Читать книгу Under Wraps - Joanne Rock - Страница 8

NORMALLY, THE LAST PLACE Jake Brennan would want to be the week before Christmas was sitting on a stakeout.

He’d promised his mom he’d come home for the holidays this year, a pledge which made him a liar three years running. Instead, he sat in his SUV across the street from a suspect’s business in downtown Miami, where neon palmetto trees made a tropical substitute for white lights in the snow back in Illinois.

But when the stakeout involved Marnie Wainwright, there were perks involved. Enough perks that Jake didn’t mind watching the storefront for her business, Lose Yourself, from inside his vehicle on a Friday night. It didn’t matter that the rest of the world went to holiday parties right now. He had Marnie for entertainment, and two months of surveillance on the entrepreneur behind Lose Yourself had taught him that was more than enough.

His hand hovered over the screen of his BlackBerry where an internet connection allowed him access to the camera he’d installed in her place eight weeks ago. Soft holiday music and Marnie’s warm, sexy laugh greeted his ears even before the picture on the video feed came into focus.

Thanks to the wonders of technology, he could sit two car lengths up the street and still see exactly what went on inside her high-end adventure company that specialized in exotic fantasy escapes.

And as long as Marnie was there, he always got an eyeful.

“If you’ll just give me your credit card, you can pay the balance on the trip and I’ll mail you a detailed itinerary next week,” she was currently saying to an attractive middle-aged couple in front of her desk.

Marnie had a pen tucked in the swoop of cinnamon-colored hair piled at the back of her head. He knew from hours of watching her that she sometimes stuck as many as three pens back there at a time, occasionally losing all writing implements to her hairdo. His camera was hidden inside a bookcase he’d built for her two months back, when he’d posed as a carpenter and helped remodel the front office. The carpentry skills, a long-ago gift from his dad, had been fun to brush off after his years in the military and the Miami P.D., and they’d certainly come in handy for concealing the surveillance camera at Marnie’s business.

At that time, she’d been a prime suspect in a white-collar crime at Premiere Properties, her former employer. Vincent Galway, the CEO of Premiere, had fired her right after discovering embezzlement that had cost the company $2.5 million.

Vincent only had very circumstantial evidence pointing to Marnie. The missing funds had been funneled through her department, and there had been a rise in client complaints about double billing. Coupled with her frequent overtime, easy access to the accounts and constant work outside the office, Vincent had let her go for superficial reasons—easy enough to do since Florida was an “at-will” state for employee termination. Then, with Marnie out of the company and none the wiser as to why, Vince had asked Jake to quietly investigate a few key remaining employees and to keep his eye on Marnie, too. While Jake hadn’t found the missing money yet, he had leads.

Today, he had the distinct pleasure of taking Marnie off the list of primary suspects thanks to the ridiculously stripped-down lifestyle she’d led for the past two months. Marnie had demonstrated obvious financial hardship while funds continued to disappear from Premiere’s accounts. But Jake couldn’t even share with her since she’d never known she was a suspect. Still, Jake thought of today as a damn happy occasion because clearing Marnie meant he could do more than just watch her from afar.

His eyes locked on her luscious curves as she came out from behind the desk to shake hands with her clients. Yes, the time approached when he could return to her life—as the carpenter she hadn’t seen in two months—and ask her out. He could remove the surveillance equipment easily enough if she left the front office for even a minute.

There’d been a definite attraction between them when he’d first met her, an attraction he would have never acted on while she remained a suspect. But now, the path was clear to explore the fireworks he’d felt when he’d been in her office building that bookcase for her. If anything, he admired her all the more after watching her pull her life together in the wake of losing a job and getting dumped by the waste of space she’d been dating up until she’d been terminated. Marnie had defied the odds and opened her own business in a crap economy, using her travel smarts to her advantage in the new gig.

Smart. Sexy. And she’d be all alone inside in another minute once her customers left. Would he knock on the door as soon as they were gone? Or, knowing that she was prone to stripping off a few layers of clothes as soon as she flipped the Closed sign on her storefront, would he tune in to the BlackBerry a few minutes longer?

Heat crawled up his back at the thought. The need to be honorable warred with the urge to look his fill.

As she ushered her clients to the door, Jake figured he’d split the difference. He’d only watch for a minute and then he’d flip off the feed.

And this time, he wouldn’t settle for just fantasizing about Marnie. He’d follow it up with a house call, because damn it, he wanted to see the show in person one of these days.

Yes, a very Merry Christmas to him….