Dangerous Flirt (7 page)

“I've looked through as many of the public records as I could get ahold of. Every time I find a company name, it turns out to be a front.” Beth sipped her warm brew. It slid down her throat, heating her body from the inside out. “The whole thing stinks to high heaven
and that fool Wilcox is in it up to his third chin.”

“You really need to tell Hank about all this.”

“My grandparents’ house is in Council County. Hank's jurisdiction ends at the Dry Creek County line.”

“Uh-huh, so what's with him branding you like a prized calf, because you and I both know that's what that kiss was all about.”

Her heart raced at the idea and she clasped her hands tighter around
her mug to keep them from shaking. “Nothing.”

“Has he asked you out?”

Heat flared in Beth's cheeks.

Eyes wide with curiosity, Claire leaned in. “Oh my God, did you sleep with him?”

“No!” She straightened in her chair, putting as much distance as possible between her and her best friend. The words tumbled out anyway. “We kissed. That's all. It didn't mean a thing.”

Claire shook her head, sending
her auburn hair waving around her shoulders. “Yep, keep telling yourself that, Beth.”

The alarm on her cellphone vibrated and she swiped it off the tabletop. “Come on, we gotta head out to the airport. Thanks again for dropping me off.”

“Hey, what are friends for?” Claire grabbed her plate and Beth's empty coffee cup and placed them on the counter before they walked out the door. “You know,
Hank's leaving tomorrow for a boys' poker trip to Vegas. Chris and Sam are already out there. God, I can't imagine what trouble my three brothers are going to cook up.” She grinned at Beth. “Maybe you'll run into him. It would be the perfect opportunity to ask for help in a neutral environment, and you know, if things happen to get all hot and heavy…”

Beth yanked open the car door and slid into
the passenger seat. “That is not going to happen.” She snapped her seat belt closed.

Claire plopped down into the driver's seat. “Mmm-hmmm. We'll see.”

“Don't even think about it.”

Pure deviousness crinkled the corner of Claire's brown eyes. “I have no idea what you're talking about.” She turned on the radio and started singing along to an old Motown song in an off-key voice that should only
be heard in the shower.

Giggling, Beth joined in, her own voice as jarringly out of tune as her friend's. Somewhere in Dry Creek, the dogs had to be howling along with them.

After a short car ride to the regional airport, a quick check-in at the kiosk and an uncomfortable groping from the security agent, Beth climbed the stairs of the small commercial jet.

Walking down the narrow walkway between
the seats, she kept her gaze glued to the seat numbers for twelve-A. There it was, two rows up, a window seat. Things were looking up.

The woman in front of her stowed a carry-on bag in the overhead storage, then sat down, giving Beth a view of the coach passengers buckling in. Her stomach did a triple flip.

Hank looked up at her from twelve-B. “You wouldn’t be stalking me now, would you? Because
I probably wouldn’t mind.”

T
he fates were against her.

Beth's black skirt suddenly felt two sizes too small as heat spread through her limbs. Her stomach sank and fluttered at the same time and she double-checked her seat assignment. Twelve-A. Damn.

“You sitting down or what, lady?” The short guy in a business suit behind her not-so-gently nudged her with his oversized carry on, hitting her square in
the ass. She flashed him a dirty look and took in the size of his suitcase. The zipper looked about to pop. There was no way in hell that thing would fit in the overhead compartment.

“Hold your horses, I'm moving.” But her feet, encased in pointed-toed black heels, refused to go forward.

The line got restless behind her and the grumbling increased. Only a handful of empty seats remained in coach.
Judging by the number of grumpy people still in line, switching seats wasn't going to be an option. Time to put on her big-girl panties and suck it up. The flight was only two hours. She could handle that. Right?

She pushed her glasses back up the bridge of her nose. “I don't know how you managed to make this happen.”

“Just luck, I guess.” Amusement flashed across Hank’s face and he sat up straight
in the aisle seat. “Do you need me to get out or can you squeeze by?”

Beth steeled herself. “I can get by.”

There was just enough space for her to shuffle through, but not by much. Her bare calves brushed his knees and she faltered for a moment, grabbing the headrest of the seat in front.

