Finders Keepers

by Shirl Henke

  Sam tried to read the old lady’s face but hadn’t a clue. Jeez, she’s better than Uncle Dec. “You ever play poker?” she asked incredulously.

  Claudia threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, you passed muster. I decided to play along with the subterfuge as the most expeditious way of removing Matthew from danger.”

  “Yeah, but I let him get kidnapped and shot,” Sam replied glumly.

  “Ah, but you did save his life—at considerable risk to your own, I might add. I hired the best woman for the job, which you did without interference from your local flatfeet, the Bureau…or the CIA.”

  “I almost screwed up. If Tess Renkov hadn’t been able to catch Kit Steele’s boat, she’d have killed Matt,” Sam confessed.

  “I read my great-nephew’s story in the Herald. I’m sure he considers you his heroine.” Claudia eyed Sam over the edge of her glass as she sipped.

  Sam had no clue where this was going. Some heroine. He ditched me. She changed the subject back to his aunt. “How’d you become a Witherspoon?”

  “My second husband. Poor Hubert. Such a dry old stick, but at least he had the good grace to drop dead at the stock exchange a year after we were married. He was sixty-seven. I was twenty-nine. My father died during the war and my younger brother, very impressed with becoming titular head of the family, insisted I marry someone of my station. Since he was controlling the purse strings until I did, I chose Hubert Witherspoon.”

  In spite of everything, Sam couldn’t resist a grin. “He was old and rich and let you do whatever you wanted.”

  Claudia nodded. “After I inherited Hubert’s money, I invested it and made a tidy profit. Irritated the hell out of Matthew’s grandfather and father.”

  “You hinted earlier about insider influence in Washington politics. Was that how you kept the CIA off Matt when he started investigating Renkov?”

  “As I said, I contacted my sources,” Claudia replied. “Caleb and I go back a ways.”

  “Caleb Ware, the former CIA director?” Sam asked, thinking of the distinguished elder statesman.

  Claudia’s Cheshire cat smile returned. “Men who’re high in the inner circles of government can be very helpful—and sometimes excellent lovers. Perhaps Henry was right. Power can be quite an aphrodisiac.”

  “Kissinger.” It wasn’t a question. Who hadn’t this amazing old lady had a liaison with?”

  “A pity about J. Edgar’s sexual peculiarities. He would’ve been very useful during the McCarthy era, but then he always was such an icky little toad….”

  Sam was so fascinated by Claudia’s sexual and political adventures she forgot the feast spread in front of her until her hostess took a water cracker piled high with Beluga caviar and popped it into her mouth. “Do eat or that stout will go straight to your head. I imagine you haven’t had a thing but dreadful squad-room coffee for hours.”

  Sam wolfed down a couple of wafer-thin proscuitto roll-ups and some superb Roquefort cheese, then leaned back and looked Claudia straight in the eye. “Now,” she said, wiping her mouth with a monogrammed napkin, “why did you ask me here? I know it wasn’t to shock me with your colorful past or intimidate me with all the powerful men you’ve slept with.”

  Claudia threw back her head and laughed, a low throaty growl of delight. “I knew you and I would get on famously. No, I had no doubt that I could either shock or intimidate you. I want to make you an offer…”

  Sam knocked on the door while glancing across the open hallway to Collins Avenue below her. The bright Florida sunrise illuminated the topiary phalluses standing guard at the entrance to the condo across the street. Somehow that seemed appropriate. But then this was South Beach, after all.

  “Come on, Granger, where are you?” she muttered, leaning on the buzzer. He’d left the Herald offices around seven the night before, an ecstatic young clerk told her in awed tones. Right now everyone up to the managing editor probably thought Matt Granger could walk on water.

  The door opened and the bleary-eyed subject of her thoughts leaned against the door frame. He didn’t look the least bit buoyant as he said, “It’s the crack of dawn. I was asleep.”

  She walked past him into the living room, trying to pull off Claudia’s panache. Failing miserably. Nothing she could do but to be Sam Ballanger from south Boston. No class, just nerve. “You gave the fibbies the slip. Pissed ’em off,” she said with a grin.

  “Oh, they caught up with me at the Herald. Spent an hour grilling me. Your pal Patowski helped out.”

  “You still mad with me about him, working the deal to trick your aunt, I mean?” She had no intention of sharing what Aunt Claudia had told her in confidence. He didn’t need to know.

