Absolute Pleasure Read online

  Duncan checked his watch. “Call Abe back and tell him I’ll be there within the hour. And have Marisa track down the Burbank and Ricci files.”

  “What about Locke?” she asked, jotting down his instructions. “It’s a three-carat rock, and Abe did say he had a big one.”

  “Pull the file,” he said. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Lucy rose up on her toes, trying to get a peek inside his office. “Anything else you need? Bail money? A lawyer?” She lowered her bifocals. “A cold shower?”

  Lucy had been in his employ from day one and knew as much, if not more, than he did about the agency, the cases they handled, the people he employed and even himself. He couldn’t begin to imagine how the agency would ever get along without her. At the moment, however, the concept suddenly had merit.

  “Just get me those files,” he told her. “I can handle the rest.”

  She made a “harumph” sound, clearly indicating her opinion on the subject. With one last glance, she strode down the hall calling for Marisa, his administrative assistant.

  Duncan closed the door and turned back to Sunny. “Sorry about that,” he said.

  Uncertainty clouded her eyes when she faced him. “I better go.” She made no move to leave.

  He snagged the tie he’d removed earlier from the hook on the back of the door. “How’s seven sound for dinner?”

  She glanced nervously around the office. “Good,” she said, not looking at him. She cleared her throat. “Uh, where should I meet you?”

  He would’ve preferred to pick her up himself, but he understood and respected her caution. Despite the hot kiss that still had his blood simmering, she knew very little about him. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t follow him back to his place after dinner, he thought hopefully.

  Finished with his tie, he jotted the name of a casual restaurant close to his apartment on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “See you at seven.” He considered the wisdom of one last kiss. One final taste of sweet peppermint and hot passion.

  She folded the note and slipped it inside her pocket. “I’ll see you then.”

  He circled the desk. The door swung open and Lucy stormed in with one of the files he’d requested. “Here,” she said, thrusting the file in his direction. “The rest is somewhere in this mess.”

  “I’ll find my way out,” Sunny said, then disappeared down the hall.

  He turned to glare at Lucy. “Whatever happened to knocking?” Duncan complained. Her interruption—again—annoyed the hell out of him. So much for testing the wisdom of one last kiss.

  Lucy planted her thick hands on her wide hips and scowled at him. “Whatever happened to discretion? Playing footsie in the office? With a Fibbie?”

  He didn’t question how Lucy knew what he and Sunny had been up to behind closed doors. Nothing ever went on within the walls of the tenth-floor office suite that she didn’t know about—his personal life included. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but what’s the big deal?”

  “If it concerns this office, it concerns me.” She looked pointedly at the mountain of work scattered around his office. “What you need to be playing with, are these open cases.”

  He let out a sigh. “Point taken.” He joined her in the search for the files he needed for his meeting, but his thoughts remained centered on sweet peppermint and hot, wet kisses.

  5

  LUCK. DUNCAN NEVER put much stock in the concept. He didn’t buy into misfortune or the half-baked theory of an all-powerful, mystical puppet master pulling the imaginary strings of humanity to satisfy its whims. Hard work met with reward, and ensuring that reward entailed paying close attention to detail, occasionally tweaking a rule or two when necessary and having the ability to persuade others to see his way was the only way.

  Contrarily, if a man was ill-prepared or ill-equipped in the determination department, opportunities were often missed. He wasn’t so arrogant to believe he held absolute control over every aspect of his universe, although he did his best to disprove the theory whenever possible. If he made an error in judgment, then he promptly set out to rectify the problem by compensating for his gaffe and acting accordingly to bring about the positive outcome he sought.

  When it came to mistakes, he’d made plenty. Odds were he’d make a few more, too. He was wise enough to appreciate the value of hindsight in providing him with the vision to dissect a problem. Most were traced back to poor judgment on his part, which in his opinion, stemmed from plain lack of preparation.

