His indrawn breath made her think he was checking out the view, but when she glanced at him, their gazes collided. She immediately dropped her eyes to his chest and concentrated on her moves.
A few moments into the proceedings, his husky voice endangered her focus. “Come here often?”
“Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, from ten ’til two.”
“Busy girl.”
“You have no idea. Heads up, handsome.”
“Trevor.”
“Sorry?”
“My name is Trevor.”
Alrighty, then. She braced her weight on one leg, swung the other over his head, then straddled his lap again, this time facing away from him. Hips low, she arched her back and insinuated her body over his in time to the music.
From the corner of her eye, she watched his attention drift to her butt, then scorch a trail of heat along her spine, across her shoulders, and surprisingly, to her face.
“Very limber.”
“Glad you’re enjoying the show, Trevor.”
“Absolutely. In fact, you need to lift up a little or…ah…”
Too late. She felt some of the “incidental contact” Stacy had warned of, and jerked away, almost losing her balance in the process. To cover the flub, she untied the bow at the back of her bikini, spun around, and flashed him. She settled above his lap again, giving him even more room this time, and crossed her arms over her breasts. Her eyes sought his.
“Nice save,” was all he said, but those intense eyes seemed to see right into her mind.
She gripped the chair with one hand, leaned back, and tossed her hair away from her face. When she came up, she fixed her smile firmly in place and stared resolutely at his chin. “Happens all the time.”
Her nonchalance fell short of convincing. “How long have you been dancing here?”
Two hours.
“Two years.”
“Really?” He frowned, and she noticed an almost invisible, incongruously vulnerable white scar etched along the corner of his upper lip. “That surprises me. And not much surprises me.”
Now it was her turn to frown. “Don’t you like my dancing?”
“I love your dancing. I love it so much you better lift those amazing hips a little bit more.”
She complied. “We want to keep it legal.”
That earned her an odd look. “Always.”
Thankfully, the song ended, so she didn’t have to come up with a reply. She slowly drew away from him, keeping an arm over her breasts.
“Thank you for the dance.”
“I think that’s my line,” he replied, smiling at her, or himself, or the absurdity of having a barely clothed stranger shake her hips in the general vicinity of his lap.
The waitress arrived with another round for the other table. Kylie used the moment to retie her bikini and reinforce her wall of detachment. When the waitress moved away, the blond man lifted a fresh bottle of champagne and waved Kylie over. “Join us for a drink, gorgeous?”
Her eyes drifted back to Trevor. Inconceivably, part of her wanted to say yes, just so she could stay nearby. Which proved the sooner she got away from him, the better. “No, thank you. I don’t drink while I’m working.”
“Probably a good policy,” Trevor replied. He pressed a folded bill into her palm, and added, “Don’t work too hard, Stacy.”
No chance.
Stacy isn’t working at all
, she thought irritably. Outwardly, she brightened her smile and extended it to the adjoining table. “Enjoy your evening, gentlemen.”
C’mon boots, start walkin’
.
Two table dances, one stage performance, and another lap dance later, she practically cried with relief to be done with those boots. Screaming arches and numb toes made walking to her car a challenge, even in her thick-soled flip-flops. She might have crawled if not for the witness.
One of the club’s bouncers accompanied her. Benny reminded Kylie of a big, blond tank—low forehead, lantern jaw, no discernible neck separating his head from the mountain of muscle comprising his body.
“You were real good tonight, Stacy.”
Benny’s IQ rivaled his biceps’ circumference, according to Stacy. It was an impressive number, for biceps. But he knew his job, followed instructions, and kept his hands to himself, so most of the girls liked him.
“Thanks, Benny. Busy night, huh?”
“Yeah. We’re always busy on a full moon Friday.”
Kylie tipped her head up. Sure enough, a huge, glowing orb hung in the sky. Had to give Benny credit for noticing. She would have overlooked it entirely.
“I guess you’re right.” They reached Stacy’s shiny yellow VW Bug. Kylie watched him scan the lot while she disengaged the lock and opened the door. She appreciated his vigilance, but wanted to move him along, so she got in and started the engine. He continued to stand by the car. Manners forced her to lower the window.
“Something else on your mind?”
“I saw Gary talking to you before your shift. He get outta line?”
Deuces’ smarmy, sandy-haired bartender had told her if her ankle started to bother her, he had a special therapy guaranteed to take her mind off everything below her G-spot. Stacy had warned her about Gary, calling him “obnoxious and always on the make.”
“Gary was Gary,” she replied diplomatically.
“Uh-huh. Let me know if he crosses the line. I’ll take it to Vern. Couple of the other girls complained about that guy’s mouth.”
