by Toni Blake
Okay, so thinking about why the case was important wasn’t all that easy at the moment. Her eyes were drawn to pictures on a polished wooden mantle—frames around people who weren’t her. Art on the wall he hadn’t owned then. Magazines on the table that she’d never known him to have an interest in. In fact, even the furniture was new.
So apparently everything had changed for Max. He’d packed up, gone to Las Vegas, and come back a new man. But it was clear that one thing hadn’t changed. He still hadn’t forgiven her for what happened on the Carpenter case. As her stomach clenched, she strengthened her vow to prove to him that she could do her job and do it well.
She took another glance around the room—and then it hit her, in a whole new, powerful, horrible way. Oh God, she was really going to work with Max again. Max, who had been so much more than just a lover to her, whether or not he knew it. Max, whom she’d wanted to build a life with and wake up next to every morning until they were old and gray. This had been the last blow she’d expected today.
But she was an adult. And a professional. She’d told Max she could handle it, so what choice did she have now?
She only hoped she didn’t do anything to mess up his career again.
And she hoped she didn’t somehow end up falling into bed with him again. Which seemed pretty unlikely considering how much he appeared to despise her. But stranger things had happened, and…oh brother—what had she just gotten herself into?
Chapter Two
Letting the towel drop at his feet, Max went to his chest of drawers, pulled out a pair of gray boxer briefs, and stepped into them. Then he yanked a pair of worn blue jeans up from the bedroom floor and put them on, using one hand to swipe a lock of still-wet hair off his forehead.
But an accidental glimpse of himself as he passed by a mirror made him quit going through the hurried motions of getting ready to brief his partner—and come back to reality.
This wasn’t just another case. And he wasn’t meeting with just another partner.
Kimberly Brandt was sitting in his living room. Kimberly Brandt was about to be his partner on the last case of his career.
He rolled his gaze heavenward and let out a mutter. “What could I possibly have done to deserve this?”
Hell, he probably should have let her leave with Frank when she wanted to. This was a bad idea—there was just too much bad blood between them to pull this off.
But as he’d told Frank earlier, he really had no choice in the matter. He needed a woman and he needed her by tomorrow morning.
Even so, for the first time since he’d taken this case, he suffered a niggling sense of doubt. Worry. Mistrust. The same mistrust he’d started feeling after the Carpenter case, and the same mistrust that had made him choose to run his business as a one-man operation when he’d moved to Vegas. If you didn’t make the mistake of depending upon anyone, they couldn’t mess things up for you.
Leaving the West Coast and starting over with his own firm had been the best thing Max had ever done. No one in Vegas had known him or his professional history. He’d performed at peak level for the entire two and a half years he lived there. And he’d discovered that when the gambling mecca’s high rollers needed a private investigator, they were happy to loosen their purse strings.
He’d made a killing in just two years. But he’d also gotten tired. And he’d finally admitted to himself that he just didn’t like living in the neon desert. So he’d come home with a plan to establish his firm back in L.A., but this time to hire enough good P.I.s that he could run the operation from behind a nice mahogany desk.
And now…now he had to worry about this turning into another Carpenter case. Which could ruin his career all over again. His chest tightened.
On another rainy night three years ago, he’d had an appointment with Margaret Carpenter, an elderly lady who walked with a cane and always carried her silver poodle, Lacey, in her free arm. He knew this because he’d been watching her through surveillance equipment in a van near her house for over three weeks. Only Margaret Carpenter hadn’t been there when he’d arrived that night. She’d packed up her dog, her belongings, and her stolen money and hadn’t been seen since. And it had been all Kimberly’s fault.
He and Kimberly had both been employed by the Kessler Agency at the time, the biggest and most prestigious investigation firm in the city. He’d been at the company for nearly ten years and had gradually worked his way up to being the third man in charge. He’d hired Kimberly despite her lack of experience because she’d seemed eager and earnest and willing to learn. He’d had no idea they would soon start dating.
But date they did—quickly making it exclusive. And he’d been…well, damn happy if he was honest with himself. Yet five months into the relationship and six months into her job at Kessler’s, Margaret Carpenter had come along.
It had been a pretty simple case initially. Margaret had been stealing money from her son’s business and he’d hired Kessler to prove it. The first angle Max had taken had involved sending Kimberly in as a new neighbor. He set her up in a small bungalow next to Margaret’s little house and Kimberly forged a relationship with her. The idea had been simply to get the older lady to confess, and hopefully to explain how she’d done it, as well, so that they could track down the physical evidence of her crime.
Max should have known there was trouble, though, when Kimberly told him that she’d met Margaret’s son—their client—when he stopped by his mother’s house one day and she’d found him rude and brutish. “He’s just plain mean to her, Max,” she’d said.
“Of course he’s mean to her,” he’d replied. “He knows she’s embezzling his profits.”
Kimberly succeeded in getting Margaret to admit that she had over a hundred thousand dollars “saved” and that she was seeking a good investment for it, but she never said where she’d gotten the money. Still, it had been pretty obvious—she didn’t work, lived meagerly, and had access to her son’s accounts, a mistake of him being too trusting when opening his construction business years earlier as a young man.
