Heat Of The Night

She slid her arm though his and propelled him up the stairs before he knew what she was up to. Keep the opposition off balance she reminded herself, before they could do the same to you. “Well, I might as well walk you up, since I’ll be joining you.” She gave him a megawatt smile, then slid her arm free and pushed open the lobby door. “After you?”

He looked at her, then simply nodded and walked through. “Thank you.” Being the gentleman, he opened the inner door for her. “After you.” His seemingly benign smile, on closer inspection as she passed by, was actually a shade on the insolent side.

Rather than feel deflated, she felt…energized. She was also incredibly turned on, but that was a very unprofessional reaction, so she tried hard to ignore it. Crybaby O’Keefe? Making her hot?

Okay, she told herself as they headed to the mayor’s office. Playtime was most definitely over. She switched mental gears and worked on coming up with a quick game plan on how to handle the meeting. A meeting she hadn’t been invited to. But she was sure the mayor wasn’t going to throw her out. She merely had to engineer the thing from the start to go the way she wanted it to. She had no compunction in working the mayor to suit her own needs, even though he was her client. After all, as long as the outcome was what he’d hired her to accomplish, that was what was most important, right?

She caught a glimpse of Brady’s face as the receptionist led them back to Henley’s office. He looked as if he was going to war. And perhaps he wasn’t far off.

Going through the mayor to get Brady to do what she wanted—needed—him to do was really the only way. And it would tick him off. Big time. But maybe that was for the best, too. All this hormonal stuff sparking between them could only be a bad thing.

Really bad. Because it felt too damn good.

She used the moment Brady turned to close the door behind them to make her first defensive strike. His loss for always being a gentleman she told herself as she charged into battle.

BRADY CLOSED the door and turned to find Erin striding confidently across the expanse of carpet to intercept Henley before he could take charge of the meeting. Very effective, he thought, silently applauding the maneuver. He’d used the same one many times. Only he usually didn’t enter smiling. Or moving his hips like that.

She blocked his view of Henley, but he got the distinct impression the mayor wasn’t expecting them both. Hmm. So, the question was, had she been waiting for him to show up and use him as her entrée? Or had she just come out of the building and spied him on his way in? He bet on the latter.

He smiled. She’d probably gotten her battle plan in place with the mayor and thought it was her lucky day when she’d snagged him on his way in. Only he hadn’t succumbed to the sex-charged fog she’d effortlessly swirled around the two of them and answered all her questions without a fight. But she hadn’t pouted and given up, she’d merely switched tactics.

He liked that in an opponent.

The fact that there were still some remnants of that fog swirling around inside him was probably the reason he was being so damn reasonable about the whole thing. Well, that and the fact that pretty much nothing was going to make him change his mind about dealing with her on this investigation. Nothing short of the commissioner himself, ordering him to—

“Detective O’Keefe? Please have a seat. I have a phone conference ready to go with Commissioner Douglas.”

Brady kept his gaze averted from Erin and made certain the litany of curses running through his mind were not reflected in his expression. It wasn’t easy.

He sat in a purposefully relaxed manner. “Good morning, Mayor. Commissioner Douglas.”

“O’Keefe?” The commissioner’s scratchy voice rasped through the speakerphone.

“Yes, sir?”

“I want an update on my desk by noon. It will be couriered to me. In the meantime, I want you to stop giving Ms. Mahoney such a hard time here and work with her. I don’t expect you to compromise the investigation, but we have a press conference this afternoon and we need a concrete plan on how we’re going to handle this with the media. I don’t have to spell out for you the sensitive nature of this matter. Mayor Henley is grieving the loss of one of his dearest friends and—”

And the loss of almost five percent on the overnight polls, Brady added mentally, striving to hold on to his temper.

“The community is shaken up over the whole sordid ordeal. I know how involved this case is, which is why I brought Erin in in the first place. She will free all of us up to do our jobs and from having to deal with the press.”

