There was no woman on earth who wanted to be innocent. She’d never been breakable the way Cole thought. And she’d had it with the princess pedestal. His shirt peeled off in a nicely mortal fashion. His belt, once unsnaked through the belt loops, neatly graced her lampshade. Skimming off a man’s dress pants was a thousand times easier than skimming off tight jeans.
She got him naked, but it was the last aggressive action she had the chance to make. Slugger, it seemed, had some things he wanted to express. He attacked her breasts with a tenderness, a gentleness, that stripped her defenses. His hands defined her throat, her ribs, the length of her long legs, as if his caressing strokes could seal her to him. Long, drugging kisses merged into longer, wilder kisses that took her breath and fired her soul.
I’m not losing you. He didn’t say it again, but it was what he told her, what he showed her, in a dozen ways. She mattered to him. For just this night, Cole seemed to have forgotten that he never took an emotional risk, that he equated involvement with arsenic, that he’d painted himself as an unprincipled coward.
Regan sensed his vulnerability. She sensed the strength and power of feeling he’d long denied. And when he settled between her thighs, she was more than ready for him. Her arms tightened, pulling him down, pulling him in. Oh, Cole. I’d die if I lost you, too. He’d been sure for so long that she wanted a hero. He’d always been right. She’d wanted the love of a true white knight, the kind of man she could count on, the kind of man who would stand by her, the kind of flesh-and-blood man who needed her with the same power of longing and belonging that she needed him.
She’d found him.
Their joining was a wild ride on a dark night, a canter that built to a delirious gallop so fast they flew, free, taking each other to the same joyful place. Regan heard his hoarse groan, calling her, calling her. She was there for him, as he’d always been for her.
When the last shudder racked her body, she clung, feeling mist in her eyes like soft, warm rain. For an age they lay side by side, twined, still touching, still stroking. For an age his eyes never left her face.
When he finally looked away, his gaze shifted a few inches down. Whatever he saw made his whole body still. “What the hell did you do, princess?”
“What?”
“How could you do this to me?”
“What?” She lowered her head, to see the topaz brilliantly glowing like a radiant pink fire. Let him see, she thought. Please let him see the magic we are together.
Cole woke from a sound sleep with his heart pounding. It wasn’t quite six; Regan was curled around him like a warm kitten. The smoke gray light of predawn filtered through her lacy curtains. Three stories below, he heard muted traffic sounds, but the apartment was serenely quiet.
His heart, though, kept pumping chunks of adrenaline. Carefully he slipped away from Regan and reached for his pants. Stark naked, he tugged them on, then paced to her bedroom door.
Opening it a crack—and feeling like a fool—he ducked his head around the corner. Her front door was closed, her living room silent as a tomb...but he heard something. A tiny rustling?
Very tiny. The minuscule sound raised the hairs on the back of his neck, which did not please Cole. He had a feeling, a bad feeling, that a mouse was going to run over his foot and he would wake up a most-amused Regan when he let out a coward’s screech.
Most happy she was not awake to witness it, he tiptoed down the hall toward the kitchen.
A bulky shadow was bent over her table—a large man's familiar bulky shadow that suddenly turned toward the doorway. Cole didn't have time to think. He didn't need to think. He had ten years of well-honed instincts warning him to turn tail and run in any situation involving danger.
It was a complete surprise to him when his fist shot out and connected with a bulbous nose. The impact sent Francis Dorinsky reeling back, knocking into a kitchen chair, grabbing the counter for balance. Needles of pain exploded in Cole’s hand. He figured he'd broke something, but damned if he could make himself care. He'd known it was Dorinsky. He'd always known it was Dorinsky, and when he thought of all the anguish and fear that bastard had caused Regan—
“Wait! Stop! For God's sake, Shepherd—”
His fist connected into layers of soft, doughy stomach. Dorinsky, gasping, bent over double. Suddenly the kitchen lights went on, glaring bright. Regan, still belting the sash on her white robe, put a hand on her heart. “My Lord! What's going on?”
