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“My steak,” he clarified. “Medium well. I like to be sure it’s dead.”
“And the Yankees?” she prompted.
Now he did smile, and it completely transformed him. With his dark and somber expression, he was dangerously handsome. With those sensual lips curved, he was devastating.
“Absolutely.”
She nodded, but couldn’t for the life of her even remember what the question had been. The man had just smiled, and her mind had blanked.
“Is that the end of your analysis?” he prompted.
“Not quite,” she said, wondering whether she should pursue the issue or make a tactical retreat. He intrigued her—maybe too much. She was a woman used to being in control of her life and her emotions. But after less than ten minutes in Joel Logan’s company, she felt her comfortable world tilting crazily on its axis. It thrilled her. And terrified her.
“What else do you think you know?”
“You’re looking for someone. Someone you expected to be here. Whether he is or not, I couldn’t say, because I don’t know who it is, but I know you haven’t found him. Or her,” she amended quickly.
He pinned her with that deep blue gaze, and she felt as if all the bones in her body had simply melted. When he spoke again, the low, throaty tone was as seductive as a caress. “Maybe I’m just looking for someone to take home for a quick bout of hot, sweaty sex.”
“I hadn’t completely disregarded that possibility,” she acknowledged, a little breathlessly. “But I think if that was what you wanted, you would have found her by now.”
“I’m flattered, I think.”
“Just an observation, Mr. Logan. So why don’t you tell me what it is that brought you to West Virginia?”
“Why do you assume I’m not a local?”
“If you were, we’d have met before now.” And she definitely would have remembered. Joel Logan wasn’t the type of man any woman would forget.
“I’m here on business,” he admitted after a pause.
“What kind of business?”
“You haven’t figured that out?”
“I’m still working on it,” she said. “But I haven’t been able to think of any reason why an out-of-town cop is at my fund-raiser.”
“I’m not a cop.” He took another sip of his beer.
“Oh.” She frowned. Then, in an accusatory tone, she said, “You look like a cop. Standing at the far end of the room, your back to the wall, as if you expect armed gunmen to come charging through the door.”
This time his smile seemed to come more easily. “I used to be a cop,” he conceded.
“And now?”
He shrugged. “Now I’m not.”
Joel tipped his glass to his lips again and drank deeply, wishing for at least the hundredth time since Shaun McIver walked into his office that he’d refused this assignment. It should have been a simple job: to find a child who had been adopted twenty-two years earlier. But four months later Joel had made scant progress.
The few facts he’d managed to uncover so far led him straight to Senator Ellen Rutherford-Quinlan. If the senator had information that would help find Shaun’s fiancеe’s sister, Joel was determined to get it. Which was his reason for coming to West Virginia.
He hadn’t counted on crossing paths with Riane Quinlan, though. And he’d been completely unprepared for the quick punch of arousal that struck low in his belly when he’d first set eyes on her.
A smart investigator would turn the situation to his advantage—get whatever information he could from the daughter as the mother was nowhere to be found. But he was having difficulty thinking like an investigator with the subtle scent of Riane’s perfume fogging his brain.
Which meant that the wisest thing would be to establish and maintain a safe distance from Riane Quinlan. He needed answers, and he wasn’t going to get them if he allowed himself to be distracted. The senator’s daughter was quite a distraction.
“Riane, darling—”
Joel exhaled a silent sigh of relief as she was forced to turn her attention to the stocky woman who descended upon them in a cloud of sweet scent and glittering sequins.
“Margaret,” Riane said, exchanging air kisses with the older woman. “I’m so pleased you could make it.”
The woman looked vaguely familiar to Joel, but it took a moment to search his memory banks for the reference. When it clicked, he wondered that his jaw didn’t hit the floor. Margaret Cassidy. The attorney general of the United States.
The upper echelons of political society had turned out for this event—all the way from Washington, even. A reminder of how much political clout the Rutherford-Quinlans wielded. As if he needed any reminders. He’d tangled with them once before, and that encounter had cost Joel his reputation and his career.
