Again he interrupted her. “Not in the slightest.” Before she could tell him to get out of her car, he hit her with a question out of the blue. “Are you familiar with the area?”
If she lied, he’d probably quiz her by dropping some establishment name on her that she’d never heard of. “No, I’m not—”
“Well, lucky for you,” he said with an accommodating grin, “I am. There’s this great little restaurant about four miles from here. They make a prime rib steak that makes you think you’ve died and gone to heaven.”
She was pretty much at the end of her temper and she made no attempt to hide the fact. Something had to make this man back away. “I just want one that makes me think I’m dining alone.”
The expression on his face testified that he didn’t believe her. “Is that any way for someone named Aphrodite to act?”
“You mean picky about the company she keeps?” Tiana guessed pointedly, refusing to give in. “Yes, I’m pretty certain that it is.”
Rather than to back off, he kept trying to find a crack in her defenses. “C’mon, what’s one meal going to hurt?” he coaxed.
Ordinarily, he would have backed off long before this. But there was more to this woman than met the eye, and he wanted his chance to find out what that “more” was. Since he had no way of knowing where the break would come from—the one that would allow him to gain access to the real inner world of these flesh peddlers, he couldn’t leave any stone unturned, and right now she had to be the most attractive stone he had hopes of turning over, bar none.
“I’m thinking a lot,” she told him, hoping to put him off. She might have known better.
“Maybe that’s just the problem,” he guessed.
“My thinking?” she asked incredulously. Just because he was probably used to women with the IQ of a carrot didn’t mean that all women were like that, or were happier like that.
“Your overthinking,” he corrected. Then he went back to coaxing for a positive response. “The restaurant will be crowded. There’ll be a lot of people there. You’ll be safe,” he guaranteed.
“If you have to go out of your way to tell me I’ll be safe, then I’m rather certain that I damn well won’t be safe there—possibly not safe anywhere.”
“I repeat, what can happen to you in a crowded restaurant? I’ll even let you drive,” he said, buckling up in the passenger seat and then raising his hands up like a prisoner with no options before him other than to give up defending his land or to defend it to the death. “That way you’re in control,” he told her cheerfully.
“Takes more than a steering wheel to be in charge,” she informed him.
He inclined his head. “True,” he agreed. “But it’s a start.”
Her stomach was really beginning to pinch her. She wasn’t going to do Janie any good starving herself or allowing herself to become the embodiment of malnutrition, and she was having trouble remembering when she’d actually eaten last. Everything had been focused on coming down here and searching for her sister as soon as possible.
Now that her only viable connection to Janie was lying in a pool of his own blood, she had to find another lead.
“All right,” she agreed grudgingly. “Where is this fantastic restaurant of yours?”
“If it were mine, you could eat there every night for free,” he told her. He smiled like a chess champion making that final move that rendered his opponent completely neutralized, with no options open except to surrender. Mind games, she reminded herself. These were just mind games and all she had to do was stand firm. “You go down this block and make a left at the light. Head straight, then make another left turn where Ball intersects Fairview.”
She nodded, turning on her ignition.
Following his directions, she made a second left where he told her, then glanced at him, waiting for further instructions.
He obliged. “Two blocks from here, make a right.”
“What’s this restaurant called?” Sensing that they were getting close, she wanted to know what name she should be looking for.
“A Little Piece of Heaven.”
“I didn’t ask what the food tastes like,” she told him pointedly. “I want to know the name.”
“Both,” he told her. “It’s both.” The exasperated look she shot him only succeeded in amusing him. “There it is, up ahead,” he said, pointing it out.
The sign on top of the building proclaimed it to be A Little Piece of Heaven. Its appearance, however, negated that assessment, at least as far as looks went. The building was in serious disrepair and needed more than a little tender love and care to look respectable.
“It looks more like A Little Piece of Hovel,” she said.
“Well, there you go,” he said as if the restaurant were making his argument for him. “Looks can mislead you,” Brennan concluded.
It was like being in the company of a book of useless platitudes and clichés. “If you say anything further along the lines of looks can be deceiving, I promise you’ll live to regret it.”
She could feel his eyes on her, taking measure, reducing her to what, she wasn’t sure, but it had to be something he dealt with on a regular basis.
She parked her car and got out. He was right there beside her. They walked toward the restaurant’s front entrance.
“I doubt very much if I’ll regret any of this,” he told her.
She sighed and shook her head as they approached the restaurant in question. “How long did you have to practice before this smooth way of talking came naturally to you?”
“No practice. Some things you’re just born with—like red hair,” he said, pausing before the massive wooden front door and feathering a strand of her hair through his fingers.
She automatically pulled it out of his fingers.
There was something far too personal about the way he’d touched her hair. The intimate action seemed to strip her of her self-assurance, both the one she clung to and the one she was careful to project.
