Silk Confessions

by Joanne Rock

  “Trust is something earned, not given.” He’d learned that the hard way with women. Twice. And even then he’d told himself he could at least trust his partner, a mistake he wouldn’t make again with Vanessa even though they got along just fine. But he’d thought Steve was his friend and the guy either sold out to the lure of money or he’d simply gotten way too careless on a job where every breath he took should have been weighed and measured.

  Shoving herself to her feet, Vanessa breezed past him, the leather strap of her jacket’s belt slapping the back of his chair. “You keep telling yourself that, Wes. I’m sure it will be comforting next month when your up town girl dumps you.” She paused to fill a cup of water from the cooler on her way to the door. “Just don’t for get people are very good at living up to your worst expectations. It’s a satisfying fact of the cynic’s creed.”

  She lifted her cup of water toward him in a mock toast and then sailed out of the room before Wes realized he hadn’t told her squat about his progress on the case.

  Damn.

  So maybe Vanessa had a valid point about him being a loner. And a tad cynical. That didn’t mean he couldn’t keep Tempest in his life longer than a month if he wanted.

  Although, as he stared unseeing at his computer screen with the list of women he planned to meet starting this afternoon at one o’clock, he had to admit he was already well on his way to pissing her off. She hadn’t liked him arranging dates as part of his investigation, but he’d gone ahead and made the arrangements anyway since Tempest hadn’t been able to produce the woman at MatingGame who should have the answers to his questions.

  The appointments were the only way to find out more about the women who used the Blind Date service. Forcing thoughts of Tempest from his mind, Wes re turned to his private message box at the MatingGame site and found two more responses to his e-mails re questing dates. Guilt nipped him as he realized that one of the notes came from a woman whose profile had caught his eye on a personal level. He’d streamlined his investigation to include only women who posted blatantly sexual profiles on the Web site—except for one that snagged his eye because he’d been thinking about Tempest.

  He nearly deleted the post, knowing his dates didn’t have a damn thing to do with his personal life, but at the last minute he paused. Thought about it.

  Maybe he should meet one woman who hadn’t mentioned a lot of kinky sex anyhow, sort of like a standard for comparison in a science experiment. His 8:00 p.m. meeting with the dog owner who described her ideal foreplay as a good conversation would give him a more rounded look at Blind Date’s clientele anyway, some thing Tempest’s company deserved.

  Confirming the time and place with the last woman on his list via e-mail through Blind Date’s private account, Wes had every intention of catching his criminal this week. His time frame for solving the case seemed all the more urgent after Tempest’s apartment had been trashed. What if she was next on the killer’s list? While he couldn’t be sure the break-in had been related to last week’s murder, he knew he’d sleep a hell of a lot better once the person responsible had been caught.

  Maybe then he’d be able to figure out how to convince Tempest to stick around for more than a few weeks. Because, no matter what Vanessa said about his ability to trust, Tempest was one woman he didn’t have any intention of letting go.

  TONIGHT SHE WOULD LET GO of all her inhibitions.

  Tempest had told herself as much ten times over on the cab ride to Mick’s Grill in the lower West side. But while banishing her inhibitions in the bedroom sounded easy enough, she hadn’t fully prepared herself for the challenge of being loose and carefree on the streets of New York at night.

  And not just loose in a figurative sense. No, Tempest had elected to wear the trench coat Wes left at her place and nothing more for her rendezvous tonight, so her breasts were jiggling around inside the jacket like mounds of unconfined Jell-O.

  What had she been thinking?

  Her gaze skated up to meet the cabby’s eyes in the rearview mirror, hoping he hadn’t noticed any unusual breast activity. Luckily he was flipping off the guy in the taxi behind him, completely engaged in his work.

  God bless the high level of job commitment in New York cabdrivers.

