The Lady in Red & Dangerous Deception

by Linda Turner

  “No kidding? You talking about that tall dude that was down here earlier in the day? Somebody stole his tires?”

  “Apparently so. And I’d really appreciate it if they were returned.”

  Slipping his hands into the back pockets of his tattered jeans, he rocked back and forth on his heels, considering the matter with a twinkle in his eye. “I don’t know anyone who’s into that kind of thing, you understand,” he finally confided, “but I can see how tempting two new tires would be to someone running around on retreads. Life’s tough, you know.”

  Sabrina just barely managed to hold back a smile. “And two new tires don’t come rolling by every day. You think if I offered a reward it might convince whoever took them to give them up?”

  At first, she thought he was going to jump at that, but after careful thought, he shook his head. “Nope, that’d only encourage whoever did this to try it again. Just sit tight. I’ll drop a hint in a few ears.”

  That was all Sabrina could ask for. Beaming, she said, “Thanks, Joe. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he snorted. “I’m a regular prince.”

  “That’s what all the young girls around here say,” she said with a laugh as she took the porch steps. “’Bye, Joe. Behave yourself.”

  He wouldn’t—the kid just didn’t seem to have it in him—but he would do as he promised. And that was all Sabrina could ask for.

  When she came home from work late the following afternoon, the tires were sitting on her front porch with a big red bow on them. And suddenly a day that hadn’t been all that good got better. Pulling into her driveway, Sabrina laughed. Glancing down to the corner, she thought she saw a movement in an upstairs window at Joe’s grandmother’s house. It was Joe, of course, but she knew he wouldn’t come out for her thanks, or even admit that he was the one responsible for getting the tires back—that would clash with his bad-boy image. But without his help, those tires would be on the back of somebody’s low-rider, and they both knew it. Waving gaily, she saw the curtain swish again and grinned.

  Five minutes later, she was headed for Blake’s place with the tires loaded in the trunk of her Honda. She’d leave them by his front door, she decided, and let him wonder how they had gotten there. It would drive him nuts. Her eyes starting to sparkle at the thought, she turned into his apartment complex and found a parking spot within a few feet of the stairs to his second-floor apartment. Seconds later, she was rolling the first tire up the steps.

  As quiet as a mouse, she propped it against the doorjamb, then went back to her car for the second. She would have sworn she didn’t make a sound, but just as she leaned the second tire against the first one, the door was suddenly jerked open and both tires fell across the threshold with a soft thud. Caught red-handed, she glanced up, a quick explanation already forming on her tongue, only to find herself face-to-face with Blake’s grandfather.

  “Oh! Mr. Finnigan! You startled me. I didn’t think anyone was here.”

  “Pop,” he automatically corrected her. “I thought you were Blake.” His green eyes, so like his grandson’s, lit with mischief as his gaze slid from her to the tires and back again. “You know, in my day, I had a few women surprise me with a cake or two, but I don’t believe one ever showed up on my doorstep with a load of tires. Have you got a car hidden somewhere to go with those?”

  Sabrina laughed. “No, but Blake does. These are his—the ones stolen off his truck yesterday. They sort of showed up on my doorstep.”

  “Just like that?” he asked, arching a brow at her. “Why do I have a feeling you’re leaving something out?”

  “Well, I did sort of feel responsible since it happened in my neighborhood,” she admitted. “So I put the word out that Blake was a friend and I’d like them back. But I’d prefer that he didn’t know that,” she added quickly.

  “Didn’t know what? That you consider him a friend or that you’re the one who got his tires back for him?”

  He was, Sabrina thought, fighting a blush, altogether too sharp for her peace of mind. “Let’s just say this is our little secret,” she suggested with a smile. “I wouldn’t want Blake to feel beholden or anything. Especially since we’re both usually fighting for the same stories. He might feel like he has to step back and let me have an exclusive, and that’s not what I want.”

  “You want to beat him fair and square at his own game.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement from a man who obviously read her like a book. Grinning, he pulled the door wider. “I like your style, missy. Since Blake’s not going to be able to thank you for the tires, the least I can do is offer you a drink after you carted those dirty things up the stairs in this heat. Come on in.”

