Ch. 34 – Rico
R ico couldn’t take his eyes off his laptop screen. He scrolled up and down the private website again and again, staring at the aggressively pleasant images of The Terrace, the preppy, multi-use space that Porter Development Co. wanted to build on top of the corpse of The Rose and Thorn. With Mayor Bishop’s personal seal of approval, of course.
“That dirty bastard,” he said, shaking his head.
“It’s a big story,” Jax insisted from her spot on the couch. Her right leg extended over the armrest, her swaddled ankle hanging in the air. “Right?”
Rico sat on the floor of her small apartment, his laptop perched on the coffee table. They’d just spent the past hour having a “sharing is caring” sesh with their story notes, and Rico’s head was spinning with the implications.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s review everything we’ve got so far.”
“Easy.” Jax stroked the spotted kitten in her lap, then held out a finger. “One, Porter Development Co. funds a super PAC that donated to Bishop’s re-election campaign. ”
“Two.” Rico took up the thread. “The super PAC has a history of supporting local candidates who then go to bat for their building projects.”
Jax leaned her head back on the couch. Her socked foot wiggled in the air. “Three, Bishop tried to sneak a measure through the city council that would have revoked Theo’s zoning exemption.”
“Wait.” Rico frowned. “First, Bishop tried to strong-arm Theo into selling him the winery. Then he tried to revoke the zoning ordinance.”
“Right. The fucker,” Jax agreed.
Styles stood in her lap and stretched, pushing out his front paws and sticking his furry butt in the air. He hopped gracefully to the floor and padded to Rico.
“So, four . . . no, five,” Jax picked up. “We know Porter Development Co. plans to build The Terrace on Theo’s land. They’ve already done extensive planning for it.”
“Bishop probably clued them in to the fact that Theo would never sell,” Rico added, “but they obviously think the project’s going through anyway.”
The kitten approached him cautiously. Rico reached out to pet the cat, but Styles reared back.
“Put your hand out,” Jax instructed him. “Let him smell you.”
Rico followed her instructions. The kitten looked at him with large green eyes, then leaned forward to sniff Rico’s hand. After a moment, he pressed his head under Rico’s palm.
“Ha! Your cat likes me.” Rico grinned at Jax.
“There’s no accounting for taste.” A saucy smile twitched on her lips, then she frowned as if forcing her mind back to the topic at hand.
“Okay, so the story’s obvious,” she said. “Porter wants Theo’s land for their WASPY little compound. They financed Bishop’s campaign in exchange for his help to kick Theo out. Isn’t that illegal? ”
Rico shook his head. “We can’t prove a tit-for-tat. Plus, politicians award their donors all the time. That’s why corporations pour so much money into campaigns.”
“But what about Bishop trying to sneak through the change to Theo’s land use permit?” Jax pressed.
Rico stroked Styles. The kitten’s fur was surprisingly soft. “It definitely doesn’t look good, but Bishop could say he forgot to add it to the agenda. There’s still not much of a story here.”
Jax groaned. “Fine. Then how about the part where Bishop sabotaged Theo’s irrigation system, then came back to do more damage? You think that’s a story?”
“You’re getting ahead of yourself,” Rico chided her. “Let’s start looking at what we don’t know. Did someone sabotage the irrigation system? If so, who was it?”
“The mayor!” Jax’s foot waved in the air.
“Do we have proof it was the mayor?”
Jax grumbled something under her breath.
“Exactly,” Rico said. “But we do know that Bishop wants to buy The Rose and Thorn. Why?”
“Because he knows Porter wants the land. He can probably sell it to them at a premium.”
“Yes! He has inside information about the true value of the property. He’s using his political connections to enrich himself. That could be a good story.”
“Could be?” Jax frowned.
“Well, we only have Theo’s word that Bishop pushed him to sell.”
Jax sat up. “Theo wouldn’t lie about something like that.”
“You know that and I know that,” Rico responded evenly, “but it’s going to be Bishop’s word against Theo’s. We need something more solid.” He continued stroking the cat. The action was oddly meditative.
“Okay, right.” Jax frowned in concentration, her dark brows puckering over the bridge of her nose. Rico could practically hear the hum of her mind as she reviewed the angles of their story. He felt the intoxication of chasing down a story, putting the pieces together, and unveiling secrets.
He knew Jax was right there with him. They were operating on the same wavelength, feeding off each other’s energy. God, she was breathtaking.
