His Hot Number Read online

  Linn could feel the heat from his body

  When he moved the hooks of her dress aside and she felt the waistband loosen, goose bumps tiptoed from her waist to her shoulder.

  “I know you’re not cold,” Kellan whispered behind her. “It’s seventy-five degrees outside. I’m still waiting for your answer.”

  “You know how I feel about you.”

  “I want to hear it.”

  He slipped the dress off her shoulders. “I can’t resist you,” she confessed. “I should, but I can’t.” The red silk whispered down her legs.

  “Who says you should? Work is a long way away. There’s no one here but us.”

  When she turned to him, she was naked except for her panties. Her gaze traveled up his trousers and paused on the ridge of his erection under the fine wool.

  “This isn’t fair. You have more clothes on than I do.”

  In seconds he’d taken care of that little problem….

  Dear Reader,

  These days, having a relationship with someone you work with is fairly common. I married my boss, so I consider myself an authority on the subject! But in the law enforcement community, having a relationship on the job can be a difficult and sometimes dangerous thing. Then again, when you really want something, the rewards are often worth the risks, aren’t they? When writing Linn and Kellan’s story, I used a lot of my own experience from the years when I worked as support staff for law enforcement. For instance, the opening scene in the glass interrogation room was based on the undercover calls I was often directed to make.

  I’m thrilled to be part of the Blaze line, joining authors whose work I’ve read for years. It’s a chance for me to push my own envelope as well as that of romance fiction. Come visit me at www.shannonhollis.com, learn about my book plans and meet the cover model who was the inspiration for Kellan Black!

  Warmly,

  Shannon Hollis

  Books by Shannon Hollis

  HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

  931-—HER PRIVATE EYE

  HIS HOT NUMBER

  Shannon Hollis

  For Jeff, with love

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank the female police officers and FBI agents who so generously lent me their time and expertise but who, for the sake of their investigations, declined to be named. Thanks also go to Karolyn, Jenny and Mara for careful reading and good suggestions, and as always, to my editor, Jennifer Green, for her hard work and keen eye.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  1

  JUST HER LUCK—she was a phone-sex virgin.

  State investigator Linn Nichols sat alone in a modified glass-walled interrogation room that contained the secure phone line nicknamed the “hot number.” The undercover investigators always had their targets call that line, whose number was changed for every new operation. It was always answered by someone who had been briefed on what to say, and the conversations were always recorded.

  Half a dozen men stood at the windows watching her, probably already planning how they were going to tell the guys on swing shift about this when they got in. It wasn’t every day that a female investigator transferred into the narcotics division of the California Law Enforcement Unit, much less one who had agreed to give them this kind of entertainment on a Wednesday morning.

  She might have earned her stripes with the covert ops unit of the Santa Rita PD, but she was an unknown entity to these guys. Too bad she couldn’t have proved herself in some other way.

  She couldn’t think about her audience. Right now it was just Linn and Rick O’Reilly, the West Coast’s slipperiest cocaine importer, on the phone, all alone.

  All she had to do was make him believe.

  No problem. “Fake it till you make it.” That was the mantra in narcotics. If she wasn’t exactly sure how to fake a seduction over the phone, she’d figure it out in the next ten minutes, or die of embarrassment trying.

  The tallest of the men who were ranged along the glass nudged the guy beside him without taking his eyes off her. She was only a rookie with a grand total of one State of California paycheck to her credit, which was probably why she hadn’t seen him before. Unlike the others, he didn’t wear an identification badge on a clip. He couldn’t be a civilian, though—he had too good a rapport with the other investigators. And he definitely wasn’t a lawyer. With the confident stance of someone who had taken on the worst the streets had to offer—and beaten it—he shook back the hair that brushed his shoulders.

  And what shoulders they were, too. The black Aerosmith concert T-shirt stretched tight across his chest and wrapped around upper arms hard with muscle. The T-shirt was tucked into a pair of worn jeans that hugged him and invited a woman to stroke him where the fabric was faded and soft at his hip, thigh and fly.

  With a start she realized she was staring at his crotch, and worse, he’d caught her at it. One corner of his mouth lifted in a half grin.

  That did it. Linn focused on the scratched wood tabletop and tried to channel her energy into making up a character. It wasn’t that she could feel him watching her, or that she couldn’t drag in enough oxygen to stop the erratic pounding of her heart, or that, despite her jacket and jeans, she was freezing.

  She had to do this right. The team was counting on her to get them the information they needed, and she couldn’t let some buff biker type and his nudging and smiling distract her.

  When the phone rang, Nudge-and-Smile shifted his weight to the other foot. She took a deep breath and put her head down on her arm along the tabletop. She’d heard once that the differing tensions on the throat changed the sound of the voice when the body was horizontal. She hoped it was true. She needed to sound tousled and sleepy—a woman ripe for pillow talk.

