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SUSAN ANDERSEN!

“This start of Andersen’s new series has fun and interesting characters, solid action and a hot and sexy romance…. The introduction of the heroines of the future stories whets the appetite for more.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Cutting Loose

“Snappy and sexy…. Upbeat and fun, with a touch of danger and passion, this is a great summer read.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews on Coming Undone

“Deft characters, smart dialogue, laugh-out-loud moments and sizzling sexual tension (you might want to read Chapter 15 twice) make this hard to put down…. Lovers of romance, passion and laughs should go all in for this one.”

—Publishers Weekly on Just for Kicks

“Andersen again injects magic into a story that would be clichéd in another’s hands, delivering warm, vulnerable characters in a touching yet suspenseful read.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Skintight

“A classic plot line receives a fresh, fun treatment…well-developed secondary characters add depth to this zesty novel, placing it a level beyond most of its competition.”

—Publishers Weekly on Hot & Bothered

“Sassy, snappy and sizzling hot!”

—New York Times bestselling author Janet Evanovich on Baby, I’m Yours

“Lively and fun!”

—New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips on Be My Baby

“Sizzling, snappy, sexy fun.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Crusie on Baby, Don’t Go

Dear Reader,

I’m often asked which of my books I like best. It’s a question I can only shrug at and reply that’s like trying to choose your favorite kid. Each book owns a chunk of me, and I love them all equally.

That’s the Scout’s-honor truth…as far as the big picture goes.

In the narrower scope of things, I usually love the book I’ve just finished the best—primarily because it is finished, because it all came together despite my darkest midbook doubts when I was certain it never would, and because in the end my characters finally settled down long enough to let me write their story my way.

Still, I have a sneaking fondness for this book in particular. I’ll even cop to feeling the teensiest sliver of favoritism. John Miglionni had been building in my mind for the past two books, and I truly knew this guy by the time I sat down to write him. He’s a former Marine with a troubled past and a bad attitude when it comes to relationships. Give them a week, he maintains, and they start to stink.

Oh, boy. That’s just begging for a comeuppance, don’t cha think? So I gave him his worst nightmare in the form of Victoria Hamilton, the one woman to walk away from him before he was ready to see her go. Being thrown together with her again is blowing his ironclad notions about the interchangeability of women all to you-know-where and gone.

I just adore John and Victoria and their assorted family, friends and foes. And when all is finally said and done, I’m tickled pink with the way their story turned out. If you are, too, and you want to know how things turned out with Jared and P.J. once they grew up, check out their story in Coming Undone, in stores now.

Susan Andersen
Hot & Bothered

This is dedicated to that wild and zany,

Whitey’s-territory wedding party

To the bride and groom, David and Heather

To John and Sam, Uncle Chuck, Mom

and those dancin’ fools, Austin and David

And especially to Colleen and Dave,

for sharing it all with me

It was crazy fun, and I love you all

—Susie

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’d like to acknowledge Marcine Egender, Co-Executive Director of StandUp For Kids in Denver, Colorado. Thank you so much for answering all my questions, and for your insight into life on the streets for today’s at-risk youth. I hope my interpretation of the facts you shared is in the ballpark. If not, the inaccuracies are mine alone.

Hot & Bothered

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

FORD EVANS HAMILTON OPENED his eyes and blinked the blurry room into focus. Pain splintered through his skull and throbbed along his nerve endings, and he lifted a cautious hand to probe the back of his head. It felt like an overripe cantaloupe.

What the hell had happened? Hearing muted voices, the clink of heavy crystal, he drew his eyebrows together. Was there a party going on?

Images flickered and floated on the peripheries of his mind and his brow grew smooth. Ah, yes. That’s right. There was a party—the one he’d thrown to watch McMurphy squirm. Well, McMurphy and one or two others, but the point was he had guests and he’d come into the library for a box of cigars to go with the after-dinner brandy. And…Jared had been there, right? Ford scowled as bits of their argument came drifting back and he suddenly recalled the shove his son had given him as the boy had stormed for the door. Jared was nothing but a blotch on the Hamilton name. Both his children were big disappointments.

The faint swish of fabric brushing against the Aubusson rug snagged his attention. He turned his head, wincing as fresh agony stabbed like a series of ice-pick thrusts from cranium to tailbone. He was going to make Jared rue the day he was born. Peering sourly at the slowly merging double image of the person kneeling by his side, he demanded, “What the hell are you doing here?” Then he pushed the question aside with an impatient wave of his fingers. “Never mind that.” He extended his arm imperiously, furious that he hurt all over. “Give me a hand.”

“Oh, I intend to,” the person murmured. “I plan on giving you a helping hand straight to hell.”

Then faster than Ford’s confused mind could process the facts, the razor-sharp silver-handled letter opener that usually rested on his mahogany desk flashed downward. And his heart exploded.

CHAPTER ONE

“COME ON, DARLIN’,” John Miglionni murmured to the curvy little redhead. “Just let yourself go. You know you wanna—it’ll feel so good.”

He sucked in a satisfied breath when she did as he urged. “Yes!” he whispered…and zoomed in the lens of his camcorder on the woman across the field as she finally swung herself up onto the back of a quarter horse at least fifteen hands tall. His client, Colorado Insurance, would be ecstatic, as this would go a long way toward putting a serious crimp in the woman’s multimillion-dollar disability claim against the company. The injury she had insisted under oath rendered her unable to ride her beloved horse was clearly fraudulent.

He kept his camera trained on her as she took the horse over the paddock fence and galloped across the high plains that spread out east of Denver. Once she was no longer identifiable through the lens, he packed up his equipment and headed down the road to where he’d left the dusty, beat-up old tan pickup truck he was using for this morning’s surveillance.

Forty-five minutes later he banged through the front door of Semper Fi Investigations, grinning when his office manager Gert MacDellar jumped and slapped a hand to her bony chest.

“Good Gawd, Almighty,” she snapped, glaring at him over the top of her rhinestone-studded cat’s-eye glasses. “You scared a dozen years off my life! And at my age, boy, I can’t afford to lose a single minute, much less more than a decade.”

“As if you aren’t gonna outlive us all, Mac.” John hooked a leg over the corner of her desk, perching a bun on its solid oak corner. He handed her the camcorder. “Download this for the Colorado Insurance file. Then tally up the final invoice to include three and a half hours for today.”

Her faded blue eyes, which were several shades lighter than her rigidly upswept hair, lit up behind the pristine lenses of her glasses. “You got her?”

“Yes, ma’am. Dead to rights.”

Gert whooped and plugged the high-tech digital camcorder into its docking station. Downloading its contents with one hand, she used the other to pull a short stack of pink “While You Were Out” slips from beneath a chunk of polished quartz. “Here. You had a few calls.”

John read the first slip, then slid it to the back of the stack. He handed the second message back to Gert. “Give this one to Les,” he said referring to the engineer he’d recently hired to handle the increased spate of product liability cases that had been coming his way. Scanning the next message, he narrowed his eyes and looked back up, pinning Gert in place as he thrust that one, too, at her.

“You know I don’t do domestic cases anymore.”

“Well, you oughtta,” she said unrepentantly, making no move to take the slip. “They pay very well.”

“Yes, they do. They’re also chock-full of highly charged emotions and invasion of privacy problems, and frankly I’m not interested in sneaking around taking pictures of people having quickies. Now, if one of the spouses is hiding assets on the other, I’m your man, and I’ll be more than happy to ferret them out. But if they just want someone to dig up dirt they can use to bury their partner, refer ’em to the Hayden Agency down in LoDo.” He dropped the message slip onto the desk.

Gert huffed and gave her lacquered updo a comforting pat, but she argued no further and John looked at the last note.

And smiled. “All right, now this looks much more my thing. Give me a runaway any day of the week.” Settling himself more comfortably on the edge of the desk, he gave Gert his full attention. “Tell me about this one.”

She perked up, her disgruntlement forgotten. “Have you read about that tycoon down in Colorado Springs who got himself stabbed through the heart with a letter opener?”

“Yeah. Somebody—Somebody Hamilton, wasn’t it?”

“Ford Evans Hamilton. His daughter, Victoria, is our potential client. Well, I actually talked to the lawyer, but you get my drift. Ms. Hamilton’s seventeen-year-old half brother, Jared, disappeared the same day Daddy bought the farm.”

“The kid kill him?”

“According to Robert Rutherford, the attorney, Ms. Hamilton, or Evans Hamilton, or whatever she calls herself, swears young Jared isn’t capable of that kind of violence. But he’s been in trouble before—and he’s definitely a person of interest to the police, so she’d like to locate him before they do. Apparently he has a tendency to give a lot of attitude when he’s cornered or scared and she knows that lipping off to the cops won’t improve his situation.”

Having suffered similar tendencies as a youth, John could readily identify with the teenager and he flashed his office manager a big, feral smile. “Then isn’t it lucky for her that her lawyer called in the best.” It wasn’t couched as a question.

“Lord, you are the cocky one.” Gert bared her own bright white dentures. “It’s one of the things I’ve always liked best about you.”

He laughed. “Aw, Mac, admit it, you like everything about me. We’re so compatible, in fact, I’m surprised we haven’t run off and gotten hitched by now.”

Her puckered mouth looked as if she’d sucked a lemon, but John knew the flush tinting her cheeks stemmed from pleasure, not disapproval. She loved being teased, but he was more likely to see her update her stuck-in-the-fifties look sometime in the new millennium than ever hear her admit it.

As if reading his mind, she gave him a stern look over the top of her glasses. “I swear you could go to a wake and end up flirting with the corpse.”

He slapped a hand to his heart. “Why, Gert MacDellar, I’m crushed you’d think so. You know I’d only do that if the corpse were female.”

Her lips quirked, which was no doubt what prompted the impatient flip of her fingers that waved him off. “Get out of here, you fool. Go call that lawyer back and make us some money.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He snapped off a smart salute. “I know how you love those billable hours.” Then he rose from the desk and headed for his office to talk to a man about a case.

VICTORIA KNEW SHE HAD TO get a grip. Sometimes, though, that was a lot easier said than done and, pacing the parlor of her late father’s mansion, she freely admitted her emotions were in chaos.

At the small, quiet core of her, she was simply glad to be back. As much as she loved the hustle and bustle and history-soaked atmosphere of London, it wasn’t home, and she’d never quite gotten past feeling like a dispossessed expatriate while living there. She’d only gone in the first place because her aunt Fiona was there and, more importantly, because she’d needed to get Esme out of Father’s range before he could screw up her daughter the way he’d screwed up her and Jared.

But as glad as she was to finally be home, the circumstances gave her no peace at all. Her father was dead. And not merely gone forever—which heaven knew would have been traumatic enough, given all her unresolved feelings for him—but murdered.

Damn him. Half the time he’d been such a bastard. Most of the time, really. But he’d still been her father, and no one deserved to die the way he had.

Yet, wasn’t it just typical of him to go out in a blaze of notoriety? He’d never minded that for himself, with his increasingly younger wives and his cutthroat business practices. But when she or Jared made even a fraction of the waves Ford Evans Hamilton had, he’d given them no end of grief. The two of them had been expected to be good little Hamilton clones always, and there was a part of her that was steamed her father had died on her before she could unload just once her opinion of his parenting skills.

Which of course made her feel guilty, which in turn rendered her so twitchy she could barely sit still for more than twenty seconds running. So here she was, waiting for her lawyer to show up with a private eye in tow. Dear Lord. Whoever would have guessed she’d live to see the day The Maltese Falcon intersected the life of an Evans Hamilton? Old film noir images of men in fedoras who referred to women as dames and legs as gams kept flicking through her mind.

A bark of laughter that sounded dangerously close to hysteria escaped Victoria and she slapped a hand over her mouth to contain it. Carefully, she regulated her breathing.

Okay, let’s try not to lose it here. She focused on a priceless piece of art showcased on one of the sitting room’s pale yellow, watered-silk-covered walls. Just don’t think about any of this too closely. Take it minute by minute, and let the details blur. And if that smacked suspiciously of The Ostrich School of Coping Skills, so be it. The only way she knew how to deal with this mess was one problem at a time. Anything else was too overwhelming.

The telephone rang and she started. Then, fed up with her raw, edgy nerves, she crossed to the small credenza and picked up the receiver. “Hamilton residence.”

“Victoria, dear, is that you?”

The voice hiccuped in and out in the telltale manner of a cellular phone about to leave its service range, but she was pretty sure it was her lawyer’s. “Robert? Is that you?”

His voice faded out.

“I’m sorry, I can barely hear you.”

“Oh. Hold on.” Then suddenly his voice came through with crystalline clarity. “There, I switched to a new channel. Is that any better?”

“Much.”

“I’m calling to let you know I won’t be able to make our appointment with the Semper Fi investigator. I’ve been called into court. I apologize Victoria, but I want to assure you that I’ve talked extensively with Mr. Miglionni and everything is in order. To get him started, you merely need to meet with him, tell him about Jared and answer any questions he may have. You do have the number for my cell phone, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. If you think I might be able to answer any of the questions you can’t, give me a call.”

“I will. Thank—” the call abruptly disconnected “—you.” She blew out a breath and set down the receiver. “O-kay. Looks like I’m on my own.”

Nothing new there. She’d been on her own most of her life.

It was about time, however, to be a little less reactive and get a lot more proactive. God knew she owed Jared that much, since she’d always felt that by leaving she’d sacrificed him to save Esme.

She took a firm grip on her emotions and walked to the sitting-room desk where she forced herself to sit. She began sorting condolence cards into one stack that could be answered by her father’s secretary and into another requiring a more personal touch. By the time she heard the doorbell ring a short while later, she felt far more composed. Heading for the front entry, she smiled back at the housekeeper when she heard the woman bustling down the hallway from the kitchen. “It’s all right, Mary, I’ll get it.” Reaching the immense mahogany door, Victoria pulled it open.

