His Wicked Ways

“A detective, actually. And one of New York’s finest, at that.” Vanessa tipped an imaginary cap in his direction, hoping to diffuse the tension. “You’re wanted for questioning in extortion charges filed by your business partners in McPherson Real Estate Development. If you’ll just come with me—”

“A city cop. Un-freaking-believable.” He tossed her badge back with an easy flip of the wrist. “Are you on my uncle’s payroll?”

“Not unless you’re the mayor’s nephew.” She tucked her badge back into her pocket, struggling to follow his mercurial mood. He seemed more distant now, but she supposed that made sense given his family’s long-standing animosity for law enforcement. “But we can chat more about it on the way to my precinct.”

She jerked a thumb toward the door, more than ready to leave 172nd Street behind. If only she could get Alec into a squad car and down to the station, she could scratch this case off her docket and consider an old debt to Lieutenant Durant paid.

The pending extortion charges against Messina were more an FBI matter, but nothing formal had been filed yet. Alec’s business partners had just wanted the police to find him. Bring him home. She had no idea if their method of dealing with uncooperative associates resembled mob justice, but Vanessa knew she wouldn’t want to be in Alec’s shoes when he returned to Manhattan.

Then again, maybe he thought he’d just silence her now rather than risk being found by his family.

Not that he stood a chance.

“I’m wanted for police questioning.” He reached for a basketball in a wire bin full of sports equipment on the perimeter of the gym. “In other words, you don’t have jack to pin on me, but you think if I come down to the station for an hour you’ll be able to maneuver me into a confession with some good-cop/bad-cop antics, right?” He spun the basketball on his fingertip, steadying his elbow beneath the moving weight. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

Mesmerized by the old playground trick, Vanessa figured as long as his hands were busy with the ball, he couldn’t very well pull any surprise attacks. Unfortunately, the play of his deft, strong fingers didn’t do anything to stifle the unfamiliar tension still coiling through her.

“Don’t you want to clear your name? Let your business partners know where you’ve been?”

“If I wanted them to find me, I would have told them before now.” His free hand whipped the ball faster and faster until it became a blur of orange. “But thanks for letting me know about the trouble over there. I’ll get in touch with them soon and figure out something.”

“They’re pointing fingers at you.” She peered around the gym to make sure they were still alone. Keeping her wits about her around this man took enough of her attention without adding any hidden lurkers to the mix. His students had all filed out onto the street earlier, but she knew there were other entrances to the building. Had in fact scoped them out before she’d insinuated herself in the self-defense class.

“I’m cheating my own company out of money?” He stopped the ball in midspin and tucked it under his arm. “Makes me wonder why I’ve been busting my ass for nine years to build a good business.”

“Maybe it’s all just a misunderstanding.” She didn’t care how things settled out, she just wanted to do her part and get it over with. “If you could come down to the police station—”

“No.” He invaded her space, leaning close to get the message across. “Not gonna happen. You’ve got a pretty badge there, lady, but for all I know you’re as crooked as small-town politics.”

“You’re related to one of the biggest mobsters on the eastern seaboard and you’re afraid I’m crooked?” Didn’t that beat all? “If you’re so concerned, why not just call the police station and have them send a car for you? We can have someone here in ten minutes at the most.”

A perfectly logical plan to circumvent his concerns. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem convinced.

“Look, I’m not going to the police station on principle, even if I thought you were for real and you threw in a full body massage on the ride over.”

“Not in this lifetime, Al.” She lingered over the shortened version of his name he’d been using to hide out in plain sight for months. “And be careful you don’t verbally harass me, bud, or I’ll be hauling your butt back to Manhattan whether I have your consent or not.” Where did he get off distracting her with visions of full body massages?

Even more irritating—where did she get off actually envisioning her hands anywhere on this man’s body? Something was massively wrong with her today. She knew it had been a bad idea to venture into her home terrain, considering all the wrong turns her life had taken here.

“The lady doesn’t mind trading punches, but toss a little innuendo her way and she gets out of sorts.” He raised an eyebrow as he lined up a three-point shot from the side of the court. “You’re not the run-of-the-mill detective, Vanessa Torres.”

