by Vanessa Dare
She tried to look around me, but I blocked her view of the hallway, of her escape. Shifting slightly, I let her see past me and know she wasn’t trapped.
Her arched brow rose at the endearment, but said nothing for a moment. Glanced down the hall. “I am a little naïve when it comes to some things, I’ll admit. I’ve been on my own for a long time, but I don’t need a keeper. I don’t need a man to watch my every move.”
I frowned. “I don’t want a woman who needs watching.” I paused. “This is about what I said?” I saw the answer on her face. “I only meant that if you were mine, I wouldn’t be able to take my eyes off you because you’re so damn pretty. I’d want to cross the room to be near you, to be able to touch you. Like I want to do right now.”
Her eyes lit up with surprise. “Oh.” Her plump lower lip was glossy and it was hard not to stare at it, wonder how soft it was, how good she’d taste. She wasn’t playing coy to hook and reel a man in like a fish.
Which only meant she didn’t know her worth. And that meant— “Some fucker really messed with you. Was it Zach?” I stood up straight, ready to beat the shit out of the guy at her word.
She placed a hand on my arm, then pulled it back as if burned. “No. Not Zach. He’s my friend.” She must have seen the skeptical look on my face because she added, “Really.”
I relaxed, glad to know Zach was decent. Moretti? Had Moretti done things to her? Forced her into the mess with Lane? I wanted to ask, but couldn’t.
“Who hurt you?”
She straightened her spine, shifted her shoulders back, looked me dead in the eye. Her color had returned and the spark in her gaze showed me she was more mad than sad. “I don’t even know you. You can’t just go slaying my dragons for me.”
“Can’t I?” It was my job to protect the innocent—at least when I was Jake Griffin. With Anna, I wanted to do the protecting more with my fist than with the badge I had hidden away.
Anna laughed bitterly. “Who are you?”
Instead of answering, I gave her advanced warning. “I’m going to hold your hand.” I watched her eyes for any reaction, but she didn’t resist when I took her small hand between both of mine.
She inhaled sharply as she looked down at our combined hands.
“You feel it, too,” I whispered, absorbing that spark, that awareness that passed between our palms. I stared at the top of her head, her dark hair sleek and shiny. I knew if I touched the soft strands, they would feel like silk.
I felt her tense, ready to tug her hand free. “Don’t. I won’t hurt you. You have to trust me on that.”
She glanced up at me beneath a dark fringe of lashes. “Like I said before, I don’t even know you.”
I couldn’t push her anymore. We weren’t in an interrogation room, but I was pumping her for answers. She wasn’t going to give them to me. Not right now. She was too good at not telling just to give in now. Had I really expected it? Flirting didn’t work. I couldn’t fuck it out of her. I could barely touch her let alone convince her to go back to my room, let me strip her down and give her an orgasm or two to loosen her tongue.
“I don’t want to scare you off like the bastard who’s got you spooked, so I’m going to let you get back to the party. I’m sure even Zach is wondering where you are by now. Can I meet you for coffee tomorrow?”
I knew her answer, but I had to play clueless.
She shook her head. “I don’t live here. I’m from New York. I’m leaving tomorrow to go home.”
I paused, let her think I was considering. I wanted to find out who’d hurt her and beat the shit out of him. But that wasn’t why I was standing in front of her. I’d crashed the wedding to make contact for Moretti, the asshole. I had to tell her about Scorch. Expose my connection to Moretti and to Bobby Lane’s body. To show her I was somehow related to the fiasco she’d inadvertently fallen into yesterday. To make her see that Moretti was watching and the one way she’d stay alive was to forget what happened and get on that plane. To forget me.
I let go of her hand with an inward sigh. What had I been thinking? I’d let a pretty face blind me to the real world. This attraction—this lightning strike of feeling I had for her—wasn’t real. It wasn’t love at first sight, but something damn similar. Lust. I’d lived like a monk for so long I’d forgotten what it felt like. Yeah, this was just lust. I couldn’t have her. Who the fuck was I kidding? She couldn’t be mine, not while I was undercover. Not as Nick Malone. I couldn’t do anything for her except stay away. How fucking depressing was that?
