Mischief 24/7 (18 page)

Court’s laugh made her realize what she’d said, and she took a deep breath, trying to collect herself.

“I’m sorry. I’m just thinking about Teddy’s favorite chair and what it would look like in here.”

He came over to her and took hold of her upper arms, looking deeply into her eyes. “It’s a house, Jade. I didn’t build it, I didn’t furnish it. I had nothing to do with it, so I can’t take credit for it. Do you think that this house is me?”

“Well, it’s certainly not
me,
” Jade said, trying to smile. “So where do you really live? Because if you tell me that portrait of the beautiful woman in the striped gown slides back to uncover a humungous flat-screen TV and you spend Sundays stretched out on one of these couches, drinking beer and wiping potato-chip grease on the upholstery while you watch the game, I’m not going to believe you.”

“That’s quite an image. You’re right. Nobody uses these rooms anymore, except for large events. They did once, but that was another time, another century.” He took her hand. “Come on, it’s been a long day. Let’s grab the luggage and go upstairs. You can take the grand tour tomorrow.”

Jade was nervous the entire way up the curving staircase. She had been nervous from the moment Court asked to meet Teddy and every moment since.

But then she stepped into Court’s suite of rooms, and suddenly there was nothing to be nervous about anymore.

The room was large—she had a feeling there was no such thing as a small room in this house—but a section of it had been designed as a sitting area, and someone had started a fire in the grate. The room was warm, welcoming.

And it looked like Court. Masculine, solid. Bookcases flanked the marble fireplace, and the books looked jumbled on the shelves, as if someone used those shelves often. She saw one book, open and turned on its pages, lying on a small table next to one of the leather chairs that also flanked the fireplace. The large antique mantel clock chimed once and she realized that it was already eleven-thirty, just a scant half hour from midnight and the new year.

She walked over and picked up the book to read its title. “You read thrillers?” she asked, seeing Lee Child’s name on the spine. “Not one of Donald Trump’s how-I-did-it-so-there books?”

“No, sorry. I can’t seem to get past the hairstyle, for some reason. You read thrillers? Not mysteries?”

“Mysteries are full of private investigators. Been there, done that, know how boring ninetynine
percent of the job is,” she said, putting down the book. “You shouldn’t open your books like that, you know, it breaks the spine.”

“I know. I like my books to feel lived-in.” He lifted one of the suitcases and put it on a low table and then unzipped it. “Yours. Where do you want it?”

Jade looked around the room as she realized something she hadn’t thought about earlier. “Does it matter? I can change after I shower tomorrow, but I don’t think there’s a nightgown. And here I’ll bet you thought you’d thought of everything.”

“Who says I didn’t?” Court said as he joined her in front of the fireplace. He’d stripped off his tuxedo jacket, but the opened bow tie was still hanging from beneath the collar of his shirt. He looked like an ad in
GQ.
Better. He was close to her now, but he didn’t touch her. “Jade? Still nervous? Still wondering what the hell you’re doing here?”

“Not when you look at me that way, no,” she said honestly. She couldn’t seem to find a lie when she was with him or even a convenient evasion. “I like being with you.”

He put his hand against her cheek, lightly cupping her face, so that she closed her eyes and went with the sensation his touch sent through her. “Just the two of us,” he said softly, intimately. we make sense, don’t we, when it’s just the two of us.”

She bit her bottom lip, nodded. “I don’t understand it. I’ve never felt like this before. I don’t
know what to do about it. I’m not impulsive, Court. I’m not… reckless.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, her eyes openly imploring him to help her. “But then you look at me and the next thing I know I’m… I don’t know. Where am I, Court? Where are we?”

we’re where we belong, Jade, you and I,” he told her quietly as he lowered his head toward her. we’re together.”

She moved into him with a sigh, knowing he was right. For tonight, if not forever. For as long as they could keep the world away—that would be the romantic way to look at it. But as she closed her eyes and waited for his kiss, she knew she should be thinking: for as long as she could keep common sense away.

