The Sex On Beach Book Club (4 page)

Holly shut down that train of thought. The O'Man's blog was still up on her computer screen. She looked it over and got the gist of it—a knuckle-dragger bragging that he could seduce any woman based on her “type.” A couple types he listed were Anti-Princess, Invisible Woman, Wonder Woman, Barbie Babe, Cat Woman. Holly stopped reading. She wasn't interested in the women he supposedly seduced, but in the man's real identity. She couldn't help it—it was her nature to want to solve mysteries. What made a guy want to hide behind a ridiculous nickname on a Web site and try to convince the world he could seduce any woman? Holly sighed and closed down the Web site. She had her own work to do.

She turned her attention back to her case. She planned to follow Tanya today, starting with Tanya's yoga class at eleven. Holly didn't expect to find Cullen at the yoga class, but she wanted to cover all her bases. Still, that left her an hour and a half before the class started. She could go into her office and catch up on a few things.

Her gaze caught on Wes's shirt sitting on the desk next to her mouse.

Or she could run by the bookstore and return Wes's shirt to him. Last night, she'd been caught off guard by the sexual attraction between them. She'd meant to use him for information and had been shocked at the strength of her reaction to Wes's sex appeal.

This morning, she wondered what the big deal was. She hadn't had sex in a while. She liked sex. She liked men. She just didn't want a relationship. What was the harm in a couple of dates, maybe a couple of passionate nights, as long as she kept her priorities in place? Wes didn't seem like he was looking for anything more than a few laughs and a sex partner.

She stood up and grabbed the T-shirt. What harm could it do to drop by the bookstore and return the shirt? See where things went from there?

 

A half hour later, Holly was balancing two cups of hot takeout coffee, with Wes's shirt hanging over her arm, as she walked toward the bookstore. She caught Wes just as he was unlocking the door to Books on the Beach. He looked suave and sexy in a pair of well-cut slacks and a black button-down shirt. His hair had a touch of shower dampness darkening the sun streaks. A thread of desire tightened her stomach at the sight of him. “Hey, book boy.”

After sliding the key out of the lock, he turned and the morning sun sparkled in his green eyes. “Ah, my favorite stalker.” He held the door open for her.

Holly walked past him, very aware of him watching her. Since her plan was to put Tanya under surveillance, she'd dressed in a pair of jeans, tennis shoes, a black T-shirt, and twisted her hair up into a clip. She had a moment of self-consciousness, then shoved it aside. She wasn't here for his fashion opinion.

He walked toward her, took the coffees from her, and set them down. Taking hold of her bare arms, he leaned down and slowly kissed her. Then he lifted his head and crinkled his eyes with a sexy smile. “Good morning. Tell me you're stalking me for a second date.”

That molasses kiss moved languidly through her veins until it hit her heart and kicked out a rush of adrenaline-laced desire. Holly took a deep breath and reminded herself she was going to take control. She knew what she wanted. “I came to return your shirt.” She pulled it off her arm and handed it to Wes.

He took the shirt and tossed it on the counter without looking. He kept his green gaze on her. “And?”

Damn, he wasn't buying her excuse and unaffected demeanor. “And to see if the puppy is okay.”

He grinned at her. “If you want to know, you'll have to come over tonight to see for yourself.” He rubbed his right hand over her bare arm. “I'll take you to dinner wherever you want to go. Then we'll go back to my house, take the puppy for a long walk on the beach, put him to bed, and then I'll have you all to myself.”

Holly was surprised to see he'd been thinking about her as much as she'd been thinking about him. Only tonight she planned to do this on her terms. “No.”

“No?” His hand froze on her arm.

She shook her head, taking a step back to lean against the counter. She slid her purse off her arm and set it down. “We'll do pizza and a movie at my house.” He wouldn't have her so off-balance and overwhelmed if they were at her house. And the silly little puppy wouldn't tug at something she didn't want to feel.

He surprised her by laughing. Sliding his hand up over the curve of her shoulder, he said, “Are you asking me on a
date
, Hillbay?”

The feel of his hand on her skin was warm, sensual, and way too sexy. But if she shrugged his hand off, he'd know he was getting to her. As if she hadn't felt his good morning kiss arrow right through her center and make her want more. So much more. Instead she kept her breathing even. “You don't get out much, do you, Brockman? If you want to call pizza and a DVD at my house a date, knock yourself out.”

He dropped his hand and reached past her over the counter to grab a pad of paper and a pen. Handing them to her, he said, “Write down your address.” He picked up one of the coffees and took a drink.

She wrote down her address and handed it back to him. To show him her indifference, she said, “Seven o'clock or I'll eat all the pizza myself.”

Wes took the pad but his gaze stayed fastened on her. “It's a
date,
Holly. I'll be there and I'll bring the wine.”

