by Kay Hooper
“And me?”
“You too. No demands, no complications, no hurts—no problems. Just what I trust will be a pleasant memory for both of us.”
Wolfe knew he’d be a fool to turn her down. There had been a few similar offers in the past, which he had promptly accepted and for which he felt no regrets. But Storm . . . Every instinct warned him that, with Storm, there could never be anything simple and uncomplicated, least of all an affair.
“No,” he said harshly.
She didn’t flinch at his tone or appear the slightest bit ruffled by the rejection. In fact, she smiled at him, and her drawling voice remained casual and matter-of-fact.
“Maybe I should have warned you about the Tremaines. We don’t give up so easily.”
Wolfe didn’t say a word when she turned and headed briskly for the computer room. And he didn’t move. He just stood there, surrounded by lighted display cases of gems in a virtually silent museum, and he would have sworn he could see the gauntlet flung down on the marble floor in front of him.
As she neared the computer room, Storm’s steps slowed and she drew a deep breath.
“Yaaa,” Bear murmured in her ear.
She released the breath. “Shut up. I’ve burned my bridges.”
Refusing to think about anything, she called for a cab as soon as she got to her desk, then gathered up what she needed to take back to her hotel and left, locking the door behind her. It wasn’t yet six o’clock, but since she planned to work in her suite, she didn’t feel guilty about leaving early.
No one could have said Storm bolted from the museum, but she didn’t waste any time in leaving. Making a mental note to rent that Jeep she’d mentioned to Wolfe, she paid the cab in front of her hotel and went up to the suite. She dumped everything she was carrying onto the couch—including Bear—and immediately sat down to wrestle her boots off.
Half an hour later, she was comfortably dressed in an old, frayed sweater and leggings and was curled up on the couch. She had a meeting later—not here as before, because he was wary of being seen here too many times—and her supper was on its way up from room service. She turned on the television, more to provide background noise than anything else, and began sorting through her notes and diagrams.
She tried not to think about Wolfe, but his face kept intruding on her thoughts. Those eyes of his, so fiercely blue, seemed burned in her memory, like the sharp angle of his jaw and the curve of his sensual lips.
Burned, like her bridges. There was no going back now, she knew. Impossible to turn around, even if she’d wanted to. She was following her heart, allowing it to lead her even though her head told her she was likely to regret it. But Storm could only do her best. With all the lies in her life, her only choice was to pick a dividing line and stick to it. It was a chancy decision, and she knew it, but she didn’t really have a choice.
Because of a promise given, she couldn’t tell Wolfe the whole truth, and because of what she had come here to do, he was the last man on earth she should have gotten involved with on any personal level—least of all an intimate one.
It wasn’t until much later that evening, when she was on her way to the meeting, that the real crux of the matter became clear in Storm’s mind. The simple truth was, she was caught between two very strong-willed men, bound to obey one—and seemingly fated to fall in love with the other.
Wolfe caught himself pacing his comfortable sublet for at least the third time since he’d arrived home at eleven.
He was being an idiot. He should take what Storm offered, put another notch on his goddamned bedpost, and then cheerfully wave good-bye to her when she left in a few weeks.
That was what he should do.
So why was he even hesitating?
It was nearly midnight when he sat down to make a call, forcing himself to concentrate on business. The number he called was a familiar one, a special private line to an office in Paris. He waited for the connection to be made, slightly impatient because it took longer than usual. When the receiver was finally picked up, the deep voice sounded very harassed—and very French, even though it snapped only a one-word name.
“Chavalier.”
“If your mood’s that rotten,” Wolfe said, “I’ll call back some other time.”
“Nothing’s wrong with my mood,” Jared Chavalier said, now sounding no more French than Wolfe did. “It’s the rest of the world causing problems.”
Wolfe grunted. “Know what you mean. Listen, can you do me a favor?”
“I suppose you want me to check Interpol’s files for information of some kind, as usual?”
“Yeah. Max’s exhibit is due to open in just a few weeks now, and I’m trying to anticipate problems.”
“Also as usual,” Jared said. “Okay, what do you need from me?”
“Two things. I have a few questions about one of our local collectors, and I’d appreciate any information you can dig up. Her name’s Nyssa Armstrong.” He spelled the name briskly, adding her address.
“Got it. And the second thing?”
Wolfe hesitated, then said, “I’m more than a little worried about the security company we’re using. Max still has faith in them, but after the first technician they sent us screwed up, I started to wonder. Then they lost an employee, who had apparently been blackmailed before she was murdered. And since I’ve seen Nyssa coming out of their offices here in the city—when I happen to know she uses a different security company herself—I can’t help but be concerned. At the very least, the company seems too damned prone to leaking information. Their reputation is excellent, but I’d like to know more than what I’ve found in the public record.” He named Ace Security, provided the address and other necessary information, and said, “See what you can find out about the outfit. All right?”
“No problem. It may take a few days, though. I have to use the computer on a time-sharing basis, remember, and this isn’t exactly official business.”
“Yeah, I know. The collection isn’t threatened until we take it out of the vaults, so I have some time before the information’s critical. Just let me know.”
