24 Hours Bundle

by Jo Leigh

“I think I can arrange that.” And then she threw herself into his arms and kissed him for all she was worth.

  WHEN SHE WAS BAD…

  Cara Summers

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  To my fellow Blaze writer, Jo Leigh.

  When it comes to real-life romance heroines, you are my

  inspiration. Congratulations and happiness always!

  And special thanks to my cousins-in-law, Ron Sims

  and Gary Wilkie, for your inspiration, too.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Wednesday, February 11—9:30 p.m.

  IT WAS THE PERFECT night for a burglary.

  Pepper Rossi tried to push the paranoid thought away, but it continued to nag her as she peered through the French doors. The small balcony outside the Atwells’ penthouse suite was bathed in shadows. The moon, which had been bright and full an hour before during the preview party, was now trapped behind a batch of paralyzed clouds. In Pepper’s mind, the whole scene provided an excellent setting for a little second-story work.

  Her aunt Irene, the most immediate cause of her paranoia, was the queen of second-story work. As the star of a local reality show—Are You Safe?—Irene Rossi broke into the homes of prominent San Franciscans on a weekly basis. And Irene also had a motive for stealing the priceless Monet that Pepper was currently babysitting while the Atwells and their guests were attending a gala performance of the symphony.

  But Irene wouldn’t actually go so far as to steal a Monet, would she?

  A little voice in the back of Pepper’s mind shouted, Yes!

  Don’t panic, Pepper lectured herself as she stepped back from the first set of French doors and moved to check the next. So what if the queasy feeling in her stomach was warning her that disaster was imminent? She’d had these premonitions before, and they hadn’t always panned out.

  Just because her aunt had attended the Atwells’ preview party for the upcoming charity auction on Sunday night didn’t mean that she’d come to case the place. After all, most of the movers and shakers in San Francisco had been invited for a private viewing of the Monet that would be auctioned to benefit the new children’s wing at the hospital. The guest list had included Pepper’s father who was running for mayor in the fall election, and he’d brought his sister Irene as his guest. Simple as that.

  At the next set of French doors, Pepper tested the lock and peered out. Nothing. But she couldn’t quite stop worrying about her aunt. Over the years, Irene had been the only one of her Rossi relatives who’d kept in touch with her. There’d been birthday cards, surprise presents and letters, and she’d gotten pretty close to her aunt. That meant she was privy to all the details surrounding Irene’s forty-year star-crossed romance with ex-mobster Butch Castellano.

  Pepper was aware that during his time in prison, Butch had become a legitimate businessman and was now running a resort in the Caribbean, that he had a weakness for French Impressionist paintings, and that he’d reneged on his promise to allow Irene to join him after his release from prison. Butch’s excuse for breaking up with Irene was that he still didn’t think he was good enough for her.

  She also knew that Irene had taken his excuse literally and was determined to prove that she was bad enough for him.

  Would she do something as drastic as steal a priceless Monet? Pepper sent up a little prayer that her aunt wouldn’t be so foolish.

  Fighting off another wave of queasiness, she dashed into the bedroom. The Monet was still there resting on its easel. Feeling a little better, she crossed to the French doors and checked the lock. It held. She was not going to blow this job. This was her big chance to prove to her brothers that she was a competent PI. And she was. Hadn’t she received the highest grade in the PI training class she’d taken?

  The problem was that being a PI in a test-taking situation had turned out to be radically different than being a PI in the real world. She’d always been able to ace tests, but so far her career at Rossi Investigations, her brothers’ fledgling security firm, could best be described as hit and miss.

  And she could lay the blame for that solidly at the feet of Cole Buchanan. Fisting her hands on her hips, Pepper marched out of the bedroom. Cole was ruining everything. Why on earth had he moved to San Francisco and joined Rossi Investigations at the same time that she had? It wasn’t fair. Every time she thought about it she wanted to kick something.

  Since she’d paid a week’s salary for the high-heeled red shoes she was wearing, she resisted the urge.

  Instead, she imagined Cole as a rag doll and mentally stuck a pin into his arm. First off, he affected her in a way that no other man ever had. She was certain that she lost brain cells whenever he was near her, starting with the first time they’d ever met at one of her father’s weekly family dinners. She’d just arrived in San Francisco and had been anxious to make a good impression on the family she’d just found out she had and was just beginning to know. Everyone who attended Peter Rossi’s Sunday dinners was required to bring a dish they’d prepared, and she’d been holding hers, a pasta salad in a newly purchased glass bowl, when Cole Buchanan had walked into the kitchen.

  That’s when it had happened. It was just as if the man had put a spell on her. The very instant her eyes had met his, her mind had quite simply gone blank. All she’d been aware of was the strangest sensation—an electric jolt that had hit her right smack in her center and radiated through her whole system.

  The next thing she’d known, the pasta was lying at her feet with little bits of shattered glass sparkling through it. And that had been just the beginning of the disaster. When she’d knelt to clean up the mess, she’d gotten a shard of glass in her hand. Before she could even react, Cole had lifted her up, settled her on a counter and begun to administer first aid.

