Damn pretty morning for it, if you paid attention. One of those sparkling clear, hint-of-a-breeze mornings you'd wish you'd prized come July.

Or he could just go down and sit on the dock, look out toward the salt flats and watch the sun play on them. Take the coffee down and just sit and do nothing on a pretty spring morning-a damn good deal.

And what was Joe doing this fine morning? Sitting in a cell? A padded room? What was the redhead up to?

It was no use pretending it was just an ordinary day in the life when he couldn't get yesterday out of his head. No point thinking he wanted to sit on the pier nursing a hangover and pretending everything was just fine and dandy.

So he went up the back steps to his bedroom, hunted out clean jeans and a shirt that didn't look like it had been slept in. Then he pulled his wallet, keys and other pocket paraphernalia out of the jeans he had slept in after he'd dragged his half-drunken ass to bed.

At least he'd been smart enough to take a cab, he reminded himself as he scooped his fingers through his shaggy mass of brown hair. Maybe he should wear a suit. Should he wear a suit?

Shit.

He decided a suit was a kind of showing off when worn to visit a for mer employee in Joe's current situation. Besides, he didn't feel like wearing a damn suit.

Still, the redhead might like suits, and since he had every intention of tracking her down, a suit could play to his advantage.

Hell with it.

He started out, jogged down the sweeping curve of the main staircase, across the polished sea of white tiles of the grand foyer. When he opened one of the arching double doors, he saw the little red Jag zip down the last curve of his drive.

The man who folded himself out of it was wearing a suit, and it was sure to be Italian-as would be the shoes. Phineas T. Hector could manage to look perfectly groomed after mud wrestling in a hurricane.