Love by Association Read online

  He turned, expecting to see someone older, perhaps his mother’s age. An art lover up from LA. Or one who’d flown in from the East Coast, like Jaime had...

  Blond hair came into his vision, flowing over the most perfect breasts... The glass in his hand dropped to the bar with such force he was embarrassed. His mouth would have dropped, too, if he hadn’t been so cultured himself.

  She was most definitely not his mother’s age.

  “Hello,” he said, making way for her to step up to the bar beside him.

  “Hello.” Her East Coast accent wasn’t strong, but it was there. Another part of her the school couldn’t quite ameliorate?

  “I’m Colin Fairbanks,” he said, holding out a hand to her.

  He was a handshaker. It came with his job.

  Her nails, conservatively longish and a sedate red, glistened as she returned his gesture. Her skin was surprisingly...not as soft as he’d expected, like she did her own gardening or, like Julie, had her hands in turpentine. Still, he wanted to hold on.

  “I’m Chantel Johnson,” she said, pulling her hand back after a brief touch. And then, “Thank you,” with what had to be a heart-stopping smile to the bartender as he slid her wine toward her.

  She took a sip, those glossy red lips managing to caress the edge of the glass without leaving any residual red paint behind.

  “You in town for the auction?” He asked the obvious because for once in his life he didn’t have an interesting conversational tidbit to offer.

  She turned that smile on him, and it was more potent than he’d imagined. The small shake of her head drew his gaze to where the blond curls were caressing her breasts.

  Embarrassed, he immediately raised his gaze. She tilted her head. “Not much of a gentleman, are you, Colin Fairbanks?”

  “I’m sorry.” He was mortified. “I don’t usually... Truth is, I haven’t... You aren’t in town for the auction, then?”

  Some rainmaker he was.

  More like opportunity-blower.

  She shook her head again. His gaze stayed glued on hers.

  “I’m here, tonight, for the auction, but I’m in town to stay. I’ve recently relocated.”

  Hot damn. Chances were, since she clearly had an invitation to the night’s shindig, he’d be seeing more of her.

  “Where are you staying?”

  “In a hotel at the moment. Until I can find a place that suits me.”

  He asked her what kind of place suited her and found out that she wanted something with beachfront—and property—but didn’t need anything overly large as she lived by herself.

  Colin was grinning by that point.

  “So what brings you to California?”

  “I’m writing a book,” she told him. “My family is in publishing, and I want the book to be published, or not, based on its merits. I plan to submit it like anyone else would have to do and, knowing me, it’ll be easier if I’m not right there with everyone, having to make up stories about what I’m doing.

  “Besides, until last week I had an office on the top floor—VP of marketing. If nothing else, that felt like a conflict of interest, though I can’t really say why. Marketing and editorial are separate entities...”

  Publishing. Julie’s children’s books.

  This was getting better and better.

  “You’re from New York?” he asked, then said, “Publishing, and that little bit of an accent...”

  “I was raised in upstate New York,” she told him. Her wineglass was still full.

  “So, since you’re new here, I suppose you don’t know many people.”

  “None, actually. A big black-tie charity event...if it’s anything like home, I figured this was the way to get to know them.”

  He stood, almost full glass of Scotch in hand. “Will you allow me to introduce you around?”

  He’d probably wake up in the morning and find out that he’d had one hell of a great dream.

  “I don’t know, Colin Fairbanks,” she said, taking a step back and giving him a saucy grin. Yeah, that dream was getting better by the second. “If I’m seen with you, will it damage my reputation? For all I know, you could be Southern California society’s bad boy.”

  For a brief moment, he wished he was. Because he had a feeling she’d like him that way.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Ms. Johnson. I’m the guy others don’t like because I tend to see the world in black-and-white—and aim for the white every time.”

  “No shades of gray for you?” She ran her finger along the edge of her wineglass and then licked it.

  He fought a very strong temptation to bring that finger to his lips but managed to simply shake his head.

  “Disappointed?” he asked.

  She sipped wine and studied him. “I’m not sure,” she told him. “Can I get back to you on that?”

  So she expected to see him again. “Anytime,” he told her, one hand in his pocket.

  His clients were probably watching him by now. Any other night, he’d have been out there with them—mingling, being seen, listening.

  Appearing to enjoy himself.

  Did it show that that night was the first time in a very long time that he actually was enjoying himself?

  “What is it that you do?” she asked, still not moving on into the room.

  “I’m an attorney. Owner of Fairbanks and Fairbanks.”

  “Hotshot corporate lawyer,” she said. Her eyes might have darkened. He couldn’t be sure.

  “You’ve heard of us.”

  “Who travels in this circle and hasn’t?”

  She had him there.

  She was welcome to him anywhere.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SHE WAS OVERDOING IT. She’d never be able to pull off the femme fatale flirtatiousness on a longer-term basis. Chantel took the sexy steps she’d practiced across the room at Colin Fairbanks’s side, reminding herself that she had to be patient. To slow down. She was in this for the long haul.

