Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55606 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 278(@200wpm)___ 222(@250wpm)___ 185(@300wpm)
“Again, I don’t work for you. I work for your father. I’ll introduce them when I’m ready.”
Words that pushed alarm through her. Michel was bad enough, but if this guy was working for Dusan, she may be up shit’s creek. Naked.
Michel crossed beefy arms. “Be ready now. I’m bringing in my father.”
“Do what you must. I don’t care, but step away and let me apologize to my woman without you trying to get some fucking lessons on how a man talks to a woman as opposed to what you usually do, interacting with a child.”
Even more interesting by the second, things got.
The man watched the other two move away before he faced her again. Jasmine blinked, her fingers comfortable around her baton, just waiting for some wrong move. This time it wouldn’t be a disabling blow but a deadly one. He shifted them a bit more but made sure he could keep an eye on the two men. She recognized the move.
“I need your help, Jasmine.”
“I told you, I don’t know you or who that person is you keep calling me. I think you had better tell your friends there you made a mistake.”
His chuckle was deep and, fuck it all, arousing. He could have just pushed his hand down her pants and flicked her clit given how her body responded. Working her over completely and reminding her how long it had been since anything beyond her own fingers had been between her legs.
Not good.
“I know I didn’t. Want to know how I know this? Because you propositioned me.”
“I’ve done that to more than one man. It doesn’t make you all unique or special.”
That chiseled jaw flexed and a low rumble escaped. “You do that a lot to detectives?” He thumbed back the bill of his cap and she stared into his eyes. While they were no longer the icy green she remembered but blue-green, they were still intense as all get out.
Holy fucking shit and goddamnit. He may look a bit different, but no way would she ever forget this man. And, from the looks of things, he’d not forgotten her either.
Be that good or bad, it was something that remained to be seen.
One of Atlanta’s own, Detective Lance Baldwin.
Chapter Two
Every moment of your life is a second chance.
It had been a risk. He knew that and understood it but he didn’t care. Lance knew she could help him and he was willing to do what it took to secure that help. And he meant whatever. Thinking back over everything that Declan had said about her, he knew trusting her wasn’t something he should just do blindly. After all, she’d set her own sister up.
Despite the fact that every nugget of information he’d read about her—and that had been a thick and a damn interesting read—and had had to deal with when their paths crossed, informed him this was a woman who spelled nothing but trouble for any male stupid enough to think with his cock around her. Or underestimate her.
She’d make them pay.
Even though she’d not been his informant or even his issue, he had been helping out Declan McBride and they had been on the steps of the courthouse on a nice sunny day when Declan’s then-lover—and a woman whom everyone had thought was Jasmine—had reminded him she wasn’t her. At all.
He’d been about to get back in his vehicle and back to his world of being a detective, not a babysitter, when the witness who’d everyone thought was Jasmine announced once more she wasn’t and that Jasmine was over there. The similarities were there but Caro had a softness about her that Jasmine didn’t. Jasmine’s gaze was shrewd and never slowed as she constantly watched the world around them, even as her lips turned up in a mocking smirk.
Enter Jasmine. The real one. And the prosecuting ADA had been livid. She’d lit into both sisters after getting them into a small room, and while most people had watched Carolyn’s responses, he’d been focused on Jasmine—the real Jasmine—and there hadn’t been any way to disguise the rage that had flared in her gaze as she’d looked at the woman threatening her twin. It had taken him everything in him to ignore the heat that flared in his gut the longer he watched her. Caro did nothing for him but Jasmine, hell, he’d not wanted to focus on it. Given Declan had married Caro after he got his head out of his ass, he assumed it was the opposite for that man. Caro did it for him, not the real Jasmine.
So while on paper the woman had set up her own sister, he would be stupid to assume she didn’t care about her.
“What do you want?”
Her tone had as much warmth as it ever had when they were back in Atlanta and she’d been dressed like a five-dollar hooker. Made him nearly reach for a winter coat as if they weren’t in sunny California. Didn’t matter then and it didn’t now, there had always been something more to her. He would have bet his shield on it then, now he had something a bit more on the line. His life.