Dangerous Proposition (6 page)

That may have been true. But that didn’t mean she was about to sacrifice her virtue to get it.

Julia sighed. Even if she wanted to accept his offer—which would be a very,
very
bad idea—there was no way in hell she was giving him the satisfaction. Recalling the vexatious grin on his face after he’d kissed her, the look of triumph in his eyes as he’d smirked down at her, she could only imagine what he would do if she agreed to become his on-call bed warmer.

There was no way in hell she was going to do it. But as much as she wanted to send him on his way, door smacking against his ostentatiously dressed derriere, another part of her sort of…liked the idea of his outrageous suggestion.

He’d only held her for a moment. But the memory of being in Colin’s bed had been branded on her skin. The way he’d run his fingers through her hair had sent a powerful rush of excitement from her scalp to her core, and it did so again whenever she thought back on it. She wanted him to kiss her like that again, wanted more than anything for him to kiss her like that again. And though there was no way she was letting it happen a second time, she couldn’t help thinking that somehow, if it did, Colin might fulfill those fantasies she’d had all those years ago.

“What you’re proposing,” she said as she turned to face him, “goes against everything I believe in.”

“But not all that you desire.” Colin smiled deviously.

Julia hid her eyes. It was as if he said these enticing things deliberately, because he knew how she was going to react. His cocky expression indicated that he was fully aware of her inexplicable attraction to him, and that it gave him an immense level of satisfaction.

Eyes drifting to the mantel, she caught a glimpse of the portrait she and her dad had made years ago. Her dad with his flannel shirt and jeans. Her, twelve years old, wearing glasses and a turtleneck. She’d thought it was so silly, getting all dressed up just to take a picture. But her father had insisted they take a special photograph together, just the two of them.

For the first time in years, Julia felt the sting of tears in her eyes. Tucker Dyson wasn’t just her father. He was her hero. More importantly, he was her best friend. She couldn’t imagine what she’d do if she never saw him again. She’d already lost her Mom, and that was something that could never be made right no matter how hard she wished it.

She blinked several times, making sure there wasn’t as much as a trace of moisture on her irises. She turned toward Colin with firm resolve. “If you mean that I desire to find my father and bring him home safely, then, yes, of course that’s what I want. But I won’t be your mistress. You’re talking to the wrong girl.”

“You’re sure?” he persisted, his smirk indicating he wasn’t entirely convinced she was satisfied with her decision.

Was she? If he walked out the door, that was it. There’d be no second chance. Not unless she intended to sneak back into the Westwood Mansion and make an even bigger fool out of herself than she had the first time.

Colin was offering her his help. And if he really was her father’s kidnapper, she’d have a much better chance of figuring that out if she was spending her days and nights with the guy, instead tailing him from behind in the shadows.

But Julia Dyson would be no man’s concubine. It was degrading and humiliating, not to mention that actually going through with it would be completely contemptible. Worse, Colin would know she was enjoying every minute of it.

“Absolutely, I’m sure,” she said. “In fact, I wouldn’t touch you again with a twenty-foot pole.”

He leaned in, causing a jolt of fire to shoot up her spine. “There was no pole between us last night, Julia, when you were kissing me.”

Resisting the urge to fan herself, Julia took a gigantic step back. “I found one piece of the puzzle on my own. The rest will come with or without your help.”

“For Tucker’s sake, I hope you’re right.”

She watched as Colin started for the door, knees knocking hard against one another as he stepped onto the front porch.

Of
course
she didn’t want to accept his ridiculous offer. Just because the man made her hot with a flash of his teeth, it didn’t mean he didn’t have an agenda just the same. At best, he might persuade her to trust him. At worst, he could wind up breaking her heart.

“When you change your mind, you know where to find me,” Colin said.

“I won’t change my mind.”

“We’ll see,” he said and started down the driveway.

“What happened after I left last night?” Desmond asked later that morning. With the most aggravating look of suspicion in his eyes, he turned toward Colin, taking his hands from the pile of papers he was sifting through on the floor of Tucker’s office.

