Mischief 24/7 (3 page)

But Court was barely listening, as he was already tuning in to the conversation going on between the middle-aged man next to him and Jade Sunshine.

“And you’re sure I can’t buy you a drink, honey?” the guy was saying, his back to Court. “Something
real.
Who comes to a bar to drink ginger ale?”

Jade stirred her soda with the plastic swizzle stick, the ice clinking. “I like to start slow and then build from there. In my business, a clear head is a part of the service.”

Court liked her voice. A little bit low, slightly husky. Definitely sexy. And he was pretty sure she knew it. The guy next to him was nearly drooling.

“And what is your business, honey?” the guy asked her.

Jade kept her right hand on the swizzle stick as she gracefully swiveled on the bar stool and carefully crossed those long legs beneath the short, black sheath. Court swore he could hear the silk of her stockings whisper with the movement.

She reached out with her other hand and stroked a finger down the guy’s tie. “I thought I told you, handsome. Service. You see, honey, I serve people. Should I
serve
you? I’d really like to serve you. What’s your name, honey?”

Court lowered his head and let his breath out slowly, wondering why the ice cubes in his own glass, and in every glass in the bar, hadn’t melted yet.

“I… I’m Harvey,” the poor sap stuttered. “If… if,
uh, we’re going to get to know each other, um,
better,
maybe you should tell me your name?”

“Sure thing, honey,” Jade said, her hand leaving the man’s shirtfront to slide down his thigh and then onto her own knee. “I’m Lucy. Lucy Lawless.”

“But isn’t that the name of that actress who… Oh. Oh, right. I guess, in your line of, uh, work, names aren’t real. I should have thought of that. But I
am
Harvey. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Harvey, honey,” Jade soothed, inching up the already short skirt of her dress. Her other hand had left the swizzle stick and now rested on Harvey’s jacket lapel. “It’s a great name, Harvey. What goes with it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Court saw the bartender moving down the bar, probably to eject the obvious hooker. Court shook his head slightly, warning the guy away.

Harvey’s eyes were all but glued to Jade’s leg as she slid two fingers beneath her hem and slowly headed North. “Hubbard. I’m… I’m Harvey Hubbard. Should you be doing that here? I’ve got a room upstairs and…”

Court caught a mind-blowing glimpse of black lace garter as the blue-cover-clad tri-fold appeared from beneath Jade’s hemline. At the same time, her other hand grabbed at and pulled on Harvey’s jacket front, and an instant later the obvious summons was in his inside jacket pocket.

“Harvey Hubbard—honey—you can now
consider yourself
served,”
Jade said, getting to her feet as she let go of him.

Harvey wasn’t too quick on the uptake, at least in Court’s opinion, but he certainly reacted pretty quickly to what had just happened.

“You
bitch,
I’ll
kill
you,” Harvey muttered murderously as Jade turned to walk away. He flew off his bar stool and clapped a hand on Jade’s shoulder a split second before Court was off his own stool and reaching for him.

Court shouldn’t have bothered. He’d already had a front row seat for the show from where he’d been sitting. In fact, he almost got his nose in the way as Jade rounded neatly on Harvey, her left arm—fingers together, palm rigid—cutting through the air like a whip. Well, like some sort of efficient judo move, anyway, but who needed particulars?

Harvey sure didn’t. He simply went down like a felled tree. It was, Court had told Sam later, a thing of real beauty to watch. Poetry in motion.

Court raised his left hand slightly and pointed toward the crumpled Harvey, and two bartenders quickly hauled the man up by his underarms and half carried him out of the dimly lit bar. Most of the patrons, intent on living their own lives, hadn’t even noticed anything unusual.

Leaving Court and Jade facing each other. She tipped her head to one side, blinked and then just stared at him as he stared right back at her. She had to feel it. The attraction, the pure, physical
pull between them. But she didn’t flinch, didn’t run away. She just lifted her chin slightly and continued looking at him.

She was tall, but he was taller. Their bodies would fit together like a song, a symphony. Did she hear the same music?

