Blowing out her breath and muttering to herself, Samantha next dialed her office. “Jellicoe Security, we’re here to help,” came Aubrey’s smooth voice.
“You’re a better employee than I am,” she said with a half smile, flipping on the plasma TV to catch the morning news.
“I like being here. During the season I don’t even get going until nightfall. Daytime is interesting.”
“I know what you mean. I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“No hurry. Daltrey checked in to say he should be finished this afternoon, and Ortiz is bringing in his notes at about the same time.”
“Nothing new from the Malloreys?”
“Not a peep. I guess Gwyneth liked whatever you did last night.”
“I switched over her entry tone to Westminster Cathedral bells.”
“Very nice.”
“Glad to see my business runs better with me just out setting door chimes.”
“Nonsense, Miss Samantha. A business is supposed to run well even when the boss is out of the country. At least that’s what’s supposed to happen when you hire people who know what they’re doing.”
Those employees knew what they were doing mostly because they’d done time for it previously. That was between her and the guys she hired to do the installations, though. And she and Stoney put them through hell first, to make sure this wasn’t their way of getting back into the old business.
“Thanks. I’ll bring lunch,” she said, and hung up.
Since work didn’t need her for anything urgent, Mike Donner was at school, and she had until tomorrow for the Toombs house tour, she spent an hour at the computer looking up everything public or otherwise she could find about old Wild Bill. Then she pulled on her shoes and went to collect the Bentley. Stoney might not be home, but that wouldn’t stop her from visiting his place and trying to figure out where he’d gone. In her line of work people vanished for one of two reasons: either they were on the run, or they were caught or killed. If this was a third one, she wanted to know what it was.
Stoney’s red ’93 Chevy pickup wasn’t in his driveway or in his garage, which she took to be a good sign. On the outside his small, slightly shabby house fit right into the Pompano Beach neighborhood. On the inside, from the sliding-eyes cat clock in the kitchen to the classic 1950s radio console and actual tube television in the living room, it was pure Stoney. His idea of cool antiques ran to the I Love Lucy era.
He’d never given her a key, but they both knew that she’d never needed one. She picked his lock in about eight seconds and walked in. At least he had an answering machine, but the only message on it was the one she’d left last evening. Which could mean either that everybody else he knew was aware that he was out of town, or that he was picking up his messages from somewhere else.
Grumbling, Samantha opened his refrigerator. A couple of beers and two slices of pizza, plus half a head of lettuce and every low-calorie salad dressing known to man. Tomatoes, cauliflower, melon—if he didn’t get back soon, his refrigerator was going to turn into a serious hazmat situation.
His toothbrush and stuff were still in the bathroom, but as far as she knew Stoney had an emergency bag just like she did—everything he’d need for a quick, clean getaway neatly packed inside. Just in case.
She hadn’t expected to find a clue; after all, they were in the same business, and she wouldn’t have left one. But it wasn’t like him to vanish without at least a coded message to let her know he was okay. They’d been family since she could remember, and when Martin had proved to be a royal fuckup of a father, Stoney had been the one to step in for her.
His younger brother Delroy lived in New York, but he had a nice bakery business going. Calling him would only make him worry, so she’d delay that for as long as possible.
“Okay, Stoney,” she muttered, stacking the pieces of mail from behind his door and setting them on the Formica kitchen table, “this is your gig. But whatever you’re trying to shake loose, you’d better check in soon. I have enough things I’m hunting for right now without adding you to the list.” Especially since he was supposed to be helping her with information on Toombs.
As she closed and locked his door again, she could admit that with her two main guys both gone, she felt a little off her game. Sure she could manage on her own, and frequently did so, but Stoney was her sounding board for ideas and theories. As for Rick…Well, he was everything else and then some more. And she was just crazy about him.
Once the house was buttoned up again she walked the half block to where she’d parked the Bentley. As she started to pull away from the curb, a metallic blue Volvo 750 passed her heading in the opposite direction. The car looked vaguely familiar, and as it pulled into Stoney’s driveway and the petite brunette in the power business suit got out, she frowned. Kim Stacey, real estate agent extraordinaire, and Stoney’s squeeze for the last couple of months.
Slowly she backed the Bentley until she was just a house away from Stoney’s. As she unrolled the passenger window she could hear Kim pounding on the front door and yelling. “Walter! Are you in there? Walter, if you can hear me and you’ve had a stroke or something and can’t talk, pound twice on the floor and I’ll call 911.”
Great. So Stoney hadn’t even told the girl he was kind of dating where he’d gone. The nice, straitlaced Samantha with a security business partner missing and nothing to hide would have gotten back out of the car so she could commiserate with the girlfriend and they could call the cops together.
She wasn’t straitlaced. Samantha put the car in gear and drove off, making the first right turn she could to get out of sight of the house. Then she dialed Stoney’s cell phone again. Still nothing—not even the choice of leaving a message, probably because the techno-dummy didn’t know how to set up an account.
If the cops were going to bust in they would find nothing but neatly stacked mail, which would probably make them figure one of his neighbors was watching the house for him. She couldn’t leave a message on his home machine other than the one she had last night—which purposely didn’t have anything weird in it.
