Sex, Lies & Lace (Sex and Lies Book 4)

by Kris Calvert

  “I’m sorry, I just—”

  “I know, I know, you were curious. But I don’t kiss and tell. No matter who I’ve been kissing.”

  The light turned green and as we took off I cleared my throat. “I’ll look into whether the Joseph family had any ties to the club or if it was just something she was into.”

  “Good idea.” Win made the last turn onto a rural country road. “It should be just up the road here.”

  “This is really pretty,” I said. Enormous trees lined the street, each bowing over the road to shade our path and welcoming us to the kingdom of the South. Along each side were endless rolling fencerows of green land and I thought it looked like something out of a coffee table book on places to see before you die.

  It didn’t take long for the charm to dissipate as we approached the road closure. Win pulled up slowly in our black sedan and rolled the window completely down. He said nothing, but pulled his badge from the console in front of us and flashed his official ID.

  The agent motioned for another on the sideline to move the roadblock aside so we could pass.

  Rolling up the window, Win shot me a smile. “These local guys hate us. So be kind.”

  “I can handle myself.”

  Win raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses and tilted his head. “That’s good.”

  “Don’t be an ass. I’m serious.”

  Win reached for the door. “Me too.”

  Out of the car, we walked directly to the gate. Evidence markers were everywhere, but the body was gone. I was upset and relieved at the same time that Tina Joseph had been removed. I didn’t want to see the girl who’d been bound and murdered, and yet I knew it was my job.

  “Who’s got the lead?” Win asked.

  “Agent Beckett. He’s up at the house, sir.”

  Win nodded and I scanned the group of officers. “I’m Agent Holloway, this is Agent Weatherford. Can you open the gate so we can meet with Beckett?”

  “You’ll have to walk from here, sir. We’ve been advised that no one can drive through until forensics is finished.

  “Of course,” Win replied. “Where—”

  “Is the owner of the property on the premises?” I asked, cutting Win off. I wanted the boys to know I wasn’t merely a sidekick.

  Everyone gazed back at me as if I had no right to be asking questions—everyone except Win who shot me a sly look of admiration.

  “Dr. Kingston Giles. He’s up at the main house,” replied a polite yet confused agent.

  “Thank you,” I said, walking through the crowd of men and past Win who quickly followed my lead.

  “Damn girl, take the reins,” he whispered with a chuckle in his voice.

  “It’s important that they know I’m real.”

  “Don’t worry, Gip. The badge shows them you’re real, it’s how you wield it that’ll make them respect you.”

  I let Win’s words settle over me. He was telling me in a nice way not to try so hard. I listened.

  6

  KING

  I paced the study adjacent to my master suite. Joy sat on the couch and calmly asked me questions. I’d not had to answer any more from Beckett as Joy requested a private meeting with me prior to the next round of interrogations.

  Joy was a beautiful woman and we had, on occasion hooked up, but our mutual attraction and admiration revolved around one simple thing—sex. Joy was a fuck buddy and nothing more. Many women wouldn’t be interested in the kind of relationship I shared with Joy but she followed the rules of our game closely and so did I. We were merely there for each other’s pleasure—there was no love, no support. It was a twisted kind of friendship others wouldn’t understand and I didn’t expect them to.

  Joy arrived full of questions and I had few answers. I didn’t know how it happened. I didn’t know why she was in Shadeland. I didn’t know why someone would want her dead. I simply did not know. Still, she was satisfied with what I’d told her and she trusted me to be telling her the truth. The one thing Joy and I had, more than anything, was trust.

  Stopping in my tracks, I was startled when a knock came at the door. The feds were combing my house as if the murder took place inside Rose Hill and it was making me nervous. I’d secured the secret parts of the house and I had nothing to hide, but at the same time I was pissed that they’d made themselves so at home. “Joy, can we get rid of these guys rummaging through my house?”

  She nodded. “I don’t see why not.”

