apartment before their encounter could get any more bizarre.
“The thing about us older women you can’t get with a young one like that,” she said, nodding in the direction of Jenna’s apartment, “is that we know more.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Honey, I could play your body like an accordion.”
Travis shuddered at the image.
“Have a good night,” he said as he closed and locked the door.
Turning away from it, he looked around the small room. Jenna was nowhere in sight, much as he’d expected, but the sound of running water came from behind a nearby door. Light was visible in the space between the door and the floor, so he figured Jenna had decided to take a shower.
He took in the mess that surrounded him. Either Jenna Calvert was a lousy housekeeper and a woman with violent feelings toward her sofa, or someone had trashed her place. But, if there had been a break-in, maybe even a struggle, it could have only just happened. Maybe Jenna wasn’t even alive and well in the shower. An image of her murdered body being soaked in a bloody shower flashed in his mind, and he panicked.
“Jenna!” He raced to the bathroom door and flung it open.
There, behind the transparent shower curtain, was the unmistakable silhouette of Jenna’s body, standing up, seemingly alive and well. He couldn’t help admiring the perfect proportions, the tantalizing curve where her waist met her hips. Steam from the shower dampened his face, and he caught the scent of her shampoo, something feminine and fruity.
“Jenna? It’s me, Travis.”
She peeked out from the edge of the curtain and smiled. “Oh, hi. You got here faster than I thought you would.”
Even the sight of her bare shoulder and her crimson hair, slicked back away from her face, aroused Travis. He’d definitely been working too hard lately, neglecting his social life, because instantly, he had a hard-on.
Cardiac arrest was the only appropriate reaction to what she did next. As Travis struggled to keep his jaw from sagging, she slid the curtain open and smiled a wicked half smile.
“Care to join me?” she asked, her tone playful, but her gaze leveled at him with a look of absolute daring.
There was simply no way not to look. He admired the full, round perfection of her damp breasts, the small pink nipples forming tight peaks; the narrow expanse of her waist; the incongruous but tantalizing triangle of blond curls at the peak of her thighs; the delicious shape of her long legs. Not a tattoo in sight. Rivulets of water formed all over her skin, and the only coherent thought Travis could form was that he wanted to lick them off.
Finally, he recovered the ability to speak. “It’s a tempting offer….”
She sighed. “But you don’t think it would be appropriate.”
“Um…” Surely he could say something more profound than “um,” but nothing came to mind.
Instead, he could only think of pinning her to the shower wall and burying himself deep inside her. To hell with propriety, to hell with everyone’s expectations—he could do something wild and improper for once in his life, couldn’t he?
Couldn’t he?
Apparently not.
“I’ve shocked you speechless, I can see.” She slid the shower curtain closed again. “I’ll be finished in a minute, if you want to wait in the living room.”
Travis closed the bathroom door, then leaned against it, barely resisting the urge to bang his head on the wall. His inability to seize the moment was so typical, so thoroughly Travis Roth, it made him want to yell.
Everything he’d accomplished in life had been through careful study and hard work. Never risk taking. His lack of daring had slowly brought the family investment firm out of a slump and into steady profitability, but as his little brother frequently pointed out, the risk takers were the ones who dominated the business world. Calculated risk, their father had always preached, was the hallmark of success. Since he’d been the man who’d built the family fortune, he had the right to preach.
And here was Travis, presented with the erotic invitation of a lifetime, and he couldn’t take it. But so what? Business and personal matters weren’t the same, and risk taking had entirely different kinds of repercussions for each. He wasn’t going to beat himself up for not hopping into a shower with a woman he’d only just met. Getting involved sexually with Jenna would be a huge mistake anyway.
He glanced around again at the mess of her apartment, finally remembering why he’d rushed into the bathroom in the first place. At least he knew now that she was unharmed, but that didn’t explain the chaos in her apartment.
Was she just the world’s lousiest housekeeper? Was she mentally unstable? That could explain the shower incident, too…. Yet he had the feeling this was definitely a mess someone else had made.
On the other side of the door, the water cut off, and he heard the shower curtain slide open. Travis pushed aside thoughts of Jenna’s naked, wet body and walked across the room to look at the books strewn around the bookcase. He bent and picked up some of them, placing each one on a shelf after reading the title. Classics, mysteries, biographies, romance novels, memoirs, philosophy—Jenna seemed to read it all.
He supposed he shouldn’t have found that surprising, since she was a freelance journalist. That career suggested a certain intelligence and curiosity, both traits Travis had to admit he considered incongruous with her wild image.
He’d just bent to pick up a copy of the Atlantic Monthly— definitely not typical vixen reading material—when Jenna emerged from the bathroom dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a white sleeveless top that laced up the sides. Her damp hair had been pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and her face was scrubbed clean of makeup except for a hint of red on her lips.
Her gaze lingered on him, and rather than looking embarrassed by the shower incident, as Travis imagined he did, Jenna seemed amused.
“I guess Mrs. Lupinski let you in, no problem?”
“She offered to play me like an accordion, but yes, she let me in.” He winced at the image and held out the key that was still in his hand. “Here’s your key back.”
“Thanks. Don’t worry, my place doesn’t normally look like this.”
“What happened?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“While we were having lunch today, someone came in the open window and ransacked it. They stole my laptop and all my backed-up files.”
A sense of outrage rose up in his chest on behalf of Jenna. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
“But why would someone take all your files? Do you have other copies anywhere?”
“It’s a long story, and yes, I do have some hard copies and disks of some of my work, but a lot of the newer stuff is lost. I’d hidden emergency backups in my closet, but I wasn’t very methodical about backing up regularly.”
“We’ve got a long drive ahead, so you can tell me on the way why someone would want to steal your files.”
“A long drive where?”
“To Napa. My family has a country home there, a private place where we can get you up to speed on impersonating Kathryn.”
“We haven’t even discussed my condition for helping you yet.”
Up until a few minutes ago, he’d been pretty sure whatever she wanted wouldn’t be a problem, but now he knew firsthand that Jenna could be…unpredictable. Outrageous. Wild.
“Okay, let’s hear it.”
She stepped over a mangled couch cushion and sat on the arm of the sofa next to him. He could