Private Investigations Page 11

  First off, she was reasonably convinced that there was no blood connection between Nicole and Clarise. She questioned if Bennett was their real name. When she’d arrived in Memphis, the first hotel attendant she’d dropped a twenty on had told her Nicole had checked in under the name Kidman. Har, har, she remembered thinking at the time. But if she was going around using false names, then it was possible that Bennett wasn’t her real name, either.

  She picked up the phone and put a call through to her cousin three times removed on her father’s side who worked at the phone company in St. Louis. Janet was two years younger than she was and wasn’t the brightest, but they’d always gotten along. After the normal amount of chitchat, she asked Janet to check and see if there was a listing for a Clarise Bennett in the St. Louis or surrounding area. Shocker of shockers, there wasn’t. Then she asked her cousin whose name was connected to the number Clarise had given her that was now out of service. Janet seemed a little put off by that one.

  “Geez, Ripley, you know I can’t do that. That’s illegal.”

  Ripley bit her tongue, stopping herself from saying that’s exactly the reason she had called her instead of Information. Ripley rested her chin in her palm, trying to think up an inventive story that would get her what she was looking for. She found one. She told Janet she was going out with this guy, and that was the number he had given her, but he suddenly up and disappeared. The kicker was, she was afraid he was married.

  Boy, was she ever going to hear it from her mother once that news made it back to her.

  “The name on that account is Christine Bowman,” Janet said a moment later. “Only after the initial installation two months ago, she never paid her bill, and the company cut off service a couple of days ago.” She made a low sound, then read off the address. Ripley wrote it down. “Swanky. Funny how she could afford a place like that but couldn’t make the phone payment.” Her voice lowered. “You think that’s the wife?”

  “Wife?”

  Oh, yeah. She’d forgotten her story. “Just as I expected. The no-good, low-down rodent.”

  She thanked her cousin, then hung up. Was Clarise Bennett really Christine Bowman? She’d bet she was. But why go through all the trouble of giving a false name?

  She thought about the story she’d just fed to her cousin. She realized Clarise, aka Christine, had probably fed the sister story to her in order to find Nicole Bennett. But why?

  She picked up the photo of Nicole and squinted at it. She wondered at the odd angle again, and the grainy quality. While she’d questioned why it looked like it had been taken from a security camera before, now, armed with the suspicion that Nicole and Christine, aka Clarise, weren’t related at all, she was convinced it had been taken from a security camera. She leaned closer, examining the surroundings. The shot had been taken on the front steps of a house with white columns flanking the steps and a brick sidewalk snaking beyond them. Nicole wore a simple light-colored dress—it was difficult to tell what color because the shot was in black and white—that looked more like a uniform than your run-of-the-mill dress.

  Ripley sat back, thinking.

  Okay, so Nicole wasn’t Clarise’s sister. And Nicole hadn’t been at Clarise’s house for a regular family visit, either. Ripley suspected Nicole had been working at the house, and not for very long, at that, if Clarise had just moved in a couple months before. Then Nicole had stolen the box….

  She crossed her legs. But why then wouldn’t Clarise have called the police and reported the items stolen? Why, instead, did she hire Ripley to find Nicole and recover what appeared to be nothing but a boxful of worthless costume jewelry?

  She took a deep breath then let it out, the answers she found only sprouting more questions.

  “I need that box,” she said aloud.

  She looked at Joe who lay across the bed, reading a book he had open on his washboard stomach. She ignored the little skip her heart gave then crossed to sit on the bed next to him. “What are the chances of our getting into the car without anyone noticing us?”

  He laid the book, cover down, on his stomach and glanced at her. “Oh, about zero to none.”

  “Not the answer I was looking for.”

  “Unfortunately it’s the only one I’ve got for you.”

  She snuggled a little more comfortably against the pillows and fingered the pages of the book. “What are you reading?”

