His Hot Number Read online

  He wanted to see where she lived.

  “We could, I suppose,” he mused. “I just got this really great king-size bed. It’s so big I almost couldn’t get the TV into—”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “Come to my place. You won’t get Dungeness, but I’ll think of something.”

  She dictated the address, but he’d already had Coop break into her HR profile. He’d memorized it the way he memorized license plates and the telephone numbers of his suspects.

  “What time?” He spun the wheel and dove down the ramp into the CLEU parking lot, rolling to a stop next to her little Japanese knockoff.

  “Will you be out of court by six?” Her tone was civil in the extreme. She was trying to get them back on a business footing, too. That was good, right?

  “Yes.”

  “See you then.” She closed the passenger door and climbed into her car without another glance at him, tossing the shopping bag onto the seat beside her as if it hadn’t just cost the State the price of a bribe.

  He watched her pull away while Victor-21’s engine idled. Then he parked the unmarked car in its assigned space and got into his own truck. While he waited for it to warm up, he tried to figure out Linn Nichols.

  How could a woman so dislike the clothes that made her look that good? Legs like hers under a dress like that were enough to get her arrested. But at work, half a dozen identical sets of blue jeans did a fine job of hiding them from curious eyes.

  He’d seen her body respond when she knew he was looking at her. Was Caroline lurking behind those eyes somewhere?

  No. Couldn’t be.

  But the possibility intrigued him a lot more than it should.

  Abruptly he decided to play the jealous boyfriend Saturday night. He might only get one chance to get cozy with Caroline, and damned if he was going to let Tricky Ricky have all the fun.

  4

  THE WAY LINN SAW IT, she had two choices. She could accept the damned assignment and play The Girl to the hilt, or she could resist and demand to be given meaningful duties that resulted in the respect she craved.

  The problem was, she was a Libra, and Libras saw things from both sides. On the other side of the scale, Kellan Black really did have only one option, and that was to use her as Caroline. He’d run every other lead into the ground, and was banking his success on her. What she couldn’t know was whether playing Caroline would work. If it did, and the operation succeeded, she had a fighting chance at being accepted by the team.

  But the cost…could she pay the price?

  She wished she could talk through this with someone. She could call Natalie Wong at the Santa Rita PD, but the chances of having an uninterrupted conversation while Nat was at work were pretty much nil. She could call her sister, Tessa, but she was probably still in class. Besides, talking about work with her family was like trying to communicate through a door—you got some things through, but rarely the important ones. Her parents and Tessa happily marched to their own drums, whereas Linn had deliberately chosen to march to one that was tried and true, and came with a retirement plan.

  Like law enforcement. You always knew where you were with the law. She just wished she could say the same about her team. Or her team lead.

  She’d sleepwalked through paperwork and a surveillance today while he’d been in court. A glance at the clock told her she didn’t have time to spend on the phone, anyway. She had an hour to shower, change and get dinner started before he was due to arrive.

  In the shower she reached for her handmade aromatherapy soap, scented with lime and some herb that always made her feel alert and positive. No plain-Jane brand-name soap for her, no sir. She knew she was a white-cotton, tailored kind of woman. A strong, no-nonsense woman who took things on and got them done. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a few tiny vices. Handmade soap and a glass of Baileys straight up in the evening did something toward balancing the stress and frustration of the job.

  It was a better alternative than pharmaceuticals, at any rate. Cheaper, too.

  The soap foamed over her skin and washed away the interminable day, leaving her feeling at least a little optimistic that she could get through a meeting with Kellan Black without killing him or crawling into his lap—both of which she wanted badly and which would be very dangerous for her career.

  Linn stood naked in front of her closet and fingered the skirt of the red silk dress hanging on the back of the door. She could just imagine the cover team’s reaction when she walked into the hotel bar in this. Just like Kellan in the dressing room, they’d never look at her in the same way again. They’d think of her as a sexual object, not as a fellow investigator, and she couldn’t stand the thought of it. She’d paid her dues on that score with the Santa Rita PD.

