His Hot Number

by Shannon Hollis

  “Transaction complete,” Coop said helpfully.

  “Hey, I don’t think—” Farley started to say, leaning toward the laptop, but Arroyo overrode him.

  “Or should I refer to you as Investigator Black of the California Law Enforcement Unit?”

  The words, chipped out of ice, were no sooner out of his mouth than the door banged inward and half a dozen people belonging to an alphabet soup of state and federal agencies exploded into the room.

  THE LAST THING KELLAN HEARD before he was hustled out of the room by his security team was two DEA guys duking it out with the INS over who actually got custody of Arroyo. He’d put his life on hold for six months to roam the streets as Dean Wilcox, whose only goal had been to bring down Rick O’Reilly and, with him, the famous El Peligroso. Funny how he didn’t care right now who got the credit and who got to fill out the paperwork.

  All he cared about was reaching Linn, and the security team charged with his safety didn’t seem to get that. While Control dished out staccato commands in his ear, directing each arm of the operation, he tried to get a word in edgewise. All he needed was ten minutes. Just ten minutes, and then he’d vacate the site like a good investigator.

  Finally there was nothing left to do but pull rank. A minute later Kellan ducked through the hotel’s massive, stainless-steel kitchen and skidded out onto the loading dock.

  “Kell.” Danny Kowalski was standing on the hydraulic tailgate of the winery truck. “Over here.”

  Around him, the team was cleaning up. A guy struggled under a CLEU agent on the far side of the dock, amid toppled bundles of newspapers. Someone else had a guy in a dark jacket up against the door. He leaped into the back of the winery truck.

  “Where’s Linn?” he demanded.

  “Right here.”

  He heard her, but he couldn’t see her. All he saw were a pair of men’s boots sticking out from behind a pile of crates.

  “Are you okay?” He jumped another crate and landed beside the boots, then gawked down at the floor.

  Rick O’Reilly was out cold, facedown on the wet metal, and Linn sat on his butt. She took his unresisting arm and snapped the second handcuff around his wrist.

  “I’d have to say I’ve never been better,” she said with satisfaction. “There. Control, loading dock secure. We’re coming in.” She glanced at Danny and Kellan. “Why don’t you two see if you can get him into a vehicle?”

  She was all right. O’Reilly had obviously tried something on her, but she’d won. “Did you do this?”

  Danny picked up O’Reilly’s feet and gestured for Kellan to do the same with the guy’s shoulders. He must have weighed two hundred pounds—unconscious, it seemed like three.

  “She kneed him in the balls and coldcocked him with a bottle of wine,” Danny grunted. They hefted O’Reilly off the tailgate and into the nearest unmarked vehicle. “Get out the whip and chair. That woman scares me.”

  Kellan grinned. That was his girl. “No kidding.”

  “Doesn’t she scare you?”

  Kellan glanced over his shoulder, where Linn was giving instructions about the disposition of the truck and its cargo, with one finger on the transmitter in her ear as if it were talking at the same time.

  “I like a woman who kicks butt and takes names.”

  Danny rolled his eyes. “Watch yourself. The next name she takes might be yours.”

  Linn jumped down from the tailgate and walked toward them, her black suede jeans hugging her hips and thighs, her jacket riding easily on her shoulders. Kellan’s heart jerked in his chest when she smiled as though he was the one person on earth she most wanted to see.

  “That’s the plan, Danny,” he said softly. “That is definitely the plan.”

  16

  THE DRIVE DOWN Highway 101 to Linn’s San Mateo condo took about ten minutes as opposed to the usual twenty or twenty-five. There was no one on the road at this time of night, and Kellan blew the carbon out of Victor-21’s high-performance engine like it had never been blown before.

  Before he’d signed his equipment back in at the office, he’d learned from Control that Linn hadn’t yet done so and she still had preliminary reports to finish.

  Reports could wait. As far as he was concerned, he and Linn couldn’t.

