Authors: Talyn Scott
“Well, good luck rooting for the firehouse tonight, ladies.” He pecked Libby on the cheek. Libby was brushing Payton’s hair, twirling her long curls around her fingers until they looked like red velvet ribbons. Turning to Payton, he looked at her hard. “There was another delivery for you while you were in the shower.” He kissed her temple, his lips lingering longer than necessary, causing Libby to raise a questioning brow.
“What delivery?”
Noah never answered, was gone so quickly Payton’s stomach gave another anxious squeeze. Then she heard the loft door clicking shut. Payton spun around and then gasped in delight when her trumpet skirt whooshed around her knees.
“You’re going to kill it on the dance floor.” Libby tapped her chin with her fingertips, circling Payton, her long nails tipped in silver. “Do you remember how to waltz?”
“Yes, how can I forget sitting through all your ballroom lessons, and then you practicing on me.”
Libby made a face. “At least, they’ve paid off recently, with all these events.” She pulled her to the hallway. “Let’s see what this delivery is all about.”
Payton couldn’t walk fast, her thighs and knees tight in the dress, and she heard Libby hoot when she reached the great room. “What is it?”
“Brut champagne, it’s truly from France, not sparkling wine!”
Thinking she could use a drink before they faced another party with Sarasota’s rich and famous, she suggested, “Pop it and I’ll grab some glasses.”
“It’s Krug Clos d’Ambonnay nineteen-ninety-five!”
Growing up in an affluent household, Libby held a wealth of information, had friends in high places. Sometimes her upbringing came in handy, particularly since her father bought three plates for tonight’s Sarasota Burn Recovery Dinner. Its purpose to raise money for a much-needed, state-of-the-art life flight, a lifesaving helicopter with a hefty multi million-dollar price tag. Though kept from the press, Libby had found out that this evening’s festivities were sponsored by none other than Drake Easton, one of the assholes pressing the Easton’s suit against the firehouse.
Payton’s mouth watered for the champagne. “So, nineteen-ninety-five isn’t that old.”
“You wouldn’t dare drink this stuff! Not when we need money to finish the bathroom in apartment C.”
“We need nineteen-hundred dollars for that bathroom,” Payton said, lifting her hands in a so-what gesture.
“E-bay!” Libby wagged the bottle. “I wouldn’t let it go for less than twenty-eight hundred bucks. We’ll have money to spare.” She chewed her lip. “Well, that is if you are donating it to our cause.”
Twenty-eight hundred dollars? “Of course, I would donate it to our cause, if I were keeping it.” She marched to the basket filled with boxes and boxes of confections, colored salts, cheeses, and crackers labeled in French, to search for the card. “Flowers are one thing, extravagant gifts are another.”
“If this is from Avery Easton,” Libby hooted again, spinning with the bottle in hand, “the cost of this champagne is nothing to him.”
“That doesn’t make it right,” Payton argued hotly. “And put that down before I don’t have to worry about returning it.” She searched again. “There’s no card.”
“Perfect, then you won’t have to worry about returning it, since you don’t know the sender,” she argued just as hotly, moving to the small sideboard next to their round dinette. Bending, Libby placed the bottle in a basket woven of grapevines and filled with her grandmother’s linen napkins. “For now, this is the safest nest for our little egg.” She stood, tugged the strapless top of her indigo, beaded Chanel dress, before snagging her silk wrap and matching beaded purse. With her blonde hair flowing like spun gold around her shoulders, Libby was a walking fantasy.
“Lib, you might have to use your pepper spray tonight.”
“I’ll end up using it on myself, if this night’s another bust.” She sighed. “Let’s go. Every minute counts. I’ll drive.”
Libby’s car was a two-seater, and Payton questioned, “Isn’t Stephen escorting you?”
“No.”
“I figured you’d given him Noah’s seat.” Libby and Stephen had been dating for six months.
“Stephen’s company is catering a wedding of six-hundred in St. Petersburg.”
“Wow.” Payton slid the coordinating black wrap over one shoulder, smiling as it set off the flocked overlay on her dress. After digging grout from beneath her nails and clipping bits of dried sealant from her hair, the pleasure of dressing up in clothes she could never afford and participating in a party she wouldn’t have otherwise been invited, without Libby’s interference, was nothing short of exhilarating. “But we’ll see your father tonight, right?”
“Dad’s not feeling well,” she explained, locking the loft door as they stepped on the front landing.
