Road To Temptation
Terra Little
Destination: LoveThe disappearance of a state politician’s teenage daughter sends missing-persons consultant Elise Carrington into uncharted territory. Especially when the independent PI is forced to partner up with Broderick Cannon, who insists on working the high-profile case his way. As they come to terms with each other, Elise can’t let her intense attraction to the sexy, infuriating ex-Secret Service agent interfere with their mission.Joining forces with a beautiful woman on a search-and-rescue isn’t Broderick’s usual style. But he has his own reasons for signing on, which ups the ante even as he and Elise give in to an overwhelming desire. As they chase down leads across the Midwest, Broderick must confront an unresolved personal tragedy that still haunts him. Will he find the answers he’s looking for? Or will his lonely pursuit of justice cost them a bright future together?
Destination: Love
The disappearance of a state politician’s teenage daughter sends missing-persons consultant Elise Carrington into uncharted territory. Especially when the independent PI is forced to partner up with Broderick Cannon, who insists on working the high-profile case his way. As they come to terms with each other, Elise can’t let her intense attraction to the sexy, infuriating former Secret Service agent interfere with their mission.
Joining forces with a beautiful woman on a search and rescue isn’t Broderick’s usual style. But he has his own reasons for signing on, which ups the ante even as he and Elise give in to an overwhelming desire. As they chase down leads across the Midwest, Broderick must confront an unresolved personal tragedy that still haunts him. Will he find the answers he’s looking for? Or will his lonely pursuit of justice cost them a bright future together?
When Elise failed to laugh with him, he sobered up by degrees, looking at her like she was crazy. “You’re serious.”
“Yes, I am. I told you, I take insults very seriously. So, what’s it going to be? Are you in or are you out?”
He looked up from watching her lips move and caught her eyes. “Suppose I was in. What are the stakes?”
“I want the Hummer.”
“That was quick. Would this be the same Hummer that you’ve previously referred to as a rolling monstrosity?”
She dimpled at him, and he had a sudden urge to feast. “It is. Don’t tell me you’re afraid you’ll lose?”
Don’t sweat it, Broderick. She won’t win anyway. “Not at all.” But you will. He scraped the skin beneath his bottom lip with his teeth for a second as he silently weighed his options. She had issued him a dare, so there was really only one option. “Fine. The Hummer. What do I get if I win?”
“That depends. What do you want?”
“You,” he said simply and just as quickly.
Dear Reader (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9),
There’s nothing like a sizzling romance in the frosty wintertime! Add a gorgeous alpha male, a spur-of-the-moment road trip and a blushing heroine to the mix and you’ve really got a recipe for ecstasy. Wouldn’t you agree?
Sparks start flying the moment Elise Carrington’s sleek Jaguar and Broderick Cannon’s snarling Hummer kiss bumpers on the street. This brings the shy former cop turned private investigator and the rugged former navy SEAL turned corporate security specialist face-to-face for a confrontation that can only be described as, well...foreplay. A twist of fate forces them to work together—grudgingly, of course—but since when does fate make mistakes?
After all, what could be better than taking to the open road with a fellow comrade, especially one with a wealth of knowledge to share? Lucky for Elise, Broderick is the generous sort and she’s a willing student...
Safe travels!
Terra
Road to Temptation
Terra Little
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
TERRA LITTLE has been reading romance novels for decades and falling in and out of love with the heroes within the book covers for just as long. When she’s not in the classroom teaching English literature, you can most likely find her tucked away somewhere with her laptop, a dog-eared romance novel and romance so heavy on the brain that it somehow manages to weave its way into each and every story that she writes, regardless of the genre.
Terra resides in Missouri, but you can always find her on the web to share feedback, the occasional joke and suggestions for good reading at writeterralittle@yahoo.com.
For Alex.
Contents
Cover (#ub4bca1c2-5917-5b90-8d11-97bc9ae0639c)
Back Cover Text (#u0bb96bed-6393-53e9-aac1-2679fe1e8185)
Introduction (#uc92e9a91-2d07-5ef7-b870-2a8f7189960a)
Dear Reader (#u2fe32406-38d9-5c1e-98c6-df046b2cec40)
Title Page (#ueabc83e6-b14d-55af-9cd0-0cde83e9117a)
About the Author (#u5df74686-e380-578b-a0b7-82fc9068c743)
Dedication (#u133e671f-493d-5fc1-8397-ef0873044959)
Chapter 1 (#u62b86819-1238-5b7c-aa60-b92d02233164)
Chapter 2 (#u81cc3414-f45d-560a-b543-337ea58381a2)
Chapter 3 (#u98375840-7790-5539-ad63-ea049b190807)
Chapter 4 (#u650c14f5-49b6-553b-a06a-f5574c43ad4d)
Chapter 5 (#u33a61363-c538-5e29-a862-d1f85d705607)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
“I have a present for you,” a sultry feline voice said, breaking the early-morning silence.
Elise Carrington looked up from her computer screen and frowned at the petite woman heading across the reception area in her direction. Curly sandy-brown hair with copper highlights flew wildly around her heart-shaped face and bounced against her shoulders with every step she took. Her plump lips were shellacked to perfection with a frosty fuchsia-tinted gloss and curved into a smile wide enough to sink the matching dimples in her cheeks. And the naturally arched brows above her deep-set, amber-colored eyes were poised, as if they expected to take flight at any moment.
Elise was immediately suspicious of the woman’s intentions and slightly amused at the same time. Looking at another person and seeing an exact replica of herself still startled her every now and then, even though she’d been doing it for over thirty years and should’ve long since grown used to it. “Only you could manage to look bright and chipper at seven o’clock in the morning,” she drawled, reaching for a mug of steaming coffee on the tabletop. “The rest of us poor schmucks are still cracking our eyelids open.” She sipped the hot liquid gingerly, taking a moment to appreciate the creamy, caramel-flavored blend as she eyed her identical twin over the rim of the mug. She knew without having to be told that the file folder in her sister’s hand didn’t contain good news. The ones that tended to land in either of their laps these days rarely did. “What’s up?”
“We have a runaway on our hands,” Olivia Carrington said. “Well, I guess I should say you have a runaway on your hands.”
“Excuse me?” Elise watched incredulously as Olivia smoothed her silk tunic over her hips, plopped into one of the upholstered chairs across the table from her and crossed her legs. The blouse’s bright fuchsia color matched Olivia’s lip gloss perfectly, reminding Elise that she hadn’t bothered with anything more than leggings, a tunic-style hoodie and a fresh-scrubbed face this morning.
“I’m in the middle of the Donaldson case,” her sister began, “but since you wrapped up your last case a few days ago, I figured that it was okay to accept a new case for you.”
Elise’s frown deepened. “That’s my present? A new case?”
“Yep,” Olivia chirped, dimpling prettily.
“Seriously. I don’t know why I put up with you.” Unconsciously mimicking her sibling’s pose, Elise sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “It’s not like I don’t have enough paperwork to do before I can finally close the file on my last case. Plus, I was hoping to take a break before I accepted another assignment, maybe sneak off to the Bahamas for a few days with a few of the girls and relax.”
“Okay, first of all, you put up with me because we’re twins. I’m two minutes older than you are, so you have to. Secondly, you don’t have any girls. Plus, I couldn’t have turned this one down if I wanted to and, believe me, I really wanted to. Do you remember Joel Barclay?”
“Sure, I remember Joel.” How could she forget him? He and Olivia had carried on a scorching affair for several months back in high school. Despite the fact that he was twenty at the time, almost twenty-one, and a junior in college, and Olivia was barely seventeen and a high-school senior, what had started out as a carefree summer fling had quickly turned into an intense, nearly year-long relationship. Up to that point, Elise had never known a member of the opposite sex to hold Olivia’s attention for longer than a few weeks at a time, and, as far as she knew, there had only been one or two others who’d managed to accomplish the feat since. It was a toss-up as to which of them—Joel or Elise—was more shocked when Olivia turned down Joel’s marriage proposal and then broke up with him shortly afterward. “How is he?”