Her eyes sparkled. She was very obviously on a natural high after serving Harvey—or maybe it was taking the guy down that had gotten her blood flowing hot in her veins. She probably needed an outlet for all that pent-up energy, and Court felt it only his duty as a good host to help her out there.

“Hello,” he said at last, pushing back the bar stool recently occupied by Harvey. “I’m Court Becket, the owner of this hotel.”

Her chest was still rising and falling fairly rapidly from her recent exertion. “Good for you. And you want me to leave your hotel.”

“No, I’m pretty sure I want to marry you. Which means we probably should get to know each other a little better. We could do that here, or up in my suite. There’s a fantastic view of the city skyline, including City Hall. Billy Penn’s wearing a Santa hat. You should see it.”

“That’s sacrilege—on all counts—and he is not.”

“How do you know? You haven’t looked As for the first part, yes, I am. Going to marry you, that is. Would you like me to go down on one knee? I mean, I’m game if you are.”

She didn’t move. She also didn’t look away
from him. He imagined she had learned every inch of him and committed it all to memory.

“I saw Sam trying to avoid me. I’ll assume you’re related to him.”

Court took a single step forward, not quite invading her space, but close enough to smell her perfume. “His cousin. And you’re Jolie’s sister. Consider us destined, if you want. You. Me. This time. This place. Not Harvey, though.” He lost his smile. Whatever works for you, Jade Sunshine.”

Something moved through her magnificent sherry-colored eyes. A decision made? A bridge crossed?

Her voice took on a new huskiness. Low and intimate. “This isn’t a good idea, Court Becket.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Nothing’s going to happen, you know.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” he said, holding out his arm to her.

She slipped her arm through his. “You saw me take Harvey down.”

“I’ll consider myself warned,” Court said before they walked out of the bar in silence, toward the last elevator on the right side of the lobby, the one that served only the penthouse.

The first hairpin dropped to the carpeted floor of the elevator almost before the doors had whispered shut….

“W
HAT’S WRONG
? Court? Court blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “Excuse me?”

“You… I think you groaned,” Jade said, looking at him. “Is it something in that file?”

“No,” he said, looking adorably confused, or at least as confused as an intelligent man could look. “I was just…my mind was wandering, that’s all. Sorry.”

“And you tell me I need sleep?” Jade took the file that was still closed on his lap and frowned at it. “This is the Vanishing Bride case. It’s already solved.”

“Really? I guess I didn’t notice.”

Jade looked at him again, and she was surprised she could resist putting a hand to his brow to check him for a fever. “You’ve been sitting here for nearly forty-five minutes looking at a solved
case?” She put the file on the coffee table and stood up. “Come on, let’s go.”

Court got to his feet. “To bed? Would it be too tacky to say that your wish is my command?”

“Yes, and we’re not going to bed. You’re coming to the kitchen with me. I think you need food.”

“Sustenance of some sort would probably be helpful, yes,” he said as she led the way into the large kitchen. “What are you going to cook for me?”

“Cook for you? Are you crazy? It’s nearly midnight,” Jade said, her head half inside the large refrigerator. “You’ll get whatever I can find in here and like it.” She heard her own words and bit her lips together, turned to look at him. “Sorry. I just had a flashback, I think. Suddenly you were Jess or Jolie, demanding to be fed long after I’d cleaned up the kitchen for the night. I had to keep reminding them that I wasn’t their servant.”

“Did it work?” Court had sat himself on one of the stools at the large granite island.

“Not in my memory, no,” Jade said, making a face. “They always asked, and I always gave in. For one, Jolie was too skinny, anyway. And Jess? She’d just look at me with those big puppy dog eyes, and I’d melt.”

“You’re their sister. You sound like their mother. Where was your childhood, Jade?”

She turned back to the refrigerator. “PB and J on white bread,” she said, avoiding his question. “Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it. And I’m sorry if I’m opening an old wound here. But you never talk about what it was like for you after your mother left. I spoke with Jessica about it the other day, and she had what she called a small epiphany. It’s her conclusion now—besides the notion that your parents never should have married in the first place—that she and Jolie were spoiled brats and that you got a raw deal. I’m betting you don’t feel that way.”

