For the First Time
For the First Time
Stephanie Doyle
There’s not a lot former CIA agent Mark Sharpe hasn’t done. Yet suddenly he’s in a world of firsts—first time being a father, first time being self-employed… and first time being attracted to his employee.Jo Jo Hatcher with her attitude, her tattoos and her investigative talents tempts him in ways he can’t explain. With each day she becomes more irresistible and he fights the urge to abandon his new conservative lifestyle! Then his teenage daughter is threatened. There’s only person he trusts to help him: Jo Jo.As they work to find the perpetrator, Mark imagines a future together that includes another first—family.
Being a father shouldn’t feel this risky!
There’s not a lot former CIA agent Mark Sharpe hasn’t done. Yet suddenly he’s in a world of firsts—first time being a father, first time being self-employed…and first time being attracted to his employee. JoJo Hatcher, with her attitude, her tattoos and her investigative talents, tempts him in ways he can’t explain. With each day she becomes more irresistible. How is he supposed to function in this messed-up situation?
Then his teenage daughter, Sophie, is threatened. There’s only one person he trusts to help him: JoJo. As they work to untangle the mystery, Mark imagines a future together that includes another first—family.
“I can walk right in front of you and you’ll never recognize me.”
Mark scoffed at JoJo’s boast. “JoJo, you do realize I was a CIA black-ops analyst in the field for years.”
“And years and years…” His daughter rolled her eyes.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t going to impress Sophie.
“Observation is what I do,” he continued as though Sophie hadn’t interrupted. “It’s how I survived. You can’t get past me. Especially not with the tattoos.”
JoJo held out her hand. “It’s a bet, then. I do this. I get the job. You win. You get to show off your observation skills to your daughter. The only thing you’re out is a half hour of your time.”
“We were going to go eat….”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not leaving,” Sophie said. “I want to see this.”
JoJo winked at Sophie and his daughter smiled back. Great, he thought. She’d known this woman for minutes and they had bonded more tightly than he had with his daughter in months.
Still, he’d play out this little wager. What did he have to lose? It wasn’t like JoJo would ever get past him.
Dear Reader,
This is my third story set in the Tyler Group world (One Final Step, October 2012, and An Act of Persuasion, March 2013) and while an author never plays favorites with her books, I have to say this was one of the most satisfying books I have ever written. I fell in love with Mark and Sophie, an absent father and his daughter, who reunited in An Act of Persuasion. When I thought about Mark’s story and giving him his happy-ever-after, I really couldn’t think about him alone.
It had to be Mark and Sophie and their happy-ever-after. That meant I needed the type of heroine I thought would suit them both. That’s when JoJo walked on to the scene.
She’s not exactly conventional and she comes with a lot of baggage. But somehow the three of them make this story work. So this isn’t a story about Mark and JoJo. This is a story about Mark and JoJo and Sophie and how together they become a family.
I love to hear from readers—the good, the bad and the ugly—so check out my website, www.stephaniedoyle.net (http://www.stephaniedoyle.net).
Happy reading!
Stephanie Doyle
For the First Time
Stephanie Doyle
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephanie Doyle, a dedicated romance reader, began to pen her own romantic adventures at age sixteen. She began submitting to Mills & Boon at age eighteen and by twenty-six her first book was published. Fifteen years later, she still loves what she does, as each book is a new adventure. She lives in South Jersey with her cat, Lex, and her two kittens, who have taken over everything. When she isn’t thinking about escaping to the beach, she’s working on her next idea.
For Wanda
Because when I said I could never, ever write Mills & Boon Superromance books, she said let’s not say ever.
Contents
Prologue (#ua18ca28b-5858-5667-b7a0-cf96cb774b2a)
Chapter One (#ubddff335-f3ed-5be0-9ead-c5fc5c4009fe)
Chapter Two (#udae20a6b-88e5-55ed-bf37-155343d7247a)
Chapter Three (#uc3997aed-9243-5e02-96b3-636ed75bba09)
Chapter Four (#uf2cee32a-f029-5dc6-b619-f9a304bbd881)
Chapter Five (#u477e50dc-ced8-56f2-b8f7-e9e5308b33ab)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
“I NEED YOU to focus, Josephine.”
She was focusing. She was focusing very hard. She knew that the man in front of her was a police detective. He had brown hair with gray mixed in on the sides. He wore brown leather shoes and khaki pants that were fraying a little around the hem. His badge number was 79134.
She’d made herself memorize it—79134.
“Tell me again everything that you saw.”
Why? She’d said it all already. It wasn’t going to change.
“Do it, JoJo. Tell him again.” Her father paced in the living room, stopping every once in a while at the chair where her mom sat so he could put his hand on her shoulder. It only made her mom cry harder.
“We were at the mall.”
“The strip mall on Springfield,” her mother interjected. “It’s where I dropped them off. They were supposed to go shopping, then call me to pick them up. They were supposed to stay there.”
The detective nodded, and turned to JoJo. “But you decided to leave the mall instead.”
“We wanted to see a movie. Two boys from our class were supposed to meet us there.” JoJo winced at the sound of her father hissing. “It wasn’t like a date or anything, Dad. They were just friends.”
JoJo and Julia were only fourteen. They had already been told by their parents over and over that they weren’t allowed to date until sixteen. Which was so stupid. All the freshman girls in high school already had boyfriends. They were, like, the only single girls in the class.
“Don’t worry about that,” the detective said. “Focus on what happened. You left the mall.”
“The theater was just up the street a few blocks. The movie was at three forty-five.” She remembered that stupid detail.
Three forty-five p.m. Why only that one?
“She was walking too slow. She always walked so slow. Then she stopped because her shoelace came undone.”
JoJo could see it clearly. She was nearly half a block ahead. Julia bent down on one knee tying her shoe as if they had all the time in the world. Which, of course, they didn’t because it was already three-forty. What if the movie had started when they got there? What if they couldn’t find Peter and Jake? Then the whole point of doing this would be for nothing.
JoJo shouted to her to hurry. But Julia flipped her the bird instead. It actually made JoJo smile.
“Then a car pulled up along the side of the road. It was silver. A minivan. The kind where the side door slides over.”
“Can you tell me the make? Was it a Toyota or a Ford?”
JoJo shook her head. She only knew the makes of cars she liked. MINI Coopers and Volkswagen bugs because they were cool. She knew the Subaru her mother drove and the Toyota her dad had driven for years. But they weren’t minivans. It didn’t help. Nothing she knew was helping.
“Then what happened?”
“The side door opened and this guy jumped out. It happened so fast. He just grabbed her from behind. Then she was screaming and he put her in the van.”
The tears that had been falling since she had watched her twin sister be dragged into that van came faster, but they wouldn’t help, either. She had to pull it together so she could tell the detective everything. It was the only way they would find her. Just like she’d told the people at the theater, and the first police officers who arrived at the scene and then her parents.
“He wore jeans. His hair was dark. I think he had a hoodie on, but I can’t be sure.”
“How could you tell what his hair color was if he was wearing a hoodie?”
“It wasn’t on his head. The hood was down. It was gray. I’m sure it was gray. You know, like a workout sweatshirt.” She just remembered that, which meant maybe there were other things she would remember. Something important that would bring Julia back.
“Then the van sped away. It made a U-turn in the middle of the street and was gone.”
“Did you see the driver?”
JoJo closed her eyes. “It was just a guy. I couldn’t really see. A shape behind the wheel, that’s it.”
“But you know that the person who grabbed your sister wasn’t driving the van.”
“Yes. It happened too fast. He grabbed her and the door was sliding closed and the car was moving.”
“Okay, Josephine...or can I call you JoJo?”
She shrugged. Whatever. She hated to be called Josephine. Julia sometimes did it to piss her off.
“I need you to really think. When the car drove away did you see the license plate?”
Everyone wanted to know that. They kept pushing her over and over again to think about it, visualize what the numbers and letters might have looked like. If she could just remember those numbers, then they could find Julia and everything would be all right.
Only she couldn’t.
“Think, JoJo!” her father shouted as he moved between her and the detective. “This is important. You have to think about what you saw and tell them the license. It’s her only hope.”
She lifted her face to her father. “I can’t remember. I didn’t see it. I don’t think... Maybe it didn’t have a front plate. It was fast and I was running to get her.”
“That’s not good enough!” he roared. “This is your sister’s life! Now think!” The blow to the side of her head knocked her off the couch.
“Jonathan!”
“No,” he barked at her mother. “She has to do this. You have to do this!”
“Sir, I know what you’re going through right now. But this isn’t the answer,” the detective said, purposefully keeping his voice even and steady.
JoJo lifted herself onto the couch with a ringing in her head. That was the first time her father had ever hit her. It was so weird.
“Tell them the license plate numbers. Tell them. If you can’t do this, it’s your fault what happens to her. Do you hear me?”
Her fault? Of course it was her fault. She’d wanted to go to the movies. She had a crush on Peter. Julia knew it, too. It was probably why she was being slow. She knew it would make JoJo crazy and Julia lived to make JoJo crazy.
It was what twins did.
JoJo closed her eyes and struggled to think about what happened. The sound of the tires screeching. The vague shape of the body behind the wheel. The back of the van moving away from her as she screamed and screamed and ran so hard after them.
She couldn’t remember one stupid letter of the license plate. She didn’t think she even looked at it.
CHAPTER ONE
MARK SHARPE LOOKED across his desk at the latest job candidate. Her hair was slicked into a tight ponytail, with a straight heavy band of dark hair falling down her back. The nose stud she obviously sported had been removed for the interview. She wore a black turtleneck blouse that looked as if it was strangling the life out of her under her suit jacket.
Occasionally, when she fidgeted with the collar, he could see the hint of ink peeking out.
A nose stud and a neck tattoo. Who knew what else she was hiding?
“I wanted to let you know how impressed I was with your work on the Anderson case,” she said.
Josephine Hatcher was the second investigator he’d interviewed. The previous one had wanted to talk about the Anderson case, too. Interviewing 101, he supposed—compliment the boss on his work. Some days, though, that case didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It felt like a family ripped to shreds starting with the murder of a daughter by her own father.
“First getting the coroner’s ruling of suicide overturned and then learning her father was behind the poisoning had to be shocking. He’d been free for thirteen years until you uncovered the truth.”
The other candidate had said almost the same thing. Mark was a genius, a detecting marvel, a hero for justice. Blah, blah, blah...
“It took you a little long, though.”
“Excuse me?” The other candidate hadn’t said that.
“After you exhumed the body and were able to confirm the girl had been poisoned, the number of suspects was limited to her family and her boyfriend. Few others would have had sufficient access to her over the prolonged period of time it took to her kill her. Once you knew the method, how hard was it to eliminate suspects?”
“Not hard.”
Her lips twitched. “Just saying. Can I ask why you opened the case?”
“Anonymous tip.”
“Probably someone who knew her, knew the family dynamic.”
“Probably,” he grumbled. Who the hell was interviewing whom?
“Did you find the source of the tip?”
“No.”
“Did you look?”
Yes, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Anonymous tips were tricky. Sometimes they panned out. Sometimes they didn’t. Mark always preferred identifying the source of an anonymous tip as a way of evaluating the reliability of the information. But he hadn’t been able to locate the person who had sent him the copy of the coroner’s report along with the plainly typed note that simply read, She didn’t do it.
It had been enough to pique his interest. Especially when he read the report and the police file. Suicide had been a stretch, he thought. When people chose to kill themselves they wanted it done immediately.
This girl had been dying for months.
“That doesn’t matter now—the case is closed. So, I should tell you I’m looking for someone with several years’ experience.” It was a prelude, he thought. A way to cushion the blow he was preparing to deliver.
“I’ve been working in the field independently for four years, and apprenticed with another investigator two years before that while earning my master’s in criminology.”
He sighed. He should have figured she would be the type to put up a fight. Couldn’t she pick up on all the subtle no signs he was throwing out? It wasn’t that she wasn’t qualified—of course she was qualified or she wouldn’t have gotten as far as this interview.
The problem was her. There was something about her that made him want to squirm in his chair. It was completely irrational. He had no idea why he felt this way. But he was a man who relied on his gut. His gut said no. His gut said she was trouble.
Mark really hoped that gut feeling wasn’t based on the fact that when he looked her in the eyes, he had a suspicion she was smarter than he was. Because that would probably make him an ass.
“I’m targeting a certain type of clientele.” Hell, that made him sound like a snob. Now he was a snob and an ass.
“I imagine paying ones.”
There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. He’d made his decision almost instantly. The moment he’d shaken her hand and it fit so securely in his. A knee-jerk reaction that told him to run.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Hatcher, but I’m not sure you’re the right fit.”
He watched her shoulders slump. Only for a second, though, then she straightened. “Can I ask why? You have my résumé. You know I’m more than capable.”
It was a ridiculously impressive résumé. A bachelor’s in psychology from New York University, and that master’s of criminology from Columbia—graduated top of her class in both. She’d worked for a medium-size private investigator firm for the six years since. She was changing jobs only because the firm’s owner had decided to retire and she wasn’t happy with the new ownership. Her former boss, Tom Reid, happened to know Ben Tyler—Mark’s former boss and adversary from their days in the CIA together.
That Tom knew Ben wasn’t a surprise. It seemed everybody, at some point in their life, knew Ben Tyler, who headed up the Tyler Group—a small troubleshooting firm located in Philadelphia. Ben employed a few detectives so Reid had forwarded him Josephine’s résumé. Ben—recognizing that he had deprived Mark of his assistant, Anna, by knocking her up and marrying her—had sent Josephine’s résumé to Mark instead.
On paper, she was exactly what he was looking for. He’d already found someone to replace Anna’s duties from an administrative aspect, but his business was gaining a solid reputation and with that came more cases. Trying to make his schedule work with his daughter’s was becoming a challenge. Adding a trained, licensed investigator—one recommended by someone Ben trusted—was like a godsend.
But she wasn’t going to fit. Her eyes were too blue. A deep color that made him think they could see through anything—probably a great quality in an investigator but not such a great quality in a colleague.
“Can I ask you a question?” It was probably unfair to drag out the interview, especially since he’d decided not to hire her. He was curious and wanted to confirm his suspicions that she was, in fact, trouble.
“I think that’s what I’m here for.” She half smiled and again fiddled with the cloth around her neck.
“You’ve got a really impressive résumé. Did you ever consider applying for the FBI?”
“Not really my thing.”
“What about your local police force?”
“Also not my thing.”
Right. Trouble. Just like he suspected.
“Yet according to your list of special skills, you’ve spent months at several law enforcement training camps specializing in firearms and hand-to-hand combat. I guess I’m curious why you wanted to train like an agent, but didn’t want to be an agent.”
He watched her crack her neck as she seemed to search for an answer that was accurate, honest and didn’t cost her the job—even though it was already too late.
Almost too late.
“While law enforcement—either as a police officer or a federal agent—is an honorable career path for many, I was concerned that the confines of the hierarchal structure would be too limiting. Especially for someone in the minority sex.”
She didn’t like authority or sexist pigs.
The sexist pigs he could get behind because she was right. While many of the government investigative agencies from the FBI to NCIS were opening their doors to more women, it was still a man’s world.
But it was the authority part of her explanation he had a problem with. Since, if he employed her, he would be the authority she had a problem with.
“Can I see the tattoo?” That was for his curiosity again.
“Excuse me?”
“The tattoo. Can I see it?”
She smirked. “I have a few. In some rather interesting places so you’ll have to be more specific.”
“Specifically...the one on your neck.”
She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, a move that reminded him vividly of his teenage daughter, then she pulled down the collar.
Black ink barbed wire. With spikes. Covering both the right and left sides of her neck. Not completely circling her skin the wires trailed off as they neared her larynx. Still, a signal to the world to back off.
“Yes, I can see where you might struggle within a—how did you phrase it?—a hierarchal structure.”
“I’m a good investigator. No, check that. I’m a great investigator. I prefer to work on my own, but I never fail to get results. I don’t see why a tattoo should be a problem in getting a job.”
“Except that you know it is or you wouldn’t have covered it up with the turtleneck.”
“Some people are more conservative than others.”
As a rule, Mark was not. In fact, a couple of months ago he wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about a tattoo. But that was before the mother of his estranged daughter died in a car accident. Before he left the CIA to return to the States. Before he started the process of building a relationship with said estranged daughter...
And failed at it miserably.
Now he was trying to do everything right. He wanted the right type of company. The right type of people around his daughter. The right everything.
Nose-stud, barbed-wire-tattoo chick was not it.
He glanced at her résumé again. She’d included a list of high-profile cases she’d worked on. Some very high-profile cases. What had she said? She was a great investigator. That was probably true, damn it.
“Why the move to Philadelphia?”
“To get away from New York.” She quickly added, “Not that there was anything bad there. Tom’s brother Tim is assuming the role of president of the firm. Tim and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and we both knew when he took over I wouldn’t stay. Tim will never make me a partner. So I figured this might be a good chance to leave the craziness of the city behind. Stop pouring all my money into rent on a studio apartment not much bigger than a closet. I considered Boston, Philadelphia and D.C. but then when Tom brought up Ben Tyler’s name... Well, everyone knows his reputation. Even in New York. I came here for him, but he sent me to you. Now you’re sending me away because you don’t like tattoos. Is that on all people? Or on women in particular?”
Mark gritted his teeth. He would not be backed into a corner on this. “You and I both know you have problems with authority. It’s why you chose private investigation and probably why you couldn’t work with Tim Reid. He’s former FBI as I understand.”
“He might be former FBI but he’s a current ass.” She winced, probably knowing that calling her former boss an ass was not helping her case. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. For the record, I didn’t have a problem with him, or his authority. He, however, had a problem with me and the fact that I have breasts. He’s not a big believer in women in the workforce in general. He’s an old-school, barefoot-and-pregnant kind of a guy.”
“They still exist?”
“He does. Which is how I knew I would never be partner.”
“Is that what you want?” Mark hadn’t thought that far ahead. When he came back after Helen’s death his objectives had been pretty clear. Find a way to reconnect with Sophie and find a way to make a living out of doing what he did best: gathering information. He hadn’t seen much beyond that.
Everything changed so quickly when he realized that it made the most sense to have Sophie live with him. Now she was his first thought every day. Then came the business. Strange that, despite his priorities, progress on his first objective was, to date, rather abysmal, while his second objective was prospering beyond his imagination. Hence the need for help.
“Yes, I want to be a partner. I want a piece of what I create. Eventually. I’m willing to earn it over time.”
“Why not start your own business? Then nobody can tell you what to do.”
“That’s not practical at this point. I don’t have the savings I would need for a proposition like that and, well, health care. It’s a bitch. Got to have it in case one of my tattoos gets infected.”
See, he thought. She was snarky. Nearly unprofessional. She’d referred to her former boss as an ass, for Pete’s sake. She had penetrating deep blue eyes and she was too damn smart. All of that spelled trouble, just like he’d thought.
He was trying to establish something different in his life. Something solid and conservative. Something...that was the opposite of whatever he had been in his former life.
Because being daring to the point of recklessness wasn’t something a stable father should be.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded and stood. Then she pulled out a card case from the black purse she carried—a purse he highly suspected saw the light of day only when she was interviewing—and handed a card to him.
“I’m staying downtown at the Marriott for the next few days. I figure I’ll take in the city, do the tourist thing before I head to D.C. I have an interview at a firm next week. If you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”
Mark had to chuckle. “I turned you down for the job, yet you’re letting me know where you’re going to be in case I change my mind. That’s awfully ballsy.”
Josephine—somehow that name didn’t fit—shrugged. “Look at my casework again. Tell me you’ll find someone more qualified.”
She offered her hand and he took it. Her grip was firm and confident just like it had been at the beginning of the interview. Certainly not the handshake of someone who had been rejected.
She wasn’t the right fit for him, but he wasn’t going to deny that inwardly he was sorry about that. The woman had guts. Guts, in his opinion, was a necessary ingredient in a successful life.
* * *
“LUCY, I’M HOME!” Mark opened the door to his condo in a city-center high-rise and wondered if tonight would be different.
Probably not.
He’d been coming home to his daughter for the past two months and not one night had she greeted him with a smile.
He set down his briefcase, one he’d recently purchased to replace the leather satchel he used to carry. The satchel made him feel like Indiana Jones. The briefcase made him feel like his father. Mark figured that was a good thing. Might make him more fatherly.
Like most Mondays, his daughter wasn’t alone. The tutor he’d hired for her a few weeks ago to replace the one who had quit to go on maternity leave was here. Nancy was a nice woman in her early thirties who had proved to be an outstandingly good hiring decision. She showed up when she was supposed to, never lingered when it was time to go. Sophie’s grades were being maintained at the highest level and Nancy was fairly cheap, all things considered.
Watching Nancy, wearing plain jeans and a conservative sweater, collect her books to leave made him feel better. He’d definitely made the right choice by hiring her, he thought. Which meant he’d probably made the right choice letting Josephine walk.
“Hi, Mark.”
“Nancy, how are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine.”
Sophie sat on a stool at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. She was reading a textbook and didn’t look at him as he approached.
“Hey.” He tried a different greeting.
“Hey.”
“Did you hear me when I came in?”
“Uh, yeah. Was that supposed to be an I Love Lucy reference?”
“Too old?”
“Too lame, Mark.”
He hated it when she called him Mark. “You know I would really prefer it if you would call me Dad.”
She smiled then, but not the kind of smile he was hoping for. “Hey, I would prefer it if you had actually been a dad.”
“Okay, well, I’ll be going,” Nancy said.
Right. Who wanted to stick around to witness such familial bliss? “Thanks, Nancy.”
“See you, Sophie. Don’t forget—not a word less than five hundred.”
“No problem.”
Mark watched Nancy leave and wondered, not for the first time, how he and Sophie must seem to her. Dysfunctional didn’t begin to cover it. She probably raced home to...well, no one. He happened to know that she was single and not seeing anyone. It had been part of what he had dug up during the background check on her—that and her Match.com profile.
But no doubt she thought they were a mess. And that was the truth—he and Sophie were a mess. Their past—or more accurately, lack of a past—was the river that separated them. It seemed no bridge he could build would ever allow him to cross it. No matter how much he changed his life for her.
Because, in the end, for so many years he’d been nothing more than a name scrawled on the bottom of a card. Certainly not a father.
Despite that, he liked to think he hadn’t been a total ass to her mother. When Helen told him she was pregnant he instantly knew he had to do the right thing and offer marriage. Only Helen knew she’d done the wrong thing by deliberately getting pregnant to hold on to a man whose life ambition was the CIA.
He thought he’d done everything right by her. He’d volunteered to refuse the CIA offer and find a more stable career—possibly with another federal agency, or scrap those plans altogether and go to law school. He damn certain had put a ring on her finger.
In the end, Helen had been the one to back away. She must have figured out that no matter how tightly she tried to hold him, he would always be looking over his shoulder wondering what kind of life he could have been living.
