Page 6 of Crossing the Line
“Bonjour, my dear,” he said, his knife never ceasing its murderous precision.
Waverly helped herself to a glass of fresh lemon cucumber water. “So what’s the mood like in there?” She nodded her head in the direction of the morning room.
Louie’s coal black eyebrows raised speculatively. “It’s…interesting,” he said finally. He put the knife down and wiped his hands on the checkered towel he always kept slung over his shoulder. “You’re not going in there like that are you?” he asked, eyeing up her yoga shorts and hoodie.
“That’s funny because there for a second I thought you were a chef, not my personal stylist,” Waverly teased. If there was one thing Louie loved more than his precious cast iron skillets, it was fashion.
“I’m both to you until you finally develop some taste of your own. I can’t understand why a girl who looks the way you do goes stomping around in sweaty gym clothes.”
“A. I don’t stomp,” Waverly corrected. “And B. I just had a yoga session. I’m supposed to be sweaty.”
It was an old argument between them, and a moot one at that, since Waverly and her assistant, Kate, deferred all decisions on her public outfits to Louie.
“You can help us go through the options for that thing this weekend if it will make you feel better,” she promised him.
His frown deepened, but she knew from the pink flush on his ears that he was pleased. “That ‘thing’ this weekend is the Women in Hollywood awards, and you’re presenting. Don’t you ever look at your calendar?”
“Why would I do that when I have you, Louie?”
He shot her a dark look that had absolutely no effect on her. “I will do my best to choose something that doesn’t make you look like a homeless Pilates instructor,” he told her.
Waverly stuck her tongue out at him, and Louie tossed a handful of spinach at her.
“There you are!” A tiny woman dressed in head-to-toe gray bustled into the kitchen. Her dark hair with its spider web of silvery strands was pulled back in a severe bun. Marisol Cote topped out at five-foot-two, nearly a full head shorter than Waverly, but the woman carried herself with the aplomb of a four-star general. She’d been in Waverly’s life from birth. Originally the nanny, Marisol had been promoted to house manager when Waverly hit her teens. Now she ran the family home—and the family—with a loving, if iron, fist.
“Morning, Mari,” Waverly said, giving the woman an exaggerated kiss on her smooth cheek. Marisol was ageless, and she credited her unlined complexion to her Dominican blood and her deadpan expression. Her serene expression was even evident in her wedding pictures to the French Canadian she’d fallen for at nineteen.No smiling, no frowning, no wrinkleswas her motto.
“Don’t pucker, girl. It will give you wrinkles.”
Waverly laughed. “Louie has not been a fount of information this morning, Mari. What’s the big pow-wow about?”
“They tell me nothing,” Marisol said evasively. She eyed Waverly’s outfit. “This is what you are wearing?”
“Why does everyone suddenly care about what I wear around the house?”
Louie and Marisol exchanged a knowing look.
“What? If I’m going to be emotionally manipulated for failing to live up to the family legacy, I can at least be comfortable, can’t I?”
Marisol took her by the shoulders and shoved her toward the door. “Go talk to your parents and remember that they do this out of love.”
Crap. That wasn’t a good sign.
Waverly let Marisol shove her out of the kitchen. She used the walk across the hallway to steel herself for whatever assault her mother had planned. She was an adult, Waverly reminded herself, and her desire to call her own shots was finally starting to override her need to not rock the boat.
She let herself into the morning room with a deep breath, the gold handles of the door cool to her touch. She was halfway into the room when she came to a halt, her bare feet buried in the snowy depth of the area rug.
The welcoming committee was bigger than she expected.
Her father was texting from a cream-colored wingback chair near the fireplace. Her mother was on the divan pouring tea no one wanted into delicate china. Phil, the agent that the two Sinner women shared, sat next to her mother. His thinning hair was trimmed short and inadvertently showcased the near-constant sweat that beaded his ever lengthening forehead. His customary wire-rimmed spectacles rode low on his nose.
But it wasn’t the usual cast of characters that caught Waverly’s eye. It was the man leaning against the mantel across from her. The man whose presence was definitely responsible for Louie and Marisol’s preoccupation with her gym clothes.
He was tall, at least an inch or two taller than her father and more athletically built. His thick hair blurred the line between brown and blonde and was worn short enough to make Waverly think military. Eyes the color of amber studied her coolly. There was no hint of a smile on his firm lips. Broad shoulders wore the black Brioni suit with a careless confidence. His arms were crossed over his chest, his stance casual, but there was nothing casual about the way his gaze locked on her.A hunter and his prey,the thought came unbidden, spiking her pulse into a tattoo rhythm.
He wore a tailored suit, polished shoes, but there was a roughness around those edges. A sharpness in the eyes and the determined set of his well-defined jaw. In the way he held himself, Waverly sensed a restrained power like a beast waiting to be unleashed.
She knew danger when she saw it, and this stranger was lethal.
