So they’re all wolves. In some way, shape, or form. Maybe that’s the key element I’ve been missing. Even herd animals have their alpha males, right? Problem is, some wolves are just plain wolves. I don’t think there are too many willing to embrace their inner sheep. Not for the long term. And maybe I fall into that category. Because, frankly, I’d still rather howl at the moon with a wolf than have a baaah-ed time with a good guy.

Chapter 12

She felt too damn good. Better than too damn good. And she was in his arms. The very last place she should be . . . and the only place Riley wanted her.

He tightened his arms around her and felt her fold her body into his. His heart thudded. Might have even stumbled a little when her fingers dug into his back as he heard a muffled sniffle.

I can’t be all those things. But I’ll be damned if you don’t make me want to be.

What the hell was that about anyway? Where had that come from? He just wanted to get into her pants, right? That’s what the sleepless nights were about. The cold showers. Bottom line, that’s what he wanted, what all Parrish men apparently wanted. Good—make that great, mind-altering even—sweaty, headboard-banging sex. Nothing more, nothing less.

Okay, nothing less, definitely. But he seemed to be having a little problem with that “nothing more” part.

Maybe he could blame it on an instinctive male reaction to tears. Say anything to make them stop. Although, from the look on her face moments ago, he wasn’t sure who had been more momentarily horrified by those glassy eyes. She didn’t strike him as the sort to indulge in crying jags. And even now hers were silent tears, if she was still crying at all.

There is one way to find out, his little voice helpfully suggested. All he had to do was touch her face, look into those eyes again. Yeah, there’s a brilliant idea. Dance even closer to the edge.

And yet there went his hand, touching her chin, tipping it up. What he found there was like a punch to the gut.

Huge and glassy, her eyes were completely un-Tanzy-like. And suddenly there was no edge to dance on. He was free-falling.

“I am sorry,” he said, his voice gruff with sincerity. “About all of this.”

She merely held his gaze, lips pressed tightly together as she visibly tried to gather her control.

He cleared his throat, struggling mightily to land on his feet, regain some control of his own. But God almighty, he wanted to taste that mouth of hers. Wanted to do something, anything, to make them both okay.

His fingers tensed with the desire to pull her closer, drop his mouth to hers, to finally take what he’d been wanting since the last time she was in his arms. All those lectures he’d given his dad nudged at his conscience. And helped him relax his hold on her. But he was beginning to understand at least a part of his dad’s side of the argument. That, at times, being purely professional sucked.

He let his hands skim down her arms, but lingered, unable to break contact altogether. He might never have the opportunity to touch her again. “I can promise you that I’m doing all I can to find this guy,” he vowed.

She sniffed, then hiccuped, which brought her dry smile back to life, albeit a watery one. Another hiccup followed. But instead of embarrassment, she laughed. “God.” Hiccup. “Real smooth.”

His smile came naturally then as well. For all that her innate frankness appealed to him, her steady sense of humor, especially when it was self-directed, drew him in even more. “If I said you were cute when you hiccuped, would you whack me?”

“No.” Another hiccup. “But I’d seriously question your sanity.” Wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks and taking several slow, deep breaths, she moved from his grasp and stepped away.

He recalled his half-formed fantasy of how this moment would play out, of telling her who he really was. That fantasy had ended with them devouring each other. He supposed he should be happy he’d come to his senses in time.

She put more distance between them as she collected herself, took several more deep breaths, and held them, trying to get rid of the last of the hiccups. It worked, but she stayed on the other side of the room from him.

He decided he wasn’t all that happy.

But the alternative was to quit. Then he could pursue her free of any other conflict of interest. Which, of course, he wouldn’t do. For business and personal reasons. No way was he walking away from this, or her, until he had SoulM8 locked down or strung up. Besides which, ending their professional relationship might mean ending the only relationship he could hope to have with her. It was pathetic, settling for what he could have instead of going for what he wanted. But there it was. And hadn’t he been doing exactly that since the day his knee blew out?