“I found him in your kitchen. Call the cops, princess.”
“The cops! Regan, this man is totally crazy! Shepherd, if you'd just give me a second to explain—”
“Cole—”
But Cole wasn’t looking at Regan’s face. He was looking, glaring, straight into Dorinsky’s, and the older man was saying, “Look at the table, would you? Look at the table. Just look at the table. “
On the table there was a fresh white bag of doughnuts, still warm from the bakery. Next to the bag sat the small box that Regan had given him the night before.
It seemed her thief had come bearing gifts.
It took Regan several minutes to calm them both down, make coffee and administer ice—first to Cole’s swelling knuckles and then to her old friend’s bloody nose.
“I understand why you thought I was a burglar, Shepherd, but I had no idea you were still here. It never occurred to me that you didn’t go home after we all left last night. It’s just not like Regan to…” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I was calling so early because she’s always been an early riser—like me—and we’ve often had doughnuts and coffee in the morning. When I realized she wasn’t up, I should have left. But I had the apartment key, and I wanted to return the sapphire, and it made sense to me to leave both the doughnuts and sapphire on the table where she’d find them. I figured we’d talk later. But then you—”
Regan tactfully sat down between the two men. “I don’t understand. Why were you returning the sapphire?”
“Because.” Dorinsky brushed back his thinning hair. “Regan, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw that yellow sapphire last night. Until you brought up that old history, I don’t think I knew for how long...how dead wrong I was for carrying a grudge against your gramps.”
He looked at her with sick-puppy eyes. “Honey, Jake paid his debts to me a long time past. I never had the education the other partners had, but he still took me on. He staked my son to a financial start, and when my daughter was in the hospital—heck, he got there before even I did, stayed the whole night with my wife and me.” Dorinsky shook his head. “That stone is yours, sweetheart. There was a time Jake owed it to me, but not anymore.”
Not long after that, Regan walked Dorinsky to the door. When she came back into the kitchen, she took a long look at the raw, red swelling on his knuckles. She said, “Slugger, slugger, slugger...”
Probably for the first time since he was four, he felt a flush climbing up his cheeks. “Could we talk about this next Tuesday?”
He took Regan out to breakfast. By the time they strolled back to her apartment, it was two hours later and they were both too stuffed on blueberry pancakes heaped with whipped cream to climb the stairs.
Cole punched the elevator button, thinking that the outing hadn't gone at all as he'd planned. Getting Regan away from the apartment and exposed to fresh air had been his first goal, but discussing her safety had been his main agenda.
Dorinsky's returning the sapphire had put her in a tailspin. She’d wanted to give away the stones, wanted to right those old wrongs for her grandfather, but she’d also seen those gems as the only bait she had to catch the truth. Once Dorinsky left, she felt even more confused over what she should do or think regarding the other partners. Typical of Regan, though, she was more concerned with hurting their feelings with a mistaken accusation than in considering any danger to herself. Besides, she’d returned the stones, hadn't she? What more could they want from her?
Cole had no idea, but his gut instinct w
arned him that she was at more risk, not less. Regan had shown only part of a poker hand the night before, and one of those boys now knew she had other cards—like the rest of what was in the journals, like the vitamins, like background on each of them. All three men had reacted totally normally to her the night before. Two had no reason to react any other way, but the third had to be one smart actor, and that scared Cole.
His intention, over breakfast, was to scare Regan—enough to see the potential for danger had not disappeared. He'd tried. She'd even pretended to listen, but she was just so ravenous. He watched her work her way through the stack of pancakes with a hedonist's sensual pleasure. When she swirled the whipped cream on her tongue—and winked at him—every logical thought scattered and Charlie strained against his jeans. She asked him if he liked whipped cream. Then she asked him where he might like whipped cream. And he thought, You're always going to be this much trouble, aren't you, princess? Always.