Bright afternoon sunlight poured into the foyer, blinding her and backlighting the man standing on the brick steps. The only thing she could tell for sure was that he was tall and lean. Not that seeing his features was necessary in order to give him her best social smile—she’d attended far too many upscale girls’ schools for manners not to be second nature by now. “Mr. Miglionni?” she inquired softly. “Please, won’t you come in?” Stepping back to allow him entrance, she extended her hand. “I’m—”

“Tori,” he acknowledged in a husky tone that feathered down her spine. Her hand remained suspended between them for a moment when he made no move to take it.

Then she dropped it to her side, but it was the use of her nickname that knit her eyebrows together. Only a few of her closest friends, Jared and Aunt Fiona ever called her that. Robert Rutherford must have somehow let it slip, however, so she smoothed her brow and gave the private investigator another polite curl of her lips. “Actually, I go by Victoria.”

“Un-frigging-believable,” he said hoarsely.

She didn’t see why and surely the vulgarity wasn’t necessary. Nevertheless, she needed this man’s help if she were to have any chance of finding Jared, she reminded herself. She took refuge once more in the lessons learned from years of etiquette. “I’m sorry—what must you think of me to keep you standing on the doorstep. Please, do come in.”

He stepped forward and bent to set something on the floor. The strong lines of a tanned throat flashed briefly into sharp focus and sunlight caught a sleek, black ponytail that unfurled over his shoulder with his movement. The thick rope of hair was so shiny it shimmered with blue highlights. Then he straightened and once again turned into an impenetrable shadow limned by the blinding sun…all except for the olive-skinned, long-fingered hand that he extended toward her. Just as she accepted the belatedly offered handshake, he took a forward step that rendered his features a bit less obscure.

And Victoria’s stomach dropped with a sickening swoop. Flabbergasted, she stared up into the coal-black eyes of the one man she’d never thought to see again. She snatched her hand from his warm grasp. “Rocket?”

Hearing herself say the only name she’d ever known him by, realizing the consequences that his presence could have for her, a lifetime’s worth of composure vanished. Oh, God, oh, God, this was the last thing she needed. She had to get him out of here. She had to get rid of him before—

He swung the door shut behind him and for the first time jumped sharply into focus, all wide shoulders, dark skin and flashing white teeth. She’d barely begun even the quickest of inventories, however, before he reached out to pull her into his arms for a quick, hard hug that lifted her Ferragamos clear up off the floor. Setting her back on her feet, he gripped her shoulders and stared down into her face.

You have to go, you have to go, you have to—

“Damn, girl,” he said, “it’s good to see you again.”

CHAPTER TWO

JOHN COULDN’T SEEM TO stop smiling. It wasn’t often anything caught him by surprise, but when the door opened and he’d seen Tori standing on the other side, she could have knocked him on his butt with a nudge from one well-manicured fingertip. For an instant he hadn’t been able to believe his eyes.

But a guy didn’t forget the woman responsible for making him take a good, hard look at the identity he’d chosen for himself as a boy and question if it were still valid for the man he’d become. So although the always laughing, sun-streaked brunette he remembered was now cool-eyed, sober and remote, it only took a moment for him to logically accept what he’d known without question on a deeper, more visceral level. His new client was indeed the beach-scented woman with whom he’d once spent the better part of a never-to-be-forgotten week.

Sliding his hands from Victoria’s shoulders down to her wrists, he noted that her skin was every bit as silky as he recalled. It was amazing, in fact, the way his body seemed to remember every single detail about her. Feeling incredibly pleased, he smiled down into her moss-green eyes. “I waited for you to come back, you know.”

She stood very still within his grasp. “Excuse me?”

“When you took off. The note you left only said that a family emergency had come up, so I waited to see if you’d be able to get back.”

“You were the one who set the ground rules of no last names and ‘this week only.’”

Because until I met you that sort of arrangement suited me fine. “I know.” But his brows furrowed slightly, for while her voice had been perfectly polite, there’d been something beneath the surface that he couldn’t quite identify. Accusation, maybe? Regret?

Whatever it had been was gone when she inquired coolly, “So what made you think I would have come back even if I could?”

“Wishful thinking, I suppose.” He ran his hands up and down her arms. “I guess I just hoped you’d resolve whatever the problem was and come back, so I stayed on a couple of extra days, just in case.”

“You can’t seriously have expected me to return, though. Not when we only had two days left and you’d never said a word to indicate you had any desire to change the status quo.”

Before he could respond, she dismissed the subject with an abrupt wave of her hand. “That’s ancient history, however,” she said in the same reserved voice she’d used earlier. “So while it’s been very nice seeing you again, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m in the middle of yet another family crisis and I have an appointment with someone I’m expecting at any moment.”

She was perfectly polite, but the message couldn’t be clearer, and this time he didn’t have the sun shining in her eyes to blame it on. What did you expect, Ace—that she’d offer to take up where the two of you left off? Get a clue. She hasn’t smiled once and if she were any stiffer beneath your hands, she’d be a surfboard. It didn’t say a hell of a lot for his detecting skills that he just now was getting around to noticing that little fact. His only excuse was that he’d been happy to see her.

Clearly, she was not as pleased to see him. He dropped his hands to his sides and stepped back. The barefoot twenty-five-year-old of his memory now wore mango-colored linen and a long strand of knotted pearls, and her wild, streaky-brown, waist-length hair was subdued in a cut that curved sleekly just above her shoulders. This was plainly no new transformation, either. It was much more likely that the Tori of his memory, the woman with the sandy feet, frayed cutoffs and tropical-print bikini tops, had been the real aberration.

For the first time since stepping through the door, he took his eyes off her and glanced around the foyer, taking in its sweeping staircase, black-and-white marble tiles and the opulent art on the walls. Then he turned back to give Tor—no, Victoria—a slow appraisal and his eyes narrowed at the sudden suspicion that popped into his head. “So, tell me. You and me that week—were you just slumming?”

“Please. It was a long time ago and I truly don’t have time for this right now. My appointment—”

“Is here.” Screw it. She was right; it was a long time ago and some things simply couldn’t and shouldn’t be resurrected. Not to mention that she had some heavy emotional shit going on in her life at the moment and he was here to do a job. Pushing every other consideration from his mind, telling himself she was simply another new client, he thrust out his hand. “John Miglionni, at your service.”

“No.” Horrified, Victoria simply stared at the extended hand. No way was she touching those long, lean fingers again—the sensory impressions from the first time were still too fresh. “You can’t be.” Shooting a glance at the mostly red tattoo beneath the silky black hair on his forearm, she shoved down the memory of tracing it with her fingertips and instead studied it just long enough to assure herself that the words Swift, Silent and Deadly still surrounded the white skull and crossbones on three sides. Then she looked back up into his dark eyes and, even as she recalled the name of his agency, said insistently, “You’re a Marine.”

“Former Marine. And as you said, ma’am, it’s been a long time. I mustered out of the service over five years ago.”

Ma’am? Victoria watched him bend down and pick up a computer case off the floor. Sure, he was here in a professional capacity—and she most emphatically did not desire to start up anything with him again. But, please. Ma’am?

He straightened again and regarded her without expression. “If you’ll lead me somewhere I can set up my laptop, we can get started.”

She should have been glad that he was suddenly all business. She was glad. The only reason she hesitated at all, she told herself, was because she wanted the man she knew as Rocket gone.

Unfortunately, she feared she had dire need of John Miglionni’s services if she wanted to locate Jared any time soon. Recalling that his was the name that had repeatedly popped up as their best chance of locating a missing teenager when Robert checked around, she blew out a long, resigned breath. “Please. Come into Father’s office.” It was better to get this over with. The sooner she did, the sooner Rocket-slash-John Miglionni would be on his way. Then any future dealings with him could be handled by Robert.

They settled into facing leather chairs a few moments later, and as he booted up his computer and pulled up a file, Victoria subjected him to a covert inspection. The only obvious difference that jumped out at her was the length of his hair, which was completely opposite to the military buzz cut he’d worn when she’d known him. It was longer than her own now, which should have lent his face a feminine aspect. Instead it managed to do just the reverse and accentuated his high cheekbones, hawklike nose and the spare angularity of his face.

A cell phone rang into the silence of the dark-paneled office. With a rumbled apology, he twisted with supple grace to paw through the leather laptop case he’d set on the small table next to his chair. Bringing the phone to his ear, he punched the talk button. “Miglionni.”

Watching him from beneath her lashes as he asked an occasional question, said several uh-huhs and scribbled notes on a legal pad, she concluded he was still as long and lanky as ever. Except for his wide shoulders, he had the type of body that looked deceptively skinny in clothing. She knew for a fact, however, that beneath the black silk T-shirt and immaculately pressed black slacks, were muscles hard as tungsten.

Her gaze skittered back to his slacks and lingered a moment on another long and lanky shape forming an impressive bulge to the right of his fly. She tore her eyes away. Damned if she’d let herself be dragged back into those memories.

More insidious and harder to ignore, though, was the recollection of how he’d made her feel. Good about herself. Safe. Free to explore her sexuality. He might have had a butterfly’s commitment to relationships, but she’d sensed a rock-solid core to him, and he’d treated her so nice. After a lifetime spent dodging Father’s verbal slings and arrows, she’d found Rocket’s rough-edged sweetness even more seductive than his sexual expertise.

Involuntarily, her lips curled up. Well, that might be stretching it a bit, since the two were so closely entwined in her memories. God knew she’d been a fool for his way of making her feel like the funniest, smartest, sexiest woman in the universe. Another female might have questioned how many other women he’d made feel the same way. Victoria hadn’t cared—at least at first. More accustomed to bracing herself for a caustic remark than fielding compliments, she’d discovered protectiveness and sweet-talking attentiveness to be her personal version of Spanish Fly.

“ROCKET!” SURPRISED laughter exploded out of her when sun, surf and sand suddenly whirled in a kaleidoscope of colors as he snatched her up off her feet and swung her in a half circle. She was vaguely aware of something whizzing past, but paid it no heed as she stared, mesmerized, up at the man holding her in his arms. She was five-ten, and hardly a fragile flower, but he was forever handling her with an ease that made her feel daintier than Tinkerbell.

“Sorry,” called out a voice and Victoria blinked when Rocket set her back on her feet as abruptly as he’d swept her off them. He bent to retrieve a volleyball off the sand. Her heart thudded in slow, thick beats as she watched the fluid slide of his muscles when he tossed the ball up and, with one powerful swing of his fist, sent it winging back toward the game they’d just passed.

That’s when her head quit whirling long enough to realize he’d just saved her from being knocked on her face by a serve ball. “You must have the reflexes of a cat.” She felt warm and secure, which in turn started nerves deep in her body to humming and she stepped close. “You couldn’t possibly have seen that coming.”

He shrugged as if it were no big deal. “I sensed it—felt it displacing the air, probably.”

She stroked her hands down the hair-roughed skin of his forearms. “That was just so…heroic.”

He made a rude noise, but it died in his throat and he went very still as she leaned her weight against him and pressed a soft, openmouthed kiss against his neck.

“I think an action so heroic deserves to be rewarded,” she murmured, pressing a second kiss a bit south of the first, humming in appreciation as her lips picked up a hint of salt from his skin. She settled her breasts more firmly against his chest and his arms wrapped around her to pull her closer yet. Feeling him begin to grow hard against her stomach, she smiled, wiggled subtly, and tilted her head back to look up at him. “Don’t you?”

His dark eyes were heavy-lidded as he stared down at her. “Damn, Tori,” he said hoarsely, and his hands clenched on her back. “When you do stuff like that, I just want to tear your clothes off and take you where you stand.”

She licked the little hollow at the base of his throat, feeling powerful when it made her tall, tough Marine shiver. “In front of all these people?”

“And their little dogs, too,” he agreed, regarding her with hot, reckless eyes. “So, darlin’, unless you’re prepared to let ’em watch, I suggest you take a quick, large step back and give me a minute to regain a little control.”

“I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T MEAN to keep you waiting.”

Victoria couldn’t have started more violently if someone had goosed her with a cattle prod. Feeling her face flame, she was relieved to see that Rocket had turned away once again as he returned his cell phone to the computer case. Taking a few quick breaths, she attempted to collect herself before he focused the force of those dark eyes on her.

“That’s quite all—” her voice sounded like Froggy and his magic twanger, and she cleared her throat “—right. May I offer you something to drink before we get started?” What on earth had she been thinking to let her mind go back there?

“No, thanks. I’m set.” Sitting back, he opened the thin computer on his lap and looked up at her. “Why don’t you tell me about your brother.”

“Oh. Yes. Jared. Of course.” She was mortified that for one brief instant she’d forgotten all about him.

Annoyance straightened her spine. She’d forgotten a lot of things and that was dangerous. Forcing herself to focus, she met John’s gaze head-on. “First of all, he didn’t kill my father. I want that understood.”

“All right. Can you tell me why you’re so certain of this?”

She leaned forward, but before she could say a word, the office door opened and her father’s fifth wife strolled in.

The busty blonde stopped when she saw them. Her gaze skimmed past Victoria with supreme disinterest, but John was apparently a different matter for she subjected him to a lengthy once-over. “Sorry,” she finally said. “I didn’t realize anyone was in here.”

Tori suppressed a sigh. “Mr. Miglionni, this is my father’s widow, DeeDee Hamilton. DeeDee, this is John Miglionni, the private investigator Father’s attorney helped me hire.”

DeeDee’s big blue eyes grew even bigger and bluer. “Why the hell would you need a P.I.? As far as I can tell, the only even halfway interesting thing you’ve ever done is piss off your daddy by having Es—”

“Mr. Miglionni has a reputation as the man to call when a teenager is missing. He’s going to find Jared.”

“No shit? Aren’t you worried the cops’ll slap him in irons the minute you bring him home?”

Fury flared in Victoria’s chest. “Jared didn’t kill Father!”

The lush blonde simply shrugged.

“He did not.”

DeeDee looked bored. “Okay, fine. So why did he run, then?”