“Is there anything we can do?” she asked, her voice still a bit rough. “I mean, I thought about telling the authorities after I got the note. Actually, I didn’t think about it, but my friends suggested it.”

His attention snapped back—mercifully—to the real matter at hand. “You told your girlfriends about this?”

She looked surprised by his sudden sharp tone. “I’m sorry,” she said when he merely looked at her expectantly. “I’m still not used to the other you. You keep switching back and forth. It’s confusing.”

“The other—?” He swore silently, wishing he’d never heard of her stupid sheep/wolf theory, much less adopted it. “Never mind that. How much did you tell them?”

“Not much, really. We were actually talking about you.”

He refused to ask, despite the teasing spark that returned to her far too expressive green eyes. She seemed quite willing to shift the tension away from her problems, and onto his problems.

She didn’t move closer, but her steady regard seemed to shrink the space between them nonetheless. “Don’t you want to know why I was talking to my friends about my great-aunt’s assistant? Don’t you want to know how I characterized our date?”

“It wasn’t a date.”

Her smile faltered and he hated that, but, like Millicent, she was a formidable opponent. He didn’t think there was an edge she wouldn’t dance too close to.

“Right,” she said. “I forgot. For you it was surveillance. I guess you were relieved when I was forced to take you along as my escort. Beats skulking around in the halls, right?”

Talk about a loaded question. “I was just glad to help out.” He shrugged at her wide-eyed snort of disbelief. “Okay, yes, it helped me watch out for you. But I’d have done it anyway.” Great, just hand her the edge, why don’t you?

Still, she only managed a dry smile. “Thanks. Your loyalty is impressive.”

He could have told her it had nothing to do with professional loyalty and everything to do with getting to touch her while she was wearing that nothing of a dress Clarisse had no doubt gleefully chosen to torture him with. But he wasn’t that suicidal.

“Well, since you dragged it out of me,” she said, sitting down.

Did her legs really just go on forever, or what? he caught himself thinking as she crossed her legs and tucked the toe of her slipper behind her calf. Even dressed like an unmade bed she made him sweat.

“I was actually telling them about how you took control of the situation at the radio station and how at odds it was with the man I knew you to be.” She laughed then, but there was a sharp edge to it. “Boy, you really weren’t kidding when you said I didn’t know you.”

He sighed and muttered beneath his breath.

“What was that?”

He looked over at her, hands on his hips. “It was a stupid idea, okay? The whole sheep thing. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m sure I suffered more trying to pull it off than you did having to deal with an overly polite, anal-retentive employee.”

“Rather than what?” She folded her arms. “What are you really like, then, Riley?”

She was infuriating. He threw up his hands. “This.” He gestured to his T-shirt and sweatpants. “I normally dress a little better, but this is pretty much what you get.” A broken-down athlete trying his damnedest to make his father’s lifelong business pay off so they could both move on to doing something they really enjoyed. Which stopped him dead in his tracks. Had he really been marking time with all this? He knew he’d been doing it for Finn, to make enough so the old man could retire. He managed not to snort. Retire from something Finn had only ever worked at hard enough to make ends meet. But it was all Finn knew. That and women.

Standing where he was at the moment, Riley wasn’t sure he knew anything about either. And now was certainly not the time to ask what in the hell he really did want to do with his life. Because, the thing was, he thought he’d already done it. He’d made the pros. Now he was doing this. Because this was what there was to do.

“Riley?”

He snapped his gaze to hers. “I’m just doing the best I can, Tanzy. Your aunt wanted me to stay behind the scenes as much as possible. The rest . . . well, I take full responsibility for that.” He sighed and let his hands drop to his sides. “Maybe we should just step past this and focus on what’s important.” He let himself take one last long look at her, then reluctantly let go of every fantasy he’d had regarding her. “You said you told your friends about the note. Did you tell anyone else? Did you say anything to Martin?”

