The cowboy stopped cold when he caught sight of her. Jasmine knew her auburn hair glowed in the sunshine and she stepped aside, turning to go toward the back of the gallery to ask about Trey. Roger trailed behind her.
As Jasmine approached the office, Kinnard exited with that friendly smile on his face that always made her feel welcome. “So what do you think of Trey’s work?” he asked.
“It’s amazing, but where is Trey? Mary’s been trying to reach him, too.”
“He told me he was going to drive up the coast for a few days to absorb the sights and smells, wants to try his hand at a seascape next.” Kinnard shook his attorney’s hand. “So, Roger, see anything you like?” Kinnard’s smile deepened when Roger eyed Jasmine’s shapely rear end as she wandered away down the gallery walls.
Jasmine had worked her way all the way around and back to the door when she noticed that the cowboy had approached Kinnard. He held out a photo and tipped his hat back, scowling, when Kinnard waved the picture away and said something. She heard Trey’s name . . .
Inhaling sharply, Jasmine turned away to hide her shock. She concentrated on the painting in the window; the subject’s stance in the painting was so evocative of the man glaring at Kinnard that Jasmine knew she’d just glimpsed the notorious Chad Foster. Trey’s brother. They looked nothing alike. She peeked his way again. Trey had perfect, almost effeminate features, but Chad, if it were indeed he, had cold gray eyes, tanned skin stretched over angular facial muscles, and a body long, lean, and muscular, just as Jasmine liked.
The times she’d met Trey when he’d had too much to drink, which was often, he’d talked about his brother with a mixture of resentment and love. A volatile mix Jasmine understood all too well.
So what did it mean that Trey’s Texas Ranger brother had dragged himself away from paradise to Sin City? He was looking for his brother, judging by the way he’d displayed that photo and grim attitude. Jasmine frowned, the instinct that said something had happened to Trey now jangling. She’d come here not just because Larsen had invited her but because Mary was out of town and so worried she couldn’t reach her boyfriend that Jasmine had promised to see if she could track him down.
As Jasmine pretended to be lost in the painting, the cowboy turned on his booted heel and headed for the door. Behind him, Kinnard glared holes into his back, but his mean expression softened when he saw her looking at him. With a cheery wave, he turned back to his office, Larsen in tow, and closed the door behind them. Jasmine sidestepped away from the door just to be safe, keeping her face turned away, but the firm boot steps paused near the window. She felt Foster looking over her shoulder at the painting. She was tempted to address him by name but resisted.
His voice was as hard and unyielding as the rest of him, though there was a deep, husky timbre beneath the words that made her picture things she shouldn’t think of. “So what’s a painting of Palo Duro Canyon outside Amarillo, Texas, doing in a Californio art gallery?”
Jasmine turned to look at him. “California has beautiful deserts, too. Western art is big in the Golden State.” She didn’t know why she felt compelled to defend her adopted state, but everything about this man, from the way he treated Trey, to his attire, to his tone, irritated her. He looked her up and down, thoroughly, and obviously liked what he saw, but she was used to that.
Then his gaze moved to the painting she was convinced he might as well have sat for. “I know that scene, and it’s my brother’s work, all right.”
Vindication should have been sweet. Reading people had always made her good at her job and she hoped it would help her in the practice of law. But her heart sped up instead of slowing down as she felt his gaze wander over her again, head to toe.
“What does it make you think of?” Chad Foster asked. Some of the sternness had gone from his tone.
The words were drawn out of her with more honesty than she expected. “How lucky that man is to be alone.”
“You haven’t tried it lately.”
Arrested, Jasmine couldn’t avoid meeting his gaze any longer. She turned on her high heels to look up at him. For an instant, his gray eyes were as cold and bleak as the edges of the painting. Her pale green eyes darkened as she met a long look that had nothing to do with lost brothers and everything to do with loneliness and the hope for someone to fill it. Jasmine’s breathing quickened but then Kinnard and Roger exited his office and Kinnard called, “I want to take you to an early dinner, Jasmine.”
