by Joanne Rock
Josh scanned the scene for glimpses of Lexi, but came up blank. “I’d like to send a mai tai to Lexi Mansfield, the event hostess. Do you know who I mean?”
The woman’s mouth gaped with insult, sort of like Lexi’s fish, Bubblegum. “Every woman in New York knows Lexi Mansfield.” The waitress narrowed her eyes. “Do you know her?”
Josh flipped a bill on the woman’s drink tray. “She asked to meet me here. Could you point her out before you deliver the drink? I’m having a hell of a time locating anyone in this crowd.”
He was also having a hell of a time waiting to see Lexi. The week had crawled by like a never-damn-ending eternity, given that he was dreaming about her every night and fantasizing about her every day.
The waitress pocketed the tip and pointed to a stately older guy in a tuxedo and a sexy sylph in turquoise sequins who were waltzing their way across the dance floor to a disco beat.
Josh recognized Jeeves—or was it James?—the classy butler from Simone Bertrand’s Long Island mansion. But while the butler’s dance partner was certainly recognizable, she was also missing two feet of wild black hair.
Lexi had cut off her hair? Josh gaped in surprise, not because she didn’t look gorgeous, but because most women who grew their hair as long as Lexi’s usually seemed pretty attached to their manes.
He indulged the urge to stare at her unseen in the shadows of the club. She danced the same way she moved through life, in constant, effortless motion. Her shorter hair just brushed her shoulders, leaving an enticing expanse of skin bared to his gaze.
Damn lucky for Jeeves that he wasn’t touching any of that bare skin. Not so damn lucky for the plainclothes guy who was supposed to be protecting Lexi. Josh didn’t see the cop anywhere in sight.
He barreled through the crowd to get to her, telling himself he was in such a hurry because she could be in danger, knowing the real reason probably had more to do with the fact that he hadn’t touched her in almost a week.
Reaching the dance floor in record time, Josh tapped the butler on the shoulder. He forced a polite “May I?” out of his mouth, although the Neanderthal in him screamed something more along the line of “Out of my way, she’s taken.”
But even Josh couldn’t snarl at a guy who snapped an old-school bow to Lexi and kissed her hand like he was Cary Grant.
After the butler disappeared into the well-heeled crush, nothing impeded Josh’s view of Lexi. And what a view.
She smiled that wicked grin. The one that made him remember every illicit moment they’d spent together in vivid detail.
“Cat got your tongue?”
Only then did Josh realize he was single-handedly creating a scene, standing there ogling her in the middle of the packed dance floor.
“Maybe my tongue is just conserving its strength for later.” He took her arm and tugged her off the dance floor, seized by uncharacteristic impulsiveness.
Her skin was so smooth, so cool. Josh wondered how fast he could take her temperature up a few degrees if he could find someplace private.
“Maybe your tongue would be better off for the exercise,” Lexi grumbled, although she quickly assumed a smile for the waitress who brought her mai tai. Lexi sipped at it steadily as she followed him across the bar to the cloakroom.
Josh flashed his badge at the attendant and tipped her generously, but he secured the room and some time alone for a few minutes at least. Jackets, capes and shawls of all kinds lined the walls and were piled high on a table in the middle of the small space. A mixture of perfume scents wafted from the coats, surrounding them in a fog of flowers, musk and maybe some Chanel Number Five.
He yanked down the screen over the counter to enhance their privacy, but the thumping music from the club still rocked the walls.
“Are you complaining about how I use my tongue, Lexi?” He knew he had no right to touch her, but his hands found their way to her hips anyhow. Sequins bit into his palms, but his fingers rested on the satiny skin of her back.
She stared up at him with dark, gypsy eyes, her exotic scent wrapping around him, distinguishing itself from the hundred other perfumes in the room.
“I’m limiting my complaints to your conversational skills.” Her voice was breathy, but she slid herself out of his grip, anyway, stationing herself near a rack of lightweight overcoats and delicate shawls. “But they really do need improvement. Care to tell me why you’re here, after you specifically turned down the offer to be my guest?”
