by Christa Wick
No matter what he might say, he damn well couldn’t deny the dates. Even if Alex had been born premature, Dante had gone straight from dumping me to another woman’s bed. Probably some slinky blonde, one of the cheerleaders at college who were always trying to attract his attention. Not that I cared what she looked like.
Trying to keep the growl out of my voice, I pointed at the card on the floor. "Craig’s an experienced investigator, former Masonville homicide detective. Pretty famous in town and he would be working the case anyway if I had said yes. So just take the damn card and go."
For a second, he didn't move, just stared at me as if I was a complete stranger. Then he stood. I foolishly thought he would relent, that he was standing to leave. Instead, he started to come around my desk.
I pushed my chair back, trying to escape his resolute approach. "He’s good, Dante."
"I don’t want good, Olivia. I want the best. That's you -- always has been you." The purr was back in his voice, full throated and rumbling.
I shook my head. I knew that look in his eyes. It frightened and excited me in a way I no longer thought possible.
"Don't come any closer," I pleaded.
His hand came down on the back of my chair to keep me from scooting further away. The other hand took possession of the arm rest so I couldn't slide out. He bent until his mouth was next to my ear, his breath falling warm against my skin. "Anything you want, Liv. If it's in my power, it's yours. Every last dollar, every piece of property."
I shook my head. He had nothing to offer. Once he had been everything I wanted, but I could never be that stupid, trusting girl again. Neither could he give me back all the intervening years or the lovers I might have been happy with if they had only come before him.
"Liv--"
Feeling the brush of his lips against my ear, I shook my head again, more violently. "I don't want your money, Serrano. And no matter what Diamond finds, you'll need every last dollar for the attorney to make the evidence matter in court."
He stopped arguing -- with words at least. His hand skimmed up my arm until his fingertips landed softly against my collar bone. He was betting on all my little pleasure points being the same. I closed my eyes and prayed they weren't.
"I said anything, Liv." His hand dipped beneath the silk shell I wore under my jacket. A short caress parted my lace bra from my skin and his hand slid inside to palm my breast.
"Dante…"
I didn't expect what came next.
"I divorced Alex's mom the summer you got engaged to Dumont."
I wanted to cry, uncertain whether the response was regret or the sweet pain of having Dante touching me again. Peter Dumont had been my second engagement -- my father's choice, not mine. Alex would have been about three the summer I gave in to family pressure. But I hadn't been able to go through with the marriage. What Dante had done to me, I did to Peter in a way. I never set a date and after a few months, Dumont had stopped pressing. A year later, he walked down the aisle with another woman.
Clearly Olivia Miller, so plump and awkward, was easy to get over. Dante had done it, so had Peter and a handful of other men.
I pressed my lips together, trying hard to keep any tears at bay. I couldn't take the case. I wanted to punch Dante, I wanted to laugh in his face about his failed marriage. But I also wanted to lean into him, my breast filling his palm as I tilted my head up toward his mouth.
Recognizing that I was riding a roller coaster of angry and aroused, I knew I couldn’t risk subconsciously sabotaging the investigation. I had to tell him no and keep on telling him until the message sank into his dense skull. "Take the card and go, Dante."
His hand moved deeper into my bra. His thumb slid toward his palm to trap and tug at my swollen nipple. "Alex didn’t do this, he didn’t kill Ray."
A moan threatened to erupt but I swallowed it down. Turning my head, I glared at Serrano but made no move to stop his hand as I bit out, "And Craig or some other PI will help you prove it."
Turning my face towards his was a tactical mistake. His mouth captured mine, his tongue quickly drawing me into a kiss I didn't want as his fingers grew more teasing. He plucked the nipple, smoothed it before rolling the whole puckered areola as his tongue and mouth ravaged me.
When the next moan threatened, I couldn't stop it.
