Hot and Bothered (6 page)

There'd be hell to pay.

***

Gideon had made arrangements to meet Boomer at the Rough & Tumble to touch base about the creeper since the PI had spent the day doing some legwork.

But truth be told, he'd also needed this built-in break from Rochelle more than he'd realized.

Usually, watching over a client was the iciest experience Gideon could think of. Other BGs he knew liked to call themselves Terminators because they were like human machines—always on guard, scanning everything and everyone around them for the slightest hint of something wrong. But Gideon's Terminator self had been mightily distracted by Rochelle.

The scent of her hair whenever she'd walk past him.

The sound of her laugh as she'd chatted with readers.

The sight of her stretching in the limo on the way to another signing, then closing her eyes for a moment of rest.

Had she slept as badly as he had last night? Or, more to the point, had she slept at all, knowing that they were only footsteps away from each other?

As he entered the Rough & Tumble, some hard Janis Joplin rushed at him from the corner jukebox, and he told himself that soon he'd need to untie these sexual knots that'd been bunching in him. And when he saw a few familiar girls at the bar—waitresses from the Silver Hills Casino near the interstate—his gut gave a tug, like it was already loosening.

Problem solved? Goddammit, like he had the time.

“Quick-draw!” yelled one brunette whose hair was blond at the bottom. She was scanning him with a lascivious grin, probably wondering why he'd come in here without his usual cowboy gear on.

He didn't have time to explain that he'd shaved and worn an all-black wardrobe today for his job's sake. He'd wanted to look imposing in case the creeper was at Rochelle's signings.

“Nice to see you, Nola,” he said over the music.

“How about some body shots?”

Any other night, and he'd be into that. In fact, he'd been into that a few times before.

“Just stopping by,” he said, gesturing toward the back hallway that led to the private poker room.

She flipped him off and returned to her drinks.

Hell, she'd find someone else. Maybe even Jimmy Beetles, who was urging a pack of sweet asses from a local motorcycle club to get up and dance on the bar. First guy to do that every night won a pot of money that everyone contributed to, which is how Gideon made a lot of his pocket change.

Best of luck to Beetles.

When Gideon arrived at the poker room, the door was closed, so he knocked. The door opened, compliments of Kat.

The brass ceiling fan inside the flocked, red-velveteen wall-papered room ruffled her short, blondish hair.

Gideon leaned against the door frame. “What're
you
doin' back here?”

“Taking a second off from work. What—am I the only one who's never allowed a break?”

He chuffed her under the chin like she was a little sister. “It's good to see you resting, Kat. Isaiah's got a good influence on you.”

“Yeah, well.”

She opened the door and he walked in to find Boomer and another R&T regular at the poker table lounging over beer, cards, and guttered cigars in ashtrays. The room carried a brandied aroma barely cut by the motion of that lazy ceiling fan.

Talking about lazy, Boomer laughed, pushing a hank of dark hair away from his eye and tossing away his cards. “You missed a hell of a game, quick-draw,” he said in his scratchy New Orleans voice, although he never confirmed or denied
where
he was from. But the way he still made his
th
s into
d
s gave Gideon a good hint.

Across the table, Jesse Navarro rubbed at his skull-shorn hair. He had a very basic Aztec sun shaved into one side, and he looked as granite as ever.

“Cowboy,” he said in an officious, rumbling voice that spoke of his time as a fellow soldier.

“Jesse.” Gideon noticed that one spot at the table had another set of cards marking Kat's place. She was really taking a break tonight, and that was strange, seeing as she was always working her ass off to make sure the saloon didn't go under. “What's really the occasion, Kat?”

“No occasion,” she said as they both sat. “It's just that I haven't been part of a good game in years, and I told myself why not. Might as well give it a go every once in a while.”

Boomer chuckled. “Kat's got a hankering for her man, and she's trying to distract herself. That's the down-low.”

“Shut up, Boomer,” she said.

But Kat was trying really hard not to smile, and that made them all smile, because she'd fallen for a guy last year, and that was highly unusual, seeing as she was as secretive and private as they came. She had a past—a doozy of one that had resulted in a knife scar near her ribs—and only a few R&T regulars knew about it, including Gideon and Boomer.

What was telling was that her new beau, Isaiah, still didn't know everything about her. Kat had been working her way around to it for months.

If you asked Gideon, he'd say that didn't bode well for their future. Neither did the fact that Isaiah was attending graduate school out of state and they were doing the long-distance thing.

