by Terra Little
It was just like Olivia to send obscene text messages across open frequencies, as a primary means of communication. Along with her latest visual transmission—two extremely vivid images of a naked, embracing couple, locked together at the mouth and at the waist—came the declaration: Just do it!
“Uh-oh,” Broderick said from just beyond her shoulder.
Startled out of the trance that the explicit images had put her in, Elise stopped short, pressed the phone to her chest and cringed. Had he seen Olivia’s text over her shoulder? Oh my God. Of course he had, and now he was probably thinking that she was some kind of sex fiend.
Tossing her cell back inside her tote, she slowly turned to face Broderick. “Um, about what you just saw—” Whatever else she’d been about to say died in her throat when she saw that he was busy with his own cell phone. Thank God. Her relief was short-lived, though.
Broderick’s gaze flickered up from his cell’s screen to hers and a devilish smile toyed with his full lips. “I just got a text. You’re not going to believe where Meagan is.”
Her eyebrows joined his in the stratosphere. “I hope you’re not about to tell me that she’s not in Jefferson City, because I swear to God—”
“Oh, she’s there, all right,” he said, motioning for Elise to resume walking as he composed and sent a responding text. She did, and he fell in step behind her. “She’s just in the last place that either of us would ever expect her to be.” When he was done, he put away his cell and then reached around her to aim his key fob in the Hummer’s direction. At the press of a button, the engine roared to life, the headlights switched on and the electronic locks released. The interactive dashboard was booting up when they climbed inside and fastened their seat belts.
“Recalculating your route,” the automatic navigator advised as soon as Broderick shifted the Hummer into gear and drove off. They found their way back onto the highway in silence.
“Are you going to tell me where Meagan is, or do I have to guess?” Elise prodded when two or three minutes passed and no further explanation was forthcoming. The look he slid her made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “What? Has something bad happened? Is she hurt?” The smile that curved his lips was reminiscent of the big, bad wolf. “Broderick...”
“Would you calm down?” he said, chuckling darkly. “Meagan is fine. She’s just possibly...uh...indisposed at the moment.”
“‘Possibly indisposed’? What does that mean?”
“It means that right now she’s at a place called The Farm.”
Elise was lost. Was he playing some kind of silly word game with her? Really? Right now? “Okaaay. Well, where is this farm and what is she doing there? Riding bulls?”
“I know you’re being facetious, but that could actually be the case.”
Elise did a double take. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Calm down.”
She hated being told to calm down, especially by a man. Broderick’s overly calm, placating tone was irritating enough by itself, but playing cat and mouse on top of that was really pushing it. “Don’t I look calm? Just tell me what’s going on.”
“I will, but first I have to warn you, Elise. What I’m about to tell you might—”
“You know, you’re really starting to get on my nerves.”
“You haven’t had sex in almost two years. That’s what’s probably getting on your nerves.”
Elise sat up in her seat and nailed Broderick with a murderous glare. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that!”
“Of course you shouldn’t have because now I fully intend to use it against you every chance I get.” The Hummer suddenly lurched forward, picking up speed rapidly and eating up the dark road beyond the windshield. “Look, I’ll tell you what. I consider myself a decent person, and I wouldn’t want to get on your nerves any more than I apparently already have, so why don’t I just shut up and let you see for yourself where Meagan is?”
Her gaze wandered across the console and found his waiting patiently. “Fine,” she bit out.
“Fine.”
Oh, yeah. She was definitely going to sleep with him.
Maybe.
Someday.
If they didn’t kill each other first.
* * *
“I could kill you!”
Rolling his eyes to the ceiling wearily, Broderick followed both the threat and the woman behind it inside the hotel room that she had insisted they get and closed the door at his back. If she was really going to kill him, he thought as he took in the neatly made double beds, fluffy-looking pillows and the flat-screen TV mounted to the opposite wall, he hoped she’d wait to make her move until after he had showered and was in a deep sleep. The place wasn’t exactly the Ritz, nowhere near it, actually, but it was clean and the beds looked soft, which was a good thing because he was exhausted. Her suggestion that they stop to rest and regroup was a valid one. There wasn’t much else they could do at the moment, anyway. The fact that the hotel was the only one for miles and there was only one vacancy, forcing them to share a room, was an unexpected but very pleasant bonus.
They’d been inside The Farm for over an hour and had searched the entire place twice before Broderick finally succeeded at prying information out of the stone-faced doorman, and even then there hadn’t been much to learn. Yes, Meagan and her boyfriend were there earlier, but they’d left several hours before Broderick and Elise had arrived. According to the doorman, nothing remarkable had stood out about Meagan and her date, except that they were younger than most of the other patrons in attendance at the time. They had gone up to the second floor only briefly before leaving and Meagan had forgotten to retrieve her iPhone on her way out. Broderick had pocketed the phone, wondering what the hell Meagan was up to and hoping that she was at least being safe in the process. Even without the added burden of mental illness, two spoiled, privileged college kids, off on a spontaneous road trip, with plenty of money at their disposal and no sense of personal responsibility, was a train wreck just waiting to happen.