Don’t get personal.

Vanessa knew the drill, having long ago figured out how to keep the bad guys at arm’s length along with fellow cops. But Alec Messina wasn’t necessarily either. He had a reputation as a shrewd businessman with ties to organized crime even though he’d never been convicted of anything. Did that make him a good guy? Or merely one who was very skilled at getting away with misdeeds?

“You’re not a run-of-the-mill real-estate developer, either.” She watched him make his shot and then found herself moving toward the ball. Not that she was here to play. Far from it. She just found it impossible to walk away from a potential competition. “But that still doesn’t explain why you’re hiding out in the Bronx using a different name.”

She dribbled super casually, telling herself maybe she wouldn’t need to shoot if she could keep her hands busy.

“Can’t bear to talk about yourself, can you?” Alec stripped the ball away and jogged to the rim for a layup. “I have to say I’m intrigued why the department sent you out here to bring me in alone. Don’t you people work in pairs?”

“I’ve seen your moves, Messina. I think I can handle it.” She kept her eye on the ball while Alec rebounded and dribbled.

Vanessa had a partner. A great partner who would be there for her in a heartbeat if she needed him. But Wesley Shaw enjoyed working alone just as much as she did. No way would she run to him just because Alec knew how to get under her skin.

“You haven’t seen anything.” He bounced the ball from hand to hand, the thunking cadence reverberating in her ears as he seemed to size her up. “I had to take it easy on you since I thought you were a local with no experience.”

That stung for reasons he couldn’t possibly comprehend since she’d been a local with no experience once. And that lack of preparation—the complete absence of basic self-awareness—had nearly cost her sister her life.

“I’m definitely experienced.” She tugged her thoughts from the quicksand of her past, refusing to get sucked into the same self-recriminations she’d been wading through for years. “And I’ve been around long enough to know I’m making no inroads with you unless I get a warrant, right? I’ll just let myself out.”

Turning on her heel, she headed for the door. No sense wasting time here with a man who just wanted to yank her chain. Six other cases waited on her desk, all of which would keep her comfortably in her Manhattan jurisdiction. She’d only hunted down Messina since her superior had investments with McPherson Real Estate and didn’t want to see the whole company go belly-up. Vanessa had a knack for old-fashioned sleuthing, the kind of tedious paper trail following most detectives hated. She’d done her part by finding Alec in the first place, hadn’t she?

Not.

It definitely would suck to admit defeat, especially to the man who saved her bacon by reassigning her when her first partner on the force had gotten too friendly.

Reaching for the double doors that emptied onto the street, Vanessa paused when Alec shouted to her.

“How’d you find me?” His words echoed slightly against the high ceiling.

Should she stay and hope that she could wrest answers from him without dragging him back to the precinct? To question him here posed more of a risk and kept her tied to the old neighborhood that much longer.

Then again, if she left, she’d have to tell Lieutenant Durant she’d failed. An alternative that held little appeal for a woman who prided herself on success.

“Tell you what, Al.” Pivoting silently on the heel of her sneaker, she faced him across the polished wooden floor. “I’ll answer one of your questions if you answer one of mine.”

IN BLATANT DEFIANCE of the heat surging through him at just the sight of Vanessa Torres silhouetted in the light from the high windows, Alec assured himself he could never be interested in a cop.

His complicated friendship with his uncle’s mistress had reminded him of all the reasons sex needed to stay far, far away from all relationships outside of a committed one. Something Alec couldn’t afford with his personal life consigned to a low level of Dante’s Purgatory. The added knowledge that Vanessa possessed the power to haul him off to jail made his sex thoughts about her all the more unwelcome.

And blasted uncomfortable.

“You’re not cutting me any slack here, are you?” He didn’t want to answer her questions, but he really needed to know how she’d tracked him down. If she could do it, maybe his uncle had already found him, too.

