Authors: Roxanne St. Claire
Take Me Tonight
Contents
Prologue
I
f tenacity had a face, Lucy Sharpe was looking at it. A tornado of determination brewed in angry eyes. A defiant jaw set against anything that got in its way. Even her delicate nostrils flared as Sage Valentine leaned over Lucy’s desk and declared, “You owe me, Lucy. Big.”
A hundred responses echoed through Lucy’s mind, a thousand ways to say hello for the first time in thirteen years, a million ways to reach out to her sister’s daughter and close the chasm that time and blame had formed between them.
She remained as impassive as she would be with any other potential client being turned away. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Sage crossed her arms and peered down at her aunt, tilting her head. “Big difference.”
Tenacity and attitude. Sage didn’t look like Lydia Sharpe, but she obviously had a few of her mother’s traits. “This job isn’t right for the Bullet Catchers,” Lucy said. “My company is a security firm.”
“I thought you did investigations.”
“Only as it relates to the security of our clients and the principals we protect.”
“Come on, Lucy.” Sage tapped the desk impatiently. “With all your contacts in government and law enforcement, after all those years in the CIA? You have to be able to get information I can’t.” She closed her eyes with a whisper-soft sigh. “I wouldn’t ask you if it weren’t important.”
Lucy almost smiled. “I
did
check the temperature in hell when you called.”
Sage dropped into the guest chair that she’d refused two minutes earlier, leaning elbows on the colossal writing table between them. “Proof that I am desperate.”
Proof that she was resourceful. Another trait of Lydia’s.
“Let me tell you what I have.” Inches from Lucy’s fingertips lay a file folder with details about www.takemetonite.com, a fantasy website run by computer nerds and supported by young women with more money than common sense. The file contained nothing that a dogged journalist like Sage couldn’t have figured out on her own. For a Bullet Catcher file it was remarkably thin, but Lucy’s sources had revealed enough to know that her niece was wasting her time seeking retribution and responsibility where there was none to be found.
“Takemetonite.com is a privately owned business set up to conduct mock kidnappings and subsequent fantasy rescues strictly for personal entertainment,” Lucy said. “They check out and are, for lack of a better word, legitimate.”
“So who owns it? Who does these kidnappings? Who polices this? How can it be legal? And who kidnapped my roommate the night she died?” Sage’s frustration was clear in the last question.
“The site is owned by a company called Fantasy Adventures, a division of a large software gaming company in Southern California. FA has about forty employees who staff four operations in the U.S., including one in Boston, with plans to open about six more in the coming year. They are profitable and private about what they do.”
Sage leaned back in the chair. “And what they do is kidnap women.”
“Yes. No doubt you’ve heard of thrill sites, where people can arrange to do or experience just about anything for a price?”
“Anything,” Sage said pointedly. “Including commit a murder.”
“True. Those sites are hidden deep underground and are most definitely against the law. But takemetonite.com is much more mainstream, a company that will arrange for someone to have the experience and adrenaline rush of a nonviolent abduction, followed by a rescue performed by handsome young men. And what these young women do to…thank their rescuer is paid for on a sliding scale.”
“So the men, the rescuers, they’re like prostitutes?” Sage’s expression was a mix of disgust and disbelief. “The last thing Keisha Kingston had to do was pay for sex.”
“She didn’t,” Lucy said. “Your roommate was never kidnapped. Her suicide appears to have been unrelated to the fact that she’d registered with the site.”
Those delicate nostrils flared again. Was that in response to this information, or the word ‘suicide,’ sitting between them like the proverbial thousand-pound elephant in the room, with all the same ability to crush them both?
Sage shook her head. “Keisha was one of the most intelligent, optimistic, and joyful people I’ve ever known. She’d be the last person to commit suicide.”
“Her death was thoroughly investigated and the autopsy was unambiguous.”
“Unambiguous as to
how
she died, not why. I want to know what happened while I was out of town for two months. I want to know what changed her life that much.” She narrowed her determined eyes again. “Signing up for this thrill site was way out of character for her. As soon as I found it on her computer, it felt like a lead to me.”