“I’m doing my job.”
“Your job involves titillating conversation and a clandestine rendezvous in the coatroom?” She cocked her head to one side, her hands planted on her hips.
Her nails shone opalescent in the dim light: pink nails decorated with silver fish.
Damn, but she was a trip. A sexy-as-hell, take-no-lip trip.
“No, Lex. My job involves checking up on my rookie cops who don’t know better than to leave you to your own devices in this building full of sharks. I don’t know who’s supposed to be watching you, but I am so going to kick his ass.”
She unfolded her arms and paced the tiny space, her shorter hair bouncing behind her in a dance of spiral curls. “Maybe your job ought to involve telling these guys that if they’re going to watch me on my turf, they need to wear a tie to a black-tie event. I sent Otis off on a mission to pick up something more suitable.”
Otis had left her by herself? Josh’s buddy from the gym was going to get treated to a one-on-one boxing lesson next week.
“The guy’s a cop, not a clotheshorse, Lexi. What were you thinking?” He moved closer to her, needing to impress his message on her somehow. “Do you realize how vulnerable you are here? Especially given the fact that it’s probably one of your uptown fashion friends who is burning down apartments and turning wayward kids into bonafide criminals?”
Lexi reached up to smooth his tie. The simple gesture—a domestic staple that probably wouldn’t mean much to a guy who’d grown up among family—touched him in a way he didn’t even begin to understand.
“Too bad other cops aren’t like you, Josh. The average detective doesn’t know how to navigate the waters of New York society.”
“That’s ludicrous, Lexi. You know I have no idea what I’m doing around these people. Hell, I can’t even talk to you in front of all those highbrows, so I just spent half my paycheck to buy off the coat-check girl.”
“See? You got what you wanted without offending the social matrons by kissing me senseless on the dance floor. You manage to fit even where you don’t fit.” She slid her fingers down the lapels of his jacket, raked her eyes over his chest. “We’re sort of alike in that way.”
“Lady, if you think I’ve got what I want, you’re sadly mistaken.” Still, he had to admit he sort of liked her analogy. No one had ever accused him of fitting into polite society.
His bread and butter as an undercover cop had been to blend in with the worst possible segment of society. But Lexi saw something better in him, something semi-noble.
“I can’t have what I want, either, Josh, but assuming you didn’t come here to tell me you changed your mind and want to claim me as your own, I’m just going to head on back to the party before I’m missed.”
He cuffed her wrist with his fingers, the gesture bringing back out-of-control memories about last weekend’s handcuff adventures. “I have questions to ask you first.”
She waited, her body resting very still, only a fraction of an inch away from his. Her perfume teased his nose, fired his senses. He wanted to touch her, taste her, keep her captive, with his hands as her only bonds this time.
Then again, maybe he really wished he didn’t have to hold her to make her stay.
“QUESTIONS?” Lexi’s brain was fuzzy—make that sexually scrambled—by Josh’s presence. She forced herself to remember this kind of interlude was all Josh wanted from her—private, anonymous, physical.
He didn’t want to take on all of her. For that matter, he didn’t even know all of
her. He still saw her as the wild child, the bad girl who knew how to cause a scene and stir up trouble.
She stepped away from him, right into a wall of coats, to prevent herself from getting sucked in by sheer animal magnetism. “What questions?”
Josh let go of her wrist, his jaw working overtime as he clenched his teeth in obvious sexual frustration that mirrored her own. “My case against the Bertrands is nonexistent.”
Her mind struggled to shake off the steam they generated just by standing next to one another. “I called your office last week and told them Simone definitely purchased one of Valentino’s red cashmere sweaters. Didn’t you get my message?”
“The lab is still testing the fibers.”
Indignation fired her steps in his direction, until she stood toe to toe with the man. He hadn’t once bothered to comment on her new haircut—but he could question her knowledge of fabric? “You think I don’t know cashmere from acrylic?”
