He found her J Style studio in a refurbished warehouse ten blocks from his office. As the blocks dropped off, the neighborhood grew seedier. Travis paid a homeless man twenty dollars to watch his Jag and rang the bell.
Janica called down through the voice box. "Who's there?"
"Travis." She didn't buzz him in, so even though he'd known her since she was in pigtails, he said, "Travis Carson."
"You're kidding me," she said, and he would have grinned at her reaction if he weren't so stupefied by what he was doing. "What are you doing here?"
"Let me in, Janica," he growled.
The buzzer sounded, and he opened the thick metal gate. It slammed shut behind him as he made his way up the concrete steps to the second level.
Janica leaned against the door, scowling at him. "What do you want?"
Travis had always admired Janica for sticking up for her older sister. Even though she was a perfect size two, Travis had the sense that Janica wasn't the kind of woman who disrespected women larger than she. On the contrary, she seemed to go out of her way to make them look beautiful, as was evidenced by the line of plus-sized clothes Travis saw hanging from a rack by the window.
"What are those?" he asked, ignoring her biting question.
She gave him a triumphant look. "Lily was such a hit at my show that I've been asked by a local boutique to design an entire line of clothes for plus-sized women. Real women, like Lily. Not like those plastic uber idiots you always date."
Her stance was tense. She looked ready to spring and strangle him at any moment, the bear cub who would do anything to protect its mother.
"Relax," he said, "I'm not here to malign your precious big sister."
"Watch who you're calling big," she said as she approached him, a menacing look in her eyes.
Travis held his hands up and took a step back. "I didn't mean big as in big," he said. "I meant big as in older."
"Whatever," she said, not looking the least bit appeased by his explanation. "Tell me what you want, then get out."
"I need an entire wardrobe for Lily."
"What?"
"By tonight."
"Excuse me?"
"For Tuscany."
Janica sat down heavily on a dusty windowsill. "You've completely lost me. When did Lily make plans to go to Tuscany?" Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. "And what do you have to do with the trip?"
"I've hired her to furnish one of my clients' houses. We're going on a quick buying trip."
"You're kidding me," Janica exclaimed, before her doubts returned full force. "Then again, I shouldn't be so excited. I'm sure you have a perfectly nefarious reason for asking her to do this. You always do. Just like that time you showed up at Luke's house with some total slut and completely ruined her birthday dinner. I know you did it on purpose, just to hurt her, shoving some skinny bitch in her face like that."
Travis tried to shake off a sense of guilt that he felt at Janica's words. Sure, he might have accidentally crashed Lily's birthday party a year ago, and he might be taking Lily to Italy out of some self-serving need to get her out of his system, to teach her what happened to women who dared to say that he wasn't a good lover; but in his own defense, hadn't he just given her the professional opportunity of a lifetime?
The fact that it was one he knew she couldn't say no to, one that included rights to her body whenever he so desired, didn't make it any more unfair than business as usual, did it?
So what if all the balls happened to be in his court? It happened to be where he liked all of the balls to be. Which only made him think of the way she had caressed his balls earlier by the pool....
Forcing himself to turn off his libido, Travis deftly switched the facts around to suit his needs. "She quit her job at Barker's yesterday." It was the truth, or nearly, even though he was leaving off some pertinent details, like the fact that he was the one who convinced Lily to quit. Hopefully, if he presented it right, he could get Janica off the scent of his actual nefariousness. "I found out about it and wanted to help her out."
"You wanted to help her out?" Janica's disbelief rang out loud and clear. "I never would have expected this in a million, billion years," she muttered. Staring at him, no, staring straight through him with those damn all-seeing Ellis eyes--so much like Lily's, Travis saw the first hint of smile and wondered where it was coming from.
"Tell me what you need," she said, her demeanor changing from black to bright white. "If I have anything to do with it, Lily is going to look like a goddess in Italy, you can count on that."
JANICA PICKED UP her phone the minute Travis left the office. "Luke," she said, calling her sister's best friend. "It's Janica."
