Playing Love's Odds (A Classic Sexy Romantic Suspense) (3 page)

The grin she offered him leaned to wry but didn't quite reach her eyes. "Best as in terms of money to be made, or best as in terms of a challenge offered?"

"One tends to balance the other," Logan replied, effecting a casual shrug while wondering which one of them was the better actor after all.

"Well, I'm offering both."

"Sounds intriguing." He arched one brow, hoping against hope he looked suitably intrigued rather than antsy which, according to the resident army firing salvos in his gut, was exactly how he looked.

Why was she here? What could she possibly want? And did he really want to know?

Hannah leaned back in her chair. "Then where do we start? The payoff or the hunt?"

He lifted his feet from his desk and planted them hard on the floor. With his knees spread, he swiveled side to side and stared at her, looking for a sign of recognition. Finding none, he decided the best course of action would be to play the game her way.

The more he thought about her request the more complicated it became. If he hadn't known better, he would've figured she'd imagined being followed. Ninety-five percent of his cases turned out that way.

The problem was he did know better, the irony being that he was why she was here—in more ways than one. And the fact that she saw him as the solution, when he was in reality the problem, was more than his mind could assimilate.

Especially when she kept swinging that leg, drawing his attention to the way her skirt rode higher and higher on her thigh. At the moment, he was too itchy to do any assimilating at all.

He took a different tack and only had to clear his throat once to ask, "How do you know Julian?"

"I used to work for him at Vandale Chemical."

Facing forward, he propped his elbows on the desk. "Used to? Past tense?"

She nodded, the quick move shaking loose a tendril of her sleek hair. "I've been working for ViOPet for the last six months."

"Why'd you leave Vandale?"

She met his gaze directly. "Does it matter?"

"It might."

"The reason I left Vandale has nothing to do with why I'm here."

Then what were you doing with him at that restaurant? And what the hell was on the papers you gave him?
"Why, exactly, are you here?"

"I told you. I'm being followed. I want you to find out who and why."

"Easier said than done." Not to mention being a conflict of interest, Logan thought to himself.

She frowned. "I thought this was what you did for a living. Julian highly recommends you. In fact, he said you're the best."

"I do and I am." Logan tapped his chin with both index fingers. One corner of his mouth curled drolly. "Most cases are easier said than done."

"Just your standard comeback to throw off the faint of heart?"

Logan shrugged. "Something like that."

"Believe me, Mr. Burke, I'm not fainthearted. What I am is determined to see this through. With or without your help."

"Then let's get one thing straight up front. If I take your case, I call the shots. Every last one of them." He paused to gauge her reaction. "Too often it's my ass that ends up on the line. And I'm awfully fond of my ass."

Hannah tucked her hair behind her ear and gave a consenting nod. "Fine. I have no problem with that."

Logan extended his legs under the desk, feeling the crinkle of Harrington's check in his pocket—an all too real reminder of exactly who was sitting across from him. He didn't like this situation. Didn't like it at all.

And suddenly he didn't know how much of the information he'd given Harrington he believed to be the truth. "What makes you think you're being followed?"

"Think?" she asked, rising from the chair to pace the room in a sudden gust of fury. "Why do you assume this is all in my head? Why not take my word for it?"

Logan watched her walk the length of the office and back. "My assumption is based on experience. Too often this type of case is the product of a wild imagination. Or the result of something so simple the obvious has been overlooked."

Hannah stopped behind the seat she'd vacated. Her crimson nails digging crescents into the cushioned chair back, she snapped, "You sound just like Julian."

Man, he loved a fiery woman. One who knew how to burn him up. Too bad this one wasn't his type. She was wrapped just a little too classy, a little too cosmopolitan, and her nose rode a little too high in the air for his taste.

Not to mention he had no business taking this association any further than this case, not if he valued his hide. He crossed his arms over his chest. "What does Vandale have to do with the trouble you're having?"

"Nothing other than after talking to you both, it seems you've taken macho lessons from one another," she hurled back.