“Well, let me think. Could it be that he stumbled across his father’s dead body, and that he’s seventeen years old and it probably scared him to death? Or for all we know, he could have walked in while Father was being killed. Am I the only one worried that he might not have left voluntarily?”

“Yes.”

“For heaven’s sake, DeeDee, if you’ve spent any time with him at all, you must know he hasn’t got a violent bone in his body.”

“Yeah? So how the hell would you know? Except for the odd holiday or flying visit, it’s not like you’ve been around much during the two years I’ve been here.”

“You’re right, I haven’t. And I have to live with the fact that I left him to Father’s less-than-tender mercies. But that doesn’t keep me from knowing that a person’s basic nature doesn’t change. And Jared wouldn’t hurt a flea.”

“Maybe not.” DeeDee shrugged once again. “But who else had any reason to kill Ford?”

“My God, are you serious?” The laugh that escaped Victoria went a little wild, and ruthlessly she slammed a lid on the urge to give in to unchecked hysteria. “Considering Father’s personality, and the fact that he was killed in the middle of a dinner party he was giving to rub salt in the wound of a CEO whose company he’d just acquired in a hostile takeover, I’d have to say darn near everyone.”

She turned to include Rocket. “I realize it’s unkind to speak ill of the dead, but you might as well know up front that my father wasn’t a nice man. He liked nothing more than to toy with people, and from what I’ve gathered, none of the guests attending his little soiree the night he was killed had a clue if they’d still have a job come Monday morning. I’m not just talking about the employees of the company he’d taken over, either. No one could afford to relax around him. He was just as apt to can his own people as the ones from his new acquisition, if for no other reason than to provide himself a moment’s entertainment.”

“And here I thought my old man was the daddy of dys-function.” John had been watching the interaction between the two women with fascination, knowing they had no idea how revealing it was. But it was time for a more straightforward approach. He needed to start directing the conversation to where he wanted it to go.

It was clear the women weren’t overly fond of each other, and turning to DeeDee, he decided she couldn’t be more than a year or two older than Victoria—who, if he remembered correctly, would be about thirty-one now. As Victoria’s new stepmama, that had to make for some friction. He’d bet the main source of dissension, though, was the fact that you’d have to search hard to find two more dissimilar women. Even way back when, he’d understood that Tori wasn’t one of the party girls he was accustomed to picking up in bars. So when she’d allowed him to do exactly that, he’d noted her relative inexperience, then simply felt grateful to whatever karma had thrown him in her path at the exact moment she’d decided to cut loose.

DeeDee, on the other hand, had the look of a woman who knew her way around a wet T-shirt contest. Not that you could always go by appearances, he admitted, remembering when his friend Zach had first met the woman who’d become his wife. Still, there was an indefinable aura about DeeDee that said she knew the score, and at the very least, she struck him as the quintessential trophy wife.

He favored her with his most charming grin. “You have a point,” he said. “A homicide detective will always look first within the family for his suspect. Hell, any cop will be happy to tell you that nine times out of ten the victim is killed by someone he knew.”

Something about the smug look she shot Victoria rubbed him the wrong way, but he wasn’t stepping into the middle of that brouhaha. As a man, he knew better than to get between two women with opposing points of view. As a professional, he didn’t get involved in his clients’ lives, period, or anyone else’s who might be connected to a case. As far as he was concerned, in fact, the two of them could dive right into a knockdown drag-out fight, and he’d simply pull up a chair and enjoy the show. Especially if the ripping of clothing was involved.

He glanced at Tori’s svelte little sheath, then at her patrician nose poking ceiling-ward, and swallowed a snort. Sure, Ace, that’s likely to happen. Turning his attention back to DeeDee, he added, “Of course they generally look at the spouse first, since that’s who most often inherits the lion’s share of money.”

She curled her lip at him. “Lets me out, then. I signed a prenup that said if Ford divorced me or died for any reason during the first three years, I’d get bupkis—or next to it, at any rate. He was my golden goose, pal—it was in my best interests to keep him healthy.”

John glanced at Tori, who nodded. “He had all his wives sign the same prenuptial agreement, and it was set up in such a way that they only received a truly generous bequest if they lasted ten years.” She shrugged. “The only one who ever came close to lasting that long was my mother, but she died just before my eighth birthday.”

A shaft of light found its way through the shutters and shone directly in her eyes. It highlighted the gold flecks around her pupils, and he was irritated that seeing them gave him the urge to cut her a little slack and not pursue the next logical line of questioning. He gave her a flat stare to compensate. “So I’m guessing you and your brother inherited the bulk of Daddy’s fortune then.”

When she narrowed her eyes, he had a feeling it wasn’t against the light. But she said without inflection, “Yes. And before you ask, I was living in London when he died, and I’ve already told you that Jared couldn’t have done it.”

Hit men could be hired as easily from London as anywhere else, and John never trusted in the goodness of young men he hadn’t met. Since he had a hankering for this case, however, he knew better than to say so. He might be one of the best at locating missing teens, but he was by no means the only investigator qualified for the job, and his prior relationship with Tori was more likely a strike against him than anything that would work to his benefit.

But what the hell—when in doubt, project confidence, he always said. Besides, it wasn’t as if he actually believed she’d put a contract out on her old man. No, the woman he’d met this afternoon was more likely to freeze a man to death.

Seeing DeeDee watching the two of them as if this were improvisational theater, he leveled a look on her. “Would you excuse us, Mrs. Hamilton? My client’s paying by the hour and I’d like to get down to business with her.”

“I just bet you would,” she murmured, but then spun on her stiletto heels and sashayed out as blithely as she’d entered.

The moment the door shut behind her, he pinned his best no-nonsense look on Victoria. “Okay, look, I plan to look for your brother regardless, but I’d still like to know why you believe he’s incapable of violence. There’s probably not a person in the world who doesn’t have the capacity for it, given the right circumstances.”

“I simply can’t visualize what those circumstances would ever be in Jared’s case,” she said. “He’s scared to death of spiders, for heaven’s sake, yet he’s still the type of guy who’d perform a catch and release if one got in the house. Now, me, I’d rather see the damn thing dead.”

He remembered. She’d climbed up his back once, screaming Kill it! Kill it! in his ear when a hapless daddy longlegs had shown the poor judgement to venture across their bedroom floor in Pensacola. Irritably shoving the memory away, he focused on the facts. “Yet he’s been in quite a bit of trouble, if I understand correctly.”

“It’s true he’s been expelled from several schools. But always for things like drinking, or smoking or not knowing when to stow his attitude.” She leaned forward in her chair as if she could compel his understanding through sheer physical intensity. “When he was little, he was always running up to Father saying ‘Watch this! Watch this!’ All he ever wanted was the tiniest bit of his daddy’s attention, and his expulsions were just a continuation of the same. They were a way to get Father to pay him a little regard, if only in a negative way.”

“Tell me who his friends are.”

Victoria sat back. “That’s one of those good news/bad news things,” she said. “He has a habit of falling in with the malcontents, which as you can probably imagine contributes considerably to his problems. The good news is, he didn’t do that this time. Since there were only a few months remaining in the semester when he was bounced from his last school, Father decided to enroll him locally to finish out the year. Jared joined a baseball team, discovered he really liked the sport, and actually met a couple of nice kids on the team. The bad news, though, is that whenever he told me anything about them, he only referred to them as Dan and Dave.”

“That’s okay, just give me the name of the school.” He’d contact the coach and go from there.

She told him, and he was keying the information into her file when the office door opened once again. Brows furrowing, he glanced up. Now what?

A little girl with a long, wild, tangle of baby-fine brown hair that was held off her face by sparkling butterfly barrettes stood in the doorway. Casting him an intrigued glance, she ran over to Victoria. “Hullo, Mummy,” she said in a clear British accent, leaning into her. “Nanny Helen told me a ’tective was here to find Uncle Jared.”

Mummy? John felt his jaw drop as he watched Victoria wrap an arm around the little girl and hug her close. She was a mother?

“Yes, that’s true,” Victoria said. “So you really should run along, sweetie, and I’ll come see you just as soon as we’re finished.”

That “something” he’d heard earlier was back in her voice and he narrowed his eyes on Victoria. What the hell was it? Alarm? Wariness? He couldn’t quite pin it down.

“But, Mummy, I want to say hello.”

There was an instant of dead silence. Then Victoria succumbed to her manners. “Very well. Sweetheart, this is Mr. Miglionni. He’s the private detective Nanny Helen was telling you about. John, this is my daughter, Esme.”

His experience with little girls—or any kids her age, for that matter—was nil. But what the hell, a female was a female and John bestowed his warmest smile upon the little girl. “Nice to meet you, Esme. Love your butterflies.”

Her little hand went up to touch one of her barrettes in an ageless feminine gesture. “Thank you. My mummy bought them at Harrods.” A pleased smile curved her rosebud mouth and she stared at him with big eyes as dark as his own.

His stomach began to churn as a sudden suspicion splintered through him. Holy shit. Oh, holy, fuckin’ shit. It couldn’t be. Could it?

Hell, no. They’d used protection.

Which any fool knows is never one hundred percent fail-safe. He took a deep breath and got an iron grip on his emotions. “Harrods, huh? That’s a department store in London, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You look like you’re nearly grown up. Got your driver’s license yet?”

She giggled. “No, silly. I’m only five and a quarter years old.”

“Ah. I guess that is a little young.” The hot roil in his gut had turned to ice. He might not be the world’s greatest mathematician, but he could sure as hell add two plus two and arrive at the right answer. Especially when you factored in the kid’s eyes. Although it took every ounce of his self-control, he managed to keep the easy smile plastered on his kisser until the little girl skipped out of the room. But it dropped the instant the door closed behind her, and he swung to pin Victoria in place with furious eyes.

“You’ve got some explaining to do, lady.”

CHAPTER THREE

DAMN! VICTORIA’S HEART pounded in her chest, and to her disgust every last drop of moisture in her mouth had turned to dust. Damn, damn, damn! She’d feared this exact situation ever since discovering her private investigator’s identity, and for a moment all she could do was stare at Rocket while a pool of churning acid tried to eat a hole in her stomach. But drawing on a lifetime of displaying composure even when it was the last thing she felt, she sucked in a quiet breath and leveled a gaze on him. “For what exactly do you believe I owe you an explanation?”

“Don’t pull that ice princess crap on me, Tori. You know damn well what this is about.” He took a step that left him towering over her and Victoria swallowed dryly at the banked rage she saw burning in his eyes. “Esme. I want to know who that little girl belongs to and I want to know now.”

“Me.” A healthy surge of anger roared through her and her back snapped straighter than a yardstick even as her heart settled down to a more manageable tempo. Tilting her chin up at him, she met his furious gaze head-on. “Esme belongs to me. She’s my daughter.”

“And mine,” he snarled. “A not-so-minor little detail I never would have known about if I hadn’t come here today.”

She might have categorically denied his parentage if she’d just had a moment to think things through. After all, they’d religiously used condoms that week. But over the course of the current past two weeks, her father had been murdered, her brother had disappeared and she’d packed up and moved everything she owned from one side of the world to the other. Add to that the father of her child dropping into her life from out of the blue and her mind had turned to chop suey. Besides, what was the point? She had a feeling he knew that her fling with him had been unusual enough. She’d sustained too many shocks and was worn to a nub—she simply didn’t have the wherewithal to pull off the pretense that she’d gone straight from his bed to someone else’s.

Still, his gall made her gape and she had to snap her sagging jaw shut. “You’ll have to excuse me, Rocket, or John, or whatever you’re calling yourself these days, if I find your self-righteousness just a little hard to swallow. How do you suggest I should have informed you—sent a letter to the U.S. Marine Corps addressed to Rocket, last name unknown? And tell me, during the two months it took me to see beyond the fact we’d used protection to realize my flu-that-wouldn’t-go-away was actually the first stages of pregnancy, where were you? Sleeping with other women you knew only by their first names? Regaling your buddies with all the details of our time together?”

“No. Dammit, Tori, I never said a word to anyone.”

Ignoring the little surge of satisfaction she got from hearing him deny the charge, she clung grimly to her indignation. “Why not—that was your usual MO, wasn’t it? The night we met, one of your buddies made a point of warning me you liked to kiss and tell. That you were real big on sharing the particulars with your friends, right down to the last moan.” And the thought of him sharing the specifics of their time together had chewed on her for months after she’d cut and run.

“Oh, let me guess—Bantam, right? The same guy who tried everything in his arsenal to get you to leave with him instead?” Hands thrust in his pockets, Rocket stared at her for a moment before essaying a curt shrug. “Still, it’s true enough. That was my MO…until you.”

“Uh-huh.” Skepticism permeated the erstwhile agreement. “Because I was so special, I suppose. Just what kind of fool do you take me for?” She threw up a hand even as he opened his mouth to speak. “Don’t answer that. The fact that I left with you despite the warning makes me too many kinds of an idiot to list.” She could still recall the heart-pounding excitement of his company, though—remembered too clearly that feverish and dangerous feeling of being swept away by something beyond her control.

It had seemed particularly delicious because she’d come so close to passing on the Pensacola trip. Her accommodations were at the type of swinging singles resort she’d been raised to shun, so when the architectural firm she worked for presented her with a gift certificate as a thank-you for creating the design that had won them a lucrative new account, she’d fully intended to let it quietly expire. But, God, she’d been proud—not only of her work, but of the appreciation her bosses had shown her. And she’d been eager to share it with her father.

She should have known he’d blow her off. At the very least, she shouldn’t have been surprised—nothing she’d done was ever good enough for him. Once again, however, he’d managed to stagger her with his lack of affection. But this time, when he’d skipped right over her accomplishment to arrogantly proclaim that of course she wouldn’t step foot in a resort that had no more taste than to bill itself as Club Paradise, she’d rebelled.

