by JoAnn Ross
“What was that for?” she asked, shaken but loath to show it.
Those chiseled lips she could still taste curved upward in an outrageously attractive, unrepentant grin. “It’s Paris,” he said, as if that explained everything.
Which, Bliss decided, it undoubtedly did.
“You promised to keep your hands in your pockets.”
“I did.”
She heard the sound of change jangling as proof and realized that he was telling the truth. So why was it that for that fleeting second she’d imagined she could feel his hands touching her everywhere?
“I knew this was a mistake,” she murmured.
“It was only a kiss.”
“True.”
Although she hadn’t wanted him to kiss her in the first place, Bliss was annoyed by the way he so easily dismissed something so mind-blinding. She also wondered briefly how many women he’d kissed while strolling along this same river. How many women he’d taken into his arms in some out-of-the-way garden? How many he’d made love to.
“You’re right, of course.” He took his left hand from his pocket and rubbed at the line etched between her coppery brows with the tip of his index finger. “Technically, I cheated. But I’m afraid I enjoyed it too much to apologize.”
His easy words reminded her that he was a man accustomed to getting his way. A rich man.
“I really should be getting back to my hotel,” she murmured. “I still have to finish packing before my flight.”
“I don’t suppose you could change your flight?”
When that treacherous finger began trailing down the side of her face, heating her skin, Bliss backed away. “No. I can’t.”
She’d expected an argument, but once again he surprised her.
“Whatever you want.”
Shayne summoned a taxi and they sat side by side in the back. Neither said a word. But the sexual tension was strung so strongly between them Bliss felt she could reach out and touch it. Instead, she kept her hands clasped together tightly in her lap, her gaze directed steadfastly away from him, out the window.
When the taxi arrived at her hotel, she expected another argument about whether or not he’d accompany her upstairs, but he seemed content to merely walk her to the door.
“Thank you for a lovely evening. And, although I know this will sound like a horrendous cliché, I’ll enjoy knowing that we’ll always have Paris.”
That said, he lifted her hand to his lips. Then gave her another of those heart-melting smiles and walked away.
She entered the lobby, but unwilling to completely surrender the magic of the evening, Bliss stood by the window, watching the taxi drive away.
When the taillights disappeared around a corner, she sighed. Then went back upstairs to finish packing for her trip home to New Orleans.
“WHAT THE HELL do you mean, she did it again?”
Two days after meeting Bliss Fortune, Shayne O’Malley was pacing the floor of his superior’s office, frustration and disbelief radiating from every pore.
“The diamond-and-sapphire earrings we’d left in a jewelry box in the bedroom disappeared after Ms. Fortune retrieved her coat,” David Cunningham revealed.
Shayne’s curse was ripe and vicious. “That’s impossible.”
“Apparently not.”
“I watched her the entire time.”
“I know.” Cunningham’s smile reminded Shayne of a rattler. “I haven’t yet congratulated you on coming up with a way to take her mind off having your portrait painted. That kiss was inspired.
“And isn’t it admirable,” he continued, his voice laced with the acid sarcasm Shayne had learned to expect from the older man, “what sacrifices a man is willing to make for his country.”
The memory of the brief kiss flooded back. It had been a mistake. But one Shayne couldn’t regret. “You told me to watch her.”
“And you did. Admirably.”
Again the sarcasm stung. Again, Shayne managed, just barely to keep from commenting and returned his thoughts to this latest glitch in the investigation.
“I don’t get it.” He raked his hand through his hair and resumed pacing again. “Gwen followed her into the bedroom. Between the two of us, there wasn’t a time when Bliss Fortune was alone long enough to steal anything.”
“Although I hate to admit it, the woman’s a master thief,” Cunningham said. “Fortunately, the jewels in question were paste. Very good paste,” the older man qualified. “Which means that your screwup has still cost the government a great deal of money.”
“I don’t get it,” Shayne repeated as he glared out at the Louvre’s glass pyramid. How the hell could she have done it? He was the best. Nobody outfoxed Shayne O’Malley.
“Washington’s losing patience.” Cunningham’s voice broke into Shayne’s thoughts. “The guys at Interpol are laughing at us for not being able to apprehend a mere woman. You need to stop Bliss Fortune, O’Malley. Now.”
“What do you expect me to do?” Shayne shot back. “Go to New Orleans, lock her in her precious antique shop, shine bright lights in her face and beat her with a rubber hose until she confesses?”
“Whatever it takes,” his superior said mildly. But the steel in his gray eyes assured Shayne that the instructions were no exaggeration.
3
New Orleans
THE CIRCUMSTANCES WERE not what Shayne would have chosen. A full white moon floated like a galleon in the night sky, casting a bright light on New Orleans’s French Quarter. He would have preferred the sheltering cover of darkness; after all, when you were breaking into a building, the one thing you didn’t want was a damn spotlight shining down on you.
But unfortunately in his business, you often had to work under less than optimum conditions. So rather than complain, he set to work, opening the door with a mere flash of the steel pick. Once inside he turned on the flashlight. The silent alarm proved no problem; he suspected a twelve-year-old hacker could disengage it in a matter of minutes. It took Shayne less then ten seconds.
