Rarities Unlimited 03 - Die in Plain Sight

nine.” Lacey stepped out onto the cracked sidewalk. None of the vehicles looked familiar. “Where’s the chariot?”
    “Half a block down to the left.”
    Lacey smiled to herself as Ian took the street side of the walk and then laced his fingers through hers. When he squeezed gently, hot and cold thrills chased over her nerves. Omigod, I’ve got it bad. Just holding hands with him makes me want to laugh and skip like a kid. She looked up and saw him watching her, smiling. The simple pleasure in his eyes made her toes curl.
    Ian kissed the flyaway curl on her temple and kept walking. It was that or drag her back to the shop and head for the nearest horizontal surface. The realization that he was hard and ready to go—and had been for some time—irritated him. He wasn’t used to taking orders from his dick. Advice, sure. Urgent suggestions, sometimes. Orders? Not since he was fifteen and found out that his dick was seriously stupid.
    “Whoa, that’s a grim look,” Lacey said.
    “Just thinking.”
    “About what?”
    He keyed off the locks and opened the passenger door of the truck. “About being fifteen and so horny I’d screw the crack of doom.”
    She laughed and choked at the same time. Then she went absolutely still when she saw the intensity in his dark eyes.
    “But I’m not fifteen,” he said. “I know all about itch-scratch-itch. If I thought it was that easy with you, we’d be back in your shop and I’d be hip deep into you, and we’d both be loving it. But it’s not that easy, is it?”
    She opened her mouth, closed it, tried to get a grip on her scattering thoughts. “I don’t know. I’ve never…” She touched his mouth with her fingertips. “Whatever it is, I don’t want it to go away.”
    “Does that mean you trust me?”
    “Yes.”
    Ian leaned over and said against her lips, “I’m holding you to that, Lacey January Marsh Quinn.”
    He had her inside the truck with the doors locked before she realized that the words could be a promise or a threat.

Newport Beach
    Thursday night
25
    B arefoot and still in the black dress she had worn to dinner, Lacey paced restlessly in the apartment above her shop. She considered painting and rejected it. All she wanted to paint right now was Ian Lapstrake. Stark naked.
    “Damn.” She groaned.
    She raked her hand through her hair and threw the fat hair clip into the corner, letting her curls spring free. Maybe she should have had more champagne. Or maybe she should have dragged Ian inside when he said good night, instead of letting him drive Susa back to the hotel where they were staying.
    Being on duty twenty-four/seven really sucked.
    Lacey looked at the single bed in the corner and knew she wouldn’t sleep. She looked at the empty canvases waiting for her. She could paint. The result might be colorful garbage, but she could still paint the hours away until she was tired enough to sleep—or until she saw Ian again.
    Itch-scratch-itch. But it’s not that easy, is it?
    Right now she was willing to risk finding out. Too bad he wasn’t. The good-night kiss he’d given her had been worthy of a younger brother.
    With an irritated swipe of her hand, she turned on the CD player. From speakers as small as fists, Etta James’s husky, worldly wise voice poured out, filling the apartment with dark words about breaking hearts, crooning a deceptively simple blues song, lamenting what might have been.
    Perfect
    Lacey decided she would paint after all. Without a thought for the expensive dress she was still wearing, she pulled on a huge, tattered flannel shirt that served as a paint smock if the nights were cold. When she’d first found the shirt at a garage sale, the hem came way below her knees and she’d had trouble keeping the sleeves rolled up. The hem hadn’t changed, but now there was so much paint on the sleeves that they were crusted in deep folds at her elbows.
    No sooner had she started to lengthen the legs of her easel when a knocking sound from the front door made her jump. Cautiously she went to the window that overlooked the sidewalk in front of the shop, opened it, and stared down. The man below turned up his head at the sound of wood creaking against wood.
    “It’s me,” Ian said. “Susa kicked me out. Said you needed protecting more than she did. Then she woke up my boss, who told me to do what Susa wanted.”
    Lacey started to ask why, but thought better of it. He didn’t sound happy to be standing below her window in