Yours for the Night

by Samantha Hunter

  Much like the bent trajectory of her photography ambitions, this wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do as a private investigator—she wanted to solve cases, murders and other important, life-changing crimes. But everyone had to start somewhere.

  Marcus Hooper was definitely cheating on his wife. Tiffany had seen him come to this hotel several times now, and had seen a woman’s hand on the door as she let Marcus in. But after that, they were out of view. The woman never stepped outside the door. What Tiffany knew and what she could prove were two different things. She’d taken all of the makes of cars and plate numbers from the lot, looking for repeats that she might track down to the woman in the room, but she must have taken a cab—a theory Tiffany was currently pursuing. Unsuccessfully. Cab companies were difficult to penetrate, let alone getting any one particular cabbie to talk. But she didn’t need to know who the woman was—all she needed to do was catch Mr. Hooper in a compromising moment. Let him explain who it was to his wife and her lawyer.

  Looking at her watch again, Tiffany groaned in frustration. The rehearsal dinner was tonight, and she had to be on time. As the lights clicked off up in Marcus’s hotel room, she mentally calculated how long she had to spend on wedding responsibilities. No more than three hours.

  If she was lucky, maybe Marcus would be here longer than that, and she could come back and finish the job. Maybe it was time to get a little more creative, pretend to be room service—wait, no, this place didn’t have room service. But she could come up with some ruse to get him to open that door, and if she was standing right there, maybe she could get the shot and run.

  It was risky, but she had to make this work. Good detectives did whatever they had to do to get the job done. She couldn’t fail, not again.

  She also couldn’t risk anyone asking her why she was late to the dinner—or why she had been late to work a few times this week, and why she completely forgot her brother’s birthday party Wednesday night.

  No one knew about her new profession. Tiffany hadn’t wanted to share until she knew she was going to meet with success. After a string of brilliant failures in life, her family very likely wouldn’t support this new venture and she couldn’t blame them.

  So she led a double life. By day, she worked in her parents’ jewelry store, making the rent and convincing them that she was a reliable adult. At night, she parked here in the lot of the Fall Inn and waited to get photos of a cheating spouse.

  Putting the camera down safely on the car seat and starting the engine, she drove out of the lot and toward Sausalito, where the dinner was being held. A short while later she arrived and was only a teeny bit late.

  Smoothing the front of her dress, she grabbed a champagne cocktail from the tray that a server carried past her as she entered the reception room, spotting the table where her party congregated. It was going to take a few more fizzy peach drinks to make it through this evening, though she’d only allow herself one, since she still had work to do.

  Her worlds had almost collided earlier. One of the employees who worked the afternoon shift at Jarvis Jewelry —the jewelry store owned by her family and named after her grandfather, Jarvis Walker—had a personal emergency that left Tiffany on her own to run the counter, finish the weekly inventory and close up the store. Her parents were off for the weekend on a purchasing trip they couldn’t cancel, and Tiffany was left in charge. She almost hadn’t done it all, changed her clothes and gotten ready for the party before heading out to catch Marcus after he left his job, following him to the hotel. He went there Monday, Wednesday and Friday, like clockwork.

  She’d have thought a cheating husband might be a little less predictable, but he’d followed the same routine each time. She could have called her younger brother to cover the store, but Nick was neck-deep in his MBA program at Berkeley, and he spent weekends up to his ears in books. He would take over Jarvis’s someday—with her blessing—but for the moment, she was perfectly competent to watch over the place. Or at least, that was what she was trying to prove to her parents. Also, Nick might have questions. He was a little too perceptive sometimes. Maybe he should be the detective, she thought with a sigh.

  She didn’t mind working at the store; she needed a paycheck and it settled some of her parents’ worries that their eldest daughter was never going to be successful at anything. Sometimes Tiffany wondered about that, too.