He locked the door behind him, then, not daring to turn on the lights, circled the room with the yellow flashlight beam.
For someone who’d chosen to live life on the edge, Shayne was a stickler for order wherever he could find it. One quick glance assured him that he wasn’t going to find it here.
Bliss Fortune’s beloved Treasure Trove was a jumble of mismatched merchandise, offering everything from an exquisitely carved mahogany cockfighting chair to a porcelain statue of Buddha to the collection of army helmets on a shelf above a gesso-painted wooden sarcophagus. If it hadn’t been for the helmets and the sarcophagus, the place would have reminded him of his grandmother Broussard’s attic.
It was not going to be easy, locating those earrings, he considered, flashing the light over the locked display case of stuffed animals. But Shayne had suffered enough close calls that he’d learned not to trust in easy. Actually, with very few exceptions, he never trusted anything or anyone. Which was why he was very, very good at his job. It was also why the idea of the woman getting away with the jewels in Paris on his watch irked.
Broadening the beam of light, he moved toward a collection of snuff boxes. His sources had informed him the boxes were part of the shipment Bliss had received from France just this morning. With any luck, he’d be able to locate the missing merchandise, take the lady jewel thief into custody, then leave town before anyone even knew he’d been here.
After that debacle in Paris, Shayne figured he was due for a change in luck.
AT FIRST MICHAEL O’MALLEY thought it was mice, which didn’t make sense, because if there was one thing Bliss Fortune’s horrible cat did—other than hiss at him—it was keep the place free of insects and rodents. Michael had proof of the tomcat’s industriousness. There’d been more than one morning he’d arrived at work to find a dead mouse lying in front of his door.
Whenever he complained to his landlady, Bliss would merely smile her dazzling, man-melting smile and ass
ure him that the murdered rodent was a gift. Hercules’ way of showing affection. Michael didn’t believe that. Not for a minute.
He held his breath, listening carefully to the sound of footsteps on the floor below. Having arrived back from Baton Rouge late, he’d dropped by the office to make some notes in a file, then, rather than drive home when he was suffering the effects of a twenty-hour stakeout, he’d sacked out on his leather couch and had been happily dreaming of a holiday on an island inhabited by scantily dressed beauties who lived only to please, when he’d been awakened by the unmistakable sound of footfalls.
It could be Bliss, he knew. Perhaps she’d decided against spending the night in Lafayette. He hoped that meant she’d been successful at the auction today.
Since his office was located at the top of the stairs, he’d be able to see the glow of a light through the frosted glass of his door. The fact that he couldn’t was proof that whoever was down there wasn’t The Treasure Trove’s owner.
He stood up, pulled his shoulder holster from the back of a nearby chair, took out the 9 mm pistol and made his way gingerly across the floor, intending to confront the thief.
As a board squeaked beneath his feet, sounding like a damn civil defense siren in the hush of the night, Michael bit back a curse and hoped the sound had been missed.
It hadn’t. Shayne stiffened at the creak above his head. Every atom in his body went into instantaneous alert, while he decided whether to fight or flee. Not that there was any real choice. Shayne had never been the kind of man to run from a confrontation and although he preferred to think of himself as a lover, not a fighter, when push came to shove, he was more than willing to do what it took to extricate himself from a sticky situation.
He gingerly pulled his pistol from the back of his belt, went into a crouch, and using both hands to steady his grip, pointed the gun toward the interior door leading to the stairs. The door flew open. An overhead light flashed on, momentarily blinding both men.
There was a moment’s stunned shock as the two O’Malley brothers, both holding guns, confronted one another just as they had in those long-ago days when they’d played cops and robbers.
But they were no longer boys. And the guns were not cap pistols, but all too real.
Eyes narrowed, faces grim, they cursed.
Then, Michael and Shayne O’Malley began to laugh at the absurdity of their situation.
Buss WAS IN a filthy mood. Although she should have spent the day unpacking the shipment from Paris, she’d taken another day away from the office and driven all the way to Lafayette for an antique auction. Unfortunately, she’d been outbid on nearly every item by her old nemesis, Nigel Churchill, who, despite his name and fake British accent, was every bit as American as she was.
“The only reason he bid on that bachelor’s chest was because he knew I wanted it,” Bliss fumed as she drove back to New Orleans. She was exhausted from the roller-coaster emotionalism of the day. “There’s no way he’s going to be able to recoup his investment.”
Churchill owned a string of antique shops across the South, from Savannah to New Orleans. The women of the Gulf States all seemed to find him incredibly charming, although personally Bliss found his charm less than sincere.
“It’s the kind that washes off in the shower,” she muttered. “It’s slick and slimy. Like skunk oil”
The man seemed determined to corner the entire Southern antiques market. If he couldn’t talk a shop owner into selling to him, he’d try less honorable tactics. Bliss had discovered exactly how dishonorable Churchill could be when he’d actually tried to seduce her after she’d turned down his last offer.
