Ew. “Really?”
“Yeah. SEALs get laid simply by being SEALs. Anywhere, any time. It doesn’t matter what we look like, doesn’t matter who we are. And yeah, I’ve taken advantage of that more than I like to admit and… I don’t know. Right now I’m tired of it. I’m going through this phase, I guess, where I want the woman I’m in bed with to like me for me—at least a little bit.”
“Well, all they have to do is talk to you for a few minutes,” Brittany told him. “I mean, I liked you right away. You’re very likable. That can’t be too hard to—”
“How many times have you had sex with a stranger, just for the sake of having sex?” he asked.
She didn’t have to think about it. “Never.”
“And how many times have you had casual sex?”
“Once,” she admitted. “It was awful, and I cried for four days afterwards, and I never did it again.”
“There,” he said, as if it proved his point. “You’ve obviously got a different agenda when it comes to meeting men. You think in terms of friends or potential lifemates, rather than tonight’s quick screw. Walk with me, okay? I want to go check out Amber’s garage. I think it’s over this way.”
They retraced their steps back toward the kitchen and down a different corridor.
“Just for the record,” he added. “I like you a lot, too.”
THE GARAGE WAS PROTECTED by the same high-quality security system that was wired throughout the rest of Amber’s castle. There were no windows, so Amber’s overly enthusiastic fan either had to have wandered in from the street, or come in through the house.
Wes pushed the button for one of the automatic door openers to verify that, yes, the garage doors were built right into the stone wall that surrounded the place. Although there was a gate and a driveway in the front of the house, he suspected that was mostly used for limousines.
He pushed the button again, and the door slid back down.
Like everything else in the house, the garage was spacious, with three bays. Each was filled, and filled very nicely, with a Maseradi, a Porsche and a vintage 1966 Triumph Spitfire—be still his heart.
Two regular doors led into the house—one was the door Wes and Britt had come through, from the kitchen, and the other… He opened it.
“Jeez, this place is freaking huge.”
Britt looked over his shoulder. “Ah,” she said. “It’s the laundry-slash-ballroom. Of course.”
The laundry room had stairs leading down into the basement—an enormous, cool concrete area, complete with a wine cellar.
It took a while, but Wes checked the windows, making sure the security system was hooked into them all, as Brittany trailed after him.
Everything was kosher. All the windows were secure.
“Do you really think a grown man could fit through those tiny windows?” Brittany asked.
“I could fit,” he told her.
“Yeah, but you’re…in really good shape. Anyone with a tummy is going to get stuck.”
He looked at her. “You were going to say little, weren’t you? Don’t worry, it doesn’t bother me.”
“I don’t think you’re little,” she told him. “I think you’re just…more compact than most men.”
Wes laughed at that. “My father’s a real giant,” he told her. “He’s six foot four. My little sister Colleen is big, too. She’s actually taller than me. So’s my brother Frank. As luck would have it, I took after my mother’s side of the family. The elfin side. We’re short, but we’re fast and we’re tough.”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
Yes. “Of course not. I mean, sure, it took me a few years to recover from the shock when I stopped growing but Colleen didn’t. And I’ve gotten into more than my share of fights through the years, you know, proving what a tough guy I am despite my lack of height and…”
Brittany was just looking at him. He’d told her the truth about Lana, for crying out loud.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “It sometimes bothers me—it was just a genetic crapshoot, that I should be short and Colleen should be tall, you know?”
“Yeah, I do. I used to hate the fact that Melody was so much prettier than me,” Brittany told him. “I love her dearly, of course, but even now I sometimes get envious. It’s all part of being human—the envy. I don’t pay it too much attention, because I’m at the point in my life where I really do happen to like myself just the way I am. But it’s like a holdover from when I was a teenager, when I hadn’t accepted yet that there were things out of my control. I mean, yeah, I could get a nose job, but why? I’m really glad now that I didn’t.”
“You have a great nose,” he told her.
