Between himself and Tabby, it was a totally different story. He wanted her desperately. After this morning, it was going to be hell trying to keep away from her at all.
She had the most beautiful, desirable body he'd ever seen. He wanted all of it, all of her. But her price was just too high for him to pay.
Nick went to Thorn College and set up his interrogations in Tabby's office while she was teaching her classes. Dr. Flannery, the assistant biology professor, was high on his list of suspects. One of the few things he'd learned about the man was that he needed money, and that he'd been accused of theft while still in his teens. Tabby's fiance, meanwhile, had been arrested for taking part in an antiwar demonstration back in the sixties and had spent some time in jail. He'd deliberately falsified information on his record to that effect.
The computer in Tabby's office gave out a wealth of information on the faculty. Helen, one of the finer hackers in the Western Hemisphere, had supplied Nick with the password that got him into the college's personnel files. He was having a field day going through them. There was only one other suspicious person on the staff, and that was Dr. Day. Day was over the art department, and something of a professional layabout before, during and after college. He seemed to always have money, but the things he owned didn't jibe with the salary he was paid to teach. The Lamborghini, for instance, was a bit above the average college professor's salary.
Nick narrowed his investigation down to those three men, and proceeded to carefully and warily dig out any information he could about them. He discovered, not to his amazement, that Daniel was the only one of the three whom most everyone on campus disliked. Daniel soon became his number one suspect, but Nick had to keep his suspicions to himself for the time being. Tabby might not even believe his accusations, or she'd attribute them to jealousy.
He couldn't blame her. His behavior had been erratic and unbelievable, even to himself. He'd sworn to keep away from her, but more and more he was getting in over his head with her physically. One dark night, he thought irritably, he was going to steal into her bedroom and seduce her. That would certainly complicate an already impossible situation. She was bent on avoiding him after their interlude at her home. He sighed as he worked. Back to square one. It was no less than he'd expected.
Meanwhile, Tabby was trying to come to grips with her behavior of the morning. Allowing herself to be bent back over a kitchen table and fondled like some harem girl didn't sit well on her conscience. Ever since he'd come back, Nick had gone out of his way to make her aware of him. He'd been almost jealous of her relationship with Daniel, and frankly protective.
That was flattering, but it wasn't love. It wasn't even something permanent. Nick was on a case and she was handy. Perhaps he hadn't had a woman in a long time. She wished she knew more about his late woman friend.
During a slack period during the morning, she called Helen just to talk, because she wanted to do a little prying of her own.
"How's Nick doing?" Helen asked.
"All right, I suppose, he's very close-lipped about what he's finding out. Helen," she added slowly. "Tell me about Lucy."
"Ah. I was wondering if you'd ever ask," the other woman said gently. "Nick started going with her just after you turned down that skiing trip with us."
Tabby's heart skipped. "You asked me..."
"On his behalf. I even told you he'd wanted you along, but I guess he'd rejected you so much by then that you didn't believe anything he said. I'm sorry."
Tabby tangled the telephone cord around her finger and watched it curl. "So am I. Nick said that Mary had told me a lot of lies."
"Mary!" Helen ground out. "Yes, she did, and I knew nothing about it until you'd gone off to college and she laughed about breaking up your crush on Nick. She wanted him herself, but he didn't want her. It was pure malice. I wish I'd known."
"She didn't get him," Tabby said with quiet satisfaction.
"No, she didn't," Helen said curtly. "She wound up with a bald banker twenty years her senior and the last time I saw her she looked older than he did. She hasn't had a good life."
"Poor Mary," Tabby said.
"Poor you," came the reply. "If it hadn't been for Mary, you might be married to Nick by now."
"Not likely. He isn't the marrying kind, is he?"
"I don't know. I think he was, before Lucy got killed, but her death frightened him. He learned that it hurt to lose people you cared about, even if they weren't people you loved. He's afraid to risk his heart. Especially," she added thoughtfully, "on someone he could love obsessively. He's growled about you ever since we were here the first of the year. But he hasn't been the same, either."