After she’d let him know, with no mincing of words, that she’d rather go to bed with an alligator, he’d obviously decided to do whatever he could to keep her from acquiring merchandise. Even if it meant overbidding at every auction they attended.
“I’d rather dump every last saltcellar into the Mississippi River than let that horrid man get his clutches on The Treasure Trove.” Her fingers ached; realizing her anger had made her grip the steering wheel too tightly, she flexed them, one hand at a time.
He reminded her a great deal of Alan, who, she recalled grimly, had been the one to introduce her to Churchill in the first place when they’d run into each other during carnival in Venice.
“That’s probably why he thought he could seduce me into giving him the store,” she muttered. After all, she’d already proven herself susceptible to the appeal of one professional charmer.
“Of course I was younger then.”
Only two years, an argumentative little voice in the back of her mind piped up.
“That’s a big difference. I was much more naive.” Bliss sighed. Unfortunately, she may have gotten older, but it seemed she wasn’t that much wiser. At a recent auction Churchill had repeatedly outdid a friend of hers who owned a shop in Houma, which she’d refused to sell to Churchill. She should have suspected he’d use the same tactic again and been ready with a countermove.
Well, that was water under the bridge.
“You still have all that wonderful merchandise from the Paris trip,” she reminded herself, choosing to look on the bright side as she enjoyed the sight of the wide white moon floating just in front of the windshield.
That would keep her open for long enough to come up with a new plan to thwart Nigel Churchill’s takeover attempts.
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing here?” Michael and Shayne both asked at the same time.
“I rent an office upstairs,” Michael said. “Which gives me every legal right to be here.”
Shayne conveniently ignored the little dig at his own illegal status. “Bliss Fortune is your landlady?” How, he wondered, had the New Orleans team of investigators missed that all-important fact?
“That’s right.” Mike folded his arms and glared at the youngest O’Malley brother. “And she’s a terrific woman. Which makes me wonder why my spook brother would feel the need to be breaking and entering her shop in the middle of the night.”
“It’s not exactly the middle of the night,” Shayne argued.
Michael cursed. “Lord, I’d forgotten how you never give a straight answer. It’s a wonder Mom’s hair didn’t turn snow white trying to deal with you.”
“Roarke and I probably gave her a few gray hairs,” Shayne allowed. “But don’t forget, she had a secret weapon.”
“Such as?”
“You. One false move and we found ourselves answering to our big brother.”
“Someone had to keep the two of you in line.”
Especially since Dad was never around. Neither brother said it, but Shayne knew they were both thinking it.
“Have you heard from him?”
Michael’s glower could have cut granite. “Not since Mom had that surgery a couple years ago. Apparently Roarke told him about it, and he drifted back into town long enough to visit her in the hospital.”
“That was big of him.”
“Yeah, wasn’t it?” Mike’s acid expression suggested otherwise.
Their father, Patrick O’Malley, had spent his life roving the world, taking his award-winning news photographs. Although their mother had done her best to raise her three sons, the mantle of masculine responsibility had fallen on Michael’s shoulders. Not that he’d ever complained. Indeed, he’d willingly taken on the role of disciplinarian while they’d all been growing up.
He’d even, Shayne remembered now, turned down a baseball scholarship to UCLA, which had cost him a coveted shot at the pros and a longtime girlfriend who’d gone west to school and made new friends, and a new life, without him.
Perhaps because he’d only met his famous father three times in his entire life, Shayne felt only ambivalence toward him. Unlike Mike, who Shayne knew hated Patrick O’Malley for having essentially deserted the family.
“You still haven’t answered my question,” Michael persisted. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
“I don’
t suppose you’d believe I was shopping for Mom’s birthday present?”
“Her birthday’s still two months away.”
“She’s hard to shop for. I thought I’d get a head start.”
“Good try, but I’m not buying it.” Mike folded his arms over the front of his white T-shirt. “Want to try again?”
“Geez, you remind me of the time I was sixteen years old and you caught me sneaking into the house five minutes past curfew.”
“It was two hours past curfew and you had beer on your breath.”
“It’s New Orleans,” Shayne returned. “Kids don’t exactly head straight to the newest soda parlor on Saturday nights.” His brother had beat the holy hell out of him for driving drunk, he remembered all too vividly. “I never thanked you.” At Mike’s arched brow, he added, “For not telling Mom.”
Mike shrugged. “She had enough troubles without worrying about her baby boy.”
Given his upbringing, Shayne decided it was no wonder Michael had become a cop. That way he could be big brother to the entire damn city. Or at least he had, until he’d gotten caught up in the tangled web of political interests.
“I ran into Roarke in Barcelona. He told me about your problems at the cop shop last year.”
Another shrug. “At the time it was hard, bucking the system. You get used to dealing with politicians if you’re a cop, especially in this town, but when the powers that be decided it’d hurt tourism if news of a serial rapist running around loose in the Quarter got out before Mardi Gras, I decided I’d had enough.
“But it all worked out for the best because I enjoy working for myself these days. I take the jobs I want, and turn down the ones I don’t...and you still haven’t answered my question.”
Shayne cursed good-naturedly. “You’re just not going to give up, are you?”