by Lucy Score
“Nicholas.” The emphasis was on the “ass.”
He nearly fell out of his chair.
“Mrs. Zimmerman?” The woman of his teenage nightmares stood frowning in his doorway. Gone were the black and gray tracksuits that she’d donned for decades to test thousands of students on Presidential Fitness. In their place, she wore somber black slacks and a dark gray tank top that showed off her still impressive biceps. Her steel gray hair was cut short, emphasizing the sharp lines of her face. She’d been gray when he had her for phys. ed. in ninth and tenth grade. He’d, perhaps unfairly, assumed she’d been near ninety then. However, twenty years later, she looked exactly the same.
Definite vampire genes.
“I see you’re still a mess,” she noted, her disdainful gaze taking in the disarray.
“Just a little behind on the filing,” he said, recovering. He stood and gestured toward the only chair not buried under files. “Please, have a seat.”
She sat gingerly, as if she expected something sticky to ruin her clothes. He thought about the protein shake he’d spilled last week and hoped he’d remembered to clean it up.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, trying to rein in his long-dormant teenage panic.
She sat staring at him for much longer than necessary. He wished he would have shaved. And worn something besides the wrinkled t-shirt he’d pulled off the floor of his closet.
This was the effect Mrs. Zimmerman had on all students. Even dimpled teenage rebels.
After overhearing some admittedly embellished locker room talk during gym class, she’d pulled him aside and put the fear of God into him. Her lecture on why real men didn’t need to prove their manhood by detailing their sexual exploits had stuck. So had the uncomfortably detailed list of the consequences of unprotected sex.
Nick had never kissed and told again. He’d also never forgotten a condom. Hell, his backups had backups.
“If you find yourself capable of professionalism, I’d like you to find the person who murdered my nephew.”
He gave himself points for not spitting out the now-cold coffee in her face. There were a lot of ways that sentence could have ended. Find my car keys. Find out what my neighbor is growing in their backyard. Find out where my ex-husband spent my alimony money.
He had not seen the murdered nephew thing coming.
“What happened to your nephew?” he asked, setting the mug down.
She gave him a steely-eyed glare of disappointment. “Why don’t you tell me since you’re the one who discovered his body?”
“Dickie Frick is your nephew?”
“Was. Seeing as how he’s dead now.”
He tried to do the math. Either the entire family had vampire genes, or they aged prematurely.
“He was my sister’s son,” she continued. “My sister is a pathetic doormat of a human being who excelled at nothing but making terrible choices in life. Her son was a disgusting disappointment. However, despite their shortcomings, they are both family. And family—even disgusting disappointments—deserve justice.”
“Uh. Okay. So why hire me?” he asked. “Why not let the cops do their job?”
“Have you seen the news in the past five years?” she scoffed. “Not only does our fair city have the highest murder rate in its history, it has also attained the distinction of having most of those crimes go unsolved. Something is rotting in Harrisburg, Nicholas. And I don’t trust the authorities to prioritize finding justice for my disgusting nephew.”
“But you do trust me?” he said. He could feel the grin spreading across his face. “You like me. You’ve always liked me, haven’t you?”
She rolled her eyes, but there was a distinct twinkle in them. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never liked a student. You’re all hormonal disgraces to the human race,” she sniffed.
“Of course we are. But, to clarify, you want to hire this hormonal disgrace because you believe I’ll get you justice.”
She sighed as if the conversation pained her. “Stop fishing for compliments, Nicholas. I have no control over what you choose to believe. Are you taking the job or not?”
Taking the job meant definitely seeing Riley Thorn again and not avoiding her like he’d planned. “I’m in,” he announced.
She gave him a stately nod. “Fine.”
They discussed terms and negotiated his fee until both parties were satisfied.
“Would you like something to drink?” Nick offered. He could probably scrounge up a teabag from cold season last year. Mrs. Zimmerman looked like a tea drinker.
“Bourbon. I presume you have some in your desk.”
She presumed correctly. It felt like a trap. But sometimes it was more fun falling into a trap than avoiding them.
He punched his bottom drawer open and produced a bottle of Jack Daniels along with the two reasonably clean glasses.
“I’m counting on you, Nicholas, to get my family the justice they’re due,” she said as he poured. “The police are being awfully tight-lipped about their investigation.”
Make his high school gym teacher proud, solve a case his ex-partner was working, and spend more time with Riley Thorn?
Nick suddenly wasn’t so pissed off at the world anymore.
Nothing like a challenge to get the blood moving.
19
11:57 a.m., Wednesday, June 24
“There’s a man here to see you. With flowers.” Riley was dragged from the low hum of boredom that was seeping through her pores into her bloodstream by Donna’s uncharacteristically cheerful voice on the phone.
A man with flowers to see her? If it was Griffin trying to charm his way into an exclusive interview about Dead Dickie, she was going to make him eat the flowers. She limped around the corner and got a shock when she spotted Nick Santiago looking fine and flirty with an armload of roses.
His dimples were locked and loaded.
Donna looked like she was going to vault over the desk and devour him alive.
