made the mistake of believing their hearts had been as connected as their bodies, but that was the gullibility of youth and inexperience for you.
He padded barefoot into the kitchen, extracted two glasses from the cabinet, then pulled a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator. He carried his load to the table, poured and slid a glass in her direction. She looked so damned rigid he wanted to bark, “At ease.”
But helping Phoebe relax wasn’t his job. Not anymore.
Settling across from her, he nodded at her murmured thanks and leaned back in his chair. Her light floral scent—the same perfume she’d worn twelve years ago—hit him with a C-130 military transport plane full of memories. He used to know every pulse point she anointed with the stuff intimately. He swigged his drink to ease the dryness in his mouth and assessed the changes in Phoebe over the rim of his glass.
She was still a beauty with her dark hair and changeable hazel-green eyes, but the fire and excitement had faded from those eyes and tension flattened the lush curve of her mouth. She looked too poised and proper, too much like a storefront mannequin for his tastes. It was almost as if someone had sucked the life right out of her, and that saddened him.
Not your problem, Jones.
“Are you happy being your grandfather’s sidekick?”
She blinked at his question. “As opposed to what?”
“Working at a museum or teaching at the university.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, apparently surprised he remembered her long-ago plans. He wished he could forget those nine months and the pain of discovering he’d never be good enough for Phoebe Lancaster Drew. Despite the fact that he was now worth millions, Carter Jones could never be a part of her old-moneyed, politically connected world.
“I’ll have time for that later.” She fingered her glass instead of meeting his gaze. The thick line of her lashes cast shadows on her smooth cheeks.
“And what about the family you once claimed to crave? Say granddad gets elected and possibly even reelected, although he’s pretty old for a second term. You’re thirty. If you wait for Wilton Lancaster to retire, you’ll be pushing forty before you get started.”
He hated the polite and insincere politician’s smile curving her lips. It did nothing to eradicate the sadness in her eyes. “I’ve decided to focus on my career. And my grandfather will be seventy when he’s inaugurated. He’s eager to break Reagan’s record of sixty-nine. Given that Granddad is in excellent health and is very active and mentally acute, a second term isn’t out of the question.”
“He’s been in office more than thirty years. He ought to retire.” And give someone more open-minded a chance. But Carter kept the last to himself.
Her long fingers curled around the glass. “What are you doing with yourself these days, Carter?”
He sipped and nodded, silently acknowledging her change of topic. She wanted chitchat? He could do chitchat. “Computers. What else?”
They’d met when he’d been assigned to tutor her in computer science during college. She’d been the first female he’d met whose eyes hadn’t glazed over when he nervously rambled on about motherboards, memory chips and hard drives. And she hadn’t laughed at him when he’d lost track of his words each time they’d accidentally brushed against each other.
“What exactly do you do with them?”
“I’m a cyber-cop.” The surprise arching her eyebrows grated on his nerves. Had she, like his father, expected him to amount to nothing? Probably. His father had always claimed Carter’s infatuation with computers would lead nowhere. Well, he’d proven good ol’ Dad wrong, hadn’t he?
“You investigate computer crimes?”
“Got it in one.”
“You must be good.” And then she flushed as if she realized that wasn’t exactly a politically correct comment. Jeez, somebody needed to loosen her up. Her candid comments had been only one of the things he used to love about her.
“I own my company, but computers aren’t the only thing I’m good at.” He flashed a carnal grin and watched another wave of peach spread from her neck over her cheeks. Teasing Phoebe had always been fun, and now that she seemed determined to ignore the passion that had once flowed between them, he took perverse pleasure in getting a rise out of her.
He set down his glass and laced his fingers over his abs. “Why should I give you the pictures, Phoebe?”
The taste of her name on his tongue made him think of hot nights and tangled sheets, of quickies in the car or anywhere else they could grab a moment’s privacy vertically, horizontally or otherwise. His pulse quickened. His inability to control his response only increased his anger. Why, dammit, did she still rev his motor? She’d been his first lover, but she hadn’t been his last. He’d been a slow starter, but he’d made up for lost time. There had been plenty of willing women, sweaty sex and tussles between the sheets since.
“I need to be certain they won’t turn up in the press.”
The insult raised his blood pressure. “You think I’d sell our pictures to the highest bidder?”
He practically could see her weighing her words. “Perhaps not, but someone else could get their hands on them and—”
“It won’t happen. The pictures are under lock and key. They have been since we said goodbye. If I didn’t sell them then, when I was seriously pis—peeved with you, I’m not likely to now.”
She wet her lips—one slick swipe of her pink tongue—and fire flickered behind his zipper. Phoebe had once had an amazingly talented mouth. She’d perfected her technique on him, and she’d allowed him the pleasure of returning the favor.
“Carter, please, let me have the pictures.”
He rocked back in his chair and steepled his hands. Tapping his bottom lip with one finger, he pretended to consider her request, but there was no way in hell he’d casually hand over the pictures for her to shred. He didn’t look at them often, hadn’t seen them since he’d moved into this house three years ago, in fact, but they represented the first time in his life when he hadn’t felt like a failure. Phoebe’s betrayal had cut deep and made him feel like a shameful dirty secret, but for a while she’d made him feel like a king.
A spark of an idea began to form. He’d been an untried boy twelve years ago when he and Phoebe lost their virginity together. Afterward they’d explored the boundaries of their newfound sexuality and shared some amazingly uninhibited sex. He hadn’t met a woman since who could ignite him to such a fever pitch or coax him into the unknown with nothing more than a naughty twinkle in her eyes. No woman in the past twelve years had pushed him beyond his rigidly imposed self-control.
Surely his memories of their time together had exaggerated her potency? No way could this buttoned-up, every-hair-in-place woman have the same power over the experienced man he’d become that she’d held over the wet-behind-the-ears boy he’d been. So he’d slake his curiosity and then kiss her goodbye. In the process, maybe he could loosen up Phoebe and teach her a lesson at the same time. Ms. Phoebe Lancaster Drew needed to learn how it felt to be used and tossed aside.
Vengeance could indeed be sweet. And sexually satisfying.