“Thanks, Benny. That’s sweet of you, but not necessary.” Absolutely not. During her six-to-eight-week stint as Stacy, she didn’t intend to make any waves. “Thanks for walking me to my car.”
“See you tomorrow.”
Tomorrow. The thought brought a big, jagged lump to her throat. Six more weeks of this would kill her.
Halfway home her cell phone chimed. She dug it out of her bag, checked the caller ID, and immediately pulled over.
“What’s wrong?”
Stacy’s laugh flowed over the line. “Nothing’s wrong. I called to see how the night went.”
“I survived. I’ll be home in, like, ten minutes. Why don’t we talk then?”
“I’m not home. I’m at…what’s your name again, sweetie?”
Kylie saw red. “What do you mean, you’re not home? How’d you get anywhere? You can barely walk. You can’t drive. And even if you wanted to, I’ve got your car and your license.”
“And I’ve got yours.”
“Stacy!”
“Calm down. I didn’t drive. But I was bored out of my mind, so I hobbled down to BJ’s,” she answered blithely, mentioning the sports bar just a block away from their apartment. “That’s where I met my new friend. BJ’s closed, so now we’re at his place.”
“Stacy, you better be home by the time I get there. I mean it. You are not allowed to go out and…make
friends
while I dance your shifts.”
“Touchy, touchy. How much did you earn tonight?”
“Almost three hundred. Get home right now or I’m keeping it.”
Her sister whistled appreciatively and ignored the threat. “You had a good night. I knew those boots would make money.”
“We’ll need every penny for my orthopedic surgery. Those suckers are…oh,
dang it
.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I left them in the dressing room at the club.”
“Those are four-hundred-dollar boots. Go back and get them.”
“Four hundred dollars! No wonder you don’t have any savings. And no way am I driving back to Deuces. I’ll get them tomorrow night.”
“They’ll be long gone by then. The other dancers have sticky fingers.
Please
, Ky? If you go back right now, you’ll probably catch Vern.”
Kylie rested her head against the steering wheel. Shit. “Phone the club and tell them to wait.”
“I’ll call right now. Hurry!”
“I’m…hurrying,” she said to a dead line. Calling herself every kind of idiot, she drove back to Deuces. The club was dark by the time she pulled into the parking lot, but the full moon and the perimeter lights got her up the short flight of stairs to the back door. She tried the handle. Locked. Banging on the door produced no response.
A scraping noise from across the parking lot drew her attention. She squinted into the distance. Was there something, or someone, by the Dumpster?
Impossible to say, but one thing was suddenly all too clear. Hanging out alone behind a strip club at two thirty in the morning qualified as a bonehead move. She’d get the boots tomorrow. If they disappeared, too damn bad. Stacy could buy a new pair of boots. A sister would be tougher to replace. She ran down the steps and back to the car, flip-flops echoing like gunshots on the asphalt.
As she pulled away, her headlights washed over the back of the lot, bringing the Dumpster into view, as well as—oh, jeez—a prone figure on the pavement. It looked like a man, though his head was turned away from her.
A passed-out drunk? The unnatural angle of his body worried her. She slowed and honked. Not a twitch. A dark puddle of…liquid spread over the pavement around his head. Maybe the poor man had slipped, cut his head on the Dumpster, and knocked himself unconscious? Probably a barback from the club, taking out a load of empties.
She put the car in park and lowered the window. “Mister? Are you okay?”
Smart Kylie. If the horn didn’t rouse him, your voice should do the trick. Okay, okay, okay. Just go take a look. She got out and stood on wobbling legs, clutching her phone.
God, it smelled awful. Like a Dumpster and…something else.
“Mister,” she croaked, touching his shoulder. He didn’t respond. She gave him a little shake. Still nothing. Carefully, she stepped around him and crouched by his head.
“Sir?”
Vacant eyes stared at her from a battered, bloody face. She screamed, stumbled back, and slammed her skull into something solid. Stars exploded before her eyes. A hollow clanging rang in her ears. She screamed again, even as she realized she’d run into the Dumpster and not a bat-wielding thug. Biting back hysteria, she scrambled up.
Adrenaline flooded her system, jolting through her like an electrical current. She overshot vertical, landed on her knees, and clawed her way to the car, trying to outrun the vision of the man’s bruised, swollen face.
Not even a face anymore. Whoever he was, she didn’t recognize him. Nobody was going to recognize him. Ever again.
In the car she wasted several moments frantically searching for her phone before remembering she already had it in her hand. Dialing 9-1-1 took three tries. Finally an operator answered.
