His Private Pleasure

by Donna Kauffman

  He thought about the way she’d looked at him, like she’d wanted to inhale him. The light in her eyes that told him she knew just how she’d lap him up. Slowly, and with great relish. He went hard just thinking about it.

  And knew exactly why he’d given her his key.

  “Dinner and some sunset conversation, my ass,” he muttered. They both knew casual conversation was not her reason for taking that key. Which should have been an immediate turn-off to him. Of the fistful of reasons he’d come back to Canyon Springs, women figured prominently among them. Specifically, the type of woman he’d tended to run across in his previous line of work. Hard, cynical. Bored, lonely. He’d had too many of each, before realizing he saw himself in them.

  But Liza wasn’t like that. “That’s just your hard-on talking,” he told himself, shifting in his seat. Although that was partially true, so was his initial take on her. For someone taking a break from life, she didn’t look used up or worn-out. Absolutely the opposite. Alive, hungry, ready. Those were words he’d use to describe her. He doubted she was casual about anything, even sunset conversation.

  He wasn’t that blinded by those aquamarine eyes and candy-apple lips. He knew a player was a player, no matter the league. Okay, maybe he was a little blinded. But they had one thing in common that intrigued him enough not to care. They were both escapees. And they wanted each other.

  He smiled and pressed down on the gas. So maybe this wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had. At the very least it would be an enjoyable mistake.

  His home, a soaring A-frame with more glass than any sane man with an aversion to cleaning would ever put in a house, appeared on the horizon. He smiled. So what? He’d spent long nights staked out in cramped cars dreaming of this exact house. And now it was a reality. And all his.

  He topped the last hill and something in him settled, as it always did, every time he saw it. It was nestled perfectly among the tall pines and jagged rocks. He’d had to blast out some of it to make an area large enough to build on, but no one could say the foundation wasn’t rock solid. The second-story deck afforded him a wide view of the rincón, or valley, below. A short walk to the other side of the mountain presented him with a spectacular view of the canyons where the springs originated.

  He enjoyed sitting out on the deck with a cold beer, watching the sun go down as the few winking lights in downtown Canyon Springs flickered on, the endless sky full of stars overhead, the moonrise.

  He kept thinking this feeling would wear off, that he’d get that same itch that had driven him from this town the day after he’d graduated from high school. But he’d been back a little over two years now. It had been eight months since he’d hammered the last nail on this place. And he still felt that sense of homecoming every time.

  They said you can’t go home again. But he was coming to believe that you couldn’t really appreciate what home was until you’d left it for awhile. For all the annoyances that went with living in a place where everyone knew you, the sense of security, the steady pace of life, soothed the part of him left jagged and raw by his years in Vegas. That more than made up for the occasional bird rescue or irritating comments from the hometown hero–turned–fire marshal.

  The sudden bleat of his cell phone jarred him from his thoughts. He thought about ignoring it, his body humming as he spied Liza’s shiny little roadster parked in the drive. He reached over to punch the phone off, but stopped when he saw the number on the digital display. His gut tightened in that familiar way he’d hoped to never feel again. He pressed the Answer button. “How did you get this number?”

  The deep voice on the other end chuckled. “Come on, D.J., I worked vice, same as you. If I want to find a number, it gets found.”

  “What part of ‘I’m not interested’ didn’t Hannigan understand this morning?”

  “You know the captain doesn’t listen to what he doesn’t want to hear.”

  Dylan let the truck drift to a stop, still a hundred or so yards away from the house. “And all you’re going to hear is a bunch of silence when I hang up on you.”

  He felt the amusement leave his former squad member’s voice even before he spoke. “You’re the only one she trusted, D.J. She’s ready to talk, but she’ll only talk to you.”

  “I heard all this from Hannigan. She knows I’m not on the force anymore.”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter. We’ve been trying to nail Dugan for—”

  “I know exactly how long.” The old bite was back in his voice. Dylan didn’t appreciate being forced to use it. “It was my case, remember?” His stomach pitched and the acid burned his gut. One phone call and it was like he’d never left Vegas.

  “Yeah, we all remember.”

  Dylan started to tell him where to get off, then bit back the words and sighed. “Quin, I’m out of that game. I’m not coming back.”

  “No one is asking you to come back. We just want you to conduct this one interview.”

  “To conduct an interview,” he pointed out, “I’d have to come back.”

  There was a pause. “Not if we brought her to you.”

  Dylan went still, then his grip tightened on the phone. “Not a chance. I’m hanging up now.”

  “D.J., wait!” There was just enough desperation in Quin’s voice for Dylan to keep his finger hovering over the End button without pushing it. Dylan could be gone for a hundred years and still never forget what it was like to be consumed by that sense of desperation, on the heels of which was always the realization that you’d devoted your whole life to bringing down scum like Armand Dugan. So if you failed…it meant your whole life was a failure.

  “Dugan lost interest in you at exactly the same time you lost interest in him,” Quin was saying. “He’s been way too busy covering his tracks from the rest of us to worry about what your sorry ass has been up to. He also has no idea that we finally got Pearl to turn.”