  But for some reason she couldn’t figure out, with Kellan it was different. Face it, she liked that look in his eyes. Wanted to see it again, in fact. And since she was never going to get to see it in real life because he was her team lead, and any kind of looking along that line was strictly against State human resources policies, the only way she was going to satisfy her craving was to play Caroline.

  Which, she was sure, was sick and twisted and likely to get her sent up to the staff therapist when it was all over.

  So what would happen if she played Caroline tonight?

  He’d said himself that she needed to know everything Dean’s girlfriend would be likely to know. What better way to do that than to reach down into that dark place inside her and bring Caroline out, just for this briefing? Caroline was the kind of woman who got the upper hand through sex, not through hard work. Men fell all over themselves to invite her to their lovely houses—and paid for the privilege. Kellan Black would look at Caroline and she’d revel in it, to hell with the HR rules.

  Besides, it wasn’t as if she were going to sleep with him. It was only dinner. And practice at being his girlfriend. Totally job related.

  Highly unethical. But job related.

  The red dress was out of the question, of course. She might get a spot on it and there wouldn’t be time to get it to the cleaners before tomorrow night. Among all these clothes she must have something that Caroline would wear to a cozy dinner at home with her boyfriend Dean.

  Of course, Caroline would probably wear nothing at all. Maybe she’d cook him his pasta in a black satin thong. But there were limits to how far Linn was prepared to go in the interests of prepping for her part.

  Linn dug through the slacks, skirts and shirts she owned, without success. Then, way at the back, her hand fell on a black leather miniskirt that her little sister had talked her into a couple of years ago. Tessa had taken up the weird hobby of reading tarot and styling herself as a psychic, and somehow the black leather skirt had played into Linn’s future. Linn blanked on exactly how, but in a moment of madness she’d bought the skirt, just to keep Tessa quiet.

  Tess had been wrong about Linn’s future—the skirt couldn’t do much about it, tucked away in the dark—but maybe it could influence Caroline’s.

  And Kellan’s. Ha.

  Okay, what went with a black leather skirt? She had a pile of T-shirts and tank tops, but most were what she wore to the gym. A cotton camisole was a possibility, but it had seen better days. Caroline would never put on something that had gone yellow around the edges.

  She eyed a white tailored shirt. Hmm. A black lace bra, whispered Kensington W8. The shirt over it, with the top half-dozen buttons undone. I’d wear that.

  Great. Now she was hearing voices.

  I’m part of you, darling. You can do this. Why, you could have that man for dessert if you wanted to.

  Linn rolled her eyes. And wouldn’t she have some explaining to do to Lieutenant Bryan?

  This was risky, she thought as she shimmied into the skirt and bra, and hesitated on the buttons of the shirt. She hoped Kellan Black was the strong, silent type, because if he did what most investigators did, which was run their mouths off about their sex lives at every possible opportun
ity, she might as well kiss her career at CLEU goodbye.

  Undo one more button.

  Fine. Linn put her hands on her hips, which made the placket of the shirt spread, and bent forward.

  It was clear she was going to get her money’s worth out of her lingerie tonight.

  Lovely, darling. Now makeup.

  Oops. She’d almost forgotten makeup. Obviously a swipe of lip gloss and a couple of strokes of mascara weren’t going to cut it with Caroline.

  When she was finished, Linn gave herself a critical look in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were sultry and long-lashed, her lips full and red. She looked like someone who could not only take on Kellan Black or Rick O’Reilly, but…what was it Kellan had said? Oh, yes. Tie him up and beat him, too.

  The thought made her smile, and on the heels of it, the bell rang.

  Show time, darling.

