Her 24-Hour Protector

“Rather late for dinner?”

She shrugged. “He said he had some kind of evening coaching session with his at-risk teens or something. Anyway, I told him I wanted white flowers and that the rest of the evening was my treat—” she stirred her coffee, chinked the spoon on the side, smiling “—and my surprise.”

Jenna liked this time with her dad. He was a flamboyant casino mogul with movie-star good looks, a much-noted temper, a passion for perfection and a shrewd eye for business. He liked to get up real early each morning, do work in his home office and then kick back for a while over breakfast. It was his time to catch up with Jenna and the newspapers and to drink his coffee. After that he’d go down to the Grand Hotel and Casino, where he often worked well after midnight. He was a driven entrepreneur, and he wasn’t a man who needed much sleep.

But he’d always made time for her, since she was a kid, and Jenna loved him for it. She’d do just about anything for her father. He remained the solid center of her rarefied Vegas life. Her BlackBerry beeped suddenly, and Jenna set down her coffee cup, checked the message. It was from Cassie. FBI agent Perez had apparently just paid her friend an “official” visit, and Cassie wanted to know what Jenna had gotten her into.

“You’ll ask him about the ring, of course.”

Frowning, her eyes flashed up. “Of course.” She hesitated. “Dad—you’ve always said that The Tears of the Quetzal came from granddad’s South American operations, but where exactly?”

“Ah, sweetheart, I’m not one hundred percent sure. All I know for certain is that your grandfather had the diamond set down there, but otherwise, all the paperwork seems to have been lost in an old fire at the South American office.”

She studied him. If there’s one thing Harold always was, it was sure. A teensy icicle of doubt formed. “What exactly do you want me to get out of Lex Duncan?”

He chuckled, removed his reading glasses, blue eyes sparking like the broken surface of the pool catching sun behind him. Yet there was a sharp edge that lurked behind his smile—an edge that appeared whenever Harold spoke about The Tears of the Quetzal. “Anything you can, sweetheart. You could make a monk drop his habit, Jenna, and I have no doubt you can work your charms on this man. I want some idea of the FBI’s thought process in connection with the case. And of course I want my ring back. I want to know where they are holding it. In the wrong hands it—”

“I know the drill—in the wrong hands great misfortune is sure to follow. In the right hands it brings true love. You don’t honestly believe that old Mayan nonsense, do you?”

He gave her an odd glance. “Just look what happened when that lunatic Thomas Smythe got a taste for it. He almost killed Conner’s Vera, not to mention her sister Darla and brother Henry. Although the cops haven’t officially named Smythe as a suspect in Silver’s near-fatal scaffolding accident, I wouldn’t put it past him. And God only knows who killed Candace. That damn ring is cursed, I tell you. I just want it out of circulation, back in the vault where it belongs before it causes any more damage.”

A small shiver passed through Jenna as she thought of what had happened to Candace after she’d removed the rock from daddy’s safe. Her sister had gone and gotten herself bludgeoned to death after wagging it around at a charity event the night before her murder. That ring had been the one thing taken from Candace’s apartment by the killer, only to turn up in the purse of a single mother named Amanda Patterson while she was visiting Luke Montgomery’s casino.

Having possession of that ring had close to gotten Amanda killed as well. And then Luke had stepped up and proposed to her, of all people.

The ring had subsequently been taken into Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department custody, and a man named Thomas was later ID’d as the thief who impersonated a LVMPD officer and stole the ring from the evidence room. Conner had discovered the paste copy left in its place when he’d been sent to retrieve the ring from the police department. He’d then tracked The Quetzal to an exotic dancer and landed bang in the middle of an FBI investigation into a cross-state jewelry thieving ring. Which is how Conner ended up defending—and falling for—a stripper named Vera Mancuso who’d been implicated in the diamond theft by her roommate. The jewel thieves had, however, been caught and that case closed, but it was at that point that the LVMPD and FBI investigation into Candace’s murder had intersected, and how the whole shebang—both the ring and murder—had landed up under FBI jurisdiction.

