Under Wraps (2 page)

“Is everything okay in there?” He stepped closer, trying to look past her into the familiar office interior that he'd seen often enough on his surveillance tapes. Framed prints of the Egyptian pyramids hung next to a map of London highlighting historic pubs.

“Everything is fine.” She spoke the words oddly, like a marionette where the mouth's movement didn't quite match up with the sounds. “Especially now that you're here.”

“I don't get it.” He didn't like the brittle set of her shoulders or the flushed color in her cheeks. Was she not feeling well?

Before he could ask, she raised a silver-tipped dart that he remembered well from an earlier meeting.

“You're just in time for target practice while we wait for the cops to arrive.”

“What?”

His confusion only lasted until she arced back her arm and let the missile fly, aiming for his eye.

Oh, shit.

Belatedly, he realized her assortment of symptoms pointed to stone-cold fury. All directed at him.

Luckily she was so angry, that her release point was late and the dart clattered harmlessly to the concrete pavement at his feet.

“How could you?” she yelled through the narrow opening. Disappearing for a moment, she returned with a whole handful of darts. “You pervert!”

The darts started flying in earnest now and he took cover against the door.

Ace detective work told him she'd found his hidden camera.

“Marnie?” He tried leaning into her line of sight between rounds of incoming fire. “Did you really call the cops?”

That was going to be a nightmare. He had as many enemies on the force as he had friends. With his luck, one of the former would answer the call and gladly lock his ass up for the night until he could straighten away the paperwork.

“Of course.” Another dart.

He ducked.

“You can wait with me while the local police bring
you a pair of handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.” A painted pink stone that he happened to know was her paperweight came hurtling through the opening now, joining the darts on the pavement.

He heard the stomp of furious footsteps away from the door. Leaning into the vacated space, he used the time to make his case.

“Marnie, wait.” He pulled out his wallet and tossed it inside her storefront where it skidded across the gray commercial carpet and thudded against her ankle. “There's my ID. I'm a licensed private investigator.”

She slowed her battle with the buttons on the desk phone. Apparently, she'd been making more calls. To a friend or neighbor? Backup to be sure he stuck around long enough for his own arrest?

“If that's true, that sounds only marginally less smarmy than being a complete and total perv.” She cradled the phone against her shoulder and started punching buttons again, this time with slow deliberation.

“Premiere Properties didn't terminate you because they couldn't fund your department. They terminated you because of a major embezzlement scam that originated in your sector of the company. You were a prime suspect.”

She shook her head. Confused. Shocked. He'd seen that expression on people's faces when he'd worked in homicide and he'd had to face grieving family members to question them. Hell, he still saw that expression as a P.I. when a wife learned her husband had been cheating. He didn't take jobs like that often, but sometimes he
could be persuaded. Having been on the clueless end of an unfaithful relationship made him empathize.

Marnie's face mirrored that kind of disillusionment now.

“Who are you?” She seemed to see him for the first time that night, her brows furrowed in concentration as if she could guess his motives if she stared hard enough.

Relieved, he pointed to her feet.

“My ID is right there. Just hang up the phone long enough to let me talk to you.”

With a jerky nod, she replaced the receiver and retrieved his wallet. Seeing his Florida private investigator's license inside, she met his gaze again.

“I didn't really call the cops yet. I only just found that camera a minute before you arrived.”

Thank God. He didn't want to deal with that drama tonight.

“I'm going to collect the darts out here,” he told her, scooping up the littered sidewalk. “If you want to meet me somewhere you'll feel safe, we can talk.”

By the time he straightened, she was already back at the partially opened door. The stiff set to her shoulders had vanished.

Her caramel-colored hair slid loose from a messy twist on one side, the freed strands grazing her shoulder where her satin robe drooped enough to show she wore a black cotton tank top underneath it. Her gray eyes locked on his, searching his face for answers.

