No Strings Attached. Susan Andersen
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but the guy should have thought about all the potential consequences before he tried framing him. “More than that, it’ll likely cement my position in the cartel, which gives us the opportunity to close the case faster than we thought we could. We need to do this.”
They disconnected a short while later after Paulson promised he’d check with the director about another kilo—with the caveat that it was by no means guaranteed they’d get one. But Luc refused to entertain the idea, because he was deadly determined to see this case through.
Unfortunately, it didn’t keep him from gnawing over Tasha’s defection. What had made her decide to catch the night flight back to Nassau after all, when she’d assured him she would wait?
He went around and around on it but eventually had to shelve the whole damn mess. “Get over it, chump,” he said, his mood black. Chicks dumped guys—it happened all the time, even if he’d only rarely experienced it himself. There sure as hell wasn’t anything he could do about it. She clearly hadn’t been as into him as he had been into her.
“Well, your loss, sweetheart,” he finally growled aloud. And shoving his wallet into his back pocket, he went off to find something to distract him from the pointless what-ifs pinballing around in his brain.
* * *
“SO WHAT WAS THE CASE?”
“What?” But he shook his head to bring himself back to the present and told his half brother a condensed version of what had gone down that day. Then he simply stared at the big deputy for a moment.
“Christ, Max,” he finally said. “I was blown away to see her in your dining room last night. Then when I followed her out to the backyard, she was beyond pissed, which I don’t get, ’cause like I told you, I thought she’d run out on me. Yet she was furious with me.” Remembering her parting words, he rolled his shoulders. “And maybe with reason.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “What reason?”
“Last night she said that thanks to me, she’d spent two nights in a Bahamian jail.”
“So either there was a failure to communicate between the two countries’ drug enforcement agencies, a clerical screwup—or somebody lied to you, Slick. I don’t know the players, but I know Tasha. And I gotta tell you, if there was any lying going on, I doubt it was her.”
“Yeah.” Luc doubted it, too, because she knew just enough about his cover to get things wrong—and they were things she shouldn’t know at all. Plus, she was crazy furious with him, which she’d have no reason to be if she had taken off.
He met Max’s eyes and didn’t doubt his own eyes were every bit as hard as his half brother’s. “And you can take it to the bank that I will get to the bottom of this. But first,” he admitted, “I have to convince Tasha that I’m not a drug dealer. Then I need to get her to talk to me long enough to learn exactly what happened that night so I can figure out where to go from there.”
TASHA HEARD THE street door to Bella T’s open while she was scrubbing down the kitchen. “We’re closed,” she called, which everyone and their brother should already know because—hello!—Razor Bay. Monday. Labor Day weekend now behind them.
On the other hand, it hadn’t even occurred to her to lock the door while she was back here cleaning. So on the off chance it was some out-of-towner looking for a slice, she came out to give him/her the bad news. But seeing Tiffany, the young woman who had worked for her since the day she’d opened the restaurant’s doors, Tasha frowned in bewilderment. “Hey, girl. What are you doing here on your day off?”
“I parked in my spot behind Bella’s to run some errands,” the plump, flawlessly-made-up brunette with the sunny smile, even sunnier disposition and easy way with people said. “But when I was cutting between the buildings to the street I saw...” Her words trailed away, and for a second she appeared unusually hesitant. Then she tipped her head inquisitively, gave Tasha a penetrating look and suddenly asked, “Do you and that good-looking new Bradshaw brother have something going on that I should know about?”
“What? No!” Oh, God, was it written on her forehead that she and Dieg—Luc—had had crazy wild sex one night a hundred years ago? “Why would you think so?”
“Because I saw him heading upstairs a minute ago,” Tiffany said with a vague wave toward the end of the building where the outdoor staircase ran up to the living quarters. “And he was carrying a big duffel bag like he’s moving in.”
“What the hell—?” Tasha peeled off her rubber gloves, tossed them on the service counter and headed for the door. “Lock up for me, will you?”
“You got it, boss.”
Her heart pounded with an emotion she didn’t want to examine too closely, but she was never so rattled that she forgot to give her aqua-white-and-green-painted building a ritualistic pat as she rounded its corner. Bella T’s was the realization of a dream she’d held since she was twelve years old—except better, because not only was the pizzeria a reality, but she owned the building that housed it, as well. Well, okay, she and the bank owned it, but one day it would be hers alone. And she never, but never, failed to show her appreciation when she transitioned from her work space on the street level to her home upstairs. This was likely the most well-loved inanimate object in Razor Bay.
And she intended to find out what the hell Luc Bradshaw was doing in it.
She took the solid wooden stairs up to the second floor two at a time and burst through the unlocked exterior door, but then stopped dead and stared down the narrow hallway that ran along the building’s back wall as the door bounced off the inside wall. Down near the far wall, Luc stood in front of the studio apartment that her longtime renter, Will, had recently vacated, the aforementioned duffel bag at his feet. At the sound of her less-than-subtle entrance, he spun away from fitting a key in the door lock, his right hand reaching toward the small of his back before suddenly freezing.
That got her moving again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded as she strode up to him. She thrust out a hand. “Give me that key!”
“Taking your questions in order,” he said dryly, “I’m moving in, cariño. And no.”
She stepped up until they stood nearly nose to nose. “What do you mean, no?”
“It’s a fairly self-explanatory word, princesa mia. I’m not giving back the key. I signed a contract that says I’m the proud owner of this studio apartment for the next ninety days.” He flashed that charming white smile of his that creased his cheeks into not-quite-dimples. Seven years ago its power had rendered her stupid.
She was neither charmed nor made stupid by it this time around, however—not by the smile or his damn Spanish endearments. Back in another lifetime she’d made him explain what those sweet nothings meant, but she’d long since put them out of her mind. And she assured herself firmly that hearing them now left her cold.
Luc himself, unfortunately, did not. From the moment they’d met on that long-ago dawn-cooled beach, she’d felt the heat of the sexuality he exerted with such apparent ease. And much as she might wish otherwise, she still did. He was just so damn...male. And so flipping effortlessly carnal and attractive in his plain navy T-shirt and worn Levis that she spared a second to regret the sullied white apron she had tied around her hips and her old, faded, shapeless T-shirt that stuck messily to her skin in the all places where she’d splashed herself. Which, face it, in her zeal to clean the kitchen, were many. And once again she didn’t have on a speck of makeup. She had to quit letting him catch her looking so undone all the time.
Seriously? Are you listening to yourself? She stepped back and stood tall. Luc Bradshaw was nothing to her. It didn’t matter what he thought of her appearance.
Then, belatedly realizing what he’d just implied, she addressed