by Lori Foster
The perfect setting for a fantasy. The perfect setting for a real escape—an escape that might turn into another quick rejection if she answered Sam’s question about her job anytime soon.
Lacey loved the Bureau. She loved her success. Yeah, she wasn’t so crazy about sacrificing the fun side of her personality, but she accepted that this was the price she’d have to pay to pursue the job she adored, particularly on a timetable unheard of by most standards. Just as she did when evaluating a crime scene, Lacey identified the strongest clue and sought to exploit it. As long as she scheduled a few weekends like this—long distance getaways where she could release and indulge all her pent-up passions—she could look forward to a long, fulfilling career.
Especially if she kept meeting perfect men like Sam Duke.
Beyond his incredible body, handsome face and extraordinary sense of rhythm, Sam’s charming persona included impeccable manners. He had the finesse to invite her to order a drink and peruse the menu before he brought her back to the topic she wanted to avoid.
“So, you didn’t tell me. How does chemistry relate to your job?”
She summoned her coolest demeanor while she folded her menu. “Just one of the many tools I use,” she answered, knowing full well her response had been cryptic at best. And cowardly at worst.
“That could make you anything from a hairdresser to a mortician. You’re deliberately not answering my question,” he chastised, his tone light, flirtatious. “I should warn you, you’re only intriguing me more.”
A thrill raced through Lacey’s blood, propelled by the naughty twinkle in Sam’s dark green eyes. With a deep, nerve-quelling breath, she locked on to his claim. She could buy herself—actually, both of them—some time.
“You enjoy intrigue? Hmm. An interesting clue about you. We could make a game of this, you know. We can spend the evening getting to know one another and while we do, you can try to figure out what I do for a living. And vice versa.”
“Is it something illegal?”
She shook her finger from side to side. “This isn’t Twenty Questions. You’ll have to be more clever than that.”
He nodded, grinning, his eyes glittering with the challenge. Whatever Sam Duke did for a living, Lacey guessed it had something to do with unraveling mysteries. Was he a novelist? A cop? A mathematician? The possibilities were endless, but she knew she’d have just as much fun figuring it out as he, though with her FBI background, she might have the jump on him.
Of course, with what she had planned for later, jumping on him was in the cards either way.
“So, what would you like?”
His question popped right through her lascivious thoughts. “Excuse me?”
“For dinner? You were starved a minute ago.”
She flipped open her menu and sighed. So many wonderful choices! Lobster bisque, a favorite…but then she could never say no to an okra-less gumbo. Oh, and they had French onion soup served with Gruyère croutons, another rare indulgence she couldn’t pass up. Before she even made it through the salad listings, tempting her with everything from her favorite watercress and apple salad with glazed pecans to juicy tomatoes and basil topped with milky mozzarella, Lacey closed the menu.
“You pick,” she said.
“Me?” His dark eyebrow arched, a sure sign that her request surprised him. The tone of his voice doubted the veracity of her request. He probably wasn’t used to ordering for a date, since the practice had died a well-deserved death sometime before the turn of the century.
But Lacey didn’t care. She’d made her one big choice tonight, and in the spirit of fun, she wanted to see what type of food this man would select for her.
“I don’t know what you like,” he insisted.
She waved her hand. “You’ll soon find out, if you play your cards right. I’m not allergic to anything and though I’m not particularly fond of fish, shellfish is wonderful. You take it from there.”
“I suspect you are a bossy woman,” he said, humor dancing in his eyes.
“I’m deferring my preferences to you, letting your order for me! How is that bossy?”
He grinned at their stalemate and she excused herself for the ladies’ room when the waiter arrived. The prospect of him surprising her added another layer of excitement to an already amazing night.
How her lipstick survived the dancing, she’d never know. The brand Gina had given her was top-notch. Lacey dabbed the shine off her face with her powder, then used the soft paper towels and a splash of water to refresh the skin on her neck and chest. The cool splash reminded Lacey how hot she was, how flushed her flesh remained—and not just from the dancing.
She was hot for Sam, and they’d only just met.
With her fingers, she fluffed her hair, pleased with the streaks of temporary red hair color she’d combed into her natural light brown before she’d left her hotel. For the first time in years, she looked a little more like the woman she used to be. Irreverent. Free-spirited. Fun. She’d changed so much since the last time she’d hit a club like this, but she couldn’t say the changes were all bad.
Back in high school and college, she regularly partied all night. But except for a spontaneous make-out session on the dance floor with a particularly arousing hunk, she chose her lovers with great care. Everyone may have thought she was easy, but Lacey rarely slept with guys she met in the clubs. Her lovers were guys she shared classes with or that she met through her sister—nothing too serious, but nothing wild. Beneath her outrageous exterior, Lacey possessed a cautious heart—a heart that was about to make some serious exceptions for the man waiting for her in the restaurant.
Lucky guy, she thought with a laugh.
After using the bathroom and washing her hands, she pulled out her credit card thin cell phone and dialed her sister.
Eve didn’t answer her home phone, so Lacey dialed her cell. Not surprisingly, Eve hadn’t yet left the university where she worked, even if it was nearly ten o’clock on a Friday night.
