Anticipation

“I’m not going to sleep with you,” Nick insisted

Not to be deterred, Serena reached out and lazily ran her hand over his leg. “Sure. Okay.”

Nick jumped back as if he’d been burned. “I’m serious. You’re wasting your time here, Serena. You can report back to AJ that you came, you saw and you didn’t conquer. The bet’s still on.”

She stood and stepped closer to him. “Fine.” Then, before he could stop her, she slipped her index fingers into the edge of his pants, feeling a rush at the warm satin of his skin against the backs of her fingers. “But Nick, fooling around isn’t sleeping. Can’t we still play?” She didn’t have to work at imbuing her voice with a low huskiness.

He grabbed her wrists and set her away from him. “It’s time for you to leave, Serena.”

But she couldn’t. Even though she’d love to run screaming from the room and leave behind the fire ignited by the brief touch of his hands, she had a job to do. She shook her head and scraped her fingernail down his chest. “But I just got here. We haven’t even had any fun yet.” She paused. “And Nick, I’ve heard you’re lots of fun….”

Dear Reader,

I knew when I first introduced Nick O’Malley in his big brother’s story, Really Hot!, that he was special. But I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of reader mail I got asking for Nick’s story. And since I always listen and try to deliver when I can, here is Nick’s Blazing tale….

But not just any woman would do for Nick. She had to be someone different, someone special. And when Serena Riggs, a tough undercover cop, breezed into my imagination, I knew Nick had met his match.

It’s one of my favorite setups in a romance—putting together two people who are intellectually the worst possible choice for one another, but ultimately just what the other needs. And they need each other quite a bit in this story….

I hope you enjoy Nick and Serena’s grand adventure. I would love to hear from you. Check me out and e-mail me at my Web site, www.jenniferlabrecque.com, or snail mail me at P.O. Box 298, Hiram, GA 30141.

Happy reading,

Jennifer LaBrecque

Anticipation

Jennifer LaBrecque

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Acknowledgment

Thanks to the Boston Police Department for the inspiration. All the inaccuracies are strictly my own.

Dedication

To Robert, my Massachusetts-born hero.

I’m glad you decided to stay.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

1

“I GET OFF OF work in two hours.” Cherry, a new waitress, placed the wings and a beer pitcher in the table’s center. The food and drinks were for everyone, but the sultry look was for Nick only.

Nick O’Malley smiled back at her but didn’t comment. Cherry stood, blocking the ball game. Obviously the regular staff at Dougal’s Sports Bar and Grill hadn’t taught Cherry the cardinal rule of waitressing in a sports bar: no blocking the big screen. Dougal’s wasn’t Boston’s finest or oldest, but Nick and his buddies had idled away many afternoons and evenings there in the past nine years since they’d reached legal drinking age. Cherry finally left, casting an inviting glance over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen.

“Man, you suck. You don’t even have to try to pick up chicks,” AJ groused and reached for the wing basket, shaking his blond crew-cut head in disgust.

The room groaned in chorus as Donovan struck out Perez…bases loaded…third out at the top of the ninth. The Red Sox had shot that game to hell.

“It’s gotten even worse since you hit every trashy newspaper in the country.” AJ didn’t let it go. “Amazing. You get caught embezzling half a million, your big brother goes on two reality shows to help you come up with the money you owe, the press gets wind of it and—bam—you’re famous.”

And he’d rather AJ not bring it up. It hadn’t exactly been his finest moment. His serious lapse in judgment had affected his whole family. He’d felt the worst about humiliating his parents. The look in their eyes had shattered him. It was something he lived with every day. They hadn’t been aghast as much as accepting. Irresponsible Nick had struck again.

Not a day went by that he didn’t think about it and rue what he’d done. His mom and dad had stood by him, but told him he had to take responsibility for his actions. He was determined to go one better. He’d never be his older brother, Rourke—talk about a tough act to follow—but he’d finally figured out that being Nick didn’t mean landing himself in jail. And standing in Rourke’s shadow was something he could choose to do or not.

