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Untamed Love
Lindsay Evans


The one you can’t resist…A winning bid at a silent auction gets Mella Davis more than just complimentary services from landscape architect Victor Raphael. It sparks an instantaneous attraction to the brooding bachelor that takes her completely by surprise. Stern and tightly wound on the surface, irresistibly masculine underneath, he’s a challenge to her single-and-loving-it status—and to the heart she’s learned to protect. And still, she can’t help giving in.Ever since love burned him in the past, nothing has cracked Victor’s calm control. Then he glimpses carefree, vivacious Mella at a Miami charity event. Uninhibited days and sensual nights follow as she brings warmth and desire back to his world, until doubt wrenches them apart. Opposites attract, but can they also overcome their differences…and sow the seeds to thrilling and lasting love?







The one you can’t resist...

A winning bid at a silent auction gets Mella Davis more than just complimentary services from landscape architect Victor Raphael. It sparks an instantaneous attraction to the brooding bachelor that takes her completely by surprise. Stern and tightly wound on the surface, irresistibly masculine underneath, he’s a challenge to her single-and-loving-it status—and to the heart she’s learned to protect. And still, she can’t help giving in.

Ever since love burned him in the past, nothing has cracked Victor’s calm control. Then he glimpses carefree, vivacious Mella at a Miami charity event. Uninhibited days and sensual nights follow as she brings warmth and desire back to his world, until doubt wrenches them apart. Opposites attract, but can they also overcome their differences...and sow the seeds to thrilling and lasting love?


Victor whispered softly to her until they ended up together on their sides facing each other. She held on to him as she slowly floated back to earth.

“I’m sorry I walked out on you the other day,” she whispered.

“I know.”

His breath brushed against her mouth. She dug her fingers into his bared chest, giving herself over to the wet movement of her mouth against his. Then he pulled abruptly away from her.

“Someone is coming.”

She didn’t question how he knew, just scrambled to her feet and yanked down her dress. By the time she had herself together, he was already zipped up, shirt buttoned and black blazer back on. But his eyes were still tender in the silver glow of the moon. She wanted to kiss him again. Mella deliberately stepped away from him when she heard the approaching footsteps for herself.

“I should go.” She clasped her purse tightly against her thighs, turning her back to the path so she wouldn’t see who was coming. Resentment at the intruders lay heavy and bitter at the back of her throat.


Dear Reader (#ulink_428c57df-345e-50e4-80ba-9f8df523721a),

Have you ever had such tragedy in your life that the only thing you can do is face the world with a determined smile? That’s what Mella does on a daily basis...faking happy until she feels it. But running into the difficult and handsome Victor Raphael shakes her very foundation, including her smile. And there’s more than the sizzling attraction between them. Mella senses that underneath Victor’s growling surface is someone with demons as savage as her own. Despite the pain of the past, will these two beasts collide and manage to make beautiful music together?

Come with me, and follow their journey.

Lindsay Evans


Untamed Love

Lindsay Evans






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


LINDSAY EVANS was born in Jamaica and currently lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia, where she’s constantly on the hunt for inspiration, club in hand. She loves good food and romance and would happily travel to the ends of the earth for both. Find out more at lindsayevanswrites.com (http://www.lindsayevanswrites.com).


To my readers, old and new.

Thank you for sharing your time with me.


Acknowledgments (#ulink_b688e0b7-3bce-565f-9937-7af5addac9ce)

This writing journey of mine wouldn’t be possible without Sheree L. Greer, Angela Gabriel, Cherie Evans Lyon and Dorothy Lindsay. As my beta reader, Sheree has read more romance novels than she’d ever even thought possible, and Angela has suffered with me through many plotting sessions over dinner and ice cream. Cherie Evans Lyon and Dorothy Lindsay have simply always been there.

Kimberly Kaye Terry, as ever, thank you.


Contents

Cover (#ua034b94d-c9f9-5c5e-9e96-1841f6140bf6)

Back Cover Text (#u820ba05c-3680-5a67-a0bb-e8c21ee02850)

Introduction (#ud6ea9fb7-45ae-5604-9376-42e655fb86fb)

Dear Reader (#ulink_38c66fd1-6e9e-5502-8254-551d9ab14d2b)

Title Page (#ud3f334fc-dd16-5bdf-9298-7e4da0ef89e0)

About the Author (#u6f221473-7d78-53a7-b462-47380f4fe762)

Dedication (#uf0b3c7fb-5772-5874-957a-f0dff11738b9)

Acknowledgments (#ulink_f73d7894-aa8f-520d-954c-86cfb5bd9343)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_a1cb9eaf-8b2e-5688-999d-a5d5afa2c6a1)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_4a576966-c5dc-5af2-beab-36f6a76dcf6b)

Chapter 3 (#ulink_fbdc1e18-22e9-5e85-8fd8-65c8b1f8c2f2)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter 1 (#ulink_9a5e45a4-2550-53b1-b5de-1325ec7beb3d)

“If you weren’t my friend, I’d be burying your body out back right now.” Victor Raphael carefully put a hand on the cloth-covered table in front of him, the other hand balanced on his thigh as he listened to the auctioneer call out to the eager bidders.

“Three thousand, five hundred dollars!” the tuxedoed man shouted, his teeth a blinding white in his tanned face. “Do I hear four thousand?”

His best friend, Kingsley Diallo, didn’t look worried. “Auctioning yourself off for charity will make you feel good,” he said with a vague smile, looking around the large ballroom of one of their acquaintance’s latest mansion renovation projects gone wrong. Naked cherubs everywhere. “And it’ll make you look like less of an ass.”

Kingsley, perpetually Miami casual in a lavender V-neck shirt and celebrity-endorsed jeans, eventually settled back in his chair across from Victor, apparently satisfied that he had checked out the entire room and seen what there was to see. Victor, however, was quietly furious. Kingsley had put the services of his company up for bid without him knowing. Victor was a landscape architect, not some bored socialite’s puppet. He opened his mouth to say as much, but the auctioneer announced Raphael Design Group, effectively shutting him up. Victor snapped his eyes back to the small raised stage in the center of the room.

They were doing things the old-fashioned way, raising paddles to signal their interest in the bids. Despite the open ballroom, brightly lit by the afternoon sun, the French doors were open to let in the crisp February breeze. Or at least as crisp as February ever got in Miami. Every event like this Victor had ever seen on TV took place in shadowed rooms or unironically old European auction houses with the look of old blood money staining the silk-papered walls. But this was Miami. Why wouldn’t things be different? He’d half expected a stripper parading around in a white thong and moaning the name of each item up for bid. But maybe that spoke to his lack of class.

Despite the fact that it was his services on the line, Victor tuned out the proceedings. It didn’t matter who won. Kingsley had decided that Victor should get out of his comfort zone and had damn near pushed him out of it, so here he was, obligated to perform. For free.

His fingers flexed on top of his thighs, the muscles tense and strained. Just like the rest of him. Polite applause rippled through the room. Someone had won the auction. His fingers tightened even more.

“Nice one.” Kingsley reached over the small table to clap him on the shoulder.

Would it really be that bad to shovel dirt over his best friend’s face and leave him for dead? Maybe someone would find his traitorous body after an hour or two.

Ice cubes rattled in a glass, and he looked down to see a tumbler of ginger beer in front of him, along with a slice of German chocolate cake. He gave Kingsley a grim look but picked up the glass. The liquid was cool and stroked his tongue and throat with its effervescence as it went down.

“One day, I will kill you,” he said.

“Not today, my friend.” Kingsley drank from his own glass: whiskey neat. “Today, you’ll thank me.”

“I doubt that.”

Kingsley laughed as if he knew a secret. He dug into his own slice of chocolate cake, a dessert that was a favorite for them both. His friend was relying on bribery to soothe his temper. The cake was good, he’d grant Kingsley that.

