The Dare Collection: August 2018. Avril Tremayne

me never!

      I was torn between a smile and a scowl. A smile because if I chose to call her right then, she would’ve answered. A scowl because the redhead was the first to tweak my interest in a while, and I’d hoped she would end this uninvited dry spell that had taken over my sex life. But despite my earlier anticipation, the desire to get her back in my bed was dwindling fast. I stared at the picture again and stroked my dying wood a second before I hit the Delete button, erasing her from my contacts altogether.

      I gunned the engine onto the Pacific Coast Highway, pointing my car toward Downtown LA. With my bedroom plans now shot to shit, and in no mood to return to an empty bed and dreams filled with memories I didn’t cherish, work was the next best option.

      Nevertheless, I cursed when my phone rang. “Dammit, doesn’t anyone sleep anymore?” I griped.

      Maggie, my assistant, answered, “You don’t pay me to sleep. You specifically stated during my interview that I wasn’t allowed to sleep.”

      “You don’t get to sleep. That doesn’t mean you can interrupt mine. I’m shocked I need to explain that to you.”

      “Tell me you’re not heading to Fixer HQ right now and I’ll hang up.”

      I didn’t bother because she had a GPS tracker on my car. Once or twice that tracker had saved my skin and extricated me from some unsavory situations.

      “What do you want, Maggie?” I switched lanes, enjoying the sweet purr of the engine.

      “Wow, someone’s grumpy,” she muttered under her breath, then said briskly, “We have an urgent situation.”

      I tapped my finger against the wheel. “Aren’t they all?”

      “This one is less sex, drugs and rock and roll, more...something else.”

      I suppressed a growl. “By all means, hold the dramatics.”

      My sarcasm bounced right off her thick skin. It was one of the many reasons she was invaluable. “I’m sending you the address her people sent me. You can be there in fifteen minutes.”

      The joy in my ride gone, I cursed. “Her people? Did you not explain to them that I don’t deal with people? That it’s one-on-one or not at all?”

      Maggie sighed. “I know how to do my job, Caleb. Trust me, please, just a little?”

      I frowned. I didn’t trust blindly because I didn’t trust anyone. Maggie knew this. Why she was choosing to tap into a resource not readily available to me wasn’t improving my mood. The sizeable monthly paycheck I signed bought me her hard work and loyalty. I didn’t expect anything else, and certainly not her request for me to trust her.

      My phone buzzed with the incoming address. “I’ll be in touch.” I hung up, pulled off the road long enough to check out the Mulholland Drive address before I executed a slick U-turn.

      High walls and electronic gates greeted me when I reached the property. Everything about this smelled like trust-fund princess with her panties in a twist about her latest flame. Or a chihuahua kidnapping that wasn’t worth my time.

      Only the assurance that Maggie excelled at her job made me roll down my window and press the intercom.

      The cast-iron gate slid back, and I drove up the cobbled driveway of a large stone mansion. In typical Hollywood style, the original property had been remodeled into a grotesque status symbol, with little care for artistic design.

      I hid my lip curl as I stepped out and spotted the rent-a-cops stationed on either side of the house.

      The front door swung open to reveal a young, sharply dressed man on the threshold. He seemed out of place in this setting but I wasn’t here to judge. “Good evening, Mr. Steele. If you’ll come with me?” He didn’t offer his name and I didn’t ask for it. This was LA, where even D-list celebrities were paranoid about revealing their identities to the wrong person.

      The inside of the mansion was as gaudy as the outside, the designer having gone to town with an explosion of golds and leafy greens splashed across every surface.

      Suppressing a shudder, I went down a hallway into a large living room, growing impatient when a look around didn’t produce the her Maggie had mentioned.

      “Wait here, please.”

      He left. I paced, silently hoping this trip would be worth my while. I had a dossier full of needy clients but their demands were nothing I couldn’t handle in my sleep. Thoughts of sleep, or the woeful lack of it lately, ramped up the disquiet inside me.

      I was busy smashing it down when the double doors opened in front of me.

      At the first sight of her, my gut clenched tight and my lungs flattened with expelled air I wasn’t interested in replenishing.

      I wasn’t sure whether it was the shock of her roughly chopped white-blond hair that gripped my attention or the wide, full red lips currently getting sucked between her teeth. Maybe it was the bright, oval-shaped green eyes staring directly at me. Or the lush petiteness of the body draped from head to toe in black leather and lace.

      Leather and lace.

      The combination was lethal enough without the silver-studded leather cuffs encircling both wrists and her slim throat.

      Jesus.

      She was a cross between a wannabe punk rock star and a BDSM enthusiast’s wet dream.

      She stared at me, our height disparity forcing her to angle her head and expose her delicate neck to me. Edgy hunger burned through me as I tracked her alabaster-pale face, the lightest flutter of her nostrils, the velvet smoothness of her mouth. The racing pulse beneath her choker.

      She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “I hear you’re a fixer.”

      “You heard correctly.” I wasn’t in the phone book. Referrals were strictly by word of mouth. I sent silent thanks to whichever client had sent her my way.

      She gave a brisk nod. “Before we start, we need to discuss an NDA,” she said in a sexy voice I wanted in surround sound in my head.

      I was used to nondisclosure agreements. No one worth a damn did business these days without first whipping out an NDA. But whether it was the time of night or my general mood lately, I shook my head.

      “Before we discuss NDAs I need the broad strokes of the job first.” Who was I kidding? This woman, whoever she was, intrigued me. I was fairly sure I was going to take the job.

      Her mouth firmed. “Fair enough. I’ve picked up a stalker,” she said matter-of-factly. “It started off as cyberstalking but in the past three weeks it’s escalated to physical stalking.”

      The bolt of unexpected protectiveness shot through me, unsettling me enough to make me cross my arms. “And you haven’t called the cops because...?”

      “Because it could be linked with the work I’m doing.”

      “What work?”

      “Extremely sensitive work that I can’t discuss without you signing the NDA.” She held out the document.

      My intrigue spiked. “Okay, let’s see it.”

      It was seven pages long, far more detailed than the standard three-page NDA, with her name left blank. I noticed her studying me from the corner of my eye as I read it a second time. When I was done, I shifted my gaze to her, my interest mounting when she met my eye boldly. “It looks good. Pen?”

      As if on cue, the door opened, and the young guy who opened the front door walked in. I watched him, then her, looking for signs of a relationship. She nodded her thanks when he produced a pen, but there was nothing else in her gaze that tweaked my senses.

      I grimaced at the relief that shot through me, and signed.

      She took the pen and inserted her name.

      Lily