Payton lifted her trumpet skirt as high as it could go and took a tentative step down. If she didn’t ass-plant, it would be a miracle. “I’m sorry to hear that. I hope it’s not the flu.”
“It’s not.” Her face flashed concern, but she offered nothing else.
A half hour later, Libby handed her keys over to the valet as they entered the Hytel Plume. “Remember, Drake Easton is our targeted asshole.”
“If only we could trust Avery to help us.”
“We can’t trust anyone in that family. Did you study the pic I texted you.”
“Yes. I could pick Drake Easton out of any lineup.”
“Perfect,” Libby said, taking in the sizable crowd, “because we’ll have to split up.” A man with a walking cane stopped cold, his unusual eyes drinking Libby in slowly as though he were memorizing her. “Remember, no drinking, Pay, club soda for you. Got it?”
“Got it.” Payton discreetly glanced between the man and Libby. “This really hot guy is…oh, never mind, you have Stephen and he’s a keeper.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, her smile uncharacteristically brittle, “Stephen is a keeper.”
Libby turned on sparkling heels, disappearing into the crowd, right as a voice descended on Payton’s ear.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
Oh, she knew that voice. Turning around, she lost her breath in a rush of air as she greeted Dylan Easton, “Good evening, Mr. Easton.” The firehouse’s future was too important so Payton bit back what she really wanted to say - how he’d dumped her on a staircase with a sneer, and smiled warmly. His eyes roamed her, moving from forehead to chin, repeatedly, as he closed the distance between them. He appeared startled, reminding her of Avery when he had seen her face for the first time yesterday. She felt her smile slip. Others were beginning to stare. “Is something wrong?”
Unknotting his jaw, Dylan recomposed himself instantly, flashing a playboy’s smile. “I thought I’d dreamt you,” he purred intimately, his hand clasping hers, lifting her knuckles to his mouth for a warm kiss. The action struck a heady cord deep within her body, waking up places he’d toyed with the night he’d kissed her in the corridor. “Well,” he prompted. “Shall we dance?”
Could any woman tell Dylan Easton no? “Yes.”
He moved her hand to his forearm and walked her around the outskirts of the circular room, the floor a lightly veined marble inlaid with a burgundy sunburst outwardly spiking symmetrical triangles. Flamboyant crystal chandeliers glistened, all woven with colorful plumes. Payton’s head started to swim when Dylan brought them close, placing a possessive hand against her lower back where she hadn’t enough fabric between them to miss the hot brand of his skin claiming hers. And then they swayed gently to the music.
“I regret my behavior in the tower,” he explained, his thighs touching hers, the rise and fall of his chest meeting her breasts. “I’d like to blame it on alcohol, but I’m no liar. I was leery of your purpose and acted like a typical brat, for that I’m sorry.”
Turning away from the intensity of his aqua-colored gaze, she smiled widely as Libby twirled by with a man twice her age, his stare blatantly fixated on the curvature of her breasts. “I hope you patched things up with your…” Conquest, fuck buddy, the gorgeous blonde who warned Payton against pursuing him.
“No, you don’t.” Dylan spun her in a tight circle, keeping her near a gas lit fireplace and away from the crowd when a rather attractive man tried to cut-in. Without a trace of arrogance, he added, “Or you wouldn’t have kissed me after she bolted.”
Oh, he was pretty and smart, a powerful combination. “I’m afraid I was quite wasted, Mr. Easton.”
“I hear Mr. Easton all day.” His hand on her lower back, his fingers grazed the top of her ass. “You will call me Dylan from now on.”
“All right, Dylan.” She had no clue what heated her more, the flaming fireplace or the blistering man. A bead of perspiration made its way down her cleavage, which didn’t go unnoticed by Dylan. “Like I said, I was wasted. Normally, I don’t make out with strangers in corridors or stairways.” She cleared her throat and his eyes snapped up from her breasts, their heat magnifying by a thousand degrees.
“Blame it on the drink, if you must. But there’s something to be said about freeing your inhibitions, Payton, and I think you were free that night.” He leaned down, closing their distance in height, and pressed his warm lips against the tender hollow beneath her ear. “With me.”
Another whirl placed his knee briefly between her thighs. Although her dress was uncomfortably tight, her slight thong offered no protection and she melted for him intimately. Since she had also melted for Avery just yesterday, similarly moving against Dylan should bother her somewhat. Shouldn't it? “Tonight, I won’t be drinking, so my inhibitions will stay in check,” she warned, pressing her hand against his chest and feeling his heart thundering beneath her fingertips, moving her other hand to his biceps.
