The list of candidates she'd given him was impressive. She'd exposed some of West Palm and Palm Beach's most upstanding citizens for crimes ranging from political corruption, to sexual harassment, to racial prejudice in the elite private clubs littering the area.
He rattled off the short list he'd come up with as well as some obvious speculation. "I like Marian Abramson for starters," he suggested, and hunted up the other stud.
"Abramson? A woman?"
"You know anyone meaner than a vindictive woman?"
"Good point."
"See what other dirt you can dig up on her. According to Jillian, the councilwoman warned her to back off on her investigation involving kickbacks and inappropriate spending that led to her arrest last month. She's out on bail now but due to be indicted in a couple of weeks. Definitely motive there."
"Murder may be several steps up from corruption, but terror campaign could fit the councilwoman's profile." Ethan agreed.
"Then there's the own-backyard approach." Nolan shifted the phone to his other ear and tackled the stud at his left wrist. "Jillian's coanchor Grant Wellington's star is fizzling. Word is he resents the hell out of Jillian's flash dazzle ... so much that it's starting to show on the newscasts. Sort of reeks of desperation from where I stand. Check him out, too."
He gave Ethan a few other names, including Erica Gray. the weather girl, who seemed to have delusions of fame and might have an ax to grind against Jillian for outdistancing her in local media popularity. There was also Lydia Grace. Jillian's assistant, who sounded just a little too innocent to be believed, and Diane Kleinmeyer, the producer of the newscast, who according to Jillian, erupted like Mount Saint Helens at least once a week.
Hell, there's a whole laundry list of possibles at the TV station
alone, including an overachieving weekend anchor. Can’t come up with her name right now. I'll fax the detailed list over tomorrow. In the meantime, Jillian is currently working a story about
a guy with amnesia. Maybe he's got some secrets he'd just as soon leave in the dark."
He gave Ethan John Smith's name
and address and glared at the black tie lying on the bureau. "See what you can find out about him."
"That ought to hold us for a while."
"You're going to owe me for this one."
"Just keep your head in the game. And watch your back," Ethan
warned him.
Nolan disconnected, shrugged into his tux jacket, and shot the cuffs on his shirt. He hadn't mentioned Jillian's ex-lover, Steven Fowler, or Fowler's wife, the woman scorned. Each,
for their own reasons, might want Jillian dead. For whatever reason, he didn't want to travel that road with Ethan just yet, either. For whatever reason, he didn't want to travel that road at all.
Overkill,
Jillian thought when Garrett stepped out of her guest bedroom and into the living room where she was waiting for him.
The man had a talent for it. From the military tenacity over his endless lists to a jawline that was so perfectly masculine and impossibly sensual, he was just too much.
And it was almost too much for her—literally—when. grim-faced, he held out his tie. "No clue," he grumbled, then sank down on the arm of her sofa, legs splayed wide so she had better access to him.
His scent assaulted her first when she approached him with wary determination. And his heat. The two seemed irrevocably intertwined. And both were wrapped up in all that raw and dangerous male beauty.
His breath was warm and minty as it fanned her cheek. The starch in the dress shirt smelled clean and fresh and blended with a scent unique to him—a scent she'd tried not to acknowledge when she tended to his wound in the kitchen last night.
She couldn't ignore it now as she worked on his tie. He smelled of substance. Sage. Sex. The combination set all of her erogenous zones humming.
"Problem?" he asked in a gritty whisper when she swore at her fumbling fingers and had to start all over again.
"Just hold still," she grumbled.
He didn't say a word. They both knew he wasn't fidgeting. And they both felt the electric shocks zipping from her trembling fingers to the warm, fragrant skin at his throat as she wrestled with the black silk. All too aware of his thigh pressing ever so lightly against her hip. Of his heat and strength surrounding her, caging her in. Of his gaze on her face. His breath feathering the fine hair at her temple as if he were touching her there.