The thought had urged him to call her back just now, when she’d been ready to walk away. If she was legit— an honest city detective trying to do her job—then he couldn’t just let her venture back onto the street unaware of the danger of having identified him. She could have been followed here. Even worse, she could be dispatched now that she’d served her purpose. A chance he wouldn’t take.

“You forget, I’m not here to pay you a social call.” Her perfect posture looked so rigidly ladylike. He wouldn’t have believed she could dribble a basketball with as much finesse as a WNBA star unless he’d seen it with his own eyes. “If you want answers, you’ll have to give up a few of your own.”

“Fair enough.” He’d gladly dance his way around her questions in order to extract whatever information he could. Besides, Vanessa counted as the most intriguing company he’d entertained in a long time. Even if she hid a connection to his uncle bent on revenge, at least Alec would enjoy the view until she made her move against him. “I’ll answer a question if you tell me how you found me.”

Venturing closer, she walked back into the gym with that silent, subtle way she had of moving. He realized she wasn’t quite as tall as he’d originally thought. Her monochromatic clothing and uncommonly straight shoulders gave the illusion of height, but she didn’t top five foot six. Smooth skin and unlined features probably put her in her mid to late twenties.

“I figured your work in real estate gave you plenty of places to hide, so I obtained a list of properties with your name attached.”

“That amounts to hundreds of holdings.” No way could she have tracked him here on that kind of information.

“I paid special attention to land with active building permits under the assumption you’d need to keep busy, or at least keep an income flowing.” She lowered herself to the front tier of pull-out bleachers on one side of the gym. “And it helped that I have contacts in this neighborhood who checked out the property next door to a deserted sports complex.”

“Damn.” Alec had been discreet in his efforts to renovate the building owned by one of his dead grandfather’s cronies, slowly incorporating another decaying edifice into a revamped community center. But still, Vanessa had traced him here even though he’d been using cash to live on for months. “You’ve got friends in the South Bronx?”

“Contacts,” she corrected, smoothing her palms over the knees of her dark jeans. “And it’s my turn to ask a question now.”

“By all means.” He dropped down to the bench a few feet away from her, settling the basketball between them for good measure. He didn’t have any intention of following a dangerous attraction without knowing more about the woman, even if his eyes were glued to her hand resting on the denim-encased thigh. “Fire away.”

“Why do you think your partners have pointed the finger at you now that there is money missing from the company you own together?”

Maybe Uncle Sergio put them up to it. He hadn’t seriously considered that angle until Vanessa showed up— possibly leading anyone looking for him right to his door.

“I guess because I disappeared around the same time.” He twirled the ball on the metal bench, hoping to keep her involvement more marginal. “And I happen to have a blood relationship with a gangster.”

“But you’ve always been related. Why would your partners suddenly decide now that it makes you a bad guy?”

“It’s complicated.” Major understatement.

Vanessa messed up a perfectly good spin by palming the ball. “Hey, I explained my answer. If you’re going to half-ass your end of the deal—”

“I’m not.” He studied her hand on the ball beside his. No fingernail polish. No rings. Just a surprising amount of strength. She was nothing like Donata Casale, who’d been sheltered and pampered her whole life. “It’s tough to explain my relationship with my partners. All along, they’ve provided most of the money while I’ve provided the vision and actual labor required to move the company ahead.”

“From all accounts, you’ve been incredibly successful.” She didn’t say where she came by her information, but Alec knew his company’s projects were in business trade publications more often than not, although he made it a point to keep himself out of the spotlight. A low business profile suited him just fine and his partners were content to be the face of McPherson Real Estate.

Her hands retreated from the ball as she straightened.

“It’s been a good gig.” Until he’d found out half the reason his partners had joined forces with him was to leverage a criminal connection. “We were all getting along just fine until I had a recent falling out with a family member who’s got some powerful friends.”

Uncle Sergio hadn’t taken kindly to his girlfriend’s claim that she’d slept with his nephew. Thanks, Donata. She’d chosen a hell of a way to pay him back for offering to help her escape his uncle’s control.

“They’re upset you fought with your family?” Brow furrowed, Vanessa tucked her hands into her pockets.

