Читать книгу Exposed - Julie Leto - Страница 9

“HEY, SWEET THING. Wanna lift?”

Ariana Karas swung her pack securely over her shoulder, ducking her head so the tube of architectural plans shoved inside didn’t knock off her lucky hat. She secured the Greek fisherman’s cap by pressing the brim firmly over her dark bangs and stepped onto the Powell-Hyde cable car for her ride back to the restaurant. She flashed a weary grin at Benny, the sixty-something brakeman who flirted with her on a nightly basis, just enough to make her smile—even tonight.

“Sweet thing?” she asked, eyebrow cocked. “I should be offended, Benny.” She produced her transit slip.

Benny rubbed his bearded jowl and laughed. He released the lever and tweaked the bell, setting the car—empty except for her in the front and a group of chilled tourists riding inside—in motion up Powell Street toward Fisherman’s Wharf.

“Heaven help me if I ever offend you, Miss Karas. That tube you’ve been carting from the restaurant to Market Street for the past few months would end up whacked upside my head.”

Ariana laughed silently, wondering how Benny and everyone else in the world could ever get the idea that she was so tough. Sure, she talked a good game to keep her rowdy bar patrons in line or to ward off the aggressive transients that sometimes hung around in front of the restaurant, but on nights like tonight, Ariana relived all the uncertainty she’d felt when she’d left home, young and starved for independence. Against the wishes of her entire family—grandparents, father, mother, two brothers and two sisters—she’d packed up and moved across the country from Tarpon Springs, Florida, to San Francisco, California. She’d had a degree in accounting from the local junior college and little knowledge of the world outside her tight-knit Greek community.

But she’d also had dreams taller and wider than the Golden Gate Bridge. She’d wanted to be her own woman, make her own dreams come true—on her terms and with few debts owed to anyone when her lifetime of fantasies became reality.

Eight years had passed. And tonight, three years of marriage, one divorce and five years of fourteen-hour days later, she was one week away from seeing her dream begin. Starting tomorrow afternoon, the restaurant she operated would be closed for business for the first time since her uncle had turned management duties over to her. When the remodeling was done and she reopened, she’d have a large, airy, modern space to serve locals and tourists alike. Customers would line up to taste her eclectic blend of hearty Greek and Italian foods and sip original libations in her signature bar.

She’d call it Ari’s Oasis.

She’d worked so long, so hard to compete with the other operations on the Wharf, some of which had been serving food to San Francisco since the turn of the century. Her uncle inherited the building from her aunt Sonia’s family, fishermen who used to sell their catch from makeshift carts. The permanent structure had evolved over the years, but the crisp, white-paneled walls, quaint fishing nets strung from the ceiling and red checkerboard tablecloths, while homey, were showing their age. Even Uncle Stefano knew the time for change had come. But he enjoyed sipping strong Turkish coffee in the mornings and ouzo in the evenings with customers more than supervising the menu or balancing the books.

Ariana had left home specifically to work for Stefano and Sonia, in hopes of inheriting the business from her childless relatives. Marriage to Rick got in the way. But soon after Ariana found herself divorced and jobless, she’d accepted Stefano’s offer to take over. In record time, she’d put the restaurant in the black and on the map, and had secured financing for much-needed renovations. She’d even approved every blue pencil mark on the prints she carried in her pack.

Now she had seven days—the contractors wouldn’t arrive until a week from Monday—to clear out the place before they started knocking down walls. Since Uncle Stefano insisted that he supervise the moving of the equipment and furniture into storage, he ordered Ariana to take the week off—her first real vacation since she moved to California—to rejuvenate before her life descended into complete turmoil.

And who was she to argue? Stefano had a way of making his rare commands sound like sweet talk—a skill he’d developed to deal with his loving but willful wife. A woman Ari reminded him of, judging by the times he called her Sonia, particularly during a disagreement. Ari swallowed a bittersweet smile.

Sonia’s death and Ari’s divorce had been strong catalysts to her single-minded pursuit of success for the restaurant. She’d worked tirelessly for five years. But now she really needed a break. For herself. For her sanity.

The cable car rattled and shook as it moved uphill, a familiar buzzing hum beneath her feet and a crisp San Francisco night chilling her cheeks. The fog was rolling in late tonight. Fingers of smoky moisture twirled toward them from the Bay. But over her shoulder the scene was clear—the glittering, neon and historic charm that was San Francisco.

