by Alix Labelle
T.J. took out his keys and handed them to her. “Black SUV, a block south. Plate reads HOT4U2.”
“I didn’t know you were a fan.” She gave him an odd, sad smile, and with a nod to the rest of his crew, she walked out.
T.J. issued instructions before he started after Sarah, unable to let her go without one last kiss. Yet as he trotted down the block after her, he saw the SUV still parked where he left it, and no sign of his lover. He stopped and clenched his fist.
He still felt something sticky on his fingers and looked down to see a tiny birthmark on his palm. When he checked his shirt, he saw it had acquired a birthmark, too. Careful examination revealed that both birthmarks were fake.
Together on a woman’s neck, however, they’d look just like a vampire bite.
A thousand things about Sarah that hadn’t made sense suddenly did. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me.”
He found the keys inside on the driver’s seat, surrounded by the bloody towel, which had been neatly folded and arranged in the shape of a heart.
#
Three days later T.J. sat in a too-small office. Across from him a heavyset man with good teeth and a bad toupee tapped the end of a pencil against the report T.J. had filed. He shifted before he made direct eye contact and held it, the way skilled liars did to make themselves seem more sincere.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Riley,” the head of the organized crime task force said. “Perhaps the lady you’re looking for was just a working girl.”
“A hooker? Really? That’s the story you’re going to run with?” T.J. leaned forward. “How many prostitutes in Boston do you think could pass as Sarah O’Hara’s identical twin? And how many get kidnapped outside Sarah’s college dorm? While they’re wearing Sarah’s clothes, carrying her backpack and phone, I mean?”
The older man smiled blandly. “Sounds like at least one.”
T.J. rose and walked out of the office, dialing Ashley in London as he did. “I need you to locate a woman for me,” he told her as soon as she answered. “She’s an undercover cop. Probably Boston PD, but she might be FBI or DEA.”
“Good afternoon to you, too, darling,” Ashley replied. “Can you give me a tad bit more to go on?”
“She’s a dead ringer for Sarah O’Hara. Wait.” He stopped in his tracks as his father’s car pulled up in front of him. “I’ll have to call you back.”
His old man opened the back door of the limo himself. “Arthur still has the Taser.”
T.J. bent over to glare in at his father. “Pop, I don’t have time for this.”
“If you want to find the nice undercover lady cop you’re looking for,” Terence countered, “you’ll get in.”
T.J. climbed in and slammed the door shut. “Where is she?” When his father gave him a pitying look, he sat back. “All right. Just give me a name.”
“I don’t got that yet,” Terence admitted, “But I know someone who does.” As Arthur merged into traffic he added, “You want to talk about it, son?”
T.J. wondered if he should start taking yoga. “About her? I don’t know anything about her.”
His father chuckled. “From what my associates tell me, you had sex with this gal all night in that perv whorehouse. Boy, what don’t you know about her?” He leaned closer. “She Irish Catholic, you think?”
Angry as he was, T.J. couldn’t help chuckling. “Pop, give it a rest, will you?”
“Just saying.” The elder Riley settled back. “The pressure’s not so bad now. Margaret’s pregnant, and your mother is over the moon. I figure that gives you until the kid is out of diapers to start a family. Unless the baby’s like your cousin Bradley. They thought they’d have to send that boy to high school in rubber pants.”
Arthur drove across town to the O’Hara building, where he parked and limped after Terence and T.J. They made it as far as the lobby of the penthouse floor before they were stopped.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Riley, Mr. T.J., but Mr. O’Hara isn’t available,” the pretty receptionist told them. “I’ll be sure to tell him you stopped in – sir? Mr. Riley? Sir, you can’t go back there.”
Terence strode directly into Brian O’Hara’s office, where he planted himself in front of the Publishing mogul’s desk. “Brian, you should be ashamed of yourself. What are you doing, hiding in here from me? I’m your oldest friend.”
T.J. told a grateful Arthur to go sit in reception before he stepped inside, locked the door and watched his father browbeat one of the most powerful men in the country.
