Читать книгу His Ex's Well-Kept Secret - Joss Wood - Страница 8

Prologue

In the presidential suite of a boutique hotel on the Via Manzoni, the most luxurious hotel in Milan, Jaeger Ballantyne ran his hand down a slim female back, the bumps of her spine pearls under satin skin.

The fine cotton sheet covered Piper’s hips and draped her butt. Jaeger couldn’t stop touching her, loving the feel of her warm skin under his rough hand. He’d had women in his hotel room before, probably more than he should have, and while Piper was not the most beautiful female he’d ever had in his bed, she was certainly the most magnetic. Since the moment she’d stumbled into his life a day and a half ago, he’d thought of little else.

Exceptional gems—the cut and sparkle of diamonds, rubies, opals, emeralds and a dozen more—captured and held his attention. Women? Not so much. Like diamonds destined for the mass market, they were generally nicely cut and well polished but nothing exceptional. And when he did find one a cut above the rest, he enjoyed her and quickly moved on.

But for some reason, he kept thinking of Piper as a flawless, colorless diamond, the rarest type on the planet. Ridiculous, because he knew there was always another gem to discover, and he never lost his head over sparkly stones or the sweeter-smelling sex.

Piper Mills made him wonder if walking around headless was a risk he was prepared to take.

He should have been back in New York City already, Jaeger thought, irritated with his overthinking. He’d originally intended to be in Milan only for the previous evening. But when he’d seen Piper at the Milan branch of Ballantyne and Company, her long legs under a short skirt captured his attention. They’d been designed, he was convinced, to wrap around his hips.

The intelligence in her light green eyes intrigued him, and the splash of freckles across her nose charmed him.

Her body had him wanting to make her scream until the whole of Milan knew his name.

Piper had mentioned owning ten blue stones that family legend said were sapphires, but he was too fascinated by her face to pay much attention. Then she smiled and a tiny dimple in her right cheek flashed, and all thoughts of carats and color disappeared. His breath hitched, his vision swam and he knew he was not leaving the city until he’d taken her to dinner.

And to bed.

Fast-forward thirty-six hours and three dates—dinner, lunch and another dinner—and they’d shared some very hot, very fun sex. Jaeger’s thumb ran over her right buttock, flirted with the curve at the top of her thigh and back up again.

Best day and a half of his life, by far.

Jaeger bent down and placed a kiss on the ball of her shoulder, pulling a long curl the color of a newly minted penny off her face.

Piper rolled onto her side, and when Jaeger looked into her eyes, he felt like he was walking in a mysterious forest. Her gaze bounced away from his face, ricocheted off his body and focused on the watercolor painting on the far wall. So the very sexy Ms. Mills wasn’t very good with post-sex conversation. Why did that make him smile?

Piper sat up and pulled the sheet to her torso. “Um...this is awkward.”

“It really doesn’t have to be,” Jaeger assured her.

Piper tucked the sheet under her armpits, pushed a hand through her hair and adjusted the sheet again. “Can we have a quick chat about why I was in Ballantyne and Company?” Piper asked.

Jaeger could think of a better use of their time, but if talking about her stones made her feel at ease, then he was all for it.

“Okay, let’s talk sapphires.” Jaeger rolled off the bed, snagging his boxers from the floor. He pulled them on and walked over to the bathroom to pluck a blindingly white cotton robe off the hook behind the door. He opened the robe and Piper, self-conscious, left the bed and hastily slid her arms into the sleeves. Jaeger turned her around, covered her up and tied the belt across her narrow waist.

Resisting the urge to lower his mouth to hers, Jaeger took her hand, led her into the living room of the suite and dashed the remains of a vintage Cabernet into a wineglass for her. Piper took the glass and curled up into the corner of the couch, tucking her bare feet, tipped with red-hot toes, under her butt. Along with every other inch of her body, he’d tasted those toes. He’d kissed his way up her calves, tasted the sweetness of her inner thighs, the heat and spice of her core.

And he desperately wanted to do it all again.

He would; the night wasn’t over yet.

Deciding he needed a whiskey, he poured two fingers into a glass, sat down opposite her and mentally begged her to make it quick.

“As I said, I have some sapphires that have been passed down through my mother’s family.”

“How many stones are we talking about?” Jaeger asked, resting his forearms on his thighs.

“Ten. There were twelve, but my mom sold two, thirty years ago, to give my father the money to start his business.”