He hadn't said anything to her about what had happened between them the night before. There hadn't been time. But his mind was very much on his feelings for Regan—until they stepped off the elevator, and Cole saw her front door gaping open. “Too damn many people have keys to your place,” he muttered, and then, “Stay outside in the hall.”
“No. Wait, Cole—”
But Cole hadn't forgotten his humiliating mistake earlier with Dorinsky. His knuckles still throbbed and his pride still stung. Considering how long he’d had an aversion to violence—and how long he'd touted the values of a coward—he still wasn't sure why he'd reacted like such a damn fool, but it wouldn't happen again. His head was screwed on straight now. Her intruder was no stranger, but obviously Reed or Trafer because the key was sticking in her front door lock. As Regan kept trying to convince him, one of those boys could be an innocent old friend. The situation called for caution and care, but Cole was going to be damn sure what they were dealing with before making any half-cocked judgments.
As he stepped into the apartment, he heard no sound of movement anywhere. Cheerful patches of yellow sunlight poured through the east windows, but the place was totally, eerily silent. He ducked his head into the kitchen—no one.
He’d just turned toward the living room when he saw the gaunt, tall shape of a man hustling toward him. Reed was wearing a trench coat, and his right hand was in his coat pocket. At the same time Reed opened his mouth to say something, his right hand dug deeper in the coat pocket as if he were reaching for something.
In that split second, Cole tasted terror and a panic so thick that his temperature shot up ten degrees. Fear could reduce a man to his most elemental, basic level. The only thought in his head was extraordinarily simple. If the bastard had a gun or a knife and got by him, Regan was just outside and defenseless.
Cole rushed him, butting his head so hard into Reed’s chest that the taller man went barreling against a wall. A table rocked, a lamp tipped, and Reed, breathing a startled gasp, sank to the carpet in a less than dignified heap. “Shepherd, it’s just me. Archibald Reed. It’s just me. Try and calm yourself—”
Regan—who was never going to have the self-protective instincts of a newborn kitten—jogged in at the first sound of a scuffle.
“Thank heavens you’re here,” Reed said fervently, and cast a horrified and uneasy look at Regan. “I would strongly appreciate it if you would control your friend, my dear. I am almost positive he is considering hitting me again.”
“I think he has a gun in his right pocket.”
“A gun. Why, conceivably, would you think I had a gun? Regan, I do have something in my right pocket, and the reason I came here was to bring it to you. Possibly it would be wiser if you took it out—”
“Don’t you go near him, princess.”
Cole leaned over and rifled through the right pocket of Reed’s trench coat, his gaze flat on the older man’s flushed face. His fingers encountered a small box. A familiar small box. When he scooped it into the light, he saw the same box that held the tsavorite Regan had given away the night before.
Cole rocked back on his heels and wished to hell he could disappear. He just had the nasty feeling that he was about to hear another perfectly innocent story.
Reed didn’t begin to talk until he was sitting properly in the Queen Anne straight chair and Regan had poured him a small libation.
“My dear, I seriously considered this matter all last night. I was unaware that Jake had kept the tsavorite...and unaware that he’d kept the journals from all those years ago. If you know the story, you obviously felt that I had the significant prior claim on that gem. Then. But not now.” Reed duly sipped from the shot of brandy she’d handed him. “Your grandfather and I go back a great many years, Regan. We were both different men when we were younger. Ambition dominated our lives then, and so did a driving need to amass a fortune. Greed has a way of making men ruthless. Jake may have done some things he regretted. But so did I. Many things I’m not proud of.”
He shook his head. “But your grandfather settled old scores with me a long time ago. We almost severed the partnership a dozen times, yet always held on. We were both guilty of the same kinds of sins. When you share that kind of guilt, it makes a curious kind of bond. We grew older and we grew up. We both changed—I should like to believe—into better men. Integrity is not genetically inbred. It became something we valued—which is only to say that Jake was one of the finest men I knew. If you judge your grandfather solely on the basis of what he did forty years ago—”
“I never judged him, Reed,” Regan said quietly.
