Money, Honey

by Susan Sey

  She snatched up her suit coat and shoved one arm into it while she bumped open her front door with her hip. “I’m coming,” she called to him, her voice brisk and businesslike. It was the perfect tone to dispel any notions he had about fetching her at the door like a prom date. Because she wasn’t his damn date. She was on the job. They both were. “Just let me lock up.”

  Then he was on the porch beside her, his hand—always bigger, warmer and more solid than she ever anticipated—over hers. Then her key was gone, as if he’d simply poofed it into the next dimension.

  “Hey!” She glared at him. “You have a problem with me locking up my house?”

  “No,” he said calmly, pushing the door back open and dragging her inside by the hand he still held. “I have a problem with your outfit.”

  Liz looked down at herself. Suit was still there, same as always. She looked back up, eyes narrowed. “What kind of problem?”

  He sighed. “Let me count the ways. No, that would take too long. Let me summarize. It’s inappropriate.”

  “A black pantsuit is always appropriate. Ask Hillary Clinton.”

  He rolled his eyes and renewed his grip on her hand. He dragged her down the back hall, opening doors as he went. “Not for what I have in mind,” he told her.

  Liz dug in her heels and yanked her hand free. “What, exactly, do you have in mind?” Then he found her bedroom.

  “Ah,” he said, heading in. “Here we go.”

  Liz bolted after him, alarmed. “Patrick, what are you doing?”

  She found him in the little shoe box of space that passed for a walk-in closet, hands on hips, the light from the single bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminating his expression of pure, unadulterated surprise. And then the smirk rolled in and Liz could feel the blush crawling from her toes all the way up to her ears.

  “Well, well, well,” he said, wandering deeper into the closet. He reached out to finger a puffed bit of candy pink taffeta, then a delicate curve of deep green chiffon. “Isn’t this interesting?”

  Liz banded her arms over her stomach and yanked on the chain connected to the lightbulb. The little closet plunged into the half-light of early evening. “Yes, it’s fascinating that I own clothes that aren’t the suits you hate so much. I realize it comes as an enormous shock. Now will you please get out of my closet? We have work to do.”

  Patrick reached out and snapped the light back on. “Not dressed like that we don’t.” He turned back to study the row of vintage cocktail dresses that marched along an entire wall of Liz’s closet like a very elegant army. Her cheeks burned and she spun on her heel with a noise of disgust and stalked out. He followed her a moment later with the green chiffon. He removed it from its hanger with a reverence Liz appreciated even as it pissed her off.

  “Now this little beauty, this is more like what I had in mind.”

  “No.” She didn’t bother glancing at the dress. She knew what it looked like, and more to the point, she knew what she looked like when she wore it. Curvy, retro and flat-out hot. At least that was how she felt, and judging by the number of men who looked twice, she wasn’t wrong. But putting a nice big spotlight on her femininity in front of a predator like Patrick was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. She was working hard enough to keep her libido in check where he was concerned and wasn’t about to sabotage herself by shimmying into a dress that all but crooked a finger his way.

  Patrick gave her a reproachful look. “Liz, let’s not make this personal, hmmm?”

  She stared at him. “I’m not the one trying to stuff my colleague into a cocktail dress.”

  He shook his head. “I realize you don’t think much of my judgment, but if this little partnership is going to work, you’re going to have to accept that I have an expertise in certain areas, limited though they may be.” He shot her a charming, roguish grin. “And when it comes to club hopping—rural, urban and in between—let’s just acknowledge that I have a superior knowledge of what’s going to blend.”

  “Fine, but I seriously doubt that a dress like that”—she eyed the billowing mound of crinoline and chiffon on her bed—“is going to blend anywhere in Grief Creek.”

  He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “So let me just assure you that while I have all the regard in the world for such a charming little dress and what your figure can do for it, my interest in getting you into it is solely based on my professional goal.”

  “Which is?”

  “Making sure that everything about your entire person stops shrieking cop at the top of its lungs.”

  She glared at him. “I am a cop.”

