The burn of resolve felt as comfortable as knowing her name. She had to do something—and nothing stopped Jessica Adams when she had to do something. Stumbling to the door, she tried to twist the handle, but the knob jammed against her hand. She managed to get back to the window, yank open the blinds, and push at the metal casing. Locked.
All she could see was that long stretch of desolate beach. She banged a weak fist against the glass and whimpered in frustration.
A sense of panic rose but she forced it down. Dropping to her knees, she pulled open the drawer of the nightstand. There, she saw the most beautiful sight in her life: a pink suede handbag. With sudden clarity, she remembered buying the Chanel bag at Bloomingdale’s, remembered the sensation of making the frivolous purchase.
She grabbed the purse like a starving woman who’d found food. Her phone was in here. She could call 911. Or Jazz. Or…work. Yes, she could call Ollie. Ollie would always be there for her.
As she stared into the satin lining, disappointment stabbed her. She thrust her hand inside, flipping out a makeup bag, a plastic tampon case, and a comb and mirror. Where was her wallet?
Where was her phone?
Shaking, she curled on the floor and did the only thing her tired, aching, sick body would allow.
She wept.
Until a gentle touch on her shoulder jolted her up. Just as the gasp of recognition replaced her next sob, she saw the glint of metal catch the moonlight.
“It’s not time yet, Jessie.” Oh, that voice. She’d never noticed it was actually…menacing.
She tried to jerk away, but the sting in her leg stopped her cold. She looked down to see a needle buried into the ugly bruise. For one crystal clear moment, she understood everything.
And then she remembered Jazz. Oh, God. Was she pretending to be Jessica right this minute? If he found out the truth…if he knew who she was…
Then the world went dark and silent again.
Alex smelled the American coffee as soon as he approached 3701. After a six-mile run on the beach, the last thing he wanted was a cup of Chock Full O’ Nuts, but he hadn’t stopped for a colada and pastelitos because he wanted to shower and be ready for Jazz when she decided to get up. With her, he had no idea what to expect next.
And there she was, at seven A.M., dressed and sitting at the kitchen counter with her laptop open, a phone book next to her, and the coffee aroma wafting from a Krupps countertop percolator.
If it weren’t for the fact that she wore no makeup and the same skimpy white tank top she’d arrived in, he’d have thought Jessica had mysteriously returned.
“You should use the chain lock when I’m gone,” he said as he entered.
She didn’t look away from the screen, tapping the keyboard ferociously. “I didn’t do a bed check. I thought you were still asleep.”
“I figured I could run and get breakfast before you stirred.”
“You figured wrong.”
“What are you working on?” He stood behind her and glanced at a database on the screen, inhaling the smell of her citrusy shampoo. “The Yellowstone intracompany phone book?”
Tipping the screen to dim it, she spun around on the barstool and came face to bare chest with him. She was so close he could see her individual eyelashes and the cream of her just-washed complexion. She was much prettier as Jazz than as Jessica. She didn’t need stage makeup. She oozed an undercurrent of sexuality that was far more attractive to him than high gloss TV polish.
He forced those thoughts away. He would not be brought down by an audacious woman with a bodacious body. He would not risk everything because of his libido or his temper. He was his own man, with a job to do, a responsibility to meet, and lives—many lives—to protect.
She lifted her gaze, having studied his chest with the precise intensity he’d just given her face. “I’d like to make a deal with you,” she said.
“No deals,” he responded without stepping back. “I don’t do deals, concessions, bargains, or special arrangements.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “What do you do, Alex Romero?”
“Don’t start,” he warned softly. “You’ll lose.”
She spun back around and flipped up the laptop. “I was simply going to suggest a compromise so we could help each other.”
With a sigh of resignation, he found a cup. American coffee was enough of a compromise for him. “How can you help me?”
“I can…cooperate.”
He couldn’t resist a smile at the way just saying the word pained her. “Meaning?”
“I will let you…protect me.” More pain.
“You really cling to that independence, don’t you?” He leaned against the counter, bracing himself for the first sip.
She shrugged, her focus moving from the computer to his bare torso and back to the computer again. Another nice thing about no makeup; he could see the color rise in her cheeks.
“I don’t like to be so needy.”
“Needy?” He almost spat out the dishwater coffee. “You?”
“Maybe needy isn’t the right word.” She shifted on the barstool. “But I’ve always seemed to need…assistance.”
Were they talking about the same woman? “How so?”
“It doesn’t matter. I always—”
“It does matter,” he interrupted. “I want to know what I’m dealing with here. And to be honest, you don’t strike me as a woman who’s ever needed anyone to do anything but get out of her way.”
She flashed a smile. “I take that as a compliment.”
“Take it any way you want. It’s true.”
“It hasn’t always been.”
He set the mug down. “I find that hard to believe.”
She sighed briefly. “About a year ago, I quit news-casting. I told you, I sucked at the politics and games. Then I…got into my new business. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Well, I helped my boyfriend start his own PI firm.”
For some insane reason, his heart rate kicked up. She had a boyfriend. He waited for her to continue.
