The man was eye-poppingly pretty. There was no other way of saying it. He was beautiful, with a slight, slender frame, defined cheekbones under creamy-soft brown skin, and luminous eyes framed with inky-black lashes that might have even been set off with mascara. Strangely, he was dressed in a cropped, turquoise-sequined halter top, formfitting black cigarette pants, and cream-colored ankle boots.
I blinked at the delicious creature before me until the late-afternoon sunlight sparkled off something even more unexpected.
Nestled in his short dark hair was a delicate sparkling tiara fitted with hundreds of crystal gemstones.
Oh holy fuck.
In her drugged-out stupor, Jillian had clearly hired a sex worker to come with me to Las Vegas. A sex worker who just happened to tick every single box on my extensive list of turn-ons and—I stared at those dark eyelashes again and nearly swallowed my tongue—added a couple of boxes I hadn’t realized I was missing.
Jillian was definitely getting a Ferrari.
2
Marcel
I did not do last-minute changes of plan.
Answering Jillian’s frantic call just as I was about to step onto a subway train to join my friends for a bachelorette party extravaganza had been a major tactical error. Rumor had it, the plan had been to end up at a male strip club. I’d had one back pocket full of singles and the other full of condoms.
If I couldn’t be the bride, at least I could be the bride’s slutty gay friend who got fucked by a hot stripper at the bachelorette do. And if I wanted to live that particular fantasy, there was no better time than when my workaholic boss was safely tucked away on a luxury cruise ship in the Mediterranean, right?
But no. Jillian had to call in the favor she’d been sitting on for years. The one she’d earned when she’d had to suffer through the worst blind date possible with a grizzled old grandpa just so I could get a nice, long dicking by the guy’s hot grandson.
I’d thought at the time that it had been worth it.
But now here I was, standing on a private plane, hot and effervescent after racing back to my apartment to shove a bunch of clothes into a suitcase and make it out to Teterboro in time to meet…
Oh. Ohhhhh.
Wait just a tall, muscular moment. This guy wasn’t at all what I’d expected when Jillian had told me stories about her high-maintenance boss.
I’d heard gobs of stories about Luca Bernardi, the billionaire hotelier. Stories about his inability to resist being the first to bring a new hotel concept to market. His inability to take a vacation. Ever. His inability to tolerate soft cheeses paired with toast points.
“He insists brie belongs on a nice baguette,” she’d griped one evening over Happy Hour cosmos at Pinnie’s. “And if you need a cultural example, he’ll be happy to hold forth for hours about feta’s relationship to pita bread and how Halloumi should be paired with watermelon instead of any kind of bread product at all.”
“Okay, but… the man’s not wrong,” I’d muttered into my drink.
But then she’d told me about his obsession with Hawaiian shirts.
“He thinks wearing one means he’s on vacation. He’ll spend a weekend in Newark signing legal paperwork, but as long as the man is wearing garish florals with his chinos, he thinks he’s spent a long weekend in paradise,” she’d muttered.
I’d shuddered at the very idea of an older man in a Hawaiian shirt in Newark, New Jersey. Give me a hottie in… know what? How about nothing? How about naked? Give me a naked hottie in the city, and you can keep your weirdo old grandpa in his Hawaiian shirt and most likely also black work socks, shorts, and some kind of loafer.
But now here I was looking at Luca Bernardi in the flesh—the tall, broad, sexy as fuck flesh—and I could say with confidence he was way more daddy than grandpa.
Also, the man could wear a Hawaiian shirt like nobody’s business… even if it was still very fashionably wrong on a million different levels.
“What are you wearing?” I asked, unable to hold back a smirk. He was irresistible. The man made every skin cell on my body tighten. “Because… I was under the impression this was a work trip.”
His eyes roamed up and down my body slowly before one manicured eyebrow lifted in challenge. “Is that right?”
My cheeks flamed as I remembered what I was wearing. Why hadn’t I taken two extra minutes to change into something work-appropriate? “I… uh… never mind about me,” I said, gesturing to my bachelorette outfit. “This is… just for travel.”
Why did I care what he thought about me? I didn’t. This was purely about paying back a friend for a favor. Two days in Vegas helping this guy say no to his pissant cousin and I’d be back home enjoying my rooftop terrace sun chaise while my boss was still away on his cruise.
Easy peasy.
I turned to enter the cabin of the plane and took a seat in one of the wide leather chairs. It was even more luxurious than my boss’s new plane, which was pretty damned impressive. Still, I’d flown on enough of these to know the drill.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said to the flight attendant. “Could I please have a bottle of water? And if you have a hot towel, I could use that as well.”
I dropped my leather messenger bag on the seat next to mine before exhaling. The rush to get here on time had damned near killed me. Hopefully, I could catch my breath and close my eyes for a bit on the way to Vegas. Maybe I could even use that time to daydream about the stripper sex I might have gotten if my night hadn’t been so rudely hijacked.
When the flight attendant brought me a tall bottle of Voss water and a hot towel on a small silver tray, I shot him a smile of thanks and helped myself to a little face-and-hand-wash session.
“There’s a shower in the back of the plane,” a deep voice grumbled.
I lifted my head from the refreshing cloth and saw Mr. Bernardi in the seat opposite me, long legs folding elegantly in the space between us. “Is there? Excellent. I’ll take you up on the offer once we get in the air.”
“I wasn’t offering exactly,” he corrected. “More like informing.”
“Mm. Thank you kindly for the clarification.” Asshole. Maybe being sexy was his only saving grace.
“I’m Luca Bernardi,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “And you are…?”
“Oh, right. Silly me. Marcel Abbott. Jillian sent me. I assumed she told you about me.” I reached out a hand to shake, but he just stared at it for a beat.
Right as I was contemplating using the same hand to shoot him the bird, he reached out and grasped it.
As soon as his much larger hand gently gripped my smaller one, I bit back a gasp. Lord, but I was a sucker for a big strong man who didn’t play the egotistical hand-crushing game.
“Jillian told me some things,” he said in a strangely tense voice. He let go of my hand like it had singed him. “Thank you for coming… oh god. No, not coming… I mean, uh… I mean…. joining me on such… hot notice. I mean short! Short notice. Not that you’re short! You’re perfectly… heighted. Heighted? I don’t think that’s a word… uh… you’re fine. I mean… your body’s fine. It’s good. It’s a good body. Not that it’s any business of mine how your… body is…”