by Avery Flynn
Calling it bright would be an understatement, but the riotous mixing of the goldenrod painted walls, mossy green love seat, and melon-colored pillows made her smile every time she walked in. She’d grown up trying to fit in despite her coarse hair, dark brown skin, and wide nose that marked her as being totally different from the WASPy rich kids in her neighborhood. She’d barely even gotten a chance to open her mouth to say hello before she’d seen it in their eyes. They’d never accept her as one of them.
There were some zip codes in the world where standing out was worse than being ignored, and she’d grown up in one of them. But she’d moved on, and her living room showed just how far. It was hers. It looked like her, it felt like her, and she wasn’t about to apologize to anyone for it.
She strolled inside. As she passed him, she couldn’t help but let her hand drift close to his bulky frame, and she had to force herself to keep moving instead of grabbing and pinning him against the wall. Getting on the motorcycle with him had been a very bad idea. And now, inside her apartment, it was just the two of them and her revved up engine.
She needed him the hell out of here.
“Good thing you’re not a lizard,” she said. “Even if you can be kind of slimy.”
“It’s part of my charm.” He chuckled.
The sound spilled over her like warm honey, and she struggled not to drown in the sweetness. “Is that what your mother always told you?”
He stiffened. “According to my mother, there was nothing charming about me.”
“Sorry.” She didn’t know what she’d just stepped into, but she was knee deep.
“Not your fault.” He shoved his fists into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “We need to be talking about your case.”
“My case?” That made it seem so distant and harmless. In reality, it was her life swirling around the toilet bowl. Many of her clients would scatter as soon as they heard the news. Having a client die in the middle of a makeup application tended to do that. The others would want her around just to get the inside scoop about what happened. Not that she would say anything even if she knew it. Gossip stopped being her thing once she’d been at the dead center of it in complete ugly glory. Once again, she’d be alone and starting out from scratch.
“No offense,” he said, “but your performance with the cops didn’t do you any favors.”
She lifted her chin and looked him straight in the eye, giving off all the bravado she could muster. “I wasn’t looking for any.”
“Then you won’t be disappointed.” He sighed and rubbed his hand against the back of his head as he paced from one end to the other of her living room. “Take me through what really happened.”
“You already heard everything I told the detective.” God, she’d been so glad to see him walk into that hideous white room that it had taken everything she had not to run smack dab into his arms, but showing that kind of weakness in front of the police wasn’t in her DNA.
“You can’t think of anything else?” he asked.
She hesitated. Fergus had been toying with the lipstick… Could he?
No, it was ridiculous. She’d been with him the whole time, and he’d never even opened the silver tube. Just thinking about the possibility made her feel guilty.
“What is it?” Before she could answer, his cell phone chirped out some hard rock anthem heavy on the bass. He glanced down and grimaced. “Shit. I have to take this, but we will finish this conversation.” He raised the phone to his ear.
She flipped him off—very ladylike, she knew. Her mother would’ve been so proud.
“Yeah, I’m with her.” He paused, and his eyes rolled to the ceiling. “No, I am not annoying her.” A longer pause. “There’s reason to be concerned.”
Her stomach hit her toes faster than an anvil dropping in an old school cartoon. She’d hoped she was just being paranoid as usual about the police, but the fact that others were worried increased her nerves by a factor of ten. She closed her eyes, then took in a deep breath and let it out in one long, uninterrupted exhale until her lungs burned from the emptiness. When she opened her eyes again, his phone was an inch from her nose.
“They want to talk to you.”
She stumbled back. “The police?”
He reached out, and his strong grasp on her elbow steadied her. And then there was that gentle smile again, the one that made her forget to breathe. “Sylvie and Tony.”
Not the cops. Relief whooshed through her. “I’ll call her in a little while after you leave.” She pointed towards the door
“We can hear you.” Sylvie’s voice came through loud and clear on the phone’s speaker. “This isn’t something you can handle by yourself.”
She could. She would. It’s how she handled everything. How she’d been forced to handle everything after the police took her dad away in handcuffs and left her on her own. But she couldn’t explain that to Sylvie, not with Cam listening. Especially not while he still touched her arm, reminding her of just how much he unsettled her and how shaky her world had become.
“Who said I’d handle this alone?” She pulled her elbow free, immediately missing the strength he offered and hating herself for it. “I’ll call a lawyer in the morning.”
“Tony’s already talked to his old buddies on the force,” Sylvie responded. “Tell her what they said.”
Tony’s voice came through the phone. “It’s a high-profile case, and you’re an easy target for suspicion.”
“Because I was there?” Her voice sounded pinched to her own ears. “I wasn’t the only one in the room.”
“No, but you were the one closest to her at the time of her death,” Tony said. “And because of what happened before.”
Sins of the father and all that. Yeah, she knew what he really meant. “You mean because of my parents.”
“Yeah, I do,” Tony said.
Cam, standing close enough that a low-level frisson of awareness lapped at her skin, quirked an eyebrow at her in question. She wasn’t about to go into all that—not with him. Especially not now.
“My dad’s conviction won’t have any influence on my case.” She tried to believe her own words, but stubborn doubt tugged at her.
