Strip Search

by Shayla Black

"What's wrong?" he turned and asked.

  The sudden concern on his face made her pause. Damn it, she was angry. She wanted to stay that way. He deserved every hurled accusation she could dream up for his lies and deceit. But while she couldn't deny that the bastard didn't love her, his concern was evident in the tilt of his golden brows above watchful hazel eyes. He was trying to save her life ... in his own overbearing way.

  "I'll be fine if you give me a--"

  With an exasperated shake of his head, Mark bent and lifted her against his chest. "Stubborn woman. If your feet hurt, just say so. Put your arm around my neck."

  With an exasperated sigh, Nicki slid her arm behind his neck, trying to ignore his woodsy-musk smell that never failed to ignite a flicker of awareness. His breadth, his solid heat--damn, together they nearly curdled her anger.

  Then she made the biggest mistake of all; she raised her gaze to his.

  His stare, so intense. The green in his hazel jumped out to touch her. Like a caress, it smoothed over her cheek, brushed her mouth. The awareness she'd been fighting fanned its way to arousal.

  She knew she should close her eyes against the sensation. It was all a lie. He didn't want her. He'd only been investigating her.

  None of her self-talk worked. Nicki felt herself mutely drowning in his stare. Damn it, she'd never had the spine of a jellyfish. Why start now?

  Because the thought that he'd betrayed her and would soon be gone left her feeling torn, unable to breathe. The thought of being without him made her feel like some part of her was missing, like she'd only be half the person she should be without him. It made no sense... but there it was.

  When they reached the lobby of the hotel, an elderly bellhop opened the door for them, grinning as if gladdened by the sight of young love. Mark nodded at him, but otherwise ignored the man. Instead, he simply strode through the lobby, still cradling her in his arms--the most wonderful, dangerous place to be.

  "You can put me down," she whispered once they were inside.

  He ignored her as well, until they reached the front desk. Slowly, he set her on her feet, dragging her body down the length of his. Her breasts brushed against the steel of his chest. Her nipples hardened, deciding now would be a good time to come out and play. Nicki stifled a groan and looked away.

  Mark stepped back pulled out some money from his pocket. The instant he let go, his strength and his heat disappeared. She felt oddly cold, despite the fact is was June in Las Vegas.

  "There's a gift shop over there. Go see about getting us some toothbrushes and anything else you need."

  With a nod, she took the money and turned away. Without a purse or any money of her own, she had no choice.

  The gift shop sported shelf after shelf of items that shouted early Las Vegas tacky. She grabbed two toothbrushes and a travel-sized tube of toothpaste. The slogan on the box promised to make her mouth kissably fresh. Glancing around the comer at a grim-faced Mark talking to the desk clerk, she reminded herself that she shouldn't need to worry about her breath too much. She wasn't kissing him. Once was enough to make her will evaporate. More that that, she might as well lie on her back, tear her clothes off, and start panting.

  Grimacing at that humiliating thought, Nicki snatched up a comb, a mini-tube of mascara, and a nonfiction paperback about war atrocities in former Yugoslavia that would surely curdle all sexual thoughts. She hoped.

  On her way to the register, she encountered a fluorescent display of condoms in various flavors. Margarita caught her attention, and she added it to her pile. Let Mark buy a condom for his eventual replacement in her bed. That would be poetic justice.

  As long as he didn't persuade her to spend it on him.

  Shoving the thought away, Nicki paid for her purchases. The clerk didn't raise a brow as she packed it all away in a discreet little sack. Nicki supposed nothing raised brows in Vegas. After all, what happened here, stayed here, right?

  Rolling her eyes at that, she clutched the bag and made her way back to the lobby.

  "Let's go," he said, eyeing the little brown bag in her hand.

  Nicki eyed the room key attached to the enormous palm tree keychain clutched in his fist. She was curious about that, really. But she'd be damned if she was asking.

  They made a long, silent trek down a musty hall, to an elevator that might have been new when T-Rex ruled the planet, and reluctantly climbed in when the doors opened.