When he’d been stationed overseas Mark had liked to tell himself that he remained a part of his daughter’s life. He’d sent her cards and presents on her birthday and holidays. He’d occasionally chat with her over the internet if he was in a place that had the capability. But no amount of justification could cover up the truth. Having spent the past fourteen years of his life outside the United States, he was the very definition of an absentee father.
Hell, he hadn’t even made it home in time for her mother’s funeral.
No wonder Sophie hated him.
But she was stuck with him. Dom and Marie, her grandparents, who had been in the process of selling their home to move into an assisted-living facility when Helen died, had tried to make a go of having Sophie live with them. After a few months it was easy to see that two aging grandparents in questionable health weren’t up to handling a fourteen-year-old teenager.
And not just any teen. Sophie was special.
“What do you want to do for dinner?”
“Surprise me, Mark.”
There it was again. That hint of sarcasm. His daughter would turn fifteen in a few months but there were times when she sounded like she was double her age. He figured it was expected. The girl was a prodigy. A piano master by age nine who had been touring the country and the world for the past five years with the most highly respected orchestras and conductors. Giving her unique gift to the world, yes. But growing up way too fast for his taste.
He’d seen her act sophisticated and gracious with some very important political and business leaders who came backstage to pay her compliments on her performance.
Mark had also seen her roll her eyes at him like he was the dumbest man imaginable. He was proud of his daughter and the way she handled herself, but he also appreciated the other side, too. It reminded him she was still just a kid.
“Okay, I’ll cook.”
“I said surprise me, not kill me. The last time you tried to cook it was a disaster.”
“It was hot dogs,” he said in his defense. “How bad could they have been?”
“They were still cold in the middle and made me gag.”
“Whatever.” Oh, my. Had he really stooped to responding to his daughter in her own teenage speak?
“Besides I shouldn’t eat. I had a big lunch and I have to watch my figure.”
The girl was tall and lithe with long straight blond hair. If there was an extra ounce of fat on her body, he didn’t see it. However, he had to appreciate that she was a performer who was conscientious about how she looked onstage.
Mark decided to avoid the conversation—always a good thing when it came to women and weight—and instead went to check the mail.
In the months that they had been living together they’d fallen into a routine. He couldn’t say it was a comfortable one, since Sophie was too prickly for that. However, Mark thought at least they were settling into some kind of normalcy, which he was convinced was a good thing. After all, she couldn’t hate him forever. It simply wasn’t practical.
She practiced every morning at a studio where he rented space. From there she usually went to rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra—her current assignment—at the Kimmel Center for a few hours. Nancy came three times a week in the afternoon.
Mark wasn’t sure how he felt about Sophie trying to cram what most kids did during a five-day school week into what was essentially nine hours a week. But given his daughter’s grades, it wasn’t like he could protest. She’d already taken a preliminary SAT test and had scored only two hundred points shy of perfection. No, he wasn’t worried about her grades so much as he was the other things kids experienced in high school. Like making friends, going out to parties, getting asked to the prom. The last time he asked her if she missed that kind of stuff she scoffed at him as if all high school activities were beneath her.
Maybe they were for a girl with her mind and talents. Who knew? Mark only knew that he was starting to enjoy their camaraderie even if it was seasoned with sarcasm.
She had chores around the house, although they were simple. She was supposed to keep her room neat, help him with the grocery shopping—that being agreed upon after a totally awkward moment when he’d purchased the wrong brand of feminine products for her—do her laundry and collect the mail.
Mark hired someone to handle the majority of the cleaning, which left him with providing dinner. That mostly entailed taking Sophie out to a restaurant of her choosing or ordering in. If this was to be their life together, then he probably needed to learn how to cook something besides grilled meat and hot dogs.
Walking to the small table in the foyer where Sophie left the mail every day, Mark sorted through what was mostly garbage and stopped at a white envelope that had no addresses—his or a return—or stamps. Just his name. Sharpe.
“Hey, was this in the mail?”
Sophie looked at him. “Yeah, whatever was in the box downstairs I put in the dish. You know, like I’ve done every day for months.”
He was going to have to explain to her that not every statement she made to him needed to be followed by a rolling of the eyes. The girl was going to give herself an eye condition.
Mark opened the envelope with suspicion. Maybe it was from a neighbor. He hadn’t really taken the time to meet any of them, being too busy keeping up with Sophie and the business, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have them. Maybe they didn’t like Sophie playing her electric keyboard too late at night.
There was only a single sheet of plain white paper inside. He pulled it out and saw the neatly typed sentence centered on the page.
You’re going to lose her.
The instant reaction in his gut was stunning and more powerful than anything he’d ever felt before. He lifted his eyes to his daughter, who had already dismissed him, and he thought, The hell I am.
This, he realized, was what it felt like to be a father.
And he kind of thought it sucked.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’RE SURE SOPHIE didn’t do it?” Ben lifted the note in the air, looking to see if there was any imprint in the paper. Some identifying mark.
Of course Mark had already checked for that. But he hoped Ben’s trained eye might pick up something he had missed. Despite the fact that Ben had been a longtime rival, Mark also knew he was the best. The truth was, after Ben resigned from the CIA, Mark had lost much of his love for the job. He’d already been making plans to leave the agency when the death of Sophie’s mother sped everything up.
Ben had been his benchmark: the agent Mark intended to be someday. The man he would best someday. To set himself apart from the others, Mark had done a lot of risky stuff. One stunt nearly cost Ben and him their lives. As a result, until recently they had never exactly been friends.
Now that they were both in the States and trying to live normal civilian lives, they had forged a bond that in the past few months had strengthened into friendship. Strange, considering how they’d started. Stranger still after Mark hired Ben’s assistant out from under him.
Yes, Mark had even harbored the notion of trying to steal Ben’s woman—for no other reason than to resume the rivalry that got his blood pumping. But Anna was in love with Ben and had already been carrying his baby when Mark hired her.
Ben had done the smart thing by tying Anna to him with vows and a ring. She was too easy for anyone to like. Smart, pretty, funny. Easy to be around.
For a moment Mark flashed on his interview from the day before. What was her name...Josephine? Yeah, she did not look like someone who would be easy to be around. But he had to remind himself of that because he’d been having second thoughts about letting Josephine go. Or maybe rethinking his reasons for letting her go.
Immediately, Mark shook it off. He didn’t have regrets. Regrets were a waste of time.
The only thing that mattered now was the note. While Sophie played with Ben and Anna’s baby—the one area of common ground Sophie and Mark shared was taking pure enjoyment out of Kelly—Mark was free to pick Ben’s brain about the note.
“She said she didn’t do it,” Mark answered.
Ben lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes, I believe her. She’s moody. She’s petulant. She’s constantly pissed at me. But as she told me when I asked, she’s not a nut-job. If she wanted to scare me, she could find other ways to do so.”
“You’re sure the threat relates to her?”
“Who else could it be? Sophie’s the only she in my life.”
“What about the grandparents? Maybe it’s a subtle warning that if you don’t work harder to improve the relationship, you’ll lose her.”
Mark shook his head. “Not their style. Dom sternly lecturing me about what I’m doing wrong—yes, that is their style. They’re too vocal about their disappointment in me as a father to do this.”
Ben scowled. “Then we need to think of other possibilities.”
That was the problem. Mark didn’t want to think of other possibilities. Other possibilities potentially meant old enemies who were now in the U.S. and watching him. Threatening his daughter.
You’re going to lose her.
Mark could think of a lot of Taliban leaders who would love nothing more than to cut open his chest and rip his heart out. But even if any of them were in the country, any note they left would include explicit details about their intentions for her. It didn’t make sense. The government saw to it that the Taliban couldn’t enter the country. Besides, now that Mark was no longer a player in the game, why would they want to hurt him? They had their hands filled with active U.S. military and paramilitary agents. He had no information that wasn’t almost a year old. Information that old was useless.
Mark thought of assets he’d turned during his years on the job who might have gotten turned back. But they, too, were all overseas. There were the cases he’d solved in the year since he’d opened his business. People he’d put in jail—some fairly high-profile.
A criminal Mark had brought to justice for a scam-artist ring he’d run for years. A missing girl he’d found dead. The Anderson case. Except that Jack Anderson was dead by his own hand before he ever saw the inside of a jail cell.
With the sound of women’s voices approaching, Ben turned. “There are my girls.”
“Sophie is hired,” Anna said. “She just changed her first poopy diaper and she didn’t even flinch.”
The girl sat on the couch with the baby in her arms. “I’m not going to lie. It was gross.”
“I don’t know that Sophie needs extra babysitting money. She’s doing pretty well with her music.”
Pretty good meant that any college in the country she wanted to go to was already paid for. He knew her plans included Stanford, Stanford and Stanford. In other words, the school farthest from him.
“I wouldn’t charge them. I would do it because I like Kelly. You’re so coarse, Mark.”
Another mistake. He thought he was making an offhand joke. She thought he was an asshole. Typical.
“Can I hold her?” Mark asked. At least while holding the baby he could pretend that a child actually liked him.
Reluctantly, Sophie handed Kelly over and he cradled the nearly five-month-old in the crook of his elbow. She’d been almost a month early and to Mark she still looked impossibly small, but the doctors had all declared her perfectly healthy. Kelly seemed to be deciding whether to cry or coo so Mark helped that decision along by bouncing her gently. The cooing continued and he watched as she broke out into a large, wide smile.
So little. So precious. Mark remembered holding Sophie when she was even younger. He remembered it, because it was the last time he saw her before he left for Langley. The next time he’d seen her she’d been five years old.
Closing his eyes, he brought the baby close and smelled how fresh and lovely she was. How had he been able to leave Sophie as a baby? When he felt as possessive as a Neanderthal with her now. Now when she hated him rather than adored him as she had when she’d rested in his arms.
“Please,” Sophie said. “Don’t even pretend you’re all about Kelly. We know what you think of babies, Mark.”
Mark didn’t respond to his daughter’s jab. He was starting to become immune to them. Anna walked over with a sympathetic smile and took her daughter from him. “Time and patience,” she whispered.
He smiled back. “Look, we should be going. My daughter probably has some more nasty things to say to me and I would rather we not subject the baby to it. It could corrupt her subconsciously. Ben, you’ll continue thinking about our problem.”
“I’m on it. But it might not hurt to have extra help. You should show it to JoJo.”
“Who?”
“JoJo. The detective I sent to you. You said you were going to interview her. I’m assuming you hired her, so have her look into the matter. According to Tom, she’s one of the best he’s ever worked with.”
Mark frowned. “I didn’t hire her.”
“Why not?”
His doubt surfaced as he once more tried to put his finger on his problem with her. “She wasn’t what I was looking for. I was hoping for someone more conservative. I’m trying to create a serious agency with serious agents.”
“Yes. I know. She has serious talent. It’s why I let you have first crack at her.”
Mark struggled with how to identify his specific issue with her. “She’s got tattoos.”
“You have a tattoo.”
“You do?” Sophie stood with her arms folded.
Mark scowled at Ben. “It’s since been removed.”
“You should reconsider. Because if you’re not hiring her, then I will. She’s too good to let go. I figured I was repaying you for stealing Anna away.”
“You didn’t steal me away,” Anna countered. “I chose not to go back to work because of Kelly. You two can be so full of it.”
Ben waited until Anna was distracted with the baby to give Mark a small nod that said he still thought he was right about JoJo.
“I don’t know if she’s still in the area. She said she was sticking around for a few days before heading to D.C. for another interview, but who knows.”
“Then you better act fast. The next person who sees her résumé won’t be so foolish as to let her go because of a couple of tattoos.”
“They’re on her neck.” Mark winced as he tried to imagine why a young woman might do that to herself. It had to hurt like hell.
“Totally cool,” Sophie muttered.
“Don’t even think about,” Mark warned. “Okay. Let’s make a stop on the way home.”
* * *
JOJO LOOKED AT the movie list and considered what would kill time better—an engrossing thriller or some eye candy in the form of Ryan Gosling. In truth, neither was very appealing. Pounding her hand on the mattress, she considered what her next move would be.
She’d been so damn sure she would get the job with Sharpe. In her mind she had already adopted Philadelphia as her new home. She’d had a Geno’s cheesesteak. What was that if not commitment?
Now she really would have to follow up on opportunities in other cities. She had exaggerated slightly when she told Sharpe he was one interview in a long line of them.
Okay, so it was a total lie. She hadn’t contacted any of the other agencies she had researched because she didn’t think she had to. Tom knew Ben Tyler and Ben Tyler was a man with significant influence. Since he had recommended JoJo to Mark, it should have been a lock.
Apparently not for Mark. Because he’d seen the tattoos.
JoJo got up from the bed and walked to the mirror. She’d removed the ponytail hair extension and her jet-black hair was again short and spiky. She had dyed it black a long time ago, and it brought out her blue eyes better than her natural blond. She kept it short to accent her smallish face and because it was easier to care for and to cover with a wig when she was in disguise.
Did she look a little too badass? Yes. There were times when that was an asset. Sometimes having an edge helped when she was interrogating a criminal or interviewing a witness.
But other times badass tattoos cost you a job. Two, if she counted Tim Reid’s reaction to her. He never liked her, despite the quality of her work. While she blamed it on his sexism, it probably also had something to do with how she defied the conventionalities to which he adhered.
Tim had a lot in common with her father. When it was announced Tim was taking over the agency, she knew she could not work for him. They would drive each other crazy.
So where to next?
The phone rang, which startled her. There weren’t a lot of people who knew she was even in Philadelphia. It was probably one of those stupid surveys about the hotel service, and she answered it out of sheer boredom. “Hello?”
“Oh, good. I caught you. Ms. Hatcher, this is Mark Sharpe.”
JoJo pumped her fist in the air. Then calmly answered, “Yes, can I help you?”
“I’m downstairs in the lobby. I’ve had second thoughts and was wondering if I could talk to you again.”
“Sure. Uh...” JoJo considered her appearance. She could change out of the jeans and sweater and into something more appropriate, but it would take her at least ten minutes to redo the hair extension. Oh, hell, it wasn’t like the disguise worked anyway—he hadn’t bought her conformist costume for one second. If they were going to work together, she would have to show her true self eventually. It might as well be now.
She even left the nose stud in.
* * *
MARK WATCHED THE elevators for Josephine Hatcher. When he spotted a woman with short dark hair walking toward him, he did a double take.
He would never have thought she was the same woman who had been in his office if it weren’t for the tattoos around her neck. The way her hair stuck up from her head at different angles should have made her look like she’d just woken up. Instead it made her look chic and hip. She wore skinny jeans with knee-high black boots and a bulky sweater that moved with her body. Ms. Hatcher was efficiency in motion, with an edge.
She stopped in front of him and held her arms up, clearly communicating that this was the woman beneath the conservative turtleneck. The woman he would get if he hired her.
Everything in Mark recoiled. Not that she wasn’t attractive in a certain sort of way, but she was so not what he needed in his life right now. Yesterday, he’d thought she was trouble. Now he knew she was more than that. She was dangerous. He could imagine what kind of example she might set for Sophie—who was already staring at the woman with awed admiration.
“Mr. Sharpe, you wanted to talk?”
Now what was he supposed to do? His gut and his brain were at war. This never happened. What was crazier was that his gut and head seemed to be taking opposite sides from what they ought to. His head should have told him that this woman was not employable and his gut should have said to take a chance on her. Instead his head was remembering her résumé, line by line, and his gut was churning with...something.
Ben said this woman was the best. Seriously?
“Uh...sorry to drop by like this unannounced, but I had second thoughts and didn’t want to miss you.”
“I’m glad you stopped by. Who is your sidekick? She looks a little young to be head of the HR department.”
“This is my daughter, Sophie. Sophie this is Josephine Hatcher.”
“JoJo,” she corrected.
Sophie gave him that look of hers. “Why do you have to introduce me as your daughter? Why can’t you just say I’m Sophie?”
“Well, most people like context and the crazy thing is, you are, in fact, my daughter.”
“Whatever, Mark.”
It was her third whatever of the day. He was starting to loathe the word.
He looked at JoJo—what a silly name. “As you can tell, my daughter and I have a very loving and close relationship. It’s why we’re here together today. She can’t stand being apart from me.”
Sophie sat in one of the lobby chairs and said nothing. Mark sat on a couch and gestured to a chair across from it, indicating that JoJo should sit, as well.
He didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to ask, now that, once again, he was firmly against the idea of this woman working for him. She simply wasn’t going to fit in his world. His old one, yes. No question she would have fit. Hell, in his old life he would have been champing at the bit to get to know the woman behind the tattoos.
But in his new world, he couldn’t allow himself to cater to personal whims.
“You don’t quite look like the candidate you presented yourself to be.” Perfect. He could back out under the pretense that she’d misrepresented herself. Covering up her hair length...who did that?
“Sometimes people don’t look past the surface. So I didn’t dress to be obvious.”
“Obvious is one word for it.”
“Mark,” Sophie snapped. “How uncool. Just because she doesn’t look like everyone else that’s somehow wrong?”
Oh, yeah. The joys of fatherhood just kept on coming. “Do you mind, Sophie? I’m conducting an interview.”
“You’re being a total square.”
“Seriously? People still say square?”
“No.” She smirked. “People say douche bag but I thought that was crossing a line.”
“It did,” he snarled.
“Uh, excuse me?” JoJo waved her hand. “My interview, remember?”
“You do understand,” Mark said, “in this line of work blending in matters. Not standing out.” He waved his hand to indicate her whole being as one big standout. “No offense, but you don’t exactly blend.”
“Is that the only thing preventing me from getting this job? You’re concerned about how the way I look would affect my work?”
Not really. But what was he supposed to say? That her unapologetic style bothered him? That he felt uncomfortable merely sitting across from her? That his discomfort wouldn’t be conducive to a solid working relationship? That her eyes were really, really blue?
She would be the only other investigator working for him, and he imagined them spending a lot of time consulting with one another on their cases. Something akin to a partnership. Then there was the idea of having her look into the note. That meant actually trusting this woman.
He couldn’t explain all that. Instead he kept it simple. “I guess it is. I’ve spoken with Ben and he says I would be crazy to let you pass by. In fact, he’s waiting in the wings to scoop you up if I do.”
Another fact that rankled him. If he didn’t hire her and she worked for Ben, he might run into her at Ben’s office. How irritating would it be to find her solving cases for Ben while he was left with someone less talented?
No doubt Ben would lord it over him.
“Okay,” JoJo said, “we’ll make it a challenge. I bet I can leave and, within half an hour, be in your line of sight without you realizing it’s me.”
“That’s totally awesome. Mark, you have to let her do it.”
Mark gave his daughter a wry smile. Maybe he could impress her at last. “JoJo, you do realize I was a CIA black-ops analyst in the field for years.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “And years and years...”
Okay, maybe not.
“Observation is what I do. It’s how I survived. You can’t get past me. Especially not with the tattoos.”
JoJo held out her hand. “It’s a bet then. I do this, I get the job. You win, you get to show off your observation skills to your daughter. The only thing you’re out is a half hour of your time.”
“We were going to go eat—”
“Are you kidding me?” Sophie said. “I’m not leaving. I want to see this.”
JoJo winked at Sophie and his daughter smiled. Great, he thought. She’d known this woman for minutes and they had bonded more than he had with his daughter in months.
He did need another agent. Especially if the threat against Sophie was real. JoJo’s résumé did speak for itself....
Not that he was worried about losing, but he conceded that, if she pulled off the impossible, it wouldn’t be the worst thing from a professional standpoint.
Personal, maybe, but he could get over that. He would get over that.
He looked at his watch and pressed the timer.
“You have thirty minutes. You must be in my line of sight. If I identify you, I win. If I don’t, you’re hired. Go.”
She didn’t run. She didn’t leave through the front door, which was what he would have done. Much better to be someone coming in that way, then coming down the elevator where he could concentrate his attention.
Instead, she sauntered to the elevators in that same efficient, but also aggressive, walk of hers. A walk that said, Get out of my way, I’m coming through. She stepped through the door and Mark leaned back to wait.
Thirty minutes. He wished he had a magazine to help kill the time.
CHAPTER THREE
MARK CHECKED HIS WATCH. Twenty-three minutes had passed. He watched the elevators for activity then swung his attention to the front entrance. A man and woman walked in, but a quick assessment told him the woman was well over fifty. Not that makeup couldn’t do wonders, but JoJo wouldn’t have had enough time to put together a costume like that.
He turned to the elevators and spied a family getting out. A mother, a father and a teenage boy who was dressed from head to toe in black and carried a skateboard over his shoulder.
At least he looked like a boy. Mark kept his attention on the kid, searching for tells. There was a tattoo on his arm, but nothing around his neck. Was that sparkle on his face a nose ring? He heard Sophie gasp—clearly she was wondering the same thing.
Had JoJo, a small woman, turned herself into an average-sized teenage boy?
The front door opened again and a single woman walked in. Tall, blond, pretty, wearing a shockingly red coat over a short skirt and high heels. Mark assessed her quickly, and decided anyone trying to blend in wouldn’t wear such an eye-catching color, nor something so provocative as the short skirt. It would naturally draw the attention of any man in the vicinity. It, in fact, drew his. Her legs were fabulous.
Still, there was something about the way she moved. Mark’s gaze followed her to the desk, where she asked to use a phone. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she held the receiver to her ear. Mark could not see tattoos on her neck.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” Sophie announced.
Mark stood to scope out hiding spots around the lobby where she could claim to be in his line of sight, but actually be hidden from view. The people working behind the desk hadn’t changed, so she hadn’t sneaked in that way. The family stood together, using the lobby computer. The boy had his back to Mark, so he couldn’t check for blue eyes. Instead Mark studied the shape of his back, his height.
Close. Definitely close to JoJo’s height. Had she paid the two people to pose as parents?
“Twenty-nine minutes. She’s so going to win.”
Mark shot Sophie a glance and started toward the kid. A motion in his periphery caught his attention. The woman on the phone had lifted a leg up behind her. He followed that beautiful leg to her shoes.
Not just high heels. Platform high heels. They raised her height by at least two inches.
Gotcha.
“Time is up. Who is she?”
Mark looked at his daughter. “Do you know?”
“I have my suspicions.” Her smile was smug.
Smiling. Sophie was smiling. Mark looked at the blonde again. She had turned and he briefly caught her eye, but she bent her head and continued talking into the phone.
“You think that’s her?” Mark pointed toward the kid.
Sophie’s face fell a little. She obviously thought JoJo was the boy, and that he had won. He wasn’t sure if Sophie was displeased that he had won or that JoJo had lost.
It had been a very short time for two people to make such a positive connection. There were worse things than his daughter liking someone Mark employed.
He was throwing the contest, but in all of the time he had spent with Sophie, this was the most fun they had ever had. Deliberately, he went over and tapped the kid on the shoulder. The boy turned around, his Adam’s apple clearly visible. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Mark said. “I mistook you for someone else.”
“Whatever.”
Ah, yes, Mark’s favorite word. The kid turned around and Mark could see the father shoot him a look, but Mark simply folded his arms over his chest and waited.
The blonde made her way to him sporting a victorious smile.
