Sex & the Single Girl (11 page)

She had serious business to take care of today and no run-in with Aidan would make her forget it. Once she revealed her news about Mel contacting her, she'd discuss her recurring problems with her ex at the police station.

And then, by God, she'd be ready to claim her future—free and clear of dangerous men.

 

S
OMETHING ABOUT
B
RIANNE'S
flowers didn't sit well with Aidan. Too bad he didn't realize what it was until he looked past the dumb-ass jealousy that had been gnawing at him ever since he pulled out of her driveway.

He was already prowling the dimly lit back halls of Club Paradise when he finally realized what bothered him.

The hang-up phone call she'd received earlier that day.

Hadn't he told himself—and her—he was going to be on the lookout for her in light of that phone call? Yet it hadn't occurred to him that those flowers she received might be connected to the phone call. And the only reason he hadn't put the two things together in his mind was because he was too busy envying the guy who'd caught Bri's eye.

Could he be a bigger idiot?

Suddenly, he couldn't cross his fingers enough that those damn orchids had been from an admirer. Far better that than if they were from some creep who was bothering her.

He yanked a phone from the pocket of his suit jacket and jabbed in the numbers for her cell. Damned if at that same moment, a phone didn't start ringing from somewhere behind him in the semidarkness.

Standing utterly still he waited. Listened.

A feminine voice purred through the receiver and through the echoing corridor under construction.

“Hello?”

That throaty voice would send shivers down a man's spine if the subject at hand hadn't been so important.

“Where are you?”

She gasped. A quick intake of breath that enabled him to locate her. Two doors down behind some scaffolding.

“We need to talk.” He spoke into the receiver and then folded the phone closed as he spotted her.

Her pale skin stood out in the shadows, her arms bared by the brown silk tank top she wore from earlier in the day. Although daylight still shone outside, the interior corridors of the hotel lacked windows. The lights seemed to be on some energy-saving mode where they only came on when the lounge was open downstairs or when construction work was underway.

She spotted him too, jabbing the off button on her phone and stuffing it into the slim briefcase she carried. She looked a little frazzled, which in light of her usual perfect appearance meant she had a few windblown hairs breezing around her neck. And she had her shoes off.

“Are you okay?” He studied her, refusing to let his emotions do his thinking for him this time around. The only unusual thing he could find was that she was carrying her high heels instead of wearing them on her feet. With most women, that wouldn't surprise him at the end of the day, but it seemed a bit informal for the woman raised by Palm Beach's answer to Emily Post. “What gives with the shoes?”

“I was trying to be quiet because I knew you wouldn't be expecting anyone else to be here. And no, everything's not okay.” She thrust her hand forward to give him a piece of paper. “Read this.”

Apparently she'd been sneaking up on him, thanks
to her damn camera system. He might have grumbled about that a little if he hadn't been so concerned about what had upset her.

The paper was actually a tiny envelope. Like a florist's card.

Tearing out the note inside he read a couple of short lines that did an excellent job of incriminating Brianne.

Thanks for covering for me. You're the best. Mel.

“I don't know what he's referring to.” She met his gaze head-on. Her voice never wavered. “But I wanted to give you this in case you could trace the flower order and find out where it came from.”

The envelope lacked a business name, but that many orchids had to be a memorable order for any store. Assuming they were obtained locally. “I'll look into it.”

He shoved the card in his pocket. The evidence would keep. Right now, he needed to interrogate a woman full of mysteries who could probably help him a hell of a lot more. He slung one arm around the metal pole of the scaffolding, anchoring himself in case she got fired up about this.

“I know you're not going to want to answer this question, Brianne, but it's related to the investigation and doesn't have a damn thing to do with us personally. I need to know who you thought the flowers were from in the first place. Did you suspect they were from Mel and that's why you wanted me out of there so fast?”

Her forehead wrinkled as if she exercised great effort to follow his logic. “Why would I spend my day off hunting you down to show this to you if I thought
they were from him in the first place? I could have saved myself a lot of time if I'd just handed you the card while you were on my front doorstep.”