  “How did you get her to turn?” Dylan swore under his breath when Quin said nothing. “It’s a simple question. I worked on her for months. Never met a tougher broad than Dugan’s ex-flame.”

  “Let’s just say a woman scorned is a woman to watch the hell out for.”

  “He scorned her years ago and she accepted his sorry behavior as her due. So why turn on him now?”

  “You asking because you’re interested in helping out?”

  “I’m asking because you’re wasting my time with all this, so you might as well tell me the details.”

  There was another pause while Quin weighed what little leverage he thought he had. Dylan wished there were none at all, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t at least interested in what had transpired on this particular case since he’d left Vegas. It wasn’t the only one still open when he’d left, far from it, but it was one he’d poured a considerable amount of personal time and energy into. It was only human to be curious about how it was going, right?

  He wasn’t going back. But he might be able to help them out. “If I know why she turned, I might be able to tell you how to get a confession out of her without dragging me into this.”

  Quin sighed. “I’ll take whatever help I can get.”

  “And owe me for it.”

  He laughed, but there wasn’t as much humor in it. “Yeah, add it to my tab. Okay, here’s the deal—”

  “You sure you want to discuss this on the cell?”

  “You aren’t exactly giving me many other options here.”

  Dylan looked up at his house. His haven. A haven where a gorgeous and hopefully willing woman was waiting for him. He was not taking this into his house, for a lot of reasons. “If you think we’re clear, go ahead.”

  “I’m as reasonably certain of it as I can be, or I wouldn’t have said as much as I already have.”

  “Yeah, yeah, okay. Sorry. I have an appointment here, so give already.”

  “What, with the Rotary Club or something? What could possibly be going on in that one-horse town of yours at this hour?”

 
“We don’t have horses. We actually drive cars now. And I didn’t say it was a business meeting.”

  Quin hooted. “Some things never change, do they?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Dylan muttered. “So, why did Pearl decide to turn on her one and only true love?” Out of several Vegas casinos, Dugan ran an underground operation they’d been trying to break open and shut down for years. Despite his mob connections, Dugan played the role of family man. His extended family of aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews all benefited generously from not only his money—the part he kept clean—but also from his time and affection.

  Five years earlier, word had leaked out that Dugan, who was forty-five at the time, had begun to despair of ever starting a family of his own. Family was sacrosanct to him, but he’d yet to meet the right woman who would help him continue his little dynasty. In the meantime, he’d run into Pearl Halliday, showgirl-turned-stripper. Definitely not the woman to bear his children, but Dugan hadn’t minded getting her to bear his attentions for a while. What he hadn’t counted on was falling in love with her.

  Hopelessly in love. So much so that he’d tried to turn her into the proper woman his family would respect. He set her up with her own dance studio, as a proprietor and instructor. He lavished her with nice things, hired tutors to put some polish on her brass, basically did his best to turn his pearl into a diamond.

  Only Pearl was simply Pearl. She wanted Dugan’s love, not his things, not his Pygmalion-Svengali attempts to turn her into something she was not. She just wanted her Duggie, the man she’d made breathless with the sheer magnetic force of her attentions. So she made the fatal mistake of giving Armand Dugan an ultimatum: love me for me, or find someone else.

  It had taken Dugan less than a week to find that someone else. A quiet young woman of good breeding—and obvious bad taste, if you asked Dylan, for falling for a slimeball like Dugan. It wasn’t a love match, but Dugan had come to realize that passion distorted things, took away his ability to control. Elaine Bartoloni would be the perfect, malleable kind of wife he should have been looking for all along. He occasionally wished he could have had it all, but he wasn’t stupid. So he took what was best. He graciously left Pearl the title to the dance school and the apartment that sat over it—what had once been their little love nest—and walked away.

  Pearl should have hated him for that. Instead she was grateful for the chance to live quietly, out of the spotlight. She was pushing fifty now, but life had aged her beyond her years. Makeup, no matter how pricey, covered only so much. She was too old—in more than calendar years—to dance in the casino shows, and too aware of what real love felt like to take her clothes off again for leering, jeering drunks.

  So she’d kept her school, made a life for herself and kept her mouth shut when it came to Armand Dugan. She wouldn’t be used as the instrument for the downfall of the only man she’d ever loved. He wasn’t to be blamed for the pressure his family had put on him. He was an important man. She was lucky to have had him for the time she did. She’d supposed she’d known all along she’d never be good enough for him. Giving him an ultimatum had just brought to an end what would have ended anyway.

  “So why, after years of living quietly, has she finally decided to turn on him?” Dylan asked.

  “That’s just it, she won’t say. She came to us three days ago, asking after you.”

  “You didn’t tell her—”

  “Please, no matter how much we hated you walking on us, we’d never do that to you.”

  “Don’t expect an apology. There was never going to be a good time. So I did it on my timetable.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I hear you. Who knows, someday I might retire down there myself, if for no other reason than to drive you to an early retirement.”

  “I’m real amused here.”

  “Let us bring her down to you, you get the information we need to bring him in and get a conviction, then we’ll disappear back into the night and leave you to your sweet little six-thirty appointments.”

