YEAR LATER

“I’m going in.”

Ric laughed out loud, which was probably not the best thing to do, given the circumstances. “No, you’re not.”

But Annie only narrowed her eyes at his amusement instead of delivering a smack to the side of his head.

Which, he realized, was something she hadn’t done to him since she was thirteen. Still, he could tell that she was tempted.

“Look,” he tried reason. “I said you could ride along. There’s an unspoken understanding there that you’ll stay in the car.” Of course, they were both already out of the car, standing in this suckhole of a parking lot on the crap side of Sarasota.

At least they were standing in the shade.

Annie, too, tried reason. But hers was laced with attitude. “You can’t go in. And unless Hutch is on his way over…”

Damn, but he hated when she called him Starsky, even by omission like that. But this time he clenched his teeth and kept his mouth shut. This was definitely not the time or place to get into The Argument, which went something like: “Oh, that’s right, Ric, you don’t have a Hutch. You don’t want one, don’t need one, even though I’m standing right here, volunteering for the job. No, you prefer to believe—despite years of police work that proved otherwise—that you don’t need any backup whatsoever. You’d prefer to end up lying in an alley again, with the shit kicked out of you. You’d prefer to pee blood. Again.”

Annie’s second day of work as his new office assistant at Alvarado Private Investigations hadn’t been a particularly good day for Ric.

Her third day, however, had included his successful apprehension and delivery to the FBI of the shitkicker’s brother, who was wanted in four states for a variety of violent crimes. Ric had received a twenty-thousand-dollar reward for his diligent, but not particularly brilliant detective work. Twenty thousand. After adding up the time he’d put in, plus expenses, it worked out to just over four hundred dollars an hour, which was sweet. Well, sweet, with the exception of those particularly nasty twenty minutes during which he’d allowed himself to get stomped in order to gain possession of the kicker’s cell phone—which subsequently revealed the location of his even nastier older brother’s girlfriend. And again, it wasn’t Ric’s skill as a detective, but rather the fact that Nasty the elder had just broken the woman’s nose, that had worked to Ric’s advantage. For a slim five percent share of the reward, plus a truckload of revenge, she’d eagerly divulged the wanted man’s whereabouts.

Still, four hundred dollars an hour, however he’d earned it, wasn’t something to sneeze at. And the fact that he’d finally worked a lucrative case that didn’t involve bored, wealthy suburbanites cheating on each other was another reason to cheer.

Yet it was the getting-beaten-up-and-peeing-blood part that Annie brought up over and over again.

Along with the fact that she had been sorely misled by her own asshole-of-a-brother-Bruce—her name for him, not his—to believe that Ric needed an assistant rather than a receptionist. Annie had taken this position, she’d told him, not merely because she needed a job where she could bring along her separation-anxiety-suffering little rat-dog, but because she didn’t want to sit behind a desk all day. Yet all Ric wanted her to do was sit in his office behind a desk, take phone calls, and create—again, her words—stupid office forms.

Of course, the most recent stupid office form Annie had created—in under ten minutes—was an exceptionally well-organized client interview sheet. It was precisely what he’d needed—possibly with the exception of those two little boxes, one that said yes, one that said no, next to the words This client wants to do me.

He’d used her interview sheet with his current client, an extremely well-put-together older woman named Lillian Lavelle, who’d come to his office just this morning.

As Ric now watched, Annie got ready to go inside of Screech’s, the so-called gentleman’s club where a young dancer named Brenda Quinn had last been employed. They had been hired—he had been hired—to find Brenda, who was Ms. Lavelle’s recently deceased daughter’s former roommate. Ms. Lavelle apparently had a photo album that she wanted to give to the young woman.

The entire case was proving to be slightly more difficult than he’d first imagined. He’d taken it just this morning, expecting to be filing it in the “case closed” drawer long before noon.

It was now sunset, pink and orange clouds streaking the western sky, as a cooling breeze blew in off the Gulf of Mexico.

As Ric watched, Annie took off her jacket, tossed it in the back of her car, and ran her fingers through her light brown curls.

“Maybe he won’t recognize me,” Ric said as she fished in her shoulder bag for something.

He deserved the look of scorn that she shot him, because it was a stupid thing to say. There was zero chance in hell that Screech’s bouncer, Tommy Fista, wouldn’t recognize him. Seven years ago, almost to this very day, Ric had jammed his knee into the middle of Tommy’s gargantuan back as he’d cuffed him and read him his Miranda rights. Fista had gone to Raiford Maximum Security for five to seven for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.

Ric tried again. “I heard he found God in jail.”

As he watched, Annie glanced around the corner at the bouncer. Clearly Fista hadn’t found Jenny Craig in the lockup. The huge man was standing at the door to Screech’s, which was a fairly new establishment, having opened since Ric had left the police department last year.

Still, it hadn’t taken Ric much effort to learn that it was owned and operated by Vitardo Co. Strip clubs in this part of Florida were usually owned either by local scumbag Gordon Burns or his main rival, Miami-based Bernie Vitardo.

