Her 24-Hour Protector

It was the same in high school. Because of her seductive beauty Jenna was automatically labeled as promiscuous. So, to stay “cool” and “liked” she pretended to be “bad,” wore the sexy clothes, hung out with the in crowd. And she always managed to hide her giving heart, her sharp intelligence and her genuine sensitivity. No one had ever really gotten to know the real Jenna Rothchild.

And Jenna started to become the person she had so carefully fashioned. Because of this, she continued to attract the wrong sort of men post school, and she continued to escape with parties. Throwing fabulous events became her forte, her way to escape uncomfortable reality, to be the center of attraction—to be liked. And she was so good at the parties it grew into a business, her dad eventually hiring her as a key event planner for his major Strip casino—the Grand Hotel and Casino.

But deep down, something was missing. A pit was forming in Jenna’s gut—a longing for a sense of worth, something real. Some value and relevance in the scope of the world. And she’d begun to harbor secret fears that maybe she really had no personality after all. Then with Candace’s murder, the inner Jenna really began stirring, asking questions about what life and money were really all about when it couldn’t buy the kind of happiness her poor beleaguered sister seemed to have been yearning for.

Her dad approaching her for help in Candace’s case was a way to wrest some control of it all. To do something.

And now there was this bonus—Special Agent Lexington Duncan.

He was pure eye candy. She wanted him and was stunned he’d been able to resist her, especially after she’d coughed up a cool quarter million for his pet charity.

Damn cool solid hunk of granite.

It made her all the more determined and just a little bit vulnerable.

She pushed a wave of hair back from her face, watching him exit the hotel, shirtless. And she allowed amusement to whisper over her lips. Poor devil. He’d thrown his shirt to the crowd of bidding women, and now he was apparently too proud to go back inside to look for something to wear. The FBI agent was left with no choice but to go home half-naked.

Her smile deepened into a grin.

She’d get him.

She’d seal the seduction tomorrow, on their date.

This was just phase one, she told herself. She’d done her reconnaissance, and gotten him here—playing it smart, staging the event away from the Grand Hotel and Casino and keeping her own name off the event ticket.

Enlisting Cassie to approach Lex’s partner, Rita Perez, at the gym where Rita gave martial arts classes two evenings a week had been the coup de grâce.

Yeah, the date itself would be phase two. And once she was done there, he’d be pure, warm putty in her hands. And that thought sent a hot little tingling zing of anticipation through her belly. She exhaled, pressing her hand against her stomach as she watched the glass revolving door spew him out into the hot desert night. The valet rushed over to him, called for his car.

As Lex passed by on the other side of the big glass windows making his way toward his black SUV he glanced up, caught her watching and scowled.

She smiled sweetly and gave a little wave.

Then she spun on her four-inch heels and sashayed back toward the pulsing Ruby Room. But as she pulled open the doors, she bumped into Cassie coming out.

“Uh-oh,” Cassie said the minute she saw her friend. “You have that look.”

“What look?”

Cassie glanced over Jenna’s shoulder, saw the shirtless cop through the windows getting into his SUV. “Oh, come on, Jenna. Why do you want him so bad, when you could have any one of the guys back there?”

Jenna didn’t answer for a minute.

“Ah, wait, I get it.” Cassie’s disarming chuckle bubbled up from her chest. “It’s because he’s immune to the infamous Jenna Rothchild charm, is that it? He doesn’t want you. Because he can see right through you, girlfriend.”

Jenna laughed, making light of it while she said goodbye to her friend. But Cassie’s words left a niggling coolness inside her. Maybe Cass was right.

Maybe Lex did see right through her. And he saw there was nothing inside. Nothing under the money and superficial glitz.

Jenna wasn’t sure how to handle this idea. It made her feel more than just a little bit vulnerable—it made her feel worthless. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Lex Duncan had nailed the game advantage and she hadn’t won after all.

Lex was greeted by a chorus of adult males making the yipping sounds of a small dog as he walked into the bullpen at the FBI’s Las Vegas field office Friday, the next morning.

He glanced at Rita Perez. “What the hell is going on here?”