  He was waiting on the front steps of her condo, listening to the birds wake up in the crepe myrtle across the road when the garage door rolled up and her little SUV came around the corner and parked inside.

  Instead of going through the house, she came outside and walked up the steps to meet him. Her eyes were somber, with the pinched look of sleep deprivation. Her skin looked fragile, or maybe it was just that its normal color had faded under all the stress and exhaustion of the night.

  Without a word he took her in his arms. One hand caressed her shoulder blades, her ribs, slid down to her hip. Taking inventory. Making sure everything was there and she was all right.

  “This has been the longest night of my life,” he said at last.

  In a nearby tree, a bird let loose with a piercing trill, and they both winced.

  “Sun’s coming up,” she said. “Let’s go in.”

  LINN TOSSED HER JACKET and purse on the hall table. What she wanted to do was fold herself into Kellan’s arms and let herself realize that it was really over—or as over as it was going to get. Arroyo would be extradited and then she’d have a whole bunch of other things to worry about.

  But right now she couldn’t think that far into the future. Things weren’t settled between herself and Kellan, and after tonight, she was taking no more chances. They hadn’t been able to communicate during the worst moments, and she wasn’t going to let another opportunity go by.

  “Do you want a cup of coffee or something?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Juice? Breakfast?”

  “No.” He caught her around the waist. “I want to kiss you, take you into the bedroom, look at you for a while, kiss you again and make love to you.”

  Linn smiled up at him. “Can you be more specific?”

  It never failed to amaze her how fearless he was with words. But she was learning to be just as fearless with actions, so she did what she’d been wanting to do for hours. His big hands cradled her back, and she rubbed her cheek on his shoulder, feeling the heat and strength of his muscles under the pale-blue dress shirt he still wore. He must have left the suit jacket in his car.

  “I like a man who knows what he wants,” she murmured.

  “There’s more on the list. Want to hear it?”

  “Can I do that lying down?”

  “Absolutely.”

  She took his hand and led him into her bedroom.

  “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in here,” he said, looking around him with interest. “Usually we don’t get any farther than the couch. Nice parrots.”

  “That’s a parrot and a chicken.”

  “Right. You told me that. Is that one of your mom’s paintings?”

  “The mate to the one in the living room. This one’s called Star Gazer.”

  He tilted his head. “Those are stars?”

  “Never mind the art. We can talk about it later. Take your shirt off.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She watched him pull the knot out of his tie and then slide the buttons through their holes one by one, revealing his chest a little at a time until the tie hung down on either side of the open placket. He might be in the advanced stages of exhaustion, but he was still the sexiest thing she’d ever laid eyes on.

  He shrugged out of the shirt and she took a long breath of satisfaction.

  “What?” he said.

  “You. All I want to look at is you.”

  “I guess that makes us even. Much as I like those leather pants, I’m not sure I want to get into bed with them. Take ’em off.”

  “These are suede, I’ll have you know.” She unzipped them and brushed regretfully at the wine stain on the right thigh. “Not the b
est fashion choice for crawling around in the backs of trucks, I discovered.”

  He leaned back on the pillows. “It kind of went with the theme—you know, the woman in leather beating up the bad guy. An improvement on the red dress. Much more you.”

  “Great,” she grumbled as she pulled the red tank top over her head. “I can just imagine what the team will make of that.” She tossed the tank top on the chair by the window and crawled onto the coverlet next to him.

  “The team thinks the same as I do,” he murmured into her hair.

  “What, that you need a whip and a chair to make love to me?” Intellectually she knew that this was the kind of backhanded compliment male investigators paid. Half mocking, half admiring, sometimes insulting. She should be used to it, but somehow she never quite managed.

  She thought he might chuckle, but he didn’t. “You don’t miss much.”

  “I have ears.”

  Gently he pulled a tiny piece of adhesive from her skin, just beneath her bra. She must have missed it when she was peeling out of the transmitter earlier. He touched the reddened spot. “Did that hurt?”

  “No.”