Although, in a fatalistic kind of way, he wondered if it wasn’t supposed to happen and play out the way it had. Rourke had met the woman of his dreams, the associate producer for the two reality shows he’d been on. Portia and Rourke were now happily married and Rourke had bonded like glue with his stepson. Maybe their paths would never have crossed if Nick hadn’t screwed up. And maybe Nick wouldn’t have grown up and figured out a lot about himself and life in general. One thing for sure, he was never going to get himself into another scrape that embarrassed his family and required Rourke to rescue him.

Nick knew he was lucky he hadn’t done jail time for his crime. Lance Gleeson had declined to press charges as long as the money was returned with interest. Nick was also eternally grateful that the women of the world didn’t seem to hold it against him, even though it was sort of weird that not only did they not mind, they almost seemed to like it.

“It’s gotten better. I think my fifteen minutes of infamy have passed.” The latest celebrity couple breakup and another headline proclaiming aliens had visited the White House, and he was yesterday’s news. Thank goodness.

“Yeah. In a whole month no one’s mobbed us when we’ve been out with Nicky,” Tim said. He was the peacemaker and the only married one in the group. He agreed with whomever was making a point at the time, whether it contradicted what he’d just said or not, a trait that went a long way with his wife, Marsha.

“Chicks have always dug him,” AJ said.

Nick shrugged. He liked women and they seemed to like him. It worked. AJ wasn’t a bad-looking guy and he made decent money as a site foreman for his father’s construction company, but he had an attitude problem that women picked up on. Chicks. “I’ve been trying to tell you for years, that’s your problem. They’re not chicks. They’re women. They know you think of them as chicks.”

“Man’s got a point,” Tim said, refilling his beer. Nick held out his empty mug and Tim did the honors. “Marsha says ‘chick’ is demeaning.”

AJ shook his head. “Nah. That’s not it at all.” AJ poured extra hot sauce on his wings. Nick had tried one of AJ’s wings several years ago. Personally, he thought there was a lot to be said for still being able to feel your tongue when eating. Nick picked up a mild drummette and bit into it while AJ rambled on. AJ was fond of the sound of his own voice. “Nicky’s addicted to women. They sense it and they want to provide his fix.”

What? AJ was—

“You’re full of it,” Matt said, dipping a carrot stick in blue-cheese dressing. Between carrying a few extra pounds and early male-pattern baldness, Matt definitely looked the oldest of the four, even though he was six months younger.

AJ eyed the plastic basket of carrots and celery. “Your dick’s gonna fall off eating that. You should try some real man food.” Cousins as well as friends, AJ and Matt constantly gave one another a hard time.

Matt feigned surprise. “Damn. That’s what happened to you, man? Aunt Celeste fed you a carrot and your pecker dropped off? All these years we thought you’d just been shortchanged at birth.” He munched his carrot.

“Blow me.” AJ stabbed his chicken bone in Matt’s direction. “And I’m telling you, Nick’s addicted to chicks.”

Nick thunked his empty mug onto the scarred wood, thoroughly enjoying himself. “I’m not addicted to women.”

“Sure you are.” AJ smirked. “Name one time since junior high that you’ve gone longer than two weeks without a girlfriend.”

“There was…” Wait, that hadn’t been a week, but what about the time…“Yeah, when I had that emergency appendectomy and couldn’t take Melissa Frecht to the dance and she dumped me.”

“Sorry, loser. Remember the girl who started bringing your assignments over and doing them for you?”

Martha Crawford.

“Oh. Yeah. Okay. But that doesn’t prove anything.”

“Nicky wants proof.” AJ grinned and hoisted his beer at Matt and Tim with a smirk. “You and Trish have been quits for what, three days now?”

“Something like that.” Trish had wanted a ring, as in engagement ring, for her thirtieth birthday. Nick had been thinking more along the lines of a box of chocolates. She hadn’t liked his idea and he sure hadn’t gone for hers. Seeing Rourke and his sister-in-law together had actually left him discontented, wanting more than he had. But Trish wasn’t the woman he’d consider growing old beside.

“Five hundred bucks says you can’t go without a woman for thirty days,” AJ said. He bet on everything.

And Nick usually took him up on it. “Piece of cake,” Nick shrugged. He could do this and it went along with his new vow of being more responsible.

Matt whistled through his teeth. “Thirty days is a long time, Nick.”

“Especially for you.” Tim looked at Nick in apology.

