Finally on the fourth floor, she smelled what she was seeking.
Pixie followed her down the hallway, and, when Bobbi paused and pointed at a doorway, she reached inside her leather jacket to pull out her bag of lock picks. They were inside in seconds.
The apartment was dark and dingy, and the paint on the wall was peeling off in sheets. Jax Mackenzie, the aforementioned dumbass wolf shifter, sat next to Bobbi’s brother Heath on a faded green couch, watching a flickering black and white TV with rabbit ears.
Both of them were big, broad-shouldered men, although Heath at six five was several inches taller than Jax. Jax had thick, glossy black hair and cheekbones that hinted at Native American heritage. Heath had curly brown hair and caramel brown eyes. A broken, reset nose and a scar slashing through one eyebrow hinted at Heath’s upbringing on the streets.
They both glanced up as Bobbi and Pixie burst into the room. Jax had a resigned expression on his face. “I scented you in the hallway,” Jax said. “I guess I should have known that you’d find us.”
“Yes, idiot, you should have.” Bobbi’s breath came out in an exasperated hiss. Jax was her fated mate, and they’d agreed that they would get married if they could make it a year together without killing each other. Jax’s odds that evening weren’t good.
She knew what was going on. Jax trying to protect her and treat her like a fragile china doll. She understood why he would do that, but she had also made it very clear when they started dating; she wasn’t a hide on the sidelines kind of girl, and he would have to live with that.
She could always tell when Jax was lying to her…and something had clearly been up earlier that day when he’d told her that Tyler wanted her to head out to an elegant hotel called The Gilded Swan to guard an Eastern European princess.
All the signs were there, the mumbling, the way he spoke too fast and avoided her eyes…
That night, she’d pretended to head out to the address that he’d given her, but then she’d turned around and circled back to lay low near their apartment so she and Pixie could follow him.
And here they were, not at a fancy uptown hotel, but in a stinking slum that clung to the edge of Playa Linda’s coastline.
“I told you we couldn’t fool her,” Heath chided Jax in exasperation.
“I know. She’s too smart for us,” Jax said dolefully.
The TV turned staticy, and Heath crossed the room and wiggled the rabbit ears, looking annoyed.
“We’re both too smart for you,” Pixie added.. Pixie hated to feel left out.
“Damn straight,” Bobbi said irritably, feeling slightly mollified by his concession. “So what the hell is the real assignment?”
“The real assignment is what we said it was. We just lied about the address. There have been numerous assassination attempts on this young woman’s life, because she rejected the marriage proposal of a sheikh. Her family is trying to figure out a safe place to hide her. We have word that the people who are trying to assassinate her are in Playa Linda. Staying in a luxury hotel is too obvious; we decided that for tonight, we would hide her out in a place that nobody would ever think to look for her.”
“I’m not leaving.” Bobbi folded her arms across her chest and speared Jax with a glare.
Despite her anger, her body did that thing it always did when she was near Jax. It pulsed with desire. She felt her nipples hardening, and she couldn’t help but let her eyes rove admiringly over his incredibly body. Mine, all mine. The broad shoulders, the curving biceps, the flat, hard stomach…all hers.
“Fine,” he shrugged said wearily. “I give. You win. She’s in there.” He nodded his head at a closed door. “Why don’t you girls go hang out with her, and your brother and I will hang out here? We’ll make coffee later. We have a crew coming in to relieve us at 7 a.m. She doesn’t speak any English, I’m afraid.”
“All right,” Bobbi said. Something was bothering her, but she wasn’t sure what.
She and Pixie opened the door and walked into the next room. A pretty girl with wavy dark hair, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, sat on an old sagging bed, listening to music on her headphones and typing on a tablet computer. She waved at them when they walked in, then went back to her computer.
Pixie and Bobbi sat on the other side of the bed in silence for a few minutes.
“Of course, you’re not technically cleared for bodyguard duty,” Bobbi said to Pixie.
“Oh, don’t start. Tyler’s been teaching me Krav Maga. And I fight dirty. And I always have your back.”
