by Lyn Stone
Or maybe she had come to finish what her husband had begun and try to squeeze more out of Somers and the others. Some people thought they never had enough money. Mitch figured James Andrews must have either made investments and/or set up offshore accounts for the people on the list, then got a little greedy and demanded more of a percentage than first agreed on. The pages in Russian worried him even more. Foreign espionage? More likely, the Red mafia in New York.
Not that Mitch really believed Robin was mixed up in that. He only reminded himself once again that she could be, and that he had to recognize the possibility. Damned hard that was, too, since she raised his temperature several degrees every time he looked at her. He’d probably need blood-pressure medicine if she stuck around for long.
God, this was making him feel sick. He wanted her so bad he could taste it, but that was out of the question now.
Just when he’d given himself permission to ask if maybe he could see her again after all this was solved and settled, she pulled the rug right out from under him. Rich. Damn. And maybe playing him like a fish.
She’d just blown his mind completely with the news that she was wealthy. Models—good ones, at least—did make a fortune, he had heard. Weird that he couldn’t recall having seen her in magazines, but maybe not so strange. He didn’t spend a lot of time reading Vogue or whatever. Maybe she looked different now or had made most of her money on the runway instead of in the mags.
He guessed it didn’t matter in the long run. She had no reason to lie about the money she’d made. It would be easy enough to check her financial situation and she would know that. Kick had probably done it already.
And where the hell was Kick, anyway? He should have been home an hour ago.
He yanked open several drawers until he found a corkscrew. “Just like at the country club,” he muttered through his teeth, remembering the bartending job that helped put him through college. “Pour and serve and smile and listen.” He splashed the wine in one of the stemmed glassed off the rack beneath an upper cabinet.
He sloshed a little bourbon into a highball glass for himself and carried the drinks back into the living room.
She sat right where he’d left her, hands folded in her lap, looking sad. What the hell did she have to mope about?
“Here you go,” he said in as normal a voice as he could manage. “Merlot. I don’t know much about vintage.”
She took the glass. “Neither do I.” After tasting it gingerly, she nodded. “Not vinegar. That’s good enough for me.”
“Is it,” he said, not a question.
“You don’t quite know what to say to me now, do you?” she asked. “It doesn’t make any difference, you know.”
“Right.” He downed the bourbon and winced. Not a good vintage here, he thought. But maybe everything would taste nasty under these circumstances.
She leaned toward him. “Mitch, the money is just incidental. Two million is not that much really. Not when you consider it’s probably all I’ll ever make. Modeling pays well, sure, but it’s an incredibly short-lived career.”
He rolled his eyes. “Right, you’re so over-the-hill now. Jeez, look at you.”
Robin sighed with obvious frustration. “I’m still the same person I was an hour ago.”
“So am I.” He thunked down his glass, not caring whether it left a ring on the shiny surface of Kick’s stupid ugly end table.
“Let’s get on with this,” she snapped.
Mitch stood, pacing in front of her, not looking at her. “Tell me about Andrews’s friends in New York. Did you ever meet any of his associates?”
“We attended parties on occasion,” she told him. “Three, I think, the whole time we were together. He introduced me to some people, but I formed the impression they were connected to the arts. He was big into that.”
“Liked to show you off, huh?” he asked, noting as he did that she resented the question. He didn’t blame her.
He saw her throat work. “It seemed so. I hated going out.”
“You’d have even less fun here, I bet. No culture to the vultures.”
She got up and marched right over to him, hands on hips and her eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to start a fight? I hate confrontations.”
“Do you?” he snapped, almost glad to see her angry. “Didn’t it even occur to you that it’s normal to fight for yourself, Robin? You can’t just stand around looking pretty and expect the best while you get pissed on! I’ve seen your courage in action. Why the hell didn’t you show it when that creep was using you?”
“Don’t do this!” she cried, virtually leaping up from her chair and beginning to pace. “What do you want from me?”
He grabbed her upper arm to stop her and got right in her face. “I want you to be yourself, Robin! I want to see who you really are for more than five minutes at a time!” His voice dropped to a whisper despite his fury. “I want that woman I’ve seen beneath the mannequin. Show me you’re real. I’m sick to death of seein’ that expressionless—”
She kissed him.
Mitch couldn’t even think what he’d been doing, riling her up like that, but the feel of her tongue invading his mouth, the sound of her impatience as she deepened the kiss and the feel of her long, elegant fingers holding his face, tore coherent thought right out of his head.
Mitch slid both arms around her and grasped her to him as if she was his last hope of salvation. Damn, she felt great. Tasted sweeter than homemade jam and had him harder and hotter faster than he could ever remember.
He moved against her, fitting his body to hers in a dance that was likely to end in the bedroom if she didn’t call a halt.
But he didn’t want to stop, and she didn’t want him to. Mitch slid his hands past her waist and down her slender hips, pulling her closer, holding her tighter.
“Well, well, well!” a loud voice crooned, forcing Mitch to release Robin and grab for his weapon. “What have we here?”
