Early to Bed

by Cara Summers

  It was in that instant that she made her decision. The first moment that she could snatch some time with him, she was going to tell him exactly why she'd come to his hotel. Then at least when her father arrived tomorrow, Tony would know what he was up against. Whatever the consequences to her career at McNeil Enterprises, she couldn't go on deceiving Tony or his family any longer.

  "How does this look?" Alistair angled the sketch he'd been working on in Lily's direction.

  Lily studied the drawing for a minute. The hairline was right, so was the chin, but something wasn't quite right. "The nose was broader, I think. I just got that one quick glimpse of him. I'm sorry I can't be more accurate."

  "You're doing fine." A.J. patted her hand. "If someone had taken a shot at Sam, I don't think I could remember a thing."

  "We're smart," Grace said. "We're going to figure out what's going on here. We just have to get all the facts on the table."

  "Here! Here!" A.J. cheered. "I hear a future lawyer speaking. What do we know so far?"

  Dame Vera set down the glass of sherry she'd been sipping. "The crystal is failing me today. There's deception on deception on deception. All I can see for sure is that it began on the Ides of March."

  Grace grabbed a notepad from the table and jotted down 3-15. Lily felt the muscles of her stomach clench. Her birthday. Her fault?

  Alistair glanced up from the sketch he was working on and rolled his eyes. "Vera, they need something more concrete than that."

  Dame Vera sniffed. "In the Thin Man movies, William Powell didn't pay much attention to Myrna Loy, either. But she was usually right."

  Lily's stomach clenched again.

  A.J. glanced over at her husband, Sam. "Why don't you guys spill everything? You've been huddling over there mumbling to each other long enough. What do you know that you haven't told us?"

  Sam's face softened into a slow grin before he shrugged and shifted his gaze from his wife to his two brothers. "What can I say? She's a damned good attorney. She can read people."

  Drew fastened his gaze on Lily. "For starters, Tony has received two offers to buy the hotel, one from McNeil Enterprises the other from Fortescue Investments."

  "Both of which I refused," Tony added smoothly.

  "And the leak in the plumbing the other night wasn't the result of pipes rotting," Drew said. "Murphy says they were cut by an expert."

  For the space of a beat, there was silence in the room, and Lily felt a ball of ice form in her stomach.

  "You're saying it was deliberate sabotage?" Grace moved closer to the edge of the sofa.

  "Sabotage?" Lucy echoed. "But why?"

  Then everyone seemed to speak at once. By concentrating hard, Lily managed to pick up that Alistair and Dame Vera had turned over a sketch of the possible plumbing saboteur to Drew who'd identified him and was trying to run him to ground.

  "We'll know more once I question him," Drew said, "but it's taking too much time. The license plate we got on the shooter will take time, too, because it's only a partial."

  "Why would someone want to shoot Tony?" Lucy asked.

  "Because they want the hotel, and Tony has refused to sell," Drew said, his gaze never leaving Lily. "With Tony out of the way, who would run this place?"

  "I'm sure that Lucy could step into my shoes," Tony said. "And you all would pitch in to help her."

  "We're assuming that Tony was the intended victim," Grace said. "But Lily was on that corner, too."

  Tony's cell phone rang as A.J. managed to lean around Lily far enough to smile at Grace. "You're going to make a great lawyer. I should have thought of that. I think that pregnancy is destroying some of my brain cells."

  "Who would want to shoot at me?" Lily asked. "No one knows I'm even here except my family. They wouldn't want to hurt me." But would they want to hurt Tony? Stunned that she would even think the question, she recalled J.R.'s words. This deal is crucial. She felt a chill run over her skin. No. It was ridiculous to think that any member of her family would want to harm Tony. She was just reacting to seeing him...to seeing that shooter...

  Grace patted her hand. "Tony's talking to my brother, Nick. Before he became a lawyer, he was the best P.I. in New York."

  "Now, Sam's the best," A.J. said. "And Nick is a proper Boston lawyer. But you can rest assured that they'll figure things out."

