by Jill Shalvis
“Honest,” she finally settled on.
He met her gaze and there went that odd thing in the air again. Animal magnetism, he thought.
Or maybe not. Maybe it was just him. He had no idea. His woman-radar was off, way off, at least according to his little sister Amory, who was forever after him about “dating” the wrong kind of woman. He’d never had the heart to tell her that he wouldn’t exactly describe his relationships as dating, and he liked it that way. “Don’t have any reason to lie,” he said.
Zoe chewed on that for a moment and then headed through the archway back into the living room. “C’mon, I’ll show you your room now.”
She walked him through the rest of the house, which had clearly been lived in long and hard but, in spite of showing its wear and tear, was just as clearly well loved. The living room was classic Victorian with fantastic original antique moldings and lots of nooks and crannies, all filled with comfy chairs, bookshelves, pictures, and other knick-knacks.
Parker followed Zoe up a narrow set of stairs, watching her ass as they went. It was a very sweet ass, one that even her oddly old-lady dress couldn’t hide, and he went back to picturing some of her pretty lacy things beneath it. Black? Pink? Sheer?
At the top of the stairs she opened the first door on the right. Inside the bedroom was a full-size bed, a dresser, and a comfortable-looking club chair in a corner.
“There’s a bathroom down the hall,” she said. “I’m sorry, but the other two bathrooms in the house are out of commission until I hire a plumber, so we have to share. I’ll need the shower at seven tomorrow morning to get to work on time.”
While he was picturing her standing in her shower, freed from that dress and wearing nothing but suds, she went on.
“The rules,” she said. “We should go over the rules.”
This got his attention. “Rules?” he asked, wondering if one of them was going to be no weapons. If so, they’d have a problem as his job required him to be armed. And since he lived the job, he was always armed.
“No overnight shenanigans,” she said.
He waited for her to smile, indicating that she was kidding, but she didn’t. “Understood,” he said. “Though it’s a damn shame given our smokin’ chemistry.”
She stared at him for a full beat. “I wasn’t referring to you and me,” she finally said. “I was referring to you and any dates you might want to bring home.” She paused. “Smoking chemistry?”
“You denying it?”
She blushed yet again but held his gaze. And her silence. Finally she said, “Also, no dogs.”
Nice subject change. They both looked at Oreo, who’d followed them and was sitting at her feet, panting and looking up at her adoringly. She patted him on the head.
“He’s a rescue,” she said. “And he was neglected and abused by some asshole, so he doesn’t like men. And also there were a lot of mean dogs where he lived. Other dogs terrify him. Actually, everything terrifies him. He’s a nervous Nelly and I want to move slowly with him.”
“He doesn’t seem all that nervous to me,” Parker said.
Oreo farted audibly.
Zoe fanned the air. “See? Nervous.”
Parker laughed. “My guess would be he’s eaten some of your cookies.”
“Ha-ha,” she said. “But don’t be fooled. He can be a real killer.”
At this, Oreo slid bonelessly to the floor and rolled to reveal his belly, presumably for a good scratching.
Parker couldn’t help it; he laughed again and bent to oblige the dog.
Above him, Zoe sighed. “It’s probably because in comparison to him, you smell really good.”
Parker tilted his head back. “Ah, so you do feel it.”
She grimaced. “Look, sometimes things spill out,” she said around her fingers. “Ignore it.”
“Yeah, not really good at that,” he said.
“Then it’s a good thing I am.” And with that she hightailed it out of the room.
Oreo looked torn for a moment but then huffed out a sigh and got up and followed after his food provider.
Huh. He’d come to Sunshine for a boatload of complicated reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with a real vacation or enjoying himself, but he was doing just that.
Three
Parker went outside to retrieve his duffel bag, and while he was out there he received a text from his sister.
Thanks for the pretty mountain pics! You meet your wife yet? I wanna be a sister-in-law!
Parker shook his head. She never gave up. At age eighteen, Amory was a romantic, wanderlust spirit tied to their hometown and their parents in a way he’d never been.
She claimed to be okay with that. She was sweet and naïve and overprotected for good reasons, by both his parents and himself, but she lived for the daily pics he sent from wherever in the world he happened to be. She also lived to try to domesticate him, or at least get him to find a woman to marry.
He put his phone away and went back inside to find a set of legs sticking out from beneath the kitchen sink. Zoe¸ flat on her back.