He might have responded, but Lexi cut him off.
“I didn’t get to be where I am today by not knowing every flipping thing there is to know about clothes, Josh. You may think my job is some sort of superficial B.S., but it entertains a lot of people, and I gain a lot of social leverage for other causes through what I do.” Call her defensive, but hadn’t Amanda promised that people saw beyond the outward trappings of Lexi’s glamorous lifestyle?
“I know.”
“It’s not global economics, maybe, but it’s— You do?” Had she heard him correctly? She backed up a step in an already confined space.
He followed, stalking her. “I know your work is important.” He fingered one shoulder-length curl of her hair. “You accomplish big things by wielding a mighty pen and providing a living example of unselfishness. You don’t ever need to defend yourself to me.”
No man had ever spoken such sweet words to her. Certainly her family never had. She considered throwing herself in his arms and taking whatever relationship he could offer her, but he swiftly changed the subject.
“I trust your gut about the fibers, Lexi, but until I get more scientific proof that Simone has a sweater made of that fabric, I can’t get a warrant to search her place, and I don’t have much to go on.” He let go of the curl he’d been holding so that it sprang back into place beside her cheek. “I need something more concrete.”
Although Lexi still felt the warmth of Josh’s professed admiration, his conversation reminded her that he wasn’t here to sneak a quickie in the cloakroom or to boost her ego. He was a committed police detective, a man dedicated to protecting hapless fashion critics and anyone else who might find themselves the target of criminal activity.
She admired his work, too, respected him for his noble ideals. But that didn’t help close the gap between them.
“And you think you might somehow find the evidence you need tonight?” Lexi eased away from him, staring at the wall of coats to distract herself from the too tempting detective. “Simone is here, if she’s still a suspect.”
“She and her brother are both suspects, along with several other guests tonight.”
That snagged her attention. “You think Anton is behind some of this?” She found it hard to reconcile her playground savior with an arsonist.
He went utterly still. “You have reason to think he wouldn’t be?”
The sudden chill in the room made Lexi long to wrap herself in one of the warm shawls tossed across a back counter. Although even cashmere made a poor substitute for Josh’s arms.
“Only that I thought we were friends. But I guess it makes sense he wouldn’t want me to pan Simone’s designs in my column if he is the driving force behind her business.” She thought through the verbiage of the anonymous letters, the vague pleas for her to quit running her mouth. “The letter writer obviously wants me to shut up about something, but I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly what.”
Josh tensed, leaned forward. “But you have criticized Simone’s designs on more than one occasion?”
“I prefer ‘critique’ to ‘criticize,’ but yes, I’ve nixed several of Simone’s designs in my column.”
“I see.” Josh nodded, his gaze remote, the wheels in his detective mind visibly spinning.
She waved a hand in front of his face. “Does that mean, ‘I see, Anton is guilty as sin’ or ‘I see, Simone has been behind this all along’?”
Josh caught her hand in midair and held it captive in front of his face. Lexi startled at the sudden shift in his mood. His gaze cleared, focused solely on her.
“It means, I see I have more work to do.” He brought the heel of her hand closer to his mouth. “I see I can’t think straight around you.” He bent her finger back ever so slightly and ran his tongue around the hollow of her arched palm. “And I see I don’t stand a chance in hell of not touching you once I get within fifteen—maybe twenty-five—feet of you.”
The warm swirl of his tongue made her knees weak, her thighs shivery. He kept his eyes on her, cataloging her reactions, silently challenging her to deny the heat between them.
She wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
Josh’s mouth in silence was more eloquent than hers at full speed. And Gawd was the man speaking volumes to her right now.
She allowed her eyes to drift closed, telling herself she only wanted a moment to concentrate on the sensation of his lips sliding over her flesh. But closing her eyes made her less cautious, less able to remember why she couldn’t give herself completely to this man. In that narrow window of time, Josh managed to draw her body to his, stroke the bare skin of her back with his fingers, tease the edges of her gown with his touch.
