A Touch of Passion (boxed set romance bundle)

by Uvi Poznansky

  “Cute.” He grasped her hand as they reached the corner. “Here’s Divas. Stick close.”

  “I don’t think I’m their kind. How about you stay with me, kid.”

  “You’d protect me?”

  “Of course,” Celia said. “You can’t be the hero all the time. Maybe I want to win one.”

  “You’d make a terrible Batman,” Dax said.

  “I’ll be Wonder Woman.”

  His entire body heated at the image of Celia in a Wonder Woman costume. All boobs and legs. He knew she’d fill it out perfectly. “Deal. But you have to model the costume for me first.”

  She laughed and shook her head.

  “There’s Al. Big guy, bald head, gold nose ring.”

  Celia gasped. “He looks like one of the bad guys.”

  “He’s not. Trust me, Al is a chameleon.”

  “I do trust you, Dax.”

  Those words made him walk a little taller. Puff out his chest a bit. He pulled her in front of him and maneuvered through the tables filled with laughing parties of people, mostly drunk or high. Harmless, mainly, as the partiers looked for the next laugh.

  “Why is it so busy?” she asked.

  “Diva’s does a show in the middle of the street. On the weekends, they sell tickets for brunch-all you can drink mimosas with a breakfast choice. Under forty bucks per person. This is just happy hour.”

  The music changed from disco to an introduction. “What’s that?” Celia looked around.

  Dax kept her attached to his side-the last thing he wanted was for her to get lost in the crowd. This wasn’t her arena. “Just watch.” He kept moving toward Al, who saw him and waved him over.

  “Hey, Dax. Who’s your friend?”

  “Celia Langston. New in town. Celia, Al. Al, Celia.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand.

  Al chuckled and shook it. “Cute.”

  Celia pulled her hand back and glared at Al.

  “Watch the show,” Dax said, hiding a smile as he turned her toward the entrance. A gorgeous ebony woman wearing a two foot tall headdress waited as the cars around her stopped to honk and take pictures.

  “I don’t believe it,” Celia said. “She, he, she’s beautiful.”

  Dax kept his hand in hers, but pulled back to talk to Al. “Where’s Dad?”

  Al jerked a thumb to his left. “Way down at the other end. I chose this spot so we could be hidden from the main strip.”

  “Veronica?”

  “Dancing with the guys. The girl can move.”

  Dax peered down the long row of tables. At the far end of the restaurant his dad sat at a high top with a pitcher of mimosas, using his smart phone to video Veronica.

  Only, his dad didn’t have a smart phone.

  And the one he was using was covered in gold. Probably 14 karat.

  “Veronica is having my dad video them, her and the photographers, together.”

  “You’re good, Dax.”

  He heard Al’s sarcasm, but didn’t react. “If my dad gets hurt in any way, I’ll kill her.”

  “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” Al drummed the tabletop.

  “Maybe she needs to prove to Umberto that they are all together?”

  “Conjecture.”

  “Yeah.” He looked at Celia, who watched everything in awe. Would she enjoy the show, or was it way too far out of her comfort zone? He turned to Al. “Did you notice if my dad has an oxygen tank with him?”

  “Haven’t seen one.” Al took a drink from his light draft beer.

  Hell. “So what’s the plan?”

  “Originally, I was going to scare them into thinking they would be arrested. Now? Veronica is a wild card.”

  “She knew about the plan. Said she wanted to be part of what’s going down.” His dad looked like he was having the time of his damn life.

  “I just don’t know that I buy her story of not knowing where they were this whole time.”

  “Trust me,” Dax said, remembering her rages. “She didn’t know. She was not included in their adventure. That made her almost as mad as them having the jewels.”

  “I’m just glad he’s still wearing that emerald around his neck. Even though it’s fake, somebody could have killed him for it. It looks real to me.”

  Not fake. Definitely worth killing for, if anybody realized. Deciding his friend deserved the truth, Dax said, “About that emerald…”

  “It’s real?” Al blew out a breath. “Those lucky sons of bitches. Now I get why she’s so damn mad.”