  She found it hard to believe he would be reading a novel in the midst of all this. But the truth was she didn’t know Joe very well. Maybe he read when he was nervous or in trouble. Lord knew others did far stranger things to calm their nerves. Her mother scrubbed the walls in the entire house when she was worried about something. Ripley eyed the hotel room walls, thinking she’d prefer to read.

  He held the book up so she could see the cover.

  How to Become a P.I. In Ten Quick, Simple Steps.

  She gaped at him. “You’re kidding.”

  He grinned. “Nope.”

  She snatched the book out of his hands and glanced at the back cover. She was familiar with the book. She’d checked a copy of it out of the St. Louis main library a month ago. But what was he doing with it?

  She tossed it back to him and sighed. “What are you doing, Joe?”

  He closed the book and put it on the nightstand. “I figured I needed something to do when we weren’t having sex.”

  “And your becoming a P.I. is what you came up with?”

  He shook his head, his grin making her thighs quiver. “Nope. You’re the P.I. I just thought reading up on the subject would make me more of a help than a hindrance.”

  She lolled her head on the pillow, not sure if she should be touched or insulted. She opted for touched and tried to ignore the other. “So does this mean I have to read up on shoes now?”

  He chuckled. “Not unless you want to.”

  He leaned closer to her, his index finger finding its way to the hem of her T-shirt. “You know, we could skip all the P.I. and shoes stuff and go straight to the sex part.”

  A thrill raced up her skin, hardening her breasts and making her blood start to simmer. “Hmm,” she said, watching as he lifted the hem of her T-shirt and revealed her plain white panties.

  “You ever hear of Victoria’s Secret?”

  She tried to move his hand away. “You ever hear of tact?”

  The finger worked its way under the elastic of her panties and lightly stroked her. Ripley gasped, surprised by the instant awakening of all sorts of hot feelings up and down her body.

  He withdrew the finger from the bottom of the panties and moved to the top, tugging the cotton down her hips. “We could always eliminate the topic of underwear altogether.”

  Ripley swallowed hard. “We could.”

  Down and off went the panties. But instead of coming right back up, Joe took one of her feet in his hands. He did something to her toes that made her nipples ache. Then his long fingers rubbed her instep, sending shivers up her arms and down her back.

  “Do you have a thing for feet?” She’d meant the comment as a mild crack, but her voice sounded raspy even to her, betraying how very much she liked what he was doing.

  He grinned and ran a fingertip from heel to toe, eliciting a shallow gasp. “Feet are my business.”

  She caught her bottom lip between her teeth. “Some men are breast men. Others leg men. Just my luck that I’d pick a guy with a foot fetish.”

  His chuckle tickled the sensitive skin on her leg, making her realize he’d graduated from her feet and was making his way up her body.

  Ripley settled a little more firmly on the mattress, stretching her neck when his fingers found her magic button and began stroking it.

  “God, you’re so hot,” Joe murmured, the air from the words stirring the hair between her legs.

  Ripley cracked open her eyes just as his mouth pressed against her heated core, his thumbs holding her swollen flesh open to his attentions. She gasped, caught between needing to push him away
and wanting him to do exactly what he was doing.

  Her back arched violently, shamelessly pushing her against him as he laved her with his tongue. She restlessly licked her lips, thinking a girl could definitely get used to this. He sucked her most sensitive piece of flesh, and she shuddered. Oh, yeah…definitely.

  Up and up she soared. She was teetering on the precipice…when Joe removed his mouth.

  “No!” she cried, trying to force him back down.

  He chuckled, and a moment later her protests left her when his mouth was replaced by his arousal, thick and hard and pulsing between her legs. She thrust her hips against his.

  “Impatient this morning, aren’t we?” he murmured, nipping the flesh at the base of her neck.

  “Just shut up and give it to me.”

  He ran his shaft the length of her flesh then back again. “Give you what, Ripley? I want to hear you say it.”

