Private Investigations

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No, she hadn’t reported the episode to the police. This was a family matter. And all Clarise was really interested in was retrieving her silverware and making sure Nicole was all right.

As to the initials, Clarise had said she’d inherited the set from her maternal grandmother.

Ripley propped her chin on her palm and stared at the photo again. What type of person stole from her own sister to finance a trip to Memphis? Allowing, of course, that that’s the reason she’d stolen the items. Was she on drugs? Clarise had assured her she wasn’t, but Ripley wasn’t convinced. Especially when she’d visited Nicole’s apartment in East St. Louis and found that it was little more than a room in a flophouse, a furnished room with a sink in the corner that could technically be listed as an apartment but was little more than a closet with running water. She hadn’t found anything there to give her a clue about the woman she was looking for.

She reached for another strawberry only to discover they were all gone. As were the eggs Benedict, the two pieces of toast, a side of bacon and an extra large helping of hash browns and fruit. She glanced at the front of her jeans and groaned. If she wasn’t careful, she would need a whole new wardrobe in a larger size by the time this woman hunt was over.

She reached for the phone to call Clarise and give her a status report. Asking for a better picture of her sister probably wouldn’t hurt, either. She consulted the file then dialed the number. A moment later the sound of a recording telling her the number was no longer in service couldn’t have surprised her more. She pressed disconnect and tried again, only to get the same result.

Well, that didn’t make any sense. The number had worked just fine yesterday when she’d called to tell Clarise she was on her way to Memphis. She tried one more time then finally dropped the phone into its cradle, drumming her fingers against the cold plastic, before putting in a call to her own answering machine. Nothing. Not even a call from her mother reminding her to come for dinner Sunday night.

She hated when there were no messages.

A dull, muffled sound came from the direction of the hall.

Ripley nearly catapulted from the chair and fell on her face, given the way she was sitting with her leg bent under her. But that was nothing compared to the way her heart thunked in her chest. She tiptoed toward the door, her hand resting against her chest as if to keep the rowdy organ still.

She knew she shouldn’t have hung around as long as she had. She should have gathered her belongings and hightailed it right out of there the instant she knew the gunmen had left. But no. She’d had to sample the room service tray. And while she was doing that, she thought she might as well review the case file, too. No sense wasting any time.

Right.

Another sound.

Ripley scrambled for the bedroom, hoping she wasn’t in for a replay of the night before.

WHAT IN HELL was he getting himself into?

Even as Joe asked himself the question, he knew that whatever it was, it was sure to be a whole hell of a lot more interesting than his life had been of late. He got off the hotel elevator on his floor and strode purposefully toward his room. He’d called there no fewer than four times after Larry, Curly and Moe had left him at Shoes Plus twenty minutes ago. No answer.

Which was essentially what he’d given the three men who had introduced themselves as FBI agents. No answer.

Oh, he’d spoken with them, all right. Only he suspected he hadn’t given the responses they had been banking on. Instead, he’d asked them how they’d known where he was. The first guy had said they had gotten his name from the hotel, then put a call into his secretary in Minneapolis.

Great. They probably knew more about him than any of the women he’d dated in the past five years.

No, he’d told them, he didn’t know the person in the hotel room next to him. And for good measure asked what the guy was wanted for. Yes, he’d had a female visitor last night. A little Memphis treat from his, um, colleagues. Did he know how to contact her? Well, they might try the Kitty Kat Lounge, but he really couldn’t give them any more than her stage name.

After talking around in circles like that for fifteen minutes, Joe had somehow gotten away with not even telling them what that stage name was. If it had come down to it, though, he probably would have made up a name. Like Naughty Nelly or something. Over the past ten years, building his own company, he’d gotten good at staving off disaster. He’d never had to lie, really. He’d merely stretched the truth now and then.

Of course he had lied to the FBI agents. Blatantly. Which meant he’d be in deep doo-doo if they figured that out and caught up with him.

After giving a brief knock on the door, he slid in his card key, then opened the barrier. No sign of Ripley, not that he expected one. The fact that the security block hadn’t been on the door was a pretty good indication she wasn’t in there. Still, he walked to the bedroom. Either housekeeping had already visited or his surprise visitor was a neat freak. The bed was made. The room service tray from the night before was in the hall. He looked in the bathroom. All the discarded towels sat in a neat pile in the corner.

Neat freak. What kind of woman cleaned up a room at a hotel?

He backtracked to the living area, plucked up the phone and dialed the room next to his, although he’d tried it, along with his number several times earlier. No answer.

