As if she read his thoughts, she flushed and glanced down, staring at her white, ice-pick heels rather than at him. Still, her sultry voice made him burn when she whispered, almost shyly, “Sorry I’m late. Traffic. I had to go by Gram’s first…to check on Tuck.”
“How’s he doing?” Zach asked, standing up and placing his hand on the back of the chair he intended to offer her.
He’d found Tuck drunk and unconscious on the living-room floor of Zach’s new house. The garage doors had been open, and Zach’s Lamborghini and second Mercedes had been missing.
Fortunately, Zach had come home unexpectedly and had caught two of Tuck’s friends, also drunk, ransacking his house, or he might have suffered worse losses. Since then, the automobiles had been found abandoned in New Orleans.
Zach blamed himself, in part, for not having hired an appropriate staff for the house.
“Tuck’s doing okay.” Summer answered his question as she stepped farther into the room, her legs as light and graceful as a dancer’s, her silky white dress flowing against her hips. He remembered how sexy she’d looked when she’d bent over in her short shorts on her grandmother’s porch.
And why shouldn’t she be graceful and sexy? She was a performer, a highly paid one. Everything she did was part of a deliberate, well-rehearsed act. Maybe the kiss they’d shared when she’d seemed to quiver so breathlessly had been a performance, as well.
She sat down in the chair he’d indicated and crossed her legs prettily. He stayed on his feet because staring down at her gave him the advantage.
Even though he knew what she was, and what she was capable of, the years slid away. Again he was sixteen, the bad new homeless kid in school with the sullen, bruised face. Everybody had been scared of him. Summer had been the popular, pampered high-school freshman, a princess who’d had every reason to feel superior to him.
People talked in a town the size of Bonne Terre. Everybody knew everybody. Nobody approved of Nick dragging such a rough kid home and foisting him upon the school. Thurman Wallace had even demanded Zach be thrown out.
Only Summer, who’d been a precocious thirteen and two years ahead of her age in school, hadn’t looked down on Zach. Not even when all the other kids and her step-daddy thought she should. No, even on that first day, when Roger Nelson, a football star, had demanded to know what Zach had done to make a guy hate him so much he’d beaten him nearly to death, she’d butted in and defended him.
“Maybe that’s not what happened,” she’d said. “Maybe Zach was in the right, defending himself, and the other guy was in the wrong. We don’t know.”
“So what happened, Torr?” Nelson had demanded.
“Why should I tell you?”
“See, he’s trash, Pollyanna,” Nelson had jeered. “Anybody can see that!”
“Well, then maybe I’m blind, because I can’t,” she’d insisted. “I see a person who needs a friend.”
Not long after that Summer had become his secret best friend.
The memories slipped away, and Zach was heatedly aware of the woman seated before him.
As if she couldn’t resist using her power on him, Summer tipped her head his way, sending that thick curtain of blond hair over her shoulders as her blue eyes burned into the center of his soul.
“Zach, thanks for getting Tuck medical attention so fast. They said you had specialists flown in from Houston.” Her face was soft, beguilingly grateful.
Clenching a fist, he jammed it in a pocket. He wasn’t buying into her gratitude. Not when he knew she’d do anything to keep her brother from being arrested.
“The doctors are personal friends of mine in Houston. It was either fly them here or airlift him to New Orleans. He was out cold. He had a bump the size of a hen’s egg on his head and a gash that needed stitches, so I wanted to make sure he was just drunk and that there was no serious head injury involved.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“I don’t see any need for us to make a big deal about something anyone would have done.”
“You paid for everything, too. We have insurance. If you’ll invoice me, I’ll-”
“You’ll pay me. Fine,” he growled.
He was blown away by his feelings. He wanted her so badly he could think of nothing else, and she was coldly talking money.
“You said you wanted to see me. I’ve talked to Tuck, and he feels terrible about everything that happened. He had no idea those boys were going to steal anything or tear up your house. The last thing he remembers is hearing a noise in the garage and stumbling across the living room to check it out. Then he must have tripped.”
“Oh, really? What about the money that went missing when he was fired from his last job? Your brother’s been running pretty wild all summer. He’s nineteen. Old enough to know what the guys he runs around with are capable of.”
“He was just showing off. They said they’d never seen a billionaire’s place. He wanted to impress them.”
“He shouldn’t have invited them over or given them my whiskey.”
“I agree, and so does he…now. He just didn’t think.”
“Your Tuck’s had too many run-ins with the law for me to buy into his innocence. He’s been indulged in Bonne Terre. Maybe because he’s a Wallace.”
“That’s what this is about, isn’t it-his last name? You were hoping something like this would happen. You deliberately hired my trouble-prone brother, set him up, so you could get back at me.”
He tensed at her accusation. “Since you’re so quick to blame others for his actions, I’m beginning to see why he’s so irresponsible.”
Heat flared in her eyes. He noted that she was breathing irregularly, that her breasts were trembling.
“You have no right to use him this way. He’s practically an orphan. I was twelve when he was born. He was two when our father ran off, four when Mother married Thurman and he adopted us. If my stepfather was hard on me by pushing me in school, demanding I excel and graduate two years ahead of my class, he constantly browbeat Tuck, calling him a wimp and a sissy who’d never amount to anything. I was the favorite. Tuck could never measure up.
“After our mother died, he was raised by a stepfather who disliked him and then by aunts who cared more for their own children, and later by his grandmother, who’s become too old and lenient. And I admit, I don’t come home often enough.”
Zach had figured all that out for himself. The kid had no direction. She and Viola were protective of Tuck, but didn’t demand enough responsibility from the boy.
“And what do you do-you put him in temptation’s way so you can get at me,” she repeated in a shaky tone. “Since he’s been in trouble before, if you press charges and he’s tried and convicted, he could be locked up for a long time. You knew that when you hired him. If this gets out to the media, there will be a frenzy.”
Zach paced to the window. “If you believe I deliberately used Tuck to hurt you, you wouldn’t believe anything I told you to defend myself. So, I won’t bother.”
“Oh, please. You threatened me the last time I saw you. I think you’ve ordered me here because you intend to make good on that threat!”
Yes, he wanted to yell.
I want to sleep with you so badly I’d do almost anything to accomplish that!
But then the intensity of her pleading look made him jerk his gaze from hers.
She was afraid of him.
He didn’t want her fear. He wanted her warm and passionate and wild, as she’d been the first time.
He strode back to the table and picked up the legal documents in which he’d accused her younger brother of a felony.
When he saw his grip on the papers made his tendons stand out, Zach knew he was dangerously close to losing control. What was her hold over him?
By all rights he should have the upper hand in this situation. Her brother had brought thugs to his home to rip him off. He had every right to demand justice. But Tuck, who’d trusted him, needed help. He needed direction. Zach remembered how he himself had been derailed as a kid due to vengeful adult agendas.