His Hot Number Page 3

  He started to type. “File 04-0117.7/18, 10:00 hours.” He paused, then minimized the report and brought up the “compose” screen on his e-mail instead.

  To: lnichols@cleu.ca.gov

  From: kblack@cleu.ca.gov

  Re: shopping

  I’m betting Caroline doesn’t have anything appropriate to wear Saturday night. We’ve got to do this right. Pick you up tonight after work.

  Kell

  3

  LINN STARED AT HER E-MAIL. He bet she didn’t have anything sexy to wear, did he?

  She did so. She had a black-velvet cocktail dress that she’d not only worn on bodyguard duty at an embassy do here in San Francisco, but that she’d actually taken on a cruise once.

  It wasn’t red, though. And it sounded as though CLEU was catering to Rick O’Reilly’s horrible taste in women’s clothing for purposes of this investigation. Well, she didn’t have to cater to it. Caroline wouldn’t wear something just because some guy told her to. Caroline had a bit of spine.

  Linn would just make good and sure she was out of here when swing shift came in, and she’d take off and do something else instead of going home. Look as he might, Kellan Black wouldn’t be able to track her down.

  Because of course he’d try. Her profile was in the CLEU database, and a few keystrokes would tell him everything he wanted to know, including her address, how old she was, and how many years she’d spent in school. Confidential meant nothing to these guys. Breaking into the Human Resources computer files was finger practice, as commonplace as getting a cup of coffee. Easier. They didn’t even have to get up.

  In the underground parking lot, she scanned the unmarked vehicles that sat in a row separate from the investigators’ personal cars and trucks. Since CLEU was not a police department, they didn’t own marked cars, but the undercover cars were still equipped with hidden sirens and lights. The sporty, high-performance two-door that had appeared when Kellan did yesterday was gone.

  Linn unlocked her vehicle and got in. Shopping, indeed. Ha. He’d have to find her first.

  She made it to the first intersection past CLEU headquarters when he did.

  Directly behind her, a police siren blurted on, then off. When she ignored it, she heard it again, sustained long enough to get her attention. Linn glanced in the rearview mirror and saw him in the sports car the California taxpayers had provided him, large as life, grinning as he flipped the siren on and off like a rapper with a turntable. The flashing lights concealed in the grille blinked in time with the noise.

  Damn! She checked traffic on all sides, but there was no way to lose him, unless she wanted instant death by attempting a high-speed chase in the middle of the financial district. She drove into the parking lot of an espresso bar. By the time he pulled in beside her, she was leaning on the rear fender of her little hatchback SUV, arms crossed, waiting impatiently, as if she had something much more important to do and he was holding her up.

  His physicality was just as potent in the open air as it was in the office. She rested the backs of her knees against the bumper of her vehicle to ground herself with something solid.

  “Knocking off early?” he asked with an easy smile, settling against the back of his own car as if he had all the time in the world. “Going home to change?”

  “No,” she said. “I had plans this evening.”

  “Not a problem. Reschedule ’em.”

  “I will not.”

  “Come on, Linn. You’re my only hope. My only lead to O’Reilly. I told you, we have to do this right, and that means the right look and the right information.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of coming up with the right look. I’ve done this before, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. So what do you call the right look? Black velvet and pearls?”

  She felt a little nettled. “That’s what I had in mind, yes.”

  “Linn, this is California, not Boston.”

  “I know this is California. This is where I’ve had all my training. Your problem is, you don’t want me taking control, even with something as inconsequential as what I wear.”

  He gave her a narrow look. “I’m the case lead. You have a problem with me wanting control?”

  Uh-oh. He may look like every woman’s dream of a night of sin, but he had the same hierarchical mindset of every cop she’d ever known. The last thing she wanted was the ugly word insubordination in her performance evaluation.

  “Of course not.” She bit off the words with difficulty.

  “Then get over it. We’re going to get you a dress, and since the meet is day after tomorrow, we’re going now. Get on the horn and cancel your plans.”

  With an effort she didn’t care if he saw, she controlled her temper and spoke in a tone that was almost calm. “It’s all right. They weren’t firmed up anyway.”

  He accepted her words at face value. Evidently he was the kind of man who let bygones be bygones—once he’d gotten his own way.

  “Great. Leave your car at the office where it’s more secure and we’ll take Victor-21.”

  She doubted anybody would want to steal a five-year-old vehicle that didn’t even have power windows, but she did as he suggested.

  When she slid into the passenger seat of his car—call code Victor-21—he waited politely for her to buckle in before he gunned it up the ramp and out onto the street.

  She had never understood people with claustrophobia before, but now she got an inkling of what it was like to be trapped in a small space without enough air. She rolled the window down an inch, enough to let in the breeze off San Francisco Bay, flavored generously with exhaust fumes and the smell of frying fish.

  The guy took up way too much room. Or maybe it wasn’t just him. There was something in the air between them. Sexual awareness on her side. Oh, yeah. And what else? Challenge? Was this little excursion some kind of a test?

  If so, she was going to pass it. No problem. How hard could it be to find a dress that only a bad girl would wear?