And now her dad wanted that ring back at all costs.

Jenna shook off an uneasy sensation, reached down and picked up Napoleon. She stroked him absently on her lap. She suddenly wasn’t so crystal clear on what she was doing with the lead investigator on her sister’s murder case.

Or why her father wanted her involved at all.

Lex returned to the FBI field office building after his coaching session that evening to pick up some reports. He wanted to go through the file on The Tears of the Quetzal again, check out the ring’s trail. Somehow, that rock was central to everything—including Candace Rothchild’s death. And now that Thomas Smythe—Darla St. Giles’s boyfriend—had disappeared, Lex was back at square one.

It was late and most of the offices were empty and dark. Lex flipped on the neon overheads. One of the bulbs flickered as he made his way down the corridor to evidence lockup. He hesitated outside the door, a sense of coolness settling over his skin. Damn AC thermostat was on the fritz again, turning the place into a virtual meat locker. He unlocked the heavy door, creaked it open. He hadn’t noticed the creak previously—must be the quietness in the building at this time of night.

Lex picked up the box containing the rock that had caused so much trouble and opened it. He took the ring between his thumb and forefinger, holding the massive stone up to the dim light, he swiveled it.

He was momentarily blinded by a flash of green, violet, then blue light. His pulse accelerated slightly. He’d never seen the rock in this light before. It was magical. He turned it more slowly in his fingers, the facets of light bouncing electrically as it moved. The Tears of the Quetzal. Even the name seemed sad. Somehow poignant. Yet beautiful at the same time. Seven carats of chameleon diamond. Set in gold.

The colors were dazzling. The strange luminous shafts of light emanating from the stone were like the ectoplasmic fingers of some ghost, reaching out to curl back and retreat suddenly as he moved the ring. The play of luminosity absorbed Lex’s attention so fully, so totally, that he was no longer aware of any sound at all in the office, or the fact he was standing alone in near dark under the flickering blue lighting of the evidence room. A band of sensation tightened across his chest as an incredible thought shimmered into his mind.

What if the legend was true?

Natalie, the LVMPD cop—Jenna’s sister and Candace’s twin—had fallen in love while investigating the ring’s disappearance. Then Amanda Patterson, whose purse it was found in, ended up marrying Luke Montgomery in a true Cinderella series of events. After which Silver Hesse Rothchild, a stepsister of Jenna’s, had found true love with her bodyguard after a mere passing acquaintance with the ring. Even defense lawyer Conner Rothchild had fallen head over heels for Vera Mancuso, an exotic dancer, after he’d spotted her flashing the ring during a steamy striptease. Vera was probably the most inappropriate woman a man like Rothchild could possibly end up with.

Enduring love—it was one of the promises of The Tears of the Quetzal.

Given the odd series of romantic events in the preceding months one might actually be forgiven for thinking this ring held mysterious power, thought Lex, watching the light curl into itself in the stone, as if a sentient thing. Alive. Shimmering. All-knowing. He snorted softly, trying to brush aside the hypnotic power the thing seemed to be exerting over him.

Then he thought of Candace and the flip side to the supposed Mayan curse on this stone. And a cold chill rippled over his skin again as he stared at it, his heart beginning to beat even faster, a strange sensation beginning to settle through him. Lex couldn’t say why or what possessed him but he suddenly pocketed the ring, leaving the box empty as he locked the evidence door.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_f4bb599f-9829-5e65-a1c2-497cd58de1c6)

“So, what are you doing in Sin City, Lex?”

Lex regarded Jenna warily, his body language defensive as he sat across the table from her. His job tonight was to work Jenna Rothchild for whatever information he could. And then get out fast.

But things were already going sideways.

Jenna was clearly in the driver’s seat. Having her limo pull up at his humble suburban driveway was no doubt a power play on her part. So was her “request” to be greeted with a bouquet of white flowers.

