“You don’t talk to anybody. And put that notebook away. This was a random attack, and you’re trolling for a job.”
“A job that needs doing.”
“Really? Then why haven’t you brought up the most obvious suspect? My pal, the Prince of Darkness.”
She toyed with the edge of her notebook. “I’m getting there.”
“Very slowly. And I know why.”
She nodded. “Because I feel responsible.”
“You aren’t, but I like your guilt.” He appreciated the way she stepped up to the plate with none of the pretend ignorance so many people hid behind. Pipe was a straight shooter. Except when she chose not to be.
She balled up her napkin. “How was I supposed to know you were going to give Prince Aamuzhir a phony Super Bowl ring? And he’s in London now. Yes, I checked. Not that it means anything. And, yes again, I’m worried. It’s one thing dealing with a disgruntled former employee or a Broncos fan who’s still holding a grudge over that Hail Mary you threw against them on fourth-and-ten. It’s another thing entirely to deal with a foreign dignitary-and I use that word loosely. He could easily have hired that thug.”
“Look, Pipe. I know your heart’s in the right place, but the bottom line is that you’re an investigator without a job, and you’re trying to manufacture one.”
As soon as he’d said it, he wanted to take it back. Her eyes darkened, and her wide mouth collapsed at the corners, if only for a moment. She’d always been impervious, even amused, by the insults he’d enjoyed tossing at her-insults about the way she dressed, her ballsy attitude-but he’d insulted her integrity, and her hurt was painful to watch.
She rose from her chair, back straight. “I gotta go.”
He got up and blocked her way. “Hold on. That didn’t come out the way I meant.”
“I think it came out exactly the way you meant,” she said quietly.
“No, it didn’t.” He cupped her shoulders. She didn’t pull away. Instead, she lifted her head and stared him down, daring him to insult her again.
Her shoulders nestled in his palms. Her personality was so big that he sometimes forgot how small she was compared to him. “Pipe, you love what you do, and all I’m saying is-that could be impairing your judgment.”
She actually seemed to think it over. Finally, she shook her head. “No. But apology accepted.”
He hadn’t really apologized.
“And you’re the one with the impaired judgment. You want to believe the attack was random, so you’ve closed your mind to any other possibility.”
Her motives were pure, if wrongheaded. “I wish I’d had you on my offensive line when I was playing. Nobody would have been able to touch me.”
She smiled-open and genuine. Sulking wasn’t in her nature.
He wasn’t exactly sure when their eyes locked, only that he still had his hands on her shoulders and that his aches and pains seemed to have faded. She lifted her arm, and her fingers brushed his bruised jaw in a caress so gentle he could barely feel it. The breeze blew a strand of dark hair across her cheek. He wasn’t used to looking at anyone like this. Gazing so deeply. Seeing nothing but big eyes and a soft, inviting mouth. Kissing her felt like the most natural thing in the world.
She could have stopped him simply by turning her head, but she didn’t. She opened her lips and slipped her hands under his sweatshirt to touch his bare back.
Their kiss gathered heat, and their bodies melded. A hot rush of blood ripped through him. All he wanted was to be inside her. To satisfy her in a way no one ever had. He wanted to hear her moan. Have her beg him. Want him as much as he wanted her.
She had his sweatshirt off. He pulled her top over her head. She wore a black bra beneath. He drew her toward the big chaise.
The purple cushions were soft, but he landed on his bad side and winced.
She jerked back from him as if she’d burned him. “We can’t. You’re-”
He stopped her words with his mouth and rolled to his good side, taking her with him. He cupped her bottom through her jeans. He had to get them off her. Strip everything away. He heard a buzzing in his head as he slipped his finger under her bra strap. His lips went to her shoulder. The buzzing grew louder. Pushing him on. Louder still. More demanding.
She shoved herself away from him so abruptly he nearly fell off the chaise.
She reached for something.
The buzz… it wasn’t coming from inside his sex-obsessed brain. It was coming from above them.
A silver X-shaped drone hovered in the air overhead. He let out a blistering curse. The drone made a small circle just above the garden. Circled again.
And then it exploded.
Shards of fiberglass, plastic, and metal flew everywhere.
Piper stood in the middle of his garden, dressed only in her jeans and a black bra, her arm raised. And in her hand, the hand that had, only moments before, been caressing him, she held a semiautomatic pistol.
One shot. That’s all it had taken for her to bring down the drone. One perfect shot.
He sagged against the brick terrace wall. Nothing like a woman with a gun to spoil the mood.
13
The street below the terrace wall was quiet, with only a dog walker and a female jogger in sight. “You stay here,” Piper ordered as she pulled her T-shirt back over her head and bolted toward the French doors.
“Like hell!”
They spent the next hour scouring the neighborhood together. It would have been more efficient to split up, but Piper wanted to keep him in her sight. No one on the street had seen anyone operating a drone, but all of them wanted to talk to Coop about his career.
On the elevator back up to his condo, he finally got around to the question he’d been waiting to ask. “Are you always packing?”
“Not in the club, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He had been. The image of Piper turning into a one-woman SWAT team to protect him from whatever she defined as a threat wasn’t anything he cared to contemplate. “No more guns,” he said, after she’d gone to the terrace to bag up the pieces of the drone.
“You grew up on a ranch,” she protested.
“And I can shoot. But that doesn’t mean I want ’em around me in the city.”
She looked up at him and grinned. “Admit it. That was one hell of a shot.”
A shot he doubted he could have made. “Respectable.”
She laughed and picked up her jacket from the kitchen barstool. “Good news. I’ve decided to take that bouncer job you offered me.”
He should have anticipated this. “Forget it. The offer’s off the table.”
“And why’s that?”
“You only want the job now because you’ve decided I need a bodyguard. In my own club!”
“Nonsense. You can take care of yourself.”
She said it with an absolute sincerity that didn’t mean a thing. He was caught in a dilemma. He needed her, wanted her, but on his terms, so he poked his finger toward her forehead. “If I hire you, you’re a bouncer-only there to take care of the women.”
“Of course.”
“No bodyguard needed. None.”
“Understood. Completely understood.”
“Okay. You can have the job.”
“Great.”
As she walked back into the kitchen, all he could think was-shit, now he had a bodyguard.
She grabbed her jacket and turned back into the Woman of Steel. “There won’t be any more physical contact between us. Not while I’m working for you. Agreed?”
She wasn’t the only one who could dish out crap. He rested his shoulder against the refrigerator door and gave her his laziest drawl. “Now, sweetheart… Do you really think you can keep your hands off me?”
Then he kicked her out.
Piper fingered the broken wing of the drone. She’d pieced together enough to make out the model and manufacturer, but an online check and a couple of phone calls revealed that the company had sold thousands of these. The creepiest part was knowing this particular model offered live-streaming video. Whoever had sent it up had seen her heavy make-out session with Coop.