A Lot Like Love (11 page)

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Authors: Julie James

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #General

BOOK: A Lot Like Love
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Jordan noticed that he was going off the script a little. “A gamay?”
Nick snapped his fingers. “A gamay—that’s it.”
“With Huxley it was a carménère from Chile. And he picked it out.”
“Well, Huxley knows a lot more about wine than I do. Since I don’t have time to learn, my character is going to be more of a novice.” He grinned. “Your character finds this refreshing in contrast to all the stuffy wine snobs you usually meet.”
“But my character probably won’t emphasize that fact tonight, since most of those stuffy wine snobs will be at this party,” she threw back.
The two of them looked over as Huxley stumbled his way into the living room and sank onto the couch.
“I overheard you talking. You’ll take my place, then?” he asked Nick.
“It’s our only option at this point.”
Huxley shook his head dejectedly. “Three years working for the FBI and I’ve never had to take one sick day. Today of all days, this happens.” He leaned back against the pillows and looked Nick over. “You’re going to need a suit.”
“I have several suits,” Nick said, appearing offended.
Huxley did not seem impressed. “A
real
suit.” He held up his hand, cutting off Nick’s objection. “No offense, but Men’s Wearhouse or whatever isn’t going to cut it tonight. You want to blend, remember? Every person at the party will be checking out the guy walking in with Jordan Rhodes. You need to look like someone they would expect to see her with.”
“
Hey
. I would date a guy who wore a suit from Men’s Wearhouse,” Jordan said indignantly.
Nick sized her up. “Huxley’s right. I better get a new suit.”
Jordan folded her arms across her chest, on the defensive. “You two are way off base with these assumptions about me.”
Nick turned to face her, taking the bait. “Okay, I’ll eat my words right now if you can honestly say that you’ve dated anyone in the last three years who wore a suit from Men’s Wearhouse.”
Jordan stared him in the eyes, wanting to prove him wrong like nothing else.
But.
She sniffed reluctantly. “Just to be clear, it’s not a criteria I have. True, I tend to meet mostly men who have white-collar jobs. And if they want to spend their money on expensive suits, well, that’s their business.”
Nick shrugged. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, princess.”
Jordan’s eyes widened in surprise. She stepped over to him, pulling herself up to her full five foot five inches. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, or where you came from, but nobody’s calling anybody a
princess
around here.”
“Brooklyn.”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m from Brooklyn.” The edges of Nick’s lips curled up in a grin. “Your majesty.”
Jordan stared him in the eyes for another moment, and then turned to Huxley. “Doesn’t the FBI have some sort of top-secret vitamin shot they can give agents in these circumstances? Something that can get you up and running by tonight? Anything?”
“Sorry. I’m afraid you’re stuck with Nick.”
Lovely.
“Trust me, I’m not exactly thrilled about it, either,” Nick said. “No offense, but being cooped up in a van for seven hours sounds more fun than hanging around with some elitist wine crowd.” He glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. “We don’t have a lot of time to pull this all together. Now that I’m taking your place, I need to find a backup man and get him up to speed,” he said to Huxley. “And I need to go shopping, too.”
He was so bent out of shape about the darn suit. Because of that, Jordan was tempted to hold her tongue and let him figure things out by himself. But like it or not, for Kyle’s sake, the two of them were in this together. So she pulled out her cell phone.
“I’ll take care of the suit.” She scrolled through her contacts list, found the person she was looking for, and dialed.
A man’s voice on the other end answered. “Please tell me you’re coming in to shop. We’ve been dead this whole week because of the blizzard.”
Jordan smiled. Two years ago she’d discovered Christian, a personal shopper at the Ralph Lauren store, and he’d never let her down no matter what the fashion emergency. “Are you working this morning? I need a man’s suit. Fast.”
“No problem. I’m at the store already.”
“Perfect. He doesn’t have a lot of time to shop, so do me a favor—pull some suits in advance. Shirts and ties, too. Nothing too trendy, something classic. I need a size . . .” She looked expectantly at Nick.
He didn’t look thrilled that she was taking charge, but he didn’t object either. “Forty-four long.”
She repeated the information to Christian, who sounded intrigued.
“You’ve never sent me a man before,” he said. “This forty-four long must be special.”
“Oh, he’s special all right. And he’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Wait,” Christian said before she hung up. “I’m dying here, Jordan. You’ve got to give me something. Who is this mystery man?”
She hesitated for a second, then realized she had to bite the bullet and start the lies at some point. Might as well cut her teeth on Christian.
“His name is Nick. He’s . . . my boyfriend.”
 