His words were low, full of promise, and they tightened her gut with anticipation. How the hell did he do that? She turned around and watched as he walked around the counter, tore off the paper where she'd written the address, and stuck it in his shirt pocket. She was trying to think of a reply when she realized that Wes's gaze had caught on something behind her. A faint frown line burrowed between his eyebrows. Her cop instincts automatically kicked in. “What's wrong?”

His gaze swung to her, but the sexual promise had vanished. “The door to the meeting room is closed. It was open when I left last night.” His shoulders tensed and faint worry lines shadowed his mouth.

She turned and looked behind her. The door was closed. Seeing him start to move around the counter, she walked over to block him. “Wes, are you positive you left the door open?”

He stopped and looked down at her. “Yes.” He set his hands on her shoulders. “Don't get in the way. Stay here.”

She was aware of his strength, and the worry tensing his hands. “Listen, let me—” She was talking to herself. He was fast, damn fast. He stepped to the side, walked around her, and headed toward the door.

Holly reached inside her purse on the counter and got her gun out. By the time she unlocked the safety, she reached Wes's side. As he pushed open the door, she stepped in front of him and raised her gun.

But the man on the floor had already been shot. From what she could see, he had a head and a chest wound.
Professional
, she thought. Instinct and training took over and she started assessing the danger.

“Holy Christ, that's Cullen,” Wes said, so close his words tickled her neck.

Quickly, Holly looked around the room. She didn't see anyone else. From memory, she knew there was a small bathroom off to the right and another door next to that. It had been closed last night so she didn't know what was in there. To Wes, she ordered, “Stay here.”

Carefully, she walked into the room and went straight to the bathroom. It was clear. She went to the second door and eased it open. It was a combination office and storage room. No one was in there, and the back door that led to the alley behind the store was still locked from the inside.

Then she went to the victim. The entry wounds in his head and chest didn't look too bad, but she knew the exit wounds in his back would be a lot worse when the coroner turned him. Blood had seeped and stained the carpet beneath him where he lay between the meeting table and the storage room/office door. From the way he was positioned, she thought he must have been shot while standing and facing where Wes stood. She knew he was dead, but she crouched down and put two fingers against his throat anyway. Then she stood up, engaged the safety on her gun, and moved to Wes. “He's dead.”

Wes ran his hand around the back of his neck, then dropped it and locked his gaze onto her. “No shit. I can see that for myself. The question is, who the hell are you?”

“Don't freak.” She knew it was a fair question since she had just pulled a gun out of her purse. But his attitude was cold and accusing, probably because he hadn't thought he was dating a woman with a gun. He'd thought she was a nice, tame real estate agent. “I'm an ex-cop, now a private investigator. That's why I was at your book club last night. I didn't realize it until then, but Cullen is connected to the case I'm working on.”

Suspicion coated his voice. “Does this case you're working on have anything to do with me?”

Jeez, there was a murdered body ten feet away and he was making it about himself. “No. At first I thought you were the man my client's wife was sleeping with, but I soon realized it's him.” She tilted her head toward the body.

Wes turned to look at Cullen, then back to her. A beat of time passed. He stepped toward her, putting both hands on her arms to stare at her with his steely green gaze. “How do I know you're telling the truth?”

Uneasiness sliced her professional calm, but she didn't let him see it. “Since I have the gun, I guess you're just going to have to trust me.”

An aching silence hung between them. Finally, he let her go and said, “Looks that way, doesn't it? I'll call nine-one-one.”

“Y
ou're shitting me. Dude, take off,” George said. Wes was on his cell phone outside the bookstore, and looked through the window at Holly, who was talking to a detective from the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Criminal Investigation Division. “No. I'm sticking.”

George made a rude sound. “You think this is a fucking coincidence? You said the stiff was shot in the head and chest—a hit. In your bookstore. What? You want them to write you a message in black marker on your walls? It was a warning or a screw-up. Don't wait around to find out which!”

“I'm done running. I ran three years ago for a reason.”
His sister.
God, he missed her. He knew he'd done the right thing then by disappearing. The thugs had used Michelle as a punching bag to try and convince Wes not to testify. Even now, rage roared through him at the memory. Michelle had been furious, too, and had told him he'd become the very thing their father had fought against—corrupt. Wes couldn't let her get hurt, or worse. He'd gotten her safely out of the way, done what he had to do, then he'd gone surfing one morning and disappeared, leaving his surfboard to wash up on the shore. His only regret was any grief Michelle suffered, but he stayed the hell away from her to keep her safe. His sister deserved her life. She deserved happiness. Once the people after him had realized he'd either died or bolted, they left his sister alone.

“Look, Wes, don't go noble on me. I hate noble.”

He laughed. “Yeah, sure.” George was not quite the badass he wanted Wes to believe he was. “I'm sticking. Cullen was a slug, but I doubt he deserved to die. I might be the reason he's dead. I'm staying.”

