by Terra Little
“I am.” He found a pillow and bunched it underneath his head, thinking that if she wasn’t already, she could easily make her first million in the phone-sex industry. “Is she there with you now?”
“She is, but she’s asleep right now.”
He sighed. “As we should all be. Do you make a habit of returning phone calls that should be returned during business hours in the middle of the night, Miss Carrington?”
“Only when I receive a few voice-mail messages, suggesting very strongly that I do so.”
“You keep mentioning that—the fact that I called you several times last evening and left messages. Is that your way of eliciting an apology from me? Because if it is, I should probably tell you that you’re wasting your time.”
“No, it’s my way of asking if you were raised in a barn,” she shot back, and his eyebrows rose in the darkness of his bedroom. “Who does that?”
Tongue in cheek, Cooper considered Olivia’s question for a second. Then he thought of a few questions of his own that were suddenly more important. “Isn’t it past your bedtime? Why are you even awake at this hour?” He glanced at the bedside clock again and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of his king-size bed and dropping his size-fourteen feet to the chilly hardwood floor. After six hours of hibernation, his mouth felt like a dust bowl. Thinking that a glass of ice-cold sweet tea would hit the spot, he rolled to his feet and ran a lazy hand around the back of his neck as he padded, barefoot and naked, out of his bedroom and down the stairs, to the kitchen.
Olivia’s insistent voice buzzed in his ear as he walked. “Oh, no you don’t. Don’t try to change the subject, Agent Talbot. Explain yourself, please.”
“Now, see, the beauty of this situation is that I don’t have to explain myself to you. Nor do I see the need to apologize, so I won’t.” In the kitchen, he tucked his cell between his head and shoulder and opened the refrigerator, taking out a pitcher of iced tea and bumping the door closed with his hip. “You have something that I want and I intend to get it,” he said as he located a glass, filled it with ice from the dispenser on the outside of the refrigerator door and then followed up with iced tea.
“Shannon Bridgeway.”
“Bingo,” Cooper said and downed half the full glass in one long gulp.
“Now, wait just a minute, Agent. I was under the impression that Shannon was cleared of any possible involvement in that bank robbery.”
“The investigation is still ongoing, but my interest in her has nothing to do with that, except that I have a suspect in custody on another robbery in Missouri and I believe she might be able to offer some insight. I’d like to interview her as soon as possible, which—” he paused to down the other half and then refill “—is why I’ve been trying to reach you. Bridgeway’s release paperwork lists you as her emergency contact.”
“And is this an emergency?”
He leaned back against the nearest counter and slowly ran his tongue around his teeth. Thanks to the dim, under-cabinet lighting, his own ghostly reflection stared back at him in the window over the sink, reminding him that he was too damn old to be up, poking around the house in the middle of the night, especially when he had to report to work first thing in the morning. “Don’t be coy, Miss Carrington. You called me at three o’clock in the morning, so you tell me. Is this an emergency? And by the way, it’s Special Agent in Charge Talbot.”
“Wow. Somebody sure is important.”
“What—” He paused so that the incredulous chuckle that suddenly filled his mouth could escape. “So you were doing it on purpose.” She chuckled, too, a low, mysterious sound that stirred his dangling sex. Scratching the top of his head with his free hand, he shifted against the counter, crossed his ankles and rattled the ice in his glass idly. “I should’ve known. When can I speak with Bridgeway?”
“She doesn’t want to speak with you or anyone else from your agency, Agent Talbot. You people have scared her half to death already and enough is enough. Now she just wants to clear up the bogus arrest that you people have slapped her with, which she will do in court tomorrow morning, and move on with her life.”
“You know, if Bridgeway is as innocent as she says she is, then I would think she’d want to help law enforcement out as much as possible.”
Olivia snorted sarcastically and Cooper took a breath for patience. “Yes, well, think again.”
