After the first thirty minutes surrounded by traffic and chaotic noise, he was always ready to head back to the proverbial hills. That she’d managed to catch him during that slim window of opportunity was reason enough to give her a few more minutes of his time. His curiosity peaked. He wanted to know how she’d found him and why she’d begun with that eye-popping statement.
“I’m flattered,” he drawled, reaching out of habit to switch on the small recorder that would preserve their dialogue. “And just where did you hear that?”
“I know a lot of people in your business, Mr. Chaney.”
Evasion wasn’t the best way to get on his good side. His tone sharpened. “And what business is that? The killing business? If that’s true, why do you need me?”
“The law and order business, Mr. Chaney.” Her words picked up an interesting bite, too. Interesting enough for him to smile as he began to doodle lightning bolts and rain clouds on the blank calendar page.
“Ah, correct me if I’m wrong but law and order isn’t about killing and it isn’t what I do.”
“That’s why I need you. This isn’t about law. It’s about justice and your special talents. Can you help me?”
“I don’t know you, Miss—”
There was silence, then she supplied, “D’Angelo.” Why was that so familiar to him? Another warning he decided to ignore for the moment.
“Like I said, I don’t know you, Miss D’Angelo, and I don’t do business with people I don’t know.”
“I can pay you.” How suddenly desperate she sounded as that persuasion rushed out. “The money doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, either.”
“What does, Mr. Chaney? What will make you agree to meet with me? If you’d just listen to what I have to say—”
“Lady,” he interrupted smoothly, “everybody’s got a story to tell. I’m not a priest or a four-year-old, so why should I want to listen to your story?”
She cursed in a low aside, passionately, using words that made his brows arch and his lips purse. She continued with a rough rumble of anger that he found…well, he found it sexy as hell.
“I was told you were a professional, a man who could get things done. I see I was misled, Mr. Chaney. I’m sorry for wasting your time and mine when it’s clear you’re not interested.”
“Did I say that?”
His quiet interjection had her hauling in her temper. He could hear it in the sudden silence and the quick pace of her breathing that followed. Finally she asked for clarification in a husky whisper.
“What are you saying? That you’ll help me?”
He closed his eyes. The ripple of raw silk being drawn over the head of a bed partner in the night incited the same kind of urgent response as the whiskey-edged melody of her voice. Like soft blues music and slow, wet kisses. Exciting enough to make him linger in the exhaust-laced and crime-infested hell of Detroit. This was a woman he had to meet face-to-face.
“No promises. I’m not big on premature commitments.” He wasn’t big on commitments of any kind. Caution was his middle name. “We’ll share a cup of coffee in some very public place and look each other over first.”
“And then?”
“Then, if I like what I see, you can tell me your story. But first—” his tone toughened, getting back to the important point “—I have to know how you got my name and this number. I’m not listed in Killers-R-Us.”
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “I got it from Stan Kovacs.”
Of all the references she could have given, she picked the one he couldn’t toss off with a shrug. And that made him all the more suspicious, and uncomfortable, as though some trap was about to be sprung now that he’d been suckered in with the right bait. But he wasn’t sticking his neck out just yet.
“Ah, good old Stan. He still into fitness and jogging to work every day?”
Humor brushed like a warming breeze against the chill of her anxiety. “I don’t know which Stan Kovacs you know, but this one would have a coronary going up the steps of a bus too fast.”
Tension eased from his shoulders as that picture came to mind. Good old soft-on-the-outside, sharp-as-a-razor inside Stan. Jack chuckled softly. “Yeah, that’s Stan. How do you know him?”
“He was a friend of my father’s. And mine. He told me to mention his name if you got…difficult.”
Yes, that’s how Stan would describe him. She was obviously in the old P.I.’s small inner circle of friends. But she hadn’t played that trump card right off the bat to smooth her way into his good graces. She’d held it back until he’d given her no choice but to lay it down. Perhaps Ms. D’Angelo preferred difficult to trading on favors.
And damned if he didn’t like that about her.
On the blank desktop calendar, Jack wrote, “Call Stan/D’Angelo.” To his husky-voiced wannabe client, he added, “All right, Miss D’Angelo, do you know where Cuppa Jo’s is on Woodward?”
“I’ll find it.” The steely determination was back, fortified by his momentary lapse in sanity. He hoped his libido wasn’t leading him into more trouble than he wanted but he seemed to have forgotten his middle name. Oh, yeah. Caution.
“Seven o’clock.” That would give him time to do the necessary background checks so he wouldn’t feel so off balance.
“How will I know you?”
He smiled into the receiver. “Well, it won’t be by the violin case and red carnation. I’ll find you.”
By seven o’clock, he’d know everything there was to know about Miss Smoky Voice D’Angelo.
And then he’d listen to her story.
Cuppa Jo’s was one of those dingy inner-city dives that served a questionable round-the-clock clientele. Jack liked it because the coffee was always hot and because he could collapse into one of the mended vinyl booths at 4:00 a.m. and not have to explain anything to anybody. Not even about the occasional contusions on his face. At Jo’s, everyone kept their troubles to themselves. And Tessa D’Angelo could mean the capital-T kind.
He’d read her file. Smart mind, good family, loyal to the bone when it came to her up-and-coming D.A.-turned-hopeful politician father. The glossy photos he’d flipped through showed her at her father’s right hand, smiling, poised, beautiful, an asset in any public circle, while her equally gracious and gorgeous mother stood at his left. She’d given up the promise of her own law career to support her father in his. She was supposed to have seen him on to bigger and better things. Not see his reputation go down in a blaze of rumors not even the grave could extinguish.
She sat in the rear of the hazy diner, her back to the wall leading to the rest rooms he wouldn’t use on a dare. The fact that she was out of place was as glaringly apparent as the cost of her tailored business suit. Classy clothes, classy lady. The dusky-colored plum wool suit, creamy silk blouse opened in a modest vee, tasteful pearls and gravity-defying heels belonged in the business district not in the back booth of a greasy spoon. Even though the sun had all but disappeared, she still wore trendy wraparound dark glasses. But if it hadn’t been for a pair of the most luscious lips this side of an adolescent boy’s dreams, Jack wouldn’t have recognized her from the society page photos he’d studied. This woman had none of the healthy sorority girl sparkle and confidence that had beamed out at him from the newspaper file he’d sneaked a peek at. This dangerously fragile Tessa D’Angelo looked as though she’d gone several brutal rounds with the reigning middleweight champ and lost. Badly.
The Veronica Lake spill of her sleek blond hair couldn’t quite cover the stitching that ran from delicately arched eyebrow