“Thank you.” She smiled at him. “It’s pointy, but thank you.”
“I happen to like pointy,” he said.
Her smile got wider. “And I happen to like compact.”
Bare bulbs lit the basement, but they didn’t light it very well. Shadows loomed in the dimness. Shadows and intriguing possibilities.
But the last time this woman had had casual sex, she’d told him that she’d cried afterwards—for days.
“God, I want a cigarette,” Wes blurted. No, what he really wanted was to close the distance between himself and Britt, take her into his arms and kiss the hell out of her.
“Well, you can’t have one.” She started for the stairs. “What’s the next step in this investigation, Mr. Holmes?”
“I have to talk to Amber, find out if her alarm system was completely on, on the day that guy got into her garage. It’s possible she shunted the system—you know, had it only partly on, bypassing, say, the patio door,” Wes said as he followed Brittany back into the kitchen. “It’d be a piece of cake for someone to climb the wall, get into the yard and hang out and watch to see if a door or window is left open so they can sneak in when Amber goes out.”
She stopped just short of the doors that led outside. “You know, Sherlock, if you’re right about people being able to hop over the wall—and I’m not convinced you are because I sure couldn’t do it—this place is big enough that your guy could have sneaked in while Amber was home. She never would’ve known.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“Which is kind of scary, huh?”
“Kind of.”
“You better go talk to her,” Brittany told him. “I think it would be a good idea for her to make sure her alarm system is on all the time. No shunting. Even when her housekeeper’s here.”
“Aye-aye, Captain Evans,” Wes said. “But you better come with me, because once I step out that door, I’m sharkbait.”
Brittany laughed. “Shall I try to look enormously satisfied—like we just had a quickie in the closet?”
Wes laughed, too, as he put his arm around her waist, pulling her so that their hips were touching. “Just stay close and, you know, run your fingers through my hair every now and then as you gaze at me adoringly.”
She reached up to push his hair back from his face, her fingers gentle and her eyes suddenly so soft. “How’s that?” she whispered.
As he looked down at her, his heart was actually in his throat. When was the last time that had happened?
She was standing close enough to kiss and for about a half a second he was toast. He was going to kiss her. He had to kiss her—forget about all of his reservations.
But then the corner of her mouth quirked up, as if she were trying to hide a smile, and failing.
And he knew she was just pretending. This was just a game she was playing. They were playing. He was playing it, too.
“That’s pretty damn perfect,” he managed to say instead of kissing her. “Let’s go find Amber.”
CHAPTER SIX
AMBER TIERNEY DID’T TAKE her sister’s—and Wes’s—concerns very seriously.
She was even prettier up close and in person then she was on TV, all cascading red curls and bright green eyes and a face that was nearly a perfect oval. As Britt watched Amber talk to Wes, sh
e found her self wondering about Lana. If she looked anything like Amber, was it any surprise Wes was ga-ga over her?
Lana-the-Bitch. That was how Britt had started thinking of her. Lana-the-Bitch had a husband who was nicknamed Wizard. Wizard-the-Loser. Lana-the-Bitch knew Wizard-the-Loser was unfaithful, but instead of dumping the chump, she instead boosted her self-esteem by telling another man—Wes—to jump through hoops for her.
Well, okay, maybe she should cut Lana a little slack. Brittany knew how awful it had been to find out that That-Jerk-Quentin was cheating on her. There had definitely been a time of uncertainty, when she’d been paralyzed and unable to take action. True, with Britt it had only lasted about twenty minutes, but some women spent weeks or even months going through all the different phases of a dying relationship.
Denial. Anger. Grief. Acceptance. More anger.
Although it sure seemed as if Lana-the-Bitch had settled on acceptance a little too early in the process—like, she’d accepted her husband’s philandering. And instead of the relationship dying, her own self-respect had gone belly-up.