  As long as it took to build a strong enough case against James Morrison. Or to convince herself that, while the man had admitted to beating his little brother to death with a baseball bat, he really wasn’t a wife and family beater.

  She smiled, said hello and shook hands as Colin introduced her around. She’d seen pictures of the Morrisons but had yet to see either of them that night. She hoped Leslie’s absence didn’t mean she had new bruises that she couldn’t bring out in public.

  Always the cop, Chantel couldn’t ever lose her awareness of the darker side of life. Not even in the midst of a life as beautiful as that glitzy ballroom with its linen chair covers and tablecloths, real crystal glasses and more diamonds than she’d ever seen in one place. The flower arrangements were real. She could smell the roses as she passed.

  And felt the heat as Colin’s tuxedoed arm brushed against the skin left bare by her halter-top gown.

  “How long have you been in town?” he asked as they left a group of investors in conversation with a lawyer Colin had just discreetly motioned over.

  “A week,” she told him. Wayne had gone over her story with her umpteen times. She’d delivered it without a hitch. He’d come up with the idea of her living in a hotel. It was easy enough for her to get picked up and dropped off from a hotel lobby. To take the hotel’s limousine service to functions and then to drive home in her older model Mustang to her small one-bedroom apartment across from the beach.

  An added benefit to the plan was that Wayne had done a favor for the night manager at the hotel. If anyone asked about her using the hotel’s car service, or asked about her hanging around, she’d have an alibi.

  The writing...that had been her stroke of genius. A job she could “do” without anyone ever seeing her. She had a maternal aunt by marria
ge whose family was in the publishing business. And their name was Johnson.

  She saw Commissioner Reynolds tipping glasses with another man almost straight ahead of them, close enough that she heard their laughter. Colin was going to lead her right to them.

  An awkward moment she’d prefer to avoid...

  “I’m getting a little warm. Do you mind if we step outside?” she asked, raising her glass to her lips at the same time to hide any telltale twinge at the side of her mouth.

  “Of course.” Colin sounded as pleased as she felt relieved; he took a right and led her to a pair of glass double doors that led to a balcony.

  Thankfully, there were heaters out there. She’d freeze her tail off in this gown on what had turned out to be a forty-degree January night. Wishing she hadn’t left the shawl she’d bought on her bed at home, she allowed herself to be led outdoors.

  Colin went for the balcony rail. She could hear the ocean in the distance but got as close to the nearest heater as she could manage.

  “I can tell you’re from New York,” he said, smiling down at her in a way that she found more than a little distracting.

  While she’d had more than her share of admirers in her more than three decades of living, Chantel didn’t usually find herself being viewed with tenderness.

  She was a decorated cop. The men she worked with knew that. They respected her abilities to protect them as well as they’d protect one another.

  She felt naked against the tiny white glittering lights strung around a couple of potted trees on either side of them.

  “My accent gives me away every time,” she said, trying to tighten her mouth a little bit more around the words—instilling as much of her accented native tongue as she could. A sound she’d worked years to lose when, with her best friend, she’d migrated from upstate New York to LA right out of high school.

  Neither of them had ever looked back.

  “It’s not just your accent,” he told her. “Look around you.”

  She did. There were three older men, all in matching monkey suits, to her right, seeming to be hiding out from the activities going on around them. Another two, farther away, to their left, were smoking.

  “I don’t get it,” she told her companion. What about these guys gave her away as being from New York?

  “There are no women out here. Even with the heaters, it’s far too cold. You’re obviously acclimated to colder weather.”

  Nope. But she had tough skin.

  She’d missed seeing herself as the “only woman.” Probably because she was used to being the only female among men.

  She was perfectly comfortable that way, but felt like she was quickly losing control of her cover.

  Like maybe, just maybe, she couldn’t do this.

  “Well, perhaps I’m just counting on you to keep me warm,” she said. She would do this. A memory of the picture she’d seen of Ryder Morrison, of the collage he’d made and she’d studied, had her straightening her backbone. The medical records she’d been privy to as part of a law-mandated notice sent from the hospital to the police department sprang to mind.

  She pictured her friend Meri, thought of the scars she still wore so long after the brutal beating that had almost left her dead, of the way she’d been near death’s door, mostly incoherent, and had still managed to get herself out to the street...

  “You okay?” Colin leaned in toward her. She breathed in his musky scent.

  “Of course I’m okay,” she sputtered, covering another lapse with a small sip of wine that took a long time to swallow.

  So she wasn’t quite as good at this undercover thing as she wanted to be. It was her first night out. On her first gig.

  And she cared more than she probably should about the ultimate outcome. But truthfully, what cop didn’t?

  She forced a chuckle. “Makes me wonder about you, though, that you’d think there’s something wrong with me for counting on you to keep me warm.”

