The rustle of the wind in the trees meant clear skies. When the wind died, the fog would roll in, sometimes so thick a man couldn’t see six feet in front of him. Cars and trucks on the nearby interstate would be caught unawares, and terrible wrecks of twenty or sometimes thirty vehicles were a gruesome yearly ritual.
The fertile earth that grew so much of the country’s produce cast up its rich and peaty tang, full of the minerals and plant matter left over from a time when the river had run free and unconstrained, flooding the valley with life-giving water. Now trapped, it ran tamely where it was bid, a pale ghost of its reckless youth. The stars twinkled overhead and Dan was struck by the quiet. He’d almost forgotten how quiet it could be here.
Set up high on its foundation, the old house rose a full two stories, giving the impression of an old woman, settled and comfortable in her own skin. The back door opened and his mother called from the top of the cement steps. “Coming in?”
Dan looked at his partner over the top of the car. “Show time.”
Chapter Two
Intent on her task -- frying pyrogi properly was an exacting science -- Valerie turned away from her pan when the back door opened and a pair of tall men entered the kitchen. It had been such a cliché of feminine tasks, women gathered in the heart of the old house to make a holiday meal. Oversized and spacious though it was, the presence of even one man disturbed the balance.
It only took Val a second to recognize Suzi’s brother, Dan. It had been years since she’d seen him. Funny, but she would have thought the object of her grade-school crush -- and junior high and high school -- would be indelibly etched in her memory. He’d changed, though.
“Hey there, Red.” He opened his mouth to speak, only to quickly shut it again. As though he’d been about to comment further but thought better of it.
She was amazed he still remembered to taunt her about her hair. He had always insisted it was red, while she had just as vehemently denied it.
His height was the same. He’d topped six feet in junior high and hadn’t quit growing until he’d reached six-two in high school. But he’d broadened since then. Oh, my. How tall and lanky had turned into tall and built in the intervening years.
The eyes that flickered appraisingly over her body were still the same deep brown of melted chocolate that had haunted her adolescent dreams. The dark brown hair was still a touch too long, brushing over his collar in back and falling into his eyes in front. That couldn’t be a touch of gray she saw creeping in at the temples.
“Hi, Dan. Nobody told me you’d --” God, how embarrassing. Some things never changed. For as long as Val could remember, she’d been tongue-tied in the presence of her idol. She had usually just ducked her head and muttered a “Hi.” But she was a grown woman now. She could talk to anyone. For God’s sake, she talked to strangers all day long. She could do this. “When did you get in?”
He looked over his shoulder and Valerie remembered someone was standing behind Dan. Who was he?
A few inches shorter and as blond as Dan was dark, the stranger was nothing short of gorgeous. Eyes that weren’t merely blue, but a true sapphire, flashed wickedly. A smile that told her he was aware of his appeal and slightly embarrassed by it saved him from his own perfection. Men that good-looking were invariably a waste of time and Valerie had learned to avoid them. To complete her embarrassment, Val could feel a low pulsing begin in her core. The smile that charmed her almost against her will flashed again, hinting at shared secrets. “I’m Tyler. Dan’s partner.”
Dan.
In her assessment of his friend, Val had nearly forgotten Dan.
At the same time, Mrs. Crocker came back into the kitchen in time to smack his shoulder and scold him. “I raised you better than that. Shame on you, Dan. Making guests introduce themselves. You remember Val, don’t you?”
Those eyes were on her again, roaming her face familiarly, before skimming lower. Val knew her clothes were nothing special. Working in a call center where she never met the public face-to-face allowed her dress any way she liked and, like today, she usually favored a casual look. Low-slung jeans and a couple of long-sleeved T-shirts were hardly worthy of that slow perusal.
“Oh, yeah. I remember.” What did he mean, with that slow drawl? “I think it’s probably time for that apology I owe her.”
