Body Movers: 2 Bodies for the Price of 1
He didn’t want to be seen with a fugitive’s daughter. That would be a conflict of interest and not good for a distinguished detective’s career. The same reason Peter Ashford had dumped her and ripped her heart out years ago when she’d needed him most. Did her father know how much he had damaged her and Wesley’s lives? Did he even care?
“Right?” Jack repeated, his expression anxious. He wanted her to let him off the hook.
“Right,” she said brightly. “Now let’s get the tailor down here and make sure that when your date opens her door, you take her breath away.”
He gave an uncomfortable little laugh and Carlotta tamped down her own unease as she called the house tailor. The day was wearing on her—first the mysterious phone call, then Jack Terry dredging up all her troubles, plus this weird physical attraction that had sprung up between them. But the attraction was probably born of the knowledge that nothing could possibly come of it … there were simply too many obstacles.
While she described to the tailor what services they would need, she swung her gaze to Jack and was unnerved to find him blatantly studying her. She squirmed under his gaze and stumbled over her words. The man was too perceptive for his own good—if she spent much time in his company, she wouldn’t be able to keep secrets from him.
She hung up and gave him a shaky smile. “He’ll be right down.”
“Carlotta, is something bothering you?”
Damn those cop’s instincts. For one crazy second, she wanted to confess about the phone call, to see if he could trace it and….
And what? Hunt down her father and drag him back to Atlanta to stand trial on the investment-fraud charges, now trumped by charges for being a fugitive? And her mother for aiding and abetting? Would it really be better to have her parents in prison than to have them on the run? Either way, they would be unavailable to her and to Wesley. And if her parents were imprisoned, the stain on the family name would be even more permanently set.
“No, I’m fine. Now … let’s get you out of those jeans.”
His eyes lit with mischief. “Whatever you say.”
She smirked and pointed toward the dressing room. “I meant you need to put on the pants before the tailor gets here.”
He frowned and moved toward the dressing room, reluctance in his step.
Carlotta shook her head, but when the dressing room door slid open a bit, she couldn’t resist a naughty peek at Jack’s reflection as he shucked his boots and jeans, revealing white boxers and long, powerful legs, more tanned than she’d expected. Unexpected heat struck low in her stomach.
Plus ten points, she noted idly, wondering what the Alabama boy did in his free time to acquire that tan. Somehow she doubted it was playing tennis.
“See something you like?”
She glanced up to find him grinning at her as he stepped into the pants. Carlotta straightened. “Don’t flatter yourself, Detective.”
His rolling chuckle sent vibrations over her warm skin. The arrival of the tailor saved her from more embarrassing banter. Suddenly she wanted to put distance between herself and Jack Terry. The man triggered dangerous urges—the urge to tell the truth being the least hazardous of her impulsive reactions.
She stood back as the tailor, a distinguished older gentleman, took over. To her amusement, Jack seemed uncomfortable to have the man touching him.
“Do you dress right or left, sir?” the man asked as he knelt to mark the hem on the slacks.
Jack frowned. “Excuse me?”
Smothering a laugh, Carlotta silently signaled the detective by pointing to his crotch and flopping her hand right, then left.
When recognition dawned on Jack’s face, his neck flushed red. “What difference does that make?”
“It affects how your trousers hang, sir,” the tailor said crisply.
Carlotta’s shoulders were shaking. Jack glared at her and muttered, “Left.”
She turned away to enjoy a laugh at the big man’s expense, pretending to fold the dress shirt. It was nice to have something to lift her dour mood, if only temporarily … and the episode helped to level the field between her and the man who seemed to hold all the chips in their relationship.
Carlotta looked in his direction to see him holding up his arms while the tailor practically bear-hugged him to mark the waist on the pants. Not that she and Detective Jack Terry had a relationship. More of a … an association.
Jack flinched as the tailor made adjustments to the inside seam that had him putting his hands in places where another man’s hands obviously had never been. “Is this going to take much longer?” he asked irritably.
“That should do it,” the tailor said, standing and smoothing his hand over the back of the trousers—and Jack’s ass—which garnered the older man another stern look.
