Wait.
There it was. In small print. On the bottom of the page.
The gala had been organized by…noted Vegas philanthropist Sophie Winston.
His dog returned to his side, depositing the Frisbee demandingly at Ryan’s feet, but he couldn’t pull his eyes off that name, wildly rolling and rattling around in his brain like pinballs bouncing off flippers.
Could she really be related?
Nah.
He was getting ahead of himself.
“It’s just a common last name, right?” he said to the dog. Johnny Cash panted, then eyed the Frisbee. A reminder. Didn’t matter to the dog what the woman’s name was. Throw the damn Frisbee.
He picked up the purple disc, chucked it across the yard once more, and peered again at the screen through his shades. His fingers tingled, itching with possibility.
Winston.
Sophie Winston.
Showing up at the same building where John Winston worked.
The same John Winston who knew why his father’s murder investigation had been reopened but wouldn’t pony up the details.
Winston. Winston. Winston.
Take a deep breath. Maybe the detective just happened to have the same last name as the woman Ryan wanted to get his hands on.
He popped open another browser window, plugged in her name and John’s together, and soon the all-knowing Google revealed that the woman who’d invited him to the fete was the detective’s sister.
“Huh,” he said, staring at the screen in a sort of awed silence. As his dog scurried back to him, Ryan kneeled down and patted his head. “What kind of lucky son-of-a-bitch am I?”
The dog panted and Ryan imagined he was saying, “The luckiest.”
He scratched the dog’s chin. “I can’t be that much of an asshole to hope she might know something, can I?
The dog had no answers. Instead, he nosed the Frisbee.
Not wanting to deny his best friend and confidant, Ryan pointed to the pool, then threw the Frisbee into the glistening crystal-blue oval in his yard. The dog splashed loudly, then paddled to the shallow end in hot pursuit of his favorite thing.
As Ryan returned his focus to the screen, he told himself to slow it down. Just because Sophie-come-hither-to-my-party-tonight-Winston was the detective’s sister didn’t mean she was going to serve up details of the case to him. Hell, she probably didn’t know anything. He didn’t share the details of his job with his sister, so it was foolish to think John had told her the things Ryan was desperate to know.
Besides, he was interested in the woman because there’d been some kind of fuse lit between the two of them this afternoon, and far be it from him to deny that kind of heat. He wasn’t some fool who believed in love at first sight. He had no interest in love, nor any faith that it existed. He did, however, believe in the almighty power of lust.
Ryan had been invited to spin into Sophie’s orbit, and that was precisely where he intended to be tonight. But he didn’t like to be unprepared. He vastly preferred arming himself with data and details, so he spent a little more time with Google and Sophie, learning she possessed a hell of a lot more than a beautiful body.
Apparently, she had quite a large brain, too.
She wasn’t simply “noted Vegas philanthropist Sophie Winston.”
Several business news articles told him what else she was, and it shocked the hell out of him.
Never ever would he have pegged her as a goddamn tech millionaire.
He zeroed in on a well-known tech blog and read its coverage of the sale of an Internet start-up to an online search giant several years ago.
Stanford graduate Sophie Winston sold the encoding compression start-up InCode in a deal rumored to be valued at $100 million. She launched the company while finishing her computer science degree at Stanford, and oversaw two rounds of venture capital funding for the technology, which has been used by networks and broadcasters, and in enterprise applications. Her brother was the original investor, having provided the initial seed funding from his savings, she has said. Winston tells us she is “delighted” with the acquisition, and plans to step down as CEO, return to her hometown of Las Vegas, and begin charitable work. “I’m thrilled that InCode will be in good hands, and am eager to return home to be with my family.”
Ryan whistled in admiration. The sound caught the attention of his sopping wet dog, who cocked his ears as he trotted to Ryan.
“Guess what, Johnny Cash?” he said, as the dog shook the chlorinated water from his fur at Mach speed. Ryan stepped away, making sure the tablet screen wasn’t in the line of fire. “Seems I was wrong when I thought she was a movie star. The woman’s a retired Mark Zuckerberg.”
He chucked the disc into the pool, and his dog raced after it, launching into the deep end.
But maybe that wasn’t the best comparison, because there was nothing unfeminine about Sophie. She was all woman, and all sex appeal, and he intended to find out tonight what made her tick.
Because his desire for the beautiful—and evidently brainy—blonde had nothing to do with the fact that she might be privy to things he wanted to know. Nothing at all. It had everything to do with how she looked in that dress, and how insatiably curious Ryan was to learn how she looked out of it.
He was living for that moment, and that moment only.
Chapter Three
Sophie was late.
Sophie was often late.
Being on time was so hard when there was makeup to do, and hair to blow-dry, and chandelier earrings to locate in the bottom drawer of her jewelry chest (when she swore she’d left them in the top drawer), and stockings to pull on just so, inch by delicate inch, because you didn’t want them to rip.
Stockings took time to do right.
Hers were positioned properly with the garter attached at her thigh.
She’d be wearing them even if she didn’t have that little, fluttery hope of a hot man in her crosshairs. She wore them because she loved stockings. Stockings were sexy, and being sexy was fun. After years upon years of donning jeans and hoodies and knit caps because that was what the “nerds” wore and she’d desperately wanted to look the part—since being a woman in the tech field had already made her stick out like a sore thumb—she relished looking like a woman. She’d shed the old Sophie when she left the land of bits and bytes behind her, that man’s world of dressed-down anti-fashion.
Now, with her new focus on philanthropy, dressing up was not only embraced, it was essential.
The panties though…those were just for her.
She had on her favorite pair, though nearly every pair she owned was her favorite. La Perla had a way with silk and satin and beads and pearls that made every slinky bit of fabric enticing. Tonight’s panties were black like her dress, and sheer, with a slim, crisscross tie up the side.
She smoothed a hand over her dress, gave herself one more quick once-over in her full-length bedroom mirror, then snagged her purse from the middle of the cranberry-red comforter on her bed. She swiveled around, ready to go, then sneaked one more final glance.
Just to make sure that the piece of hair above her ear hadn’t fallen out of place.
Nope. All was well.
Wait.
Did she have any lipstick on her teeth? She bared her canines and was satisfied. Everything was in order. She headed down the hall to the wide-open living room with its floor-to-ceiling windows, which boasted her favorite view in the universe—Vegas, lit up and neon, bright and bold, her favorite city in all its unabashedly sinful glory.
She paused in the living room, one hand on the back of the soft chocolate-brown couch, wondering if she’d remembered to put fresh pillowcases for her brother in the guest room at the other end of the condo.
A flicker of tension skimmed through her veins.