“What are you doing here?” Riley asked, crossing her arms over her chest. Something she could do now without the sling.
She was getting tired of men just popping up into her life. She’d had to sneak out of the house just to get past Gabe this morning. He’d been following her around since his arrival, asking her when she would be ready to start their training.
“Can’t the luckiest guy in the world stop by and say hi to his beautiful fiancée?” he asked, all charm. He pushed the flowers into her arms and, before she could react, dropped a kiss on her forehead. It felt like it set her skin on fire.
Donna’s jaw unhinged, and her mouth fell open. Fiancée? How does she rate a prime steak like him? She must be blackmailing him.
Riley closed her eyes and exhaled sharply. The last thing she needed right now was to be inside Donna’s head. “How did you find me?” she hissed at Nick.
“PI, remember?”
The nosy receptionist wheeled her chair closer, straining to hear their conversation.
“Let’s go in the conference room,” Riley decided. She closed her fingers around his wrist and was once again jarred by the jolt of skin on skin. That ugly bedspread popped, unbidden, into her head again. Maybe she should have a sit-down with Gabe if it meant she could stop falling into sex fantasies at the drop of a hat.
She pulled Nick into the windowless room with its dark wood-paneled walls and cheap laminate table. This was the room most client meetings occurred in. Management thought it was impressive. Riley thought it looked like the interior of a coffin.
Closing the door behind them, she dropped his wrist and resumed the annoyed crossed-arm position.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, those blue-green eyes running over her body.
He’d been the only one in the building to ask her since she’d shown up to work on Monday with her arm in a sling and bruises covering eighty percent of her body. “Fine,” she said. If fine meant so sore she had to give herself a pep talk before getting off the toilet. “Wha
t are you doing here?”
If he asked her to tell him what number he was thinking of, she was going to hit him in the head with the trash can. She’d use her good arm.
“I need your help,” he said, leaning one very fine ass cheek on the glossy conference table.
She blinked. “With what?”
He gave her one of those slow once-overs, that eyebrow hook, and another shot of dimples. “I caught a new case today,” he said, picking up a SHART pen and clicking it.
She counted the clicks. The marketing department had cheaped out. Sure, they looked okay on the outside, and they mostly did the job you’d expect. But each pen had between thirty-five and forty-two clicks in it before the spring mechanism exploded. One of their more nervous sales reps had nearly lost an eye in the middle of a big pitch.
“Mazel tov. What does that have to do with me?”
“You, my lovely fiancée, are my access.” Click. Click.
This didn’t sound good.
“Access to what, exactly?”
“Dickie Frick’s aunt hired me to find out who killed him,” Nick said.
“Aren’t the cops handling that? Isn’t that their job?” The guy wanted to track down someone who willingly put two bullets in a human being’s head. This was exactly the kind of man she did not need to get involved with.
Click. Click.
“The family isn’t happy with how the investigation is proceeding. They want to make sure Dickie gets justice.”
“That means you have to hunt down a murderer.”
He spread his arms wide. “All part of the glamorous life of a PI. Who happens to be engaged to the deceased’s next-door neighbor.”
“You want me to get you into his apartment,” she said, finally understanding.
Click. Click.
“And access to the rest of your roommates. Someone in that house has to know something. Also, please don’t tell me you’re claiming them in your family tree, by the way. We’re engaged. You can give up the pretense.”
She sniffed indignantly. “If we’re fake engaged, then I can claim any fake relative I want.”
He reached for her and drew her between those long legs. “Come on, Riley,” he said, all charm. “Give a guy a break.” He pushed up the sleeve of her cardigan and examined the bruise on her forearm. “Damn, Thorn. I bet the rest of you is purple.”
She batted his hand away. “Oh, right. You care so much about my welfare,” she said with no shortage of sarcasm. “I’m at work, Nick. Can we get to the point?”
“If you help me, I’ll pay you.”
Okay. Money talked. A few extra bucks a week would go a long way. “You’ll pay me to be your fake fiancée so you can interrogate my neighbors and hunt down a person who killed a man? How does any of this sound normal to you?”
“Live a little, Thorn. It’ll be fun.”
He was so confident. So charming. So smooth. She wanted to smack him.
“I don’t want to have fun,” she said, sounding distinctly pouty.
His grin sharpened. “Sure you do,” he countered.
There was a smolder there in those inky-lashed eyes. His thighs brushed hers, and he slid a hand up her jaw, around her neck, and into her hair. It was a gentle yet inevitable pull that brought her forehead to his. She put her hands on his chest. So she wasn’t exactly pushing him away, but she also wasn’t grabbing him and yanking those unfairly full lips to hers.
Heat that was more than just the slow simmer of humidity bloomed between them. Her body forgot how to breathe.
They stayed like that for a long while. Hell, it might have been the rest of the day. Riley wasn’t sure since all measurements of the passage of time abandoned her along with most biological functions.
“I need to think about it,” she gasped, finally sucking oxygen into her burning lungs.
He released her, and she took a step back.
Nick stood, and for a second, she thought he might pin her against the door with those agile-looking hips and kiss her until she suffocated.