  KELLAN STOOD OUTSIDE the town house door and looked around him curiously. Nice place. Nicer than his, but that wouldn’t take much. Linn’s complex in the upscale town of San Mateo was designed around a series of courtyards, with trees and flowers and a fake stream that probably cost the homeowners’ association a bundle in maintenance. But the shade felt good in the heat of the July evening.

  Beside the steps, someone had planted a bed of blood-red peonies. His mom’s favorite. She was retired now, but when she’d had the florist shop in Modesto, he could remember helping her and seeing her bury her face in a big bouquet of them. Not to smell them, she’d said. To feel the petals against her skin.

  That was his mom. Hugging everyone—kids, peonies, dogs, you name it. And teaching him and his two older sisters the names of all the flowers in both Latin and English. He still remembered a lot of them.

  He’d forgotten how to hug, though.

  A lot of cops let the paranoia of knowing how bad the bad guys were get to them. And the time on the street just exacerbated it. The time you poured into the job messed up marriages, destroyed families, left good cops washed up on the shores of permanent therapy. He’d started relationships with the best of intentions and then somewhere along the road he’d given more of himself to the job than to the person he was supposed to be with, and potential life partners had fallen along the wayside.

  That was why he gravitated to women who knew the price of the job as well as he did. Women in law enforcement who weren’t looking for long-term. Who knew how to have fun and didn’t bother with consequences.

  Women like, well, the imaginary Caroline.

  The bottle of wine he held chilled his fingers, and when a trickle of sweat snaked down his back under his shirt, he considered holding it against the back of his neck. Probably not the best thing to do to a decent wine before he offered it to his hostess, though.

  The door opened, and he stepped back in surprise, catching himself on the wrought-iron railing just before he took a header off her low front step and crushed the peonies.

  “Linn?” Maybe he was hallucinating Caroline. Or maybe Linn had a gorgeous twin sister, come for a visit.

  “Don’t you recognize me, darling? Here, give me that wine before you drop it.”

  No hallucination. Buttoned-up Linn Nichols was definitely unbuttoned now, and playing the evening as Caroline. Somebody up there loved him. He should run out and buy a lottery ticket, but then he’d lose half an hour of the evening with her, and he wasn’t going to let that happen.

  She leaned in and he sucked in a breath as her breasts snugged against his chest, heavy and sweet. The teasing scent of lime wafted past him in the second before her mouth touched his lightly, and then she was gone. His stunned brain hadn’t even had time to command his arms to move around her.

  “Guh,” he said, and gave himself a mental slap. He followed her into the kitchen and tried again. “How…how are you?”

  “I’m very well, thanks.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she stirred something in a pan, and he felt his brain cells sizzle. That smile was dazzling, and combined with those eyes and that—he blinked—skirt. Leather skirt. Bare legs. Bare feet, slipped into glossy little flip-flops with a black flower between her toes.

  Maybe he’d better buy two tickets.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “I meant with your case this afternoon.”

  He stared at her blankly, and his brain cleared. “It was fine. Going to trial. Man, you have the best…uh…English accent I’ve ever heard.”

  “I spent a term at Oxford during college. It’s difficult not to pick it up. I thought it would be appropriate for this evening.”

  Appropriate had never sounded so inappropriate as her upper-class accent contrasted with those luscious lips pouting into a kiss with every p. He wondered if he could get her to say popcorn. Or pornographic.

  Or suspended, the last remaining rational part of his brain reminded him. This is Linn, you dummy. Your teammate. Your off-limits teammate who threatened you with a lawsuit the day you met her.

  So why were his responses escalating every time he saw her? Was it because every time he saw her, she was another step deeper into her role as Caroline?

  They were the same woman.

  Maybe it was he who had the problem. A woman like Caroline had “short-term” written all over her, and a woman like Linn meant “unwrap carefully—serious investment inside.” Maybe his body already knew what his mind refused: this woman presented a challenge he wasn’t going to be able to resist.

  Scary thought. One he wasn’t ready for.

