The Perfect Man

by Kristine Dexter

  “No one would get harmed.”

  “Except our case, if someone found out.” She could just imagine what Lou would have to say about it.

  “The information I’d get would be the same information you’d get from a phone call. You can make the calls as backup later. No one would have to know.”

  “Except me, Rick.” She shook her head. “Let’s forget we had this conversation. I’ll be on the phone bright and early tomorrow.”

  “It gives him a chance to get away.”

  “He’s not leaving. He has to find Jessamyn.”

  “It gets you off this case faster.”

  She frowned at him. “I’m not an ends-justify-the-means girl.”

  Amazingly, he smiled at her. Then he took her hand, and kissed the inside of her palm. “You know, that’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  She pulled her hand out of his. “This is not a date, Chance.”

  “I know,” he said. “If it were a date, we’d have taken my truck.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  TASHA AND RICK arrived back at the hotel just after dinner. She couldn’t think of a reason to go back to the station—unless she let Rick practice his illegal magic tricks.

  So it felt even more like a date than it had. Only it felt like the kind of date she’d never been on before. The kind that ended up in a man’s hotel room for a one-night stand.

  Rick unlocked the door and Tasha went in first, her hand on her gun, making sure the three rooms were empty. They were. The newspaper cluttered the table, Rick’s laptop was still sitting on the couch, and the bed—which dominated that bedroom—looked untouched.

  She beckoned Rick inside. He closed and locked the door behind himself.

  And stood there, hands at his side, like a little boy who expected someone else to take his mittens off.

  “Now what?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, now what?”

  “You and me, what happens next?” He shrugged. “I’ve never been protected before.”

  “I haven’t done much protecting,” she said, going to the window. The street was dark except for the amber glow of the streetlights. A teenage couple smooched in a doorway. A white car drove past. Other than that, the street was empty. “But it seems to me that you should go about your business and I try to make sure no one harms you.”

  Rick remained near the door. “You don’t honestly think the Creep is going to break in here tonight.”

  Tasha closed the sheers and then the heavy drapes. “He broke into your house,” she said, and winced. She hadn’t told him that part, and she didn’t want to get stuck on it, so she added quickly, “But he doesn’t seem like the breaking-in type to me. If he finds out where you are, he’ll come to the door, maybe posing as a member of the hotel staff or someone who has the wrong room. People answer the door for that sort of thing all the time you know.”

  “And if I were to open it, he would—what?—shoot me?”

  She turned. Rick had moved to the couch, his legs on the coffee table and crossed at the ankle. His hand rested on his laptop as if it were a lifeline.

  “Possibly,” she said. “More than likely, he’d find a way to get in here, and then he’d torture you until you told him where Jessamyn was.”

  “He’d have to be a lot bigger than me to do that.” Rick’s forefinger tapped on the computer’s top.

  “Not necessarily,” she said. “A gun does a lot of talking.”

  “So.” He tipped his head back, leaning it against the pillows against the wall. “You don’t have to be eternally vigilant.”

  She stiffened. He was good with words. He’d backed her into a verbal corner. “I should be ready for all contingencies.”

  “I suppose,” he said. “But wouldn’t eternal vigilance in this case merely be an overreaction?”

  She knew where he was going, and she didn’t like it. “Rick—”

  “Tasha.” He sat up suddenly, all pretense at relaxation gone. “There’s something between us and it’s time we stop pretending it doesn’t exist.”

  She stayed by the curtains. “It seems to me you were the first one to pretend that it didn’t exist.”

  “And you’ve been punishing me ever since—when you remember.”

  “Punishing you? I thought you were some kind of assailant this morning.”

  “And tonight?”

  She sighed and sank into one of the chairs by the table. “Tonight I’m on duty.”

  “Really?” He stood. “Serve and protect and all that.”

  His expression was warm, his tone belonging to the Rick she’d met at the wedding. And she thought she saw desire in his eyes. “I think you’re taking that out of context.”

  “Hmm.” He was nearly to her chair. “Protect. That’s what you’re here for, right?”

  “Rick—”

  “And serve? I’m a taxpayer, right. You’re in service to me.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” she said.

  He put his hands on the arm of her chair, his face a few inches from hers. Those blue eyes of his were gorgeous and deep. She could get lost in them.

  “Tasha,” he said softly, “how about we forget all the other stuff, just for one night?”

  “And have our Creep come to the door? Rick, that’s—”

  He kissed her. He tasted faintly of the coffee he’d had after dinner and something else, something as good as his scent, something indefinably Rick. In spite of herself, she leaned into the kiss, tilting her head back, and enjoying the feel of his mouth on hers, the way he tasted her as if she were a fine wine.

  When he pulled away, ever so slightly, their lips no more than a millimeter apart, she heard herself groan in protest.

  “See?” he said softly. “We can’t just ignore this.”

  No, they couldn’t. This time she bridged the gap between them, her lips brushing his. He didn’t touch her anywhere else, his hands still gripped the arms of the chair, his body was a discreet distance from hers. And she wanted to close the gap. She wanted to touch him more than she’d ever wanted anyone.