“Please,” she whispered, so breathless she sounded as if her lungs had sprung a leak. “Please send an ambulance. I think he’s… I think he’s…dead.”
Things moved dizzyingly fast from there.
A cavalry of cops and paramedics arrived within minutes. Lights flashed, radios crackled, uniforms moved in and out of her line of vision. Somehow she ended up sitting in the back of an ambulance, holding a bag of ice to her head, watching with dreamlike detachment while activity swirled around her. Tracking it made her eyes hurt, so her attention strayed to something stationary—the body. For someone who’d probably gasped his last breath alone in a parking lot, he had a lot of company now.
A couple of paramedics knelt beside him first. With a few frighteningly efficient touches, they pronounced him dead. Then the police moved in, displaying the same frightening efficiency. They taped off the scene, took pictures, asked questions.
She answered as best she could, but there wasn’t much to tell and she struggled to concentrate with all the buzzing in her ears. Did she recognize the man? No. Had she seen anyone else? No. Did she work at Deuces? She hesitated. Did she?
A deep, strangely familiar voice answered. “Yeah, she works at the club. She’s worked there two years.”
Kylie turned, and keen brown eyes captured her gaze. The same deep, all-seeing eyes she’d stared into during her very first lap dance.
Chapter Two
Trevor McCade cursed fate as he met shell-shocked blue eyes. He knew those eyes traveled in close company with the most heart-stopping albeit fake smile he’d ever seen, and the most mouthwatering—and beautifully real—body. Instead of the biker-girl bikini, she now wore a white T-shirt and cropped pink workout pants, but the comparatively sedate ensemble didn’t much distract from the spectacular curves beneath.
He’d been trying to get the whole irresistible package out of his head since leaving Deuces hours ago. Eight months ago, sanitation workers had found a businessman named Alex Montenegro in an alley a block away, beaten to death. Trevor had inherited the cold case just last week. With no solid leads, he had decided to check the club out on an unofficial basis, pretty much because it was the only edgy establishment in the vicinity. He’d walked out of Deuces feeling like his gut might have been wrong this time, but now, because he’d been masochistic or just plain stupid enough to answer his phone on his night off, here he was, investigating another homicide. And here was Stacy, in front of him again, this time in an official capacity. Or, more accurately, in
his
official capacity.
He’d been a cop for nine of his thirty years, and a homicide detective for the last three. He’d seen plenty of violence and depravity, but it hadn’t erased his compassion for the innocent or the vulnerable. And for whatever reason, something about the woman in front of him struck him as innately innocent and inherently vulnerable. A neat trick, considering her profession tended to leave its practitioners as hardened and dispassionate as, say, homicide cops.
“Stacy?”
She gave him a strange look and started to say something, but then caught herself. Nerves, he judged. Understandable. Cops made people jumpy. Homicide cops made people very jumpy.
“Yes, Officer…Trevor?”
Oh yeah, definitely cautious. He tapped the badge clipped to his hip. “Detective. Trevor McCade. You okay?”
She stared at him for a moment. Then her gaze flicked down to his detective’s badge, and then over his shoulder, to the scene. “I’ll live,” she said softly.
She would, but he wasn’t liking her pale cheeks or the way her attention kept drifting to the vic. Those eyes said shock. He shot a questioning glance at the paramedic standing nearby. The sturdy brunette nodded and murmured, “We’re watching her.”
“How’s your head?”
She took a moment to process the question. Long blond eyelashes cast shadows on her cheeks. “It’s okay. I ran into the Dumpster.”
He ran careful fingers over the bump. “Ouch.”
“It’s nothing.” Those baby blues tried to dart back to the body, but he kept his hand at the base of her head and shifted closer, blocking her view.
In the club earlier, she’d worn full makeup and infused all kinds of crazy volume in her long white-blond hair. Now, wearing no makeup, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, she looked incredibly young and fragile. Light freckles dusted her nose. Full, unadorned lips trembled open as she drew a breath.
Wanting to give her something to concentrate on besides a dead body—which they’d get to soon enough—he said, “You know, I figured you’d made me as a cop tonight.”
Her brow scrunched. “Why?”
“During our lap dance you wanted to keep it legal. I thought maybe I made you nervous.”
“Did I seem nervous, Detective?”
He couldn’t restrain a grin, remembering how she’d gasped and jumped when he’d stood at attention. “Yeah. You might have seemed a little nervous. Why don’t you call me Trevor, since we know each other so well?”
She moved her head away from his hand and frowned. “We don’t really know each other very well.”
He fought an urge to brush his fingers over one smooth, pale cheek. “Oh, you might be surprised. I know you’re Stacy Roberts. You’ve worked at Deuces for two years, and right now, you’d dearly love to be anywhere but here.”