The cable car paused between the intersections at Geary and Powell, then shrugged forward when no one jumped aboard at Union Square. The main cable car traffic at this time of night was on the return trip, from the Wharf to the hotels at Market Street and stops along the way. At least, that’s what she’d heard.

On most Friday nights, and Saturday through Thursday as well, she was helping her hostess find seats for customers, checking on orders with her chef or serving her specialty drinks in the bar. She knew little to nothing about the charming, diverse, anything-goes city she called home. Her explorations were limited to the nightspots her former husband once played with his band and the blocks around Chinatown where she lived in a rent-controlled apartment above Madame Li’s Herb Shop.

But she had one week to see the city, every inch of it if she could, before she immersed herself in supervising the contractors who would turn her quaint dockside eatery into a restaurant of international reputation.

Before she could contemplate what her father would think of her bold, risky move from storefront eatery to full-fledged culinary powerhouse, a flutter of glossy pages caught her eye from farther down the bench, snared She slid over and plucked the magazine from the seat, recognizing it as one of the hip women’s periodicals her landlady bought for her shop so the older patrons who stopped by for her delicious blend of tea and gossip could laugh at their younger counterparts and their silly ideas of womanhood.

She might have agreed with them about some of the magazine’s topics, but this issue’s feature caught Ari’s eye.

Sexy City Nights: San Francisco Style.

Sex. Now there was an interesting activity Ari barely remembered. She fanned the pages until she found the large color spread featuring a couple leaning against the bright orange railing of the Golden Gate. Darkness and a fine mist of fog shadowed the models’ bodies, but their faces were angled into the photographer’s light just enough to capture expressions. Wanton desire on the man’s. Sheer ecstasy in the eyes of the woman.

Whatever he was doing to her, she was enjoying it.

A lot.

The cable car rattled along, slowing beneath a bright street lamp long enough for Ariana to see that the man’s left hand had disappeared somewhere beneath the woman’s incredibly short and fluttering skirt.

Ari swallowed, briefly marveling at the bold sensuality of this mainstream magazine. But soon her intimacy-starved imagination superimposed her own face, equally enraptured, equally pleasured, over the model in the photograph. A pressure, not unlike the sensation of a man’s fingers, slipped between her thighs and stirred a throbbing loneliness she usually felt only late at night after a hot shower or early in the morning after a restless battle with erotic dreams.

How thrilling, how inviting—to be in a public place while a man touched you privately—with only the night and the thin misty remnants of fog to shield the sensations from prying eyes. For a woman to risk such discovery, the desire for a man’s touch and utter need for intimacy would have to override every ounce of good sense, every inkling of decent behavior.

Ari sighed. Once upon a time, she’d been caught up in a man enough to leave her logic at the door. Unfortunately, though the sex hadn’t been bad, her ex-husband, Rick, had been more concerned with his own pleasure than hers. And she, barely into her twenties and wholly inexperienced, hadn’t known better.

On the bumpy road to now, she’d learned about her needs. But by the time she knew what she wanted from a man, Rick had packed his bags for a gig in Seattle, leaving behind the divorce papers, their apartment lease and an ocean of emotions she’d only just emerged from.

But now she had a whole week off and a magazine detailing a city full of possibilities.

Benny leaned over the wooden bench to peak over her shoulder. “So, what are you planning to do when Athens closes?”

Ari turned the page of the magazine, intrigued by another sultry photo shot in a cell at Alcatraz. Talk about bondage.

She glanced up to see if Benny had noticed, but his eyes were back on the line, his hands working the brake and bell with practiced grace.

“We’ll be closed for over a month, but I only have a week for vacation. I’m not letting those contractors tear out one nail unless I’m watching.”

Benny shook his head and clucked his tongue. “You can’t be there all the time. Girl as young and pretty as you shouldn’t be cooped up in that restaurant as much as you are. You need to get out. See the city. Enjoy being young while you can.”

Ariana folded the next page over, her breath catching at the image of nude lovers immersed in the mineral baths in nearby Napa Valley. She’d never been to Napa. Not once. And by the looks of the photo, she was missing a lot more than wine.

“Sounds like a plan,” she answered. “I’ve got one week to experience San Francisco. Think that’s enough?”