Valerie had no idea what he was talking about, but the low rumble in his voice resonated deep inside her. “Apology?” Val looked from Dan to his mother. Mrs. Crocker looked just as puzzled as Val knew she must.
“Yeah. That sleepover and the plague of snails?” Dan smiled modestly. “That was me.”
“Snails ...?” The word had barely cleared her lips when the fog lifted and memory returned. On one of her innumerable sleepovers at the Crockers’, Suzi and she had decided to rough it by camping out in sleeping bags inside a tent pitched under the big oak tree out back. No one had been able to explain the dozens of snails they had awoken to find covering the ground, their sleeping bags, and even their hair. Always the first to rise, it had been Valerie’s piercing shrieks that had shattered the Crocker family’s early morning.
“You --” Val bit off the more colorful word that came to mind, changing vocabulary mid-expletive. “-- jerk. I should have known.”
Dan’s friend swallowed a laugh, neatly turning it into a cough, while Dan just shrugged and smiled.
“Daniel Austin Crocker, how could you?”
Dan reached out an arm and hugged his mother close. If Val wasn’t ready to strangle him over his admission, she would have been charmed by the affection obvious in the gesture. Her own family had never enjoyed the same easy physical expressions of caring that were so common with the Crockers. “Aw, c’mon, Mom. It was just a little harmless fun.”
Valerie shook her head in amazement while the inner order of her universe changed shape. If Dan Crocker -- straight-A student, star athlete, and captain of the debate team -- was capable of putting snails in her sleeping bag ... She remembered now there had even been one in her Minnie Mouse sleep shirt! Well, then, what else was he capable of?
“Harmless fun?” Valerie let the heat she was feeling infuse her voice as she relived the horror of the moment. “I should send you the bills for my therapy sessions. I was emotionally scarred, damn you.”
“Nah. You’re exaggerating. No harm, no foul.” He reached out and drew a finger down her cheek, brushing it lightly over her bottom lip, and Val felt the tingle all the way to her toes. “Where’s Suzi, anyway? It’s all her fault I’m here.” So stunned was she, it took a few moments for his words to unjumble themselves in her mind and the question to register. But by the time they had, he was gone.
* * * * *
Damn.
When had little Valerie gotten so freaking hot?
When had he last seen her? He cast back in his memory, trying to pinpoint the time. If she was Suzi’s age and Suzi was three years younger than he, then she’d been a junior in high school. Sixteen. Seventeen years old, tops. She’d been a coltish beauty then -- all long legs and big eyes. And she’d unknowingly starred in more than one of Dan’s guilty stroke sessions.
As he strode through the house looking for his sister, Dan shook his head at how fast the years had gone. One minute his sister’s little friend had been the leggy kid that blushed and stammered and never quite looked him in the eye. Not that that had stopped him from imagining how perfectly those cute little tits would fit in his hands. And now she was ... Shit. He didn’t know the word. Goddamn beautiful.
Still had that rusty brown hair that caught his eye every time. Not quite brown. Not quite red. He smiled that he could still yank her chain with the nickname. He’d never known why it bugged her so much, but he hadn’t been able to resist tweaking her with it once he’d discovered how much it riled her.
Eyes that had seemed odd and a little tilted in a child’s face had become irresistibly exotic in the woman. Dan remembered how the kids in school had made her miserable, calling her al
l sorts of names having to do with those eyes. Asian eyes. Rice eater. Sailor Moon. Their color, a cool blue without a hint of green or gray, was always eclipsed by their unusual shape.
And those lips.
Not finding his sister on the first floor, Dan headed upstairs while he tried to shake the image of Valerie’s lips.
Lush and full, like ripe peaches. Completely fuckable.
Goddammit, Crocker, she’s your sister’s friend. A guest in the house. He had no business picturing her down on her knees, parting those sweet, generous lips while he fed her his cock.
