Sex & the Single Girl

by Joanne Rock

  Aidan wondered if, deep down, he’d hightailed it over here tonight to see what it would be like to kiss twenty-eight-year-old Brianne as opposed to eighteen-year-old Brianne.

  No comparison.

  The woman must grow more potent with each passing year.

  “I know exactly what you’re here for since you made it very plain to me yesterday.” She swiveled on one high heel and continued in the direction of her office, her shoes clicking a fast beat on the colorful corridor tiles. “You want access to the club and you want to view my videotapes. That won’t be a problem assuming you’ve brought the necessary paperwork.” She paused in her sexy strut. Turned her head in a way that sent auburn hair swishing over her shoulder. “You do have a warrant, don’t you?”

  Of course she wouldn’t forget about that. Aidan had known better than to think he could roll right over Brianne Wolcott.

  “About the warrant—”

  She folded her arms across her chocolate-colored cat suit. The bare skin on her arms looked far softer than the expression on her face. “Forget it. No warrant, no tapes.”

  Shit.

  Aidan had practically begged a federal judge for the warrant in addition to presenting credible evidence for why he needed access to Brianne’s security archives. According to his informant, those cameras of hers had been running for nearly two weeks. Who knew what evidence they might have captured in that time?

  But the judge was a notorious hard-ass and hadn’t been impressed. Leaving Aidan with nothing to sway Brianne other than his smooth-talking charm.

  And from Brianne’s tight-lipped glare, Aidan suspected no amount of cajoling would help him in his cause tonight.

  “I couldn’t get the warrant. But it’s just a damn piece of paper, Brianne. I need to be here if I’m going to find Mel.” His voice was loud enough that his words bounced around the wide hallways and tile surfaces.

  “To you it’s just a piece of paper, maybe. But it’s a legal necessity to me.” Brianne’s voice whispered along the corridor, but her message was every bit as clear. “Contrary to your beliefs, I don’t have anything to do with men who circumvent the rules at every turn. I’m on the straight and narrow, and you need to be, too, if you expect me to cooperate with your investigation.”

  Aidan skimmed a hand over his baseball cap-covered head, willing a good idea to pop into his brain before Brianne tossed him out on his ass. He needed to be here tonight. Call it gut instinct. Intuition.

  But something told him Club Paradise held the keys to Mel Baxter’s whereabouts and Aidan’s case.

  No way could he allow Brianne’s anger at him from a decade ago to overshadow his number one priority.

  “If I leave the club tonight, Brianne, I can guarantee you I won’t be far away. And I won’t really be gone.” He took a step closer, ready to go toe-to-toe with her on this. He lowered his voice, unrepentant about using mild intimidation tactics on a woman who could probably teach him a few things about attitude. “Wouldn’t you rather have me in your sights so you know where I am and what I’m doing as opposed to having me in the shadows, watching you when you are unaware?”

  He hadn’t meant to infuse the question with sexual overtones, but as the words left his lips the provocation was suddenly just there, not even remotely subtle.

  Brianne didn’t betray a thing with her cool expression, but Aidan watched her shoulders rise and fall with the same bracing breaths he was taking to keep his hands in check.

  Damn, but he wanted to touch her again.

  “Surely you aren’t supposed to coerce innocent people in the course of your investigations, Agent Maddock.” In the background, the blaring pop music finally ceased. “Are you certain your superiors would approve of your approach?”

  Hell no. But then again, Aidan had never advertised himself as a play-by-the-rules kind of guy. Sure, his unorthodox methods had landed him in the agency’s doghouse sometimes, but they had also accounted for a stellar track record on his cases overall.

  “Maybe not. But if you don’t mention the coercion, I won’t dispute your status as an innocent person.”

  Before Brianne could reply, Aidan heard the double doors of the club open out on to the corridor several yards behind him. Feminine laughter and a collection of clicking high heels approached.

  “I’m a hell of a lot closer to innocent than you are,” she hissed between clenched teeth, no doubt attempting to hide their conversation from her advancing business partners.

