by Jami Alden
Laurie gave her heavy, straight hair a toss. “Yeah, that was true until this year.”
Joyce leaned in and put a hand on Ethan’s arm. “Laurie and Kara had a bit of a falling-out. But she won’t tell me what it’s about.” She sighed and shook her head.
“I told you, Mom, we just grew apart or something,” Laurie said, her tone full of the sharp exasperation teens had spent centuries perfecting. “Let it go already.”
“I don’t understand how you can be friends one week and not the next, especially after all this time.” She turned to Ethan. “They used to do everything together—dance classes, summer camp, everything. They even made the Promise pact together. Then—poof.”
Laurie remained silent. “Fine,” Joyce said, throwing her manicured hands up. “Don’t tell me. I’m just your mother.” She pushed away from the table and walked out of the kitchen, leaving Laurie alone for the moment with Ethan and Toni.
Laurie craned her neck, listening as her mother’s footsteps faded down the hall. “Toward the end of the school year, Kara got into some things that weren’t exactly my scene.”
“Your mom said you made this Promise pledge with her,” Ethan said. “Was the fact that she had a boyfriend the problem?”
“We can still date guys,” she said, leveling a look at him that would have slain him had he been under the age of twenty-one. “We just don’t have intercourse.”
Ethan shifted in his seat. Discussing sex with a teenager in front of a woman you wanted was not a situation he was comfortable with.
“Kara’s mom mentioned an online community.”
“The V-Club,” Laurie said, nodding. “We created a network on FacePlace so we could meet other girls who had taken the pledge and were saving themselves for marriage.”
“Girls like you and Kara.”
“Yeah. At least I thought so, anyway. But then Kara’s parents split up and it really messed her up. She got really angry at her dad. He was always all over her to stay straight, get good grades, all that stuff. And here he was, having an affair and trying to hide money from the family. She said it didn’t matter what you really did, as long as you only let people see what they wanted to see.”
“Her parents didn’t notice any difference.”
Another eye roll. “Her dad isn’t home very often, and her mom, even when she’s there, she’s not ‘there,’ know what I mean?”
“Okay, so tell us more about this weird behavior,” Toni said.
“I don’t know, she wasn’t herself. We’d make plans and she’d flake, come up with lame excuses. Like my mom said, we used to do everything together, and all of a sudden she’s never around. A couple of times I caught her in a lie about where she’d been. Finally I confronted her about it, and she told me she’d started hanging out with some new people and didn’t want to hurt my feelings. But she invited me to a party right before I left for France. And after that I didn’t really even want to hang out anymore.”
“Some bad stuff go down?” Ethan prompted. It was hard to imagine what could happen at high school party that would produce the look of disgust on Laurie’s face. Then again, she was a twenty-first-century avowed virgin till marriage, so her sensibilities were more easily offended than his.
“Like I said, not my scene. It wasn’t a high school crowd. A lot of drunk frat boys and girls jumping into the pool naked. Kara was on something and kept telling me not to be such an uptight bitch, so I left. I didn’t want to say anything to my mom because I knew she would freak out.”
Ethan absorbed the new information, lined it up with what he already knew about Kara. “What about Sean? Was he at that party?”
“Sean?” Laurie let out a short laugh. “She dumped Sean on his ass after she got back from spring break.”
Toni’s eyes met Ethan’s across the table. “Manuela said Kara had been sneaking out to meet him,” she said.
She moved closer to the table until she was standing just to Ethan’s left. This close, he could smell the subtle scent of her perfume, fresh and floral. And underneath, a soft, sexy smell that was pure Toni. He snuck a look at her out of the corner of his eye.
And immediately wished he hadn’t. With the early-July heat wave blazing outside, the Friedlands had the A/C cranked to eleven. Toni’s nipples rose in tight points against her T-shirt, daring him to yank down the scooped neckline and pop one into his mouth. Unbidden, his cock thickened against the fly of his pants, and he almost swore aloud. What the fuck was wrong with him, pitching a tent like some junior high kid? He never let sexual attraction get the better of him.