  Turning her thoughts back to the wedding, she wondered why they even needed to rehearse. How hard could it be to walk down an aisle and stand still for fifteen minutes while her friend got married? It was the first wedding she’d been in, and it had all been a lot of fuss, though fun at times. It was slightly less fun being paired up with Jimmy, Isabel’s brother. He was a nice enough guy, harmless, really, though he could find any excuse imaginable to touch her.

  During a dance at the engagement party, he’d snuck his hands down to her backside before they were halfway through the song. She’d been taking some local self-defense classes to be prepared for any trouble she might confront in her investigations. Also on the sly, she was learning to shoot, though she didn’t own a gun yet. She traveled to a rural shooting range in Point Reyes once a week for lessons, far away enough that word could not get back to her family.

  Still, neither skill would help her deal with the bride’s touchy-feely brother.

  Finishing off her cocktail she took her seat at the table, the chair next to hers still empty.

  “Tiff, you made it!” Isabel chirped, dashing around the table as fast as her high heels would allow, wrapping Tiffany in a perfumed hug. Isabel had been her friend since fourth grade, and Tiffany was really happy for her. She only wished her good pal could have matched her up with anyone but her little brother.

  Then again, Jimmy was a safe bet for Tiffany being able to keep her resolution to swear off men for a while—there was no way she’d consider getting involved with him at all.

  “I told you I would,” Tiffany said. She had even called to let them know she’d be a few minutes late.

  “I know, but, well, you know how things go with you sometimes,” her friend said with no malice at all, hugging her again.

  Tiffany did know. She was, after all, Tiffany the Impetuous. Tiffany the Spontaneous. Nick had called her “Froggy” for years because she had something of a reputation for leaping before she looked. Hopping from one thing to another. She’d always defended her adventurous spirit, championed spontaneity, but looking thirty in the face was even making her wonder if she’d ever find her real path in life.

  She had a college degree in English, but didn’t want to teach or write. So, she had set out into the world to find her bliss.

  Among a litany of boring or dead-end jobs was her stint as a flight attendant, which she had liked, but she hadn’t been able to handle the rude passengers.

  Then there was the time she started her own dog-walking business, which was a booming industry in the Bay area, but after one bad bite, she was reluctant to carry on with that enterprise.

  The capstone was emptying her savings to go into business with a friend who had started an adventure-tourism company. She’d become a local hiking guide. It sounded fun—until she had gotten lost in Yosemite overnight with eight tourists. Luckily, everyone was fine, and Paul was good at his part of the job. The business hadn’t been running long enough to see much profit, so he couldn’t buy her half out now, but swore he would. She trusted him, but it still left her broke. Adventurous as she was, she was more of a city girl.

  And then there was Brice.

  Everyone she knew had told her Brice was a bad bet, but she had refused to listen. He’d been charming, sweet, sexy—and a crook. He’d emailed her to ask her to dinner one night, and when she got home—after being stood up—everything she owned was gone. Stolen. He’d cleaned her out. That would never have happened to any of her favorite fictional detectives. Well, maybe to Veronica Mars, who had suffered worse.

  The cops said they couldn’t do a thing about it because she’d
given him a key and legally, he lived in the apartment. There was no way she could prove anything he had taken was hers as she hadn’t kept receipts, many of the items bought years before.

  It was a hard lesson learned. She needed to focus, to be responsible. The first step had been taking a responsible job. The next was staying away from men until she could trust her judgment again. Still, she needed to pursue her dreams, but she was going to do it in a more sensible—and low-key—way. Work at the store—familiar but boring—and make her parents happy. Being in the wedding with Jimmy made Isabel happy, and it certainly made Jimmy happy. Tiffany would be happy if she could just get that picture of Marcus for his wife.

  “Where’s Jimmy?” she asked, looking down at the empty seat.

  “Oh, I was so busy I forgot to call and tell you. Jim got severe food poisoning. He’s in the hospital.”

  “That’s awful! Will he be okay?” Tiffany didn’t like Jimmy all that much, but still didn’t wish him that kind of suffering.

  “He’ll be fine, but he was really sick.”

  “So he won’t be in the wedding?”

