Sex & Sensibility (8 page)

“It’s a skirt, obviously. Suede. I thought the fringe was cool. When I saw it at this secondhand shop I go to on P—”

“That isn’t a skirt, that’s a frigging Band-Aid! What are you trying to do? Turn this into a circus?”

“Oh, great.” She tugged on the skirt and fastened the seat belt as he fired up the engine with a roar and wheeled out into the long driveway. “A zillion cops in the world and I get the one who’s a father figure in training.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Good thing she’d been hanging on to the armrest. If she hadn’t, she might have bumped her head on the window as he took the first curve in the drive.

“That’s the kind of thing dads say,” she replied. “Well, not my dad. He’s a ‘live and let live’ kind of guy. But most dads—Jay Singleton, for instance—would certainly say something like that.”

“I am not a father figure!” he snapped. He gave the brakes a nominal tap and turned onto the main road.

“You don’t have to get grouchy about it.”

“I don’t like being slotted into a role that has nothing to do with how I really am.”

“Like what you’ve been doing to me this whole time? Gosh, I’m so sorry.”

That stopped him. She probably sounded like a petulant teenager herself, but she couldn’t help it. He may look like a beat-up warrior, but all this distrust and authority-figure stuff just rubbed her the wrong way. And when that happened, her filters went down and she said what she thought without considering anybody else’s feelings.

“Besides, I wear what I want. Just because a woman
wears something that’s fun and makes her feel sexy doesn’t mean it’s going to turn into a circus. Like men are going to lose control when they see it. I have more confidence in guys than that.”

He just snorted and didn’t reply until they were out on the highway. This beat-up old truck had one heck of an engine, and it was obviously in perfect running order. She couldn’t see the speedometer, but they had to be doing nearly eighty.

“You’re right,” he said abruptly five or six miles later.

“What, about guys losing control at the sight of my skirt?”

“No. About what I’m doing. You said you weren’t involved in that street fair episode and I didn’t believe you.”

“What did you think I’d done?”

He kept his eagle eye on the road, but his tone had lost the edge it usually had when he spoke to her. “There was a ring of small-time cons and scammers using the fair as a front for fraud.”

She sat back. “Wow. No kidding.”

“Turns out it was all the people selling herbal remedies in a cooperative. One of them said that you and the woman in the booth next to you were in on it, so I hauled you all in.” He glanced at her. “You make an enemy there or something?”

She shrugged. “No idea. I got one of the better booths as far as placement goes, though. Maybe somebody got angry about it.”

“Anyway, that’s the story. Fraud is one of my hot buttons, and having you involved then and now just bent me out of shape.”

Tessa’s mind flashed to the first impression she’d received of him. She’d resolved not to bring it up again, but
it had to be said. “It has something to do with your mom, doesn’t it?”

He threw her a glance, then returned his gaze to the highway. They were nearly to the Santa Rita exit. “Keep that up and I’ll start to believe you know what you’re doing.”

“Keep this up and you won’t have to apologize for the circus remark.”

The corners of his mouth twitched, and then he sobered. “My mom’s getting old and she lives on her own. She’s pretty sharp, but women in that age group are targets for a certain kind of character. When I was still with the P.D. she hired this handyman to do some stuff around the house. He came off as Mr. Trustworthy and soon he was giving her financial advice and before I knew what was going on, he’d talked her into giving him access to her accounts. I think he even had her convinced they were going to get married. Anyhow, she dropped something in conversation one day and I made it to the bank just in time. He was in the process of cleaning out her savings account, after he’d used her checking account to buy a one-way ticket to Guatemala, where he was from.”

“Oh, no.” Tessa couldn’t imagine how he must have felt. Or what his mother had gone through. “So you got him?”

“Got him, booked him, now he’s doing time. She wasn’t his first victim, and when he gets out she probably won’t be his last.” He swung the truck onto the off-ramp. “I hate it that she nearly lost everything she’d worked for her whole life. But what I hate more is that she lost her faith in people. He stole part of my mom that won’t come back, and that’s what burns me the most.”

He took a westbound street that would take them to the waterfront.

“I think she’s lucky to have you,” Tessa said. “You saved her from a lot of misery.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Grouch he might be. Authority figure—yeah, that, too. But Tessa couldn’t fault him for caring about his mom, as she did hers.

If nothing else, at least they had that in common.

T
HE BOUNCER
at the door went by the name of Olie and looked like an ex-WWF wrestler or maybe a runaway extra from a Viking epic. He took the picture of Christina and studied it by the light over the nondescript door on which
Atlantis
was stenciled in black paint.

“Nope. Never seen her before. Brunettes are my thing. I’d have remembered her.”

“How many guys does the club have on the door?” Griffin asked.

“Six of us. Two on weeknights, four on weekends, when the bar gets covered, too. Eight-hour shift and free drinks. Not a bad gig. I’m going to cooking school in the daytime so I needed an evening job.”

Griffin wondered if he gave out this much personal information to everyone. No matter. It beat the hell out of a long, frustrating attempt at interrogation.

“Where’s the other bouncer? I’d like to show this to him, too.”

