Wickedly Hot

by Leslie Kelly

  The work she did on behalf of the Historical Society was on a donation or loan basis only. The society didn’t have the money to purchase artifacts. Even if they could prove the items had once been stolen, the present-day descendents of the former owners usually couldn’t afford the legal fees to pursue a lawsuit whose outcome was tenuous at best. If they could even be found.

  Which was why Jade was so dedicated to what she did. She’d managed to talk a lot of people into donating a lot of items over the past few years. She could usually tell how things were going to progress as soon as she met the current owners, but this man had her stymied. She wasn’t sure whether this was going to be a good day or a bad one.

  “That is how I found you,” Jade finally admitted. “Someone forwarded your posting from an antique gun Web site message board, and I began to do the research.”

  “Interesting line of work you’re in, young lady,” the old man said as he set his glass on a nearby coffee table.

  “Not my line of work, exactly,” she explained. “I’m a volunteer.”

  That seemed to surprise him. “You mean, you don’t work for the Society?”

  She shook her head and grinned. “I own a haunted sites tour company in Savannah. I just do this for fun.”

  He barked a laugh. “Some idea of fun.”

  The exchange seemed to have intrigued him, and he finally smiled. “All right, so tell me more about this Harrison estate. The family.” Then he winked. “And the tax benefits of making such a valuable donation.”

  But before Jade could say another word, they were interrupted by a knock on the door to the apartment. Jade cursed the luck. She’d just about had Mr. Brewer in the right frame of mind to give away something he could sell for tens of thousands of dollars. Now, however, he was thoroughly distracted by the imperious knocking.

  “One moment, young lady,” the old man said as he rose from his seat. Using his cane, he carefully made his way to the entrance of the apartment. He peeked through the peephole, then opened the door only as far as the chain-lock would allow. “What do you want?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for someone. Miss Maguire.”

  That was Ryan’s voice. Jade immediately rose to her feet, wondering what on earth he was doing here.

  Mr. Brewer raised a curious brow, and Jade could only shrug in apology. Appearing satisfied, the old man unlocked the door and ushered Ryan inside. “Do I know you?”

  Ryan strode toward the living room, answering over his shoulder. “No, sir, you don’t. I’m sorry to intrude, but I have to take Miss Maguire out of here. Right now.”

  Her first thought was of bad news. An accident. “Something’s wrong. Is it Jenny? Aunt Lula Mae?” she asked, her heart somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.

  He sucked in a breath, instantly looking contrite. “No, darlin’, nothing like that. But you, uh…you need to come with me. Right now.” He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Before this goes any further.”

  She whispered back. “Before what goes any further?”

  “Yes, before what?” Mr. Brewer asked, banging his cane on the floor.

  Ryan squared his shoulders. Even from a few feet away, Jade could see the pulse ticking in his jaw and the flush in his cheeks. No question something had happened. He looked more upset than he had since the night they’d met. “Sir, I’m sorry we’ve intruded on you. Miss Maguire and I are leaving now.”

  Jade’s jaw fell open. From Mr. Overprotective to Mr. Freaking Neanderthal. She barely recognized this man as the flirtatious charmer she’d met at Mamie Brandywine’s party.

  She shook off his hand when he tried to take her arm. “Ryan, you’re being ridiculous. I told you I had business to take care of.”

  “Not this kind of business,” he bit out. Then he looked over his shoulder at Mr. Brewer. “Could you possibly give us a moment of privacy?”

  The old man looked them both over, faint amusement evident on his face. He obviously thought they were having a lovers’ quarrel.

  He wasn’t quite right. They were about to have a lovers’ World War III if Ryan Stoddard didn’t come up with a good explanation pretty darn quick.

  As soon as Mr. Brewer had left them alone in the room, Jade threw Ryan’s hand off her arm and put her fisted hands on her hips. “What do you think you’re doing? I almost had him convinced to let me walk out of here with those flintlocks.”