Benny laughed heartily, the booming sound coming from even his belly. The straining cables beneath the street, the heartline of old San Francisco seemed to chuckle right along with him.

“With the right man, a woman can experience the world in one night.”

Ariana laughed in response, but privately mulled his words over, allowing her romantic side to believe Benny knew what he was talking about—that there was a man out there for her. One completely enamored with her. One who would put her pleasure, her satisfaction, before his needs. No, her pleasure and satisfaction would be his needs.

She wanted a sexy, uninhibited, confident man who would show her the soul of the city and the depths of her desires. And then, at the end of the week, he would fade away as if he’d never existed, leaving her with a lifetime of scorching memories to heat her through the cool San Francisco nights.

Without warning, the quixotic fantasy was slapped out of her head. Her hat tumbled onto her lap and she scrambled to catch it and the magazine before they flew off the car. Adjusting her backpack, she grinned wryly at the long tube that had just hit her—and at her own fanciful interlude. Such a dream lover didn’t exist…in her experience. She had no men at all in her life except for Ray, the restaurant’s day manager, who was happily married and treated her like a sister; her uncle, Stefano; the majority of her wait staff; and, of course, her customers.

Customers.

One in particular.

Benny slowed the cable car to pick up a trio of laughing coeds, then made the turn at Jackson Street for the brief ascent to Hyde, up toward the fancy houses on Russian Hill. Toward the place where she’d heard he lived. He being one Maxwell Forrester. A customer.

But not just any customer. The customer she lusted after. The customer who’d shown up in one too many of her fantasies as of late, even though they’d exchanged no more than twenty-five words in the past year, not including, “Would you like lime in your club soda?” or “The crab pasta is particularly good today.” He’d become a regular at Athens by the Bay, though one she’d wisely kept a distance from.

He possessed too much potent male power for a woman like her, at first reeling from a divorce and then determined to make her own way without any distraction from her goals. And Maxwell Forrester most definitely distracted her.

He jogged into the restaurant every morning for coffee before finishing his run to his office somewhere in the Embarcadero. Luckily, since she usually came in around two o’clock to handle the afternoon and evening crowds, she’d only seen him in the mornings on rare occasions. His sleepy, bedroom eyes and barely combed-through hair did a number on her senses each and every time. Not that seeing him after a long day at work was any better. He often jogged back from his office, in sweatpants and a jacket that were just ratty enough to mold to his broad shoulders and lean thighs, and just designer enough to remind her that he was out of her league.

She didn’t know much about him—he was wealthy, did something in the real estate business and lived in Russian Hill. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t even see him again until the restaurant reopened sometime at the end of next month.

Ordinarily.

Except that if fate was on her side… She checked her watch, shifting the magazine so she could activate the blue light. He might still be at the restaurant. The private party, a wedding-rehearsal dinner, had been booked at Athens by the Bay by Maxwell Forrester’s friend, Charlie—another regular customer, but one she’d gotten to know a bit better. Charlie had worked with her to plan tonight’s dinner, using their one-on-one meetings to casually drop the information that Max would be his best man at his upcoming wedding.

Charlie Burrows had all the subtlety of a barge. The groom-to-be made no secret that he thought Max and Ari should get to know each other better. Until she and Charlie had met yesterday to finalize the plans, Ari interpreted Max’s cool friendliness toward her as a hint that he’d also heard Charlie’s matchmaking arguments and wasn’t interested.

But during their last meeting, Charlie had claimed that her assumption wasn’t true. He’d never encourage Max to date anyone since his pal hated fix-ups. Unfortunately, Charlie was a horrible liar and Ariana sensed that there was something in his claim that didn’t ring true.

But completely focused on her goals, Ariana had waved away Charlie’s suggestion. She didn’t need a date with anyone but her architect and her loan officer, and those were strictly business.

Of course, now all the blueprints were authorized and the financing was signed, sealed and delivered. She had to face the fact that she had a whole empty week ahead of her, a fascinating city all around her and an ignored libido driving her crazy.

Suddenly, crazy didn’t seem so bad—and it definitely wasn’t out of place in San Francisco. She fanned through the article, witnessing once again what this amazing, charming, insane city had to offer—with the right man and the right attitude.