“What?” Tim shifted like the wind. “You guys have no faith in me?” Obviously he needed to prove himself as the new and improved Nick to his buddies.

“You…thirty days…no women…” Matt looked at Tim, who grimaced. Matt glanced back at Nick and shook his head. “Sorry, dude.”

AJ smirked. “Money talks, bullshit walks.”

Nick leaned back in his chair. “We’ll see. Define going without. Are we talking no dates? Phone calls? Kisses? Nothing?”

AJ reached for another wing. “Second thoughts? This looking a little harder than you thought?”

“It’ll be a walk in the park.” Maybe an understatement, but he could do this. For his own self-respect he had to do this. It was proof of the new direction in his life. Plus, five hundred bucks would leave a big whole in his pocket.

“How many beers have you had?” Matt asked.

Two? Maybe three? “Not that many.” He looked across the table at AJ. “Now are you gonna lay out the rules or are you rethinking putting your money where your mouth is?”

AJ grinned and Nick didn’t bother to tell him he had a chunk of chicken stuck in his front teeth. “I’m putting my money on a sure thing. No dates. No kissing. No copping a feel. Absolutely no sex of any kind and, yeah, that includes phone sex, hand jobs and blow jobs.”

Matt winced. “That’s harsh, AJ.”

“You’re being pretty rough on him,” Tim said.

Nick swallowed. Obviously his three buds thought he’d cave before he even got in the game. “Not a problem.”

AJ laughed. “Right. This is gonna be the easiest five hundred bucks I ever made.”

He’d known AJ a long time, ever since the four of them had played Little League together. Nick had a few rules of his own to throw out, based on how well he knew AJ. “You can’t screw around with me and send women my way. That’s cheating.”

“Wrong. All’s fair in love and war, isn’t it, boys?” AJ glanced across the table at Matt and Tim.

“Man’s got a point,” Tim said. You couldn’t count on Tim to back you up in a tight spot.

Matt polished off the last carrot stick. “Sounds fair to me.”

“Majority rules.” AJ hoisted his beer in a mock toast. “A man on a deserted island can go without a beer, but put a pitcher in front of him and then you know what he’s made of.”

“WAIT TILL YOU GET a load of this, Riggs.” Brian Bennigan grinned and nodded toward the captain’s office as Serena Riggs made her way through the bullpen of Boston’s 151st precinct, located in the less-than-scenic heart of Boston’s most crime-ridden area.

Joe Pantoni tossed in his two-cents’ worth. “It’s right up your alley, Riggs. If you can’t catch Malone with this one, we’ll check and see if you can get on desk duty.”

“Last I heard, you had dibs on that spot, Panty-oni,” she said with her own smirk as she passed his desk. Being busted down from detective to desk clerk was a running department joke.

“Hey, Riggs, if you need to get in a little practice, Bennigan says he’s available. He’s got a little something in common with your perp,” Mike Harding piped up. Bennigan gave him the finger from across the room.

Steve Shea laughed with the rest of them, but withheld comment.

“Stuff it, boys,” Serena said good-naturedly, dropping her purse on her desk. They were a mouthy, but essentially harmless, group of guys. She, Bennigan, Pantoni and Harding had all been knocking around the 151st since their rookie days. Bit by bit, the men had insinuated themselves into the fabric of her life.

They and their families had had her on rotation for the past five years. Mike and Becca Harding commandeered her at Christmas. Pantoni’s wife, Francesca, always insisted Serena join their enormous and enormously loud extended family for Thanksgiving—although that would change this year. Francesca had decided she’d had enough of a cop’s lousy hours and the lousier pay, along with the gut-eating stress of being a cop’s wife. She and Joe were locked in mortal urban combat, commonly known as divorce. And Bennigan, the clichéd but oh-so-sweet third-generation Irish-American cop, dragged her along for St. Patrick’s Day, a holiday that ran a close third to Christmas and Thanksgiving in Boston.

She razzed them that they only had her over so she’d bring dessert—she could kick some pastry butt. Cannolis and tiramisu for the Pantonis, the Hardings were particularly fond of her éclairs and amaretto cheesecake, and she always baked several loaves of Irish soda bread and a chocolate mousse with Irish cream topping for the Bennigan clan. She liked to bake and it made her feel less of a charity case. Unlike her first several years in Boston, the past five had never found her alone on a family holiday, thanks to “the boys” and their families.

