by Nora Roberts
had only to beat on the box—beat on it as he had once beat on a closet door.
They’d open it, let him out, let him gulp in fresh air. His head lolled back, rapping sharply against the side of the trunk. White-hot pain seared into his head, and images danced behind his closed eyes.
Cobb leering, spouting gut-clenching lies.
He could take care of Cobb, Luke promised himself as he grayed out. It only took money.
Roxanne. Those pictures of Roxanne on the tape he’d terrified out of Gerald. He could hear the sound of her blouse ripping, the muffled demands to be released. He could see the spray of blood, almost smell it as she’d fought herself free.
And how she’d looked, bloody Christ, how she’d looked standing there, fist clenched and ready, body poised like an Amazon, valor shimmering around her and fear and rage shining in her eyes.
He’d wanted to hold her then, to stroke the tremors away. Just as he’d wanted to beat the already bruised and battered Gerald to a slimy pulp.
But as furious as he’d been, he’d been equally ashamed. Had he, blind with drink and lust, done to Roxanne what Gerald had only attempted?
No. He was being a fool. Hadn’t he awakened, sick, aching and fully dressed? Right down to his shoes. The taste in his mouth hadn’t been Roxanne, but the dead skunk flavor of stale whiskey.
Desire and blackmail. Well, neither were worth dying for. He lifted an unsteady hand and slapped himself hard, once, twice so that the shock of pain cleared most of the mists in his brain.
He went to work on the leg irons, sipping cautiously at the thinning air.
“It’s too long.” Roxanne heard the skitter of panic in her own voice as she grabbed at her father’s sleeve. “Daddy, he’s two full minutes over.”
“I know.” Max closed a hand that had gone ice cold over his daughter’s. “He has time yet.” There was no use telling her that he’d taken one look at Luke’s pale, hollow-eyed face in the dressing room and had demanded he cancel his part of tonight’s performance.
Just as there was no use telling her that Luke had overruled him. The boy was a man now, and the lines of power were shifting.
“Something’s wrong.” She could imagine him unconscious, smothering helplessly. “Damn it.” She whirled around, intending to streak to the wings to snatch the keys from Mouse. Before she’d taken a step, the lid to the box crashed open.
Suitably impressed, the audience applauded. Drenched with sweat, Luke took his bows and filled his starving lungs. When Max saw him sway, brace himself, he signaled to Roxanne and immediately stepped forward to distract the crowd with sleight of hand.
“Idiot. Jerk. Flea brain.” She hurled insults between the clenched teeth of a bright smile as she took his arm and led him offstage. “What the hell were you trying to do?”
Lily was right there with a tall glass of water and a towel. Luke gulped down every drop. The fact that he still felt faint mortified him.
“Get out, mostly,” he said as he rubbed sweat from his face. When he staggered, Roxanne wrapped her arms around him. Her heart beat like thunder in her ears as she continued to berate him.
“You had no business going in there tonight after spending last night in a bottle.”
“My business is going in there,” he reminded her. It felt good, too good, to have her holding him steady. He pulled away and headed for his dressing room. Like an angry terrier, Roxanne stayed on his heels.
“Show business does not mean you have to kill yourself. And if you—” She stopped at the door to his dressing room. “Oh, Luke, you’re bleeding.”
He glanced down where the blood seeped from his wrists and ankles. “Had a little trouble with the leg irons.” He shot a hand up to stop her before she could rush in. “I want to change.”
“You need to have those cleaned up. Let me—”
“I said I want to change.” Now it was the cool look in his eyes that stopped her. “I can take care of it myself.”
She pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling. Didn’t he know that a cold dismissal hurt her a hundred times more than an angry word? Her chin came up. Of course he did. Who knew better?
“Why are you treating me like this, Luke? After last night—”
“I was drunk,” he said sharply, but she shook her head.
“Before, you weren’t drunk before. When you kissed me.”
Little licks of fire curled in his gut. A man would have to be blind not to see what she was offering with her eyes. He felt sick, needy and tired to the bone. “You were upset,” he managed with remarkable calm. “So was I. I was trying to make you feel better, that’s all.”
Pride flared. “You’re a liar. You wanted me.”
He gave her a smile calculated to insult. He had that much self-control left. “Babe, if I’ve learned anything in the past ten years, it’s to take what I want.” His hands curled into fists at his sides, but his eyes stayed lightly amused. “Weave your little fantasy around your pin-striped college boys. Now I’ve got things to do before the next show.”
He closed the door smartly in her face, then leaned heavily against it.
Close call, Callahan, he thought, closing his eyes. In more ways than one. Because his aches were demanding attention, he pushed away to search out some aspirin. He had to go see Cobb, and he would be armed with two thousand dollars and a clear head.
No one knew the value of timing better than Maximillian Nouvelle. He waited patiently through the second show, making no comment, voicing no criticism. He firmly overrode both Lily’s and Roxanne’s objections when Luke lowered himself into the iron box for the late audience. Max was in a position to know that if a man didn’t face his personal demons, he would be swallowed whole by them.
At home, he politely invited Luke into the parlor for a nightcap and moved inside to pour two snifters of brandy before the invitation could be accepted or declined.
