by Nora Roberts
“Damn foreign cars,” he muttered. “Give me a Chevy any day.”
Wide-eyed with admiration, Whitney heard the engine spring to life. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
Doug shot her a look. “Just hold on. This time, I’m driving.” Throwing the Porsche into reverse, he peeled out of the space. By the time they reached the garage entrance, they were doing sixty. “Got a favorite hotel?”
“I’m not going to a hotel. You’re not getting out of my sight, Lord, until your account has a zero balance. Where you go, I go.”
“Look, I don’t know how much time I have.” He kept a careful eye on the rearview mirror as he drove.
“What you don’t have any of is money,” she reminded him. She had her book out now and began to write in neat columns. “And you’re currently in to me for a windshield, an antique porcelain vase, a Meissen tea set—eleven-fifty for that—and a plate-glass window—maybe more.”
“Then another thousand isn’t going to matter.”
“Another thousand always matters. Your credit’s only good as long as I can see you. If you want a plane ticket you’re taking on a partner.”
“Partner?” He turned to her, wondering why he didn’t just take her purse and shove her out the door. “I never take on partners.”
“You do this time. Fifty-fifty.”
“I’ve got the answers.” The truth was he had the questions, but he wasn’t going to worry about details.
“But you don’t have the stake.”
He swung onto FDR Drive. No, dammit, he didn’t have the stake, and he needed it. So, for now, he needed her. Later, when he was several thousand miles from New York, they could negotiate terms. “Okay, just how much cash have you got on you?”
“A couple hundred.”
“Hundred? Shit.” He kept his speed to a steady fifty-five now. He couldn’t afford to get pulled over. “That won’t take us farther than New Jersey.”
“I don’t like to carry a lot of cash.”
“Terrific. I’ve got papers worth millions and you want to buy in for two hundred.”
“Two hundred, plus the five thousand you owe me. And—” She reached into her purse. “I’ve got the plastic.” Grinning, she held up a gold American Express card. “I never leave home without it.”
Doug stared at it, then threw back his head and laughed. Maybe she was more trouble than she was worth, but he was beginning to doubt it.
The hand that reached for the phone was plump and very white. At the wrist, white cuffs were studded with square sapphires. The nails were buffed to a dull sheen and neatly clipped. The receiver itself was white, pristine, cool. Fingers curled around it, three elegantly manicured ones and a scarred-over stub where the pinky should have been.
“Dimitri.” The voice was poetry. Hearing it, Remo began to sweat like a pig. He drew on his cigarette and spoke quickly, before exhaling.
“They gave us the slip.”
Dead silence. Dimitri knew it was more terrifying than a hundred threats. He used it five seconds, ten. “Three men against one and a young woman. How inefficient.”
Remo pulled the tie loose from his throat so he could breathe. “They stole a Porsche. We’re following them to the airport now. They won’t get far, Mr. Dimitri.”
“No, they won’t get far. I have a few calls to make, a few … buttons to push. I’ll meet you in a day or two.”
Remo rubbed his hand over his mouth as his relief began to spread. “Where?”
There was a laugh, soft, distant. The sense of relief evaporated like sweat. “Find Lord, Remo. I’ll find you.”
C H A P T E R
2
His arm was stiff. When Doug rolled over he gave a little grunt of annoyance at the discomfort and absently pushed at the bandage. His face was pressed into a soft feather pillow covered by a linen case that had no scent. Beneath him, the sheet was warm and smooth. Gingerly flexing his left arm, he shifted onto his back.
The room was dark, deceiving him into thinking it was still night until he looked at his watch. Nine-fifteen. Shit. He ran a hand over his face as he pushed himself up in bed.
He should be on a plane halfway to the Indian Ocean instead of lying around in a fancy hotel room in Washington. A dull, fancy hotel room, he remembered as he thought of the fussy, red-carpeted lobby. They’d arrived at one-ten and he hadn’t even been able to get a drink. The politicians could have Washington, he’d take New York.