  She slipped her arms around his neck, and this time it was his turn to groan. He pulled her against him, stood her up, and continued kissing her, all in one long fluid motion. Now they were leaning against each other as they had been when they were dancing, and it felt as right as it had then, holding and swaying to a music that only they could hear.

  His fingers brushed the hem of her cotton shirt and she started out of the fog that had held her. She caught his hands in her own.

  “Wait,” she said against his mouth.

  She stepped away, took off her gun, and set it on the table, hoping she wouldn’t regret that, hoping she’d been right about the Creep. Out of the corner of her eye, she checked to make sure the chain was on the door. It was, and the safety lock button had been pressed. If hotel propaganda was to be believed, no one could get in—not without an axe.

  The memory of Rick’s office door—shattered with a few measured blows—made her shudder.

  “Stay with me,” Rick said, and slipped her into his arms again. He kissed her—oh, the man knew how to kiss. How to be gentle and demanding at the same time; teasing and provocative; warm and enticing. His hands had stayed on her back, and yet she felt desire course all the way through her—desire built simply from the kisses, the way he held her, the way her body fit against his.

  This time, it was her fingers that tugged at his shirt. She wanted to feel his skin, to see if it was as smooth and muscled as it looked. She yanked the shirt up, trapping his arms. He laughed and pulled away, letting her drag the shirt over his head.

  She let the shirt fall as she slid her hands across his flat stomach, around his side and to the muscles in his back. He tugged at her shirt now, but she stopped him again, reaching for his belt. She unbuckled it, then unzipped his jeans, pulling them off him. She wanted to see him—all of him—to know everything about him. She had wanted that from the moment
she met him, only days ago. Days. It felt like weeks.

  It felt like her entire life.

  He bent down, slipped the jeans off, somehow managing to get his shoes off at the same time. Then he stood before her, nude.

  She’d seen perfect men before, in calendars and magazines, but she’d always thought them airbrushed and carefully photographed. She never realized they could exist in real life—strong square shoulders, tapering down to narrow hips and muscular legs.

  She took him in her hand, and he moaned. Then she leaned over and replaced her hand with her mouth. He reacted as if she had lit his entire body on fire.

  His hands were in her hair, touching her neck, reaching for her breasts. “Tasha,” he said, “Tasha, please.”

  She smiled and let him go long enough to say, “Serve and protect, remember?” and then she continued.

  “Oh, God, Tash, I didn’t mean that.” He clung to the table with his right hand. She could feel him struggling for balance, balance and control. He tasted good, felt good. She ran her hands along the insides of his thighs, touching him everywhere she could reach.

  Finally, he grabbed her arms and pulled her up, clawing at her shirt.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes,” he said.

  She tugged off her jeans, happy to be rid of them, then pushed him back toward the sofa. He tripped on his shoes and nearly fell, but she caught him, easing him down. Then she slipped over him.

  He fit inside her. No one had ever felt like this, as perfect as he had when they danced together. But she didn’t savor the moment. Instead, she started to move.

  “Tasha—”

  She bent over, her hair forming a cloud around them, and kissed him. Her hands on his shoulders, his hands on her breasts, caressing, stroking, touching. Moving to their rhythm. Fast and wonderful and powerful.

  She’d never felt like this, as if her skin were alive. Every place she touched him sent desire flaming through her. Every place he touched her did the same. It built, until she thought she couldn’t take any more.

  Then he moved quickly and suddenly, his arm wrapped around the small of her back, holding her against him. Her shirt bunched up, and the rough fabric of the couch scraped her skin and he was on top of her, making everything even more erotic. Her hands were in his hair, his mouth was on her neck, and suddenly she was gone, gone with him, exploding in a thousand ways, like she never had before.

  He was with her, every step, as if they’d planned it, his body pulsing with hers, his moans mixing with hers, until there was nothing but warmth and sensation and love.

  ***

  “I’m crushing you,” he said a moment later, sounding remarkably calm given what had just happened.

  “No, you’re not,” she said. But she had become aware of her shirt, gathered in a knot behind her shoulder blades, the slight charley horse in her left leg, and the fact that her right foot was wedged against the coffee table.

  “You know, this couch was not made for tall people,” Rick said, “and my knees will never be the same.”

  “They’ll recover,” Tasha said. “In about twenty-five minutes, the same time it’ll take me to recover.”

  “Oh my God,” he said in mock horror, “a never-ending cycle. I’d read about women like you!”

  “And?”

  “I’ve been praying they existed.” He propped himself up on one elbow and eased the hair off her face with his finger. “You are beautiful.”

  “You keep saying that.” She smiled. “One would think you do it to have your way with me.”

  “I think it was the other way around,” he said.

  “You started it.”

  “Yes.” His finger felt warm and gentle against her skin. “And then I lost control of it pretty quickly.”

  Her smile widened. “Not that quickly.”

  He eased off her, then helped her to her feet. He wobbled as she pulled. She could barely rise. That had taken more energy than she thought.

  “Next time,” he said, “the bed.”

