“Yeah, I got it covered, Lucy.” He opened the door and listened. Silence. “But let me ask you a question.”
“Of course.”
He walked past the lockers, a long vanity, mirrors and sinks. Nothing. “Is this sister still technically the principal?”
Lucy laughed softly. “So the twin is as attractive as the real thing?”
“She has a certain appeal.” He checked the stalls. Every damn one was empty.
“Yes, Alex, my rules still hold.”
“Carajo,” he mumbled as the truth of what Jazz had done hit him.
“This is important. Stay on the course you’re on and don’t complicate things with sex.”
Alex spun around and stared at an emergency exit door that locked from the inside. Grabbing the handle, he swung it open to the hallway of the second floor.
“Your job is to keep everything under control, Alex.”
He managed to mute the blackest curse he could think of, but punched the wall as frustration and fury careened through him. “Everything is under control,” he lied.
“Even your libido?”
“Trust me, Luce.” He leaned into the hall and could have sworn he heard the ding of an elevator around the corner. The little witch had escaped. “With this one, that’s the least of my problems.”
Once Miles Yoder got the call and learned that Jessica was being “replaced” by a twin sister, he pulled himself from the bed and slipped down to the Palme d’Or. This he had to see. Otherwise he would have remained in his suite, snuggled peacefully with the woman he loved.
From the far end of the bar, Miles sipped his Highland Park single malt and remained in the shadows. Fortunately, he wasn’t the only man alone in the hotel bar that night. Would the imposter have the nerve to walk up to every one of them and ask his name?
If she was anything like Jessica, she just might. And he’d take it from there.
If she didn’t approach him, he wouldn’t approach her. As a twin sister, she may or may not be trustworthy. He couldn’t know from one quick meeting in a bar. Either way, she was doing him a huge favor, and he preferred to keep it that way. She was obviously good enough to fool some very discerning audiences.
When he saw her pause at the entrance and scan the bar, he tried to be objective. Would he know she was an imposter if he hadn’t been warned?
He’d spent quite a bit of time with Jessica over the past few weeks; they’d had several meals and long conversations. He had to admit, at first, he would think that woman was Jessica. Not just because of the face—which was eerily identical—but her posture, the tilt of her head, the body language as she nodded to the bartender and took a seat.
But Jessica would have known him on sight. And she never would have arrived twenty minutes late.
As she settled onto her stool, he decided he would have been suspicious because of her wardrobe. He’d never seen Jessica in anything but high-quality, elegant clothes. He couldn’t imagine her wearing army pants, or going out with her hair looking like she’d combed it with a rake.
Intrigued, he sipped his scotch and observed her. Everything in him wanted to talk to her, test her. But he hadn’t made it to the top of his game by gambling. He couldn’t take the chance that she’d tell the wrong person, the wrong “friend” at work.
He felt her gaze fall directly on him and he ignored her.
As the bartender brought her bottled water, she leaned forward and asked him something. He shook his head.
He saw her shoulders sag a bit. As the bartender walked away, she added, “Could you bring me a Cuban coffee?”
Miles took a bill from his wallet and slipped it under his cocktail napkin. Yes, Miss Jasmine Adams. You drink some coffee. You’ll be sitting here for a long time waiting for a rendezvous that will never take place.
He left the bar and strode through the historic lobby of the Biltmore, his curiosity satisfied. Now he was eager to get back upstairs to his soul mate.
The last thing Jazz expected when she opened the condo door at two in the morning was to find Alex watching porn. As she entered, he burned her with a look that matched precisely how she felt.
“Did you have a good time?” he asked, his voice low and humorless.
She shrugged off her bag and took a few steps into the living room, looking at the TV.
“I got stood up.” She shoved her hands into the pockets of her pants and indicated the screen with her chin. On it, two women writhed around in a huge bathtub with a heavily tattooed man. “Hope I didn’t drive you to that level of desperation.”
“Not even close.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and stared at the soundless TV.
She slowly approached his chair, wired from espresso and frustration. His gaze remained riveted on the TV, expressionless. He didn’t look like a sexually frustrated man reduced to watching porn to get his rocks off. His face didn’t have that raw lusty look she’d seen a few hours ago.
Her body instantly responded to the memory of the moment he’d lost control, the second that she saw him give into the power of passion. She’d never seen anything so flat-out erotic in her life. When Alex Romero lost control, she’d almost come right on the health club floor under him.
Then some guardian angel had intervened before her pitiable plan backfired in the most glorious way.
“So DR didn’t show, huh?” he asked.
DR? The question wrenched her back to the moment. “I didn’t go to meet with DR. I have no idea who that is.”
“Really?” He shifted in the chair, the colors of the screen casting an eerie glow on his jet black hair. A thick lock had fallen over one eyebrow, and another grazed his square jaw. Her fingers tingled to touch the strands.
“Allow me to introduce her,” he said, pointing the remote toward the TV. “As soon as she finishes that blow job, you can meet Desirée Royalle.”
Stunned, she turned toward the screen where a blond woman was indeed up to her neck performing bubble bath fellatio. “This isn’t the same movie we watched last night.”
“Nope. I hit the all-night video store.”
