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  “George? He’s as straight and narrow as they come. He wants to help you until you figure things out.”

  George was one of the older agents whom Nick depended on. After the Rupert shakedown, he took a liking to me. He suggested I become an agent, which I immediately refused. His next suggestion was private investigator. A visual of my massive frame hiding in a bush as I inconspicuously stalked a man who was accused of cheating on his wife caused me to cringe.

  “He needs a new pet project.”

  “Hey, it would give you an additional income at least while you’re getting your psychology degree.”

  “True.”

  Nick flicked on the TV and we both settled into a comfortable silence as he searched for something to watch. When my sister returned, we had settled on a repeat of the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.

  “Seriously?” she asked, plopping down on Nick’s lap. “Interested in the latest lingerie trends?”

  “It’s entertaining. No different than you watching a football game.”

  “It’s very different.”

  I threw Angela a poignant look. “You watch for the sport or to see the men in tight football pants?”

  She quickly quipped, “The sport.”

  “You lie.”

  Nick changed the channel and shrugged when I said, “Dude.”

  “Why ruin my chances at sex tonight?”

  Angela smacked her husband before bending to kiss him.

  “Ugh, time to go,” I grumbled at their display.

  “David, you need a woman in your life,” Angela said. “Which leads me to what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  “Oh, no way! It really is time for me to go.” I immediately stood up and added, “Thanks for dinner, guys.” As I walked past, Angela reached out and grabbed my wrist.

  “Sit down and hear me out.” With a very heavy sigh, I sat back down on the couch beside them. “She is so sweet, and her personality is amazing.”

  Nick snorted as I said, “That’s code for ‘barker.’ ”

  “She is very attractive!” she insisted. “She just started working for Eve. Eve is having a happy hour to celebrate her new location. Stop by. If you don’t like what you see you can leave without an explanation.”

  “No.”

  “David. It’s the least you can do; you owe me.”

  I glared at my sister with my mouth gaping open. “What are you talking about? What do I owe you for?”

  “For not being at my wedding.” She threw that fact in my face often.

  “I was at your wedding.” At the time she didn’t know that I was there, since I was hiding from the feds…but I was there. From a distance I watched her and Nick marry in a small, quaint ceremony in Central Park.

  “No. Standing fifty feet away incognito doesn’t count. Come on, it’ll be fun. You know how our cousin goes all out. Eve will have the best booze and food in the city.”

  She had a point. Canned soup was getting old.

  “Is Nick going?”

  Nick shook his head while Angela nodded.

  “Baby, I have to work.”

  “Nice try. I haven’t even said when it is yet.”

  “Damn it,” Nick mumbled.

  “You’re both coming. It’s on Friday night at six, after the store closes. No arguments.”

  Nick and I exchanged an eye-roll. At the sight of it, Angela assumed victory. She can be such a pain in the ass, but we do love her.

  “Yay, it’ll be so much fun. You’ll see.”

  “Wasn’t that the last thing the captain of the Titanic said as he pulled out of port?”

  Nick laughed as his wife swatted me in the face with a throw pillow.

  —

  On Friday night I walked into Eve’s store with dread written all over my face. Nick threatened me that if he had to come to this damn party, then I’d better be there, or else. He never clarified what “or else” meant, but knowing my brother-in-law, it would involve putting his wife on my ass regarding my social life. That was enough to force me into doing just about anything.

  Standing at the door of the overly expensive retail space that my cousin had built from the ground up, my eyes scanned the dozens of people milling around among the racks of overpriced clothing. The store was all white, and the clothing was all black.

  I seriously didn’t get it. How many black shirts did one need?

  Servers weaved through the crowd offering fancy glasses of champagne and tiny food that couldn’t satisfy a mouse. Watching upper-crust New York socialites was better than watching TV. These people didn’t have a clue what life was really about. I’d love to take a good portion of the guests at the party and airdrop them into a hotbox somewhere in the middle of Iraq.

