“Did I make a mistake when I got between you and Dovey Smollett?”

No. She shook her head. He believed it, but she still wasn’t talking.

Okay, he thought. Fine.

“Why don’t you show me what’s in the messenger bag.” If it was cocaine, the party was coming to a screeching halt. It was going to hurt. Really, it would, but if Duce had called it right, the best thing he could do for Esme was turn her in before somebody turned her six feet under. He sure as hell wasn’t going to step aside and let a kilo of coke hit the streets and watch her get hurt in the process. No fucking way. That was the Boy Scout in him, and for someone who had never been a Boy Scout, he seemed to have a helluva lot of it.

But, geezus, that was going to hurt, if she’d really sunk that damn low.

She looked down at the leather messenger bag she had clutched in her lap-and he waited.

“My partner suggested that I stick with you tonight,” she said after a long, weighted silence, right about when he was going to insist on seeing what was in the bag. “That with Bleak pooching our deal, you were doing a good job of watching my back and keeping me in one piece, and I should take you with me to make my delivery, if you were willing to go.”

Well, talk about a boatload of information.

Geezus.

He sat back in his seat and looked at her for a moment, and for every second of that moment, he only saw one thing: trouble. It was probably tattooed on her ass. In caps.

“What’s your deal with Bleak?” Start at the top. That was the best place.

“I pay him the money he lost on my dad, or he breaks my dad into a couple dozen pieces, a process my dad may or may not survive. It doesn’t matter to Bleak either way.”

Straightforward. Brutal. Predictable.

Fucking perfect.

“And your partner thinks I’m the guy to help you out with this transaction?” What kind of asshole had she hooked up with, to leave her on her own to do a deal with Franklin Bleak?

But she was shaking her head.

“Then what?” he asked.

“My first delivery is up in Genesee Park, to meet a man named Isaac Nachman. He’ll give me the money in exchange for the property I recovered off the German you saw in the Oxford. Nachman’s property. My dad’s been working on this deal for over four years, and I’ve been on it a month, getting everyone in place for tonight, and now I’m running late, about half an hour late, getting to Genesee and getting the money.”

Recovered-now there was a nice word. Johnny had “recovered” a few things in his younger days, and he wasn’t talking upholstery.

“And when are you meeting Bleak?”

“Five A.M., but my partner will be here by then. We’ll do the final deal together.”

“Partner in what?” Crime? Some kind of scam they were running on rich guys living up in Genesee? Out and out idiocy?

“Private investigations. We’re based in Seattle, and mostly do a lot of Pacific Rim stuff, specializing in property recovery and finding people, especially people who don’t want to be found. Sometimes we work in South America, and people who need help down there know to come to us.”

“Private investigations.” That was a nice catchall, and the whole Pacific Rim thing sounded so professional, and she was just so sure of herself, rattling all this information off-and yet, here she was, sitting in this dump of an alley with him, back in the old neighborhood, with a lowlife like Franklin Bleak threatening to bust up her deadbeat dad. “Did you major in that up in Boulder, at the university?”

He wasn’t being a smart-ass about it, really. He was curious. She’d been the best and the brightest, and guys like Franklin Bleak shouldn’t be in her vocabulary, let alone breathing fire down her neck.

“Look,” she said, a bit of an edge coming into her voice. “I really don’t need help delivering the property. I appreciate everything you’ve done, but all I really need is a cab. I can take it from here.”

“Where’s your partner?”

“On his way up from Colorado Springs.”

“You sleeping with him?” That was the question, rude or not. If he was in, he was in, and he wanted to know where all the lines were. A few thin bricks of cash delivered to Bleak? Hell, he could do that in his sleep. Esme didn’t have to be part of it at all. Duce could grab a couple of his crazy spider boys out of the alley, his elite Arañas Locos, and the four of them could go over and visit Mr. Bleak. The whole damn thing wouldn’t take more than five minutes. Johnny knew how the street worked, and whatever beef Bleak had with Burt Alden wasn’t going to be worth pissing off Baby Duce, not once the bookie got his money.

And Duce owed him. Duce would always owe him, until the shot caller pulled his last breath. There was no walking away from the places they’d been together.

“No,” she said. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

She was right. It was none of his business.

“Are you sleeping with anybody?” That wasn’t any of his business either, but the question stayed where it lay.

“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” she said, giving him a look that said he was way outside the bounds of propriety.

She was wrong. He and propriety had reached a truce a long time ago-and the question still stayed where it lay.

“Yes, you do,” he said.

And she did. She knew exactly what it had to do with everything. It was why he was sitting here in the dark with her, instead of back on a barstool at the Blue Iguana with a shot and a beer in front of him. It was why at five A.M., no matter how she answered the question, he’d be staring across the table at Franklin Bleak with the bookie’s cash lying between them.

“I don’t think… well, think that…”

Yes, she did, and he could prove it.

Without moving from his side of Solange, he lifted his hand and gently cupped the lower part of her face, spreading his fingers across her left cheek and letting his thumb rest on her lips.

Softly, ever so softly, he brushed his thumb across her mouth-and watched her grow still.

He could have stopped there, could have stopped with her eyes darkening under his gaze, with the heat rising between them at his touch. But she was the impossibly not-so-easy Easy Alex, and for this one moment, he literally had her in the palm of his hand.

So he kissed her, simply leaned forward and opened his mouth over hers-and she let him, exactly as he’d known she would. Nothing had ever been finished between them, and God, her mouth. She had the softest lips, the slightest overbite, and a taste that went straight to his groin. She didn’t move away, not so much as a millimeter. She held so perfectly still, her breath seemingly caught somewhere between them, her lips parted just enough to allow him entry, a hesitant welcome that warmed with every slow thrust of his tongue into her mouth.

She was sweet, and hot… and careful, exactly as she’d always been. He almost grinned. Somehow, somewhere, sometime tonight, the carefulness had to go. But for now, he’d take her careful kiss. He’d take the soft, hesitant giving way of her tongue to his, take her gentle exhalation inside himself, and imagine what it would take to make her groan.

Not much, he decided, when she made a soft sound deep in her throat and turned into the kiss- but not all the way, still holding back. Still keeping her hands to herself. Still not committing, not submitting-and that’s what he wanted, what he needed. Submission. He knew how incredibly sweet it could be, and he wanted it from her.

God, she’d made him work for it the last time they’d been kissing in a car, too, never giving away too much, until toward the end, when she’d been so close to giving it all up for him.

So close… so close… but then no closer.

Tonight would be different. He hadn’t chased her down to lose out in the end. And that’s exactly what he’d done-chased her down, hooker skirt and all. He’d been sitting in the Blue Iguana, checking out the women, wondering about them, idly fantasizing about a couple of them, and wondering why the old “threesome in the back of the bar” fantasy never seemed to happen to anybody in real life, and at the same time he’d been wondering why he wasn’t putting more effort into at least saying hello.