Asking For Trouble (12 page)

"What do you want? I kind of want to be
alone..." she said sullenly then laid her violin and bow down
beside her, before folding her arms under her breasts.

"I came to check on you, make sure you
weren't hurt...and I heard the music," he told her then flattened
his palm against the side of her face.

She pulled away from his hand and said, "I'm
fine, I just need to be alone."

He dropped his hand to the bed and told her,
"The police want to talk to you downstairs...I told them they'd
probably have to come back."

"They will, because I don't want to talk to
anyone
right now," she told him flatly and pinned him with
her eyes trying to convey that included him too. She couldn't be
around this confusing man right now.

They both turned when Chase walked into the
room. He smiled at her, then walked around to the other side of the
bed and sat down. Her eyes met his serious blue ones and she gave
him a soft smile. She thought she heard a muffled growl from Beau,
but she didn't care.

"Are you okay, sugar?" he asked with deep
concern pinching his tawny eyebrows together.

"Yeah," she said softly, then added, "Just
shaken up..."

"I wanted to let you know I canceled my
meeting and took a few days off. I'm not leaving you alone..."
Chase told her fiercely, then swallowed a couple of times.

"You have to go to your office, Chase...I'll
be fine, really." Jazzie didn't want him putting his busy life on
hold because of her. He'd done enough to help her already.

Chase ran a hand through his hair, then
glanced at Beau, before dragging his eyes back to hers, "I thought
maybe I'd ask you to come to the lake house with me. You'll be safe
there, nobody could find you there. We'll bring Dave's men with
us...what do you say?"

She felt Beau stiffen beside her and replied
hesitantly, "I don't know, Chase...I'm worried about my mom and
dad...they're not safe here either."

"I'd say they could come with us, but I
talked to Dave and he felt like it would be better if they went
somewhere else, so ya'll weren't all together," Chase told her with
an apologetic smile.

Beau sat up straighter on the bed and put
his hand on her calf, then told Chase in a dark tone, "She's not
going anywhere with you...she's coming with me, so I can protect
her. Your guys didn't do such a good job earlier."

Beau pinned her with a glare that dared her
to argue with him, before moving his gaze back to have a stare down
with Chase. They were rounding off like two dogs with a thick juicy
steak between them, and she'd had enough.

Jazzie sat up straighter on the bed herself,
then held up a hand about to blast them, when Chase huffed out a
breath then nodded, then told Beau, "Jackson was in the bathroom
when it went down...he didn't know his partner had taken off in the
van to go gas it up. No, excuses, though--you're right, they didn't
do their job."

Beau's eyebrows lifted then he told Jazzie,
"I spoke with the FBI and they're going to provide some protection
for your mom and dad...maybe take them to a safe house somewhere,
until they can find your brother and resolve their case."

"My older brothers...do you think they're in
danger?" Jazzie asked Beau with concern. She was appalled that she
hadn't thought about Chichi, Raffie and Joe, or even Carlos, until
now.

He snorted then told her, "If your other
brothers are anything like Carlos, I don't think you have anything
to worry about," before he added, "They picked you because you're
the easiest target...your brothers would be more difficult to
abduct and subdue, but maybe we could get Dave's guys to provide
some extra security for them." He looked over at Chase, who nodded,
then stood up.

"I'll go talk to him," Chase said then
walked to the door, but turned back, and offered. "You could use my
lake house if you want, darlin'. That way you'll be closer to
Dallas and Austin, when they find your brother." Beau saw Chase's
square jaw work a couple of times, as he waited for their response.
Rhodes held Jazzie's gaze, silently communicating something to her,
but what that was Beau couldn't figure out, and it set his teeth on
edge. Maybe he was wrong about how well these two knew each other,
he thought, and a wave of fierce possessiveness seized him.

Everything about her connection with Chase
Rhodes set him off...their interactions were just too easy. It
pissed him off, because all he and Jazzie seemed to do was argue.
What made him even angrier was that he could tell that Chase Rhodes
wanted Jazzie...cared about her...and it looked like she cared
about him too.