  From across the room I watched the ridiculousness that surrounded me. It was times like this that I was grateful for my military discipline. I was able to stand robotically mimicking the body language of a normal human being even as my chest roiled with resentment toward this room full of strangers.

  In the far left corner I saw my cousin’s husband, Jase, chatting with Angela and Nick. As if sensing my ominous presence, Angela suddenly looked my way, grabbed Nick’s hand, and beelined right for me.

  “That’s her on your right near the bar,” she said without a hello.

  My eyes moved to a very tall, very big-boned blonde laughing manically while holding her beer. “Her name is Carly,” Angela continued.

  “Should be Charlie,” I murmured, and Nick spit out the sip of beer he still hadn’t swallowed.

  “Knock it off,” Angela whispered. “She’ll hear you.”

  “Ang, I hate to break this to you but that she is a he.”

  My sister’s eyes flew over to where Carly now had one of her very large hands on the shoulder of the small-framed man standing beside her. The difference in their height only supported my argument.

  “No way,” Angela argued, refusing to believe my theory. “She is not.”

  “Sis, if that isn’t a dude, I’ll go put on one of these skirts Eve sells for way too much money and model it up and down the streets of SoHo.”

  My sister tsked as her eyes focused on Carly, and deep frown lines puckered her forehead. If she continued to work her brain as hard as she was, smoke would start billowing out of her ears soon.

  “Baby, I think he’s right,” Nick said after a few minutes had passed with the three of us blatantly staring at the amazon my sister wanted to set me up with.

  “How could you not see it?”

  “I don’t see anything but a pretty blond woman. Sure, she’s tall, but so is every supermodel out there.”

  “Angela, look around and compare her to every other female in this room. I’m pretty sure I can see her Adam’s apple as well as her…”

  A familiar petite blonde caught my attention, stopping me mid-sentence. She stood chatting with Eve, smiling at whatever was being said. As she slowly raised a glass of champagne to her lips, her eyes landed on me.

  “You know Maygen?” Angela asked, following my gaze.

  Without breaking the optical connection that stretched across the store, I shrugged nonchalantly. “Not really.”

  “Well, she keeps looking at you.” Her comment was laced with snarkiness. “And you can’t stop looking at her. What exactly does ‘not really’ mean?”

  “If you must know, Miss Nosey, I ran into her outside her building and she spilled her coffee all over herself.”

  “How romantic, a real Hallmark commercial in the making. She’s gorgeous, and definitely your type.”

  “And definitely a female,” Nick added. Angela smacked his shoulder, causing him to say, “What?”

  “How well do you know her?” I asked her.

  “Not well. I met her through Eve. She assists one of the designers that Eve loves, and Eve is trying to get Maygen to convince him to do an exclusive design for the store.” Remembering that Maygen had admitted she worked for a designer, I nodded at my sister’s little tidb
it of information.

  I’d forgotten how stunning she was. Maygen’s eyes alternated between Eve and me as she nervously spun the crystal flute between her fingers. I wanted to see her cheeks flush with embarrassment when I asked why she stood me up. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I wanted to start something that I had no intention of finishing.

  “She’s adorable, and very down-to-earth. Go talk to her, David.”

  An internal debate ensued, before I relented. “Excuse me.”

  With purpose in my step I walked toward Maygen. I could feel my sister’s smug gaze burning a hole through the back of my head. Eve turned to look over her shoulder to see what Maygen was so intently focused on.

  When she saw me, a genuine smile spread over Eve’s face. “Hey, cuz,” she said, wrapping her arms around me for a hug. “I’m so glad you decided to come. Angela said you needed your arm twisted.”

  “She said you’d have booze and food. But froufrou champagne isn’t booze.” I glanced at a passing waiter who peddled bite-size sandwiches and thumbed toward his tray. “And that isn’t food.”