  She blinked her eyes open to stare at him, her breath rushing from her lungs at the raw, undiluted need on his face.

  She reached down and gripped his length in her fingers, giving a squeeze for good measure, and finding him sheathed in a condom. She fit the knob of his arousal against her opening, then thrust her hips quickly upward. “This…oh, yes, this…”

  9

  THE MORE SEX THEY HAD, the more sex Joe wanted.

  Ripley wriggled beneath him, and he rocked into her to the hilt, taking great pleasure in her shudders, the sway of her breasts, the bowing of her lips as she pulled in quick, shallow breaths. He claimed her mouth, running his tongue along the length of her lips, then thrust again.

  Who knew it could be this good?

  The emotions raging through him were both familiar and foreign. He’d had sex with his share of women, but the burning need that always invaded his groin roared through his entire body when he was getting sweaty with Ripley. He stopped short of thinking they were a perfect fit, but when her slick muscles contracted around him, he felt like the most important man on earth. Like this was the place he was meant to be, and he never wanted to leave it. Before…well, he had been after only one thing—his own gratification. And it wasn’t simply that he was concerned with Ripley’s pleasure, it was also that he didn’t want their physical coming together to end. And pleasuring her helped ensure that it wouldn’t.

  He ran his fingers over her breasts, then between the two globes of flesh, wondering at the dampness there, then moved his hands beneath her to cup her bottom, fitting her to him even more closely. She protested the lack of freedom, and he kissed her words away, reluctantly sliding his hands from her bottom and down her thighs, curving her legs until they were bent between them. When he thrust this time, she called out his name and shattered beneath him. He watched the myriad expressions cross her face as she climaxed.

  He tried to hold back, to enjoy merely watching her. But just seeing her experience so much pleasure, knowing he could take credit for it, made him explode right along with her.

  Moments later, his mouth pressed to Ripley’s sweat-dampened neck, he felt a moment of what he was pretty sure was fear. Not fear that he hadn’t performed well. Or that his weight was too much for her. Fear that what was happening between them wouldn’t last.

  Ripley gave a low, husky laugh. “You know, at some point we’re going to have to get out of this bed.”

  He pulled back to gaze into her face, taking in the humor in her eyes, the flushed state of her skin. “Why?”

  She took his head in her hands and kissed him fully on the mouth. “Because I have a case to solve.”

  He couldn’t help his grimace. And what happened when she did solve that case? Would she go back to St. Louis? Where would that leave things between them?

  For the first time in his memory, probably ever, Joe thought he’d gained an insight into what went through the minds of those women who desperately tried to cling to him after sex. And it wasn’t a pretty picture.

  Ripley pushed at his shoulders, and he reluctantly rolled off her, watching as she headed for the bathroom and the shower.

  Joe rubbed both hands against his face, breathing in the sweet scent of her that lingered there and trying like hell not to feel like an idiot.

  He’d spent some time with a woman in Dallas. Once, after they’d had sex and he lay almost indifferent on the other side of the bed, she had told him that one of these days he was going to meet that one person who would make him feel what she was feeling. He’d stopped himself from scoffing at her and listened patiently, but he’d been thinking he was immune to whatever it was that made women turn from perfectly good bed buddies into demanding, commitment-hungry monsters.

  He glanced toward the open bathroom door. Unfortunately, he thought he was finding out that not only wasn’t he immune, he was feeling whatever that feeling was in spades.

  He rolled out of bed, discarded the used condom, then began pacing the length of the room. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. This wasn’t supposed to happen to him.

  He caught himself. Okay, get a grip, guy. So you like having sex with this woman. And you don’t want that sex to end just yet. There was nothing wrong with that. It didn’t mean he was falling into the big one. That he’d stuck his foot right in the middle of it.

  Love.

  No. No. There was a difference between sex and love. He’d learned that in sex ed classes.

  And that was exactly the reason he was afraid he was coming to know the other side a little too well.