He had to give her credit. She could give as good as she got. "But you have talked to him about your suspicions."

Hannah's eyes flashed. "Yes."

"Then your relationship with him is more personal than business."

Her stare was enough to quell the most curious of cats. "My relationship with Julian is not under inspection here. I knew he'd used an investigator to try and locate his daughter. I also knew I could rely on his advice."

"And what did he suggest?"

"That I call you. Advice I'm quickly coming to regret."

Growing tired of the game, Logan leaned his forearms on the edge of his desk and peered intently at Hannah. He knew when they got down to business he'd be toeing a fine, if not outright dangerous, line. "You can leave any time you want."

He spoke the words with an untold measure of self-discipline as his internal battle raged. Logan Burke, the private investigator, wanted her out of his office. Logan Burke, the man, wanted her to stay.

Hannah collapsed into the chair. She sat with her eyes closed, those dazzling, gorgeous eyes, and a guilty fist of remorse tightened around Logan's throat. For Hannah, this was no game. She felt justifiably threatened. But he could hardly reassure her without implicating himself.

And even though it wasn't his place to do it, putting a little fear into her would give her a chance to reconsider whatever it was she was planning. White collar crime tended to be more costly than the participants ever imagined. That fact he knew too well.

He dragged his hand down two days worth of five o'clock shadow and sighed. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"

She opened her eyes, only to stare over his head with blank exhaustion. He forced himself to harden his heart. He'd captured her supposed betrayal with his own camera lens and printed the results in bold black and white. If those results were accurate, he wasn't about to play patsy in whatever scam she was pulling on ViOPet.

"Miss Evans?"

Hannah's gaze returned to his. She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue and took a deep breath. "About a month ago, I came across something at work I wasn't meant to see."

Well, at least she had the guts to start off on a foot of truth. "What was it?"

"Until I hire you, Mr. Burke, there are some things I'll consider privileged."

Logan nodded. "Go on."

"I kept it to myself, thinking I'd been mistaken, or that there had to be a logical explanation for what I'd found. Later I went back to double check, which was probably my undoing." She picked at a loose thread on the chair arm, and whether her performance was an act or not, Logan found his resolve coming just as easily undone. "Being in the wrong place at the wrong time once? Sure, but a second slip up wasn't as easily explained away."

"You were discovered?"

"Why else would someone follow me?"

"You tell me."

Hannah crossed and recrossed her legs. "I thought we'd been through this before."

"I have to cover all bases, Miss Evans. If you're certain there's no other reason behind what you suspect, then for now, we'll assume the two incidents are related."

Hannah smiled sweetly. Too sweetly. Not waiting for the dressing down sure to come, Logan hurried on to ask, "Do you have any specifics about your tail?"

"Excuse me?"

"The person following you. Do you have pictures, a plate number, anything distinguishing?" Logan held his breath.

"At first it was more of a feeling than anything."

"That famed woman's intuition?"

She focused on him then, really focused, and seemed for the first time since he'd walked into the office to relax. "I guess so. Ranks right up there with the dreaded prerogative," she said, a wisp of a laugh escaping her throat.

"And what did your intuition tell you?"

"That someone was watching me."

"Not one of your usual admirers?"

"Definitely not," Hannah agreed.

"Then you never saw the person you suspect." Logan kept his voice steady, the tone impersonal, but still his fingernails bit into the chipped wood of his desk as he waited ... and waited.

"Not exactly."

What the hell does that mean?
he inwardly shouted but asked instead, "What, exactly, did you see?"

Hannah took an introspective pause and frowned as she thought. "Definitely male from the shape of the head and the cut of the hair."

"Color?" Logan dared to ask.

"A dirty blond from best I could tell."

Well, lady, yours wouldn't be so clean either if you'd sat and sweated your backside off for hours on end.
At least he'd had his hair whacked off just above his shoulders since then. He shook his head, the dark blond strands brushing his neck, looking for any sign of familiarity in her eyes. When she gave none he continued. "No other distinguishing items?"

