by JoAnn Ross
The hand was back. The muscles of his leg clenched under her exploring touch. "I've always enjoyed Philadelphia."
"Oh?" The politely interested expression on her face belied the fact that her fingers beneath the tablecloth were becoming dangerously intimate. "Are you from New England?"
"My mother's family lives in Boston. I spent most of my childhood there." Deciding he had nothing to lose, Caine covered the hand with his own and gently returned it to Elizabeth Bancroft's lap. Her expression didn't alter.
"Lovely city, Boston," she agreed with a brief nod. "Although it does have a tendency to blow its own horn a bit, don't you think?" Her smile was ever so slightly con-descending. "We Philadelphians prefer to think of our city as one of the best-kept secrets in the world."
Caine was more than a little relieved when for the remainder of the meal the conversation consisted of a treatise on Philadelphia's illustrious past. Over medallions of lamb on a bed of parsley served with truffles and Madeira cream sauce, buttered scallions and accompanied by a watercress, tomato and basil salad, Elizabeth lectured Caine practically nonstop. Although he hoped that he managed to appear at least moderately interested, he was aware of her words only on the most distant of levels as he watched the others watching Chantal.
"That's very interesting," he said when the waiter arrived once again to clear away their plates. At the opposite end of the long table, Blair was announcing that dessert would be served in the front parlor. "You have a remarkable knowledge of the area. If you're ever looking for work, you could probably get a job in the history department at Penn."
"But that's precisely what I do," she informed him as she took a sip of the robust ruby-red Pinot Noir wine. Beneath the cover of the tablecloth, the hand returned, more provocative than ever. "I'm a professor there. In fact, I received tenure last year." She gave him a smile loaded with feminine invitation. "And now that I've done my civic duty and filled you in on all our city has to offer, why don't we skip dessert and I'll take you on a more personal tour?"
"Look," he said quietly, for her ears only, "I'm flattered by your interest, really I am. But you see, I'm kind of spoken for."
"Oh really?" She arched a blond brow. "Are you engaged?"
"No, but—"
"Living with someone?"
"No."
A knowing smile quirked at the corners of her mouth. "Pinned? Going steady?"
"Not exactly." He was beginning to feel like a fool. Why the hell did he have to explain anything to a woman he'd met only an hour ago?
"Don't tell me you're gay."
"No, not that, either."
"Thank heavens," the woman breathed with relief. "That would have been a terrible waste."
"Excuse me," Chantal's familiar voice interrupted as she stopped beside his chair on the way out of the room. "I hate to interrupt what appears to be a fascinating conversation, but if you don't mind, Caine, I need to speak to you in the library. It's about tomorrow's exhibition."
Pushing the Chippendale chair back from the table, he rose instantly. "Don't worry about a thing. After all, it's my job to see that things run smoothly." He managed a look of feigned regret as he. turned back toward Elizabeth. "Perhaps I'll see you later."
"Perhaps." Her gaze was shrewd as her eyes moved back and forth between Caine and Chantal. "Then again, perhaps not. At any rate, it was a pleasure meeting you, Mr. O'Bannion. And Princess, I do hope that your tour is a smashing success."
A strange tension lingered in the air. Unable to decode it, Chantal wished fleetingly that her sister was here. With her remarkable clairvoyance, Noel always proved adept at reading people's emotions. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Oh, Mr. O'Bannion," Elizabeth called out as the pair began to leave the wainscoted dining room.
Caine half turned. "Yes?"
This time Elizabeth Bancroft's emerald eyes were dancing with undisguised humor. "Good luck."
While Chantal proceeded to charm the assembled gathering of Main Line Philadelphians, the dark-haired man sat alone in his luxurious suite on the twenty-fifth floor of the Palace Hotel, staring at a picture of the princess on her wedding day. Clad in a frothy confection of lace, satin and seed pearls, a tiara of diamonds perched atop her gleaming dark hair, she appeared to be a princess from a fairy tale. All that was missing were the glass slippers.
