Licensed to Thrill [Clandestine Affairs 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Zara Chase

  “Precisely, we don’t know, because we don’t live in their part of the world.” Hal felt anger radiate through his body. She just didn’t get it. “And don’t properly understand their beliefs and what they’re prepared to sacrifice in their name. It’s rather arrogant to assume that the whole world wishes to live by the same standards as the West.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Jodie looked crestfallen. “But I can’t abandon what I think is right. Not for anyone.” She sighed, and added softly, “Not even for Milo.”

  “I guess that’s up to you.”

  “How did you guys get to be so tight?” she asked after a brief pause. “I don’t mean to be rude, but you look and sound as though you’re from different walks of life.”

  “Milo’s upper class and I’m just a working boy from the backstreets?” he suggested, a hint of a smile breaking through his anger.

  “Well, that is how it seems to an outsider, and yet it’s as though you can communicate without the need for words. I’m guessing, but I don’t think you discussed taking me to bed. You just seemed to exchange a look, and knew you were on the same page.”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty much how it is with us. Milo’s family owns half the county of Kent…well, I exaggerate, but they certainly have a huge old house down there that will be Milo’s one day. He’s an only child, you see. He went to Harrow, then on to Oxford, where he got his law degree. Then he signed up for the army, determined to prove something to himself by getting into the SAS. He could have gone in as an officer, and had a relatively easy time of it, but he chose to do it the hard way.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “He and I were on the same basic training course, and hated each other. I thought he was too soft to make the grade, he thought I was a total jerk. Neither of us was right.” Hal laughed. “We just kinda hit it off when we were paired together on a night exercise. He actually saved me from major embarrassment when I wandered into quicksand.”

  “And what do you do now he’s practicing law?”

  “I act as his investigator. Basically we live, work, and play together, and that’s the way we like it.”

  “It must be nice to have such a close friend.”

  The pathos in her tone caused Hal’s annoyance with her ideology to dissipate. “Yeah well, we’d best get you down to the police station,” he said, stacking their dirty plates in the dishwasher. “You…er, might wanna remove that collar.”

  Jodie reached up a hand and touched it. “Not a chance. It’s mine.”

  Hal laughed. “As you wish.”

  There was tension between them as Hal drove to the station. Partly, he assumed, because Jodie was anxious about reporting in, but partly caused by Hal’s withdrawal from her. He was being unfair, he knew that, but he felt torn. Never had he met a woman who so comprehensively drew him in, but he and Milo had always said in the unlikely event of them settling down, they would share the same woman—just like they shared every other aspect of their lives. Jodie could very likely be that woman, except for her fucked-up view of the world’s problems. Milo would never go for it, and Hal didn’t want to put him in the position of having to seriously consider it.

  And if he knew how smitten Hal was, Milo would consider it. Their friendship, their shared history, made that inevitable.

  “We’re here,” he said, sliding the car into a multistory a few streets away. “Wear your dark glasses, honey, and keep your head down.”

  “You think there will be reporters?”

  “There usually are, and news of your arrest will have got out by now. Daddy won’t be best pleased if your picture’s plastered all over the dailies. Milo’s arranged for us to go in around the back, but still.”

  “And we don’t want to disappoint, Daddy, do we?” She clenched her jaw. “Okay, I’m ready.”

  “That isn’t precisely what I meant.”

  “Then what?”

  “You’ve made yourself conspicuous by getting arrested.”

  “Which wasn’t my intention.” Jodie’s tone was scathing. “I’m not the one in my family seeking public recognition.”

  “Think about it.” Hal placed a guiding hand on her elbow as they covered the short distance to the police station. “You were doing what you wanted to do, without anyone being any the wiser. But now—”

  “Oh shit, I get what you mean.” Jodie’s face paled. “Now everyone will know who I am, or more to the point, who my father is.” She shook her head. “Great, just great!”