  “Oh, that’s not necessary,” she began.

  “Then humor an old man,” he said with a shrug, blatantly playing on her sympathies. “I don’t get a chance to talk to a pretty girl very often. Blake doesn’t bring too many home, and when he does, they’re not interested in jawing with an old geezer like me.”

  The pitiful look might have worked on somebody else, but Sabrina wasn’t buying it. “Nice try, Finnigan, but somehow you don’t strike me as a lonely old man who roams around an empty house talking to himself all day. You’ve lived here all your life, haven’t you? You probably know more people than God.”

  Laughter deepening the wrinkles lining his weathered face, he nodded. “Probably. But most of them are on the downhill side of seventy, and all they want to talk about is aches and pains and where they’ve got their money invested. I bet you can tell some stories that are a sight more interesting than that. So, you coming in or not?”

  She should have said “Thanks, but no thanks,” then come up with a quick excuse to get out of there. She already knew all she wanted to know about Blake Nickels—he kissed like something out of one of her dreams—and the less she saw of him and his family, the better. But she really did like his grandfather, and what harm could a few minutes do?

  “Well, it is hot, and I would like to wash my hands,” she said, finding more excuses than she needed to ignore her common sense. “But I can’t stay long.”

  Thirty minutes later, she was still there. Sitting at Blake’s kitchen table and on her second glass of iced tea, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed herself more. Pop Finnigan had a real gift for storytelling, and more than once, she laughed so hard, she cried. He told her outlandish tales about his stint in the navy as a cook and his travels around the world, stories, she was sure, that he’d carefully edited for her delicate ears. She could have told him that there wasn’t much she hadn’t heard covering crime in some of the city’s worst neighborhoods, but she appreciated his old-fashioned courtliness. He was a wonderful old man and Blake was lucky to have him for a grandfather.

  He was also sneaky as a fox. Without Sabrina quite realizing how it happened, he cunningly shifted the focus of the conversation to Blake. One minute he was telling her about shore leave in Italy, and the next, he was confiding that as a child, Blake had traveled all over the world with his parents, who were career diplomats.

  “That kid had a ball,” he said with a grin. “He could speak French and German fluently by the time he was eight and knew Rome like the back of his hand when he was fourteen. Karen—that’s my daughter—really thought he would go into politics.” Laughing softly at the thought, he shook his head. “She’d better thank her lucky stars he didn’t. Blake always did have a nose for secrets. With all the intrigue in international politics, he would have asked questions he had no business asking and ended up starting a war or something by now. The kid’s a born reporter.”

  “I’ll give him his due,” Sabrina said, eyeing him knowingly. “He does seem to know what he’s doing.”

  “You’re darn right he does,” the old man agreed promptly. “He always knew what he wanted and went after it. Of course, his mother still thinks this writing stuff is an act of rebellion on his part, but you won’t find a better man anywhere. When Karen and Richard g
ot assigned to France for a year, she had this crazy notion that I was too old to live alone. I told her I was just fine, thank you very much, but you know how daughters are. She worried, so Blake quit his job in New Mexico and moved here to watch over me. I told him I didn’t need a baby-sitter, but he still checks in with me every day. I know what he’s doing, of course, but I don’t say anything because I don’t want Karen to worry.”

  Fighting a smile, Sabrina nodded solemnly. “Of course. I’m sure your daughter sleeps a lot easier at night knowing Blake is here to watch over you.”

  “Sure she does. She’d sleep a lot better, though, if he’d settle down with a wife and a couple of kids. A man his age needs a good woman in his life, don’t you think?”

  A blatant matchmaker, he winked at her, just daring her to disagree with him, and it was all Sabrina could do not to laugh.

  Lord, he was outrageous—and as bold as his grandson! She didn’t have the heart to tell him that he was talking to the wrong woman. “Mr. Finnigan—”

  “Pop,” he corrected her, flashing his dimples at her.

  “Pop,” she repeated with a smile. “Blake’s marital status is really none of my business—”

  “It could be.”

