Until You (A Romantic Suspense Novel - Author's Cut Edition)

by Sandra Marton

  "Don't you ever feel anything?" Jillian had shrieked towards the end of the disaster they'd called a marriage.

  Conor swallowed another mouthful of coffee. Of course he felt things. He enjoyed a crimson-and-gold sunset, a good bottle of wine, a concerto that could make your throat constrict and the feel of a woman in his arms.

  That hadn't been enough for Jillian.

  She'd wanted, she'd said, a man who would "communicate."

  Christ, how he'd come to hate that word.

  Share with me, Conor. Tell me what you 're thinking, Conor. Let me inside you, Conor.

  One day, when he'd had all he could take, he'd said okay, if she really wanted to know what he was thinking, he'd tell her. What he was thinking, he'd said, was that he wanted her to stop trying to invade his space and his head.

  Then he'd flown off on a brief assignment. When he got back, Jillian was gone. All she'd left waiting for him was a polite note, her attorney's phone number and a faint drift of perfume.

  Conor had felt some loss but the truth was, he'd known the marriage had been over for a long time. The last months, they'd only been making each other miserable. It wasn't her fault or his; they just weren't right together.

  But it had bothered him that, at the end, Jillian had accused him of being just like his father.

  He knew better than that.

  He was nothing like his old man. Hell, no. He'd lived his whole life making sure of that.

  His father was a cop, with a cop's mentality. Things were good or they were bad; there was no in-between. He never smiled, never had a good word for anybody. He didn't read books or listen to music; he'd never been more than a couple of hundred miles from home and his idea of a good time was to sit around the house, drink beer and watch TV.

  A cold breeze drifted up from the river. Conor shivered, stepped back into the room and closed the balcony door. He'd made damn certain his world was a hell of a lot bigger than his father's and if Jillian hadn't been able to see that, that was her problem. Anyway, he hadn't been cut out for marriage. There were too many things to do in this world besides tying yourself down to one woman.

  As for Miranda Beckman—okay, his gonads had taken over last night, but it wouldn't happen again. A man was nothing if he didn't have control of his emotions.

  He had a job to do and he'd do it. He needed to figure out what was going on. Was Eva Winthrop being threatened? Was her daughter? And if so, were the two incidents connected?

  First things first. He shot back his sleeve, glanced at his watch. Cochran would be just about finished installing the new lock on Miranda's door. He'd check it out, ask her a few more questions and tell her she was to keep close to home until she heard from him.

  Conor smiled. He had the feeling he knew exactly how she was going to take that bit of news.

  Whistling softly, he headed out of the hotel.

  * * *

  Cochran had said changing the lock would take thirty, forty minutes. "An hour, max."

  Conor had told him to make sure it took an hour. He got to Miranda's with five minutes to spare but either his timing or Cochran's was off. Whichever it was, by the time he got to the apartment building off the Rue de Rivoli, the locksmith was gone—and so was Miranda.

  The concierge, who bore more than a passing resemblance to one of the gargoyles that looked down from the roof of Notre Dame, looked at him coldly and said she was sorry but she could tell him nothing of Mademoiselle Beckman's whereabouts. Mademoiselle, she said, looking at him down her classic Gallic nose, was out. No, she did not know where she had gone. No, she had no idea when she would return.

  Pressed, she finally agreed that Monsieur might, if he truly wished, leave a note.

  Conor truly wished. He scrawled his telephone number on a sheet of paper yanked from his address book, added a terse line which was not quite "Where the hell did you go?" but a close equivalent, tucked it into an envelope Madame ungraciously provided, sealed it and handed it over. Then he went out onto the street, fished his cell phone from his pocket and put in a call to Cochran.

  "Yeah," the redhead said, "I did the babe's locks." He made a wheezing sound Conor figured was supposed to be a "just between us guys" chuckle. "Tell the truth, I'd sooner have done her. Man, that is some piece of ass! You gettin' it on with her or what?"

  Conor felt his stomach knot. An image shot into his head, his fist connecting with Pete Cochran's grinning face and turning it into hamburger.