“He’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Olivia said, suddenly serious. “His daughter is missing, and we have to find her.”
Surprised for the second time in as many minutes, Elise stared at her sister as she reached across the table for the file folder that Olivia held out to her. Setting her coffee aside, she opened the folder and scanned the 5x7 color photo that was clipped to a thin stack of written notes inside. The teenage girl staring back at her was the spitting image of the Joel she remembered—raven-haired, with classic features and a warm smile. According to the notes in the file, her name was Meagan, she had just turned eighteen a little over a month ago and she’d been missing for nearly twenty-four hours.
“I remember when he got married right after college,” Elise remarked absently as she continued scanning the case notes. “You had the nerve to be upset because you weren’t invited to the wedding, as if you hadn’t just broken the poor guy’s heart ten minutes before he walked down the aisle.”
“It did seem like he got over me rather quickly, now that you mention it.”
Elise’s gaze flickered up to her sister’s briefly and then skated away. No way was she touching that subject. Of the two of them, Olivia, bless her heart, was by far the vainest. As a teenager, Elise had always preferred the company of a good crime-fiction novel and a steaming mug of chamomile tea over that of chattering girls and hormonal boys. But Olivia was the exact opposite. She’d always been smart and had ultimately graduated cum laude from Loyola University, but only after their parents had spent most of their daughters’ adolescent years worrying themselves sick over whether or not Olivia would ever get serious about something other than boys, lip gloss and gossip.
She’d also dated enough for the both of them in high school, which was just fine with Elise, since it had taken most of the pressure of adolescent expectations off her. But Olivia’s tendency to make everything about herself could be a bit much if you didn’t know her well enough to know that her heart was just as big as her head.
“So this is their kid, huh?”
“Their one and only,” Olivia said. “So you can see why I couldn’t say no to the case, but I couldn’t exactly take it on myself, right? It would be...weird.”
“Yes, I can see how it might be.”
It was a high-profile case, one that would definitely get its fifteen minutes worth of fame if the media caught wind of it. After marrying his pregnant rebound girlfriend right out of college, Joel had set his sights on a career in politics and law. He was currently in his first term as a circuit court judge, a seat that he’d just barely won in the last election, thanks to his teenage daughter’s penchant for scandalous public exploits. Add that to the fact that, before he’d become a judge, he was the kind of young brash defense attorney who himself had a tendency to take on the kinds of controversial cases that kept him in the public eye, and the result was a private life that didn’t exactly lend itself to voter sympathy. The last thing he or his wife needed was the kind of publicity that a presumably out-of-control runaway child would attract, especially since his name was now on the short list for appointment to the Illinois Appellate Court. That had to be why he’d bitten the bullet and reached out to Olivia. His was just the kind of case that Carrington Consulting specialized in.
In the three years since Elise and Olivia had grown tired of taking orders from power-hungry men and gone into business for themselves, they’d taken on countless missing persons cases and, at last tally, they were operating at a more than 90 percent success rate. With Elise’s background in law enforcement and Olivia’s forensic experience, if anyone could find Meagan quickly and with a minimum of fuss, they could.
Glancing at her watch, Elise pushed back from the table and got to her feet. She picked up her laptop, coffee mug and, as a last thought, the file. “I hate to run out on you like this, sis, but I have a videoconference later this morning,” she told Olivia. “Can I finish looking over the notes on the case right afterward and let you know what I decide?”
“This afternoon?” Olivia’s eyes widened in alarm as she tracked Elise’s progress out of the room. “Joel was frantic when he called this morning, Elise. I don’t know if putting this off until this afternoon is such a good idea.” Her wispy hair rode the wind as she swiveled in her chair. “He mentioned something about her having behavioral problems. Something could happen to her by then, if it hasn’t already.”
Elise thought about the possibility for a moment. “I won’t be long,” she said before disappearing down the hallway.
“Okay, but if your videoconference isn’t until this afternoon, where are you going now? It’s still morning,” Olivia called after her.
“I have a teleconference in ten minutes, and I can’t miss it. My last case isn’t going to close itself,” Elise called back. “When the phone rings, it’ll probably be for me, so I’ll pick up the extension in the study.”
Hoping that she had escaped having to make a decision on the Barclay case, if only for a little while, Elise closed the study door at her back and took a seat at the conference table across the room. She was almost done setting up her temporary base of operations when Olivia opened the door and stuck her head inside the room. Elise couldn’t say that she was all that surprised.
“I have an idea. Why don’t I have Harriet call Joel and set up a meeting with him for this afternoon?” she said, referring to the gray-haired dynamo who was their administrative assistant. “Just in case,” she added when Elise’s amber gaze rose from the computer screen to meet hers and narrowed in warning.
“You’re not going to let up until I agree to take this case, are you?”
“Why do you ask questions that you already know the answers to?”
“All right,” she said, nodding reluctantly. “All right. Have Harriet schedule an early-evening meeting. I should be done with everything by then, so I’ll go to him instead of having him come here. I need some fresh air, anyway. But I’m telling you, after this case, I’m officially on vacation.”
She looked away from Olivia’s smiling face when the phone rang. Pushing a button to accept the call, she didn’t see the victory fist pump that Olivia executed before the door closed softly in her wake.
* * *
Working from home did have its advantages, Elise mused as she stepped into the shower and quickly soaped herself from head to toe. It certainly made transitioning from one task to the next on her to-do list a lot easier. Ironically enough, that was precisely the argument that Olivia had used three years ago when the question of where they would set up Carrington Consulting’s business offices had come up. Elise was in favor of leasing office space in downtown St. Louis, so they could at least try to keep their private investigations business and their personal lives separate, but Olivia’s arguments to the contrary had eventually worn her down. There was more than enough room in the house for both business and pleasure to coexist, she’d pointed out, and they could save money on overhead expenses. Put that way, Elise could hardly refuse. Olivia was right on both counts, though Elise would cut out her tongue before she’d admit it.
Her parents had built the house five years ago, after her father decided to give up his thriving Clayton law practice and retire early, and, for a while, decorating it had kept both Lance and Yolanda Carrington busy. It was a showplace, something tangible that they could both appreciate and enjoy after years of hard work. It wasn’t until after it was finally completed and each room had been meticulously appointed that her parents had suddenly decided that they didn’t want to live there, after all. Almost thirty years of living in the States was long enough, her father had said. He was homesick for London, where he’d been born and raised. Leaving the house to their daughters, they had updated their passports, packed up their personal belongings and left the country seemingly in the blink of an eye, a decision that hadn’t surprised Olivia at all but that had finally confirmed for Elise the origin of Olivia’s flighty tendencies.
True to form, Olivia hadn’t wasted any time ditching her South County condo and moving in, but Elise hadn’t been quite so eager to let go of her Clayton town house. Her sister had already been living in the house a full six months before she sublet her town house and joined her.
After showering and moisturizing, she paired a cream-colored cashmere sweater dress with a wide chocolate-brown belt and matching suede boots. The steam from the shower had completely wrung the life out of her hair, so she brushed it until it was smooth and caught her wild, curly locks at the crown of her head with a jeweled clip. As a finishing touch, she added mascara and gold-tinted lip gloss before tossing her cell phone and iPad in her red Kate Spade tote and slipping her favorite Chanel sunglasses over her eyes.
Downstairs in the foyer, she grabbed a red vintage leather coat from the coat closet and then swiped her car keys from the entry table on her way out the door. With just about forty-five minutes to spare, she could just barely make it to Joel Barclay’s Waterloo, Illinois, estate on time.