  Get a grip, Lily told herself. Her family wouldn't hurt anyone just to get hold of a hotel. That was ridiculous.

  When Sam signaled for the cell phone, Tony passed it off to him. Nick and Sam were security experts. Between the two of them and Drew, he was certain that they would beef up the security around the hotel even more. Nick had been adamant that Sam should find him a bodyguard, and Tony wasn't going to argue. He was confident that he could find a way around one if he needed to. The important thing was they had to make sure that the family was safe. And he had to make sure that Lily was safe.

  The point that Grace had made had already occurred to him. The shooter could just as well have been aiming at Lily as at him. He still couldn't quite wipe from his mind that instant when the shot had sounded and she'd thrown herself against him. For one awful moment as they tumbled to the sidewalk, he'd believed that she'd been shot.

  Ruthlessly, Tony shoved the image away. He had to keep his mind clear, his thoughts focused. Who and why? Until he found the answers to those questions, no one would be safe. For a few minutes, he let the conversation hum around him. Sam was consulting Drew, and with his brothers occupied, he could study the group at the other end of the living room.

  Drew and Sam might still be keeping their distance, but his aunt and cousins and sister-in-law had rallied around Lily. In their minds, she'd saved his life. But he sensed that they also genuinely liked her. It occurred to Tony as he watched her lean closer to catch something Grace was saying that she looked right sitting there.

  Just right.

  The realization hit him like a punch in the solar plexus. Lily McNeil was just right for him. If Drew hadn't chosen that moment to ask him a question, he might have laughed right out loud. He could almost hear his father's laughter in the room. Henry had always warned him that one day when he found a woman who felt just right, the task of convincing her of that wouldn't be easy. It had been part of his lecture that women were work.

  At that moment, Lily glanced up and met his eyes. Slowly, irresistibly, desire moved through him, and with it came an ache—warm, throbbing and wonderfully new. He wanted her right then—more than he'd ever wanted her before. She might be out to get his hotel. He'd deal with that. Somehow. The one thing that he was sure of was that Lily McNeil was just right for

  him. This time he was sure he heard his father's laughter echoing in the room.

  Every time she looked into his eyes, Lily felt the pull, as physically strong as if he had taken her hand and was drawing her toward him. Each time the sensation grew stronger. Each time she lost a little more of her will to pull away.

  A.J. pulled a notebook out of her bag. "Assuming that Lily was the intended victim, let's make a list of suspects. Who knows you're staying here?"

  Lily turned her attention to A.J. "My family and certain other people at the office—like my father's assistant. Someone from his office called to cancel my reservation here when they thought I was stuck in Tahiti."

  "What about the tall blond Viking type who kissed your hand in the lobby this morning?" Dame Vera asked.

  "I think his arrival was a coincidence," Lily said.

  "He's been asking a lot of questions about the hotel. Alistair and I overheard him asking Lucy where Tony was going when he left with you for your run."

  Lucy nearly dropped the plate she was clearing. "And I told him. I told him Tony was going to the park to run." Guilt-stricken, she turned to Tony. "He wanted to set up an appointment to talk with you. I didn't think."

  Tony moved to Lucy and drew her close. "Why would you? I think we're getting a little paranoid here. We don't know for sure that the man in tha
t car was shooting at either Lily or me."

  "Is this the man?" Alistair asked, angling the sketch once more in Lily's direction.

  Lily's eyes widened. "That's him. That's definitely him."

  "Well, it's not the man who tampered with the pipes," Alistair commented.

  "He doesn't look a thing like the Viking, either," Dame Vera said.

  No, it certainly wasn't Giles, Lily thought. But as the Romanos crowded close to study Alistair's drawing, her mind was racing through the possibilities. Giles Fortescue had made an offer for Henry's Place, and he had somehow known that she was staying here. Did he have a spy at McNeil Enterprises? She couldn't imagine either her father or stepmother giving him that kind of information. And J.R. had not been happy to learn that Giles was registered at the hotel.