“She has one of those little purse pooches,” Perez said as Lex removed his jacket.

“What are you talking about?”

Perez slapped a copy of the Las Vegas Sun on Lex’s desk. “You and it-girl.” She folded her arms across her chest, looking too damn smug for her own Latina good. Lex glanced down and saw the photo he knew he would. The one that showed him half-naked, gleaming with perspiration and kissing the Vegas heiress who was also the youngest sister of his homicide case victim.

He swore under his breath.

More yips taunted him.

“What’s a purse pooch anyway?” he said, glaring at the press photo, growing hot under his collar.

“One of those little it-girl dogs, you know? The kind that cost several grand and fit right inside a designer purse. Look—” Perez flipped the paper open to page four, tapped the page annoyingly with her finger. “There. A file photo of your casino princess on a little shopping spree with her pooch and daddy’s money, no doubt. Note—” said Perez, bending forward for emphasis “—that the purse matches Rothchild’s outfit, as does that cute little bow in the dog’s hair.”

“What the hell kind of dog is that anyway…look at it’s teeth. It’s got an underbite like it’s permanently mad at the world.”

“Shih-Tzu,” said Rita.

“Shih-t-what?”

Guffaws of laughter burst from the room, and more yipping came from the far corner of the bull pen.

“Shih-Tzu,” corrected Perez. “It’s Vietnamese.”

“Chinese!” called an agent from across the room.

Another crescendo of yips rose through the office.

“Geez,” Lex muttered, shuffling papers off his desk. “Bunch of losers.”

“Agent Duncan!”

He glanced up sharply to see Harry Quinn, FBI Special Agent in Charge, standing at the rail up a level at the offices. He was holding a copy of the Las Vegas Sun, the big black headline sticking out over his thumb: “Record Two Million Raised for Nevada Orphans Fund.”

“Can I see you in my office.” It wasn’t a question.

“Ooh, he’s in the shih tzu doo-doo now,” someone cooed in a loud stage whisper. More raucous laughter rolled through the bullpen. Lex swore softly as he made his way into Quinn’s office.

Quinn slapped the paper down on his desk. The photo of Lex, topless, partying down with a person of interest in his homicide investigation mocked him from the polished surface. From the look in his boss’s eyes, Lex was about to hear that he was off the case. Or worse.

He cleared his throat. “I can explain—”

Quinn raised his hand. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” he snapped. “Jenna Rothchild paid a quarter of a million? To date you for a night?”

Lex ran his tongue over his teeth. “Yes, sir.”

His boss suddenly threw back his head and laughed. Hard, really hard. He slumped down into his chair, wiping a tear from his eyes.

“Geez, Quinn, I’m not that much of a dog,” Lex muttered. “Besides, I told her to forget it. Mistake. Conflict of interest. This—” he wagged his hand at the newspaper on Quinn’s desk “—will all blow over by tomorrow.” Why did he not sound more convincing to himself?

His boss sat forward suddenly, eyes dead serious again. He had a way of switching back and forth, unnerving people. It kept his agents on their feet. “No.” His black eyes bored into Lex. “No. This is not over. We use this. We use her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Play along.”

Surprise rippled through Lex. He had zero intension of messing any further with Jenna for personal, never mind professional, reasons. “That’s…ridiculous. It’s a clear conflict of interest. It could pose a problem for the prosecution if they find a connection between me and Rothchild, especially if a defense attorney gets wind of—”

“Granted, yes, it’s unorthodox.” Quinn tapped his pen impatiently on his desk. “But nothing about this case to date has been orthodox. Consider it a covert operation, Duncan. A Rothchild infiltration.” He leaned back in his chair as he spoke, and Lex detected a faint smirk of amusement on his superior’s face.

“There’s no way—”

“She’s a tool, agent. She handed herself to us on a silver platter. Use that tool, leverage it to get to her father, to dig up information on that little trophy wife of his, on the dead sister, crack anyone or anything open, pry it loose. Play her game. One hundred percent. God knows we need some kind of break on this case.”

“She set me up.”

“So? Find out why.”

