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Those big brown eyes implored him. “I didn’t mean to—”
“How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much money did they give you to play this game?”
For a girl who liked to talk, her silence was a message in itself. She was holding something back, but what? He no longer thought she worked as a stripper at Topaz—Brax liked his girls to wear sleek outfits, not castoffs from a Yankee Doodle Dandy parade. Plus, Brax liked to do his own talking. He would never send someone, especially this someone, to do it for him.
Yuri, on the other hand, was crafty, pathologically so, but immature. Maybe the Russian got the itch to dig at Drake, throw him off, so he’d hired this girl, maybe minutes before she walked in here, with hasty instructions to play on his father’s death. Maybe she was hard up for money, feared the thug or both.
“Why don’t you stick to what you’re good at.” He gave her a scathing once-over. “Although anybody who has to advertise to that extent probably isn’t all that good. Who hired your sorry ass?”
She opened her slick red lips to say something, but nothing came out.
Sally appeared, pushed a coaster toward his neighbor. “What can I get ya?”
Miss Who Dat swerved her stricken gaze to the bartender. “I, uh...”
He set down his bottle, hard, on the bar. “Order something. We have some talking to do.”
“Cherry cola?” she asked in a wispy voice.
Sally gave him a what’s-up look. He flashed her a mind-your-business one back.
“Maraschino juice in a cola okay?” Sally asked.
“F’sure. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Sally. And you’re?”
“Uh...” Her gaze darted across the bar. “Remy.”
“Nice to meet you, Remy.” She pointed to Drake’s bottle. “Another?”
He shook his head as an old Sinatra tune, “Luck Be a Lady,” started playing in the background.
Remy tapped her fingers on the bar. “I like this song.”
“Fine. Who put you up to this?”
She gave him a blank look. “Nobody.”
“Sticking to that story, eh?”
The way she lowered her thick black lashes, then raised them slowly, made him think of a theater curtain. He wondered what show he would see next.
“Like I told you,” she said, oozing earnestness, “I don’t know a Brassell or Yuri.”
“Braxton.”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He’d pulled that same stunt a hundred times. Mispronouncing a name to pretend he didn’t know the person. Playing dumb when you actually knew everything about the person, from the city where they were born to their cat’s name.
She acted like some kind of psychic nut, but he got the sense she was a lot sharper than she let on. No way was he going to get information from her. Not the truthful variety anyway.
“What you claim to have heard could not have been my father because...” He paused, swallowed an ache he’d been fighting all day. “He’s dead.”
There was a stupefied look on her face. Then she keeled forward and hugged him. “Oh, mercy!” she murmured, her voice breaking. “I had no idea.”
He set down the phone, trying to ignore the curious looks of others at the bar. Placing his hands on her trembling shoulders, he peeled her off him.
Her eyes glistened with emotion. Her chin quivered. What an actress.
“You knew.”
She sucked in a loud, indignant breath. “That he’s de— passed? No, of course, I didn’t know—how would I have? Even if I did know, I wouldn’t have shared what I heard...or sensed maybe is more like it, because to tell you the truth, I’m not all that sure I have the gift...but even if I was sure, I would never have said something like that without believing it offered some comfort.”
He frowned. “What?”
She waved her hands in the air. “Never mind.” She paused. “What are you pointing at?”
“That photo over the register. My dad was the original owner’s best friend, and a lifetime member of the Blottos who still hang out here most afternoons. If somebody wanted to learn facts about my father, all they’d have to do was buy one of those regulars a drink.”
“I don’t know any facts.” She looked at the photo. “He must be the gentleman on the right. The other one is too old.”
He said nothing.
After several beats, she said quietly, “You’re right. Those pulsations likely were your phone on vibrate. Sometimes I think I’m picking up on vibes, but...” She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “My nanny, though, she had the gift.”
“I don’t care if there’s a radio frequency scanner embedded in your skull, you have no right pretending to know Benedict Morgan.”
His brother had his issues, but Brax would never stoop so low as to fabricate a story involving their father. This evening was getting weirder by the minute. Time to go home, grab some shut-eye before his three a.m. return to Topaz.