  Swallowing back an attack of nerves, Tempest figured as long as she could pay the man his fare and get out of the car without giving anyone on the street an eyeful of cellulite, she’d be okay. Once she had Wes in her sights again, she would focus only on their night together—the night she planned to shed the last of her hang-ups and concentrate solely on pleasure. After all, she’d progressed beyond the blindfold stage and was now well on her way to making serious strides in the bold and brazen department.

  Nervous and a little excited, she tipped the cabby and stepped out of the car with extreme caution. Awareness of her nudity beneath the coat made everything about her surroundings feel sexual. The rumble of a truck vibrated through her as it hurried down the street. The hiss of steam from a subway vent snaked up her thighs to warm her intimately. At the corner, the stoplight turned from yellow to red, bathing a handful of pedestrians in a seductive flush of color.

  Amazing how the simple absence of undies filtered all her perceptions through a sex lens.

  Tugging on the ends of the coat’s belt, she made sure she was still covered before pulling open the door to Mick’s Grill. An old Billy Joel tune spilled out onto the street along with scents of spicy teriyaki sauce. The small bar and eatery wasn’t jam-packed, but it seemed crowded for a Tuesday night.

  Weaving her way past the corporate crowd that liked to invade the quirky establishments on the lower West side in a relentless search for atmosphere, Tempest spied more room in the back where the locals congregated. Squinting through the hazy smoke from the grill, she thought she spied her personal KingKong at the back corner table where he said he’d be. But wasn’t that a woman just leaving his booth?

  Irritated, she would have stomped straight over to her date’s female companion to claim Wesley Shaw for her own, but something about the woman’s familiar posture stopped her.

  Tall and slim, the redhead possessed a confident stance as she bent to place a flirtatious kiss on Wes’s cheek. Her dress was short and sexy, designed to catch a man’s eye.

  Recognition came when the woman turned on one red-and-white polka-dot heel.

  Kelly Kline, Boucher’s vice president of global development.

  Flustered and not sure what else to do, Tempest darted closer to the bar, ducking under the arm of a short guy in a suit so Kelly wouldn’t see her. “Well, hello.” The balding Mr. Corporate huffed a beer-stinking breath over her before he nearly fell face-first into her exposed cleavage.

  Eyes glued on Kelly’s disappearing red dress, Tem pest shoved away from the barfly and scrambled closer to Wes, concerned that maybe they’d overlooked some thing by not examining her work associates sooner. Could Kelly have trashed her apartment in anger? If office gossip held true, the woman probably harbored a fair share of anger with Tempest for not giving her a chance at the CEO slot.

  Coincidence that she’d shown up here tonight? Tempest didn’t think her driven business associate was capable of murder, but it didn’t sit well to see the woman among Wes’s suspects when she already had reason to resent Tempest.

  Picking up the pace, she reached Wes in a distracted huff, eager to share her suspicions.

  “I know that woman.” She began without prelude as she latched on to Wes’s arm, pointing toward the front of the bar where Boucher’s most ambitious employee had vanished.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Wes slid out of the rounded corner booth to stand, rapidly inserting himself between her and the crush of the dinner crowd and assorted happy hour partygoers. “I’m interviewing suspects, damn it.”

  “I know. I just wanted to—” It was rather complicated actually. She hadn’t planned to greet him so abruptly.

  What’s more, he looked less than pleased and maybe even a l
ittle suspicious.

  “How did you even know where to find me?” Frowning, he nudged her toward the curved bench seat and settled across from her at the table.

  “You asked me to meet you.” She hoped he wasn’t going to be mad about this. But damn it, she had a right to be here to prove to him Blind Date had set them up legitimately. “I’m the dog owner whose ideal foreplay is good conversation.”

  “You?” Wes looked confused for about a nanosecond before a small tic started pulsing beneath his left eye. “You entered your profile on Blind Date?”

  “I figured if you were trying it out to see how it worked, I could, too.” She didn’t mention that she’d also toyed with the idea of trying to date her way out of her fixation with him. The tic under his eye warned her this was really not the time to bring it up. “Once I saw a note from KingKong, I remembered about your dog and I knew it was you, so—”

  “I’m a trained investigator looking for a killer and I happen to be armed for the job.” The tic picked up speed. “You care to tell me what makes you qualified to test the system, Nancy Drew?”