A shutter snapped down over the desolation in those gray eyes as if Foster knew he’d revealed too much. “Jasmine, huh? Well, imagine that, the famous dancer in the flesh.” Pulling his hat low over his face, Chad Foster opened the door and promised softly, “I’ll be around to check out your . . . act. Gentleman’s Pleasure, isn’t it? Great name for a strip club. Fits you.” Foster exited, banging the door.
Jasmine peered after him, wondering why the flattery sounded more like a threat than a compliment. And how the heck did he know who she was, anyway?
CHAPTER 4
Chad emerged just in time to see a motorcycle cop, lights flashing, writing him another ticket. Chad hurried over. “I’m sorry, Officer, I’m just moving—” The cop turned. Chad’s protest froze in his throat. Great. Riley O’Connor again.
The response was a ticket thrust into his face. “You should have thought of that before you parked there. I suspect you can read.” He nodded at the parking sign that forbade parking between the hours of four and six p.m. weekdays.
Chad checked his watch: four fifteen. Crap, he’d been legal when he went in. God, he already hated this place . . .
The handsome young man, not a spot or wrinkle on his uniform, cracked a smile. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules, just enforce them. Looks like we’re going to be running into one another a lot. Shall we make this official? I’m Riley O’Connor.” He held out his hand. Chad shook it. “I have a feeling I’ll be citing you again, but in the meantime, try renting a car that fits in LA traffic.”
Chad hesitated but couldn’t help his reaction to the pucker-assed, by-the-book prick. Even his olive branch felt fake to Chad. “Ever hear the word reciprocity?”
That straight back stiffened again. “You saying because we don’t have one with Texas, you won’t pay the fines?”
Chad shrugged.
O’Connor eyed him. “Well, I guess we know why you left the Rangers. Don’t like to follow rules, do you?”
Chad glared. “I follow rules just fine when they make sense.”
“Shall I explain why we don’t allow parking here at rush hour, or is that too much for you to comprehend, seeing as how you’re used to wide-open places and all?”
Chad saw where this was going. This wasn’t a pissing match he’d win and before he was done, he might need the help of local law enforcement. It grated on him, but he managed, “Sorry, you’re right. I’ll move immediately.”
O’Connor straddled his bike. “No never-mind to me. At the rate you’re going with infractions, you’ll hit first-degree felony in a week. No reciprocity needed on that. Have a good day, sir.” Off he roared, even his apparent politeness pissing off Chad, as it was supposed to.
“Ha ha,” Chad said sourly as he fired up his truck. He’d deserved that maybe, but he still didn’t like it. Chad started to toss the crumpled ticket on top of the other two, but he was still a cop in all but badge and gun. He spread the ticket out, along with the others, made a mental note of the monies needed to pay all three fines, and drove away.
A few hours later, Chad exited the showers at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank and pushed back his wet hair with both hands as he went to the lockers. His hair was so thick that he usually had to blow-dry it, but he’d left in too much of a hurry to remember such niceties. Now it would curl, and he hated that. Making a mental note to find a barber tomorrow, if such a plebian creature existed in this place, Chad dressed in fresh jeans and a button-down shirt. He wanted to be clean, at least when he saw this Jasmine wom
an tonight. He hoped his tips might warm her up a bit, get her to be more forthcoming now she was away from that snooty gallery. He was dead level certain Trey had painted those works he’d seen at Kinnard’s gallery and that both Kinnard and Jasmine knew Trey.
So what were they hiding? And why hadn’t Trey called him back?
Jasmine pushed her food around her plate. When Roger excused himself to go to the men’s room, Jasmine let her fork rattle to her dish. “Thomas, why did you lie to Chad Foster and tell him you don’t know his brother?”
Kinnard wiped his mouth and folded his napkin, his smile firmly in place. “That was Trey’s request, if Foster came sniffing around looking for him. He wants no further contact with his brother. How did you know Foster asked me about him?”
“I saw him show you a photo. And even more interesting, Foster knew my name and said he’d visit the club to see me dance. I suppose Trey could have mentioned me to him, but it seems more likely he’d have talked about Mary.”
