FROM THE LOOK on Kyle’s face, Sydney had chosen her outfit well—from her low-cut gold silk blouse designed to emphasize her breasts, to the teardrop emerald pendant nestled at the deepest juncture of her cleavage, to her sinfully short skirt. She’d paired the breezy blouse with black—black supersheer hose, and a sleek black cotton-blend skirt. She’d bypassed leather—some things were overkill. And while Sydney intended to play this game for the ultimate win, she would do so with finesse.
Adam was, after all, listening. Knowing he could hear the sound of her heartbeat from the tiny microphone Jillian had taped beneath her bra added a sexual undertone to the entirely serious affair. And since Adam insisted he handle the surveillance on his own, Sydney could say whatever she wanted without anyone but him hearing.
An idea clicked in her mind, but she filed it away for after she’d finished this business with Kyle. She had rung the bell of his swanky South Tampa townhome, then stepped back from the polished oak door and struck a sexy pose, in case he peeked out the peephole. Information now, games later. Not her usual mode of operation, but, hey, she could adapt.
Kyle had answered quickly. “Sydney! What are you doing here?”
She grinned slyly and grabbed the doorjamb. Just when she saw him relax in the belief that she was content to remain outside and chat, she swung past him and marched through the foyer. She’d no plans to wait for a formal invitation inside. She had work to do.
The entryway took her past a formal dining room and gourmet kitchen, then opened onto a huge great room with a fourteen-foot cathedral ceiling. A bank of windows across the far end provided an impressive, unhampered view of the bay, with Tampa’s growing skyline providing a cosmopolitan backdrop. Kyle’s couch and chairs were leather, his end tables and coffee tables sculpted stone and topped with hand-etched glass.
“Wow,” she said, turning a full circle to take in the rather esoteric, yet expensive, art gracing the walls. “You’ve certainly moved on up. If this were a high rise, I could sing the theme song to The Jeffersons.”
Kyle made a sound that resembled a laugh. He shut the door and hurried toward her, as if he had somewhere he needed to go.
“My luck changed. Look, Sydney, I’d love to show you around, but I’ve got an appointment in twenty minutes. Do you think we could do this later maybe?”
She speared him with a disbelieving look. “You know me, Kyle. Now or never.”
He watched her walk across the room, and slowly his eyes narrowed. “Why are you here, Sydney?”
Aha. Smart boy. She certainly wasn’t here to jump into bed with him. No matter that making him believe she’d come here for sex might have helped her, Sydney decided she’d only go so far. “I just need a little information. Nothing too hard.”
“Are you implying that I’m stupid?”
“I don’t toy with stupid men, Kyle. You must be pretty darned smart to have amassed enough money to afford this place. I don’t suppose you want to tell me how you did that?”
“What? You writing a book?”
She scoffed at his lame attempt at a joke. “Not presently.”
“I saw you made the New York Times again.”
His attempt to change the subject didn’t deter her, but she did acknowledge that perhaps Kyle was a tad slicker than she remembered. That was okay by her. She could be slick, too. “That’s why I’m here, in a roundabout sort of way.”
Not a lie. Not the truth, but most definitely not a lie.
She slid down onto the leather couch, crossing her legs high at the thigh so he could catch a glimpse of her lace-topped hose. She’d performed the move on Adam just this morning, but the lecherous look on Kyle’s face did nothing but make her force a smile.
He slung his hands in his pockets, a sure sign that she’d piqued more than just his intellectual interest. “What do I have to do with you making the Times?”
“I’ve been spending some time looking up some old friends from back when I was writing that book. You’re one. Adam Brody is another.”
She watched his face, caught the twitch in his jaw, the quick glance to the floor that spoke volumes. She may not have been trained as a private investigator, but as a writer Sydney had long made a habit of watching people, studying them, guessing the underlying meanings to their expressions and trying to stick around long enough to see if she was right.
Kyle didn’t like that she’d mentioned Adam. He didn’t like it one bit.
“Who?”
Lame-o. “Adam Brody. The architect? He used to have a condo across from mine.”
This time he hid his emotions behind deep thought. “Oh, yeah. 8-B, right? Light brown hair? Tall?”
