serving trays, and champagne flutes wink against the pearl-gray sky. Around the edge of the frosted lake, weeping willows shiver in the wind, and in the middle of it, a mini orchestra plucks strings and practices rifts on a floating platform.
The heart of the Devil’s Preserve has been transformed into the epilogue of a Gothic Romance novel, a picture-perfect Happy-Ever-After. But no amount of romanticism can take away from the fact that it’s freezing.
Matt presses a champagne flute into my hand. “You know; I think I’ll get married on the French Riviera.”
I drag my gaze from the rows of empty white chairs and regard my neighbor. He’s leaning against the trunk of an oak tree, drinking in the view over the rim of a beer bottle. The ceremony doesn’t start for another fifteen minutes, and he’s already loosened his bow tie.
“You can’t even spell French Riviera, idiot.”
He flashes me a sideways grin. “You gonna be this pissy all night? I already told you I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t going to stop my nipples from getting frostbite.”
Matt failed to tell me the wedding was al fresco when he invited me last night. Didn’t think to mention it when he saw me step out into our shared hallway in a backless blue dress, with my coat slung over my arm, either. Now, despite being hot and bothered himself, he won’t give me his jacket in case the girl he’s here for gets the wrong idea.
“You can have my socks?” he offered after I’d subjected him to a blistering glare. “They aren’t cashmere, but they sure feel like it.”
I passed on his charming offer, instead settling for burying my chin in the collar of my faux fur coat and dancing a constant two-step.
“And what about you?”
“Huh?”
“Where do you want to get married?”
“I don’t want to get married,” I grunt. My response is an involuntary reflex. A decision so steadfast it’s practically woven into my DNA.
“At all?”
“Nope.”
“What if you fall in love?”
I swig the remains of my champagne, put the empty glass on a passing tray, and pick up a fresh one. “I won’t.”
“You can’t possibly know that.”
“Women don’t fall in love, Matt. They fall into traps. They are lured in by sweet lies and smooth promises. Then years, maybe decades, down the line, they realize they’re tethered to a stranger, their chains made heavier by things like babies and mortgages and mothers-in-law with unhealthy obsessions with their sons. Some get divorced; some decide it’s easier just to stay shackled.”
Heavy silence whistles in the wind. I turn to Matt and smirk at his expression. “What? Too much?”
“Fuck, Pen. Who hurt you?”
I laugh this time, ignoring how my necklace tingles at the question. My theory doesn’t just stem from the man who hurt me, but also from my experience of swindling. I’d say eighty-percent of the men who have approached me at bars or casinos have been married. With every ring-clad hand that made its way to my thigh, another jaded scar formed on my heart. Sure, it made it easier to hit their pockets, but it also made me feel hollow inside. Because behind every married man is a woman who doesn’t realize he’s an asshole.
A lethargic symphony drifts from the lake and seeps through the gathering crowd like low-hanging fog. While Matt’s eyes work like rovers, scanning arriving guests for any sign of his crush, I lazily drink in our surroundings. The women at the bar sipping martinis and cooing over one of their designer bags like it’s a newborn baby. Men sipping whiskey in tight groups of three, muttering in a language I don’t understand.
A language I don’t understand.
My flute is halfway to my lips when icy unease freezes me to the spot. Gaze sharpening over the bubbles fizzing in my glass, I look back to the women at the bar and squint. The bag they’re passing around isn’t just designer, it’s a fucking Birkin. The one with a six-year waiting list.
I swallow and give a slight shake of my head. No. Surely not. I turn my attention back to the men closest to us and run a frantic eye over their attire. They are all wearing tuxedos punctuated with silk pocket squares. Standard for a wedding. But then I hone in one man in particular, picking apart his details. The gold chain disappearing underneath a shirt collar. The large cross tattoo on the back of a tanned hand and the Rolex Daytona that sits above it.
Then something shifts in my peripheral vision, and my heightened state makes my head snap up to catch it. Between two oak trees on the other side of the clearing, a man lurks in the shadows. He’s only detectable from his broad silhouette and flash of his eyes as they sweep the crowd. To the left, another shadow, another concentrated stare.
An iron-clad ring of security. And there’s only one family on this coastline that would need that.
“Matt,” I say steadily. “Who did you say Rory was marrying again?” I’m met by silence. “Matt?”
