Dangerous Kiss (3 page)

“That’s my Chris, always looking on the bright side. Come on, let’s go downstairs and get some coffee.”

“Yeah, about downstairs…” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and stared at the pine floor.

Her trouble meter flashed out a warning, sending heat streaming through her body. On edge, she gave her brother the stink eye. Chris’ tone meant it could be anything from a coyote trapped in the kitchen to an angry mob protesting in front of the restaurant. Either way, it was bad news and she’d have to take care of it pronto.

“There’s a dude downstairs sniffing around about what happened last night, and even if he is…”

Who in the hell would be digging up dirt? Sure, gossip was the lifeblood of a small town, but still, there was a dead girl involved and even the most callous rumormonger would wait a few days out of respect for the dead.

Maybe it wasn’t someone local. It could be a reporter. The girl could have been a student at Cather College. You had to be pretty well-to-do to afford the small, private school’s tuition. Maybe a reporter was hoping for a story that would boost his career to the big leagues.

A hot flash seared her skin. Maybe it was the Voice of Doom.

Panic danced on the edge of her thoughts. He’d said he’d call. Maybe the bastard had changed his mind? She opened her mouth to tell Chris, but a small voice warned her against it. What if it wasn’t the killer?

There was only one way to find out. Claire marched out the door, intent on protecting her family.

The upstairs dining room’s wall of windows had a great view of the revitalized downtown, including a 1940s-era movie theater. Usually Claire would slow down to admire the sight. Not today. She didn’t even pause when she whacked her hip on a table. Swallowing a yelp of pain, she quick-stepped down the wide staircase, rubbing her aching hip.

Chris followed a few steps behind. “Claire, this guy is—”

“I’m about to find out exactly who he is.”

A smattering of customers munched away at the round tables on the first floor. She didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. Well, except for the sudden drop in conversation followed by an immediate rise in the whispering.

Yeah, finding a dead body in your Dumpster will make people do that.

“Where is he?” Claire asked no one in particular.

Celestine Arthur, one of the regulars, pointed a bony finger toward the bar off to the side of the dining room. A malicious glow lit up the old crone’s face.

“Enjoy the show, Celestine.” Claire marched toward the side room, Chris hot on her heels.

Suzie, the bartender, stood behind the bar polishing it. Today, she had only one customer.

Target acquired.

Claire zoned in on the guy facing her at the opposite end of the bar. Steam floated up from the dusky orange coffee cup he palmed in his large hands.

He took a slow sip and his shoulders visibly relaxed. “Now that is a good cup of coffee, Suzie. Thank you.”

His low voice slid over Claire’s skin, caressing her hidden pleasure zones as strongly as if he had touched her. Unless he was a master at impersonations, there was no way last night’s nasal-toned threats had come from the fine male specimen relaxing at her bar.

He must have felt the weight of her gaze because he raised his head.

Her breath caught. Damn, he was magnificent. He had close-cropped dark, almost black hair. She’d bet today’s receipts that the small scar on his cheek was all that had kept his face from being plastered on billboards in Times Square. A small dimple in his chin punctuated his chiseled jaw. Only his full lips, almost feminine in appearance, balanced out the all-encompassing masculinity of the rest of his face.

He had trouble written all over him, the kind that made women of all ages yearn for a nearby bed. She licked her dry lips and stood as tall as she could.

As if accepting her positive appraisal as his due, he smirked and winked one of his slate-blue eyes at her. She snapped out of her trance. Pretty boys. They were all the same, self-centered jerks who looked like Apollo and acted like Hades. She’d learned that lesson the hard way.

So he wasn’t the Voice of Doom. Who was he, and why was he in Harvest asking questions that were better left to law enforcement? Time to find out.

“I’m Claire Layton and I own Harvest. Is there something I can help you with?” Proud of her steady, almost neutral tone, she drummed her fingers on the gleaming bar.

The man sauntered over and stopped an inch shy of her toes. He was tall and so close. She inhaled his musky scent. His black shirt’s buttons, level with the tip of her nose, worked valiantly to hold the material together across his muscular chest. Part of her hoped they’d burst just so she’d get a peek at the treasure beneath.

She forced her gaze upward. Her feet ached to take a step back, or forward, but she’d be damned if she’d give him the satisfaction.

“Who’re you and what do you think you’re doing in my restaurant?”

He laughed. Her nipples tightened at the warm, sensual sound. Her breath caught when he tweaked her on the nose.

“You’re a spitfire, aren’t you?” He chuckled, low and soft.

Her jaw nearly dropped to the floor. She couldn’t believe it. He’d tapped her on the nose as if she were a five-year-old girl or a dog. An indignant flush swept up from her toes.

She managed, just barely, not to kick him in the shin.

“I’m Jake Warrick with Absolute Security in Denver. You must be Claire Layton, the girl who finds dead bodies in her garbage.”

“Only one body, thank you very much.” The words flew out before she could formulate a witty response.

“Yes, Kendall Burlington. Her father hired me to act as the family’s eyes and ears during the investigation. They want to make sure everything stays on the up and up.”

Claire’s jaw jutted out at the insinuation about her brother’s law enforcement ethics. Hank was the most ethical man she knew. He’d lock up his own mother before he’d be part of a cover up.

“Oh you, you…”

That’s it.

Quick as lightning, her hand snaked across the bar. She snatched the water hose attached to the sink under the counter. With a flick of her wrist, she aimed the nozzle and let it rip.

The geyser soaked his shirt until it clung to his brawny chest.

Chris cut short her satisfaction, much to her dismay. Yanking the nozzle out of her grasp, he handed it to Suzie like a hot potato.

A wolf whistle blasted across the room.