"Is Lily all right?"
Janica had always appreciated how well Luke looked after her sister. She used to wonder why they weren't boyfriend-girlfriend, but over the years, Janica had decided it was a good thing. Maybe one day she could convince Luke to see her as a woman instead of Lily's kid sister.
"She's fine, at least I think she is." Getting straight to the point, she said, "I heard that Lily went home with you after the fashion show. Is that true?"
The line was silent for several long moments. "Not exactly," he finally said.
Her suspicions about Travis's impromptu visit grew. "Were you even at my show?"
Luke cleared his throat. "No. I got called into the ER. It was really bad timing on my part, and I wish I had it to do over."
Janica pieced two and two together and, unfortunately, it was exactly what she had already deduced. "You sent Travis in your place, didn't you?"
Luke sighed. "I'm afraid so."
"How could you?" she exploded, forgetting for the moment that she lusted after Luke. It was one thing for Travis to treat her sister like she wasn't good enough for him--at least you knew a self-important snake when you saw him slithering around--but it was worlds worse for a nice guy like Luke to turn on the person she loved most in the world.
"How could you have done something so...so awful? You of all people know how he ignores her. He acts like she doesn't even matter." Luke was silent as she fumed, which pissed Janica off more. "Don't you have anything to say for yourself?"
He let out a long breath. "I blew it. Trust me, I've been beating myself up for it ever since."
Janica hmmphed. That was more like it. He should feel bad, she thought. Luke's thoughtlessness had caused Lily no end of problems. In the back of Janica's mind, it occurred to her that maybe she had been the start of Lily's problems: After all, if she hadn't forced Lily to be in the fashion show, then Travis wouldn't have come in Luke's place.
No, she thought, I won't blame myself. Why should I when it's clearly Luke's fault? Forcing any traces of guilt from her mind, she worked to get the rest of the facts straight. "So Lily went home with Travis?"
"Janica," he said, not bothering to hide his growing impatience, "maybe you should be asking Lily these questions."
Janica snorted. "Yeah right. Like she'd tell me anything. She would never talk to me about her sex life in a million years. She still thinks I'm twelve or something." Just like you do, she almost said before she caught herself. Pausing to think things through, Janica said, "So she went home with Travis. But there's no way they, you know..." She blushed furiously in the privacy of her design studio, glad that Luke couldn't see how embarrassed she was. "So why is he taking her to Italy?" she added, speaking more to herself than to Luke.
"He's what?"
"He just came by to pick up a complete wardrobe for her for their trip. For tomorrow."
Fury bursting from every word, Luke said, "Janica, if you would excuse me, I need to go have a word with my brother to make sure that he treats Lily with the respect she deserves."
The line went dead, and Janica hung up the phone, confused, but, for the first time, hopeful that her sister might actually be living life instead of hiding behind a wall of responsibility and fear. There were so many times that Janica had wanted to tell Lily to go out and get a life. T
o dress up and get her hair cut in a sassy new style. To stay out all night with a totally inappropriate guy. To look in the mirror and actually see how beautiful she really was. But Janica knew Lily would never do any of those things.
For some crazy reason, Janica mused, Lily thought that she wasn't a stunning woman because she wasn't stick-thin. Janica had watched Lily suffer through one diet after another until she wanted to scream with it.
But then again, Janica marveled at how Lily was, all of a sudden, getting all the guys. Not that Travis was any kind of super prize, of course; he was way too much like a typical macho guy for her.
But Luke, on the other hand, had definite possibilities. Big, throbbing possibilities. Smiling again as she got to work on her latest men's suit design, Janica couldn't help but envision how Luke's broad shoulders and trim waist would look in her clothes.
Or better yet, without them.
LILY STOOD IN THE MIDDLE of the huge, busy warehouse and ran her hands over the beautiful imported upholstery fabrics, feeling as if she were a fairly-tale princess in a perfect dream. How else could she possibly be standing amid all of this multicolored, richly textured beauty, able, for the first time, to let her imagination roam freely?
