Maximum Exposure (6 page)

It was like this in a lot of situations: Finn doing all he could to get his clients the information they were after and coming up empty. Or if not empty, then with the unexpected. A woman might want to catch her husband cheating to get out of a bad marriage with an even worse prenup instead of accepting his choice to work overtime rather than come home. An employer might suspect an employee of embezzlement rather than face the truth of poor management resulting in falling profits.

Finn had dealt with a number of similarly motivated scenarios that had left clients less than pleased, and often blaming him for not bringing the results they’d set their minds on and built their plans around. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d learned not to let it get to him or to take it personally. And having done this for awhile now, he was just cynical enough that he expected some level of dissatisfaction from every client whose case he took on.

So far, Dustin Parks had been an exception to Finn’s bracing for the worst. But then Dustin had seemed resigned to bad news from the get-go. He was already dealing with Roland Green’s cold shoulder. Either that or he hadn’t yet managed to snag the other man’s attention at all.

Finn sipped his coffee, on one hand admiring the way Parks was hedging his bets, on the other thinking there was a whole lot to be said for just going for it. Going for it the way Olivia Hammond did. Remembering her performance last night at the billiards lounge…

He was having a hard time believing that she didn’t get some sort of sexual thrill out of what she did. Maybe his disbelief had a lot to do with the way he’d been poleaxed right there in his seat while she’d played peekaboo with the table of men in the club. Talk about thrilling
and
sexual.

He’d been afraid of getting up and walking out of the place for the rest of the night. Every time he’d thought his erection had lain down to rest, he’d pictured Olivia in action, and the monster had come back to life with a vengeance.

What he’d found really strange was that not for a minute had he considered acting on the urge. And that didn’t make sense in any world he’d ever lived in.

He set his coffee mug on the table, which coordinated with both the chairs and the umbrella collapsed around its pole in the center, and reached for one of the two folders he’d brought outside.

After opening it on his lap, he took a moment to breathe and soak in the sea breeze and sunshine before looking down. He knew what he’d see when he did. It was just that the picture in his mental viewfinder was evocative and arousing in ways the photos he’d printed from his memory card could never be.

What Olivia had done at the club last night had been calculated and with purpose. Hot, yes, but not in the same league as what she’d done for him alone and at his command. It made all the difference in the world in how heated he grew, in his body’s physical reaction.

Knowing she was performing for him and not for a group of strangers in a club was akin to having a woman in his bed as opposed to seeing one on screen, making love to another man. He might get off to the second, but the first? He was there, fully involved, aching, burning, tightly wound.

He breathed through the tightness in his chest, reached for his coffee. Thing of it was, the way he responded to her also made a difference in whether or not he decided to take the job she’d offered.

He had never in all his years of private investigation allowed himself to get involved with a client on a personal level. He had to remain impartial. Taking sides, empathizing, feeling his own need for fairness or justice or revenge…it all amounted to the same thing. He couldn’t afford to care about the outcome, only that he did his job well.

That was his only investment. That was how he built his business, how he would see his own beach house finished. He couldn’t rely on the kindness and wealth of every stranger who hired him, and once he was done with the remodeling of his Key Largo place, he could stick close to home instead of taking on long-distance work for the extra cash.

Speaking of extra cash…he needed to decide what to do about this job for Olivia Hammond. About taking pictures of what she did, how qualified he was, how impartial he could be. He stared down at the photo on the top of the stack, the last one he’d taken before she’d dropped her halter and bared herself completely to his gaze.

She was teasing him, flirting with him, her eyes sparkling with the fun it was obvious she was having. And it was that same fun that had been missing when she’d performed for the not-so-knightly roundtable at the cigar and billiards lounge.

He flipped to the second picture. She’d had her back to him, untying the sash at her waist and looking over her shoulder while she did. He knew her flirtation was calculated, but that didn’t stop him from wondering how the performance would’ve left him feeling had it been true, if her heart had been in it even half as much as her head.

He was a smart enough guy to know it hadn’t been, and so his time spent with her pictures wasn’t about wishing and hoping. It was about pros and cons. Working with her versus not. He was already in Miami, and the job that had brought him here had a lot of downtime built in. If he could shoot Olivia while Roland was at work, the situation held a lot of win-win potential.

The only thing holding him back was Olivia herself. As intrigued as he’d been by the mystery of her offer, he’d gotten over his initial lust pretty damn fast once he’d realized how easily she’d played him. He didn’t like her assumption that showing a little skin was going to get her what she wanted.

And then there was the photo shoot of her striptease. She might have followed his directions when taking off her clothes, but only because it suited her to do so, because she hoped to take as much out of the game as she put into playing it.

Quite frankly, he didn’t need that shit. He’d left Texas to make a new start because he was tired of being a pawn. He much preferred being a king. He liked the sun coming up for him before anyone else got a glimpse of the morning, liked that he was the first to breathe the air carried to him by the currents above the Atlantic.

All he needed now was to finish the repairs to his own deck on his own beach. Which was why he’d probably take the job Olivia had offered. The cash. No other reason. The greenbacks and nothing more.

“McLain?”

“Out here,” he called to his client, who had generously offered him a place to stay—though it worked in the other man’s favor, saving him from having to pay the cost were Finn to lodge elsewhere.

He hadn’t heard the front door open; the sound of the waves rolling in kept him from hearing anything else—a big part of the reason he liked spending his mornings in the company of the surf and the sun.

