Sex & Sensibility

by Shannon Hollis

  Tessa sighed, took a bite out of her muffin and a sip from the cold coffee, and reached for the phone on the nightstand.

  GRIFFIN BERATED HIMSELF for getting into that conversation all the way into the house. What had he been thinking, telling Tessa Nichols he liked touching her when he had no intention of following up? That moment of honesty could have become downright dangerous.

  He had neither the time nor the inclination to start something he couldn’t finish, and even if he did, it wouldn’t be with a blond psychic who represented everything he mistrusted. Besides, she only found him attractive when she wasn’t really herself.

  If that wasn’t a kick to the manhood, he didn’t know what was.

  But why mistrust her? She’s proving to be an asset.

  He couldn’t get past it. He needed facts. Evidence. Things that were real. She lived in some parallel universe half the time.

  A parallel universe where she wants you, buddy. Think about it.

  And just how weird was that?

  12

  “CLEU, THIS IS NICHOLS.”

  “Hi, it’s me.”

  “Tessa?” Linn’s tone went from hard-nosed cop to concerned sister. “Why are you calling me at work? Is something wrong?”

  “No, not at all. In fact, you’ll be happy to know I’ve got a paying gig. Remember that kidnapped girl I told you about?”

  “The one you say you saw in some kind of vision?”

  “Yeah. Turns out she wasn’t kidnapped at all. We think she’s run off with her boyfriend, and my gig is to find her. A missing persons deal.”

  “Why bother? I can sympathize. I’d like to run off with my boyfriend right now.”

  “She’s only eighteen, and he’s an older man. Daddy is very upset.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I could see that.” Linn paused. “So what’s up?”

  “If I give you a couple of phone numbers, can you run them and find out who they belong to?”

  “Phone numbers?”

  “Yeah. Griffin says to ask you to do a subscriber check.”

  “Griffin? I only know one Griffin, and that’s the one who arrested you two years ago and made me raise my voice and say bad words in public. I didn’t know you were within a hundred miles of him.”

  “He works for the guy who hired me. Kind of a security guy.”

  “You sound awfully cheery for a woman working with her arresting officer,” Linn observed. “Especially when I know you’ve been carrying around a lot of anger over it.”

  “The operative words being over it. I’m cool. He admitted he was wrong—well, sort of—and we’ve moved on.”

  “Griffin Knox admitted he was wrong. To a person he arrested,” Linn repeated the words flatly. “I never knew that man to admit he was wrong about anything, and I worked on the same squad with him for two years.”

  “I guess he’s loosened up a bit.” He gets a hard-on when he looks at me. That’s definitely what I’d call loosening up.

  No, no. You just didn’t say things like that to Linn.

  “So if I give you these numbers, can you help?”

  “Sure. I guess. Strictly off the record, of course.” Tessa dictated them and Linn said, “I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

  She was as good as her word. Tessa’s cell phone beeped a couple of notes of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” a few minutes later, and when she answered it, Linn said, “I don’t know how much good this is going to do you.”

  “Why? Who do they belong to?”

  “The first is assigned to someone called Michelle Oraia at Oraia Salon, on First Street in Santa Rita.”

  “Hey, I know that place,” Tessa said. “Or know of it. Very exclusive. They definitely don’t cater to the working woman.”

  “The second is registered to a company called Stellar Memory in Carmel Valley.” She dictated both addresses and Tessa wrote them down. The second one meant nothing to her, but hopefully it would ring a bell for Griffin.

  “Thanks, Linn,” she said. “I really appreciate this.”

  “No problem. It’s not like you ask me for favors every day of the week. So, um…” She stopped.

  “What?” It was very unlike Linn not to finish a sentence. “Did you find a florist?”

  “Huh? Oh, yes, I did. Kellan’s mom is going to do all the flowers. I don’t know why I didn’t ask her in the first place. No, I just wondered what it was like working with Griffin. If, you know, you’re okay with it.”