“None of their business, right? I didn’t realize until then how much they liked the tie to my well-connected clan.” And damn, but that had turned his whole life inside out. All those years he’d thought he’d been putting distance between himself and the family, his partners had been discreetly using his uncle’s name as a way to cinch business deals. They were all in a shitload of trouble now, and Alec didn’t have a clue how to dig them out of the mess. Yet.

“So you went into hiding to regroup and—” raising an eyebrow, she glanced around the recently refurbished gym “—create an inner-city haven for delinquents to hone their fighting skills?”

That pissed him off. As a cop, she ought to know better. “Just because they live in the middle of a war zone doesn’t make them responsible for the violence.”

For a moment, he thought he saw a hint of regret in her dark eyes. But then the impression was gone, her gaze as remote and unyielding as when she’d swept his legs out from under him and planted him flat on his ass.

“So why did you come here?” Her tone implied only a moron would spend time teaching self-defense to kids who could easily be the street thugs of tomorrow.

Maybe some of them would use the knowledge unfairly. But if his fighting techniques saved a life…it would go a long way toward making up for a lot of mistakes he’d made.

“It’s my turn to ask a question, remember?” He didn’t have any intention of telling her more than necessary. And he found himself a little too eager to learn more about this woman who fought like she meant it and didn’t waste words. Both rare qualities in women, in his experience.

“I’m ready when you are.” She flipped her long, dark braid over one shoulder and crossed her legs.

Alec told himself he wasn’t following the line of her calf with his eyes. He was just thinking she looked very…fit. Yeah. That’s it.

“Fair enough. How about telling me where you learned those moves you used to fight me off earlier? Those aren’t exactly standard issue for NYPD cops.”

“I’ve been trained in kendo. It’s an older fighting style I don’t see offered much in New York.”

“Yet you managed to hunt down your own archaic fighting master from the comfort of downtown Manhattan.” Something about her didn’t add up. The unusual martial art style. The fact that she’d found him in the first place. She seemed too well trained for a city detective. Too elite to sit around with a bunch of cynical cops all day debating how to set up drug dealers.

Which brought him back to his first inclination that she seemed more like a top-of-the-line hit woman. Probably a paranoid thought fostered by his situation, but he still had to consider it. Vanessa could be either a skilled cop who’d led his revenge-happy uncle right to him, or she could be the means to Sergio’s ends.

“Let’s just say I was well motivated to seek out the toughest training I could find.” She waggled her fingers toward the ball, indicating he hand it over. “Now— completely off the topic—you need to tell me why you don’t want to go to the police station with me.”

“Don’t you think that question is a hell of a lot more personal than me asking you about a few kung fu chops?”

“Depends why you were asking.” She scooped up the ball and balanced it on her forearm, rolling it to her elbow and back to her hand in an easy rhythm. “I can’t help it if you don’t use your questions wisely.”

“For a woman who doesn’t like to talk about herself, you sure don’t mind showing off.” He plucked the ball off her arm and put an end to her trick. “And I already told you why I don’t want to be grilled by a bunch of junior interrogators who think I’m going to be their ticket to a big bust.”

“I recall that’s what you told me, but this time, I’d like to know the truth.” She watched him with those remote eyes of hers and Alec wondered if anything ruffled this woman. Did she ever scream during sex, or did that detached chill remain even then?

“You want to know the truth?” He couldn’t tell her the whole story. Hell, he’d be here for days. And although he hadn’t appreciated many of his uncle’s teachings, Alec still practiced one of Sergio’s most repeated doctrines—never talk about family business outside the family.

“I find it hard to believe you’re afraid to speak to interrogators since you’ve been in a prominent position at a major corporation for years. Anyone who heads up the kind of controversial building projects you do has surely crossed swords with business reporters, or at least a few in-house detractors, before. So any suggestion of you being intimidated by a few cops asking questions rings pretty false to me.”

He wondered idly why a city detective spent her free time watching business reports, but barely had time to guess at the answer when she barreled ahead, her low words spoken with quiet authority.