“I’m glad I didn’t decide to make an early evening of it so we could hang out,” Lacey chastised into the phone, teasingly. Both Baptiste sisters were horrible workaholics and came from a long line of workaholics. Laziness in a Baptiste was considered immediate reason for expulsion from the family. Which was probably why Lacey and Eve, at twenty-eight and thirty years old respectively, were the last living members of their clan.
“Yeah, right, Lace. Like you had any intention of cutting your night short. How’s the date with Dixon going?”
Lacey groaned. “Exactly how do you know this man? He’s not your accountant or anything, is he? Because if he is, you might want to log on and check your accounts. Fast.”
“Dixon’s a criminal?” Eve asked, making Lacey proud that her sister would trust Lacey’s instincts about such matters. Eve and Lacey had a good relationship, despite the many fights they had as preteens. Only two years apart in age, they’d survived intense sibling rivalry by retreating into their own divergent worlds. Lacey was the unstoppable extrovert with her endless stream of friends and party invitations. And Eve talked to dead people. She didn’t make her living that way—officially, she was a professor of anthropology, with a specialty in Gypsy cultures. On the side, she regularly spoke with ghosts.
They were an interesting pair.
“I don’t have proof, but I’ll bet I will by Monday,” Lacey answered. “He dumped me five seconds after he learned I worked for the FBI.”
Eve laughed. “And that makes him a criminal? Hate to break it to you, Sis, but just because you didn’t instantly wow him with your endless charm doesn’t mean he’s operating on the wrong side of the law. He’s the brother of one of my graduate students. One of my brightest graduate students.”
“Yeah, well,” Lacey muttered, conceding nothing, “don’t leave him alone in a room with any of your antiquities, okay?”
“So, are you headed back to your hotel? You could come over to the house, you know. I’m leaving here in about twen
ty minutes.”
Lacey shivered. A few years ago, Eve had moved into a tiny house on the outskirts of the city, a quaint bungalow situated on what used to be a plantation—complete with its own cemetery in the backyard. She’d heard enough over the phone about Eve’s spectral roommates to give her nightmares. Living, breathing psychotics she could handle. Ghosts and spirits were something else altogether.
“I love you, Sis, but the only thing I want visiting my room tonight is a waiter in a cute little tuxedo. Though I’m not going back to my hotel room. At least, not in the next hour.”
If Eve groaned with displeasure, she’d had the decency to cover the mouthpiece of her phone.
“Did you pick up someone new? I thought all the people at Blind Dates were fixed up before they arrived. That’s the hook, isn’t it? Come with a date or stay at the blind date lounge downstairs until you find one? Did you do the blind date lounge?”
Lacey turned away from the mirror. “Hey, I thought about it for about five seconds. But I got lucky.”
“Don’t you always?”
“I try.”
“Be careful.”
“Goes without saying, Sis. I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow?”
After Lacey confirmed the meeting place and time with her sister, she disconnected the call and hurried back to her date. Sam was just uncorking a bottle of champagne, fresh from an iced bucket now sitting beside their table. He stood and helped her back into her chair. She could get used to this.
“Your manners are impeccable. Southern born and bred, aren’t you?”
“Only the finest Macon cotillions for me.”
“You’re not local?”
“I’ve been in Atlanta since college.”
But he had no accent. Then again, neither did she, and she’d been born and raised here. Of course, she’d had to work to drop her natural Southern twang during her first year at Quantico. She’d secretly traded vocal training with a department linguist who wanted to learn how to swing dance, knowing she’d be a better agent, more adaptable and fit for cross-country assignments, if she could speak without revealing her regional affiliation.
That explained her speech patterns, but what about Sam’s?
“Where’d you go to college?”
He hesitated, as if divulging his alma mater might end the game they’d decided to play. “Georgia State. You?”
“Emory.”
“Monied family?”
“Good inheritance. My father died when I was sixteen. Mother followed a year later.”
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, but with complete sincerity.
Lacey shook away the ever-present grief. “Thanks. They worked themselves to early graves. Dad was a stockbroker who died of a heart attack; Mom had a law firm specializing in civil rights cases. She died from not paying enough attention to her high blood pressure.”
“Is that why you’re such a free spirit?”
She grinned. Man, she’d longed to hear someone call her that again. Someone other than herself or her sister, who were both getting harder to convince since she’d joined the Bureau.
“Yeah, that’s why. All work and no play can get you very dead.”
He slid her champagne glass to her and lifted his in salute. “Here’s to living.”
5
SETH DRANK THE champagne with relish, for once in his life enjoying the dry bubbles tickling his nose. Normally, he was a beer guy, with an occasional taste for scotch. A shooter or two if out with a date. But tonight, he’d had no compunction at ordering the pricey sparkling wine. Lacey Baptiste could inspire a man to love champagne and anything else frivolous and fun. But now, he also knew she possessed a layer of depth, dug by the tragedy of losing her parents, just below the surface of her party-girl persona. She had real reasons to cut loose and enjoy herself. She knew how temporary life could be.