After the most pleasant five minutes she had ever spent with Albert All in Barker's that morning, where she picked up the sweater she had forgotten and watched him sputtering and spitting all over himself at her resignation, even though she hadn't had the nerve to tell him exactly what she thought of him, she hopped in her car and headed straight for the San Francisco Design Center.
When she had first graduated from design school she loved to walk through the cluttered building, letting all of the beautiful furnishings fill her soul to the brim. But then, when she finally accepted that she didn't have the guts to start her own design firm--not with so many other talented, driven designers out there all vying for the same jobs--she stopped coming to her favorite place. All it did was make her feel even more like a loser. Especially when she saw somebody from her graduating class walking around with a cell phone making purchases for a client. She knew she had to accept that she worked at a subpar furniture store, selling pressboard armoires and faux-leather couches. Hundred-thousand-dollar rugs and cut-crystal chandeliers had no place in her world.
Today, she almost felt like she belonged in the showroom, and it was wonderful. Lily felt freer than she had since she was a child, safe in her mother's arms, before her parents had died in the car crash on Highway One. Overnight, Lily had become a mother to Janica, giving all of herself up to make sure that her baby sister's life was as good as it could possibly be under the circumstances. Grandma Ellen had done the best she could with them, but Lily knew she was the only one who could even come close to loving, supporting, and taking care of Janica the way their mother and father had. Lily didn't regret one single moment with Janica. She wouldn't take back any sacrifices in the name of her sister's happiness. Lily was the sensible, grounded one, happy to let Janica fly free into the world.
But, somehow, amazingly, Travis had given Lily the gift of flying free herself.
Not that she trusted him, though. Not one bit. He had clearly brought her out to the pool to seduce her, and although she definitely didn't mind his incredible lovemaking--oh, who was she kidding, there was no love about it, it was sex, pure and simple--she minded the fact that Travis thought all he had to do was crook his finger in her direction, and she'd come running.
She ran her fingers through the soft weave of a plush rug sample and thought about the sensual pleasure of running her hands through Travis's hair. Regardless of what happened with him, even if he reverted to his usual superior behavior with her and never looked at her with lust in his eyes again, she didn't regret one single second in his arms. The memories of his loving would be the perfect antidote to lonely nights in her apartment with only cable TV as her companion.
At the same time, Lily wasn't naive enough to think that this job didn't come with strings attached. But right then, lost in her own creative heaven, she decided she wasn't going to care.
Lily could hardly believe that she was going to furnish the beautiful Tuscan-style villa. This was her chance to make her mark in the design community. Regardless of how her private life was going, she wasn't going to blow her one big professional opportunity. Under no circumstances was she going to go crawling back to Albert at Barker's.
Her cell phone rang. She reached into her purse and looked at the number on her caller-ID screen. "Janica?"
"Lils, why didn't you tell me you were going to Tuscany?"
Lily blinked in confusion. "Tuscany? I'm not going to Tuscany. Who told you that?" Her call waiting beeped. "Hold on a sec, honey, I'm going to get the other line."
"Lily, it's Luke. I wanted to congratulate you. Whatever you did with Travis, it worked like a charm."
Glad that her best friend couldn't see her blushing through the phone as the clear vision of riding Travis's cock in a stranger's swimming pool popped into her head, Lily said, carefully, "You mean because he hired me to decorate one of his clients' houses?"
"So that's why you're going to Italy?"
Lily held the phone away from her ear and looked at it like it was speaking in foreign tongues. "Why is everyone talking about my going to Italy?"
Travis emerged from behind a tall stack of rugs, looking darkly dangerous and handsome as sin. He took the phone from her ear, closing it with a quick snap. Lily gulped for air and put a hand out to steady herself.
"Because we're leaving for Rome tomorrow. That's why."
A thrill shot through Lily at Travis's words. Travis wanted to take her to Italy? Just the two of them? Visions of walking with him hand in hand through olive groves, on ancient streets danced in her head.
