Anticipation

“HERE’S YOUR BEER. Should I bring another one when I bring your burger?” the waitress asked, putting his drink on the table in front of him.

“No thanks. I’m good.”

He looked past the waitress, avoiding the eye contact she sought. That was a big mistake because it left him looking at the leggy blonde sitting at the bar. He’d been so good when he came in the room. He’d made sure he didn’t look around the room. Better not to even know what he was missing out on.

And then he’d seen her at the bar and his whole world had shifted, tilted, come into focus. It was as if every cliché of meeting a stranger’s eyes across a crowded room had blossomed inside him at that moment in time. For the span of several heartbeats the people and all the noise of the bar had faded to nothingness and it had only been him and her.

Damn it to hell. Twenty-eight days and none of the women AJ and Matt had thrown at him had interested him, certainly none had tempted him.

And now, he saw this woman. She definitely tempted him. She wasn’t particularly beautiful but she was pretty in a fresh-scrubbed way and those legs in those boots…His sex drive had returned from its twenty-eight day hiatus with a vengeance.

Damn. The smart thing would’ve been to order room service and eat in with Sheila. He almost told the waitress to box it up to go and then he stopped himself. He was made of sterner stuff than that.

Nope. He was not going to think about running his hand over the smooth curve of her calf and along the delicate line of her ankle. No sir. Not even going to imagine those legs wrapped around him. Nuh-uh.

He glanced up from those incredible legs and found her watching him with faint amusement. A little thrill coursed through him until his brain cells caught up with his hormones. He deliberately looked away. He’d concentrate on his beer. Two days. He had two lousy, long days to go. He could he do it. He would do it.

He definitely didn’t need to look into those eyes or ogle those legs again. Why torture himself when he couldn’t even introduce himself? What would he say? “Hey, I’d like to get to know you a little better. Mind if I call you in three days when this bet is off with my friends?” She’d think he and his friends possessed the mentality and maturity of adolescent schoolboys. While that might well be the case, he didn’t need to advertise it.

The waitress delivered his burger and a bottle of catsup. “Can I get you anything else?”

Nick demurred and forced himself not to look at the blonde at the bar. So, they’d exchanged a look and a smile. Big deal. He bit into his burger and concentrated on savoring the flavor of ground sirloin, a toasted Kaiser bun, fresh lettuce, a ripe juicy tomato and a thick slice of pungently sharp cheddar cheese. But he was still conscious, in his peripheral vision, of those shapely legs shifting.

Nick was two bites into his burger when he saw the woman stand in his peripheral vision. No. Please don’t let her stop by his table. He was in a weakened state. She walked past and, idiotically, he found himself disappointed. But there was nothing wrong with his sense of smell and she smelled as good as she looked. A light and airy scent with an underlying tone of seduction. Hell, who was he kidding? At this point the damned hamburger smelled seductive.

He watched her walk, mesmerized by the length of her legs, the sway of her hips in that short skirt. And those black, thigh-hugging, stiletto-heeled boots made him ache. She was obviously a woman who worked out. She looked toned and lean. Nick forgot he had a mouthful of ground beef and swallowed, promptly choking.

Dangerously close to needing the Heimlich maneuver, with his eyes watering, he missed where she went. That was just as well, since she was none of his business.

He concentrated on his burger and the ball game playing silently on the bar TV. He was relieved the blonde with the boots had left. Really, he was. He wasn’t in the least disappointed. So, she’d started his engine in a major way just by walking by. It was his lucky day that she’d left. He’d take his time, have a nice leisurely meal and watch the game. He could relax now that temptation had left the building.

He winced as Bastion, a new closer for the Sox, allowed a grand slam. Another Sox game down the toilet. The waitress arrived with another beer.

“I didn’t order that,” Nick said.

“Compliments of the lady at the bar.” The waitress, who didn’t look old enough to drink beer, much less serve it, winked at him.

“What lady?”

She pointed to where the blonde had been. “She was over there. She said to send this over and she’d be back in a few minutes.”

Nick made a strangled noise. “I need my check.”

“Was something wrong with your burger?”

“No. Yeah. Maybe. I just need to leave.”

