gave her a wry smile. Sandy had known him since he’d been a teenager driving his parents crazy with all his extreme sports activities, and she didn’t miss a thing. “Don’t mind me, I’m just bored.”
“And lonely?”
He pursed his lips. “Maybe.”
“You need to stop trying to kill yourself jumping out of airplanes and settle down. I’ve seen a dozen women come through here in the past few months. Aren’t any of them marriage material?”
He walked over and put his arm around her shoulder. “I’m the one who isn’t marriage material.”
“You’re not afraid to jump off a cliff into the ocean, but you’re afraid to walk down the aisle?”
“Sandy, there are some things that are even too scary for me to attempt.”
She made a rueful noise. “One of these days, son, you’re going to meet someone who makes you feel more alive than any of those stunts you pull. When you do, promise me one thing?”
“What?”
She poked him in the arm. “That you’ll jump. Good night.”
“Good night,” he said, planting a kiss on her cheek.
After Sandy left, Dominick reasoned that he’d been cooped up in his office too long, that he needed to plan a getaway and do something fun. The thought perked him up. He hadn’t tried the new wingsuit that research and development had sent to him. After all, nothing said fun like jumping out of plane and riding the wind currents miles above the earth with the ground rushing toward you at breakneck speeds. The sensation was as good as sex.
Lately, even better than sex.
He considered calling Bethany, his current lover, but he was growing weary of her conversation—the woman was obsessed with reality shows. Call him old-fashioned, but he’d rather live life than watch it on a flat screen.
He thought about pouring a fresh drink, but couldn’t work up the enthusiasm. He needed…something. A new challenge. Things were beginning to feel stale in his life. Maybe that’s why the potential acquisition of Sunpiper intrigued him—it would give him something new to throw himself into.
When his doorbell rang he was glad for the diversion.
A courier looked him up and down. “Dominick Burns?”
“That’s me,” he said cheerfully, although he realized that one might not expect the owner of a home in this neighborhood to answer his door barefoot, wearing jeans and a retro Hang Ten T-shirt.
He signed for the package and tipped the guy. When he saw the return address, a smile curved his mouth. So Violet Summerlin had compiled information on Sunpiper already. The woman was a dynamo. He’d tried to steal her away as his personal assistant several times, but she’d turned him down flat. And he respected her for it. No one knew better than he did that the best job in the world was working for oneself.
Besides, if she was on his direct payroll, he couldn’t flirt with her until her cheeks turned that adorable shade of pink.
As he opened the package, the image of Vee came into his head. Between the staid black-and-white uniform she insisted on wearing and that damn ponytail that was so tight the rubber band might blind someone if it snapped off and caught them in the eye, she was perhaps the most prim package he’d ever encountered. Still, he had eyes and the woman was classically beautiful. Her hair was thick and curly and she didn’t miss being a redhead by much—a strawberry blonde he’d heard his secretary describe her as once, with the milky coloring to match. Despite her freckles, he doubted if the woman had ever spent a full day in the sun.
In fact, he thought, chuckling, there were probably parts of her that had yet to see the light of day.
But she had the most incredible blue-green eyes and full coral-colored lips. And he could see the generous curve of breast that she hid underneath her somber jackets. Violet Summerlin was stacked—she just didn’t want anyone to know. He wondered idly if she had a boyfriend or if she spent all her time pleasing people like him.
Furthermore, he wondered if anyone had ever tried to please her. A vision of parting her knees to delve into those unexposed places made his cock twitch unexpectedly.
Dominick pulled his hand down his face and chastised himself for thinking such wicked things about such a sweet person, a person who wanted world peace for Christmas, for heaven’s sake.
He decided to switch to coffee to peruse the information she’d sent, tossing an extra scoop of grounds into the filter for a caffeine kick. While he waited for the coffee to brew, he pulled the stack of papers out of the envelope. Violet’s handwritten note to him was simple and to the point—she had arranged the research starting with high level, moving to more detailed.
More to come, the last line said, then she’d signed her initials.
He liked the way she communicated—quick and to the point. But her handwriting surprised him with its large letters and lots of swoops and curves. It seemed…romantic.
The thought conjured up another image of Violet, nude on pink satin sheets, her hair unbound and fanned around her head, her pale breasts high and full, with puffy pink nipples, her legs long and slender. When his cock hardened, Dominick scoffed at his reaction. He’d had a lot of women in his bed, all of them fit and tan and physical. Violet Summerlin was about as far from his type as he could imagine. She didn’t smile easily, could never be described as bubbly or fun. As intriguing as it might be to try to bed her, she struck him as a lights-off-during-sex kind of girl.
He poured a cup of coffee, settled into a chair in the den and turned on a Hawks basketball game in the background. Over the next couple of hours he alternately read and checked the game score. Working through the material Vee had compiled, he mentally ticked off answers to some of his uppermost concerns. On the surface, Sunpiper looked like a good acquisition.
But things weren’t always what they seemed.
When he turned the page, he frowned at a pink polka-dot envelope that looked incongruous next to the rest of the printed research. Had something been inserted in the package by mistake?
On the outside of the envelope were some kind of doodled numbers and letters…or a code?
He withdrew the pages and unfolded them. From the salutation, he first thought it was a letter to Violet and he started to refold it. Then he recognized the handwriting as hers—the same large letters, the same whorls and loops—and his curiosity intensified.
Noting the date, he soon realized that it was a letter that Violet had written to herself when she was in college. A couple of lines into it, though, his eyebrows flew up. Violet had recorded her sexual fantasies? As he read her words about her uninspiring sexual experiences, he shook his head. College-age boys weren’t the most giving lovers.
But when he read the part where she questioned her own desirability, a pang of remorse barbed through him. These were the words of a lonely woman who felt overlooked and unloved. No wonder she downplayed her beauty—the more men ignored her, the more she probably wanted to be ignored. But in the letter she’d written, it was clear that she’d had hopes and dreams for her future that included exploring her sensuality.
I hope you’ve