  He continued softly, “The good thing about it is the guys are too intimidated to make a pass at you. Which leaves the field clear for me.”

  “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that.”

  “Do you have to keep your underwear on?”

  “Yours is still on,” she pointed out.

  He stripped it off and tossed it on the floor, then watched her release the front catch of her red lace bra. He lifted the narrow straps off her shoulders with a finger and trailed it down her arm, as if tracing her bones.

  “What would you think if I wrote the corporal’s exam and transferred? I was thinking about organized crime or maybe the serial crimes unit.”

  She pushed up on one elbow in astonishment, and when his gaze didn’t so much as flicker away from her own, she knew he had to be serious.

  “But you love narcotics,” was all she could think of to say. “You’re so good at it.”

  “I’m so tired of it,” he corrected her. “I’ve been doing it for three years, and this last six months has burned me out in a bad way. Yeah, I’m good at it, but so are you. So is Danny. Coop I’m not so sure of. I think his heart is in homicide, but he sticks here because he thinks asking for a transfer would be letting the team down. If I do it first, that frees him up.” He paused. “Most important, it frees us.”

  She hardly dared ask, but she had to. If he could tell her exactly what he wanted, then she could, too. “Frees us to…?”

  “To do this.” He kissed her, softly, tenderly. “To stop sneaking around. To come out of the closet, as it were.”

  Because he would no longer be her boss. He would move on and leave the field clear for her own path to success.

  To cover up her emotion, she quipped, “To tell Coop he won his bet?”

  “You heard about that, too?” Then the crinkles around his eyes smoothed out, and he grew serious. “What do you think? Should I go for it?”

  She knew what he was really asking, because it could only mean one thing. “You’re thinking long-term, aren’t you? For the two of us?”

  He grinned. “You sound like a business proposal, but that’s so you.”

  A business proposal? She’d show him a proposal. Her lashes drooped and she allowed a sultry pout to curve her lips. When he blinked, she knew she had his complete attention.

  “I’m not thinking of business at all, darling. I’m thinking in terms of pleasure. Of fabulous sex. Of moving your king-size bed in here so you can look at my Mexican chicken every morning. I want you around full-time. I love you.” She might have started off with Caroline’s accent, but she said the final words as Linn.

  Kellan cradled her face in one hand, his fingers soft on her skin.

  “I’ve built a career on making deals,” he said, smiling into her eyes, “but that’s the best one I’ve ever heard.”

  His mouth came down on hers, and she forgot about proposals and propositions and everything but the way her desire flared up to meet his, the way her body curved to welcome his hands, the way she melted inside when he touched her.

  And then she couldn’t think at all.

  “INVESTIGATOR NICHOLS, would you come in here, please?”

  Linn looked up from the paperwork that lay scattered like unraked leaves all over the surface of her desk.

  “Me, sir?” What had she done now, besides not get all these blasted forms filled out fast enough? Form 632—Incident Report. Form 632B—Exhibit List. Form 715—Felony Charge Report. Form 1470—

  “Now, Investigator. If you don’t mind.”

  “Right, sir. Sorry.”

  Linn followed Lieutenant Bryan into his office and halted on the threshold. Kellan sat in one of the two chairs in front of the desk, and smiled at her as Bryan sat in his big leather upholstered chair that he’d had brought in from a local furniture company on his own nickel.

  Bryan folded his hands on the blotter and looked them over. “Good work on Arroyo, you two.”

  “Thanks, sir,” Kellan said. “Any word?”

  “The DEA is being close-lipped as usual, but rumor has it that they’re going to extradite.”

  Kellan slapped the arm of his chair. “They can’t do that! We’ve got him on felony importing, trafficking, fraud, you name it. I want to face that guy in court.”

  “Yeah, well, apparently the Colombian government is kicking up such a fuss that the governor is giving him back to them.”

  “We know and they know that he’s got rich friends in the junta,” Linn said. “The fuss is probably a smoke screen to set him free so he can go on doing business.”