“So what’s the best-case scenario?” Annie asked as she applied lip gloss with one finger, leaning down to see herself in her little car’s side mirror. “Tony-the-bouncer takes you by the hand, leads you inside for a joyful hymn and prayer session before sharing—willingly—everything he knows about Brenda Quinn?” She straightened up, smacking her lips together as she put the container back in her bag.

“It’s Tommy the bouncer,” Ric corrected her. This was possibly the first time he’d ever seen Annie with makeup on, and he searched his memory, trying to prove himself wrong. But no. Aside from Halloween back when she was little, he couldn’t think of a single time that she’d gotten dressed up. She hadn’t gone to her school prom. And she’d worn one of Bruce’s suits and ties to her high school graduation. Although, as far as makeup went, what she had on now wasn’t much. It just made her full lips look shiny. More moist.

If that was possible.

Annie Dugan wasn’t traditionally pretty, at least not in a helpless-and-fragile delicate female sense. She did, however, have the fresh-faced, Irish American peasant-girl thing down pat, with big gray eyes and freckles, naturally curly hair, and a wide smile that could, at times, be incredibly sweet.

Her attitude, however, was pure twenty-first-century kick-ass dominatrix.

With the exception, perhaps, of her attachment to her ridiculous little dog, Pierre. Ric would’ve expected a woman like Annie to have a golden Lab. Something large and outdoorsy, capable of playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Something that galloped. Something friendly named Pal or Lucky.

Not this glorified fuzzball of a quivering rodent named Pierre, that she now hugged and kissed and gave a doggy treat to, all while reassuring it that she’d be right back.

“So what’s the worst-case scenario here?” she asked, plopping the rat-thing back onto the front seat of her car, making sure his travel bowl of water was full before turning her attention back to Ric. “A trip to the dentist with your two front teeth on ice in a Ziploc baggie? Or maybe another few days of pink urine? Gee, that’s always so much fun. Setting my watch alarm to go off every ten minutes so I can check to make sure you haven’t gone into shock from excessive hemorrhaging…?”

Yeah, telling her about the internal-injury thing had definitely been a mistake. At the time Ric had thought it would invoke a little sympathy, maybe make her extend the two-week notice that she’d given him back when she’d quit—on day one of her employment—when she found out she’d be sitting behind a desk.

Time was running out. He had only a few days left to replace her or convince her to stay.

And it was there that she had the unfair advantage.

He wanted her to stay. Rather badly.

“It wasn’t days, it was day,” he pointed out now.

“I’m going in to find Brenda Quinn’s last known address,” Annie told him with that hint of bitch-queen, do-not-cross-me, I-am-determined, you-are-toast that he’d first heard in her voice back when he’d met her, when she was eleven and he was fifteen. Almost twenty years ago. Damn, had they really been friends for nearly two decades? Although he hadn’t seen very much of her in the last ten years…

Still, it occurred to him that now, just as when she was little, the best way to deal with her might be simply to let her try. Just hang close to pick her up and dust her off in case she failed miserably.

It wasn’t as if there were any real danger hiding in that strip club.

It was, however, filled with relentless apathy, seedy despair, and unending depression. Spending some time in Screech’s might well make Annie decide against a career path as a private investigator.

“Okay,” Ric said.

She looked up at him with a mix of wariness and disbelief.

Ric nodded. “Go for it. Go find Brenda.”

“You don’t think I can do this,” she accused him.

“What does it matter what I think?” he countered. “It only matters what you do. Or don’t do.” Which was more likely going to be the case. But she’d find that out soon enough.

“Thank you, Yoda.” She gave a tug on the bottom of her T-shirt, as if that would somehow provide the illusion that she had real breasts.

And thank you, Mary Mother of God, for keeping him from saying that aloud, because he definitely hadn’t meant to be insulting, just realistic. Not that her breasts weren’t real. They just weren’t stripper-sized.

They were extremely nice, actually. And now that he was thinking about it, it was really her waist that wasn’t stripper size, which was good, because women who had that creepy, tiny-waisted wasp thing going on just didn’t do it for him. No, Annie was curvy and soft in a way that Ric truly appreciated. She was no skinny twig who might snap if you held her too tightly and he was so screwed because he was standing here, staring at her body, thinking about sex.

And that was a serious violation of rules one through about two thousand and twenty-seven in the male employer/female employee relationship handbook. It came right before rule number two thousand and twenty-eight: Never, never, never employ family or friends—because how the hell do you go from twenty years of friendship to employment without completely screwing things up?

Cursing Annie’s brother, Bruce, and his brilliant ideas—Bruce who was going to be mad as hell when he found out that Ric had actually let Annie go into that strip club, so he better never find out—Ric looked slightly more northward, and found himself meeting Annie’s gray gaze.

Her very cool gray gaze.