“Maybe you had an attack of conscience?” Hell, he didn't know. She probably still harbored some affection for the guy. From what Aidan had gathered, Mel had provided her with the most stable father figure she'd had in her life. “It's not like I'd think you belonged on the Most Wanted list if you tried to give him a hand.”

“Could we not talk about this here?” She glanced around the hallway and then down at her mini viewing screen on the pseudo-watch she wore whenever she was at the club. “We do have cleaning staff and construction people who work when we're closed.”

Spying a door not two feet from her elbow, he steered her toward it. “Do you have a master key or do you want to see my lock picking skills in action?”

She sighed, pressed a button on her little computer pad and the green light flared beside the doorknob.

Aidan shoved his way into a room filled with lavender silk curtains around the bed and more pastel silk hangings all over the walls. Covered rattan baskets served as low tables while fat silky cushions dotted the floor. The only light fixtures were wall sconces in the shape of candelabra.

“It's a harem.” And he had to think he wasn't the only guy who would find it a bit of a challenge to crack cases in a harem.

“Summer's calling it the Pasharina's Palace so far, but we're trying to convince her there are only pashas and not pasharinas. If any great names for the room
come to you, by all means let me know and I'll throw them into the pot.” She stood amid the flowing silks and seemed quite content to discuss a new topic, but Aidan needed a few more answers first.

“I'll get back to you. Now, can you tell me who you thought the flowers were from since you didn't think they were from Melvin?” He searched for a place to sit, but all the lush pillows and sensual fabrics begged more intimacy than either he or Brianne could afford.

Her jaw flexed. Tightened. Pursing her lips, she glared at him for two slow heartbeats before she said a word. “I thought they were from a guy in New York. An old boyfriend.”

That would do for a start anyway. “Can I have his name?”

“I need a damn alibi to receive flowers?”

“Damn it, Brianne, don't make this any harder than it already is. Just give me a name and we'll leave it at that.”

“I don't want to leave it at that. I want you to find Melvin and lock him up so I can get on with my life. What I'm objecting to is having my past unearthed for the sake of a flower alibi.” She sounded rattled and he hated knowing he'd disrupted her life that much.

Correction, he hated Melvin for dumping his crimes in her lap while he lived the high life in Guadalajara or the Cayman Islands or any one of ten thousand other remote havens.

“His name is James Vanderwalk and he lives on the lower West Side. Our breakup ranked as a monumental disaster in his life and I'm eager to put some distance
between us.” She seemed to settle down with the admission. Tossing aside her shoes and her briefcase, she strode across the light-colored carpet to a wet bar surrounded by small potted trees and hanging plants. A desert oasis.

“And does this James guy know you're living down here now?” He definitely needed to know more about a relationship that still had the power to rattle Brianne. The woman was hell on wheels
and
a security genius.

It seemed as though any guy who could upset her that much had to be more than just your run-of-the-mill jerk.

She tugged a bottle of wine from a hidden shelf of the wet bar, or maybe she'd gotten it from one of those in-room vending machines. Either way, she set it on the bar and started unwinding the paper seal from around the neck.

“I hope like hell he doesn't know I'm down here, Aidan, and trust me, it's the kind of story that requires a drink with the telling.”

He didn't like the sound of that one damn bit. In fact, the hair on the back of his neck stood straight up while his fists urged his brain to find out how fast they could lay waste to this James guy.

But he wasn't a street thug unless the situation called for it. He'd grown up in neighborhoods a hell of a lot tougher than anything South Beach had to offer and he'd managed to haul himself up out of those years by keeping his nose clean whenever possible. Still, the thought of Brianne having to defend herself against an obsessive lunatic made his fists clench.

Somehow, he shoved those thoughts aside enough
to cross the room and join her at the bar. Right now, he was going to find out a hell of a lot more than how fast he could tank one James Vanderwalk.