Carlotta pressed her lips together and managed to keep a straight face long enough to thank the tailor. But when the man was out of earshot, she glanced at Jack’s perturbed expression and burst out laughing.
“Are you finished humiliating me?”
“Yes, you can take off the pants.”
She watched him stride back into the dressing room and craned her neck to see if he would happen to leave the door ajar again. When it clicked shut, she frowned, then was irritated with herself. She had no business looking at Jack Terry or liking it—and the man’s ego probably didn’t need more feeding. Lots of women seemed to go for the base types.
She pursed her mouth as a memory surfaced. Jack had a history with Liz Fischer, her father’s former attorney … and lover. The woman had also come to Wesley’s aid when he’d been arrested, much to Carlotta’s dismay. She didn’t trust her, and the fact that Jack had admitted to bedding her was just one more reason to stop looking at him.
Something she had to keep reminding herself when he stepped back out in his snug jeans, the suit draped over his thick arm. Averting her gaze and walking in front of him, she led him to a register.
“I gave you my friends-and-family discount,” she said, holding up a little card.
“Thanks.”
“You might consider using the difference to buy a decent tie,” she suggested. “There’s a clearance table over there—two for the price of one.”
“Tempting. Maybe next time.”
Carlotta swiped his credit card. “You can come back tomorrow to pick up the suit. We can look for shoes then.”
“I thought I’d wear my boots.”
She made a face.
But Jack was staring at someone over her shoulder, the displeasure on his face clear as he returned his card to his wallet.
Carlotta turned and blinked in surprise to see Peter Ashford standing there, looking polished in dark designer slacks and shirt, his blond hair slicked back, his watch, signet ring and seriously expensive shoes befitting a successful investment broker. “Peter,” she breathed.
“Hi, Carly.” He eyed Jack Terry warily. “Hello, Detective.”
Jack nodded curtly. “Ashford. When did you get out of jail?”
Peter blanched slightly, but stood his ground. “Last night. The charges won’t be officially dropped until later this week, but my attorney and the D.A. arranged for an early release.”
D.A. Kelvin Lucas, the man who had ordered her father’s case be reopened and asked Jack Terry to make it a priority. For such a big city, it was a small world.
“I guess I owe you my thanks for nailing the person responsible for Angela’s death,” Peter said to Jack.
“Just doing my job,” Jack said. “Carlotta was the one who kept insisting you were innocent, even after you confessed. You should be thanking her.”
“I intend to,” Peter said, gazing at her with affection so palpable, she could feel it settle around her shoulders.
Jack cleared his throat, spearing Carlotta with his sardonic gaze. “See you around.”
She nodded absently as he walked away, thinking that the two men were a study in extremes—Jack Terry, rough and aggressive; Peter, cultured and subtle.
Carlotta glanced back at Peter, hoping that he hadn’t come to press her about renewing their relationship. She wasn’t ready, and neither was he, so soon after his wife’s death. “Peter, what are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you.” He looked around as if to ensure they were alone.
She realized that in the wake of Jack’s departure, his expression had grown grave and his hands were shaking. “What’s wrong?”
He stepped closer and seemed to grapple with what he had to say. “Carlotta, your father—Randolph—”
Her pulse skyrocketed. “What about him?”
“He—he called me.”
3
Wesley Wren sat staring at the perspiration beading on the forehead of the real-estate broker sitting opposite him. Admittedly, it was hot as hell in the back of the west-end car repair shop where a game of Texas Hold ‘Em had erupted on this stewing Sunday afternoon. But they’d been playing for over two hours and the guy’s sweat glands hadn’t kicked in until just now, when the last of five cards had been turned up in the community pot.
Wesley hoped that meant the three of clubs worsened the guy’s hand rather than giving him a fluky straight that would beat his own full house of three queens and two eights. Because they’d been dealt only two face-down pocket cards and since there were no pairs in the face-up community cards, the only other hand that could beat his full house, four of a kind, was out of the question.
