STOLEN MOMENTS

by Michelle Martin

  "It's probably for the best," Harley said with a sigh.

  "Any trouble getting here?"

  "Cab to door, perfectly safe."

  "Good. Let's go. I'm starved and you're buying."

  "I am?" Harley said in surprise.

  "You're rich and I've got the information you want, don't I?"

  Harley ruefully regarded the slender woman before her. "I intend to pump you mercilessly."

  "Exactly. You're buying. I made reservations at the Manhattan Ocean Club."

  "You don't believe in half-measures, do you?"

  "Harley, the man walked into the office glowing this morning. Glowing. You're the one who apparently doesn't believe in half-measures."

  The damn blush was back again. "He's … um … inspirational."

  Emma guffawed and then hooked her arm through Harley's. "Let's get going. I've got a diary waiting for a lengthy report tonight."

  When Harley finally returned to the Loews, no one leapt out from behind the bushes or the doorman to try to grab her. She spent the rest of the afternoon writing a song that was slow and sexy and might never be heard in public. She didn't care. She'd sing it to Duncan and maybe it would ignite that hot glow in his eyes that turned her muscles to mush. She certainly hoped so.

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  « ^ »

  Harley woke slowly from the drugging pleasure of sleeping in Duncan's arms, his warm body curved around hers beneath the comforter. There was no way that life could get any better than this.

  Turning up last night in jeans and a plain old knit top had done nothing to curb Duncan's libido. He had jerked her into the apartment, slamming the door behind her, and then pushed her hard against the entryway wall as he devoured her with hungry kisses that had sent the world spiraling away. Only the loud buzzer from a kitchen timer had pulled them apart and reminded him of his vow that he really would feed her this time.

  And he had. Harley had never realized it before, but there was something both nurturing and erotic about having a man cook for you. The fact that he was a surprisingly good cook had only added to the pleasure. It had been lovely to sit across the table from him and talk about his work and her music and the plays they both wanted to see once Desmond and Louis had returned to France. It had been friendly and comfortable and satisfying, as it had been with Emma, only different because underneath the conversation with Duncan had been a deep river of desire they had silently and mutually agreed not to tap just yet. But it had given everything a lovely glow, like the candles Duncan had lit. It had made her aware of the different levels they had created together and in such a short time.

  She saw in his moments of surprise and delight and uncertainty that this was new for him. He was a virgin when it came to intimacy and connection, much more so even than she. And she liked that. She liked that she was his first true lover, and he was hers. Kindred spirits. Parallel lives. What magnetic field had finally shifted to bring them together, as she was certain they should be together?

  How could they not? Here they lay, his skin flowing into hers, as his life had flowed into hers. They were connected, she and Duncan Lang. The question she had fended off for nearly two days now rose up: how long? How long would they be bound together? He had used no words to tell her what he felt for her, but she knew that it was more than physical desire. His kisses told her that, the way he touched her when they made love or sat across a table from each other told her that. But he had gone scrupulously out of his way to remind her that he had never committed to any woman in his life.

  Whatever their relationship could be called, it had no guarantees. Her mother would be horrified. But then, her mother had had the guarantee of a marriage solemnized by a church and wedding guests and vows, and all of that had ended up meaning nothing. She was alone. Her mother had been alone for twenty-four of Harley's twenty-six years and had been too afraid to let another love into her life in all that time.

  With Duncan's warm body molded against her, Harley understood some of that fear now. To have love and joy suddenly stolen away was a frightful thought. To open yourself to possibly letting that happen again could be terrifying. But Harley was not her mother. She had spent most of her life trying to be very different from her mother, because Barbara Miller's fear of life was more frightening to her than any leap into the emotional depths.

  Her thoughts tried to avoid that phrase, not because it frightened her, but because what it implied frightened her. It implied love, growing love, and she hadn't wanted to acknowledge that to herself, let alone him. He was so skittish about relationship and commitment anyway that she didn't know how he'd take it. She was so skittish about something so new in her life that she wasn't sure how she would take it.