I tear my eyes from the shadows to look at him, but he’s fixated on something else. With a rigid spine, he’s watching a dark-haired woman in a red dress slip through the crowd and join a group conversing behind the seating area.
“Pen, get us some more drinks,” he mutters, not taking his eyes off her.
“But your beer is full and so is my—”
He grabs the flute from my hand and pours both our drinks into a muddy puddle by his feet.
My mouth opens on instinct to snap back at him, but my brain decides against it. Judging by his witless stare, I’d get more information from the thick trunk he’s leaning against, anyway.
I head to the bar, skin buzzing with awareness, ears straining to catch snippets of every conversation I pass. Rory Carter can’t be marrying a Visconti. There’s no fucking way. Her soon-to-be-husband must be one of their favored employees, maybe a manager at one of the clubs or restaurants in Cove or something. Because growing up, I’m pretty sure she was never one of those Devil’s Dip girls, the ones who craned their necks when a blacked-out car rolled over the cobbles of Main Street. I can’t imagine she wrote Dante Visconti’s name inside a heart on her textbooks, or tried to get into one of Tor Visconti’s clubs with a fake ID, hoping to catch sight of the man himself behind a velvet rope.
I reach the bar and wait patiently while the girl behind it figures out how to pop open a bottle of champagne. I’m fidgeting, my gaze wandering with both caution and intrigue, and not just because I’m surrounded by men with more blood on their hands than the entire population of Washington State Penitentiary combined. No, it’s because there are two Viscontis I’m keeping an eye out for. One I only met last night, and the other I’ve known for years.
As if he knew I was thinking about him, a deep, soft voice touches my back.
“Last time I saw that coat, you shook me down for a grand.”
I grip the edge of the bar, and my lids flutter shut. I don’t turn around, not yet. Partly because the emotion creeping up my throat is too thick to hide, and partly because I don’t want to be confronted by how fast time passes.
Nico Visconti was never a liar, but he’s lying about this coat. The last time he saw it was when he dropped me off at the Devil’s Cove bus depot at two a.m., a few weeks after my eighteenth birthday.
That’s the problem with the Coast. My past hides in all of its shadows, threatening to jump out and choke me when I least expect it.
The warmth of his body orbits mine, coming to a stop beside me. I roll my neck to the right and meet storm-gray eyes underlined by a lazy smile. My heart cracks in two and I look away again, pretending to study the whiskey bottles lining the bar.
“Long time no see, Little P.”
His nickname for me lights a match in the darkness beneath my rib cage. I hated it growing up. It felt condescending—made worse by the fact he’s barely older than me. Only a couple years’ difference in age, but we were always destined to be worlds apart.
I’d known Nico for as long as I could remember, but only by sight. He was the quiet, gangly kid that sat in the corner of the Visconti Grand Casino with a Diet Coke and a notepad. I’d learned from my mother that he was Alberto Visconti’s nephew, and his father was the owner of the whiskey company in Devil’s Hollow.
We first spoke in the coat room. I was ten, still growing used to the weight of the new four-leaf clover pendant around my neck. I’d started eating dinner between the racks of expensive coats, because I’d just learned the hard way that the men playing poker in the other room weren’t really my friends.
Nico had crawled in beside me and stared at my reheated lasagna for what felt like minutes. Then he’d asked a quiet question. “Why have you started charging men a dollar to blow on their dice?”
I’d swallowed the real reason and told him what I desperately wanted to believe. “Because I’m lucky.”
He’d held up the notepad that was always glued to his hand and tapped it with a thin finger. “Stupid people rely on chance; smart people know luck can be optimized by skill.”
And then he opened his book and introduced me to the world of advantage gambling. “It’s not cheating the house,” he’d whispered. “It’s using statistical probability and calculated observations to swing the odds of winning in your favor.” He’d glanced toward the door as he spoke, and then leaned a little closer. “But still, you gotta promise not to tell anyone.”
I didn’t. For the next four years, we’d meet in the cloak room three times a week and practice card counting, edge sorting, and shuffle tracking, and I never told a soul.
Our routine was interrupted by the murder of my parents. Once the dust had settled and the police backed off, I grew restless with nights spent staring at the ceilings of guest bedrooms in foster homes, and started sneaking out to the casino. The first night I turned up, Nico asked me another simple question.
“Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to be distracted?”
I chose distraction, and that’s when he taught me how to pick pockets. We graduated to bar tricks and distraction scams, and by the time I turned eighteen, the student was better than the master.
I breathe in a lungful of icy air and finally find the balls to look at Nico properly. Jesus. I knew he would look different, but not this different. His lanky frame has bulked and hardened into an imposing silhouette, and his childish grin has morphed into a handsome smile. He’s transformed from a geek obsessed with numbers to a tattooed warning sign. Everything from his huge stature to the dragon breathing fire up his neck screams danger, danger.
It wasn’t the three years at Stanford that did that to him, that’s for sure.
“It’s good to see you, Nico,” I say with a small smile.
He nods, and then we wait in comfortable silence for the bartender. She looks up and lets the champagne bottle clatter to the counter top. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Visconti. What can I get you?”
“A Smugglers Club and a vodka with lemonade.” He turns to me, brow cocked. “Unless you’re more civilized these days?” I shake my head and he smiles. “Vodka and lemonade it is.”
With a slight tremble, the bartender pours out a whiskey and fixes my vodka. She drops a wedge of lime in for good measure, and it reminds me of my mother, because that’s what she’d do in the earlier days—add a wedge of lemon or lime or a sugar rim to her drinks to make her alcoholism look more sophisticated. She dropped the pretense pretty fast; by the end, she was slamming liquor straight from the bottle. I try not to think about my parents when I drink. If I changed my habits as a precaution, I’d have to admit I’m like them. And I am nothing like them.
“So.” Nico slides my glass across the bar then leans his forearm against it. “What are you doing back here?”
My mouth opens to deliver the same bullshit excuse I gave to Matt. But Nico was like an older brother to me; I owe him more than that.
“Because you were right.” His tight jaw disappears behind the rim of my glass as I take a big gulp.
When I turned eighteen and realized it was impossible to hold down a job without quitting or getting fired within training week, I decided to put everything I’d learned into practice and hit the tables in Cove. Blackjack was my game of choice, and card counting was always what I was best at. Of course, I avoided the Visconti Grand like the plague, but it took Nico no time at all to figure out what I was doing anyway. He was livid. Because although card counting isn’t illegal, it’s highly frowned upon in casinos. And in a Visconti casino? You might as well get on your knees and beg them to put a bullet in your head.
He was leaving town to study math at Stanford, and told me if I wanted to continue my antics, then I should do the same. He drove me to the bus station, handed me a brick of notes, and left me with a parting message.
“Remember, no matter how lucky you think you are, your sins will catch up with you eventually, Little P. They always do.”
Now, Nico takes in the sea of guests over the top of my head. “Are you on the run?” he murmurs, just loud enough for me to hear.
“No.” Maybe.
“Is anyone looking for you?”
“No.” Hope not.
“Are you planning on hitting Cove now that you’re back?”
This is the only ‘no’ I can say with confidence. “I’m going straight.”
His eyes drop back to mine, a smirk playing on his lips. “Yeah?”
I nod. “I’m back at my apartment in Devil’s Dip, and I’m looking for a regular job.”
“Good idea. Cove’s not safe right now, anyway. So do me a favor and avoid it all together, yeah?”
“Why?”
His attention drifts to behind my head again. This time, I follow his gaze and find Tor Visconti sitting on the back row of chairs, cell phone to his ear.
“Family drama.”
I gulp my drink to squash the shiver rolling down my spine. Yeah, I don’t want to know, not even just to be nosy. I’ve had enough drama in the last week to last me a lifetime.
We converse for a few more minutes, peeling back the layers of the last three years, when a sudden unease rolls through my body like a slow-moving tide. The anecdote I’m telling Nico trickles off. I’m all too aware, too distracted, by the cold shadow brushing the nape of my neck.
The moment I realized this wedding was polluted by the Viscontis, I knew it was only a matter of time before I had the misfortune to meet Raphael again. It’s obviously the reason he’s visiting the Coast. But still, even knowing it was inevitable, I’m not prepared for the way his voice drapes over my shoulders like a silk blanket.
“Nico, the ceremony is about to start, so I’m afraid I’ll have to steal you away from your lady-friend here.”
