Private Investigations

by Tori Carrington

  “Which, um, brings me to the reason I’m here,” he murmured.

  “You mean you didn’t come back just to pull me out from under the bed?” But before he could answer, Ripley softly pressed her lips against his.

  Joe groaned, his left hand going for her right and the gun. He held it still while his right hand skimmed under the hem of her T-shirt to grasp her breast. She dipped her tongue and tasted his lips. Coffee. Something sweet. A doughnut? She worked her tongue into his mouth. Vanilla. Definitely a doughnut. Bavarian cream.

  He quietly cleared his throat, flicking the pad of his thumb over her erect nipple. “What I have in mind takes place on top of the bed, not under it….”

  4

  OH, GOD…

  Joe had never considered himself a particularly religious man, but standing there kissing Ripley while holding her gun still with one hand, the fingers of his other stroking her bare breast under her T-shirt was the closest to heaven he’d ever come. A heart-pounding mixture of denial and raw need exploded in his groin until he took the gun out of her hand and put it on the table, then backed up until he plunked down in a chair and she tumbled after him. Much maneuvering ensued, and what he had hoped for happened as Ripley put her legs on either side of the chair and straddled him. Preferable would be if she was minus a pair of jeans, but when her pelvis made solid contact with his he forgot about logistics and delved his tongue deeper into her mouth.

  In one smooth move her T-shirt was up and over her head, tousling her auburn hair so it fell wild and curly around her face. He hungrily grasped her breasts in both hands. Not too big, not too small, she fit in his palms perfectly. He fastened his mouth over an engorged nipple and generously laved it with his tongue, reveling in the deep sound she made in her throat and the digging of her fingers into his shoulders. He skimmed his hands around her rib cage to her back, then dove toward her lush bottom, dipping his fingers into the waist of her jeans. She felt so softly decadent, so sinfully sweet. He pressed her more tightly against him, filling his mouth with her flesh and bringing his erection more fully against her.

  Ripley thrust her hands into his hair and pulled him back and away from her breasts so she could launch a fresh attack on his mouth. “This…is…so…crazy,” she said between kisses.

  Joe completely agreed. Crazy was exactly the word he’d use to describe every moment of the twelve hours since she first slipped between his sheets and into his bed.

  He ran his fingers up and down the hot silk of her back, then plunged them under her bottom as she pushed his jacket back, and fumbled for the buttons to his shirt.

  Joe thought he heard a sound in the hall. Still kissing Ripley, he slanted a gaze toward the door. The security latch was securely in place. But when it came down to it, how much security would it actually provide, especially against those three guys?

  All too quickly the reason he’d run out on his lunch meeting with a couple of sales representatives and returned to the hotel to see her came rushing back.

  “Ripley,” he whispered, trying to tear his mouth from hers.

  She made a low sound in her throat as she tugged the tails of his shirt from his slacks.

  He caught her hands in his and pulled his head back as far as he could without giving himself whiplash. He nearly cursed at the sheer desire he saw reflected in her brown eyes.

  “Ripley, we need to talk.”

  The instant the words were out, the unmistakable sound of a card key being inserted into the lock came from the door.

  In a flash she was off his lap and diving for the bedroom.

  Joe began to follow, nearly colliding with her when she backtracked to retrieve her gun and myriad papers from the table. Her hands shook as she grasped all of it and sought safety.

  He wrapped his fingers around hers, pulling her to a stop. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to run with her, or help her run, not considering what he knew. “Ripley, those guys—the ones from last night—they tracked me down to talk to me this morning.”

  She blinked at him, apparently not understanding at first, then her eyes widened.

  “I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, Ripley, or how deeply you’re in it, but they identified themselves as FBI.”

  The lock mechanism clicked. The hell with grappling between right and wrong. He grasped her by the shoulders and thrust her into the bedroom, closing the door behind him just as he heard the outer door get caught on the security latch.

  Christ. Joe closed his eyes and cursed. What were the laws concerning harboring a fugitive?

  He glanced at Ripley and the panicked expression on her beautiful face. Aw, hell, who was he kidding? He’d bet his belt and his business that she wasn’t any more a fugitive than he was. While half a day wasn’t a lot of time in which to get to know someone, he doubted Ripley could even bring herself to jaywalk. The woman had made his bed, for God’s sake.

  The sound of a body being thrown against the outer door filtered through to them.

  Ripley gasped then wriggled from his grasp. He watched, frozen, as she stuffed the gun into her jeans and covered it with her T-shirt, then grabbed a duffel bag from the bed. She stuffed the papers into it. “FBI my behind.” She rushed toward the balcony.

  Joe followed her, the sweet bottom in question looking damn fine in those close-fitting jeans.

  “Ripley, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be going to my room right now. They know about me, remember?”

  “How much?” she asked, searching his face.

  “What do you mean, how much?”

  She stared at him.

  “They know I’m your next-door neighbor. No, they don’t know you stayed in my room last night, but I think they suspect it. Strongly.”

  “So who did you say you were with then?”

  He cleared his throat. “A stripper.”

  She surprised him by kissing him full on the mouth.