“Oh, my God, I totally did not guess that was you,” Sophie said hopping up and down on her toes with excitement. “How did you hide the tattoos?”
“A trick I learned from Hollywood actresses.” JoJo tilted her neck and peeled off a thin layer of beige tape. “They use this stuff when they’re filming.”
Effective, at least from a distance. Up close, Mark could see the faint outline of the tape on the other side of her neck. That was probably why she hadn’t used the adhesive during her interview.
“Not bad. Hiding in plain sight. It worked.”
“Did it?” JoJo asked. Their eyes met. She clearly knew she’d been caught. She wasn’t counting on Mark throwing the contest.
Sophie looked at him. “Yes, totally. You won the job. Right, Mark? I mean, you’re not going to back off the bet now?”
“Nope.” He put his hands into his pockets. “You won fair and square. Since today is Tuesday, you can take a few days to get settled. Be at the office at eight o’clock sharp next Monday and we’ll work out salary and what your billing rate will be.”
JoJo held out her hand and Mark shook it. Odd for such a small hand to pack such a firm grip. She was a study in contrasts.
“Sophie, why don’t you check the computer for restaurants. Find some place you want to eat.”
“Okay. You should invite JoJo. It can be like a celebration dinner for beating you.”
Sophie left him in a ridiculously awkward situation. He didn’t particularly want to have dinner with JoJo. He would need the next few days to come to grips with the fact that he was now working with her. Maybe dinner would help with that. Maybe he would find himself less uncomfortable after breaking bread together.
“Would you like to join us? Not sure what Sophie will pick, her tastes are rather eclectic. It could be burgers, it could be sushi or it could be Thai food.”
“Why did you let me win?”
Mark feigned confusion.
“You caught my eye, let me know you knew it was me. Then you tapped the kid on the shoulder. Why?”
“I guess I decided I wanted to hire you after all. Besides, it was a good costume. It almost had me fooled.”
“You looked at my legs,” she said. Not judgmentally, but merely as a statement of fact.
“That was the intention, wasn’t it? For me to look at them and not at you.”
“Yes. I want to make sure you’re not going to have an issue working with me. Maybe the problem isn’t the tattoos. Maybe the problem is I’m a woman.”
Mark laughed. “Trust me. That’s not the problem. I’ve worked with plenty of women in my career. Operatives and soldiers. I have nothing but respect for people who do their job and do it well, regardless of their gender.”
“Okay.” JoJo nodded slowly. As if reaching some conclusion about him.
“And if you’re worried about me being attracted to you, I can promise you that won’t be an issue.”
“Okay...” she drawled.
He realized he’d basically said she was unattractive. At least unattractive to him. What phrase had Sophie used? Douche bag? It seemed appropriate here.
“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re a very attractive woman. I just... For me...”
“I get it.”
“Your legs were really distracting—”
“Mark, put a sock in it. This is actually a good thing. You’re not into me and I would never find someone like you attractive, either. So we’re cool. Business colleagues and that’s it.”
“That’s it,” Mark agreed. Although why the idea that she would never find someone like him attractive suddenly bothered him, he couldn’t say.
* * *
SOPHIE HAD GONE with Mexican. The restaurant was a small place off Market Street. Not a lot of ambiance but the waiter brought out a big basket of hot chips and spicy salsa. Combined with a margarita and JoJo had all a girl needed to be happy in life.
For a second she considered passing on the drink. Not exactly a good image, to be drinking in front of the boss shortly after being hired, but she had concluded she was done playing games for this guy. She was hired. She wasn’t working a case. She would have a drink and not put on any more pretenses.
She’d gone to her room to ditch the wig and the tape, but she kept her outfit on because that was part of her, too. The vibrant red coat hung on a hook at the corner of the booth.
Neither Mark nor Sophie could refrain from checking out her tattoos every once in a while.
JoJo couldn’t pretend it bothered her. After all, she’d gotten the tattoos for a very specific purpose—just like she did most things in her life. So to complain when people stared seemed hypocritical.
She also knew that with her tattoos she was writing off nice guys like Mark Sharpe, who would never be attracted to her. Solid businessman, clean-cut. Probably a conservative who wore boxers. Yes, he was definitely not her type.
Still, as she looked at him with his neatly trimmed dark hair, his barely there scruff along his chin and his dark sweater that highlighted broad shoulders, she got the impression he wasn’t quite the conformist he portrayed.
Then there were his eyes. To say they were brown didn’t describe them at all. They reminded her of a bird’s eyes. Sharp and calculating. Assessing her like she was nothing more than a squirrel he would hunt for sport rather than food.
There was no escaping those eyes now that they were focused on her. They were like her tattoos. Badass. When he’d looked at her in the lobby and she knew she’d been made, she’d felt like prey being given a reprieve. She wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
JoJo made a mental note that there wouldn’t be a next time. As a rule, she wasn’t intimidated by men. The experience she had with her father after her sister had died made intimidation impossible. She never feared men because she knew she could survive anything.
Mark was different, somehow. He threatened her in a way she couldn’t define.
Unfortunately that threat didn’t mean he wasn’t someone she might be attracted to. If anything, it contributed to the possibility. Telling him he wasn’t her type had been a flat-out lie. Done out of pride because he was so completely not into her. Also because she wanted to affirm there was no way she would ever be attracted to someone she worked for.
Which was a crock. A woman couldn’t control who she was attracted to. She only controlled what she did with that attraction.
She had been lucky that it was never a concern in her prior job. Even if there had been someone, she never would have crossed the line. It was hard to earn respect from your peers if they thought they could take you to bed. A perfectly logical reason to avoid interoffice dating.
Of course she’d also never had a relationship with any of the men from her last firm because she was completely and totally messed up emotionally. Every once in a while she forgot that.
“So,” JoJo said, dipping a chip into the salsa. “What’s your deal?” She looked at both Sophie and Mark. It was a nosy question, but she was a detective. She lived to be nosy.
Mark didn’t say anything, but Sophie looked at him, clearly waiting for him to say something first. Mark just shifted in the booth and reached for a chip.
“No deal.”
“Okay.” JoJo was prepared to let it go, but she could hear Sophie huff.
“Uh, please. She wants to know why I call you Mark. And why we’re together.”
“You call me Mark to annoy me.”
“My mom is dead.”
JoJo heard the flat note in the girl’s voice. It was as if she practiced saying it over and over again in the mirror so that when she had to say it out loud, to real people, she wouldn’t crack.
JoJo was sure her own voice had the same tone when she told people her sister was dead.
“I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. It was an accident that happened months ago. Actually...it’s over a year now. I forgot.” Sophie frowned but quickly shook away whatever bad stuff was floating through her head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Mark left me when I was a baby to save the world in Afghanistan and when my mom died he had to come back. I wanted to stay with my grandparents, but they’re too old to keep up with me so I’m stuck with Mark.”
Mark clenched his jaw and JoJo watched the muscle in his cheek spasm. “That’s about eighty percent accurate.”
“What part is wrong?” Sophie asked, having clearly told her story as truthfully as possible.
“You say I left you like I dropped you on the side of the road. Your mother and I reached a decision. Also, I would like to add that I have been in touch with you throughout your life.”
Sophie turned to JoJo. “Sorry. He sent me cards and gifts for my birthday and Christmas. When he wasn’t hiding under a rock somewhere, we would talk over the internet. Really intense conversations, too, like, ‘What grade are you in now?’ Mostly I saw a grainy picture of a guy with a scarf over his face. Half the time I didn’t even recognize him. So emotional.”
“It’s sandy and windy in the Stans. Scarves are a necessary accessory for, you know, breathing.”
“What—”
“—ever,” Mark finished. “Yes. But you should also know I didn’t come back because your mother died. I was coming back regardless. Your mother’s death only sped up the process.”
Sophie said nothing, but shook her head to show she didn’t believe it. Then she lifted her hand to her mouth and nibbled on a fingernail.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” Mark said.
Instantly her hand dropped and she reached for the chips.
“That’s the other thing about Sophie,” Mark said. “She’s a child prodigy. A piano player who has toured the country and Europe performing with various orchestras. Right now she’s under contract with the Philadelphia Orchestra.”
“I’m almost fifteen now. We can lose the child-prodigy tag. Just say I play the piano.”
“I would like to hear you sometime,” JoJo said.
“I can get you tickets.”
“Cool.”
JoJo looked again at Mark. He sat back in the booth defensively, looking like he wanted to escape, but he didn’t move. JoJo knew what it was like to have a broken relationship with her father. The difference between Mark and her dad was that Mark cared about what Sophie thought of him. He cared that she felt abandoned. And his expression showed that he also felt guilty.
That was something JoJo’s father had never felt. Still didn’t.
Mark excused himself to go to the restroom. “If the waiter comes—”
“You want a beef burrito,” Sophie said. “Like that’s news.”
Mark paused and a small smile lit up his face. “You know how tempted I am to say I want fajitas?”
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face. You know you want the burrito.”
His smile only grew larger. “You’re right. I do.”
JoJo watched him walk away and tried not to notice how nicely his jeans fit over a firm ass. Nice shoulders, nice ass. Oh, my. When was the last time she’d taken in a man’s appearance like that? And of all men, it had to be her new boss?
When she looked at Sophie, the girl was biting her fingernails again. As soon as she noticed JoJo’s eyes on her, Sophie dropped her hands into her lap.
“Why aren’t you supposed to bite your nails?”
Sophie wiggled her fingers. “Don’t want anything messing with the tools. A hangnail or infection could be death for an artist like me.”
JoJo heard the sarcasm that was obviously a big part of who Sophie was. But it also let JoJo know the girl didn’t take herself too seriously. Which was probably a good thing in someone so talented.
“I really am sorry about your mom. I’m not just saying it.”
There was a shimmer in the girl’s eyes that she would hate to know was there. A small crack. Instantly JoJo felt contrite for making the girl crack in front of company. As a concession she offered her own pain. “I lost my sister. When I was young.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“It blows.”
Sophie nodded. “It’s like...I get up every day and I do the stuff I am supposed to do. Like nothing happened. Only everything happened.”
“You feel guilty.”
“Yeah. Like I should be in my room crying every day. And some days that’s all I want to do, but I don’t. I go to practice, I go to rehearsal. I get ready to perform. It’s like this horrible thing didn’t happen. Only it did. I forgot it was more than a year ago.”
This was where JoJo was supposed to offer up some nice words. You’ll work through it. It will get better. It was the least she could do.
“It will get better.” JoJo choked out the words.
“Will it?”
“No,” JoJo admitted truthfully. The girl was too smart and would see through any fabrication. When you removed the bullshit there was only the truth. “No, it doesn’t get better. It just gets less worse.”
Sophie took a chip from the basket. “She died in a car accident. The guy wasn’t even drunk. It was just some stupid car accident.”
“My sister was murdered. She was my twin and she was murdered.”
JoJo had belched up the words—they never came out freely. But she’d played a game with a master spy and had won. Sort of. And she had gulped down a really good margarita on a stomach that was empty except for a few chips.
It felt like Sophie got it. They both knew the same pain. It was different when people died when they were supposed to because of old age or after a long illness. When they died young, the pain was sharper because it happened so abruptly. Sophie’s pain was fresher, but JoJo’s was no less intense.
“Murder. Oh, my God, that, like, totally sucks. I’m really sorry. Is that why you became a detective?”
“It’s why I became...everything.”
* * *
MARK OPENED THE door to his apartment and let Sophie pass by him.
“I was thinking of watching a movie. You up for it?”
“I’m going to read. I have work to do for Nancy that I’d rather get out of the way tonight.”
She’d rather do homework than watch a movie with him.
Ouch.
Still, he wasn’t going to complain. Today, by far, had been their best day together. She’d been almost happy while playing with baby Kelly. She’d agreed to go with him to meet JoJo. And he knew she liked JoJo.
To quote Sophie on their ride to their apartment, JoJo was cool.
The best news of all was that she knew he preferred beef burritos. It meant they were getting to know each other. Maybe reluctantly on her part, but it was happening.
“Yeah, sure. If you’re interested, maybe we could take in the new superhero movie that’s coming out this weekend.”
She halted. “You’re into superheroes?”
“Honey, I was a superhero.”
She rolled her eyes, but at least he got her to smile. “Yeah, sure. Okay. What—”
“Please. I beg of you. No more whatevers. Not tonight.”
“Lame. First one up makes breakfast.”
“Deal,” he said, even though he knew it was a trap. Sophie had mastered the art of staying in bed until he was awake, so he would be stuck with breakfast duty. One time he tried to outwait her and ended up lying in bed staring at the ceiling until almost ten in the morning. While dinner was his responsibility, they both agreed breakfast and lunch were a free-for-all. During the week they stuck to toast or cereal.
On Saturdays he went the extra mile. They both liked egg, pork roll—a Pennsylvania tradition she’d introduced him to—and cheese on a bagel. Saturdays were quickly becoming his favorite day of the week. On Sundays they visited Dom and Marie, and while he didn’t mind visiting them, he definitely liked it better when it was just him and Sophie.
It was becoming their thing. Despite her hostility, her snark factor and even her stubborn refusal to relent and fully forgive him, he was coming to like her. Loving her was automatic. But now he liked her.
He had to get her to like him in the same way. Forgoing the movie, he grabbed a beer and made his way to his bedroom, where he kept his personal computer to prevent any snooping from his daughter. Not that she would be able to get through his security, but its location added one more level of protection.
Sitting at his desk, he turned on the computer and accessed the site that would provide him with the most comprehensive information on JoJo Hatcher. A site that went beyond basic fact-checking, that some considered not completely legal.
But he wasn’t messing around. The woman was now officially working for him. If he was going to ask her to help him track down whoever sent that note, he had to know everything about her. Not a single piece of information was insignificant. It was time to know exactly who he was dealing with.
CHAPTER FOUR
THIS WAS THE start of a battle. A prelude to the fight. This was a time for her to lead her people forward into the unknown. They would give their lives for her. They would sacrifice all. Where she played they would follow. With wisdom and knowledge and no fear...
“Sophie! Sophie, halt!”
The words finally penetrated and Sophie looked up from her piano, the story she’d been telling with her fingers suddenly gone.
“Yes, Maestro?” She looked up at the short, plump man standing on the raised platform with the baton in his hand. Igor Romnasky, the legendary composer and conductor from Moscow, had been chosen to direct this performance of Grieg’s “Op. 16 in A minor.” He claimed he’d accepted the opportunity to work with Sophie. Or so she’d been told. Instead of listening to her play however, all he ever seemed to want to do was stop her.
“You are out of pace with the orchestra, yes?”
It always sounded like a question when he said it, but it never was.
Sophie nodded, but thought that if anyone was off the pace, it was the orchestra. He should be keeping them in time with her, not the other way. It wasn’t arrogance, it was the way the music had been written. The piano was king. Or in her case, queen.
“Again, yes?”
They had already been at it for three hours without a break. Her fingers were starting to get numb.
Sophie, too fast, yes? Sophie, too slow, yes? Sophie, too hard, yes?
No. Sophie was ready to take the bald man’s baton and shove it up his—
“How about a short break? It’s been a couple of hours. I think we all could use it.”
This from the principal violinist. Sophie looked at Bay and smiled. He gave her a wink and she really hoped it didn’t make her blush too horribly. She knew it made her heart race, which of course caused her palms to get sweaty. Which was gross when you were trying to play.
The maestro seemed to consider the young man with the big talent and finally relented.
“Fifteen minutes. No more, yes? Our first performance is next Friday.”
Sophie pushed out her bench and stood. She hadn’t realized how stooped over the keys she’d been and she nearly groaned when she stretched her back.
“You weren’t off the pace.”
Sophie smiled as she heard the quiet words in her ear. Turning, she smiled into Bay Tong’s beautiful face. He was Korean on his father’s side and Caucasian on his mother’s, and so completely the most gorgeous person she’d ever met. She didn’t think it was possible that someone like him would ever pay attention to her, but he did and it thrilled her every time he spoke to her.
Once a child prodigy himself, she got the feeling he tried to shelter her in ways that maybe he hadn’t been. But at age eighteen he was no longer identified as special. Merely incredibly talented. Certainly talented enough to win the first chair position in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
If only he would see her as more than a kid.
Of course, it was totally understandable when she was fourteen and had first met him. But now she was nearly fifteen and they were going to be only three years apart in age. Which was practically nothing, given her level of maturity. If she really wanted to, she could test out of high school. Then she wouldn’t even be considered a student.
“His hearing needs to be checked,” he added.
“I know. I think he gets off on bossing me around. Whatever. I’ve dealt with conductors like him. They all think they will be the one to make me do something I’ve never been able to do before. It’s all about their ego. All I want to do is play.”
“Yes, but you can learn from them. Sometimes I know it’s hard to think that way when they’re yelling at you. You have to take the one piece of instruction or advice that works for you and throw the rest away.”
“I spent three years at Juilliard. I know how to take instruction.”
“That’s different. They are trying to improve your technique. These guys care about something more. They want to pull a performance out of you and they can be ruthless in doing so. Sometimes even mean. That stuff can get to you after a while.”
Sophie shrugged and lifted a shoulder. “I know.”
“Just don’t let him get you down.”
“Protecting me again?”
He laughed softly. “Why do I think you’re the type who would say you don’t need anyone’s protection?”
That made her beam. Because she was exactly that type of person, which meant they were getting to know each other. They had been working together since January and now, as April approached, she was starting to think that maybe things could change between them. If only he saw her differently. Her birthday was May 15 and once it came, she was sure he would look at her with new eyes.
Today she’d intentionally worn tight skinny jeans and a top that was cut low enough to reveal the tops of her breasts. She’d spent thirty-six of her fifty-dollar-a-week allowance on a push-up bra from Victoria’s Secret. After weeks of owning it, she had finally worked up the courage to wear it.
Only he hadn’t ogled her chest once.
“It better not be because I’m a girl.” She threw her hip to one side in a pose she hoped was sexy. Then she flicked her hair—which she had spent almost twenty minutes straightening—off her shoulder. For the past few weeks she’d kept her hair loose instead of braiding it. All guys liked long hair. Everyone knew that. Well, maybe everyone except JoJo.
Braids were for little girls. It could be completely annoying when her hair got in her face while she was playing, but that was something she would have to deal with. Maybe bangs was the answer.
“Chill out, Gloria Steinem. I would do the same for any kid. Boy or girl.”
Kid. That hurt. It also made her feel stupid wearing her bra. “You know, you’re only three years older than me.” When they’d first met, she had said she was almost fifteen, which she was—only in January that turning point had been further away than it was now.
“Three years and three lifetimes, Sophie.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looked at his sneakers. For rehearsal, this maestro wasn’t concerned about what they wore, unlike other conductors who insisted the musicians rehearse in formal dress to better prepare for the performance.
Bay was so hot in his well-worn jeans and brown sweater that Sophie actually came to understand how the word mouthwatering related to boys.
“It means I’m eighteen and you’re fifteen and we’re just...friends.”
Sophie felt another rush of humiliation, which she immediately countered with sarcasm. “Uh...yeah. What did you think we were?”
He glanced briefly at her overflowing breasts, which were nearly busting out of her shirt. It was a silent message. He was letting her know he understood what she was trying to do with her clothes and her Victoria’s Secret bra. She wanted to fall through the floor. She wanted to cover her breasts with her arms.
Instead she raised her hand to bite her fingernails.
“You’re not supposed to do—”
“I know,” she snapped. “Any other words of wisdom?”
“Sophie—”
“Hey, Sophie!”
Sophie turned at the sound of her name. Mark was walking down the aisle. “What’s he doing here?”
“You never cut him any slack, do you?”
“You don’t know anything about my relationship with him.” Again she lashed out, still in pain from the rejection.
Bay didn’t flinch. “I know he’s all you’ve got now. I know he’s here all the time trying to talk to you but you act like he’s a total jerk. He’s trying, Sophie. When are you going to try back?”
“I thought you said we were friends. Friends have each other’s back.”
“Sophie—”
“But hey, I’m just a kid, so what do I know?”
* * *
MARK CLIMBED THE steps to the stage, where everyone was milling about. He’d arrived during a break, which was great so he could talk to Sophie, but was disappointing, too, because he wouldn’t hear her play today. Nothing moved him like listening to his daughter. Nothing made him more proud and, conversely, more guilty for having missed so much of her amazing life.
They hadn’t been able to move her grand piano from her grandparents’ house into his apartment. As spacious as his place was, it couldn’t accommodate a piece of furniture that size. Instead he’d rented studio space where she could practice independently. She spent two hours there every morning before heading to the Kimmel for rehearsal. The performances would soon begin, but other than attending those, the only time he heard her play was when she messed with the electric keyboard in her bedroom.
This would have been a pre-performance treat. Maybe if the break was short, he could linger. She had informed him that she didn’t care to be watched, which seemed odd since she was used to playing in front of thousands of people. Once, when she’d forgotten her purse, he came to drop off money for her lunch. She had curtly thanked him, then dismissed him. Evidently he was the only person she didn’t want watching her.
Things were changing, he told himself. Ever so slowly, they were. He had to hold on to that.
Gone now were any rules Sophie had laid down about when he could see her. That had changed the moment he received that note. Someone made a threat against him and used his daughter to do it. If he wasn’t watching her carefully, it would be someone else. Someone he would have to trust in a hurry.
Mark approached his daughter, who was talking to Bay, the violinist. Mark had met the boy before. A nice kid who had a path to success similar to Sophie’s. He thought it was a great thing for her to have someone like Bay around with experience performing at this level at such a young age.
At least he had thought it was good until he saw his daughter wearing ridiculously tight black jeans and a shirt that showed her...gulp...breasts.
Holy jeezus, his daughter had breasts!
And they were totally out there.
“What in the hell are you—” Mark stopped when he saw her face. Tight, flushed. Ready for him to drop the hammer and call her out for wearing something so overtly and inappropriately sexual. Call her out in front of Bay, who was handsome and a friend who she talked about constantly.
“Uh, rehearsing here today?” he finished lamely. “Yeah. I figured I would stop by for a preview of the show.”
“We’re working the concerto,” she said, her arms now fully wrapped around her thin body, her shoulders sunken in as far as she could. “You wouldn’t know the composer. It’s not the guy you like.”
“Beethoven.” Mark smiled at Bay. “I like Beethoven. I didn’t know who did all that sad stuff, but it’s him every time.”
“Beethoven is great,” Bay agreed. “Sophie does the ‘Moonlight’ like nobody else.”
Mark smiled and as he did so felt his facial muscles contract. Was this kid flirting with his daughter? “You know, come to think of it, Bay, I don’t know that I ever asked you how old you are.”
He could feel Sophie shoot him the evil look of death, but after living with her for the past few months he was mostly immune to it. Her death look now brought no more than a mild sting.
“Eighteen, sir.”
“Eighteen,” Mark repeated, probably too loudly. “How about that. You’re legal now. It’s official. An adult. Not a kid anymore.”
