by Jami Alden
Time to shut this thing down before Ethan was refereeing a battle of the exes worthy of The Jerry Springer Show. Bringing his fingers to his lips, he let out a piercing whistle that broke through the escalating volume of their voices. “Yelling at each other isn’t going to help us figure out where Kara is and who she’s likely to be with. Let’s try to focus so we don’t waste any more of the officers’ time.”
Or mine, he thought wearily, suddenly bone-tired and wishing Kara would pull herself out of whatever bed she’d passed out in and haul her happy ass home.
He rubbed his eyes wearily and looked up to see Toni staring at him as though she knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Do you have someplace more important to be?” she said, one dark brow arched over the frame of her glasses. “Perhaps debugging your fancy security system so Kara can’t sneak in and out without anyone being the wiser?” A smirk pulled at her lips. He wanted to kiss it off her face and spend the rest of the morning showing her who was boss.
Too bad he didn’t have time. But he wasn’t about to stand around and let her take potshots at him in front of a client. He pasted on a dazzling smile worthy of a toothpaste commercial and affected a deferential tone.
“Thanks for pointing that out. Now, I appreciate your coming all the way over here to assist us, but between the police and Gemini, we have it handled.” He pulled his gaze away from Toni’s face, her pale skin flushed with irritation.
“Marcy, I promise I’ll keep you apprised of any new information.”
Marcy began to protest but Toni silenced her with a lift of her hand and approached Ethan with slow, deliberate steps. “Listen, Ethan,” she said, perfectly mimicking his placating tone, “let’s get something straight. I’m not here to assist you. I work for Marcy and her daughter. If you want to run your little investigation, that’s fine, but stay out of my way.”
CHAPTER 2
W E APPRECIATE YOUR coming all this way to assist us. Arrogant bastard, she thought as the police continued their questioning about Kara’s recent behavior. One glance from those turquoise eyes and Ethan no doubt thought she’d puddle at his feet and let Ethan Taggart, Gemini Securities, take over the show. Not a chance.
Okay, maybe she had gone a little weak-kneed—not that she’d ever in a million years admit that to anyone else. With his dark, gold-shot hair, laser-sharp blue eyes, and features that looked like they’d been chiseled in granite, he was gorgeous in a way that called to every feminine instinct she possessed. And what healthy heterosexual girl wouldn’t get a few butterflies in her stomach at the way his full mouth stretched into a heartbreaker of a smile?
And to up the ante even further, he was tall, at least a few inches over six feet, all of it solidly muscled, if the way his shoulders filled his jacket was any indication. Big and strong enough to make even Toni feel something close to delicate.
Ethan’s focus strayed from the policeman’s questions to Toni’s face. A hot flush erupted in her cheeks when he caught her staring. God, talk about an inappropriate time for her libido to decide to come out of hibernation. What kind of person was she, drooling over some guy when Kara was missing?
The anxious knot in her stomach tightened another notch, silencing the butterflies. Toni had gotten to know Kara over the past year that she’d been working for Marcy. As her parents said, Kara was a nice kid, a good kid, keeping her head down and focusing on school, trying to hold it together despite the ugliness her parents were heaping on each other.
Toni and Kara had struck up a friendship, one of the few occasions Toni broke her “no emotional involvement” rule when it came to her clients. Toni had stayed in touch with Kara via e-mails and text messages, as well as the occasional coffee date.
Kara never told her much about her friends or her social life, mostly just vented about her parents, while Toni offered what guidance she could about surviving your parents’ divorce. Toni had seen so much of herself in Kara, in the way she tried so hard not to make waves. Unlike Toni, whose drive had been self-induced, Kara strove to live up to the demands of her exacting parents, trying to live up to Jerry’s image of Kara as the perfect daughter who never got into any kind of trouble. Whether it meant staying up all night to study for her SATs or taking a vow of virginity, Kara would do anything to win her father’s approval.
