Under Wraps

“How could you?” she yelled through the narrow opening. Disappearing for a moment, she returned with a whole handful of darts. “You pervert!”

The darts started flying in earnest now and he took cover against the door.

Ace detective work told him she’d found his hidden camera.

“Marnie?” He tried leaning into her line of sight between rounds of incoming fire. “Did you really call the cops?”

That was going to be a nightmare. He had as many enemies on the force as he had friends. With his luck, one of the former would answer the call and gladly lock his ass up for the night until he could straighten away the paperwork.

“Of course.” Another dart.

He ducked.

“You can wait with me while the local police bring you a pair of handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.” A painted pink stone that he happened to know was her paperweight came hurtling through the opening now, joining the darts on the pavement.

He heard the stomp of furious footsteps away from the door. Leaning into the vacated space, he used the time to make his case.

“Marnie, wait.” He pulled out his wallet and tossed it inside her storefront where it skidded across the gray commercial carpet and thudded against her ankle. “There’s my ID. I’m a licensed private investigator.”

She slowed her battle with the buttons on the desk phone. Apparently, she’d been making more calls. To a friend or neighbor? Backup to be sure he stuck around long enough for his own arrest?

“If that’s true, that sounds only marginally less smarmy than being a complete and total perv.” She cradled the phone against her shoulder and started punching buttons again, this time with slow deliberation.

“Premiere Properties didn’t terminate you because they couldn’t fund your department. They terminated you because of a major embezzlement scam that originated in your sector of the company. You were a prime suspect.”

She shook her head. Confused. Shocked. He’d seen that expression on people’s faces when he’d worked in homicide and he’d had to face grieving family members to question them. Hell, he still saw that expression as a P.I. when a wife learned her husband had been cheating. He didn’t take jobs like that often, but sometimes he could be persuaded. Having been on the clueless end of an unfaithful relationship made him empathize.

Marnie’s face mirrored that kind of disillusionment now.

“Who are you?” She seemed to see him for the first time that night, her brows furrowed in concentration as if she could guess his motives if she stared hard enough.

Relieved, he pointed to her feet.

“My ID is right there. Just hang up the phone long enough to let me talk to you.”

With a jerky nod, she replaced the receiver and retrieved his wallet. Seeing his Florida private investigator’s license inside, she met his gaze again.

“I didn’t really call the cops yet. I only just found that camera a minute before you arrived.”

Thank God. He didn’t want to deal with that drama tonight.

“I’m going to collect the darts out here,” he told her, scooping up the littered sidewalk. “If you want to meet me somewhere you’ll feel safe, we can talk.”

By the time he straightened, she was already back at the partially opened door. The stiff set to her shoulders had vanished.

Her caramel-colored hair slid loose from a messy twist on one side, the freed strands grazing her shoulder where her satin robe drooped enough to show she wore a black cotton tank top underneath it. Her gray eyes locked on his, searching his face for answers.

“I don’t want to go anywhere. Not when my thoughts are so scattered and my head is spinning like this.” Over her shoulder, he could see the mess in her office, it looked as if she’d cleared everything off the display case he’d built, probably searching for other cameras. “I’m suddenly very, very tired.”

Without warning, she closed the door in his face and he thought she’d ended the conversation. Then, he heard the safety latch unhook and she reopened the door, silently inviting him inside.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” He didn’t like the idea of setting foot in there if she thought for a second he could still be some random lecher taking video for fun.

She nodded. “A real perv would have put the camera in the bedroom or over the shower, not pointing at where I do business. Besides, a colleague from Premiere called tonight and mentioned something about rumors of a financial loss. I know you’re not making it up about possible embezzlement. Are you the guy Vince hired to ask discreet questions around the office?”

He nodded.

“Then you might as well come in.” Her words lacked the red-hot fury of the flying darts, but there was a new level of iciness that didn’t feel like a big improvement.

Accepting the grudging invitation, he stepped inside the storefront and closed the door behind him.

