Olivia laughed. “‘Cool.’ You’re so old.”
Tom only laughed as Olivia ran off again. “You are old,” he said, when Richard lifted an eyebrow at him.
“I’m younger than you are.”
“Yeah, by four big old years.” He handed over another bottle of Miller and lifted the glass he’d made up for his wife. “Come on, before I get busted again.”
They headed into the kitchen—and Richard stopped. Kate had put one of her I’M A CHEF, RELAX aprons on Samantha, who stood at the counter with a knife in one hand and a stalk of celery in the other. The muscles across his abdomen tightened in pure lust. Who would have thought that Sam looking domestic would give him a hard-on?
She smiled as she saw him. “Look, I’ve been promoted to celery.”
Laughing, Kate turned off a burner and slid a boiling pot of pasta over to one side to cool. “By the end of the evening I’ll have her mixing ingredients.”
Samantha chuckled in obvious good humor. “Look out Wolfgang Puck.”
Unable to resist any longer, Richard strolled over to put the beer on the counter next to her, then tilted his head around to kiss her lightly on the mouth. “You are so boss,” he murmured.
Samantha grinned, popping an olive into his mouth. “Groovy.”
Twenty
Sunday, 7:50 p.m.
Samantha couldn’t remember ever being in a house that felt so calm. If someone had described it to her, in her limited experience she would have thought it deathly boring. Surprisingly, though, the Donners’ house was far from that. Cozy, perhaps, and comfortable, but not dull. It pleased her, even when she realized that she was beginning to hope Donner was a boy scout and that her reservations about him were more because of his career than because of him personally.
“Sam, will you carry the salad out to the table?” Kate asked, pulling a stack of plates down from a sunny yellow cupboard.
“Sure.”
Olivia led the way with a tray of salad dressings, and together they marched out to the covered patio. Donner had lit lanterns at the perimeter of the wood and lath, probably to keep the bugs away. Around the border of the large garden, lights had been set into the ground, shining upward into the flowers and lush green foliage.
The Donners had obviously put a great deal of time and effort into their house, and it showed. “Have you always lived in Florida?” she asked Olivia, as the girl carefully arranged bowls of salad dressing around the tossed salad in the center.
“Yes. We had a smaller house closer to my dad’s office when I was little, but he built this one for us because we were getting too big to squeeze into the old one.”
Sam smiled. She couldn’t imagine living her entire life within ten or twenty miles of where she’d been born. She didn’t even know where she’d been born.
Kate appeared, carrying two plates laden with chicken and pasta. “There’re more on the counter,” she said, setting them on the table.
Rick and Donner helped tote out the drinks and parmesan cheese, and they all went out to the patio together. They’d set a place for the middle boy, Mike, but Kate left his plate in the microwave.
At the doorway Samantha hung back, touching Kate’s arm. She needed to know for sure about Donner one way or the other before she could let herself relax. “Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
Kate gestured toward the hall at the far end of the living room. “Second door on the left, just past Tom’s office.”
“Don’t wait; I’ll be right out.” With a smile she headed back into the house.
Dinner, she’d already decided, would give her the best opportunity to do a little searching. Afterward, there would be Donners all over the house, and if Rick and the lawyer went off to get some work done, she’d be completely closed out of anywhere interesting. She found the bathroom and closed the door so it would look as though she was inside. That done, she slipped into Donner’s office.
He probably had a corner office or something at his law firm, but she would wager that if he was up to anything underhanded, he would keep the evidence away from work. His desk was neat, with only a phone, a computer, and some framed photos marring the expensive mahogany surface. Sitting in the chair, she pulled open the top drawer. Pens, a few sticky notepads, paper clips, and three jacks—that was it.