“Holy shit! What are you looking at?” Rounding the corner from the top step into his sister’s old room, he couldn’t stop the words that leapt from his mouth. But there was his sister -- his baby sister -- her nose two inches from an image on her computer screen. A bound woman, restrained by an intricate network of ropes that completely immobilized her naked, vulnerable body, looked out tranquilly from the monitor.
His sister jumped back in a guilty start, relaxing only when she saw who it was that had startled her.
“You little shit! You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you were Dad.” She continued to berate him, even as she threw her arms around him in an energetic hug. “Jesus, you scared me. Danny, it’s so good to see you! I’ve missed you.”
Dan hugged her back, his conscience needling him. He knew how much he’d disappointed their father with his defection. Without him to share the load, the entire weight of their parents’ hopes and dreams had fallen on Suzi’s delicate shoulders. Capable though she was, she never should have had to bear it alone.
“Me, too, Suz. How are you? And what the hell are you looking at?” The last came out with unavoidable emphasis.
“Ooh, check out the cop voice. Well, you can just back your bad self down, big brother, because I am over eighteen and I can look at anything I want.” The kid sister he’d alternately tormented and protected pulled out of his arms and glared back at him, hands thrust belligerently into her pockets.
“Maybe. But I want to know what you’ve got yourself involved in. Who’s got you interested in bondage?” He played his ultimate trump card. “Do Mom and Dad know about your little interest?”
Narrowing her eyes, his sister pulled her hands out of her pockets to brace them with equal force on her hips. “You’re just lucky I’m glad to see you, because I could so yank your chain with this.” Then she outright laughed at him. “You should see the expression on your face. For sure one of us found the right profession. Calm down, Dirty Harry. It’s not for me. I’m doing some research.”
“Research? Last I heard you were an accountant.”
“Can I trust you to keep a secret?”
Dan didn’t dignify the question with an answer, only folding his arms across his chest and waiting.
“It’s for Val’s Secret Santa present. She asked for shibari and I had to look it up.” Dan cocked his head as he tried to make sense of his sister’s incoherent response. “Hellooooooo. Anybody in there?” Suzi waved a hand in front of his face.
“Try that again, please. Use small words. Speak slowly.”
“My friend Valerie -- you may have seen her downstairs? -- asked for shibari for three for Christmas. Your backwards sister who has never been anywhere or done anything exciting didn’t know what that was and had to look it up. I now know what shibari is. Now I just have to find the other two to make up the three.”
She looked up at him with a “so, there” look on her face while Dan braced his feet as the world tilted on its axis.
Holy --
He shook his head and waited for the pieces to settle. His baby sister was researching the Japanese art of erotic bondage in order to set up a threesome for her best friend. The cute little girl downstairs that he’d berated himself for lusting after because she was so innocent.
In his job, Dan constantly felt as though he’d not only seen it all, but cleaned up after it. He saw and did things on a daily basis that would drive most people into therapy. And, up until two minutes ago, he would have sworn he was less shockable than the love child of Dr. Ruth and Billy Idol.
Something was deeply wrong with him when he could misread a situation so badly. He’d just spent two years undercover, working to bust up a ring of some very bad men. He and his partner had lived by their instincts. That, and their trust in each other. Those two things had kept them alive. Dan could only think that if the bad guys had disguised their true natures as well as Valerie apparently had, he and Ty wouldn’t have made it home.
“Really? Valerie and shibari for three? You’re absolutely certain? You couldn’t have mistaken what she said?” His body, momentarily distracted from its infatuation with the nubile young woman downstairs, roared back to attention.
“You’re a cop. Care to examine the evidence?” His sister thrust her hand back into her pants pocket and retrieved a wrinkled slip of paper. “And don’t even ask how I got hold of this.”
Shibari for three.
There it was, in blue and white. Blue ink, written in a forward-slanting feminine hand on a scrap of anonymous white paper.
“How do you know she wrote this?”
“What’s with the third degree, Danny? You think I don’t know my best friend’s handwriting? And then there’s that small detail of us discussing it. Anyway, give it back. I’m not finished with my research.”