“Look, Miss Carrington, as I said, I have a suspect in custody here in Knoxville and—”
“Knoxville?” Olivia cut in, sounding surprised. “Is that where you are right now?”
“Yes, it is,” Cooper snapped. He hated being interrupted when he was speaking. “We have evidence that points to his having strong ties to the group that we believe is responsible for the bank heist there in Missouri, as well as for a string of other similarly executed heists across the region in recent months. So as much as I’d like to let Miss Bridgeway get on with her life in peace, at this point in our investigation, it really is important that we meet with her, if for no other reason than to eliminate her as a potential witness.”
“The answer is still no, Agent Talbot.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Positive. Your new case has nothing to do with Shannon and she’d like to keep it that way.”
“And she can’t tell me all this herself?”
“No.”
“Because she’s afraid.” It wasn’t a question, more like a mocking drawl.
“Exactly. So if you wouldn’t mind, Shannon and I would both appreciate it if you’d stop calling.”
He rolled his eyes to the ceiling and thought about going through the phone. “You do realize that I don’t actually need your permission to access or speak to Shannon Bridgeway, don’t you? This is merely a courtesy call, Miss Carrington.” She chuckled—a fluttery, mysterious sound that stroked the shell of his ear like a lover’s breath. His dangling shaft tingled and he frowned down at it in disgust. Traitor.
“Fine,” she chirped. “Thank you for the courtesy, Agent Talbot, but—”
“There you go not addressing me properly again,” Cooper snarled before he could think better of it. She burst out laughing and suddenly his sex felt ten pounds heavier. “Listen, Miss Carrington—”
“No, you listen, Agent Talbot. It’s very late—or very early, depending on how you look at it—and I’m tired. I need sleep.” And he didn’t? “I can’t help you and neither can Shannon, so please just leave us alone.” Apparently taking his silence to mean that he intended to comply with her ridiculous request, she was gracious enough to offer him a soft “thank you” before ending the call. He stood there for several seconds afterward, holding his cell phone, staring down at his swooning penis and cursing viciously under his breath, before it occurred to him to go back to bed.
* * *
He was late for work.
Thanks to Olivia Carrington’s outrageous timing, he’d slept right through both his bedside alarm and his cell phone’s backup alarm, only managing to crack open his heavy eyelids when a passing early-morning thunderstorm had unleashed a clap of thunder that shook his entire house. He had bolted upright in bed, taken one look at the time and cursed so dramatically that by the time he was done, he’d given himself a headache. On top of that, he had damn near broken his neck, stumbling around in his bathroom, trying to wake himself up and get dressed at the same time, and now that he was thinking about it, there was a very real possibility that he’d forgotten to close his garage door after he’d burned rubber backing out of the damn thing at 8:45 a.m.
Cooper thought about the vintage 1989 Porsche 930 Turbo that was currently parked in his three-car garage and felt a momentary punch to the gut. Just this past weekend, his precious baby girl had been hand-waxed to a high-gloss, metallic-silver shine and her black, butter-soft leather interior had been lovingly cleaned and conditioned. He knew because he
’d done both himself, just as, over the years, he’d done most of her restoration work himself. As a result, she was primed and ready for the next time that he had an urge for a midnight joyride, which sadly hadn’t been the case in weeks. Her tinted windows were halfway down and the keys were dangling on a hook in the garage, leaving her vulnerable to his neighbor’s pain-in-the-ass teenage grandsons, one of which he’d caught ogling his baby just yesterday.
Great. Just great.
A car horn blared, intruding on Cooper’s darkening thoughts, reminding him that the time was now 9:30 a.m. and he was officially an hour late for work. Spying the endless line of bumper-to-bumper cars beyond the windshield of his black Audi A7, as well as the trail of cars visible in his rearview mirror, he sat back in the driver’s seat and frowned as he thought of Olivia Carrington.