Grasping her hips, he steadied her. Each of his long fingers burned an imprint through her skirt and onto
her sensitive skin. Body on high alert and anticipating pleasure, she shivered under his touch. His fingers tightened, his thumbs pressing into the tender top curve of her ass. A strangled sound, half groan and half sigh, escaped her lips.

Like a siren blaring in the far-off distance, the audible proof of her arousal brought her back to reality. Embarrassed he could do this to her so easily and
in the middle of a packed airplane, she ignored her instinct to lower herself onto his lap.

“Steady there.” Hank's voice had gone husky. His fingers flexed over the thin material of her skirt.

“I'm fine. Thank you.” The words came out in a shaky whisper.

Holding her breath, she sidestepped the last few inches to her seat. As soon as her legs cleared his, a chill covered her calves from the
loss of his body heat. Sitting, she stuffed her leather briefcase under the seat in front of her. The flashes of excitement skittering along her skin told her he watched her every move.

Studiously looking out the window at the airport employees bustling around on the tarmac, she reached for her seat belt, her fingers accidentally brushing his thigh. Biting her bottom lip to keep from making any
more tell-tale noises, she pulled the belt across her lap and snapped it closed. After tightening it until it was snug against her waist, she watched the baggage handlers tossing suitcases into the belly of the plane. Her purple suitcase flew into the baggage compartment. Well, at least she'd packed all of her breakable items in her briefcase.

“Still bothers you, huh?” His voice slid across her
skin like a warm breeze as he leaned closer to peer out the window.

“It's okay, there're only clothes in it.”

“Not your suitcase, this.” His warm hands covered hers, stilling them.

Unknowingly, she'd been tugging at the seat belt, some part of her needing to double-check it would hold. The car accident must’ve shook her up more than she'd realized. Despite everything, his concern touched her.
It had been twenty years since her parents’ fatal car crash. She'd been trapped for hours, hanging upside down, secured to her seat by her seatbelt. It had saved her life.

“I'm okay.”

He gave her hands a light squeeze. “Good.”

The captain's announcement about expected weather conditions during the flight stopped any further exchange. Hank settled back into his seat and the little plane picked
up speed, bouncing a bit as it barreled down the runway.

Blood pounded in her ears and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth as that old familiar fear plucked her nerves. Man, she hated flying. Clutching the armrest in a white-knuckle grip, she forced herself to breathe in slowly, hold it a second and then exhale. Her stomach dropped as the plane left the ground and she squeezed her eyes
shut. All Beth could picture was her mom's long brown hair spread wide across the ceiling of the station wagon, her mouth hanging open and the wet sound of her gasps echoing in the silent night.

“You know I've been fantasizing about you since I was twenty-two?” Hank's hand covered her smaller one. “I came home after boot camp and bam; my little sister's best friend had turned into a stone-cold
fox.”

His words pulled her away from the terror of that night. Grateful, she squeezed his hand.

Lowering his lips until they nearly touched her ear, he hushed his voice to a throaty whisper. “I've spent a lot of time alone, thinking of how that ass of yours would feel in my hands. Hard or soft? How much would it bounce if I gave it a little slap?”

Her gaze jumped around the plane as a fierce
blush burned her cheeks. Had anyone heard? “Shut up, people will hear you.” She glanced back and spotted two junior attorneys from her office three rows behind them.

“So?”

“So?” The single word came out louder than she’d intended, drawing the attention of the passengers across the aisle, exactly what she'd been trying to avoid. Smiling weakly at their irritated faces, she quieted her voice.
“I do not want everyone to think that I'm the latest in your parade of women.”

He shrugged his wide shoulders. “Sure, I've dated a few women since the divorce, but I don't think you can call it a parade.”

A few? A few? If he called twenty-eight a few, then he needed to rethink his math abilities. “Do you want me to name them all?”

“So you've been keeping track, eh?” He sat up straighter in
his chair, pride beaming from his hazel eyes.

Damn. He picked up on that. Flustered, Beth wished she could think of something to say to wipe that smug smile off his face but whatever brain synapses controlled her smartass comeback function failed. Her mind stayed stubbornly blank.

