Hot & Bothered

She was perfectly polite, but the message couldn’t be clearer, and this time he didn’t have the sun shining in her eyes to blame it on. What did you expect, Ace—that she’d offer to take up where the two of you left off? Get a clue. She hasn’t smiled once and if she were any stiffer beneath your hands, she’d be a surfboard. It didn’t say a hell of a lot for his detecting skills that he just now was getting around to noticing that little fact. His only excuse was that he’d been happy to see her.

Clearly, she was not as pleased to see him. He dropped his hands to his sides and stepped back. The barefoot twenty-five-year-old of his memory now wore mango-colored linen and a long strand of knotted pearls, and her wild, streaky-brown, waist-length hair was subdued in a cut that curved sleekly just above her shoulders. This was plainly no new transformation, either. It was much more likely that the Tori of his memory, the woman with the sandy feet, frayed cutoffs and tropical-print bikini tops, had been the real aberration.

For the first time since stepping through the door, he took his eyes off her and glanced around the foyer, taking in its sweeping staircase, black-and-white marble tiles and the opulent art on the walls. Then he turned back to give Tor—no, Victoria—a slow appraisal and his eyes narrowed at the sudden suspicion that popped into his head. “So, tell me. You and me that week—were you just slumming?”

“Please. It was a long time ago and I truly don’t have time for this right now. My appointment—”

“Is here.” Screw it. She was right; it was a long time ago and some things simply couldn’t and shouldn’t be resurrected. Not to mention that she had some heavy emotional shit going on in her life at the moment and he was here to do a job. Pushing every other consideration from his mind, telling himself she was simply another new client, he thrust out his hand. “John Miglionni, at your service.”

“No.” Horrified, Victoria simply stared at the extended hand. No way was she touching those long, lean fingers again—the sensory impressions from the first time were still too fresh. “You can’t be.” Shooting a glance at the mostly red tattoo beneath the silky black hair on his forearm, she shoved down the memory of tracing it with her fingertips and instead studied it just long enough to assure herself that the words Swift, Silent and Deadly still surrounded the white skull and crossbones on three sides. Then she looked back up into his dark eyes and, even as she recalled the name of his agency, said insistently, “You’re a Marine.”

“Former Marine. And as you said, ma’am, it’s been a long time. I mustered out of the service over five years ago.”

Ma’am? Victoria watched him bend down and pick up a computer case off the floor. Sure, he was here in a professional capacity—and she most emphatically did not desire to start up anything with him again. But, please. Ma’am?

He straightened again and regarded her without expression. “If you’ll lead me somewhere I can set up my laptop, we can get started.”

She should have been glad that he was suddenly all business. She was glad. The only reason she hesitated at all, she told herself, was because she wanted the man she knew as Rocket gone.

Unfortunately, she feared she had dire need of John Miglionni’s services if she wanted to locate Jared any time soon. Recalling that his was the name that had repeatedly popped up as their best chance of locating a missing teenager when Robert checked around, she blew out a long, resigned breath. “Please. Come into Father’s office.” It was better to get this over with. The sooner she did, the sooner Rocket-slash-John Miglionni would be on his way. Then any future dealings with him could be handled by Robert.

They settled into facing leather chairs a few moments later, and as he booted up his computer and pulled up a file, Victoria subjected him to a covert inspection. The only obvious difference that jumped out at her was the length of his hair, which was completely opposite to the military buzz cut he’d worn when she’d known him. It was longer than her own now, which should have lent his face a feminine aspect. Instead it managed to do just the reverse and accentuated his high cheekbones, hawklike nose and the spare angularity of his face.

A cell phone rang into the silence of the dark-paneled office. With a rumbled apology, he twisted with supple grace to paw through the leather laptop case he’d set on the small table next to his chair. Bringing the phone to his ear, he punched the talk button. “Miglionni.”

Watching him from beneath her lashes as he asked an occasional question, said several uh-huhs and scribbled notes on a legal pad, she concluded he was still as long and lanky as ever. Except for his wide shoulders, he had the type of body that looked deceptively skinny in clothing. She knew for a fact, however, that beneath the black silk T-shirt and immaculately pressed black slacks, were muscles hard as tungsten.

