The Haviland Touch

by Kay Hooper

  Managing a light tone, she said, “Even if those collectors somehow heard that I was going after the cross, I doubt they’d have any more faith in my ability to find it than you do.”

  After a long moment he said, “That does rankle, doesn’t it?”

  “Your opinion of my abilities?” Spencer pushed her empty coffee cup away and leaned back, wondering if her smile looked as strained as it felt. “If it gives you any sense of triumph to hear it, yes. I don’t suppose anyone likes being considered a stupid and talentless fool.”

  Drew seemed to hesitate, then reached across the table suddenly and grasped one of her hands. “Why do you want to find the cross, Spencer?” he asked flatly.

  She tried to pull her hand away, but abandoned the attempt when his grip tightened. The touch of him was instantly disturbing, and she answered his question automatically as she tried to cope with the response of her body to even so casual a contact with him. “For Dad. It’s the only thing I can give him before he dies, and I have to. . . . Please let go of me.” The expression in his eyes bothered her. It was almost distant, as if he were listening to some far-off sound.

  Somewhat to her surprise he did release her hand, and when his eyes focused on her face again they were almost angry.

  “Damn you,” he said softly.

  Spencer nervously brushed at a strand of hair on her forehead that had come loose from the neat braid, and then laced her fingers tightly together in her lap. Why did she feel suddenly more threatened than ever? It was as if he was somehow closer than he’d been before, looming, and she couldn’t hide from him. Damn her? Damn him for making her feel so vulnerable.

  Holding her voice steady, she said, “I should be getting back to the farm. The horses are fed at six, and I need to work with Corsair before then.”

  “You should quit for the day.” It wasn’t an order, but a flat statement, and before she could say anything he went on in the same level tone. “Today’s Friday. If you seriously intend to go to Europe on Monday, you need to rest, Spencer. Be sensible.”

  He was right, and that didn’t make the knowledge any more palatable. She half nodded and slid from the booth. “Will you take me back to that farm, please? I need to get my car.”

  Drew didn’t seem surprised by her acquiescence. If anything, he was matter-of-fact as he joined her. “Fine. Then I’ll follow you back to the house. I’d like to see Allan.”

  “No!” She got a grip on herself, knowing her voice had been too sharp, the refusal too adamant; she was still wary of provoking him. “He—doesn’t see anyone,” she murmured, watching Drew toss a few bills onto the table.

  Drew didn’t say anything in response to that until they were in his car on the way back to the farm a few moments later, and when he did speak his voice was calm. “A lie to keep me away from him, Spencer?”

  “I’m not a liar,” she said, wondering if he would ever believe that. “Dad doesn’t see anyone. He doesn’t want anyone to see him, don’t you understand? He’s very thin and—and weak, and the stroke affected his speech. He’d hate it if you saw him. Especially you. He thought a lot of you.”

  After glancing at her briefly, Drew said, “Did you tell him I came to the house last night?”

  “No.”

  “Does he know you’re going after the cross?”

  Spencer hesitated. “He knows.”

  Drew glanced at her again. “But?”

  “But nothing. He knows, that’s all.” She wasn’t about to tell Drew that a couple of weeks earlier her father had gotten it into his head that she would have help in her search for the cross, and that the help would be Drew. That was one reason he was confident she could find it. With Drew helping her, he’d said, she was sure to find the cross. After the first moment of shock, she had just assumed that her father’s mind had drifted into the past, because it sometimes did that. Still, she’d been more unnerved than she might otherwise have been when Drew had shown up at the house last night.

  “You can’t go alone,” Drew said.

  She started slightly. “What? Of course I can. I’ve been to Europe before.”

  “That isn’t the point. Spencer, weren’t you listening when I talked about those collectors? If word gets out—and it will, it always does—that there’s even a chance the cross could be located, things could get very nasty for you.”

  “I can take care of myself,” she said stubbornly, even though she wasn’t at all sure of that.

  “Can you handle a gun?”

  The flat question made a chill run down her spine. “If you’re trying to scare me—”

  His glance this time was impatient and something else, something she couldn’t identify. “I hope to God it’s working. You should be scared. That cross is worth millions—people have been murdered for a hell of a lot less.”

  Spencer didn’t want to think about that; after all, what could she do except be cautious? But what he was saying caught her interest in another way. Curious, she said, “That sounds like the voice of experience. Surely you haven’t had to deal with violent people in building your own collection?”

  “Once or twice,” he replied, definitely impatient now. “Spencer—”

  “I can’t imagine you in violent situations,” she said. “You were always so cool and calm. I mean, I knew you went to some pretty out-of-the-way places looking for antiquities, but I never thought of you carrying a gun. Have you?”

  “Yes, I’ve carried a gun. Quite often. And before you ask, I’ve had to use it a few times.”

  Spencer stared determinedly through the windshield, just stopping herself from wincing at the sharpness of his voice. “Sorry I asked. I know your life’s none of my business.”

  Cool and calm, Drew thought, wondering what had happened to those qualities. He sighed roughly. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off. But my past isn’t important. Your immediate future is the point right now. You have to take this seriously, Spencer. Some of the people who collect antiquities are very dangerous. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want. You’ll be a long way from home, in an unfamiliar situation, and you don’t know the players. You could get hurt.”