Besides being incredibly inconsiderate, the woman clearly had no idea whom she was dealing with. Calling her and trying to play nice was nothing more than his attempt at promoting positive public relations between the bureau and the community at large, because positivity was the name of the game these days. But had he known that Olivia was going to be so uncooperative, he’d have followed his first mind, skipped the phone calls altogether, and saved himself some time and aggravation by sending a team of agents to ring her doorbell instead. Preferably at three o’clock in the morning, he added bitterly, because playing nice was clearly highly overrated.
He tried to picture her answering the door at that hour of the morning, perhaps in curlers and a sensible nightgown, with fuzzy slippers on her feet and a pair of glasses sitting lopsided on her face. A ringing doorbell at that time of the morning or night would bring her running, her thoughts as scattered as the hair on her head, and she’d be pissed.
Almost as pissed as he’d been early this morning.
After she had hung up on him, it’d taken him over an hour to settle down and doze off again. His thirst quenched, he had climbed back into bed and collapsed on the mattress, fully intending to capitalize on whatever time he still had left to sleep. But his quivering penis had other ideas, which, as much as he hated to admit it, was the other reason that Olivia Carrington was now at the top of his hit list.
His rational mind had quickly decided that he disliked her, but his penis—traitor that it was—hadn’t wanted to get on board with the plan, as hypnotized as it seemingly was by her sultry, breathless-sounding voice. He’d lain in bed for long minutes afterward, replaying the sound of it in his head, trying to imagine what she looked like one minute and then telling himself that he couldn’t have cared less in the next. All the while his penis had been on the verge of a self-induced nirvana, bouncing against his abdomen like an insistent guest and refusing to be ignored. After the twelve months of forced celibacy that he had intentionally inflicted upon it, it had apparently grown tired of behaving and decided to stage an uprising. And all it had taken was an absurd phone call from a strange, faceless woman with a sex-infused voice and an orgasm-laced giggle.
Nice, he thought and mentally kicked himself in his own forty-year-old butt. Would he never learn?
Unbidden, an image of his former fiancée flashed before his eyes, and just as quickly as it had come, he banished it. Blythe Nunley was the only child and sole heiress to the Knoxville-based Nunley Pharmaceuticals brand. She was also spoiled, impulsive and used to getting her way—all characteristics that he had dismissed as relatively harmless, since she was over thirty, living on her own and halfway through a pediatric residency at Knoxville General when they were introduced by mutual friends. It had taken him three years and returning home a day early from an out-of-town speaking engagement to figure out that he’d been played for a lovesick fool.
In more ways than one, he qualified, recalling the scene that had unfolded when he’d walked into the condo they shared and interrupted a pretty intense lovemaking session between his then fiancée and his then best friend. For six months their affair had been going on right underneath his nose, and all he’d been able to see the entire time was the incredible beauty that was Blythe, which, he realized in hindsight, was by calculated design. Blythe was a master manipulator. Discovering in the aftermath that his best friend hadn’t been the first man Blythe had cheated on him with bruised his ego even more.
But, hey, at least he wasn’t bitter, right?
Aside from being a colossal waste of time, the three years that he’d spent with Blythe had also taught him a valuable lesson. Sex was one thing, but relationships were something else altogether. In the eighteen months since he’d kicked Blythe out of the condo, sold the damn thing and bought himself a new bed, he had gone looking for sex a few times but always with the understanding that relationships weren’t an option. Once bitten, he wasn’t just shy. As far as he was concerned, he was completely over it.
Still, though.
Not counting the first nineteen years of his life, twelve months was the longest he’d ever gone without sex. He was usually so busy working that it was easy to forget about satisfying his flesh, but every once in a great while, a subtle reminder crept up on him and tapped him on the shoulder. Olivia Carrington’s X-rated voice had done exactly that, and at the worst possible time—at the witching hour and, if he was being honest, at the onset of a fantastically erotic wet dream that his ringing phone had rudely interrupted. So while it did occur to him that his problem really wasn’t so much with Olivia Carrington as it was with the fact that he needed to find time in his busy schedule to get laid, the fact remained that, either way you spun the situation, her timing sucked to hell and back.