Chapter 2 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
Half an hour later, Elise’s Jaguar was stuck in rush-hour traffic on Interstate 40, sandwiched between an ancient bright green Beetle that had obscene bumper stickers plastered all over it, and a snarling black Hummer with tinted windows and aggressive tendencies. Every few minutes, the Beetle crept forward a couple of feet, putting her that much closer to the exit she wanted, which, thankfully, was only about a half mile up ahead. Thanks to the pushy Hummer that had been riding her rear bumper nonstop for the last twenty minutes, a half mile seemed more like a million. The thing practically growled every time she hit the brakes and forced it to stop on a dime barely an inch from her bumper, as if her car and her car alone was responsible for the bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Jerk. She eyed the idling bully in her rearview mirror steadily. The windows weren’t just tinted, they were also reflective, making it completely impossible to see who, or, in this case, what was inside, behind the wheel. But she didn’t need to actually see the face of evil to know that it existed, did she? He—and she was convinced that it was a he—was probably one of those corporate types, with a string of vengeful ex-wives, dangerously high blood pressure and out-of-control anger issues. He probably laughed maniacally every time that his rolling bully narrowly avoided tagging her bumper because driving like a maniac and terrorizing everyone else on the road made him feel powerful.
Elise docked her iPod into the dashboard, scrolled through her music and selected her Marsha Ambrosius playlist. Turning up the volume a couple of notches, she sat back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the rhythm. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been nervous about anything.
Before Carrington Consulting, she’d been a police officer for two years and then a US marshal for seven, and, by now, there was very little about criminal behavior that surprised her. She’d dealt with bullies every day on the job, and most of them were men who were on the same side of the badge that she’d been on. Compared to that particular brand of chaos, this maniac and his souped-up Hummer were child’s play. Still, his theatrics were starting to get on her nerves, especially since she was in just as much of a hurry to get where she was going as he apparently was.
I’m stuck in traffic, she texted Harriet. Please contact the Barclays and advise them that I’m going to be—
A car horn blared behind her, calling her attention to the fact that the Beetle had moved forward in front of her just about a fraction of an inch. She rolled her eyes at the culprit in her rearview mirror, then slowly caught up to the Beetle, with the Hummer riding her rear bumper the entire time. Its tires squealed when it suddenly stopped behind her and she sighed long and hard.
—a little late, she finished texting. She was this close to her exit. Another fifty yards, give or take, and she could ditch the Hummer from hell for good. Waiting for the moment that she could escape was like watching paint dry.
Done, Harriet texted back a few minutes later.
As soon as Elise was close enough to maneuver her Jaguar into the exit lane, she did, stirring up roadside gravel in her wake as she gratefully left the standing traffic on the interstate and took off down the exit ramp. Resisting the urge to flip the bird to her rearview mirror as she went, she rolled to a stop at the red light at the bottom of the ramp and reached for her cell phone, intending to reactivate the GPS.
She didn’t see the Hummer bearing down on her until it was too late to do anything except stare up at her rearview mirror in disbelief. “What in the world?” She heard tires squealing and then a sharp bump from behind sent her Jaguar hopping forward on the pavement and her cell phone flying out of her hand. Her car shuddered to a stop dangerously close to the Buick in front of it and vibrated with indignation for several seconds afterward.
Oh my God! I’ve just been hit by a stalker! Frantic, Elise threw her car into Park and quickly dived at the passenger-side floorboard in search of her cell phone.
The light changed, and, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred, the line of cars to her left moved forward and merged into traffic, while the Hummer behind her pulled into the tow lane to her right and its driver shut off its engine. It took a second for the gravity of the situation to sink in, but when it did, she joined him in the tow lane, leaving enough space between the two vehicles to make a quick escape possible.
It didn’t occur to her to be afraid. What she was, she suddenly decided, was completely and thoroughly pissed.
* * *
Hidden behind tinted one-way glass, Broderick Cannon saw the woman coming, closing the distance between her sophisticated little gold car and his Hummer with long-legged, angry strides. With every step she took, her leather coat flapped open, giving him an enticing glimpse of nipples hard enough to cut glass underneath her dress and a generous hourglass figure. He sat back in his seat and lazily watched her come, wondering what the Jackie O–style sunglasses covering half of her face were hiding and if she was packing something other than lipstick in the ridiculously large purse dangling from the crook of her arm. She had to be, he decided, pressing a button to disengage the electronic locks and then releasing his seat belt. Either that or she was certifiable.
The pretty ones always are, he thought as his gaze momentarily settled on the rhythmic sway of her hips, then slowly traveled back up to her face. The fact that she could be, this very second, walking into a dangerous trap either hadn’t occurred to her or she simply didn’t care. Either way, the chances of her being completely nuts were looking better and better.
As if she could somehow read his thoughts, she slowed to a stop at the midway point between their vehicles and struck a pose, tapping a foot impatiently on the pavement. He cracked a smile despite himself. She was a sitting duck, and she didn’t even know it. But just in case she wasn’t as stylishly clueless as she looked in her red-bottom boots, he released the safety on his .357 SIG Sauer pistol and tucked it into the rear waistband of his slacks. Twice, he’d seen her touching up her makeup in the rearview mirror, instead of driving. Another time, she’d held up traffic while she fiddled with something on the dashboard instead of driving. And still another time, she’d spent way too much time fiddling with her cell phone instead of driving. Any idiot could see that her negligence was to blame for their accident, but maybe forcing him to rear-end her was her plan all along. Maybe she thought that he was the sitting duck.
And maybe pigs really do fly, Broderick thought as he climbed down from the Hummer and went to meet her.
Fifteen years ago, he’d put away his master’s degree in computer engineering from Brown University, and, instead of heading for Silicon Valley like he’d always planned, he joined the navy and applied to the SEALs program. He was recruited by the CIA’s Special Operations Group a few months after graduation, and the rest was history.
His specialties were global threat suppression and hostage extraction, and, for the past fifteen years, that’s exactly what he’d done—brought home hostages that the rest of the world had written off as hopelessly lost; hunted down reclusive global leaders and brought them to justice; and gathered intelligence on terrorist sleeper cells worldwide. Aside from the fact that he was a fifth-degree black belt, a decorated marksman and fluent in three languages, he was damn good at his job and, somewhere, he had a chest full of medals and commendations to prove it. As a result, when he decided to go into reserve status three years ago and launch Cannon Corp as the initial phase of his eventual transition back into civilian life, his inaugural client list had damn near built itself. Most of the cases that he took on nowadays were significantly less risky than the ones he’d once lived and breathed around the clock, but he hadn’t yet learned how to adjust his actions and reactions accordingly, and he wasn’t sure he ever would.
Nevertheless, one thing was for damn sure—he’d never been anyone’s sitting duck.
“You hit my car!” she shrieked as soon as he emerged from the Hummer and sent the door flying shut behind him. Another round of cars whipped past them just in time to catch the tail end of her accusation, complete with flailing arms and a perfectly shocked O of a mouth. He barely resisted the urge to roll his eyes to the sky.
The pretty ones were always drama queens, too.
“Are you out of your mind?” he countered calmly, approaching her head-on. “Or does the fact that you seem to have no regard for your personal safety mean that’s already a foregone conclusion?” To her credit, she didn’t flinch when he stopped less than a foot away from her, dropped his hands on his hips and purposely loomed over her. Instead, she crossed her arms underneath those lovely, Jell-O–like breasts of hers, shifted her weight to one side and faced him defiantly. She was taller than he’d first thought, and up close, her glittering mouth was nothing short of amazing.
“That’s funny because I was about to ask you the same thing. I could’ve sworn that road rage is illegal.”
He looked up from staring at her shimmering lips and found the foggy outline of her eyes behind her dark lenses. “So is texting while driving,” he fired back. “And if touching up your makeup while driving isn’t already illegal, it certainly should be. Don’t you think?”
An outraged chuckle burst out of her mouth. “You know, I think that what should be illegal,” she said without missing a beat, “is driving around in a pimped-out monstrosity, hiding behind tinted windows while you terrorize every other vehicle on the road. Don’t you think?”
His head started shaking in denial right around the time that she referred to his baby as a pimped-out monstrosity, and it was still shaking when he said, “Not quite every other vehicle on the road, just little toy ones being driven by Barbie dolls who can’t stop looking at themselves in the rearview mirror long enough to properly operate them.” That pimped-out monstrosity crack had stung.
