The Bravos: Family Ties
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And very, very expensive.
He explained, “It’s engraved on the back with the date and ‘KinderWay at Impresario’—and don’t look at me like that. Yes, it’s a gift. A strictly professional one. To commemorate a job much more than well done.”
Strictly professional. Did she believe him?
Yes. No. She didn’t know.
She did know that the watch was beautiful and she had done a hell of a job in the past weeks and … yes, she wanted it.
What did that make her? A professional justifiably proud of her latest accomplishment? Or a woman finally saying yes to a man’s slow, relentless seduction?
Or both?
The really scary thing was that it didn’t matter what it made her. Whether this gift was strictly professional or not, she was keeping it.
Her doubts fell away. She knew at that moment that she would have to break up with Danny. And that someday soon Fletcher would ask her out to dinner again. And when he did, her answer would be yes.
No qualifications. And no restrictions. Simply, completely, yes.
She picked up the box and removed the watch, turning it over, reading the inscription, which was just what he’d said it would be. “Thank you,” she said for the second time. “It’s an important day and now I have something to remember it by.” She laid it over her wrist and caught the tiny diamond-studded buckle to clasp it.
“Let me….”
She started to refuse—and then stopped herself. What good would refusing him such a small thing do her? In the end, she would say yes to everything. She understood that now. And her intuition told her that the man across from her had always known, from that first day when she met with him in his office. He had always known … and he had been right.
She extended her wrist to him.
He stood. It took him only a moment to hook the delicate pin into the buckle. He held on a few seconds longer than necessary. “It looks good.”
She met his eyes without wavering as those now-familiar sensations of heat and longing danced beneath her skin. “Yes. Thank you again.”
With obvious reluctance, he released her. “And I have to go.” He waited for her to rise and come around the desk. When she did, he fell in behind her. It was only a few steps to the door.
She felt him acutely at her back. She wanted him. She’d tried to deny it, but the wanting did not go away. So she was yielding to it, finally, her capitulation at last complete—so much so that she almost stopped in midstep and turned to him and …
No.
Not here. And not now.
She had come to the point where she realized what was bound to happen, where she even accepted it. But not today, not in her office. And most important, not until she’d talked to Danny and told him goodbye.
Still, she simply couldn’t resist turning back to Fletcher as she opened the door to the outer room. “I am glad,” she conceded. “That you kept after me. That it’s worked out so well.”
He took a long time to answer—sizzling, delicious seconds during which heat shimmered in their shared glance. “I’m pleased, too. Very much so,” he said at last, and they both knew he referred to more than KinderWay.
She leaned back against the open door and allowed it to happen—for one more sweet, seductive moment before he left her, to get lost in his beautiful, dangerous eyes.
Then, with a slow sigh, she turned back toward the outer room. And blinked in guilty horror at what she saw.
Danny.
He was sitting on the sofa against the wall opposite Rae-Anne’s desk with a heart-shaped box of candy in his lap.
“You have a visitor,” said RaeAnne.
Danny took the box of candy in his beefy hand and stood. “Hey. Got home early.” His soft, dark eyes took it all in: Cleo standing stunned in the doorway and the tall, commanding, beautifully dressed man behind her. “Thought I’d drop by and see how things are goin’.”
Chapter Six
Danny understood in an instant what Cleo had refused to accept for nearly a month. He kept it calm and low-key, shaking Fletcher’s hand when Cleo introduced them, even smiling that sweet, open smile of his. The two men exchanged a few quick words of greeting and then Fletcher took his leave.
Danny followed her into her office, but he didn’t sit down. The minute she shut the door, he set the box of candy on the credenza and said, “I think we really gotta talk.”
“Of course. Danny, I—”
He put up a hand. “Not here, okay?” She swallowed and nodded. “I’ll be over tonight. Eight o’clock.”
What could she say? Nothing. Except, “I’ll be there, Danny.”
“All right, then.” He left without another word.
She took the box of candy out to RaeAnne and told her to share it with the staff. Cleo didn’t eat a single piece herself. She couldn’t.
Her doorbell rang at eight exactly. Danny looked so somber when she let him in.
She offered, “Are you hungry? I could …” She didn’t know how to finish. His expression broke her heart. It was infinitely gentle and much too wise.
