The Survivor

He grinned and quirked a brow. “Do they typically like her?”

She chuckled again, unable to help herself. “She’s managed to date a few younger men.”

“And by younger, you still mean they are senior citizens?”

“Yes,” she said, snickering.

“Aha,” he said. “I thought so. I’m less than half her age.” He gave a shudder. “I almost feel like I need a bath.”

Laughing quietly, Bess felt her eyes water. “Oh, come on,” she said. “It can’t have been as bad as that.”

“It was,” he deadpanned. “Because I thought she was you.”

Her sides were aching. “Yes, I know,” she wheezed.

His eyes widened in outrage. “You know? You knew?” He gasped. “You were watching,” he accused. “You saw the whole damned thing, didn’t you?”

She nodded, unable to respond.

“That’s… That’s…evil,” he said, staring at her with a new sort of appreciation in his eyes.

She merely shrugged. “I saw you when you got out of the car,” she said. “I might have corrected you, but you were in such a hurry and then—” she pressed her lips together to keep from grinning again “—and then it was just too funny not to watch.”

He shook his head, continued to stare at her, then sketched a makeshift bow. “Glad to provide your entertainment, milady. Let me know when I can do it again.”

Ooo-la-la, Bess thought as the last words rolled off that incredibly smooth tongue. She had a feeling he could provide her with hours and hours of hot, sweaty, wonderfully wicked entertainment if she’d let him.

And judging by the heat scorching her veins, she just might before this trip was through.

4

AFTER AN HOUR IN BESS’S company, Lex was beginning to wonder if he might have been better off protecting his virtue from Elsie than essentially being trapped in the car with a woman he’d wanted to lick from head to toe the first moment he’d set eyes on her.

Licking, he was relatively sure, wasn’t in his job description, and considering that he was already feeling like he wasn’t doing the damned thing properly—that she’d beaten him to a plan, as it were—he didn’t need to further complicate matters by making a play for his…partner. He couldn’t think of anything else to call her, really. She wasn’t his client or his target or even his accomplice.

And more importantly, she was Brian Payne’s friend. Brian had mentioned that he’d known Bess for years, that he’d been buying things from her for a long time and that her case was special. Though he hadn’t said as much, Lex imagined that Bess was either trading him out inventory for services or she was getting a vastly reduced rate. He didn’t have any idea what kind of money she pulled in through her store selling her ju—stuff, he mentally corrected, remembering Payne’s warning about her dislike of the word, but he couldn’t imagine that it was a huge income.