In Hot Pursuit

by Joanne Rock

  Her body squeezed his, drawing an answering detonation inside him. His release thundered through him like a freight train, as if he’d somehow poured all of his heart and soul into Lexi.

  In the long minutes afterward, as he held her through the warm aftershocks, Josh couldn’t help but wonder—and worry—that maybe he had.

  MAKING LOVE with the light on had definite benefits as far as Lexi was concerned.

  For one thing, the floor of her living room gave her the impression that she’d just had an erotic romp ten leagues under the sea. And she had to admit she felt sultry as a mermaid now, with her arms and hair tangled around Josh.

  She stared up at the best benefit of illuminated sex. Josh Winger lay with his eyes closed beside her, his face only marginally less severe in repose. Something about the bold slash of his eyebrows, the chiseled angles of his cheekbones, hinted at the fierce street warrior lurking within.

  But Lexi had discovered there was more to this man than amazing pecs and a take-no-prisoners glower. Josh was also her staunch protector, an unlikely ally. Her household full of pets hadn’t scared him off, her wild fashion sense and penchant for speaking her mind hadn’t sent him running, and—best of all—even her high-visibility career didn’t seem to faze him.

  Was there a chance she had room in her life for a man, after all? A man who wouldn’t feel threatened by her success, yet would respect what she did?

  An idea jumped into her head, teased the corners of her mind. “Josh?”

  “Hmm?” He cocked one eye open as he twisted a lock of her hair around and around his finger.

  “I have to go to a black-tie dinner next weekend, the Dance for Children. Actually, I’m hosting the event and wondered—” She was surprised at the wave of nervousness that assailed her just before she asked him. She never had a problem speaking her mind, but she also had zero practice asking a man out.

  But they’d just spent the past two nights together. And heaven knew, Josh had been the one to pursue her today. He couldn’t be totally uninterested, could he?

  Swallowing her nerves, she forged ahead. “Would you go with me as my date?”

  “Lady, I’d go just about anywhere with you.” He turned toward her in half sleep, his eyes falling closed again as he cupped the small of her back. “But I still do undercover work. I can’t afford to have my mug splashed all over the society pages.”

  Gently, he stroked her hair, his movements growing slower as he neared sleep. But his words had robbed the gesture of its intended effect. Lexi didn’t feel anything close to soothed as she lay wide awake, her bare body partially wrapped in the chenille throw Josh had filched from the back of her couch.

  He wouldn’t go with her.

  “Are you okay with that?”

  The quiet alertness in his voice caught her off guard. She thought he’d fallen asleep, but as she peered up at him, she found him studying her with an intensity any other woman would probably find disconcerting. Lexi, on the other hand, adored his eyes on her.

  Usually, anyway. Right now, she wished she had covered her emotions better before she’d met that gray gaze, wished she had time to erase the husky sadness from her throat.

  “Um. No. I’m not, actually.”

  Tender in spite of his blatant refusal to embrace her publicly, Josh pulled the throw over her, smoothing its contours to follow the lines of her body.

  She batted his hands away, needing to distance herself from him fast, before she caved to his touch all over again.

  “We can see each other, Lexi, just not in such public forums. I might not be able to be at your side during your fancy black-ties, but I want to be in every other part of your life.”

  She shook her head, stinging from his unwitting rejection, but resolute. “That is my life.”

  Muffin entered the conversation, perhaps drawn by the sorrow in Lexi’s voice. Lexi held her arms out to the dog, grateful for any barrier to erect between her and the man she wanted to be with.

  “It’s not your whole life, Lex. Why can’t I be here to have cappuccino with you when you come home from those dinners?”

  Unexpected tears welled. She wished she could be happy with just that much, but she’d never been a woman of half measures. Resenting the tears and the hurt, she adopted a tight smile. “Who says I come home after those events? Maybe that’s when I like to hunt for my conquests.”

  Josh’s brows lifted. “Then, how about I hang out with you during the week?” He patted Muffin on the head and shook her paw. “I can help you paint Muffin’s nails.”

