Hitting The Mark

by Jill Monroe

  This blew. Here she was erasing his memories, and he comes barreling over her fence like he had when they were fifteen and wanted to be alone together.

  After brushing off her hands, she turned to face him. He leaned against the siding, trying to look casual and unassuming, and not at all like a man who’d just fallen on his ass.

  “I’m a lot better now,” he told her, that rich voice of his caressing her in the dark.

  Her back stiffened and she heard the blood pound in her ears. “I doubt it,” she told him after she realized he was talking about his technique on the sex tape and not some weird psychic reaction to her setting his pictures ablaze. Or his backside.

  Dirk laughed. Sexy and low and in a way she didn’t remember. All man and full of confidence now. Not the green fumbling teenager in the dark. Her breath grew shallow.

  “It’s something I’d prove.”

  And despite it all, she felt a tingle of awareness. Maybe it was the recent nostalgia. Maybe it was because the back porch light only gave the hints and shadows of his rugged face, but Cassie knew, on some elemental level, that sex with Dirk in the present would be amazing. It hadn’t been all that bad years ago, bordering more on emotion than sensation. But now it would be both.

  “I called a while ago. What were you doing? Were you thinking of me?” he asked, his voice husky, as if he were thinking of her naked.

  She rolled her eyes. Dirk never used to ask those kinds of questions. “Actually, I was burning your effigy in my backyard.”

  “Really?” he asked, sounding worried.

  Good. “Oh, did I say that out loud? Because I meant to say that out loud.”

  “I bet you look hot. What are you wearing? I can barely see you.”

  Cassie gasped at his gall. Secretly intrigued and hating herself for it. Chapter Nine.

  Someone to hate.

  Focus. It was all blinking loud and clear. “A housecoat. Something my grandma gave me. Used.”

  Yet somehow his outrageous comments didn’t make her angry. No, they excited her. Thrilled her. Now was not the time for this. She felt more vulnerable somehow, here at night, surrounded by dozens of memories of them together in her backyard. Playing in the sprinkler as children. Kissing under the tree.

  “I bet you look fantastic. I can’t describe the agony I was in when I imagined you asleep in your bedroom. Under the covers. I’d wake up hard. I’ve never wanted anyone like I want you.”

  Her breath hitched, and it became harder to breathe. I want you. Present tense. Cassie was a person who noticed grammar. Dirk knew that. He pushed himself off the side of her house, and walked toward her.

  “You need to leave,” she told him.

  “Have dinner with me tomorrow night,” he said. It wasn’t an invitation…more like an encouragement. Have dinner with me. Let me do amazing stuff to your body. Her breasts grew heavy. She wouldn’t let herself imagine what that stuff would be.

  Let me humiliate you in front of the world.

  “No, thank you,” she replied. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning anyway.”

  He nodded toward the bottle she’d left on the picnic table. “Then share your wine with me now.”

  “If there’s to be any drinking together, you’d be buying. And I don’t drink cheap wine.”

  “I think I can manage your preferences on my budget,” he said. A small laugh from him told her he knew she’d rung up the dinner bill on purpose and that he didn’t care.

  “Besides,” he continued, “I never got to finish my end of the conversation tonight. You owe me that.”

  She righted herself. So did her breathing. “I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

  “Then you owe it to yourself. Don’t you want to know what I have to say?”

  She hesitated. Say no. Say no. Say no. But what did he want to say? Curiosity did a lot more than kill the cat. Danni always said curiosity was a bad thing. Now she understood why.

  An intensity surrounded him, as if he was ready to do battle. The question was why. Her thoughts grabbed on to the tips in Chapter Two. Confront Up Front.

  “What do you want?” she asked, not bothering to hide her confusion. He was her Chapter Nine. Her one person to hate. She was good with that. It worked.

  More important, she didn’t want to change that, but it seemed like Dirk had other ideas.