  “Are we going to try for every room in this suite?”

  “Good idea.” He grinned. His cheeks were still flushed, and his eyes twinkled. He was even better looking than he had been before. Handsome. Movie-star handsome, just like she had noticed that first day. “But how about a little food first?”

  “It’s all about satisfying needs for you, isn’t it?”

  He raised his eyebrows in mock innocence. “Isn’t it that way for you too?”

  “Actually, yes,” she said, and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and made the kiss deeper.

  “We could do this all night,” he said after a moment.

  “And then I really wouldn’t be doing my job,” she said.

  “Promise me,” he said, slipping his hands under her shirt, “that when this is over, we’ll do what we want for an entire night.”

  She smiled. “I promise.”

  He laughed, and let her go. She felt the loss of his warmth. He gathered his clothes and headed for the bathroom. He looked as good from the back as he did from the front.

  She watched him until he disappeared through the door. She was falling in love with him—or maybe she had already fallen. With a man who had a penchant for writing books under another name, and a stalker who was trying to kill him.

  Tasha smiled gently to herself. Maybe Brooke had been right after all. Maybe Tasha always did get involved with the wrong man.

  But no wrong man had ever felt this right before.

  She pulled off her shirt and followed him into the bathroom, hoping that their friend the Creep would give them a few more hours alone.

  THIRTY

  TASHA HAD INSISTED on sleeping near the door. They had taken the extra blankets and the pillow they’d found in a drawer, and made up a makeshift bed for her. She slept in her T-shirt and jogging shorts—just in case she had to chase someone into the hallway, or so she said—her gun and badge beside her on the coffee table.

  Rick stood over her for a moment, watching her sleep. Her face, in repose, was softer. The active intelligence, the animation that was so much a part of her, enhanced her features, but hid them also. She had classic cheekbones, a narrow chin, and a small nose—the very features that most women would accent. Tasha didn’t accent them at all. She never wore make-up and she didn’t seem to care how her hair flowed around her face.

  He liked that about her. In fact, he liked everything about her, including that slight furrow in her brow as she slept.

  He longed to touch it—to touch her again—but he didn’t dare. She needed her rest. He still wasn’t ready to sleep. The stresses of the day haunted him, and as much as the evening had relaxed him, it still hadn’t removed the anger that nestled inside him.

  Tasha had helped him manage to block out the Creep for nearly two hours. But after that, the Creep returned, bringing with him all the anger Rick had tried to suppress—suppress for years.

  He would find this son of a bitch, and then he would make him pay.

  Rick bent down beside the couch, moving as silently as he could—he didn’t want to startle a woman with a gun—and then grabbed the MacBook. He carried it into the bedroom, and plugged it into the DSL line the hotel provided.

  Then he logged on, turning the sound down so low that Tasha couldn’t hear it in the living room of the suite.

  She had made it clear that she didn’t want to know if he had broken the law to find the Creep. She didn’t want to be party to it. But he had to know if their brainstorming this evening was a dead-end or not. He didn’t want to waste the morning tracking something by phone that he could download in the space of a few hours.

  He started with the delivery service he used the most, then hacked into the personnel records at their Chicago office. He would sort by year, then by route, then by employee, and see if any of the people who’d had his route had quit about the time he moved to Portland.

  Then he would cross-reference with the Portland office.

&
nbsp; If that didn’t work, he’d find the next company and start all over again.

  ***

  The alarm cut through Beebe’s sleep, distant, pinging, shrill. The freshly laundered covers—laundered the day before in anticipation of Jessamyn’s arrival—were wrapped around his legs. He’d been exhausted, but sleeping fitfully. The dreams were back, haunting him.

  The dreams of Jessamyn the last time he had seen her, her red curls glinting in the sunlight, her eyes begging him for help. Sometimes that was all he could see of her—her green eyes and her red hair. He was beginning to forget what she looked like.

  Just like he had forgotten his mother.

  Pinging.

  He opened his eyes. His bedroom was dark, so dark he could barely see. But his computer screen was on—the screensaver off and the windows display like a beacon of light in the dark room.

  There was activity.

  Beebe hauled himself off the futon he’d been using as a bed and walked barefoot across the room. He grabbed his robe off a peg before sitting in his chair. Then he shut off the notification alarm.

  His program’s window was already open. Someone using Chance’s account had been online for five minutes. Chance’s account, usual log-in number, new website.

  Chance was checking delivery services.

  His hands grew clammy. So close. So very close.

  Beebe was a ghost in the server, unseen, a lurking witness to all that Chance did. Only right now, he didn’t want to watch. He wanted to find, just in case Chance was logging on from Jessamyn’s hiding place.

  Chance had gone through a number of servers to get to his. All Beebe had to do was find the place where connection originated.

  That took a few minutes. He had to trace backwards, but he did so, finally ending up with an I.D. on the original server. The Old Multnomah Hotel. He called up the address, had the computer pinpoint it on a map. He still wasn’t as familiar with Portland as he wanted to be.

  Downtown on Third and Alder. Now all he needed was a room number.

  And a plan.