Sensing he had me, Dante slid his other hand behind my neck, his fingers wrapped around the back of my skull so that he had full control over the kiss. Another wave of memories washed through me. My thighs slicked as I remembered the subtle ways he had dominated my body. Persistent, he had always refused to let me retreat from my arousal. There had been no hiding, no lights out -- as a lover, Dante would accept nothing less than my body and need fully exposed to him. I'd felt beautiful then. Beautiful, loved, desired -- but Alex was proof that I had been nothing more than gullible and stupid.
"I can't," I gasped, ending the kiss as my hand came up to stop his tormenting caress.
"One week, Liv." Dante stared deep into my eyes before his lips traced a line from my cheek down to the side of my mouth. "Then I’ll let you hand the case off to this Diamond guy."
I swallowed a sigh. He knew to always start small with me and chip away from there. That’s how it had started back in college. He’d been in the library, absorbed in his engineering textbooks, always mindful of the merit scholarship paying his way through school. I had been equally absorbed -- watching him.
When he glanced up and caught me in the act of visually devouring him, I’d blushed hotly and immediately left the building. That had sparked Dante's interest and determination. He'd dogged me for a month before I agreed to one date -- just the one. One date had led to one short stop in my dorm room at college, then to one kiss, one hand on my hip, then another behind my head, just as he held me now.
I sighed. I’d been a plump, artless freshman back then. Now in my early forties, I was still plump, or worse. But I was no longer fresh or artless. I wouldn't let Dante seduce me into working for him.
Finally finding some will power, I pushed against his chest. He retreated, just a few inches.
Realizing he had freed my breast completely from its bra and shell, I drew my jacket shut as I fought the urge to smooth my hair. After a short swallow, I met his gaze. "You think I’ll prove the Masonville PD wrong in a week?"
"I think you’ll prove yourself wrong in a week, Liv." He stepped further away, certain he had convinced me. "I know you. You’ll stay on after the week -- you wouldn’t let an innocent kid go to jail or the real killer go free."
Chapter Two
After Dante left my office with a limited consulting agreement, I contacted the defense attorney Dante had hired for Alex. Dante had been right not to try to hire me through the lawyer. Arnold Crane might be a five-hundred-dollar-an-hour suit, but I had plenty of practice turning men like that down. Telling Dante no? Not so much.
I set a pre-afternoon appointment to pick up some background files from Crane. Then I went by the city jail, dropping the lawyer's name ambiguously and bluffing my way into the jail for a face-to-face with Dante’s son.
At twenty, Alex was the same age Dante had been when we first met. Waiting for the young man to be brought into the visiting room, I had anticipated a sense of déjà vu. In a way, Alex did remind me of his father, but only a little in his physical appearance. He was tall, like Dante, but reed thin. And his hair was a light golden brown. Even the eyes, a cloudy blue, were off. But the kid walked like Dante, even with a murder charge hanging over his head. He looked me in the eye, too, and didn’t waver when he went over his version of the events on the day of the murder.
Possessed of a familiar stoicism, he only seemed to pull back once -- when he first entered the room and his gaze landed on me.
"I know you," he had said, the words an echo of Dante’s from just that morning but the context and the voice nothing alike.
I assured him we had never met. He looked me over, shaking his head as if I had just lied to him
. But then he shrugged and let it go. I started the interview and, somewhere in the middle of it, he went from being my ex-lover’s son to a young man who wasn’t acting like he’d killed someone. The hook Dante had planted in my skin earlier sank a little deeper as I was faced with the very real possibility that Alex was innocent.
Leaving the jail more confused than I'd felt in a long time, I checked my voicemail. Diamond had called. I called him back. I had already given him the facts I had so far, enough for him to start working his police contacts. From what Alex had recounted, I suspected the young man had been identified in a show-up in which the police arranged for the witness to see him without any decoy suspects. Not illegal, but far easier to tear apart in court than a more formal identification with decoys.
Now, thanks to Craig, I had the name of the witness. Locating the guy wouldn’t be as easy. From the sound of it, he lived in homeless shelters when he could find a space and in abandoned buildings when he couldn’t. That’s how the guy had been on the crime scene, according to Craig.
