The Rogue (The Moorehouse Legacy #4)(17)

*

Spike waited for Mad to respond. She was looking completely dazed, which was probably not a good thing. Ah, hell, he should have called.

“Excuse me, Madeline,” the guy to Spike’s left said. “But perhaps you’d care to introduce me to the man you’ve invited to my house?”

Spike swiveled his head around. So this was Richard.

Man, no wonder she didn’t want to come here alone. This guy was straight-up, high-class trouble, from his icy eyes to his signet ring to his perfectly turned-out bow tie. Real spit-and-polish nasty.

Mad cleared her throat. “I, ah, I wasn’t sure he was—”

“My fault,” Spike interjected. “I didn’t let her know my other plans had changed. As you can imagine, I’m just thrilled to be here, Dick.”

Richard’s stare got transferred to Spike’s face. “I go by Richard, thank you. And apparently, my guests think you’re decent company. Which is a vote in your favor.”

“Yeah, Binder and I go back.” Spike smiled, showing all his teeth. “But I have to tell you, I’m not looking to get elected and I’m not here to be decent company. I’m here for Mad.”

Richard frowned. “Indeed. And exactly how do you know each other?”

Spike glanced at Madeline, figuring this was a question she should answer.

“Friends,” she said. “We’re friends.”

“That I could have guessed.” Richard’s voice was even. Well-modulated. Resonant. “Madeline doesn’t have a lot of success with the opposite sex.”

As Mad flinched, Spike narrowed his eyes. And wondered what good old Richard would sound like if his front teeth were knocked out.

But then he took a deep breath. Before he gave the tooth fairy some extra business, he should probably find out whether Mad wanted him to stay at all. He’d hoped to arrive after dinner so they could talk, but he’d been so anxious to see her that he’d left the Adirondacks too early and gotten to Greenwich too soon. And once he was in the vicinity, he hadn’t been able to stay away from her house.

From across the table, Walter Binder spoke up. “So Spike, what are your long-term plans for White Caps? Are you going to expand? Maybe establish a presence in Manhattan?”

Spike cleared his throat to answer, but then had to lean back while silverware and a napkin and a glass were put down in front of him. The endive salad that landed in the middle of the setup looked good, but when the white wine bottle came forward, he shook his head.

“None for me, thanks,” he told the waiter. Then he glanced over at Binder who, if memory served, was a deep-pockets real estate developer. “Ah, yeah…I think we do want to grow in the next couple of years. And though the Big Apple is a little far away from us, let’s face it, New York is one of the hot spots for food in all the world.”

“Are you looking for capital yet?”

“We’re beginning to.” As a matter of fact they’d already talked to Nate’s brother, Jack, who had a pile of the stuff.

“Now that,” Binder shook his forefinger in the air, “would be a great investment.”

Talk shifted, moving in various wealth-related directions. As Richard launched into a conversation about the S&P with the anemic blonde next to him, Spike looked at Mad. Compared to the other guests, she was under-dressed in her white polo and her loose pants. But to him, she was absolutely stunning: all healthy and vital and beautiful. Man, Chanel had nothing on a pair of khakis when it came to Mad.

In a soft voice, he said, “I really should have called.”

She pushed her endive around and smiled a little, the tilt of her lips catching and holding his eyes. “I am a bit surprised to see you.”

“I don’t have to stay. I don’t want to cause any problems for you.”

She looked over at him, and suddenly, everything faded into nothingness. All he saw was the twilight color of her eyes, a blue so dark it seemed infinite.

The words came out of him quickly. “I’m sorry, Mad. About what I said back at Sean’s.”

“What? Oh…he told me you’d apologized. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s really not.”

Abruptly, Mad’s eyes shifted to the left and she stiffened. Ah, so Richard was listening in.

“Let’s go for a ride on my bike,” Spike said quietly. “As soon as dinner’s over.”

She nodded. “I’d like that.”

Spike picked up his fork, tucked into what was actually a very nice salad, and tried to stop staring at her. To distract himself, he surveyed the room and…whoa. He hadn’t really noticed when he walked in, but the wealth and splendor of the environs was outrageous. If he’d been told the whole thing had been airlifted out of Versailles, he wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

Funny, he’d thought he’d been ready to get a gander at her family’s house. Even though he didn’t come from anything, he knew a lot of rich people because rich people ate a lot of French food and they liked to know their chefs. But this…this was beyond rich and into Rockefeller money.

As Spike reached for his water glass, he knew that even if he hadn’t had a prison record, Madeline Maguire was way outside his league.

Hell, he wasn’t even from the same planet as her.