  “So I understand.” He spread his hands innocently. “But not tonight. Tonight, you’re my date.”

  “I am so not your date—” she began hotly.

  Patrick cut her off. “Yes, my date,” he said calmly. “My accessory. A tasty little bit of arm candy I’ve picked up for the duration of my stay in the Midwest to alleviate the terrible dullness of it all. And if you can’t leave your badge at home long enough to make that happen, we might as well just wait until Goose clears enough of her caseload to take your place.”

  Liz opened her mouth. Shut it again. Considered. He was right. She hated it that he was right, but he was. If she was going to keep this case on schedule, she needed to be Patrick’s source of on-site local information. As his date, she could murmur a steady stream of who’s who and what’s what into his ear without anybody looking twice. And if she wanted to look even remotely like the kind of woman Patrick would pick up as arm candy, she was going to have to wear that dress.

  She hissed out a breath through her teeth and said, “That dress shoves my boobs practically into the stratosphere.”

  He smiled, silkily. “I’d wondered. Matching shoes?”

  She closed her eyes, prayed for strength. “In the closet.”

  “Excellent.”

  Chapter 8

  IT WAS an intimate thing, dressing a woman. Patrick reflected on it while he listened to Liz stalk around her bedroom, presumably shoving herself into the dress and shoes he’d laid out for her. He hoped she wasn’t too angry to take proper care of that gorgeous dress. Harming it would be nearly a criminal act in his mind. And he was far more impatient to see that soft, pale green chiffon laid over that creamy, milkmaid skin of hers than he’d like to admit.

  He’d been knocked nearly to his knees when he’d walked into her closet and found a veritable treasure trove of vintage cocktail dresses. He’d recognized some of the designers immediately, others he’d never heard of. The colors had spanned the spectrum, as did the styles, but the one thing they all had in common was an exquisite sense of fabric and line. How could a woman who bought her suits off the discount rack at God knows where have possibly put together such an amazing and frivolous collection of dresses?

  She was such a paradox, his Liz. And a lovely diversion. One he felt he deserved after spending the past three days diligently pumping his sources for anything they could provide on Villanueva while concealing that activity from his sharp-eyed sister. Neither endeavor was going particularly well. Not that he’d expected to whistle and have Villanueva appear on his doorstep like a well-trained dog. But his lack of anything even resembling progress had put him in a foul mood. As had the family time Mara seemed determined he enjoy. Forcing his sensible cop to put on a party dress had cheered him considerably.

  He was still grinning over it when the door to her bedroom shot open and she stalked through, an emerald green clutch purse dangling from her fingers, a filmy wrap of some sort lying over her arm. The smile died on his lips and his mouth went dry as he simply stared.

  She stood there, framed in the dying light, one impatient hand propped on the crinoline of her skirt. “Well?” she asked. “Everything you’d hoped for?”

  He forced himself to rise, to walk over to her with a deliberate air of inspection. He spun a finger in the air, a silent command to revolve. She rolled her eyes but complied.

  God, he th
ought, was there anything sexier than a woman’s naked throat and shoulders? The dress was perfection on her, the pale, sea-foam green chiffon crisscrossed over her chest and angled over each shoulder. The neckline was far from revealing, but framed the full upper curves of her breasts in a way that made his palms go damp. A more daring V of that smooth skin was displayed in the back, the delicate wings of her shoulder blades limned in the golden light.

  Just under the bodice, the entire dress went a deep, rich emerald green. It banded in to highlight an impossibly tiny waist, then billowed out into an extravagantly full skirt that swirled around her knees in a frothy, feminine indulgence. He followed the silky line of her legs to the sky-high heels he’d picked out in a matching green. He had to swallow hard at the things her well-toned legs did for the vintage, ankle-strapped shoes.

  She stood there, one eyebrow cocked, that fist still jammed into the hollow at her waist. “Well?” she asked again. “You’re the expert on arm candy. Are you satisfied?”