The auction was the last event of the fund-raiser, an afternoon garden party to raise money to help local low-income kids pay for college. Victor breathed a sigh of relief that it was almost over. Soon he would get in his car and drive back to his house in the upper east side of the city, maybe even pick something up from Whole Foods to cook for dinner.

“All right!” Kingsley’s fork rattled against the now-empty dessert plate. “Let’s go meet the winner.” He picked up his whiskey.

“No. I’m done with this.” Being social wasn’t Victor’s forte.

His sister had even called him a standoffish hermit, which he’d told her was a bit redundant. He’d already donated money to the scholarship fund and even wished the high schoolers good luck, although he winced in sympathy, for them, being paraded in front of these rich idiots just so they could feel sorry for the kids and see that their money wasn’t going to waste. Or something equally stupid.

“Come on, man. You have to see who won.” Kingsley nudged him to his feet. “Not to mention you need to make arrangements to start the work.”

“That’s what phones are for.” But he allowed himself to be led across the room toward the table where the winning bidders gathered with the auctioneer and his half dozen or so assistants.

“The winning number is 191,” Kingsley hissed as they stepped into the sea of designer casual wear and perfumes.

Before Victor left his house to come to the auction, the day hadn’t been especially good. He was thinking about his sister Violet as he always did on her birthday, his already dour mood plummeting with the thought that she would have been thirty this year.

Kingsley apparently knew him too well and called to drag him out of the house and into the light of social interaction. Too bad he had no idea before he left the house of the knife Kingsley was gleefully waiting to plunge into his back. The bastard.

At a far table, he spotted a black-and-white paddle with the number Kingsley told him. Better get this over with sooner rather than later, he thought. He pushed through the crowd toward the older man who held the paddle upside down in the crook of his crossed arms.

Kingsley grabbed him. “Where are you going?”

He jerked his head toward the man holding the number of the winning bid.

But Kingsley shook his head. “Wrong number.” He squeezed Victor’s arm and pointed toward another paddle, this one held in a slender feminine hand: 191. As he watched, the woman slowly began to fan her face with the paddle. Victor swallowed.

The sight of her punched the breath from his lungs. She was damn stunning. Hair in tight and gorgeous coils around her face, skin the warm brown of the inside of a seashell. The perfect handful everywhere. And so very unlike any woman he’d ever seen that he nearly stumbled on his way to her.

It was only Kingsley’s amused presence at his side that kept Victor from tripping over his own feet. Even from across the room, there was something about the way she made him feel that beat a hard and familiar drum deep inside him. It was like fear and exhilaration all at once.

She fanned her face, and the small breeze from the auction paddle stirred the cottony hair resting around her cheeks. That hair was big, springy and wild, framing narrow and laughing eyes. One of the two women around her laughed, too, then leaned in to slap playfully at her shoulder. Her friends, Victor assumed. Two women who were pretty enough in their tight outfits, with their laughing faces and sophisticated clothes.

Next to them, the woman looked like their little sister, almost innocent in her white blazer, pale floral slacks that tapered down to her narrow calves and high-heeled pink shoes. A big necklace in the shape of a sunflower rested at her throat. She was springtime personified. From the first glance, there was nothing sensual about her, only joy in the way she stood, a radiant presence in the crowd. Then she tipped her head back with the paddle moving languorously through the air, revealing more of her slender neck, the line of her jaw. And desire bit him low in his belly.

“You all right, man?”

Kingsley’s question should have worried Victor. He was showing too much emotion. He shouldn’t care. He should tighten up and exchange information with the winner of the bid and then leave. But all he could do was feel and realize that no, he was not all right. Far from it.

* * *

“This place is such a madhouse.” Mella used her auction paddle to fan her face. “And it’s hot.” She grinned. This was the kind of scene she loved. The restrained wildness of the crowd, the heated wave of everyone’s intentions as they surged toward something they wanted. Even if it was just bidding for a vacuum-cleaning service. She fanned a little faster, wondering what drove the organizers to open the doors of the massive ballroom instead of turning on the AC. This was Miami, not freakin’ Minneapolis.

“This so-called party is about as much fun as watching paint dry in the cold, Mella.” Corinne looked the epitome of boredom in her Gucci shades that she refused to take off indoors. It probably had something to do with her red eyes and the late night she’d had the day before.

“Relax, Corinne.” Mella glanced over at her friend, reining in her smile. “You’ll get the chance to throw yourself at eligible single men in just a few minutes. I need to get the information about the landscape guy, then we can go.” She’d already paid for her winning bid and was only waiting to collect her prize.

“Yeah. Relax, Corinne.” Liz, Mella’s best friend and Corinne’s old college roommate, sucked in her stomach and posed in her barely decent dress. Her high heels put her already tall frame nearly half a head over most women in the room, including Mella, who could only claim five feet. “You need to smell the roses. Or in this case, the testosterone. Maybe the guy Mella bid on is some hot and hung lumberjack type wearing jeans tight enough for me to tell his religion.”

Mella snorted with laughter. “You’re thinking about a gardener, not a landscape architect.”

“Same thing,” Liz muttered.

Mella heard Corinne take in a quick breath and whisper under her breath, “No, it’s not.” Corinne took off her dark glasses and stared.

Mella turned to see what her friend was gawking at. Only through an act of will did she keep the paddle in her hand moving, fluttering the air around her face that suddenly felt several degrees too hot. Two men were walking purposefully toward them. She bit the inside of her lip to keep her mouth from dropping open just like Corinne’s. Of the two men stalking their way, she only really noticed one.

He was dressed all in black, an utter contrast to everyone else at the fund-raiser who’d put on their spring colors and lightweight jackets. Black upon black upon black. Leather ankle boots with an understated sheen, Italian-cut slacks that fit a lean shape and a dress shirt rolled up to show muscled and lightly veined forearms dusted with hair. His watch, a gleaming stainless steel, was the only touch of light on him.

“Damn, he’s fine!” Corrine breathed somewhere near Mella.

“Yes, girl...” Mella could only agree while she lost her breath to the man in black.

There was nothing pretty or soft about him. Watching him walk through the crowd and make his way toward where she and her friends stood was like watching a jaguar stalk through a room of gazelles, the silken glide of his every step a promise of power and strength. Mella’s back straightened, but she felt her legs quiver from the impending confrontation. She kept the smile on her face.

“They both are,” Liz said with an amazed laugh. “After seeing absolutely nobody halfway decent in here for the past two hours, and now these two fine gods walk in from nowhere...somebody up there was listening to my prayers.”

From the corner of her eye, Mella noticed Corinne preen even more, smoothing a hand down her taut thighs and shifting toward the men in profile so they could admire the high curve of her butt in the clinging white jumpsuit. “Maybe we can get one for you at the next spot, Mella.” She said the last nearly under her breath since the men had come steadily closer and were only a few feet from them.

Mella continued to fan her face, wishing desperately for the heat in her cheeks to subside. She never reacted like this to men. Never.

“My name is Victor Raphael.” The one in black held out his hand for Mella to shake. “I believe you’ve won me for the next few months.” Just as his look promised, his voice was a lulling purr, calm and steady. A man used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “I’m with Raphael Design Group,” he said after a short pause.

Damn, he’s tall. She stared up and up at him. Then looked down at his hand, not quite ready to touch him yet. It felt like a big step for her to take his hand and feel his skin against hers, to know some of the strength in him. She looked down at the large hand, at least larger than her own, and opened her mouth to speak. But Corinne slid close and grasped Victor Raphael’s hand instead.

“I’m Corinne,” she said. “I haven’t won you, but you can win me.”

Her friend’s foolishness snapped Mella out of her daze. “Michaela Davis.” She introduced herself with a nod and smile, then turned to his friend who she’d barely noticed. “And you are?”