  “And that will make you a target,” Hal said, determined to tell her the brutal truth. “You’ll put yourself and others in danger if you sail too close to the wind over sensitive issues.”

  “Shit,” she muttered again as they made their way inside.

  Their business didn’t take long. Hal ushered Jodie out through the back entrance again, pleased to have avoided the press. He pushed the door open, sensing that Jodie had relaxed as well, and was met with a plethora of camera flashes.

  “Goddamn it! Keep your head down.” He grabbed Jodie’s arm and hustled her away. “How the fuck did they get back here?”

  Chapter Ten

  Milo’s case at the magistrate’s court dragged on, and he found it hard to concentrate. Eventually it was done. He shook his client’s hand, aware the guy was lucky to get off with a slap on the wrist and a modest fine. He checked his cell phone for messages, and found one from Hal, telling him to call, urgently.

  “What’s up?” he asked when Hal picked up.

  “Reporters lying in wait outside the nick,” Hal replied tersely.

  “Shit, how the fuck…”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Presumably they knew it was Jodie.”

  “Oh yeah. There were only two of them, but they called her name and she looked up before I could stop her.”

  “Damn. You back home yet?”

  “On our way now.”

  “Okay, I’ll be with you in ten. We’ll talk about it then.”

  The downside of living in Battersea was the lack of a nearby underground station. Milo took a cab home. It was quicker and cheaper than trying to drive and then find a parking space. He mulled over Jodie’s situation as he sat in the cab, stuck in traffic on the Albert Bridge. Thoughts of the hot sex they’d enjoyed the night before had been messing with his brain all the morning, and showed no signs of abating. She was a confusing combination of ideology, vulnerability, anger, and sexy, desirable female. Milo should have done what he could for her from a legal perspective and walked away. The moment he offered to let her stay with him and Hal—and he still didn’t know what had made him do that—walking away was never going to be an option.

  Why her, with her admirable but totally misguided ambitions? Not that she’d ever see them in that light, so he should have left her the fuck alone. It was too late for that now. Damn, just the thought of her pussy clenching around his cock, the cute mewling noises she made when she was close, her curiosity about the games he and Hal wanted to play with her, her intoxicating sensuality, told him stuff about her passionate nature she probably hadn’t been aware of herself.

  He had felt a deep, bewildering oneness with her the first time he’d seen her in that grimy police station, and now he was in deep. He wanted her with an intensity that shook him rigid. After all, he’d only known her for a day. Lightning didn’t strike that quickly, did it? He cared about her, too, in a way that he never had for any other woman. He also felt sympathy for the situation she found herself in with her dysfunctional family, and could understand why she wanted to rebel against them.

  But they were poles apart in every other aspect of their lives, apart from sex, of course. They were pretty damned compatible in that regard, but the principles that had formed his character and made Milo the man he was today were diametrically opposed to Jodie’s take on life. She wasn’t just playing at championing the world’s underprivileged—she was deadly serious about it—and Milo absolutely couldn’t go back there.
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br />   His leg spasmed, as it still did occasionally—a sure sign he’d overdone it. It was also a timely reminder of just why anything other than a passing fling with Jodie was out of the question. His physical scars had healed—after a fashion—but the mental damage done by that fucking grenade still gave him nightmares. In the beginning he had woken up regularly, screaming, drenched in sweat, the sheet twisted around him like a straitjacket, his subconscious dragging him back to the time and place he most wanted to forget. Those incidents were gradually getting less frequent now but he absolutely didn’t need the constant reminders that Jodie’s “well-intentioned by basically naively impractical” campaigns would engender.

  That he was even considering anything other than one of their usual flings brought him up short. How had that happened? Presumably that’s why he’d showered with her. It was a test he hadn’t consciously decided upon, but she’d passed it with flying colors, expressing nothing more than mild concern about his scars, wisely asking no intrusive questions. Presumably she had saved those for Hal this morning. Milo wondered if he’d answered them, rather hoping that he had. If Jodie knew the truth then she would realize for herself that this was nothing heavy, always supposing her thoughts had even veered in that direction.

