Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy) (6 page)

“It’s the company I run,” he answered. “But you already know that.”

“How would I know that?”

“Because for some reason you were following me.”

“I already told you why I was following you. Why can't you accept that?"

"Because every silver lining has a cloud."

"That's a pessimistic thing to say."

"It's the truth. You’re a beautiful woman.” He indicated her with a sweep of his hand. “Men are supposed to follow you.”

She folded her arms, stretching the material of her brown shirt across her chest. Her breasts were small, he noticed, but nicely shaped. Big, dark, angry eyes dominated her oval face.

“This is the twenty-first century. If women want to follow men around, nobody can stop us." She glanced around the room and pointed to Ned Weimer, who was moving toward the outside patio. “There’s a man in motion. He seems to be alone, too. I think I’ll follow him.”

She pivoted and headed for Weimer, leaving Grady to wonder what the hell had just happened. He watched in amazement as she caught up to the mayor's Chief of Staff. Weimer was divorced, fortyish and as slick as the dyed black hair he gelled back from his angular face.

Unfortunately, Weimer was no dummy. The FBI believed the corruption in City Hall reached all the way to the top but had nothing on either Weimer or the mayor.

Tori laid a hand on Weimer's arm, walking with him out the glass doors to the patio. Something unpleasant slithered through Grady but he refused to characterize it as jealousy.

He couldn't be jealous of Ned Weimer. The man was phonier than a six-dollar bill. As for Tori, he hadn't invested enough emotionally in her to get proprietary.

I don’t even trust her
, he thought as he hurried across the room, deftly avoiding saying more than hello to passing acquaintances. If Tori decided in mid-date that she preferred Ned Weimer, he told himself as he stepped into the fresh air, he’d have one fewer worry.

Tori stood with Weimer on the terra-cotta tile under a palm tree illuminated by a string of tiny white lights, sandwiched between the beauty of the mayor’s teardrop-shaped pool and the Intracoastal Waterway. Ned laughed at something she said and his teeth flashed white in the night.

The Chief of Staff probably had them professionally brightened to complement his expertly dyed black hair. Weimer hooked his thumbs in the pockets of trendy white slacks he wore with a short-sleeved black silk shirt. Oh, please.

Grady wouldn’t be able to stand it if Tori thought Ned Weimer was hot, too. He approached the two of them.

“Hey, Ned,” Grady said. “I see you’ve met my date.”

“Your date?” Weimer focused his too-small eyes on Tori. “I got the impression you were here by yourself.”

“I drove here by myself,” Tori said.

“Only because she followed me." Grady slid closer to her, captured her left hand and deliberately rubbed his thumb over her palm. “Isn’t that right, Tori?”

She didn’t pull away, but then she couldn’t. Not if she still expected him to buy her story. But if she had the hots for him, why had her body gone as tense as a tuning fork? Then again, why had his?

“Yes,” she admitted, not looking at him. “I am here with Grady.”

“Well, hell.” Ned shook his perfectly immobile head of hair. “I should have known you approaching me like that was too good to be true.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Grady murmured.

“No offense,” Ned said, targeting his comment at Tori, “but I see a woman over there who actually may be here by herself.”

Before he sauntered away, Ned took a business card from his wallet and handed it to Tori. She pulled her hand from Grady’s to take it.

“What’s this for?” she asked.

Ned slapped Grady on the back as he moved away.

“Insurance,” he said. “If you get tired of Palmer, you know where to find me.”

She laughed. Grady didn’t.

“First me, then Weimer,” he said. “Is accosting strange men a habit of yours?”

Her chin lifted. It had a tiny cleft in its center that made him want to dip his finger into it.

“Of course not,” she said. “Besides, you’re the one who accosted me. I never would have approached you.”

“Why not?” he asked grumpily. "You approached Weimer."

"Ned's more approachable," she said.

He let out a frustrated breath. "Trust me on this. Ned Weimer is not a good guy."

She raised eyebrows a few shades darker than her hair. Her auburn curls rustled in the gentle breeze. “And you are?”

A painful awareness hit him that his presence at the party gave the appearance he supported Honoria Black in her bid to win re-election. In truth, Grady had already made an anonymous donation to the campaign of slow-growth advocate Forest Richardson. The local lawyer probably wouldn't turn out to be much of an improvement over Mayor Black but he couldn't be worse.

“Hell, yeah, I'm a good guy,” he said and moodily looked around at the collection of hobnobbers and phonies on the patio.

His gaze drifted across the pool and snagged on Wade Morrison, who he felt sure was as crooked as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He'd suggested to his FBI contact that they offer Morrison a bribe, but had been told to concentrate instead on the officials who approached him.

Morrison talked to a bleached blonde in a black leather miniskirt and scandalously high heels.

The blonde tossed her long, straight hair in a gesture he recognized. His body stilled. She turned slightly, giving him a clear view of her familiar, overly made-up face as she bestowed a dazzling smile on the undeserving Tax Assessor.

Laying a slender, long-fingered hand on Morrison's arm, she batted her heavily mascaraed lashes at him. Grady sucked in a breath, ready to rush across the room and rip away her hand. But then Morrison nodded and left her side, probably because she’d charmed him into bringing her a drink.

“Grady, is something wrong?” Tori’s question snapped him out of his momentary paralysis.

“Yeah, something’s wrong,” he ground out. “I see somebody over there I need to talk to.”

“The blonde?” Her voice spiked with curiosity. “Who is she?”

“My sister.”

Lorelei Palmer loved a party.

She adored the way everybody dressed to the nines, the buzz of conversation, the flowing alcohol, the delectable finger food. Most of all, she loved the excitement that swirled in the air.

