by Joanne Rock
As she listened to the waves roll up the beach, she assured herself it didn’t matter where he’d gone. She needed to scavenge some semblance of personal space and distance from the man anyhow. Not an easy feat to accomplish when they jumped each other every time they were alone together.
Her whole life seemed to be spinning out of control, and getting naked on an airplane only proved how much she’d lost it. Even now she couldn’t put Alec far from her mind since the most unexpected places on her body burned from the light friction of his bristly cheek. Her neck. Her hip. Just above one breast.
Not a chance she’d forget about Alec anytime soon, but maybe once they found enough evidence to put his partner away along with the guy’s slimeball nephew, Alec could go back to flying around the East Coast to monitor his real-estate development sites and she could return to…
Feeling nothing?
A sharp wind blew in off the water, wavering the lamp flame right through the glass globe and chilling her to the bone. She debated picking up her phone and retreating inside when a dark shape took form down the beach.
Fingers moving automatically to the gun at her waist, she wondered how many of Alec’s enemies already knew he’d resurfaced in the Hamptons.
“The lights are on at Donata’s place.” Alec’s voice carried on the wind as he stalked closer, a dark shape growing bigger until at last he arrived in the ring of light around the patio table. “You ready to take a ride over there?”
What was the worst that could happen? She’d confirm her own fears that Donata possessed the glittering lifestyle Vanessa could never aspire to on a cop’s paycheck? Or was she just worried that a woman who signed herself as “Your Pussy” would embrace the kind of blatant sexuality Alec seemed to seek in bed?
“I’m game.” Shoving to her feet, she pocketed her phone, refusing to allow some bogus sexual insecurity to rule her choices when it came to her job. “You can see her house but you can’t walk to it?” She’d never even considered that he might have gone over to Donata’s alone.
“It’s down the road about a mile, but the beach curves around as you head east, so there’s a good view of the houses that way.” He extinguished the flame, throwing them back into the dark, causing her to stumble just a little.
Come to think of it, that was pretty much how she always felt about Alec and the whole sex issue. She knew her way around a gun and a police computer, but put her next to an attractive man and she might as well be stumbling around in the dark.
“You okay?” His hands somehow found her, his arm sliding around her waist to guide her forward off the patio and through the night. “My social interactions have been limited to contractors and teenagers for the past six months, and even then, most conversational attempts are crammed between the noise of hammers and circulating saws over at the rec center. Sorry if I’ve got the social aptitude of a primate.”
His arm around her made her feel better than any attempt at etiquette, but she didn’t think she needed to share that with him. Not when she was planning to maintain some distance before things got too complicated between them.
“I’m fine.” She kept pace with him as they crossed a narrow walk to the driveway, her eyes adjusting to the dark as she followed him into a garage designed like a Cape Cod–style house. “How did you ever maintain your anonymity while converting those old buildings into the center? Didn’t you run into any of the same contractors you normally work with?”
He took a set of keys off a Peg-Board on one wall and pressed the remote for a vehicle that looked like a huge SUV. A digital beeping sound bounced off the cement floor as the doors unlocked. Alec opened the passenger-side door and held out his hand for her to step up inside.
A Land Rover. The recreational vehicle of choice for guys who could afford a Cessna.
“I used all new companies this time and hired them out under the Al Perez name. Paying in cash prevents a lot of questions, so it wasn’t a problem and it gave me a chance to meet some different people. I found a few good guys I’ll be working with again, and a few that I won’t. No real surprises there.”
He started the vehicle and shifted into reverse before placing a steadying hand on her seat as he turned around to see behind him.
“Will you put any more time into the rec center now that you’re going to reclaim your stake in McPherson?” She’d wondered about that since he’d seemed so at home teaching those kids how to defend themselves.
Alec slowed the Land Rover to a stop at the end of his driveway and waited for an oncoming car.
