Harper Allen - Sullivan's Last Stand

“Oh.” Now he’d rattled her, she thought. She’d known when she’d made up her mind to come here that she would have to hold on to every ounce of self-control she possessed, and already she could feel it slipping away. She took a deep breath. “Why don’t we skip the small talk and get right to the—”

“The ever-charming Ms. Flowers.” There was an unaccustomed edge to his voice. “It’s been—how long—a year?” He leaned back farther in his chair, and she found herself hoping that this time it would fall. “So to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure of this visit? Don’t tell me—you finally decided to pack in that little fleabag operation of yours and join a real firm of investigators, right?”

“Triple-A Acme’s doing just fine, thanks,” she said evenly. “In fact, I send you business every so often. I figure you need to keep the cash flow steady, what with those expensive tastes of yours. Nice suit, Sully.”

He followed her gaze and flicked a nonexistent speck of lint from the sleeve of his jacket. “Thanks,” he said complacently. “Those Milan tailors know how to do their job.”

“Too bad you don’t.” Bailey took her feet off the desk and planted them back on the floor with a thump. She leaned forward, her gaze hardening. “Your firm screwed up, Sullivan.”

“My firm screwed—” Abruptly he swung his own legs off the desk, all traces of good humor gone from his handsome face as his eyes met hers. “I don’t think so, Bailey, honey,” he said softly. “You can rag on me about anything else you please—my love life, my clothes, even my character. But Sullivan Investigations and Security is off-limits, unless you can prove what you just said.”

“Angelica was one of the cases I sent your way.” Her tone was as humorless as his. “And you’re right—whatever else my opinion of you might be, I’ve always admitted that you run one of the best agencies in Boston.”

“The best,” he interjected. “Just because you come first in the phone book doesn’t mean you beat me out in getting results and clients. Far from it, in fact.”

“I assume that’s a dig at the fact that Acme’s just a one-woman detective agency.” She shrugged. “I’ll admit that. The reason I sent Angelica to you was partly because Sullivan’s is such a large firm.”

“Multinational, now.” He shrugged, too. “I’ve expanded since you and I last chatted.”

On the mahogany desk he had an exquisite Waterford crystal paperweight. For a moment the impulse to grab it and hurl it at him was almost overwhelming. Chatted? Bailey thought with dull fury. Was that how he categorized their last encounter?

“I can see you’re doing well,” she noted tightly. “But that’s your problem, Sullivan—I think the company’s gotten so big you’ve lost touch with what’s going on. You didn’t even know Angelica was a client until I just told you, did you?”

“Your sister? Okay, I didn’t know, but what’s your point, Bailey?” He leveled an unconcerned blue gaze on her. “I can’t be expected to be on top of every file we’re handling.”

“My adopted sister,” she said shortly.

“Adopted sister.” His usual lazy tone was clipped. “She married Aaron Plowright four or five years ago, going from cocktail waitress to billionaire’s wife in one fell swoop, right? So why did you send her to me? Did she mislay some trifling object like a yacht that she wanted us to locate for her without the hubby finding out?”

“No. She thought hubby had a trifling object that he didn’t want her to find out about.” Impatiently she tucked a stray strand of hair behind one ear. “But Angel never was the smartest girl on the block—just the most beautiful. She came to me first and asked me to tail him.”

His grin surprised her. In the tan of his face it was a flash of white, and it was devastating. Even now she could feel her own lips starting to curve in an answering smile. She bit the inside of her cheek sharply enough to keep her expression under control.

“Yeah, he might just have clued in, seeing his sister-in-law popping out from behind bushes everywhere he went,” he said. “You’re right—not too bright of our little Angelica. Although I don’t agree that she was the most beautiful girl on the block, honey. Not when the two of you lived in the same house, anyway.”

It took a moment for her to realize what he was saying. It took a moment only because her brain was starting to turn to mush, she thought in chagrin, the way it had turned to mush a year ago when she’d been around him. It was the grin. She was letting him affect her.

“I never was in Angelica’s league in the looks department, Sully, and you and I both know it. I didn’t come here for a dose of your patented Irish blarney. I came here on business, so let’s keep things on that footing and we’ll get along just fine.”

It came out more sharply than she’d intended. He held her gaze for a moment, his own as unreadable as she hoped hers was, and then he let out a long breath.

“So you sent the lovely Angelica to my firm to have her husband followed.” He pushed aside a stack of papers on his desk and leaned forward, lifting his shoulders a little as if his muscles were tense. “How do you figure we screwed up? Did Aaron make the tail?”

“Of course not. Your people aren’t amateurs.”

Her voice was nearly back to normal again, she noted with surprise. She felt oddly light-headed, as if she’d just picked her way through a minefield and couldn’t quite believe she was still in one piece. She’d done it, she thought. She’d finally gotten him out of her system.

“As a matter of fact, Aaron had to go away on an unexpected business trip last weekend, and apparently your—” She stopped abruptly, her breath suddenly short and her heartbeat speeding up.

“Go on.”

He’d stood up and shucked off the suit jacket he’d been wearing. Now he was unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt and rolling his sleeves back, his attention focused on the task. His forearms were a dark gold against the white material, and the same tan tone was echoed in the worn leather shoulder holster that slashed across the whiteness of his shirt higher up. He glanced over at her.

“What is it?”

How many times had she seen him shrug off his jacket and unfasten his cuffs in the past? she thought helplessly. The answer came to her immediately—three. Three times in the past he’d stood in front of her and lazily started to undress, and those three times he’d kept going. She’d once told him that if the investigation business ever went bust, he could probably make a darn good living as a male stripper. He’d given her a wide-eyed look of protest that had had nothing innocent about it at all, and then he’d taken so excruciatingly long to discard the rest of his clothes that by the end of it she was practically out of her mind with desire for him.

And the next time she’d paid him back in exactly the same way, Bailey remembered.

They’d made love three times together. Well, that wasn’t strictly true—they’d spent three nights together and made love all through each of those nights, time and again. They’d made love that last morning, just an hour or so before she’d walked in on the phone call that had negated everything she’d thought they had between them. She swallowed with difficulty.

“Nothing. I just want to make sure I don’t leave anything out,” she finally said, her tone as professional as she could make it. “Aaron went away on what he said was an emergency business trip, and your operative followed him. Apparently Angelica’s suspicions were correct, because when Jackson reported back to her—”

“Jackson?” He looked up quickly. “Hank Jackson?”