Kasey Michaels - Mischief 24/7

Jade bit her lip to suppress a giggle.

What was wrong with her? How had she lost her mind this way? This wasn’t her. She wasn’t this kind of woman. A fall-into-bed-with-strangers kind of woman. She was responsible. Clearheaded. Dedicated. She didn’t go in for one-night stands. She wasn’t the type.

Then again, she also knew she’d never felt this good before, not in her entire responsible, clearheaded, dedicated life. Jessica, the romantic one, would say that Jade was in love, that it had been love at first sight between Jade and Court.

Which was ridiculous. Lust at first sight? Yes, that sounded more plausible. Physical attraction, pheromones, whatever, it had been an instant crash of mutual desire and need, that was certain.

The question now was what to do about it.

There was a knock at the door. “I don’t hear the shower running. Are you ready to eat? I don’t know about you, but I seem to have worked up quite an appetite.”

Jade dropped her irreverent pose and headed for the oversize shower stall. “In a minute!”

“All right. Do you like strawberries dipped in dark, warm chocolate?”

“What? Do I… for breakfast? Um, yes, sure, I suppose so. Why not?”

“Good, because I’m working up this fantasy where you lie with your head on my lap as I feed one to you, and then you return the favor.”

“Sounds, um, sounds like a plan?” Jade fussed with the taps, wondering why anyone would need so many controls to turn on a simple shower. Except this wasn’t a simple shower, not with all those extra showerheads. “Just give me five minutes and… and we’ll talk about it.”

She didn’t wait for the water to turn warm, but stepped quickly under the cold sprays that seemed to come from everywhere, teasing at her already sensitive skin. She had to get her head back on straight, was what she had to do. She had to shower, find her clothes, make up some sort of excuse and get the hell out of here.

If she didn’t go, now, she’d never want to leave. As it was, she was fairly certain that the memory of last night, of Court Becket and his bottomless brown eyes, the wild abandon they’d shared, would haunt her for the rest of her life.

“No. NOT YET, NOT YET, you idiot… don’t leave yet, don’t go…” Jade pleaded, keeping her eyes firmly closed, trying to recapture the dream. No, not a dream. A memory. Her life, the one she’d had within her grasp and then so carelessly thrown away.

She gave up and opened her eyes, silently cursing the ringing phone that had awoken her, sparing one of her choicest swear words for Court, who seemed to think nothing of doing business in the middle of the night. The least he could do was answer the damn phone.

“Four o’clock?” she muttered, aiming her outstretched arm toward the nightstand. Her fingers closed on the receiver and she pulled the phone onto the bed with her as she fell back against the pillows. “Mr. Becket will be with you in a moment,” she half slurred into the phone, praying she was right. Otherwise, she’d have to get up and go hunt Court down. And then kill him.

“Which one are you?”

Jade pulled the phone away from her ear and squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment, hoping she’d feel more awake when she opened them again. The voice was deep, most probably male and obviously disguised by one of those electronic devices anyone could pick up on eBay. Probably the same guy who had called before, the one Matt’s friend Ernesto had thought was a kid playing phone pranks.

Fully awake now, Jade held the phone to her ear once more. “Screw you,” she said, and then winced. Obviously she couldn’t be as awake as she thought she was. Screw you wasn’t exactly the snappiest comeback in the books.

“Okay, you’re the bitchy one. Jade, right? Not the actress? I’ll bet most of your callers want to talk to the actress. Too bad, but as long as I have you, how about we just chat?”

“How about I just hang up and you go seek professional help?”

The caller went on as if Jade hadn’t said anything. “Brains are messy, aren’t they, Jade? They hit that knotty-pine paneling, and then they slide down it, the bits that don’t get hung up on the pieces of skull stuck in the wood like shrapnel. No, never mind. You don’t have to answer me.

You know how it looks, Jade, don’t you? You saw how it works.”

Jade quickly covered her mouth with her hand, afraid she might vomit. Then she took it away and sucked in a lungful of air, letting it out again slowly. She had to calm down, refuse to let this guy get to her. They’d had a million phone calls since Jessica had the bright idea of putting their number on the air during her news-magazine show, asking for help from the public. What they’d gotten were whack-jobs. One good lead with Melodie’s shampoo tech, granted. But most of the calls were like this one, complete with electronic voice disguisers. So many sick tickets out there with time on their hands. “And you’d know this how?”

“How do you think I know?”

She should just hang up, but she was too angry. “Are you confessing to killing my father? Hey, terrific. But first tell me what you did with Jimmy Hoffa. Is he really buried beneath the goalposts at the Meadowlands?”

“Back off, shut down that smart mouth of yours, or else I’ll show you how I did it. I can get at you, any one of you, anytime I want. For instance, do you know where your blond-bimbo sister is right now? I do. Should I reach out and touch her, or are you going to behave?”

Okay. This had never been funny, but now it was turning ugly, and Jade was beginning to get a cold, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, because she didn’t know where Jessica was right now. She was already half out of the bed when her bedroom door opened and Court stepped inside, a cordless phone to his ear. He lifted one finger to his lips and then motioned to her to keep talking, keep the caller on the line.

“It’s a little late at night for fairy tales,” she said as she subsided back onto the bed, her eyes on Court as he advanced across the room toward her and squeezed her outstretched hand. “Or should we just call that threat what it is—you’re blowing smoke.”

“Am I? Do you really want to find out?”

Oh, my God oh, my God oh, my God. Jade began to rock back and forth on the bed as Court put down the cordless and fished his cell phone out of his pants pocket. She knew what he was doing. He was calling Jessica’s cell, or Matt’s. Hurry hurry hurry. Make her answer make her answer.

“All right, you’ve got my attention now, so talk to me,” Jade told the caller, clutching at anything she could think of to say, hoping to keep the monster on the line. Joshua Brainard? Was she talking to Joshua Brainard? No, that wasn’t likely. What were the odds? Jess had said something about the whole world knowing something soon. Whatever she and Matt had done, were doing, might already be public knowledge. “Why are you calling me? What do you want?”

“You know what I want. I want you and your sisters to stop digging where you shouldn’t be digging. Parading yourself all over television and the newspapers, crying about your poor dead daddy. A person could get hurt sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. Your old man is dead. You don’t really want to join him, do you?”

Court smiled and held his cell phone to Jade’s free ear.

“Hello? I said, hello! Do you have any idea how scary it is to hear a phone ring at four in the morning, Jade? Damn it, Jade, talk to me, and if someone isn’t bleeding to death, I’m going to—”

Jade sagged in relief as Court pulled the phone away and walked to a corner of the room to tell Jessica what was happening. Matt was with her. Matt was a cop, he carried a gun. He’d protect her.