And it was happening on his watch, every unbelievable bit of it.
Again.
He was on the road in five minutes flat. Fortunately he didn’t have to fiddle around with cabs. In preparation for getting his client to her various appointments the next day, he had rented a car. It was coming in handy now.
Not wanting to alert the hotel staff to his mission, Tom looked for an all-night gas station as he drove, found one on a corner a block away, pulled in, and asked directions to the Yellow Dog. A sleepy attendant had no problem directing him. It was the best-known bar in town.
It was also, he discovered as he cruised past the darkened storefronts that lined Main Street, impossible to miss. A huge yellow neon dog flashing off and on
above a square, two-story converted warehouse was a dead giveaway.
He pulled into the crowded parking lot just across the street. Ignoring a couple intertwined on a car hood in the parking lot and another groping each other on the sidewalk, he headed toward the glass double doors at the front of the building.
The bass pulse of the music could be heard as far away as the street. When the doors swung open to admit him, the volume of sound almost made him take a step back.
“Five-dollar cover.” The price of admission was shouted at him from a booth just inside the door by the attendant on duty, a beefy kid not long past college age who looked as if he could have made some money as a pro wrestler. A crowd of young women in miniskirts and their equally young-looking, jeans-clad escorts pushed past him on their way out the door as he extracted a five-dollar bill from his wallet and handed it over.
“We close in an hour,” the kid mouthed over the music, his expression semiapologetic as he took Tom’s money and stamped his hand with a grinning dog in glow-in-the-dark ink. A glance over the kid’s head found a large clock. It was two-fifty
A.M
.
At nine
A.M
. she was scheduled to speak to a women’s group; then there were the press interviews at noon.
Jesus H. Christ.
Tom nodded, and at last was allowed to pass through the narrow doorway into the dark, pulsing cavern beyond.
“One?” A waitress, slim and blond with a bare,
tanned midriff under a clingy little knit top, held up a single forefinger. She, too, had to shout to be heard over the music.
Tom nodded, and followed her miniskirted backside into the snake pit of writhing, strobe-illuminated bodies that was the club. The dance floor, as far as he could tell, was in the middle of the room, and it was full. But that didn’t seem to matter a whit to anyone. Patrons were dancing everywhere, in the aisles, in front of the bar, even some on tables. The roving strobes zoomed around the room seemingly at random, as blinding and disorienting as photographers’ flashbulbs as they illuminated their victims for a second or two and moved on.
Thank God, the place was so dark and weirdly lit that it was almost impossible to tell male from female at-a distance of more than five feet, much less recognize anyone. No wonder the reporter had to call to confirm it was her.
Maybe, Tom thought with a last lingering trace of hope, it wasn’t. Maybe he was on a wild-goose chase, or was even the victim of a gag set up by Kenny.
Please God.
The waitress stopped before a tiny round table with a white marble top. For form’s sake, Tom sat down in one of the uncomfortable ice-cream-parlor-style chairs and ordered a Heineken, the single word bellowed at the top of his lungs and lost in the cacophony before it had so much as escaped his lips. The waitress, apparently adept at lipreading in the dark, nodded and took herself off.
The sheer volume of sound was mind-blowing.
Cliché or not, the phrase
he couldn’t hear himself think
was nothing short of the literal truth. Tom couldn’t.
He shook his head to clear it, fought the urge to clap his hands over his ears, and began a methodical visual search of the place. Besides his errant client, he also sought reporters spying on her. Of course that only worked if the reporter was someone he knew; but just as likely it wasn’t.
As he had already noted, it was almost impossible to recognize anybody. Tom gave up almost immediately on the reporters. After a couple of minutes spent squinting at first one slim young body and then another, Tom realized that in order to find his primary quarry he was going to have to go from table to table and from dancing couple to dancing couple, leaning close and staring intently into the face of nearly each and every person present. The only ones automatically disqualified were those obviously too heavy, or sporting a buzz cut. Even short haircuts could be misleading; she might have put her hair up. Or be wearing a baseball cap.