  Lexi stared down at the dog’s bright red nails matching her own. The thought of big, burly Josh bent over Muffin’s tiny black paw was more than she could bear.

  “It wouldn’t work.”

  “Because you won’t let it?”

  “Because I won’t settle for a secret affair and avoiding the press in order to have a relationship.” Although God knew, if anyone made her want to change her mind, it was the tough guy stretched out beside her.

  He shook his head. “It wouldn’t have to be like that. Lexi, it’s not like I don’t want to be with you. This is my job.”

  “It’s about my job, too. And despite how superficial my fashion critiques look to the rest of the world, my life isn’t about fashion. It’s about holding an audience’s attention with one topic long enough to make them hear messages about other topics they don’t always want to hear.”

  She gained strength as she reiterated her mission, secure in the knowledge that—logically—she had chosen the right path for herself. Too bad it currently hurt like hell.

  “I spent a lifetime being shushed by everyone around me. I’m not about to embark on any relationship I can’t announce to the whole world.” Anonymous sex was one thing. An anonymous relationship was another altogether.

  He studied her, searched her soul with penetrating gray eyes.

  “You’re saying if I don’t appear in public with you, then we don’t have anything together?”

  The lump in her throat wouldn’t let her do more than nod.

  He sat up, his gorgeous body bared to her gaze one final time.

  “Woman, I thought I’d seen your best moves when you tossed me flat on my damn back tonight.” He rubbed a hand across his chest. “But that’s one hell of a follow-up punch you’ve got there.”

  Lexi might have argued the point, might have told him he hadn’t exactly left her unscathed tonight, either. But for once her communication skills failed her. She had no words left to tell him how she felt, no hope of describing the ache in her heart as she watched him slide on his pants to leave.

  11

  HE’D OFFERED TO PAINT the dog’s nails for chrissake.

  Josh landed a left cross squarely on the gym’s red leather punching bag, following it up with a flurry of quick blows that mirrored his frustration.

  How the hell had he gone from self-sufficient New York police detective to sappy dog manicurist in the course of a weekend? Not that he really would have cared if only Lexi had said yes to him. But he’d gone and blown his best sensitive-guy routine for squat.

  Zilch. Right hook.

  Nada. Left uppercut.

  Damn. He stilled the bag with sweaty arms, his breathing the lone sound in the otherwise empty workout room at the back of Marley’s gym.

  He’d thought Lexi would be a soft touch compared to the other women he’d dated. Not only did she color-coordinate her nails with her dogs’, she also worked in a world of glittering sophistication. All of Josh’s exes were either on the force or somehow associated with it—women every bit as tough as their jobs and their training.

  He hadn’t expected Lexi to be such a pit bull, given her china doll appearance. But she was tenacious about her career, serious as hell about her charity missions—and Josh found himself admiring her more than ever.

  The sound of the bell on the gym’s front door jarred him.

  “Hey, Winger!” Rookie detective Otis Stanton strode into the gym, p
eeling off his sunglasses as he made his way toward the locker room. “I think that bag is getting the best of you, buddy. Maybe you’d better throw in the towel before this match turns ugly.”

  “The bag is tough, Stanton, but don’t think I couldn’t whip your butt inside of ten minutes.” Who the hell were these rookie cops, anyway? What was this kid—all of nineteen?

  Josh refused to think about the fact that Stanton was barely older than the wayward teen who’d shot down another cop last summer.

  The junior baby looked nonplussed. In fact, the kid had the nerve to grin. “I’ll stick to hitting the weights this week.”

  Good. The kid was obviously scared spitless.

  Stanton paused as he unearthed tape from his gym bag. “The word at the station is there’s a big shipment hitting New York this weekend—maybe in the Garment District. Is your team working on it?”

  Josh started unlacing his boxing gloves, regretting his decision to stop at the gym before going to the precinct. Lexi was already messing with his control, affecting how he did his job. “How confirmed is this rumor?”