  Joy opened the door and I saw two new faces staring back at me. The man was an obvious hotshot agent—young and in his designer suit, ready to impress, but his partner—she was truly something. At first blush she struck me as an enigma. At roughly five foot five, her elongated and muscular body gave her the illusion of being taller. Her long blonde hair and flawlessly proportioned features were striking to say the least. She was Barbie—a doll with a body that could kick a man’s ass—literally. I could tell by the way her suit fit her muscles she was shredded—cut. But she was all woman. The innocent china doll face with dark doe-eyes was deceiving. She was disarming, and I found myself letting my guard down. I knew by instinct, she was a girl who could take care of herself, and that alone made her the kind of woman I would want to take care of.

  “Yes?” Joy asked.

  “I’m Agent Holloway and this is Agent Weatherford. We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and we’d like to ask Dr. Giles a few questions.”

  Joy turned and looked at me.

  “Would you please escort Agent Beckett and his crew from the house?” I asked Joy. “Tell them Tina was never in Rose Hill and they don’t need to be in here.”

  “They’re looking for evidence that she was in your home, doctor. But they can pack up. Agent Holloway and I are taking the lead on the case.”

  Her voice was sweet and a welcome respite from the rest of the noise in my head.

  “I’m Agent Weatherford, Dr. Giles,” she said as she extended her hand to me. Her eyes glistened each time she blinked her long lashes. Her toned body wasn’t hiding behind the navy pinstriped blazer and pants she wore, and her blue top showed just enough cleavage to be a tease. I paused a moment, unaware I was staring and still holding her hand.

  “King?” Joy asked breaking my gaze.

  “Yes?” I turned, still foggy from the events of the morning, but more shaken by the beauty that had wandered into the room.

  “I’m going to sweep the house and move them from the inside to the outside,” Joy continued.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” Win asked as he extended his hand to Joy. “Agent Holloway.”

  “Joy Henderson, counsel for Dr. Giles.”

  Win nodded and held out his arm, silently asking Joy to precede him.

  “King.” Joy turned as she made her way to the door of the study. “Don’t answer any questions until I return.”

  I gave her a nod and waited for her and the other agent to leave. “She’s bossy,” I said, trying to ease the unspoken tension in the room. Either the beautiful agent was into me, or she was scared shitless to be here.

  “I see,” she said without expression. Walking about the room, she inspected each and every book and trinket.

  “Can I offer you a glass of water? I’m afraid there’s not much in here and I dismissed the staff for the day with all the…ah…”

  “No,” she replied with a sudden and unexpected smile that took me away from the mess that lay outside my house. “But thank you.”

  “Have a seat.” I gestured to the chair across from the couch. I wouldn’t sit in her presence if she continued to mill about the room. What was worse, I couldn’t help but follow her every move. I had a feeling it was making me look shifty as I watched her move from place to place.

  “Thank you.” She adjusted the gun that sat snugly at her beautiful hipbone and let out a sigh.

  “Agent Weatherford?” I was sure I’d caught her first name—Reagan, but I was so taken by her when she arrived I wasn’t sure and I d
idn’t want to be impolite.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Please, call me King.”

  She sat and a light fragrance wafted from her body toward me. She was an FBI agent with a firearm strapped to her body—a body I suddenly imagined in my bed.

  “I’m Reagan.”

  “Reagan,” I repeated her name and stared into her porcelain face.

  “We’ve cleared the house,” Joy said, bolting through the door of the study. Stopping in her tracks she glared at me and then back to Reagan. Joy and I had few secrets and I could tell by the look on her face she knew I was taken by the lovely Reagan Weatherford.

  “What’s up in here?” Joy asked as the other agent joined us in the room.

  Reagan looked to her partner and raised her eyebrow just enough to signal to him that she thought she should ask the questions. I wasn’t a federal officer, but I was an expert in reading people. Something I’d learned in medical school with patients unable to describe their pain or symptoms, but honed with sexual partners and other escapades. The body says things the lips wouldn’t dare.

