Maximum Exposure Page 5

  Her drink, which had been cooling, now began to burn. “Is that what it looked like to you? A show?”

  “A show for a particular and private audience, sure. Not a general-admission performance. But letting people look would make it a show, yeah.” He paused, his eyes darkening, demanding. “So your guys. Do they know? Do they care? Do they play along, knowing you’ll be going home with them?”

  She was beginning to wonder if this was all a big mistake. Wondering what he thought of her, why she cared. Because it was obvious from the unsettled state of her stomach that she cared about his opinion too damn much.

  “It’s a moot point since I don’t date. Now, do you want to talk business or not?”

  Seven

  Roman was barely through his front door before he was out of his clothes and on his way to the shower. He was looking forward to a night of pizza and ESPN, with nothing more pressing on his plate than a quick report to his task force. Both Carmen and Livia had after-hours plans, so Roland had been more than happy to stay late and work through close.

  It wasn’t like Roland had any sort of social life…friends to party with, drinks to down, or hot asses to grab before crawling into his big brass bed alone. He’d made it known he wasn’t into PNP.

  Christ.

  If something didn’t break soon on Operation Bebé Bust, Roman didn’t know how he’d ever assimilate back into the hetero world. He wouldn’t be able to pick up a chick to save his life. Even now, standing beneath the stinging spray of the shower, enveloped in heat and steam and thinking about all the ladies he’d loved, he barely felt a twinge when he stroked.

  Thinking about the ladies Roland serviced at the store didn’t help, either. No reason it should, since Roland’s servicing meant complimenting Splash’s customers on their tans, which cost a fortune; their hair, which cost even more; their bodies, which they’d paid through the nose for plastic surgeons and personal trainers to sculpt.

  And then he thought of Jodi Fontaine.

  Jodi with the tits and ass and long, long legs he could have with a snap of his fingers. Ah yes. That was better, he mused as his thighs tightened, his balls twitched, his cock thickened in his fist.

  He closed his eyes, imagined her on her knees in front of him, water running down her back and turning her hair into a thick, wet rope. Her mouth was open, her lips wrapped around his cock, her hand, too, holding him there while she sucked him like a pro.

  He groaned, braced a hand against the tile wall, pumped harder and faster, watching in his mind as Jodi got to her feet and took him in her hand, spreading the lips of her cunt with the other.

  She put him there, the head of his cock, rubbing his big black bulb all over her juicy pink flesh, rubbing her tongue around her parted lips like she wanted him in both holes at the same time. And then she let him go, turned, and bent over, inviting him to fuck her in the third.

  He lubed himself up and did, stretching her and pushing inside, driving in and out once he had her filled, faster and faster, and goddamn she was tight, and he couldn’t get enough of her, and he listened to her beg him for more and more and more and, “Fuck!”

  He shot his load, spurting against the wall of the tub instead of into Jodi’s ass or mouth or cunt. And then he showered, growing hard as he thought of her again, knowing the odds of this fantasy coming true were about the same as going blind from stroking.

  The chime of his doorbell cut his shower short.

  He was in the mood for visitors about as much as he was in the mood to spend the rest of his life as Roland Green. But since he wasn’t expecting anyone, and no one had reason to come calling, he quickly toweled off and tugged on his boxers and sweats.

  He was halfway to the door and pulling his T-shirt over his head when the knock sounded again. “Yeah, yeah. Hold on. I’m coming.”

  He double-checked that his piece was loaded, the safety off, and eased it from its holster where both were stored in the desk next to the door. He left the drawer cracked the width of his finger, then put his eye to the peephole.

  Shit. Christ. He had settled in for the night as Roman, and now…

  He opened the door, waved Tomás Bebé quickly inside, checking the long hallway for anyone who might have seen him come in. “What are you doing here? Are you crazy? You can’t come here. I don’t want you here. We don’t have any reason to be seen together away from work.”

  “Chill, vato. No one knows I’m here, so no one is going to see us.” Tomás walked farther into the room. “I don’t plan to stay longer than it takes, anyway…. What the fuck, Green? You live in a dump.”

  “Than what takes?” Roland asked, with a nervous flutter of one hand, while Roman ran through explanations for his alter ego’s living conditions.

  Carmen must’ve gotten the address from Penny somehow, or else Bebé’s rats had followed him home. He’d never told anyone where he lived. Not that the apartment would give anything away, but no. It had never been part of his cover.

  Tomás shook off whatever he was thinking and turned. The light from the desk lamp reflected off the lightning-bolt scar bisecting his jugular. His black eyes gleamed. “It’s happening Friday.”

  Friday. Christ. Today was Tuesday. Roman swallowed, his mind racing. He had to get to his team. They were good to go. They’d been waiting for this. But the more advance notice, the better.

  “What do you mean, Friday? I can’t be ready Friday.” Roland started to pace. “We’ve got a new collection going on display. I’ll be swamped getting set up for the arrival. You should have told me before today. It just can’t be done on such short notice—”

  Tomás stepped into Roman’s space, wrapped a hand around his windpipe, and squeezed. “What can’t be done is you getting away with running your cocksucking mouth, you got it?”