“Definitely. Hell, I need to stay connected to those kids or I won’t be able to teach them anything. They can sense when you’re only showing up to earn a paycheck. Maybe once things get back to normal and I can edge Vercelli out of the company, I’ll be able to tighten up the real-estate business and spend some more time at the rec center. I can hire an administrator and get things fully functional.”
The rightness of the choice settled over her. Pleased her. A man like Alec could make a deeper difference than any superficial urban renewal program.
“You never told me why you think your partner turned on you.” She’d asked him earlier tonight, on the airstrip. “We got distracted before we could talk about that on the plane.”
She didn’t bring it up to sound suggestive. She’d just meant to remind this close-mouthed man that he’d already agreed to talk to her about this. She could see the heat in his eyes even in the soft illumination from the dashboard lights.
“Yes, we did.” He didn’t touch her. Didn’t move to tempt her. “And as I recall we made an agreement about the next time we’re together.”
His utter stillness made her realize he’d never done anything to draw her eye, to inspire this kind of heat. The ache of need she felt had been rooted in the most instinctive physical attraction from the start. Yet instead of diminishing the attraction, that revelation only validated it for her. She didn’t want him for his mini-mansion or his toys. Not the Cessna. Not the mile-high orgasms. She wanted the self-defense instructor as much as—more than?—the real-estate mogul, admiring his faith in the kids he taught even while the cynical part of her wrote off the effort as crazy. Dangerous.
“Are you trying to distract me from this question?” The thought occurred to her as she shoved aside the bout of lust. “Because this makes two times you’ve sidetracked me when the topic came up.”
“I’m not the one doing the distracting.” He eased the vehicle out onto the darkened street, his hand falling away from her seat as he drove along the county route linking tightly packed beach properties in an area where every square inch of sand was prime real estate. “And I don’t think there’s any great mystery about why Vercelli wants me out of the company. The trouble has been brewing with us for years, I just hoped if I ignored it long enough it would go away. Stupid approach, but it seemed easier than breaking up our company and potentially ticking off a lot of clients.”
“What kind of trouble did the two of you have?” Vanessa stared out the window, searching for hints of the houses that lurked behind security fences and thick shrubbery barriers.
She’d heard many of the residents out this way only lived here part of the year, making some of the communities ghost towns on weekdays or during the school year. The reputation seemed to apply tonight. Every now and then she spied a hint of lit fountains or swimming pools, but for the most part, she could discern only the sprawling rooftops of the three-story homes that made even Alec’s mini-mansion look conservative.
“Mark’s been pressuring me to bring my uncle into the business for years, and he stepped up the pressure about a year ago, though who knows why since we’re making great money without any of the guaranteed contracts that go along with Sergio’s business.”
He drove slowly, just barely crawling up the street. Probably because Donata’s house was too damn close to his.
“Maybe he was having financial problems?” Although it seemed shortsighted to draw that kind
of criminal element into a successful business.
“Or maybe he just wanted a chance to carry a gun.” Alec rolled his eyes as he drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “Vercelli was always a little too impressed with my family’s ties to crime. The first time I ever met him over a keg at a college party he was quoting The Godfather. Later he graduated to Goodfellas, but he didn’t get any more of a clue.”
“Yet you were close enough friends to start a company together.” She couldn’t imagine working with people she didn’t respect.
Not a problem at her job.
“He’s good with people.” Alec seemed content to leave it at that as he turned the wheel and pulled into a private driveway. But then, as he shut off the ignition, he smiled at her across the Land Rover’s front seat. “Me? I tend to scare people or put them off because I’m not a big talker. But Mark puts people at ease because he’s Joe Social. He doesn’t know squat about land development, but he can close a deal.”
“And he closed deals for you for years and then one day he decides to pull the rug out from underneath you with a visit to the cops?” Squinting into the darkness, she took in the lines of the house that belonged to the mobster’s mistress. “I don’t get it. Why the change?”