  “What was that for?”

  “A thank-you. You lied to protect me.”

  That, he had. And he was beginning to hope he wouldn’t live to regret doing so.

  He watched her throw her bag over the side of the balcony and had the sinking sensation that he indeed was going to live to regret it. He looked over the side with her. Her bag was caught in one of the lower branches of a tree next to the pool. He swallowed hard and took a step back, taking her with him.

  “What in the hell are you doing?” he asked in a hushed voice.

  She frowned at him. “I’m going to climb down to the ground. What did you think I was going to do?”

  “Climb down to the ground.”

  She wriggled out of his grip. Something she was getting good at. Before he could move she had swung her feet over the railing and was crouching to grab the lower bar of the wrought iron.

  Joe closed his eyes and cursed again.

  She laughed. “What’s the matter, Joe? You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  “No. It’s you I’m afraid of.”

  He gripped the railing and watched her let go and hang from the bottom part. Her feet swayed for several seconds, then she gained a foothold on the railing on the balcony below.

  Oh, God…

  The irony that those were the same words he’d mentally uttered only a few minutes ago when they started kissing wasn’t lost on him. He feverishly rubbed the back of his neck, wondering why he and God were getting so well acquainted all of a sudden, and knowing it was because of the sexy little demon now dropping from the next railing…and straight into the pool.

  Joe grinned as she broke the surface of the water, sputtering, and gave her a little wave. Then it hit him—the sound of the door about to give way in the room behind him. And there was Ripley down below pulling herself from the side of the pool. In two seconds flat he and Ripley would be separated for what could possibly be forever.

  Then where would she be? Whose bed would she crawl into in the middle of the night? What other imbecile would she shock the hell ou
t of with her recklessness?

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he gripped the railing and followed Ripley’s lead. When he was on the balcony below, he aimed for the cement patio beside the pool. Too late he figured out that a guy didn’t have the most accurate aim when he was shaking clear down to his bones. He landed smack dab in the middle of the pool.

  RIPLEY’S NECK snapped back as Joe maneuvered his late-model sedan from the hotel parking lot. Even as she twisted the water from her T-shirt and onto the floor, she glanced around the car, which could have been a twin to the one her parents owned, a four-door Lincoln that had old fogey stamped all over it. Either that or pimp. She gazed at Joe through half-lidded eyes. No. He didn’t look like a pimp. Despite the power he seemed to wield over her body, she didn’t think he intended to use that same body to make money for himself.

  She glanced in the back seat.

  “What are those?” she asked, staring at about eight shoe boxes.

  “Shoes.”

  She stared at him. “I meant what are you doing with them?”

  He glanced at her. “I’m a sports shoe maker.”

  “A salesman?”

  He crooked his neck as if trying to work out a few kinks. “For the purpose of this trip, yes, I suppose you could say that.”

  Ripley recalled climbing into his bed the night before and being thankful he wasn’t a pudgy salesman. Little did she know. He was a salesman. Though, thankfully, not a pudgy one. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on Joe’s long, lean body. He had the physique of a top-rung baseball player. And a completely decadent one-track mind. Just thinking about his searing kisses, both to her mouth and her breasts, made her hot all over, despite the coolness of the water soaking her clothes.

  She slid the 9mm from the waist of her jeans and laid it on the seat beside her, then pawed through her duffel bag, thankful it hadn’t landed in the pool along with her. She didn’t say anything when Joe took the firearm and put it on the floor under the seat. She pulled out a fresh, dry T-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts. With a quick yank, she peeled the wet material from her torso.

  The car swerved, throwing her against the passenger door. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  She readied the fresh T-shirt to put on. “What do you mean?”

  His eyeballs looked ready to pop straight out of his head as he drew to a stop at a red light. “You’re…”

  She followed his gaze to her bare breasts, shocked right alongside him. She quickly put on the T-shirt, yanking it down farther than she should have. His hot gaze told her that wasn’t much better. She glanced to find her pebbled nipples standing out in clear relief against the soft cotton.

  She’d been so preoccupied with their flight, she hadn’t thought twice about trading her wet shirt for a dry one, completely oblivious to the fact that they were in a moving vehicle in the middle of the day. She glanced out the side window and found an elderly man grinning at her, gums and all, from a bus stop bench. Oh, boy.

  Still, Joe’s knee-jerk reaction thrilled her straight to her toes.

  She longingly eyed the dry shorts she held, then looked at the heavy, damp denim weighing down her legs.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Joe warned.

  She smiled. “What?”

  “Changing your shorts in here.”

  “Why?” She batted her eyelashes at him, something she had never done in her life but that felt strangely natural right now. “You wouldn’t want me to catch cold, would you, Joe Pruitt? A cold could lead to a nasty respiratory infection. A nasty respiratory infection can lead to full-blown pneumonia. And you can die from pneumonia.”

  “We can die if I drive the car into a telephone pole, too.”

  She shrugged and eased the top button of her jeans open. “You don’t have to look.”

  “I don’t have to breathe, either.”

  She laughed. “You aren’t really putting me into the same category as breathing, are you?”

