KISS AND MAKE-UP (2 page)

Ellen held her hands up, palms out, and shook her head in a
don’t-shoot-the-messenger
pose. “You know I angered your older cousins when I supported you as CEO. We both expected some pushback.”

Of course they had. Her three older cousins were all male. None of them had been happy that Cassandra had been given the position as CEO when her own father had retired last year. “And they’re now pushing back using my imaginary reputation?”

“Not entirely imaginary, is it?” Ellen asked, tapping a long, pink-tinged nail onto the top of a tabloid magazine lying on an end table.

Cassandra averted her eyes, instantly recognizing—and regretting—the picture. No, she wasn’t the wild child the press made her out to be. But she had been caught in a bad light by the ever-hounding paparazzi a handful of times. Bad luck, bad timing. And, okay, maybe a bad decision or two. But when it came to work, nobody was more fit to run the family business.
Nobody
.

“At least you managed to avoid any publicity on your latest trip to the conference in Dallas,” her grandmother said, smiling. “How did you like Texas?”

“It’s hot and full of cowboys. What’s not to like?”

“I never took you for the cowboy type.”

“I’m not,” she said with a sigh, not up to playing any kind of word games with the family matriarch. “Can we cut to the chase, Grandmother? Harold, my divorce…what is it you want me to do?”

Ellen smiled demurely and tucked a strand of snowy white hair behind her ear. Cassandra saw a hint of steel in those still bright blue eyes and knew her grandmother had something very specific in mind. And, knowing Ellen to be as brilliant as she was devious, something that would probably solve both problems in one stroke.

“That’s easy, my dear. You can get the press and your cousins, er, off your back, as they say, by admitting the truth.”

“What truth?”

“Why, that you are thoroughly respectable, responsible….and married.”

If Wyatt Reston
had walked into his office overlooking the Newmarket business district in Boston and found a goat napping on his desk, he couldn’t have been more surprised than he was right now. In fact, the goat would probably have been better for his sanity. Because this couldn’t be happening. The strawberry-blond woman standing at the window, looking down toward the bustling street eight stories below, couldn’t be…couldn’t
possibly
be…

“Hello, Wyatt.”

Damn. It
was
happening. It was her, the person he’d hoped never to see again, even though his heart lurched every time he spotted her picture in a society column or a magazine.

Cassandra Devane Reston—now just Devane again—stood framed in the brilliant afternoon sunlight pouring through his office windows. Her full lips were curved into a very small, demure smile and her expression was calm, as if she visited him every day instead of only in his deepest, darkest, most torturous dreams. Or his deepest, darkest, most dangerous fantasies.

Dressed in a yellow blouse and a pair of silky pants, she looked cool and springy, perfectly at ease. Like she’d stepped out of one of those magazines that always seemed to have her on display, setting fashion trends and causing eyebrows to raise.

“I imagine you’re surprised to see me,” she said.

He closed his eyes, instinctive protection against that soft, lyrical voice. Cassandra’s sweet voice had reduced him to a six-foot-tall pile of want the first time he’d heard it on a sunny Florida beach. When he’d seen the bright smile and blue eyes that accompanied the voice, he’d been halfway in love already. Her red bikini had added to the steam. He’d never wanted anyone else the way he’d wanted her. Before or since.

“Surprise. That’s one word for it,” he finally managed to say in the charged air, ripe with tension only he seemed to feel.

Surprise. Yeah. That was the only reason his blood was rushing through his veins so loudly it could surely be heard above the chatter of voices outside the office and the city traffic far below them. Just surprise.

Bull.
He was an ad man, and he couldn’t even sell that garbage to himself.

Adrenaline was fueling his response. And excitement. A response he’d always had around this particular female.

“You look almost the same,” she said as she stepped away from the window, her high heels sinking into the plush carpet of his office. She approached him, but stopped several feet away, as if she suddenly felt the charged expectation in the room and didn’t quite know what to do about it.

He had a few suggestions.
Back away. Disappear. Leave me with my sanity and my comfortable life and kindly remove yourself from my memories.