“Really? What’s it like wrestling on a mat with him?” Bobbi grinned wickedly. Tyler and Pixie had been attracted to each other since they first met, but they were taking their sweet time acting on it.
“None of your beeswax.” Pixie looked flustered. “Let’s get back to that whole bodyguard thing. You know you can’t get rid of me; I’m not going to let you have all the fun.”
“You’re supposed to be our expert on breaking and entering. On picking pockets. I feel badly, bringing you along on assignments where there’s potential danger.”
“Well, actually, I usually just find a way to tag along, so it’s not really your fault. Besides, I know the drill. If shit goes down, I dive behind the bed, you shift and rip their throats out.”
“Jeez! Language! We’re sitting in a room with a princess!”
“Oh, whatevs, she has her headphones on. Besides…she doesn’t look like a princess.” Pixie cast a doubtful look over at the young woman.
Bobbi glanced over at her, and caught a glimpse of the computer screen, and suddenly it hit her like a thunderbolt. She knew what had been troubling her ever since she and Pixie broke into the apartment.
“Those sons of bitches!” she hissed, jumping to her feet.
* * *
Jax and Heath ran for thirty blocks without stopping. As soon as Pixie and Bobbi had shut the door to the bedroom, they’d shifted, slunk quietly out of the apartment, and run for it as soon as they hit the sidewalk. As they ran, Heath’s jaws were firmly clamped on a bag of clothing for them to change into.
Finally, they came to a halt. They were out of the warehouse district and in a residential neighborhood, at Dominick’s house. The two of them trotted behind a hedge in his front yard, and shifted back in to human form. They pulled their clothes on, glancing behind them to make sure that Bobbi wasn’t in hot pursuit.
So far, they seemed to have pulled off their ruse.
“My sister is seriously going to kill us,” Heath said.
“I know how to distract her when she’s mad,” Jax said smugly.
“Hey. This is my sister we’re talking about,” Heath said, looking appalled. “I don’t actually want to picture whatever it is you’re talking about.”
“Adopted sister. And you know this is for the best,” Jax said.
“Yeah, you say that now,” Heath muttered. “When we get back, even in my bear form – my sister is seriously capable of putting the hurt on me.”
“Quit your whining and take it like a bear,” Jax said, as Dominick stepped out onto the porch, car keys dangling from his hand. He shut and locked the front door of his small wooden bungalow house.
“Are you ready?” he asked them.
“I was born ready,” Jax said.
“Cliché, dude,” Heath said.
“Dude is cliché. Do people actually talk like that in Arizona?” Jax glanced over his shoulder one final time to make sure that Bobbi wasn’t following them.
“Do you think that she’s figured it out yet?” Heath asked, ignoring Jax’s jab, as they climbed into Dominick’s car.
“Oh, yeah. Figured it out, plotting her revenge…Dominick, drive fast.”
“Really? Scared of a girl? Who’s the pussy here?” Dominick snorted in contempt, as he headed for their destination, a private airstrip an hour outside of Playa Linda.
Jax and Heath were getting ready to head out to their real assignment, the one they’d been so desperate to prevent Bobbi
from learning about.
It was a special assignment for Kenneth. Over the past few months, there had been break-ins at several of Kenneth’s homes in Europe. At two of his homes, in Italy and in France, art had been stolen. The break-ins had been particularly brutal; one of his employees, beaten savagely in the attack, was in a coma.
None of the artwork had turned up in any of the usual places; nobody was trying to fence it, there wasn’t even a whisper about it on the international black market. It wasn’t even particularly valuable artwork, certainly not enough to warrant the risk of breaking into Kenneth’s houses to steal it. The thieves had left behind original Van Goghs, Monets and Picassos. They’d bypassed all of Kenneth’s security systems, overwhelmed his staff and vanished into the night. The crew that had stolen the artwork had clearly been top notch professionals.
The only thing they’d taken from each house was a limestone statue of ancient Sumerian provenance, believed to have originated circa 3000 B.C. And oddly, in one house, they’d removed one large Sumerian statue, but left behind a smaller one.
