Rocco and Mandy: A Red Team Wedding Novella (Book #6.5) (15 page)

“Okay, here they are.” She held them while Rocco then Mandy gave him a kiss.

“Goodnight, baby boy,” Mandy whispered.

“I’m not a baby, Mom. I’m a big brother,” he grumbled without even opening his eyes.

Mandy’s heart did a flip. She sent Rocco a look to see if he’d caught that. “That’s very true. And big brothers need their sleep. Sweet dreams!”

She looked at Rocco as Wynn carried Zavi away. His eyes were dark. Mandy reached out to touch his heart. He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Mrs. Silas, will you dance with me?”

A flash and a click came from across the room. Ace smiled at them as she lowered her camera. “That was a good one.”

Mandy couldn’t wait to see it—and all of the pictures Ace had snapped of her and the girls and the kids and the guys all day long. She hooked her arm through Rocco’s and let him lead her outside to the patio, where a couple of space heaters were warming the chilly autumn evening.

* * *

The room emptied of people as they spilled outside to watch Rocco and Mandy’s first dance. Owen wandered over to the bar in the living room. Selena followed him. By now several other couples were dancing. Val and Ace were standing at the edge of the patio, observing the dancers. She watched them as she leaned on the bar.
 

“What’s your pleasure?” Owen asked.

Selena straightened, trying to read between the lines of that question. There was always a “between the lines” with Owen. “What are you having?”

“Balcones.”

“That’s what I’ll have.”
 

Owen’s lips thinned. Did he not like her answer? Whatever. She wasn’t in the mood for a ladylike glass of wine. He splashed two fingers into an empty glass, added some ice, and handed it to her. She took a sip then turned to watch the couples on the patio.

Owen leaned on the counter. “You jealous?”

“Of whom?”

“Of Val with another female.”

Selena shook her head as she looked into the center of the amber liquid in her glass. “You guys are unbelievable.” She sipped the whiskey. “I fired him the same day I fired you.”

“Huh. So what do you make of her?”

“I’m still deciding.”

“She has eyes like yours, the eyes of a warrior.” He sighed. “There’s a difference, though. You’re one hundred percent a warrior.”

“And she’s more of an operative. I got that, too.”

Owen straightened and downed the rest of the whiskey in his glass. “Which begs the question, an operative for whom?”

* * *

Angel went up the back stairs to Rocco’s suite in the north bedroom wing. Casey was watching a marathon of some teen series she liked. “Hey, kiddo.”

“Hi, Angel. Have they cut the cake downstairs?”

“Not yet. Is Miss Wynn up here?”

“Yeah, she’s reading Zavi a story. It’s his third one. He won’t let her go. Mom said she’d bring me up a piece of cake if I stayed with Zavi.”

“That sounds like a good deal. I’ll remind her when I go back down. I’m going to see if I can rescue Miss Wynn.”

“Good luck with that.”
 

Angel stepped into Zavi’s room. He paused in the short hallway between Zavi’s closet and bathroom, listening to Wynn read a rhyme about three sketchy characters called Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. He closed his eyes, letting her voice slip inside him to soothe his frayed nerves. Her voice was soft, like her eyes, her skin, her body.
 

He looked out the open door, worried that Casey was watching him act like a voyeur of Zavi’s nanny. Luckily he was just out of sight of the kid…and Wynn. He stayed another minute, then walked further into Zavi’s room. Wynn was stretched out on the bed, cuddling Zavi. The light on the nightstand was dimmed. Either her vision was excellent, or she knew the poem by heart.
 

She looked up and smiled at him. Goddammit all. Just like that, he lost his fucking heart. She lifted a finger to her mouth, motioning him to silence. Zavi’s eyes were closed, his head lolling against Wynn’s ample breast.
 

Angel had never in his life been jealous of a little kid. Until now.

Wynn turned the last page of the book, where the mom in the story tucked her little sky travelers into bed. She eased herself from Zavi’s hold. Setting the book aside, she pulled his covers up, kissed his cheek, then turned off the light and tiptoed over to her shoes. She hooked her fingers through the back straps of her high-heeled sandals and moved quietly out to the sitting room.
 

