Trust Me on This (12 page)

"God, you kiss beautifully," she said, moments later, trying to remember why she was playing with fire. "Is that what you do for a living? Kiss?"

"No," Alec said, dazed. "Although I'm considering it now. This is great." He bent his head to her again, and she ducked gracefully away.

"So what
do
you do?" she asked, struggling to get her breathing under control.

"I—" Alec began, and then stopped, a grin breaking slowly across his face. "Please, God, let this be happening. Don't let it be a lie."

"What?"

Alec cast a fervent gaze at the elevator ceiling. "Please let her be trying to seduce information out of me. Please let it be true."

"Oh, very funny." The elevator doors opened at the seventh floor, and Dennie walked out carefully.

"Wait, don't give up." Alec followed her out. "You can do it. Kiss me again."

"Drop dead." Dennie fished in her purse for her room card and jammed it in her door. Then she stepped inside, trying to shut the door in Alec's face, but he slipped in behind her while she was turning around.

She had to give up daiquiris as part of her investigative technique. They made her slow. And evidently stupid. Trying to seduce Alec for information was definitely stupid. Trying to seduce Alec at all was a waste of time, he came preseduced anyway. Like a microwave entree. You pressed his buttons, and he got hot.

Well, she had work to do. And great kissers were… well, not a dime a dozen. But not on her agenda.

Right. She had an agenda.

"Leave," she said, but Alec was already stretched out on her bed and reaching for the phone.

"You need carbohydrate to soak up that alcohol," he told her. "Go rinse your mouth out while I order. I can't believe you kissed me with the same mouth that kissed him. Save me some mouthwash."

Dennie put her hands on her hips and glared. "You don't need to worry. It won't happen again."

"Want to bet?" He grinned at her. "You still haven't wormed any secrets out of me."

"You need worming all right," Dennie said. "You're about ninety-five percent worm. I want a steak. Very—"

"Rare. I know. I know everything you like."

Dennie winced. "God, you even sound like him."

"Like who? Bond? I do not." Then room service answered, and Alec turned his attention to the phone.

"Just like him," Dennie said, and went to wash out her mouth.

Downstairs in the lobby, Sheree fumed. Right, just a mark, that's all this Dennie person was. Then why was he all over the woman like that? She'd been right not to trust him with another woman.

Now all she had to do was get even.

"Okay, you're fed and at least relatively sober," Alec said an hour later. "Let's get back to the seducing part."

"In your dreams," Dennie said.

He was still stretched out on her bed, but she was sitting cross-legged at the foot, a whole bed length away from him.

"I can't believe you thought that would work," Alec said.

"It worked on Bond," Dennie said. "Come on, Alec, give. He's selling land. You're not dumb enough to be buying from him. So you're investigating him. What are you? SEC? FBI?"

"Don't be ridiculous." Alec grinned at her. The more she trashed Bond, the happier he got. Men were so transparent when they were jealous. Alec went on, "Do I strike you as somebody who'd work for an acronym?"

"Then who do you work for?"

He crooked a finger at her. "Oh, no. You have to seduce it out of me. Come here."

"You're some kind of cop," Dennie said, staying put.

"It's the only thing that makes sense. I bet Bond would know. Maybe I'll ask."

Alec stopped, and then slowly sat up on the bed until he was close to her. He reached for her neck and encircled it with one firm hand. "Do not mention this fantasy to Bond."

"Or what?" Dennie said, unfazed. "You'll wring my neck? Ha."

"Ha, yourself," Alec said, and kissed her, pulling his hand down her neck and across her breast, his thumb tracing a pattern down the hollow of her throat and into her dress.

It felt great, but she was too close to the truth to stop now. Dennie caught his hand as it cupped her. breast. "Who do you work for?"

"Harry Chase," Alec said. "I'll introduce you tomorrow. He's busy right now. And so are you." He dipped his head to kiss her again, and she slid away.

"And who does Harry Chase work for?"

Alec slid after her, rolling her under him and trapping her on the bed. "The KGB. We're Russian spies. This is your chance to be a patriot. Seduce me witless, and I'll tell you all my secrets."

"Are you a crook?" Dennie asked. Her hands were firm against his chest, and she wasn't playing. "If you're a crook like that slime Bond, I'm not interested."