“With all due respect,” Brady began, still not looking at Erin, “you’ve always allowed me to handle my investigations the way I see fit. And I don’t think allowing a civilian to be privy to the innermost details of a homicide investigation, especially this one, is a positive move.” He held up his hand when Erin tried to interrupt. “Furthermore, I’ve never had a problem handling the press and I don’t expect this case will be any different.”

The mayor cleared his throat. “Detective O’Keefe, no one is challenging the way you handle your investigation, but I think you’ll agree that, in the past, the relationship between you and the media has been somewhat…strained.”

“What he’s trying to say, O’Keefe,” the commissioner broke in, “is that you’re a stubborn pain in the ass and you don’t give a good goddamn what the media thinks of how you run things.”

Erin choked on a chuckle and Brady couldn’t ignore it. So he did the last thing she’d expect, he winked at her. The resulting flash of shock on her face was very satisfying. He turned back to the speakerphone and the mayor, who had missed the little exchange. “Very true, Commissioner,” he said. “So I don’t see why we should change what has always been an effective policy to date. I tell them nothing, they stew and dig harder, I tell them nothing, they fill their columns with wild speculation and false leads, then I solve the crime, it all comes out in the wash and we go on to the next public debacle.”

Erin crossed her legs the other way, costing him a split second in timing, but a crucial one as it gave her the opening she’d been waiting for. “Gentlemen, if I might intrude.” She turned that polished PR smile on him. He hated it, which for some strange reason, made him smile in return. That made her blink, even if only for a second.

Damn, but this was kind of fun. Fun in a very this-can’t-be-good-for-me way.

“Detective O’Keefe,” she said, the smile toned down now. Point for Brady. “I understand how pointless this may seem to you, but even you must admit that in an election year, something like this case can have far reaching consequences. This is no longer simply about solving a murder. It’s about protecting innocent people’s reputations and possibly their livelihoods.” She relaxed and exuded that “everything will be fine if you simply trust me” vibe. “I don’t have to know every gritty detail. I merely need a brief conference with you on how I want to handle this with the press. All I need from you are enough details to support my angle.”

“Your angle?”

Brady looked to the mayor, who had been watching them like someone at a tennis match. Henley seemed more than happy to allow Erin to handle things and didn’t use the moment to jump to Brady’s defense. Coward, Brady thought.

“There is a way to present the situation to the public,” she continued insistently, “even to feed their need for titillation, without compromising the innocent.”

Brady had to hide his smile when her last comment got a visible reaction from the mayor.

“Now, Ms. Mahoney,” he blustered, finally looking a little concerned, “I really don’t think—”

The confident smile returned. “Mayor Henley, we’ve been over this.” She leaned forward, oozing sincerity. “I know exactly what line to walk and how not to cross it.”

And Henley totally bought it. Brady swore under his breath, knowing he’d just lost this hand.

To her credit, she didn’t gloat. She turned to him and flipped open her Palm Pilot. With total businesslike mien, she looked at the small screen. “I can give you thirty minutes right now,” she said. As if he were the one demanding her time. Very clever.

Brady knew when to hold and when to fold. He also knew a new hand got dealt each round. So she’d won this one…it wasn’t as if she’d made a run on the house. Not yet, anyway.

He turned smoothly toward the mayor. “Can we use your conference room?”

The mayor didn’t bother to hide his relief. His mood was now as expansive as his smile. “By all means.” He waved them inside the long room that connected with his office. “I’ll have Teri come in with some coffee.”

“Thank you,” they said in unison.

Brady waited until the mayor’s secretary had come and gone, then took his time pouring his coffee. He even fixed Erin a mug. “Sugar?”

She eyed him warily now. “Black is fine.”

He slid the mug toward her and took a seat catty-corner to her at one end of the immense black table. With a relaxed smile that gave away none of what he was really feeling, he asked, “So, what is your angle?”

She leaned forward and pushed her mug aside. Folding her arms on the table, she looked him right in the eye. “Why don’t you tell me yours first?”

3

ERIN STUDIED Brady closely, but couldn’t tell what was going on behind those enigmatic eyes of his.

