by Joanne Rock
“Fine, Sean. I knew what I was signing up for to be on the force.” She backed away from him, retreating deeper into the safe haven of her home. “I’m just not used to tripping over pushy P.I.s at every turn on an investigation.”
“Good cops cultivate their sources, they don’t lock them out.” He followed her into the living area that doubled as her bedroom in the small space. “Nice place you’ve got here.”
So technically, she had a man in her bedroom after a long, long time. A shiver accompanied the thought as her gaze lingered on the foldout sofa where she slept.
“Not quite as grand as my Long Island digs, but at least it’s all paid for honestly.” She’d inherited a house in the Hamptons from her father when she was eighteen and she’d used the proceeds from the sale to set herself up in this apartment with a nice savings account for a rainy day. Everything that Sergio had ever given her she’d donated to charity after the split.
She hated what it said about her that she’d been involved with a crook. The police background check may have forgiven the transgression, but forgiving herself was far more difficult.
“I knew four years ago that you weren’t guilty of anything but poor judgment, Donata. I only made the big show of putting you under arrest in the hope you might spill something about Sergio’s connections in the filmmaking industry.” He took off his coat and tossed it on her couch, making himself at home before she’d invited him to stay.
The intimacy of the act suggested an ease around her that men didn’t usually feel with a woman accustomed to being labeled “cold.” One of the police cadets she’d gone through training with had gone so far as to suggest she could wither a man’s sexual interest at twenty paces with just one glare. Not exactly flattering, but a helpful kind of superpower for a female who was scared spitless of dominating men.
And yet Sean remained immune to the glare.
“I knew you didn’t have any evidence,” she admitted, figuring she might as well come clean if they were going to work together. “And I could have called in my FBI connections to set things straight, but I figured the threat of me being busted would buy me street cred with Sergio. He was starting to get suspicious of me. The big bust happened just a few weeks later.”
“So all that surly silent treatment was an act?” He strolled around her living room, checking the titles of the books on her shelves, the DVDs next to the TV and the wine bottles on the rack near the kitchen.
The attention to his surroundings was typical of a good cop and she wondered why he’d felt the police department couldn’t bring his sister’s molester to justice. The department always needed good investigators and she had the feeling his leaving was a loss for the city.
“I honestly didn’t know of any connection Sergio might have had to the film industry. But as for the tough-girl behavior, I did a lot of acting those last few months with him.” What scared her more were the hours where she’d forgotten it was an act, the dates they went on that had seemed like old times and had made her forget for a little while that she was staying with him only to bust him.
It had all felt so unclean. So dishonest.
“What about the harassment charges?” Sean turned on his heel to stalk straight toward her now, all pretense of interest in her apartment gone as he focused on her. “Was that an act to buy points with your boyfriend, too?”
“No.” She stifled the impulse to step backward, away from him. “But I realized afterward that I was just scared and…acting out…to even the odds between us. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about that.”
She’d rescinded her verbal accusation and refused to formalize it in writing after her head had cleared from the sensual haze that enveloped the room when she and Sean had been together.
“Luckily, I was already making plans to leave the department by then so it wasn’t as big of a deal as it might have been.” He stopped a foot from her, his sleekly muscular body making its presence felt even though he didn’t touch her.
Four years ago she’d thought the resulting shaky feeling inside had been from harassment. Now she recognized it for what it had been all along.
She had the hots for Sean Beringer.
* * *
EVEN AS SEAN BEGAN to realize it had been a mistake to seek out Donata after hours, he still couldn’t make himself back away from her.
He’d seen hints of the old over-the-top sexiness at the precinct today in the pure silk blouse she’d worn beneath her navy suit. The fire-engine-red lips had been another clue, even if the rest of her face hadn’t been made-up.
But in the safety of her own apartment, she obviously gave her diva leanings more room to play. Her blue-and-yellow lace camisole blouse outlined spectacular cleavage while a fuzzy blue sweater was tied closed with a satin ribbon around her waist. The crocheted sweater was full of so many holes a man could see everything through it, from the spaghetti straps of the blouse to the hummingbird tattoo on her lower back that showed between her low-rise jeans and the camisole.
What man could see a tattoo like that and not fantasize about tasting it?
Exotic perfume clung to her clothes and her skin, a scent that hadn’t been present during her workday. Most women came home and stripped away the material trappings of beauty but apparently Donata cloaked herself in sexy feminine decor the minute she left the police department behind. The thought of her switching roles like that turned him on at a primal level.
“What did you want to discuss?” Her throaty words floated through his consciousness to distract him when all he really wanted to do was close the space between them and see if she felt as good as she looked.
From the satiny blouse and the fuzzy sweater to the sleek silken swish of her hair, everything about Donata was a tactile temptation, begging to be touched.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t in any position to cop a feel.
“I need to know where you’re going with this investigation since our conversation ended prematurely today. You seemed freaked out about Alteri’s possible involvement in the filmmaking scheme, and I’m here to ask you nicely to back off if you think you can’t separate feelings for your ex from the job.”
