by Linda Cajio
“Okay, the truth,” she said. “We’re planning to rob the store. Happy now?”
“Thrilled.” But he shook his head.
“If you had let me drive—” she began.
He touched her lips with his forefinger. Her insides flipped at the gesture. She forced herself to stand still and not give away her reaction.
Rick pulled his finger back as if scorched. “We already had that argument.”
“So we did.” She wandered over to another section of the department store. Rick followed. She frowned and looked around for Lettice.
“Do you like your zoo work?” he asked.
She glanced at him, then away. “Yes. It’s great, and it’s unpredictable. That’s what makes it fun.”
“Amorous mules, you mean.”
She nodded, concentrating on the object before her … until she realized she was staring at the hips of a male dummy standing at a table-setting display. She immediately turned toward a chaste set of kitchen glasses.
“Just animals in general,” she replied, clearing her throat. “It isn’t a regular nine-to-five job. And I can make a little difference in the world, which is nice. But I just like the job.”
Rick picked up a knife from the display, then set it down again. “Looking forward to the new one?”
“Yes.” She sighed, thinking of what she had to do before she could get back to start it.
“You don’t sound happy.”
“I am.” She glanced sideways at him, wondering how she was going to get to Mr. Havilan without her faithful companion. Tonto must have cut the Lone Ranger some slack upon occasion. And where was Lettice?
She edged away from Rick, casually, as if she were moving forward to look at more displays. He edged with her. Clearly wherever she went, he intended to go.
His closeness sparked panic in her. She tried to think straight. But all that went through her head was a silly conversation he’d had after breakfast with Grahame, who had wanted him to buy a new kitchen service while they were in the city. Where the hell was Lettice? And why couldn’t she concentrate on getting away from Mr. Sexy and getting to Mr. Havilan? The problem with the necklace seemed so far away.
Jill froze.
“What?” Rick asked, turning around when she stopped.
“Grahame,” she said, grabbing Rick’s arm, ignoring the heat that shot through her at the touch. As she dragged him along to the counter, she said, “He wanted you to get a new kitchen service. Here we are, so let’s get it.”
“No. Let’s let Grahame get it,” Rick protested, digging in his heels. “I don’t know what to get, Jill.”
“Oh, stop fussing.” She began the trek to the counter again. “Besides, Grahame doesn’t expect you to actually do it, so that then he can complain to his heart’s content. This way you can outwit him, and you can thank your grandmother for wanting to go shopping first.”
“Good point. Where is my grandmother anyway?” he asked, looking around.
“Can I help you?” a saleswoman asked, fluffing out her multicolored hair. Obviously, new-wave punk had hit London with a vengeance.
“This gentleman is looking for a new kitchen service,” Jill said.
“China, ceramic, ironstone, or resistant glass?”
“I don’t know,” Rick said, blinking.
“Show him everything,” Jill suggested. Just a moment more, she thought, and pushed away a twinge of guilt.
The woman got out several kinds of place settings and launched into the merits of each. Rick listened courteously.
Jill patted his arm. “While you’re doing this, I’ll go find Lettice.”
He nodded.
She smiled and scooted away. She had no sooner crossed the threshold of the department than a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.
“I’ve been waiting here for fifteen minutes!” Lettice snapped. “I thought if I lost myself you’d come looking for me.”
Jill laughed. “Great minds think alike. Let’s go.”
Rick crumpled the note and gazed around the store, then refocused on the woman who’d just brought him the note. She looked half-scared.
“How long ago did they leave?” he asked, furious that he had been engaged in discussing kitchenware while his grandmother and Jill decided finally to go sightseeing. The note directed him to meet them at Madame Tussaud’s in two hours. He’d kill Grahame when he got home.
“They left a little bit ago, sir,” the clerk said. “I’m very sorry—”
“Right.” He spun on his heel and headed for the door.
“I saw them get into a taxi,” the girl called after him.
