Flirting With Disaster

by Ruthie Knox

  Katie glanced at the clock by the bed. “No. It’s after twelve. Why?”

  “Shouldn’t start a trip on a Friday. Bad luck.”

  “We both drove here today,” she pointed out. “It was your idea.”

  Judah swept his hand out, a loose gesture at the evening they’d just spent together. “See what I mean? Bad luck.”

  Katie walked to the door. “Give me a call when you’re ready to talk.”

  “That’s probably not going to happen.”

  “In that case, it was nice meeting you.”

  “Good night, Katie,” he said when she opened the door.

  “Goodbye, Judah.”

  Chapter Eight

  The door opened with so much force, it banged into the wall.

  A muted click, and the room flooded with light. Katie stood by the switch, high heels dangling from her free hand. Her hair was all mussed, her lips swollen and feet bare.

  She looked exactly the way he’d been afraid she’d look when she came back, which was why he’d forced himself to turn off the light and close his eyes and go to sleep.

  Not that it had worked, but he’d been trying. It was either go to sleep or get shit-faced, and he refused to be that weak. Not about Katie. Not about anything.

  He refused.

  She bent over the dresser and started opening and closing drawers. Sean glanced at the clock. Twelve thirty.

  Her flannel pajama pants landed on the bed, followed by the blob of her T-shirt. A moment later, socks and what was probably a pair of panties, though he looked away too quickly to be sure.

  “Sorry if I woke you up,” she said without looking in his direction. She tipped her head to the right and took out an earring, then tipped it to the left and removed the other. “I had a bunch of tequila, and if I tried to do this in the dark, I’d probably break something.”

  She scooped her clothes off the bed and entered the bathroom without another word, and Sean stared at the space where she’d been while the shower started up.

  He didn’t know how to feel. Jealous. Ticked off. Surprised. Turned on. Tired.

  Pleased?

  Maybe. She hadn’t spent the night with Judah. She wasn’t in his bed, flat on her back, moaning with pleasure.

  She was naked in the shower, twenty feet away from him, preparing to put on flannel pajama pants and go to sleep.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  He listened to the noises she made, the muffled thuds of bottles of shampoo and conditioner against the shower tile, the water cutting out after a while. Silence as she toweled off. The faucet running as she brushed her teeth. The loud white noise of a hair dryer.

  Familiar sounds, though it had been a while since Sean had heard them. More than a year since he’d spent the night with a woman and even longer since he’d lived with one. What was it now, two years since Sarah had moved out? Three?

  He wondered where she’d ended up. She’d been so disappointed when she realized he wasn’t half as serious about the relationship as she was, so angry by the end at the way he’d failed to live up to her expectations, that he’d become more cautious about letting women into his life. Dating was fine, short- or long-term, but the older he got, the more reluctant he became to give any woman keys to his house.

  By the time Katie came into the room again, he’d turned his back on the bathroom. He wouldn’t indulge his curiosity or spin some happy fantasy where she was in this room with him by choice. She’d just been with Judah. Possibly had sex with Judah. No, probably had sex with him. Which meant Sean needed to drop the fantasy. Katie had made her choice.

  Not that he’d given her a choice.

  “I know it’s late,” she said from behind him. She flopped heavily onto her bed with a creak of the box springs. “I know we’re supposed to go to Louisville tomorrow. I know I just woke you up, and I’m not in charge, so I don’t even get to decide. But we quit.”

  Sean turned over. She was sideways across the bed, staring at the ceiling, her head dropping off the mattress edge and her hair dangling.

  She looked at him upside down. It wasn’t the most flattering angle. He could see right up her nose. “He wouldn’t tell me anything. He doesn’t trust me. We’re wasting our time.”

  Katie didn’t sound like a woman who’d been in the throes of pleasure mere minutes ago. She sounded tired and cynical, and hearing the displeasure in her tone was the best thing that had happened to him all day.