“John’s probably inside.”

They found John talking with the bartender, but like Olie, neither of them could remember seeing Christina before. And the manager was no help, either.

“Are you a cop?” he asked from behind the desk in an office that looked like the inside of an aluminum trash
can, all smooth metallics and black-on-silver design. “Got a warrant?”

“No and no,” Griffin said. What a jerk. Clearly, he didn’t know it took more than a soul patch to make him cool. “I just need to talk to your weekend bouncers. I’m a private investigator working on a missing persons case.”

“You’ll have to come back Saturday, then,” the manager said. “I ain’t giving out the names and numbers of my people. That’s confidential.”

“A girl’s life may be in danger,” Tessa put in quietly. “We need to talk to them. Tonight, if possible.”

“That ain’t my lookout.” He shook his head. “My people are my lookout. Come back Saturday.”

He waved them out the door and that was that. Tessa glanced at Griffin as they walked down the stairs, but he was busy trying to control the urge to walk back in there and choke a few names out of the guy.

When they pushed open the doors, they saw the club had begun to fill up and the music and light show had reached titanic proportions. Tessa had to shout to make herself heard.

“Now what?”

“Fall back to Plan B,” he said. “We’ll cruise around and see what you can pick up.”

The suede fringe on Tessa’s skirt swung as she crossed the dance floor and began to make a slow circuit of the room. Griffin found his anxiety and frustration fading as he followed her. He had no idea what to expect. A trance, such as she’d gone into earlier? Some kind of information flow like that of a Geiger counter? That was too far out of his league. He was better at close observation, and as they pushed through the crowd, the music reverberating around them, he found himself unable to do anything else.

It was no hardship to observe Tessa and her curvy little rear end wrapped in soft suede. The fringe brushed against her thighs, parting and falling together again every time she took a step. It was hypnotic, almost. Parting and falling. Parting and falling.

What’s the matter with you?

Just because it wasn’t a hardship to look at her didn’t mean she was suddenly interesting to him in a sexual way. Not at all.

Just because she seemed to know what she was doing and might actually be able to help him didn’t mean they were in some kind of partnership. Wrong. He was a glorified babysitter. Or, as she’d said herself, a recording secretary.

He dragged his gaze off her legs and the fringe and fixed it on the back of her neck as he trailed behind her. There was no particular method in her movements. She’d pause by a table or a stool, wait for a moment, then move on and touch a mirror or a string of glass bubbles suspended in the air. There were no fake fishing nets and naked mermaids at the Atlantis. It was all about glass and transparency and the way light broke in wavy patterns on people’s faces as they danced.

Flakes of light glimmered in Tessa’s hair as she bent her head to consider the railing of a circular staircase that led to the loft, where there seemed to be a restaurant. The light moved like a sprinkling of fairy dust on the back of her neck, which was exposed by the blunt cut of her hair as it fell forward.

He’d never realized before how vulnerable a woman’s nape was. How slender yet strong it looked. Maybe it was the contrast of soft skin against the hard transparency of the glass and the bubbles and the Lucite treads of the stairs. Or maybe it was just Tessa.

He and his bad attitude had hurt her feelings a dozen times since she’d arrived this afternoon. He’d bullied and blustered in the very best Singleton tradition, and she’d done nothing but straighten her spine and force him to focus on Christina. She’d held to her job description when he’d been busy resenting the fact that she’d even been given a job.

If they were going to be successful, he was going to have to start over with her somehow. If she’d let him.

He took a breath to say something along that line, when she turned. “I’m not getting anything,” she said. “Sorry about that. I really thought I could.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The music segued from a brisk salsa number into something he actually recognized. “Smooth,” by Santana and Rob Thomas. “We can head out if you—”

But she was no longer listening to him. She’d whirled away onto the dance floor, her body pulsing as her feet moved with the salsa step. She lifted her arms above her head, giving herself up to the beat, her hips describing circles that only a guy made of solid rock wouldn’t recognize as the movements of a woman in the throes of sex.

Two men materialized out of thin air to dance with her, and she turned to face them both, laughing.

So smooth. She’d said that earlier. Did the song have some kind of effect on her because of Christina? Did he care? No, what he cared about right now was getting her out of the grip of Nitwit Number 1, who seemed determined to pantomime orgasm with her plastered up against him.

He grabbed the guy by the arm and told him where to go.

“Take it easy, man,” he said resentfully, brushing his sleeve back into place. “It’s just a dance.”

“Yeah, well, she’s with me.”

They faded into the crowd and there was Tessa, doing the shimmy right in front of him. “Dance with me.”

“I think we should go.”

“This is it,” she said, and danced around him. “This is their song.”

His brain had a split second to absorb the words before he found himself attempting to mimic her steps, something he generally avoided like wasps’ nests and crack houses.

“Like this,” Tessa said, and grabbed the waistband of his jeans on either side. “Move your feet like mine. One-two-three. One-two-three.”

Was that all there was to it? Or was it the fact that she was plastered up against him and her thighs guided his in the beat while her breasts brushed his chest? His brain lost the ability to focus on anything else but Tessa’s body and the sinuous way she moved, as though the music had wound itself inside her and was pulsing through her body and into his.

