The Wild Side

by Isabel Sharpe

  Son of a bitch.

  Riley pressed the button to delete the message and put the phone back into its cradle, resisting the urge to slam it down. Who would Rose become for Slate, to entice him and get past his restraint where women were concerned? His perfect girl-next-door match? Exotic woman of experience to offset his boyish charm? Was she smiling sweetly? Suggestively? Letting show occasional glimpses of leg or breast to drive him wild?

  Riley forced his muscles to loosen, tried to deepen and slow his breathing. He should be feeling sorry for his friend, not wanting to punch him out. Slate had already been intrigued, listening on the phone tap when Rose made arrangements with that Tom guy. Chances were good he’d get his heart punctured by her steel-trap artifice.

  Relax. Riley went into his living room and sat on the carpet, closed his eyes, concentrated again on his breathing and waited until his mind cleared, his anger receded and calm control took over.

  Okay.

  So Rose was out of the picture. Which left her apartment wide-open. Jake Allston’s people wouldn’t dare send someone in with the cops monitoring the building, but if Riley went in alone and searched, he’d become an obvious target for whoever wanted the portrait. Becoming an obvious target was not his favorite activity. People like Jake Allston tended to hold grudges; latch on, pit bull style, to the desire to eliminate, and not stop until the job was done.

  Calculate. Slate had left the message at 2:00 a.m. So he couldn’t have left Boston later than eight or nine o’clock yesterday. Knowing Slate, he hadn’t been followed; whoever was tracking Rose wouldn’t know she’d gone out of state. Riley glanced at his watch. Seven-thirty. At this hour, it was conceivable someone watching the building could be fooled into thinking Rose was back home, asleep.

  Her bed was against the wall, out of sight from the window. He could go in and pretend he was talking to her. Gesture. Laugh. Bend down for a kiss. The FBI would have a bug in the room, but he doubted Allston’s people had set up anything more than a visual stake-out. He could pretend he was getting clothes from her dresser, food from her refrigerator, cooking breakfast, wandering around the room, occasionally out of sight—all the while searching.

  Best possible scenario, he could find the portrait this morning and get this entire episode over with before his meeting with Captain Watson, and later with Ted Barker, FBI.

  Worst possible scenario, he’d have to get Rose back from Maine and resume their ridiculous charade, knowing Slate might have already had her.

  Riley pushed away the jolt of rage that came with that picture and went out to his car. He drove to Cambridge calmly, purposefully, convincing his mind to accept finding the portrait in the next hour as a certainty. Around the corner from Rose’s apartment, he parked, then strode across the Cambridge Common and into her building, keeping focused on the task, not allowing himself to think about what had happened the last time he was here.

  Concentrate.

  He rode the elevator up, stepped out onto her floor, turned resolutely toward her apartment and stopped. Rose. Striding down the hall toward him, slender, vibrant, eyes wide, lips parted in surprise.

  What the—

  “Rose—Melissa. What the hell are you doing here?”

  She held out the hand that had jumped to her chest at the sight of him and raised her eyebrows. “Uh…I live here. What the hell are you doing here?”

  Riley stared. Stared harder. She shifted under his scrutiny. A blush there was no way she could have manufactured spread up her face.

  Rose is with me, in Maine.

  Melissa is your real name?

  He closed his eyes against a giddy rush of relief.

  She wasn’t Rose.

  He hadn’t lost his mind. Wasn’t just another male lemming driven to mental suicide. She wasn’t Rose. He could have kissed her, except he had some enormous lies to come up with to explain what the hell he was doing here, and he had to find out exactly how this woman fit into the picture. Right now all he knew about her was that she wasn’t Rose and she wanted to have sex with him.

  “I wanted to see you. I hoped to catch you before…” he gestured to her beige suit “…before you left for work.”

  “Oh?”

  “I would have called, but I didn’t have your number.” He cleared his throat. Think, Riley, think. “I wanted to ask you…”

  She winced and gave him a sheepish half smile. “I think I know what you wanted to ask.”

  He felt his expression start to freeze and forced it to remain neutral. “You do.”