Glancing down, he quickly closed up the folder of Olivia’s photos just in case his instincts were off and his gallery-owning client and her gallery-owning friend weren’t one and the same.

He was pretty sure they were, and that had him considering fate and coincidence as Dustin Parks settled gracefully into the chair on the other side of the table, crossed his legs, adjusted the crease over his knee, and closed his eyes.

“I don’t come out here often enough. I really don’t. I forget there’s more to South Beach than tanned skin and six-pack abs cut sharply enough to slice butter. There’s actually sunshine and air that’s delicious to breathe.”

He opened his eyes, his gaze crawling from the end of his deck to the water’s edge. “You know, this would be the perfect spot for beach volleyball. I wonder what it would take to sponsor a charity tournament. I must get Jodi on that.”

Finn remained silent, watching as Dustin pulled his iPhone from his waistband and typed himself a memo. He and Finn were of similar size, height, and build, making it possible for Finn to fit into Parks’s clothes. Body type was where the comparison ended, however.

Finn was dark, his skin ruddy from exposure to the sun, his hair black and longer than he’d ever worn it in his life. He wasn’t big on looks, only used a mirror for shaving when he bothered. Yeah, he’d become quite the bum since his move. Parks, on the other hand, was pretty. Finn could be completely hetero and still recognize the other man’s blond-haired and blue-eyed Brad Pitt appeal.

“So,” Parks began, having finished his note. “Have you learned anything that I wasn’t able to learn for myself?”

Finn slid the folder containing the pictures he’d taken of Roland Green across the table. “It doesn’t look like it.” He waited while Parks studied the photos. “There was an altercation outside of his place of employment—”

“I see that.” Parks held up one of the shots Finn had taken of Green arguing on the sidewalk with the Latino. “That’s Tomás Bebé. Carmen’s boyfriend.”

One mystery solved. Er, part of it, anyway. “Carmen?”

“Carmen Miranda Jones. She and Roland are the managers of Splash & Flambé. Tomás runs a hotshot delivery service, which Livia uses.”

Livia. Not Olivia.
Yeah, Parks had to be her gallery owner friend who wanted the photographs of her doing her thing. Finn wasn’t sure he wanted to dwell on why. “Livia. That would be Olivia Hammond?”

Parks glanced over, his eyes hidden by what Finn figured were designer sunglasses costing a mint. “You know Livia?”

Finn shrugged, looked back out across the water, at the far horizon. “I met her. I don’t think that counts as knowing her.”

It was a loaded comment, one heavy with unasked questions. Finn knew Dustin could give him some of the answers; he was familiar enough with Olivia to know she let people look, and to want pictures of her doing the same. But Finn had a thing for privacy, a hard respect for confidentiality. And though Olivia hadn’t told him to keep mum on their arrangement, it went against the grain to talk about one job to a client who’d hired him for another.

“You’re right,” Parks finally said. “Meeting Livia and knowing her are worlds apart. We’ve been friends forever. And I still don’t know but half of her secrets. She is very jealous of the ones she keeps to herself.”

Finn didn’t say anything. He just nodded politely, biting his tongue for propriety’s sake and his sanity. Dustin not knowing all there was of Olivia had Finn’s investigator’s antennae singing.

“Get to know her, McLain. I insist.”

What? Talk about out of nowhere.
“Insist on what?”

“That you get to know Livia Hammond. She works too hard. She doesn’t date. She needs to date. She needs a fling.”

Finn’s ears perked higher than a Great Dane’s.

Parks sat forward in his chair, bracing both forearms on his crossed knee. He cast Finn a sly glance, his sunglasses hiding his eyes, not his intent. “You seem very laid-back. Livia could use that in her life.”

“Her life probably needs someone laid-back who’ll be around. I don’t plan to be in Miami much longer.”

“I’m not planning a wedding here, McLain. Though a night out wouldn’t be out of the question.”

What was the question? “Are you setting me up?”

Parks launched out of his chair, turned, and stared down at Finn. “Tomorrow night. Come to my gallery. I’m hosting a private showing for an exhibit that will open on Friday. Livia will be there. It’s evening casual, and you’re welcome to whatever you can find in my closet.”

This was the last time Finn left home without packing for every occasion. He might not like being manipulated, but he did like the idea of seeing Olivia without her putting on a facade to see him. “On one condition.”

“Which is?”

“Don’t tell her I’ll be there.”

Parks’s mouth slid into a smile. “You know her better than you’re letting on, don’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

“You want to watch her, to see what she does, without her being aware that you’re looking on.”

Finn reached for his coffee. It was tepid, the rim of the mug salty. He drained the contents, anyway, deciding Parks’s comment was best left alone. “You have a card with the address? And what time should I be there?”

Parks pulled a pen and small leather case from his pocket, jotted a note on the back of a card, and then handed it to Finn. “Eight, and call my assistant Jodi if you need directions.”

Tapping the card against the table, Finn asked, “Do you want me to stick with Green a while longer? Or do you have what you need?” What Finn had was a big, fat zero. He’d discovered nothing about Green’s personal life except that he spent a lot of it alone.

Parks looked away, as if he didn’t like considering that Finn’s failure might be his own. “He’ll be at the gallery tomorrow night. I’ll be too busy with my duties as host to spirit him away. If you can find anything more substantial, I’ll pay you double your hourly fee. If you don’t, you can send me a final bill, and I’ll find a new place to shop for my clothes.”

“That sounds pretty drastic.”

“Drastic, dramatic, dire, and doleful. Such is unrequited love, n’est-ce pas?”