  “You must have a short memory, Bri,” he whispered back, only too pleased for the excuse to lean closer to her. “The steamy propositions you tossed my way as a wild eighteen-year-old were more inventive than any I’d heard before or since.”

  BRIANNE HAD SPENT the last ten years cultivating a proficient poker face to negotiate with the heavy hitters in her male-dominated profession. But she had the feeling that—despite her best effort—her expression now was nothing short of panic-stricken.

  She’d suspected Aidan would remember a few of the racier proposals she’d issued in her overeager youth. But she really, really hoped he wouldn’t remember one in particular.

  A fantasy of hers—ancient, of course—involving Agent Aidan Maddock in his investigator role and Brianne in her suspect role.

  Specifically, a strip search.

  Cloaking any sign of her fears with an effort, Brianne recovered just as Summer, Giselle and Lainie reached them.

  Summer flashed a thumbs-up as she cruised by in her rainbow-colored skirts and braids. She was a walking fashion emergency today but she still managed to look gorgeous. “I tested the club microphones in your absence, Brianne, and I’m happy to report they are working just fine.”

  Giselle settled for winking at Aidan as she tapped past them too, but Lainie paused and donned her cool, face-the-public smile for his benefit.

  “Agent Maddock, I trust Brianne has explained to you that all the partners behind Club Paradise are happy to extend our full cooperation to your investigation of the former ownership?” Lainie smoothed an already perfect strand of her blond hair behind one ear, her gold cuff bracelet glimmering in the lighting from an overhead chandelier.

  Brianne sighed inwardly at her co-owner’s helpfulness.

  Aidan responded with the full force of his charm. “Thank you, Ms. Reynolds. Brianne was just getting ready to give me a tour of the resort so I could get acclimated for making myself at home here over the next week or two.”

  Had he told her he’d be here for that long?

  “Excellent. Just let me know if you need anything else.” Lainie smiled with more efficiency than warmth, and it occurred to Brianne she probably hadn’t ever seen a full-fledged grin on the new CEO’s face.

  One day she’d ask Summer more about Lainie’s story, but now as her partner departed down the hallway, she was too annoyed with Aidan to think about it anymore.

  Aidan turned on her, his mask of polite good humor vanishing. His dark brows flattened into a fearsome slash across his forehead. “Care to tell me why you’re wasting our time arguing about whether or not I have your authorization to hang out on the premises when your partners have obviously already agreed on it?”

  Unwilling to be cowed by the tough-guy act, Brianne decided the time had come for a little cold, hard honesty here.

  “Has it ever occurred to you I might not want the object of an ancient and embarrassing crush glued to my side for two whole weeks?” She struggled to keep her tone even, level. Her work had taught her that women were more likely to be written off if they emoted too much. Men had the luxury of acting out when and if they so chose, but thanks to an age-old stereotype of the hysterical female, women had to pull the ice queen facade in order to make men take them seriously.

  Usually, she was superb in that particular role. But oddly enough, the subject of Aidan Maddock still had the power to get her a little more riled than she cared to admit.

  Aidan frowned. “You find an old crush on me embarrassing? You think I’v
e gone downhill in the last ten years, Bri?”

  A little exasperated sigh broke free.

  After ten years of keeping her cool—even with the psycho guitar player former boyfriend—Brianne couldn’t believe Aidan was already getting under her skin.

  “That’s not what I mean and you know it. I don’t appreciate having to rub elbows with a guy I once threw myself at as if I were—”

  “Some kind of lovelorn teenager?” he supplied.

  She glared at him. “Some kind of blind and disillusioned kid.”

  Aidan nodded. Placated her. “You’re right. I can see where the situation might be a little awkward for you.” Was he hiding a preening male smile underneath that pseudo-charm of his? “But now that we’ve established that I’m going to be welcomed here by the rest of the owners, why don’t we move on to a quick tour of the grounds and then I’ll make myself scarce.”