Her expression turned hopeful. “Can I go?”
“Sorry, no.” He watched the hope wilt out of her face, and actually did feel sorry. “I need to ask you some questions about what happened tonight. What you saw.”
She frowned again. “I want to help, Detective. Honestly, I do. But I’ve already told the other officers everything I know, which isn’t much. Someone took my statement. I reviewed and signed it.”
He knew she was tired. Fatigue painted light purple shadows under her eyes. But getting her statement tonight, watching her reactions with everything still fresh in her mind, would be far more valuable than collecting the information secondhand from other officers or arranging an interview tomorrow. “Can I trouble you to run through it again? For me.”
Her shoulders slumped a little, but she summarized her movements from the time she left Deuces until she found the body. When she recounted approaching the victim, her voice thinned and her breathing went shallow. He’d worked homicide long enough to know it wasn’t a good sign.
“Did you recognize him?” He kept his voice low and level, hoping to fast-forward her to a less traumatic point in the evening.
“No. I thought he might work at the club but…” She glanced over at the body and her eyes glazed.
He crouched until they were eye level and slipped his hand under her ponytail so he could rest his palm against the nape of her neck. Sweat covered her cold skin. “Easy, Stacy. Take a couple nice, deep breaths for me, okay?”
She didn’t seem to hear him. “His face was just a bloody…mess.”
Impossibly, her skin went paler. She blinked, reached out blindly, and grabbed a handful of his shirt. “We have to stop spinning.” Then her eyes did a long, slow roll toward the back of her head.
Hell. Way to go, McCade. “Stacy.” He said it loudly—loud enough to have her dilated pupils looping back to his. Keeping his hand at her neck, he eased her limp body down to the floor of the ambulance. The paramedic hurried over with a dirty look, a cold compress, and some smelling salts. He ignored the look and laid the cold compress across Stacy’s forehead. The smelling salts he pocketed. Hopefully they wouldn’t need them.
“That helps,” she mumbled and closed her eyes.
Her color improved. Trevor took a seat next to her in the back of the ambulance. “Can you open those big blue eyes for me, Stacy?”
She complied, shielding her eyes with a hand. A clear, steady gaze met his.
“You’ll feel better if you stay hydrated. I’ll help you sit up when you’re ready, and you can drink some water.”
“I’m ready. I’m all right.” Her words sounded a little fuzzy, but her eyes remained clear and trained on his. Stacy Roberts might appear as fragile as a porcelain angel, but he already knew she was tougher than she looked. She’d stopped in the middle of the night, put herself at risk out of concern for her fellow man—and received a nasty reward for her bravery. Most women—and men, for that matter—would be heavily sedated by now. He couldn’t help admiring her guts.
Or the rest of her, which was, as of now, strictly off-limits. Keeping that in mind, he slid his hand under her shoulders and tried to repress the memory of her long, smooth back undulating in front of him.
“Okay, here we go.” He helped her into an upright position, and somehow ended up with an arm around her shoulders. The soft weight of her breast had nowhere to rest except against his side. Her cheek found a cushion on his chest. Clearing the tightness from his throat—and doing his best to ignore the tightness in vicinities farther south—he looked down at her. “How’s that?”
“I’m all right,” she repeated, and took a deep breath. “You smell nice,” she added, her voice a bit fuzzy, which told him she wasn’t exactly back to normal yet.
He laughed, mostly because he couldn’t smell anything except her—a sweet, tropical, positively edible scent. Whatever she’d slathered on her skin begged to be licked off, and his mouth watered to do the job.
You already have a job
.
Keep your mind on it.
“Tell me right away if you feel like you need to lie back down. See the paramedic over there?” He pointed and waited until she followed his gesture. “She thinks you’re gonna faint on me, but I’m betting no.”
“I’m not going to faint.” To prove it, she straightened and squared her shoulders. Her movements were as steady as her voice, which made him think she might be right.
“Good girl.” He pulled a bottle of water out of a cooler tucked against the wall of the ambulance, cracked the lid, and handed it to her. “Think you can handle a few more questions?”
She looked less sure about that, but took a sip of water and nodded.
“We’re almost done. I promise. Getting back to the victim’s identity, I know you said you didn’t recognize him. Not surprising, under the circumstances. What’s surprising is we found his ID in his wallet. His name was Carlton Long. Ring any bells?”
She rubbed the heels of her hands over her eyes, then sighed and shook her head. “No. I’m sorry. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a Deuces employee. I’m really not on a first-name basis with many people at the club. It’s not what you’d call a social workplace.”