Bypassing Meagan’s password and hacking into her cell phone was child’s play. Sixty seconds after they climbed back into the Hummer and he pulled the device out of his pocket, he was scrolling through her contact list and reading her texts. It had taken him a little longer to plant a LoJack-style worm in her phone and shoot it through to her boyfriend’s cell phone, but, even with Elise’s husky voice buzzing nonstop in his ear and the intoxicating scent of her cologne damn near crossing his eyes, he managed to get through it. Now that they were trapped alone together in a hotel room, he’d be lucky to get through the next couple of hours.
Through a slit in the curtains at the window, he spotted an indoor pool and fantasized about dunking Elise a few times...in the deep end. Then he sighed and tossed his overnight bag on the bed. Did the woman ever shut up?
“I still can’t believe I let you and Olivia talk me into this wild-goose chase,” Elise railed, dropping her overnight bag on the bed closer to the bathroom and fighting her way out of her coat. She slammed it on the mattress, then sent her tote hurling after it. “Almost two hours we were in that place and for what, Broderick? What exactly did we accomplish?” She stepped out of her shoes and raked her fingers through her hair, those gorgeous amber-colored eyes of hers staring at him expectantly.
Broderick opened his mouth to respond, missed his nanosecond-size window of opportunity, and then snapped it shut again. Poker-faced, he unfastened his watch and set it in on the desktop. His platinum cuff links clinked onto the wooden surface next.
“Oh, wait,” she went on, tearing into her overnight bag mercilessly. “What am I saying? We did get two things accomplished. Let’s see, first, we were able to successfully retrieve Meagan’s iPhone from a new-age brothel, which, according to the doorman of said brothel, Meagan accidentally left there several hours ago.” She h
ad just about emptied the bag’s contents onto the mattress when she finally unearthed a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, which she promptly brandished at him like a two-pronged weapon. Secretly amused, he eyed it and her warily as he shrugged out of his coat and strolled over to the closet with it.
What she needed, he decided in a sudden burst of mental clarity, was sex. But not just any sex, his tingling cock reminded him. She needed the kind of sex that would break the bed, send her drifting off into a peaceful, satisfied sleep, and then have her walking funny the morning after. And as he strolled back the way he’d come, he wondered if she had any idea just how close she was to getting it.
“And let’s not forget,” she continued, “that we can now report back to Joel and his wife, whom I’m sure are worried absolutely sick by now, that, while we have no idea where their underage daughter actually is, we do, however, still know exactly where she isn’t.” She paused to suck in a deep breath and release it slowly, looking genuinely troubled. “She’s underage and on the loose with a reckless playboy who’s old enough to get into adult sex clubs and also connected enough to take her with him. Did I miss anything?”
Several seconds of silence passed before he realized that she actually expected him to speak. And that was only after he glanced up from the desktop, where he’d been busy setting up a portable workstation, and ran right into her simmering gaze. “Don’t you think you’re overreacting just a little?” was all he could think to say.
“No, I don’t.” She folded her arms underneath her breasts and shifted her weight to one side, a brow cocked. “For all we know, Meagan could be across the border, somewhere in Mexico right now. What in the hell is she thinking? If I were eighteen and dating an older guy, who took me to a sex club, I’d—”
“You’d probably be somewhere right now with your bra up around your neck and your ankles around his,” Broderick speculated jokingly. “Admit it, Elise. Carry on all you want but all that sex in the air turned you on and you know it. I saw the look on your face when we walked in on that three-way sixty-nine.” She looked like a deer caught in headlights, making him snort with laughter. “It was hot. This is a safe place, Sister Mary. You can admit it.”
She bristled and flushed at the same time. “All right, it was hot. A little...busy, but still hot.” She noticed him vibrating with silent laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I’m just having a hard time reconciling the image of the tough, no-nonsense cop that you say you were, with the inexperienced, damsel-in-distress vibe that you’ve got going on right now. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so damn sexy.”
“Stop flirting with me, Mr. Cannon.”
“Tell you what, Miss Carrington. I’ll stop flirting with you if you’ll stop flirting with me.”
“I’m not flirting with you.” She seemed to remember the items in her hand and held them up as proof. “I was just going to brush my teeth. But, before I do, I would like to point out that just because I don’t make a habit of doing something doesn’t mean that I’ve never seen or heard of it. I’m not as innocent as you seem to think I am. I just happen to prefer quality over quantity. Is that a crime?”
The look he gave her was a cross between marriage and murder. He’d never known a more nerve-rattling woman. Or a more exciting one. “I believe it’s possible to have both.”
“That lady back at The Farm certainly was, wasn’t she? Having both, I mean,” she mused, setting aside her toiletries and folding her arms as she sauntered over to him. Walking into the V of his open legs, she studied the computer screen curiously. “What are you working on over here, Inspector Gadget, and how can I help?”
“Well, while you were busy working through a sudden onset of post-traumatic sex disorder, I was LoJacking Meagan’s boyfriend’s cell phone. Sit down, I’ll show you.” She surprised him by not objecting outright. “I don’t bite,” he murmured in her ear a few seconds later, as she settled her butt onto his lap and went along for the ride when he rolled them closer to the desk and pressed a button on the keyboard. It took every ounce of self-control that he possessed to ignore the weight of her butt in his lap and the feel of his hard cock pressing into its softness like a concrete speed bump. Settling a hand at her waist, he stifled a groan and told himself to focus.
