Hot & Bothered

by Susan Andersen

  The insincerity of that smile irritated Victoria no end. Good Lord, he seemed more like a soldier to her now than he had six years ago when he’d still actually been one. Back then, at least, he’d never hesitated to exhibit emotion, and his expression had always been open. These days she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Hullo, Mr. Miglondoanni!”

  Victoria’s heart clutched at the bright expectancy in her daughter’s face as she stared up all unknowing at the man who’d fathered her. But she managed to say calmly, “It’s Miglionni, sweetie.”

  “It’s a mouthful either way, especially when the mouth trying to pronounce it belongs to such a dainty little thing.” He smiled down at Esme, and this time genuine humor warmed his eyes. “Instead of trying to wrap your lips around all those syllables, why don’t you just call me—” with a quick glance at Victoria, he cleared his throat “—John. That would probably be simplest.”

  “’Kay.”

  He dropped to a crouch in front of her and reached out long, tanned fingers to the braided and bespeckled doll that peeked over Esme’s shoulder from her backpack. “Who is this? Your sister?”

  “No, silly. That’s my American Girl doll. Her name is Molly Mack-’n-tire.”

  “She’s very cute.” He hesitated, clearing his throat again as patent uncertainty dimmed the usual lady-killer wattage of his charm. “Nearly as cute as you,” he added and gave her a small, crooked grin so diffidently sweet it made Victoria blink.

  “Oh, you.” Esme giggled in delight and gave him a flirtatious poke with one soft little finger. It didn’t cause so much as a dimple in the soft cloth stretched across his hard chest. “Do you like her Route 66 frock?”

  “Yeah, sure. It’s very, uh…blue.”

  “Yes, lovely, isn’t it? It’s new. Mummy sent away for it on the inner net.”

  “Internet, Esme.”

  “Uh-huh.” The little girl didn’t spare her so much as a glance. Her bright-eyed gaze was locked firmly on Rocket. “I have a playdate with Rebecca Chilworth. She and her mummy are s’posed to pick me up, but they’re late. Rebecca’s my best friend, you know. Fiona Smyth was my best friend, but now that I live in the States, Rebecca is. Her and my mummies usta know each other a long time ago. Do you have a best friend?”

  “Yes, I have two.” He looked a little dazed, but added gamely, “Their names are Cooper and Zach. We were in the Marines together.”

  Her brow puckered in confusion. “What’s that?”

  “They’re soldiers, Es,” Victoria interjected. “Like the Queen’s Guards at home.”

  “Only better,” John added. “A Marine wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those tall-ass furry hats.”

  None of which appeared to enlighten Esme, so Victoria added, “You know, sweetie. Like what Mr. McIntire is in.”

  Her daughter’s whole face lit up and the look she flashed John couldn’t have been more awed if a super-hero had suddenly sprung to life. “You been over the seas, then?” she demanded.

  “Yes. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in other countries.”

  “Molly’s papa is over the seas, and she has to make sack fries.”

  John’s expression not only lacked comprehension, he looked downright stupefied. Esme’s gregarious chatter could do that to a person, so Victoria decided to take pity on him. But she didn’t bother to swallow the little smile that quirked her lips. It was refreshing to see him at sea in his dealings with a female.

  “Glad to see you’re having a good time,” he growled and her smile grew.

  “Oh, I am.” But she saw Esme’s baffled expression and straightened her face. “Each of the American Girl dolls are set in a different era,” she informed him. “And part of their appeal lies in the books that come with them, with settings in the doll’s specific period in history. Molly’s stories describe life on the home front during World War II, from the challenge of having a father who’s overseas, to the sacrifices her family makes to help their country win the war.”

  Esme beamed at the dark-haired man in front of her. “Sack fries,” she agreed. “Mummy says that’s part of what makes Molly a hair win.”

  “Heroine, sweetie.”

  “Ah.” Then John, too, grinned, a slash of white so reminiscent of the carefree, I-can-charm-your-pants-off, you-gotta-love-me smile that had first sucked Victoria into his orbit all those years ago she felt her knees grow weak and her thighs clamp tight.