  Roman nodded, his Roland eyes wide with fear, his Roland grip weak on the other man’s wrist.

  “Good.” Tomás shoved him away. “Now, the collection you’ll be waiting on will be carefully secured to avoid any damage in transit. And I know how you feel about damage in transit, so you’re going to check each and every package with a fine-tooth comb, got it?”

  Another nod while Roman did the mental math. Livia had mentioned the designer’s living-room studio in his home in Little Havana. Carmen had asked Penny to schedule the delivery. He’d heard them talking on his way to the boss’s office on Monday.

  He’d go in early tomorrow, get the address. Tonight he’d arrange for one of his team to drop in and shop as soon as the boutique opened. He’d hand it off then.

  “What am I supposed to do with the boxes after we unpack the collection? It’ll be obvious the pieces aren’t all that’s inside. And getting the items out on display is our highest priority.”

  “Fuck your fucking collection.” This time Tomás used a switchblade for emphasis, nicking the tip of Roman’s chin. “The contents you need to worry about will look like foam packing bricks. You make sure to stack them nice and neat to be used again, comprende?”

  Roman comprended all right, calculating the size of the shipping boxes the boutique was expecting and how much heroin could be safely squirreled away inside. “When will the…bricks be picked up?”

  “Don’t worry your fuzzy little head about that,” Tomás said, taking another look around and shaking his head before making his way to the door.

  “You’re not leaving them there. Not for anyone to find.”

  Tomás stopped, cocked his head, and glanced back but didn’t turn. “Are you telling me what I’m doing again? Why you telling me what I’m doing again, Green? Didn’t we have this conversation already? Do you want I take off more of your chin?”

  Roman kept silent, his alter ego too cowed to argue and he himself too busy ticking off all the things he needed to do.

  “I’m going now, Green. Don’t fuck up on Friday, or it’ll be the last fucking of any kind you do.” No one might have witnessed his arrival, but the entire complex heard Tomás slam the door and l
eave.

  Holding his T-shirt to his chin, Roman secured the locks, secured his gun, dropped into his industrial task chair, rolled up to his functional desk, and booted up the state-of-the-art computer.

  “What?” he barked when his cell phone rang.

  “That sort of greeting is not going to win you many friends or go far in making sure you keep the ones you have.”

  “Jodi.” He collapsed against the back of the chair. “I don’t have time to talk. Can’t this wait?”

  “I don’t think so, no. It’s about Thursday.”

  “What about Thursday?” He dropped the shirt, held the phone between his ear and shoulder, launched the innocuous-looking software program that would connect him with his team, and typed his user name and password.

  “The private showing at the gallery. You said you’d come as my date.”

  Christ. He didn’t have time for this now. “I may not be able to make it.”

  “You’d better have a damn good reason. I already bought a dress for the night.”

  “Something’s come up—”

  “Is that something your cock?”

  What the hell? “How many times do we have to go through this, Jodi? It gets tiring.”

  “It gets tiring for me, too.”

  “Then let’s not do it anymore.”

  “Actually, that’s why I was calling.”

  Five minutes. He’d give her five minutes and no more. Then again, better to deal with her now, be done with the distraction, without raising her suspicions by brushing her off.

  He closed his eyes, rubbed at his forehead with his free hand. “Why were you calling?”

  “I’ve decided to leave you alone.”

  His eyes flew open. He sat up straight.

  “That’s good news,” he said, hoping his words sounded more convincing on the phone than in person. He didn’t believe a thing he said.

  “I thought you might think so,” she said, though something in her voice—irony? sarcasm?—made him wonder what had motivated this truce. “Though I’m not sure being friends makes much sense, considering we’re not, not really.”

  “Finally, the girl sees things my way.”

  Her change of heart, if real, would make his professional life a whole lot easier. On the personal front, he’d be hurting. He enjoyed having her throw herself at him. He’d be a fool to want her to stop.

  She laughed, a deep throaty sound of sex and old scotch, and it was all he could do not to give her his address, take down his pants, and wait.

  “I’ll let you think that for now,” she said.

  The only thing he could say was, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Unfortunately, he was still thinking about her kneeling between his spread legs and opening her mouth, so what should’ve been a querulous tone came out as a hungry growl.

  This time when she laughed, the sound was triumphant, and if there’d been any doubt remaining as to how badly he’d been boned, her laugh made it more than clear.

  “I’ll see you Thursday. Eight o’clock at the gallery. I’ll make sure you know what it means then.”

  Eight

  There was something about a sunrise over the Atlantic that made a night of insomnia seem like a bad dream. A mug of strong coffee in one hand, his sunglasses in place, his feet propped on the deck’s railing, Finn tried to think of nothing, to enjoy the simplicity of his life and ignore the complications he could see on the horizon if he made a habit out of Olivia Hammond.

  The breeze was salty and just this side of warm. Later in the day, he’d be more of a mind for a swim, a cold beer, and a really long nap. Five hours. Maybe six, his limit. He had zip on his agenda today, except delivering the pictures he’d printed from Monday’s surveillance. He was pretty sure Dustin wouldn’t find anything of interest in the pictures, but he could hardly say Finn wasn’t doing his job.

