Rev It Up (Black Knights Inc. #3)(38)

It’d never truly be over. At least not for her.

But it had to be. Because there was just no other option.

And then, inexplicably, an image of those blue roses popped into her head. Blue…blue meant mystery, didn’t it? So, what? She had a secret admirer? And just like that, the solution to her little problem with Jake presented itself.

Jumping from the bed, she grabbed her purse and fished inside for her wallet. Once she located it—way at the bottom beneath a granola bar, the extra pair of Underoos she kept in case Franklin had an accident, and her travel sewing kit—she flipped through old receipts until she found the business card she was searching for.

Lifting the phone from her nightstand, she punched in the number printed in a firm hand on the plain white cardstock and waited as one ring turned to two, and then three.

“Come on. Be home.”

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded groggy, and she glanced at the digital clock on her nightstand. 11:30.

Dang.

“I’m sorry to be calling so late, Dr. Drummond,” she winced, “er, Chris. But I was wondering what you were doing for dinner tomorrow night…”

***

“Okay.” Vanessa pulled off her wig and flung it on the hotel bed, stepping out of the sky-scraper heels that were absolutely killing her back, not to mention her calves. “The next time you want to pump the lovely Candy for information, you’re going to do it yourself.”

Rock sat on the chair they’d parked in front of the window, a pair of optics held to his eyes. “Well, you’ve still got your eyes, chère,” he observed in that slow-moving molasses drawl of his as he turned away from the window. “So it couldn’t have been that bad.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I thought she might want to scratch your eyes out after that first scene. ‘Who you callin’ bitch, bitch?’” he mimicked in a terrible falsetto, grinning and batting his almost girlishly thick lashes. “Remember that?”

“For gals like us,” she told him, “bitch is a compliment. When I said you’d have to take the next shift with Candy, I wasn’t referring to any possibility of a cat fight breaking out. Yeah,” she shook her head at the look on his face, “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but we professionals stick together. Anyway, I’m saying you’re up next because it’s gonna take weeks, and the repeated bleaching of my ears, to recover from the conversation I just had.”

He lifted a brow, clearly intrigued.

“Candy saw the, uh…we’ll call them props that our little delivery boy brought in, and she spent ten minutes regaling me with stories about a guy who used to like to use the same kind of equipment on her as she plucked his chest hair while simultaneously singing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’”

Rock snorted with laughter. “At least the guy was patriotic. God bless America!”

She sent him a disparaging look. “And that’s a clean version of the conversation, I assure you. Of course, given her experience with the equipment, it made it easy for her to believe I’d completely worn you out and left you up here sleeping while I ran downstairs to take a break.”

“But given the size of our equipment, shouldn’t you have been the one worn out?”

She smiled innocently and batted her lashes. “Who says we used the props on me?”

Rock shuddered. “Okay, you may need ear bleach, but now I need brain bleach.”

“My work here is done,” she chuckled.

“Not so fast,” he swallowed and made a distasteful face like he was having trouble scrubbing away the images circling around in his head. “What’s the 411 on Johnny?”

“I told Candy I’d done,” she made the quote marks with her fingers, “a client here once before who paid really well. Gave her Johnny’s description. Asked if she’d seen him around lately. She says she thinks maybe she saw him yesterday evening out in front of In the Mood Lounge. She couldn’t be sure since she was soliciting another john at the time, but the physical characteristics she described sound an awful lot like Vitiglioni.”

“Does she know if he’s staying here?”

“Nope.” She moved toward the bed, flexing her poor aching toes after flinging herself back on the squeaky mattress they’d stripped of bedclothes and covered with what they hoped were at least semi-clean towels. “She said she hasn’t seen anyone who fits his description go in or out of the hotel today, but at least we have a solid lead on the bar. And speaking of, is there anything new over at In the Mood?”

“Non.” She stared at the water-stained popcorn ceiling and let his smooth baritone wash over her. “Just sad patrons, tired prostitutes, and lazy pimps.”

“Not exactly the glamorous life we’re living, huh?”

“It could be worse,” he mused. “It could be much worse.”

She lifted her chin and stared at him, curiosity overcoming her. “Like your other job?

He spun away from the window where he’d once more resumed his surveillance duty. “What d’ya know about that?”

“Nothing.” She pushed to a sitting position. “As far as I can tell, nobody knows anything about that.”

“And that’s the way it’ll stay.”