  “No, he can’t be,” Isabel said sadly.

  “Um, do I have to do this alone?”

  Somehow that suddenly made her more nervous than fending off Jimmy’s octopus hands for a few hours.

  “I wasn’t sure what we were going to do, but Ed said he has a friend in town who will take Jim’s place. He’s on his way here.”

  “Oh. A stranger?” Tiffany said, wary but intrigued.

  “He’s a friend of Ed’s from college. He’s here from Philadelphia. I asked Ed what he looked like, but you know how guys are. He just said ‘tall,’” Isabel said, lowering her voice to mimic her husband-to-be, laughing.

  Tiffany smiled, intent on being a good sport. “I’m sure he’ll be great if he’s a friend of Ed’s.”

  “Probably. Maybe it will be more fun for you. I know you weren’t crazy about being paired up with Jimmy, but he’s always had a crush on you. I just couldn’t say no when he asked me,” Isabel said by way of apology.

  “Hey, Jimmy’s a great guy. I’m just too old for him,” Tiffany said, an excuse that had saved her from having to be fixed up with Mr. Hands before.

  “Please, this is me you’re talking to,” Isabel said with a grin. “You know my parents would love you to go out with him, but I completely get it. He can be…pushy, I know. No worries,” she said, hugging Tiffany again.

  “Thanks, Iz,” she said, meaning it.

  Tiffany smiled at the other attendants who were already sitting, and she joined them as Isabel returned to the other side of the table to sit with Ed. She was glad she’d made it in time for dinner. Her stomach was growling; she hadn’t had a chance to eat anything since breakfast.

  She focused on the first course that a server placed before her and picked up her fork, ready to dig in when she heard her name again.

  “Pssst, Tiff! Psssst!”

  She looked up, zeroing in on Isabel, who was urgently gesturing toward the entrance to the restaurant.

  Tiffany looked, curious what Isabel could be so excited about. Then she saw him.

  She was sure the man making a beeline for their table was an actor, a celebrity she’d seen before but couldn’t place. Tall and confident, he moved with a powerful, smooth stride, seemingly oblivious to his own dangerous good looks.

  Then Tiffany finally realized why Isabel was so worked up.

  It wasn’t a celebrity-spotting, but the new usher.

  She whipped back around to look at the bride-to-be, mouthing “Is that him?” across the table. Isabel nodded enthusiastically.

  Mary, the matron of honor, who was sitting directly across from Tiffany sent her the thumbs-up, wiggling her eyebrows.

  The new guy walked around the other side of the table to where Ed was sitting, and that was when Tiffany saw the somewhat battered spray of flowers he was holding. They had certainly seen better days, and she discreetly covered a smile at how they sort of moved with his hand, like an extension of his arm, losing a few petals every time he did so.

  The two men shook hands warmly. Ed introduced Isabel to his friend as everyone watched, and she also gave the new guy a hug.

  He was even more impressive up close, weary flowers and all.

  “Do we all get to hug him?” Mary, Isabel’s cousin, asked out loud, grinning, causing all of them to chuckle. Her husband laughed, too, shaking his head ruefully. Mary was often the comic relief, which had been a blessing at long dress fittings and times of other wedding stress.

  Ed declared, “Sure!” and introduced his incredibly sexy friend as Garrett Berringer from Philadelphia, the new usher who was generous enough to stand in for Jimmy at the last minute.

  It was lust at first sight for Tiffany.

  She barely remembered her own name by the time he came to her chair; their eyes met first, sending a zing of excitement down to her toes.

  “Hi, I’m Garrett.”

  His deep, gravelly voice had her rapt. When he smiled, his hazel eyes were friendly, but guarded. She got the impression that he was going along with the party, but perhaps not as social as he was pretending to be. It made him even more intriguing to her.

  “Tiffany Walker,” she said, trying to sound as casual as everyone else, though her breath caught a little as she put out her hand.

  “Not a hugger?” he asked, his eyes warming slightly as his large hand encompassed hers and didn’t let go right away.

