“Have you had your shots?” he whispered to her as he rubbed his hand.
She stayed under him, braced on one hand, gasping for breath as she fumbled for something in her pocket, the bill of her baseball cap shielding her face in the dark. He heard a whoosh and another gasp and leaned over her to see if she was all right, and she whispered savagely, “Touch me and I’ll scream.”
“No you won’t,” he whispered. “If you were going to scream, you’d have done it already.”
She exhaled hard and pushed herself up from the floor, a blur in the darkness as she knocked him back, and he caught her sleeve as he rolled to his feet.
“Easy,” he whispered. “I can’t let you go yet I haven’t-”
“I don’t care.” She was whispering, too, as she tried to tug her sleeve away from him. “Let go, I have to get out of here.”
“No.” He pulled her arm closer and caught a hint of her scent, something sweet “The thought of you on the loose discussing this with the cops does not-”
“Look, you idiot.” Her whisper was savage as she tried to pry his hand from her arm. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know what you look like. How can I possibly tell anybody about you?”
“Good point.” Davy dragged her over to the window and pulled back the drape to let the street light in, keeping to the shadow so she couldn’t see him.
“Hey.” She was wearing a sloppy Oriental jacket buttoned to her throat, and she glared up at him, her strange light eyes glowing behind huge hexagonal glasses that made her look like a bug. “Are you insane?” she hissed at him. “What if somebody’s out there?”
She jerked away from him again, and he let go of her arm before she dislocated it. “What are you dressed for?” he whispered. “Chinese baseball?”
She shoved past him, and he pulled off her baseball cap and held it above her head, feeling disappointed when her hair was too short to come tumbling down. She took another deep breath and turned back to him.
“Has it occurred to you that this isn‘t a game?”
“No.” Davy stared at her dark, loopy curls, standing up like little horns. “It’s always a game. Why else would you do it?”
“Give me that hat,” she whispered, and when he held it higher, she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and glared at him.
“No,” he said. “And that was a question. Why are you here?”
She frowned at him, glaring harder.
“What?” he said. “Speak.”
She shook her head, clearly frustrated. “Oh, forget it. Keep it.”
She headed for the door and he caught her around the waist and pulled her back against him. “Tell me what you’re up to, Mulan,” he said in her ear as she tried to squirm away. “I’d like to be a gentleman, but the stakes are high.”
She stopped struggling so suddenly that he drew in his breath. Cinnamon. Her hair smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, like the rolls his sister used to make on Sunday mornings. Then she turned in the curve of his arm to face him, which was nice all on its own.
“An old-fashioned gentleman,” she said, her voice low, and Davy felt a stirring of alarm. “I could use one of those.”
“I’m not.” Davy loosened his hold and backed away toward the closet. “Twenty-first-century cad, that’s me.”
She stepped closer, and he tripped over Clea’s shoes and stumbled backward.
“I need a favor,” she whispered up at him as she backed him through Clea’s clothes and up against the wall, and her low, husky voice would have set up a nice hum in his blood if she hadn’t been so stiff as she pressed against him.
You want to seduce me, you have to melt a little, he thought, but she smelled like the best mornings of his life, so he didn’t push her away.
“I’m not good at this kind of thing,” she whispered, putting her palms on his chest, her hands trembling a little.
No kidding, Davy thought. He’d held two-by-fours that were more yielding.
“While you clearly are-” she clutched his shirt “-good at this.”
“Okay, you really are no good at this,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “So cut to the chase. What do you want?” He heard her sigh in the darkness, and there was a tremor in it, and he realized she was afraid and put his arm around her. “It’s okay,” he told her, without thinking.
“There’s a painting,” she said. “Eighteen inches square. A city scene with a checkerboard sky with lots of stars. It’s somewhere in this house.”
“A painting,” Davy said, knowing what was coming next.
“Steal it for me,” she whispered, and his hands tightened on her automatically, feeling all that warm softness under her slippery jacket.