“I remember that the door from the garage to the kitchen was locked,” Amber said, her attention flitting to some new guests who’d just arrived. She stood on her tiptoes and waved. “Carrie! Bill! I’ll be right with you.” She turned back to Wes. “I really don’t have time to talk about this right now.”
“I think you might want to consider adding some kind of security team to your staff,” Wes suggested. “Maybe just as a temporary thing.”
“You mean bodyguards?” Amber widened her eyes and laughed. “Look, I’m at the studio, I’m on set or I’m here at home. I don’t have time to go anywhere, and I really don’t think I need a bodyguard to go from my bedroom to my kitchen.”
“You may not need a bodyguard,” Brittany said, “but you probably could use a Sherpa.”
Amber didn’t hear her because she’d already scurried off to air kiss Carrie and Bill, but Wes did.
He laughed, but it turned rueful very quickly as he watched Amber head for the bar, arm in arm with her latest guests.
“I’m going to have to make another appointment to talk to her,” he said. “Maybe with her manager or her agent. Someplace we can sit down and she can attempt to pay attention to me for, jeez, maybe a whole half an hour.” He shook his head in exasperation. “She doesn’t think anyone can climb over this wall, either.”
“That’s a very high wall,” Brittany told him. “Once you’re up there, how the heck do you get down?”
“You jump.”
“And sprain your ankle,” she said. “Which would put a crimp in your stalking plans. Hard to stalk when you can’t walk.”
Wes sighed. “I’m going to have to set up a demonstration, I guess. Maybe that’s the thing to do. Set up an appointment to meet with Amber and her manager and agent, here in her house. Tell her to turn on her security system, tell her to wait in her kitchen. And then I’ll just blow right past the entire setup—come in over the wall, get into the house without a single bell going off. Did you know her third-floor windows aren’t even protected?” He shook his head in disgust.
Brittany shaded her eyes from the spotlights that lit the house as she looked up at the third story. “Can I watch?” she asked. “Because I’ve never seen a man fly before. That is how you’re going to get up there, right?”
That got the response she was hoping for. He grinned and his eyes actually twinkled. Oh, dear, he was just too adorable when he did that. White teeth, tan skin, laughing blue eyes, those slightly reddish highlights in his hair.
“Last time I tried to fly, it didn’t end so well,” he told her. “In fact, I managed to break both my nose and my wrist.”
She narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “Let me guess. You were ten and it involved climbing up onto the roof of your house with a cape with a big S on it.”
“I was seven,” he said, “and it wasn’t a cape. It was a sheet from my parents’ bed. I tied a corner to each of my ankles and wrists and jumped. I didn’t quite get the results I’d hoped for.”
Britt laughed. “What, did you think you’d float down to the ground?”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “It always worked when Bugs Bunny did it.”
One of the belly button women—there were so many of them in dresses designed to show off their perfect abs—was approaching, eyeing Wes like he was one of those incredibly delicious crab pastries Britt had taken from the buffet table for her dinner.
Brittany closed the gap between them, slipping her arm around his waist. She reached up with her other hand to play with the hair at the nape of his neck. He had lovely hair, so soft and thick. “How long was it after that before you were back on the roof?” Her voice sounded a little breathless—no doubt a result of the sudden heat in his eyes. Wes was really good at looking at her as if no other woman in the world interested him in the slightest when she was standing so close.
“Three days,” he admitted. He used one finger to push a stray strand of hair back from her face, hooking it behind her ear. Anyone looking at them would think they were entirely, completely wrapped up in each other.
“God bless your poor mother,” she said.
He played with her earring, still with only one finger. “I figured if I couldn’t fly, I better get really good at keeping my balance.”
She sank her own fingers more deeply into his hair. “And it never occurred to you that if you broke your wrist once—”
“And my nose,” he added, closing his eyes and sighing.
“And your nose, that you could maybe slip and fall and break something else?”
“Well, that was the idea,” he said. “To get so good that I’d never fall again.”
“And did you?” she asked.