Dylan lifted his head from her ear, now looking down at her. “Are you implying you need a drink to want me?”
“No, I’m saying we won’t be repeating what happened.” Her internet sleuthing confirmed that Dylan Easton was a proven man-whore, a classic heartbreaker she’d best avoid outside her dreams, though she still had to think of the firehouse. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be friends.”
“Friends?” Dylan Easton may be a rich playboy with a breezy desk job and jet setting lifestyle, but his frame was that of a warrior, nearly the same as Avery. His dirty blonde hair sleeked back from his forehead, his roguish stubble shining flaxen under the chandeliers, his eyes glistening from the leaping flames in the nearby hearth, the aqua swirling into a turbulent sea-foam. “So that’s it? This is where we stand?” A wave of rippling muscles stiffened his body. “ A few days ago we shared an intense attraction, which only whetted my appetite, and now you’re saying its over.”
“People are staring.”
“That’s my life, every move recorded, reviewed, and judged by strangers.” Cupping her elbow, Dylan smiled and nodded politely at onlookers when they passed through the crowd. He easily directed her to a darkened corridor fashioned with a mirror-tiled archway. Sconces lit the way, but they weren’t welcoming when coupled with his sudden frosty demeanor, his purposeful gait. After they emerged in the back of Hytel Plume’s lobby, two women literally dove at him, their five-inch heels clattering on the hand painted tiles, their perfectly plucked eyebrows alight with surprise and desire. Neither of them cared he had his hand on Payton. He shook his head no, stopping the women midway with a chilling glare, and steered Payton to an imposing limestone wall supporting three gilded cage elevators.
Gaping at the elevators, Payton hadn’t even detected the opening he discretely ushered her through before they were inside a small room the size of the three elevator cars. He slid the mahogany, pocket door closed, locking it with an ominous click. An overstuffed, one-armed velvet sofa lined one mirrored wall, covered in the exact plum she’d seen in the grand foyer of the hotel. Against the opposite narrow wall — this one also mirrored, was a high side table in the same mahogany as the door, its dark wood gleaming from two sconces flanked three feet apart. The side table held nothing other than a replica rotary phone in black and white. At least, she thought it was a replica.
Avoiding the velvet sofa, she dropped her purse on the side table, leaning her butt on its edge and crossing her arms over her chest. “How many women have you brought here for privacy?”
“Are you jealous?”
Unfortunately, she was, but she wasn’t divulging that minor tidbit. “I won’t be anyone’s faceless notch.”
“I haven’t been in here since I was a child, hiding from my aunt after I got kicked out of boarding school for the third, fourth, or maybe the fifteenth time.”
“I didn’t realized your family owned this hotel, too.” So after his parents had died in the tower fire, his aunt had been appointed his guardian. “Well, with all those camera phones waiting to go off when we crawl out of here, I’ll be posted online as your,” she stalled when she looked into his eyes. Could that be raw vulnerability hidden behind the mask of a reckless playboy?
He stepped forward, his body a hairsbreadth from hers. “I’ll have my publicist make an official statement to the contrary.”
A nice offer that wouldn’t work. “Don’t bother.” Her eyes dropped from his face, admiring how his shoulders filled out his tuxedo. Dylan had omitted the goofy bow tie most men wore, replacing it with a thin, cream silk necktie that had to have cost more than her old Corolla was worth. “I think an official statement would stir more interest. Don’t you?”
Holding out his hand, he waited patiently until she slipped her palm in his. “Of course it would, but I refuse to have you labeled as one of my lays.”
“Dylan Easton, you confuse me.”
“Ditto, but there isn’t enough confusion in the world to ruin this moment for me.” Lowering himself on the small sofa, his legs spread wide in that guy way, he pulled Payton next to him.
“This isn’t a moment.” Shifting until she was able to sit comfortably without ripping her borrowed dress, she inhaled slowly but it didn’t help, her lungs now filled with scents of him. One inch separated their bodies, and Payton’s anxiety spiked with thoughts of falling into Dylan’s well-worn trap. No matter what she pretended, she was over her head for him.
“Payton,” he commanded, curling his finger under her chin and preventing her from hiding, “forget everything but breathing.”