“You talk to Isaiah today?” Gideon asked as Boomer gestured toward a beer. Gideon waved it off. He wouldn't be here for long. “Because you seem in a mood.”

“Yes, I talked to him, and, no, I'm not in a mood.” Kat picked up her cards, even though no one else was playing anymore.

Boomer couldn't resist teasing her again. “They're talking about taking the big plunge.”

“We are
not
,” Kat said. “Jesus.”

Jesse's laugh was more like a grunt. But it was a laugh anyway.

“Boomer,” Kat said, sliding him a saucy look, “if you don't cut it out, I'm gonna ban you from the saloon.”

“No, you wouldn't, darlin'.”

“Try me. It's not like you're here often enough to make my coffers overflow anyway.”

“But when I am here, I bring so much more than riches. My charms are worth a million.”

“Yeah, a million grains of Mojave sand.”

Then the tone changed as Boomer's light blue eyes lost their glimmer and he gave Gideon a steady look. “Today, Kat and Isaiah talked about investing in silver hunting equipment since he thinks there's a stash 'round these parts.”

The table went quiet as Kat joined in that look.

Jesse was the only one here who didn't know how silver had become the bane of her existence when she was younger, even if it could help her out now. He didn't know how a man had once seduced her, then got her into big trouble when she discovered that he was a silver thief and his partner had taken her out to the desert to make Kat reveal where the cache had been buried. Kat didn't have a clue as to its whereabouts, and she'd come close to dying because of it.

Just ask that ugly wound near her ribs.

She was always on the lookout for another criminal who might wander into the R&T, dragging her back into that secret past she'd tried so hard to put behind her, and Isaiah had been the first person in recent memory to pass all her tests.

Then again, they all had things to hide, didn't they? What would Rochelle think if she found out how he'd gotten his own gunpowder burn mark . . .?

Gideon thrust the subject out of the room, just as he always did. “I say let Kat and Isaiah take the big plunge together.”

Boomer leaned back in his chair. “They've sure been plunging nice and slow. Kat, has he even plucked your cherry yet?”

Kat actually laughed. “Ain't no cherry to be plucked, smart ass.”

Jesse finally spoke up. “You haven't gotten close up and way personal with Isaiah?”

Kat wasn't a blusher, but as sure as pink lemonade, one crept up her neck and to her face.

“Why, my eye!” Boomer said. “And here I thought you two were making the creature with two backs on a regular basis.”

Kat stood. “Hard to do that with a long-distance relationship. Besides, I'm not like you whores. I've got some discretion.”

Gideon held up his hands. “Give her a break, you all.”

Boomer pounced. “Because you're afraid we're gonna ask you if you've nailed Rochelle yet?”

Kat seemed ecstatic that the heat was off of her. “I know you were friends because of her uncle Dennis, but the way you two looked at each other last night . . .” She stuck a finger toward her mouth and gagged.

Gideon warned her off with a whole different kind of look this time. Next to him, Jesse cleared his throat, like he was afraid the questioning would come around to him next and he wanted to get out of here before then.

Boomer wasn't quite done with Gideon, though. “She's a fine choice, if I say so. She's beautiful, dresses like money, and . . .”

“Has a creeper?” Gideon added.

That was a signal as sure as any, and Jesse seized the moment to get on his feet. He was as imposing as one of those primitive rocks on . . . what did they call it? Easter Island?

“It's been real,
muchachos
,” he said. “But some of us need to get back to the grind.”

And that was the literal truth for Jesse, seeing as he owned a gentlemen's club and food joint in North Vegas that served the best carne asada around.

“Yeah,” Kat said. “And some of us don't want to hear about wannabe Rough and Tumblers who left town only to come back and exploit Cherry Chastain.”

“That's not the story, and you know it, Kat,” Gideon said. Were those his hackles rising? Hell, he supposed that'd happen with any woman he wanted to bang.

Kat shook her head as she wandered toward the door, Jesse following her.

“Mark my words, Gideon,” she said. “That girl's here for herself, and whoever wrote that creeper shit on that bookstore poster of hers was just protecting Cherry, right-minded or not. No one wants to read a bunch of lies.”

With that, she was out the door. Jesse paused a second, then shrugged as if to say
Damn, she does need to get laid
and left with a casual salute.

Boomer and Gideon sat at the table, the rumbling from a Jefferson Airplane song on the jukebox in the saloon competing with the electric whir of the ceiling fan.