He stood, retrieved his wallet from his pocket.
“Please, sir,” she whispered, “it was just a...funny coincidence.”
He turned away as he leafed through the money in his billfold. At least with his back to her, she’d get the hint their exchange was over.
“You got me wrong,” she continued.
So much for that theory.
“I sat next to you because I liked you. I walked in here and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s one good-looking guy. Sharp dresser, too.’ Maybe we could talk, get to know each other, but then your phone dropped...”
He turned so abruptly she jumped. “Let’s end this nonsense now,” he said in a low rumble. “You claim nobody sent you, fine. You call that...other part...a funny coincidence, okay. I halfway believe you because nobody in their right mind would hire a flake to put some mental muscle on me. But you can’t fool me about the rest of your performance. I’m not buying, sister, so sell it elsewhere.”
“Sell?” She actually looked affronted. “You think I’m...a hooker?”
“I’m giving you two pieces of advice. That ingénue act might work on out-of-towners who’ve never been to the big city, but don’t test-drive it on the locals, baby. And the next time somebody asks your name, don’t pick one off a bottle, Remy.” He snorted a laugh. “I suppose your last name’s Martin.”
Another guilty look. “F’true, you got me there. But you’re wrong about the rest. I’m not selling anything.”
“Right,” he muttered, “and I’m Mickey Mouse.”
Sally appeared, set the cola in front of the girl.
He tugged loose a five and handed it to Sally. “Keep the change.”
“Going home?” She slipped the bill into the tip jar.
He nodded. “Time to take my dog for a walk.”
“Don’t be a stranger.” She pulled out her cell phone and headed down the bar.
He didn’t look at “Remy” as he plucked his jacket off the high back of the stool. Folding it over his arm, he headed to the door as the music swelled and Frank warbled a long, long note that faded to nothing.
Drake stepped outside, and the heat hit him like a blast furnace. He wondered when he’d last taken a breath that didn’t smell like exhaust and warm asphalt.
Looking up at the night sky, he picked out the Big Dipper. When he was a kid, the skies had been cleaner, the stars brighter. But like everything else in life, things changed.
He was tired of change. It demanded too much and left too little. Never understood why people liked to say “embrace change,” as though it was fun, like wrapping your arms around the waist of some hot babe on a Harley, the two of you streaking toward some exhilarating destination. Change was more like sitting in the back of a taxi with some hard-nosed cabbie who drove recklessly, padded the fare and dumped you at the wrong address.
That was the problem with being a practical man. You knew life was no easy ride.
Sometimes, though, he envied the dreamers of the world, wondered what it was like to hope. To believe without the benefit of physical evidence. Staring at the stars again, he wished he could trust that something lay beyond life’s closed door, because he sure as hell couldn’t find the answers here.
He walked across the parking lot to the darkened kiosk, brushed off the seat of an abandoned stool and laid his jacket neatly over it. Rolling up a shirt sleeve, he watched the traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard. Cars, trucks and those life-changing taxis streamed past, filling the night with scraps of laughter, music and the occasional horn blast.
He scanned Topaz’s parking lot. No yellow Porsche parked in its regular spot. No black Mercedes, either, but it could be parked in a section not visible from here. He’d walk through the lot on his way to his truck, see what was there.
Fighting a yawn, he rolled up his other sleeve. He felt drained. Time to close the lid on today’s troubles, go home, walk his dog, then get some rest.
Click click click.
“Hello, sir?” called out a too-familiar female voice.
So much for closing that lid.
CHAPTER THREE
VAL SLOWED HER steps as she approached the darkened kiosk. The overhang cast a deep shadow around the building, making it difficult to see what or who was there, but from Dino’s window she had seen Drake stop somewhere around here.
“Hello, you there?” She squinted into the gloom.
“If I told you I wasn’t, would you go away?”
She huffed a breath. “Good thing that bad mood of yours isn’t luggage or it’d be too heavy to carry.”
“You came out here to tell me that?”
“No. You forgot your phone.” She thrust out her hand, more than ready to give it up. Whatever pulsations she had felt, or thought she felt, were gone.