Well too damned bad, because if Beau had
anything to say about it, Rhodes wasn't going to have
her...
ever
.

The last thing Beau wanted was Jazzie being
beholding to the man. "I was planning on taking her to my dad's
ranch in Amarillo..." Beau didn't relish the idea of going to his
dad's ranch either, but she'd be safe there, they wouldn't find her
there.

"Don't I have a say in any of this?" Jazzie
asked them angrily, then swung her legs to sit on the side of the
bed beside Beau.

"No!" they both said in unison, then looked
at each other. Beau finished by responding first, "Your choices are
either my ranch in Amarillo, or Chase's lake house outside of
Bowie. Those are two places they couldn't find you. You can't go
anywhere they could trace you...and you need protection."

She snorted, then asked, "And that
protection has to be provided by you?"

"I called my boss and told him what was
going on, and he approved me providing protection for you...the
only other option would be for the FBI to protect you, and you
wouldn't like staying in a safe house, trust me."

"So, I'm a job then? Approved duty for you?"
she asked him in a soft, lethal voice.

Beau nodded, not understanding the reason
for the intensity of her tone. Her beautiful melted chocolate eyes
hardened, then she shoved off the bed to stand there by him with
her hands on her hips.

"Then you won't mind if Carlos and Chase
come with us. As long as you're there to protect me, I'll be safe.
I could use their company, to make sure I don't get bored and
grouchy. I wouldn't want you to get distracted from your
duty
, trying to entertain me," she told him smugly.

Fury swept through Beau and he stood up,
then looked down at her flushed face. "We don't need all those
people out there, Jazzie. It's too much of a liability, and more
responsibility for me trying to keep them safe."

"I'm sure you'll manage...that's the deal if
you want me to go
anywhere
with you," she said stubbornly,
then turned back to the bed and leaned over to slide her violin
case to the edge of the bed. In the process, she gave both him and
Rhodes an enticing view of her round backside, and he saw the man
noticed too. He clenched his fists in frustration, then stood.
"Fine...get packed," he told her gruffly, then stalked out of the
bedroom, leaving her and Chase standing there.

After he'd taken two steps down the hall,
Beau realized he'd just left Rhodes and Jazzie alone in the
bedroom, and fought down the urge to go back in there. With
determination, he forced himself forward and down the stairs. He
knew the next week at the lake house with her and Chase Rhodes in
such close proximity was going to be sheer torture. He would go
slowly insane having to watch them together.

CHAPTER FIVE

Three days later, Beau knew he'd been too
conservative in his estimation that torture was what he'd be in for
at the lake house. What he was enduring was sheer and utter hell.
How a child's game could transition into one where the losers
removed a piece of clothing, he didn't know, but it had. Jazzie was
sitting at the kitchen table with Chase Rhodes and Carlos playing
an intense game of
strip
Monopoly.

It was going to be a slow strip-down for
sure, but Jazzie had already lost the first game and removed her
lacy red bra, which was hanging on the corner of her chair taunting
him.

Carlos had removed a sock, and Rhodes was
still fully clothed. Beau was sitting across the room staring at
them sullenly, grinding his teeth.

Beau knew this game of hers was only going
to get worse. She was losing this round too, he didn't know if she
was losing intentionally, but she didn't have many clothes on to
begin with. Stretchy shorts and a white spaghetti strap top that
barely covered her now unbound breasts. Her nipples were hard under
the shirt, and he could see the dusky peaks clearly through the
thin material. The shorts were definitely aptly named. They were a
stretchy towel-like material that barely covered the globes of her
round ass.

When she came out of the bedroom a little
while ago wearing the ensemble, Beau's blood pressure shot into the
stratosphere. He wanted to jerk the table cloth off the table and
wrap it around her.