“Kingsley Diallo.” His friend shook her hand with a wide smile. “I wasn’t won and didn’t win anything. I’m just here for the food.” Laugh lines bracketed his expressive mouth.

Mella liked him immediately. “Wasn’t the lobster mac and cheese phenomenal?”

Kingsley laughed, an infectious sound that had her instantly laughing with him. “It was,” he said. “Although I have had much better from a friend’s kitchen.”

“Let’s get back to the business of this auction before we discuss the menu.” Victor said the last word like a curse. Didn’t he like food?

Well, two could play at that all-business game. Mella held out her hand. “Your card?”

For a moment, he stared hard at her, at her hand. Then reached for his wallet and took out a business card. She was surprised that it wasn’t black, too. Instead it was a crisp green with black writing, everything she needed to contact him, including a QR code printed on the back.

“Call me when you’re ready,” he said.

“I’m ready now,” Liz muttered behind Mella.

Mella ignored her friend and gave Victor a card of her own, taking care that their fingers didn’t touch. Would their hands spark with static electricity, or would it be like touching any other man? She wasn’t quite ready to find out.

Normally, she would have grasped him in one of her typically friendly handshakes, a handshake that would morph into a hug at their next meeting, but she had a feeling he wasn’t like every other man she’d dealt with before. She tucked his card away into her purse and clenched her teeth into a determined smile.

“Perfect.” She gripped her purse and tapped it against the front of her thighs, almost succeeding in ignoring Victor and the weakening effect he had on her. Her heart was practically fighting to leap out of her chest. “It was good to meet you both, but now we have to head out. Have a great afternoon.”

“But wait...they just got here.” Corinne sounded as if she was working up to a pout. She and Liz had been chatting up Kingsley while Mella and Victor “got down to business.”

Liz put a hand on Kingsley’s forearm. “We were heading to Fever on South Beach. They’re having a huge day party. You should come with.” Did she just bat her eyes?

Corinne, who could read most men as easily as her daily horoscope, turned her attention to Kingsley instead of trying to worm her way beneath Victor’s aloof and prickly exterior. He was obviously not into playing anyone’s game. Mella couldn’t help but chuckle at the Cheshire Cat grin that took over Kingsley’s face as the two women latched on to him on either side.

“You ladies could tempt a monk to sin,” he said, although he was obviously not a monk.

Why couldn’t Mella have been attracted to him? He looked fun, as if he was open to wherever the night might take him and would simply leave it all behind the next morning, no strings attached. Instead she was aware of every breath that left Victor Raphael’s body, of the firm heat of him only a few feet away, aware of just how much she wanted to twine her arms around his waist and lead him into breathless sin. But she didn’t need to know his sun sign to realize he wasn’t that kind of man. She kept her smile easy and noncommittal.

“You can go ahead, Kingsley.” Victor tipped his head toward the open door through which most of the party’s attendees had already gone. “You’ve had a long week at the office and need some time to unwind. You’re not going to get that from me today. I can get a cab back home.”

The two men exchanged a private look. Then Kingsley glanced down at the women, obviously tempted to stay with them. But he shook his head, about to speak.

Mella jumped in. “There’s no need to ruin anybody’s night, Kingsley. I can take Victor home, and you go with Corinne and Liz. He and I can talk business while you three have fun. I need to head home early, anyway.” For what exactly, she didn’t know. But if playing chauffeur meant she could spend a few minutes longer in Victor’s company, then it would be a pleasure.

Kingsley turned to his friend with a raised brow. “Only if Victor is okay with that plan,” he said.

Mella couldn’t look at Victor. With one stroke of his commanding gaze, she felt all her good sense begin to desert her. God! This was humiliating. But she couldn’t think of any place else she’d rather be. Victor made a low noise, which finally urged her to look at him. Although his face was blank, it was obvious he didn’t want to go to Fever.

“No,” he said. “I’d need more than an almost handshake for you to take me home.”

Did he just make a joke? Mella blinked at Victor.

“I’ll come with you to the day party,” he said. “As Kingsley is quick to say, I need to get out of the house, anyway.”

Oh.

“Okay.” Mella rolled her eyes as her friends high-fived each other. She hoped Victor Raphael knew what he was getting himself into.

They left the party in two separate cars, with Victor and Kingsley agreeing to meet them at Fever. The men already knew where the place was, or at least Kingsley did.

“I don’t know what you guys were thinking inviting them to the party. Victor didn’t look like he was in the mood.” Mella was a big fan of doing what she wanted instead of what other people expected. Life just tended to be happier that way.

From the small backseat of Mella’s green Fiat convertible, Corinne giggled. “We would have been happy just hanging with Kingsley. He seemed fun, at least.”

Mella glared at her in the rearview mirror, annoyed that she would think of leaving Victor behind, even if that meant Mella would get the chance to take him home. She didn’t dwell too long on how that sounded in her head. “But what would Kingsley look like, leaving his friend for some random chicks he just met?”

“Spontaneous, Mella. He’d look spontaneous.”

Mella shook her head. She was all for spontaneous, but she was about loyalty, too. And she liked that, though it was a small thing, Kingsley had stuck by his friend even when it seemed he could have gotten lucky, twice, on his own. Mella knew her friends weren’t above the occasional threesome. They may have been on the marriage hunt, but she knew they saw nothing wrong with having a little fun along the way.

“You all are dead wrong,” she muttered.

At Fever, the music was loud and bass-heavy, women and men in tight designer clothes, the liquor flowing freely on the wide rooftop. The three women headed for the bar for their usual drinks before looking for Victor and Kingsley. When they found them, Kingsley was dancing in the middle of the crowded floor with a woman Mella was fairly certain he’d never met before.

Victor, though, was nowhere to be seen. Her friends flocked to Kingsley, ready to fend off the Jenny-come-lately who was hanging on to his hips for dear life as they grooved to the hip-hop pounding from the speakers.

She saw some people she already knew and joined them, leaving her husband-hunting friends to make their move on Kingsley. The afternoon was fun and the music and energy all that Mella hoped for. She drank her cocktails, shared gossip with old friends and danced until the sweat ran down her back and she had to take off her blazer and leave it hanging on the back of a chair.

It wasn’t long before she finished her second drink and wanted another one, but the main bar had a line from hell. She excused herself from her friends and made her way to the other side of Fever and downstairs to the hidden bar very few people knew about. Mella gripped the chrome handrails and nearly stumbled down the stairs in her high heels, her thighs trembling faintly from dancing for nearly two hours straight in her stilettos.

The lower level of Fever was smaller than the rooftop space, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows letting in the bright Miami sunlight. But the bar, hanging as it was beneath dark beams and sheltered from much of the brightness, was partially in shadows.

Barely a half dozen people sat at the stools surrounding the bar. The patrons that sat on the stools were spread out, little islands to themselves. One man and woman were practically sitting in each other’s laps, an impressive feat considering the small size of the bar stools, a trio of businessmen and a lone man dressed in black who sat with his back to the room. Mella went up to the bar, fitting herself between the businessmen and the man in black. She signaled the bartender, who had been talking amicably with the lone man.

The bartender turned. “Hey, Mella.” His bright smile lit up his entire face.

“Hey yourself, Greg. How have you been?” She gave him her order, a Blood and Sand, and propped her hip against one of the bar stools.

“I’m doing great now that you’re at my bar.” He amped up his smile.

“You say the loveliest things, Gregory.” She batted her eyes at him while he made her drink, a mixture of Scotch, orange juice, sweet vermouth and cherry liqueur. Light on the orange juice.

“Sweet for the sweet.”

She laughed, knowing that he only flirted as a matter of course, part of the job. Greg was happily married with twin girls in kindergarten. He exchanged the drink for her ten-dollar bill, and she turned with the chilled glass in her hand, getting ready to head back upstairs and to the dance floor. But a pair of intense eyes pinned her where she stood. Victor Raphael.