 
ON THEIR WAY
out, Nick held Huxley’s front door open for her. “Boyfriend, huh? I didn’t realize we had taken things to that level.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—this is my first undercover operation,” Jordan said. “I’m a little unclear about the rules. Are we seeing other people in this fake relationship?”
He followed her down the steps to the sidewalk. “You expect me to make this decision on the spot? I’m a man, Jordan; I can’t be pressured into these kinds of things.”
She flashed him a sweet smile. “Lucky for you, it will all be over soon. Tomorrow you can have a fake freak-out over commitment issues that will lead to our fake breakup. After that, I think our characters will need some very real time apart.” She began walking toward the street.
Nick caught her by the sleeve of her coat. “I think we need to make sure we’re clear on something. You may be used to ordering your personal assistants around, or the minions at your wine store, but this is my investigation now. Which means that I’m in charge here—only me.”
She pulled out her cell phone and cocked her head innocently. “Should I cancel the suit, then?” When he glared at her but said nothing, she smiled. “I’ll take that as a ‘Thank you, Jordan. I appreciate you helping me out in a pinch like this.’ ”
She headed in the direction of her car, but Nick caught her by the sleeve again. “Where are you going? You’re coming with me to the Ralph Lauren store.”
“Why would I go?”
“Because I’ve got about eight hours to make sure this undercover op is successful, and you need to fill me in on everything you told Huxley on Thursday. Particularly the description of Eckhart’s office.”
Jordan pushed up the sleeve of her coat and looked at her watch. “It’s after nine. We’ll be cutting it too close if I go downtown with you. I’m supposed to open my store at ten and I need to go home and change first.”
“Can’t you get someone to cover for you?”
“Unfortunately, no,” she said. Martin and Andrea—one of the two associates who worked at DeVine Cellars—were both set to cover the store that evening while she was at Xander’s party, and her other sales associate, Robert, was out of town that weekend. Plus, they were having a closeout sale on several wines her distributors were unloading at bargain prices and she needed to get shelf talkers in place before the store opened. “Is there another time we can talk?”
Nick looked over at her car. “Does that Maserati come with Bluetooth?”
For over a hundred grand, about the only things it didn’t come with were ejector seats and a parachute. “Yep.”
“We’ll do this by phone. I have your number.”
Of course he did.
They separated at the street and climbed into their respective cars. Immediately after starting hers, Jordan pushed the button that warmed the tan leather seats. Like good wine and great shoes, heated seats on a February morning were at the top of her most-prized list of luxuries. She let the car idle for a minute before easing it out of its tight parking spot. Heading in the same direction as Nick, she took the one-way side street toward Lake Shore Drive and caught up with him at a stop sign.
She saw him glance at his rearview mirror, spotting her behind him. A few seconds later, her cell phone rang. When she answered, his whisky-rich voice came through the car’s speakers.
“So I’ve been thinking about your question. My character has decided he doesn’t want to see other people.”
“What made you change your mind? Let me guess—the Maserati.”
He chuckled. “Our cover story is that my character has been smitten from the moment he met you. He’s not about to let another man get anywhere near you.”
“Your character sounds a little possessive. Is this something my character should be worried about?”
They came to a stop at the light that would take them onto the Drive. Nick’s voice was low, even smoother than the car’s engine. “I think your character secretly likes it. You’ve been dating boring, uptight guys for too long. You’ve been looking for something different.”
Jordan looked sharply at the SUV in front of her. “I think your character presumes too much.”
His eyes caught hers in the rearview mirror. “Does he?”
The light turned green, and they drove off in opposite directions. As Jordan headed north, away from downtown and with Nick’s car safely out of sight, she decided it was time to change the subject. “What do you want to know about the layout of Xander’s office?”
“As much as you can tell me.”
As she sped along the Drive with the gray expanse of Lake Michigan on her right, Jordan filled him in on as much as she remembered. She finished the call with Nick just as she pulled into her garage. She hung up and sat in her car for a moment, thinking about his comment.
You’ve been looking for something different
.
Presumptuous words. Very presumptuous. But she couldn’t help but wonder if there was any truth to them. Pushing the thought from her mind, she opened the car door and hurried into her house. There was one thing, at least, she knew without a doubt.
It was far too cold to be sitting outside thinking about Nick McCall.
 
 
THIRTY MINUTES LATER,
suit in hand, Nick walked along Michigan Avenue toward the parking garage where he’d left his car. He made a phone call.
It was a truth universally acknowledged that FBI agents in possession of great skill and talent, even those who frequently engaged in the practice of trash-talking, understood that there were times when all bullshit needed to be set aside in order to get a job done.
This was one of those times.
After two rings, another agent answered Nick’s call.
“Pallas.”
“It’s McCall. I’ve got a problem.”
“The Eckhart op?”
“You got it. Huxley’s out with the flu.”
“What do you need?”
“Backup in the van.”
“I’m on it.”
“Meet me at the office in ten minutes.”
“Yep.”
Nick hung up the phone, mentally running through his checklist. Ridiculously overpriced Ralph Lauren suit? Sixteen hundred dollars, all of which had better be reimbursed by the Bureau. Backup man? Technically free, although he’d be hearing about this from Pallas for a long time. Nabbing the moneyman of the city’s most notorious gangster while infiltrating an exclusive wine tasting?
Priceless.
Eight
 
AFTER A TEN-MINUTE
pit stop at home to change her clothes and throw on some makeup, Jordan hurried out the door and walked the three blocks to DeVine Cellars. The streets were relatively quiet since most stores and businesses hadn’t opened yet. Her cell phone buzzed loudly in her purse. She saw that it was Christian and answered.
“You couldn’t at least send me a metrosexual to work with?” he asked.
She grinned at that. “How did the shopping go with Nick?”
“We survived. That’s about all I can say. You should’ve seen his expression when he saw the colors of the ties I’d pulled to go with the suit. He told me that where he comes from, men don’t
do
boysenberry. I shudder to think such a place exists.”
“Boysenberry? You
are
lucky you survived. Thanks, Christian. I appreciate your help.” Jordan made a mental note to send him a bottle of wine from the store.
“Feel free to send me all the suit-buying customers you want. And I think you’ll be pleased with the results.” His tone turned sly. “Happy Valentine’s Day, Jordan. I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one for you.”

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