Bay smiled and nodded as if he understood Mark’s implied message. “Yes, sir. Look, I’ll leave you two alone. It was good to see you again, Mr. Sharpe.”
“Hey, call me Mark. After all, we’re two grown men. Two men should call each other by their first names. Don’t you agree, Bay?”
“Uh. Sure. Mark.” He waved and walked to the string section, where the performers were starting to regroup.
“How could you?”
Mark fixed a fairly stern glare on Sophie. “Nuh-uh. Not this time. This time—” he looked pointedly at her chest “—it’s on you. How could you? We’re not going to talk about this here. I know this is your place of work—I respect that even if you are only fourteen. So we’ll discuss this at home.”
“Stop calling it home. It’s not a home. It’s an apartment.”
“Fine. Then we’ll discuss it at the apartment.”
“Whatever. Why are you here anyway?”
“I told you, I had some time. I wanted to listen to you play.”
Actually he wanted to check in on her. While she knew about the existence of the note, Mark was fairly sure she didn’t understand its significance. To her it was some meaningless prank. To him it meant trouble. It was okay with him if she was oblivious to that—the girl had enough on her hands getting ready for opening night.
“You can do that Friday night. I told you before I really don’t like to be interrupted when I’m working. I’m sorry if that sounds like diva city, but you have to respect that, too.”
It wasn’t said with any real heat, probably because she wasn’t really mad at him. Instead, she was suffering from embarrassment and maybe a little bit of heartbreak. Fourteen and stuck smack in the middle of her first crush. And if Mark’s instincts were correct, her first rejection.
Which really sucked. For her and for him.
It was easy to think that because she had just come into his life they would have all this time to get to know each other, to come to love each other, and be what a father and daughter were supposed to be to one another. Yet she was growing up—fifteen in two months. Yes, she was still young, but she wasn’t exactly a kid anymore. He had to respect that her feelings were real and they had taken a hard jab that went to their soft, gooey core.
“Okay. Listen, though. Do me a favor and call me when rehearsal is over. I’ll pick you up.”
“Why? I usually take a cab home with some of the others.”
“I know, but humor me.”
“Is this about the note?”
His daughter was too damn bright for her own good. Which meant it didn’t make sense to lie to her. “Yeah. This is about the note. Someone sends me a note like that and I worry.”
“It was so stupid, though. It didn’t say anything. I mean, lose me how? It’s not like I’ve seen some creepy villain lurking offstage waiting to grab me.”
He imagined someone making a grab for Sophie. He could see the fight she would put up. His girl wasn’t the quiet or shy type. But a teenage girl didn’t know what kind of evil there was in the world.
He did. He knew too much of it.
“Humor me. Call me. It will save you cab fare.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ve got to go.”
He watched the orchestra come together onstage and took the stairs to the auditorium. She’d already told him this conductor was particularly difficult to work for. Pushing her to five, sometimes six, hours of rehearsal a day when three hours was the norm. Apparently Romnasky was a perfectionist.
Mark lingered in the dark shadows, where he knew she couldn’t see him. She would probably know he was still there because the main doors hadn’t opened and closed.
“Come, come, Sophie. This time perfect, yes?”
She settled on her bench and Mark held his breath as the conductor lifted his baton above his head and the music began to play.
You’re going to lose her.
Words of advice from a conductor who had been working with his daughter for the past few weeks and had observed her behavior?
Mark spotted Bay in front of the row of strings, his violin tucked under his chin. Or maybe a warning from someone she considered more than a friend?
It didn’t matter. In time Mark would know who sent the note because gathering information and finding answers was what he did best.
When it came to doing that for Sophie, nothing would stop him.
* * *
“HEY.”
Mark stopped at the door to his office. Behind his desk sat JoJo, looking rather at home. She wore all black today. Some tights that made her legs look impossibly thin, with a wide top that should have made her seem witchy but instead showed off her impish face. A thin red belt held all the material together at her tiny waist. An elf witch. A magical fairy elf witch. With tattoos.
When he moved around the desk he saw that the Gothic ensemble was highlighted with red shoes, which transformed her style from angsty teenager to sophisticated woman.
“You do understand you’re in my office. Yours is the one next door. The small one.”
When he had decided to hire another detective, Mark had rented a bigger space in the same Liberty Plaza building. The new office had a reception area, two offices, a conference room and even a small kitchenette with a single-serving coffeemaker. He was intensely fond of that, as he preferred fresh coffee to stale coffee that had been forming sludge on a burner.
“I’ve been here for days already and you haven’t given me anything to do.”
JoJo had not waited until Monday to start her new job. Instead she had shown up the very next morning, on time and ready to work. He’d had no idea what to do with her so he introduced her to the receptionist, Susan, and gave her an excessive amount of paperwork to fill out.
“I checked with Susan and she said she put a bunch of new cases on your desk.” JoJo stood with the files in her hand, assessing him. “You’re not going to be one of those bosses, are you?”
“Those bosses?”
“The ones that are always telling everyone what to do and when to do it.”
“Isn’t that the very definition of a boss?”
She sat on the edge of his desk, her tights-wearing perfect little butt touching his phone. “I work best if I’m left alone to do my thing. Hand me the cases and I’ll get you results.”
“You sound confident.” A self-starter. Wasn’t that exactly what he wanted in a colleague? Someone who wouldn’t wait around to be told what to do? “Do you always sit on furniture like that? More specifically, furniture not made for sitting on?”
For whatever reason it bothered him. The way she sat. The way her body touched his stuff. The way she seemed to take up all the space in his office. The way she called attention to her very small bottom. He could probably hold it in two hands.
No. He did not just have that thought. He didn’t.
She stood. “Sorry. Jeez. Sensitive about people being in his office, sensitive about people sitting on his desk. I’m starting to wonder about you. I took you for the laid-back sort.”
He stepped in front of her even as she tried to walk around him. “I’m not a sort. And you don’t know anything about me.”
He was sure it was the expression on his face that made her body tense. Mark knew the power of his glare well. Hell, he practiced his hard-core intimidation look. He used it to knock people off guard.
She was right. For the most part, he was a laid-back guy. Right up until the point when he wasn’t.
It was time JoJo—and, really, what was with that ridiculous name?—knew that about him.
He’d sent hardened soldiers, Taliban fighters and steely covert operatives into retreat with this very expression. No doubt it would work on her.
JoJo snorted and shoved his chest. “Give me a break. You don’t scare me, spy man. Now, do you want me to go over these cases or not?”
Mark was stunned by her lack of fear. Her lack of awe. Her lack of every reaction he was accustomed to. Had he become so domesticated since returning stateside that his once infamous back-the-hell-down face was no longer effective?
He sighed with disgust. It was official. He was no longer a badass. Merely the remnant of one. He supposed that was a good thing, but it felt deflating.
She still waited for him to give her enough room to pass, her arms filled with the cases he’d planned to have her go over. But he abruptly knew he didn’t want her working on any of them.
A woman who could stand up to him when he was being his worst was someone who also stood a chance with Sophie when she was being her worst.
Leaving Sophie at rehearsal today had been difficult. He didn’t like the idea of her without protection. But given her attitude toward him, Mark knew he needed an alternative to following her around himself. Having someone Sophie actually liked do it was the answer he was looking for.
“No, I don’t want you to look at those cases. I have something more important that I need you to handle. Something incredibly important to me.”
“And that would be?”
“My daughter’s safety.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JOJO LOOKED AT the note and felt a jab of anger behind her breastbone. Like someone had stabbed an old wound, reminding her of how real pain used to feel. The kid had lost her mother and she was building a relationship with a father she hadn’t known growing up.
Now this? It didn’t seem fair.
JoJo walked the few steps to her office. She felt more in control in her office. More of a problem solver and less of an empathizer. Mark followed and leaned against the door, his arms crossed.
“What are you thinking?” She sat behind her desk. Placed her elbows on its surface. Asked questions. Acted out the same role she would with any client.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Old enemies, new enemies? You’re starting to build a reputation in this city as someone who solves unsolvable crimes. There must have been people along the way who would want to hurt you. Hurt you through her.”
“You’re not going to ask me if I think she sent it?”
“No. I’ve met Sophie. This isn’t her.”
“You say that confidently. You met her this week and chatted for a few hours.”
JoJo shrugged. “I know what I know. Giving your father a hard time is something I’m an expert on. While Sophie might sarcasm you to death, sneaky scare tactics aren’t her style. She’s too up front.”
“Is that what you did after it happened? Gave your father a hard time?”
She didn’t need to ask what he was referring to—any investigator by trade would certainly ferret out his employees’ personal details. JoJo wondered if poor Susan knew the extent to which her privacy had been violated. It was most likely beyond what many employees would consider reasonable.
No, there was no question whether he knew about her past. But she didn’t know what to say in response.
He wore a sheepish grin, yet didn’t look apologetic. “It’s who I am. It’s what I do. I knew about it peripherally when I did the background check before I hired you. I heard you tell Sophie about it at dinner and I learned everything there was to know. I’m sorry for your loss, of course.”
Right. This was the point where she nodded demurely and said thank you because it was usually the most expedient way to get people to stop talking about it. With her eyes lowered and her lips turned down in a hard frown, most people didn’t press the topic. No one actually wanted to make a woman cry. Not that she had. Not for a long time.
But something about what he said rubbed her the wrong way. The way he stood in front of her thinking he knew everything, when all he had was facts from his internet search. Trying, but failing, to be apologetic for invading her privacy. It made her want to punch him in his smug face.
It made her want to cry, just to watch him squirm.
“You don’t know shit about it. All you know is what you read. You don’t know what happened to me. To my family. Nobody does.”
“Then tell me.”
“Why would I do that? I don’t know you.”
“But I want to know you.”
Her eyes widened.
“I meant for professional reasons,” he said quickly. “I need you. I need someone to watch my daughter because she won’t let me. You have to be someone I can trust and that trust has to be built instantly. I agree that sometimes facts aren’t enough. So tell me what really happened.”
“Telling you about my family tragedy will build trust?”
“Telling me about what happened between you and your father might.” Mark’s expression was dour. “Okay, fine, it also might help give me some insight into Sophie. Figure out how I can change us. Fix us.”
JoJo smiled sadly. “Trust me when I tell you there is nothing about what happened between me and my father that will help you to fix anything. You might say my dad and I are...permanently broken.”
“It was that bad?”
“It was worse.”
“I don’t want to break things with Sophie. I really don’t.”
“Then you won’t. The problem my dad and I had—and eventually my mom and I—wasn’t the result of what I did. It was because of them. A kid can try to let go and parents can refuse to allow it. But if parents let go, there is nothing for the kid to do but walk away. As long as you refuse to let her go, it doesn’t matter how angry Sophie gets or how snarky or how combative. That bond will still be there.”
She could see him absorbing her words. Understanding what it said about her own family. What it meant.
“They had already lost one daughter. How could they let you go?”
“I spent a lot of time taking psychology courses to figure out that very thing. The truth is, murder is destructive and it has many victims. And I was not...easy.”
“I really am sorry.”
JoJo didn’t reply. It was such a useless phrase. One that people felt obligated to offer. It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change anything. It only made a person say, “Thank you.” Thank you for what?
“I’ll need a list of everyone you suspect might have written this note. I’ll also want a list of anyone involved in any case you’ve solved since your return to the States. I imagine you can’t put together a list of potential threats from your days in the government—security clearance and all—so you’ll have to do your own work there.”
“Right. And you’ll—”
“I’ll need to get familiar with Sophie’s schedule. Her friends, teachers, et cetera. Do you want my surveillance to be covert or open?”
Mark hesitated and JoJo imagined he was weighing the pros and cons.
“Do you want to take the risk of me doing this without her knowledge, knowing at some point she might learn the truth or—”
“You can’t handle covert surveillance on a teenager?”
JoJo nearly growled. “Of course I can. But should danger threaten her in some way I may need to expose myself. The girl’s pretty bright. I’m thinking she wouldn’t buy the story that my presence was a coincidence. Or do you want to spare the righteous teen outrage that would follow such a revelation and simply explain what’s happening? A threat was made, we’re checking it out, but in the meantime I’m going to be hanging around to make sure nothing happens.”
Still, he hesitated.
“What did you say about wanting to fix the relationship between you and your daughter?”
“I don’t want to scare the crap out of her with this. She’s got enough on her plate.”
“Then you need to ask yourself who Sophie is. Is she the type of kid who is going to be freaked out by this and will shut down out of fear? Or is she the type of kid who can deal with the situation and take reasonable steps to secure her own safety by accepting a necessary precaution?”
“Are you seriously trying to out-reason me?”
“I’m saying you’re not a spy anymore. Getting away with a covert operation isn’t the goal. Establishing trust between you and your daughter is. You know? That silly thing called trust—that thing you want to have with me. Well, I’m no expert but I’m fairly sure it’s a critical component in any relationship, especially one between a father and daughter who are only starting to know one another.”
“You did out-reason me,” he whispered, sounding disgusted. “Okay. Come over tonight. We’ll talk to her together. I’ll let her know what the deal is and you can explain your role. She’ll probably take it better coming from you.”
“Deal.”
“Did you find an apartment yet?”
“Not yet. I have some appointments tomorrow.”
“To rent or buy?”
This time she was the one to hesitate, pondering how much he needed to know about her personal life. In her mind, the more space the better, especially since she realized she sort of liked him.
Not the dangerous red-zone level of like. More bordering on orange. He was funny and could trade barbs with anyone. But there was something else that made him different from other men she’d known. She’d worked for detectives, she’d trained with law enforcers. The term swinging dick was a staple in her descriptive vocabulary.
The difference between Mark and the other types she’d known in this profession was that he didn’t have to swing his dick to prove anything to anyone.
He was a badass, and his dick was just there. Impressive without having to announce its presence.
And that is enough time thinking about the Penis. Move on.
She considered what he had said earlier. If he was going to trust her with his daughter’s safety, then she could at least be honest with him about the basic facts of her life.
“Rent.”
“Because you can’t buy or won’t buy?”
“If you’re offering me a raise already...”
He sneered at her. That was the only description she could come up with for the way his lips thinned while half his mouth curled up. “I’m trying to find out if you’re renting for a reason.”
“Like, duh,” she said, with what she hoped was enough teenage speak so he would understand.
It only made him sneer harder.
“Yes, I’m renting for a reason. Until you and I figure out if we can mesh together, I don’t want to make any long-term commitments.”
“Why do we have to...mesh? Why can’t we simply be two people working together?”
“Dude, small office. You need to accept the fact that I’m the type who will go into your office and take the case folders if I need them. I probably need to accept the fact that, deep at heart, you’re still a paranoid spy guy. If we can’t do that, no meshing.”
“Well, then I want to mesh.” He shook his head slightly. “What I meant to say is, I want this to work out. With us.”
“Ditto.”
“Good. Okay, well, if you don’t have a place of your own, you’re probably sick of eating out. Come over for dinner.”
“You cook?”
“Why did your voice go up an octave? You don’t think I can cook? Is it because I’m a man? That’s so stereotypical and, I have to say, a little cliché.”
JoJo bit her lip because who knew? Maybe his secret passion was cooking. But she had a feeling she was being played. In fact, that was always how she felt around him. Like she was being tested or there was some hidden agenda behind everything he did and said. It constantly kept her on her toes.
The man—the real man—behind the intimidating spy or the sarcastic jokester or the seriously lost new dad, was a mystery.
Which was not a good thing because there was nothing she loved better than solving a mystery.
He’s your boss. He’s not a mystery. He’s your boss. A boss without a Penis.
Still, a home-cooked meal—if he could deliver it—was not something a woman who ate most of her meals at restaurants ever passed up. Cooking was a luxury her job rarely afforded.
“You’re on, chef.”
* * *
MARK CLUTCHED THE take-out bags in one hand while he fiddled with his key. He opened the door and found Sophie where he’d left her after he had picked her up from rehearsal. Nancy was with her and the two of them had their heads down over a big book.
“Hey, I’m home.”
Nancy lifted her head and smiled. “Hi.”
Again, Mark was struck by the sweet nature of her smile. So open and friendly and welcoming. So unlike the woman who was coming for dinner tonight.
I want to mesh....
Where in the hell had that come from? It had been her word, but to him it conjured all sorts of lurid images. Mostly involving naked bodies and what happened to them when they meshed.
He wasn’t even sure why the images arose. It wasn’t like he was attracted to her. She was so far from what he wanted in a woman she might as well be a man. Any thoughts of meshing should be irrelevant.
That was what he needed to do. He needed to think of her as a man. A man, a fellow detective, a coworker. A hey-buddy-let’s-get-a-beer-after-work dude. Or a go-watch-the-game-and-burp kind of man.
Did JoJo burp?
“What’s that?” Sophie asked him.
Shifting his thoughts away from his she-man coworker, Mark set the bags in the kitchen. “This is lasagna. Homemade. Well, at least homemade by someone else. But we’re going to pretend tonight. What are the odds I have a dish remotely this size?”
He started foraging through his cabinets, where he knew he’d stashed the pots and pans and serving dishes he’d bought. When he first realized that it only made sense for Sophie to live with him, he’d gone out and bought everything he thought a home should have. Things like kitchen implements. He was a man who owned a grater, a juicer and a whisk.
Not one of those tools had ever been used in this kitchen.
“Ah-ha!” Mark pulled out a square white ceramic dish and a saucepan and held them up to show off his discovery to the two ladies seated at the island.
“Yeah, so you have pots? I don’t get it.”
Mark opened the bags and pulled out a container of red sauce. He dumped the contents into the pot and put it on the stove, setting the heat level to warm.
Next action item: the delicate surgery of removing the lasagna from the aluminum container and placing it into the serving dish. What might a man need for that? Spatula. Yes! That was a kitchen tool he was familiar with. A man had to have eggs and pancakes after all.
Sophie followed his activities with a bemused expression. “What are you doing? What is the point?”
“I think he’s trying to impress someone.”
Mark glanced at Nancy and saw a sad smile on her face. It was crazy, but he had the feeling he’d disappointed her by being interested in somebody else. The crazy thought occurred to him that his daughter’s tutor might have a crush on him.
If so, it was flattering. She was a woman in her early thirties and attractive in a no-nonsense way. Long, ash-blond hair, pretty green eyes. Soft in all the right places. She was a woman any man would find it easy to be around. Hell, if she wasn’t his daughter’s tutor, he might consider asking her out.
Because wasn’t that what he wanted? A nice woman. A steady woman. A woman with a lovely smile.
But she was his daughter’s tutor and Sophie liked her. That was something he wasn’t going to mess up. There were boundaries that couldn’t be crossed if he didn’t want to see Nancy storm off, leaving him hanging over something as silly as her broken heart. After all, what were the odds he could actually make a relationship work long-term?
Given his track record, his odds were on par with being able to cook lasagna on his own from scratch. And since he had no clue about what went into lasagna, those odds were basically none to none.
“Not impressing anyone,” he clarified. “Just proving her wrong.”
“Her.” Nancy nodded. “I sort of figured.”
“Who is it?”
Mark looked at Sophie. “JoJo is coming over.”
He watched her face instantly change from suspicious to excited. “Awesome. Why, though? I thought you guys were working together. Mark, you do know you can’t date someone you employ, don’t you? It’s totally not cool.”
“It’s not a date. It’s a work thing. But she made a crack about me cooking and well...”
“You would rather set up an elaborate scene with pots and dishes than tell her the truth. Which is that you don’t cook.”
“Exactly.” Mark smiled. “You know, Soph, I really feel like we’re getting to know each other.”
“Well, I’ll be going,” Nancy said as she closed the book. “Let you do your...work thing. Sophie, I’ll expect that report next week. See you around, Mark.”
Mark ignored her doubt about the intentions behind tonight’s activities. While he might appreciate her attraction, he certainly wouldn’t feel obligated to explain any part of his life to her. If that put her nose out of joint, then it was her issue. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to pursue him or not. Because when it came to him and women, it only ever went two ways. Either they chased him until he was ready to be caught, or Ben, his former rival and now friend, showed interest in a woman who Mark would then actively seduce.
It had worked every time, until Mark met Anna. Because Ben and Anna had been in love.
Love. Mark had never truly been in love. He used to worry what kind of person that made him. After years of dissecting his relationship with Helen, he’d concluded that if he’d loved her, really loved her, then staying with her and Sophie would have been more important than pursuing any life dream.
But she had betrayed him. In the worst way. She lied to him about taking birth control while actually trying to get pregnant. Trying to find a way to cage him. To keep him from doing the thing he told her he’d always dreamed of doing. They had been together for what, eight or nine months? Two young kids enjoying college and steady sex.
They hadn’t even lived together. Their entire relationship consisted of bars, beers, late-night calls and finding secretive places at parties to have sex.
From that she had wanted forever. Had tried to make it happen by tricking him. A fact he would never share with Sophie.
He didn’t regret the course of events. He couldn’t. He had Sophie now. How could he possibly be sorry when she was so spectacularly amazing? But had Helen lived, when he returned to the States to build a relationship with Sophie, there would have been nothing but a cordial friendship between him and his ex-girlfriend.
After Helen, Mark’s ideas about love and relationships changed. He was totally up front about what he wanted from a woman. Harshly, that meant sex and only sex. He liked the game. He liked the chase. Whether he was doing the chasing or someone was chasing him. And he liked sex.
There was no love involved in any of that. But lately he’d been rethinking his position. Maybe finding someone he could actually try to develop...what? After so many years of playing, he couldn’t actually say he understood what a real relationship was. He couldn’t fathom a scenario that he would be willing to subject not only himself to, but Sophie, as well.
“What’s the matter?”
Mark shook himself out of his reverie. What the hell was his problem anyway? There was no reason to be thinking about love and sex now.
It was only JoJo who was coming over.
He transferred the lasagna to the dish then splashed the sides of the ceramic with sauce. He turned on the oven and put aluminum foil over the dish, hoping ten minutes of heat might permeate the apartment with the smell of home cooking. He didn’t have to pretend with the bread. Who came home and made fresh bread? As soon as he had the garlic and butter coating ready he could throw the loaf under the broiler. Surely that would give off enough smell to convince anyone that major work had transpired in the kitchen.
“Are you serious about this?” Sophie asked as she watched him methodically set the stage.
“Like a heart attack. Here.” Mark handed his daughter the garbage bag containing all evidence from the restaurant—the receipt, the trays the food came in, even the menu that had been included. “Take this to the trash shoot. Be careful on your return. If she’s already at the door, double back, walk the long way around the hallway and then pretend you’d forgotten to pick up the mail.”
Mark walked to the dish where Sophie had already placed the day’s mail and handed it to her.
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Stephanie Doyle
There’s not a lot former CIA agent Mark Sharpe hasn’t done. Yet suddenly he’s in a world of firsts—first time being a father, first time being self-employed… and first time being attracted to his employee.Jo Jo Hatcher with her attitude, her tattoos and her investigative talents tempts him in ways he can’t explain. With each day she becomes more irresistible and he fights the urge to abandon his new conservative lifestyle! Then his teenage daughter is threatened. There’s only person he trusts to help him: Jo Jo.As they work to find the perpetrator, Mark imagines a future together that includes another first—family.