  He took her by the upper arms and pulled her close. She felt the anger in his touch and saw the grimness of his tightly held lips. “I can’t let you do it, Jade. I know you think you’re doing something noble, but it’s still wrong. I can’t let you steal from that old man.”

  Steal. Steal? Had he just said steal?

  This time her mouth didn’t just open, she really thought for sure she’d heard the thud of her jaw hitting her own chest. “What are you talking about?” she managed to choke out.

  “I know the truth,” he said between clenched teeth. “I know you think you’re being some kind of Robin Hood, stealing back stuff that was stolen and donating it to the Historical Society.”

  “I am what?”

  He lowered his eyes, not meeting hers for a moment. Jade was still trying to take it all in.

  Then he looked up, almost pleading with her. “You can’t do it anymore. It’s too dangerous and I won’t let you risk it.”

  Wouldn’t let her risk it…risk being a thief? That’s what he thought she was doing here? A half-hysterical laugh, completely devoid of humor, escaped her lips. “This is crazy.”

  “Yeah, it is,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair in frustration until it stuck up in all directions.

  Her first impulse was to reach up and smooth it out. She squashed the urge. She’d be better off sticking her own fingers into a lit fire right at this moment. She suspected it might be less painful in the long run.

  “I know you come from a crazy background,” he added, “and that somehow you made it seem right in your mind. But you’re playing a risky game, Jade, and your luck’s not going to hold out. I can’t stand by and watch you get caught.”

  “Caught,” she murmured.

  Heaven help her, she’d already been caught, hadn’t she? Caught in a spell of love with a man who didn’t know her at all. He’d nearly proclaimed his love for her a few hours ago. And now he was telling her he cared about her too much to let her get into trouble because of her thieving.

  If he thought that…well, he didn’t know her at all. She was a complete stranger to him. She had to be if he could think she was some kind of thief or con artist who’d steal from an old man because of some misplaced notions of Southern patriotism. Jade didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or just pummel the distrusting louse.

  The lousy man she loved.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, trying to put the pieces together. “Is that why you went out with Jenny? She said you’d asked a bunch of questions.” Then another thought struck. “Oh, God, that’s why you came to Savannah, isn’t it? You weren’t there by chance—you were tracking me!”

  It sounded ridiculous, but she knew by the look on his face that she’d scored a hit.

  “I came after you to find something you took from someone I know,” he explained tightly.

  She shook her head, blinking rapidly to clear her eyes of gathering tears. “So it was all a lie. You pursued me on purpose, lying to me the whole time.”

  He fidgeted, then fired back. “You pursued me, too. I wasn’t the one who tied you up naked to a statue in Mamie Brandywine’s garden.”

  From the other room they heard a curious choking sound. Jade spared a second of concern for Mr. Brewer, but no more. She was too focused on what Ryan was admitting. “I already told you why I did that, because of Jenny. Which might have been the perfect time for you to admit the truth yourself.”

  He grabbed her hand. “I wish I had, Jade.” He didn’t elaborate. And frankly, she didn’t really give a damn at this point.

  “Tel
l me one thing,” she finally said.

  He waited.

  She urged her voice to remain steady, not to crack as she voiced what might be the most important question she’d ever asked. “Tell me, knowing me as you do, do you really think I’m a thief?”

  He met her stare and she silently pleaded with him to admit he was wrong. That there had been some colossal mistake, and he knew darn well she’d never be so dishonorable, so deceitful.

  Instead, he just looked at her, his mouth opening, closing. But no words came out.

  Without another word, she dropped his hand and walked out of the apartment.

  “WELL, YOU CERTAINLY mucked that one up, didn’t you, young man?”

  Ryan had barely even remembered where he was—in a complete stranger’s home—once Jade had stormed out. He’d been frozen, torn between what he knew to be true—based on his grandmother’s words—and the look of absolute betrayal in Jade’s eyes.

  His head was spinning as he wondered what he’d just done.

  “What did you say?” he finally asked the old man as he shook his head, trying to regain his equilibrium.