  She unlocked the latter and took a hasty step away to give herself some distance before she did something foolish like reach out and run her fingers over the same hard surface her daughter had poked. Hot awareness surged so fast and furiously through her system that blisters were no doubt popping up in its wake, and she gave silent thanks when the doorbell rang. She crossed the entryway and opened the door, greeting Rebecca and her mother with even more warmth than usual.

  With the arrival of her friend, Esme lost interest in John so fast and completely it made his head swim. He’d been doing okay there for a while, but apparently she had bigger fish to fry now, and there was a lesson to be learned from thinking he’d been making some kind of headway. He watched as she threw her arms around Tori’s neck, pursed her little rosebud lips for an enthusiastic smooch, then tore away and clattered out the door, exchanging machine-gun-rapid patter with a little curly-haired dishwater blonde he could only assume was the aforementioned best friend Rebecca. Being able to charm a little girl for five minutes didn’t mean he knew squat about kids in the long term, he reminded himself.

  “I’m sorry we’re late,” a more mature version of the little blonde said breathlessly to Victoria, pulling his attention away from the children who were climbing into a minivan parked on the circular drive. “I overestimated how quickly I could run a few errands. And Lord knows—”

  “Ma-mmmm!”

  With a shrug and an assessing, curious glance at him, Rebecca’s mother moved toward the door. “The natives are definitely restless. I’ll have Esme back by six.”

  “Thanks, Pam.”

  Victoria walked the woman out and John listened to a flurry of farewells and slamming car doors. Then between one moment and the next she was back, closing the front door behind her as silence settled over the entryway. Blowing a strand of hair out of eyes that were alight with humor, she grinned at him. “Whew.”

  She was mussed and flushed, and looked so much like the Tori he remembered that he experienced a sudden sharp desire to pin her against the door at her back and rock his mouth over hers. Man, just one little kiss, that was all he asked. Just to see if the new, uptight Victoria had the same addictive flavor that had lived on in his mind all these years. Heartbeat picking up tempo, he took a determined step forward.

  She scooped her hair back. “So, tell me. Why were you in a bad mood when you came in?”

  He halted, jerked back to the present. “What?”

  “When you let yourself in a while ago, you looked furious. Then you saw Es and me and slapped on your company face. Which was pretty smarmy, by the way.”

  O-kay. He took a large step back. That wasn’t the brightest plan he’d ever had. Hell, he had professional standards to maintain here. But still…“What do you mean, smarmy?”

  “Come on. The way you went from being clearly out of sorts to that phony hail-fellows-well-met smile? Smarmy with a capital smar, Miglionni. I thought for a minute there you were going to try to sell us a used car.”

  “Yeah?” He stepped forward again. “So what about you, then?”

  She, too, took a step forward, her chin angling up at him. “What about me?”

  “You’ve been giving me that little society-princess smile since I first landed on your doorstep, when both of us know damn well that if you had your way I’d be six states away. What’s that all about?”

  “Good manners.”

  “Uh-huh. So let me get this straight. When you do it, you’re Little Ellie Etiquette, but when I do it I’m a used-car salesman?” He shrugged. “That
’s fair.”

  The last thing he expected to see was the wide, amused grin she flashed him. “No, it’s not, but somehow it seems different when I’m the one doing it. I suppose, though, that it’s just as much a way for you to keep your feelings to yourself as it is for me.”

  Damn. He started measuring the distance between them and the door again, deciding that pressing her up against an unyielding surface was a mighty fine idea after all. Screw professionalism. Stacked up against the thought of getting his hands in that hair, kissing those lips, it was highly overrated.

  And if that wasn’t dangerous thinking, he didn’t know what was. Stuffing his hands into his slacks pockets, he took a large step back, feeling like he was performing some spastic do-si-do but determined to put distance between them. “You wanna know what was bugging me?”

  “Yes. If you’d like to tell me.”