  The group at the table started chanting “hug, hug, hug,” and Tiffany rolled her eyes at them. Garrett laughed, leaning in for a quick, polite hug before taking his seat. For the brief second he held her against him, everything inside of her melted, and her temperature went way, way up.

  “Who are those mums for?” she asked, eyeing the desperate blooms.

  “Mums?”

  She pointed at the bouquet.

  “Oh, I thought they were daisies,” he said. “I bought them from a street person, and ended up sort of carrying them around. I almost forgot I had them,” he said with a slight smile that made her toes wiggle. He was hot and sweet. Sweet-hot. Her favorite flavor.

  “I see. Here, they don’t travel well,” she said, taking them from his hand, planting them in her water glass.

  They made small talk as they ate, but Tiffany’s imagination was working the whole time, wondering what he would look like out of his suit or half-covered by the new sheets she had just bought for her bed. Even the flowers perked up considerably as they sat and chatted over dinner, seeming to reflect her mood.

  “Can I get you another drink?”

  Tiffany blinked, taking in his sensual lips, a strong chin, slightly crooked nose and those tawny eyes. Like a lion’s.

  “Did you break your nose?” she asked, oblivious to the non sequitur.

  He nodded, a slight smile tugging at the edge of those lips. “Yeah. Once or twice,” he admitted. “My brothers and I all have. We played a lot of sports, and our work puts us in the way of fists now and then. Gives my mother fits.”

  “There are more at home like you?” Tiffany said, and heard Mary snort from across the table.

  “Three more, actually, though my brother Jonas just got married.”

  “Congratulations,” Tiffany said.

  She thought maybe she’d noticed his gaze dip discreetly to her bodice, which showed a little more cleavage than she normally exposed, but her push-up bra was the only thing not in the laundry. She counted that as a lucky thing and sat up straighter.

  “Can I get you another drink?” he repeated.

  She shook her head with a smile, silently damning Marcus Hooper.

  “So no, then?” There was a flicker of disappointment in Garrett’s eyes, thrilling her. He wanted to spend time with her, as well. If only.

  “Maybe something non-alcoholic. I don’t want to teeter down the aisle at the rehearsal,” she joked.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep you on course,” he said, standi
ng and offering her his arm, his words wiping her brain clear of any thoughts at all.

  She stood, slipping her arm through his. It was old-fashioned gallantry, and she liked it.

  She looked back to the activity around the table. “Oh, it must be time to get over to the church. It’s not too far from here. I have my car if you need a ride,” she offered, and then bit her lip, wondering if she wasn’t leaping into spontaneous mode again.

  “That would be great. To tell you the truth, I am a little out of my element here. I’ve never been in any wedding but my own and my brother’s.”

  “Yeah, sure. No problem,” she said breezily, all of her lusty thoughts spiraling right down the drain at his mention of being married. She looked down quickly and saw no ring.

  Oh, great. Of course there had to be a catch. He’d been too perfect, but he was just one of those. A guy who took his ring off when he was out of town, though she didn’t even see a tan mark from it. She didn’t need to be a detective to figure out his game; she only needed to be female. She’d definitely seen a spark of answering lust in his eyes, but that only meant Tiffany was going for the record in being a loser-magnet.

  She was stuck offering him a ride, so they walked out, joining the others. Tiffany might be Ms. Spontaneous, but that didn’t include fooling around with married men. She had a few rules she wasn’t willing to break. In spite of all of her promises to herself, she’d been ready to throw caution to the wind to spend some sexy one-on-one time with Garrett Berringer.

  Now she didn’t have to worry about that. Controlling herself around him would be no problem at all.

  2

  GARRETT SURVIVED THE rehearsal and in the end, he was glad he’d agreed to help Ed out. Mostly because of her.

  Distracted from any sad memories by the woman he’d walked down the aisle with, he watched Tiffany look at the clock for what might have been the hundredth time in an hour. She appeared to be in a hurry to leave, saying goodbye to Isabel, from what he could tell.