This time he wasn’t quick enough to hide his astonishment. His face flushed scarlet. “What the—?” He slammed the glass down on the coffee table and sprang to his feet. “How did you find out about that?”
She regarded him with an air of cool superiority. “It’s a long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
Not as much as he thought. She took a deep breath and said, “It all started when Ross—”
Yale immediately interrupted her and rudely demanded, “Who in the hell is Ross?”
His words acted like a trigger release. The man was going to get the full treatment. It was no more than he deserved.
Diana traced an imaginary line along the edge of the mahogany bar with her fingertip and said blithely, “Ross is this soldier of fortune who tried to pick me up at the airport the day I arrived in Manila.”
Yale Grimmer was visibly stunned. “My God, Diana, what’s happened to you?”
“More than you’ll ever know, or could ever imagine,” she said, facing him squarely. “Why don’t you sit down again, Yale. You seem slightly shell-shocked.”
“If you don’t mind, I prefer to stand,” he snapped at her peevishly.
Diana shrugged her shoulders and continued with her story. “It all began at the airport. There was this man—”
“This soldier of fortune?” he interjected.
She nodded. “This soldier of fortune was waiting for me. Initially I thought Ross had been sent by you, or by the company. He was holding up a sign with my name written on it.”
Her one-time fiancé made an inarticulate noise and stared down into his half-empty glass.
“As it turned out, of course, he was a complete stranger. He’d raced to the airport to warn me that I was in trouble. Big trouble, he claimed.”
This was a little too much for Yale Grimmer. “I think I will sit down.”
Diana was almost enjoying herself now. “I didn’t believe him at first. And when he wouldn’t let go of my arm, I threatened to scream bloody murder.”
“My God, you were openly accosted in broad daylight in a public airport?”
“It wasn’t really as bad as it sounds,” she said, the golden brown eyes flickering almost humorously. “Anyway, I didn’t believe one word of the crazy story he tried to tell me.”
“I should hope not.”
“Until later.”
That brought his head up. “Until later?”
“When I went upstairs and discovered that my hotel suite had been ransacked.”
The sideways glance he gave her was disconcertingly shrewd. “Did you notify hotel security, or the police?”
She gave her head a shake. “Ross didn’t recommend it. The red tape and all. We decided to check ourselves to see if anything had been stolen.”
“Had it?”
“No.” She made a sudden and vigorous gesture with both her hands. “That was the strangest part of all. Not a single thing was missing.”
“That is strange.”
“A few minutes after that, you called.”
His eyes touched hers briefly. “God, Diana, why didn’t you warn me?”
“You mean, tell you?”
“Yes, why didn’t you tell me what was going on?”
“Our connection wasn’t very good. I was having trouble hearing you,” she said by way of an explanation. “Besides, there wasn’t anything you could do. You were hundreds of miles away on Port Manya.”
His shoulders drooped. “You fool. You bloody stupid little fool,” he growled.
For a minute Diana thought she’d heard him incorrectly. “I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing,” he said, his expression grim.
“The next morning I went to the airport as you’d instructed and caught the nine-thirty flight to Port Manya,” she said matter-of-factly. “Ross came along.”
Yale’s handsome face tightened. “You invited another man to come with you?”
“Of course not,” she said tersely. “I didn’t realize what his plans were until I got on the plane, and there he was.”
“I’m beginning to dislike this soldier of fortune of yours already.”
If he only knew the half of it!
Diana took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “Anyway, when we arrived on the island and you were nowhere to be found, Ross thought it would be wise for us to pretend we were married.”
That brought Yale right up out of his seat. “The damn fool did what?”
She leapt to Ross’s defense. “He isn’t, he wasn’t, a damn fool. At the time it seemed like a good idea. It was to protect me. The culture on Port Manya is very conservative. A single woman traveling on her own, without a chaperon, is regarded with great—suspicion.”
“The guy sounds like a world-class con artist to me.” Yale looked at her as though she had taken leave of every one of her senses. “Don’t tell me that you ended up sharing a hotel room with him.”
Diana straightened her shoulders and said with as much dignity as she could muster, which was a considerable amount, “Yes, I did.”
He reached out for her hand and gripped her fingers so tightly she winced. “You weren’t the American couple staying in the honeymoon suite?”
Refusing to cringe in the face of Yale Grimmer’s disapproval, Diana confirmed, “As a matter of fact; we were.”
“Did you sleep with him?”
“It’s a strange thing about men,” she said, ignoring his implication.
“What is?”
“Sex.”
His voice rose, rich with anger. “Sex?”
She nodded. “That was one of the first questions Ross asked about you.”
The once-handsome face was scarlet with outrage. “The guy had the nerve to ask if you were sleeping with me?”
She could think of nothing more appropriate to say than a simple, “Yes.”
“Did you tell him?” asked Yale coloring angrily.
She managed to withdraw her fingers from his grasp. “Not at the time.”
“I should hope not.”
“But he seemed to know, anyway. I guess it’s a sixth sense, an instinct—some men have it and some men don’t.”
“And he has it,” said Yale gloomily.
She flashed him a broad smile. “In spades.”