He crouched at her side. “What are you doing?”
“Napping,” she said, voice muted since her head was in the cabinet. Her dress had ridden up to midthigh. She had a set of really great legs to go with her great ass.
“Need some help?” he asked.
“It’s just a slow leak, but it’s driving me crazy.” Her voice was strained, like she was trying to work a wrench. “I’ve got this.”
In direct opposition to the words, the sink began to drip faster.
“You’re making it worse,” he said, and bit back his grin when she swore beneath her breath and climbed out from beneath the sink, her face and hair wet.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“Absolutely nothing.” He grinned. “I have a question.”
She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze warily. “What?”
“Do I get a key?”
She seemed to relax marginally and moved to a drawer so full of junk he had no idea how she found anything, but she pulled out a key and slapped it into his palm.
He closed his fingers around hers. He waited until she met his gaze to ask the question he knew she’d been expecting before. “Do you greet all of your tenants with a kiss?”
“No.” She looked away. “And you’re my first tenant.”
“Setting a new policy, then,” he said with a nod. “My lucky day. So who’s the dentist?”
She stared at him as if just realizing something and whirled, eyeing the clock on the wall next to the fridge. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“He never showed!” she said.
“Your dentist?”
“No call, nothing.” She snatched a cookie from the plate and shoved it in her mouth. She chewed once, grimaced, muttered “Dammit!” and then spit it out into the sink.
He grinned, and she narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you laughing at me?” she asked.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She pointed at him. “Now that was a big, fat lie.”
“Never said that I couldn’t lie,” he said, “only that I choose not to.” Mostly. “So the dentist . . . he was a blind date?”
She blew out a sigh. “Yes. I’ve been stood up by a guy who hasn’t even met me yet.” She looked down at herself. “Which means it isn’t the dress’s fault. Ha!”
When he didn’t respond, she lifted her head, eyes narrowed. “You think there’s something wrong with this dress, too? My sister, Darcy, said it was a granny dress.”
Parker fought a smile. “I was thinking bingo night. But it wouldn’t have stopped me from taking you out.”
They stared at each other until his phone buzzed. Pulling it from his pocket, he looked at the screen. Oh shit, not good—a FaceTime call from his boss. “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to take this,” he said, and walked from the room and into the living room before hitting answer.
“’Bout time
,” Sharon Morton said. “Where the hell are you?”
He’d purposely answered with his back to the living room wall, a blank off-white color that could be anywhere in the world. “On leave,” he said. “As you well know.”
She gave him a steady look. “You can’t blame me for checking in on my most prized special agent.”
Uh-huh. Granted, there were only two hundred USFW special agents nationwide, and maybe he’d been touted as cream of the crop, but he knew damn well there were others every bit as good as him. “We both know you say that to all your men.”
Her mouth curved. Sharon, the SAC, special agent in charge, reported directly to the chief officer in Washington on each of the eight field regions of the United States. Most hated her because she ruled with an iron fist, but Parker had never had a problem with her. She was direct and tough as nails and knew how to let her team do what they did best: catch criminals.
She was also a curvy bombshell who, if you didn’t know her, looked like an actress playing the part. If you did know her, you knew better than to dismiss her as only a hot chick because she’d put your balls in a vise for even thinking it.
“I’m going to assume you’re at home,” she said. “And not directly disobeying orders not to follow the leads from your informant on the Carver case.”
Since that wasn’t a question, Parker said nothing.
“Because,” she went on in that same I-eat-puppies-for-breakfast voice, “if I thought you were in Idaho after all that happened—”
“You mean after the case was dropped?”
She gave him a long look. “That, too.”
The case was the bane of Parker’s existence. Tripp Carver was still on the loose, left free to continue his reign of terror on endangered big game. He was out there right now, bringing illegal gains into the country, things like rhino and elephant tusks, and tiger parts, among other things—all highly valued by antique dealers. These goods were then distributed and sold at high dollars.
As in millions of dollars, annually.
Last year alone thirty thousand elephants had been slaughtered for their ivory, which sold for $1,500 a pound. Illegal rhino horns commanded prices as high as $45,000 a pound, roughly equivalent to the price of gold.
They’d knocked out the dealers directly beneath Carver, but that wouldn’t slow the asshole down for long.
Parker and his team had been closing in on him, and in fact had located him at one of his storage warehouses in Oregon three weeks ago, when in the ensuing scuffle one agent had been killed and another injured.