However much the vacation may have started out as a screw-you to her dad, though, it had changed into something else entirely the minute she’d met Rocket. She’d found being with him a thrill a minute, arousing and terrifying and increasingly addictive. He’d made her feel so—

Stiffening her backbone against memories that managed to grab her by the throat even now, she pinned him with a stern look. “Don’t think my being a fool means you get to take the high road. You never made the least effort to contact me and you sure as heck never gave me any personal information when we were together that would make finding you feasible. I didn’t even know what part of the country you were stationed in. So I made the decision to keep my baby, and I battled my father’s demands that I rid myself of it before it could reflect badly on him.”

He stilled. “Your father wanted you to have an abortion?”

“Either that or marry the investment banker of his choice.”

Something savage flashed in his eyes, but just as quickly it vanished, and his expression grew remote. “Okay, so we’ve established you had no expectation of being able to contact me when you discovered you were pregnant.” His tone contained the same cool politeness he’d used to call her ma’am earlier, but his eyes burned with the devil’s own fire, holding not the tiniest vestige of polite objectivity as they drilled into hers. “That doesn’t begin to address your failure to mention Esme or her relationship to me since I arrived.”

“Are you serious?” Staring at him, she could see that he was. “Well, what can I say, Rocket? Coming face-to-face with a man I haven’t seen in six years took me a bit by surprise.” The edge of bitterness in her own voice shocked her. Reminding herself she was an adult, she drew a deep breath, grabbed hold of her manners before they could slip-slide their way right into oblivion and exhaled quietly. “I apologize. That wasn’t civil.”

His mouth twisted. “God-frigging-forbid we should be uncivilized.”

Yes, well, not all of us have the luxury of verbalizing every thought that pops into our head. Unclenching her teeth, Victoria inquired with hard-won equanimity, “Then how about this? I have a well-adjusted little girl, and for all that I remember you as a very nice guy, I also recall that long-lasting relationships weren’t exactly your forte. I have no reason to assume that’s changed.” An edge of hardness crept into her voice and she didn’t attempt to soften it. “Frankly, I don’t care how nice you may or may not be. I will fight to the death before I’ll allow Esme to be exposed to a father who flits in and out of her life like Peter Pan.”

His eyes grew fiercer yet. “I have news for you, honey—I was never the Peter Pan type. I might have been a partier when we met, but not wanting to grow up was never the problem. Set aside the fact that I was first and foremost a Marine, which by definition is a person of credibility. I grew up rough and I grew up fast, at an age, by God, younger than most. You want to exchange resumes on responsibility? I was out dodging bullets and eating mud while you were still attending your posh little schools for pampered princesses.”

“So what is it that you want, Rocket?” For a moment, watching his grim face, she could see the warrior in him and she couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice to save her soul. “Visitation rights? Custody every other weekend and two weeks every summer?” That was the last thing the man she’d known would want.

And perhaps he hadn’t changed all that much, because the question seemed to stop him in his tracks. He simply stared at her while a look that in any other man she might have construed as panic crossed his face. Then he blinked, and his expression resumed that noncommittal blankness at which he was so adept. But his voice was wary when he said, “Visitation rights?”

“I assume that’s where all this indignation is leading.” And she didn’t even want to consider the idea. When she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d been perhaps the tiniest bit relieved that she didn’t know how to locate him. The last thing she’d wanted to do was force a guy who’d made such a point of their fling being just that into instant fatherhood. She’d had a father who wasn’t interested in the job—there was no way in hell she’d intended to subject her child to that sort of unrelenting rejection.

Yet if Rocket truly wanted to be a part of Es’s life—well, maybe this wasn’t about her wants and desires. Maybe it was about doing what was best for her child. And, God help her, as much as the idea pained her, maybe she had no real moral or legal right to keep the faithless bastard rat from his daughter. Not if he was willing to devote himself to being a caring father.

He gave her a wary look. “What exactly does she know about me?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing? Didn’t she ever ask why other kids have a daddy and she doesn’t?”

“Of course she asked. But what was I supposed to tell her, that she was the result of a slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am fling with a Marine who didn’t even want to know my last name?”

“So…what? You told her that I’m dead, instead?”

“Certainly not!” Insulted right down to the ground, she glared at him. “I don’t lie to my daughter, Miglionni. And I plan on telling her the truth when she’s old enough to understand. Until that day, I’ll keep reiterating what I’ve told her so far.”

He looked at her with unfriendly eyes. “Which is?”

“That while her papa couldn’t be with her, God wanted me to have a special little girl, so He sent her to me. I’ve told her that I love her enough for two parents, and that we don’t need a da—” She cut herself off, recognizing a don’t-go-there situation when she blundered into it.

But it was too late, and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t need what, Victoria? A daddy? You might not, lady, but I bet that little girl could use one.”

“So I ask you again. What do you want?”

Plowing his fingers through his hair until they ran into the rubber band clubbing it back, he stared at her in frustration. “I don’t know.”

“Well, know this. I would have given the world for a loving and attentive father. Instead I learned firsthand the damage a neglectful parent can do. If my baby girl can’t have the former, I will see to it that she never has to know the pain of the latter.” She looked him straight in his pretty black eyes. “I’m trying extremely hard to be reasonable and see your side of the situation. But unless you’re fully prepared to be the kind of papa Esme deserves, Rocket, don’t even think of informing her that you’re her father.”

“Fine.”

He stared at her for several silent moments and Victoria had the feeling that nothing would ever be fine again. She was actually relieved when he finally broke eye contact and reached for his laptop. Before she could ease out so much as a single thankful breath, however, he turned back and pinned her in his sights once again.

“Have a room prepared,” he said, and although his voice was low and reasonable on the surface, it had a demanding undertone that was unmistakable. “I’m moving in.”

“Excuse me?”

“The fact of my paternity may be six years old to you, Tori, but as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been a daddy for exactly ten minutes. I admit I don’t have a clue how I feel about my newfound status. But I sure as hell deserve the chance to get to know my daughter while I figure it out.”

“Yes, you do.” Her heart was trying to beat itself through the wall of her chest again. “So get yourself a hotel room and stop by daily to see her.”

“And give you the opportunity to pack her up and beat feet for places unknown? Not a chance, lady.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” She stared at him, appalled that he’d believe her capable of such a thing.

“You forget, baby, I was the one left behind when you did it before.”

Yes, but that was because I was in over my head with you and getting way too involved after giving you my word I wouldn’t. Her heart, her skin, the very core of her throbbed at memories that had a habit of surging to the fore without a hint of encouragement from her. Six long years ago, she’d sneaked out as dawn crept over the Pensacola beach because she’d found herself falling too hard and too fast for a man whose rugged sexuality was far removed from the sanitized men in her world. She’d initially assumed sticking to his rules to enjoy their time together with no strings attached would be easy as pie. But when every day spent in his company sucked her deeper under his spell instead, it had scared her silly. To preserve her heart before she ended up with something a great deal worse than its already growing ache, she’d slipped away with the sunrise.

She wasn’t crazy enough to admit that to the hard-eyed man standing in front of her, however. He bore little resemblance to the charmer she remembered, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that he would take full advantage of any weakness she displayed. She met his gaze with faux composure and lied without a qualm. “I told you before, a family emergency called me away.”

“And I plan to be right here should another one suddenly crop up to call you away again.”

Even though there was neither skepticism nor so much as a hint of sarcasm in his voice, she felt mocked—and somehow threatened. It was those eyes, she decided, and longed desperately to defy him.

But Rocket looked at her as if he were prepared to make things truly nasty if she fought him on this. And the fact was, Tori knew, someone had killed her father and it wasn’t her brother. So perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to have a man in the house who was capable of protecting Esme if the real killer decided to pay them a return visit because this hadn’t been a grudge against her father after all.

Unsatisfied with the decision but too tired to figure out what else to do, she said stiffly, “I plan to stay exactly where I am until Jared is found. Nevertheless, I will inform Mary to prepare a room for you.”

“Good.” His look said there’d never been any doubt. “Then if you’ll supply me with a photograph, I’ll get to work locating your brother.” And he thrust out his hand as if closing the most mundane of business deals.

To refuse his handshake would have been rude, but the minute she accepted it, Victoria knew she’d made a mistake. The chemistry that had existed since she’d first laid eyes on him in a resort bar all those years ago—and had been doing funny things to her pulse as recently as a few minutes ago—was still at work. Her skin heated where it touched the hard brown hand wrapped around her own and nerve endings deep inside sizzled and seethed, dispatching urgent messages to every erogenous zone she possessed.

She broke the contact the instant she could do so without giving away its effect on her. It’ll be okay, she assured herself. If you try hard enough, you can make this work, and Esme will emerge the winner. Victoria would put up with anything to see that happen.

So why, then, couldn’t she shake the feeling that she’d just sealed a deal with the devil?

JOHN WAS PISSED. SERIOUSLY steamed. “I apologize,” he snarled in a high-pitched falsetto. “That wasn’t civil.” He climbed into his car, fired it up and reversed in a hard, tight U out of his parking spot. Well, screw Tori’s weak foray into sarcasm. Slamming the gearshift into First, he aimed the car down the drive. Not telling him he had a kid the minute he walked through the door was uncivil.

Fury and frustration boiled in his gut, enticing him to strike out. He wanted to hit someone, to feel the satisfaction of flesh giving way beneath his pounding fists. And, frankly, right this minute he wasn’t particular about whose flesh it was.

That was just too freaking reminiscent of his old man in one of his drunken rages, though, so John sucked it up and contented himself with punching the accelerator instead to send the car shooting through the closing estate gates with barely an inch of clearance on either side. His car fishtailed onto the road before he straightened it out and laid rubber down the highway. He was damned if he’d allow Tori’s betrayal to flush years of hard-earned self-discipline down the toilet.

Still. He had to do something or he’d explode. Letting up on the gas until he had the speed down to a more reasonable level, he reached for his cell phone and punched an auto-number.

He was grateful when Zach answered so he didn’t have to go through his friend’s wife. John adored Lily, but small talk was simply beyond him at the moment, and without any preliminaries, he snarled, “Pass out the cigars. I’m a daddy.”

There was a brief hesitation, then Zach said, “Rocket?”

“Yeah. Hang on a sec. I want to see if I can get Coop, too. I have a real need to vent, but I’m afraid blood’s gonna flow if I have to explain this twice.”

“Take your time, buddy. I’ll be right here.”

That cooled John’s temper by several degrees and he turned his attention to reaching the other number. Within moments he had a three-way connection going with Cooper Blackstock and Zach Taylor, former team members from his reconnaissance days in the Marines and his two closest friends. As succinctly and unemotionally as he could manage, he told them he had a daughter, then laid out the details of how he’d come to learn of her existence.

There was a moment of silence when he concluded his story. Then Zach breathed, “Holy shit,” at the same time Coop said, “I don’t believe it. The Muzzler finally has a real name.”

“Victoria,” Zach concurred. “The timing fits.”

“Huh?” Brow furrowing, John lifted his foot off the gas pedal. “What the hell are you two babbling about?”

“Marines don’t babble, chief,” Zach said. “Did you think it somehow skipped our attention that six years ago you suddenly embraced total discretion after more than a decade spent regaling us in pornographic detail about whatever girl had ridden the rocket the night before?”

“Give us some credit,” Coop agreed. “The transition was too abrupt not to note.”

“I don’t recall either of you ever asking me why.”

“We might have, but you were so damn close-mouthed about it we didn’t feel we could. It was so out of character for you to keep time spent with a woman under wraps.”

“Gotta admit, we would have appreciated just a couple of details, though,” Zach added. “Ice and I spent a lot of time speculating on who could have taken the bite out of the dog.”

“Great.” The car drifted to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and he slapped the gearshift into Neutral, then yanked on the brake. “That’s fucking swell. A pivotal moment in my life and the two of you were giving it a funky label and yukking it up.”

“No,” Coop said flatly. “We weren’t. Your silence told us it must be important, so we never laughed, John. But we were curious and we needed to call your sudden change of heart or epiphany or whatever the hell you want to call it something, so The Muzzler was born. It seemed appropriate.”

“Yeah.” Burying his frustration with the adeptness of lifelong habit, he looked at it from their point of view. “I guess it was. Something about Tori made me realize there was more to my identity than being good in the sack.”

“Hell, man, I never realized you assumed there wasn’t,” Coop said. “You were one of the few, the proud.”

A bitter bark of laughter escaped John. “You met my old man—you didn’t think growing up with him might have tilted my thinking a little left of center?” He could still vividly remember his father showing up at Camp Lejeune, drunk on his ass and belligerently vocal about his son’s decision to join the corps. “Before I discovered my ability with the ladies, I was just the pitiable kid of that crazy noncom who was always being busted back to seaman first class.”

“Navy asshole,” Coop said scornfully.

“Fuckin’ A,” Zach agreed. “The navy is for pussies who can’t get into the corps.”

Tactfully neither of his friends mentioned the vitriol his old man had spewed at him that night, or how John had allowed the elder Miglionni to shove him around until he’d finally lost his temper and flattened him. But the truth was, it wasn’t the Marines he’d glommed onto to validate his sense of self-worth. He’d liked knowing he had something in his pants that most guys would kill for.

“So now it turns out you’ve got a kid, too,” Zach said. “Aside from being hacked off over the way you found out about her, how do you feel about that? You always swore you’d never have one.”

“Yeah, but now that the choice has been taken out of my hands, I don’t know—I feel like I’ve gotta get to know her. At the same time, I’m scared shitless to get too close. Jesus, Midnight, she’s got a British accent. She sounds like the frigging queen of England!”

“Yeah, I can see where that would unnerve a guy.”

“Is your Victoria a Brit, then?” Coop asked.

“She is not my anyth—” He cut himself off, knowing how merciless his friends would be if he protested too much. “No. Tori’s not a Brit. She took Esme there to get her away from her father’s influence.”

“That’s your daughter’s name? Esme?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty,” Coop said. “What’s she look like?”

“Little. Sweet. A real girly-girl. She has this wild head of hair like her mother used to have back when I knew her before.” She’s got my eyes. That just blew him away every time he thought of it.

“Sounds like a cutie to me. Little girls are awesome. I never realized just how cool until I met my niece Lizzy. Get your hands on a camera, pal, and send me a picture.”

