In Hot Pursuit (12 page)

“What is it?” Josh leaned over her shoulder, squinting to see the small red swatch.

“Fabric. Very wet, dog-drooled fabric.” Lexi
turned the square-inch piece over in her hand. “Make that dog-drooled cashmere, which makes a big difference. This is definitely nothing that came from inside my apartment.”

“I'll take it to the lab to run some tests. Maybe Harry got in a fight with whoever set the fire.” Josh nudged her gently forward. “But right now we'd better get out of here.”

Lexi half heard him and took a step forward, but last year's fall collections kept playing over in her mind. Someone had used red cashmere like this, and the name of the designer teased the edges of her brain.

“In just a minute,” she replied absently, mentally rewinding all the fall runway shows. If only she could remember who designed it, maybe she could find out who owned it.

“Lexi, I mean it. We need to hit the road if we want to—”

Lexi looked up as his words trailed off. She followed his gaze across the crowded street to the white sport utility vehicle with a “TV 11” logo in bright blue emblazoned on the side.

“If we want to avoid the media?” she supplied, knowing exactly why Josh was in such a rush to get out of there.

The look he sent her would have frozen a normal woman to the spot. “And if we want to keep you alive to write next week's column.”

Lexi shook her head, hoping a little levity would cover the hurt she felt inside at the thought that he would never want to be seen with her. “I wouldn't
dream of dying on you, Josh. Can you imagine the negative publicity?”

“Actually, I can.”

He whistled for the dogs and scooped up Bubblegum's container, effectively leaving her with nothing to carry. He stomped down the street toward his car, which she could see parked half a block behind the fire trucks.

“You can?”

“The last person I was looking out for I ended up shooting, Lexi.”

That stopped her in her shoes. “You're kidding.”

Josh seemed to be cursing himself under his breath as he set down Lexi's things and fished for his keys in his pants pocket. “Extra, extra, you can read all about it if you want. It was in every paper in the city a few months ago.”

As he opened the door to his car, Lexi's dogs couldn't scramble into his back seat fast enough.

Why hadn't Amanda mentioned this event to her? Wouldn't Duke have been upset if his partner had truly hurt somebody? Her mind refused to picture Josh shooting someone without damn good cause. “I was in Europe a lot this summer—why don't you refresh me?”

Josh loaded her pictures in the back seat of his unmarked cop car. “Hop in, I'll tell you.”

She stepped closer to the vee of the car's open door, creating a semi-intimate setting despite the throng of people milling half a block away. “Tell me now or I'm going nowhere.”

She should be scared, shouldn't she? A dangerous-
looking cop confesses to shooting someone in his custody.

But she wasn't. Lexi could see beyond the glower to the regret in Josh's eyes.

He half sighed, half growled out his frustration. “I had been sort of working with a city informant in a drug case, when the kid decided it wasn't enough to turn evidence against the buddies who had wronged him—he wanted revenge, instead.”

Her whole body tensed. “What happened?”

“The kid showed up at the scene of a drug bust one night and went wild.” Josh clenched his jaw a few times in quick succession. “He hit and killed one of the traffickers before a cop noticed him and turned a gun to him. The kid shot the cop and I shot the kid. End of story.”

“Not end of story.” No matter how much he might think otherwise, Josh needed to talk about this as much as she needed—wanted—to hear it. “How young a kid are we talking about?”

“Sixteen.” Frustration laced the word. He tilted his head back to stare up at the sky for a moment. “Lex, I'm sorry I'm trying to hustle you out of here, but we really should go.”

She smoothed her fingers along his shirtsleeve, keeping her touch featherlight. “Did he die?”

He brushed some ash off his clothes. “The kid, yes. The cop, no. But the cop wouldn't have gone down in the first place if I'd done a better job with the kid. I had been talking to him, you know? Trying to bring him around to life without crime. Piss-poor decision.”

The narrow look he shot her declared the topic
closed. He pulled Lexi around to the other side of the car and held the front door for her. “Now get in the car, we're going.”

“That's why you don't like the media?” Call her clueless, but Josh offered up so precious little about himself, she wanted to be sure she got it right.

“I have no problem with the media,” he clarified, his tight smile looking close to a grimace. “But as an occasional undercover guy, I need to stay out of the papers for the next year or so until all that dies down. Then I can go back to hitting some heavy-duty undercover assignments.”

She really wanted to know why he liked working undercover more than he liked her. Couldn't he choose to work undercover with her and outside the damn covers at work?

