Lucky Charm Read online

  The good thing for Ariel was that she was on the road most of the time. Trips back to the D.C. area, though, were required every few months. A week at the office stretched interminably. Based in Ohio, though, she had a lot more autonomy than most and was thankful for it.

  “How are you doing down there?” Rae Anne asked, her voice deceptively chipper and cheery.

  “The Fort Lauderdale site is up and running, so everything is go. You might want to give the folks on the Help Desk a heads up, though,” Ariel said.

  “Did you get your entries in?”

  Taking a deep breath, Ariel restrained herself. “I haven’t been near an internet connection since this morning. As soon as I can I’ll get them entered.”

  Rae Anne said, her voice abruptly sharp, “You know how important it is that we have good records, Ariel. Get that entry in as soon as possible.”

  Not good job but rather did you get the notes into the computer?

  Rolling her eyes, Ariel promised she would before hanging up.

  Such a joy. Once she reached Tampa and checked into her room she would fire up her laptop long enough to satisfy Rae Anne’s need for the i’s to be dotted and the t’s to be crossed. Then she’d shut the whole thing down and not to touch the machine again until Monday.

  Ariel put all of that aside to spend two days with an e-reader and good books under an umbrella by the side of the pool. With her fair skin, sunburn was a problem but she loved the feel of the warm air on her skin, like heated silk gliding across it. If she wanted to cool off, a quick dive in the pool was all she needed. She lounged by the poolside gratefully and tried not to dread Monday.

  Chapter Seven

  Matt slumped in his favorite chair, stretching his legs out in front of him with a sigh of relief. Since he was using his own money for this little adventure, he hadn’t flown first class and coach was definitely not made for a man with legs as long as his.

  His spine popped as he settled into the leather, breathed in the scent of it.

  Home, he was home.

  “So,” Darrin drawled evenly, “still no success?”

  It was that voice that Matt remembered most from his first meeting with the man who would become his stepfather. Even as a wary and belligerent boy it had caught at him, reminding him of the sound of a cello – low, warm and smooth. That was something he would’ve been too embarrassed to mention, then or now.

  Tall, lean and spare, the lines in his rugged face highlighted by the golden lamplight, Darrin looked back at him with sharp, piercing blue eyes. In every way most people thought, Darrin was the epitome of a cowboy, from his pearl-buttoned western shirt down to his cowboy boots. His own long jean-clad legs were stretched out in front of him in much the same way as Matt’s. All that was missing from the image were the chaps.

  A lot of people underestimated him because of that. Darrin played it and the drawl up deliberately. It came in useful sometimes for folks to see him as a nothing more than a cowboy, he’d told Matt once. One of Darrin’s favorite books was Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. He’d spent time in the service as well. Few knew he had a Master’s degree, or in what, and fewer still would have guessed what University it came from.

  He’d also been on the force for twenty years and you could see that, too, if you looked hard enough.

  Few did.

  Then Darrin had decided he wanted to work for himself. As much as he loved the job, he wanted something that didn’t have the politics, rules and regulations that had hampered him as a cop. He’d chosen to do private investigation. Very specialized investigation.

  Darrin had a glass of whiskey on the table beside him. Matt always kept a bottle of the good stuff for him but he rarely drank it himself. A beer sometimes to be sociable, or maybe two on a hot day, but not the hard stuff. He shied away from the memory of those shots coupled with the beer in Fort Lauderdale. Never again. He’d been stupid once and paid the price for it. Now maybe twice. That was enough for him.

  They sat in Matt’s living room. He’d come home to Phoenix to unwind. He had to rest, recharge and talk to Darrin. The frustration was getting to him. He was getting nowhere. For all his contacts both above and below board, he wasn’t hearing anything that helped and he was tapping all of them. So was Darrin.

  Nothing else had worked.