  He smiled at her, let it spread like warm chocolate. She’d expect that, he knew. And he couldn’t let her see that all he wanted to do was stare for a few more minutes, then start at her feet and work his way up her entire body, lingering at all the most interesting points until he’d put his lips on every single square inch of her skin and she was begging him, begging him, to take her right back out of the dress he’d insisted on putting her in.

  But all he said was, “Satisfied? What an interesting word.”

  She rolled her eyes again but didn’t back away when he reached for the wrap lying over her arm. He held it out for her, giving her his most dazzling smile. She blinked, then turned and allowed him to drape it over her bare shoulders. She pulled it briskly to her and murmured a very businesslike thanks over that gorgeous shoulder.

  But he didn’t remove his hands as she so clearly expected. Instead, he smoothed the delicate fabric over her shoulders, enjoying the warmth of her skin under his hands. He felt her jolt but didn’t step back. He stepped closer instead, left barely an inch or two between their bodies, and slid his fingers into her hair, against the sensitive skin at her nape.

  He gloried in the sharp breath she sucked in at his touch, and he took his time freeing her hair from the wrap. When he was finished, he smoothed the fabric back into place against her shoulders and turned her to face him.

  “Lovely,” he said, and took an immense amount of pleasure in the fact that she looked about as flushed and distracted as he felt. “Ready to get to work?”

  “There’s something you should know,” she blurted.

  Patrick lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “I have a gun in my purse.” Those wide blue eyes he admired so much were suddenly very clear and snapping with temper. “You get fresh, I’m using it.”

  “Right,” he said. “Good to know.”

  He put a hand in the small of her back and let her precede him out the door.

  LIZ GLANCED around as Patrick linked his fingers casually through hers and led her through the dark, hot crush of bodies. Even that minimal contact sent a jolt through her system, but she’d gotten used to it. Patrick had been touching her all night, in hundreds of tiny ways. If she let them all get to her, she’d have been in cardiac arrest four clubs ago.

  “I saved the best for last,” he murmured in her ear as he deposited her on a curved, red velvet settee. It was one of several scattered throughout the room up on little pedestals with spotlights trained on them. Patrick brushed a hand over the ends of her hair as he spoke, and Liz, intensely aware of being all but onstage, leaned into the caress like a cat. She’d fallen easily into her role over the course of the evening—too easily for her peace of mind, if she was being honest—but she consoled herself with the fact that she was probably convincing as a result.

  “I think you’ll like this place,” he said, trailing a lazy fingertip down the exposed line of her neck.

  “I already do,” she purred, canting her body intimately into his space for the benefit of the watching crowd. “I’m not sitting on or in front of a two-story speaker, my shoes aren’t stuck to the floor, and if the volume level in here stays put, my hearing will probably be back to normal by morning.”

  Patrick’s gaze dropped somewhere south of her face and Liz winced inwardly at the amount of cleavage she was exposing. A gentleman—hell, even another agent—wouldn’t look, but this was Patrick O’Connor she was dealing with.

  “I’ll get us a drink,” he said, and followed his gaze with a fingertip, trailing it along the vulnerable skin along the edge of her bodice before he pulled his hand back. Just in time, too, because she was thinking about snapping it off for him. Or she should have been. He shot her a look of wicked amusement, then turned and melted into the crowd.

  Liz was careful to keep her eyes half lidded and faintly amused as she glanced around the cavernous space and filed away a mental image. The club was called Cargo, and given its location in the warehouse district and the correspondingly boxy exterior, Liz had been unprepared for all the red velvet and black lacquer she was seeing. It was art deco, but not quite. Lots of angles and edges, silver accents and indirect lighting. F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Rent, she decided.

  The crowd was a mixed bag, too—plenty of club kids, but plenty of professionals as well. Hers was not the only vintage dress in the place, either. Score one for Patrick. There was a pale blue halter pantsuit swirling around the dance floor that caused Liz a sharp pang of envy. Halston, if she wasn’t mistaken. She didn’t have the figure for it herself, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t admire the sleek, heroin chic of it. Very Studio 54.

