Flirting With Disaster (2 page)

Judah Pratt saw her potential. The singer-songwriter had asked for her specifically. And okay, yes, maybe Judah’s interest in her was largely carnal, but an opportunity was an opportunity. She’d only been in his Chicago apartment for half an hour when it arrived: he’d announced that he would hire Camelot Security, but only if he could have Katie.

He’d said it just like that, too.
Only if I can have Katie
. A week later, the memory retained the power to send shivers skittering up her spine.

Or it usually did. It was a little hard to get swept up in her Judah fantasies with Sean sitting next to her, emanating stony disapproval of … something. Her being assigned to work with him. The way she breathed. Her boots. Who knew?

“Katie?” Caleb interrupted her reverie.

“What?”

“Are you even listening to me?”

“Sure.” She rewound her brain, hoping to locate some phantom memory of what he’d said when she wasn’t paying attention.
Nada
. “What did you say?”

“When did you stop listening?”

“Uh, payroll?”

“Never mind. The upshot is, you’ve still got your old job when you come back.”

“Yeah, but after I completely blow your socks off, you’ll need someone else to do my old job.”

“Please don’t try to blow my socks off. Be safe.”

“Right, right.” She turned into the gas station. “I’ve got to go.”

“One last thing.”

“What?”

“I want you to keep your distance from Pratt.”

“Caleb—”

“No, I’m serious. Sean, I need your help here. Keep the guy away from my sister. I don’t trust him not to take advantage.”

Katie pulled to a stop beside a pump, her blood boiling. There was overprotective, and then there was stifling. She loved Caleb and all, but she wasn’t about to let him smother her to
death.

Sean had turned to look at her. He had the most astonishing eyes. Dark, dark blue, with thunderstorms in them.

She lifted her chin. “That isn’t necessary,” she told Caleb.

“I think it is.”

“No, it isn’t. If Judah wants to take advantage of me, I’m all for it.”

Sean blinked.

“Katie,” Caleb said, a note of warning in his voice.

“Stop. You don’t want to have this conversation any more than I do, so just drop it, okay?”

Sean got out of the car. Katie watched him go, uneasy but resolved. It was hard enough to defeat her own internal censor. She didn’t need two men dog-piling on to judge her ability to make decisions about her own freaking sex life.

Not that she had a sex life.

“Believe me, I would love to drop it,” Caleb said. “But I don’t think I can.”

“Try. I’m a grown woman. I have condoms. I think I’ve got this under control.”

Sean tapped on the passenger-side window and pointed toward the gas tank. Katie popped the fuel door for him, and he swept one open palm in the direction of the gasoline options. “The cheap stuff,” she said, loud enough for him to hear her through the window. He nodded and turned his back on her.

“I don’t imagine you care,” Caleb said carefully, “but I think your sleeping with Judah is a bad idea.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“It’s unethical.”

Now
that
was just unfair. Six months ago, Caleb had asked Katie if she thought it would be unethical for
him
to get involved with a client. She’d thought about it and told him no—that it depended on the situation, and in the situation he and Ellen had been in, it was fine.

She’d come to the same conclusion about this Judah job. It would be one thing if Judah were traumatized by fear, quaking in his boots and relying on Katie to keep him safe, but that just wasn’t the case. She was along for the ride. Why not make the ride a little more enjoyable—especially when Judah had made his interest in climbing aboard more than clear?

Maybe it wouldn’t be the smartest move of her life, or the most romantic, but “romantic” wasn’t what Katie was looking for from Judah. If she had to pick one adjective to describe what she was looking for, it would be “torrid.”

Or “inadvisable.” She’d never had inadvisable sex before. She’d had Levi, the high school sweetheart who’d given her every single one of her firsts: first kiss, first sex, first orgasm, first wedding, first abandonment, first divorce.

Considering that Levi had walked out on her almost two years ago—two long, transformative, sexless years—and the ink had finally dried on her divorce papers a few weeks back, “torrid and inadvisable” sounded like just the ticket. Katie wanted to throw herself headlong into new experiences, skate the edge of recklessness, flirt with disaster.