  It was like this in a lot of situations: Finn doing all he could to get his clients the information they were after and coming up empty. Or if not empty, then with the unexpected. A woman might want to catch her husband cheating to get out of a bad marriage with an even worse prenup instead of accepting his choice to work overtime rather than come home. An employer might suspect an employee of embezzlement rather than face the truth of poor management resulting in falling profits.

  Finn had dealt with a number of similarly motivated scenarios that had left clients less than pleased, and often blaming him for not bringing the results they’d set their minds on and built their plans around. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d learned not to let it get to him or to take it personally. And having done this for awhile now, he was just cynical enough that he expected some level of dissatisfaction from every client whose case he took on.

  So far, Dustin Parks had been an exception to Finn’s bracing for the worst. But then Dustin had seemed resigned to bad news from the get-go. He was already dealing with Roland Green’s cold shoulder. Either that or he hadn’t yet managed to snag the other man’s attention at all.

  Finn sipped his coffee, on one hand admiring the way Parks was hedging his bets, on the other thinking there was a whole lot to be said for just going for it. Going for it the way Olivia Hammond did. Remembering her performance last night at the billiards lounge…

  He was having a hard time believing that she didn’t get some sort of sexual thrill out of what she did. Maybe his disbelief had a lot to do with the way he’d been poleaxed right there in his seat while she’d played peekaboo with the table of men in the club. Talk about thrilling and sexual.

  He’d been afraid of getting up and walking out of the place for the rest of the night. Every time he’d thought his erection had lain down to rest, he’d pictured Olivia in action, and the monster had come back to life with a vengeance.

  What he’d found really strange was that not for a minute had he considered acting on the urge. And that didn’t make sense in any world he’d ever lived in.

  He set his coffee mug on the table, which coordinated with both the chairs and the umbrella collapsed around its pole in the center, and reached for one of the two folders he’d brought outside.

  After opening it on his lap, he took a moment to breathe and soak in the sea breeze and sunshine before looking down. He knew what he’d see when he did. It was just that the picture in his mental viewfinder was evocative and arousing in ways the photos he’d printed from his memory card could never be.

  What Olivia had done at the club last night had been calculated and with purpose. Hot, yes, but not in the same league as what she’d done for him alone and at his command. It made all the difference in the world in how heated he grew, in his body’s physical reaction.

  Knowing she was performing for him and not for a group of strangers in a club was akin to having a woman in his bed as opposed to seeing one on screen, making love to another man. He might get off to the second, but the first? He was there, fully involved, aching, burning, tightly wound.

  He breathed through the tightness in his chest, reached for his coffee. Thing of it was, the way he responded to her also made a difference in whether or not he decided to take the job she’d offered.

  He had never in all his years of private investigation allowed himself to get involved with a client on a personal level. He had to remain impartial. Taking sides, empathizing, feeling his own need for fairness or justice or revenge…it all amounted to the same thing. He couldn’t afford to care about the outcome, only that he did his job well.

  That was his only investment. That was how he built his business, how he would see his own beach house finished. He couldn’t rely on the kindness and wealth of every stranger who hired him, and once he was done with the remodeling of his Key Largo place, he could stick close to home instead of taking on long-distance work for the extra cash.

  Speaking of extra cash…he needed to decide what to do about this job for Olivia Hammond. About taking pictures of what she did, how qualified he was, how impartial he could be. He stared down a
t the photo on the top of the stack, the last one he’d taken before she’d dropped her halter and bared herself completely to his gaze.

  She was teasing him, flirting with him, her eyes sparkling with the fun it was obvious she was having. And it was that same fun that had been missing when she’d performed for the not-so-knightly roundtable at the cigar and billiards lounge.

  He flipped to the second picture. She’d had her back to him, untying the sash at her waist and looking over her shoulder while she did. He knew her flirtation was calculated, but that didn’t stop him from wondering how the performance would’ve left him feeling had it been true, if her heart had been in it even half as much as her head.

  He was a smart enough guy to know it hadn’t been, and so his time spent with her pictures wasn’t about wishing and hoping. It was about pros and cons. Working with her versus not. He was already in Miami, and the job that had brought him here had a lot of downtime built in. If he could shoot Olivia while Roland was at work, the situation held a lot of win-win potential.

  The only thing holding him back was Olivia herself. As intrigued as he’d been by the mystery of her offer, he’d gotten over his initial lust pretty damn fast once he’d realized how easily she’d played him. He didn’t like her assumption that showing a little skin was going to get her what she wanted.

  And then there was the photo shoot of her striptease. She might have followed his directions when taking off her clothes, but only because it suited her to do so, because she hoped to take as much out of the game as she put into playing it.

  Quite frankly, he didn’t need that shit. He’d left Texas to make a new start because he was tired of being a pawn. He much preferred being a king. He liked the sun coming up for him before anyone else got a glimpse of the morning, liked that he was the first to breathe the air carried to him by the currents above the Atlantic.

  All he needed now was to finish the repairs to his own deck on his own beach. Which was why he’d probably take the job Olivia had offered. The cash. No other reason. The greenbacks and nothing more.