from his convention and all appeared well.
Maybe Lexie was right. Maybe the woman wasn’t cheating on her husband. He supposed it happened, that there were still married people who were faithful to each other. He just hadn’t had the opportunity to meet many of them in his two careers.
He’d told himself he wasn’t going to think about Lexie, but he might as well try to stop breathing. How could he not think about the woman when he could still feel her imprint on his body, still smell her scent on his hands? Every time he closed his eyes his brain insisted on throwing up the image of her naked, an erotic movie playing out against his eyelids.
Which meant he’d spent half the weekend with a hard-on and the other half annoyed with himself for getting so caught up with a woman that he let her distract him from his work. He was almost grateful when Monday morning arrived with its promise of mundane routine.
Except, of course, that Monday also meant facing Lexie again. He braced himself for her wrath. In his experience, women didn’t appreciate it when you walked out on them without so much as a note the way he had. They didn’t seem to understand that sometimes it was better not to say anything than to risk putting the wrong thing in writing. At least then you had less chance of your words being used against you.
“Good morning, Nick.” She looked up from her desk when he arrived, her voice cheerful, her ruby-tinted lips curved up in a smile. The sight of her, dressed in a clingy red top that dipped low in the front to show off an enticing glimpse of cleavage, sent a jolt through him. Apparently Lexie clothed could arouse him as much as the memory of her naked.
“Good morning.” He nodded to her, trying to act casual, trying to avoid staring.
“Did you have a good weekend?” she asked.
Was this a trick question? Was she waiting for him to bring up the events that had started off the weekend? Did she expect him to admit she’d shaken him up, and not in a good way?
“It was fine.” He threw the conversational ball back to her. “How was yours?”
She assumed a coy expression, her eyes sparkling with teasing mirth. “Oh, I had a very nice weekend. There’s nothing like fantastic sex to get things off to a good start.”
That she’d thought the sex they’d enjoyed was fantastic pleased him. Apparently he hadn’t lost his touch.
But then something black and ugly wrapped itself around him. She had been talking about the two of them, hadn’t she? “So what did you do this weekend?” he asked casually. “I mean, after Friday?”
“Oh, I went shopping. To the movies. Fun stuff.”
Alone, he hoped, then pushed back the thought. He didn’t have any right to tell her who to see or what to do with her time. One night didn’t give him any claim to her.
On this depressing note, he went into his office and shut the door. He focused on catching up on paperwork, and tried to forget all about the woman on the other side of the door.
But the woman apparently wasn’t going to let herself be forgotten. He’d scarcely pulled the first file from the stack on the corner of his desk when she came breezing into his office without even knocking. He looked up, annoyed. “Yes?”
“How did you spend your weekend?” she asked.
Here it was then. She wasn’t going to let it go until she’d wrung some kind of apology from him for running out on her. He frowned. “I really don’t have time to discuss this right now,” he began.
She sat in the chair across from his desk and crossed her legs, a good bit of knee and shapely thigh, clad in sheer black stockings, showing beneath the hiked-up hem of her black skirt. Did she do that deliberately, knowing the move commanded his attention?
“I know what you were doing,” she said. “You were watching Ellen Wittier. Did you find anything? Did her lover ever show?”
He shook his head. “No sign of the guy.”
“I’ve been thinking about this and I think you should let me talk to her.”
He shook his head. “No way. I don’t want her to get suspicious.”
“She won’t be suspicious.” She leaned toward him. “You said yourself she spends a lot of time alone. So she’s probably lonely. And lonely women like to talk. I’ll simply arrange to run into her somewhere and strike up a conversation.”
“Right. And she’s going to tell you—a stranger—all about her boyfriend?”
“I won’t be a stranger by the time we’ve talked a few minutes.” Her smile would have looked smug on anyone else. On her it was flat-out sexy. Confident. The smile of a woman who’d seen you naked and knew exactly what to do to make you beg.
Not that she’d made him beg, but it was a tempting fantasy….
He pulled his mind out of that trap and focused on business. The truth was, he wasn’t getting anywhere with this case on his own. And Lexie’s idea made a certain amount of sense. “All right. You can give it a try. But be careful. Don’t give anything away.”
“I won’t. Now didn’t you say you had her schedule?”
He opened a drawer and took out the case file. In it were the copies of Ellen’s date book that Wittier had given Nick. He handed the sheets to Lexie.
She scanned the pages, then tapped a pink-painted nail against one. “This is great. She has an appointment for a manicure at a nail salon in LoDo. I’ll make an appointment for the same time and it’ll be easy to strike up a conversation.”
He nodded and replaced the sheets in the file. “Let’s hope you find something.”
“Or maybe I’ll find out she really isn’t cheating. Our client ought to be happy with that.”
So it was “our” client now? He really couldn’t object to that. If she wanted to help out with a few investigations, he’d let her. But he’d make the rules about when and where. As long as he remained in charge, everything would be okay.
She stood and smoothed her skirt. “I’ll call and make an appointment at the nail salon right away.”
She turned to leave but he cleared his throat, stopping her. “Was there something else?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah.” His chest was tight. He hated this kind of thing but he wasn’t going to be a jerk about this. “About Friday night…”
He’d half hoped she’d jump in with another comment about how “fantastic” it had been, saving him from having to grovel, but no such luck. She fixed him with a level gaze and waited.
“Sorry I ran out like that,” he said. “Without a note. I—” He shrugged. “I’m not much for notes.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “About the note. Not that you left.”
Right. So she did think he was a jerk. He waited for her to let him have it, but she surprised him by sitting down again and pulling her chair closer. “It would have been okay if you had stayed,” she said. “I
