Her lips parted. Brad couldn’t tell if that was good or bad. But then she closed them into a smile sweeter than maple syrup. “You really get me, don’t you? That makes me feel special.”
“I plan to make you feel a lot of things tonight.” Shifting his hand to the back of her thigh, Brad pulled her more snug against him. Pulsed once as a preview of what was in store.
“You’ve got moves. World-class moves. The way you swivel your hips is surprising for a man with all your muscles.”
“You have no idea.” If she ever saw him dance, then she’d know from moves.
“What does that mean?”
He shook his head, sending a spray of water across the room. “Never mind.”
“I hid a six-pack of beer and a plate of snacks in here. I’m not telling where until you ‘fess up whatever you’re hiding.”
Well, he did need to keep his strength up. Tonight clearly had the makings of a sex marathon. “What kind of snacks?”
“Cold pizza and chips. Oh, and guacamole because I remembered how much you scarfed it down this summer.”
Damn, she’d found his weak spot. Hot sex, cold beer and guac pretty much equaled the best night ever. As long as he didn’t scare her off with his revelation. But he’d wanted to share his secret with a girlfriend for years. Trina, with her easy acceptance of everything in life, might be just the woman to risk opening up to about it. Brad pulled out. Walked around the corner to dispose of the condom. When he came back, he planted his feet and arms wide. “Still feeling the after-effects of that orgasm I gave you?”
Her head slowly lolled to the side. “I’m stuck on a clammy, cold stack of wet towels because I can’t begin to move. You turned me boneless.”
“Let’s fix that.” Brad scooped her up and rubbed her down with two dry towels. “My point is that I think it’s safe to tell you my secret because I’m at my peak of manliness right now.”
“You are the Mt. Kilimanjaro of manliness.”
God, this was hard to say out loud. If this tanked his evening, he’d blame Coop. His cousin put all those ideas in his head about sharing interests, and not just a bed with a woman. Brad would take that risk with Trina, but it had damn well better pan out.
“I can do more than just swivel my hips. I’m a dancer.”
“No way.” She tried—cutely—to wrap her hand around his bicep. Then used both hands. “This is not the body of a dancer. This body is practically a weapon. For going into battle, for breaking a foot-high stack of boards with your bare hands.”
Boards? Child’s play. “I can do it with bricks, too.”
“I’d love to watch you do that.”
“Look, I’m not kidding. I’m a dancer.” Brad stepped back, did a quick mambo step then ended with a double...well, he wouldn’t call it a pirouette, not even in his own head. A double spin. Which felt really weird to do completely naked.
“What—how did you—” Trina’s eyes were huge as she shrugged back into her robe.
“My mom dragged me to ballroom dance class back in elementary school. She wanted to take lessons, and they needed boys in the kids class, so I was her collateral. Mom flaked after a few lessons, but I was hooked. Got serious enough to get a steady partner and win a bunch of amateur competitions. I love it as much as I love hopping on my motorcycle for a long ride.” Because he couldn’t kick the urge to defend his secret passion, Brad added, “Besides, I’ve used the smooth moves learned in dancing to evade the bad guys. Saved my ass more than once in a fight.”
“You’re the hottest guy on the Boardwalk, you’ve got a gun and know how to use it, you make love like a god, and you can dance on top of everything else? Seriously, Brad, you are the ultimate man. You should have some sort of a fancy, jeweled belt like the wrestlers get.”
God forbid. Brad tied a towel around his waist. “That would majorly diminish my manliness factor. Besides, it’s a secret. Strutting around in a belt would give it away.”
“Nobody knows? Not your buddies on the force?”
“Especially not them. I’d never hear the end of it. I keep it on the down low. Only my family knows.” He’d never even told Dana. She’d seen an ad for a reality dance competition and made a couple of insulting digs. Brad figured it was better to keep his mouth shut. Maybe surprise her during the first dance at their wedding. Good thing he hadn’t shared that part of him with her. But he didn’t regret opening up tonight. To Trina. Apparently he could say anything to her. Which felt pretty damn great. “And now you.”