Her gaze skittered back to his slacks and lingered a moment on another long and lanky shape forming an impressive bulge to the right of his fly. She tore her eyes away. Damned if she’d let herself be dragged back into those memories.

More insidious and harder to ignore, though, was the recollection of how he’d made her feel. Good about herself. Safe. Free to explore her sexuality. He might have had a butterfly’s commitment to relationships, but she’d sensed a rock-solid core to him, and he’d treated her so nice. After a lifetime spent dodging Father’s verbal slings and arrows, she’d found Rocket’s rough-edged sweetness even more seductive than his sexual expertise.

Involuntarily, her lips curled up. Well, that might be stretching it a bit, since the two were so closely entwined in her memories. God knew she’d been a fool for his way of making her feel like the funniest, smartest, sexiest woman in the universe. Another female might have questioned how many other women he’d made feel the same way. Victoria hadn’t cared—at least at first. More accustomed to bracing herself for a caustic remark than fielding compliments, she’d discovered protectiveness and sweet-talking attentiveness to be her personal version of Spanish Fly.

“ROCKET!” SURPRISED laughter exploded out of her when sun, surf and sand suddenly whirled in a kaleidoscope of colors as he snatched her up off her feet and swung her in a half circle. She was vaguely aware of something whizzing past, but paid it no heed as she stared, mesmerized, up at the man holding her in his arms. She was five-ten, and hardly a fragile flower, but he was forever handling her with an ease that made her feel daintier than Tinkerbell.

“Sorry,” called out a voice and Victoria blinked when Rocket set her back on her feet as abruptly as he’d swept her off them. He bent to retrieve a volleyball off the sand. Her heart thudded in slow, thick beats as she watched the fluid slide of his muscles when he tossed the ball up and, with one powerful swing of his fist, sent it winging back toward the game they’d just passed.

That’s when her head quit whirling long enough to realize he’d just saved her from being knocked on her face by a serve ball. “You must have the reflexes of a cat.” She felt warm and secure, which in turn started nerves deep in her body to humming and she stepped close. “You couldn’t possibly have seen that coming.”

He shrugged as if it were no big deal. “I sensed it—felt it displacing the air, probably.”

She stroked her hands down the hair-roughed skin of his forearms. “That was just so…heroic.”

He made a rude noise, but it died in his throat and he went very still as she leaned her weight against him and pressed a soft, openmouthed kiss against his neck.

“I think an action so heroic deserves to be rewarded,” she murmured, pressing a second kiss a bit south of the first, humming in appreciation as her lips picked up a hint of salt from his skin. She settled her breasts more firmly against his chest and his arms wrapped around her to pull her closer yet. Feeling him begin to grow hard against her stomach, she smiled, wiggled subtly, and tilted her head back to look up at him. “Don’t you?”

His dark eyes were heavy-lidded as he stared down at her. “Damn, Tori,” he said hoarsely, and his hands clenched on her back. “When you do stuff like that, I just want to tear your clothes off and take you where you stand.”

She licked the little hollow at the base of his throat, feeling powerful when it made her tall, tough Marine shiver. “In front of all these people?”

“And their little dogs, too,” he agreed, regarding her with hot, reckless eyes. “So, darlin’, unless you’re prepared to let ’em watch, I suggest you take a quick, large step back and give me a minute to regain a little control.”

“I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T MEAN to keep you waiting.”

Victoria couldn’t have started more violently if someone had goosed her with a cattle prod. Feeling her face flame, she was relieved to see that Rocket had turned away once again as he returned his cell phone to the computer case. Taking a few quick breaths, she attempted to collect herself before he focused the force of those dark eyes on her.

“That’s quite all—” her voice sounded like Froggy and his magic twanger, and she cleared her throat “—right. May I offer you something to drink before we get started?” What on earth had she been thinking to let her mind go back there?

“No, thanks. I’m set.” Sitting back, he opened the thin computer on his lap and looked up at her. “Why don’t you tell me about your brother.”

“Oh. Yes. Jared. Of course.” She was mortified that for one brief instant she’d forgotten all about him.

Annoyance straightened her spine. She’d forgotten a lot of things and that was dangerous. Forcing herself to focus, she met John’s gaze head-on. “First of all, he didn’t kill my father. I want that understood.”

