Hidden Depths(7)

“Wait a minute.” Something about the woman in the photo seemed familiar. “Let me see that.”

Carlo handed him the phone, turning to the girl next to him and saying offhandedly to the bartender, “This lovely woman’s drink is on me.”

Jack stopped paying attention to Bruscinni. The car mogul was going to blow him off anyway and not invest in Jack’s latest attempt to heave himself back into the style to which he had been accustomed and had been sadly lacking due to his personal finances as of late.

He stared at the picture. Jesus, he knew who that looked like. The high cheekbones, the full lips, even the coloring.

Just like her.

Not sure what he could do with the observation, but it was interesting. After a minute more of staring, he handed the phone back to Carlo and got up. “Perhaps we should speak another time.”

Carlo, not taking his eyes off the redhead, nodded and Jack left the bar, ignoring the bartender who at the last minute held up his check. At least he’d stuck Bruscinni with his bar tab.

He was going to pay his old friend Damien Reynolds a visit tomorrow. He’d see if the resemblance held up in person. And then, who knew?

* * * * *

The penthouse suite at the Wrentham was old-fashioned but simple. Just as Evan liked things. Or furnishings anyway. Solid-oak floors without a lot of fussy carpets. Big pieces of dark wood with ample cushion crafted for utilitarian purposes like sitting and sleeping. And fucking.

He wasn’t old-fashioned about sex, by any means. Up-front attitudes about sex were one of the few ways in which modern society had progressed from frontier days in his book. So he wasn’t judging Andrea Prentiss for hooking up with him. Hell no. He was just pissed she hadn’t told him who she was and had let him think she was the escort he hired. He felt as if an elaborate joke had been played on him.

Of course, since the sex was so good, he was willing to forgive and forget.

He looked at his watch. An hour or two, she had said. It was three by now. Pushing open the balcony door, he went out into the fresh night air. Or as fresh as New York air got. It had rained torrentially earlier in the day but it was dry now, the air moist and the elevation of his balcony isolating him from some of the deafening block of sound he always noticed when he visited New York these days. Sound so loud you could hear it through a locked window until you got up forty stories or so. Sometimes it took higher. He put his hands on the cold wrought-iron railing and looked down at the blinking lights of the city. God, he hated New York. He felt lonelier in this place packed wall to wall with people than he did alone on his island. Trite maybe, but true. Usually he got laid and left. He couldn’t get out fast enough. But Andrea Prentiss had kept him here this time. Good thing too, since he would have wanted to be there for Michael anyway.

But Michael was going to be fine. It was himself he wasn’t so sure about.

By the time it got to four hours since she had promised to meet him, he was annoyed. As the only laid-back loner in a family of domineering males, Evan wasn’t used to being pissed off or impatient, especially over a woman. He sincerely hoped one more round in the sack with Andrea Prentiss would get it out of his system and he could go back to the serenity of his real life.

The doorbell rang. He had left word at the desk to let Miss Prentiss up whenever she arrived. At the sight of her when he opened the front door to the suite, he forgave her immediately. God, she was lovely, with white skin and red lips and hair so sable brown it could have been mink. How had he ever mistaken her for a whore? Class radiated from her, her heart-shaped chin tilted up slightly.

She had a raincoat on in deference to the previous showers and when she unbelted it, he was sort of disappointed she wasn’t naked underneath. But her outfit, like everything else about her, screamed class. A black satin shift, not too clingy, not too short, and pointy black heels that made her almost as tall as he was. Her hair was up again, but this time in a loose knot at her neck.

She swept past him, dropping her expensive Louis Vuitton bag onto a chair.

“You’re late,” he noted, shutting the door behind her.

“Oh my goodness. Is my reservation gone?”

Her comment made him feel petty, especially since he had probably never complained about anyone being late in his entire adult life. He was the one who was always late, and if by some miracle the other person he was meeting was even later, it made no difference to him. He usually felt as if he had all the time in the world. But waiting for Andrea Prentiss, he had been as anxious as a kid waiting for the circus—or waiting for his half-assed father to pick him up to take him there—and he didn’t like the flashback. He tried to reclaim some of his usual cool as she shrugged out of her raincoat and he hung it on a hanger in the front closet. “You get up all right?”