"Do you think I'm a crook?" He smiled his open, honest boyish smile at her.

"I think you could be." Dennie stared back, unsmiling. "I think you'd probably do just about anything if you thought the reason was right. And I haven't known you long enough to know what reasons you think are right."

Alec stared down at her, suddenly serious. "I'm not a crook. I'm one of the good guys. But you're just going to have to take my word for that. Which is only fair because that's what I'm doing for you right now, much against my better judgment."

Dennie felt her breath go, and not just because of all of Alec's lovely weight on top of her. "This is the first time I've seen you serious," she said. "This is really you, isn't it?"

Alec's face changed, and it felt as if he'd moved closer, although that wasn't physically possible. "Yes," he whispered, and kissed her, and this time Dennie felt more than the old, hot physical punch of his kiss. This one hurt deep inside, breaking into a place she'd kept safe before, and she closed her eyes and held him tight and savored the pain because it was so agonizingly wonderful to feel that much about anything, and especially wonderful to feel that much about Alec.
I love you
, she thought, but she didn't say it, saying it would have been stupid. She'd known him only forty-eight hours. She absolutely was not going to tell Alec "I love you."

Alec must have heard her anyway. He broke the kiss and closed his eyes as if he were as thrown by it as she was. Then he rolled off her to sit on the edge of the bed. "Listen, I'm not a crook. But I very much need you not to blow my cover to Bond."

Dennie sat up and tried to remember what they were talking about. "I won't. I need to see Bond again, though. I'm working on a story about him."

Alec frowned at her, pulling away even more. "I thought you were working on Janice Meredith."

"I can do two things at once." Dennie held out her hand. "But I won't get in your way, and I won't blow your cover. Deal?"

Alec took her hand and held it. "No deal." He started to say something and then he stopped, leaning forward to kiss her on the cheek instead. He hesitated, as if he was going to move to her mouth, and she heid her breath, but then he stood up. "This thing with Bond is just about over, and it would have made a lousy story anyway, so do me a favor and forget him." Dennie started to shake her head but he went on. "You don't need to be there tonight, and I probably won't see you again before I go tomorrow. Have a good life, Dennie Banks. I'll watch for your byline in all the major publications."

He turned and left before she could think of what to say, and Dennie felt the bottom of her stomach plummet as the door closed behind him. It was probably all those damn daiquiris. So he was leaving. Big deal. There were other great kissers in the world. But if he thought she was giving up the Bond story, he was nuts.

Dennie let herself slip back down into the fred. Now she could concentrate on the two greatest stories of her career. She'd certainly handled everything beautifully. Patience would be so proud. She got her laptop and began her Bond notes. It was going to be a great story. She'd really handled things well.

Of course, Lady Macbeth had probably felt the same way after she'd washed off all that blood.

Stupid analogy. Dennie hadn't killed anybody. She didn't have anything to regret.

With a great deal of willpower, Dennie dragged her mind back to her story and began to type but it was no go.
You just need sleep
, she told herself, and slid down into her bed and stuck her head under the pillow and tried her damnedest not to think about Alec.

When Alec got back to his room, he found a message from Harry telling him to meet them in Harry's room.
Why
? Alec thought. What difference did any of this make? They'd put Bond away for a little while, and then he'd be out on parole, and the whole mess would start over again in another state. Even Harry's database couldn't stop these guys; it would just make them easier to catch.

And that was something, Alec had to admit. It just wasn't everything anymore. He shoved that thought aside and went to tell Harry that he was pretty sure Dennie wasn't a con.

"I know," Harry said, when Alec was in his room. Harry sat on the edge of the brass-bound desk by the window and looked despondent. Victoria sat in the red plush desk chair and looked worse. Harry went on. "The checks came back. She's a reporter, nothing to do with Bond."

"I told you so," Victoria said, but she didn't look happy.

Neither did Harry. Well, Alec didn't feel particularly joyful, either. They weren't supposed to be happy. They were working.

"I told her not to bother about tonight," Alec said. "She wanted to do a story on the whole mess. I just want it over with."

"So do I," Harry said. "But we hit a snag. A big one."