  Duncan stretched a little against her and murmured something in his sleep that sounded wonderfully like her name. Her whole body was glowing. Hmm. She seemed to be taking this whole love thing remarkably well.

  A large warm hand slid across her breast, cupping it, as thumb and forefinger began to stroke one rapidly hardening nipple.

  "Good morning," she gasped, eagerly leaping into the emotional depths.

  Just after seven o'clock, she sat attentively on a kitchen stool while Duncan instructed her in the proper way to make a perfect omelette. She had quickly grown addicted to watching Duncan cook. She loved the flair he used to chop vegetables, the sensual way he swirled a hot omelette pan and the melting butter within it, the deft way he cracked open eggs and tossed away the empty shells.

  "You are as passionate about cooking as you are about your work," she informed him as he zestfully beat a bowl of raw eggs to froth.

  He missed a beat as he looked up at her in surprise. "I am not passionate about my work."

  "Oh, of course you are," she retorted. "You're passionate about life, Duncan, didn't you know that?"

  He begged to differ … at length.

  "I give up, I give up!" she said, holding up both hands in defeat and stopping him in the middle of his reasoned denial that he had a passionate bone in his body. "The fact that you forget to eat when you're working on a case—Emma told me—and that your whole being is focused on the tiniest minutia of a case, and that you are fiercely determined to find and prove the truth in a case no matter the cost, and that you think about your work even when you're brushing your teeth, means nothing. Just like the exuberance that radiates from you whenever you cook means nothing. I've got it now. You are not a passionate man."

  "Exactly," he replied as he slid a perfect omelette onto a plate and handed it to her. She swiveled around to the kitchen counter and breathed deeply. Marvelous! She'd hire the man as her personal chef if he wasn't already passionately committed to his own work.

  Duncan sprang his plan on her as he sat down beside her. "I have an idea," he said after taking a sip of fresh-squeezed orange juice.

  "Yes?" Harley said hopefully.

  "About Boyd," he said dampeningly.

  "Oh." Harley sighed. "Okay, what about Boyd?"

  Duncan cut into his own perfect omelette. "Boyd's been sticking very close to the Ritz-Carlton. No visitors except Brandon, who apparently is trying to keep him placated so he doesn't say nasty things about Colangco to the press. What is telling is that Boyd goes out once a day to make a one-minute phone call from a public pay phone, a different one each time. We haven't been able to trace the calls. And we can't catch him with his hand in the Maurizio cookie jar if he just sits around the Ritz all day long. I'm convinced from those phone calls and his frayed nerves that he's missed an important deadline. I think if we push just the right buttons, he'll go running to his contact within the Maurizio organization and that should tell us how Boyd has earned his fifteen million clams."

  She silently regarded him until he finally set down his fork and knife and looked at her questioningly. "You're very good at this, you know."

  "I always liked playing Clue," he said. "I could even beat Brandon."

  "No," Harley said, her hand
cupping his cheek, making his eyes meet hers. "You are very good at your job, Duncan Lang"—she felt the tremor in his heart as if it were her own—"and you love doing it."

  She heard his breath catch. "Thank you." He almost believed her. She saw it in his eyes.

  She kissed him, gently, tenderly, and then pulled back with a smile. "You're welcome. Just out of idle curiosity, in all those boring jobs you worked on for Colangco these last two years, did you ever screw one up?"

  "No," he said, looking puzzled.

  "Any complaints from clients on the company customer satisfaction surveys?"

  "No," he said, puzzlement turning to wariness.

  "And did Emma tell me the truth when she said more than three-quarters of your clients asked for you by name when they called Colangco to do more work for them?"

  "Harley," he said, looking grim, "what are you up to?"

  "I know I don't have a degree from Columbia," she said modestly, "but it seems to me you've more than amply demonstrated your ability to do your job and do it well."

  "So?"