“PMS,” Pantoni surmised in a stage whisper.

“Definitely hormonal,” Bennigan agreed.

She gave them the finger behind her back as she eased into the captain’s office.

“Today’s your lucky day,” Harlan Worth announced as Serena closed his office door behind her.

“Yeah. So I gathered running the gauntlet.” She slumped into the chair in front of his beat-up desk and sipped the sludge disguised as coffee, still half a cup away from being fully humanoid. Where was it written that police station coffee had to be so bad? She vowed she’d never sleep through another alarm again and not have time to make her own coffee at home.

Worth steepled his fingers. “We’ve got a lead on Slick Nick for you.”

Finally. She’d been chasing Nick Malone, a money-laundering suspect, for months. However, she’d wait until she heard the particulars of the lead to decide whether it had validity. “Let’s hear it.” She pulled a small notepad out of her purse. She wrote everything down. More than once she’d reviewed her notes and found some obscure detail or minutia that had proven to be key.

“Got to love your enthusiasm, Riggs.”

Chasing dead ends had taught her not to get too hopeful. “I’ll see if I think it’s something to get excited about.”

“Seems Slick Nick dumped a girlfriend and you know how you women get.” She let the comment pass. If she took exception to every sexist comment uttered in the 151st, she’d be a raving lunatic. Besides, Harlan, despite his bluster, was one of the nicest men she’d ever met. He’d been married to Nancy Worth for over forty years and still worshipped the ground the woman walked on. “She’s selling her stud-muffin down the river.”

Stud-muffin? Harlan was stuck in the eighties. Serena focused on the rest of what he’d said. Depending on just how pissed off they were, ex-girlfriends could provide a wealth of info. Maybe this was something to get excited about.

She knew Nick Malone was a little over six feet with short, dark hair, blue eyes, and a medium build. That had only narrowed it down to over half the men in greater Boston. She needed a photo and a means of positive ID. The guy had been smart enough never to get caught or arrested. No fingerprints, no photo ID, and he went by several aliases. “Please tell me we have a photo.”

“We have a photo.” Harlan pushed it across the desk in her direction. “For what it’s worth.” The photo was out of focus, the man in the picture little more than a blur, with no discernable features, other than dark, short hair.

“Oh.” Yep. As disappointing as every other lead in this case. She drained the cup and bit back a grimace. She was saving every dollar for a down payment on a town house, but she might have to break down and buy a decent cup of coffee at the nearby coffee shop when she overslept. This stuff was either going to kill her or put hair on her chest—both bad options.

Harlan flipped through his notes, which Serena knew was unnecessary. The man possessed an amazing memory. “According to the girlfriend, he’s a top-notch dresser. Likes nice clothes. Said he’s obsessed with them ocean movies.”

Huh? “Beach movies?”

“Nah. Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve. She says he wants to be like that Clooney guy.”

Serena cracked a smile. “There are worse men to want to be like, although I personally think Matt Damon’s the looker in that lot.”

“You seen the movies?”

“Yeah.” The ending in the second one, Ocean’s Twelve, irritated the heck out of her. “So, we’ve got a perp who fancies himself a master criminal.”

“Hey, at least he’s got professional ambition.” Harlan unwrapped a Twinkie. “Breakfast of champions.” He took a bite and swallowed with minimal chewing. Watching Harlan eat reminded her why she was still single. Men could be real pigs. That and you needed to trust them to marry them. “We also know that our boy has a tattoo.”

“That works.” Finally something to really smile about. A perp could alter haircut and color, pop in colored contacts, change the way he dressed, but it was hard to get rid of a tattoo or a scar. “Arm? Neck? Chest? Back?”

“This is good.” Harlan grinned, looking like one of Santa’s elves gone bad with his full, round face, slightly pointed ears and a blob of cream filling at the corner of his mouth. She made a sign and he swiped off the cream. “It’s on his ass.”

Serena rolled her eyes. No wonder the boys had been in rare form this morning. “That’s great. To make a positive ID I’ve got to yank this guy’s pants down?”