He was clearly out of his element here, even if no one else seemed to realize it. He didn’t fit in with these people; he didn’t want to. He’d attended this gala event because his client was paying all incidental costs—including the thousand-dollar ticket for dinner and the rental of this damn tux—and because he’d been confident he could remain in the background. Riane had taken that option away from him. And he wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or annoyed that he’d caught her attention.
While she was preoccupied with the attorney general, Joel scanned the room again, searching for the elusive senator. Ellen Rutherford-Quinlan’s name had been on the top of the guest list. This charity camp was her daughter’s pet project. So where the hell was she?
His head snapped back to the conversation beside him when the attorney general said, “I’m so sorry I missed your mother.”
“She didn’t want to miss the ball,” Riane told her. “But Daddy convinced her that it was more important to celebrate their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
Daddy. Joel fought the urge to roll his eyes. How many grown women referred to their fathers as “daddy”? Then the impact of what she was saying registered and he nearly groaned out loud: the senator wasn’t going to make an appearance here tonight.
He accepted the fresh glass of beer the waiter brought to him without question and tipped it to his lips, cursing the fact that he’d wasted his time—and his client’s money—in attending this gala event. Hell, his whole trip to West Virginia might turn out to have been a waste of time.
Riane said goodbye to the older woman, turned back to him and smiled. Joel felt that quick punch of desire again and had to remind himself of all the reasons that the senator’s daughter was off-limits.
She wasn’t his type, anyway. She was too sophisticated and high class. Too everything. He preferred a woman with more simple tastes, more basic desires. And blond, he reminded himself, even as his fingers itched to pull the pins out of Riane’s dark silky hair to let it tumble freely down her back.
Joel swallowed, hard. Yeah, he definitely preferred blondes.
Like the one beside the window, tall and slender in body-hugging green velvet. Her hand was on the arm of a short, portly man who looked old enough to be her father, but the hefty chunk of diamond on the woman’s hand suggested otherwise.
Despite the ring and the presence of her companion, she caught Joel’s eye and sent him a blatantly invitational glance from beneath lowered lashes. There was nothing complicated about that one, Joel thought approvingly. Except that he never cut in on another man’s territory. It was one of few rules he lived by, and one he’d never consider violating. He knew too well how it felt to be on the other side of that equation.
“Meredith Ashcroft,” Riane said, close to his ear. “Of the Boston Ashcrofts—by marriage. Now divorced and currently engaged to Justice Cunningham.”
“The man in the ill-fitting tux?”
“That’s the one,” Riane agreed. “He hasn’t bought a new suit in the past ten years because he won’t admit that he’s put on forty pounds. He thinks he has the same physique that impressed his first wife. She left him more than a dozen years ago and took half his money. He still possesses a sizable fortune and an impressive position on the bench, which is why Ms. Ashcroft is in line to become wife number three.”
“A friend of yours?”
Riane’s smile was thin. “An acquaintance,” she clarified.
“But I could arrange an introduction, if you wanted.”
“You said she was engaged.”
“Does that matter to you?”
“Yes.”
“A cop with morals,” she mused.
“I’m not a cop,” he said again.
“So you said. But you didn’t say what you are.”
Not wanting to reveal too much about his reasons for being in West Virginia, he opted to try diversion again. “Do you dance?”
She tilted her head. “Is that a hypothetical question or an invitation?”
“An invitation.”
She studied him for another moment, as if considering his motives, then nodded. “All right.”
Joel led the way to the dance floor, reassuring himself that he’d issued the invitation solely to prevent her from continuing her inquiry. He wasn’t ready for her to find out who he was, his real reason for being there. Not until he knew whether or not she was the answer to his questions.
Then Riane put her hand in his, and desire surged through him. Hot and hard. And he knew that however he chose to rationalize the request in his own mind, the simple fact was that he’d wanted to hold her. She was sexy and beautiful and intriguing, and it had been far too long since he’d been with a woman.
The intensity of his own reaction shook him. He was a man of action, in charge of his life, responsible for his own decisions. Yet the moment she turned into his arms, he felt a spiraling sense of panic, a stunning realization that this was out of his control.
He’d only ever felt this way once before—toward the end of the Conroy investigation. Just as all the pieces seemed to be falling into place, he’d known that it had been a little too easy. He’d ignored the instinct, convinced himself it was paranoia.