  The cab pulled up outside the apartment block. Milo paid the driver, noticing Hal’s car was back in its usual spot. He let himself in and rode the elevator up to the loft. Hal and Jodie were seated at the breakfast bar, sharing a pot of coffee.

  “Hey.” He dropped his document case on the couch, but resisted the urge to touch Jodie. “I hear you’ve been on candid camera this morning,” he said to her.

  “I had no idea I was so popular,” she replied with a casual shrug.

  She looked up at him, huge eyes brimming with an emotion he didn’t try to put a name to, and felt his groin constrict. Damn it, perhaps her causes were just a passing phase. They could work something out, surely? Seeing her here in his and Hal’s private space—a space where they seldom invited anyone to stay for more than one night—felt so fundamentally right.

  “Did you find out which papers the photographers were from?” Milo asked Hal, helping himself to coffee.

  “No, I didn’t recognize them, and didn’t want to stop and ask. That would have given them more opportunities to snap away at Jodie.”

  “Good point.” Milo leaned against the kitchen surface, ankles crossed, and rubbed his jaw as he thought it through. “We know most of the regular snappers, so I’m guessing they were freelance, working on a tip-off.”

  “From inside the nick?”

  “Most likely.”

  “The police would tell the press?” Jodie’s eyes were luminous with shock, outrage, anger.

  Milo shook his head. She really was hopelessly naïve. “In a heartbeat, darling. Half of England’s finest earn a bit extra by letting the press know if anything interesting goes down in the station.”

  She shrugged. “Oh.”

  “Ah well.” Milo loosened his tie and shrugged out of his suit jacket. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  Hal took his phone from his pocket and scrolled through the pictures on it. “Seemed only right to return the favor,” he said, grinning as he handed the phone to Milo. “I snapped them snapping us.”

  Milo laughed. Leave it to Hal to turn the tables. He looked at the pictures, then shook his head. He didn’t recognize the guys, either. “Send it to my e-mail.”

  “Will do. You got ideas?”

  “Not sure.” Milo turned to Jodie. “I guess your dad won’t be best pleased if your picture’s all over the press, and the web, so I have to at least attempt damage limitation.”

  Jodie shrugged, like she didn’t much care, but the gesture looked contrived. She was trying just a little bit too hard not to appear concerned, which told him deep down her father’s reaction mattered to her, even if she wasn’t ready to admit it to herself.

  Milo spent half his working life talking to people accused of committing crimes, and could almost always tell if they were being completely honest. In Jodie’s case, she was holding something back. Still, if it had nothing to do with the circumstances leading up to her arrest then he figured it was none of his damned business. He definitely didn’t want to get into the minefield that was her relationship with her family. That would imply an intention to prolong their relationship, which wasn’t going to—which couldn’t—happen.

  He caught sight of her lovely profile and his heart stalled. She looked up, saw him gawping at her, and her face colored. Then she sent him a wicked little smile that fired his blood. Shit, she’d really gotten beneath his skin! Part of him wanted it to take a while to finalize her affairs, just so she would have to stay with them a little bit longer. The practical side of his brain told him to get over himself.

  “Excuse me for a moment.”

  Milo broke eye contact with her before he could start daydreaming about that temptingly plump lower lip of hers, and all the things he’d like to have her do with it—to him. He went into his bedroom, trying not to look at the bed and think about what had gone down there the night before. Yeah, right! He quickly changed into jeans and a T-shirt, thrust his bare feet into Docksiders, and splashed water on his overheated face.

  Back in the main room, he decided the only way to get through this with his sanity intact was to keep it all business.

  “Okay, guys,” he said. “We’ll knock together some lunch. Then I need you to go over to the house in Camden Town, Hal.”

  “Thought you might.”