He shrugged, looking for all the world as if he couldn’t care less that the commissioner and mayor had basically just sold him down the river. “I don’t have an angle.”

“So just like that you’re going to give me everything I want?” Careful, Erin. Those eyes had flared, even if only a tiny fraction. At any other time she’d have jumped on that zap of electrical energy that had just shot between them. She would have worked it right up to the edge of professional acceptability. Meaning just enough to reduce her opponent to a quivering mass of hormones, but far shy of allowing him to believe it would ever lead to anything. Much less anything serious.

Now, fun and casual? That she might be up for. Just not with Brady. There was nothing fun or casual about Brady O’Keefe. Dangerous and unpredictable, that was Brady. She’d never encountered electricity of the type that seemed to flare up every time she came within ten feet of him.

But she didn’t lean back now. Because her job demanded she didn’t. And as long as she remembered she was here on a job, one that could push her small firm into the spotlight, she’d be fine.

When Brady didn’t respond to her challenge, she opted to take control of the meeting. Something she should have done last night. She cleared her throat and got to work. “I want to present this as a homicide. The brutal slaying of a well-known member of Philadelphia’s upper crust. We will focus on Sanderson’s numerous philanthropic contributions and what a loss his death will be to the underprivileged. We want to stir up outrage that such a worthy member of society has been taken from us. We want people demanding this obviously deranged killer be caught.”

“Erin—”

She talked over him. “I’m well aware that the media’s focus is going to be on the kinky sexual elements present at the scene of the murder.” She stopped and looked at him. “You have ruled this a homicide, am I correct?”

Brady stared at her for such a prolonged moment, she was certain he was going to balk, or get up and walk out. In the end, he did neither. But there was no electricity now. She wasn’t exactly relieved. Not a good sign.

“We’ll have the full report from the medical examiner later today,” he said finally. “But preliminary findings are edging toward heart attack.” He leaned back, but didn’t go so far as to smile smugly. Though she sensed he wanted to. “Not exactly the brutal slaying you are so anxious to depict.”

“So, he what then? Died of an overdose of sex? I mean, this is a murder investigation, isn’t it?”

“Right now we’re waiting to hear the final postmortem from Theo. Until then we treat it as a homicide. Once the results are in, we’ll rule whether there was foul play.” He looked her in the eye. “Or whether ol’ Morty preached hard-line morality to the people, while privately practicing something fairly…well, amoral, certainly by his own standards anyway.” He folded his arms. “You have an angle on how to play that possibility to the media?”

She swallowed a curse word and didn’t much like the taste. “Brady, if Sanderson is portrayed as some kind of sex pervert, there will be total chaos in the mayor’s political party while everyone tries to run and distance themselves from the guy. I’ve already got Henley’s campaign manager breathing down my neck over this.”

Brady shrugged. “Not really my problem. My problem is to determine if Morty died getting his satin-covered rocks off, or if someone helped him along a bit. But I’m here to tell you, your job isn’t going to be easy either way. Morty was not well liked. There are people who will come out of the woodwork to crucify him when they get wind of this.”

“Exactly,” Erin retorted. “Chaos. And with the mayor being a close friend of Morton’s, this could blow up in everyone’s face. It would destroy his campaign. The mudslinging will make everyone look bad.”

“So basically you don’t care what really happened. You just want the mayor to come out looking good for reelection. That is what he’s paying you the big bucks for, right?”

She didn’t take offense. This was part of the job, too. Though not her favorite part. “What I care about is successfully getting my client through a rough personal spot with the least amount of personal and professional damage I can manage. That is why he hired me. And honestly, I didn’t think taking on a job for the mayor was exactly something to be ashamed of.”

“You don’t care about the truth then? Just the most positive spin you can put on it.”

Erin blew out a breath and tried to clamp down on her rapidly growing frustration. Why she cared what Brady thought of her was beyond her. He was supposed to be a means to an end. But his words had stung, there was no denying that. “Look at it this way. I’m like an attorney who has to occasionally represent a guilty person and still do her utmost to get him the best deal within the bounds of the law. I occasionally work for someone who is caught in a less than ideal position and do my darnedest to lessen the negative impact.”