  He moved closer, put an arm around her and pulled her in close, shocking Chantel with just how good that felt. “It was your eyes, not your words, that made me wonder,” he said softly, leaning his head down toward her ear. “You looked kind of lost for a second there.”

  She had a poker face. Almost always. But she took note to work on it in front of the mirror in “rich heiress” mode.

  “It’s all so new,” she said now, speaking the complete truth. “All of this...it’s nothing like my life in New York.”

  “You didn’t live by the ocean, then?”

  “No.” Her family, the broken fragments of it, had mostly lived in a brick house that looked like every other brick house in the row of brick houses. “And I always had friends close by,” she said, resuming character. One friend. Jill...

  “I didn’t realize it was going to be so hard...not knowing anyone. Truth be told, I was kind of looking forward to meeting a whole new group of people.”

  “Society life can be a little cloying, can’t it?” Colin surprised her by saying. “You grow up with the same people, go through school with them, attend charity events with them...”

  “Oh, the life of the rich and famous.” She chuckled again but wondered at the very serious tone in his voice.

  Initially she’d had him pegged as a privileged playboy, and then as an uptight, closed-minded, filled-with-his-own-importance type of guy.

  She’d been profiling.

  And he was proving her wrong.

  She wasn’t there for him to prove anything to her. He pulled her closer. She wondered if he was as good in bed as it felt like he would be.

  “You’re shivering.”

  “I’m not overheated anymore, that’s for sure,” she lied. A chance meeting with the commissioner might have been better than the balcony she’d traded it for.

  “Colin?” The female voice behind them had Chantel spinning guiltily around.

  What was she doing?

  She had to get back inside and mingle. Clearly spending time with Colin Fairbanks wasn’t going to be the “in” she’d hoped. Because “in bed” wasn’t her goal.

  “Leslie?” He turned, too, greeting the other woman with a warm tone. Chantel would have left, except that he didn’t let go of her.

  “I thought that I saw you out here,” the other woman said. She was as beautiful as expected with a perfect figure and auburn hair that did all the right things, including tapering down to perfectly molded breasts. Probably due to inserts. “I’ve been looking for you.” Her moist lips moved, but the smile didn’t leave her face.

  As she came closer in the dim lighting, Chantel got a better look at her.

  She was a good ten years older than Chantel. And probably Colin, as well, if she’d been right in assuming him to be about her age.

  “Leslie Morrison, this is Chantel Johnson. She’s new to town, and you’re one of the people I wanted her to meet.”

  She reached out a hand, grappling with the twisted means of fate. Leslie Morrison. Her sexy, distracting, dangerous companion had just given her the means to speak with the woman Chantel was there to save.

  Her meeting with Colin hadn’t been a mistake or foolishness on her part. It had been preordained.

  Chantel was going to use it for everything it had.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “CHANTEL’S WRITING A BOOK.” Colin spoke with bragging rights he couldn’t possibly have earned in the space of an hour. He heard himself and stood there grinning, anyway.

  He’d been the first to find her.

  So he was staking his claim.

  They were still with Leslie but had moved inside and had new drinks in their hands. They’d been joined by others, in ones and twos, who’d moved on in the same fashion.

  Couldn’t have high society looking like groupies. Or
lose that slightly bored look in spite of the new flesh among them.

  “A book?” Leslie’s head dipped slightly, showing that she was impressed. In Leslie’s case, Colin understood the gesture to be more than a show. While Leslie Morrison had grown up among the rich in Southern California and was considered old money, she also was one of the most genuine among them.

  Which, along with the fact that the Morrisons and Fairbankses had been doing business together for almost a millennium, was probably why Julie felt so comfortable with the older woman.

  With a bit of humility Chantel nodded a little shyly. He wondered what she hid behind the sip of wine she took.

  Amusement?

  Or real embarrassment.

  He wanted to believe the latter but had ceased expecting the best from people—especially the people in his crowd—a long time ago.

  “What kind of book are you writing?” Leslie asked.

  Another bit of a pause from Chantel was followed by, “Women’s fiction police procedural.” She took another sip, and added, “It’s a woman-in-jeopardy story told from the point of view of a female cop.”

  Not very ladylike material, which might explain her slight discomfort. But then she probably hadn’t been in California long enough to know that she’d fit right in.

  Leslie’s eyes widened. “Oh, Colin.” She reached out as though to touch his wrist and then pulled back. “You have to get her to help us with the library project,” she said before turning to Chantel. “If you have time, that is...”

  “Of course I have time,” Chantel said. “My calendar is empty at the moment. What’s the library project?” She looked at them, her gaze lingering a tad bit longer on Colin.

  Pretty sure he wasn’t imagining her interest, he took a step closer to her, intending to give her the short version, when Leslie said, “Colin, the two of you would be perfect for the lead roles!”

  He’d agreed to help out—partially because his firm was handling the estate and resultant legal details, and partially because he wanted Julie to have more exposure in the book world—but his assistance was to have been only behind-the-scenes.