Who knew?
The waitress came back with his bottle of beer, placing it on the table in front of him on top of a tiny paper cocktail napkin. With a shouted “Thanks” Tom extracted his wallet and fumbled around for a bill, which he handed over with a wave indicating she should keep the change. She illuminated the money with a quick flash from a tiny flashlight, which dangled from a chain around her wrist. From the wattage of the smile she turned on him, Tom guessed the bill was a ten or twenty instead of the five he’d intended to give her.
Blast it, he didn’t have that kind of money to throw away.
But that was the least of his worries, Tom thought, downing half his beer in one gulp preparatory to standing up and starting his search in earnest. Finding out if—
There she was. There was no mistaking that red hair as the light hit it. She was dancing, gyrating really, with a jeans-clad kid who didn’t look much older than Mark. Her head was thrown back, and she was laughing as she danced. Her teeth gleamed blindingly white in the blaze of ultraviolet light. She was wearing cutoff jeans, the real short kind with raggedy fringe around the thighs, a tight black T-shirt, and high-heeled sandals that made her legs seem two yards long. As Kenny had warned him, she was looking hot. The kid looked enthralled.
Tom stood up, filled with a surprising degree of reflexive anger, as if she were betraying
him
. Which was stupid. She was his job, not his wife.
Deliberately he gulped the rest of his beer, and considered his options. His first impulse was to go over there, wrap a hand in that too-red hair and drag her out of the club by it, but that had to be discarded. First, it would attract too much attention, and second, he could not manhandle the woman who was his ticket back into the political big time. It wouldn’t be good for business.
He was going to have to use all his wile to get her out of there without attracting undue notice. The first thing to do, obviously, was to get rid of the kid whose hands were even now sliding around her waist. A minute or two more, and Tom had little doubt they’d be
cupping her butt. And from all appearances, the lady seemed to be loving it.
It didn’t require genius to figure out that Mrs. Lewis R. Honneker IV had come out tonight with every intention of getting laid.
Sorry, darling
, Tom thought with an ironic twist of his lips, and headed toward his quarry.
By the time Tom reached them, she had her arms around the kid’s neck and was dancing against him in a way that would make a priest think dirty thoughts. And from the look on his face, the kid wasn’t even vaguely considering the priesthood.
Tom tapped him on the shoulder. Not surprisingly, he was ignored. Tom tapped a little harder—more of a shove, really—and at the same time detached one of his client’s cool, slender hands from the kid’s neck and tugged her toward him.
Over the kid’s shoulder she blinked at him in surprise. The kid turned toward him with murder in his eyes.
Tom really couldn’t blame him. He’d want to murder anyone who broke in on that too.
“What the—?” the kid began angrily.
“My wife,” Tom yelled, flashing the huge square diamond and thin gold band on the lady’s left ring finger in the kid’s face.
“Oh.” The kid’s expression altered ludicrously. His arms dropped and he backed away, holding his hands up in front of him in an age-old gesture of surrender. “Sorry, man. She didn’t say she was married.”
Tom nodded as the kid disappeared. The slim hand he was grasping detached itself and slid around his neck, to be joined by its fellow.
The faint scent of some expensive perfume teased his nostrils as she plastered herself against him. In his arms she felt slender, supple, feminine and very, very sexy. With a sense that he was somehow losing control of the situation, Tom set his hands firmly on either side of her waist and frowned down into a pair of come-hither chocolate-brown eyes.
Chapter
13
“L
IAR
,” R
ONNIE MOUTHED
, not missing a beat of the dance. Quinlan’s body felt hard and strong and headily masculine against hers as she moved against it; his neck was warm beneath her hands. Having him show up here was a surprise, but not a bad one, she decided. From the first she’d considered her own personal political consultant to be a very attractive man.
“There’s a reporter here,” he said into her ear. His breath smelled faintly of beer. “We need to leave.”
