After she hung up she scuttled to the bathroom to do some kind of emergency work on her hair. Two minutes into it she gave up. Pete was going to have to see her in her ‘raw’ state. The other night she’d been decked out in a full on seduction number, hoping to catch Rocco’s eye.
It seemed she had. But he wasn’t going to do anything. She had yet to get to the bottom of that, but she bet it was because he thought she was too young, too much his best friends’ little sister...
Pete Boulder might just be the man she needed to help Rocco see that she’d all grown up. Hopefully the photographer would still think she had potential despite her student-on-the-run gear and straggly hair.
Her mouth drooped a little. Did she really think she could make it as a model? Did she really even want to? What Logan had said had resonated—she knew it wasn’t easy or glamorous.
But she squared her shoulders. Too bad whether she wanted to or not, she needed money fast.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Chapter Five
ROCCO QUICKLY TRIED to read over the copy his assistant had prepared for him. Least he could do was sign it off so the woman could get home and not worry about it all night. But he wasn’t concentrating.
All his attention had been sucked up by Dani. He figured the fastest way to kill her crush was to get her to hate him. But damned if he wanted to do that to her. She’d had enough of a rough day as it was. He’d winced when Logan had shredded her. She’d cleared out just at the point when he’d been about to interrupt and tell his friend to go a little easier.
He remembered when she’d been a skinny termagant, shrieking at her mother years ago because she didn’t want to go back to boarding school. Logan had reckoned they were crocodile tears. Rocco hadn’t been so sure. Logan hadn’t been around much then, and even when he was, he’d been preoccupied with his own issues—much as he was now. So how would he have known?
Nothing was as it seemed in that house. The superficially perfect home hid utter unhappiness. He’d recognized her genuine distress—and its source. He knew what it was like not to be wanted. To have your presence merely endured. And ultimately, to be pushed away.
After his father died, his mom had met Bill who she’d hired to manage the family restaurant. They’d married horribly soon. Rocco’s mom had stepped back from the restaurant, had a couple of boys.
But Bill hadn’t liked the permanent reminder of his wife’s first husband. It was bad enough that the restaurant was named after him. But the place was so successful Bill couldn’t change that. But he could change the family line-up.
Rocco’s presence had barely been tolerated by Bill from the beginning. And in the end the bastard forced Rocco’s mom to make her choice.
She had.
Rocco went out on his own the day he turned thirteen. Roughing it for a while before Connor and Logan stepped in and became the brothers he’d lost. Not that their parents had liked it. Old man Hughes was ruthless. He demanded the best, accepted nothing less, no matter the situation.
Rocco sighed and headed back upstairs, summoning self-control. He could handle Dani. And himself.
He liked sex but desire didn’t rule him. Sure, he’d enjoy a one-nighter when he needed a screw to ease off the strain. He wasn’t as voracious as Logan, but who was? He picked up a willing woman in a bar and went back her hotel room for a few hours. Invariably he targeted women who were only in town for a few days. Though never a guest in his own hotel. Never a female associated with any of his friends.
Logan and Connor were more than friends, they were now the only family he had. And Rocco always abided by the brotherhood code—mates before dates, friends before fucks.
Dani wasn’t a date, definitely not a contender for anything more or less. She was utterly out of bounds.
Two minutes later he walked into his ominously quiet suite and cursed long and loud.
She was utterly out of the room.
Cursing more beneath his breath, he headed straight down to reception. “You seen Dani—my guest—leave here?” he asked the guy on reception, knowing his staff had all had a good, long look at her when he’d brought her in. Word would have travelled at warp speed that he’d ensconced her in his suite.
“I believe she’s in the bar.” The guy briefly glanced up at him, then was palpably relieved when he had to answer a phonecall.
She wasn’t even fucking legally allowed to drink. What did she think she was doing—going to the bar to meet someone?
Rocco strode into the bar, blinking a few times to adjust to the dimmer light. Who’s dumb idea had it been to create such an intimate mood in the place?
Oh yeah. His.
He stalked past private nooks, peering as discreetly—yet efficiently—as possible.
