by Joanne Rock
As she sat up, clutching a pillow to her like a satin shield, Aidan realized she was already engaged in a full retreat. “Maybe we don’t want to wait. It occurred to me that we could probably check out the activity in the banking account in my mother’s name. We might be overlooking something important.”
We? Aidan guessed he was missing something here, some key element to Brianne’s angle on their relationship. But even with all his years of field experience, he didn’t have a clue what that might be. This struck him as more than just an effort to put distance between them. “You sure you want to tackle that right now?”
“Definitely.” She scrambled for her blouse and shoved the torn remnants of her panties into her purse, her movements clipped and hurried. “We can use the office computer.”
Grudgingly, Aidan forced himself out of the bed, away from the warmth that was Brianne. He already knew her complex scent would cling to him for hours and force him to recall their wild night together. “That’s okay. If we’re going to tackle this thing, it makes more sense for me to hit the field while you see what you can find on the computer. I’ll call New York and Miami Beach police before I leave here though and make sure this James guy is still in New York.”
Brianne clenched the white dancing veil so tightly in her palm that one of the tiny bells along the fringe popped off and rolled on to the floor. He was going out to mingle with crooks and talk to bad guys on the streets even after her offer to look for leads together from the safety of her office?
As she reassembled her outfit with slow precision, she wished she could rebuild her emotional defenses with half as much thoroughness. In the course of an evening, she’d managed to bare far more than her body to Aidan. Somehow she’d revealed secret fears and insecurities she had never shared with any other man.
And he’d even met her mother, for crying out loud.
She was in too deep, too fast. Even worse, she couldn’t think straight when they were in the same room together, which was probably why she felt the sudden need for space. Not so much to send Aidan away as to think clearly, because after the series of romantic mistakes she’d made in her lifetime, she didn’t trust her judgment when it came to men. At all.
Her only option as far as she could see would be to run far and fast from this night before her faulty decisions started exploding in her face.
While she scanned the floor of the harem-themed hotel room for her shoes, Aidan studied her from where he still lounged on the bed, his tanned chest a dark contrast to the white bed linens all around him. “You got dressed in record-breaking time. You’re not running away from me, are you?”
Damn. Damn. Damn.
Brianne had always been far more outspoken than her polite mother. Furthermore, she’d held her own in blunt speaking with New York’s notoriously tough film industry crowd. But Aidan’s straightforward approach to what they’d shared tonight still threw her for a loop.
Crossing her fingers that the best defense was a strong offense, she let him have it with both guns. She tossed her hair, shot him her best smoldering look. “You shattered my personal lifetime orgasm record in the first two hours we were together, Aidan. What woman in her right mind would run from that kind of sexual firepower?”
“A woman who’s scared of a relationship. You.” He eyed her from the bed, her six-foot-four personal psychiatrist.
Brianne reeled from the comment even though she didn’t so much as blink. Playing it cool grew increasingly challenging when it came to Aidan, however.
“I didn’t know we were contemplating a relationship.” The word stuck to her tongue a bit before she managed to speak it aloud. Her heart pounded with a swirl of confused emotions at the thought. “Judging by your shared kisses with a cigarette girl followed by your involvement with me, I hadn’t pegged you for a relationship type of guy.”
God, she sounded like a cynic. And her flip attitude wasn’t even honest. She knew damn well Aidan would at least bring more to a relationship than she ever could. But if she didn’t find a way to insert some distance between them—fast—she’d be losing her heart to a man who didn’t understand her and who was wretchedly wrong for her.
“I spent three years of the last ten as a married man, Brianne. You could say I tried out relationships in a big way.” He swiveled off the bed and planted his long, muscular legs on the floor as casually as if he hadn’t just rocked her foundations.
“You?” Brianne turned up the lights in the room— partly to hunt for her shoe and partly to occupy her suddenly nervous hands. “Married?”
“Is that so hard to believe?”
“You just seem so absorbed in your job. But maybe that’s because I’ve never really seen you at a time when you weren’t working.” Would things have been any different between them if they’d met outside his investigations?
“I met Natalie after a hit-and-run accident.” He dressed as he talked, covering up the tanned skin Brianne had kissed, licked, touched. “It wasn’t part of a case, I just sort of stumbled on the scene on the way home one night.”
That sounded like Aidan. She nodded, curious to hear more even as a twinge of jealousy stabbed through her for the woman who had caught Aidan’s eye. She was willing to bet Natalie didn’t have a criminal for a stepfather.
“She’s a nurse and she had stopped to check on the victim. I got involved so I could make sure the cops were on the way, secure the area. We hit it off right away and I took the plunge a few months later.” He slid his tie around his neck, not bothering to knot it. “Eventually she got freaked about my job and called it quits. Not that I blame her.”
That she could certainly understand.
“And your divorce hasn’t soured you on relationships?” Brianne didn’t think she could handle a divorce of her own. She’d weathered enough of Pauline’s to know they were sticky, unhappy business.
More importantly, they had the potential to break hearts.
“Call me an optimist.” He flashed her a sexy grin and took a step closer. The heat of his body reminded her of all they’d shared tonight. “So what do you think, Brianne? You ready to try this again between us or are you still running?”