  If simply looking at him had jolted her system, having him hold her hand had nearly destroyed it. Close up, the man’s effect on her had increased to the point that she’d been tempted to kiss him—a man she hadn’t even met!

  Even now, she could recall that moment when his face had been so close to hers that she could see the color of his eyes, a fascinating mixture of gray and green. And she remembered exactly how his breath had felt on her lips, how that whisper of heat had sent flashes of fire along her nerve endings. And she also vividly remembered the hot coil of desire that had grown inside of her. All she would have had to do was lean a little bit forward and she could have tasted him. The desire to do that had bordered on desperation.

  And it still did. Mentally, she plunged a second pin into the rag doll’s other arm. Then she forced herself to recheck the French doors in the living room of the suite. Each time she was near Cole Buchanan, the strength of her desire to kiss the man had only increased. It had grown into an obsession. And she couldn’t seem to get away from him.

  Every time she did some field work, her brothers invariably sent Cole to check on her. The only reason he wasn’t here tonight was because Evan Atwell had assured her brothers that he was confident she could handle the Monet babysitting job by herself.

  And that was another thing that she could blame Cole for. He’d ruined her romantic life. Evan was such a nice man, and thanks to Cole she’d had to break off her relationship with him. She and Evan had dated for almost three months,
but she couldn’t in all conscience continue to see him when she felt the way she did about Cole. Even if she was determined never to act on her feelings.

  Mentally, she considered a spot for a third pin and decided on a leg and stabbed it in.

  Cole Buchanan was the last man on earth she should be attracted to. They were literally as different as night and day. Plus, he just happened to be her biggest nightmare come true. Cole was her brother Luke’s best friend from college and her brothers had hired him right after they’d hired her. She’d moved to San Francisco determined to prove to her newly discovered family that she could fit in and the person she had to compete against was a costume and mask short of being a super hero.

  He was an ex–CIA agent, and she was an ex–Philadelphia debutante. He was good with guns; her hand shook whenever she picked one up. Oh, she was great at the shooting range, but she didn’t think she would ever have the nerve to actually point her weapon at a real person. Cole was trained in hand-to-hand combat; she was enrolled in a karate class. The list went on and on.

  It simply wasn’t fair. Not only had he ruined her romantic life, but he also stood in the way of her goal of becoming a partner in her brothers’ firm. How could they possibly consider her for the position when they could have him?

  But in spite of the fact that she was about to stick another pin in him, if Cole Buchanan walked in right now, she’d want to kiss him.

  The sudden ringing of her cell phone had her jumping. She grabbed it out of her blazer, dropped it and managed to catch it before it hit the floor. Her heart sank when she saw it was Luke, her oldest brother.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Everything’s fine.” Except she was mentally obsessing about Cole Buchanan instead of keeping her mind on the Monet. Just to make sure, she ran back into the bedroom to check. The painting was still there on its easel.

  “You sure you can handle this alone?” he asked.

  She stiffened. “Evan thought that I could.”

  “Yeah, I know.” This comment was followed by an almost inaudible sigh. Pepper knew the tone of that sigh. She’d heard it often enough. It was the same kind of sigh her grandmother had made whenever she’d failed to live up to the responsibility of being a Pendleton.

  Thanks to her parents’ messy divorce when she was less than a year old, she’d grown up in Philadelphia in her grandmother Pendleton’s house, and she’d never so much as seen or talked to her brothers until eight months ago. She wouldn’t have even known they existed if her aunt Irene hadn’t told her in the letters they’d exchanged. When she’d pressed her grandmother, she’d learned her father had signed her away in the divorce settlement, agreeing not to contact her until her twenty-fifth birthday. He’d kept the boys; her mother had kept her.

  According to her grandmother, the Rossis simply hadn’t wanted her, and she was better off for it. She’d never fit in with them because she was a Pendleton. Her aunt Irene had claimed that her father had only agreed to the settlement because her mother had asked her father to on her death bed. Pepper suspected that the truth was somewhere in between.

  “It’s intermission, and I’m just checking in,” Luke was saying. What he didn’t say—and what she already knew—was that this was a high-profile job for Rossi Investigations. If they screwed up—if she screwed up—the news would be in all the papers, and that was not the kind of PR her brothers needed. “There are quite a few French doors in that suite. Not the best set-up when you’re guarding a priceless painting.”

  Pepper lifted her chin. “I am perfectly capable of handling this job.”

  “Okay, okay,” Luke said. “Wait a minute…” For a moment, Pepper could only hear muffled voices. Then Luke said, “Dad wants to know if Irene is there with you.”

  Pepper felt her stomach sink. “Isn’t she with you?”

  “She must be around,” Luke said. “Dad just hasn’t seen her for a while, and intermission is about over. The Stravinsky piece gave her a headache, and he thought she might have headed back to keep you company. You’ve got me on speed dial, right?”