Colin grunted, brushing past his absentminded underling with an exasperated huff. Scooping up a pile of fresh papers, he walked to the desk and slammed them down—hard.

He’d just spent the last two hours sifting through paperwork, trying to determine what, if anything, was missing among the pile of documents. It was as if Tucker’s abductor had come there looking for something, and when he hadn’t found it, he’d taken Tucker as a consolation prize.

Glancing Desmond’s way, he considered the best way to answer the question he’d posed. Ordinarily, this would have been the part where he bragged about last night’s conquest. Hell, a beautiful woman had snuck into his bed—what man wouldn’t be pleased? But the evening hadn’t exactly ended the way he would have liked. And the more he thought about how Julia Dyson had circumvented his advances, acted as though he could have been hit by an oncoming truck for all she cared, the more livid he became.

“Nothing of consequence.” Colin sifted through the papers on the desk. “Dyson’s daughter is proving to be more of a problem than I anticipated. She showed up last night. At my home.”

“No kidding,” Desmond said, taking a seat in Tucker’s chair. With a smile that was quite unsettling, he said, “What happened?”

Colin supposed there was no point in keeping this part to himself. “She snuck into my bedroom and hid while you and I were talking. This may sound strange, but I think she intended to ambush me. She has her father’s phone, with my name all over the caller history.”

Desmond bit back a smile. “And you just let her walk away?”

“Let’s just say she had some very spot-on tactics for making her escape.”

“Man, she’s better than I thought.”

That was certainly the understatement of the year. Julia Dyson was proving to be craftier than several of his recruits. Colin wondered whether that was a good or bad thing.

“She’s a pistol from hell is what she is.”

“I’m sure you’re exaggerating.”

“I wish I was. The truth is, Julia Dyson could really mess things up for me if I’m not careful. But I think I’ve found a way to handle her.”

Desmond’s smile faded. “You don’t mean…you wouldn’t actually…
kill
Dyson’s daughter, would you?”

“Kill her?” Colin’s shock turned to indignation. He could hardly believe Desmond thought he would do something so depraved as to actually kill a woman. “Good God, no. I’ve asked her to accompany me on her father’s search. That way I can keep my eye on her while I locate Tucker, and make sure she doesn’t make trouble for me.”

He nodded, affirming his statement. Keeping Julia Dyson at his side was essential. It was the one surefire way of controlling what she did and who she talked to. And it wasn’t as though he minded the idea of taming the little shrew. He was dying to touch her soft skin again and wanted very much to finish what they’d started in his bed.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Desmond asked. “What makes you think Julia’s going to go along with your plan, a woman who broke into your house and snuck into your bedroom? I wasn’t going to mention it, but I saw someone running from the mansion last night. Long red hair, curves that could drive a guy to distraction?”

Had the event been televised? “She found her father’s phone and decided to confront me about it. I thought it was best if I offered her a compromise.” Colin sighed, hardly believing what this had come to. “It was the only way I could keep her from going to the authorities.”

“This is worse than I thought,” Desmond said. “I would’ve pegged the girl for having smarts like her old man, but I never would have believed she’d put all of this together overnight.” Glancing toward the ceiling, he said, “On second thought, it might be nice to have someone on our side who can accomplish things in half the time it takes most of our men.”

Colin sneered. Julia Dyson was smart indeed. She’d made a shrewd deduction about her father’s disappearance in a short amount of time. He had no intention of admitting the fact to Desmond, but he was rather turned on by her sharp mind.

“I have no intention of involving Ms. Dyson in her father’s investigation,” he said. “Under my wing, she’ll know only what I choose to tell her.”
Or whatever it is I make up to tell her…

“I don’t understand,” Desmond said. “The girl is brilliant. Why not use her ingenuity to help us?”

“I’m not involving her for her help,” Colin answered. “The plan is to keep her close-by and prevent her from putting any more of the pieces together, lest she should get any more ideas about trying to expose me. This will prove a lot easier if she’s under my nose, instead of out dusting for fingerprints in the middle of the night.”