  “Stop that!” Sabrina laughed. “If Blake wanted a wife and children, I’m sure he’d have them. You said yourself that he always knew what he wanted and went after it. Anyway, that has nothing to do with me. I just came over to deliver his tires. And now that I’ve done that, I really do need to get out of here.”

  He tried to talk her into staying a little longer, but she was adamant. Thanking him for the tea and the entertaining conversation, she headed for the door. But she’d waited too long. The sound of a key in the lock stopped her in her tracks. A split second later, Blake pushed open the door with his shoulder and stepped into the apartment carrying the two tires she’d left on his doorstep.

  Surprised, he lifted a brow at the sight of her as a slow smile stretched across his face. “Well, look who’s here. And you came bearing gifts. At least I assume I have you to thank for these,” he said, dropping the Michelins on the floor next to the door. “And I didn’t think you cared, Jones. That just goes to show you how wrong a man can be about a woman.”

  “Don’t let it go to your head, cowboy,” Sabrina returned sweetly. “I just didn’t want you to have an excuse when I won our bet.”

  Pop, watching them with a broad grin, stepped into the conversation at that. “Bet? What bet?”

  “We have a little wager over who can bring in the most new subscribers by the end of the month,” Blake informed him without ever taking his eyes off Sabrina. “Right now, I’d say it’s a dead heat.”

  “In your dreams,” Sabrina snorted. “I just checked the numbers this morning, and I’ve got nothing to worry about where you’re concerned, Nickels. I’m so far ahead of you, you’ll never catch up.”

  Not the last bit concerned, he only grinned. “I’m a patient man, sweetheart. And the month’s not over with yet. With a little luck, you just might have to eat those words, not to mention buy me the thickest steak in town.”

  “Speaking of which,” his grandfather cut in smoothly, “I think I smell my roast cooking. How about staying for dinner, Sabrina? There’s plenty.”

  “Oh, no,” she began. “I couldn’t.”

  “What’s the matter?” Blake teased. “Scared of breaking bread with the competition?”

  “No, of course not!”

  “Maybe she has another date,” his grandfather supplied.

  “No—”

  “Then there’s no reason why you can’t stay,” Blake said easily. “After all, feeding you is the least I can do after you got my tires back for me.”

  Put that way, there was no way she could gracefully refuse, and he knew it. “All right, all right,” she said, laughing. “I’ll stay. I just feel guilty about showing up here at suppertime without an invitation. I should have waited until later.”

  “That’s okay,” Blake assured her, his smile crooked. “If it’ll make you feel any better, we’ll make you work for it. You can do the dishes.”

  The meal that followed was one that Sabrina knew she would remember until her dying day. The food was delicious, but it was the company that was superb. Unlike most men she knew, who were reluctant to show their emotions, Blake made no attempt to hide his affection for his grandfather. And the old man was just as affectionate with Blake. They teased and cut up and traded stories about each other until Sabrina could hardly eat for laughing. Long after the meal was finished and the roast was just a memory, they sat at the table talking and reminiscing about old times, fascinating Sabrina. Enthralled, she could have sat there for hours and just listened to them talk.

  Which was, in fact, what she did. No one was more surprised than she when she glanced at her watch and saw how late it was. “Oh, my God, it’s going on ten o’clock! And I still haven’t done the dishes yet.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Pop said when she jumped up and started collecting the dirty plates. “Blake was just teasing.”

  “Oh, but it’s the least I can do,” she argued. “I can’t remember the last time I had such a wonderful meal. It was delicious, Pop.”

  Pleased, he grinned. “I’m glad you liked it. You’ll have to come again. Won’t she, Blake?”

  Blake, recognizing the mischievous glint in his grandfather’s eyes, shot him a quelling look behind Sabrina’s back, and said easily, “Sure. Maybe next time, you can make that stuffed-pig dish you learned to make in Fiji.”

  “I don’t know,” the old man said. “That sort of smokes up the house. And I wouldn’t want to go to all that trouble when you never know when you’re going to be called out on a story. Maybe you should just take her out instead.”

