Hearts in Vegas (Harlequin Superromance) (6 page)

He realized he was smiling back.

“So,” she said, her voice turning husky, “do you know where I can find Braxton?”

Oh, now she’d done it.

He’d always been a sucker for women’s smoky, raspy voices, and she’d just given it to him twofold. She was a young Lauren Bacall. Cool, unflappable, smooth. And he was Sam Spade, private eye, ready and willing to help the damsel in distress.

Ka-boom.

He straightened, laughing as he realized what he’d just fallen for.

“Oh, you’re good,” he said, giving his head a shake. “The hot blonde strolling in here, bringing trouble into my life. That pantsuit fooled me at first. Who’s your stylist? Hillary Clinton? That uptight schoolmarm bun, whoa, we’re talking
foxy
...like Frau Farbissina in the
Austin Powers
movies. But I have a thing for blondes, which they probably told you. And that husky, smoky voice. Wow. Tie me up and make me write bad checks all night long, baby.”

He laughed. She didn’t.

“So,” he said, turning down the dial on his frivolity, “who put you up to this? Drake?”

A sly half smile played on her lips. “Right, it was Drake. He told me Braxton would be sitting at this desk at nine.”

“Yeah, I open up most mornings.”

She placed a manila envelope on the desk. “Then this is for you, Braxton Morgan. Have a nice day.”

Neatly printed on the envelope were the words
To Braxton Morgan, personal and confidential
and
Dmitri Romanov
in the top left corner. The papers from Dmitri. And the check. Smoky-husky was his associate?

When he looked up, the blonde was walking away. No goodbye. Just a silky-smooth exit, like a trail of smoke from Lauren Bacall’s cigarette.

Was that how the clichéd private-eye story ended? After the hot blonde walked into the detective agency and exchanged a few words with the P.I., who of course fell hard for her, she walked back out? Just like that?

Not in
this
movie.

Braxton grabbed his phone and headed after her.

* * *

H
EADING
TO
HER
CAR
in the Morgan-LeRoy Investigations lot, Frances shivered as a chilly breeze flittered past. Two hours ago, the skies had been deceptively blue and the sun so bright she’d tossed her sunglasses into her purse. Now clouds were moving in, obliterating the sun, casting the world in a surreal, hazy light.

Footsteps slapped behind her.

“Hey, Babe!”

She looked around. The only other person nearby was a guy in a cap with earflaps and pom-poms ambling down the sidewalk, so “Babe” had to mean her.

She turned back to Braxton, who was walking briskly toward her. Hadn’t bothered to put on a jacket or coat, so he had to feel the cold, but he seemed oblivious to it. Flashed her a smile and waved as though out for a stroll on a balmy spring day.

He was tall, a little over six feet, she guessed. That tucked-in fitted shirt emphasized his V shape—from the width of his shoulders down to his toned chest that tapered to a flat, lean waist. Although he wore his trousers stylishly loose, the material seemed to skim his muscled thighs as he walked.

A sensual awareness prickled over her skin.

Back in the Morgan-LeRoy office, she’d found him to be cute in a goofy kind of way, but he’d also been sitting down, so she didn’t get an overall impression. Plus she’d been juggling other thoughts—trying to get a fix if this was Braxton, as she wanted to hand over the envelope to the right person, thinking about her brunch meeting today with her boss.

Her thoughts scattered as Braxton stopped in front of her. He blew out a breath and grinned—an infectious, sheepish smile that filled his whole face. Standing this close, inches apart really, she got the full force of his gray eyes, really more of a light gray-blue that reminded her of early-morning skies.

“I said some dumb stuff back there.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I’m sorry.”

His flustered boyishness—like a teenage boy worried about what to say to the girl—took her by surprise. Where’d the cocky, in-your-face guy go? The one who blurted that line about tying him up and making him write bad checks all night?

Sudden heat crawled up her neck, spreading to her cheeks. Shouldn’t have thought about that.

“Must say,” she said casually, willing the heat to subside as she looked over at an old pickup, its suspension squeaking, lumber along Graces Avenue, “I’ve never been compared to Frau Farbissina before.”

“I thought someone was punking me—didn’t know you were really here on business.”

As she turned to face him, a gust of wind blew his soapy, masculine scent toward her. She held back a shiver, not from the cold this time.

“Don’t worry about it.” She meant it. Whatever had been going on back there in the office didn’t make sense, but it was a small issue in a world of big ones.

“I don’t deserve to get off the hook so easily,” he murmured, his voice dropping to a low rumble she felt all the way down to her toes.

“No, you don’t,” she agreed, trying not to smile.

They’d only met a few minutes ago, but she felt the rhythm, the current between them, as though they’d done this dozens of times. Playing, teasing each other. Doubted any woman could resist his charm.