  The music—thanks be to God—wasn’t the crushing physical presence it had been at most of the other clubs Patrick had dragged her through. The speakers were hidden inside shiny black panels that extended from ceiling to floor, and what pulsed through them was some oddly appealing combination of techno and big band. And the floor, though just a cement slab, hadn’t sucked at her shoes like double-sided tape.

  She had no trouble spotting Patrick as he wended his way through the crowd to the raised black-lacquer bar in the center of the soaring room. The masses simply melted away in front of him in unconscious deference to his wealth, his power, his wardrobe and his utter disregard for their opinion. Liz gave her head a tiny shake. An identical scene had unfolded at each of the clubs they’d already hit this evening, so she couldn’t claim to be surprised. Just incredulous.

  Was she truly the only person in the world who gave Patrick O’Connor shit? The thought made her smile, a small, feline smirk that turned up just the sharp edges of her mouth. Her first ten years had been distinctly lacking in privilege, but she’d spent the second ten trapped inside ancient, ivy-covered buildings being educated alongside the heiresses to some of the world’s most impressive fortunes. She’d spent enough time in the company of the ultra-wealthy to have developed an immunity to the overwhelming air of social privilege that dripped from them like heavy perfume. Enough time so that the sight of their poster boy in motion didn’t strike her dumb with awe, anyway.

  Which was a good thing, because it certainly filled her with lust.

  Her smile faded at that lowering thought, and she watched him hand a counterfeit hundred over the counter in return for their drinks. The bartender never blinked, never even looked away from Patrick’s face as she made change. Liz refrained—barely—from rolling her eyes in disgust.

  A few moments later, Patrick strolled up, drinks in hand, not a drop spilled. He handed her a glass of something cool and golden, then slid onto the couch next to her, the long line of his thigh pressed firmly to hers from hip to knee.

  “No problem with the pass,” he said, brushing her hair away and leaning into her ear.

  She swept her lashes down and peeked sideways at him, shooting for coquettish. “That’s because you keep ordering drinks from women.”

  He smiled at her, slow and warm. “Hey, I just present myself at the bar. Is it my fault th
at women feel compelled to serve me?”

  She did roll her eyes this time. “We’re not here for you to pick up women, Patrick. We’re trying to get caught passing fake hundreds, but nobody’s looking at the money because they’re too busy being dazzled by your stupid face. For God’s sake, order from the men next time, will you? Give them a fighting chance.”

  Patrick slipped an arm around her shoulders and gave her an intimate little squeeze. “Did you bury a compliment in there somewhere?”

  Liz suppressed a hot shiver with all the willpower left in her body, and took a fortifying slug of her drink. It burned a path of lemony fire straight to her stomach. “What the hell is this?” she asked.

  “It’s called a Between the Sheets.” He grinned at her. “Or a Maiden’s Prayer, depending who you ask. Apparently, it was quite popular in the Roaring Twenties.”

  Liz tried very hard to turn her frown into something more adoring in case anybody was watching. Which they probably were, because men like Patrick didn’t need a damn spotlight to attract attention. “Which explains why this tastes like something my West Virginia cousins brew up in the barn.”

  He leaned in, feathered his lips along her cheekbone all the way to her ear. A shock wave rolled over every inch of her skin and detonated in parts best left unconsidered. “Let’s dance,” he said.

  “What?” She blinked at him. Techno/big band still pumped out of the speakers. “To this?”

  He plucked the drink from her hand, set it aside and rose to his feet. She automatically went with him, as he’d somehow availed himself of her hand. “Trust me,” he said over his shoulder and led her into the chaos.

  She didn’t trust him. Far from it, but Liz was no fool. She held on. She had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do once he got there, but she’d rather stick with him than be abandoned to the sweaty tangle of elbows and hips he was currently parting like the Red Sea.

  When he finally stopped, she managed a glance over his shoulder and found they had arrived at the DJ station. A young guy was manning the turntables, working an elaborate array of slides and switches with one hand while holding an enormous set of headphones against his ear with the other. His head bobbed to whatever rhythm he heard there, though how he heard anything over the spill of music coming from the speakers at his back, Liz hadn’t a clue.