by Joanne Rock
She paused to peer up and down the street, no doubt searching for a taxicab. “Your answering machine is right by the coffee machine.”
That didn’t sound promising. But it’s not like he had any other woman in his life who might have called. Before Amanda there’d been a long dry spell. “And?”
“And I was still too much in shock from seeing my video in your VCR to politely duck out of the kitchen while your partner left a message about the investigation of my father.” She picked up her pace again, obviously ready to walk to Manhattan until she saw a cab. Her long, angry strides radiated tension, anger…hurt.
“We aren’t investigating your father,” he argued, attracting the attention of an elderly woman in an orange caftan sweeping her front step.
The woman paused to watch the glamorous movie star walk by with her barefoot fan limping along beside her.
Great. Just great.
Oblivious to the scene they created for the few early risers that dotted the street, Amanda strode onward, her handbag swinging from her clenched fist with a viciousness that would surely discourage any purse-snatchers with half a brain. “Then why would your partner call you to offer up dirt on my dad?”
Her voice didn’t quiver. Rather it shook with anger, a barely disguised urge to throttle him. Ten years on the police force had taught Duke to discern the difference.
It hadn’t, however, taught him caution.
As long as they were having a no-holds-barred debate for all of Brooklyn to hear, they might as well confront the issue of her father. He sure as hell had nothing more to lose here.
“Maybe because your dad isn’t keeping his hands clean.” Duke offered. He was only stating the obvious, wasn’t he? “Maybe his habit of hanging out with known criminals is finally biting him in the ass—butt.”
She halted in her tracks in front of the bakery for just long enough to stare him down. Her cool gaze bore no resemblance to the seductive looks she’d flashed him last night. “Since when is it against the law to have criminals for clients?”
Duke noticed the baker set aside his rolling pin to watch the commotion outside the window. Duke and Amanda weren’t being loud, but he had the feeling they created quite a picture.
“It’s not. But your father doesn’t do a damn thing to discourage the public perception of himself as a friend to the mob. If anything, he plays right into the ‘Don of the Garment District’ reputation.”
“That doesn’t make him guilty of anything.”
“Bad judgment, at the very least.”
Amanda planted her fists on her hips, showing him no quarter. “Still not a crime.”
By now the baker’s wife had joined him to watch out the window. Duke stepped closer to Amanda, wishing he’d stuck to apologizing and left the issue of Clyde Matthews for another day.
“I’m sorry about the phone call. And I swear there is no formal investigation of your father. Josh and I have heard he’s greasing hands for extra protection and good favor among his friends. Apparently it’s reaching the point that he’s losing money.”
Amanda shook her head, not backing down. “No. I know for a fact the business is losing money, but that’s the effect of a slow season. My father will make it back once the fall collection hits the runways in a few weeks.”
“So clear the air, Amanda,” he challenged, desperate to convince her before he lost what could well be his last chance to convince her. “Take a look at his books for yourself and see if the old man is as innocent as you think.”
She tipped her chin. “It would be worth it just to prove you wrong.”
“I’m not.” He tried not to notice the older couple who’d come out on their front stoop to take in the argument. Even the paperboy paused on his bike to watch the glamour goddess put the Brooklyn cop in his place this morning. Duke wondered if they were taking bets on the outcome. Hell, even he would put his money on the goddess. “Has it occurred to you that your father’s reputation could hurt your business? Or that his gangster friends might expect you to treat them with the same courtesy he has?”
She gripped her purse so hard Duke guessed she was fighting the urge to swing it at his head. “You think I’m the kind of person who would work with the mob?”
He took a split second too long to answer. A mistake he realized he would pay for. Her disillusioned face said it all. Even with her lips still swollen from their night together, her collarbone bearing the rasp from his unshaven face, he understood without being told. They’d moved too far apart to put things back together. He’d known this could happen. He hadn’t known it would hurt so damn much.
A flash of yellow moved by them on the street.
Amanda stepped off the sidewalk with one perfect leg and brought the taxicab careening to a halt beside them.
Duke scrambled to salvage what he could, all the while knowing whoever had bet on the goddess would win big. “It’s not that I think you’d want to, Amanda, but you might be put into a position where—”
She held up her hands to thwart his explanation, backing toward the cab. “I’ll talk to my father for my own peace of mind, and to prove you wrong. But I won’t keep secrets from him.”
“Amanda—” He moved to open the cab door for her, at least, but the unusually solicitous taxi driver beat him to it.
Damn. Why did it feel like all of Brooklyn was on her side? Duke watched Amanda smile her polite thanks to the little old gentleman playing chauffeur and wondered if he should have taken a more circumspect position on her father’s link to the crime world.
As she turned to slide into the taxi, her gold dragon pin winked at him in the sun.
Damn it, but didn’t the serpent remind Duke how foolish he’d been to think he could vanquish any dragons for Amanda.
14
AMANDA DRAGGED THE last male mannequin into her father’s showroom window, hoping one more plastic body would be enough to create the first vignette in her last-ever series of window designs.
