Road to Temptation

by Terra Little

  Dammit.

  Resigned to her temporary fate, Elise emerged from her bedroom ten minutes later, ready to get the show on the road. She found Olivia and Broderick in the study, sitting close together, with their heads bent even closer and their voices hushed. “I’m ready if you are,” she announced, interrupting their nearly nose-to-nose exchange. Their heads flew up guiltily, as if they’d been caught sharing government secrets. Trying not to scowl, Elise slung her tote strap over her shoulder and looked from one face to the other. She wasn’t jealous. Really, she wasn’t. But, damn, did Olivia ever turn it off? “Shall we go?” she asked, glancing at her watch meaningfully and then pinning Broderick with another look. He rose from the couch slowly, smirking. Was he really smirking?

  “Of course. After you.”

  * * *

  “Truth or dare?”

  She turned away from the passenger-side window and looked at him like she was surprised to see him sitting in the driver’s seat. “What?”

  “I said, truth or dare?”

  It was almost ten o’clock at night, and they’d been driving in complete silence for an hour. A few miles back, at around the halfway point, the Hummer’s GPS navigation system had routed them away from the interstate and onto an isolated stretch of paved service road that weaved through several miles of pitch-black farmland. It would eventually lead to a rural road in Jefferson County, and, shortly afterward, they would enter Jefferson City limits via a small residential community on the south end of town. But not for at least another three thousand six hundred seconds, which, in Broderick’s estimation, was just about enough time for the spicy, exotic fragrance clinging to Elise’s skin to finish driving him crazy.

  Every time he inhaled, he was transported back in time to a mission in Bangkok, to a smoky massage den in the red-light district, and a 3:00 a.m. curfew that he’d taken his punishment for missing with a sleepy, satisfied smile. Every exhale was an irritating little reminder that it had been five months since he’d known anything close to that kind of satisfaction.

  Something had to be done and, unfortunately, Truth or Dare? was the first PG-rated solution that came to mind. It wasn’t the best idea that he’d ever come up with but a distraction was in order and at least this one would end the ridiculous silence between them. Or not, he thought as the light cast by the dashboard console illuminated the doubtful smirk on her face.

  “I’m not playing a silly game with you, Mr. Cannon.”

  He bit down on a smirk of his own and cocked a brow. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid.”

  “No, I’m not afraid and I’m not ten, either, so your peer-pressure tactics won’t work on me.”

  He glanced over at her and then took his eyes to the rearview mirror. “You sure about that?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Then prove it,” he challenged, catching her eyes for one tense second and then winking at her. “Play with me.”

  “No.” Crossing her arms underneath her breasts, she shifted in her seat until her both her knees and her nose were pointed toward the passenger-side window. She looked like a proper nineteenth-century schoolmarm, except that he was 99 percent sure that she wasn’t wearing any panties underneath her skintight jeans, and, if he stood over her at just the right angle, he could see down the front of her sweater. Her breasts were freckled, too, and bubbling out of the top of her bra in a way that was anything but proper.

  “Come on, Elise,” he cajoled playfully. “Help me out here. I’m starting to feel a little restless and I could use a distraction right now. So play with me.” He saw her hesitate and, sensing that he had the advantage, pressed a little harder. “Come on...you know you want to.” She rolled her eyes at him and cracked a smile.

  “All right, fiiine,” she said, dragging the word out over four irritated syllables before ending on a hard n. “But I’m warning you, I’m never going to choose dare, so don’t even waste your time going there.”

  “Fine,” Broderick parroted, making her giggle. “Same rules here, though. If you aren’t accepting dares, then neither am I. But,” he added, putting up a finger to stall her when she opened her mouth to respond, “to compensate for the loss of dare privileges, I have to insist that all truth responses be completely and totally honest. No bullshitting to get out of giving straight answers allowed.”

  “Agreed.” She shifted in her seat again. Pointing her knees in his direction this time, she crossed her legs, leaned into the armrest and propped her chin on her fist. “Let’s go then,” she said, bouncing a foot in the air. “I’ll go first. You’ve probably already guessed by now but, just to be clear, I choose truth.”

  “Truth it is. Why don’t we start with where you went to college and what your major was?”

  “Gee, you’re a real risk taker, aren’t you?”

  “See? You’re already breaking the rules. Just answer the question, please.”

  “Whatever. I went to Northwestern and I majored in pre-law.” He didn’t miss the subtle sniff of superiority in her voice. Northwestern was a good school, a damn good school, and she knew it. “And I graduated in the top five percent of my class, in case that was your next question.”

  “It wasn’t. How does someone who graduated from Northwestern in the top five percent of her class end up calling herself an investigations consultant instead of an attorney?”

  “You make it sound like a step down.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s not. I may not spend my days and nights huddled in muddy trenches, wallowing in my own filth and dodging land mines, like you, but my work is still very satisfying.”

  He wasn’t the least bit offended. “So, you’re saying that chasing around cheating husbands is more satisfying than taking them to the cleaners in a court of law?”

