“Help you, sir?” a clerk asked.
Tyler started. “I’d like to see Mr. Warren. I’m here to apply for a job.”
“We aren’t hiring.” The clerk eyed Tyler curiously.
This wasn’t in the script Tyler had planned, but he improvised successfully. “I know, but Felix Farley thought Mr. Warren could find a place for me. I’m actually a bookkeeper, but I’m also a car buff and Mr. Farley thought I’d be helpful in the warehouse until a bookkeeping position opens up.”
The clerk shrugged. “Bernard’s office is over there. Go on in if you’re sure he’s expecting you.”
“Thanks.” His guess had been on target. Felix regularly sent people who approached him for jobs to Bernard Warren.
Tyler came behind the counter and raised his hand to knock. Then he heard shouting through the thin plywood door and paused with his fist in mid-air.
“We can’t move it out tonight,” a man shouted in exasperation. “For one thing, I’ve got a business to run. For another, I don’t have that kind of manpower. Besides, he can’t prove anything.”
From the moment of silence that followed, Tyler gathered Bernard Warren must be on the telephone.
“Look,” Warren continued. Tyler had to strain to hear. “It can’t be done. How the hell could you have let this have happen? We’ve never had trouble out of the accountants before. What tipped him off?”
Tyler couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t even gotten the job yet, and already he was getting an earful. What the devil was going on behind the scenes at Farley Brothers?
“He must be on the phone,” the helpful clerk said from behind him. “Here. You’ll have to knock louder.”
Tyler reluctantly stepped aside. He’d hoped to hear a bit more before making Bernard Warren aware of his presence.
“This man says Mr. Farley sent him over.” The clerk poked his head fearlessly into Warren’s office. “He’s supposed to help in the warehouse until a bookkeeping position opens up.”
Bernard Warren scowled at Tyler and slammed down the receiver. “Who did you say you were?”
Warren was a burly man about Felix’s age, but he lacked the sophisticated polish Felix Farley displayed. He looked like a mechanic who had made good, and his clothes were a more expensive version of Tyler’s current outfit.
“I’m Schy—Tyler Reid,” Tyler said. He had no reason to give a phony name, he decided abruptly. “Mr. Farley sent me over to help out in the warehouse.”
Warren put on a friendly smile after running a beefy hand over his face. “Sure thing, Reid. We’re short of counter help today. Do you think you can act as sort of a gopher for the other guys until you learn our system?”
Just like that. “I’ll be glad to help out in any capacity,” he said gruffly.
He obligingly filled out a simple application without bothering to resort to lies. His only falsehood was a failure to list his education beyond his high school diploma.
Tyler spent the afternoon feeling lost and idiotic, running back and forth from the counter to the long aisles of automobile parts in search of computer-numbered parts. It wasn’t nearly as easy as he’d thought, considering he was used to working with his brain rather than his legs and arms.
The store stayed open until nine that evening, and Tyler soon realized he was expected to stay until that time. He took a brief break and called his apartment.
“It’s Tyler,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll be home at nine-thirty.”
“Nine-thirty!” Berry exclaimed. “You worked all day yesterday. When do you get some time off?”
“I’ll explain when I get there,” he said, and clicked off his phone before someone saw or heard him.
Berry’s attitude was a complication he hadn’t expected. He’d be lucky if she didn’t tackle his father about making him work long hours. Grinning, Tyler raced down one of the long aisles after a set of points for a 1970 Chevrolet Impala. He’d never had a woman jealous of his time off before. It was rather endearing.
• • •
Berry clicked off her phone, fuming, and glared at the chocolate pie she had just removed from the oven. Tyler wouldn’t get home in time to appreciate the rich chocolate odor filling the air.
But the pie would be chilled and ready to eat by then, she thought, cheering slightly. No wonder housewives got angry when their husbands worked late.
Tyler’s landline phone rang. She answered in Mary MacGregor’s husky, purring tones.
“Who is this?” a man demanded.