“I’ll just set these down.” He piled the darts on her desk, an elegant antique piece out of place with the rest of the utilitarian furniture. Kind of like her. Her silk bathrobe probably cost as much as the old beater she drove to work lately.

Marnie Wainwright had fallen on some hard times, but he admired her grit in not letting them get the best of her.

“I refuse to apologize for the darts.” She produced an open bottle of champagne along with two glasses, then dropped onto the love seat in her office’s waiting area. “Even if you were conducting an investigation, a hidden camera is still a disturbing way to go about obtaining information.”

But legal for an investigation of this magnitude, as long as the device wasn’t inside her private residence. He took the chair at a right angle to her, observing the way she recovered herself. Her fingers shook with the leftover churning of emotions as she handed him a glass of bubbly. He hated that his investigation had freaked her out. Hated that she’d found the damn camera in the first place. He’d been banking on hitting on her, not having her glare at him as if he were evil incarnate.

“Granted. But it was also the fastest way of proving your innocence. If my client had gone to the cops, you could have been stuck trying to clear your name from inside a cell, since the evidence they had on you was pretty damning.” He set the glass she’d given him on the coffee table.

She seemed to think that one over as she poured her own glass and held the cool drink against her forehead like a compress.

“Why didn’t they go the police?” she asked softly, her hands shaking just a little as she lowered the flute and took a sip.

He tried not to envy the glass for its chance to press against her lips. She was dealing with a crisis, after all. But he’d been battling an attraction to this woman ever since the week he’d built the custom-made cabinet to house his spy equipment. He couldn’t help subtly ogle a bit now that he was finally free to act on that attraction. Her dark robe slipped away from her calf enough to reveal the delineation of the long, lean muscle in her leg. A gold toe ring winked from her bare foot, a small row of pearls catching the light as she shifted.

Jake had a sudden vision of that long, bare leg in his hands, his body planted between her thighs. And wouldn’t that fantasy be helpful in explaining why he’d been spying on her? Cursing the wayward thoughts, he forced himself to talk about the case.

“The CEO of Premiere doesn’t trust the local police ever since they misplaced key evidence that would have convicted some crooks involved in his last company.”

The case still pissed off Jake, too, even though it had been two years ago.

“Brennan. You were the investigator on that crime.” She snapped her fingers in recognition. “I thought your name sounded familiar when we met. I did a little research on it because I worked for Premiere when they hired Vincent Galway to take over as CEO.”

Great. Jake didn’t want to be associated with an investigation that screamed police corruption. He’d left the force because a couple of the cops appeared to be flunkies for some bigwigs who didn’t want that particular corporate fraud case prosecuted. To keep his eyes off Marnie’s legs, he diverted his attention to a nearby painting of the Anasazi cliff dwellings, decorated for the holidays with a few balsam sprigs on the top of the frame.

“I quit when the system screwed over Vince. He talked to the cops and the Feds to try to throw some light on dirty dealings in his last company, and he was the one with mud on his face after the evidence was misplaced.” Jake swiped the champagne glass off the table. “But I know Vince from way back. He served in Vietnam with my dad. Because Vince trusts me, he hired my services to help him wade through the embezzlement scandal that could have hurt his company if news about it leaked.”

Marnie swirled her glass and watched the bubbles chase each other.

“So you got onto the work crew when I had the office overhauled and you installed a camera.” Her bathrobe slipped off her knee, unveiling bare skin for as far as the wandering eye could see up her leg.

A slice of creamy thigh proved too much competition for the picture of the damn cliff dwellings. His gaze tracked up her skin as he calculated how quickly he could have her naked…

“Yes.” His throat went dry. “It was a fast way to either clear you or confirm your guilt, and it’s a tool the cops rarely use because—”

“—because it’s highly unethical and borderline illegal?”