Seeing a definite exception to his no drinking on the job rule, he yanked two glasses from a cabinet behind the bar and stood them on the counter.

“You're not leaving until you tell me everything.”

H
OW OFTEN DID
a woman hear an invitation like that?

Brianne knew Aidan was trying to pull the intimidating FBI-guy routine on her with his “you're not leaving until you tell me everything” spiel. But she couldn't remember any man in her entire life—and that included numerous boyfriends and several stand-in fathers—being so adamant about hearing what she had to say.

Pouring the wine into their glasses as they stood in the lushly appointed harem room, she reminded herself that part of the reason Aidan wanted to hear about her past was because of his case. But as she handed him his merlot and their eyes met in the flickering light of the electric candelabra scattered about the room, Brianne saw more than professional interest in his gaze.

He wanted to know more about her.

What could it hurt to unburden herself just a little? Aidan's shoulders looked as though they could stand the weight.

“It's not a pretty story,” she warned him, visually searching the room for a place to sit that wasn't draped in silk and satin. Had it ever occurred to Summer to install bar stools in a room with a bar? “And I guess
I'm going to have to concede today as a loss for getting anything done. Do you have a few minutes?”

“Sure. Let's grab a seat and—” Their eyes fell on the bed at the same moment. Draped in hangings of light purple silk and situated next to a miniature stone fountain, the high mattress surrounded by pillows ranked as the most substantial piece of furniture in the room. “I take it pasharinas aren't fond of chairs?”

“So it would seem. What if we just sit on the floor and we can use the—” She stared at the bed and the pristine white spread. And quickly conjured a vision of her and Aidan rolling, writhing on that cool, clean expanse of silky fabric. “—
that
as a backrest.”

Had she really just suggested they step within five feet of a mattress?

Aidan nodded slowly—as if under protest.

But she'd never been the kind of woman to back down. And damn it, if she had to tell this painful story, she would be at least
physically
comfortable in the process.

Plunking down on the carpet, Brianne tugged two rattan baskets over from the foot of the bed and dropped them in between her and the spot Aidan had chosen a few feet away.

Tan and smooth, the covered baskets measured about the size of hatboxes and would make the perfect coffee table for the wine. They also created a nifty physical barrier to Aidan just in case she felt herself weakening in his enticing male presence.

She'd learned a long time ago that a girl didn't necessarily need to be born with great willpower and emo
tional reserves to have strength. A strong woman knew how to stack the deck in her favor.

Or, in this case, the baskets.

Aidan peered at her across the rattan divide and gulped back half his wine. “This guy never hurt you, Brianne.” He stated it as fact, as if by sheer force of his will, he could make it so. Then, when she didn't respond right away, he raised an eyebrow. “Did he?”

“Not in a physical way. But he definitely dragged me through the wringer emotionally.” What a mess that had been. “He's a musician. And I guess that accounts for part of the reason I found myself drawn to him. He seemed like a more emotionally intuitive person. Sort of the antithesis of me.”

“Not true.”

Brianne rolled her eyes. Sipped her wine. Welcomed the warmth of the drink in her throat before she reached the next phase of her story. “Either way, I soon discovered that what I'd perceived as sensitivity was actually just one phase of extreme mood swings. When I told him things weren't working out between us, he turned even creepier.”

Aidan stiffened. No amount of rattan would disguise the light shift and ripple of muscles beneath his suit jacket. His jaw flexed. “Creepy in what way?”

“He started calling my apartment, my office, my cell all day, every day. I changed my own phones, but I couldn't do anything about my work number. He'd wait for me outside my building, follow me home. He wrote me lots of weird letters, song lyrics—” she hesitated, wishing she didn't have to admit much more of the nightmare “—and poetic threats. Beautifully
scripted, lovingly worded pleas for compliance so he didn't have to hurt me.”

“Jesus, Brianne. Why didn't you show any of this to the cops?”

She bristled. And welcomed an opportunity to bristle, actually, because thinking about that whole scary chapter of her life tended to make her ill. “I did show all of it to the cops.”