Chapter 10
“Makin’ yourselves right at home, I see.” Kick Taylor winked at Robin. “Mrs. Andrews. How you doin’, ma’am? Gettin’ a little help with your grief, there?”
“Shut up, Taylor,” Mitch warned, resnapping his holster over the butt of his gun. “What are you doing here?” He glanced at his watch for emphasis, trying to hold his hand steady.
“I live here, remember? Where the hell have you been?”
“Out of town,” Mitch replied. “Is your offer of hospitality still good or are you plannin’ to give me a hard time?”
“Still goes,” Kick said with a shrug. “But it’s a good thing I wasn’t a few minutes later, huh?” He looked at the drinks sitting on the coffee table. “I see you found the refreshment.”
He motioned with both his forefingers. “Why don’t you two just continue on with your business, and I’ll come back in about an hour?”
“Knock it off already,” Mitch said, less forcefully. No point in egging Kick on by overreacting. “It was just a kiss.”
“And Niagara’s just a waterfall.” He shook his head and gave Mitch a wave of dismissal as he left the room. “You got a minute, man, we need to talk.”
Mitch looked at Robin whose face glowed like pink neon.
“Will you excuse me?”
“Certainly,” she murmured.
If she’d been able to turn off that blush, he would never have guessed their kiss had affected her at all. As it was, he couldn’t really say whether it was actually the kiss or getting caught acting human that shook her up.
Well, he might not be piling in big bucks as a detective, but he sure knew how to go about solving that particular mystery.
Mitch decided not to tell Kick about the disk or the printouts he had made from it just yet. If Robin screwed up and got caught hacking into places she shouldn’t, or if not turning the information over was subsequently considered withholding or suppressing evidence, Mitch would take full responsibility, and Kick wouldn’t have to share the blame. And Mitch still thou
ght he should talk to Damien first.
He would give Robin her opportunity at cracking this. A few hours she had said. Then whatever she found or didn’t, they would give it up and let somebody else figure it out.
“What you got so far?” he asked Kick. “Any red dirt on her shoes?”
“Lab report’s not back.” Kick busied himself digging around in the fridge for something, then straightened with a container of dip and set it on the counter. He opened an overhead cabinet and took out a bag of chips.
“She didn’t do it,” Mitch assured him.
“You think somebody’s after her because she saw who did?”
“Maybe,” Mitch said. “Or that she might know something about what got Andrews killed. Could be something she doesn’t even know she knows.”
Kick shook his head. “That girl is yankin’ you around. You better go on home and let me take over here.”
Mitch saw he was dead serious. “Not a chance. She’s not guilty, Kick. I’d stake my badge on it.”
“Yeah, well, you have. And we know which part of your anatomy is making decisions, don’t we?” Kick said with a frowning glance at Mitch’s crotch. “Don’t let her mess with you. Loosen her up a little and get her to talking, but you keep your mind on business. And call me immediately with whatever info you get out of her. This is my case. Whatever she’s got, I want, and I want it yesterday!”
Mitch shifted, planting his hands on his hips. “Now who’d ever guess you’d been on the job for mere months?”
Kick grinned sheepishly and thumped the sack of chips. “Stuff it, okay? Just keep your ears open and your fly shut.” He headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I won’t be back tonight. You know where I’ll be.” Kick smiled suggestively. “Call me if anything turns up I should know about. If she tells you anything.”
Mitch leveled him with a look. He picked up the chips Kick had set out for him and nodded toward the door in a gesture of dismissal. “Thanks for the use of your place.”
“Mi casa es su casa,” Kick said. He saluted and disappeared out the back door into the garage.
“Okay,” Mitch muttered. “We’ll make ourselves at home.”
Later that night Robin booted up the PC in Kick Taylor’s home office. She felt uncomfortable using his personal computer since she hadn’t asked. “Are you sure he won’t mind? Maybe we’d better call him and ask,” she suggested again.
“It would serve him right, but no.”
“What do you mean?” She logged on, wondering why anyone would disable the requirement for using a password. That was the first line of defense. At least it was effective against casual curiosity. Just because a person lived alone did not mean his occasional guest might not get curious. She noted the programs visible on his desktop and wondered whether they were blinds like the ones on her computer, or whether his were for real.
“He’s at his girlfriend’s house,” Mitch explained. “Besides, if we ask, we’d have to say what we’re using it for.”
“Oh. Okay.” Well, it wasn’t as if she planned to violate the detective’s privacy or anything. She only wanted to get online. And she would be extremely careful not to leave any virtual tracks that might lead back here. Or to her own identity.
After a number of clicks, she was connected and into a database she frequented to check out potential clients before entering into contracts with them. What would Mitch, a detective, make of her resources? Robin wondered.
She entered one of the names from the list on the CD and the screen changed, filling with information on the man in question. “How the hell did you do that?” Mitch asked as if he hadn’t watched her every move while she did it.
Robin shrugged. “It’s perfectly legal. This is one I subscribe to. You want to print this?”
