[Cutthroat Business 01.0 - 03.0] Boxed Set

by Jenna Bennett

  Marquita scowled. I hesitated. I probably should talk to Rafe. Mrs. Jenkins wasn’t in any kind of condition to understand about the paperwork I had brought, and it was none of Marquita’s business. Unless Rafe planned to marry her, but then she could damn well wait until after the ceremony to hear the details. “I suppose I’d better. Is he at work? When will he be back?” And by the way, what sort of work does he do...?

  “Oh, he ain’t gone. He’s just upstairs. You go on up, baby. He won’t mind.”

  She glanced over at the TV. Marquita’s face went stony, and I was too entertained by the whole thing to even try to resist temptation.

  “I don’t expect he will. I’ll see you later, Mrs. Jenkins. Nurse.” I smiled sweetly at the scowling Marquita. She watched me as I went up the stairs. I wriggled my fingers in a friendly wave, and she huffed and turned on her heel, waddling back to the kitchen table.

  It was anybody’s guess in which of the upstairs rooms Rafe was, so rather than walking from room to room in what was now a private residence, I stopped in the upstairs hallway and raised my voice. “Rafe?”

  “In here.” It came from a bedroom on the left, overlooking the overgrown side yard. I walked there and stuck my head in. And felt my jaw drop.

  Two weeks ago, there had been a moldy mattress full of rodents in here. Chunks of the ceiling had fallen onto the floor, and there had been debris in all the corners. Now, it was a different room. The mattress and the mice were gone, and in their place was a good quality four-poster bed and matching dresser. The bed and the top of the dresser were covered with newspaper, but I could see lilac-printed sheets through the gaps. The ceiling was freshly dry-walled — so fresh that the mud between the pieces hadn’t dried yet — and the walls were in the process of being painted a soft lavender.

  “Speechless?” Rafe’s voice was amused, and I pulled myself together and looked for him.

  And found him standing in the corner, paintbrush in hand, wearing a pair of threadbare jeans and a T-shirt that fit him to perfection. Both jeans and T-shirt were liberally sprinkled with paint-stains, not all of them lavender. When I didn’t say anything, he added, gesturing with the paintbrush, “Whaddaya think?”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said honestly. “You’ve done a great job. It looks like you might have had some experience doing this sort of thing.”

  I paused, hoping that maybe he’d let slip some information about having done this before.

  “I’ve got experience doing all sorts of things.” He grinned when he saw my expression, and added, “It’s my grandma’s room.”

  “I thought it must be. It doesn’t suit you, somehow.”

  “Good to know. Mine’s down the hall. Wanna see?” He winked.

  “I don’t think I’d better,” I said, fighting back a blush. I wanted to, sure — not because it was his, of course; just because I was curious to see what he was doing to it — but the idea of willingly stepping into Rafe’s bedroom with him didn’t seem smart. The old story about Goosy Loosy and Foxy Loxy came to mind. His eyes brightened with amusement.

  “You afraid I’m gonna throw you down on the bed and have my way with you? Don’t worry, darlin’. I ain’t so hard up that I have to force myself on anyone.”

  “I imagine you’re not,” I said sweetly. “I saw Marquita downstairs.”

  He turned away, balancing the paintbrush on the edge of the bucket. “She needed a job, we needed a nurse. That’s all. I told you before, ain’t nothing going on with Marquita and me.”

  “Yes, I remember hearing you say that. I actually just came by to give you this.” I handed him the envelope I’d gotten from the lawyer. “It’s the listing agreement for the house, cancelled by Walker, and all the other papers that your grandmother signed. The Milton House will get to keep the hundred thousand, but at least the house is yours again. Or your grandmother’s. Steven Puckett came through in a big way, bless his heart.”

  Rafe took the envelope, but didn’t open it. Instead he looked at me. “Looks like I owe you one.”