  “Probably. The DEA is having a thing or two to say about it as we speak. But that’s out of our hands. What’s in our hands is this memo I have here from Internal Affairs.”

  Linn’s stomach plunged, and her fingers turned icy cold.

  “Saying what?” Kellan asked calmly, as if he could care less.

  “Offering me a couple of suggestions on how I can run my shop.”

  Kellan and Linn sat in silence, waiting.

  “Apparently they’re concerned about the possibility of fraternization among the ranks. Improper behavior. Distraction.”

  “What evidence do they have for that, sir?” Linn asked through dry lips. Here it was. The end of her very bright but brief career with CLEU. After this, even Santa Rita PD would find it most entertaining when her application for re-employment came across the desk.

  “They don’t have any evidence,” Bryan replied. If he’d been a smoking man, Linn was sure, he’d have been chewing his cigar. “They seem to think that just because I have a female investigator, I need to be vigilant about the behavior of my troops on State time.” He held up the memo and glared at it. “Of course, nobody comes out and says so directly. It’s all a bunch of bullshit about EEOC compliance and the harassment policy and the empowerment of underrepresented demographics. That would be you.” He glanced at Linn over the top of the paper.

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “So to avoid future problems of this sort, it’s incumbent upon me to act.”

  Oh, God. She was going to be fired. She, the underrepresented demographic, had not only slept with Kellan Black, she’d admitted she was in love with him and proposed they live together. Now it was all over. The talk had spread outside the team to the other floors, and she was going to take the consequences.

  “Investigator Black, let me be the first to congratulate you.”

  Kellan glanced at Linn, his eyes wide and confused. “On what, sir?”

  “On your promotion from team lead to corporal. If you want it, that is.” Bryan pulled a thicker sheet of paper—they had better stationery on the executive floor—from a file and handed it to him. “These are your test scores. You’ve been on the streets a long time, so it would be a big change for you if you decide to take it. Corporal isn’t
a total desk job, but there’s enough time in a chair to make your butt as flat as mine.”

  “Thanks, sir.” Kellan stared at the paper. “Geez. Ninety-two percent. How do you like that?”

  The lieutenant turned to Linn. “Investigator Nichols, I’ve put in to have your probation period terminated.”

  For a moment Linn couldn’t believe she’d heard the words. “Terminated, sir?” That was just like a male-dominated profession. Get a memo from Internal Affairs, get spooked, promote the guy and fire the woman.

  Well, fine. She’d go to the EEOC and—

  “Yes,” Bryan confirmed. “Anybody who can take down Rick O’Reilly single-handed—with or without abusing alcohol—deserves full officer status, retroactive to the date of the arrest in July. With commensurate pay, of course.”

  Kellan grinned at her in a way that told her he’d had something to do with this. “I can’t believe you tried to open a fifty-dollar bottle of merlot on Tricky Ricky’s head. That’s alcohol abuse in the extreme.”

  “Thanks,” Linn managed. She would not cry. Absolutely not. “To both of you.”

  “Congratulations, Nichols, and welcome to the team. Black, take a little time to think about accepting your stripes. I just need to know your decision by Wednesday, so they get your rank right when I put in your names for commendations.”

  Linn sat back in the chair, feeling a little winded. There was just no end to all the surprises.

  Bryan gazed from one to the other. “Whether we get to keep him or not, nailing Arroyo was a good piece of work. Creative, effective teamwork. You two put it on the line and succeeded. So I felt commendations were the least I could do. The rest of your careers are up to you.” He pushed his chair back and stood, reaching over the desk to shake their hands. “Now, get out of here and go do something different and interesting. Like work.” Bryan waved them out, but Linn could swear she saw a grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

  Kellan walked her back to her cubicle. Out of the corner of her eye, Linn saw the heads of her teammates bobbing up and down over the tops of the cubes.

  Uh-oh.

  Her sense of self-preservation went on full alert. Even so, she wasn’t quite prepared when she got back to her desk and saw what was sitting on her pile of paperwork.