by Jenna Ryan
“You’re a bloody good liar is what you are.” Aidan tugged the tie away from his throat “If I had any doubt before about your natural parentage, it’s gone now. That performance was worthy of Margaret Truesdale at her peak.”
“And yours wasn’t?” She grunted and glanced in the side mirror. “Face it, Brodie, fear was the wellspring of our joint performance today. Turn here.”
“I know the city, Sam.”
“Turn here, Aidan.”
He said nothing, merely shot her a steady sideways look and took the next right.
She leaned forward, peering into the mirror more intently. “There’s a car back there, a sedan. I think it’s following us.”
His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror. A frown marred his forehead. “Hold on,” he said, changing lanes.
She didn’t at first, but soon realized he meant it and clung on. He whipped the Jeep around a corner, along a semi-deserted street, up a hill and through a small back lane to a palm-lined avenue. Their tail stuck with them like a leech.
“He’s good,” Aidan noted.
“You don’t need to sound so impressed.” She pried her fingers free of the seat and attempted to twist herself around. “I can’t tell if it’s Alistair or…Oh, hell, he turned his head-lights off.”
It might very well be Alistair, Aidan reflected, swerving to avoid a young woman on roller blades. They had no reason to trust the man, especially in light of the slashed brake line incident On the other hand, why would Thurman Wells’s hired man want to harm them?
Unless Thurman, instead of being concerned for Mary as he professed, was in fact helping her. The other answer, no less palatable, was that Alistair was working for someone other than Thurman, possibly Mary Lamont herself.
Dammit, he should have cornered the little git at the recep-tion and had it out with him then and there.
“It must be Alistair,” Sam said. The faint quaver in her voice betrayed her state of nerves.
Tempted to reach over and stroke her cheek, Aidan refrained with an effort.
“Who else could it be?” She shivered. “Unless one of the others hired someone to put us off. We should have been more subtle, Aidan.”
“Robert Brodie,” he corrected abstractedly, his gaze shifting to the rearview mirror. “And we’d have learned even less than we did if we’d concocted a different story. Besides, it’s unlikely they had time to hire anyone.”
“Leo could have done it. There were lots of waiters and security guards there. Who says they all have scruples?”
Aidan’s brows arched in a wry challenge. “I could pull over if you’d like. That would answer our question.”
“Don’t be obtuse. Just lose the creep. This car chase stuff is not my idea of a fun night in L.A.”
One more glance at her in that dress and a dozen enjoyable ideas would present themselves to Aidan’s mind, none of them feasible and every one of them the worst mistake he could possibly make. He’d been married once; he’d vowed he would never do it again. He had his reasons, and not even Sam Gian-carlo with all her beauty, wit and intelligence was going to change his mind.
The sedan continued its relentless pursuit. Aidan cut a labyrinth path through Hollywood, past immortal Graumann’s, across Vine, out of Movieland and west to the ocean.
When that tactic failed, he reached down and punched off the headlights, a dangerous move, but necessary if he was correct in his assumption of their pursuer’s next move.
“Get down,” he told Sam calmly.
“What are you going to—”
Rather than repeat himself, he cupped a hand around her neck and yanked her sideways, directly, he realized with an inward grimace, into the region of his lap.
She fought him like a wildcat. “Are you crazy?” she demanded, and would have taken a strip off him if they hadn’t received a sudden bone-jarring jolt from behind.
“He hit us,” she whispered, disengaging herself from his unrestrictive grip. “It’s a Lincoln. They’re fast.”
Aidan squinted at the mirror. “Can you see the driver’s face?”
She dug into the headrest with her fingernails. “Only an outline. He—or she—is wearing a big hat.”
Aidan drove full speed for the water. He’d seen this trick in the cinema. He couldn’t see pulling it off, but you never knew. Maybe the lunatic behind them didn’t watch movies. “A man’s or a woman’s hat?” he asked, his mind racing faster than the two vehicles.
“Hedda Hopper’s.”