  I shook my head. “No, you don’t. You helped me burglarize Clarice’s locker and fetch Alexandra and intimidate Maurice, and you caught me when I fainted and bought me cheesecake and made sure I got home safe...”

  “That’s true. Maybe you owe me one instead.” He grinned.

  “One what?” Try as I might, I couldn’t help the nervous glance at the newspaper-covered four-poster. He wouldn’t really try to seduce me in his grandmother’s bed, would he...?

  He laughed. “Not that.”

  “What, then?” My heart began to thud uncomfortably fast and hard as he dropped the envelope on the dresser and took a step toward me.

  “Nothing too painful. Though I’ve earned a kiss, don’t you think?”

  “I... suppose.” After enumerating all the things he had done for me lately, I could hardly say anything else. Although I admit I was worried about Marquita coming upstairs and finding us in flagrante, as it were, and what she’d do to me.

  “Glad you agree. That mean you’ll stand still and enjoy it?”

  My eyes wavered. “I’ll... um... try.”

  “Good. Now just relax, darlin’. This ain’t gonna hurt a bit.”

  He tipped my chin up and leaned down. My knees buckled and my eyes rolled back in my head. From very far away, I heard a chuckle and felt a pair of arms settle around my body. A voice murmured in my ear. “Not that relaxed. Try to stay awake, darlin’. You don’t wanna miss nothing.”

  And I tried, I really did. The idea of being unconscious and completely at his mercy — and with a bed within easy reach, too! — was too dreadful to contemplate. But then his lips moved from my ear, across my cheek and over to close over mine, and the next second, everything went black. My last coherent thought was that if I got out of this room with my virtue and my sanity intact, I’d never let him get within touching distance ever again.

  About the Author

  New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Jenna Bennett (Jennie Bentley) writes the Do It Yourself home renovation mysteries for Berkley Prime Crime and the Savannah Martin real estate mysteries for her own gratification. She also writes a variety of romance for a change of pace.

  For more information, please visit Jenna’s website: www.JennaBennett.com

  A CUTTHROAT BUSINESS

  Savannah Martin Mystery #1

  * * *

  Copyright © 2010 Bente Gallagher

  All rights reserved.

  * * *

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Hot Property

  Savannah Martin Mystery #2

  When Savannah’s fellow Realtor and friend Lila Vaughn is robbed during an open house, Savannah rushes to the rescue with tea and sympathy, or at least a really good lunch and a shoulder to cry on.

  * * *

  However, Lila seems more peeved than distraught, and her main gripe is that the sexy robber who tied her to a kitchen chair—for her own good—didn’t follow her suggestion to tie her to the bed instead.

  * * *

  Lila’s description of the man fits Savannah’s old school-mate Rafael Collier to a T. Rafe has recently turned up in Savannah’s life again, and he isn’t above doing a little breaking and entering.

  * * *

  Metro Nashville Homicide Detective Tamara Gri
maldi is of the same opinion, and when Lila turns up dead, tied to her bed and strangled, Rafe becomes a suspect. Now Savannah must get busy finding the real murderer before Detective Grimaldi can arrest the wrong man.

  Chapter One

  The first open house robbery took place on the second Sunday in August, just at the time I was busy apprehending a murderer.

  Before I go any further, I guess I should make it clear that I’m not actually in the business of law enforcement. Walker Lamont was the first, and I sincerely hope the last, murderer I’ll encounter.

  My name is Savannah Martin, and what I am, is a Realtor. Walker was my boss. Up until the moment I happened to be standing next to him when he came face to face with someone who could put him in the wrong place at the wrong time, we’d had a very good relationship, and I’m sure he meant it sincerely when he apologized for having to kill me.

  But I digress. As I was pushing the business end of a lipstick into Walker’s back, trying to make him believe it was a gun, another Realtor – Kieran Greene with RE/MAX – was being gagged and tied to a chair on the other side of town. After he was safely trussed, four masked men proceeded to strip the house of anything of value and cart it off in a rented moving van, leaving Kieran sitting in the kitchen waiting to be rescued.