She stared at him for another eternally long, very disconcerting moment. His control wavered, as it was wont to do around her and probably always would. He thought if it went on another second, he’d snap and just cross the room and drag her off the couch and plant one on her. He’d either get kneed in the balls . . . or her naked on the carpet. At the moment, he was almost willing to risk it.

Then she sighed, and her gaze dipped to her hands, which she folded tightly on her knees. He wasn’t sure if she was wrestling with the same urges he was, or if she’d been thinking about the case the entire time. He was really going to have to stop lecturing Finn about women, he decided. It was quite obvious to him now that he’d been talking out of his ass.

“I haven’t told Martin yet. I was planning to today.”

“Well, I think maybe it’s best you don’t. For now, anyway. Is there some way you can meet him in person?”

“You think he’s my stalker and you want me to invite him over for tea?” All teasing and sparks were gone now.

“He may be leaving you strange notes, but that doesn’t mean he’s dangerous. Just—”

“Deluded?” Now she snorted. “Come on, I know what you told me, but I still can’t imagine it. It’s just not in him.”

“Well then, invite him over so I can get a print off a water glass or something. I’ll be right here the whole time, so you won’t be in any danger.”

“Didn’t you just say he probably thinks this is some sort of fantasy romance or something?” She didn’t wait for him to respond, she just shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe this.”

“Fine, then help me get his prints and eliminate him from the short list without ever having to let him know you suspected him in the first place.”

She shot him a look. “I don’t suspect him.”

“Okay, fine. You let me do the suspecting.”

She didn’t react to that, instead she switched gears. “My friends think I should take this to the police. But I just don’t see how that will make a difference. He’s not doing anything illegal and he hasn’t tried to harm me, or threatened me with harm. Could they do anything?”

“Not much at this point. I explained that to Millicent when she hired me. However, she felt then, and we both feel now, that it’s important to keep pursuing this, at least to identify him. Whoever he is,” he added.

“And if it’s not Martin—and it won’t be—what will that give us?”

“With a name, we can do some digging, maybe determine his character, get a better handle on what he’s capable of. See if he’s done anything like this in the past, has any assumed names, that sort of thing. We can also monitor his movements and so on.”

“You mean tail him?”

“That’s one way. There are others.”

She looked at him, but apparently decided she didn’t want to know just what that involved. “For how long? Until he latches on to someone else?”

“As long as we think necessary.”

She sat back, folded her arms again. “Or as long as Millicent pays you.”

“Tanzy—”

She shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I understand what she was trying to do. It’s just frustrating to have her go behind my back.” She gave a humorless little laugh. “Although why that surprises me, I have no idea.”

“Would you have listened to her?”

Tanzy just looked at him. “That’s not the point. I didn’t think he was a problem. I should have never have mentioned him to her. I hate it that I’ve worried her with all this.”

“She just wants to know that you’re safe. She loves you very much.”

Tanzy sighed and Riley found himself wondering again what was going on in her mind. He knew for a fact how much Millicent cared about her only grandniece, and looking at Tanzy now, he felt that love was most definitely reciprocated. But he’d only dug as far back as her college years, mostly to establish how she’d come to be close to her current crop of friends, to rule out the possibility that they had any hand in this.

Still, he knew very little about Tanzy’s distant past and wished he’d dug back a bit further. Although there was nothing professional about his curiosity now. He did know the general story, that her mother hadn’t been around much and had stuck her only child in boarding schools while she jetted around the globe. He was surprised, knowing Tanzy and her great-aunt a bit better now, that Millicent had put up with Penelope treating her only child so callously. But then, he wasn’t privy to all the skeletons in their closets.

“I’m going to have to call her,” Tanzy said, more to herself than to him. “Tell me something, is Frances really ill? And for that matter, is Millicent really in Philly?”

“I couldn’t say about her friend. I know Ms. Harrington is visiting her.”

Tanzy blew out a breath and raked a hand through her hair. “Okay.” She stood and walked over to him.

He stood, too, when she stuck out her hand.

“Don’t be so suspicious,” she said with a wry smile when he regarded her hand warily. “It’s not like I’m secretly a black belt or something. I just wanted to thank you.”

