Sandra Hill (12 page)

“A bubble bath? Me? In that ancient tub?”

“Sorry, we’re fresh out of gold-plated spas, your highness. But you do get to choose between lilac or musk essence…from the Priscilla and Elvis bath lines.”

He sniffed with disdain. “I much prefer my Dior toiletries, but I’ll take the musk, of course.”

What a self-indulgent narcissist!
“Of course.”

“I don’t suppose…” He gave her one of those slow, sweeping looks of his that she was now convinced were an affected ploy, but which nevertheless made her warm and ill at ease and jittery.

“No, I’m not going to scrub your back.”

“Tsk-tsk,” he said, wagging a forefinger at her. “That’s not what I was going to say.”

“Oh?”
I wish I could sink into the floor. But wait, he might have had something even worse in mind
. “Well, I’m not joining you.”

“Tsk-tsk,” he chided again.

I wonder if my face is as red as it feels
.

“Would you draw my bath?”

“Get a life!”

He laughed softly. “Dare I hope that the bath towels are heated?”

“What bath towels?”

That stopped him in his tracks. “No bath towels?”

“Nope. Naomi is afraid we’ll escape wrapped in a towel. So all we have to dry off with are those little guest hand towels,” she informed him with relish.

“Naomi is nuts. I’d run down the highway naked if I could escape from this nuthouse…uh, nutcastle.”

“That’s what I told her. ‘The prince has absolutely no modesty. He’d run naked in the New York Marathon if it would save his company.’”

“And did you tell her you would run with me?” he inquired, his eyes sparkling merrily. “Naked?”

“Get a life!” she repeated.

But that was not what she was thinking.

“We have company,” Ferrama announced later that afternoon. He was sticking his head out of the side window, straining to peer at something toward the front of the castle.

“It’s probably one of Naomi’s workmen,” Cynthia commented idly. She was sitting on the bed giving her toenails a second coat. It was either that or continue to ogle the prince in his shamrock shorts, something she’d been doing entirely too much of for the past eight hours. Much more and her hormone generator was going to explode.

“I…don’t…think…so.”

“Contractors come and go all the time—elec
tricians, painters, plumbers, landscapers. I think she’s making arrangements for a massive renovation project to begin the minute she gets her cash from the stock settlement.”

“Nope. This guy is driving a fifty-thousand-dollar black Cadillac Seville.”

“How can you tell from this distance?”

“I have good eyesight. And it’s hard to miss the lines of that luxury vehicle. Believe me, this is no plumber.”

“Hah! Have you heard what plumbers charge these days? I have one client from Staten Island with a $ 1.2 million portfolio, all earned from toilets.”

“Come over here. Quick. You have to see this.”

“In a sec. I want to finish painting my toenails.”

“Enough with the nail polish! You’ve giving me impure thoughts.”

She glanced up to see if he was serious.

He was.

She could see his erotic appreciation in the flare of his aristocratic nostrils, in the lingering sweep of the tip of his tongue over presumably dry lips, in the slight rise of one of the shamrocks.

Oh, boy!

She set the polish aside and shimmied off the bed, sashaying over to the window. She was testing just what a shamrock could do with a little incitement.

He watched her the whole time with a smol
dering, dangerous gleam in his dark blue eyes.

When she got to his side, she asked, “Nail polish gives you impure thoughts, huh? Are you a pervert?”

“Maybe.”

She tilted her head.

“Picture a pitch-black bedroom, two naked bodies, preferably male and female, and ten glow-in-the-dark fingers performing…magic tricks.”

She got the picture. “You
are
a pervert.” She tried to laugh as she spoke, but it came out a squeak.

He grinned at her. She hated when he grinned at her as if he could have her anytime he wanted with a snap of his elegant fingers. He probably could, but that was beside the point. She refused to let him get the upper hand in these mental games they played with each other.

“Would you like me to paint your nails later?” she offered saucily.

He blinked with surprise. And interest. “Pink nail polish? Not on your life!”

“Oh, but didn’t you know? It comes in Clear Night-Glow, too.” She stared at his manicured fingers with their transparent enamel. The fact that he polished his nails still stopped her short, even though she knew many men did.

The grin he gave her then was slow and sexy and full of wicked promise.

She shifted uncomfortably, aware of the heat his body threw off—or was it hers?—and Elvis
in the background appropriately belting out the seductive lyrics to “Loving You.” It was a double-whammy assault on her senses, which she fought to control.

“What did you want to show me?” she demanded testily.

He hesitated, as if reluctant to break the electrifying mood. Then he put one arm on her shoulder, urging her to lean out the window with him, and pointed.