MAXWELL FORRESTER SHOVED his platinum credit card back into his eelskin wallet and shrugged over the cost of his and Madelyn’s wedding-rehearsal dinner. He had more than enough money to cover the expense, but growing up poor had saddled him with a frugal nature he constantly battled. A day didn’t pass when he didn’t remember going to bed hungry, knowing the food stamps had all been used, all too aware even at the age of ten that if he wanted so much as an extra peanut butter sandwich, he’d have to go out and earn it himself.

As expected of a man in his current financial position, he’d told Charlie, his best man, to spend whatever was necessary to make the evening elegant for Max’s future bride, their families and wedding party. He should have known better than to hope Charlie, Madelyn’s favorite cousin and Max’s best friend, would even think of capping his spending.

“You ready to go?”

“It’s early yet,” Charlie scoffed. “You’ve got one more night of freedom and you want to call it quits at—” he pulled his sleeve back to read his watch “—midnight?”

Charlie’s argument lost some of its punch when even he realized that it was indeed late, what with the wedding less than twelve hours away.

Eleven hours, to be exact, Max realized. Not twelve. Not a minute more than eleven. Once he said, “I do,” he’d be stuck with his decision to marry Madelyn. He shrugged away the thought. He wouldn’t be any more stuck tomorrow than he was today. Max had already made a promise to Madelyn that was just as binding as a wedding vow. And though he considered himself an arrogant, driven son of a bitch who sought financial gain over just about anything else, he’d never break a promise to a friend.

“Marriage to Madelyn isn’t a threat to my freedom,” Max grumbled. He wasn’t lying. Madelyn couldn’t be a threat to his freedom when he’d really never had any in the first place. Max was a prisoner of his ambitions—he’d accepted that fact before he turned sixteen. But tonight the reality really rankled, partly because he was tired of this conversation with Charlie, and partly because as he scanned the crowd in the barroom off to the left, he saw no sign of a Greek fisherman’s cap bobbing behind the bar—or more specifically, the exotic dark-haired beauty who wore it.

“That’s only because you don’t know what freedom feels like, tastes like.” Charlie grabbed his jacket from behind the chair, but slung it over his shoulder instead of putting it on, a sure sign that he wasn’t ready to go. “You should leave that office of yours every once in a while—and not to jog through a city you don’t see or to show a property you don’t appreciate as anything but a potential sale. Heck, you and Maddie barely even date each other!”

Max attempted to tear his gaze out of the bar before Charlie noticed, but he wasn’t quick enough. Charlie’s grin annoyed him all the more.

“I don’t want to hear this, Charlie. Madelyn is your cousin. You should be supportive of our marriage. It’s what she wants.”

Charlie grabbed Max’s arm and tugged him into the bar. “Maddie is not just my cousin. She’s my favorite cousin. She’s the one person in the whole snooty family who didn’t write me off when I flunked out of Wharton or when I decided to try my hand at acting before I moved back home. I owe her.” He forced Max onto a bar stool and waved at the carrot-topped, college-age kid tending the bar. “She introduced me to you, didn’t she? Got you to give me a try selling real estate. And who was your top agent last year? For the third time? Who’s helping you become a millionaire more than any of the Yalies or finishing-school lovelies who show your listings?”

Max glanced back at the door, knowing he should leave. He needed sleep. At least when he was sleeping, he wasn’t thinking. And tonight, he didn’t want to think. He’d promised Madelyn Burrows that he’d become her husband. They’d been friends since college. She’d helped him take the coarser edge off his Oakland habits, teaching him about designer clothes and fine wine and which fork to use at the country-club dinner. He’d repaid the debt by giving her a shoulder to cry on when she broke her engagement to P. Howell Matthews, her parents’ handpicked son-in-law. She’d wept, not because she’d loved the guy, but because her parents had treated her like a mass murderer rather than a woman scared to death of choosing the wrong man.

So instead, she chose a friend, her best friend. He and Madelyn shared a love for jogging and naturalistic art, and they both appreciated old buildings—she saved them, he sold them. They also had a mutual desire to marry for reasons other than love.

Max had nothing against love. In fact, he admired the emotion. Revered it, even. His parents loved each other, and they loved his footloose brother, Ford, and Max unconditionally and with all their hearts. But love hadn’t paid the rent on their tired Oakland apartment. Love hadn’t kept his father from working twenty-hour days driving a cab. Love had only marginally helped his mother endure the frustrations of teaching six-year-olds how to read and write when most of them were more concerned with getting their one, state-subsidized lunch, usually their only decent meal all day.