Two seconds later he lurched to a halt. It was like a knee to the balls. She had met someone. Worse, that someone was male. Rocco glared through narrowed eyes and recognized the bastard.
Like bloody hell.
He stalked up behind her and plucked the champagne flute from her hand. “I’ll take that, thanks Princess.”
He felt her turn towards him, but he was too busy out-staring the man she’d been talking to.
Pete Boulder’s eyebrows soared to within a whisker of his hairline. “Rocco. Good to see you.”
Rocco took a mouthful of her drink, paused a second and then swallowed the sweet lemonade. “Didn’t know you were headed back to Manhattan so soon,” he said to Pete.
He shot Dani an annoyed look and handed her glass back to her. Somehow the fact that she hadn’t been drinking alcohol pissed him off all the more. So did the fact that she’d done her hair and something to her eyes. And there was gloss on her full lips.
She’d prettied up for Pete-the-Pervert Boulder?
“No rest for the wicked.” Pete smirked.
Yeah, Pete was absolutely wicked. Vile in fact. And he wasn’t getting near Dani.
“Indeed.” Rocco watched as Dani placed her lemonade on the table with an arctic expression. She wasn’t impressed? That made two of them.
“You still wanting to use the Silk Room as a backdrop to one of your portfolio shoots sometime?” He turned his attention back to Pete.
“You’re finally agreeing?” Pete’s eyebrows rose again.
“Seems so.” Rocco would offer anything to get this creep away from Dani. “Call my assistant to set up a time that suits.” He glanced at his watch in an exaggerated gesture. “I need to get Dani to her brother now.”
He slung his arm along her shoulder at the exact moment she stiffened. “Come on, Princess. Don’t want the carriage to turn into a pumpkin. See ya, Pete.”
He left with that image of Pete’s smirk burned in his brain.
What the hell had she been thinking?
But Dani was unusually silent as she walked with him across the lobby and into the elevator. It was only once the doors closed and they were alone that she turned on him.
“I didn’t need you to come rescue me.” She shot daggers with those fierce blue eyes. “I told you, I’m all grown up.”
“You don’t need—”
“I turned him down.”
Turned him down for what? Rocco’s blood boiled. “He tried it on?”
“Ugh.” She wrinkled her nose. “The man only has sex with his camera.”
Is that what she thought? Was she that naive? Dear lord, the guy had been salivating.
“The only way he wanted to shoot me was naked,” she said, jabbing the button for the fourth floor as if it would make the elevator move faster.
“Wanted to know if I was as adventurous as my brother.”
“You said no?”
The elevator doors opened on his floor.
“Of course I said no. I’m not stupid.” She stalked ahead and turned, impatiently waiting for him to open the door. “You’re as bad as Logan, not trusting me.”
“You said you’d stay in my room.”
“I said I wouldn?
?t leave the hotel. And I didn’t.” She marched into the room and kicked off her boots. “No one thinks I can make sensible decisions for myself.”
“That’s because you don’t make sensible decisions. Isn’t this proof of that?”
“That’s because I’m forced into action. They don’t want to know. Won’t listen. Won’t let me talk.”
“But Pete Boulder for fuck’s sake. Surely you know his reputation?”
“Of course I do. I know he makes people famous.”
“Why do you want to be famous?” And for what? It didn’t add up, this was the girl who’d always run away from all that stuff. Hell, she’d run away from the party the other night. Though he’d wondered if he’d been the only guest to notice the fact.
“I don’t. I just want to make some money.”
“You come from one of the wealthiest families in America.”
“I have no money of my own. Or none that I can access right now. The only way I can gain control of my life is to control everything. Especially money. My father just blocked my cards as a way to control me. I can’t let that continue.”
Rocco sighed. “I get it. But you don’t want to model with that guy as the photographer—”
“I don’t want to model at all,” she snapped. “I just thought it would be a fast way of getting enough money to get on with my life.”
“Then why did you have that slanging match with Logan about it?” Rocco struggled to simmer down.
“Because he was trying to control me as much as my father does. He wouldn’t listen.”
That had been true. Logan had just wanted her out of there. “Yeah but did you have to be so bone-headed about it?”
“Did he?”