The light green flecks in his eyes disappeared as the irises darkened. “I've been chasing after you for weeks now.”

She fiddled with her skirt hem, not daring to make eye contact or he'd know how much staying away from him cost her.

“Sure, I've dated other women, but they're not you—and I want you.”

His words slapped her across the face.

Don't cry. Whatever you do, don't cry.

Biting her lip, she said nothing.

“After Claire's party, I thought we'd turned a corner. But you're even more skittish around me
than before. So, what's going to happen, Beth?”

A thunk reverberated under her seat as the pilot raised the plane's wheels. She'd give anything to be able to say yes to him even just once, but she'd already lost too many people to do that again. “Nothing is going to happen between us.”

The vein in his temple pulsated and his mouth formed a grim line. “Okay, I guess I have my answer.” He leaned
back in his seat and closed his eyes. “But I'm not going to stop asking.”

By the time the fasten-your-seat-belt light blinked off a few minutes later, Hank's breathing was slow and steady.

Her thoughts in a jumble, she reached for her briefcase. She needed work to distract her from the lusty heat building in her belly, and lower. Work always took her total concentration.

She grabbed the folder
labeled Haverstan Limited. The company name was all she'd been able to find in the real estate records filed after Mrs. Hunihan and the rest of her neighbors had agreed to sell. The deal was set to close in another week, but only if she agreed to sell too. Flipping through the sheaf of papers inside, she grabbed one at random. The Nebraska Secretary of State's Office logo, an identifiable if not
overly creative outline of the state, stretched across the top of the page. According to the state, Haverstan's CEO was one Robert Reynolds of Stickland, Nebraska.

The problem? Robert Reynolds was dead and had been for about ten years.

A reporter with the local weekly newspaper in Stickland had e-mailed her a copy of Reynolds' obit. He'd lived a good life, raised corn and a trio of daughters
until he’d dropped dead of a massive heart attack at the age of sixty-six while shopping for a new combine at John Deere.

The estate attorney in her wondered if he'd gotten everything squared away before he'd died. Many farmers didn't, they expected to work their land until they hit ninety. Most were wrong.

Checking out the sleeping Hank from the corner of her eye, she wondered if she could
get him to do a DMV search for Robert Reynolds to see if another lived in Stickland. Only two thousand three hundred and forty-one people lived in the tiny farming community as of the last census, meaning the chances of two unrelated Robert Reynoldses living in the same small town were pretty slim.

Hank shifted in his seat and laid his head down on her shoulder. She bobbed her arm, trying to
dislodge him, but he didn't budge.

“Stop moving.” He smacked his lips together. “I promise not to drool.” Snuggling in, he never opened his eyes.

His weight pressed against her, solid and unyielding. Claustrophobia should have set in, the fear of being trapped clawing at her. Instead, his body warmed her and calmed her nerves. It felt good. Too good. Shit, she couldn't even scoot by him in the
plane without getting hot and bothered. If she enlisted his help in this mess, she'd be another notch on his bedpost within a week. Then she'd have to stop avoiding her childless future and face it head on.

Not yet. Beth chose to put the pain into a little box and shut it away. Someday, maybe.

Tossing the page onto the file folder spread open on the tray table, she harrumphed in frustration.
Using her unhampered left arm, she pulled another page free of the file.

Her heart stopped.

A yellow note covered in unfamiliar handwriting was stuck to the corner of the paper.

I'm begging you. Sell. It's gone too far to stop. There's no other way. Please, before it's too late!

The cramped words were scrawled across the two-inch-by-two-inch note, written in blue ink with an unfamiliar heavy
hand that had broken through the bright paper on the exclamation point's dot. Peeling it from right to left, she eased the note away from the larger page. Her hand shook as she held it up. Heart hammering, she tried to push down her growing panic.

Who?

When?

How?

She didn’t have a single answer.

That was it. She needed Hank's help. She didn't have a choice.

But she did have a little time.
Three days to be exact; the length of the conference. As soon as she was back home, she'd ask for Hank’s help. Even if it was out of his jurisdiction, he'd know what to do.