“You dope.” She batted at him with one end of a towel. “You should’ve told me right from the start. We could’ve done something special tonight.”
Brad grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall. Hip to hip, he said, “I think we just did something pretty special. And we’re just getting started.”
She giggled and curved a hand around his ass. “Agreed. But we can do that any night. Whereas the Boardwalk ProAm Ballroom Dance Classic is just this weekend at the Trump Taj Mahal. All the girls at Club Eden were talking about it.”
“I know. It’s why, in addition to the obligatory strippers and beer, I chose AC to hole up over my non-wedding weekend.” Not that he’d admitted that fact to his father when he suggested this trip, Coop, or anyone else. Trina was his own personal truth serum. “I’ve got a ticket for tomorrow’s competition. Plus, I entered as a walk-in for the open-dance hour at the start. If anyone wants to dance but doesn’t have a partner, they can use me.”
Her lips pursed in an accompaniment to the quizzical frown between her eyes. “What if I want to use you?”
“Huh?”
“I love dancing.” She changed her hold on him and tangoed them straight across to the sauna door. “I took it all growing up—ballet, tap, jazz and ballroom. I was so little that everyone wanted to use me for lifts. It’s been a while, so I’ll probably step all over you. But if you don’t mind, I’d love to dance with you.”
Brad couldn’t believe his good luck. “You don’t have something better to do?”
“Better than grinding against my own personal sex god? Hardly. Except that first, I have a lead to tug at tomorrow morning. For my case.”
Uh-huh. The non-existent case with no paying client. Then her words clicked. As unpredictable as ever, Trina had apparently cobbled together a real case out of thin air. “You have a new lead?”
“Oh, yes. A couple, actually. And confirmation from an...outside source that there’s something bad going down at the club.”
Seeing as how she had no license, no weapon and almost no experience, Brad’s first instinct was to yet again demand she drop the whole thing. Or call in reinforcements. But he knew he had to tread lightly with that suggestion. She’d made it clear the other night that walking away just on his say-so wasn’t an option. The more Brad thought about it—and he had, as he’d tossed and turned in his bed—it was obvious his knee-jerk reaction to her had, well, made him a jerk. Brad didn’t regret what he’d said. Sure did regret the way it had come out, though.
Trina walked around the corner. He hoped it was to scare up the snacks. Brad raised his voice to be heard over the burbling spa. “Bad enough that you should step away and call in the police?”
“Maybe. Which I’ll totally do, once I get actual proof on top of my hearsay.”
Technically, it was the right way to progress with a case. Still made him nervous, though. And he couldn’t step back and see with a clear head if it was because she was a newbie investigator, or because she was Trina. Better figure that out before going off on her again. Because it wasn’t fair to judge her any differently just because he liked the way she kissed. “Guess you’ve thought this through.”
“Don’t worry. I’m taking Darcy with me, for safety in numbers. It’ll be broad daylight, too.” She reappeared, hands laden with beer and fo
od. “What could go wrong?”
“Just about everything,” he mumbled as he helped her set it all down on the floor.
Trina crossed her feet. And her wrists. Then twisted her fingers together. “Um, do you want to come with us?”
Getting involved on an official level with a woman who might be his girlfriend was the last thing Brad wanted. “Atlantic City isn’t a place to play at investigating. Serious shit goes down here.” All right. Hard as it was, he’d put blinders on to ignore their connection and treat her like any other P.I. “Give it to me straight. Are you just practicing again, or do you honestly know, with facts and in your gut, that you’ve got a case?”
She met his gaze with cool assurance. “I know. I typed up a report on it last night and emailed it to Joe. Proper investigative procedure—documenting everything. He’s fully in the loop.”
And he had to respect that. God knows he’d felt that same, bone-deep certainty about cases he’d fought for over the years. Maybe they were more alike than he’d thought. “Then I won’t tag along. You say you’ve got this, and I believe you.” Still, Brad had to ask one last protective question before he dropped it. “You still have your mace?”