The winner of this hand would walk away with the fifteen grand that was piled on the sticky table between them. Wesley tamped down a spike of excitement. He was in a sweet spot, but he’d been close to the payoff before only to have it snatched away. In fact, he was still smarting from a bad beat in a weekend-long tournament that had left him too broke to make payments to his loan sharks and even deeper in debt to his rich buddy Chance Hollander.
This game had started after he’d dropped off his sister’s car for some scratch-and-dent repair. Chance had tagged along and suggested a little gambling to the oily owner. A few phone calls later and a few bored professionals had shown up, ready to part with their easily-earned cash.
He was convinced he needed this money more than Real Estate Man, but two layers of deodorant and a puff of his sister Carlotta’s talc on his forehead kept his sweat glands under control at moments like these.
While he waited for his opponent to see the bet, raise or fold, Wesley nursed a pang of regret for once again reneging on his promise to his sister to stay away from gambling. He told himself that the fact that he’d sold the motorcycle that she hated would temper her anger if he wound up losing the five grand he’d gotten for it.
Poor Carlotta. They’d both taken it hard when their parents had been forced to leave town to keep his father out of prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but Carlotta had borne the brunt of the fallout, having to raise his smart ass and generally try to keep him out of trouble.
It had worked for the most part. Oh, sure, he’d racked up some debt and had been caught hacking into the county courthouse records, but no one—not even his buddy Chance or his hot attorney Liz Fischer—knew that his crime wasn’t as sloppy as it seemed. The incident had left him with a back door into a database that would hopefully divulge details about his father’s case, and an impending community-service job with the city’s computer security department that would give him all the access he needed.
The fact that his probation officer had turned out to be a stacked redhead who kept him awake at night was an unexpected bonus.
Carlotta was less convinced that their father was innocent of the charges levied against him, but Wesley chalked it up to her anger. She certainly had a right to her resentment—suddenly saddled with a kid, dumped by her boyfriend and left to scrape by on a retail job. His sister’s life hadn’t been easy.
Which was why he’d love nothing better than to take home this money and prove that he could contribute more to her life than migraines. And why he was determined to prove his father’s innocence so their parents could come out of hiding and they could be a family again.
“Hey,” Chance said from a chair where he slouched, watching. “Ain’t there some kind of time limit for placing a bet?” Chance had bought into the game too but, as usual, had been eliminated with record speed.
“Yeah, get on with it,” the owner of the place said to Wesley’s opponent between puffs on a cigarette. The guy stood to get his cut no matter who took home the pot—totally illegal, but no one here was going to call 911.
This money could be the first step toward the kind of life he knew that Carlotta dreamed of: a normal one. If they got their debts paid off, maybe she would even relax enough to start dating. His boss Cooper was nuts for her and he’d seen the way that cop Jack Terry looked at her. Plus her old boyfriend Peter Ashford seemed eager to make amends.
Raise, he urged the guy silently. Try to bluff me. Put another couple of grand on the table. Wesley chewed on his fingernail to fake worry over a bad hand. In truth, he had a damned gorgeous hand that he had slow-bid to this point.
Real Estate Man zoned in on Wesley’s nail-gnawing, then shifted forward in his chair. “All in,” he said, pushing his remaining chips and cash to the center of the table.
Wesley almost wet himself: it was more than he could have hoped for. He wanted to play it cool, but couldn’t help grinning as he responded, “Ditto.”
Chance lurched to his feet to see the reveal. Real Estate Man groaned and turned over a lousy pair of tens. Wesley threw down his full house with a whoop and the celebrating began. With a rebel yell, Chance picked him up and shook him like a rag doll. Wesley couldn’t remember being so happy in all the years since his parents had left. He had finally won a big pot and he couldn’t wait to tell Carlotta.
He’d bet it would be the biggest surprise of her week.
4
Carlotta stared at Peter as his words sank in. Her mouth opened, then closed. “My father called you?”
He nodded. “Can we go somewhere? You should sit down.”
“I … let me clock out.”
She went through the motions automatically, refusing to think about what her father’s phone calls meant. Was he ready to come home? Turn himself in? Had he heard about Wesley’s run-in with the law and wanted to check on them? Then a paralyzing thought seized her—had something happened to her mother?