  Sam stood in the center of the meticulous living room. Plain masculine furniture in shades of brown and dark green, a couple of potted plants, end tables without clutter. The walls were filled, mostly with newspaper articles, some with his by-line, more written by famous reporters. The plants were thriving and even the damn frames were hung straight. She ought to hate him for that.

  Matt took his time replying. With all that had happened to him in the last few days, his mind was a touch on the fuzzy side. The charming interrogation by the local and federal constabularies hadn’t been easy, either. When they finally released him, he’d taken a cab straight home and become one with his bed. But seeing Sam standing in the middle of the room, her toe tapping impatiently, hands on her hips, staring intensely at him made him forget his achy side and lack of sleep.

  “I might be. You and my aunt have your little chat?”

  “We talked. She’s led a…dramatic life.”

  That elicited a snort of laughter. “Dramatic? That’s like comparing Robert DeNiro’s acting style to Gary Cooper’s. She’s been everything from a cabaret singer to a spy. Drove the family nuts. That’s why it pissed me off so much when she insisted I stick to the straight and narrow after my parents died.”

  “She wanted you to be safe…to live to carry on the Granger name. Being a stockbroker’s a lot safer than going for a Pulitzer.”

  “Ya think? Dullsville, though.”

  “She admits you’ve inherited her wild streak.”

  “Just not her penchant for making money.”

  Sam shrugged. “You always have the trust fund.” He bristled. She grinned. “I know you don’t want it, but think of all the security you grew up with, just knowing it was there.”

  “I guess a kid from the other side of the tracks might think that’s a little weird.” He appeared to consider the idea as if it had never occurred to him before.

  “I don’t think it’s weird, Matt,” she said softly, walking toward him and raising her hand to touch his beard-bristled cheek. “I think it’s completely nuts—but,” she cut him off when he opened his mouth to protest, “I forgive you.”

  Then she wrapped her arms around his neck and tiptoed up to insert her tongue in his mouth, coiling it with his in a hot, languorous kiss.

  “You clean up pretty good,” he finally managed when they broke the kiss. She had obviously showered and changed clothes. He nuzzled her neck, inhaling a faint scent of floral perfume. “Smell good, too.”

  She took him by the lapels of his terry-cloth robe and said, “Well, you don’t. Into the shower, Mr. Granger.”

  “Isn’t this where we started last week?” he asked, following her down the hallway.

  “God, I hope your shower’s cleaner than the ones in those motels.” Looking at the immaculate state of his digs, she knew it would be. This might really work out after all…or not.

  He cupped her derriere. “You gonna give me a good scrub off?”

  She looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. “I even brought a blindfold and cuffs.”

  “No way. I intend to see and feel every inch of you.”

  “Speaking of inches…” Her voice trailed away when the tent pole under his robe prodded her in the backside. Taking the protruding “handle,” she led him into the small bathroom
and said in her best retrieval specialist’s voice, “Now strip. I gotta check your wound before we do anything too strenuous.”

  “I’m okay for strenuous,” he murmured with a small grunt of pleasure. “In fact, the doc told me to remove the bandages and shower this morning when I got up.”

  “Oh, you’re up all right. But let’s just make certain the stitches aren’t seeping. I’m the health-care professional, remember?”

  He untied the robe, then slipped it off his shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. Except for a narrow wrap of gauze around his ribs, he didn’t have a stitch on under it. “Now it’s your turn.”

  As he began to unbutton her blouse, Sam removed the bandage and checked the ugly gash on his side. Not deep but it had been a bleeder. She’d seen lots worse in her paramedic days but knew they had to take it easy. “Just lean back against the shower wall and let Nurse Sam do the rest, okay?”

  “You’re the health-care professional,” he said without a hint of sarcasm this time, while his hands continued to undress her.

  “And you’re the get-naked specialist,” she said as he un-hooked her bra with two fingers. Amazing. Even more amazing when his big hands each cupped a breast and teased her nipples into pebbly ecstasy. “All the blood you have left in you’s in one place right now. Look, I don’t want you passing out in the shower stall like you almost did at the back of my van. I’m too little to carry a lummox like you so let’s go slow.”

  Why in the hell had she started this without thinking about his physical condition? The man had been shot yesterday afternoon! Because the minute she’d seen him in that doorway looking disheveled and sexy as hell, all rational thought had fled. He wasn’t the only one whose blood had settled someplace else besides his brain.

  “Slow is good,” he agreed, turning on the water, nice and warm. Steam quickly enveloped them.