“Damned if I know.” He pocketed the keys and pointed to the beach cottage in front of them, a rambling one-story clapboard affair that defied architectural description thanks to a century’s worth of add-ons. Rooms sprawled out in every direction along with tacked-on screened porches. “But maybe she will.”
Vanessa didn’t understand why he thought so, but she followed his lead and opened the door to let herself out of the Land Rover. Maybe she’d just save her questions for their midnight house call.
Making her way up the stone path to the front door encrusted in seashells, Vanessa could see the house predated Alec’s place a mile up the road. In a stretch of beach where big, showy homes rubbed shoulders with older dwellings built on a much smaller scale, Donata’s residence strayed to the less grand. The simple bungalow architecture and painted siding would have seemed charming on a country lake, but in the Hamptons the house looked like part of a bygone era.
Alec ignored the doorbell outlined in a scallop-shaped plaster molding and rapped on the clapboard siding instead.
“Come here often?” Vanessa muttered under her breath, still half wishing she hadn’t made the visit with him in the first place.
Alec turned dark eyes on her under the porch light, allowing just enough heat in his gaze to remind her how much he wanted her. Only her.
She felt that stare of his clear down to her toes, the slow, sensual thrill of it giving her the urge to fan herself.
The door opened in the middle of their steamy exchange. Only the person on the other side wasn’t the sex-crazed woman Vanessa expected. Instead, a tall, wiry guy with glasses stood framed in the doorway, his expression quickly twisting into a mask of rage.
“Sergio?” Alec’s stance shifted. Straightened.
Vanessa didn’t have time to go for her gun. The guy on the step charged out of the house like a bull closing in on a red flag.
“You goddamn son of a—” Sergio’s curses were punctuated by a feminine scream within the house, but Vanessa kept her eyes trained on Alec and his uncle, who’d either made a jailbreak or had been released on bail since his drug bust the night before.
Alec lowered his shoulder before Sergio hit him, sheltering his body from the worst of the blow. They crashed to the stone pathway leading up to the house and then half fought, half rolled their way into the wet grass.
“Alec!” The anguished feminine cry from the porch steps didn’t distract Vanessa as she hurried after them, gun drawn. She wouldn’t use the 9 mm with Alec locked in the guy’s pissed-off grip, but God help him if he let Alec go.
Fear pulsing through her, she flashed her badge with her other hand and shouted at the rolling tumbleweed of arms and legs while fists flew.
“Stop! NYPD, you’re under arrest.” Cramming the badge back in her jacket pocket, she figured she’d done her duty to alert him to her presence.
If anything happened to Alec…
“You brought a cop with you?” Sergio’s muffled shout came from underneath the pile and Vanessa noticed it looked as if Alec had regained the upper hand despite Sergio’s fingers around his throat. “That’s some kind of freaking loyalty, you double-dealing dumb ass.”
His foot kicked out, knocking over a statue of a fat cherub keeping vigil over a bed of purple irises.
“We’re here to see—” Alec’s voice sounded strained from the pressure to his throat, but then he managed to slam Sergio’s head against the stone path, forcing his attacker’s fingers loose “—Donata. Not you, you crazy bastard.”
He freed himself from his uncle and stood up while Vanessa kept her gun trained on Sergio, her heart still slamming with leftover fear for Alec.
She never should have denied Alec’s request to go to the police now that he had his disks to back up his story. Damning her need for evidence at the risk of his life, she stepped closer to Sergio.
This charade of an investigation would end right now. Training her weapon on the gangster, she planned to make herself very clear to the man.
“Don’t move, or I’ll shoot.”
ALEC SWIPED THE GRASS from the back of his head, hoping he could talk Vanessa out of arresting Sergio quite yet. But she didn’t look like she was in any mood for conversation.
His uncle’s groan a few feet away made Alec tense, especially since he could practically feel Vanessa tense, too. How had he ended up this in-tune to her, this keyed-in to how she thought?