Angel followed her, helpless to do anything else. She pulled the door to, then told Casey, “I’ll be right back.”

Angel shook his head. “No, she won’t. She’s going to play with the grownups for a while.”

Wynn gave Angel a look that was hard to interpret. They walked side by side out of Rocco’s suite and into the hall of the main house. Midway down it, she stopped Angel. “I think it’s best if I stay up here.”

“I think it’s best if you come down and dance with me.”

She gave a quick shake of her head. “Angel…dancing with you would be…inappropriate.”

He grinned. A dance wasn’t nearly as inappropriate as everything else he wanted to do with her. “Don’t make me suffer through yet another wedding. Alone.”

“Have there been a lot of weddings?”

“This is the third since we got here. There has to be a record somewhere that we’re breaking.”

She smiled at him. Suddenly, his fingertips were on her face. Her skin was like rose petals. He bent close. Her lips parted. He stopped short of kissing her. She thought she was forbidden fruit. Maybe she was. Maybe he’d let her think it mattered. For a little bit longer, anyway, long enough for them to get to know each other better.
 

“One dance, Wynn. What harm can that do?” He bent lower, almost touching his cheek to the velvety skin of her neck. “Come be with the grownups for a little while. Quit hiding behind the kids.”
 

Anger flashed in her blue-brown eyes. “I’m not hiding behind the kids. They’re my job.”

“You’re off the clock tonight.”

“I’m a live-in nanny. I’m never really off the clock.”

Angel lifted her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist, watching the gooseflesh he’d raised on her skin.
 

She pulled free. “This isn’t going anywhere.”

“Not yet it isn’t.”

“Not ever.”

He took her hand and started down the hall toward the bridge. “We’ll see.”

She stopped. “I mean it, Angel.”

He stepped into her space. “How can you be sure when we haven’t even had our first kiss? Aren’t you curious to know what we’d be like together?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

She looked back toward Rocco’s suite, but the bend in the hall hid them from Casey. “One kiss, then,” she whispered. “One kiss to end this.”

Angel slowly smiled. He touched her face with the fingertips of both hands. “Good to know one kiss will do it for us. I’ll hold off on it for a while, then. I don’t want to lose you so soon.”

Val carried two mugs of coffee out to the patio. It was the first time that day that Ace had actually removed her camera. It was almost as if she used it as a shield. Ivy had asked her to come over early in the day to capture all of the wedding preparations. He, Ivy, and the other girls had escorted her wherever she needed to be around Blade’s the whole day. He’d gotten to spend a lot of time with her, which he’d enjoyed more than he should have—although he didn’t like being banished from Mandy’s room, which she’d done without remorse.

“Brought you some coffee.” He looked around and realized they had the patio to themselves. “Don’t think you need a second wind, though. Looks like everyone’s quitting for the night.”

Ace stared down at her camera in a pensive way.
 

“Ace?” Val prompted, worried at her silence.

“You have a nice thing going here, Val.”

“I do.” He sat on a two-seater and looked up at her. When she finally looked at him, her pale green eyes were awash with tears. She blinked, then looked beyond him for a second. “You ever feel like you’re just waiting for your life to start?”

He considered that. “No.”

She glanced down at her camera again, absently touching it. “Sometimes I think I’m not real at all. That I only live in the two-dimensional images of my photo journals.”

“You have photo journals?”

She nodded. “I have pics of everything.”

“I’d like to see them sometime. Or are they private?”

“Some are private. I could show you some of the others.”

He reached over and caught her hand. “Will you show me the photos you took today?”

She nodded and sat next to him—so close that his body began to hum at the contact. He watched her tweak the camera until it was on the image she wanted. Her fingers were long and elegant, her nails painted a skin-tone pink, such a muted color for so vibrant a woman.

“I caught this one when Mandy was sitting quietly, looking out her window. The hairdresser had just stepped away for a few more hairpins, so there’s only the first braid in her hair.” There was another pic of Mandy and Ivy holding hands and laughing, their mouths open, their eyes shining. Val remembered that they’d been friends in high school—because of Kit—even though they were a few years apart.
 