“We’re being chased by a dead gossip columnist?” The question required no answer, so Sam didn’t bother to fashion one.
“I think…What are you doing?”
He caught the note of alarm in her voice as she was half thrown back into her seat. “Trying something.”
The water loomed before them, a great wash of black, sparkling like eerie diamonds under a storm-dark sky.
Sam gasped. “You are crazy, aren’t you?” She braced herself with her feet and hands. “Aidan, you can’t do this. Don’t do this!”
But it was too late to change his mind. And it might just work at that.
The Lincoln was less than ten feet behind them as he sped along the residential road, a dead end that Aidan hoped to hell the driver behind them didn’t know about.
Unlit houses, trees and black, cracked pavement rushed past on both sides. Raindrops began to spatter the windshield. Aidan waited until the last possible second, calculated the re-maining distance, counted downward from three, then gave the wheel a hard yank to the right
The Jeep wasn’t built for high-speed maneuvers. It stuttered and shook and tipped precariously. When it finally landed on four wheels, Aidan released a pent-up breath and applied the brakes. Ignoring her elegant gown, Sam scrambled to her knees and looked back.
“He’s gone,” she said in disbelief. “He’s really gone, Ai-dan. He shot off the road and into the ocean.”
“STUPID, STUPID, stupid,” Mary muttered crabbily. She sloshed, sodden, into the house and sank unceremoniously onto the bottom stair. “Shouldn’t have done it.”
“Good God!”
Tobias’s exclamation of shock galvanized her anger, turning it outward from herself.
“Not a word,” she snapped, hazel eyes flashing a dangerous warning. “I’m in no shape for you, and I’m in a firing mood. I lost Mr. Plimley’s car.”
“Mr.—who? Plimley?”
“The man who owns the Canyon Grocery Store.”
“But that’s miles from here.”
“No kidding.” She eased an aching foot out from underneath her, fingering her swollen ankle. “I got a ride to town with a kid in a truck who was higher than a kite.”
“On drugs?” Tobias croaked.
“Love.” Mary gave a smug smile. “He’ll never remember an old broad like me.”
“You’re not—”
“Then,” she interrupted, easing her other foot free, “I took Plimley’s Lincoln and drove it to Rockland’s reception.”
“You went there!” Aghast, Tobias closed his eyes. “That was very foolish.”
“I know. It didn’t work, either. I couldn’t have gotten in. But I thought the girl and her champion or partner or whatever he is could use a little shaking up, so I waited outside. Always keep the enemy guessing, Tobias.”
“But—”
“Shut up, Tobias. I’m explaining. It’s more than you deserve. I followed them. Not too closely, but they saw the car and knew someone was after them so they tried to ditch me.”
“Obviously they succeeded.” Tobias’s tone was dry as dust.
Mary made a soaring motion with her hand. “I went flying off the road and into the water. Lucky the car did a nosedive into three feet of water or I’d have been trapped.”
“Did they see you?”
“No, but morbid snoops that they are, they poked around the empty wreck. I hid among the rocks on the beach. When they left a coon’s age later, I hobbled along the beach, pulled the hood
of my rain slicker up and paid a smelly guy with a beard down to his knees and pupils the size of quarters to drive me to the fork. I walked, or I should say, limped from there.”
“Good God,” Tobias repeated softly.
Mary made a snarly sound. “I’m old Tobias. I’m not dead. Why do so many people when they reach a certain age plop down in their rocking chairs and wait placidly for death? If my heart goes, it goes. But I don’t think it will because you know I only smoke at certain times now and I also have a damned fine reason to keep right on living.”
“Margaret.”
“Revenge.”
“There’s little difference, Mary.”
Her eyes assumed a glow that warmed her body right through. “I’ve got all my little rooks and pawns set up, Tobias, just like Sherlock Holmes did in his giant chess game. I know all the moves.”
“All of them?”
“Enough to play the game,” she retorted testily. “I’ll win, Tobias. This time, I’ll beat Margaret Truesdale.” She directed a hard look at his wrinkled face. “I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way, including her snippy little granddaughter.”