  Okay, now that pissed her off.

  “I own the company, Wes. This might be just another case to you, but Boucher Enterprises is my whole life. I’m not going to sit back and watch it go belly-up be cause of some deranged prostitute on a killing spree.”

  A harried-looking waiter arrived before Wes could say anything. The college kid with a crooked bowtie picked up a leftover glass with a red lipstick print on the rim and asked Tempest what she wanted.

  “No, thanks, we were just leaving,” Wes informed him, tossing a wad of cash on the guy’s tray.

  “I’ll have a vodka tonic with a twist, no ice.” Tem pest never took her gaze off Wes, refusing to be steam rolled.

  As the waiter took off, she leaned forward over the table, needing to clarify one more point. “And furthermore, I don’t even think you’re right about the whole prostitution angle. The woman you were meeting before me happens to be an employee of my company and trust me, we keep her far too busy for her to moonlight as a hooker. She also happens to make plenty of money by using her brain, without having to throw her body into the mix.”

  “You mean Katrina?” Wes’s gaze flicked down to Tempest’s breasts, lingering long enough to send a rush of heat through her. By the time he met her eyes again, the tic had faded. “She also happens to have damn kinky tastes.”

  “Well her name isn’t Katrina, it’s Kelly Kline and although I can’t picture her having any reason to murder a man she met through the MatingGame site, she does have reason to be unhappy with me since I’m the biggest obstacle to her stepping into the CEO shoes at Boucher.”

  “You think she might have been the person who trashed your apartment?” Wes lifted a skeptical brow as he straightened his skinny silk tie. Between the retro neck-wear and a slightly faded pinstripe suit, he looked like a gangster from the forties. All he needed was the fedora.

  “I don’t know. I just thought it seemed odd that you’re here looking for a killer and possibly someone who’s upset with me because I’m in the wrong business, and in walks Kelly.” She smiled up at the waiter as her vodka tonic arrived. “Thank you.”

  “I see you brought my coat back.” Wes’s eyes drifted lazily over her after the waiter left.

  Music pulsed through the bar, the light rock changing to old seventies disco tunes. And thanks to a Gloria Gaynor song, Tempest began to feel very bold and brazen as “I Will Survive” blasted over the speakers.

  “I did.” She smoothed her hands over the lapels and admired the texture of the finely woven garment. “Al though I like it so much, I think you’re going to have to take it off me yourself if you want to get it back.”

  His focus narrowed solely to her, his nostrils flaring as he stared at her across the table. “I’m not willing to part with the coat.”

  She sipped the vodka, allowing the alcohol to tingle pleasantly through her veins and enhance the buzz of sexual awareness humming through her. “Really? Then why don’t we take this in the alley and you can fight me for it?”

  Wes reached over the table, suddenly very interested in the coat. He slid a finger under the lapel of the jacket and skimmed it down. Down.

  His gray eyes darkened, stormy and foreboding. “Just what the hell do you have on under there?”

  SHE COULDN’T be naked.

  No. Way. In. Hell. Yet even before her lips curled upward in a wicked grin, Wes knew the truth. The woman didn’t have a stitch of clothing on beneath her trench coat. His coat, damn it. The same one he’d slung around his shoulders countless times now hugged her nude body, the silky lining caressing her skin the way he wanted to.

  “I had the advantage of knowing who I was meeting for my blind date tonight, so I thought I’d dress accordingly.” Her voice curled around him like a wisp of smoke from the fat candle flickering on their table.

  “How do you know I don’t have five other women lined up after you tonight?” He was still frustrated she’d shown up in the middle of his investigative work. What if she’d arrived during an arrest? Or worse, what if she’d gotten caught in a shoot-out with a desperate criminal?

