Silk, Lace & Videotape

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“Amanda.” The word sounded harsh, his voice rough with sexual frustration.

Her eyes flew open, her flush growing deeper.

“Sorry,” she murmured, as if that particular remark fell frequently from her lips. She focused on retrieving her satchel from the floor, her hands a sudden flurry of awkward movement.

Damn.

He stepped back, prying his fingers from her body, afraid he would kiss her all over again in some misguided attempt to apologize. “Don’t be.” He pulled her to her feet again, unwilling to let her walk away looking so bereft. “You kiss like an angel.”

Or like a temptress from a teenage fantasy.

But Amanda Matthews seemed like the kind of woman who would appreciate the first analogy more.

She adjusted the leather strap on her shoulder and rewarded him with a tentative smile. “Really?”

Duke stifled a groan. Just how innocent was she? Maybe Victor Gallagher had taken a lover because his girlfriend, the mobster’s daughter, was off-limits until her wedding night. The idea made sense, considering Amanda had been going into Victor’s apartment building this morning rather than leaving it.

No matter that she’d probably been wearing a killer skirt and real, honest-to-goodness stockings underneath her conservative trench coat. She had an inherent modesty about her, an old-fashioned sense of grace and propriety she broadcasted in everything from her fifties starlet hairdo to her perfect posture.

He squeezed her hand and nodded, knowing he was already in way over his head. “Really. I didn’t mean to get so…carried away.”

She flashed him a high-wattage smile—definitely the fantasy temptress variety—and made him rethink his ideas about her all over again. “You won’t hear me complaining.”

It would have been so easy to kiss her again. Amanda obviously wouldn’t mind. He wanted to touch her so badly his muscles twitched with the effort to restrain himself. But Duke forced himself to think about the consequences.

Despite what he’d spouted about chemistry and jumping in with both feet, Duke knew he’d have to give some thought to involving himself with Amanda Matthews. How wise would it be for a New York detective to lose his head with a sheltered daughter of a possible mobster? A sheltered daughter who’d been lying through her teeth when she’d said she returned to Victor’s building for her date book.

Maybe she was just having a hard rebound after her bout with her indiscreet boyfriend this morning. Surely that accounted for the impassioned kiss more than anything.

Duke nodded toward the lobby. “I’ve got to get back to the precinct and go over today’s evidence. You need a ride downtown?” He asked even though he knew better than to spend too much time in her tempting presence. His granddad would kick his butt if he left a woman stranded.

She shook her head, effectively freeing a few more strands of hair from the slipping knot at the back of her head. Duke’s fingers itched to pull the pins from the caramel-colored mass and see it fall down around her shoulders.

“I’ve got to get back to the showroom to work on a window for my father. You still want me to stop by the station tomorrow?”

“I’d appreciate it.” They reached the lobby doors and he pushed one side open for her, remembering how they’d met just that morning.

The sexy look she sent sizzling his way told him she was remembering, too. “See you at eleven.”

She clicked her way down the street, her trench coat waving a sassy goodbye as it moved in time with her confident step. She had a walk to turn heads, stop traffic and make Duke forget what the hell he was doing.

He’d held the door of Gallagher’s apartment building for at least five people by the time she turned the corner at Twenty-eighth Street, out of his sight.

He knew she’d be very much on his mind, however, when he went to the station to review the day’s evidence for his case against Gallagher.

Her kisses had been hot as a siren’s, but her reaction afterward smacked of an innocence that warned him to exercise caution. Amanda Matthews’s mobster father didn’t intimidate him one bit, but her old-fashioned values and conservative approach gave him pause.

He would proceed very slowly with her, starting tomorrow when she stopped by the precinct at eleven.

Until then, he needed to get his head back into his case and review all the findings of his investigative team today.

And he planned to start by finding out what was on that videotape.

4

AMANDA FUMBLED WITH her keys outside her apartment door. Her overprotective father had insisted she install three different locks to secure the loft that served as her workroom and her home. Normally, she didn’t mind the extra time required to unlock each one, but now that Duke Rawlins’s kiss hummed in her veins, her key ring jumped out of her hands twice before her door was tugged open from the inside.

Her best friend, Lexi Mansfield, stood inside the loft, her black toy poodle at her feet. Lexi had her own apartment on Columbus Circle, but she stopped by Amanda’s often enough to have a closet full of clothes stashed in the hallway. No doubt Lexi had sought out Amanda to hear how the secret weapon had gone over with Victor. Garbed in thigh-high leather boots, a skirt printed with a snakeskin design and a big black angora sweater, the petite brunette possessed an outrageous style that often masked her status as one of New York’s most celebrated fashion reviewers.

Ignoring the jumping and yapping of her little dog, Lexi clucked her tongue and frowned. “You’re giving Muffin a nervous breakdown with all that rattling around out there, girlfriend.” She clutched Amanda’s arm with perfectly manicured red talons and pulled her friend inside. “Come on in here. You look like you need a drink.”