“You want me to come to you?”
“Mercy, must everything be an issue?” Silence. “Yes, I want you to come to me.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll bite?”
“Yes. But I have to warn you, I bite back.”
She swiped a bead of sweat off her hairline. This damn wig was too tight, too hot. And these fishnet stockings made her legs itch something fierce. They never bothered her when she’d worn them at her old job, but that was indoors with plenty of air-conditioning, not outside where temps were pushing a hundred. Honestly, she could almost feel the steam rising from the pavement, even at this time of night.
She debated whether to set the damn phone on the ground and leave, but she didn’t want to fail at this. F’sure, she’d told Marta there were no guarantees to the honey trap, but what if Drake, her fiancé, told her about the weird hooker who claimed she felt pulsations through his phone, channeled his father, then stalked him into the parking lot? Hardly the techniques of a seasoned, knowledgeable private eye.
Marta would demand back every cent of the retainer.
Val would not let that happen. She had to suck it up, figure out how to salvage this mess. She and Grumpy were here now, alone. Which meant she had one more chance to sweeten the honey trap.
“You’re right, I’m a girl for sale.” Technically, she sold her investigator services, so that was true. “But I played the wrong man. You’re too smart, too hip to fall for this silly costume and come-on. I apologize.”
Her vision had adjusted enough to the shadows so that she could see his dark silhouette. He leaned against the building, and from the angle of his head, he was watching her. She remembered that gaze at the bar. The faint lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes, their smoky color. How they shone with intensity, as though he was on the verge of asking a question or in the process of formulating one. But when he angered, their color darkened to a flat, dull shade like gunmetal.
She wondered what color they were right now.
“Let’s call a truce, okay? I’ll bring your phone to you, then you can thank me.”
He didn’t respond. She had probably taken him by surprise with her no-harm-no-foul attitude. Or maybe he was mulling over her ability to actually tell the truth. That man sure spent a lot of time in his head.
She walked almost to the edge of the shadow and stopped. “I’d walk to you, but it’s not so easy to see in there, and I’d hate to fumble and drop the phone while handing it over. Of course, it might survive bouncing on the ground a few times, and you wouldn’t need to replace it, so—”
“Stay put.”
He stepped forward. Hazy moonlight slanted across his face, not enough to clearly see his features, but enough to see the pronounced line of his jaw, the bulk of his shoulders. He reached out with both hands and wrapped them around hers.
“Do you still feel those pulsations?” he asked, his voice husky, and unless she had lost her sense of hearing, more than a little suggestive.
“No,” she whispered. His hands were big and warm, triggering pulsations that had nothing to do with the phone. In the space of a heartbeat, the edginess between them had shifted, intensified, from a mental struggle to a physical one.
“Nothing at all?”
He tightened his hold, stroking his thumb in a light, lingering path on the back of her hand. Sensations sparked within her.
“Of course I feel something,” she managed to say around her heart thundering in her throat. “I’m flesh and blood, aren’t I?”
A throaty chuckle. “I like it when you’re honest. One moment, let me put the phone away.”
She realized she was holding her hands in midair, suspended where he’d abandoned them, as though they had no purpose other than waiting for his touch. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
He captured them again. With a squeeze, he drew her closer, then placed her palms flat against his chest. Through his shirt, she felt his heart pumping, its beat steady and strong. That’s how he is. Steady, strong, focused.
Raising one hand, he kissed her index finger before drawing it into his mouth. She shuddered a release of breath as he suckled it. Maybe she should admit she wasn’t really a hooker.
Slowly, his mouth released its hold on her finger and moved to her wrist, which he kissed and nuzzled.
Or maybe not.
“Do you like that?” he whispered.
“Ye—” The rest of the word ended in a small, ragged moan as his talented mouth and tongue tickled, nibbled and kissed the inside of her arm.
“What’s your real name?” His voice, rough and low, reverberated through her.
“V-val.”
These were just caresses, and some wicked attention from his mouth, yet her insides were rocking and rolling as though they were buck naked in bed. She stifled a building moan and told herself to chill, gain some ground. She was acting as if she hadn’t been touched by a man in years.