“So, where do we go from here?” she asked.
“We need to keep digging,” Rico managed, forcing himself to focus. “Maybe Bishop already made promises to Porter that he could deliver the property.”
“Or maybe Porter’s giving him kickbacks to get city council votes,” Jax added excitedly. “Bishop’s as dirty as a flea at a whorehouse. I know it.”
Rico laughed but waved a finger at her. “Don’t make assumptions, Jacklyn. We’ve got to follow the facts, not speculate.”
“We’ve also got to follow our gut,” she shot back. “And my gut says he’s a sleazeball.”
The kitten began to purr and flopped next to Rico’s leg. Rico rubbed his fluffy belly. It was delightful. “On Monday, I’m going to reach out to my source and lean on him hard,” he said. “I’ll find out if he saw or heard anything suspicious during the campaign.”
“And I’m going to see if I can find anyone at Porter who will talk,” Jax said.
“We can’t let any of this get back to Bishop,” Rico warned her. “If he knows we’re looking into this story, he might start destroying evidence or worse.” He remembered the sight of Jax running toward his headlights, the shadow of a man chasing after her.
“Meow?” Styles accused.
Rico looked down. He’d stopped petting the cat. In fact, his hands were curled into fists. When had that happened?
“There’s something else . . .” Jax’s voice dropped in volume. Her lips pinched as if her words were distasteful. “Bishop may have inside help.”
Rico raised an eyebrow. “Whaddya mean?”
She blew out a breath. “When the-man-who-might-not-be-Bishop-but-was-totally-Bishop came to the winery the night of our competing stakeouts, he opened the side door.”
“Theo might have forgotten to lock it,” Rico answered easily. “You get him talking about his new red blend and the world doesn’t exist anymore.”
“True, but I closed up that night,” Jax told him. “I could’ve sworn I locked the side door.”
Rico rubbed his face. He didn’t like where this was going. “Who was at the winery that night?”
Jax’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Breanna.”
“Shit.” Without thinking, Rico raked a hand through his hair, mussing its careful dishevelment. Theo’s relationship with his girlfriend was on the rocks, but what else was new? If Yucca Hills gave out an annual award for couple who shouldn’t be together, they’d be the champs, four years running. But even still, Rico couldn’t imagine Breanna teaming up with Bishop to destroy the winery. She knew The Rose and Thorn was Theo’s reason for living.
“I just can’t believe she’d do that to Theo,” Jax said, echoing his thoughts. “Though it does seem like she’s always competing with the winery for his affection. ”
“And she always loses,” Rico added.
“Yeah,” Jax agreed softly.
They looked at each other.
“But she wouldn’t.” Jax’s tone wasn’t so sure.
“We can’t say anything to Theo. Not unless we find something solid,” Rico warned.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” Jax said, then let out a rough laugh. “The other day she almost seemed like a real human being, and now I’m wondering if she’s stabbing her boyfriend in the back.”
“We don’t know anything yet,” Rico cautioned her.
Jax’s phone dinged. She reached for it on the coffee table, grunted, and waggled her fingers at him. Rico let her struggle for another second, then picked up the phone and handed it to her. Three more messages dinged through in quick succession.
Jax unlocked the screen, scrolled, then rolled her eyes.
“Everything okay?” Rico asked. “Sky’s not falling, is it?” Though if it were, Diane would probably give that story to Melissa, too, and laugh in his face while the world burned around them.
Jax groaned. “My friends are reading this dumb book. A couple of ’em have some very hot takes they absolutely have to share.” Even as she spoke, her phone vibrated with several more incoming messages. Jax snickered at one, then locked her phone.
“What kind of book?” Rico asked innocently.
Jax shrugged. “Like I said, it’s dumb.”
“What’s it about?”
She looked away. “Um, a murder.”
Rico smirked. “Does it, by chance, feature a Chippendales wannabe rocking a fedora and a rather well-endowed lady on the brink of a major wardrobe malfunction? ”
Her brown eyes widened and color bloomed across her cheeks. Then she dropped her face into her hands. “You saw the book on my nightstand.”
And just like that, downstairs Rico kicked reporterly Rico out of the captain’s chair in his brain. He absolutely loved the way Jax’s flush was spreading down her neck, past the collar of her loose T-shirt.
“I didn’t know you liked smutty books, Jacklyn,” Rico said softly. He gently nudged the kitten out of the way and stood. Styles gave him an offended look. Just let me have this, Rico silently begged the feline. Thankfully, the bro code held. Styles scampered into one of the bedrooms.