  “I’m putting looking at a naked woman into the same category as breathing. They both happen automatically. There’s no way I’m going to be able to act like you’re not doing anything over there.”

  “Then I’d suggest you pull the car over,” she said, and with one wrenching, skin-chaffing yank, pulled her wet jeans off.

  The car swerved again, then screeched to a halt in the parking lot of a small grocer. Ripley wriggled the shorts halfway up her thighs and was about to pull them the rest of the way when Joe beaned her in the head with a cardboard windshield shade he retrieved from the back seat.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, rubbing the back of her head.

  He was staring at her lap. “Are those my underwear?”

  She grinned sheepishly. “Yeah.”

  He muttered something under his breath, then nearly decapitated her with the shade.

  “Would you stop?” she said.

  “Somebody has to save you from yourself,” he said, spreading the shade so it blocked part of her from outside eyes.

  Ripley bristled at his words. While they appeared innocent on the surface, she suspected a much deeper meaning lurked just beneath. Only because she’d spent a lifetime listening to similar words from her parents. “Trust us. We know best, sweetheart,” her mother had told her when she’d come home with a battered dirt bike at age fourteen, bought with money she’d made baby-sitting and doing lawn work for neighbors in a ten-block area. Her parents had taken the bike away, promising her they’d reconsider getting her another one when she was a little older. Back then, she’d been slow to realize that “reconsider” basically meant “not in this lifetime.”

  She hated when people tried to take care of her. Her parents she had to put up with. Joe…

  She finished dressing then maneuvered to do the zipper. “No need. I’m done.”

  “Thank God for small favors.”

  She ducked as the shade made another pass overhead until it was once again in the back seat.

  She squinted at him in the bright midday light streaming through the windows. “Aren’t you going to change?”

  He backed the car out of the lot, nearly getting rear-ended for his efforts. “I would, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to get my pants off.”

  “Your pants should be easier to get off than mine.”

  He stared at her as if she weren’t only missing the point, but the entire paragraph. She glanced at the front of his brown trousers and saw immediately what he was talking about. “Oh.”

  “Oh? Oh?” He whipped the steering wheel around quicker than he needed to and was forced to make a correction. “You nearly get us both killed by playing Sally Striptease and all you have to say is oh?”

  She tucked her T-shirt into her shorts, then gathered her wet garments. “I would have thought you’d know how to handle yourself around strippers.”

  WELL, JUST WHAT in the hell was that supposed to mean?

  Joe dragged in a deep breath and slowly let it out, still not entirely convinced Ripley had just did what she had. What was she thinking, stripping down to her skivvies, his skivvies, right there in the car? He didn’t mind so much that he was around to see. But he could have done without the old geezer nearly smashing his stubble-dotted face against the passenger window to get a better look.

  The slow, even breathing exercise wasn’t working. He was still as aroused as he’d been two minutes ago. And his mood wasn’t improving considering he’d just as good as admitted he’d been angry that someone other than himself had gawked at what he wanted all to himself.

  He felt remarkably possessive. As though Ripley was his and his alone to look at. Nude. Naked. Bare as the day she was born. Her rosy nipples pert and puckered in the middle of her swaying breasts.

  All this and he hadn’t even slept with the woman yet.

  Yet? He ran his hand restlessly through his damp hair, then reached across her lap to the glove compartment where he always kept a clean golf towel. If he had a brain in his head, he wouldn’t eve
n consider slipping between Ripley Logan’s deliciously toned thighs, much less be so obsessed with the idea that he could barely think of anything else. Including the three beefy FBI agents that not only were hunting for her, but obviously already suspected he was linked to her in some way.

  He grimaced. If they’d had any doubts before, they certainly didn’t now—not with both their hotel room doors securely bolted from the inside, but no one inside.

  He pulled out the golf towel and ran it over his face and hair, then offered it to Ripley. She passed on it, saying she was pretty much dry enough already. He was glad somebody was. He felt like he was sitting in a warm puddle. Or like he was a warm puddle…of lust.

  She shifted on the seat next to him. Joe was almost afraid to look for fear she’d changed her mind about her choice of clothing and was stripping yet again.

  What was with him when it came to her, anyway? For three hours last night he’d been in the company of some of the finest-looking ladies Memphis had to offer and spent the entire time staring at their feet. Meanwhile, Ripley had him so hot and bothered that his wet clothes and the blasted air-conditioning weren’t enough to cool him down.

  He put the wet towel on the seat next to him then made the mistake of looking in her direction. “I was thinking—”

  The words got lost somewhere between his brain and his mouth. Ripley was bending over the seat, doing Lord only knew what in the back, her bottom stuck high in the air. The hem of the shorts was fine when she was sitting, but when she was positioned like that…

  Whatever ground Joe had managed to recover in the past few minutes disappeared altogether. He nearly ran off the road again. The blare of a horn behind him made his ears stop ringing but did nothing to put out the fire raging through his bloodstream.

  “What are you doing now?” he said between gritted teeth, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so tightly he was afraid he might snap it off its mounting.

  Mounting. He shifted uncomfortably then slid another glance at her round, well-shaped bottom.