  “I’m getting paid sixty bucks an hour to be okay with it. But no, I meant it. We’re cool. We had a talk.”

  “Another revelation. There’s a reason we called that guy Fort Knox, you know.”

  “I don’t doubt it. He had a hard time with my, um, shall we say, investigative methods at first. But he’s coming around now, since they seem to be providing information.”

  “Coming around how?”

  Should she tell her? Oh, what the heck. “I kinda came on to him while I was having a vision. He’s been apologizing ever since for responding. It’s really annoying.”

  Tessa could practically feel Linn trying to revise her initial reaction, which was complete disbelief. “How can you come on to someone while you’re seeing things?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s like I’m describing what I see and acting it at the same time.”

  “And you do this in front of people?”

  “Just him. His assignment is to report everything I say.” She paused. “Well, almost everything.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re my sister. If it were anyone else I’d say they were bullshitting me,” Linn said. “This is not the Griffin Knox I know. His wife dumped him when he was shot. Took off with his partner. Natalie Wong, my friend in Forensics, knows the whole story because she worked with his wife. Anyway, after that we started calling him Fort Knox, because no woman could crack him.”

  “People change. Not that it matters to me personally. He’s not my type.”

  “I know. You’re saving yourself for Coop or Danny.”

  “Don’t even go there. Maybe I’ll seduce Griffin just to prove you wrong.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible.”

  “What, that I could seduce someone?”

  “Oh, I have every confidence in your ability to put a hex on some defenseless man and make him do your bidding. I just don’t think that stuff works with Griffin Knox.”

  You didn’t see his eyes when he looks at me. “Very funny. Thanks for the phone numbers.”

  “Anytime. Keep me posted.”

  Tessa hoped she was talking about the investigation, and not about the man.

  UNFORTUNATELY, the subscribers to the phone numbers meant nothing to Griffin, either.

  “A salon, okay, I can see her calling that repeatedly. But Stellar Memory? They manufacture computer parts. It must be a mistake.”

  “Or our mystery man works there.” Tessa sat on the end of the bed, and leaned back with her elbows on the bedspread. The cottage had become command central with the addition of a Mission-style oak table provided by Mandy so they would have somewhere to put the laptop. A couple of yellow legal pads, some pens, and Griffin’s cell phone sat on its glossy surface.

  “Which narrows the field to what? A couple of hundred people?” Griffin’s tone was gloomy. “I could go over there and start asking questions, which would probably make other people ask questions, which would mean the media asking questions. I just don’t see how we can pin down one guy on the quiet.”

  “Why so many calls to Oraia, though?” Tessa wondered aloud. “It’s supposed to be really exclusive. You know, caters to the tennis-and-Jag set. But still, you call, you make an appointment, you wait two weeks to get in. You don’t phone a bazillion times.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t get the nail person she wanted.”

  “Was that a sarcastic remark?”

  He glanced at her. “That girl isn’t Jay’s daughter for nothing. I wouldn’t put it past her to nag until she got what she w
anted.”

  “Hmm.” Tessa wasn’t satisfied.

  “You can call over there and ask everyone in the place why Tessa called so often, if you want.” From his tone, it was a dead end. “This Michelle Oraia is probably just a girlfriend and they’re yakking, like she does with—” he held up the sheets of phone numbers “—Ashley, Melissa, and Georgia.”

  “You know what? I think I will. Something about this is bugging me.”

  He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  She dialed the salon’s number and someone picked it up on the second ring. “Good morning, Oraia.”

  “Hi, can I speak to Michelle, please?”

  “This is she. Can I help you?”

  “Oh, I hope so.” Tessa made her voice light and guileless. “Does Christina Singleton have an appointment there this week?”

  The woman paused, and Tessa heard a page being turned. “She does, as a matter of fact. Tomorrow at two, for henna and a trim.”

  “Um, just between you and me, do you think she’ll make it?”