But something about Toni Crawford and the sexy-librarian fantasies she inspired threatened his normally ironclad control.
Laurie shook her head. “If she’s sneaking out, it’s not to meet Sean. I think the guy she’s seeing is older. I never met him, though.”
“So the party was the last time you talked to her?”
“In person. She still posts on the V-Club network, but I don’t know why she bothers.”
Toni motioned to the laptop that sat closed next to Laurie on the kitchen table. “Would you mind pulling the site up for us?”
Laurie sighed and looked at her watch. “My mom and I are already late.”
Toni’s stare was cold, hard, unwavering. “Your friend is missing. Your nails can wait.”
“She’s probably passed out somewhere,” Laurie said, but she opened her laptop and clicked on the page. Laurie gestured at the screen. “I told you she’s fine—she posted a message this morning.”
Toni moved around the table until she was standing behind Laurie, who had navigated her browser to a page emblazoned with a banner that read “V-Club. Virgins of the World, Unite!”
Kara had mentioned the social network to Toni, and Toni had even tried to visit. But to visit, you had to be invited, and Kara hadn’t offered an invitation. Toni could easily have posed as a teenager seeking support for her sexual choices, but she didn’t feel right about lurking without Kara’s knowledge.
Now she wondered if she was just as stupid as the parents she mocked who thought it was important to give their kids “space.”
Posted near the top of the most recent messages was a picture of Kara, in all of her blond, fresh-faced glory.
“What does it say?” Ethan pushed out of his chair and moved to stand behind her, his tall, broad body somehow managing to move gracefully in spite of its size. Now why couldn’t she master that sort of athletic ease? She’d never quite recovered from shooting up to her current height at the ripe old age of fourteen. Though she dressed to flatter her lean frame and tried to use her height as an advantage, underneath she still felt like an awkward, clumsy teenager who could barely control her unexpectedly long limbs.
Next to Ethan, who seemed to have perfect control over every rippling muscle in his body, she once again felt like the girl her classmates so sweetly dubbed “Stork Legs” after she’d made the mistake of wearing shorts to gym class. Joyce and Laurie didn’t help, with their tiny figures that barely topped five foot three. They both looked like little brunette dolls, perfectly sized to fit in the palms of Ethan’s big, broad hands.
She could feel the heat of his body permeating her thin shirt as he leaned in to read over her shoulder. As subtly as possible, she tried to move forward but found herself pinned between the back of Laurie’s chair and the massive wall of Ethan’s chest. She resisted the urge to shove an elbow back under his ribs as her body temperature rose another five degrees. Which had nothing to do with the ridiculously masculine pheromones Ethan was giving off, and everything to do with the fact that after a lifetime in the Pacific Northwest, Toni still hadn’t become acclimated to the Bay Area’s sun-drenched summers.
She refused to acknowledge the low hum of the air conditioner and the fact that it kept the house at roughly sixty-five degrees.
A trickle of sweat rolled down Toni’s neck, and she shifted uncomfortably, careful to keep herself from erasing the millimeter of air Ethan h
ad left between them. Hadn’t the guy ever heard of personal space?
His breath wafted over her ear as he read Kara’s posting aloud. “Just dropping by to say hi. Nothing new to report. More later.”
“She posted that at eleven thirty-eight this morning,” Toni said. Almost an hour after she’d left the Kramers.
“That’s good news, right?” Joyce said as she came back into the kitchen. On her arm was a handbag roughly the size of Canada. “If she’s posting on the Internet she can’t be in too much trouble.”
Toni nodded absently. She thought of Kara’s computer, missing from her room. Could be Kara took it and really had posted the message. But there was always a darker possibility Toni couldn’t avoid.
“It wouldn’t be hard for someone to use her computer or hijack her account,” Ethan said, echoing her thoughts.
Okay, she had to concede points for his being more than prime eye candy. “Mind if I post something really quick?”