  The kid shrugged, winding tape around his hands. “Pretty firm. I’m surprised they haven’t—”

  Josh’s cell phone started ringing on cue.

  “—called you already.”

  Tension rippling through him, Josh flipped open his phone with his freed hand. “Winger.”

  He prepped himself for hearing the latest word on a possible influx of drugs into the city. He wasn’t prepared for the voice of one of the downtown research guys.

  “Josh, it’s Mikey. You wanted me to look up this Anton Bertrand.”

  His brain shifted gears as he tugged off his other glove with his teeth. Otis disappeared into the locker room, leaving Josh to get his head out of the clouds—or maybe out of Lexi Mansfield’s apartment.

  “I’m ready.”

  “At first look, there’s nothing. These rich guys are aces at having their records mopped up.”

  “But eventually you found…” Normally Josh didn’t mind the long version of the research process, but this case meant too much to him. For that matter, Lexi meant too much to him, to let Mikey waste any time getting to the point.

  The junior guy huffed out a sigh. “Some juvenile brushes with the law including small-time drug dealing. Chances are he still knows some people in the business.”

  Or maybe he ran the business. “Thanks, Mike. Tomorrow morning that girly coffee you like is on me.”

  Mikey snorted. “It’s a latte, Winger. Last time you wanted to reward me I had to choke my way through an espresso.”

  “Caffeine is caffeine to me. But I’ll get it right this time.” Lexi would have known the difference. “Tell the deputy inspector I’m looking into the big shipment hitting New York and I’ll be in soon.”

  But first he had a few other things to take care of. As he headed for the showers, Josh flipped open his phone to dial one more number.

  He didn’t need help keeping Lexi safe, but he owed it to Duke to clue him in to the situation—at least the PG-rated portions of the situation.

  Lexi was in more trouble than he’d realized. Hell, the woman lived and breathed trouble. It might not faze her, but Josh wasn’t taking any more chances. He needed to move her out of harm’s way until he checked out the anonymous notes and followed this lead on Anton.

  And if that meant he had to park himself on her doorstep—or in her velvet chaise longue—until she listened to reason, that was one sacrifice he was only too happy to make.

  LEXI WAS DONE sacrificing her hopes and dreams for other people.

  She repeated the words like an endless motivational tape in her mind as she trekked home from her morning outing to Neiman Marcus.

  In the wake of Josh’s defection, shopping hadn’t held its usual allure. Instead of deriving pleasure from trying on gorgeous clothes, Lexi found herself wishing Josh could see her in the scarlet suede mini-dress, wondering what he’d think of the cute, pink-feather bustle-skirt, and envisioning how much the man would have drooled over the skintight leather boots that had been the day’s shopping coup.

  Of course, she was done sacrificing her hopes and dreams for other people.

  She squeezed her eyes shut to impress the notion upon her brain as she juggled her bags up Broadway. She’d suppressed her own desires and squelched most of her irreverent thoughts while growing up in her parents’ home. Lexi had been as foreign as an alien creature to her quiet, academic family. Although she’d always been confident of their love, she’d been aware of an underlying disapproval of her goal to conquer the fashion world.

  What neither of her parents had ever realized was that Lexi had found a way to indulge her passion for fashion while fixing half the world’s ills at the same time. Sure, she got to parade around in Versace dresses and Bill Blass gowns, but she raised boatloads of money for the homeless, sick and otherwise endangered because of her notable name and her broad media appeal.

  Not a bad claim to fame for a middle-class girl with a Jersey accent.

  And although Lexi wanted a man in her life one day, she’d been too busy and, frankly, too self-centered during the years that she built her career to have time for anyone else. And now…

  Now she’d found the perfect guy without even looking, except that Josh Winger only wanted parts of her, and she wasn’t willing to wholesale off parts of her personality to suit anyone.

  Somehow, someway, she would find a man to embrace her outrageous sense of style, her runaway opinions, her Romanesque nose and her public persona, damn it.