“How dare you insinuate I can’t keep my personal feelings out of my work?” She lowered her voice to a fierce whisper even though there was no one around to overhear them. “It’s because of me that Alteri is behind bars in the first place.”
“Hey, I couldn’t keep my personal life out of my work, which was why I left the force.” Frustration replaced some of the heat between them and he was grateful for the impetus to back away. He didn’t need attraction to Donata screwing him over now that he was close to finally busting the sleazy video outfit. He needed to know more about the Sara Chapman case to see if her situation coincided with some of the other girls’ experiences of having their video images posted online.
Donata seemed to think over what he said, her arms folded tight while she stared up at a framed photo of herself as a flamboyantly dressed teenager with her arm wrapped around a skinny old guy wearing a Doors T-shirt and a poorly fitting dinner jacket.
Had she started dating ancient men that young?
Alteri had to have been twenty years her senior and this guy looked closer to thirty.
“I respect your need to go after somebody who hurt your sister.” Slowly, Donata turned on him, her eyes wearier and wiser than he remembered. “In turn, you have to respect that I’m going to be all over this investigation. Not just because it’s my job, but because I have a particular axe to grind with men who try to take advantage of innocents. That doesn’t make me sloppy. That makes me driven.”
He barely recognized the woman who delivered the words. Outside, she looked the same with her too-sexy clothes and killer body. But the steely strength that emanated from within—that was all new since the last time they’d crossed paths. This Donata was a woman with a mission and Sean thought any guy would be damn lucky to have her on his side.
Except he didn’t want a prof
essional partner. If she wanted to partner in other ways, however…
“Heard and understood. I appreciate the honesty when we—”
“You ready for some more?”
“What?” He blinked.
“Honesty.” Cool purpose gleamed in her eyes and Sean got a mental picture of her heading up a boardroom instead of a police investigation.
That mental picture lasted about three seconds before being replaced by one of Donata naked and in his bed, his fingers exploring the soft terrain beneath the hummingbird tattoo.
“Su-sure.” He loosened his collar before he remembered he wasn’t wearing a tie. Damned if a Mets batting jersey could strangle a man, but somehow, his managed to do exactly that.
“Focus on this case is important to me and I’m having a hard time finding it with you and me working on it.”
Of all the things he might have expected her to say, this would have been the farthest from his mind. She couldn’t honestly be…flirting with him?
“Are you coming on to me?” He’d gotten rusty at interpreting signals from women in the years since his wife had left him, so chances were good he’d read Donata wrong. But since he’d never had enough finesse to muddle through blindly when asking a direct question could clear up everything in an instant, he figured he had nothing to lose by confronting her.
“Just the opposite.” She fidgeted with the long blue ribbon dangling from the bow where her sweater was tied closed. “I’m asking for your help in keeping our interaction as impersonal as possible given our…unusual history.”
The way she said it made him wonder how much of those hours they’d spent together she remembered. When she had refused to call a lawyer and he had been hell-bent on interrogating her anyway. There had been anger, resentment and undeniable sparks.
“No one at that precinct gives a crap about the past. Cops are only interested in your present and future and what you’re bringing to the table that will help catch crooks.”
“Perhaps I’m less concerned with what my colleagues think than what I think.” She released the ribbon and the satin fabric swung like a delicate pendulum for a moment before coming to rest on the snap of her jeans.
The sight of that sleek fabric pointing the way south on Donata’s voluptuous body would have distracted him under the best of circumstances, but now when he was trying to navigate his way through her cryptic words…his brain seemed to short-circuit.
“I’m not getting it.” The scent of her—darkly sexy and warmed by the heat of her skin—drugged any remaining sense right out of him. “You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Donata, because I’m not following you.”
“Then let me make it clear as crystal.” She swept aside the hem of her loose sweater to cock a hand on one denim-clad hip. “I’m not even sure I like you, Beringer, but there’s something undeniably sexual in the air when we’re in the same room and I want to avoid that at all costs.”
Okay, this he could understand. Something sexual? Yes ma’am. This was finally making sense.
“You don’t mean sexual in the negative sense, right?” He just needed to get this one last point straight because no way, no how, would any woman accuse him of something like harassment again.
Thinking hot thoughts wasn’t a crime. Just so long as he didn’t act on anything without two thumbs up from the woman in question.
“No. I mean sexual in the distracting sense and I’ll tell you right now I’m not going down that path with any man who knew me back in my questionable youth.”
Her eyes were so cool and remote that he couldn’t reconcile her overtly sexy exterior with the uptight words.
“I met you four short years ago. Hardly during your childhood.” Reason clamored through the haze of lust in his brain, urging caution.
“But you saw me in the setting of the criminal underworld.”
“You were working undercover.”
“As an informant, not a paid detective. Big difference in respectability, don’t you think?”
A knock sounded at her door before he could pick apart how ludicrous it was for her to write him off because they met under inauspicious circumstances. But then, he was too rocked by her admission that he distracted her to process anything else with much speed.