But Toni could sense the cracks forming in the facade. Striving for that level of perfection was exhausting, especially when you were dealing with an emotionally disengaged father and a borderline-unstable mother with an increasing reliance on prescription pills to get her through the day.
No surprise then that there was a lot more going on with Kara than Toni or her parents knew. Toni’d hoped that by offering herself as a non-judgy adult to talk to, she could help Kara survive the shitstorm her parents created.
It hadn’t been nearly enough, even when they’d been communicating regularly, and Toni felt another stab of guilt that she hadn’t pushed harder to keep in contact over the past few months. Kara had stopped responding to Toni’s messages, and Toni had let it slide. Now she cursed herself. How hard would it have been to send a freaking text? It would have let Kara know she was still there, still cared. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Sneaking out to party and running away are two completely different things. So far, sneaking out to see her boyfriend is the extent of Kara’s bad behavior.
She ripped her gaze from Ethan’s knowing look and listened intently as Jerry and Marcy answered the police’s questions.
“Try her friend Laurie,” Marcy was saying. “Laurie Friedland. She and Kara have been best friends since the fourth grade. And she was close with some of the girls on her volleyball team.”
“What about the boyfriend?”
Marcy shook her head, her thin shoulders hunching. “I didn’t even know about him. We haven’t really seen much of each other since school ended and she decided to come stay with her father.”
Toni frowned. She’d last heard from Kara a couple of weeks ago, and she hadn’t mentioned moving out. Then again, Kara hadn’t mentioned the boyfriend, either.
Jerry shook his head and shrugged. “I didn’t know about the boyfriend, either,” he snapped.
“His name is Sean, I think,” Manuela offered. “And he drives a white car. That’s all I know.”
“Do you think he took her?” Marcy asked in a thin voice.
Officer Hayes shook his head. “More likely they met for a date. Honestly, folks, I know you’re worried, but there’s a good chance she’ll turn up on her own.” He flipped his notepad shut and nodded to his partner.
Toni’s shoulders tensed under the thin fabric of her T-shirt as she remembered another girl, another missing girl no one took seriously. Until it was too late.
She forced the morbid thoughts from her mind. Kara was nothing like Toni’s younger sister, Michelle, Toni reminded herself. Unlike Michelle, Kara was a good kid, for all that she might have started acting out. Toni’s sister had practically had “bad kid” tattooed on her forehead. When Michelle had gone missing, no one, not even Toni, had questioned the idea that she’d run away. After all, she’d done it before, and she had always come back, whenever she got sick of her boyfriend or needed money.
Until that last time, when she didn’t come back.
“That’s it?” Marcy asked, pulling Toni’s attention away from her morbid memories. “You’re going to do nothing while we sit around and wait for her to come home?”
He held up a placating hand. “Ma’am, that’s not what I said. But situations like this tend to resolve on their own. For now, we’ll file a report and open an investigation.” He took down a description, a list of Kara’s closest friends, and requested a recent photo.
All very standard operating procedure, Toni thought, as the knot of anxiety in her stomach grew. She knew the police would do what they could, but without any sign of foul play, they weren’t likely to put a whole lot of resources into the search. Still, the police promised to follow up with Laurie and the girls from th
e volleyball team. Manuela retrieved a recent picture of Kara, and the officers left, promising to provide an update as soon as they had any additional information.
Jerry wheeled on Marcy as soon as the police followed Manuela out of the kitchen. “This is your fault,” he said, raising an accusing finger. “You never want to discipline her, never want to do anything to piss her off. Who’s the parent here, anyway?” His face was purple, and a vein appeared in his forehead, throbbing with such force Toni was afraid he was going to have an aneurysm.
“Not you!” Marcy raged right back. “How dare you make accusations, as though you know what’s going on in this house or with your children. Since the divorce, you’ve hardly spent any time with them. It’s all been up to me.”
“Yeah, and you’re doing such a great job Kara moved out and now she’s sneaking out at all hours to meet some idiot.”