Wayne made her feel as if she were completely transparent—but she wasn’t, she told herself. That was just his way of undermining her.
She was her own person and she was very aware of what she was doing here—and what would happen if she wasn’t successful.
This man was not just a sexy smile and a swagger, she told herself. He could very well be the key to finding her sister. At the very least, she had a feeling—one that she couldn’t substantiate but it was still there—that Wayne would keep her safe if it came down to needing that.
Or maybe she was just losing the ability to be sensible.
“Let’s just keep this strictly business,” she told him.
“Never crossed my mind to keep it anything else,” he assured her, spreading his hands in what amounted to an innocent gesture.
“I might look gullible, but I’m not,” she told him pointedly. “And even if I were somewhat gullible,” she conceded, “nobody’s that gullible,” she added, referring to his comment that he hadn’t thought about trying to make things personal between them.
Cocking his head, he looked at her quizzically. “I don’t follow you.”
“Your ‘innocent’ act isn’t working,” she informed him—needlessly in her opinion.
The man beside her laughed softly, the sound weaving itself under her skin despite the din in the restaurant that they entered. “I haven’t been ‘innocent’ since I turned five years old.”
“Now, that I can readily believe,” she told him.
He smiled in return, then slipped his arm through hers and guided her, not entirely against her will, toward the hostess table.
The slender young woman with the straight dark brown hair looked at them and asked, “Two?”
Brennan nodded, confirming her assumption. “Two.”
Tiana had no idea why that number sounded so exceedingly intimate to her, but it did.
As she walked behind the hostess and half a step ahead of Wayne, she did her best to shake herself free of that feeling.
It refused to leave.
Chapter 7
Brennan waited until the hostess had shown them to a booth, handed them their menus and discreetly withdrawn before saying anything to this woman who aroused his curiosity and stirred his imagination.
Deciding to go along with the persona she was projecting, he asked her, “So, how did you happen to get into this line of work?”
Tiana studied the menu for a moment. The description was straightforward, lacking in effusive adjectives. The selection itself was limited, but the prices were reasonable. Maybe that was the real draw here, she mused. It certainly wasn’t the ambience.
Glancing up for half a second, she murmured, “I could ask you the same thing,” before looking over the dessert section of the menu. That was even more limited.
“You can, but I asked first.” Brennan grinned when she looked up at him, a trace of impatience furrowing her brow. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he proposed.
“What are you asking, to hear my life story?”
“At least the abbreviated version.”
Conversation was curtailed briefly as a waitress—apparently the only one working the floor from the looks of it—came to take their order. They both ordered the same thing—prime rib—except that his was medium and hers wasn’t. She liked her steak just barely dead.
And when the woman went to place their orders, Tiana looked at the man sitting across from her and resumed their conversation, picking up the threads exactly where they were dropped.
“Why?”
Brennan looked almost amused. “You ask that a lot,” he noted.
“I suppose I do,” she allowed. “But there’s a reason for that. Because you ask a lot of questions,” she pointed out.
“Fair enough.” He paused as the waitress arrived with his drink—and her glass of water. “I was just wondering why someone who looks as if she’s got a lot going for her wouldn’t try to do something more legitimate,” Brennan said, making his point as the young server wove her way to another table.
Tiana stared into the glass of water as she shrugged. “Maybe I’m just lazy and this comes easy.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he countered. She looked up at him and he gave her an explanation. “If you were lazy, you wouldn’t have put together an ‘escort’ service,” he pointed out.
She wasn’t about to argue any point. She’d found that being nebulous and vague was a far better course to take. And for the time being, what was easiest for her was to take her own background and embellish on it.
“Okay. Maybe I had a mother who decided to run out on me when I was ten, leaving me with a father who was a cop and brought new meaning to the word strict.”
As she spoke, she could practically see her father in front of her. She supposed that in his own way, he’d tried, but he was short on patience and long on anger. And she looked a great deal like her mother, so he took his anger out on her. Whatever was left over spilled out on Janie.
Her sister was more fragile, while she was the tougher of the two. She did what she could to get him to take things out on her rather than Janie. That had left scars.
Her mouth twisted as the dark memories rose before her. There were times during those days when she was sure she wasn’t going to survive. And yet she had. Which made her stronger than she had initially thought.
“A father,” she continued, “who made me account for every minute of my life when I was out of the house, even if it was just in school.” The laugh was short and totally devoid of humor, just as her life had been back then. “Maybe the escort service is my way of rebelling and putting him in his place.”
“Is it?” Brennan asked, his eyes on hers.
It seemed to her that there was no one else in the restaurant except for the two of them despite the fact that the handful of tables and booth in the small establishment were all taken.
