She put them on. She had already done her hair and makeup, and was in her robe, about to dress. She picked up her loose hair so he could see the earrings.
“That’s very pretty,” he said, touching her elbow in a way that acted like a spell, freezing her with her hands in her hair while he tracked the view all the way down the front of her robe to where her raised arms lifted her breasts against silk. “Perhaps you should stay exactly like that while I push our reservation.”
“I just put Locke down. We probably have at least…ten minutes,” she joked.
His brutish face softened into something like tenderness as he hooked his hand behind her neck and drew her close.
“I can work with that. Can you?”
“Try me.” She played her touch over his buttons. His particular scent, spicy and elemental, lingered in the air around her and called her to step even closer.
It struck her that no man had ever made her feel this way—soaked in yearning. She doubted any other man ever would, and that was both a relief and an unbearable loss. Her eyes grew hot as a strange, clamoring desperation gripped her. What if he rejected her? What would happen when he rejected her?
That wasn’t happening now. He drew her closer and covered her mouth in a languorous kiss that had nowhere to be except right here. It was dreamy and reassuring and made a moan of sheer luxury climb from her chest into her throat. She leaned into him and he cupped her head, and they stood like that, kissing and kissing. He drew on her bottom lip and returned to capture her open mouth. She greeted his tongue with her own and her knees nearly disappeared from under her, but she didn’t care so long as they kept doing this.
He was hard behind his fly. She shifted to press herself into his shape and ran her hands over his back. She wanted to do everything—tear off his clothes and feel his skin and stroke him past his control and feel his lips mapping her every curve. But as he lifted his head and revealed the heat in his gaze, giving her a slow, wicked smile, she knew they had time. Her heart could race, but they didn’t have to.
She was so happy in that moment. Deliriously happy. She ran her hand up to the back of his head, urging him to return for another kiss.
When her fingers grazed the strap of his eye patch, he flicked it off and tossed it toward the night table, then scooped her off her feet and into his arms.
A knock sounded on the bedroom door.
His face blanked with outrage.
“Busy,” he bit out.
“Shall I dismiss the woman downstairs?” the butler asked. “Ms. Walker?”
“Mum?” Scarlett asked with concern. “Tell them to send her up,” she called while Javiero set her onto her feet. “I’m so sorry. I texted her when we were leaving Spain, telling her we would be here this evening. I thought she was coming on the morning train. Maybe she misunderstood.”
“Nothing a cold shower can’t fix,” he said with rueful frustration. “Invite her to join us for dinner.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“I’ve waited this long.” He caught her chin and kissed her once. Hard. “Make it up to me later,” he suggested, and disappeared into his bathroom.
She heard the ding of the elevator and hurried out of the bedroom, not worrying about the fact she was in her robe. It was only Mum.
Except it wasn’t. It was her sister, Ellie.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ELLIE WORE FULL makeup. Her hair was bumped and curled and teased into flyaway wisps. She was dressed for clubbing in a short, tight skirt. Her leopard-print top was scooped low to show a lot of her breasts.
She took a pull off her vaping pen and released a cloud of moisture while she looked Scarlett up and down, gaze sticking at her chest. “Are those real?”
“What?” Scarlett touched the pendant of the diamond-encrusted lock that Javiero had given her. “This?”
“Your boobs. They used to be a lot smaller.”
“I just had a baby.”
“Oh. Right. Where is he?” Ellie glanced around.
“With the nanny. Sleeping.” Scarlett glanced at the butler with a strained smile. “This is my sister, Ellie.”
“Shall I prepare a room?”
Scarlett realized Ellie had brought an overnight bag. “Arrange something with a nearby hotel. My treat,” she assured Ellie with a smile that hid the way she was freaking out. “So the baby doesn’t keep you up.”
Ellie made a choking noise as the butler melted away. “You have a nanny and a butler?”
And a housekeeper who also cooked, but Scarlett didn’t bother to mention it.
“It’s nice to see you. How are you?”
Ellie released a fresh cloud of cherry-scented vapor through a pursed smile that derided Scarlett’s manners.
And Scarlett gave them up as she waved to dispel the sickly sweet aroma from the air, already feeling a headache coming on.
“Can you not do that in here? Where’s Mum?” She glanced toward the elevator.
“Didn’t want to come.” Ellie turned off her pen and dropped it into her overstuffed bag. “Dad asked her to visit him tomorrow. She’d rather do that.”
“But…” Scarlett’s heart plummeted with disappointment while part of her had to wonder if she deserved that disregard. “So she’s not coming at all? Did you try to talk her into it?”
“What’s the point?”
It was a careless dismissal of Scarlett’s feelings, but not deliberately cruel. Ellie had been as affected as all of them by their twisted upbringing. Her way of coping had been to act out and run around with boys, all of them terrible. Ellie’s pain was the same as Scarlett’s and Scarlett’s was so acute her chest was tight.
“Mum sounded so excited to meet Locke,” she murmured.
Actually, Mum had tried to talk Scarlett into staying with them at the house and going to the prison with her, but Scarlett had made excuses about Javiero’s demanding schedule and her colicky son.
Maybe she shouldn’t complain about her mother’s priorities when