While investigating the case, Kenneth had found out that the El-Debars, a family of antique dealers in Turak, had approached his family on at least half a dozen occasions over the years, asking about the statues. The country of Turak was located in the region of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, where the ancient region of Sumer, birthplace of civilization, had once been.
However, the El-Debars weren’t affiliated with any museums, and all of Kenneth’s background investigations seemed to indicate that they were honest, scrupulous folk who were unlikely to have been behind the art thefts at his homes.
Regardless, it was the closest thing to a lead they had, so Kenneth had commissioned a private jet to take them to Turak.
Unfortunately, Turak was in the middle of a civil war, and it was highly dangerous to travel to that region. Jax was willing to risk Bobbi’s wrath rather than see her travel through a war zone.
* * *
Upstate New York
The fundraising ball was being held in a 19th century Queen Anne style mansion, the same spot it was held every year. It was a massive building which stood on a hilltop, sprawled out over manicured grounds, with gabled roofs and rounded towers visible from miles away.
The strains of Fur Elise drifted through the air, and Chloe tugged nervously at the bust line of her dress. With an eye towards her nonexistent clothing budget, Henry had borrowed a red evening gown from his sister, slapped red lipstick on Chloe, done something with an eyeliner pen, and piled her hair up in a neat, shiny chignon at the back of her head.
She was pretty sure that she wasn’t fooling anyone.
She was clutching a Cosmopolitan in her sweaty hand, tottering around in high heeled silver pumps and praying she didn’t break an ankle. The room was full of academics and wealthy men and women in tuxes who flashed big Chiclet-teeth smiles for the cameras of the local media. People kept trying to make small talk with her, and she kept stammering out the same polite answers and watching their eyes glaze over as they drifted away. She wanted to find a closet to hide in.
“Henry, the agreement was, you would pretend to be my date until Kenneth leaves,” Chloe muttered, elbowing Henry in the ribs.
“I am pretending to be your date! I’m standing right next to you! Ooh, canapés. Try one!” Henry grabbed one from a tray and winked at the waiter, who winked back.
“You’re flirting with other men,” she pointed out. “Openly.”
“Well, I am gay.”
“Yes, but Kenneth doesn’t know that! So act straight for one more hour, for the love of God.”
“Fine, fine,” Henry let out a long, exasperated sigh. “I am going to go get us some of those miniature tarts. I’ll be back shortly.”
“Don’t go far! Honey,” she added loudly, in case Kenneth was anywhere nearby.
She scanned the room anxiously. When would that jerk show up? It was five minutes to nine, and she just wanted to get this over with.
A very handsome man in a tuxedo standing across the room met her gaze and smiled. He was broad-shouldered, with close-cropped hair and a military bearing. She glanced behind her shoulder, puzzled, then back at the man, who was still smiling at her.
Annoyed, she looked away. Obviously he was looking at somebody behind her. That had happened to her three times already tonight. Somebody waved and smiled at her, she smiled and waved back, wanting to be polite, only to realize that the person was waving at somebody else. Well, she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself yet again. How much mortification did one person have to endure for an evening?
“Looking for someone?” Kenneth said from right behind her, making her jump and spill half her drink down the front of her dress. He was wearing a shiny black tuxedo with a perfectly knotted blue silk bowtie, and clinging to his arm was a slender platinum blonde with huge blue eyes. She had a tiny button nose and a mouth shaped like a glossy pink heart. She wore a dress that looked as if it were made of black liquid silk, fitting her as if it had been poured over her slim body, rippling and flowing like a river.
Looking at her clinging to Kenneth gave Chloe an odd, sickly feeling in her stomach which she had never experienced before.
Chloe glanced down at her dress. It was loose in the bust, and tight in the hips, and now there was a stain on the front that was shaped like a chicken, and she was regretting her decision to carry her sweater slung over her arm. She should have handed it in at the coat check.
High society and Chloe didn’t mix.
“I’m looking for my boyfriend,” she said desperately. “We’re practically engaged, actually.” Where the hell was Henry?
“Is that a sweater?” the blonde asked her incredulously, eyes widening.
“What does your boyfriend look like?” Kenneth asked politely, but she could sense the skepticism in his smile. “Let me help you find him.”
