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  Cross My Heart

  Paris Brandon

  Liberal talk show host Valentine Cross’ and police detective Jack Sutton’s ideological differences don’t get in the way of down-and-dirty, up-against-the-wall sex. In a relationship that consists only of sex and fighting, the conflagration seems worth it. Until Jack issues an ultimatum that Val fears will destroy them both.

  Six months after walking out of her life because she refused to marry him, Jack receives an assignment that sends him right back into the fire. Val might be hiding his suspect and she’s in danger. Oh yeah, there’s also the little problem of all the mind-blowing sex with his ex getting in the way of solving the crime.

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  Cross My Heart

  ISBN 9781419932090

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Cross My Heart Copyright © 2010 Paris Brandon

  Edited by Helen Woodall

  Cover art by Darrell King

  Electronic book publication December 2010

  The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.

  With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/). Please purchase only authorized electronic or print editions and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  Cross My Heart

  Paris Brandon

  Dedication

  To all of the unsung heroes who dedicate their lives to looking out for those who just need a little help along the way.

  Acknowledgements

  Once again I would like to thank my family and friends for being the greatest cheerleaders anyone could have and for always being ready to help me celebrate a dream that took more than a little bit of time to achieve.

  My thanks to my longtime critique group, Lynne, Rosie and Betty, for always being there for me. Your support has always meant so much. Thank you also to Francesca and Stephanie for the beta read.

  Last, but certainly not least, I would like to once again thank my amazing editor, Pamela Campbell, for all of her hard work and wise counsel.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Buick: General Motors Corporation

  Cadillac: General Motors Corporation

  Facebook: Facebook, Inc.

  Ford Escort: Ford Motor Company

  Ford: Ford Motor Company

  Home Depot: Homer TLC, Inc.

  Honda Accord: Honda Giken Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

  Marlboro Man: Philip Morris USA Inc.

  Styrofoam: Dow Chemical Company

  Twitter: Twitter, Inc.

  Ziploc: S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.

  Prologue

  Jack Sutton watched the curvy redhead in the faded denim miniskirt and red cowboy boots wink and flirt under the glare of street lights on the same corner he and his partner, Emmett Daniels, had been watching for the past three nights. Half the brick-front buildings had been deserted and their windows boarded up, but there was apparently enough traffic to make the corner profitable.

  The brunette standing beside her was older, her clothes a little shinier, her laughter brittle as she darted glances up and down the block. She should be nervous. She was the one who’d given them the tip and if her pimp found out she was going to need more than bus fare from Kansas City to escape Cedric Blood.

  He was kind of hoping the son of a bitch wouldn’t check on his girls any time soon. The idiot had beaten up Delia Carson, the only hooker who had ever agreed to testify against him, and Jack was going to enjoy putting his skinny, blond ass away.

  But he wouldn’t mind watching the redhead for a little while longer. In fact, against his better judgment, he’d like to do more than watch.

  She joked and laughed with the other woman but there was something just a little bit off beneath the veneer of heavy makeup that darkened her big green eyes and made her pouty mouth even more kissable. And no matter who hit on her, she never went with any of them.

  Which probably meant that she was a little too discriminating for this particular street corner or she wasn’t really a pro. And she wasn’t Vice because he’d checked that out after the first night she’d attracted his attention.

  “That’s his car,” Daniels whispered and Jack spotted the pristine red Cadillac convertible. “The fucker isn’t even trying to hide.”

  Not only was he not hiding, he jumped out of the car and started smacking the older hooker standing next to the redhead, who then started bashing said fucker on the head with her tiny purse.

  So much for fantasy. Jack grabbed for the door and barely beat Daniels out of the car but not across the street.

  Daniels used his solid weight to pin the pimp and Jack went for the redhead who let loose with a string of curse words while she still tried to get at the blond, pretty-boy pimp.

  “He’s going down for assault and battery, sugar. I’d rather not have to book you,” Jack said, wrapping both arms around her and dragging her back while he tried to figure out why her voice seemed familiar.

  She struggled in his grip. “If the girls were protected by law you wouldn’t have to worry about booking anyone,” she growled. “And I know the difference between being frisked and being felt up, so watch it.”

  He spun her away so she faced the wall of the brick building and trapped her splayed hands with his fingers. “I always kiss the women I want to feel up, and until that happens, you’re safe,” he whispered, so close that he could feel her shiver. “Now, who are you and what are you doing on this street corner?”

  She turned her head and smiled. Her green eyes sparkled and her pink lips were so inviting he stopped breathing. But then she uttered, “Ever hear of Cross My Heart?”