Cynthia tried to ignore the weight of his arm or the smell of his Elvis musk. Eventually, after a heart-stopping moment, she looked where he was pointing and saw what did indeed appear to be an odd sight.

One man in a dark suit, presumably the driver, emerged from the front of the sleek black car and opened the back door for another dark-suited man. The hounds were yipping and yapping like crazy, pulling against the limits of their retractable dog chains. Elmer restrained them during the daylight hours, freeing them to guard the palace grounds at night.

One of the animals had almost reached the driver and was attempting to nip at his pant leg. To her horror, the man reached under his suit jacket, pulled out a pistol and shot into the air. That poor dog and the other hounds went wild, barking and leaping futilely against their chains.

Cynthia screamed.

Ferrama shouted, “Hey! You can’t do that!”

But no one heard them. There had to be at
least two hundred feet and six stories separating them, not to mention a buffer of fake banana trees.

Naomi came rushing out of the castle then, waving her arms and no doubt giving them a tongue lashing. Good thing Elmer and Ruth had gone grocery shopping. Elvis might possibly be dead again since Elmer would never have stood for the stranger shooting deadly weapons around any one of his precious dogs.

Amazingly, another dark-suited man emerged from the back of the car, and everyone turned to him. He must have weighed about three hundred pounds, had a shiny bald head and a pet snake draped around his massive shoulders. He reached out a fat hand and, to their amazement, Naomi shook it in welcome.

“Sammy ‘The Snake’ Caputo,” she and Ferrama said at the same time, recognizing the renowned underworld figure. “The Mafia!”

“The Mafia!” Naomi scoffed a short time later.

She was standing in the hallway, beyond the reach of his hands, which ached to get a grasp on her skinny neck. He’d wring it like a chicken’s, given the chance. But, unbelievable as it was, his crazy stepsister was aiming a pistol at a point midway between his heart and his other favorite organ. He decided to forestall the pleasure, for now.

“We saw you talking to Sammy Caputo. We both did.” He inclined his head toward the bed, where Cynthia was taking a little afternoon nap. “Don’t deny it.”

“Sammy Caputo?” Her eyes widened with what appeared to be surprise, but who knew with Naomi.

“Yeah, the guy with the bald head and the snake wrapped around his neck.”

Naomi gave a little twittering laugh. “That was a silk scarf, not a snake.”

The idea of the Cosa Nostra dropping by his estate to chat with Naomi had been preposterous to begin with. Was it possible that he and Cynthia had been mistaken? Hah! His life was one big mistake of late. “Who the hell were they, then?”

Naomi shrugged. “Businessmen. They said they’re thinking about opening an Italian restaurant in the Catskills, and they made a wrong turn for Indian Mountain.”

“That was a helluva wrong turn!”
She is lying through her teeth
.

“Whatever.”

“Businessmen who carry guns?” he persisted. He couldn’t give up the notion that something had been strange about the Cadillac trio. And Naomi had seemed to be shaking hands with one of them.

“They’re from the Bronx. Everyone carries a weapon in the Big Apple. Even I own a handgun.”

“I noticed. But even you don’t shoot at helpless dogs.”
You kidnap people but spare animals. A real paragon of virtue
.

Her shoulders sagged at that horrifying reminder, but then stiffened immediately. “He only shot in self-defense. He thought the dogs were going to attack him.” She gulped several
times, as if the words gagged her. Then she added, “We could have been sued, you know? Elmer should be more careful with those mutts.”

“We’re already about to be raked through the courts. What’s one more lawsuit?”

Her upper lip curled into a sneer.

Uh-oh! Best not to rile her…too much, anyway
.

“Why’d you call me up here? I have work to do,” Naomi snarled, shifting from foot to foot in her ridiculous work boots. By the splatters on the steel-reinforced toes, he’d guess she was laying concrete today.
Jeesh!

“Naomi, put down the gun. We have to—”

“What’d you do to wipe out the shark?” she asked with a leer, cocking her head toward the bed where Cynthia still slept.

“Not what you think.”
Not what I’d like
.

Elmer and Ruth had brought them back a late lunch, Kentucky Fried Chicken with the works…chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, buttermilk biscuits. All that heavy food, with no exercise, was making him groggy, too.

Not that he’d remotely consider slipping into the sack with her. He’d had a hard enough time keeping his eyes off her for the past hour—the key word being
hard
.

He followed Naomi’s gaze to where Cynthia lay on one side, curled into a ball, like a kitten. Her cheek rested on her two hands, which were folded in a prayer position on the pillow. From the back he could see more than she’d like him
to see of her butt through the straining silk of her panties. Her big mop of strawberry blond hair was strewn all over the place, but even so, her shoulder blades were visible against the lace camisole.