He sat at the bar, drinking something from a cocktail glass and looking pleasantly relaxed on the stool. His strong forearms rested easily on the edge of the bar while his eyes held her with the strength of a leash in an iron grip. She forced a casual smile, although butterflies had started a small rebellion in her stomach.

“Mr. Raphael.” She nodded in his direction.

“Ms. Davis.”

Greg, who had been making his way back to Victor, looked between him and Mella, then abruptly turned to check on his other customers. Victor’s attentions, still fierce and predatory, didn’t stray from her.

Then the ridiculousness of it all forced her to laugh. They were in a club. She was covered in sweat from dancing the afternoon away, and he was sitting at the bar cool as could be, with what was probably some sort of manly whiskey drink. Their differences couldn’t be more apparent.

“You should call me Mella after all this,” she said and moved closer to him, despite instincts that screamed at her to run the other way. He wasn’t like other men. She couldn’t tease him and walk away and dismiss him from her mind as if he’d never been there.

Victor Raphael nodded. The unforgiving lines of his face and most of his body were wreathed in shadow, but she couldn’t mistake the way he stared at her. He didn’t say anything, but she forged ahead, anyway.

“And I’ll call you Victor.”

“If you like.” His voice brushed like the finest silk over her skin. Mella shivered.

“I do like.”

In the half light of the bar, he was even more fierce than at the fund-raiser. All remaining trappings of civility stripped away to leave this brooding shadow man who seemed to have a lot on his mind and wasn’t about to change his demeanor simply because someone had wandered into his cave. Because Mella was sometimes foolish, she went further into the beast’s lair.

“Why are you drinking alone?” she asked.

“Because I want to.” The words should have pushed her away, but she only leaned closer to hear his voice. “The alternative—” he waved vaguely to the party happening above them “—is not much of one.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

He tipped his head, appeared to consider it. Appeared to consider many things in that one charged moment. “No. Stay. And let me pay for your next round if you’re having one.”

The words were so uncharacteristic of the man she’d met at the fund-raiser that she looked down at his glass, wondering at his welcome and just how much he’d had to drink that he was inviting her to stay with him at the bar. Wasn’t he the one who’d wanted to get down to business and then go home? Had his drink changed his personality? Although she couldn’t talk. This was her third drink, and her blood was just warm enough that she was looser than usual, feeling so good about life that having another drink would take her from nice to naughty. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to act that much of a fool with this magnetic stranger. A stranger whom she would be working with very soon.

Mella lifted her glass. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m afraid this is it for me. Although I’m not driving, I don’t want to get too blitzed today. I still have some work to get done tonight.”

She expected him to ask about her job, what kind of work she did and how long she’d been doing it, maybe even what school she went to. Those were the usual things people asked when they wanted to either dismiss or devour you in the world.

“It’s a weekend,” Victor said instead. “You should enjoy the rest of your Sunday. Work can wait until an actual workday, can’t it?”

She shrugged. In theory, it could. But the reality of owning your own business often didn’t allow for workdays versus rest days. But she said none of that. “Maybe you’re right.”

Sitting next to him, Mella felt that powerful hum of attraction all over her skin, so powerful that it was almost uncomfortable, putting her body in a higher state of awareness than she was used to. Before now, her interactions with men she liked had been all butterfly delight and the uncomplicated steps of a familiar dance. Mella took a sip of her drink to hide her gulping swallow. She felt him follow the movement of the glass to her mouth.

Remnants of the alcohol clung to her top lip. She licked them away and lifted her eyes to his.

“Although I didn’t say this before, thank you for donating to the charity this afternoon. The money will go a long way to helping them reach their goal, and the project you’ll be working on means a lot to me.”

Victor thumbed condensation from the sweating glass in front of him, his mouth curving faintly up. “You should actually be thanking Kingsley. He’s the one who put Raphael Design Group up for bid. I had nothing to do with it.” His smile turned openly sardonic. “I didn’t even know about it.”

“Oh.” She didn’t quite know how to respond to that. Was he pissed off that his friend had volunteered him? Mella started to pull back.

“But—” Victor tapped the smooth surface of the bar near her hand, reaching out to her without touching. “Despite how we got here, I’m glad to help.”

“I... I’m glad, too.” What kind of friendship did the two men have that something like this was okay?

“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” Victor’s mouth twisted again. “Kingsley just worries about me and my lack of interaction with the larger world.” He made a dismissive motion. “Nothing to dwell on.” His smile appeared. The nicer one. “So, tell me, what are you drinking?”

Mella blinked, mentally switching to accommodate the abrupt change in topic. Okay, she thought. I can do this.

Mella told him. “It’s sweet and strong, just like me.”

A smile darted across his face, briefly crinkling the corners of his eyes. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Me neither, until recently.” Mella put the cocktail glass on the bar and traced a finger through the condensation in random patterns. “I like to try new things,” she said. “Sometimes I look online or in menus for a cocktail or food I haven’t tried, and then I taste it. If it’s good, I enjoy it until it’s time to try something else.”

“Interesting. Does that habit extend to all areas of your life?”

“Depends on the thing.”

“I see. Not everything will suit you, you know.” His eyes, a deep agate, grounding and challenging at the same time, held hers in a resolute grip.

Mella’s tongue darted out to lick the corner of her lips. “I know. But I want to taste it, sample it, have it again and again until I’m sure it’s not for me.”

Victor hummed a response, eyes on her mouth, gaze getting warmer by the second. Without asking, she knew what he was thinking. Her lips, his body. A comfortable bed. Maybe even a hidden corner of the bar where he could seduce her lips apart, encourage her to kiss him, to lick and suck whatever he had to offer. Her pulse began a fast and delicious tattoo in her throat.

This, Mella knew. It was flirtation with no consequences. She saw where it was going before it even properly started. A man and a woman in a bar. The spark of attraction. She fell into the moves of the familiar dance, unthinking. Practiced. Despite the electric attraction, unusual and disconcerting, that she felt for Victor Raphael, she could do casual like this blindfolded. If he was into that kind of thing. She smirked at the thought.

But things didn’t always go the way she expected.

Victor’s lashes swept up and his mouth firmed. “While I am an acquired taste, I’m no one’s experiment, Ms. Davis.” Without him moving an inch, his body closed itself off to her. “Taste testers have never been my preference.”

Mella bit her lip and called herself all types of fool. She knew he wasn’t a casual man. All she had to do was look into the swirling brown depths of his eyes to know that he was a man to drown in, not wade into and step back when the waves got too close. She sat up straight on the stool. “Of course, Victor.” She picked up her glass and swallowed a sweet, burning bite of the drink. “I think it’s time for me to get back to my friends.”

His expression didn’t change. “Thank you for spending a bit of your time with me,” he said.

“A pleasure.” Then she made her escape.


Chapter 2 (#ulink_b42b0f7a-3f35-5377-bd4b-907cf763683a)

Mella didn’t know how long she had stayed out the night before with her friends, but it had been much too late for someone who had to be at work by 5:00 a.m. Sitting on the patio of the North Beach flagship location of Café Michaela the next morning, she clutched a giant cup of black coffee while going over the previous week’s sales and current stock to decide what needed to be reordered.

It was still early, barely 5:30, and she was the only one in the café. Her first employee would arrive within half an hour to begin dealing with the morning rush, but for now, it was just her and the rising sun that seeped into her skin through the thin tank top and shorts she wore.

Mella sat on the patio with her laptop open, the sound of waves quietly whispering nearby. Her shop was on prime real estate. She’d been lucky to get it for a reasonable price a few years before. She never stopped being thankful for all her blessings, despite the other things in her life that hadn’t quite gone her way.