Sam fingered the jacks. Kid’s toys, probably Olivia’s. She lifted her eyes to the desk photos. One of the whole family filled the largest frame, on the Yale campus from the background building. The oldest Donner offspring, Chris, had obviously received the best genes from both parents—tall, blond, and confident-looking, his father probably thought he’d make a great lawyer. The other photos were of the younger boy, Mike, playing baseball, and one of Olivia dressed in what must have been a Halloween fairy princess costume. And there was one of Donner and Rick, both grinning, each holding some kind of deep sea fish they’d obviously caught. Rick’s was bigger.
Early in her career she’d learned to trust her instincts, learned that she could look at a room and tell the character of the person who inhabited it. Here she had an entire house, designed and built by Tom Donner and family. Blowing out her breath, she slowly pushed the drawer closed again and sat back.
“Satisfied?” Rick’s quiet voice came from the doorway.
She jumped. Shit. “I was…”
He pushed upright, walking into the room. “You were what?”
Sam stood as well, returning the chair to its former position. “I was looking for proof that he had something to do with the tablet or the murders.”
“Why?”
She could have made up a story, but she’d begun to realize something; she liked being straight with Rick Addison. “Because you refused to suspect him, and I wanted to be sure you weren’t being played.”
“And? Did you find anything?”
Sam grimaced. “Much as I hate to admit it, Donner’s okay.”
He stopped beside the desk and reached out to take her hand. Unsure of his mood, she hesitated, then gripped his fingers. If he blabbed to Donner about this, she’d probably be asked to leave the house. And surprisingly, she wanted to stay a little while longer. Rick drew her up against him, tilting her chin up with his free hand.
“I told you,” he murmured, “I choose my friends carefully. Which means that you are the only person who’s allowed to play me.”
“I’m not—”
His mouth covered hers, hot and hard and breathless. Then, before she could do more than close her eyes and wonder how long it would be before the Donners came in looking for them and found them sprawled naked on the lawyer’s desk, he broke the embrace. Rick looked at her, fixing her smudged lipstick with his thumb. “Just remember,” he said, shifting his grip on her hand to pull her toward the door, “that I know what you’re doing, and that I have a finite amount of patience for games.”
He’d never lost control, she realized. He’d done exactly what he meant to, heat her up to boiling and make her lose her composure, while he stayed perfectly cool. Dammit. They returned to the patio, and Kate smiled as Sam took the seat beside Rick.
“Salad?”
“Yes, please.”
Samantha mentally shook herself. So Rick was a game player himself. She already knew that. Now she needed to be calm and enjoy the evening, because the Donners were genuine, normal people, and she wasn’t likely to have this kind of opportunity very often.
“Which bits did you cook?” Rick asked.
“I only chopped,” she said, “and sampled a little. It’s great.”
“It smells great,” he agreed, taking the salad bowl from Kate and handing it to her.
Drawing another breath, she managed to transfer a mound of salad into her salad bowl with a fair amount of aplomb. She’d shared meals with her father and with Stoney, but they’d been mostly take-out pizza or pasta. Fresh, home-prepared food with fresh salad and steamed vegetables was a rarity.
“I’m home!” a young voice called from the interior of t
he house.
Kate stood, going to the patio door. “Your dinner’s in the microwave.”
A towheaded boy emerged a moment later, his plate balanced in one hand and a can of soda in the other. As he caught sight of Rick, his serious face brightened. “I thought that was your car out front,” he said, grinning and taking the seat on Rick’s other side.
“I left a gift for you on the bar,” Rick said, putting an arm around Mike’s shoulders and giving him a playful squeeze.
“After you eat,” Kate said, before the boy could rise. “And say hello to Sam. She’s a friend of Rick’s.”
“Hi,” he said, his ears flushing red.
She smiled back at him. “Hello.”
“I didn’t mean to be late,” he continued with a look at his father, digging into his chicken and pasta. “The coach made us run extra laps because Craig and Todd started throwing water balloons.”
“Just Craig and Todd?” Donner repeated.
Mike grinned. “Mostly. They’re the ones who got caught, anyway.” Seeming to think he needed a diversion from that statement, he turned to Rick again. “Is it true you almost got blown up?”
Rick shrugged. “It wasn’t that exciting.”
