First Class Seduction

“No, I’m fine.”

“Are you still inside the house?”

“Yes.”

“Get out now.”

“I’ve looked through the house. No one is here.”

“Leave anyway. Go outside and wait for the police,” the take-charge operator ordered. “Did you walk in on the vandals?”

“No, I just returned from a three-day trip to Mexico,” Lori explained, exiting the bedroom. “I’m a flight attendant…I’m away a lot. Never had any trouble. I can’t believe this…” She stopped abruptly, glanced back at her ruined kitchen, and then yanked the front door open and hurried across her driveway toward Brittany, who was still outside preening her rose bushes.

“What’s the matter?” Brittany asked, seeing the terror on Lori’s face. “Trouble at Globus? Who’s on the phone?”

“The police.”

“What?”

“Right. You won’t believe this, Brit. Somebody vandalized my house. Everything…is covered…with…graffiti,” Lori sputtered as she described the scene.

“Shit! You gotta be kidding,” Brittany snapped. She threw her clippers to the ground and grabbed hold of Lori’s arm. “Nobody’s inside, right?”

“No, but it’s a mess in there. Did you hear anything last night? See any suspicious-looking people hanging around?” Lori wanted to know.

“No. Nothing. As I said, Janice and Tom came over for dinner. We had the outdoor speakers turned up pretty loud while we were on the patio. They left about ten. Must have happened after I went inside. I didn’t hear anything unusual.” Brittany glanced back at Lori’s house. “Did they kick in the back door? Break a window?”

“I don’t know…I didn’t look to see…” Lori stopped, turning around to focus on the black and white patrol car with whirling red and blue lights that swept up to the curb and jolted to a stop.

Pushing her cell phone into her uniform pocket, she approached the tall black man who unfolded his towering uniformed body from the squad car and hooked his thumbs into his holster belt. “Officer. Thanks for coming so quickly.” Lori rushed to welcome the policeman.

“Detective Clint Washington,” he told Lori, without extending his hand. He surveyed her house with inquisitive eyes, seemingly already on the case and primed for action. “What happened here?” he asked, listening as Lori described what she’d discovered on her return home.

“Let’s check it out,” he stated with calm authority, striding off. His long legs devoured Lori’s brick-paved walkway in five giant steps, leaving Lori and Brittany to tag along behind.

Once inside, they went into the bedroom, and then checked the master bath. “We do have a few good fingerprints, here on the edge of the basin,” he told Lori. “That’s encouraging. I’ll get the crime scene investigation team out here right away. You can go ahead and sweep up the broken glass, but don’t touch the paint smears, okay?”

Lori nodded in relief, hoping the prints might help the police catch whoever did this.

“Are you sure nothing of value was stolen?” Washington asked after he’d inspected the rest of the damage and determined that the vandals had cut the wires to Lori’s alarm box and broken a window in the dining room to get into the house.

“Certain. Nothing is missing, I checked everywhere I could think of,” Lori assured him. She watched him open a pad of forms and begin to fill one out.

“So this was for kicks?” Brittany snapped in disgust. “I can’t believe some damn sicko would do this just for fun.” Brittany directed her anger toward Detective Washington, whose shoulders leveled off at the top of the petite woman’s head. “That is some crazy shit, you know?” she blurted out.

Lori cut her eyes at her friend, warning her about her language. Back in the day, Brittany’s startling potty mouth might have been a ratings winner when she was playing a rebellious teenager on a television sitcom, but that kind of language was definitely out of place when dealing with the police.

“Oh, excuse my language, detective,” Brittany muttered. “But I’m sure you know what I mean.”

“Unfortunately, I do,” the policeman agreed, turning intensely serious eyes on Brittany. “This kind of vandalism happens all the time. It’s June. School just let out. Kids with too much time and too little to do wind up pulling stunts like this for kicks. Just last week, two streets over, we had the same kind of thing—only red paint that time.”

“So what are the police doing about it?” Lori demanded, fear now shifting into outrage. “Can’t you catch the punks who are ruining the subdivision before they strike again?”

“You’re just one of many on my watch. The kids will slip up, and we’ll catch ‘em, but in the meantime, keep your eyes open for any suspicious activity. Might want to get a dog. A barking dog does a good job of scaring prowlers off.”