  “So.” He piloted the car as if it were a fighter jet. “What kind of clothes does Caroline like?”

  “I have no idea,” Linn retorted a little acidly. “She didn’t exist before yesterday.”

  “Oh, I bet she did.” He gave her a sideways glance that hinted at drizzled chocolate and French kisses and things better left unmentioned in the daytime.

  She gave herself a shake. This had to stop. The guy had “catch the crook” on his mind, nothing more. She was projecting flirtation onto him because…well, because it was a better alternative than what she’d been thinking since yesterday, which was jumping on him.

  He leaned over to look into her face. “You okay?”

  Stop it, Nichols. She had no business dwelling so much on someone she’d known for two days. “Yes. I was just thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “About clothes.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes, that’s all,” she lied. “I’ll need something I can run in if I have to, which narrows down the field.”

  “You won’t need to run. The cover team and I will be there.”

  “You do your job, I’ll do mine. And if it makes me more comfortable to operate in clothes I can run in, I’ll do it.”

  “You can run in a miniskirt, right?”

  She gave up. He was not going to let her do this her way. “Yes,” she sighed.

  Fortunately for her patience and his immediate survival, they arrived at the mall. Within minutes she’d found a boutique that carried clothes that might be appropriate for picking up drug dealers, although the management probably wouldn’t thank her for saying so.

  “What’s your size?” Kellan studied a rack of dresses with an appraising eye.

  “Look, Kellan, I can find a red dress. How hard can it be?” Two salesgirls who looked about seventeen were descending on them. She had to get him out of here before he said something truly embarrassing. “Why don’t you go to the electronics store or something?”


  He glanced at her, one brow raised incredulously. “What for? I have a job to do here. For this op, you need to look classy, even if the next stop after the bar is the bedroom. So to speak.”

  She stared at him. “Bar. Bedroom. Class. Mutually exclusive.”

  “Nah. Not for Caroline. She can pull it off.”

  Naturally both salesgirls arrived in time to hear him. “A classy woman who can be convinced otherwise,” one of them said, and gave Linn an all-over inspection. “Sleek. Feminine. A woman with secrets. Is this for you or someone else?”

  Linn did not want to explain why her companion was referring to her in the third person. “For me.”

  “I want to see you in them.” Kellan pulled up a chair outside the dressing room and straddled it backward. “No hiding in the changeroom the way my sisters do, and saying everything makes you look fat.”

  Linn clamped her teeth together for the second time that day. If this kept up she was going to start sending him her dental bills.

  And the man had sisters. Funny, she’d been thinking of him as a solo act, isolated by the nature of his job. It seemed strange to think of him as someone with a family. Sisters were something they had in common, but his probably didn’t sneak into his room and borrow his clothes.

  Then again, maybe they did. She had a concert T-shirt somewhere in her T-shirt drawer herself. It was for Stevie Ray Vaughan, though, not Aerosmith.

  Linn hung up the dresses in the change room and got down to business. The first dress was about forty percent leather. The other sixty percent was…missing. She didn’t have to wear a bra with it, but the air-conditioning seeped under the leather in places air-conditioning didn’t usually go.

  “No on this one,” she informed him through the dressing room door.

  “Why not?” She heard the chair legs scrape the floor as he got up.

  “Don’t you dare!” She flung the door open and glared at him, and his critical gaze slid from shoulders to hem.

  Thank God for the leather. It hid her nipples, which were hardening under his perusal, and there was no way on earth she wanted him to know that.

  “No,” he said at last. “You want to seduce the guy, not tie him up and beat him.”

  Linn shut the door in his face and pulled off the leather.

  The next one seemed more like a slip, something she would wear under her black velvet. She felt undressed, incomplete. Cold. The bra may not be the best fashion choice, but under this dress, it was vital.

  When she stepped out of the dressing room, Kellan’s eyes lit up. “That’s it.”

  “Ditch the bra,” the salesgirl said.

  “No. Ditch the dress.” She shut the dressing room door again, a little more firmly than necessary.

  “Come on, Linn,” Kellan said through the door. “It’s perfect for Caroline.”

  The salesgirl could make what she wanted of that one, Linn thought. “It’s burgundy. Not red.” She yanked the satiny thing over her head. “Besides, I’m the one who has to wear it, so I get veto power.”

  Even without a bra, she could appear in public in the third one—made of some filmy fabric that resembled silk crepe—without getting arrested by her own cover team. She looked over her shoulder at the back, reflected in the dressing room mirror.

  Or maybe not.

  It had no back. The front was decent enough—a boat neck that bared her collarbone. No sleeves. But the back plunged to the waist and left more skin visible than she had ever displayed outside her bedroom. Not only that, the flared skirt was short. Really short. Some serious engineering was going to have to occur in the underwear department to make this one work.

  She stepped out of the dressing room.

  Kellan’s gaze traveled over her slowly, taking in every stitch, lingering on the way the crepe fabric draped over her breasts, which were obviously naked underneath. This time his gaze wasn’t critical. Far from it. The look in his eyes made her skin heat up. Her nipples tightened, and the material formed a crescent-shaped swag from one to the other where it had merely draped a moment ago.

