An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,37
thoughts in his head? The mortification!
"You call it coffee," he continued, and this time she knew for sure that he moved closer. "I call it - "
"Maybe we should go inside." Anything to put a little distance between them. Between him, her, and that pool. Wet and getting wetter. She cleared her throat. "We can talk in the house where it's cooler."
He stilled, then glanced over his shoulder at the front door. "Not yet. I can't... let's not go in there yet."
"Fine. No problem. Sure." There was no reason for them to go inside, not when this job wasn't going to be hers anyway. Glancing around at the beauty of the pool and then thinking of the potential to be found inside the modern-style house, disappointment sliced through her again.
Damn her family for once more standing between her and her dreams.
Anger went on simmer inside her, but she tried ignoring it as she faced Johnny once more. "So you know, I can't take the job."
His eyes narrowed, his gaze a blue laser beam locking onto hers. "Is that right?" he said softly. "You can't or you won't?"
Suppressing a little shiver, she remembered calling his money manager persona the night before boring. Now she wondered if the occupation might take more steel than she imagined. "I shouldn't, I can't, I won't." She shrugged. "It's really all the same."
"I don't understand."
"You won't want me."
He smiled, making her shiver again. 'Tea, you've got to know by now that's not true."
Oh, good God. She was going hot again. Fanning her face, she tried her best to stop thinking about what he'd said and focus on what she had to say. "Bad choice of words. My family... " Shame and anger edged higher inside of her.
"Your family - ?" Johnny prompted.
The right words wouldn't come out. "There was a murder here," she blurted. "Sixteen years ago."
"I know," he said calmly.
She blinked. "You do?"
He nodded. "The realtor told me before I bought the place. But you didn't know?"
He was laser-beamed back onto her again. "No. Not until I saw the blueprints Cal brought over and the name on one of the sets. Giovanni Martelli." The family enemy. The family victim. Both, according to rumor.
Johnny nodded again.
"It doesn't bother you?" Tea asked.
"Not really." His face was smooth, his expression unreadable. "I'm a live-in-the-present, look-forward-to-the-future kind of man."
"That's smart." Why couldn't she live like that? To some extent she tried, it was why she'd refused to move away from Palm Springs, but there were always those whispers following behind her. Those sticky webs reaching out to draw her back to the shadowy world where her grandfather lived.
"It bothers you, though," he said. 'The murder."
"No." If Giovanni Martelli had really whacked her father, wasn't it right that he was dead too? "Yes!" Because being a daughter of the mob didn't necessarily mean she believed in the mob brand of justice. But this ready confusion between right and wrong was just another of the reasons she couldn't live amongst her family again.
Johnny was just looking at her, cool and collected and so handsome that she hated having to tell him the truth.
But she did have to tell him... some of it.
'The thing is, Johnny, rumors are that the man was killed on orders from a member of my family." Heat rushed to her face, shame and another sickening wave of anger that she was forced to make such a confession.
'Tea - "
"You don't understand." She gestured wildly with her hand, arcing a spray of coffee onto the pavement. He couldn't understand or he wouldn't be wearing that neutral expression. No man could understand what growing up with a father in the crime business was like. "The Mafia isn't just the stuff of Scorcese movies and Godfather books. My grandfather heads up California's most notorious crime family, Johnny. The Carusos are mobbed up."
"Okay," he said slowly. "But what does that have to do with you? Is your business - "
"No!" Her arm made another wild gesture, splashing more coffee. "My business has never been anything less than legitimate. You have my word on that."
"So then what does the Mafia have to do with us?" he asked, plucking her coffee from her hand and setting both cups and carton on the ground at his feet. He straightened and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking in control and unperturbed.