“He’s got bleached blond hair, he’s wearing a plaid jacket…”
“That man over there?” He inclined his head at Henry, who was standing in a corner making out with the waiter. The waiter was still holding the tray in his left hand, and people were walking by, grabbing canapés off of it.
Tarts. Riiight. He’d gone to seek out tarts. She mentally added a new item to her to-do list for tomorrow: stab Henry through the heart with a fountain pen.
“No, no…ah…another blond guy in a plaid jacket.” Right. Because the room was crawling with them. She edged away, holding her sweater in front of the stain, blinking hard and trying not to hyperventilate. She gave the bust of her dress another tug, holding it in place. “He’s here somewhere.”
Kenneth turned to the blonde. “Tiffany, or whatever your name is, do you see that man over there? Silver haired man standing by the bar? Richard Bogdanovich. Loves younger women. Just got divorced from his fourth wife and he’s looking for a fifth. And he’s never learned to hold out for a pre-nup.”
Chloe watched in amazement as Tiffany practically left scorch marks in her rush across the room.
“She’s fast for a human. How did you know all that about him?” Chloe asked.
“I didn’t. I have no idea who he is. Let’s get out of here quickly before she finds out I was lying. The sculpture garden is supposed to be lovely.” He inclined his head towards the back door.
Chloe took a deep breath, and quickly downed what was left of her drink. A walk in the dark with the devil himself? Sure, what could possibly go wrong?
I bet that’s what my grandmother thought the first time she laid eyes on Kenneth’s grandfather, Chloe thought warily. Right before she went crazy.
“Fine. Let’s get this over with,” she said.
Chapter Four
Playa Linda
The supposed princess glanced up from her iPad, looking alarmed.
“‘She’s too smart for us?’ ” Bobbi repeated scornfully. “Does that sound like something Jax would say?”
“Crap,” Pixie said. “Hell no. He always thin
ks he’s the smartest one in the room. You’re right.”
“He set this whole thing up to throw us off. That bastard. That brilliant bastard,” Bobbi said, caught between homicidal fury and admiration. “I am going to…I don’t even know what I’m going to do to him, that’s how pissed off I am.”
“He double-crossed us. That son of a whore.” Pixie shook her head.
“Worse. He double-double crossed us. He pretended he didn’t want us to follow him here just to throw us off his scent.”
“So he four-crossed us! I hate being four-crossed.”
“It’s all I can do not to shift and rip someone’s throat out right now, I swear to God,” Bobbi hissed.
“Hey, don’t look at me! It was your boyfriend and your brother. And you totally fell for it.”
Bobbi leaned across the bed and grabbed the girl’s laptop. She held it up to show Pixie. The princess who supposedly couldn’t speak English had been updating her Facebook page. In English.
“Motherfucker,” Pixie said.
The girl quickly pulled her earphones out of her ears and stood up. “So I can go home now?” she said. “Jax said as soon as you figured it out I could go home.”
“How much did Jax pay you for this little charade?”
“Five hundred bucks.”
Pixie and Bobbi raced into the living room. Jax and Heath, of course, were gone. Sitting on the sofa was a large manila envelope.
Bobbi grabbed it and ripped it open. Inside was a briefing on Bobbi’s real assignment. When she saw it, Bobbi let out a stream of curses, as the “princess” sauntered past them, purse slung over her shoulder, and left the apartment.
“Let’s go,” Bobbi said, gritting her teeth. .
“What’s our assignment?” Pixie said, following her out the door.
“Okay, you know how a lot of our bodyguard assignments are basically babysitting jobs?”
“Yeah…”
“This is literally a babysitting job. Prince Reginald the Third, an eight year old cheetah shifter, is in town because he wanted to go to Disney Land. We are supposed to accompany him to Disney Land. His parents, who are the monarchs of some tiny Asian country I’m not going to bother to try to pronounce, are away attending important matters of state for the next two weeks.. He’s at a hotel with his nanny, and the two shifter bodyguards that Jax left at the hotel have been ordered to leave at 8 p.m. whether we show up or not. We’ve got about 20 minutes to get there.”
His Purrfect Mate Page 3