He laughed. “Well, let’s just say I never fell unintentionally. Or without being shoved.”
She pulled back from him. “Shoved. Off the roof?”
Wes put his arm around her and reeled her back in. “I got into a lot of fights as a kid—people thought they could push me around because I was short, you know? So I had to fight to prove I was a tough guy. Sometimes all I proved was that a five foot ten inch, hundred and thirty pound kid can do a lot of damage to a four foot eleven, eighty-five pound shrimp. But still, I usually won because I was like the Energizer Bunny. They’d knock me down, and I’d get back up and come at ’em again.” He touched her necklace lightly, lifting the pendant with one finger. “This is very pretty.”
She refused to be distracted. “Please don’t tell me you really had fights up on roofs.”
“I was a fight magnet,” he admitted, letting the necklace drop and lightly tracing her collarbone, which was harder to ignore. “I managed to get into fights even in church.”
“Oh, God, you were probably just like Andy back when he was thirteen. If someone so much as looked at him funny, he’d be down in the dust, fighting with them in a matter of seconds. Your mother must’ve gone prematurely gray.” Her voice came out sounding breathless again. She hoped he’d think it was merely part of the act.
He nestled her even closer to him, and there was no longer any doubt about it. No one at this party would have even the slightest doubt that they were deeply involved. It seemed kind of ironic, because out of all the people here, Wes and Britt weren’t the actors.
“Yeah, but you see, my older brother became a priest,” he told her. “He got all As in school, too, so that kind of canceled out all the trouble I caused.”
“I would’ve thought it would make it much harder for you,” she said. “That’s a tough act for a kid to follow. A perfect older brother…? Of course it can be just as difficult when the younger sibling is the perfect one.”
“No one’s perfect,” he told her. “Not even Frank.”
“Melody was,” she countered. “She really was. Is. She really is that sweet—it’s not just an act, you know.”
“You’re sweet, too,” he told her. “You pretend you’re not,
you try to hide it, but I think you’re even sweeter than she is.”
She tried to turn it into a joke. “Is that a compliment or an insult, bub?”
Wes just smiled. “You can take it however you want. I happen to think you’re one of the sweetest, smartest, funniest and, yeah, prettiest women I’ve ever met.”
Talk about sweet. He was standing so close, his face inches away from hers. Brittany really didn’t think before she did it—it just seemed like such a natural thing to do after he said something that nice.
She kissed him.
It was just a tiny little kiss, the softest press of her lips against his.
But when she pulled back, he looked stunned. He tightened his grip on her as he opened his mouth and took a deep breath, no doubt to tell her she’d crossed the line in this charade they were playing, when a scream erupted from the other side of the swimming pool.
It wasn’t an “isn’t this fun?” scream. It was a frightened scream. And it was taken up by even more voices.
People were moving back, fast, from a bedraggled-looking man who stood near the deep end.
Wes swore sharply. “This guy’s got a knife.”
Sure enough, the wind blew and the light from the bouncing Chinese lanterns strung across the yard glinted off of a dangerous-looking blade.
“Someone’s hurt,” Brittany said, pointing across the pool, to where a man was on the ground, cradling his arm or his chest—she couldn’t tell which. His white shirt was bright red from blood.
“Someone call 9-1-1,” Amber shouted.
“Stay here,” Wes ordered Brittany. “Don’t go over there, don’t move until this guy is under control. Do you understand?”
“What are you doing?” Britt asked, but he was already gone. Heading around the pool, toward the man with the knife. Of course. “Be careful,” she called after Wes, but he didn’t turn around, all of his attention focused on that knife.
Oh, God.
About fifteen feet away from the man with the knife, Amber was inching closer to the wounded man.
Britt started around the other side of the pool from Wes. If he could distract the guy with the knife, she and Amber could pull the injured man back, and start giving him medical attention. She had surgical gloves in her evening bag. Like most medical personnel in this day and age of disease, she carried them wherever she went. She opened her bag now and slipped them on.
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