Braxton had what her mom would have called “matinee-idol good looks.” Illegally handsome and exuberantly male. Plus he exuded an unlabored, playful sexiness that if left unbridled could gallop into full-on killer charisma. She imagined he had to hold the reins tight, practice some self-imposed restraint, try to wheel it out on special occasions only.

She glanced at the old Volvo, the only other car in the small lot. Had to be his. Why did a charismatic, good-looking guy with a sharp sense of style drive a rusting, bald-tired car?

“Piece of junk,” he muttered, following her line of vision.

Everything within her froze.

She stared at a patch of peeling paint on the hood, a rusted dent on its side. Braxton couldn’t see her imperfections, but if he did, would they be standing here, playing mental footsie?

She doubted it.

After all, he looked like the perfect male—classic good looks, sculpted bod, designer clothes. Maybe it wasn’t fair to assume he’d seek the same perfection in life—be it a woman, car, house, whatever—but considering how he looked down on that poor Volvo, maybe he would.

“You should fix up your car,” she said quietly, “then you’ll like it better.”

Pulling the key fob from her pocket, she headed to her Benz. Breezes whipped past, chilling whatever warmth she’d felt.

“Hey, did I say something wrong?” he said, following her.

Her heels clicked across the asphalt. She punched a button and the door locks on the Benz clicked open.

“I’ll get it,” he said, bounding ahead.

He looked so gallant opening the driver’s door for her, those sparkling gray eyes seeking her approval, but she didn’t want to play this game anymore because it was destined for a happy-never-more ending. He was the matinee-idol prince and she was the frog princess.

And no way that prince would ever want to kiss this frog princess.

Deliberately avoiding his gaze, she started to get into the car when their bodies bumped and she stumbled.

He grabbed her by the elbow, steadying her.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

She could feel his eyes wanting to connect with hers, but she couldn’t go there again. They’d experienced a few frivolous moments, and now it was time to get back to reality.

“I have a meeting,” she said evenly, lowering herself into the driver’s seat.

“What’s your na—”

The rest of his question was cut off as she closed the door with a sharp clack.

CHAPTER FOUR

T
WENTY
MINUTES
LATER
, Frances took a seat at the table, immaculately set with linen, crystal and a bottle of champagne—Taittinger, no less—chilling in an ice-filled silver bucket. The lights were moody low, the classical music softly romantic.

Her boss, Charlie Eden, was dapper in a charcoal Ralph Lauren suit that complemented his silvering hair. He looked at her with shining, attentive eyes from across the table.

She and Charlie had sometimes ordered cocktails during these meetings, but champagne on ice? This was a first. Made her uncomfortable. Did he think this was some kind of date?

She flashed on several women at the Vanderbilt Insurance office who’d run over their own grandmothers to be in Frances’s shoes right now. In the company kitchen, they’d whisper breathlessly about his Porsche 911 and how its custom paint job matched its baby-blue cockpit, his Tuscan-style home on a golf course, his European vacations.

What they liked was his money, of course, not his withering looks when displeased or his condescending tone when addressing someone he viewed as an imbecile, which seemed to be half of the earth’s population. It amazed her how some people, like Charlie’s office groupies, viewed the almighty dollar as if it were the most important attribute in a potential mate, rather than traits like kindness and devotion.

Or maybe Frances was more attuned to what money
couldn’t
buy based on her mom’s stories of her privileged, but painfully lonely, upbringing.

So here Frances sat in a luxurious restaurant, feeling awkward. Maybe she wouldn’t have thought twice about the decor and champagne on ice if her dad hadn’t been so insistent that Charlie had a thing for her.

Did he?

She’d never picked up on any signals from her boss, but then she’d always related to his professional role, not the man behind it.

Something about Charlie she’d always picked up on loud and clear, though. He wasn’t a gambler. His every action had a plan and a purpose. Nothing with him was ever simple or spontaneous.

Which meant his reasons for selecting this restaurant were more convoluted than his setting up a date. Eventually, he’d tell her what they were.

“Hope the bubbly wasn’t too expensive, Charlie,” she said, setting her smartphone on the table, “because I won’t be drinking any. Way too early for me.”

He flashed his Gordon Gekko smile. “It’s almost noon.”

“It’s a few minutes after ten.”

“Frances, as always, you are enmeshed in the minutiae. Observe, document, categorize.”

“If everybody saw the forest instead of the trees, nobody would know how to plant a seed.”

Charlie did a slight double take, but didn’t say anything as the waiter appeared at their table. He wore a white jacket with
Chez Manny
stitched in blue on the pocket and gave them a practiced smile. After setting a basket of “hand crafted” rolls and butter on the table, he gestured toward the champagne. She noticed initials inked on the inside of his ring finger, which made her wonder why people got tattoos with personal messages, as though anything in life were that permanent.