Suzi reached for the paper, but the idea forming so quickly and in such exquisite detail in Dan’s mind wouldn’t let go. Pulling the paper out of his sister’s reach, he shoved it into his own pocket. Then, reaching past her, he used the mouse to close out the screen displaying the incriminating scene.
“Forget the research, Suz. I think Ty and I can take care of this one.”
“Are you telling me you know something about this?” She formed her words slowly and Dan could practically see the wheels turning in her mind. His sister was no dummy and the conclusions she was drawing were inescapable. “You. And Ty.”
Dan returned her look, giving it the weight it deserved. “Trust me, Suz.”
* * * * *
Ty had to hand it to the Crockers. Their holiday get-togethers had the Zinczenkos’ beat all to hell. He’d been going back to Cleveland for the holidays as often as his schedule permitted ever since he’d moved to California. There was nothing quite like being surrounded by a troop of noisy relatives and home cooking at the familiest time of the year.
Unless the alternative you were discussing involved tying up a hot redhead and fucking her six ways to Sunday, which it now looked as though they were.
He’d learned a lot about making plans on the fly from working undercover. This last job was by far the longest he’d ever worked on one operation. He and Dan had lived the story so long, he’d sometimes forgotten that he wasn’t really a part-owner in an up-and-coming computer business. There had been any number of times he had had to take invisible cues from Dan and go with his gut when, in reality, he had no idea what was going on. He’d never realized how handy that kind of training would come in back in civilian life.
But earlier, when they hung up coats and Dan let him in on the possibilities, for the first time he wasn’t second-guessing his decision not to fly to Cleveland this year.
“Thanks for the ride home, guys.” Dan’s sister’s friend had a nice smile. Not to mention legs that went on for miles, perky little breasts, and a really luscious-looking ass. That it was completely obvious she had no idea how hot she was only added to her appeal.
“No problem. Anything to avoid doing dishes.” This from his partner.
“Dan, I think you are ruining every single illusion I have about you in one night. First the snails, now this.”
Dan smiled as he drove and Valerie watched from the front passenger seat, while Ty sat in the back seat taking it all in. Without being obvious, Ty was watching Val’s body language. The sidelong glances she stole told him she was interested. The way her fingers fidgeted with her watchband and jacket
buttons betrayed a hint of nervousness. Although she was doing her best to play it cool. A truly terrified woman would have placed her back to the door and used her legs as barricades. Another sweep of her lashes toward first Dan, then back to him in the back seat definitely signaled interest.
“You have time for a cup of coffee, Val? There’s something my partner and I would like to talk to you about.”
“Uh, sure. I guess. What about?” Her looks back and forth from Dan to him were overt now. “Do you need help with Suzi’s Christmas present?”
“Something like that. Is this place all right?” Dan indicated the restaurant just ahead. A red-and-yellow sign, incongruously new-looking, invited hungry diners to sit down to a plate of chicken and waffles.
Waved to seat themselves by the teen-aged hostess not eager to interrupt her conversation with the restaurant’s cook who looked scarcely older, Dan went on, “I can’t believe this place is still here.”
“It almost wasn’t.” Valerie pulled off her coat one sleeve at a time, the thin layered T-shirts she wore under it clinging nicely to her softly rounded breasts. “But when Bernie passed away -- you remember Bernie -- one of her grandkids took it over. The service stinks, but that’s sort of traditional here.” Her coat removed and thrown over the back of the booth, Valerie propped her elbows on the table and looked back and forth expectantly from Dan to him. “So what’s up, guys?”
A look passed between Dan and himself and a nod so minuscule Valerie never picked it up gave Dan the go-ahead.
“This.”
Reaching into a pocket, his partner fished out a small slip of paper and slid it toward the smiling woman seated between them. Ty could tell the second she recognized the paper and her own handwriting on it, because the smile slid from her face. A slow flush rose from her chest and up her neck, her redhead’s complexion turning her cheeks bright red.
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