“I’ll bet.” He glanced up and caught Detective Ian Ford’s deceptively lazy green stare. Ian whipped his slightly overgrown blond bangs off his forehead with a quick jerk of his head, and sent Trevor a questioning look.
We done here?
Trevor nodded and shifted his attention to Stacy. “The officers have your contact information?”
“Yes,” she answered, staring at her feet.
“And you’re not planning any out-of-town trips in the near future, right?”
That brought her head up. “Am I a suspect?”
“You found the body. From an investigative standpoint, that makes you a person of interest. But, no, I wouldn’t call you a suspect.”
Wary eyes turned curious, so he explained. “Mr. Long was five-eleven, almost two hundred pounds, and, in my educated opinion, beaten to death. Limited defensive wounds suggest he didn’t put up an epic struggle, but he fought some. Unfortunately for him, his attacker was bigger, stronger, and overpowered him quickly. You’re what, five-six, maybe a hundred and ten pounds, soaking wet?” Without waiting for her confirmation, he went on. “Other than a bump on the head, you don’t have a mark on you. So, yeah, my remarkable powers of deduction tell me you didn’t do this to him.”
“I see.”
“We appreciate your cooperation with our investigation. I don’t have any more questions right now. Is there anything you’d like to add to your statement? Additional details? Corrections or clarifications?”
She paused, but then shook her head, and he got the feeling she was hiding something. Although he doubted pressing his hunch would yield any results, he pulled a business card from his pocket and held it out to her. “If you think of anything you want to add—no matter how minor—contact me.”
For a long moment she simply stared at the card, and he could almost hear her inner debate. There was something else. To his frustration, if not surprise, she took the card and said, “Am I free to go?”
Shit. Sometimes it sucked to be right. “Yep. You’re free to go. Would you like us to call someone to pick you up, or have an officer drive you home?”
“No, no. That’s not necessary.” She hopped out of the ambulance. “I can drive myself. I don’t have far to go.”
“Uh-uh. Bad idea. A few minutes ago you nearly passed out. Fainting and driving don’t mix.”
“I’m good now. Honestly. Check my pulse, pupils, whatever. I can’t leave my car here. I need to be somewhere first thing tom…today.”
He assessed her. Admittedly, she seemed steady. Wired and stressed, but not about to conk out. “Okay, fine. Far be it from me to stand between a woman and her wheels. Go wait in your car. I’ll have a black-and-white follow you home. You can take off as soon as you see it in your rearview mirror.”
She exhaled a pent-up breath and started walking toward her car. Then, like a schoolgirl remembering her manners, she turned back to him. “Thank you.”
“Thank me by driving home safely and contacting me if you decide to add anything to your statement.”
She slipped into her car and saluted. “Will do.”
Yeah, right. Maybe she’d drive home safely, but he knew with a bone-deep certainty she’d never contact him again of her own accord. Why not? He stared after her, frowning. Because something about the entrancing Stacy Roberts didn’t quite add up.
…
Kylie gripped the wheel and drove home with the care of a teenager taking her driver’s exam. Through the rearview mirror, she watched the patrol car follow close behind.
Like a shark stalking a guppy
, she thought uneasily.
Dear God,
w
hat have you gotten yourself into
?
Well, she’d lied to the police, for one. She hadn’t planned to, exactly. In fact, when the first officers had questioned her, she’d been in such a daze, she was pretty sure she’d given
her
name. When they’d asked to see some ID, she’d opened her wallet and handed them her driver’s license, completely forgetting she had Stacy’s. By the time she’d tuned in to the proceedings enough to realize the mistake, one disturbingly observant Detective Trevor McCade stood in front of her, clearly recognizing her as Stacy Roberts, low-flying lap dancer.
Certain she could do her pathetically small part to help them investigate poor Mr. Long’s death and be on her way, she’d rolled the dice and let the mistake stand. Confessing she’d posed as Stacy would only have raised a bunch of questions and possibly gotten them in trouble with Deuces…and maybe the authorities too? Impersonating someone sounded shady—possibly illegal.
Little did she know finding the body made her a “person of interest.” Now here she was, involved in a murder investigation, trapped in a lie, facing a detective whose piercing brown eyes told her he knew she wasn’t telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Sweating like a fugitive, she pulled into the narrow, stacked parking spot in front of the apartment she and Stacy shared. Their
dark
apartment, she noted with a scowl. The place would be lit up like the Sunset Strip if Stacy were home. Even at…she glanced at the clock on the dash and groaned…four in the morning. Guilt immediately washed over her. Yes, she’d be sleep-deprived the rest of the day, but at least she’d have a day. Carlton Long couldn’t say the same.