Ronnie took advantage of the dip of his head to press closer to him. His chest felt good against her breasts. He was bigger than she was, wider, taller. His cheek as it brushed hers was rough with stubble. His hands on her waist were strong. He was wearing the same suit he had worn earlier in the evening, a dark navy pinstripe. She’d noted at the time that it emphasized his build, showing off his broad shoulders and flat stomach, his narrow hips and muscular thighs. The only fault she’d been able to find with his appearance at the dinner was that, all buttoned and pressed and
unsmiling, he had looked uptight. Now he had five-o’clock stubble, his white shirt was open at the collar, and he wasn’t wearing a tie.
Ronnie felt herself begin to tingle.
“Did you hear what I said?” When she didn’t reply, his voice in her ear turned impatient.
Ronnie shook her head and clung closer. “I want to dance.”
He pulled back to look down into her face. She smiled sensuously up at him, rubbing her body against his as she moved with the music.
His frown deepened into a full-fledged scowl, and he leaned forward to speak into her ear again. “You’ve been drinking.”
It was an accusation, tinged with an undertone of outrage, and it made Ronnie smile.
“You’re right,” she agreed, and tightened her hold on him. He swung her around, reflexively she thought, to keep from being bumped by the couple on their left. People were dancing all around them, close together, doing everything but making love on the dance floor.
The procession of boys she had danced with earlier hadn’t done much to fire up her libido. She hadn’t really wanted to sleep with any of them. But Quinlan was something else again.
How would he be in bed? she wondered. Just considering the possibilities was enough to send heat shooting clear down to her toes.
It had been a long time since she’d felt like that about a man.
“Let me take you back to the hotel.” His voice in her ear was coaxing now. Ronnie liked that. She snuggled closer.
“Maybe,” she said. “After we dance.”
“Ronnie …”
It was the first time he had called her by her given name since the day she had met him. Usually he didn’t call her anything at all, just shot “suggestions” at her. When he had to address her as something, it was as
Miz Honneker
, in an ironic-sounding southern drawl that increasingly made her want to hit him. Ronnie rewarded him now by stroking the nape of his neck with a forefinger. He stiffened.
His hands were still on either side of her waist. They tightened. His fingers dug into her middle. She got the impression that he was trying to work some space between them.
Not a chance, buster
, she told him silently, and tightened her arms around his neck. Her hips pressed against his. She discovered that he was as affected by her proximity as she was by his.
He’d found her attractive from the beginning. She had experienced the admiration of too many men not to recognize the signs.
“Tom.” She purred his name. It felt right on her tongue. Just as he felt right in her arms.
“We have to go.” He was talking in her ear again.
“Go if you want. I’ll find somebody else to dance with me.”
They were barely moving now, just swaying in time to the pulsing beat. The fine tropical wool of his suit felt scratchy against her bare arms and legs. The sensation was erotic, as though she were naked in his arms while he remained fully clothed. Other couples pressed against them on all sides, limiting movement. Not that anyone seemed to care. Ronnie discovered that they
had somehow worked their way into a dark corner not too far from a door discreetly marked Exit. Though there were people all around, the sense of being alone with him was intense.
Her arms wrapped tighter around his neck. Her fingers stroked the warm skin of his nape. His broad shoulders were curved protectively around her, and her breasts snuggled against his chest. Her hips brushed his hips, her thighs pressed his thighs. The last holdout against a totally enveloping embrace were his hands on either side of her waist.
If he had asked, she would have told him that resistance was futile.
She pressed closer, until every inch of her body from shoulder to knees was in contact with his. Letting go of his neck, she slowly slid her hands over his shoulders and down his arms to his wrists. Tugging, she removed his hands from her waist and pulled them around her body. He did not fight her, though she got the impression that his capitulation was reluctant.
Too bad
, she thought, luxuriating in the feel of his arms around her as her hands slid back up to lock behind his neck. A faint, satisfied smile curved her lips, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“Do you realize it’s after three a.m.? You have to give a speech at nine in the morning.” He was scolding now, but she didn’t mind: His breath was warm on her ear. As if to give the lie to his tone, his arms were wrapped securely around her body, holding her close against him.