The next angle they’d planned to take was to send Max in as a friend of Kimberly’s, a real estate broker who could help Margaret invest her cash. He would ask how much money she had and tell her he needed more, quickly, for a sure-thing investment. Even if they couldn’t get a confession from her, they’d watch the accounts for the amount he requested.
But by the time he got there that night, the house was dark and Margaret Carpenter was on her way into hiding. Because, unbeknownst to him, Kimberly had broken all the rules of ethics by telling Margaret who they were and what her son suspected.
He remembered all too clearly the day both of them had been called into Dean Kessler’s office. Max had found out Kimberly was responsible for Margaret’s departure just moments before—when she’d told him herself, obviously sensing why Kessler had called the meeting.
Kessler had first fired Kimberly, after furiously pointing out that they all could have lost their licenses over this kind of behavior.
And then Kessler fired him, too.
He hadn’t seen it coming—he’d thought he was only involved as Kimberly’s direct superior—and having just found out what she’d done had been upsetting enough. Instead Kessler had held him entirely responsible for the whole damn debacle. “You hired her. And you put her on this case. And you also got sloppy, Max.”
“Sloppy?” He’d leaned forward, eyebrows raised.
“This is what happens when you start thinking more about what’s under your employee’s skirt than about her work. You lose your judgment and she botches the job.”
Then Kessler had walked out of his own office, leaving them both alone. And Max had sunk more deeply into the chair where he sat, trying to wrap his head around the fact that he’d just lost everything he’d worked to build for the previous ten years. He was dumbfounded that it could be taken from him that quickly. Not to mention indignant, resentful, and downright angry
Slowly, he�
�d turned his head to look at Kimberly—the woman who’d done this to him. Tears stained her cheeks as their eyes met, and her voice came out whispery sad. “I suppose it’s too late to say I’m sorry.”
Sorry? He’d just lost his whole career. Sorry didn’t begin to cover it. “Too late,” he’d said. “And too damn little.”
She’d swallowed visibly and they’d simply sat staring at each other for a long, painful moment. And then she’d stood up and walked out. Out of the office. And out of his life.
He hadn’t seen her again until he’d exited the shower ten minutes ago and found her standing in his foyer, rainwater dripping from the hem of her short blue dress and the tips of her wavy hair, a smug sassiness he didn’t remember from before now overflowing from her.
She was everything he’d asked Frank for. Smart. A good actress. And God knew she was a pleasure to look at.
But there’d been one thing he’d left out of his description of the perfect lady partner when he’d talked to Frank. Trustworthiness. She’d proven to him three years ago that she couldn’t be counted on to maintain her loyalty or finish a job. She’d cost him everything.
And now they were supposed to work together?
Kimberly crossed and uncrossed her legs. Then she firmly crossed her arms under her breasts. What the hell was taking him so long? First he’d kept her waiting at the door, now in his living room. How long did it take a man to get dressed?
Finally, she released a sharp sigh of irritation and leaned forward on the couch. “Um, excuse me in there? Those clothes you went to put on? Are you weaving the fabric yourself or—?”
She flinched when he exited the bedroom and walked toward her down the hardwood hall in bare feet. The flinch came because his chest was also bare, and his jeans were pleasantly low-slung and snug in all the right places. Or maybe those were actually—on second thought—the wrong places. Oh my. She leaned back into the couch, trying to pretend she hadn’t just had a spasm at the very sight of him.
“You bellowed?” he asked, widening his dark eyes in a way that might have struck her as…warm, or maybe even sultry, if it hadn’t been coupled with sarcasm.
“I just wanted to make sure you hadn’t dozed off or something.” She uncrossed her legs, then recrossed them the other way. “And if this is going to take a while, shouldn’t you call Julie and change your plans?” Oh drat—she’d tried to resist saying that last part, but it had slipped out anyway. Despite herself, she wanted to know who Julie was.
But all she got for her efforts was yet another of Max’s classic dry looks as he shoved a lock of dark hair from his forehead. “Don’t worry, Brandt. I’m completely capable of handling my own affairs.”
The response cut her to the quick. Although she didn’t know what bothered her more—the allusion she knew he was making to the Carpenter case and the underlying suggestion that she wasn’t capable of handling anything, or hearing him say the word affairs and thinking of him having them—not with her anymore, but with other women. With this, this Julie person.
However, she quickly deduced that the allusion to that last case they’d worked on ate at her the most. Because she still suffered the compulsion to try explaining to him why she’d done what she’d done that night. “Believe it or not, Tate, I’m capable, too. More than capable. And as for the Carpenter case—”
He held up his hand. “Stop.”
She snapped her response. “Why?”
Settling in a leather chair across from her, he narrowed his gaze on her. “Because if this is going to work, we need to push our bad feelings for each other aside and stick to the case.”
“That’s a spiffy plan, Tate, but if you’d just let me tell you my side of things, I’m sure we’d both—”
“Nope,” he cut her off. “The past is in the past and I have no desire to dredge it back up. That’s how it has to be if we’re going to work together.”