It was disconcerting as hell. If she wore heels, she’d be at least as tall as he was, and he was not a short man.

“You’re such a jerk,” she said, clearly able to read his mind all the way back to his real-breasts thought. “What, do you think I’m going to pretend I’m here to apply for a job as an exotic dancer?”

Well, yeah, that was what he’d thought. But sometimes it was best to keep one’s mouth firmly shut.

“I’m not stupid, Alvarado,” Annie continued. “Nor am I deluded. I know what I look like.” She laughed her disbelief. “Who’d pay to see me strip?”

With that, she turned and walked away, across the parking lot, around the edge of the building that kept Ric out of Tommy’s line of sight, toward Screech’s front entrance.

Pierre stood up in the front seat of Annie’s car, paws on the steering wheel so that he could watch her go.

Ric watched her, too—watched her T-shirt stretching across her back as she moved. Bruce had told him that one of her last jobs, after she quit the accounting firm, was assisting a woman who built stone walls. She was clearly strong and very…healthy. Very. With those long denim-clad legs leading up to a posterior that was…definitely healthy.

And in a flash, he could picture her, in motorcycle leather, sexy as hell, with seven-inch platform heels that would turn her into a total Amazon, strutting the stage with a whip, hooking her leg around a pole as she writhed to the pulsating music.

God save him.

She was out of sight now, and he peeked around the corner, far less patient than Pierre, who’d settled in for a nap as he waited for Annie’s promised return.

Across the parking lot, she’d stopped to speak to Tommy Fista, who not only let her pass, but actually held the door for her. When Tommy’s head was turned, she sent a quick grin and a thumbs-up in Ric’s direction, before vanishing into the club.

Max Bhagat, the head of the FBI’s most elite counterterrorist division, had a huge stain on his tie.

He was standing in the waiting area just outside of the Oval Office, and as Jules Cassidy approached this man who was both his boss and his friend, he saw that it was Emma-goo that marred the fine blue silk. It looked as if it might be oatmeal, with traces of Max’s one-year-old daughter’s favorite, mashed sweet potatoes.

“Here’s the file, sir.” Jules handed the sealed envelope over. “The news is bad.” He couldn’t say more than that out here, but he didn’t need to.

Max knew what they were dealing with. This was just confirmation. “Thanks,” he said, sticking the envelope into his briefcase.

The man had also missed a spot while shaving—a small patch near his left ear. No one else would notice it—at least those who didn’t know Max as the meticulously, obsessively well-groomed person that he was.

To Jules, who’d worked with him for years, he looked practically slovenly.

And yet his hands were steady, his eyes clear. He no longer seemed as if his head were on the verge of exploding, despite the gravity of the news he was here to share with the President.

“President Bryant will see you now, Mr. Bhagat.”

“Sir.” Jules had his own tie off and held out to Max before noting that it was, because of its pattern of teensy, barely recognizable SpongeBobs, perhaps even more inappropriate for a meeting with the U.S. President than that tie stained from Emma’s epicurean euphoria.

And sure enough, Max waved him off. “Put it back on. You’re coming in with me.”

“Excuse me?” His voice actually cracked.

But Max had already disappeared into the Oval Office, leaving Jules standing there under the impatient and somewhat disdainful gaze of the President’s secretary.

So he put his tie back on, straightened his collar, brushed the invisible dust from his jacket, and walked…onto the set of The West Wing. Except this was the real thing.

And the bald-headed man with his shirtsleeves rolled up and tie loosened was the real U.S. President.

Who probably wouldn’t even remember that phone call Jules had made to him on his private line—the number somewhat illegally obtained—during an international crisis a few years back.

There was a meeting already in progress—several members of the President’s staff were sitting in a circular grouping of couches and chairs.

“How’re Gina and the baby?” Alan Bryant was asking as he shook Max’s hand. “Emma, right?”

“Thank you, sir,” Max said. “They’re both doing well.”

“Mr. Cassidy, how’s the leg?” Bryant shook Jules’s hand just as warmly. “Sit, please sit.”

So much for his not remembering. “Fully healed, sir,” Jules reported as he and Max both sat down. “I’m back to speed.”

“Nice tie,” the President said, squinting at it more closely. “I’ve got a granddaughter who adores that show. I’ve watched it with her—funny stuff.”

“Yes, it is.” Was he really discussing SpongeBob with the leader of the free world?

“I’ve gotta get me a tie like that. Where’d you get yours?” the President asked.

Jules glanced at Max, who was busy opening the sealed file—no help was coming from him.

So okay. His President had asked him a question, he was just going to have to answer it truthfully. “I was on vacation in Provincetown,” Jules admitted. “In Massachusetts. Cape Cod. There’re stores there with…campy stuff.” To hell with that. If he was really out, then he was out in the Oval Office, too. He explained. “Gay-friendly stores.”

Max glanced up at that, but Jules didn’t look at him. It was entirely possible that, after this meeting ended, Max would inform him that he’d just exploded his career.