  “Then you don’t need to be in my office with all the security equipment?” If she’d known they didn’t have to be together all the time—

  “I meant I’d make myself as scarce as I can be in your office,” he amended quickly as he made a sweeping gesture for her to go first down the hall. “I’m pretty damn good at my job, you know. And the faster I find out where Mel is hiding, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair.”

  “I can’t help you there,” Brianne protested, though she knew Aidan didn’t believe her any more now than he had a decade ago. Not that it mattered any longer. “But I can give the tour of the property in less than an hour assuming you can keep up.”

  She blew by him, grateful for the distance her long legs could cover in just a few paces. And she didn’t wait to see if he followed.

  This time, Brianne would be the one leaving him in her dust.

  AIDAN TOOK A SHALLOW BREATH as he sat shoulder to shoulder with Brianne at her master control board later that night. A deep breath would draw in too much of her scent, too much of her. And he was already edgy and restless from spending half the day glued to her side.

  They’d only been apart long enough for Brianne to change out of the sleek brown cat suit she’d been wearing and into a skirt short enough to leave him practically drooling in her wake. Apparently this new outfit was the kind of getup a woman wore when she worked in a nightclub.

  Getup being a pretty damn descriptive phrase at the moment.

  Now, she stared up at her wall of monitors and spoke softly into her headset to one of her partners. The blue digital clock on the control board turned to 4:00 a.m.—closing time—while she narrated a drunken man’s actions to the party on the other end of her connection. It sounded like Brianne was asking if she should intervene in the situation.

  Aidan could hardly keep quiet. “If he doesn’t make it out the door under his own power in another minute, I’ll run him off.” He didn’t like the idea of Brianne playing bouncer to a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound biker with spikes strapped around his wrists. Besides, it would probably do him some good to get a breath of air that didn’t involve Brianne’s darkly complex perfume.

  Brianne covered the mouthpiece of her headset with one hand and glared at him in the dim light of the security board in her office. “I don’t think so, Maddock. Thanks anyway.”

  Had she always been this bristly? Even now in her crisp white man’s shirt and shorter-than-short black sequin skirt, she had a cool, hands-off look about her before she said a word.

  “You’re running a one-woman show here, Bri,” he shot back as he switched screens on the monitors to check out the action on the street in front of the club. Still no signs of Mel Baxter. “Can you really afford to turn away offers to help out?”

  “I can when they come from a man who’s only interested in dragging the club’s name through a little more mud.” She uncovered the mike on her headset and told her partner she’d check in later then clicked off the connection.

  “I offered to kick out a drunk. You don’t have to make a federal case out of it.”

  “You obviously want to.” Brianne tossed aside her headset and opened the top of her computer display. “That’s the only reason you’re here, after all—to make your federal case and then ride off into the sunset a hero. Of course, it doesn’t matter to you that you could be costing four women their livelihoods and their dreams for the second time in one year. As long as you get your conviction, who cares what happens to the club, right?” She spared him a glance over her shoulder, her red hair dancing around her shoulders like a fitful flame as she moved. “So do me a favor and don’t pretend to care what happens around here before you pull the rug out from under us.”

  She went back to tapping away at her computer keys, her breathing measured and regular and totally unruffled while he was still over here choking on his freaking shallow gulps of air so as not to inhale too much of her damn mess-with-his-head perfume.

  The whole day had been an exercise in professional and sexual frustration. Mel’s trail was cold—possibly thanks to his stepdaughter’s smooth maneuverings— and Aidan’s superiors grew more agitated with the situation with each passing day. And instead of focusing on his work, Aidan was more in tune with Brianne’s every movement in the chair beside him, every breath she took and every slow uncrossing and recrossing of her mile-long legs.

  He’d watched video camera feeds of half-naked women shimmying across the stage in the Moulin Rouge Lounge all night, their painted nipples poking through the white feather bras they wore with their white skirts. Brianne, on the other hand, was encased in a forbidding expanse of starched white dress shirt, yet he could envision her breasts more clearly.

