You've Got Male (11 page)

In response to his question, she spared a moment to give him a complete once-over, from the top of his blond head to the tip of his black loafers and back again. But as hard as he tried to discern a reaction in her expression—and it bugged the hell out of him that he even cared about her reaction—he couldn’t detect a single change in her features.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t see a briefcase full of disguises.” Her smile turned indulgent again. “In fact, if it weren’t for the suit, I would have pegged you as a Boy Scout selling tickets to the jamboree.”

Tanner smiled back, sarcastically he hoped. “Well, golly gee, Ms. Nesbitt, the jamboree’s not till summer. But could I maybe interest you in some band candy?”

Her smile fell some. “So you know my name is Nesbitt,” she said. “Though I don’t suppose that was especially hard to figure out with me heading up to the front door, was it?”

“Yep, I know your name,” he confirmed readily. “I know more about you than you probably realize.”

It was more than she’d be comfortable with, too, Tanner thought. But unlike some people, he didn’t get off on making others feel uneasy, so he’d just keep it to himself. Unless, you know, she asked. In which case he probably could lower himself to making her feel edgy. Why should he be the only one? Of course, there were a lot more interesting ways to put a woman on edge than by saying things to her. There were lots of things he could
do
that would accomplish that, too. Not that he necessarily wanted to do this woman. Uh, do
anything
to this woman, he quickly corrected himself. Probably. Maybe.

“Is that a fact?” she said, smiling the peeing-terrier smile again.

“Yep,” Tanner said. “I also know your age. And it’s ten years more than the twenty-nine you tell people,” he added, leaning in to deliberately invade her space and totally forgetting about that arm’s-length business. “That would be your sister who’s twenty-nine,” he said. “Your
younger
sister. Avery.”

Mostly Tanner said all that because…well, just because, that was why. And it was a good reason, too, dammit. If Carly Nesbitt wanted to compete with him on the annoying scale, he was right there with her.

“And I know your phone number,” he continued, “even though it’s unlisted and harder to find than mismatched shoes and handbag at a Junior League function. And I know that you’ve never been married. What I didn’t know—before today, I mean—was why. And I know that, in lieu of earning an honest living, you spend your time going to parties where you inveigle men who have more dollars than sense to give you lots of money and make promises for more. For a good cause,” he hastened to add.

There. Take that, Ms. Carly Nesbitt of the East Hampton Nesbitts who had doubtless stiffed at least one SoHo bartender in her time.

By the time he finished, her mouth had flattened into a tight line and her eyes had narrowed. “Well, my, my, my. Someone has been doing his homework. And do you know my bra size, too?” she asked caustically.

This time Tanner was the one to give Carly a good once-over, but he lingered over her midsection since, hell, she’d asked for it. Not sure what possessed him to do it, he took a single step forward, bringing his body within inches of hers. And then, since she’d also asked for it, however indirectly, he dipped a hand under each side of her open leather motorcycle jacket. At no time did he touch her body. But he pushed the garment open to give himself a better view of the part of her anatomy to which she had directed his gaze, since, in case he hadn’t mentioned it, she’d asked for it. When he finally glanced at her face again, it was to find Carly Nesbitt blushing.

And just like that, he felt the upper hand slip firmly back into his grasp.

“Thirty-six C,” he said with confidence as he withdrew his hands and let her jacket fall back into place. “Though it fits a bit more snugly than you’d like, doesn’t it?”

Her lips parted in surprise, as if she couldn’t believe he’d just spoken to her the way he had. To be honest, Tanner couldn’t believe it, either. He wasn’t usually a jerk with women. He liked women a lot and he was generally a pretty easygoing guy. But something in Carly Nesbitt brought out the worst in him.

His annoyance with himself compounded when she pulled her jacket closed, her cheeks stained with what he told himself must be anger and couldn’t possibly be embarrassment. He started to apologize, then stopped himself. Maybe it would be better if she just went on thinking the worst of him. Because something about her discomfort made him think better of her.

Awkwardly she extended his ID toward him, and Tanner tucked it back into his coat pocket.

“My sister doesn’t live here anymore,” she said, still not looking at him. “And she isn’t expected. Not today. Not ever. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Gillespie, my mother and father
are
expecting
me
for dinner.”

“They’re expecting your sister, too,” Tanner said flatly. “She’s due anytime. And they’re expecting me, as well, since I’m one of the agents assigned to keep an eye on her.”

That got Carly’s attention again, and she returned her gaze to his. But only long enough to slip her wraparound sunglasses on over her eyes, after which Tanner saw nothing more of what she was thinking.

“What’s she done now?” she demanded.

“Actually she was kind of an innocent bystander in the situation,” Tanner said.

“What’s she done?” Carly repeated.

“She’s helping us catch a very bad person.”

That made Carly’s mouth twitch. But all she said was, “I see.”

Obviously the elder Nesbitts hadn’t clued their other children in to what was going on, in spite of having been alerted early that morning to the situation. Tanner wondered why not. Yes, OPUS had rushed this operation into production, but there had still been time for the family to be made aware of what was going on. All of them were in town and all of them had telephones. And cell phones. And e-mail. And PDAs. And BlackBerrys. And every other damned device engineered to keep people hooked up to every damned thing in the universe every damned minute of the day.

But Tanner saw no reason why he couldn’t alert Carly Nesbitt to the situation, since she was living in the house where the situation would be unfolding. “My agency has made arrangements with your parents to house Avery here for her own safety while the investigation is under way,” he said.

That made Carly chuckle out loud. “Her own safety,” she echoed.

Tanner nodded.

“How long will this investigation last?” she asked. “And how exactly did Avery get involved in the first place?”

“I’m not at liberty to discuss the particulars of an ongoing investigation,” he said, assuming his no-nonsense OPUS agent voice that people knew not to question.