Her mouth dropped open, snapped closed and then dropped open again. The process was fascinating to watch.
“Excuse me? I’m not the maniac who rammed into the back of someone else’s car. You are.”
“I think you might be using the word rammed a little loosely here, because—”
“You did ram my car! Are you denying it?”
“I don’t think so and no, I’m not denying that there was some contact between your vehicle and mine. What I’m saying is that I merely tapped your rear bumper. I didn’t ram it.”
“There’s a scratch.”
“No, there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is.”
“I don’t believe you. Show me.”
“Are you kidding me? You can’t seriously believe that I...that you...that...” She floundered visibly, then stopped short, throwing up her hands in defeat and sucking in a slow, steady breath. “You know what? Whatever. This is pointless,” she said, waving a dismissive hand in his general direction and then spinning around on her skyscraper heels. “I’ve already called the police, and they should be here soon,” she tossed back at him over her shoulder as she walked off. “I’m going to wait for them over there. You stay here.”
Her butt was a work of art. “Fine,” he called after her, staring at it.
“Fine!” she yelled back.
Okay, so maybe the Barbie doll crack was a low blow. But it wasn’t like she was the only one who had a reason to be irritated. Visiting the Midwest in late February had to rank in the top five on Broderick’s personal list of things that would never occur to a sane person. Yet here he was, and the circumstances that had brought him here weren’t even close to being the best. There were no guarantees on how long he could actually stay, so every second counted. It stood to reason that he hadn’t bothered to factor time into his already-tight schedule for dealing with distracted women drivers and the traffic accidents that they inevitably caused.
And now that his schedule was shot to hell because of one such driver, she was giving him attitude when he was the one who should be furious? What the hell ever. She was over there right now, inspecting her bumper like it was in danger of falling off. Taking picture after picture of it with her laptop-sized cell phone, from as many different angles as she could manage, in case he was thinking about running back to his Hummer before the police arrived and fleeing the scene. She had no idea that, as far as traffic accidents went, she should’ve been happy that he was the one who’d rammed her toy car and not some psychotic maniac, because a scratch on her bumper could’ve ended up being the very least of her worries.
Just last month, his firm had been called in to investigate a kidnapping that had gone horribly wrong long before someone thought to refer the young woman’s distraught parents to him. After nearly a week of local police and FBI involvement, it had taken his men just over two days to find the girl, but by then the only thing that their discovery could offer her parents and local police was closure. That and the identity of her kidnapper—a psychopath who, among other things, had regularly staged minor traffic accidents to lure unsuspecting women into his sadistic trap. It was how he’d gotten their daughter, his last victim.
Minor traffic infractions just like this one. And unsuspecting women just like the one snapping pictures right now.
Where the hell were the police, anyway?
Against his better judgment, he walked over to where she was leaning back against the passenger door of her Jaguar, working her cell phone like a speed demon, to find out. When his shadow fell over her, she looked up, saw him standing there and uttered the sexiest sigh that he’d ever heard. Somewhere along the shaft of his semi-sleeping penis, a nerve yawned and stretched.
Tongue in cheek, he said, “Excuse me, but when you said you’d already called the police, you did mean today, right?” He didn’t need to actually see her eyes to know that she rolled them.
Hard.
“Of course I called them today. Trust me, I would not be standing here indulging your obvious mental instability if I wasn’t absolutely certain that they were on the way.”
The tiny diamond stud in her left nostril was a sparkling stranger in a landscape of even tinier cocoa-colored freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose. It, unlike her forked tongue, was attractive, he thought as a grin played with his lips. “I’m sorry, but did you just call me unstable?”
“I believe so, yes,” she said, dropping her cell phone into her purse and then taking out a makeup compact. She flipped it open and inspected her lip gloss critically. “If I’d known exactly how unstable, I would’ve locked myself inside my car from the very beginning and called in the National Guard, instead.”
“Which reminds me,” Broderick sniped back at her without missing a beat. “In situations like this, that’s precisely what you should do. Another time, you might consider staying inside your car while you wait for the police or anyone else to arrive. I’m just saying,” he quickly added when she bristled visibly. “If I were, say, a serial killer, you would have just walked right into my trap.”
“Are you a serial killer?”
He wished he could see her eyes. “Fortunately for you, no, I’m not.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Isn’t it?”
* * *
Five months, Broderick suddenly remembered as he watched her lips form the words that she spoke. That’s how long it’d been since he last made time in his schedule or room in his bed for a woman. Five months.
Crazy work hours, dangerous working conditions and near-constant travel. They were all to blame for his forced celibacy. Mostly, anyway. In his line of work, maintaining a relationship was like being burdened with a second job, especially since he was never really off duty from the first one. There was no such thing as a typical assignment, set time frames or guaranteed outcomes, and he liked it that way. Women? Not so much, especially since those same improbabilities applied to his personal life, as well. He had long since made peace with the fact that his career choice meant that he’d probably die a lonely old man, but in the meantime, he’d been known to occasionally carve out a little time for a no-strings-attached fling.
He wondered if she’d be willing to join him. Then he said, “You know, the fact that you can joke about your personal safety is very telling. A random encounter like this one, on the interstate—any interstate—could’ve ended very differently for you.”
“Then I guess it’s lucky for you that it didn’t, Mr...?”
“Cannon. Broderick Cannon.” He made himself look away from her mouth. “And you are?”
“Quite capable of defending myself, Mr. Cannon.”
Her glistening lips curved into a smile so charming and so innocently sweet that every nerve in his penis simultaneously sputtered. His gaze wandered back down to her mouth just as twin dimples sank into her cheeks, a third one winked out at him from the center of her chin and a soft giggle eased out from between even, white teeth. A second later, it flickered back up, locked on to the dim of her eyes behind her dark lenses and narrowed speculatively.
“And, oh, look!” she exclaimed in a childlike voice. “Just in case you really are a serial killer, here come the police. I feel safer already.” Sidestepping around him carefully, she walked off and left him standing there with visions of his tongue dancing between her thighs flashing before his eyes.
It wasn’t until a half hour later, when their fender bender had been duly documented and his was the last vehicle to drive away from the scene, that Broderick took the time to look at her insurance information and the business card that she’d grudgingly handed him before jumping into her car and speeding away. It was printed on soft pink parchment paper and lightly scented. He’d been too busy staring at her to pay it much attention before then.
Her name, he thought as he wondered exactly what kind of fly-by-night operation Carrington Consulting was, was Elise Carrington.
Chapter 3 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
Classical music was billowing from underneath the study doors, filling the dimly lit foyer, when Elise finally made it home. Knowing that her sister was undoubtedly in the midst of it and hoping to avoid running into her just yet, Elise closed the door as quietly as she could and tiptoed to the coat closet to hang up her coat. After the ridiculous afternoon she’d just had, the last thing she was in the mood for was one of her sister’s nerve-jangling inquisitions. The drive home was stressful enough as it was, without having to get into a whole thing with Olivia as soon as she walked through the door. Right now, all she wanted to do was change into something loose and comfortable, get her hands on a couple of aspirin and then wash them down with a glass of white wine. She’d come clean to Olivia later.
Under the cover of Tchaikovsky’s urgent-sounding crescendos, Elise began creeping toward the staircase at the far end of the foyer. Holding her breath and moving on the tips of her toes, she narrowly avoided teetering sideways into the centerpiece of the foyer—a marble, French baroque-style pedestal table—by a hair and froze for five long seconds. Satisfied that Olivia hadn’t heard her, she started carefully inching forward again. She had almost reached the bottom step when the volume of the music suddenly dropped, one of the study doors swung open and Olivia appeared in the doorway like an apparition. Caught, Elise stopped short and slowly removed her sunglasses.
Great. Just great.
“Soooo...” Olivia said in a singsong voice as she leaned in the doorway and eyed Elise balefully over the rim of her reading glasses. “Joel called.”
“I figured he would. What did he say?” As if she didn’t already know.