“A dog?” Lori rolled her eyes and pressed a finger to the company name embroidered on her blouse. “As you can see, I’m employed by Globus-Americas. I travel all the time. No way can I take on the responsibility of a dog.”

“Well, then, a more effective alarm system might help,” the detective suggested, handing Lori the police report to sign.

With a sigh, Lori signed the paper, took her copy and then escorted the officer out. As she watched him drive away, she felt discouraged and very uneasy. “I doubt the police will ever catch the punks who wrecked my house,” she said to Brittany as they turned and walked up the driveway.

“He sure was fine,” Brittany murmured, ignoring Lori’s comment.

“Fine?” Lori’s head whipped around. “What are you talking about?”

“Detective Washington. Big feet, long legs. A killer smile. Umm, he’s got it all going on.”

Lori punched Brittany on the shoulder. “Get outta here! You’re checking out the brother when we need to be pushing him to do his job? Brittany Adams, you need to quit.”

“Hey, my radar is always on, and he was one good-looking black dot on my screen. He’s obviously well employed and wasn’t wearing any rings.”

“Girl, please,” Lori sighed in frustration. “The last time you got involved with a policeman, you wound up chasing the guy out of your house with a pot of hot coffee in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other.”

“Nat Chavis was FBI, not local,” Brittany defended. “And it was a mug of hot coffee, not a pot.”

“Whatever,” Lori quipped. “All I remember is that he treated you like a suspect and you snapped when you found out he’d bugged your cell phone.”

“Nat was a fool…he underestimated my intelligence,” Brittany said calmly, chin raised. “But this Detective Washington, now, he looks like a man with good sense.”

Lori paused at her front door and pinned her neighbor with a warning expression. “Let’s just hope he uses his good sense to get the fools who trashed my house.”

Brittany came up beside Lori, nodding. “But…as the handsome, intelligent, hopefully single detective said, one police car can’t be everywhere all the time. If thieves and vandals want to get in, they’ll find a way.”

“Yeah.” Lori grimaced in agreement. “I get the impression that we’re kinda on our own.”

Brittany grunted. “Well, I’m not gonna put bars on my windows and doors to keep some punk-ass kids from spray painting my living room, and I refuse like hell to buy a gun. Just my luck I’d wind up shooting the mail carrier in the ass.”

“Unfortunately, it all comes down to making it hard for someone to get in,” Lori observed, her mind turning back to what the officer had said. What you need is a better alarm system.

“Brit, I gotta go,” Lori quipped, giving her neighbor a quick wave goodbye.

“Need any help cleaning up?”

“Naw. I’ll sweep up the glass, but I’ll have to leave everything else until the crime scene investigators are finished. I’ll be over later. Save me some ribs.”

Inside her house, Lori reached into her skirt pocket, removed Ramón’s business card and stared at it, her heart lurching in her chest at the thought of hearing his voice and seeing him again. She picked up the phone, pressed in two numbers, but then stopped.

“I’ll call first thing in the morning,” she decided, not yet ready to trust her voice. Not ready to betray her feelings for a man who was quickly winding his way into her heart.

Chapter Six

Ramón slid the bacon and spinach omelet he’d just made onto a plate and sat down at the breakfast table in his condo. It was only seven-thirty in the morning, but he had already completed his daily three-mile run, showered and was looking forward to breakfast. Ramón wasn’t much of a cook, but he could put together a hell of an omelet. Since he watched his diet carefully, he ate a light lunch and dinner was most often a steak and fresh vegetables at the Big Tex Steak House two blocks from his house.

With a flick of his thumb, he scrolled through messages on his cell phone while eating, replying to those that required a response, deleting a bunch of spam. The three days he’d spent in Acapulco with his brother had put him behind schedule, but now that he was back in Houston, it was time to get on track and back to work.

After he finished reading and responding to his e-mails he shifted his focus to the workday ahead. He had two commercial estimates to prepare, a whole-house installation to inspect and equipment to pick up at the electrical supply house. But before he did any of that he wanted to drop by the assisted living center and say hello to his dad.

While plotting his day, his cell phone rang and he quickly recognized Lori’s name and number.