  “If you’re trying to demolish my confidence,” she said a bit shakily, “congratulations on doing a good job.”

  Drew swore under his breath and abruptly pulled the car off the road just yards from the farm’s driveway. He killed the engine and turned to face her, his expression a little tight. “We do seem to read the worst into each other’s motives, don’t we?”

  The car was small, and with his entire attention focused on her it felt even smaller to Spencer. She was already unnerved by what he had said and done last night; his mercurial moods today had served only to confuse her further. She couldn’t not suspect his motives. Very conscious that only the gear console separated them in the enclosed space of the car, she shrugged defensively and looked at him with wary eyes.

  “Dammit, Spencer, I know what I’m talking about when it comes to collectors. Can you accept that?”

  “Yes, I can accept it. I can even accept that you’re probably right and I’m in over my head.” She drew a short breath. “But that doesn’t change a thing. I am going after the cross, and nothing you could say to me would make any difference. So why don’t you accept that?”

  “Because you’re doomed to fail. You should spend Allan’s last days with him, not haring off on a wild-goose chase.”

  She stared at him for a frozen moment, then said softly, “Thanks a lot. Add guilt to the rest. You really do know where to stick the knife, don’t you?”

  Drew looked at her white face, still seeing the flash of anguish that had briefly darkened her eyes, and for the first time didn’t question his reading of her emotions. She was haunted by the fear that her father would die while she was far away in a foreign country searching for a myth.

  “God, I’m sorry,” he muttered, reaching over the console to grasp her shoulders. “I didn’t mean—Spencer, I wasn�
��t trying to hurt you.”

  “Sure.” She shifted a little as if to dislodge his hands, then said in the same stiff voice, “If you’ll let go of me, I’ll get out here. You don’t have to drive to the barns.”

  The past twenty-four hours had been unsettling ones for Drew. Stepping back into Spencer Wyatt’s life had opened a Pandora’s box of gnawing, unresolved emotions, and he hadn’t been able to find a calm balance among them. Last night he had believed that simply taking what belonged to him—her—and making her surrender to him completely would satisfy him, but today he had faced the knowledge that it wouldn’t be that simple.

  He was angry, worried and frustrated, and talking was doing nothing except exacerbate the situation. Their mistrust made them both believe the worst no matter what was said.

  “Dammit, Spencer . . .” Hating the withdrawn look in her eyes and the masklike stillness of her face, he pulled her toward him suddenly and covered her mouth with his.

  Spencer wanted to fight him. She wanted to remain stiff and unresponsive, for the sake of her pride if nothing else. But she couldn’t. At the first touch of his warm, hard mouth, a dizzying wave of pleasure washed over her with stunning force, and the hands that had lifted to push against his chest lingered instead to clutch the edges of his open jacket. She barely felt the steel teeth of the zipper bite into her fingers.

  All her thoughts were submerged, drowned by physical and emotional sensations so powerful they bordered on pain. It was as if he had opened a door to the part of her she had shut away long ago, releasing the wild storm of feelings she’d never been able to control. And couldn’t now. Nothing mattered but him and what he made her feel, nothing at all. Every nerve and instinct her body could claim came alive, and the empty ache inside her was a hunger so vast it was like madness. Was madness.

  She wondered later where it would have ended if there hadn’t been an interruption. But the loud blaring of a car horn jerked them apart as a convertible filled with teenage boys roared past, and Spencer found herself staring dazedly through the windshield at the retreating car and the laughing faces turned back toward them.

  Drew said something violent, his voice hoarse, then started the engine with a slightly jerky motion. He didn’t say another word until he pulled the car into the lot near the barns and stopped, and when he did speak his voice was still a bit strained. “At least there’s one thing we don’t fight about.”

  Spencer reached for the door handle and had one foot out of the car when he caught her wrist.

  “Admit it, Spencer.”

  Her breathing and heartbeat were just beginning to settle down to something approaching normal and she felt feverish from head to toe, and she did not want to say anything at all because she knew her voice would be treacherously unsteady. But she also knew he was determined for her to say what he wanted to hear. Without looking at him, she merely said, “Yes.”

  “It’s just a matter of time. You know that.”

  “Yes,” she repeated softly.

  His fingers tightened around her wrist, then suddenly released her. She got out of his car and closed the door, then walked steadily to the barn where she’d left her hard hat and gloves. She didn’t look back, even when she heard the sports car roar away with an angry sound.

  Once inside the cool, shadowy barn hall, she leaned back against a closed stable door and shut her eyes. For the first time she understood why she had felt nervous and threatened around him all those years ago. It was because her deepest instincts had known then what her mind only now accepted as truth—and understanding made it no less frightening.

  She was lost when he touched her, instantly his with no will to save herself. From the first time she had looked into his eyes she had been tied to him, had belonged to him on some deep, almost primitive level of herself. Perhaps it had happened because she had been so young, had fallen in love so desperately, or perhaps it had happened simply because it was meant to. For whatever reason, she had known she was his. It was a knowledge deeper than instinct or reason, a certainty that was ancient and without question. So simple. And so terrifying.

