An Offer He Cant Refuse - By Christie Ridgway Page 0,49
of mood was that?"
"There was a woman."
Which confirmed what his father had told him as well. "Do you remember her name?"
"I didn't know it. I just knew Giovanni was in love with her."
"Sure doesn't sound to me like a guy who'd take the risk of commiting a crime against the Mafia." Murder. That's the part that never seemed to stick. That Johnny didn't want to stick. He couldn't see his father as a murderer.
"Maybe for money? To impress the woman?" Phillip mused. "He was crazy enough about her to do anything, I think. He built her that tiki room on the property you own."
"Huh?"
"The tiki room on your property."
"There's no tiki room on Johnny's property." It was Tea, swinging her racket as she came toward them.
He had the sudden urge to grab her, to hold her, to sink himself into her SweeTART of a body and let it take him away from all this.
"I have all the blueprints," she continued, "and there's no tiki room."
Phillip shrugged, then passed a frosty glass to Tea. "I don't know what to say. Giovanni Martelli told me he was building a tiki room, but I never saw it."
"Giovanni Martelli," Tea echoed. Her gaze cut over to Johnny.
"Phillip was giving me the history of my place," he said, thinking quickly. "As a matter of fact, we were just getting to the snowbirds and their bedroom mirror."
Her gaze dropped. She blushed. And he was pretty certain that one little comment had pushed her concerns about Giovanni Martelli out of her mind.
Leaving him free to lie another day.
But he wasn't going to feel bad about that! There was no reason he should. He had other issues, after all. Though he wished to God it wasn't so, the Mafia connection was no longer coming from some cop with a knee-jerk reaction to an Italian last name. Phillip was someone who had known his father and he seemed to believe it was possible.
Meaning Johnny might have to accept his father had been a murderer.
The idea made him want to go to Tea again. He wanted to grab her, hold her, bury his face against her hair and let his dick be the brains of the operation again. But of course, if what he'd learned was the truth, she was the last one he should be fucking.
It meant his father had really killed hers.
Not to mention the other lesson he should take away from all this. He may have followed in his father's footsteps and become a gambler, but he sure as hell wasn't going to make Giovanni's other mistake. If Phillip was right, it was a woman who had led Johnny's father to his downfall. So now Johnny had to take extra care not to let a woman be his.
Chapter Fifteen
"The Way You Look Tonight" Stan Getz Stan Getz Plays (1952)
Though he'd gotten the information he was after in the first forty minutes, the "cocktails and tennis" that Johnny took Tea to turned into cocktails, tennis, conversation, and enough hors d'oeuvres to serve the entire U.S. Davis Cup team. After playing and eating and trying to fill Clark's hunger for knowledge of Texas Hold 'Em and all things poker, it was closing in on eleven p.m. when Johnny drove Tea home and escorted her up her front walk.
At the door, she turned to face him, and he looked down at her, grateful for the shadows that disguised her curvy, follow-me figure. It was only her eyes he could see clearly, their exotic tilt framed by wavy tendrils that had worked free from the long braid hanging down her back. "I had a good time," she said. "Thank you." She put her hands behind her back, an action that he knew would be thrusting her breasts forward. If he let himself think about that. Which he didn't.
"You're welcome. I wasn't expecting the evening to end so late." When he'd picked her up, he'd expected a few drinks, a little information, then long hours in the warmth of Tea's bed. It was optimistic, hell yes, but any good gambler went into the game expecting to win.
Though after what he'd learned from Phillip, Johnny had revised those expectations. It had made the evening hellishly long as he'd watched Tea and wanted her, all the while knowing he wasn't going to do one damn thing about it. But the best gamblers also knew that when the game wasn't going their way, it was time to pick up their chips and leave the table.