“Vida-Shield Security,” he said, using his business greeting and tamping down his excitement over the fact that she was calling.

“Ramón Vidal, please,” Lori said.

“This is Ramón.”

“Oh, great. This is Lori Myles…from the airplane. Remember me?”

“Of course. How could I forget?” Ramón responded, intentionally lowering his voice in an attempt to sound relaxed and calm. “Glad you called. Wasn’t sure you would.”

“Well, before you get too excited…I have to tell you, this is not a social call. I need your help.”

Ramón squinted at the sliding-glass door leading onto his patio, where hanging baskets of ivy and ferns created a lush, quiet retreat. He considered her remark and decided that it was better to be needed than ignored. At least she’d turned to him. “Okay…shoot. What can I do for you?” he offered as casually as possible, thrilled that she wanted his input on whatever was on her mind.

“I’m not sure where to start. I’m still so angry I can hardly talk about what happened.”

Ramón’s initial pleasure at hearing from Lori quickly shifted to alarm. She sounded so intense. So frightened. And so different from when they’d chatted on the plane. Something terrible must have happened. “What’s going on?” he asked, listening as she described the scene that greeted her when she arrived home. He got up from the table and began to pace his kitchen, frowning at the floor, disturbed by what she was telling him.

“All right. I know you’re upset, but try to calm down,” he encouraged, sensing how nervous she was. During the flight to Houston, she had been the epitome of calm, a poised professional woman who was totally in control of her emotions, but now she was rattling on in a nervous sputter that sent off bells of alarm. “Are you okay?” he wanted to know when she finally paused to catch her breath.

“I’m fine,” Lori assured Ramón.

“Where’d you sleep last night?”

“Next door…at my neighbor’s house.”

“Good. How do you feel today?”

“Shaken up and mad as hell. I don’t understand why my burglar alarm didn’t alert the police when the vandals broke in.”

“Do you have a wireless alarm?” Ramón inquired.

“Yes, I think so,” Lori replied.

“That means your keypad, circuit board, backup battery and siren were most likely all in one unit,” Ramón added.

“Yeah, probably so. It came with the house, so I never paid much attention to what kind of system I had,” Lori said.

“Well, the burglars could have completely disabled your unit before it had time to send a signal to the police.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Ramón confirmed. “Happens all the time.”

“The detective who came out to take the report was nice,” Lori added. “But he wasn’t very encouraging. He said there’ve been a few incidents like mine since school let out. Local kids who are bored, he thinks.”

“Yeah, sounds like that,” Ramón agreed. “But that doesn’t make them any less dangerous than hard-core criminals. If I were you, I’d take this seriously.”

“I plan to. That’s why I called. The vandals destroyed my system. Smashed the control box and stripped all the wires. Think you can you fix it?”

“I can try, but if you have an all-in-one unit, I’d replace it. They’re extremely vulnerable and create a false sense of security. What you need is a hardwired cellular system that communicates an alarm signal in less than thirty seconds. Let me take a look at what you have and we can go from there. I can come over this morning, if you want,” Ramón offered, surprised by how easily he was agreeing to rearrange his schedule and how much he already cared about Lori.

“Would you?” Lori asked.

“Of course.”

“Great. The crime scene investigators were here at daybreak. They got what they needed and left. Now I need to find someone to deal with all this paint,” she went on, voice raw with indecision. “This mess is gonna require a lot more than a mop and a broom. Paint is everywhere. My mirrors are shattered. The carpet is ruined. I can’t…I don’t…”

When Lori’s voice cracked and the phone went silent, Ramón flinched, stung by Lori’s frustration, as well as her shock over what had happened. He’d been in the home security business long enough to sense how she was feeling right now. She was hurt, stunned and confused about what to do.

“First thing you need to do is call your insurance company,” he offered.

“I did. They’re sending someone out today,” Lori said.

“Good. I can give you the name of a restoration company I’ve used. They do a good job and accept whatever insurance pays.”

“That would help a lot,” Lori replied, clearly relieved.

“Be sure to take pictures before the cleaning service deals with the paint, too,” he added.

Having been inside vandalized homes more than a few times, Ramón could visualize the scene: precious treasures trashed, carefully appointed décor ruined. In an instant, everything that had once been clean and shiny was now dirty and ugly, sullied by an intruder’s touch. The emotional toll that such an incident took could be very heavy.