The waitress gave him a look that said he was cute but seriously psycho. Let her think he was psycho. He didn’t care. All he knew was that he didn’t plan to wait around for Ms. Legs to return. His willpower was already stretched thin. In fact, he was fresh out. He needed to get the hell out of Dodge before those legs and that cute freckled nose showed up at his table.

Forget the rest of his burger. He upended the beer—a fresh beer was a terrible thing to waste. His best course of action was to put as much distance between him and that long-legged, sweet-smelling siren. He couldn’t get back to his room fast enough.

3

SERENA EASED the hotel room door closed behind her. She turned and saw a woman sitting in the chair across the room and nearly jumped out of her skin. Adrenaline surged through her. Was the woman dead or tied up? Serena realized she was neither, because she wasn’t a woman, she was a freaking blow-up doll wearing a man’s shirt. What the heck?

She shook her head and crossed the room, eager to have a look at the laptop open on the round table. Her luck had definitely taken a turn today. Who knew? Maybe she’d find all the incriminating evidence she needed at once.

What she saw on the screen was incriminating all right. Slick Nick perched on the doll’s lap, nuzzling her neck. And the sicko had even posted a caption across the bottom. “I think I’m in love.” Ick. With a plastic doll.

Just went to prove you should never, ever judge a book by its cover. Slick Nick looked like a regular, sexy, hot guy. He looked nice. Certainly not like you’d expect him to cozy up with a blow-up doll and get off on a little spanking. This guy’s kink factor was way off her meter.

She rifled through the folders in his briefcase, taking care to leave everything the way she’d found it. Nothing definitive there, except the name Nick O’Malley, plus a phone number and address. They knew Slick Nick used a number of aliases. O’Malley was close enough to Malone to make sense as an alias. People tended to pick names similar to their own. But the address…She grinned. Sweet.

She stepped back and turned around, bumping the chair behind her. The doll started to fall and Serena grabbed it to keep it from tumbling to the floor.

“Oh, Nicky, would you like me to talk dirty to you?” a canned woman’s voice asked, startling Serena. Serena realized it was the doll. This guy was a bonafide freak. Serena righted the doll, feeling slightly intimidated in the face of what were extremely large breasts. Apparently Slick Nick did not find more than a mouthful a waste. Those monsters would require a quarterback to make a two-handed pass. Wait till the boys in the station heard about this.

And then because she figured Nick hadn’t even finished his burger yet and it was sort of akin to watching a train wreck or Jerry Springer when you were late-night channel surfing, she squeezed the doll again.

“Oh, Nicky, you’re so big.”

Oh brother. This guy was pa-thet-ic. And then, because she wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t come in handy one day and because she was simply curious, she listened to the rest of the doll’s messages. Sheesh. Love slave. Mama. Threesome. Spanking. Well, Slick Nick certainly had some hot buttons.

She did a quick recon of the drawers. Not much there except for the usual socks, underwear—kind of boring tighty whities, not exactly what she’d figured for a kinky kind of guy—and a pair of cotton drawstring pants all jumbled together. Nick might be a nice dresser but he wasn’t exactly tidy or organized.

She only had one more place to check. Maybe he had something in the closet, something in his suitcase. She slid open the mirrored closet door and checked the pants pockets. Nada. The door lock clicked. She froze for a second, then she ducked into the closet, sliding the closet door behind her just as the room door swung open. Her heart pounded. Two seconds later and she’d have been an unwilling doorstop.

The deadbolt clicked into place, a sure sign that whoever had come in—she assumed Nick—didn’t plan on going back out any time soon. She was amazed she could hear anything over the deafening pounding of her heart. That had been a close call. Nick walked past the closet and Serena held her breath, careful to remain still and not bump the hangers at shoulder level. Thank goodness he’d left half the closet empty. She inched the closet door open, just a hair, so that she could survey the room.

Slick Nick sat at the table next to the blow-up doll and did something on the computer. “Ah, sweet Sheila, you’re still here.” Double ick. His plastic fantasy had a name. And where the heck else did he expect her to be? Sheila wasn’t going far on rubber legs. “I should’ve ordered in and eaten with you, my sweet.”

It was one of those universal injustices that such a weirdo had such a sexy voice, a warm, slightly husky baritone that slid over you, through you.