A
lead
. Sage was trained to sniff out a story, a cause, and a place to assign blame.
“Besides,” Sage added, “she left our apartment precisely at the appointed time of her kidnapping. Two neighbors saw her.”
“But she was found back in that apartment the next day,” Lucy reminded her. “With a suicide note in her own handwriting and enough ephedra in her body to kill a cow.”
“But she could have been kidnapped first,” Sage pointed out.
“She never showed, which is very common. As many as one out of four registered participants bail before the abduction occurs. Apparently, fantasy abductions and rescues have become
the
surprise gift to give among more adventurous women, but not all of them want that type of surprise.”
“But no one gave her this as a gift,” Sage insisted. “She registered herself.”
Lucy angled her head in agreement. “And the Boston operation of takemetonite.com confirmed that. However, she didn’t show for her appointment. The abduction and rescue never took place and their records are rock solid. Believe me, I checked.”
Sage released another frustrated sigh. “Lucy, you may not know this, but I’m an investigative journalist. If I could have just gotten past voice mail with that company, I could have figured out this much myself.”
“I have no doubt of that.” Lucy had followed her niece’s every move in the last thirteen years. She’d read every story Sage had ever published in any magazine or newspaper, saving them in the same file drawer where she kept Lydia’s work. But Sage didn’t know that. Or care.
Lucy picked up the manila folder and set it in front of Sage. “But I
did
get past voice mail and I’m confident their records are accurate. You may have this.”
Lucy resisted the urge to reach across the desk and touch her niece’s hand. The gesture would not be appreciated or reciprocated. Instead, she cleared her throat and masked her sympathy with a cool tone. “I know that this kind of death is very difficult to accept, but your answers don’t lie with that website. I suggest you let this go.”
Sage stood up and slipped her handbag over her shoulder. “I didn’t ask for your advice. I asked for your help. But never mind—I’ll get what I need myself.” Without bothering to take the file, she left the library. Lucy sat motionless while the voice of her new assistant floated down the hall, the front door to the estate closed, then a car motor revved and tires squealed out of the driveway.
Only then did Lucy take a deep and shuddering breath.
So that was it. Thirteen years of estrangement had come down to a six-minute meeting that ended with a thud. Well, there was no one to blame but…
Norman Valentine. And Sage’s father was long past the point of shouldering blame.
She opened the file and leafed through the few pages. Takemetonite.com was legal and she had no doubt that the operation had nothing to do with Keisha Kingston’s suicide, but she’d done a miserable job of convincing Sage of that.
Lucy closed her eyes. Her niece had grown to be as beautiful and spirited as her mother, even though she hadn’t inherited Lydia’s dark eyes and black hair, and her pale skin belied the Far Eastern coloring from previous generations. But she
had
inherited her mother’s nose for news and trouble and a story, along with that terrierlike quality that made Lydia Sharpe one of the best reporters ever to write for the
Washington Post
.
Lucy had no doubt of what Sage would do next, and she was powerless to stop her…but not powerless to protect her.
Any Bullet Catcher could do that, but she needed someone who could be
believed
in the role. Someone who wouldn’t demand to know who Sage Valentine was, and why she was receiving protection she didn’t want; someone who never, ever questioned Lucy’s judgment.
Johnny Christiano. Utterly trustworthy, blindly loyal, and every woman’s fantasy. Sage would never know who really rescued her…and Johnny would never know why.
Chapter
One
E
arbuds to block out any warning of approaching danger.
Check.
Long flowing ponytail for an easy takedown.
Check
.
Low-slung runner’s shorts to give even the clumsiest rapist easy entry.
Check
.
A midnight jog, a vacant park, not so much as a key in hand for self-defense.
Check. Check. Check
.
Didn’t this woman have a mother to teach her any common sense?
Hey—not his problem. Johnny slipped deeper into the shadows of the Boston Public Garden and waited for Sage Valentine to make her next pass.