Instead, he pulled a business card out of his back pocket and held it out. “Come by my office after work,” he said. “Meet the team.”
“The team,” she repeated.
“Yeah. Stop by. Get a feel for me as more than just your devastatingly handsome fake fiancé.”
“Maybe,” she hedged.
There were those damn dimples again. They had a hypnotizing effect. The man could probably convince a teetotaler gathering to go wine tasting.
“See you later, Thorn.” He winked, all swagger and confidence, as he opened the door.
Alone in the coffin room, Riley sank down in the closest chair. She was dazzled by so many Nick Santiago pheromone fumes in such a confined space. She picked up the pen. Clicked it.
The spring shot out and whizzed past her face before banking off the wall.
With a sigh, she took the flowers and went back to her desk.
She had just uncapped her red marker when her desk phone rang again.
“There’s another one here to see you.” Donna sounded incredulous.
“Another what?” Riley asked.
“Man.”
With a frown, Riley hung up and made the trek back to the reception area.
There, perched on one of the chairs, was a placidly smiling Gabe. He was dressed in black gym shorts and a black tank that looked like it had been painted on. Donna was staring at him, her mouth agape.
“I’d spend an hour biting his hamstrings.”
Riley sent up a prayer that she hadn’t just overheard that from Donna’s brain.
“What are you doing here?” Riley demanded.
Gabe rose, towering over her like a giant, cuddly grizzly bear.
“I wish to take you to lunch so we can discuss your training.”
“Training?” Donna was leaning so far over the reception desk that she was practically horizontal.
Ah, crap.
Riley looked hard at her uninvited visitor. “My personal trainer,” she said slowly, willing the bear of a man to keep up with the lie. She wasn’t sure how telegraphing mental messages went, but she did not need Gabe blabbing to Donna about her psychic inabilities. “For the wedding.”
“Ah, yes,” he said, catching on. “I am Riley’s personal trainer. She would like much larger biceps for her wedding.”
“You’d think she’d want a smaller ass,” Donna sniped.
“You seem to carry an unusually large burden of hate and disappointment for such a small person,” he observed. “Have you tried meditation?”
Her mouth fell open even farther, and Riley thought she heard the woman’s jaw crack.
“I’m taking an early lunch,” Riley decided, dragging Gabe out the front door.
“Yes. We will discuss caloric intake,” he said, waving over his shoulder at the flabbergasted receptionist.
“Are you trying to ruin my life?” Riley demanded once they hit the sidewalk.
“This is a confusing question as I am clearly trying to improve your life,” he said, easily catching up to her with his freakishly long, muscular legs.
“You can’t antagonize a co-worker who hates me and expect it to improve my life,” she argued.
“And you cannot refuse to stand up for yourself and expect your life to improve.”
The gigantic man had a point. “It’s easier this way,” she said, trying to ignore his point… and the way his dark skin seemed to shimmer in the sunlight like his entire body was dusted in some kind of angelic bronzer.
Was he the epitome of human perfection, or was he something otherworldly? Had her grandmother sent her some kind of guardian angel?
“Is it?” he mused in his deep baritone.
“You sound like my mother.”
“Your mother must be a highly evolved person.”
“Do you have money?” she asked, changing the subject. She’d left her wallet at her desk, and she really needed to eat her feelings.
“Of cours
e.”
“Good. You can buy me lunch.”
Riley eyed the mixing bowl-sized tossed salad post-fast Gabe was namaste-ing across the table and ignored the gaggle of other people’s thoughts that were intruding on her own.
No dressing. No meat. No croutons.
He was definitely not human.
It struck her that Nick and Gabe were polar opposites. One structured and disciplined, invested in long-term results. The other a wild card looking for a good time. Where did she fall on that scale? She considered the healthy-ish turkey wrap that she was eating on the lunch break she’d taken early.
Eh. Probably somewhere in the middle.
“Okay. So tell me about this training you’re so excited about,” she said reluctantly.
He lit up. “Your grandmother instructed me to provide any training or support necessary to help you navigate your powers,” he said.
“I don’t understand why she’d think I would want to ‘navigate my powers,’” she complained. “I had a vision that my neighbor was going to get murdered. I went to the police. I warned the neighbor. He still got murdered. And now I’m a person of interest in the crime.”
She noted that the burly, bearded guy at the deli counter was either worried about someone named Candy or running out of candy.
“I can see how that would be frustrating for you,” Gabe said, hanging on her every word. He was a freakishly good listener.
“What’s the point of hearing other people’s thoughts or seeing the future if I can’t do anything about it? Why would I want that?”
He nodded. “Being who we are meant to be is not always easy.”
“I don’t want to be this. I want to be normal. Ordinary.”
“No one is meant to be ordinary. We are all extraordinary,” he said, his brown eyes beseeching her.
“Yeah? Well, I just want to be ordinary.” That was all she’d ever wanted. To be normal. To fit in.
“It is here that our beliefs diverge, Riley,” he said. “Life is an adventure to be lived, not a series of repetitive days to survive.”