  The tight quarters weren't helping, not with Mark half a breath away, taking up most of the space, all of the air. He slanted a look at her, one that questioned if she was still pissed. With a resolute toss of her head, Nicki looked away.

  The ancient elevator dinged as it passed every floor. Damn, she could have crawled faster than this!

  Mark coughed, inched closer. Their arms brushed. Awareness clashed with anger. Something volatile churned inside her. Nicki knew if she didn't get out of the elevator in about two seconds she'd scream. Or tear his clothes off and have her way with him here and now.

  She backed away, leaning against the wall instead.

  A few moments later, the elevator gave its final ding as it arrived on the fourth floor. Only two suites occupied this floor, one to the left and one to the right. Mark guided her left. They reached the tall door, freshly coated with white paint that nearly concealed the peeling layers beneath it. A brass plaque on the front simply stated BLUE HAWAII.

  Mark inserted the key in the lock, the palm tree key chain dangling a good four inches, and turned. The lock popped open, and he pushed the door forward.

  A blast of humid air greeted her first. But the decor was a close second.

  "Oh my gosh. Elvis threw up in here."

  Scowling, Mark pushed her inside with a hand at the small of her back and walked into the room. "I'm about to join him."

  A canopied bed with white gauze curtains dominated the middle of the room. Behind it, a mural of the beach and the ocean beyond. Swaying palm trees bracketed the bed. To add a touch of reality, a hunk of wood carved to look like a palm's trunk had been nailed to the wall on either side of the bed and artificial greenery affixed to the ceiling above.

  On the wall to the right of the bed, a tiki had been painted. A door that led to the bathroom gave the illusion of being the tiki's door. Clever ... in a high-cheese sort of way. The wall on the left was a mural of the beach and ocean, with a lone island in the distance and dancing orange crabs and off-white shells.

  Wandering into the room, Nicki set the bag of goodies down on a nearby dresser made of bamboo.Mark shut the door, and she turned to face him. On the wall behind him, Elvis crouched in the sand, wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and a lei. He strummed a guitar and crooned to bikini-clad babes swooning on his left and right, while the endless blue ocean faded into a bright sunset in the distance. Even the ceiling had been painted an impossible blue with fluffy white clouds.

  Nicki was sure she'd seen it all now.

  Seeing her attention fixed on the wall behind him, Mark turned for a glimpse. His shoulders stiffened.

  "I'm going to kill Rafe," he muttered. "Is this your brother-in-law's idea of a joke?" "Or romance. I'm not sure which."

  Nicki scoffed. "If so, it's a miracle he's married." "That's probably true."

  Silence fell. Nicki glanced around for a place to sit--and found none. Behind a half-wall in the comer she found a jetted tub sunken into the floor and presided over by dancing starfish. But no sofa. No chairs. Just a big bed with a bucket of iced champagne beside it. Rafe had to have arranged that in advance.

  Wasn't that just peachy?

  Nicki sat on the edge of the bed, watching Mark with wary eyes. "Okay, I'm here. Blade can't possibly find me here. Even if he did, he'd have a laughing fit. Tell me what the hell is going on!"

  Nodding, he threw the dead bolt into place and crossed the room. "Long story short, the FBI requested that Rafe and I investigate suspicious financial activity going on at your club. Bocelli was the primary suspect from the start. During t
he investigation ... things happened that made me believe you and Blade were working together to launder money for some higher connection in the Mafia. It wasn't until--"

  "What? Launder money for someone in the Mafia?"

  Mark might as well have been speaking Greek. Nicki tried to pick her jaw up from the floor. But shock reverberated through her, making movement difficult.

  "Yes."

  "Are you serious?" she asked "You thought I'd use my own club to do something that stupid and illegal? And work with Blade to do it?"

  "I had no hard evidence of your innocence or guilt, so I had to consider you a suspect."

  "Why would you imagine such an asinine thing?" she demanded.

  Tall, taut, Mark just stared with a battered stare. "Best I could figure, you were using your cut of the money to buy out your uncle's interest in the club. I know you're eager to get him out of your business. He's such an ass, I don't blame you for that."

  "Blade works for my uncle." Her tone told him to try logic--and quickly.