He realized he knew nothing about her or her family. You don’t need to; you’re not going to see her again.

“Most of the stones are around an inch, some bigger, some smaller,” Piper continued.

A sapphire longer than an inch? He didn’t think so. “Are they cut? Uncut?”

“The smaller stones are cut. There’s one that’s...spectacular.”

Jaeger knew people exaggerated, particularly when it came to gemstones. The stones were probably half that size. He looked at Piper and sighed when he saw the blissful look on her face. If she were anyone else, he would bluntly have told her the gems were probably fake. A cache of sapphires like she was describing would have been well-documented. Unless you enjoyed royal connections, exceptional and important gems were rarely passed down a family line.

Unaware of his skepticism, Piper held her wineglass to her chest, her eyes dreamy. “Oh, Jaeger, it’s beautiful. A deep, dark blue, sleepy and velvety and just, God, gorgeous. I just want to touch it, hold it, look at it.”

“It’s difficult to comment on stones I haven’t seen, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up if I were you,” he said, keeping his voice noncommittal.

“I have a photo of them. Could you look at it?” Piper asked.

Jaeger nodded and sighed when Piper bent over to pick up her bag. The cotton robe delineated her heart-shaped bottom, revealed the backs of her thighs. He felt his boxers tighten as his junk moved up to half-mast. The urge to sink into her heat was strong.

Relax. You’ll have her again. Once more, or twice, before they went back to real life.

Piper walked back to him and sat on the arm of his chair, her fingers dancing across the screen of her phone. She passed it to him, and Jaeger looked down at the burst of blue on black velvet.

His heart stopped momentarily and his hand shook as he placed his glass on the table in front of him.

Jaeger enlarged the screen and focused on the biggest of the cut stones. The quality of the photo wasn’t great, but the color was breathtakingly brilliant.

“Where did you say these came from?” he asked. Tell me again that you think they’re from Kashmir because, hell, you may be right.

“Through a great-great-uncle on my mother’s side. He was a soldier in the British army. Family legend says they come from Kashmir.”

Yes!

Be cool, Jaeger told himself. If it sounds too good to be true then it usually is. But the color and her family history suggested there was a possibility of these stones being real.

“What else do you know about the original owner?”

“Just what I told you,” Piper said. She tapped her screen with the tip of her finger. “Well, what do you think? Could they be real? I’ve taken them to other gem dealers who say they aren’t.”

Of course they would say that. She was young and pretty and an easy mark. They’d make her a token offer, resell the gems and make a freakin’ killing. “Stay away from dodgy dealers,” he muttered.

“But do you think they could be worth anything?”

Maybe she’d been in Ballantyne and Company because she was thinking of selling them. If they were genuine, he was definitely interested in buying. He slid his habitual I’m-not-impressed expression onto his face—his excitement tended to inflate prices—and handed Piper a casual smile. “I don’t know. It’s really difficult to tell from a photograph. Let me look at them when we’re back in the States. Can you send me the photo?”

“Sure.”

Jaeger rattled off his number, and within twenty seconds he heard the beep telling him the photo was on his phone.

“I really hope they aren’t real,” Piper stated, her expression glum.

Now there was a statement he’d never heard from a prospective seller before. “Why on earth would you not want to be the owner of a collection of stones worth, potentially, a lot of money?” Jaeger demanded.

“Because then I’d feel morally obligated to sell them to help my...to help someone out of a financial jam.”

“You have people in your life who owe millions?”

Piper wrinkled her nose. “They’re worth as much as that? No, tell me they aren’t!”

“They could be, possibly, if they are Kashmir sapphires. But don’t bank on it,” Jaeger warned

“Maybe I should’ve just taken the first offer I received. A grand a stone.” Piper muttered.

Ten thousand dollars? Jaeger felt sick. Although he was trying to remain calm, trying not to overreact, he knew, somewhere deep inside him, that he’d might’ve made the discovery of a lifetime. If they were real, then hers were special stones.

“Will you promise to bring them to me, in New York? No one else?” He couldn’t let the stones slip through his fingers.

Piper nodded. “Sure.”

“I’ll call you to set up a time.”

Piper swung her legs around and placed the balls of her feet on Jaeger’s bare thigh. Their eyes met and sparks flew.

Seeing desire flash and burn in her eyes, he slid his hand between her thighs, sighing at the smooth, warm flesh. He opened his mouth to ask whether he could see her again like this, not just at Ballantyne, when they both returned to New York. Then he frowned. Why her and why now?