As the check came, Thomas tossed down his black American Express card. “Maybe he knows you both danced there. I have no idea what’s going on in that redneck’s head. Whatever the feud between Trey and his brother, it’s none of my business. As for you, well, I imagine his tips will be as good as the next guy’s.” He was busy scribbling his name so didn’t see the hurt in Jasmine’s eyes as she looked away. Or the thoughtful way she nibbled her lip as she contemplated his evasive response.
Around eleven that night, music pounded in Chad’s ears so loudly he could pretend, at least to himself, he wasn’t aroused. Sure, his thumping heartbeat, as the red-haired dancer gyrated around the pole, echoed the primitive drum beat.
Great rhythm. And while he was at it, he could explain that flagpole in his britches as a patriotic salute.
Damn you, Trey . . . He was too humiliated at his own reluctant arousal to get up and leave, even if he had that luxury, which he didn’t. While he might be convinced those paintings in Kinnard’s gallery were by Trey, they weren’t signed—by design, perhaps? And Kinnard denied that Trey had been there, so Chad had no choice but to follow his only other lead. No need now to follow Corey’s theory and go to the tattoo parlors, since he’d found Jasmine so easily. So for the first time in his life, he’d entered a strip club.
At least now he knew why they called it Gentleman’s Pleasure. She was a pleasure, all right. To look at, no doubt to smell, and touch. And feel.
He was glad for the long tablecloth and the dark corner, but he kept his face blank as he watched the show. Texas Rangers were good at sitting stony-faced while they grilled their suspects. He wasn’t sure if he was angrier with himself or this redhead who’d brought him halfway across the country. Still, his eyes just about popped out of his head as they remained glued to the stage.
She had seemed so classy when he’d met her earlier at the gallery, fully dressed, if a bit frosty. It was an all-fired shame, as his granny would say, that a woman with the perfect features of an angel and the body of a Victoria’s Secret model was just a no-’count who danced naked for a living.
Well, almost naked.
She was down to a G-string, a triangle with lacy ties on both sides and a thong up her butt, and a scrap of a bikini top. Imprinted with holographic butterflies that seemed to flutter with her every movement, it was more suggestive—made a man want to catch those butterflies in his hands—than nudity.
She was too beautiful to be a stripper, and she showed some real talent in the rhythm of her moves, but the mere fact she showed her wares off for a price meant to Chad she was capable of fraud, if not worse. She certainly had the right equipment to distract a man to death. At least he finally understood what had drawn Trey away from high-sky Amarillo to smoggy Lost Angeles.
Fascinated—and getting more pissed off by the minute at his own arousal—he watched as The Butterfly crossed both endless legs around the pole. Supporting all her weight, which wasn’t much despite her height, she leaned so far backward her long waves of deep auburn hair brushed the stage. Her arms moving Cleopatra style, her upper torso shimmied as she continued to bend farther back until she was a bow of sheer sexual energy, flexed to fly free at a man’s touch.
Her large breasts pointed provocatively at the ceiling, the nipples erect. Great boob job, he tried to tell himself scornfully, but his mouth was parched. He licked his lips, watching her lick hers, caught himself and turned tomato red under the weary gaze of a topless waitress.
Well, hell, that’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Using a man’s baser urges against him to make him part with his hard-earned dollars. Still, the self-lecture couldn’t counteract what he saw and heard and, God help him, what he wanted to touch.
One of Trey’s parting comments came back to torment him. How long had it been since he’d had a real date, anyway? He tried to remember, but Jasmine Routh made it hard for him to recall what his old girlfriends—either one of them—even looked like.
When would this torture end so he could go to her dressing room and question her?
He’d tried a background check on Jasmine Routh before coming here and found just about zilch. No criminal record, no marriage license on file. She owned one car, a sporty Acura, and lived in an apartment in Beverly Hills near all the other weirdos on the border with West Hollywood.
