Mischief 24/7

“But that help came with a time limit. I remember this part. Go to Hollywood, Jolie, fall flat on your face—but eat well while you’re doing it—and then come home at the end of one year and marry me. You ought to think about a career in the diplomatic corps. Especially since, last I heard, she’s still out there and you’re still here, kicking yourself in the backside.”

“I’m done kicking myself for that one, Court. I’ve done something else since that fiasco. The dumbest damn thing I’ve ever done.”

“Dumber than the day you pinned a pillowcase to your shoulders and flew off the garage roof?”

Sam smiled at the memory, rubbing the arm he had broken in the fall into some saving shrub. “I was seven. I had an excuse. I don’t have an excuse for this one. I know a few people out there in La-La Land and I… I bought Jolie’s way into the worst movie ever released straight to video.”

“Porn?”

“Very funny. No, Court, a horror flick. You know, kids out for a night of necking in the woods, the obligatory masked madman running through those woods, chopping up teenagers with a souped-up Cuisinart or something. She had a few lines and then got some pretty good close-ups where she had to look scared and scream a lot.”

“All right, I think I’m beginning to follow this,” Court said, commandeering a bowl of peanuts from the bartender. When you own the hotel, someone is always watching, ready to supply anything you want. “The film bombs, Jolie bombs, and she gives up, comes home to pick out china patterns. So? Tell me about the flaw in this master plan, because obviously there was one.”

Sam ran a hand through his already mussed dark blond hair. “So this big Hollywood type saw her, said he’d never seen anyone the camera loved more since Julia Roberts, and signed her to a three-picture deal. The first one isn’t out for another month or so, but according to the grapevine, she’s brilliant in it.”

“Ah, hoist with your petard,” Court said, toasting Sam’s debacle with bottled water. “Or something like that. Now what?”

“Now I face the fact that I’ve lost and I’ve got to learn to live without her, that’s now what. Now I keep doing what I’ve been doing.”

“Burying yourself in work,” Court said, thinking of Sam’s legacy separate from the Becket family inheritance, a large import/export antiques empire that had its beginnings nearly two hundred years ago and, in the past few years, a steady increase in high-end retail antique stores. Court had leased him a large area inside this same hotel and many of his hotels around the world. “How’s that going for you?”

Sam held up his glass. “How does it look like it’s going? But enough of me crying in my gin and tonic. How are things with you? I know you just flew in from somewhere. Where was it this time? London? Paris?”

“Rome. You’ll be happy to know that your share of our latest acquisition to the Becket family portfolio includes an owner’s suite overlooking Vatican City. It’s yours to use whenever you want.”

“Sweet,” Sam said, clinking glasses with Court. “I propose a toast. To Ainsley Becket and his entrepreneurial spirit. Shipbuilding, land, thoroughbred horses, banks, developing industries. He was a man ahead of his time.”

“He was a privateer and a pirate, chased out of his own country before he could be hanged,” Court said, smiling. “Come to think of it, so are we. Pirates, that is. We just play more within the rules than he did two centuries ago.”

“Good, because I don’t think getting hanged from some yardarm is on my to-do list for the New Year. How about you? Court? I said, how about you?”

“Hmm?” Court had turned on his bar stool, his interest caught and held by the woman just entering the bar. He watched her steady progress toward him, everyone else in the crowded room fading away as if a spotlight was on her, moving with her.

She was stunning, from her unbelievably long legs to the artlessly piled honey-brown hair that made him itch to find the pins that held it in place and slide them out one by one, all those warm-looking curls cascading down over her bared breasts. The clear mental image surprised him. “A couple of days after the fact, but better late than never. Thank you, Santa Claus.”

“Santa Claus? What the hell are you talking—Oh, damn it all to hell. What’s she doing here?”

“You know the lady?” Court asked, dragging his gaze away from the woman who was heading for a bar stool two down from him. A good thing he was civilized, or he’d push the guy next to him to the floor so she could sit beside him. “Talk to me, cousin. If I’m going to propose marriage to the woman, I probably should know something about her.”

Sam kept his head down, a hand raised to shield his profile. “That’s Jade Sunshine. Jolie’s older sister. She works with Teddy at the Sunshine Detective Agency. She’s a PI, Court. And you’d have about as much luck trying to tackle a porcupine. Maybe more luck with the porcupine, come to think of it. Trust me. You don’t want any part of that.”

Court was silent for a full three beats. “Really. She’s a private detective? Do you think she’s here on a job or something? At least she isn’t a high-class call girl, which would have ruined every-thing. You know, thinking ahead, for when one of our kids asks how I met their mother.”