“The media will—”

“I’ll let the media know you’re officially off the case. Unofficially, you’re on it 24/7. We’ll plug it as a covert op, and the legal stuff will be in the clear as long as you keep your hands off her.”

“Look, I—”

His boss stood, making up in breadth what he lacked in Lex’s height. “It’s good to have you in the Vegas office, agent. I was more than happy to approve your request for transfer.”

“Thank you, sir.” That was a veiled threat if he ever saw one. Lex was no idiot. He’d put in for a post at this Las Vegas field office several times over the last couple of years, wanting to get out of Washington and back to the Reno-Vegas area for reasons of his own.

His application had been approved nine months ago, thanks in major part to Harry Quinn. And Lex had settled in fast, coaching troubled foster kids at football, volunteering for Nevada orphans-related charities. He’d landed himself a nice little house in one of the new subdivisions away from the hubbub of the Las Vegas Strip from where he could see the firered spring mountains. It was his springboard to the desert wilderness he’d always loved as a kid, yet not too far from the sort of pulse he’d grown up with in Reno. In many ways, Lex felt he’d come right home to Sin City. His mother had a past here, and it was here he’d come looking for answers. Lex was finally in a position to put everything into finding the man who had killed his mother.

He had no intention of being eased out now. If keeping this posting meant tangling with Jenna Rothchild, he’d have to bite the bullet and try to keep his libido in check. In spite of what moves she pulled on him.

Damn—he was between a rock and a hard place. He could already hear the snickers out in the bullpen.

He blew out a chestful of air as Quinn showed him out the office door. “And keep me briefed, Duncan. Let me know if you need anything. Perez remains your backup on this.”

Perez was the one who got me into this.

He saw her smiling up at him as he neared his desk. “I wanted to kill you last night,” he muttered as he approached.

She grinned, teeth bright-white against her dusky skin. “And now?”

“Even more so. You better watch your back, Perez.”

She chuckled. “I’ll be too busy watching yours. Just make sure you keep your shirt on this time, will you?”

He grunted as he took a seat at his desk.

“Did you actually read that article, Duncan?” she called over to him.

“You got any work to do there, Perez?”

“No, seriously, did you see who the hot competition was for your bod? Who the mystery bidder was that gave our little it-girl a run for her daddy’s money?”

“Who?” He fussed with moving papers across his desk, feigning disinterest.

“Mercedes Epstein.”

He went stone still then turned slowly to look at Perez.

“Si, amigo, that’s right,” she said, getting up and sauntering over to his desk to him with that devil-can-do look in her Latina eyes. “Wife of the Frank Epstein, who’s currently under investigation with the FBI financial crimes unit in New York. Some junk bond scam, apparently.”

Mercedes had bid on him? The wife of the man who had once employed his mother in his Vegas casino as a croupier? The man who’d fired Sara Duncan when she fell pregnant with him, necessitating her move to Reno, to start a new life. Just him and her.

“Interesting, huh?”

It was plain freaking weird. “Mmm,” he said, opening a file, but his pulse had quickened.

“So, what d’you think the grand Vegas matriarch wanted with you? You think she pushed up the bidding just to get up Jenna’s whatoot?”

He glanced up sharply. “Tell you what, Perez. Why don’t you and me go for a little drive and check out that new shooting range? And while we’re there you can tell me how and why you signed me up for that bachelor auction while I try not to shoot you. Because I’m thinking it was you who set me up, not the Rothchild heiress.”

“Sure,” she shrugged. “We can go shoot. From that photo it looks like you could let off a few.”

He grabbed his jacket angrily, took her elbow. “For starters,” he growled as he led her out the door, “who approached you about the auction?”

“Cassie Mills. She takes a class at the club where I teach martial arts.”

“She Jenna’s friend?”

“How the hell would I know?”

Jenna was feeling an inescapable buzz. Being attracted to a man she was going to see that night was like a drug to her system, a welcome relief from all the sadness that had beset the Rothchild mansion since Candace’s horrible death. “Good morning, Dad,” Jenna said, as she bent down to kiss her father on the cheek. She set a bowl of doggie kibble down for Napoleon, poured coffee from the silver jug Mrs. Carrick, their cook, had left on the patio breakfast table and took a seat with a view of the pool.