“About six foot two. Caramel hair. Could lose yourself in those almond eyes. Do you know what happened to him?”
Sydney didn’t have to feign the wistful sound in her voice.
“You lost touch with him? Weren’t you two involved?”
Sydney shrugged. “We went our separate ways. I went on a book tour a year ago and then on vacation. I was gone a long time and when I got back, he was gone. I tried looking him up, but struck out. Now I have something I need to return to him. Since I made the Times, I’ve decided to move to New York. Be closer to my publisher.”
She and Adam had concocted this lie over breakfast in bed. They’d verified the idea with Jillian, who thought the ruse might work. The experienced investigator had worried a little over the inherent danger of confronting Kyle with too many questions, so they’d also discussed adding one more of Jillian’s gadgets to the mix. Sydney clutched the tiny “bug” in her hand, waiting for a chance to plant it in Kyle’s apartment so she and Adam could hear what might go down after she dropped her bomb and left.
“When do you leave?” he asked, his tone casual, but he’d licked his lips one time too many, a facial tic Sydney attributed to true nervousness.
“Tomorrow, actually. But I have these plans, blueprints, that Adam asked I take with me to Scotland, to keep safe. I don’t know, I guess they’re valuable. Anyway, I figured he’d contact me again after I got back, but I haven’t heard a word. Since I knew you’d been at the condo that night, I wondered if maybe you had some idea of what happened to him.”
“You remember that I was there?”
Small beads of sweat formed just over Kyle’s thin upper lip, causing Sydney’s heart to beat faster. She wondered if Adam could truly hear the pounding vibrate as hard against the microphone as it seemed to against her chest.
She attempted a nonchalant wave. “No big deal. It’s not like I think you’re unforgettable or anything.” She used the saucy teasing as a prelude to stand. She wandered the room, picking up a brass statuette of an ibis and examining it closely. “But I did want to look you up, see what you’ve been up to and how you’ve been doing before I took off. Then I thought if you knew anything about Adam, I’d do the two-birds, one-stone thing. No biggie. I’ll just toss the plans or something.”
“Toss them?” He voice cracked up an octave, before he cleared his throat. “Don’t you think they might be important?”
She wandered to the bookshelves and ran her fingernail over the perfect uncracked spines. Decorative, unread books. What a waste of trees.
“I guess. But I checked with his sister. She and Adam don’t get along,” she lied, inserting this detail to ensure that Kyle or whoever paid him to filch the plans left Renée alone, “but she said he sold his business, his place, everything and just took off. Sounded odd to me, but, hey, maybe he had an early midlife crisis or something.”
“Do you have the plans with you?”
Sydney arched a brow, but lowered it before she faced him. Odd question. She and Adam hadn’t planned on using her as bait, so she knew the answer she was supposed to give Kyle, to throw him off track. For an instant, she considered defiance. Maybe the bait thing wasn’t such a reckless idea. Yet the minute she considered rebellion and nearly told Kyle she did indeed currently have the last known copy of the plans, she imagined Adam cursing her on the other side of her microphone for inviting danger. Part of her wanted him to sweat awhile, just for fun, but she certainly didn’t want him charging up the stairs and ruining the whole operation.
“No, they’re with my attorney. I’ll just have him hang on to them. If I don’t find Adam first, that is.”
“You going to keep looking?”
Sydney pursed her lips, pretending the question required great effort and thought. “I don’t know. If the mood takes me. I’ve already given the guy more attention than he deserves.”
Ouch. She hated saying that, hated pretending that Adam wasn’t back in her life, even if it was to force the hand of a transparent opportunist. Maybe she’d never recognized the streak in Kyle since he’d never wanted anything more from her than sex, which, at the time, she’d been willing to give. Now she knew he was nervous, knew her visit had thrown him off-kilter. But she wasn’t done yet, and she certainly couldn’t leave until she convinced him that her visit had been merely the execution of a whim.