  "How's that parole arrangement of yours going?" he asked pleasantly. "The Surete still sending reports back to D.C., assuring them you're living a righteous existence?"

  "Hey," Cochran said in the tones of a man who's been grievously misjudged, "what'd I say? Since when is it a crime to notice that a babe looks hot?"

  Conor took a deep breath, then let it out.

  "It isn't."

  "Damn right, it isn't."

  "Yeah. Sorry. It hasn't been a great morning."

  Cochran chuckled. "I have days like that myself, man."

  "Listen, I have to get moving. Thanks for doing the job so quickly."

  "No problemo. Maybe we can get together sometime, have a drink?"

  "Sure," Conor said, lying through his teeth, and broke the connection.

  Moments later, he was on the phone again, talking with a very irritable Eva Winthrop.

  "Do you have any idea what time it is here, Mr. O'Neil?" she said, her voice made husky by sleep and annoyance.

  "I'm sorry to wake you," Conor said politely, "but I thought you'd want to know that I've seen your daughter."

  There was a silence. "And?" Eva said finally.

  "I passed myself off as a private detective, working for you and your husband."

  "Why?"

  "It gives me more latitude. I told her you'd received a threatening note and that there was some reason to think the threat might extend to her."

  "You mean, you led her to believe I hired you to check on her welfare?"

  "Yes."

  "That's a far-fetched proposition, Mr. O'Neil. I'm quite certain Miranda knows I'd do nothing of the sort."

  Conor's jaw tightened. "She said as much. But something happened that changed her mind."

  Eva sighed. "Are you going to tell me, or am I supposed to guess?"

  "It's possible that someone broke into her apartment and went through her things."

  "What do you mean, it's possible?"

  "It's what your daughter claims, Mrs. Winthrop."

  "Miranda has always lied as readily as others breathe. Why would you take her word for such a thing?"

  "I saw the apartment. Somebody went through her stuff, all right."

  There was a moment's silence. He waited for the questions, for Eva to ask if Miranda had been hurt.

  "So? Frankly, Mr. O'Neil, I fail to see what that has to do with my situation."

  Conor's hand clenched into a fist but when he spoke, his voice was calm.

  "It's conceivable that the two incidents are related. If someone were trying to threaten you, Mrs. Winthrop, they might feel they could make it even more effective by also threatening your daughter."

  "It would be a useless ploy. Miranda lives her life. I live mine. We have nothing in common."

  "Nothing but blood," he said, before he could stop himself.

  Eva's voice took on a even greater chill.

  "Making judgments is not part of your job, Mr. O'Neil. Perhaps I should ask my husband to put in a call to Mr. Thurston and tell him you're overstepping your bounds."

  "That's a wonderful idea," Conor said, and ended the call. He counted to ten, then to twenty before hitting the speed dial number that connected him to Harry Thurston's home phone.

  It was obvious that he woke him, too, but Thurston covered it better.

  "What's the good word, Conor?"

  Conor brought him up to date.

  "Well, now that you've eyeballed the girl, what's your best guess? Could she have sent that note to her mother? Or could
it be somebody else? That Frenchman she married, maybe? Or the Frenchman's cousin?"

  Conor shifted the phone to his other ear and glanced at his watch.

  "I haven't ruled anything out yet, Harry. The embassy dug up some phone numbers and addresses for me. I'm going to pay a couple of visits today, do some sniffing around but I've got to tell you, what I'm figuring is that the note was a one-shot."

  Thurston yawned. "And the break-in at the Beckman girl's apartment?"

  "Probably another one-shot. I doubt if there's any connection."

  "Maybe it wasn't even a break-in. The girl could just be a slob."

  Conor laughed. "I'll be in touch," he said, and hung up.

  * * *

  An hour later, he was tooling down a back road southwest of Paris.

  It wasn't much of a road, not even by French standards. Barely one-car wide, cut off from the sun by the overgrown branches of the oak trees that grew along either side, it was closer to a dirt track than a road. Unless Conor missed his guess, nobody had bothered to re-grade the surface since the days of the Three Musketeers.