She approached at an impressive clip and he sank farther into a hedge thick with sickeningly sweet yellow flowers, gauging exactly how long it would take until Hot Legs got herself snatched. The first time she’d passed him he realized she was not only foolish, reckless, and irresponsible, but also fast. Following her at a safe distance, he matched her rhythm.
She rounded the pond, veered into the dim beam of a decorative lamp, then slowed down. Changing her mind? Rethinking her stupid plan? Just buying time? Johnny held back, waiting. She looked toward the footbridge to her right and the Charles Street gate to her left. Johnny, crouched under a low willow branch, saw her sports bra rise and fall with slow, even breaths. Fast, and not even winded.
A beam of headlights cut through the park and she whipped around, her posture suddenly transformed from clueless to alert. Then she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, fiddled with her iPod, and started into an easy jog.
He stayed about fifty feet behind her, just close enough to get hypnotized by the pendulum swing of her ponytail and mesmerized by the hip-hugging shorts that barely covered her marathon-toned ass. If Lucy had told him she was a runner, he might have planned this differently. But his boss had been short on particulars and long on demands. He only knew what to do, no clue why.
How hard up could a woman be for a cheap thrill? Well, not so cheap. The cost of a plain vanilla fantasy kidnapping and quick release was a thousand bucks. Fifteen hundred if you added a simple rescue. Two Gs for the “deluxe,” which he assumed included stud service from your white knight.
Evidently male strippers were
so
last millennium for today’s fun-loving girls.
Not his problem, man. He’d just do the job Lucy had given him. That’s what Bullet Catchers did. No judgments on the shortcomings of the principal.
She neared the gate and adjusted her earbuds, clearly back in her home state of oblivion. She now ambled slowly, bopping her head to the tunes, tightening her ponytail. Then she stopped, silhouetted against the pale beam that illuminated the swan-shaped boats moored in the pond. She bent over and stretched to touch her toes, her long, blond hair grazing the ground. On an exhale, she flattened her hands on the pavement, her body curled as gracefully as the swan boats behind her.
With a sudden jerk she straightened, squared her shoulders, clenched her fists, and walked directly to the open iron gate that led to Charles Street. Directly to her appointment with a kidnapper. Which either took the cake for stupidity or proved that somewhere in those sexy curves, she hid a set of titanium balls.
She lingered near the gate as a few cars passed the Beacon intersection, two blocks to the north. A white Audi zipped past on one-way Charles Street; otherwise it was as deserted as most of Boston’s roads at midnight on a Monday. She walked slowly, drumming her fingers against her bare thigh.
Johnny waited just behind the open gate, stealthy and quiet, but he wasn’t worried she’d spot him. Her focus was on the road. The muscles in her back tensed, though she was trying to act relaxed and unprepared. She glanced over her shoulder at the sound of a vehicle approaching. A van. Dark, older model. Parking lights only.
Showtime, baby doll.
She stepped to the curb, slowing near the crosswalk. Johnny counted to five, then broke into a light jog. The van veered into the left lane, dropped to about three miles per hour, then stopped just two feet from her.
She froze for a second, then broke into a light run, just fast enough to seem real. Johnny kicked up his speed as the van’s back door opened.
“C’mere, honey,” a man called. “I need some help.”
She hesitated for a moment.
“C’mere,” he repeated.
She took one step closer, then Johnny swooped in, grabbed her by the waist, and lifted her right off the ground, never missing a beat of his stride.
“Hey!” She squirmed in his arms and pounded him with one solid swat. “Not yet!”
He hoisted her higher and the man yelled from the van.
She whacked him again. “I haven’t been kidnapped yet!” She punctuated that with a knee that barely missed his own titanium set.
“Come on, princess,” he said as he charged toward the Camry he’d parked hours earlier. “This is how it works.”
He reached the car in fewer than ten strides, held her immobile with one hand, yanked the back door open with the other, and shoved her in as the van screeched back into the street to catch up.