Being a father shouldn’t feel this risky!
There’s not a lot former CIA agent Mark Sharpe hasn’t done. Yet suddenly he’s in a world of firsts—first time being a father, first time being self-employed…and first time being attracted to his employee. JoJo Hatcher, with her attitude, her tattoos and her investigative talents, tempts him in ways he can’t explain. With each day she becomes more irresistible. How is he supposed to function in this messed-up situation?
Then his teenage daughter, Sophie, is threatened. There’s only one person he trusts to help him: JoJo. As they work to untangle the mystery, Mark imagines a future together that includes another first—family.
“I can walk right in front of you and you’ll never recognize me.”
Mark scoffed at JoJo’s boast. “JoJo, you do realize I was a CIA black-ops analyst in the field for years.”
“And years and years…” His daughter rolled her eyes.
Okay, maybe he wasn’t going to impress Sophie.
“Observation is what I do,” he continued as though Sophie hadn’t interrupted. “It’s how I survived. You can’t get past me. Especially not with the tattoos.”
JoJo held out her hand. “It’s a bet, then. I do this. I get the job. You win. You get to show off your observation skills to your daughter. The only thing you’re out is a half hour of your time.”
“We were going to go eat….”
“Are you kidding me? I’m not leaving,” Sophie said. “I want to see this.”
JoJo winked at Sophie and his daughter smiled back. Great, he thought. She’d known this woman for minutes and they had bonded more tightly than he had with his daughter in months.
Still, he’d play out this little wager. What did he have to lose? It wasn’t like JoJo would ever get past him.
Dear Reader,
This is my third story set in the Tyler Group world (One Final Step, October 2012, and An Act of Persuasion, March 2013) and while an author never plays favorites with her books, I have to say this was one of the most satisfying books I have ever written. I fell in love with Mark and Sophie, an absent father and his daughter, who reunited in An Act of Persuasion. When I thought about Mark’s story and giving him his happy-ever-after, I really couldn’t think about him alone.
It had to be Mark and Sophie and their happy-ever-after. That meant I needed the type of heroine I thought would suit them both. That’s when JoJo walked on to the scene.
She’s not exactly conventional and she comes with a lot of baggage. But somehow the three of them make this story work. So this isn’t a story about Mark and JoJo. This is a story about Mark and JoJo and Sophie and how together they become a family.
I love to hear from readers—the good, the bad and the ugly—so check out my website, www.stephaniedoyle.net (http://www.stephaniedoyle.net).
Happy reading!
Stephanie Doyle
For the First Time
Stephanie Doyle
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stephanie Doyle, a dedicated romance reader, began to pen her own romantic adventures at age sixteen. She began submitting to Mills & Boon at age eighteen and by twenty-six her first book was published. Fifteen years later, she still loves what she does, as each book is a new adventure. She lives in South Jersey with her cat, Lex, and her two kittens, who have taken over everything. When she isn’t thinking about escaping to the beach, she’s working on her next idea.
For Wanda
Because when I said I could never, ever write Mills & Boon Superromance books, she said let’s not say ever.
Contents
Prologue (#ua18ca28b-5858-5667-b7a0-cf96cb774b2a)
Chapter One (#ubddff335-f3ed-5be0-9ead-c5fc5c4009fe)
Chapter Two (#udae20a6b-88e5-55ed-bf37-155343d7247a)
Chapter Three (#uc3997aed-9243-5e02-96b3-636ed75bba09)
Chapter Four (#uf2cee32a-f029-5dc6-b619-f9a304bbd881)
Chapter Five (#u477e50dc-ced8-56f2-b8f7-e9e5308b33ab)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
“I NEED YOU to focus, Josephine.”
She was focusing. She was focusing very hard. She knew that the man in front of her was a police detective. He had brown hair with gray mixed in on the sides. He wore brown leather shoes and khaki pants that were fraying a little around the hem. His badge number was 79134.
She’d made herself memorize it—79134.
“Tell me again everything that you saw.”
Why? She’d said it all already. It wasn’t going to change.
“Do it, JoJo. Tell him again.” Her father paced in the living room, stopping every once in a while at the chair where her mom sat so he could put his hand on her shoulder. It only made her mom cry harder.
“We were at the mall.”
“The strip mall on Springfield,” her mother interjected. “It’s where I dropped them off. They were supposed to go shopping, then call me to pick them up. They were supposed to stay there.”
The detective nodded, and turned to JoJo. “But you decided to leave the mall instead.”
“We wanted to see a movie. Two boys from our class were supposed to meet us there.” JoJo winced at the sound of her father hissing. “It wasn’t like a date or anything, Dad. They were just friends.”
JoJo and Julia were only fourteen. They had already been told by their parents over and over that they weren’t allowed to date until sixteen. Which was so stupid. All the freshman girls in high school already had boyfriends. They were, like, the only single girls in the class.
“Don’t worry about that,” the detective said. “Focus on what happened. You left the mall.”
“The theater was just up the street a few blocks. The movie was at three forty-five.” She remembered that stupid detail.
Three forty-five p.m. Why only that one?
“She was walking too slow. She always walked so slow. Then she stopped because her shoelace came undone.”
JoJo could see it clearly. She was nearly half a block ahead. Julia bent down on one knee tying her shoe as if they had all the time in the world. Which, of course, they didn’t because it was already three-forty. What if the movie had started when they got there? What if they couldn’t find Peter and Jake? Then the whole point of doing this would be for nothing.
JoJo shouted to her to hurry. But Julia flipped her the bird instead. It actually made JoJo smile.
“Then a car pulled up along the side of the road. It was silver. A minivan. The kind where the side door slides over.”
“Can you tell me the make? Was it a Toyota or a Ford?”
JoJo shook her head. She only knew the makes of cars she liked. MINI Coopers and Volkswagen bugs because they were cool. She knew the Subaru her mother drove and the Toyota her dad had driven for years. But they weren’t minivans. It didn’t help. Nothing she knew was helping.
“Then what happened?”
“The side door opened and this guy jumped out. It happened so fast. He just grabbed her from behind. Then she was screaming and he put her in the van.”
The tears that had been falling since she had watched her twin sister be dragged into that van came faster, but they wouldn’t help, either. She had to pull it together so she could tell the detective everything. It was the only way they would find her. Just like she’d told the people at the theater, and the first police officers who arrived at the scene and then her parents.
“He wore jeans. His hair was dark. I think he had a hoodie on, but I can’t be sure.”
“How could you tell what his hair color was if he was wearing a hoodie?”
“It wasn’t on his head. The hood was down. It was gray. I’m sure it was gray. You know, like a workout sweatshirt.” She just remembered that, which meant maybe there were other things she would remember. Something important that would bring Julia back.
“Then the van sped away. It made a U-turn in the middle of the street and was gone.”
“Did you see the driver?”
JoJo closed her eyes. “It was just a guy. I couldn’t really see. A shape behind the wheel, that’s it.”
“But you know that the person who grabbed your sister wasn’t driving the van.”
“Yes. It happened too fast. He grabbed her and the door was sliding closed and the car was moving.”
“Okay, Josephine...or can I call you JoJo?”
She shrugged. Whatever. She hated to be called Josephine. Julia sometimes did it to piss her off.
“I need you to really think. When the car drove away did you see the license plate?”
Everyone wanted to know that. They kept pushing her over and over again to think about it, visualize what the numbers and letters might have looked like. If she could just remember those numbers, then they could find Julia and everything would be all right.
Only she couldn’t.
“Think, JoJo!” her father shouted as he moved between her and the detective. “This is important. You have to think about what you saw and tell them the license. It’s her only hope.”
She lifted her face to her father. “I can’t remember. I didn’t see it. I don’t think... Maybe it didn’t have a front plate. It was fast and I was running to get her.”
“That’s not good enough!” he roared. “This is your sister’s life! Now think!” The blow to the side of her head knocked her off the couch.
“Jonathan!”
“No,” he barked at her mother. “She has to do this. You have to do this!”
“Sir, I know what you’re going through right now. But this isn’t the answer,” the detective said, purposefully keeping his voice even and steady.
JoJo lifted herself onto the couch with a ringing in her head. That was the first time her father had ever hit her. It was so weird.
“Tell them the license plate numbers. Tell them. If you can’t do this, it’s your fault what happens to her. Do you hear me?”
Her fault? Of course it was her fault. She’d wanted to go to the movies. She had a crush on Peter. Julia knew it, too. It was probably why she was being slow. She knew it would make JoJo crazy and Julia lived to make JoJo crazy.
It was what twins did.
JoJo closed her eyes and struggled to think about what happened. The sound of the tires screeching. The vague shape of the body behind the wheel. The back of the van moving away from her as she screamed and screamed and ran so hard after them.
She couldn’t remember one stupid letter of the license plate. She didn’t think she even looked at it.
CHAPTER ONE
MARK SHARPE LOOKED across his desk at the latest job candidate. Her hair was slicked into a tight ponytail, with a straight heavy band of dark hair falling down her back. The nose stud she obviously sported had been removed for the interview. She wore a black turtleneck blouse that looked as if it was strangling the life out of her under her suit jacket.
Occasionally, when she fidgeted with the collar, he could see the hint of ink peeking out.
A nose stud and a neck tattoo. Who knew what else she was hiding?
“I wanted to let you know how impressed I was with your work on the Anderson case,” she said.
Josephine Hatcher was the second investigator he’d interviewed. The previous one had wanted to talk about the Anderson case, too. Interviewing 101, he supposed—compliment the boss on his work. Some days, though, that case didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It felt like a family ripped to shreds starting with the murder of a daughter by her own father.
“First getting the coroner’s ruling of suicide overturned and then learning her father was behind the poisoning had to be shocking. He’d been free for thirteen years until you uncovered the truth.”
The other candidate had said almost the same thing. Mark was a genius, a detecting marvel, a hero for justice. Blah, blah, blah...
“It took you a little long, though.”
“Excuse me?” The other candidate hadn’t said that.
“After you exhumed the body and were able to confirm the girl had been poisoned, the number of suspects was limited to her family and her boyfriend. Few others would have had sufficient access to her over the prolonged period of time it took to her kill her. Once you knew the method, how hard was it to eliminate suspects?”
“Not hard.”
Her lips twitched. “Just saying. Can I ask why you opened the case?”
“Anonymous tip.”
“Probably someone who knew her, knew the family dynamic.”
“Probably,” he grumbled. Who the hell was interviewing whom?
“Did you find the source of the tip?”
“No.”
“Did you look?”
Yes, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Anonymous tips were tricky. Sometimes they panned out. Sometimes they didn’t. Mark always preferred identifying the source of an anonymous tip as a way of evaluating the reliability of the information. But he hadn’t been able to locate the person who had sent him the copy of the coroner’s report along with the plainly typed note that simply read, She didn’t do it.
It had been enough to pique his interest. Especially when he read the report and the police file. Suicide had been a stretch, he thought. When people chose to kill themselves they wanted it done immediately.
This girl had been dying for months.
“That doesn’t matter now—the case is closed. So, I should tell you I’m looking for someone with several years’ experience.” It was a prelude, he thought. A way to cushion the blow he was preparing to deliver.
“I’ve been working in the field independently for four years, and apprenticed with another investigator two years before that while earning my master’s in criminology.”
He sighed. He should have figured she would be the type to put up a fight. Couldn’t she pick up on all the subtle no signs he was throwing out? It wasn’t that she wasn’t qualified—of course she was qualified or she wouldn’t have gotten as far as this interview.
The problem was her. There was something about her that made him want to squirm in his chair. It was completely irrational. He had no idea why he felt this way. But he was a man who relied on his gut. His gut said no. His gut said she was trouble.
Mark really hoped that gut feeling wasn’t based on the fact that when he looked her in the eyes, he had a suspicion she was smarter than he was. Because that would probably make him an ass.
“I’m targeting a certain type of clientele.” Hell, that made him sound like a snob. Now he was a snob and an ass.
“I imagine paying ones.”
There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. He’d made his decision almost instantly. The moment he’d shaken her hand and it fit so securely in his. A knee-jerk reaction that told him to run.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Hatcher, but I’m not sure you’re the right fit.”
He watched her shoulders slump. Only for a second, though, then she straightened. “Can I ask why? You have my résumé. You know I’m more than capable.”
It was a ridiculously impressive résumé. A bachelor’s in psychology from New York University, and that master’s of criminology from Columbia—graduated top of her class in both. She’d worked for a medium-size private investigator firm for the six years since. She was changing jobs only because the firm’s owner had decided to retire and she wasn’t happy with the new ownership. Her former boss, Tom Reid, happened to know Ben Tyler—Mark’s former boss and adversary from their days in the CIA together.
That Tom knew Ben wasn’t a surprise. It seemed everybody, at some point in their life, knew Ben Tyler, who headed up the Tyler Group—a small troubleshooting firm located in Philadelphia. Ben employed a few detectives so Reid had forwarded him Josephine’s résumé. Ben—recognizing that he had deprived Mark of his assistant, Anna, by knocking her up and marrying her—had sent Josephine’s résumé to Mark instead.
On paper, she was exactly what he was looking for. He’d already found someone to replace Anna’s duties from an administrative aspect, but his business was gaining a solid reputation and with that came more cases. Trying to make his schedule work with his daughter’s was becoming a challenge. Adding a trained, licensed investigator—one recommended by someone Ben trusted—was like a godsend.
But she wasn’t going to fit. Her eyes were too blue. A deep color that made him think they could see through anything—probably a great quality in an investigator but not such a great quality in a colleague.
“Can I ask you a question?” It was probably unfair to drag out the interview, especially since he’d decided not to hire her. He was curious and wanted to confirm his suspicions that she was, in fact, trouble.
“I think that’s what I’m here for.” She half smiled and again fiddled with the cloth around her neck.
“You’ve got a really impressive résumé. Did you ever consider applying for the FBI?”
“Not really my thing.”
“What about your local police force?”
“Also not my thing.”
Right. Trouble. Just like he suspected.
“Yet according to your list of special skills, you’ve spent months at several law enforcement training camps specializing in firearms and hand-to-hand combat. I guess I’m curious why you wanted to train like an agent, but didn’t want to be an agent.”
He watched her crack her neck as she seemed to search for an answer that was accurate, honest and didn’t cost her the job—even though it was already too late.
Almost too late.
“While law enforcement—either as a police officer or a federal agent—is an honorable career path for many, I was concerned that the confines of the hierarchal structure would be too limiting. Especially for someone in the minority sex.”
She didn’t like authority or sexist pigs.
The sexist pigs he could get behind because she was right. While many of the government investigative agencies from the FBI to NCIS were opening their doors to more women, it was still a man’s world.
But it was the authority part of her explanation he had a problem with. Since, if he employed her, he would be the authority she had a problem with.
“Can I see the tattoo?” That was for his curiosity again.
“Excuse me?”
“The tattoo. Can I see it?”
She smirked. “I have a few. In some rather interesting places so you’ll have to be more specific.”
“Specifically...the one on your neck.”
She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, a move that reminded him vividly of his teenage daughter, then she pulled down the collar.
Black ink barbed wire. With spikes. Covering both the right and left sides of her neck. Not completely circling her skin the wires trailed off as they neared her larynx. Still, a signal to the world to back off.
“Yes, I can see where you might struggle within a—how did you phrase it?—a hierarchal structure.”
“I’m a good investigator. No, check that. I’m a great investigator. I prefer to work on my own, but I never fail to get results. I don’t see why a tattoo should be a problem in getting a job.”
“Except that you know it is or you wouldn’t have covered it up with the turtleneck.”
“Some people are more conservative than others.”
As a rule, Mark was not. In fact, a couple of months ago he wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about a tattoo. But that was before the mother of his estranged daughter died in a car accident. Before he left the CIA to return to the States. Before he started the process of building a relationship with said estranged daughter...
And failed at it miserably.
Now he was trying to do everything right. He wanted the right type of company. The right type of people around his daughter. The right everything.
Nose-stud, barbed-wire-tattoo chick was not it.
He glanced at her résumé again. She’d included a list of high-profile cases she’d worked on. Some very high-profile cases. What had she said? She was a great investigator. That was probably true, damn it.
“Why the move to Philadelphia?”
“To get away from New York.” She quickly added, “Not that there was anything bad there. Tom’s brother Tim is assuming the role of president of the firm. Tim and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and we both knew when he took over I wouldn’t stay. Tim will never make me a partner. So I figured this might be a good chance to leave the craziness of the city behind. Stop pouring all my money into rent on a studio apartment not much bigger than a closet. I considered Boston, Philadelphia and D.C. but then when Tom brought up Ben Tyler’s name... Well, everyone knows his reputation. Even in New York. I came here for him, but he sent me to you. Now you’re sending me away because you don’t like tattoos. Is that on all people? Or on women in particular?”
Mark gritted his teeth. He would not be backed into a corner on this. “You and I both know you have problems with authority. It’s why you chose private investigation and probably why you couldn’t work with Tim Reid. He’s former FBI as I understand.”
“He might be former FBI but he’s a current ass.” She winced, probably knowing that calling her former boss an ass was not helping her case. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. For the record, I didn’t have a problem with him, or his authority. He, however, had a problem with me and the fact that I have breasts. He’s not a big believer in women in the workforce in general. He’s an old-school, barefoot-and-pregnant kind of a guy.”
“They still exist?”
“He does. Which is how I knew I would never be partner.”
“Is that what you want?” Mark hadn’t thought that far ahead. When he came back after Helen’s death his objectives had been pretty clear. Find a way to reconnect with Sophie and find a way to make a living out of doing what he did best: gathering information. He hadn’t seen much beyond that.
Everything changed so quickly when he realized that it made the most sense to have Sophie live with him. Now she was his first thought every day. Then came the business. Strange that, despite his priorities, progress on his first objective was, to date, rather abysmal, while his second objective was prospering beyond his imagination. Hence the need for help.
“Yes, I want to be a partner. I want a piece of what I create. Eventually. I’m willing to earn it over time.”
“Why not start your own business? Then nobody can tell you what to do.”
“That’s not practical at this point. I don’t have the savings I would need for a proposition like that and, well, health care. It’s a bitch. Got to have it in case one of my tattoos gets infected.”
See, he thought. She was snarky. Nearly unprofessional. She’d referred to her former boss as an ass, for Pete’s sake. She had penetrating deep blue eyes and she was too damn smart. All of that spelled trouble, just like he’d thought.
He was trying to establish something different in his life. Something solid and conservative. Something...that was the opposite of whatever he had been in his former life.
Because being daring to the point of recklessness wasn’t something a stable father should be.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded and stood. Then she pulled out a card case from the black purse she carried—a purse he highly suspected saw the light of day only when she was interviewing—and handed a card to him.
“I’m staying downtown at the Marriott for the next few days. I figure I’ll take in the city, do the tourist thing before I head to D.C. I have an interview at a firm next week. If you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”
Mark had to chuckle. “I turned you down for the job, yet you’re letting me know where you’re going to be in case I change my mind. That’s awfully ballsy.”
Josephine—somehow that name didn’t fit—shrugged. “Look at my casework again. Tell me you’ll find someone more qualified.”
She offered her hand and he took it. Her grip was firm and confident just like it had been at the beginning of the interview. Certainly not the handshake of someone who had been rejected.
She wasn’t the right fit for him, but he wasn’t going to deny that inwardly he was sorry about that. The woman had guts. Guts, in his opinion, was a necessary ingredient in a successful life.
* * *
“LUCY, I’M HOME!” Mark opened the door to his condo in a city-center high-rise and wondered if tonight would be different.
Probably not.
He’d been coming home to his daughter for the past two months and not one night had she greeted him with a smile.
He set down his briefcase, one he’d recently purchased to replace the leather satchel he used to carry. The satchel made him feel like Indiana Jones. The briefcase made him feel like his father. Mark figured that was a good thing. Might make him more fatherly.
Like most Mondays, his daughter wasn’t alone. The tutor he’d hired for her a few weeks ago to replace the one who had quit to go on maternity leave was here. Nancy was a nice woman in her early thirties who had proved to be an outstandingly good hiring decision. She showed up when she was supposed to, never lingered when it was time to go. Sophie’s grades were being maintained at the highest level and Nancy was fairly cheap, all things considered.
Watching Nancy, wearing plain jeans and a conservative sweater, collect her books to leave made him feel better. He’d definitely made the right choice by hiring her, he thought. Which meant he’d probably made the right choice letting Josephine walk.
“Hi, Mark.”
“Nancy, how are you?”
“Oh, I’m fine.”
Sophie sat on a stool at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. She was reading a textbook and didn’t look at him as he approached.
“Hey.” He tried a different greeting.
“Hey.”
“Did you hear me when I came in?”
“Uh, yeah. Was that supposed to be an I Love Lucy reference?”
“Too old?”
“Too lame, Mark.”
He hated it when she called him Mark. “You know I would really prefer it if you would call me Dad.”
She smiled then, but not the kind of smile he was hoping for. “Hey, I would prefer it if you had actually been a dad.”
“Okay, well, I’ll be going,” Nancy said.
Right. Who wanted to stick around to witness such familial bliss? “Thanks, Nancy.”
“See you, Sophie. Don’t forget—not a word less than five hundred.”
“No problem.”
Mark watched Nancy leave and wondered, not for the first time, how he and Sophie must seem to her. Dysfunctional didn’t begin to cover it. She probably raced home to...well, no one. He happened to know that she was single and not seeing anyone. It had been part of what he had dug up during the background check on her—that and her Match.com profile.
But no doubt she thought they were a mess. And that was the truth—he and Sophie were a mess. Their past—or more accurately, lack of a past—was the river that separated them. It seemed no bridge he could build would ever allow him to cross it. No matter how much he changed his life for her.
Because, in the end, for so many years he’d been nothing more than a name scrawled on the bottom of a card. Certainly not a father.
Despite that, he liked to think he hadn’t been a total ass to her mother. When Helen told him she was pregnant he instantly knew he had to do the right thing and offer marriage. Only Helen knew she’d done the wrong thing by deliberately getting pregnant to hold on to a man whose life ambition was the CIA.
He thought he’d done everything right by her. He’d volunteered to refuse the CIA offer and find a more stable career—possibly with another federal agency, or scrap those plans altogether and go to law school. He damn certain had put a ring on her finger.
In the end, Helen had been the one to back away. She must have figured out that no matter how tightly she tried to hold him, he would always be looking over his shoulder wondering what kind of life he could have been living.
When he’d been stationed overseas Mark had liked to tell himself that he remained a part of his daughter’s life. He’d sent her cards and presents on her birthday and holidays. He’d occasionally chat with her over the internet if he was in a place that had the capability. But no amount of justification could cover up the truth. Having spent the past fourteen years of his life outside the United States, he was the very definition of an absentee father.
Hell, he hadn’t even made it home in time for her mother’s funeral.
No wonder Sophie hated him.