  Oh fuck! Valentine Cross, the liberal chick from late-night radio. The liberal chick who believed in legalized prostitution and medicinal marijuana. She wasn’t supposed to be this hot. She was supposed to have wild earth-mother hair and wear sandals with her long skirts and tie-dyed tee shirts.

  Within two weeks he’d found out that although she did possess tie-dyed tee shirts, she preferred jeans to skirts. And she didn’t mind wearing her cowboy boots to bed while she rode him. He figured they could work out the rest.

  Chapter One

  Two Years Later

  Jack Sutton was freezing his ass off and remembering another stakeout on the very same corner two years earlier that had been a whole lot more interesting—not to mention warmer.

  Valentine Cross, with her sassy smile and her denim miniskirt. And those red hand-tooled leather cowboy boots that had never seen the inside of a barn but had managed plenty of action in the eighteen months they’d been together.

  They might still be together if he hadn’t panicked during an attack of
macho idiocy and asked her to marry him. Their fights had escalated and the silences between them had become so long that he’d been afraid she was going to wake up one morning and decide they were just too different to stay together.

  Six months and he could still remember the scent of her skin, the taste of her lips, the feel of her breasts pillowed against his chest. Her cry as she rode him while he watched her face as she climaxed. He shuddered and his partner Emmett tapped him on the shoulder and pointed at the alley across the street from where they were parked. He could just make out the bulk of a shadowy figure.

  The figure turned out to be a bundled-up man taking a leak. They weren’t here for someone forced to piss with only a brick building to break the frigid wind. Emmett had gotten a tip that some kid had been stupid enough to finance a serious gambling jones with a mysterious money man who’d been gaining a vicious reputation owing to the nature of his debt-collecting practices.

  The kid may have deserved an ass-kicking for being stupid but he didn’t deserve to be dead. Besides that, they liked knowing everyone who did “business” in the neighborhood and the money man seemed to have sprung from nowhere fast.

  “That’s kind of a nice coat,” Emmett observed when the figure walked out of the alley and stood just outside the street light’s glow. “And the dumbass has earphones and wouldn’t hear someone walk up on him if they were wearing combat boots.”

  “I think the dumbass is listening to instructions,” Jack hissed while he looked through his binoculars and watched the kid’s lips move. “Or giving them.”

  Something wasn’t right.

  “How long have you known this snitch?”

  “I’m thinking not long enough,” Emmett whispered right before an SUV with tinted windows whipped around the corner and gunfire erupted.

  The kid jumped into the speeding vehicle, whose barrage of firepower was concentrated on their unmarked car and the dumbasses who should have known better.

  Thank God none of them could hit the broad side of a barn but the ricochets were a little more interesting than Jack cared for. They’d drawn enough fire that, by the time they’d righted themselves, given chase and called it in, the little pricks had vanished.

  McCoy was going to ream them. This was their second car in a month that was going to need body work.

  * * * * *

  “Sutton!” The sharp demand drew more than his attention when Captain Archer McCoy barked from his open office door. He was holding a file and he didn’t look happy. Great.

  There were a few snickers but everyone pretended to be working as Jack followed McCoy back into his office and shut the door. He took the chair in front of the desk when his silver-haired captain darted a brisk nod toward it.

  “If this is about the car,” Jack started.

  “Forget the damn car,” McCoy growled then ran a rough hand through his hair. “Emmett’s looking into why his snitch burned him.”

  That’s when he noticed for all of his spit-and-polish appearance, the man looked as if he hadn’t sleep in days and his office reeked of fast food and burned coffee.

  McCoy sat down and slid a slim dog-eared and coffee-stained folder across the desk. “I want you to investigate a suspicious missing persons report. The husband reported her missing and swore out a complaint claiming that she assaulted him.”

  Jack flipped through the folder once, glancing at the photograph of a pretty young blonde who’d been missing nearly a month. “Are we looking at her for the assault charge or do you suspect something else?”

  “That’s what I want you to find out. You can find the husband here,” he said, sliding an austere white business card across the table. “He told the EMTs who responded to the 9-1-1 call that he was on the phone trying to get his wife into rehab when she clocked him, emptied out his wall safe and ran.”

  “Do we know how much was in the safe?”

  “He claims only a couple of hundred.”

  “Wouldn’t get her far,” Jack mused, taking a closer look and trying to get a clearer picture of the woman’s guarded expression.

  “No, it wouldn’t and I’ve run out of leads. She doesn’t have any family to speak of and the friends list is pretty small and consists of women she’s served with on committees. I got the impression she kept pretty much to herself.” McCoy cleared his throat and Jack glanced up and didn’t like what he saw. McCoy was rarely hesitant and it didn’t bode well.