"I...noticed that he's less brittle."
"Our Nick?" Helen chuckled. "Pat yourself on the back. He's been breakable out here."
"It's the case. I don't flatter myself that it's me. He enjoys a good mystery."
"Is that all he's enjoying?" came the bland reply.
Tabby remembered his eyes on her nudity that morning and blushed to the roots of her hair. "What was Lucy like?" she asked, putting the knife into her own heart with the question.
"Dainty and beautiful and devil-may-care. She burned like a candle flame, and went out just as easily. She was reckless and liked taking risks, just like Nick." Helen paused, because she was thinking, as Tabby was, how he liked risk and how easily he put his life on the line. He could wind up just like Lucy with no trouble at all. It was a frightening thought.
"Did he love her?" Tabby asked.
"He was fond of her. I think he found her exciting and sensual, and I'm pretty sure they were having a hot affair. He mentioned marriage, but without any real enthusiasm. I've never said this to him, but I always had the feeling that he would have broken it off in the end. He wasn't committed to her, even if he did find her vividly desirable."
"I suppose...women like that appeal to sophisticated men like Nick," Tabby said dully.
"In bed, sure." Helen laughed. "But not as prospective wives. Nick was raised to believe in all the virtues, even if he doesn't practice them. He'll settle one day, but it won't be with some vivid butterfly who likes the social life. He'll want a pipe and an easy chair and his children on his lap at bedtime to read stories to. You mark my words, he's got all the makings of a family man. He just doesn't know it yet."
"I wish..." Tabby began fervently.
"Don't give up on him," Helen said gently. "I know I tried to put you off him for your own good, but he's changed since January. He really has. Give it a chance."
"He wants me," she blurted out.
"Good. That's a step in the right direction. Just don't give in to him. That's the best way I know to classify yourself with his other women and turn him away."
"I know that. But it's hard," she confessed. "I do love him so, Helen."
"So do I," his sister admitted. "I think he's pretty special. But, then, so are you, my friend. Keep in touch. And don't brood, about Nick or the spot you're in. It will all work out. Really, this time next year, you'll hardly remember it."
"I hope you're right," Tabby said. But long after she put the receiver down, she remained unconvinced.
Chapter Five
There was a crowd in the halls when Nick came out of Tabby's office after having used the computer at Thorn College.
Shrieks were coming from the biology lab, and the outer door was open. With assumed casualness, he walked in.
Dr. Flannery was trying to calm a violently upset Pal. The man was holding something in his hands that the primate was obviously bent on possessing.
"You can't have these!" he was telling the monkey. "Where did you get them, anyway?"
"What does he have?" Nick asked with amused interested.
Dr. Flannery looked over his shoulder and his pink complexion went even pinker. "Dr. Day's keys," he replied. "God knows where he found them. Dr. Day must have been in here earlier."
"Are you teaching him to steal now, Flannery?" Daniel asked from the doo
r with that maddeningly superior tone that put everyone's back up.
"I am not!" Flannery choked, and went even redder. "Would you give these to Dr. Day at lunch, please?" he asked Daniel, handing him the keys. "I have a meeting."
"Glad to," Daniel replied. "That animal's a born thief. I'd watch him if I were you."
"That's what I'm trying to do."
"This primate project is a waste of time," Daniel muttered. "The only thing you're going to learn about that creature is that he's adept at sleight of hand."
"I believe your field is history?" Dr. Flannery asked pointedly.
Daniel shrugged. "It doesn't take a biologist to recognize an animal with a bad attitude." He glanced with irritation at Nick, who'd been leaning against the door facing, taking in the conversation. "Did you need something, Mr. Reed?"
"Only Tabby," Nick replied with a sensuality in his tone that penetrated even Daniel's thick skull.
