Laura's Big Break (24 page)

As the world faded to black, he thought he saw a playboy bunny leaning over him. Her smile was feral. A mane of wavy auburn hair dangled tantalisingly in front of him. He almost drooled at the sight of her long creamy legs as he began to sway.

“That’s for breaking into my house, numbnuts,” she said, before she pushed him backwards.

He hit the old veranda with a thud.

His last thought, before the lights went out, was that she had the craziest green eyes he had ever seen.

Jack lost consciousness with a smile on his face.

“Wake up.”

Words were nudging at the back of his head. It was proving difficult to open his eyes. He thought he heard footsteps.

“Wake up you stinking thief,” a woman commanded.

Silence and then - what the hell? Jack shot upwards as icy cold water hit his face, only to find he couldn’t sit up. He spluttered and coughed. It all came back to him as soon as he spotted the playboy bunny smiling down at him.

“Are you trying to kill me?” he demanded.

“I’m trying to make sure I didn’t kill you. You’ve been out for quite some time.”

“Yeah, a blow to the head will do that to you.”

He moved his hand towards his face and didn’t make it. His head snapped round to see what the problem was. He could feel the blood vessels in his neck begin to throb.

“You tied me up?”

“Of course I tied you up. What did you think I was going to do with you?”

Her tone implied that he was the idiot in this scenario.

“You need to untie me. You need to let me go.” He used the voice that intimidated lifelong felons.

It had no effect on her.

“Not until we’ve had a little chat.”

She put the empty jug on the old rattan coffee table. Jack struggled against four brightly coloured pieces of silk. She’d tied him between the old posts on the veranda. He was lying spread-eagled looking up at her. Under other circumstances it would have been fun. His eyes narrowed as he wondered if they’d take his years with Brighton Police Force into consideration while sentencing him for murder.

“Stop struggling, those scarves were expensive. I don’t want them ruined on the wooden floor.”

“Yeah, the scarves are my main worry too.”

She took a deep breath. It seemed she was considering something.

“Listen.” She crouched beside him. “I’m not going to call the police, but I want to make sure that you won’t come back here again. What do you say? I’ll let you go, and you promise to go rob somewhere else?”

He blinked several times. She wasn’t calling the police? His instincts went on to high alert. Why wasn’t she calling the police? What did she have to hide? What was she up to? If she didn’t want the police snooping around, then he definitely did. Although, he had to admit, the thought of his old colleagues seeing him in his current predicament wasn’t that thrilling.

“What makes you think that I won’t rip off your pretty little head as soon as you free me?”

Once the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. He’d been so close to freedom and had to blow it with logic. He could see her tiny brain tick over. She hadn’t thought of that. She flopped into one of the lopsided rattan chairs.

“Let me go,” Jack said reasonably, “and we’ll talk about this like adults.”

“Well, I can’t do that now, can I? Not when you said you might rip my head off. Honestly. I was about to let you go. If you’d kept your mouth shut we wouldn’t be in this mess. Now I have to think of an alternative plan.”

She bit her lip as she drummed her long purple nails on the arm of the chair. In the back of his mind Jack knew that one day this would be funny. One day. Not now.

“How about I promise not to harm you and you untie me?”

“Why should I trust you? You were breaking into my house.”

His jaw clenched.

“It’s my house, lady.”

His crazy tenant leaned forward and rested her forearms on her knees. She pointed a long fingernail at him.

“See, it’s that attitude that led you into a life of crime. You can’t go around thinking other people’s stuff belongs to you. It’s just…” She cast around for the right word. “Rude,” she said at last.

Jack stared in disbelief at her perfect oval face, with its cat-like green eyes and bow shaped lips, and knew, with certainty, that she was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

“I inherited this house,” he said in the voice he used to disarm drugged up teenagers.

“You can’t have, the landlady isn’t dead.”

“You need to read your mail more often.”

He nodded towards the pile of unopened bills stacked inside the front door.

His captor tottered over to the letters and flicked through them. She discarded most of them, but ripped open a cream envelope. Her shoulders slumped. He almost smiled.

“This doesn’t say anything about the new owner, just that he’ll be in touch.”

He smirked.

“Consider this in touch.”

“How do I know it’s you? There’s no name.”

His head was throbbing and it wasn’t just from the blow it had taken.

“Call the lawyer. Ask him the name.”

She did as she was told and got an answer machine. She left a message before coming back to crouch beside him.

“Look,” she said reasonably. “I can’t let you go without proof, the lawyer isn’t there and there isn’t anyone I can call to stop you from ripping my head off if I free you. Any ideas?”

“The first one that springs to mind is intensive psychiatric treatment,” he said tightly. “You need some serious help.”

Her oval eyes narrowed.

“I guess we wait until the lawyer calls back.”

She stood up on shoes that were so high they were practically stilts.

“Wait,” Jack said. “I have one more idea.”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. Don’t do it, he told himself, it’s a stupid idea.

“Put your hand in my pocket and pull out my wallet and phone,” he said, against his better judgement.

Her eyes flicked to the front of his jeans. Her pink tongue darted out to wet her lips as her face paled.
Oh no. Not now.
Jack shook his head at himself as all the blood in his body rushed to the one place he didn’t want it to go.

“You want me to go in there?”

She pointed at his jeans, just as the blood arrived at ground zero. He closed his eyes briefly. There was humiliating - and then there was this. They were in new territory. He’d been assaulted and tied up by a page-three model and now it looked like he was trying to play kinky games. He knew the minute she registered his physical reaction to her. Her cheeks flushed.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she told him.