The first problem was that Whitney held the purse strings, and she hadn’t given him a choice. The next problem was, she’d been right. He’d only been thinking of getting out of New York, she’d been thinking of details like passports.
So, she had connections in D.C., he thought. If connections could cut through paperwork, he was all for it. Doug glanced around the high-priced room that was hardly bigger than a broom closet. She’d charge him for the room, too, he realized, narrowing his eyes at the connecting door. Whitney MacAllister had a mind like a CPA. And a face like …
With a half grin he shook his head and lay back. He’d better keep his mind off her face, and her other attributes. It was her money he needed. Women had to wait. Once he had what he was going for, he could swim neck-deep in them if he wanted.
The image was pleasant enough to keep him smiling for another minute. Blondes, brunettes, redheads, plump, thin, short, and tall. There was no point in being too discriminating, and he intended to be very generous with his time. First, he had to get the damn passport and visa. He scowled. Damn bureaucratic bullshit. He had a treasure waiting for him, a professional bone breaker breathing down his neck, and a crazy woman in the room next door who wouldn’t even buy him a pack of cigarettes without marking it down in the little notebook she kept in her two-hundred-dollar snakeskin bag.
The thought prompted him to reach over to pluck a cigarette from the pack on the nightstand. He couldn’t understand her attitude. When he had money to spend, he was generous with it. Maybe too generous, he decided with a half laugh. He certainly never had it for long.
Generosity was part of his nature. Women were a weakness, especially small, pouty women with big eyes. No matter how many times he’d been taken by one, he invariably fell for the next. Six months before, a little waitress named Cindy had given him two memorable nights and a sob story about a sick mother in Columbus. In the end, he’d parted company with her—and with five grand. He’d always been a sucker for big eyes.
That was going to change, Doug promised himself. Once he had his hands on the pot of gold, he was going to hold on to it. This time he was going to buy that big splashy villa in Martinique and start living his life the way he’d always dreamed. And he’d be generous with his servants. He’d cleaned up after enough rich people to know how cold and careless they could be with servants. Of course, he’d only cleaned up after them until he could clean them out, but that didn’t change the bottom line.
Working for the wealthy hadn’t given him his taste for rich things. He’d been born with it. He just hadn’t been born with money. Then again, he felt he’d been better off being born with brains. With brains and certain talents you could take what you needed—or wanted—from people who barely noticed the sting. The job kept the adrenaline going. The result, the money, just let you relax until the next time.
He knew how to plan for it, how to plot, how to scheme. And he also knew the value of research. He’d been up half the night going over every scrap of information he could decipher in the envelope. It was a puzzle, but he had the pieces. All he needed to put them all together was time.
The neatly typed translations he’d read might have just been a pretty story to some, a history lesson to others—aristocrats struggling to smuggle their jewels and their precious selves out of revolution-torn France. He’d read words of fear, of confusion, and of despair. In the plastic-sealed originals, he’d seen hopelessness in the handwriting, in words he couldn’t read. But he’d also read of intrigue, of royalty, and of wealth. Marie Antoinette
. Robespierre. Necklaces with exotic names hidden behind bricks or concealed in wagon-loads of potatoes. The guillotine, desperate flights across the English Channel. Pretty stories steeped in history and colored with blood. But the diamonds, the emeralds, the rubies the size of hen’s eggs had been real too. Some of them had never been seen again. Some had been used to buy lives or a meal or silence. Others had traveled across oceans. Doug worked the kinks out of his arm and smiled. The Indian Ocean—trade route for merchants and pirates. And on the coast of Madagascar, hidden for centuries, guarded for a queen, was the answer to his dreams. He was going to find it, with the help of a young girl’s journal and a father’s despair. When he did, he’d never look back.
Poor kid, he thought, imagining the young French girl who’d written out her feelings two hundred years before. He wondered if the translation he’d read had really keyed in on what she’d gone through. If he could read the original French … He shrugged and reminded himself she was long dead and not his concern. But she’d just been a kid, scared and confused.
