“I know about the Wolverines.” A worried crease formed between his eyebrows.
“They didn’t care that I was his old lady. They…made me do things around the clubhouse and when I didn’t do them right they…were violent. Levi didn’t intervene. He said I deserved what I got.” Lana’s voice thickened with remembered pain. “Sometimes he would just…watch them hurt me. Only thing he stopped them doing was…”
A stick cracked not more than ten feet away, and a gasp broke free from her lips as she glimpsed the beam of a flashlight.
James bolted to his feet and helped Lana off the forest floor. “Looks like we’ll have to continue our date in a new location.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Carpe Noctem?”
Lana stared at the golden plaque affixed to the wall in the now-familiar Gastown alley. “This is where you’re taking me to escape from the drug dealers? The cab we caught outside the University Endowment Lands would have taken us anywhere. You must really get off on the whole danger thing.”
James chuckled. “You certainly do.”
Lana’s cheeks flamed at his overly accurate statement. If they hadn’t been interrupted in the forest, no doubt their date would have involved even more sex in unusual places.
James slid his access pass through the reader. “I need to speak to Tony,” he said. “I overheard something at the beach that could be a concern. He knows I’m undercover and he has a knack for sorting through thorny issues.”
Lana shuffled her feet. “How about I just wait for you out here? My last two experiences haven’t been the most positive. The first time I visited the club you interrogated me and then threw me out. The second time you riled me up so I would get thrown out. This time I’ll just save you the trouble and stay out here.”
“You have no problem endangering your life to get a picture for your case, but you’re afraid to go into a sex club?”
She saw the challenge for what it was, but she couldn’t stop her hands from finding her hips. “I’m not afraid.”
“Good.” He clasped her hand and led her down the stairwell and into the black-and-white-tiled reception area. Trixie hustled out to greet them wearing a barely there, blood-red corset dress lined with gold trim, red mesh stockings and red stilettos.
Lana swallowed and looked down at the little black dress she had thrown on after they had had sex on her desk three different ways. Jackie had convinced her to keep a selection of outfits at the office for various emergencies, but she hadn’t been prepared for an impromptu visit to a sex club.
“I’m…er…overdressed.”
Trixie gave her a wink. “Not at all. Your dress is tight, short and low cut. You just make the grade. And there’s someone here tonight I know you’ll want to see, so you get a free pass.”
After James headed to Tony’s office, Trixie walked her to the bar. Lana kept an eye out for leather jackets with Hades patches but the only leather in the club was the kinky kind.
“Katy!” Trixie called out. “Look who’s here.”
Lana smiled as a woman with long brown hair turned around. Katy Sinclair. Her first surveillance suspect. Her first case. The reason she’d met James.
“Lana.” Katy gave her a warm smile and turned to her companion, a glamorous woman in head-to-toe leather. “This is the private investigator who saved my life after Steven had his breakdown.”
They exchanged greetings and Katy and Lana chatted about Katy’s new law practice, her children and their new house in West Vancouver.
“Hey, it’s my favorite PI.” Katy’s husband, Mark, joined them from behind the bar. Also a lawyer, and James’s best friend, he and Katy had met on the same case and been instrumental in putting some serious criminals behind bars. Tall, with broad shoulders, sable hair and dark eyes, Mark had been the object of Lana’s fantasies until she realized he was totally smitten with Katy.
“I’ve been curious about the woman who managed to tame James,” Mark said. “He’s been quiet about you two for so long that I thought you weren’t together anymore.”
Lana swallowed and her cheeks flamed. “We aren’t. Weren’t. Aren’t. I don’t know.”
How humiliating. Either they were going out or they weren’t. How could she not know where they stood?
Mark chuckled. “Totally understand. I lived with him for almost ten years and he still confuses the hell out of me.”
Lana stiffened. She had forgotten how close Mark and James were. He probably knew James better than anyone. And there was a question dancing on the tip of her tongue.