  He reached for her hand, twining his fingers between hers. So familiar. “I want to spend time with you. Talk. Get to know you again,” he said, his gaze direct. His voice strong and not sounding a bit strange in spite of the romantic things he was saying. Dirk was not a romantic.

  “No,” she said, flat, emotionless.

  In spite of her refusal, she could see his smile in the night. “Why not?” he asked, appearing as if he liked the idea of the challenge.

  She thrust his hand away. “Hmm, let’s see. You let me down. You broke my heart. The most intimate moments I could ever spend with you are now a personal sex education class for any fourteen-year-old boy with a low-speed modem. Half those sites aren’t even password protected.”

  “It’s not that bad,” he said, his voice taking on a reassuring tone, as if he wanted to comfort her.

  Cassie sucked in a breath. “Maybe not to you. You’re the stud on Ibangedherdotcom.”

  Dirk reached for her elbow, his thumb gently caressing her skin. “What I said earlier is true. I never stopped thinking of you.”

  She made a scoffing noise.

  “I was an idiot. I made the biggest mistake of my life when I let you go. I want to fix that mistake now. I’ll start by finding out who took our tape. It was stolen, Cassie. I didn’t do it. I want you to know that. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  He seemed sincere. And the words…he was saying every single word in exactly the way her twenty-year-old self would have wanted to hear them.

  Her twenty-nine-year-old self wanted to grab the bottle of wine she wouldn’t share and dump it over his head. “Not interested.”

  His lips turned sultry, his gaze heated. “It’s still there between us, Cassie. The spark. The hunger. I could see it in your eyes tonight. Feel it in the tenseness of your body right now. You want me. I damn well know I want you.”

  A shaft of awareness splintered through her chest, and warmth rushed between her legs. The idea of this big, sexy man still wanting her after all these years made her body yearn for his touch. She forced herself to harden her response. Cut off the desire.

  “Ahh, but, Dirk, I am not a jerk. And I don’t want you.”

  “Not true,” he challenged. His thumb continued to caress the sensitive skin of her wrist.

  Goose bumps formed on her arm. She knew Dirk felt them—she felt the excitement in him.

  “Oh, my body may want you, but to borrow a tip from my third chapter—second helpings are merely cold servings left over from the first time. There’s a reason the entrée was returned to the kitchen.”

  He dropped her hand, but didn’t seem at all fazed by her rejection. “That was a chapter I just couldn’t get into.”

  8

  ERIC STUDIED THE PICTURE he’d printed of Danni from the casino’s database. The openness and honesty of her now didn’t mesh with the sullen-faced girl in the photo. But then, no one looked good in a mug shot.

  He slipped her picture into a file folder and pushed the whole thing away to a corner of his desk. For some reason he didn’t want to think of her as a broken, forgotten teen trying to find her place in a world that didn’t want her, with a father who couldn’t stay out of jail. A person who spent her high school years behind bars. Albeit deservedly so.

  He much preferred Danni as she had been last night. Smart and funny and a woman he wanted to know better. A woman he’d like to help stay on her current path of legitimacy. Which made no sense at all.

  People were supposed to trust him. Yet he found himself wanting to trust her. He wasn’t supposed to want things from them either. Not their breath on his heated skin. Not the joy they
made him feel.

  He slammed a drawer shut. Last night wasn’t right. Last night felt like a serious date. He had a job to do, and dating, at least that kind of dating, wasn’t part of it. Keeping it casual was the key.

  And printing off her picture was far from casual. He shoved her folder into a nearby cabinet. Couldn’t have Danni finding that.

  His cell phone rang. Eric didn’t have to glance at the caller ID to know it was his supervisor needing another progress report. Now was not a good time. Danni was meeting him here for lunch, and he had things to set up.

  For the first time he felt frustration with his career. When he’d taken this job, the casino had been nothing but an opportunity. A chance to move up the ladder. He never dreamed he’d find something here he might want to hold on to after it was all over.

