His Wicked Ways

by Joanne Rock

  “Damn.” Alec had been discreet in his efforts to renovate the building owned by one of his dead grandfather’s cronies, slowly incorporating another decaying edifice into a revamped community center. But still, Vanessa had traced him here even though he’d been using cash to live on for months. “You’ve got friends in the South Bronx?”

  “Contacts,” she corrected, smoothing her palms over the knees of her dark jeans. “And it’s my turn to ask a question now.”

  “By all means.” He dropped down to the bench a few feet away from her, settling the basketball between them for good measure. He didn’t have any intention of following a dangerous attraction without knowing more about the woman, even if his eyes were glued to her hand resting on the denim-encased thigh. “Fire away.”

  “Why do you think your partners have pointed the finger at you now that there is money missing from the company you own together?”

  Maybe Uncle Sergio put them up to it. He hadn’t seriously considered that angle until Vanessa showed up— possibly leading anyone looking for him right to his door.

  “I guess because I disappeared around the same time.” He twirled the ball on the metal bench, hoping to keep her involvement more marginal. “And I happen to have a blood relationship with a gangster.”

  “But you’ve always been related. Why would your partners suddenly decide now that it makes you a bad guy?”

  “It’s complicated.” Major understatement.

  Vanessa messed up a perfectly good spin by palming the ball. “Hey, I explained my answer. If you’re going to half-ass your end of the deal—”

  “I’m not.” He studied her hand on the ball beside his. No fingernail polish. No rings. Just a surprising amount of strength. She was nothing like Donata Casale, who’d been sheltered and pampered her whole life. “It’s tough to explain my relationship with my partners. All along, they’ve provided most of the money while I’ve provided the vision and actual labor required to move the company ahead.”

  “From all accounts, you’ve been incredibly successful.” She didn’t say where she came by her information, but Alec knew his company’s projects were in business trade publications more often than not, although he made it a point to keep himself out of the spotlight. A low business profile suited him just fine and his partners were content to be the face of McPherson Real Estate.

  Her hands retreated from the ball as she straightened.

  “It’s been a good gig.” Until he’d found out half the reason his partners had joined forces with him was to leverage a criminal connection. “We were all getting along just fine until I had a recent falling out with a family member who’s got some powerful friends.”

  Uncle Sergio hadn’t taken kindly to his girlfriend’s claim that she’d slept with his nephew. Thanks, Donata. She’d chosen a hell of a way to pay him back for offering to help her escape his uncle’s control.

  “They’re upset you fought with your family?” Brow furrowed, Vanessa tucked her hands into her pockets.

  “None of their business, right? I didn’t realize until then how much they liked the tie to my well-connected clan.” And damn, but that had turned his whole life inside out. All those years he’d thought he’d been putting distance between himself and the family, his partners had been discreetly using his uncle’s name as a way to cinch business deals. They were all in a shitload of trouble now, and Alec didn’t have a clue how to dig them out of the mess. Yet.

  “So you went into hiding to regroup and—” raising an eyebrow, she glanced around the recently refurbished gym “—create an inner-city haven for delinquents to hone their fighting skills?”

  That pissed him off. As a cop, she ought to know better. “Just because they live in the middle of a war zone doesn’t make them responsible for the violence.”

  For a moment, he thought he saw a hint of regret in her dark eyes. But then the impression was gone, her gaze as remote and unyielding as when she’d swept his legs out from under him and planted him flat on his ass.

  “So why did you come here?” Her tone implied only a moron would spend time teaching self-defense to kids who could easily be the street thugs of tomorrow.

  Maybe some of them would use the knowledge unfairly. But if his fighting techniques saved a life…it would go a long way toward making up for a lot of mistakes he’d made.

  “It’s my turn to ask a question, remember?” He didn’t have any intention of telling her more than necessary. And he found himself a little too eager to learn more about this woman who fought like she meant it and didn’t waste words. Both rare qualities in women, in his experience.

  “I’m ready when you are.” She flipped her long, dark braid over one shoulder and crossed her legs.

  Alec told himself he wasn’t following the line of her calf with his eyes. He was just thinking she looked very…fit. Yeah. That’s it.

  “Fair enough. How about telling me where you learned those moves you used to fight me off earlier? Those aren’t exactly standard issue for NYPD cops.”

  “I’ve been trained in kendo. It’s an older fighting style I don’t see offered much in New York.”

  “Yet you managed to hunt down your own archaic fighting master from the comfort of downtown Manhattan.” Something about her didn’t add up. The unusual martial art style. The fact that she’d found him in the first place. She seemed too well trained for a city detective. Too elite to sit around with a bunch of cynical cops all day debating how to set up drug dealers.

  Which brought him back to his first inclination that she seemed more like a top-of-the-line hit woman. Probably a paranoid thought fostered by his situation, but he still had to consider it. Vanessa could be either a skilled cop who’d led his revenge-happy uncle right to him, or she could be the means to Sergio’s ends.

  “Let’s just say I was well motivated to seek out the toughest training I could find.” She waggled her fingers toward the ball, indicating he hand it over. “Now— completely off the topic—you need to tell me why you don’t want to go to the police station with me.”