She was sending off an order to her supplier in Ethiopia when her cell phone rang. “Hey.” Mella kept her voice low to baby the last remnants of her hangover. She ruffled a hand over her thick hair and stretched out her legs in the sun.

“Good morning, Michaela.” Nala Singh laughed at her through the phone. “Either you’re trying not to disturb the other early birds, or a killer hangover is about to crack you wide-open.” Mella had to smile. Only Nala could make her laugh at herself in this condition.

Since they’d met, the billionaire orphan and jet-setting photographer refused to call Mella by the shortened version of her name, instead insisting, since their names sounded too alike, that she would call Mella by the name her parents gave her.

“What are you doing up so early?” Mella asked.

“I haven’t been to sleep yet. But I figured you’d be up doing something very responsible.”

“Good guess.” Coffee in hand, Mella stepped away from the table and walked to the railing, looking across the paved street to the glimpse of ocean through the bushes. The early-morning sun burned the sky with its incendiary reds and golds, spreading all that lush color through the clouds and over the virgin day. “What did I do to deserve a call so close to your bedtime?”

“Your email, of course. I just read it.”

Mella hid her surprise. She’d only sent the email a few hours before while she’d been at Fever. Before the drinks had started to dull her senses. “Good. I think we lucked out with the Raphael Design Group.” She ignored the way her stomach fluttered when Nala said the name of Victor’s firm. “They have a great reputation, and the projects they’ve done in Miami and across the States are phenomenal. They’re the perfect fit for your Sanctuary project.”

“It looks like it. Thanks for sending the links to their website and the Herald articles about their work.”

“I like to be thorough.”

Nala had inherited a mansion from her long-dead parents. It was a place she didn’t want to live in and had left to basically rot for years. But then she had the idea to turn it into a nonprofit space for homeless kids, kids who were kicked out of their homes for one reason or another and wanted to stay in school or get jobs but weren’t quite able to do it on their own. A sort of semipermanent home for formerly homeless kids. Nala wanted to complete the renovations to the mansion, have a party to celebrate her best friend’s marriage and new baby, then turn it over to the kids who wanted to move in.

When Nala told her the idea the night they’d met at a party on Star Island, it instantly captivated Mella. Helping kids who had been abandoned by their parents, people who were supposed to love them no matter what, had resonated with her immediately. She offered to help with the logistics of the mansion’s renovations, even finding a firm to deal with the applications to live in the home. The project and what it would eventually do for an underserved part of the city’s population made Mella feel she was doing something worthwhile with her life. She was thankful to Nala for giving her that chance.

“I’m hoping the firm would get some good publicity out of this, at the very least,” Mella continued. “Victor Raphael has been a good sport about this whole thing, especially since it wasn’t even him that put his services up for auction.” She explained Kingsley’s prank.

Nala snorted. “That sounds like something Kingsley would do. For someone who runs a Fortune 500 company, he has a lot of damn time on his hands.”

“You know him?” Mella took another sip of her coffee, then balanced the cup on the railing.

“He’s my best-friend-in-law’s brother.”

Mella laughed, almost choking on her coffee. “What?”

Chuckling, Nala explained their connection, that Kingsley was the older brother to her best friend’s husband. “Not complicated at all,” she said.

“Of course not.”

Mella laughed again and shook her head. It was a small world. “Anyway, Victor’s going through with the project, although obviously he doesn’t have to.” She remembered Victor’s melodic and downright sexy voice explaining what his friend had done. “But I sent him an email about Sanctuary this morning. He agreed to meet me at the site later on this week to take a look at what needs to be done.”

“Have fun. I know Corinne thinks he’s smokin’ hot.”

Corinne talked to Nala?

“I’m not sure if you can take Corinne’s word on something like that. She thinks any man with a pulse is a viable choice.”

Laughter snorted at her from the other end of the phone. “Are you saying Victor’s not sexy?”

“I’m definitely not saying that...” Mella bit her lip as she remembered Victor sitting at Fever, his furred forearms resting on the bar, the smell of faintly spicy cologne, and beneath that the more natural scent of a man. “He’s definitely sexy. But he’s too serious. You know I like my men with a sense of humor.”

“According to Nichelle, all men have a sense of humor—you just have to tickle them the right way.”

“I’m not ready to work that hard,” Mella said with a dismissive wave of her hand, although obviously, Nala couldn’t see it. But even as she said the words, she wasn’t sure she actually believed them. They had been true before she met Victor. She generally liked her men fun and uncomplicated. That way, the affair was light, just like she preferred it. And when it came time for it to end, nobody would cry any disappointed tears or make a scene. But it was a moot point. Victor wasn’t a fan of “taste testers.”

Her mouth tightened at the phrase he’d used. Not that his reaction hadn’t been her fault. What else would a man like that say to someone who basically compared a potential affair with him to having a monthly round of drinks?

Nala’s tsk-tsking brought her attention back to their conversation. “Most hard work is worth the reward, Michaela,” Nala said with a teasing lilt. Although Mella hadn’t known her long, she knew that Nala didn’t necessarily subscribe to that philosophy herself.

“Right.” She sipped her coffee, mouth curving in a reluctant smile.

Nala chuckled. “I’ll let you get back to your morning routine. But call me if anything comes up about Sanctuary or anything else.”

“I will. Thanks.”

Mella disconnected the call. Despite what she’d said to Nala, she knew she was already being an idiot. Victor was serious, unlike any of the men she’d dated before. The way he looked at her made her want to both run away from and curl up into him. She didn’t want him to laugh at her weak jokes. She didn’t want him to smile. She had no interest in changing him into what she liked. She just wanted him to come closer and cover her with all that masculine intensity.

* * *

It was raining. An expected rain, but still an annoying one. Victor would rather be in the office for the rest of the day, working on the looming Barcelona project, ordering in lunch and leaving only when it was time to go home. Instead he was in the rain. Granted, he was actually safe and dry in his SUV, but the main point was that he was at a mansion in the farthest reaches of Miami, waiting on a woman whom he didn’t quite know what to think of. Michaela Davis. Mella.

She was nothing like he’d thought she would be, yet she was everything his entire being gravitated toward. He’d expected her to be like a butterfly, flitting from one interesting thing to another, laughter always hovering on the curve of her lips. Mella was that, but even more. It seemed that actual light emanated from her. A radiance that he longed to bask in even as he tried to convince her, and himself, that her brand of living was not for him.

In that dark corner of the bar, she had been like a glowing curve of bioluminescence that begged for his touch. But no impulse he’d ever gone with had ever gone well in the end. So he pushed her away.

Besides, she was more into Kingsley, anyway. Victor didn’t miss the way Mella and his best friend had immediately clicked at the auction. She’d laughed at his jokes, looked up into his face with a smile radiating from her eyes. It wasn’t new to him, being looked over in favor of the more outgoing and better-looking Kingsley. But it still sparked something like pain in his chest.

After Fever, he went home to cook, accepting that she wasn’t into him, but he found his mind wandering to her. Her smile, the way she tried with a swipe of her hand to push the kinky curls from her face only to have them float back, tickling her nose into an amused wrinkle. It had been an interesting ballet to watch. All beauty and light. Nothing that belonged in his life. Only for someone like Kingsley.

Victor looked at his watch. It was nearly ten thirty. Michaela had been scheduled to meet him at ten. He wondered if she’d canceled the meeting without telling his secretary. No. Though he didn’t know her well at all, he figured that wasn’t something she would do. Not with this, a project she seemed to care very much about.

But the rain, a light but endless drizzle, made him regret his Italian-leather ankle boots and the pissing away of his morning. Victor glanced at his watch again, remembered that he had a pair of old Timberland boots tucked away in the back of his SUV. He reclined the seat and felt around on the floor of the large truck until his fingers bumped into the hard leather of his boots. He was tying the laces of the second boot when he saw a flash of light green, a Fiat convertible making its way up the long driveway through the rain.

