Never Trust A Lady

by Kathleen Creighton

  But she couldn’t possibly be in the wrong room. This was her room, number 722, the very same one she’d left not half an hour ago to go down to the garage with Connie.

  And…well, of course! Now she knew exactly what was missing. It was the Washington Monument. She’d been looking at it before, and it was the last thing she’d seen as she’d pulled the door closed behind her. But now the curtains were drawn, the room in darkness. And she’d left the desk light on…

  All that realizing took place in the space of time it took her to utter one small exclamation of surprise and alarm. What she did next required even less time and no thought at all, and she couldn’t for the life of her account for the impulse.

  She let go of her purse, reached into the plastic bag that held her Roy Rogers six-shooter and pulled it out. It slid smoothly from its holster, nestled nicely in the palm of her hand. And the next thing she knew, she was holding it the way she’d seen policemen do in the movies, with both hands and at arm’s length, and was aiming the toy pistol at the dark wall of draperies right where the Washington Monument was supposed to be.

  And what then? Up until that moment, her mind had been operating on autopilot, or like a computer purring smoothly through its set-up program. Now it waited with a blank screen, cursor patiently blinking, for further instructions. And she had none whatsoever to give it! She thought…nothing. No review of the course of action chosen, no consideration of better alternatives. no what-ifs or should-haves. Stranger still, she felt nothing, not even fear.

  Perhaps there just wasn’t time. Because that curious blankness could have lasted no more than the span of a heartbeat or two, and just as she was beginning to get a glimmer of an idea that maybe, just maybe, it was a very stupid thing she’d done, the blankness exploded into violence and total confusion.

  Something struck her-from the side, she believed, although for some reason she fell forward, suddenly and hard, so that the wind was knocked out of her. As she lay gasping and retching on the scratchy hotel carpet, she felt a tremendous weight come down between her shoulder blades, as if someone had knelt there, on one knee.

  She knew a second or two of absolute terror as hands touched her…fingers searched along the side of her neck… There was a ghastly pressure. Panic-stricken, unable to struggle or even draw a single breath, she wanted to scream, to cry out. But no sound came from her mouth. And then darkness drifted down around her, almost gently, as if someone had thrown a blanket over her head…

  And then, just as gently lifted it. She found that she could breathe again, and hear all sorts of confusing noises-thumps and scuffles, muffled shouts and running footsteps. She could see, although her range of vision consisted mostly of the underside of a hotel bed. And for some reason, she felt so weak that the notion of lifting her head, even to improve the view, was utterly beyond her.

  She would have been content to stay where she was for a while longer, but it seemed only a moment before she felt the vibrations of footsteps scuffing and jarring the carpet nearby. The bed that loomed alongside her jiggled violently, and then urgent hands were gripping her hips, her waist, her shoulders. She felt those hands pulling her back, turning her over.

  She heard a man’s voice, raspy with alarm. “Ma’am-are you all right?”

  She muttered automatically, “I think so.”

  But as the hands pulled and hoisted her to a sitting position, her head began to pound and the darkness to descend once more. Quite by accident, she found that if she hastened the darkness by closing her eyes and then wrapped herself inside it like a nice, safe cocoon, she could concentrate all her willpower on fighting the nausea. She felt quite clever to have made that discovery, and would have preferred to stay indefinitely in that safe, lovely darkness.

  “Here, put your head down,” the voice commanded, coming now from a great distance, somewhere on the other side of the darkness. “Don’t get sick on me now.”

  The idea of passing out or throwing up on her shoes in the presence of a total stranger was all the inspiration Jane needed. Cautiously opening her eyes, she found that her view now consisted of the hotel-room carpet and her own feet. From that fact, her sluggish powers of deduction reasoned that she must be sitting on the edge of the bed with her head tucked between her knees. Besides being hideously uncomfortable, she found it a mortifying position to be in, especially since a stranger was sitting beside her and holding her firmly by the shoulders.

  At some point, he’d also apparently closed the door, but turned on only the entry light. She didn’t know whether to be sorry there wasn’t more light, or glad.