“I don't want to go anywhere. Not when my thoughts are so scattered and my head is spinning like this.” Over her shoulder, he could see the mess in her office,
it looked as if she'd cleared everything off the display case he'd built, probably searching for other cameras. “I'm suddenly very, very tired.”

Without warning, she closed the door in his face and he thought she'd ended the conversation. Then, he heard the safety latch unhook and she reopened the door, silently inviting him inside.

“Are you sure you're okay with this?” He didn't like the idea of setting foot in there if she thought for a second he could still be some random lecher taking video for fun.

She nodded. “A real perv would have put the camera in the bedroom or over the shower, not pointing at where I do business. Besides, a colleague from Premiere called tonight and mentioned something about rumors of a financial loss. I know you're not making it up about possible embezzlement. Are you the guy Vince hired to ask discreet questions around the office?”

He nodded.

“Then you might as well come in.” Her words lacked the red-hot fury of the flying darts, but there was a new level of iciness that didn't feel like a big improvement.

Accepting the grudging invitation, he stepped inside the storefront and closed the door behind him.

“I'll just set these down.” He piled the darts on her desk, an elegant antique piece out of place with the rest of the utilitarian furniture. Kind of like her. Her silk bathrobe probably cost as much as the old beater she drove to work lately.

Marnie Wainwright had fallen on some hard times,
but he admired her grit in not letting them get the best of her.

“I refuse to apologize for the darts.” She produced an open bottle of champagne along with two glasses, then dropped onto the love seat in her office's waiting area. “Even if you were conducting an investigation, a hidden camera is still a disturbing way to go about obtaining information.”

But legal for an investigation of this magnitude, as long as the device wasn't inside her private residence. He took the chair at a right angle to her, observing the way she recovered herself. Her fingers shook with the leftover churning of emotions as she handed him a glass of bubbly. He hated that his investigation had freaked her out. Hated that she'd found the damn camera in the first place. He'd been banking on hitting on her, not having her glare at him as if he were evil incarnate.

“Granted. But it was also the fastest way of proving your innocence. If my client had gone to the cops, you could have been stuck trying to clear your name from inside a cell, since the evidence they had on you was pretty damning.” He set the glass she'd given him on the coffee table.

She seemed to think that one over as she poured her own glass and held the cool drink against her forehead like a compress.

“Why didn't they go the police?” she asked softly, her hands shaking just a little as she lowered the flute and took a sip.

He tried not to envy the glass for its chance to press against her lips. She was dealing with a crisis, after all.
But he'd been battling an attraction to this woman ever since the week he'd built the custom-made cabinet to house his spy equipment. He couldn't help subtly ogle a bit now that he was finally free to act on that attraction. Her dark robe slipped away from her calf enough to reveal the delineation of the long, lean muscle in her leg. A gold toe ring winked from her bare foot, a small row of pearls catching the light as she shifted.

Jake had a sudden vision of that long, bare leg in his hands, his body planted between her thighs. And wouldn't that fantasy be helpful in explaining why he'd been spying on her? Cursing the wayward thoughts, he forced himself to talk about the case.

“The CEO of Premiere doesn't trust the local police ever since they misplaced key evidence that would have convicted some crooks involved in his last company.”

The case still pissed off Jake, too, even though it had been two years ago.

“Brennan. You were the investigator on that crime.” She snapped her fingers in recognition. “I thought your name sounded familiar when we met. I did a little research on it because I worked for Premiere when they hired Vincent Galway to take over as CEO.”

Great. Jake didn't want to be associated with an investigation that screamed police corruption. He'd left the force because a couple of the cops appeared to be flunkies for some bigwigs who didn't want that particular corporate fraud case prosecuted. To keep his eyes off Marnie's legs, he diverted his attention to a nearby painting of the Anasazi cliff dwellings, decorated for
the holidays with a few balsam sprigs on the top of the frame.

