“Well?” Matthew’s smile was challenging, inviting, daring her to disagree with his analysis.
Naturally, she did. “You’re delusional!”
“You like to fling that charge around.” He placed both his hands on her waist and held her lightly. “Well, I disproved it last night and I can do it again right now.”
She could have moved away from him without exerting any force and with hardly a shred of effort. But she stayed right where she was. “I won’t let you kiss me again!”
He grinned wolfishly. “Now that’s an invitation if I ever heard one.”
“No, it isn’t. But you’re certainly vain enough to think so!”
“You’re flattering me again.” He lowered his head and kissed the soft lobe of her right ear, then the sensitive skin behind it.
“And you’re...you’re demented!” He brushed her lips with his, briefly, almost experimentally. “The compliments just keep on coming. I’ve always heard about the fabled charm of Southern women and now I know it’s not a myth. You steel magnolias really do know how to make a man feel like he’s a king.”
“Stop making fun of me,” she ordered breathlessly. “You’ll notice I’m not laughing.”
“Believe me, baby, I’m not laughing, either. In fact, I’ve never felt less like laughing in my life.” His voice held a desperate ring. He scooped up a fistful of her long, dark hair, baring her neck. “Too bad, because I think the joke is on me.”
His tongue touched the white softness of her neck. He stifled a groan of pleasure at the feel and taste of her skin.
Hannah closed her eyes. His lips were warm and soft, and she ached, remembering the sensual pressure of them against hers. She wanted it again; she wanted his mouth open and hot and covering hers. She wanted his tongue deep inside her mouth, rubbing hers, making her squirm with liquid desire. Yearning swelled inside her, so strong and heavy she could scarcely breathe.
Matthew pulled her deeply into his embrace. She went willingly, raising her mouth to his as he lowered his to hers.
Five
Their lips came together lightly, fleetingly, rubbing and lifting, before touching again. They savored the contact, repeating the seductive sequence again and again. Hannah trembled with anticipation, waiting for his mouth to take hers in a deep, hard and intimate kiss, the kind they’d shared while dancing, while sitting in the van with the rain pounding around them.
But the hungrily awaited kiss never happened. Out of nowhere came three young boys about eleven or twelve years old, roaring down the sidewalk on their bikes. They were laughing and cussing and one of them careered into Matthew and Hannah, knocking them into the wall of the hotel. Matthew took the brunt of the hit but maintained his balance, his body sheltering Hannah, protecting her from the full impact of the bike and the wall. She clung to him gasping, knowing that if he hadn’t been holding her, she would’ve been knocked to the ground.
At the same time, another young biker swooped down and snatched Hannah’s umbrella, which Matthew had set on the ground nearby. Whooping with triumph, he rode off with it. Moments later, a gust of wind caught the open umbrella like a sail, and the velocity nearly unseated the young rider. The boy let the umbrella go and it flew into the street, where an oncoming car promptly ran over it, smashing it to smithereens.
“You little hoodlums!” Matthew shouted. His body was taut with fury, his black eyes flashing with rage as he started down the sidewalk after them. “You’d better pray I don’t catch you because if I do—”
“Matthew, don’t.” Hannah hung onto him, holding him back. “Let them go. They’re just kids.”
The boys laughed, called a few taunts over their shoulders and then sped off, causing a party of senior citizens to scatter. The seniors turned to glare at the boys, who had already vanished around the corner.
“They’re juvenile sociopaths!” Matthew grated.
Another car drove over the remains of Hannah’s umbrella.
Hannah heaved a sigh. “Well, you just had your first run-in with some of the Polks. Literally. Now you have a story to contribute next time everybody’s hanging out at Fitzgerald’s Bar and Grill, trashing the Polks.”
“Polk?” Matthew croaked. His face was suddenly, oddly ashen. “Those little thugs? Are you sure?”
Hannah nodded. “Absolutely sure. All the Polks have that dark hair and dark eyes and swarthy complexion. And of course, their behavior was a dead giveaway.”
“No other kids in town knock over pedestrians, grab things and then toss them in front of cars?” Matthew questioned grimly.
Chances were likely that those maddening little monsters who’d all but knocked him and Hannah down, who’d stolen her umbrella only to see it carelessly destroyed, were related to him. How closely? he wondered bleakly. Cousins, preferably distant? What if he had sisters and brothers who had kids, and those bicycle-riding young terrorists were his nephews? Suppose Jesse Polk, the man who’d fathered him at eighteen, was still reproducing at the ripe old age of fifty, and those brats were his kid brothers?
All of the prospects depressed him. He began to more fully understand the stigma of being a Polk in Clover. It was not a name and heritage to be proud of.
He gazed down at Hannah, who was staring at him, her wide gray eyes curious. “Are you all right?” he murmured huskily. She nodded her head. “I’m sorry,” he added, apologizing for his kinfolk and their atrocious behavior. He felt as if he owed the entire town an apology!
Hannah was perplexed. She couldn’t detect whether he was angry or sad. Or both. And his apology made no sense, unless he felt responsible for the loss of her umbrella. Perhaps he blamed himself because he’d been the one to put it on the ground for the young Polks to grab.
“It doesn’t matter,” she assured him. “The umbrella was cheap, only a few dollars. It’s certainly no great loss. I bought it at the five-and-ten because I’m always losing umbrellas. I’d never invest in an expensive one.”
The way he was staring at her made her nervous. The umbrella incident had clearly rattled something within him. Certainly he minded the young Polks’ transgressions far more than she did. She realized once again how very little she knew about him. Far too little to be allowing him the intimacies she was freely granting! A chill of danger tingled along her spine, and this time it alarmed her instead of exciting her.