  Attempts to check out Bill’s office had run into roadblocks so he’d tried one of the other offices in California, only to find it as well protected as Fort Lauderdale had been. Between them Matt had tried the Atlanta office and run into the same difficulties. After the debacle at Fort Lauderdale, he’d tried Tampa. He thought he’d seen Ariel walking toward a car in the parking deck. That same distracting sway of hips.

  He’d been careful to be sure she hadn’t seen him.

  Why did that woman plague his mind so much? Was it something about that sadness in her? Or the opposite, the pure joy she’d taken in making love with him? He remembered her smile as she rose to take him in, knowing what he wanted and what she wanted. He got hard just thinking about it. Again. It had to stop. He had to put her behind him as he had Carly. Or at least some of those he’d slept with more than once. Not with as much passion or pure pleasure as Ariel.

  He tried to put her out of his mind. Again.

  Tomorrow he’d take one of the horses, go for a ride, clear his head out and get some fresh air in. Both he and the horse could use the exercise.

  Matt stared out through the sliding glass doors, out past the shimmering light of the pool to the greater darkness of the mountains that blotted out the stars in the distance and tried not to think of a long spill of ebony hair over white breasts.

  He couldn’t, wouldn’t forget Bill.

  This problem wasn’t insoluble, he just had to find a way.

  “No,” he said finally, answering Darrin’s question with frustration. “There’s something going on, I’m sure of that. The security is too tight for a simple financial management company. What do they need that kind of security for if they haven’t got something to hide? Something’s going on and I need to find out what it is.”

  Looking at the fading bruise on Matt’s face – Matt wouldn’t tell him about it, Darrin knew, he hadn’t said anything but Darrin had a pretty good guess as to how it had got there – he wondered himself. Matt was no slouch in the self-defense department.

  “Well,” Darrin drawled, “I can’t disagree with you there. Given that shiner, even a corporation as big as Marathon doesn’t need that kind of protection. It would be different if they were dealing in real money, not stocks and securities.”

  Matt knew what Darrin was referring to but he wasn’t going to tell Darrin, he would only worry more if he knew the truth.

  That had been a bad miscalculation. If it hadn’t been for luck and a certain dark-haired, blue-eyed woman armed with a two-by-four, it might have been a lot more than a miscalculation. He’d have ended up like Bill. Knowing that would do more than make Darrin worry. Perhaps things had been too easy for a while. Matt had lost his edge a little bit. Darrin might certainly think so.

  If he were honest with himself, Matt had to admit he wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

  “What do you plan to do?” Darrin asked, his eyes steady on Matt.

  Neither of them considered giving up. It was Bill. The answers were there to be found, Matt simply had to find them. Eventually.

  Taking a swallow of his beer, no glass, right from the bottle – this was home so he could let his hair down – Matt shook his head slowly.

  “Try the more direct approach. See if I can get onto one of the offices legitimately and find a place to duck into, empty office by preference until the place shuts down for the night. The oldest trick in the book. It might work.”

  With a small frown, Darrin narrowed his eyes at him. “If the security is that good, they’ll find you.”

  It was ironic but what Matt was trying to do was precisely what he was usually hired to prevent. There was the advantage, though, of having all those e
xamples of what not to do.

  He thought about what Darrin said again and shook his head.

  “It’s not that they’re that good, not on the security side. It’s strong-arm stuff to keep people out they don’t want in, but there isn’t a surveillance camera in the place. It’s as if they don’t want anyone, not even a camera, to see what they’re doing in there.”

  That was odd. Darrin considered it.

  “What’s Marathon hiding?” he asked, swirling the whiskey in his glass. It was a good single malt, Glenglassaugh, golden in the light of the lamps.

  “What about Genesis?” Matt asked.

  Frowning Darrin shook his head. “Big, high end, very exclusive. Unlike Marathon they only take select clients – several Hollywood stars, producers and directors, the new rich and old money. The only connection I can find between them is that the CEOs of both companies tend to move in the same circles. The company is well-respected and its CEO is formidable.”

