Hot & Bothered

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.”