So I did my job. I reached into my pants pocket, took out my wallet. “Here. Take my card. If you ever need to talk, call me. Day or night.” I handed it to her. It was plain stupid giving her proof to my relationship with Moretti and Bobby Lane in one sentence and then telling her I’d help her with her problems the next. Why the hell would she turn to me when I gave her the proof of my connection to the cluster fuck of her trip? Zach—nice, safe Zach, would be a better bet than me.
Squeezing the lapels tightly, she asked, “Call you?”
She looked so innocent standing there in my tuxedo jacket, dwarfed beneath it so only the very hem of her demure, yet very sexy, dress showed. “If anything, anyone bothers you. Call me. I can help.”
Maybe. If it didn’t blow my cover. Shit. If she needed help, I’d give it. Fuck Moretti. Shit. This was a complete mess because I couldn’t do both. Be both Nick Malone and Jake Griffin.
Anna glanced down at the card, her body tensing as if struck by a live wire. The look in her eyes when she lifted her chin was a mixture of panic, fear and confusion. She licked her lips again and my dick got hard.
“I’ve…um…you’re right.” She knew. Knew I was one of the bad guys who’d fucked up her weekend. “Zach’s probably wondering where I am. It was…nice meeting you, Nick.”
With those final words, she turned and fled. This time, I let her. I exhaled a deep breath, wishing for a drink. Shit. To think, just for a moment there, I’d forgotten myself, wanting her for my own. To, like she said, slay her dragons. I’d gotten lost in her eyes, so expressive, so secretive. Her scent had practically drugged me into a state of forgetfulness. As if I were a regular guy with a regular job. As if.
I was just a thug that worked for Moretti. That’s what she now thought anyway. Like I told Peters, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. I offered my help but I wouldn’t be able to give it, and I sure as hell couldn’t tell her the truth. Not undercover. Not when the case against Moretti was almost complete. So I gave her the damn card. Gave up any chance with her. Jesus, this was all kinds of fucked up.
If she were innocent, she’d be back to her life in New York by tomorrow night, definitely safer away from me and the dangerous shit I was involved in. Whatever had happened to her, she was skittish and wary of men in a way I’d only seen in domestic abuse or rape cases. My jaw clenched at the possibility that someone had touched her that way, but I couldn’t help unless she was willing to share. The way she’d acted in the interrogation room earlier, she’d learned to build some pretty good defenses. So the guy who would teach her that not every man was bad, that all touches weren’t cruel, wasn’t going to be me. I ran my hand through my hair as I stared down the empty hallway. Fuck.
“Get a fucking grip, Grif,” I whispered to myself.
I pushed those pussy-whipped thoughts aside as I walked to the elevator. My gut screamed there was more to her than fragile waif, and my gut was never wrong. It had saved my neck over and over in Afghanistan and on the streets. The angel in me may have offered her my help, but the devil on my shoulder had given her the card because I knew, deep down, she was too good to be true. God didn’t just deliver the woman I’d dreamed about—but just didn’t know existed—to a guy like me.
There had to be something wrong with her. She might not have killed Bobby Lane, but she was hiding something, I knew it without a doubt. She had to be. All women had something to hide. With the card, she now knew I worked for Moretti, and mos
t likely she did, too. Now, all she had to do was show up at Scorch and prove it. Prove women were as slick as I’d learned to believe.
CHAPTER THREE
Anna
When I finally made it back to the table, the maid of honor was giving her speech so Zach could only lift a dark eyebrow at me in question. He wanted to ask me where I’d been, I knew, but it wasn’t the time to talk. Once we lowered our glasses from the toast, he leaned in, whispered, “Nice jacket.” He grinned, raised and lowered his eyebrows.
Oh God. I still had Nick’s jacket. I looked around the room, didn’t see him. Of course not. He’d left to go back to Scorch. I was wearing a jacket of a guy whose colleague was found dead in the trunk of a car. A bad guy. Why did a bad guy seem like a good guy? He didn’t act like a thug. He sure didn’t look like one. Were all bad guys drop-dead gorgeous with hair I wanted to touch, a body I wanted to learn and a mouth I so desperately wanted to kiss? As if my luck couldn’t get any worse, I was lusting after a guy that worked for—what was the man’s name? Morelli? Moretti. The detective from yesterday had said Scorch was one of his businesses.