She was smiling into the camera lens, and as the man's eyes settled on those full, rosy lips, he was momentarily distracted to realize that he could recall their taste even now. Not only their taste, but their softness, as well. And the sweet scent of her hair, the petallike silkiness of her skin, the inviting, dark depths of her eyes. Such vivid memories came as a startling surprise after all this time.
Then again, perhaps such whispers from the past were not so unusual, he decided, rising from the chair to resume his pacing. After all, Chantal had always been a remarkably memorable woman. In a way, he almost regretted what he was about to do. She was so breathtakingly beautiful; how could any mere mortal destroy such exquisite perfection? But just as he began to vacillate, other more painful memories managed to make themselves heard in the heated turmoil of his mind, and a single truth stood out like a shining beacon.
The Princess Chantal Giraudeau de Montacroix must die.
"Why did that Bancroft woman wish you good luck?" Chantal asked as they entered the library.
Caine shrugged. "She was undoubtedly referring to the tour."
"I suppose that's why she was stripping you with her eyes all during dinner?"
Caine could feel the heat beginning to rise at the back of his neck. "Don't be ridiculous."
"She was," Chantal insisted. "Fortunately for you, it was obvious that you were resisting her feminine ploys."
"If she had made a pass at me, I certainly would have resisted," Caine hedged. "Now, what's the problem?" Wondering if she had seen something or someone that may have triggered some internal alarm, he was considering saying the hell with orders and admitting everything when her next words caught him off guard.
"I need you to tell me a joke."
"A what?"
"A joke. Please, Caine, I've just been through one of the more agonizingly boring meals of my life. I need a little levity if I'm to survive dessert."
"You looked as if you were having a great time."
"I have been taught to appear fascinated by the most inane conversations, and if I do say so myself, I perform my duty very well. Now, however, I need some assistance to get through the next hour."
Caine searched his mind, finding it a complete blank.
"Caine," Chantal protested, "I'm counting on you."
"I'm working on it. Just give me a minute, okay?" He remembered a story the guys at the gym had been laughing about the last time he'd worked out there. Not only was the joke inappropriate for mixed company, it was definitely not princess material. Suddenly he recalled a joke his eight-year-old nephew, Danny, had told him a few weeks ago.
"Okay. What's round and purple and conquered the world?"
Chantal was silent a moment as she considered his question. "I don't know," she said finally. "What is round and purple and conquered the world?"
"Alexander the Grape."
"That's a terrible joke."
"If it's so bad, why are you laughing?"
"I don't want to hurt your feelings. I am, after all, a very compassionate woman."
"Sorry, but I'm going to have to argue with you about that one, Princess."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
Unable to resist touching her another moment, Caine brushed his knuckles along her cheekbones. "Don't you?" His voice was rough with an unmistakable desire that thrilled her. "Are you saying that you don't realize that you've been driving me crazy? That all I can think about is you? How right you feel in my arms, the soft, sweet taste of your lips, the way a single look from you, or a mere touch, can make me feel as if I'm sinking into quicksand?" His lips skimmed the path his hands had warmed. "Dammit,
what is it about you?"
Chantal tried to ignore the restless anger she heard in his tone, concentrating instead on his words. Words that so closely echoed her own tumultuous feelings. "I don't know," she whispered, "but whatever it is, I feel the same way about you."
Unable to resist the hidden appeal, Caine leaned closer, watching as Chantal's lips—those soft, incredible lips he'd tasted over and over again in his memory—trembled apart. It happened slowly. So slowly, so gradually, that either could have backed away. Chantal watched, fascinated as his mouth lowered to hers.
It was just as it had been the first time. His lips were gentle, persuasive, causing a stream of pure pleasure to flow through her. Meltingly soft and caressingly delicate, the kiss created a shimmering, hypnotizing cloud that settled over her mind.
After a long moment, he eased back. "You've no idea how much I've needed this." Caine framed her uplifted face with his hands, his thumbs brushing her cheeks.