  “Don’t you think that question is a hell of a lot more personal than me asking you about a few kung fu chops?”

  “Depends why you were asking.” She scooped up the ball and balanced it on her forearm, rolling it to her elbow and back to her hand in an easy rhythm. “I can’t help it if you don’t use your questions wisely.”

  “For a woman who doesn’t like to talk about herself, you sure don’t mind showing off.” He plucked the ball off her arm and put an end to her trick. “And I already told you why I don’t want to be grilled by a bunch of junior interrogators who think I’m going to be their ticket to a big bust.”

  “I recall that’s what you told me, but this time, I’d like to know the truth.” She watched him with those remote eyes of hers and Alec wondered if anything ruffled this woman. Did she ever scream during sex, or did that detached chill remain even then?

  “You want to know the truth?” He couldn’t tell her the whole story. Hell, he’d be here for days. And although he hadn’t appreciated many of his uncle’s teachings, Alec still practiced one of Sergio’s most repeated doctrines—never talk about family business outside the family.

  “I find it hard to believe you’re afraid to speak to interrogators since you’ve been in a prominent position at a major corporation for years. Anyone who heads up the kind of controversial building projects you do has surely crossed swords with business reporters, or at least a few in-house detractors, before. So any suggestion of you being intimidated by a few cops asking questions rings pretty false to me.”

  He wondered idly why a city detective spent her free time watching business reports, but barely had time to guess at the answer when she barreled ahead, her low words spoken with quiet authority.

  “Besides, I studied your financial records. I know you’re making money hand over fist with your company and you have been for a long time.” Something flickered in her gaze. Some warm ember of feeling tha
t made him think she wasn’t completely aloof. “So there’s no logical reason for you to take money out of company escrow. I’m curious to know why you won’t just go in to clear your name if you’re innocent.”

  “I swear to you, I’m going to answer that, but could we break up the order of this questioning for just a minute and let me ask two of my feeble queries in a row?” A plan was beginning to form in his mind, a possible way to ensure her safety and get them both out of this mess. He just hoped his instincts about Vanessa proved on target. “You said it yourself, my questions suck anyway.”

  She was shaking her head no before he even got the words out of his mouth.

  “Just hear me out first, and then you can decide.”

  “Fine.” She stared out over the gym, not even bothering to make eye contact with him. “But I can’t promise I’ll answer.”

  “Do you know a lot about business? Finance?”

  That caught her attention more thoroughly than anything he’d said so far. In fact, from the rapid way she whipped her head around to look at him, he’d bet she was ten times more interested in finance and business than his shady relationship with the law.

  Bingo.

  “I have an MBA.” Shrugging as if it were of no import, she shoved her hand in her jacket pocket. The pocket with her badge, he remembered. “And a small personal interest in finance. Why?”

  He recalled the sensation of reaching into her blazer himself, of brushing her thigh through the light fabric. That brief touch had been almost as enticing as when he’d been stretched out over her on the mat earlier. Perhaps because that second time she hadn’t been fighting him off.

  Willing away a surge of heat, he steered his thoughts back to his plan to get her out of here and keep an eye on her until he figured out where she fit into his uncle’s revenge plot. She might not even buy it, but maybe if he could keep her distracted…

  “I could use some help interpreting company records for McPherson.” He dangled out the best carrot he could think of to keep her with him. And it wasn’t a total lie. He had an excellent knack for making money, less of a knack for organizing it into the neat columns number crunchers seemed to prefer. “And to answer your other question, I won’t go to the police station because surfacing now could put my partners in danger. Or me.”

  Or her.

  Welcome to Paranoia 101. A pain in the ass to always look over your shoulder maybe, but that same tendency had kept him alive despite his notorious family for too long to set it aside now.

  Already, her brow furrowed, his answers not agreeing with her. But he’d had enough personal revelation for one day and their time here was running out.

  “I’m sure that doesn’t add up for you, but it’s the truth.” Mostly. He didn’t know how much that pledge would mean to her, but he’d already shared far more than he had planned. “I won’t make any public appearances or go on record, but if you’d lend me a little of that financial expertise for a few hours, I’ll answer as many of your questions as I can.”

  “Here?” She glanced around the echoing space, confusion and suspicion in her eyes.

  “No.” Speaking of which, they’d better get the hell out of there. Standing, he pitched the basketball back into the bin. “It won’t be safe here for much longer. We could find somewhere else that would be neutral terrain.”

  She shook her head, her dark braid swinging behind her. “You’ve been implicated in a crime. Soon you’ll be brought up on extortion charges. And you expect me to just take off with you to act as your financial adviser? You know damn well you need a lawyer, not a cop.”

  Shifting to her feet, Vanessa backed up a step.

  No doubt about it, she thought he was a lunatic. Frankly, Alec didn’t blame her. But she’d put them both in a precarious situation by finding him. He had to keep her close to protect her from his enemies or, at the very least, prevent her from turning him in and effectively signing his death warrant.

  And he was prepared to use any means necessary— including the persistent chemistry that kept him distracted at every turn.

  “I don’t need financial help.”

  “Then what do you need?” Impatience strained her throaty voice.