“He said that you walked into his house, stayed just long enough to decline his case and then walked right back out. And then you were in some sort of road-rage incident that led to a car accident?” Arms still folded and eyebrows raised, Olivia padded barefoot across the foyer until she was close enough to see Elise clearly in the muted lighting. Circling her slowly, she looked her up and down with a wrinkle of concern creasing her forehead.
“What are you doing?” Elise asked, tracking her movements suspiciously.
“I’m making sure you’re okay. The way Joel was going on and on, it was like listening to an episode of How to Get Away with Murder. I was worried sick. What in the world happened to you after you left here earlier?”
“Well, Joel was right about one thing. There was an accident but—”
“What? Oh my God, what happened?” Eyes wide, she pounced on Elise, checking with searching hands for possible bumps, bruises or breaks. Finding none, she breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Elise said, warding off Olivia’s hovering hands as she moved around her and reached for the wooden banister behind her. “It was really just a tap, and it happened on my way to Joel’s house, not after I left. I’m surprised Joel even knew about it.” She climbed one step, then two and then it occurred to her. “Wait, what am I saying? Of course, Joel knew about it. He probably told him all about it before I got there.”
“He? Who’s he and exactly what was there to tell?”
Elise opened her mouth to explain, then thought better of it. Introducing Broderick Cannon’s name into the conversation right now would only result in more questions, and, if Elise factored in the questions that were already in queue to be asked, they could end up standing there half the night, which was so out of the question that it was laughable. There was only so much harassment that she was willing to take in one day, without a chilled glass of Reisling on hand as backup, and she’d reached her threshold well over an hour ago.
“Elise?” Olivia prompted with a cocked brow when the silence stretched from one second into five.
“Just some friend of Joel’s from college. No one important,” Elise explained vaguely, impatiently. “A private investigator, I think.”
And a demigod, she silently added, mentally reviewing Broderick’s finer points in her mind. Six-three or -four, with the kind of imposing build that was best served scantily clad and glistening with body oil. Smooth, mocha brown skin, full lips and sleepy-looking bedroom eyes, rimmed with long black lashes. A deliberate five-o’clock shadow that was as expertly groomed as his close-cropped black hair was and a slightly off-kilter smile that, by itself, was seemingly harmless but that, together with the whole of him, was exactly the thing that instantly melted a woman’s panties and summarily dismissed every ounce of her self-control.
Elise knew because she’d been transfixed herself by the way his protruding Adam’s apple bobbed rhythmically in his powerful-looking neck as he talked and the way the slashes in his cheeks bracketed his mouth just so when he smiled. She’d been secretly appreciating the way the muscles in his forearms strained against the sleeves of his black trench coat whenever he moved his arms, when she also happened to notice that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and suddenly thought, eighteen months. That’s how much time had passed since her last relationship ended and, not until the moment that Broderick loomed over her and blithely suggested that he could be a serial killer, had it ever occurred to her to question exactly why.
At some point, very early on, when she was still thinking clearly and in her right mind, she noticed the look in his eyes, recognized it for what it was and knew she was in trouble. The same X-rated thoughts that were running through her mind were clearly running through his, but, unlike her, he didn’t seem to care that she could see them. She should’ve been offended by the unobstructed view into his carnal thoughts, but, instead, she was excited and slippery wet, and embarrassed by her body’s reaction to him. And, honestly, she’d been too busy ogling him right back and thanking God for dark sunglasses to hide behind while she did it, to bother jumping on anyone’s feminist soapbox. Frankly, his boldness, his tendency to stare at her mouth when she talked and at her breasts when he thought she wasn’t looking, turned her on.
He was a spectacular-looking man, an interesting cross between Boris Kodjoe and the Terminator, with a hint of something else lurking beneath the surface, something other than his amazing looks and tall, powerhouse physique. He’d been dressed like a business mogul, in a flawlessly tailored trench coat, cashmere dress slacks and hand-sewn Italian loafers. But the energy around him was raw and intense, his gait controlled and predatory, like a caged beast, one that was chomping at the bit and impatiently biding his time on lockdown.
My God, he was sexy.
Elise had never been more attracted to a man in her entire life.
But that information was on a need-to-know basis, and, as far as Elise was concerned, Olivia didn’t need to know. They were identical twins, but when it came to men, the two of them were like Jekyll and Hyde. Olivia was a femme fatale, with a trail of broken hearts in her wake that dated all the way back to kindergarten to prove it. While Elise...well, Elise had simply watched the drama that was her sister’s life unfold from the sidelines. She was a bookworm, who’d been obsessed with maintaining her position as captain of the debate team and with maintaining at least a 3.5 GPA at all times. She was seventeen, almost eighteen, when she got around to her first tongue kiss and a whopping twenty-one when she fumbled her way through losing her virginity, and even then she’d only done it because she figured that it was about time. To this day, she could count on one hand the number of men that she’d been intimate with since then.
And she’d still have two fingers left.
Men like Broderick Cannon scared the hell out of her.
“Wait, so Joel hired another firm?” Olivia wanted to know. “A competing firm?”
“I didn’t really leave him any choice. After he hit me, I—”
Olivia gasped. “What? Joel hit you?”
“No,” Elise cried impatiently, stretching the word out into five long syllables. Just a few minutes ago, escape had seemed so possible. Now? Not so much. “Joel didn’t hit me, Broderick Cannon did. Please try to keep up.”
“I am trying, but you’re not making it very easy,” Olivia said, laying a hand on Elise’s forehead and looking concerned. “You seem rattled, and you’re a little flushed, too. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Elise rolled her eyes to the ceiling and swatted Olivia’s hand away. “Stop that. Of course I’m okay.” She climbed two more steps. “I just need a few minutes—”
“Well, at least come into the kitchen with me and have some tea. It should be done steeping by now. It’ll help you relax, and you can tell me all about whatever happened today...from the beginning and in chronological order this time. How about that?”
—alone to catch my breath and process everything, Elise finished silently. Aloud, she said: “Well—” The ringing doorbell cut her off. For a second, she was torn between hanging around to see who was at the door and getting out while the getting was good. “Who could that be at this time of the evening?”
Olivia frowned at her watch. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the courier that Eli was supposed to send over with some papers five hours ago,” she said, referring to Eli Seamus, the retired CIA agent who moonlighted as their Competitive Intelligence Analyst, or CIA, and all-around computer hacker. “He’s called five times now, each time to let me know that he was running a little later than he was running when he called the time before that.”
“Who? Eli?”
“No, the courier, and you can bet Eli is going to hear all about it first thing in the morning.” The doorbell rang again, and Olivia’s neck rolled ominously. “He’s five hours late, and I’m the one who’s taking too long?” She threw up her hands and let them fall back to her sides wearily. “Incredible.” Sighing disgustedly, she whirled and headed for the door, giving Elise just the opportunity that she needed to hurry up the rest of the stairs. “Listen, don’t go anywhere, okay?” Olivia called out to Elise as she switched on the veranda light and went up on her tiptoes to peek through the peephole. “I’m still not convinced that you’re completely okay, and I want to talk some more about what happened today.”
Elise decided to go with getting out while the getting was good and made a dash for it, heading up a second, shorter flight of stairs to the second-floor balcony that overlooked the foyer while Olivia was still talking. She leaned over the balcony and called back, “Sure, I’ll be right back,” then hurried down the east hallway to her bedroom suite and firmly shut the door behind her.
In about an hour, she thought a few minutes later, as she peeled off her clinging panties and stepped into a cold shower.
Chapter 4 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
The massive entry door swung open, and Broderick’s brown eyes met a pair of gorgeous amber-colored ones. She’d gotten rid of the giant sunglasses and traded her dress and boots for tight black pants, a flowing top that bared one caramel-colored shoulder, and bare feet. Up top, a pair of eyeglasses was anchored in the midst of the wild, curly lion’s mane framing her face, and, down below, glossy, hot-pink toenails and an ultrafeminine diamond ankle bracelet winked up at him. If it hadn’t been for the subtle, provocative gleam in her eye, she could’ve passed for an innocent college coed, with her smooth, clear skin and big, blinking eyes. She was so completely opposite of the snarling sex kitten from earlier that, for a second, he wondered if he was looking at the same person. Then she smiled and he thought, There she is.