Yale staunchly declared, “I have always held you in the highest regard, Diana. I respected you. I adored you. I put you up on a pedestal.”
She deflated his hot air-filled balloon with a single word. “Bull.”
Suddenly Diana realized that she didn’t like Yale Grimmer very much. The man was vain. Self-centered. Chauvinistic. Shallow. A bad liar. And insincere.
“You are not the woman I thought you were,” he said icily. “You’ve changed.”
“Yes, I have. Thank God.”
“Did you sleep with your soldier of fortune?” he asked venomously.
“Yes.”
“Of your own free will?”
“Absolutely.”
“Son of a—” His features hardened. “You fell for the bastard, didn’t you?”
She was incensed. “Ross is not a bastard. He happens to be an out-of-work engineer.”
“You’ve fallen in love with a drifter. A man who doesn’t even have a job. A man who couldn’t afford to pay your clothes bill for one month. Have you lost your mind?”
“Possibly.”
“You’re making a big mistake.”
“I don’t think so. Marrying you, now that would have been a big mistake.”
“The wedding is off.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Dammit, Diana, how could you do this to me?”
“It has nothing to do with you, Yale,” she declared archly. “It was just one of those things.”
He shook his head, and a bitter laugh escaped. “If only I had been there when your plane landed.”
“But you weren’t. And there is no going back now,” she said firmly. “Naturally I will return the diamond enga
gement ring you gave me.”
Yale looked at her hand for the first time since entering the hotel suite. “Where is your engagement ring?”
Diana glanced down at her ringless finger. “Now, let me see… when did I take it off?”
“Cripes, you don’t even remember!”
She pursed her lips in thought. Then it all came back to her. It was just before Ross had made love to her in the forest tree house. He had stashed both her engagement ring and her charm bracelet in his shirt. She hadn’t given either one a thought since. She assumed both pieces of jewelry were still in his pocket.
Yale’s lips went white. “Where is the gold charm bracelet I gave you?”
Diana found herself in the grip of an odd feeling of danger. “I don’t know. Why?”
He stated unequivocally, “I want the bracelet returned, as well.”
“But it was a birthday present.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want you to have it now. Not after what you’ve done.”
She didn’t believe him. Not entirely. Yale wanted the bracelet back all right. But he was lying about the reason.
She sighed and gave a nonchalant shrug. “I don’t have the charm bracelet anymore.”
Yale was next to her in a shot. “You don’t have it anymore?”
“No.”
“You little fool,” he said, quite fearless with resentment. “It was the bracelet all along.”
Her gaze narrowed. “What do you mean ‘it was the bracelet all along’?”
He was nearly shouting at her now. “The merchandise. The bloody merchandise. It was on the bracelet, you stupid bitch.”
Yale Grimmer was suddenly in a rage. It was an ugly sight. This was not the man she’d thought she had known, Diana realized. “What was on the bracelet?” she asked, managing to keep her wits about her even though he was falling apart.
He swore viciously, using words she had never heard from him before. “A quarter of a million dollars.”
Her eyes grew round as saucers. “What?”
“One of the charms on the bracelet was a coin.”
She nodded and agreed. “Yes.” It had never been her personal favorite, however.
“That coin was one of a kind. To the right collector it was worth at least a quarter of a million dollars. Maybe more.”
She had an awful, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. “Yale, what have you done?”
He grabbed her by the arms and gave her a shake. “If I don’t get that bracelet back, Diana, I’m a dead man.”
A voice as hard as nails came from the doorway behind them. “You’re a dead man, Grimmer, if you don’t take your hands off my woman.”
Fourteen
“Your woman?”
“My woman.” Ross liked the sound of it; he nearly said it again.
Yale Grimmer dropped his hands, quickly stepped away from Diana, shook his head and, with an incredulous expression, looked from Ross back to her. “The guy is a Neanderthal. Where did you get him?”
“I told you,” she said with a perfectly straight face, “at the airport.”
Ross St. Clair nearly lost it at that point and laughed out loud. He had heard most of the conversation between Diana and her ex-fiancé from the doorway. She had held her own very nicely. Very nicely, indeed. But there were still a few unanswered questions, a few loose ends to tie up.
He took a menacing step toward the other man. “At least I know how to take care of my own, Grimmer. You don’t deserve a woman like Diana.”
The brown-haired businessman hooted. “And you do?”
Ross advanced another step. “I wouldn’t hide behind a woman’s skirts. I wouldn’t use her as a courier. I wouldn’t put her life in jeopardy for a lousy quarter of a million bucks.”
Diana echoed. “Put my life in jeopardy?”
“Her life was never in any danger,” claimed Yale, nervously licking his lips.
“You lily-livered, chickenhearted piece of—” Ross paused and smiled apologetically at Diana. “Since there is a lady present, I won’t tell you what I really think of you, Grimmer. I should beat you to within an inch of your life for what you did. I was there. I heard every word. So don’t lie to me,” he spit out as he moved closer.
Yale backed up. “What do you mean you were there?”