Why do they hate us? she’d written. Why do they look at us with such hate? Papa says we must leave Paris and I believe I will never see my home again.
And she never had, Doug mused, because war and politics go for the big view and trample all over the little guy. France during the Revolution or a steamy pit of a jungle in Nam. It never changed. He knew just what it felt like to be helpless. He wasn’t going to feel that way ever again.
He stretched and thought of Whitney.
For better or worse, he’d made a deal with her. He never turned his back on a deal unless he was sure he could get away with it. Still, it grated to have to depend on her for every dollar.
Dimitri had hired him to steal the papers because he was, Doug admitted honestly as he sucked in smoke, a very good thief. Unlike Dimitri’s standard crew, he’d never considered that a weapon made up for wit. He’d always preferred living by the latter. Doug knew it was his reputation for doing a smooth, quiet job that had earned him the call from Dimitri to lift a fat envelope from a safe in an exclusive co-op off Park Avenue.
A job was a job, and if a man like Dimitri was willing to pay five thousand for a bunch of papers, a great many with faded and foreign writing, Doug wasn’t going to argue. Besides, he’d had some debts to pay.
He’d had to get by two sophisticated alarm systems and four security guards before he could crack the little gem of a wall safe where the envelope was stored. He had a way with locks and alarms. It was—well, a gift, Doug decided. A man shouldn’t waste his God-given talents.
The thing was, he’d played it straight. He’d taken nothing but the papers—though there’d been a very interesting-looking black case in the safe along with it. He never considered that taking them out to read them was any more than covering his bets. He hadn’t expected to be fascinated by the translations of letters or a journal or documents that stretched back two hundred years. Maybe it had been his love of a good story, or his respect for the written word that had touched off his imagination as he had skimmed over the papers. But fascinated or not, he would have turned them over. A deal was a deal.
He’d stopped in a drugstore and bought adhesive. Strapping the envelope to his chest had just been a precaution. New York, like any city, was riddled with dishonest people. Of course, he’d arrived at the East-Side playground an hour early and had hidden. A man stayed alive longer if he watched his ass.
While sitting behind the shrubbery in the rain, he’d thought over what he’d read—the correspondence, the documents, and the tidy list of gems and jewels. Whoever had collected the information, translated it so meticulously, had done so with the dedication of a professional librarian. It had passed through his mind briefly that if he’d had the time and opportunity, he’d have followed up on the rest of the job himself. But a deal was a deal.
Doug had waited with every intention of turning over the papers and collecting his fee. That had been before he’d learned that he wasn’t going to get the five thousand Dimitri had agreed on. He was going to get a two-dollar bullet in the back and a burial in the East River.
Remo had arrived in the black Lincoln with two other men dressed for business. They’d calmly debated the most efficient way to murder him. A bullet in the brain seemed to be the method agreed on, but they were still working out the “when” and “where” as Doug crouched behind bushes six feet away. It seemed Remo had been fussy about getting blood on the Lincoln’s upholstery.
At first Doug had been angry. No matter how many times he’d been double-crossed—and he’d stopped counting—it always made him angry. Nobody was honest in this world, he’d thought as the adhesive pulled a bit at his skin. Even while he’d concentrated on getting out in one piece, he had begun to consider his options.
Dimitri had a reputation for being eccentric. But he also had a reputation for picking winners, from the right senator to keep on the payroll to the best wine to stock in the cellar. If he wanted the papers badly enough to snip off a loose end named Doug Lord, they must be worth something. On the spot, Doug decided the papers were his and his fortune was made. All he had to do was live to claim it.
In reflex he touched his arm now. Stiff, yes, but already healing. He had to admit crazy Whitney MacAllister had done a good job there. He blew smoke between his teeth before he crushed out the cigarette. She’d probably charge him for it.