Her fingers stilled. She closed her eyes, then lifted her gaze ... to find his riveted on hers like a laser.
Again, he didn't say a word. But she read his mind like a psychic when one corner of his mouth slowly slid into a knowing smirk.
You do want to get in my pants.
"We're going to be late," she sputtered, and headed for the door.
He hadn't exactly kicked or screamed, Jillian admitted to herself a few minutes later as they cruised in her convertible down South Ocean Boulevard toward Mar-A-Lago. but he looked about as happy as a paratrooper with an iffy rip cord. It was a small thing to gloat about—which probably made her small as well—but she rather enjoyed seeing him so uncomfortable.
All right,
she conceded, backpedaling a bit.
Uncomfortable
- probably wasn't the correct word.
Uncomfortable
was wistful
thinking on her part. In truth,
formidable
was probably better fit for the way he looked. Formidable, competent
,
and
unfortunately, gorgeous in the tux that had been messengered over about an hour before they had to leave for Mar-A-Lago.
Grudgingly she sneaked a glance at his profile. He drove with concentrated proficiency, his eyes hooded, his posture deceptively relaxed, when she knew he could transition to full attack mode in a heartbeat. He was professional to a fault, her bodyguard, right down to his insistence that he drive
instead of her.
She made herself look away; then she stared out the passenger window toward the ocean sweeping along the horizon in endless
waves of foaming white surf and blue-green water
. But
all she saw was him.
Garrett's transformation from Attila the Hood to
GQ
model had thrown her into yet another dimension of sexual threat she'd been determined to keep under wraps. But he'd walked into his bedroom looking for all the world like a thug in blue
jeans and emerged forty minutes later as a hard-edged Prince Charming. Or Prince Charmless, she reminded if you factored in his attitude and his sparkling conversation, which up until this point had been limited to curt, sharp warnings to keep a low profile, stay by his side, and plan on making it a short night.
Oh, and his sarcastic "I suppose it's too much to ask that you change into a dress that would draw a little less attention," as he'd followed her out the penthouse door.
Shimmering in a white Dior hand-stitched with seed slim lines, and little else, she'd snagged her beaded purse from the foyer table, liking it a little too much that his detached,
I'm only the hired help
composure had cracked ever so slightly when he'd looked her up and down.
"We must keep up appearances, darling." Her affected purr had been laced with enough sarcasm to set even her own teeth on edge. "It's the price we pampered princesses pay for being born royal."
And that had been the last she'd heard out of him. That was fine, she thought wearily. She'd heard plenty earlier in the day. First he'd made arrangements with City Place security to change the code on her entrance door. Then he'd bullied her into promising not to give it to anyone. And that meant
anyone.
She'd glanced at the slip of paper containing the new code. "Do you eat this or do I?" He had not been amused. Next, he'd talked to her father and they'd agreed it was necessary for Nolan to take her mother's place at the sold-out benefit dinner. Then, for the better part of the rest of the day they'd sat with their heads together, fleshing out his precious list. Fat lot of good it would do them.
He was snarling at the wrong dogs. It wasn't anyone she knew. She was convinced of that. It was some sick soul without a life, so he'd decided to make one—and make hers hell in the process. She couldn't wait until they caught him, or her. As Garrett often pointed out, it could be a woman. Whatever, she'd like to impose a little justice of her own on the creep for what he—or
she,
she added on a grumpy afterthought—had put her through, not the least of which was dealing with her bodyguard.
With every hour that passed, everything about Garrett's tactics reinforced why she'd had a bellyful of growing up as one of the hottest kidnapping prospects in Florida. It brought back all those memories of when she was younger.. the violation of her privacy, of her rights, the theft and disregard of her need for independence. Garrett didn't care about any of that. He cared about only one thing, and that afternoon he'd proceeded with dogged determination to fill page after page with names and detailed notes about anyone with whom she had regular or irregular contact. He was merely being thorough, he'd said, not in defense of his attention to detail but in an attempt to get her to stop bitching.