Okay, the chances of her delivering what she was promising were nil, and she was a thief which couldn’t be good, and she was asking him to steal which was worse than anything she’d done to him up until then including the bite and the shin kick. A smart man would say no and escape, dragging her with him so she couldn’t rat him out.
But life had been so boring lately.
And she was afraid.
“Please?” she said, pressing closer, her lips parted.
“Sure,” he said, and kissed her lightly, wanting her to taste like cinnamon, surprised to find her mouth cool like mint, even more surprised a second later to find her kissing him back, rising to meet him, the tip of her tongue touching his, and he tightened his arms around her and kissed her as if he meant it.
“Vilma Kaplan,” he said when he broke the kiss, and she jerked back, and then he heard it, too, the step outside the door, and almost knocked her off her feet trying to get the closet door closed before someone came in.
Okay, that’s an omen, he thought. Stay away from this woman and her tongue. Then a moment later she sighed beside him and he put his arm around her again.
Thank God, she’s a brunette, he thought as he listened to Clea rustle out in the bedroom. It’s the blondes that screw up my life.
FIFTEEN MINUTES earlier, Clea Lewis had been watching Gwen Goodnight slurp cheesecake and thinking of ways to permanently separate her from Mason, with an ax if necessary, when the caterer interrupted her.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Lewis?” he said from the doorway, and Clea turned to look at him, keeping her face pleasant because Mason liked it when people went out of their way to be nice to the help. Also, they might need a caterer again. You never knew.
“There’s a telephone call for you,” the caterer said.
“Thank you, Thomas.” Clea turned back to Mason and the threat from the gallery. “I’m so sorry,” she said, radiating graciousness.
“Perfectly all right,” Mason said, happy because he was talking about art again. Mason wasn’t hugely attractive, but he was hugely rich, so the smile Clea gave him was genuine.
Gwen Goodnight widened her pale blue eyes that couldn’t compare to Clea’s, which Clea knew because she’d compared them. “No problem,” Gwen said to Clea. “Tell whoever it is we said hi.”
Clea nodded and slid her chair back, keeping her eye on Gwen. Gwen had crow’s-feet and her jawline was going, but she knew art, and more than that, Mason thought she was charming. “Gwen Goodnight,” he’d said when he’d taken her phone message. “Charming little woman. I’d almost forgotten her. I invited her to dinner.” And now here she was.
Fortunately, Gwen looked her age, which was just careless of her.
“Hello?” Clea said when she’d picked up the phone.
“Clea? Clea, darling?” a man said.
“Who is this?” she said, annoyed. The last thing she needed was Mason hearing some man calling her “darling.”
“It’s Ronald,” the voice said, clearly hurt.
“What do you want?” She stretched to see into the dining room. Mason was still leaning toward Gwen. Honest to God, she’d gotten the man a caterer for the evening -well, she’d hired the man who showed up at the door canvassing for odd jobs after she realized Mason expected her to ha
ndle dinner- and now he was using the dinner party she’d arranged to flirt with another woman. Where was loyalty? Where was appreciation?
“I know you said not to call,” Ronald was saying, breathless, “but this is important. Davy Dempsey has found us.”
“What?” Clea looked around to make sure Davy wasn’t standing there, flashing that lousy grin.
“He tracked us down somehow,” Ronald said. “He even knew where you were, I don’t know how. He threatened me to keep me quiet, Clea, but I had to tell you, I don’t care if he beats me up, I had to tell you because I love you.”
“How did he follow me here?” Clea said, her voice like a lash. Honest to God, she had a genius for picking men who would let her down. Davy, Zane, Cyril… “He didn’t know where I was. He followed you. What did you do, leave a forwarding address?”