  “Are you a friend of hers?”

  “Yes, this is Ashley. I was thinking, you know, since she might not be back in town, you might let me have her appointment.”

  “So she actually did it, did she?” The young woman’s voice lost its formality and took on a confidential tone. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t think she’d go.”

  “I didn’t, either. Not with her dad being so protective and all.”

  There was a pause. “You’re way too nice. The guy’s a total tyrant, making her check in every time she goes anywhere, always wanting to know where she is. This whole Trey thing was a major reaction to all that.”

  Trey?

  Inside her, it felt as if a bell had rung, deep and sure. That was his name. Trey. The guy they were looking for.

  “Do you know him very well?”

  “No better than you. As much as you can know someone you only see in clubs and stuff. I mean, he talked as much to you as he did to her, which if you don’t mind me saying, totally made Christina mad at you.”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do? Ignore my friend’s guy? But I still don’t know where they—”

  “Oops, it’s time to open up, and I promised I’d stay away. Why don’t we wait and see if she calls, okay? If not, someone will let you know about that appointment tomorrow morning.”

  “Sure, that’d be fine.”

  Tessa said goodbye and hung up, grinning. She may not have been able to ask where they were going, but at least she had a name. Damn, she was good at this investigative stuff.

  She just hoped Ashley was in the mood for henna and a trim.

  “WELL?”

  The suspense was killing him.

  Tessa practically glowed, she was so elated by her success with Michelle Oraia. Tessa glowing was a new one on him, Griffin thought. It would be safer and easier on his self-control if she wouldn’t do that. Her eyes sparkled and her lips were parted, as if they couldn’t wait to tell him the news.

  He dragged his gaze off the lips and back to the eyes—the lesser of the two evils.

  “This Michelle seems to be another of Christina’s friends. She said that Christina took off for a tryst with a guy named Trey.”

  He flipped through the case files on the top level of the filing cabinet in his brain and came up blank. “Did you get a last name?”

  She shook her head. “I think Ashley would have been expected to know, so I didn’t ask. So totally cool, huh? Now we have something to go on.”

  “What made you decide to impersonate Ashley?”

  “I just had a feeling. And it paid off.” She sat on the bench and hugged her knees, the picture of delighted satisfaction.

  “A feeling.” With Tessa, that could mean anything. “Did you hear her thinking or something?”

  “Of course not.” Tessa crinkled her eyebrows in what he supposed was a frown. “It’s like when the phone rings, you know? And you just know it’s your mom, like you have a flash, or a word appears in your mind.”

  He was not going to touch that one. Flashes and words didn’t generally appear in his mind. Give him something solid, like a spatter pattern or a fingerprint.

  “So now what?” Tessa asked.

  He walked over to the computer. “How about I see if there’s a Trey anywhere at Stellar Memory?”

  She came to stand behind his shoulder as he typed the name into the search function at the company’s Web site. While he waited for the page to load, her scent tickled his nostrils. Jasmine and cotton and soap. The skin on his back tingled and his body tightened as his memory returned to this morning, when he’d looked at her and her nipples had—

  “Wow, look at all those hits,” she said, leaning closer.

  Griffin blinked and came back to reality as the entries scrolled down the page.

  Trey Ludovic, Chief Operating Officer, announced today…

  Stellar Memory’s Trey Ludovic said in a statement that…

  COO places tenth in Bay to Berries run…

  Griffin clicked on the last one. Show me a picture, he commanded the screen. There was a good chance that a community events article would have a photograph.

  “Hey,” Tessa said in surprise. “Wait a minute.” She dashed out of the room.

  Griffin stared at the door and then shrugged, returning his attention to the screen as the photograph finished loading.

  And there he was. “Trey Ludovic, 41, of Stellar Memory crosses finish line to take tenth place.” The guy was in damn fine shape for forty-one. Lean, muscular, his thick brown hair windblown, he grinned at the camera and even after a 10K run, looked ready to charm the Nikes right off the photographer.

