Operative Attraction (3 page)

Chapter
One

Detective Hal Stevens’ very plain name failed to adequately convey the rather extraordinary detective as he stood beneath a huge magnolia tree. He was clad in deep ebony slacks that skated gracefully over narrow hips and tight, hardened thighs,
then down his well-shaped calves, stopping a hush from the tops of his equally somber shoes. A shock of extremely dark hair fell to his shoulders in a spiral of loose curls. Broad shoulders stretched his suit jacket taut across the luscious expanse of his frame. A slim, petite brunette strutted past him, tripped and tumbled across the sidewalk, before coming to a stop a few feet from him. He smirked at her, but the expression wasn’t cruel.

“Caught another one, eh, Stevens?” Avery Lamont asked between chuckles. “Damn girl couldn’t stop starin’ at you. You act like some fashion model instead of a cop.”

Well, hell, Hal guessed he was looking at Avery, because Avery still wore his deeply tinted shades. He acted like some damn rap star, sporting his sunglasses inside, outside and on cloudy days too, and he had an ego the size of
Mount Everest
to go with the shades. Hal been partnered with the younger man for nearly four years.

“Where the hell is that informant?” Hal asked instead, letting the jab at his good looks go by. The precinct jokes about his appearance had made reaching detective difficult, but that was ancient history. Now, if he and Avery could just get their hands on the serial rapist who had been taken into some sort of twisted-ass protection with a ring of criminals, he could finally put the last of the whispers to rest.

Hal slid his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose and shrugged off Avery’s streetwise commentary. He glanced over to his partner before putting his attention back on the very attractive woman standing about fifteen feet from them. The sun-kissed beauty crouched down to pick up the toy a small toddler dropped as he and his mother walked past her. She smiled gently at the little boy before waving goodbye.

Hal smiled too as he let his gaze start at the bottom of those glossy yellow stilettos, then climb ever so slowly up those tapered ankles, up sculpted, well-defined calves, and right over the full swirl of her sundress or whatever they called those little snippets of cloth. God, he loved summer.

“She’s beautiful, ain’t she?” he grunted toward Avery.

The female with the curvaceous body and smooth caramel skin had snared his attention. Could be why he hadn’t seen the skeletal, pale broad struggling to catch his eyes.

At the mere thought of the fine-ass African beauty, Hal’s gaze went directly back to her, the gorgeous woman draped in a canary yellow dress and all soaked in the beautiful day’s rays. Hal understood why the sun seemed so drawn to her. He too felt an urge, a tug so damn strong he fought hard to stop his cock from rising.

“Who the fuck is that?” Avery asked beneath his breath. “Ain’t that some shit?”

Hal shook off his daydreaming in time to see some menacing bastard leering at the dark angel in high heels. Mr. Grabby had his hands all over the woman’s goods, and she didn’t seem to like it none too much. She was trying to slap his hands away, but Mr. Grabby seemed to have grown an extra pair to paw at her.

“We’re going to stand around and watch the show?”

He didn’t answer Avery’s question, just gave him a slight glare.

It didn’t seem right that such a gorgeous day would be ruined by such stupid-ass behavior. Especially directed toward a woman so damn fine. Yeah, they should be waiting on the informant, but hell, this shouldn’t take long. At the very least, he could maybe get the beautiful woman’s telephone number.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” the woman snapped and slapped at the offending man’s outstretched hands.

Hal’s gut clenched hard, and the amused smirk on Avery’s face melted off. Just a few feet from them, the woman in question with the sharp tongue and the husky voice had stiffened. Like a viper, the snake of a man snatched her toward him, even as she recoiled.

“Let go of me!” she shouted, fighting the man’s cruel grip. “Bastard!”

“You little sniveling bitch! I came all the way from
Raleigh
to fucking get you, and you wanna run out on me?” the greasy bastard growled at her. “Shut the fuck up!”

A crimson tint filtered over Hal’s eyes as he moved, charging like a bull toward the target right in front of him. Without having to look or even wait, he knew Avery fell into step behind him. It happened so often that the other knew exactly what his partner thought. At that moment, the only thing that mattered rested within beating-ass length from his clenched fist.

Mine!

That singular thought propelled him the way coal did a steam engine, right up through to the quarreling twosome.

“Who the fuck—” the dirty bastard grunted, swirling around before… Wham!

The bastard bounced across the sidewalk, skipping like discarded trash.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” Hal asked, breathing through his nose to quell the hot, quick anger that burned through him like an inferno. No one—ever—should manhandle a woman, much less such a fine creature as this one.

She turned, and wide, sable eyes rimmed with her own level of pissed-off red met his blue ones. Her full bottom lip quivered, but he understood that tremble came from her annoyance.

“What the hell are you two assholes doing?” she spat out, delicate fists balled up.

“Ma’am, I’m here to help you.” His
Tennessee
drawl slipped into each word. He folded his sunglasses and slipped them into the front V of his shirt. “I’m Detective Stevens, and this here is Detective Lamont. We’re here from the Greensboro Police Department, and I just wanna…”

Hug you tight.

He faltered and coughed to clear the emotions clogging up his throat.

“You just cost me information! Information that could’ve helped me capture a rapist!” she shouted and jerked Hal’s hand off her arm. “I’m Olivia Eaton.”

