In Bed with the Wild One & In Bed with the Pirate

by Julie Kistler

  “Yeah. Pretty funny.”

  Actually, not funny at all. Could she really be as genuine and sincere as she seemed? Or was she snowing him down to his shoes?

  Tyler took a big swallow of wine, watching her, weighing her, mentally taking her apart and putting her back together.

  The bottom line was there was just something about Emily. Something about the sparkle in those round, trusting hazel eyes, about the perfect Little Dutch Girl hairdo that seemed to frame her face and make her eyes even bigger, about the bright, uncomplicated radiance of her smile. About the way she attacked her clams with the same gusto she’d kissed him with in Washington Square.

  That was something, all right.

  And if he didn’t watch himself, he would be falling for her crazy, mixed-up charms. Big-time.

  “Great time for that,” he muttered under his breath. “You are on the verge of losing your office, your practice and your kneecaps. Sure, great time to fall for Susie Sorority.”

  “What did you say?” she asked politely.

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought you said something about Sukie Sommersby. Now that would be a coincidence.” Emily laughed, shaking her not-quite-golden brown hair.

  Tyler found himself distracted by the way the candlelight played across the fall of her shiny hair.

  “Sukie and I go way back.”

  “Sorry. Don’t know anybody named Sukie.”

  But Emily was off and running, doing this riff on the adventures of her old college chum, who seemed to have lived quite the roller-coaster life. Waving her hands for emphasis, giggling, trying on and discarding goofy accents to sketch the various personages who drifted through Sukie’s madcap escapades, Emily was irresistible.

  Her performance also gave him a pretty good idea of why she thought it was acceptable to jump on a plane to San Francisco and then run off on a wild-goose chase once she got there. Because it was what Sukie would do. Damn Sukie. And what kind of name was Sukie, anyway?

  Oh, well, at least the collected stories of the life and times of Sukie Sommersby gave him a chance to watch Emily lick the cream out of a cannoli.

  There were few pleasures in life to top that.

  TYLER FELT ABOUT TEN YEARS older by the time he took her back to Beau’s B and B. Given how giggly and clingy Emily was getting, he probably shouldn’t have poured quite so much wine down her. Or had the last few glasses himself.

  Good thing he’d found her credit card when the bill came. Not only did he verify that her name really was Emily Chaplin, but he didn’t have to wash dishes to get them out of Caffe Fiori. By himself, he couldn’t afford the first bottle of Chianti, let alone a second one.

  “Okay,” Emily told him as he opened the front door for her. “I want you to say it. You say, Emily, you saved my adorable butt and thank you, thank you, I need you on the team, you are my partner now.”

  “I’m not going to say that.”

  Emily stopped in the doorway. “Why not? Didn’t I bonk that guy on the head for you? Didn’t I pick up the tab at the Caffe Fiori because you were temporarily without funds?”

  “Yes, you did.” Sighing, Tyler scooped her up and lifted her over the threshhold. “But that just made us even, you know. I saved your adorable butt, too—from Sluggo who came through the window, remember?”

  “Yes, but that was your fault, too,” she argued. “Sluggo was after you, not me. And why are you calling him Sluggo?”

  “He just looked like a Sluggo.”

  “I don’t think so,” she shot back. “Brutus. I would call him Brutus.”

  “Does it matter?” He lowered his voice as he carried her down the hall. “Let’s try to be quiet, okay? We don’t want to wake Kate or the other guests.”

  “Oh, Kate. She’s nice, isn’t she?”

  “Very nice.”

  “I really like her.” Emily smiled mistily. “I like everybody.”

  “I’ll bet you do, with two bottles of Chianti in you.”

  “Tyler, I’m not that drunk,” she said severely, wiggling until he put her down. “Don’t patronize me.”

  “Never.”

  “Oh, yeah, right.” She put a hand on the rail to steady herself, and he could tell she was concentrating on the tiny lights along the floorboards to guide her. She navigated her way up to the second floor all by herself by sheer force of will. “All you do is patronize me. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t give me a straight answer all night. I was honest with you. But you? Ha!”

