Tara Taylor Quinn - Love By Association

Like maybe, just maybe, she couldn’t do this.

“Well, perhaps I’m just counting on you to keep me warm,” she said. She would do this. A memory of the picture she’d seen of Ryder Morrison, of the collage he’d made and she’d studied, had her straightening her backbone. The medical records she’d been privy to as part of a law-mandated notice sent from the hospital to the police department sprang to mind.

She pictured her friend Meri, thought of the scars she still wore so long after the brutal beating that had almost left her dead, of the way she’d been near death’s door, mostly incoherent, and had still managed to get herself out to the street...

“You okay?” Colin leaned in toward her. She breathed in his musky scent.

“Of course I’m okay,” she sputtered, covering another lapse with a small sip of wine that took a long time to swallow.

So she wasn’t quite as good at this undercover thing as she wanted to be. It was her first night out. On her first gig.

And she cared more than she probably should about the ultimate outcome. But truthfully, what cop didn’t?

She forced a chuckle. “Makes me wonder about you, though, that you’d think there’s something wrong with me for counting on you to keep me warm.”

He moved closer, put an arm around her and pulled her in close, shocking Chantel with just how good that felt. “It was your eyes, not your words, that made me wonder,” he said softly, leaning his head down toward her ear. “You looked kind of lost for a second there.”

She had a poker face. Almost always. But she took note to work on it in front of the mirror in “rich heiress” mode.

“It’s all so new,” she said now, speaking the complete truth. “All of this...it’s nothing like my life in New York.”

“You didn’t live by the ocean, then?”

“No.” Her family, the broken fragments of it, had mostly lived in a brick house that looked like every other brick house in the row of brick houses. “And I always had friends close by,” she said, resuming character. One friend. Jill...

“I didn’t realize it was going to be so hard...not knowing anyone. Truth be told, I was kind of looking forward to meeting a whole new group of people.”

“Society life can be a little cloying, can’t it?” Colin surprised her by saying. “You grow up with the same people, go through school with them, attend charity events with them...”

“Oh, the life of the rich and famous.” She chuckled again but wondered at the very serious tone in his voice.

Initially she’d had him pegged as a privileged playboy, and then as an uptight, closed-minded, filled-with-his-own-importance type of guy.

She’d been profiling.

And he was proving her wrong.

She wasn’t there for him to prove anything to her. He pulled her closer. She wondered if he was as good in bed as it felt like he would be.

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m not overheated anymore, that’s for sure,” she lied. A chance meeting with the commissioner might have been better than the balcony she’d traded it for.

“Colin?” The female voice behind them had Chantel spinning guiltily around.

What was she doing?

She had to get back inside and mingle. Clearly spending time with Colin Fairbanks wasn’t going to be the “in” she’d hoped. Because “in bed” wasn’t her goal.

“Leslie?” He turned, too, greeting the other woman with a warm tone. Chantel would have left, except that he didn’t let go of her.

“I thought that I saw you out here,” the other woman said. She was as beautiful as expected with a perfect figure and auburn hair that did all the right things, including tapering down to perfectly molded breasts. Probably due to inserts. “I’ve been looking for you.” Her moist lips moved, but the smile didn’t leave her face.

As she came closer in the dim lighting, Chantel got a better look at her.

She was a good ten years older than Chantel. And probably Colin, as well, if she’d been right in assuming him to be about her age.

“Leslie Morrison, this is Chantel Johnson. She’s new to town, and you’re one of the people I wanted her to meet.”

She reached out a hand, grappling with the twisted means of fate. Leslie Morrison. Her sexy, distracting, dangerous companion had just given her the means to speak with the woman Chantel was there to save.

Her meeting with Colin hadn’t been a mistake or foolishness on her part. It had been preordained.

Chantel was going to use it for everything it had.

CHAPTER FOUR

“CHANTEL’S WRITING A BOOK.” Colin spoke with bragging rights he couldn’t possibly have earned in the space of an hour. He heard himself and stood there grinning, anyway.

He’d been the first to find her.

So he was staking his claim.

They were still with Leslie but had moved inside and had new drinks in their hands. They’d been joined by others, in ones and twos, who’d moved on in the same fashion.

Couldn’t have high society looking like groupies. Or lose that slightly bored look in spite of the new flesh among them.

“A book?” Leslie’s head dipped slightly, showing that she was impressed. In Leslie’s case, Colin understood the gesture to be more than a show. While Leslie Morrison had grown up among the rich in Southern California and was considered old money, she also was one of the most genuine among them.

Which, along with the fact that the Morrisons and Fairbankses had been doing business together for almost a millennium, was probably why Julie felt so comfortable with the older woman.

With a bit of humility Chantel nodded a little shyly. He wondered what she hid behind the sip of wine she took.

Amusement?

Or real embarrassment.

He wanted to believe the latter but had ceased expecting the best from people—especially the people in his crowd—a long time ago.

“What kind of book are you writing?” Leslie asked.

Another bit of a pause from Chantel was followed by, “Women’s fiction police procedural.” She took another sip, and added, “It’s a woman-in-jeopardy story told from the point of view of a female cop.”

Not very ladylike material, which might explain her slight discomfort. But then she probably hadn’t been in California long enough to know that she’d fit right in.

Leslie’s eyes widened. “Oh, Colin.” She reached out as though to touch his wrist and then pulled back. “You have to get her to help us with the library project,” she said before turning to Chantel. “If you have time, that is...”

“Of course I have time,” Chantel said. “My calendar is empty at the moment. What’s the library project?” She looked at them, her gaze lingering a tad bit longer on Colin.

Pretty sure he wasn’t imagining her interest, he took a step closer to her, intending to give her the short version, when Leslie said, “Colin, the two of you would be perfect for the lead roles!”

He’d agreed to help out—partially because his firm was handling the estate and resultant legal details, and partially because he wanted Julie to have more exposure in the book world—but his assistance was to have been only behind-the-scenes.

“What lead roles?” Chantel gave her head a little shake, but she was smiling through her confusion.

“Oh, we’re hosting a decadent murder mystery dinner—at a thousand dollars a plate—to help purchase books for our own full-service library in Santa Raquel.”

He’d hoped Julie would be a part of it, but so far, she’d refused to commit to anything other than helping Leslie with behind-the-scenes paperwork, guest lists and contacting people she knew with personal rare-book libraries who might be willing to donate a copy or two.

“Katie Estrada, a childless widow, willed her family’s mansion to Santa Raquel with the caveat that it be used as a library,” Colin said. “A trust was set up with money left in her estate to fund the salary of one librarian and to cover basic operating expenses for the first ten years,” he added.