Sylvie sighed into the phone. “But you need to worry about the court of public opinion too. God knows the brass will, and that doesn’t help your case at all.”
“They’re not going to convict me just because of my parents.”
“No,” Sylvie said. “But you need help on this one.”
Drea wanted to argue the truth of her best friend’s statement, but she couldn’t. She knew how it looked, and she couldn’t even blame the cops for zeroing in on her. “Fine. What do you need from me?”
“Nothing.” Sylvie’s relief came through the phone loud and clear. “Cam will take care of everything.”
All thought came to a screeching halt only to slam back in action with a thousand questions at once, all starting with the same word. “Cam?”
He cranked up the wattage on his smile and nailed her with a look that could make ice melt in the arctic tundra. Tempting. Off limits. Totally lickable. He was trouble in human form. And he was supposed to be her knight in shining armor? That’s what she got for thinking her day couldn’t get more craptastic.
“Believe it or not,” Sylvie said. “There’s more to him than a hot bod.”
Unsure whether to run or melt into him, Drea opted for the truth disguised as sarcasm. “That’s what I’m worried about.”
“So you agree?” Sylvie asked.
God help her, she wanted to say yes. “I’ll think about it.”
A girl could only inventory her makeup supplies so many times before she lost her mind, and Drea had passed that point about twenty minutes ago. The police had kept her makeup kit, which was filled with almost everything a client could need, and she had no idea when or if she’d ever get it back. She picked up her own half empty bottle of Nars sheer matte foundation in Khartoum with its dark espresso underto
ne from the makeup scattered on her dining room table and eyeballed it skeptically. There was no way in hell she could make it magically match Mrs. Roper’s pale complexion before the annual Paws for Pals Charity Ball tomorrow night. She’d already had five cancelations. She couldn’t afford rent if she had any more.
She slipped on her shoes and stood. “I have to make a run.”
“Okay, where are we going?” Cam lounged on her loveseat, his large frame taking up most of the space. An open laptop that he’d brought in with him sat perched on his muscular thighs, and the TV remote was within his reach on the dark oak end table. He’d spent the past two hours monitoring the news and doing background checks on everyone tied to the Orton family.
She wished she could say he looked out of place, but he didn’t. He’d settled in and made himself right at home. Would he look just as comfortable in her bedroom? Every time they’d hooked up, it had been at his place, which had made it easy for her to blaze out of there at the first crack of dawn. There’d be no easy out in her own place, not without shoving him out the door. The thought should have killed the temptation then and there, but a mental image of his suntanned skin and dirty blond hair, tousled from activity, against her plum sheets spiked her already high heart rate.
Space. She needed to get away from him. But that was easier said than done in her one-bedroom apartment. “I need to replace my supplies.”
He stood and stretched, and the movement lifted up the hem of his black T-shirt, revealing a few inches of hard abs and a pale blond happy trail that disappeared behind his waistband.
She shouldn’t look, but she did, and then she couldn’t look away.
If it had been anyone else but him, she wouldn’t still be standing on her side of the dining room table. She’d have taken one look and had the sexy stud halfway to the bedroom and mostly naked. But he wasn’t just some guy. He was Cam, and he’d broken her my-private-life-stays-private rule. She’d already had enough public humiliation in life. She sure as hell didn’t need to have more by having a public affair with a man who went through women the way she went through eyeliner. She hesitated.
“Changed your mind?” The gravel in his voice and the thick outline pressing against several inches of his inseam said he hoped she had.
“No.” Just getting the one word out of her dry mouth was a struggle. “All right then, let’s go.”
He winked, acknowledging but not challenging her bullshit, and reached for the remote. A breaking news graphic flashed across the screen, and he paused. A second later a blonde reporter in a tan trench coat dress appeared on the screen. When the camera zoomed out, Drea saw her own apartment building.
“That’s right, Phillip, we do have a Channel Four exclusive,” the reporter said. “I’m here outside of Drea Sanford’s downtown Harbor City apartment. My sources have confirmed that the makeup artist was with Natasha Orton at the time of her death and is considered a person of interest in the investigation.”
An image of Drea as a teenager flashed on the screen. Oh, God. She knew that picture. It was from her father’s trial. Her mother stood on one side of her, a blank expression on her face. On the other side stood the defense attorney who’d persuaded her father to take the plea bargain. Nausea swept through her, so swift and strong that it nearly sent her to her knees.
“You may remember her father, Jefferson Sanford,” the reporter went on. “He pleaded guilty to fleecing dozens of senior citizens living in his chain of high-end long term care facilities, withdrawing millions from their bank accounts before the suspicious death of a resident at Serenity Meadows caught law enforcement’s attention. While he was suspected in the death of Maria Luedtke, he was never charged. He served two months of his fifteen year sentence before being killed in an altercation with another inmate. Two weeks later, his wife, Mariette Sanford, committed suicide by jumping off the Harbor City Bridge in the middle of the morning rush hour.”
