It was a series of bandages over a gaping wound.
I didn’t have much time to study between working at the diner and taking care of Brando, but I had straight As and I volunteered with Habitat for Humanity so that I’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a scholarship to a university somewhere.
No man was going to fix our problems in the end.
I was.
“Just because he’s wealthy doesn’t mean he’ll share that wealth with us,” I pointed out mildly as I picked at the chipped navy-blue nail polish on my thumb.
Aida laughed again; the tone indulgent as if she was just placating her silly daughter.
Between the two of us, I was not the silly one, but again, I knew it was pointless to argue with her. She’d been living her life in the exact same pattern since before she met my father. It was fruitless to expect change now.
“He’s from New York City,” she continued in her fluttery, breathy way. “He owns multiple Fortune 500 companies, and he comes here often for business.”
I frowned. We lived in a town the same size and relevance as a wet spot on a map of Texas. There was no reason for someone to visit unless they were involved with the oil and gas industry or they were passing through.
I knew it was unlikely this man could be doing business in the area because the city was dominated by a single company.
And that company was owned by the Constantine empire.
And Aida, despite her flightiness, would never date another Constantine even if they were wealthy and available.
Not after the last Constantine ruined her life.
There was a knock at the door.
Three hard, staccato raps against the wood that sounded to me like a death toll ringing.
“Cara, answer that for me, would you?” Aida purred as she fluffed her hair, then discarded her silk robe, revealing an old, but meticulously cared-for La Perla corset and stocking set in the deepest red. “Invite him in.”
She didn’t have to tell me that she liked to keep her men waiting a little longer to build the anticipation before she revealed herself in all her made-up glory. This was a song and dance we’d been preforming since Dad died five years ago.
Still, I gritted my teeth as I turned on my heel to do her bidding, muttering under my breath. I was distracted by my irritation, the hot spike of it in my blood like lactic acid making my hands shake as I opened the front door off the kitchen to let in another in a long line of my mother’s lovers.
So, I wasn’t prepared for the sight that awaited me.
The sight of a man cloaked in shadow because our front porch light had been out for months, and no one cared enough to change the bulb. He wore the darkness like a mantle over his broad shoulders, a king of some underworld place. There were diamonds at his cuffs, a glittering silver watch with gems embedded in the face at his tanned wrist, and a single, exquisite red rose in one tattooed hand. The expression on his fierce, roughly hewn features was regal, cold, and haughty. He looked down his hawkish nose at me as if he was deigning to grace me, a mere mortal, with his presence, but he wasn’t happy about it.
I swallowed thickly, struck dumb by the sight of a man for the first time in my life.
It wasn’t his beauty that did it, even though there was no doubt his strong features beneath the olive-toned skin, his height and considerable bulk, his thick, artfully mussed black hair were all beautiful enough to make a painter weep. Aida had dated beautiful men before and they’d never impacted me so powerfully.
It was that look in his pale green eyes.
A look that said, I dare you to sin.
A look that welcomed your darkest desires.
A look that hooked through my gut and pulled me just a little step closer so I might smell his scent—smoky and warm—so that I might trace the exact path of the scar puckering the skin from his left ear to the corner of his mouth.
“Have you ever heard of personal space?”
I blinked, momentarily mute and dumb, the sight of him dominating every other one of my senses. So it took me a second to realize he was insulting me in a voice dripping with poisonous disdain.
I blinked again as my mouth dropped into a shocked “O.” “Excuse me?”
One inky brow rose, thick and slashing so that he had a perpetual expression of aggravated contempt. When he spoke, it was slow and overly enunciated as if he were addressing an imbecile.
“Per-son-al sp-ace.” One tattooed hand, the one with the shiny watch, gestured dismissively between our bodies, his knuckles brushing my chest. There was a tightening to his flat mouth that made me wonder if it was as accidental as it seemed.