They talked a while longer without saying anything of real consequence. John felt better, though, and more in control when he finally disconnected. But as he sat in his car on the side of the road, staring out at the trees, he admitted he was still as confused as ever about his new status as a parent.

Luckily, he had a job to do. When things were out of whack, it was comforting to have something to do that you did well. Figuring out puzzles was something he did very well. So he took off the brake and put the car in gear.

Then he headed down the road to talk to Jared’s high-school coach.

CHAPTER FOUR

“I WAS INFORMED YOURteam lost its game.”

Jared Hamilton looked up to see his father in the library doorway. The great Ford Hamilton didn’t usually instigate a conversation with him unless it was to catalog his faults, but he appeared almost…interested. He must be to have pulled himself away from the dinner party that Jared could hear going on in the dining room. Stealthily sliding the brandy bottle from which he’d been sipping behind his backpack, he straightened from his dejected slouch, an optimistic kernel of hope unfurling in his chest. Maybe he didn’t have to drown his sorrows after all. “Yeah.”

“And I understand it was you striking out that ended the game.”

The hope shriveled and Jared’s stomach began to churn, but he rose to his feet and gave his father the bored, insolent sneer he’d perfected years ago. “Yeah, well, what can I say? Shit happens.”

Ford gave him a look of disgust. “Shit does not just ‘happen,’ young man. It’s a result of sloppy preparation.”

He shrugged, but his gut roiled harder and fiercer. Wouldn’t it be something if just once his father didn’t take the opportunity to tell him what a huge disappointment he’d turned out to be? Other guys had dads who actually tossed balls around with them. He had Ford Evans Hamilton, who tossed his son’s every mistake in his face. His chin jutted out. “And who do you see giving me a hand with these preparations? You?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Exuding polish from his expensively barbered hair to his gleaming loafers, the older man strode across the room until he loomed over Jared. “You’re seventeen years old—call a baseball camp or hire yourself a coach. Exert yourself for once in your life. A Hamilton strives to excel.”

“Maybe I am striving! How would you know? You’ve never even seen me play.”

Ford shot his cuffs impatiently. “Is this going to be another whine because I didn’t attend your little game? How many times do I have to tell you that business—”

“Takes precedence over sports.” Jared completed the familiar litany in unison with his father’s cultured tones. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” A thought popped into his head and left his mouth before he had time to censor it. “Man, you are such a hypocrite.”

Ford stilled. “What did you say?”

The fury in his father’s eyes made Jared’s heart pound so hard he could barely breathe, but he didn’t back down. “I didn’t want to join the stinking team in the first place, but you insisted it would build character and turn me into a team player.” And as it turned out, he’d discovered baseball was something he was pretty good at and had ended up loving the sport. But everyone else had family at the games to cheer them on. With Tori and the pip-squeak in London the past couple of years, his own cheering section was diddly-squat. Thrusting his chin a notch higher, he put forth his best I-could-give-a-rip curled lip. “Team player, my ass.” His voice cracked embarrassingly on the last word and he played with the sleeve of his jersey, uncovering the bottom half of his tattoo to distract the old man’s attention from that sign of weakness. “You talk the talk,” he sneered. “But what you really mean is that everyone else oughtta be a team player. Not you, though. You’re the frickin’ owner of the franchise, always too damn important to waste your time doing anything nice for anyone else.”

“I can’t believe I sired you.” Ford’s voice neither raised in volume nor exhibited anger. Yet like an arctic wind, it sliced an icy swath through Jared’s self-esteem. “You look like some punk off the street, with your tattoo and your earrings, and you’ve disgraced our good name by being tossed out of three schools.”

“Four,” Jared said, clenching every muscle in his body to prevent his father from seeing the way they’d started to tremble. “You always forget Chilton. And hey. At least I don’t keep marrying women young enough to be my daughters.”

Ford’s eyes turned more frigid yet. Leaning down, he murmured conversationally into Jared’s ear, “I really should have insisted your mother have an abortion. Things would have been so much better all the way around.”

Pain sliced deep and scalding tears rose in an unstoppable tide in Jared’s eyes. Feeling as if he were suffocating and would die if his father saw how powerfully the words had wounded, he reached out blindly with both hands to thrust Ford out of his way. He had to get out of there. Please. Just let him get out with a shred of pride left intact. Pushing past, his shoulder bumped the old man’s chest.

With an undignified yelp, Ford stumbled back. He bumped a table, scattering its contents across the Aubusson rug and his arms windmilled before he finally caught his balance. Yet even as he straightened, he took a step back with his left foot and rolled the heel of his tasseled loafer over a corner of the first edition leather-bound, gilt-edged classic that had tumbled to the floor. He pitched backward.

“Dad!” Jared leapt to catch him, but his fingers slid along the smooth, pampered length of his father’s hand, and he watched helplessly as Ford crashed onto his back on the floor. There was a sickening thud as the older man’s head came into contact with the marble hearth before he lay still.

“Oh, God, oh, man.” Jared squatted down. “Dad? I’m sorry, I’m sorry—I never meant to hurt you.”

His father didn’t move and Jared reached out. Ford’s head canted awkwardly against the edge of the pale veined marble. “Are you all right? Come on, Dad, wake up!” He felt for injury, but there was no blood from the contact site at the back of his father’s head, no soft spot that he could discern. But…that angle couldn’t be normal, could it? Bringing his fingers around to the front of his father’s neck, he pressed against the artery.

No pulse beat beneath the pounding blood in his own fingertips.

Jared snapped awake, sick horror pumping through his veins. He blinked in confusion at the rows of flowers that hovered overhead on either side of his prone body. Then he blew out a breath. Okay. All right. He knew where he was now: in the gardens of the Civic Center park in Denver.

Swearing under his breath, he sat up. Since hitting town, he’d slept in fits and starts, and then only during the day because he was scared to sleep at night. He lived in constant fear of getting rousted by the cops or—worse—by someone who’d just as soon slit his throat as look at him. The sun had definitely gone down, though, and not only had he dozed off, he’d had the damn dream again. It seemed like every time he closed his eyes, he relived those awful ten minutes that he wished more than anything he could take back and do over.

But, oh, God, he couldn’t, and no spin in the universe could get around the fact he’d killed his own father. Nauseated, he hugged his knees to his chest and buried his face in the notch between his kneecaps, rocking in abject misery.

Almost worse was the way he’d run afterward without even stopping to call 911. It probably would have been too late to save his dad anyway, but he’d never know that for certain because he’d panicked, showing only enough foresight to grab the brandy bottle and his backpack before hauling ass for the front door. He’d had it in his mind that his father’s guests were about to walk out of the dining room at any minute. The thought of one or two or maybe even the whole frickin’ lot of them staring at him with knowing eyes as they pointed accusing fingers and called him murderer had filled him with so much terror there hadn’t been room left for anything else.

For a second he desperately wished for his mother, but the desire passed as quickly as it had come upon him. The truth was he’d been so young when she died that all he really knew of her were the stories Tori had told him in an attempt to keep her memory alive.

What he really wanted was Tori. God, he wished he could call her, but not only did he hate the thought of making her an—what?—accomplice or witness or whatever in his crime, he didn’t have her number with him and doubted he could get a London number by calling 411.

Besides, what would he say—Sorry, but I offed Dad?

Snatching up his backpack, he leapt to his feet. He had to get out of the park, had to go someplace where other people hung out, even if he didn’t talk to anyone. He needed noise to drown out the voices in his head. Exiting onto Colfax Avenue, he headed for the 16th Street Mall.

Lost in misery, he failed to pay attention to the slight figure that detached itself from the shadow of the Greek amphitheater and followed him.

VICTORIA PAUSED IN THE doorway of Ford’s second office the next afternoon and watched John as he sat with the telephone receiver clasped between his ear and a hunched-up shoulder, scribbling furiously on a legal pad that sat at an angle on the desk in front of him. She didn’t understand why her father had felt the need for two offices, but the south wing that housed this one had been added while she was abroad, so perhaps he’d had plans to turn his old office into something else. That wasn’t really important, anyway. She only knew she’d chosen this room for Rocket’s use because it was farther away from the heart of the house than Father’s original study.

Which hardly explained why she was standing there staring at John’s muscular shoulders and the bunch and release of the sinews in his forearm as he wrote with the twisted, upside-down awkwardness of a leftie. You’d think she’d never seen silky black hair feathering a guy’s arms before. Shaking off a niggle of unease that whispered she’d never found any features on another man quite so virile as this one’s, she stepped into the room.

And heard him murmur, “You’re the woman, Mac. You sure you won’t change your mind about running away with me?”

Well, there’s a reality check for you. The guy was a lady-killer and she’d be wise to keep that in mind. Composing her features to reveal nothing beyond polite disinterest, she waited until he’d hung up the phone before saying, “You wanted to see me?”

His head jerked up and she froze as something hot and dangerous flashed in his eyes. Then his face went neutral and, setting down his pen, he reached for his coffee cup. Bringing it to his lips, he took a sip, and looked at her over its rim. “I thought you might like a progress report.”

She took an eager step toward the desk, her momentary discomfort forgotten in a wash of anticipation. “Have you found Jared, then?”

“No, not yet. But I will.”

Swamped with disappointment, she nevertheless gave him an apologetic grimace as she pulled out the chair across from him and sank onto its edge. “I guess it was naive to jump to that conclusion in the first place. I know it’s too soon to get my hopes up.”

“It’s too soon for me to have much to report, as well, but I’ve found that most clients appreciate being kept up to date. So if you’re interested…?”

“Yes. Please. My imagination has conjured up some truly horrendous scenarios, so to have something—anything—else to think about would be helpful.”

“I talked to Jared’s friends Dan Coulter and Dave Hemsley. Unfortunately he hasn’t contacted them.”

Her disappointment deepened. “Could they be lying? Perhaps they think they’re protecting him, or that telling you where he is would break that unwritten adolescent code not to rat out your fellow teen.”

“It’s possible, Tori, but I’ve interviewed a lot of teenagers over the years, and it’s taught me to pay attention to their body language and the nuance in their conversations. Kids are my specialty and these two struck me as a couple of straight shooters whose biggest secret was having attended a rave and a few beer blasts.”

She wanted to be stoic. She meant to be stoic. But she couldn’t prevent the low moan that slipped past her compressed lips.

“Heeey,” he crooned, leaning forward. “This is not the end of the world. It eliminates the easiest possibility, but it also gives us more eyes and ears around town. I stressed the seriousness of Jared’s situation to his friends, as well as the danger he could be in, and asked them to put out the word. Jared doesn’t have a girlfriend, which is unfortunate, since teenage boys often tell their girls things they’d never say to their buddies. But kids talk, and Dan and Dave swore they’d call me if he gets in touch with anyone they know.”

“So if he isn’t hiding out at a friend’s house here in town, what now?”

“I go talk to the cops. I generally do that right off the bat, but decided to talk to his friends first this time instead.”

“The police seemed pretty determined to make Jared their prime suspect when I talked to them.” Her stomach flip-flopped at the memory of that conversation.

John merely shrugged. “If they don’t feel like sharing, I’ll go talk to the cab companies and see if any fares were picked up in this neighborhood on the night of your father’s death. If I get a hit, I’ll talk to the cab driver and show him Jared’s picture. And if that doesn’t produce anything, I’ll take his photo to the airport and bus station to see if anyone remembers selling him a ticket.” He reached across and stroked gentle fingertips atop the hands she hadn’t even realized she’d clasped tightly on the smooth cherrywood surface of the desk in front of her. “I will find him, Victoria.”

She appreciated the reassurance, but his touch registered clear down to her toes, and she sat back in her chair, easing her hands out from beneath his long fingers. Looking around the office to avoid meeting his eyes, she found the distraction she sought and frowned in puzzlement. “There’s something wrong with this room. I can’t quite put my finger on it—whether it’s a dimension or a spatial aberration, or maybe it’s just the color scheme, which isn’t my cup of tea. But something about the office is off. It bugs me that I can’t figure out what.”

He leaned back, his dark eyes bright with interest. “That’s right—you’re an architect. As I recall, you were on the fast track at some hotshot firm when I knew you. You were in line to become…an associate, wasn’t it? Did that happen for you?”

“No. Well, they offered me the position, but I had to turn it down.”

“You’re kidding me!” Straightening, he stared at her. “I remember you being totally psyched about that promotion—wasn’t it your design or something that landed a big contract?”

“Yes.” She smiled at the memory.

“So, why the hell would you turn down something you’d been working so hard to attain?”

“Esme.”

“You walked away because you had a kid? That’s kind of a fifties attitude, don’t you think? News flash, darlin’, lots of women actually handle both.”

“Well, thank you for the tip, Miglionni.” Anger erupted and for once it didn’t occur to her to try to contain it. “You think it was an easy decision? I loved that job and I was damn proud of my work. But it also required putting in more than sixty hours a week and I’ve got a little news flash of my own, darlin’. I know what it’s like to have a parent whose work is more important than his kids. I wanted better for my child.”

Feeling agitated and restless, she climbed to her feet. She had to get out of here. Somehow Rocket pulled a multitude of feelings and sensations out of her without even trying, and she wanted no part of them. The last time she’d felt this way had also been with him, and in the end it had nearly broken her heart. So she was so gone. But first…

She stared down the length of her nose at him. “I have a suggestion for you. Go talk to those women who do it all. Ask them if they’d stay home with their children if they could afford it. You might be surprised at how many would leap at the chance. I know I’m fortunate to have the resources that gave me a choice, so guess just how much your input means to me? You’re the last person I’d ever solicit an opinion from on parenting. My God, you bullied your way into moving in here with unfounded accusations that I never in a million years would have thought to do. Not to mention that subtle threat to make things ugly for everyone involved if you weren’t given the opportunity to get to know your daughter.” She ignored the fact that she was using him in return for protection.