Said scene was a ninety-year-old building that Dante’s company was preparing to demolish. I knew from my interrogation of Dante and Alex that Dante's crews were doing structural salvage on the wood work, stone tiling and copper plumbing and wiring first. Alex worked for the summer on the crew Ray supervised.
Knowing I needed to get a good look at the premises, I told Craig to meet me at the building. I didn't expect Dante to be standing next to the PI when I arrived. Maybe I should have. Serrano was demonstrating a real knack for being places he shouldn't be -- places I didn't want him to be.
Getting out of my car, I tried not to glare at him even as I picked out little details in his appearance. He’d gotten dirtied up in the few hours since our meeting. Fresh spots of grease dotted the jeans and t-shirt and a thin layer of dust covered his hair. The effect made him look younger, more like the Dante I’d last seen all those years ago. He’d worked construction summers and weekends back then, long hard hours to help his mom and younger half-brother who lived in one of Masonville's south side trailer parks. Two decades of such work had left him lean and hard. He was still a perfect ten in mind and body.
And a perfect ten on the jerk scale, I reminded myself as I popped the trunk to my car and tried not to remember how well our bodies had fit together. Whether we were out dancing, watching TV on the couch, or making love in my dorm room or the back seat of his old Ford, everything had been a perfect match. At least, it had been perfect for me. All morning long I hadn't been able to escape the fact I had been completely alone in that feeling.
I pulled a digital video recorder and its bag from my trunk and slammed the lid shut. The bag was oversized, filled with many of my tools of trade. Focusing on the afternoon's task, I pulled a set of latex gloves out as I approached the two men on the front stoop.
Intent on ignoring Dante, I nodded at Craig. "How much of the scene is taped off?"
Craig pointed through the open double doors. "Just the unit where they found the vic." He cut a quick look at Serrano and cleared his throat. "I mean Mr. Epps."
Dante jumped in. "Ray was in the manager’s unit. We knocked out the walls to store the salvaged material inside until it's ready for transport."
I filed the information away without acknowledging Dante. He shouldn’t be there. Work on the site had shut down while the cops and forensics kept the crime scene taped off. I kept my gaze on Craig. "You find the witness yet?"
"No, but I got this." Craig handed me a manila folder.
I gestured at the taped door as I flipped the folder open. "No one watching it?"
"Forensics came back for about an hour after lunch. Patrol officer on guard left when they did."
Ready to go into the building, I didn’t want Dante dogging our every step inside. I turned to him, briefly catching his gaze. "Don’t you have somewhere better to be?"
"Can’t visit while he's in city jail. Bond hearing isn't until tomorrow morning."
I handed the folder back to Craig, put my gloves on, and started checking my camera. "Don’t you have a company to run?"
"It can all wait."
I wanted to argue but saw the futility. Nothing could move Dante when he had his mind set on something. Catching the inside of my bottom lip between my teeth, I remembered how, once upon a time, I’d been that something.
Don't go there…
I needed to keep the past buried if I was going to help Alex. Dante wasn't making it easy.
"Just stay out of the way," I growled. Brushing past him, I instantly regretted the contact as I got a close smell of his cologne and the way a few hours of work had twisted it.
More than just sexy, he smelled like home. Oh, not like the house I grew up in, or the river on a good day, or even the city after a hard rain had wiped the streets clean. Just a sense of "home" that, deep down, I knew was part of the reason I came back to Masonville instead of moving my mother to Miami. Only, after three months in Masonville, the placed still hadn't felt anything like home until this morning.
"Way out of the way," I amended as I turned to Craig.
I knew from my years in Florida that the best private investigators available were ex-cops. Proving me right, Craig had scored a photocopy of the witness statement, an inventory of the scene and Ray's truck, plus some off-the-record statements from the crime scene techs.
"Where’s this closet?" I asked.