“You better get that man a new shirt quick,” Celestine hollered from the dining room. “Before one of the old biddies out here gets a little too excited seeing all those muscles.”

Claire glanced over. Sure enough, Jake had peeled off his sopping-wet shirt. He did, indeed, have muscles on top of hard muscles. A dusting of dark hair covered his pecs. Her mutinous eyes followed the narrowing trail of hair until it dipped into the low-slung waistband of his jeans. She balled her hands to avoid reaching out and tracing the shadows on his six pack. Gritting her teeth, she forced her gaze to his face.

The bastard grinned at her. Her clit tingled in response.

Damn. Why did she always want the cocky jerks? There must be something wrong with her. She had to get out of here and give herself a chance to get her treacherous body under control.

“Chris, why don’t you come with me to get a shirt for Mr. Warrick? We wouldn’t want him to catch cold.”

She stomped toward the storeroom.

Jake winked at the interfering old lady in the dining room and sat down at the bar. Man, that water had been cold, even if the woman spraying it had been on fire.

What the hell had he been thinking, challenging her like that? He knew the rules. He had to win over the witnesses, gain their trust and charm them into telling him everything they knew. He’d just given the middle finger to every one of those requirements. What had this woman done to him?

She’d walked in with flames shooting out of the ends of her auburn hair, chocolate-brown eyes blazing. Dressed in a dark purple dress that wrapped around her tight body, highlighting her large breasts. His body responded to the fierce pixie. Strongly. He couldn’t stop himself from stoking her inferno. Her heat had spread to him and turned any thought of his mission to ash.

A more cautious man—his father would say a smarter man—would have handled her gently. But he hadn’t been able to do that. He’d had to push to see how hot she could burn.

Pretty damn hot.

Different time, different place and he’d let the fire run its course. But he couldn’t do that today. He looked down at the bulge in his jeans. Looks like his cock hadn’t gotten the message.

He sat down on the bar stool, trying to unobtrusively adjust his jeans. He reached over to where he’d been sitting and grabbed the worn leather satchel lying on the bar and pulled out the case dossier. His father had e-mailed it from Absolute Security’s home office in Denver.

That’s where Jake wished he was right now, waking up with the Rocky Mountains outside his window and a naked blonde in his bed, someone beautiful, tall and docile. Much more his type than Claire Layton.

He flipped through the printouts. Kendall Burlington, the very rich and spoiled adopted daughter of Denver hedge fund manager Charles Burlington, was the victim. Claire, the county sheriff’s sister, had discovered Kendall’s body in a Dumpster.

He wondered if the good sheriff had scattered any evidence to the wind on his sister’s behalf. His gut told him she wasn’t the killer, but she sure had a temper to go along with that red hair of hers.

She also had a redhead’s tendency to blush, from her awe-inspiring tits to the top of her forehead. The memory made his cock rise. Again. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he saw a woman blush.

An image of Claire arching her back, tossing her hair while she rode him, flashed into his head. Her nipples would be a dark rose color, he guessed. Her tits would sway with her rocking motion as she undulated on his erection. He’d grab her round hips, urge her to rock faster. She’d lean down. Her hard nipples would graze his chest as they kissed, their tongues curling around each other in an echo of what the rest of their bodies were doing. He’d flip her to her back, that red hair of hers spreading out across the white pillowcase like a sunset. She’d wrap her legs around him as he drove his hard dick into her wet center. He could hear her moaning, throaty and wanting. Then—

Whoa there.

She was a witness, not a candidate for making those fantasies a reality. He erased the tantalizing mental images and went back to reading the dossier.

Charles Burlington wasn’t going to take any chances the case would go south because some local yokels couldn’t investigate their way out of a paper bag. That’s why he hired Absolute Security. Jake would poke his nose around without interfering with an ongoing investigation.

Earlier that morning, the old man had called saying Burlington wanted to know if the investigators had found Kendall’s phone. The request stuck him as weird. She’d just been murdered, for God’s sake, why zero in on her phone? Burlington had told the old man it had some photos Kendall’s mother wanted. Jake figured grief made people focus on strange things. Still, the request stuck in his craw.

He scanned the initial sheriff’s report. Nothing there about a phone. Where was it?

“She didn’t do it, you know.”

He looked up at the bartender.

“I’ve known Claire for years. She’s not involved in anything bad.”

Suzie, according to her purple, corncob-shaped name tag, wiped out a glass and set it on a shelf under the bar.

“People surprise each other all the time.” He reached for his coffee. “You never know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.”

He should know. He’d seen the pictures of his mother from when he was a toddler. She’d looked happy. His father thought she’d been content. But she hadn’t been. No one had known until the day father and son came home to find all her clothes gone. A note had been taped to the fridge.
I want to be somebody new
.

They’d never heard from her again.

Yeah, people hid a lot about themselves. Who knew what secrets Claire hid behind her pretty face?

C
laire had to get Jake out of her bar. The hotshot from Denver pushed her buttons like a payphone.

Tongue tied and turned-on, her body and mind were in turmoil. She should have put a little more effort into getting laid before her whole world had gone crazy. Hell, she should have bothered to look at a man as dating potential. If she hadn’t sworn off men, she wouldn’t be worked into a lather over a yummy set of abs. And the way his appreciative gaze sent shocks through her. And how his voice turned her insides to jelly.

Chris walked ahead of her back to the bar. She stopped in the doorway and stared at Jake. Who wouldn’t? With his movie star looks and granite-hard body, the man was beyond easy on the eyes and hard on the panties. Her body perked up, an electric shot of desire pulling her forward.

He sat at the bar, his attention on the papers in front of him. She savored the chance to observe him unnoticed. As he read, he seemed softer. Not weak, but less cocky and full of himself. However, a sense of restrained danger remained under the surface.