But she was stuck with him. Dom and Marie, her grandparents, who had been in the process of selling their home to move into an assisted-living facility when Helen died, had tried to make a go of having Sophie live with them. After a few months it was easy to see that two aging grandparents in questionable health weren’t up to handling a fourteen-year-old teenager.
And not just any teen. Sophie was special.
“What do you want to do for dinner?”
“Surprise me, Mark.”
There it was again. That hint of sarcasm. His daughter would turn fifteen in a few months but there were times when she sounded like she was double her age. He figured it was expected. The girl was a prodigy. A piano master by age nine who had been touring the country and the world for the past five years with the most highly respected orchestras and conductors. Giving her unique gift to the world, yes. But growing up way too fast for his taste.
He’d seen her act sophisticated and gracious with some very important political and business leaders who came backstage to pay her compliments on her performance.
Mark had also seen her roll her eyes at him like he was the dumbest man imaginable. He was proud of his daughter and the way she handled herself, but he also appreciated the other side, too. It reminded him she was still just a kid.
“Okay, I’ll cook.”
“I said surprise me, not kill me. The last time you tried to cook it was a disaster.”
“It was hot dogs,” he said in his defense. “How bad could they have been?”
“They were still cold in the middle and made me gag.”
“Whatever.” Oh, my. Had he really stooped to responding to his daughter in her own teenage speak?
“Besides I shouldn’t eat. I had a big lunch and I have to watch my figure.”
The girl was tall and lithe with long straight blond hair. If there was an extra ounce of fat on her body, he didn’t see it. However, he had to appreciate that she was a performer who was conscientious about how she looked onstage.
Mark decided to avoid the conversation—always a good thing when it came to women and weight—and instead went to check the mail.
In the months that they had been living together they’d fallen into a routine. He couldn’t say it was a comfortable one, since Sophie was too prickly for that. However, Mark thought at least they were settling into some kind of normalcy, which he was convinced was a good thing. After all, she couldn’t hate him forever. It simply wasn’t practical.
She practiced every morning at a studio where he rented space. From there she usually went to rehearsal with the Philadelphia Orchestra—her current assignment—at the Kimmel Center for a few hours. Nancy came three times a week in the afternoon.
Mark wasn’t sure how he felt about Sophie trying to cram what most kids did during a five-day school week into what was essentially nine hours a week. But given his daughter’s grades, it wasn’t like he could protest. She’d already taken a preliminary SAT test and had scored only two hundred points shy of perfection. No, he wasn’t worried about her grades so much as he was the other things kids experienced in high school. Like making friends, going out to parties, getting asked to the prom. The last time he asked her if she missed that kind of stuff she scoffed at him as if all high school activities were beneath her.
Maybe they were for a girl with her mind and talents. Who knew? Mark only knew that he was starting to enjoy their camaraderie even if it was seasoned with sarcasm.
She had chores around the house, although they were simple. She was supposed to keep her room neat, help him with the grocery shopping—that being agreed upon after a totally awkward moment when he’d purchased the wrong brand of feminine products for her—do her laundry and collect the mail.
Mark hired someone to handle the majority of the cleaning, which left him with providing dinner. That mostly entailed taking Sophie out to a restaurant of her choosing or ordering in. If this was to be their life together, then he probably needed to learn how to cook something besides grilled meat and hot dogs.
Walking to the small table in the foyer where Sophie left the mail every day, Mark sorted through what was mostly garbage and stopped at a white envelope that had no addresses—his or a return—or stamps. Just his name. Sharpe.
“Hey, was this in the mail?”
Sophie looked at him. “Yeah, whatever was in the box downstairs I put in the dish. You know, like I’ve done every day for months.”
He was going to have to explain to her that not every statement she made to him needed to be followed by a rolling of the eyes. The girl was going to give herself an eye condition.
Mark opened the envelope with suspicion. Maybe it was from a neighbor. He hadn’t really taken the time to meet any of them, being too busy keeping up with Sophie and the business, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have them. Maybe they didn’t like Sophie playing her electric keyboard too late at night.
There was only a single sheet of plain white paper inside. He pulled it out and saw the neatly typed sentence centered on the page.
You’re going to lose her.
The instant reaction in his gut was stunning and more powerful than anything he’d ever felt before. He lifted his eyes to his daughter, who had already dismissed him, and he thought, The hell I am.
This, he realized, was what it felt like to be a father.
And he kind of thought it sucked.
CHAPTER TWO
“YOU’RE SURE SOPHIE didn’t do it?” Ben lifted the note in the air, looking to see if there was any imprint in the paper. Some identifying mark.
Of course Mark had already checked for that. But he hoped Ben’s trained eye might pick up something he had missed. Despite the fact that Ben had been a longtime rival, Mark also knew he was the best. The truth was, after Ben resigned from the CIA, Mark had lost much of his love for the job. He’d already been making plans to leave the agency when the death of Sophie’s mother sped everything up.
Ben had been his benchmark: the agent Mark intended to be someday. The man he would best someday. To set himself apart from the others, Mark had done a lot of risky stuff. One stunt nearly cost Ben and him their lives. As a result, until recently they had never exactly been friends.
Now that they were both in the States and trying to live normal civilian lives, they had forged a bond that in the past few months had strengthened into friendship. Strange, considering how they’d started. Stranger still after Mark hired Ben’s assistant out from under him.
Yes, Mark had even harbored the notion of trying to steal Ben’s woman—for no other reason than to resume the rivalry that got his blood pumping. But Anna was in love with Ben and had already been carrying his baby when Mark hired her.
Ben had done the smart thing by tying Anna to him with vows and a ring. She was too easy for anyone to like. Smart, pretty, funny. Easy to be around.
For a moment Mark flashed on his interview from the day before. What was her name...Josephine? Yeah, she did not look like someone who would be easy to be around. But he had to remind himself of that because he’d been having second thoughts about letting Josephine go. Or maybe rethinking his reasons for letting her go.
Immediately, Mark shook it off. He didn’t have regrets. Regrets were a waste of time.
The only thing that mattered now was the note. While Sophie played with Ben and Anna’s baby—the one area of common ground Sophie and Mark shared was taking pure enjoyment out of Kelly—Mark was free to pick Ben’s brain about the note.
“She said she didn’t do it,” Mark answered.
Ben lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes, I believe her. She’s moody. She’s petulant. She’s constantly pissed at me. But as she told me when I asked, she’s not a nut-job. If she wanted to scare me, she could find other ways to do so.”
“You’re sure the threat relates to her?”
“Who else could it be? Sophie’s the only she in my life.”
“What about the grandparents? Maybe it’s a subtle warning that if you don’t work harder to improve the relationship, you’ll lose her.”
Mark shook his head. “Not their style. Dom sternly lecturing me about what I’m doing wrong—yes, that is their style. They’re too vocal about their disappointment in me as a father to do this.”
Ben scowled. “Then we need to think of other possibilities.”
That was the problem. Mark didn’t want to think of other possibilities. Other possibilities potentially meant old enemies who were now in the U.S. and watching him. Threatening his daughter.
You’re going to lose her.
Mark could think of a lot of Taliban leaders who would love nothing more than to cut open his chest and rip his heart out. But even if any of them were in the country, any note they left would include explicit details about their intentions for her. It didn’t make sense. The government saw to it that the Taliban couldn’t enter the country. Besides, now that Mark was no longer a player in the game, why would they want to hurt him? They had their hands filled with active U.S. military and paramilitary agents. He had no information that wasn’t almost a year old. Information that old was useless.
Mark thought of assets he’d turned during his years on the job who might have gotten turned back. But they, too, were all overseas. There were the cases he’d solved in the year since he’d opened his business. People he’d put in jail—some fairly high-profile.
A criminal Mark had brought to justice for a scam-artist ring he’d run for years. A missing girl he’d found dead. The Anderson case. Except that Jack Anderson was dead by his own hand before he ever saw the inside of a jail cell.
With the sound of women’s voices approaching, Ben turned. “There are my girls.”
“Sophie is hired,” Anna said. “She just changed her first poopy diaper and she didn’t even flinch.”
The girl sat on the couch with the baby in her arms. “I’m not going to lie. It was gross.”
“I don’t know that Sophie needs extra babysitting money. She’s doing pretty well with her music.”
Pretty good meant that any college in the country she wanted to go to was already paid for. He knew her plans included Stanford, Stanford and Stanford. In other words, the school farthest from him.
“I wouldn’t charge them. I would do it because I like Kelly. You’re so coarse, Mark.”
Another mistake. He thought he was making an offhand joke. She thought he was an asshole. Typical.
“Can I hold her?” Mark asked. At least while holding the baby he could pretend that a child actually liked him.
Reluctantly, Sophie handed Kelly over and he cradled the nearly five-month-old in the crook of his elbow. She’d been almost a month early and to Mark she still looked impossibly small, but the doctors had all declared her perfectly healthy. Kelly seemed to be deciding whether to cry or coo so Mark helped that decision along by bouncing her gently. The cooing continued and he watched as she broke out into a large, wide smile.
So little. So precious. Mark remembered holding Sophie when she was even younger. He remembered it, because it was the last time he saw her before he left for Langley. The next time he’d seen her she’d been five years old.
Closing his eyes, he brought the baby close and smelled how fresh and lovely she was. How had he been able to leave Sophie as a baby? When he felt as possessive as a Neanderthal with her now. Now when she hated him rather than adored him as she had when she’d rested in his arms.
“Please,” Sophie said. “Don’t even pretend you’re all about Kelly. We know what you think of babies, Mark.”
Mark didn’t respond to his daughter’s jab. He was starting to become immune to them. Anna walked over with a sympathetic smile and took her daughter from him. “Time and patience,” she whispered.
He smiled back. “Look, we should be going. My daughter probably has some more nasty things to say to me and I would rather we not subject the baby to it. It could corrupt her subconsciously. Ben, you’ll continue thinking about our problem.”
“I’m on it. But it might not hurt to have extra help. You should show it to JoJo.”
“Who?”
“JoJo. The detective I sent to you. You said you were going to interview her. I’m assuming you hired her, so have her look into the matter. According to Tom, she’s one of the best he’s ever worked with.”
Mark frowned. “I didn’t hire her.”
“Why not?”
His doubt surfaced as he once more tried to put his finger on his problem with her. “She wasn’t what I was looking for. I was hoping for someone more conservative. I’m trying to create a serious agency with serious agents.”
“Yes. I know. She has serious talent. It’s why I let you have first crack at her.”
Mark struggled with how to identify his specific issue with her. “She’s got tattoos.”
“You have a tattoo.”
“You do?” Sophie stood with her arms folded.
Mark scowled at Ben. “It’s since been removed.”
“You should reconsider. Because if you’re not hiring her, then I will. She’s too good to let go. I figured I was repaying you for stealing Anna away.”
“You didn’t steal me away,” Anna countered. “I chose not to go back to work because of Kelly. You two can be so full of it.”
Ben waited until Anna was distracted with the baby to give Mark a small nod that said he still thought he was right about JoJo.
“I don’t know if she’s still in the area. She said she was sticking around for a few days before heading to D.C. for another interview, but who knows.”
“Then you better act fast. The next person who sees her résumé won’t be so foolish as to let her go because of a couple of tattoos.”
“They’re on her neck.” Mark winced as he tried to imagine why a young woman might do that to herself. It had to hurt like hell.
“Totally cool,” Sophie muttered.
“Don’t even think about,” Mark warned. “Okay. Let’s make a stop on the way home.”
* * *
JOJO LOOKED AT the movie list and considered what would kill time better—an engrossing thriller or some eye candy in the form of Ryan Gosling. In truth, neither was very appealing. Pounding her hand on the mattress, she considered what her next move would be.
She’d been so damn sure she would get the job with Sharpe. In her mind she had already adopted Philadelphia as her new home. She’d had a Geno’s cheesesteak. What was that if not commitment?
Now she really would have to follow up on opportunities in other cities. She had exaggerated slightly when she told Sharpe he was one interview in a long line of them.
Okay, so it was a total lie. She hadn’t contacted any of the other agencies she had researched because she didn’t think she had to. Tom knew Ben Tyler and Ben Tyler was a man with significant influence. Since he had recommended JoJo to Mark, it should have been a lock.
Apparently not for Mark. Because he’d seen the tattoos.
JoJo got up from the bed and walked to the mirror. She’d removed the ponytail hair extension and her jet-black hair was again short and spiky. She had dyed it black a long time ago, and it brought out her blue eyes better than her natural blond. She kept it short to accent her smallish face and because it was easier to care for and to cover with a wig when she was in disguise.
Did she look a little too badass? Yes. There were times when that was an asset. Sometimes having an edge helped when she was interrogating a criminal or interviewing a witness.
But other times badass tattoos cost you a job. Two, if she counted Tim Reid’s reaction to her. He never liked her, despite the quality of her work. While she blamed it on his sexism, it probably also had something to do with how she defied the conventionalities to which he adhered.
Tim had a lot in common with her father. When it was announced Tim was taking over the agency, she knew she could not work for him. They would drive each other crazy.
So where to next?
The phone rang, which startled her. There weren’t a lot of people who knew she was even in Philadelphia. It was probably one of those stupid surveys about the hotel service, and she answered it out of sheer boredom. “Hello?”
“Oh, good. I caught you. Ms. Hatcher, this is Mark Sharpe.”
JoJo pumped her fist in the air. Then calmly answered, “Yes, can I help you?”
“I’m downstairs in the lobby. I’ve had second thoughts and was wondering if I could talk to you again.”
“Sure. Uh...” JoJo considered her appearance. She could change out of the jeans and sweater and into something more appropriate, but it would take her at least ten minutes to redo the hair extension. Oh, hell, it wasn’t like the disguise worked anyway—he hadn’t bought her conformist costume for one second. If they were going to work together, she would have to show her true self eventually. It might as well be now.
She even left the nose stud in.
* * *
MARK WATCHED THE elevators for Josephine Hatcher. When he spotted a woman with short dark hair walking toward him, he did a double take.
He would never have thought she was the same woman who had been in his office if it weren’t for the tattoos around her neck. The way her hair stuck up from her head at different angles should have made her look like she’d just woken up. Instead it made her look chic and hip. She wore skinny jeans with knee-high black boots and a bulky sweater that moved with her body. Ms. Hatcher was efficiency in motion, with an edge.
She stopped in front of him and held her arms up, clearly communicating that this was the woman beneath the conservative turtleneck. The woman he would get if he hired her.
Everything in Mark recoiled. Not that she wasn’t attractive in a certain sort of way, but she was so not what he needed in his life right now. Yesterday, he’d thought she was trouble. Now he knew she was more than that. She was dangerous. He could imagine what kind of example she might set for Sophie—who was already staring at the woman with awed admiration.
“Mr. Sharpe, you wanted to talk?”
Now what was he supposed to do? His gut and his brain were at war. This never happened. What was crazier was that his gut and head seemed to be taking opposite sides from what they ought to. His head should have told him that this woman was not employable and his gut should have said to take a chance on her. Instead his head was remembering her résumé, line by line, and his gut was churning with...something.
Ben said this woman was the best. Seriously?
“Uh...sorry to drop by like this unannounced, but I had second thoughts and didn’t want to miss you.”
“I’m glad you stopped by. Who is your sidekick? She looks a little young to be head of the HR department.”
“This is my daughter, Sophie. Sophie this is Josephine Hatcher.”
“JoJo,” she corrected.
Sophie gave him that look of hers. “Why do you have to introduce me as your daughter? Why can’t you just say I’m Sophie?”
“Well, most people like context and the crazy thing is, you are, in fact, my daughter.”
“Whatever, Mark.”
It was her third whatever of the day. He was starting to loathe the word.
He looked at JoJo—what a silly name. “As you can tell, my daughter and I have a very loving and close relationship. It’s why we’re here together today. She can’t stand being apart from me.”
Sophie sat in one of the lobby chairs and said nothing. Mark sat on a couch and gestured to a chair across from it, indicating that JoJo should sit, as well.
He didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to ask, now that, once again, he was firmly against the idea of this woman working for him. She simply wasn’t going to fit in his world. His old one, yes. No question she would have fit. Hell, in his old life he would have been champing at the bit to get to know the woman behind the tattoos.
But in his new world, he couldn’t allow himself to cater to personal whims.
“You don’t quite look like the candidate you presented yourself to be.” Perfect. He could back out under the pretense that she’d misrepresented herself. Covering up her hair length...who did that?
“Sometimes people don’t look past the surface. So I didn’t dress to be obvious.”
“Obvious is one word for it.”
“Mark,” Sophie snapped. “How uncool. Just because she doesn’t look like everyone else that’s somehow wrong?”
Oh, yeah. The joys of fatherhood just kept on coming. “Do you mind, Sophie? I’m conducting an interview.”
“You’re being a total square.”
“Seriously? People still say square?”
“No.” She smirked. “People say douche bag but I thought that was crossing a line.”
“It did,” he snarled.
“Uh, excuse me?” JoJo waved her hand. “My interview, remember?”
“You do understand,” Mark said, “in this line of work blending in matters. Not standing out.” He waved his hand to indicate her whole being as one big standout. “No offense, but you don’t exactly blend.”
“Is that the only thing preventing me from getting this job? You’re concerned about how the way I look would affect my work?”
Not really. But what was he supposed to say? That her unapologetic style bothered him? That he felt uncomfortable merely sitting across from her? That his discomfort wouldn’t be conducive to a solid working relationship? That her eyes were really, really blue?
She would be the only other investigator working for him, and he imagined them spending a lot of time consulting with one another on their cases. Something akin to a partnership. Then there was the idea of having her look into the note. That meant actually trusting this woman.
He couldn’t explain all that. Instead he kept it simple. “I guess it is. I’ve spoken with Ben and he says I would be crazy to let you pass by. In fact, he’s waiting in the wings to scoop you up if I do.”
Another fact that rankled him. If he didn’t hire her and she worked for Ben, he might run into her at Ben’s office. How irritating would it be to find her solving cases for Ben while he was left with someone less talented?
No doubt Ben would lord it over him.
“Okay,” JoJo said, “we’ll make it a challenge. I bet I can leave and, within half an hour, be in your line of sight without you realizing it’s me.”
“That’s totally awesome. Mark, you have to let her do it.”
Mark gave his daughter a wry smile. Maybe he could impress her at last. “JoJo, you do realize I was a CIA black-ops analyst in the field for years.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “And years and years...”
Okay, maybe not.
“Observation is what I do. It’s how I survived. You can’t get past me. Especially not with the tattoos.”
JoJo held out her hand. “It’s a bet then. I do this, I get the job. You win, you get to show off your observation skills to your daughter. The only thing you’re out is a half hour of your time.”
“We were going to go eat—”
“Are you kidding me?” Sophie said. “I’m not leaving. I want to see this.”
JoJo winked at Sophie and his daughter smiled. Great, he thought. She’d known this woman for minutes and they had bonded more than he had with his daughter in months.
He did need another agent. Especially if the threat against Sophie was real. JoJo’s résumé did speak for itself....
Not that he was worried about losing, but he conceded that, if she pulled off the impossible, it wouldn’t be the worst thing from a professional standpoint.
Personal, maybe, but he could get over that. He would get over that.
He looked at his watch and pressed the timer.
“You have thirty minutes. You must be in my line of sight. If I identify you, I win. If I don’t, you’re hired. Go.”
She didn’t run. She didn’t leave through the front door, which was what he would have done. Much better to be someone coming in that way, then coming down the elevator where he could concentrate his attention.
Instead, she sauntered to the elevators in that same efficient, but also aggressive, walk of hers. A walk that said, Get out of my way, I’m coming through. She stepped through the door and Mark leaned back to wait.
Thirty minutes. He wished he had a magazine to help kill the time.
CHAPTER THREE
MARK CHECKED HIS WATCH. Twenty-three minutes had passed. He watched the elevators for activity then swung his attention to the front entrance. A man and woman walked in, but a quick assessment told him the woman was well over fifty. Not that makeup couldn’t do wonders, but JoJo wouldn’t have had enough time to put together a costume like that.
He turned to the elevators and spied a family getting out. A mother, a father and a teenage boy who was dressed from head to toe in black and carried a skateboard over his shoulder.
At least he looked like a boy. Mark kept his attention on the kid, searching for tells. There was a tattoo on his arm, but nothing around his neck. Was that sparkle on his face a nose ring? He heard Sophie gasp—clearly she was wondering the same thing.
Had JoJo, a small woman, turned herself into an average-sized teenage boy?
The front door opened again and a single woman walked in. Tall, blond, pretty, wearing a shockingly red coat over a short skirt and high heels. Mark assessed her quickly, and decided anyone trying to blend in wouldn’t wear such an eye-catching color, nor something so provocative as the short skirt. It would naturally draw the attention of any man in the vicinity. It, in fact, drew his. Her legs were fabulous.
Still, there was something about the way she moved. Mark’s gaze followed her to the desk, where she asked to use a phone. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she held the receiver to her ear. Mark could not see tattoos on her neck.
“Twenty-eight minutes,” Sophie announced.
Mark stood to scope out hiding spots around the lobby where she could claim to be in his line of sight, but actually be hidden from view. The people working behind the desk hadn’t changed, so she hadn’t sneaked in that way. The family stood together, using the lobby computer. The boy had his back to Mark, so he couldn’t check for blue eyes. Instead Mark studied the shape of his back, his height.
Close. Definitely close to JoJo’s height. Had she paid the two people to pose as parents?
“Twenty-nine minutes. She’s so going to win.”
Mark shot Sophie a glance and started toward the kid. A motion in his periphery caught his attention. The woman on the phone had lifted a leg up behind her. He followed that beautiful leg to her shoes.
Not just high heels. Platform high heels. They raised her height by at least two inches.
Gotcha.
“Time is up. Who is she?”
Mark looked at his daughter. “Do you know?”
“I have my suspicions.” Her smile was smug.
Smiling. Sophie was smiling. Mark looked at the blonde again. She had turned and he briefly caught her eye, but she bent her head and continued talking into the phone.
“You think that’s her?” Mark pointed toward the kid.
Sophie’s face fell a little. She obviously thought JoJo was the boy, and that he had won. He wasn’t sure if Sophie was displeased that he had won or that JoJo had lost.
It had been a very short time for two people to make such a positive connection. There were worse things than his daughter liking someone Mark employed.
He was throwing the contest, but in all of the time he had spent with Sophie, this was the most fun they had ever had. Deliberately, he went over and tapped the kid on the shoulder. The boy turned around, his Adam’s apple clearly visible. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Mark said. “I mistook you for someone else.”
“Whatever.”
Ah, yes, Mark’s favorite word. The kid turned around and Mark could see the father shoot him a look, but Mark simply folded his arms over his chest and waited.
The blonde made her way to him sporting a victorious smile.
“Oh, my God, I totally did not guess that was you,” Sophie said hopping up and down on her toes with excitement. “How did you hide the tattoos?”
“A trick I learned from Hollywood actresses.” JoJo tilted her neck and peeled off a thin layer of beige tape. “They use this stuff when they’re filming.”
