To the Limit (4 page)

She raised her head, raked her hair back from her face. OK. So it had been a long time ago. She'd been a kid. So had he. Neither one of them had known what love meant—and it sure as the world hadn't involved a quick tumble in a moonlit cabana.

But his great escape from her life that night had pretty much proven that Tyler McClain possessed what she'd since categorized as the triple-A factor. He was an arrogant alpha asshole—just like any other man she'd trusted like she'd once trusted McClain.

He returned to the booth with two heavy cream-colored mugs filled to the brim. One had a chip in the handle. She noticed he took that one for himself.

"In the stupid question department—are you all right?"

He studied her face with a grim scowl. His eyes were the same warm mocha brown she remembered as he considered her across the booth.

And she was not up for a stroll down memory lane even if just looking at his outrageously handsome face kindled memories of that first sweet crush.

Besides, it was a little late for him to be asking about her well-being. She'd needed to hear that from him fourteen years ago.

"I'm peachy." She wrapped her fingers around the coffee mug, disgusted to find that her hands were still a little shaky. "Now tell me what you have to do with Tiffany Clayborne."

"Sorry. That falls under
client confidentiality.
Just like Molotov cocktails fall under
somebody's royally ticked at you.
Ready to talk to me now about who's got it in for you?"

She would never be ready to talk to him. "That falls under
I
have no clue.
Besides, what makes you think it wasn't meant for you?"

"I came in the back way, cupcake. If the boom boom had had my name on it, the joker who threw it would have followed me and tossed it through the window."

OK. So she couldn't argue with sound logic. But she wasn't about to discuss her life—or her death threat—with him.

"Tiffany Clayborne is a friend of mine," she finally said, skirting back to the issue of finding her. "I'm worried about her. Now what's your tie to her?"

"OK, disregarding the issue that you and Tiffany Clayborne don't strike me as the type to be 'chummy',
why
are you worried? So worried that you're breaking into a private office?"

It all came back to one thing. She wanted an answer before she gave up any more information. "What do you have to do with Tiffany?"

He simply looked at her.

Stalemate. This was getting her nowhere.

"I've got to go." She eased toward the side of the booth.

"Wait," he said wearily, and reached across the booth to clamp her forearm in his hand. "Just wait a second."

She stared at his hand, far too aware of the strength and the heat and the roughness of his palm against her bare skin. "You know, I've had a bit of a rough night. If I were you, I wouldn't want to piss me off. Now get your hand off me."

He gave her one of those "are you for real?" looks, then lifted his hand in an exaggerated show of submission.

"You may have forgotten," he pointed out, and he didn't sound happy, "but I just got caught between a blonde and her bomber, all right? Further, I hauled your beautiful ass out of there or you'd be splattered from here to Miami by now. In
my
book that entitles me to more answers than you're entitled to questions.

"Now obviously, we both have some kind of a... let's say
vested
interest in the elusive Miss C. Maybe we can be of use to each other."

She didn't care if he'd walked over fire and chewed glass for her. Whatever he did now was too little too late. And she didn't trust him. "Fine. You go first."

He pushed out a grunt. "Not gonna give an inch on this, are you?"

"Now you're getting it."

He slumped back in the booth and shook his head. "OK. Fine. I've been hired to find her."

"That much I already figured. Hired by who?"

"Her old man."

Wrong,
Eve thought, instinctively distrusting anything McClain said. Jeremy Clayborne was the stuff of legends and broad speculation. No one had seen him in years. Three years, to be exact. Word was the brilliant but eccentric businessman who'd made his fortune as, among other things, a firearms manufacturer had built the equivalent of a bunker in his twenty-story chrome and glass hexagon building in West Palm Beach. Word also had it that unlike Elvis, Clayborne had not
left the building
during those past three years.

Three years almost to the day, in fact, that Tiffany, who had been under Eve's protection at the time, had nearly been abducted. Whatever Clayborne had been doing for the government at the time must have been big. So big that he'd insisted on and had been granted Secret Service protection for his daughter by none other than the president. Which was why Eve was on the scene in the first place.

"You're telling me you spoke with Jeremy Clayborne?" she asked with enough skepticism to make him shake his head again.

"No. I didn't speak to Clayborne. I spoke with Richard Edwards."

OK. This, she could possibly buy. Richard Edwards was the gatekeeper of Clayborne's private fortress within a fortress that was rumored to be stocked with everything he needed to survive away from the public eye into the next millennium, regardless that he wouldn't be around to see it. Edwards, reportedly, was paid big bucks to protect his boss's privacy. He did it well.

"When did you speak with Edwards?" she asked.

"Last week."

"Last week?"

"Yeah. Seems our girl hasn't shown her face in Palm Beach for a couple of weeks—maybe three."

Which was the same song Eve had been hearing all night at Club Asylum. Three weeks was a long time to be a no-show. And if Tiff really had been missing for three weeks, then Eve's speculation that it hadn't been Tiffany who had called last night was probably correct.

So what did that mean? Were Tiffany's disappearance and the attempt on Eve's life two separate issues, or were they wrapped up in each other in some way?

It made no sense at all that they would be. But then none of this made any sense.