  SHE WOULD NOT BE A SAP. She would not be a sap. Danni said this to herself over and over again as she walked through the casino toward Eric’s office.

  Her father would say Eric had her on the run. After all, she was doing the legwork and coming to him, meeting him on his turf. But this was a healthy, adult relationship. Her first. And things like legwork and power balances didn’t figure in healthy adult relationships. Of that she was mildly confident.

  Eric’s door was open. Her heart rate increased and her palms grew moist. This was probably a typical teenager’s response to seeing a guy who you really really liked, and macked with the night before.

  Except she was a grown woman. Still, despite the fact that she missed out on all the typical coming of age angst, she planned to explore every emotion and sensation, and enjoy it the way a woman should.

  Danni popped her head around the doorframe. His office was empty. She tamped down her small sense of disappointment. What should she do? Hang around outside his door? Go inside and have a seat? She had absolutely no social skills where this kind of situation was concerned.

  And yes, she’d quash that first instinct that an empty office was a ripe opportunity. Opportunity to rifle through all his things. No. She’d sit down in one of the guest chairs, cross her legs at the ankles and demurely place her hands in her lap. Not a problem. She could even consider this moment as a moment of quiet from her job and her studies, and meditate or something. For that matter, she could embrace the calm.

  Except about twenty seconds into her imposed tranquility, her gaze fell upon the file on Eric’s desk. The one marked Security. And its twin marked Banned.

  Out it came. The Flynn Family Curiosity. An amateur might think that snooping and reconnaissance were identical. Semantically, probably very similar…but in application. One got you thrown into jail, and the other kept you out.

  Asking yourself questions like, “What would one small peek hurt?” or “Who would know?” would also get you thrown out of your new hot and utterly normal boyfriend’s office.

  So she could wait. Patiently, too. Her gaze moved around the room. He still didn’t have anything in his office. Maybe she could change that. She felt a grin on her face. She sure liked the way that sounded.

  Seven minutes and thirty-seven seconds later, Eric strolled into the room. The tense expression left his face when he saw her.

  She loved knowing her presence alone could make him feel better. Now that was a whole lot better than embracing the calm.

  “I’m sorry, I got stuck on the floor. Were you waiting long?” he asked.

  “No.” Lie.

  At her words, Eric flashed her a smile that sent shivers all over her body and straight through to her toes. She could have waited forever for that smile. “The hotel has opened a new restaurant. You up for Chinese?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Should she mention the files on his desk? Perhaps remind him he shouldn’t leave important items like that lying around? Then he reached around her and locked the door, pulling it shut after them.

  “Do you always lock your door?”

  Eric nodded. “Always.”

  “But it was wide open when I arrived.”

  “I knew you’d be coming.”

  She smiled, growing as warm and tingly as if he’d kissed her. Eric trusted her. And the feeling was wonderful. Good call on not lifting up the file folder for a quick peek.

  “The restaurant is off the casino floor,” he said, leading the way. After they ordered, they were left alone to talk. It occurred to her that since Eric had taken over the date planning, he’d created a lot of chances to talk.

  “Tell me about the first time you cheated someone.”

  Her back stiffened. He hadn’t brought this up since her confession. She would have preferred miniature golf to this.

  “It’s okay,” he urged.

  Danni gave Eric a hard, scrutinizing look. Searching for any sign of judgment or distaste. But she found only curiosity in his eyes. This is what people did, right? They got to know one another. That had to include everything.

  “In the fifth grade a girl down the street tricked me into giving her my favorite Barbie. By the end of the week, I got it back plus her Barbie Corvette.”

  Eric laughed. “How’d you do that?”

  Danni shrugged. “I don’t remember anymore. Probably a combination of misdirection and flattery. Dad said I had the perfect hustle. Mom said I should be ashamed of myself. It was the only time I ever saw my parents argue. Dad was a con man before he married her, but gave up the game for her. She required it.”

  “How did your mom die?”