Toni’s head began to pound, and suddenly she was sixteen again, and she and her little sister sat on the couch, staring straight ahead at the TV, pretending indifference to the barbs slinging back and forth between their parents. She wanted scream at them that this was not the time or the place to go twenty rounds of “who is the worse parent,” but she held her tongue.
I should never have answered Marcy’s call this morning, she thought, then immediately felt like a jerk. She’d promised Kara she could count on her, and she meant it, even if it meant putting up with her parents. Toni straightened to her full height and stepped between Marcy and Jerry. “Look, you can work all this out in your next family therapy session, but right now we need to focus on finding out where Kara is and making sure she’s safe.”
Marcy looked appropriately shamefaced, while Jerry had to get in the last word. “I don’t need you to tell me to be worried about my daughter.”
“Good,” she snapped back. “Because you should be.” She turned and caught Ethan’s gaze. His mouth was quirked up in a sexy half smile and there was a glint of open admiration in his eyes. Toni cursed her pale complexion as she felt telltale heat bloom in her cheeks for a second time.
Her skin prickled with awareness and she was overcome with the need to escape from the vitriol spilling from Jerry’s and Marcy’s pores. And from the walking testosterone bomb that was Ethan Taggart.
“I’m going to go look around her room,” Toni said abruptly. She ignored Jerry’s protests as she asked Manuela for directions, feeling the heat of Ethan’s gaze on her retreating back.
Toni marveled at the over-the-top opulence of Kramer’s house as her sneakers squeaked on the marble steps of the massive staircase. She was used to working with wealthy clients—women like Marcy accounted for the majority of her income—but Kramer’s house, with its vaulted ceilings, marble floors, and handmade rugs that probably cost more than her car was beyond anything she’d ever seen firsthand.
But the blatant display of wealth gave the place the vibe of a museum, not a happy home. Growing up, watching her mom struggle, Toni always thought that if they had more money, they would be happy. But in the brief time she’d worked as a private investigator, she’d learned that people could be unhappy no matter how much money they had. Immense wealth couldn’t buy perfect children or faithful husbands—in fact, it often made things worse. Recently, Toni had started to feel like she was operating in a toxic cloud, like she had picked up the scent of rot pervading these seemingly perfect lives and now couldn’t get it out of her nostrils.
Now, after an ugly divorce rife with infidelity and hidden assets, the Kramer family was being sucked deeper into the cesspool.
She followed the hallway to the door Manuela had indicated. She pushed it open. Jesus, this is bigger than my apartment. Not that Kara’s room in Marcy’s townhouse was exactly a dump, but this was ridiculous. In addition to a queen-size four-poster bed, the room was spacious enough for a sitting area complete with a small couch and a low coffee table. Mounted on the wall was a forty-inch LCD television with a satellite-TV hookup and DVR. Pushed up against the wall was a mini fridge, and a small espresso machine sat on top.
Kara practically had her own efficiency apartment. Completely tricked out so she wouldn’t need to leave her room for days if she didn’t want to. Toni scanned the room for her prey.
“Find anything interesting?”
The voice was so close she felt his breath across her neck. She spun around and found her nose butting up against a hard wall of chest. For a moment she stood there, her face buried in the open throat of his button-front shirt, inhaling the intoxicating scents of fresh aftershave, laundry soap, and warm, musky man skin.
Okay, the guy might be an arrogant asshole, but the mere smell of him was enough to curl her toes inside her sneakers.
She took a hasty step back before she did something stupid like flick her tongue out for a taste. This guy was so far out of her league it wasn’t even funny.
“What do you want?” she asked, hoping her imperious tone and matching expression would mask the fact that her insides were fluttering madly at the heat radiating off him.
“Just wondering where you’d hurried off to.” His oh-so-charming smile was cracking around the corners.
Good. Her manufactured hostility was working.
“I wanted to see if I could find her computer.”
“Why?” He looked genuinely confused.
“How else were you planning on tracking her down?”
