LITMIR.BIZ

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screen in front of them came to life in response, setting Daisy Stephenson in motion again.

      Saved by the cigarette girl.

      Aidan pressed himself back in his seat, as far away from the temptation of Brianne as possible. What had he been thinking to let himself get so close?

      Brianne pivoted in her seat, a half smile on her face. “Ready for your big screen debut?”

      He welcomed the cool distance in her voice. Hell, he needed an Arctic blast to stay focused on business with Brianne around. He settled for jerking a thumb toward the television, confident his limited exchange with Daisy on screen wouldn’t reveal the woman’s connection to the Bureau. Brianne’s tape didn’t include the audio feed she had for some of the others.

      Daisy had been more interested in jumping him than providing information.

      “Maybe you can give me a few pointers on how I did.” Aidan needed an excuse to hang out with Brianne, some time to build a rapport with her again.

      “Are you sure you can handle an assessment of your technique?” She folded her arms and peered down her nose at him, the ice queen in full battle mode.

      Luckily, Brianne’s cool demeanor had never scared him off.

      “Since when have I had an ego problem?”

      She cracked a genuine smile, a gift all the more special because it was—in Aidan’s experience—so rare.

      “You’ve got me there.” She turned back toward the screen just as Daisy flung herself into Aidan’s arms on the archived footage. “Prepare to be critiqued.”

      Aidan scooted his chair forward to sit side by side with her, telling himself an essential part of his job was building relationships with people who might have key information on his case. His gut told him Melvin Baxter would be in touch with the ex-stepdaughter he’d always doted on, and Aidan was going to be there when it happened.

      His job—his whole badass reputation within the Bureau—demanded it.

      His decision to sit two inches from Brianne had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he wanted a better whiff of her perfume.

      He stole a glance at her in the dull blue glow radiating from the wall of monitors. Some of the televisions caught the action on the dance floor, around the bars and in the back alleyway. But Brianne stared up at the video of Daisy and Aidan, head tipped to one side as if trying to make sense of the film sequence.

      “You bumbled this kiss from the beginning.” She pointed one pale pink fingernail toward the central screen. “It’s all awkward angles and bad timing.”

      “That’s not my fault. I got cast with the wrong woman.”

      Brianne snorted, her gaze glued to the image of Aidan being clawed into submission by the voluptuous informant.

      Okay, maybe he hadn’t exactly fought the woman off. But she’d taken him totally by surprise.

      “I’m serious,” he protested, wishing his first meeting with Brianne after ten years didn’t have to take place during a fluke lip lock with an overeager coed. “I’m a foot taller than this girl. I need a leading lady with some major long legs.”

      He couldn’t help but smile as Brianne strutted her way into the video scene right on cue.

      “Weak excuses. You’d never make it in film, Maddock, no matter how much you flex those ripped muscles.”

      Her eyes widened, almost as if she’d said more than she’d meant to. Aidan couldn’t help the slow smile that crept across his face.

      She snatched up her remote and smashed the pause button. “Now, I think we can both agree I’ve humored you tonight. It’s time you either get to the point of your visit or you’re really going to have to leave.”

      Shit. Aidan needed more time to convince Brianne he wasn’t the devil’s spawn she seemed to think him. Then again, maybe all the time in the world wouldn’t be enough to convince her she could trust him.

      One botched encounter with her that night before she left for New York and he ruined the great connection they’d once had.

      Unfortunately, it was time to play hardball because he sure as hell couldn’t walk away from his one and only lead to Melvin Baxter.

      “Actually, I’m going to have to carve out a spot for myself at Club Paradise for a little while, so we might as well try to work together.” He scratched an idle hand across his chest, affecting a casualness he definitely didn’t feel. He flexed his bicep for her benefit. “You really think the muscles are looking ripped?”

      He would have been golden if he could have teased another one of those killer smiles out of her. But as he met her stormy green gaze, he was pretty sure there would be no smiles forthcoming.

      In fact, he was damn certain he was about to experience the brunt of Brianne’s new hell-on-wheels attitude.

      A COLD, CLAMMY FEAR SETTLED in her gut, but Brianne would rather be cut off from her remote for all of eternity than let Aidan know. He wanted to settle in here? To work?

      That could only mean the FBI had her under a microscope, a notion which scared her right down to the silver rings on her toes. If word got out the new club was being investigated, it would taint the place with an underworld feel she and her partners were working hard to overcome.

      Thankfully, she’d learned a thing or two about acting in her time behind the camera as a documentary producer, and it wasn’t that much of a stretch to work up some annoyance at Aidan’s presumptuous, self-absorbed shtick.

      “I’m not about to get into a discussion of your physique in light of your earlier comment.” She met his gaze levelly, hoping no barroom brawls would break out at the club in the moments she took her eyes off the security monitors. The scene inside her office promised to be more explosive anyhow. “What exactly do you mean you need to carve a spot out for yourself at Club Paradise?”

      He leaned back in his chair as if utterly at ease with the notion, then laced his fingers over his reclining chest. “Melvin pissed off a lot of people with this latest stunt, Brianne. You know he took off because we were ready to nail him with racketeering charges?”

      No, she hadn’t known. Didn’t want to know. She’d said goodbye to Melvin and all her mother’s other shady—but well-providing—boyfriends and ex-husbands ten years ago. Brianne was well into a new chapter of her life now.

      Thoughts of Jimmy the guitar player niggled in the back of her mind. Had she somehow started her own parade of shady boyfriends?

      “That doesn’t have anything to do with me or with Club Paradise.” She stood, eager to walk away from the implied intimacy of the darkened room and the proximity of their seating arrangement. She flipped on all the overhead lights, determined to chase away all traces of shadiness in her life. Starting now.

      “Whatever business Mel was running out here, it’s not going on anymore. The women I’m partners with have so much collective fury at the Rat Pack that we could probably take down all of them if they were ever stupid enough to set foot in South Beach again. But they’re not. Mel is gone and he’s going to stay gone.”

      Aidan blinked against the sudden deluge of high wattage filling the room. “And you think you can make it so by the sheer force of your will? Mel has connections all over town and a strong racketeering operation in place. He’s not going to walk away from that income forever.”

      Why had her mother ever married such a loser?

      Bad enough Pauline Wolcott-Baxter-Menendez-Simmons unabashedly married the men for money. Did she have to be so unconcerned with how they made it?

      Brianne leaned against the master control board, strung tight and wishing she could appear half as at-ease as the agent lounging in her office chair. She set the remote control on the panel beside her. “He knows better than to contact me.”

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