway? That he was
special
to the frosty Miss Prentiss
?
That he
had gone where no man dared to go before or some crap? Christ, maybe he had
been on his island too long. Maybe he did need some psychoanalysis, a self-help
tool he had always disdained in favor of picking up a hammer and nails and
pounding away at something.

He whipped his shirt over his head. “Never mind. You want to
fuck? Let’s fuck. But if you really want to play the whore, you’ll have to do a
little more work than you did the other night.”

“I was under the impression you enjoyed our interlude. But
of course what did you expect? You get what you pay for and it was free, after
all.”

He closed the distance between them, shoving her to lie back
on the bed and climbing on top of her. “Oh I was perfectly fine with it.” He
echoed her earlier words. “I like fucking whores. But I was in a bit of a rush,
as you might recall, and we can elaborate on the scenario tonight. Let’s see if
you enjoy it not only when you’re treated like a whore but when you
act
like one as well.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“How many guys have you slept with, Andrea?”

For some reason, that question seemed to penetrate her cool.
She colored, a dusky rose appearing on those creamy pale cheekbones. “Not as
many as whoever you were expecting that night, I’m sure. Did she eventually
show up, by the way?”

He reached down to tug her dress up a little so he could
better fit between her thighs and she widened them obligingly. “She did, as a
matter of fact. But you’d already spoiled me for her.”

One smooth brown eyebrow arched. “Given your vigor, I admit
I’m surprised by that.”

His “vigor” was asserting itself right now in the cradle of
her legs as he held her hands high above her head, and he smiled. “I don’t mean
I couldn’t get it up with her. I mean after you, I didn’t want to.”

“You’ll turn my head with compliments like that.”

He kissed her, slow and long and thorough. And she
responded, tugging her hands free to bring them to the back of his neck,
sifting through the hair at his nape, causing him to shiver. She didn’t taste
chocolaty as he imagined she would have if he had kissed her at the hospital.
She tasted fresh and clean and lemony, as if she’d had hot tea before she came
here.

Pulling back a fraction, he whispered, “I want to feel your
hands on me.”

Her breathing was low and fast.

“Your mouth on me,” he added, kissing her again in soft,
teasing caresses. “Would you like that?” he murmured. “That’s all I meant. I
want to know you’re into this.” He led her hand to the buttons on his jeans.
“So help me out here. I like to fuck naked. Remember?”

She unbuttoned his jeans slowly, not dropping eye contact,
and he relished the focus of her dark-blue eyes combined with her attentions
below. By the time she was done his cock was throbbing so hard through his
briefs he could have mounted her with them still on. He’d fucked her so fast
and so eagerly last time that he hadn’t even paid attention to whether she’d
come. He was going to remedy that this time. And they had all night.

Though her long fingers were delicately strumming the length
of him through the cotton, causing him almost mesmerizing shivers of
excitement, he took a deep breath and forced himself to roll off her, sitting
up.

“I thought you wanted me to undress you,” she said softly.

“I do.” He urged her to sit up as well. “Just not yet. I
kind of liked the stripping part last time.
You
stripping. Let’s do that
again.”