“Don’t count on it. There were times I hated them all, even as I played Frankenstein to their monsters.” Jade opened cabinet doors until she found the jar of peanut butter and set about making them each a sandwich. “Looking back from where I am now, I’d say that I played the cards I was dealt the best I knew how at the time, that we all did. Pretend I’m a teenager again, however, and that changes. At times I felt like running away and leaving them to realize how they’d be lost without me—but that would make me just like our mother, so it wasn’t an option.”

“Much better to emulate your father? Did you ever wish you’d been born a son, instead of a daughter?”

“I’ll ignore that.”

“That’s probably good. Go on.”

“I will, since you started this. At other times, I liked being the one in charge of everything and wouldn’t have it any other way. And I was in charge, Court, at least in the beginning. Teddy… poor Teddy just fell apart when he finally understood that our mother wasn’t coming back this time. I had to stick close.”

“Our
mother? As in, to all four of you? You know, to an outsider, it could almost look as if you raised all
three
of them, Teddy included. But eventually Jolie and Jessica went to college, and Teddy managed to get his act back together. And yet still you stayed home.”

“So? I have an associates degree and my PI license,” Jade said, knowing she sounded defensive. Which was probably because she
felt
defensive. “I wanted to work with Teddy, so I didn’t need anything else. Jess and Jolie did.” She slid one of the plates across the granite. “Here. Eat.”

“So you didn’t have any idea of what to do differently with your life once the others were established? You always wanted to work with Teddy?”

“Who said I wanted to work with… What is
this, Court? An interrogation? Exactly what was Jess saying to you when you two had your little talk? And for the record, I don’t appreciate being the topic of conversations going on behind my back.”

“I’m sensing that, yes. Good sandwich, but it’s missing something.” Court walked around the island to take a carton of milk from the refrigerator. He poured a glass for each of them and placed one in front of Jade before returning to the other side of the island. “Nothing better than ice-cold milk with your PB and J. Drink up, and as long as you’re angry with me, anyway, let’s do a hypothetical, all right?”

“I don’t deal in hypotheticals,” Jade told him nervously. “I deal in facts, evidence.”

“Tell that to someone who isn’t working these cases with you,” Court told her as he put down his glass. “We’re working with about forty percent hypothetical, and another forty percent hunch. Leaving not a lot of room for facts, if you’re adding up numbers on your fingers.”

“You have a milk mustache,” Jade told him, wishing he’d leave her alone. Leave her alone, or take her in his arms and run off with her, the way she’d sometimes wanted to run away from all her teenage responsibility. “All right. A hypothetical. One, and then it’s back to the files.”

Court wiped his mouth carefully, as if mentally forming his question, the single one she’d allowed him. “All right,” he said, putting down the napkin, “here goes. If—
if
—your mother hadn’t left, how would your life be different? In other words, and still the same single question, would you still have joined Teddy in his private-investigator business or would you have pursued another dream?”

Jade felt a stab of regret, then quickly pushed it aside. “Sure, Court, there was something else I wanted to do. I wanted to go out West and be a cowgirl. Right after I was the first female astronaut to step on the moon. One small step for woman, one giant leap for womankind. Come on, let’s get back to work.”

“Stay where you are,” he said, and something in his voice told her he wasn’t going to let her get away without giving him a straight answer.

“Why, Court?” she asked him, nearly pleaded with him. “Why this question and why now? What I want, wanted, has nothing to do with what happened then or with what’s happening now.”

“True enough. But someday this is going to be over, one way or the other. What are you going to do then, Jade? Run the agency by yourself?”

She shook her head. She’d wondered when he’d get around to asking this particular question.

“No, that’s not possible. Teddy was the heart and soul. I was just the nuts-and-bolts person, working the computer and hardly ever going out into the field. I don’t have… I don’t have his flair. The Sunshine Detective Agency is officially out of business.”

“Leaving you free to go out West and be a cowgirl or fly to the moon. Which will it be, Jade?”

Did he have any idea how much he was hurting her? Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them away as she cleared the counter. “Neither. I suppose I’ll have to find a new dream.”

“Or tell me the real one,” Court said, finishing his sandwich. “I’m guessing ‘chef isn’t on the top of your list.”