“Now that your guest is here, shall I pour the champagne?” he asked.

She held her hand over her glass. “No, thank you.”

The waiter bent his head in understanding and poured the bubbly into Charlie’s crystal flute.

Her boss had wanted to meet at this restaurant last night, too, but she’d canceled, explaining she felt drained after the odd undercover-cop escort and limo meeting.

She was glad she’d gone straight home last night, because her dad had been worrying himself sick since their aborted phone call. He’d also thought he’d failed her because although he’d left messages for Charlie, he didn’t know if Charlie had heard them, so her dad fretted about her possibly being behind bars with no one coming to her aid.

Wanting to ease her dad’s concerns, she’d glossed over what had happened during their dinner of Spam sandwiches and leftover Chinese food. Said the undercover cop had pulled her over for a broken taillight and let her go with a warning. That she would have called her dad after that but had been pulled into a last-minute meeting at a downtown coffee shop with a Vanderbilt client.

After dinner, she wrote an email to Charlie filling him in on all the details, including that she’d be conducting a delivery in the morning for the Russian, after which she could meet Charlie. He wrote back later that he’d be at Chez Manny by ten.

“Would you perhaps like a Baby Bellini, a nonalcoholic drink made with peach nectar and sparkling cider?” the waiter asked her.

She ordered one, plus an omelet. Charlie ordered the cedar-plank-roasted salmon special.

After the waiter left, Charlie lifted his glass of bubbly. “To my star investigator.”

“Hardly a star. All I did was talk to the Russian.”

He took a sip of champagne, set the glass back on the table. “But he trusted you enough to invite you into his inner sanctum, Frances, which is a coup. You’ve been an investigator long enough to understand the significance of that.”

She caught an edge of apprehension in his tone.

“Pass the bread?” she asked pleasantly, studying his face, wondering what was going on with him.

He held out the basket and she helped herself to a “hand crafted” roll. She spread some of the butter—which the waiter had mentioned was “lavender laced”—on the warm roll and took a bite, savoring its herb-infused, yeasty taste.

For several moments they said nothing, listening to a gentle violin played over other diners’ murmured conversations.

“I have good news and bad news,” he finally said, “or possibly good news and good news, depending on how successful you are in this case, Frances.”

“I’m not sure I like how this sounds,” she murmured.

“I shouldn’t call it bad news. More correctly, it is
potentially
good news for both of us.”

“But you said this depends on how successful
I
am, so apparently my actions dictate how this...whatever it is...will affect both of us.”

“Correct.” He drew his lips into a tight, reflective grin. “I’ve been interested for some time in opening my own antiquities insurer company, but haven’t found enough interested backers. Fortunately, the CEO of Vanderbilt—an old friend of mine, we attended Cornell together—has offered me the helm of a new Vanderbilt division that will handle all high-end antiquities insurance policies. I’ll be building an elite team of appraisers, underwriters and fraud investigators whose focus will be to reduce claims fraud on our more valuable jewelry and antiquity items. Frankly, I haven’t been happy with most of our investigators—their sloppy work has resulted in Vanderbilt paying extraordinarily hefty claims without recovering insured items. But you, Frances, have a solid track record of solving cases. I’d like you to join my team as my first investigator, but...”

But what? He was giving her high praise one moment, then seeming critical of her the next. She held his gaze for an awkward moment or two, watching the sparkle go out of his light brown eyes until they reminded her of dead leaves.

“Spit it out, Charlie.”

She’d never spoken like that to her boss, but it was grating on her nerves he didn’t just speak his mind. She might tell white lies to her dad so he wouldn’t worry, fabricate stories and identities in the course of her investigative work, but sometimes the best way to deal with an issue was to put it out there.

As the violin music trilled in the background, Charlie stared hard at her, finally saying, “You can’t fail at this case.”

“Because you want to show Vanderbilt I have what it takes to be part of your elite group.”

“Correct.” He took another sip of champagne.

“I know how much Vanderbilt wants me to find those coins, Charlie, but there are never any guarantees. You know that.”

“I do. Just bring your A-game, Frances. That’s all I’m asking.”

Which brought up the issue she’d tossed and turned over last night. Sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., she’d finally dozed off, still torn about whether or not to make this request.

“I’m not sure I should investigate this one,” she said.

He frowned. “Why not?”

“It’s out of my league. I can bring my A-game, but it’s like asking a—” she listened to the violin warble “—a small-time fiddler to play first violin in an orchestra. You want me to find coins worth
millions
of dollars...but, Charlie, you seem to forget I was a teenage pickpocket who later lifted a few pieces of jewelry. My biggest theft was a diamond-and-ruby necklace worth eighteen grand retail,
and
I got caught.”