  “Are you all right?” the man asked for the second time, in a gravelly, dispassionate voice that Jane suddenly realized was familiar to her. “Want me to call someone?”

  She gasped. “Oh, God, no!” The idea appalled her. “No, I’m okay. Really.” She tried a somewhat gingerly stretch.

  Her Good Samaritan instantly let go of her shoulders but stayed where he was, close beside her, his body touching hers, as if he thought she needed bolstering.

  And she did-oh, she did! All the willpower she’d employed moments ago to keep her wits and her lunch, she called upon now to keep from throwing herself into those strong masculine arms. To keep herself from thinking about how lovely it would be to have those arms around her while she blubbered and snuffled into the man’s nice broad chest.

  Instead, she let her eyes drift shut again, drew a long breath and rotated her head carefully. “Oh, my,” she murmured. “What on earth happened?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” the now very familiar voice said dryly.

  Recognition came like a clap of thunder. Jane’s eyes flew open upon a facial landscape so forbidding and at such close range, she pulled back from it with a soft, reflexive gasp. “Mr. Hawkins-it is you. What on earth are you doing here? I’m Jane-Jane Carlysle-from the auction, remember?”

  He seemed to be regarding her with puzzling intensity. “Oh, I remember you,” he said, and something about the way he said it made her heart stumble.

  While she pondered that phenomenon, he got up and turned on the lamp on the dresser. On the way back, he stooped to pick something up from the floor. “I guess this must belong to you,” he said, and held it out to her on the palm of one hand.

  “Oh, God.” Instead of taking the offering, she put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Then, to her dismay, she began to shake, but not with laughter.

  Tom Hawkins looked at her for a moment, then shifted his grip on the toy pistol he held in his hand, hefted its weight, sighted along the barrel, pulled back the hammer. He squeezed the trigger and listened almost thoughtfully to the crisp metallic click.

  “Quite a weapon,” he drawled with more than a hint of sarcasm. “What were you gonna do, throw it?” It was only when he transferred a steely blue gaze back to her that she realized he was angry.

  To Jane, seeing anger in the eyes of a stranger was so unexpected-it seemed so very personal, somehow-it was as if she’d been doused with cold water, or slapped smartly across the face. Her head cleared. Her shaking subsided. She sat very straight and still, immersed in a strange calm that was almost like being suspended in weightlessness.

  “I don’t know what I meant to do with it,” she said in a hollow voice. “I don’t think…the fact is, I didn’t think. It was stupid, of course. Right now I can think of at least six things I should have done instead. I don’t know what got into me.”

  Hawk found it impossible, suddenly, to be so close to her. He went to sit on the other bed, shoulders hunched and hands clasped between his knees, and studied the woman who had just become his biggest problem. Her face was very pale, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. She should have looked older, he thought, with her makeup gone and her hair all mussed and curling with the humidity in a way that could only be natural, but for some reason she didn’t. She looked incredibly young. And frightened. He hadn’t expected that.

  “You were damn lucky,”
he said harshly. “You know that, don’t you? If I hadn’t come along when I did-”

  “I know.” She caught in a breath hungrily, as if she hadn’t had one in a while, then repeated, “I know. I haven’t even thanked you.” She looked sideways at him. Amazing, he thought, how expressive those sea-gray eyes of hers could be-and a reminder to him to keep his own shielded. “I’m very grateful you happened along. How did you-I mean. it’s such a coincidence, isn’t it?”

  There was a nuance in her words that didn’t escape Hawk. He laughed, hoping to head off her suspicions with a certain gruff charm. “No kidding. You’re the last person I expected to see here. Hey, I was on my way to the elevators-going down to get a bite to eat, as a matter of fact. And I hear this yelp and a thump, and the next thing I know, this guy comes tearing out of here with this package in his hands-”

  “Package-oh my God, my painting!” She shot to her feet. He could have told her it was a bad move. He put out a hand to steady her when she swayed.