“In fact, it all goes back further than Elliott. I should tell you, so you can understand why finding Jessica, helping her, is so important.”
“Go on.” He attempted another sip of the muddy brew.
“Jessica has always been—well, just look at her life.” She waved a hand at the showplace around her. “She’s a bona fide success story. Nothing challenges her, nothing trips her up, nothing gets in her way. She doesn’t know what failure feels like.”
“And you’re jealous of that.”
“God, no.” The vehemence in her voice told him it was the truth. “I admire her for all that she’s achieved. It’s what makes her her, and, believe me, she’s…amazing.” She shook her head. “I mean, really amazing.”
“So you’ve said.”
“I grew up depending on her. She would always come through for me. She’d taken the notes for class, she had the money in her pocket, she made sure we got home by curfew, she got our applications for college and grad school and jobs in on time, she…did whatever needed to be done. I took. She gave.”
“I’m sure you brought something to the party.”
“Precisely.” She laughed softly. “I brought the party. I provided the comic relief, the occasional adventure, the fun. Jessica is very conservative, in control at all times. It was a nice balance when we were young. I’d get a little action going, and she’d be sure it didn’t go too far. But…” Her smile faded. “Then we grew up. And found out that our visions of life were as different as our personalities.”
“Did that cause a big falling out or something?” He could imagine a woman as accomplished as Jessica not liking her lifelong plans being shaken up by her less ambitious sister.
“Not really,” she replied. “She just wasn’t thrilled at my decision. She didn’t understand choosing a low-paying PI job over the glamour of TV. And when I moved in with Elliott…”
She lived wit
h the guy? He dumped the rest of the coffee in the sink to hide his reaction.
“She thought he was all wrong for me. Too much of a power monger, too determined to tell me what to do. But I learned how to be a PI from him, and even though I didn’t get my license or a paycheck for the first year, I liked the work.”
Past tense. All past tense. “So what happened?”
“I hit my personal wall.”
At her serious tone, he turned to look at her.
“I realized that I had spent my life depending on my parents, on Jessica, and then when I floundered in Fresno, all alone, I hooked up with Elliott Sandusky, who was another caretaker. I hadn’t done anything autonomous in twenty-nine years.” She crossed her arms. “I had to change that. I decided to stop depending on anyone except me. So having Jessica actually depend on me, instead of the other way around—well, this is really important to me.”
“What happened to Elliott the caretaker?” Not that it mattered.
She shrugged. “He liked the old me better.”
He loathed the relief that swept him. Why should it matter if she had a boyfriend or not? Lucy’s rules were enough to keep him out of her bed. And he was staying out of her bed, regardless of his physical response to her. Once he’d acknowledged that response—which he had during the mostly sleepless night—he could conquer it. “And then?”
“I moved to San Francisco, got my PI license, found one runaway teen, caught a woman cheating on her husband, and came to Miami because Jessica said she needed me.”
“And impersonating her as a favor is part of your grand scheme for self-actualization?” He failed to see the life-changing aspect of the stunt. It still struck him as stupid and childish.
“It’s more than a favor. It’s…it’s proof.”
“Proof of what, Jazz?” He couldn’t resist pushing what he suspected was a hot button. “Proof that you’re as good as she is?”
Resentment darkened her eyes to pewter gray as she spun off the barstool and headed for the coffeepot. “No. It’s proof that I’m good enough to be her twin sister. Not as good—that’ll never happen.”
While she poured, he drank in the sight of her backside sheathed in hip-hugging jeans while familiar heat started low in his gut.
“Taking foolish chances is no way to prove anything. I don’t believe in risks.” Which was why he forced his attention away from those jeans.
“Well, I do. And that’s the deal I’m offering.”
He gave her a deliberately confused look. “I forgot we were discussing a deal. I thought we were confessing inner conflicts to Oprah, here.”
“Very funny. That’s what I get for being honest.”
“Sorry to make light of your issues, Jazz.” He gave her a lazy grin. “But why don’t you tell me your deal and I’ll think about it while I’m in the shower.” Because one more minute in the tiny kitchen with her and her skin-tight clothes and lemon-flavored scent, and his own issues would be straight up and obvious.
“I’ll let you protect me and be my bodyguard, if you’ll let me go where I need to go to try to find her. But I go as her, not me.”
“I’ve been the one wanting to find Jessica from the beginning. I’m willing to do whatever I have to—”
“We have to.”
“—do to find her.” He spoke right over her correction. “But I don’t think your pretending to be her is helping.”
“How is it hurting?”
“If she’s in hiding or undercover for some reason, then you’re not giving her any reason to contact you. And if she’s not, if she’s hurt, or worse, then there’s no missing person, no crime, no body.”
Her jaw dropped. “Body? You think some horny fan killed her?”
“That’s the worst case scenario. But that’s just how I think.”
“Lovely.”
“Reality rarely is,” he said, placing his hands on her shoulders to make his point. And touch her bare skin again. “Here’s my deal, Jazz. We spend the next forty-eight hours looking for her. We’re truthful about who you are. If we haven’t found her by Monday morning, we go to the authorities and you come clean.”