She dropped to her knees, and glanced at the bizarre scene on TV, then back to Alex. “How’d you figure out she’s DR?”
He froze the frame, then changed disks with a click of the remote. The machine droned and whirred, breaking the silence. Alex still didn’t spare her a single glance.
Sighing softly, she placed her hand on the armrest, as close to him as she dared. “I’m sorry about…how I did that.”
He barely raised one shoulder. “Forget about it.”
Like that would happen in this lifetime. If she hadn’t been hellbent on a mission, she’d have spent the last two hours…She looked at the frozen image on TV.
Like that. Upside down and inside out, underneath and on top. If he’d gone looking for a condom, she’d have run after him naked—instead of running to the Biltmore, only to get blown off by some mystery TV executive who wasn’t even a registered guest and never answered his cell phone again.
“Look,” he instructed.
The screen suddenly flashed to something more familiar. Wet Kiss. As the opening credits rolled over a woman’s face and pierced nipples, she slid her finger in her mouth and gave it a long, sensuous lick.
Jazz was in no mood to watch this trash again. “What am I looking for, Alex?”
“Her.”
“What about her?” The actress dipped her wet finger between her legs and said something to the camera before it cut away to the first scene.
“You didn’t recognize her?”
Jazz squinted at the screen. “Not a lot of face time in that last shot.”
“Come on, Jazz,” he prodded. “You’re the PI. Don’t you remember where you’ve seen that woman?”
He skipped back to the opening again and froze the screen on the actress’s face.
“Sorry, Alex. I’ve never seen her before.”
“You saw her today. She walked right past
you in the parking lot of Channel Five.”
“No way!”
“And look at her here.” He switched to the other disk, skipped a few scenes and froze the screen on the same blonde, this time with waist-length hair, wet from her bathtub frolicking. “That’s your sister’s source. Or maybe it’s her good friend and coworker.”
Slack-jawed, she looked from him to the TV screen. “How did you figure that out?”
“I kept thinking about it, and finally decided that it was during that moment in the parking lot that the sense that I’d missed something started to bother me.”
She knew that feeling, but she hadn’t experienced it today. Was she so wrapped up in pretending to be Jessica that she overlooked obvious clues?
Alex continued his explanation. “I saw that woman walking toward us and I knew I’d seen her before. And it wasn’t in the newsroom or anywhere else we’d been. After you disappeared tonight, I remembered the video last night.”
Jazz inched closer to the TV, sitting on the floor in front of him. “Hit play again. I want to get a better look.”
The action started up again. “The closing credits list a woman named Desirée Royalle—DR on your sister’s calendar. To be sure, I stopped by the triple-X video store and found two more of her movies. Both produced in Miami, by the way.”
The actress in the tub pulled back from her lover for a close-up.
“That’s the woman we saw in the parking lot,” he stated. “No doubt about it.”
“I hardly noticed her.” She remembered the moment, however. She’d been trying to navigate the steps in Jessica’s high heels.
“She was carrying a backpack and smelled like cigarettes,” he said. “She also glared at you for a long time.”
Realization rocked her. “She probably thought I was Jessica—and that I ignored her.”
Alex turned off the TV, leaving the room lit only by a golden sheen from the nightscape reflecting off Biscayne Bay. “But that’s not our problem, is it? Just go about your life as your sister, and when she comes back, she can explain everything to us.”
Jazz looked at him, dumbfounded. “What? You don’t want to go find this woman? What if she knows where Jessica is?”
“Jessica is working on a story,” he said quietly. He reached over to the end table and picked up a bottle of water. He took a long pull and then let his head drop back, black hair falling against polished white cotton. “We’ll just wait for her.”
“Like hell we will.” She rose to her knees and suddenly realized she was in front of his lap, on her knees, in the dark, not two feet from his body. The vivid memory of his throbbing erection against the sole of her foot knocked her right back down. “I’m going to find this Desirée and talk to her, with or without you.”
“How are you going to do that, Jazz? Blind me with lust again?”
Without the TV, the only sound was the soft hum of the air conditioner. He stared at her from under half-closed lids, his long eyelashes making black circles under his dark eyes. “What exactly did you have in mind, Jazz? Did you think you could fuck me unconscious?”
The raw language cut through her. “I thought…you might have to come back up here for a condom. And then I could…leave.”
He shook his head with a caustic laugh. “Do you seriously think I’d make a mistake like that?” He held up a hand as if to correct himself. “Though I admit I’ve been a little off my game since you first walked in that door.”
God, she’d hate to see him on his game. “I knew it was a lousy plan.”
“Lousy? Nah. I liked it.” His smile was forced. “But you knew that.”
“I really needed to get out on my own tonight.” The explanation sounded as pathetic as she felt.
“Your technique was creative, I’ll give you that. But reckless.”
“How so?”
“I could have skipped the condom,” he said. “I could have just taken you.”
It was more like the other way around, and they both knew it. “But that would go against your training.”
Slowly, he leaned toward her. Without a word, he reached under her hair, taking her neck in his hands and pulling her so close that his breath warmed her face as her heart skidded around her chest. “Everything about this assignment goes against my training.” There was no disguising the loathing in his voice.