“Really, other than that glower on your face and the shorter hair, you could be the same guy I met outside the Blue Dolphin nine years ago,” she said.

Wyatt kept his teeth clenched, determined to get through this unexpected meeting with his dignity—and his heart—intact. Not to mention with his pants firmly zipped, despite how uncomfortably tight they’d begun to feel the minute he’d set eyes on her. He forced an impersonal smile. “You look older.”

She stiffened, taking his words as a criticism, then said, “Isn’t the standard response ‘some things get better with age’?”

Oh, yeah. Definitely. He could think of lots of things that would probably be better now. He imagined that with a little more experience on each of them, they could be absolutely combustible together. They’d already been an inferno when they’d been a couple of young, inexperienced kids. Now, well, he couldn’t imagine how much fun they’d have playing grown-up bedroom games.

Forget it. The only games this woman knows how to play are games with your heart and your head.

“It wasn’t an insult,” he managed to mutter, trying to keep his mind out of the corner of his brain reserved for his most erotic fantasies. “You look great.”

As a coed, Cassie had been a pretty girl. Her long hair had been a thick mass of golds and reds, every day on the beach adding more streaks of sunshine. Her stunning eyes had caught and reflected any shade of blue within a hundred-yard radius. She’d had a delicate face and full lips that tasted like sin against his own.

But now…well, now she looked simply amazing. Softer. More womanly. Mature and sultry rather than simply young and lovely.

“So do you,” she murmured, her stare roaming over him, her eyes warm and appreciative.

He tried not to react to her, tried again to stomp the memories out of his brain. He should have known that wouldn’t work. It certainly hadn’t over the past eight years.

Funny, right now, he couldn’t muster up any of the bad images. Just the good ones. Images of the crazy, sexy, wonderful way they’d been in the beginning.

He’d been a twenty-two-year-old kid, struggling to finish college before his scholarship money ran out. Hitching a ride with a buddy to Florida for spring break had been an impulsive idea inspired by a bitch of a chemistry midterm.

Sure, like every college guy heading south on I-95 in April, he’d had his mind on girls. He’d never, however, expected to fall in love with one. Certainly he’d never dreamed he’d be married ten days later. But he
had
fallen in love, and he
had
married the girl with the sultry voice, the sapphire eyes, and the red bikini. The one who’d always had her nose buried in a book, as if completely unaware of the raucous party going on around her.

Some people had tried to stereotype her as a rich bitch, interpreting her reserve as arrogance. On the contrary, Cassie was one of the nicest, most intelligent, unpretentious girls he’d ever met. And she’d had a wicked sense of humor that seemed to come out of nowhere and take people completely by surprise. It had delighted him.
Everything
about her had delighted him.

“You’re more beautiful than you were,” he admitted, hating himself for it the moment after the words had left his mouth.

Much of Cassie’s waist-length, straight hair was gone, the strawberry tresses now framing her faces in long layers. Though sun-kissed, her skin lacked the deep tan of a Florida spring, and he’d bet there were no tiny freckles dotting her nose like there had been that first day they’d met near the pier.

He didn’t intend to find out. Self-preservation demanded that he remain five feet away from this woman at all times. This was as close as he ever wanted to get—and it was much closer than he’d ever expected to be considering they hadn’t set eyes on each other since the day he’d moved out of their tiny apartment.

So why couldn’t he tear his eyes away from the soft neckline of her blouse and stop remembering the way the skin just below her collarbone had tasted?

Swallowing hard, he muttered, “What do you want, Cassie?”

She frowned. “Don’t call me Cassie.”

Like he
needed
a formal reminder of the difference in their social stature? That she’d been the rich blue-blooded golden child and he’d been the dirt-poor blue-collar kid from Indiana? The jab stung. It didn’t bother Wyatt personally—he’d never given a damn about the society set, beyond landing the accounts of companies that sold them their Rolexes. But he hated that Cassie could have changed so much. She might have been rich, but she’d never been a snob.