  “Emily, come on,” he said, poking through her purse until he located her key. He unlocked the door for her, ushering her into the Pollyanna room.

  “You come on. I deserve better.” After tossing her purse, her shopping bag and then her jacket onto the bed, each one with a satisfying whack, she faced him down. “I really do.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you on that one. You do deserve better.”

  “Well, then…”

  But he shoved all the junk off the bed and tipped her backward. “Get in, Emily.”

  “Tyler, this is important. In the morning, you will take me with you, right?” Her expression was dead serious and her gaze steady. “Promise?”

  “Yeah, okay.” He backed away from the bed. “I’m afraid not to let you tag along,” he teased. “Or you might conk me on the head with your trashy sandals, too.”

  “Exactly,” she declared. She sat up, unbuttoning her pants.

  “Maybe you should wait on that,” he began, but she wasn’t listening.

  She kicked off her shoes and socks, and then started to shrug out of the khakis, still bubbling with enthusiasm. “This is going to be great, Tyler. We’ll find Slab and Shanda again, before he can take her apart with his bare hands to find the stash. But I don’t think that will be a problem, do you? Because she seemed pretty capable of taking care of herself. I am a lot less concerned about her than I was at the beginning.” With a finger to her lips, she stage-whispered, “I’ll bet she spent his money.”

  “What?” How did she know Slab’s name? Or Shanda’s? Or anything about a stash? Was that something she’d overheard from the rest room at The Flesh Pit? And why was she undressing in front of him?

  “Tyler, I don’t want you to worry.” Her hands moved to the hem of her T-shirt, and she edged it up over her rib cage, displaying every intention of taking that off, too.

  This time he put a stop to it himself, knocking her hands away from her shirt. “Don’t you think you should leave that on?”

  “Well, I was planning to sleep in it, but I have to take my bra off first.” She rolled her eyes. “Men. Why would I sleep in my bra?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said sarcastically. “Maybe so I don’t dream all night about you in here without one?”

  “Would you? That is so sweet.” And she gave him that moony smile again, the one that made him think she needed a keeper—but not him, of course.

  “Yeah, yeah. Just go to bed, will you?”

  “Tyler, I want you to know everything will be okay,” she said dreamily, falling back into a stack of frilly pillows. “We’re going to do this together, and we’re going to make sure you are not out on the street, that Fat Mike doesn’t lay a hand on you, that Slab shows up for court on Monday, and you can pay Jozette back every dime you owe her.”

  As this speech progressed, he grew more and more still. It took a minute, but he found his voice. “How the hell do you know all that?”

  “Oh.” She hesitated, lifting her head, squinting as she attempted to focus. “You said it. I couldn’t help but overhear.” She giggled. “Don’t you remember, at the Rainbow Rest-O-Rant? What a dump!”

  “The Rainbow…? In Chicago?”

  “Uh-huh.” She yawned and reclined further into her pristine white bedclothes. “I had a banana split. Slab made the coffee cups bounce. Where did you think?”

  “What I thought was…” He set his jaw. She’d followed him all the way from Chicago. Not from a cab at the a
irport, not because she liked the B and B, not even because a burglar had piqued her interest. All the way from the beginning—which put this into a totally different category. “I don’t know what I think.”

  But her eyes were already closed. Emily had drifted off into never-never land.

  Quietly seething, he left her there on the bed in the Pollyanna room, carefully locking the door behind him. Back in the relative safety of The Wild One, he stared at the newly repaired window, wondering just how much of a sucker he was.

  Again and again, she’d kept to her story. I could tell you were in trouble and I wanted to help. That is the absolute truth.

  Was it possible? Was Emily really as innocent as she wanted him to believe?

  No one could really be that naive or that crazy, could they? To follow some guy she’d never met all the way from a third-rate coffee shop in Chicago to San Francisco on a whim?

  It didn’t make sense.

  But what might make sense was a different scheme. Say she was a rookie cop or even a fledgling investigator for either the FBI or the ethics committee to the bar association. Say she got assigned to him, she did some surveillance, and she trailed him from Chicago to California, all by the rule book.