“All right.”
When he cradled the receiver a few minutes later, Wolfe rose to his feet and went to the living- room window. The apartment boasted a fairly spectacular view of the San Francisco Bay, and in the daylight it was possible to see either a fog bank or the Golden Gate Bridge—whichever happened to be visible. But right now what Wolfe saw were the multicolored lights of the city, some of them hazy because a light fog was rolling in.
He wanted to continue thinking of business, but as he idly watched the lights and the fog, his thoughts returned to Storm. Her hotel wasn’t very far away. In fact, if he went and looked out his bedroom window, he could see it.
He was almost overwhelmingly tempted to pick up the phone again and call her, just to hear the lazy drawl of her voice, but he resisted the urge. She had the trick of throwing him off balance, of maneuvering him, and it was that more than anything else that he was wary of; no matter what happened next in their relationship, he wanted to make damned sure he had at least some control over his own choices.
For a long time after he hung up the phone, Jared Chavalier stared down at the notes he’d made while talking to Wolfe. Then he sighed, tore off the top page of the pad, crumpled it up, and threw it somewhat viciously toward a nearby trash can. It missed, which didn’t improve his mood.
He got up and went to a window, gazing out without paying much attention to what he saw. His eyes moved restlessly, though, scanning the horizon even while his mind was occupied with methodical thoughts.
“Shit,” he murmured finally, English expressing his feelings far better than French would have. He took a good look at the view then, noting that the fog was thickening, blotting out the lights of the bridge. It looked miserable out there, and for a moment he wished he were back in Paris. He muttered another curse, then returned to the spindly desk his hotel provided. He didn’t pick up the special phone, the
one that would accept only calls routed through his Paris office. Instead, he picked up his cell phone.
When his call was answered, he didn’t offer a greeting, but simply said, “We’ve got a problem.”
For the next two days, Storm barely saw Wolfe. She didn’t go out of her way to see him, biding her time patiently and allowing her work to occupy her. In truth, because she was on such a short schedule, the project filled more than her usual working hours, and she always spent at least several hours in her hotel suite each evening going over plans, diagrams, operation manuals (dealing with the security hardware), and her notes as she planned a rather involved computer program.
By Friday afternoon she had begun writing the program, filling the first sheet of a brand-new legal pad with line after line of precise mathematical formulas. She expected it to take her another three or four days to finish writing the program and to go over it for possible problems—though there would likely be a few bugs showing up only after the program was installed and running. There usually were.
The work occupied her thoughts and attention, for which she was grateful, but it didn’t do much to help her sleep. She was acclimated by now, the jet lag past, but dreaming about Wolfe had become a habit that left her nights somewhat disturbed. Even Bear had taken to napping often during the day—a feline habit but not one of his—because she kept him awake tossing and turning half the night.
The situation might have continued indefinitely—since Wolfe was a stubborn man and since Storm was still worried about gaining his trust under false pretenses—but the status quo was disturbed late Friday afternoon when a visitor came into the museum.
“Hi, there.”
Startled, Storm looked up to see Nyssa Armstrong standing just inside the doorway of the computer room. The older woman, polished and sophisticated in a silk dress with her pale gold hair bound up in a refined chignon, makeup perfect and a bland social smile on her precisely painted lips, made Storm feel instantly threatened—and that reaction had nothing at all to do with business.
In a contest of elegance, Nyssa won hands-down. Storm was dressed with her usual casual indifference in faded jeans, boots, and a thick green sweater about two sizes too big for her. In addition, her hair was full of static electricity today, there was a smudge of ink on her nose and a pencil tucked behind each ear, and she had chewed one thumbnail down to a nub.
For one awful moment, Storm couldn’t help wondering what on earth made her even imagine that Wolfe could possibly prefer her to someone like this sleek creature. And if the memory of his desire was reassuring, the fact that he’d avoided her for the past two days wasn’t.
Highly conscious of her own disheveled state, Storm was nonetheless concerned first with security. She rose to her feet, smoothly turning the legal pad on which she’d been working facedown, and went around the desk to face the other woman.
“Ms. Armstrong, you shouldn’t be back here,” she said mildly. “Didn’t one of the guards stop you?” Wolfe had posted a guard at the end of the hallway of offices the day after Storm told him about the phone patch.
Nyssa widened her blue eyes innocently. “Oh, he let me pass. I’ve been here several times to visit Max—and Wolfe, of course. The guards know me.”
Storm made a rather grim mental note to do something about that. “I see. Well, since you’re here—what can I do for you?” She stood in such a way as to prevent Nyssa from coming farther into the room.
“Actually, I came to see Wolfe. You don’t mind, do you, dear?”
For a moment, Storm didn’t trust herself to speak. First of all, she disliked being called “dear,” especially by another woman and most especially by a woman she’d encountered only once before in her life—and then in the ladies’ room of a restaurant. She also had no trouble whatsoever in deducing the fact that Nyssa was bent on making trouble.
Pleasantly, Storm said, “Why ask me? Whatever’s between you and Wolfe is entirely your own business. But his office is down the hall, you know.”