Daniel seemed to grow an inch. "My fiancee," he stressed the word, "is teaching her class."
"I know." Nick shouldered away from the wall. "Nice of you to take her class until she got here."
"How did you know that?" the older man demanded.
Nick smiled slowly. "Why don't you ask Tabby?" He turned and walked along the hall, intent for the moment on finding Dr. Day.
The art department was in a separate building, and it took some searching before he found Dr. Day's class. The interested looks he was getting from some of the women students amused him. But lately, the only face he saw was Tabby's. Who'd have believed that she had a body like that, he wondered as he walked along. Her clothes made her look thin and lackluster. But under them... He groaned silently at the memory of how it had been to look at her, to touch and taste her. He wanted her more and more every day, and that wouldn't do.
He found Dr. Day in a corner classroom, just gathering his things together into an attache case. He was a tall, thin man with thick dark hair, and he looked faintly nervous.
"Dr. Day?" Nick introduced himself and shook hands with the other man. "I hope you don't mind. I'm trying to find out as much as I can about a recent theft."
"You think I'm involved?" he asked, immediately defensive.
"Good heavens, no," Nick drawled. "I wanted to know if you had any idea why someone might stoop to the theft of an ancient relic in the anthropology department, that's all."
Day relaxed, but only a little. He kept shoveling papers into that attache case, but now his long fingers were trembling. "Why does anyone steal?" he asked. "For monetary gain."
"There are other motives."
He glanced at Nick. "Professional jealousy, I suppose?" He nodded. "Well, just between us, Dr. Daniel Myers has more than his share of that. He and Dr. Harvey were once what you might call serious rivals even though they work in different departments. They're engaged now, though, so I assume that they've settled their differences."
"Dr. Myers has your car keys, by the way." Nick told him after they'd talked for a few minutes. "He'll give them to you at lunch."
"What is Dr. Myers doing with my car keys?" he asked irritably.
"Dr. Flannery's primate research project took them, I understand."
"That blasted monkey! I wish someone would cook and eat him. He's a positive menace!"
"Most of the faculty on his floor would tend to agree with you." Nick frowned. “How did your keys get into the biology lab, if you don't mind my asking?"
"I haven't been in the biology lab in two days," Dr. Day replied seriously. "The last time I remember having my keys was in the audiovisual room. That's in the library, next door to the main building where the biology lab is temporarily located."
"Surely the monkey can't leave the building when he wants to?"
"He can pick locks, didn't you know?" Day scoffed. "The damned thing's almost human. That's what scares me. One morning they'll find him in the dean's office smoking cigars and drinking brandy. Then where will Flannery's precious research funds go?"
He seemed to find that thought amusing. Nick thanked him and made a few more stops on his way around the campus. Then he went back to find Tabby, because it was now nearing the lunch hour.
She and Daniel were in her office, in the middle of a heated discussion.
"It wasn't like that at all," she was saying. "Daniel, you can't believe...!"
"What else can I believe? And isn't his arrival right now a little convenient?" he added narrowly. "My God, you almost drool when he walks into a room! I've had no input from you in days about our book. I can't even get you on the telephone in the evenings. And this morning you're late and he knows that you asked me to take your class. How?"
"Go ahead, honey. Tell him," Nick dared her, pausing in the doorway.
Tabby flushed. "Don't make it sound like that!"
"Why not?" he returned. "It was like that." His eyes went to her blouse and lingered until she flushed. "I'm the reason she was late," he told Daniel, and he smiled.
Daniel went scarlet with rage. He glared at Tabby. "So that's what's going on. And you said it was just an old crush. But that's not true. You're lovers, aren't you?"
"No!" Tabby gasped.
"Conspirators, too, probably," Daniel continued angrily. "I don't doubt that you're guilty of that theft after all, Tabitha, and that you did it to discredit me! You know that when Brown retires, I'm in line for a promotion to head of the history department. You can't stand it that I might achieve a higher position than you have in the sociology department, isn't that it?"
