Free Staying Cool by E. C. Sheedy

 
     
     
    Chapter 1

     
    Patrick Byrne glanced at the time on the dashboard clock.
    Bang on midnight.
    If the information given him was right, the woman, Silver, driving a snappy, red Mercedes SLK, should be making her exit any second now.
    Leaning forward, he squinted, trying to see through the slashing rain and up the dark path leading to the gate and the mansion beyond it. The bank of trees fronting the property didn't make it easy. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they formed a dense shield against everyday oglers—and PIs, like him, following beautiful hookers.
    This being his first night on her tail, he hadn't yet set eyes on the woman, but he was pretty sure the guy paying for this job, the reclusive and insanely wealthy Harold Coleman wouldn't go to this much trouble and expense for fugly. Either that or the guy had more than the pay-as-you-go hots for her. It'd been known to happen.
    Before he could come up with any other scenario, a red car hustled its expensive butt out of the driveway, powered through a puddle, and sloshed water over the hood of his black Ford.
    Gotcha!
    Silver, the woman with one name and a few too many secrets to suit her current sugar daddy, was in his sights. So too was his next couple of months' rent. Which was all he needed. Then it was a fast goodbye to this PI crap. He couldn't wait.
    He gave the woman some lead time, put the Ford into gear, and pulled in behind her, staying several car lengths back. With luck, her shift was over; she'd go home—wherever that was—and he'd have some uninterrupted think time. He smiled. Damn! This job deserved an "A" for easy. The only trouble ahead that he could see was all Silver's.
    The woman might be a professional, but even so, Coleman obviously didn't hold with his women playing around. So, considering the depth of the man's pockets, if Miss One Name was selling her, no doubt bodacious, ass on the side, she was about to lose a helluva meal ticket. Then again, judging from the ritzy address she'd just left, maybe she'd already covered her losses.
    * * *
    Angry, disappointed, and all-round frustrated, Gina Argento flexed her grip on the leather-wrapped steering wheel while a fusillade of rain pummeled the car's hood and fought the high-speed wipers for windshield territory. Pulling to a stop at an intersection about ten minutes from the mansion, she hesitated. She looked left, in the direction of the rented penthouse—where she should go—then right, toward home.
    She turned right.
    Her meeting with her boss, Tanner Cross, had not gone well. "You're too close to this," he'd said, for the thousandth time.
    Tanner's hard jaw and flinty eyes might have been telling her she was on the edge of failure, but she wasn't about to admit it—to him or to herself.
    But, like it or not, she couldn't do anything more tonight.
    All she wanted at that moment was to get home, wash her face clean of makeup, put on snuggly PJs, then hit the bed and cover up her head—with not a man in sight until her dinner date with Coleman tomorrow night.
    She pulled into her driveway, turned off the car, took some deep breaths, and rested her head on the steering wheel.
    Ignoring the bile rising in her throat, she acknowledged the inevitable: she'd have to sleep with Coleman. So far, she'd held him off, but the hard-to-get routine only worked on a man like him for so long. That she'd lasted until now was a miracle, but batting false eyelashes, and blah-blahing about how she was worth the wait, was getting old fast. If she was going to learn anything, she had to get him alone—intimately alone—a place where his personal, three-hundred-pound Igor, with his unblinking salamander eyes, wasn't standing guard like a concrete plinth.
    That place was the bedroom.
    When her stomach lurched, she sighed noisily in lieu of cursing. "Sex, it's only sex, for God's sake," she said to the rain soaked windshield. "And it's with Coleman. It's not like it's going to contribute to global