  She couldn't actually be thinking that Giles would be involved in a drive-by shooting, could she?

  But he'd known that she and Tony had gone to the park for a run.

  "Anybody recognize him?" Drew asked the question of everyone, but once again his gaze was on Lily.

  "No," she said.

  "Who's the Viking?" Sam asked.

  "He's Giles Fortescue, my ex-fiancé," Lily said.

  "Well, there's a little fact we've been missing," Drew said. "When were you going to let us know that there's a jealous lover we can add to the mix?"

  "Ex-lover." Tony laid a hand on Drew's arm. "I've known about him. So if you're annoyed, take it out on me."

  Drew whirled on Tony. "She's blinding you. Can't you see—?"

  "Let's take this outside, bro." Tony spoke in a very soft voice.

  For a moment, a sizzling silence filled the room. During it, Sam tucked his laptop under his arm and moved to Drew's other side. Then, together, the three brothers left the suite.

  Tony led the way around a row of terra cotta pots bursting with flowers to the edge of the basketball court. Usually it only took him a few minutes to get his temper under control, but he found that his hands and jaw were still tightly clenched when he turned to face his two brothers. He might have even thrown the first punch—something he'd trained himself not to do—but he had his wits about him enough to know that wouldn't solve the problem of keeping Lily safe.

  Tony made himself take a deep breath. "What the hell is the matter with the two of you? Lily may very well have saved my life this afternoon. Whatever you think is going on, she's not involved."

  Fury flashed in Drew's eyes. "She's up to her pretty little neck in it."

  Sam placed a hand on Drew's arm. "He's not going to believe it until he sees it."

  "Sees what?" Tony asked.

  Sam moved to a nearby picnic table, opened his laptop and began punching keys. "I've had men working on this since you told me you'd been fielding offers for the hotel. I ran a check on McNeil Enterprises, much deeper than the one you asked me to run on Lily. Look what I found."

  Tony looked over his brother's shoulder at the screen. What he saw didn't make any sense at first.

  "It's a listing of all of McNeil Enterprises' subsidiary companies and their holdings," Sam explained. "Pay particular attention to Langford Properties. That subsidiary was formed two years ago. It's headed up by

  Pamela Langford-McNeil, and it's become their New York City real estate acquisition arm. So far, they've been concentrating on one section of the city."

  Even with Sam highlighting it on the screen for him, it took Tony a few minutes to see it. Then slowly as he read the street addresses, the significance began to sink in. Langford Properties currently owned the entire city block that Henry's Place sat on.

  "When McNeil first approached you, what did he tell you?" Drew asked.

  "He said that he was interested in acquiring a few small hotels on Manhattan and that he intended to put some money into renovations that would capitalize on their individual charm. He didn't mention that he'd bought out the whole block."

  "What about Fortescue?" Sam asked. "He called a week after McNeil did to say that he would beat any offer that McNeil gave me. I told him that Henry's Place was not for sale."

  "But when the little blonde called, you agreed to let her move right into Dad's suite," Drew said.

  "Drew." Sam's voice was sharp. "We came out here to talk. We're not going to get to the bottom of this if we start throwing punches."

  Drew threw up his hands, palms out. "Okay. Okay, I'm sorry. For now." Sam turned to Tony. "Why did you agree to see

  Lily?"

  Because of her voice. It was the truth, but it was bad enough that he'd admitted that to himself. He certainly wasn't going to say that out loud to his brothers. If he didn't know her, didn't believe in her, he would probably have felt the same way. So he shoved his fisted hands in his pockets and gave them part of the truth. "She told me that she was heading up a new division of McNeil Enterprises. Since I had been firm about my decision not to sell, she wondered if I might be interested in her consulting services."

  Drew made a sound, and Tony pinned him with one look. "She offered to take a look at the hotel, and then draw up a five-year plan for renovations."

  "Free of charge," Sam said.

  "That's right. But she wanted first shot at presenting a loan package that would finance the renovations. I figured the loan would be structured so that I wouldn't be able to pay it back on time—and then they'd foreclose."