“Well?” she said. “Are you going to speak first or should I?”
“I guess I should, since you walked out of our last meeting before I had a chance to fully explain myself.” She had the nerve to cock a brow at his tone but damned if he cared. She knew damn well why he was there and exactly what he wanted, and if his tone was sharp, she knew why that was, as well—because he was on the verge of shaking her until her teeth rattled around in her head like loose marbles.
Anticipating another round of pointless sparring, he put up a hand to ward her off and tried for a more diplomatic tone. “Look, obviously, I had no idea who you were when we met earlier, and, for the record, I didn’t figure out what Joel was up to until right after I arrived at his estate, which was about five minutes before you did. If I’d known beforehand, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But since I am here and the circumstances surrounding Meagan’s disappearance are less than ideal, I came here to ask you to please reconsider Joel’s and my proposal.”
He expected her to start hissing and spitting at him again, but she surprised him, instead, with a thoughtful expression and a few seconds of contemplative silence. “Joel’s proposal?” she asked, pursing lips that begged to be sucked and staring at him through narrowed eyes. “Sounds interesting. Go on.” She leaned against the door casually and waited.
“I’d be glad to but could we talk inside?” The temperature had dropped to somewhere between twenty and twenty-five degrees in a matter of hours and, the later it got, the more brisk the wind became. Supposedly, it was an unseasonably warm midwestern February, but to Broderick, who’d grown up on the West Coast, anything below seventy degrees was cruel and unusual punishment. He couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Sorry, but no. You’re a complete stranger, so right here works for me.” She giggled at his pithy expression and then gave him one right back. “So what was it that you wanted me to reconsider, again?”
“As I said before, I wasn’t expecting that Joel would hire you to find Meagan and then want us to work together, but now that I’m here and the idea is on the table, I think we should seriously consider it.”
“Oh?” She cocked a brow. “Why?”
“Meagan is my goddaughter, and while this isn’t the first time she’s run off, it is the first time she’s run off without her medication. We believe she’s with a guy that she’s been dating behind her parents’ backs for the past couple of months. His name is Peter Danforth, as in the son of state senator Frank Danforth.”
“I see, and are Peter’s parents searching for him, as well?”
“Apparently, they flee to the Caribbean when it’s wintertime here. But we do know that their son is a grad student at Mizzou, who just happens to be well over the age of twenty-one, and, according to the family’s housekeeper, present and accounted for on campus as we speak. So, technically, he isn’t missing and I, for one, couldn’t care less about him right now. Frankly, I’d have hung up on Joel when he called me late last night, if it wasn’t for the fact that Meagan was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a month ago and she’s been refusing treatment. Let’s just say that her decision-making skills are questionable under the best of circumstances. Factor in a rich boyfriend with a valid ID, platinum credit cards and mental illness, and she’s a ticking time bomb. As of about fifteen minutes ago, she was in the Jefferson City area, which isn’t very far away, but based on her travel pattern so far, it doesn’t look like she’s planning to head back in this direction any time soon. I could be wrong, but I’d rather go after her now than have something that could’ve been prevented happen later, because I didn’t.”
“I get that part,” she said, looking slightly confused. “But what I don’t get is why you need a partner. You seem to have a handle on things already.”
“Ordinarily I wouldn’t, but I’m in the middle of another case right now and there’s a possibility that I could be called away without notice. I’d like to have an associate with me in case that happens, someone who could pick up the slack, if necessary.”
“You mean like a sidekick?”
He shrugged. “That’s one way of putting it, but—” He realized his mistake a second too late, when her expression went from open and curious to closed for business in the blink of an eye. “If I might rephrase—”
“No need. I think I understand perfectly, Mr...”
That made him laugh. “Oh, so now you don’t remember my name?”
She looked taken aback. “Is there a reason why I should?”
Was she serious? Just a few hours ago, he’d been positive that something interesting was happening between them, something that, if played right, would eventually lead to her straddling him and riding his stiff, swollen cock until they were both out of breath. He wanted her, and, underneath her prickly exterior, he thought he’d sensed a mutual attraction. But now, standing face-to-face with her again, without so much as a spark between them, he reminded himself that there was always room for error, and, though it didn’t happen often, he wasn’t above entertaining the strong possibility that he’d made one. Either that or he’d been right all along and she really was nuts, in which case he was probably talking to one of her multiple personalities.
“No, I guess not,” Broderick conceded after several seconds of holding up his end of a staring contest. “Look, about Joel’s proposal...”
“It sounds like what you need is an assistant, and I’m afraid that’s something we can’t help you with. I could, however, recommend a couple of our past interns who might be available for a last-minute assignment like this, if you’d like.”
The emphasis that she’d placed on last minute hadn’t escaped his notice, but he wasn’t in the mood to rise to the bait. He’d wasted enough time already. “I have an entire staff of assistants at my disposal, Elise. The last thing I need is another one.” Something flickered in her eyes when he said her name, but it came and went so quickly that he wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen it or if it was a trick of the light.
“Fine, so use one of them,” she suggested and he thought, for a tense millisecond, that he saw it again.
“I would if it was that simple,” he said, and the sigh she offered in response was soft and wistful, sexy in a breezy, nonchalant kind of way that irritated the hell out of him. He rolled right over it. “But the thing is, both cases require extreme discretion. Meagan’s case, in particular, needs to be kept away from both the press and local law enforcement, for obvious reasons. So far, that hasn’t been much of an issue, but if her behavior were to escalate and she were to become a threat to herself or others, because she was off her meds and not thinking clearly, then who knows how things could play out.”
“Okay, but I still don’t understand what any of these situations you mentioned have to do with me.” Now it was Broderick’s turn to sigh and he did, deeply, impatiently and borderline rudely, a fact that she seemed to find funny.
He hated wasting time, particularly when lives could be at stake, and he especially hated having to explain himself when it came to his business and how he chose to handle it. In his line of work, every second counted and, so far, Elise Carrington had already caused him to squander so many of them that he’d lost track. And, like an idiot, he had let her. She was right. It wasn’t like the fate of the world relied on whether or not she helped him. Truthfully, he’d move much faster and cover much more ground without her slowing him down. She was beautiful, but he wasn’t under any illusions about the scope of her professional capabilities. Her expensive, scented business card had introduced her as a Private Investigations Consultant, whatever the hell that was. But based on her red-bottom boots, painted-on designer clothing and the mini-mansion that she called home, it was way more likely that she spent most of her time trailing cheating husbands and reporting back to disillusioned housewives. Which meant that her skill set, or lack thereof, as the case likely was, was a liability that he could’ve happily done without. He was surprised that Joel had sought assistance from someone like her in the first place.
Clearly Joel’s anxious mental state had compromised his thought process but what the hell was Broderick’s problem? The jury might’ve still been out on whether or not she was certifiable, but the longer he stood there, spinning his wheels and ogling her on the sly, he wondered if maybe he had it all wrong and he was actually the crazy one.
“They have everything to do with you because, thanks to you and the traffic accident you caused, I don’t have time to vet another candidate. As it is, I should’ve been in Jefferson City hours ago. If I had been, I’d probably be on my way back here with Meagan right now and none of this would even be an issue. But, since it is an issue and Joel has apparently already vetted you, I think an appropriate gesture of professional goodwill would be for you to accept the case and see it through.”
She stared at him for several seconds—a wide-eyed, stunned stare that he was compelled to return full measure—and then she reached up, plucked her glasses out of her hair and slipped them over her eyes. Behind the spotless lenses, her eyes were narrowed and searching. “You’re saying that your failure to plan accordingly is my fault?”