  “Hey, it’s okay-it’s right there, on the bed.” He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her down, narrowing his eyes when he looked at her, trying hard not to see how pale and vulnerable she was. “I…more or less persuaded the bast-uh, guy-to leave it behind.” His lips tightened and stretched in a smile while his jaw clenched with the unpleasant taste of lies. Necessary lies, he assured himself. “Unfortunately, I couldn’t persuade him to stick around and explain why he was making off with it. Hey,” he added, all innocence, “isn’t that the one you just bought, today at the auction?”

  She nodded, then winced.

  “Headache?” he asked gently.

  She nodded again, closing her eyes this time. “He…did something to my neck-right here.” She cupped the place with her hand, rubbed briefly, then let the hand drop. Her eyes opened, fixed unnervingly on his face as she said in a soft, puzzled voice, “I think…I must have passed out. It’s so strange…I really think he was going to kill me.”

  Hawk didn’t say anything. He watched his hands as he placed one on either side of her neck, watched his fingers search for the spot he knew very well, trying to block out the way her skin felt, the way it had felt such a short time before, when he’d stopped for just a second or two, the life force pulsing beneath it. Soft and warm. Vibrant and strong. Alive.

  He tried to block out awareness of those eyes of hers, so near he could see the tiny lines that gave away her age. Tried to deny the strange, tense silence that had fallen between them.

  He couldn’t look at her eyes, so he shifted his gaze to her mouth. And that was a mistake. He hadn’t expected it to be so full and soft…or so near. His heartbeat grew strong and heavy; his mouth went dry and his vision blurred. He could feel the moist warmth of her breath on his lips, like a summer promise.

  Shaken to the very soles of his feet, he pulled his hands away from her and growled, “Lady, if he’d wanted you dead, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

  But even with the safer distance between them, for several moments longer they sat in that curious state of silent tension, in a kind of connectedness God knows he didn’t want, but didn’t know how to end. Her eyes seemed to be asking something of him. He felt as if he ought to apologize to her.

  But exactly what would he be apologizing for? The fact that it was he who’d knocked her down and put her out of commission, when by doing so he’d probably saved her life? The fact that he wanted to kiss her-very nearly had kissed her-or the fact that kissing her was the one thing he wasn’t about to let himself do?

  And then suddenly, like a rubber band stretched too far, the suspense broke. Hawk shifted even farther away from her and they both spoke at once.

  “Did you see who-”

  “-Must be some painting.”

  He rebounded first, answering her question with a shake of his head. “He was wearing a ski mask.”

  For some reason, that information seemed to unnerve her as nothing else had. She muttered, “I don’t believe this,” then added with a touch of asperity, “What is it with that painting, anyway? First that man Campbell tries to buy it, then he wanted to bribe me, and now someone-” She broke off midsentence, her eyes darting to Hawk’s with the unspoken question.

  He answered it with a shrug of apology. “Sorry. No way to tell if it was the same guy. I told you-he had on a ski mask.” At least that much was true.

  “Must be some painting,” he remarked once more, keeping his tone light, with only a touch of irony. Picking up the flat, paper-wrapped package he’d placed so carefully on the bed next to him, he held it up tentatively in front of Jane, who was chewing her lip and frowning thoughtfully at nothing. “Okay if I take a look at it?”

  “What? Oh, okay, sure…” She obliged him by holding it while he tore the tape that crisscrossed the back and peeled aside the layers of brown packing paper. A moment later, he had it in his hands. The prize. Game, set…match.

  “It’s nice,” he said, surprised to discover that he meant it. Funny, he wouldn’t have expected that little weasel Jarek Singh to have such good taste in art. Not that it mattered; it could be Elvis on black velvet, for all he cared. What he wanted was hidden somewhere in, on or behind this damn painting, and all he had to do now was get it out of the woman’s clutches long enough to find it.

  An idea came to him, based on something he’d overheard earlier, in the parking garage. Keeping his voice carefully neutral, he said, “I take it it’s not supposed to be valuable?”

  “No.” She rose, gingerly at first, then with more confidence, and moved over beside him so she could look at the painting with him.