Love hadn’t been enough to keep his family together when his father was shot on the job. Unable to work, John and Rhonda Forrester had shuttled their sons from resentful relative to resentful relative. Eventually, the family had reunited, but the result was Max’s single-minded pursuit of wealth and, over time, power, which had led him directly to the eve of a marriage that had nothing to do with love at all.

And he wouldn’t even go into the havoc the emotion caused his brother. Ford was the most easygoing, likable man on the face of the planet, but he fell in and out of love quicker than Max unloaded a waterfront foreclosure. His younger brother had absolutely no idea what real love was about, and this was one lesson his big brother wasn’t qualified to teach.

He was certain of only one immutable fact—love was fine and good for people willing to sacrifice and suffer for it, but Max preferred to pursue success and financial satisfaction. Romance was a distraction. Until he’d met Maddie in college, he’d considered dating an unnecessary expense. Then she’d introduced him to her friends, girls with rich fathers and boundless connections. He’d dated the ones he liked, but drew the line at emotional involvement. So after graduate school, when Madelyn had suggested they “date” to keep her parents from fixing her up with another son of the country-club set like P. Howell Matthews, Max agreed. The ruse was born and had lasted all these years.

Madelyn was a pal. She understood his desire to make all of San Francisco forget that he was once a poor kid from Oakland—that now he was a force to be reckoned with in the lucrative business of buying and selling the most valuable properties in northern California. The marriage thing was more than he had bargained for, but Madelyn insisted the deal would work out for both of them.

Married to a Burrows, Max would have every door in San Francisco opened wide to him. Her father, her grandfather and her great-grandfather before him had all been prominent bankers with ties to every section of the diverse San Francisco community.

For Madelyn, the trade-off wasn’t so clear—at least, not to Max. She claimed that marrying him would not only appease her parents, but the union would give her more clout with the wealthy matrons who financed her building restorations. Personally, he thought Madelyn deserved better—a man who loved her like a wife and would give her the passion she deserved. And he’d told her so on more than one occasion. But he owed her so much, cared about her so much, that when she begged him not to worry and to trust her decision, he’d gone along.

Like Charlie, he wasn’t so sure he was doing the right thing. But he’d made his choice and he couldn’t betray Madelyn now because of a bout of uncertainty.

“You’re a real pal, Charlie, but Madelyn and I have discussed this over and over. I won’t back out.”

Charlie ordered two beers and shook his head. “You and Maddie are so blind. Neither one of you knows what you’re missing. Lust, passion, desire. Marrying a friend is all well and good, but without the fire…” Charlie’s words trailed off, his blue eyes glazed over.

Recently wed in Las Vegas to a woman he’d met in a suspicious jogging accident at Pier 39, Charlie was still high on the thrill of pure passion and uninhibited lust. Max paid the young bartender when he slid the beers in front of them, shaking his head at his friend, then glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone had overheard this unusual prewedding conversation.

That’s when he saw her.

She entered through the front door between a departing party of four, stopping to shake hands with satisfied customers while Stefano Karas, the host for the evening, grabbed her backpack, shoved it at a nearby waiter and then ushered her into the bar.

Max turned aside. The last woman he needed to see tonight was Ariana Karas, with all her long, jet hair, ebony eyes and curves even her slimming black turtleneck, jeans and boots couldn’t hide. She was exotic sensuality and alluring confidence all molded and sculpted into a compact package that made him fantasize about endless nights of sex. Nights that turned into days. And weeks. Maybe months.

Nothing but sex. No work, no money. No troubles.

He downed half his beer without taking a breath.

“Sex isn’t everything, Charlie.”

Charlie took a generous slurp of amber brew. “Oh, yeah? Says who? And I’m not just talking about sex, anyway. I’m talking about true love.”

He sang the last two words as if he was joking, but Max knew Charlie well enough to realize his friend was a hopeless romantic. He was a free spirit who’d finally found some level ground with a job he was damn good at and a woman who obviously adored him, and vice versa.

“Yeah, well, if marrying your true love is so highly rated, what the hell are you doing here with me?” Max asked. “You should be home in bed with Sheri, not keeping me out till dawn.”