“There's no record of any of it.” Perhaps he noticed her glare because he hastened to add, “not that you were ever on my suspect list, Bri, but I definitely did a search for information on you in case Melvin sought you out. And I can tell you for damn sure there's no record of you lodging any complaints with the police in New York.”

Well, wasn't that just perfect? “So if I'd been found strangled on my doorstep, they wouldn't have had a clue as to whom to arrest, I suppose? That's incredibly reassuring.” Vaguely, she wondered what else Aidan had unearthed about her in his search. She tilted her head back against the white satin bedspread and allowed the cool material to tickle her neck and shoulders. “I have to say, they didn't seem all that impressed with threats written in rhyming stanzas.”

“They're going to be pretty freaking sorry they weren't more impressed when I call them tonight and raise hell over there.” He turned sideways to face her, sweeping aside the gossamer bed veils and anchoring himself with one long arm across the mattress. “And I can assure you we'll know exactly where this Vanderwalk guy is by tomorrow.”

Warmth swirled through her, a tingly, unfamiliar
feeling of having someone else look out for her. “Thank you. I've been meaning to get in touch with the police down here to at least alert them to the situation. I don't think Jimmy would ever leave New York to seek me out, but then again…”

“Never underestimate your enemy. Can you define the nature of the threats he made against you?”

“They were pretty vague for the most part. He never spelled out any particular form of violence, just expressed a desire
not
to hurt me. Of course, as soon as he'd say that, he'd invariably follow it up with some sort of line about how I provided him with no alternatives.” And she'd hated the fear that instilled in her.

Her whole life she'd prided herself on confronting challenges, charging through her male-dominated industry armed with cool professionalism and the drive to get a job done. But those months where Jimmy had been following her around, sending her the letters, she'd retreated from everything.

When the opportunity arose in South Beach for her to pitch in at Club Paradise, she'd jumped at the chance to escape the prison her life had become. And even though she was pretty certain she'd have moved to Florida no matter what, it bothered her that the decision had been made for her because she'd been living in fear.

“So there were never any more specific threats made?” Jaw clenched, eyes intense, Aidan had morphed into investigative mode—asking questions and looking for clues. For once, his job didn't seem dangerous so much as noble.

“Well, come to think of it, one of the creepiest let
ters he sent said something about my defection being like a knife in his heart and how he hoped I'd never experience that kind of pain.” In a fit of paranoia, she'd dumped every kitchen knife she owned into the drawer under her oven. Surely no psychotic stalker would think to look for a knife there should he attempt to attack her in her home?

The string of curses Aidan ripped loose could have made a sailor blush. Undaunted by the phenomenon, Brianne only wished the New York police had been half so enraged on her account.

When he finished his wine and seemed to have himself under control again, he looked only semi-apoplectic.

“Do you have these letters?” Maybe Aidan had gleaned that the memory still unsettled her because he retrieved the bottle of wine from the bar and then sat back down to refill her glass. His movements were stiff, his gestures tautly controlled.

“I left a few of the early originals with the cops in New York, but I still have the note about the knife in my chest.” She'd stashed that one at the back of her closet.

“If you give it to me, I'll make sure it's recorded in police files.” His fingers toyed restlessly with the edge of a scarf tossed across the foot of the bed. Brianne happened to know the gauzy white scarf was part of a belly dancing costume Summer wanted to hang on one of the walls, but all she'd managed to acquire so far were the headpiece and veil.

Watching Aidan's big hands adjust the line of beads across the bottom of the veil did shivery things to her
insides even though she knew he flipped the fabric back and forth out of thinly controlled frustration.

“Why didn't you tell me about all this before?” His gray gaze pierced hers in the soft glow of the electric candlelight, his jaw flexing rapidly. “For that matter, why the hell didn't you pick up a phone in New York and utilize your FBI contact to leverage some help for yourself, Bri? I would have—” He shook his head, huffed out an aggravated sigh. “You should have called me.”