  Time to offer up the last trick in his bag of unholy bargaining tools.

  “I need someone to take a look at the company accounting to help prove my innocence.”

  3

  “THAT MAKES NO SENSE at all.” Vanessa cocked her head to one side to see if studying Alec from another angle would help. Nope. He might be a total stud on the outside, but inside, he’d lost his marbles. “You’re asking a city cop to look over your books when you’re two steps away from being charged with stealing money from the company? Do you have a special affinity for being clapped in irons, Alec, or are you simply out of your mind?”

  “Maybe I’m not guilty.” He ducked into a small office off to one side of the gym and she saw the track pants he’d been wearing go flying across his desk to land in an empty chair. “Ever thought of that?”

  What the hell was he doing? Changing his clothes two feet away on the other side of Sheetrock? He returned a minute later, wearing a pair of jeans. He carried a clean T-shirt in one hand and a leather satchel in the other.

  “Actually, no.” She eyed him warily as he dropped the bag to the ground and then reached for the hem of the shirt he had on.

  Oh.

  In theory, she knew she ought to look away for her own good. In practice, however, her eyes remained glued to the scene as Alec pulled his shirt over his head. Leaving him bare chested and…wow.

  “Well, I never touched a nickel that wasn’t mine.” Tossing the old shirt aside, he tugged the clean one on. “And I intend to prove it just as soon as I can compare my personal accounting records to whatever doctored BS files someone is using to incriminate me.”

  Tearing her eyes away from the naked torso now imprinted on her memory, Vanessa searched for hidden agendas in his request.

  “But I could use that information to build a case against you.”

  “Too bad you’re not going to find anything incriminating in there about me because I’m innocent.”

  His raised voice called her to look back to his square shoulders and hard pecs. She hadn’t experienced thoughts like this about a man in…well, almost never. She’d never been one of those types to get all sex crazed and foaming at the mouth over a guy, yet here she stood, remembering every inch of Alec Messina’s chest, despite the fact that he might be spending ten to fifteen years behind bars.

  “You don’t look all that innocent from where I’m standing.” As soon as she made the remark, she realized she was commenting more on his rock-hard body and powerful arms than his degree of criminal aptitude.

  Thankfully, Alec didn’t seem to notice, taking her words at face value.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He ducked back inside his office, continuing to shout to her through the open door as he shuffled through papers and drawers. “But I guarantee if you find something in those files that suggests I’ve stolen money, I’ll offer up both wrists for some of your cop bracelets. Deal?”

  He reappeared in the gym with a ring of keys in hand.

  “I’d have to be even more crazy than you to go off to some undisclosed location to read your books.” What if he was guilty as hell and desperate to escape a possible prison sentence?

  No. She’d been ready to walk away from him earlier, but he’d called her back. A desperate man would have gladly allowed a detective to leave.

  “You think it’s crazy to crack a big case? Snag a little interdepartmental spotlight for yourself?” Pocketing the keys, he stalked closer.

  Of all the buttons he could have pressed, how did he know to lay on her need to succeed? That competitive streak had been her downfall more than once in her life.

  But she was stronger than that now. She just had to remind herself she hadn’t gone into police work for the glory. Hell no. She was here to save people
like the sister she’d failed.

  The reminder put a lid on her strange attraction to Alec in a hurry.

  “I can’t. This is more an FBI matter, anyhow.” Although, the promise of access to McPherson’s accounting files swayed her a bit. Not only did she fight off the need to solve a case, she also battled the hunger to bury herself in the comfort of numbers and financial data, two well-loved commodities she rarely indulged in her mission to make New York a safer place.

  “Are you sure, Vanessa?” He took a step closer, his cross-trainers squeaking on the floor. “Because I can promise there will be arrests to be made by the time you figure out what’s going on. And I’m taking off now, whether you come with me or not. So if you want to keep an eye on me…”

  Shrugging, he didn’t bother to spell it out. She knew he’d disappear into thin air again if she didn’t stick with him. And what were the chances she’d find him a second time after a stroke of good luck had helped her track him down the first?

  Not to mention, she’d have to tell her lieutenant she’d found Alec Messina but had only succeeded in tipping him off…

  Screw it. She didn’t have a real choice here anyhow. Her sister always called her the family pit bull because Vanessa couldn’t let something go once she’d had a taste of trouble. Letting Alec walk away now wasn’t even an option.

  “Okay, Messina. You want me to take a look at your books? Fine.” Truth be told, she couldn’t wait. “But I can promise you, I’m not going to be sucked in by a bunch of bogus entries if you’ve tried to revise the data. The police department can obtain company records from your partners for comparison.”

  “Fair enough.” Retrieving his bag, he looked her in the eye. “I’ve got outside documentation to support most of my transactions anyhow. I’m not asking for special treatment.”

  “Except for your own personal detective to solve your criminal problems.” She didn’t intend to cut him any slack just because she’d agreed to look at the accounts. And she sure as hell wouldn’t just wander off with a potentially dangerous man without some consideration to her own safety. Gena’s battle for her life had taught her better. “But before we go anywhere, I think a few basic precautions are in order.”