behind him and who had to be Tate Hawthorne. She knew that, because he looked really, really rich.
His sable hair was cropped short, his skin was sun burnished to the color of a gold doubloon and his gray eyes shone like platinum. He was dressed in a polo uniform—equestrian, not water, unfortunately, because a body like his would have seriously rocked a Speedo—in hues of more precious materials, from the coppery shirt to the chocolate-truffle jodhpurs, to the front-zipper mahogany boots that climbed up over his knees with their protective padding. All of it skintight over taut thighs, a sinewy torso, salient biceps and shoulders broader than the Brooklyn Bridge. It was all Renny could do to not drool.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t as lucky in keeping herself from greeting him less than professionally. “Hiya.” Immediately, she realized her loss of composure and pheromones and amended, “I mean...hello, Mr. Hawthorne.”
“Hello yourself, Ms...” He halted. “I’m sorry. Aurora included your name with the appointment, but I’ve been working on something else this morning, and it’s slipped my mind. And, well...you are a bit early.”
He seemed genuinely contrite that he was at a loss for her name, something for which Renny had to give him credit. Not just because he was being so polite about her having impinged on his time after being told he didn’t have much to spare, but because, in her experience, most high-powered business types didn’t feel contrite about anything, least of all forgetting the name of a junior associate from a law firm they never had dealings with.
Madison the butler moved aside, and she murmured her thanks as she stepped past him into the foyer. She withdrew a business card from inside her jacket and extended it toward Tate Hawthorne.
“I’m Renata Twigg,” she said. Not that she’d felt like a Renata a single day in her life, because Renata sounded like, well, a tall, leggy redhead. Renny had no idea what her mother had been thinking to want to name her that, or what her father had been thinking to insist it be the name she used professionally. “I represent Tarrant, Fiver & Twigg, attorneys,” she concluded.
He took the card from her but didn’t look at it. Instead, he looked at Renny. With way too much interest for her sanity and saliva glands. And—okay, okay—her pheromones, too.
“Renata,” he said, fairly purring the word in a way that reminded her of velvet and cognac. And suddenly, for some reason, Renny didn’t mind her given name at all.
“Thank you so much for making time to meet with me this morning,” she said. “I know you must be very busy.” Duh.
She drove her gaze around the massive black-and-white-tiled foyer to the half-dozen ways out of it—two doors to her right, two doors to her left, and one more framed by a curving staircase that led to the second floor.
“Um, is there someplace we can talk?” she asked.
For a moment, Tate Hawthorne said nothing, only continued to gaze at her in that mind-scrambling, gland-addling way. Finally, he said, “Of course.”
He extended a hand to his left to indicate Renny should precede him. Which she would have done, had she had a clue where he wanted her to go. He could have been gesturing at the doors to her left, the staircase, or to the exit behind himself. He seemed to realize the ambiguity of his action, too, and threw her an apologetic smile that just made him even more charming. As if he needed that. As if she needed that.
“My office is this way,” he told her.
He opted for the exit behind himself, and Renny followed. They passed another eight or nine—hundred—rooms before he finally turned into one that looked more like a library than an office, so stuffed to the ceiling was it with books. There was a desk tucked into a corner, facing to look out the window at a green space behind the house that was even more idyllic than the scene in front, and topped with a state-of-the-art computer and tidy piles of paperwork. Also sitting there was a polo helmet that matched his uniform, so she gathered he was in here when she arrived, trying to cram in more work before heading out to play. The guy clearly took both his business and his pleasure seriously.
“Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing toward a leather-bound chair that had probably cost more than the gross national product of some sovereign nations. Then he spun around his desk chair—also leather, but smaller—and folded himself into it.
Renny tried not to notice how his clothing seemed to cling even more tightly when he was seated, and she tried not to think about how much she suddenly wanted to drop to her knees in front of him to unzip his boots. With her teeth. Instead, she opened her portfolio and withdrew the handful of documents she’d brought with her to support what was sure to sound like a made-for-cable movie on one of the channels that was way high up the dial.
“Mr. Hawthorne,” she began.
“Tate,” he corrected her.
She looked up from her task, her gaze fastening with his again. Those eyes. So pale and gray and cool for a man who seemed so deep and dark and hot. “Excuse me?” she said without thinking.
He smiled again. She tried not to spontaneously combust. “Call me Tate,” he said. “‘Mr. Hawthorne’ is what they call me at work.”
This wasn’t work? she wanted to ask. It was work to her. At least, it had been before he smiled in a way that made clear his thoughts were closer to pleasure at the moment than they were to business. And, thanks to that smile, now Renny’s were, too.
“Ah,” she started again. Probably best not to call him anything at all. Especially since the only thing coming to mind at the moment was... Um, never mind. “Are you familiar with the name Joseph Bacco?” she asked.
A spark of something flickered in his eyes, then disappeared. “Maybe?” he said. “Something in the news a while back? I don’t remember the context, though.”
Renny wasn’t sure how far Joseph Bacco’s influence might have traveled beyond New York and New Jersey, but he’d been a colorful-enough character in his time to warrant the occasional story in magazines or true-crime shows on TV. And his death had indeed made national news. She tried another tack.
“How about the name ‘Joey the Knife?’”
Tate’s smile this time was tinted more with humor than with heat. And, gee, why was it suddenly so easy for her to think of him as Tate?
“No,” he replied.
“‘Bulletproof Bacco’?” she asked, trying another of Joseph Bacco’s distinctive monikers.
“Ms. Twigg—”
“Renny,” she said before she could stop herself. And immediately regretted not being able to stop herself. What was she thinking? She never invited clients to use her first name. And only Bennett Tarrant and her father called her Renny at work, because they’d both known her since the day she was born.
Tate’s gaze turned hot again. “I thought you said your name is Renata.”
She swallowed hard. “It is. But everyone calls me Renny.”
At least everyone who wasn’t tied to her by business. Which Tate most certainly was. So why had she extended the invitation to him? And why did she want to extend more invitations to him? None of which included him calling her by name and all of which had him calling her hot, earthy things as he buried himself inside