“Because it takes a lot of reviews to obtain permission for it.” He’d be damned if he’d let her call his honor into question. “Technology is saving a lot of manpower hours at your local cop shop, so I can guarantee you it’s not illegal when there is just cause—for me, or for them.”

“But I’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing, thanks to having my life put under a microscope?”

“You’re no longer a prime suspect.” He watched her retuck the bathrobe around her legs, possibly feeling the heat of his stare despite his best effort to rein himself in. “In fact, I was hoping to remove the equipment tonight.”

Right before he hit on her. He planned to get very close to Marnie Wainwright in the near future. Now? Who knew how long it would take for him to rebuild some trust?

“You thought you’d just saunter in here tonight after I hadn’t seen you in two months?” The precariously lopsided twist in her hair finally gave up the ghost, spilling caramel-colored strands and spitting out a pencil that had been holding it all together.

“I figured you wouldn’t want to have that equipment running any longer than necessary,” he told her reasonably as he retrieved the fallen pencil and placed it on the coffee table.

“Of course not, but since I didn’t know I’d been under surveillance for the past two months, might I inquire why you thought I’d even let you in?”

Animal attraction.

But he knew better than to say as much.

“I figured I’d look into a fantasy escape.” Heavy on the fantasy. God knew, she’d been occupying enough of his lately.

The woman had compromised his investigation every time she sashayed past that surveillance camera, her confident feminine strut one hell of a distraction.

“At this hour?” Her gaze narrowed. Suspicion mounted.

And with damn good reason.

He hadn’t even come close to laying his cards on the table with her yet.

“I work late.” He shrugged, not sure what else to offer in his defense. “Do you want me to take the equipment now?”

“No.” She leaned forward on the love seat, invading his personal space in a way that would have been damn pleasant if she hadn’t fixed him with a stony glare. “I know how to take a sledgehammer to the cabinet, but thanks anyway. Right now, I’m more interested in two things.”

“Shoot.” He breathed in the warm, spicy scent of an exotic perfume he wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t been this close.

“First, you didn’t say I was cleared of suspicion. You carefully distinguished that I’m no longer a prime suspect. Care to explain what that means?”

Her silk-covered knee was only inches from his. One bare foot sat so close to his loafers that he’d have to be careful of her toes if he stood. The nails had been manicured with glittery white polish except for the big toe on each foot, which featured a carefully painted holly berry leaf.

Lifting his gaze to meet hers, he wondered if he was the only one fantasizing about peeling off her robe.

“It means that there’s an outside chance you could still be a conspirator, but we don’t think that’s likely and we are one hundred percent sure you are not the primary force behind the embezzlement.”

“How reassuring.” She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, frowning as she seemed to consider the implications of that.

“You said you were interested in two things?” He saw the dartboard behind the love seat no longer contained a picture of her ex-boyfriend, something he hadn’t known from the video feeds since his camera didn’t give him enough of a wide angle on the room.

Good for her for not caring anymore. Jake’s investigations had dug up more than a little dirt on him.

“Right.” She fixed him with her gaze. “I’d also like to know just how much of me you’ve seen with that camera lens of yours.”

2

MARNIE HAD HER ANSWER in a nanosecond.

The heat that flared in the private investigator’s eyes practically singed her skin before he said one word.

Hell, he didn’t have to say a word.

“Oh, my God.” She buried her face in her hands to escape Jake’s gaze. Or maybe to hide from the answering heat inside her that she had no business feeling for a man who had spied on her.

Damn him.

“Please believe it was never my intent to see more than the business transactions.” He had that cool, authority-figure voice down pat and she wondered how she ever could have believed he was a carpenter, let alone a good guy.

Jake Brennan had dangerous tattooed all over his big, imposing bod, a wedge of powerful muscle that looked fit to take care of business in a back alley. The brooding, hot expression in his eyes communicated something altogether inappropriate, as if he knew exactly what she looked like naked and had devoted a fair amount of thought to seeing her that way again.

Was she reading into that enigmatic look of his? Maybe. But his presence made her twitch in her seat.

