you’ll find an entry in there that says Get kidnapped before lunch!”
Taylor didn’t know what infuriated her more, the fact that Austin was still reading her
sister’s diary, or that he was ignoring her. Refusing to put up with it anymore, she reached out
and snatched the book from his hand. He gave her an exasperated look.
“What is your problem?” he demanded. “I’m a professional and could care less about
your sister’s personal life, except where it relates to her disappearance. I need to read that diary,
so give it back.”
Austin reached for book as he spoke, but Taylor jerked it further away. “No!” she said. “I
told you that I don’t want you reading my sister’s diary!”
His eyes narrowed as he took a step toward her. “Do you actually want your sister found,
or not?”
She lifted her chin. “Of course I do,” she said. “I just think it’s completely inappropriate
for you to be reading her diary, that’s all.”
Austin scowled. “I don’t have time for this,” he said. “There could be something in there
that might put us on your sister’s trail.”
Taylor thought for a moment. She really doubted there would be anything relevant in her
sister’s diary. But if Austin was right and there really were something in it that could help them
find her sister...
“I’ll read through it and let you know if I find anything suspicious,” she finally conceded.
Austin gave her an impatient look. “I’m not going to sit here while you read that whole
diary. Besides, you’d probably miss anything important, anyway,” he said. “Now, stop playing
around and give it back to me.”
When he reached for it again, Taylor backpedaled, putting the edge of the bed between
them. “I said, no!”
He swore under his breath. “Okay, that’s it!”
Before Taylor could even react, Austin Malone had closed the distance between them and
plucked the diary from her hand. Infuriated, she made a grab for the book, but he tossed it onto
the bed. She immediately reached for it, but the bastard caught her arm and steered her away
from it. He was going to throw her out of the room, she realized.
“Hey!” she protested. “You can’t...”
But to her surprise, Austin wasn’t heading for the door. Instead, he sat down on the
padded bench at the foot of the bed and, with a yank on her arm, sent her tumbling headlong over
his knee. For a moment, Taylor was so stunned that she simply lay there with her head hanging
down and her bottom up in the air. She regained her senses quickly enough though, and when
she did, she immediately tried to push herself up off his lap. She didn’t even get halfway up
before a strong hand on her back shoved her down and held her there.
Taylor had no choice but to put her hands on the floor to steady herself. Craning her
neck, she looked at him over her shoulder. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she
demanded.
“Something someone obviously should have done a long time ago!” he ground out.
Her brow furrowing in confusion, she opened her mouth to retort, only to let out a
startled, “Oh!” when she felt his hand come down on her upturned bottom. Her blue eyes went
wide. Oh my God, the jerk had actually just spanked her!
Taylor struggled like a wildcat to free herself even as his hand smacked the seat of her
jeans again. “Let me up, you...owwwww!”
“Not until we get a few things straight. If you want me to work for you, then this attitude
of yours has got to stop,” he told her, punctuating the words with a series of hard slaps right on
the most rounded portion of her asscheeks.
Ouch! She couldn’t believe how much the spanks stung! What was he, crazy? Did he
think she would just lay there and put with it? “My attitude!” she shrieked at him. “What the hell
are you talking about, you jerk? Let me up right now!”
That earned her a sharp smack on each jean-clad cheek and she yelped. She wanted to say
something biting right then, but the heat building up in her bottom was making it difficult to
come up with a suitable retort. She pushed against his muscular leg with all her might, but didn’t
succeed in getting herself off his lap. God, she hadn’t realized he was so strong!
“I’m talking about the fact that you’re irritating as hell, Ms. Cavanaugh!” he told her,
bringing his hand down on her ass yet again. “You may be paying me, but that doesn’t mean I
have to put up with you second-guessing me the whole time. This is my job and I’m damn good
at it. But you seem to think that you know more than I do. And despite the fact that we just met,
you seem to have an almost unnatural ability to aggravate the hell out of me. In fact, I’m betting
that I’m not the only one you annoy. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that’s why your sister took
off. She was probably tired of putting up with her pain in-the-butt sister!”
Austin punctuated every other word with a sharp smack, and while it stung like crazy,
Taylor was more outraged by his words than by the spanking he was giving her.
“How dare you say something like that about me!” she yelled. “You don’t even know me,
you arrogant jerk!”
“No, I don’t,” he agreed, his hand resting on her throbbing ass. “But I do know that
you’re not letting me do my job. Now, are you going to stop being such a pain in the ass and let
me do what’s necessary to find your sister, or do I need to start spanking you all over again, Ms.
Cavanaugh?”
Again? Taylor thought in amazement. Her bottom couldn’t take even one more smack!