  So maybe she got in over her head once she got here. Maybe she liked him more than she was supposed to. Maybe she drank too much and had some fun and totally screwed up her assignment.

  Maybe she was the world’s worst undercover investigator.

  Now that made sense.

  He stripped off his own clothes, splashed some water to knock some sense into his head, and stretched out on The Wild One bed. But he wasn’t interested in sleeping. He had some thinking to do.

  Who was Emily Chaplin? What did she know?

  And how much trouble was she going to cause him?

  6

  WRAPPED IN WHITE LINEN and lace, Emily tossed and turned. She wasn’t exactly awake, but she wasn’t asleep, either. She felt itchy and uncomfortable, a little constricted, a lot woozy. And why was her head full of buxom strippers who had tattoos and Tyler lying on a black leather bed wearing nothing but a smile?

  “Mmm,” she mumbled into her pillow, enjoying the image. “Tyler…”

  But when she moved her lips she realized there was something wrong with her mouth. She tasted like garlic. Old, used-up garlic.

  Rousing herself, Emily padded into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She had a vague recollection of where she was and what she’d been doing, but things were still awfully fuzzy. Blearily she squinted into the mirror over the sink, giving her reflection a hazy once-over.

  “Yuck,” she said out loud. Her hair was a disaster area, and she was wearing nothing but a rumpled white T-shirt with her grandmother’s pearls. Somehow she doubted Grandma Burr would approve. “Maybe Grandma had more of a sense of adventure than I think.”

  Unlikely. Fumbling with the catch on her necklace, she dropped the pearls near the sink, and then scanned the basin and the marble top. No toothbrush. The best she could do was swish some water around in her mouth and rub a finger over her teeth. But she still reeked of garlic and wine. Way too much wine.

  “My head hurts.” She stumbled back a step. No medicine cabinet. No helpful pain relievers, either. “But wait.”

  A ray of clarity penetrated the fog. There should be aspirin in her briefcase. And a tiny toothbrush and tube of toothpaste, too—emergency supplies for client meetings after lunch.

  “Fabulous,” she murmured, locating what she needed in the dark, savagely brushing her teeth, knocking back the aspirin and climbing into bed with a glass of water.

  After sticking the cup on the wicker bedside table, she dropped into her Pollyanna bed, but she was still uncomfortable. Frowning, she sat up. With one tug, she pulled her T-shirt off up to her neck, unhooked the damn bra and tossed it on the floor, and then readjusted the T-shirt.

  “Much better,” she said drowsily, conjuring up the forbidden mental pictures she’d been enjoying. Tyler, black leather, nothing but a smile. “Oh, yeah.”

  OVER IN THE WILD ONE, Tyler was restless.

  He’d shoved that stupid leather bedspread onto the floor, yanking out the black sheets around the edges enough to give him some room to breathe, but he still kept staring at the ceiling, wide-awake. Or glaring at the armoire with its secret passage into Emily’s room. Or glancing at the window, wondering whether Sluggo or Mack the Knife planned return appearances anytime soon.

  “Damn it,” he muttered to himself. As near as he could figure, and from what he’d been able to gather from Slab before the brouhaha broke out, the mopes who’d been bothering him were ex-cohorts of Slab’s who thought they were entitled to a share of whatever ill-gotten gains Slab had hidden in San Francisco. And they didn’t plan to let it go easily. They wanted their money, and they wanted it now.

  And because Emily kept showing up where she wasn’t supposed to be and barging into what didn’t concern her, the bad guys undoubtedly thought she was involved in this, too. Plus Mack the Knife had a personal score to settle, given that she’d hammered him over the head with her shoe.

  The memory of that altercation came flooding back, and Tyler laughed in spite of himself. The way that guy had crumpled to the floor was a picture, all right. Who’d have figured Emily to pack such a potent left hook?

  But he sobered quickly. Because of that hook, Emily had put herself in a bull’s-eye. It was mostly her own fault, but it was still a fact.

  No matter where she fell on the spectrum—from total innocent to really bad undercover agent—stooges like Sluggo and Mack didn’t play around. It was only a matter of time before they came gunning for Emily. And what the hell could he do about it?

