Читать книгу Road To Temptation - Terra Little - Страница 13

Chapter 4

The massive entry door swung open, and Broderick’s brown eyes met a pair of gorgeous amber-colored ones. She’d gotten rid of the giant sunglasses and traded her dress and boots for tight black pants, a flowing top that bared one caramel-colored shoulder, and bare feet. Up top, a pair of eyeglasses was anchored in the midst of the wild, curly lion’s mane framing her face, and, down below, glossy, hot-pink toenails and an ultrafeminine diamond ankle bracelet winked up at him. If it hadn’t been for the subtle, provocative gleam in her eye, she could’ve passed for an innocent college coed, with her smooth, clear skin and big, blinking eyes. She was so completely opposite of the snarling sex kitten from earlier that, for a second, he wondered if he was looking at the same person. Then she smiled and he thought, There she is.

“Well?” she said. “Are you going to speak first or should I?”

“I guess I should, since you walked out of our last meeting before I had a chance to fully explain myself.” She had the nerve to cock a brow at his tone but damned if he cared. She knew damn well why he was there and exactly what he wanted, and if his tone was sharp, she knew why that was, as well—because he was on the verge of shaking her until her teeth rattled around in her head like loose marbles.

Anticipating another round of pointless sparring, he put up a hand to ward her off and tried for a more diplomatic tone. “Look, obviously, I had no idea who you were when we met earlier, and, for the record, I didn’t figure out what Joel was up to until right after I arrived at his estate, which was about five minutes before you did. If I’d known beforehand, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. But since I am here and the circumstances surrounding Meagan’s disappearance are less than ideal, I came here to ask you to please reconsider Joel’s and my proposal.”

He expected her to start hissing and spitting at him again, but she surprised him, instead, with a thoughtful expression and a few seconds of contemplative silence. “Joel’s proposal?” she asked, pursing lips that begged to be sucked and staring at him through narrowed eyes. “Sounds interesting. Go on.” She leaned against the door casually and waited.

“I’d be glad to but could we talk inside?” The temperature had dropped to somewhere between twenty and twenty-five degrees in a matter of hours and, the later it got, the more brisk the wind became. Supposedly, it was an unseasonably warm midwestern February, but to Broderick, who’d grown up on the West Coast, anything below seventy degrees was cruel and unusual punishment. He couldn’t wait to get the hell out of Dodge.

“Sorry, but no. You’re a complete stranger, so right here works for me.” She giggled at his pithy expression and then gave him one right back. “So what was it that you wanted me to reconsider, again?”

“As I said before, I wasn’t expecting that Joel would hire you to find Meagan and then want us to work together, but now that I’m here and the idea is on the table, I think we should seriously consider it.”

“Oh?” She cocked a brow. “Why?”

“Meagan is my goddaughter, and while this isn’t the first time she’s run off, it is the first time she’s run off without her medication. We believe she’s with a guy that she’s been dating behind her parents’ backs for the past couple of months. His name is Peter Danforth, as in the son of state senator Frank Danforth.”

“I see, and are Peter’s parents searching for him, as well?”

“Apparently, they flee to the Caribbean when it’s wintertime here. But we do know that their son is a grad student at Mizzou, who just happens to be well over the age of twenty-one, and, according to the family’s housekeeper, present and accounted for on campus as we speak. So, technically, he isn’t missing and I, for one, couldn’t care less about him right now. Frankly, I’d have hung up on Joel when he called me late last night, if it wasn’t for the fact that Meagan was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a month ago and she’s been refusing treatment. Let’s just say that her decision-making skills are questionable under the best of circumstances. Factor in a rich boyfriend with a valid ID, platinum credit cards and mental illness, and she’s a ticking time bomb. As of about fifteen minutes ago, she was in the Jefferson City area, which isn’t very far away, but based on her travel pattern so far, it doesn’t look like she’s planning to head back in this direction any time soon. I could be wrong, but I’d rather go after her now than have something that could’ve been prevented happen later, because I didn’t.”

“I get that part,” she said, looking slightly confused. “But what I don’t get is why you need a partner. You seem to have a handle on things already.”

“Ordinarily I wouldn’t, but I’m in the middle of another case right now and there’s a possibility that I could be called away without notice. I’d like to have an associate with me in case that happens, someone who could pick up the slack, if necessary.”

“You mean like a sidekick?”

He shrugged. “That’s one way of putting it, but—” He realized his mistake a second too late, when her expression went from open and curious to closed for business in the blink of an eye. “If I might rephrase—”

“No need. I think I understand perfectly, Mr...”

