She edged around a half-erected piece of scaffolding and headed for the door.
“Wait, Bri—”
“Oh, and because I like you, Aidan,” she turned when she reached the gilded archway of cherubs and vines that led to the hall, “let me give you a little friendly advice.”
Hell, this meeting had gone so abysmally, maybe he ought to be taking advice from the crook’s daughter. He folded his arms and waited.
She cocked a hand on one gently curved hip. “Next time you want to pull a covert snooping mission, why don’t you choose a room that’s not under camera surveillance?”
Aidan would have liked to have argued he hadn’t been trying to be sneaky. But of course, that would have been a flat out lie. By the time his gaze discovered the tinted panel in the mirrored ceiling, Brianne’s high heels were already clicking their way down the Moroccan tiles of the hallway floor.
Didn’t that go over well?
He was supposed to be investigating Florida’s biggest thief of the last decade yet he waltzed in here tonight making rookie mistakes left and right because Brianne Wolcott was involved in his case.
Sure, he’d wanted Brianne to find him tonight—he’d needed to talk to her. But he hadn’t meant for her to discover him kissing the cigarette girl or to record his antics on film. His mistake in not noticing the camera panel ought to damn well teach him not to wear sunglasses past dusk.
Brianne had been right. She had, without a doubt, caught him with his pants down.
But not for long. Aidan might have been surprised at the level of awareness she sparked in him, but next time they met, he’d be prepared. He’d think about baseball while he spoke with her, if that’s what it took to safeguard against inappropriate thoughts.
He was going to have a real conversation with Brianne now. A talk that didn’t involve sexual innuendo or past recriminations. A talk that focused solely on his case.
Chucking his shades in a cupid-covered trash can on the way out the door, Aidan rooted around his brain for enough baseball trivia to stifle all sexual thoughts while he talked to Brianne. As if that were possible.
He could read Baseball Weekly cover-to-cover and not find enough to distract him from mile-long legs and her I’m-in-charge strut.
Nevertheless, as he made his way through the lobby toward the offices at the back of the club, he started ticking off slugging percentages for the whole Marlins’ roster.
OBVIOUSLY, BRIANNE HAD been immune to the Good Fortune Potion. Having the FBI show up her first night in business definitely equaled bad mojo. Especially when the guy with the badge happened to be the object of an embarrassing ancient crush.
She wound through the darkened resort lobby on her way back to her office, all the while wondering why the federal investigator assigned to her smarmy stepfather couldn’t have been fifty and balding. Or a woman. Or even a guy who looked remotely like a Fed was supposed to—sharp suit, regulation haircut, clean-shaven.
Instead, she got all six-foot-four of non-conforming Aidan who looked more like a Hells Angel.
Sighing, she slipped into the safety of her office and cursed her predilection for rebels. Hadn’t she learned anything from dating that psycho guitarist in New York? Sure, his tortured music had appealed to her as a fellow social outsider, but maybe she should have taken the electric-blue highlights in his hair at face value. Jimmy had been out of control.
Not bothering to flip on the light, Brianne checked her monitors and slid out of her shoes, padding silently around the glass-and-mirror studio in her bare feet. Summer had puzzled over how anyone could work in an environment so coldly sterile, but Brianne had never been one to reveal too much of herself. She preferred her remote haven to the raucous party taking shape on monitor number one.
She turned up the volume on the video feed from the stage camera in the Moulin Rouge Lounge. The floor show was just getting underway with dancers in white-feathered headdresses that were far more elaborate than their skimpy costumes. Yet as Brianne absorbed the images of half-dressed women striking deliberately erotic poses, all she could think of was the even more enticing video in her possession.
The archived footage of Aidan Maddock prowling around Honeymoon Heaven.
Assuring herself she only wanted to look at it for a minute, Brianne flicked the appropriate switches on her control panel until the cupid quarters flashed up on the main screen. The gilded white room was vacant now.
Maybe Aidan had realized Club Paradise was exactly what the new ownership purported—a legitimate business out to recoup the losses of its former incarnation. All the women involved in rejuvenating the scandal-mired resort either wanted a chance to make back the money they’d lost when the Rat Pack left town, or they wanted an opportunity to prove themselves career-wise. Some of them were hoping for a little of both.
Brianne rewound the archived footage until she found the moment Aidan entered the room—only about five minutes before she’d discovered him. She smiled in spite of herself as she watched him in action. Instead of breaking out his fingerprint kit or high-tech phone tap equipment, Agent Maddock had pumped six quarters into the hospitality cabinet to earn himself a Milky Way bar that was probably a year old.
Then, as if testing the mattress, he’d bounced on the heart-shaped bed for a minute before peering into every nook and cranny of the saccharin-sweet accommodations.
Her gaze drank in the sight of his rangy body. He’d been that tall ten years ago, but his frame hadn’t been quite as solid. Muscles filled out his Harley T-shirt now, stretching the well-worn fabric in a way that made Brianne’s mouth water.
No doubt about it. Aidan Maddock still sizzled her from the inside out and no amount of her in-your-face bravado was going to change that.
She just hoped to God Aidan would never realize as much.
No sooner had the thought occurred to her, then the office door swung open behind her. An awful premonition flitted through her mind—a scenario she did not want to contemplate as she stared up at the big-screen version of sexy Aidan Maddock.
Please let it be Giselle with another round of Good Fortune Potions. Or maybe it was Summer ready to yell at her for watching television in the dark again.
Please let it be anyone except…
“Looks like you couldn’t wait to see me again after all.” A far-too-cocky voice filled the studio. A masculine bass that definitely hadn’t originated on her tape.
…Aidan.
2
BRIANNE REACHED FOR the remote to pause the videotape, but Aidan’s hand beat hers to the control.
“I’ll take that.” He swiped the electronic device behind his back, allowing the tape of himself to continue rolling. “I want to see the part where you walk into the room. I’ve never seen anyone make an entrance quite like you, Bri.”
The man could be all charm when the situation warranted. No wonder she’d fallen for him a lifetime ago.
Good thing she knew better now.
“My entrance isn’t until after Daisy’s.” Brianne tried not to notice when the curvy blonde sashayed her way across the television screen in her micro-miniskirt. “But by all means, enjoy the show until then. You wouldn’t want to miss the footage of your lip lock.”
Aidan hit the pause button on the remote, stilling the picture on the television just as Daisy entered