  He shot another glance at the directions he'd scrawled during his phone call to Amalie de Lasserre. When you were dealing with a series of lefts and rights marked by signposts like the crumbling walls of an ancient chateau or what remained of an old vineyard, it was hard to tell if you were on track or not.

  It wouldn't have surprised him if Miranda's once-upon-a-time roommate had given him instructions that would lead him straight to the middle of a cow pasture. She had sounded politely guarded at first, when he'd identified himself as a journalist, but when he'd mentioned Miranda, her tone had become downright frigid.

  "I know nothing about Miranda Beckman," she'd said. Conor had spoken quickly, sensing she was about to hang up. He'd explained that he was a writer doing an article about American models working in Paris and that it was off-the-record background information he was looking for.

  "I have not seen Miranda in many years," Amalie had said, but less abruptly, and Conor had assured her that the Miranda he was interested in was the one Amalie had known as a teenager.

  "Why?" she'd said, and he'd gone for broke, following his instincts, telling her he wasn't just writing an article, he was writing an expose about the seamier side of high fashion. Of course, he'd added, he'd pay her for her time. Amalie had asked how much, he'd tossed out a number he figured might raise a couple of eyebrows when the bean counters checked his expense sheet, and now he was bouncing along a road in the middle of nowhere, looking for a grey stone farmhouse with a slate roof and the ruins of a church just behind it.

  And there it was. Conor stood on the brakes. And there she was, Amalie de Lasserre, standing in the doorway and looking just as he'd pictured her: stout, unwelcoming and unattractive.

  There didn't seem to be a driveway so he pulled the car onto the muddy stretch of ground that he assumed had once been a lawn and got out.

  "Mr. O'Neil?"

  Her English was perfect, better than his French. He smiled and extended his hand.

  "Mademoiselle de Lasserre. Thank you for agreeing to see me."

  She hesitated, then gave him her hand. It was large and callused. She had, he saw, a faint mustache.

  "You said you would have something for me, Mr. O'Neil?"

  Conor took a handful of bills from his wallet and dumped them into Amalie's meaty palm.

  No dancing around the issue, he thought. Well, that was something to be grateful for.

  "We agreed upon twice this amount," she said brusquely, after she'd counted it.

  "We did. I'll give you the rest after we've talked."

  She looked at him for a long moment. Then she turned and marched into the house with Conor following after her.

  "Shut the door, please. I don't want all the heat escaping."

  What heat? he wondered. There was a fire glowing on the hearth at one end of the room but the air was cold enough so he could see his breath plume. An old, very plain oak table stood to the left of the fireplace. Amalie settled herself into one of the chairs. There was a cup filled with some sort of steaming liquid on the table in front of her. She lifted it to her lips and took a noisy sip.

  "Now," she said, plunking down the cup and fixing him with a sharp look, "what do you want to know?"

  So much for hospitality. Conor walked to the hearth and held his hands out to the fire.

  "I want you to tell me about Miranda Beckman, mademoiselle."

  "You can leave off the French terminology, Mr. O'Neil. I speak your language quite well and I am not impressed by your ability to speak mine."

  "Of course," he said politely.

  "What is it you wish to know about Miranda?"

  "Whatever you think will help me get a picture of her as she was in the days you and she roomed together."

  Amalie de Lasserre folded her arms over her ample bosom.

  "I didn't know her well. We were not friends."

  "But you were her roommate."

  "So everyone at Miss Cooper's said."

  Conor arched his brows. "I'm afraid I don't follow that."

  "It's quite simple. I had been at school for three years before Miranda arrived. She moved into my room, not I into hers, yet no one ever referred to her as my roommate."

  He smiled. "I see your point, Miss de Lasserre."

  "No, you do not. You couldn't possibly see my point. You have never been an overweight seventeen-year old with pimples and stringy hair, called to the headmistress's office one morning to be told that you are about to share your room with a girl who couldn't pass a mirror without looking into it and admiring her reflection."

  Conor kicked a chair out from beneath the table, turned it around and straddled it.

  "You didn't hit it off?"