And somehow, some way, he was going to make her pay for it.
Acutely aware that time was something that seemed to always be in short supply, Cooper glanced at his watch and sighed gratefully when traffic slowly began moving forward. Minutes later he was finally clear of the three-car collision that had caused the traffic jam. Accelerating to just under the posted speed limit, he drove the rest of the way to the Knoxville FBI Field Office in deep, calculated thought. For a second, as he parked his car, grabbed his leather attaché case from the passenger seat and slammed the driver’s door in his wake, he considered cutting Olivia Carrington some slack. Then he recalled the exact number of times that she had purposely called him Agent Talbot and thought, nah.
He had called her to ask nicely and she had returned his call at three o’clock in the morning, only to turn him down flat and not-so-nicely. She had balls—he’d give her that. But damned if he was going to let her add his balls to her collection. He considered calling her again during business hours, when she might’ve been more willing to hear him out. Then he remembered that she had asked him if he’d been raised in a barn and thought, hell nah.
Suddenly he had an even better idea.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good morning, Amelia.” Cooper glanced at his assistant on his way past her desk, noticing without breaking stride that her naturally brunette hair was no longer arranged in a hot-pink bouffant, as it had been when he’d left work yesterday evening, but was now deep purple and framing her heart-shaped face in a sleek pageboy style. He had inherited her with his promotion five years ago and, while all of her various eccentricities had initially thrown him for a loop, he had quickly come to the conclusion that she was exactly the kind of assistant that his type A personality needed.
“Did you get my text?” he asked as he walked into his office and dropped his attaché case on his desktop. He shrugged out of his suit jacket, hung it on the coat rack behind the door and then returned to the doorway to lean against it. She swiveled around in her chair to face him and he saw that her lipstick was black and extra glossy.
“You mean the one you sent me while you were driving?” she asked, sniffing with disapproval. The hoop in her right nostril quivered as she exhaled.
Cooper waved a dismissive hand, silently refusing to entertain her attempt at chastising him. Then he saw her
eyes narrow and said, “I was sitting at a red light when I sent it, all right? Did you get the text or not?”
Apparently satisfied with his answer, she smiled graciously. “Yes, I did and I even managed to track down Judge Sheppard to sign the arrest warrant. The paperwork still has to be processed and filed, but it should be here by lunchtime,” she said. “Late afternoon at the latest. In the meantime, I booked you on a nine-thirty flight to Missouri, which puts you there at around eleven o’clock tonight. Shannon Bridgeway isn’t on the federal docket there until ten o’clock tomorrow morning, so you have a little time to prepare beforehand.”
“Does the Missouri field office know I’m coming?”
“They’ve been notified and I also requested a vehicle loan, which—” she paused to swivel back around to her desk and tap a few keys on her computer’s keyboard “—was just approved. There will be a car waiting for you at the airport. Pick up the keys from airport security.”
“What would I do without you, Amelia?”
“Let’s hope I never win the lottery and you have to find out,” she quipped. “But if you were looking for a way to show your appreciation, coffee would be nice, sir.”
He pretended to think about the request for a second. “You still take it with two sugars and three creams?”
“Yes, and did I mention that I also cleared your schedule for the rest of the week, just in case?”
“Ah, and since good help is so hard to find, why don’t I bring you a doughnut, too?” he offered as he straightened from his perch against the doorway.
She grinned as she adjusted the wireless headset on her head and tucked her legs underneath her desk. “That sounds lovely, sir. Chocolate, please.”
“Coming right up.” Since the mountain refused to come to Mohammed, Cooper thought as he strolled down the corridor toward the staff lounge, then Mohammed was going to the mountain. With any luck, not only would he score a sit-down with Bridgeway but he’d also discover the answer to the question circling around in his head: Did Olivia Carrington’s face match her sensual voice?