  She caught him off guard with a deep, throaty laugh that put every nerve in his body on full alert. “You know, for someone who’s supposed to be so smart—didn’t I read somewhere that you graduated from high school when you were sixteen?—you seem awfully misinformed.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “You did a background check on me?”

  She quirked a brow. “You didn’t do one on me?”

  After a second, he shrugged. “Yeah, I did. While you were packing, I did a quick check to see if you had a criminal background,” Broderick admitted after a few seconds of holding her lovely gaze. “But, unfortunately, I couldn’t dig up anything significant on Carrington Consulting in the short time that I had to look, and I was wondering if that was because there’s nothing much to find.”

  “Hardly. Carrington Consulting caters to a very select clientele, so discretion is crucial to the success of most of the cases we take on. More often than not, they involve missing persons, high-profile circumstances and wealthy families who would prefer to keep their dirty laundry private, so broadcasting what we do and who we do it for is definitely not the objective. Sometimes we’re able to make problems disappear without having to involve law enforcement, but situations like those tend to be the exception. As a general rule, we do what we do, and then we fade into the background and let law enforcement take all of the credit for it.”

  “Give me a ‘for example.’”

  “What?”

  “I said, give me a ‘for example.’ It’s just the two of us here. Your secrets are safe with me, so give me a ‘for example.’”

  “You want me to name a case that Carrington Consulting handled but that law enforcement took the credit for?” He nodded and she looked thoughtful. “Okay, um...the story out of Virginia, the one where the teenage girl wandered into a police station early one morning, after having been missing for several months. Do you recall that case?”

  “Yeah, I do. She told police that she’d been kidnapped and forced into prostitution by a man she met online. She said that she was o
nly able to escape after the house they were holed-up in was burglarized. The perps found her in a basement bedroom and let her go.”

  “There was a total of six underage girls being imprisoned in that house when Olivia and I sent our associates inside to contain the situation and retrieve the girl we’d been hired to find. She was the one they released. The other five were ‘discovered’—” she paused to put up air quotes “—safe and sound by police when they raided the house a few minutes later, acting on an anonymous tip, of course.”

  “Of course. They found the two guys who ran the house bound and gagged in a utility closet.” He slid her a look and chuckled. “Nice touch.” They shared a smile. “Give me another ‘for example.’” He liked the sound of her voice.

  “The Michelson scandal.”

  “The guy who swindled people out of millions with insurance scams and disappeared,” he said, nodding.

  “That’s the one. He’s in prison now because of us.”

  “I’m impressed,” Broderick said, meaning it. Michelson had almost managed to fall off the face of the earth. “I imagine it must be hard, living with never being able to take credit for your work.”

  Her gaze skipped away from his. “You’d be surprised at what people can live with, Mr. Cannon. Besides, we’re paid very well for the services we provide and that’s always a plus. Which brings me back to my point...”

  “Which is?”

  “That my time is much too valuable to waste chasing sex-starved men who can’t keep it zipped up and consoling the heart-broken women who can’t live without them. If you ask me, the society we live in is way too obsessed with sex. Thank God I’m not.”

  “Wow,” Broderick ventured carefully as he leaned forward and pressed a button on the dashboard. “Back to the point, indeed. That was a passionate little speech you just gave. You must really hate sex.” A built-in monitor lit up, displaying an interactive map of Jefferson City and its surrounding counties. Cannon Corp had attached an electronic shadow to Meagan’s cell phone several hours ago and, right now, it was tracking her physical location and marking the geographical coordinates with a flashing red dot on the mobile computer screen. He was as relieved to see that her location hadn’t changed as he was to learn that, as of an hour ago, she’d done them all a favor and stopped posting to her various social media accounts. No new posts meant no new embarrassing snapshots going viral and no new rambling, unintelligible status updates that would have to be explained away later. There were enough of those floating around already.

  He toggled to a second screen to check for status updates on his other case. Seeing none, he dimmed the monitor and sat back. He had dispatched field agents to Albuquerque as soon as the lead had come in this morning to evaluate its validity and report back. That was over twelve hours ago. There should’ve been something to report by now. He’d sent two of his best men, and, in the back of his mind, he knew that if there was something to report, they would, but the waiting was starting to work his nerves. If there was any consolation to be had in the entire situation, it was the fact that had he followed his first instinct and gone after the lead himself, he would have missed the opportunity to encounter and eventually seduce Elise Carrington.

  And that would’ve been a completely different kind of damn shame.

  “How did you manage to get that from what I said? I’ve never had any problems with sex.”

  “But you think it’s highly overrated.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He thought about it for a second, then shook his head. “No, it’s not and anyone who thinks that is insane.”

  “That’s exactly what I’d expect a man to say. Whose turn is it now? Mine?”

  “I think so.”

  The GPS system’s automated narrator spoke up just then. “In three hundred feet, turn right onto Highway J.” He switched on the turn signal and prepared to follow directions.

  “I choose truth.”

  “All right, my question for you is, why are men so obsessed with sex?”

