And now … now he had to worry about this assignment turning into another Carpenter case. It could ruin his career all over again. His chest tightened at the thought.
On another rainy night three years ago he'd had an appointment with Margaret Carpenter, a white-haired old woman who walked with a cane and always carried her silver poodle, Lacey, in her free arm. He knew this because he'd been watching her through surveillance equipment in a van parked outside her house for over three weeks. Only, Margaret Carpenter hadn't been there when he'd arrived that night. She'd packed up everything, including her dog and her stolen money, and hadn't been seen since. And it had been all Kimberly's fault.
He and Kimberly had both been working for the Kessler Agency at the time, the biggest and most prestigious P.I. firm in the city. He'd been at the company for nearly ten years and had gradually worked his way up to being assistant V.P. He'd hired Kimberly with no experience because she'd seemed so eager and earnest and so willing to learn. He'd had no idea they would soon start dating.
But date they did, heavily. And it had been going well. Yet four months into the relationship and six months into Kimberly's employment, Margaret Carpenter had come along.
It had been a pretty simple case initially. Margaret Carpenter's son, Bruce, believed his mother had been stealing money from his business and he'd hired Kessler to prove it. The first angle Max took involved sending Kimberly in as a new neighbor. He set her up in a small bungalow next to Margaret's little house and Kimberly forged a relationship with her. Kimberly kept a tiny tape recorder on her through all their visits, the idea being simply to get Margaret to confess, and hopefully to confess how she'd done it, as well, so that they could track down the physical evidence.
Max should have known there was trouble when Kimberly told him she'd met Bruce Carpenter, when he stopped by his mother's house one day. She'd found him rude and brutish. "He's just plain mean to her, Max," she'd said.
"Of course he's mean to her," Max had replied. "He knows she's embezzling his profits."
Kimberly succeeded in getting Margaret to admit to her that she had over a hundred thousand dollars hidden away and that she was looking for a good investment, but she never told Kimberly where she'd gotten the money. Still, it had been pretty obvious—she didn't work, lived meagerly, and had access to her son's accounts, a mistake of him being too trusting when he opened his construction business some years before.
The next angle they planned to take was to send Max in as a friend of Kimberly's, a real-estate broker who could help Margaret invest her money. He would ask her how much money she had and tell her he needed more, quickly, for the investment. Even if they couldn't get a confession from her, they'd watch the accounts for the amount Max requested.
But by the time Max got there that night, the house was dark and Margaret Carpenter was on her way into hiding. Unbeknownst to him, Kimberly had broken all the rules of ethics by telling Margaret who they were and what her son suspected.
He remembered all too clearly the day he and Kimberly had both been called into Dean Kessler's office. Max had found out Kimberly was responsible for Margaret's departure just moments before. She'd told him herself, obviously sensing why Kessler had requested a meeting with them both.
Kessler had first fired Kimberly, after berating her and explaining to her that they all could have lost their licenses over this kind of unethical behavior.
And then Kessler had fired Max.
Max hadn't seen it coming because he'd thought he was only involved as Kimberly's direct superior. Instead, Kessler had held him completely accountable for Kimberly's bad decisions. "You hired her and you put her on this case. You also got sloppy, Max."
"Sloppy?" He'd leaned forward and raised his eyebrows.
"This is what happens when you start thinking more about your employee's skirt than her work. You lose your judgment and she botches the job."
When he was finished, Kessler simply walked out of his office, leaving them both alone. Max sat back in the big leather chair he occupied, contemplating the reality that he'd just lost his job, his career, everything he'd worked to build for the previous ten years. He was dumbfounded—and furious—that it could be taken from him that quickly.
Slowly, he turned his head to look at Kimberly, the woman he had trusted. Tears stained her cheeks as their eyes met. Her voice was barely a whisper. "I suppose it's too late to say I'm sorry."
Sorry?
He'd just lost his whole career! Sorry seemed a meaningless word in that devastating moment. "Too late," he finally said. "And too little."
She'd swallowed visibly and they'd simply stared at each other for a very long moment. Then she'd gotten up and walked away. Out of the office. And out of his life.
He hadn't seen her again until he'd exited the shower twenty minutes ago and found her standing in his foyer, rainwater dripping from the hem of her short blue dress and the tips of her wavy hair, a smug sassiness he didn't remember from before overflowing from her. She was everything he'd asked Frank for. Smart. A decent actress. And God knew, she was a pleasure to look at.
But there'd been one thing he'd left out of his description of the perfect lady partner when he'd talked to Frank. Trustworthiness. She'd proven to him three years ago that she couldn't be counted on to maintain her loyalty or to finish a job. She'd cost him everything.
And now they were supposed to work together?
* * *
Kimberly crossed and uncrossed her legs. Then she firmly crossed her arms under her breasts. What the hell was taking him so long? First he'd kept her waiting at the door, now in his living room. How long did it take a man to get dressed?
Finally, she released a sharp sigh of disgust and leaned forward on the couch. "Um, excuse me in there?" she yelled. "Those clothes you went to put on? Are you weaving the fabric yourself or…?"
When he exited the bedroom and walked toward her down the hardwood hall in bare feet, she flinched. His chest was also bare, and his jeans were pleasantly snug. Oh my. She leaned back into the couch and tried to pretend she hadn't just had a spasm at the very sight of him.