  His eyes met hers, and she felt a jolt of desire in the pit of her belly. Between one second and the next, she realized, he had gone from seeing her as an operative who needed to be outfitted, to a woman, a sexual being, who was displaying herself for him. If he could have this kind of effect just by looking at her, what would happen if he kissed her? Or, God, made love to her?

  “Better.” He sounded as if he’d just remembered he ought to say something.

  “Do you like it?” the salesgirl chirped, and broke the spell. Cinderella came back to earth in the dressing room with a jolt.

  “This is definitely a woman who can be convinced,” the girl went on. “We can get you a no-strap bra to go under that, if you want.”

  Now you tell me, Linn thought, trying to recover. She turned and let him get an eyeful of the back, keeping her face out of his line of sight.

  It was Caroline who enjoyed a man looking at her. Caroline who bought red dresses. Not she, Linn. By the time this case was over, she was going to have to check herself into the loony bin with acute schizophrenia.

  “Good choice.” Kellan’s voice still sounded a little strange, as if he were having a hard time getting out the words. He cleared his throat. “Okay, Linn?”

  The department was going to pay for it, she knew that much. Caroline might buy clothes like this, but in Linn’s book, if you couldn’t wear something to work, you shouldn’t waste the budget on it.

  But you are wearing this to work. Well, yes, she thought, in a manner of speaking.

  And Kellan likes it. Kellan probably liked hockey and beer, too, but she wasn’t about to go buy a sixty-inch television and a case of Coors now, was she?

  You like it that Kellan likes it.

  That was going to have to stop, ASAP.

  Silencing the voice from the dark side, Linn turned back into the dressing room. She slid into her comfortable clothes with a sense of relief. The jacket was her choice. She looked like herself in it—clean and classic.

  Not like a woman who could be convinced.

  Not like Caroline.

  KELLAN FLICKED A GLANCE at Linn while he waited for the light to change. She held the shopping bag on her lap as if it contained something that should be disposed of by the HazMat team.

  The problem with her was that she was too structured. Too controlled. No imagination. Trying on a red dress was probably the most excitement she’d had since senior prom.

  Or so he tried to tell himself. He was still in recovery from that moment in the dressing room when he’d realized just how desirable and touchable this woman could be. And now he was having a hard time getting his view of her back to where it had been.

  Where it was safe.

  Some people, he knew, liked an eight-to-five gig where things stayed the same from day to day, where you knew exactly what you’d walk in and do every morning. A person like that belonged in Motor Vehicles, not CLEU. He loved coming in and not knowing what was going to happen. When they’d pulled him out of the Sacramento PD to join this specialized State unit, he couldn’t have been happier. Not that he was an adrenaline junkie. He wasn’t like his predecessor, who had faked his way through the psych screens so well that no one had figured out that the higher than normal numbers of casualties on his cases were the result of him going off like a cannon in life-and-death situations, just for the high.

  No, Kellan wasn’t a fool with life—his or anybody else’s—but he was okay with a little risk if it meant getting the collar. And the woman next to him was definitely a risk. An unknown.

  One with a beautifully honed body that could bring a man begging to his knees. The memory of the way that red silk had clung was going to keep him up at night for a long time.

  “Do you have anything going on tomorrow night?” he asked.

  Only a flicker of her eyelids told him he’d startled her by breaking the silence. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean do
you have plans. We need to get together again so I can brief you.”

  She glanced at him, then straight ahead. “The light is green.”

  So it was. He stepped on the accelerator.

  “Why can’t you brief me during office hours? Or right now?”

  He heard a tiny pop as one of her nails punctured the plastic bag, and frowned. “I’m in court tomorrow and I have to prep for that tonight. The O’Reilly case will take time to go through with you. It’s a lot of material. Fills a whole box. I even have an org chart to show you where I fit into his command structure.”

  She sighed and chewed the inside of her cheek. She looked indecisive. Vulnerable. His determination to see her strictly as a means to an investigative end careered off the track again.

  Well, hell. Why the hesitation? If he had anything but this single card to play, he would. An evening with him wasn’t that bad, was it? Maybe he’d better throw something in to sweeten the pot.

  “I’ll take you to dinner. We can discuss it over Dungeness at the Crab Factory, if you want.”

  “Wouldn’t we be overheard?”

  “It’s possible. But not likely.”

  “You can’t take file folders and org charts to the Crab Factory.”

  She was right. “Okay then, how about I take them to your place? We can eat and do the briefing there, and not have to worry about people listening in.” When the silence got a little too long, he glanced over. “What?”

  “I…I’m not sure.”

  “I don’t care if you’re a lousy housekeeper.”

  She straightened, and her lips thinned. “There’s nothing wrong with my domestic skills.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “We could just use a conference room at the office. Or go to your place.”

  The lady didn’t want him in her house. She probably didn’t want him to see that she had prissy little plastic slipcovers on all the furniture, like his grandma. If he didn’t care about where the briefing would be before, he definitely cared now.