Up Against the Wall

There she sat, flirting with his father at the bar. Long mahogany hair down to here, short black skirt up to there. His dad’s eyeballs bugged out to…hell. The woman clearly wasn’t here to gamble.

Seth had long since given up on the idea of his parents ever getting back together—and he knew his mother was far better off without Austin Cartwright. Messing with the ladies had never been his dad’s problem. But he had other weaknesses that an opportunist like Rebecca Page wouldn’t hesitate to exploit if it meant getting her story.

And the story brewing beneath the surface of the Riverboat was too big to allow an ambitious reporter to break it before his mission here was accomplished.

If he could still accomplish it.

Seth had been out of the office in an instant, knowing this entire undercover operation could be lost with one wrong word by that woman. He couldn’t get to the bar fast enough. Couldn’t risk asking his father about what they’d discussed when he’d dashed past him and Melissa in the lobby. He’d been blinded by the same surge of adrenaline he’d felt when their paths had crossed in the past. Rebecca Page had to go.

Her resistance renewed once he got her out the door. No surprise there. This time she tried to reason with him. She flipped the hem of her apron at him. “I have a job here, you know.”

“Where’s the rest of your uniform?”

“I just started.”

He got her across the gangplank. “Then you’re fired.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Watch me. Where are you parked?” He remembered the flashy red Mustang from their last encounter when she’d had the gall to stalk his mother to her home to bug her about the Baby Jane Doe murder investigation. Sure, that case had since been solved with the help of his new stepfather, and his mother’s position as acting commissioner of police had become a permanent job since they’d put the killer behind bars.

But he figured once a pest, always a pest. In another profession, he might have admired Rebecca’s persistence. But it was a reporter’s job to make headlines. Reveal secrets. Expose facts that could do more harm than good if they became common knowledge.

Therefore, the lady with the diehard curiosity had to go before she opened her mouth.

“Give me your keys,” Seth ordered, as they approached the Mustang, moving farther away from the lights and crowd of the casino. Instincts honed by months of learning to spot trouble before it spotted him had Seth checking between and underneath the vehicles before he led her to the door of her car. He snapped his fingers when he saw she wasn’t complying. “The keys.”

Out of sight from the front doors and beyond the hearing of other customers, she was done pretending to cooperate. She stuck her purse out at arm’s length and tried to play keep-away. “Can’t you ever just ask nicely when you want something?”

The role he’d been forced to play since taking this assignment didn’t involve making nice. People who asked got trampled on in this business.

So he grabbed her outstretched arm, spun her around and backed her against the car while he snatched the black bag from her grasp.

“Damn you. Give me that!” Her fingers tangled in the lapels of his jacket as she tried to push him away and retrieve her purse.

“Stop.” Seth leaned in half a step closer, pinning her hips and thighs in a mockery of intimacy, warning her she couldn’t win this particular battle. Her struggles stilled with a startled gasp. But if she hadn’t made the sharp sound of surprise, he would have. Her lips hovered at eye-level, painted red and parted, breathing little puffs of tantalizing warmth across his cheek, reminding him how long it had been since he’d risked being with a woman. How long it had been since he’d risked feeling anything beyond the job.

The imprint of her feminine shape was an unexpected shock to his system. Blood surged through his veins and things awoke. Control and denial had sustained him for months. But here he stood, caught unawares in the middle of the night, wanting something he shouldn’t—needing something too dangerous even to put a name to.

Damning that weakness inside him, Seth opened her purse and fished out the keys. While she watched in mute condemnation, he removed the tape from her recorder and dropped it in the pocket of his jacket.

“That’s stealing,” she accused, drawing her hands from his chest and crossing her arms between them.

He’d done worse recently. “I call it a security precaution.”

A cool breeze off the river blew a long, curly tendril over her flushed cheek, but didn’t do a thing to soothe the fever rising in his body. He tested his restraint by refusing to move away, by denying the urge to sweep away that lock of hair that had caught at the corner of her mouth. He denied the urge to sample that corner with his tongue to find out if she was as rich and fiery to the taste as she was to the eye.

He forced Rebecca to be the one to retreat. She obliged by leaning back against the sweet lines of the car to ease a whisper of space between them.

“You are a son of a bitch,” she accused, jamming the tempting strand of hair behind one ear. The husky softness of her voice was a direct contrast to the darts targeting him from those golden eyes.

He didn’t argue the point. He didn’t say anything as he returned her purse and slipped the key into the lock.

“Did they boot you off the force for being a jerk?” She was determined to get the upper hand he wouldn’t allow.

“It is my right and responsibility to escort anyone off the premises whom I deem a threat.”

“A threat to what?” She snatched at his sleeve and demanded he look at her. “This is about your mother, isn’t it. If she and I can share a civil conversation now, then you—”

“Leave my mother out of this.” Seth could do the in-your-face thing, too. “I don’t want you snooping around here.”

“I wasn’t—”

“You don’t know how to do anything else.” He opened the door and pushed her inside, instinctively taking care to protect the back of her head, just as he would load up any of the suspects he’d once pulled off the streets. “Did you tell anyone here you work for the Journal? Or were you recording conversations illegally?”

“What? No. That tape is still blank.” Seth climbed in right beside her and closed the door, forcing her to scramble over the console onto the passenger seat. “Hey. Get out!”

For a split second, her backward crab crawl exposed a smooth tanned thigh all the way up to a line of black silk panty. Sheesh. Hormones lurched in a base male response to all that bare skin and he slapped his hands around the steering wheel before he reached for something he shouldn’t. Rebecca Page was the enemy here. She fired his temper, not his lust.

She threatened his mission, not his conscience.

Tender feelings like guilt or concern had no place in the world of power and intimidation in which he’d immersed himself.

And he was too smart to forget that.

He wisely averted his gaze while she hastily sat up in her seat and righted her skirt and the apron she wore. He went on the attack before he did something foolish, like ask if he’d been too rough with her. “Why are you here? What story are you working on?”

She tucked the heavy charm at the end of her necklace back inside the front of her dress. “I’m here to make friends and earn some extra money with a part-time job.”

“Liar.”

“Ass.”

With a noisy huff, she folded her arms and stared out the windshield into the fog off the river.

Seth breathed deeply, right along with her, waiting for a response. The carefully preserved interior of the small vintage car was tinged with the scents of leather polish and Rebecca’s own spicy perfume. Frustrated with her stubborn silence, he raked his fingers through the careless spikes of his short blond hair. His focus should be back on the Riverboat and proving that Teddy Wolfe was just as deviant and dangerous as Interpol and KCPD suspected him to be. He shouldn’t be sitting here, noticing the Mustang’s fine details. And he damn well shouldn’t be noticing anything about the car’s owner.

“Well?” he prodded.

“You said you weren’t a cop anymore. I don’t have to talk.”

Enough of this battle of wills. He needed to win this argument more than she could ever understand.

Seth fitted into Teddy Wolfe’s world all too well. He released the steering wheel and leaned over the center console, bracing one hand on the dashboard and the other on the seat behind her head. “You’ll talk to me.”

Chapter Three

Whatever advantage Rebecca had over Seth Cartwright when they were standing vanished when they sat side by side. Now he loomed over her, and those massive shoulders and beefy chest filled up the tight space inside her car.