  "Good figuring," Sam said and sent a grin in Drew's direction. "See. He's not totally besotted."

  "Yet," Drew grumbled.

  "The loan deal might explain the sabotage," Sam continued. "Repairs like that would hike up the kind of money you'd need to borrow."

  Drew shook his head in disgust. "You figured you were being suckered and you still agreed to see her?"

  Tony shrugged. "I'm going to have to do renovations. I had Sam check Lily out, and her background is in small hotels that focus on individualized service. As I said before, I figured I could pick her brain. No harm done."

  Sam closed down his laptop. "I keep telling Drew that you haven't entirely gone brain dead. The thing is—the loan scheme might explain the damage to the plumbing. But loans and foreclosures take time."

  "But if they shoot me, there's at least a chance that

  Henry's Place will go on the market right away," Tony said. "Bingo," Sam said.

  Drew frowned at both of them. "And she knew you were going to be in the park with her today. The consulting gig could just have been a way to get close so that she could set you up."

  Tony took one step toward Drew before his brother held up both hands, palms out in a gesture of surrender. "This isn't going to work unless we brainstorm all the possibilities."

  Because he was feeling the urge to punch Drew again, Tony bent down, picked up one of the basketballs that always lay along the edge of the court and began to bounce it. "Lily didn't set me up. And Grace made an excellent point. The shooter may have been aiming at Lily. That started me thinking. She wasn't even supposed to get here yesterday. Something happened to McNeil's company plane, and she was supposed to be stranded in Tahiti. Someone even called to cancel her reservation and her appointment with me. Maybe Lily wasn't ever supposed to get here." He tossed the ball to Sam. "Can you look into what happened to the plane?" "I can try."

  "While you're at it, check out Fortescue. Two years ago, Lily broke off the engagement and killed the merger plans between Fortescue and McNeil. He might have more than one reason to make sure she doesn't get a chance to lead me down the garden path."

  "And you're sure she isn't doing just that?" Drew asked as he caught a pass from Sam and began to dribble it toward the center of the court.

  "She's not leading me anywhere I don't want to go," Tony said with a smile. And he hoped to hell that was true.

  The moment the three Romano men left the suite, Lucy raced to the window. "I've got five bucks that says Tony throws the first punch."

  "My money's on Drew," Grace said. "He needs to work on that temper of his."

  A.J.
turned to Lily. "No one ever puts money on my man. But it's not that he's a coward."

  Grace laughed. "He's the baby. He had to learn to be smarter and sneakier."

  "We...I shouldn't let them fight. This is my fault," Lily said, trying to rise.

  Grace and A.J. both clamped hands on her arms. "No. They'll sort it out."

  Lily glanced from A.J. to the other women. "Do they do this often?"

  Gina nodded. "It's worse when Nick's around. It's a testosterone thing."

  "But this...this is my fault," Lily said. "No," Gina said. "They're worried about their brother, and Tony's worried about you. They'll feel a lot better after they let off some steam."

  "Crisis is over," Lucy reported from her vantage point at the window. "All bets are off. They've decided to settle their differences on the basketball court. I think it's safe to join them now." "Sam will win," A.J. said. "My money's on Tony," Grace said.

  "I'll take Drew," Lucy said.

  To Lily's surprise, the women rose then, with the exception of A.J. who needed Alistair's help to lever herself off the sofa. As she followed the others through the door, Lily's glance fell on the roses that Tony had left outside the room earlier, and she remembered Giles and his invitation to have drinks with him. A glance at her watch told her that she had thirty minutes to meet him at the Waldorf-Astoria. If Giles was behind the sabotage and the shooting, she wasn't going to have a better chance to pump him for answers.

  "Aren't you going to join us and watch the game?" Dame Vera asked.

  Startled, Lily turned to find Dame Vera right behind her. "I have something I need to take care of. I'll be along in a few minutes."

  To her surprise and dismay, Vera raised a hand and rested it on her cheek. "You're worried that your family has something to do with the troubles."