Tiana had deliberately dipped into her own past and used what was there as a starting point in order to weave an acceptable story for this man with his endless questions. It was only meant to be a jumping-off point, and she hadn’t meant to go that deeply into her life or jar the memories she had. It had taken her a long while to pack them all neatly away.
But ever since Janie had disappeared, the memories had found their way back up to the surface, bobbing and weaving before her like a taunting reminder.
To show you what you’ve accomplished, what you’ve risen above, not who you were, she silently insisted.
“Maybe,” was all she would say on the subject. Tiana was more than ready to turn the tables on this snoop. Let him answer some questions for a change. “Isn’t it about time you did a little sharing of your own?” she asked, prodding him.
He obliged her, ready for a capsulated version of his own upbringing, which had been average, but the one thing he’d never lacked for was love, something he had a feeling this woman he was talking to couldn’t say.
As he began to open his mouth, the waitress returned with their dinners. “Careful, they’re hot,” she warned needlessly, then made herself scarce, leaving a parting word: “Enjoy.”
Tiana looked at him pointedly, obviously waiting for him to live up to his side of the bargain.
“Can’t blame what I do on my childhood, which, looking back, was pretty good—especially compared to yours,” he added. “I just kind of fell into this. It came easy, so I stayed. No traumatic reason,” he confessed, “I just like money and this came easy. No years of studying, no climbing my way up some corporate ladder, no getting stabbed in the back by some overeager toady.”
Tiana laughed harshly as she took a sip from the water glass before her. “You make it sound like a dream come true.”
“Well, at least somebody’s dream,” he conceded. Then he nodded at the glass of water she’d just set down again. “You sure you wouldn’t rather have something with a kick to it?”
“I’m sure,” she replied firmly.
“A madam who doesn’t drink.” He rolled the concept over in his mind. “That doesn’t sound quite right,” he observed, although he had to admit that she struck him as someone who didn’t care about other people’s opinions about what she did.
“I like keeping a clear head,” she told him. “That’s how I stay one step ahead of the competition and anyone who wants to work their way up my corporate ladder,” she said, playing his words back to him.
Brennan nodded and set down the drink he’d ordered—whiskey, neat. He’d only taken a couple of sips himself. If she wasn’t drinking, then he didn’t have to in order to play his part.
“You might be onto something,” he conceded, then asked completely out of the blue, “What do you think of Roland?”
“What should I think of him?”
He wasn’t fishing for something deep. “Just that. You know, Venus—you don’t mind if I call you that, do you? It the Roman version of your name and it’s less of a mouthful than Aphrodite.”
She shrugged. “Whatever makes you happy,” she allowed, then saw the look on his face. She’d walked right into that one, she told herself. “Within reason,” Tiana specified.
Brennan laughed, amused. “Nice save. What I started to say was that not everything is a test or needs to be examined seven ways from sundown before you answer. I just wondered if you had the same impression I did.” He saw her raise a quizzical eyebrow and obliged by giving her his own opinion first. “That he was living large but that he wasn’t the top of the totem pole.”
“You mean that he’s taking orders from someone else,” she said, putting it into other, simpler words.
He nodded. “That’s what I mean.”
“Probably.” She gave him her take on the way things were set up within this organization. “There’re the recruiters who bring in the talent any way they can, like the kid in the motel room,” she bit off contemptuously. “There’s the middleman or -woman who keeps track of what’s going on and houses the ‘talent’ until such time as the girls are either shipped out, sold or rejected, and there’s someone at the head of all this who makes a nice living off everybody else’s efforts. He gets the lion’s share of the money, which he feels entitled to because he put up the original seed money and he also greases whatever palms need greasing and makes sure the right people are looking the other way so that the flow of this particular ‘traffic’ isn’t impeded.” She concluded by taking another long sip of water to keep from gagging on her words. The scenario she’d outlined made her sick when she gave any real thought to it.
“I’m impressed. You know this business pretty well.”
For a second, she allowed herself to bask in the unintended compliment. She had made it her business to take a huge crash course in the way these sleazy, sickening organizations were run when the rumors that there were flesh peddlers looking for fresh slaves began surfacing.
Janie’s worthless boyfriend’s roommate had indirectly been her initial source of direct information. When she’d come looking for Wayne, Jack, his roommate, told her he’d kicked Wayne out when he discovered that he was mixed up in finding girls who could be easily talked into voluntarily going into the life because of the “rewards” that waited for them down the line: money, expensive clothes, jewelry.
She’d shown the former roommate Janie’s picture and he had recognized her sister as being Wayne’s newest girlfriend. She’d quickly filled in the gaps in her education with information she picked up from other police officers.
“Oh, good,” she cracked in response to “Wayne’s” compliment. “Now I can die happy.”
He paused for a moment, as if considering her comment, then changed topics entirely. “So, have you given any thought to where you are staying after we leave here?”
Cavanaugh Undercover Page 8