Panic clogged her throat. She harbored more animosity toward her mother than her father for deserting them. But that wouldn’t soften the blow if something had happened to her.
Carlotta allowed Peter to lead the way to a bistro connected to the mall. Walking next to him felt so familiar, it brought moisture to her eyes. He’d been her first love, had proposed to her before leaving for Vanderbilt University. To outsiders the fact that she wore a Cartier engagement ring most of her senior year of high school might have seemed elitist, but Carlotta had been raised with the best things that money could buy—a grand home, exotic vacations, private schools. Marrying into the uber-wealthy Ashford family had seemed the next logical step.
She had loved Peter more than was healthy, she realized in hindsight. When he’d broken their engagement on the heels of her father’s scandal, she’d thought she might not recover.
She had, but the experience had callused her emotions. Now Peter was single again and pressing on her heart … along with this bombshell from her father.
By mutual consent, they waited until they were seated at a table and had ordered coffee before tackling the mountain of issues between them. She was desperate to hear about the phone call, but reminded herself that Peter had buried his wife only a couple of weeks ago and had just been released from jail himself.
“How are you?” she asked carefully. Undoubtedly, Angela’s death was beginning to settle in and, their bad marriage aside, it had to be a horrific adjustment.
“I take it day to day,” he said. He looked haggard, his boyish good looks compromised by the stress he’d suffered.
“Are you planning to go back to work soon?” Peter worked for Mashburn and Tully Investments, the same firm where her father had been a partner and had perpetrated his white-collar crimes.
Alleged crimes, Wesley would say.
Peter nodded. “Walt Tully has been good to me. I went into the office today to catch up. It feels good to be busy and doing something normal. It was quiet. I was the only one around. When my phone rang and your father identified himself, I was floored.”
Carlotta fisted the cloth napkin in her lap. “What did he say? Are … are they okay?”
“He said they’re fine … healthy, I mean. He said that he’d tried to call you on your cell phone, but that you’d hung up on him.”
“I dropped the phone and accidentally disconnected the call.”
“Oh. Well, he said he couldn’t blame you. But that’s why he called me.”
“How did he know that you were working at Mashburn and Tully?”
“He said he’d been keeping up with the company.”
The company—not his family. That hurt.
“What did he want?”
Peter squirmed. “He wanted me to look for some files.”
She frowned. “What kind of files?”
“Having to do with his … case.”
“Why?”
“He said that he needed them to prove his innocence.”
Anger sparked in her stomach and she pounded her fist on the table. “Innocence? If he was innocent, why didn’t he stay and defend himself ten years ago instead of skipping town and leaving his kids high and dry? Why—after all this time—this ruse of proving his innocence?”
Peter reached across the table and took her hand in his. “I asked him the same questions, but he said he didn’t have time to go into it, only that he needed my help. He said that the paperwork given to the D.A. had been doctored—that the original paperwork would exonerate him.”
Carlotta didn’t bother to hide her sarcasm. “And where is this original paperwork supposed to be?”
Peter sighed. “He believes one of the partners hid it or destroyed it.”
Her father had always insisted that he’d been framed, but the evidence against him had been so damning. And when he’d disappeared, his declaration of innocence had become a moot point. “How convenient. Did he happen to name names?”
“No, just that he didn’t trust Ray Mashburn or Walt Tully or the firm’s chief legal counsel, Brody Jones.”
“Is Jones still with the company?”
“Yes.”
“Did my father happen to tell you anything specific or was his entire conversation cryptic and mysterious?”
Peter shifted in his seat. “No specifics. He just asked me to poke around, then he hung up.”
She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, Peter.”
“Sorry? For what?”
“For my outlaw father dragging you into his mess. Have you told the partners that he called?”
“No. Randolph asked me not to tell anyone and I told him that I would help him if I could.”
“Peter, you can’t do that. You’ll jeopardize your job. You should go to the police.”
His intense blue eyes bore into her. “I want to help him, Carly. For you … for your family.”