If so, so be it. Jules was who he was.

But Bryant was smiling. “Oh yeah,” he said as he reached down and opened one of the drawers of a nearby cabinet. “I’m familiar with Provincetown. My favorite nephew and his partner—spouse now—have a summer place there.” He took out a mahogany tray that turned out to be filled with a colorful array of new ties, and held it out to Max, as if he were offering hors d’oeuvres. “I’ve got a pack of granddaughters. One’s about the same age as your Emma. Her aim, too, is unerring.”

“Thank you, sir.” Max took a tie and put it on, slipping his soiled one into his pocket.

Jules took one, too, replacing it with his. “I’m happy to donate SpongeBob to a good cause,” he told the President.

“Unnecessary, but sincerely appreciated,” Bryant told him with a smile, but then morphed into the man Jules had seen on TV—gravely serious. “You’ve got bad news for me, I gather.”

“I’m afraid so,” Max said, handing him the contents of that file.

“Let’s have Mr. Cassidy give the report,” Bryant said, “since you’re obviously grooming him as your replacement.”

What the…? Was Max really?

Jesus yikes.

Again, no eye contact from his boss, the bastard, who told the President, “Cassidy’ll also be in charge of this investigation.”

Another piece of breaking news that left Jules speechless.

Of course, now Max did look at him, but only because he was passing him the proverbial microphone.

Not that this wasn’t completely typical behavior from his legendary boss—surprise the leaping bejeezus out of him, then make him give an impromptu presentation—his first in front of the U.S. President and his staff.

Jules cleared his throat. “The photo you’ve been given, sir, is that of Yazid al-Rashid al-Hasan. Our code name for him is Tango Two, due to the amount of time he’d spent as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man back in the late 1990s. We believe he’s heading to the United States, with the intention of carrying out a major attack on an East Coast city, probably New York, possibly Atlanta.

“We believe his point of entry will be the Gulf coast of Florida via South America. We’ve been watching a mob boss named Gordon Burns, who’s based in Sarasota—we believe his organization may have been responsible for smuggling another al Qaeda operative into the country, although we’ve uncovered no hard evidence to date. We’re working to find out the logistics—where, when, how.

“We have an agent inside,” Jules continued. “Peggy Ryan has been working as a live-in housekeeper at the Burns estate for the past two months.” And wasn’t she going to love it when she found out that Jules had just been assigned agent-in-charge of an investigation she was working, when just last year he’d been working for her? Especially when she’d transferred down to Florida to get away from him. “As of yet, she’s found nothing, but she’s one of our best and—”

“Cassidy doesn’t know this yet, but I was notified about an hour ago”—Max interrupted him—“that Agent Ryan missed her last check-in.”

And that was not good news. Peggy may have been homophobic, but she was a good agent—always meticulous with safety procedures such as check-ins. Although, good agents missed check-ins all the time, for a variety of reasons. Support staff generally waited to panic until an agent failed to file two consecutive reports.

“Under other circumstances,” Max continued, “we’d obtain the necessary warrants and shut Burns’s operation down. But apprehending Tango Two is a higher priority.” He was still addressing the President, but his message was also aimed at Jules. “As much as we would like to provide assistance to our missing agent, we can’t risk doing so at this time.”

Those words weren’t easy for Max to say. Jules knew that. Although he and Peggy had never gotten along, she and Max were friends.

“If we merely shut down Burns’s operation,” Jules added, “it’s likely that Tango Two will find a different route into the country—a route we may not know about.”

“Can’t we just continue to track him?” the President’s chief of staff asked.

“Well, we could, sir,” Jules said, “provided we knew where he was. Last report had him heading for Spain.”

Due to its proximity to Algeria, Spain had been, in the past, one of the jumping-off points for terrorists heading into the United States—a fact that the President and his staff knew well.

Jules stood. “If there are no other questions, please excuse me. I need to get to work, locating my missing agent.”

As Annie went into the dank darkness of Screech’s, she said a silent prayer of thanks to the unlikeliest pair of patron saints—Tommy Fista and, yes, Lillian Lavelle.

Alvarado Private Investigations’ newest client had swayed into the outer office early this morning, like some kind of stereotypical private-eye film noir fantasy.

Auburn hair surrounded a heart-shaped face with full lips. Predatory heat simmered in cat-green eyes. Painted nails, do-me shoes, and matching condom-size handbag—she had all her accessories in order. As for that skintight dress from Cleavage “R” Us…It was almost too funny for words.

Almost.

Ric, the big dick, didn’t exactly laugh as Annie showed Lillian—if that was really her name—into his office. In fact, his eyes appeared to have glazed over.

And Lillian, upon first sight of Ric rising to his feet to greet her, had actually gasped.