  “Oh, no, that’s not necessary—”

  “Pop—”

  Ignoring Sabrina’s automatic refusal and his grandson’s warning tone, the old man said innocently, “Weren’t you looking for someone to go with you to the awards ceremony at the National Newspaper Convention next weekend? Sabrina’s probably going, too, so why don’t you go together? It seems kind of dumb to go in two cars.”

  Under ordinary circumstances, Blake would have agreed. If he and Sabrina had just been rivals, he wouldn’t have hesitated to suggest the same thing. Just because they worked for competitive papers didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends. But there was nothing friendly about that kiss they’d shared or the way the memory of it made him ache in the middle of the night. He was having a damn difficult time getting her out of his head, and taking her out, even to an awards ceremony, would only make the situation worse.

  But before he could think of an acceptable reason to sidestep his grandfather’s suggestion, Sabrina came up with one for him. “Thanks for the offer, Pop, but I wasn’t even planning on going. I don’t get much out of those kind of things, and even if I did go, I’d sit with the Daily Record staff. Arriving with Blake could be…awkward.”

  As far as excuses went, it was a good one, and Blake knew he should have been thanking his lucky stars for it. But she’d come up with it damn quick. And what the hell did she mean…arriving with him could be awkward? He was no Cary Grant, but he wasn’t some homeless guy off the street, either. He knew a lot of women who would jump at the chance to go out with him!

  Perversely irritated, his ego bruised, he should have let it go. But a man had his pride, dammit, and she’d just stepped all over his. “Why don’t you tell him the real reason you don’t want to go with me?” he challenged her. “This has nothing to do with work or your boss and co-workers seeing you with me. You’re chicken.”

  It was the wrong thing to say to a woman who prided herself on being gutsy. Gasping as if he’d slapped her, she carefully set the dirty plates she’d collected back on the table, drew herself up to her full five foot four inches, and planted her hands on her hips. “Let me get this straight, Nickels. You think I’m afraid? Of you?”

  Hi
s grandfather’s presence forgotten, he nodded. “You got it, sweetheart. You can’t take the heat.”

  “I can take anything you can dish out.”

  “Then prove it. Go to the awards banquet with me.”

  “I told you—I can’t sit with you!”

  “That’s okay. I’ll pick you up and take you home. Is seven o’clock okay?”

  He knew the exact moment she realized she’d walked into a trap. Her brown eyes widened slightly with panic, then in the next instant, snapped with fire. If she could have gotten her hands around his throat, she probably would have squeezed the life out of him, but she apparently had more self-control than that. Her nostrils flaring as she drew in a calming breath, she nodded curtly. “Seven will be fine.”

  For the span of ten seconds, Blake savored the victory and started to grin. Then it hit him. Sabrina wasn’t the only one who’d walked into a trap. He’d sworn the last thing he was going to do was ask her out, then he’d turned around and done just that. And it was all his grandfather’s fault! Turning to glare at the old man, he found him watching the two of them with glee dancing in his eyes. If Blake hadn’t been so disgusted with himself, he might have laughed. Lord, he was going to have to watch Pop. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have him married with children before he even knew what hit him!

  She had to be out of her mind.

  Standing in front of the mirror on the back of her bedroom door, Sabrina stared at her image and, for the fifth time in as many minutes, gave serious thought to calling Blake and claiming that she was too sick to go anywhere. It wouldn’t be a lie. Her stomach was in a turmoil, her nerves jumpy, and she was definitely sick in the head. She had to be. Why else would she be standing here decked out in a new dress wondering if Blake would find her pretty?

  Dear God, what was she doing?

  Turning away from the sight of herself in a red silk dress that showed more skin than she’d ever showed in her life, she nervously paced the length of her bedroom. This was crazy. She was crazy! She didn’t even know how she had gotten talked into this madness. She didn’t like these kinds of shindigs, even if she was up for one of the most prestigious awards in the business. And she didn’t go out with men who made her heart skip in her chest. It just wasn’t smart when she had no intention of getting emotionally involved.