curls on her head to the toes of her high-heeled boots, she was a gold digger. It annoyed him that her husky laugh tickled pleasantly at the edge of his senses.
“The Vail ski patrol,” she said admiringly to Jess. “You must know some famous people.”
“Some,” he admitted. “Mostly, my job is a great way to get in a lot of skiing. As a bonus, I get to help people.”
“Like your friend, the deputy.”
“Kind of weird,” Jess said. “The three of us were buds in high school, and we all ended up in some kind of law enforcement jobs.”
“Ski patrol?” Paul scoffed. “Do you catch a lot of bad guys on the slopes?”
“Tell me about Mac,” Vanessa said.
Mac muffed a shot. He didn’t want Jess giving her too much information about him. Until he figured out what Vanessa was up to, he didn’t want to let his guard down.
“Mac’s dad was the sheriff,” Jess said. “A good guy. He moved down to Florida after Mac’s mom died.”
“Does he have other family up here?”
“Aunt Lucille.” Jess chuckled.
“Oh, yeah,” Paul chimed in. “Good old Aunt Lucille. She’s a real character.”
Jess picked up where he left off. “The woman has got to be in her seventies, but she still wears flashy clothes and skis like a demon. She competed in the 1952 Winter Olympics when Stein Eriksen won the giant slalom.”
“My kind of woman.” Vanessa bared her teeth in a grin. “A winner.”
“We’ll see about that,” Paul said. “Looks like you’re playing Mac.”
As she sashayed toward the pool table, her dark eyes held a competitive gleam. Mac decided there was no way he’d let her win this game. Unfortunately, when he broke the balls, nothing went in.
When Vanessa positioned herself across the table, he had a spectacular view of her cleavage. Earlier today, her vamping and prancing was a major turnoff. Now, when she wasn’t trying to be sexy, he was getting turned on.
With a crisp shot, she sank a striped ball and left herself another good lie.
“Nice,” Jess commented.
Gliding around the table, she nudged Mac out of her way. “I don’t like losing.”
She tapped the cue ball. Another ball tipped into the corner pocket. Now she had a problem. The cue ball was trapped behind two others.
Her eyes narrowed as she considered all the angles. When Vanessa banked the cue and sank the four, it was obvious that she knew what she was doing.
“You’re a hustler,” Mac said.
“I learned more in Vegas than just shaking my tail feathers.”
When her ruby lips spread in a smug grin, he had the insane urge to kiss the smile off those lips. He didn’t want to be attracted to this woman. She was a protected witness. For all he knew, she was up to her pretty brown eyes in danger and disaster—criminal activity of the worst kind.
He only had one more chance to sink a ball. He muffed it. Then she cleared the table and sank the eight.
Grudgingly, he offered approval. “Not bad.”
“Beat you.”
She tapped her cue against his chest and looked him straight in the eye. What was going on inside her head? He wanted to find out.
Mac was good in a police interrogation when he had the weight of the law on his side. Subtlety wasn’t his forte, but he was good at spotting a liar. “Buy you a drink?”
“I’ll have a Singapore Sling.”
“The Sundown Tavern doesn’t do cocktails with umbrellas.”
“Then, I’ll have the specialty of the house.”
As he led the way from the back room to the bar, Mac calculated her body weight and probable resistance to intoxication. It shouldn’t take more than three tequila shots to loosen her tongue. Then she’d be ready to tell him anything he wanted to know.
AN HOUR LATER, Abby stared down at the shot glass on the table. It would be her fourth. Though she’d managed to spill more than she drank, she was beginning to feel the effect.
“Drink up,” Mac urged. He was sipping soda, claiming that he couldn’t mix alcohol with his pain medication. “No need to worry. I’m the designated driver.”
She rose to the challenge, lifting her shot glass. “Here’s to the mountains.”
“To the mountains,” echoed Paul and Jess, both of whom were still nursing their first and only glass of beer.
She tossed back the tequila. The fiery liquid burned her tongue, but she held it in her mouth. When she lifted her beer glass to her lips as a chaser, she spit most of the tequila into the glass. Even with all these precautions, she was woozy. Clearly, Mac was trying to get her drunk. But why?
He rested his elbow on the table and gazed curiously into her eyes. “How are you doing, Vanessa?”
“Great,” she said defiantly.
“Feeling a buzz?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
Drunk or not, she could nail his hide to the wall. If he was a dirty cop, she was the woman who could prove it. As she stared back at him, she was momentarily distracted by the devilish spark of amusement in his intense blue eyes. Being with his friends had loosened him up, and he almost seemed to be having fun. When the tension in his face relaxed, it was a very interesting face. Good bone structure. Strong features.
Though he wasn’t as gorgeous as Jess and not as likable as Paul, she was intrigued by Mac. He was a man of many secrets. At the same time, he seemed straightforward and solid. Not the kind of guy who broke the rules. Was he dirty?
“You know, Vanessa,” he said softly, “from the first time I saw you, you looked familiar. Have we ever met before?”
“Nope,” she said.
“It seems like you know me.”
At the edge of her alcoholic haze, a warning bell went off. He was very subtly interrogating her, trying to get her to admit to a link between them. He suspected her.
Easily, she slid back into her Vanessa persona. “You and me? Honey, we don’t run in the same circles.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just am.” Though she didn’t physically move away from him, she tried to create some distance. “And if you’re using this as a pickup line, it’s not very good.”
“I don’t have to pick you up,”