“Yes. And I’ve taken two self-defense courses. Money well spent no matter what. If I do decide to help Khristiana, I hear the fashion business can be brutal.”
So in the middle of this amazing night, mulling her career choices still popped into her mind? Brad resolved to up his game for round two. Because he didn’t want this whimsically adorable woman to be able to think any serious thoughts besides how right they were together. “Education’s never a waste.”
“Oh, and I already have my yellow belt.”
“Good for you. Do you know a vertical outward block?” Brad rushed at her, and she executed the move flawlessly. So flawlessly that it pushed him backward straight into the hot tub. Brad laughed so hard he swallowed a gallon of water.
Coop was right: finding a woman who could share his passions, his whole life—that was the only way to go. Now he just had to convince Trina.
Chapter Ten
If anyone had mentioned that being a navigational genius was required of an investigator, Trina might’ve given the whole thing second thoughts. And third and fourth, too. She looked down at the map covering her red shorts, up at the three-way branching of the road, and then back down. A four-leaf clover had less curves than this under—and overpass nonsense. She tossed the useless map over her shoulder into the back seat of Darcy’s car.
“Atlantic City has horrible signage. If we were trying to actually get somewhere instead of just following someone, we’d probably be lost.”
“We are lost.” Darcy’s voice had a grim undertone. Undoubtedly because her jaw was clenched and her hands in a ten and two death grip on the steering wheel.
“Yes, but on purpose. Technically, we don’t have to know where we are. We know exactly where we’re going—anywhere Misty goes.” Trina slurped at her toasted coconut chocolate latte. Getting up at dawn to tail the strippers coming off the Club Eden graveyard shift hadn’t been easy. But specialty coffee topped with whipped cream and chocolate shavings made it bearable. Wherever Misty led them, Trina hoped it was near someplace she could get a refill. None for Darcy, though. She was wound tight enough.
“We still need to get back to the Atlantic Dunes at the end of this little adventure. Which is why you should have your nose in that map to figure out where we are.”
“Relax. I’ll use the GPS on my phone to...” Trina looked at the frozen screen on her phone. “Uh oh.”
“What is it? Did you see a police car? Did you get a text from Misty telling us to stop following her?”
Sheesh. Her partner was being a flat-out pain in the butt. “You’re very uptight this morning. Shouldn’t you be basking in the glow of being engaged?”
Darcy set her jaw. “I would be doing more than basking if you hadn’t dragged me out of my room at the ass-crack of dawn. Now we’re speeding down unfamiliar roads probably right into a dangerous situation.”
“Nope. No danger. We’ll safely assess from afar.” Same principle they were using to follow her. There were three cars and a lane between them and Misty’s lemon yellow sports car. “I don’t want Misty to even know we’re there. Strictly reconnaissance today. If we see anything that looks like trouble, we hightail it out of there for reinforcements.”
“Sounds good.” Darcy took her eyes off the road just long enough to slit a glare at Trina. “So what’s with the uh oh?”
“I wasn’t paying attention and accepted a full system upgrade on my phone. It’ll be unusable for, um, a while.” Yet another mistake she’d learn from and never, ever make again. Silver lining, right?
“How much of a while?”
Last time she’d followed the instructions and done it overnight. So the true answer was probably sometime after lunch. Which would only help them if Misty led them around town for the next five hours, at least. Which would no doubt freak Darcy out, as she’d left her phone at the hotel to charge. Trina knew that it was dumb, no, poor planning to be hot on the investigative trail without a cell phone. But, darn it, if Charlie’s Angels could solve crimes without a phone, so could she.
“Not too long,” she hedged. “Besides, see those three big wind-power thingies?”
“The windmills?”
“Yes, but I can’t call them that. Windmills are cute. They’re supposed to have people with big hats and even bigger clogs festooning them with tulips. These things look like giant, futuristic, ten-story-tall automatic fans. Anyway, they’re easy to spot for miles. We’ll use them as our guidepost. Problem solved.”