His kisses were slow, drugging. Hypnotizing. She was caught up in the spell of him, the taste, touch and smell of him. She reached for the ends of his bow tie and held on, making sure he didn’t leave her, anchoring herself before she floated away.

He was smiling against her mouth, she could feel the curve of his lips, and when she smiled back it was as if she’d learned another secret button to push, for her arousal immediately went up another notch.

This was a fairy tale. He was Prince Charming and she, while not exactly Cinderella, was certainly no fantasy princess. She didn’t need a glass
slipper; she didn’t want one. She could live without a prince or a castle.

But she didn’t know if she could live without Court.

Her arms slid around his back and clung tighter to him, as if she could hold the fantasy, draw it and him inside her and keep both with her forever.

“Court,” she breathed in aid of nothing as he slipped one arm around her back, bent down to slide his other arm behind her knees, lifted her high against his chest. She simply liked saying his name.

He carried her over to his bed and gently laid her down, then followed her to cover her body with his own. His kisses trailed across her cheek, down the side of her neck and onto her bare shoulder, even as he slid the single strap of the gown down her arm.

“Court…”

She lifted herself against him, so that the soft whisper of the zipper sliding free brought an answering whisper from her.

“Yes…please…”

The night air could do nothing to cool her body as he exposed each inch, kissed each inch, possessed each inch of her. His passion, his want, was so amazing to her. That he seemed to believe she was precious, even somehow fragile. Feminine. And eminently desirable.

She was more than ready for him when he came to her, when he lowered himself onto her,
into her. She sighed as she felt the now familiar fullness of him, bit back a small cry when his low moan of pleasure ripped at her very core.

He took her high. Then he took her higher. What she thought she knew about pleasure paled beneath his measured movements, and then shattered when she knew he had lost control, that she had excited him past his Southern gentlemen perception of himself.

“Yes.” She breathed the word into his ear even as she nipped at his lobe, tongued the remarkably soft flesh. “Yes, Court… yes.”

When the mantel clock struck midnight, Cinderella never even heard the chimes.

J
ADE DIDN ’T LOOK UP
from the file folder she was reading as Court entered the living room back at Sam Becket’s house. “What time is it?”

Court sat down on the facing couch, resisting the urge to grab the folder from her and tell her,
Enough, Jade, enough!
“Time to begin planning alternative ways to explain to Sam why he’s going to need new fringe on his dining-room carpet, I guess. Sunny must be teething.”

“Oh, no,” Jade said, closing the folder on her own and sitting back against the cushions. “There’s not a stick of furniture or a carpet in this place that’s not some kind of antique. Please tell me you’re joking.”

“All right, I’m joking,” Court said affably. “But we’re still going to have to find a way to explain the chewed fringe to him.”

Jade ran her fingers through her hair, lifting her hair away from her face, not realizing that

Court had always considered the gesture a turn-on, as it highlighted her magnificent bone structure.

Unfortunately, today it seemed to highlight the fact that she’d been losing weight, as well as the faint blue bruises of weariness beneath her eyes. “Sweetheart, why don’t you go take a nap? We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

But either she didn’t hear him or she was ignoring him. “Jessica will be back soon,” she said, seeming to relax a little. “Her dog, let her handle it. There, one problem solved. Although I hope Ernesto is keeping Sunny outside.”

“He is. Rockne is initiating Sunny in the fine art of digging for gold in Sam’s flower beds. Would you like something to drink?” Court pushed his hands down on the couch on either side of him, prepared to stand up, when he thought he felt some resistance beneath his left hand. “What’s this—music?” he asked, reaching between the cushions and pulling out a CD in a clear plastic case.

Jade held out her hand and he passed the case to her. She opened it and turned the case slightly to read something written on the disk itself. “Not a CD, Court, a DVD, I think. And I think it’s probably news clips from Jessica’s station. Video
from the Fishtown Strangler case, Terrell’s case. Oh—and Teddy’s funeral. That’s on here, too. I didn’t know she had all this.” She closed the case and got to her feet.

“Hold on, Jade,” Court said, also rising. “You want to watch it, don’t you? Don’t do that, sweetheart. What good is that going to do?”