“Okay, I’ll bring some plywood to board up your broken window,” he told Lori, wanting to do whatever he could to ease her anxiety. No way was he going to let her go through this alone.

“What’s your address?” he asked, grabbing a pen to scribble the street name and number on the back of a dry-cleaning receipt as he calculated how far away she lived. “Hold it together, okay? I’ve got a quick stop to make and then I’ll call you when I’m nearby.”

Tomás Vidal wiped a tear from his eye and then looked at Ramón, who was seated beside him in the recreation room of the assisted living center. “What a wonderful thing to witness,” Tomás whispered in a quiet tone. “My boy is now a federal judge. Amazing, but not surprising. He worked hard to make it, you know? I remember when your mother and I left Mexico and came to Texas. Xavier was just a boy. And now he’s a big-shot judge. I only wish your mother could have lived to see this day.”

Ramón closed the DVD player they had been viewing, set it on the coffee table and looked at his father, his mind suddenly turning back to the days they had spent together deep-sea fishing in the Gulf. Setting out before dawn, looking forward to a day at sea and a huge catch to bring home had been wonderful. But those days were gone forever. Never again would he go fishing with his father, whose health was deteriorating very quickly. It pained Ramón to see Tomás Vidal withering into a shell of a man right before his eyes. His father’s thick black hair was now nearly all gray, his once bright eyes no longer shone with the gleam of life that Ramón remembered and the skin around his thin lips was more puckered with tiny wrinkles than Ramón had seen on his last visit. With each passing day, Ramón knew his time with his father was getting shorter, so he wanted to make each moment they spent together count. Bringing along the DVD of Xavier’s swearing-in ceremony had brightened Tomás’s day and given him much to discuss with his fellow residents at the assisted living center.

“Pop,” Ramón began. “I know Mom is up in Heaven watching us right now and she knows what’s going on.”

Tomás laughed and winked at his son. “She always knew what was going on with you two boys. Not much escaped her, you know?”

“For real,” Ramón replied. “She was on my case every day.”

“That’s why you and Xavier turned out to be such fine young men. Because your mother taught you how to appreciate what you have and how to make the most of the talent God gave you.”

“I’ve tried to make you proud, Pop.”

“And you have,” Tomás agreed, reaching out to take hold of Ramón’s hand. “But there is one thing I want you to do, Ramón. Time is moving on, son. You need to do what your brother has done. Get married and start a family so I can enjoy more grandchildren before I leave this world.”

Tilting his head back, Ramón let his father’s words sink in, realizing how true they were. He gave his father’s hand a firm squeeze, and said, “I’m working on that one, Pop. Just be patient, okay?”

When Ramón walked into Lori’s house, he did a double take and then smiled. The last time he’d seen her she had been dressed in her GAA uniform, looking spiffy and totally in charge. Now she was wearing black stretch pants, thong sandals and a skimpy white halter top that showed off smooth tan shoulders and a lot more cleavage than he had seen on the dance floor. She looked like a teenager with her hair, now freed from its neat French twist, falling loosely around her face in a soft cascade of jet-black curls that brushed cheeks devoid of makeup.

Lori propped her broom against the table in the foyer and grinned at Ramón, sending a jolt of pleasure straight into his gut.

“Hi,” she said, wiping her brow with the back of one hand. “You just called! Either you were already close by or you broke the speed limit getting here. Which is it?”

“I wasn’t that far away. Stopped to see my dad.”

“Really? Where does he live?”

“Old Mill Assisted Living Center.”

“Oh, yeah. Over on Huffman near Broad?”

“Right. After I left him, I headed straight here. And yes, I did keep an eye on my rearview mirror for any black and whites that might be on my tail,” he said with a wink, knowing he’d rolled through that last stop sign at the intersection leading to Lori’s street—after looking both ways, of course.

During the drive to her house, he’d thought of nothing but how shaky her voice had sounded on the phone, how anxious and panicky she must be. He was not about to leave her house until he had done all he could to make her feel safe. “Give that to me,” he told Lori, taking hold of the broom. “Go sit down and watch TV or something. Let me take over from here.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” she said forcefully, tugging on the broomstick, her eyes squinting in earnest. “Sweeping up glass, I can do. Fixing a trashed alarm? No. So you get busy with the alarm, while I clean up the rest of this glass.”