“I’m taking a great risk telling you this at all,” Ronald said, his voice thick with hurt. “He’s dangerous. He threatened to kill me. If I didn’t love you so much-”
“He’s a con man, not a hit man.” Clea thought about Davy -good-looking, shifty, and implacable- and glanced around the empty hall again, thinking fast. He could be anywhere, the bastard, looking for his money. She had to get rid of him. Ronald should do that. He owed her. It was his fault Davy was here. “If he’s so dangerous, why did you send him after me?” Clea let her voice tremble. “Oh, Ronald, I’ll never be able to trust you again-”
“Clea-” Ronald’s voice strangled on his panic.
“-unless you help me.” Clea let her voice drop, deepening with promise. “Unless you prove you love me by saving me, Ronald. If you did that, I’d know we-”
“Anything,” Ronald said, his breath coming quicker. “Anything. We should talk about it. Let me see you. If we could-”
“You have to prove you love me first.” Clea craned her neck to make sure Gwen hadn’t crawled into Mason’s lap. God, you just could not trust men.
“I’ll meet you,” Ronald said breathlessly. “We’ll-”
“I can’t possibly meet you while Davy is around.”
“Clea, please-”
“Get rid of Davy and then we’ll talk,” Clea said. “I have to go-”
“Wait, wait, I have a plan for that,” Ronald said. “I think I can get him to agree to leave you the million he stole from you and only take the money he made with it. The first million is rightfully your-”
“It’s all mine,” Clea said, outrage making her louder. Honestly, where was this man’s mind? How long did he think a million would last her in this economy? Well, in any economy. She dropped her voice again, this time to the purr that had made stronger men than Ronald twitch. “You know that, Ronald darling, you know that’s true.”
“Of course,” Ronald said automatically. “But if he’ll leave-”
“He won’t leave,” Clea said. “I know him, he’s impossible. Get rid of him, and then you and I can be together forever. I only have a few more paintings to buy, Ronald. Another month at the most and then we’ll be together again. With a beautiful art collection.”
“A month?” Ronald took a deep breath. “I don’t-”
“But only if you get rid of Davy,” Clea said. “As long as he’s around, we’ll never be together.”
There was a silence on the other end of the line, and Clea stretched to see what was going on in the dining room now. Gwen was laughing at something Mason said. The woman was practically a hyena. And her jawline was definitely going. Clea put her fingers under her chin and pushed. Still firm, but for how long? There was a limit to plastic surgery, after all. Too much and you started to look like-
“What exactly,” Ronald said slowly, “do you mean by ‘get rid of?”
In the dining room, Gwen put her hand on Mason’s arm, and Clea said, “Get him out of the picture.”
“You mean, kill him?”
Clea stopped glaring at Gwen and Mason to think about it. Death was a little more drastic than she’d intended, but it would get Davy out of the way permanently. Maybe Ronald could pin his murder on Gwen. That would solve all her problems.
On the other hand, it was Davy. He’d been good to her a long time ago.
Oh, hell, let Ronald figure it out. “Ronald, either you love me or you don’t.”
“He has family” Ronald was saying. “Real family, he calls his sister every week. I don’t think I can-”
“Then you don’t get me,” Clea said. “If you won’t take care of a little thing like this, I can’t trust you to take care of me, which means I can’t spend the rest of my life with you. You betrayed me, Ronald, you sent that horrible man here and now you won’t save me. I’m so upset, I can’t even talk to you anymore.”
“Clea-”
“Good-bye forever, Ronald,” Clea said and hung up in the middle of his pleading, hearing the crack of desperation that meant she had him.
Now all she had to do was wait for Ronald to push Davy under a bus or deport him or something. Ronald loved her, he’d do it. Not a problem. As long as Davy wasn’t already in the house. He couldn’t be in the house already, could he? She should have asked Ronald for more details.
Clea took one more look in the dining room and went upstairs to her bedroom to make sure Davy wasn’t ripping her off. That’s the kind of world it was: a woman had to do damn near everything for herself.