“All right. Can you tell me why you’re so certain of this?”

She leaned forward, but before she could say a word, the office door opened and her father’s fifth wife strolled in.

The busty blonde stopped when she saw them. Her gaze skimmed past Victoria with supreme disinterest, but John was apparently a different matter for she subjected him to a lengthy once-over. “Sorry,” she finally said. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

Tori suppressed a sigh. “Mr. Miglionni, this is my father’s widow, DeeDee Hamilton. DeeDee, this is John Miglionni, the private investigator Father’s attorney helped me hire.”

DeeDee’s big blue eyes grew even bigger and bluer. “Why the hell would you need a P.I.? As far as I can tell, the only even halfway interesting thing you’ve ever done is piss off your daddy by having Es—”

“Mr. Miglionni has a reputation as the man to call when a teenager is missing. He’s going to find Jared.”

“No shit? Aren’t you worried the cops’ll slap him in irons the minute you bring him home?”

Fury flared in Victoria’s chest. “Jared didn’t kill Father!”

The lush blonde simply shrugged.

“He did not.”

DeeDee looked bored. “Okay, fine. So why did he run, then?”

“Well, let me think. Could it be that he stumbled across his father’s dead body, and that he’s seventeen years old and it probably scared him to death? Or for all we know, he could have walked in while Father was being killed. Am I the only one worried that he might not have left voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“For heaven’s sake, DeeDee, if you’ve spent any time with him at all, you must know he hasn’t got a violent bone in his body.”

“Yeah? So how the hell would you know? Except for the odd holiday or flying visit, it’s not like you’ve been around much during the two years I’ve been here.”

“You’re right, I haven’t. And I have to live with the fact that I left him to Father’s less-than-tender mercies. But that doesn’t keep me from knowing that a person’s basic nature doesn’t change. And Jared wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

“Maybe not.” DeeDee shrugged once again. “But who else had any reason to kill Ford?”

“My God, are you serious?” The laugh that escaped Victoria went a little wild, and ruthlessly she slammed a lid on the urge to give in to unchecked hysteria. “Considering Father’s personality, and the fact that he was killed in the middle of a dinner party he was giving to rub salt in the wound of a CEO whose company he’d just acquired in a hostile takeover, I’d have to say darn near everyone.”

She turned to include Rocket. “I realize it’s unkind to speak ill of the dead, but you might as well know up front that my father wasn’t a nice man. He liked nothing more than to toy with people, and from what I’ve gathered, none of the guests attending his little soiree the night he was killed had a clue if they’d still have a job come Monday morning. I’m not just talking about the employees of the company he’d taken over, either. No one could afford to relax around him. He was just as apt to can his own people as the ones from his new acquisition, if for no other reason than to provide himself a moment’s entertainment.”

“And here I thought my old man was the daddy of dys-function.” John had been watching the interaction between the two women with fascination, knowing they had no idea how revealing it was. But it was time for a more straightforward approach. He needed to start directing the conversation to where he wanted it to go.

It was clear the women weren’t overly fond of each other, and turning to DeeDee, he decided she couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Victoria—who, if he remembered correctly, would be about thirty-one now. As Victoria’s new stepmama, that had to make for some friction. He’d bet the main source of dissension, though, was the fact that you’d have to search hard to find two more dissimilar women. Even way back when, he’d understood that Tori wasn’t one of the party girls he was accustomed to picking up in bars. So when she’d allowed him to do exactly that, he’d noted her relative inexperience, then simply felt grateful to whatever karma had thrown him in her path at the exact moment she’d decided to cut loose.

DeeDee, on the other hand, had the look of a woman who knew her way around a wet T-shirt contest. Not that you could always go by appearances, he admitted, remembering when his friend Zach had first met the woman who’d become his wife. Still, there was an indefinable aura about DeeDee that said she knew the score, and at the very least, she struck him as the quintessential trophy wife.

He favored her with his most charming grin. “You have a point,” he said. “A homicide detective will always look first within the family for his suspect. Hell, any cop will be happy to tell you that nine times out of ten the victim is killed by someone he knew.”