"Yes, I do." Her arms wrapped possessively around him, the gesture fitting her body more closely to his. "Because I was going mad during dinner."
His hands moved against her back, palms tracing lazy circles up and down her spine, soothing gestures that excited rather than calmed. "Don't feel like the Lone Ranger," he muttered against her lips.
As she moved invitingly against him, her slender body was a contradiction of strength and delicacy that had him yearning to rip off her plum silk dinner suit and take her here, now, atop the burl walnut partner's desk Blair Sherwood had expressed such pride in. Lord, how he wanted her!
Chantal's breath shuddered out as he kissed her from one corner of her mouth to the other, which was almost Caine's undoing. For a man accustomed to maintaining control, he was finding what Chantal could do to both his mind and his body equally intriguing and disconcerting.
It was too easy to forget that she wasn't the woman for him when her lips were clinging so avidly to his. The feel of her softly yielding curves against his body drove all logic and intellect from his mind. Needs welled up inside of him, but even as his blood began to burn, Caine managed to ease her away.
"We'd better get back to the others before they send out a search party."
Chantal was breathless. She was trembling from desire, but something told her that merely making love to Caine wouldn't be enough. She wanted more. She wanted… what? It was impossible to sort out her tumbled thoughts while her head was still spinning.
"I suppose that would be a good idea," she said. With hands that were not as steady as she would have liked, she reached into her beaded evening bag and pulled out a jeweled tube of lipstick and a slender gold compact.
"Wait." Caine's eyes didn't leave hers as he caught her hand, stopping the creamy plum lipstick on its way to her mouth. Although this time his kiss lasted no longer than a heartbeat, it was no less devastating. "If you were my woman," he said, tracing her softly parted lips with a fingertip, "you'd have to give up that stuff."
"Oh, really?" she said archly as she gathered her wits about her.
Now that he'd discovered the fires lurking beneath the frosty regal exterior, Caine found himself beginning to enjoy her princess routine. "Really." Smiling, he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers one at a time, rewarded by her faint tremor of arousal. "Because I'd plant one on you every time those ridiculously seductive lips got within puckering range."
" 'Plant one'?"
"Like this."
Chantal's blood swam as his lips captured hers for one more brief, fiery moment. "Oh." Pressing her finger against her tingling mouth, she imagined that she could still feel the heat, even now. Opening the compact, she frowned as she studied her swollen lips in the mirror. "Blair is a darling," she said, managing a reasonably casual tone as she struggled for composure, "but she's such an incorrigible gossip. By tomorrow, everyone in Philadelphia will believe that we're lovers."
As much as he wanted her, Caine wasn't wild about being included in the long list of Chantal's various lovers. "Does that bother you?"
"Only that it's not true." Repairing the damage as much as possible, Chantal closed the compact with a click. "I believe we're expected in the parlor for Blair's famous petits fours," she said, denying him an opportunity to respond. In truth, she was not certain that her self-esteem could handle another one of Caine's polite rebuffs.
Watching her struggle to regain her composure, Caine admitted to himself that making love with Chantal Giraudeau would be easy. But falling in love with her would be, as his grandmother O'Bannion would have so shrewdly pointed out, a completely different kettle of fish.
The house was dark. Quiet. The distant rumble of thunder echoed on the horizon. Chantal lay in bed, inhaling the faint scent of lilacs in the air as she tried to untangle her feelings for Caine O'Bannion.
She hadn't been with a man—hadn't wanted to be with a man—since the day she'd finally thrown in the towel and walked out on Greg. After the devastating years she'd spent trying to survive the sham of her marriage and the pain of the inevitable divorce, Chantal had encased her heart in a thick block of ice. It was safer that way, she'd assured herself, and she'd been right.
Then she had come to America and met a man who possessed his own personal blowtorch.