  He found himself bracing automatically for her nearness. Apparently not at all affected by his, she was silent for a while, gazing down at the painting as if she’d never seen it before. Then she caught a quick breath and said in a puzzled tone, “I was told it isn’t. I just bought it because I like it. The style reminds me of Renoir-I’ve always liked Renoir.” She gave a short laugh. “Of course, this isn’t. I’m certain of that. But it’s more than that. It just…” Her voice trailed off, but she went on staring at the dancers in the painting. There was something about the tilt of her head that made her seem…wistful.

  “Maybe,” Hawk said, releasing the painting into her keeping with a casual shrug, “somebody knows something you don’t.”

  Her eyes flew to his, not guiltily, but with a little lift of surprise and gladness, in the way of one human being discovering another of like mind. “That’s just what I thought! You don’t think it’s silly, do you? Things like that do happen.” Again she gave that ripple of laughter he was beginning to recognize as a signature of hers. “Not to me, of course. But suppose…”

  “If you’d asked me this morning, I’d have said not a chance,” said Hawk dryly. “But after what just happened, I’d have to wonder. Somebody obviously wants that painting pretty badly.” He paused a beat before adding, “Maybe you should have it appraised.”

  She nodded, her face thoughtful. “Oh, I plan to. I’d already planned to, after that man Campbell offered me so much money for it. And after this…”

  “I might be able to help you there.” He said it with just enough diffidence, not too eager. “I have a friend at the Smithsonian-he could probably recommend somebody. I’ll give him a call, if you want. You could take the painting in tomorrow morning.”

  That ought to give Devore plenty of time to get somebody in place, he thought.

  She laughed and said faintly, “My goodness, the Smithsonian.”

  But Hawk knew he was losing her. He was an experienced enough hunter to know when his quarry had sensed the trap. Her smile was strained, now, her body tense, and her eyes slid sideways, reluctant to meet his.

  Or maybe, he told himself, it was just that she was feeling better now, more her usual self, and her natural self-preservation instinct was kicking in. He was well aware that an animal suffering from trauma will tolerate invasions of its comfort zone that a hale and healthy one n
ever would. Human beings were no different.

  Or, it could be that Jane Carlysle was simply experiencing the normal edginess of a woman-a nice woman-becoming aware that she was alone in a hotel room with a strange man. Small wonder if she was feeling leery, after that near slip of his. He’d have to be a lot more careful about that in the future. And he would be. It had just snuck up on him, that’s all. It had been a long time since he’d felt that kind of attraction to a woman. A long, long time.

  But, either way, his moment had come and gone. Time to drop back and punt, he thought. Let her get her confidence back, and wait for another chance.

  “Just an idea,” he said with a shrug.

  “I appreciate the offer.” She leaned forward to prop the painting against the pillows at the head of the bed, and shot him a quick smile over her shoulder before she straightened-not seductively, more like a peace offering, he thought, but felt the sudden lurch in his belly anyway, like a plane hitting an air pocket. “I really do-it’s very kind of you. But I already have the name of an appraiser-I believe he has a gallery in Georgetown. I’m going in to Washington first thing in the morning anyway. I’ll just take the painting with me then.”

  “Oh-okay, well, that’s good.” Nothing more to be done now, he told himself. Time to go. And yet he felt a curious reluctance. He told himself it was the painting he hated to leave behind. “That’s good…sounds like you’ve got it covered.” He edged toward the door. “I guess if you’re sure you’re okay…”

  “I am-really.” She followed him, moving in that fidgety way people do when they don’t know quite what to do with their hands. “And thank you. For saving my-” She broke off, gave that little embarrassed laugh of hers and amended it to, “My painting. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t…”

  “My pleasure,” Hawk said, and reminded himself to smile. “Glad I happened to be in the right place at the right time.” He stopped suddenly, as if the thought had just come to him, and made one last try. “Listen, maybe you should get somebody to go with you when you take that painting in tomorrow. You know, if somebody’s crazy enough to try this…”