Berry instantly recognized Mason Reid’s voice. “Why, hello there, Mr. Reid. This is Mary MacGregor. How lovely to hear from you this evening. What can I do for you?”
“I want to speak to my son, if you please.”
The formal, cool tone told Berry everything she wanted to know. “Why, he isn’t available just now. May I have him call you the moment he gets in?”
“Do that, please. I’m at the office,” Mason said drily.
Berry hung up the receiver and glanced at the time on her own cell phone with mild surprise. Tyler obviously wasn’t working late at his own office.
Maybe he had a date.
She put her hands on her hips and considered the thought. She had no business feeling so jealous if he did. Her best bet was to pretend total disinterest in the state of Tyler’s love life, considering the way she’d crashed in on him.
By the time Tyler was due home, Berry had a full meal prepared. He was not going to regret letting her stay in his apartment. He was saving her a lot of money, and providing her with a feeling of security besides. She owed him a few good meals, and no questions asked about where he’d been.
Someone knocked at the door. Startled, she swung toward it.
The pounding resumed, louder and more annoyed this time. Berry raced for her bedroom, where she swiftly inserted the purple contact lenses and shucked off her sensible jeans and T-shirt. The best she could do on such short notice was to fling on a fluffy, pink chenille robe and stuff her feet into a pair of pink high-heeled sandals and freshen her lipstick.
“Coming,” she sang out.
She rushed down the hall to another round of pounding. But before she could reach the door, she tripped over an obstacle strung across her path. She fell heavily, sprawling full-length on the hall carpet.
Breathless, she lay still a moment. The knocking stopped and didn’t resume.
Berry concentrated on getting her breath back until she heard a new sound. Gasping, she pushed herself up and stared toward the door, which was now swinging open of its own accord.
It was Tyler, and he looked both annoyed and curious.
“Who the hell was that at the door?” he demanded. “He ran off when he saw me coming.”
Berry fought to catch her breath and speak. Something looked strange about Tyler, but she couldn’t immediately put her finger on what.
“What did you do to your hair?” she wheezed.
“What are you doing on the floor?” He crossed the living room to her side and helped her sit up. “Are you all right? Say, you have one gray eye and one purple eye. Did you lose a contact? What the heck is going on?”
“Oh, no!” Berry wailed. “We’ve got to find it, Tyler. This is the only pair I’ve got.”
“Oh, Lord.” He switched on the overhead light to join her in combing every inch of the carpet. “Do you know who that was at the door when I came up?”
“I have no idea,” Berry said irritably. “I was on my way to answer it when I tripped over something and fell. Maybe it’s a hit man hired by your family to bump me off.”
“Unfunny, Challoner.” He sat back on his heels. “Were you going to answer the door in that outfit?”
“As a matter of fact, I was,” Berry said defiantly. “I was in jeans, and that just won’t get it. And by the way, your father wants you to call him. He said to tell you he was at the office.”
“Did you tell him I was working late?” Tyler asked, grinning.
Berry looked u
p from her search. “No wonder your dad sounded so strange.”
“If you answered the phone, I’ll bet he did sound strange. For some reason, knowing I’ve got a woman in my apartment seems to be doing my family a lot of good. This afternoon, I told him I was taking a few days off, and he probably thinks you and I are about to take off for Tahiti.” On his hands and knees, he scoured the thick green carpet closely. “What did you trip over? Or is that a fair question, considering the height of the heels on those shoes?”
“I have no idea.” Berry sat back and studied the path she had taken from her bedroom to the door. “Nothing’s there.” She shrugged. “If something had been there, I’d have seen it earlier.”
“It’s those shoes.”
“It wasn’t the shoes,” she said irritably and stuck out her right leg for him to view. “It hit me right above the ankle, whatever it was. See the mark?”
He examined the fading red mark above her ankle. “Are you sure this didn’t happen in the fall?”
“I keep on telling you. Whatever gave me that mark is what tripped me and caused me to fall.” Exasperated, she rose to her knees again. “Let’s find my contact, or I’m in serious trouble.”