The small car came up the circle drive and swerved neatly around him to park in front of his SUV. A sticker on the back of the ridiculously tiny car read My Other Car is a Motorcycle.

The car’s taillights flickered out, and the driver’s-side door opened. Purple rain boots splashed into the standing water. Black knee socks, bare legs, then a small denim skirt that clung to curvaceous hips. Mella was wearing a light green T-shirt that said “I didn’t claw my way up the food chain to eat vegetables.” A clear umbrella popped open before her head emerged fully from the car. Her hair was damp around her face, and she was smiling.

“Hi, Victor.” She waved the umbrella at him, then snapped it shut after gauging the intensity of the rain with one upraised palm, not bothering to apologize for being late. “Come on.”

After a moment’s pause, he left the safety of the truck, locking the Mercedes with a click of the remote. “It’s raining,” he said once he was at her side. She smelled like soft mint candy.

“I know. Isn’t it nice?” Mella unlocked the massive front door and wiped off her boots on the mat before stepping into the house. Despite the overgrown mess of the front yard and the large fountain that was crumbled and needed fixing, the inside of the house was immaculate. It smelled of fresh paint and furniture polish. The banister to the wooden staircases on both sides of the foyer gleamed from a recent cleaning. There was no furniture. “They did a great job fixing this place up,” she said. “You should have seen it a few months ago.” Her voice echoed in the empty space.

There was something about her, standing in the entryway of a deserted house, that he found dangerous. The whole look of her was inviting, the tilt of her head, the scent of rain and tangerine shampoo that sweetened the air around her, the clinging invitation of the short denim skirt. Victor wanted to move closer, so he stayed in the doorway. If he were Kingsley, he wouldn’t want a man who hadn’t had sex in over two years sniffing after the next woman to end up in his bed.

“We’re here to look at the grounds,” he said carefully, wanting very much to wrap his hands around her hips and test the feel of her. “But the rain makes it too difficult to see what needs to be done. We can come back another time when it’s dry.”

Mella looked at him with her big eyes from under her big hair, her head slightly tilted as she smiled. “We’re here. We might as well look at the grounds now. A wet lawn looks pretty much the same as a dry one.”

When he didn’t move, she shrugged and walked toward him, coming back out of the house. He stepped out of her way before she could reach him. “But you’re right about one thing, though. Why go through the house when the exterior is all you need to see?” Mella hooked her umbrella over one arm and looped the other through his. It was only his surprise and her boldness that allowed her to tug him around the wide wraparound porch, down a flight of marble stairs and out to the overgrown backyard.

The rain was light as a woman’s fingers on his head and cheeks, its touch cool but soothing after the heat of the morning. Despite his earlier complaints, Victor breathed in the smell of the rain and of the green grass under his feet with a minute shudder of pleasure. This was another part of his job he loved—wading into the disorder of nature and finding harmony in it.

The grounds were large, but he’d worked on larger. The grass was overgrown, the weeds bold enough to take over nearly every inch of free space, leaving room for occasional sprouts of wildflowers and dandelions. A small orchard of mango trees lined the back of the property while a high garden maze, at least seven feet high, that had lost nearly all of its rigid form, took up nearly half the space. He would have to fix that.

“It looks daunting,” she said. “What do you think?”

Watching her with the wind flinging her wet hair at her cheeks, her hands on her hips and the wet curve of her smiling mouth, Victor thought he just might be in trouble. Big trouble.

* * *

He surveyed the property, the back first and then the front, walking around the acre plus of overgrown land, dried grass, wild fruit trees and out of control weeds. Juggling his umbrella so his iPad wouldn’t get wet, he took notes and pictures, briefly sketching ideas of what he wanted to do. Mella sat on the steps as he worked, having finally opened her umbrella, eyes taking in the gloomy morning, the heavy clouds, while Victor walked through the untamed gardens.

While he worked, he felt her eyes on him, assessing. Her gaze made him vaguely uneasy, but there was something in him that enjoyed her attention, the focus of such a striking and unpredictable woman who couldn’t look away from him.

Unlike most people, she didn’t take out a cell phone, book or some electronic device to pass the time. She simply watched him and the rest of her world with her large and devouring stare.

When he was finished with the front and back of the house, he joined her on the stairs with his own open umbrella. Rain tapped the umbrella as he held it over both their heads. She folded hers closed and put it at her feet.

“What’s the verdict?” she asked.

“It’s a beautiful property,” he said. “It’ll be even more beautiful when I’m finished with it.”

He took out his notes and shared his ideas on the space. Trim up the English maze, install a fountain, transplant the fruit trees to another part of the yard, put in a paved walking path winding through the entire front and back of the mansion.

Victor kept his language as straightforward as possible, making sure the entire process was transparent. As he spoke, he noticed her frowning more than once, but she waited until he was finished to voice her concerns.

“I don’t like any of it,” she said.

Victor had to mentally repeat what she said to make sure he wasn’t misunderstanding her. Mella shook her head and reached over to tap the surface of his iPad, enlarging the image. Despite the layers of clothes between them, he felt her warmth, the way the muscles of her arm moved.

“The fruit trees should stay where they are. The kids would love to have their own mango trees in the backyard instead of going through the garden to get them.” Her breath brushed against his neck as she spoke, her attention completely focused on the notes he laid out on the tablet. “They’re for fun and food, not just to look good. And the English maze—” she actually put up air quotes with the closest thing to a sneer he’d ever seen on her face “—I want that to look more natural. Those mazes in English movies are boring. You can still leave it a maze, but nothing so rigid. Give the plants some room to breathe. Leave the flowers that are accidentally growing together. I don’t like rectangular plants, and I don’t think the kids will, either.”

The longer she spoke, the more he frowned until he swore his forehead had folded in on itself. Just who was the professional here? “You don’t like any of my suggestions?” He made it a question because he couldn’t believe it.

“Sorry, that’s not quite true.” She grinned at him as if she was about to pay him the biggest compliment. “I like that type of buffalo grass you suggested. It won’t need too much maintenance after it takes hold.”

“Listen...”

But she was already standing up and walking out into the rain with her umbrella. Her purple boots splashed in the puddles and squished in the grass. She stood with the closed umbrella, its curved handle draped over her arm. Mella stared out into the wide yard, her breath blowing out the drops of water falling in front of her mouth.

“This place is beautiful and natural and should feel like a home. The garden is overgrown, but that’s what makes it pretty, don’t you think?”

He didn’t tell her what he really thought.

“The grounds just need a little grooming, not a complete overhaul.” She turned to him, and Victor felt his breath catch. Damn, she was...

“Frustrating.”

She drew up to every inch of her five feet nothing. “What?”

“You can’t have it both wild and civilized, Ms. Davis. You have to choose. Having it both ways just doesn’t make sense, and it’s not possible. I’m telling you the best way to do this.”

“Well, I’m telling you it is possible. I’m trusting you to perform what’s apparently a miracle—” she lifted her eyebrows at him, mouth aggressively smiling, all teeth and little warmth “—and give Nala and the kids exactly what they want.”

“Right now, you’re the one saying what you want. Why, when your opinion, as you’ve just said, doesn’t matter in this equation?”

She was clenching her teeth so hard Victor thought they would crack. “You should assume what I’m telling you is exactly what Nala wants. Create something beautiful that won’t make the kids feel like they’re living in a showplace. It’s a home, not somewhere they’re made to feel like they don’t belong.”

Frustration bubbled up in his chest, but he tamped it down. “All right,” he said. “All right. Let’s start again, shall we?”

Her jaw relaxed, and her smile became more natural. The sight of it loosened a tightness he hadn’t known was in his chest. She grinned up at him, a small ray of sunshine glowing beneath the heavy gray skies.

