Hottest Mess (S.I.N. #2)(13)

Right now, however, he needed to let all of that go. This wasn’t the time to get lost in the memory of the way she’d looked and felt. And it sure as hell wasn’t the time to worry about how he would tell her the truth if the investigation proved that Colin was guilty.

Instead, right now he needed to focus on the reason he’d thrown this party in the first place—Henry Darcy.

He checked his watch and saw that it was almost ten. The party had been in full swing for two hours. He hadn’t seen Darcy among the guests, but the man had assured Dallas that he was coming, and since Darcy had a reputation of showing up late to pretty much everything, Dallas wasn’t yet worried about missing him.

What gave him more pause was seeing Jane downstairs.

They’d parted ways at the garden shed, deciding that it was safer to return to the party separately. He’d left first, circling the house and entering through the service entrance to avoid being noticed. He’d used the back stairs to head to the third floor and the master bedroom. Jane, he knew, had most likely used the same route to get to the second floor and her childhood bedroom.

She was just one floor below him, and it was so damn tempting to go down to her. To lock the door and strip her bare. To lay her out on the bed, spread her wide, and lose himself in the scent and feel of her.

Instead, he had to go back to the pool deck and pluck an anonymous woman from the crowd. Someone to look good beside him. Someone he could tease and tempt and put on a show with.

Someone who would expect him to take her to his bedroom and f*ck her hard once they’d made the party circuit.

The thought made him cringe. Jane was the only woman he welcomed into his bed now. But that left him faced with the rather daunting problem of how to manage expectations, not to mention his own carefully-honed reputation as one of the biggest manwhores in the country.

Considering the scope of the investigations he ran for Deliverance, the dangerous calls that he made, and the sensitive data he handled on a daily basis, the fact that his biggest problem at the moment was how to deal with the rumors surrounding his cock seemed more than a little ridiculous.

Ridiculous, maybe. But still legitimate.

Then again, his cock wasn’t actually his biggest problem. That honor belonged to Colin—who was currently in a holding pattern—and Darcy, who wasn’t. And Dallas needed to get downstairs and talk to the man. Determine what exactly he knew about Deliverance. Did he know anything at all about the organization behind the code name? And if he did, Dallas would have to assess whether or not Darcy himself was a threat.

If so, he’d pull together the team and they’d come up with a plan.

If not, he’d breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

First, though, he had to find a girl he didn’t want, but who would serve his purpose.

Suck it up, Sykes. You chose this life. You built Deliverance. You know what it takes to make it work. Don’t start acting like a * now.

Right. Good advice.

With his pep talk running a loop in his head, he pulled on a fresh pair of jeans. He continued to wear the cashmere sweater that Jane had given him. It was still clean, but it carried her scent, and he wanted as much of Jane with him as he could have.

Presentable again, he started toward his bedroom door, then caught sight of the blue envelope sitting on the small table that sat flush against that wall. Well, hell. One more thing to add to his list of shit that just kept piling up.

According to Archie, the letter had arrived last Monday, tucked inside the plastic bag in which the morning paper had been delivered. But Archie had told him that news at the same time that he’d told Dallas that Jane was waiting for him on the pool deck. Dallas had asked Archie to leave the letter in his bedroom to read later, and Dallas had hurried to Jane, the letter forgotten.

Now, he frowned at it, another one in a string that had started arriving about a year ago. He was tempted to just shred the thing, but reason told him not to. He didn’t know who was sending them, and so far they’d been nothing more than a nuisance, but he also knew that could change.

He opened this one, then felt his gut twist as he read the words printed there:

My mouth, my *, my ass, my heart. You know you have all of me, so why aren’t you mine?

The words made him cringe, all the more so because coming from Jane, they would make him hard.

“Bitch,” he spat, cursing the unknown woman as he carefully folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. He’d deal with it later. Right now, he had more important things to worry about than a woman who imagined herself scorned.

Forcing the letter from his mind, he hurried down the hall and through the double doors that separated the private rooms from the public area. He moved slowly down the stairs, using the vantage point to scope out possible companions mingling in the great room below. He didn’t see Jane, and her absence both disappointed him—when didn’t he want to see her?—and pleased him. Because right then, seeing her would only drive home the fact that she was the one woman at the party that he could absolutely not pursue.

He’d reached the second floor landing when he saw Liam. His childhood friend turned business partner stood ramrod straight in the middle of the room, his perceptive gaze taking in every face. He was looking for Dallas, of course, but his military training was so ingrained that the man never entered a room without assessing the occupants and the space. Liam had been captured once, too, and held in Afghanistan. And Dallas knew damn well that his friend also fought his own personal demons.