Rick bit off an angry curse and kept on walking. He’d allowed himself to be taken in by a wry wit and a soft smile. And a great body. His grandmother was making a monkey out of him too. If he had thought he’d been imagining that the two women were up to something, he’d just had the truth confirmed.
He’d be at Tussaud’s early. Very early. Something about the location bothered him. He dismissed it for the moment, deciding he couldn’t wait to hear Jill and his grandmother wiggle out of this one.
“Well done, Jill,” Lettice said, smiling in satisfaction when they finally caught a taxi.
“Not really,” Jill said, immersed in a deluge of guilt. She hated running out on Rick like that, but what choice had she had? His intense look had been making her increasingly uncomfortable, and she’d been half-tempted to confess her deception. Lord, but he would have made a great interrogator. Women probably fell at his feet under that Valentino stare of his. She knew she wanted to. She wanted to feel his kiss again, his hands caressing her skin.…
Jill hauled back her straying thought, because it was straying into territory better left untouched. She had a great new job to go home to, and a great new life ahead of her. She wasn’t about to ruin everything by indulging in a vacation fling. Even if she could. Rick had said it wouldn’t happen again. She believed him. Already, she’d come to realize he was a man of honor.
More guilt washed through her, and she bit back a groan. “Do you think that clerk gave him the message we left?”
“Of course,” Lettice said. “She looked young and honest, and I tipped her ten pounds. By the way, what did you write in the note?”
Jill watched the crawling traffic with a heavy heart. What should have been a twenty-minute walk to Whitehall would be a forty-five-minute ride. They’d never get there in time. “Just that we were going on since he was busy with his own shopping, and he could catch up with us at Madame Tussaud’s at three.”
“All the way over there?” Lettice exclaimed.
Jill flushed. “It was the only place I could think of that wasn’t remotely near Havilan’s office.”
Lettice smiled. “I haven’t been to Madame Tussaud’s in thirty years. It might be fun.”
“If we live that long,” Jill muttered with great foreboding.
Four
“There you are! Why aren’t you in line getting tickets?”
Fury ripped through Rick at his grandmother’s greeting, and he decided she had flipped her silver rinse. “Where the bloody hell have you two been?”
His grandmother raised an eyebrow. “Do not take that tone of voice with me, Roderick Kitteridge. You had shopping to do, and we had sightseeing to do. So we have been sightseeing. Right, Jill?”
“Right.”
Jill’s monotone caught his attention. He peered at her and was surprised to see how deflated she looked. It was as if someone had drained her of her vitality. Something had happened while they were gone, something that had upset her. His anger eased, and he glanced around at the crowds of people queuing on the street outside the popular wax museum. That he had paced and cursed and cursed and paced the length of that queue for the past hour wasn’t so important now. He didn’t like it that Jill was hurting, and an odd urge to protect her rose up in him. He moved closer, as if to shelter her. “What’s wrong?”
A hunted expression came over her, then
she shook herself and shrugged. “Nothing. We’d better get in line, or we’ll never get in.”
“Why do we want to get in?” he asked.
“Because I haven’t been here in thirty years,” Lettice said sharply. “So stop squawking like a mother hen with lost chicks and get in line.”
“You really want to go to Tussaud’s?” he asked dubiously. He could understand if they wanted to go to Harrods, or the National Gallery, or the Savoy for tea, but a wax museum?
“Yes, I really want to go to Tussaud’s,” his grandmother snapped. “And I do not want to play Twenty Questions about it. Now get in the damned line.”
Rick blinked. He looked at Jill, who looked back and smiled. “Okay,” he said. “Let’s get in the damned line.”
He took Jill’s elbow to guide her after his grandmother. Her skin was cool to his touch, yet it evoked an unexpected intimacy. If he adjusted his fingers slightly, so slightly, he would touch the side of her breast. He remembered what it was like to feel her grow hot with desire … desire he created.