George wasn't stupid; he knew Wes's weaknesses. “Yeah? What about your two clerks, Jodi and Kelly? What about your friends? The other members of the book club? What if they get killed?”

“And what if I leave and they get killed? We don't know what's going on. I'm going to find out.” He watched through the window as Holly appeared to describe something to the detective. “And I know just who is going to help me.”

“Are you out of your—”

Wes hung up the cell. Then he turned it off. George could scream at his voice mail. Sticking the cell in his pants pocket, he studied Holly.
An ex-cop. Damn.
And yeah, he believed her now that he'd seen her with the cops that had screamed up with lights and sirens blaring from his nine-one-one call. Wes knew cops.

His dad had been a well-known journalist with a nationally syndicated column,
Cop Scan
, dedicated to exposing police corruption and brutality. He'd grown up seeing the dark side of the thin blue line. His family had not been a favorite of the cops. Oh yeah, Wes knew cops. As a rule, he didn't like them, but he needed Holly. He headed back into the bookstore.

The detective saw him first and strode toward him. Lois Rodgers was a small woman with dark hair cut short to frame big brown eyes living in a serious face. But it was her vibrant energy that commanded attention. Stopping in front of him, she said, “Mr. Brockman, how do you think the victim got into your bookstore? Did you meet him here last night?”

Wes wondered what Holly had told her. “No. Cullen left right after the book club meeting was over. I didn't see him after that. I have no idea how Cullen got into the bookstore. The front door was locked when”—he glanced at Holly leaning against a bookshelf—“we came in this morning.”

“Do you have an alarm system?”

“Yes. With a code. My employees and I know it, and both of them have keys.”

She made notes on a five-by-seven yellow pad. “I'll need you to write down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all your employees and anyone else who has the keys and alarm code.”

“My two part-time clerks, Kelly and Jodi, both went to San Diego for a few days' vacation and to catch a concert. I'll give you their cell phone numbers, but they weren't even here. What else?”

Lois Rodgers looked up. “We'll need your fingerprints. For elimination purposes.”

“There are thousands of fingerprints in the store. How will that help?” He wasn't sure how far his identity would hold. But he didn't think his fingerprints were in the police files anywhere under his real or fake name, so it really didn't matter.

She arched her brows with an accusatory gleam in her brown gaze. “You don't want to cooperate?”

He smiled. “Of course I do, Detective. I didn't realize pointing out obvious facts was uncooperative.”

She narrowed her gaze, then said, “Do you have a gun, Mr. Brockman?”

“No.” He didn't own a gun, but George had taught him to shoot. In the first months after he'd disappeared, he'd kept one of George's guns in the beach house, but over time, he'd gotten out of the habit.

She wrote another note, then asked, “Where were you last night?”

“Home all night.”

Looking up, she asked, “Anyone see you?”

Wes kept his answers bland, ignoring his impatience. Holly must have told her. “Holly saw me until she left around ten. I read for a while and went to bed.”

“Let's go back to Mr. Vail, the victim. Did you have problems with him?”

He thought about how to frame his answer. “Cullen was starting to cause tension in our book club by dating and dropping several of the women. However, it wasn't anything I couldn't handle. Otherwise, I didn't know the man well enough to have problems with him.” That should cover anything that the book club members said. And it was the truth.

Rodgers zeroed her gaze in on him. “Did he date the same women you were interested in?”

Finally, his patience snapped and he looked down his nose at the small woman. “I'm a thirty-two-year-old man, Detective, and this isn't high school. I let a woman decide if she wants to date me, I don't compete with other men.”

She didn't flinch or otherwise recognize his cold tone. “Good for you, Brockman. Now lose the attitude. I'm conducting a murder investigation and offending you is not my biggest worry.”

He almost liked her. Lifting both hands with his palms up, he went for charm. “I'm trying to be helpful, Detective…” He trailed off when he spotted Holly heading toward the door. He brushed by Rodgers. “Holly, wait.”

Holly stopped in the doorway.

“Brockman,” Rodgers said, “we're not done.”

Wes looked back at the Detective. “I'll be back in a minute.”

Rodgers strode toward him, her short legs eating up the floor. “It's procedure to—”

Wes ignored her, took hold of Holly's arm, and they both walked outside. When Rodgers started to follow, he glared at her. “Detective, I have several lawyers on retainer. Up till now I haven't seen any reason to call them since you're just doing your job and I want this murderer caught. But if you start infringing on my rights, I will call all of them.”

She stopped, her intelligent brown eyes reflective as she thought it over. Then she said, “Five minutes. And if you take off, I'll find you and drag you to the station in handcuffs.”

“Threats,” he sighed. “And not very original threats, either.” He turned his back on her and looked at Holly.

Her light blue eyes were icy, her back was rigid, and she rocked slightly on the balls of her feet with edginess. “Let go of my arm and talk fast.”