And okay. Yeah. With his tie loosened and the top button of his white shirt undone, long sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, Annie’s new boss—and her brother’s best friend from their high school days—was scary handsome. With his thick dark hair, deep brown eyes, and that face like a movie star, he was TDH to the max. But he was also about twenty years too young for someone as overripe as Lillian Lavelle.

Ric offered the woman his hand, they shook, and of course she held on way too long. Not that he particularly seemed to mind. Annie settled in, leaning against the filing cabinet in the corner, ready to take notes, but Lillian aimed her artfully made up eyes in her direction.

“This problem I’ve come to discuss—it’s a very delicate matter,” she told Ric in her hint-of-Southern-honey voice, focusing now on her hands, clasped demurely in her lap. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer at least the illusion of privacy.”

And instead of giving the woman his usual speech about how Annie was an essential part of his team, how she’d be taking the notes that she’d type up for him later, Ric gave Annie a dismissing nod.

So Annie had left.

Twenty-seven and a half minutes later—not that she’d been counting seconds—he’d buzzed her back into his office.

Where Lillian was using a rhinestone-studded compact mirror to reapply her bloodred lipstick.

She smacked her perfect lips together, murmuring “I can’t thank you enough.” She leaned forward in her copious sincerity, which gave her captive audience—Ric, seated behind his desk—a perfect view of that world-class cleavage.

The woman’s lack of subtlety was audacious, and again Annie almost laughed out loud.

She coughed instead, covering her mouth with her fist.

Ric shot her a glance—amazing that he could drag his gaze away from the hypnotic feast of plenty in front of him. He politely rose as Lillian, too, ascended from her seat.

Her every movement was graceful, fluid, hinting of perfectly choreographed sex.

“We’ve already discussed payment,” Ric told Annie as he handed her a file marked Lavelle in his ridiculously messy handwriting. “And I’ve taken her contact information.”

She bet he had.

There was nothing to do then but show the woman to the door.

But Lillian Lavelle was not to be hurried. Annie felt like a Mack truck next to her as she swayed her way out of Ric’s office.

Always observant, Ric was paying close attention—no doubt in an attempt to solve the mystery of exactly how Ms. Lavelle could be forty-something years old, yet still have such a freakishly perfect ass.

As Annie watched, the older woman turned to give Ric one last smile before she left his line of sight.

She then sped up, thank God, leaving only a trace of her perfume in the outer office as the front door closed behind her. Pierre had lifted his head as she’d passed his dog bed, and he now watched Annie, his brown eyes anxious.

“It’s all right, puppy boy,” she told him. “The mean lady is gone.”

With a sigh, he settled back down. All was right in his world.

Annie lowered the temperature on the window air conditioner, making it kick on, getting the air moving as she took the file to the receptionist’s desk.

“She was…rather dramatic,” Ric said, and she glanced up to see him in his favorite position—leaning against the door frame, thumbs in the front pockets of his faded jeans, left foot crossed over his right.

“Was she?” Annie asked, forcing herself to look down at the file folder, scanning the ridiculously sparse notes he’d taken during their twenty-seven-minute interview.

The case was a relatively easy one. A simple locate-the-whereabouts of Lillian’s deceased daughter’s former roommate, Brenda Quinn. Brenda most likely wasn’t trying to stay hidden. She’d merely dropped out of Lillian’s life, leaving no forwarding address, when Lillian’s daughter, Marcy, had died. According to Ric’s chicken-scratches, the client had made several cursory searches via the Internet, and come up cold.

She’d given them a photo of two young women on what looked to be the local public beach, out on Siesta Key. They were both in their early twenties, dressed in bathing-suit tops and shorts, hair pulled back into ponytails. Both were pretty—one dark, one fair. They were mugging for the camera, looking over their shoulders, showing off what looked to be matching tattoos—some mystical-looking Chinese characters that probably said kick me —on the small of their backs.

“Which one is Brenda?” Annie asked.

“On the left,” Ric told her. “The blonde.”

Annie looked at the photo more closely, trying to see any trace of Lillian in her dark-haired daughter’s face. Maybe a little around the mouth and chin…

As for the blonde, she had another tattoo on her right arm—three intricately drawn, intertwined calligraphy-style letters—a G, a B, and a J.

According to Ric’s notes, Marcy had died just about eighteen months ago. And okay, the final comment he’d scribbled was daughter dead from drug overdose. That had to suck.

But then Annie spotted the rate of pay for which Ric had agreed to take this case. “A hundred dollars a day? Are you out of your mind?”

He turned and went back into his office, obviously unable to meet her accusing stare. “Her daughter’s dead, she’s on a limited budget, it’s going to take me fifteen minutes on the Internet to find Brenda…”

Annie followed him. She’d spent some time over the past week that she’d been here trying to talk him into taking her on as a partner—paying her with a percentage of the money that she helped him bring in. Currently, she was on salary, and aside from that reward he’d gotten along with the excess blood in his urine, he hadn’t earned nearly a quarter as much as he’d paid her last week.

