Die in Plain Sight (12 page)

Newport Beach

Early Thursday morning

W
hat’s wrong?” Susa asked.

Ian glanced at the rearview mirror yet again. Still there, hanging back in the early morning traffic. “Someone’s playing tag.”

“What?”

He thought of pushing a yellow light just to see what happened, but decided against it as he had every other time he’d been tempted this morning. If the car had been anything other than a beige Ford, he would have tried to dump the tail by breaking a few laws. That didn’t work when the guys behind you had badges.

“Tan sedan, three cars back,” Ian said. “A wolf in lambskin.”

She looked over her shoulder. After a few moments she spotted the sedan. It wasn’t hard. In southern California, almost no one but government types drove full-size American cars.

“You broken any laws lately?” she asked.

“Not in the last few days. I’m licensed for concealed weapons here. I
even have the sheriff’s private number on the back of his business card if I need help from any of his boys and girls. Just one of the perks of working for someone Moreno County really wants to have around.”

“Rarities Unlimited?”

Ian laughed and shook his head. One of the things he really liked about Lawe’s mother was that she didn’t have any idea of her own importance to the world at large.

“It’s you, La Susa, not Rarities. Every local PD and county mountie is touchy about who does and doesn’t carry on their turf. The fact that I work for Rarities didn’t hurt, but it was being your gofer that really did the trick. Sheriff Rory Turner himself gave dispensation for me and my shoulder harness to follow you around Moreno County.”

Susa rolled her hazel eyes. “Spare me the testosterone brigade. It’s a good thing you aren’t a lump as a companion.”

“Why?”

“Because I’d really have to smack some ass the next time I saw Don.”

Ian gave her a slow sideways smile. “Sounds like fun.”

She snickered.

He signaled like a good citizen, turned, and drove down a side street, leaving the bumper-to-bumper grind of the coast highway behind. As soon as he found a space big enough for two cars, he pulled over.

“Forget something?” Susa said.

“Hope not.”

He watched the tan sedan approach, drive by, and park half a block down. “Stay here with the doors locked,” he said to Susa.

He got out and walked down to the sedan. The men inside made no effort to ignore him. In fact, the one in the passenger seat rolled down the window.

“Morning,” Ian said. “Do I know you?”

“He’s Deputy Glendower and I’m Deputy Harrison,” the man said, pointing to the driver first, then himself.

“Mind if I see some ID?” Ian asked mildly.

Harrison pulled out a badge.

Ian nodded and looked at the driver.

“Chrissake,” muttered Glendower, but he took a badge out of his suit coat and showed it to Ian. “You got something to show us?”

“No badge, sorry.” Ian’s smile was all teeth. “How about this?”

He took out his wallet and removed the business card with its handwritten number on the back.

Glendower looked at the card without surprise. “Say hi to Sheriff Turner for us.”

“Will do. You boys have something that can take back roads?”

“No.”

“In about half an hour, you’re going to need it. Have it delivered to the south entrance of the Savoy Ranch.”

Ian left as one of them reached for the radio to order up a four-wheel-drive vehicle. When he got back to Susa, he slid in behind the wheel.

“Well?” she asked.

“I’m double-checking.”

Keeping an eye on the sedan, Ian took out his cell phone and punched in Sheriff Rory Turner’s private number.

“Yeah?” Rory said, picking up, yawning.

“Ian Lapstrake. Sorry for calling you after hours, or before in this case. I’m being followed by a beige Ford sedan with two plainclothes in it. Glendower and Harrison. Are they yours?”

“Probably.”

“I’d appreciate it if you’d find out for sure. I wouldn’t want to put a foot in the wrong place.”
A cop’s balls, for instance.

“Hang on.”

Ian waited. It wasn’t long.

“They’re mine,” Rory said.

“Have you received threats against Susa or any information that she might be at risk?”

“No, but the more I thought about her, the more I didn’t like the idea of someone bothering her in any way. We aren’t as bad as Mexico or Italy, but kidnap for ransom isn’t unheard of here, either. It’s not going to happen on my watch if I can help it.”

Ian’s eyebrows went up. “I see. Thank you, Sheriff. Sorry to bother you.”

