License to Thrill by Lori Wilde Page A

his apartment caught fire didn’t mean he was up to his old tricks.
    Believe that and there’s a bridge in Brooklyn someone is dying to sell you.
    Sighing, she flicked on Maybelline’s computer and leaned back in the chair as she waited for the hard drive to boot up.
    After leaving the scene of the fire, Mason had insisted on going back to her grandmother’s trailer to help her clean up the mess and repair the broken bedroom windowpane. She’d been touched by his offer and then angry with herself for going all soft and gushy inside just because some guy did a decent thing.
    Plus, she couldn’t stop thinking about the way his hard, lean back—all sinewy and masculine—had felt beneath her when she’d knocked him to the floor and saved him from the gunman’s bullet. Even now, hours later, the memory of his body caused the moisture to evaporate from her mouth and her pulse to speed up.
    She wasn’t falling for his charms. No how. No way. She understood that old song and dance. Guys were oh-so-delightful at first, at least until they landed you in their beds. After they got what they wanted, it was so long, Charlee, been nice knowing you, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.
    It was closing in on two A.M. but she was too wired to sleep. After dropping Mason off at the Bellagio, she schlepped down to the office to hunt through Maybelline’s files in search of clues.
    But instead of probing the database on the hard drive, she found herself logging onto the Internet. She never consciously decided to Google him, but the next thing she knew, there she was, typing Mason’s name into the search engine.
    And up popped a string of references.
    Links to newspaper articles and magazine interviews and high-society pages. She discovered his family held a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.
    When she stumbled across a detailed listing of the numerous companies they owned—including a silver mine in New Mexico, a flagship hotel in the Bahamas, and a top accounting firm in Hollywood—Charlee realized his family was richer than God and she was in far deeper trouble than she ever imagined.
    Damn her and her illogical Prince Charming complex.
    She found a photograph of Mason escorting a glossily beautiful blonde to some debutante shindig and the pinch of jealousy biting into her stomach scared her.
    Good gravy. What did she have to be jealous of? She could never compete with such a woman. Nor did she want to. She’d had her fill of rich men.
    Briefly, she thought of Gregory Blankensonship, the first man she’d ever loved, and winced. Would she ever recover from his betrayal?
    Oh, stop whining. You’ve got work to do.
    Determined, she logged off the Internet, picked up the telephone, and began calling hospitals, hotels, airlines, and bus stations. Maybelline, Nolan, and Elwood simply couldn’t have disappeared into thin air.
    She might not be lucky in love, but she was a damned fine private investigator. And one way or another, she would find them.
    Mason had come to Vegas to find his grandfather and drag him back home in time to prevent his brother from taking sole credit for closing the biggest deal in the history of Gentry Enterprises. Retrieving Gramps should have been quick, clean, and simple.
    But instead of achieving his clear-cut goal, a little more than twelve hours after arriving in town, Mason found himself embroiled in a royal mess featuring one testy lady P.I., her missing granny, a ransacked trailer house, a disgruntled gunman, and a very suspicious fire. What he couldn’t figure out was how Gramps fit into the chaos.
    Mason had tumbled into bed, certain he would fall asleep within minutes, but slumber eluded him. Two-thirty and he lay wide awake listening to the bedside clock tick off the seconds. Dammit. Charlee had promised to come around for him at six A.M. SO they could start searching for their grandparents again.
    Charlee.
    Now there was one hell of a woman. Tough and unflinching, she