Take Me (Take Me 1)

“Relax,” he said, “I’m not here to malign your precious big sister.”

“Watch who you’re calling big,” she said as she approached him, a menacing look in her eyes.

Travis held his hands up and took a step back. “I didn’t mean big as in big,” he said. “I meant big as in older.”

“Whatever,” she said, not looking the least bit appeased by his explanation. “Tell me what you want, then get out.”

“I need an entire wardrobe for Lily.”

“What?”

“By tonight.”

“Excuse me?”

“For Tuscany.”

Janica sat down heavily on a dusty windowsill. “You’ve completely lost me. When did Lily make plans to go to Tuscany?” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “And what do you have to do with the trip?”

“I’ve hired her to furnish one of my clients’ houses. We’re going on a quick buying trip.”

“You’re kidding me,” Janica exclaimed, before her doubts returned full force. “Then again, I shouldn’t be so excited. I’m sure you have a perfectly nefarious reason for asking her to do this. You always do. Just like that time you showed up at Luke’s house with some total slut and completely ruined her birthday dinner. I know you did it on purpose, just to hurt her, shoving some skinny bitch in her face like that.”

Travis tried to shake of a sense of guilt that he felt at Janica’s words. Sure, he might have accidentally crashed Lily’s birthday party a year ago, and he might be taking Lily to Italy out of some self-serving need to get her out of his system, to teach her what happened to women who dared to say that he wasn’t a good lover; but in his own defense, hadn’t he just given her the professional opportunity of a lifetime?

The fact that it was one he knew she couldn’t say no to, one that included rights to her body whenever he so desired, didn’t make it any more unfair than business as usual, did it?

So what if all the balls happened to be in his court? It happened to be where he liked all of the balls to be. Which only made him think of the way she had caressed his balls earlier by the pool___

Forcing himself to turn off his libido, Travis deftly switched the facts around to suit his needs. “She quit her job at Barker’s yesterday.” It was the truth, or nearly, even though he was leaving off some pertinent details, like the fact that he was the one who convinced Lily to quit. Hopefully, if he presented it right, he could get Janica off the scent of his actual nefariousness. “I found out about it and wanted to help her out.”

“You wanted to help her out?” Janica’s disbelief rang out loud and clear. “I never would have expected this in a million, billion years,” she muttered. Staring at him, no, staring straight through him with those damn all-seeing Ellis eyes, so much like Lily’s, Travis saw the first hint of smile and wondered where it was coming from.

“Tell me what you need,” she said, her demeanor changing from black to bright white. “If I have anything to do with it, Lily is going to look like a goddess in Italy, you can count on that.”

Janica picked up her phone the minute Travis left the office. “Luke,” she said, calling her sister’s best friend. “It’s Janica.”

“Is Lily all right?”

Janica had always appreciated how well Luke looked after her sister. She used to wonder why they weren’t boyfriend-girlfriend, but over the years, Janica had decided it was a good thing. Maybe one day she could convince Luke to see her as a woman instead of Lily’s kid sister.

“She’s fine, at least I think she is.” Getting straight to the point, she said, “I heard that Lily went home with you after the fashion show. Is that true?”

The line was silent for several long moments. “Not exactly,” he finally said.

Her suspicions about Travis’s impromptu visit grew. “Were you even at my show?”

Luke cleared his throat. “No. I got called into the ER. It was really bad timing on my part, and I wish I had it to do over.”

Janica pieced two and two together and unfortunately it was exactly what she had already deduced.

“You sent Travis in your place, didn’t you?”

Luke sighed. “I’m afraid so.”

“How could you?” she exploded, forgetting for the moment that she lusted after Luke. It was one thing for Travis to treat her sister like she wasn’t good enough for him—at least you knew a self-important snake when you saw him slithering around—but it was worlds worse for a nice guy like Luke to turn on the person she loved most in the world.

“How could you have done something so… so awful? You of all people know how he ignores her. He acts like she doesn’t even matter.” Luke was silent as she fumed, which pissed Janica off more. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

He let out a long breath. “I blew it. Trust me, I’ve been beating myself up for it ever since.”

Janica hmmphed. That was more like it. He should feel bad, she thought. Luke’s thoughtlessness had caused Lily no end of problems. In the back of Janica’s mind, it occurred to her that maybe she had been the start of Lily’s problems: After all, if she hadn’t forced Lily to be in the fashion show, then Travis wouldn’t have come in Luke’s place.

No, she thought, I won’t blame myself. Why should I when it’s clearly Luke’s fault? Forcing any traces of guilt from her mind, she worked to get the rest of the facts straight. “So Lily went home with Travis?”

“Janica,” he said, not bothering to hide his growing impatience, “maybe you should be asking Lily these questions.”

Janica snorted. “Yeah right. Like she’d tell me anything. She would never talk to me about her sex life in a million years. She still thinks I’m twelve or something.” Just like you do, she almost said before she caught herself. Pausing to think things through, Janica said, “So she went home with Travis. But there’s no way they, you know…” She blushed furiously in the privacy of her design studio, glad that Luke couldn’t see how embarrassed she was. “So why is he taking her to Italy?” she added, speaking more to herself than to Luke.

“He’s what?”

“He just came by to pick up a complete wardrobe for her for their trip. For tomorrow.”

Fury bursting from every word, Luke said, “Janica, if you would excuse me, I need to go have a word with my brother to make sure that he treats Lily with the respect she deserves.”