Charlie obviously saw her concern because his expression turned soft, almost apologetic. “Let’s table that discussion for a minute.”

She nodded.

“Speaking of that eighteen-grand necklace, you’ve almost paid off the restitution, right?”

“Almost.”

“I’m proud of you, Frances.”

She didn’t feel any pride over what she’d learned these past five years, but she definitely felt humbled.

It hadn’t been easy paying the restitution. Besides the cost of the necklace, the court tacked on their case-processing fees, plus an assessment for the victims’ compensation fund, which brought her financial obligation to just over $22,700. A hefty payoff considering her fence, a pawnbroker named Rock Star, paid her only $4,500 for the necklace, the standard 25 percent going rate.

At first she’d felt sorry for herself for getting into that mess. Then one day her probation officer called and said the victim, a woman named Leona, who’d recently lost her daughter in Afghanistan, wanted to meet her. Frances had balked, anxious about facing Leona’s justified anger, especially as the necklace had never been recovered.

Her mother, in the last weeks of her life, although Frances and her dad didn’t know it at the time, simply said,
You owe it to her.

The following week, Frances had sat in a spacious, airy living room, eating chocolate cookies with Leona, a plump, fiftyish woman with eyes the color of water. She didn’t get angry. Didn’t mention the necklace, either. Instead, she talked for two hours about her daughter, Dena, who’d played the flute, raised bees and dreamed of being a veterinarian. She never mentioned Dena’s death, only said she’d joined the army to help pay for her college.

Later, Frances thought how she’d gone to Leona’s so the woman could yell and vent her justified rage. Instead Frances received something far greater. Forgiveness.

“But you weren’t caught
stealing
that necklace,” Charlie continued, “which is commendable.”

Frances was surprised he’d used the word
commendable
about her theft. For all Charlie’s education, sometimes he had the depth of a puddle.

“It was the fence that snitched you out, right?” he said pleasantly, as though this were a light, inconsequential conversation.

“The buyer of the necklace coughed up my fence’s name to the police, who in turn coughed up mine.” Loyalty among thieves.

“Which is my point—you’ve never been caught in the act,” he said, “because you’re good at what you do. Which our mystery Russian recognized after watching your brilliant audition on the surveillance feed.”

The waiter returned with her Baby Bellini, poured more champagne for Charlie and informed them their food would be served shortly.

After he left, Charlie said, “You’re not
out
of your league, Frances—you’re stepping
up
to it.”

As he paused to take another sip of champagne, she tasted her Baby Bellini, enjoying its peachy fizz, thinking she should call Leona and ask how her bee farm was going.

“Was the Russian at his office this morning?” Charlie set down his drink.

“Don’t know. Oleg was in the front area, working on a computer, but the other doors were closed.”

“Did Oleg discuss your work there?”

“Just to be there Monday morning around nine and to ask for him.”

“Oleg,” he mused, “is a very savvy hacker if he’s breaking into a government facial-recognition database. If the feds were to nail him, he could spend up to ten years in prison.”

“These people don’t leave electronic tracks.”

“No, they get caught after doing something stupid, like leaving behind a half-eaten sandwich covered with DNA.”

A famously stupid mistake in one of the largest jewel heists in history. After several years of rigorous planning, a brilliant jewel thief named Leonardo Notarbartolo executed a meticulous break-in of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre and its supposedly impregnable vault. Afterward, he tossed his half-eaten sandwich, along with receipts for some of the break-in tools, in a farmer’s field near the scene of the crime. The farmer called the police, angry people were dumping trash on his property, and read them the information on the receipts, which the police recognized to be the tools used at the crime. After running a DNA analysis on the sandwich, they identified Notarbartolo, who spent several years in prison, although he never divulged the whereabouts of the diamonds.

Cases like that taught investigators to never dismiss seemingly unconnected leads. That the jewelry was never located wasn’t a surprise, however, as in nearly half of such thefts, the gold would be melted and the gems recut.

Which made intact historical jewelry pieces, such as the Helena Diamond necklace and the fifth-century-BC coins, all the more valuable.

“Think the big man’s from Saint Petersburg?” Charlie asked.

“Chocolates were from there, but that doesn’t mean he is. Saw a name—Dmitri Romanov—on the envelope I delivered this morning to Braxton.... Apparently that’s the name he goes by, but I don’t know...could be an alias, too.”

“I don’t think we know enough about him. What else did you notice?”

“I’ve gone over and over our meeting in my head. He wore no jewelry, had no visible scars from what I could see, but the lighting was dim in the limo. I described that other set of Georgian earrings at Fortier’s in my email—learn anything about them?”

“The slight blue cast of the diamonds is unusual, but there’s no record of their theft.”