With one strong hand, he eased her head to the side and pressed his mouth to her ear. “I’ve never lost a power struggle in my life, querida.” His husky voice sent shivers to every nerve ending. “And I assure you I won’t lose this one.”
He released her, picked up the water bottle, and walked toward his room. The next sound she heard was the latch of his door.
Jazz sat on the floor and stared at the empty chair. Instead of indignation, or even a healthy dose of repugnance at his macho threats and cold dismissal of her, she ached. In the most physical way. In the most private places.
Not that he was about to ease that ache. No, that would be tantamount to waving the white flag in their power struggle.
There was nothing for her to do but figure out how to find Jessica. Tomorrow she would start a skip trace on the porn actress and find her.
Tonight she’d study her target, and lick her wounds. She settled into the club chair, soaking up the warmth that his body had left behind. She picked up the remote, prepared to watch Desirée Royalle do all the things she wanted to do with Alex.
But a sharp, unfamiliar sense of despair settled over her. She dropped the remote on the floor and pushed herself out of the chair, her eyes and throat suddenly stinging. What could cause that?
She shook it off and glared at Alex’s closed door. It must have been all that Cuban coffee—or all that Cuban man.
Chapter
Nine
C onsciousness hit Jessica like a physical punch. One second, she was as deeply asleep as she’d ever been, the next moment she was fully awake. She opened her eyes, but squeezed them shut just as quickly.
Confusion gushed through her, hot and scary in her stomach.
Where was she?
She frowned and squinted, slowly letting her pupils contract enough to be able to stand having her eyes open. She turned her head, seeing only a blank wall. The movement brought a sense of relief, and she scoured her brain to remember why.
Of course—she’d been paralyzed. But now she could move her head.
She wiggled her toes. Her fingers. Bent her right knee. Glorious muscles—they worked!
Holding her breath, she turned her head in the opposite direction. Skinny bands of light danced in her hazy vision, filtered through window blinds. She frowned as her gaze traveled to the foot of the bed where she lay. Everything was pale and gauzy and neat.
She liked that.
She tried to swallow, but her throat was painfully dry. She lifted her head and propped herself up on the pillow. Lifting the heavy comforter, she looked down at her body, sucking in a little breath when she realized she was completely naked.
She closed her eyes as a forbidding shudder trembled through her.
She remembered sleeping. And waking up paralyzed. And…forgetting her name. The terror of that particular memory caused the hot rush in her stomach again.
Jessica Lynn Adams. I am Jessica Lynn Adams. Born April 18, 1976. She recited it as though it were her name, rank, and serial number. A comforting, safe piece of knowledge that she could cling to.
Jessica Adams. A reporter. An anchor. In Miami.
Miami…She scooted higher on her elbows and looked around. Was she in Miami now? Was she a guest somewhere? Overnight? With a man?
A quick glance at the pillow next to her assured her she’d slept alone. Yet she was naked and in a strange bed. Instinctively, she reached between her legs. Her flesh was dry, and not the least bit tender. She hadn’t been engaged in anything sexual.
But why was she undressed and in a bed? And how had she gotten there?
Had she driven there? Yes. Yes, she had b
een in her car. Her brand new beautiful car. She could still smell the fresh leather, hear the opening notes of a Mozart CD right after she’d turned on the ignition…and headed for…work. Had she been going to work?
She’d been going somewhere. At night. She squeezed her eyes shut, but her memory was totally blank.
Was this a hospital? Had she been in a wreck? Attacked in the parking lot?
And, Lord, why did her brain feel so utterly empty?
She tried to sit up, but nausea coiled through her. She clutched her stomach, certain she would throw up. Her tongue swelled and she couldn’t stop the gag, but nothing came out of her. Two more dry heaves followed, and her limbs started to quiver. God, she couldn’t remember being this sick.
She inched to the side of the bed, scanning the empty nightstand, the lone chair across the small room. A door with a brass knob. Absolutely nothing looked familiar. She stood on wobbly legs, glancing down at her body. Her stomach looked concave, and an angry purple-green, days-old bruise marred her left thigh. How long had she been there?
Cold, clammy fear wrapped around her heart.
“Where am I?” she whispered in a raspy voice. She managed one step to the window, using two fingers to lift a blind and peer out.
Crisp white moonlight reflected off black water. A rippling wave curled up and the translucent foam sparkled in the moonlight, just before it broke against a long stretch of sand. She could make out the faint swoosh-thump of the ocean.
She knew that sound; she’d been hearing it in her sleep. And the view looked vaguely familiar. It wasn’t home, because her view was thirty-seven stories in the air. That little memory warmed her.
Just as the next breaker rose, a wave of pain and sickness crested in her stomach, so sharp that she doubled over, falling back on the bed and gagging. This time, tears came, and her body exploded with chills.
She needed help. She really, really needed help.
Jazz.
The name echoed in her head, and if she’d had the strength she would have called it out loud. Jazz! Jazz was on her way to help her. She’d promised.
Fighting the pain in her stomach, Jessica forced herself off the bed. She had to find clothes. A phone. Answers.