“But you did see more than business transactions,” she snapped, frazzled by sexual thoughts. She lifted her head and quickly realized she’d sat far too near to him for this little tête-à-tête.

His knee was so close she could feel the warmth of him through the thin silk of her robe. He sat forward in his seat, his sculpted shoulders leaning toward her as if he debated offering comfort. A worn gray Henley shirt stretched over the taut muscles of his arms, the sleeves shoved up to his elbows past a heavy silver watch that rested on one wrist. Wavy dark hair brushed his collar; his jaw was bristly with a five-o’clock shadow.

She wondered what it would feel like against her skin. And damn it, why did she care? It had to be because she’d spent the past weeks thinking about Jake the Carpenter in a romantic way, building him up to be someone he wasn’t based purely on attractiveness. A stupid habit, that. Hadn’t she been burned oh so recently by a guy who was all flash and no substance?

Although comparing Alec to Jake was sort of like weighing a cheap copy of a famous painting against the original. One was nice to look at. The other took your breath away it was so freaking magnificent.

“When I installed the camera, I had no idea you would make yourself so comfortable in your office space. How many people work in their pajamas? Um, legally, anyway.”

He said it without a trace of a smile, but she could swear she saw a glint of amusement in his flinty gaze.

Defensiveness steeled her spine.

“I thought I was alone so I refuse to be embarrassed.” Could she help it if she’d gotten in the habit of peeling off a layer as soon as she flipped the Closed sign on the business?

It had been a damn difficult year between losing her job, losing her savings due to her ex’s crappy financial management and finding out the ex himself was the kind of superficial jerk who only cared about her worth as his personal sugar moma.

Oh, and that was all before she found out she’d also been under suspicion for embezzlement.

“You definitely don’t have any reason to be embarrassed.” He cracked a smile that time—the barest hint of a grin that revealed an unexpected dimple. “I thought your dance moves were great.”

In different circumstances, she would have been totally charmed.

But flirting with the P.I. who’d surely seen her mostly naked and who, by the way, hadn’t fully crossed her off his suspect list, didn’t strike her as a particularly wise move.

“Thanks. But on that note, maybe I should let you take the camera and get back to your investigation.” She stood, feeling awkward and too aware of him.

“I appreciate that.” He stood, too, topping her by several inches and filling her vision with more than his fair share of studliness. “I’d hate to lose expensive equipment to a sledgehammer.”

He didn’t move, however. At least not right away.

Her heartbeat quickened.

“Jake.” Saying his name aloud felt foreign and familiar at the same time. She’d thought about him often enough since their first meeting.

Strange that all the while he’d been feeding her daydreams, she might have been playing a role in his, too. The thought stirred desire so palpable it made her breath catch.

“Yes?” He’d been waiting. Watching.

Still not moving.

“Who else has seen those surveillance tapes?” She had to know. Because while she might be able to write off Jake’s eyes following her in her most private moments, she didn’t think she could handle knowing her former employer had been reviewing the footage.

“No one but me has seen the actual footage. I just pulled off a few stills to show some of your transactions in progress. I would never compromise your privacy any more than absolutely necessary.”

She nodded, believing him.

“Thank you for that, at least.” Warmth swirled through her, although why she should feel so comforted that he would keep her amateur stripteases to himself, she wasn’t quite sure. “Do you need any tools to remove the camera? I have a screwdriver somewhere.”

Turning, she moved to retrieve it.

“Marnie, wait.” His hand clamped lightly around her shoulder and she froze. Not that he was holding her in place. Far from it. She could have easily kept on walking.

But it was the first time that he’d touched her for real and not just in passing—or in fantasies. The contact made her mouth turn dry and her legs felt a little shaky.

“What is it?” Her words were breathless.

She hoped he would interpret that as nervousness from finding out she’d been suspected of a major felony and under surveillance all in one evening. And honestly, that was part of it.