  “Yes.” She moved her shoulders uncomfortably, as if she were trying to shrug off something that was bothering her. “You want to ask why if I’m Rose, I told you my name is Melissa, and why I was so…confusing.”

  He wanted to laugh at the understatement. “You certainly were confusing.”

  “I only seemed confusing because…” She bit her lip and looked at him apprehensively. “I’m not Rose. I wasn’t pretending to be her—I didn’t realize that’s what you must have thought until yesterday, when I started putting some pieces together, and then I had no way to reach you and explain.”

  “I see.” He looked carefully for any sign of lying and found none. She was utterly convincing. “You didn’t know I was expecting Rose?”

  “No.” She fidgeted and didn’t meet his eyes, but he sensed only chagrin, not subterfuge. “Rose set this up. I don’t know why she didn’t tell you. She might have figured if you thought you were meeting her you’d be more likely to come.”

  “I didn’t come, as you recall.”

  “You—” She caught his smile and laughed nervously at the joke.

  Riley relaxed further. “You don’t think you were enough of a draw to get me here?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Well, I don’t know. Not next to her, certainly. I was probably crazy to go to her in the first place to recommend someone, but I figured she’d know lots of men, and…well, you know the rest.”

  Riley nodded, keeping his gleeful satisfaction in check. He knew the rest. The Feds could check Melissa out to be sure she was as innocent as she seemed, but he was betting there wasn’t so much as a parking ticket on her record. In the meantime, with Rose safely out of the way, Melissa would provide the perfect cover for continuing the search of Rose’s place. They’d both get what they wanted.

  “I hope…that won’t make a difference, that I’m not Rose. I mean, if you want to stop seeing me, I’d understand.”

  He stepped closer, smiled, reached out and ran his finger across her lips. “It sure as hell wasn’t your name I was attracted to the other night.”

  She inhaled and exhaled quickly, a little gasp that sounded as if he’d managed to turn her on just with his words and one small touch. Fresh-faced and proper in that professional suit, getting rosy and wet from hearing his voice. He suppressed a smile, leaned forward, kissed her, drawing his tongue lightly across her mouth to tease her.

  She made a tiny sexy sound, then moved forward and caught his lower lip between her teeth in a brief, gentle bite.

  The contact jolted him with unexpected erotic electricity. He fisted the hands that were about to reach for her, and drew away, surprised at his reaction. What was that? He liked women who’d been around, who could match his sexual experience and cynical attitude. For all her bravado in wanting a sexual odyssey, Melissa was hardly that kind.

  “So I’ll see you tonight?” He brought himself to heel, kept his voice casual.

  “Yes.” She nodded rapidly, flushed and beaming, and glanced at her watch. “I better run or I’ll be late.”

  He accompanied her down the hall to the elevator, back in emotional balance. “Do you want to meet at Rose’s place again? I’m assuming she’s out of town.”

  “Oh, I didn’t—well, sure. It sort of…fits the occasion. I don’t think she’d mind.”

  He pushed the button for the elevator and followed her inside. Perfect. He didn’t even have to come up with a reason they should meet there. The in
vestigation was being handed to him on a slender, beige-suited dish.

  He followed Melissa into the building’s foyer and glanced behind her head at the panel housing the door buzzers, to find out her last name and which apartment she lived in, so the Feds could run a check.

  He’d barely taken in the first two names when Melissa backed firmly against the wall, door in one hand, head covering the panel.

  “How do you feel about women opening doors for you?” She gestured to the street and met his eyes calmly.

  “Liberated.” He stepped ahead of her, wondering if she’d deliberately tried to obscure his view, and paused on the sidewalk breathing the cool morning air, tinged with exhaust fumes, until she joined him.

  “Have a nice day at work, dear.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead.

  She laughed. “You’ll have dinner waiting when I get home, I trust.”

  “Something nice and hot.” He winked at her. “You want to choose the menu or should I?”

  “I have some ideas.” She smiled shyly. “Maybe you could come up with half the meal?”

  “I think I could do that.” He almost laughed. How the hell could he ever have thought this woman anything but what she appeared?

