But her heart still beat a little too fast. By giving him her last name, she’d given herself one less shield from him.
“Samantha Kennedy,” Max said softly as if tasting the name. But, no, he was wrong.
Max kept calling her Samantha when she was just plain old Sam. Despite her mother’s hopes, she’d never been fancy enough for Samantha. Her fingers curled around the door knob, and she began to pull it open.
“How do I find you, Samantha?”
He wanted to find her?
Well, duh, Sam, you left the man with a hard-on. Of course he wants to find you.
But she didn’t want him to see her world. Not ever. In this fake life, she and Max could touch here. Nowhere else.
Not on the streets. Not in the shadows where she worked. Not with the killers. He didn’t need to see them.
“You don’t, Max,” Sam said with a sigh, and she finally glanced back now. “But I can find you, and I will.” Unless he told her to screw off. Unless—
“Sounds like a promise.”
It was.
She gave a quick nod and opened the door. A man stood nearby, young and handsome, close to her age, and he eyed her with a knowing smile on his lips.
Sam walked right past him, her mind already on the case.
On the dead body that waited for her.
Samantha Kennedy.
So he had a full name. A name and a face and a hard-on that was really damn painful.
Max Ridgeway stalked to the edge of the balcony. His hands gripped the thick metal railing, and he sucked in a deep breath.
And still tasted her.
Samantha.
She’d come against his hand. He hadn’t missed the hard clench of her sex or the soft cream that coated his fingers. She’d come, she’d kissed him, then she’d walked away.
Using him for sex.
Jesus Christ—women usually used him for money. For power.
Sex?
Probably shouldn’t complain. He was supposed to like that, right?
But he didn’t. Max yanked at his bow tie, loosening the knot, hating the damn thing, hating the stupid party he’d been forced to attend. Five years ago, he never would’ve been caught in this scene, but these days, he knew he had to play the game in order to keep his business in the black.
His business. The minute he’d seen Samantha, he’d forgotten all about the deals that he’d been working on at the party. As a rule, Max didn’t go for one-night stands. He was long past the stranger pickup. Well, he had been. Until Samantha had touched him, and he’d gotten lost in her dark, turbulent eyes.
Walking away from her that night hadn’t been possible, not after he’d tasted her. He’d taken her lips and known he’d take her.
The beginning. For him, that’s what it had been.
Max wanted more from Samantha Kennedy than just a few hot hours in the dark.
Down on the street below him, she ran from the building, hurriedly dodging in and out of the lights. The lamps caught the red of her hair, flickering almost like fire in the heavy curls.
Samantha.
When she’d come up to him at that bar, her heart-shaped face had been so pale. Her brown eyes so wide. Her mouth—slick and red—had trembled.
She’d been afraid, and he’d wanted her.
A fast f**k.
No.
Max knew when a woman had secrets, and Samantha carried those secrets like a cloak around her sensual little body.
Samantha jumped into a small red VW Bug. He almost smiled at that. Hadn’t been expecting her to—
She shot out of the lot with a roar of the car’s engine, and he watched until the red taillights vanished.
It would be easy to find her. He had connections in D.C. His, his stepfather’s. He could track her and discover everything that there was to know about Samantha Kennedy in a matter of hours.
If that was what he wanted.
Secrets.
He had them, too. In spades.
I’ll find you. She’d better. Because Samantha Kennedy had made a mistake. She’d given him a taste, and now Max found that he wanted more.
Being a greedy bastard was part of his nature. When he wanted something, he took it.
He wanted Samantha.
“Thought you didn’t go for the society ladies.” His stepbrother’s mocking voice drifted in the air to him.
Max didn’t glance back. He’d heard the door open, just as he’d heard it earlier when Quinlan came outside. At a piss-poor time.
“Sorry for the interruption.” The soft tread of Quinlan’s shoes padded over the tile. “Didn’t expect you to be… occupied out here.”
Max forced himself to release the railing.
Quinlan’s rough laugh filled the night, only to end with a nervous edge. “Didn’t know you went for sex in public places, man.”
“I don’t.” Normally. “And whatever you thought you saw out here, forget it.” Kissing and telling wasn’t his style either. Slowly, Max turned around and stared at his younger brother. Hell, his stepbrother was probably a lot closer to Samantha’s age than Max was at thirty-three.
Quinlan gulped and looked away. His left hand lifted to rub against his neck, and his golden horseshoe ring—his so-called lucky charm, a gift from Quinlan’s father—glinted.
His stepbrother always seemed to have trouble looking him in the eye. Since his mother’s death, so did their “father.”
Max headed for the door. He was done with this scene. He didn’t need to schmooze and party. What he needed—well, she’d driven away.
I’ll find you. She’d better.
Find me, or I’ll find you, baby.
CHAPTER Two
Sweat was slick on Sam’s palms as fear settled heavily in her belly. She slammed the car door, rubbed her hands on the black pants she’d changed into at her place, and stared up at the looming mansion.
Two police cruisers were parked near the gate. A crime scene investigation team fanned over the area.
She sucked in a deep breath, then shoved back her shoulders and marched forward as she pulled out her ID. “I’m with the FBI—where’s Agent Dante?” Dante, not Hyde. She didn’t want to see him just then.
A uniform pointed toward the big house. “With the body.”
Another kill didn’t make any sense. The Briars only had one son so no one else at the residence fit the kidnappers’ profile. The vics were rich males in their early twenties. Party boys who had parents with too much money and too little time for them.
The first kidnapping had occurred three months ago. The ransom demand had come twenty-four hours after the college student disappeared. The father paid, and the next day the son was back and able to provide absolutely no description of his abductors.