She continued strolling around the room, admiring his knickknacks, asking him questions so he could brag about his new business, which he’d supposedly started thanks to the investment generosity of a friend. In the middle of his rather dry diatribe on the rise and fall of day trading, she found a spot near his phone to hide the small listening device. Unfortunately, his phone was portable. If he wandered, they might not hear much. But, if he was involved in the theft of Adam’s plans, and acted in accordance with Jillian’s instincts, he’d soon make a frantic phone call to whomever was behind the plot.
And he wouldn’t have expected Sydney Colburn, devil-may-care romance novelist, to have planted a bug in his house so they could listen to his every word.
ADAM ADJUSTED the frequency on Jillian’s radio the moment Sydney emerged from Kyle’s townhouse. She glanced over her shoulder, and with no front window for Kyle to watch her through, apparently felt safe enough to dash across street to where he’d parked the Mustang under a thick, low-hanging tree. By the time she opened the passenger door and maneuvered her tight skirt and slim legs into the car, he’d found the sound of Kyle cursing.
“Guess he wasn’t so glad to see me, huh?” Sydney asked.
“Can you blame him? You are a merciless tease.”
“I think today is the first time anyone could actually call me a tease and get away with it.”
Kyle’s cursing quieted and they heard the clatter of him grabbing the phone.
“I wouldn’t presume to call you anything. You’ve already given me more attention than I deserve, remember?”
She waved her hand at him. “You know that was just part of the act.”
He suppressed a laugh, determined to use her comment as sensual leverage later on. “Fine. I’ll let you make it up to me.”
Her comment had muted the sound of whomever Kyle had asked for on the other line. He wanted to shush her, but figured doing so might cause him permanent physical damage.
Luckily, she’d heard and lowered her voice herself. “Oh, I’ll make it up to you, all right.”
At that, Adam reached across, took her hand and placed a sweep of kisses across her knuckles. “I’m looking forward to—”
“We’ve got a problem.” Kyle’s voice was strong at first, then started to fade.
“Phone’s portable,” Sydney said, frustrated.
Adam nodded. Jillian had warned him that they’d run into this problem lately with the standard under-the-table bug. But he hadn’t wanted to wait until Jillian could arrange a more reliable one that attached to the innards of the phone or a radar device that required a big vanful of equipment and qualified personnel to operate.
“Sydney Colburn came to see me today.” Pause. “Oh, yeah, I didn’t ever tell you about her, did I. She was there the night I took the plans.”
Well, at least they had their confession, inadmissible as it was. Adam had decided this morning that if the police needed useable evidence, then they could darn well get it themselves. Wiretap orders required time and a judge’s signature—and he didn’t have the patience to wait for the police to get either. He wanted his plans back, and he wanted them now. He’d already lost a year of his life. If he had a shot at speeding things up, he was going for it.
“Because she was a friend. I didn’t want you going after her. It’s been a year, and you’ve sold your plans to your foreigners. She hasn’t caused us any trouble. She probably isn’t any trouble now, except she told me that Brody gave her a copy of the plans for safekeeping. And he’s never claimed them. She’s looking for the dude now.”
They listened a few more minutes, Adam’s anger raging by degrees with each detail Kyle revealed. He had indeed taken a payoff to set up the fake courier pickup and had stolen the plans, though how he’d learned about the pickup order or that Adam had finished the plans was still an unknown. Kyle had been aware of Adam’s accident, though, from the tone of the conversation, the former courier hadn’t realized the hit-and-run was a setup until after the fact. Seemingly, his one job had been to steal the plans and for that he’d gotten enough cash to start his business.
He’d told Sydney that he had quadrupled the initial “investment” amount in less than a year. The nest egg now gave him a fearless attitude about his former—and still nameless—compatriot. He colorfully informed the person on the other end of the line that he didn’t give a damn how the situation was handled so long as his part of the scheme was never exposed.
The fact that Kyle also seemed intent on protecting Sydney from whomever he’d conspired with kept Adam from marching upstairs right this minute and beating the identity of the other person on the line out of his skanky, opportunistic body. Kyle bought the lie that Sydney had left the plans with her attorney, making them essentially untouchable. He also related Sydney’s untruth about Adam’s falling out with Renée, and Adam’s supposed disappearance into parts unknown.
“If he wanted those plans, he could have found her. I don’t think you have to worry, except now there’s proof that he designed that building.”