Well, she hadn’t. Two years, if she didn’t count that backseat fumble in Houston. A realization that was as depressing as it was embarrassing.
But when he lightly trailed the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip, then dragged it leisurely down her neck, his touch both deliciously coarse and gentle, the only thought she had was more, more...
“Why the wig, Val?”
“Hmm?”
“The wig. It’s obvious you’re wearing one. Why?”
She mentally fought her way through the haze of arousal. “Does it...look bad?”
As soon as she asked, she regretted it. Made her sound pathetically insecure about her looks, which was so far from the truth. If anything, she had been pathetically insecure about how she’d prepared for her job tonight.
“It looks—” he fingered a lock “—like strands of moonlight. Gives you an unearthly, dreamy quality.”
For a man who bottled up his words, he sure knew how to pour them on sweet and thick at the right moment.
“I always wear it with this outfit.” Also true.
“Interesting outfit to wear to Dino’s. Who hired you, Val?”
“Nobody.”
“Was it Yuri? You can tell me.”
“Nobody.”
Interesting, too, how he’d deftly manipulated this encounter so he was now in control. He’d plied her with his mouth and touch, worked her with compliments until her reserve dissolved, and she was ready to divulge whatever he wanted to know.
This man had taken over her honey trap!
Oh, no. Two thousand dollars, and the small but significant fact that her self-esteem needed her to succeed at her first P.I. gig, were at stake.
Time for the queen bee to regain her territory.
She had a job to do. Maybe she’d flitted here and there, floundered a little in her flight, but she would land this job, and do it right. This was her career, her future. Val Louvinia LeRoy would prove she had what it took to be a professional private eye.
“I wore an interesting outfit,” she said, sliding her arms around his waist, “in the hope I’d meet an interesting man.” You drone, me queen, sugar.
She nuzzled her face against his shirt, taking in its clean, crisp scent. Finding a gap between buttons, she slipped her tongue inside, touching the mat of hair on his chest. She probed a little farther and licked the slick, wiry strands, filling her mouth with the tangy, salty taste of his sweat. Closing her eyes, she sensed the warmth rising from his body, imagined what it’d be like to slowly undress him, piece by piece, unveiling his strong, powerful, male body...
Adrenaline surged through her veins. Ah, she felt alive, lost in the sensations. She could stay like this forever, indulging in slow, erotic play, teasing and prolonging the sweet torture until...
With great effort, she shoved down the fantasy.
There would never be an until, only these moments now. Of course she knew that, yet something inside of her splintered, the shards slicing, hurting.
“Val?” His voice was gruff, yet tender.
“Sorry.” She opened her eyes. “Got lost in my thoughts.”
“Anything I should know?”
Staring into his face, she cupped his cheek with her hand, half wishing they were indoors so she could read the look in his eyes. Those brooding, wary eyes, always watchful, always vigilant.
“You need to lighten up more.” The words spilled out before she’d thought them through.
“Are we back to my carrying bags?”
“Actually, it was luggage.”
“And my bad mood fitting into it.”
“Actually, I said it was a good thing your bad mood wasn’t luggage because—”
“It’d be too heavy to carry.”
Listening to his amused chuckle, she smiled. Didn’t completely ease the pain she felt inside, but it was good to share a moment of playfulness.
“How about I lighten up more now,” he said, his voice dropping to a rugged register that sent a thrill skittering up her spine.
“Let me help...”
Pressing closer, she wrapped her arms around his neck. Molding herself against him, she let him feel the length of her body against his, close and tight, from her breasts to her thighs. Emitting a throaty purr, she opened herself to him and gently thrust her pelvis against his. Then once more—giving him an unmistakable confirmation of her body signals.
She felt him hardening against her.
He lowered his head. “That’s not what I call light.”
Leaning back her head, she parted her lips, shuddering her pleasure as he nuzzled her neck, his big hands kneading her bottom. She felt the change in him, the tensing of his muscles, his labored breaths. Kissing was no longer a game. She was playing with fire, and she wanted to be scorched, consumed.