“No problem. If you notice any other cars or anything else odd, let me know.”

Susa watched Ian as he replaced the cell phone. “Everything okay?”

“They’re on the side of the angels.”

She let out a breath. “Okay. Let’s get Lacey and do some painting. She has to be back by eleven o’clock to open her shop.”

“You’re hoping she’ll tell you her real name all by herself.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Then I’m hoping she’ll tell me why she wanted a fake name in the first place.”

Newport Beach

Early Thursday morning

L
acey stood in the door of Lost Treasures Found and looked at Ian with eyes that were too dark against skin that was too pale. If she’d gotten any sleep last night, it didn’t show. The bruises beneath her eyes were big enough to frame.

“I’m sorry,” Lacey said tightly to Ian. “Something has come up. I can’t go painting with Susa.”

He smiled with gentle understanding and was inside the shop with the door closed behind him before she could blink.

“What could be more important than painting with the premier living artist in the United States?” he asked.

Lacey said the first thing that came to her mind. “I’m sick. I don’t want to infect anyone else.”

He might have bought it just on her looks alone, but she was such a bad liar that he didn’t even hesitate. “You’re not sick, you’re worried. What’s wrong? Is it something to do with your fake name?”

For an instant tears stood in her eyes. Then she turned her back and got herself under control. “Give Susa my regrets.”

“No. You’ll have to do that yourself.”

“I told you, I don’t want to infect anyone else.”

“Susa’s tough.” He put his hands on Lacey’s shoulders. “So am I. What’s wrong?”

Blindly, Lacey shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Why not? I’m discreet. I haven’t told anyone who asked me about your real name.” Which was the truth—Susa hadn’t asked.

The sudden stiffness of Lacey’s body told Ian all he needed to know.
Bingo.

“That’s what this is all about, isn’t it,” he said, no question in his voice. “Your fake name.”

She turned around and faced him.

His hands lifted, then settled on her shoulders again.

She felt the warm weight of his touch and wished that things were different. It had been a long, long time since any man had intrigued her on as many levels as he did. But things weren’t different. They were what they were, and she had a family to protect.

“Good-bye,” she said huskily. “Please give Susa my regrets. Her encouragement of my own painting is something I’ll never forget.”

He saw both the determination and the shadows in her eyes. “Lacey, whatever it is, let me help.”

“I can’t.”

“That means you won’t.”

She closed her eyes. “If it was just me, I would. But it’s not.” She opened her eyes and gave him a crooked smile. “Don’t forget to take your movie poster.”

That pissed him off. “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry, and don’t come back again, is that it?”

Her smile wavered. “It’s better that way.”

“No, it’s better
this
way.”

His hands tightened, his mouth lowered, and he kissed her, surprising both of them. Neither of them stayed surprised very long. Both of them had been wanting this since the teasing kiss over her easel in Cross Country Canyon.

Lacey went up on tiptoe, pressing into the kiss. Into him. His hands
shifted and drew her close, then closer. She tasted hot, exotic, ripe with possibilities. In a heartbeat the kiss went nuclear. Before he knew what he was doing, he wrapped his arms around her, turned, and flattened her between his body and the shop door.

Even as he told himself to back up and back
off,
her arms tightened around his neck and she made a throaty sound that told him she was with him every bit of the way. He groaned and went in deeper, trying to get all of her sweet female heat he could. When his hands pushed under her sweatshirt, she hesitated, then shuddered with pleasure as his thumbs teased her nipples through her bra. She twisted her hips against him, moving against the erection he couldn’t have concealed if he’d tried.

Heat exploded through him. Distantly he realized that one of them had better come up for air or he would strip off her jeans and take her right where they were, right now, picking her up and wrapping her legs around his waist and watching her and driving into her until—

Lacey’s hand over his mouth cut off the hot vision he hadn’t even been aware of saying aloud.

“Holy shit,” she said, leaning against him, trembling, struggling for breath while her heart went wild. “What’s happening?”

Ian lowered his forehead against hers and grabbed at breath. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

She stuck out her lower lip and looked stubborn. “I asked first.”