“I’m not much in the mood for a drink.” Luke’s stomach swayed sickly at the thought of alcohol.
Max merely settled into his favorite wing chair, warming the bowl of the snifter in his hands. “No? Well, then you can keep me company while I have mine.”
“It’s been a long night,” Luke began, hanging back.
“It certainly has.” Max lifted one long-fingered hand, gesturing to a chair. “Sit.”
The power was still there, the same force that had once compelled a twelve-year-old boy to wait by a darkened stage. Luke sat, took out a cigar. He only ran it between his fingers as he waited for Max to speak.
“There are all manner of methods of suicide.” Max’s voice was mild, like a man settling back to tell a story. “But I have to admit that I consider any and all of them a form of cowardice. However.” Gesturing with one hand, he smiled benignly. “A choice of that nature is highly personal. Would you agree?”
Luke was lost. Since he’d learned long ago to be cautious with words when Max was laying a trap, he merely shrugged.
“Eloquently put,” Max said with the bite of sarcasm that had Luke’s eyes narrowing.
“If you contemplate the choice again,” Max continued after a sip of brandy and an “ah” of appreciation for its flavor, “I would suggest a quicker, cleaner method, such as the use of the handgun on the top shelf of my bedroom closet.” Before Luke could do more than blink in surprise, Max had lunged forward, one hand still delicately cupped around the glass bowl, the other dragging hard on the collar of Luke’s shirt. When their faces were close, Max spoke with a quietly intense fury that mirrored the look in his eyes. “Don’t ever use my stage again, or the illusion of magic, for something as cowardly as ending your life.”
“Max, for God’s sake.” Luke felt the strong, wiry fingers close around his throat, squeeze off his words, then release.
“I’ve never lifted a hand to you.” Now the control that had cloaked Max through the second show and beyond began to crack so that he had to rise and turn away as he spoke. “A decade now, and I’ve kep
t that promise I made to you. I’m warning you now, I will break it. If you ever do such a thing again, I will beat you sensible.” He turned back, measuring Luke with dark, gleaming eyes. “Naturally, I’d be forced to have Mouse hold you down while I did so, but I promise you I know where to strike to hurt a man most.”
The outrage came first. Luke sprang to his feet with it, furious dares and denials hot on his tongue. It was then he saw in the flash of the lamplight that Max’s eyes weren’t gleaming with temper, but with tears. It humbled him more than a thousand beatings would have done.
“I shouldn’t have done the bit tonight,” he said quietly. “My timing was off. I had problems I wasn’t able to push out of my mind. I knew it, but I couldn’t . . . I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, Max, I swear it. It was stupidity, and pride.”
“Amounts to the same, doesn’t it?” Max drank again to clear the thickness from his voice. “You drove Lily to tears. That’s difficult for me to forgive.”
For the first time in years, Luke felt that clammy fear—that he would be turned away. That he would lose what had become so precious to him. “I didn’t think.” He knew it was a weak excuse. Part of him wanted to pour out his reasons. But if he could do nothing else, he could spare them that. “I’ll talk to her. Try to make it right.”
“I expect you will.” Calmer now, Max reached out to lay a hand on Luke’s shoulder. There was comfort in that, and a wealth of understanding that needed no words. “Is it a woman?”
Luke thought of Roxanne, and how his hands burned to touch her. That had been part of what had clogged his brain, topped off by Cobb and too much drink. He could only shrug.
“I could tell you that no woman is worth your life, or your peace of mind. But of course, that would be a lie.” His lips curved now, and his fingers squeezed lightly. “There are some, and a man is both blessed and cursed to find them. Would you like to talk about it?”
“No,” Luke managed in a strangled voice. The idea of discussing his dark and driving desire for Roxanne with her father had him hovering between a laugh and a scream. “I’ve got it under control.”
“Very well. Perhaps you’d like to hear about the next job.”
“Yes. Fine.”
Satisfied the air was clear once more, Max sat again, settled back. “LeClerc has come across some interesting information. A certain high-ranking politician keeps a mistress in the rich suburbs of Maryland near our nation’s capital.” Max paused to drink. Interest caught, Luke reached for his own snifter. His stomach no longer felt like a mine field. “Our public servant is not above accepting bribes—a particularly foul way of making a living in my estimation, but there you have it. In any case, he’s wise enough not to use his bonuses to inflate his own life-style and cause speculation. Instead, he quietly invests in jewelry and art, and keeps his investments with his mistress.”
“She must be a hell of a lay.”
“Precisely.” Max inclined his head, brushed a finger over his luxuriant moustache. “It’s difficult to imagine why a man who would cheat on his wife and his constituents would then trust the woman who helps him cheat with nearly two million in trinkets.” Max sighed a bit, as always baffled and delighted with the capriciousness of human nature. “I would hardly admit this in front of the delightful ladies of our house, but a man is not led by the nose, but by the dick.”
Luke grinned. “I thought the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.”
“Oh, it is, dear boy, it is. As long as it’s by way of the crotch. We are, after all, an animal with intellect, but an animal nonetheless. We bury ourselves in a woman, don’t we? Quite literally. How many among us can resist that illusion of returning to the womb?”