Still, he supposed the way their marriage had ended should have burned the truth into him forever: she cared a lot more about money than he’d ever have expected.

Careful to maintain his five-foot distance, he moved around to the other side of his desk and sat down. “What is it you want,
Ms. Devane?
”

She frowned slightly, looking confused. “I didn’t mean that. I meant…call me Cassandra. Everybody does,” she said.

He’d rather call her
gone,
but said nothing. Still, he relaxed a little, glad his warm beach angel hadn’t turned into a total corporate ice queen. “Fine.” Leaning forward, he dropped his forearms onto his desk. “So why are you here,
Cassandra?
”

Years of dealing with people had taught him how to figure out what it was someone wanted by the way they moved, the clench of a hand, the shift of the eyes, the tightening of a mouth. Right now, Cassie was doing all of the above, meaning she was bothered about something. It could be that she was as disturbed about seeing him as he was her, but he doubted it.

“May I sit down?”

He couldn’t very well say no, so he merely shrugged.

Cassie took a seat on one of the chairs across from him, leaning slightly forward, with her knees together and her ankles crossed. Ladylike. Prim. Well-bred. She didn’t look much like the rich wild-child the press liked to make her out to be. “Great view,” she commented, gazing at the window. She quirked a brow. “I’m surprised your window actually opens. In New York, you never see that because of the leapers.”

He had to chuckle. “This is Boston. Much more genteel.”

“Right. Red Sox fans were the height of gentility in ’04.”

He and Cassie used to have regular weekend dates in front of their tiny TV—which had had lousy reception barely boosted by rabbit ears—whenever the Red Sox or the Yankees were playing. Funny, since the divorce, he hadn’t been able to sit down and watch an entire baseball game.

“At least they had something to celebrate.”

“I suppose you’re entitled to
one
win every millennium.”

Unable to defend himself against her smile or her laughter, Wyatt shook his head. “So are we done talking about my window?”

“Nope. I wasn’t finished. With this view, I imagine this is some pricey real estate. Business must be good.”

“Business is phenomenal,” he told her, not trying to keep the self-satisfaction out of his tone.

He didn’t elaborate, though he could have said a lot. After all, hadn’t his lack of financial prospects been a big part of what had destroyed the remnants of their marriage? A marriage that had already been incredibly shaky near the end of their first year.

“You always knew you would succeed.”

“Yes, I did.”

“That self-confidence was so unique in a guy your age.”

If only she’d shared that confidence.

At age twenty-three, a young husband, a recent graduate, he’d been incredibly confident about his prospects and his financial future. He’d known from age six that he was a natural-born salesman. Advertising had been his career goal from the first time he’d heard everyone he knew humming that dumb
Baby Bottle Pop
jingle and had realized its power.

He’d thought Cassie had understood and supported that.

He’d been wrong.

When things hadn’t happened quickly enough to suit her, Cassie had gone behind his back to her rich parents for help. Before that point, they had been so disapproving of their marriage that they’d refused even to meet him, and had cut her off completely.

He could have predicted what would happen if she’d told him what she’d planned to do. Once she’d proved to them that they had her back where they wanted her—under their financial thumb—her parents had told her they would help, but only if Wyatt gave up his dreams and came to work for them, living on their money. They’d tried to
buy
him.

Wyatt had been shocked, and not just that Cassie would have gone to her family so furtively. He’d also been dismayed that she hadn’t had enough faith in him to know he could make it without anyone’s help.

Her actions had done one more thing. They had proved that, despite what she said, his wife had not been able to break herself of her need to have her parents’ approval. Marrying him was the first rebellious thing she’d ever done in her life. She’d promised him that she wouldn’t let family drama pull them apart.

That vow had lasted less than a year. She’d gone asking them for money, but, in truth, was begging for them to approve and validate the choice she’d made. She’d needed that…more than she’d needed him. So Wyatt had walked out.

“Can we cut to the chase?” he asked, glancing at his watch, wishing he had an appointment.

“Wyatt,” she said with a sigh, “can’t I even comment on your company? Your business is doing really well, isn’t it?”