Shaking the thought away, he leaned over and whispered, “Look, Grandmother couldn’t hide a microdot from anybody if her life depended on it, and you’re certainly not fooling me. Now, what is going on? Where did you two go?”
Jill glanced sharply at him, not quite hiding a moment of panic in her gaze. “Sightseeing. Lettice got tired of waiting for you. She wanted to move on. It’s no big deal, Rick.”
“The two of you in a strange city—”
She rolled her eyes. “You make us sound like ‘innocents abroad.’ It’s the nineties, Rick, and we’re perfectly capable of finding our way around.”
He lost his patience. “Damn it all, Jill. The car is kilometers away in a car park, and the buses are jammed and the taxis near impossible to get with the strike. What if we had missed each other here? What if either of you were in trouble? How could you have let my grandmother just wander off like that? Why didn’t you come back for me?”
“I apologize.”
He gaped at her, the righteous anger going right out of his sails.
“I apologize,” she said in a firm voice. “I hadn’t realized you would be so upset about it.”
“What’s he upset about?” Lettice asked, as they settled at the end of the line behind her.
“Nothing,” Rick muttered, suddenly feeling like that mother hen. He’d had every right to be worried, but to his disgust, the two women had out-manuevered him. It was getting to be a habit.
Grahame’s scathing comments that morning about his abrupt trip to London echoed in his mind. He hadn’t left the farm and surrounding area in years—until Jill. Then he had latched onto the first excuse to get away. He should have stayed home and away from intoxicating women. They were trouble.
In a little form of revenge once they were in the museum, he insisted his grandmother have her picture taken with the Benny Hill statue. Lettice frowned, providing a perfect counterpoint to Benny’s saluting Fred Scuttle character.
Jill ducked her head and chuckled.
“You’re next,” he said, delighted to hear her laughter again.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” she said, backing away from him and the photographer. She backed right into Elvis’s guitar. “Just what I needed. A rude awakening.”
“Come on,” he cajoled, realizing she was cheering up. The color was back in her cheeks, and her eyes were sparkling.
“Only if you have your picture taken with Benny,” she said.
“But Jill, I’m not the tourist here, you are.” Laughing, he managed to grab hold of her arm and pull her forward. “You can have all your friends back home try and guess who’s the real wax statue.”
She made a face. “How genteel of you, Rick. Remind me to spike your tea later.”
He laughed. He wouldn’t care if she did. It was good to see her relaxing and cheerful again.
Her mood lasted through the Grand Hall, especially when he “innocently” leaned against a pillar in an attempt to fool people by looking like another statue. There were several of them that looked just like ordinary tourists, taking a rest on a bench or gazing at an exhibit.
Still, as they continued through the wax museum, he felt as if somebody had forgotten to let him in on a secret the rest of the world knew. Ever since they’d arrived Jill had clearly been upset, and his grandmother was acting half-senile. Just getting on a plane and crossing the Atlantic without telling anybody was completely out of character for her, and then there was the scene outside Madame Tussaud’s, when she nearly threw a temper tantrum over the possibility of not going to a wax museum. As he continued to wonder why they were being so secretive, the odd location of their rendezvous kept coming back to haunt him. A horrible notion floated through his mind. Even seeing a near perfect replica of Cher in her Academy Awards acceptance dress wasn’t enough to make him forget that this area was also known as London’s medical district. Harley Street was only a few blocks away, and it still held some of the best specialists in the world. Not everyone who consulted with them was British.
When he saw his grandmother engaged in morbid conversation with an elderly French couple over the death masks of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, he seized the opportunity and Jill’s arm. He pulled her farther into the dank humid “dungeon” in the basement of Madame Tussaud’s, until they were almost in the walk-through exhibit of Jack the Ripper’s Victorian London.
“My grandmother is sick, isn’t she?” he demanded. “That’s why you two came over on a moment’s notice. That’s why you’re so hot to see my father, right?”
Jill’s mouth dropped open. Rick knew he’d completely surprised her with his conclusions.