"A snag?" Alec looked at them both warily. "I do not want to hear about snags."

"Well, you're going to—" Harry snapped, and then Victoria cut him off.

"The two of you seemed to have missed a detail," Victoria said acidly. "Evidently, it is not illegal to sell land you own."

When the phone rang half an hour into her nap that afternoon, Dennie stretched out a hand from under the covers to pick it up, more to stop it from ringing than from any desire to talk to anyone. She had to pat the table twice before she found the phone, and even then she dropped the receiver on the bed before she managed to mumble, "H'lo?"

"Banks?"

Dennie frowned, trying to open her eyes. "What?"

"Banks?"

"Taylor?" She fumbled with the covers, trying to sit up and pull her thoughts together. "Taylor, is that you?"

"It certainly is me." The satisfaction in Taylor's voice was clear, even through her stupor.

"Taylor, what do you want?" Dennie looked longingly at the soft place she'd been in bed. "I'm busy here."

"Not anymore you're not," Taylor said. "You're fired."

Back in Harry's room, Alec closed his eyes in pain. "He owns the land?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "It's crap, nobody will ever be able to develop it, but he can sell it. He owns it."

"Oh, hell." Alec sat down and put his head in his hands so he could think unimpeded by the relentless gloom in front of him. "Did he misrepresent anything?"

"No." Victoria seemed near tears. "He was everything he said he was. He never pretended to be anything else."

Harry reddened a little. "That EPA stuff wasn't a promise. We can't get him."

Alec looked from Harry to Victoria and back again. "Do you guys know something I don't? Because you look way too depressed for this. We'll figure this out."

"How?" Victoria slumped back in her chair. "Harry and I already talked about it. We agreed to the land deal as it stood. If we start asking him to make promises now, he'll smell a rat. We all sat there and agreed with him."

"Dennie didn't," Alec said. He'd meant it as a rueful joke, but as soon as he said it, he realized what it meant. "Dennie didn't go for the deal at all," he said, as he straightened. "If the deal hinged on Dennie, he'd have to pony up more."

Harry stopped looking at Victoria as if he were a basset hound and brightened. "This could be good."

"Of course, I just said good-bye to her forever," Alec said.

"Well,
that
was dumb," Victoria said tartly. "Of ' course, this is my day for dumb people. First Janice Meredith, the smartest woman I know, turns out to be a paranoid rabbit, and then there's you two. You meet the perfect woman and you sacrifice her for your job." She stood up and slammed her chair under the desk. "Men have absolutely
no
sense of priorities."

She stomped out of the room, and Harry said, "Oh, hell," and pulled her chair out and sat down.

"I'm missing a lot here," Alec said.

"Solve your own problems," Harry said. "What the hell did you dump Dennie for, anyway? You didn't know she wasn't a con. You should have played her." Harry's scowl deepened. "That's what you get for being unprofessional. The job always comes first."

"You can't dump somebody you never had," Alec said. "And if it turned out she wasn't a con—which I would like to point out, it did—we didn't need a reporter on this, we have enough trouble. And she was unpredictable."

"Unpredictable is bad," Harry growled in agreement.

Abo she was screwing up my thinking to the point where I might have said something stupid
, Alec went on silently.
Like, "I love you
." That would have been bad. You do not tell a woman you have known for forty-eight hours that you love her. Well, more like fifty hours because it had been noon on Thursday when she'd come smacking through the doors—

He stopped. Counting the hours since he'd met somebody was a bad sign.

"But we still need her," Harry said* finishing his sentence. "Go get her."

Alec grinned. He hadn't meant to, going back to Dennie was such a bad idea, but as soon as Harry said it, he felt better.

"Only because it's the professional thing to do," he told Harry, and went back to his room to figure out what to say when he called her.

Back in her room, Dennie clenched her jaw and told herself not to panic. "Taylor, I'm tired. Call back later with the jokes."

"Banks, you're fired." She heard no sympathy whatsoever in his voice. "I warned you about that Meredith woman, but you wouldn't listen."

Victoria
. Dennie ran her hand through her hair as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. Could Victoria have talked to Janice already? Was that what this was about? "Taylor, don't be ridiculous," she said, stalling for rime so she could think. "I didn't go anywhere near her."

