His eyes gave her a shock. It was the first time she’d seen them, and they were a pale shade of blue. Powder blue, she decided. It was an inconceivable color for a man like him. She couldn’t decide whether she liked the effect or not. Then she was startled even more by the flicker of apprehension in their depths. Apprehensive? Him? The man who hung out in honkytonks, probably drank his beer straight from the can and crushed the empties against his head? He was primal and raunchy enough for ten men! And yet she felt an unaccountable welling of tenderness for him. The tough guy with baby-blue eyes, she thought, smiling to herself. Lord, she hoped the emotion didn’t show.
His voice turned harsh. “I asked what you were doing.”
“You’re feverish,” she told him. “I thought the cold cloth might feel good.”
“I don’t need a nurse,” he said abruptly, waving her hand away. “I need a drink. And make it booze.”
What a crude, insufferably rude—she bit back the angry retort on her lips. She couldn’t afford to alienate him now. She had a whole battery of questions to ask, and she wanted him receptive, the ingrate.
“Did it ever occur to you to ask rather than order?” she said quietly, rising to get him the drink. She had every intention of making it a stiff one. Maybe alcohol would loosen his tongue.
She crossed the room to the mahogany sideboard that had been a wedding gift from her ex—in-laws, poured several splashes of brandy into a snifter, returned, and plunked it down in front of him on the coffee table. She then took the wing chair across from him, smiling as she sat down. “Need a coaster?” she inquired, casually opening the drawer of the table next to her chair.
“A what?” he said, grimacing. “No, forget it.”
She settled back in the chair. “You’re welcome.”
He took a long swallow of the brandy, shuddered, hit his chest, and took another. “Good stuff,” he said, looking up.
Since it was probably the closest thing she would ever get to a compliment from him, Bev nodded graciously. Either the man had been raised by wolves, or he went out of his way to be obnoxious. Something told her it was the latter, especially as she watched him toss back the rest of the brandy. For one thing, he knew how to hold a snifter.
His comment about the brandy sank in. It ought to be good stuff, she thought. It was one of the gifts she’d given her ex-husband, Paul, in the last months of their five-year marriage. Her reaction to her husband’s pulling away from her had been to compensate with lavish amounts of attention and needlessly expensive gifts. It wasn’t her style at all, but she was desperate to make up for the things she couldn’t give him, the things he really wanted. The thought of another failure had been unendurable at that point in her life, and losing Paul had been the ultimate failure.
You’re on thin ice, Bev, she told herself. She quickly pushed the memories of her marriage away, knowing she was on dangerous ground. The real reason she and Paul had split up was far too painful to draw out and examine now. Besides, she had more immediate things to concentrate on, such as taking advantage of her guest’s weakened condition.
“You went to a lot of trouble to find me,” she said. “Mind telling me how you did it?”
He shrugged and dark hair fell forward, almost tumbling into his eyes. “No trouble at all,” he answered, sweeping the hair back. “I had a hunch you were giving me the slip yesterday, so I checked out your license plate number as you were pulling away from the bar.”
“And my address? How did you get that?”
“Friends at the DMV.”
She asked the next question without missing a beat. “Why were you so eager to find me?”
“You don’t know?”
“You just couldn’t get enough of me?” She smiled, and then almost wished she hadn’t said the words as his baby blues drifted to more intimate areas of her anatomy, including her breasts, which were already overly responsive to his displays of interest.
“Not nearly enough,” he said. “Care to remedy that?”
“Maybe ... when I get some honest answers.”
His eyes flashed with the same dark impulses she’d seen when she was pinned beneath him in the stairway landing. Sexual bargaining seemed the only ploy that worked with him, and the awareness sent a strange thrill of excitement through her. Of course, she couldn’t consider such a thing again. She’d already had two narrow escapes. It would be utterly crazy ... and yet she couldn’t deny that there was something about him that made her want to take risks. What was it? His moody, gimme-what-I-want-baby good looks? The air of reckless sensuality?