“Oh, good.” Her smile widened.

He was so screwed.


Chapter 3 (#ulink_82cb6507-9e2e-5ea0-bca0-c5cf6a9b36e8)

Mella shouldn’t have touched him. But she thought if she put their flesh together, casually, as she’d done with any other man in the past, it would be nothing. That she would get past the foolish notion that touching Victor would be significant. But it had been much worse than she thought.

On the porch of the mansion, she looped her arm through his and felt shivers run through her body, tiny seismic events jolting through her and making her deeply regret the impulsive move. His skin on hers was exactly the shock to the system she had been expecting. And more. He smelled like something she wanted to put on her body. A favorite blanket, an old T-shirt, Christmas socks that felt perfect while she lay by the fire. Even now, after he’d driven off to his office or wherever he needed to be at one o’ clock on a Thursday afternoon, her entire side tingled from where she’d been pressed against him. The core of her felt like it had been flung about on a roller coaster. Stupid. She had been utterly stupid.

Mella sat in her car with the windows up, steam fogging up the interior as her thoughts ran completely away from her.

This is pointless, she thought. I need to get out of here.

With a shuddering sigh, she started the engine and roared her little car down the long driveway. The tires hissed through the rain, windshield wipers thudding back and forth across the glass.

There was work to do at the café, but she didn’t feel like dealing with any of it. Not with the awareness of Victor Raphael riding so close to the surface of her skin. Mella just drove. She didn’t realize where she was going until she pulled into Mary McLeod Bethune Park. The small Coconut Grove park lay between two roads, one open to vehicular traffic and the other closed to everyone but the long line of motorcycles doing the charity ride for pelican protection and conservation.

Her aunt Jessamyn, who didn’t give a damn about pelicans but used any excuse she could to travel with other bikers, was on the ride. Around one thirty, she and the other riders were supposed to take a break at the park to eat and stretch their legs before continuing north to Deerfield Beach. If Mella had thought about it, she would have ridden her own motorcycle to link up with her aunt, but the anticipation of meeting with Victor Raphael that morning had made basic thought processes impossible.

It was still raining, and her hair was already wet. The rain jacket she pulled from her car kept the rest of her mostly dry, though. Her boots squelched in the grass as she crossed the manicured green to the other side of the park and to the line of motorcycles. She took out her phone and called her aunt.

“Are you still at the park?”

Her aunt immediately answered in her gravelly voice. “Yeah. By the statue of the old girl. One of the shaded picnic benches.” In the background, Mella could hear other voices and the occasional grumble of a motorcycle.

Mella waded through the crowd of bikers, fifty at least, and easily found her aunt in the roundabout, her bike parked near the eight-foot bronze statue of Mary McLeod Bethune. Her aunt straddled her big purple Harley while she chatted up another biker, a man with a handlebar mustache and most of his muscled chest bare under an open leather vest.

Even in a crowd like this, her aunt stood out. Almost unnaturally beautiful, she’d gotten even more striking in her middle age. She had long ago traded her sleek pantsuits and blazers for jeans, biker boots and the occasional tuxedo when she was in the mood. Today, she wore her mostly salted hair in two big French braids with the ends curled like snails at her shoulders. The freckles on her sand-colored cheeks glistened under the steadily falling raindrops.

As Mella came closer, her aunt’s companion gave her a fist bump, then wandered off. Aunt Jess waved at Mella. “I didn’t expect to see you here, honey.”

“I didn’t expect me, either.” Mella made a face, irritated with herself now that she was officially running to her aunt as if someone had stolen her lunch money.

“What’s wrong, Michaela?” Her aunt’s forehead wrinkled in concern.

But even though she’d run halfway across the city to see the woman who had raised her, she wasn’t ready to talk about it yet. It being whatever the hell Victor was doing to her.

“I’m not sure,” Mella finally said. “Maybe I’m just feeling restless.” She rubbed a hand over her face.

But Aunt Jess wasn’t buying her helpless act. “You’re a terrible liar, Michaela. But I’ll wait.” She got off her bike and pulled a minicooler from her saddlebag, then pointed Mella toward an empty picnic bench under a nearby banyan tree offering some protection from the light rain.

Aunt Jess unpacked two sandwiches, two bottles of water and a bag of potato chips from the cooler. “Eat. It’s lunchtime, and I doubt you’ve made the time to get something.”

“I was going to stop by Gillespie’s on the way back to the café.” But she took a sandwich anyway, one of her favorites her aunt made with turkey, rye bread and raw kale. The wasabi mayo burned sweetly as she chewed her first bite. “This is good.”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” her aunt chided, but she was smiling. She opened the other sandwich and nudged the bag of kettle chips closer to Mella’s hand.

When she was very young, Aunt Jessamyn had been one of Mella’s favorite adults to be around. Her aunt liked the same movies Mella did, cooked the best food and liked to do different things from the rest of her family, including her own parents. Although Aunt Jessamyn had a kid of her own, Shaun, she often acted like a child herself, laughed loud and long in public, impulsively took Mella and Shaun on trips to Disney World and learned to ride motorcycles just because. She loved doing things for the experience of them, and that was one of the things Mella had always enjoyed about her favorite aunt and her mother’s only sister.

The three aunts on her father’s side were boring. It just seemed natural that after Mella’s parents died when she was eight, Aunt Jessamyn was the one to take her in. She’d loved her parents and missed them every day, but she was glad she had Aunt Jess.

“How’s the ride going?” Mella asked after chewing a mouthful of chips.

“Decent enough. It would be good if this rain let up, but it’s not too bad. Watching out for the fool drivers cutting up in this weather is a decent distraction from thinking about Shaun.”

Mella nodded. She’d noticed the date, nearly four years to the day Shaun had been sent away to begin his ten years behind bars for vehicular manslaughter. Her aunt was hurting. Mella reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

“You saw him this week?” she asked.

Her aunt nodded. “Yesterday. He’s in such bad shape.” She pressed her lips together, her face a mask of pain. “I’m not sure he’ll last in that place if he doesn’t get paroled. Every time we talk, he tells me he’s sorry for what he did and wishes he could take it all back.”

“I know,” Mella said. “We all wish that.”

But they didn’t live in a world where wishes came true and felons got released just because their mothers were sad.

When Shaun was only twenty and in college, he’d been dumb enough to get behind the wheel after a few too many drinks. The crazy thing was he’d done it so many times before that he hadn’t even thought twice about doing it again. Or at least that’s what he’d told Mella when she visited him in prison.

That night, he’d had too many drinks and didn’t notice the stop sign until he’d plowed through it in his SUV and T-boned a little white sedan. The man in the car hadn’t survived. And although her aunt, through her tears of anger and disappointment, had hired some of the best lawyers in Miami, Shaun had still been sent away for ten years. That was a long time to be without your child.

Shaun had done some crazy things before the accident, partying hard with kids with more money and less responsibilities, kids whose parents lived in a higher tax bracket and played outside the boundaries of the law, knowing that their parents could get them out of trouble if necessary.

Mella tried to warn him about what could happen, but he didn’t listen. Then he was in jail, and his so-called friends disappeared from his life as if they’d never been there. Mella and Aunt Jess had been trying to pick up the pieces over the years. And now that he’d served his minimum sentence and was eligible for parole, Mella and her aunt crossed their fingers that the prison system would let him go. Shaun was only twenty-four. He had spent so many of his prime years in prison.

“Do you need some company tonight?” Mella asked. “I can make us that lasagna you like.”

Although her aunt lived in a decent-sized house on Key Biscayne and often had her housekeeper make meals for her for the week, Mella knew she’d appreciate the offer.

Her aunt nodded. “That would be nice.” She balled up the empty sandwich bag in a delicate fist while Mella finished the last of the chips. “A vegetarian lasagna?”