Luke lifted a brow. “I wouldn’t say that was what was on my mind when I’m bouncing on a woman.”
Max swirled his brandy. It had been a roundabout way to get the boy to talk, but Max often preferred a circular route. “My point, Luke, is that at a certain stage—thank God—the intellect clicks off and the animal takes over. If you’re doing everything right, you’re not thinking at all. Thought comes before—in the attraction, the pursuit, the seduction, the romance. Once a man’s inside a woman, once she surrounds him, the mind turns off and control is forfeited. I suppose that’s why sex is more dangerous than war, and much more desirable.”
Luke could only shake his head. “It’s not that difficult to enjoy the experience, and keep your mind focused.”
“Obviously you haven’t found the right woman. But you’re young yet,” Max said gently. “Now.” He leaned forward. “About our trip to Washington.”
It took six months in the planning. Details needed to be refined and polished as carefully as the stage show the Nouvelles would perform at the Kennedy Center.
In April, when the cherry blossoms were in rich and fragrant bloom, Luke traveled to wealthy Potomac, Maryland. Disguised with a pin-striped suit, a blond wig and a trimmed beard, he made the rounds with an eager real estate agent. With a clipped Boston accent, he assumed the identity of Charles B. Holderman, the representative of a wealthy New England industrialist who was interested in a home in D.C.’s elegant suburbs.
He appreciated the trip for what it was, and for the added benefit of distance from Roxanne. She’d taken her revenge in the sneakiest and most effective of ways. By acting as though nothing had ever happened.
Luke hadn’t fully relaxed in months, and looked on the trip as a kind of working vacation. There was the added benefit of having a suite of rooms in the quietly dignified Madison, indulging in tourism—he particularly enjoyed the Smithsonian’s array of gems—and simply being alone.
He toured the listed houses with the real estate agent, hemmed and hawed over building lots and locations. The questions he asked as the representative of a perspective buyer paralleled what he needed to know as a potential thief.
Who lived in the neighborhood and what did they do? Were there any loud dogs? Police patrols? What company would be recommended for installing a security system? And so on.
Later that day Luke approached Miranda Leesburg straight on. He strolled up her flower-lined flagstone walk and knocked on her oak and stained-glass front door.
He already knew what to expect. He’d studied the pictures of the sharp and sleek thirty-something blonde with a killer body and blue ice eyes. With resignation, he heard the high-pitched barking of a pair of dogs. He’d known she had two Pomeranians, it was just too bad they were yappers.
When she opened the door he was surprised to see the sleek blond hair pulled ruthlessly back in a ponytail and the sharp-featured, canny face damp with sweat. There was a towel around Miranda’s neck. The rest of that lush, boldly curved body was snugged into a scant, two-piece exercise suit in vivid purple.
She scooped up both dogs, soothing them against breasts that rose like snowy white moons above the thin swatch of spandex.
Luke didn’t lick his lips—but he thought about it. He began to understand why the good senator kept this little prize tucked away.
In photographs she was lovely in a cool, detached and obvious way. In person she shot out enough sex appeal to strike a man blind at sixty paces. Luke was much closer than that.
“I beg your pardon.” He smiled and spoke with Charles’s Yankee accent. “I’m sorry to disturb you.” The dogs were still yapping and he had to pitch his voice over the din. “I’m Holderman, Charles Holderman.”
“Yes?” She looked him up and down, much as she might if he were a sculpture she was contemplating in a gallery. “I’ve seen you around the neighborhood.”
“My employer is interested in some property in the area.” Luke smiled again. Holderman’s proper maroon tie was beginning to strangle him.
“Sorry, my house isn’t on the market.”
“No, I realize that. I wonder if I might have a moment of your time? We could speak out here if you’d be more comfortable.”
“Why would I be more comfortable outside?” She arched one delicat
ely sculpted brow as she sized him up. Young, well built, repressed. She bent down to set the dogs on the polished hardwood—the movement put a marvelous strain on the spandex—and gave them both a little pat on the rump to send them skittering off. With her lover out of town for nearly two weeks on a fund-raising tour, she was bored. Charles B. Holderman looked like an interesting diversion. “What did you want to speak to me about?”
“Ah, landscaping.” He managed to keep his eyes from skimming down to the slopes of her breasts. “My employer has very specific requirements for grounds and gardens. Yours comes quite close to meeting them. I wonder, did you construct the rock garden in your side yard yourself?”
She laughed, patting the towel to her breasts, her gleaming midriff. “Darling, I don’t know a pansy from a petunia. I use a service.”
“Ah. Then perhaps you could give me a name, a number.” The ever efficient Holderman took a slim, leather-bound book from his breast pocket. “I’d appreciate it very much.”
“I suppose I could help you out.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Come on in. I’ll dig up the card.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Luke put the book away and filled his mind instead with the details of the foyer, the front stairs, the size and number of rooms off the hallway. “Your home is lovely.”
“Yeah, I had it redecorated a few months ago.”
It was all pastels and floral prints. Restful, feminine. The lush body in the vivid slashes of purple added a shock of sex. Like passion in a meadow.