“What I’m saying is that Joel and I need your help.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but Carrington Consulting has a very strict policy against partnerships with outside entities,” she informed him tartly, her eyes still narrowed and, now, a hand on her hip. “So, while I can appreciate your dilemma, I can’t violate policy.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
She hesitated for a moment, then rolled her eyes heavenward as if to say, hey, what can we do? Then she mouthed the word sorry to him, stepped back and began closing the door in his face.
Let her go, his mind screamed at the same time that his foot shot out and breached the threshold at the last possible second. He hadn’t planned on going into detail about the other case that he was working on because it was none of her business. But the bottom line was that she had something he wanted—her time—and, since appealing to her professional ethics hadn’t worked, because she apparently had none, then maybe the truth would.
“Three years ago,” he blurted out, barely able to conceal his irritation at having to do so, “my sister disappeared. I was on an assignment in the United Kingdom when it happened, so I didn’t find out until after I got back to the States, a couple of weeks later.” He caught the door with the tips of his fingers before it collided with his foot and held it open. “By then, whatever leads the local police thought they had were cold and the world had pretty much moved on to the next tragic story. To everyone else, including the police, it’s a cold case, but a body was never found and I believe that’s because she’s out there somewhere. So I still look for her.”
His announcement was met with complete silence, during which time she didn’t open the door again but she didn’t close it, either. He chose to take that as a good sign.
“Hers is the other case that I’m working right now,” Broderick went on. “Around the same time that I got the news that Meagan was on the run again, a new lead into my sister’s disappearance popped up—the first one in over a year. I have some associates looking into it as we speak but if they find something significant, I plan to be the one who follows up. Since I can’t be in two places at one time, that’s where you come in.”
He breathed an audible sigh of relief when the door slowly moved in reverse and she came into view again. “Plus,” he added, catching her eyes and cocking a brow, “you’d be saving me from having to make a very difficult choice.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Broderick Cannon,” another woman’s voice said from somewhere behind the first one. His head snapped up and his gaze quickly roamed the foyer beyond the woman standing in front of him. By the time he had located his target and zeroed in on her, she was already walking toward them, moving up behind her identical twin slowly and eyeing him warily. “What are you doing here?”
“Talking with you, I thought.” He slanted a chastising look in the other woman’s direction and received a grin in return. He barely resisted the urge to grin back at her.
Well, that explains it, he thought as he stared into Elise Carrington’s eyes and mentally commanded his swooning cock back into semihibernation. In a blatant act of rebellion, it yawned and stretched against his thigh, and then tightened in anticipation.
Right down to their facial expressions and physical mannerisms, the resemblance between the two women was beyond uncanny. As far as he could see, the key to the only identifiable difference between them rested squarely in his groin. The woman standing in front of him was just as beautiful as the one who’d just walked up, but he hadn’t once caught himself wondering what she tasted like. His mouth was definitely watering now, though.
Elise—the real Elise—had traded her sexy dress and designer boots for a pink fleece jumpsuit that zipped up the front and bare feet. The material clung to her curves like a second skin, revealing just how dangerous to a man’s sanity they really were. He couldn’t help staring.
A throat cleared softly and he looked up to find two sets of amber-colored eyes trained on him—one wide and unblinking, and the other alert and amused. Not the least bit repentant, he cleared his own throat and tried again. “Miss Carrington, as I was just explaining to your sister, I’d like to talk with you about what happened between us earlier.”
She cocked a brow. “Elise.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I said, I’m Elise.” She touched a delicate hand to her chest in case he needed a visual. “You obviously can’t tell me apart from my sister, so...”
They stared at each other, one of those if looks could kill stares, and he was the first to look away.
Okay, so she was pissed. He got that. But if she thought they were about to have a repeat of their interstate showdown, then she was sadly mistaken. For one thing, he was tired and starving, and for another, every synapse in his brain was on overload at the moment, blindsided by a swift punch of lust that had completely missed his gut and exploded, instead, in the center of his groin. He hated to ruin her diabolical little plan but divine intervention couldn’t have helped him hold up his end of an argument just then.
“Okaaaay,” Broderick hedged carefully. “I believe I’m completely clear now. So can we talk?”
Her other eyebrow joined the first one, high up on her forehead. “No.”
“Elise—”
“Elise,” her twin said at the same time. “You’re being rude.”
Elise turned to her sister with murder in her eyes. “Excuse me?”
“I’d like to hear what he has to say,” the other woman murmured close to Elise’s ear.
To Broderick, she said, “I’m Olivia Carrington.” Then she extended a hand and shook his firmly. “I think you’ve already met my sister.”
“That I have,” Broderick confirmed, liking Olivia immediately. After a few seconds, he released her hand and turned his attention back to Elise. “That I have,” he said again, his voice turning thoughtful.
“Well, then, welcome to Carrington Consulting. Come inside,” Olivia said and took Elise with her as she moved aside so that he could do just that.
Chapter 5 (#ub9443291-05e4-532f-b9e7-b724160c85a9)
Olivia was sprawled across Elise’s king-size bed with her feet waving in the air, lying in wait for Elise when she emerged from her walk-in closet with a packed Louis Vuitton carryall and her portable gun safe. “That delicious specimen downstairs,” she said, sitting up and announcing as soon as she spotted Elise, “is Broderick Malcolm Cannon.” She consulted the iPad in her hand and nodded in approval at what she saw on the glowing screen. “He’s thirty-seven, single and, according to the information that Eli was able to dig up on short notice, very financially solvent, which is always a plus in my book. Oh, and he owns Cannon Corp, which is apparently some sort of underground investigations firm with hush-hush assignments and a very high-level security clearance. Even Eli couldn’t find out much about it, but he did say that our Mr. Cannon has a reputation for being a bit of a beast in the field, so we can assume that he’s probably at least a little dangerous.” She paused to giggle delightfully. “And, hopefully, an animal in bed, which makes the fact that Eli didn’t find anything to support your theory that he could be a serial killer very good news. For you, I mean.” She set the iPad aside, looking pleased with herself until she noticed Elise’s incredulous look. “What? I’m sorry but he’s hot. Did you really expect me not to comment on it? What is it about fine men, exactly, that makes you so nervous?”
“I’m not nervous,” Elise said, lying through her teeth. She dropped her carryall on the upholstered bench at the foot of her bed, then plopped down next to it and unlocked the gun safe. Opening it, she took out a pearl-handled Ruger .38 pistol and began loading it. “What I am is pissed.” When she was done, she snapped the revolver into a leather holster and dropped it inside her tote. “I can’t believe I let the three of you talk me into this.” Badger was more like it but, whatever. Either way, the result was the same—she’d been ganged up on and guilted into hostile compliance. Adding an apologetic and pleading Joel to the mix via Skype had not only compounded the pressure that Olivia and Broderick had piled on her, but it had also been a stroke of evil genius on Olivia’s part. She was good, Elise had to give her that. Damn good. The traitor.
“Why can’t you believe it?” Olivia asked, and Elise didn’t buy the confused expression on her face for one second. “This is a perfect example of why you and I started Carrington Consulting in the first place, isn’t it? To help people? To help women? If you’d stop thinking about yourself for one second and think about the situation from Mr. Cannon’s perspective, you’d see that he’s really nothing more than just another client who’s in need of our services.”
“Let’s not forget that he’s just another client who, according to Eli, runs a very successful security firm of his own. If he handles the kinds of cases that you and Eli seem to think he does, then he probably has resources at his disposal that we’ve never even heard of. Doesn’t it seem a little strange to you that he needs my help? Why doesn’t he just put one of his minions on Meagan’s trail, so that he can deal with his other case without any interruptions?”
“Probably because, thanks to the little fender bender that you caused this afternoon, there isn’t time.”
“Of course there’s time,” Elise refuted, jumping up from the bench and throwing up her hands in outrage. When Olivia only smiled, she snatched up the safe and took off for the closet again, unable to shake the feeling that she was being hoodwinked and bamboozled. The more she thought about it, the more irritated she became. “Meanwhile,” she chirped in a voice that was somewhere near the soprano range, “don’t I get a say about how I choose to spend my time?” She brought a pair of jeans and a sweater out of the closet with her and dropped them on the bed.