  “Had the girl by the heart, and you chucked her away,” Mr. Brewer said, shaking his head in disgust. “Youth is wasted on the stupid and insensitive.”

  He could only watch, slack-jawed, as the old gentleman sat down in a chair, pulling a wooden case onto his lap. He opened it, glanced at the items inside, then snapped it closed. “You’ll take these with you and get them to her, won’t you?”

  Ryan stared, noting the emblem burned into the wood. “The pistols?”

  “Of course the pistols,” the man said with an irritated look. “Was about to give them to her when you busted in.”

  Ryan lowered himself into a chair opposite the old man. “Sir, you should know—”

  “Should know what? That she was here on behalf of the Savannah Historical Society? That she asked me if I’d consider donating these flintlocks, which were stolen from a Southern plantation during the Civil War? That she knew they had no legal claim to them, but hoped I’d consider it as a good-faith gesture and an excellent tax write-off?”

  Ryan sagged back into the chair, completely stunned. He could hardly take it in. Jade had come here in complete honesty? She’d asked the man to donate an antique, probably worth upward of fifty-thousand dollars, and he’d agreed?

  Though, heaven knew, when Jade Maguire set her mind to have something, any man was hopeless to resist. Including this old guy.

  “Do you mean to tell me she didn’t come here saying she was some kind of buyer? Or gun expert? Or appraiser?” he asked, feeling two steps behind everyone else in the world.

  “Course not,” the old man snapped, rapping his cane on the wood floor. “Can’t imagine why you’d think otherwise, but she contacted me weeks ago, telling me who she was and who she represented.” Then he raised a sly brow. “But you didn’t know that, did you? You thought she was here for some other reason altogether.”

  Yeah. To steal something that had once been stolen.

  Ryan could only nod.

  “And you’ve been lying to her all along about things? I heard that much.” Then he cackled. “Naked and tied to a statue, eh? I’d like to know who this Mamie Brandywine is.”

  Ryan shuddered. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “That young lady, she got you good, didn’t she?” He cackled again, then let out another sound, something like a harrumph. “But she didn’t do it unscathed. Got herself hurt in the process.”

  Ryan, realizing all the implications of what the old man was saying, launched up out of the chair and began to stalk the room. “I can’t understand this. She steals from my grandmother, but politely asks for something from you?”

  He was speaking more to himself, so he wasn’t quite prepared for Mr. Brewer to answer. “Your grandmother?”

  Ryan nodded absently. “She called me for help, saying Jade had swindled her out of a painting.”

  “You a married man?”

  The abrupt subject change didn’t seem any more crazy than anything else that had happened in the past few minutes. Ryan shook his head. “No.”

  “In love with Miss Maguire?”

  He merely nodded.

  “Grandmother a matchmaking type?”

  Then he froze and turned on his heel. Gape-jawed, he stared at the old man.

  Mr. Brewer started to laugh. “Worried for a long time about my youngest boy getting hooked up with the wrong one. Tried everything to steer him toward a young woman who used to work for me, but he wouldn’t have it.” He nodded his head in obvious satisfaction. “Til I locked ’em together in a storage closet at a Christmas party one year.”

  And suddenly, Ryan got it.

  He closed his eyes, shaking his head, wondering when his brain had turned into a complete wasteland.

  Suckered. He’d been completely suckered. Played like a kindergartner tricked into giving up his lunch money.

  By his own grandmother.

  13

  JADE HAD STOPPED CRYING by the time she got home to her apartment in Savannah that night. She’d cried a lot while racing to the airport, not even caring about the things she’d left behind at Ryan’s place. She’d tried to hide the tears behind dark glasses but probably hadn’t fooled anyone on the flight home to Georgia.

  And on the drive from the airport, she’d just given in and whined, right up until she’d entered her apartment.

  “Damn him,” she muttered late that night as she tore off her clothes and reached for a comfortable, familiar nightshirt in her top dresser drawer.