Effective, at least from a distance. Up close, Mark could see the faint outline of the tape on the other side of her neck. That was probably why she hadn’t used the adhesive during her interview.
“Not bad. Hiding in plain sight. It worked.”
“Did it?” JoJo asked. Their eyes met. She clearly knew she’d been caught. She wasn’t counting on Mark throwing the contest.
Sophie looked at him. “Yes, totally. You won the job. Right, Mark? I mean, you’re not going to back off the bet now?”
“Nope.” He put his hands into his pockets. “You won fair and square. Since today is Tuesday, you can take a few days to get settled. Be at the office at eight o’clock sharp next Monday and we’ll work out salary and what your billing rate will be.”
JoJo held out her hand and Mark shook it. Odd for such a small hand to pack such a firm grip. She was a study in contrasts.
“Sophie, why don’t you check the computer for restaurants. Find some place you want to eat.”
“Okay. You should invite JoJo. It can be like a celebration dinner for beating you.”
Sophie left him in a ridiculously awkward situation. He didn’t particularly want to have dinner with JoJo. He would need the next few days to come to grips with the fact that he was now working with her. Maybe dinner would help with that. Maybe he would find himself less uncomfortable after breaking bread together.
“Would you like to join us? Not sure what Sophie will pick, her tastes are rather eclectic. It could be burgers, it could be sushi or it could be Thai food.”
“Why did you let me win?”
Mark feigned confusion.
“You caught my eye, let me know you knew it was me. Then you tapped the kid on the shoulder. Why?”
“I guess I decided I wanted to hire you after all. Besides, it was a good costume. It almost had me fooled.”
“You looked at my legs,” she said. Not judgmentally, but merely as a statement of fact.
“That was the intention, wasn’t it? For me to look at them and not at you.”
“Yes. I want to make sure you’re not going to have an issue working with me. Maybe the problem isn’t the tattoos. Maybe the problem is I’m a woman.”
Mark laughed. “Trust me. That’s not the problem. I’ve worked with plenty of women in my career. Operatives and soldiers. I have nothing but respect for people who do their job and do it well, regardless of their gender.”
“Okay.” JoJo nodded slowly. As if reaching some conclusion about him.
“And if you’re worried about me being attracted to you, I can promise you that won’t be an issue.”
“Okay...” she drawled.
He realized he’d basically said she was unattractive. At least unattractive to him. What phrase had Sophie used? Douche bag? It seemed appropriate here.
“Look, I didn’t mean it like that. You’re a very attractive woman. I just... For me...”
“I get it.”
“Your legs were really distracting—”
“Mark, put a sock in it. This is actually a good thing. You’re not into me and I would never find someone like you attractive, either. So we’re cool. Business colleagues and that’s it.”
“That’s it,” Mark agreed. Although why the idea that she would never find someone like him attractive suddenly bothered him, he couldn’t say.
* * *
SOPHIE HAD GONE with Mexican. The restaurant was a small place off Market Street. Not a lot of ambiance but the waiter brought out a big basket of hot chips and spicy salsa. Combined with a margarita and JoJo had all a girl needed to be happy in life.
For a second she considered passing on the drink. Not exactly a good image, to be drinking in front of the boss shortly after being hired, but she had concluded she was done playing games for this guy. She was hired. She wasn’t working a case. She would have a drink and not put on any more pretenses.
She’d gone to her room to ditch the wig and the tape, but she kept her outfit on because that was part of her, too. The vibrant red coat hung on a hook at the corner of the booth.
Neither Mark nor Sophie could refrain from checking out her tattoos every once in a while.
JoJo couldn’t pretend it bothered her. After all, she’d gotten the tattoos for a very specific purpose—just like she did most things in her life. So to complain when people stared seemed hypocritical.
She also knew that with her tattoos she was writing off nice guys like Mark Sharpe, who would never be attracted to her. Solid businessman, clean-cut. Probably a conservative who wore boxers. Yes, he was definitely not her type.
Still, as she looked at him with his neatly trimmed dark hair, his barely there scruff along his chin and his dark sweater that highlighted broad shoulders, she got the impression he wasn’t quite the conformist he portrayed.
Then there were his eyes. To say they were brown didn’t describe them at all. They reminded her of a bird’s eyes. Sharp and calculating. Assessing her like she was nothing more than a squirrel he would hunt for sport rather than food.
There was no escaping those eyes now that they were focused on her. They were like her tattoos. Badass. When he’d looked at her in the lobby and she knew she’d been made, she’d felt like prey being given a reprieve. She wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
JoJo made a mental note that there wouldn’t be a next time. As a rule, she wasn’t intimidated by men. The experience she had with her father after her sister had died made intimidation impossible. She never feared men because she knew she could survive anything.
Mark was different, somehow. He threatened her in a way she couldn’t define.
Unfortunately that threat didn’t mean he wasn’t someone she might be attracted to. If anything, it contributed to the possibility. Telling him he wasn’t her type had been a flat-out lie. Done out of pride because he was so completely not into her. Also because she wanted to affirm there was no way she would ever be attracted to someone she worked for.
Which was a crock. A woman couldn’t control who she was attracted to. She only controlled what she did with that attraction.
She had been lucky that it was never a concern in her prior job. Even if there had been someone, she never would have crossed the line. It was hard to earn respect from your peers if they thought they could take you to bed. A perfectly logical reason to avoid interoffice dating.
Of course she’d also never had a relationship with any of the men from her last firm because she was completely and totally messed up emotionally. Every once in a while she forgot that.
“So,” JoJo said, dipping a chip into the salsa. “What’s your deal?” She looked at both Sophie and Mark. It was a nosy question, but she was a detective. She lived to be nosy.
Mark didn’t say anything, but Sophie looked at him, clearly waiting for him to say something first. Mark just shifted in the booth and reached for a chip.
“No deal.”
“Okay.” JoJo was prepared to let it go, but she could hear Sophie huff.
“Uh, please. She wants to know why I call you Mark. And why we’re together.”
“You call me Mark to annoy me.”
“My mom is dead.”
JoJo heard the flat note in the girl’s voice. It was as if she practiced saying it over and over again in the mirror so that when she had to say it out loud, to real people, she wouldn’t crack.
JoJo was sure her own voice had the same tone when she told people her sister was dead.
“I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. It was an accident that happened months ago. Actually...it’s over a year now. I forgot.” Sophie frowned but quickly shook away whatever bad stuff was floating through her head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Mark left me when I was a baby to save the world in Afghanistan and when my mom died he had to come back. I wanted to stay with my grandparents, but they’re too old to keep up with me so I’m stuck with Mark.”
Mark clenched his jaw and JoJo watched the muscle in his cheek spasm. “That’s about eighty percent accurate.”
“What part is wrong?” Sophie asked, having clearly told her story as truthfully as possible.
“You say I left you like I dropped you on the side of the road. Your mother and I reached a decision. Also, I would like to add that I have been in touch with you throughout your life.”
Sophie turned to JoJo. “Sorry. He sent me cards and gifts for my birthday and Christmas. When he wasn’t hiding under a rock somewhere, we would talk over the internet. Really intense conversations, too, like, ‘What grade are you in now?’ Mostly I saw a grainy picture of a guy with a scarf over his face. Half the time I didn’t even recognize him. So emotional.”
“It’s sandy and windy in the Stans. Scarves are a necessary accessory for, you know, breathing.”
“What—”
“—ever,” Mark finished. “Yes. But you should also know I didn’t come back because your mother died. I was coming back regardless. Your mother’s death only sped up the process.”
Sophie said nothing, but shook her head to show she didn’t believe it. Then she lifted her hand to her mouth and nibbled on a fingernail.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” Mark said.
Instantly her hand dropped and she reached for the chips.
“That’s the other thing about Sophie,” Mark said. “She’s a child prodigy. A piano player who has toured the country and Europe performing with various orchestras. Right now she’s under contract with the Philadelphia Orchestra.”
“I’m almost fifteen now. We can lose the child-prodigy tag. Just say I play the piano.”
“I would like to hear you sometime,” JoJo said.
“I can get you tickets.”
“Cool.”
JoJo looked again at Mark. He sat back in the booth defensively, looking like he wanted to escape, but he didn’t move. JoJo knew what it was like to have a broken relationship with her father. The difference between Mark and her dad was that Mark cared about what Sophie thought of him. He cared that she felt abandoned. And his expression showed that he also felt guilty.
That was something JoJo’s father had never felt. Still didn’t.
Mark excused himself to go to the restroom. “If the waiter comes—”
“You want a beef burrito,” Sophie said. “Like that’s news.”
Mark paused and a small smile lit up his face. “You know how tempted I am to say I want fajitas?”
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face. You know you want the burrito.”
His smile only grew larger. “You’re right. I do.”
JoJo watched him walk away and tried not to notice how nicely his jeans fit over a firm ass. Nice shoulders, nice ass. Oh, my. When was the last time she’d taken in a man’s appearance like that? And of all men, it had to be her new boss?
When she looked at Sophie, the girl was biting her fingernails again. As soon as she noticed JoJo’s eyes on her, Sophie dropped her hands into her lap.
“Why aren’t you supposed to bite your nails?”
Sophie wiggled her fingers. “Don’t want anything messing with the tools. A hangnail or infection could be death for an artist like me.”
JoJo heard the sarcasm that was obviously a big part of who Sophie was. But it also let JoJo know the girl didn’t take herself too seriously. Which was probably a good thing in someone so talented.
“I really am sorry about your mom. I’m not just saying it.”
There was a shimmer in the girl’s eyes that she would hate to know was there. A small crack. Instantly JoJo felt contrite for making the girl crack in front of company. As a concession she offered her own pain. “I lost my sister. When I was young.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
“It blows.”
Sophie nodded. “It’s like...I get up every day and I do the stuff I am supposed to do. Like nothing happened. Only everything happened.”
“You feel guilty.”
“Yeah. Like I should be in my room crying every day. And some days that’s all I want to do, but I don’t. I go to practice, I go to rehearsal. I get ready to perform. It’s like this horrible thing didn’t happen. Only it did. I forgot it was more than a year ago.”
This was where JoJo was supposed to offer up some nice words. You’ll work through it. It will get better. It was the least she could do.
“It will get better.” JoJo choked out the words.
“Will it?”
“No,” JoJo admitted truthfully. The girl was too smart and would see through any fabrication. When you removed the bullshit there was only the truth. “No, it doesn’t get better. It just gets less worse.”
Sophie took a chip from the basket. “She died in a car accident. The guy wasn’t even drunk. It was just some stupid car accident.”
“My sister was murdered. She was my twin and she was murdered.”
JoJo had belched up the words—they never came out freely. But she’d played a game with a master spy and had won. Sort of. And she had gulped down a really good margarita on a stomach that was empty except for a few chips.
It felt like Sophie got it. They both knew the same pain. It was different when people died when they were supposed to because of old age or after a long illness. When they died young, the pain was sharper because it happened so abruptly. Sophie’s pain was fresher, but JoJo’s was no less intense.
“Murder. Oh, my God, that, like, totally sucks. I’m really sorry. Is that why you became a detective?”
“It’s why I became...everything.”
* * *
MARK OPENED THE door to his apartment and let Sophie pass by him.
“I was thinking of watching a movie. You up for it?”
“I’m going to read. I have work to do for Nancy that I’d rather get out of the way tonight.”
She’d rather do homework than watch a movie with him.
Ouch.
Still, he wasn’t going to complain. Today, by far, had been their best day together. She’d been almost happy while playing with baby Kelly. She’d agreed to go with him to meet JoJo. And he knew she liked JoJo.
To quote Sophie on their ride to their apartment, JoJo was cool.
The best news of all was that she knew he preferred beef burritos. It meant they were getting to know each other. Maybe reluctantly on her part, but it was happening.
“Yeah, sure. If you’re interested, maybe we could take in the new superhero movie that’s coming out this weekend.”
She halted. “You’re into superheroes?”
“Honey, I was a superhero.”
She rolled her eyes, but at least he got her to smile. “Yeah, sure. Okay. What—”
“Please. I beg of you. No more whatevers. Not tonight.”
“Lame. First one up makes breakfast.”
“Deal,” he said, even though he knew it was a trap. Sophie had mastered the art of staying in bed until he was awake, so he would be stuck with breakfast duty. One time he tried to outwait her and ended up lying in bed staring at the ceiling until almost ten in the morning. While dinner was his responsibility, they both agreed breakfast and lunch were a free-for-all. During the week they stuck to toast or cereal.
On Saturdays he went the extra mile. They both liked egg, pork roll—a Pennsylvania tradition she’d introduced him to—and cheese on a bagel. Saturdays were quickly becoming his favorite day of the week. On Sundays they visited Dom and Marie, and while he didn’t mind visiting them, he definitely liked it better when it was just him and Sophie.
It was becoming their thing. Despite her hostility, her snark factor and even her stubborn refusal to relent and fully forgive him, he was coming to like her. Loving her was automatic. But now he liked her.
He had to get her to like him in the same way. Forgoing the movie, he grabbed a beer and made his way to his bedroom, where he kept his personal computer to prevent any snooping from his daughter. Not that she would be able to get through his security, but its location added one more level of protection.
Sitting at his desk, he turned on the computer and accessed the site that would provide him with the most comprehensive information on JoJo Hatcher. A site that went beyond basic fact-checking, that some considered not completely legal.
But he wasn’t messing around. The woman was now officially working for him. If he was going to ask her to help him track down whoever sent that note, he had to know everything about her. Not a single piece of information was insignificant. It was time to know exactly who he was dealing with.
CHAPTER FOUR
THIS WAS THE start of a battle. A prelude to the fight. This was a time for her to lead her people forward into the unknown. They would give their lives for her. They would sacrifice all. Where she played they would follow. With wisdom and knowledge and no fear...
“Sophie! Sophie, halt!”
The words finally penetrated and Sophie looked up from her piano, the story she’d been telling with her fingers suddenly gone.
“Yes, Maestro?” She looked up at the short, plump man standing on the raised platform with the baton in his hand. Igor Romnasky, the legendary composer and conductor from Moscow, had been chosen to direct this performance of Grieg’s “Op. 16 in A minor.” He claimed he’d accepted the opportunity to work with Sophie. Or so she’d been told. Instead of listening to her play however, all he ever seemed to want to do was stop her.
“You are out of pace with the orchestra, yes?”
It always sounded like a question when he said it, but it never was.
Sophie nodded, but thought that if anyone was off the pace, it was the orchestra. He should be keeping them in time with her, not the other way. It wasn’t arrogance, it was the way the music had been written. The piano was king. Or in her case, queen.
“Again, yes?”
They had already been at it for three hours without a break. Her fingers were starting to get numb.
Sophie, too fast, yes? Sophie, too slow, yes? Sophie, too hard, yes?
No. Sophie was ready to take the bald man’s baton and shove it up his—
“How about a short break? It’s been a couple of hours. I think we all could use it.”
This from the principal violinist. Sophie looked at Bay and smiled. He gave her a wink and she really hoped it didn’t make her blush too horribly. She knew it made her heart race, which of course caused her palms to get sweaty. Which was gross when you were trying to play.
The maestro seemed to consider the young man with the big talent and finally relented.
“Fifteen minutes. No more, yes? Our first performance is next Friday.”
Sophie pushed out her bench and stood. She hadn’t realized how stooped over the keys she’d been and she nearly groaned when she stretched her back.
“You weren’t off the pace.”
Sophie smiled as she heard the quiet words in her ear. Turning, she smiled into Bay Tong’s beautiful face. He was Korean on his father’s side and Caucasian on his mother’s, and so completely the most gorgeous person she’d ever met. She didn’t think it was possible that someone like him would ever pay attention to her, but he did and it thrilled her every time he spoke to her.
Once a child prodigy himself, she got the feeling he tried to shelter her in ways that maybe he hadn’t been. But at age eighteen he was no longer identified as special. Merely incredibly talented. Certainly talented enough to win the first chair position in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
If only he would see her as more than a kid.
Of course, it was totally understandable when she was fourteen and had first met him. But now she was nearly fifteen and they were going to be only three years apart in age. Which was practically nothing, given her level of maturity. If she really wanted to, she could test out of high school. Then she wouldn’t even be considered a student.
“His hearing needs to be checked,” he added.
“I know. I think he gets off on bossing me around. Whatever. I’ve dealt with conductors like him. They all think they will be the one to make me do something I’ve never been able to do before. It’s all about their ego. All I want to do is play.”
“Yes, but you can learn from them. Sometimes I know it’s hard to think that way when they’re yelling at you. You have to take the one piece of instruction or advice that works for you and throw the rest away.”
“I spent three years at Juilliard. I know how to take instruction.”
“That’s different. They are trying to improve your technique. These guys care about something more. They want to pull a performance out of you and they can be ruthless in doing so. Sometimes even mean. That stuff can get to you after a while.”
Sophie shrugged and lifted a shoulder. “I know.”
“Just don’t let him get you down.”
“Protecting me again?”
He laughed softly. “Why do I think you’re the type who would say you don’t need anyone’s protection?”
That made her beam. Because she was exactly that type of person, which meant they were getting to know each other. They had been working together since January and now, as April approached, she was starting to think that maybe things could change between them. If only he saw her differently. Her birthday was May 15 and once it came, she was sure he would look at her with new eyes.
Today she’d intentionally worn tight skinny jeans and a top that was cut low enough to reveal the tops of her breasts. She’d spent thirty-six of her fifty-dollar-a-week allowance on a push-up bra from Victoria’s Secret. After weeks of owning it, she had finally worked up the courage to wear it.
Only he hadn’t ogled her chest once.
“It better not be because I’m a girl.” She threw her hip to one side in a pose she hoped was sexy. Then she flicked her hair—which she had spent almost twenty minutes straightening—off her shoulder. For the past few weeks she’d kept her hair loose instead of braiding it. All guys liked long hair. Everyone knew that. Well, maybe everyone except JoJo.
Braids were for little girls. It could be completely annoying when her hair got in her face while she was playing, but that was something she would have to deal with. Maybe bangs was the answer.
“Chill out, Gloria Steinem. I would do the same for any kid. Boy or girl.”
Kid. That hurt. It also made her feel stupid wearing her bra. “You know, you’re only three years older than me.” When they’d first met, she had said she was almost fifteen, which she was—only in January that turning point had been further away than it was now.
“Three years and three lifetimes, Sophie.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He looked at his sneakers. For rehearsal, this maestro wasn’t concerned about what they wore, unlike other conductors who insisted the musicians rehearse in formal dress to better prepare for the performance.
Bay was so hot in his well-worn jeans and brown sweater that Sophie actually came to understand how the word mouthwatering related to boys.
“It means I’m eighteen and you’re fifteen and we’re just...friends.”
Sophie felt another rush of humiliation, which she immediately countered with sarcasm. “Uh...yeah. What did you think we were?”
He glanced briefly at her overflowing breasts, which were nearly busting out of her shirt. It was a silent message. He was letting her know he understood what she was trying to do with her clothes and her Victoria’s Secret bra. She wanted to fall through the floor. She wanted to cover her breasts with her arms.
Instead she raised her hand to bite her fingernails.
“You’re not supposed to do—”
“I know,” she snapped. “Any other words of wisdom?”
“Sophie—”
“Hey, Sophie!”
Sophie turned at the sound of her name. Mark was walking down the aisle. “What’s he doing here?”
“You never cut him any slack, do you?”
“You don’t know anything about my relationship with him.” Again she lashed out, still in pain from the rejection.
Bay didn’t flinch. “I know he’s all you’ve got now. I know he’s here all the time trying to talk to you but you act like he’s a total jerk. He’s trying, Sophie. When are you going to try back?”
“I thought you said we were friends. Friends have each other’s back.”
“Sophie—”
“But hey, I’m just a kid, so what do I know?”
* * *
MARK CLIMBED THE steps to the stage, where everyone was milling about. He’d arrived during a break, which was great so he could talk to Sophie, but was disappointing, too, because he wouldn’t hear her play today. Nothing moved him like listening to his daughter. Nothing made him more proud and, conversely, more guilty for having missed so much of her amazing life.
They hadn’t been able to move her grand piano from her grandparents’ house into his apartment. As spacious as his place was, it couldn’t accommodate a piece of furniture that size. Instead he’d rented studio space where she could practice independently. She spent two hours there every morning before heading to the Kimmel for rehearsal. The performances would soon begin, but other than attending those, the only time he heard her play was when she messed with the electric keyboard in her bedroom.
This would have been a pre-performance treat. Maybe if the break was short, he could linger. She had informed him that she didn’t care to be watched, which seemed odd since she was used to playing in front of thousands of people. Once, when she’d forgotten her purse, he came to drop off money for her lunch. She had curtly thanked him, then dismissed him. Evidently he was the only person she didn’t want watching her.
Things were changing, he told himself. Ever so slowly, they were. He had to hold on to that.
Gone now were any rules Sophie had laid down about when he could see her. That had changed the moment he received that note. Someone made a threat against him and used his daughter to do it. If he wasn’t watching her carefully, it would be someone else. Someone he would have to trust in a hurry.
Mark approached his daughter, who was talking to Bay, the violinist. Mark had met the boy before. A nice kid who had a path to success similar to Sophie’s. He thought it was a great thing for her to have someone like Bay around with experience performing at this level at such a young age.
At least he had thought it was good until he saw his daughter wearing ridiculously tight black jeans and a shirt that showed her...gulp...breasts.
Holy jeezus, his daughter had breasts!
And they were totally out there.
“What in the hell are you—” Mark stopped when he saw her face. Tight, flushed. Ready for him to drop the hammer and call her out for wearing something so overtly and inappropriately sexual. Call her out in front of Bay, who was handsome and a friend who she talked about constantly.
“Uh, rehearsing here today?” he finished lamely. “Yeah. I figured I would stop by for a preview of the show.”
“We’re working the concerto,” she said, her arms now fully wrapped around her thin body, her shoulders sunken in as far as she could. “You wouldn’t know the composer. It’s not the guy you like.”
“Beethoven.” Mark smiled at Bay. “I like Beethoven. I didn’t know who did all that sad stuff, but it’s him every time.”
“Beethoven is great,” Bay agreed. “Sophie does the ‘Moonlight’ like nobody else.”
Mark smiled and as he did so felt his facial muscles contract. Was this kid flirting with his daughter? “You know, come to think of it, Bay, I don’t know that I ever asked you how old you are.”
He could feel Sophie shoot him the evil look of death, but after living with her for the past few months he was mostly immune to it. Her death look now brought no more than a mild sting.
“Eighteen, sir.”
“Eighteen,” Mark repeated, probably too loudly. “How about that. You’re legal now. It’s official. An adult. Not a kid anymore.”
Bay smiled and nodded as if he understood Mark’s implied message. “Yes, sir. Look, I’ll leave you two alone. It was good to see you again, Mr. Sharpe.”
“Hey, call me Mark. After all, we’re two grown men. Two men should call each other by their first names. Don’t you agree, Bay?”