The surface shimmered with refracted morning sunlight as Jones, their groundskeeper, cleaned the pool filter. A soft, hot desert breeze ruffled the tops of the garden palms. It was late June, Vegas peaking into summer, and today was going to be a scorcher.

“So?” Harold said over the top of his paper and his reading glasses, his Paul Newman-blue eyes twinkling. “Two mil for the orphan fund? Not bad, sweetheart.”

She grinned. “The FBI agent is not too bad either.”

“When is your date?”

“Tonight. I just sent him a text message asking for his address and to say my limo will be waiting outside his house at 10 p.m.”

“Rather late for dinner?”

She shrugged. “He said he had some kind of evening coaching session with his at-risk teens or something. Anyway, I told him I wanted white flowers and that the rest of the evening was my treat—” she stirred her coffee, chinked the spoon on the side, smiling “—and my surprise.”

Jenna liked this time with her dad. He was a flamboyant casino mogul with movie-star good looks, a much-noted temper, a passion for perfection and a shrewd eye for business. He liked to get up real early each morning, do work in his home office and then kick back for a while over breakfast. It was his time to catch up with Jenna and the newspapers and to drink his coffee. After that he’d go down to the Grand Hotel and Casino, where he often worked well after midnight. He was a driven entrepreneur, and he wasn’t a man who needed much sleep.

But he’d always made time for her, since she was a kid, and Jenna loved him for it. She’d do just about anything for her father. He remained the solid center of her rarefied Vegas life. Her BlackBerry beeped suddenly, and Jenna set down her coffee cup, checked the message. It was from Cassie. FBI agent Perez had apparently just paid her friend an “official” visit, and Cassie wanted to know what Jenna had gotten her into.

“You’ll ask him about the ring, of course.”

Frowning, her eyes flashed up. “Of course.” She hesitated. “Dad—you’ve always said that The Tears of the Quetzal came from granddad’s South American operations, but where exactly?”

“Ah, sweetheart, I’m not one hundred percent sure. All I know for certain is that your grandfather had the diamond set down there, but otherwise, all the paperwork seems to have been lost in an old fire at the South American office.”

She studied him. If there’s one thing Harold always was, it was sure. A teensy icicle of doubt formed. “What exactly do you want me to get out of Lex Duncan?”

He chuckled, removed his reading glasses, blue eyes sparking like the broken surface of the pool catching sun behind him. Yet there was a sharp edge that lurked behind his smile—an edge that appeared whenever Harold spoke about The Tears of the Quetzal. “Anything you can, sweetheart. You could make a monk drop his habit, Jenna, and I have no doubt you can work your charms on this man. I want some idea of the FBI’s thought process in connection with the case. And of course I want my ring back. I want to know where they are holding it. In the wrong hands it—”

“I know the drill—in the wrong hands great misfortune is sure to follow. In the right hands it brings true love. You don’t honestly believe that old Mayan nonsense, do you?”

He gave her an odd glance. “Just look what happened when that lunatic Thomas Smythe got a taste for it. He almost killed Conner’s Vera, not to mention her sister Darla and brother Henry. Although the cops haven’t officially named Smythe as a suspect in Silver’s near-fatal scaffolding accident, I wouldn’t put it past him. And God only knows who killed Candace. That damn ring is cursed, I tell you. I just want it out of circulation, back in the vault where it belongs before it causes any more damage.”

A small shiver passed through Jenna as she thought of what had happened to Candace after she’d removed the rock from daddy’s safe. Her sister had gone and gotten herself bludgeoned to death after wagging it around at a charity event the night before her murder. That ring had been the one thing taken from Candace’s apartment by the killer, only to turn up in the purse of a single mother named Amanda Patterson while she was visiting Luke Montgomery’s casino.

Having possession of that ring had close to gotten Amanda killed as well. And then Luke had stepped up and proposed to her, of all people.