In a voice every bit as spuriously polite as Storm’s, Nyssa said, “No, I didn’t know that. I’ve never actually been in his office, you see.”
“Then I’d be happy to show you,” Storm said, all but nudging the other woman back out into the hall so she could close the door to the computer room. “This way.”
“You have such a lovely accent,” Nyssa said, following. “Georgia? Alabama?”
“Louisiana.” Storm happened to know Wolfe was presently in his office, because she’d seen him go past her door nearly an hour before. So she rapped sharply on the door, opened it, said, “You have a visitor,” and motioned Nyssa inside before Wolfe could even begin to rise from his chair.
She didn’t wait to see what reaction Nyssa would be greeted with but closed the door and turned to go back to her own bailiwick. It didn’t much surprise her to find Morgan waiting at the door of her own office—a door that had been closed when Storm led Nyssa past it.
Leaning against her doorjamb, Morgan said gravely, “I see she’s hunting again.”
Storm paused and considered the matter. “Looks that way,” she allowed.
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“Why should it? Except for the fact that she has the eyes of a serial killer, I’d say she’s perfect for him.”
Morgan lost her solemnity as she grinned. “Meow.”
Storm felt a smile tugging at her own lips. “Okay, so the woman gets on my nerves.”
“I’m glad to hear you’ve got nerves. I was beginning to wonder. And I certainly hope you mean to do something about Nyssa’s blatant attempt to get her claws into Wolfe.”
“He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”
“Yes, but that’s hardly the point, is it?” Morgan’s amber eyes were gleaming.
Storm shook her head. “Her primary interest is the exhibit, and we both know it. Taking Wolfe away from me—if that’s what she imagines she’s doing—is nothing more than a pleasant diversion for her.”
Morgan nodded, grave again. “True, very true. So it doesn’t bother you a bit, huh?”
“Not a bit.”
“Uh-huh. So why’re your hands clenched into fists?”
Storm looked down and made a conscious effort to relax her hands. It was surprisingly difficult. She flexed her fingers and cleared her throat. “I’m a little tense. Big deal.” She squared her shoulders determinedly. “It’s been a long day. I think I’ll pick up all my toys and go home now.”
“And if Wolfe should ask?”
“What makes you think he would?”
Reflectively, Morgan said, “Probably because he’s been getting more than a little edgy lately when he doesn’t know where you are. He usually asks me or one of the guards. When you vanished at lunchtime yesterday, I thought he was going to drive us all crazy prowling around until you came back.”
A little blankly, Storm said, “I didn’t see him when I came in.”
“No, I imagine he made sure you didn’t.”
This was very interesting, but Storm mentally allowed a bit of room for exaggeration; Morgan wouldn’t do it consciously, but since she was clearly rooting for a relationship between Wolfe and Storm, she could have allowed wishful thinking to cloud her otherwise clear perceptions.
“He won’t ask,” Storm said.
“Oh, I think he will.”
She didn’t think he would, but Storm felt a burst of recklessness seize her. “If he should ask, you can tell him I said he’d better watch the pillow talk with Nyssa—I’d hate to have to change the computer access codes.”
Morgan’s eyes grew huge. “Are you sure you want me to tell him that? In those exact words, I mean?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, no reason. I suppose you know what you’re doing.”
Privately, Storm doubted it, but she wasn’t about to back down. “Certainly I do. See you Monday.”
“I hope so.”
Storm’s vast irritation carried he
r through the next hour in fine style. She gathered up the work she meant to do over the weekend, picked up Bear, and went out to the parking lot where her rented Jeep waited. When she got to her hotel suite, she dumped everything and immediately went to take a shower, trusting lots of hot water to ease the tension she felt.
It only half worked, but that was enough to make her laugh ruefully at herself as she was drying her hair a few minutes later. Since he’d avoided her for the past two days, she figured Wolfe wouldn’t be interested enough in her whereabouts to ask Morgan—no matter what the brunette thought—so the really nasty message calculated to enrage him had been wasted. And her anger at Nyssa was fairly useless; she’d encountered enough women like the older blonde to have learned that the sleek, polished surface of them was like armor.
The realizations left Storm feeling slightly drained and more than a little depressed. She changed into one of her comfortable working ensembles, this one made up of a flannel-lined but silky-looking black top and leggings that resembled pajamas and a pair of thin black socks because her feet were cold.
She turned the television on to a news program and was just about to find the room-service menu when a sudden pounding on the door made her jump. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out who the visitor was, and Storm wasn’t sure how she felt about it as she went to open the door.
It was Wolfe, and she’d never seen him so mad.
“May I come in?” he asked with exquisite politeness.
She stepped back and allowed him to pass, then shut the door and followed him into the living area. In her best damn-the-torpedoes tone of voice she said, “You must have gotten my message.”
Wolfe had shrugged out of his black jacket in the gesture of a man who wanted to be prepared for anything and tossed it over the back of the couch—narrowly missing Bear, who hunkered down and watched silently.
“Yes, I did, and what the hell did you mean by it?” Wolfe snapped, glaring at her.