“You’ve got a deal. Show me where the control box is and leave it to me,” Ramón agreed.

“It’s in the garage. And it’s stifling hot out there. I can hook up a fan if you want.”

“No, I’ll be fine,” Ramón commented, following Lori through the kitchen toward the door to the garage. However, walking behind her, what he really wanted was to place both palms on her sweet round hips, which were so deliciously encased in her black Capri pants. The sight was too beautiful for words. Sucking in a breath, he ripped his eyes away from her perfectly shaped rear end. The last thing he wanted was for Lori to turn around and see the growing bulge in his pants, though he knew there was no way to slow his growing desire to possess her completely.

Once Lori restored as much order to her trashed bedroom as possible, she stripped her bed of ruined linens, stuffed them in two heavy-duty trash bags and headed through the kitchen to the garage. There she paused in the doorway and drank in the delicious sight of Ramón, shirtless, standing in the garage with his back to her while removing the broken control box.

Lori’s heart did a jerky flip, sending pulses of heat between her legs and into the pit of her stomach. He looked so damn good with his longish black hair tied back with a red handkerchief and his smooth V-shaped torso glistening back at her. Lori ran her tongue over her bottom lip and gulped back the surprising surge of desire that rose within her. As she watched him twist wires and adjust levers, she realized that he was singing the song they had danced to in Club Azule. Was that a coincidence, or was he trying to send her some kind of a message?

Damn he’s hot! Why did he have to take off his shirt? Show me so much skin? Tempt me like this when the last thing I need is to get tangled up with a stranger?

“There’s a radio over there on that shelf,” she said casually, stepping into the garage.

Ramón’s head swiveled around in surprise. He flashed a killer smile at her, sending more pulses of heat through Lori, who drew in a short breath to cool down. After depositing the trash bags in the large rolling bin, she went over to the cluttered shelf, picked up a battered boom box and handed it to Ramón. “Here. Put it on any station you want. Then you won’t have to sing to yourself.”

Ramón reached out, as if to take the radio, but covered her hand with his instead. With an insistent tug, he guided her closer, slipped his hands beneath her arms and cupped her elbows with his palms. Only the small blue radio that Lori was holding prevented her body from molding flush to his. “No, thanks,” he replied in a husky tone. “I’d rather listen to my own singing…unless it rattles you.”

His remark slid over Lori like a layer of sweet syrup, easing through her veins to pool in her chest. He had a way of saying the most mundane things in the most sensual way, stirring up emotions that threatened Lori’s composure.

“Don’t worry. You could never rattle me, unless I allowed you to,” she countered, setting the radio down, shifting her hips to one side while eyeing Ramón with a dare of a gaze.

“Never?” he repeated. “You sound awfully sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Hmm. Okay. Let’s give it a test. Does this rattle you?” he whispered, feathering a finger along the side of her neck and down to rest on her bare shoulder.

“Not at all,” Lori replied, luxuriating in the shivers initiated by his touch, knowing it was pointless to deny that she was getting all hot and bothered. “In fact, that feels pretty good,” she admitted, knowing she was telling the truth.

Encouraged, Ramón graced her with a misty half smile and then dipped down to graze his lips across hers in a brush of a kiss before pulling back to check her reaction. “How about that?”

Lori felt the muscles in her tunnel of love contract, relax and then tighten again as she connected with the yearning expression darkening his features.

“Getting close,” she admitted, watching him with guarded eyes as his self-assured smile widened, brightening his face.

With just a touch on her cheek and a light brush of a kiss, he’d turned on the kind of sexual heat that Lori knew spelled trouble. There was no denying that his effect on her was too dramatic to ignore, too delicious to dismiss and too intensely inviting to pass up. However, she planned to keep a tight rein on the pace of this rapidly evolving encounter and not get caught up in the drama of too much togetherness too soon. Yes, Ramón did rattle her, but she liked the feeling of not knowing what to expect. He made her want to do things she shouldn’t even be thinking about, let alone hoping would happen.