"No. Just the car."

The words dropped in his lap with the finality of a death sentence. His. He pictured his cherry red Mustang parked out front next to her banana. What had happened to that tank she'd been driving for the past month? And why hadn't he parked around back as usual?

Big mistake, Burke. Big mistake. You couldn't take an extra minute to drive around the side of the building because you were too busy thinking of pleasure instead of business. When are you gonna learn that pleasure for you is a non-commodity?

Tension thrummed through his veins, twanging each nerve like a steel guitar. He came to his feet. "I'm starved. You like seafood?"

Hannah's gaze shot to his. She stared like she questioned his sanity. He questioned it himself. By weaseling his way out of this trap he was undoubtedly falling into a bigger one.

"Seafood?" she finally asked.

"Yeah. Shrimp, crab, lobster. Big steak fries and coleslaw dripping in dressing."

Hannah closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples in small, circular, analgesic motions. "Mr. Burke," she began with the exaggerated patience his mother had been forced to use on more than one occasion. "Do you always conduct interviews in such a slapdash manner?"

Logan perched one hip on the edge of his desk and grinned. "Only at five-thirty on a Friday night when all I've put in my stomach since I crawled out of bed is a bowl of stale Cap'n Crunch."

Hannah's eyes gravitated to his stomach and a smile played across her lips. Her stomach growled. She raised her head, her face a grimace of embarrassment. "Maybe I'd best be going so you can get dinner. I'll make an appointment with your secretary on my way out." She uncrossed her legs and stood in one fluid motion. "I'm sorry to have dropped by without having called."

"No, wait." As she turned to walk out of his life, Logan hopped off the desk and reached out his hand. She paused. He jammed his fist deep in his pocket where it closed around the check he was coming to despise.

He didn't want to be reminded of who she was or what she was doing. He was beginning feel an itch of intrigue—not sparked by the case but by the spirit of the woman herself.

"Yes?" she questioned, a sad smile on her lips and a wealth of tired ringed in dark circles under her eyes.

Logan felt like a heel of the worst kind. He'd put those circles there. The least he could do was try to take them away. "I'll buy the dinner and the gas if you'll drive."

She shook her head. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

She turned again and this time he touched her. Only on the shoulder and only for half a second. It was enough. She stopped, closer now that he stood behind her, close enough for him to catch a whiff of her hair as it floated when she pivoted to face him. Coconut. Paradise.

"Why's that?" he asked, his voice unusually husky.

"We don't know each other at all, Mr. Burke." Her gaze spanned his length once, twice, as if she found him too wrinkled the first time. "I doubt we'd have much to talk about. And I'm afraid I wouldn't make much of a dinner companion this evening."

He shrugged. "Variety makes the world go 'round."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "The spice of life."

"So I'm not too good with words. I make up for it by sniffing out the best food around. How 'bout it?" He waited a minute and watched her hunger fight with her better judgment, the battle a clash of colors in her eyes. "Help me out here. We'll finish this interview over food and drinks so I can take it off my taxes."

He knew the minute hunger won, but still her better judgment wanted to go another round. She asked, a bit suspiciously, "Why do I have to drive?"

"My T-bird's up on blocks." Not a lie, merely an evasion. His T-bird was up on blocks. "Besides, I've never ridden in a banana."

She propped one hand on her hip and lifted her chin one uppity notch. "Excuse me? A banana?"

Her words reeked with such an air of hoity-toity that Logan couldn't help himself. "It's either that or bad taste."

Her gaze sluiced over him again. "That coming from a man who looks like the inside of a laundry hamper?"

Logan made a quick check of his appearance and shrugged. "Hey, I was in a hurry."

"And what does that say about your taste?"

She threw his words back as carelessly as he'd tossed them, but suddenly the game lost its appeal. He should've seen it coming. He should've been able to take one look at her head-to-toe class and know she'd judge him accordingly. He'd wanted her to be different, to have a depth above shallow, and the ensuing disappointment rankled.