“I didn’t come here to eat and I think you know that.”
So she led him to the living room. He took the easy chair and she perched on the edge of the couch.
He got right down to it. “Since that night I came for dinner and saw that little blue box—the one you wouldn’t open—I been getting the picture, getting the feeling there was someone else. I kind of figured it might be the guy who sent you that box, might be Fletcher Bravo—and it is, isn’t it? I knew it today, when you two came out of your office….” He seemed to run out of words. In the silence he just looked at her, waiting for her to answer him.
She felt about two inches tall. “Danny, I swear to you, I never went behind your back. Not with anyone. I would never do something like that.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” He gave her the kindest, most tender little smile and she wanted to cry then, just bawl her eyes out. But she held the tears back. After all, she wasn’t the injured party here. “You’re not that kind of woman,” he said. “And I know that you loved me—or at least, you thought that you did.”
“Danny, no. I did love …” She cut herself off. She couldn’t go on, not with the way he was looking at her, both knowing and disbelieving at once.
He shook his head. “I always knew that you wanted to love me, that I’m the kind of guy you think will be good for you, the kind of guy you’re gonna feel safe with. The kind of guy who’s nothing like the high rollers and big shots who messed your mom over so many times. And you know what? That was enough for me, to be the one you could count on, to be the guy you could trust, until … well, until now. Until I saw you today with a guy you’re crazy for.”
She longed to argue, to stand up and say, No, Danny. I’m not crazy for Fletcher. Not in the least.
Too bad she couldn’t get her mouth around such an enormous lie.
Danny said, “You been pulling away from me for weeks. You been tired every time I touch you. You know that you have.”
“I know. I’m so sorry….” She felt like a total creep, too awful to look him straight in the eye. She dropped her gaze.
He got up from his chair and came to stand over her. “Hey.”
She tipped her head back and made herself meet those kind eyes and realized that it wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be fair, to keep saying how sorry she was. Sorry just didn’t cut it. She swallowed and sat up a little bit straighter and said with real regret, “I’ll miss you, Danny.”
“And I’ll miss you. But Cleo, the way you looked at that guy …”
She swallowed. Hard. “Yeah. I know.”
He pointed at her wrist. “He give you that watch?”
“Yes. Today.”
“And you took it.”
“Yes, Danny. I did.”
“I think you’re in love with him. Are you?”
“Oh, Danny …”
“You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know.”
And that was it. There was nothing more to say except, “I’d better get your things….”
He shoved his hands in his pockets, lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. “Yeah. Okay.”
So she got up and went to collect his spare razor and toothbrush from the bathroom, his blue windbreaker from the hall closet. “I think this is all of it.” She handed everything over.
“Thanks.”
She opened the door for him and closed it quietly as soon as he had stepped through.
And then she returned to the living room and sat down on the sofa and couldn’t believe what she had just done. She’d said goodbye to Danny, her best friend, the man she had been so certain would one day be her husband and the father of her children. Danny, the exact right man for her, good and honest and true.
She sat there alone on her sofa and wondered which was worse: that she’d lost the sweetest guy she’d ever known, that she was actually relieved that Danny ended it—or that Danny was right. Somehow she’d gone and let herself fall for Fletcher Bravo, a man who was everything she’d sworn never to fall for.
It occurred to her that maybe she was more like her mother than she’d ever let herself admit. Now there was a seriously scary idea. It wasn’t as if all the hard lessons had faded from her mind. Uh-uh, they were with her, still fresh and vivid and full of pain.
She could close her eyes and see Lolita now—at three in the morning, standing in the doorway of the bedroom they’d always had to share since there was never money to “waste” on a two-bedroom place. Every spare penny had to go to headshots and building their portfolios, to hair and makeup and killer clothes and the endless series of dance lessons.
Oh, yeah. Cleo could still see her mother now: Lolita Bliss, standing in the bedroom doorway, the light from the hallway behind her falling on her platinum-blond hair, making a halo effect around her shadowed face….
“Baby, you up?” Lolita whispered—a stage whisper loud enough to wake Cleo if by chance she had been sleeping.
Cleo dragged herself to a sitting position, squinting against the bright hallway light. “Yeah, Mom. What?”