Joyce closed her eyes in exasperation. “Fine, but then I’m afraid we really have to go.”
Toni leaned over the table and used Laurie’s account to post a quick message:
This is Toni, looking for Kara. Call or text me ASAP. Your folks are worried and so am I.
She straightened up, only to finder herself flush against Ethan, her back to his front. She shot him a glare as her butt made contact with his thighs.
“Sorry.” For a split second, something gleamed in his eyes, a mischievous spark that told her he was messing with her, that he enjoyed making her uncomfortable. But it was gone in an instant, replaced by a perfectly bland and deferential look.
“Thanks for your help, ladies,” Ethan said, turning to Joyce as he stepped out of Toni’s way.
In her hurry to get away from him, Toni took another step to the side, mortification bursting in her stomach as she stumbled over her own feet. At least she was wearing sneakers and was able to catch herself before she fell on her ass.
Joyce Friedland spared a glance for Toni, barely masking her scorn, then refocused one hundred percent of her energy on Ethan. “You’re so welcome, Ethan,” her tone almost breathless as she placed an earnest hand on his arm and stuck out her ample cleavage. It took a Herculean effort for Toni not to roll her eyes. But she couldn’t help sneaking a glance at Laurie to see if she was as embarrassed as she should be to see her mother blatantly flirting with Ethan.
If anything, Laurie looked even more enthralled with Ethan’s square jaw and buff body than her mother did. And to think we give men a hard time for being blinded by big boobs and a pretty face.
“If there’s anything we can do, please don’t hesitate to call me,” Joyce continued. “And I mean anything.”
Okay, this was getting ridiculous. Toni stepped bodily between Ethan and Joyce and stuck out her hand, which Joyce shook reluctantly. She dug a couple of business cards from her pocket and handed one to Joyce and one to Laurie. “If you can think of any other information, anyone else she might be with, call or text me anytime. Or e-mail me. I’m always online.”
“No surprise there,” she heard Ethan mutter as she showed herself to the door. She could hear the muffled sounds of Joyce’s laughter and Ethan’s answering chuckle and had no doubt that by the time he left Ethan would have another job offer—investigating the contents of Joyce’s pants.
Before she could get in her car, she heard Ethan call over, “Hey, Toni, wait up a sec.”
Her spine stiffened, every instinct urging her to get away from this man, and fast. Then she reminded herself of Marcy Kramer’s order to keep an eye on him. Like it or not, until Kara was safe at home, she needed to resign herself to spending a lot more time with or near a man she couldn’t stop imagining naked. And wondering how it would feel to have him naked beside her.
On top of her.
Under her.
She was going to melt like a Popsicle before he reached the car.
“Was there something you needed?” Toni asked, keeping her tone cold even if her body was radiating more heat than the asphalt.
It didn’t deter him one bit. If anything, his grin widened as he strode toward her. She kept her gaze pinned firmly in the middle of his face, forbidding herself to stare at the way his trousers pulled against his strong thighs as he moved.
I really need to get out more if this is the way I’m going to react to the first remotely hot guy I see. Okay, to be fair, Ethan is more than remotely lot. He is yummy male hotness, the likes of which you rarely see, so appreciate it for what it’s worth for the next five seconds and then focus on the task at hand. Five, four, three…
“I’m thinking this will go a lot more smoothly if we work together.” he said.
She pulled her mind away from wondering whether he had a four-pack, six-pack, or full-fledged eight-pack under the cotton brocade of his shirtfront and replied, “Oh really, how so?”
“No offense, but I noticed you weren’t exactly making friends in there.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Friedlands’ house, his lips still quirked in amusement.
Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Making friends isn’t part of my job description.”
“Are you always this standoffish?”
She folded her arms across her chest and jerked her chin up. “Just because I’m a professional and don’t hit on every member of the opposite sex I come into contact with doesn’t make me standoffish.”
He had the gall to look mildly offended. “I wasn’t hitting on Joyce Friedland.”