  Because of him, Emily had imbibed way too much wine, and she was probably passed out in a stupor right now, totally unable to defend herself.

  He got up to check the new latch on the window. It seemed fine. And he didn’t see any suspicious shadows down below on the street, as if anyone were watching or waiting.

  He went back to bed.

  He got up to make sure the armoire was secured, that the trophy was in place and the hooks were fastened. All fine.

  He went back to bed.

  He got up and re-examined the window and the armoire and the entire security system. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  But the silence in this room was deafening. Where was a siren when you needed it? Or a storm or a cat fight or a garbage truck, or even a drunk staggering home in the wee hours singing, “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille”? It was too damn quiet out there, and in here.

  Unable to shake his uneasy feeling, Tyler pulled his jeans back on, got a drink of water, paced for a while, and stood at the window, gazing out into the dark, mysterious San Francisco night.

  Maybe he should take a gander into the Pollyanna room, in and out, just one little glance, to make sure she was okay. He knew she was fine—of course, she was fine—but it couldn’t hurt to double-check, could it? He’d be quiet, he’d be quick, he’d slide open the armoire, take a peek, verify that she was sleeping peacefully, and have the whole shebang back together before she even knew he was there.

  Gliding along the hardwood floor, Tyler removed the silver trophy and set it on the floor. It only took a second to undo the latches, to slowly edge the panels open, to ease himself ever so carefully through the opening, and then take one tentative step into the Pollyanna room.

  Moonlight spilled in through the white lace curtains, streaking across the bed, illuminating Emily’s cheek against her pillow and the pale line of her bare leg where she’d kicked off her covers.

  She looked like an angel. All warm and cozy, sleeping sweetly, probably spinning mental pictures of the ballet or the opera or the new Donna Karan line or whatever pampered suburban rich girls with a fistful of credit cards dreamed of.

  Clearly she was fine, just fine, so he’d completed his rounds and it was past time to—

  When out of the blue, something landed
on his head.

  “Ow!” he yelled. “What the hell?”

  It was furry, yellow, and it had claws. As he spun around, trying to catch it and get it and its damn claws off his head, some scrap of stretchy fabric on the floor tripped him, and he almost fell down. As he staggered, the cat smacked him in the face with its fluffy tail, bounded down his shoulder and took off under the bed.

  “Damn cat!” he swore. He grabbed whatever it was that had tangled up his foot, jerking backward when he recognized it. A sliver of silk, the color of champagne.

  Emily’s bra. It was still warm from her hot little body. He stood there, dumbfounded, clutching Emily’s bra, grasping it so tight the hook embedded itself in his palm.

  “Tyler?” Sounding dazed but conscious, Emily lifted herself on one elbow in the four-poster bed, linens pooling around her waist. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. Sorry. I was just…” He dropped the bra like a hot potato. “I got to wondering whether you were safe. You know, with Sluggo and Mack on the loose and probably looking for us. So I came over to check. But Beau must’ve been hanging out on top of the armoire, and he jumped on my head.” He hesitated, aware how stupid all this sounded. “Sorry.”

  “S’okay.” She peered at him, obviously confused and three-quarters asleep. “D’ya wanna come in?”

  “Come in?” he echoed. What the hell did that mean?

  Yawning, she scooted over to one side of the bed and threw back the covers on the other. “Come in,” she repeated. “Do you want to come in?”

  His mouth fell open. She was inviting him into her bed as if it was nothing? The way she would offer a cup of coffee to a vacuum cleaner salesman?

  “I don’t think I should,” he muttered. “That’s probably a really bad idea.”

  He wondered if she was aware of exactly what she was offering. Sure, too much Chianti, a very long day, and she was opening up, relaxing, letting down her hair. But even so, he would have bet everything he had left in the world that Emily did not normally invite anyone into her bed on the first date.

  Not that you could really call what they’d been through tonight a date. A foiled burglary, a knife fight at a strip joint, escaping a police raid, a walk in the park, dinner and two bottles of wine at a quaint Italian restaurant. Well, that was as close to a date as he’d had in a good long time.