“What subtle threat? I haven’t said one freaking word that could remotely be construed as a threa—”

“But now that you’ve gotten what you wanted,” she said right over the top of him, surprised to find she was all but quivering with fury, “funny thing. I haven’t seen you make any effort to spend so much as five minutes with Esme since I introduced the two of you.”

John stared at the passion in Victoria’s face and felt his heart pound in his chest. This was the woman he remembered, with her electric eyes and intense fervency. The cool and reserved socialite he’d been dealing with since entering the Hamilton mansion annoyed the hell out of him, but he almost wished she’d come back. At least she didn’t confuse him so much, and God knew she was a whole lot easier to hold at arm’s length. This woman he wanted to throw down on the desk and have the kind of red-hot head-banging sex he remembered from six years ago.

She made a sound of disgust deep in her throat and he realized he’d been staring at her too long without responding to her accusation. Before he could say a word she’d whipped around on her expensively shod heels and he watched her hair bell out then settle back into place as she stalked from the room. The door closed behind her and he threw himself back into his chair. Swearing, he rammed his fingers through his hair and ground the heels of both hands into his scorched eyes.

What the hell was he doing here? He knew nothing about being a parent. Less than nothing. The truth was, just the thought of it scared the bejesus out of him.

And wasn’t that one for the books? In the ordinary run of events he wasn’t a man prone to fears. The day after graduating high school he’d forged his old man’s signature so he could join the Marines and he’d spent the next fifteen years in every hellhole and hot spot in the world. It wasn’t that he’d never been afraid, of course—only a fool went up against trigger-happy terrorists armed with the latest in automatic weaponry without a healthy dose of fear to keep him cautious. But he’d learned to take in stride the kind of things that would probably start the average guy’s bowels to churning.

Wasn’t it a hell of a note, then, that a tiny peanut of a girl with a mess of hair and big dark eyes should be the one to strike terror in his soul?

He’d deliberately stayed out late last night and had left before breakfast this morning in order to avoid running into Esme. Not that curiosity wasn’t gnawing at him like a rat on cheese. He wanted to know everything about her—what kind of toys did she like, which vegetables did she hate, did she like to be read to? Or maybe five-year-olds read for themselves—what did he know about such matters? He’d like to discover the answer to that, too. But the voice in his head that had kept him one step ahead of his father’s fists, one dodge away from bullets sprayed by captors of the political hostages he’d been sent to retrieve over the years, whispered warnings to keep his distance.

He should probably head back to Denver and let Victoria get back to her well-structured life. Hell, let her raise little Esme any way she saw fit; she was obviously an excellent mother.

He, on the other hand, knew bugger-all about being a father.

But much as the idea appealed to him, he knew he wasn’t going to do it. Not yet at any rate. Gert had the office running with the precision of a German-made engine, and he’d caught up on all of the cases requiring his attention in Denver. Then, too, he still had a number of people to contact here.

Besides—his jaw stiffened—there wasn’t a female born who could make him tuck tail and run. Not some little bit of a thing less than three feet tall and not her leggy mother, either.

Tori probably hadn’t meant it as such, but she’d issued him a challenge. She’d all but accused him of being too chickenshit to get to know his daughter. And, fine, he’d admit it—that was exactly how he’d behaved. Didn’t mean he couldn’t do better, though.

It might take a little time for him to gird his loins. But John Miglionni didn’t run from any challenge.

CHAPTER FIVE

“HERE, SWEETHEART.” VICTORIA stooped to untuck a narrow ruffle that had bunched beneath the strap of Esme’s backpack. Glancing into her daughter’s dark eyes, she smiled at the excitement shining there. She smoothed the hem of the little retro flower-power tank top over Esme’s cotton shorts, then brushed back a stray tendril of baby-fine hair that had escaped the little girl’s fat braids. “Do you have everything you need?”

“Uh-huh.” Esme fidgeted away from her mother’s fussing fingers. “I’m tidy, Mummy,” she said impatiently. “When’s Rebecca gonna be here? I been waiting forever.”

“Or at least five minutes, anyhow.” Victoria struggled to keep her amusement to herself. She heard footsteps coming up the steps of the portico and patted Esme’s arm. “There. That’s probably Rebecca and her mum now.”

Instead of the expected knock, however, the big mahogany door simply opened, bringing a wash of sunlight into the house. Then the door clicked closed and there stood John. A fierce scowl marred his brow, but the instant he saw Tori and Esme in the foyer, it disappeared. His eyes were slow to lose their storminess and remained watchful, but the glower was immediately replaced by a courteous curve of his lips.

The insincerity of that smile irritated Victoria no end. Good Lord, he seemed more like a soldier to her now than he had six years ago when he’d still actually been one. Back then, at least, he’d never hesitated to exhibit emotion, and his expression had always been open. These days she couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“Hullo, Mr. Miglondoanni!”

Victoria’s heart clutched at the bright expectancy in her daughter’s face as she stared up all unknowing at the man who’d fathered her. But she managed to say calmly, “It’s Miglionni, sweetie.”

“It’s a mouthful either way, especially when the mouth trying to pronounce it belongs to such a dainty little thing.” He smiled down at Esme, and this time genuine humor warmed his eyes. “Instead of trying to wrap your lips around all those syllables, why don’t you just call me—” with a quick glance at Victoria, he cleared his throat “—John. That would probably be simplest.”

“’Kay.”

He dropped to a crouch in front of her and reached out long, tanned fingers to the braided and bespeckled doll that peeked over Esme’s shoulder from her backpack. “Who is this? Your sister?”

“No, silly. That’s my American Girl doll. Her name is Molly Mack-’n-tire.”

“She’s very cute.” He hesitated, clearing his throat again as patent uncertainty dimmed the usual lady-killer wattage of his charm. “Nearly as cute as you,” he added and gave her a small, crooked grin so diffidently sweet it made Victoria blink.

“Oh, you.” Esme giggled in delight and gave him a flirtatious poke with one soft little finger. It didn’t cause so much as a dimple in the soft cloth stretched across his hard chest. “Do you like her Route 66 frock?”

“Yeah, sure. It’s very, uh…blue.”

“Yes, lovely, isn’t it? It’s new. Mummy sent away for it on the inner net.”

“Internet, Esme.”

“Uh-huh.” The little girl didn’t spare her so much as a glance. Her bright-eyed gaze was locked firmly on Rocket. “I have a playdate with Rebecca Chilworth. She and her mummy are s’posed to pick me up, but they’re late. Rebecca’s my best friend, you know. Fiona Smyth was my best friend, but now that I live in the States, Rebecca is. Her and my mummies usta know each other a long time ago. Do you have a best friend?”

“Yes, I have two.” He looked a little dazed, but added gamely, “Their names are Cooper and Zach. We were in the Marines together.”

Her brow puckered in confusion. “What’s that?”

“They’re soldiers, Es,” Victoria interjected. “Like the Queen’s Guards at home.”

“Only better,” John added. “A Marine wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those tall-ass furry hats.”

None of which appeared to enlighten Esme, so Victoria added, “You know, sweetie. Like what Mr. McIntire is in.”

Her daughter’s whole face lit up and the look she flashed John couldn’t have been more awed if a super-hero had suddenly sprung to life. “You been over the seas, then?” she demanded.

“Yes. I’ve spent quite a bit of time in other countries.”

“Molly’s papa is over the seas, and she has to make sack fries.”

John’s expression not only lacked comprehension, he looked downright stupefied. Esme’s gregarious chatter could do that to a person, so Victoria decided to take pity on him. But she didn’t bother to swallow the little smile that quirked her lips. It was refreshing to see him at sea in his dealings with a female.

“Glad to see you’re having a good time,” he growled and her smile grew.

“Oh, I am.” But she saw Esme’s baffled expression and straightened her face. “Each of the American Girl dolls are set in a different era,” she informed him. “And part of their appeal lies in the books that come with them, with settings in the doll’s specific period in history. Molly’s stories describe life on the home front during World War II, from the challenge of having a father who’s overseas, to the sacrifices her family makes to help their country win the war.”

Esme beamed at the dark-haired man in front of her. “Sack fries,” she agreed. “Mummy says that’s part of what makes Molly a hair win.”

“Heroine, sweetie.”

“Ah.” Then John, too, grinned, a slash of white so reminiscent of the carefree, I-can-charm-your-pants-off, you-gotta-love-me smile that had first sucked Victoria into his orbit all those years ago she felt her knees grow weak and her thighs clamp tight.

She unlocked the latter and took a hasty step away to give herself some distance before she did something foolish like reach out and run her fingers over the same hard surface her daughter had poked. Hot awareness surged so fast and furiously through her system that blisters were no doubt popping up in its wake, and she gave silent thanks when the doorbell rang. She crossed the entryway and opened the door, greeting Rebecca and her mother with even more warmth than usual.

With the arrival of her friend, Esme lost interest in John so fast and completely it made his head swim. He’d been doing okay there for a while, but apparently she had bigger fish to fry now, and there was a lesson to be learned from thinking he’d been making some kind of headway. He watched as she threw her arms around Tori’s neck, pursed her little rosebud lips for an enthusiastic smooch, then tore away and clattered out the door, exchanging machine-gun-rapid patter with a little curly-haired dishwater blonde he could only assume was the aforementioned best friend Rebecca. Being able to charm a little girl for five minutes didn’t mean he knew squat about kids in the long term, he reminded himself.

“I’m sorry we’re late,” a more mature version of the little blonde said breathlessly to Victoria, pulling his attention away from the children who were climbing into a minivan parked on the circular drive. “I overestimated how quickly I could run a few errands. And Lord knows—”

“Ma-mmmm!”

With a shrug and an assessing, curious glance at him, Rebecca’s mother moved toward the door. “The natives are definitely restless. I’ll have Esme back by six.”

“Thanks, Pam.”

Victoria walked the woman out and John listened to a flurry of farewells and slamming car doors. Then between one moment and the next she was back, closing the front door behind her as silence settled over the entryway. Blowing a strand of hair out of eyes that were alight with humor, she grinned at him. “Whew.”

She was mussed and flushed, and looked so much like the Tori he remembered that he experienced a sudden sharp desire to pin her against the door at her back and rock his mouth over hers. Man, just one little kiss, that was all he asked. Just to see if the new, uptight Victoria had the same addictive flavor that had lived on in his mind all these years. Heartbeat picking up tempo, he took a determined step forward.

She scooped her hair back. “So, tell me. Why were you in a bad mood when you came in?”

He halted, jerked back to the present. “What?”

“When you let yourself in a while ago, you looked furious. Then you saw Es and me and slapped on your company face. Which was pretty smarmy, by the way.”

O-kay. He took a large step back. That wasn’t the brightest plan he’d ever had. Hell, he had professional standards to maintain here. But still…“What do you mean, smarmy?”

“Come on. The way you went from being clearly out of sorts to that phony hail-fellows-well-met smile? Smarmy with a capital smar, Miglionni. I thought for a minute there you were going to try to sell us a used car.”

“Yeah?” He stepped forward again. “So what about you, then?”

She, too, took a step forward, her chin angling up at him. “What about me?”

“You’ve been giving me that little society-princess smile since I first landed on your doorstep, when both of us know damn well that if you had your way I’d be six states away. What’s that all about?”

“Good manners.”

“Uh-huh. So let me get this straight. When you do it, you’re Little Ellie Etiquette, but when I do it I’m a used-car salesman?” He shrugged. “That’s fair.”

The last thing he expected to see was the wide, amused grin she flashed him. “No, it’s not, but somehow it seems different when I’m the one doing it. I suppose, though, that it’s just as much a way for you to keep your feelings to yourself as it is for me.”

Damn. He started measuring the distance between them and the door again, deciding that pressing her up against an unyielding surface was a mighty fine idea after all. Screw professionalism. Stacked up against the thought of getting his hands in that hair, kissing those lips, it was highly overrated.

And if that wasn’t dangerous thinking, he didn’t know what was. Stuffing his hands into his slacks pockets, he took a large step back, feeling like he was performing some spastic do-si-do but determined to put distance between them. “You wanna know what was bugging me?”

“Yes. If you’d like to tell me.”

Sunshine from the leaded-glass entry sidelights shone in her eyes, picking out the gold flecks in her moss-green irises. Feeling a sudden need for an emotional, as well as physical, distance if he wanted to keep himself from doing something they’d both regret, he said flatly, “It was the conversation I had with the police about Jared. I was thinking about the lead detective, who’s a donut-eating lard-ass too lazy to look at anyone else when he’s got a nice, convenient scapegoat in your brother.”

That gave him the distance he wanted, but seeing the humor wiped from her face gave him no satisfaction. On the contrary, the strained worry he was responsible for putting in its place made him feel like a school-yard bully. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he leaned toward her.

Only to watch her back snap poker-straight and her expression smooth out into the bland aloofness he hated. It should have put his back up. Instead her words played back in his head. I suppose, though, that it’s just as much a way for you to keep your feelings to yourself as it is for me.

Shit.

He reached for her hand. “Come on.” Tugging it gently, he led her down the hallway toward the office she’d assigned for his use. “Let’s go sit down and talk about it.”

A moment later he seated her in the chair facing his desk, then circled it to take his own. “Can I have Mary bring you anything? Some iced tea, maybe? Something stronger?” He wasn’t exactly accustomed to summoning servants, but he’d been the housekeeper’s golden boy since he’d questioned her and the rest of the help yesterday, so what the hell. Might as well take advantage. No one understood better that he was likely to drop out of favor just as quickly as he’d come into it.

Victoria merely shook her head, however.

“She agrees with you, by the way.”

She blinked at him. “Mary does? About what?”

“Jared’s innocence.”

That got her attention and John saw with satisfaction a spark of anger igniting in her eyes. He considered that a big improvement over the defeat that had dulled them.

She straightened in her chair. “You questioned Mary?”

“Yes, ma’am. And the cook and the two girls who come in once a week to clean, as well. Oh, and the gardener.” He gave her a smile he knew would aggravate the hell out of her. “And except for the gardener, who’s still hacked off at Jared for running over his dahlias with the car, they all agree the kid couldn’t have killed your father. Swore that he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“I told you that!”

