CHAPTER ONE
I LOVE MY line of work. People bitch and moan about their careers but not me.
Clients task me with a job and I get it done. I don’t run an empire. I don’t employ anyone full-time. I only have myself to watch out for and that’s the way I like it.
This job earned my family back a shred of their respect a decade ago and I’ve been dishing the dirt on corrupt arseholes, playboys and spoilt little rich girls ever since.
I didn’t set out to be a private investigator. It’s a job that chose me when my family needed it most and it turns out I’m a natural. If there’s dirt, I’ll find it.
And right now, that dirt is sitting across the softly lit room from me.
Only this kind of dirt I cannot dish.
It crosses a line that even my skewed moral compass cannot abide.
‘Come on, Ash, what gives?’
I raise my eyes from my untouched pint to see Jackson grinning at me from the other side of the bar. ‘Where’d you come from?’
‘We’re short-staffed tonight. I’m helping out.’
‘A bit beneath you, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Nah, I kind of enjoy it.’
He scans the darkened corners of the room, the various people making out, and barely raises a brow. And why would he? This is his life day in, day out. This is his club—Blacks—complete with sex on tap, catering to the British elite. The upper crust. A circle to which I once wholeheartedly belonged and now wouldn’t piss on if it were on fire.
These people have money. Enough to pay for the exclusive membership and the non-disclosure agreement that comes with it. Anything goes within these walls—within reason—and no one on the outside is any the wiser. Including my client. But the presence of my target—her—tells me there’s more to Coco Lauren than what the world sees. What the press witnesses. And that’s what I need to tap into, to expose, if I’m to get what I need and deliver what my client demands.
‘Jesus, you need something stronger than a pint, judging by the look of you.’
I barely acknowledge his observation. Truth is, what I need is something that gets her to step out of line, outside of this safe haven where I can’t say anything without compromising my friend’s business.
He backs up and snatches a bottle from the side with two shot glasses, smacking them down between us. ‘You never come here, so I repeat: What gives?’
The truth will only piss him off, and I’m not about to lie, so I stay quiet and his eyes narrow, his powerhouse of a frame turning rigid. If he wasn’t my oldest friend I’d think he was about to punch me.
‘You’d better not be here on the clock...’
‘Hey, easy.’ I raise my palms. I knew he’d be suspicious, and he has every right to be—because he’s right. I never come in here. ‘The twisted secrets of this place are safe with me.’
He continues to study me and I know he’s warring with what he knows of my work and what he knows of me. I know he doesn’t like how I earn a living; we agree to disagree. As far as I’m concerned, these people deserve what they get.
Just like the princess teasing me with her long bare legs, cute little arse and a face that’s bordered by a blonde low-swinging bob. She projects such innocence to the outside world, but not now, not in here.
As if on cue she stands and bends over the table to whisper in the ear of her female companion. I clock the feline curve of her body, the gentle swell of her hips, the delicate arch to her back, and then her friend turns and they kiss. Not just a peck. A deep, tongue-sinking kiss that has a spasm of heat ripping through me.
I straighten against it. Fuck.
I’ve seen her dressed for swanky lunch dates, the gym, charity galas and shopping sprees, and now I get to see her half-naked, with an intent that screams one thing: sex.
And in surroundings such as these, with soft lighting, plush grey sofas and the perfect balance of glass and warm wood, she’s lending a sophisticated charm that you could lose yourself in. It’s only the debauched goings-on here that make it more than just a hip wine bar, and she’s smack-bang in the middle of it. Adding to it.
I don’
t want to see the appeal. The allure. The legs that go on for ever. And that kiss that sears the air, my skin, my blood.
‘Ah, now I see...’
Jackson’s enlightened murmur snaps me out of it. I pull my gaze back to my pint, chug back a gulp.
‘It’s a woman that brings you my way—now it makes sense. It’s about time.’
I almost choke on the bitter drink. ‘Hardly.’ He’s close, and yet so far off the mark. ‘I can’t say I care for your choice of clientele.’
He laughs. ‘You don’t need to care—not for sex. You ought to try it some time...a bit of no-strings fun. Celibacy doesn’t suit you.’
‘Really?’ My brow lifts. Never mind him punching me, I’m going to swing for him across the bar, to hell with the doormen flanking the place.
He laughs harder as he pours clear liquid into both shot glasses and slides one across to me. ‘Your mistake was letting one get under your skin.’
‘One?’
‘You know who I mean—Jess.’
I throw back the shot and wince. The harsh hit douses the burn of her—my ex, the woman who left the second my family lost it all. ‘Yeah, well, I’d take a woman out of my local over one from here any day.’
‘That’s not what your face was telling me a few seconds ago.’
I glower at him—but, hell, he’s right.
I drag my mind back to the job, to what I should be focusing on.
Coco is clearly at home here, her open affection with the other girl and the show they’re putting on for the guy across from them makes that obvious. Nothing in my research suggested she swung that way, but Philip Lauren—my client, her half-brother—had suspected it.
‘I’m not sure I’m her type.’