The plan was completely counter to what Lucy wanted, but too bad. His boss was so blinded by her need to impress this client that she didn’t realize how much danger Jessica Adams could be in. He had to do what he could to help Jessica; that would impress the client. Not playing games with the stand-in while his gut told him something was wrong with the woman he’d been hired to protect.
“Fine. We start with a studio in Hialeah where they produce porn movies.” She backed away. “But we agree now: we don’t tell anyone at the TV station. No one who works with Jessica.” He started to shake his head. “Just say yes or no. Stay or go. You’ll agree, or you’ll leave.”
He chuckled. “You really want control of me one way or another, don’t you?” And they both knew how effective the other way was. “No way.”
He turned toward the bathroom, but she stopped him by grabbing his arm. “I mean it, Alex. No one from the station.”
God, ultimatums and negotiating and risk. The woman was making him nuts. It didn’t matter anyway; they wouldn’t see anyone from the station for two days. He pulled out of her grasp and shook back his hair. “Okay, fine.”
Her shoulders relaxed in relief. “Thank you. And, in return, I’ll promise not to…not to…”
“What?” He let his gaze linger over her curves, his mouth suddenly dry. “No more foot massages?”
A soft flush spread from her cleavage up her throat, where a tiny pulse jumped in a rapid rhythm. “I’m sorry. That was unfair and sneaky and not nice.”
“Unfair and sneaky, yes.” He couldn’t fight the smile. “But it was real nice.”
She grimaced at his tone. “I won’t do that again.”
“You can do it anytime you want,” he said, leaning into the warmth that quivered between them. “But next time, I’ll know precisely what you’re up to.”
“And what will you do?”
“The last thing you expect, querida.”
He could have sworn a little glimmer of anticipation sparkled in her eyes, and her lips parted just enough to prepare for a kiss. He took another visual slide down to the taut buttons of her nipples.
One more inch, and those points would touch his bare skin. All he had to do was ease forward, and her breasts would graze his chest and that paltry piece of cotton would be history. His hands and mouth could feast on her again.
“What will you do, Alex?” Her breath was tight with the repeated question.
Every muscle in his body tightened with one single need: to find a way inside of her.
“Absolutely nothing,” he said flatly.
The light went out of her eyes, and he left to take an ice cold shower.
Chapter
Ten
L ucy Sharpe crossed her long legs, her bare calves rubbing against the warm leather of the custom-designed recliner. She accepted a glass of champagne as the Gulfstream IV hit cruising altitude of thirty thousand feet on its way to Florida. She never apologized for her love of luxury; instead, she shared it. The result was a happier work force—even if they weren’t always thrilled with what she asked them to do.
Holding the crystal flute toward two of her most favored employees, she looked from one to the other and raised her glass in genuine gratitude.
“Thank you both for rearranging your schedules.”
A rare, ironic smile lifted Max Roper’s lips.
Dan Gallagher’s quick hoot matched the twinkle in eyes the color of an Irish hillside. “Yeah, Luce.” Dan’s grin revealed the tiniest imperfection in an otherwise heart-stopping smile. But there was something about his slightly crooked front teeth that was as endearing as the man himself. “Like we had a choice.”
“You always have a choice,” Lucy reminded him, and sipped a few sweet bubbles. “You may say no to any assignment, at any time, for any reason.”
Not that they wo
uld. Her salaries were quadruple what any other security firm paid its top bodyguards, which was why she had the best in her force. And two of the best of the best were in front of her.
Max’s expression returned to unreadable. “I’d rather be enjoying my seats on the fifty yard line of the Steeler game on Sunday than saving Alex Romero’s ass.”
“I realize you haven’t even unpacked from Cannes yet, Max.” She gave him a sympathetic smile. “With luck, you’ll get to the next game.”
They sat around a cocktail table in the center of the plane, the crew appearing only when summoned by a call button under Lucy’s armrest. She preferred to conduct her business dealings in complete privacy.
Dan stretched out his solid six-foot-three frame across from her, locking his hands behind his dark blond head. “Seriously, Luce. How bad is the situation in Miami?”
“Not dire yet,” she said, thinking of her phone call with the client that morning. “But I want to cover every base, and Alex needs to stay with the principal.”
“The fake one,” Max put in. “Not the real newscaster.”
She nodded. “He’s protecting Jasmine Adams and I don’t want that to change. I prefer Kimball Parrish to think all is copacetic with his soon-to-be network star. In the meantime, I need more eyes down there to be sure we’re on top of the entire situation.”
Max’s background in sniffing out drug runners for the DEA in the Caribbean and Dan’s undercover experience with the FBI were ideal for what she had in mind. “It’s important that Alex stays close to her and in front of the client, who will be back in Miami shortly.”
She reviewed the facts for them. True to form, Max rarely exhibited any emotion or response, his sharp mind simply sucking up the details. Only the flecks of gold in his chocolate eyes revealed his interest. His jaw was clenched tight, his thick, muscular body always spare in its movements. She would trust this bear of a man with her life, and she did trust him with those of her clients every day. Their only complaint was they never had any idea what he was thinking. Which was exactly how Max liked it.
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