On Thin Ice by Susan Andersen Page B

I’m telling you, Connie, it would be a real temptation if this was just someone who was going to be left behind when we move on.” Then she shrugged and shook her head. “But that’s not the case; he’ll be coming right along with us when we leave. So, yeah, I believe I’m gonna steer clear. Who needs the aggravation? No,” she mused, and Connie wondered just whom she was trying to convince here, “I really don’t think it’s smart to complicate a working relationship with sex.”
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    Mick had different ideas on the matter. Restless and edgy, he stalked the corridors of the arena trying to burn off the synapse of hot energy that pulsed along his nerve endings and arced between his cells. Mixing sex with business sounded like a fine idea to him. It sounded just about right in fact. Mixing a whole lot . . . of both.
    Okay, so it wasn’t what had been in the game plan when he’d set out on this assignment. But she’d changed the rules tonight when she’d stood there staring up at him with that fraudulent wide-eyed uncertainty. He didn’t like being played for a fool.
    God, he had to hand it to her, though, she was good. Mick unknowingly echoed the same sentiments Sasha had expressed about him. Hell, she had to know how good she looked, yet she was smart; she hadn’t played that angle at all. Instead she’d worked it casual and friendly and then had stood there all but trembling when he’d turned up the heat a little. Those big gray eyes had told him all sorts of contradictory stories. They’d seemed attracted but uncertain. Come closer, they’d said; stay away.
    Hell, yeah. She was damn good.
    He’d never in his life played the whore for an assignment, no matter how important it was. Well, call him a slut, but this was one instance where he was more than willing. He’d spent most of his time the last few years hanging out with the dregs of the earth. But they at least were halfway honest about their unrelenting avarice. Most of them owned up to it; they didn’t pretend to be something diametrically opposed to what they actually were. Just who did this little honey think she was fooling? No one who sold product that killed off half the junkies on the West Coast was saving it for marriage.
    But if that’s the way she wanted to play the game, then he would, by God, play it right along with her.

F OUR
    Mick never got an opportunity to play it one way or another. Sasha Miller managed to avoid him quite handily for what remained of the Follies’ Sacramento run. Only once were they alone together and even then “alone” was a relative term. She requested a meeting to discuss the arrangements she’d previously mentioned, but insisted on holding it in the hotel dining room. They were alone in the sense that nobody bothered them, but it was in the midst of a roomful of diners.
    And just to add to his general frustration, even her phone remained mute.
    He knew better than to expect instantaneous results on any assignment but found it aggravating nevertheless in this instance. For the first time in his career he was impatient, anxious to rush a case, unwilling to let it unfold at its own pace. In all his years of doing covert work, he had never felt the pull of an unwanted attraction involving the subject of an investigation, and be it involuntary or otherwise, the fact that he was battling such an attraction now made him competitive in ways he’d never before encountered.
    Dammit to hell, it took more than a pretty face and a great body to distract Mick Vinicor from his given goal. True, his quarry were generally men. But he’d been offered the favors of innumerable girlfriends, whores—hell, even the occasional sister or wife—in the course of previous investigations. Sometimes, if the woman herself was willing and not simply the chattel of some drug czar, he’d availed himself of those offers.