Oh, this was good. No recognition at all. The disguise was working. She’d had to leave her glasses on, because she was blind without them. Not that it seemed to affect the whole look. Mickey disguised as a bimbo had been a masterstroke. Who would suspect?
Mickey placed a hand on her hip, forming a nice isosceles triangle, just as she’d seen the other girls do.
“May I help you?” Beth asked.
“It’s Mickey,” she answered, twitching a little because the spandex skirt was hitting her butt in all the wrong places.
Beth emerged from behind the cappuccino machine and started to smile. “It’s always been a big, fat lie, hasn’t it?”
“What?”
“The whole ‘I hate men’ thing. Look at you,” she said, her hand encompassing spandex, lace and thigh-high boots. “You just jumped from the latest issue of Sluts R Us.”
Not exactly the look Mickey had been trying for. “Are you trying to make me feel better?”
Beth finished up the coffee she’d been making and put it on the wooden bar. “I’m not, huh?”
Mickey shook her head.
Beth grinned. “Well, girlfriend, you’re going to be fighting the vice cops off with a stick.”
When Beth started thinking she was witty, they were in serious trouble. “Where is he?”
Beth cocked her head in the direction of the far corner. “That’s his usual table. He’s not here yet.”
“Okay.” Mickey, who’d secretly been looking forward to mingling with the wrong kind, felt a little disappointed.
She practiced her walk over to the small round table. Hip to the right, hip to the left, thrust, thrust, thrust. There was a certain samba feel to it, not that Mickey had ever danced the samba, but if she had, it would have given her that same all-over body tingle that she had now.
Three espressos later, he walked through the door. Instantly she knew who he was. He moved with a sleek, lean grace, no squeaky tennies here. The kind of man who could kill you before you even knew he was in the room. His shoulders were broad, probably from lifting bodies. All in all, he was one dangerous hombre.
What scared Mickey was that, although Beth had told her enough that she would be able to recognize him, Beth had failed to disclose how a woman’s body would react. A logical, intelligent, rational woman’s body.
Mickey sat up straighter in her seat. Her back, her chin, her breasts all snapping into place. She’d taken a course in body language, she knew what she was saying.
Come on, baby, light my fire was the same in all languages.
Cold dark eyes scanned the room, settling on her.
Uh-oh.
The room temperature dropped ten degrees. In that moment, it dawned on her this was a really stupid idea.
He was going to kill her. He had the look of a man who carried a tommy gun in his pocket, or even worse, a garrote. Automatically, her hand covered her throat.
The next thing she knew, this cold-blooded killer was looming over her table. “You got three seconds to move your pretty little ass clear of my table.”
My table. Her eyes narrowed. Nothing like arrogance to piss a woman off, especially Mickey. She had heard the tone before. Dr. Breedlove had tried it her rookie year at Astrophysical Sciences Research Center. Her nuclei and elementary particles prof at U of C tried it, too, and both had been easily shot down. That’s what happened when you could solve Maxwell’s equation at the age of eighteen.
Mickey pulled at her tortoiseshell glasses until she could stare down her nose at him. “I’m here on business, so you might as well stop your gawking and sit your pretty little ass right down.” She smiled innocently. “Sweet cheeks.”
The coolness in the dark eyes heated. Damn, he was a handsome devil. Handsome in the ways of those Italian boys with high cheekbones and dark, brooding looks that said, “Casanova was my grandfather.”
Not the sort of man that roamed the composite-floor hallways at Astrophysical Sciences Research Center.
Not that she was noticing, or anything. Defiantly she raised her chin.
“Say what you want to say. It’s a free country.” Then he sprawled into the tiny chair next to her, his legs comfortably apart. A pose designed to draw attention to his well-muscled thighs and his well-muscled other parts.
Not that she was noticing, or anything.
Mickey tore her gaze away from his parts. “I want to hire you.”
His reaction wasn’t quite what she wanted. His legs closed, his arms folded across his chest, and his eyes could’ve turned her to stone. “No.”
“You haven’t even asked what I want you to do.”
He stared up at the ceiling, doing a fine job of avoiding her eyes. “I don’t want to know.”
This was not good. “I could pay you,” she whispered. “Pay you well.” The dark eyes flickered back to earth.
“I don’t do anything illegal,” he said, slow and quiet, in a tone that implied that he did things illegal on a daily basis.
Mickey took a sip of coffee. “It’s not that illegal. I’ve got some property that needs returning.”
“To who?” he asked.
“Whom,” she corrected, now portraying the part of a bimbo grammarian. Focus, Mick. “To me.”
“You got the wrong city block for drug deals gone bad.”
“No drugs. It’s a tape.”
His dark eyebrows drew together at a perfect forty-five degree angle. “Who’s holding it?”
Mickey slid a piece of paper across the table. Slimeball Intern’s name and address were printed in twelve-point Arial type so that there were no mistakes. She’d seen that on Law & Order.
“How much are we talking here?”
“Two-hundred dollars.”
The eyes closed off again. “Sorry, lady.”
Quickly Mickey backtracked. The going rate for breaking and entering was not posted on CNN. “Two thousand.” It would kill her savings, but for a career-sustaining insurance policy, it was worth it. She needed muscle, and she was willing to pay for it.
Again she caught the flicker of interest in his face before it disappeared. “No.”
“Please,” she said. It was about the closest she’d ever come to begging in her entire life, but she needed help.
“How do you know there’s only one tape?”
Mickey closed her eyes. This was where things got tricky and moved into the realm of diplomatic finagling. “If there’s more than one tape, then work—of a more forceful nature—might be involved. You do any leg breaking? Whacking?” she asked, successfully imagining Slimeball Intern screaming in pain. She smiled.
“No,” he said, and the screams in her dreams drifted away.
“Oh,” she muttered softly, thinking it was probably a good thing that Slimeball Intern wouldn’t get hurt. Secretly she was still disappointed.
“So you’ll do it?” she asked, just as the door swung open. The bells on the top jangled, and a big man walked through. Big, beefy, with frown lines that were carved permanently into his face.
Mickey shot a quick glance in Beth’s direction to see if she’d been watching, but right now Beth was missing. And where was moral support when you needed