  Nobody sounded like that after fantastic sex. Only after bad sex. Phenomenally bad.

  Or after no sex at all.

  “I want to go home,” she said. “I can’t drive, though. I had too much to drink. So I guess I’m asking you for a favor. Can you drive me home? Tonight? It’s kind of a big favor, since I’ll probably pass out in the car.”

  He met her eyes upside down. So big and brown and honest. Katie could be prickly, but there was no pretense to her. No reserve. She was what she seemed to be, always.

  What would it be like to move through life that vulnerable? Like taking off your skin and just letting the world have at you.

  Sean could think of few things he’d hate more. Yet he didn’t pity or resent Katie’s openness. It was one of the things he liked about her.

  “I’ll handle my brother,” she promised. “And I’ll make sure Judah pays us for the whole weekend. It’s not our fault he’s got a screw loose.”

  He stared at her for a few illicit seconds as triumph pounded through him and he had to stop himself from kissing her again, upside down, with his knees on the carpet and her head immobilized between his hands.

  She wasn’t for him.

  But she wasn’t for Judah, either.

  He threw back the covers, grabbed the jeans he’d been wearing off the armchair where he’d left them, and pulled them on over his boxers, keeping his back turned so Katie couldn’t see the grin that kept tugging up one corner of his mouth.

  Within fifteen minutes, they were on the road.

  Chapter Nine

  Katie swiveled in her office chair and picked up the fax that had emerged from the machine.

  Scrawled in large black letters, one word was repeated over and over again: Please please please please.

  He’d sent her an MP3 file of the song just ten minutes ago. It would seem this was the follow-up fax.

  Smiling faintly, she balled it up and threw it in the recycling bin just as the office phone began to ring. She picked it up and the sound of Judah begging—with backup singers—came over the line.

  They actually sounded like real, live backup singers. She remembered the recording studio in his apartment. Had he hired people to come over at eight in the morning to sing James Brown to her?

  It was a great song.

  He wrapped it up with a flourish of drums that made her realize he not only had backup singers, he also had musicians. Lord, rich people were crazy. “I never would’ve thought you could pull off soul,” she said. “I didn’t think you had one.”

  “Oh, honey. The things you don’t know about my soul could fill an encyclopedia.”

  “Name three.”

  “It’s so huge, Katie. Huge and … powerful. Frightening, really.”

  “I think you’re getting your soul confused with other body parts.”

  “You think? I could’ve sworn that was my soul.”

  Katie laughed. “You know this is borderline stalking, right?”

  “Now that would make a good headline. ‘Judah Pratt Stalks Secretary.’ ”

  “I’m not a secretary. I’m a field agent.” Or she might have been, if it weren’t for the man on the other end of the phone.

  He’d been calling her four or five times a day since she got back from Louisville, texting and emailing in an attempt to charm her into driving to Buffalo next weekend. Every time she asked him why, he said the same thing he’d said in Louisville. I like you. I have a feeling about you. I need you.

  But he wouldn’t tell her what he needed her
for, and he wouldn’t apologize.

  Katie worried about him. How could she not? He was obviously troubled, and troubled people sucked her in like magnets. She wanted to attach to their sides, to be a useful fifth limb that could help them rescue themselves from their troubles. She’d spent far too many idle moments in the past week fretting about Judah, wondering if he was okay, if he really did need her for something. If she could help him.

  That kind of attitude got her into trouble.

  What can I do for you? had been her constant refrain at Wild Ride. Levi was the river guide, the expert hiker, the wilderness guru. Katie ran the office and schlepped the packs. She asked What can I do for you? and fixed snacks, smiling until her cheeks hurt.

  “I need a cup of coffee,” she declared.

  “Let me take care of that for you. I’ll have it delivered by courier. Do you prefer a Colombian or an Ethiopian roast?”

  “I’d prefer that my brother get off his ass and make me a cup,” she said, loudly enough for Caleb to hear it through the open door of his adjacent office.