  The incident made the news, but was treated as sort of a sidebar to Walker’s arrest. Violence against Realtors, Part II. Poor Kieran’s ordeal was buried on page 4 of the Nashville Banner and received scant attention from anyone. It wasn’t until the next Sunday, when the same thing happened again, that the real estate community sat up and took notice.

  The first I heard of this second robbery was at the weekly staff meeting on Monday morning. With Walker in jail, Timothy Briggs had taken over as managing broker of Walker Lamont Realty, and he was the one who brought it up. “Before we talk about holding open houses next weekend,” he said, leaning back in Walker’s leather chair and folding his manicured hands across his flat stomach, “I guess we should discuss what happened yesterday. I assume you’ve all heard the news?”

  He looked around the table, his baby-blue eyes bright.

  I raised my hand. “I haven’t. What happened yesterday?”

  “Oh, Savannah, it was just awful!” Heidi Hoppenfeldt was busy chomping her way through the three dozen donuts Tim had brought in for us to share, and when she spoke, a fine spray of crumbs arched out of her mouth and landed on her ample bosom. She was on the other side of the table from me, so I wasn’t hit, but the people on either side of her leaned away.

  “What’s awful?” I said. And added, mentally, “apart from Heidi’s table manners.”

  Tim smirked. “Didn’t you catch the news last night, darling? My goodness, you must have had a busy day. It was on the five o’clock, six o’clock, nine o’clock and ten o’clock news!”

  “I was in Sweetwater this weekend,” I said. Sweetwater is my hometown, a small place an hour or so south of Nashville. My mother and my two siblings live there, along with their spouses and children, my aunt Regina, and various old friends and acquaintances. “I had dinner with a friend before I drove back, so I didn’t get home until after eleven. And I didn’t listen to the radio in the car.”

  Tim smacked his lips appreciatively. “And how is the scrumptious Mr. Collier?”

  A few of the girls and the other (gay) guys tittered. Tim has an outspoken and unrequited crush on Rafael Collier, who’s an old acquaintance of mine, also from Sweetwater. Rafe isn’t gay – not by any stretch of the imagination – but Tim likes to dream.

  “He’s fine,” I said repressively.

  “He certainly is,” Tim agreed, with a saucy grin.

  I rolled my eyes. “You know what I mean. I haven’t seen him for a few days, but he seemed all right on Thursday. And we’re not dating.”

  “You were dating last weekend at Fidelio’s,” Tim pointed out. A whisper, like a breath of wind through stiff grass, spread around the table. Fidelio’s is one of the nicest (and most expensive) restaurants in Nashville; the sort of place where country music stars dine and normal people can only afford to go on special occasions. It’s not the kind of place one takes a casual acquaintance, unless one has serious designs on her. Which Rafe does. (He wants to sleep with me. And he hasn’t made any secret of it, so I don’t see why I should.) But if he had thought that wining and dining me at Fidelio’s would make me give in to his predatory charms, he must have been disappointed. He didn’t get so much as a goodnight kiss when he brought me home, although I’d wager that my near-faint when he suggested it may have been almost as gratifying to his undeniable ego.

  “It was a business dinner,” I said firmly. “And it’s none of your concern. Yesterday I had dinner with someone else. Someone you haven’t met.”

  “You get around, don’t you, darling?” Tim smirked.

  I narrowed my eyes. Tim added, “Well, since you missed the news... There was another open house robbery yesterday.”

  I blinked. “Like the one last week? When the owners came home and found their Realtor bound and gagged in the kitchen?”

  Tim nodded. “Poor Kieran. He’ll never be the same.” He clicked his tongue sympathetically and then brightened. “This time the Realtor was Lila Vaughn, with Worthington Properties.”

  I must have made a noise, for he added, “Do you know her?”

  I nodded. “I took real estate classes with Lila Vaughn. We got together for lunch less than two weeks ago.” Just after the ordeal with Walker, in fact. She’d wanted to hear the scoop.