But she didn't have a chance to ask another question, because he slammed her car door shut with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

Curse the man.

He'd saved her dogs, her parakeet and even her pink fish, and in the course of an afternoon, Josh had made her realize their relationship was built on far more than sex.

Too bad Josh didn't seem to realize it.

After hearing about Josh's stint in the public eye, Lexi understood things weren't as cut-and-dried with him as she'd first thought. He was a man with as much heart as muscle, judging by how torn up he'd been at the memory of a dead criminal. He was a complex man with intriguing layers.

And for some reason, Lexi couldn't help but en
vision how rewarding it would be to personally uncover every one of those delectable layers.

 

J
OSH PULLED UP
to the famous Matthews design showroom in the Garment District a few minutes later. Amanda Matthews still kept a loft apartment above the showroom, a space Duke said she was slowly converting into her own design studio.

As Josh scoped out the parking situation, he spotted a familiar red Harley-Davidson in front of the showroom's display window. The time of reckoning drew near, now that Rawlins was back in town. Josh wondered if Duke would believe his relationship with Lexi was based on more than sex.

It worked against Josh that he hadn't had many relationships based on more than sex in the past decade. But that wasn't because he hadn't been open-minded. He just hadn't found a woman who really held his attention long term.

His work had always been completely absorbing. Okay, and maybe a part of him didn't want to commit the same failings as his parents. No kid of his would be shuffled into the middle of a fierce divorce just because he didn't know his own mind.

Josh had always told himself he wouldn't bother initiating a long-term relationship unless he found someone who genuinely fascinated him. And frankly, Lexi did.

“Looks like they beat us back,” Lexi noted, eyeing the motorcycle. “You think Duke is going to blow a gasket about us seeing each other? He does sort of think of me as the baby sister for some reason.”

“Duke's usually pretty reasonable.” He hoped. He slung his arm over the steering wheel to keep from touching Lexi. That long, wild hair of hers had a way of drawing his touch. “But I don't think either of them is going to appreciate knowing about the one-night stand.”

“Technically a two-night stand in our case.”

“Right. I think they'd be fine if we were pursuing a serious relationship, but since you aren't ready to—”

“You mean since
you
aren't ready to, Mr. Camera Shy.”

“I vote we keep our mouths shut about the whole thing and fake like we met yesterday when Duke asked me to check up on you.”

Lexi flashed him a thumbs-up sign far too quickly for his taste. Couldn't she at least consider his suggested arrangement for seeing each other?

But she was already climbing out of the car with her dogs in tow. They followed her up the street like ducks in a row, each knowing his or her place in the pecking order behind the fashion princess. God, she was a sight to see. While she wasn't exactly beautiful in Hollywood terms, she was a woman you couldn't ignore.

Heads turned and gossip flowed wherever Lexi went.

Damn, but she was so wrong for him. Why did he have to want her so much anyway?

Josh sprinted to catch up to her. “Honey, you can't just take off on me like that. You're officially in dan
ger now, so you can't strut the streets of New York like you own them.”

She dug in her purse for her keys, setting off for him a sexual stream of consciousness—purse, leopard-spotted purse, leopard panties, scintillating sex.

This was going to be a long night.

“Sorry.” She let them into the famous design showroom full of luxurious clothes, marble floors and faceless mannequins, then led them through the store to the stairs in the back. “I guess I'm going to have to think through my actions a little bit more. I'm not used to staying out of the spotlight,” she said as they climbed to the loft.

The tiny quaver in her voice did him in. Pausing just outside the door, Josh turned her toward him, needing her to listen.

“I'll keep you safe.” His fingers pressed into the soft flesh of her arms, the delicate line of her shoulders. “I promise.”

“I want to be safe from the rest of the world.” Her keys jingled, forgotten in her constantly moving hands. “Just not with you.”

The rattling keys faded to the background for him, too, as her words sank into his brain and the implication sank into his libido. “You don't want to feel safe with me?”

The stairwell seemed to shrink in size, closing in around them to four private walls.

“I want to be adventurous and not hide away from the world.”

Ah. She was talking about something else entirely.
She was talking about his refusal to enter the limelight with her.

Too bad her proximity and that damn exotic scent of hers wouldn't let him concentrate on an intelligent answer. “Adventure I can give you, Lexi.”

Her pouty lips said his form of adventure wouldn't be enough for her—a challenge his own mouth found too hard to resist.

