Licensed for Trouble (3 page)

PJ rolled onto her back, trapped, her eyes closed, listening as the Vespa roared to life and whizzed away with a high-pitched
whee!

And from somewhere beyond her periphery, she heard a camera click. Oh, perfect.

“Problems, PJ?” Boone said, his voice over her. He grabbed her by both sides of her bun and pulled her to her feet. “What was that?”

She'd torn a hole through the costume at the knees, and her dirty legs poked through between bun and dog. “She jumped bail. Were you serious—you don't have a handcuff key?”

Boone's silence made her look up.

“What?”

“Jeremy has you skip tracing now? A couple solved crimes and suddenly you're tracking down fugitives?” A quiet anger simmered in his expression.

“Listen, I know you're still worried about me, but you can stop now. I'm fine. I just need to get out of these cuffs.”

“You think just because you don't want me in your life that I'm going to suddenly stop caring? that I'll stop waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, afraid that someday you're going to get yourself hurt—really hurt?”

Oh. “I
do
want you in my life. Just not . . . as my boyfriend.”

He took a long breath.

“Please, Boone, I miss your friendship.” And the cuffs had begun to pinch.

He shook his head slowly, then turned away. “Boone!”

As if she might really be in some sort of B movie, Jeremy swaggered up, a convenient entrance, wearing a black baseball cap backward, and minus his ketchup costume. “You okay, babe? What's with the cuffs?”

Boone stopped. Rounded. One second too late, PJ recognized his expression.

“Boone, don't—”

“You're going to get her hurt,” he said, advancing on Jeremy, who took a breath. PJ winced at the cold, calm look in his eyes.

Boone's voice stayed low and lethal as he stopped just in front of Jeremy. “You don't deserve her, and worse, you're going to get her hurt.”

“You're overreacting. I'm fine. I just . . . I shouldn't have believed Bix.”

Boone shook his head, his eyes hard on hers. “People don't change, PJ. You should know that by now. Just try and stay alive.”

He strode away, his tails flapping as he loosened his tie and dumped it in a garbage barrel.

PJ watched him go, her throat burning. She turned to Jeremy, scraping up her voice, any voice. “And where were you, Mr. Ketchup? Did you not hear me? Meredith Bixby, bail jumper, remember?” She indicted her still-cuffed hands. “A little help would have been appreciated.”

But Jeremy's gaze had trailed after Boone. “I knew you could handle it. Besides, I wasn't going to do you any good trapped inside a tube of tomato paste.” Finally his eyes met hers. “Why'd you let her go?”

“Because she had a hair appointment. I didn't let her go! Clearly, because I'm wearing handcuffs. Do you happen to have a key?”

He gave her a small smile. “Somewhere inside that hot dog beats a heart of compassion. Don't worry; you'll get her next time.” Jeremy ran a hand down her arm. “I'll track down a key. And then I need something to eat. Seeing you in that hot dog costume is making me hungry.”

Chapter Two

“You're very photogenic. This is the second shot of you in handcuffs in four months.”

Jeremy folded the Monday edition of the
Kellogg Gazette
in half and tossed it toward PJ, who sat on his black leather sofa. It landed with a plop at her feet. She didn't even glance at it. Not again. She'd already scanned every last grainy detail in this morning's mail delivery, read every last jot and tittle about the fiasco at Kellogg Farms over the weekend.

“Thanks for bringing that up. I feel so much better.” She'd have to track down—she leaned over and read the photo credits—
Lindy Halston
and strangle her for the fabulous shot of PJ as she stood, scuffed-up and alone in the parking lot with the setting sun behind her, a torn, unhappy, handcuffed hot dog, while Jeremy tracked down the handcuff key.

“I can't wait for my mother to see it. She'll probably have it framed.”

Jeremy leaned back in his desk chair and smirked at her. “Have you heard from her yet?”

“No. I left a number of messages at her house and a few on her cell, although she barely knows how to turn it on. My mother has the technical acuity of a gecko. Still, she should be able to answer her phone. I might need to do a drive-by today.”

