He shrugged. “Now I’m not.”
Joel tipped his glass to his lips again and drank deeply, wishing for at least the hundredth time since Shaun McIver walked into his office that he’d refused this assignment. It should have been a simple job: to find a child who had been adopted twenty-two years earlier. But four months later Joel had made scant progress.
The few facts he’d managed to uncover so far led him straight to Senator Ellen Rutherford-Quinlan. If the senator had information that would help find Shaun’s fiancée’s sister, Joel was determined to get it. Which was his reason for coming to West Virginia.
He hadn’t counted on crossing paths with Riane Quinlan, though. And he’d been completely unprepared for the quick punch of arousal that struck low in his belly when he’d first set eyes on her.
A smart investigator would turn the situation to his advantage—get whatever information he could from the daughter as the mother was nowhere to be found. But he was having difficulty thinking like an investigator with the subtle scent of Riane’s perfume fogging his brain.
Which meant that the wisest thing would be to establish and maintain a safe distance from Riane Quinlan. He needed answers, and he wasn’t going to get them if he allowed himself to be distracted. The senator’s daughter was quite a distraction.
“Riane, darling—”
Joel exhaled a silent sigh of relief as she was forced to turn her attention to the stocky woman who descended upon them in a cloud of sweet scent and glittering sequins.
“Margaret,” Riane said, exchanging air kisses with the older woman. “I’m so pleased you could make it.”
The woman looked vaguely familiar to Joel, but it took a moment to search his memory banks for the reference. When it clicked, he wondered that his jaw didn’t hit the floor. Margaret Cassidy. The attorney general of the United States.
The upper echelons of political society had turned out for this event—all the way from Washington, even. A reminder of how much political clout the Rutherford-Quinlans wielded. As if he needed any reminders. He’d tangled with them once before, and that encounter had cost Joel his reputation and his career.
He was clearly out of his element here, even if no one else seemed to realize it. He didn’t fit in with these people; he didn’t want to. He’d attended this gala event because his client was paying all incidental costs—including the thousand-dollar ticket for dinner and the rental of this damn tux—and because he’d been confident he could remain in the background. Riane had taken that option away from him. And he wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or annoyed that he’d caught her attention.
While she was preoccupied with the attorney general, Joel scanned the room again, searching for the elusive senator. Ellen Rutherford-Quinlan’s name had been on the top of the guest list. This charity camp was her daughter’s pet project. So where the hell was she?
His head snapped back to the conversation beside him when the attorney general said, “I’m so sorry I missed your mother.”
“She didn’t want to miss the ball,” Riane told her. “But Daddy convinced her that it was more important to celebrate their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary.”
Daddy. Joel fought the urge to roll his eyes. How many grown women referred to their fathers as “daddy”? Then the impact of what she was saying registered and he nearly groaned out loud: the senator wasn’t going to make an appearance here tonight.
He accepted the fresh glass of beer the waiter brought to him without question and tipped it to his lips, cursing the fact that he’d wasted his time—and his client’s money—in attending this gala event. Hell, his whole trip to West Virginia might turn out to have been a waste of time.
Riane said goodbye to the older woman, turned back to him and smiled. Joel felt that quick punch of desire again and had to remind himself of all the reasons that the senator’s daughter was off-limits.
She wasn’t his type, anyway. She was too sophisticated and high class. Too everything. He preferred a woman with more simple tastes, more basic desires. And blond, he reminded himself, even as his fingers itched to pull the pins out of Riane’s dark silky hair to let it tumble freely down her back.
Joel swallowed, hard. Yeah, he definitely preferred blondes.
Like the one beside the window, tall and slender in body-hugging green velvet. Her hand was on the arm of a short, portly man who looked old enough to be her father, but the hefty chunk of diamond on the woman’s hand suggested otherwise.
Despite the ring and the presence of her companion, she caught Joel’s eye and sent him a blatantly invitational glance from beneath lowered lashes. There was nothing complicated about that one, Joel thought approvingly. Except that he never cut in on another man’s territory. It was one of few rules he lived by, and one he’d never consider violating. He knew too well how it felt to be on the other side of that equation.
“Meredith Ashcroft,” Riane said, close to his ear. “Of the Boston Ashcrofts—by marriage. Now divorced and currently engaged to Justice Cunningham.”
“The man in the ill-fitting tux?”
“That’s the one,” Riane agreed. “He hasn’t bought a new suit in the past ten years because he won’t admit that he’s put on forty pounds. He thinks he has the same physique that impressed his first wife. She left him more than a dozen years ago and took half his money. He still possesses a sizable fortune and an impressive position on the bench, which is why Ms. Ashcroft is in line to become wife number three.”
“A friend of yours?”
Riane’s smile was thin. “An acquaintance,” she clarified.
“But I could arrange an introduction, if you wanted.”
“You said she was engaged.”
“Does that matter to you?”
“Yes.”
“A cop with morals,” she mused.
“I’m not a cop,” he said again.
“So you said. But you didn’t say what you are.”
Not wanting to reveal too much about his reasons for being in West Virginia, he opted to try diversion again. “Do you dance?”
She tilted her head. “Is that a hypothetical question or an invitation?”
“An invitation.”
She studied him for another moment, as if considering his motives, then nodded. “All right.”
Joel led the way to the dance floor, reassuring himself that he’d issued the invitation solely to prevent her from continuing her inquiry. He wasn’t ready for her to find out who he was, his real reason for being there. Not until he knew whether or not she was the answer to his questions.
Then Riane put her hand in his, and desire surged through him. Hot and hard. And he knew that however he chose to rationalize the request in his own mind, the simple fact was that he’d wanted to hold her. She was sexy and beautiful and intriguing, and it had been far too long since he’d been with a woman.
The intensity of his own reaction shook him. He was a man of action, in charge of his life, responsible for his own decisions. Yet the moment she turned into his arms, he felt a spiraling sense of panic, a stunning realization that this was out of his control.
He’d only ever felt this way once before—toward the end of the Conroy investigation. Just as all the pieces seemed to be falling into place, he’d known that it had been a little too easy. He’d ignored the instinct, convinced himself it was paranoia.
He’d been wrong.
There was no way he’d make the same mistake again.
Okay, so maybe he was overreacting a little this time. Riane Quinlan was a woman.