She released a bitter sigh. She should have known better. After all, she’d tried to explain outside Kessler’s office that day, but he hadn’t let her then, either. He’d just kept saying, “You told her what?” as he glared at her with disbelieving eyes. And then Kessler had called them in and that had been the end of it. He wouldn’t let her explain then, and he still wouldn’t let her explain now. “Fine,” she bit off.
“Now, about the case.”
She shifted on the couch, trying to relax and get into a professional frame of mind. “I’m listening.”
“The guy we’re after is Carlo Coletti. Carlo makes a pastime of robbing wealthy wives of their expensive jewelry.”
“How does he go about it?”
“He hangs out in upscale drinking establishments until he can befriend some rich guy and cling onto him. He makes a point of getting the guy to show him a picture of his wife—who, as far as I can tell, has to be a knockout in order to get Coletti interested—and then he ingratiates himself into the couple’s lives. After that, he seduces the wife and steals her jewelry in the process.”
She tilted her head. He’d obviously glossed over some details. “Fill in the gaps, Tate.”
“Well, in my client’s case, the guy seduced her and charmed the jewelry away from her. Told her it turned him on to make love to a woman decked out in diamonds. She went to her safe, put on every diamond necklace and bracelet she owned, slept with the guy, then woke up hours later naked of even the jewels.”
Kimberly was beginning to think she got the picture here. “So, it’s more than just money for this guy. He’s after the thrills, too.”
Max gave a short nod. “Would seem that way. Another thing pointing in that direction is the fact that he could just pick up rich single women. But he only goes for couples. He seems to like seducing the wife away from her wealthy husband. The scam tears the victims apart. In addition to robbing my client, he broke up her marriage, too.”
“You said victims. So there are other known victims besides your client?”
“I’ve talked with four.”
“And if everyone knows what happened, and if this guy is so easy to find, why isn’t he behind bars?”
Max offered a wry smile. “That’s the tricky part. Police have checked him out, held him on suspicion—and he even went to trial once. But he says he didn’t do it and no one can prove anything. Claims he seduces the wives, but that’s it—no jewelry. To top it off, the guy lives in a dumpy apartment near Venice. It’s been searched over and over and the police never turn up anything. The most valuable things in this guy’s possession are his car and the clothes on his back, which make him fit in with the rich set well enough at a glance. But whatever he’s doing with the jewels, he’s covering his tracks and keeping it quiet. He’s stolen over three million dollars’ worth from the four women I’ve spoken to, yet there’s not a shred of evidence.”
“And that’s where we come in.”
“Right. Tomorrow morning you and I move into a mansion in Beverly Hills, borrowed from a well-off friend of my client’s, a studio bigwig who’s out of town for the next month. Tomorrow night, Carlo Coletti joins us for dinner and the party begins.”
“One question,” she asked. “If you didn’t even know who your wife was going to be, you obviously couldn’t show the jerk her picture. How’d you reel him in without it?”
Their eyes met. “I assured him that my wife was the most beautiful, vibrant, sexy, sultry woman he’d ever have the pleasure of meeting.”
Is she? She wanted to ask, but held her tongue. His gaze on her, saying those words, made her throat tighten and the juncture between her thighs tingle.
So that was when she rose from the couch, suddenly ready to end the meeting. “Is there anything else I need to know?”
He stood up, as well. “Nothing I can’t fill you in on tomorrow. But be prepared—the guy’s gonna be all over you as soon as he gets one look. And if you have any sexy clothes, bring ’em—we want to paint you as…not unwilling.”
“Sexy clothes,” she murmured. But she was
still stuck on the first thing he’d said. The guy’s gonna be all over you.
Ugh. Wrong guy.
Yet then she cursed herself. Damn it, quit thinking about Max like that.
“Like what you’re wearing right now,” he added.
She blinked, a little confused—then she glanced down, unaware that the simple blue sheathe qualified as sexy. “This?”
He nodded. “I saw you from the back at Frank’s party. Even without seeing your face, you were easily the hottest woman in the room.”
Despite the suggestive words, his voice held zero emotion. So as the warmth of a blush attack her cheeks, she turned away. She padded toward the mantle and studied the pictures there, attempting to block out the increased fluttering sensations that rippled through her body.
Which one might be Julie?
Though…a closer look revealed that none of them could be. She found two pictures of his parents—an older one and another more recent, and a picture of Max and his three brothers taken long before she’d known him. Still, the exercise hadn’t succeeded in distracting her enough—every part of her body hummed with awareness of his presence and what he’d just said.
“I’ll get you a cab,” he announced behind her. But she still didn’t turn around. She didn’t want him to see how his words had affected her. Even if she kept hearing them over and over again. You were easily the hottest woman in the room.
A few long minutes later, the beep of a horn from outside announced the taxi’s arrival, something that was more than welcome. She grabbed up her purse and shawl, then moved briskly to Max’s front door, whisking it open to let in the sound of the rain and a glimpse of the shiny black street.
“Give some thought to your part and establish a character,” he told her before she could exit.
The sound of his voice stopped her—and she turned to peer back at him, unable to resist a last look at this man she’d thought she’d never see again. Her heart ached a bit—at the sight of him, and at the memories of what they once had.