That made him laugh. “Oh, so now you don’t remember my name?”

She looked taken aback. “Is there a reason why I should?”

Was she serious? Just a few hours ago, he’d been positive that something interesting was happening between them, something that, if played right, would eventually lead to her straddling him and riding his stiff, swollen cock until they were both out of breath. He wanted her, and, underneath her prickly exterior, he thought he’d sensed a mutual attraction. But now, standing face-to-face with her again, without so much as a spark between them, he reminded himself that there was always room for error, and, though it didn’t happen often, he wasn’t above entertaining the strong possibility that he’d made one. Either that or he’d been right all along and she really was nuts, in which case he was probably talking to one of her multiple personalities.

“No, I guess not,” Broderick conceded after several seconds of holding up his end of a staring contest. “Look, about Joel’s proposal...”

“It sounds like what you need is an assistant, and I’m afraid that’s something we can’t help you with. I could, however, recommend a couple of our past interns who might be available for a last-minute assignment like this, if you’d like.”

The emphasis that she’d placed on last minute hadn’t escaped his notice, but he wasn’t in the mood to rise to the bait. He’d wasted enough time already. “I have an entire staff of assistants at my disposal, Elise. The last thing I need is another one.” Something flickered in her eyes when he said her name, but it came and went so quickly that he wasn’t sure if he’d actually seen it or if it was a trick of the light.

“Fine, so use one of them,” she suggested and he thought, for a tense millisecond, that he saw it again.

“I would if it was that simple,” he said, and the sigh she offered in response was soft and wistful, sexy in a breezy, nonchalant kind of way that irritated the hell out of him. He rolled right over it. “But the thing is, both cases require extreme discretion. Meagan’s case, in particular, needs to be kept away from both the press and local law enforcement, for obvious reasons. So far, that hasn’t been much of an issue, but if her behavior were to escalate and she were to become a threat to herself or others, because she was off her meds and not thinking clearly, then who knows how things could play out.”

“Okay, but I still don’t understand what any of these situations you mentioned have to do with me.” Now it was Broderick’s turn to sigh and he did, deeply, impatiently and borderline rudely, a fact that she seemed to find funny.

He hated wasting time, particularly when lives could be at stake, and he especially hated having to explain himself when it came to his business and how he chose to handle it. In his line of work, every second counted and, so far, Elise Carrington had already caused him to squander so many of them that he’d lost track. And, like an idiot, he had let her. She was right. It wasn’t like the fate of the world relied on whether or not she helped him. Truthfully, he’d move much faster and cover much more ground without her slowing him down. She was beautiful, but he wasn’t under any illusions about the scope of her professional capabilities. Her expensive, scented business card had introduced her as a Private Investigations Consultant, whatever the hell that was. But based on her red-bottom boots, painted-on designer clothing and the mini-mansion that she called home, it was way more likely that she spent most of her time trailing cheating husbands and reporting back to disillusioned housewives. Which meant that her skill set, or lack thereof, as the case likely was, was a liability that he could’ve happily done without. He was surprised that Joel had sought assistance from someone like her in the first place.

Clearly Joel’s anxious mental state had compromised his thought process but what the hell was Broderick’s problem? The jury might’ve still been out on whether or not she was certifiable, but the longer he stood there, spinning his wheels and ogling her on the sly, he wondered if maybe he had it all wrong and he was actually the crazy one.

“They have everything to do with you because, thanks to you and the traffic accident you caused, I don’t have time to vet another candidate. As it is, I should’ve been in Jefferson City hours ago. If I had been, I’d probably be on my way back here with Meagan right now and none of this would even be an issue. But, since it is an issue and Joel has apparently already vetted you, I think an appropriate gesture of professional goodwill would be for you to accept the case and see it through.”

She stared at him for several seconds—a wide-eyed, stunned stare that he was compelled to return full measure—and then she reached up, plucked her glasses out of her hair and slipped them over her eyes. Behind the spotless lenses, her eyes were narrowed and searching. “You’re saying that your failure to plan accordingly is my fault?”

“What I’m saying is that Joel and I need your help.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but Carrington Consulting has a very strict policy against partnerships with outside entities,” she informed him tartly, her eyes still narrowed and, now, a hand on her hip. “So, while I can appreciate your dilemma, I can’t violate policy.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She hesitated for a moment, then rolled her eyes heavenward as if to say, hey, what can we do? Then she mouthed the word sorry to him, stepped back and began closing the door in his face.