And her mother came dancing in, smelling of Joy perfume and Max Factor and something else—something musky and thick: sex, though Cleo hadn’t realized it then.
Lolita dropped with a happy giggle to the edge of the bed. “Oh, darling. It’s happened. It’s happened at last. I’ve met him. My own real-life Prince Charming. He’s rich and he’s so handsome and he can’t take his eyes off me—not to mention his hands.” Another throaty giggle escaped her, followed by along, dreamy sigh. “Oh, honey, he loves me already.” Lolita held out her arms, wiggling her fingers. “Come on. Come here.” And Cleo moved closer, into the warmth of her mother’s supple, sculpted body and those mingled smells of perfume and makeup and sex. Lolita hugged her so tight and whispered against her hair. “Cleopatra Bliss, our lives are about to change big-time. You’d better believe it.” Her mother’s long, lean dancer’s arm squeezed her harder. “Say you do.”
“I do, mom,” Cleo lied.
“Say it again. Please …”
“Mom, I do.”
Her mother’s lips brushed her hair. “Oh, sweetheart, he’ll make everything good for us. Just wait. You’ll see….”
But their lives didn’t change. And the men came and went, each of them breaking her mother’s heart when he left her.
And Cleo grew up dreaming of an ordinary life—a life where her kids ate three square meals a day, where they went to bed at a decent hour and woke up at daybreak and Cleo cooked them all a nutritious breakfast. In Cleo’s dreams, she lived in a real house and everybody had her own bedroom and Cleo’s husband was a good man, a regular, down-to-earth guy, both steady and true.
A guy exactly like Danny, as a matter of fact—Danny, who had just said goodbye and walked out the door.
So what about Cleo’s lifelong dreams now? She’d never have the life she longed for with someone like Fletcher. And please, who was she kidding? It was highly unlikely she’d have any life with Fletcher. He wanted her, period. And she wanted him.
This thing between them had nothing to do with the two of them building a life together. So if she couldn’t forget about him, she’d better learn to accept that what they’d have together wouldn’t last all that long.
Cleo supposed it was funny in a grim sort of way. Here she sat, contemplating the brief white-hot affair she and Fletcher would share. She was heading right into the kind of nowhere relationship her mother had never been able to resist. Lolita, though, had always believed that each player she fell for was finally the right one, that she’d found him at last.
Not Cleo. She was cursed with a crystal-clear view of hard reality. Fletcher Bravo was no knight in shining armor. With him, it would be hot and heavy and overwhelming … and brief.
The more Cleo thought about that—about how she was following in her mother’s footsteps without the benefit of her mother’s stubborn and somehow valiant illusions—the more she resisted her longing for Fletcher.
As the week went by, she tried to keep from running into him. In the morning and in the afternoon, when the kids were picked up and dropped off, she stayed away from the five-year-olds’ classroom and off the breezeway where she could easily cross paths with him coming or going.
She avoided him—and she longed for him. She daydreamed about kissing him. And at night her dreams went way beyond mere kisses.
On Thursday, she happened to be in with the three-year-olds again when Celia brought Davey in. J.J. wasn’t with them.
“Where’s that beautiful little girl of yours?”
Celia grinned. “Up at the apartment.”
Since Cleo had access to Davey’s student file, she knew already that Celia and her family lived in one of the big penthouses at the top of High Sierra Hotel. She couldn’t resist asking, “You like it … living on-site?”
Celia leaned a little closer and whispered, “I wouldn’t have it any other way. And J.J.’s with her aunties, Jilly and Jane. They refused to part with her even long enough for me to come down here and drop Davey off at school.”
Cleo remembered what Ashlyn had revealed at her birthday party. “Jilly and Jane. J.J.’s named after them, right?”
Celia nodded. “They’re my best friends. We grew up together, up north in the dinky little town of New Venice. Our husbands are New Venice natives, as well. They all had bad reputations as those wild Bravo boys. We—Jilly, Jane and I—were very, very good girls. It’s the classic story, I guess. A bad boy and a good girl. Sparks flying. Love. And marriage. Though I must admit, when I fell in love with Aaron, I never imagined we’d end up husband and wife. He so was not the marrying kind, if you know what I’m saying….”