“According to the map—” he began in a strangled voice, thinking that her cologne was the devil.
“Oh, goodie, the map,” she chirped and clapped her hands together like a delighted child.
“You hate the map because you fear the map.”
“I don’t fear the map.” He watched her roll her eyes to the ceiling and bit back a smile. Soon, he promised himself, he’d make her eyes roll for completely different reasons. “The map is just a map. What other handy little gadgets have you got in that bag of yours?”
“You probably wouldn’t know what half of them were, even if I explained each one of them to you.”
She reared back, pressing a palm against her chest like a true Southern belle, and stared at his profile with exaggerated offense. “I’m sorry, but was that a crack about my perceived lack of investigative skills?”
“Possibly.” He sat back in the chair and gave her his full attention, challenging her with his eyes. “What if it was?”
“Oooh, someone’s got jokes.”
“Did you really think I was going to let that Inspector Gadget crack slide without a clap back? Come on now, Elise. You should know better than that by now.”
A smile played with the corners of her mouth. “Touché. But while I do see your point, the fact remains that I take insults very seriously, especially when they’re coming from someone who wants to sleep with me. It occurs to me that this isn’t the first time you’ve insinuated that you’re better at your job than I am at mine.” She sat back, too, and turned her head, bringing her luscious mouth to within inches of his.
“I never said that and I don’t believe that I’ve ever said that I wanted to sleep with you.”
“Oh?” She shifted on his lap, rolling her butt back and forth across the granite pole underneath it slowly as she held his gaze.
They stared at each other.
“Touché,” Broderick finally said.
She tsked softly and shook her head. “Oh, ye of little faith. Tell me, Broderick, you wouldn’t happen to be interested in a little professional wager between frenemies, would you?”
“Frenemies? That’s an interesting way of putting it. Go on.”
“What if I said that even though you can’t find your sister and you’re supposedly the best in the business, I can? That’s how good I am.”
The laugh that Broderick had been doing his best to suppress broke free before he could stop it from tumbling out of his mouth with a dark, cynical twist that begged the question: Are you out of your mind? When Elise failed to laugh with him, he sobered up by degrees, looking at her like she was crazy. “You’re serious.”
“Yes, I am. I told you, I take insults very seriously. So, what’s it going to be? Are you in or are you out?”
He looked up from watching her lips move and caught her eyes. “Suppose I was in, what are the stakes?”
“If I win, I want the Hummer.”
“Damn, that was quick. Would this be the same Hummer that you’ve previously referred to as a rolling monstrosity?”
She dimpled at him and he had a sudden urge to feast. “Let’s just say that it’s grown on me. Don’t tell me you’re afraid you’ll lose?”
Don’t sweat it, Broderick. She won’t win, anyway. “Not at all.” But you will. He scraped the skin beneath his bottom lip with his teeth for a second as he silently weighed his options. She had issued him a dare, so there was really only one way to properly respond, wasn’t there? “Fine. The Hummer. What do I get if I win?”
“That depends. What do you want?”
; “You,” he said simply and just as quickly. “With your fine ass. I want you. And since the Hummer is on the table and she happens to be very special to me, I’m going to have to insist on an entire night with you—any way I want you and as many times as I want you. Are you up for that, because you know you’re going to lose, right?”
Elise’s face and neck were beet red when she cleared her throat and sucked in a shaky breath. “Fine. If you win, which you won’t, then yes, I am up for that. I’ll have to be, won’t I?”
“All right, then I’m in.” This was going to be like taking candy from a baby.
“You won’t be saying that when I’m selling off your precious Hummer, piece by piece, for parts.”
Chapter 7
The water was sparkling and clear, it was the middle of the night and Broderick was the only one enjoying it. Glancing at the sign posted on the far wall, advising guests that both the pool and the hot tub had closed for the night hours ago, he tugged off his T-shirt, dropped it at his feet and dove into the deep end in one fluid motion.
The plan was to swim laps until he no longer had the energy to think about how tempted he was to slip his hand between Elise’s thighs and wake her from her nap with an orgasm. Then and only then could he return to their hotel room and continue with the pretense of being even a little bit civilized. As it was, every time she slanted her feline eyes in his direction and hurled some smart-ass, thinly veiled insult at him, he was tempted to give her something else to do with those glittering, suckable lips of hers besides sniping and snarling.
Something nasty.
At the shallow end, he kicked off from the wall and started back the way he’d come, hoping that the bracing water cleared his head and checked his raging libido. It wasn’t like him to let a woman get so deeply under his skin, especially one who was moody and talked too much, and never while he was on an assignment. Rounding up Meagan and delivering her back home to her parents didn’t necessarily fit that description, but it was still a time-sensitive task—one that he needed to wrap up as quickly as possible, so he could focus on the latest development in his sister’s disappearance. There was no telling when he’d have free time like this again and it wasn’t like leads on the case were constantly pouring in.