He dropped her arm, reading her impatience in her tight posture. She wasn't classically beautiful; she was attractive in an active, powerful way. It was her strong face, sexy body, and get-out-of-my-way attitude that he liked and admired. But right now, he had to concentrate on finding out what was going on. He decided to go on the offensive. “You're the one who used me, what are you all bent out of shape for?”

She stood still and raised her eyebrows. “What did I use you for?”

“Information on Cullen.” He leaned casually against the side of the building. “And sex. You came to my store this morning hoping for a date to score with me tonight.”

Her blue eyes thawed slightly. “You must feel so cheap. I was gonna buy you a pizza dinner first.”

God, she made him want to laugh. She
had
used him—not that he cared. She'd been doing her job, and he was willing to sign up for her to use him sexually anytime she wanted to. But he needed to use her, as well. “Too late for that, but I have another proposal that will make an honest woman out of you.”

Holly's mouth twitched. “You want to marry me?”

That slammed his brain with a case of shock and horror. “Hell, no!”

“No? Gosh, book boy, you really know how to make a girl feel special.”

He thunked the back of his head against the wall. She was yanking his chain and he, like a total dumb shit, fell for it. “I want to hire you to find out who murdered Cullen, but I need to be in on the investigation. Sort of like partners.”

The cloudy blue color in her eyes iced over. “No. I don't work with a partner.” She reached into her purse.

Wes pushed off the wall and frowned, wondering what she was looking for in her purse. “You aren't going to shoot me, are you?”

Holly pulled her hand out, holding her car keys. “Don't be stupid, Wes. I'd never shoot you with all these cops around.”

That's why he wanted Holly on this. She was smart, determined, and no one pushed her around. She'd proven to him the lengths she'd go to get information—infiltrating his book club and dating him. But he needed to accompany her as she investigated because she didn't know the truth. He did. And damn it, he'd been forced to run last time to keep his sister safe.

This time, he was going after the problem and resolving it. Wes wanted his life back—wanted his sister back. But he had to make sure it was safe before he approached Michelle. And he needed Holly to help him do that. Of course, he wasn't going to tell her anything about Michelle or his past, unless he had to. Distrust of cops was too ingrained in him. Instead, he used a more reliable method to get her cooperation. “I'll pay you double your rate.”

She had started to walk away. Now she turned back. “Why? Rodgers is a damn good cop. There's a good chance she'll solve this case and you won't have to pay anything.”

He shook his head. “I don't think so. Holly, what was Cullen doing in my bookstore? How did he and the murderer get inside? It was locked. You saw me lock the door last night and unlock it this morning. Your detective buddy is going to look for the easy answer, and that's me since it's my store.” He took a breath and added a little raw honesty. “I want to know. I have to know. Is that so hard to understand?”

She dropped her arm to her side with her car keys hanging from her fingertips. “You want to know bad enough to pay me double rates? Why not just hire another PI?”

He took a step closer. “I want you to investigate.” He touched her face. “I know which women Cullen dated from the book club. Since he was murdered in the meeting room, it could be linked to that.” He had no idea if that was true but it sounded good. “And they're more likely to talk to you if I'm there. Plus I know”—he paused as he tripped up on the tense—“or
knew
Cullen, so I might spot something you don't.” Then he smiled at her. “And I like you.”

Her face hardened. “This is business. I'll take the job with the terms that I decide how involved you will be.”

Wes nodded, figuring that was the best he would get from her at the moment.

Holly reached back into her purse and pulled out a business card. “Call my cell when you're done here and we'll arrange a time to meet. Right now, I have to go see a client.” She handed him the card.

Wes snagged her wrist, tugging her toward him. “This is about more than business.” Then he let her go and turned back to his bookstore.

He heard Holly huff and stomp off. She really didn't like not having the last word.

 

Holly's eyes burned from doing computer searches on Cullen Vail. It turned out that Cullen had a record—he'd done some fast-talking swindling of women for a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme that caved pretty early into the game. That little escapade earned him probation and restitution.

Holly leaned back in her chair, tapping her pencil on her desk while looking at her poster from the old
Moonlighting
TV show. She'd loved those shows when she'd been growing up. PIs got the job done that the cops couldn't.

And they didn't follow the rules.

Holly wasn't big on rules either. Neither, apparently, had been Cullen. So what had he been doing in that book club? Trolling for women? Maybe. A guy like him would probably buy into the stereotype that a bookish woman didn't get many dates, therefore she was an easy lay.

She couldn't think of any other reason he'd be there. He didn't seem the book-loving type.

So she could assume he was there to pick up women. And it was a fact that he had a record as a swindler. What if, Holly thought, she put those two things together, and someone from the book club was one of Cullen's past victims? That woman waited for the opportunity and killed him in revenge.