  Amalie laughed. "The understatement of the year, sir. We hated each other on sight. Oh, she put on quite a performance, sweet little Miranda, smiling and simpering when we first met, but I saw what she was."

  "And what was she, Miss de Lasserre?"

  Amalie's nostrils flared, as if she'd caught the scent of something unpleasant.

  "A rich brat, vain and spoiled, just like her mother."

  "You met Eva Winthrop?"

  "Only once, the day she brought Miranda to Miss Cooper's, but it was enough. The woman acted as if she expected me to kneel and kiss her ring."

  Conor smiled. "So, you didn't like either Eva or Miranda."

  "No intelligent person would."

  "But Miranda tried to be friendly, at the beginning?"

  "She put on an act, yes, but I paid no attention. Did she think she could fool me so easily? No one wanted to be my friend," Amalie said bluntly. "I wasn't pretty, I wasn't popular. I knew what she wanted from me."

  "And that was?"

  "I was an excellent student. She wanted me to do her homework for her, write her research papers."

  Conor thought back to Miranda's records and all those A's and B's.

  "And did you?" he asked.

  "Certainly not. She got nothing from me, I can tell you that!"

  "Except an introduction to your cousin," Conor said gently.

  Amalie's head snapped up. "What do you mean?"

  "Just what I said, Miss de Lasserre. You introduced her to your cousin, Edouard."

  "I did." The moon-like face filled with color. "Even though Edouard had come to see me at the request of my dear maman."

  "A courtesy call," Conor said, "from cousin to cousin?"

  "Edouard is my cousin, but twice removed. And I did not think that he was a fool like all the rest, to be taken in by a pretty face." Her jowls quivered. "He'd stopped in the States on his way home from checking on some property he owned in the islands, and so he paid me a visit. We got along famously. He was quite taken with my intellect."

  "Ah," Conor said softly.

  "Ah, indeed. Then he met Miranda and she—she victimized him!"

  "She married him, you mean."

  Amalie's eyes
narrowed. "How do you know of this, Mr. O'Neil?"

  "Why? Is it a secret?"

  "It is not common knowledge."

  Conor shrugged. "I told you, I'm doing research for an article. The information was there. All I did was stumble across it."

  "Then I hope you also stumbled across the fact that Miranda seduced poor Edouard."

  "You saw her?"

  "She flaunted herself before him. And she insinuated herself into every encounter. Edouard was a perfect gentleman. He would come to take me to tea or for a drive and he would ask her if she wished to join us, out of politeness, mind. But Miranda never refused so off we'd go, she sitting in the car between us, laughing and fluttering her lashes." Amalie's mouth tightened into a cramped knot. "How long could he resist such enticement?"

  "I don't know," Conor said pleasantly. "How long was it, do you recall?"

  "Two months! Eight short weeks and she—she lured him into running off with her. Of course, the marriage did not last long. Miranda decided she'd wearied of the game and left poor Edouard, just like that."

  "Didn't he try and stop her?"

  "Stop her?"

  "Yes. Did he try to talk her out of leaving?"

  "Certainly he did, but she would not listen. I don't know all the details, Mr. O'Neil. Edouard and I never speak of it. It is still a very painful memory for him, you understand."

  "Did Edouard know Miranda was underage when he eloped with her, Miss de Lasserre?"

  "Of course not."

  "Did he know her mother and stepfather were wealthy?"

  Amalie shot to her feet. "What sort of question is that? What would her family's money matter to Edouard? He has plenty of money of his own." She picked up a poker and stabbed viciously at the burning logs until sparks flew into the air. "You cannot imagine the guilt I feel, sir. If only I had warned him! She was no good, that girl. Everyone knew it."

  "What did they know?"

  "That she was wild. A common tramp."

  "How did everyone know? Did Miranda boast about her behavior?"

  "She didn't have to. Just to look at her was enough. All that hair. Those eyes. Besides, there was talk. Girls at Miss Cooper's knew girls at other schools she'd attended. She'd been expelled from dozens of places before she came to us." Amalie turned towards him, her expression fierce. "If Miranda's in trouble now, it's no more than she deserves."