“Of course, you do,” Olivia cooed.
“Except that, thanks to you and Mr. Chippendales down there, apparently, I don’t.” She shrugged out of her jumpsuit, tossed it on the bed and snatched up her jeans. “He doesn’t really need me and you know it. And stop calling him ‘Mr. Cannon.’ You’re such a suck-up.”
“Maybe so, but you have to admit that this arrangement makes sense. This way, if something does come up while you’re together, it’ll be easier and less time-consuming to deal with. Besides, it probably won’t even come to that because, thanks to Meagan’s obsession with social media, you already know that she’s in the Jefferson City area and has been for several hours. Once you two get there, you could drive from one end of that place to the other in, what, an hour or less? You’ll find her, toss her in the car with you and get back on the road,” Olivia predicted, waving a dismissive hand. “Trust me, you’ll be back here by this time tomorrow evening, if not before, at which time I will try very hard to refrain from saying ‘I told you so.’”
Elise paused in the midst of jumping into her jeans to glare at Olivia. “All right, then why don’t you go in my place?”
“I would, only I’m not the one he was down there seducing in his mind. You are.”
Elise’s sigh was long-suffering. “Why is everything about sex with you?” she asked, dropping a peach cable-knit sweater over her head and smoothing the hem around her denim-clad hips. “I think you need to see someone about that.”
“I think it’s cute that you think that,” Olivia shot back. “The question is, why is nothing ever about sex with you? My God, Elise, loosen up a little, would you? He was flirting with you. He couldn’t take his eyes off you just now and you didn’t even seem to notice. How long has it been since you’ve been out on a date, because this could be a prime opportunity for you to—”
“Are you serious right now, Olivia?”
“Oh, come on. Tell me you don’t find him attractive and I’ll shut up.”
Elise was instantly conflicted. Despite the fact that she and Olivia were opposites in more ways than they were alike, they couldn’t be closer. Even when they were at each other’s throats, they’d always been as thick as thieves, partners in crime in whatever nefarious scheme that one or the other had masterminded. If there were secrets between them, Elise couldn’t think of very many, and, if there was a subject that was or had ever been off-limits, it didn’t immediately come to mind. Under different circumstances, keeping the fact that she was attracted to a man from Olivia wouldn’t even occur to her. It wasn’t like she’d never been pursued by a man or been interested in one, and, contrary to what Olivia seemed to believe, she had actually dated twice as many men as she’d ever slept with. Which wasn’t saying much, but, still. It was just easier for both of them if Olivia didn’t know every single detail of her sex life. Like the fact that she’d just turned thirty-three and had only ever had three lovers. She knew her sister, and, in Olivia’s hands, information like that would die a very slow and painful death.
Did she find Broderick Cannon attractive? Of course she did. What red-blooded woman in her right mind wouldn’t? But that was another little nugget of information that Olivia didn’t need to know because, with it, she’d have the power to drive Elise crazy.
“Okay, yes,” Elise reluctantly conceded. “He’s attractive. But that’s not the point. This isn’t a date.” She snatched up a pair of silver hoops from her dressing table and put them on, then reached for her watch. “This is me being tricked into riding off into the night with a man that I barely know. Which reminds me, in the event that I’m never seen or heard from again, do me a favor and tell Mom and Dad that I did love them, no matter what you always said to them behind my back.” Olivia was giggling way too hard for Elise’s taste. “I’m glad you think I’m so amusing.”
“Not amusing, just in dire need of some serious loosening up. You do know that we’re not in high school anymore, right? There are no more midterms and finals to study for. It’s okay to have a life now.” She caught the distressed look on Elise’s face in the dressing-table mirror and launched into a full-fledged laugh. “Hey, I’m just trying to save you from a future filled with a bunch of cats and a house that looks like a shoe.”
“Yeah, well, as long as this shoe house of mine has a heated pool and local pizza delivery, I’m good.” She stepped into tan pumps and grabbed her cell phone from the dressing table as soon as it rang.
“I’m just saying. No one would blame you if you let your hair down a little...for once. I can’t think of a better way to kick off a vacation than with hot, sweaty sex. Milk isn’t the only thing that does a body good, you know.”
Relieved to see Eli Seamus’s name flashing on her cell’s screen, Elise touched an icon to accept the call and put the phone to her ear. She covered the mouthpiece, hissed at Olivia to shut up and, when she didn’t, waved a hand for her to at least quiet down. “Eli,” she said into the phone. “Hi, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Please tell me you found something helpful.”
Nearby, Olivia murmured something about seeing her downstairs. After nodding, she listened to what Eli had to say.
As soon as she’d been able to pry herself away from the dynamic duo downstairs, she had excused herself to her room to change clothes and pack an overnight bag. But first, she’d called Eli and shared what little case information there was with him, hoping that he’d be able to pin down Meagan’s exact whereabouts quickly enough to eliminate the need for a partnership and, even worse, a road trip. But, as she listened to Eli’s report, she realized that there was no way out, at least not yet, anyway. He agreed to stay on top of things and let her know if something interesting popped up but, in the meantime, it looked like she was stuck playing Robin to Broderick Cannon’s Batman.
Dammit.
Resigned to her temporary fate, Elise emerged from her bedroom ten minutes later, ready to get the show on the road. She found Olivia and Broderick in the study, sitting close together, with their heads bent even closer and their voices hushed. “I’m ready if you are,” she announced, interrupting their nearly nose-to-nose exchange. Their heads flew up guiltily, as if they’d been caught sharing government secrets. Trying not to scowl, Elise slung her tote strap over her shoulder and looked from one face to the other. She wasn’t jealous. Really, she wasn’t. But, damn, did Olivia ever turn it off? “Shall we go?” she asked, glancing at her watch meaningfully and then pinning Broderick with another look. He rose from the couch slowly, smirking. Was he really smirking?
“Of course. After you.”
* * *
“Truth or dare?”
She turned away from the passenger-side window and looked at him like she was surprised to see him sitting in the driver’s seat. “What?”
“I said, truth or dare?”
It was almost ten o’clock at night, and they’d been driving in complete silence for an hour. A few miles back, at around the halfway point, the Hummer’s GPS navigation system had routed them away from the interstate and onto an isolated stretch of paved service road that weaved through several miles of pitch-black farmland. It would eventually lead to a rural road in Jefferson County, and, shortly afterward, they would enter Jefferson City limits via a small residential community on the south end of town. But not for at least another three thousand six hundred seconds, which, in Broderick’s estimation, was just about enough time for the spicy, exotic fragrance clinging to Elise’s skin to finish driving him crazy.
Every time he inhaled, he was transported back in time to a mission in Bangkok, to a smoky massage den in the red-light district, and a 3:00 a.m. curfew that he’d taken his punishment for missing with a sleepy, satisfied smile. Every exhale was an irritating little reminder that it had been five months since he’d known anything close to that kind of satisfaction.
Something had to be done and, unfortunately, Truth or Dare? was the first PG-rated solution that came to mind. It wasn’t the best idea that he’d ever come up with but a distraction was in order and at least this one would end the ridiculous silence between them. Or not, he thought as the light cast by the dashboard console illuminated the doubtful smirk on her face.
“I’m not playing a silly game with you, Mr. Cannon.”
He bit down on a smirk of his own and cocked a brow. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”
“No, I’m not afraid and I’m not ten, either, so your peer-pressure tactics won’t work on me.”
He glanced over at her and then took his eyes to the rearview mirror. “You sure about that?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Then prove it,” he challenged, catching her eyes for one tense second and then winking at her. “Play with me.”
“No.” Crossing her arms underneath her breasts, she shifted in her seat until her both her knees and her nose were pointed toward the passenger-side window. She looked like a proper nineteenth-century schoolmarm, except that he was 99 percent sure that she wasn’t wearing any panties underneath her skintight jeans, and, if he stood over her at just the right angle, he could see down the front of her sweater. Her breasts were freckled, too, and bubbling out of the top of her bra in a way that was anything but proper.
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