  “Until the next time you need my help.”

  Quin laughed. “You weren’t that hot a shot, D.J. Just this one favor, then we won’t come knocking again.”

  The problem was, he had been that hot a shot. And they both knew it. They also both knew that one turn as a “consultant” would put him on their list. They’d come knocking whenever they needed to, with whatever excuse they saw fit to use to get what they wanted. “Liar.”

  Quin said nothing. “You going to help us or what?”

  Dylan already knew it wasn’t as simple as saying no. If so, it would have worked when he’d done just that to Hannigan this morning. “I say no and you’ll just show up in my office with Pearl in tow. So why didn’t you just do that in the first place?”

  “Professional courtesy?”

  “That’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one, especially out of our department.”

  Quin didn’t rise to the bait. Probably because he knew it was true. Dylan was thankful enough that he had called first not to push it any further.

  “Are you sure she knows anything? I mean, it’s been years since she’s been in the loop with Dugan. If she really knew anything important, he’s had plenty of time now to cover it up. Otherwise he’d have never left her to her own devices in the first place.”

  “Maybe he knows she’ll be loyal because she still loves him. Maybe he was stupid enough about her to trust her that way. You know we all think with our dicks half the time. Why not Dugan?”

  “I don’t know, Quin. It just doesn’t sound all that solid to me. Did she give you any specifics of what she was going to spill?”

  “No. But we have to pursue it, D.J. We don’t have that many options with Dugan these days. So how does this Wednesday sound to you?”

  That was only two days away. But it was probably best to get it over and done with. Dylan sighed and massaged his temple. Maybe he’d been wrong after all. You could go home again, but all the baggage you’d collected along the way came home with you.

  “We’ll come to your place. Keep this quiet and out of the local papers.”

  “No, not at the house.” If he’d had the time, Dylan would have simply caved and gone to Vegas, done the interview and put it behind him. But with the festival coming up and all the attendant council meetings, there was no way he could be gone without making explanations he’d rather not make. He blew out a long breath and decided sleeping with Liza was moving way down on the list of possible worst mistakes.

  “You pick the place, then.”

  Setting up secret meetings with ex-mob girlfriends wasn’t exactly high priority these days, so he had to think about it for a moment. “Mims Motel. We keep this private.” It was small, but nice enough, and more importantly, tucked away on the outskirts of town. “Reserve the room, an end unit, under the name Liza…” Damn, he didn’t know her last name. “Smith.” Lame, but he was thinking on the run here, and rusty at it.

  “Hey, Boss, you trying to get the department to pay for your little shack-up?”

  His jaw tensed. “You want my help?”

  “Liza Smith it is,” Quin said instantly, but not without a little amusement. “See you Wednesday, Boss.”

  “Yeah, great,” Dylan muttered, but Quin had already hung up. Dylan tossed the phone on the passenger seat and scrubbed his hand over his face, then around the back of his neck. He wondered what his chances were of getting Liza to hang around Canyon Springs for another forty-eight hours.

  He was certain his mother had mainlined the information about his supposed showgirl’s arrival directly into the artery of the very active ladies auxiliary. The entire town was buzzing as he sat here. So, it would cause barely a ripple if he were to visit said girlfriend at a local motel. And there was the added bonus of gaining what little approval he could get from his mother over not allowing Liza to stay at his house. Why a thirty-two-year-old man gave a damn about that was simply too pathetic to contemplate.

  Of c
ourse, Avis might be so thankful over his proved heterosexuality that she wouldn’t care if he and Liza swung naked from the trees smack in the middle of town.

  He shook his head at the image and climbed his truck the rest of the way up the steep drive.

  She was waiting for him on the deck.

  “I thought you were having second thoughts,” she said, leaning over the railing. “And third and fourth ones.”

  He closed the truck door and climbed the spiral stairs to the second-story deck. “What do you mean?”

  She turned to face him, but stayed by the railing. “Well, you sat down there at the bottom of the hill for so long, I began to wonder.”

  “Oh. Phone call. Sorry.”

  “Ah.” She gestured behind her. “You have quite the view from up here.”

  “You improve it greatly.”

  She smiled at him. “Smooth, very smooth.”

  He shrugged and the whole problem with Quin and the upcoming interview slid to the background. Maybe he should arrange to come home to a beautiful woman more often.

  “I try.” Rather than move closer, which was what he wanted to do, and likely what she expected him to do, he leaned against the side door that led into the living area. The entire front wall of the house was sectioned glass. His bedroom was in the loft at the upper rear of the house and had a small balcony off the back. He wondered if she’d been up there yet and absently hoped he hadn’t left too many stray socks lying around. “Can I get you a beer or something? Or have you helped yourself?”

  “Actually, I haven’t been inside.” She dangled the key. “I came up here and got cozy with the view instead.”

  “You could have at least gotten yourself something to drink.” He’d assumed she’d make herself right at home. Maybe she enjoyed doing the unexpected, as well. Should make for an interesting evening.

  She lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t come directly up to the house.” She grinned. “Now don’t go frowning like that. I didn’t talk to anyone. At least not anyone immediately related to you.”