Drea’s legs turned to mush, and her ass hit the wooden dining room chair hard enough to make her teeth rattle. Shock pushed out every other emotion until she sat like a husk of herself. It was going to happen all over again. Every detail on the front pages. Gossip blogs looking for any nugget of information. Photographers tracking her every move. She’d be humiliated, exposed, and alone. Three things she promised herself she’d never experience again.
“Police sources are telling me that Drea Sanford was not cooperative when police interviewed her, which as you can imagine, raises many questions,” the reporter said. “We’ll be watching this story closely, so stay tuned for the latest updates. For Channel Four, this is Elizabeth Hanson reporting.”
Cam clicked the TV off.
She couldn’t blink, couldn’t look up from the blank screen, couldn’t stop the way her throat tightened. She’d thought she’d moved past it, gotten beyond the hurt, the betrayal, and the abandonment, but it all came rushing back like she was eighteen again and watching her entire life crumbling around her. No control. No support. No one.
“No,” Cam growled before striding over to her chair, gripping her shoulders and yanking her into a standing position.
The word didn’t make sense. “No?”
“I won’t let them do that to you.” He shook her—not hard, but enough to snap her out of the fog.
He loomed over her, his jaw set at a determined angle and a vein throbbing against his temple. The normal smartass Cam was gone, eaten up by the man in front of her who looked like he wrestled alligators in the morning and boxed bears at night. Barely restrained fury tightened his shoulders, and righteous indignation rolled off of him in waves of heat. She’d never understood before how a cocky guy like Cam had successfully spent years working as a paramilitary agent, but she did now. If he’d come after her with that dead cold look in his hazel green eyes, she’d run for the hills.
Swallowing past the lump in her throat she tried to make sense of his words. “You won’t let them do what?”
“Make you feel like that.” His grip slackened, and he brushed his palms up and down her biceps as if to brush away marks on her arms only he could see. “Your parents’ shit is not your shit. Don’t let it be.”
She eased away from him, the need to run a living ache inside her. “Like you’d know anything about that.”
“I know more than I’d like to.” He looked away, but not before she saw the hurt in his eyes. “You don’t get to choose your parents, but you do get to choose how you live your life.”
The words, although he meant well, shredded her soul, and she did what she always did. She didn’t give an inch, instead got toe-to-toe with him, literally, and fought back. “What is this? Deep thoughts with Cam Hardy?”
“Call it whatever you want.” He shrugged those broad shoulders of his that looked big enough to take the weight of her rant. “You know I’m right.”
“Does it really matter?” God, she’d run away from her former life and transformed herself into a better, brighter Drea Sanford for a reason. Her past had sucked all the color right out of her world, leaving nothing but muted grays. And now that she’d finally put a little light back into her life, they wanted to take it away.
“Yeah, it matters.”
“Why?” What was it with their chromosome that made men think they had to be right all the damn time?
“Because I’m the one who’s going to get you out of this mess.” Whether it was the truth or not, he believed it. There wasn’t any way to fake the bone-deep assurance in his deep voice.
Wouldn’t it be nice if she could believe too? For once. But she knew better. “You’re not the only investigator at Maltese—and that’s if I even agree I need the agency’s help.”
“Oh you need it, and I’m the only one who will do it right.” His fingertips slid down her sides and settled on her hips, setting off sparks across her skin. “This isn’t about us sleeping together before. And it’s not about how high you keep those damned walls you’re hiding behind. It is about the fact that I’m the on
ly one who will take this wherever it needs to go, no matter what.”
How she heard his words over the rushing in her ears was beyond her, but she did, and it made her want to run to him and away from him at the same time. That was one battle she didn’t have time to fight right now. “Big promises.”
“I’m a big guy, I can back it up.” He grinned, slow, sexy, and full of sin. “So you’re on board as Maltese Security’s newest client?”
She took his measure. The man was six-feet, five-inches of temptation, but he was right. For all his faults, he was loyal, and he was her best chance to get the cops off her back. They both knew it. “God help me, I am.”
“Don’t worry.” Cam dropped his gaze to her mouth. “I’m all the help you need.”
Damn, the man was worse for her than a deep fried Oreo, but she didn’t care right now. After the day she’d had, she could use a little comfort and he was more than willing to offer it. To hell with tomorrow. She’d take him tonight and figure out how to get him to leave in the morning.
“Are you what I need?” She licked her lips—slow and deliberate, tempting fate and the hunk of a man in front of her.
He sucked in a quick breath and tugged her forward so that she stood between his thighs. “Without a doubt.”
“This is a one-time only offer.” After the chaos of today’s events, she needed the kind of rock-solid, no-strings-attached comfort Cam could offer—needed it enough to break her cardinal rule. “I don’t give second chances.”
“My whole life is second chances.” He palmed her ass over her skirt and picked her up like she weighed nothing, then pulled her tight against him and pressed her back against the wall.
She wrapped her legs around his lean hips and her arms around his neck, eliminating the last millimeter of space between them. “Maybe you need to work on getting it right the first time.”
“And here I thought you liked me getting it right the second and third times too.” He kissed and licked his way up her neck, the tenderness of his lips balanced out by the scratch of his stubble—just the mix of hard and soft she needed.