She was sleeping so soundly that every once in a while a breathy sound would emerge from her parted lips, a combination mini-snore and purr. He thought it was incredibly sexy.

When he looked at those oddly vulnerable shoulder blades and Cynthia’s childlike posture in sleep, and when he heard her feminine snore, P.T. felt a heavy, tugging sensation in his heart. It was probably indigestion from all that fatty junk food. He sure as hell hoped that was the explanation.

“You’re gonna have to make love to her, you know,” Naomi observed. “A lot.”

“I…beg…your…pardon.” He turned back to his stepsister, hands on hips. Why did everyone in the world think he or she had the right to interfere in his personal life?

“It’s the only way to get her on our side…to protect the company.”

“Screw the company.”

“See. I knew I was right to take matters into my own hands. You used to put the company interests first. Now you’ve become soft…an easy mark for every bit of fluff that crosses your testosterone radar.”

He gritted his teeth and willed himself to speak softly, with a patience that had run out
days before. “Naomi, this has nothing to do with business tactics or my reputed overinterest in women. The police are probably on your tail, as we speak. You’ve committed an ass-backwards felony here.”

“Felony, smellony!” She waved her gun in the air dismissively. He wished she wouldn’t do that. “You can fix the police business.”

“Me?”
You did the crime, you pay the time, sister dear. Not me
.

“Yeah, charm the pants off the woman. You’ve been doing it to women forever; you should have the technique down pat by now.”

“Forever?”

“Remember Brenda ‘Breasts “R” Us’ Bicarro.”

He groaned. Well, he’d stepped into that one. “Brenda Bicarro. Brenda Bicarro. How many times are you going to remind me about her? I was fourteen years old, for God’s sake!”

“That’s just what I’ve been saying. You’ve had eighteen years of practice. Seducing Cynthia Sullivan over to our side should be a piece of cake.”

Our side? Which side would that be? The loony bin side? The criminal side? The fairy tale side?
“Since when is seduction the answer to everything?
Mierda
, you and Dick have like minds.”

Naomi’s face went beet red. “Dick and I have nothing in common, and don’t you dare say that we do.”

P.T. lifted a brow at the vehemence of her response. Normally, he would have taken great
pleasure in teasing her about her longtime crush on Dick, but he decided to back off this time. Naomi under normal circumstances had been known to whack him on the head when riled. Naomi with a pistol, under volatile circumstances, was an unknown. “You are aware that Dick will hightail it up here by tomorrow if I haven’t returned?”

“No, he won’t.” Naomi flashed him a triumphant smile.

“Why?” he asked hesitantly. The fine hairs stood out on the back of his neck.

“Because I called him from the cell phone in your truck.”

His neck hairs went ramrod stiff with intuitive warning. “And?”

“And I told him you took Ms. Sullivan to your hideaway in the Poconos, where you intend to nail her.”

“Nail her?” he inquired dumbly. “In the legal sense?” He was stalling for time while his benumbed brain assimilated the consequences of Naomi’s actions.

“Nail her, in the sexual sense, you moron. Criminey, when did you get so stupid?”

“When did you get so vicious?”

“You never knew me at all, P.T.” She sliced each word out with icy contempt.

Maldito!
There was a whole lot going on here besides money and a stock offering. “Naomi, put down the gun and unlock my chain. I can unravel this whole mess. Trust me.”

“Trust you? Trust you? I’d rather trust…a snake.”

Did she mean Sammy “The Snake” Caputo? “At least give us some clothes. This is…indecent.”

She snickered.

Wringing her neck was becoming more and more appealing.

“Where’s your renowned royal ego,
Prince
Ferrama? Don’t you have as much self-confidence in your macho abilities without all the princely trappings?” she taunted. “And by the way, Sleeping Beauty doesn’t know you’re not a real prince. You can thank me for that later. I’d suggest you keep up the charade. Work the Prince Charming bit for all its worth.”

Somehow the persona, and the seduction, sounded sordid when they came from Naomi’s lips.

“It’s just not right, Naomi.”

“Well, big fat deal! Was it right that Daddy married your mother and doted on you like a real son instead of giving all his attention to his daughters? Was it right that he trained you to run the factory? Was it right that his will split the estate three ways, giving you sixty percent and me and Ruth only twenty percent each? Was it right for you to give up ten percent of your shares to split between Enrique and Jake, without asking us? Was it right for Daddy to make you trustee of our money, forcing us to beg each month for what’s rightfully ours? Was it right
that you changed the name of Daddy’s company to your name?”

Good Lord! P.T. had never realized that Naomi’s grievances had been festering for so long, or so deeply. And some of them were legitimate gripes.

“Naomi, I’m perfectly willing to sit down with you and go over each of your concerns. Maybe we can come to a mutually satisfactory solution. But this isn’t the time for such a discussion. We have more urgent problems.”