  She swayed toward him, then seemed to lose her nerve and gave a little wave with her fingers. “See you tonight.”

  Riley watched her walk down the block, grinning with pleasure. Instead of agonizing over becoming ensnared by someone like Rose, he was on top of the case, in control, and dealing with a lovely, uncomplicated woman who did beautiful things to a miniskirted suit, and whose idea of kinky sex was probably doing it with the lights on.

  He meandered in the opposite direction, turned the corner and waited a few minutes, then doubled back to her building and went inside to check the buzzer panel so he could pass her name along to the Feds.

  B. Joyce, S. Shute, H. Harriman, A. Faloud, R. Sheppard…M. Rogers. Riley grinned and pushed the buzzer for the hell of it. Bingo.

  He’d wasted incredible energy on the self-torture of uncertainty. Now, in a few hours, with the FBI machine behind him, the no-longer-mysterious Melissa Rogers would be a wide-open book.

  He left the building and strode down the street toward his car, chuckling in satisfaction.

  And tonight he’d get to read between her lines.

  6

  MELISSA LAY ON HER BACK on Rose’s bed, wiggling her bare feet. She’d decided not to wear shoes for her date with Riley tonight, because it was always sort of awkward taking shoes off. Well, shoes weren’t bad, but taking socks off was decidedly unsexy. Especially if you were wearing knee-highs and the guy took your pants off first, and there you were with half your legs too brown and a big dark band under your knee, still trying to act sexy while you felt like a bag lady.

  She closed her eyes, trying to still the inane chatter in her brain. There were more important things to worry about. Like whether she was risking her life or health or sanity offering handcuffs to a guy she didn’t know. Here she was, planning to trust him with her body, but she’d jumped to avoid meeting him at her own place, and instinctively tried to hide her last name and apartment number when he’d been scanning the building’s buzzers.

  Obviously, for all her bravado, she hadn’t quite made up her mind about him.

  She shifted and stretched on the bed. Enough. Been there, worried about that. Odds were huge he was just what he seemed: an incredibly sexy, emotionally closed man willing to fulfill her every desire. The fact that she’d found him on the first try was like buying only one lottery ticket in a lifetime and hitting the jackpot. Her time would be much better spent imagining herself shackled to the bed, completely at Riley’s mercy.

  The dark excitement unfurled in her body, wrapped her in warmth. She put her hands over her eyes, as if ashamed of her own longing. Okay, admit it, Melissa. The truth. That sense of danger, that tiny uncertainty about him was a total turn-on. To be bound, immobile, and totally in the control of a man she knew next to nothing about, who fulfilled her every fantasy of what it was to be female—well, it made her wild.

  So she was a bestial slut from hell. But she’d be the best gosh darn bestial slut from hell she knew how to be. At least while the adventure lasted.

  Melissa giggled and turned over, still not quite able to believe this was happening to her. She’d spent a hyper-ordinary Saturday, grocery shopping, doing errands, cleaning her apartment, greeting and chatting with people she knew, all the while aware of the crazy secret burning inside her, a secret no one in a million years would expect of sweet innocent Melissa.

  She pushed herself off the bed and prowled the apartment. He’d be here any minute. Half of her damn well couldn’t wait. The rest of her was nearly shaking with nerves.

  Welcome to the wonderful world of Melissa Rogers. Pick a personality and wait your turn.

  His knock sounded at the door. Melissa’s heart leaped into warp speed. Maybe the handcuffs should wait. Maybe she’d do better with her ice cube fantasy, or honey. Or maybe just a nice conversation. Or a movie. Or Bible study.

  He knocked again. Okay, Melissa, front and center. She turned determinedly, ran her fingers through her hair, adjusted her white, sleeveless, not-yet-hopelessly-wrinkled linen top and black rayon drawstring pants and went to answer.

  “Hello, Melissa.” Riley smiled down at her, dark and handsome, the definition of virility in khakis and a white, short-sleeved shirt with a teal pinstripe. From his fingers hung a small paper shopping bag that immediately drew Melissa’s wary gaze.

