She glanced out the windows. “Maybe I should come back to Dallas, work out of my office in the city.”
Beau shook his head. “I want you to stay in Pleasant Hill. I need your help. We’ll do better working as a team.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “I won’t rush this. Whatever’s happening between us, we’ll wait to figure it out. First we’ll find the man who killed my father.”
Cassidy held his gaze for several long moments; then she nodded. “All right.”
Beau caught her hand and tugged her toward the elevator. “We’ll go over the files when we get back to the house. In the meantime, we came to talk to Dooley Tate. You ready for that?”
She looked up at him. “I’m ready.”
Beau pressed the elevator button and waited for her to walk inside. He pushed the button for the parking garage. It was time to find a killer.
Chapter Eleven
Cassidy stepped out of the elevator into the underground garage. Her pulse was back to normal, the flush gone from her cheeks, but her lips still tingled, along with other feminine parts of her body.
One thing she knew, Beau Reese was the best kisser on planet Earth.
She sighed, not daring to let herself go where that thought led. Not right now. Not when they were in hot pursuit of a killer.
She stood next to Beau as a valet brought up a sleek black BMW coup. “How many cars do you have?” she asked.
“Counting this one, four. Besides the Ferrari and the Lambo, I’ve got a Jeep Rubicon I drive when I want to spend time outdoors. This is the car I use for business.”
He helped her into the passenger seat, then went around and slid in behind the wheel. “Sometimes my job calls for long hours. There’s a small private apartment connected to my office. If it gets late, I can sleep in there, shower and change and go back to work.”
“I saw photos of your home inArchitectural Digest. It looks beautiful. Doesn’t sound like you get to use it much.”
He smiled. “Not enough, that’s for sure. I had it custom built. I thought I’d spend more time there, but if I stay too long, I don’t know . . . sometimes it gets kind of lonely. My schedule’s pretty full, so it doesn’t happen that often.”
Cassidy made no reply. With his amazing looks and a net worth in the hundreds of millions,lonelywasn’t a word that should pertain to Beau Reese. And yet somehow she believed him. There was something about Beau, something mysterious that kept him slightly aloof. Cassidy was determined to find out what it was.
He turned on the headlights as the car rolled along the highway. It got dark early this time of year. The temperature was in the sixties, the skies clear. It was a little after six when they followed a guy on a Harley into the parking lot next to a sign that read BARBIE’S.
The lot was already half full with customers stopping on a Friday night on their way home from work. Sex was always a draw, no matter what time of day it was. Add to that, another sign boasted the cover charge was only a buck until 7 P.M. Afterward, it went up to five dollars.
“You ready for this?” Beau asked, surveying a group of bikers who pulled in behind them.
Cassidy raked her hands through her hair, fluffing the heavy dark curls into a big-hair, slightly trashy look. On the drive over, she had added more makeup. She adjusted the snug, waist-length black leather jacket she’d put on after they’d left the office. “I’m ready.”
Cassidy glanced at Beau. He was wearing jeans and a navy-blue Henley, a casual look that showed off his hard-muscled chest. She wouldn’t have imagined him in a pair of black cowboy boots, never guessed how good he would look in them.
They’d both fit in just fine, she figured. “Come on, cowboy, let’s go.”
Beau didn’t smile. He was busy watching the bikers, who were parking and dismounting their bikes. Cassidy got out of the car, and she and Beau walked toward the front door. The biker who had arrived in front of them, big and burly with inky, slicked back hair, leaned against the railing around the front porch.
“Hey, sweet cheeks, why don’t you ditch the pretty boy and let a real man show you a good time?” He grabbed his crotch and made a lewd gesture.
Cassidy sneered. “I only see one real man here and you aren’t it.”
Beau turned, exposing the scar along his jaw, which should have been a warning. Instead, the guy took a threatening step toward her. Beau lifted his boot a fraction, the biker tripped and went down hard, landing with a foul-mouthed curse. Cassidy felt Beau’s hand at her waist as they walked inside the club.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.
His mouth edged up. “Probably not.”
Just inside the door, a big, dark-skinned bouncer stood with his arms crossed over his massive chest, surveying the interior for any sign of trouble. Beau walked up to the counter, where a buxom blonde accepted two crisp dollar bills for the cover charge.
Music blared inside. A long counter lined with men in jeans and work boots or wearing black leather sat next to women with too much makeup, short skirts or tight jeans. The stage spread across the opposite end of the room and there were smaller stages on each side, though only the main stage had entertainment this early in the evening.