But Austin must have taken her silence for resistance because he said, “I suppose I’ll just have to
spank you some more then.”
“No!” she squealed. “Okay, I promise I’ll stop bothering you. Just let me up!”
But to her chagrin, the private detective continued to hold her in place. “Do I have your
word on that?”
Taylor seethed with anger. “Yes,” she said through gritted teeth. “You have my word.”
He had her word all right, she thought to herself. Her word that she would be finding
another private investigator as soon as she got off his lap!
Chapter Two
But she didn’t. Instead of telling the detective that he was fired, Taylor sat on the couch
in the living room, silently fuming while Austin Malone thumbed through her sister’s diary back
in the bedroom. It wasn’t that she had changed her mind about firing the private detective,
however. It was just that every time she opened her mouth to tell him that his services would no
longer be required, he would look at her with that warning glint in his eye and she would fall
silent again. And her bottom still stung way too much to chance another spanking, which is
exactly what she was sure would happen if she bothered him again.
Taylor she reached back to surreptitiously rub her sore bottom. What kind of man put a
woman over his knee and spanked her, anyway? She should have known from looking at his oldfashioned
office that he was a throwback to a bygone era. He was probably the type that thought
men were superior and that women should know their place, too. Neanderthal jerk!
At that moment, Austin walked into the living room, interrupting her thoughts. Taylor
immediately
got to her feet.
“Where’s my sister’s diary?” she demanded. She didn’t know why she was making such
an issue of it, really. If reading her sister’s diary helped them find Tiffany, then what did it
matter?
Austin regarded her coolly. “I put it back where I found it.”
She folded her arms. That was something, she supposed. “So, was there anything in it of
any use?”
He didn’t answer right away, but continued to study her with those incredible amber eyes
of his. “From what I read, I’d say you don’t know your sister as well as you’d like to think, Ms.
Cavanaugh,” he said. “It turns out that she’s been dating this guy Andrew Wallace since she
started going to college. And from what I read, she seems to be pretty serious about him.”
Taylor was speechless. That couldn’t be right. How could her sister have been dating
someone seriously for so long and not told her? “Did Tiffany say in her diary if she was planning
on eloping with him?” she asked when she had finally found her voice.
Austin shook his head. “No, but she did mention that they had talked about getting
married.”
Taylor felt like she she’d just been slapped. “I can’t believe my sister would go off and
get married without telling me,” she said in a soft voice.
“We still don’t know for sure that she did,” Austin said. “It’s just another possibility. I’ll
make some calls when we get back to my office and see what I can dig up on this Andrew
Wallace.”
Reminding herself of her earlier promise to fire the private detective at the first
opportunity, Taylor was surprised when she found herself following him to the door instead.
While she would have preferred to have nothing more to do with Austin Malone, she couldn’t
ignore the fact that he was the only one actually willing to investigate her sister’s disappearance.
Surely she could overlook his brutish behavior if it meant finding Tiffany, she told herself. As
much as it hurt Taylor to think about it, Tiffany very well might have gone off to get married
without telling her, but it was also still possible that her sister was in trouble. Taylor had to know
for sure.
Though the detective had said he was going to make some calls back when they got back
to his office, he had obviously decided not to wait until then because he pulled out his cell phone
and began dialing a little while after getting out onto the main road. Even as preoccupied as she
was with thoughts of her missing sister and all the things she apparently didn’t know about her,
Taylor still listened intently to Austin’s conversation. While she would have liked to have
interrupted him every couple of minutes to find out if he’d learned anything, she forced herself to
wait until he’d hung up the phone.
“So, what did you find out?” she asked as he put his cell phone away.
Austin gave her a sidelong glance. “Wallace used his credit card at a gas station on I-
in Baker a couple of days ago.”
Taylor’s brow furrowed at the name. Baker was about an hour east of LA, which put it
right in the middle of the desert. And right in the middle of nowhere. The perfect place to kill
someone and dump the body, she thought frantically.
“Was Tiffany with him?” she asked Austin. “Was she all right?”
The private detective shook his head. “I don’t know if your sister was with him, but I’ll
find out,” he said as he pulled into a parking space outside his office. “A friend of mine at the
LAPD is faxing over Wallace’s driver’s license photo. As soon as I get that, I’ll head up to Baker
and check it out.”
Taylor nodded. “I’ll go with you,” she said, already reaching for the door handle.
Austin gave her a sharp look. “No, you won’t,” he said firmly. “You’re going home. I’ll
call you if I find out anything.”
Her grip tightened on the door handle. “No way! I’m paying you, so if I want to go with
you, I will. And you can’t stop me!”
God, that sounded incredibly childish, she thought. Right then though, she didn’t care.