  "Nothing new in the underling screwing the boss, especially in the Mafia."

  "Now you think my family is in the Mafia? Why?"

  "I don't think. The FBI does."

  A cold chill fell over her. Nicki settled back on the bed. "Pietro likes gangster movies and pretending he's Don Corleone. He's a typical Italian man with his hands in a lot of businesses so that everyone else does his work for him. I hardly think that makes him a gangster."

  "That's between him and the Feds. But it doesn't change the fact Blade appeared to be using your club to launder money. He had access to your books and bank statements for months. He kept false records on Marcy's computer. On your computer, I found a set of genuine accounting records. Did you give him your passwords?"

  Nicki struggled to keep up. The information whizzed by so quickly. The way he stated everything as fact before she had a chance to soak it in and examine it was dizzying. "I let him use it when Marcy's wasn't working. But what do you mean by passwords? I only have one. More than one would have confused me. Hell, the whole computer confused me."

  "Well, he's been tampering with your machine, and he didn't want you to know anything about it. There was a password to your system, a different one to your accounting software, and a third to the actual accounting records."

  His assertion took her totally aback. "I just established the one, after my favorite shoes."

  "I guess he likes Ty Pennington and knows a guy named Frank, who's twenty-nine."

  "Well, Marcy liked Ty, so maybe it was her. Frank... I don't remember her dating anyone by that name."

  Suddenly, Mark frowned. "It's possible Marcy created some passwords. But she couldn't be the one laundering money. She's dead, and it's still going on. Anyone else ever use your computer?"

  "Everyone. Lucia is writing her research paper on it. Zack keeps schedules. Blade ... does whatever. Ricky wrote a term paper. My bartender, Leon, answers his e-mails sometimes. Marcy's computer quit for a while after she was shot. I finally got it fixed just before you arrived."

  "That was probably by design, just like I think Marcy's death was."

  Nicki's heart stuttered. "You don't think the drive-by was random? The police thought it might be some sort of gang initiation that--"

  "No, I think Blade wanted her gone, the way he wants you gone. And that he hired someone to do his dirty work."

  Pressing her forehead into her hand, Nicki tried to wrap her mind around his words. "Her death was suspicious, I suppose. I can believe that someone wanted her gone and made it look random. But Blade... he's had a thousand opportunities to kill me. He's never made a move in my direction."

  "He's being watched, and I'll bet he knows it. He wanted to make your death look as much like an accident as possible. Falling lights, gas leak, intruder..."

  "Oh my ... You think Blade did that?"

  Mark sighed and edged closer. "Before I came to Vegas, Rafe hired a private investigator--"

  "Jacob T. Lane?" A razor had nothing on her sharp voice.

  "That sounds familiar enough. Anyway, he pointed a finger at Bocelli as the most likely suspect. The coworker who framed me for embezzlement used to launder money through the bank that employed us for someone matching Bocelli's description. I even saw a picture of them together, leather stretched across his back as he was buried balls deep in this woman. In public. Who else would that be?"

  Nicki sagged back against the pillow for a moment. Lord, her head was spinning. "You know for sure he's laundering money through the club?"

  "I've got months' worth of false accounting records, bank statements, and analysis to prove someone at the club is laundering money."

  Holy shit. Nicki sighed. "And why did you think I was involved?"

  Mark tensed, backed away. "I got the idea you were helping Blade when you invited me to your apartment for sex for the first time and someone approved bank transfers while we were ... busy."

  "You weren't doing my accounting yet. I hadn't give you access to my records."

  "That's right." His tone set her teeth on edge.

  "What? You just--just barged into my records?"

  "I--I was there to investigate, Nicki. Wherever that led, whomever looked guilty, I was there to check it out. I did my job."

  Blinking once, twice, Nicki stared at him, stunned yet again. "So you took me to bed, pried into my financial records before the sheets were cold, and decided I was an accomplice, rather than imagining it might have been a coincidence." Her thoughts drifted back over that night and as the recollections came, a fresh stab of betrayal and pain accompanied it. "Oh, then when you decided I was guilty, you came back, fucked me, then left me like a cheap whore."