Shit. The day had started out okay, but it was definitely going downhill.
Her opinion didn’t change when she got to the office. “Hey,” she greeted Aubrey, putting a turkey club sandwich and fries down in front of him. “And an iced tea,” she finished, pulling it from the holder and handing over a straw.
He popped the plastic lid and looked inside. “You even added a lemon slice, you darlin’ you.”
“I know what my men like. Anything exciting?”
“Tom Donner called. No message, but he asked you to call him back at your earliest convenience.”
She stopped just past the reception door. “Did he really say ‘earliest convenience,’ or are you cleaning it up?”
“Well, the actual quote was ‘when she gets her ass into the office,’ but a gentleman wouldn’t repeat such things unless specifically requested to do so.”
Samantha chuckled. “Gotcha.”
Once she’d seated herself in her office and pulled out her Chinese chicken salad, she called Donner’s office. “Donner, Rhodes and Chritchenson,” the pert receptionist drawled after one ring.
“Donner, please. It’s Jellicoe, returning his call.”
“One moment, Miss Jellicoe.”
Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik reverberated through the line until it clicked open again. “Are you in your office?”
“Yes.” She frowned. That was even less friendly than usual. “Is something wro—”
The line clicked dead and then returned to the dial tone.
“He’s not going to get a Christmas present, if he keeps that up,” she muttered, hanging up the phone. And if Rick had asked Donner to call and keep an eye on her, he wasn’t getting a present tonight when he got back from New York. Which was a damned shame, because she really wanted him to get this one—her in nothing but a bow.
Six bites of salad later, she heard the outsid
e office door open, followed by Aubrey’s voice and then Donner’s deeper one. She stiffened as he appeared at her office door. “I knew I rented this office too close to yours,” she said, finishing her bite but keeping the plastic fork in her hand. It wasn’t exactly lethal, but it would damn sure hurt.
He reached behind him to slam her door closed just as Aubrey reached it. “Did you, or did you not, take my wife on a burglary yesterday?” he snarled, all six-foot-plus of former Texan trying to intimidate her.
Samantha stood up. She might be five-foot-four, but she didn’t intimidate. And she didn’t like to be yelled at on her own turf. “I did not.”
“Okay, so you didn’t steal anything. You know what I mean, dammit.”
“And if you’re so sure you know the answer, why are you asking me?” she shot back.
Her door rattled. “Do you need assistance, Miss Samantha?”
“I’m fine, Aubrey. As you were.”
Donner’s gaze didn’t leave her face. “I asked you a question.”
“And I answered it.”
“Are you going to dance around this all day?”
“You’re the lawyer. Make me talk.”
“You had lunch together. Which car did you take afterward?”
“You know what I think, Mr. Lawyer? I think you don’t know anything, but you have some weird hunch, and you’re trying to confirm what you want to hear. And I’m not saying anything one way or the other. Draw your own conclusions. I’m not a rat.”
“You’re not a rat. You’re a cat, but they’re both animals in my book.”
“Ooh, very nice. I bet you worked on that one for a while. But being nasty isn’t gonna make me spill anything.”
“So you admit there’s something to spill.”
“I admit that you think there’s something to spill.”
“Dammit, Jellicoe, I should kick your ass.”
“You should give it a try.”
“Why won’t you answer me?”
She folded her arms. “Because I don’t want to.”
Cursing under his breath, he stalked over to her window and pulled the blinds open. His own gleaming office building stood just across Worth Avenue, and he glared at it for a long moment. “Let’s try this again. What did you and Katie do yesterday?”
“That’s better. You’re not accusing me of anything, anyway. Tell me why you want to know, and maybe—maybe—I’ll tell you.”
Donner muttered something to himself, then faced her. “Katie and I have three kids. Chris is twenty, for Christ’s sake.” His tanned face reddened. “I guess my point is that we’ve been having…we’ve been intimate for a lot of years.”
“Yipes. And you’re telling me this because?”
“Because last night she…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to you.”
She was beginning to suspect what he was about to tell her, and she couldn’t quite believe it, either. “So don’t.”
“Last night was the craziest, wildest night we’ve ever had,” he fumbled in a rush. “She—she rocked my world, Jellicoe.”
Samantha couldn’t have stopped her grin for a million bucks. “And you have a problem with that?”
“It depends. Rick said that your theft thing is kind of a high for him. A sexual high.”
“He actually told you that?” Samantha asked, lifting both eyebrows.
“Not exactly in those words, but yeah.”
Great. Now she was embarrassed. “So you figured that because your wife was more into you than usual, something must be wrong? That’s lame, even for a Boy Scout like you.”
He shook his head. “You’re not going to tell me, are you? She wouldn’t say anything, either. But I know you were up to something. Just…was she in any danger yesterday? Other than the usual driving-around-in-Palm-Beach danger?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that, and I hope you know that by now.”
“I don’t get you, Jellicoe. Rick’s dancing around like you’re going to break when he gives—” Donner swallowed. “But you stand up to me like you’ve got balls of granite.”