  “You’re number one,” Pepper assured him, but she was already running toward the balcony doors in the bedroom. All of her earlier paranoia returned in a rush. One glance through the glass panes told her it was too dark to see a thing on the balcony. The clouds still blocked the full moon.

  “Better still, call Cole if you need backup.”

  Pepper frowned. “Why?”

  “He’s closer.” Luke chuckled. “The Stravinsky gave him a headache too, and he left to take a walk.”

  A suspicion formed in Pepper’s mind. Whirling, she raced from the bedroom and headed down the short corridor to the double doors of the suite. The symphony hall was only five blocks away from the hotel. Cole wouldn’t come back here to check on her, would he? One glance through the peephole confirmed that he had. Cole Buchanan stood leaning against the wall in the hallway, not ten feet away.

  A flood of emotions streamed through her. Resentment, jealousy, anxiety—all of those she’d learned to deal with on a daily basis. But there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to block her body’s instant response to him. Her pulse was racing, her body melting, as desire tightened hot and hard inside of her. Even worse, she could feel her brain cells coming unglued. She couldn’t even get a clear picture of that rag doll anymore.

  She certainly tried to analyze her reaction to him. She couldn’t deny that he was handsome—if you liked the James-Bond-on-a-scruffy-day type. She evidently did.

  But it wasn’t just his looks that drew her in. She’d decided that it must have something to do with his size. Whenever she was around him, he seemed to take up more than his fair share of space. Even now, she was aware of those broad shoulders, that long subtly muscled body. He had his arms crossed and her eyes were drawn to his wide-palmed hands and those strong, lean fingers. A tremor moved through her. Every time she saw those hands or pictured them in her mind, she thought about what they might feel like on her skin. Her knees melted.

  Dragging herself away from the peephole, she leaned against the wall for a moment. Would those hands move in that slow, easy way he walked—as if they had all the time in the world and intended to take it? Another tremor moved through her. She was getting very, very good at creating this fantasy, and it was getting easier and easier to slip into it.

  COLE BUCHANAN DRAGGED himself out of the little fantasy he’d been weaving in his mind and began to pace the hallway. Where Pepper Rossi was concerned, he’d lived on fantasy alone since before he’d even met her. His fascination with her had started the first time Luke Rossi had shown him a picture of her over six months ago. He’d made excuses for himself at the time, blaming the instant attraction on the fact that he was drawn to the whole Rossi family. He’d grown up in the foster care system, and despite that he’d lived with a lot of families, he’d never run into one like the Rossis. Luke had invited him home for that first Thanksgiving twelve years ago, and just like that, they’d welcomed him as if he’d been born a Rossi.

  But any thought that his interest in Pepper had more to do with her family than any real connection between them had vanished the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. His lips curved at the memory. He’d watched her walk into one of Peter Rossi’s Sunday gatherings, and he hadn’t hesitated to follow her into the kitchen to be alone with her. She’d looked into his eyes and he’d felt as if he’d been sucker-punched in the gut. For a moment, his mind had been wiped clean as a slate.

  No woman had ever affected him that way. And when she’d dropped that bowl of pasta, he’d had his first inkling that the chemistry between them was operating both ways. That suspicion had been confirmed while he’d finessed the sliver of glass out of the palm of her hand. She’d begun to tremble. He’d never made a woman tremble before by simply holding her hand. And the pulse at her throat had hammered so frantically that he’d almost kissed her right then and there.

  Not only hadn’t they been int
roduced, but she’d come with a date, Evan Atwell, who might have walked in on them at any moment. And that might not have been enough to stop him. Not even the idea that she was his best friend’s sister, and that making a move on her might jeopardize his relationship with the only real family he’d ever known, would have kept him from kissing her.

  What had stopped him cold was the sudden fear that if he tasted her even once, he might not be able to stop himself from having her. Right there in Peter Rossi’s kitchen.

  No other woman had ever tempted him that way. Only Pepper.

  Turning, Cole glanced at the door to the penthouse suite. That had been his primary reason for deciding to bide his time. If there was one thing he’d learned in life, it was that a man didn’t take a flying leap into unknown territory without checking it out and figuring all the angles first. Knowledge was key. So he’d spent some time learning about Pepper Rossi. It hadn’t been hard since her brothers had directed him to keep an eye on her.

  On the outside, everything about her was militarily neat yet feminine, from the cap of dark hair she wore in a spiky cut to the business suits she favored at the office. The only thing that jarred the image a bit were the ankle-breaking shoes she always wore. Tonight, she’d been wearing strappy red sandals.

  He’d never seen her in casual attire—not even at the family dinners her father hosted every Sunday. And he’d never seen her relax or laugh. Even around her family, she always seemed to be “on,” as if she was afraid that she would do something wrong. As if she was constantly keeping herself in check.

  He’d known about her long separation from her brothers and father and about her close relationship with her aunt Irene.