Something about the smug look she shot Victoria rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn’t stepping into the middle of that brouhaha. As a man, he knew better than to get between two women with opposing points of view. As a professional, he didn’t get involved in his clients’ lives, period, or anyone else’s who might be connected to a case. As far as he was concerned, in fact, the two of them could dive right into a knockdown drag-out fight, and he’d simply pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Especially if the ripping of clothing was involved.

He glanced at Tori’s svelte little sheath, then at her patrician nose poking ceiling-ward, and swallowed a snort. Sure, Ace, that’s likely to happen. Turning his attention back to DeeDee, he added, “Of course they generally look at the spouse first, since that’s who most often inherits the lion’s share of money.”

She curled her lip at him. “Lets me out, then. I signed a prenup that said if Ford divorced me or died for any reason during the first three years, I’d get bupkis—or next to it, at any rate. He was my golden goose, pal—it was in my best interests to keep him healthy.”

John glanced at Tori, who nodded. “He had all his wives sign the same prenuptial agreement, and it was set up in such a way that they only received a truly generous bequest if they lasted ten years.” She shrugged. “The only one who ever came close to lasting that long was my mother, but she died just before my eighth birthday.”

A shaft of light found its way through the shutters and shone directly in her eyes. It highlighted the gold flecks around her pupils, and he was irritated that seeing them gave him the urge to cut her a little slack and not pursue the next logical line of questioning. He gave her a flat stare to compensate. “So I’m guessing you and your brother inherited the bulk of Daddy’s fortune then.”

When she narrowed her eyes, he had a feeling it wasn’t against the light. But she said without inflection, “Yes. And before you ask, I was living in London when he died, and I’ve already told you that Jared couldn’t have done it.”

Hit men could be hired as easily from London as anywhere else, and John never trusted in the goodness of young men he hadn’t met. Since he had a hankering for this case, however, he knew better than to say so. He might be one of the best at locating missing teens, but he was by no means the only investigator qualified for the job, and his prior relationship with Tori was more likely a strike against him than anything that would work to his benefit.

But what the hell—when in doubt, project confidence, he always said. Besides, it wasn’t as if he actually believed she’d put a contract out on her old man. No, the woman he’d met this afternoon was more likely to freeze a man to death.

Seeing DeeDee watching the two of them as if this were improvisational theater, he leveled a look on her. “Would you excuse us, Mrs. Hamilton? My client’s paying by the hour and I’d like to get down to business with her.”

“I just bet you would,” she murmured, but then spun on her stiletto heels and sashayed out as blithely as she’d entered.

The moment the door shut behind her, he pinned his best no-nonsense look on Victoria. “Okay, look, I plan to look for your brother regardless, but I’d still like to know why you believe he’s incapable of violence. There’s probably not a person in the world who doesn’t have the capacity for it, given the right circumstances.”

“I simply can’t visualize what those circumstances would ever be in Jared’s case,” she said. “He’s scared to death of spiders, for heaven’s sake, yet he’s still the type of guy who’d perform a catch and release if one got in the house. Now, me, I’d rather see the damn thing dead.”

He remembered. She’d climbed up his back once, screaming Kill it! Kill it! in his ear when a hapless daddy longlegs had shown the poor judgement to venture across their bedroom floor in Pensacola. Irritably shoving the memory away, he focused on the facts. “Yet he’s been in quite a bit of trouble, if I understand correctly.”

“It’s true he’s been expelled from several schools. But always for things like drinking, or smoking or not knowing when to stow his attitude.” She leaned forward in her chair as if she could compel his understanding through sheer physical intensity. “When he was little, he was always running up to Father saying ‘Watch this! Watch this!’ All he ever wanted was the tiniest bit of his daddy’s attention, and his expulsions were just a continuation of the same. They were a way to get Father to pay him a little regard, if only in a negative way.”

“Tell me who his friends are.”

Victoria sat back. “That’s one of those good news/bad news things,” she said. “He has a habit of falling in with the malcontents, which as you can probably imagine contributes considerably to his problems. The good news is, he didn’t do that this time. Since there were only a few months remaining in the semester when he was bounced from his last school, Father decided to enroll him locally to finish out the year. Jared joined a baseball team, discovered he really liked the sport, and actually met a couple of nice kids on the team. The bad news, though, is that whenever he told me anything about them, he only referred to them as Dan and Dave.”

