Big Easy Temptation (The Perfect Gentlemen #3)(6)

Sounds good! Hope you two have fun.

She sent the text, trying not to admit that her stomach dropped at the thought of pretty, curvy Courtney with Dax. Courtney looked like a swimsuit model. She was exactly the type of woman Holland would expect on the arm of one of the infamous Perfect Gentlemen.

Absolutely not her. Never Holland.

It had been years since she’d spoken to the gorgeous Dax Spencer, but she dreamed of him often. It wasn’t like she hadn’t dated, but she ended up comparing every single man who came into her life to Dax, and they always came up short.

She’d seen him at his father’s funeral. She’d shown up quietly and sat in the back. It had been a travesty how few people had been in attendance. Admiral Harold Spencer’s exemplary reputation had been washed away with one indiscretion.

“Hey, I’ve heard we’re going to have trouble.” Jim Kellison leaned against the door to her office, his dark eyes grim. “Your friend was telling everyone Captain Spencer has come back to town for a while.”

She was certain that had a couple of special agents thinking about early retirement, including the one in front of her. “Apparently he’s agreed to help write the documentation on the new training procedures. He’s been testing them on his ship.”

“Sure. That’s what every captain dreams of,” Jim shot back. “Spending several weeks writing training manuals. I’ve heard a rumor you run in his circle.”

She shook her head. “God, no. I’m friends with his sister. I was very close to the wife of one of his friends.”

Joy Hayes. It was hard to believe she was really gone, the victim of a single bullet from a lone shooter. Tears threatened. They did every single time she thought about the day Joy died. How could she ever forget it? Some TV news show rolled the video of her friend dying at least once a week.

Joy had been killed by a man who’d wanted to assassinate her husband. The news stories claimed the assassin was a mentally ill man who hated Zack and couldn’t stand the thought of him in the White House. Three days later, Zack Hayes had been elected president.

Six weeks after that, the terrible scandal involving Admiral Spencer had blown up. In the thick of the gossip and media speculation, he’d killed himself. Holland could only imagine how dark those days had been for Dax.

So much pain in a short amount of time.

She would love Zack Hayes to the end of her days because while everyone else had abandoned the Spencer family, the man with the most political capital to lose had sat beside Dax in the church for the admiral’s funeral that day. All of the Perfect Gentlemen had been there—Crawford, Bond, the scary one, Hayes, and Calder. They’d deflected the press from Dax and protected their friend.

She might not always understand the ties that bound those men together, but she sometimes envied them.

Jim nodded sympathetically. “Yes, Mrs. Hayes was a gracious lady. We all mourn her loss.”

More tears burned her eyes. She blinked them back. “Has Captain Spencer been in touch with you? You and Bill closed the case on his father, if I recall.”

That was an understatement. She knew exactly who had worked the case, but she’d tried to stay far from it. Being close to Augustine Spencer, Dax’s sister, meant recusing herself from participating in the admiral’s open investigation. She hadn’t even read the file. She couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Harold Spencer, upright family man and Naval officer, a beacon of New Orleans society, had been caught on camera in bed with an underage prostitute. She’d heard that a witnesses close to the admiral told NCIS the man had been a pedophile for a very long time. Rumors had spread like a bad virus and the jackals had shown up to drag the Spencer family through the mud.

And then, before he could be court-martialed, he’d been found with a bullet in his brain.

“We closed the case, but the captain made it very clear how unhappy he was about it.” Jim huffed. “We did a thorough investigation.”

Jim was one of the finest investigators she knew. He’d been a special agent for more than fifteen years. “I’m sure you did your best. These kinds of cases are always hard. There was a lot of media scrutiny.”

The press had been like a pack of wolves. The office had been inundated with their calls. Once the salacious story hit the tabloids, reporters had written article after article speculating on the lurid details of the admiral’s organized sex parties and the supposed ways in which he’d defrauded taxpayers to host them.

NCIS had been forced to investigate each and every rumor. All of them had been proven false, except the original allegation.

God, she hoped the admiral hadn’t known the girl’s true age. Amber Taylor had been fifteen, but on camera she’d looked at least a half dozen years older.

“I have gray hair from that case,” Jim acknowledged. “And I swear Bill went bald after that last press conference. I’ve never seen a man look so terrified on camera. There’s a reason he didn’t go into the entertainment field.”

It was probably for the best since Bill had a brilliant mind but a potbelly that wouldn’t look great on screen. “I remember. So I guess you’re afraid Captain Spencer’s return will mean more media attention? If it’s any consolation, I don’t think he liked the press coverage any more than we did.”

“I’m not worried about the press.” Jim ran a hand over his hair. “I’m worried about him. I don’t need his harassment again. He was like a dog with a bone, Kirk. He called ten times a day, sent so many e-mails I couldn’t keep up with them, and I won’t even go into all the times I could have arrested him for interfering with an investigation. I didn’t, because I like his mother and sister. I thought they’d been through enough, but I won’t put up with that crap again.”