Her father would have to find someone else to take her place now. She had her own company to run and she couldn’t afford to spend any more time in a display window.
But she planned to go out of the window dressing business with a bang.
To that end, she adjusted one of the toy guns in another of the male mannequin’s hands. Her series would be part political commentary, part Matthews family satire.
And part homage to Duke.
She’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that she’d hated walking away from him. But what else could she have done?
He didn’t trust her, didn’t see her as one of the “good guys.” She could paint herself with twinkle stars and he still wouldn’t see her in the same light as his noble fellow police detectives.
In Duke’s eyes, she was too tainted by the world she’d grown up in. Perhaps by keeping a copy of her videotape, he’d continually reminded himself of the kind of woman he believed her to be—the sort who fraternized with criminals and did stripteases to entice them.
Still, a small part of her enjoyed the fact that he’d found her alluring enough to watch her video over and over. She had to thank Duke for giving her a new confidence in herself that she’d never had before.
Amanda hauled a box of silk ties into the window and started digging. She’d searched through two other boxes in an effort to find the right pattern to put on the mannequins representing the good guys in her window, but her father had a limited supply of outrageous neckwear.
The bad guys were getting black turtlenecks and pinstriped suits. Their enemies wore white cowboy hats with their dinner jackets, symbolism that would be blatantly obvious to even the hastiest passersby.
Too bad men in real life weren’t so readily identifiable. Amanda had only seen the flashy exterior when she’d looked at Duke—an exterior that both appealed to her sense of style and shook it up at the same time.
But she’d failed to see beyond that to the high moral standards, the sense of nobility that was as much a
part of him as the granite jaw and Sinatra blue eyes.
Too bad she’d fallen in love with that part of him along with all the rest.
Sighing, Amanda jammed a pair of sunglasses on each of the two good guys’ plastic faces. They were the predators of the scene, the flashy avengers of the Garment District on their way to take down four perfectly pinstriped crooks.
She didn’t want to upset her dad with the new window, just open his eyes to how the rest of the world saw him.
The movement of the curtain behind the window caught her eye.
“Bonjour, Amanda,” her father called, angling his shoulders between the curtains. “How is your latest creation coming?” He peered around the display area with interest.
Amanda hadn’t prepared herself to confront him today. But then, maybe if she kept waiting until she was prepared, she’d never really do it.
She took a page from Duke Rawlins’s book and jumped in with both feet instead. “Good, Daddy. But this is going to have to be my last series. I’m getting swamped with fine-tuning my own collection for the fall preview next week.”
She braced herself for an aria at full volume, but instead her father smiled agreeably.
“Of course, sweetheart. The windows can wait a few weeks.”
Amanda gave in to the urge to grind her teeth for only a moment. “No, Daddy, I’m going to have to quit working on them for good. I just can’t handle the workload of designing my own clothes and creating your windows, too.”
He tried distracting her without answering. First he offered her a cup of coffee. Then he tried calling in his bookkeeper, Karen, to look at Amanda’s window. He even went so far as to hop into the window himself to make adjustments to the mannequins in the new vignette.
But Amanda ruthlessly steered their conversation back on course. “You know plenty of artists who would love to work on your windows,” she argued.
Her father pinned one of the mannequin’s jackets for a better fit. “None as good as you,” he replied, his petulant frown not enough to detract from the hard-won compliment.
Amanda gave her father a hug, reminded that her father had a hard time reaching out to people. He had always preferred the world come running to him. “Thank you.”
“Although, despite your artistry, I have no idea what this window is supposed to be saying.” He pinned the other side of the jacket, blithely helping her create a window that would no doubt cause a lot of uproar in his life.
For the first time she realized how much faith her father placed in her, how much trust. So often she’d interpreted his silence about her projects to be an insult. But he’d only been allowing her room to create, trusting she’d find her own path instead of superimposing his artistic vision on her work.
Why hadn’t she ever noticed that before?
“The display shows off a couple of menswear looks for the fall and also tells the world that the Matthews design house doesn’t kowtow to criminals.”
Her father’s busy hands stalled for only a moment before he launched into a song from La Bohème.
Amanda tossed all the ties back in the box and stepped between him and the mannequin he worked on. “Daddy, I don’t want our name to be associated with criminals anymore.” She forged ahead, talking right on top of her father’s Italian lyrics. “We are attracting too much negative publicity every time one of those mob henchmen shows up at our door and I don’t like it.”
He took his song down a notch in volume, a sign he might be listening.
“That means no more photo opportunities for the press the next time you see Freddie the Fish or Big Vinny or anybody else.”
The aria trailed off to die a quiet death. Her father frowned, seemingly paying attention to her for the first time all day. “This is important to you?”
“Some people judge a man by his clothes, but others judge him by the company he keeps.” She wondered if Duke’s granddaddy was sending her telepathic pithy wisdom for the occasion. “I want to start gaining the respect of the latter.”