“So,” Gideon said, settling down to business, which was why he was here in the first damned place. “I guess I should ask if there's any news you dug up about Rochelle's creeper?”

“That's why you dragged your ass over here, isn't it?” Boomer had obviously had enough of the teasing. He knew when it was time for business.

“And?”

“And I was able to access those security tapes from the mall.” His accent had leveled out, now that he wasn't playing around. “All I've got for you is a person with medium-build, wearing a hoodie and sunglasses that blocked their face along with baggy pants, generic black boots, and tight gloves. They used a run-of-the-mill Sharpie and made quick work of that poster during a crowded rush in the mall, and they didn't have a vehicle in the parking garage or lot to track. They disappeared onto the Strip.”

Gideon closed his eyes. When he'd read some of Rochelle's book last night, he'd tried to put together a profile of someone who loved Cherry enough to harass Rochelle or someone who downright didn't like Rochelle. He wasn't sure yet. It looked like he would have a whole lot more thinking and reading to do. Especially since he was on the edge of discovering something about Rochelle through Cherry. He just couldn't put his finger on what it was yet.

He slowly opened his eyes. “So we have nothing on the creeper.”

Boomer shook his head. “I'll try to work a connection or two and see if I can get a look at some closed-circuit cameras on Las Vegas Boulevard. But I think the best bet is to keep an eye out for the creeper at Rochelle's events. Tell me if she has any strange contact with anyone, no matter how trivial it might seem, and I'll follow up.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Hey, anything to keep her safe.” Boomer raised a long, dark eyebrow, business over. “And to get you laid.”

“Buddy, I think you know I don't need help in that area.”

Boomer offered him a touché toast with his beer bottle as Gideon thanked him and left, headed back to probably the only house in the area where he
wouldn't
be getting laid.

Rochelle knew Gideon was on his way back to her rental place because she heard him call Harry. And when he relayed Gideon's message to her, she couldn't help feeling almost incidental, as if she hadn't been important enough for a call.

But she was only a client, and Harry, Gideon's partner, was standing here right next to her, in the perfect position to tell her what was going on. Why should Gideon make two calls instead of one?

Rather than obsessing over something so dumb, she left her cousins and Suzanne to themselves to watch some ultimate fighting in her home theater, then put on a light pair of sweats, and went to the sitting room by the foyer to tool around on her laptop. Harry followed her, sitting nearby.

She decided to put off outlining her next book about Howard Hughes's fifteen-year-old mistress, Faith Domergue, and instead emailed her longtime critique partners, who always got first look at her work and likewise, and her friends in Southern California, who were itching for updates about the creeper. She hadn't let any of them know about Gideon, though. She wouldn't do that until she returned. It'd be a story to tell during happy hour, right? And that's all.

When she heard Gideon using the extra set of keys she'd given him to open the front door, she popped up on the leather sofa like a puppy who'd been waiting for her person to get home.

Except puppies probably didn't get all misty inside as their person's boots hit the stone tile, the sound echoing all over the cavernous front room. And when she saw Gideon, his hat in hand, his brown hair tousled, she got even mistier, sexual condensation trickling down the lining of her belly until it settled between her legs.

Just one look, and that's all it took. No, wait—even a
sound
from him did it for her. Why did it take so little to get her going when it came to Gideon Lane?

“Hi,” she said, putting her laptop to the side. “Did you have a good break?”

“If you wanna call it a break.” Gideon jerked his chin at Harry, who stoically returned the gesture. Then he hung his hat on a rack. He wasn't wearing his denim jacket tonight, just a much lighter black one he'd used to conceal his firearm in the bookstores, thanks to the warming weather. “I just stopped to talk to Boomer at the saloon.”

“What did our PI have to say?”

He told her about the lack of progress on the creeper, and she frowned. She'd been hoping to get Superfan squared away so she could enjoy her promo events without peering around the bookstores all the time. But at least her creeper would be under control with Gideon and Harry around. She had every confidence in that.

Harry got to his feet, all ten thousand pounds of him, and Rochelle realized that it was time for him to go off shift.

“Thanks so much, Harry,” she said. “I'll see you bright and early for the interview at the R and T tomorrow morning?”

“You got it, Ms. Burton. If you don't mind, though, I'd like to do a sweep outside, just for peace of mind.”

She smiled at him, and Gideon gave him an appreciative nod. But as Harry went out the sliding door, Gideon just stood there like he didn't know what to do around her.

