Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

deep cranberry color. Like the jewelry, it would have been fashionable in the 1910s or’20s. Unlike the jewelry, it was wool-lined and warm. She pulled out the coat, looked it over critically, and decided that no one would notice the teensy moth holes here and there. Moths had to eat, too, right? Besides, she’d stitched up the worst of them with thread that almost matched the basic material.
    She glanced at the clock, sighed, and faced the shoe issue. Not that she didn’t have plenty of shoes. She did. Her mother and her sisters were forever buying pretty instruments of torture for her to wear on her feet. Needle heels and toes to match. Even though the leather was incredibly soft and twice as expensive, her toes cringed at the thought of being crammed together while she tiptoed through an evening. She looked longingly at her scuffed, comfortable sandals, but didn’t reach for them. The coat she could justify on the basis of warmth. There was no justification for the sandals except sullen mulishness.
    If it had been a required party thrown by her mother, she might have been a mule. But she didn’t want to embarrass herself—or worse, Susa and Ian—by looking like something out of a church rummage sale. It was grin-and-bear-it time.
    “Bother!” Lacey grumbled, grabbing a pair of black heels and glaring at their sleek, uncomfortable style. “Why are there so many useless rules about what to wear to this or that? And why is everything that’s acceptable un comfortable? Who decided that women should wear heels, anyway—the Marquis de Sade?” She sighed and hoped Ian would take her straight to the restaurant, where she could kick off her shoes under the table and wiggle her toes.
    The downstairs bell rang, telling Lacey that she couldn’t stall any longer. She pulled on the shoes with their lethal heels, grabbed the vintage beaded envelope purse, shoved her arms into the coat, and headed down the stairs. There were just enough shop lights on to satisfy her insurance carrier. In the semidarkness, Ian’s silhouette loomed black in the doorway. For an instant she remembered her first impression of him: big, broad shoulders, and not necessarily safe.
    Then his smile flashed through the plate-glass window in the frontdoor and she felt a giddy kind of happiness bubble through her blood. Only then did she understand how much she’d been looking forward to seeing him again.
    You’re getting in over your head, she told herself.
    It’s about time, too. Dating myself is really boring.
    Lacey unlocked the door and opened it. “Come in. I’ve got to check the locks and stuff, and then we can go.”
    “Not so fast. You forgot something.”
    She opened her mouth to ask what and then felt his tongue gliding past her lips. She made a humming sound as she leaned toward him and slid her arms beneath his, getting as close to him as her bulky coat allowed. His arms tightened, helping her get nearer, holding her while the kiss burned like a fast fuse leading to an explosion of unknown force.
    After a moment or five, Ian forced himself to loosen his grip on Lacey. He lifted his head slowly, with many tiny nips and tastes that made her moan. She returned the sweetly stinging caresses and bit not quite gently on his lower lip. Then she traced his lips with the tip of her tongue and tasted him again, bit him again, shared the full-body shudder that went through him.
    “I want you,” he said.
    “Same here. If I could hear my brain above my heartbeat, I’d be scared to death.”
    His smile flashed again in the gloom. “Me, too. But I’m not so deaf to reason that I’m going to do what I really want to do.”
    “Which is?” she whispered.
    “Lift you up on that counter, take off your panty hose, and go so deep into you we both want to scream.”
    The small sound she made was more exciting than anything he’d known before.
    “Is that what you want, Lacey? Right here? Right now?”
    “I—I—”
    He gave her a quick, hard kiss and released her. “Lock up. Lock up real tight. I’m having a hell of a time remembering that I’m on duty here.”
    “Not here you aren’t,” she retorted, but made sure she was three steps away before she spoke. “You’re not guarding anything of mine.”
    He blew out a hard breath and wondered why he couldn’t keep hishands off a curly-haired artist in a moth-eaten cranberry coat. Then he decided the why of it all didn’t matter. The attraction was as real as gravity and just as