“There was a woman in the bar…my God, those legs. I was seriously tempted.”

He was talking about her. She wasn’t sure whether she was flattered or grossed out. Well, that wasn’t true. Maybe all his perversion was rubbing off, because, dammit, she was flattered that he was out there sighing over her legs and confessing to the plastic Sheila.

“They were get-your-dick-hard legs. Oh, honey. And those eyes and that cute nose. Sheila, she was a turn-on and I was close to caving, but I stayed the course, even if it meant leaving half my dinner. I didn’t give in to temptation. I was true to you, my love.” He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his head. “I swear I can even smell her perfume in here. She seriously flipped my switch.” He opened his eyes and shook his head, as if to clear it.

Serena couldn’t believe that it turned her on to hear Mr. Perve talk about getting a woody looking at her legs, especially since he was describing her to his blow-up doll girlfriend. She didn’t want to feel the moisture gather between her thighs, didn’t want to feel that flutter low in her belly. It was even worse when she considered that his “giving in to temptation” meant betraying an inanimate object with a permanently gaping mouth.

Oh no. No flaming way. Not going to do it. No way she was going to sit in this closet and watch him “enjoy” Sheila. But hey, Sheila was there, available, permanently willing and he was turned on. Of course that was what was going to happen.

Cripes, a guy with a little willie going at it with a blow-up doll. Well, it wouldn’t be any better if it was a guy with a big willie.

The upside, however, to witnessing that freak show in action would be she’d see his bare butt and have a positive ID. Sometimes her job sucked. Increasingly, she felt permanently slimed by the bad guys.

“Okay, little Sheila, I think it’s time you went in the closet.”

What?

Nick picked up the doll and carried her under one arm across the room.

No. No. No. A blow-up doll was about to totally blow her cover. She inched back but couldn’t go too far because his suitcase was on the foldout stand and his clothes were hanging. If she was really lucky, he’d only open the door far enough to shove the doll in. But she wasn’t feeling lucky about right now.

Nick reached for the closet slide and must’ve hit Sheila’s hand. “Oh, Nicky, would you like me to talk dirty to you?”

“Thanks for the offer, Sheila, but I don’t think so.” He laughed but turned back toward the bed, away from the closet. “But I guess you can just stay in the chair. You’re really too nice a girl to be stuck in the closet.”

Reprieved! Blood rushed to Serena’s head.

“Enjoy your chair while I shower.” He placed the doll in the chair and crossed to the dresser where he pulled out the cotton drawstring pants.

Shower meant naked. Bare tush. All she needed was one good look, just a glimpse of that tattoo. No. She was not looking forward to checking out his bod. She was just doing her job—even if that meant watching a buff, good-looking perve strip naked.

Serena wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold this position, scrunched over. Nick went into the bathroom. Don’t close the door. He pushed it behind him, but it only closed about a quarter of the way, leaving her with a line of sight and the reflection from the bathroom mirror.

He tossed the cotton pants onto the counter next to the sink and reached into the shower, turning on the water. Serena took advantage of the moment to kneel on the closet floor, closer to the crack, giving her a better view without her eye being level with his in the mirror. She didn’t need him to see her watching him from the closet. That could be a bad scene. But from what she knew of this guy, he’d probably get off on it.

Nick tugged his shirt over his head and tossed it onto the floor, taking her right back to that life-not-fair deal. He had a gorgeous chest, broad with a smattering of hair that was masculine without looking like a hairy beast. And the mirror reflected his back—no hair, thank you, but plenty of sculpted muscle. And arms—cut, defined. He was buff without being Cro-Magnon.

He stepped out of a pair of loafers and unzipped his pants, sliding them down well-muscled legs. Now who was the freaking pervert? She was crouched in a closet watching a man undress. She felt as if she should close her eyes or look away, but that would defeat the purpose of getting a look at his butt and that was, after all, why she was here. She kept her eyes trained on the nearly naked, very fine male specimen before her.