“Yes, you did. But I take nothing on faith and no one’s word is good enough for me. I’m not satisfied I’m even getting in the vicinity of the truth, in fact, until I’ve double—and preferably triple or quadruple—checked every statement I take, every assertion I hear. That, darlin’, is what you’re paying me for.”

“To be a cynic?”

“Damn straight. You want someone to hold your hand, agreeing with every word you speak and ‘poor-babying’ you about your murdered dad and missing brother, go talk to one of your country-club boys. You want Jared found, you got me. And that means poking my nose in every corner of his life, finding out things the help might know, discovering the stuff he’d never in a million years confide in his sister.”

He waited for her to ask what kind of stuff, but instead she straightened in her seat and eyed him with speculative consideration. “The police aren’t going to look any further than Jared, are they?”

“Not if the conversation I had with Detective Simpson was any indication.” Anger burned in his gut all over again at the thought of the cop’s incompetence. It wasn’t something he was accustomed to running into with most law-enforcement personnel.

“Then I’d like to expand your job.”

He stared at her. “In what way?”

“I don’t understand the detective’s attitude, given that there are literally dozens of people who might have wanted my father dead. So you look into them. Heck, I can give you ten names off the top of my head just to get you started.”

“That’s probably not a great way to spend your money. It’s likely to cost you a fortune and still not net you the results you’re looking for.”

“I don’t care about the money. The police aren’t doing their job, so I want you to do it for them.”

“You do understand, don’t you, that I have no authority to compel anyone to answer my questions? If people don’t want to talk to me there’s not a helluva lot I can do to make them. It’s why private detectives rarely get involved in murder cases. We have neither the jurisdiction nor the contacts the cops do.”

She met his eyes and her lips curled up in a faint smile. “Yet you’ll do it anyway, won’t you?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “If that’s what you want. What the hell, I enjoy a good challenge.” Leaning back in his chair, he studied her. “It’s your money, of course, but if you don’t want to find all your resources going into my pockets, you might consider acting as my entree to the folks in your world. I’m not exactly the country-club type.”

She considered him for a moment. “No, you aren’t. Does it really matter?”

“Only in that water-finding-its-own-level kind of way. Chances are better than decent that without an introduction from you, most of that crowd will be leery about talking to me.” Or, more likely, flat-out refuse.

“All right.”

“All right they’ll be leery or all right you’ll—”

“I’ll perform the introductions.”

“Don’t agree without giving it some thought,” he warned. “It could turn out to be time-consuming.”

She shrugged. “I don’t care how time-consuming it is.” She rose to her feet and looked down at him. “If that’s what it takes to clear Jared and get on with our lives, then that’s what I’ll do. Just let me know what you need.”

He thought about that as he watched her walk from the office—about letting her know what he needed. Oh, Mama. Then he thought about getting on with his life, and a less-than-amused laugh escaped him. Shit. He would’ve been all over that concept two days ago. Now he found himself with a daughter he hadn’t known existed and didn’t have a clue what to do with. Not to mention a persistent lech for a woman who only wanted him to untangle her brother’s problem, then disappear. Get on with his life…His ass!

He didn’t even know what the hell that meant anymore.

CHAPTER SIX

JARED STOOD OUTSIDE THE SPOT, silently reciting a variation of the pep talk his baseball coach always gave the team before a game. He’d heard about the drop-in recreational center when he’d eavesdropped on a conversation between a couple of kids hustling for change on the 16th Street Mall. His ears had perked up when he’d heard one of them claim it was possible to hang out there from five in the evening until ten. The prospect of having a solid five hours before he had to move on made him feel almost giddy. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a solid block of time to simply sit in one place, never mind sleep. He didn’t even care about the activities the rec center might offer. All he wanted was somewhere he could stay put for a while. It seemed like every time he got halfway comfortable, he had to pick up and move.

He stood to the side of the door for several minutes and watched some Hispanic guys horse around inside the center. Then, drawing a deep breath, he took a step toward the opening.

“You don’t wanna go in there,” a husky voice said from behind him and Jared jerked to a stop, looking over his shoulder. A kid, so slight of build he looked as if a stiff breeze might blow him away, detached himself from the shadows cast by the side of the building. Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his baggy jeans, he jerked his pointed chin toward the group of boys inside the rec hall. “That’s one of the local gangs,” he told Jared. “They have a tendency to run off anyone not one of their homeboys.”

“Shit.” Disappointment was a massive stone around his neck. God, he was tired. He was so freaking tired and he just wished he could go home.

Tears burned behind his eyelids, prickled his nasal passage and he turned his back so the kid with the funny, raspy voice wouldn’t catch sight of them and think he was a damn baby. “Thanks for the heads-up,” he said gruffly. Blowing out a weary breath, he trudged away from the place that for one brief, shining moment he’d believed might actually provide a few hours of sanctuary.

“Hey, wait up!” The kid caught up and gave him a friendly nudge. “What’s your name? I seen you around, here and there. I’m P.J.” He dug a grimy hand into his pocket and pulled out a candy bar. “You want half?”

Jared surreptitiously knuckled away a couple of tears that managed to leak past his guard. Glancing at the kid from the corner of his eye, he saw him studiously looking the other way and thought maybe he wasn’t the only one who succumbed to the occasional overwhelming bout of helplessness. For some reason, the realization made a difference, and after a swipe of his nose with his shirttail, he squared his shoulders. “Yeah. Sure.” He was careful when he reached out to accept the portion of candy bar P.J. offered, because what he really wanted to do was snatch it out of the little guy’s hand. He couldn’t quite remember when he’d last eaten. He’d killed off the brandy last night, but hadn’t had any solid food since long before then. Resisting the urge to stuff the entire candy bar in his mouth, he took a small bite. “Thanks.”

“No problem. So, you never told me your name.”

“Jared.”

“That’s prett—uh, a good name.” He cleared his throat, but his voice was even raspier than before when he said, “What were you hoping to get outta The Spot, Jared?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Someplace to just…be, I guess. Do you know what I mean? I just wanted somewhere I didn’t have to leave the minute I got settled.” He noticed the griminess of his own hand as he brought up the candy for another bite. “And I’d sure like a shower. Maybe I oughtta go to the Salvation Army, after all.” He’d been avoiding those kind of shelters, for fear someone might recognize his face. The truth was, though, he didn’t even know if he’d been on the news here. What was hot news in Colorado Springs might not be worth mentioning in Denver. And he was rapidly reaching the point where he could hardly stand his own smell.

“Trust me,” P.J. interrupted his thoughts, “you wanna steer clear of the S.A. Way too many mean sum-bitches there.”

“The Salvation Army isn’t safe?” Jared stared at P.J. in shock. “Aren’t those the people who ring bells and say ‘God bless’ when you drop money in their collection pots outside the stores at Christmas time?”

“Yeah, we ain’t in Kansas anymore, Toto.” P.J. shrugged. “It’s not the people running the place who are gonna hurtcha—they’re all pretty nice. But a lot of the homeless grown-ups using the joint?” Blowing out a tuneless, expressive whistle, he shook his head. “They’d just as soon punch you in the face as give you the time of day.” Then he brightened. “We could head on over to Sock’s Place, though.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s another drop-in center. Well, it’s really kind of a church, but it’s tight. You can get a meal and shower there and catch a few hours sleep. Whaddya say?”

“Sounds good.” It sounded great. Like a little piece of heaven. He wasn’t about to say that aloud, though. Playing it cool was difficult, but he sure as hell didn’t have to come off sounding like a hick.

It also felt really nice, he admitted a few minutes later as he and P.J. set off for the new place, to have someone to hang out with. Right up there near the top of the Horrendo-meter was how alone he’d felt in this ongoing nightmare. It was good to have someone to talk to.

Not that he did much of the talking. P.J. seemed to be a jawer by nature; he had an opinion on everything under the sun and didn’t hesitate to state it. That was fine with Jared. The smaller boy had obviously been on the streets longer than he had and he was a font of good information that most likely would have taken Jared weeks to learn for himself.

Studying the other youth as P.J. skipped backward in front of him, telling him ways to blend in around the Auraria College campus in order to catch some rest during the days, he thought the two of them probably looked like Mutt and Jeff. He possessed the Hamilton genes, which meant he was tall and rangy, all long arms and legs. To his disgust, he wasn’t the least bit buff, but Cook said that was because he was still growing into his bones. She insisted he’d be buff enough before he knew it.

He wasn’t exactly holding his breath waiting for that to happen, but compared to P.J. he could have been a fricking graduate of the Charles Atlas school of bodybuilding. The other boy was nearly a foot shorter than he and so fine-boned that he appeared almost girlishly delicate. To be fair, that impression was gained mostly by what was on view: the little dude’s big-eyed face and stick-thin arms. The rest of him was buried beneath a T-shirt about three sizes too large and a pair of wide-legged jeans that sagged off his skinny hips and pooled their frayed hems around sneakers that had seen better days. Somehow Jared doubted that the rest of P.J. was any more filled-out, though. Hell, his face didn’t even exhibit a trace of fuzz yet.

“How old are you, anyway?” he demanded.

“Gonna be fifteen in a few months.”

“Yeah?” Jared studied him skeptically. “How many months do you consider a few?”

“’Bout twenty.” P.J. grinned unrepentantly. “How about you? I bet you must be around eighteen, huh?”

“Not until November.”

“I was close.”

Jared snorted. “Closer than thirteen is to fifteen, anyhow.” But his disdain was all for show, and they both knew it. “So, what does P.J. stand for?”

“Priscilla Jayne.”

Jared stopped dead. “You’re a girl?” His voice cracked on the last word, but he was too busy staring and reassessing to care.

“Of course I’m a girl! Jeez! Why does everybody think I’m not?” Looking down at her chest, she plucked the cloth away from its flat planes. “It’s because I ain’t got no boobies, isn’t it? Well, I’m gonna have ’em someday, you know. I’m just a late bloomer.” Her little triangular face went forlorn. “I’d sure have a lot less money troubles if I had ’em now, though.”

“How’s that?” Now that he knew she was a girl, he was amazed he hadn’t tumbled to it the second he’d clapped eyes on her. Shit. In hindsight, it seemed so obvious.

“If I had a nice rack—or, okay, any boobs at all—I could turn tricks and my money problems would be yesterday’s news.” But she made a sour face. “All right, the truth is, part of me is just as glad that’s not an option, but if you tell anybody I said so, I’ll deny it. Don’t cha think, though, that the whole sex thing seems really…icky?”

“Well, yeah.” He looked at her and thought she didn’t look all that much older than his niece Esme. His stomach rolled at the thought of some sweaty old man rolling around on top of her and he reached out to rap his knuckles against the top of her backward-facing baseball cap. “Hel-lo! Letting fat old guys do whatever they want to you with their pudgy damp hands? Be glad you don’t have the stuff.”

“Yeah, well, easy for you to say. I bet you could make a bundle.” She gave him a jaundiced once-over. “It must be nice to be gorgeous.”

He made a face at the latter comment, but warmed inside all the same at the thought of someone thinking he was good-looking. He also perked up at the idea of making some money. He was down to his last twelve dollars. “Women will pay for sex?” That didn’t sound like such a bad deal. He’d only had sex twice, but he’d liked it.

A lot. P.J. made a rude sound. “Not women, you dumb-shit. Men.”

“No fucking way!” He jumped back, as if the very notion were contagious. “That’s sick.”

“Yeah,” she agreed glumly. “Like I said, the whole deal is really icky.”

“It’s not the sex that sucks, P.J. I’m no big expert, but I’d rank getting laid right up there with hot-fudge sundaes. That’s with girls, though. I’m not into the guy-guy thing.” The mere thought made him queasy.

“Hot-fudge sundaes, huh?” She regarded him with some interest. “I like those. Whaddya wanna bet, though, that only boys get that out of sex? Girls probably end up with mud pies that only look like sundaes.”

“Hey!” He felt vaguely insulted by her assertion until he thought of Beth Chamberlain, with whom he’d shared his first sexual experience. “Well, maybe it is better for guys the first few times.” Then Vanessa Spaulding, an older woman of nineteen who’d taught him a thing or two, popped into his mind. “But if a guy knows what he’s doing, it gets way better.”

“That’s good to know.” P.J. shrugged. “Still, if it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon skip the sweaty groping and go straight to the chocolate-covered ice cream.”

He laughed. It was the first thing he’d found remotely amusing since tearing out of the Colorado Springs mansion, and suddenly things didn’t seem quite as scary now that he had someone to hang out with. He gave the young girl a friendly shove to the shoulder. “You’re all right, you know that? I’m glad we met.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

JOHN CLIMBED THE EXTERIOR staircase of the six-car garage behind the mansion. Reaching the top, he glanced back over his shoulder toward the kitchen door, which he could just see from his vantage point. Then he turned back and gave the antique brass door knocker several authoritative, decisive raps. Mary, the housekeeper, had told him he’d find Victoria there, and he had no legitimate reason to doubt her. But what would Tori be doing in an apartment over the garage—having a hot and heavy affair with the chauffeur?

Jesus, Ace. Okay, so it didn’t strike him as particularly funny. It should have—considering how much she’d changed over the years, the very notion should have been ironic, or at least marginally amusing. Instead, the mere idea of her getting down and dirty with some faceless man irritated the hell out of him. Which made no sense at all. It wasn’t as if he expected she’d been celibate for the past six years.

All right, that was exactly what he expected. So sue him.

It didn’t help the nascent case of jealousy swirling in his gut that the woman who yanked the door open hardly looked as if getting down and dirty were outside the realm of possibility. Gone was the sheath-and-pearls-attired socialite. In her place stood a familiar barefoot woman clad in a threadbare pair of cutoffs and an oversize white shirt, the tails of which had been knotted at her waist over a lipstick-red sports bra. The shirt looked as if it might have belonged to her father, so long were its tails and so bulky its rolled-back cuffs that ended just below her elbows. And her hair was a wild, sun-streaked, flyaway nimbus floating out from beneath the little red triangular bandana she’d tied behind her head. But it was the ragged threads straggling against her firm, freckled thighs that riveted his attention.

