“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?”
Luca rose again, walked to the bar, and reached for the bottle of Scotch. His head was buzzing. Well, no. Not really buzzing. A shot of Scotch wasn’t enough to make a man drunk—unless all he’d had to eat in the past umpteen hours was half a blueberry muffin and a belly full of bile.
Grim-faced, he put his empty glass on the granite countertop, then walked back to his seat.
“Luca? Do you expect to hear from her?”
“No,” he said flatly.
“Will you contact her?”
Luca looked at Matteo.
“Didn’t you hear what I said? If I don’t expect her to get in touch with me, why would I get in touch with her?”
“I don’t know. I just thought, you know, she’s a good-looking woman.”
“The world is full of good-looking women.”
“True, but this one—”
“I have work to do,” Luca said sharply. He picked up his iPhone and turned it on. “Surely, you do, too.”
“Bianca said she seemed familiar.”
“Who?” Luca said impatiently, as if he had no idea what his brother was talking about.
“Cheyenne McKenna. Bianca said—”
“Do you think we could stop talking about a woman none of us will ever see again?”
Matteo gave him a long, searching look. Then he tossed back his drink, set the glass aside and opened his computer. Seconds later, he was engrossed in reading and responding to the emails that had accumulated in the last couple of days.
Luca tried to do the same thing, but it didn’t work.
He was back in that cheesy motel room, his head filled with X-rated images.
And anger.
Why?
They’d had sex, and she’d left. So what? Why was he so pissed off?
She used you.
Back to that again. 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 control freak. He wasn’t into domination.
He wasn’t.
But he wanted to dominate her. He wanted to take charge, demand that she give herself to him, not just give herself but submit to him…
Every muscle in his body had turned to stone.
Basta! Enough of this nonsense.
He picked up his phone again, called up his emails and scanned them. There were messages from his various project managers, a note from a friend who would be travelling from Rome to New York in a couple of weeks, but most of the emails were updates and reminders from Jessica. He had a lunch appointment Wednesday with a client for whom he’d built homes on the Costa Brava and in Connecticut; the Wall Street Journal wanted an interview; he had been invited to a weekend in Bermuda and he’d yet to respond.
And here was the information about tonight’s appointment.
He frowned.
He was expected at a fundraising dinner. Drinks at seven-thirty, dinner at eight, black tie, blah blah blah.
Black tie. A tux, then. Hell. Maybe he could get out of the commitment. Quickly, he texted his P.A.
Re tonight: OK just to send a check?
She texted back just as quickly.
Not OK. You bought a table for 8.
Luca sighed.
Name of charity?
Horse Sense.
What?
Horse Sense. An Equine Therapy Program.
An image flashed through his head