He could tell her that having her in his arms, even briefly, had almost been payment enough. Fortunately he was able to keep his mouth shut. For a change. He took her hand. “Thank your great-aunt, for caring,” he said.

“Oh, I will.”

Her tone had him raising an eyebrow. “She really was only trying to protect you, you know.”

“I know.” Tanzy turned away then and abruptly walked to the door.

“Where are you going?” He assumed she’d have more questions for him.

She looked back at him as if surprised by the question. Like it wasn’t any of his business. He didn’t at all like how that made him feel. Problem was, that reaction was far more personal than professional.

“I’m going to pack.”

“For what?”

“I do appreciate that she’s worried about me. But I don’t see the need to stay here any longer. I realize your employment is up to my aunt. But my residence here is not.”

“It makes a lot more sense to stay here,” he said, surprised by this sudden turn of events. “Security is established, everything is monitored.”

She was moving to the door again. “I appreciate that but—” Then she stopped, turned. “Just how much of ‘everything’?”

Riley shot her a look. She wasn’t the only one who could do that. “I’m not a pervert, okay? I don’t have your rooms directly monitored.”

“There’s a relief,” she said dryly.

Continuing to give her the same look, he went on. “But most of the rest of the house is. The entries, exits, exteriors, interior halls, that sort of thing. I doubt you have anything set up like that at your place, so—”

“Oh, you’re not coming to my place. I’ll talk to Millicent about your retainer. I’d feel better knowing who this guy is, too, if for no other reason than to prove you wrong about my editor. But it’s only right that I foot the bill. However, I don’t need a watchdog.”

“Excuse me, but have you forgotten the note you received?”

“No. But your presence hardly thwarted that little maneuver, now did it?”

Riley gritted his back teeth. “We didn’t think he’d make contact. Which is just my point. Until we do get a better handle on him, you should stick with the established program. It’s not perfect, but it beats the hell out of being an open target.”

He saw her try to hide the little shudder. She wasn’t very good at it. But then, she wasn’t very good at hiding much of anything. Another reason he needed to stay on top of her.

He tried not to groan at the unintentional visual that brought up.

“You keep saying ‘we.’ You’re in business with your father, right? So is he in on this somewhere? Have we met and I don’t know it?” Her eyes lit up. “Was he the older man at the dance?”

“No.”

“Ah. Well then, who was that guy anyway? Another client?”

“My father is on another assignment,” he said, deciding he’d revealed enough. If she wanted to find out about his past, she could do it on her own time. “As for the ‘we’ part,” he doggedly continued, “I told you, I use outside resources.”

“Which you get how?”

“The same way any business does, through connections made doing business.” So what if, in his case, the business had been football? Sporting events had long been a venue for making outside business connections. So his had been done on Astroturf instead of a putting green, it wasn’t all that different, was it?

“How did my aunt come across Parrish Securities?”

Riley propped his hands on his hips. “What is it, exactly, that gives you such a low opinion of me, huh? I explained about the dance and the note—”

“It’s not that. It’s just that she usually goes for big and centuries-old, not independent mom-and-pop. Or son-and-pop, as the case may be.”

“Nice to know your opinion of small businesses is equally flattering.”

“I didn’t mean it as a slam.”

His expression told her what he thought of that. “We got the referral from a friend of hers that we did some work for a few months back. Mr. Waterston.”

Tanzy’s eyes widened. “The guy that just got hammered in a headline-making divorce?” She smiled. “Nice work.”

Riley glared at her. “You don’t know all the details. Nor will I be telling them to you.”

Folding her arms, her smile widened. “Now you’re sounding more like the prissy Riley I’ve come to know and—”

“Prissy?” He was spluttering, he couldn’t help it. “I wasn’t prissy. I was—”

“Punctilious? Sententious?”

“Remind me never to argue with a writer. I was just trying to blend in with the background. Fly under the radar.”