“For the record, I think most attorneys are slimeballs, no matter who they are representing.”

Now she smiled. It was that or throw something at him. “So I’m a slimeball?”

“No, you’re a professional spin doctor who just might have jumped in over her head into shark-infested political waters where people play for keeps. This isn’t about prettying up some businessman’s brush with a drug bust.”

She smacked the table. “Okay, now you’re really ticking me off. I don’t really give a flying hot damn what you think of me, the mayor, or even Mort Sanderson. Finding out how Sanderson died and who might have killed him is not my job. Someone else has to worry about that, namely you. My only interest is seeing that this whole thing doesn’t drag my client through the sewage Ol’ Morty might have been wallowing in. How I present things to the media is strictly meant to help him, not hinder you. So there is absolutely no reason why you can’t continue your fight for truth and justice, while I protect the people who are getting caught in the crossfire.”

“So, if what I discover ends up painting the mayor in a less than positive light, you’ll just spin that the right way too, whether or not he might be a slimeball as well?”

Righteous indignation fled as a frown instantly creased her forehead. “Do you have any indication Henley is in any way involved in this? Personally?”

Brady laughed. “You’re a piece of work, you know that? But I can see why you’re doing so well. You do keep your eye on the end goal, no matter what blows across your path.” He pushed back his chair. “Your thirty minutes are up.”

“I want you to let me know the instant you get the report back. I’m going to push the press conference back to four-thirty.”

“Wouldn’t want to miss that five o’clock newscast.”

“No,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “We wouldn’t. But if this isn’t a murder, I need to know. Otherwise I’m going with what I told you earlier. We need to steer this thing away from how he was found and toward catching the psycho that killed him. I would think you’d want that, too.”

“If there is a psycho killer.”

She stood and blocked his path. “Last I heard, the press only knew that he’d been found in the Dew Lily Inn and that there was supposition that his reason for being there was sexual.”

“No one is at the Dew Lily Inn unless it’s sexual.”

“Point taken. But the rest has been kept under wraps, right?”

“There are strict orders on those who were at the scene. Until I finish my interviews, it’s in the best interest of the investigation—not to mention your job—to keep the rest sealed. Now, how long that will last, I can’t say. You know how this town is.”

“You’ve talked to people, conducted some interviews already. What do you think happened?”

“I think I don’t make guesses. Now excuse me. I have to get back to work.”

That he felt his work was more important than hers came through loud and clear. “I’ll expect a call from you,” she said, “or I’ll be camped out at the precinct until I get an answer.”

He turned back at the door. “You know where my desk is.” Then he left.

She turned to the table, hands clenched, working hard not to toss her mug across the room. She was normally not a violent woman, but Brady… The man was impossible! Couldn’t he see she was just trying to do her job, here? She wasn’t deliberately doing anything to get in his way, nor was she hurting anyone. If anything, she was keeping the press off his back and putting them squarely onto hers. “He should be thanking me, dammit.”

She downed the rest of her coffee, knowing it would likely be all she had until dinner, then snapped her briefcase shut and headed out the door. She had a lot of work to get done before the press conference. Not the least of which was figuring out how in the hell she was going to spin this if Sanderson had in fact just died of a heart attack while playing kinky sex games.

BRADY WAS surprised when he returned from the morgue and did not spy a certain long-legged redhead perched at his desk. He spun a wary glance around the squad room. Nope, he was in the clear. He walked to his desk, totally ignoring the sense of disappointment he’d felt. And it was not smug disappointment either. Theo hadn’t been able to rule out foul play. It had been a heart attack, but there didn’t seem to be anything to back up why it had happened to an otherwise healthy forty-nine-year-old man. There had also been no sexual activity. They were running toxicology tests to see if anything had been introduced to his system to induce heart failure.