There'd be no sleeping tonight. Pushing the covers aside, Chantal rose from the bed and padded barefoot to the window. She'd just started to push the draperies aside when she heard the soft, plaintive cries of a kitten coming from somewhere behind the wall. Remembering what Blair had said about secret passages, Chantal began to run her fingers over the floral wallpaper, searching for an entrance. Nothing. Not even a ripple in the smoothly applied paper. The kitten's cries increased.
It had to be here somewhere, Chantal thought, turning on the bedside lamp. Wooden angels sounding trumpets were carved on the fireplace mantel, and as Chantal traced the lines of their gowns with her fingertips, there was a slight grinding sound and the back of the fireplace slid open. "A walk-in fireplace," she murmured. "How ingenious." Ducking her head, she entered the secret doorway.
"Here, kitty," she whispered, not wanting to wake up the other members of the house at this late hour. "Come here, kitty."
The secret passage was as dark as midnight and as cold as a witch's heart. Chantal shivered and had just about made up her mind to go back for her robe and a light when she heard the frantic mewing again. "Here, baby," she called out softly as she turned a corner that took her faraway from the light and comfort of her bedroom. "Come to Chantal. Here, kitty."
Without warning, she felt something come up behind her. Something too large, too solid to be a mere kitten. When a strong hand clamped over her mouth, forcing a scream back into her throat, she began to struggle, kicking backward with her bare feet, hitting out wildly with her hands. Her fingernails scraped a bloody path down the side of her assailant's face, and she felt his hold on her ease as he spewed off a string of harsh, guttural curses.
Just when Chantal thought she might actually have a chance to escape, something rigid came crashing down on her head. A flash of lightning exploded behind her eyes. Then everything went black.
9
Caine was huddled in the front seat of the car across the street, watching the Sherwood house.
"I hate this," he muttered.
"I don't know what you're complaining about," Drew said. "At least you were invited to dinner while your long-suffering partner was reduced to eating take-out burgers and fries."
"Anything fancier than a fast-food taco would be wasted on you," Caine countered, cringing as his partner tore open a bag of chocolate-covered raisins.
"True enough," Drew agreed with resolute good humor. "But I do thank you kindly for the petits fours."
Caine wondered if the cleaner would be able to get the chocolate frosting out of his suit-jacket pocket. "Anything for a pal. Damn, it's cold tonight." The temperature was making his shoulder ache; he rubbed it.
Drew noticed Caine's gesture. "Why don't you go back to
the hotel? I don't mind pulling a little extra duty."
"I'm staying."
"Suit yourself." Drew poured them both a cup of coffee from the thermos he kept in the back seat. "Got it bad, huh?"
Caine didn't answer immediately as he took a tentative sip of the steaming, too-sweet drink. He should have known that Drew would pour half the sugar bowl into the thermos. "She's different from what I expected."
"Different good, or different bad?"
Caine considered the question. That Chantal was even more beautiful than she appeared in photos definitely lined up on the plus side of the ledger. That she was genuinely nicer and more intelligent than he'd thought were other pluses. What she was doing to his mind, however, was something he hadn't counted on. Caine decided that the unsettling feelings he'd been experiencing lately definitely belonged on the negative side. But he wasn't able to come up with any other minuses to balance out his ledger.
"Just different. You should have heard her during cocktails. The princess played that crowd like a faith healer at a tent revival. Hell, she probably collected more for her Rescue the Children Fund in ten minutes than you and I make in a year."
"Sounds as if the lady's got a future selling water purifiers if she ever decides to get out of the princess business."
"It's not a business. If you're royalty, you're royalty for life."
"And that's what's bothering you, isn't it? That when all this is over, she'll still be a princess. While you're a glorified civil servant."
"Our worlds are light-years apart."
"Did I ever tell you about my granddaddy Billy Joe Tremayne?" Drew asked, popping a handful of raisins into his mouth.
"The one who did time for shooting that federal revenuer he caught nosing around his still?"
"Nah. That was my uncle Buster Joe Tremayne. And he didn't exactly shoot him. He just winged his hat a little."
"Pumped it full of buckshot, if I remember the story correctly."