Josh heard the hitch in Lexi’s breathing, sensed a hunger in her that equaled his own. He toyed with the sequined edge of her dress, so low on her back, so dangerously seductive.
If he slipped his palm beneath the fabric, would he find the lure of leopard-print panties? Or, considering the way her gown molded to her like a second skin, would he find her naked and waiting for him?
A cloakroom wasn’t the place to find out, especially not with New York’s fashion elite gathered in force just outside the flimsy shade pulled down over the front counter. He told himself he would stop any minute, but then Lexi’s hand reached to cover his, squeeze his, nudge his fingers lower….
The groan that escaped him was lost in the driving bass rhythm of the dance tune pounding through the club. He dipped into the curve of her back, his knuckles brushing the thin material that held the sequin network in place.
Her skin taunted him, vibrant and warm as if she’d spent the day lying in the sun. He curved a hand over her bottom, all the while searching for the slightest scrap of satin or silk, yet finding her deliciously naked.
The knowledge that she wore absolutely nothing beneath her gown drove him insane. He crushed her to him, needing to feel the gentle shape of her breasts against his chest. He squeezed her hip and reached lower still, needing to feel—
“Josh, wait.”
Through the sex-starved recesses of his overwhelmed senses, Josh heard Lexi’s soft plea.
He stilled his hands, but kept her in his arms, powerless to let her go just yet. “What?”
Her breath blew along his shoulder in one long, frustrated sigh. “We can’t do this.”
He tried blinking his way back to reality. The senses that had been focused solely on her slowly registered the outside world once again. “Wrong place. I know.”
She shook her head against him. “Wrong everything, remember?”
Damn. “Not the wrong chemistry, Lex. Admit that much.” He forced his arms to his side, his body protesting the loss of her.
“I admit that much.” Smoothing her gown over her hips, she stretched her lips into a wistful smile. “For all the good it does.”
More curses came to his mind. He knew he wasn’t supposed to touch her anymore, knew she wasn’t the kind of woman for half measures. Yet here he was, trying to take whatever he could in a damn coat closet.
“I’m sorry—”
She covered his lips with manicured fingers, the pink nail polish glittering with those tiny silver fish. “Don’t be.”
She oozed sophistication and glamour, but there was nothing refined or tame about her. Lexi’s gown was wild and daring, baring scandalous amounts of skin while still maintaining her classy edge.
“You look gorgeous tonight,” he whispered across the super-charged three inches of air between them.
“Thank you.”
“I like your hair.” He plucked a springy curl from her shoulder and smoothed the strand between his fingers. “You must have cut off about two feet.”
“Twenty-six inches.”
He remembered her hair blanketing him in her bed and missed the rest of it for just a moment. No, he mostly just missed her in his bed. “You measured it?”
A smile kicked up one corner of her mouth. “It’s standard procedure to measure it when you donate it. I cut it off for one of those places that make wigs for kids who’ve undergone chemo or who’ve lost their hair for some other reason.”
Her words provided a knockout punch to his ego. He’d told himself he was making a difference in the city by taking bad guys off the street, but he’d ended up nearly costing a fellow cop’s life by giving a juvenile gangster a second chance.
Yet Lexi continually managed to give help where it was needed—finding research money for kids with incurable illnesses, lending her name to the Shelter the Homeless fund-raiser despite the gossip she’d faced that night, and lifting an anonymous child’s spirits by cutting off her gorgeous hair. Josh wondered if he’d be as likely to make an impact on the city by joining Lexi in her crusade to better the world as he did roaming the streets anonymously with a gun and a badge.
But he wasn’t about to share that thought with her. He’d worked his whole adult life as a cop. He wasn’t ready to be relegated to the role of Lexi’s personal bodyguard, no matter how enticing her body might be.
“For a woman who likes to dress in sequins and glitter, you’ve got to be the least superficial person I’ve ever met.” He replaced the lone curl back in the shiny mass of her hair.