“Well, Court, I won’t know that until I watch it, will I?” she said, not as good at sarcasm as some people, but she did a good imitation. Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled-for. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. My mind keeps jumping from here to there and back again. One minute I’m living in the moment and the next I’m back a dozen or more years to these cold cases, and then I’m partway in between, thinking about…”

“Yes? Go on, Jade,” Court said as they headed for Sam’s private den—and the DVD player that was sure to be there. “Sometimes you’re where, thinking about what?”

She surprised him by stopping in the middle of the hallway and turning to confront him. “Us, okay? I keep thinking about us. About where we were, about what happened to us that we ended up like this, neither here nor there or knowing where we go from… Let it go, Court. Please, just let it go. I can’t deal with this right now.”

He put his hands on her shoulders before she could turn away, flee up the nearby stairs to her bedroom or whatever.

“Jade,” he said quietly. “I’m not trying to press you, sweetheart, I’m really not. I’d like to, I admit that. But I’m here because you’re hurting and I want to help. And yes, I’m also thinking about us a lot right now, about what happened to us. What happens tomorrow? I don’t know, neither of us knows that. And that’s all right. I just don’t want you to fight me now. I don’t want you to fight yourself. I only want you to take whatever strength I can give you, no strings attached.”

“Oh, Court,” she breathed, stepping closer to him, her body against his, her cheek against his chest. “I don’t know how you put up with me, I really don’t. I’m…I’m so confused right now. I don’t know if I can trust my own emotions.”

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You just lost your father, Jade. Your anchor for a lot of years. You have to feel like you’re drifting. It’s only natural.”

“You never liked him,” Jade said, sniffing, and then she pushed back slightly to look up in his face. “Did you?”

“I liked Teddy well enough, Jade. He was a
likable man. I didn’t like that he was my competition.”

“He wasn’t. You make that sound almost incestuous, Court, do you know that?”

Great. Once again, he’d put his foot in it. Sometimes he found it hard to believe he could actually walk and chew gum at the same time, let alone run a pretty good-size business empire. “You know what I meant, Jade. He needed you, I didn’t. That’s how you saw it.”

“You’d
agreed,
remember? You traveled for business nearly every week. What was I supposed to do when you were gone—turn into one of those insipid ladies who lunch? So Teddy needed help a couple of days a week, background checks, clerical help, and couldn’t really afford to hire anyone to replace me. So what? And I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Neither can I,” Court said, mentally kicking himself for his lousy timing. “Let’s go look at this DVD. But you know, Jade, if Jessica had found anything important on it, she would have told us.”

“Always the dreamer, Court,” Jade said, and even smiled. “You’re really cute when you’re gullible.”

“Ha. Ha,” he said, watching as she once more
headed for Sam’s private den, relieved that the awkward moment was behind them. He really had to start rehearsing what he was going to say to Jade when this thing was over, if it was ever over. She was experienced enough now not to give in to their intense physical attraction and then simply pretend that was the answer to all their problems. She wanted and needed more. Deserved more.

Come to think of it, so did he.

Court returned to the living room to grab two cold sodas from behind the bar and then joined Jade in the large, darkly paneled room that not only could have been taken from an English gentlemen’s club, but actually had been, board by board, by Sam’s great-great grandfather.

The room smelled comfortably of leather polish and the occasional cigar Sam indulged in, but was kept from being oppressively proper by the collection of Phillies and Eagles paraphernalia scattered throughout the bookcases. Yachting trophies and the like were reserved for men who didn’t like chowing down on spicy French fries and drinking cold beer from plastic cups in the cheap seats.

Jade was sitting on one of the leather couches and the DVD was already playing on the
enormous flat screen, usually hidden behind an oil painting by some long-dead Dutch artist.

“Anything yet?” Court asked as he handed her one of the soda cans and sat down beside her.

“Not really, no.
Oh,”
she said quietly.

Court looked at the screen. Jade had stopped the action on Teddy’s face. He was at a funeral, standing in the rain, and he looked like he’d just lost his best friend. “That was a few years ago, don’t you think? Teddy looks… younger.” Really, what else was there to say?