Harlan chased the Twinkie with a slurp of coffee sludge. “You could try asking him nicely. According to the girlfriend, he’s quite a looker, but she says he’s a tiny mite when it comes to the johnson—course that could just be the woman-scorned thing.”

Serena laughed. That must be the little something Bennigan had in common with Malone. “That’s just great! This’ll make for some interesting conversation. Excuse me, you look like someone I know. In fact, you remind me of Danny Ocean. But I need to know, do you have a tattoo on your butt and a little penis?”

“Hey, it’ll guarantee a positive ID.” Harlan smirked. “Another little tidbit for when you’re trying to get those pants down to check out the tattoo—your boy likes a good spanking. You might want to dust off your dominatrix outfit.”

Sometimes she just found out more than she wanted or needed to know about people. Being in a job where she was surrounded by the worst of society was often demoralizing. “I didn’t need to know that.”

Harlan wagged a stubby finger at her across the desk. “It might come in handy. You’ve got to work on always having a backup plan, Riggs. She says he’s particularly partial to one of those little riding whips with the split leather on the end.”

“Jesus. Was there anything she didn’t tell you?”

“She was singing like a bird.” Harlan grinned.

“Please, tell me we’ve got an address.” Slick Nick was a shadow man. She hadn’t been able to find out where he lived. An address would be a huge plus. That she would definitely smile about.

“Sorry, Toots. You aren’t that lucky today. She said they always went to her place or a motel and they always took a cab. But, she did say he has an important meeting at that hotel near the airport, The Barrister. He’s going to be there for a three-day meeting from the twenty-fourth until the twenty-sixth. Just think, you can spank him till he talks and he’ll like it.”

Okay, it looked like dominatrix was about to be added to her repertoire. Serena was the department “go to” girl when light undercover was required. She liked it and she excelled at it. She’d handle the dominatrix thing without a problem.

Color her cynical, but this seemed like a surfeit of information where before they’d only had one dead-end after another. “How do you know she’s not setting us up? That’s a lot of information for her to know.”

“Nuh-uh. She’s setting him up, big-time. Apparently he thought she was just a dumb blonde and didn’t really go to any trouble to hide his day planner. So she found it and took a look.”

Serena grinned. “I like the sound of this woman.” Well, except for her poor judgment in dating a crook. Growing up with a petty criminal for a father had left Serena with zero tolerance and had been a major influence on her decision to be a cop. Criminals were criminals—bottom line. And women who had anything to do with lawbreakers were almost as bad as the men themselves.

If Serena’s mother had left her good-for-nothing father, they would’ve still been poor, but at least they could’ve claimed a little dignity. Pretty damn hard to have dignity when your old man was in and out of prison all the time and your mother lied to cover for him.

Serena had bailed when she hit eighteen. A high-school graduate with thirty-two hundred bucks in her pocket, saved from working nights and weekends, she’d tried to get her mother to come with her. Her mother had stayed because, according to Mom, Serena’s dad needed her when he got of jail. Again.

Serena had shaken Cleveland’s dirt from her feet, headed east and, even though she talked regularly with her mom, she’d never gone back. She couldn’t face the squalor and her mom’s resigned hopefulness. She definitely wasn’t interested in her father’s lies that this time he was going straight.

Becoming a cop had been Serena’s way of denouncing everything her father stood for. Plus, her father truly hated cops. Her job might keep her in contact with criminals and all the emotional dysfunction that went with a criminal’s lifestyle, but she was fighting all that instead of living it. “The girlfriend’s more than a blond bimbo. Bad news for Slick Nick. Good news for moi.”

“Don’t you want to know what kind of tattoo he has on his ass?” The elf-gone-bad’s eyes fairly danced with mischief.

Serena blew a strand of hair out of her eyes. She wanted to grow her hair out, but she might not make it through this growing out stage. And PMS just made it worse. She should come with a warning today: Bad Hair Day, PMS Bloating and a License to Carry Concealed. “I’m thinking there is a limited number of men that fit his general description with any kind of tattoo on their butts, but sure, go ahead. I can tell you’re dying to spill it. And doubtless the guys all know already. They were in rare form this morning.” Secrets in the station just didn’t happen.