He nodded. “The point of this explanation is that I came here to return the stone. I wish I could comprehend your grandfather’s purpose in saving those old journals and exposing you to that part of his life...but I don’t know. We’ll obviously never know now, but I want you to have the stone.”
When Regan returned from seeing Reed out, Cole was lying flat on the carpet with an arm over his eyes. “God, don’t say it.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, slugger.”
“I feel like a fool.”
“You thought he had a gun.”
“I didn’t think Dorinsky had a gun this morning.”
“You were afraid they were here to hurt me or threaten me. Dorinsky understood. So did Reed.”
“Reed did not understand. He looked at me like he wanted to stuff me in a jar of formaldehyde.”
“He’s a little overprotective of me, always was.” The pink topaz sparkled in the sunlight as she knelt next to Cole. When he lifted the arm from his eyes, his gaze magneted first to the gem, then to her face.
“You have to be feeling good,” he said seriously.
“In what way?”
“About your grandfather. About finally getting some of the truth that mattered so much to you. Jake was a good man, honey. Not perfect, not a hero, but ultimately a man who had the guts to put his life together on the right track. It has to feel good to know that your faith in him was justified.”
“Yes.”
“And even when the facts were looking ugly, you kept your faith in those Dutch uncles of yours, as well. And now two of them have proved out that your judgment, your instincts, were true.”
“A lot of things have happened that have helped me regain trust in my own judgment,” Regan agreed softly, but she was looking at him, and not thinking in any way of the partners. One of these days she was going to have to tell him that he was very much his father’s son.
Cole touched the topaz at her throat. For a moment she thought he was going to use the chain to pull her toward him—instead, he suddenly shook his head. Quickly, practically, he lurched to his feet. “You’re not going to agree with me, but what I want you to do—now, immediately—is take your whole story to the cops. Two of the boys showed up clean, which only leaves Trafer. I know it’s possible that he’s just as innocent as the others. I know you still don’t have tangible proof. But the truth’s been weeded down this far. Maybe we can’t give them anything
specific enough to arrest him, but they could at least question the guy, and—”
“Okay.”
Cole was prepared to be a lot more persuasive. “Okay? Just like that?”
“Honestly, Shepherd, you’d think I argued with you about every little thing. I tried my dinner. It settled my little problem with honor, but totally failed to uncover my snake in the grass. Maybe it isn’t Trafer, but at this point I’m obviously willing to…” Her voice trailed off. Cole had jogged out of sight. “Where are you going?”
“To get your jacket. When you’re in the rare mood to talk horse sense, I figured I’d better move like lightning. We can be inside a police station in twenty minutes.”
Regan, chuckling, rose to her feet and plucked the jacket from Cole’s hand. He swiftly strode for the door, his gaze still on Regan when he turned the knob and opened it.
Too late, he twisted his head. Standing on the other side of the doorway was Trafer, his small, gnarled hand just raised to knock.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For several seconds Cole didn’t—couldn’t—move. Regan’s list of enemies had boiled down to Trafer. With the other two, his first instinct had been to protect her. That instinct—that need from his gut to insure her safety—was even more powerful now.
But one look at Trafer, and Cole locked still. This was different. Physically confronting a defenseless old man made the situation impossibly different. The other two had been big men—bigger than Cole—both built solid and fit. Trafer was at least ten years older, and he was such a frail little squirt. Even dressed in a camel’s hair topcoat, he couldn’t weigh 130 pounds. His spectacles had slipped down his nose, giving him a puckish expression; he was leaning on an ebony cane as if he suffered arthritis...and damnation, if he wasn’t holding out a little box in his left hand.
“Mr. Shepherd, I didn’t expect to see you here. Is Regan in?”
“Maybe I could help you. She’s got a headache.” The lie was the best Cole could think up on the spur of the moment. If Regan hadn’t peeked around his shoulder, it might have worked. Trafer’s expression brightened the instant he spotted her.
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