“You mean my man-eating radar.” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Nice to know my own flesh and blood has as high an opinion of me as the media does.” She held up a hand to stall whatever response he would have made. He was still wishing he’d shut up long enough to hear what she was going to tack onto “the Riley I’ve come to know and” blank.

“I know what you’re thinking. And God only knows what you’ve read about me in your”—she crooked her fingers in a quotation mark gesture—“research.”

“Tanzy—”

“Sure,” she interrupted, “I date. Sometimes more often than others.” She eyed him directly. “But Santa notwithstanding, I don’t sleep around. I mean, men have their definite uses and all—”

He couldn’t help it. He rolled his eyes.

She pounced on it. “What? It’s only okay for you guys to be sexist when you refer to women?”

“Have you ever heard me refer to a woman like that?”

“I haven’t been around the real you long enough to know how you refer to women. Besides, I was generalizing.”

“You do that a lot.”

“It goes with the job. And I thought you said you read my column. Surely you’d know, then, that we are just as shallow and obsessed with sex as you men are.”

Now he smiled. “I respect that you believe that. But I highly doubt it.”

“Which was my point exactly, I believe.”

“Oh, we may think about sex most of the time, but we like to fool ourselves into believing you need us for more than just that.”

“Oh, but we do.”

He lifted a brow, thinking she looked too damn sexy, sharply decimating his entire sex while wearing bunny slippers.

And just when in the hell had he developed this fetish with animal footwear, he had no idea. But he suspected it coincided with the first time he’d seen her in them.

“So,” he asked, “you do realize we can be witty companions, good providers, and defenders of home and hearth?”

She shrugged. “That, too, I suppose. I was thinking of the important stuff.”

“Which is?”

“The ruling triumvirate of genetic male abilities. Bug squashing, tire changing, and moving heavy things.”

He couldn’t help it, he laughed. He’d never figure out how it was that she could simultaneously annoy and arouse him. But she did all the time, and made it look effortless.

“But getting back to my original point, I’m just saying that I don’t necessarily deserve the tag that’s been hung on me.” At his questioning look, she gritted her teeth and clarified, “Man-eater.”

“I never said you did.”

“You don’t have to when the rest of the world does it for you.” She lifted a hand to stall his argument. “I’m not even complaining. About the rest of the world, that is. I accept that as part and parcel of revealing things of a personal nature to a readership of over a hundred thousand people. I guess I just thought, when it came to Millicent, that she knew me better than that.”

“I suspect she does. Maybe you should take it as a compliment. That she thinks so highly of your appeal to the opposite sex as to warn me about it.”

She snorted. “Highly overrated, trust me.”

“I might have agreed. At first.”

Her mouth dropped open, and he just grinned.

He had to hand it to her, caught bare-faced, she ended up smiling and rolling her eyes. “Nothing wrong with my ego, apparently.”

“I said, ‘at first.’ “

Now that gleam came into her eyes, that carnal one he’d dreamed about. He took a mental if not physical step back when she stepped more fully into the room.

“So, what changed your mind? Was it my sterling wit? Or, being a man, likely it was Clarisse’s wizardry with a needle?”

“Honestly?” he said, though he had no idea why. She was teasing, expecting him to dish the nonsense right back at her. But apparently her say-what’s-on-your-mind-at-all-times attitude was catching. “It was a lot of the former and admittedly a little of the latter. But you got my attention way before that.”

“Oh?” She looked a little more unbalanced by his revelation than she sounded. “Do tell. A woman needs to know these things. For future reference, of course.”

She’d pulled it together admirably, but he was still smiling, knowing he’d snagged the edge away from her, even if only momentarily. Holding her gaze, enjoying his grasp, and not really thinking about possible future fallout, he said, “It was the first time I saw you in those things.” He pointed to her feet. “That and the Niners jersey. Which is something else we really have to talk about. San Francisco? Just because you live here—”

But she wasn’t interested in talking football. “What do you mean, the first time?”

Oops. Oh well, it had been fun having the upper hand while it lasted.