“Oh, please, like you didn’t notice the way she was practically pouring her boobs out onto your arm.”
He gave an arrogant shrug. “Women like me.”
“Not all women,” she lied and went to climb in her car, but stopped when he wrapped a big, long-fingered hand around her upper arm.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to walk away when someone’s talking to you?” he said.
“You want to tell me more about the legions of women falling at your feet?”
He gave her another smile, one that made the lines around his eyes crinkle. “We got off on the wrong foot. There’s no reason we can’t help each other out.” He leaned one hand on her car, just to the right of her shoulder, almost but not quite boxing her in. It wasn’t exactly intimidating, but the way he made her tilt her head back a notch to look up at him was his way of establishing authority. He was good at this, taking command with his size and his charm, so subtly that most people probably didn’t even notice he was doing it.
“Yeah? How so?”
“I don’t know who you’ve worked with before, but people in this area are used to a certain amount of ass-kissing.”
“At which you obviously excel,” she muttered.
His blue eyes turned steely, and for the first time she got a glimpse of a hardness that matched his tightly honed exterior. “When necessary, yeah. Especially if it helps me find out the information I need. Now, you do ninety percent of your investigating at your keyboard. Am I right?”
She shrugged and nodded. Jeez, the way he put it, it made her sound like some little troll slaving away in her cave. She thought of her dark, cramped home office and conceded that he wasn’t too far off the mark.
“Come on,” he said. “Let me finish interviewing Kara’s friends while you find out what you can, and we can meet up later to compare notes.” His smile changed, suddenly saturated with sexual intent. “Let me take you to dinner so we can get to know each other better.”
Toni swallowed hard. God, he was good. Even knowing that his hot look was calculated to make her melt and manipulate her into doing whatever he wanted, she was tempted to say yes.
To dinner, to Ethan, to the amazing, headboard-knocking sex that would no doubt come after. That she was so sorely tempted was enough reason to turn tail and run, even if Marcy had told her to keep an eye on him.
“I’m sorry, Ethan, but as you’ve probably already guessed, I work much better alone.”
Before he could stop
her, she slid into her car and closed the door, not caring if his fingers made it to safety or not. As she drove away, she could see him staring after her through the rearview mirror, his expression one of amusement mixed with annoyance. God, she hated that he always seemed on the verge of laughing at her. Reminding herself that she didn’t give a crap about Ethan Taggart and what he thought of her, she stuck her hand out the window for a final wave before she pulled out onto the street.
CHAPTER 4
T ONI SIGHED AND took a gulp from the glass of ice water next to her laptop. She squirmed in her seat as a bead of sweat trickled down her rib cage. Her air-conditioning had been on the fritz for the past week, and Mrs. Arroyo said it would be at least another week until it would be repaired. There was nothing to do but suffer through it. For the rent she was paying, Toni was lucky to have A/C at all, and she figured if her tiny Filipino building manager and four children could survive the heat of their cramped apartment, so could Toni. At least she had a fan to move the hot air from one end of the room to the other.
What she wouldn’t give for a cool Seattle summer rain. She thought wistfully back to the adorable flat she’d had in an old Victorian in Seattle’s Queen Anne neighborhood. She remembered how she’d love to curl up on the window seat of the big bay window in her living room and sip a cup of coffee while admiring the view of the Cascades.
Instead, she was spending yet another sweltering afternoon in her home office, such as it was. It was Sunday afternoon, and Kara was still gone. The multiple text messages Toni had sent had gone unanswered, and Marcy hadn’t heard anything, either.
Toni had spent most of yesterday and this morning poring over the messages posted to the V-Club, the online community Kara and her friends had set up on FacePlace. Though it offered some insight into the pressures teenage girls faced when it came to sex, as far as giving any clues as to where Kara was, it was a bust. There had been a few responses to Toni’s message, but no real information. And so far, Toni could find no evidence of the double life Laurie Friedland had alluded to.