  Sunshine from the leaded-glass entry sidelights shone in her eyes, picking out the gold flecks in her moss-green irises. Feeling a sudden need for an emotional, as well as physical, distance if he wanted to keep himself from doing something they’d both regret, he said flatly, “It was the conversation I had with the police about Jared. I was thinking about the lead detective, who’s a donut-eating lard-ass too lazy to look at anyone else when he’s got a nice, convenient scapegoat in your brother.”

  That gave him the distance he wanted, but seeing the humor wiped from her face gave him no satisfaction. On the contrary, the strained worry he was responsible for putting in its place made him feel like a school-yard bully. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he leaned toward her.

  Only to watch her back snap poker-straight and her expression smooth out into the bland aloofness he hated. It should have put his back up. Instead her words played back in his head. I suppose, though, that it’s just as much a way for you to keep your feelings to yourself as it is for me.

  Shit.

  He reached for her hand. “Come on.” Tugging it gently, he led her down the hallway toward the office she’d assigned for his use. “Let’s go sit down and talk about it.”

  A moment later he seated her in the chair facing his desk, then circled it to take his own. “Can I have Mary bring you anything? Some iced tea, maybe? Something stronger?” He wasn’t exactly accustomed to summoning servants, but he’d been the housekeeper’s golden boy since he’d questioned her and the rest of the help yesterday, so what the hell. Might as well take advantage. No one understood better that he was likely to drop out of favor just as quickly as he’d come into it.

  Victoria merely shook her head, however.

  “She agrees with you, by the way.”

  She blinked at him. “Mary does? About what?”

  “Jared’s innocence.”

  That got her attention and John saw with satisfaction a spark of anger igniting in her eyes. He considered that a big improvement over the defeat that had dulled them.

  She straightened in her chair. “You questioned Mary?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And the cook and the two girls who come in once a week to clean, as well. Oh, and the gardener.” He gave her a smile he knew would aggravate the hell out of her. “And except for the gardener, who’s still hacked off at Jared for running over his dahlias with the car, they all agree the kid couldn’t have killed your father. Swore that he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “I told you that!”

  “Yes, you did. But I take nothing on faith and no one’s word is good enough for me. I’m not satisfied I’m even getting in the vicinity of the truth, in fact, until I’ve double—and preferably triple or quadruple—checked every statement I take, every assertion I hear. That, darlin’, is what you’re paying me for.”

  “To be a cynic?”

  “Damn straight. You want someone to hold your hand, agreeing with every word you speak and ‘poor-babying’ you about your murdered dad and missing brother, go talk to one of your country-club boys. You want Jared found, you got me. And that means poking my nose in every corner of his life, finding out things the help might know, discovering the stuff he’d never in a million years confide in his sister.”

  He waited for her to ask what kind of stuff, but instead she straightened in her seat and eyed him with speculative consideration. “The police aren’t going to look any further than Jared, are they?”

  “Not if the conversation I had with Detective Simpson was any indication.” Anger burned in his gut all over again at the thought of the cop’s incompetence. It wasn’t something he was accustomed to running into with most law-enforcement personnel.

  “Then I’d like to expand your job.”

  He stared at her. “In what way?”

  “I don’t understand the detective’s attitude, given that there are literally dozens of people who might have wanted my father dead. So you look into them. Heck, I can give you ten names off the top of my head just to get you started.”

  “That’s probably not a great way to spend your money. It’s likely to cost you a fortune and still not net you the results you’re looking for.”

  “I don’t care about the money. The police aren’t doing their job, so I want you to do it for them.”

  “You do understand, don’t you, that I have no authority to compel anyone to answer my questions? If people don’t want to talk to me there’s not a helluva lot I can do to make them. It’s why private detectives rarely get involved in murder cases. We have neither the jurisdiction nor the contacts the cops do.”

  She met his eyes and her lips curled up in a faint smile. “Yet you’ll do it anyway, won’t you?”