  Allowing her lips to soften into a pout, Linn relaxed her shoulders and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” Her voice was a seductive whisper, as if she’d been awakened by the phone. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the operator give the thumbs-up, and the men leaned in to listen to the recording equipment outside the room. Nudge-and-smile crossed his arms and narrowed his gaze.

  There was a pause while the suspect on the other end of the line adjusted. He hadn’t been expecting her. The call had been set up between him and an operative known on the streets as “Dean,” a guy whose identity was so secret Linn didn’t yet know which of the investigators he was.

  “Well, hi. Who’s this?”

  “Caroline.” Linn injected the rounded vowels of Kensington W8 into her voice, gleaned from an exchange term spent at Oxford studying the history of justice administration. “And who is this?”

  “Rick. Dean didn’t tell me about any Carolines. Now I know why.”

  “Oh?” she purred, as if she already knew the answer, as if men were in the habit of keeping her their dirty little secret.

  “Because he knows what a sucker I am for a pretty voice.”

  “Don’t you mean face?” You scumball charmer, you.

  “Voice for now. Face, maybe later. Like when Dean lets you out in public so I can buy you a drink.”

  “There is no let. If I want to have a drink with you, darling, I will.”

  “You shouldn’t talk to strangers that way.”

  “You’re no stranger…Richard.”

  Suspicion leaked into his voice. “How come I haven’t met you?�
��

  She was going to have to tread carefully here, while doing her best to sound ingenuous. “I only arrived this week.”

  “Dean never said anything.”

  “Does he share his love life with you? Oooh, I’m either going to have to be very, very careful or very, very bad. Which would you prefer?”

  She’d taken him aback a second time, judging by his pause. Hard to believe when you considered the element he hung around with.

  She glanced up and locked gazes with nudge-and-smile. Why was he staring at her as if she were a lock and he had a handful of picks?

  “I like a bad girl who’s very, very careful.”

  Rick’s voice sounded in her ear—and on the tape—and she dragged her attention back to him. “I’m always careful. So much so that you probably don’t know we have a mutual friend.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Hidalgo Martinez sends his regards from Acapulco. He has a new house there. I visited last winter.”

  “No kidding.” He stopped. “Was that before or after he got busted?”

  “Before, unfortunately.” She sighed with regret. “It was such a lovely house.”

  But if O’Reilly contacted Martinez, who had been one of his distributors and was out on bail in Miami while he waited for his trial, he’d find that Martinez would corroborate her story. He’d “flipped” and given CLEU a ton of information—not to mention agreed to back up her cover story—in exchange for a reduction in his charges.

  “Thanks for the message. Hidalgo’s a good guy.”

  “Dean’s told me you are, too.”

  “Oh, yeah? What did he say?”

  She stretched a little more, giving herself a moment to synthesize the information in the case file into something she could use for an answer. “Oh, just that you’re one of the smart ones who can do business without bringing a lot of attention to yourself. Unlike poor Hidalgo.”

  In other words, Rick O’Reilly had managed to weasel out of so many charges that they called him “Tricky Ricky.” It helped that he had one of the best defense attorneys in the State on his payroll, and for all they knew, a couple of deputy D.A.s, as well.

  “Dean said that?” He sounded pleased. Was Dean’s opinion important to him in some way? Or was it merely the competitive posturing of a pair of alpha males? Linn wished she knew more. She filed the information in the Rolodex in her brain in case she needed it later.

  “Absolutely. But you should ask him, not me.”

  “I can think of other things to ask you. Like where you are right now, pretty lady. And what you’re wearing.”

  Oh, God, the guy was a walking, talking cliché. “What makes you suppose I’m wearing anything?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes.” She pretended disappointment at having to confess it. “A little Dior camisole I picked up the last time I was in Paris. Silk.”

  “What color?”

  “Red.”

  “Does Dean like it?”

  “He likes me better without it.”

  “I bet I would, too. What are you doing Saturday night?”

  “Mmm.” She stretched along the table, like a woman reluctant to get out of bed. “Why don’t I call you back when I’m decent and I know I’m alone?”

  “I like you indecent. Take off the cami-thing. Touch yourself. Tell me what it feels like.”

  “Bad boy.”

  “I can be very bad. Come on. Take it off. We can be bad together.”

  The giggle felt foreign in her throat. “How bad?”

  She practically sensed his chest swelling over the line, and resisted the urge to roll her eyes in case he detected the contempt in her voice.

  “What if I told you I could give you the baddest night of your life? Not just now, but later. When I’ve got you all alone.”

  Do not groan. Do not even think about laughing. To lose the urge to giggle, she glanced at the window again. Nudge-and-smile hadn’t moved. In fact, now he leaned on the glass with one shoulder, arms still crossed, as if he were trying to get as close to her as he could without actually falling into the room. His head was tilted down a little, and he watched her with half-closed eyes. The heat in his expression intensified, and their gazes locked a second time.