Charlie chuckled, then quieted when Ariana grabbed a black apron from the coatrack behind the bar.

“Sheri could use a little time to herself and you need me to talk some sense into you.”

Max barely heard Charlie’s explanation, more intrigued with watching Ariana flip the apron over her head before freeing her dark hair from beneath the pretied knot around her neck and fanning the luxurious length of it over her back. While wrapping the tie around her slim waist, she instructed the young guy who’d served their beer to cover the tables while she took over behind the bar. She tilted her hat at that jaunty angle that grabbed Max right at the center of his groin, and before he could look away, she captured his stare with a questioning glance.

“Something I can get you?” she asked.

Max sipped his beer, trying not to wince when the brew suddenly tasted strangely flat. “I’m fine, thanks.”

She smiled, then made her way from one end of the bar to the other, checking on her customers, making small talk, replacing empty glasses and refilling snack bowls—all done with a quiet animation that made her both friendly and mysterious at the same time.

Max decided then and there that he was an idiot. He knew all about the lust Charlie lectured about. He’d been feeling the pull with growing intensity ever since he jogged into Athens by the Bay a little over two years ago and caught sight of the owner’s niece helping a crew unload boxes from a delivery truck.

If he’d simply flirted with her and gotten to know her, he’d probably be long over this intense interest. Instead, he’d played cool, ignored the attraction, turned away from her not-quite-shy, not-quite-inviting smiles that haunted him long after he’d run from the restaurant to the office, showered and parked himself behind his desk.

Now he was less than a day away from marriage, and the woman of his dreams was only an arm’s length away.

“Hey, Ari,” Charlie called, “how ‘bout one of your specialty drinks for the road?”

“You driving?” she asked, grabbing a cone-shaped glass from beneath the bar.

Charlie grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, guess I am. Then how about making one for my old friend here?” He slapped Max on the shoulder. “He needs it more than I do anyway.”

Ariana didn’t laugh as Max expected, or as perhaps Charlie expected as well. Instead, she grabbed a collection of exotic liqueurs, one blue, one green, one amber, pouring the jewel-toned liquids into the glass on the edge of a knife, skillfully layering them with a clear, unidentified libation, so the colors barely mixed. After floating a layer of ruby-red grenadine on top, she moved toward them.

With confident grace, she lifted the drink in one hand and a bottle of ouzo in the other. She set the glass down in front of Max and without a word, swirled the ouzo over the grenadine. Focused on the glass, Ariana shielded her eyes from Max behind thick lashes, pressing the lips of her generous mouth into a pout that was focused and sexy as hell. When she finally looked up, meeting his thirsty stare straight on, he caught the glimmer of a smile twinkling in her night-black eyes.

He slid his hand forward, brushing his fingers over the base of the glass. She crooked her finger around the stem. “Not so fast,” she instructed, her voice breathy and low, but compelling all the same.

He questioned her with raised eyebrows.

She stepped up on the lower shelf behind the bar so she could lean forward and keep their exchange private. Max wanted to glance aside to see if Charlie or anyone else was watching, but he was slowly, surely, losing himself in the depths of her fathomless eyes. To hell with everyone else. She was just offering him a drink, not her body.

“This is my most special specialty.” She skimmed her finger on the top layer of ouzo, careful not to disturb the rainbow of liqueurs underneath, then dampened the rim of the glass—precisely where his mouth would be when he took a drink. “I don’t make it for just anyone.”

Max’s mouth dried. He moistened his lips with a thickening tongue. “I’m flattered.”

“You should be. But you have to do your part, too.” She dampened her finger again, but this time she touched the taste of ouzo to her lips. “This drink is called a Flaming Eros. Just like good loving, it takes two to make it hot.”

Hot? Oh, yeah. Max was learning about heat very, very quickly. His collar grew tight around his neck. His body dampened with sweat. The perfectly starched shirt beneath his perfectly pressed jacket was starting to buckle.

“Makes sense,” he managed to say.

Her fingers dipped into the pocket of her apron, then she slid her hand toward his, something small hidden beneath her palm.

Her phone number maybe? The key to her apartment?

He glanced down. A box of matches?

“So,” she said, slightly louder, but still in a voice meant entirely for him, “care to light my fire?”