Not tense at all.

She said, “The boys are in the theater, watching grown men smash each other to death in a cage. Weirdly, Suzanne seems to be into it, too, although that could be because of all the margaritas she drank and she has no idea what she's watching.”

“Will she be okay for tomorrow?”

“Oh, yeah. I've seen her walking into walls when she's had too much, and by morning she's always chipper and ready.”

“I wouldn't have guessed that about her. She looks . . .”

“Like she should be sipping iced tea at the country club? I know.”

Then again, she thought, what did you really know about a person? Even
she
felt like a complete stranger now, here with Gideon.

He casually planted his hands on his hips. “Harry already let me know that the boys arrived to take over the mansion.”

“You should say hi to them.”

“Maybe I will before Harry leaves the property.”

“Better hurry before they pass out. You should've seen all the booze they brought.” She laughed. “My cousins—every one a Peter Pan in his own way. But they're bachelors, so who can blame them for living it up?”

“I hear bachelors are wild, all right. Bachelorettes, too.”

“Well . . .” She gestured to her sweats and then smiled. “Maybe not so much.”

He also smiled in that cowboy way of his, and that carnal haze in her went from misty to hot. How was she going to handle a week of this?

He said, “Harry told me that the boys were raising hell the second they stepped foot in here. I guess they're not used to the fancy.”

“The fancy?”

“This.” He swept his hand around. “And you.”

“I'm not . . . fancy.” Not really.

He sent her a lowered gaze, and it was so damned sizzling that she nearly slid off the sofa in a flow of need. Dear God, how could she have blown it with
that
all those years ago? Shouldn't she have been awesome at sex without having to think about how she was doing or if she were making him feel the best he'd ever felt?

She looked away from him. Maybe she'd tried too hard with Gideon, and that had been her downfall.

“You,” he finally said, “are the very definition of fancy.”

“Okay, maybe I'm a little bit.” She raised an eyebrow his way. “But if I were
super fancy,
I would've had you and Harry dressing in suits while you're on guard duty.”

He tilted his head in acquiescence. “True. But you have to admit that you've only gotten fancier over the years. Back in the day, you'd put on Wranglers and boots and ride a horse like you were born to it, but nowadays I can't imagine that.”

“You think I can't cowgirl it up anymore?”

He shrugged, and it only drew her attention to the width of his shoulders below that black T-shirt he was wearing, clinging to his lean body, making him look more like an assassin than a gunslinger tonight.

“Hey,” she said, “if I weren't so busy being fanci
er
than ever, I might just prove you wrong.”

That heavy silence purred between them, but instead of being full of confusion or bad feelings, it was rife with something else now.

Expectation?

But what was she expecting?

His voice softened. “Rochelle?”

Hearing her actual name from him rocked her. “Yes?”

“You know that Uncle Dennis would be bustin' his buttons if he could see you today, don't you?”

She smiled, curling her legs under her on the sofa. It always stumped her how her father's brother had found it so much easier to express affection and approval than her dad. Then again, Dennis hadn't been married to a cheating woman who'd left him cold.

“My uncle was always proud of me,” she said. “And of you, too.”

“I doubt that. He had more hope for me than anything else. He knew I was . . . how would he have put it . . .?”

“A distracted idjit?”

They both laughed, because there was no doubt that girls had been Gideon's first priority in those days. Horses had run a close second, though, and that's what Uncle Dennis had seen in him—the potential to be good at something more meaningful than one-night stands.

Gideon's laughter trailed off. “But you. You always had your priorities in line. Everyone—including you—always knew what Rochelle Burton was meant to be. A writer. A success.”

A success in everything except sex. But, thanks to a lot of dating, she'd taken care of that. She'd made sure she was good at it with just as much methodical practice as anything else. And, as she watched Gideon, she knew that there was one thing marring her perfect record.

Him.

God, wouldn't some closure be nice? What if she could rewrite history, just like she did with her fictionalized books?

But . . . dammit, it was a terrible idea. The worst . . .

She dug herself out of this hole of moronic longing. “Whether you know it or not, Gideon, you're a success. I feel extremely safe with you and Harry around, so you've definitely succeeded in that.”

“Just doin' my job, ma'am.” He tipped his invisible hat to her, grinning.

Oh, that grin . . .