  “Don’t be so caveman.” Eve flicked her hand against my chest. “What do you think of the store?”

  The pride on my cousin’s face was hard to ignore. With this location marking her fourth store, she had created quite a dynasty. My sister ran her other New York location while Eve bounced between New York, Chicago, and Vegas. Her husband, Jase, was an ad exec, and between them they pulled in quite a huge chunk of change, affording them a very luxurious lifestyle.

  “Simply stunning.” My words referred to both the store and the girl I continued to stare at. “Hello, Maygen.”

  Eve immediately noticed the electricity coursing between us. Cocking her head with a gleam in her eye, she asked, “You two know each other?”

  “I ran into Maygen yesterday…literally,” I admitted with a smirk.

  “Hi, David.” A rosy blush tinged Maygen’s cheeks before she quietly asked Eve, “So, you’re cousins?”

  “Yep. David is Angela’s brother.”

  “Small world.”

  “Hmm. It is indeed. I have to mingle, but David will take good care of you.” Eve kissed my cheek and whispered, “Be nice to her.”

  Maygen and I stood a few feet from each other with my eyes on her and her eyes darting around the room obviously avoiding mine. The nervous energy emanating from every cell in her body was almost comical. Stepping closer, I left her no choice but to stare either at the center of my chest or up into my eyes. I could tell I was affecting her by the way her chest rose and fell as she pulled in one quick breath after another. Her teeth briefly clamped down on her lip before she said, “So about yesterday…”

  “I ended up in the emergency room with a hundred and twelve stitches.”

  “Oh no,” she said with a gasp, her eyes widening in panic before they surveyed my torso. “What happened?”

  “Mauled by a pack of wild dogs. Didn’t you see the blood on the sidewalk outside your building? It was mixed with the latte stains.”

  Her beautiful pink lips quirked to the side as she tried to hide a smile. “Very funny.”

  “Quite the contrary. They tore me apart. It was a horrific scene. Traffic stopped, people ran for cover. I was on the news. I’ll consider my scars a small price to pay for having met you.”

  Losing the battle, a gorgeous smile slowly spread over her lips. “I’m sorry I didn’t show up to save you. Once I got to work my own hell broke loose. Obviously not in the form of a canine Armageddon, but more in the lines of a fashion designer’s hissy fit.”

  “Well, I’ll forgive you under one condition.”

  “Another ultimatum?” she asked before taking a healthy sip of her champagne.

  “You are the one who stood me up and left me for dead.”

  “I didn’t mean to!” The spark I first noticed after we initially met returned in the depths of her pale blue eyes. A few of the other guests turned toward us and the mortified look on her face had me chuckling at her expense. Leaning closer she lowered her voice and said, “Besides, I left word with the security desk, but you never went in looking for me.”

  She had?

  I tried to hide my surprise over her admission, but failed.

  She cleared her throat before saying, “Um…forget I said that. I didn’t want you waiting around and I had no way of getting in touch with you, so I thought maybe if you went looking for me the security guard could fill you in on my excuse for not showing up.” Mistaking my stunned silence for something else, she quickly added, “Um…okay, well…take care of those sutures, you don’t want them becoming infected.” She threw me a shy smile and started to walk away.

  I quickly reached out and grabbed her elbow. “Want to get out of here and get some real food?”

  Her eyes brightened, her smile widened, and she said, “I’d love to.”

  Maygen

  After congratulating Eve on her grand opening—and politely smiling as she tried to grill me on details of my relationship with David, which basically didn’t exist—I retrieved my coat and waited at the door for him. He stood with his back toward me talking to Angela and her husband when suddenly three sets of eyes glanced my way. David shook his head and waved a hand at whatever his sister was saying while calling over his shoulder, “Bye, sis!”

  Angela couldn’t have been too upset with him based on the huge smile that spread across her face. She met my eyes and blew me a kiss. I had only recently met her through Eve. I ran into them at an Art Through Fabric exhibit at the Met, and I instantly liked her. How funny that a few weeks later I would meet her brother by chance and was about to have a date with him…well, kind of.

