Her dark hair was half pinned up and half trailing down her back, a few glossy curls spilling over one bare shoulder. Even now, six years later, she took his breath away as fast as a punch to his chest. For a single devastating instant, he thought the smile curving her red lips was for him.
Then, she opened her arms wide.
“April!” Elena greeted Weston Rivera’s date warmly, wrapping her in a one-armed embrace like they were old friends.
Only then did Gage notice how Elena gripped her phone in her other hand, holding it out at arm’s length to record everything. Was it a live video? Anger surged through him at the same time he wondered how in the hell she knew April Stephens.
“Smile for my followers,” Elena instructed her friend as the two women eased apart. She lifted her cell to get both of them in the shot.
April hesitated, clearly confused about being in the spotlight.
“Were you unaware of Elena’s day job?” Gage asked April as he plucked the device from Elena’s red talons and dropped it in the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. “She’s now a professional menace.”
Elena rounded on him, pinning him with her dark eyes. They stood deadlocked in fuming silence. Weston might have said something to him—Gage couldn’t be sure—before Weston and April headed off. Now it was Gage and his ex, surrounded by at least twenty-five other guests still filming Chiara Campagna’s every movement on their phones.
“That belongs to me,” Elena sniped, tipping her chin at him. “You have no right to take it.”
“You have no right to be here, but I see you didn’t let that stop you from finagling your way onto the property.”
She glared at him, dark eyes narrowing. “My video is probably still recording. Maybe you should return my phone before you cause a scene that will bring you bad press.”
Extending a palm, she waited for him to hand it over.
“If you have a problem with me, why don’t you tell it to the security team you tricked into admitting you tonight?” He pointed toward the door where two bodyguards in gray suits were stationed on either side of the entrance. “You’re trespassing.”
The crush of people in the foyer began to ease as Chiara Campagna’s entourage made their way into the great room, pausing just inside the open double doors to take a few photos with her friends. At least there would be less of an audience for whatever antics Elena had in mind.
“Is that a dare, Gage?” Her voice hit a husky note, no doubt carefully calibrated to distract a man.
It damn well wasn’t going to work on him.
“I’m giving you a choice,” he clarified, unwilling to give her the public showdown she so clearly wanted to record and share with her followers. “You can speak with me privately about whatever it is you’re doing in my house, or you can let my team escort you off the premises right now. Either way, I can promise you there won’t be any cameras involved.”
“How positively boring.” She gave him a tight smile and a theatrical sigh before folding her arms across her chest. “Maybe using cameras could spice things up a bit.”
She gave him a once-over with her dark gaze.
He reminded himself that if she got under his skin, she won. But he couldn’t deny a momentary impulse to kiss her senseless for trying to play him.
“What will it be, Elena?” he pressed, keeping his voice even. “Talk or walk?”
“Very well.” She gestured with her hands, holding them up in a sign of surrender. “Spirit me away to your lair, Gage, and do with me what you will.” She tipped her head to one side, a thoughtful expression stealing across her face. “Oh, wait a minute.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “You don’t indulge your bad-boy side anymore, do you? Your father saw to that a long time ago, paying off all the questionable influences to leave his precious heir alone.”
The seductive, playful note in her voice was gone, a cold chill stealing into her gaze.
He’d known she had an ax to grind with him after the way his father had bribed her to get out of his life.
He hadn’t realized how hard she’d come out swinging.
Elena followed Gage through his massive home on unsteady legs.
At well over six feet tall, he cut an imposing figure. His build was as formidable as ever, broad chest and muscular arms filling out his tuxedo. As she walked behind him, she could appreciate the way those broad shoulders narrowed to his waist, how his dark hair brushed the collar of his jacket. She caught a glimpse of the tattoos on his forearms just beneath his shirt cuffs. She used to love tracing the intricate colorful patterns there, asking him the stories behind each. And he would tell her, spinning tales of his past in the New Zealand accent that was an aphrodisiac to her. Or maybe it was just Gage—pure and simple. He could have spoken with a Southern drawl or a Boston accent, and she probably would have thought it the sexiest thing she’d ever heard.
He had affected her that way at one time.
She hadn’t been prepared for how seeing him would affect her now. Six years had passed since their relationship ended in an icy goodbye, with Gage believing his father’s story that she’d allowed herself to be paid off in order to leave Gage alone. She’d been so angry at his automatic condemnation that she hadn’t bothered to correct him. If he thought that poorly of her character, then he’d never really known her at all, and couldn’t have possibly loved her.
So she’d told herself that their split was a good thing. An eye-opening moment about someone she’d cared for deeply. She’d even been married since then, a colossal flop of an endeavor that had left her broke and humiliated. Her cooking-show-host husband had taken up with his assistant while Elena was out of town at a conference. She’d become a divorce cliché before she’d turned thirty.
Sadly, even her husband’s infidelity hadn’t left her as unsettled as seeing Gage tonight. Which spoke volumes about her poor decision in marrying Tomas in the first place.
She thrust those thoughts from her mind as Gage led her from the party to a quiet corner at the opposite end of the house. The sound of music faded as they entered a gray stone corridor illuminated by recessed lights in the pale wood ceiling. The building materials were sleek and expensive looking, the walls mostly unadorned. Even the floors were free of rugs; her high heels echoed in the wide hallway.
They soon arrived in a sitting room with a gray stone fireplace. Or maybe it was an office. She realized the mammoth glass-topped table with steel legs was actually a desk. There was a deep leather couch tucked against one wall and a television screen mounted on the one opposite.
The surroundings were as cold and unwelcoming as her host.
Gage closed the double doors behind them and then turned to face her. The room was soundproof; you’d never know a noisy party was taking place in another section of the house.
“Do you care to tell me what you’re doing here?” he asked her now, his brown eyes unreadable as he studied her by the light of two ultramodern chandeliers with sleek white glass spokes.