“I quit when the system screwed over Vince. He talked to the cops and the Feds to try to throw some light on dirty dealings in his last company, and he was the one with mud on his face after the evidence was misplaced.” Jake swiped the champagne glass off the table. “But I know Vince from way back. He served in Vietnam with my dad. Because Vince trusts me, he hired my services to help him wade through the embezzlement scandal that could have hurt his company if news about it leaked.”

Marnie swirled her glass and watched the bubbles chase each other.

“So you got onto the work crew when I had the office overhauled and you installed a camera.” Her bathrobe slipped off her knee, unveiling bare skin for as far as the wandering eye could see up her leg.

A slice of creamy thigh proved too much competition for the picture of the damn cliff dwellings. His gaze tracked up her skin as he calculated how quickly he could have her naked…

“Yes.” His throat went dry. “It was a fast way to either clear you or confirm your guilt, and it's a tool the cops rarely use because—”

“—because it's highly unethical and borderline illegal?”

“Because it takes a lot of reviews to obtain permission for it.” He'd be damned if he'd let her call his honor into question. “Technology is saving a lot of manpower hours
at your local cop shop, so I can guarantee you it's not illegal when there is just cause—for me, or for them.”

“But I've been cleared of any wrongdoing, thanks to having my life put under a microscope?”

“You're no longer a prime suspect.” He watched her retuck the bathrobe around her legs, possibly feeling the heat of his stare despite his best effort to rein himself in. “In fact, I was hoping to remove the equipment tonight.”

Right before he hit on her. He planned to get very close to Marnie Wainwright in the near future. Now? Who knew how long it would take for him to rebuild some trust?

“You thought you'd just saunter in here tonight after I hadn't seen you in two months?” The precariously lopsided twist in her hair finally gave up the ghost, spilling caramel-colored strands and spitting out a pencil that had been holding it all together.

“I figured you wouldn't want to have that equipment running any longer than necessary,” he told her reasonably as he retrieved the fallen pencil and placed it on the coffee table.

“Of course not, but since I didn't know I'd been under surveillance for the past two months, might I inquire why you thought I'd even let you in?”

Animal attraction.

But he knew better than to say as much.

“I figured I'd look into a fantasy escape.” Heavy on the fantasy. God knew, she'd been occupying enough of his lately.

The woman had compromised his investigation every
time she sashayed past that surveillance camera, her confident feminine strut one hell of a distraction.

“At this hour?” Her gaze narrowed. Suspicion mounted.

And with damn good reason.

He hadn't even come close to laying his cards on the table with her yet.

“I work late.” He shrugged, not sure what else to offer in his defense. “Do you want me to take the equipment now?”

“No.” She leaned forward on the love seat, invading his personal space in a way that would have been damn pleasant if she hadn't fixed him with a stony glare. “I know how to take a sledgehammer to the cabinet, but thanks anyway. Right now, I'm more interested in two things.”

“Shoot.” He breathed in the warm, spicy scent of an exotic perfume he wouldn't have noticed if they hadn't been this close.

“First, you didn't say I was cleared of suspicion. You carefully distinguished that I'm no longer a prime suspect. Care to explain what that means?”

Her silk-covered knee was only inches from his. One bare foot sat so close to his loafers that he'd have to be careful of her toes if he stood. The nails had been manicured with glittery white polish except for the big toe on each foot, which featured a carefully painted holly berry leaf.

Lifting his gaze to meet hers, he wondered if he was the only one fantasizing about peeling off her robe.

“It means that there's an outside chance you could still
be a conspirator, but we don't think that's likely and we are one hundred percent sure you are not the primary force behind the embezzlement.”

“How reassuring.” She tucked a strand of hair behind one ear, frowning as she seemed to consider the implications of that.

“You said you were interested in two things?” He saw the dartboard behind the love seat no longer contained a picture of her ex-boyfriend, something he hadn't known from the video feeds since his camera didn't give him enough of a wide angle on the room.