  “Make your own,” Caleb called back. “I got mine at Ellen’s.”

  “He always gets his at Ellen’s,” Katie grumbled, and Judah laughed.

  “You have such a dirty mind,” he said.

  “Takes one to know one. Where are you?”

  “I’m at home. But if you want me to fly to Ohio and sink to my knees at your feet, I don’t have anything on my agenda for the next few hours.”

  “Don’t waste jet fuel on my account. I’m not feeling swayable this morning.”

  “Maybe after you’ve had your coffee.”

  “Doubtful.”

  “I’ll call back later and try, sugar lips.”

  “Sugar lips? I can’t even—That’s gross. Or possibly obscene, I’m not sure which.”

  “It means you’re sweet to kiss, Katie. Get your mind out of the gutter. And then get your butt to Buffalo. I need your help.”

  “You already know my terms.”

  “I met them.”

  “No, you sent me chocolate. Chocolate isn’t an apology or an explanation.”

  “If it’s good chocolate, it shouldn’t matter. And I asked Paul to apologize.”

  “He did, but Paul is not you. You can’t delegate apologies. It makes you look like an even bigger knob than you already are.”

  “Did you just call me a knob?”

  “I did.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Sure. Judah Pratt, world-famous heartthrob, complete knob. Tell me you’re sorry and I’ll think about coming back. Tell me every little detail and secret about the case you should’ve told me last weekend.”

  “I will if you come to Buffalo.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Yeah. You probably shouldn’t.”

  “ ’Bye, Judah.”

  “Talk to you later, sweet cheeks.”

  She hung up the phone.

  Caleb stood on the threshold of his office, hands buried in his pockets, perplexity stamped all over his forehead.

  “Spit it out,” she said, coming out from behind her desk and crossing to the table where they kept the Keurig coffeemaker and some sodas and snacks for the agents, who had a tendency to treat the office like a neighborhood hangout. Sometimes it was like working in a locker room.

  She moved a cardboard box full of surveillance stuff out of the way, shoving it on the floor under the table. Camelot Security was outgrowing the space Caleb had rented a year ago. Ellen’s brother, Jamie, had not only given Caleb control of his own security detail, putting the company solidly in the black, he’d also referred a lot of his friends, who referred other people. Caleb was daydreaming aloud about opening a second location in Los Angeles.

  “What’s going on with you two?” he asked.

  She bent over to check that there was enough water in the reservoir for a giant cup of coffee. “I think we’re becoming friends,” she said wonderingly.

  “You called him a ‘dickbag’ when you got home from Kentucky.”

  “He is a dickbag. Kind of. But I like him. He keeps calling, and he can be a charming dickbag when he wants to.”

  Caleb crossed his arms. “You’re hung up on him.”

  “No,” she said, pressing the button to brew the coffee. “No, I’m really not. I just feel … responsible for him. He’s like this completely clueless creature. He needs a moral compass.”

  “You’re going to be Judah Pratt’s moral compass.”

  She shrugged. “I shouldn’t, but he needs one. Anyway, I’ll only do it if he apologizes properly and tells me everything, which isn’t going to happen.”

  “What if it does? You take the case back?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you consider checking with me and Sean first?”

  “Nope.”

  “Care to enlighten me why not?”

  She reached up and patted Caleb’s scruffy cheek. He hadn’t shaved this morning. He looked good scruffy, but then, her brother looked good just about every way. “Because you do my bidding, and Sean does yours.”

  With a sigh, Caleb uncrossed his arms and stuck his hands back in his pockets, and Katie knew they were fine. He’d let her take the case back if she wanted it. “Where do you get those coffee thingies?” he asked. “We’re out of the ones I like.”

  “I get them in town. I’ll pick some up.”

  “You’re the office manager, not my personal slave.”