“Not…” He slammed the door and barely heard her muffled, “Yet!” She pounded the window in protest.
Yes, yet
.
The van approached just as he jerked open the Camry driver’s door. “Hey, asshole, what are you doing?” The angry voice from the van was as Boston as baked beans and Johnny didn’t take time to respond. He’d assumed that Lucy had prearranged this with the site, but even if there had been a communications breakdown, he knew what his job was. He slammed the car door and stabbed the keys into the ignition, but furious fingers seized a handful of his hair and pulled like hell.
“I can’t believe you did that!” she shrieked.
Shaking her loose, he managed to start the car, threw it into drive, whipped it in front of the van, and flew across three lanes to turn right on Beacon. The van didn’t follow. Still, the real rescuer could be close by with orders to find out who had just muscled in on the business. Just in case, he blew out of there.
She smacked her hand against the back of his seat so hard, he felt it in his chest. “That was too fast! I didn’t even get kidnapped! I paid to get kidnapped, you son of a bitch!”
He managed to snag her furious gaze in the rearview mirror. “You’re welcome.”
She choked and threw herself back. “That’s not what I paid for. I didn’t get a
thing
out of that.” She kicked his seat with a frustrated, “Ooh,
damn
it all!”
What the hell kind of buzz was she after? Climbing into a van with some creep for pretend danger? Was that really some kind of good time?
“You paid to get rescued,” he said, looking at her in the mirror again. He hadn’t seen a picture, like he usually did. On a normal job Lucy would have given him a dossier an inch thick, with every detail down to bra size. He adjusted the mirror slightly south. A decent—very decent—B-plus. “I am just doin’ my job, miss. Where to?”
“Where to?” She sounded incredulous. “I didn’t flag a cab to cruise Beacon Street. I paid to get
abducted,
thank you very much. And I did
not
get two thousand dollars’ worth of abduction services.”
“Two?” He coughed. “You bought the deluxe?”
Her eyes sharpened. “Don’t you guys communicate at that company?”
“I was told it was a standard rescue operation,” he said, hoping that would be the right term. “No deluxe.”
She crossed her arms, her cheeks flushed with fury. “I was very clear in the application. I wanted the most amount of time I could possibly have before the rescue. My contact promised me at least an hour of kidnapping. An hour with the guy who’s supposed to be the best there is.”
“An hour? For what?” The question was out before he could stop himself. He backpedaled fast. “I mean, isn’t the whole reason you sign up for this the rescue part? From a knight in shining…” He glanced at the dash and gave her his most endearing grin. “Toyota?”
She rolled her eyes. “I wanted the whole package.” She turned to the window, lost for a moment, then back to the mirror. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Awhile.”
“Do you do a lot of the rescues? Are you a regular?”
“Rescues? Oh, yeah, that’s all I do, sweetheart.” A bodyguard could certainly be considered a rescuer.
“And do you only work for takemetonite.com, or are you a freelancer for other operations?”
How many sites were there where chicks paid for fantasy adrenaline rushes? “Just this one.”
“Do you talk to them much? The girls you save?”
“If they want.” He had to give it more than this or she’d never believe he worked for the site. “I mean, I’ll talk if they, you know, bought the deluxe package.”
She leaned forward, pressing her fingers on his shoulders. “Let’s be clear here, pal. Is that deluxe business straight sex or something kinky?”
He tapped the brakes at a light and shrugged. “Hey. It’s your two grand, babe.”
“You need to turn the car around.”
“Huh-uh. No way. You’re not going back to that park. You’ve been rescued. The first part is over, whether it lasted long enough for you or not. No doovers.”
“I know the rules,” she said. “But you need to turn around anyway.”
“Where do you want to go?”
She smoked him with a meaningful look. “I live off Chestnut Street in Beacon Hill. These are all one-way streets past the State House.”
He zipped into the left lane to hang a U. “Home? You want to go home?”
“Yep. I want my money’s worth.” She reached back and whipped her hair out of the ponytail, shaking a thick blond mane around her shoulders, her expression fairly detached for a woman who’d just discussed straight or kinky with a perfect stranger.