Let her go, his mind screamed at the same time that his foot shot out and breached the threshold at the last possible second. He hadn’t planned on going into detail about the other case that he was working on because it was none of her business. But the bottom line was that she had something he wanted—her time—and, since appealing to her professional ethics hadn’t worked, because she apparently had none, then maybe the truth would.

“Three years ago,” he blurted out, barely able to conceal his irritation at having to do so, “my sister disappeared. I was on an assignment in the United Kingdom when it happened, so I didn’t find out until after I got back to the States, a couple of weeks later.” He caught the door with the tips of his fingers before it collided with his foot and held it open. “By then, whatever leads the local police thought they had were cold and the world had pretty much moved on to the next tragic story. To everyone else, including the police, it’s a cold case, but a body was never found and I believe that’s because she’s out there somewhere. So I still look for her.”

His announcement was met with complete silence, during which time she didn’t open the door again but she didn’t close it, either. He chose to take that as a good sign.

“Hers is the other case that I’m working right now,” Broderick went on. “Around the same time that I got the news that Meagan was on the run again, a new lead into my sister’s disappearance popped up—the first one in over a year. I have some associates looking into it as we speak but if they find something significant, I plan to be the one who follows up. Since I can’t be in two places at one time, that’s where you come in.”

He breathed an audible sigh of relief when the door slowly moved in reverse and she came into view again. “Plus,” he added, catching her eyes and cocking a brow, “you’d be saving me from having to make a very difficult choice.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Broderick Cannon,” another woman’s voice said from somewhere behind the first one. His head snapped up and his gaze quickly roamed the foyer beyond the woman standing in front of him. By the time he had located his target and zeroed in on her, she was already walking toward them, moving up behind her identical twin slowly and eyeing him warily. “What are you doing here?”

“Talking with you, I thought.” He slanted a chastising look in the other woman’s direction and received a grin in return. He barely resisted the urge to grin back at her.

Well, that explains it, he thought as he stared into Elise Carrington’s eyes and mentally commanded his swooning cock back into semihibernation. In a blatant act of rebellion, it yawned and stretched against his thigh, and then tightened in anticipation.

Right down to their facial expressions and physical mannerisms, the resemblance between the two women was beyond uncanny. As far as he could see, the key to the only identifiable difference between them rested squarely in his groin. The woman standing in front of him was just as beautiful as the one who’d just walked up, but he hadn’t once caught himself wondering what she tasted like. His mouth was definitely watering now, though.

Elise—the real Elise—had traded her sexy dress and designer boots for a pink fleece jumpsuit that zipped up the front and bare feet. The material clung to her curves like a second skin, revealing just how dangerous to a man’s sanity they really were. He couldn’t help staring.

A throat cleared softly and he looked up to find two sets of amber-colored eyes trained on him—one wide and unblinking, and the other alert and amused. Not the least bit repentant, he cleared his own throat and tried again. “Miss Carrington, as I was just explaining to your sister, I’d like to talk with you about what happened between us earlier.”

She cocked a brow. “Elise.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I said, I’m Elise.” She touched a delicate hand to her chest in case he needed a visual. “You obviously can’t tell me apart from my sister, so...”

They stared at each other, one of those if looks could kill stares, and he was the first to look away.

Okay, so she was pissed. He got that. But if she thought they were about to have a repeat of their interstate showdown, then she was sadly mistaken. For one thing, he was tired and starving, and for another, every synapse in his brain was on overload at the moment, blindsided by a swift punch of lust that had completely missed his gut and exploded, instead, in the center of his groin. He hated to ruin her diabolical little plan but divine intervention couldn’t have helped him hold up his end of an argument just then.

“Okaaaay,” Broderick hedged carefully. “I believe I’m completely clear now. So can we talk?”

Her other eyebrow joined the first one, high up on her forehead. “No.”

“Elise—”

“Elise,” her twin said at the same time. “You’re being rude.”

Elise turned to her sister with murder in her eyes. “Excuse me?”

“I’d like to hear what he has to say,” the other woman murmured close to Elise’s ear.

To Broderick, she said, “I’m Olivia Carrington.” Then she extended a hand and shook his firmly. “I think you’ve already met my sister.”

“That I have,” Broderick confirmed, liking Olivia immediately. After a few seconds, he released her hand and turned his attention back to Elise. “That I have,” he said again, his voice turning thoughtful.

“Well, then, welcome to Carrington Consulting. Come inside,” Olivia said and took Elise with her as she moved aside so that he could do just that.