She cocked her head sideways. “I’ve been shot, Donner. Being yelled at by a Boy Scout from Yale doesn’t shiver my timbers. So whatever Katie and I did yesterday was our business, two girls on the town.”
“Shit.”
“But if you want another night like last night, tell her I said we’ll have to do it again sometime. And you’re welcome.”
“One of these days, Jellicoe, you’re going to give me a straight answer.”
“Doubtful,” she returned, walking to her door and pulling it open for him. “Because you’re too straight to take on somebody as crooked as me. Have a nice day.”
Once Donner left she returned to her desk and sat down again. And then she pushed her chair back and laughed.
Chapter 12
Wednesday, 4:18 p.m.
“Is she home?” Richard asked as Reinaldo pulled open the double front doors of Solano Dorado.
“Upstairs, Mr. Rick, in the suite. Hans has hamburgers and potato salad on the menu for tonight, if that is acceptable.”
“Samantha’s choice?”
Reinaldo cracked a grin. “You guessed it.”
“That’s fine. About seven?”
“I’ll tell him.”
Upstairs in the master suite he dropped his travel bag and briefcase onto the floor. “I’m home,” he called, then noticed the trailing end of a wide red ribbon over the back of the couch.
A small card was attached to the end of it. Pulling it from its envelope, he unfolded it. “‘Follow me,’” he read aloud. That was all it said.
He walked around the couch. The ribbon coiled and twisted loosely over an armchair, around the base of a floor lamp, and then flowed into the bedroom past the half-closed door. “It had best be you in here,” he said with a smile as he slowly pushed the inner door open, “or I’m going to embarrass myself.”
Silence. But he could feel her in there, her excitement, the warmth of her presence. His smile deepening, Richard stepped into the room.
His jaw dropped. “Wow.”
It was the only sound he could choke out. All the blood left his brain and headed south.
Samantha stood, one leg bent and slightly in front of the other, one hand on the ornately carved bedpost and the other at her side. In between she wore nothing—nothing but that red ribbon, looped once around her hips and once across her breasts and back over her shoulder to the floor again. If this was Christmas, he’d obviously been a very good lad.
“What—” He cleared his throat. “What did I do to merit this present?”
“I believe,” she said, her voice husky with suppressed excitement, “that this is the one-year anniversary of the first time you unwrapped me.” She flicked her fingers toward the bed. “And right there, too, as I recall.”
So it was. Three days after they’d met. Three very eventful, unforgettable days that had been followed by three hundred and sixty-five more. Shrugging out of his jacket, he dumped it to the floor. When he reached her, he slid his hands around her bare waist and leaned down to kiss her upturned mouth.
Chuckling against his lips, Samantha worked her fingers into the knot of his tie and tugged it open. “I thought about wearing pink thongs, but this seemed more fun. I know you like when I wear red.”
“It’s definitely working for me.”
“I can see that.” She skimmed a hand down the front of his trousers, then went to work on his shirt buttons. At the same time he slipped the ribbon down her shoulder and watched it float gracefully to the floor.
Drawing his fingers across her breasts, he listened with deep satisfaction to her sharp intake of breath. Whatever he’d accomplished in New York, whatever the news Gorstein had given him, it all could keep until later. She’d set this up for him, waited for him to come home, initiated this little party. She could be aggressive and demanding and proactive, but when it came to private matters between the two
of them, he was the one who generally led the way. Not this afternoon, though.
He gently pushed her back against the bedpost, deepening his kiss, letting the feel of her skin beneath his hands flow into him. Some of his favorite nights were when they climbed into bed together and simply fell asleep, but nothing was better than sex with a revved-up Samantha. Nothing.
Once she’d stripped off his shirt and belt, he undid his pants himself and kicked them and his shoes off. He couldn’t imagine that he looked very studly with his black dress socks on, so he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled them off, as well.
Samantha leaned over him as he yanked off the second one, pushing him flat on his back and crawling up to kiss him before she sank down to run her tongue across his nipples. Then she moved lower. As she took his cock in her soft mouth, his eyes rolled back in his head. Good God.
“Come here,” he growled when he couldn’t stand her enthusiastic bobbing any longer, pulling her up along him again and twisting to put her beneath him.
He kissed her mouth, her jaw, her throat, and trailed his lips down to her breasts, sucking and licking and trying to hold himself in check against the sounds of her moans of pleasure. Reaching down, he lowered one hand between her thighs. Teasing her folds apart, he slipped a finger inside her.
She bucked, gasping. “How do you always make me feel like that?”
Richard lifted his head for a moment. “That would be a trade secret. Kind of a James Bond thing.”
She wrapped her fingers into his hair as he returned his attention to her tits. “You are so full of—”
He curled his finger, pressing against her. Samantha jumped, yanking hard on his hair. “See?” he murmured.
“Okay, okay. I give. Quit teasing and give me the main course.”
“Not yet. I’m still snacking.”
Richard trailed his mouth down her body, kissing her flat belly and the insides of her thighs and then moving in again with his fingers and his tongue. Her hard breathing, the writhing and the keening sounds she made drove him half mad, and he slid up over her again.
A Touch of Minx Page 14