  “I saw her on the news yesterday,” Heidi mumbled, spraying another shower of crumbs across the table. The donut box was slowly emptying out.

  “They interviewed her?” That sounded like Lila. She was an aggressive go-getter, willing to do pretty much whatever it took to get ahead, and she probably considered the news coverage free advertising. I could easily see her pushing through any fear or discomfort she was feeling to get her face on TV. She’d exhorted me to do the same thing last time we spoke, and to take advantage of the media circus surrounding Walker’s arrest.

  Heidi nodded. “Black girl, pretty, with long, curly hair.”

  “That’s her. What happened?” I looked around the table.

  “The same thing as last time,” Tim said. “Just before the open house was over, a group of men showed up. They tied Lila to a chair and spent twenty or thirty minutes carrying everything of value out of the house. Electronics, jewelry, rugs, paintings. The house was full and they got it all.”

  “Was Lila hurt?”

  Tim shrugged. “The news didn’t say. The owners found her when they came home later.”

  “Gosh,” I said, “she must have been terrified.”

  We all thought about Lila’s ordeal and – I’m sure – thanked God it had happened to her and not to us.

  “In light of all this,” Tim broke the silence, “those of you with open houses scheduled for this weekend may want to take some extra precautions. Get a friend to come with you so you don’t have to be alone. Keep the doors locked between visitors, or stay on the porch or outside in the yard where people can see you. Arrange to call a friend every fifteen minutes. You know, all the usual things.”

  “The same things my daddy told me when I was sixteen and started dating,” one of the women said with a grin.

  Tim nodded. “And that reminds me... Savannah, I can usually count on you to host an open house for me, but if you’d rather not, under the circumstances...” He let the sentence trail off suggestively. I grimaced. At the last open house I hosted, someone had tried to kill me, which didn’t make me particularly eager to try again. Until the open house robbers were caught, I’d just as soon not tempt fate.

  However, I couldn’t in good conscience say no. Tim was, for all intents and purposes, my boss, now that Walker was languishing in jail, and although he couldn’t really order me to do anything – like all Realtors, I’m an independent contractor and responsible only to myself – I didn’t think
it would go over very well to refuse. In my roughly eight weeks on the job, I hadn’t brought in so much as a dime in commissions.

  “Sure. I’m happy to help.” I don’t think I sounded happy, but I got the words out.

  “Excellent.” Tim showed all his capped teeth in a blinding smile. The conversation went on to the houses he and the others wanted to hold open next weekend, and I tuned out while I let my mind wander.

  Poor Lila, what a horrible thing to have happen. She wasn’t the most delicate of women, bless her heart – not by a long shot – but still, surely something like this would be enough to put the wind up anyone. I’d had to deal with some scary stuff myself in the past few weeks, and I was becoming quite an expert on heart-stopping terror. I should definitely give her a call to commiserate, once the meeting was over. If I scraped the bottom of my purse, I could come up with enough change to pay for lunch.

  “Does that sound OK, Savannah?” Tim’s voice said. I nodded vaguely. “I’ll put you down for that, then. Thank you.”

  “No problem.” I had no idea what I’d just agreed to do, but I wasn’t willing to admit I hadn’t been paying attention by asking him to repeat it. I’d figure it out later.

  Tim giggled. “If you’re worried, maybe you should ask Mr. Collier to keep you company. He looks like he’d be able to handle any number of robbers.”

  Rafe would be more likely to be aiding and abetting them, but I didn’t say so. “I’ll keep the suggestion in mind,” I said instead, cooly.

  “Do that, darling. And if you don’t, maybe I’ll ask him to guard my body instead.” Tim tittered.

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be surprised if you find yourself tied to a chair, in that case.”

  “Darling!” Tim bleated, seemingly overcome with emotion. He fanned himself with a limp hand as the rest of the room laughed. I blushed.