  Dax held up his free hand, the other one still entwined with Celia’s. “You still want to arrest them?”

  “Yeah,” Al nodded. “I sure the hell do. They’ve pissed me off.”

  Celia sighed as the song the drag queen sang ended. “That was great. Just as good as the shows in Vegas.”

  “Celia,” Dax said, trying not to laugh at her enjoyment. “How about you go and sit with my dad, you know, like you just bumped into him?”

  She leaned away from him with a frown. “Just go over, as if I was in the neighborhood? No offense to your friend, Al, here, but that doesn’t make sense.”

  Al drained his beer, but didn’t say a word.

  “Veronica will know that we’re here,” Dax explained. “She had to realize I’d come after my dad. I’m gonna help Al with the phony arrest.”

  Celia swallowed, looking from Al to Dax. “All right. But is there a way to get a drink before the shit hits the fan?”

  “My dad has a pitcher of mimosas he can share,” Dax said. “He’s not supposed to be drinking anything but water.”

  “Okay, then. See you soon!”

  Celia walked carefully through the crowd of drunk people, her innate politeness making it take longer than normal. “Excuse me,” she said. “Excuse me.”

  “Where did you find her?” Al asked, his elbow on the table as he watched her walk away.

  “She came to our little town by the sea. Just opened up a café. Great food.”

  “Great body. She’s something else.”

  “Back off, Al,” Dax said.

  “All right, I was just noticing.” Al scowled. “You seem to care an awful lot about a woman you just met.”

  Dax patted his heart. “Believe me, I didn’t ask for it. But yeah. I do.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Al put his empty beer glass upside down—a signal that he was done drinking. “Good luck, man. Okay, you want to cuff the first guy, or taze the second?”

  “Uh.” Dax didn’t want to do either of those things, especially not with his dad videoing via gold-plated phone.

  “Just messing with you.” Al pushed his arm. “Follow my lead. Don’t say anything. Look menacing. Hunch your shoulders. Growl.”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Everybody is going to be looking at me, and my badge. Your job will be to catch the dickwad with the emerald, ‘cause I know he’s gonna run.”

  Dax didn’t question how Al knew that. “Got it.”

  Al looked down the tables. “Celia is sitting with your dad. Veronica is still dancing, acting like she hasn’t seen anything. Yeah, you’re right. She wants us to go through with the plan.”

  “I’m following you,” Dax said, wondering for the tenth time how he’d come to be here. Then figured it didn’t matter. In Zen terms, he was here. He was now.

  In the background, another Diva lip-synched to Barbra Streisand, and most of the partiers watched him. However, as Al shoved his way through the people like a damn truck, leaving drunk people lying on the sidelines, they gathered attention of their own.

  Well, hell.

  As they reached the table where Veronica grinded with her two boy toys, Al shouted, “Stop. You’re under arrest.”

  Veronica slowed her grind, her expression shocked as she watched Al and Dax come forward. Jorgio froze, while Felippe grabbed his crotch and air pumped a few times.

  “Suck this,” Felippe said.
<
br />   Jorgio jumped from the table.

  Celia reached out her foot and tripped him so that Dax was able to pounce on his back and hold him still.

  “It’s about time you got here, son,” his dad said with a grin.

  Veronica shoved her elbow into Felippe so that he lost his balance and fell off the table, toward Al. Al took Felippe’s arm, swung him around and cuffed him.

  Dax, his knee in the center of Jorgio’s back, looked up at Celia, who had a flute of champagne in her hand, toasting him with it from where she sat next to his dad.

  “Thanks.” His heart pounded.

  “You would have got him,” she said. “I just wanted to help.” She sipped from her glass, her pinky up.

  “We make a good team,” he said.

  She winked. “Whatever you say, Dax.”

  He swallowed a growl as Veronica jumped down from the table.

  “Did you get all that, Dave?” she asked.

  “Sure did, Veronica. Right down to you elbowing that guy and aiding in the arrest.”

  Dax’s gaze clashed with his dad’s. “What were you thinking?”

  His dad took offense and clamped his jaw tight.