Nick hooked his thumbs in his underwear and pulled them off, stepping back slightly, so that his butt was just behind the door. Serena gaped. Sweet mother of…oh my. He had a magic wand waving that looked pretty big from where she crouched. He pivoted on his right foot and turned toward the door, giving her a bird’s eye, full-frontal nudity view. She bit back the sound that almost escaped her. Case in point, one woman’s stallion was another woman’s foal, because there was nada wrong with the equipment he was packing up front. If his ex-girlfriend wanted to see little…well, Serena should introduce the woman to Serena’s last two boyfriends. Nick here made them look like they needed to shop in the boy’s department. Wow. He flipped the switch for the fan and then pivoted back around. Blocked by the door, he got in the shower.

Damn. She ought to smack herself. She’d been so busy ogling his package, she’d missed the perfect opportunity to check out his rear which would’ve been reflected in the mirror. Now, when she would have had the chance to slip out the door while he was in the shower, she had to wait around in the closet, hoping she’d catch a glimpse of it when he stepped out.

There was no use beating herself up about it. That had definitely been a distraction. She was pretty sure there wasn’t a woman alive who wouldn’t have found herself…interested in that view.

She might as well try to stretch a bit and switch positions while he had the shower going, although she didn’t dare risk sliding the closet door open. She carefully moved the empty hangers to the other end so she wouldn’t bump against them. God knows how long she was going to be stuck in here. She hoped he wasn’t a night owl. She sat on the closet floor, yoga style.

The scent of his cologne clung faintly to his clothes. Tempting. Tantalizing. Even his clothes smelled sexy. He looked good—make that great. He smelled good. He even sounded good. What a shame he was a bad guy. And what the heck was wrong with her? All she’d ever felt on any other case had been a sense of detachment and loathing for the perp. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t find that detachment now. Nick Malone, aka, Nick O’Malley, was fully deserving of her loathing. Unfortunately, she couldn’t muster it. Somehow he had slipped in under her radar. Something about him had felt intensely personal, intimate, from the time she’d met his eyes across the room, to when she’d listened to him talk to a blow-up doll about how Serena affected him, until now when she sat surrounded by his scent. Something about this man pierced the protective armor she’d always instinctively cloaked herself in and touched her, engaged her. She felt betrayed by her reaction, her attraction to him, but it was something she couldn’t seem to quell and she couldn’t deny. And in that moment she learned something important about herself and choices and mankind in general. This man was reprehensible, and against all rationale and against everything she stood for and believed in, she felt a connection, a pull to him that was totally out of her control. She could despise herself, she could berate herself, but it didn’t seem to change her instinctive response to Nick Malone. What she could control, however, was what actions she took. She’d make a positive ID and then she’d turn the case over to Worth and he could reassign it. Any of the boys should be glad to take on a case that was almost in the bag.

A sound from the shower interrupted her train of thought. There it was again. Was it a moan? Maybe she’d imagined that deep, throaty sound. She heard it again. It wasn’t her imagination. She wasn’t exactly naive, but it took a moment for her to figure it out, a few seconds before she recognized the noise of a man aroused. God. She was sitting in a closet alone and she still blushed—she could feel the heat wash over her. Obviously his hand and his imagination were both being used on that impressive erection she’d seen not too long ago.

She wet her suddenly dry lips. She’d done that. She’d heard his confession to his plastic girlfriend. The intensity and frequency of his moans increased and another type of heat fired through her. Just as she’d been helpless against the attraction she’d felt earlier, she couldn’t seem to suppress her reaction to him masturbating in the shower. She bit down on her lower lip but still her nipples tightened and her thighs grew wet in response to what she overheard. Please. She really couldn’t take much more of this. She was embarrassed and frustrated, and dammit, suddenly and incredibly turned on. It was uncanny, almost as if he shared some cosmic wavelength with her, but he came then in one long moaning release.

The water stopped. She knelt again, making sure her body wasn’t visible through the crack, and peeked out. He reached for a towel, his dark, hair-covered arm dripping water. Steam rendered the mirror useless. She couldn’t see him while he toweled off—he was too far into the room. He stepped forward, picked up the loose cotton pants and stepped into them. Talk about frustrating. Between the door angle and a streak of bad luck, she couldn’t see his butt.