  "So," she said with a bright smile, "you once told me that you had something to prove to your family and I think you're wrong. I think the only one you have to prove anything to is yourself."

  He scowled at her. "Eat your omelette."

  Her smile brightened. "What's the matter, Mr. Lang? Can't take a home truth now and then?"

  "We were talking about Boyd."

  "So we were," Harley demurely replied.

  "Anyway," Duncan said, glaring at her, "I intend to make Boyd run to his contact. That will set off the chain of events we want to finally close this case."

  "I'll buy that. How are you going to do it?"

  Duncan smiled with malicious pleasure. "I'm going to tell him the truth. I'm going to tell him that you've hired me to find out what he's up to. I'm going to casually mention his Bermuda bank account. I'll drop a hit about your tour schedule. I'll allude to Colangco's warm relationship with national and international police forces. And then I'll send him on his way."

  "Wow," Harley said. "He'll freak."

  "Exactly," Duncan said with a satisfied smile. "We can double the impact if you're there with me. Sort of drive home the point that you're onto him and the jig is up."

  "Gee," Harley murmured. "I wonder what I should wear to a shakedown?"

  It turned out that a black knit dress that almost reached her knees was the best choice to drive home how far she had already moved away from Boyd and to give his meeting with Duncan an ominous tone. Bare legs and black pumps completed the ensemble.

  She walked into Emma's office ten minutes early to find Duncan's door closed.

  Emma's whistle was low and impressed. "You will kill him."

  "Who?" Harley asked.

  "Both of them."

  "Good," Harley said with a smirk as she sat down in the chair beside Emma's desk. "What's Duncan up to now?"

  "Studying the videos we've got on the Giscard diamonds for the zillionth time."

  "Videos?"

  "We tape everything we do, for backup in case anything goes wrong, and to protect ourselves from any wrongful claims of illegal activity."

  "Hacking into bank computers is not illegal?"

  "We don't tape that."

  "Of course not," Harley said with a grin. "Has Duncan found any leads on the robbery yet?"

  "No," Emma said with a sigh. "He's come up bone dry. So have the police. They were in here again this morning, grilling him."

  Harley's hands were rigid. "They can't arrest him just on suspicion, right?"

  "Right."

  Emma's office door was suddenly thrown open. Boyd Monroe walked in, stopped, and stared in disgust at Harley.

  She stood up slowly, to give him the full effect and to collect her suddenly disordered emotions.

  He wore his usual nondescript clothes, but Harley had never seen him like this. Somehow his Marine-short brown hair had more gray in it. His trim, compact body was so tensed he looked as if he would shatter if you touched him. Boyd was running scared, just as Duncan had said. She had never seen Boyd scared.

  "Still dressing like a slut, I see," he sneered, walking up to her.

  "Still thinking you can bully me into caving, I see," she retorted.

  "Don't play word games with me, little girl. I taught you everything you know. I hope you're proud of yourself. Your mother went into hysterics when I told her that you're running around New York all by yourself."

  "You told her…?" Harley gasped.

  "Someone had to."

  "You had no right!"

  "I have every right!" he seethed, grabbing her by her upper arms in a painful grip. "I have spent the last nine years protecting you from the users and the abusers in the music industry. I've kept you safe from the druggies and from the men who only want you for your money or your fame. I've given you that fame, and the money, and the adulation of millions. You have nothing to complain about."

  "Take your hands off me, Boyd," Harley said in a low, authoritative voice she had never heard before.

  "Don't use that tone with me, little girl," he snapped, squeezing her arms tighter. "Are you forgetting who taught you everything you know? Are you forgetting that I am the one who got you the recording contracts and the concert dates and the TV performances that put your name on the world map? You—"

  "This is your last chance, Boyd."

  "Are you threatening me?" he demanded in amusement. "Don't forget, Jane, that you need me to walk into a recording studio. You need me to walk out on a stage. Without me, you are just a timid little hick from the Dust Bowl. You're nobody."