Chapter Five
By 10:00 p.m., Sam was so tired she could have fallen asleep in a closet, and so aware of Aidan Brodie that she wanted to scream.
He moved like a cat, sleek and lazy, a little slouchy, yet never appearing to expend a great deal of energy. His skin was sleek, too, and his musculature. She was guessing on that last thing, but she imagined him to be beautifully muscled, not bulky just toned to a lithe firmness under his clothes.
When he took her home and walked her up the long outer staircase, it took all her willpower not to invite him in for a drink. He shouldn’t drink and drive, and he couldn’t possibly stay. Not if she wanted to maintain her emotional stability.
There were six other tenants in the building. Three of their lights were on, including sweet, snoopy Miss Busby who played piano and made hideous human sculptures that she called surreal, but most people simply called grotesque.
“What’s that?” Aidan asked doubtfully of the one drying on Miss Busby’s porch.
“Ed Sullivan,” Sam answered, not looking.
“Where’s his head?”
“She says he lacked personality. No personality, no head. No, Aidan, don’t stop here. She has a dog, a big dog with even bigger teeth.”
“She lets him out?”
“Her, and she chews pant legs, mail and the odd shoe. Aidan?” Pausing halfway up the last set of stairs, she regarded him somberly. “Who do you think was in that car tonight?”
He had a sensual stare. His eyes looked at a woman rather than through her. Bedroom eyes, she thought with a small sigh of regret. If only she wasn’t so skittish about relationships. If only he would make some kind of move…
He regarded her half-lidded. His voice was a lazy Irish drawl. “I don’t know, Sam. Maybe Alistair, but that’s the obvious answer. I think there may be a great deal about this case that isn’t obvious.”
“That has an ominous ring to it”
She was facing him on the narrow staircase. The rain had been stopping and starting for the past two hours. It was thinking of starting again. Sam felt a light mist settle across her shoulders and hair. Various porch lights angled shadows over both of them. And yet she could see him quite clearly in spite of that.
Before she could stop herself, she had raised her fingers to trace the strong lines of his face, a classically handsome face that had no aspect of prettiness about it His skin was warm and smooth. He exuded sexuality like a fire radiated warmth. She faltered. Heaven help her, her desire was beginning to win out over her will.
She let her hand fall away. Like his face, his hair begged to be touched. “I’ll, uh, call Margaret tomorrow and see if she’ll agree to meet you.”
He nodded, seemed about to say something, but changed his mind and lowered his gaze to her lips. “I had a feeling I’d regret walking you up,” he murmured.
Breathing with difficulty, Sam fought the urge to slide her arms around his neck. And yet she didn’t want him to go, either. She wanted…The thought had barely formed before his mouth came down on hers in a move so sudden and unexpected that she had no time to react. His kiss sent a shock of excitement through her body, along her spine and right up to her brain. An odd sort of dizziness swept over her, something to do with hidden hunger and feelings too new to fully understand.
She felt his thumb stroke her jaw and the strain of desire he strove to conceal. Her breath came in a gasp when, as if driven by a demon, he broke the contact between them.
“Damn,” he said softly, and dropped his head forward. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
Sam swallowed, not sure she could speak. Too many things were leaping around in her mind, jumbled thoughts that might take days to sort out. Steadying herself, she faced him, all bravado. “It’s done, Aidan. We’re both old enough to deal with it.”
“You’d think so,” he agreed cryptically. His eyes shifted to the water. “I was married once,” he told her in a low voice. “For two years and four months. When I left, she set her lawyers, her brokers and her Dobermans on me.”
“Sounds a bit drastic,” Sam replied carefully, not sure what else would be appropriate. She was still trying to regain her equilibrium.
His smile was ironic. “That depends on your point of view. She thought she had just cause.”
Sam hesitated. He felt very dangerous all of a sudden. “What did she call ‘just cause’?”
His green eyes held hers in a gaze she was powerless to break. “She claimed I tried to kill her.”