Her feet twitched with the desire to be out the door. He thought she might be running? If she could find her shoes she’d be sprinting. No matter what tender feelings she’d experienced with Aidan tonight, she didn’t have any intention of setting herself up for a fall. Emotions scared her to begin with and the confusing knot of desire, hope and caring she felt for Aidan flat-out terrified her.
“Honestly, I don’t know. I’m a little scared.” Understatement. “And confused.” Even bigger understatement.
“That’s allowed. Hell, I don’t know what’s going on between us either. But I plan on hanging in there until we figure it out.”
“I just might need some space to get my head on straight. Between a new business to run, a stepfather on the lam, my mother mixed up in some banking scheme and some loser ex-boyfriend on the loose, I worry about making bad decisions. And I can’t think when you’re with me.”
He shot her a purely male grin—ego-driven and not afraid to show it. “Sometimes thinking is overrated.”
Sensation sizzled over her pulse points, bringing to mind moments tonight when she’d submerged herself in feeling.
Resisting the urge to fan herself, she settled for backing up a step. “Remember when I told you I was afraid of reliving my mother’s bad choices when it came to men? I made a documentary about dangerous men and the women who love them, and trust me, it’s an insidious behavioral pattern I refuse to get trapped in. I’ve always said I wouldn’t follow that same insane road as her and yet I seem to be crossing paths with one dangerous man after another.”
“Don’t tell me you’re including me in the category with the stalker.” He thunked a broad hand across his forehead. “Damn, Brianne. Since when am I the dangerous type?”
“You carry a gun 24/7, don’t you? And the scariest part of that is knowing
it wouldn’t bother me unless I cared about you. A lot.” Panicking just a little—not that Aidan would ever be dangerous to her, just that she needed to extricate herself from this conversation ASAP—she swept the room with her eyes again. Where the hell were her shoes? “I just don’t think I could handle knowing you were rubbing elbows with criminals, taking risks, putting yourself in danger all the time.”
Call her wimpy. But she’d lose her mind. Maybe it would be different if she could be certain he wouldn’t take crazy chances. But she knew Aidan, knew how he felt about his job, and knew he’d put himself on the line at the drop of a hat.
“I know what I’m doing with the gun. Did I mention they don’t roll out badges to any slouch with an itch to play cops and robbers?” Aidan stalked toward the door.
At first she thought he was leaving but then he bent to retrieve something from under the wet bar. Her shoes.
“You seem to be in a damn hurry for these, Brianne, so I’m going to hand them over.” He delivered them to her, his tall body too close to hers as he dropped them on the floor beside her mocha-almond-painted toenails. “I won’t stop you from running and I won’t keep you from finding your damn space. But I think you’re going to be missing out on something if you don’t take a few chances once in a while.”
His words tugged at her, made her long to live up to his expectation. “I realize I’ve been thinking a lot about security these days, not risk. But taking chances certainly proved enjoyable tonight.” She smiled up at him as she slid into her strappy shoes. “Would you give me a little longer to try to figure out what I want?”
His nod was curt, but at least he’d agreed. “I’m going to check the status of this guy Vanderwalk now. I’ll be down in your office making calls, so just swing by there before you leave or else I can drive you home.”
He looked so stern, so serious. She wished she could ease away that stone set of his jaw, but she needed to be true to herself too. “Thanks Aidan. I don’t want to sound ungrateful because I really appreciate you helping me out with that.”
“Don’t be too appreciative because I’m not letting you off the hook on the relationship by a long shot. You’re nothing like your mother and I think you’re making big-time excuses for your own damn fears by rolling out that one.”
He snagged his jacket off the surveillance camera in the corner of the room and headed for the door. “Sooner or later, you’ve got to stop living life behind a camera lens and see what happens when you step into the real world.”
12
FRUSTRATION CHURNED through Aidan as he slouched in Brianne’s office chair and punched the phone number for the tenth call on his list. He’d already talked to the cops in New York and Miami Beach, he’d checked up on the whereabouts of James Vanderwalk, and now he followed up on his current investigation.
But throughout the calls he’d been thinking nonstop about his night with Brianne, wondering why the hell their time together had to transform from euphoric to explosive as soon as they’d quit touching and started talking. She needed space? How much damn space could one woman have? She already moved through life like a one-woman island.
Scribbling down notes from his conversation with an agency support staffer on a cocktail napkin he’d found in his pocket, Aidan marveled at the uncluttered black lacquer of Brianne’s office desk. She kept exactly one crystal clock, one silver pen and one chrome paperweight on the shiny surface. No paper in sight.
How could he ever communicate with a woman who didn’t even reveal a hint of herself on her desk?
In the past, great sex had been a cause for celebration. Now—at 6:00 a.m. according to her crystal clock—he didn’t feel much like pounding his chest in he-man victory.
He felt more like pounding the nearest wall.
How could she retreat so fast after the night they’d shared? They’d probably conquered half the positions in the Kama Sutra. They definitely must have set some kind of Guinness orgasmic record. But more importantly, she’d felt comfortable enough with him to share pieces of herself, her past.