This was the first solid lead she had on her sister, and she was going with him to check it out,
dammit!
In the seat beside her, Austin’s eyes narrowed warningly. “I thought that spanking I gave
you back at your sister’s apartment was enough to get you to behave yourself, but apparently I
was wrong,” he growled. “Maybe you need another. Should I give you one right here in the
parking lot, or take you up to my office?”
Taylor’s blushed hotly at the thought of another spanking. “There’s no way I’m letting
you spank me again!” she said.
“And there’s no way I’m letting you tag along while I look for your sister,” he told her
firmly. “Either you agree to let me do the job you hired me to do without this constant
interference, or I drop this case right now. After I give you the spanking you so richly deserve,
that is.”
It was on the tip of Taylor’s tongue to tell Austin Malone that she didn’t need his help,
that with the lead he had given her, she could find Tiffany on her own, but the truth was that she
did need his help. Even if she found someone at the gas station in Baker who recognized
Wallace, she wouldn’t know what to do next. Austin had contacts and resources that she didn’t.
“Fine!” she snapped.
Austin inclined his head. “Good. I’m glad to see that you can be reasonable sometimes,”
he said. “I’m going to need a recent photo of your sister. Do you have one with you?”
Thinking that the private detective would need a photo if he’d agreed to take the case,
Taylor had actually brought a picture of Tiffany with her. Opening her purse, she reached inside
and took it out.
“This was taken before Tiffany started college,” she said as she handed it to him. She and
her sister had gone out to Catalina Island for the day, and Taylor had taken the picture of the
other girl after they had come back from a horseback ride.
Austin studied the photo for a moment, but made no comment, other than to say that he
would show her sister’s picture around at the gas station up in Baker and ask if anyone
remembered seeing her with Andrew Wallace.
“You’ll call me the moment you find out anything, right?” she asked as they got out of
the Wrangler.
He looked at her over the top of the SUV. “I told you that I would,” he said, and then
sighed before adding in a gentler tone, “Ms. Cavanaugh, if your sister is with this guy Wallace,
I’m sure she’s just fine.”
She folded her arms. “You don’t know that,” she insisted.
The private detective sighed again. “No, I don’t,” he agreed. “Which is why I’m going to
go up to Baker, and then follow it up from there. Now, why don’t you go home and try to relax. I
promise that I’ll call you as soon as I learn something.”
Since her car was parked in that direction, Taylor fell into step beside Austin as he began
to walk toward his office. When they reached the door, she had to resist the impulse to follow
him upstairs. Since her sister had disappeared, she’d been going nonstop on nerves and
adrenaline. She couldn’t imagine how she could just go home and “relax.” But trailing after him
&nb
sp; like a puppy wouldn’t get her sister found any faster. And would probably only get her spanked
again, Taylor thought.
“Thank you,” she found herself saying as he stood expectantly in the doorway. Then to
make sure that he wouldn’t think she was thanking him for the spanking he’d given her earlier,
she added, “For taking the case, I mean.”
Austin studied her for a moment in silence before he finally nodded. “You’re welcome,”
he said. “Now, go home and try not to worry. I’ll find her.”
But as she sat in her car a few minutes later, Taylor realized that while she might be
grateful Austin Malone had taken the case, there was no way she could simply stand by and wait
for him to find her sister. She just couldn’t do it. She had spent the past ten years with no one to
rely on but herself and she’d gotten used to that. Her sister might be in college now, but Tiffany
was still her responsibility, and she needed to be the one to find the girl. Which meant that
Taylor had no intention of playing by Malone’s stupid rules. If he didn’t want her to tag along,
then she would just have to make sure he didn’t realize she was doing it. How hard could it be?
she thought. When he left for Baker, she would simply follow him.
Back in his office, Austin tossed his keys onto the desk with a sigh. Checking out the lead
at that gas station up in Baker was going to be a waste of time, and he knew it. He already had a
good idea exactly where the two college kids had been heading. So why the hell had he told
Taylor Cavanaugh he’d look into it? Because he’d never been able to say no to a beautiful
woman, that’s why, he thought. And with those big blue eyes, long dark hair, and hot body,
Taylor Cavanaugh was definitely beautiful.
There was another reason why had he agreed to keep helping Taylor, though. After
reading her sister’s diary, he had begun to feel a little sorry for Taylor. Tiffany had been brutally
honest in her diary, which was why he hadn’t let Taylor see it for herself. While Tiffany
obviously loved her older sister, she’d written endlessly in her diary about how she felt
smothered by Taylor’s overprotective attitude and constant need to run her life. And Tiffany had
apparently grown tired of what she viewed as Taylor’s bitter and cynical outlook on men and
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