“Yes?” Donata answered the door after peering through the peephole.
A middle-aged woman wearing a long caftan waited on the threshold, a mug of something steamy in one hand and a FedEx package in the other.
“Sorry to interrupt.” The woman peered over Donata’s shoulder to take a visual inventory of Sean and for a moment she seemed to forget what she was saying.
Obviously, his charm still worked. Just not on the right woman.
“That’s okay, Charlene. Did you need anything?” Donata’s clipped tones were completely at odds with the sweet words she used to employ around her old boyfriend.
“Oh. Um, yes.” The woman thrust a box through Donata’s doorway. “One of your deliveries came to my door by mistake.”
Thanking her, Donata took the package and closed the door even though the woman clearly had been angling for an invitation inside.
“Do you do this to every woman you meet?” Donata hissed out a breath between her teeth, somehow finding him at fault for her neighbor’s nosiness.
“I’m sure she just wanted to know who you were hanging out with these days.” Although, judging by Donata’s quick squashing of any attraction between them, maybe there wouldn’t be any hanging out involved.
“Yeah, tell me another one.” She squinted at the box and frowned. “The shipping label doesn’t look right.”
He looked over her shoulder but didn’t see anything unusual.
“There’s no bar code. No return address.” She spoke softly to herself as she reached for the pull-tab to open the package while Sean sought a way to get their conversation back on track.
He needed to leverage information from her on this case, convince her to let him proceed applying pressure in non-traditional venues because he couldn’t allow the scumbags who’d hurt his sister to walk away.
“Oh God.”
Donata dropped the manila envelope she’d pulled from the FedEx box.
“What?” Instantly on alert, Sean shifted his attention to her. He bent to retrieve the padded envelope and noticed her hands shook as he set it on her coffee table.
He wasn’t rude enough to look inside the package, but he was curious enough to note the corner of one document stuck out the open end. It appeared to be a photograph or short stack of photos, the size of the corner suggesting they were large and glossy color prints.
“They’re photos of me from when I was with Sergio.” Her voice bore none of the steely determination he’d heard from her earlier. The hitch in her throat and high pitch quavered closer to tears. “The son of a bitch must have kept them for their future blackmail potential.”
That didn’t sound good. And judging by the suddenly chalky pallor of her skin, he’d say the photos weren’t your garden-variety vacation shots.
“Are they…compromising?” He suddenly wondered if this case they were pursuing could possibly be even more personal to Donata than it was to him.
“If you mean are they naked, the answer is yes. Go ahead and have a look, Beringer, and you’ll see just how bad of a girl I once was.”
CHAPTER 4
“WAS THERE A LETTER with it?” Using the corner of his T-shirt to prevent any extra fingerprints, Sean picked up the box the envelope had arrived in without looking at photos that obviously embarrassed her. “The package couldn’t have gone through FedEx with no labels. Somebody must have dropped it in front of your neighbor’s place.”
“I didn’t see a note.” Donata shook her head, her pale skin even whiter than usual as she stared at the envelope full of photos. “I didn’t even look at all the pictures.”
And who could blame her? She had to have busted her tail to climb the ranks of the police force the way she did, even with key
recommendations from two FBI agents she’d worked with to get the dirt on her old boyfriend. No wonder she wasn’t in any hurry to look through a package of photos that could destroy her career or—at very least—shred her credibility.
“I’ll look through them if you want me to, Donata. But if you’d rather keep them private, I’m going to ask you to scan through everything before we decide what to do next.” He knew he wasn’t the cop here, but she didn’t look ready to take on the lead investigator role right now.
This had to suck big-time for her.
What the hell kind of partner did she have to leave her hanging on a huge case like this? He knew of Mick Juarez’s reputation on the police force, but the guy sure didn’t seem to be living up to it today. But Sean prayed she didn’t want him to take a peek because he didn’t know how well he’d handle seeing naked pictures of this woman. And she definitely didn’t need a P.I. with a hard-on trying to straighten out this mess.
She nodded. Blinked.
“I’ll do it.” With shaking fingers, she reached into the envelope and withdrew the stack of photos, keeping the backs of the prints to him. About ten in all. “I don’t see any—Wait.”
Sean set the box by the front door as a reminder to her to bring it into the lab guys tomorrow so she could have it run for prints. The incident might not have anything to do with her investigation, but she’d want to follow up on it anyhow.
“You got something?”
“Yeah. It says, ‘I have a few photos that will make nice wall art for the 10th precinct. Leave the filmmaker case alone and I’ll keep the pictures our secret.’ There’s no signature.”
The note made him wonder how explicit the photos might be but he didn’t think he could handle that discussion right now with his thoughts running wild. His imagination was too damn vivid when it came to supplying possibilities.
“Your friends at the FBI would be interested in this. Even without being processed through FedEx, using their packaging might make a case that this was a federal crime.” The selfish half of him didn’t want the feds swarming around any more than he wanted city cops treading over his terrain.
