The Ruthless Caleb Wilde. Sandra Marton
certainly are.”
“Well, yeah. I mean, no, not exactly. I mean—”
“We know what you mean,” Jacob had said as solemnly as Travis. “You’re a dinosaur.”
“Absolutely. We can hear your bones creak.”
His brothers had exchanged looks. Then they’d started to laugh.
“You guys sound like a pair of chickens,” Caleb had said with what he hoped sounded like indignation.
“Cluck-cluck,” Jake had cackled, and that had done it. The three of them had grinned, done the obligatory elbow-in-the-ribs, high-five thing grown men do when they love each other, and Caleb, on an exaggerated sigh had said, yeah, okay, he’d make the sacrifice and go to the party.
“And report back,” Travis had added, waggling his eyebrows. “’Cause we equally ancient wise ones want all the details.”
Caleb lifted the Scotch to his lips now and sipped at it.
So far, the details were just what he’d expected.
From the balcony, where he’d settled once he’d found his host and engaged in the necessary two minutes of shouted conversation, he had a view of everything happening on the dance floor. It was crowded up here but nothing compared to the situation down below.
The DJ high up on a platform. The pulsing lights. What looked like a thousand sweaty bodies gyrating in their glow.
And the women, all of them spectacular, lots of them interested enough to give him smiles and glances that only a dead man wouldn’t be able to interpret.
No big surprise there.
It wasn’t his doing, it was the Wilde DNA, a mix of Roman centurion and Viking blood tempered by more than a touch of what was probably Comanche or Kiowa.
The Wilde sisters teased him and his brothers about their looks, and showed no mercy.
“Oh, oh, oh,” Jaimie would say, in a perfect imitation of a swooning Victorian maiden.
“Be still, my heart,” Emily would sigh, her hand plastered to the center of her chest.
“So tall. So dark. So dangerous,” was Lissa’s line, delivered with all the drama of an old-time movie star.
And this was perfect Wilde territory. So many beautiful women …
Except, tonight, Caleb wasn’t interested.
“Ah’m jest a country boy from Tex-ass,” he’d told the blonde who’d slithered over a little while ago.
That had gotten rid of her, fast.
Actually, he’d been pretty hard on her, but then, what kind of female batted her lashes at a man and asked, in a breathy little voice he figured was supposed to be cute, was he somebody rich and famous that she was supposed to recognize?
In truth, he was. Rich, for sure. Famous, too, in corporate and legal circles.
Her approach was at least honest.
It certainly was different.
Another time, he might have smiled and said he was both, and what did she intend to do about it?
Not tonight.
Right now, he thought, glancing at his watch, what he wanted was for another thirty, thirty-five minutes to slip past. Then he could find his host, if that was possible, tell him he’d had a great time and he was sorry as hell but he had an early-morning appointment back in Dallas …
“… for you?”
Caleb turned around. There was a girl standing just in back of him. Pretty, not spectacular, not in a crowd like this but still, she was pretty. Tall. Blonde. Big blue eyes.
Lots of makeup.
Too much for his tastes. Not that his tastes mattered.
Pretty or not, he wasn’t in the mood.
“Sorry,” he said, “but I’m going to leave soon.”
She leaned in a little. Her breasts brushed lightly against his arm and she pulled back but the contact, quick as it was, shot straight through him.
She spoke again. He still couldn’t hear her, thanks to the music, but he could certainly take a second look.
What the hell was that thing she was wearing? A dress, or something that could have been a dress if you’d added another twelve inches of fabric. It was black. Or deep blue. Iridescent, anyway, glittery, or maybe it was the effect of the light.
Either way, the dress looked as if it had been glued on her. Skinny straps. Low bodice. A sinfully low bodice, revealing the curve of lush breasts.
His gaze drifted lower, to where the dress ended at the very tops of her thighs.
To his amazement, he felt his body and brain coming back on-line.
He smiled. The girl didn’t.
“I’m Caleb,” he said. “I didn’t get your name.”
Those big blue eyes turned icy.
“I didn’t give it.”
So much for that. She might be in the mood for games. He sure as hell wasn’t.
“In that case,” he said in his best, intimidate-the-witness tone, “why are you talking to me?”
“I’m paid to talk to you,” she said, her voice as cold as her eyes.
“Well, that’s certainly blunt but I promise you, lady, I am absolutely not inter—”
“I’m paid to ask what you’re drinking. And to bring you a refill.” This time, the look she gave him was filled with stony satisfaction. “I’m a waitress, sir. Trust me. I wouldn’t have looked at you twice if I weren’t.”
Caleb blinked.
Over the years, a couple of women had told him off. There was the girl in fifth grade, Carrie or Corey, something like that, who’d slugged him after he’d made fun of her over some silly thing at recess. And a mistress—a former mistress—who’d told him exactly what he could do with the farewell sapphire earrings he’d sent her after she’d told him it was time they set a wedding date.
Neither had put him in his place better than this, or even as well.
He supposed he ought to be angry.
He wasn’t.
The fact was, he admired Blondie’s gumption. An old-fashioned, down-home word, gumption, but it was eminently suitable.
That face, that body, that dress … she’d probably been hit on a dozen times tonight until she’d finally thought, enough!
He wasn’t foolish enough to think she could have avoided the problem by wearing something else.
Caleb had worked his way through law school, rather than touch his father’s money or the money he’d inherited from his mother.
He’d delivered pizza, waited tables at Friendly’s, worked at an off-campus bar.
There’d been a dress code for the wait staff at the bar.
For the men: white shirts, black bow ties, black trousers, black shoes.
For the women: black ribbons around their throats, low-cut white T-shirts a size too small, swingy black skirts that barely covered their asses and black stiletto heels.
Or they were fired.
Sexual discrimination was alive and well in twenty-first century America. As a lawyer, as a man, Caleb knew that.
Still, he figured he deserved better than being treated like some kind of predator.
He told that to Blondie.
She