“Yeah, like how fast you can charm a shark.”

P.T. crossed his eyes and counted to ten. “Okay, Naomi, let’s cut through the bullshit. Exactly what will it take for you to release Cynthia…and me?”

“A legal document signed by her stating that her corn and subsequent injuries weren’t caused by our company. A promise not to sue the company, or any of its individual parties for any matter whatsoever, including her…uh, kidnapping.”

“I already offered her a substantial settlement to do just that. She refused.”

“Well, golly, P.T., no one said it would be easy. It’s going to take a lot of work on your part to convince her to sign. That’s where the charm part comes in. Have you kicked on your charm generator yet?” She smirked at him.

“Is that all?” he asked, seething.

“Hell no! Do you take me for a fool?”

Fool is too mild a word
.

“That Wall Street witch would sign anything to escape. You would, too, for that matter. Nope, her signature alone would mean nothing.”

“So?”

“I’ve been talking to Elmer, and we’ve come up with a plan. A safety net.”

Uh-oh!

“We think there’s one thing that will ensure that she’s on our side,” Naomi said, “besides your boinking her a few dozen times.”

Boinking?
When had Naomi developed such an earthy vocabulary? Maybe she was right. He didn’t know her very well.

Her eyes refused to make direct contact with his.

Make that two uh-ohs
. “And that one thing would be…?”

“Marriage,” Naomi announced airily.

That was the last thing P.T. had expected to hear. His jaw dropped and his eyes almost bugged out. “Marriage? To whom?”

“You.”

P.T. was too stunned to speak.

“Now don’t say no before you think the idea through. It’s a perfect plan. We’ll have the ceremony here. Elmer can supply the music. Ruth says she could make the wedding feast—a blend of Irish and Spanish foods.”

“Have you seen a psychiatrist lately?”

“And guess what?” Naomi continued enthusiastically, as if he hadn’t even spoken. “Elmer is an ordained minister in some denomination
I’ve never heard of—Church of the Latter Day Goofballs, or some such thing. He says it would be legal in New York State, but I doubt that. The important thing is that Cynthia buy its legality. Later you could get an annulment or divorce. It’s a perfect plan, P.T. Just think about it.”

He put his face in his hands and whimpered. He was thinking about it, all right. And the conclusion he came up with was,
I’ve fallen into a freakin’ fairy tale nightmare. And they expect me, Prince Charming, to play stud to a bloomin’ Cinderella
.

Even worse
, he realized with alarm, raising his head to glance over at said sleeping Cinderella,
I like the plan
.

A lot
.

After Naomi left, P.T. slung his chain over his shoulder and climbed up the steps to the massive bed.
Why would anyone feel the need to put a bed on a platform? Talk about delusions of grandeur! A guy could get a nosebleed up here
.

He gazed down at the delectable Goldilocks dozing away.
Am I gonna be the bad old bear who takes advantage of poor ol’ Goldy? Or am I gonna be the weenie bear who gets suckered in by Goldy? In other words, can I actually set out deliberately to seduce this woman?

Damn straight! I’ve done it before
.

But that was in fun, when I was younger
.

Hah! How about Countess Ariana? That was just last week
.

That was different. Ariana is sophisticated. She knows the rules of the game. She was probably out to scam me, too
.

Cynthia Sullivan is sophisticated. She knows the rules of the game. Hell, she’s probably the biggest high-roller scam artist of them all
.

But I like her
.

No, no, no. I have no time for “like.” My company’s about to go down the tubes. Forget “like.”

But I want her
.

Forget lust, too
.

I don’t want to hurt her
.

Jeesh! I really am a weenie. What makes me think I won’t be the one hurt?

Good point!

This is actually a noble thing I’d be doing
.

Even he had to snicker at that one. Philanthropic sex.

Seriously, instead of feeling guilty, I should be feeling good
.

Give me a break!

Really. The new stockholders would thank me for saving the company’s financial butt. The three hundred Ferrama employees would thank me for saving their jobs. Naomi would thank me for saving her castle. Ruth would thank me for saving her rock ‘n’ roll fairy’s career
. He thought for a moment, glanced down at shamrock city, and smiled.
Peter would thank me, too
.

Peter swelled his thankfulness.

Hmpfh! At least someone—rather, some
thing
—appreciates me
.

P.T. eased himself onto the mattress, on the opposite side from Cynthia. Carefully, he slid himself closer. But not too close.
Best to let sleeping sharks lie. No making waves. Don’t rock the boat. Man, this is gonna be a piece of cake. Who says we city boys don’t know how to fish? God! Cynthia’s wacky proverbs must be contagious
.