He tipped her head back, the need to taste her so fierce he couldn't have walked away if he'd been in the path of an oncoming freight train. Just one taste…

His lips met hers and promptly incinerated the “just one taste” theory. Her scent hit his senses and flowed through him like good wine. And she didn't hold herself back from him, despite everything she'd spouted about them not having anything together now. No, Lexi plastered herself to him with as much enthusiasm as he pressed her into him.

She was all smooth curves and legs. Her mini-dress gave him access to her thighs, and for one crazy moment, he palmed her thigh and squeezed.

He wanted more than she should give him. Hell, he wanted everything she had.

But the timing didn't seem right when the door to Amanda's loft flew open.

Duke Rawlins stood there with his soon-to-be bride, Amanda. They held hands, and wore identical expressions of shock.

Josh tugged Lexi's skirt into place. Not that she'd really been showing anything crucial, but he needed to extricate his hand from underneath her dress, at least.

Not good.

Lexi gave herself a little wriggle and seemed to put everything back into position. “Hi, guys. Welcome home.”

Her dogs backed up her friendly sentiment from behind them on the stairwell.

Duke didn't sound quite as chipper, however, when he leaned forward to point a threatening finger in Josh's face. “You'd better have earned your goddamn gynecology degree while I wasn't looking, Columbo, or else I ought to be hearing wedding bells ringing any freaking minute.”

M
EN
.

Having grown up without the benefit of a brother, and having proceeded through most of her life without any sort of significant other, Lexi had to admit it was sort of fun to have two impossibly sexy guys in each other's faces because of her.

Juvenile? Definitely. But she'd missed out on moments like this at an all-girls boarding school, so maybe she could be excused for the high school thrill she felt for a couple of seconds.

Duke Rawlins looked like the Hollywood version of a New York City Police officer. He had a square jaw with a perfectly centered cleft in his chin and the same blue eyes that had made a whole generation of women weep over Frank Sinatra. Even Duke's black motorcycle jacket couldn't dim the effect of his spiky blond hair and baby blues.

He was no Josh Winger, of course. But then, Lexi always did go for the rebels.

As her grown-up instincts kicked in, she sidled in between the snarling big dogs.

“Thank you, Duke, but I'd prefer you keep me and
gynecology
out of the same sentence in the future.” When Duke and Josh continued to lock narrowed eyes
in some sort of testosterone-induced pissing match, she sent an SOS look to Amanda for reinforcement.

The glare worked, startling Amanda out of her shocked silence.

“And as for wedding bells, I think that's a bit premature, given that Lexi and Josh have only just started seeing each other.” She looked to Lexi for confirmation of the fact.

Lexi felt a big eye-roll coming on, but stifled the impulse. “I guess you could say that.” She leaned over to pick up Muffin, hoping her dog would at least prove an effective ally.

Before she had the chance to find out, however, Josh took a step forward, still eyeing Duke. “Maybe you ought to worry less about Lexi's personal life and more about who set her apartment on fire today.”

The man had all the tact of a bulldog.

“Nice going, Winger,” Lexi muttered, as Amanda paled five shades and Duke had to bolster her up. Lexi swatted Josh's shoulder with Muffin's paw for lack of better retaliation.

“Are you okay?” Amanda asked, shaking off her burly protector to pull Lexi forward into the loft full of fabric bolts and towering piles of swatch books.

“Who the hell did it?” Duke asked at the same time, his disgruntled big brother act forgotten in his haste to get information.

“I don't know, but we're sure as hell not going to find out with you breathing down my neck like an overeager rookie.”

They grumbled at each other even as Duke helped Josh bring in Lexi's shopping bags and animals, leav
ing Lexi and Amanda to talk somewhat privately in the living room. Amanda poured water for all the dogs, poured wine for Lexi and tossed sunflower seeds in the parakeet's cage, firing questions all the while.

“Were you there when the fire started?” Amanda prodded, finally taking a seat on the arm of the sofa as the men debated where to hang the birdcage on the other side of the studio. “How much burned? Was Josh there with you?”

“I wasn't there.” Lexi sipped her wine and stole glances at Josh over in the corner talking to Duke. “I guess Josh had come over to check on me and found the place burning up. He got all the animals out. And some pictures.” Her eyes burned as she remembered seeing Josh balancing her fish and her bird.

Amanda cleared away a pile of fabric swatches from the steamer trunk that served as a coffee table and settled herself on the sturdy chest. “Are you okay, Lex? You know you can stay here as long as you want. I practically live at Duke's, anyway.”