Parker rubbed his ribs. A major setback, yeah, but he and the team had laid out a new sting—only to be one hundred percent shut down by Sharon. She’d pulled the plug on the entire operation, saying that they’d spent enough money on this case, that they had what they needed for now—twelve dealers in jail—and that there were other open cases that needed their attention, newer and shinier cases.
Parker disagreed with the stand-down order. His informant, Mick Diablo, an ex-smuggler for Carver—furs, skins, anything that commanded money—had heard a rumor that there was currently $4.5 million worth of rhino horns and elephant ivory sitting in storage that would soon be sold off—if the cache wasn’t located first.
Parker intended to locate it. And Carver while he was at it.
One week ago, Mick had slipped Parker a solid tip, a sighting of Carver in Rocky Falls, an isolated, out-of-the-way county in northern Idaho, some town named Cat’s Paw.
Parker hadn’t been able to locate Cat’s Paw on any map, but he’d found Rocky Falls. When he’d pushed back on their stand-down order, thinking he had a real shot at finding the Butcher once and for all, he’d been told in no uncertain terms to drop it.
Parker had said that he could do a lot of things pretty damn well, but dropping it wasn’t one of them.
In return, the powers that be had suggested that since he was so recently injured and all, not to mention grieving the loss of fellow agent Ned Force, now would be a great time to take some of his thirty-two saved vacation days. Or all of them. Maybe in the South Pacific.
Parker had thought Idaho a better fit. He wasn’t exactly sure what outcome he was hoping for, but he just had a feeling that somehow Carver would screw them and vanish. He couldn’t let that happen. “We are an inch away from nailing Carver,” he said to Sharon, watching her face carefully. “Why not go after him with all we’ve got?”
“You realize no one else in the entire office questioned me on this,” Sharon said.
“That’s because they all kiss your ass.”
“You should try it sometime,” she said dryly.
Yeah, maybe when he was dead. “We’re closer now than ever. Give me one good reason to back off.”
This garnered him another long look through the phone. “It’s not your job to question why,” she said. “It’s your job to get back into lean, mean fighting shape for the next case.”
“I told you, I’m fine.”
“Jesus, Parker, would you please knock that chip off your shoulder?” she griped. “You had a close call. Nearly bought the farm in fact. And we lost Ned.”
Parker did his best to keep his expression even, though it was possible he was grinding his back teeth into powder.
“The case was dropped and you’re taking some well-deserved time off,” Sharon said. “Go heal and grieve like a normal person. Learn to relax.”
He was healed. Mostly. The grief sucked, but he was handling it. “Maybe I am relaxing.”
“Why do I doubt that?” she asked, and shook her head. “Do you have any idea what I’d do with a month off?”
“Go stir-crazy?”
“Go to a deserted island,” she corrected. “With nothing but my loaded e-reader and a cabana guy to feed me grapes. Make that two cabana guys.”
“Yeah,” Parker said dryly. “That’s exactly what I’d want to do on vacation.”
She stared at him, the stare of a woman who knew how to bring a man to his knees. “Just tell me you’re not going to do something stupid and use your considerable skills to let me and this office down.”
He had no intentions of being stupid. As for his skills, he didn’t plan to share his plans or any of the details of his “vacay,” at least not at this time.
Hence his temporary housing. Wyatt had said his older sister had this big old house and would welcome the chance to earn some extra money. Parker had heard older sister and imagined her to be middle-aged, in possession of no less than five cats, and maybe a little wrinkly to boot.
Zoe was none of the above . . .
Which meant that, as a supposed investigator, one of the best of the best, he’d just broken one of his own rules—assuming anything.
Guess that made him the ass. Because Zoe couldn’t be much more than thirty and was deliciously curvy, with honey-colored hair that fell in loose waves to her shoulders and matching eyes. The-girl-next-door pretty even if she was dressed like a grandma in a long, floral print dress.
Not that it mattered. Not only was she the sister of an old friend, but also he didn’t mix business and pleasure.
Ever.
Even if she owned a goofy, wonderful big old dog that was currently drooling on his foot.
“Parker,” Sharon said impatiently.
“Have I ever let the office down?” he asked.
She swore and shook her head. “You’re a serious pain in my ass, you know that?”
Ditto, he thought grimly. “Love you, too,” he said, very aware