Lucy had been uncharacteristically vague about this assignment, but it was a damn safe bet it didn’t include gigolo services. All she’d said was don’t let her go through with the kidnapping, and be sure she was safe. Nothing about the deluxe treatment.
“What did you say your name was?” she asked.
“My name?” He slipped into cover mode, like a trained actor. Tonight, he was a thrill specialist. He dropped a few extra dollops of sex and attitude into his voice. “It’s whatever you want it to be, doll.”
“Enough with the bogus endearments. What’s your name?”
“Johnny. Johnny Christiano. What’s yours?”
“Sage Valentine.”
“Sage.” He’d liked the name the minute Lucy had told him. “Tasty stuff, sage.”
“I’m not named for the spice,” she told him.
“Actually, it’s an herb.”
“Whatever. I’m named for wisdom.”
Oh yeah? She sure wasn’t demonstrating any of
that
tonight. He watched her closely, seeing the wary, worried look deepening her green eyes. Or maybe they were brown. Hard to tell in this light. But real pretty. Kind of tilted up at the sides and wide, with thick lashes and expressive eyebrows. Nice cheekbones, too. His mother always said you could tell a classy girl by her cheekbones.
Of course, Ma hadn’t met a woman who paid a couple of grand to be kidnapped, rescued, and screwed for a good time. On second thought, with that family? Maybe she had.
Sage leaned her head against the glass and closed her eyes. “I still can’t believe you wrecked my kidnapping.”
“Was it your first time, Sage?”
“First, last, and only,” she said with a sigh.
He couldn’t believe it—he actually felt guilty for saving her ass. “Maybe I can make it up to you.”
And he knew just the thing to put a smile on her face. It worked with every other woman he’d ever known. “Don’t worry, angel. I have something special in mind for you.”
At least one thing she’d read on the website had been true.
Guaranteed safe release courtesy of hot, handsome hunks specially trained to make your every rescue fantasy come true
.
But she hadn’t waltzed half-naked through the Public Garden, skipped down Charles Street, and behaved like a ditsy blonde just for a rescue fantasy. And forget about the money. That was half her fee if she managed to sell the idea to an editor—which, without the chance to interview the “master kidnapper,” was probably moot anyway.
Worst of all, she hadn’t had the chance to find out anything about the night Keisha had been kidnapped. Now all she had was a boy toy who used pet names and had screwed up her only chance at getting some facts straight. Her only hope was to keep up the charade and try to get something out of him.
She studied his broad shoulders, the way his black hair carelessly fell over a dark shirt. Strong neck, but not thick. Gorgeous eyes. Keisha’s type? She’d liked them streetwise, but this guy was pushing that envelope to the breaking point. Still, had he met her roommate? Had he ever rescued her?
Would she actually have to sleep with him to find out? That last thought sent something scorching and unholy through her veins. She would do whatever it took, like she always did.
“You can park there, behind that Dumpster. You might get a ticket, but since the car’s a rental, who cares?”
He shot a surprised glance in the rearview mirror. “How do you know that?”
She pulled the Hertz card from where it had peeked out of the back pocket when she’d kicked his seat, and waved it. “Dead giveaway. I don’t own a car, either. If you’re smart, you don’t need one in Boston.”
He barely shrugged one of those impressive shoulders and zipped into the spot, getting out of the car before she could even figure out where the handle was. He opened the door for her with the flair of a limo driver.
Half a step above a male prostitute, but a gentleman.
She climbed out and rocked back on her Nikes, finally having the opportunity to see what they’d sent her. Yep. Truth in advertising. About six feet, rock solid, and built to please the most demanding customer. Brooding dark eyes, silky black hair, a full mouth, and a nose with just enough of a bump to prove he’d been in a fight or two, but healed well.
Too bad his timing sucked.
“Whaddya think?” he asked, a sexy half-grin lifting his mouth. “Will I do?”