For more than a decade, since his early twenties—after crawling out of the deep, dark mine shaft that grief and loss tossed him into—he’d seldom pursued a woman beyond three or four nights. He didn’t want to raise expectations, didn’t want any of his very temporary lovers to think there could be a chance of them becoming permanent fixtures in his life. He’d worn permanence once. He’d—briefly—been a father, and when his daughter Jess died, he’d lost his lover, too.

Permanence now felt like an itchy, scratchy, ill-fitting coat.

Why was he thinking about losing his baby girl and the woman he’d once loved while he was with this sexy stranger? He’d thoroughly enjoyed his easy conversation with Piper, loved her offbeat sense of humor and, hell, the sex was off-the-charts amazing. Three damn fine reasons he couldn’t see her again when they both returned to the city.

He liked her a bit too much...and that meant he had to move on.

“When are you going back to the city?” Jaeger asked.

“My flight leaves in the morning. You?”

He’d leave as soon as she did; she was the only reason he was still in Milan. “Tomorrow, as well.” Jaeger moved the pad of his thumb up her smooth calf.

“When we meet in the city,” she said, “let’s be all business.”

Whoa! What?

Piper’s toes dug into the bare skin of his thigh.

“Don’t look so shocked, Jaeger. If not for the sapphires, I’d never hear from you again,” Piper stated, her voice not accusing.

Jaeger dropped his hand from her thigh.

“It’s okay, Jaeger, I get it. It’s not what you do.” Piper continued. “The problem with being the biggest playboy on the East Coast, one of the famous Ballantyne siblings, is that the world knows how you operate. You date a girl for a couple of days, maybe for a couple of weeks if she’s really, really lucky, and then you move on.” Piper lifted her hand when he opened his mouth to respond. “Don’t look so worried. I knew the deal going in.”

“The deal?”

“This was fun, a moment in time, an unexpected encounter. So when we meet again, we’ll just chat about the stones and pretend we never saw each other naked.”

Jaeger didn’t know he was going to speak the words until they flew out of his mouth. “What if I wanted to? See you naked again, that is,” he clarified.

Surprise flashed across Piper’s face, but it was quickly followed by a healthy dose of doubt.

“I’d probably ask you not to.”

Okay. So not what he’d expected to hear.

Piper tipped her head to the side, her expression thoughtful. “Jaeger, I’m a normal woman who has her feet firmly on the ground. I enjoy my job as an art appraiser. I date. I have a full life. I don’t need you to sweep me away and into your world. I don’t like your world.”

“My world?”

“Big money, Manhattan, socialite city. It’s not me. It’ll never be me,” Piper said, her tone and expression earnest.

“I’m not asking you to marry me, Piper, or even date me,” Jaeger replied, feeling irritated. This wasn’t how the conversation normally went. Usually he fielded the demands about when he’d be calling, when their next date would be. He didn’t particularly like that the shoe was very firmly, and uncomfortably, on the other foot. “I was just wondering if you’d like to—”

“—hook up again sometime?” Piper cocked her head, the corners of her mouth lifting. When she exposed her neck, he wanted to nibble on her collar bone, kiss that spot under her jaw. “Thanks, but no. Hooking up is not something I make a habit of. This interlude will be a lovely memory, but recreating this back home won’t work for me.”

Piper tucked a long curl behind her ear. “There’s something about Italy that’s sexy and seductive. It’s a place that subliminally encourages you to seize the day and act out of character, and this—” Piper waved her hand at his bare chest “—is very out of character for me. In the real world, I sleep with guys only if I think we are going somewhere, if the man has the potential to become important to me. Thanks to the tabloids, we all know you don’t do commitment, so that rules you out.”

Okay, sure, that was true but... But? There was no but. She had him pegged!

Piper stood up and pulled the knot on her robe, allowing the sides to fall open. The fabric framed her pretty breasts, and the moisture in his mouth evaporated. With a small shrug the robe slid down her arms and then to the floor, and she stood in front of him gloriously naked. She straddled his thighs and gently touched his mouth with hers. “If this is all the time we have, then we’re wasting it, Ballantyne.”

Jaeger gripped her butt in his hands and stood up, holding her. Her legs locked around his waist as he carried her to the bedroom.

She was the perfect one-night stand; she’d let him off the hook with no drama and little fanfare, and he should feel grateful, he thought, lowering her to the bed.

So, then, why didn’t he?