Great. The FBI was on his tail for Lord knew what reason. And the woman who was the reason for it had as good as disappeared.

Or at least she wanted to make it appear as though she had.

Joe stalked to the balcony and pulled first the curtains, then the doors open wide. He looked from the left to the right then strode toward what would be Ripley’s balcony. He hiked his brows up. There was a good two feet between the railings, and a two-story drop. Had she really climbed over, naked, last night?

The question was, was he ready to climb across, fully clothed, in the light of day?

He gripped the railing and looked over the side. An Olympic-size pool sat in a courtyard surrounded by trees. People milled about, but no one seemed to notice the man staring down at them. All it would have taken was one glance and he’d have scrapped any idea of climbing over. He’d been athletic throughout high school and college. Heights were the only thing that had ever gotten to him.

He gritted his teeth and tried to see into her balcony doors, which wasn’t going to work from this vantage point. So much for that idea.

The only way to do something difficult was just to do it.

He gripped the railing tightly and vaulted to the other balcony then stood straight up, brushing his hands together in a show of great pride. Hey, what do you know? It hadn’t been half as difficult as he’d thought it would be.

He stepped to the balcony door, expecting to find it locked. Instead, it slid easily open.

Damn. Not a good sign. If Ripley was in there, he highly doubted she’d left the balcony doors unlocked.

The white filmy curtain sheers billowed out and hit him in the face. He yanked them out of the way. The bedroom was just a little too quiet for his liking. Then again, Ripley might have hightailed it out of the hotel altogether the instant after they’d hung up earlier. Maybe she’d gone to the police, as his note to her suggested.

Yeah, right.

He hesitantly stepped inside, not knowing what to expect. At least he was fairly sure The Three Stooges couldn’t have beat him to the hotel. Then again, who was to say that there were only the three of them?

He grimaced and looked around the bedroom for any sign that Ripley might still be there.

Well, at least the fact that she wasn’t a neat freak was reassuring. Whereas she’d straightened up his room, this place was a mess. In the bathroom he made out discarded clothes on the floor. If he stood staring at the red lacy bikini underwear a little longer than he should have, he wasn’t going to admit it. He crossed into the living room where a room service tray sat, not a crumb in sight to indicate what it had held. He stepped to it and smiled. The girl had an appetite, he’d give her that much. He leaned beyond the tray to the table. Papers were strewn across it. He frowned. He was fairly certain they were her papers. But had she left them there the night before, or had she been in the room recently?

He backtracked to the bedroom and stood silently in the doorway, gripping the doorjamb speculatively. The closet door was open, revealing no one was in there. The shower curtain was wide, showing an empty tub. He rubbed his chin, then crossed to the bed. Reaching blindly underneath, he groped around a bit. He heard a gasp at the same time his fingers wrapped around a warm, slender ankle. He gave a good tug, and Ripley Logan lay staring at him as if she expected Jack the Ripper.

He grinned.

RIPLEY KICKED at Joe’s shins, muttering every last curse word she’d ever learned, heard or sounded like it fit the occasion. “For God’s sake, Pruitt, why didn’t you say anything when you came in here? I thought you were one of them.”

She got to her feet and stood glaring at him, completely humiliated at having been caught skulking under the hotel room bed. And given his expression, she didn’t think he was going to make it any easier on her.

“Don’t tell me. Rule number two in the P.I.’s handbook. If you hear an intruder, hide under the bed.”

She told him to do something that was physically impossible then strode toward the living area. Yes, this might be her first case. And yes, she was probably making a first-class mess of it. But that didn’t mean she had to put up with Joe’s wiseass remarks at every misstep.

“Where’s your gun?” he asked, following her.

She lifted the lid that had kept her eggs warm and snatched the 9mm. She’d put it there thinking that if she was interrupted during breakfast, it would be close at hand.

Of course, the minute she’d needed it, she’d forgotten it. Out of sight, out of mind, or so the saying went. She took some pride in that the clip was firmly in place. At least this time it had been loaded. She chose to ignore the rest for the time being.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked as she swung around.

“Whoa, there.”

Ripley found him standing closer than she thought he would be, and the muzzle of the gun nearly pressed against his solar plexus. He carefully pushed the gun and her hand aside.

“Don’t worry. It’s on safety,” she told him.

“Tell me why that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

She smiled at him. She’d forgotten how enticingly handsome he was. Her gaze caught on his mouth, and she leisurely licked her lips.

“Ripley?”