A feat he suspected didn’t come easily to a woman whose office lacked a single photograph or personal memento.
Damn.
But he’d vowed not to tie himself up in knots over any woman, hadn’t he? The lesson had been hard-won after his marriage to Natalie, but he’d learned not to get caught up with innocents. And while Brianne wasn’t exactly naive, she possessed a depth of vulnerability he hadn’t anticipated in someone with such a slick, cool veneer.
He ought to be grateful she was willing to keep their relationship simple. Instead, he had to practically tie himself to her office chair to keep from marching back upstairs to the harem hotel suite and using every persuasive power he possessed to convince her she was making a mistake.
Of course, it didn’t help that he could still see her on the wall of security monitors.
Struggling to focus on his phone call, he grew distracted by the image of her on monitor number eight. She hadn’t left the harem suite when he did. She’d simply retrieved her laptop from the briefcase she’d carried earlier and plugged into a data port beside the telephone.
Not that he’d been watching her every move or anything.
Scrubbing a palm across tired eyes, Aidan counted himself two times a fool. He needed to pry his gaze off monitor number eight and get his head back to business before he blew this case in a colossal repeat of history. The best thing he could do right now was to follow Brianne’s lead and know enough to walk away.
But first, he needed to make one more phone call.
BRIANNE CLICKED THROUGH the keys on her laptop as she lay on the white satin bedspread where she and Aidan had made love. Repeatedly.
Later she would call housekeeping and see about having the room cleaned. Right now, some sadistic part of her reveled in the lingering scent of Aidan’s spicy aftershave mingled with her perfume.
Knowing she couldn’t go home until Aidan checked the status of her psycho ex-boyfriend, she’d figured hanging out in the harem suite made far more sense than venturing anywhere near her office. Where Aidan would be. So she’d used the time to check out the activity on the bank account in her mother’s name.
And managed to discover a few things Aidan would probably want to see.
The phone rang at her bedside, jarring her from her thoughts.
“Hello?”
“Is this enough space for you?” Aidan’s husky tones rumbled across the line, an all-too-familiar voice that made her heart jump.
She smiled in spite of herself. “Depends. Who’s calling?”
“This is the Pasha. You know, lord of the harem and all that. I need to speak to my Pasharina.”
“We definitely need to do something about the name, don’t we? The Pasharina’s Palace just isn’t cutting it.”
“How about the Orgasmic Oasis? Or maybe the Thousand and One Naughty Nights?”
More like Heartbreak Harem, judging from the sorry state of her emotions right now. But she wasn’t about to offer that up to Aidan. “The Pasharina is very busy, sir. Is there something I can help you with?”
Brianne heard a half-stifled sigh on the other end of the line and wondered if he felt as frustrated as she did.
“Just wanted to let you know the coast is clear if you want to go home. Vanderwalk is still in New York.”
“You found that out already?” She sat upright on the bed, relieved and wary at the same time. How could Aidan be so sure? “What did you do—send the cops to his door?”
There was a moment of silence on the other end. “I called him.”
Her jaw dropped. Then, remembering Aidan could see her on the wall of security monitors if he still sat in her office, she snapped it shut again. “You called him?”
“Sometimes the most obvious solution is the best. I pretended I was a telemarketer and asked him a bunch of nosy questions before he woke up enough to tell me to go to hell. I’m sure it was him.” In the background she could hear hi
m clicking through the buttons on the foot massager below her desk. He’d obviously discovered her one hidden office indulgence. “And don’t worry, I used a secure line routed from my cell phone. There’s no way any caller ID could ever trace it to Florida.”
“You pretended you were a telemarketer?” This is how the FBI gathered information? Or maybe, that was just how Aidan gathered information. Unorthodox, but impressive nevertheless. “Is that legal?”
“Put it this way, it’s a hell of a lot more legal than stalking.”
He had her there. “You’re right. And I would have given my eyeteeth to have those cops in New York gather that much intelligence on Jimmy while I lived there.” She glanced up at the camera for his benefit, wanting him to know how much his effort meant to her. “Thank you. I’m going to sleep better at night now.”
“I’d still be careful, Brianne. I’m going to check in with the police in New York every now and then, but if your security needs any beefing up at home, you’ll want to invest the time on it.” The note of concern in his voice warmed her. Made her feel protected in a way she’d never been before.
“I found out a few things for you, too,” she blurted, unwilling to sort through the swirl of emotions Aidan inspired in her. She swiveled her laptop to face the security camera. “If you want a close-up of the screen, just click on the number eight button on my master control remote and press the zoom key.”
“Got it. I’m zooming. What do you have there? Online banking statements?”
“They’re for the bogus account in my mother’s name.”
He whistled long and low under his breath. “You don’t access those by pretending you’re a telemarketer. Care to tell me how you managed that?”
“By operating under the assumption Mel set up the account. I tried out Melvin-style passwords and finally got through with ‘Go Marlins.’ All caps. But then, Melvin’s whole lifestyle had been about over-enthusiasm, hearty laughter and too much money.” She pointed to the screen. “These are recent transactions. As you can see, he had several large influxes of cash shortly before he made off with the resort’s entire operating budget.”