During the limo ride Jenna had plied him with top Scotch en route to one of the most opulent establishments in a city already renowned for excess. More cocktails awaited at the restaurant, which she’d reserved solely for the two of them—an octagonal, glassed-in affair that revolved slowly over the Vegas skyline. Candles shimmered in crystal holders on every table, a silvery sheet of water cascaded over a rock feature into a pool of lilies in the center of the room, while staff, dressed in black and white, stood discreetly in the shadows. And sitting at a baby grand, tinkling ivories for them alone, was a renowned singer from New Orleans with husky jazz vocals to rival the best of Nina Simone.

Lex would bet his last red casino chip that Jenna’s choice of music was intentional. Somehow she’d known he loved jazz.

That meant she knew way too much about him.

“I hear you’ve been in town nine months now, Lex, and that you put in for the transfer to the Vegas field office from your post in Washington.”

Definitely too much.

Jenna smiled the smile of a woman who knew exactly what wattage she generated. She was dressed in pure, virginal white and looked anything but virginal. Her blouse was low-cut, sheer. Her palazzo pants were silky. She wore them over impossibly high strappy gold sandals, and Lex had been unable to stop himself from fixating on the way the fabric had swished around her long legs when she walked. Or was that sashayed? Jenna didn’t do anything ordinary like “walk.”

In contrast to the white silk, her butter-smooth skin was tanned a soft biscuit-brown, and her limbs were taut—a woman with time for the pool and the gym. She looked vibrant, athletic, radiantly alive. And somehow sophisticated at the same time. Pure privileged casino princess. And way out of his league. Hell, she was out of his freaking hemisphere.

Her eyes glinted with some secret amusement as she waited for him to answer. Lex wondered if it was his obvious discomfort that she found so entertaining. “And you got this information from who?” he said guardedly.

She swiveled the stem of the crystal glass. “Let’s just say I mounted a little covert investigation of my own.” Her eyes slanted up. “I learned quite a few things about you, agent.”

“Including the fact I like jazz?”

“Maybe.” She smiled.

“Cassie Mills? Did she wheedle it out of my partner, Perez, at the gym?”

“Perhaps.” She took a slow sip of champagne, eyes fixed on his with a directness that made him think of sex. “Is that why the feds paid Cassie a visit today?”

He leaned forward, irritation beginning to lance dangerously through the lust burning a hot and persistent coal into his gut. “How about we just cut to the chase, Jenna? Are you trying to compromise the investigation? Is that what the auction stunt was about?”

Maybe he’d just blown his chance at getting anything out of princess here, but he’d had his fill. Spending any more time with Jenna Rothchild was going to be real bad for his health. And quite possibly his job. Because no matter what Quinn had ordered, Lex could see himself taking the fall if this so-called “under the covers” operation—a farce if he ever saw one—went downhill. And because this murder and this Vegas family was so high-profile, FBI top brass would need to make an example of him. He could smell it all from a mile away.

And it stunk.

She cast her eyes down, tracing her fingertips slowly, seductively along the silver knife alongside her plate. Lex felt his body go hot.

“No, Lex,” she said finally. “I did not set you up to mess with the investigation.” She lifted her eyes. “I’ll concede, though, that I did know you were the lead in the investigation, but when I glimpsed you at Natalie’s wedding and saw your photo in the paper, I also knew you’d be the star of my bachelor auction, if I could get you. I also figured it would be a tough sell to get you to play because of your involvement with the case, so I kept my name out of it and sent Cassie to talk to Rita instead. We learned you had a thing for the Nevada Orphans Fund, so I swung the entire event around you. And then, when I saw you up on that stage, half-naked and getting all hot under your tie, well—” she paused, watching him intently “—I just had to have you for myself.” She placed her cool hand over his. “Does that make you angry, Special Agent Duncan?”