Dangerous Games

Which meant that he’d been sitting here for half an hour. She refused to feel guilty about that. She wasn’t the one repaving the main thoroughfare. “Maybe you should have picked an Italian restaurant. At least you could have nibbled on the bread sticks.”

“I would have ruined my appetite. Chinese food is worth waiting for.” He paused only long enough to allow his eyes to slide over her. “As were you.”

“Someone else might call that a line.”

“Someone else doesn’t know me.” He waited until the waiter, who’d returned almost instantly with their orders, set the plates down and withdrew. “I don’t waste my time with lines.”

Once the meal was in front of her, she realized just how hungry she was. The only thing supplementing the huge breakfast she’d had was an energy bar she’d found in the back of her desk. It had been far too long since her last meal. No wonder she felt a little light-headed.

“Then you’re nothing like Eric,” she told him as she dug in.

“Not really,” Cole said, noting Lorrayne was a woman who ate instead of picked at her meal. Considering how small she was, he had to admit he was pleasantly surprised. “How well do you know my brother?”

The information was at the tips of her fingers. The D.A. had already asked her the same question. She wasn’t the only Cavanaugh who was acquainted with the accused. Because her cousin Janelle, an assistant in the D.A.’s office, had also gone to school with Eric, the D.A. hadn’t assigned her to the case.

“We dated a couple of times in high school.” Then, in case Cole was attempting to recall whether he’d been aware of that sequence of events, she told him, “You’d left town by then.” He looked surprised that she would have known something like that. “You took up a great deal of the conversation on our first date. Eric idolized you. Said he wanted to be just like you, but didn’t have the discipline.”

And then she smiled.

He found the look disarming and infinitely appealing. He wondered if she used it as a weapon. “What?”

“As I recall, you didn’t have all that much discipline.” She’d made short work of her egg roll and was onto to the main course without missing a beat. “Didn’t you almost get expelled once?”

“Minor misunderstanding. They found some marijuana in Eric’s locker that was mine.”

“Was it?” Her tone was mild. A little too mild in his opinion.

“That’s what I told the principal.”

Her eyes met his. “That’s not what I’m asking.”

He’d never bothered telling anyone the real story. There didn’t seem to be a point. “Eric wouldn’t have been able to put up with suspension. He probably would have dropped out.” Not that graduating high school and going on to college had managed to do very much for his brother. It had been just another excuse to continue floating. Cole had hoped otherwise.

“So you took the fall for him. No wonder he thought of you as a saint.” She stopped to take a sip of her tea. “You didn’t drop out,” she recalled.

He smiled more to himself than at her. “Someone convinced me I needed an education.”

“Oh?” Interest peaked, she cocked her head. “Someone in the Addams Family?”

He grinned. The woman had remembered the analogy he’d made earlier. But there was no way that his grandfather could have been considered part of the circus that comprised his family except in the strictest sense of the word “family.”

“My father’s father. He was a black sheep, like me.” A fondness came into his voice. It was the money his grandfather had left him that now allowed him to do what he felt was his calling. And to be his own person, unlike Eric who had always been tied to his parents’ purse strings. “He was the one who told me that the way a black sheep keeps from getting sheered is by learning to stay ten steps ahead of everyone else.”

“And do you?” she wanted to know. “Stay ten steps ahead?”

He knew she was pulling information out of him. More information than he was accustomed to volunteering, but for now, it amused him to watch her at work. So he played along.

“At least five.”

Because she identified with what he was saying, she laughed softly. It wasn’t all that long ago that she’d followed the same path. “That sounds more like the credo of a con artist than an educated man.”

He thought of the paths he’d followed before he’d settled down to his present way of life. He’d been a little of everything, including a mercenary for a while, taking on all life had to give just to feel something, anything. Adrenaline coursing through his veins when his life was on the line in the jungles of Bogota was as close as he got to experiencing anything.

“I’m guilty of both.”

She was surprised he admitted it. “And are you still a con man?”

His smile locked her out. “At present, I’m a respected businessman.”

But she apparently wasn’t one to accept a locked door and back away. “What sort of business?”

He put it in the most nebulous of terms. “I buy houses that need work—then work.”

She’d done a little homework before coming to meet him. It helped to have an in with someone in the IRS. His last form had referred to him as a builder. And there had been numerous charitable contributions cited, as well. “You make it sound simple.”

He shrugged as he finished his main course. “At bottom, most things are.”

Finished, as well, she pushed aside her plate and reached for her fortune cookie. “Interesting philosophy. But it’s usually hard to get to the bottom.”

He watched her long, slim fingers crack the golden shell. “Never said it was easy.” He indicated the paper she cast aside. “Aren’t you going to read your fortune?”

“I don’t believe in the clairvoyant powers of a cookie.” But because he was watching her, she glanced at the slim paper. You will find love soon, it read. Yeah, right. She raised her eyes back to his face. “What do you want with me?”

The prepared answer was not the one that rose in his mind. The word “want” all but shimmered in front of him. A man could want a woman like Lorrayne. She was more than pleasant to look at, the rebelliousness in her eyes having not quite been tamed by the position she’d assumed. Everything appealing and attractive had conspired to join forces within Lorrayne Cavanaugh. The last job in the world he would have said she’d been drawn to was that of police detective.

But a police detective was exactly what he needed right now. If there were other needs unexpectedly raising their heads, he would just have to ignore them.

He was fighting the clock. The D.A.’s office was out for blood. Eric’s blood. Even if his brother wasn’t guilty, everyone thought he was and appearance was enough to appease the masses.

He had to change that. But he couldn’t do it alone.

“I want you to help me prove that my brother’s innocent.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m part of the Aurora police force.”

She began to refill her cup, but he took the teapot from her and did the honors himself. “I noticed. That’s why I came to you.”

Ignoring the tea, she began to slide out of the booth. “I’m afraid there’s more than a slight conflict of interest here.”

Cole took hold of her wrist. “Just hear me out.”

Training told her to shake off his hand and to keep walking. Instinct told her to stay. She’d learned that the Cavanaugh instinct was more than just a pleasant myth her father liked to regale them with. It was based on the truth. They could all testify to that.

With a sigh, Rayne settled back in the booth. “Okay, talk.”

Chapter 4

Cole opened with his best offense. “You think my brother’s innocent.”