  “Did you bring your air?”

  His dad’s mouth turned white with anger. And yes, it was tinged with blue, but why did Dax still feel like an asshole?

  “Veronica asked for my help.”

  Dax stood and Veronica quickly put her heel on Jorgio’s neck. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “One move, and you will be paralyzed.”

  “Why did you bring my dad into your drama?” Dax demanded, meeting Veronica glare for glare.

  “Why not?” the model countered. “Felippe thought he’d get to me, sending me a selfie without any other words. I showed it to your dad, who recognized this place from an old movie. I explained what had been stolen from me and he offered to help. He has a car.”

  Dax knew he was being irrational, but it took all of his will power, and the touch of Celia’s hand on his back, to remain calm. “Okay. Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?”

  “It happened so fast,” Veronica shrugged. “We barely had a plan by the time we got here.”

  “My cell phone is at home, you know I always forget it.”

  It was true, his dad rarely remembered to take it with him.

  Dax breathed in. Breathed out.

  Celia whispered at his neck, “Doing good.”

  “Now what?” Al asked, hauling a sobbing Felippe up by the bound wrists.

  “Throw them to the sharks,” Veronica said.

  “We don’t do that,” Al said with a disgusted shake of his head.

  Jorgio struggled. “Let me up, Veronica, we were just playing a joke. A trick. You always are the one to make the plans. You have to be in charge. You’ve got to lighten up. We decided to have fun, that’s all.”

  “Without me?” She dug her heel into Jorgio’s flesh. “And with my jewels?” She reached down, lifted her heel and flipped the crying playboy over. She yanked at the heavy gold chain at his neck. “This belongs to me.”

  “What do you care? It’s cubic zirconia,” Jorgio sniffed.

  “No, estupido, it is real,” she whispered into his ear. “It is worth more than the entire village your piece of shit self was born in, do you understand?”

  “No,” Jorgio said, his face turning a pasty white. He clutched his belly and gagged as the implications of what he’d done crashed through his partying fog.

  “Yes.” Veronica slipped the emerald necklace over her head, tucking the gem safely between her breasts. “You are fired.” She looked up. “Did you get that, too, Dave?”

  Dax’s dad nodded, happy as could be holding the gold phone. “Yep. Loud and clear.”

  “Thank you, Al.” She took an envelope from her back pocket and handed it to the ex-cop. “I don’t want to bring them home with me to Peru. They don’t deserve to keep Umberto’s trust.”

  Al grunted at the men. “Partying was more important than doing your job. You’ll fit right in, here in South Beach.”

  Dax studied each of them-Veronica, the photographers and his dad-frustration singing through his blood. It was over. Adrenalin left a bad aftertaste in his mouth. Celia sighed, her hand finding Dax’s, as if she sensed he needed her compassion. How, in such a short amount of time, could her touch soothe him so completely?

  ❋

  Celia finished her mimosa, and a second one, before they all sorted themselves out. Al made sure that Veronica didn’t want to keep the photographers, after she got their equipment, film included, and videoed confessions. Both guys were obviously wasted. They left them there with a hundred bucks each as severance pay.

  Drinking was fun, living in the moment was fun, but a person had to take care their lives weren’t destroyed. When those two sobered up-if they sobered up-no doubt they would regret their impulsive actions. And the emerald? Veronica had to have been sweating bullets, but she never let on. All was well now, though, and Dax said he had a hefty paycheck to prove it was worth the trouble.

  “Ready to go?” Dax asked, holding his hand out for Celia’s.

  His grip was comforting. She liked returning the pressure of his fingers with a squeeze of her own, as if they really were a team. Damn, the champagne. It always made her emotional.

  “Will your dad be okay, taking Veronica home?”

  “Yeah.” Dax rubbed the bridge of his nose. “He had his small tank in the trunk of his car. One hit, and he’s got enough pep to make it to Orlando. Wouldn’t surprise me if they decided to see Disney.”

  “Don’t be too hard on them, Dax, okay? Everybody needs to be needed once in a while. Veronica doesn’t know that your dad has cancer. She treats him differently.”