She pulled his head down to her, closer, closer, until she felt his breath warming her lips.
“Give me some sugar,” she whispered.
With a low, guttural groan, his mouth barely touched hers—
A trumpet blasted a riff.
“Wha—?” He jerked back his head.
She blinked, steadying herself as a clarinet wailed, a snare drum tapped.
Drake looked around. “That sounds like...a Dixieland band.”
“It is.”
“‘When the Saints Go Marching In?’”
“Right again. It’s my ringtone.” She reached into her pocket and glanced at the caller ID. Someone from home was calling. Had to be one of her cousins, probably worried as it was late and they didn’t like her taking buses at night. She hadn’t had a chance to tell them that she was driving a rental for the next few days, or that her car would be fixed soon, thanks to the money from this honey-trap gig.
Now wasn’t the time to talk, though. She turned off the phone and stuffed it into her pocket.
“Let me guess,” Drake said, his voice taut, “that was Hubby.”
She barked a small laugh. Couldn’t help it. Of all the secrets he’d accused her of, she hadn’t expected that one. “Girls like me don’t have husbands. You got a wife? Or a girlfriend? A fiancée?”
“None of the above.”
His lie bothered her, even though she’d been expecting as much. She was glad the night shadowed her features, because confusion and hurt were probably stamped all over her face.
The door to Dino’s swung open, and the faint strains of a Coldplay song wafted onto the street. Traffic cruised down Las Vegas Boulevard with its mix of honking horns and screeching tires. The air simmered with the never ending, relentless heat.
Everything was the same as it had been when she first got here, but she had changed, irreversibly so. Until the past few minutes, she had not realized that, deep within her, she had put up a wall that protected something fragile, yet potentially devastating. Now it had been freed, and she could never put it back.
“I need to go now,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even.
“Where are you parked?”
“There.” She pointed in the general direction of the Honda rental, thirty or so feet away.
“I’ll watch, make sure you get into your car okay.”
She didn’t trust herself to speak anymore. With a wave, she walked away.
As her heels clicked across the lot, Jayne’s words drifted through her mind. Diamond Investigations never did honey traps because “inducing the behavior” to “objectively document” was unacceptable. Just like Jayne to couch it in clinical, detached terms.
Val could add an important side note to her boss’s rule. Honey traps were especially unacceptable because people whose hearts had been numbed might unexpectedly wake up and realize what had been missing in their lives—an impassioned connection, a sense of belonging or maybe just a person’s touch. When that happened, inducements became deterrents, and all objectivity was lost. The game became real.
She reached her car and turned.
He stood where she had left him. A dark, lonely form, vigilantly watching, protecting.
* * *
A SHORT WHILE later Val sat at the intersection of Las Vegas Boulevard and East Charleston. She still felt wobbly about what had happened in Dino’s parking lot. And embarrassed by telling him about the pulsations. At the time, she would have sworn they were dead-on real. She winced at her choice of words. Well, whatever, she should have kept the bulletin to herself.
Her nanny was the one who really had the “soul’s eye,” as she called it. Through it, she said she experienced impressions—images, feelings, voices—in the part of her brain where dreams lay, which resonated from objects imbued with memories of their owners’ lives, anything from significant events to people they had loved. Although some people called her gift psychometry, Nanny called it “measuring people’s spirits.”
When Val was thirteen, she’d thought she was picking up on objects’ impressions, too. Sometimes when she touched one of the antiques in their shop, especially ones with metal or stones, her fingers would tingle slightly. Immediately following that, an image or emotion would pass through her mind. Never heard a voice, though, like Nanny did. Not until tonight.
Looking back, she couldn’t honestly say she really saw or felt those things. Sometimes she wondered if it had just been a way to be closer to her nanny, the two of them sharing something special. Hindsight could sure give a person twenty-twenty vision.
But still, what happened earlier in the bar had seemed like an impression. She had definitely heard an older man’s voice when she held Drake’s phone, but thinking back, she remembered an older couple sitting at a table behind them, and Val had overheard him expressing his love for his lady friend. And those pulsations from the phone? No-brainer. The phone was on vibrate.