His hand slid away now that he had her attention, but the memory of it continued to warm her shoulder like a phantom touch.

“Would you consider answering a few questions about your work with Premiere Properties?”

“Of course.” She resisted the urge to fan herself. Obviously, if she was so desperate for male companionship that she would continue to think about someone who had spied on her in an, er, romantic way, she needed to get out more often.

“I’ve eliminated a lot of people.” He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and emerged with a paper. “My focus has narrowed to people involved with this place.”

He handed her the folded sticky note with a half-dozen luxury resorts listed, along with highly placed individuals within those properties. Although a handful of names were still legible, only one resort wasn’t crossed out.

“The Marquis.” She knew the property well. “You’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Returning the paper to him, she took a step back in every way possible. He might as well have indicated a nest of rattlesnakes.

“Why do you say that?” He frowned, looking at the paper again.

“You haven’t done much homework for a guy who’s been on the case for two months, have you?” She thought about pouring herself another sip or two of champagne, then figured she’d be better off just finding the damn screwdriver so he could take his camera and go.

She slid out from behind the coffee table to hunt through her desk.

“On the contrary, I’ve worked my ass off. White-collar crimes like this can be filtered through so many different accounts electronically that it makes it damn difficult to trace.” He followed her to the desk, sidestepping a few items on the floor from when she’d cleared the shelves in a frightened fury. “After hiring a forensic accountant, I spent most of my time investigating you since, on first look, the money appeared to have been leaking wherever you traveled last year.”

Her frantic culling through pens and paperclips paused.

“You think someone wanted it to look like I was responsible?” A new fear gripped her, superceding her outrage at being secretly videotaped.

“Yes. And when you opened this business, I wondered if you’d just found a new way to skim money from the same properties you worked with at Premiere since you continued to book trips to a lot of the same resorts.”

“Because they’re great destinations and I know them inside and out.”

“Including the Marquis?”

Slamming the door shut with her knee, she rubbed her temple where a stress headache wanted to take root.

“No. That one isn’t really—” Sighing, she began again. “It’s a unique place. Well off the beaten path just outside of scenic Saratoga, New York. Strictly for adults.”

“It didn’t come up in my early searches, but I just figured it was one of those high-end places that doesn’t advertise.”

“It is.” Just thinking about the things she’d seen there the last time she visited made heat crawl up her cheeks and take up residence. “Technically, Premiere doesn’t own it, but they are a partner of the eccentric owner and they take care of the food service and a few other basics. It’s a complicated relationship and it’s important that it remains under the radar since the guests are guaranteed a highly—” she cleared her throat “—sensual experience.”

Was it just her, or was sex coming to mind way too much during this conversation? While she’d like to believe it was just the buzz of good champagne in her veins that made her feel so pleasurably warm inside, she knew it had more to do with Jake Brennan being in the room with her. He would make any woman take notice.

“Sounds like the perfect place to hide an embezzlement crime.” His jaw flexed, and she could almost see the wheels turning in his head, fitting this new piece of evidence into the puzzle.

“Actually, precious little is hidden in the rooms of the Marquis.” She studiously avoided looking at him while thinking about what went on in that private resort. Her eyes locked on the screwdriver in a silver cup holder on her desk. “Here.”

She passed him the tool and eased past him to clear a path to the bookcase so he could take his equipment—and his questions—and go.

He took the screwdriver, following more slowly.

“It also sounds like the perfect place to lose yourself.”

“Excuse me?” She pulled the belt tighter on her bathrobe.

No matter that she wore a tank top and comfy pair of girly boxer shorts underneath it. The more layers the better during a conversation about a sex-drenched playground with a droolworthy stud who’d not only seen her mostly naked, and seemed to enjoy the view.

Ah, who was she kidding? She was enjoying checking him out just as much. Too bad he had already pulled a fast one on her or she might have considered acting on the sizzling connection between them.

“I want to avail myself of your services through Lose Yourself. I need you to book me a trip to this place as soon as possible.”