Darcy sighed. “You know Coop and I have to head back home tonight.”
“I know.”
“So what’s your plan for once I leave? You can’t run around chasing down leads by yourself on a crime so bad its annoying the Mob.”
Privately, Trina thought she could. But she got that people who cared about her wanted to coddle her and keep her safe. And she did appreciate the company. “Let’s stay positive. I’ve heard Misty talk about her twice-a-week rendezvous. And she always put rendezvous in air quotes. Maybe she’ll lead us straight to a big, whopping clue.”
“Not to cast aspersions, but Misty is a stripper, right? What if her air-quotes rendezvous is of the motel room by the hour variety?”
The problem with Darcy being the scientific type was that she tried to look at things from every angle. Why look for the bad when it might not happen at all? “Then we’ll try the same thing with Dakota. And I think I saw Jasmine whispering in a huddle with them, too. All those loose ends? One is bound to unravel.”
“Is that one of Joe’s sayings?”
“Yes. Along with Pee whenever you can. You never know when your next shot will come.”
“Words to live by.”
Trina cast a wary glance at her almost empty extra-large coffee cup. “He’s a wise man.” She jerked her thumb sideways. Darcy followed the silent instruction and turned. They were in an industrial area now, with far less traffic to use as a buffer zone.
A few blocks later Misty stopped in a long parking lot adjacent to a series of low-slung, blocky buildings. Darcy parked in the row behind her. Simultaneously, both women slouched down in their seats as Misty got out and went into the end building. Trina noted it didn’t have any signage. Still, she wrote down the address on her tiny notepad. No boring black for her. Its cover was embellished with a dancing Woodstock. Because who didn’t perk up at the sight of the adorable little cartoon? When they returned to Pearl’s, Trina would do an internet search on the address and see what came up.
“Now we wait.”
Darcy cleared her throat. “What did Joe say when you emailed him your write-up of the case so far? Does he want you to go home? Or sit tight and
wait for him to get down here?”
“He told me to keep my head down. And to either drop it or crack it in two days.” There’d also been a few heated lines about knowing the difference between chasing shadows and making money. But he’d finished by applauding her instincts and offering to help the moment she came up with anything more. It’d made Trina feel he did believe in her. Until he followed up by reminding her of the looming registration date for the university course. Talk about mixed signals. Or at least, signals she didn’t want to read.
“What about Brad? Does he even know what we’re doing this morning?”
Two could play that game. “Does Coop?”
“Not exactly. I didn’t want to wake him up, so I left a note that we were meeting for breakfast.” Darcy drained her coffee. “I know that as a bride I’m supposed to be stressing about fitting into the perfect dress, but I didn’t think you’d limit me to a liquid breakfast.”
“We didn’t have time for anything else.” Because she’d punched snooze on Brad’s alarm five times. Because the most amazing sex of her life tended to wear a girl out. But Trina did feel guilty about Darcy’s growling tummy. “I heard about this place that has the best biscotti on the East Coast. I promise we’ll go there afterward.”
“So what did you say to Brad?”
Do me. More. Again. Don’t stop. “He knows I’m tracking down a lead. I even asked if he wanted to come.” That third time, when she’d had her lips wrapped around him, sucking him down, he’d in fact begged to come.
“He said no?” Darcy sounded shocked.
“Even better. Brad said he believed in me.” Warmth spread through her at the memory, like a hot from the dryer towel wrapped around her heart. “I said I’ve got this under control, and he sent me on my way with a kiss.”
“Oh, Trina, that’s great.”
She didn’t bother to hold back the smug smile pulling at her lips. Trina and Darcy had been oohing and aahing over guys together for years. Heck, she’d been tempted to text her with the news last night. But Brad hadn’t left her alone for a second. Hadn’t stopped touching her. He even carried her into the elevator. “It really is. He really is. Great, I mean. Really, really great.”
Love on the Boardwalk Page 13