“That’s okay, just give me the name of the school.” He’d contact the coach and go from there.

She told him, and he was keying the information into her file when the office door opened once again. Brows furrowing, he glanced up. Now what?

A little girl with a long, wild, tangle of baby-fine brown hair that was held off her face by sparkling butterfly barrettes stood in the doorway. Casting him an intrigued glance, she ran over to Victoria. “Hullo, Mummy,” she said in a clear British accent, leaning into her. “Nanny Helen told me a ’tective was here to find Uncle Jared.”

Mummy? John felt his jaw drop as he watched Victoria wrap an arm around the little girl and hug her close. She was a mother?

“Yes, that’s true,” Victoria said. “So you really should run along, sweetie, and I’ll come see you just as soon as we’re finished.”

That “something” he’d heard earlier was back in her voice and he narrowed his eyes on Victoria. What the hell was it? Alarm? Wariness? He couldn’t quite pin it down.

“But, Mummy, I want to say hello.”

There was an instant of dead silence. Then Victoria succumbed to her manners. “Very well. Sweetheart, this is Mr. Miglionni. He’s the private detective Nanny Helen was telling you about. John, this is my daughter, Esme.”

His experience with little girls—or any kids her age, for that matter—was nil. But what the hell, a female was a female and John bestowed his warmest smile upon the little girl. “Nice to meet you, Esme. Love your butterflies.”

Her little hand went up to touch one of her barrettes in an ageless feminine gesture. “Thank you. My mummy bought them at Harrods.” A pleased smile curved her rosebud mouth and she stared at him with big eyes as dark as his own.

His stomach began to churn as a sudden suspicion splintered through him. Holy shit. Oh, holy, fuckin’ shit. It couldn’t be. Could it?

Hell, no. They’d used protection.

Which any fool knows is never one hundred percent fail-safe. He took a deep breath and got an iron grip on his emotions. “Harrods, huh? That’s a department store in London, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You look like you’re nearly grown up. Got your driver’s license yet?”

She giggled. “No, silly. I’m only five and a quarter years old.”

“Ah. I guess that is a little young.” The hot roil in his gut had turned to ice. He might not be the world’s greatest mathematician, but he could sure as hell add two plus two and arrive at the right answer. Especially when you factored in the kid’s eyes. Although it took every ounce of his self-control, he managed to keep the easy smile plastered on his kisser until the little girl skipped out of the room. But it dropped the instant the door closed behind her, and he swung to pin Victoria in place with furious eyes.

“You’ve got some explaining to do, lady.”

CHAPTER THREE

DAMN! VICTORIA’S HEART pounded in her chest, and to her disgust every last drop of moisture in her mouth had turned to dust. Damn, damn, damn! She’d feared this exact situation ever since discovering her private investigator’s identity, and for a moment all she could do was stare at Rocket while a pool of churning acid tried to eat a hole in her stomach. But drawing on a lifetime of displaying composure even when it was the last thing she felt, she sucked in a quiet breath and leveled a gaze on him. “For what exactly do you believe I owe you an explanation?”

“Don’t pull that ice princess crap on me, Tori. You know damn well what this is about.” He took a step that left him towering over her and Victoria swallowed dryly at the banked rage she saw burning in his eyes. “Esme. I want to know who that little girl belongs to and I want to know now.”

“Me.” A healthy surge of anger roared through her and her back snapped straighter than a yardstick even as her heart settled down to a more manageable tempo. Tilting her chin up at him, she met his furious gaze head-on. “Esme belongs to me. She’s my daughter.”

“And mine,” he snarled. “A not-so-minor little detail I never would have known about if I hadn’t come here today.”

She might have categorically denied his parentage if she’d just had a moment to think things through. After all, they’d religiously used condoms that week. But over the course of the current past two weeks, her father had been murdered, her brother had disappeared and she’d packed up and moved everything she owned from one side of the world to the other. Add to that the father of her child dropping into her life from out of the blue and her mind had turned to chop suey. Besides, what was the point? She had a feeling he knew that her fling with him had been unusual enough. She’d sustained too many shocks and was worn to a nub—she simply didn’t have the wherewithal to pull off the pretense that she’d gone straight from his bed to someone else’s.