Cleo did know. She nodded and made an agreeable noise in her throat, feeling wistful. Celia and her friends were not only happily married to Bravo men, they’d also lived the kind of childhood that Cleo had always longed for. “I know New Venice. It’s not far from Lake Tahoe.”
“That’s it—and hey, why don’t you come on up to the apartment around noon? You’ll like Jane and Jilly. And Jane is cooking lunch for us. She’s a genius in the kitchen. I guarantee the food will be fabulous.”
“Oh, I couldn’t….”
“Yeah, you could. Come on. Say yes.”
What could it hurt? And Cleo was curious about the other two Bravo wives. Plus, she’d liked Celia from the first time she’d met her at the Placer Room that day she and Fletcher had stopped by their table. “You know what? I’ll be there.”
“Great. We’ll set a fourth place.”
Jane Elliott Bravo, who had long, corkscrew-curly black hair and owned a bookstore in New Venice, was five months’ pregnant and thrilled about it. “It’s our first,” Jane announced, a proud hand on her swelling stomach. “Cade wants a little girl. I’ll take either. As long as she’s healthy, that’s all I ask.”
Jillian Diamond Bravo, a fashion plate in black and white with ropes of pearls, black tights and Mary Janes, was an up-and-coming lifestyle columnist in Sacramento. She was holding the baby when Cleo joined them. Jilly gazed adoringly down at the little darling. “I love being an auntie. But a mother? Well, not quite yet.” She beamed them all a broad smile and then grinned at Cleo. “I can see it in your eyes. You want to hold her.”
“You are so right.”
So Cleo took the baby, who waved her plump arms and yawned enormously, then promptly dropped off to sleep. Celia took her and put her in her crib and they all sat down to eat.
Lunch was every bit as good as Celia had promised: an incredible salad of baby greens and glazed pecans, followed by a main course of crawfish étouffée over rice. After the meal, they retired to Celia’s sun-bright living room where the view rivaled the one in Fletcher’s apartment across Las Vegas Boulevard at Hotel Impresario. Jane and their hostess sipped herbal iced tea while Jilly and Cleo indulged in second glasses of an excellent white wine.
Cleo knew she probably should have said no to that refill. The wine was making her just a little bit tipsy. But for the first time in days she found herself actually having a good time.
“I’m glad I came,” she confided. She sipped some more. Delicious. “Though the hard truth is that now I’m having a second glass of this wonderful Chenin Blanc, the rest of my workday will be pretty much shot.”
Celia looked slightly smug. “That was exactly my plan.”
Cleo laughed. “To get me drunk?”
“No, to get you to take a few hours off. I’ll bet by now you need a break.” She turned to the others and briefly explained the job Cleo had tackled and successfully completed in the last few weeks.
“Pretty darned impressive,” said Jilly. “Here’s to you, Cleo.”
Jane added, “We are so pleased that you came to lunch.”
“Oh, me, too,” said Cleo. “You have no idea how much I needed this.”
They all rose, clinked glasses and drank.
Just as Cleo was about to sink back into her comfortable chair, Jilly caught her wrist. “Cleo. This watch … Cartier. Oh, I knew it.” She laughed. “I really, really need one of these.”
“It is beautiful,” Jane agreed.
Cleo looked around at the friendly faces of the three women she was so glad to be getting to know—and her throat clutched up tight on her.
She felt tears rising. How ridiculous. She gulped and blinked, trying to force them back down. But they wouldn’t go.
“Oh, honey,” said Jilly, her dark brows drawing together in real concern. “What did I say? I’m so sorry….”
Cleo grabbed Jilly’s hand. Tight. “No. Please. It’s not you, honestly. It’s only …” Her throat locked up tight then, and the silly tears spilled over.
Jane reached for her. Never had another woman’s open arms looked so … necessary. With another huge sob Cleo fell into that warm and welcoming embrace. She bawled on Jane’s shoulder, soaking her soft red sweater, feeling the bulge of Jane’s pregnant belly nudging her own flat stomach. Jane rubbed her back and the other two women made cooing, understanding noises.
“It’s okay….”
“Don’t worry.”
“Just cry if you need to.”
“Just let it all out….”