  “In an office this small, office manager means personal slave. Unless we hire a lackey. Actually, maybe we should get a lackey. And an assistant, too, for when I go back out on another case and impress you so much, you start giving me all kinds of exciting work to do.”

  “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “You only say that because you don’t think we’re ever going to come to it.”

  “I think once you make your mind up, Katie, you can accomplish anything you want.”

  “What makes you think I haven’t made my mind up yet?”

  “I just know you. You haven’t.”

  Her cell phone flashed. She reached across the desk to pick it up. Judah had sent her a picture of himself, bare-chested, with windblown long hair. It was at least ten years old and totally cheesy. The message said, “Judah wants you back, baby.”

  Katie laughed and typed “U R a hopeless dork.” She dropped her phone back on her desk.

  “Ellen said to tell you she set up a fitting appointment for the dresses next week,” Caleb said. “Wednesday, I think? Or maybe Thursday. She sent you an email.”

  “I got it. It’s cool. You need me to do anything else to help you guys get ready for the wedding?”

  “I think it’s mostly under control. I’ve been trying to figure out the security.”

  It sucked that he had to worry about it, but that was the price Caleb paid for falling in love with Jamie Callahan’s sister. Jamie and his girlfriend, Carly, had settled down with their baby in a big house outside of town. They had a gate and a great security system, and mostly the tabloids had lost interest in them after the drama of Isadora’s arrival. But even so, candid shots of Jamie with his new family were worth big bucks, and that meant Caleb had to strategize to keep the wedding private, since Jamie would be there.

  “I thought the resort was going to handle it.”

  “They are. It should be fine. I don’t think anybody’s even going to know Jamie is in Jamaica, much less crash the wedding. But I’ll feel better if I have some of our guys along.”

  Katie’s heart sank. She knew which guys Caleb trusted most.

  “Can you ask Sean and Eric to come?” he continued. “Bryce, too, I think. I’ll pay expenses, and it’s basically a free vacation for them as long as we don’t have any trouble.”

  “Sure. I’ll call Bryce and Eric up and send Sean an email.”

  “He’s still not talking to you?”

  “Not a word.”

/>   Caleb frowned. “You know, Sean’s a great guy.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I really think if you got to know him—”

  “He kissed me.”

  Caleb went perfectly still.

  “Not like you’re thinking,” she clarified. “He kissed me in front of Judah. It was part of this pissing contest they were having, and he went all ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ and grabbed me and kissed me. It was entirely for Judah’s benefit.”

  Not a word from Caleb. Maybe he didn’t get it. “It was the single most chauvinistic, jerk-ass thing anybody’s ever done to me,” she added.

  And oh, man, was she ever having trouble forgetting about it. Every lustful thought she’d had for Judah had evaporated in the wake of the pathetic groping session in his room, replaced by an exasperated fondness that gained a bit more traction every time he called or emailed or sent her a silly text. Whereas she hadn’t heard a word from Sean, and she couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.

  Caleb was staring at her. Staring and staring and staring.

  “What?”

  He lowered his head, but not before she caught the faint smile. “Nothing, Katelet. Not a thing.”

  Reaching down, he grabbed the mug and carried it into his office just as the phone started to ring.

  It wasn’t until she’d picked up the receiver and said, “Camelot Security, this is Katie speaking” that she realized he’d stolen her coffee.

  Chapter Ten

  “So we’re bleeding money,” Sean said.

  His CFO nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

  “What’s the bank saying? Can we get an extension on the loan?” He stabbed his finger at the spreadsheet in front of him, pointing at the date Kelly had boldfaced and printed in red ink.

  “They don’t want to take the risk. We have to start paying them back or they start grabbing assets.”

  He picked up the silver Mont Blanc pen off his desk and flipped it end over end, tapping it on the blotter. Kelly began to look worried, and he put the pen down. Laurie, his PA, had told him once that everybody said when he started flipping the pen, the shit was about to hit the fan. “All right. Thanks.”