“The only time you’ve seen me in that jersey was last night.” Her eyes widened as his cheeks probably colored just a touch. “You said you didn’t have voyeuristic tendencies.”

“No, I said I wasn’t a pervert. No red-blooded male can claim to have no voyeuristic tendencies. We picture all women undressing. It’s genetic.”

She shook her head, smiling despite herself. “The more I get to know the real you, the more amazed I am you pulled off the sheep act.”

He wasn’t sure, but he thought his feelings might be a little hurt. “I’m not all that bad a guy.”

She simply looked at him, reserving judgment.

“Well, if it helps improve your opinion of me, and I see where it can only go up, I never actually watched you undress.”

“Meaning you have imagined it.”

She just shook her head when he shrugged and smiled shamelessly. “Like I said, it’s—”

“Genetic,” she finished with him. “Yeah, yeah. Go on.”

“Fine. It’s really not that big a deal. I happened to be down here that first night when you came down to raid the fridge. I was closing up the house and watched you scuff down the hall. Where did you get those things anyway?” He pointed at the ragged pink ears that drooped to the floor.

“My friend Sue. She has an odd sense of humor. But they happen to be really comfortable.”

“I can see that.”

Her gaze narrowed even as she smiled sweetly. “I can have her get you a pair if you’d like.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“So, why didn’t you say anything?” she asked. “That night, I mean. Instead of ogling my bunnies?”

“I was being stealthy. I can do that when I’m not being punctilious and sententious.”

She finally broke down and flashed a genuine Tanzy smile. “Is this the witty companion part on display?”

“So I’m no Cary Grant, but at least I make the occasional effort to tamp down my inner troglodyte.”

She hooted. “Oh, please say you’ll let me use that in a column.”

“You mean you haven’t already?” He’d been teasing, but the slight hint of color that bloomed in her cheeks was very interesting. He wondered just how much Riley the Sheep had influenced recent “Tanzy Tells All” musings.

“Only because I hadn’t thought of it.” Her smile caught his, she hesitated, looked into his eyes, then abruptly turned to leave. She paused in the doorway, her smile no longer there, but that irrepressible gleam still twinkled. “I do appreciate what you’re doing, Riley. I know Millicent can be mighty convincing in getting things done her own way. And as for my opinion of you, professionally that is, if she hired you and trusted you under the same roof with me, then that’s quite a testimonial.”

“For a son-and-pop operation, you mean?”

She just made a face at him, which made him smile. “For any operation. Will you report what you find out to me directly?”

“I have to tell Millicent—”

“No, I understand that. But I’d like to hear whatever else you come up with directly from you, rather than via my great-aunt. I’ll discuss your fee with her. As I said before, considering it’s my ass you’re trying to save, I should be footing the bill. Or whatever part of it she’ll let me pay. Perhaps we can work together on that?”

At that moment Riley really hated that he was the hired help. He wanted to tell her he’d take care of this as a friend. But though he’d blubbered on about wanting to be all those things she’d listed when she’d fallen apart, he knew that had just been the stress talking. And he’d been a convenient outlet. They were both back in control now, and they knew their actual boundaries. He was fooling himself to think they were anything more.

Yeah, he was definitely having trouble with that “nothing more” part. “We’ll work something out,” he told her. He didn’t add that no matter what part of his bill she was going to pay, it was highly likely, given what he was going to report to Millicent, that she’d request he continue the protection services as well. It was just going to get a hell of a lot more uncomfortable for him to do so. Camping out in cars instead of comfort. His knee twinged just thinking about it. “What about that fingerprint? I don’t want you meeting him without me knowing about it.”

“We’ll work something out,” she tossed back at him.

He sighed. He should have known working for the rich wasn’t going to be any different. Just then his pager went off. He tugged it out of his sweats pocket and looked down at the number. Ernie.

“I’ll let you get that,” she said, slipping out of the room before he could stop her.

“Don’t think we’re done yet,” he muttered, then scowled as he went to find a phone.