  She had known it even ten years ago, even though his restraint had kept her from losing control then. With him her instinct was to give whatever he asked, more than he asked, to relinquish even her own identity and let him take that as well. Her mind had rebelled ten years ago, too immature to understand except subconsciously that to give all that she was to him would destroy her unless he gave of himself as freely.

  She hadn’t believed he could—or would—do that. So cool and calm, so controlled, he had seemed untouchable to her, and the subconscious terror of being lost forever within his detachment had driven her to run from him. And she had run to another man, a man who had demanded nothing of her except that she be the focus of his tempestuous captivation.

  She couldn’t run again. Spencer knew that, knew the uselessness of it. Because this time he meant to have her. He was risking nothing, not even his pride, and that lack of any vulnerability would make him relentless. She knew he could be relentless now, and she knew she couldn’t fight him.

  As he had said, it was just a matter of time.

  WHEN TUCKER WOKE her up very early Saturday morning with the news that the house had been robbed in the night, Spencer’s first emotion was wry amusement. Robbed? There was nothing of value left, only copies of priceless things, and wouldn’t the burglar be staggered to discover that?

  “What did he take?” she asked Tucker as they walked down the hallway toward the stairs.

  In a precise tone, Tucker replied, “Everything he could carry, I would say. Including the contents of your father’s safe.”

  Spencer stopped at the head of the stairs and looked at him, her faint amusement vanishing. “You mean the papers? The set of copies I made of all Dad’s papers?”

  “Yes.”

  She began to feel just a little chilled. “How was the safe opened?”

  “Professionally,” Tucker replied without expression.

  “And the security system?”

  “None of the alarms were triggered, but the system’s still active. I don’t know how he got in.”

  Though it had been expensive to install, the security system of the house cost little to maintain and Spencer hadn’t been forced to shut it down. Her father had once told her that no security system was foolproof, that if a burglar wanted to get in badly enough he would, but that both insurance companies and home owners slept better with the illusion that valuables were protected. Even though she had little to protect these days, Spencer had slept better thinking that at least a burglar would have to work at it to get into the house.

  Now she knew what her father had meant about illusions.

  But even that disturbed her less than the fact that the papers had been taken. Burglars who took artworks and emptied out the silver drawer seldom bothered with papers that were quite obviously without intrinsic value. Stock certificates or bonds were one thing—but handwritten notes, drawings and maps were something else again.

  Spencer couldn’t help but remember what Drew had warned her about, and a few moments later as she stood with Tucker in her father’s study, a fatalistic certainty crept over her. The safe, on the wall at right angles to the desk, was cunningly and quite well hidden behind the face of a working clock. It was open, obviously empty, and nothing had been damaged through carelessness or inexperience. As Tucker had said, a professional job all the way.

  Almost to herself, she murmured, “He didn’t even try to open the trick safe behind the painting.”

  “No,” Tucker agreed.

  In a bit of sleight of hand meant hopefully to fool anyone looking for valuables, her father had installed a far more obvious or “trick” safe behind a hinged painting above his desk. The theory was that a thief would quickly discover that safe, find it empty and conclude that nothing of value was hidden in the room. But their night visitor had indicated contempt for the trick: the painting was pulled out away fro
m the safe and no attempt to open it had been made.

  Of course, he might have opened and then closed the safe—but Spencer didn’t think so. Everything else he had opened remained open: the other safe, desk drawers, the silver drawer in the pantry and the few curio and collectible cabinets that had held mostly worthless figurines. No, he had wanted them to know that he saw through the trick.

  Spencer was very glad he’d found nothing of value, and even more glad that the originals of her father’s papers were safely in a bank vault and that a second set of copies she’d made was upstairs in her bedroom. But she was very much afraid that whoever had broken into the house last night had been after only one thing. The papers. The cross.

  Softly she said, “If he was professional enough to bypass the security system, find the safe and get into it without fuss, don’t you think he would have known that the silver was plated, and the figurines and prints were worthless?”

  Almost as quietly, Tucker answered, “I would think so.”

  “Then he was after Dad’s papers, and the rest was just to cover up his real target.” Spencer shivered a little, for the first time seriously wondering if she would risk more than simple failure in going after the cross. “Somebody could be a step ahead of me.”

  “Someone dangerous. Miss Spencer, some collectors are ruthless in acquiring what they desire. You have no experience with that kind of person—”

  “Tucker.” She half turned to stare at him. “Don’t you start, please. I’ve already heard enough from Drew. This theft doesn’t change anything except that I have to move faster.” Very deliberately, she added, “If I fail, I fail. But I won’t spend the rest of my life regretting that I never even tried.”

  After a moment Tucker said, “The cross isn’t worth dying for. Your father would never forgive himself if that happened.”

  “It won’t happen.”

  “I know you, Miss Spencer. I know how much this means to you. I believe you’ll find the cross, where it’s lain hidden all these years or in the hands of someone who got there first. But I also believe that it won’t be easy, and it will be dangerous. I don’t want you to forget that you mean more to your father than anything else in the world. He’d be the first to consign that cross to hell to spare you pain.”