"Daniel, you aren't even making sense!" she exclaimed. "Stealing an important find would only discredit me!"
"I'm engaged to you, so it would discredit me as well!" he shot back. "I must have been out of my mind to propose to you!"
He walked out, still fuming. Nick's dark eyes never left Tabby's white face. "I don't think you did it," he reminded her.
She looked limp. "Thanks, Nick. For that," she added, glaring at him wearily, "not for making Daniel think we're lovers."
"We'd be lovers if you were a little less rigid," he said easily. "Come on. I'll buy you lunch."
She was too tired to argue. Besides, there was little danger of any more romantic interludes in a public place.
Or so she thought. But Nick had other ideas in mind. He bought a picnic lunch from a fried chicken franchise and herded her into the nearby park, to a secluded area under a sprawling oak tree.
"Isn't this nice?" he asked while they ate warm chicken.
"Peaceful, at least," she agreed. If it hadn't been quite so isolated, she'd have minded less. A stream flowed through and the gurgling of the water sounded quite close, mingled with the singing of birds in the trees around them.
"You could use a little peace after your morning."
“Why did you have to let Daniel know you were with me when he called?" she asked miserably.
"Why try to hide it?" he countered. "He doesn't own you. My God, you don't even want him. He's only using you to further his own career. A blind woman could see that, but apparently you can't."
"Why he wants me didn't matter at the time," she confessed. "I only wanted..."
"To spite me," he said for her, his dark eyes narrowing as he finished a third piece of chicken. He wiped his hands and mouth on a napkin before he took a sip of coffee from a paper cup. "Maybe to show me that you could get married if you wanted to. I slapped you down hard on New Year's Eve. I don't blame you for doing something outlandish."
"I was drunk!"
He looked at her solemnly. "No. You wanted me. And I didn't want you."
"I know that, you don't have to rub it in," she said in a ghostly tone, averting her eyes to her own cup of coffee.
He studied her, approving the way she looked in the prim green-and-white pattern shirtwaist dress she was wearing. Her hair was bundled up on top of her head with a green scarf. She looked younger than usual, and very flustered.
He smiled, lounging back against the tree. He'd removed the sports coat tha
t went with his dark brown slacks, and his tie with it. His white shirtsleeves were rolled up, the throat of his shirt unbuttoned. His hair was windblown and he looked reckless and elegant, lying there.
"I didn't realize how potent you'd be if we ever started kissing, until that night," he continued. "I was curious about you years ago, but every time I made a move, you backed away."
"You never made any moves," she countered.
"But I did. I can remember one particular instance, when I invited you to come up to law school for the weekend and go to a party with me."
Her dark eyes met his. "You were teasing. You laughed even when you said it."
"And you blushed and mumbled something and rushed off," he agreed. "I was serious. I meant it."
"I'm sure you didn't have any shortage of partners," she said stiffly.
"No. But it was you I wanted. You made me ache when you were eighteen, Tabby," he said softly. "I noticed you without any effort at all. But you were painfully shy of me. When I went to work for the FBI, I tried again, but that was a disaster. I ran to Lucy in self-defense, to prove to myself that I was still a man."
Her breasts rose and fell heavily with a long sigh. "They said you never got over her death."
"It was unexpected," he said. "And I was fond of her. We got along well enough. I might have married her eventually." He searched Tabby's sad face. "But she was the consolation prize, nothing more. A substitute for what I really wanted and couldn't have." He sat up suddenly, holding her eyes. "Haven't you worked it out? I've spent years telling myself that you found me too frightening to touch. Then New Year's Eve, you launched yourself on me and started kissing me, and I couldn't get away from you fast enough. I couldn't believe that you really wanted me. I thought it was a drunken aberration."
"It was!"
He shook his head. "No." He lay back again and opened his arms. "Come here."
She froze, her lips trembling as she fought the temptation.
Books By Diana Palmer Page 117