I swallow as the coldness shifts and then he’s in my peripheral view. A hazy vision of navy, white, and gold. A satin-wrapped statue I don’t have the balls to look at. Instead, I ignore both the thumping in my temples and the gaze blistering my cheek in favor of staring at my open-toed stilettos slowly sinking into the mud.
“But of course, it’d be rude of you not to introduce us first.”
Introduce us? Annoyance creeps up my neck, itchy and hot. How does he not remember the girl who took a six-figure timepiece off his wrist less than twenty-four hours ago? The girl he chased with a hammer? Not only am I irritated, I realize I’m also partly offended. Stupid, really. But I thought about him all night, and yet, he clearly didn’t think about me at all.
“Penny, Rafe. Rafe, Penny,” Nico says lazily, swiping a limp hand between the two of us. He’s leaning against the bar, once again distracted by something behind me.
I want to tell him we’ve already met, but then he’ll ask how, and I don’t think he’ll take too kindly to finding out I swindled his cousin last night. Especially not this cousin. It doesn’t pair well with me just telling him I’ve gone straight.
Unable to put it off any longer, I clench my molars together for courage and drag my attention upward. My eyes start at the shiniest pair of brown leather wingtips I’ve ever seen. They trail up the razor-sharp front fold of navy suit pants, climb the gold buttons of a waistcoat, and land on a gaze so intense it steals my next breath.
Holy fuck. Maybe it’s because his edges are no longer softened by the liquor and mood-lighting, but his presence is even more imposing than I remember. Towering over me, he’s a network of clean, straight lines, from the cut of his suit to the angle of his cheekbones and jaw. Every crease in his outfit is intentional; every jet-black hair on his head in its place.
Raphael Visconti is a picture of polished perfection. And something about that…well, it makes me feel out-of-sorts.
He smirks and an electric thrill crackles down my spine.
He remembers exactly who I am.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Penelope.”
My cheeks grow hot at the sound of my full name. He’s just been told my name is Penny, and yet he’s assumed it’s short for something. Arrogant ass. I refuse to correct him, because it feels like he’d be winning something if I did. Instead, I hold his stare and attempt to match his silky tone.
“The pleasure is all mine, Raphael.”
Triumph. It flickers in my chest as a slither of annoyance precedes his polite smile. It was fleeting, and if I’d have blinked, I’d have missed it.
I’m glad I didn’t blink.
My high slips away the longer he holds my gaze. His stare is easy and unwavering, and yet the heat of it leaves me feeling like I’m running my hand under a warm tap. It grows hotter and hotter until I can’t bear the burn and have to look away.
I turn my attention to Nico, partly to cool off and partly in the hope he’ll save me.
“I’ve got to go,” he grunts, swiping the whiskey glass off the bar. “Benny’s about to catch a sexual harassment charge if he backs that server any farther into that corner.” He stops beside me and squeezes my shoulder. “Let’s catch up after the ceremony, Little P.”
“Wait—”
But it’s too late. I turn to watch as he slides through the crowd toward his older brother, and my stomach sinks like a deflating balloon. With that unrelenting stare still on my back, I know I have no choice but to grow a pair of lady-balls and turn around.
Raphael winks.
I scowl.
Then he pushes himself off the bar and takes a step forward. Before I can take one back, he slides his hand out of his pocket and reaches for the opening of my coat.
I hold my breath as he slowly sweeps one side of my coat open, revealing more of my blue dress underneath. His knuckles lightly graze against my rib cage through my thin dress, creating a crackle of electricity that contrasts with the blistering December chill now coasting over my hip.
I bite down a shiver and turn my attention back to his face, just in time to watch his gaze fall down the length of my body. His expression is indifferent, observant, like he’s shopping for clothes and only stopped to look at me because I’m on sale, not because I’m his style.
Although, I’d bet every meager dime I have this man has never shopped the clearance rack in his life.
His eyes move back to mine, soft humor behind them. “Nice dress. Did you steal this one too?”
I blink. Then, coming back to my senses, I rip my coat from his hand and take a step back. “Yes,” I snap. I mean, probably.
His dimples deepen, as if he’s pleased with my answer. “Ah.”
Burning with the desire to insult him back, I open my fat mouth before I can consider the implications of what’s about to come out of it.
I nod to the Omega Seamaster on his wrist. “Nice watch. Would you like to lose that one too?”
“What? Sold my other one for crack, already?”