Amanda nodded numbly, not sure whether she was relieved to see Lexi or not. On her short walk home, Amanda had convinced herself the wisest course of action would be to fall into bed and forget the day—the kiss—ever happened. “I’ll have water,” she murmured as she listened to Lexi click her way across the hardwood floors to the small kitchen, the sound echoed by Muffin’s nails tapping along behind her.

Lexi had been Amanda’s best friend since they’d roomed together at boarding school. They shared an interest in clothes that went all the way back to the time Amanda had created a spandex micro-mini dress complete with matching headband for Lexi’s Malibu Barbie doll in second grade.

While Amanda sank into her leather couch, Lexi returned with a cup of hot tea and two gingersnaps perched on the saucer. Even as a part-time resident of Amanda’s apartment, Lexi knew her way around the kitchen far better than Amanda ever had. “Have a cookie, you’ll feel better. I didn’t know what else to do while I was waiting for you, so I baked cookies.”

Great. Just the sort of temptation that would put ten pounds back on her hips in a blink. Still, Amanda smiled at the way her friend blatantly ignored her request for water. The tea tasted better anyway, and it quieted her nerves just a little. At least she felt soothed until she closed her eyes and saw Duke’s startling blue gaze emblazoned inside her eyelids.

Her cup and saucer clattered in her hands. Swiping aside a stack of fabric swatches she’d been working with the day before, Amanda set the teacup on an oversize trunk that served as her coffee table. “Thank you.”

Lexi perched on a tall director’s chair across from her, Muffin curling at her feet. “The curiosity is choking me over here. How did it go?” She looked Amanda up and down. “And please tell me you knew better than to wear all that wool to seduce a man, didn’t you?”

Amanda snorted. “I knew better.”

Lexi leaped out of her chair and plummeted onto the sofa beside Amanda. Her cloud of long black hair floated behind her, kept in motion by Lexi’s natural restless energy. Muffin ran in circles, catching the air of excitement. “It worked, didn’t it? I knew you looked different somehow. Your eyes are sort of starry or something.”

Amanda stifled a groan as she thought of the fluorescent pattern on Duke Rawlins’s tie. “They are definitely not starry. And thankfully, the plan blew up in my face.”

Briefly, she outlined her horrendous day from the moment she’d walked into Victor’s apartment alongside a cop, to her realization that her secret weapon was missing. She stopped short of mentioning Duke’s kiss, however. The experience was still too new, too fresh in her blood to share just yet.

“So Victor turned out to be a cheating scum and a criminal, and you lost a video fit for blackmail all in the same day?” Lexi frowned. “Then what’s with the dreamy look I’m seeing in your eyes, girlfriend?”

Amanda searched for words, knowing she looked like a fish with her open mouth working soundlessly.

“The cop was a hottie, wasn’t he?” Lexi grinned triumphantly, crossing her arms over her angora sweater. “I bet he drooled himself dry if you were wearing some sexy getup for Victor. Did you flash him your garters?”

“Of course not.” Amanda sighed, realizing she couldn’t hide anything from Lexi. “I wore my coat over my videotape outfit, but I did not flash the detective a thing.”

“Come on, Amanda. A New York cop doesn’t miss a trick. I’ll bet he knew exactly what you were wearing underneath that coat and that’s why he hit on you.”

“He didn’t hit on me!”

Lexi leaned forward on the sofa, propping her elbows on her knees. “Please. Every man hits on you until he finds out whose daughter you are.” She pointed one dragon-lady nail at Amanda. “But that’s what will be great about the cop—no detective worth his badge would shy away from Clyde Matthews’s daughter just because of a few mob connections.”

“Lex—” Amanda warned.

Lexi, of all people, knew how much her father’s friendships with mobsters bothered her. Amanda had vowed to confront her father about it before the busy fashion season got into full swing again in the fall. The thought of a serious talk with her father made her stomach knot as the man had the attention span of a six-year-old and he possessed zero interest in anything that didn’t pertain to style or fashion.

“Okay, rumored mob connections. This guy could be your ticket to adventure. And he sounds way more fun than stick-in-the-mud Victor ever was.”

“Duke doesn’t ‘sound’ like anything, because I haven’t told you one thing about him,” Amanda hissed before crunching into a gingersnap.

“Ah, but you know my imagination beats the truth of the matter any day.” Lexi stole Amanda’s other cookie and munched a bite before Amanda’s words sank in. “Duke? Did I hear you right that this guy’s name is Duke?”

Amanda smiled.

Lexi sighed. “That makes him sound like a German shepherd. Or maybe a prissy English nobleman. I wonder where on earth he got a name like Duke?”

“Trust me, you wouldn’t be thinking prissy or canine if you got a look at this guy.” Just the thought of Duke Rawlins sent a shiver of anticipation through her. Amanda had never been kissed the way Duke had kissed her. The few sensual encounters she’d had in her life hadn’t lit her fire half as much as the simple brush of Duke’s mouth on hers.