“I’m not sure this is going to work,” she told him now. “This partnership thing. But you probably have more experience than I do. So maybe you can tell me, how exactly would you give me a percentage of a blow job?”

Ric looked up from straightening the papers and files on his desk and laughed. And then he stopped laughing. “You don’t really think…?”

“Twenty-seven minutes for a basic locate-the-whereabouts interview…?”

It was possible that she’d rendered him speechless.

“It complicates things,” Annie told him, perching on the edge of his desk. “I mean, if we’re partners and you get a blow job, what do I get?”

“I didn’t get a…She didn’t…I wouldn’t…” Ric was actually flustered, but then he laughed his exasperation as he shooed her off his desk and sat down in his chair. He adjusted his computer monitor and pulled his keyboard drawer out. “What kind of scumbag do you think I am?”

“The male kind?” Annie countered, sinking into the seat that Lillian Lavelle had recently occupied.

“And, by the way, this partnership,” Ric pointed out, literally, with a finger in her direction. “You’re right. It’s not going to work. Because it’s not going to happen.”

“Well, duh,” Annie said. “Because the blow-job thing’s a deal breaker. I mean, unless you can guarantee that every time you get one, I get one, too…Although I’m not sure exactly how to work that into the contract. If the party of the first part receives fellatio, then the party of the second part— ”

“Not funny.”

“Yeah, actually it is,” she countered. “You’re laughing.”

He tried to stop. “No, I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“I’m laughing,” he practically shouted at her, “because I can’t believe we’re having a conversation about…this.”

“I can’t help but notice,” she said, keeping her voice a normal volume, “that you haven’t actually denied it. There’s been a lot of blustering and outrage, but—”

“I assure you that I have never had sex of any kind as payment offered for services rendered. Not with Lillian Lavelle or with anyone else.” There was a dangerously hot glint in his eyes as he looked at her. “Although if you really do want me to pay you that way…”

The Annie she’d been ten years ago would have flushed with embarrassment at that heat, even though she was well aware it was meaningless. Ric looked at all women like that. With genuine appreciation. Regardless of the woman’s shape or size or age.

Yeah, Ric Alvarado didn’t just look at women. He smoldered at them.

The Annie of ten years ago would’ve rolled her own eyes and backed away. Even the Annie of last year would have mumbled that he was a jerk, before slinking to her desk.

But the Annie that she was today was braver. Bolder. She’d stared down death, so she could certainly hold this mere mortal’s gaze.

And, in fact, he looked away first, closing his eyes and rubbing his forehead, muttering something in Spanish. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he told her, back to English as he glanced at her through his fingers. “I’m sorry. It was improper. Look, it’s going to take both of us some time. To establish an appropriate employer/employee relationship.”

“But see, we wouldn’t have to,” Annie pointed out, “if we were partners—”

“Stop.”

And there they sat, on opposite sides of his big wooden desk. Staring at each other. Ric was studying her face, as if trying to read her mind. He finally spoke. “You really thought that I would…do that with a client, with you in the outer office, on the other side of that door?”

It was entirely possible that she’d not only offended him, but also hurt his feelings. Except this was Ric Alvarado, Annie reminded herself. Unless he’d radically changed since he was in high school…“It’s been years since we’ve spent time together,” she told him. “I don’t really know you, you know, as an adult, any more than you know me.”

“I haven’t changed that much,” Ric protested.

Yeah, that was what she was afraid of. “I’ve changed a lot,” she countered.

He nodded. “I kind of noticed.” He pulled his computer keyboard even closer to him. “I should get to work.”

“May I ask one more question?”

“Yeah,” he said, even though his body language screamed no.

“Why did Lillian—who’s basically robbing you by getting you to agree to take her case for a hundred dollars a day. A woman with shoes like those is not on a limited budget, by the way—”

“One more question?” he reminded her.

“Why do you suppose this client wanted me to think that she’d paid the other part of her bill with her mouth?” Annie flipped through the file to the final page—a photocopy of both Lillian’s driver’s license and her credit card. Her date of birth was…“Her elderly mouth.”

“She’s not that old.”

“Born in ’60. That makes her…forty-seven.”

“Fifty’s the new thirty,” he pointed out. “And she was…extremely well maintained. Prototypical MILF.” At her blank look, he added, “Like Stiffler’s mom? From American Pie. You know, a mother I’d love to… ” He left the F to Annie’s imagination.

“Ew.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t make up the acronym.”

“But you used it.” She caught herself. “Sorry. She just…creeped me out. Everything she did seemed…calculated.”

“Yeah,” Ric agreed. “And I think you’re right. After you came back into the room, she turned her volume up to about thirteen. I noticed it, too.”

“It feels to me as if she enjoys screwing with people,” Annie said. “And call me crazy, but it seems to be pretty rudimentary deductive reasoning that if she’s screwing with me, she’s probably screwing with you, too. Although, with you, she might give literally a try, along with the figurative stuff.”