He’d been wrong.
There was no way he’d make the same mistake again.
Okay, so maybe he was overreacting a little this time. Riane Quinlan was a woman. She might be beautiful, sexy, intriguing, but she was still just a woman.
Yet his instincts warned him that she was dangerous. Very dangerous. Because the scent of her clouded his mind; the subtle curves of her body made him forget his reason for being there; those full, painted lips tempted him to taste. Riane Quinlan made him not just forget, but want to forget, that she was off-limits.
Just a woman?
Like hell. This woman was more dangerous than a roomful of Zane Conroy’s trigger-happy minions with fully automatic Mac 10s.
He misstepped, and her hip brushed against his thigh. The fleeting contact jarred him, and he felt his blood begin to migrate southward. He forced himself to concentrate on moving his feet, determined to avoid any more such accidents so that she wouldn’t notice how affected he was by her.
Not that his physical response should surprise her. He was, after all, just a man, and she was as warm and soft as the scent that clung to her. And she fit in his arms as if it was where she was meant to be.
Joel gave himself a mental shake. It was ridiculous to even imagine such things. Riane Quinlan might fit in his arms, but she could never fit into his life. Nor he in hers. He knew that opposites could attract. He also knew, from personal experience, that they couldn’t coexist for very long.
“How long are you going to be in West Virginia?” Riane asked, breaking the silence that had stretched between them.
“I’m not sure,” he responded, then he made the mistake of looking at her. She’d tilted her head upward to speak to him, and her glossy lips were mere inches from his own. He only needed to lower his head a fraction and he could taste her. It was a tempting proposition. Too tempting. Too dangerous.
He tore his gaze from her mouth, saw that she was watching him. Her own eyes were dark, aware. He’d feel much more confident in his ability to do his job if he could keep his distance from Riane Quinlan. And he wouldn’t be able to keep his distance if she kept looking at him like that.
Focus, Logan.
Somewhere in the back recesses of his mind this niggling reminder from his conscience registered. He knew he was dangerously close to losing his focus, and he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. Not this time.
“Riane,” he said. “That’s a rather unusual name, isn’t it?”
“It’s a feminine form of Ryan, which is my father’s name.”
His preliminary investigation had revealed that fact, but he didn’t know if the similarity was by design or coincidence. That was what he needed to find out, and that was why he needed to talk to the senator.
“Isn’t your mother usually a supporter of the Quinlan Camp Charity Ball?”
So much for being discreet, he thought, as the question blurted out of his mouth. But he was more worried about self-preservation than discretion at this point.
If Riane was startled by the abrupt change of topic, she gave no indication of it. “Yes,” she admitted. “And I was a little worried that her absence this year would affect attendance, but thankfully it hasn’t been a problem.”
“She won’t be making an appearance tonight?”
“I doubt it.” She smiled at him once more, drawing his gaze back to that luscious mouth, tempting him all over again. “She’s in Thailand.”
“Thailand?”
Riane nodded. “She and my father went on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary.”
Joel expected to be annoyed, even angry, at this revelation. His sole purpose in being here this evening was to contact the senator. But it was difficult to be angry when there was a soft, fragrant woman in his arms. Impossible to be annoyed that his source of information had been wrong.
“How long will they be gone?”
“What is your interest in my mother, Mr. Logan?”
“Joel,” he said, and smiled.
But she’d homed in on the direction of his questions and wouldn’t be deterred. “What is your interest in my mother, Joel?”
“I was just hoping, since I was in town anyway, that I might have an opportunity to meet with the senator.”
“Are you a Republican supporter?”
He realized, with reluctant admiration, that she was trying to trip him up. And had he not done his homework thoroughly, she might have done so with that question. Her mother was a Democrat.
“I’m not a card-carrying member of any party,” he told her.
He wasn’t sure if his response convinced her, but she let it drop. Joel accepted the reprieve, recognizing that he’d have to be a little more subtle if he didn’t want to raise Riane’s suspicions any further.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, he failed to spot the photographer until the flash of the camera’s bulb blinded him. He instinctively stepped away, crushing Riane’s toes in his haste.
