Hooked

take a chair if you’re not registered here,” he said, clearly uncomfortable with confrontation. “What’s, um, your room number?”
    The kid backed off after Linc flipped open a small leather case and flashed his badge. He palmed the teen a fiver and received a toothy grin in return. Linc resumed his mission, dragging the chair through the sand until he set it down beside Tawny Dell.
    She regarded him with neither curiosity nor annoyance. This woman was accustomed to men hitting on her. In the real world of high-priced call girls, a man needed references to contract an hour’s time with this masterpiece. He had a better shot if he hired her to accompany him on exotic vacations for weekends or longer, far from his wife and kids. A trip like that could set back a salivating customer five or six figures, understood and paid at the end of their arrangement. Only a few women reached that lofty level. Tawny was one of them.
    Because she worked independently and strictly on referrals, she’d never popped up on the radar. Only after another working girl blew the whistle on her did the NYPD get the lowdown.
    He flashed the badge a second time. “Lincoln Walsh, special investigator, NYPD.”
    “My, my,” she said, with an air of feigned surprise. “What’s a New York City detective doing all the way down in South Carolina ? And why would he be after me?”
    He lowered himself into the chaise. “I’m investigating what we believe to be a sex crime.”
    Her expression changed to one of amusement, her voice husky and suggestive. “Have I committed a sex crime? Something…kinky, perhaps?”
    He kne w only one way to play a woman like this―by her rules. “I don’t know, have you?”
    “Hmm, let’s see. Nope, not today, unless masturbating is a crime. You see, I was horny this morning because, would you believe, I woke up all by my lonesome.” She glanced at h is bare ring finger. “You know how it is.”
    Linc felt a tug in his boxers. Jesus, he was turning into those drooling losers watching from the safety of their beach chairs. He leaned closer, feeling her body heat slam into him, and brushed his lips close to her ear to speak. “Had the same problem myself this morning. Now if we were together we wouldn’t have had to resort to such artificial stimulation.”
    “Oh, I doubt your bosses would approve, Mist er―what did you say your name was?”
    “Walsh. Lincoln Walsh.”
    “Ah, Bond. James Bond,” she said, mimicking the famous line.
    She was poking fun at him, but he forgot the mockery when she shifted toward him onto her hip, and those beauties shifted with her. No silicone either. They were the real thing. Damn bikini triangles barely covered her nipples. She took off her sunglasses and matched his stare.
    A few fine lines crinkled the corners of bright, turquoise eyes. Thick dark lashes. No mascara. No makeup at all. The report said she was thirty-two. He wasn’t good at judging age. Everyone appeared younger these days. Maybe it was diet, more exercise, nip and tuck. Forty was the new thirty. Wasn’t that what people said? After a couple of Mid-East tours, he looked and felt every minute of his thirty-eight years.
    Thirty-two wasn’t old for a call girl. Experience meant a lot to men who paid for women costing as much as Tawny. Did a few tiny creases mean the end of an illustrious career? Was that why she quit? He had to admit his division spent more time tracking perverts after prepubescent girls, not women aging like fine wine.
    “You guys are all so predictable,” she said, snapping him back to the present and her beautiful Caribbean eyes with the long, thick lashes. “For your information, I’m not a working girl anymore. I’ve retired. This is the first vacation I’ve taken by myself in years. I even got my neighbor to water my plants, and you’re intent on ruining it for me. What’s so important that you followed me down here?”
    He saw a couple watching as if they were in the middle of a triple-X-rated skin flick. The woman nudged her husband and he slammed his slack-jaw shut.
    “We need to talk, and this isn’t the place. Can we go to your room?”
    “I told you, I’m not in the life any more. You’ll have to find someone else to get your rocks off. And if you persist, I’ll report you to your—what division did you say you were with?”
    “Such sarcasm. Go ahead. I’m with sex crimes, but my boss will make you the same offer I’m going to. And he might not be