  “Tell me more.” She wasn’t sure if she was talking to O’Reilly or the man at the window. In fact, she could no longer remember what she’d been saying to the dealer.

  That was bad. She had to pull it together.

  “How about a bottle of Glenlivet, a king-size bed and the hottest sex you’ve ever had?”

  “I’ve had some pretty hot sex, darling.” She said the words to the stranger behind the glass. His shoulders stiffened, and he blinked. She felt mesmerized by that gaze, oddly split between the real man she could see and the one she could only hear.

  “Not like this. How about I throw in some spectacular blow? I’ve got good connections and I’m more than willing to share.”

  “Ooh, now that changes everything.” She hardly knew what she was saying. “I could be talked into a blow of a different sort for that kind of fun.”

  “Yeah? You are a bad girl. But I forgive you. You do me, I do you, and then we’ll do the blow together.”

  What? She broke eye contact with the man at the window, whose jaw had gone slack. Here she was on her maiden voyage into the world of phone sex with not one man, but two. How weird was that? She needed to get things back on track in a hurry, before this went any further and her hard-won reputation as a professional and a fine investigator went down faster than a ten-dollar trick.

  “Do you know,” she murmured, “Dean will be back any minute, and I’d rather he didn’t listen in on my calls.” She paused. “Damn. This call was for him, wasn’t it?”

  “It’s yours now, baby. Just like me. I’ll meet you at the Dominion Hotel bar on Saturday. Nine o’clock. Wear something red on top of that cami-thing. I like red on bad girls.”

  “Bother,” she sighed. “That means I’ll have to lose Dean. On a Saturday night it won’t be easy. Give me your number, darling, in case I can’t change my plans.”

  She held her breath. Here was the whole reason she’d been directed to make this call. Good thing she’d remembered to do it.

  He dictated it, and through the window, she watched her lieutenant pump his fist in the air in victory as the recording specialist contacted the phone company. Tricky Ricky used disposable cell phones and changed them every few days—one of the reasons CLEU had resorted to using a live investigator to get his number. Time to wind it up.

  “I’ve got to go. I just heard Dean’s car. I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll be waiting, sweet Caroline.”

  She dropped the receiver into its cradle and sat up, smoothing her dark hair into its easy-care French braid.

  At least the members of her team were no longer standing at the glass like johns at a peep show. They were making notes and huddling, getting ready for a fast trip to O’Reilly’s location, which they suspected was his safe house. Because of their joint-forces agreement with the phone company, whose state-of-the-art “E911” emergency tracking system could give them O’Reilly’s location within about fifty feet, once they had a number to work with, they no longer had to rely on inaccurate triangulation methods or even old-fashioned surveillance.

  For a while, at least, technology had put them one step ahead of the bad guys.

  Lieutenant Bryan pushed open the door and let in a welcome draft of fresh air. His navy ball cap said Get a CLEU in gold embroidery on the front. He pulled it off and fanned his face with it.

  “Good work, Nichols. The team ought to be able to pick him up this afternoon.” The lieutenant assessed her and rammed the cap back on. “There’s more to you than meets the eye, isn’t there? That English accent thing was great.”

  Did he mean she looked as if she weren’t capable of being sexy? She’d like to see him try a day as a woman in what most of the investigators still believed was a man’s profession. It
was dangerous; she wasn’t denying that. And the targets rarely, if ever, dealt with women, which was why there weren’t many female investigators. If she went a little overboard with the businesslike, cool exterior in the office, it was because she’d learned the hard way that it was best to start out looking as if you had the upper hand.

  Sometimes you even got it.

  “Picking him up is the plan,” the lieutenant went on briskly, “but if he gives us the slip, you’ve got his confidence. Stupid.”

  For a second Linn thought Bryan meant her, and she stiffened.

  “What kind of a wing nut would come right out and offer to meet a complete stranger? He’s either dumb as a box of rocks or has way too much self-confidence.” He shook his head and touched her shoulder. “Come on. I’m going to introduce you to the investigator heading up this case.”

  She followed him out of the glass room. Wasn’t Cooper Maxwell heading up the case? She’d been doing surveillance at his direction for the last week, and he’d been the one to assign the call to her.

  The investigators on the heroin and crack teams had scattered to their workstations in the bullpen now that the day’s show appeared to be over. As Bryan led her deeper into the cubicles, she saw nudge-and-smile hanging over a fabric-covered divider with both arms crossed on top of it, telling someone on the other side a story that involved him pointing the fingers of one hand like a pistol.

  Bryan was leading her straight to him.

  This was the case lead? She was going to have to take orders from a man who was not only oozing testosterone all over the cube, but the one to whom she’d just offered a blow job by proxy?

  She’d really done it. This man was technically her manager, and what kind of first impression would he have of her now? Every time he gave her an order or an assignment, he’d remember her stretched out and horizontal, propositioning a criminal. And she’d remember hot eyes and soft denim. They would hardly be able to say “good morning” to each other without thinking about sex.