watched with raised eyebrows as Max threw the balled-up letter across the room and swore. The charming playboy who’d brought her to his suite had totally disappeared. What the heck had been in that letter? she wondered, as she watched him pitch it before turning back to her with rage now in his formerly wicked eyes.
Max, she suddenly recalled from her research, hadn’t been all fun and games during his years of partying all over the world. He’d actually been arrested a few times for getting in fights. Mostly in other countries, and the Benton lawyers had always gotten the charges dropped. But the fact remained, even though Max Benton officially had a clean record, he’d racked up quite a few charges for engaging in physical violence.
Plus, noses didn’t lie, and Max’s was crooked with breaks. She took a step back, wondering if she could balance on her ridiculously high heels if it came down to her having to turn tail and run.
“Did you know about this?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
“Know about what?” she asked honestly, curious about what would have put him in such a state.
“My brother deciding to play God with my trust fund. His saying I can’t have the money from my trust unless I meet his terms.”
Well, that sounded like Cole for sure. Controlling was one of the first words that came up when making a list of his qualities. And if he had any idea that Max was planning to build his own competing hotel in New Orleans, Pru wasn’t at all surprised that he’d decided to play hardball. But another part of Pru, who had goals of her own, felt a twinge of guilt. Max most certainly would need his trust money to fulfill his hope of opening his own hotel, and she hated that her assignment had turned out to be of the dream-killing variety.
“What exactly are his terms?” she asked him, licking her lips nervously. “I know you and Cole have some weird history, but maybe you could just meet them,” she suggested.
Heaven knew she’d had to do a few pride-killing things when it came to meeting her brother’s needs. Like joining the PTA. However, Max didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who liked to work too hard to get the money he needed to make things happen. From what she’d read, he’d never actually worked hard for anything in his entire irresponsible life. Why would he start now?
She waited for him to respond with something ridiculous, such as how he was a Benton and therefore deserved to just have money handed to him with no strings attached. In her experience, most trust-fund babies had a sense of entitlement the size of Jupiter, and she doubted Max would be any different.
But instead of answering her, Max went completely still, his head inclining as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him.
Then to Pru’s surprise, his arm snaked out, pulling her forward, so that her body was flush with his and fully locked into his unexpected embrace.
Pru froze—well, at least the outside of her froze. Another part of her, one that she didn’t realize was still in working order after years of celibacy, stirred. Waking up, and to her great embarrassment, actually warming to the sensation of having Max’s entire body, including what felt like a rather large erection, pressed against hers.
“So this is what you do now that you’ve retired from the Revue?” he asked. “Run Cole’s blackmail errands.”
“No, this was a one-off,” she answered, breathless and completely flummoxed. “I’m actually studying to become a PI, and he threw me this case because none of the other people he’d hired to find you had come through. I guess I was sort of his Hail Mary.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “Cole sent others, but only you were able to find me,” he said. “Why is that?”
Pru shrugged. “I...um...kind of guessed.”
“You ‘kind of guessed’ that I was staying in New Orleans under a pseudonym?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “That’s kind of my MO. Someone brings me a case to solve, I gather all the information I can, then I just...guess.”
“And you guessed I’d be here in New Orleans, using Sorley Greer’s name?” he asked.
“No, not exactly. I didn’t even know who Sorley Greer was until you mentioned him tonight. But I’d read enough about you to know that you and Mike Benz were friends, and he happened to be doing his first stateside gig tonight. So I flew out here on a hunch.”
To her surprise, Max began to chuckle, his chest rumbling against hers. “You flew to New Orleans on a hunch,” he repeated. “Because you thought I might be in Sin’s VIP.”
“And I was right. My method worked,” she felt compelled to point out.
Max looked down at her, his expression now verging on slightly bemused. “That you were. But I think you might have missed something important in your information-gathering stage, when you came up with your plan to fly out here and trick me into inviting you into my private sanctum.”
His observation pulsed in the air between them, filling Pru’s chest with a weird combination of dread and anticipation as she asked, “What?”
“You didn’t notice in all those stories going around about me that no one’s ever said, ‘I played Max Benton for a fool, and I totally got away with it.’”
Pru swallowed. He was right. Max did not have a reputation for taking insults lightly.
Her sudden unease at his implied threat must have read on her face.
“Hmm, now you’re getting it,” he said, his voice almost soft with menace.
Before she could ask what exactly she was supposed to be getting, his mouth found hers in a lazy kiss.
Well...lazy on his part at least. To Pru, it felt like having her insides hollowed out as a pit of long-dormant lust opened up inside her stomach. Max Benton might have been a lot of things—a ne’er-do-well, a brawler, a playboy—but a bad kisser wasn’t one of them.
His mouth was confident on top of hers, practically guaranteeing a favorable conclusion for her if she let him keep going.
But she couldn’t let that happen. She was a professional. At least she would be after she got her PI license. Professional PIs didn’t let themselves get seduced by the people they tracked down.
Just as she was about to rally her mind and body to push him away, he cut off the kiss. So abruptly, that her legs felt a little shaky when he unexpectedly let her go.
Now he was the one who took a step back from her. “You really aren’t my brother’s flunky?” he asked, his eyes sharp with suspicion.
She bristled, flustered that her body now felt a little bereft, and insulted at the insinuation that she was completely at Cole’s beck and call, like one of his servants.
“It’s just a case,” she answered. “One I was happy to get before I officially become a licensed PI this fall.”
He studied her intently, as if he was trying to detect a lie.
She met his gaze straight on, because she wasn’t lying, not even by omission this time.
“In that