  He winked. “Dessert.”

  “Oh, nice.” She grinned weakly. As long as it wasn’t molded rubber…

  “Come in.” She gestured him into the apartment, her Sweet and Proper side taking firm control in a rush of crazy nerves. Once they got…going she would be fine. Of course she would. But how did you get going?

  “Would you like a drink?” She didn’t really want one, though the tiniest buzz of alcohol might help her relax. But she couldn’t help offering, since she appeared to have morphed into Miss Manners the minute she laid eyes on him.

  “Sure.” He glanced around the apartment, taking everything in as if he’d never been there before. Then he did it again, this time a slow circular perusal of the room, examining everything…except her.

  Melissa escaped to the kitchen. Oh, no. Something was distracting him. Their easy camaraderie of the morning was missing. He was even doing that one-word-sentence thing again. If anything, he seemed more of a stranger than before she’d met him. She sloshed Irish whiskey over ice, scoffing at the cubes in the glass. Who did she think she was, Linda Lovelace? Forget the ice. Forget the honey. Forget the handcuffs. It would take all her nerve to suggest they sit on the same couch.

  She brought the drinks back into the living room, seething with frustration. Riley was bent over Rose’s bookcase, engrossed in an apparently fascinating study of her reading habits.

  “Irish whiskey okay?” Her voice came out as chilly as the ice in the drinks.

  He turned immediately and walked toward her, holding her eyes with a magnetic half smile that deepened the groove in his right cheek and lifted a tiny corner of her despair. Okay, if he’d come up with a complete sentence, she could sit on the couch with him.

  He emptied his glass in one gulp and set it down on Rose’s coffee table. “Thanks.”

  Melissa gritted her teeth. “Were we thirsty?”

  A sexy grin spread across his face; he shook his head slowly. “No. Impatient. Come here, Melissa.”

  Impatient. For her. She stepped toward him, her insides beginning to melt into a nice heated indoor pool, wondering how he could make “come here” sound like sex-in-the-making instead of a stupid macho come-on.

  He took her drink and set it on a nearby end table, put his hands on her shoulders and turned her away from him. Melissa stood waiting for who knew what, her breathing shallow, body trembling idiotically. His mouth settled on the side of her neck, warm and gentle, sendi
ng shivers dancing over her skin. The buttons down the back of her blouse tugged and gave way, inevitably, slowly, one by one. The linen loosened around her body; she put her arms down and bent slightly forward so the top fell to her waist.

  No question. When he was like this, the man made her want to get naked.

  Riley turned her back around to face him and stepped away, smiling down at her lacy, beige cotton bra. Melissa’s joyous transformation into Sex Goddess of the Universe came to a screeching halt. She crossed her arms in front of her and glared. “What is so funny?”

  “Not funny. Beautiful.” He retrieved the bag he’d brought in with him and handed it to her. “But try this. I want to see if it fits.”

  Melissa opened the bag which, thank goodness, was too light for anything motorized, and pulled out a scarlet lace bra and matching thong panties.

  Oh my… She’d never worn anything like this in her life. A red bra? She glanced at Riley, face flaming, and got a good eyeful of what a man looks like when he thinks a woman is too chicken to wear sexy underwear.

  She lifted her chin and paraded to the painted floral privacy screen Rose had set up across one corner of her studio. Challenge accepted. She shed her clothes, hands shaking crazily, and pulled the micropanties on.

  The thong was less uncomfortable than she thought it would be, and loose enough so the sides didn’t dig into the softness of her hips and make her silhouette lumpy. The bra was too small—thanks, Riley—but better than if it had been huge and made her breasts look wistful and lost.

  She studied herself in the mirror Rose had stationed on the wall, probably for checking herself out in exactly such outfits. Hmm. From the Melissa perspective, she looked like plain old Melissa dressed up in a sexy outfit, but maybe to him she’d look exotically enticing. A thwunk sounded from the other side of the screen. Melissa frowned and listened intently. A soft swish, and another bump. What the heck was Riley doing out there? She really, really hoped he wasn’t setting up some kind of sexual trapeze set.