“My friends made me read it,” Jax mumbled. “I hate it.”
“Did you finish the book?” He approached the couch. She looked at him and shook her head. “I’m on chapter twenty.” Heat and hunger flickered in her eyes. She licked her lips nervously.
“Oh, chapter twenty. Clearly, you don’t like this book,” Rico crooned, and sat next to her hip.
“I’m reading it ironically,” she mumbled.
“Did Fedora Fabio and Heaving Bosom Lady kiss in the book?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Did you like that part?”
She nodded again.
“How did it go? Like this?” He leaned over and pressed his lips against hers. Jax’s mouth opened immediately to him. Thank God. He’d spent last night in agony remembering her honeysuckle scent, the perfection of her sleeping face under glow-in-the-dark stars.
“What else happened in the book?” he murmured against her neck.
“Murder, I told you that already,” she breathed back, sassy as ever. “Let’s stop talking about the book. ”
“Let’s stop talking,” Rico agreed. He cupped the back of her head and put his mouth over hers. He couldn’t go slow. Not this time. He’d spent the whole night fantasizing about what he had wanted to do to her yesterday. About what her body would feel like under his hands. Under his tongue. What she would feel like inside.
As he claimed Jax with his lips, Rico pressed his body against hers to make as much contact as possible. Distantly, he felt her hands tangle into his hair as her body moved against his, stroking him through their clothes. He was already rock solid and his balls ached for release. Her legs wrapped around his waist.
“Jacklyn,” he murmured, dipping down to suck on her neck. “My beautiful Jax.”
“Rico,” she whispered back, and kissed his temple. It was such a tender, sweet kiss that he shivered with emotion. He already felt naked in front of her even with all his clothes on. Jax seemed to sense his fear, his shame, his constant need to prove himself, and yet she didn’t turn away. In fact, she turned toward him.
And miraculously, with Jax in his arms, he didn’t feel afraid at all. You are enough, she seemed to say with the warm glow in her brown eyes. He could weep, but instead, he slipped a hand beneath her shirt and cupped the heavy swell of her breast. Her breath caught, and a slight shiver ran through her body. Rico dropped his hand, pulled his lips from the gully of her throat, and looked at her.
“Do you want to stop?” he asked. Please, God, say no. He’d never wanted anything more than this woman beneath him, but if she asked, he’d endure the world’s worst case of blue balls.
“No,” Jax whispered. “I’m okay.”
“You sure?”
She swallowed, then nodded. “I’m, um, nervous. But I want this. I want you. ”
“We’ll take it slow.” It was a brutally painful promise, but for Jax, he’d keep it, even if his penis never forgave him.
Rico slipped his hand under her shirt again. The feel of her heavy breast in his palm sent lightning bolts through his balls. He moved his thumb across the cup of her bra and felt her hardened nipple beneath the fabric.
Jax whimpered and fisted his hair. The sound of her pleasure only inflamed him more. Rico wanted to extract a hundred whimpers from her, an unending chorus of them. He bit her neck and stroked his thumb across her nipple harder.
“I’m going to make you beg for release,” he promised as he pulled the baggy T-shirt over her head. Her loose dark hair floated back down to her shoulders and her nose ring glinted as she arched beneath him.
“Don’t you . . .dare,” she huffed.
“Just wait and see,” he teased.
Her breasts begged for release from the plain white bra that held them captive. The swells of tender pale flesh heaved over the cups with her fast, panting breaths. Rico buried his mouth into her cleavage as he moved his hands around the sides of her ribs and located the fastener of her bra. With a smooth, well-practiced motion, he unhooked her bra.
Jax’s breasts were even more glorious than he imagined. Large and round, they possessed rosy-pink areolas dimpled with goose bumps. He had to taste her and immediately latched onto a nipple.
She whimpered again.
The front door flew open. “Hellllllo!” a voice cried. “Oh shit! Didn’t know I was interrupting.”
Rico rocketed up. Jax scrabbled for her T-shirt. His balls practically exploded in frustration as he glanced up at a grinning blonde standing just inside the apartment door. A pink, flower-patterned suitcase stood next to her.
“Haley! What the hell are you doing here?” Jax squeaked as she scooted from beneath Rico’s body and held her shirt against her breasts.
The blonde giggled. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m back, bitch!”