“It’s either that or free my hand so that I can get to my phone.”

She sucked her lip again, which didn’t help matters any. For the first time in his life he cursed the fact his body was on a separate circuit board from his brain. This was not the time to get horny. At last she spoke.

“Which pocket?”

She looked him in the eye and he knew. Beneath the bravado was fear. Fear, and if he wasn’t mistaken, a hefty dose of attraction.

He let out a slow breath. At least that levelled the playing field a little.

“Left,” he said as evenly as he could.

She took a deep breath, which made her ample cleavage rise and fall. His mouth went dry. This had to be the most insane situation he’d ever been in.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll get the phone and your wallet.” She pointed at him. “Don’t go getting any ideas.”

There was absolutely no point in denying his physical state. It was there for the world to see.

“This is not for you,” he told her. “I’ve got a thing for old Gothic houses.”

She flicked her eyes to the front of his jeans then threw back her head and laughed. Against the odds he found himself smiling along with her.

“Well, tying you to the porch was a bad idea then,” she said as she knelt beside him.

“Yes ma’am.” He nodded solemnly. “It’s the carved detail and stained glass windows that send me over the edge.”

Her cheeks flushed again. She paused briefly.

“I’m sorry this is so weird,” she said.

And something shifted within his chest. Suddenly it didn’t matter that he was tied to the veranda, or that his head thumped out a rumba rhythm, or that he’d been knocked out by his tenant. She blinked and the moment shattered. He sucked in air. Obviously he’d long since stopped thinking with his brain. As she reached towards his pocket, he grimaced. Yep, the control centre for his thoughts had run south, all right. As her fingers gently slid into his pocket, he stopped thinking all together.

This was insane. And yet, she was doing it. This was exactly the kind of situation that made Davina’s parents despair. She didn’t know why crazy things kept happening to her. They just did. And trying to lead an ordinary, quiet life only seemed to make things worse. She shook her head a little. Now wasn’t the time to wonder why she wasn’t normal. Right now she had to concentrate on the fact that she had her hand in the pocket of jeans belonging to a strange man. Jeans he was still wearing.

“Goodness, these are tight,” she muttered, as she tried to get a grip on his phone without actually touching him.

He grunted.

“I don’t usually do this sort of thing,” she told him.

For a brief minute she wasn’t sure what she was explaining exactly - the fact she’d knocked him out and tied him up, or the fact she was rooting around in his trousers.

“I mean, I don’t usually hit people. Hardly ever. And not without provocation.”

Her fingers touched leather. She angled herself further over the gorilla’s body to get a grip on the wallet. Seriously. Who wore their jeans this tight?

“I hope I didn’t do any permanent damage. I just wanted you to stop breaking into my house.” She looked down at him. “You understand, right?”

His dark eyes stared up at her.

“Sweetheart, you have your cleavage in my face and your hand down my trousers. There is nothing about this I understand.”

Davina jerked back from him, pulling out the wallet. His face was as red as hers felt. The air between them seemed warmer and she was aware of every tiny movement he made.

“Got it,” she said triumphantly, and to her disgust, rather breathlessly.

“Look at the ID,” he said through gritted teeth.

She flicked the wallet open. There he was, strained and serious, glaring at her from his driver’s licence.

“This is a terrible picture,” she told him.

“Yeah, I was worried sick about what you’d think of my photo ID.”

“Jack Miller, thirty six, that’s all it tells me.”

She flicked through the rest of the wallet. Four credit cards, one library card, which surprised her as he didn’t look the type that read, and one video card. Twenty pounds and change, and a condom that expired in the 90’s.

“This is out of date,” she told him before she could stop herself.

“I don’t intend to use it. It’s my lucky condom.”

“How can it be lucky if you can’t get lucky with it?”

Honestly, the man was an idiot. She thought she heard him gnashing his teeth.

“How is this supposed to help me?” She waved the wallet in front of him. “There is nothing in here that says you own this house.”

His sharp jaw clenched as his head turned slowly on a neck that was thicker than her thigh.

“Get the phone. I want you to call Brighton Police and ask for a friend of mine, Andy Harper. He’ll tell you the truth.”

“You have a friend in the police?” Her voice went into high-pitched Betty Boop territory, which she knew wasn’t attractive.

His eyes narrowed.

“I was police. Eighteen years. Drug division. Brighton.”

Davina gulped as everything within her ran around in a panic. She flicked her eyes towards the house. He’d almost gotten in. She flicked her eyes back to him. She’d hit a policeman?

“It isn’t so entertaining now is it?” he asked drolly.

Davina straightened her back.

“I’m not taking your word for any of this.”

“Then get the phone.”

“It’s not in there.”

He looked skyward.

“Well, try the other pocket.”

Davina swallowed hard as she looked at his other pocket and tried not to look anywhere else. She shrugged wearily - in for a penny, in for a pound. Things couldn’t get any weirder, right? She reached across his body to the other pocket.

As soon as she started to root around, she knew it was a huge mistake. She should have walked around his body instead of leaning over him. She could feel his breath on her neck. If he strained upwards, she would be touching his chest. Her skin began to tingle at the thought of it. No. No. NO. Do not get distracted. Her fingers touched the phone and she dug in deeper to get it. Jack let out a strangled groan. Davina stilled. Slowly, with her right hand still in his pocket, she turned towards his face. He seemed to be in pain.