The ring had subsequently been taken into Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department custody, and a man named Thomas was later ID’d as the thief who impersonated a LVMPD officer and stole the ring from the evidence room. Conner had discovered the paste copy left in its place when he’d been sent to retrieve the ring from the police department. He’d then tracked The Quetzal to an exotic dancer and landed bang in the middle of an FBI investigation into a cross-state jewelry thieving ring. Which is how Conner ended up defending—and falling for—a stripper named Vera Mancuso who’d been implicated in the diamond theft by her roommate. The jewel thieves had, however, been caught and that case closed, but it was at that point that the LVMPD and FBI investigation into Candace’s murder had intersected, and how the whole shebang—both the ring and murder—had landed up under FBI jurisdiction.

And now her dad wanted that ring back at all costs.

Jenna shook off an uneasy sensation, reached down and picked up Napoleon. She stroked him absently on her lap. She suddenly wasn’t so crystal clear on what she was doing with the lead investigator on her sister’s murder case.

Or why her father wanted her involved at all.

Lex returned to the FBI field office building after his coaching session that evening to pick up some reports. He wanted to go through the file on The Tears of the Quetzal again, check out the ring’s trail. Somehow, that rock was central to everything—including Candace Rothchild’s death. And now that Thomas Smythe—Darla St. Giles’s boyfriend—had disappeared, Lex was back at square one.

It was late and most of the offices were empty and dark. Lex flipped on the neon overheads. One of the bulbs flickered as he made his way down the corridor to evidence lockup. He hesitated outside the door, a sense of coolness settling over his skin. Damn AC thermostat was on the fritz again, turning the place into a virtual meat locker. He unlocked the heavy door, creaked it open. He hadn’t noticed the creak previously—must be the quietness in the building at this time of night.

Lex picked up the box containing the rock that had caused so much trouble and opened it. He took the ring between his thumb and forefinger, holding the massive stone up to the dim light, he swiveled it.

He was momentarily blinded by a flash of green, violet, then blue light. His pulse accelerated slightly. He’d never seen the rock in this light before. It was magical. He turned it more slowly in his fingers, the facets of light bouncing electrically as it moved. The Tears of the Quetzal. Even the name seemed sad. Somehow poignant. Yet beautiful at the same time. Seven carats of chameleon diamond. Set in gold.

The colors were dazzling. The strange luminous shafts of light emanating from the stone were like the ectoplasmic fingers of some ghost, reaching out to curl back and retreat suddenly as he moved the ring. The play of luminosity absorbed Lex’s attention so fully, so totally, that he was no longer aware of any sound at all in the office, or the fact he was standing alone in near dark under the flickering blue lighting of the evidence room. A band of sensation tightened across his chest as an incredible thought shimmered into his mind.

What if the legend was true?

Natalie, the LVMPD cop—Jenna’s sister and Candace’s twin—had fallen in love while investigating the ring’s disappearance. Then Amanda Patterson, whose purse it was found in, ended up marrying Luke Montgomery in a true Cinderella series of events. After which Silver Hesse Rothchild, a stepsister of Jenna’s, had found true love with her bodyguard after a mere passing acquaintance with the ring. Even defense lawyer Conner Rothchild had fallen head over heels for Vera Mancuso, an exotic dancer, after he’d spotted her flashing the ring during a steamy striptease. Vera was probably the most inappropriate woman a man like Rothchild could possibly end up with.

Enduring love—it was one of the promises of The Tears of the Quetzal.

Given the odd series of romantic events in the preceding months one might actually be forgiven for thinking this ring held mysterious power, thought Lex, watching the light curl into itself in the stone, as if a sentient thing. Alive. Shimmering. All-knowing. He snorted softly, trying to brush aside the hypnotic power the thing seemed to be exerting over him.

Then he thought of Candace and the flip side to the supposed Mayan curse on this stone. And a cold chill rippled over his skin again as he stared at it, his heart beginning to beat even faster, a strange sensation beginning to settle through him. Lex couldn’t say why or what possessed him but he suddenly pocketed the ring, leaving the box empty as he locked the evidence door.

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