  He looked up from his glass to fix his gaze on Matt. “You need to walk careful there, Matt. J. Gordon Maxwell is no one to mess with. He has money and the ears of powerful people.”

  The warning was clear.

  Darrin wasn’t asking Matt to stop, he knew. Just telling him to tread carefully. Neither of them were the type of men to let something like Bill’s death go, whatever the cost.

  “And if that doesn’t work?” Darrin said, “If you can’t get in?”

  Matt shook his head, slumped further into the chair and sighed. “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. There’s a way, I just have to find it.”

  “It’s either that or you’re going to have to find another Bill,” Darrin suggested. “There has to be someone else who’s noticed something wrong. Someone who’s afraid to speak out.”

  Another Bill. It was a thought but how was Matt going to find him or them? Hang around bars? He’d tried a variation of that and only found Carly.

  The thought brought back memories of Ariel, of her shining black hair, brilliant blue eyes and ivory skin. He was pretty sure he’d seen her in Tampa. It was fairly clear she did something for Marathon but what was it? What was it they’d said? That she was some kind of trainer? She was certainly getting into and out of those offices unimpeded. Unlike him

  Darrin saw the shift in Matt’s expression.

  There was already something or someone. Maybe.

  Something was going through Matt’s head for sure, something he couldn’t put a finger on. He’d known Matt since he was ten, knew the boy and the man he’d become. Something odd was going on here. There was a restlessness and uneasiness in Matt, an uncertainty that hadn’t been there before.

  Could he find Ariel, Matt wondered, feel her out about it? Feel her out. The feeling of his hands on her skin swamped him. The ripe feel of her breasts filling his palms. Could he keep his distance and convince her to help him? Could he do that with that memory in his head? That strength and sadness in her, the joy and the giving of their lovemaking.

  Not all women liked to touch. Like Carly. She hadn’t bothered, leaving it to him. Ariel had. He remembered her hand caressing him and he was hard in an instant. She’d enjoyed it. He shifted uncomfortably. Damn it had been good. Could he contact her and not repeat it? It was clear that something she didn’t want. He’d seen that outside the bar in Fort Lauderdale.

  That wasn’t a problem he usually had. Enough women threw themselves at him. One night stands as well. He had no problem filling his bed if he wanted it. Carly came to mind. She’d been not only perfectly willing but demanding.

  The memory of her made him uncomfortable in a different way.

  He’d finally come to realize why he’d felt like such a shit afterward. He hadn’t cared for her, hadn’t even liked her very much. Yet he’d slept with her anyway, as much because Ariel had been disappointed in him as in thinking she’d misjudged him. Then he’d proved she probably hadn’t.

  It wasn’t like him.

  There was the ranch, too. It gave some women ideas that he had more money than he did. A lot of his money had gone to fixing the place up.

  That land had come down from his father, a man he scarcely remembered, but it barely made ends meet. His mother had always been careful not to speak ill of his father but some of what he’d learned from less circumspect sources had made him glad she’d met Darrin after his father took off, as much as he’d hated the thought at the time.

  As hard as his mother had tried, though, she couldn’t keep the place up and it hadn’t been in too good a shape to start with.

  Then Darrin had come along.

  He’d gotten the place ship-shape, despite it not being his. The rest had been Matt’s muscle and hard work. As Darrin had said, it was his father’s legacy and it was now his.

  Learning about the ranch, though, made some women fantasize, picturing something out of some western movie.

  Between one thing or the other, though, he had no problems finding company if he wanted it. Somehow he didn’t think any of that would have any effect on Ariel. She didn’t want anyone getting close.

  “There’s a possibility…” Matt said, staring out into the darkness.

  Deep darkness, lit by the distant city and suburbs spreading around it, so it wasn’t as dark and gleaming as Ariel’s hair.

  Would she help him, Matt wondered? She had helped him with the stooges, gotten involved and taken a hell of a risk. Especially considering how small she was. If he told her about Bill, if he could convince her?