Hal’s grin tightened across his face, frozen in embarrassment and the urge to kiss her all wrapped up and twisted in his gut.

“Damn, Hal, she’s a superfine male informant, huh?” Avery sniggered and rubbed his bald head. “You gonna pay me now or later?”

“Later,” Hal growled. “Much later, and it won’t be the ten dollars we bet on either. I got ten knuckle sandwiches to feed you.”

Avery roared in laughter.

For weeks Hal had assumed, albeit foolishly, that the informant O. Eaton was male. Every correspondence from them bore the signature of O. Eaton. Hal knew many things, but he damn sure didn’t expect his rendezvous contact on the serial rapist and the criminal ring to be a sexy, saucy, and stiletto-wearing woman.

“Do either of you two know what you’ve just done?” Olivia asked, eyebrows burrowed down in furious anger. Her eyes’ sable-brown roundness seemed to glow in irritation, and for some reason, Hal found it terribly cute.

Chapter
Two

“Where’s that gloating partner of yours?” Olivia asked as she leaned against the hood of a sleek Lexus.

“He’s getting us coffees,” he said. “You ain’t still pissed about that, uh, misunderstanding, are you, sugah?”

She clenched her fist so tight, her knuckles ached. She fought back the urge to punch the handsome white guy square in the face. He’d cost her the only lead she had on the rapist who’d fled
Greensboro
and had taken up residence in Awau, where he’d found protection among the local criminals. To be sure, she didn’t want a group of asshole criminals running loose, and she didn’t know if Tracey would be able to find out a lot more on them. Her private detective BFF could get anyone to talk about anything, but still, Olivia didn’t like her hanging around a bunch of criminals trying to get information. Dangerous shit, and these two idiots just cost her the opportunity to find him.

“Your name again, sugah?” she asked, stressing the “sugah” and making it as vulgar as she could.

“Hal, Hal Stevens,” he replied, frowning at her. “Look, don’t get your panties all twisted and turned, princess. I saw a woman in distress, and I helped. I’m a cop; it’s what I do.”

Olivia released a single breath and pushed herself off the car’s hood. She zeroed in on him, getting in his personal space, her manicured, purple-painted fingernail poking at his rock-solid chest as she spoke.

“It’s what arrogant assholes do when they’re trying to score. Let me tell you, Mr. Hero, you get in my face, you get in my way before I nail these depraved, perverted bastards, and I’ll cut off your balls and stuff them in a jar for safekeeping.”

Hal’s blue eyes narrowed only slightly, but the edges of his deep rose-colored lips twitched at the corners. The fall of ebony hair framed the angular face, and this close, his cologne swept into her nose, making her hot and all too aware of his proximity. Her anger weakened beneath the hot look in his eyes, and Olivia regretted stepping into his personal space. Now he held her fast.

“Your hands on my balls would be a gift, though your mouth would be a hell of a lot better,” he said softly, grabbing her hand and wrapping his own around it. He pulled her closer still and tilted his head downward, as if he meant to kiss her.

God, if he kissed her, Olivia didn’t know if she’d melt under his kissable mouth or kick his ass for trying to seduce her.

“So, don’t toss it out there, sugah, unless you mean to follow through.”

“Let go of me,” she whispered around the desire lodged in her throat. She couldn’t get away fast enough, and yet she couldn’t crawl into his lap soon enough either. The hardness pressing against her belly confessed his hunger to do more than talk.

She wasn’t the only one making threats. He meant his words.

Snatching her hand out of his grasp, she rubbed her shoulders and stumbled back.

“Aye, Hal, got the white chocolate mocha, but they said they were outta soy,” Avery said, slicing through the moment and forcing Hal’s attention to something else. “Here, plain ole shit for you, miss.”

“Thanks,” she snapped, her fury ramped back up, fed by embarrassment and the strange boiling in her stomach. “Anyway, you two aren’t from here, so what do you want?”

“Didn’t you read the e-mails I sent?” Hal asked.

She shrugged. “It seems you two booked one of the lower level drug dealers, a Marcus Poindexter, and while playing let’s make a stupid-ass deal with the Guilford County D.A., Marcus revealed what we here in Awau have already known for months.”

The one called Avery put his hands on his hips and sniggered behind those damn sunglasses. The massive hunk of chocolate man seemed like a delectable treat. “Feisty one, ain’t she?”

“Yep,” Hal replied coolly.

“You didn’t know about the criminal ring that’s harboring a serial rapist, so don’t even try to fake that shit now,” Olivia said, making herself look into Hal’s cool cerulean eyes. She’d never seen eyes that blue and that damn piercing in her life. It reminded her of the water outside of
Jamaica
. So damn blue and clear. He’d suck at undercover work because every emotion he had spun in those brilliant orbs.

And right now, Hal’s emotion seemed locked on one thing—lust.

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Avery snapped, crossing his arms over his wide chest. “You act like we’re a bunch of country bumpkins. We’re city slicks. You the one who’s the civilian.”

“That’s the damn problem,” Olivia said, setting the coffee on the hood of the car. “This ain’t the city. Look around. You don’t have any clue about the reason they chose this town. Women own the majority of real estate and land in this town. You didn’t even think to ask why a bunch of criminals and a rapist would come to a town where women are predominantly in charge? Hell no. You two boys are just chasing your tails.”