“She's probably just out playing Bunco or something.”

“For three unaccounted-for days?”

“She's single. Give her a break.”

“My mother is not single. She's widowed. There's a big difference.” In fact, in many ways, Carl Sugar was still very much a presence in her mother's life: his clothes still hanging on his side of the closet, his golf clubs on the hook, even his green Jag taking up space on his side of the garage. Not that her mother lived in the past—she simply felt it disrespectful to erase him from the life he'd worked so hard to build.

“She's probably lonely, PJ. Give her some room to fill her life with friends.”

The morning sun pressed into the windows, gilding the wooden floor into a sea of amber. Downstairs, the smell of freshly baking sub sandwiches ribboned through the paned front door of Kane Investigations and found her stomach. A half-eaten sesame bagel, the two halves glued together by cream cheese, lay wrapped in a napkin and balanced on the arm of the sofa.

PJ nudged the paper away from her with her toe and finished off her latte. “I should give up on finding Bix. I'll never see her again. She's probably over the state line by now, halfway to some spa in Brazil.”

Jeremy got up and walked over to the sofa. She loved how he looked in the mornings after his workout—freshly showered, his dark hair cut close to his head, neatly shaven, smelling like clean laundry and soap, and today in a button-down dress shirt over a gray Navy tee and blue jeans. It appeared like he eased into every day without effort and expected it to be glad to see him.

Not PJ, who had wrestled herself off the sofa at 6 a.m. and eked out of her body two miles on the treadmill at the gym while trying to ferret from the crevices of her foggy brain an idea as to where Bix might be hiding. Think like a criminal. Where would PJ go if she were a fugitive?

Uh, South Dakota. Or at least that's where she'd headed ten years ago. Today? She hadn't a clue where she might lie low while ducking from the law. Nor would she want to. She'd gotten painfully used to having her family—Davy, Connie, even the crazy, fish-frying, vodka-consuming Russian federation—in her life.

Connie's pregnancy news throbbed inside her like the ugly scrape down her arm. She hated when her longings snuck up on her and pounced, filleting open old wounds.

She was happy for Connie. Really.

Jeremy sat on the end of the sofa. She was still barefoot, and he surprised her by picking up her foot, setting it on his lap.

“Listen, Princess. Stop beating yourself up over Bix. A good PI doesn't give up. You have to have confidence and a positive attitude. But you have to be empathetic, too. In order to think like your subject, you need to understand her. And although you usually have pretty good instincts, you may have let your heart sympathize just a little too much with Bix. In hindsight, it might not have been the most savvy of moves.”

PJ couldn't take her eyes off the way his thumb moved over her foot, sweetly, almost absently.

“The truth is, I'm not sure I would have done any differently. It's not like she murdered anyone. She stole an expensive wallet. She's not exactly a menace to society.”

“Mmm-hmm.” His touch tickled a little, but she wasn't pulling away.

Just like she hadn't last night when he'd bandaged the scrape on her elbow.

The stiffness in their relationship seemed to crack at the harvest event, a freshness to his demeanor that spilled over into the evening, when he'd rented an old Gregory Peck movie and watched it on the sofa, popping microwave popcorn long after his bedtime. As if he hadn't . . . wanted to leave?

Or maybe he just felt guilty about trapping her inside a large, puffy advertisement while the entire town convulsed into hysterics. Another spectacular moment for her wannabe-PI scrapbook.

“So you said you talked to Connie. You didn't tell me what it was about.”

PJ pulled her foot away and stood, collecting her uneaten bagel, his empty cup. “She's pregnant.”

She didn't know what she expected, certainly not the way his eyes twitched as he watched her throw away the garbage.

“Really. That's . . . very exciting news. Isn't it?”

She'd let the conversation simmer inside her since yesterday and had emerged with two truths. First, she might really have to start living in her loft-size Crown Vic, especially if Jeremy took on any more cases and his horizontal filing system started engulfing the rest of the office. More than that, though, Connie's news screamed the glaring truth. At least
one
of the Sugars was moving on with her life.

