Tall, Dark...Westmoreland! / The Moretti Seduction: Tall, Dark...Westmoreland! / The Moretti Seduction

“I’ll give it back to you if you take me away from here.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute but just sat there studying her face. And then he asked, “Are you sure you want to go off with me?”

She managed another smile. “Are you sure you want to take me?” she challenged.

Reggie couldn’t help but laugh loudly, so loudly, in fact, that when he glanced across the room, his brother Jared caught his gaze and gave him a raised brow. He had five brothers in all. He and Jared were the only ones still living in Atlanta. He also had a bunch of cousins in the city. It seemed Westmorelands were everywhere, but he and Jared were the only ones who were here tonight. The rest had other engagements or were off traveling someplace.

A part of Reggie was grateful for that. He was the youngest of the Atlanta-based Westmorelands, and his brothers and cousins still liked to consider him the baby of the family, although he stood six-seven and was the tallest of the clan.

“Yes, I would take you in a heartbeat, sweetheart. I would take you anywhere you wanted to go.”

And he meant it.

She nodded politely, but he knew she was thinking, trying to figure out a way she could go off with him and not take any careless risks with her safety. A woman couldn’t be too trusting these days, and he understood that.

“I have an idea,” he said finally, when she hadn’t responded and several moments had passed.

“What?”

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “Text someone you know and trust, and tell them to save my number. Tell them you will call them in the morning. When you call, they can erase the number.”

Olivia thought about what he’d suggested and then wondered whom she could call. Any girlfriends she’d had while living here years ago were no longer around. Of course, she couldn’t text her father, so she thought about her brothers. Duan was presently out of the city, since his job as a private investigator took him all over the country, and Terrence was living in the Florida Keys. She and her brothers were close, but it was Terrence who usually let her get away with things. Duan enjoyed playing the role of older brother. He would ask questions. Terrence would ask questions, too, but he was more easygoing.

Perhaps it was Duan’s inquisitive mind that made him such a stickler for the rules. It had to be all those years he’d worked first as a patrolman and then as a detective for Atlanta’s police department. Terrence, a former pro football player for the Miami Dolphins, knew how to have fun. He was actually the real swinging single Jeffries. He owned a nice club in the Florida Keys that really embodied the term nightlife.

Her safest bet would be to go with Terrence.

“Okay,” she said, taking the phone. She sent Terrence a quick text message, asking that he delete the phone number from which the message was sent after hearing from her in the morning. She handed the phone back to him.

“Feel better about this?” he asked her.

She met his gaze. “Yes.”

“Good. Is there any particular place you want to go?”

The safest location would be her place, Olivia thought, but she knew she couldn’t do that. Her father was home, going over a campaign speech he would be giving at a luncheon on Monday. “No, but I haven’t been out to Stone Mountain in a while.”

He smiled. “Then Stone Mountain it is.”

“And we’ll need to go in separate cars,” she said quickly. She had begun to feel nervous because she had never done anything like this in her life. What was she thinking? She got a quick answer when she met his gaze again. She was thinking how it would probably feel to be in this man’s arms, to rub her hand across that strong, angular jaw, to taste those kissable lips and to breathe in more of his masculine scent.

“That’s fine,” he said in a husky voice. “You lead and I’ll follow.”

“And we keep on our masks and use these names,” she said, pointing to her name badge.

He studied her intently for a moment before nodding his head. “All right.”

She let out a silent breath. Her father was well-known in the city, and with the election just a couple of months away, she didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his chances of winning. Anything like having her name smeared in the paper in some scandal. Scandals were hard to live down, and she didn’t want do anything that would be a nice addition to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s gossip column.

“Okay, let’s go,” she said, rising to her feet. She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake, but when he accidentally brushed up against her when they headed for the exit, she had a feeling anything that happened between them tonight could only be right.

Reggie, as a rule, didn’t do one-night stands. However, he would definitely make tonight and this woman an exception. The car he was following close behind was a rental, so that didn’t give him any clues as to her identity. All he did know was that she was someone who wanted to enjoy tonight, and he was going to make sure she wasn’t disappointed.

She’d indicated that she wanted to go someplace in Stone Mountain, and she was heading in that direction. He wondered if they would go directly to a place where they could be alone, or if they would work up to that over a few drinks in a club. If she wanted a night on the town first, there were a number of nightclubs to choose from, but that would mean removing their masks, and he had a feeling she intended for these to stay in place. Why? Was she as well-known around the city as he was? At least after Monday he would be. Brent Fairgate, his campaign manager and the main person who had talked him into running for the Senate, had arranged for campaign posters with his picture to be plastered on just about every free space in Atlanta.

Returning his attention to the car in front of him, he braked when they came to a traffic light. Just then his cell phone rang. He worked it out of his pocket. “Hello?”

“Where are you?”

He gave a short laugh. “Don’t worry about me, Jared. However, I do apologize for not letting you know I was leaving.”

“That woman you were with earlier isn’t here, either. Is that a coincidence?”

Reggie shook his head, grinning. “I don’t know. You tell me.”

There was a pause on the other end. “You sure about what you’re doing, Reggie?”

“Positive. And no lectures please.”

“Whatever,” came his brother’s gruff reply. And then the call was disconnected.

The traffic began moving again, and Reggie couldn’t help but think about how his life would change once the campaigning began. There would be speeches to deliver, interviews to do, television appearances to make, babies to kiss and so on and so forth. He would be the first Westmoreland to enter politics, and for him, the decision hadn’t been an easy one to make. But Atlanta was growing by leaps and bounds, and he wanted to give back to the city that had given him so much.

Unlike his brothers, who had left town to attend college, he had remained here and had gone to Morehouse. And he had never regretted doing so. He smiled, thinking that the good old days were when he got out of college and, a few years later, when he opened his own accounting firm. At the time, his best buddy had been his cousin Delaney. They were only a few months apart in age and had always been close. In fact, he was the one who had helped Delaney outsmart her five overprotective brothers right after she finished med school and needed to get some private time. He had let her use his cabin in the mountains for a little rest and relaxation, without telling Dare, Thorn, Stone, Chase or Storm where she was. Lucky for him, his cousins hadn’t broken his bones, as they had threatened to do, when they discovered his involvement. The good thing was that Delaney had met her desert sheikh and fallen in love at his cabin.

Reggie’s attention was pulled back to the car in front of him when Wonder Woman put on her blinker to turn into the parking lot of the luxurious Saxon Hotel. He smiled. He liked her taste, but given that they were wearing masks, he wondered how this would work. And then he got an idea and immediately pulled his cell phone out of his jacket pocket to punch in a few numbers.

“Hello?”

Reggie could hear babies crying in the background. “This is Reggie. What are you doing to my nieces and nephew?”

He heard his brother Quade’s laugh. “It’s bath time, and nobody wants to play in the water tonight. What’s up? And I understand congratulations are in order. Mom told me you’ve decided to run for the Senate. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” And then, without missing a beat, he said, “I need a favor, Quade.”

“What kind of favor?”

“I need a private room at the Saxon Hotel here in Atlanta tonight, and I know Dominic Saxon is your brother-in-law.”

“So?”

“So make it happen for me tonight, as soon as possible. And I need things kept discreet and billed to me.”

There was a pause on the other end. “You sure about this, Reggie?”

He shook his head. It was the same question Jared had asked him moments ago. “Yes, Quade, I’m sure. And I don’t expect any lectures from you, considering when and how my nieces and nephew were conceived.”

“Go to hell, Reggie.”