  "Boyd," Harley said quietly, amazed she could hear herself above the banging of her heart in her ears, "you're fired."

  He took a shocked step back, freeing her arms. But he made a quick recovery. "Is it that time of month again?" he sneered.

  She felt as if she were standing in the middle of an isolation booth. All of his usual weapons failed to touch her. "I'll have my accountant mail you your percentage of the tour proceeds. You'll get your usual percentage from the next album, of course, and we're done."

  "There is no way in hell you can cut your next album without me, little girl," Boyd grimly informed her.

  "Yes, I can," Harley retorted, her throat dry. She hadn't planned this. She hadn't even let herself fantasize this. But it was happening. She was making it happen. And she was right. The calm in the midst of so much emotion within her told her she was right. "You've taught me well, Boyd, and I'm grateful for that. You made me a star, and I'm even grateful for that. In return, you've become rich and you've become famous in your own right. You won't have any trouble finding other singers willing to put their lives in your hands."

  He grabbed her shoulders with both hands. "You can't do this, Jane."

  She wouldn't let herself wince beneath his death grip. "My name is Harley, and yes I can. Emma," she said to the young woman sitting so still and quiet at the desk beside her, "would you be an angel and type me up a brief severance letter for Boyd? It won't take more than two sentences."

  "My pleasure," Emma replied, turning to her computer.

  "You'll regret this to the day you die," Boyd seethed, gray eyes drilling into her.

  "Boyd," Harley said softly, "I plan to celebrate the anniversary of this day with pink champagne to the day I die."

  Duncan's office door opened. "Mr. Monroe," Duncan said in a tight voice. Harley could hear the anger behind it. "I'm glad you could make it. Won't you come in?"

  Boyd glared at her for another moment, then suddenly released her and stalked into Duncan's office. Black eyes met hers.

  "Are you okay?" Duncan demanded in a low voice.

  She could breathe again. She hadn't realized she had stopped until just now. "I'm fine," she said as she walked up to him. "Never better. Honest. Come on, let's scare the hell out of him."

  It only took five minutes. Duncan was merciless behind the friendly, even jovial tone he ad
opted. Harley had never seen Boyd sweat before. Perspiration beaded his forehead. She had never seen him give himself away before. But his hands were clenched on the arms of his chair, white and bloodless as he held on for dear life. His voice sounded strangled. His body seemed to shrink in the chair. He made a halfhearted attempt at a comeback when Duncan finished, threatening a libel suit, threatening to smear Colangco's name in the press, but Duncan was unimpressed and he showed it.

  He slowly enunciated every numeral of the Bermuda bank account number. "Perhaps that means something to you?"

  Boyd literally burst out of the claustrophobic confines of his chair and moved with awkward, jerky steps to the office door. "You can both go to hell!" he bellowed before throwing the door open and escaping.

  She stared after him, amazed at the pity welling within her. He truly had done so much for her. It hurt to see him reduced to such misery and fear, and to know that she had helped cause that.

  "That went well," Duncan said brightly.

  Harley smiled then. "You're a lethal man, Duncan Lang."

  "It's amazing the skills you can pick up in the fast lane."

  "Won't Boyd just go and move his fifteen million to another bank?"

  "He can't. I've frozen his Bermuda account."

  "Wow," Harley said, staring at him. "You are lethal. Shouldn't you be following Boyd to see what he does next?"

  "Already taken care of." Duncan pressed a button in a desk pad beside his phone. The paneling behind his desk slid up to reveal three video monitors all in a row. "I've got our people watching him and taping him every minute of the day. We'll get him, Harley, and soon. I promise. Once we know what he's up to for sure, we'll alert the Feds and they can step in and do their thing."

  "Jeez, Duncan," she said, staring at the monitors, "you could crack an international arms deal wide open and never leave your office!"

  "I like my office. Legwork," he explained with a grin, "is anathema to me."

  "Gee, and you pursued me anyway."