“I'm thrilled for her. She and Sergei will make great parents, and Davy needs a sibling.”

Jeremy still wore that strange look, as if he might be trying to peel back her words, searching for a hidden meaning.

Okay, fine—“I can't move back in.”

He nodded, real slow.

“They need a room for the baby, and I have to find a place to live.”

“You don't like my sofa?” He smiled finally, something teasing in his dark eyes.

“I can't live on your sofa forever, boss. Besides, I know how you like to work late. I'm throwing you off your game.”

“I'm not sure I'd put it
quite
that way.” He pushed one arm out along the top of the sofa. “But you've certainly changed the rules.”

His smile had vanished, and with it went any words she might have conjured. So he hadn't forgotten their kiss.

Then he sighed. “Listen, I can advance you some money, if you need it, for rent.”

“I do your books. You don't have any money to advance me.”

“Ouch. Not everything is on the books. I might have a few personal resources.”

It was the way he said it, dark and husky, that reminded her that she knew very little about Jeremy Kane. Other than the fact that he always seemed to appear when she needed him, like the first time—dressed as a pizza deliveryman, hiding in the garage in just the right place to save her skin. He also had more faith in her than she deserved.

But she couldn't take his money, and she met his hard look with one of her own. “We need clients, and now.”

She crouched next to the pile of fugitive recovery subjects messengered to them by Liberty Bondsmen and picked up the top file. “Bruno Dirkman.”

“I'll take care of that one, PJ.”

She glanced at him, then opened the front cover. Attempted murder. Bruno glared into the camera as if hoping to take out her heart and chew on it. “Right.” She'd let the guy who'd done time as a Navy SEAL handle Bruno. She closed the file and picked up the next one. “Brad Knightly. Armed robbery.”

“Him too. Just put him in my pile.”

PJ put the file aside. “Keith Dennis. Assault—”

“Mine.”

She closed the file, angled a look at him. “Excuse me, but what are all those self-defense lessons for if not to apprehend fugitives?”

Jeremy's past gathered in his eyes for a moment; then he pasted his mouth into a grim line. “Self-defense is just that—
defense
. There's a difference between defending yourself and apprehending someone. You need to be ready to follow through when you're on the offense. You've walked into the fight with the goal of finishing it. Defense is about getting away to fight another day.”

She opened her mouth,
case in point
already forming in her throat—

“And I definitely want you alive to fight another day. You're not going anywhere near those kinds of people.”

“So let me get this straight. I can do fugitive recovery, but only the
nice
criminals.”

One side of his mouth quirked up. “That about sums it up.”

“I'm going to start calling you Boone.”

His smile disappeared. “I'm not Boone, PJ.” He said it so softly it made her heart skitter. “I'm far from Boone.”

Oh yes, that couldn't be truer. Jeremy, with his steely demeanor, a man of few but poignant words, a tightly knotted control about him that she'd seen unravel only when he'd thought she might be hurt. Jeremy had a mysterious, breathtaking allure about him, the feel of autumn, like riding down a leaf-strewn road, churning up the fragrance of tomorrow in her wake. Yes, Jeremy was a dangerous mix of something sweetly familiar and the enticing scent of change. Boone, however, his presence woven into every high school memory, entwined with every future she'd envisioned, was a Saturday afternoon in the summer, the husky remnant of a sun-baked day still lazy in the wind. Easy, expected, comforting.

In a way, she loved them both, needed them both. And in that, perhaps, she saw their alikeness.

“His warning got to you. That bit about me getting hurt and his suggestion that you don't deserve me.”

“Oh,” Jeremy said, his eyes softening along with his voice, “I know I don't deserve you.” He took a breath, and his tone contained an edge when he continued. “And Boone's words were more to the tune of
I'm
going to get you hurt.”

She wasn't sure what sentence to address first. He didn't deserve her? His whispered words, spoken before the first time he'd ever kissed her, chanted in the back of her brain.
“I'm not ready for this.”
And now he didn't deserve her? It didn't take her PI instincts to recognize a man fleeing the scene of the relationship, and fast.