They hadn't asked Beau to play the game, he
hadn't expected them to. Jazzie had been treating him like an
employee...an unwelcome one, since they'd been here. He watched
her, protected her, and she taunted him with more and more
outrageous stunts that she told him kept her 'entertained'.

Like laying out on the back deck yesterday
sunning herself...topless. Beau hadn't been amused.

Yeah, she'd been laying on her stomach, but
it didn't matter. Because Beau knew what was on the other side of
her delicious body, it had driven him crazy all day, while he sat
out on the back deck with her, pretending to read. That damned
bikini bottom had been little more than a thong. Her beautiful ass
had been on display for whoever wanted to see it. And it was
obvious that Chase Rhodes didn't mind the view.

When she'd asked Chase Rhodes to apply
sunscreen to her back, it was all he could do not to punch the
guy's lights out, as Jazzie moaned under the massage he was giving
her, like she was getting close to an orgasm. And Beau definitely
remembered that throaty sound.

Jazzie evidently put Chase in jail, because
she squealed then stood up and bounced, and her breasts danced
under that shirt, but it held in place, thank god. Beau swallowed
down the desire that punched him in the gut, then dragged his gaze
back to the magazine covering his lap. Thank god for that too, he
thought, and roughly turned another page.

"It's too beautiful outside to say in here
now, let's go out on the boat and swim a little. We can finish the
game later," she purred and put her hand on Chase's shoulder. He
looked up at her mesmerized.

Beau bit back the growl that sprang to his
lips, and said gruffly, "No boat rides," then looked back down at
the page he wasn't reading.

Jazzie either didn't hear him, or was
ignoring him, because she said, "I'll go get my swimsuit on, and
you go get the boat ready," she told Chase.

Beau looked up again to see her lean down
and kiss Rhodes on the cheek. This time, the shirt did pull up and
the whole underside of her gorgeous breasts were showing. He even
saw the bottom of her tawny areolas...a little more and her nipples
would be showing.

Beau growled and threw down the magazine,
then stood up and clenched his fists. If it took going on a boat
ride to get her to put some clothes on, he was all for it. "Get
dressed," he told her angrily, then stomped to the bedroom he was
occupying to change as well.

Thirty minutes later, they were all loaded
in the boat, and Chase Rhodes was shirtless in board shorts at the
wheel. Beau on the other hand, had on a t-shirt and board shorts,
because he couldn't very well wear his shoulder holster without a
shirt under it. He was hot and sweaty, and aggravated as hell.

Jazzie was sitting next to Chase, almost
naked. The shorts and cropped t-shirt she had on before had
provided more coverage of her curvaceous body than the yellow
bikini she'd changed into. Her full breasts were pushed up so high
by the top, they were almost under her chin, and the bottoms barely
covered her mons. Beau hadn't seen the backside of her bikini yet,
thank God, or he might just lose it and throw a towel over her.

She didn't even have her thick black hair to
cover her, because she'd braided it into a rope that hung down the
middle of her back. He was tempted to grab that braid and drag her
ass back into the house and make her change. The most unbelievable
thing was that Carlos didn't have a problem with her fawning over
Chase Rhodes, or wearing next to nothing.

He sure hadn't given Chase the
'keep your
fucking hands off my sister
' speech that he'd given Beau.
Probably because he was too busy fawning over the damned speed boat
to notice. He'd been firing questions at Rhodes about it, since
they'd walked up to it on the dock. Beau snorted,
The She
Devil
. That name sure fit, since Jazzie was on board.

Chase twisted the key and the powerful motor
roared to life, it's low throbbing vibrated up through Beau's feet
to his calves, then up his thighs. He could imagine what those
vibrations were doing for Jazzie, and ground his teeth. Chase
backed the boat away from the dock, and then he shoved the throttle
forward and they picked up speed toward the middle of the lake. The
wind whipped Beau's overly long hair into his eyes, and he swiped
it back with his hand. He put getting a haircut on his agenda for
next week. He'd been so damned busy, he hadn't had a chance to do
it.