Fortunately, he took the decision out of her hands.
“Rules of the game,” he said as he set the snifter down. “The first is don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep. Sooner or later some tough customer is going to call your bluff.”
“But not a nice guy like you.”
He grinned, dug a toothpick out of his jacket pocket, and popped it into his mouth. “Right,” he answered lazily, letting the toothpick roll to the corner of his lips. “I’m a regular prince.”
“Then how about answering my questions, your highness. Like who are you? I mean, who are you really?”
He shook his head slowly. “Rule number two—don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”
“But I do want answers.”
“No, you don’t.”
Bev swallowed a sigh of frustration. He was as impossible to pin down as a flickering shadow. She tapped her fingers on the table as it gradually dawned on her that she did have a bargaining tool other than her body. A very potent bargaining tool. She slipped her hand into the table’s open drawer and pulled out the .45 automatic handgun she kept there. “Oh, yes, I do,” she said.
A grimace of disbelief crept into his expression as he stared at her, and the toothpick nearly fell out of his mouth.
Bev quelled a nervous smile. The gun was a model designed to look real even at close range. Her father, who didn’t believe in carrying weapons, had given it to her and lectured her thoroughly on its use. He’d warned her it was a good way to get shot if used recklessly, so she doubted he’d approve of her tactics now. But she just couldn’t resist turning the tables on Mr. Tough Customer.
“So tell me,” she continued, her heart pounding, “who are you anyway? When you’re not being a prince.”
Bev watched him, trying to predict what he might do next as he pulled the toothpick from his mouth and scrutinized her. She’d thought he might be amused by it all, but he didn’t look the least bit amused. His eyes had gone from baby blue to the color of ice, and his darkening mood was all too obvious. He looked as though a hailstorm of biblical proportions was gathering directly above his head. But surely he wouldn’t be foolish enough to rush a woman with a gun.
Bev had no idea how much he wanted to rush her. He’d already imagined the pleasure of wrestling the gun out of her hand in graphic detail—and then he’d rejected the idea. She obviously wanted some information, and so did he. Maybe they could do some trading. “What do you want to know?” he asked, noting her sigh of relief.
The gun dipped in her hand, and he fought back the desire to take it away from her, just on principle. Physically it would have been a cakewalk. She was no match for a man his size, but she had her act together, he had to admit that. She’d faked him out twice in twenty-four hours, and he couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
Maybe it was those lace collars she wore, or the wistful, worried, who-am-I expression he’d noticed once or twice in her dove-gray eyes. He’d been distracted by women before, plenty of times, but the reason had always been sex. With her, it was sex too, and then more. She had the damnedest way of making him feel as though he ought to be nice to her.
“Who are you?” she asked tentatively, as though she’d been trying to analyze his contemplative mood. “I mean, who are you really?”
He popped the toothpick in his mouth again and sat back, draping an arm across the back of the couch. �
��Name’s Sam Nichols.”
A frown formed. “You’ve got twenty IDs in your wallet,” she said, rubbing the gun barrel absently against her thigh. “Not one of them said Sam Nichols.”
He decided to make it easy for her. “That’s because it’s my real name.”
“Why all the IDs?”
He grinned, knowing she wouldn’t believe him. “I’m a collector.”
“A collector? Of business cards? My, what an absorbing hobby.” She stood up and strolled across the room, watching him thoughtfully, and swinging the gun as though she’d forgotten all about it. In fact, she was making him damn nervous the way she was handling that weapon.
“So ... what is it you want with me, Sam?” The gun barrel ticked back and forth like a metronome, and then, as though she’d just remembered it, she began to tap her chin with it, slowly, almost sensually. “My business card?” She cocked her head in a sexy way.
He rolled the toothpick around in his mouth and crunched down on it. Oh, now he really did want to wrestle her to the ground. Hell, she was as unpredictable as a broken compass needle. She was straightlaced one minute, wistful and curious the next—and then there was this sex-bunny-with-a-gun thing.