  She couldn’t believe how…how raw she felt, still, all these hours later. But those moments in Mr. Brewer’s apartment—those few dangerous moments when she’d asked him to believe in her and he’d responded with silence—seemed like they were going to repeat in her brain for the rest of her life.

  A thief, of all things.

  She was used to the women in her family being called names. A witch, a terror, they’d called Lula Mae. A man-eater, her mother had been named. A tease, a bimbo they’d said about Jenny. As for her? Jade? The one who’d considered herself the reasonable, responsible, driven, hardworking one?

  She’d heard seductress. She’d heard brazen. She’d even heard dangerous.

  But, by God, she’d never heard thief. Not until the man she loved had called her that.

  “Damn you, Ryan,” she muttered as she curled up in her bed, hugging her pillow. She wished Jinx was around. He was a cat, therefore often aloof. He did, however, seem to know when Jade needed comfort. He gave her the sweetest kitty kisses when he knew she needed them the most. Right now, she wanted to cling to him like a drowning woman held a life preserver.

  She couldn’t pick up Jinx from Tally’s, however, without picking up Lula Mae. Jade wasn’t up to that. Commiserating with Lula Mae meant downing gallons of oddly spiced tea, hearing the old woman’s riddles about love, and plotting payback.

  “Maybe later.”

  For now she had to grieve, alone, over what she’d lost—something that she’d only this morning begun to believe she’d found. True love.

  “Ha!” she snorted, thrusting the very idea of it away.

  Sleep proving elusive, Jade lay in bed for a long time, still trying to put everything together. She knew the basics. Ryan had come to Savannah to seek her out, after he’d sought out her little sister up in New York.

  He’d thought she’d stolen something and wanted…what? Recompense? Retribution? Revenge? All of the above?

  She remembered that first night, all his intuitive questions, when she’d half-jokingly asked if he was a P.I. instead of an architect. If she hadn’t just been in his home, seen the drawings and blueprints all over his home office, she’d suspect that he really was a private investigator. But she knew he wasn’t.

  No, he hadn’t been hired to track her down. It had been entirely personal. She just couldn’t understand why.

  Finally, sheer exhaustion made
her give in to a turbulent night’s sleep full of disturbing dreams.

  She still hadn’t figured things out the next day. Ryan tried to call—she heard his voice on the answering machine, but she refused to pick up. His messages said he’d made a mistake, that he hadn’t understood, had been misled. That he had to talk to her, to set things right.

  But how could he set something like that right? How could they go back to the beginning and pretend he hadn’t been lying to her and he hadn’t believed her to be a completely different person than she was? How could she ever really believe he was honest when he said he needed her in his life, that he cared about her, when he obviously didn’t know her at all?

  Because she didn’t want to see anyone and have to explain her tear-stained face, she didn’t tell anyone she was back in town. Somehow, however, Daisy suspected. The young woman called late that afternoon, her voice sounding frenzied on Jade’s answering machine. “Look, I know you’re out of town, but if you pick up this message, please call me. Freddy called in sick, and we have this big private tour tonight, a special one leaving out of your uncle’s place. And I have the regular group to take out. Help!”

  Jade bit back a curse, vowing to fire Freddy first thing tomorrow even though the new people she’d hired weren’t fully up to speed yet. Then she grabbed the phone. “I’m here, Daisy.”

  “Oh, thank you! I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Freddy’s now unemployed. I’m the camel and this is the last straw.”

  “About time,” the young woman muttered.

  “Now, what’s this about a private tour?” They did private group tours on occasion, but Jade didn’t remember scheduling any for this week. In fact, she’d felt comfortable going away for a few days precisely because she’d had the two new people, plus Daisy and Freddy, and no extra tours on the schedule.

  “Sorry, it just came in. A group going out of the Winter Garden, because they’re staying there or something. Tonight at nine. Freddy was supposed to take it, since I have the regular late-night tour. But he’s a no-show. And those two new ones don’t know the haunted stuff yet. They’ve just barely gotten the history for the day tours!”