The air of
possibility
.

Her gaze swept over the pool area, where guests mingled in the shadow of the Intracoastal, searching for one.

She got an eyeful of her brother leaving the side of an attractive woman with amazing auburn hair. His jaw was set, the corners of his mouth slanted downward.

She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue, reminding herself that she loved him, too. Despite his ongoing mission to make sure she never had any fun.

“Grady!” She went to meet him, taking very small steps so she didn’t fall off her heels. With the three-inch lifts, she still reached only five feet five, which made it difficult for her to do more than kiss the air on either side of his cheeks. “How wonderful to see you.”

“You should have seen me this afternoon at the office." He didn't crack a smile. "But I hear you didn’t come back after lunch.”

She ignored the censure in his voice. What a stick-in-the-mud. So she hadn’t come back to work. How was she to know he'd drop in after the golf tournament? Besides, he had other office workers. There was only so much answering the phone and paperwork to go around.

“I bought new clothes for the party.” She twirled to exhibit the leather skirt and midriff-baring top she’d picked up at the mall. She’d put them on credit because she didn't have the money to pay for them but, hey, you only lived once. "Why do you think I’m working if not to fund my social life?”

He ignored her question. “I wasn’t aware you were invited."

“You know how much I love a party.” She beamed up at him. She thought about giving his cheek an affectionate pat but now didn’t seem to be the right time. “If you expected me to stay away, you shouldn’t have told me about it.”

He screwed up his forehead. “I didn’t mention the party to anyone besides Frankie,” he said, referring to his business manager.

She gave a theatrical laugh. “If you think I couldn’t hear you and Frankie talking, you seriously underestimated me.”

Grady’s lips thinned and he lowered his voice the way he did when he was trying to hold onto his temper. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Oh, don’t get your jockey shorts in a twist, Duke.” She used the nickname primarily because she knew it annoyed him. She tossed her head, enjoying the way the blond strands swung. The money she’d spent at the beauty salon had definitely been worth it. “Nobody cares that I crashed the party.”

Nobody except Grady. Oh, she knew he loved her but tired of him playing the heavy. Only seven years older than her twenty-one, he acted more like her father than her brother.

She had a father, thank you very much. Grady did, too. Along with a mother who had sobbed over him for the past month. Lorelei had cried, too. At night with her door closed where nobody could see how the growing chasm between her parents and brother hurt her, too.

“Would you leave if I asked you?” he asked.

She put her hands on her leather-clad hips. “Would you drop this ridiculous grudge against Mom and Dad and visit them if I asked you?”

His face became a mask more unreadable than granite, but she sensed her words had hit a nerve.

“We’re not talking about me,” Grady said.

“Yeah? Well, it’s time we did talk about what’s wrong between you and them. Every time I ask, you change the subject. They’re no better.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. “Lorelei, now is not the right time to discuss this.”

“When will the time be right, Grady?” she asked urgently.

“Not now. You shouldn’t even be here.”

The stubborn set to his chin made her firm her own jaw. "Well, I am here. And I’m not going anywhere.”

He sighed. “I’ll accept that if you promise me something.”

She made a noncommittal noise, not in the mood to concede anything. She couldn’t stay angry, either. It simply wasn’t in her nature.

“What?” she asked.

“Stay away from Wade Morrison.”

“Who’s Wade Morrison?”

He cocked a dark eyebrow. “The Tax Assessor. The guy who was hitting on you.”

The possibility that somebody had been trying to score with her temporarily drove away her worries about the rift between Grady and their parents. She’d arrived at the party five minutes ago and hadn’t yet talked to anyone besides Grady. Wait. She’d asked the tall geeky guy with the wavy, dark hair where she could get a drink.

“Are you talking about the stealth hunk?”

Grady looked exasperated but nodded toward the man who’d directed her to the bar. “I’m talking about him.”

“That
is
the stealth hunk.”

“Okay. I’ll bite. What’s a stealth hunk?”

She gave him a devilish smile. “A hunk dressed like a geek. Take off his glasses, get him out of those horrible clothes and you’ve got yourself one fine naked man.”

“You say things like that to shock me, don’t you?”

“Not really. Shocking you’s a bonus,” Lorelei said, laughing. She rubbed a finger against her lower lip as she stared at Wade Morrison. He’d be really yummy without clothes. “You truly think he was hitting on me?”

“You’ve still got a lot to learn about men, Lorelei,” Grady said in that lecturing big-brother tone of his. “They always have a hidden agenda.”

“And you think Wade Morrison’s hidden agenda is to get into my pants?”

He cringed at her blunt language. “He’s bad news. He hits on all the girls. Breaks hearts all over the place.”

“Is he married?”

“I don’t think so,” Grady said, seeming disappointed he couldn’t add cheating husband to the list of Wade Morrison’s sins, “but he’s a real player.”

“Hmmmm,” Lorelei said.

“So you stay away from him, okay?”

Lying to her brother violated Lorelei’s moral code. She gave him a dazzling smile and tried a bit of misdirection.

“What's the name of the City Planning Director? With the beard, the long gray ponytail and the bald head?"

"Larry Schlichter. Why?"

"Isn't that him with the woman you were talking to?” she asked, nodding toward the couple. Grady’s head turned so fast she felt a breeze. “Looks to me like he’s trying to make time with her.”

“Damn,” he muttered under his breath but not so softly she couldn’t hear. Now this was getting interesting.

“Who is she?”

“My date,” he said shortly.

“Maybe you better rescue her. He’s invading her personal space. If she backs up any farther, she’ll hit a wall.”

Grady took off without a backward glance, which freed her to head across the patio straight for the very man he’d warned her against.