“Oh, great.
Now
what’s she done?”

Well,
most
people knew not to question his no-nonsense OPUS agent voice. Tanner sighed. Slowly, deliberately, he repeated, “I’m not. At liberty. To discuss. The particulars. Of an ongoing. Investigation.”

Carly stared at him through the black lenses of her sunglasses and offered not one iota as to what she was thinking. “Fine,” she said. “And I. Can’t invite. Strangers. Into. My house. Jerk.”

With that, she jingled the keys she had by now fished out of her purse, turned her back on Tanner quite literally and let herself into the house. Then—it went without saying—she slammed the door in his face. Leaving Tanner to think something along the lines of how it was going to be a long investigation. Too long, in fact.

And about how maybe he was going to have to tame the Nesbitt shrew after all.

S
HE WAS COMING HOME
.

That thought more than any other circled around in Carly Nesbitt’s head as she pressed her entire body back against the front door. She splayed her hands open wide against it, as if it were going to be not her little sister but the big, bad wolf himself huffing and puffing on the other side.

Then again…

But even remembering Tanner Gillespie’s silky golden hair and midnight-blue eyes and those oh-my-God good looks couldn’t quite pull Carly’s thoughts away from Avery.

There. She’d thought her sister’s name even if she still couldn’t bring herself to speak it aloud. But even thinking it felt weird after all these years. A decade. That was how long it had been since Carly had seen her sister. Her last glimpse of Avery had been on a television set with the sound turned down low so that no one would know she was watching it. Her parents had forbidden Carly and her brother from watching any coverage of Avery’s trial. But that hadn’t kept Carly, at least, from seeing every second of it. And when CNN had carried Avery’s sentencing live, she couldn’t have stayed away from the TV any more than she could have stopped the sun from rising the next day.

She remembered feeling sick to her stomach as she’d waited for the judge’s announcement, remembered marveling at Avery’s sedate demeanor in the courtroom. Not once in her life had Carly seen her sister express any emotion that wasn’t extreme, from exuberance to desolation. There had certainly never been a sedate. Avery had been the talk of East Hampton when they were growing up, unlike Carly, who had always tried to do the right thing and been completely overlooked when achieving it. But then, how could anyone notice her when Avery was just so…out there?

The day her sentence came down, though, Carly would have bet the entire Nesbitt fortune that Avery was wishing she was the one who’d always been overlooked. But what the hell had she expected, sabotaging half the planet the way she had? That they’d let her off with a warning, as her father had done time and time again? That she’d trip away happily to wreak havoc another day, as she always had in East Hampton? Not bloody likely. Not when she’d pissed off the Pope. Not to mention Greenland.

Nevertheless, when the judge sentenced Avery to ten years in prison, Carly had felt as if someone hit her with a brick. She recalled how her sister’s entire body had gone limp at the words, how her attorneys had each grabbed one arm and pulled her back to standing. Carly’s little sister. The international criminal mastermind. It had been a coup de grâce to crown the empire of pandemonium Avery had spent her life creating.

After Carly had turned off the TV, she’d done her best to put thoughts of Avery out of her mind. She wasn’t a member of the family anymore, that was what their father kept saying. Avery had finally gone too far, had overstepped the bounds of Nesbittdom—which admittedly stretched pretty damned far, Carly knew. They would never speak of her again. That was what her father decreed. He relegated his youngest offspring to the netherworld of slurs to polite society, where also dwelled things like income taxes, domestic wines, Third World countries and the Democratic Party. Just like those heinous things, they would pretend Avery didn’t exist. And as had always been the case in the Nesbitt household, Desmond Nesbitt’s word was law.

Over the years Carly had done pretty well not thinking about her sister. Holidays were the hardest to get through, but since Avery’s estrangement from the family, holidays had been easier in a way, too. Certainly they’d been more peaceful. Ultimately Carly and Desi Jr. had won more of their parents’ attention, more of their parents’ favor, more of their parents’ affection—such as it was. And with Avery gone, the family’s social standing in the community had slowly risen again. Once it could be guaranteed that one could invite the Nesbitts to a gathering without incident or embarrassment, more invitations had been extended. And accepted. And enjoyed. Over the years the Nesbitt name had lost its tarnish and turned to silver again. Not that it was sterling yet, not quite. But with Avery out of the picture, it would eventually return to its original peerless status.

Now Avery was coming back. And Tanner Gillespie was going to be keeping an eye on her. Well, wasn’t that just like her little sister to command every last scrap of attention?

Avery, who had
always
had to do things
her
way. In preschool, she’d sabotaged the sandboxes, insisting the sand should be allowed to roam free. In elementary school, she’d painted rainbows in shades of gray, declaring they shouldn’t be defined by their color. In junior high, she’d run for student council president on the Communist Party ticket, promising to abolish school tuition and open exclusive Brenner Academy to all. And in high school, when all the other girls—like Carly ten years earlier—made their debuts in lovely white designer dresses and diamond-studded tiaras, Avery had shown up for her coming out in basic black. Army fatigues. And tank top. And beret. And combat boots. And a button that said Anarchy is for Lovers.

It hadn’t gone over well with their parents.

Or East Hampton in general.

But all of those things had been forgiven. As had the time Avery sneaked onto the Abernathys’ property in the middle of the night to “Free the Thoroughbreds!” a movement which—go figure—nobody else in the Hamptons had embraced. And she’d also been forgiven—eventually—for the “Embrace Your Inner Nudist” episode at the Dorseys’ Fourth of July barbecue. And also for the Libertarian Party fund-raiser she hosted at home on her eighteenth birthday—without her parents’ permission or knowledge…until it was too late—that featured the punk sounds of Shagmore Hiney and the Blisters.