"Well, you went near somebody because she called the owner mad as hell this morning to say you'd been having dinner with somebody you shouldn't have, and he called me mad as hell, and you're fired."

Dinner. That meant it wasn't Victoria Janice was mad about. She really wanted her fired. The matter-of-fact satisfaction in Taylor's voice made Dennie go cold suddenly. "You're not kidding."

"Nope. You get two weeks' severance pay, and, Banks? I wouldn't ask for a reference."

"Taylor, c'mon now—"

"You asked for it, Banks. I warned—"

Dennie slammed the phone down before he could finish and then sat there, desperately trying to order her thoughts.

Fired. She really was fired. No job. No paycheck. Nothing. Two weeks' severance pay and then what?

And all just because she'd had dinner with Alec and his aunt?

She was beginning to dislike Janice Meredith.

The phone rang again, and she picked it up. "Listen, Taylor," she said, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

"Who's Taylor?" Alec asked.

"I don't have time for you," Dennie said, overwhelmingly glad to hear from him, and overwhelmingly angry she was so glad. "You said good-bye, you rat. You made the big exit. Go away."

"Ten minutes. That's all I ask."

"Alec, I
have problems
. Go away!" Right before Den-nie slammed the receiver down, she heard Alec say, "Don't hang up!" which made slamming it that much more satisfying.

Alec dialed again, taking the phone with him as he crossed his hotel room to stare out the window.

"That was childish," he said, when she picked it up the second time.

Her voice came across the wire, taut with emotion. "I'm having a bad day.
Do not
tell me what to do."

Alec grinned. "All right then, I'm asking you, pleading with you. On bended knee. Groveling." He sat on the edge of the windowsill. "I swear to God, I'm wallowing on the carpet right now. My eyeballs are full of broadloom."

"That's not all you're full of." The break in Dennie's voice was even rougher than usual. "I'm not kidding about a bad day. What do you want?"

Alec kept his voice light. "I need your help, Dennie. You and me, together again."

"No. You thought I was a crook, and then you dumped me because I was a reporter. The hell with you. I have to go.".

"Look, I'm sorry I didn't trust you. I will apologize over and over if you meet me. I'll be happy to come to your room. Hot fudge sundaes on me." The silence on the other end wasn't encouraging so he got serious. "Dennie, this is important. You can help me get this guy."

"You want me to help you do your job?"

"Yes."

"What's in it for me?"

"What?" Alec's voice cracked in outrage.

Dennie's voice stayed sharp. "What's in it for me? Come on, Alec, you're getting paid for this. Would you do this if there was no paycheck involved?"

"Yes," Alec said, without hesitation. He stopped, surprised at himself. "Yes, I would."

"You would?" Dennie sounded as surprised as he felt, and suspicious too. "Why?"

"Let me come see you, and I'll tell you," Alec said.

"Here?" There was a long pause, and then her voice came back, grimly serious. "You swear you'll come clean? No tricks, no lies, no evasions?"

"Not about Bond," Alec said. "I reserve the right to revert to my usual devious self in other matters."

"There are no other matters between us", Dennie said.

"Well, we can talk about that too," Alec said. "I can be in your room in five minutes. What do you say?"

Alec waited out a long pause before she said, "Come up. I will give you only fifteen minutes to explain, no hands, so you'd better talk fast."

"It's what I do best," Alec said.

"That's what I figured," Dennie said.

"Hey," Alec said, but she'd already hung up.

"You know, if you were serious about trying to win me over, you'd have picked something a little more snazzy than room service hot fudge," Dennie told him a half hour later.

Alec was puzzled by the lack of lilt in her voice, but he was willing to play along. "Ah, but because of my keen sense of character, I could tell you were the deep intellectual kind of woman who wouldn't be swayed by fancy restaurants with fancy prices." He picked up the desserts from the room service tray, sat down on the bed next to her, and handed her a sundae.

"You were wrong." Dennie stabbed her spoon through the whipped cream to the fudge. "I am easily swayed by fancy restaurants. Also by diamonds and gold. Particularly by diamonds and gold. Particularly today."

She licked the fudge off her spoon, and Alec tightened beside her and then forced himself to relax. "So what happened this morning?" Alec slurped his own fudge and whipped cream.