  Thinking about Bill reminded him about what had happened to him. They’d killed Bill to prevent that very thing. He’d be putting Ariel at the same risk. He would be there, he could protect her, watch over her and make sure nothing happened to her. Such strength and such fragility. She was such a little thing. He usually liked taller women like Carly. Lighter haired, too. So why did this woman and that one moment stick in his mind so much? There was the memory of the sharp contrast between her deep dark hair and that ivory skin.

  He pushed that aside. What he needed to remember was Bill, his old friend who’d stuck with him through the toughest times. That’s what he needed to concentrate on.

  If he asked Ariel, if he told her the truth, would she do it?

  Did he have the right to put her at risk? The people at Marathon had proven they were willing to kill to preserve their secret, whatever it was. It would be asking a hell of a lot of her, putting her job and her life at risk.

  First, he’d try another way. Try to get in, get past the security. Then, if all else failed and only then, would he consider it. For Bill’s sake. He knew she had courage, he remembered her picking up that two-by-four and wading in. That wasn’t the only thing he remembered. His jeans were way too tight.

  Darrin watched his stepson. Something else was going on here that was clear. He knew what drove Matt to do this, to keep going in the face of all the obstacles – the debt Matt felt he owed Bill. Truth was, Darrin shared it. The debt, the repayment, and the questions. Bill deserved better. He’d been a good man, too.

  Too much coincidence surrounded Bill’s death. A call for help and then Bill was dead, his house broken into, his office emptied.

  As for the debt? No two ways about it, Bill had been a true friend to Matt, a stand-up guy. You didn’t let something like that happen to someone who’d stood by you. What kind of man were you if you let that go? Matt wouldn’t, he was a good man and Darrin would help him any way he could. He owed Bill a debt, too, for standing by Matt during the bad years.

  Something about the look on Matt’s face, though, and that shifting as if he were physically uncomfortable… Only one thing could distract a man that way. A woman, it had to be, to have Matt looking so preoccupied. That was the only reason Darrin could think for Matt’s discomfort – not only the physical but the psychological.

  Now that was unusual. In all the years Darrin had known him he had never seen Matt so distracted over a woman.

  It wasn’t that Matt was the love ‘em
and leave ‘em type, it was just that for some reason he couldn’t seem to find one who would stick, who made him truly happy as Darrin had with Matt’s mother. Julianna. Darrin’s heart twinged at the memory. She’d been beautiful, warm…

  It was Matt that Darrin had to think of now. Julianna’s son. For some reason Matt kept picking the wrong women. He hoped this one wouldn’t be like the last one.

  “What’s her name?” Darrin asked, keeping his tone mild.

  Distracted, seeing ivory skin flushed with pleasure in his mind’s eye, Matt murmured, “Ariel.”

  Then he looked up sharply but Darrin was looking down at the glass of whiskey in his hands.

  It wouldn’t do for Matt to see the look in his eyes, Darrin knew. He’d always hoped that Matt would find a good woman, someone to make him as happy as he’d been with Julianna. He still missed her intensely. He’d had a little more six years of joy with her but it hadn’t been enough, even as tough as that last year had been.

  Matt deserved that same kind of happiness but he also needed it, although he wouldn’t admit it.

  “Ariel, the sprite,” Darrin commented, keeping his voice even. “Shakespeare.”

  It looked as if Ariel had wrought her magic on Matt, casting a spell over him. Darrin, for one, would be glad to see it. If Matt would let it happen. The problem with Matt was that sometimes the women picked him, seeing what he looked like on the outside and not the inside, seeing the job, the car and the ranch, but not the man who owned ‘em. Thinking of money, sometimes, not realizing that the ranch had a mortgage. Sometimes it seemed as if Matt chose them to be cool and distant, when he needed someone warm like his mom, like Julianna. It was Matt’s call. Darrin just hoped he’d be smart enough to recognize if this was the right one.