  She rounded the corner of Sixty-second Street just as the smell of smoke hit her.

  The scene on the street confused her, disoriented her. A throng of maybe a hundred people stood in front of her building as other people streamed out. A thin trail of smoke seeped from the apartments, and as Lexi looked up at the twenty-story structure, she noticed the smoke seemed to be concentrated about midway up the building on the left front corner.

  Right around her apartment.

  Premonition, instinct, or maybe just plain old terror gripped her gut and twisted. She didn’t need to count up the number of stories to know the fire was on the twelfth floor.

  Muffin. She knew it wasn’t right to worry about her dogs when there could be people in that building, but unfortunately, her dogs were the only faces she would recognize among the residents. She’d been so busy the past few years she hadn’t even taken time to get to know her neighbors.

  She ran down the street, heedless of the shopping bags banging her thighs, her sky-high heels, or the peep show she was giving in her miniskirt by pumping her legs like an Olympic runner. All those afternoons of track-and-field practice at boarding school were finally serving a purpose.

  Skidding to a halt about a hundred yards from the door, Lexi stumbled into a crowd of onlookers. Sirens wailed in the distance, not nearly close enough for comfort.

  She used the man’s shoulders in front of her as leverage for a quick vertical leap. Even in her blasted high heels she could barely see the front door or what was going on. Damn.

  The tall man turned as her feet hit the ground again. “They’re evacuating the whole building for safety, but the fire’s only on the twelfth floor right now.”

  Not waiting to hear any more, Lexi nudged the man aside and plowed her way through the crowd. If there was any way to get back inside and save Muffin, she needed to do it—now.

  “Step aside! Twelfth-floor resident coming through.” Lexi elbowed and pushed to the front of the throng, fear motivating her every step.

  When she finally cleared the sea of onlookers and evacuees, Lexi found a clear view of the front door—and one lone straggler stumbling his way out of the building with a pack of yapping dogs at his feet.

  Josh.

  She squinted through the light haze of smoke, scarcely believing her eyes. But sure enough, dangerous Detective Winger currently juggled one gilded parakeet cage complete with squawking bird, one
glass lemonade pitcher sloshing over with water and a bright pink beta fish, and a stack of picture frames jammed under his arm. Muffin, Harry and Snowball ran ahead of him, minus leashes.

  Lexi dropped her Neiman Marcus bags and launched herself toward Josh, singing a litany of “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.”

  The dogs saw her first and ran to greet her, their barks almost as loud as the nearing fire engine siren. She couldn’t think about them yet, however, not until she’d thanked Josh.

  Lexi pried the lemonade pitcher out of his arms, her heart clenching at the sight of the soot on his once-white dress shirt. “Are you okay?”

  She set the pitcher down on the sidewalk and turned to wrench away the small stack of framed photographs he must have grabbed from her nightstand—Lexi’s parents at their wedding, Lexi’s great-grandparents at Ellis Island, a family reunion in Capri when she was just a toddler.

  Josh grinned, his teeth brilliantly white against skin slightly grayed skin from ash in the fire. “Never better.”

  He set down the parakeet cage to rampant applause from the crowd at the base of the apartment building. For a man who didn’t like the spotlight, he sure did a good job of putting himself smack-dab in the middle of it.

  The dogs were already being patted, stroked and soothed by kind strangers united in crisis on West Sixty-second Street. People smiled at her and Josh, maybe encouraged by Josh’s triumphant exit.

  The need to fling herself into his arms almost overwhelmed her, but she stomped it down and settled for letting him turn her heart to mush as he whistled a comforting little tune to her bird.

  She tucked a few strands of curly hair behind her ear to keep her hands busy, to keep herself from touching every part of her hero. “How did you know about the fire?”

  As the fire engines pulled up to the curb, Josh moved their menagerie along with the rest of the crowd to the back of the sidewalk.

  “I didn’t. I came over here to move you someplace safe until I get to the bottom of the anonymous notes.” He wiped a hand across his forehead.