The realization reminded him how important she’d become in a short amount of time.
“I’d take her at her word, Serg.” He played it cool, not wanting to bust Vanessa’s cop groove or mess with her concentration when she looked so utterly focused on her target. “I’ve seen her in action and I’m pretty sure she could take you down with or without the gun.”
“Is that a fact?” Donata stepped off the porch toward them, lingering just close enough to the circle of light to silhouette her body underneath a floor-length dressing gown. The hip-jutting pose she struck looked a bit too calculated to be an accident, and despite the mild spring weather, she had to be freezing with the ocean breeze blowing up the shore. “Come to think of it, she does look a little rough around the edges.”
Alec’s eyes flicked over to Vanessa but she never gave any sign of reaction. Instead, he saw hints of the cool ice princess who’d walked into his rec center and flipped him on his ass, as Vanessa shouted back to Donata.
“Because I’m not flitting around the front yard in my nightie?” A slow smile spread across Vanessa’s face while she kept the gun trained on Sergio. “I’ll leave the pneumonia to you, thanks just the same. Besides, I’d rather not attract any attention from pea-brained mob lackeys.”
Sergio groaned louder, possibly to cover up the name Donata chose to call Vanessa. Yeah, this was going really well. Alec turned his back on Donata as she huffed her way back inside the house and slammed the door.
Just as well. Alec lowered himself to sit on the front-porch steps between a few more cherub statues, while Vanessa watched over Sergio on the walkway. Alec’s throat ached like hell from where his uncle had jammed a thumb into his windpipe. Sergio was approaching fifty, but he worked out and he’d always been a big guy. Alec could take him, but he’d be willing to bet there were plenty of thirty-year-old guys who couldn’t. Of course, it helped that Serg had probably mixed it up in his line of work a few times.
Experience was still the best teacher.
“Look, we came out here to get some answers from Donata about what the hell is going on with your people following me.”
“I’ll bet that’s all you want from Donata, you mother—”
“Hey. Would you watch your mouth if you want to spend the night in your own bed? I don’t think my friend the detective is goin
g to be moved to let you off the hook if you’re spewing filth like a backed-up toilet. You hear me?” At least Vanessa hadn’t arrested his uncle yet. Alec wanted his answers now. Tonight. “And for the record, I never laid a finger on Donata.”
More swearing ensued, followed by a heavy sigh. “Can I at least get up off the god—the ground?”
Vanessa shifted her stance, backing up a step. “You just take it slow. Easy. Hands where I can see them. And don’t even think about standing up.”
Sergio must have been tired because he didn’t argue, settling for giving her the evil eye through his dark-rimmed glasses as he sat up. He liked to brag that his vision had gone bad because he’d read too many books in his youth, sort of a self-styled know-it-all. But Alec happened to know he wore glasses just because his grandfather once predicted he’d be as dumb as his father before him, a curse Sergio somehow figured he’d beat by wearing spectacles.
Sergio’s solution only seemed to confirm his grand-pappy’s point.
“My people aren’t following you.” Sergio adjusted the glasses on his nose, which Alec now noticed was bleeding. “Where do you get these dumb-ass ideas?”
Alec glared a warning, grateful Vanessa still had the gun on him. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because you threatened to kill me six months ago and then turned my partners against me.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.” He swiped his shirtsleeve across his bloody nose. “Your partners are as crooked as the day is long. McPherson ripped me off last summer when I asked him to install a new shower in Donata’s house. You think he could do a favor for a friend?”
“He’s not a contractor, Serg.” His uncle had probably asked Alec to fix twenty different things in the past ten years, everything from installing a new roof to replacing a furnace. He’d never gotten it through his head that Alec just bought the land and planned the spaces to build. He didn’t build them himself. “I keep telling you, we hire out jobs like that. And if you weren’t following me six months ago, then who was leaving all the threatening messages on my machine and sabotaging my job sites?”