  Regardless of his beliefs, the occasional opportunity still managed to land in his lap through little or no extra effort on his part. While he’d been focusing his attention on cultivating his “in” with the Bureau, which could result in some highly impressive recovery fees, he’d unexpectedly recovered a three-point-four-carat diamond engagement ring. The payout itself wouldn’t set any agency records, but with almost zero effort and a nominal reimbursement paid to one of his contacts in the pawn industry, he’d managed to impress a new client. The rep had been so pleased he’d promised to courier over three new assignments next week—along with a check for locating the missing rock.

  All in all, not a bad day’s work. He’d asked the pawn dealer to keep his antennae raised for rumors about a fresh cache of hot gems. Not that Duncan seriously expected the jewelry collection stolen from Margo Wilder to show up locally, but in his experience, someone always knew someone who had heard that someone else had seen….

  A lead, no matter how obscure, was still a lead in his business. Since he’d offered a minute percentage of the take he’d collect on Wilder, he hoped to have a viable tip to chase down within the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours minimum.

  A movement near the door caught his attention. Marisa poked her head into his office. “You wanted to see me?”

  He waved her inside. “How are those files coming along?” Before leaving for Able Pawn, he’d asked Marisa to locate and copy the Dearborn and Garfield files for Sunny. He’d debated the wisdom of presenting them to her at dinner tonight, and had concluded it’d be best not to mix business with what he hoped would be a very pleasurable experience.

  “The property photos are scanned and printed, but I’ll have to send out for the copying of the case files.” She smoothed her hand down her summery dress and gave him an apologetic smile. “The copier crapped out again. For good this time.”

  Duncan’s grin faded. “Are you sure?” Considering most of the equipment in the office had been used or reconditioned, he’d known the need for replacements was imminent, but the copier was the third mechanical disaster this month. One Lucy would no doubt tell him they couldn’t afford to replace.

  Marisa nodded. “Sparks. Black smoke. A fatality. It needs an undertaker, not a tech.”

  He let out a sigh. “I’ll have Lucy order a new one.”

  “If you don’t need anything else,” Marisa said, “I’m outtie.”

  “Outtie? Been hanging out at the mall on your lunch hour again, haven’t you?” he teased her. She’d probably been holed up in the conference room with a tuna sandwich and a textbook, as had been her habit for as long she’d worked for him.

  She laughed. “Not quite.” Her wide smile reminded him suddenly of Sunny. Bright, cheerful, sans the accompanying caution usually lining Sunny’s gaze.

  “You should get out more,” he said, but his mind was already focusing on the possibilities of his dinner date with Sunny. The after-dinner possibilities specifically.

  “I plan to,” Marisa said, reaching for the overflowing stack of files threatening to fall off his desk and pushed them back in place. “I’m finished with class until fall, so I promised my girls we’d do more together this summer. It’s movie night.”

  According to Lucy, who made it her business to know every intimate detail of the lives of the people he employed, Marisa’s existence revolved around her two young daughters. No husband, though, if he remembered correctly. The bum had skipped out during Marisa’s second p
regnancy, leaving her to raise her kids alone.

  “Go. Get out of here,” he told her. “If anything comes up in the next twenty minutes, I’ll bully Lucy into handling it.”

  “Yeah, right. Good luck,” she said with a chuckle, and walked to the door.

  “Marisa,” he called before she disappeared. “Any word from Colin?” Last week he’d spoken to his little brother about slowing down on generating new business until Duncan wrestled his current workload into submission. No one had seen or heard from Colin since. Duncan had thought about calling his mom, but if Colin had returned to his old habits, he didn’t want to upset her.

  This wasn’t Colin’s first disappearing act, but it was the first since they’d gone into business together, and Duncan worried. From the day Duncan had approached his brother with the idea of being partners, the kid had miraculously cleaned up and had stayed that way. Working with Colin had been a gamble with high stakes, and Duncan had known going in his plan could fail. His hope had been if his brother had a purpose, then maybe he’d steer clear of the booze, drugs, gambling or some other new vice or obsession.