Until then, Brady had to keep working the case as a homicide. And Erin got to continue with her spin doctoring.

He wasn’t exactly sure what ticked him off so badly about it all. He’d had plenty of time to think it over while waiting for the overworked medical examiner. She was right about getting the press off his back. She was even right about playing down the sexual nature of the scene where Mort had been found. And he wasn’t so naive as to believe that any politician worth his constituents’ votes was going to let something of this caliber careen wildly down the media tracks without doing his or her damnedest to steer the train. Or hire someone who could steer the train. That someone being Erin Mahoney.

He had to grudgingly admit that she also seemed pretty damn good at her job.

He just wished like hell her job hadn’t crossed paths with his. He might admire her professional acumen, but that didn’t mean he trusted her. She’d made no bones about the fact that her loyalty was vested solely in saving Henley’s political ass. If she had to climb all over Brady and his investigation to do it, he had no doubt she would. He did not like anyone breathing down his neck.

The scent of her perfume wafted through his mind. Along with images of her climbing all over him and breathing down his neck…literally. He groaned and once again shoved the thought away. Erin was dangerous enough without giving her that sort of leverage. Even in the privacy of his own, suddenly feverish, mind.

The sound of a throat clearing just behind him brought him around. So the perfume had been real. He should have known. He could only thank God she had no way of knowing what thoughts—and images—had just been playing though his head.

“You’re late,” he said, taking the offensive. He’d already learned it didn’t pay to let her have the upper hand. Not even for a second.

“I do have other things to do besides dog your every move. Besides, I knew where to find you when I was ready.” She smiled. “You look a little let down, though. Who’d have guessed?”

She was just razzing him. No way did his expression reveal anything. And he hadn’t been let down, dammit.

When he didn’t respond, her smile faded and she was all business again.

“You got the report from the medical examiner? I’ve got—” she glanced at the slim gold watch circling her wrist “—twenty minutes to show time.” She looked him right in the eye. “So what angle am I playing?”

Brady really hated being party to her part in all this. He was tempted to just shove the file at her and let her come to her own damn conclusions and spin the press conference any way she saw fit. But technically anything said or done that dealt in any way with this case fell under his jurisdiction and it would be sloppy of him not to watch every move she made like a hawk.

“No conclusive evidence,” he said, not bothering to deflect the matter either. If he was going to have to deal with her—and it was apparent after this morning that he had zero choice there—he wasn’t going to waste more time than absolutely necessary on it. He raised a hand when she would have interrupted. He would be in charge, however. Whether she liked it or not. “There are enough unusual elements that we can’t rule out foul play. He did die of a heart attack.”

Her mouth dropped open in dismay.

“But we’re running toxicology tests to see if he wasn’t helped along there a bit.” She snapped her mouth shut, not entirely happy with the circumstances, but apparently knowing better than to badger him about it. Because she didn’t, he found himself opening his mouth and giving her another small bit. “There was no evidence of any semen.”

Now her eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

He had to smile. “What, you really didn’t believe your own angle? This is good news for your side, you know.”

“Since when are you concerned about my side?” She smiled, but waved a hand before he could reply. “Forget that. I should be thanking you for giving me the information without making me wheedle it out of you.”

“For the record, I don’t respond well to wheedling.”

“So I’ve noticed.” They stood there, staring at each other several moments longer than necessary. Just as the tension between them turned…questionable, she turned and nodded to the file on his desk. “Is that the report?”

“Don’t push it, Mahoney. I’ve already given you more than I have to. Just make sure you don’t hurt the investigation with it.”

“I don’t know whether to be offended or complimented. But don’t worry, your trust hasn’t been misplaced.”

“Who said anything about trust?” He moved behind his desk. For some reason, simply standing near her made his body hum. The width of the desk wasn’t much of a barrier, but he’d take what he could get. “For the time being, our goals are falling on a somewhat mutual plane. I have to do more digging now, and keeping the press off the sexual angle works for me.”

“So you’re saying you think this was a murder? And Sanderson was set up to be found like that?”