Sleepless in Las Vegas (19 page)

* * *

V
AL
SMOOTHED
THE
back of her dress and sat. As she reached for the tissue box, she felt something wet and cool against her arm.

She looked down. Hearsay, sitting on the floor next to her, nuzzled her. Dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, she petted his head with her other hand.

“The loss of civility in our society is downright alarming.” She tossed the tissue into the trash.

Drake rounded the corner like a big, dark cloud and halted, glaring at her.

Hearsay’s tail thumped against the floor, but he didn’t move. Stayed right by her side. A true gentleman.

Drake glanced at Hearsay, then met Val’s eyes. She put on her best stoic face, even as she felt a last stray tear slide down her cheek.

“I don’t get off on making women cry,” he growled.

“I am
not
crying.” She turned away slightly to swipe that traitor off her cheek.

“I said those things because you need to learn your boundaries.”

“Well,” she said, scratching Hearsay behind the ear, “if anybody can teach others how to do that, it’s certainly you.”

He stared at her so long she figured he was finally ready to hear her side. And if he wasn’t, too bad. “That manager—Miss Doyle—sent the retainer by PayPal without my knowledge.”

The day caught up with her, weighed her down emotionally and physically. She was too tired to get indignant about his accusations, or care much about anything else for that matter.

“She paid one
thousand
dollars. I haven’t been to the PayPal account, so I can’t verify the amount, although who cares—the point is I need to refund it. I called Jayne for the password, so I’ll take care of that now, then I’ll leave a message for Miss Doyle that we’re not accepting the case.”

“I’m sorry for saying I would have fired you.”

“That Charlie’s Angel crack was also pretty low.”

“I apologize for that, too.”

She almost felt sympathy for him. But there was too much hurt in the way.

“If you didn’t think I was crying, would you have said you were sorry? Because if that’s what it takes to get your attention, there’s no reason for us to continue mentoring. You can stay in your man-cave office, or if that’s too close for comfort, stay at Sally’s or wherever you’re living these days.”

He gave her a puzzled look. “I’m not living with Sally.”

Relief rippled through her, which irked. This wasn’t the time to get all distracted about his living arrangements, or notice how, when he got that puzzled expression, he looked a little shy and sweet. This was about standing up for herself, not putting up with jerks.

He pressed a finger against his mouth, dragged it to his chin. “Whether or not you were crying, I would not have fired you,” he finally said, “and I’m still your mentor. If you want me to be.”

She closed her eyes and caught the sweet scent of the roses, thought about the approving, happy look on his face when he had handed them to her. This man was making her crazier than a loon. One minute he exhilarated her, challenged her to do things like trash hits, the next it was all she could do to refrain from smacking some sense into him.

And when she wasn’t wrestling with those feelings, she wanted to touch him, kiss him, crawl all over him….

“Yes,” she murmured, “I want you to be my mentor.”

He crossed his arms, turning serious. “Now that that’s settled, we need to cover an important point.”

She liked it better when he was puzzled and apologetic.

“As an intern, you should not be negotiating payments with clients or accepting payments. I know you did neither with Miss Doyle, but I’m your mentor and you need to understand this. In the eyes of the law, your seeming acceptance of money from a client, such as a PayPal transaction, creates a
contract
for those services. As an unlicensed P.I., you have no authority from your agency, or from me, to accept new business and funds. If Miss Doyle’s retainer, based on her telephone conversation with you, was reported to the state private-investigations commission, they could bar you from
ever
receiving your license. Next time a client pressures you to take a retainer, call me.”

“I will. And while we’re getting along like wet on water, I would like to offer a perspective.”

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded his go-ahead.

“Diamond Investigations has no new cases, which means no money coming in. It appears to be the same for you. Jayne has backup resources, but still, wouldn’t it be handy to accept this case—not to
chase ghosts,
but to
gather evidence
—and put some money in the bank? I figure Drake Morgan and Diamond Investigations could split the payment fifty-fifty.”

He stared at her for a long, drawn-out minute. “Some new cases coming in would be helpful.”

“Indeed they would be.” She stroked Hearsay’s head and smiled pleasantly at Drake, who gave her one of those soft looks that made it difficult for her to remember how to breathe.

“I need to leave the office,” he finally said, “pick up a few things. Jayne left a doggie bed in my office, so I’ll leave Hearsay there.” He lightly snapped his fingers. “C’mon, buddy, let’s go check out your new bed.”

Hearsay’s ear lifted slightly, but otherwise he didn’t budge.

“Hearsay,” Drake commanded, “let’s go.”

The dog stared at him as though to say, “Hey, what’s the rush? It’s nice here.”

“Want to drag that bed out here?” Val offered. “We can lay it right here next to me, and I promise I will take real good care of him.”

Drake looked at his dog, back to Val. “He’d probably like the company.”

“That makes two of us. When I leave, I’ll open the connecting door so he can go back and forth.”

He stared at her intently, scrubbing a knuckle lazily across his chin. “Would you like to go to dinner at my family’s tomorrow night?”

Well, fry me in butter and call me a catfish.
She hadn’t expected that invitation out of the blue. “Just ‘cause I’m babysitting your dog, you don’t need to pay me back.”

“My mother invited you.”

“You talked about me with your mama?”

“No.” He gave his chin another knuckle scrub. “She asked if I was here alone, and I said there was an intern.” He shrugged as though the rest was understood. “She’s making meat loaf. Her specialty.”

“Well, now, I don’t want to disappoint your mama, so yes, I’d be pleased to have dinner with your family.”

“I, uh, told her you were a vegetarian, so she’ll also be making cheese enchiladas.”

She had no idea how to respond to that, so she let it go. They were getting along, his mama apparently wanted to get to know her, and cheese enchiladas were nice.