  They looked somewhat alike, with the same eyes and the same smile. My eyes scanned David’s tall, muscular torso as he walked toward me with a smug smirk on his face. Even with a winter coat on him, you could clearly see the definition of his remarkable physique. I was never one not to appreciate a tall, well-built man. Most of the guys I dated were of average height, average build, basically average.

  Just like the work of art that bore the same name, you couldn’t help but marvel at his perfection. He was completely oblivious to the female stares he received, or the men who subtly shuddered because of David’s size.

  “Let’s go, beautiful.” He took my hand and led me out of the store into the cold December air.

  “Miss Whitney,” Warren greeted me the moment we stepped outside.

  “No thank you, Warren,” I huffed, adding an exaggerated eye-roll for good measure.

  “Who’s that?”

  “No one.”

  David glanced at Warren once before focusing on me. One eyebrow arched higher than the other as he challenged me to amend my statement, which I promptly ignored. I wasn’t prepared to get into my father’s obsessive need to ensure I was safe. I barely knew David and that was not how I wanted him to get to know me. I made a mental note to have a serious sit-down with good old Dad as soon as possible.

  Without another word, David walked us east through the crowded sidewalks toward the corner. The other businesses and boutiques on Spring Street were already closed, with most store hours ending at six each evening. Yet there were still a lot of people out and about, braving the frigid temperatures, wanting to start their weekends with the fantastic nightlife that SoHo had to offer.

  My mind raced with things to say while he seemed perfectly comfortable saying nothing.

  “Where are we going?” I finally thought of something as we waited for the light to turn green.

  His emerald eyes focused on mine before he said, “I know of a great little Italian place up on King Street. Sound good?”

  “Sounds great.”

  He lifted our entwined hands, kissed my knuckles, and said, “Great.”

  Chapter 4

  Maygen

  The restaurant was minuscule, and David’s hulking presence made it seem even smaller. While still holding my hand, he led me to a table at th
e very back corner. It was only half-full, leaving the surrounding tables empty.

  “Not many people know about this place. I found it by accident.” He helped me remove my coat before taking off his own and placed them on an empty chair at the next table.

  “It smells delicious in here.”

  He pulled out my chair for me and asked, “Is there anything you don’t eat?” That same brow curved teasingly with his question. His eyes scanned my face and focused on my lips while he waited for a response.

  “Um…no. I eat everything.”

  “Good to know,” he said with a wink as he sat in the chair facing mine.

  My stomach flipped from both his words and the intensity of his stare. Self-consciously, I looked away, taking in the décor of the restaurant. While under the weight of his gaze, my eyes scanned the stereotypical red and white checkered tablecloths, the framed artwork of different Italian landmarks, and the staff, who all looked like they just stepped off the boat from Italy. But in my mind I only saw David’s heated gaze penetrating right through me.

  My nervousness was palpable, and it had nothing to do with not knowing anything about David. In spite of his overwhelmingly mysterious demeanor, I felt safe with him. What made me jumpy was the sudden desire to want to know him better…both in mind and body.

  I squirmed when a vision popped up of David taking a shower.

  Where the hell did that come from?

  Thankfully, a rotund older gentleman came over with menus, causing the imagery to immediately dissipate.

  “Mr. David. How are you?”

  “Good, Mimo.”

  “We no see you for a few days. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, just busy.” David proceeded to order our appetizers and dinner without asking what I wanted. My only choice came with his question of wine or not.

  I nodded yes and Mimo said, “I be back.”

  Only when Mimo walked away did he ask, “Is that okay?” I laughed at his question. “What?” he added.

  “Are you always so…?” What was the word I was looking for—bossy…controlling…domineering? I settled on, “High-handed?”

  “You think I’m high-handed?”