While he brushed his teeth, she stared at what was a very nice butt, peering hard, hoping for a glimpse of a tattoo. If his pants had been white, or off-white, or muslin, the tattoo might have shown through, but it was a lost cause with a dark plaid print. Even though it was pointless, she watched him floss, put on deodorant and run his hand through his wet hair. Of course, it wasn’t as if she had much else to do or look at, stuck in the closet.

He grabbed another clean towel, turned off the bathroom light and the vent fan, and walked out of the bathroom, his dirty clothes still heaped on the floor. He was a slob and a pervert, but he was clean. And breath-stealingly sexy. Her breath caught in her throat. When he passed the closet, she smelled the intoxicating mixture of soap, warm skin and deodorant.

From her vantage point, she could only see about half of the bed. Nick spread the towel on the floor at the bottom corner. Oh no, now Sheila was about to get it. This guy was insatiable. Wasn’t once in the shower enough for him? Apparently not.

And at this point she wasn’t so sure she knew herself any longer. Once upon a time, she would’ve known with certainty that watching a guy with a blow-up doll would disgust her. But once upon a time, she also would’ve bet the farm she wouldn’t hide in a closet while a guy got off in the shower. She would not, however, watch him engage in sex with a blow-up doll—once she got a look at his tush. She’d study the edge of frayed carpet butting up to the metal track of the sliding closet door.

Nick stretched out on the towel and propped his feet up on the edge of the bed. Serena almost laughed out loud. Sit-ups. The guy was powering through flaming sit-ups. Which explained that body—the nice flat belly with its six-pack of rippling muscle. After about a minute, she started counting. He just kept going and going, the muscles in his shoulders and his back a fine sight to watch. Hey, she was stuck here, she might as well make the most of it.

Nick stood, picked up the towel and tossed it onto the other chair. His cell phone rang. Serena held her breath, hoping it was a call about his impending meeting.

“Hi, Ma…. No, you’re not bothering me. I’m just getting ready to go to bed. How’s Da feeling?…Yeah, make sure he takes his medicine. We need him well for his surprise birthday party, don’t we?…Yep. I mentioned it to the boys and they can all come…Right. Sure, Ma, I’ll take my vitamins…Love you too. Talk to you later. ’Night.”

He sounded like such a nice person. A good son, loving, concerned, dutiful. Did his mother have a clue what her son really did? She doubted it, if the woman was reminding her thirty-year-old son to take his vitamins. She hardened her heart. It was tough when you thought about the innocent people criminals hurt with their lifestyle, all the parents, spouses and children that lived with the consequences of those actions. Did his mother know about his tush tattoo? Did she know about his little spanking fetish?

Nick turned down the cover on the king-size bed and grabbed the remote. He flipped the TV to a sports channel. She heard him sign off the laptop and close it. He stretched out on the bed, folding his hands beneath his head.

Serena settled on the closet floor.

She was so screwed.

A HAZE OF CIGARETTE SMOKE hung in the air and a cold sweat trickled down Nick Malone’s back. Jo-Jo was not going to be pleased and Nick was about to get a taste of that displeasure. Big Al, looking every inch the thug he was in a suit that didn’t quite fit his bulging biceps and thick bull neck, walked over. “Jo-Jo’ll see you now.”

Big Al shadowed him to the door where another equally massive guard, Marcel, stood. Nick reached for the doorknob. Big Al wrapped a meaty hand around his arm. “Leave the piece with Marcel. You’ll get it back when you’re done.”

Nick pulled the 357 from the shoulder holster beneath his suit jacket and handed it to Marcel. Big Al still held on to his arm. “And don’t forget about the one on your ankle.”

It’d been worth a try. He lied through his teeth. “I hadn’t got that far yet.”

“Just hand it over.”

Big Al had the stereotypical thug build, but what made him even more intimidating was that he wasn’t your typical garden-variety big, dumb guy. Big Al was cunning and ruthless and big—an intimidating combination. No one saw Jo-Jo without going through Big Al and no one went through Big Al if he didn’t want them to. Big Al reminded Nick of a crocodile he’d seen once at the reptile house. It owned the same cold, unblinking stare.

Nick fished the double-shot derringer out of the ankle holster and straightened his pant cuffs. He might be in trouble, but he wouldn’t go in with his pant leg stuck in his sock. He’d go in with panache.