It pulled her into dangerous territory, and suddenly
all
she wanted to do was go there. Hormones were swamping her better judgment right along with her body. And things only got worse when he started to amble to the corner of the room, where he could play bodyguard for her once again, putting himself on the fringes of her life as if he really wasn't there at all.

“Gideon . . .” she whispered.

“Yeah, Boss?” he asked.

Not even the nickname changed what she was feeling, craving.

She turned toward him on the sofa, grasping the back of it. “Can I ask you one question?”

“I don't know. What kind of question is it?”

Even Gideon felt the mutual understanding that was growing between them, didn't he? “It's a question you don't have to answer unless you want to.”

“Then ask it.”

Did she have the guts? Why wouldn't she when she was so gung ho in everything else?

Three, two, one . . .

“Did you even care when I left the ranch the next morning?”

It was as if she'd hurled an axe through the room, and the blade chopped into the wall next to him. The aftermath rang through the air.

She got the feeling he wasn't going to answer. Stupid for asking. Why had she done it?

His gaze connected with hers, forming a shuddering link between them, one that hummed with an erotic need that'd never truly been sated.

“I probably cared about as much as you did,” he said.

His words shook her, and even though she didn't know what to make of them, she left it at that, knowing it'd be foolish to pursue this.

Knowing that she would just have to live without the closure.

***

One question kept running through Gideon's mind, even as Rochelle had gone to bed and as he'd tried to sleep, too: Had she really been asking what he thought she'd been asking? Had she really wondered if he'd regretted it when she'd left Rough & Tumble all those years ago?

And, even worse, had she wanted him to admit to feeling something for her?

He should've cleared everything up right then and there, telling her straight out that he'd only been a horny kid and what they'd had together didn't concern anything more than a raging teenage appetite for pussy. So why had he given her a roundabout answer that had put the ball right back in her court?

I probably cared about as much as you did . . .

And wasn't that the truth? What they'd had was sex, not an explosion of true love or anything. He didn't do complicated things like love when he was happy enough with life as it was, and she sure didn't seem to do it, either, what with her being married to her career and all.

Then again he hadn't asked if she was seeing anyone. And he wasn't about to.

No matter, though, because he stowed it all into a compartment in the back of his mind, where a lot of other needless shit sat in the dark.

But it was still niggling at him the next morning as he stood in the Rough & Tumble saloon while Rochelle relaxed at the bar, right under the painting of Cherry Chastain. An influential book blogger was interviewing her while Gideon did his Terminator thing alongside Harry, searching for any creepers, especially after the interview ended and the public was let inside for an unscheduled giveaway of some of those books Rochelle had lying around the mansion.

Her manager, Suzanne, looked on the entire time, too, but instead of scanning the room like a steel guardian, she helped Rochelle by handing her books to sign until they were gone. Kat was even there, sitting at a table near the potbellied stove, eyeing the action.

When all was said and done, Rochelle flexed her signing hand then slid off her stool, facing him. She'd tamed her brunette waves, and her hair swerved down one shoulder. She was dressed in pale pink, wearing a crisp vest and elegant pants again, every inch of which kissed her curves. All in all she looked like she'd just stepped out of a room that had a star on a door and her name written in glitter.

“I'd hoped he wouldn't ask me about the creeper in the interview,” Rochelle murmured. “But I guess everyone knows about it by now.” She sighed. “One down, four more interviews to go today.”

Gideon wanted to say something casual, like
Juicy publicity can sell a lot of books
or
You handled the tough stuff like a pro
. But all that crossed his mind was
Why'd you have to open that can of worms you opened last night?

Harry spoke instead. “You're a trouper, that's for sure.”

Rochelle smiled at him, and Gideon's gaze traced her mouth, almost like he could feel the plushness of it.

Shit.

When someone approached her from the back, he instinctively took a step forward, his gun arm curving toward the firearm he had holstered in the open, as Kat had given him and Harry permission to do in the saloon. He realized it was only Dillinger, the so-called Cherry Chastain expert here at the Rough & Tumble.

A wiry man who was usually squirreling here and there whenever he was behind the bar, Dillinger clutched Rochelle's book to his chest like a shield as she turned around to greet him. Gideon remained on alert.

“I bought a copy yesterday,” he said. “I didn't want to, but I did.”

Gideon hovered over Rochelle until her hair just about tickled his chin. Dillinger saw him standing there, and his Adam's apple bobbed with a gulp. Sometimes it felt good to make people do that.

Rochelle's voice was pleasant. “Thank you for buying it . . .”