  Sam took the shampoo and lathered up his thick curly black hair, massaging his scalp while he held on to her waist, running clever fingers up and down her spine. He stuck his head beneath the spray and rinsed off as she applied soap to his chest and shoulders, being careful of the stitches. Obediently he raised his arms so she could scrub them. Then she knelt and washed his legs.

  “Saving the best for last, huh?” he murmured over the rush of water.

  When her soap-slicked fingers glided over his cock, Matt gasped in a mouthful of water and started coughing.

  “Teach you to be a smart-ass,” she said with a chuckle.

  “It wasn’t my ass I was thinking about, believe me,” he said as she turned off the water and opened the shower door. Her hair, so carefully curled earlier, was drenched and hanging in her eyes. “You look like a cute little sheepdog,” he said, cupping her face in his hands.

  “There’s no such thing as a cute sheepdog—or a little one, but thanks anyway,” she said breathlessly, reaching for a stack of towels.

  He took a huge tan bath sheet and wrapped it around both of them, holding her close. “Let’s see if we can figure a way to dry us both at once…maybe a little friction…hmm?”

  She intended to say she needed to apply a new bandage to his ribs, but the thought never moved from her brain to her lips. He already had them occupied. His erection probed her belly as he moved the soft towel sensuously around them. Overhead, a heat lamp glowed down, warming the room until her hair started to kink into the curly mass of ringlets she’d spent a lifetime trying to tame. They pressed their bodies together under the towel, moving in sync until he let it float to their feet.

  “Dry enough?” he murmured, taking her hand and pulling her toward the door.

  “Your side—I have to bandage it.” She dug her bare heels into the bath mat, stopping him.

  “Hurry up,” he groused as she picked up the gauze and tape he’d been issued at the med center yesterday.

  She’d done this so many times she couldn’t count, but her hands trembled when she picked up the scissors. Damn, I’ll probably slice off a finger. She cut the package open and managed to unroll the bandage. “Hold up your arms.” He complied as she moved in closer. It didn’t help her concentration that he rained small kisses across her shoulders while she reached around him to wrap the gauze in place and tape it.

  “Finished?” he asked as she backed away to inspect her handiwork.

  Far from her most professional job but it would hold—if they didn’t get too acrobatic in bed.

  It held for three minutes.

  But neither of them cared as they rolled around on his king-size bed until he pinned her beneath him and slowly penetrated her until they were both mindless with pleasure.

  “Sammie, Sammie,” he murmured against her hair as he thrust and she arched.

  Sam called out his name as she climaxed, her nails digging into his shoulders, luxuriating in his shuddering release so close behind hers. Perfect.

  Well, maybe. If the next part went the way she planned. Before she could gather her thoughts, he rolled to his good side and curled her against him, cradling her in his arms and kissing her softly.

  “I could do this for days.” He nuzzled her throat and splayed his hand through the mop of curly hair on her head.

  “How about forever?” Cool, Sam. Real subtle.

  “What’ve you got in mind?” he asked.

  But by that time he had turned her over and started sucking on her breast. Sam forgot what she wanted to say. Matt forgot what he’d asked her.

  They finally made it out of bed in time for lunch. Matt scrounged up some bagels from his freezer and a package of cream cheese to spread on the toasted rounds. They shared a pot of strong Cuban coffee as they ate…and Sam worked up her courage.

  “About my visit with your aunt…”

  “Yeah? She’s a kick in the head, isn’t she? Stormed into that E.R. and put the fear of God into Dr. Dyer. She said she was going to talk to you. Knew who you were before I described you. Damn woman knows everything,” he said, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “Sometimes it creeps me out.”

  Sam took a fortifying swallow of caffeine and said, “Aunt Claudia and I agreed—”

  “Already I don’t like this,” he interrupted.

  She put her cup down and looked straight across the table at him. “We agreed the only way to keep you alive is for me to marry you. She’s offered me ten K for every month we stay married, so I’m proposing and I won’t take no for an answer.”

  He stared at her, his jaw dropping. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he finally managed on a croak.

  Sam dared a cheeky grin. “I can have a custom straitjacket designed to look like a tux.”

  Matt grinned back and stood up. “Kinky. From Leather and Lace. I like it.” He reached down and pulled her into his arms.

  But Sam had the last word as he bent down to kiss her. “Oh, yeah. No divorce. I’m not giving the money back, Granger.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6203-8

  FINDERS KEEPERS

  Copyright © 2005 by Shirl Henke

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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