“My son risked his life to get this girl out,” Terence ranted. “The least you can do is tell him who she really is.”
“I can’t.” Brian got to his feet and buttoned his jacket. “There are confidentiality issues involved, Terence. If I name her, I could go to jail.” As T.J. came around his desk, he held up his hands. “I signed papers.”
“Yeah? I had sex with her for seven hours.” He grabbed the front of Brian’s shirt and jerked him close. “My dick trumps your papers. Who is she?”
Brian lifted his chin. “I’m sorry, T.J., but I’m not going to tell you that.”
“I think you will,” Terence said, sitting down to examine one of the glass paperweights from Brian’s desk. “You know my son has video of what happened in that godawful place.”
When Brian glanced at him T.J. nodded. “All seven hours.”
Terence replaced the paperweight and picked a piece of lint from his sleeve. “This girl, Brian, she was better than good. She could be Sarah’s twin. You think anyone on the porn sites we post that video to will believe she’s an undercover cop? Or are they going to think she’s Sarah while they’re watching her blow my son?”
Brian paled. “You wouldn’t dare do that.”
“Oh, in a heartbeat, pal,” T.J. lied.
The older man nodded and reached for a notepad. As he scribbled down a name, he said, “This woman saved my daughter’s life. I can never repay her for that.”
He snatched the paper from him. “Then maybe you should have paid the ransom, huh?”
“Don’t punch him in the head, Junior,” Terence said. “You’ll hurt your knuckles.”
T.J. tucked the name in his pocket. “Wouldn’t want to do that.”
“All right, I think we’re done here.” Terence rose and smiled broadly at Brian. “You’re a cheap prick, Brian, and you’re not my friend anymore. Actually, I hope you rot in hell for leaving that nice lady cop to die in your daughter’s place. But hey, confession is on Saturday. Tell Linda and the kids I said hello.”
Chapter Five
T.J. read the name Brian O’Hara had written on the paper fifteen times as Arthur drove him and his father out of the city and into the suburbs.
“You gotta destroy that video, you know,” Terence said. “Things work out, you two might have kids someday.” As T.J. glared at him, he raised his hands in surrender. “I know, none of my business. All I’m saying is, it’s not something you want them seeing you do to their mother. Kellan’s an Irish name, isn’t it, Arthur?”
“I believe so, sir,” the driver replied.
“I didn’t tell anyone about what happened between me and this woman, Pop,” T.J. said as he tucked the slip back in his pocket. “So how did you know?”
“I have my sources.” When T.J. glared, his father’s expression grew serene. “Martha wasn’t bragging about that penuche, you know. Best I ever tasted. Your mother’s crazy for it.”
“Twin Set was working for you.” T.J. shook his head. “I can’t believe you put someone inside to watchdog me.”
“She wasn’t there for you. I had my guys waiting down the block for her signal so they could move in. But then you had to outbid her.” Terence sighed heavily. “I figured you could handle things from there.”
“You knew she wasn’t Sarah.” He watched his father nod. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The old man leaned forward, and in a stage whisper said, “Junior? That wasn’t Sara
h in the whorehouse.”
T.J. began laughing with his father, and then Arthur joined in. They were almost rolling on the floor when the limo finally stopped in front of an apartment complex.
“Nice place,” Terence said, wiping his eyes as he uttered a final chuckle before peering through the window. “Give you a piece of advice, boy?”
Today his father could ask him for a limb, and T.J. would cut it off himself. “Sure, Pop.”
“This girl, she’s a brave one. Pretty, smart, resourceful. She seems to like you, too.” His father clapped him on his good shoulder. “So don’t screw this up.”
#
“Come on, Mel,” Gena Kellan begged over the phone. “You’re on vacation, for crying out loud. So vacate the premises, will you? We’ll do some shopping and lunch. Since you can’t talk about work, we’ll discuss all the cute guys you should be dating.”
Melanie Kellan pushed away thoughts of T.J. Riley. “I don’t date, Gen. I’ve already had lunch, and I hate shopping. Look, I’m just trying to relax and catch up on my sleep, okay? I’ll call you next week.”