  “Talk to the owners, Phil and Betty?” Milo glanced at Jodie to make sure he’d got their names right, and she nodded. “See if they have any ideas how those papers relating to Spectrum got to be in their house. I don’t hold out much hope, but we have to try.”

  “Right, I’m on it.” Hal winked at Jodie. “But first, tuna mayo okay for you all?”

  “Great,” Jodie replied. “Can I help?”

  “Nah, you’re good. I can just about manage to make a sandwich.”

  “I could get used to being spoiled,” Jodie said with a self-conscious little laugh. “I’ll just grab my laptop then and catch up on my e-mail.”

  “Don’t respond to anything to do with your causes,” Milo said when she returned.

  She stopped walking, and glared at him. “You’re kidding me?”

  “Darling, the police will be tracking your account, or least we have to assume they will be. Your cell phone, too, for that matter. Don’t forget, if you communicate with anyone connected with your arrest, however innocently, it’ll give the police the excuse they’re looking for to re-arrest you.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it.” Jodie put down her computer and threw up both hands, looking annoyed. “I’ll just put my life on hold and wait for this to blow over.”

  God, she’s young! “No going into any websites to do with your causes, either.” Milo fixed her with a firm glare. “Those will be monitored, too.”

  “That’s so unfair. There’s stuff I need to keep up with.”

  “Welcome to the real world,” Milo replied with a cynical twist to his lips.

  “I’ve made commitments, and I’m waiting for final news about something. People are depending upon me.”

  “About what?” Milo asked, scowling. She really was into all this stuff in a big way.

  “Well, I guess it’ll keep.”

  Milo was being distant and professional. He could see that she was confused, and perhaps a little hurt by his attitude. He didn’t want it to be that way. He would much prefer to throw her onto the nearest surface and fuck her senseless.

  It wasn’t going to happen now, but with her under his roof indefinitely, Milo had absolutely no idea how long he would be able to keep his distance. Take it one day—one hour—at a time, he told himself, just like when he’d been in the service. That mantra had worked for him then, but he wouldn’t take bets on it doing the same thing now. Jodie had got him in a major tailspin and he no longer knew which
way was up. Fuck it, he should have booked her into a hotel and been done with it. Whatever had he been thinking?

  “Lunch,” Hal called from the kitchen, sending Milo a probing glance, probably because he was acting so out of character.

  They ate mostly in silence, the lunchtime news playing on the television behind them with the sound muted. Milo wanted to see if there was anything on it about Jodie. There wasn’t, at least not yet.

  “Okay,” Hal said, gathering up his phone and keys. “I’m outta here. Play nice without me, children.”

  Without Hal’s cheerful chatter to break the tension, it seemed unnaturally quiet in the loft. Milo was aware of Jodie’s hurt expression as she pottered about tidying the kitchen, avoiding making eye contact with him. Milo owed her an explanation for the barriers he’d put up, but didn’t attempt one. How could he explain when he didn’t understand himself?

  “I have work to do,” he said, heading for his study. “Shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours. It’s a nice afternoon. Why don’t you sit out on the terrace, catch a few rays? There’re books and stuff over there if you need something to read.”

  “I’m fine.” She inverted her chin and headed for the terrace. “You don’t have to entertain me.”

  Oh baby, if you knew how much I want to! Milo fired up his laptop, and went through the procedures to make sure it was clean. Then he sent an e-mail to Raoul, attaching the picture of the photographers who had snapped Jodie, wondering if Raoul had anything on them in his extensive records. There was something not quite right about the guy on the left. He and Hal knew all the press photographers, including the freelancers. Jodie’s story was a big deal, so it wouldn’t be newbies who just happened to snap her leaving the nick. It would be someone with decent contacts, or with an axe to grind.

  If it was the latter, then Raoul would almost certainly know. Raoul’s files would be the envy of the security services on both sides of the pond, had they known about them. Hopefully they would come through for them this time, just as they had so often in the past.