The waitress brought their coffee and smiled at their clasped hands. Carlotta pulled her hand from his warm fingers and busied herself pouring sugar into her mug. Her feelings for Peter were so confusing, it made her head—and her heart—hurt to process them. Did anyone ever truly get over their first love? Her suspicions that Peter’s parents had pressured him to end their engagement after her father had skipped town had been confirmed, but Peter had accepted the blame for not standing up for their relationship.
And as tempting as it was to slip back into his arms, she and Peter moved in different circles these days. Peter lived in a mega-mansion with a guest house. She lived in a rickety townhouse with Wesley, a giant snake and the world’s nosiest next-door neighbor. Peter’s acquaintances were members of the inner circle of Buckhead society; her acquaintances were members of Loan Sharks of America.
Over the rim of his cup Peter’s expression reflected the turmoil of the past and present that lay between them. He waited until they were alone again before saying, “Did you tell Detective Terry that your father had called you?”
She averted her gaze. “No.”
“So maybe you’re not really so eager for your father to be apprehended.”
Carlotta wet her lips, unwilling to admit that deep down, she was still Daddy’s little girl and no matter what he’d done, she didn’t want harm to come to him. “I … wasn’t sure it was my father. I mean, he said it was, but it’s been so long since I heard his voice. And it was so out of the blue.” She winced inwardly when she realized she’d forgotten to get her phone back from Lindy.
“So now that you know it was him, are you going to tell the police?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if I should tell Wesley.”
Peter cleared his throat. “Detective Terry seems to have gotten awfully buddy-buddy with you.”
She looked up. “Jack was just shopping, that’s all.”
“Jack?” His eyebrows went up. “Since when does Jack shop at Neiman’s?”
“He needed a suit.”
“He was there to see you, Carly.”
A flush warmed her neck as she recalled the sexual energy that had vibrated between her and the detective. “If he was there to see me, it’s only to stay in touch about Wesley and my father. When the D.A. reopened Dad’s case, he assigned it to Detective Terry.”
“So are you going to tell him about the calls?”
She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know.”
“I hate to pressure you, but the sooner you decide, the better. I want to help, but the last thing I need is for the police to descend on my phone records again if you decide later to report it. The partners might not look favorably upon me withholding this kind of information from them.”
Carlotta nodded. “I understand. I … maybe we should tell the police and let them handle it.”
“Okay. If you want to report the calls, I’ll go with you.” He reached for her hand again. “We’ll do it together.”
Her mind raced ahead—telling Detective Terry about the phone calls, enduring phone taps and maybe even surveillance, luring her father into a trap and seeing the triumphant look on the face of that odious district attorney Kelvin Lucas when Randolph “the Bird” Wren was finally apprehended, with cameras rolling and headlines blaring.
Her stomach knotted and she wavered. “Peter, do you think … I mean, is it possible that my father is innocent?”
He shrugged slowly. “I guess anything is possible.” His expression turned dark. “I was innocent of hurting Angela, despite the way things looked.”
“Of course you were,” she said earnestly. “But you didn’t run. Rather than face the charges, my father skipped town and let everyone else pick up the pieces.”
Peter sighed noisily and the tortured look on his face said he knew that he, too, had let her down. “Carly, I can’t imagine all you’ve been through the past ten years. But no matter how much resentment you have toward your father, you’re a kind, forgiving person. I think if there’s a chance that your father is innocent, you’d want to give him an opportunity to prove it.”
She studied his face. Was Peter flattering her in the hope that her forgiveness would extend to him as well? Or did this man know her well enough to see inside her heart?
Carlotta wet her lips. “Did Daddy say he would call again?”
“Yes, but he didn’t say when.”
“Did he say where he was?”
“I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me. He did seem to be keeping up with local events. He, uh, knew about Angela and offered condolences.”
And did her father suspect that Peter wanted to rekindle their flame? Was he betting on Peter’s feelings for her to fuel Peter’s attempts to help him? A sick feeling settled in her stomach. “Does he know about me and Wesley, about what’s going on in our lives?”