  “What?” he asked, though he was pretty sure he didn’t want to know.

  “Most people don’t know how to disappear so thoroughly without some kind of support system. Say a fairy godmother with a perfect hiding place. Which, I have to tell you, I’m really hoping for. Otherwise, I have to wonder about the blood on his clothes that matched her blood type,” he said, and shrugged as if he were having trouble trying to convince himself of something. “That could have happened when she broke the vase over his head but without a body, live or otherwise, all we have is a missing person fleeing an assault and battery charge.”

  Crap. He could almost hear the gears whirring in McCoy’s mind. He should see smoke coming out of his ears any minute now. Wait for it.

  “So we have a pissed-off husband willing to file charges.”

  “He says it’s the only way he’s going to be able to get her into rehab,” McCoy said, his voice as grim as his expression. “When we asked about his wife he said her main interests were her damn self-help books and late-night talk radio.”

  As in Cross My Heart? Double-crap. He didn’t need to ask, he knew now why he wasn’t being reamed for the bullet-ridden car and losing the suspects. For one brief, insane moment he almost wished one of the bullets had dinged him bad enough to have an excuse not to be able to take this case.

  Valentine Cross was going to love having him walk back through her door again. “You do realize that Val and I haven’t been together in six months,” he said and had to swallow a groan when McCoy shot him a determined gaze.

  “We got a call earlier while you were out joyriding. Apparently she’s pissed off someone else and they decided to re-decorate her house. This guy wasn’t as artistic as the last one. I hear she has a collection of fluorescent-orange graffiti to come home to.”

  “You think cleaning a little spray paint off her walls will make her so grateful she’ll give up the location of Bea Wylde’s safe house? I thought we had an unofficial hands-off policy.”

  “I need to know if I’m looking for a corpse or a felon, Jack, and I don’t care what you have to do to find out if Val knows anything. Because if you don’t, I will. And if she’s helping to hide someone she shouldn’t be, I will throw the book at her.”

  Jack didn’t like being threatened and the weird part was, McCoy didn’t look as if he was too pleased with himself either.

  “Why not just bring her in for questioning?”

  McCoy looked as if he wasn’t going to answer but then he cleared his throat. “Because I don’t want the husband to know where we’re looking or what we’ve found until I have a chance to find Evie Masterson first.

  “I tracked down the information that she filed for divorce about a year ago but never went through with it. It doesn’t seem to have been common knowledge and hubby didn’t bother to tell us that.”

  Well, Jack could tell him what was about to become common knowledge. When Valentine found out what was going on, all hell was going to break loose.

  “Is there anything else?”

  He didn’t think it was possible but McCoy’s jaw got even tighter. “I was told to stop spending resources investigating this case, so this is unofficial and you don’t talk to anyone but me.”

  * * * * *

  Valentine Cross leaned across the console and dropped her voice an octave to seduce her listeners and please her producer, Pete Suvarski, who sat enclosed in a glass booth directly in front of her.

  “This is Valentine Cross and you’re listening to Cross My Heart. What’s on your mind, Kansas City, besides the be
low-zero temperatures and that you’re up at three a.m. listening to me?”

  Pete chuckled into her earphones. “You’ve got Bea Wylde on one, Jubal Horn on two and Corbett Sands is breathless on three.”

  Valentine hit three. “Corbett, are you outside in this?”

  “Wait,” he said, background static adding to the gravelly command. “Bad reception.”

  She had no idea where he’d accessed a phone but that was the least of her worries. There was another front moving in that could have the potential of shutting down the city.

  “Your reception’s bad because we’re in the middle of an ice storm. Why aren’t you in a shelter?”

  “They’re full up…turned around…can’t remember…the other one is,” he said, leaving Val to fill in the blanks as his phone cut out.

  “Corbett?”

  There was only dead air and Pete shook his head. She mimicked pushing buttons but Pete was already contacting the volunteer calling tree that would put out an alert for the aging veteran whose street of choice was well known. Someone might be able to find him shelter. Not a perfect plan but Val had learned early that this wasn’t a perfect world.

  Bea Wylde or Jubal? She punched one and hoped Jubal would get tired of being put on hold or that Pete would get through to someone who would take the phone away from him.

  “So, Bea, what are the Wylde Women of Kansas City up to these days?”

  “Tell me you like to play dress-up for a good cause.”

  “Will there be black vinyl involved?”

  Bea laughed her throaty, bad-girl laugh. “Depends on the designer who’s donating time but I wouldn’t be surprised. We’re planning a benefit fashion show and auction to help support Wylde House. A little birdie with a broken wing thought you might volunteer to help us get the word out.”