of her tongue to enter his mouth and touch the inner seam of his top lip.
Lex’s world swirled darkly. He opened his mouth, unable to stop himself from tasting her.
And suddenly, another camera flashed, capturing the moment.
Lex blinked, shocked instantly back to reality. He cursed viciously.
He could just see the headlines tomorrow: Half-Naked FBI Agent in Charge of High-Profile Vegas Homicide Locks Lips on the Dance Floor with Victim’s Younger Sister.
He was toast.
He had to get the hell out of here—and fast.
Lex lived for his job. The Bureau, his “kids,” the old Washoe County sheriff who’d pulled him back from the edge when he was being bounced from one foster home to the other—those things were his family. And he had no intention of blowing it all over a woman.
Especially this woman.
He grabbed her wrist firmly, his jaw tense as he escorted her brusquely toward the doors. The teeming, dancing crowd of bodies parting in front of him like the Red Sea. He ushered her out into the hall where it was quieter.
The doors shut sullenly behind them.
“You set me up, Jenna. Why?” he demanded. “Did you do this to compromise the case? What’s in it for you?” The direct approach, all business, was the only way for Lex to steer himself clear of his own libido right now.
She blinked those impossibly big, sparkling eyes. “I had no idea you were on the case, Lex.”
“You’d have to be living under a rock not to know!”
“I don’t follow all that—” she waved her hand dismissively “—technical stuff.”
He cupped her jaw, lifted it up. “Don’t give me the bimbo spiel, Ms. Rothchild. I suspect you have more intellect stashed in your pretty little head than Mr. Investment Banker with the rose wilting in his teeth back there. What game are you playing? What’re you trying to achieve here? If you’re trying to mess with this case because you have something to hide, I promise you now, I will find it.”
She swallowed, pupils darkening reflexively. Heat ribboned through him.
“Look,” he said, his voice coming out an octave lower. “It’s up to you what you do with that quarter million, but I’m outta here.”
“You still owe me a date, Lex.”
“I owe you nothing, Jenna.”
“If you want that money to go to charity,” she said with a defiant tilt of her head, “you’ll spend a few hours with me.”
He glared at her. “An ultimatum? Oh, that’s rich.”
“We had a deal.”
“What we have, Jenna, is a conflict of interest.”
“Not to my mind. And if you don’t play, agent, I don’t give.” She made a moue, and all he could think about was kissing those full, pouty red lips of hers.
Lex swallowed against the dryness in his throat. And before reengaging his brain, the words came out of his mouth. “One date. That’s it. The money goes to my kids. Then this is done. Over. Capiche?”
“What ever made you think I wanted—” her eyes teased slowly over his bare chest “—anything more?” she whispered. “I did this purely for charity, Lex.”
He muttered something unholy under his breath. Then spun, and stalked off toward the hotel lobby.
Jenna watched him go, admiring the view. His dark-blond hair glinted under the pinprick lights, and his neck was taut. The power in his shoulders transferred with each stride down the corded muscles of his broad back into the waistband of his tailored pants—pants that had been expertly cut to accommodate the rock-hard thighs she’d felt against her body while dancing. And suddenly, this really wasn’t about Daddy and the diamond at all. Not even remotely. This was about Jenna. What she wanted…and she wanted him.
Except he appeared immune to her charms. And her money.
Lex Duncan had just tossed down the gauntlet, because Jenna never failed, especially when it came to men. She always got what she wanted from a guy, and this one was making her determined to prove her skill.
And Jenna had learned from early childhood how to manipulate the males in her life, starting with her dad.
Her mother, June Smith Rothchild, had died while giving birth to Jenna, and she’d always felt that others in her family, including her father, saw her as somehow responsible for June’s death. And when Jenna and her older twin sisters—Candace and Natalie—had fought, Candace would get nasty and “remind” Jenna she “killed their mom.” These attacks had made Jenna feel like an outsider in her own family. Not to mention guilty. She’d become a sensitive and lonely child with a driving need to be loved, to please and to be liked.
And as she got older, Jenna sometimes caught her dad watching her in a certain way. It was at those times that Jenna knew she was reminding him of the wife he truly loved and missed. And although Jenna knew her father totally adored her, his feelings about his youngest daughter were complex. On occasion, especially after a few nighttime single malts, Harold would lash out irrationally at Jenna because she reminded him so painfully of June.
Those moments caused Jenna extreme hurt, and it became her goal to do anything she could to keep in her daddy’s good graces. To be liked by him, to be his favorite daughter. He was her rock. Her defense against the twins, against the nasty friends at school, and she’d found that flattery worked. It was the beginning of where Jenna learned to charm males, with very real results. She’d come to realize she could get whatever she needed this way.
It was the same in high school. Because of her seductive beauty Jenna was automatically labeled as promiscuous. So, to stay “cool” and “liked” she pretended to be “bad,” wore the sexy clothes, hung out with the in crowd. And she always managed to hide her giving heart, her sharp intelligence and her genuine sensitivity. No one had ever really gotten to know the real Jenna Rothchild.
And Jenna started to become the person she had so carefully fashioned. Because of this, she continued to attract the wrong sort of men post school, and she continued to escape with parties. Throwing fabulous events became her forte, her way to escape uncomfortable reality, to be the center of attraction—to be liked. And she was so good at the parties it grew into a business, her dad eventually hiring her as a key event planner for his major Strip casino—the Grand Hotel and Casino.
But deep down, something was missing. A pit was forming in Jenna’s gut—a longing for a sense of worth, something real. Some value and relevance in the scope of the world. And she’d begun to harbor secret fears that maybe she really had no personality after all. Then with Candace’s murder, the inner Jenna really began stirring, asking questions about what life and money were really all about when it couldn’t buy the kind of happiness her poor beleaguered sister seemed to have been yearning for.
Her dad approaching her for help in Candace’s case was a way to wrest some control of it all. To do something.
And