  “Dr. Giles and I were just settling in so I could ask him some questions.”

  Damn, I’m good.

  “That’s fine, but King, ask me before answering, okay?” Joy was quick to pick up on the situation and tried to protect me. She was good at her job and I paid her handsomely for it.

  “How did you know the deceased?” Reagan asked.

  “Her name is Tina—Tina Joseph…and I went to college with her. Cornell. We dated for a couple of years, but eventually parted ways.”

  “May I ask why?” the other agent piped up from the corner.

  “Win, is it? I asked. I knew his name, but I refused to give him that satisfaction.

  “Yes.”

  I gave him a nod and turned back to Reagan to answer. “We were young. In the end, we wanted different things.”

  “When was the last time you saw the—I mean, Tina Joseph?” Reagan asked.

  “As I told Agent Beckett, I was in Atlanta last week for the launch of a new drug. I saw her there.”

  “Was it a planned meeting?” she asked.

  I paused before answering. Reagan was striking, and the attempts to tone down the perfect symmetry of her features with her masculine clothing, ponytail and bulky gun at her hip fell victim to the pure beauty God had graced her with. She was too good for it—too exquisite.

  “No. I had no idea she even worked for the company until I saw her there,” I continued as I sat back and sighed. The alluring smell of Reagan had dissipated in the midst of her partner and my silent wish was for everyone else to leave the room so I could be with her by myself.

  “Dr. Giles,” Holloway began. “It’s important that you take this seriously.”

  Was the look on my face as I stared at Reagan giving me away? I stood and began to pace before choosing another couch across the room. The study was filled with medical books I rarely read and weird art and trinkets I’d picked up over the years as I traveled the globe. To the outside world I was merely a bachelor doctor with a nice house and too much time and money on my hands. I knew that at the very least, I needed to seem as if I cared what had happened to Tina. In reality I did, but I’d seen enough untimely deaths and destruction in years past I was hardened to it all. Dropping my head into my hands I at least gave the impression I was at a loss.

  “King?” Joy asked.

  “I…” I hesitated. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you. I saw her Friday after the BioGen launch party.”

  “And what was she doing at the launch again?” Holloway asked.

  “He already said she worked for the company,” Joy responded not giving me a chance to speak for myself.

  “She’s a district manager for BioGen. At least she was. I’ve been overseeing some clinical trials on a new Alzheimer’s drug. It will release sometime next year after it’s cleared for sale by the FDA.”

  “So you ran into her at the launch party and that was it?” Reagan asked. Even the sound of her words called to me.

  “Yes.” I stood, moving to my original seat. Looking at her it was easy to forget everything else.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “No,” I said breaking my gaze and thinking of Tina propositioning me in the bar that night.

  “King,” Joy said. “May I speak with you for a moment alone?”

  I knew Joy was only trying to protect me, but I wasn’t hiding anything and I refused to act like I was. “No, Joy. I’m good.”

  “You saw her after the launch party?” Reagan asked.

  “Yes. We had a drink in the hotel bar. Two drinks.”

  “And?”

  “And I gave her a kiss on the cheek and told her it was lovely to see her.”

  Reagan and I stared at each other. I could read people well, but she was a little harder than most. I watched her bat her lashes and decided once this whole mess was over I needed to find a way to be with her—and not as a federal agent.

  “Dr. Giles are you aware that a pair of lace panties were found in the deceased’s mouth?” Holloway was back with his questions. The more he talked the more I wanted to leave the room.

  “In Tina’s mouth,” I corrected. “Yes.”

  “Any reason those panties had your name on them? I believe they also had a crown on them as well. I guess that’s the king part.” Holloway spoke with an incriminating edge to his voice and it was pissing me off.

  “Look,” Joy began. “You can ask questions, but if you’re here just to mock my client then I’ll kindly show you the door.”