  "Nicki ..." He tossed up his hands. "The evidence wasn't in your favor. I was angry with you for looking guilty. I was angry with myself for wanting a suspect."

  "Yes, everybody knows all women are guilty of using sex to distract men and get what they want. No woman has any amount of self-respect that would make her puke at the prospect of whoring herself to get her way!" she shouted. "You son of a bitch!"

  He winced. "I didn't handle it well. I'm sorry."

  She crossed her arms over her chest. "What made you suddenly decide I'm innocent?"

  "It's tangled."

  "Untangle it fast, pal. I want answers."

  Nodding, he started, "When you asked me to be your accountant and threw Blade out of the chair, but the accounting anomalies continued, I wondered if you were the mastermind of the operation and simply trying to cut him out. It seemed even more likely after the gas leak, which I believed was an accident at the time. No money transfers occurred while you were in the hospital or down in the bed. At that point, I couldn't see how anyone else could be responsible."

  Shocked didn't begin to describe how Nicki felt. She couldn't breathe. Thoughts raced, yet she could hardly grasp anything beyond the pain, the renewing sense of betrayal. She'd loved him. Heaven help her, she still did. And he didn't know her at all. She'd been nothing to him but a case.

  "You think I have enough of a criminal mind to launder money for some big don in the Mafia all on my own? You think I'm that devious and immoral?"

  "Nicki, I didn't know what to think."

  "That didn't stop you from taking me to bed every chance you had."

  Mark gritted this teeth. "You're right. I wanted you, and I wasn't good at resisting. That's my fault. But Nicki, my thinking you were guilty changed tonight. When the intruder tonight told me he'd been hired to kill you, things snapped into place. About a year ago, Blade told the person who framed me for embezzlement that he'd have control of this money pipeline by this summer. If you're not involved, baby, he'd have to get you out of his way to do that. All your "accidents" started to look more suspicious. Why would Blade kill you if he was innocent?"

  "Maybe I cut him out and he wanted revenge?" she challenged.

  "Maybe." He shrugged. "But the meth freak said that Blade told him he'd been trying to
kill you for a while. I realized that a guy with Blade's reputation would have just finished you off if he was pissed. He didn't get a name like Blade because his mama had a knife fetish. All those accidents didn't seem like the work of someone angry. It seemed like the work of someone calculating. Someone with a master plan. A criminal trying to get a roadblock out of the way."

  Mark's answer made sense as much as it flayed her feelings into raw strips of sensation.

  "But it never occurred to you that I might be innocent because I wasn't the criminal kind of woman?"

  He frowned, his face a seeming snarl of confusion and regret. "I ... I didn't want to believe it. At times it seemed unreal, not like something you would do. But the facts were against you." He sighed. "To be honest, this was more about me. I've picked some awful women in the past. The worst. The baddest, raciest, and most audacious."

  "And you thought I fit right in with that crowd. You know what? You've done nothing but deceive and use me since the day you walked in my door--"

  "That's not true. I was as honest as I could be. My name really is Mark, although my last name is Sullivan, not Gabriel. I did work at a bank in Florida. I really was framed for embezzlement. I do have a sister named Kerry, a brother-in-law named Rafe--"

  "Tiffany?"

  He nodded. "An ex-wife named Tiffany. All true."

  "And every time you touched me, it meant absolutely nothing. I was the means to an investigation."

  Mark leaned close--disconcertingly close. He placed his palms on the mattress on either side of her thighs. Nicki was forced to lean back onto her elbows or endure his dangerous touch.

  "Do you really believe that?" He grabbed her wrist and placed it over an erection like steel. "Do you?"

  Nicki swallowed. A few feet away, with tension swirling between them, Mark had been a major distraction. With his cock under her palm, those mesmerizing eyes looking so green and challenging and staring right at her, while his lips hovered mere inches above hers ... she wouldn't have a prayer in hell if she didn't do something quick.

  "I need to use the bathroom," she lied.

  Immediately, he backed away.

  Nicki stood and walked past him, heading toward the room's lone toilet.