Don't be silly, she reprimanded herself as she worked to tamp down her fanciful imagination. She composed her face into a mask of professional politeness, wanting to show him she wasn't a complete fool who fell for his every line.
"Travis," she said through tight lips, "while I greatly appreciate you handing me this incredible decorating job, I'm afraid it doesn't give you license to mock me at every available opportunity."
Travis took a step closer, and she backed into the pile of rug samples. "I'm not making fun of you, Lily," he said, his voice quiet, his tone intense.
Willing herself to be strong in the face of such undeniable maleness, she burst out with, "Yes you are. You have been either making fun of me or just flat out ignoring me since we were kids, and I am sick to death of it!" She pointed a finger at him and took a step in his direction, deciding not to run from him for once. "Either you respect me as a business partner or I'm going to have to walk."
Lily thought she saw a flicker of admiration in Travis's eyes as he studied her for a long moment. All I needed to do was stick up for myself all these years? she thought, with no small measure of surprise. Lily was unable to believe that it could have possibly been as simple as that.
But when Travis grabbed her outstretched finger and pulled her close to him, she knew that it wasn't going to be quite so simple at all.
"Nobody is going to walk," he growled. "I'm taking you to Italy on a buying trip. It's business," he added, but even he didn't look one hundred percent convinced.
"Oh," she said, upset that she couldn't come up with a more interesting response. She felt herself melting into Travis's gaze, and she knew his lips would be coming down on hers any second. But before she let herself fall under Travis's spell again, Luke's words sounded loudly inside her skull.
"Women make it too easy for Travis to have them. And dump them. Whatever you do, Lily, you need to make him work to be with you. But first you'd better decide if that's even what you want."
Travis had pulled her close enough that she could feel his erection straining toward her. She had certainly proved that she could make his penis hard. But, she mused, perhaps that was the easy part? The only problem was, she could only think of one way to make life di
fficult for Travis.
And while she knew it was exactly what Travis needed to knock him down a peg or two, Lily hated the impact it was going to have on her on sexual satisfaction.
Deciding she either had to bite the bullet, or she'd lose her nerve, Lily pressed the full length of her body against Travis. She smiled at his swift intake of breath, working hard to ignore the tremors of lust that filled her. Leaning into him, she whispered into his ear, "On second thought, Travis, the trip sounds fine ."
She felt his spine stiffen at the word "fine" and fought back a giggle. Were men really and truly so easy to control?
"I do have one condition, however."
Travis's hand came around to caress the curve of her hips. "Anything," he said, and she knew he was never going to see the blow coming.
Pulling back to stare deeply into his incredible sea-green eyes, she said, "I want our relationship to be purely ...'' She let her words drift off and licked her lips.
Travis leaned in to kiss her.
"Professional."
He leaped back as if she were on fire.
"Excuse me?"
"If you have a problem with my stipulation, I'd be happy to forgo the trip," she bluffed.
Travis looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. "Fine with me," he said, clearly disgruntled by the turn of events. "If you want purely professional, you'll get purely professional. The airport limo will be picking you up at 2:00P.M. tomorrow. Don't be late."
He threw her cell phone to her, and she barely caught it as he turned and walked out of the showroom without another word. Lily wasn't stupid. She knew there would be hell to pay for her making Travis feel like a fool. She was shaking after their showdown, but the truth was, after besting Travis like that she felt so good she wanted to scream with joy.
Italy. With Travis. It was incredible how every one of her dreams was coming true.
TRAVIS DROVE to his loft in a blaze of frustration. He hadn't felt this out of control since he was a kid, and he didn't like it. Not one bit.
He let himself into his sparsely decorated living quarters and went into the kitchen to pour himself a drink. Lord knew he badly needed one. But for some reason he was drawn to the framed pictures resting atop the grand piano. He picked up his favorite and blew off a patch of dust that the housekeeper had missed during her weekly cleaning.