Guilty Pleasures (47 page)

She turned hot eyes on him. “I'd swear it was that chick that Eva's boss used to date. Whatshername.”

“Traci,” Jake supplied.

“Right!” She snapped her fingers. “They were very cozy.”

“Yeah, Eva told me that she'd run into her on the ship, but she'd ignored her, acted like Traci was talking to the wrong person.”

“Traci may be a lot of things, but she's no fool. How long do you think it will be before she runs into Eva again
Then what
”

“We'll deal with it if we must. We all know that Xavier is a ladies' man. And we all know that Traci is a man's lady,” Jake said. “They were probably just talking.”

“We don't need her in the way. We have enough complications as it is,” Rita said.

“Well, we can't worry about that right now. Maybe it's nothing. You don't think you've lost your art of persuasion, do you
” Jake asked.

Rita rocked to the side. “Of course not.”

“Then we have nothing to worry about. We go ahead with the plan.”

“Yeah, and exactly what is the plan
We have less than a day and a half before the ship docks. We don't know for sure where he's keeping the stash and how we're going to make the switch.”

Jake winked. “Jinx and I were working that all out when you busted in.”

She pursed her lips. “All I know is, the only bracelets I want around my wrists are diamonds.” She sauntered off to the minibar and fixed an early afternoon drink. She turned to them with the drink in her hand. “So how did the pictures come out
”

“Perfect. You did a great job. Here, come take a look.” Jake moved over on the bed and pulled up the video on the television screen.

Rita watched in awe. “Wow. That little camera thingy really works.”

“As they say in the hood,
I got skillz.
” Jake chuckled.

“Okay, Mr. Brilliant, how do we make the switch
And what if the stuff is in the safe
There's no way to get in there without that card key and signature verification.”

“You didn't call me brilliant for nothing.”

He laid out the scenario.

*   *   *

Lenora Ingram checked into the motel in Miami. Directly across the street from the airport. In two days, she would be a wealthy woman. The only thing hanging around her neck was her husband. She looked at him as he neatly put his shoes in the closet.

When they first met, those little things were cute, his quirky neatness habits, his enthusiastic but often awkward lovemaking, and even his stutter. Now, she couldn't stand any of it—or him.

She wished she could blame it all on Jerry and their illicit affair. But she couldn't. It rested with her, entirely.

For years she'd had dreams of making her parents proud—as proud of her as they were of her two brothers, both cops, and of her sister, who was the light in her mother's eye, with a minivan full of kids.

Lenora was always in their shadow, from the time they were little kids growing up in the suburbs of Long Island. She was the sickly one, always with one illness or ailment after the other, the one who didn't get the best grades or make the teams or have the handsome basketball captains ringing her doorbell on Friday nights.

Everything for her had been a struggle. A struggle to keep up, to be seen, and her diminutive stature only spotlighted that problem.

It was easy for her to be overlooked, passed over, go unnoticed. They all laughed when she said that she too was going into the police force.

“Don't be ridiculous,” her retired detective father admonished. “The force is no place for you.”

“You need to find yourself a good man like your sister and have some kids,” her mother said.

Lenora was determined to prove them wrong. First she married Stan to please her parents. But when she discovered that she could never have children, she knew that was yet another disappointment to her folks. So she signed up for the police department against their adamant objections.

She barely made it through the academy, suffering several bouts of bronchitis and a life-threatening case of pneumonia. But she
made
it—only to be relegated to a desk job due to health concerns.

She toughed it out for four years, being the dutiful working wife until she read a bulletin about recruitment for the FBI. Physically it was the best thing to happen to her. The grueling training that she was put through actually helped instead of hindered her health. The increase in pay afforded her the best nutritionist, and through hard work and determination she made it up the ranks to Special Agent with her own staff and responsibilities.

But all her years of scraping and scrapping for attention had molded her into a nail-eating, hard-nosed bitch of a woman. She bloomed when she could crunch her high heel into the back of another. Her cheeks glowed when she solved a case and sent criminals away for the rest of their lives—guilty or not. She had something to prove.

Yet for all her victories within the agency, the very nature of her sex kept her in place. She soon learned she would only go so far standing up.

It was Jerry who opened the door for her in more ways than one. He not only showed her what great sex was really like, but he repaid her favors with favors of his own—giving her the prime cases and seeing that her pay scale was bumped up regularly.

It was a shame that she'd have to screw over Jerry too.

Lenora took off her high heels and kicked them to the side. She looked for her purse. She was dying for a cigarette.

Stan wrinkled his nose when the first cloud of smoke filled the air. “M-must you
”

He actually has the nerve to look annoyed.
“Must I what
” she asked, full of innocence.