"You bellowed?" he asked, widening his warm eyes in a way that might have struck her as innocent if she hadn't known he was taunting her with them.
"I just wanted to make sure you hadn't dozed off or something." She answered, fidgeting. "And if this is going to take a while, shouldn't you call Julie and change your plans?" Oh drat. She'd tried to resist saying that last part, but it hadn't worked. Despite herself, she wanted to know who Julie was.
But all she got for her efforts was yet another of Max's classic dry looks as he shoved a lock of midnight-colored hair from his forehead. "Don't worry, Brandt I'm completely capable of handling my own affairs."
The response cut Kimberly to the quick. Although she didn't know what bothered her more—the allusion she knew he was making to the Carpenter case and his opinion that she wasn't capable of handling
anything
, or hearing him say the word
affairs
and thinking of him having them, not with her anymore, but with other women. With this, this Julie person.
However, Kimberly quickly decided it must be the former that ate at her the most. She had the compulsion, just one more time, to try to explain to him why she'd done what she'd done that night. "Believe it or not, Tate, I'm capable, too. More than capable. And as for the Carpenter case—"
He held up his hand. "Stop."
She leaned forward and snapped her response. "Why?"
He settled in a leather chair across from her. "Because if this is going to work, you and I are going to have to push our bad feelings for each other aside and stick to the case."
"That's a spiffy plan, Tate, but if you'd just let me tell you my side of things, I'm sure we'd both—"
He cut her off. "Nope. The past is in the past and I, for one, have no desire to dredge it up. That's how it has to be if we're going to work together."
She released a bitter sigh. She should have known better. After all, she'd tried to explain her actions outside Kessler's office that day, but he hadn't let her. He'd just kept saying, "You told her
what?"
and glaring at her with disbelieving eyes. Then Kessler had called them in and that had been the end of it. He wouldn't let her explain then, and he wouldn't let her explain now. "Fine," she bit off.
"Now, about the case."
She shifted on the couch and tried to relax a little, tried to adapt a professional frame of mind. "I'm listening."
"The guy we're after is Carlo Coletti. Carlo has a pastime of robbing wealthy wives of their expensive jewelry."
"How does he go about it?"
"He hangs out in upper-class drinking establishments until he can befriend some rich guy and cling to him. He makes a point of getting the husband to show him a picture of his wife, who, as far as I can tell, has to be a knockout in order to get Coletti interested. Then he ingratiates himself into the couple's lives. After that, he seduces the wife and steals her jewelry in the process."
Kimberly tilted her head. He'd obviously glossed over some details. "Fill in the gaps, Tate."
"Well," he sighed, "in my client's case, Carlo seduced her and at the same time managed to charm the jewelry away from her. Told her it turned him on to make love to a woman decked out in diamonds. She went to her safe, put on every diamond necklace and bracelet she owned, slept with the guy, then woke up hours later naked of even the jewels."
Kimberly was beginning to think she got the picture here. "So, it's more than just money for this guy. He's after the thrills, too."
Max gave a short nod. "Would seem that way. Another thing that points in that direction is the fact that he could just pick up rich
single
women. But he only goes for couples. He seems to enjoy seducing the gorgeous wife away from her wealthy husband. That's why the scam tears the victims apart. In addition to robbing my client, Carlo broke up her marriage in the process."
"You said
victims
. There are others besides this woman?"
"I've talked with four."
"Max, if everyone knows what happened, and if this guy is so easy to find, why isn't he behind bars?"
He offered her a wry smile. "That's the tricky part. Police have checked him out, held him on suspicion—he even went to trial once. But he says he didn't do it and no one can prove anything. The most frustrating part is that he
admits
he seduces the wives, but that's it. No jewelry. To top it off, the guy lives in a dumpy apartment near
Venice
, west of
Lincoln Avenue
. It's been searched over and over and the police never turn up anything. The most valuable things this guy has in his possession are his car and the clothes on his back, which make him fit in with the rich set at a glance. But whatever he's doing with the jewelry, he's covering his tracks and keeping it quiet. He's stolen over three million dollars' worth of jewels from the four women I've spoken to, yet there's not a shred of evidence."
"And that's where we come in."
"Right. Tomorrow morning you and I will move into a mansion in
Beverly Hills
, borrowed from an upper-crust friend of my client's, a studio bigwig who's out of town for the next month. Tomorrow night, Carlo Coletti joins us for dinner, I'll invite him to spend the night and the party begins."
Kimberly crossed her arms over her chest. "One question. If you didn't even know who your wife was going to be, you obviously couldn't show the jerk her picture. How'd you reel him in without it?"
Their eyes met. "I assured him that my wife was the most beautiful, sexy woman he'd ever have the pleasure of meeting."
Is she?
Kimberly instantly wanted to ask. His gaze and those words made her throat tighten and the juncture between her thighs tingle. She rose from the couch, suddenly anxious to end the meeting. "So then, is there anything else I need to know?"
He stood up, as well. "Nothing I can't fill you in on tomorrow. But be prepared—the guy's gonna be all over you as soon as he gets one look. And if you have any sexy clothes, bring them. We want to paint you as … not unwilling."