He looked at her as though she were an idiot. “Canvassing the neighborhood, calling her friends. You know, basic investigation stuff.”
She shook her head impatiently. What, was he an idiot? “Kara spends a lot of time online.”
“Right. The online virgin support group. I’m sure they’ll be a lot of help finding her boyfriend.”
Toni sucked in her cheeks and bit the inside of her lip. “That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg, Ace. And finding out who she’s talking to online will get me a lot further than talking to neighbors who probably don’t even know her name.”
Ethan smirked. “Just because you spend all your time on Lord of the Rings message boards doesn’t mean Kara does. Talking to real live friends will be a lot more useful than worrying about what Web pages she visited.”
She shot him a look of disdain. “Lord of the Rings is so 2005.” These days, Toni spent more of her time on gaming sites, but she wasn’t about to correct Ethan.
He did a leisurely tour of the room, pausing to pick up a framed picture off Kara’s desk. Toni tried not to stare at him but couldn’t seem to stop herself. The man had hit the genetic jackpot, that was for sure. Taking advantage of his distraction, she studied him more closely, trying to pick out some imperfection that would remind her that he was a mere mortal, just like her.
He’d missed a spot shaving, she noticed with a tug of satisfaction. And the strong line of his nose skewed slightly to the left. That and the bump on the bridge told her he’d broken it at least once and hadn’t bothered to get it fixed.
Somehow that made him even hotter.
There were dark smudges under his heavily lashed eyes, as though he hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Not that she should talk, since thanks to her recent late stakeouts, the only thing keeping her from looking like an Ultimate Fighting Champ contender was her industrial-strength concealer. Her gaze strayed back to the little patch of stubble, next to his right ear. It would rasp against her fingertips if she touched it, contrasting with the peachy softness of his earlobe.
There was something on his earlobe, she noticed, frowning. Almost like a smudge of blood, but as she moved to take a closer look, she realized it was too pink to be blood. Almost like—
“Is that lipstick?”
He looked up, his left eyebrow arching up his forehead.
“On your ear,” Toni clarified.
He pinched his left earlobe between his thumb and forefinger. “Maybe.” His tone was casual, but Toni could see the dark stain smudging across his tanned cheeks.
“Other one.” Toni said
, folding her arms across her chest.
He rubbed at the other earlobe with his fingers. “Did I get it?”
The dark pink smudge was still there. “Your girlfriend must wear that extended wear stuff,” she said, wincing at how snide that sounded.
“Not my girlfriend,” he said.
All the more reason to kill the attraction that was sucking her in like a tractor beam. She so did not need to get hung up on a man who spent long nights getting smudged with long-wearing lipstick by women who were not his girlfriend.
“Boyfriend?” She brushed past him and continued her circuit of the room.
He shot her a droll look. “So where is it?”
So he’d noticed that minor detail, too. Kara’s MacBook was nowhere to be seen. “Not where I thought it would be.”
“Oh, so you can admit you were wrong.”
Toni tipped her chin up to glare at him. He was standing way too close for her comfort. He seemed to loom over her, the sheer size and force of him threatening to overwhelm her.
Not that she felt threatened, exactly, but while she was only a few inches shy of him in height, he had at least eighty pounds on her, all of it rock-solid muscle. And the way he held his body in an almost predatory manner hinted at a dangerous core under his charming facade.
She wasn’t about to let him see that she noticed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared as he glared down at her. “Just that you seem like the type who would think she’s right most of the time.”
He inched so close she was afraid he’d feel the hard points of her nipples poking through her shirt. God, she was desperate. Kara’s immense room shrank in size as Ethan’s huge frame seemed to suck up all the space. “That’s because I am,” she quipped. Without waiting for his reply, she brushed past him and headed back to the kitchen, sure that she heard Ethan chuckling. She could hear Jerry and Marcy sniping at each other all the way from the stairs.
“Maybe if you weren’t so busy nailing that adolescent who works for you, you might have noticed she was gone.”
