Seducing The Matchmaker. Joanne Rock
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very, very good at.
“It was more than that.” His chest warmed at how easily she’d solved a whole world of problems for him. “I never would have thought of mentioning the hockey camp. I really want to make that happen this year.”
He couldn’t read the expression that crossed her face, but it vanished a moment later.
“I hope that it helps.” She edged closer, her skirt teasing along his leg again in a silken swish. “But right now, Kyle, you owe me a date and I intend to collect.”
“I CAN’T FOLLOW THIS woman anymore.”
Isaac Reynolds frowned at the frustrated voice coming through his phone in his home office. He’d called his head of security for an update on Stacy Goodwell, not a resignation.
“Can’t or won’t?” Isaac switched open the Skype window on his computer so he could see the guy he’d tasked to keep tabs on Stacy for the next forty-eight hours.
Although preliminary checks into her background suggested she was a privileged local girl who wrote a column for a Philly paper, Isaac wasn’t taking chances. His high-tech business full of corporate espionage taught him to trust no one.
“Can’t,” the head of his security team answered flatly, turning his phone’s camera so Isaac could see his face. Bob Wyatt had twenty years of experience and normally appeared well-groomed and competent. Right now, he looked sweaty, disheveled and pissed off. “Take a look at where we are.”
He swung the camera for a jerky view of his whereabouts. Passengers stared straight ahead, packed in tight while the steady hum of a motor made white noise in the background.
“On a bus? To where?” Isaac clicked the window to enlarge the picture. “And where the hell is she?’’
He hadn’t seen her in the pan of the swaying motor coach.
“We’re headed to Pittsburgh and she’s in the back,” he hissed into the phone, drawing attention from the guy next to him, who made a face in the frame beside him. “I can’t very well videotape her for you since she’s taping the whole damn ride herself.”
“That makes no sense.” Isaac didn’t want to be intrigued. At least not until he was one hundred percent sure she wasn’t out to sell his secrets. “Why would she film a bus trip?”
Let alone take a bus to Pittsburgh in the first place. It would be one thing if she was making contact with a buyer interested in having her spy on him. In that case, maybe a bus would have been discreet. But anyone who traded in expensive secrets did so anonymously, not on film.
“She made an announcement to the other passengers that she’s filming this for a new video blog.” Wyatt rolled his eyes, clearly unimpressed with digital media. With his tie askew and one jacket lapel flipped over to show the felt lining beneath, he seethed into the camera while the knucklehead next to him kept leaning into the shot. “She passed around waivers for us to sign, so I had to come up with an excuse.”
“Why didn’t you sign, man?” the joker in the seat next to Bob asked him, as if he’d been part of the conversation. “The blog sounds cool. I’ll bet it gets a million hits.”
“What kind of blog?” Isaac had thought about the mystery woman all day. First, he’d had to research her. But also because she’d said they made the perfect couple.
A sex goddess swathed in silver had asked him out but he’d been too busy worrying she was a spy to notice, let alone say yes.
Dumb. Ass.
“It’s called Diva No More.” This from the helpful Joe in the seat next to his so-called head of security. The guy leaned all the way into the camera frame so that his face was superimposed sideways on top of Bob’s. “She’s leaving behind the hoity-toity life to become a regular girl.”
A scuffle ensued around the camera as Bob told the guy to mind his own business. For a few minutes, Isaac couldn’t see anything and he suspected Bob had changed seats.
Diva No More? Isaac remembered their conversation about Stacy’s father trying to buy her a man. Her insistence that she needed to make her own mistakes. Could she have gone a step further today? Cut the ties to the domineering dad?
Her life didn’t sound like a cover for a corporate spy. Future video blog queen Stacy Goodwell seemed like a sweet, sexy dream girl he’d been too blind to appreciate last night. Now that he’d researched her background, he wasn’t going to let anything stop him from seeing her again.
“Sorry about that—” Bob began.
“I need to know what she’s doing in Pittsburgh,” Isaac interrupted, wondering how to meet up with her without it being too coincidental. His home office in Philly was three hundred miles away. He could call for a plane and beat her there, but he didn’t want to look like a stalker.
“I can tell you it doesn’t have anything to do with our competitor.” Bob kept his voice low even though he’d changed seats and didn’t seem to have an eavesdropper. “She’s already announced to the whole bus that she’s going to the Phantoms game to write a column on fan style for the newspaper.”
The style column was her regular job. Isaac wondered how the video blog would fit in with it, but he agreed with Bob’s former seatmate—the blog would be a hit. Stacy’s whole dazzling personality was camera-ready. She’d be sought after by ten times the number of guys who probably already wanted her.
And that was assuming the damn matchmakers her father hired didn’t try to snag her first.
“Make sure she gets to her hotel safely.” He didn’t like the idea of thirty-odd strangers on a random bus knowing her whereabouts. “I’ll take over for you in a couple of hours. I’m on my way to Pittsburgh.”
MARISSA WAS IN SUCH a hurry to be with Kyle that she bolted out the back door into the alley behind the nightclub.
“Wait up.” Kyle practically tripped her in his hurry to get in front of her.
He put his big, muscular body between her and the outside world. She didn’t mind that she stumbled into his back. He was fun to hold on to, for one thing. And for another, she thought it was kind of charming that he wanted to protect her.
“It’s okay.” She grabbed a railing on the landing outside the door where two steps led to street level. “I was just in a hurry to get to the hotel.”
“Me, too, but this is still a dangerous neighborhood.” He tucked her under his arm, keeping her body glued to his as he hurried her toward the limo. “You can’t just prance out into some dark alley alone.”
She might have protested the idea that she’d pranced anywhere. Except that she heard the worry in his voice. Felt his heartbeat racing under one ear where he held her against him.
Her chest squeezed with unexpected warmth. The driver opened the door for her and Kyle ushered her into a vehicle that could have held at least ten more people.
Kyle exchanged words with the chauffeur that were beyond her hearing. Probably instructing him to take them to the team hotel. Or hers. It didn’t matter to her where they went, as long as they excised this raucous heat that had been building inside her since the last time they were together. She just hoped being with Kyle eased the ache for him. The attraction that had started out so physical and out of control was starting to take on a new dimension.
He’d urged her to take this trip with him, insisting she’d be helping him out. But she knew darn well he could have hired a publicist to place an article in the paper a whole lot more inexpensively than what he’d paid toward her mother’s medicine. She would repay him one day. But it helped her so much right now. It touched her that he’d