  Thankfully, the gamble had paid off. Colin’s handling of what he’d jokingly referred to as the corporate ass-kissing end of the business had been flawless, to the point where Duncan had accumulated more work than he could possibly handle alone. Rick Yeager, a college student who worked for them part-time, pretty much single-handedly covered the jobs for their law firm clients and had mentioned to Duncan recently even he had more work than his scheduled allowed. Asking Colin to cut back until Duncan could get through some of their present cases had been a necessity, but may have been one more error in judgment. He hadn’t anticipated the lack of activity would make Colin slip off the deep end again after all this time.

  “No,” Marisa told him. “I haven’t. Not since he took off around noon last Friday. There’s a new business proposal presentation day after tomorrow on his calendar, too. Do you want me to reschedule, or will you cover it?”

  He looked at Marisa and an idea took hold. According to the balance sheets the past couple of months, he couldn’t afford to hire another recovery expert. If Colin had indeed gone off on another bender, someone had to take care of the clients. “Why don’t you handle it?”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. “Me? Are you serious?”

  “Why not?” The hopeful note in her voice made him smile. “No reason why you shouldn’t start putting that education to use.”

  Marisa had been taking night courses while working full-time for him as a glorified secretary and raising her two young daughters on her own. She’d already been over-qualified when he’d hired her, but now more than halfway into earning her business degree, he figured if he didn’t eventually offer her a more challenging position she’d be moving on to a bigger and better paying job. With Colin M.I.A. five days already, he couldn’t help but fear the worst. Covering his bases was the best option.

  “Besides,” he added, “you know the drill. Probably better than I do.” She should, since she prepped the presentations in the first place and had assumed the responsibility of writing the quarterly status reports on open files to their insurance-carrier clients since he’d fallen so far behind.

  “All right,” she said carefully, slowly nodding her head in agreement. “If Colin is a no show, I’ll do it.”

  “No,” he said, his tone firm. “You take the meeting.” He didn’t bother to explain his faith in her far exceeded what he held at the moment for his brother. “Whether Colin’s here or not, this one is yours.”

  “You won’t be sorry.”

  “I know I won’t,” he told her. “Now get out of here. Go have fun for a change.”

  Once alone, he picked up the phone and dialed his brother’s apartment. The answering machine picked up on the fourth ring, and Duncan left another message. He tried Colin’s cell next, only to be informed by an annoying computerized voice the mailbox was full before disconnecting him.

  Irritation mingled with his concern for his brother’s welfare. He’d just have to stop by Colin’s apartment before meeting Sunny for dinner. Depending on what he found at Colin’s, he may end up having to cancel.

  His mood dramatically soured at the prospect, he left his office and took off down the corridor to speak to Lucy about the demise and replacement of another expensive piece of equipment. Not even the thought of Sunny and the memory of her lust-filled green eyes, an image that would remain embedded in his mind for a good long while, improved his mood.

  What good was all that chemistry if he had to cancel a date at the last minute? The sparks they’d been setting off at the Wilder estate hadn’t been a fluke and, dammit, he wanted to see her again—even if his motives were marginally questionable.

  During his tenure with the Bureau he’d tweaked, twisted and ignored more than a few rules and regulations, but until today, he’d never consciously compromised another agent’s integrity. The partial truth of his answers had apparently satisfied her, at least temporarily. If he didn’t raise suspicion, then she’d have no reason to doubt he’d been anything but completely honest with her, and he planned to keep it that way. She had access to information which could lead him to the property stolen from Wilder, Garfield and Dearborn. If the Bureau put its hands on the stolen merchandise before he did, it could take months before he’d see the recovery fees. And if she learned his service with the Bureau had ended for failure to follow a direct order that had nearly cost another agent his life, he could kiss her cooperation, along with any hope of taking all that chemistry between them out for a spin, goodbye.