“I said, what do you want with me, Sam?”
She was rubbing the barrel against her cheek now, almost as though she were about to kiss the damn thing! She hadn’t forgotten the gun, she was flaunting it! She’d had a little taste of power and she liked it. That was dangerous when a woman had a .45 in her hand, and if she got any cockier, he was going to take it the hell away from her. He snapped the toothpick between his teeth to keep from smiling. She was kind of cute when she got all fired up.
“Am I going to get an answer? Sam?”
“I was hired to tail you.”
“What?”
Sam scores, he thought. Finally. “I’m a private dick—uh, you know, detective. And you’re my subject.”
She’d been approaching the coffee table as they talked, and it was a good thing there was a chair behind her, or she would have ended up on the floor. “You’re kidding me?” she said, sinking into the wing chair.
“Never been more serious. I had Nate Greenaway’s office staked out this morning when you walked in.”
“Staked out?”
“His wife, Elayne, hired me.”
“Mrs. Greenaway hired a private detective?”
He nodded, and she began laughing softly. “This is unbelievable,” she said, once more oblivious to the weapon she was waving as she talked. “I’m working for Mr. Greenaway. He hired me to check up on his wife because he thought she was cheating.”
“Could you watch where you’re pointing that thing?”
“Oh, sure,” she said, dropping the gun onto the table. “You know, it’s all starting to make sense now. I took you for Mrs. Greenaway’s boyfriend, and that’s why I followed you to the bar. You must have thought I was crazy.”
“It crossed my mind.” Several times, he thought, like a ping-pong ball in tournament play.
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, gazing at him as though she were looking for tangible proof of what he’d just told her. “Amazing,” she said, “I never would have figured you for a private eye.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said. “I mean, you had me fooled.”
She was kind of cute, he decided. Her wardrobe left a lot to be desired, and he would never understand why a grown woman wanted to strangle such sexy hair in a band. But she was flushed and excited about something. In fact, she was damn near beautiful at the moment, just like yesterday in the bar.
“Did you think I was Mr. Greenaway’s lover?” she asked.
“No, but I was curious what you were doing there. It seemed coincidental, so I decided to check it out.”
“Oh.” Bev was a little disappointed in his answer. She would like to have been thought of as someone’s paramour. And she rather liked the idea that he might have been following her simply because he’d been so totally fascinated with her. Well, at least he’d taken down her license plate number.
“Would you like something cold to drink?” she asked, aware that her throat was exceedingly dry. Nerves, she imagined. A great deal of excitement had been packed into the last two days.
“Sure, got a beer?”
“Iced tea?”
Sam hated iced tea, but he gave her a quick nod just for the opportunity of watching her walk to the kitchen.
As soon as she’d left the room, he picked up the revolver and smiled. Score another point for her, he thought. She was good. He set down the bogus weapon and did a quick visual search of the area.
There was no sign of a man in residence, but there were plenty of signs to confirm his first impression of her. The spotless house, the needlepoint and lace doilies put her squarely in the “nice” category. She might have a few quirks—who didn’t—but she was a missionary at heart. He’d had enough experience with the type to spot one. Nice women went feverish at the sight of a backslider like him, only it wasn’t sex they wanted. It was reformation. They wanted to get him shaving regularly, combing his hair, and updating his wardrobe. They weren’t hot for making babies, they were hot for table manners and good grooming.
Case in point, he told himself as she walked back into the room carrying two tall glasses with lemon wedges stuck on the rims. She already had him drinking iced tea instead of beer. By next week she’d have confiscated his toothpicks.
He’d been through that before. His ex-wife had married him as an act of rebellion against her conservative parents. When the glow wore off and she realized that his pose was for real, that with Sam Nichols what you saw was what you got, she’d bailed out. Just when he’d needed her most.