“Not in a million years would it have occurred to me to call the guy who investigated my former stepfather's crimes to ask for help.” She'd worked hard to put Aidan Maddock—and her boundary-pushing behavior with him—out of her mind once she started college. “As for why I didn't say anything about it the last couple of days… I guess I've been preoccupied with getting the club off the ground.” Normally, she would have stopped there, but the wine on an empty stomach seemed to rob her of her usual reserve. Her smooth control. “And maybe I was a little embarrassed to admit I'd gotten involved with a guy like that. It scares me to think I'm turning into Pauline.”

“Embarrassed? I can't believe you just said that. You'd ream out any of your girlfriends if they ever said they were too embarrassed to point the finger at a loser-ass stalker. And pardon the clueless guy over here, Bri, but what does being embarrassed have to do with your mother?”

“She's got a bad habit of choosing guys who are no good for her. That's always driven me crazy about her and now I'm convinced I'm following that same self-
destructive path in her size five footsteps.” She finished her second glass and peered down at the miniature monitor screen on her wrist—the remote monitoring system was rotating views of various rooms depending on the time. Now, she was able to access the darkened dance club, the Ocean Drive entrance to the club, an elevator bank and…the Pasharina's Palace.

Complete with a lovely view of her and Aidan lounging next to one another on the floor.

She wanted to turn off the lighted display, but something about the intimate picture captured her director's eye. The lighting in the room flickered with suggestive intimacy. The couple on the floor floated on a backdrop of washed-out colors—barely-there lavender bed hangings, the white bedspread in the background, a pale carpet below them.

“Everything okay?” Aidan's long arm was already breaching the rattan basket barrier to brush her wrist and catch a glimpse. Brianne shut off the display.

She didn't have to wonder if he'd seen the image on the screen. The new heat in his glance told her he had.

“You're going to get in a hell of a lot of legal trouble if you rent out hotel rooms with video cameras in them, Brianne.” His voice hit a gravelly note that rumbled right through her.

“The cameras in private rooms will be removed before we open. I just move them around among the rooms Summer will be working on so I can make sure she's safe. And so she can act out her lunch order for me when she gets hungry.” Of course, her charades were always a challenge given she ate things like tofu
on rye and bean sprout salad. “The cameras will be available on a closed circuit for making private videos once we reopen, however.”

He lifted a brow. “Which brings me back to an interesting point we started to discuss earlier today before we went to your mother's. How exactly are you marketing Club Paradise given all the erotic statues and provocative themes? I thought I heard you were leaving behind the couples theme with the new renovations.” Loosening his tie, he sent her a look that would have flash-fried a lesser woman.

As it stood, she was merely a little singed around the edges.

“Actually, we are stressing the singles angle with the revamped club. None of the new owners were too excited about the schmaltzy lovebirds logo on every blanket, towel and bathrobe in the place.” Her throat went dry as the atmosphere in the room shifted, thickened.

“So instead of catering to people who are in love, you're creating the ultimate setting for people looking to hook up. No wonder you're calling it Club Paradise. People are going to flock here in droves.”

Brianne watched as Aidan flicked open the top button of his shirt. He'd ditched his jacket earlier, maybe when he went to retrieve the bottle of wine.

The man looked damn good in a tie.

Crisp cotton outlined his sinewy arms, stretched across his chest. She knew if she tunneled her fingers through his shirt she'd find solid, defined abs and more tan skin. Not that she could reach him even if she had allowed herself to touch him.

Some genius with no clue about sex drive had put a wall of baskets between them.

“My years as a director assured me sex sells.” Sex also made even the smartest of women do stupid things. Like scale perfectly good barriers to get to the object of their lust. And Aidan sure looked tempting right about now. “Or at least the promise of sex sells.”

“Frankly, you have me sold.” He ran a finger under a collar now considerably loosened. “Brianne, I think I'd better go check in with the police station, or make some calls before things get…complicated.”