Craig led me down the hall while Dante followed about five feet behind us. We found the closet under a set of stairs against the back wall. I wouldn't actually call it a closet -- more like a cubby hole. The door, only three feet high, was locked. Turning my camera on, I looked expectantly at Craig. He smiled innocently and looked at Dante, who pulled out a set of keys and kneeled next to me.
So much for Dante staying out of the way. His body heat warmed the side of my leg. The scent of him still lingering in my nose, my stomach drew tight and my thighs clenched. As he worked his way through the ring of keys, I tried not to think of how long it had been since I had a man inside me.
Seven months.
My lips thinned at the memory. The lover in question, my business partner, had wanted to marry me. Just another reason I had fled Miami for Masonville and another failed relationship I could lay at Dante's feet.
"That old looking one right there." I growled and pointed. Was he intentionally trying the wrong keys so I had to stand next to him so long?
With the door unlocked, Dante stepped back. I should have expected the pang I felt at his withdrawal, but it hit me hard anyway. I needed to come up with something exculpatory fast -- already I was thinking more about how close he was to me than what I needed to look for at the site.
"Oh my ga—" I pulled back, quickly covering my nose and mouth. The closet reeked, the fumes so tangible I could see them escaping the small space. No stranger to awful smells, it was still so bad I fought not to gag.
"We find a couple of these nests every building." Dante pulled a pair of thin work gloves from his back pocket and put them on. "If we’re lucky, we only have to chase the squatters out once, but some keep coming back."
He leaned in, one hand reaching for the pallet of dirty blankets. I stopped him with a hand on his arm. He froze, awkwardly balanced, and I jerked my hand back.
"Don’t take it out yet." I switched the camera on. "Is there a light in there?"
He pulled a cord just inside the closet’s doorway and light flooded the small interior. He moved out of the way, handing me a blue bandana when I pulled back from the stench once again.
"Thanks."
He grunted when I took it and nodded at Craig. "Not to question how you run your business, but isn’t there more work elsewhere? Like finding this witness?"
I glanced at Craig. The PI had an amused grin on his face. We hadn’t worked a site together yet, but I had learned the hard way to take a little male muscle with me to any crime scene that was remote, abandoned, or in a bad location. This building hit two out of th
ree factors.
I turned to Dante. I had to make sure he knew -- right now -- that he wouldn’t be calling the shots on the investigation. "I’m not in the habit of being alone in abandoned buildings."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping to curl around my hips. "You’re not alone, Liv. I’m here."
God, didn’t I know it!
"And this witness…who knows what he said that didn’t make it into the report." He averted his gaze, waiting, I guessed, for me to decide.
I looked at Craig but he was still grinning. No, it was an outright smirk on his face. I didn't understand how it had happened, but I was outnumbered.
"Fine," I conceded. "Craig, back here before eight."
I glanced at Dante. "And you'll give me the key to the alley door."
Dante shook his head.
"Look, time of death was put at around eight P.M.," I argued. "I need to see the site then."
Shit, the obstinate bastard had crossed his arms while I was speaking.
I tried to remember the last time I'd had a tantrum. Certainly never as a teenager. My father would not have tolerated it. Three years old, maybe four? Seeing Dante with his arms crossed, I wanted to have one then. My skin was hot and moisture popped out along my forehead and between my breasts.
I wasn't sure it was just anger making me sweat. Down deep, I sensed hard lust mixed in with my frustration. That only made things worse. I shouldn't have been thinking any of the things that ran through my head. Shouldn't have been pulling my labia tight with every flex of muscle I noticed as Dante moved. Shouldn't have had my nipples puckered tight and aching because of how good he smelled or how deeply his voice resonated inside me when he spoke.
Damn it, Olivia! Pull it together!
"You need access tonight. I get that." Dante pointed toward the far end of the hall. "I’ll be here a little before eight at the southeast end of the alley, off Henry."
"No, you’ll give me the key, and Craig will meet me at the southeast end of the alley." I held my hand out. He didn’t budge. Screw him --- he wasn’t the first troublesome client I had ever faced. "You will give me the key."