Tyler resumed his search, grinning in a way that made her long to plant one of her stiletto heels in his ribs. “You can always wear dark glasses and claim a black eye.”
Someone knocked at the door again, and Berry said, “He’s back.”
“Challoner, you look really weird with one purple eye and one gray eye.” Tyler looked her over critically. “Better hide in your bedroom while I get rid of him. Careful. There’s a contact on this carpet somewhere.”
Berry gave him a regal glare, gathered her robe, and swept into her bedroom. For two cents, or maybe even less, she’d stretch a rope across the hall and trip Tyler up as he hurried to the door, or the phone, or—
Puzzled, she looked down at the ankle that had contacted the invisible obstacle. Now that she thought about it, it had felt remarkably like a rope that had been strung across her path. The fine hairs on her arms tickled as they lifted gently from her skin.
Somehow she managed to keep from running to open the bedroom door and look again at the area where she had been tripped. Things were getting too, too weird.
But one thing she did know. Tyler would call her totally whacko if she mentioned a ghostly rope across her path, so she added the incident to the growing list of weird events she’d experienced ever since Daniel had died.
The sooner she found out who killed Daniel, the better for everyone.
• • •
Tyler rose carefully to his feet, scanning the carpet as he did so, and went to the door with equal care. On the way, he noted once more the picturesque chunk of rock sitting on his coffee table. He had to hand it to Berry. Rather than flowers or interesting cushions, she decorated with rocks.
He checked the peephole then ripped off his tie and tossed it aside before opening the door.
“Hello, Dad,” he said calmly. “What are you doing here at this hour?”
Mason made no move to come in. He stood on the landing and eyed Tyler with a grim expression Tyler hadn’t seen since he was ten and had been caught red-handed in some boyish deviltry. “Have you lost your mind?” Mason demanded.
“Probably.” Tyler assumed a wonderfully nonchalant pose. “You might as well come in. Mary—”
“No, thank you.” Mason sniffed the air. “So. She’s even got you cooking for her. I thought you had too much sense to let a woman wrap you around her little finger, but it’s obvious I was badly mistaken.”
“Come on, Dad,” Tyler said. “You’ve cooked many a meal for Mom, and you know it.”
“That’s different.” Mason raised his brows, but Tyler could see that beneath his pose of indifference, Mason was badly shaken. “Your mother and I are married.”
Tyler gave a lazy shrug and used his fingers to fork his hair back into its usual style. “Why don’t you come in and sample my chicken?” He hoped the delicious odor he smelled was chicken. “You can tell Mom what a great cook I’ve turned out to be.”
Mason took another step back. “If we’re lucky, your mother won’t find out about this little aberration of yours.”
“In the meantime, you might try having a little faith in whatever good sense you taught me.”
“What good sense?” Mason demanded. “It’s obvious enough you’re not going to listen to a thing I say, so I’ll be going. All I ask is that you not worry your mother with this—this woman you’ve picked up.”
“Are you saying you don’t want me introducing B—Mary to the family as my significant other?” Tyler suddenly wanted to drag Berry home to meet his mother under her own identity. As Daniel’s sister, she would automatically be welcomed.
“Be reasonable, Tyler,” Mason said gently. “Your mother is a broad-minded woman, but no woman is that broad-minded.”
He went hastily down the stairs, leaving Tyler standing in the doorway.
Tyler shut the door and leaned against it. Was it only three days ago he’d been so bored, he welcomed any distraction? His life had suddenly become full of complications.
The major complication poked her curly dark head out of her bedroom. “Is the coast clear?”
“Temporarily.” He straightened. “You’d better check on whatever it is you’re cooking that smells so good while I have a look around for that contact lens of yours.”
“My chicken!”
Berry burst out of her room, now wearing her own jeans and a pink knit blouse, with a pair of house slippers. Before rushing to the kitchen, she looked carefully up and down the short hall as if in search of obstacles. A moment later, he heard the sounds of the oven door closing and the rattle of a utensil against a china serving platter.