A long pause ensued. They could hear a whiny drone, as if the person on the other end of the line was shouting. Kyle only laughed. “That’s your problem. I did my part. Keep me out of it.”
He disconnected the call, sending Sydney into overdrive, the last part of their predetermined plan. She jogged back to Kyle’s front door, as best she could in her sexy high heels, and knocked.
Adam turned the radio back to the frequency that picked up the microphone taped beneath Sydney’s blouse. He intended to find that wire very, very soon. He might just remove it with his teeth, like he had her panties the night before. She did owe him after that crack about giving him more attention than he deserved. And he knew just how he planned for her to pay. Luckily for him, he knew Sydney would be game.
“Hey, I’m sorry. My cell phone is out of power and I was supposed to call my stylist when I was on my way to the salon. Could I use your phone for a sec?”
Adam lifted his binoculars. Kyle looked flustered, but nodded. “Sure. If you promise to let me know where you’re living when you get to New York. I’ve always wanted to go there. I could look you up.”
“Sure, it’d be a kick.”
For that, he’d make her do a striptease. He’d been thinking nonstop about those thigh-high hose with the lacy tops. He wanted to watch her roll each one down, slowly, revealing inch after inch of smooth, tanned leg. And the thong panties. Oh, he had definite suggestions for what to do with those.
He listened to Sydney go to the phone and punch in numbers. He heard her pretend to speak with Robert, her stylist. She did a great job of simulating chitchat, when he knew she was using the automatic call-back feature on the phone. When she hung up, she thanked Kyle and hightailed it out of there.
This time, Kyle lingered at the door, so Sydney went straight to where she’d parked the Corvette, got in and revved the engine. Only after she’d backed out of the space and turned onto the redbrick road leading out of the complex did Kyle disappear back inside.
Adam started the Mustang and followed, wondering what she’d learned. “Come on, Sydney. Speak to me.”
But the wire she wore worked only in one direction. He followed her around downtown, then onto the expressway, listening with frustration as she played with the radio, found a song she liked, then proceeded to sing along.
He sped up behind her, but the Mustang, a borrowed one at that, was no match for the Corvette. She maneuvered her car around a slow-moving truck, then dashed off the exit by Jillian’s office, putting at least four cars between them.
She lowered the volume of her radio and made tsk-tsk noises. “Bad boy, Adam. It’s not nice to speed in someone else’s car. You know the way back to Jillian’s office. Park in the shade, in that corner away from the street.”
Aha. He did as she asked, knowing she intended to start paying him back for that errant comment earlier. He scanned the quiet residential road that crossed in front of the office building. Though it was nearly one o’clock and employees on the way back from lunch turned into the lot with frequency, he’d parked in a fairly secluded spot. With Jillian’s tinted windows, he probably couldn’t be seen.
But neither could he see Sydney. She’d turned the radio back up and only when he opened the car door and stuck one foot out did she speak through the radio.
“Sit back, sweetheart. Relax. There’s no need to go anywhere.”
He swiveled around, but if Sydney was anywhere nearby—and he figured she was if she could see him—she’d hidden that candy-apple-red car of hers extremely well.
“What are you up to, Sydney Colburn?” he asked rhetorically, waiting while she flipped through the radio stations, gave up and from the sound of it, slipped in a CD. He sat back in the driver’s seat, but left the door open.
“Ooh, there we go,” she said. “That’s perfect. Smooth jazz. Saxophone. Remember that payback I owe you, Adam? Well, baby, here it is.”
Music? No way. He knew she had something naughty in mind, because, well, with Sydney that was pretty much a given. He heard the rustle of material, and knew the sound had to be close to her breasts.
“Do you know what I’m doing, Adam? I’m unbuttoning my blouse. I’m wearing a black bra, lace cups. Soft lace, but it still chafes my nipples, especially when I’m sitting here, all alone, thinking about you—what you do to me, what you’re going to do to me after I tell you where I’m hiding.”
Adam slammed the car door shut and grabbed the steering wheel for support. Holy moly. Sydney was about to have phone sex with him. One-way phone sex, courtesy of Jillian’s wiretap.