I glanced at the card in my damp palm. Nick Malone, Manager, Scorch. It listed his phone number and the address of the club. I hadn’t missed the heat in Nick’s eyes. He may not have been very forthcoming, but his interest in me wasn’t a lie. I felt it in his touch, in the way he’d gotten angry at the thought of Zach hurting me. He really wanted to know who’d messed with me. The most amazing thing—Nick was the only person who had ever seen I had something to hide. Then again, he was the only person who made me feel something. Anything.
I didn’t even know it was possible anymore. That’s why, when he’d leaned in and whispered in my ear, my skin prickled, my nipples—and other places—ached to be touched. My body, for once, craved. Nick was the only man to make me feel that way, instantly and irrevocably. Like a drug, I wanted more. I tuned out the best man’s speech. I watched, but didn’t see the cutting of the cake.
My body might have awakened to Nick, but my brain knew he was bad for me. He worked for Moretti. He wasn’t a guest of the party. He’d crashed it. Looking for me. Making sure…making sure what? Had he wanted to hurt me? Had Moretti sent him to lure me to my death? My stomach churned at the idea of a bullet to the brain. After what happened to the dead guy in the trunk, I couldn’t ignore that distinct possibility.
Nick hadn’t tried to harm me, grab and take me from me from the party to shoot me. In fact, he’d done the opposite, pulling me in close, whispering in my ear, running his thumb over my palm. He wanted to help me, just…wanted me. So when he gave me his business card, he’d made it clear Moretti had made contact, made me aware that the man knew who I was, but Nick also gave me a way to reach him if I really needed it. I felt that part was sincere, but a complete contradiction.
I took a sip of my water, the glass wet with condensation. There was an angle I hadn’t considered before. If Nick worked for Scorch, then he knew who I was. Knew I was the one who was in the car with Bobby Lane’s body in it. That’s why he gave me the card. He wasn’t hiding who he was or his connection to Moretti. He wasn’t hiding what he knew about me and still offered to help.
Did I need his help? He was the only man that had made me feel alive in years. A decade. Longer. He could definitely help me with that, but I doubted that was what he’d had in mind when he offered. He was gorgeous, his eyes piercing and intense, his hands gentle yet persuasive. I had no doubt if I could turn off my mind, my body would melt like butter beneath his skilled hands. But I had bigger problems than reviving my libido.
I needed help saving Elizabeth. Could Nick do that? Would he?
“Want to dance?” Zach asked, breaking into my thoughts. I smiled, nodded, then stood. I couldn’t sit at the table and stare at my water glass all night. Since it was far from appropriate to be Zach’s date and wear another man’s jacket, I shrugged it off and folded it over the back of my chair.
“You okay?” he asked, leading me out onto the floor.
“Fine. I’m sorry, I’m still a little tired. Time difference probably.”
He looked down at me as he spun me around the room to a romantic tune. “Altitude, too. Wears you out.”
I laughed. “No wonder I could only go a mile on the treadmill this morning before I collapsed. I thought I was getting old.”
“Are you going to tell me about the jacket? Should I be jealous?” He winked.
“I’m really sorry. I’m your date for tonight and I go off and get another man’s jacket.”
“As long as that’s all he gave you,” he replied, his voice dark.
I rolled my eyes and patted him on the shoulder. “You’re a good big brother.”
“Someone’s got to watch out for you.”
I stiffened in his arms momentarily, then tried to relax. Nick had said something very similar.
“I can take care of myself, you know.”
He gave my hand a squeeze as he spun us around the dance floor. “Oh, I know it, all right, but a guy’s supposed to watch out for his girl.”
“I didn’t know I was your girl.”
“Of course you are. The guys at the dojo think the same. You don’t have to be a wife or girlfriend for a guy to have your back. Before you freak, they know you’re not interested in any of them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t care about you and wouldn’t do anything to make sure no one messed with you.”