  She was looking at him expectantly. He thought back quickly to what she’d just said and got his mind back on track. Accent. Job. That was it.

  “So you’re playing Caroline tonight for a little practice?”

  “Yes. Do you like it?”

  “Well, it’ll get me in the mood before tomorrow,” he said. No doubt about that. “It’ll remind me we’re supposed to be sleeping together, not working together.”

  “Oh, I’ll make sure you remember.”

  That smile again, seductive, over her shoulder. Kellan wondered how he was going to survive the evening without dragging her into the bedroom and tearing off her clothes. If she were only wearing something sensible under her white shirt, he could maybe keep his mind on business. But she wasn’t. The fabric half revealed something black and lacy and definitely not sensible. It was meant to be looked at, and right now, he wanted to do that more than anything he could remember wanting to do in a long time.

  She drained the pasta and tossed it with a mixture from another pan that looked like scallops, clams and crisp, colorful vegetables. “Not very fancy, I’m afraid. I hope you’re not allergic to shellfish.”

  It looked pretty fancy to him. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually cooked in his apartment. If he didn’t grab something in the CLEU cafeteria, he usually stopped for a hamburger or went out with Coop.

  “I’m not allergic to anything. It looks great.”

  “You could open the wine.”

  He found her corkscrew and got to work as close to her as possible. In the galley kitchen, it wasn’t that hard.

  “How long can you sustain the accent?”

  “The longer I do it, the easier it is. I could go months.”

  “It won’t take that long to catch O’Reilly. Besides, I’m about done with the whole organization. Another couple of weeks is all I can stand.”

  The cork popped out, and she took the bottle from him. Her hand slid lovingly down its neck and his brain shorted out again. In a trance, he watched her pour.

  “You keep promising me you’ll catch him, but evidently you’re a man who likes to take his time.”

  His hand jerked as he took a glass from her, and a little wine splashed on the counter. “Sorry.” He grabbed the dishcloth from the sink and mopped up the little spill. He had to get a grip. If he went to pieces every time she said things like this tomorrow night, he was going to look like a basket case, and worse, O’Reilly would k
now they weren’t sleeping together.

  Besides, Kellan was used to being the one in charge. The pursuer. The one with all the great lines. It was time to see that Caroline got as good as she was giving.

  Linn, he reminded himself.

  Whoever.

  She waved him into a seat at a round, antique-looking dining table that could seat four if she tried hard. Either she didn’t have many dinner parties for more than two, or she had huge ones and fed them all buffet style out on the neatly trimmed lawn he could see through the sliding glass door.

  His gaze followed the riot of feathery purple flowers that made up the border between the lawn and a couple of pine trees.

  “Did you plant the salvia?” he asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder to see what he was looking at. “The what?”

  “The Mexican sage. The purple ones where those hummingbirds are. See them?”

  “Oh, those. Yes, I did. What did you call it?”

  “Salvia leucantha. My mom was a florist before she retired. I have a good memory for names and numbers, including stuff most people don’t care about, like the Latin names of plants.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  “Oh, yeah. Everybody’s in Sacramento.”

  “You have sisters, too, right?”

  “How did you know?”

  She offered the pasta to him, and opened a small china container containing freshly shredded Parmesan cheese.

  “Thanks.” He liked his pasta bristly with cheese. The real stuff, not the shredded plastic that came in a cardboard tube. He spooned it out with a generous hand.

  “You mentioned it when we were getting the dress last night.”

  He had? He took a healthy sip of his wine. “Where’s your family?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  What did that mean? Had they all run away?

  “My sister’s up in the City doing graduate work at U.C.S.F., so I know where she is. My parents left in a motorhome a couple of years ago and in the last postcard they said they were in Santa Fe.”

  He nodded. “Retired?”

  “I don’t know what from, but they say so. My mom’s a painter and my dad plays at being a writer.” She gestured into the living room, and he wondered how he could have missed the huge painting that hung over the couch.