  “It’s okay,” I said to Joy as I caught Reagan’s eye once more. She’d not wavered in her gaze and I was mesmerized each time I looked to her. “I’ve got nothing to hide even though Agent Holloway seems hell-bent on desecrating the memory of my dear friend.”

  “We’re done here, Dr. Giles,” Reagan began. “Ms. Henderson, if you’d be so kind as to walk Agent Holloway through the property, I’ll finish up here and meet you all downstairs.”

  “I won’t leave my client alone with you, Agent Weatherford.”

  “Joy.” I stood and walked to the door to usher the two of them out. “I’ll be fine. Agent Weatherford is right,” I said giving Holloway a glare. “We’re finished here.”

  I waited for them to clear the room and shut the door. Turning, I found Reagan on her feet, ready to leave. “Please sit, I know you have more questions.”

  “I don’t know if your attorney will like that.”

  “I’m a big boy. I know what I’m doing.”

  With a nod she sat once again. “What is the significance of the white lace panties in her mouth, Dr. Giles?”

  “King,” I said begging her to use my first name. “It was a joke. We were young. I was an idiot. When you have a southern name like King, and you go to school in the north you take some heat. I was clowning around with her—the king of her castle—” I said the words and immediately regretted them. “So to speak.”

  I watched her blush and my body responded with a wave of sexual longing.

  “And how long ago was this?” she asked with a hitch in her throat.

  “Twelve years ago.”

  “She was still in possession of twelve year old panties?” Reagan choked on the words.

  “Yes.”

  We sat silent and she stared at me. I gave her a smile and willed her to return the gesture.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” I said.

  “How could you know what I’m thinking?”

  “I know how this looks. Two old flames meet up after all these years. She ends up dead on my driveway with white lace panties in her mouth with my name on them.”

  “Let’s not forget she had your business card in her hand.”

  “That too. But look. We had one drink. Did she want more? Yes. Did I sleep with her? No. That was over years ago and I had no desire to go back.”

  “Do you think she had an obsession with you, Dr. Giles?”
/>
  “Please, call me King.”

  “King.”

  I loved the way my name rolled across her tongue and I thought of what she might taste like. “Maybe. I mean why else would she wear the panties?”

  “Wear them? What makes you think she wore them?”

  Shit. Staring into the eyes of this creature I’d forgotten to check myself. I knew I now had to tell even more of the truth so she wouldn’t think I was hiding anything. “That day—the Friday in Atlanta when we had the drink—she told me she was wearing them.”

  Reagan looked down to the pad of paper in her small delicate hands. She’d taken very few notes. Either she was as taken with me as I was with her, or she too had a memory like a steel trap.

  “Would you say she made a pass at you that day Dr. Gi—I mean, King?”

  “Define pass.” I placed my forearms on my knees and leaned into the conversation.

  Without missing a beat, Reagan asked the question. “Did she proposition you for sex?”

  There it was. I’d always liked a woman who wasn’t afraid to ask the hard questions. Reagan certainly wasn’t letting me down in that department.

  It took me very little time to size someone up and even less time for me to make an assessment about Reagan. She was beautiful, no doubt. Any fool could see that. But she was smart. Reagan was smart in the kind of way that wasn’t noticeable at first. Quiet in her demeanor, I could tell she was constantly taking in every bit of information around her for further dissection at a later date. Reagan Weatherford struck me as the kind of woman who was deeper in thought than the exterior cues of her face and body would ever let on. I found her interesting and familiar in the way you know an old country road that you travel every day—and yet each time notice something new about. She was like coming home—a home with hidden rooms and secret passageways. She was a kindred spirit—she was—like me.

  I needed to answer the question. “Yes. She wanted me to go upstairs to her hotel suite. But I said no, and good-bye to her there in the bar.”

  “Then what happened?” Regan asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What did you do for the rest of the night?”