“You better,” her younger sister warned. “Or I’ll come and drag you out of there.”
Mel hung up the phone and rubbed her tired eyes. She hadn’t slept much since being debriefed and filing her final report on the O’Hara assignment. Her supervisor had insisted she take two weeks off before beginning the process of moving to a new city to start her next job. She’d have to tell her sister eventually that she was leaving Boston again, but she’d only been back a year. Right now she felt too fragile to handle upsetting Gena.
Somewhere out there T.J. Riley wasn’t feeling fragile. He was probably feeling pretty pissed off.
Mel walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. The red dye they’d used to cover her honey-blonde hair had already begun to fade. She’d hated cutting and curling it to match Sarah’s style, but in time it would grow back out. Without the brown colored contact lenses her eyes were back to light blue. In a month no one would think she looked anything like Sarah O’Hara. T.J. could probably walk right past her on the street and not recognize her.
Unless she touched him, or he smelled her . . . .
“No,” she told her reflection flatly and pulled on some sweats before heading to her building’s workout room.
Running five miles on the treadmill didn’t exercise many of Mel’s demons, but by the time she went to the weight machine, she felt a little looser. She set the machine at an easy one-fifty and positioned herself under the bars.
“I like that spanking bench better,” a deep, highly annoyed voice said from behind the machine.
Mel turned around to see T.J. leaning against the wall watching her. She got up and bolted for the door, but he was there in a blink.
“Melanie Grace Kellan,” he said, staring down at her. “Almost as poetic as Sarah O’Hara.”
“You need to step aside, sir,” she said in her coldest cop voice. “Right now.”
“Sir?” He folded his arms. “You’re very respectful to a guy you used to try out most of the Kama Sutra, Melanie.”
“It’s Mel.” She took a step back and assessed her options. Since he was being pissy, she went with honesty. “I’m an undercover cop. When they got wind of the kidnapping scheme from an informant, they assigned me to stand in for Ms. O’Hara.”
T.J. rolled his hand.
“I couldn’t tell you,” she insisted. “As long as they believed I was Sarah, she was safe. I had to maintain my cover until I was retrieved. When they grabbed me, they dumped my backpack, which had my tracking beacon in it. If you hadn’t come to rescue Sarah, I know I’d be dead.”
T.J. rolled his hand again.
“It’s my job to lie about who I am.” Mel didn’t know what else to say to him that wouldn’t break her heart. “I’m sorry if you’re upset with me.”
“Upset?” He dropped his arms. “I’ve been trying to find you for three days, Melanie.” He advanced on her. “So was it all an act? The sex, the promises? The way you looked at me right before you ran out on me?”
“I did what I had to do to survive.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she turned her back on him. “I’m sorry that I used you to get out. I’m not Sarah, but I am a good person. The work I do is everything to me. So please, just let it go, all right?”
T.J. came up behind her, not touching her but close enough for her to feel the wonderful warmth of his body. “I haven’t slept in three days. You?”
She shook her head, and finally leaned back against him. “I keep thinking about that dungeon. How awful it was. What might have happened to me in that place.”
He kissed the top of her head. “You’re a good liar, sweetheart. But you can’t sleep because you’ve been thinking about me. The way it felt when I was inside you. How good we were together. How hard I made you come.”
She turned around, angry now. “What are you going to do, take me off to that imaginary Caribbean island? Screw me on the powder-white sands? I’m a cop, Terry.”
“So am I,” he said, startling her. “I work for intelligence agencies in Europe and here in America. My specialty is hostage recovery. We got a big problem in Germany, which is where I have to fly tomorrow. So no, Mel, I’m not taking you to the islands. I’m taking you with me to Berlin. You like kids?”
“Why?” she demanded.
“We need to get the Lord Mayor’s son back from a bunch of fundamentalist zealots,” T.J. told her. “They snatched him from his nanny in the park. He’s five and has diabetes. They’re threatening to disconnect his insulin pump.”
She swore under her breath.