“I—I … ah … Don’t be ridiculous!” she exclaimed. “Lettice is as healthy as a horse.”
“On the outside. It’s … Jill, is she losing her faculties?” He wished he hadn’t chosen such a dim spot for their conversation. He couldn’t quite make out the nuances of her expression.
“No, she’s not losing her faculties. Just because she got her times mixed up for the visit is no reason to think that. Anyone could make a mistake.”
But Jill had hesitated with her answer, enough to confirm his conclusions. His heart sank.
“You better not say anything to her about what you’re thinking,” she added, shaking her head. “She’ll probably shoot you on the spot.”
More confirmation, he thought, taking a deep breath. He knew his grandmother would be ashamed to admit she was ill. Not until she had to. Obviously, Jill was a more trusted companion than he’d thought. And just as obviously, she had been told not to say anything. He admired her honor.
He admired a lot of things about Jill, he mused, unconsciously caressing her silken skin. He ought to let go of her. He really should. He’d promised they wouldn’t … yet how he ached to taste her once more. She stared up at him, her eyes wide and unreadable. He leaned closer.…
“Really, couldn’t you two find a better spot for necking than in the middle of Tussaud’s?”
Rick spun around to find Lettice grinning at them. The French couple strolled by, the mist not quite hiding their smiles of amusement.
“We weren’t necking,” he said in exasperation, almost snatching his fingers away from Jill’s arm.
“Too bad. Things looked pretty hot there.”
“Keep it up, Lettice,” Jill said, “and I’ll show everyone back home that picture of you with Benny Hill.”
Lettice sniffed. “I was just commenting on how you two looked huddled together like that.”
“Come on,” Rick said, taking Lettice’s elbow. It was hard to believe his bright vital grandmother was slowly succumbing to a grave illness. They’d get her well again. They had to. He forced himself to be natural. “The exhibit of the world’s worst criminals is up ahead. The perfect place for you, I’m sure.”
Jill choked, then cleared her throat. “Sorry.”
Rick nodded, his senses abruptly caught by the scent of her perfume.
And the way she moved. And the way her lips curved into a slow smile. He wished they had been caught necking.
Of all the mystifying things he’d had to cope with lately, Jill was the most intriguing.
Her brain had been working overtime, Jill thought, slowly letting out her breath as she followed Rick and Lettice. It wasn’t healthy to have a brilliantly insane idea at the same moment Rick was touching her. Controlling her wild urges to throw her arms around him and plaster her body to his was a full-time occupation, especially when he looked as if he actually would kiss her. She’d nearly blown all of her circuits when she remembered the paste copies of the crowns of England the royal wax family had been wearing in the Grand Hall. Thank heavens Lettice had come along at precisely that moment, drawing his attention away. And giving Jill a chance to explore her brilliantly insane idea.
Mr. Havilan had turned out to be a fussy little man with a fussy mustache and a fussy mind. He was absolutely no help. Lettice had nearly got them thrown out of the man’s office when she’d called him a “pencil-pusher.”
“I am not a pencil-pusher, madam!” he had snapped, bristling. “I cannot help because Miss Daneforth’s mother signed a bill of sale, making the transaction perfectly legitimate. If we had proof he’s a swindler, I would be happy to act. At the moment, I can only alert the authorities that he may be of questionable character and to watch out for him in the future.”
Mr. Havilan hadn’t told Jill anything she hadn’t already figured out. But that still hadn’t softened the blow.
Still, she had her diamond necklace and the paste of the emerald necklace, a copy so well made that a jeweler could be fooled without his loupe. Not only would she get the proof Mr. Havilan needed, but she had an idea how to get the Daneforth necklace back and drive the Colonel crazy while she was doing it. Provided the Colonel could be tempted into swindling daughter as well as mother. She had a feeling he wouldn’t be able to resist.
There was only one slight problem. She had to find the Colonel first. It couldn’t be that hard, she decided. After all, Texas was twice the size of England and Pat Garrett had found Billy the Kid.