“Anthony, Allegra, and Alessandra. I’m sensing a pattern.” Sylvie stuck out her hand.
“Yes, our mother, Annabelle—who married Anthony senior—loves the letter A.” Ryder laughed. “God help us.”
Sylvie shook hands with his sister. Their difference struck him. Where Ryder was tall, lithe, and dressed in head-to-toe black, Sylvie stood at least half a foot shorter and wore a bright pink lace skirt that hugged her mind-boggling ass, and a cream sweater that showed off even more curves, tempting him for all the wrong reasons. And just now he was having a hard time remembering the right reasons not to be.
He doubted any of Sylvie’s friends—or enemies—had ever crossed the suspension bridge and set foot in Waterberg. Over here, four-wheel-drive trucks and minivans sat parked in the driveways. Tire swings swayed in the breeze. Fences needed to be repainted, garden flags declared “Welcome Spring!” in browning gardens, and cracks traveled up the length of the sidewalks. His neighborhood couldn’t be any further from Harbor City’s rich enclaves of glass and steel than if it had been on the moon.
Kermit padded over to Sylvie, his nose twitching. As he was about to go in for his favorite greeting, she scratched behind one of the Newfie’s furry ears and squatted down
to his level. “Aren’t you just the softest thing ever?”
Instantly in love, Kermit leaned into her hand and nudged closer until he was near enough to give her a big doggie kiss. She giggled, and the breeze scattered strands of her honey-brown hair, which glimmered in the afternoon light. She buried her face in the dog’s fluffy neck and he sighed in contentment.
Tony’s body hardened. What he wouldn’t give—
Shit, he was jealous of a slobbering, overgrown dog.
Rich, pampered Sylvie Bissette should have looked out of place on the block where he’d grown up and bought a small house of his own. But she didn’t. She looked…perfect.
He didn’t have to pretend to be her boyfriend out here in the suburbs, way beyond Harbor City’s fashion district, but try as he might, he couldn’t shake the role.
Stop mentally moving her into your bedroom and get your head in the game, Falcon. Too much is riding on this for you to fuck it all up. Again.
Ryder nodded toward his Cape Cod house next door. “You working or can I sweet talk you into taking the peanut butter bandit home with you?”
“No way. The last time that happened he built skyscrapers with my coffee mugs and proceeded to play Godzilla.”
“I had to ask.” Ryder stepped closer to him and lowered her voice. “So how goes the case?”
“We’re moving base to my place. I’ll update you and the rest of the team after I get Sylvie settled.”
He opened the Charger’s trunk and grabbed Sylvie’s orange leather overnight bag and one of his black duffel bags. The other go-bag stayed in its spot, hiding the latch to the trunk’s false bottom. He slammed the trunk closed and the dog took off running toward Joey on the front lawn.
Ryder nodded toward their nephew. “You know he’s going to spill everything about you having a guest to Alessandra. Who will tell mom. Who will be scandalized and, at the same time, oh, so hopeful that her boy has finally found someone good enough to bring home to Mama.”
Tony glanced at Joey, who was lying in the middle of the front yard eating his boogers while Kermit licked away the last vestiges of peanut butter from the boy’s cheeks. Ryder was right. His nephew would rat him out in a heartbeat, and there was nothing he could do about it.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Whatcha gonna do?”
It hit Sylvie the moment she walked into the bedroom. Man smell. Not locker room man smell, thank God, but warm-blooded, all-American testosterone mixed with sandalwood and soap. Closing her eyes, she took in a double lungful and her thighs actually quivered.
“You okay?”
Heat blasted her cheeks and her eyes snapped open at Tony’s voice. “Yeah, fine.”
The stubborn hardwood floor refused to open up under her feet. She had some sort of Pavlovian response to the kind of hotness Tony exuded. The whole situation sucked. Why couldn’t he be a troll who smelled like rotting funk instead of a hottie who turned her into some kind of hormonal teen with a smelling fetish?
At this point, fate was just fucking with her. A stalker with physical damage on his agenda. A burglar who left diamonds but took old laptops. A hot guy who said he didn’t want her but looked at her like she was a supermodel. It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke. But it was her life. No wonder her time-to-freak-out alert had gone haywire.
“I turned the guest room into an office. I’ll stay on the pull-out couch in there.” He swiped a pair of jeans from a leather chair and shoved a dresser drawer shut with his foot.
“I can’t kick you out of your room.” And sleep in his bed, where she’d probably spend the night sniffing his pillow.
“You’re not kicking. I’m offering some Waterberg hospitality.”
Sylvie flipped through possible excuses but couldn’t come up with a thing that didn’t sound churlish or pathetic and force her to tell the truth. No way was she going with “I’m afraid I’ll do indecent things with your pillow.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her continued silence.