“I'm fine.” She'd be better if Josh was sitting next to her. “And thank you. I would appreciate using the loft for a few weeks. I know where you keep everything here.”

Amanda frowned. “You seem far too calm. Maybe you're in shock.”

“Maybe.” Or maybe she just couldn't take her eyes off Josh in his ashen clothes. Even the diamond stud in his ear was dulled from the coat of soot he still wore.

Oh God, she was totally falling for a cranky cop who wanted no part of her public world.

Amanda's gaze narrowed. “You're wild for Duke's partner, aren't you.”

“He's completely yummy.”

Amanda smothered a snort. “Are we talking about Joshua Winger? The guy that looks more criminal than cop?”

Lexi squinted her eyes, trying to see Josh objectively. “The guy with shoulders so damn straight God must have laid down a level to mold him? The guy with a tush any red-blooded woman would give her right eye to squeeze?”

Amanda tilted her head to the side, still staring at Josh.

Lexi knew the exact moment her friend understood what she was saying. A naughty little grin spread across the Revlon girl's features.

“Okay, quit ogling, girlfriend. You see my point.”

“He
is
kind of cute.”

“No. Muffin is ‘cute.' That man is devastatingly sexy.” Lexi watched as Duke paced and Josh talked on his cell phone. Harry the terrier fit right in on the guy's side of the room, standing at attention between the men.

“You met him because Duke asked him to check on you yesterday and he's already got his hand up your skirt?” Amanda snapped her fingers for Snowball, providing permission for the little shih tzu to jump on her lap.

“No. I met him because I handcuffed him at the Shelter the Homeless event.” Come to think of it, she
wouldn't mind having a pair of handcuffs at her disposal right now.

“You didn't.”

“I most certainly did.”

Amanda bit her lip. “He was probably trying not to stand out in the crowd, Lexi. He went there to work.”

“How does a man like that blend in, may I ask you? I noticed him from at least fifty yards away in a room packed with nearly five hundred people.”

Amanda might have answered, but they noticed Duke charging over toward their corner of the loft. They sipped their wine and pretended they hadn't just been whispering about the guys.

Duke strode in between the sofas. “Sorry to interrupt, ladies, but we need to follow up on this fire and a couple of other things.” His gaze turned to Amanda. “I'll meet you back at my place tonight?”

Amanda practically purred. “Rooftop rendezvous at midnight. Don't be late.”

Their shared liplock wasn't any hotter than the kisses Lexi had been sharing with Josh all weekend. But damn it, Amanda and Duke had forever to kiss like that.

Once Josh had caught his bad guys, Lexi wouldn't even see him.

She glanced toward him, only to find those gray eyes studying her, assessing her. A wave of heat jumped across the room as their gazes connected. Joined.

He was the first to speak. “I need that red swatch
Harry found. The lab is going to run some tests on it.”

So maybe she was the only one feeling heat waves. Damn the man.

She dug in her purse and came up with the still-damp cashmere. “I remember who used this. It was from a Valentino collection last year.”

Josh frowned. “Valentino who? Does this guy have any reason to want to scare you?”

“He's a designer, Columbo,” Duke intervened as he stepped away from Amanda. “He must have made the threads Harry found.”

Amanda snapped her fingers. “I remember that collection. I bet we could contact their showroom to at least find out a few of the customers who would have bought any of the red cashmere.”

“I'll call right now.” Lexi reached for her purse and the electronic organizer it contained.

Josh grabbed her wrist before she could get there. “Not this time, Lex. You're too damn involved in this already. I don't want you getting yourself in any deeper.”

“But I've got the number right here.”

“Give it to me and I'll call.” His brows practically glued themselves together, he was frowning so hard.

“Fine.” She pressed some numbers into her address book program and wrote the information down on a sticky note. Now Mr. Undercover wouldn't even let her help figure out who torched her apartment.

She slapped the paper into his hand with a bit too much force.

Josh squeezed her hand into his. “You okay, Lexi?”

“Peachy. Why don't you go solve the world's crimes while I wait here and file my nails?” He really didn't get it, did he? Couldn't he see she wanted to be with him, wanted to help him work on his case and be a part of things that were important to him?

Then she chided herself. Of course he couldn't. He didn't want her to be a part of his world any more than he wanted to be a part of hers.

He could only see Lexi the glamorous bad girl. He didn't know anything about the rest of her.