Why she cared what McClain thought also fell into that category, but she asked anyway. "Do you think it's possible that she was kidnapped?"

"Whoa. Way off base. Edwards figures she's off on another lark, testing her boundaries, experimenting with her creativity or some such BS reserved for spoiled little rich girls who can't get their shit together."

She studied McClain's face. "You just told me what Edwards thinks. What do you think?"

He shrugged. "I think Edwards is right. He told me she seems to be dedicated, lately, to setting land speed records for blowing her trust fund. She's developed a yen for the West Palm Beach club scene, a habit of falling in with not-so-rising rock stars and taking them and their bands on pricey little side trips to Aspen or LA or wherever the spirit and her bank card move her. Usually she shows up again a few days later, her trust fund depleted by one to two hundred thou, and in total denial over the fact that she's been used. After resting and repenting for a few weeks, she starts the cycle all over again."

Man. Eve hadn't realized it had gotten that bad. Still, if that was Tiffany's MO of late it just generated more questions. "If Edwards knows what she's up to, then why did he hire you? If she runs true to form, he must figure that she'll show up eventually."

"He hired me because this time things are different. This time she's been out of contact for much longer than usual and her bank account has dropped by close to eight hundred thousand dollars."

A puff of air escaped along with Eve's disbelief. "Eight hundred thousand?"

"At least."

"So Edwards thinks what, then?"

"Same ole same ole. That whoever she's running with figures they latched on to the gravy train and they're riding it for all it's worth. They're using her for their fun while the neglected little rich girl is lookin' for love in all the wrong places, that sort of thing."

Sadly, it may come down to that. Tiffany was the product of an aloof, eccentric self-made billionaire and a socialite mother who had divorced Clayborne when Tiff was only six. The former Mrs. Money had then had the bad fortune to die, the victim of a car accident, barely a year after she'd gone wheels up and taken a healthy portion of the Clayborne fortune with her.

Tiff had moved home with Daddy Dearest. According to what Tiff had told her during those several months Eve had spent with her on protection detail and according to what she'd seen herself, Clayborne wasn't exactly father of the year material. Eve had seen the damage Clayborne's emotional and physical distance had done to Tiffany. She may have been there to provide Tiffany with protection, but more often than not, she'd played the role of surrogate parent. At the very least, big sister.

"Clayborne's no longer willing to let her get by with these little road trips," McClain continued. "He's pissed. Doesn't want her ruining her life hanging with trash rockers. Doesn't want her losing the portfolio he built for her. Per Edwards, Daddy's fed up with—how'd he say it?—'her reckless spending and flagrant disregard for decorum.'"

Eve conceded that McClain's explanation was plausible, but still... "Why isn't Clayborne using his own security staff to find her? Why, with the resources at hand to have his own people look for her, did he hire you?"

He lifted his coffee, swallowed. "I asked the same thing. The answer was, 'Tiffany can be very manipulative, especially where her father's employees are concerned'. Apparently Edwards and Clayborne discussed several options and decided an outside firm would be better suited to finding her. And the sooner the better. The necessity for discretion was brought up several times. Clayborne doesn't want her latest stunt making the papers. The tabloids have been having too much of a field day with her exploits lately."

"And what if it's not an exploit? What if this isn't fun and games?"

His dark brows furrowed. "You're really worried that something's happened to her?"

"Yeah," she said, nodding slowly, thinking of last night's attack and the bombing tonight. She had nothing—nothing but the phone call that was sounding more and more like a fake—to give her reason to think that what was happening to her somehow involved Tiffany. "I think I'm really worried."

He leaned forward over the booth, his coffee mug cupped between his big hands. 'Tell you what. If I were you, cupcake, I think I'd be more worried about things that go boom in the night."

If he only knew the half of it.

When she met his eyes, he was studying her face with concern. "Still not going to talk about it, are you?"

Not with him she wasn't. He wasn't a colleague. He wasn't a friend. What he was, was the first in a short line of men who had made promises, left her in a bind or let her down. And the fact that he'd come back on the scene in the middle of this, "
you're dead
"
debacle was beyond strange.

In the meantime, she refused to be distracted by the brown eyes that had made her heart go pitty-pat at eighteen. Told herself it was their recent scrape at Club Asylum and her concern for Tiffany that was causing all the palpitations now. "If you find her before I do, ask her to give me a call, OK?"

"I can do that," he said, watching her with an interest that
wasn't
entirely professional curiosity but
was
entirely disconcerting.

She nodded her thanks. "I've got to go."

He rose when she did, steadied her with a hand on her arm when she wobbled. God. She needed a bottle of ibuprofen and her bed. Fresh air was the next best thing. She breathed it in, deep and slow, when they stepped outside.

She also needed to get away from this man whom she didn't like, didn't want to talk to anymore, and didn't want to thank for saving her hide tonight.

"I'll drive you home."

"No," she said quickly. "My car's not far from here."

"Then I'll walk you to your car. For all you know, it's blown to bits, too."

One thing she remembered about McClain from high school: he rarely took no for an answer. This wasn't a hill she chose to die on. "Fine. Whatever."

He smiled at her reluctant concession and shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets. "Your gratitude just makes me warm all over," he said, falling in step beside her.