“By the way, I’m Bev Brewster,” she said, handing him the glass rather than setting it on the table. “And we have a problem.” Smiling, she took a seat next to him on the sofa. “What are we going to do about our clients?”
“Well, for one thing, we can stop tailing each other,” he suggested, edging away from her. “That would save them both some money.”
She drank deeply from her glass. “No. I mean, it’s obvious the Greenaways don’t need private eyes. They need to talk. Neither one of them is cheating, but they’re not communicating either. They don’t trust each other.”
Sam set his iced tea on the table, untouched. “That may be true, but Mrs. Greenaway isn’t paying me for my psychological insights. She’s paying me to tail her husband.”
“Yes, but only because she believes he’s being unfaithful.”
Sam could see where the discussion was headed. Any minute now she’d be lecturing him on the ethics of servicing a client who obviously didn’t need the service. He wanted to concede her point about as much as he wanted to be hijacked by terrorists, but he knew anything less would get him embroiled in a long-drawn-out, no-win argument.
“So what do you suggest?” he said with barely veiled sarcasm. “That we advise our clients to sit down and have a heart-to-heart?”
“Yes!” Bev jumped on the idea immediately. “That’s exactly what they need to do, Sam. If they’d talked in the first place, they wouldn’t have had to hire us, would they?” She was surprised and delighted that he’d brought up the idea, even if reluctantly. Maybe he was a reasonable man after all.
“Do you have an office in the city?” she asked, suddenly curious. She gazed at him intently, noticing the length of his lashes and the way his eyelids drooped slightly at the outer corners. Only their arresting pale blue color kept them from being bedroom eyes.
Sam felt like telling her he worked out of his car, but he knew that would only encourage her maternal instincts. “A small office in El Monte. Very small.”
Bev barely noticed Sam’s mumbled reticence. She wanted to know more about him, especially now that they had their work in common. And she’d been vastly relieved to learn that he wasn’t a rapist, or a felon, or any of the other things she’d imagined. “Do you work alone?”
&nbs
p; “Strictly alone,” he said, glancing at her front door.
Sam was only half listening as Bev pressed on with her questions. He was planning his escape. Maybe he could tell her he was due somewhere, anywhere. He wanted badly to come up with an excuse and cut out before she got to the personal stuff, like his marital status and his yearly income. He knew how missionaries operated. They weren’t happy until they’d ferreted every secret a guy had.
The only thing keeping him there was his fascination with her hands. She was doing something a man didn’t often see a woman do in polite company. She was playing with his drink.
She’d finished her own long ago, and he’d seen her glance at his several times. At first he’d thought it was because she was still thirsty, but then he realized something else was going on. She leaned forward, absently dipped her finger into the iced tea, twirled it around and brought the finger to her lips. Her face was slightly flushed, and her eyes were sparkling as she talked and laughed, carrying the conversation, but she wasn’t being openly seductive. He wondered if she was even aware that she was doing it.
“You really like iced tea, don’t you?” he asked softly.
She glanced down at her finger and yanked it out of the liquid as though she’d been scalded. “Oh! I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ll get you another glass.”
She was off to the kitchen before he could stop her, and suddenly he wasn’t in such a big rush to leave. Maybe he’d been too quick to pigeonhole Bev Brewster. A woman who carried a blackjack in her purse and kept a fake revolver in her living room had some instincts that weren’t missionarylike at all.
He dug another toothpick out of his pocket and placed it between his lips. As for playing with his drink ... that was one of the sexiest things he’d ever seen a woman do.
Four
BEV’S HANDS WERE SHAKING as she opened the freezer compartment of the refrigerator to get some ice. She filled the glass quickly, her fingertips stinging from the cold. Her face was stinging too, but it was for a different reason. She’d exposed an aspect of herself to Sam Nichols that she was profoundly uncomfortable with. It wasn’t just iced tea she liked, as he’d suggested. It was water, liquid, anything wet. She had a ... well, she didn’t know what to call it, but a fetish for wetness.
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