  Danni sipped her iced tea. “Accident. Dad took off for a while after that, and I went to live with my grandparents. It was my last real home, I missed her so much. This sounds so—” Danni’s words broke off. She sat surprised at the tightness in her throat. So many years had passed, and she’d talked about her mother dozens of times in counseling sessions during her incarceration, and then later with Cassie. Danni hadn’t felt teary in a long while. So why now?

  Eric kept silent, waiting patiently.

  Danni cleared her throat. “Sometimes when I was in a store and there’d be a girl about my age with her mom, I’d kind of sidle up to them, and stand close and pretend. For just a moment, I’d imagine the woman was my mother. Smell her perfume. Try to memorize what she was wearing.”

  Danni lifted her chin and gave him a wink. “About nine months later, Dad dropped in, picked me up and brought me to Vegas, and gave me an education. Flynn Family style.”

  “He taught you to steal,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She lifted a finger. “He taught me the art of the con,” she said in an impression of her father’s real voice.

  “Is there a difference?” he asked, his expression turning sour.

  “Not really, but in his mind there is. You see, Dad came from a long line of conning Flynns. They developed rules over the years. I’m sure it was to mask the guilt of taking someone else’s property.”

  Danni’s and Eric’s food arrived, and Danni took a bite of her beef and broccoli. “Mmm, this is good. Excellent choice of restaurant. Yours looks good, too.”

  “You want a bite?” he asked. He swirled some of the Asian noodle dish on his fork, then tipped it toward her. Danni leaned forward, taking the fork into her mouth slowly.

  Danni’s eyes never left his as her lips closed over the delicious bite he offered. Her teeth snagged the end of the bite, and she pulled it into her mouth. She closed her eyes on a sigh.

  Eric swallowed. “That looked really good,” he said. His voice was husky, letting her know his mind wasn’t all on food.

  “See how easy it is?”

  “To what?” he asked.

  “I just conned you out of a bite of your food.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Maybe I wanted to give it to you.”

  “And there’s Flynn Con Rule Number One. Find something that people don’t mind losing.”

  “People don’t want their money taken.”

  “True. But sometimes they don’t mind if you leave them with a good feeling. Find the need they have inside, appeal
to it. That’s where the art comes in.”

  “So, a moment ago, when your mouth closed around that fork but your eyes made me think about your lips on my body, was that a con?”

  She knew she was blushing. “I’m out of the hustle business. That was all me.”

  Eric’s gaze turned heated. “That’s good to know.” After a few minutes, he asked, “You think you can con me?”

  “It would be hard, you’re looking for it now. I’d need to spend a lot of time with you, do a lot of research to find out your weaknesses.”

  “Feel free to do all the research you need to on my body,” he offered, sliding the back of his hand down her arm.

  “Very generous,” she said with a laugh.

  “So how’s your life changed since you left juvie?”

  “Well, I’ll never wear orange again for as long as I live.” She laughed even though it was true. Then she became more contemplative. “You know, I never thought I’d tell anyone but Cassie about my past.” Everything with Eric felt so easy.

  He looked genuinely surprised, and maybe a tad uncomfortable. For a moment, Danni wondered if she’d shared a little too much.

  “You haven’t told anyone, not even one of those old musician boyfriends?” he asked.

  “You’d think, but no. Maybe it would have made me look cooler in their eyes. Criminal girlfriend,” she said wryly. Then she took a deep breath, ready to lay all her cards on the table. “It’s probably because deep down I didn’t trust them enough.”

  Eric’s movement stilled, his direct gaze met hers. “Do you trust me, Danni?”

  A smile tugged at her lips. “Yes.”

  The expression on his face didn’t change. “Don’t even have to think about it?”

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t even have to think about it.”

  His hand reached across the table for hers, stilling her restless fingers. “I want you to know I’ll always take care of your interests.”

  She smiled despite the odd phrasing. Maybe that’s how people in the corporate world would say, “Come on, baby, I don’t need to wear one of those things.”