He’d worked too damn hard for eight long months to get to where he was at Wolfe International. He’d trashed his reputation on the force, lost the loyalty of his friends and gained the trust of his enemies. He’d lied, bent a few rules, broken a few bones. He’d learned the difference between being tough and being dead. No nosy reporter—woman or otherwise—was going to waltz her way onto the Riverboat and blow his operation.
“C’mon.” He slowed his pace and altered his grip to keep her on her feet and keep her moving. “I thought you’d gotten a clue last fall when you were harassing my mother about the Baby Jane Doe murder case. I don’t like report—”
“Shh!” She darted in front of him and pressed her fingers over his mouth, stopping up his words. Stopping him. What the hell? An apologetic frown creased the smooth skin on her forehead. “Don’t say another word,” she whispered. “I don’t know what you think is going on here. I was only pitching in to help Melissa. But I’ll go. Just let me get my purse.”
Huh? Capitulation? Seth’s gaze narrowed. Had to be a tactic. But a quick study of her fervent expression revealed no clear objective. Or motive. “Whatever.”
He tossed the tray on the bar and, without releasing her, picked up her little black bag.
“That’s mine.”
Evading her grasping fingers and annoyed huff, Seth twisted it open and spotted the keys, comb, lipstick—and cell phone-size recorder inside. Just as he’d thought. He had Little Miss Innocent’s number. Seth lifted his gaze to her gold-brown eyes. Was that a plea he read there? Or defiance?
Didn’t matter. He was in control of this situation. He snapped the purse shut and pushed it into her hands. “Pitching in to help yourself to what?” But that wide mouth was pressed into a fine, thin line. No problem. He could remove the tape outside, away from these witnesses, and get his own answers. “Time to go byebye.”
He reclaimed his grip on her elbow and turned her toward the doorway and the main lobby. This time she didn’t protest.
But Sawyer threw his arms up behind the bar. “Hey, you’re stealing my only waitress.”
Rebecca glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll be back.”
Seth kept moving. “No, she won’t.”
The click of her killer heels muffled when they reached the lobby carpeting. He never had understood how a woman could walk in those things, and suspected that hurrying at his side was a difficult task, even with those long legs. But she didn’t argue his hold on her arm or his path toward the front door.
He hadn’t believed it when he’d first spotted her on the monitor in his security office. He’d pegged Rebecca Page as a woman who liked to stay in control of things—not an easy thing for a gambler to do. Still, he hadn’t taken any chances and had radioed Ace Longbow, the pit boss on the floor tonight, to keep an eye on her. As long as she was playing, she could stay. Seth would steer clear of her and keep his suspicions in check.
But then Ace had taken a break to handle some personal business, and by the time the big Indian had reported back in, he’d lost track of Rebecca. Seth had scrolled through nearly every camera angle on his monitors before he found her at the Cotton Blossom.
There she sat, flirting with his father at the bar. Long mahogany hair down to here, short black skirt up to there. His dad’s eyeballs bugged out to…hell. The woman clearly wasn’t here to gamble.
Seth had long since given up on the idea of his parents ever getting back together—and he knew his mother was far better off without Austin Cartwright. Messing with the ladies had never been his dad’s problem. But he had other weaknesses that an opportunist like Rebecca Page wouldn’t hesitate to exploit if it meant getting her story.
And the story brewing beneath the surface of the Riverboat was too big to allow an ambitious reporter to break it before his mission here was accomplished.
If he could still accomplish it.
Seth had been out of the office in an instant, knowing this entire undercover operation could be lost with one wrong word by that woman. He couldn’t get to the bar fast enough. Couldn’t risk asking his father about what they’d discussed when he’d dashed past him and Melissa in the lobby. He’d been blinded by the same surge of adrenaline he’d felt when their paths had crossed in the past. Rebecca Page had to go.
Her resistance renewed once he got her out the door. No surprise there. This time she tried to reason with him. She flipped the hem of her apron at him. “I have a job here, you know.”
“Where’s the rest of your uniform?”
“I just started.”
He got her across the gangplank. “Then you’re fired.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Watch me. Where are you parked?” He remembered the flashy red Mustang from their last encounter when she’d had the gall to stalk his mother to her home to bug her about the Baby Jane Doe murder investigation. Sure, that case had since been solved with the help of his new stepfather, and his mother’s position as acting commissioner of police had become a permanent job since they’d put the killer behind bars.
But he figured once a pest, always a pest. In another profession, he might have admired Rebecca’s persistence. But it was a reporter’s job to make headlines. Reveal secrets. Expose facts that could do more harm than good if they became common knowledge.
Therefore, the lady with the diehard curiosity had to go before she opened her mouth.
“Give me your keys,” Seth ordered, as they approached the Mustang, moving farther away from the lights and crowd of the casino. Instincts honed by months of learning to spot trouble before it spotted him had Seth checking between and underneath the vehicles before he led her to the door of her car. He snapped his fingers when he saw she wasn’t complying. “The keys.”
Out of sight from the front doors and beyond the hearing of other customers, she was done pretending to cooperate. She stuck her purse out at arm’s length and tried to play keep-away. “Can’t you ever just ask nicely when you want something?”
The role he’d been forced to play since taking this assignment didn’t involve making nice. People who asked got trampled on in this business.
So he grabbed her outstretched arm, spun her around and backed her against the car while he snatched the black bag from her grasp.
“Damn you. Give me that!” Her fingers tangled in the lapels of his jacket as she tried to push him away and retrieve her purse.
“Stop.” Seth leaned in half a step closer, pinning her hips and thighs in a mockery of intimacy, warning her she couldn’t win this particular battle. Her struggles stilled with a startled gasp. But if she hadn’t made the sharp sound of surprise, he would have. Her lips hovered at eye-level, painted red and parted, breathing little puffs of tantalizing warmth across his cheek, reminding him how long it had been since he’d risked being with a woman. How long it had been since he’d risked feeling anything beyond the job.
The imprint of her feminine shape was an unexpected shock to his system. Blood surged through his veins and things awoke. Control and denial had sustained him for months. But here he stood, caught unawares in the middle of the night, wanting something he shouldn’t—needing something too dangerous even to put a name to.
Damning that weakness inside him, Seth opened her purse and fished out the keys. While she watched in mute condemnation, he removed the tape from her recorder and dropped it in the pocket of his jacket.
“That’s stealing,” she accused, drawing her hands from his chest and crossing her arms between them.
He’d done worse recently. “I call it a security precaution.”
A cool breeze off the river blew a long, curly tendril over her flushed cheek, but didn’t do a thing