Josh sent her one of those glares that would have made a normal woman cry. “You know, it wouldn't hurt for you to be marginally scared, Lex. There's such a thing as a healthy dose of fear.”

Despite the hellish day she'd just had, Lexi was only scared of one thing right now. And that was not seeing Josh again once he walked out that door.

He wouldn't be back. Not since she'd turned him down along with his offer for a partial relationship. Their kiss on the stairs to the loft had been just a knee-jerk reaction to the fire, the adrenaline rush in the aftermath of fear.

Stifling the impulse to pull him into her arms and not let go, she blew him a kiss and waggled her fingers in an exaggerated wave. “'Bye, tiger. Don't worry about me. Harry seems to like his new protector role.”

She pretty much expected him to slam the door on his way out.

But she hadn't been counting on the echoing emptiness he'd leave in his wake.

 

S
LAMMING THE DOOR
didn't come close to satisfying the anger churning through Josh as he stomped down the stairs of Amanda's loft with Duke.

“You hear that? She'll let the damn dog protect her instead of me. How the hell do you like that for an endorsement?”

Duke whistled low under his breath as they hit the street. Night had fallen, knocking down the temperature a few degrees. “She's tougher than she looks, I'll give you that. I remember Amanda telling me once that her money is always on Lexi in a fight.”

“Does that mean she frequently rips out hearts for fun?” How could she just wave him away tonight, after the kind of day she'd had? After the weekend they'd had? Josh considered himself a stiff-upper-lip kind of guy, but he was a tied-in-knots damn wreck just knowing someone was out to hurt Lexi.

“You've got it that bad, man?”

“No.” Josh wanted that clarified right now. Lexi didn't have any intention of having a relationship with him unless he yelled it from a damn mountaintop. And he couldn't—wouldn't—do that right now. “Any man that wants Lexi has to take on a whole lifestyle—it'd be like running for mayor. You know I can't afford to put myself out in the public eye like that. Not in this line of work.”

Sliding into the car, Josh tossed the police light in the front window and turned it on.

“So don't go undercover anymore. You've been
out there enough to know you can only do it so long. One of these days you'll be fingered for a fake.”

“Me? With this face? I blend in pretty well with the bad guys, remember?” Josh pulled into traffic and hit the gas, hard. He needed to get to the station and talk to about fifty different people to make sense of this case—starting with the fire department.

“Undercover work has a shelf life, Josh. Don't tell me you don't know that as well as I do.” Duke held on to the dashboard as Josh careened around a corner.

“That's crap. You're working this angle just because you've got some new morality since you met Amanda.” He forced himself to concentrate on the road and not Duke's silver-tongued maneuvering. “You said it yourself—you expect to hear cursed wedding bells. Well, it's not going to happen.”

“Scared shitless, aren't you, Winger?” Duke flashed him his Hollywood grin as they reached the Tenth Precinct and parked the car out front.

“She owns a poodle for chrissake. Why the hell would I be scared?”

“Seems to me I've never seen you turn on the police light to get back to the station.”

Josh told him exactly where he could stick his Oprah psychobabble as he slammed the car door.

Lexi Mansfield might have drop-dead legs and a killer smile, but that didn't scare Josh. Hell, no.

Maybe it made him a little sexually frustrated when he couldn't be with her every minute of the day. And a little freaked out that someone would try to hurt her.

But that did not make him scared of falling for her
smart mouth or her wicked ways in bed. And he would prove it just as soon as he sewed up this case, because he'd be walking away from Lexi for good.

That's the way she wanted it, damn it, and that's the way it would be.

 

N
EARLY A WEEK
after the fire, Amanda stopped by the loft to bring Lexi more clothes and to torture her with questions about Josh.

The week had crawled by without the sexy detective to liven things up. He'd politely called her three times, but each time he had limited conversation to the arson and smuggling investigations. He'd also dutifully stationed a plainclothes cop in a car on the street to keep a watch on her, but Josh had yet to make an appearance. He'd keep her safe, but he wouldn't come near her.

Not that she could blame him, after she'd given him his marching orders in no uncertain terms last weekend. But she didn't want to trot out her heartache right now, not when she had a big charity event to get ready for tonight. Time to forget about Josh and get back to her real life.

Lexi kept digging through the matching leather designer suitcases, ostensibly to check out the new offerings Amanda had brought, but really she just wanted to hide from conversation about the man who had turned her life upside down for one wild weekend and then all but disappeared from her life.