“Besides, I studied your financial records. I know you’re making money hand over fist with your company and you have been for a long time.” Something flickered in her gaze. Some warm ember of feeling that made him think she wasn’t completely aloof. “So there’s no logical reason for you to take money out of company escrow. I’m curious to know why you won’t just go in to clear your name if you’re innocent.”

“I swear to you, I’m going to answer that, but could we break up the order of this questioning for just a minute and let me ask two of my feeble queries in a row?” A plan was beginning to form in his mind, a possible way to ensure her safety and get them both out of this mess. He just hoped his instincts about Vanessa proved on target. “You said it yourself, my questions suck anyway.”

She was shaking her head no before he even got the words out of his mouth.

“Just hear me out first, and then you can decide.”

“Fine.” She stared out over the gym, not even bothering to make eye contact with him. “But I can’t promise I’ll answer.”

“Do you know a lot about business? Finance?”

That caught her attention more thoroughly than anything he’d said so far. In fact, from the rapid way she whipped her head around to look at him, he’d bet she was ten times more interested in finance and business than his shady relationship with the law.

Bingo.

“I have an MBA.” Shrugging as if it were of no import, she shoved her hand in her jacket pocket. The pocket with her badge, he remembered. “And a small personal interest in finance. Why?”

He recalled the sensation of reaching into her blazer himself, of brushing her thigh through the light fabric. That brief touch had been almost as enticing as when he’d been stretched out over her on the mat earlier. Perhaps because that second time she hadn’t been fighting him off.

Willing away a surge of heat, he steered his thoughts back to his plan to get her out of here and keep an eye on her until he figured out where she fit into his uncle’s revenge plot. She might not even buy it, but maybe if he could keep her distracted…

“I could use some help interpreting company records for McPherson.” He dangled out the best carrot he could think of to keep her with him. And it wasn’t a total lie. He had an excellent knack for making money, less of a knack for organizing it into the neat columns number crunchers seemed to prefer. “And to answer your other question, I won’t go to the police station because surfacing now could put my partners in danger. Or me.”

Or her.

Welcome to Paranoia 101. A pain in the ass to always look over your shoulder maybe, but that same tendency had kept him alive despite his notorious family for too long to set it aside now.

Already, her brow furrowed, his answers not agreeing with her. But he’d had enough personal revelation for one day and their time here was running out.

“I’m sure that doesn’t add up for you, but it’s the truth.” Mostly. He didn’t know how much that pledge would mean to her, but he’d already shared far more than he had planned. “I won’t make any public appearances or go on record, but if you’d lend me a little of that financial expertise for a few hours, I’ll answer as many of your questions as I can.”

“Here?” She glanced around the echoing space, confusion and suspicion in her eyes.

“No.” Speaking of which, they’d better get the hell out of there. Standing, he pitched the basketball back into the bin. “It won’t be safe here for much longer. We could find somewhere else that would be neutral terrain.”

She shook her head, her dark braid swinging behind her. “You’ve been implicated in a crime. Soon you’ll be brought up on extortion charges. And you expect me to just take off with you to act as your financial adviser? You know damn well you need a lawyer, not a cop.”

Shifting to her feet, Vanessa backed up a step.

No doubt about it, she thought he was a lunatic. Frankly, Alec didn’t blame her. But she’d put them both in a precarious situation by finding him. He had to keep her close to protect her from his enemies or, at the very least, prevent her from turning him in and effectively signing his death warrant.

And he was prepared to use any means necessary— including the persistent chemistry that kept him distracted at every turn.

“I don’t need financial help.”

“Then what do you need?” Impatience strained her throaty voice.

Time to offer up the last trick in his bag of unholy bargaining tools.

“I need someone to take a look at the company accounting to help prove my innocence.”

3

“THAT MAKES NO SENSE at all.” Vanessa cocked her head to one side to see if studying Alec from another angle would help. Nope. He might be a total stud on the outside, but inside, he’d lost his marbles. “You’re asking a city cop to look over your books when you’re two steps away from being charged with stealing money from the company? Do you have a special affinity for being clapped in irons, Alec, or are you simply out of your mind?”