That was it. Clean as a whistle. She came to work, she danced, she went home to a crappy one bedroom even though, on the money she pulled in every week, she could afford her own house despite LA prices. As for the number of her boyfriends, well, her art obviously didn’t stop when she was offstage, given that poor attorney panting over her at the gallery.
Shady ladies naturally made him suspicious, and now he’d seen her, every cop instinct he’d cultivated over the last fifteen years warned that even if she wasn’t involved in the land fraud, she was somehow involved in Trey’s disappearance. She was just too beautiful to trust.
Most damning, with her auburn hair and lush figure, Jasmine Routh was the spitting image of the girl in that last oil Trey had painted before he’d left Amarillo. Chad vividly recalled the tattoo on the slope of that perfect white breast swaying before him now. However, despite the abbreviated top, he couldn’t see a tattoo. That tattoo was the only difference between Jasmine Routh and the portrait without a face. Same length and color of hair, white skin, full bosom, proud tilt of the head. Had to be the same girl. Still, that pissant piece of fabric surely couldn’t cover a butterfly tattoo, spread wings and all.
The held breath left his lungs in a whoosh as she pulled herself back up, still attached to the pole only by the strength of her legs, and reached supple arms behind her back to untie the bikini top. It fell, a puddle of sparkles and dreams, to the stage.
Under the brilliant lights, a small yellow-and-blue butterfly tattoo sparkled with glitter on the lower slope of that flawless right breast.
In his pocket, Chad crumpled the card in his hand, wishing it were her throat. He didn’t know how, and he didn’t know why, but this seductive bitch had somehow contributed to his brother’s disappearance. She’d sure as shootin’ lured him from Texas to California.
Distastefully, Chad watched her pick up the tens, twenties, even a few hundreds, littering the stage after her dance. She allowed a couple of the guys sitting near the stage to slip large bills into her garter. When he walked up and waved a twenty to add to the little elastic band, she backed away a step, her brilliant smile fading. She crossed her arms over her bosom reflexively, as if embarrassed.
He would have liked her for that, if he believed her act. He folded the bill and set it at her feet. “Talk to you later?”
She hesitated, looking from his blank expression to the twenty, but when a stage hand brought her a robe, she wrapped it around herself, bent and picked up the twenty. Holding his eyes, she stuck one of those long legs outside the robe, folded the bill into her garter, and sashayed offstage. Chad went over to a waitress and asked for the manager.
While he waited,
Chad stared blindly at the stage. No matter what it took, if Trey was hurt, or worse, as he feared, no matter if he went to jail in the process, he’d personally take this deceitful, treacherous little bitch back to Texas so the people Trey had introduced her to could positively ID her.
He hadn’t given up his badge and The Job he loved for nothing. He didn’t care if he had to kidnap her, there would be no Californio-style lenience for the likes of her. Time for some Texas-style justice . . .
Jasmine closed the dressing room door and leaned against it. Even more drained than usual, she stared around her closet-like private dressing room, the only perk she insisted on as a headliner. The minute she walked off that stage, naked but for the G-string and the robe, the vitality and sexuality she oozed on command dissipated with the lights. She was just tired.
Tired of being leered at. Tired of pretending to be something she wasn’t, tired of hating herself. Tired of actively disliking men for leaving loving wives and lovers for these few hours to spend more money than they could afford on the lure of the forbidden. In her experience, most of the men who frequented strip clubs fell into three categories.
Some celebrated male freedom for one night at least, running with the wolves, maintaining their atavistic macho right to covet even if they couldn’t touch. The second group was as lonely as she was, reaching for the only connection they knew how to offer women and fantasizing she was theirs, the mythical angel in the kitchen and whore in the bedroom.
The last group, well, they were the worst of all. The ones who made her skin crawl and made her glad of all the bouncers. They were the users who saw women as their personal playgrounds and never tarried long after playing.
Someday she’d write a book about all this, when she was married, with her Juris Doctor degree, and had about five kids. She tied the dressing gown more tightly over her G-string, wishing she hadn’t promised to fill in for a sick waitress, so she could go home and study. She’d made over five hundred dollars tonight, even without Chad Foster’s twenty.
Foster Justice Page 4