“They’ve agreed to let a doctor examine him, which is how we get in. I do better pretending to be a killer.” He took her hands in his. “You, on the other hand, would make a very convincing pediatrician – and you do like kids.”
She laced her fingers through his. “I’ll have to talk to my supervisor.”
“Done.” He pulled out a folded paper and showed her the leave form her boss had signed. “I’ve got you for a month, and we’ll pay you triple your salary. I’ll be your handler on and off the job. If we can’t make it work in four weeks, we walk away.”
Mel knew he was lying now. “A trip to the islands included with this gig?” she asked, stepping into his arms. When he nodded, she smiled. “Okay, I’m in.”
Just before he kissed her, T.J. asked, “You wouldn’t happen to be Irish Catholic, would you?”
THE END
The Tycoon’s Temptation
Bound to the Alpha Billionaire
Book 7
(Can be read as a standalone book)
By: Lucy Wynand
The Tycoon’s Temptation
Chapter One
“That investigator from Interpol called for you again, Master,” Paolo said as he held out the dinner jacket. “He seemed very agitated about the death threat against you.”
“Which threat?” Giovanni Valente shrugged into the jacket and straightened the lapels. “The ugly letter, the vicious voice mail, or the black spray paint on my Ferrari?”
“All. The investigator believes they come from the same cartel.” The valet came around to check the knot of his tie. “I think the one you told to do the anatomically impossible with their illegal cargo.”
“Ah, they are as persistent as Interpol.” He checked his insanely expensive watch and sighed. “I must go. I promised Chiara I would make an effort this time. Thank you, Paolo. Go to bed. I will be very late.”
“Enjoy your evening, Master.” The smaller man bowed his bald head and retreated from the cabin.
A short time later Valente stepped off the speed boat he used to go ashore. Hanging red lanterns illuminated the waterway entry of to the palatial home of his cousin, Chiara Fabrinzi. A dignified doorman in spotless livery bowed and admitted him to a hall that opened out into a huge ballroom. Valente paused on the threshold to take in the beautifully-dressed people, sparkling lig
hts and soft, sensuous music.
“Valente.” Out of nowhere his cousin materialized, her long body resplendent in a black velvet gown beneath a floor-length gold lace jacket. She kissed the air on either side of his face with her blood-red lips before she stepped back to inspect him. “Ah, you are so handsome. Are you quite certain we cannot marry? Say yes. I will divorce Leon tomorrow.”
“You will not.” Of all his cousins, Chiara was Valente’s favorite. Unlike most of his relatives she shared his odd sense of humor. She’d also married for love, not money, scandalizing most of the family.
“Is she asking you to marry her again?” Her husband, a bear of a man still dressed in the rumpled suit he’d worn to his office, lumbered over to shake Valente’s hand. “It is good to see you, Gio. Pay no mind to this incestuous witch. Yesterday over lunch she propositioned my brother, the priest. He nearly inhaled an olive.”
Chiara shrugged. “I merely said that if the church ever reverses its stance on celibacy that I would gladly debauch him.” She kissed Leon’s grizzled cheek. “You may watch, darling. Always.”
“You are so brazen. I love this about you.” Her husband discreetly swatted her on the bottom before he trundled off to corner another important-looking official.
Valente and Chiara watched him go. “If you ever do cheat on Leon, with anyone,” he mentioned, “I will beat you myself.”
“I should hope so.” His cousin tucked her arm through his. “I am very glad you came to my party. Since you will not violate natural law with me, I have someone in mind for you. She’s American, from California. A model or starlet. I can’t remember which. Not especially bright, but pretty, and very well-dressed.” She pointed her out.
Valente smothered a groan. “The last model puked up everything she ate.”
His cousin made a tsking sound. “That was the Brazilian. The last American was the tree-hugger, remember?”
“I don’t need a woman,” Valente told her.
“No? How long has it been since you’ve had sex?” Chiara tapped her cheek. “Six months, yes? And I know your crew is all male, and your secretary an ancient dragon woman. This American could be amusing.”