Ace flipped through a couple dozen images. She’d done a hell of a job documenting something so fleeting that it would ordinarily only be known by a person’s heart: she’d captured the truth. All the myriad emotions of the day. The love Mandy and Rocco had for each other. Zavi’s curiosity. Everyone’s stress, joy, and hope.
 

“Jesus, Ace. These are phenomenal. You should do this for a living.”

Ace set the camera aside and shrugged. He handed her the coffee he’d brought. It had cooled considerably. “To do it for a living, you have to put roots down somewhere. It’s hard to build a clientele when you’re never in the same place for long.”

“So stay put.”

She looked up at him. “I can’t.”

“Why not? You know you can talk to me.”

She sipped her coffee. He was glad she hadn’t moved away. “It’s not the time to talk about it. Tomorrow, not today.” She shivered as she sipped her coffee. He shrugged out of his tux jacket and set it around her shoulders. She lifted the lapel and sniffed his scent. And damn if that didn’t give him an instant hard-on.
 

Her gaze moved over his face, settling on his mouth. “You’re a nice man, Val.” She sighed. So did he. Friend-zoned again. “I guess I better collect my things and head home.”

They went inside. The lights had been dimmed. The whole house was quiet. She looked around for her bag. She’d worn a different outfit when she arrived. “I put your bag in my room. Didn’t want it moved somewhere in the mayhem of the day. I’ll go get it.”

“I’ll come with you. I want to change before heading back.”

Val led the way down the hall to the back stairs leading up to the second floor of the south bedroom wing. He opened his door and held it for her, then closed it and flipped on the light.
 

Her satchel was on his bed. She kicked off her shoes then presented her back to him. “Can you undo my zipper?”

“Yes. One second.” He crossed to the other side of the room and pulled the drapes closed.
 

She was smiling at him when he walked back to her. “Afraid someone will see you with a woman in your room?”

He grinned. “Yeah. That would shock the hell out of everyone around here.” He pulled her zipper down, revealing that stunning butterfly. Unable to stop himself, he touched it, then traced the line of the butterfly’s body down her back. Her bra strap was narrow. The open zipper stopped at the dimples at the top of her hips.

She pulled her dress off and stepped out of it. He leaned on the dresser behind her and watched. Her body was slim but curvy. The thong she wore matched her bra. Her ass cheeks were toned and tight. It was a fucking curse that she thought he was gay. It seemed to make her feel safe with him—Fiona had been right in that observation. For that reason alone, he was letting it ride. For now. Seducing her wasn’t his mission. Getting info from her was.

She looked at his big bed, then pulled a black tank on. “I wish I could just crash.”

“You can,” he said, but the thought of having her in his bed the whole night and not being able to explore her curves and taste her sex was a cruel twist of fate. Guess that’s what people meant when they said karma was a bitch.
 

She pulled on a pair of skintight blue jeans. They looked more like sleeves than pants on her long legs. “What would your friends say if they saw I was still here in the morning?”

“There’s that.” Val shrugged. “I can drive you home, if you like.”

“No. I don’t like being without my wheels.” She pulled a loose beige top over her tank, then slipped into a jean jacket. She shoved her dress in her bag, put her camera in its bag, then stepped close and gave him a kiss on his cheek. “Night, Val.”

“When are we doing something again?” he asked, careful to use jargon well inside the friend zone.

“I’m coming over to talk to Owen tomorrow.”

Val frowned. “About what?”

She touched his chest and gave him a sad smile. “Tomorrow.” He followed her down the hall to the front stairs.
 

Max was coming down the hall from the den. “Ace, before you go, I’d like your memory cards.”

The request didn’t surprise her. She handed him her camera bag. “Have at it. I’ll pick it up tomorrow.”

Val opened the front door and walked her outside. She unlocked her car and tossed her bag in the back seat, then turned to face him. “Who are you, really, Ace?”

She sighed and looked over at the house. “I’m not ready to deal with reality yet, Val. Not so soon after a night like this. Tomorrow.”

“It’s already tomorrow.”

“I’ll be back in the morning.” She got in her car. Val stepped away so she could back up. He watched her go down the driveway.
 

He was still outside a minute later when Max came outside. “She sent some of the photos to herself,” he said.