Hot & Bothered Read Online Free Page B

missing teens, but he was by no means the only investigator qualified for the job, and his prior relationship with Tori was more likely a strike against him than anything that would work to his benefit.
    But what the hell—when in doubt, project confidence, he always said. Besides, it wasn’t as if he actually believed she’d put a contract out on her old man. No, the woman he’d met this afternoon was more likely to freeze a man to death.
    Seeing DeeDee watching the two of them as if this wereimprovisational theater, he leveled a look on her. “Would you excuse us, Mrs. Hamilton? My client’s paying by the hour and I’d like to get down to business with her.”
    â€œI just bet you would,” she murmured, but then spun on her stiletto heels and sashayed out as blithely as she’d entered.
    The moment the door shut behind her, he pinned his best no-nonsense look on Victoria. “Okay, look, I plan to look for your brother regardless, but I’d still like to know why you believe he’s incapable of violence. There’s probably not a person in the world who doesn’t have the capacity for it, given the right circumstances.”
    â€œI simply can’t visualize what those circumstances would ever be in Jared’s case,” she said. “He’s scared to death of spiders, for heaven’s sake, yet he’s still the type of guy who’d perform a catch and release if one got in the house. Now, me, I’d rather see the damn thing dead.”
    He remembered. She’d climbed up his back once, screaming Kill it! Kill it! in his ear when a hapless daddy longlegs had shown the poor judgement to venture across their bedroom floor in Pensacola. Irritably shoving the memory away, he focused on the facts. “Yet he’s been in quite a bit of trouble, if I understand correctly.”
    â€œIt’s true he’s been expelled from several schools. But always for things like drinking, or smoking or not knowing when to stow his attitude.” She leaned forward in her chair as if she could compel his understanding through sheer physical intensity. “When he was little, he was always running up to Father saying ‘Watch this! Watch this!’ All he ever wanted was the tiniest bit of his daddy’s attention, and his expulsions were just a continuation of the same. They were a way to get Father to pay him a little regard, if only in a negative way.”
    â€œTell me who his friends are.”
    Victoria sat back. “That’s one of those good news/bad news things,” she said. “He has a habit of falling in with the malcontents, which as you can probably imagine contributes considerably to his problems. The good news is, he didn’t do that this time. Since there were only a few months remaining in the semester when he was bounced from his last school, Father decided to enroll him locally to finish out the year. Jared joined a baseball team, discovered he really liked the sport, and actually met a couple of nice kids on the team. The bad news, though, is that whenever he told me anything about them, he only referred to them as Dan and Dave.”
    â€œThat’s okay, just give me the name of the school.” He’d contact the coach and go from there.
    She told him, and he was keying the information into her file when the office door opened once again. Brows furrowing, he glanced up. Now what?
    A little girl with a long, wild, tangle of baby-fine brown hair that was held off her face by sparkling butterfly barrettes stood in the doorway. Casting him an intrigued glance, she ran over to Victoria. “Hullo, Mummy,” she said in a clear British accent, leaning into her. “Nanny Helen told me a ’tective was here to find Uncle Jared.”
    Mummy? John felt his jaw drop as he watched Victoria wrap an arm around the little girl and hug her close. She was a mother?
    â€œYes, that’s true,” Victoria said.