Coop nodded.

Keith’s left shoulder went up. “You think it was me?”

Coop considered it. “Not really.”

“But I have a more suspicious nature,” Piper said. “I heard you took a swing at Coop when he fired your ass, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.”

Keith’s face flushed with anger. “I’ve done a lot of shitty crap in my life, but I’d never do that.”

Piper bore in-drilling him on where he’d been that night. At the bar working, as it turned out. Where he’d been this afternoon-asleep with no alibi. But Coop stopped paying attention. Whatever else Keith had done, he hadn’t been behind any of this.

While Pipe continued her interrogation, Coop took a pull on his beer and contemplated hidden enemies. He hated this. He wanted his enemies where he could see them, right across the line of scrimmage.


***

Soccer wasn’t Coop’s game, but Deidre Joss had invited him to Toyota Park to see the Chicago Fire play D.C. United, and he wouldn’t turn her down. He liked everything about Deidre, from her personality to her reputation, everything except how long it was taking her to commit to his operation.

He glanced across the stadium’s executive viewing suite at Piper. She managed to look both cute and sexy in a loopy orange sweater and a pair of jeans that actually fit. Her predictable dark tousle of a hairstyle wouldn’t work on another woman but somehow fit her perfectly. Pipe was the least needy female he’d ever been involved with, and their relationship was working out even better than he’d hoped.

He’d invited her to come with him right after they’d returned from last night’s confrontation with Keith. She’d launched into a predictable refusal-they weren’t dating, and this sounded like a date-then immediately reversed herself and accepted. He knew why. She wanted to keep him in her sights. Totally maddening and completely unnecessary. He’d nearly withdrawn the invitation, but then he hadn’t. He respected perseverance, no matter how misguided.

When he’d picked her up, she’d dropped a bombshell on him. A flood of online complaints about Spiral had popped up, complaints about everything from rude serving staff to dirty glasses to bad music-none of which was true. The reviews looked as though they’d been planted, and she’d already started the process of trying to get them taken down, but she’d warned him it would take time.

He was furious, and not even her reminder that she had years of experience handling problems like this had mollified him. She didn’t understand. She couldn’t. He had a new life, and failure wasn’t an option.

Deidre stepped away from the group she’d been talking to and caught his eye. He hoped like hell she hadn’t caught wind of the bad reviews. Forcing a smile, he went over to join her.


***

Piper gazed out onto the soccer field from the sweeping windows of Deidre Joss’s viewing suite, but the action on the field was secondary to the puzzle pieces that refused to fit together in her brain. She didn’t get it. The mugging, the drone, and the tire slashing were active acts. But the online sabotage and the false tip to the INS seemed more cerebral. How did it all come together?

Behind her, she heard Deidre laugh at something Coop was saying. The two of them looked as though they belonged together. Deidre, tall and poised as a ballerina, and Coop, all rangy self-confidence. A pair of good-looking high-achievers completely at home with the luxuries their hard work had brought them. Deidre was obviously taken with Coop, but she wasn’t pushy about it.

“Enjoying the game?” Noah Parks said as he came up beside her.

All afternoon she’d watched him take care of Deidre. He didn’t crowd her, but if Deidre needed a fresh drink, he was there. If she seemed to tire of a conversation, he stepped in to deflect it. Piper could use a Noah Parks in her life.

“It’s not like watching the Bears, but yes, I am,” she said. On the field, the Fire successfully tipped away a shot at the goal. “These are really nice digs.”

“Deidre has a skybox at Soldier Field, too, and one at the Midwest Sports Complex.”

Where the Stars played. “A girl can’t have too many skyboxes.”

He laughed. “She uses them for business entertainment.” He gazed through the glass down at the field. “Interesting that you’ve become part of Coop’s inner circle, considering the way you two started out.”

He was probably fishing for information, but he wasn’t getting anything from her. “He’s bored, and I’m a novelty.”

The Fire scored their first goal, and she excused herself to get a hot dog from the buffet.

Everybody in the suite wanted to talk to Coop, and it wasn’t until the second half that he approached her. “I just learned that Deidre Joss is the person who hired you to follow me.”

Piper straightened. “Why do you think that?”

“Because she told me.”

“Really?” She’d spoken too loudly, and some of the people in the skybox turned to stare, but Piper was outraged. After swearing Piper to secrecy and nearly destroying her career in the process, Deidre Joss had just blurted it out to Mr. Golden Eyes?

It was a good thing her cell vibrated right then. She pulled it out of her jeans pocket and glanced at the screen. Why was Tony calling her?

“Coop turned off his phone again,” Tony said when she answered. “Is he with you?”

“Yes. You want to talk to him?”

“No. Tell him we’ve got a big problem, and he needs to get over here right away.”


***

The kitchen was infested with cockroaches. Coop had never seen so many. Hundreds of them scattered from the light he’d just turned on. They scampered across the floor, the counters, along the stovetop. A pale-faced Tony was huddled in the hallway, right outside the door. “An exterminator’s on his way. We’re going to have to close down for at least a week.”

Wonder Woman took one look at the insect bedlam and headed for the hallway, too. “I am so out of here.” She spun back. “If any of those get up in my apartment, you’re a dead man.”


***

Coop barged into her apartment a few hours later. She was sitting on her couch, curled over her laptop. The exterminator was already at work downstairs, but Tony had been right. They’d be closed at least a week. Exactly seven days too long.

“You’d better have shaken out your clothes before you came in here,” she said.