“Yeah, sure.” He sat back in the chair he had dragged over beside hers and was shaking his head in disbelief. “Can you get that much on all of them?”
“We’ll see. Read the names to me. That was the only one I could remember in full.”
For each man she pulled up a file giving current occupation, age, marital status, address, credit rating and other financial information.
“This is great,” Mitch commented as he riffled through the pages she had printed. “Is all of this current, you think?”
“I don’t know how current,” she replied. “Just a minute.” She entered another site and began searching further. “This one’s deceased,” she murmured.
“Dead? When?”
She pointed at the date, then entered another of the names. All were dead within the last three months. All except Somers.
“Well, damn,” Mitch muttered. “What should we make of that?”
Robin clicked a few more times to cover her tracks if anyone bothered to check who was checking. She then zipped right to another site, this one providing a few more details, including rather personal preferences most people would never publicize.
Other than a grunt of disbelief, Mitch made no sound as he read the collection of data she had pulled up on Somers and the others. When he had finished, he stared at Robin as if he had never seen her before. “This is more than we have in our files on Somers. I think we can safely assume who it is that wants the disk,” he said. “The question is Why? Any common interests there?”
Robin hit Print. “Not any that are apparent.”
“I can’t believe you found all this,” he said as he ran a finger down one of the pages. “No secret’s safe.”
“Even yours,” she told him as she tapped the top page on the stack for emphasis.
He drew his brows together and pursed his lips, obviously lost in thought for a minute. “Checked me out, have you?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. If you remember, I haven’t had access to a computer since we met, other than your sister’s.” His frown deepened. “And I won’t do it in the future,” she promised. “Your business is none of mine.”
“Go ahead,” he said with a lift of his chin. “They won’t have much, if anything, in there on me. I never bank, invest or shop online. Don’t trust it.”
Robin was tempted to show him. Her fingers hovered over the keys. No, that definitely would be a mistake.
“Go ahead or I’ll go nuts wondering,” he ordered. “That look on your face tells me you know something I don’t.”
She worried her bottom lip as she accessed another site and keyed in his name. Several Mitchell Wintons appeared, only one listed as living in Nashville. “There you are,” she said.
“Ha! See? Name, address, phone and e-mail addy. Big deal.” He had already gotten up from the chair and moved over to the sofa across Taylor’s office when, unable to resist, she highlighted his name and clicked. A full page of information popped up.
“Hmm. Moderate interest in antique pistols, devotee of Cajun cuisine and a marked preference for the writings of DeMille. You want your grandmother’s maiden name? Your current balance at the credit union? How much you owe MasterCard?”
He was back to her side in an instant. “What the hell… How did they get all that?”
She looked away from the screen before getting too caught up in his history. “You own credit cards. You do surf, even if you don’t buy online. And your financial institutions’ computers are vulnerable, more so than you—or they—believe. You’ve completed work applications, no doubt had at least one background inquiry.”
“Not on the Internet!” he argued.
“Doesn’t matter. Companies use their computers to file things. And they share, sometimes inadvertently. If I dig a bit more, I could discover your entire work history and any time your name has appeared in print for any reason. It’s all there for anyone who’s interested and knows their way around the Web.”
He had propped his hands on the edge of the desk and was leaning very near. His gaze left the monitor’s screen and locked on hers. “Are you? Interested?” he asked, his voice little more than a whisper.<
br />
Robin wanted to back away, but found she couldn’t. His face was so close, she could see the individual hairs in his ten-o’clock shadow, the fine lines that creased slightly at the corners of his eyes. Such fine eyes, clear and blue. Deep cobalt in this low light.
The scent of his aftershave, barely discernible, combined with his own subtle essence and beckoned her even closer. His lips were slightly open. Waiting as though he anticipated a kiss. She was not going to kiss him again. No. But she couldn’t seem to look away.
“Are you, Robin?” he asked, even more softly.
“Wh-what?” Her mind seemed blank, a slate waiting for chalk, a paper eager for pen. A heart anxious for…
“Interested?”
“Yes.” The word rushed out on a shuddering breath before she could catch it.
Mitch’s lips stretched into a smile. A gentle, happy smile she couldn’t help returning, even when she knew exactly where those smiling lips were heading.
They touched hers, a mere brush of warmth to the left, then a return path to the right, lingering only a second, a tantalizing, mind-stealing second. Robin lifted her lips to meet his more firmly, seeking that elusive connection just out of reach.
Suddenly he was kneeling on the floor beside her chair, his strong fingers sliding through her hair, his palms anchoring her head as his mouth—that wonderfully mobile, beautifully sculpted mouth—gave what she sought.
Breath rushed in as he released her slowly, staring into her eyes, looking as perplexed as she felt. His hands trailed down the sides of her neck, slid over her shoulders, down her arms to encompass the fists she had pressed to her middle. She opened her fingers, and he laced his between them.
“You’re making me crazy,” he said, his smile now hovering just out of sight.
Robin felt uncertain. Did he want her to apologize for it? To protest? To give him permission? “What do you want?” she whispered, desperate to know.