Two chips of hard, agate-colored stone bored right through the coward. “I was on the beach that night. I heard the conversation between you and Carlos. I know he made threats against Diana.” Then Ross perfectly mimicked the man’s husky, cigar-smoking tone of voice, “ ‘We expect the merchandise to be in our hands by the end of the week, or Ms. Winsted will pay the price with her lovely head.’ ”
Yale Grimmer paled. “My God, you were there!”
“Yup.”
“We didn’t know anyone was listening.”
“I assumed you didn’t.” Ross added nonchalantly, “I suppose the goons with the semiautomatic weapons were hired to insure that there weren’t any eavesdroppers.”
“Then how—” Grimmer was obviously having difficulty taking it all in. “Then how did you manage it?”
Diana piped up. “He’s a soldier of fortune.”
Her former fiancé turned to her for an instant. “I thought you said he was an out-of-work engineer.”
She looked down her nose at him and said informatively, “The average American will change his/her profession at least three times during his/her lifetime.”
“Who knows what I’ll be next?” added Ross dryly.
“You can be anything you want to be,” said Diana, as if she had all the confidence in the world in him.
“Thank you, sweetheart.”
“Good grief,” muttered Yale.
Ross turned his attention to the louse standing in front of him and said, “I believe the lady asked you a question or two that you haven’t bothered to answer, mister.”
Yale attempted to bluff his way out of it. “I don’t remember any questions.”
“Then let me refresh your memory. To begin with, who is Carlos?”
Grimmer’s voice sank almost to a whisper. “I don’t know anyone named Carlos.”
Ross laughed, shook his head as though he were genuinely bewildered and said in a tone that somehow managed to be both soft and lethal at the same time, “You know, that’s the same doggone answer I got from those two thugs I trapped in the jungle.” In an aside to Diana, he admitted, “Although I do think Bolo would have talked… in the end.”
The man in front of him swallowed and said faintheartedly, “ In the end?”
Ross frowned and concluded, after due consideration, “It was probably the swamp rats.”
Yale Grimmer appeared appalled. “Swamp rats.”
Ross reconsidered. “Maybe it was my machete.”
“Your what?”
“I don’t like to brag, Grimmer, but I’m pretty handy with a machete. Maybe I could show you sometime, too.”
Diana’s eyes narrowed in reprimand. “You didn’t hurt those men you caught in the jungle, did you, Ross?”
He was wounded. “I promised I wouldn’t, darling.”
She patted his muscular arm. “I know. But sometimes when you get mad you forget.”
“I didn’t forget this time. I said I wouldn’t hurt them and I didn’t.” There was a slightly feral expression on his face as he tacked on, “Much.”
Yale forced himself to ask, yet it was obvious he didn’t want to. “What did those two thugs do?”
Ross grunted. “They tried to mess with my woman.”
Diana clarified. “They tried to kidnap me from the Hotel Paraiso. I think they were looking for your merchandise.” She added as an afterthought, “I do hope Sergeant Bok found them in time.”
Suddenly Yale Grimmer looked as if he needed a strong drink. Perhaps several. “Who is Sergeant Bok?”
Ross retaliated. “Who is Carlos?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Then I can’t tell you who Sergeant B
ok is.”
He tried appealing to Diana. “For God’s sake, help me!”
Ross watched her with a great deal of satisfaction as she said, “I’m sorry, Yale. I can’t.”
“But after all we’ve been to each other.”
“We were nothing to each other,” she corrected. “In fact, we were less than nothing. We didn’t know the first thing about one another. We weren’t in love. We weren’t in lust. We weren’t even friends.”
“We were,” he pleaded.
She looked at Yale as if she had never seen him before in her life. “A very wise and wonderful man once said that if I stayed in this part of the world I would find the veneer of civilization peeled away. He told me that sooner or later each of us is exposed for exactly who and what we are.” Her eyes narrowed. “You are a king-size rat, Yale. You’ve made your bed, now you’ll just have to sleep in it.”
“But I’m in trouble. Big trouble,” he whined.
Ross didn’t say a word. He hoped Diana wouldn’t, either. Let Grimmer hang himself without their help.
There was only silence until the desperate man began talking again. He paced back and forth in front of the coffee table. “All right, I admit it. I do know somebody named Carlos. He’s a big-time dealer.”
“A dealer in what?”
“Imports/exports.”
Ross waited. “That usually means smuggling.”
“Usually,” admitted Grimmer. “Anyway, Carlos and I made a deal. He would find a buyer. I would supply the merchandise.”
“And?” he prompted.
“Carlos paid me twenty-five thousand in advance as a show of good faith. The rest of the money was due on delivery.”
Ross was genuinely curious. “Where did the deal go sour?”
Yale ran his hand through his usually immaculate hair; the result was a frazzled appearance. “Apparently word got out to certain other interested parties that a rare, one-of-a-kind coin was going to be sold.” He glanced up at the taller man. “There are collectors who will stop at nothing to own something of which there is only one.”
Ross was entirely unsympathetic. “I’ll just bet they are.”
Grimmer went on. “I got another offer. Two offers, actually. That was the reason I was on Port Manya. That’s why I needed to rent a boat from a local fisherman. Some of my clients prefer to meet anonymously and in very private places.”
Not His Wedding! (Silhouette Reissued) Page 12