Dangerous Curves

Dangerous Curves
Pamela Britton

Special Agent Cece Blackwell is smart, savvy and knows her way around a race car Heading up a team to investigate the murder of a rally driver is right up her alley.The only problem is star driver Blain Sanders, the man who requested her. Blain is well-heeled, well-connected and drop-dead gorgeous – and he knew Cece when she was a drag-racing tomboy with grease under her nails. But Cece has grown up since then, in all the right places. And while catching the killer is her main objective, she’s not above making the man who ignored her as a teenager squirm a little. Two people on a sure-fire collision course.But Cece and Blain are about to discover that the sweetest victory does not always come from winning…

“It’s in my blood, Cece. I love this sport. But I can’t stand by and let it endanger people’s lives…”

“I know,” she said, bending to kiss Blain’s cheek. But the way it felt when her lips connected with his skin…well, it made her want to kiss something else.

No, she warned herself. She shouldn’t. This wasn’t a fantasy. This was a flesh-and-blood man.

“Blain, I don’t think this is a good id – ”

He pulled her to him, kissed her hard, and Cece settled onto his hard thighs as if she’d done it a million times before – and in her dreams, maybe she had. Only this was so much better than her fantasies.

Praise for Pamela Britton

“Passion and humour are a potent combination, and author Pamela Britton comes up with the perfect blend and does everything right.”

— Oakland Press

“Pamela Britton is no longer a rising star in the field of romance; she is a star, and-an especially brilliant one.”

—Romance Reader at Heart

dangerous CURVES

pamela britton

www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)

Dedicated to Doug and Robin Richert,

two of NASCAR’s finest.

Acknowledgements

I have to be honest in admitting that when I proposed writing a romantic suspense, I never realised the amount of research it would involve. The crime dramas on TV are nothing like real life, and so it’s with much gratitude that I thank the following people for answering all my tedious law-enforcement questions.

Mark Kolla and the gang at Sean and Donna’s wedding who graciously spent time helping me to straighten out my plot (in between drinking screwdrivers), and with a special thanks to my brother-in-law, Michael Mattocks, who never laughs at my silly ideas.

My pal in the FBI who asked not to be named (I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you). Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you for answering all my questions about bombs, protective custody and what it’s really like to be a female agent in an office full of men. You’re an angel.

Lastly, as always, to my wonderful husband, a man who knows intuitively when I need to be left alone, and who’s one heck of a plotting partner. I love you, Michael.

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS FIVE FOOT SIX of spandex-wrapped, thigh-high-boots-wearing, bustier-clad woman. And she wasn’t happy.

Shoving open the door of her boss’s office, Cece Blackwell had to fight not to yell the words, “What do you mean I’m assigned the NASCAR case?”

The glare of fluorescent lights arched perfectly off her boss’s prematurely bald head as he turned to face her, black brows—the color his hair should have been, if he’d had any—lifted above light gray eyes.

“I can’t believe you’d do this to me,” she added, placing her hands on her leather-clad waist, Cece so screaming mad she felt ready to lob her Carmen Miranda red earrings at him. Or maybe her matching bracelets. Yeah. They’d be easier to slip off.

“I won’t do it,” she huffed. “I won’t.” And darn if she didn’t feel like stomping her feet like her neighbor’s three-year-old daughter.

Bob’s chubby-cheeked face remained blank. It was one thing she despised about him. No, envied, this ability he had to remain unruffled no matter what the circumstances. He was like one of those mimes you saw in the park, able to keep a straight face even as some dog doo-dooed on his leg. The talent was helped by the fact that he had wrinkle-free skin near impossible to glean the age of. Cece supposed Mother Nature had blessed him with such a complexion as a way of making up for the no hair thing.

But instead of addressing her concerns, Bob eyed her up and down. “You been working that organized crime ring?” he asked in his Bronx accent. “That’s why you dressed like that?”

“You know I was,” she said, referring to the rent-me-by-the-hour outfit she wore: rhinestone-studded black bustier, Band-Aid-wide leather skirt and the pièce de résistance, black thigh-high boots.

“The operative word being was, Bob,” she gritted out between Screaming Red lips. “Was because they called me off the streets and told me I’d be working a new case, one that you know I have no desire to work. So tell me it isn’t true, Bob, in which case I’ll go change out of this hoochie wear, because if you tell me it is true, I quit.”

“It’s true,” he said.

“I quit.” She turned on a stiletto heel and jerked open the door.

“Cece, wait.”

“Talk to the hand, Bob,’ cause the ears aren’t listening.”

“Damn it, Cece, you don’t stop, you’re fired.”

She whirled to face him, hand falling off the handle. “I’m fired? I’m fired?” she raged, stabbing at herself with her finger, one of her fake press-on nails popping off and arcing through the hair like a boomerang. “You’ve got some nerve, you know that, Bob? You know about my past with the owner of that race team. You know every damn detail. And yet you’re still assigning me this case? That’d be like—” she searched for the right words “—that’d be like me assigning you to work with your ex-wife.” Bob winced. “I won’t do it.”

“You have to,” he said, his face stern.

Her eyes narrowed. “No, I don’t.”

“This ain’t no multiple choice, Cece. We need your expertise with explosives.”

“Oh, yeah? Just like you needed my expertise working that organized crime ring? I’ve spent four weeks dressed like this. Four weeks and I’m this close to finding out the name of the guy who sold Mantos those explosives. You want me to walk away from that? I don’t think so. Find someone else with the expertise.”

“We want you.”

Cece tottered over to Bob’s desk, not caring that her breasts all but fell out as she leaned over the papers strewn on it. “Look, Bob, I’ve had a really bad day. Some man offered me a hundred bucks if I’d let him sniff my underwear. Another asked me to do a threesome. An evangelist talked my ear off for an hour because he was convinced he could save my soul. To say I’m in no mood for this would be an understatement. My feet hurt, I have a rub spot on the back of my knee and I’m convinced a bird pooped in my hair, only, see, I can’t tell because makeup decided to turn my hair into their version of the Burning Bush, sans the flames, although there’s so much hair spray in this mess—” she pointed at her teased and cemented blond hair “—I could give Michael Jackson a run for his money.” She leaned even closer, her bonded hair not budging an inch. “Don’t do this to me.”

“It’d just be for a few days.”

“This close to busting Mantos,” she repeated, making tweezers out of her scarlet-red nails.

“Just think about it.”

“Okay,” she said straightening, looking up to the ceiling and tapping a red nail on her chin as if contemplating the color of a toupee for Bob. “Thought about it,” she said, piercing him with a glare. “No.”

Bob flung himself back in his chair, tossing a Snappy Lube pencil onto his desk. “You’re impossible.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why we work so well together.” She turned toward the door.