wanted to sleep.” Cyndi gestured at the bed. “If it’s not verbal abuse to entice someone to your bed, and get them naked, and then kiss them all over before telling them to leave, I don’t know what is!”
“He enticed you?”
“Yes! Not so much in words, but he looked at me several times tonight, and a woman knows what that look means,” Cyndi said with a peculiar lofty coyness. “He
Harry took a deep, deep breath to keep from strangling the young, self-centered girl in front of her, reminding herself that her whole purpose in being there was to watch over the kids and see that they came to no harm. Her eyes lit on the red marks on Cyndi’s chest, and a little spurt of anger burned in her stomach.
She turned, moving aside the hovering forms of Terry and Derek. Amy had moved to cling to the latter, her eyes huge and wary. A man leaned drunkenly against the wall, dressed only in a pair of obviously hastily donned pants, the waistband undone, his face slack and devoid of emotion as he watched her walk toward him. He was a little taller than she was, obviously of Greek ethnicity, with dark eyes and hair, and what in any other circumstance would have been a classical sort of beauty that she would have to have been dead not to appreciate.
“I don’t know what the hell you did to her to leave those marks, but I feel it’s important to point out that she’s only eighteen years old. Couldn’t you have gotten her out of the room without touching her?” she asked, fighting with the need to yell at both Cyndi and the randy stallion before her. He had to have been a guest at the party for which the band had been brought out at great expense to entertain, but at that moment, Harry couldn’t have cared less if he was the owner of this vast palace of sin—she just wanted to get Cyndi out of there without any further drama.
“I—” The man blinked at her, swallowed visibly, and shoved himself away from the wall to take a step forward. “The little bint threw herself at me. She was in my bed, waiting for me. I didn’t screw her, if that’s what you’re all hot and bothered about.”
“Bint!” Cyndi roared, and would have lunged at the man but for the sheet in which she was still tangled. “You bastard! I’m not a bint. Terry, what’s a bint?”
“I don’t care who tried to seduce whom—you should have known she’s too young. You’re just lucky she’s legal. And obviously you were playing a bit too rough if you left those sorts of marks.”
“I’m wounded!” Cyndi cried, grasping at that thought. “He hurt me! He’s a beastly, horrible man who hurt me and abused me! I think I may faint.”
“You’re not hurt, you little—” The man wisely bit off the word as Harry frowned. “I didn’t hurt her.”
“Oh my God, I’m bleeding!” Cyndi cried in a dramatic voice, and clutched at Terry. “I need to go to the hospital!”
“Look, this has gone far enough. I just want you to promise to stay away from Cyndi for the rest of the weekend, OK?” Harry said with an attempt to take control of the situation.
The man scowled at her. “Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? I bet you planned all of this with that little bint, didn’t you? What a setup you had, getting your friend there to screw me and then pretend she’s been attacked. What’s next, blackmail? You can just drop that idea, because there’s no way I’m going to fall for your little scheme.”
With every word, anger built in Harry. Oh, she knew full well that Cyndi was milking the situation for everything it was worth, just as she knew that Cyndi had pursued him and not vice versa, but his slander left her itching to punch him in the nose. Behind her she heard the whispered hush of the door opening, but she ignored it, saying simply, “Who am I? I’ll tell you who I am. I’m your worst nightmare.”
“I don’t know.” He leered in that sloppy way drunks had. “I’m willing to give you a try. Bet you know a few things that your little friend doesn’t.”
The man reached out and grabbed her breast. Harry saw red again before she knocked his hand away, stomped as hard as she could on his bare foot, swiftly bringing up her knee into his groin, and, when he doubled over with a scream, punched him as hard as she could in the eye. Still doubled over, he snapped his head back, his face frozen in shock and pain for a moment before he fell over backward.
“What the hell is going on here?” a voice roared from behind Harry.
She spun around to behold an absolutely furious man coming toward her. She blinked at the sight of him, amazed for a moment that such a glorious specimen of male beauty existed outside the pages of glossy fashion magazines. He was taller even than the man she’d just knocked out, a good six inches taller than her, with a broad expanse of chest that wasn’t at all disguised by a black silk shirt open at the neck, revealing a bronzed stretch of skin that she suddenly wanted to lick. The little indentation where his neck met his collarbone beckoned to her with an unholy fascination, and she stared bemused for a moment, wondering what on earth her mind was doing demanding that she taste this strange—if terribly beautiful—man.
“Who are you? ” he demanded, his black eyes blazing with a fury that looked familiar somehow. “What the hell did you do to my brother?”
“Your brother?” Suddenly, all the rage and anger and fury filled her again with righteousness. “I was seriously considering beating him to a bloody pulp. You’re a big guy—I’ll let you help if you like.”
His ebony gaze raked her over in a manner that left her both hot and cold at the same time, instantly dismissing her as not being worth his consideration. He shoved her aside and marched over to where the other man moved groggily against the wall. “I believe the phrase is ‘over my dead body.’ Get up, Theo.”
“You want on my list, too? Fine,” Harry snarled, and would have rolled up her sleeves except the fawncolored linen tunic she wore was sleeveless. “You can be second. Go ahead, Theo. Get up so I can knock your block off.”
The big, incredibly handsome man hoisted his brother to his feet, one of his lips curling. “You’re drunk.”
“Not drunk,” Theo protested, his eyes glazed. “Barely had anything. That little bitch—”
Harry moved faster than she had ever moved, intent on slapping the word right off his lips, but the other man caught her as she lunged toward his brother.
“Who the hell are you?” he snarled, his arm like steel around her waist.
“I already used the ‘your worst nightmare’ line,” she yelled at him, her fingers curling into a fist. “But you’d better believe I am!”
He stopped her fist just as she was about to punch him in the nose, shoving her backward into the small clutch of people next to the bed. His black-eyed gaze crawled over all of them. “You’re not on the guest list. What are you doing here?”
“They’re the band,” Harry said, jerking her thumb toward where the four of them, Cyndi now standing in the sheet, pressed together in silent amazement. “The one your sister hired for her eighteenth birthday, assuming you are the owner of this house of debauchery.”
The man’s eyes returned to her, scorn just about dripping from his voice as he said, “You look a little old to be in a teenage band.”
“I’m not old,” she said, straightening up. Behind the man, Theo collapsed into a chair, slumping over to rest his head in his hands with a pathetic groan. She narrowed her eyes on him, wondering if she could distract his brother long enough get in a really good punch. “I’m only thirty-three, and I’m their manager. Kind of. By proxy. I’m a writer, really, but I’m acting as their manager because Timothy’s appendix burst, and Jill had to stay with him because she’s about due to pop any minute with their first child, and there was no one else to watch over the kids, so she asked if I would do it for just this one gig. And idiot that I was, I thought, How hard could it be to watch over things while they played for some obscenely rich oil billionaire’s party? No one told me your brother was a drunkard who doesn’t have the common sense God gave a potato bug!”
Harry glared at the man as he glanced from his brother to the huddled girl, now thankfully silent, taking in her disheveled appearance, before his eyes narrowed on Harry. “I made my money in real estate development, not oil.”
She stared at him for a second. “Does that matter?”
“It does if you’re going to consider the source of my wealth as material for an insult. As for this situation—” He gestured with distaste at Cyndi. “Theo has never had to force a woman into his bed. Usually, it’s the other way around.”
“Of course he asked me,” Cyndi said with a sniff and jerk of her chin. “He smiled at me twice, and winked