“Uh. Sure. Mark.” He waved and walked to the string section, where the performers were starting to regroup.
“How could you?”
Mark fixed a fairly stern glare on Sophie. “Nuh-uh. Not this time. This time—” he looked pointedly at her chest “—it’s on you. How could you? We’re not going to talk about this here. I know this is your place of work—I respect that even if you are only fourteen. So we’ll discuss this at home.”
“Stop calling it home. It’s not a home. It’s an apartment.”
“Fine. Then we’ll discuss it at the apartment.”
“Whatever. Why are you here anyway?”
“I told you, I had some time. I wanted to listen to you play.”
Actually he wanted to check in on her. While she knew about the existence of the note, Mark was fairly sure she didn’t understand its significance. To her it was some meaningless prank. To him it meant trouble. It was okay with him if she was oblivious to that—the girl had enough on her hands getting ready for opening night.
“You can do that Friday night. I told you before I really don’t like to be interrupted when I’m working. I’m sorry if that sounds like diva city, but you have to respect that, too.”
It wasn’t said with any real heat, probably because she wasn’t really mad at him. Instead, she was suffering from embarrassment and maybe a little bit of heartbreak. Fourteen and stuck smack in the middle of her first crush. And if Mark’s instincts were correct, her first rejection.
Which really sucked. For her and for him.
It was easy to think that because she had just come into his life they would have all this time to get to know each other, to come to love each other, and be what a father and daughter were supposed to be to one another. Yet she was growing up—fifteen in two months. Yes, she was still young, but she wasn’t exactly a kid anymore. He had to respect that her feelings were real and they had taken a hard jab that went to their soft, gooey core.
“Okay. Listen, though. Do me a favor and call me when rehearsal is over. I’ll pick you up.”
“Why? I usually take a cab home with some of the others.”
“I know, but humor me.”
“Is this about the note?”
His daughter was too damn bright for her own good. Which meant it didn’t make sense to lie to her. “Yeah. This is about the note. Someone sends me a note like that and I worry.”
“It was so stupid, though. It didn’t say anything. I mean, lose me how? It’s not like I’ve seen some creepy villain lurking offstage waiting to grab me.”
He imagined someone making a grab for Sophie. He could see the fight she would put up. His girl wasn’t the quiet or shy type. But a teenage girl didn’t know what kind of evil there was in the world.
He did. He knew too much of it.
“Humor me. Call me. It will save you cab fare.”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ve got to go.”
He watched the orchestra come together onstage and took the stairs to the auditorium. She’d already told him this conductor was particularly difficult to work for. Pushing her to five, sometimes six, hours of rehearsal a day when three hours was the norm. Apparently Romnasky was a perfectionist.
Mark lingered in the dark shadows, where he knew she couldn’t see him. She would probably know he was still there because the main doors hadn’t opened and closed.
“Come, come, Sophie. This time perfect, yes?”
She settled on her bench and Mark held his breath as the conductor lifted his baton above his head and the music began to play.
You’re going to lose her.
Words of advice from a conductor who had been working with his daughter for the past few weeks and had observed her behavior?
Mark spotted Bay in front of the row of strings, his violin tucked under his chin. Or maybe a warning from someone she considered more than a friend?
It didn’t matter. In time Mark would know who sent the note because gathering information and finding answers was what he did best.
When it came to doing that for Sophie, nothing would stop him.
* * *
“HEY.”
Mark stopped at the door to his office. Behind his desk sat JoJo, looking rather at home. She wore all black today. Some tights that made her legs look impossibly thin, with a wide top that should have made her seem witchy but instead showed off her impish face. A thin red belt held all the material together at her tiny waist. An elf witch. A magical fairy elf witch. With tattoos.
When he moved around the desk he saw that the Gothic ensemble was highlighted with red shoes, which transformed her style from angsty teenager to sophisticated woman.
“You do understand you’re in my office. Yours is the one next door. The small one.”
When he had decided to hire another detective, Mark had rented a bigger space in the same Liberty Plaza building. The new office had a reception area, two offices, a conference room and even a small kitchenette with a single-serving coffeemaker. He was intensely fond of that, as he preferred fresh coffee to stale coffee that had been forming sludge on a burner.
“I’ve been here for days already and you haven’t given me anything to do.”
JoJo had not waited until Monday to start her new job. Instead she had shown up the very next morning, on time and ready to work. He’d had no idea what to do with her so he introduced her to the receptionist, Susan, and gave her an excessive amount of paperwork to fill out.
“I checked with Susan and she said she put a bunch of new cases on your desk.” JoJo stood with the files in her hand, assessing him. “You’re not going to be one of those bosses, are you?”
“Those bosses?”
“The ones that are always telling everyone what to do and when to do it.”
“Isn’t that the very definition of a boss?”
She sat on the edge of his desk, her tights-wearing perfect little butt touching his phone. “I work best if I’m left alone to do my thing. Hand me the cases and I’ll get you results.”
“You sound confident.” A self-starter. Wasn’t that exactly what he wanted in a colleague? Someone who wouldn’t wait around to be told what to do? “Do you always sit on furniture like that? More specifically, furniture not made for sitting on?”
For whatever reason it bothered him. The way she sat. The way her body touched his stuff. The way she seemed to take up all the space in his office. The way she called attention to her very small bottom. He could probably hold it in two hands.
No. He did not just have that thought. He didn’t.
She stood. “Sorry. Jeez. Sensitive about people being in his office, sensitive about people sitting on his desk. I’m starting to wonder about you. I took you for the laid-back sort.”
He stepped in front of her even as she tried to walk around him. “I’m not a sort. And you don’t know anything about me.”
He was sure it was the expression on his face that made her body tense. Mark knew the power of his glare well. Hell, he practiced his hard-core intimidation look. He used it to knock people off guard.
She was right. For the most part, he was a laid-back guy. Right up until the point when he wasn’t.
It was time JoJo—and, really, what was with that ridiculous name?—knew that about him.
He’d sent hardened soldiers, Taliban fighters and steely covert operatives into retreat with this very expression. No doubt it would work on her.
JoJo snorted and shoved his chest. “Give me a break. You don’t scare me, spy man. Now, do you want me to go over these cases or not?”
Mark was stunned by her lack of fear. Her lack of awe. Her lack of every reaction he was accustomed to. Had he become so domesticated since returning stateside that his once infamous back-the-hell-down face was no longer effective?
He sighed with disgust. It was official. He was no longer a badass. Merely the remnant of one. He supposed that was a good thing, but it felt deflating.
She still waited for him to give her enough room to pass, her arms filled with the cases he’d planned to have her go over. But he abruptly knew he didn’t want her working on any of them.
A woman who could stand up to him when he was being his worst was someone who also stood a chance with Sophie when she was being her worst.
Leaving Sophie at rehearsal today had been difficult. He didn’t like the idea of her without protection. But given her attitude toward him, Mark knew he needed an alternative to following her around himself. Having someone Sophie actually liked do it was the answer he was looking for.
“No, I don’t want you to look at those cases. I have something more important that I need you to handle. Something incredibly important to me.”
“And that would be?”
“My daughter’s safety.”
CHAPTER FIVE
JOJO LOOKED AT the note and felt a jab of anger behind her breastbone. Like someone had stabbed an old wound, reminding her of how real pain used to feel. The kid had lost her mother and she was building a relationship with a father she hadn’t known growing up.
Now this? It didn’t seem fair.
JoJo walked the few steps to her office. She felt more in control in her office. More of a problem solver and less of an empathizer. Mark followed and leaned against the door, his arms crossed.
“What are you thinking?” She sat behind her desk. Placed her elbows on its surface. Asked questions. Acted out the same role she would with any client.
“I don’t know what to think.”
“Old enemies, new enemies? You’re starting to build a reputation in this city as someone who solves unsolvable crimes. There must have been people along the way who would want to hurt you. Hurt you through her.”
“You’re not going to ask me if I think she sent it?”
“No. I’ve met Sophie. This isn’t her.”
“You say that confidently. You met her this week and chatted for a few hours.”
JoJo shrugged. “I know what I know. Giving your father a hard time is something I’m an expert on. While Sophie might sarcasm you to death, sneaky scare tactics aren’t her style. She’s too up front.”
“Is that what you did after it happened? Gave your father a hard time?”
She didn’t need to ask what he was referring to—any investigator by trade would certainly ferret out his employees’ personal details. JoJo wondered if poor Susan knew the extent to which her privacy had been violated. It was most likely beyond what many employees would consider reasonable.
No, there was no question whether he knew about her past. But she didn’t know what to say in response.
He wore a sheepish grin, yet didn’t look apologetic. “It’s who I am. It’s what I do. I knew about it peripherally when I did the background check before I hired you. I heard you tell Sophie about it at dinner and I learned everything there was to know. I’m sorry for your loss, of course.”
Right. This was the point where she nodded demurely and said thank you because it was usually the most expedient way to get people to stop talking about it. With her eyes lowered and her lips turned down in a hard frown, most people didn’t press the topic. No one actually wanted to make a woman cry. Not that she had. Not for a long time.
But something about what he said rubbed her the wrong way. The way he stood in front of her thinking he knew everything, when all he had was facts from his internet search. Trying, but failing, to be apologetic for invading her privacy. It made her want to punch him in his smug face.
It made her want to cry, just to watch him squirm.
“You don’t know shit about it. All you know is what you read. You don’t know what happened to me. To my family. Nobody does.”
“Then tell me.”
“Why would I do that? I don’t know you.”
“But I want to know you.”
Her eyes widened.
“I meant for professional reasons,” he said quickly. “I need you. I need someone to watch my daughter because she won’t let me. You have to be someone I can trust and that trust has to be built instantly. I agree that sometimes facts aren’t enough. So tell me what really happened.”
“Telling you about my family tragedy will build trust?”
“Telling me about what happened between you and your father might.” Mark’s expression was dour. “Okay, fine, it also might help give me some insight into Sophie. Figure out how I can change us. Fix us.”
JoJo smiled sadly. “Trust me when I tell you there is nothing about what happened between me and my father that will help you to fix anything. You might say my dad and I are...permanently broken.”
“It was that bad?”
“It was worse.”
“I don’t want to break things with Sophie. I really don’t.”
“Then you won’t. The problem my dad and I had—and eventually my mom and I—wasn’t the result of what I did. It was because of them. A kid can try to let go and parents can refuse to allow it. But if parents let go, there is nothing for the kid to do but walk away. As long as you refuse to let her go, it doesn’t matter how angry Sophie gets or how snarky or how combative. That bond will still be there.”
She could see him absorbing her words. Understanding what it said about her own family. What it meant.
“They had already lost one daughter. How could they let you go?”
“I spent a lot of time taking psychology courses to figure out that very thing. The truth is, murder is destructive and it has many victims. And I was not...easy.”
“I really am sorry.”
JoJo didn’t reply. It was such a useless phrase. One that people felt obligated to offer. It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t change anything. It only made a person say, “Thank you.” Thank you for what?
“I’ll need a list of everyone you suspect might have written this note. I’ll also want a list of anyone involved in any case you’ve solved since your return to the States. I imagine you can’t put together a list of potential threats from your days in the government—security clearance and all—so you’ll have to do your own work there.”
“Right. And you’ll—”
“I’ll need to get familiar with Sophie’s schedule. Her friends, teachers, et cetera. Do you want my surveillance to be covert or open?”
Mark hesitated and JoJo imagined he was weighing the pros and cons.
“Do you want to take the risk of me doing this without her knowledge, knowing at some point she might learn the truth or—”
“You can’t handle covert surveillance on a teenager?”
JoJo nearly growled. “Of course I can. But should danger threaten her in some way I may need to expose myself. The girl’s pretty bright. I’m thinking she wouldn’t buy the story that my presence was a coincidence. Or do you want to spare the righteous teen outrage that would follow such a revelation and simply explain what’s happening? A threat was made, we’re checking it out, but in the meantime I’m going to be hanging around to make sure nothing happens.”
Still, he hesitated.
“What did you say about wanting to fix the relationship between you and your daughter?”
“I don’t want to scare the crap out of her with this. She’s got enough on her plate.”
“Then you need to ask yourself who Sophie is. Is she the type of kid who is going to be freaked out by this and will shut down out of fear? Or is she the type of kid who can deal with the situation and take reasonable steps to secure her own safety by accepting a necessary precaution?”
“Are you seriously trying to out-reason me?”
“I’m saying you’re not a spy anymore. Getting away with a covert operation isn’t the goal. Establishing trust between you and your daughter is. You know? That silly thing called trust—that thing you want to have with me. Well, I’m no expert but I’m fairly sure it’s a critical component in any relationship, especially one between a father and daughter who are only starting to know one another.”
“You did out-reason me,” he whispered, sounding disgusted. “Okay. Come over tonight. We’ll talk to her together. I’ll let her know what the deal is and you can explain your role. She’ll probably take it better coming from you.”
“Deal.”
“Did you find an apartment yet?”
“Not yet. I have some appointments tomorrow.”
“To rent or buy?”
This time she was the one to hesitate, pondering how much he needed to know about her personal life. In her mind, the more space the better, especially since she realized she sort of liked him.
Not the dangerous red-zone level of like. More bordering on orange. He was funny and could trade barbs with anyone. But there was something else that made him different from other men she’d known. She’d worked for detectives, she’d trained with law enforcers. The term swinging dick was a staple in her descriptive vocabulary.
The difference between Mark and the other types she’d known in this profession was that he didn’t have to swing his dick to prove anything to anyone.
He was a badass, and his dick was just there. Impressive without having to announce its presence.
And that is enough time thinking about the Penis. Move on.
She considered what he had said earlier. If he was going to trust her with his daughter’s safety, then she could at least be honest with him about the basic facts of her life.
“Rent.”
“Because you can’t buy or won’t buy?”
“If you’re offering me a raise already...”
He sneered at her. That was the only description she could come up with for the way his lips thinned while half his mouth curled up. “I’m trying to find out if you’re renting for a reason.”
“Like, duh,” she said, with what she hoped was enough teenage speak so he would understand.
It only made him sneer harder.
“Yes, I’m renting for a reason. Until you and I figure out if we can mesh together, I don’t want to make any long-term commitments.”
“Why do we have to...mesh? Why can’t we simply be two people working together?”
“Dude, small office. You need to accept the fact that I’m the type who will go into your office and take the case folders if I need them. I probably need to accept the fact that, deep at heart, you’re still a paranoid spy guy. If we can’t do that, no meshing.”
“Well, then I want to mesh.” He shook his head slightly. “What I meant to say is, I want this to work out. With us.”
“Ditto.”
“Good. Okay, well, if you don’t have a place of your own, you’re probably sick of eating out. Come over for dinner.”
“You cook?”
“Why did your voice go up an octave? You don’t think I can cook? Is it because I’m a man? That’s so stereotypical and, I have to say, a little cliché.”
JoJo bit her lip because who knew? Maybe his secret passion was cooking. But she had a feeling she was being played. In fact, that was always how she felt around him. Like she was being tested or there was some hidden agenda behind everything he did and said. It constantly kept her on her toes.
The man—the real man—behind the intimidating spy or the sarcastic jokester or the seriously lost new dad, was a mystery.
Which was not a good thing because there was nothing she loved better than solving a mystery.
He’s your boss. He’s not a mystery. He’s your boss. A boss without a Penis.
Still, a home-cooked meal—if he could deliver it—was not something a woman who ate most of her meals at restaurants ever passed up. Cooking was a luxury her job rarely afforded.
“You’re on, chef.”
* * *
MARK CLUTCHED THE take-out bags in one hand while he fiddled with his key. He opened the door and found Sophie where he’d left her after he had picked her up from rehearsal. Nancy was with her and the two of them had their heads down over a big book.
“Hey, I’m home.”
Nancy lifted her head and smiled. “Hi.”
Again, Mark was struck by the sweet nature of her smile. So open and friendly and welcoming. So unlike the woman who was coming for dinner tonight.
I want to mesh....
Where in the hell had that come from? It had been her word, but to him it conjured all sorts of lurid images. Mostly involving naked bodies and what happened to them when they meshed.
He wasn’t even sure why the images arose. It wasn’t like he was attracted to her. She was so far from what he wanted in a woman she might as well be a man. Any thoughts of meshing should be irrelevant.
That was what he needed to do. He needed to think of her as a man. A man, a fellow detective, a coworker. A hey-buddy-let’s-get-a-beer-after-work dude. Or a go-watch-the-game-and-burp kind of man.
Did JoJo burp?
“What’s that?” Sophie asked him.
Shifting his thoughts away from his she-man coworker, Mark set the bags in the kitchen. “This is lasagna. Homemade. Well, at least homemade by someone else. But we’re going to pretend tonight. What are the odds I have a dish remotely this size?”
He started foraging through his cabinets, where he knew he’d stashed the pots and pans and serving dishes he’d bought. When he first realized that it only made sense for Sophie to live with him, he’d gone out and bought everything he thought a home should have. Things like kitchen implements. He was a man who owned a grater, a juicer and a whisk.
Not one of those tools had ever been used in this kitchen.
“Ah-ha!” Mark pulled out a square white ceramic dish and a saucepan and held them up to show off his discovery to the two ladies seated at the island.
“Yeah, so you have pots? I don’t get it.”
Mark opened the bags and pulled out a container of red sauce. He dumped the contents into the pot and put it on the stove, setting the heat level to warm.
Next action item: the delicate surgery of removing the lasagna from the aluminum container and placing it into the serving dish. What might a man need for that? Spatula. Yes! That was a kitchen tool he was familiar with. A man had to have eggs and pancakes after all.
Sophie followed his activities with a bemused expression. “What are you doing? What is the point?”
“I think he’s trying to impress someone.”
Mark glanced at Nancy and saw a sad smile on her face. It was crazy, but he had the feeling he’d disappointed her by being interested in somebody else. The crazy thought occurred to him that his daughter’s tutor might have a crush on him.
If so, it was flattering. She was a woman in her early thirties and attractive in a no-nonsense way. Long, ash-blond hair, pretty green eyes. Soft in all the right places. She was a woman any man would find it easy to be around. Hell, if she wasn’t his daughter’s tutor, he might consider asking her out.
Because wasn’t that what he wanted? A nice woman. A steady woman. A woman with a lovely smile.
But she was his daughter’s tutor and Sophie liked her. That was something he wasn’t going to mess up. There were boundaries that couldn’t be crossed if he didn’t want to see Nancy storm off, leaving him hanging over something as silly as her broken heart. After all, what were the odds he could actually make a relationship work long-term?
Given his track record, his odds were on par with being able to cook lasagna on his own from scratch. And since he had no clue about what went into lasagna, those odds were basically none to none.
“Not impressing anyone,” he clarified. “Just proving her wrong.”
“Her.” Nancy nodded. “I sort of figured.”
“Who is it?”
Mark looked at Sophie. “JoJo is coming over.”
He watched her face instantly change from suspicious to excited. “Awesome. Why, though? I thought you guys were working together. Mark, you do know you can’t date someone you employ, don’t you? It’s totally not cool.”
“It’s not a date. It’s a work thing. But she made a crack about me cooking and well...”
“You would rather set up an elaborate scene with pots and dishes than tell her the truth. Which is that you don’t cook.”
“Exactly.” Mark smiled. “You know, Soph, I really feel like we’re getting to know each other.”
“Well, I’ll be going,” Nancy said as she closed the book. “Let you do your...work thing. Sophie, I’ll expect that report next week. See you around, Mark.”
Mark ignored her doubt about the intentions behind tonight’s activities. While he might appreciate her attraction, he certainly wouldn’t feel obligated to explain any part of his life to her. If that put her nose out of joint, then it was her issue. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted her to pursue him or not. Because when it came to him and women, it only ever went two ways. Either they chased him until he was ready to be caught, or Ben, his former rival and now friend, showed interest in a woman who Mark would then actively seduce.
It had worked every time, until Mark met Anna. Because Ben and Anna had been in love.
Love. Mark had never truly been in love. He used to worry what kind of person that made him. After years of dissecting his relationship with Helen, he’d concluded that if he’d loved her, really loved her, then staying with her and Sophie would have been more important than pursuing any life dream.
But she had betrayed him. In the worst way. She lied to him about taking birth control while actually trying to get pregnant. Trying to find a way to cage him. To keep him from doing the thing he told her he’d always dreamed of doing. They had been together for what, eight or nine months? Two young kids enjoying college and steady sex.
They hadn’t even lived together. Their entire relationship consisted of bars, beers, late-night calls and finding secretive places at parties to have sex.
From that she had wanted forever. Had tried to make it happen by tricking him. A fact he would never share with Sophie.
He didn’t regret the course of events. He couldn’t. He had Sophie now. How could he possibly be sorry when she was so spectacularly amazing? But had Helen lived, when he returned to the States to build a relationship with Sophie, there would have been nothing but a cordial friendship between him and his ex-girlfriend.
After Helen, Mark’s ideas about love and relationships changed. He was totally up front about what he wanted from a woman. Harshly, that meant sex and only sex. He liked the game. He liked the chase. Whether he was doing the chasing or someone was chasing him. And he liked sex.
There was no love involved in any of that. But lately he’d been rethinking his position. Maybe finding someone he could actually try to develop...what? After so many years of playing, he couldn’t actually say he understood what a real relationship was. He couldn’t fathom a scenario that he would be willing to subject not only himself to, but Sophie, as well.
“What’s the matter?”
Mark shook himself out of his reverie. What the hell was his problem anyway? There was no reason to be thinking about love and sex now.
It was only JoJo who was coming over.
He transferred the lasagna to the dish then splashed the sides of the ceramic with sauce. He turned on the oven and put aluminum foil over the dish, hoping ten minutes of heat might permeate the apartment with the smell of home cooking. He didn’t have to pretend with the bread. Who came home and made fresh bread? As soon as he had the garlic and butter coating ready he could throw the loaf under the broiler. Surely that would give off enough smell to convince anyone that major work had transpired in the kitchen.
“Are you serious about this?” Sophie asked as she watched him methodically set the stage.
“Like a heart attack. Here.” Mark handed his daughter the garbage bag containing all evidence from the restaurant—the receipt, the trays the food came in, even the menu that had been included. “Take this to the trash shoot. Be careful on your return. If she’s already at the door, double back, walk the long way around the hallway and then pretend you’d forgotten to pick up the mail.”
Mark walked to the dish where Sophie had already placed the day’s mail and handed it to her.
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Stephanie Doyle
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
Отзывы: Пока нет Добавить отзыв
О книге: There’s not a lot former CIA agent Mark Sharpe hasn’t done. Yet suddenly he’s in a world of firsts—first time being a father, first time being self-employed… and first time being attracted to his employee.Jo Jo Hatcher with her attitude, her tattoos and her investigative talents tempts him in ways he can’t explain. With each day she becomes more irresistible and he fights the urge to abandon his new conservative lifestyle! Then his teenage daughter is threatened. There’s only person he trusts to help him: Jo Jo.As they work to find the perpetrator, Mark imagines a future together that includes another first—family.