  She should have been a hell of a lot more careful. And he shouldn’t be contemplating forgetting the lecture she deserved in favor of tearing the coat from her body.

  “Do you?” She straightened, her abrupt attention to posture robbing him of the delectable view he’d had down her jacket. “Have five other women lined up to meet you, I mean?”

  Peering around the bar she nibbled on her bottom lip and looked unsettled. Worried.

  Amazing how that small display of uncertainty could go so far toward evening the balance between them. He hadn’t appreciated being caught off guard tonight.

  “No.” He finished her drink for her, the only sip of alcohol he’d allowed himself in eight hours at a bar. “Somehow I knew to save the best for last.”

  “So you did choose my profile for personal reasons.” She reached under the table to put a hand on his thigh.

  Her touch hadn’t been the only occasion he’d been groped in his day of nonstop dating, but it was the first time he had enjoyed a feminine hand on his thigh. He pictured those neatly manicured nails clawing hungrily at his skin, her high society facade stripped away so that the real Tempest could have her way with him.

  “I thought I should meet with one woman who hadn’t blatantly advertised sex in her profile, just in case subversive hookers were more discreet than I thought.” He found it difficult to converse with her in a noisy, public place when the only thought in his head right now was how fast he could have that coat off her.

  “That’s the only reason you picked me?” She slid closer to him in the rounded corner booth, giving her self all the more access to him under the table. Her nails sketched higher on his thigh, lightly grazing his trousers and hovering to one side of his Johnson. “I was your control group?”

  “We need to go.” He reached beneath the table to imprison her wrist, thinking there was nothing “con trolled” about the chemistry between them.

  “What about my foreplay?” She wriggled her arm against his grip.

  “You’ll have all the time in the world to try out your moves as soon as I get you out of the coat.” It was all he could think about. Her full breasts even moved differently underneath the fabric. In fact, now that he had realized she was naked, he was certain anyone who looked at her would notice right away.

  “Not foreplay for you.” She crossed her legs, rubbing one calf seductively against him. “I mean what about our good conversation? The foreplay for me?”

  Tossing some bills on the table to settle their tab, Wes tugged Tempest out of the booth. “You should have thought of that before you went commando on me.”

  “Wait a minute—”

  Her words were lost in the din of shouted conversations above the blaring disco music.

  Wes kept his eye on the door and his arm around Tempest, determ
ined no man in her path would get a bonus feel of anything save her elbow as she moved through the crowd. When he finally reached the door, he plowed through it so hard the metal barricade bounced back on the hinges against the building.

  Fresh, rain-scented air blew over him, a welcome relief after the muggy heat of the bar, but it didn’t do a damn thing to cool the fire within. Drawing Tempest to ward the alleyway between Mick’s Grill and the laundromat next door, he figured he’d found the fastest path to a little privacy.

  Ducking deeper into the shadows, Wes backed her against the brick wall of the building and reached for the tie of her coat.

  “If you need a conversation first, you’d better start talking because we’ve got about five seconds before you’re giving me one hell of a show.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  “I’M AFRAID YOU’VE SEEN it all before, Detective.” Tem pest shifted on her skinny stilettos, the back of her heel scraping against the rough brick in the darkness. A streetlight shone a few yards away, near the curb, but their alleyway retreat remained shrouded in the comfort of anonymity. “Nothing new to show you tonight.”

  She loved how dangerous he looked in the shadows, his tall, lean outline tense with restrained hunger.

  Loved?

  Catching herself romanticizing, she wanted to correct herself but found she’d chosen the best word possible. Still, she could love something about the man without falling for him, right?

  “On second thought—” growling low in his throat, Wes reached for the knotted belt at her waist, his finger tugging the fabric apart “—you’ve lost your conversational window, Tempest. Less talk, more nakedness.”

  A fluttery sensation tickled over her skin as she contemplated baring herself to him here. Now. Glancing sideways toward the street she didn’t see anyone nearby. And Wes’s big body would shield her from public view anyway.