“We saw you on the news,” Olivia chimed in. “You looked really mad.”
With a chuckle, Rick reached for the ranch dressing. “I was really mad. I had to wear one of your dad’s shirts.”
Olivia giggled. “We tried to make color tags for all his clothes so he’d match, but he didn’t like it.”
With a sigh, Donner took a swallow of beer. “I have no secrets anymore.”
Kate reached over to pat his arm. “That’s all right, Tom. We don’t mind that you can’t dress yourself.”
Sam could barely remember to eat. The byplay among the members of the Donner family fascinated her. Nobody tried to outdo anyone else, no one said anything more cutting than a humorous tease, and nobody talked about how dull and ignorant and ready for fleecing the rest of the world was in comparison to themselves. She was glad she’d satisfied herself already about Donner’s innocence, because after this she wouldn’t have wanted to find anything incriminating.
“Sam, what do you do?” Mike asked, passing a basket of cheese bread.
“I’m…freelancing at the Norton Museum right now,” she answered smoothly, wishing she’d realized somebody in this nice, open, honest household was bound to ask her that question. “They got a big donation, so I’m helping them buy things and clean them up.”
“Did you and Uncle Rick meet because somebody stole one of his antiques?” Olivia asked.
“Yes, we did,” Rick put in smoothly.
Beginning to feel a little panicked, Sam took a quick look around the patio. Keep it together, Jellicoe. You’re doing fine—just act normal. Whatever that is. “Kate,” she said, a little too abruptly, “isn’t that a Phalaenopsis?”
Donner’s wife smiled. “Yes, it is. Wow. I’m impressed.”
Sam felt her cheeks heat. “I like flowers. I’d love to have a garden, but I …just have never had the time. Yours is magnificent.”
“What’s a Phalaenopsis?” Rick asked, craning his neck to look.
Kate gestured at the pot set in front of one of the patio uprights. “The purple flower there. They’re also called moth orchids. I couldn’t believe when it started blooming last month. It never has before.”
“I have a nice garden, too,” Rick protested, grinning. “Several of them, in fact.”
“Yes, but you employ like seventy gardeners, Addison.” She glanced between Kate and Donner. “I would bet ten dollars that Kate does all the flowers herself, and Tom does the water fountain and the tree trimming. You have a gardener, but he only does the lawn.”
Tom was looking at Rick. “You told her that, right?”
With a laugh, Rick dug into the back pocket of his slacks for his wallet. “I didn’t say a word about it. Samantha is extremely observant.”
He flipped a ten-dollar bill onto the table, but Sam shook her head and pushed it back to him. “Two fives, if you please.”
“Crikey,” he said, exaggerating his accent while the kids laughed. Two fives appeared, and he pocketed the ten and the wallet again.
Sam picked up the money and handed one of the bills to Olivia, and the other to Mike. “I should have bet you more,” she mused, chuckling at him.
“Definitely,” Olivia chimed in.
Rick shook his head. “I’m not betting against you anymore.”
“Thank you, Sam. Can I get my present now?” Mike asked, around his last mouthful of vegetables.
“Yes, you may. And turn on the coffee maker.”
The fourteen-year-old bolted from the table, while Sam hid a grimace. Coffee. She’d known the evening had gone too smoothly. Blech. But okay, she could drink coffee with the normals one time.
Mike returned a moment later, and ripped into the package with none of the delicate care his younger sister had exhibited. “Oh, yes!” he shouted, flinging the paper over his shoulder.
“Michael!” his mother said sharply, but she was grinning.
“Look! He found one!”
Donner frowned. “Um, forgive me for being ignorant, but don’t you have one of those gold guys already?”
“Dad,” Mike said, with an exaggerated roll of his green eyes, “it’s not a ‘gold guy.’ It’s C-3PO.”
“Yeah. The Star Wars robot. I know that. But don’t you already have one?”