I—what?
His comeback is fast and unexpected, at odds with his buttery tone. Bewildered, I look around to see if any other wedding guests overheard, as if someone catching my eye and raising their eyebrows will confirm I didn’t imagine his rude retort. But there’s nothing but curious glances and whispers over crystal tumblers.
Before I have the semblance to think of a comeback, he turns toward the bar and rests his forearms against it. I don’t know why I do it—perhaps I’m a glutton for punishment, or perhaps I like role playing as a kicked puppy—but I slip in beside him.
“Amanda, allow me.”
I tear my gaze from his profile long enough to realize the bar girl is still struggling with the champagne bottle. She freezes, turns scarlet, and reluctantly hands it to Rafe.
“First of all, you need to remove the foil.” To my surprise, he brings the lip of the bottle to his mouth and rips the foil off with his teeth. Christ. Something hot and primal flares between my thighs. I will every inch of my face not to show it. “Grip the top”—he wraps a large hand around the neck of the bottle, and places the other halfway down— “and the trick, Amanda, is to twist the body, not the cork.”
A tendon in his large, tanned hand flexes. The pop is as sophisticated as he is.
A little hiss of air escapes my lips as he gently runs the cork around the brim, settling the gas fizzing out of it. He hands the bottle back to the bartender, who mutters something incoherent.
“Amanda?”
She looks up, her near-pained expression silently conveying, haven’t you tortured me enough?
With a roll of his wrist, Rafe presents the cork between his middle and forefinger. “Always open it away from your face. These things can take an eye out.” He cocks his head. “And with eyes like yours, that’d be a travesty, wouldn’t it?”
He tosses the cork in the air, catches it, then slips it into his pocket.
Jesus Christ. This man is smoother than a freshly waxed floor.
He takes a lazy sip of whiskey and checks his watch over the rim. Then, as if he can hear my pulse thumping and he wonders where the noise is coming from, his eyes come my way. They run over my hair and down the parting of my coat, before stopping at my open-toed stilettos.
His lips tilt in amusement, because even this asshole knows it’s stupid to wear open-toed heels this close to Christmas. As his gaze comes back up to mine, he rakes his teeth over his bottom lip.
“It was a pleasure, Penelope.”
A little lightheaded from the pop, and pissed off with myself for suddenly having a spine made of jelly, I swipe my drink off the bar and harden my glare. “Sure, let’s do this again sometime.”
He smiles tightly at my sarcasm and runs a large hand down the front of his waistcoat as his gaze coasts over my head and to the wedding guests around us. With a subtle glance back at Amanda, who’s now pouring champagne into flutes with shaky hands, he curls his forefinger toward his chest.
I stare at it in disbelief.
Surely not. Surely, he’s not beckoning me?
Anger flares up inside me like a nasty rash. I’m not one of his fucking maids, nor one of the suit-clad minions he summons with a flick of his wrist.
I open my mouth to tell him so, but when our eyes clash, my protest evaporates. His sea-green gaze flickers with something dark and alluring. Something that appeals to the weak-willed space between my thighs. My brain is too foggy from alcohol and velvet-clad insults to put a name to his expression, but I know, without a doubt, it’s tailor-made for me.
Despite the feminist urge to kick him in the groin, I find I’m taking a step forward, and I give in to his gravitational pull. Once in his orbit, his warmth and soft scent of soap, cologne, and mint wash over me, sweeping away my next breath. Heart colliding with my rib cage, I squeeze my hands into fists and focus on the gold-tipped bow tie around the thick trunk of his throat. Which is perfectly shaved, of course. I’m not brave enough to look up, because I’m far too close to survive eye contact that intense. I stiffen as he stoops, and when his hard jaw grazes mine, it makes me headier than any liquor could. Then his deep voice vibrates gently against my earlobe.
“I’d rather shut my dick in a car door than do this again some time, Penelope.”
A cool rush of air caresses my neck as he returns to his full height.
What?
Stupefied and shaken, all I can do is watch as his imposing silhouette slips through the crowd without so much as a glance back.
I stand there for a few minutes, trying to regain control of my pulse. As semblance returns to me, it brings a wicked thrill. It feels like I’ve just uncovered a deep, dark secret.
Raphael Visconti may look like a gentleman, may talk like a gentleman.
But he is anything but a gentleman.