“I’ll consider myself warned,” he told her, trying not to smile but failing.

And yeah, it was a stupid thing to have said—warning him that Lillian wanted to jump his bones, like that was something out of the ordinary. It was probably rare for Ric to meet a female client who didn’t want to get naked with him.

“If I come off sounding judgmental,” Annie tried to apologize, “I don’t mean to. If you really want to let Lillian use you shamelessly, it’s not my place to criticize or disapprove.”

Ric laughed. “Yeah, that didn’t sound judgmental at all.”

“You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If you want to be a dog, you go be a dog, Ick-Ray. I don’t want my presence here to cramp your style.”

“For your information,” he told her quietly, “I don’t have sex—of any kind—with women I’ve only known for twenty-seven minutes. I prefer more meaningful relationships.”

And okay. This time, she looked away first. This time, she couldn’t speak past the sudden dryness in her throat.

He wasn’t done. “But it’s not my intention to cramp your style, either. I’m, um, aware of, um…Well, I’m just…glad you came home to Sarasota even though your mom and Bruce aren’t here anymore and…My year wasn’t half as rough as yours, but…I’m glad you’re here.”

Annie couldn’t keep tears from flooding her eyes. “I’m glad I’m here, too,” she said, forcing them back. “I just wish…Well, you know what I wish.”

Ric nodded. “You’ve communicated that effectively over the past week.”

She actually managed a smile. Stood up. “I’ll let you get to it. Finding Brenda Quinn.” She pulled the door shut behind her, but then stopped. Looked back at him. “How long will it take? You said…fifteen minutes?”

“Give or take a few.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“It will. Believe me. This is not going to be a difficult one.”

Annie nodded. “But if it does turn out to be difficult…Will you let me ride along when you go out to look for her?”

Ric sat there, behind his desk, his face expressionless. “If I let you ride along,” he finally said, “will you promise never to discuss blow jobs with me again?”

Annie laughed. “I promise.” She shut his door behind her.

It was just shy of two hours after that, after finding nothing on Brenda Quinn except cold information—the most recent dated eighteen months ago—that Ric had actually let Annie drive. He didn’t want to get dog hair in his car. Not that Pierre shedded. His poodle genes were dominant.

The more traditional, feet-on-the-street, Q&A method of sleuthing had finally brought them to Screech’s, where Brenda had worked as an exotic dancer as recently as one month ago.

And so it was thus, with the help of Saint Lillian of the Over-Endowed sparking that remarkable conversation in which Ric had confessed he was glad she was here, Annie was in Screech’s right now, showing him that she was capable of being more than a mere office assistant.

True, she hadn’t worked as a police officer, or even a security guard. Her total law enforcement background was limited to the shelves of books she’d recently read, and to a handful of courses she’d taken in college. But she’d always been a detail person, noticing things, remembering what she’d seen or heard or read. She was smart and a quick learner.

She wanted—badly—to work not for this man, but with him. Although, truth be told, as the clock ticked closer to the end of her two weeks of notice, Annie found herself coming up with excuses to stay—even if he didn’t immediately see the light.

Because as much as she bitched about sitting behind a desk, she actually liked spending time in Ric’s little office, provided Ric was there, too. She particularly liked the way he smelled, but okay, he was Ric, for the love of God. She was the kid sister he’d never had. Plus, he had a girlfriend.

Some blonde who lived in Ohio, and came into town twice a year on vacation.

Funny, though, how her name hadn’t come up during their blow-job conversation. As in, Gee, Annie, I would never cheat on my perfect blond girlfriend from Ohio by messing around with a client.

“Can I help you?” The woman who was approaching Annie from the back of Screech’s was clearly management. A few major clues were that she was in her sixties, and unlike most of the other women in the room, she had all of her clothes on.

What kind of woman would choose to manage a strip club over, say, a Bath & Body Works? Aside from a heavy smoker with perfume allergies?

Maybe a woman who’d started as a dancer herself to feed her kids when her husband bailed—maybe she would go on to manage this type of place. Or a woman who believed fiercely in the importance of her own independence…

Or maybe she was just a woman who didn’t care what happened, as long as she got her share of the pie.

While Annie wouldn’t have chosen to come here for dinner, the food that went past her on heavily laden trays looked and smelled good. And the tables and floors were clean.

Someone in here obviously cared about some things.

So Annie took a gamble. She held out her hand. “Hi. My name’s Louellen Jones. I work for a local private investigator. He hired me as his assistant, and I thought he meant assistant assistant, but I’m really just his secretary. This is my big chance to impress him, so I’m hoping you can help me…”

Robin’s sister, Jane, always got a little crazy when her husband went, in macho-SEAL-lingo, wheels up. All of SEAL Team Sixteen had gone overseas this time, their destination kept secret even from their long-suffering wives.

Janey was pretty convinced that her husband was heading to Afghanistan, where support from the other branches of the military was not always available, thanks to the unending fiasco in Iraq. She was never a happy camper when Cosmo was gone, but this time she was even less happy.