  He rapped on the side of Lucy’s cubicle so as not to startle her. “Marisa tells me the copier’s as good as dead.”

  Lucy glanced up from her computer monitor to look up at him. “I’m not surprised. That monster has been a swift kick away from the junkyard for months.” She reached for a silver travel mug that never left her side and took a drink of the contents. “If you took the time to read my memos, you’d have known it’s been dying a slow, painful death for a while now.”

  He ignored the reminder. Lucy always told him the information contained in her daily memos anyway; the woman had an affinity for paper trails. “And you didn’t call for repair because…?”

  “Because we couldn’t afford the luxury of renewing the service agreement.” She gave him one of her hard stares over the gold rim of her bifocals. “If you don’t close some of the files we have open around here, paychecks will soon be a luxury.”

  He walked into her cubicle and sat on the edge of the lateral file cabinet she used as a credenza. “Monument Insurance is sending over a check just as soon as I drop off the ring I picked up from Abe today,” he told her. “With three new cases.”

  “Like we need more work.” She made a sniffing noise. “And that scrawny fee won’t even cover last month’s electric bill.”

  “What about Ellington Casualty?” he asked, but he had a good idea of the answer. “I recovered property for two of their claimants last month.”

  “Slow. Could be at least another five to six weeks before we see a check.” She clasped the silver mug between her stubby fingers. “If we’re lucky.”

  “Call their accounts payable people and lean on them,” he told her.

  She made a note on the legal pad at her elbow.

  “What about District Insurance?” He’d personally located the antique coin collection with an insured value of a few hundred grand that had been ripped off by the claimant’s own grandson. The weasel had stupidly bartered the collection for a lousy kilo of pot. Their standard fee of twenty percent of the insured value should’ve generated some decent revenue. “Or the Langley and Joel files? Those claims alone should’ve covered operating expenses for the next ninety days or more.”

  Lucy took another drink before answering. “More like the last ninety days. Those funds were spent long before the money even made it into the bank.”

  He knew the balance sheets had been pathetica
lly thin the past couple of months, but he hadn’t realized exactly how thin. “That bad?”

  Her hazel eyes filled with worry, and she nodded. “As of this afternoon, we have a grand total of two hundred and seventy-three unresolved recoveries. I know it’s none of my business—”

  “As if that makes a difference.”

  “As I was saying…couldn’t Colin handle the smaller cases? Rick has hinted he’s capable of more, but he’s spending every minute he’s on the clock out serving subpoenas.” She let out a gusty sigh. “Duncan, this is serious. You have to do something. If we don’t start generating more revenue, you’ll have to lay off support staff. Selfish or not, I’m in no mood to look for another job at my age.”

  Duncan frowned. The thought of pink slipping any of the staff had him helping himself to the jar of antacids on Lucy’s desk.

  Her expression remained grim, telling him all he needed to know. In the three years since they’d started the agency after being booted out of the Bureau, he’d weathered a few financial pitfalls, but never to the point where layoffs were a likelihood. “Lucy?” he prompted.

  Her reply was a long, slow release of breath along with a skeptical lift of her peppered eyebrows. They were in it deep this time. He owned the burden. People depended on him and he’d do whatever was necessary to take care of business. Wasn’t that what he always did?

  He scrubbed his hand over his face and let out a sigh. “How much do you need to cover payroll and expenses for the next two months?”

  Lucy’s eyebrows rose another notch. “What are you going to do? Write a check?”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “Hire someone to help out, even if it’s on a temporary basis.”

  “And what do we pay him with? IOUs? How much do you need to get us through the next two months?” he asked her again.

  She shut down her computer, then pushed her chair back to drag a big canvas bag from beneath her desk. She dropped it on the laminated oak top with a loud thud. “Give me a couple of days to crunch numbers. I’ll have something on your desk by Friday.”