He tilted his glass toward her and offered her another silent toast before he drained the delicate flute.
They continued to chat easily and flirt ceaselessly until his first round of appetizers arrived at the table. More for his own preferences than hers, he’d ordered delectable finger foods to begin their meal.
He watched her eyes widen as the wait staff cleared the flowers and condiments from the table and presented their food. She closed her eyes and inhaled, causing him to do the same. The fiery scent of chipotle peppers, ground into a creamy sauce, then layered over buttery grilled shrimp assailed his nostrils first, hardly outdone by the garlic steaming from the Oysters Rockefeller.
The minute they were left alone, she grinned. “You’re good.”
He nodded his appreciation.
“Of course,” she continued, grabbing a shrimp by the tail and swirling it in the sauce, “I don’t know how much kissing we’ll want to do between the peppers and the garlic.”
He nodded, then scooped an oyster shell with his hand and stabbed the steamed center with a small seafood fork. “I thought of that, but if we both eat our fill, we’ll cancel each other out, right?”
“That’s the common belief.”
He shimmied the oyster off the shell, making sure that the prized morsel with the creamy spinach covering it stayed balanced on the fork. “Let’s give it a shot.”
He fed her the oyster slowly, watching with fascination as she opened her mouth in anticipation. She closed her eyes and the minute the flavors connected with her tongue, she groaned loudly and appreciatively. As if she’d pressed her fingers around his sex, he hardened. Would she be this wild, this unbridled in bed?
“God, those are delicious. Your turn,” she said, reaching for an oyster.
He stopped her. “Not quite yet.” He lifted her champagne glass to her lips, taking in how her raisin-stained mouth touched oh-so-lightly against the crystal. “Try the shrimp first. But be forewarned, it’s hot.”
She met his stare boldly. “I like it hot.”
“I’ll bet you do,” he answered.
“You think I’m real hot-to-trot, don’t you? A real wild cat?”
She’d read his mind.
“Am I wrong?”
She shook her head, licking a thin layer of bubbles from her mouth. “Maybe.”
“Now who’s the liar?”
He fed her the shrimp and after they laughed over the spicy fire of the dish, he let her feed him. They cooled the peppery taste with more champagne and a shared serving of creamy strawberry soup, served cold and garnished with mint. Seth could have spent the entire night watching her lick the last of the pink concoction off the silver spoon, but she had other ideas.
“Ready to go?”
She placed her napkin beside her plate and retrieved her purse.
“We haven’t even had the main course,” he protested, though halfheartedly. He wanted nothing more than to retreat to somewhere very quiet and very private. Soon. But not before he hit her with the whole treatment. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to please a woman with simple things like sexy food and good manners. How she managed to coax the gentleman out of him at the same time she lured the aroused man intrigued him more than any throwaway comment about her job.
He didn’t care what she did for a living. He hoped it wasn’t illegal. Other than that, he was wide open.
“The main course? Isn’t that what we’re about to have?”
He tossed a few bills on the table, then followed her out of the restaurant and into the elevator.
Temptation glazed her eyes when the doors swooshed shut, but a stop on the next level to let three more couples on the elevator erased the possibility of making love to her in the enclosed space. Once they hit the bottom floor, they followed the crowd outside. She pulled her valet ticket from her purse.
“I’m parked around the corner,” he said.
“You don’t think I’m going to get in the car with a man I just met, do you?”
He laughed, and luckily, she only looked half insulted.
“You’ll go home with me, but you won’t ride
in the car?”
“I’m not going home with you, either.”
Seth acted on a whim, tugging her away from the crowd into a semiprivate corner behind a thick potted palm.
In the tight space, he pressed his body flush against hers, as he had on the dance floor. Through the material of his shirt, he felt her nipples harden, felt her breath pant against his neck. “You’re not some kind of tease, are you?” he said, making sure she heard the playful tone in his voice.
“Oh, I’m the best kind of tease,” she replied. “I’m the kind of tease that will follow through, but on her own terms.”
He smoothed his hands down her sides, reveling in her intoxicating curves. “Name your terms, Lacey Baptiste.”
“Kiss me?”
He stepped back, but only enough so he could see all of her face.
Even in the semidarkness, her dark brown eyes glittered with electricity, life. The lipstick she’d worn earlier was now completely gone, but her lips remained glossy thanks to her tongue. And oh, that tongue. Pink and pointed and likely incredibly adept at finding the sensitive places on a man’s body that needed wet attention.
“My pleasure.”
He braced his hands around her slim waist, charged by the feel of her skin beneath his as she raised herself higher to press her lips to his.
She tasted of strawberries, sweet and minty, with a hint of spiced fire. Her mouth was warm, inviting, and Seth couldn’t control the kiss, simply because he didn’t want to. Their tongues sparred, their hands roamed. Her heart beat against his chest, and he couldn’t help but press his sex hard against her belly. He wanted her. He wanted to feel himself inside her more than he wanted to breathe.
She pushed him back with surprising strength. Her cheeks were flushed, her pupils dilated to near black. Her breasts heaved as she struggled for air. “Meet me at my hotel.”
“When?”
“Forty minutes.”