Robin sat in his sister’s kitchen, watching her go through contortions to find child care for tonight for his nephew, Billy, who sat in his high chair, happily drooling on a tray filled with Cheerios, chewing his own tiny fist.

Jane was a movie producer, and tonight she was being given an award by the director’s guild. It was some kind of Important Women in Hollywood thing that she really couldn’t miss. But Cosmo’s mom, who lived not too far away in Laguna Beach and usually sat for Billy, had tickets to a touring-company production of Aïda.

“I don’t have to go,” Robin told her as she scrolled through the address book on her cell phone. “I can stay with Bill.”

Jane looked surprised. “You were planning to go?” she asked. “I thought you were still doing press junkets for Riptide. ”

“No,” he told her. “I’m done. We did the last of this round before noon. I actually have a night off. Tomorrow, I start the film-festival appearances. It’s crazy, but a lot of them picked us for their lineup.”

“That’s because you’re good. Even when you sell out and do a popcorn movie.” She went back to searching through her address book.

“Seriously, Jane,” he said. “I can sit for Billy tonight.” How hard could it be? He smiled at the baby, who was a total clone of his sister. Same dark hair, same green eyes, same Mediterranean complexion. He was going to be a good-looking kid, a drop-dead handsome man.

The baby gave him a very soggy, toothless grin.

Of course, Jane looked nothing like Robin—they’d had different mothers. Their father had liked variety in his women. Jane’s mother was Greek, his own was Irish. Robin had darker hair than Jane, but much paler skin and blue eyes. Black Irish, it was called. Although for Riptide, makeup had once again dyed his hair and eyebrows blond. He’d been blond in four out of the five pictures he’d done. This time, after the film had wrapped, he hadn’t bothered to get his hair dyed back.

“I’m not going to do that to you,” his sister told him. “Not on your one night off.”

“I really don’t mind.”

“Really, Robin, I’ll find someone else.”

And suddenly dawn broke. “You don’t want me to babysit for Billy,” Robin realized.

Jane closed her cell phone. Exhaled. “You’re right, I don’t. We don’t. Cos and me. We’ve talked about it, Robbie and…” She shook her head.

The kitchen tilted. “Are you serious?”

She was. It was obvious that she was. She finally looked at him. “I’m sorry, but…”

Robin stood up. This was surreal. “Wow, so much for the diatribes about tolerance that I’m always hearing when I come over. Gay, straight, or bi, you’re my brother and I love you. But I don’t want you near my kid. ”

Janey actually laughed. “This isn’t about your being gay, you idiot.”

“Shhh,” he said. It was an automatic reflex, which was stupid, because there was no one here to overhear them.

“You drink too much,” Janey told him. “Cos and I don’t want you to sit for Billy because you drink too much.”

“Yeah.” He felt sick to his stomach. “Right. Good excuse, Jane.”

“It’s not an excuse.” She was mad now, too. “Don’t be a fool. You were sitting right here when I left a message asking Scotty to sit.”

Scotty, as in their mutual friend Scott, who lived with his longtime companion, Jack…

“Look at you, you’re drunk right now.” Jane’s anger morphed into thorough disgust.

“I am not,” he protested.

“You’re always extra stupid when you drink,” she informed him.

He’d offended her, and he knew he should apologize, but…Robin got mad all over again. Because this was ridiculous. Did she and Cosmo actually think…? “I mean, yeah, I had a few with lunch, to celebrate the end of the press junkets, but I’m not drunk. ”

“There’s always something to celebrate, isn’t there?” Jane asked, crossing the kitchen to pick up Billy, who was starting to get freaked by their raised voices.

“Yeah,” Robin agreed. “Yes. There is. Life is good, Janey. This movie’s going to be huge—I’m a star. I’ve finally made it. I’m allowed to celebrate.”

“And I’m allowed to say that I don’t want you celebrating around Billy,” she shot back. “You of all people should understand why.”

What was she saying? “I’m nothing like my mother,” he whispered. He’d spent the first part of his childhood in an ever-widening black hole of neglect. Neglect that Janey had rescued him from. No doubt about it, his ethereally beautiful mother had loved him, her only child, but she’d loved her gin and tonics more.

“Yeah, well. I think you got way more than your blue eyes from her.” Jane had never been one to hold back. She covered Billy’s ears. “I think it’s time you stopped bullshitting yourself, Robin.”

“And maybe you should take your own advice.” He could play this way—unsheathe his claws. “You’re just jealous because I’m the success.”

She laughed in his face, because they both knew the truth. He was the one who was jealous—of her happiness. “Yeah,” she said. “Congratulations. Your agent, your manager, and your accountant all really, really love you. That must make you feel great.”

Robin kept his mouth shut over words he didn’t want to say, words he’d never be able to take back. Instead, he went out the door, slamming it behind him.

Jesus, he needed a drink.