Her father pinched her cheek in an ancient gesture that made her feel twelve years old.
“You sound just like your mother today.”
His comment, however, made her feel strong and capable.
If only it weren’t for the ache in her heart with Duke Rawlins’s name written all over it, she’d call this day a big success.
Thinking of Duke reminded her of the one other piece of information she had yet to discuss with her father. “Daddy, do you think I could take a look at your books this week?”
“I’m losing money,” he sang the words to the heartbreaking tune of the La Bohème song, distracted once again with adjusting the mannequins’ clothing. “I’m going broke.”
“Maybe I can help find the glitches,” she offered, not wanting to delve any deeper into the story. Why bother her father with the suspicions of an over-eager police department?
Her father gripped her hand in his and poured out his heart in a rich baritone. “I wish you would. I wish you could. I’m bad with numbers, but you’re so good!”
Laughing, Amanda returned to the box of ties, amazed how easily she’d accomplished all her goals with her father.
Had it been this simple all along and she just hadn’t realized it? Or had she grown so much in the past few months that she’d finally learned how to coerce her father into conversation despite his determined efforts to avoid it?
Either way, he’d given her his blessing to review his books. Now, she would have the ammunition to prove her father’s innocence and prove Duke wrong.
And sever the last tie between her and the flashy detective forever.
Funny, no matter how much she told herself she was better off without a man who would never fully trust her, the notion offered little comfort.
DUKE FLIPPED THROUGH the pages of Clyde Matthews’s tax returns from the comfort of his rooftop deck, searching for holes and coming up empty-handed. He’d turned off the radio broadcast of the Mets game nearly an hour ago, but the silence did little to increase his concentration.
Who could focus with the memory of Amanda’s rooftop show so close at hand? He couldn’t look at the lounger without experiencing a fierce attack of longing.
But even worse than the sensual thoughts was the memory of her frosty goodbye.
He tossed the tax returns aside, frustrated on more damn levels than he could count.
He propped his boots on the low brick wall surrounding the rooftop and stared out at the Manhattan skyline in the bright afternoon light, searching for answers that couldn’t be found in old W-2 forms.
His promotion had come through this week, along with Victor Gallagher’s sentencing to five years on a handful of criminal charges.
Duke was now officially an NYPD Detective, First Grade. Yet the acknowledgement that had meant everything to him this spring now failed to make a dent in his dark mood.
Maybe because he was pretty sure his granddaddy wouldn’t be proud of him right now.
In the course of the week, Duke had managed to alienate a woman who’d become frighteningly important to him. He’d wanted to spend all weekend with her after their night together, to stay locked in each other’s arms until they had a better handle on just what was happening between them.
News of her father’s potential crimes had put a quick end to that fantasy. But did it have to put an end to their relationship, too?
He’d tried to call her this week, but she’d gone back into evasive mode, hiding out from her answering machine and not returning his calls. He didn’t know what he’d say to her, exactly, but he wasn’t going to let her slip away without a fight.
Whatever he and Amanda shared, it didn’t bear any resemblance to any other relationship he’d had in the past ten years. Maybe he’d fallen into the common cop syndrome of allowing his job to be his life. He’d always known his job would place a serious strain on any relationship, but it seemed inevitable that it would cause an all-out rift between him and a mobst
er’s daughter.
The cordless phone at his side pealed through his musings, a welcome distraction from thoughts that circled around and around Amanda Matthews.
But thinking about her all week didn’t prepare Duke for hearing her voice on the other end of the phone.
“I’ve got your bad guy.”
He stiffened. “Your father confessed?”
A long silence greeted his question.
“Amanda?”
“No, Duke. Despite what you believe, my father’s not a criminal.”
He gripped the phone tighter, finding that difficult to believe. Still, he didn’t blame Amanda for not wanting to believe the worst of her own father. He just didn’t think he could trust her judgment in crime solving.
“Then who is the bad guy, according to you?”
“It’s a bad girl, actually.”
Something about her sexy voice saying that particular combination of words brought to mind tantalizing images of Amanda in black leather. But he couldn’t afford those thoughts. Not now.
“Who?”
“Do you remember the woman who came into the showroom with my father that day you talked to me about Victor’s trial?”
Duke had a vague impression of her father’s shadow scurrying around to wipe up coffee spills. “The bookkeeper?”
“Yes. Karen Wells. She’s made a mess of my father’s books and it looks to me as if she’s been skimming cash ever since she started working for him.”
He found it hard to believe the little twit with the paper towels was tied to the mob while the bigwig designer who crafted clothes for every crook in the city was innocent. “I hate to be the wet blanket, Amanda, but has it occurred to you she might just be fixing the books at your father’s request?”
Amanda sighed on the other end of the phone. Duke remembered other sighs, the breathy variety that didn’t sound so impatient.
It scared him to realize how much he wanted them back. If he listened to her cockamamie story about the mobster bookkeeper, would his feelings for her be clouding his judgment?