Cutting Loose (25 page)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

TARA JANZEN
lives in Colorado with her husband, children, and two dogs, and is now at work on her next novel. Of the mind that love truly is what makes the world go 'round, she can be contacted at
www.tarajanzen.com
.

Want more steamy
Steele Street adventure?

Then Don't Miss

LOOSE
AND EASY

The next book in
Tara's action-packed series

BY TARA JANZEN

Coming November 2008

From Dell Books

LOOSE AND EASY

ON SALE NOVEMBER 2008

CHAPTER
ONE

Johnny Ramos knew the sad-looking little hooker limping her way down Seventeenth Street in two-inch black patent-leather platform heels. Her fishnet hose were torn in the back, revealing the bottom curve of her ass under what could only be described as a super-micro-miniskirt. Red lace and leather that had seen better days, the skirt was barely seven inches wide from top to bottom and matched her red lace gloves. The cheap white vinyl tote bag slung over her shoulder looked like it had seen better days, too. The white Lycra T-shirt laminated to her upper body had more heart-shaped cutouts and pink sequins than material. He could see a red pushup bra doing its job under the shirt.

Esmee Alexandria Alden,
he thought, East High School's valedictorian the year he'd graduated.
Jesus, how the mighty have fallen.

“Easy Alex” hooking in LoDo—Denver's lower downtown district—it was enough to boggle the mind. Nothing about what he was seeing made sense: that sweet little size-four ass in torn fishnet; the twisted-up pile of ratted and heavily sprayed blond hair he'd only ever seen in tight and tidy braids; the smartest girl he'd ever known turning tricks.

He slid his gaze over her again, from the shoes to the French twist falling out of its pins. At seventeen, he'd have given anything to get her hair loose and falling down. Those long blond braids of hers had driven him crazy. He'd wanted so badly to undo them. Hell, he'd wanted to undo everything on the girl, from her prim little button-down shirts to her carefully tied and spotlessly white tennis shoes, but there hadn't been anything easy about “Easy Alex.” That had been the joke. She'd never had a date in high school, not one, not even prom.

She couldn't possibly be a prostitute. No way in hell. Back then, she hadn't known what the word “sex” meant. He knew, because he'd gotten more off of her than any guy in East, and it had taken him weeks of pursuit and most of one hot summer night to even get to second base.

She'd been sweet. Yeah, he remembered. Sweet and scared, mostly of him, he'd guessed, and of herself, of her reaction to him. He'd been one of the city's bad boys, and she'd had the lock on the title of Little Miss Goody Two Shoes.

He'd loved it, loved the challenge of it, but she'd been too good to let him get in her pants, which is where their party had ended that night, with him aching and her panting, and neither of them getting what they'd needed.

Fifty bucks said he could get whatever he wanted off her tonight. Hell, maybe it would only take twenty, but with her looking rode hard and put away wet all he wanted was the story, the explanation.

Yeah, that's what he wanted. No way in hell should Esmee Alden be limping down Seventeenth with her ass hanging out of ripped fishnet. After graduating from high school, she'd been slated for the University of Colorado on a scholarship, full ride.

She got to the corner at Wazee and started across the intersection, heading toward the Oxford Hotel. When she was partway to the other side, the Oxford's valet signaled her, and Johnny swore under his breath.

“Jesus.”
She'd been called in to service some guy staying at the hotel, and he had to wonder, really, how many doormen and parking valets in Denver had her name in their little black books?

He hated to say it, but he would have thought any girl working the Oxford would look a little classier than what Esmee had pulled off tonight.

None of his business, he told himself, not for any good reason on God's green earth, and yet he stepped off the curb from in front of the Lizard Tequila Cantina, the bar where he'd been with his friends, and crossed Seventeenth. He wasn't following her. He was just checking things out, doing recon, getting the lay of the land.

He'd gotten home from his last tour of duty, this one in Afghanistan, two weeks ago and was still waiting to be reassigned to General Grant's command, specifically into Special Defense Force, an elite group of operatives based in Denver and deployed out of the Pentagon. Until his official orders came through, he was on leave, on his own, hanging out in his hometown and looking to stay out of trouble.

Or not.

A brief grin twitched the corner of his lips. Easy Alex had never been anything except trouble for him, starting in Ms. Benson's seventh-grade social-studies class, where he'd come up with her nickname and ended up in detention. Decking Freddy Harrell for pushing her up against a locker in a back hallway in East High when they'd all been juniors had gotten him suspended for three days. He'd been protecting her honor.

And now she was hooking?

No. He wasn't buying it. Not the Esmee he knew. Something else had to be going on, no matter how much of her ass he could see—except when she got to the sidewalk, the damn valet handed her a room key.

Johnny came to a sudden halt.
Jesus, a friggin' room key.

Okay, this really wasn't any of his business, and honestly, he didn't really want to see what she was going to be doing in the hotel, or who in the hell she was going to be doing it with, or doing it to, or any damn thing about Esmee Alden “doing it” at all.

Which was why it took him another second and a half to get moving again.
Goddammit.
Inside the hotel, he caught sight of her just before she disappeared up the stairs.

He didn't hesitate. Taking the damn things two at a time, he easily made it to the second landing in time to see which door she opened with the key—number 215. She slipped inside the room and the door closed behind her, and there he stood, like an idiot at the end of the hallway, wondering what in the hell he was thinking.

The seconds ticked by, and he was still standing there. When a whole minute had gone by, he knew he should leave—but he didn't, he just kept staring at the door to room 215 and telling himself not to go anywhere near it. Good advice he might have taken, if he hadn't heard a loud thump come from inside the room, a sound like somebody falling or getting knocked over.

