An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,35

to stay on the phone, but he threw it aside and went back to his father.

To his father's body.

The knees of his jeans soaked up blood as he begged his dad to open his eyes, to speak to him.

"Johnny? Johnny, are you there?"

The voice yanked him out of the nightmare. "Tea?" he croaked.

"Johnny? What's the matter?"

Like that afternoon at her house, Tea was able to pull him from the vacuum-suck of the past. He followed her voice, holding onto the sound of it, holding onto that feeling of her vital and alive and so damn sexy in his arms when he'd kissed her, letting that more recent memory lead him back to the present. Letting Tea bring him back to the present.

The shirt he was wearing was soaked with sweat. His hair was wet with more of it. He smelled fear. He smelled of fear.

He couldn't, wouldn't, live like this any longer.

"Johnny, speak to me."

"I'm here." He swallowed, struggling to bring his voice back to normal. "I'm right here."

"Did you hear what I said?"

He swallowed again, and lifted a trembling hand to comb back his hair. "What you said about what?"

"That I have a problem with the job... with your house."

Join the club. But he was going to do what he must to exorcise its demons and lay his own ghosts to rest.

"What kind of problem?" The question came out rougher than he liked.

"Maybe we should talk about this tomorrow," she said, her voice puzzled. "You sound as if you need some sleep."

He laughed, a harsh sound. "You've got that right."

'Tomorrow, then."

'Tomorrow." Yeah. He'd face whatever was inside that house tomorrow.

The increasing number and intensity of the flashbacks demanded it. Tomorrow, he'd move into the house. And closer to Tea. She was both a link to his past and a salvation from it. Until he had all the answers he needed, he'd use her for both.

He'd told her they needed to settle things. And tomorrow he would. No more doubts, no more Mr. Nice Guy. He was going to get the truth and he was going to get her.
Chapter Eleven
"Oh! Lady Be Good" Ella Fitzgerald The First Lady of Song (1949)

All good things ended. She already knew that. Tea reminded herself, so there was no reason to feel such sharp disappointment as she arrived - early, of course - for her appointment with Johnny. Unlike her first visit to the compound on El Deseo Drive, this time hers was the sole car in the parking area by the large garage. Like her first visit, as she walked past the lagoon on her way to the front door, a chill crept down her spine.

But the little shiver was chased off as she pushed through the overgrowth beyond the murky body of water and reached the concrete steps leading up to the house itself. This part of the estate had been better cared for than the rest. On either side of the wide, shallow stairs were manicured bushes showing just the slightest shagginess. Beyond them was a sloping, well-watered lawn. As she reached the last step, she took in the smooth concrete walkways that swirled left and right to follow the contours of a generous free-form swimming pool. The water looked turquoise in the morning light, and revealed partially submerged boulders before it took a turn inside the house to flow under a glass panel that delineated one wall of the foyer.

The house itself was stunning too, its flat roof, glass walls, and box shapes seeming to grow out of the low-lying, granite-studded hills surrounding it. Following the curve of the pool, Tea passed tall fan palms and mounds of feathery grasses. At the front door, she turned, catching the breathtaking view that showed the distant and dramatic barren mountain slopes across the valley floor.

"Already?" Johnny's voice said.

Tea jumped, then spun to confront him. He'd come from another direction, around the side of the house. One hand gripped a Starbucks cardboard cup carrier.

"You're early," he remarked.

"I'm always early," she murmured, disappointment piercing her again. Not over the lost design job this time, but over losing him, or her contact with him, anyway. He was every inch the OOD - Object of Desire - that Rachele had once called him, and that based on his voice alone.

Now - in the flesh and in soft-washed khakis and a white silk T-shirt - he was STWSADOI personified. Sex the Way She'd Always Dreamed of It.

"The quintessential good girl, aren't you," Johnny said, plucking a cup