  “Look at this.” Tessa handed him a framed photo and he recognized the group shot of the Christmas party that hung in the hallway. She pointed to someone in the back row, wearing a toga that managed to reveal way too much chest for a social occasion. “It’s the same guy.”

  She was good. No doubt about it.

  Griffin told the laptop to print the race article over their wireless network to the color printer in Jay’s office.

  “Come on. I’ll bet you a beer Christina met him at the Christmas party, right here in the house.”

  Tessa followed him across the patio. “You realize that if it’s someone he knows, Jay is totally going to blow a gasket and shoot something. Maybe us.”

  That was the risk you took when you worked for Jay Singleton.

  13

  “CHRISTINA RAN AWAY with Trey Ludovic?”

  Tessa distinctly felt the glass in the windows rattle with the force of Jay Singleton’s rage.

  “I’ll kill that two-faced S.O.B.!” he shouted. “I’ll sell my stock—no, I’ll buy his damn company and fire him. I’ll make sure he never gets another job in the industry. And when he’s homeless, I’ll hunt him down with an elephant gun and he will be sorry—” he slammed a fist on the desk “—that he ever—” Slam! “—even looked—” Slam! “—at my daughter!”

  Tessa eyed Griffin, waiting for a sign in case they were to run—or maybe perform CPR. Geesh. The guy had no medium setting. He was either enraged or Mr. Control Freak, with nothing in between. She wondered if he made love with his teeth clenched. Poor Mandy.

  As if the thought had conjured her up—though it was probably the shouting—Mandy Singleton slipped into the room. She was wearing a multicolored wrap top that Tessa bet carried a Rodeo Drive label, and hot pink capri pants. It wasn’t even lunchtime and she looked glossy and perfectly put together.

  “Did you find something?” Mandy crossed the room and laid a hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Jay, what’s the matter?”

  Jay told her, which made him erupt all over again. When the volcano had settled down to just a few spurts of lava spitting out now and again, Griffin spoke up. “Do you think it’s possible they met at the Christmas party this past winter?”

  “What the hell difference does it make where they met?” Singleton snap
ped. “The point is, where are they now?”

  “The length of their relationship makes a lot of difference,” Mandy said thoughtfully. “If she met him at Christmas and pursued him for, say, a couple of months before they began an affair, it could be fairly new. In that case it will be easier to break up. If they’ve been a couple for a year or more—”

  “—they could be in Vegas getting married,” Griffin finished.

  That was not helpful. Tessa flashed him a glare.

  Instead of punching out a window or throwing something, Singleton sat heavily in his upholstered chair and put his head in his hands. Mandy leaned down to hug him.

  “That would be the worst-case scenario,” Griffin added, evidently trying to soothe the poor guy’s feelings. “Hopefully we can find her before that happens.”

  Jay was silent for a moment, then lifted his head. “As far as I know, she’d never met him before the Christmas party. She was living in Boston then, and flew out for it. I only got her to come out here to live in April.”

  Griffin looked at Tessa. “E-mail,” he said.

  She nodded. “We got so involved in the phone records, we forgot to check it.”

  “You think they might have been having an online affair between Christmas and April?” Mandy looked a little creeped out by the thought. Which was odd. After all, who was married to a much older man?

  “We’ll find out,” Griffin said.

  “But her physical pursuit of him didn’t start until she got here,” Tessa said. “I’m sure of that. Her clothes and things definitely give me that impression—longing, frustration, seduction.” Jay flinched. “Sorry. But we have to deal with the truth, here.”

  “Why don’t I see if I can track him down through his office?” Mandy suggested. “I can say I want to talk to him about a stockholders’ barbecue or something. You know, part business, part personal. That will get past any executive assistant on the planet.”

  Tessa gazed at her in admiration. “You’re good.”

  Mandy shrugged modestly. “It worked with Jay, didn’t it?”

  It must have.