“I have the 1997 version, made by Hasbro. This is the 1978 model, from General Mills Fun Group.” Mike held up the black box, which was dotted with starlight and a photo of C-3PO. “Look. His waist is thicker, and his legs aren’t articulated, and his eyes are the same gold as his skin—not yellow like in the newer version. And it’s in the original box.”
“So it’s better.”
“It’s the original, so it’s rarer. You have to be careful, because some guys buy the new ones and repaint the eyes gold, then seal the joints on the legs and feet so he looks like the older one. You can tell when you look at his feet, though. The markings are completely different. But some guys want him so bad that they’re easy to fool. There’re pretty good fakes all over the place.”
They continued chatting about the merits of the 1978 C-3PO, but Sam only half listened. Something that Mike had said tickled at the back of her mind. Something that hadn’t occurred to her before. Something about why someone with a prestigious, steady job like Danté Partino would risk jail—or worse.
“Samantha,” Rick murmured, leaning close to her ear, “what is it?”
“Hm? Oh, nothing. Just thinking.”
“About what?” he pressed.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Promise?” he whispered, sliding a hand along her bare arm.
“Promise.”
“How do you know about moth orchids?”
She shrugged, shivering as his fingers twined with hers. “I like reading gardening books.”
“I want to kiss you right now,” he whispered.
Maybe he wasn’t totally in control, after all. Good. “You already did kiss me,” Sam smirked, pulling her hand free and glad she hadn’t tried to explain that gardens fascinated her, mostly because of the permanence they represented. You couldn’t move around a lot and still have a garden. “So try to resist me,” she chastised. “There are children present, you goof.”
“‘Goof,’” he repeated, a slow smile touching his eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before.”
Kate cleared her throat. “Shall we adjourn to the sitting room for coffee?” She gazed at Rick. “Or tea, in your case. How about you, Sam? Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, soda?”
“Soda, please,” Sam answered, grateful. “I’ll help you clear the table.”
“Not necessary. That’s what children are for.”
“Mom,” Olivia giggled again. “We’re not slaves.”
“Yes, you are. Clear, slaves. Clear.”
As they left the patio for the sitting room, Rick waited for Kate to take him aside and interrogate him. He knew Tom had only given her the bare bones of Samantha’s story. But knowing Kate, she’d probably figured out a great deal more about his date than she’d been told.
Thank God he’d gone looking for Samantha when she’d vanished off to the bathroom. And thank God he’d taken a moment to observe, instead of barging in and yelling at her for violating his friends’ privacy. Seeing the way she’d looked at Tom’s photos had abruptly made him wonder what her life had been like before he’d come across her in his gallery.
Mike and Olivia seemed to like her, mostly because she didn’t talk to them like they were children. She didn’t seem to know much about being a kid, herself—not the way the two youngest Donners did. He wondered what kind of childhood she’d had, but without knowing anything much, he already assumed she hadn’t had a mother who baked cookies on a regular basis. Hm. He hadn’t either.
Something during dinner had caught her attention. He hadn’t a clue what it might have been, but she would tell him. Everything about her fascinated him, and the way her mind worked most of all.
She sat in her short green dress between Kate and Olivia, who had brought in a few more of her miniature dolls to show off. He enjoyed finding items to add to what the children already enjoyed collecting, especially when he could procure something for them that they wouldn’t be able to obtain or afford on their own. His childhood hadn’t been precisely normal, either—perhaps that was why he enjoyed collecting items from other peoples’ lives. Rick gazed at Samantha. Do we seek what we know, or what we lack?
Kate stood. “Who wants an ice cream sundae?” she asked.
Olivia’s hand shot up, followed by Tom’s, and then Mike, his own, and lastly, Samantha’s. Obviously she was holding back to see what the correct procedure for dessert might be. Still adapting, though he’d begun to have the feeling that somewhere this evening, the acting had stopped.
“Rick, give me a hand,” Kate ordered, heading for the kitchen.
Ah, here it came. Taking a breath and offering Samantha a supportive smile, he climbed to his feet and followed. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, entering the kitchen.
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