"I got fired." Dennie put her sundae on the table beside her, evidently not hungry after all. She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at the blank TV.

Alec stopped slurping. "Fired?"

"My boss warned me to stay away from Janice Meredith," Dennie said, still staring at the TV. "So I did. Sort of. But for some reason, she had me fired anyway. My best guess was your aunt Victoria but Janice was mad before that."

"Aunt Vic wouldn't have you fired."

"No," Dennie said. "But she was going to talk to Janice for me this afternoon, and Janice might have decided that I was still harassing her. She decided something because she called the owner of the paper this morning." She turned her head to look at Alec. "And that's the end of my job."

Alec slid closer and put his free arm around her, balancing his top-heavy sundae in the other. "So, we'll fix it."

"No," Dennie said. "I don't think this one is going to fix. I don't think I'm bouncing back from this one. In fact, I think I may even deserve this."

"Hey." Alec tightened his grip on her shoulders. "You don't—"

"I'm thirty-four," Dennie said. "It's time I tried the hard stuff. That's what this is, the hard stuff. This is the kind of experience that will make me smarter. I don't want to bounce back the same. This is my chance to grow up. To be tough."

"I like you soft," Alec said, puzzled. "And I've never noticed you being particularly weak or afraid, and you're sure as hell not a quitter—"

"I always have been." Dennie stared at the TV again. "Afraid, I mean. You know, my best friend and I used to spend the first two weeks of every summer at her uncle's farm. He had this big pond, almost a lake, and one side of it had this ledge hanging over it. It wasn't much of a ledge, maybe ten, fifteen feet, but to a kid, it was high."

"Okay," Alec said, trying to follow her drift.

"Every summer, Patience would just plunge off that cliff, and I'd be too afraid until she'd say, Til catch you. Jump, I'll catch you.' And she always did. And now I'm really going to jump, and she's not going to be there." She squinted at Alec. "That's the only hard part. The rest of this, losing the job? That's not so tough, really. I needed to leave that job anyway. So it's scary, but good scary. It's knowing Patience can't catch me anymore because she's got a husband to catch now. She can't drop everything for me. I wouldn't ask her to. I'm going to have to do the tough stuff alone."

"No." Alec paused, trying to think of the right thing to say. "You're not alone." Alec moved his hand from her shoulder to drape his arm around her neck, hauling her closer to him, his chin against her hair. "I can cover you until you're ninety-six."

"Ninety-six." Dennie's voice sounded flat, and Alec felt a clutch of fear; maybe she wasn't going to come back from this one. After a moment, she pulled back from him and asked in the same flat voice, "Why ninety-six?"

Alec tilted her chin up until she was eye-to-eye with him. "Because when you're ninety-six, I'll be a hundred, and I'll be too damn old to break your fall. Until then, I've got you covered."

She swallowed, and the movement of her throat made him dizzy. He reached across her to put his sundae on the table and free up his hand for better things, and the melting cream slipped a little, a dollop falling right below Dennie's collarbone. "Sorry," he said, and bent to lick it from her skin. When he lifted his head again, her eyes didn't look dead anymore, and Alec felt his heart pound.
Careful
, he told himself, and then thought,
Screw careful
.

"Right," Dennie said, a little breathlessly. "You're planning on staying around until I'm ninety-six."

"No," Alec said, pulling her closer. "I am not planning on it. Hauling you out of trouble is the last thing a sane man would plan on. But I'll be there just the same."

Dennie seemed strangely calm. "You think?"

Alec took a deep breath. "I know. What do you think?"

"Oh, boy." Dennie smiled up at him, a weak smile but a real one. "I don't know what I think, but I know it feels awfully good to hear you say it."

Alec traced her lips with his finger. "Well, that's a start. The important thing is, you know you're not alone in this." On an impulse, he kissed her forehead, and then her nose, and then gravity took him to her lips, and the kiss there was soft and light and comforting and made him breathless. "You're not alone, babe," he whispered against her lips, and then she buried her face against his neck, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly.

When she pulled back a few minutes later, her face was flushed, but she was Dennie again. "You really know how to get to a woman, Prentice," she told him.