Courting Suspicion. Kimberly Dean

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СКАЧАТЬ doing some follow-up work. Your employee was the victim of a pretty bold crime last night. I’m trying to figure out why she might have been targeted.’

      ‘Her boyfriend obviously was the target, Senator Gunderson.’

      Josh cocked his head. ‘Maybe. I still need to check all the angles. You know that about me by now, Nina.’

      Her eyes widened. She set the files on Rielle’s desk and gestured to the hallway. ‘Come to my office. We can talk there.’

      His gaze swept down her form as he followed her. It was beyond habit now; it was a compulsion. Her skirt cupped her backside like it had been custom made, and the slit up the back gave him glimpses of sleek legs. She thought those sky-high heels of hers could help her kick ass.

      Come to think of it, they did. The first time he’d seen her, he’d been knocked on his.

      They hadn’t kicked him out the door, though, and he’d kept coming back.

      He looked around the familiar office. It screamed sophistication with plush grey carpeting and lighter grey walls. Pops of royal blue were sprinkled around from the pillows on the sofa to the decanter on the wet bar. He’d guessed long ago it was her favourite colour. He sat down in the chair in front of her desk – the normal one, not the funky blue one. You couldn’t pay him to sit in that thing. Yet when he sat, he felt all of her menagerie staring at him. Blue glass figurines flashed at him in disapproval from the shelves on the walls. The elephant on the corner of her desk even flailed its trunk in outrage.

      I know, buddy, Josh thought. I know.

      He didn’t know why he felt guilty. He’d had inklings all along about Luxxor’s mysterious line of work. Inklings that, in truth, had been big, glaring red neon signs. He just hadn’t looked too hard at them.

      He’d been looking somewhere else.

      He watched Nina as she moved behind the big oak desk and sat in that oversized leather chair of hers. ‘Now, what is this about, Detective?’ she asked.

      ‘I thought you might be able to help with our investigation.’

      ‘Into the break-in at the Emissary Hotel? How?’

      ‘I’m looking for a motive.’ He held up his hands. ‘You don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to. This isn’t an interrogation.’

      She arched an eyebrow at him. ‘So if I ask you to go away, you really will this time?’

      He lowered his hands and wrapped them around the arms of the chair. ‘I wasn’t the one who ran away, Nina. You were.’

      Colour lit her cheeks, and she fussed with her pen. They both knew that, the last time they’d seen each other, they’d been in a lip-lock that had lit up a 40,000-seat stadium.

      She tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘I apologise. That was rude of me.’

      He didn’t mind so much. He intimidated most women. He didn’t mean to, but he couldn’t help his size. OK, maybe he could fix his attitude, but when he was working he focused. He’d focused hard on her, and she hadn’t flinched. He liked the way she stood up to him, itty-bitty thing that she was.

      He looked at her more closely. He hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks. Her ash-blonde hair looked soft and shiny. Her lips were a soft pink to match the colour on her fingernails. She looked put together, but with enough femininity to balance the seriousness of that suit. With the morning sun coming through the windows behind her, though, he could see the tiredness written across her face.

      He frowned. When had Genieve called her? He’d bet his lucky nickel it had been before she’d made it down to the car. Which meant that Nina had been up nearly as long as he had … Unlike him, she’d tried to hide her fatigue with the magic of makeup, but he could see it.

      She sat behind that huge desk looking tired and way too calm, and he just couldn’t take it. The behemoth desk had stood between them more than once. Not this time.

      ‘Where’s that coffee Rielle talked about?’

      Nina’s eyebrows rose. ‘In the breakroom. Would you like her to bring you some?’

      She reached for her phone.

      ‘No, let’s go down there.’

      ‘What? Detective Morgan?’ he heard her sputter when he stood and left the room.

      She followed him, like he knew she would.

      He caught Rielle’s eye when he stepped back into the lobby. Her head was bent close to Sienna Blakely’s, Luxxor’s communications manager. Wonder what they were talking about?

      ‘Breakroom?’ he asked.

      Rielle quickly unfolded her long legs and started to rise.

      He held up his hand to stop her. ‘Which way?’

      She pointed, and he found it just one door down. The office lunchroom area was like a gourmet kitchen compared to the breakroom down at the police station. The refrigerator was stainless steel, as was the dishwasher. At the station, they used paper cups and plastic silverware. Here, a bowl of fresh fruit sat on the counter, along with a basket of power bars. He headed for the coffeemaker and found real coffee mugs. He poured himself a cup and had one waiting for Nina when she marched into the room.

      ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

      ‘You look about as good as I feel.’ He pointed at the coffee cup already on the table.

      Her chin came up at that, and her hand lifted self-consciously to her face.

      ‘Oh, don’t give me that. You’re a knockout and you know it, but I can see how tired you are.’

      She glared at him. ‘You’re such a sweet-talker, Detective.’

      Wordlessly, he passed her a packet of creamer and two sugars – just how she took her coffee. He knew. He’d been paying attention. He gave her a spoon, too, a real one from a fancy silverware set in the first drawer he opened. No plastic stir straws for this place.

      The stiffness in her jaw softened. At last, she took a chair, prepared her coffee and took an appreciative sip. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

      ‘You’re welcome.’ He sat down in the ladder-back chair at the end of the table. It put him right next to her, and he much preferred this set-up. There was no desk between them, no zoo of glass figurines watching. They were still on her turf, but not in her fortress. They could talk now.

      ‘So …’ he began. ‘Genieve dates a senator.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘How long has that been going on?’

      ‘I’m not sure. A month or so? I don’t follow my employees’ love lives that closely.’

      ‘Really?’ He grunted. ‘It seems we’ve had a front-row view of some of them.’

      She considered СКАЧАТЬ