  He hesitated, then shrugged. “If that’s what you want. What the hell, I enjoy a good challenge.” Leaning back in his chair, he studied her. “It’s your money, of course, but if you don’t want to find all your resources going into my pockets, you might consider acting as my entree to the folks in your world. I’m not exactly the country-club type.”

  She considered him for a moment. “No, you aren’t. Does it really matter?”

  “Only in that water-finding-its-own-level kind of way. Chances are better than decent that without an introduction from you, most of that crowd will be leery about talking to me.” Or, more likely, flat-out refuse.

  “All right.”

  “All right they’ll be leery or all right you’ll—”

  “I’ll perform the introductions.”

  “Don’t agree without giving it some thought,” he warned. “It could turn out to be time-consuming.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t care how time-consuming it is.” She rose to her feet and looked down at him. “If that’s what it takes to clear Jared and get on with our lives, then that’s what I’ll do. Just let me know what you need.”

  He thought about that as he watched her walk from the office—about letting her know what he needed. Oh, Mama. Then he thought about getting on with his life, and a less-than-amused laugh escaped him. Shit. He would’ve been all over that concept two days ago. Now he found himself with a daughter he hadn’t known existed and didn’t have a clue what to do with. Not to mention a persistent lech for a woman who only wanted him to untangle her brother’s problem, then disappear. Get on with his life…His ass!

  He didn’t even know what the hell that meant anymore.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JARED STOOD OUTSIDE THE SPOT, silently reciting a variation of the pep talk his baseball coach always gave the team before a game. He’d heard about the drop-in recreational center when he’d eavesdropped on a conversation between a couple of kids hustling for change on the 16th Street Mall. His ears had perked up when he’d heard one of them claim it was possible to hang out there from five in the evening until ten. The prospect of having a solid five hours before he had to move on made him feel almost giddy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a solid block of time to simply sit in one place, never mind sleep. He didn’t even care about the activities the rec center might offer. All he wanted was somewhere he could stay put for a while. It seemed like every
time he got halfway comfortable, he had to pick up and move.

  He stood to the side of the door for several minutes and watched some Hispanic guys horse around inside the center. Then, drawing a deep breath, he took a step toward the opening.

  “You don’t wanna go in there,” a husky voice said from behind him and Jared jerked to a stop, looking over his shoulder. A kid, so slight of build he looked as if a stiff breeze might blow him away, detached himself from the shadows cast by the side of the building. Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans, he jerked his pointed chin toward the group of boys inside the rec hall. “That’s one of the local gangs,” he told Jared. “They have a tendency to run off anyone not one of their homeboys.”

  “Shit.” Disappointment was a massive stone around his neck. God, he was tired. He was so freaking tired and he just wished he could go home.

  Tears burned behind his eyelids, prickled his nasal passage and he turned his back so the kid with the funny, raspy voice wouldn’t catch sight of them and think he was a damn baby. “Thanks for the heads-up,” he said gruffly. Blowing out a weary breath, he trudged away from the place that for one brief, shining moment he’d believed might actually provide a few hours of sanctuary.

  “Hey, wait up!” The kid caught up and gave him a friendly nudge. “What’s your name? I seen you around, here and there. I’m P.J.” He dug a grimy hand into his pocket and pulled out a candy bar. “You want half?”

  Jared surreptitiously knuckled away a couple of tears that managed to leak past his guard. Glancing at the kid from the corner of his eye, he saw him studiously looking the other way and thought maybe he wasn’t the only one who succumbed to the occasional overwhelming bout of helplessness. For some reason, the realization made a difference, and after a swipe of his nose with his shirttail, he squared his shoulders. “Yeah. Sure.” He was careful when he reached out to accept the portion of candy bar P.J. offered, because what he really wanted to do was snatch it out of the little guy’s hand. He couldn’t quite remember when he’d last eaten. He’d killed off the brandy last night, but hadn’t had any solid food since long before then. Resisting the urge to stuff the entire candy bar in his mouth, he took a small bite. “Thanks.”