I stopped dancing. Zach and I just stood there in the middle of the floor, other couples moving around us. “Really? I didn’t realize.”
“You’d do the same for me.”
I thought for a moment. I would. I’d do anything to help Zach. I was in Denver, wasn’t I? Pretending to be his girlfriend. “Yes, I’d kick any guy’s ass that messed with you.” I grinned.
He did, too, before pulling me in a little closer, started dancing again. For the rest of the night, I thought about Zach’s words. Was that what Nick had meant? That he’d protect me, regardless? Was this really what the good guys did? Was Nick one of the good guys? How could he be if he worked for Moretti? My mind circled and circled, like Zach and I around the dance floor, but I didn’t come up with any answers.
After the reception was over, after Zach walked me to my hotel room door and I’d closed it behind me, I realized in a moment of perfect clarity that I could ask Nick for help with Elizabeth. Standing there, staring at the fire emergency placard on the back of the door, it came to me. He was the perfect person to do so. Neither my father nor Todd knew him. No one in New York did. If he worked for Moretti, he moved in circles I couldn’t fathom. Could work angles I couldn’t contemplate.
He’d help, not only out of chivalric duty.
He didn’t have a choice.
I took his jacket that I’d carried back to my room, put it back on. In front of the hotel, I asked the doorman for a taxi. When it arrived, I pulled out Nick’s business card and gave the driver the address to Scorch.
Grif
Things were in chaos when I returned to the bar. One of the liquor shipments hadn’t arrived as scheduled, a bartender had called in sick and a new server had spilled a tray of drinks on a group that was now very unhappy. I yanked off my bow tie and stuffed it in my pocket, undid the top button of my tuxedo shirt and got back to business. Most issues were easy to resolve, but took most of my focus; free drinks and a move to the VIP section fixed ruffled feathers, a call to the distributer brought a shipment of vodka that hadn’t been sent to Phoenix by mistake. To resolve the bartender shortage, I took over one end of the bar for the night. Not something I wanted to do, nor got me any closer to arresting Moretti, but the crowd didn’t take my feelings into account. They just wanted their drinks.
One a.m. and the club was still crowded. Pouring drinks didn’t occupy my mind enough to keep it from wandering to Anna Scott and how sweet she’d been. I swear I was getting a case of blue balls, my dick getting hard every time I thought of her sweet mouth, her pale skin. It
was the mystery of her, the secrets she had hidden beneath that dress. That, was torture. Good thing the bar was high enough to hide my reaction.
I poured a row of shots for a group of guys, put their money in the till and turned back to find Anna standing there, her manicured fingers on the edge of the sleek bar top. She still wore my black tuxedo jacket like a suit of armor, with the sleeves rolled up. It was as if thinking about her had conjured her up. I froze. She was as beautiful as I remembered, her hair still sleek and perfect, her eyes dark and clear, her lips free of the lipstick she’d worn earlier, now a natural pink, even in the intense blue and white lights pulsing in time to the music.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
She was good.
For once in my career, I had been completely and totally off the mark. Her good looks, hot body and naïveté had blinded me to the truth. She was just like Nadine. A fake. A liar. A cheat. My gut clenched with disappointment; I really wanted her to be innocent. I’d hoped she’d get on that plane and then I’d have known she was that sweet little thing, soft and lush, I’d initially pegged her for. To know that someone like that still existed. To be something different than the dregs of society I was stuck with. I was the naïve one to fall for her act, even for a little while.
Disney movie over, reality set in. She was a cold, calculating bitch. She’d duped Werbler and Gossing. She got past Peters’ radar. Mine, too.
Tonight at the reception? She’d played the innocent waif, damaged and fragile. I’d fallen for her hook, line and sinker. She was really, really good at being bad. At least my hard-on was gone.
“What can I get you?” I asked, placing a cocktail napkin down on the gleaming wood in front of her. I was a sucker and I felt it in my gut. Didn’t mean I had to show it.
“Club soda.”
I took the time filling her drink to cool down. The crowded bar was not a place to yell at a woman, no matter what she’d done. After placing it in front of her, I crossed my arms over my chest. “Here to return the jacket?”