  Ripley came out of the bathroom freshly scrubbed, her auburn curls somewhat tamed. She was dressed in khaki shorts and a white blouse with a white tank top underneath. And she couldn’t have looked sexier to him had she been in one of those sheer, body-hugging getups he saw in the Victoria’s Secret catalogues that were delivered to his house.

  Holy shit, I am in love with her, he realized with a breath-robbing gulp.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  No. Hell, no. He wasn’t anywhere near ready. In fact, he’d never be ready. What was he going to do? Where was he going to go? She was watching him. What was he going to say?

  “For what?” he forced himself to ask.

  “To get the box from the car, of course.”

  “Of course,” he repeated, pacing from one end of the room to the other. He forced himself to stop, to try to gain some perspective, but all he could think of was the terrifying “L” word.

  He finally forced himself to put on his clothes, more to distract himself from his thoughts than as a response. Then her words sank in, and he turned to face her even as he tucked his shirt into his jeans. “What did you just say?”

  She glanced at him guilelessly from where she was putting her file together. “What? That we’re going to get the box from your car?”

  “Yes, that’s it.” He crossed his arms over his chest and tried to ignore how much he wanted to tackle her back to the bed. “Are you insane? There’s no way we’re getting into that place without those goons seeing us.” Or the dogs. He wasn’t sure which was worse.

  She slung her purse over her shoulder, tucked the file under her arm and headed for the door. “Exactly.”

  Joe caught the door with his hand, pushing it closed. He eyed the damp tendrils of hair that clung to her finely curved neck. “What do you mean, exactly?”

  She shrugged and held the file against her chest. “Nelson told me that there are times when it’s wise to make friends out of your enemies.”

  That Nelson Polk again. Joe sighed.

  She smiled. “I think it’s time you and I found out who our new friends really are, and what, exactly, they’re after.”

  OKAY, JOE WAS ACTING decidedly weird. Ripley pulled her hair off her neck then fastened it into a loose twist at the top of her head. She’d come out of the shower to find him looking at her in a way she could only describe as shell-shocked. And that seemed to be the general way he’d looked at her since. No wiseass remarks. No trying to get into her underpants. Instead, he appeared ready to bolt in
the other direction if she so much as said boo to him.

  She smiled, tempted to do just that.

  In the back of the taxi she’d called to pick them up, Joe couldn’t have sat farther away from her had he tried. And she got the distinct impression he was trying. He all but had the side of his face smashed against the window in his effort to stay away from her.

  So she did the natural thing. She reached out and touched him.

  He started, and she laughed.

  “Am I missing something here?” she asked. She began to remove her hand from his arm, then changed her mind, deciding she liked him being a little ill at ease. At her mercy, so to speak.

  She watched him swallow hard then shake his head. “It’s just that I don’t know if this is such a good idea.”

  She smoothed her hand up his arm, then over his chest, her fingers seeking and finding the opening of his shirt and slipping inside to tease the fine, crisp hair there. The tension that practically radiated from him was of the anxious variety. She smiled and dipped her fingers down to roll over one of his flat nipples.

  He caught her hand. “Would you cut it out? I’m serious here.”

  That was the thing. He was a little too serious.

  Could it be that all this was finally getting to him? That the source of his anxiety stemmed from the three goons they were about to face off with? After all, she could only guess at what had happened when he’d gone head-to-head with them alone.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Joe,” she said, sitting back on her side of the seat and watching as he collapsed against his side in almost comical relief. “If they are FBI, then we’re safe because neither of us has done anything wrong.” She hoped. “If they’re not…well, it’s the middle of the day. What do you think they’re going to do? Shoot us?”

  “The thought has crossed my mind.”

  “Well, then, we’ll shoot them back.” She patted the bag that held her gun for emphasis.

  “Gee, that’s reassuring.” A return of the old Joe, but the words didn’t hold half the energy they usually did.