None of his business—right—except it was Easy Alex in there, and he didn't want to be reading about her in the morning papers. He'd “been there, done that” with too many people in his life, so better judgment be damned, he started down the hall.

When he got to the door, he could hear some guy spluttering in indignation and anger from inside the room.

“You…you…goddamn
schickse.
You…you can't do this to me.”

Johnny pressed his ear closer. None of his business, absolutely none—
dammit.
He wasn't cop of the world, not here. He should be enjoying the reprieve, not jumping in the middle of a fifty-dollar trick.

“
Schickse
yourself, Otto,” a cool, sweetly feminine voice replied. And yes, it was definitely Easy Alex. He remembered the slightly cultured accent, the honeyed tone, the instinctive edge of authority.
Christ.
She'd always had the edge of authority, usually with her hand in the air, fingers waggling, her arm stick-straight, going for all the height she could get—
Hey, hey, teacher, I know the answer, I know the answer.
Hell, she'd always known the answer.

“That's not…this isn't,” the guy kept spluttering, his voice starting to sound a little strained. “This isn't what I asked for…I wanted Dixie. I was told to ask for Dixie, and…and you're not Dixie.”

No, Johnny thought, a little taken back. She most certainly wasn't. Anywhere in Denver north of the Sixteenth Street Mall, the name Dixie bandied about in that tone of voice by some guy in a hotel could only mean one thing, a diminutive forty-five-year-old dominatrix with a quirt. She'd been a permanent fixture of the city's nights for as long as Johnny could remember, which did nothing to answer the questions of why Esmee Alden was taking one of Dixie's calls, and what in the hell she'd just done to the German in room 215.

Somebody in the room let out a strangled sound of distress, and he knocked, twice, hard and solid, a pure knee-jerk reaction that clearly said “What in the hell is going on in there?”—and the room went silent. He could have heard a frickin' pin drop in the hall, and he could just imagine the two of them frozen in some sordid S&M act, their gazes glued to the door, wondering who in the hell had knocked.

“Housekeeping,” he said, loud and clear. “We have your towels.”

         

Towels?

Esmee tightened her grip on the handcuffs she'd used at Otto Von Lindeberg's request to secure his hands behind his back. He was facedown on the floor, her knee planted firmly and deliberately in his back, pressing hard. Her other hand had a strong grip on the dog collar the German had also been so kind as to provide already in place around his neck. She had the attached leash tied to the bed frame—and there was somebody at the door, somebody she'd bet didn't have any towels.

Dammit.
Releasing her hold on the collar, she swiveled on Otto's back and quickly flex-cuffed his ankles, then used one of his other leashes to hog-tie his ankles to his wrists.

Geez.
Germans and dogs—it was always the Germans with the dog paraphernalia. She'd seen it half a dozen times in her line of work, which despite her outfit didn't have a damn thing to do with prostitution.

Esmee Alden, Master of Disguise—yes, sir, that was her, all right, when the situation called for it, and old Otto had laid himself wide open to get taken by a hooker tonight. She'd known he would, and she'd known exactly what kind of girl he'd be looking to hire. Six months of investigation hadn't gone for naught, and fifty bucks to the parking valet had done the rest. The call for Dixie had come to her instead. She might have to make up the missed trick to the aging dominatrix, just to keep peace on the street, but a couple hundred bucks ought to cover it, which left her with the night's profit margin hitting close to a thousand percent.

And it still wasn't enough, not even close.

She rose to her feet, leaving Otto to squirm on the floor. He'd left his suitcase open on the bed, and it took her about thirty seconds to search through his clothes and the rest of his dog collars. He had a penchant for spikes and studs.

She had a penchant for fine art, the stolen variety, and she wasn't finding any packed in his suitcase. Oh, hell, no—that would have been too easy.

Reaching into her tote bag, she pulled out a knife and thumbed it open, then started in on the suitcase itself. She kept to the edges, inside and out, running the blade close to the frame and carefully pulling back the linings and fabric covering.

No art.

Specifically, no Jakob Meinhard's 1910
Model in Blue,
an Expressionist masterpiece last seen in Munich in 1937 as part of the
Entartete Kunst
exhibit, the Degenerate Art exhibit, and believed burned in Berlin in 1939. Her father had been on the painting's trail since word of its survival had surfaced four years ago.

Four years of following the painting. Six months of following Otto, including the two months needed to set up a “sale” in Denver, and about five minutes in a hotel room to set almost seven decades of loss right—not to mention saving her dad's butt. Again.

Dammit.
She let out a short sigh and thumbed the knife closed, her gaze searching the room. All Otto had brought with him, that she could see, was the suitcase and the clothes on his back.

She dropped a glance at the mostly naked man trussed at her feet. Without the black leather thong he'd strapped on with all its buckles and snaps, he'd be completely naked.

She was so grateful for the thong.

The rest of his clothes were in a neatly folded stack on the bed—except for his suit jacket.

She looked to the open closet near the door leading out into the hall. Sure enough, he'd hung up his jacket, and it was looking very tidy in the closet. Very tidy, indeed, and rather stiff.

Walking over to the closet, she opened the knife again in a single, smooth move.

“Policia.”
She heard the man outside the door talking again, the guy with no towels.
“Abra la puerta, por favor.”

Open the door, he'd said, and Esmee could see her time was running out damn fast. He was obviously speaking to somebody with a key, and given his choice of language, she was guessing one of the maids. Everybody manning the front desk spoke English.

Without rushing, she didn't waste a second, taking hold of Otto's suit jacket and neatly slicing open the side seam. Her hand went in between the silk lining and the English tweed, and her smile came out—
voila!
Success.