“Hmm?”

“Don’t look at me that way.” She watched a swallow work its way down his throat. “You might not like what happens as a result.”

For all intents and purposes last night marked their first kiss. But given the circumstances, Ripley hadn’t enjoyed it to the extent she would have normally. Gunmen probably had that effect on a woman. But right here, right now, there was nothing to stop her from thoroughly exploring Joe’s smart, sexy mouth. She stepped forward, her gaze firmly on his lips. He caught her by the shoulders.

“Sorry, Ripley. Some men might find a woman with a gun attractive. Me? Frankly, it scares the shit out of me.”

She realized she still held the 9mm in her right hand and sighed. “Party pooper.”

His grin could have coaxed seedlings into full-grown plants. “You had your chance last night.”

“Last night I didn’t know you.”

“You don’t know me all that much better now.”

She twisted her lips to rid them of the itching. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

He glanced at his watch. “And of course you would pick now to change your mind.”

“Of course.”

He sighed. “I’m supposed to be in a meeting right now. A very important meeting that could have a very important impact on my company.”

“Uh-huh.” She could tell by the way his gaze kept drifting to the front of her T-shirt and her mouth that the idea of her kissing him was looking better by the second. She leaned in until their lips were almost touching.

“Which, um, brings me to the reason I’m here,” he murmured.

“You mean you didn’t come back just to pull me out from under the bed?” But before he could answer, Ripley softly pressed her lips against his.

Joe groaned, his left hand going for her right and the gun. He held it still while his right hand skimmed under the hem of her T-shirt to grasp her breast. She dipped her tongue and tasted his lips. Coffee. Something sweet. A doughnut? She worked her tongue into his mouth. Vanilla. Definitely a doughnut. Bavarian cream.

He quietly cleared his throat, flicking the pad of his thumb over her erect nipple. “What I have in mind takes place on top of the bed, not under it….”

4

OH, GOD…

Joe had never considered himself a particularly religious man, but standing there kissing Ripley while holding her gun still with one hand, the fingers of his other stroking her bare breast under her T-shirt was the closest to heaven he’d ever come. A heart-pounding mixture of denial and raw need exploded in his groin until he took the gun out of her hand and put it on the table, then backed up until he plunked down in a chair and she tumbled after him. Much maneuvering ensued, and what he had hoped for happened as Ripley put her legs on either side of the chair and straddled him. Preferable would be if she was minus a pair of jeans, but when her pelvis made solid contact with his he forgot about logistics and delved his tongue deeper into her mouth.

In one smooth move her T-shirt was up and over her head, tousling her auburn hair so it fell wild and curly around her face. He hungrily grasped her breasts in both hands. Not too big, not too small, she fit in his palms perfectly. He fastened his mouth over an engorged nipple and generously laved it with his tongue, reveling in the deep sound she made in her throat and the digging of her fingers into his shoulders. He skimmed his hands around her rib cage to her back, then dove toward her lush bottom, dipping his fingers into the waist of her jeans. She felt so softly decadent, so sinfully sweet. He pressed her more tightly against him, filling his mouth with her flesh and bringing his erection more fully against her.

Ripley thrust her hands into his hair and pulled him back and away from her breasts so she could launch a fresh attack on his mouth. “This…is…so…crazy,” she said between kisses.

Joe completely agreed. Crazy was exactly the word he’d use to describe every moment of the twelve hours since she first slipped between his sheets and into his bed.

He ran his fingers up and down the hot silk of her back, then plunged them under her bottom as she pushed his jacket back, and fumbled for the buttons to his shirt.

Joe thought he heard a sound in the hall. Still kissing Ripley, he slanted a gaze toward the door. The security latch was securely in place. But when it came down to it, how much security would it actually provide, especially against those three guys?

All too quickly the reason he’d run out on his lunch meeting with a couple of sales representatives and returned to the hotel to see her came rushing back.

“Ripley,” he whispered, trying to tear his mouth from hers.

She made a low sound in her throat as she tugged the tails of his shirt from his slacks.

He caught her hands in his and pulled his head back as far as he could without giving himself whiplash. He nearly cursed at the sheer desire he saw reflected in her brown eyes.

“Ripley, we need to talk.”

The instant the words were out, the unmistakable sound of a card key being inserted into the lock came from the door.

In a flash she was off his lap and diving for the bedroom.

Joe began to follow, nearly colliding with her when she backtracked to retrieve her gun and myriad papers from the table. Her hands shook as she grasped all of it and sought safety.