  And as if that weren’t bad enough, he’d been plagued by memories of her long-ago racy propositions ever since they’d finished their exploration of the hotel and plunked into their seats in her office.

  When she’d been giving him the grand tour, she’d shown him the tacky Sweethearts Suite decorated in chocolate brown and pinks, the bedspread a nightmare of bright candy wrappers and peppermint sticks. Instead of thinking like an agent and gleaning details to apply to his case, Aidan had been swamped with a vision of eighteen-year-old Brianne in her candy striper’s outfit asking him if he wanted to see her tie a cherry stem with her tongue.

  No doubt about it, Brianne had been a wild child.

  And while Aidan had congratulated himself at the time for ignoring her overtures—repeatedly—all her suggestive propositions were coming back to him in vivid color. Only, he wasn’t remembering the Brianne of a decade ago issuing them.

  In his mind’s eye, he was hearing them come from the Brianne of today.

  The Brianne with the take-no-shit attitude and the sexy saunter that could bring a grown man to his knees.

  And it was driving him insane.

  Steeling himself for another round with her, he shoved his chair away from the control board and swiveled his seat to face hers. “I can’t afford to care about the consequences of Mel’s arrest. Chances are they’re going to up his status to one of Florida’s most wanted men if I don’t bring him in within the week. Do you think criminals shouldn’t be punished just because it might have a few negative effects?”

  Brianne shoved away from the control panel and stood. “Of course not. I’m just saying don’t pretend to give a rip about the club or me when you’re doing your damnedest to run us both out of town.”

  Aidan shot out of his seat, putting them inches apart.

  So maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to confront her, he thought as the perfume that had been teasing his nose all night wafted even closer.

  If her body was even half as hot as his, no wonder he could smell the scent all the more.

  “I’m not trying to run you out. Or your business, or your partners. As long as you’re not helping him cover his tracks, lady, you’ve got nothing to worry about.” He didn’t want to think about Brianne being involved in anything illegal. But she had remained close to her stepfather for years after he’d divorced her mother.

  Aidan knew becaus
e he had Mel’s file practically memorized.

  Brianne turned her back on him to glide her way across her office floor, her high heels barely making a sound on the brand-new black industrial carpet. Every facet of the woman’s space was coolly functional and austerely impersonal. No photos, no frills and no nonsense for this woman.

  Aidan could relate. He’d gone the frills and sentiment route with a woman five years ago and look what had happened.

  Disillusionment on both sides. Disappointment. Divorce.

  Aidan wouldn’t be treading down the path of vulnerable women anymore. He’d tangled with innocence and had ended up hurting his wife with his dangerous job, his total cluelessness when it came to sensitivity.

  Brianne, on the other hand, knew the score. As she stood there in her black sequined skirt and her all-business white shirt, Aidan couldn’t see a hint of vulnerability in the woman.

  And innocence?

  Brianne might protest her innocence in a courtroom, but she had to know as well as he did that she liked living on the edge. She was no stranger to danger or adventure.

  Even though Aidan had been too much of a gentleman to indulge her eighteen-year-old sensual urges despite her provocation, he had no doubt that she’d been able to lure other men to her bed. And had probably left them begging for more and ruined for any other woman to boot.

  No, Brianne Wolcott hadn’t been vulnerable or innocent for a very long time.

  Which meant she was the kind of woman Aidan allowed himself to touch. To take home. To satisfy mutual urges.

  He tracked her movements on the other side of the room—this woman who was distracting the hell out of him. She was talking to him as she flipped through papers on her desk. Apparently she’d been telling him off while he’d been caught up in his own lust.

  “…and I don’t care what Lainie says,” she was saying, eyeing him with a sharp green gaze. “Negative press does not equate with good publicity as far as I’m concerned. The club has enough association with the underworld. I have every intention of making this place a success despite Mel and all his crooked buddies. And despite you camping out here ready to pounce.”