And she
had
been bitchy. She freely admitted it. She hated this.
Not just his growing laundry list of possible suspects—some of whom she considered her friends—but also because it was beginning to feel more and more like she really did have reason to be concerned.
She still wanted to discount the threat as a mean-spirited joke. It was getting harder and harder to do, though, when he continued to approach the problem from the angle that someone wanted her dead. Garrett and his gloom and doom would be a real hit at a New Year's Eve party.
When Steven Fowler's name had come up in their conversation it had ended in a stalemate. She was not going to discuss that debacle with Garrett. She wasn't all that ready to examine it herself. Steven Fowler had been important to her, and both her pride and her heart were still smarting over his duplicity. She'd thought he might be the one. She'd been ready for a long-term relationship. It still hurt that he'd lied. It hurt more that she'd cared and he'd duped her. And she was ashamed—too ashamed to give Garrett the satisfaction of knowing it.
When he pulled into the drive at Mar-A-Lago, she let out a breath of relief and drew another to brace herself.
It was showtime. And despite Garrett's unsettling and unwelcome presence at her side, she had a job to do tonight.
Flanking Jillian to the left, Nolan walked close beside her as they ascended the white stone steps leading to the flamingo pink palace that Donald Trump had turned into one of the most, if not
the
most, exclusive private clubs in Palm Beach a few years ago.
Nolan picked out the in-house security people as they walked through the main doors and into a high-ceilinged anteroom overrun with pillars and pots, glitter and gold. Thanks to the blueprints Ethan had hastily procured from an associate who worked for Bolo—the firm providing Mar-A-Lago's in-house security and with whom E.D.E.N. regularly consulted on assignments—Nolan already had a mental picture of the layout.
Fortunately, Ethan had been able to spare their brother, Dallas, for a couple of hours that afternoon. Dallas had done a walk-through of the facility and the grounds surrounding the one hundred plus-room mansion and briefed Nolan in a phone call earlier.
The good news: For the most part, house security was professional and tight.
The bad news: The razzle and the
dazzle
of Palm Beach society had turned out in droves for the event. The size of the crowd—250 or so Mr. and Mrs. Richie Riches rubbing elbows and bussing air kisses—wasn't exactly a security nightmare, but it wasn't without its concerns.
From the anteroom to the salon, where cocktails were being served, the place was packed with sequins and satin, diamonds and silk, as the city's most affluent and philanthropic citizens mingled and laughed with gentile grace over glasses of bubbling champagne and tables heaped with frou-frou looking finger food. God only knew what was in some of that stuff.
And God only knew how much coin had been laid out for the place. Whatever realtor had made the sale to Trump must be ass deep in caviar and imported champagne. Mar-A-Lago, which, according to detail-oriented Dallas, meant "sea-by-lake," was set on eighteen of the priciest acres on earth, between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Worth, and lived up to its billing as a playground for the moneyed few.
Nolan couldn't help it. He whistled softly through his teeth as they worked their way farther through the salon, cataloging the twenty-foot gold-leaf ceilings, pricey antique tapestries, Spanish tile floors, and chandeliers dripping with glittering crystal.
It
was way overdone for his taste—army surplus had done him just fine—but he had to admit the enormous plate-glass window at the far end of the room that looked
out over a sprawling lawn and beyond, to the crashing waves of the Atlantic, was as impressive as hell.
"Remember, stay close," he reminded Jillian when she accepted a flute of champagne from a passing waiter.
"You're overplaying this." Her smile never cracked as she nodded a greeting to someone across the room.
"Yeah,
well. Get used to it I live for excess." Speaking of excess ... her dress. Holy mother of God. She appeared to be body-painted into a long, sleek skin of tiny white pearls stitched over fabric so sheer it looked transparent. The whole thing clung like lotion to her fantasy body and appeared to be held on her shoulders by thin silver threads.