He scratched his eyebrow. “I also told her…actually she assumed…that you’re a man.”

Val wasn’t sure what surprised her more at this point—her conversion to vegetarianism, her new gender or the color creeping up his tan throat.

“Not that it matters…of course, she’ll see you’re not a man.”

“Have mercy,” she whispered, “I hope so.”

“That didn’t sound good. It’s not that you look anything like a man—or that I even think of you that way—in fact, you look…”

That color creeping up his neck was darn near rushing now, flooding his face with red. Plus, the way he was pacing and flicking awkward, heated looks her way, she’d say the man was hotter than a goat’s butt in a pepper patch.

“Mind driving?”

“We might smell like the city dump when we get to your house.”

“Val,” he said chidingly, “keep the AC on when you drive, roll down the windows and the trash smell will be gone by then, I promise you. Told her we’d be there by six, so let’s leave here around five-thirty.”

Here.
“You want me to drive to Diamond Investigations to pick you up tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Thought I’d come in, take care of some insurance paperwork.”

“F’sure, I’ll be here.”

A few minutes later, Val watched Drake as he walked toward the parking lot, her gaze slipping down those broad shoulders, over his brawny back, down to the snug fit of those jeans around his buns. The man was built like a machine. All steel, no flab.

Her gaze traveled up to his bristly head. She had his body figured out, but whatever went on in that brain was a mystery.

Through the far window, she watched him hop into his pickup and a second later cruise out of the parking lot.

Take out the part about his mama thinking she was a man, and the fact Val was doing all the picking up and dropping off tomorrow, a girl might almost think she’d just been asked out.

CHAPTER TEN

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
, Saturday, Val started getting ready for that night’s supper at noon. After she tried on half a dozen dresses and modeled them for Jaz and Char, the group consensus was the vintage black-and-white polka-dot dress with a white satin sash.

Afterward, she joined Jaz to watch
Chinatown,
a ‘70s film noir about a private eye investigating an adultery case who stumbles upon a murder, gets his nose sliced open and discovers the dark, sordid family secret that forever ruined the love of his life.

After that, Val decided to head in to work, where private eyes led much calmer lives. For the most part.

As she walked into Diamond Investigations, the grandfather clock was chiming four. To her surprise, Hearsay ran up to greet her, his tail wagging.

“Hey, there, sweet thang, is your daddy home?”

She headed down the hallway with Hearsay trotting next to her. The connecting door was open, but no lights were on in his office.

She liked the open door, but it didn’t seem like Drake to leave it this way. Did he forget to close it—or could it be possible the man was starting to let down his guard and let her inside? His office, of course.

“Drake, you there?” she called.

Silence.

She craned her neck and peered through the window that offered a view of his parking space. No pickup.

“Well, sugar,” she said to Hearsay, “looks like we’re on our own.”

A few minutes later, he had settled on the bed, still next to her desk, where he gnawed on a chicken squeaky toy, which from the bright color and lack of missing parts appeared to be new.

Val watered the plant in Jayne’s office, checked the fish, then called the repair shop and learned her Toyota would be ready by Wednesday. The incessant squeak-squeak-squeak of Hearsay’s toy was a bit unnerving, but she figured either she’d grow used to it, the dog would fall asleep, or she’d bribe it away from him.

After that, she was sliding several manuals on private investigations into the bookcase when she accidentally bumped against the case. The figurine of two birds toppled from the top shelf, bounced off her shoulder and would have smashed onto the floor if she hadn’t miraculously caught it.

Her heart pounding, she held the crystal object in her trembling hands while catching her breath. Hearsay, alerted to the near emergency, abandoned the rubber chicken and stood next to her, his ears perked.

“This needs to be in a safer place,” she said to him.

After carefully setting it on her desk next to the fragrant roses, which smelled even sweeter than yesterday, Val watched Hearsay return to his bed and the chicken. She then focused her attention on the crystal birds and thought about Jayne. After getting all emotional on yesterday’s call, maybe it would reassure her boss if Val dropped her an email, told her everything was going well.

Moments later, she was tapping on the keyboard.

Hi, Jayne,

It was great talking to you yesterday. Wanted you to know everything’s going well at Diamond Investigations.

She hesitated, wondering if she should share her first investigative victory about finding the cigarette butt. No, Jayne needed to think about happy, positive things, not her P.I. intern wading through filth.

Drake likes the back office, and we’ve already had several mentoring sessions.

That sounded good.

I hope you’re doing well. I think about you often, and look forward to your being back at Diamond Investigations.

She felt a stab of sadness. Last night, Val had looked up the life expectancy for liver cancer, as Jayne had said the cancer had spread to that organ. In advanced stages, the prognosis was several months, but Jayne’s cancer wasn’t that severe. Plus, it gave Val hope when she read how surgery could sometimes remove the cancer altogether from the liver. Of course, there was also the Hodgkin’s disease, but from everything Val had researched, its survival rate could be years, sometimes decades.

If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to call.

Side note: I’m working on slowing down that impetuous streak.

Sincerely yours, Val

She stared at her message for a moment, then went back and hit the backspace over her sign-off, and instead typed,

Love, Val

After that, she played with a new motion-detector video app on her smartphone, which was pretty cool. Whenever it perceived movement, the video-audio recorder turned on, continuing until the motion stopped.

The squeaks had grown few and far between as Hearsay grew sleepy. Last she looked over, he’d nodded off, the chicken in his mouth.

She was adjusting a setting on the app when Hearsay suddenly sat up and woofed. Looking up, she saw a familiar form heading her way.

Marta.

Val’s nerves started working overtime. The woman was linked to the arson. Did she know Drake had the back office? Didn’t make sense, and yet, why was she here?