Hero for Hire Read online

  Little Miss Helpful Nina Monteverde was not going back to her bedroom, she was entering yet another door off the hallway and shutting it behind her.

  Damn it!

  When he hauled it open a second later, she whipped around, eyes huge. “You scared me.”

  “I should.” He stalked toward her, toward the chest at the foot of the bed that she’d been just about to open. “What’s in there?”

  Instead of backing away, as he imagined she would, she drew the blanket around her like a queen gathering her robe, and lifted her chin. “Nothing.”

  “If it’s nothing, why are you so desperate for me to leave?”

  The pulse at the base of her neck drummed wildly.

  “I thought you were going to bed,” he said.

  “I was.”

  “This isn’t the bedroom I found you in, Nina.”

  “I...like to trade off.”

  “Uh-huh.” The walls were bright yellow, the bed coverings leopard print. Unlike Nina’s conservative, nearly all white bedroom, which had held only a bed, a dresser and a wicker chair, this bedroom had a huge vanity table, every inch covered with bottles and stoppers and makeup galore.

  “It is true. Look.” Nina plopped on the bed, and when the blanket around her hips gave away, exposing her thighs, she scrambled to cover herself.

  A damn shame, he thought. It should be illegal to hide a set of legs like that, all toned and tanned—

  “I am going to sleep right here.” She stretched out, taking care to keep herself covered. “So if you would care to leave...”

  Leaving was the last thing on his mind. The first had everything to do with how she looked sprawled out on the bed, but he shoved away the hot, racy thoughts. “I’m not going anywhere, Nina, because annoying as you are, you’re my only lead.”

  “I told you, I know nothing.”

  “This was Terry’s room.”

  “No.”

  Leaning forward, he took his gaze from her body and opened the chest. Like the vanity table, it was full. Reaching in, he pulled out a string with two tiny triangles of bright yellow attached to it. “What...”

  “Bathing suit top.”

  He’d have used the term top loosely. The bottoms came next, also consisting mostly of string, with one tiny patch of material in the front. “Yours, I suppose,” he said dryly, dangling it from his finger for Nina to inspect.

  Her face went fiery red. “Um...yes, of course.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It is!”

  “Prove it.”

  “H-how?”

  “Put it on.” At his wicked suggestion, she went even redder, and it was everything he could do not to laugh in her face.

  “I will not.”

  “What a shame.” Tossing it onto the bed, he went back to the chest. Out came a bright-yellow sundress that presumably covered up the bikini, though it was also majorly short on material.

  Imagining the prim and reserved Nina in it did odd things to his head.

  And his body.

  Annoyed at the loss of concentration, Rick dived back into the chest and came up with a matching yellow beach bag. Inside was an empty gum wrapper, a tube of lipstick and a little orange pill.

  Stumped, he stared down at the things. “Yours, too, right?”

  “Of course.”

  He opened the lipstick. Cherry red. Slanting a doubtful look at Nina, he shook his head. “Try again.”

  “I wear lipstick.”

  “Not this color, you don’t.” Tossing it aside, he picked up the pill, which could be anything. “I can’t imagine you on drugs, but since I’ve seen and heard everything in my day, try me. Go ahead,” he said into her stubborn silence. “Tell me it’s yours.”

  “I—” She stared at the little pill and chewed her lip.

  “Untangle yourself from that ridiculous blanket, it’s not covering anything I haven’t already seen anyway. Get out of the bed and come talk to me.”

  Surprising him by doing exactly that, he watched as she rose out of the bed, tossed back her hair and stared at him regally. “Okay. This is not my bedroom.”

  “No,” he said with feigned shock. “Do tell.”

  “You do not have to be rude about it. I decided I could tell you that much, at least. I have been trying to protect my sister’s past.”

  Since he’d screwed up protecting the one person who had ever really mattered to him, he found himself utterly unable to respond to that.

  A first.

  “My sister was a bit—” eyes sad, voice quiet, she looked around the bedroom “—flamboyant, I guess you would say. Wild. Loved the party life. But she was also much, much more than that. She was incredibly intelligent, and had an amazing business sense. She ran All That Glitters, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “She knew how to get the most of out that place, how to make it shine. While I—” she lifted a shoulder “—I am just a jewelry designer.”

  He doubted Nina Monteverde was “just” anything. “So now you run All That Glitters?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the necklace Terry wore in that picture...was that your work?”

  She nodded.

  “You’re good.”

  “It is my life,” she said simply. “Terry’s is the business end though, and I miss her with all my heart.”

  He had no idea why she was suddenly telling him all this. Either she’d finally come to the conclusion he wasn’t going to hurt her, or maybe she just wanted him the hell out of here, and thought by giving him a few tidbits, he’d go.

  No matter which, he was learning some interesting things. “You just talked about her in the present tense, Nina.”

  “Yes, I know.” She met his gaze then, directly. “It is hard to let go, as I love—loved. See? I loved her very much.”

  Oh, she was good. “What happened?”

  A little shrug and a big break in eye contact as she turned away. “All I can tell you is that she came to work one morning, like always, and was immediately arrested for embezzlement and smuggling gems, neither of which was true. She was framed. While awaiting trial, she jumped bail.”

  “Then showed up dead.”

  “Yes, after a boating accident off Galveston Island. She was sailing into an approaching storm, and drowned.”

  “She died wanted for her crimes?”

  “I tried to help, tried to find who framed her—and she was framed, believe me—but I could not, not by myself, and no one else could help.”

  Again, that reference to being utterly alone. Rick didn’t want to acknowledge she was as alone as he, didn’t want to bond with her over that. “But she was innocent.”

  “Oh yes,” she breathed, turning back, her entire heart in her eyes, so much that it hurt to look at her. “She was most definitely innocent. My sister was a lot of things, but not a thief. Never.”

  Rick withheld judgment. “And your business didn’t suffer from the scandal?”

  “At first, yes. But eventually it died down.” Her expression darkened as she once again looked at him. “Until now, that is. With you digging everything up, who knows what will happen?”

  Her indignation seemed as real as her grief, and gave him more than a moment’s pause.

  What was the real truth?

  Could Terry Monteverde have faked her death, then disappeared to have the baby, only to later really die?

  That would be a great coincidence, and Rick didn’t believe in coincidences.

  Still, that niggle of doubt bothered him, as did Nina’s beautiful eyes and seeming sincerity.

  He didn’t want to trust her. Didn’t want to trust anyone. So he held up the bathing suit, lipstick and pill one more time, forcing himself to remember that no matter how hauntingly beautiful, how vulnerable, this woman was capable of lying.

  He needed to remember that. “So these were Terry’s.”

  She bit her lower lip.

  “Nina.”

  “No.”