Jane guided her back to her chair and eased her down into it, and Celia handed her a tissue. Cleo swabbed her eyes and blew her nose and told them, “Oh, I can’t believe this. I never cry like this.” She sobbed some more, took another tissue, blew her nose again.
“What is it?” asked Jane so gently. “What’s got you upset?”
“Yes,” Jilly urged, “you can tell us.”
Celia tried a joke. “What happens in my apartment stays in my apartment.”
They were all so dear and they really did seem to care and, well, Cleo needed to tell someone, she truly did. She sniffed and swiped at her eyes. “It’s Fletcher.” There. She’d said his name right out loud. She said it again. “It’s Fletcher. That’s the sad, awful truth.”
“Fletcher,” echoed Celia in a knowing tone. “I should have guessed.”
Cleo wiped her eyes some more. “It’s just … I’m so crazy about him and he wants to go out with me and, well, I know he’s all wrong for me.” She blew her nose a third time and told them everything—from that first meeting in Fletcher’s corner office to how she’d pushed him away for weeks and then finally taken his gift of the watch and how Danny, who was the perfect man as far as she was concerned, had broken it off with her because he knew she’d fallen for Fletcher.
When she’d finished her sad story and accepted another tissue from Celia, Jane dropped to the arm of her chair and bent close, that cloud of dark hair swinging forward around her arresting face. “Listen. Don’t feel too bad. I know, it’s awful when you fall for a Bravo man.” Jilly and Celia were nodding—in total agreement, apparently. “All of them,” Jane went on, “the sons of Blake Bravo, they always seem to have … issues, you know? They all grew up without a father and their childhoods had big challenges and … that’s just how they are. Kind of tough to get close to. At first, anyway …”
“But Cleo,” said Celia, “you might be surprised if you gave it a chance. You might find out that Fletcher is exactly the right guy for you.”
Cleo blinked. “You’re not serious.”
Celia looked slightly crestfallen. “Well, yeah. I was. Kind of …”
“Celia, he’s a major player. You know it.” She pointed her tissue at Jane and Jilly. “They know it. See? They’re not arguing. My mother loved nothing but major players and I know one when I see one. Fletcher’s a gorgeous guy with lots of power and a boatload of money, and I know he’s got a different girlfriend for every day of the week.”
Was she hoping they’d disagree with her—just a little, at least? No such luck.
Celia did go so far as to wave a dismissing hand. “Well, Aaron was that way, too. The drop-dead beautiful women came and went so fast I could hardly keep track of them. And as his personal assistant, it was my job to keep track of them. I was like you then, sure he was never going to settle down with one woman—and if he did, not with me. I’m very happy to tell you that I was totally wrong. It could be that you—”
“Wait a minute,” Jilly cut in. “Look, Cleo. We are so not going to tell you what you should do.”
“Well, I am,” Celia insisted.
Jilly shot her sister-in-law a warning look and continued, “We’re not going to lie to you. We all find Fletcher a hard guy to know.”
Celia was scowling. “But I think—”
Jilly cut her off again. “Ceil, come on. Fletcher’s a smooth operator, totally charming when he wants to be. And loyal where it counts. I believe he’d lay down his life for anyone he called family—or for anyone he considered his responsibility, for that matter. But what goes on inside that brilliant mind of his? It’s not like any of us knows.” She gave Cleo a game smile. “All we can say is, we did marry his brothers. And each one of us was certain our love was never gonna work. And look at us now.”
Cleo slumped in her chair. “The problem is, I’m just … paralyzed. Can’t stop thinking about him, can’t seem to make myself face him. I’ve actually been kind of hiding out from him, never going anywhere I might run into him during the time he would be dropping off or picking up Ashlyn….”
Celia pointed her index finger skyward and declared, “Action. Sometimes it just comes down to the fact that you have to do something, you know what I mean? Make a choice and go for it.”
“But with honesty,” said Jane. “Look him straight in the eye and lay the truth right on him.”
Jilly chimed in again. “Action is good.” Jane gave her a sharp look and she shrugged. “Yeah. All right. Honesty matters. I know that, Jane. But Cleo, you still have to figure out what’s going to work for you. If you decide to go to him, can you live with it if it ends up just the way you’re afraid it will? On the other hand, can you stand not to give what you feel for him a chance?”