Mella shook her head in disgust. “Hell no! What do I look like?”

Her aunt chuckled. “Just checking. You’ve been hanging out a lot with that Nala woman.”

“It’s just work, Aunt Jess. Besides, you should be worrying about her other habits rubbing off on me, not the fact that she doesn’t eat meat.” Nala loved to party, loved to travel to places that weren’t the safest and had a wicked collection of knives in her Wynwood loft.

Her aunt made a noise that was all doubt. “That girl is a bad influence.”

“She’s fine. Just because she doesn’t work doesn’t make her a bad influence.”

“Idle hands, Michaela.”

Mella grinned. It was funny that the only people who called her Michaela were her aunt and Nala, the girl she disapproved of so much. “She’s nice. Once you meet her you’ll see.”

The sound of a whistle pierced the rainy afternoon. A woman stood on a picnic table at the far end of the park waving a green flag. The whistle between her lips shrieked again.

“Break time is over.” Her aunt threw the remnants of lunch in the nearby trash can. “Do you want to do the rest of the ride with me?” she asked. “It’s only another couple of hours, then we head back into the city.”

Mella didn’t even have to think about it. The bike ride would be a distraction from her own obsessions. Specifically the one that wore Victor Raphael’s face. “Sure. I can catch up on my work when I get back.”

At the bike, she took her aunt’s spare helmet, hitched up her already short skirt and climbed on the back of the big, rumbling Harley. The seat was damp under her butt, and the bike’s rumble rattled her teeth. The world beyond the screen of her helmet was still rainy, still cloudy, but it felt good to have her aunt near her, even if they were both carrying their separate worries.

“Lead on, warrior princess,” she called to her aunt, her voice muffled behind the helmet.

“That’s warrior queen to you, girl!” Her aunt opened up the throttle, and they were off.

* * *

The Miami Heat was losing the basketball game, but Victor was having a good time, anyway. He was grateful to Kingsley—again—for dragging him out into the world. He had a lot to do at home—cook, work out, look over the draft of the grant request his sister, Vivian, had sent him. But a phone call from Kingsley had him sitting on the courtside, watching Dwyane Wade try to get his team back on top.

“This might be a lost cause,” Kingsley said. But he sounded disgustingly cheerful over the fact.

Kingsley spent more of his time people-watching and answering texts from his little sister than paying attention to what was happening on the court. The game was good, though. The Pistons were putting on a good show and making the Heat work for every score they got.

“Depends on what cause you’re talking about.” Victor swallowed the last of his sparkling water. “I know I’m having fun watching them get burned for a change. Keeps them humble.”

Victor looked away from the court when Kingsley nudged him.

“Hey, isn’t that the auction honey?” He jerked his head across the court where a trio of women jumped to their feet and cheered along with the crowd to the sudden three-pointer by one of the Heat.

Yes, it was definitely Mella. No need to ask Kingsley who he was talking about. She was with her friends from the auction. This time all three women were dressed more casually. Mella wore a white T-shirt under a bright yellow blazer, and tight jeans clung to her exquisite body. She was as distracting as ever, exchanging high fives with her two friends and laughing in a way that made him wonder what the joke was.

He hadn’t seen her since the afternoon they’d looked over the grounds of Sanctuary together. But that didn’t mean he hadn’t been thinking about her. Often. And at the most inconvenient times. Those thoughts made him feel like he was cheating with his friend’s girl. Kingsley never explicitly expressed an interest in Mella, but Victor could see the writing on the wall. They were going to end up together, and he was just going to end up looking stupid.

People were jumping to their feet, whistling, applauding and flagging down the hot dog guys. Halftime.

“Let’s go see what the ladies are up to.” Kingsley stood up. He was apparently anxious to go talk to Mella.

But Victor couldn’t blame him. If he had been the one Mella was interested in, he would already be over there staking his claim, “taste tester” or not. Once she had a taste, maybe she’d discover he was what she craved. He swallowed at the thought. “You go ahead,” he said. “I’ll just chill here.”

He couldn’t bear watching them together from up close. He didn’t want it to be a repeat of their visit to Fever. Not only had it been torture to watch Mella dance with Kingsley and share flirtatious smiles with him, it had also been a social situation he wasn’t quite prepared for. Hundreds of people had crowded him with their sweat and expectations. Women approached him. Men sized him up as competition. The thought of it made his skin crawl a little. But later, when Mella had unexpectedly found him at the downstairs bar, he hadn’t minded as much. There, he’d almost managed to convince himself he was the one she wanted. She’d been a warm and brilliant thing, tempting him with the wet stroke of tongue across her lips, the low hum of her voice as she leaned closer to him at the bar.

He remembered wanting to tug open the buttons of the tiny shirt she wore and just stare at her nipples until they stiffened and ached for his touch. She’d talked about tasting that night, and God, he’d wanted to taste. Later in bed, he’d had particularly vivid dreams.

In the seat next to him, Kingsley glanced at his phone, then shoved it back in his pocket. “You know, not every woman’s waiting around the corner with a shank. Metaphorically speaking.”

Victor winced at the idea that he might be talking about Mella. Was Kingsley really that into her?

But Victor tried to play it off. “Are you saying that with your big head, or the little one?”

Like him, Kingsley had had his share of ruthless women in his life. The only woman he’d been interested in and that actually seemed decent turned out to be his brother’s current wife. She was a woman who seemed ruthless on the outside, all vicious high heels and dry humor. Underneath it all, though, she was a version of sweet. But it turned out she’d also had a thing for Kingsley’s brother, Wolfe, for years before the two of them finally hooked up.

“Don’t be a dick, Vic.” Kingsley grinned at the rhyme, and what he obviously thought was a good joke. “There’s nothing wrong with entertaining a beautiful woman or two for the afternoon. But if you want, I’ll pass along your hellos.”

Just for the afternoon? Mella deserved more than that, if that was what she wanted.

Victor shrugged the tightness from his shoulders. He needed to pull his head out of his ass exactly right now. Stop. Thinking. About. Her. But from the corner of his eye, he couldn’t help but notice her wild, haloing hair and the graceful bow of her back as she threw her whole body into a laugh. She and her friends had attracted the attentions of the other people around them, especially the men. Victor winced again.

Although he didn’t want to see Kingsley with Mella, he wasn’t exactly eager to be in that social of a crowd. Part of him had always thought there was something wrong with him for not wanting to socialize much. Hell, even his parents enjoyed getting out more than he did. Being in crowds didn’t torture him, per se, but when he was expected to interact with the hoard, his comfort level dropped into the basement. His sister said he had mild social anxiety. Victor just thought he was selective about the people and situations he exposed himself to.

All around him, people were chattering, gobbling down hot dogs, dancing to the loud music coming from the speakers. No one looked at him. No one seemed to expect anything from him. He was cool with that.

“Go ahead,” he said to Kingsley. “I’ll be right here enjoying the view.”

Kingsley hesitated, a split-second pause, before he glanced again at his phone then stood up. “I’ll be back.”

“All right, Ahnald.”

Kingsley chuckled as he walked away.

While his friend made his way toward Mella and her friends, Victor leaned back in his seat and watched the action in the stands. A tall guy who looked like a pro ball player joined Mella and her friends, no doubt drawn to their collective vivacity and beauty. Victor didn’t recognize him, but that wasn’t saying much.

Mella’s friends, though, seemed immediately starstruck, flirting with the tall guy and then with Kingsley, who’d walked into their gathering with enviable ease. When his friend got to the women, they looked like a blessing had fallen on them straight from heaven. One of Mella’s friends—he couldn’t tell them apart—amped up the charm on the ball player while the other claimed Kingsley. Despite the attempted pairing up, Mella never lost the attentions of the ball player or Kingsley. Victor didn’t bother guessing what they were talking about. Would Kingsley mention him?




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