  Broderick glanced over at her and took in the confused expression on her face before slowing to a stop, turning right onto Highway J and then merging with eastbound traffic. “I’ve known plenty of women who enjoy sex just as much as men do. Trust me, it’s not just a male thing.”

  “Oh? Exactly how many women have you known, Mr. Cannon?”

  He glanced at her again and collided with her steady, incriminating gaze. A chuckle rumbled in his throat. One day soon they were going to break the nearest bed clean in two, he was convinced of it. But until then... “I’m sorry, is it your turn again, because I don’t think it is?”

  “It’s not, but I’d still like an answer, please.”

  “I bet you would, Miss Carrington, but a gentleman never kisses and tells. Besides, it’s no longer your turn, it’s mine. Truth or dare?”

  “You already know my choice.”

  “Okay, truth. How many lovers have you had?”

  She gaped at him. He didn’t miss the fact that her face was so flushed that it was practically glowing in the dark. “That’s not fair! You can’t refuse to answer a question and then ask me the same question and expect an answer.”

  “I can and I just did. Tell you what, why don’t you take a few minutes to double-check your math while I find us a parking space?”

  “Where are we going and why do we need to park when we get there?”

  “We passed an all-night diner about a mile back,” he explained as he exited the highway and turned onto the outer road that was parallel to it. “I thought we’d stop and eat.”

  “But what about Meagan?”

  “She’s probably already eaten by now. You, on the other hand, aren’t much use to me if you’re running on fumes.” She turned a skeptical look on him and he shrugged. “What? Meagan hasn’t left the area in hours and we’re less than half an hour away from her right now. How much more damage can she do in the twenty minutes that it’ll take us to refuel?” he asked, turning onto the parking lot and weaving through a line of idling transfer trucks. He found a parking space and shut off the engine.

  “Recalculating your route,” the automated narrator advised before it powered down with the rest of the vehicle.

  “Based on what you’ve told me about her, a lot. I really don’t think we should—”

  “Look, I’m starving and it’s not like I really need your permission to stop, is it, Sister Mary? Stop being such a goody-goody and come on. Let’s eat.”

  She divided a look between his face and the nearly empty diner. Inside, a bored-looking waitress strolled the length of the counter to plop a plate that was piled high with French fries in front of a customer. He felt, rather than heard, her sigh of longing.

  “All right,” she finally agreed, albeit reluctantly. “We’ll eat, but we have to be in and out of this place in fifteen minutes or less. I know you didn’t graduate from Northwestern, like I did, but you can count that high, can’t you?”

  Silently Broderick took his pistol from a hidden dashboard compartment and snatched a cell phone from the dashboard cradle. Tucking them into hidden pockets, he caught Elise’s eyes as he swung the driver’s door open.

  The look on her face was smug. Too smug. He hated to burst her little elitist bubble, but... Well, no, he didn’t.

  “I have an advanced degree in computer engineering from Brown University, Miss Carrington,” he explained as humbly as possible. “I was writing code, building websites and hacking through firewalls in junior high school. So, yes, I can count that high.” His stomach growled. “Now, are we done here? Because, if not, we’re about to have a very interesting conversation about what’s on the menu for dinner.”

  Chapter 6

  An hour later, Elise was stuffed and her thoughts were racing. Thanks to their ongoing Truth or Dare? tour
nament, sharing a meal with Broderick hadn’t only been only a surprisingly entertaining turn of events, but it had also been extremely enlightening. Without it, she’d never have discovered that, lurking just beneath his muscle-bound, powerhouse exterior was the soul of a technology geek—one who designed electronic firewalls for Fortune 500 companies by day and jumped out of helicopters, armed to the teeth and ready for whatever, in the black of night. She’d never have pegged him as one of those coffee fanatics who special ordered his coffee beans all the way from Cuba and ground them himself in a custom grinder, or as a closet Harry Potter fan, who’d read every book about the juvenile wizard and seen every one of the movies at least twice. And she certainly wouldn’t have guessed that he could speak to her in French, simply asking her to pass the ketchup for his fries, and cause a spontaneous orgasm to explode at the very tip of her already-fretful clitoris. It had taken every ounce of self-control that Elise possessed to keep from stripping naked and begging him to do something illicit to her, right there on the booth’s cracked Formica tabletop.

  He was a study in contradictions. Like Superman, she mused as he paid the check and they filed past a line of incoming exhausted-looking truck drivers to the exit. Part bashful nerd and part sexy superhero, except that she was positive that he’d never been bashful a day in his life and Superman had never been so fine. Which was why, she suddenly decided, she was going to sleep with him.

  Someday.

  Maybe.

  She took out her cell and checked for messages as they strolled across the gravel parking lot to the far end of the building, where the Hummer was parked. Unfortunately, there were none from Eli, but she’d missed a call and two separate back-to-back text messages from Olivia, just a few minutes ago. She glanced at her watch and frowned—it was almost midnight—then touched an icon on the screen to retrieve the texts. She regretted it instantly. Deeply.