He needed her for the moment, at least until they were out of the country. Once he got to Madagascar, he’d ditch her. A slow, lazy grin covered his face. He’d had some experience in outmaneuvering women. Sometimes he succeeded. His only regret was that he wouldn’t get to see her stomp and swear when she realized he’d given her the slip. Picturing those clouds of pale, sunlit hair he thought it was almost too bad he had to double-cross her. He couldn’t deny he owed her. Even as he sighed and began to think kindly of her, the connecting door burst open.
“Still in bed?” Whitney crossed to the window and pulled open the drapes. She waved a hand fussily in front of her face in an attempt to clear the haze of smoke. He’d been up for a while, she decided. Smoking and plotting. Well, she’d been doing some figuring herself. When Doug swore and squinted, she merely shook her head. “You look terrible.”
He was vain enough to scowl. His chin was rough with a night’s coarse growth of beard, his hair was unruly, and he’d have killed for a toothbrush. She, on the other hand, looked as though she’d just walked out of Elizabeth Arden’s. Naked in the bed with the sheet up to his waist, Doug felt at a disadvantage. He didn’t care for that sensation.
“You ever knock?”
“Not when I’m paying for the room,” she said easily. She stepped over the tangle of jeans on the floor. “Breakfast is on its way up.”
“Great.”
Ignoring his sarcasm, Whitney made herself at home by sitting on the bottom of the bed and stretching out her legs.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Doug said expansively.
Whitney only smiled and shook back her hair. “I got in touch with Uncle Maxie.”
“Who?”
“Uncle Maxie,” Whitney repeated, giving her nails a quick check. She really needed a manicure before they left town. “Actually, he’s not my uncle, I just call him my uncle.”
“Oh, that kind of uncle,” Doug said, a half sneer on his face.
Whitney spared him a mild glance. “Don’t be crude, Douglas. He’s a dear friend of the family’s. Perhaps you’ve heard of him. Maximillian Teebury.”
“Senator Teebury?”
She spread her fingers for a last examination. “You do keep up with current events.”
“Look, smartass.” Doug grabbed her arm so that she tumbled half into his lap. Whitney only smiled up at him, knowing she still held all the aces. “Just what does Senator Teebury have to do with anything?”
“Connections.” She ran a finger down his cheek, clucking her tongue at the roughness. But roughness, she discovered, had its own primit
ive appeal. “My father always says you can do without sex in a pinch, but you can’t do without connections.”
“Yeah?” Grinning, he lifted her up so that her face was close to his and her hair streamed down to the sheets. Again he caught the drift of her scent that meant wealth and class. “Everybody has different priorities.”
“Indeed.” She wanted to kiss him. He looked rough and restless and disheveled, the way a man might after a night of wild sex. Just what kind of a lover would Douglas Lord be? Ruthless. She felt her heart thud a little faster at the thought. He smelled of tobacco and sweat. He looked like a man who lived on the edge and enjoyed it. She’d like to feel that clever, interesting mouth on hers—but not yet. Once she’d kissed him she might forget that she had to stay one step ahead of him. “The thing is,” she murmured, letting her hands stray into his hair when their lips were only a breath apart, “Uncle Maxie can get a passport for you and two thirty-day visas to Madagascar within twenty-four hours.”
“How?”
Whitney noted with amused annoyance just how quickly his seducing tone became businesslike. “Connections, Douglas,” she said blithely. “What’re partners for?”
He shot her a considering look. Damn if she wasn’t becoming handy. If he wasn’t careful, she’d be indispensable. The last thing a smart man needed was an indispensable woman who had eyes like whiskey and skin like the underside of petals. Then it hit him that they’d be on their way by that time the next day. Letting out a quick whoop, he rolled on top of her. Her hair fanned over the pillow. Her eyes, half-wary, half-laughing, met his.
“Let’s find out, partner,” he suggested.
His body was hard, like his eyes could be, like his hand as it cupped her face. It was tempting. He was tempting. But it was always vital to weigh advantage against disadvantage. Before Whitney could decide whether to agree or not, there was a knock at the door. “Breakfast,” she said cheerfully, wiggling out from under him. If her heart was beating a bit too fast, she wasn’t going to dwell on it. There was too much to do.