  “Like he’s just old, and not dying?” Dax pulled her down the sidewalk. “Come on. We still have to get those tables put together. If they weren’t stolen.”

  They made it to the jeep, which, miracle of all miracles, had one cardboard box left in the back.

  “Enough for one assembled table and chairs,” she said. “Better than none, I suppose.”

  “I’m sorry, Celia,” Dax said, his voice low. “Let’s get you home before anything else happens.”

  “Will you bring it up?” She didn’t want their night to end on a bad note. “Of course, if nobody stole it from the back of an open jeep on South Beach, it’s probably safe in my gated condo’s parking garage.”

  Dax ruffled his bleached-blond curls, scratching at the back of his neck as he climbed into the jeep and slipped behind the wheel. “I’ll do it.”

  “I have some leftovers from dinner the other night. Beer, too.” She got in, her dress hiking up her thighs.

  He sent her a look that expressed his hunger. Not for food, if she was reading the look correctly. She squirmed in her seat, but didn’t tug the fabric down.

  She wanted him. If she was being honest with herself, she wanted Dax more than any other man she’d ever known. Ever.

  He answered something in her heart. A question she hadn’t dared ask out loud, and yet, he was there. If he came up to the condo, she knew they would make love.

  Is that what she wanted?

  Hell yes.

  They exited the freeway on Commercial, and she reached across the console to trace circles on his tanned bicep. She wanted to kiss his clenched jaw as he drove, but that might cause an accident. Home. The sooner the better would be good. She couldn’t stop staring at his mouth. His chin. The curls resting just above his ear.

  He caught her energy, her pheromones, whatever-he seemed to know what she was thinking, and adjusted his seat.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” he demanded, his voice husky. Sexy as sin.

  “Like what?” She remembered their earlier banter in the café, when she’d stopped before saying the words. “Like I want to eat you? But I do.” She laughed low, dropping her touch to his knee. She traced the line of muscle up his thigh, stopping just shy of the rising rid
ge in his shorts. Her mouth watered. “I really do.”

  His look dared her to go further. “You have a wicked side.”

  “Don’t we all?” Celia’s breasts grew heavy and her thighs clenched. Teasing him made her ache all the more.

  Somehow, they made it to Caspian’s Nest, where Matthew, the night shift, waved them in.

  “He’ll know,” she said, not really caring, but comparing it to her old life of secrets.

  “He won’t care, if he does.” Dax pulled into the parking garage, unclasped his belt and leaned over the console, grasping the back of her head and crushing her to his mouth. “People need to get used to seeing us together, Celia.”

  His lips, hot, moist, seared her skin. She couldn’t speak if she wanted to.

  Dax unbuckled her seatbelt, and pulled her across the console to his lap-and the hardness straining against the fabric.

  She pressed against his length. “I could do it here,” she said with surprise. Definitely out of her box of rules.

  Dax’s eyes glazed. “Not yet. Let’s go.”

  She nodded, knowing she wasn’t drunk or even tipsy, yet she was off balance. Hot. Sweaty. Head over heels for Dax. He lifted her off of him, holding her by the upper arm until he was out of the jeep too. They kissed, madly, a mashing of mouths that intensified her longing.

  They made it to the elevator, her breasts so tight the nipples hurt. She’d never been this ready to make love. Forget that, it sounded way too nice for what she wanted to do with Dax. She wanted to have sex-wild and crazy sex. She was wet, throbbing. Needing. She kissed him, hanging on to his shoulders so she wouldn’t fall down. She grazed her hand over his zipper, tugging at the button on his shorts.

  He turned her, pointing to the cameras in the elevator. “You make me hot as hell, Celia. But I don’t want to give Matthew a show. God, we could have walked these four floors faster.”

  She was going to hell for sure, because she wasn’t even sorry. If not for the cameras, she’d wrap herself around Dax. Naked. Just to be closer to him.

  He knew it too. His jaw was clenched so tight the muscle at his throat corded. He held her hand, lightly twirling his thumb over the base of her palm. She couldn’t swallow.