He stalked across the room. “You’re one hell of a bodyguard.”

“I’m not your bodyguard, remember? And I’ve been doing what I had to do.”

“Hiding from a few bugs?”

She shuddered. “I’m not proud of myself.”

There it was again. That refusal to defend herself over anything she perceived as a personal weakness.

“I’ve been doing some research,” she said as he started to pace. “You can buy cockroaches by the hundreds on the Internet. Did you know their severed heads can survive if they’re refrigerated? Only for a few hours, but still.”

“I didn’t know that. And I wish I didn’t know it now.”

“I’ll start tracking down dealers tomorrow, but finding out who placed the order is a long shot. They even sell them on Amazon.”

But his mind wasn’t on Amazon, and neither was hers. “With Keith out of the picture,” she said, “we both know who the next most logical suspect is.”

He didn’t ask who she meant. He knew.

She closed the lid on her laptop, stared at it for a moment, then rubbed her eyes. “He’s in Miami.”

16

South Beach was a twenty-four-hour carnival of swaying palms; Latin rock music; Easter-egg-colored art deco buildings; and shapely, long-haired women strolling along Ocean Drive with hoop earrings the size of bracelets and colorful thongs showing through tight white shorts. She and Coop arrived early the next afternoon at the Setai hotel, a Collins Avenue sepulcher serving the very wealthy, where Coop had booked a suite with a nightly room rate that could have bought her a set of tires and a new laptop.

Prince Aamuzhir had left London three days earlier for Miami and his five-hundred-foot yacht. Piper had wanted to go see him alone, but Coop had loudly vetoed the idea, pointing out that she couldn’t get to Aamuzhir without him. She’d attempted to dissuade him, but he wasn’t a man to hide from his enemies, and she couldn’t put her heart into it.

Coop had no trouble wrangling an invitation to the yacht, and exactly one month from the day he’d caught her spying on him at the club, they were back in his old stomping grounds. Everyone from the skycaps to the food truck vendors selling empanadas greeted him as a returning hero. She did her best to stay in the background and was disheartened to realize that some part of her wanted to tell the world he was her lover.

While he worked out in the hotel gym, she took in the ocean view through the massive wall of bedroom windows and changed from her travel clothes into one of the outfits she’d picked up in a rush shopping trip. They were meeting some of his former teammates for dinner, an invitation she’d tried to get out of.

“I’m only pretending to be your girlfriend when we’re on the yacht tomorrow,” she’d reminded him. “Tonight you’ll be with your old teammates. You don’t need a fake girlfriend.”

For some reason, that had irritated him. “You’re a little more than a fake. We’re sleeping together.”

“A technicality.”

“You’re going with me,” he’d retorted.

She came out of the suite’s luxury bathroom as Coop returned from the gym. The guilt that had been dogging her once again nipped at her heels. If she hadn’t talked him into helping Faiza escape, he wouldn’t be in this situation.

He stopped inside the door of the suite and stared at her. “Where the hell did you get that?”

She gazed down at her short hot-pink A-line jersey dress. “What’s wrong with it?” The spaghetti straps that crossed in the back hadn’t come undone, and the stack of silver bangles encircled her wrist in the proper place. She’d put on makeup and traded the sneakers she’d worn on the plane for barely-there sandals. She’d even pieced out her hair with what was left of an old jar of hair gel. So what if she’d bought her dress at H &M instead of one of his ridiculously overpriced boutiques?

“Nothing’s wrong with it,” he said, circling her. “That’s why the world as I know it has come to an end. You look female.”

He was in rare form for a man willing to put his life in danger by meeting up with a powerful prince who could be holding a big grudge, but every time she tried to apologize for getting him into such a dangerous situation, he became more annoyed, so she gave him the once-over instead. “More than anyone, you should know I look very female.”

“Not with your clothes on. At least not most of the time.”

She appreciated his insight. “I know how to put clothes together, the same way I know how to cook. I just prefer not to.”

“Thanks to Duke Dove.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Out of curiosity, did he ever mention that you’re pretty?”

“Why would he?” She didn’t like the way he was studying her, as if he saw something she couldn’t. “I have to look at least a little like I could be one of your playmates. It’s a stretch, I know, but-”

“Not that much of a stretch.”

The conversation was making her jittery. “These are strictly work clothes, and I expensed everything, so it’s all yours when the job’s done. Except for my sandals. And the bracelets are from an old boyfriend who didn’t know me nearly well enough.”

“Obviously not.” He sniffed the air as if he’d smelled something odious. “Are you wearing perfume?”

“Magazine sample.”

“Leave it between the pages. You smell great without it.”

And so did he, even after his workout. Male sweat on a clean body. She wanted to strip that sweaty T-shirt right off him and drag him into the bedroom.

He looked thoughtful. “If I own that dress, that means I can rip it off you anytime I want, right?”

“I suppose so. Although I’d appreciate it if you’d wait until the job is over.”

“That,” he said, “is going to be hard.”

She dipped her gaze. “So I see.”

He smiled, but the guilt she was carrying dampened her own amusement. She should have come up with a way to help Faiza without involving him.

His irritation returned. “Stop it, Pipe. You didn’t make me do anything I wasn’t willing to do.”

“I know that,” she said, way too vehemently.

He arched a brow at her, reading her mind in a way no one else had ever been able to.

She picked up his cell. “One of the prince’s people called while you were gone. About a launch to take us out to his yacht tomorrow.”