All while behaving safely and responsibly, of course. No need to get Caleb’s panties in a twist.

Her brother was silent. He seemed to be waiting for a reply to a question she wasn’t sure she’d heard him ask. She tried out another “Mmm-hmm.”

“I didn’t even like the guy,” he said.

“I noticed that.”

“You can do better.”

Judah had unruly black curls and huge, dark eyes. He had a low, sexy voice that she loved to listen to when she was tired, lonely, and in need of a glass of wine.

And maybe it was starry-eyed of her, but she felt as though she already knew him from his music. When he’d said he wanted her on the case, she’d hoped it was because he shared that feeling of familiarity, and their deep, instant connection would lead to awesome conversation and multiple orgasms.

But really, she’d settle for a less-than-mystical experience if it meant she finally got some action.

“I don’t think I want to do better,” she said.

“Fine.” Caleb sounded resigned. “I’ll stay out of it. But I’m going on record as strongly disapproving.”

“Got it.”

The gas pump shut off with a hollow mechanical thump, and Sean turned to the machine to wait for a receipt, shoulders hunched against the January chill. The wind ruffled his short
blond hair and turned the tips of his ears red. He had to be freezing his ass off out there.

Katie was hoping Louisville would be warmer than Camelot had been lately. It was only a four-hour drive, but Kentucky was the South, right? Gray skies and freezing rain had been haunting central Ohio for so long, she could hardly remember what the sun looked like.

All week, she’d been dreaming of Kentucky bluegrass. Totally unrealistic, given the time of year and the fact that she was about to spend the weekend in some dank, beer-piss-smelling nightclub, but she couldn’t turn the daydreaming off. Her mind had a mind of its own.

“Let me talk to Owens,” Caleb said.

“What for?”

“None of your business.”

“Is it about work or my personal life?”

“Also none of your business.” His voice had gone all clipped. She wasn’t getting anything else out of him.

She tried anyway. “C’mon, Caleb. It’s my phone.”

“Put him on.”

“Yeah, fine. Okay.” She jimmied the phone out of its cradle and leaned way over to open the passenger-side door a crack. “Caleb wants to talk to you.”

Sean took the phone, and she closed the door, not wanting any more cold air to get into her toasty car than necessary. He walked ten feet away and lifted the phone to his ear.

She imagined what he’d sound like if she could hear him. He had an unusual way of shaping words. Every syllable came out perfectly enunciated, as if he had nothing better to do than tumble the sounds around his tongue.

She liked listening to him talk. Yet another reason it chapped her hide that he wouldn’t speak to her.

After a minute, he disconnected the call and folded himself into the car. He was too tall for a compact. Too broad, too. He brought the cold air in with him, and she could feel the chill coming off his black leather jacket and soaking into her right shoulder.

“You good to go?” she asked, putting the car in gear and releasing the emergency brake.

He nodded, eyes straight ahead.

“You wanna drive?” They’d already begun rolling toward the exit. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

If he thought she was funny, he didn’t show it. Instead, he waved her on, settled back in his seat, and closed his eyes.

Sean Owens: World’s Most Boring Copilot.

One of her favorite Judah songs came up on the stereo, so Katie cranked the volume and started to sing along, bouncing gently up and down in a low-key car dance.

Caleb couldn’t spoil this for her, and neither could Sean. Nervousness be damned—she was on a mission. She had sixty miles left to drive, a job to do, a future to claim.

Plus, if everything went according to plan, she was going to get laid this weekend.

This trip was the single most exciting thing to happen to her in a long time.

If Sean had put himself in a dumber situation in his life, he was hard pressed to remember it.

Driving to Louisville with Katie Clark was beyond dumb. It was such a bad idea, it deserved its own category.

Lost Causes Sean’s Dick Talked Him Into, maybe.

They hit a light, and Katie squeezed the phone between her shoulder and ear so she could downshift and steer at the same time. She’d given up on the speakerphone when Ellen’s call came in. Probably wanted to avoid further embarrassment.

She changed lanes rapidly without signaling, laughing at something Ellen said on the other end.