“HE’S LYING,” Sam declared to her parakeet, Koko. The effects of Aidan’s kiss lingered, but her mind was clear enough. “He couldn’t have tried to kill her. I’d know if he had violent tendencies.” She kicked off her high heels as she headed for the kitchen. “He’d have gone for Alistair’s throat at the party if he had a flashy temper…My God, what happened?” She stopped short, her eyes widening at the mess of tattered paper on the table.
There was a note written on pink stationery with a box of Almond Rocca beside it.
Used the spare key you gave me last summer to get in. Sorry about the mess. Angel missed her breakfast I replaced the box of chocolates your mother sent. The bills are intact, and I don’t think she damaged the video itself.
Miss Busby
Sam gazed at the sorry mess. It figured the bills would survive. She didn’t know what the videotape was all about—and wouldn’t until she got her broken VCR back from the shop. It looked like a blank Sony, with half the cardboard jacket torn off. At least Angel hadn’t mangled her leather boots this time.
On cue, Miss Busby began to play her piano downstairs. “The Beer Barrel Polka.”
Sam unpinned her already disheveled hair and, humming along, let her thoughts slide back to Aidan.
He’d said those things about his ex-wife deliberately, to unnerve her. Maybe he felt the same unwanted attraction for her that she felt for him.
A horrible thought slithered in. What if her assessment of his character was totally wrong? He’d become Robert Brodie of the BBC effortlessly enough, and actors were commonplace in Southern California.
“No,” she said firmly to Koko and the night. “I won’t believe that”
It wasn’t until she’d poured herself a glass of orange juice in the well-lit kitchen that Sam realized she was continuing to hum a tune that Miss Busby was no longer playing. The apartment below was silent. She could hear the Freud sisters upstairs instead. They were watching Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson in Kiss Me Kate.
Sam grinned at the song, raising the juice to her lips. “I Hate Men.” Kate had a definite chip on her shoulder.
She started back for the living room, loving the texture of the dusty rose carpet under her bare feet. Maybe she should have asked Aidan in.
A flurry of pounding fists cut short her musings. She froze, juice glass in hand, toes curling into the
deep carpet.
Miss Busby’s voice, muffled by the heavy door, called fran-tically, “Sam! Sam! There’s a man being beaten up on the street. Let me in. Let me in!”
Her paralysis broke. She ran to the door, unchained it and yanked it open.
Miss Busby stood there in curlers. She was short, thin and wiry, in her late sixties and as spry as a woman half her age. She looked like a gnome, danced like a sprite and brandished her broom like an agitated witch.
“Get your gun,” she ordered. “Hurry.”
Sam rushed out, peering through the trees to the misty street “I don’t have a gun, Miss Busby. My God!” Her fingers strangled the railing. “It’s Aidan!” She spun. “Where’s your dog?”
Miss Busby’s vehement headshake dislodged several of her curlers. “If I let Angel out, she’ll bite them both. The man they’re beating is a friend of yours, isn’t he?”
Of course, she would have seen Aidan come up.
Running back into her apartment, Sam dialed 9-1-1, explained quickly, slammed the phone down and grabbed her baseball bat from the hall closet Hiking up her dress, she raced barefoot down the outer stairs. She knew her heart was hammering at twice its normal rate and that her palms on the bat grip were cold and clammy. But two against one was un-fair, especially when those two outweighed Aidan by a good forty pounds.
Distant sirens cut through the mist. Were they coming closer? Sam didn’t wait to find out. She lunged at the heavier of the pair, swinging her bat full force in the direction of his shoulder blades.
The impact jarred her arm muscles and sent him staggering into a bush. Miss Busby followed up with a whack to his head. Her broomstick cracked sharply against his skull.
The loss of one attacker was all Aidan needed. The other one, a muscle-bound ape with greasy red curls and black Boston Strangler gloves, growled but appeared uncertain without his partner to back him up.
Miss Busby ran onto the street, prepared to flag down the police car with the straw half of her broom. Sam brought the bat back over one shoulder and watched as Aidan and his attacker struggled.