“Thanks, Tyler. Our dinner is saved.” She appeared beside him, stepping carefully and scanning the carpet. “What did your dad want? Other than to get rid of me, I mean.”
“He wants to know why I’ve suddenly lost my mind. It seems to him my insanity is connected to the fact that a beautiful woman has taken up residence in my apartment.” He bent to inspect a bit of color on the green carpet. “Here’s your contact. That must have been some fall you took.”
He held out the purple lens on the tip of his index finger. Berry received it tenderly and hurried to bestow it in a small, plastic case after dousing it with lens fluid.
“Thanks, Tyler.” She joined him in the small kitchen, where the table had been set invitingly for two. “What are you doing with that tie? It isn’t your usual sort, is it?”
Tyler had long known women had unerring vision when it came to men’s clothing. “It’s a cheap clip-on. I thought it was appropriate to my new station in life.”
“Your what?”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m now a counter clerk at Farley Brothers number two on Westheimer. If you can pry a few figures out of Corrigan, I’ll be able to check them against the actual warehouse stock—”
“Oh, Tyler, you didn’t!” Berry shrieked. She forgot about the dinner and flung herself on him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Oh, thank you, thank you! We’re this close to finding out who killed Daniel. This close.” She separated her thumb and her forefinger by about two inches and held them in front of his face and pressed her lips against his. “You’re wonderful. No one but you could have done it.”
Tyler’s arms went around her body automatically. He pulled her against him and all exhaustion evaporated. Fresh energy suffused his body, energy tempered with fire that threatened to burn out of control.
“You inspired me,” he said roughly and kissed her.
To his surprise, Berry kissed him back with such enthusiasm, he promptly forgot all his good resolutions about not making love to Daniel’s little sister. He held her against him so that she felt the extent of his desire for her, but she didn’t pull away.
Nor did she object when he pulled her shirt from her jeans so he could glide his hand
s over that smooth golden skin he had been dying to touch ever since he had first seen her. He couldn’t get enough of touching her, of absorbing her passion into himself.
It couldn’t be happening this fast, he thought dimly. But he could only count his blessings as he stroked his hands up and down her slim back, savoring her heat and her lithe softness.
He’d never felt this degree of desire for any of his expensive blondes. Now that he thought about it, he’d never felt anything like it for Alicia Cameron, his former fiancée, either.
Berry’s long nails were in his hair, raking lightly against his scalp. He’d never realized the scalp was an erogenous zone before. Furthermore, she held him as if she’d never let him go, and that was the ultimate aphrodisiac as far as Tyler was concerned.
He lifted her in his arms and carried her to his bedroom.
• • •
Berry rode on waves of heat that carried her along like an ocean wave carried a canoe. Moments later, she felt cool air against her heated skin as Tyler set her feet on the floor and lifted her shirt off over her head so he could skim his hands over her body. Goosebumps covered her arms, and Berry shivered with delight. She felt weightless, boneless, and drowning in heat. She’d never felt anything like this before. She hoped it would go on and on.
He kissed her as if he’d been thinking of nothing but her all day. Nothing could have been more seductive. She locked her arms around him and kissed him back. She might never have this chance again.
He slipped his fingers into the clasp of her lace brassiere and unhooked it, then cupped her breasts. She fit perfectly into his hands, as if she had been built for him. He touched the tips with his thumbs and almost whimpered with the pleasure.
He drew back to stare at her and she looked back at him in wonder. Why had she waited this long to find a man who made all these exciting things happen inside her? She had believed no one could ever make her feel this way.
Well, she had been wrong, that was all. And now that she had discovered him and he wanted her, she wasn’t about to lose the chance. She might never feel these things again.
She leaned into him and fumbled with the buttons on the cheap shirt he wore. That reminded her of the extremes Tyler was going to in order to help her investigation, and her desire increased tenfold.
Texas Temptation Page 11