“I did
not
say that. Huh?
Oh
yeah.” She glanced over at him, her brown eyes dancing with amusement. “It’s been a lot longer than that. Nope. Uh, no. I’m just saying—Yeah, well, long enough that I’m hoping everything still works.”

She listened, then laughed.

She put her foot to the accelerator and ran her car right up the ass of a Ford pickup that was going too slow for her taste.

It would be a miracle if they made it to the job in one piece—a fact that only served to highlight the idiocy of his presence in the car. He was escorting Katie Clark to Louisville so she could have sex with another guy. Why not just cut off his balls and hand them to her?

Of course, he wouldn’t be able to tell her what he’d done or why, since he couldn’t fucking talk around Katie. He’d have to convey the message telepathically.
You might as well take these. I’m not using them anyway
.

Sean swallowed a laugh and looked out the side window. They were inside the clogged interstate perimeter of the city now, the traffic heavier and the scenery more obviously urban after hundreds of miles of rolling fields covered in a blanket of dingy snow.

His own phone buzzed in his jacket pocket, a nagging reminder of other claims on his attention. His best friend and business partner, Mike Anderson, had been trying to call him all morning. Something was going down in California. That, or Mike was panicking for no reason.
It wouldn’t be the first time.

Sean’s fingers itched to whip out the phone and tap a quick message to Mike.
Fuck off, I’m on leave
.

It would probably do the trick, but on the whole, he preferred to know what was going on in San Jose. Just because he’d relinquished control of the company seven months ago didn’t mean he’d fallen out of the loop.

Besides, he liked fixing problems. Bring him a problem, and Sean solved it. It was the way he was wired.

Katie was the exception—a problem he could neither solve nor enjoy.

He’d been studying her for almost four hours, trying to compile a list of everything that was wrong with her so he could use it as a weapon against the way she made him feel.

Unwillingly compelled. Trapped.

He’d climbed into her car this morning intending to crack her open like new code. No matter how well it was written, he could always find a hack. Finding the perfect hack had been his obsession once. He’d built his whole career on it.

But after a few minutes in her tiny Volkswagen, all he’d been able to think about was the way she smelled.

In high school, she’d come to class in a cloud of watermelon Jolly Ranchers and whatever lip balm she was wearing that day—root beer, cherry, wintergreen. Grown-up Katie still had a thing for lip balm. Today she wore something minty, and it mixed with another scent from her hair or her skin that reminded him of fresh grass and lemons and filled the whole car, making it impossible for him to keep a clear head.

Four hours wasted reminding himself that there was nothing wrong with that straight, shiny black hair skimming her shoulders and moving like water when she turned. Nothing wrong with those warm, lively brown eyes or her olive skin. And her body … she had slim hips and small breasts, and she shouldn’t have caught his attention every time she moved, but damn it, she did.

Katie wasn’t stunning. She wasn’t even beautiful. She was cute in an ordinary sort of way, but she
got
to him. She had this energy, this bright, shiny presence that drew him in.

Katie Clark made him weak. He almost hated her for that.

Sean pointed to the right, signaling that she should take the exit for Bardstown Road up
ahead. Katie was too busy riding the brake pedal to notice. Sean waited for the car that had been tailgating them for half a mile to slam into the rear bumper, but the crash didn’t come.

She laughed again. “You’re just jealous,” she said. “What? No way. He’s too hot to be disappointing. He’s going to be—”

Sean plucked the phone out of her hand and disconnected the call.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He pointed to the right again, and she whipped the wheel around. The club was just a few blocks down on the left, a nondescript place called the High Hat.

“I can’t believe you did that,” she said. “That was so rude.”

He gestured left, and she entered the lot and parked.

She turned fully toward him, her nostrils flaring with outrage. She had a great nose, long and straight, like some kind of aristocrat. Princess Katie demanding he apologize for insulting her royal person. “Aren’t you even going to try to explain yourself? I’ve been putting up with the silent treatment from you so far, but we have a job to do together, and it’s not going to work if you refuse to talk to me. Particularly if you’re going to pull shit like that. That was
way
out of line, Buster.”