OKAY, OKAY, Tilda thought as she stood as still as she possibly could. There’s a way out of this. I just have to slow down and think She drew in a deep breath. Oxygen was important, especially if you were asthmatic. Lack of it made you unconscious and vulnerable. She breathed in again, and the kissing bandit beside her put his arm around her.
That was sweet. He must think she was a complete idiot. Or a complete slut. She’d kissed him. She’d sunk into the dark anonymity of the closet and thought, Oh, thank God, he’s going to help me, and kissed him back. She was an idiot slut. Of course, he was a thief, so it wasn’t as though he was in a position of superiority there. I have to get out more, she thought. Six months of celibacy and she was swapping tongues with burglars in the middle of felonies.
Outside, Clea Lewis slammed a drawer shut, and Tilda froze. The bandit pressed her shoulder, and she tried not to feel comforted. He was a crook, for heaven’s sake, which strangely enough did not lessen his appeal. Goodnight blood, Tilda thought. Like calling to like.
He shoved at her gently and she realized he was trying to get her to move down into the other part of the closet, away from the first set of doors.
Right. She stepped sideways, and he eased down the wall with her, his hand now warm on her back as the closet door opened.
She heard Clea shove the clothes aside where they’d been standing, and her entire life passed before her eyes: faked paintings and forged murals interspersed with glimpses of family. She moved her head a fraction of an inch toward the man standing between her and ruin, just enough that her forehead touched his shoulder in the dark. She was always the one who rescued, but tonight, he could do it. He was as bad as she was, probably worse, he needed the good karma points, he could get them out.
Clea stopped pawing through her clothes and shut the closet door, and Tilda inhaled in shuddery relief, smelled soap and cotton, and tried not to shake. When she heard the door close outside, he said, “Here,” and opened the closet door. But it’s so safe in here, she thought, and followed him out.
“Well,” she whispered when they were out in Clea’s bedroom again, “I really apprec-”
“Fuck,” he said, and she followed his eyes to the desk. The laptop was gone. “Sorry,” he said to her, keeping his voice low this time.
“Are you kidding?” Tilda said. “I’ve been wanting to scream that for the past eight hours.” She drew a deep breath. He was wearing her black baseball cap, the one she’d borrowed from Andrew, the one embroidered with bitch on the front in white. That was okay, he could have it to remember her by. “Well, it’s been great, but-”
“There’s a diner three block
s east of here,” he said. “I’ll meet you there.”
“What?” Tilda whispered. “Why? Listen, if this is about the kiss, I apologize, I-”
“The painting,” he whispered back, trying to push her toward the door.
“You know,” Tilda said, resisting the push, “I was wrong. This is not your problem. I’ll-”
He leaned closer, large in the dim light, and she stopped. “Vilma, I don’t know what you do for a living, but it’s not theft. Go wait in the diner.”
“No, really.”
“You want to stay and search the place?”
The darkness closed in around her, and she felt her lungs start to tighten. She was such a geek. “No.”
“Then go away.” He steered her toward the door. “And if you get caught? You never met me.”
“I wish,” Tilda said, and slipped out the door, feeling like a fool and a failure.
❖ ❖ ❖
WHEN GWEN got back to the gallery, she went straight to the cabinet above the counter and pulled out the vodka bottle. It was empty.
“Damn,” she said and dropped it in the trash, prepared to savage whoever had finished it. It wouldn’t be Andrew or Jeff; they kept their booze in their apartment. Eve wouldn’t have finished off the bottle. And Nadine knew better.
Must have been me, Gwen thought. Good, just what I always wanted to be, a middle-aged amnesiac drunk. She looked for something soothing on the jukebox and settled for “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” Dionne was always good. San Jose would be good, too. Anywhere but here.
She sank down on the leather couch and tried not to think about Tilda trapped in that damn house. She needed a vacation, although it was going to be a while before she could leave. A year before Eve finished her teaching degree. Three years before Nadine went to college.
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