Desmond nodded. His stare was distant, as though he was holding something back. “You’re the boss,” he said.

“And?” Colin drummed his fingers.

“Well…”

“Just spit it out, Desmond.”

“I only hope you aren’t bringing the woman into more danger than she can handle,” Desmond said.

“I don’t doubt that she
can’t
handle it. But my options are fairly limited, considering she has Tucker’s phone with my name all over the caller history.”

“Just be careful, all right?” Desmond started for the door. “I’ve got a bad feeling about all this. For you
and
for Julia.”

As if he gave a damn about
Julia
. She was rude and uncultured and about as exasperating a woman as he had ever met. He was doing the right thing—the only thing. That was, if he cared about keeping his ass out of prison.

Colin watched as Desmond shut the door. He got to work on the papers in front of him. Sometime later—he wasn’t sure how many minutes had passed—he took his vibrating phone from his hip. With a groan he brought it against his ear. “Go ahead.”

“Well if it isn’t Dr. Colin Westwood,” a deep voice on the other end answered. “I’m betting this is one call you didn’t have scheduled into your Verizon Wireless Blackberry. John Rizzo.”

Rizzo.
Colin clenched a fist. The bastard did work for him technically, but he had reported directly to Lucas before his late partner’s unfortunate brush with death. The dolt was taking a hell of a chance, calling him from a line that wasn’t secure. He would have to be terminated for it.

“I seriously hope I’m mistaking you for someone else,
John
. Understanding the nature of your job, you’re well aware of the proper channel used to contact me.
This isn’t it
.”

Rizzo snickered and whispered to someone in the background. “What exactly are you going to do, Westwood? Let me go?” More snickering followed. “Every one of us knows that you don’t have the balls to follow through on one of your threats. Besides, I have information you’ll want to know. So I have a feeling you’ll want to be keeping me on the payroll a little longer.”

As he stepped into the hall, the thought briefly struck Colin that maybe Rizzo was Tucker’s abductor. The jackass wasn’t particularly intelligent, but it was clear enough he wasn’t working alone. He entered the stairwell. “You’ve got one minute.”

“Ramone kept a recording of his last conversation with you. He told me if anything ever happened to him, to make sure it got into the right hands.”

Yet the imbecile had waited three years to produce it? The hand Colin held the phone with shook slightly. “Destroy it.”

“Nice try. I want five hundred grand, Westwood. Otherwise this tape gets where it was going.”

Colin stopped short in front of his Mercedes. There were few men who had the nerve to threaten him, which rather made him wonder who was pulling Rizzo’s strings. This sort of thing had happened to him only a handful of times during the thirteen years he’d been in the business. He kept his tone cool. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“Just try me if you think I’m playing,” Rizzo snapped. “There’s a party going on tonight. Twenty-two, West Fifty-Fifth Street in the city. You bring me the money. And I’ll give you what you need to keep your ass in one piece.”

Colin got into his car and slammed the door shut. At sixty miles an hour, he sped from the empty parking lot. “I’ll give you a hundred. That’s more than generous.”

“Think I don’t know what you’re worth? You’re lucky five hundred K is all I’m asking for. Nine o’clock, Westwood. Show up one minute late and the deal’s off.” With that, Rizzo hung up the phone.

Colin clamped down on the expensive leather beneath his hands. That had done it. There was no way in hell he was changing his plans for these ass wipes. He’d make the pit stop, but he was going ahead with Tucker’s investigation. And Julia Dyson was coming with him.

Having been playing this game almost as many years as it had taken him to get his MD, there was little doubt in his mind that he could take care of this bump in the road, find out what these dunderheads knew about Tucker’s disappearance,
and
keep Julia Dyson from messing things up for him along the way.

As far as her being frightened by some of the things they would see, she had all but asked for this when she’d threatened to expose him to the authorities. And if the vixen was especially traumatized by something that occurred, he would be more than happy to comfort her in her hour of need.