“This song was playing when they were here.” She did a slow revolution with her arms raised and her suede-covered derriere brushed the front of his pants. Griffin swallowed and hoped no one could see his erection in the crowd.

“He made his decision while they danced,” she said when she was facing him once more.

“What decision?”

“I don’t know. Just a decision.”

“And who is
he?
”

“Don’t know that either. But someone mature. I thought before that her boyfriend isn’t someone her age. He’s definitely older.”

“How much older?”

“It’s hard to tell. Fifteen years, maybe? Twenty?”

“Good God.”

“Someone old enough to know better, anyway. He could still be the kidnapper, but I’m beginning to doubt it.”

Talking was good. Talking kept him from thinking about her body and what it was doing to his. “We’ve got to find him. We’ve got no choice but to come back here Saturday night and talk to the other bouncers.”

“Anything could happen by Saturday night.”

“Let’s hope not.”

“So what now?” She swayed gently against him in time with the music, her fingers again hooked in his belt loops. Griffin wasn’t sure which would be worse—holding her this close or doing the professional thing and stepping away. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done something—like this, for instance—for the pure pleasure of it. But how could he step away from a woman who made his blood dance with the same dark, insistent beat as the music?

But he had a feeling that if a man got involved with Tessa Nichols, “normal” might be something he’d have to kiss goodbye for good.

No way was he getting involved. He dragged his mind off the woman and onto the question she’d asked. “We might as well head back. Unless you want to hang around and listen for more music, there’s nothing else we can do here.”

“We could dance.” She grinned up at him and tugged on either side of his waistband, as if to show him how to swivel his hips.

He could show her some hip action, all right. It just wouldn’t be here.

Or anywhere. She’s not your kind of woman, Knox.

“Stay if you want,” he said gruffly, to cover up the fact that his body would be only too happy to follow her teasing lead. “Take a cab home and Jay will pick up the tab. I’m heading out.”

“All right, all right. It was just a suggestion.” She followed him out of the club and down the street to where he’d parked the truck. The wind off the harbor crept under his jacket and chilled him. It had been damned hot in there. Hot music, hot atmosphere…and a very hot woman.

He had to stop this. Had to stop thinking of her in those terms.

Unlike the trip out, where she’d extracted more information than he’d revealed to anyone but the staff therapist at the Santa Rita P.D. after the shooting, Tessa was quiet on the trip home. He was almost afraid to start up a conversation in case she weaseled her way into his head again and started on some other forbidden topic, like his ex-wife. And then there was the damn skirt, with its fringe falling open on either side of her thighs and revealing about a mile of soft, bare skin and slender leg.

Griffin felt almost relieved as they turned into the driveway and approached the dark bulk of the house. He had to get out of the enclosed space of the cab before he did something he would regret, like reach out and touch her. He couldn’t wait to get home, where everything was normal and no visions of Tessa would intrude.

The house wasn’t as dark as he’d thought. “Looks like Jay’s still up,” he observed, turning off the engine and climbing out.

Jay was not only up, he was waiting for them. “Well?” He came out of his office as they crossed the entry hall. “What did you find out?”

“Not a lot,” Griffin confessed. “The two guys on the door didn’t recognize Christina’s picture, and the other four won’t come on duty until the weekend. We’ll have to go back.” He added, “The manager wouldn’t give us their names or numbers, so we didn’t have a lot of choice.”

“Did you explain to him that this could be a matter of life and death?”

“Yes, without going into details that might pin down whose life we’re talking about,” Tessa said. “It didn’t do any good. I did get a faint reading there, though. Enough to tell me that the person whose attention she was trying to get really is an older man. Maybe twenty years older.”

“What?” Jay’s face was a mix of horror and confusion. “Who?”

“We don’t know yet,” she said. “But give me time.”

“We may not have time!”

“If you’d let me bring in the P.D. we might—” Griffin began, but Jay cut him off.

“I already said no. We’ll do the best we can.”

Griffin bit back an angry retort that would have included something about rope and tied hands. “I’m out of here, then,” he said instead. “See you in the morning.”

“What, already?” Jay glanced at his Rolex. “It’s not even eleven.”

“I’m sure Tessa could use some sleep,” he said. “It’s been a long day.”

“I don’t know about that.” Tessa stretched like a cat and Griffin swallowed and looked away. “I’m still wired from dancing.” She dropped her arms. “Hey, I know. Why don’t you come out to the cottage and we’ll go through her music collection. Music is obviously a big deal to her. I bet she’s got Santana’s
Supernatural
and if she does, maybe I get can something from it.”

“Good idea.” Jay sat behind the desk and settled in front of the computer as though he meant to work into the night. “Whatever the hell
Supernatural
is. It’s appropriate, if you ask me.”

Griffin closed his eyes briefly and resigned himself to yet more efforts at control. Tessa in a suede miniskirt. Tessa dancing. Now Tessa in the cottage alone with him, in the miniskirt, probably dancing.

Supernatural, for sure.