“Can I do something for you, Miglionni, or did you just come up here to stare at my legs?”

He tore his gaze away from the long, smooth, bare expanse. “You gotta admit, they’re ogle-worthy,” he said, meeting her eyes. “Believe it or not, though, I actually did have something to tell you—those beauties just drove whatever it was clean out of my head.” He didn’t plan the grin he flashed her; as with damn near every other time he’d ever been in her company, she drew a reaction from him that was purely spontaneous. “Man, Tori. I’d forgotten how pretty your legs are. You oughtta wear short shorts more often.” He couldn’t stop himself from giving them a final once-over before he made a conscious effort to look elsewhere. No sense giving her any more opportunities to accuse him of sexual harassment.

He glanced past her into the depths of the big open room. A huge worktable, littered with mechanical pencils and blueprints, wood scraps and piles of fabric, stood down near the end of the room. In the midst of the chaos stood two little houses about three feet tall. One was made of balsa wood and was fairly plain, but the other looked very elaborate. Deep shelves behind the table held several other balsa models and one stone one, each in a different style. “Whoa. Are those yours?”

“Yes.”

She relinquished her position blocking the door when he stepped forward and he strode past her, crossing to the table. He saw that the models on the table had an open back and, bending down, he checked out the interior of the ornate one before glancing up at her. “What is this, a dollhouse?”

“Yes.”

He indicated the other. “And this one?”

“It’s the prototype.”

“And you made both of them?” He tipped his chin to include the other prototypes on the shelves. “You made all of these?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” He gave the one still in progress a more thorough inspection. “I can’t believe the attention to detail. It’s perfect.” It had gingerbread shingles on the roof, a wraparound porch with spindle railings, two balconies and a bay window. Each room was fully realized, from window seats and the tiny oak paneling forming the wainscoting in the parlor, to the old-fashioned wallpaper and white porcelain pedestal sink in the upstairs bathroom. He flipped a switch on a little metal box he saw sitting on the table next to the dollhouse, and minuscule lights within the model came on. Laughter rolled out of his chest. “This is so cool.”

Victoria blinked as she watched Rocket circle the table to investigate the other models on the shelves. He possessed such bedrock masculinity that she would have thought he’d find her dollhouses too sissy for his consideration—or at least dismiss them with no more than a cursory glance. Instead he seemed fascinated. When he came to the stone castle and glanced over his shoulder at her, his dark eyes all but shot sparks of pure, engaged interest.

“This one’s different. It’s more like a guy’s dollhouse.”

A laugh escaped her. “Good call. I made it for a boy with an extensive collection of metal toy soldiers, most of which are knights, kings, horses and other assorted medieval warriors. It was my first experience with masonry and I’m pretty proud of the way it turned out.” Coming around the worktable to stand next to him, she hauled the castle off the shelf and placed it on the table. “Look.” She reached across his arm and past the turrets into the castle’s open top. “It has a working drawbridge and portcullis and if you move this stone just so—” she demonstrated with a fingertip “—and then the one next to it like this—shazam!” The interior wall swivelled to expose a secret room that had walls bristling with sketches of medieval weaponry.

John laughed. “Excellent! I would have beefed up the back wall here for a better defense, but it looks as if you’ve got the firepower and that’s half the battle. A couple vats of boiling oil, enough supplies to hold off a siege and you’ve got yourself a good chance of holding the fort.” He turned his head to look at her. “Do you make these for a living?”

“Yes.” Finding his face suddenly much too close, his enthusiastic curiosity much too compelling, Victoria eased back a step, trying to ignore the smooth, hot-skinned drag of his inner forearm against her own. “I sort of fell into it by default. I made one for Es and a couple of her friends fell in love with it and wanted one for themselves. Their respective parents commissioned me to make them and from there word of mouth just started to build. It was confined mostly to the Mayfair area of London until last year, when I set up a Web page on the net. Now I’ve got all the work I can handle. More, really. I’ve had to turn commissions away.”

“Have you ever considered mass producing?”

“For about five minutes.” She met his gaze. “But then I rejected the idea. Not only would mass production put me right back in the very situation I was trying to avoid when I left Kimball and Jones—devoting more time to my business than to Esme—it would strip all the individuality out of the process…and probably most of the fun, as well. I need to keep it small. That way I can build each house to suit the little girl—or in the castle’s case, boy—for whom it’s meant. Each child gets a quality, almost-one-of-a-kind dollhouse and I get a creative outlet…not to mention steady employment that’s fairly lucrative for being so selective.” Much too aware of his shoulder bumping up against hers as he leaned down to test the castle’s various working parts, she moved away, going to the shelves and finding make-work straightening the remaining models. “Which reminds me, I should get back to it. You said you had a reason for coming up here?”

When she turned back, she found him checking out her legs once again, but he immediately pulled his gaze up to meet hers. “Yeah. The probability that Jared left town just got a lot stronger. I tracked down the cab driver who picked him up the night your father was murdered.”

“Oh, God.” Feeling her legs go weak, Victoria reached for the stool she used when working at the table and pulled it beneath her hips. “What did he say? Where did he take him?”

“He said the kid was extremely quiet and seemed stunned. Maybe in shock. That when he asked if he was all right, Jared laughed hysterically, but calmed down enough to insist on being taken to the bus station.”

“Did you find out where he went from there?”

“No. I couldn’t find anyone at the station who remembers selling him a ticket. But most teens on the run head for a city and since Denver’s the nearest one to Colorado Springs, odds are better than even that’s where your brother went.”

She pushed to her feet. “I can be ready to leave in ten minutes.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, there. Slow down.” He grabbed hold of her shoulders and leveled a no-nonsense, let’s not-get-ahead-of-ourselves look on her. “We’re not going anywhere.”

“But if that’s where you think he is…”

“Think being the operative word here. Running around like a couple of chickens with their heads cut off won’t gain us anything. We do this the smart way, which means I tap into my resources. First and foremost among those is Stand Up For Kids in Denver.”

“What’s that?”

“An organization that gives aid to runaways and street kids. I’ll give them a call and fax them Jared’s photograph so they can be on the lookout for him when they do their outreach in Skyline Park Sundays and Tuesdays. Kids learn quickly where they can score a free meal and some toiletries, so if Jared’s in Denver, he’ll likely show up at Skyline sooner or later. I’ve worked with this organization before and they know they can trust me not to return a kid to an abusive situation. And in return, I can trust the Stand Up counselors to give me a call as soon as they spot him.”

“Then we go to Denver?”

“Then I do, anyway.”

“If you think I’m sending you off to collect him all by yourself, John, think again. Jared’s bound to be scared to death, and he doesn’t know you from Adam.”

He gave her shoulders a tiny squeeze. “What do you say we wait until we actually have a useable lead before we argue this to a standstill?”

The commonsense suggestion made her realize the silliness of standing here arguing about it now and she couldn’t help but smile. She gave him a poke. “Deal.”

Surprisingly, instead of treating her overture as the tension breaker she’d intended and returning a smile of his own, John frowned. “Dammit, Tori, I wish you hadn’t done that,” he growled. “Now I’ve got no choice but to get an answer to the question that’s been driving me nuts ever since I landed on your doorstep.”

“What question is tha—?” The query hadn’t fully left her mouth before she was caught against his long, hard body. One strong arm slipped down to wrap around her waist and his free hand tunneled beneath her hair to grasp the back of her neck.

She stared up at him in surprised disbelief as his body heat began to permeate every inch of her he touched. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Miglio—?”

John’s mouth, firm, hot and confident, covered hers, cutting off her demand.

For a moment, sheer astonishment held her immobile. Then she absorbed the taste of him, felt the slide of his tongue and with her heart thundering in the outraged fear that she’d never be able to hold herself aloof from this man, she slapped her hands against the solid wall of his chest and gave it a firm shove.

He didn’t even budge and she suddenly recalled his strength, remembered the way it used to intrigue her, titillate her. She remembered, too, the way it had once fulfilled the until-then-unacknowledged little girl inside of her who’d always longed for someone to stand between her and the world. Somebody to keep her safe.

Well, she’d buried that child the day she’d learned to accept once and for all that the only person she could depend on protecting her was herself. And assembling all the resistance at her disposal, she once again flattened her hands, which within seconds of her reintroduction to the warm, wet silk of Rocket’s persuasive kisses, had softened from a shove to a caress against the rigid muscles of his chest.

Even with steady pushing on her part, though, he held her with ease. He displayed not the slightest hint of roughness, yet his determination to hold on to her was unmistakable. And he kissed her with an expertise that sent her resistance down the drain. His mouth was talented and his kisses were sultry. Forceful.

Familiar. God, so familiar. She knew these lips. She’d kissed them before, studied them as they’d shaped words, slipped bites of food between them with her fingers. It had been six years, but some things a woman never forgot.

Every last defense disappeared and she felt herself start to melt at the knees. For one wild, reckless minute, suffused with a blistering pleasure she’d only known once before in her life, she kissed him back fiercely. She reveled in his hot, rich taste, in the slick inner lining of his mouth that she lapped with her tongue, in the tensile strength that supported her weight so effectively as she plastered herself against him in a futile bid to climb right inside his body.

Then before it even occurred to her to muster the will to pull away, John jerked up his head, released her, and took a giant step back.

“Damn.” He brushed the back of his hand against his bottom lip. Then, dropping his hand to his side, he dabbed his tongue against the lip he’d just touched and eyed her sourly. “It’s still there, isn’t it? I’d hoped it was gone, or at least one of those memories I’d blown all out of proportion over the years. But you’re still every bit as addictive as you used to be.” His hot-eyed regard slid over her from the top of her head to her crimson-polished toes. “Christ. You’re like cocaine in a red bra.”

It didn’t exactly thrill her that her first reaction was a sheer, fierce pleasure in knowing he’d been as affected as she. But she’d put sex behind her over the years, had assured herself that she was beyond all that—at least for the time being. The few times she’d actually stopped and thought about it long enough to realize she didn’t even particularly miss it, she’d simply assumed it was because she was too busy with motherhood and making a living. Somewhere in the back of her mind, though, she’d always believed she’d one day introduce it back into her life. Only she never had, and it horrified her to realize now that the reason she’d rarely been tempted by the men she’d dated was because none of them had been him.

Considering she had serious doubts he’d been similarly celibate, his admitting she’d left an impression seemed the least he could do.

She pushed his unexpected revelation aside until she could analyze it more closely at a later, less befuddled time. Giving the shirttails knotted at her waist a tug, she cleared her throat. “We seem to have retained the chemistry, all right,” she agreed, pleased to hear her voice emerge with commendable coolness, considering she felt like one huge, hot, frazzled nerve ending. The only sign she could see that he might feel the same was the hot color burning high on his cheekbones. “So where do you propose we go from here?”

“To our respective corners, where we keep it nice and professional.”

Victoria wondered how that would work with Esme part of the equation, but she gave him a curt nod. Because he was right. Sex was the last thing they needed clouding an already volatile and confusing situation. Keep the physicality out of the picture and they could figure out the rest as they went along. “Great,” she said with frigid composure. “Fine. Works for me.”

She caught him eyeing her legs again, but he yanked his gaze up and lanced her with the blank-eyed military stare. “Yeah. Dandy,” he agreed. “That’s what we’ll do then.”

GOOD GOING THERE, Ace. John stalked back toward the house with angry, long-legged strides. What are you, a fucking moron?

Tori had always been different from any other woman he’d ever known. Right from the beginning she’d been different, and he should have known better than to get within kissing range of her again.

Most people had a milestone or two in their lives, he imagined. One of his had been the day he’d discovered his dick was more generously proportioned than the average guy’s. Up until then, he’d merely been that skin-and-bones sorry-ass kid of Frank Miglionni, the U.S. Navy’s biggest screw-up. Life with the old man after his mom died in a boating accident had been a series of fleabag apartments outside one base or another, because decent housing on base simply offered too many opportunities for Frank to start feuds with the neighbors. It had been living alone when Frank was in the brig, and being waled on when the old man was home and there wasn’t anyone else around to afford him a more interesting challenge.

Then one day shortly after puberty’s onset, John had started yet another new school in yet another new town. And when he’d dropped his pants in the locker room after gym class, half the guys there had stopped what they were doing to offer up variations of the universally deferential holy shit, dude. It was his first taste of respect, and had made him hunger for more. In that moment, he’d grabbed hold of the new identity they offered as if it were a lifeline.

Then he’d learned there were females out there just waiting for a guy with the kind of equipment he possessed, and that was all she wrote. No one had to tell him twice that his cock size was his identity. First girls and then women admitted him into a whole new world of sex, one involving so much more than just his own fist and a raft of sweaty fantasies. It was the closest thing he’d ever found to a religious experience, and once discovered, he was its most faithful disciple. His new goal became pleasuring as many women as he could lay his hands on, and regaling his buddies afterward was just part and parcel of the process. One it never occurred to him to question.

Until he met Tori.

He’d known the moment they met that she was totally different from the Marine groupies he usually encountered. But he sure as hell hadn’t anticipated the way she would affect him. He’d just blithely laid down the same rules and set the same parameters he always had, never dreaming she’d effect the biggest change in his life since that first milestone. But something about her made him realize he was more than the missile behind his fly that had garnered him the handle Rocket by his Marine buddies. And the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he thought of anyone discussing her the way he had discussed so many others altered forever his ability to share the details of his sexual encounters with his friends.

“Hello, Mr. M.”

The soft-voiced greeting jerked him out of remembrances of sun-drenched days and hot steamy nights. Brought him back from a time when killer sex shouldn’t have seemed brand-new, yet somehow had—mixed up as it had been with emotions he’d never before experienced. He had to blink before he could focus on the housekeeper and was startled to realize she was only a foot or two shy of crossing his path as she headed for the staircase, carrying a stack of fluffy bath sheets in her arms.

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