An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,31

he replied. His gaze flicked toward her father to show that oh, he saw very well indeed.

ok? She messaged.

Looking up into her face, he hesitated.

She bit her bottom lip.

He froze, his eyes narrowing, and her skin tingled from cobalt-painted toenails to silver eyebrow ring. A hot flush followed.

Did his gaze darken? She only knew for sure that he could text message one-handed and without looking at the keypad.

slap showed up on her screen.

Sounds Like A Plan.

Rachele couldn't stop the smile from breaking over her face.

"You're sure?" he said softly.

Her heart leaped toward her throat and seemed to expand there. "You're not?" she said around it.

He grinned, melting it right back down into her chest. "My friends say I'm too smart for my own good."

Rachele sent a warning glance in the direction of her father and placed her finger over her lips.

He nodded, then turned toward the door.

As it closed behind the man of her dreams, Rachele flopped back against the padded back of her desk chair, stoked with this new feeling, this unexpected infatuation, this... love.

She'd always suspected love was going to be easy. And it was. The right guy walked through the door and bam! She went from immature and untried to a woman knowledgeable in the ways of the world and men and women.

Her imagination played it all out. With Johnny Magee as their client, there would be plenty of opportunity to run into Cal Kazarsky. And no one - her father - would be any the wiser. A smile played over her face as she watched the future unfurl.

"Oh my God!" Tea's shocked exclamation startled Rachele out of her seat.

"What? What?"

"I just knew there'd be more problems." Tea was hugging herself, as if the air-conditioning had suddenly gone arctic. Rachele's father's face was grim.

"What? What?" she repeated, rushing toward them.

In answer, Tea pointed a quivering fingertip at the name on the bottom of one set of blueprints. "Prepared for Giovanni Martelli," it read.

Oh my God. Oh my God.

Apparently the house they'd agreed to redesign was once owned by Giovanni Martelli, the Mafia triggerman who reputedly had taken out Tea's father. As quick as it had come alive, Rachele saw her promising new love die a swift, painful death.

The wound over her heart throbbed in unrequited agony. Unless Tea took this job, Rachele would never find a way to get close to Cal Kazarsky. She would be stuck in the purgatory between girl and grown-up forever.
Chapter Ten
"I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan" Bobby Darin Love Swings (1961)

Johnny hadn't been to the cemetery in sixteen years. He would have sworn he couldn't have located it on his own, but somehow the rented Jag found its way there after his return to the Palm Springs airport.

The "emergency" trip back to Las Vegas the day before had been nothing more than a bad case of jitters from one of the syndicate's longtime investors. Johnny had nursed a vodka tonic at a Bellagio baccarat table, sitting beside the retired CFO of a health care conglomerate. The other man had dropped ten large bills in less than an hour, all the while bitching about the business's change of venue.

If the fool had a lick of sense, he wouldn't be playing baccarat in the first place. Somewhere in heaven or hell Ian Fleming was laughing his ass off at the way his fictional spy had fueled the fantasies of thousands of James Bond-wannabes to play a game that was essentially nothing more than calling heads or tails. Two hands of cards dealt. The player bet on which would have a point total closest to nine. Might as well be a damn coin flip. With that, the odds were better.

Johnny had gone to bed in his Las Vegas condo in a lousy mood, got up in a nasty one, and then spent a few hours making the people who worked for him in the penthouse office miserable before catching a plane back to Palm Springs. What a way to cap off the day, he thought, driving through the cemetery's open gates.

But then again, perhaps this was exactly what he needed.

Maybe his subconscious was telling him he'd been wrong and it was returning to the grave, not the house, that would exorcise the demons that had been dogging him since his thirty-third birthday.

In a more determined, if not hopeful, mood, he followed the directions to the grave the cemetery's office had solemnly supplied, along with a stapled three-page listing and map that marked the