“Which one of us was drinking tonight? Look, Court, give me your elevator key. I don’t think I should drive tonight, so I’ll crash with you.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. I may have plans for that suite. Believe me, cousin, they don’t include you as a roommate.”

“You’re casting Jade in that role?” Sam peeked out from behind his hand to grin at his cousin. “I’ve got fifty bucks here that says it doesn’t happen.”

“Just go to the front desk and tell them I want you set up in a room, all right? Now, if you’re not going to introduce us, just go away. If you two don’t like each other, you won’t be any help, anyway.”

Sam slid off the stool, his head still averted. “It’s not a question of dislike. It’s just that I hurt Jolie, or at least that’s how Jade sees it. Stick to first names,” he advised quietly. “She hears Becket, and you can kiss any ideas you’ve got goodbye.”

But Court was barely listening, as he was already tuning in to the conversation going on between the middle-aged man next to him and Jade Sunshine.

“And you’re sure I can’t buy you a drink, honey?” the guy was saying, his back to Court. “Something real. Who comes to a bar to drink ginger ale?”

Jade stirred her soda with the plastic swizzle stick, the ice clinking. “I like to start slow and then build from there. In my business, a clear head is a part of the service.”

Court liked her voice. A little bit low, slightly husky. Definitely sexy. And he was pretty sure she knew it. The guy next to him was nearly drooling.

“And what is your business, honey?” the guy asked her.

Jade kept her right hand on the swizzle stick as she gracefully swiveled on the bar stool and carefully crossed those long legs beneath the short, black sheath. Court swore he could hear the silk of her stockings whisper with the movement.

She reached out with her other hand and stroked a finger down the guy’s tie. “I thought I told you, handsome. Service. You see, honey, I serve people. Should I serve you? I’d really like to serve you. What’s your name, honey?”

Court lowered his head and let his breath out slowly, wondering why the ice cubes in his own glass, and in every glass in the bar, hadn’t melted yet.

“I… I’m Harvey,” the poor sap stuttered. “If… if, uh, we’re going to get to know each other, um, better, maybe you should tell me your name?”

“Sure thing, honey,” Jade said, her hand leaving the man’s shirtfront to slide down his thigh and then onto her own knee. “I’m Lucy. Lucy Lawless.”

“But isn’t that the name of that actress who… Oh. Oh, right. I guess, in your line of, uh, work, names aren’t real. I should have thought of that. But I am Harvey. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Harvey, honey,” Jade soothed, inching up the already short skirt of her dress. Her other hand had left the swizzle stick and now rested on Harvey’s jacket lapel. “It’s a great name, Harvey. What goes with it?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Court saw the bartender moving down the bar, probably to eject the obvious hooker. Court shook his head slightly, warning the guy away.

Harvey’s eyes were all but glued to Jade’s leg as she slid two fingers beneath her hem and slowly headed North. “Hubbard. I’m… I’m Harvey Hubbard. Should you be doing that here? I’ve got a room upstairs and…”

Court caught a mind-blowing glimpse of black lace garter as the blue-cover-clad tri-fold appeared from beneath Jade’s hemline. At the same time, her other hand grabbed at and pulled on Harvey’s jacket front, and an instant later the obvious summons was in his inside jacket pocket.

“Harvey Hubbard—honey—you can now consider yourself served,” Jade said, getting to her feet as she let go of him.

Harvey wasn’t too quick on the uptake, at least in Court’s opinion, but he certainly reacted pretty quickly to what had just happened.

“You bitch, I’ll kill you,” Harvey muttered murderously as Jade turned to walk away. He flew off his bar stool and clapped a hand on Jade’s shoulder a split second before Court was off his own stool and reaching for him.

Court shouldn’t have bothered. He’d already had a front row seat for the show from where he’d been sitting. In fact, he almost got his nose in the way as Jade rounded neatly on Harvey, her left arm—fingers together, palm rigid—cutting through the air like a whip. Well, like some sort of efficient judo move, anyway, but who needed particulars?

Harvey sure didn’t. He simply went down like a felled tree. It was, Court had told Sam later, a thing of real beauty to watch. Poetry in motion.

Court raised his left hand slightly and pointed toward the crumpled Harvey, and two bartenders quickly hauled the man up by his underarms and half carried him out of the dimly lit bar. Most of the patrons, intent on living their own lives, hadn’t even noticed anything unusual.

Leaving Court and Jade facing each other. She tipped her head to one side, blinked and then just stared at him as he stared right back at her. She had to feel it. The attraction, the pure, physical pull between them. But she didn’t flinch, didn’t run away. She just lifted her chin slightly and continued looking at him.

She was tall, but he was taller. Their bodies would fit together like a song, a symphony. Did she hear the same music?