He laughed despite the sexual need hammering through his whole body. “You go to my head, darling, among other places.”

She didn’t have to ask which other places. She could count his heartbeat in the erection pressing against her belly. Normally she would have raked any man up one side and down the other for getting so intimate in such a hurry. What worried her was that she wanted more of Ian, not less. She wanted what he’d described—him driving into her, watching.

“And no, I’ve never tried to nail a woman the second time I kissed her,” he added. “Sorry about that. I’m wondering what happened myself.”

“Ho boy,” she said, blowing a stray curl away from her eyes. “Don’t apologize. Must be something in the air today. You got me hotter, faster, than anyone ev—” She broke off, appalled at what she was saying. Groaning, she tried to hide her blush against his chest.

Gently he lifted her chin until she met his eyes. “You’re not cooling
me off here,” he said, but he was smiling the kind of smile that made people trust him with small children and large fortunes. He brushed his lips over her eyebrows, her nose, her cheeks, and inhaled her breath without kissing her. “Come painting with Susa, or let us stay here with you.”

Thoughtfully Lacey ran her fingertips over the outline of his shoulder holster beneath his jacket. “You’re really her bodyguard?”

“No, I really work on the security side of Rarities Unlimited. I protect art, not people. Sometimes my boss does favors for the Donovan family, and vice versa. This is one of them. Until I put Susa on the Donovan company plane back to Seattle, I’m on duty. Otherwise I’d be trying the old-fashioned dating thing with you, and would have been since I first heard you coming down the stairs talking about a beer kind of day.” He blew the springy curl away from her eyes and kissed her temple. “Don’t shut me out, Lacey. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if I let something special slip through my fingers because of work.”

Lacey looked up at Ian’s dark brown eyes and even darker hair. He wasn’t smiling. He meant every word. “Oh, God, what a mess,” she said in a rush of air. “Why now, when I
can’t
?” She bit her lip and looked away, then looked back at him. “Rain check?”

“Haven’t you heard? It never rains in southern California.”

“Does that mean no rain check?”

“I’m not that patient. Never is too long.”

She closed her eyes and her generous mouth curved down.

“You said it wasn’t just you,” Ian said when the silence stretched too long. “Who else is in trouble?”

“It’s a family matter and no one is in trouble. It’s just…awkward.”
Really awkward.

He looked at the stubborn line of her lower lip and wondered what it would take for her to trust him. And then he wondered why the hell it should matter so much.

“Well, if it’s just awkward, there’s no reason not to go painting, is there?” he asked reasonably. “We won’t ask any embarrassing questions.”
Like why you needed a fake name, for instance.

“Not enough time,” Lacey said, thinking of her grandfather’s paintings hanging out in public like dirty linen. “I have to do something else before the shop opens. It can’t wait. Maybe—maybe tomorrow?”

Ian would have pushed if he hadn’t sensed that it wouldn’t do him
any good and probably would hurt his attempt to get her to trust him. He didn’t have any real sisters, but he’d been raised next door to his first cousins, all four of them girls. He knew when a female was movable and when she wasn’t.

Lacey wasn’t.

“Okay,” he said. “Painting tomorrow, six
A.M.
I’ll pick you up for dinner at seven tonight.”

She blinked. “Dinner?”

“I know you eat.” He smiled. “I’ve seen you. I even put the food on your paint table where you couldn’t miss it.”

“Um, yes, but—”

“Good,” he interrupted. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, not with the taste of her still on his lips and the heat of her body reaching out to him. “Seven o’clock for dinner. That will give you time after your shop closes to add up the till or whatever.”

She started to say something and found herself kissing him instead. Though gentle, the kiss was even hotter than the first one. She could feel him straining at the leash he kept on himself, and she could feel herself pulling hard right along with him. When he lifted his head, she blew out a rush of warm air and wondered why this one man could get to her so fast and so deep.

“Seven o’clock,” Ian said huskily, lifting her away from the door.

She watched the door close behind him and asked herself what the hell she was doing, letting herself be seduced by Susa Donovan’s bodyguard.

Susa, who could uncover Lacey’s grandfather for the fraud he was.