Jake winked at the interfering old lady in the dining room and sat down at the bar. Man, that water had been cold, even if the woman spraying it had been on fire.
What the hell had he been thinking, challenging her like that? He knew the rules. He had to win over the witnesses, gain their trust and charm them into telling him everything they knew. He’d just given the middle finger to every one of those requirements. What had this woman done to him?
She’d walked in with flames shooting out of the ends of her auburn hair, chocolate-brown eyes blazing. Dressed in a dark purple dress that wrapped around her tight body, highlighting her large breasts. His body responded to the fierce pixie. Strongly. He couldn’t stop himself from stoking her inferno. Her heat had spread to him and turned any thought of his mission to ash.
A more cautious man—his father would say a smarter man—would have handled her gently. But he hadn’t been able to do that. He’d had to push to see how hot she could burn.
Pretty damn hot.
Different time, different place and he’d let the fire run its course. But he couldn’t do that today. He looked down at the bulge in his jeans. Looks like his cock hadn’t gotten the message.
He sat down on the bar stool, trying to unobtrusively adjust his jeans. He reached over to where he’d been sitting and grabbed the worn leather satchel lying on the bar and pulled out the case dossier. His father had e-mailed it from Absolute Security’s home office in Denver.
That’s where Jake wished he was right now, waking up with the Rocky Mountains outside his window and a naked blonde in his bed, someone beautiful, tall and docile. Much more his type than Claire Layton.
He flipped through the printouts. Kendall Burlington, the very rich and spoiled adopted daughter of Denver hedge fund manager Charles Burlington, was the victim. Claire, the county sheriff’s sister, had discovered Kendall’s body in a Dumpster.
He wondered if the good sheriff had scattered any evidence to the wind on his sister’s behalf. His gut told him she wasn’t the killer, but she sure had a temper to go along with that red hair of hers.
She also had a redhead’s tendency to blush, from her awe-inspiring tits to the top of her forehead. The memory made his cock rise. Again. Hell, he couldn’t remember the last time he saw a woman blush.
An image of Claire arching her back, tossing her hair while she rode him, flashed into his head. Her nipples would be a dark rose color, he guessed. Her tits would sway with her rocking motion as she undulated on his erection. He’d grab her round hips, urge her to rock faster. She’d lean down. Her hard nipples would graze his chest as they kissed, their tongues curling around each other in an echo of what the rest of their bodies were doing. He’d flip her to her back, that red hair of hers spreading out across the white pillowcase like a sunset. She’d wrap her legs around him as he drove his hard dick into her wet center. He could hear her moaning, throaty and wanting. Then—
Whoa there.
She was a witness, not a candidate for making those fantasies a reality. He erased the tantalizing mental images and went back to reading the dossier.
Charles Burlington wasn’t going to take any chances the case would go south because some local yokels couldn’t investigate their way out of a paper bag. That’s why he hired Absolute Security. Jake would poke his nose around without interfering with an ongoing investigation.
Earlier that morning, the old man had called saying Burlington wanted to know if the investigators had found Kendall’s phone. The request stuck him as weird. She’d just been murdered, for God’s sake, why zero in on her phone? Burlington had told the old man it had some photos Kendall’s mother wanted. Jake figured grief made people focus on strange things. Still, the request stuck in his craw.
He scanned the initial sheriff’s report. Nothing there about a phone. Where was it?
“She didn’t do it, you know.”
He looked up at the bartender.
“I’ve known Claire for years. She’s not involved in anything bad.”
Suzie, according to her purple, corncob-shaped name tag, wiped out a glass and set it on a shelf under the bar.
“People surprise each other all the time.” He reached for his coffee. “You never know what’s going on in someone else’s mind.”
He should know. He’d seen the pictures of his mother from when he was a toddler. She’d looked happy. His father thought she’d been content. But she hadn’t been. No one had known until the day father and son came home to find all her clothes gone. A note had been taped to the fridge. I want to be somebody new.
They’d never heard from her again.
Yeah, people hid a lot about themselves. Who knew what secrets Claire hid behind her pretty face?
Did you miss part of Dangerous Kiss? Catch up here. xoxo, Avery