“I—I’d better get to my shop right away,” she said uneasily. “The rain is starting to come down harder.” She scurried off, leaving the shelter of the hotel portico, feeling the need to put distance between them.
But Matthew followed her down the block to Yesterdays. Though not soaked, they were both wet, before they ducked under the striped awning protecting the entrance to the shop. She unlocked the door and went inside, Matthew right behind her. He trailed her to the counter, where she removed her cup of coffee from the bag and took several bracing gulps of the hot brew.
“So this is your shop.” Matthew glanced around him, his eyes resting on the tall, narrow nineteenth-century dresser decorated with delicately detailed hand-painted flowers, then moving to the petite eighteenth-century rosewood reception desk.
Both were rare and among the most valuable pieces in the shop.
Hannah watched him nervously. Was he taking inventory of her inventory?
“Nice-looking stuff,” Matthew remarked. “I’ve seen a lot of beat-up junk labeled antiques. The word bestows a certain cachet and an excuse to charge exorbitant prices. But you aren’t running that scam here.”
“I’ve never run a scam anywhere!” Hannah said fervently. If he were entertaining thoughts of recruiting her as a fence for his purloined booty, she wanted to quash the notion immediately.
Matthew wandered into the other room, and Hannah shifted position behind the register so she could watch him. He studied the toy soldiers, lifting each tiny figure to admire the rightly colored uniforms and old-style weapons more closely. Then he noticed the dolls. He picked one up and stared at it.
> Hannah fairly flew into the other room. He’d unerringly chosen the most valuable doll in her shop, a Bye-Lo Baby, circa 1922, with a porcelain head and muslin cloth body, its blue-green glass eyes and dainty painted features in mint condition.
“My mother had a doll exactly like this,” he told her. “It was dressed in a christening gown and she kept it in a carved wooden doll cradle. It was one of the few things she owned that was off-limits to me as a kid. Not that I had any interest in dolls whatsoever. I was strictly a toy-car-and-truck kind of guy.”
He laid the baby doll in Hannah’s arms. She relaxed and smiled up at him. “It’s a wonderful doll.” She was always ready to discuss one of her major interests. “The Bye-Lo Babies were extremely popular in the twenties. The first Christmas they were released, people lined up for them, and the doll became known as the Million Dollar Baby.”
“Sort of a forerunner to our toy fads today, huh? Who would think that people would be chasing after dolls back then?”
Hannah set the doll back in its wicker carriage. “One thing I’ve learned from talking to my grandmother and from the antiques business in general is that people aren’t all that different, regardless of the age they lived in.”
“Maybe not. But the ages sure are different. Imagine someone from seventeenth-century Clover being set down here in the town today. Or vice-versa.” Matthew grinned. “Imagine if you and I were transported back in time to the Clover of 1795?”
“The Farleys would be there. And they’d probably accuse me of not behaving with the proper decorum befitting the family’s position in the town,” Hannah added wryly.
“I wonder if the Polks would be around.” Matthew mused.
“Probably. One legend has it they’re descended from pirates who sneaked into the country while the king of England still ruled the Carolinas. Another has them as escaped convicts who stowed away and then arrived in Clover to carry on as usual.”
“How would the young Polks terrorize the town back in those days?” Matthew mused. “By placing burrs under the saddles of the horses?”
“How about untethering the horses’ bridles and stampeding them through the center of town?” suggested Hannah.
They both laughed.
“Of course, the Wyndhams would still be the wealthy patricians, ensconced in their mansion,” Matthew continued. “Probably the same stuff that was there then is still there now, except today it’s priceless. Wouldn’t you like to get your hands on some of those things for your shop?”
“No!” Hannah cried. “I—I mean, they’d never sell it.” She ran her hand nervously through her thick dark hair. “And I would never, ever deal in stolen goods,” she added with righteous fervor.
“Very commendable of you,” Matthew said dryly.
He walked back into the main room and she followed him. Was it her imagination or was he eyeing her new cash register, a computerized high-tech wonder, with uncommon interest?
“I, uh, I don’t keep much money in the cash register overnight,” Hannah felt compelled to inform him. “Some change, a few bills. I don’t like keeping a lot of cash around in case of—of robbery.”
“You make a bank deposit every day?”
“If I’ve made enough sales.” Hannah’s hands were shaking as she tore off a piece of banana nut muffin. “I don’t have any set routine. I vary the time I go to the bank every day, if I go at all. Sometimes I hardly sell anything and the day’s receipts don’t warrant a deposit.”
Matthew glanced at her sharply. “You’re awfully jumpy. What’s the matter?”
“Maybe I don’t like being grilled on my banking habits!” Hannah snapped. She stuffed half the muffin in her mouth to prevent further indiscretion.
Matthew studied her. “I’ve been thinking about something you said earlier.”
“What did I say?” she demanded warily.
“You mentioned that everybody last night was trashing the Polks. And you were right, they were trashing them, each person trying to top the other’s tale about how low-down and reprehensible that family is.” His dark eyes were intense and piercing and never left her face. “Everybody had something bad to say—that is, everybody but you. You didn’t say a word against the Polks last night at the party or today, not even when those kids swiped your umbrella and practically knocked you over. Why not?”
Hannah swallowed convulsively. The muffin hit her stomach like a ball of lead. She was utterly confused. “They’re just kids,” she reminded him again. “What they did was hardly the crime of the century.”
In truth, she was grateful the kids had come along when they did. In broad daylight, she had been kissing Matthew—and wanting to do much more—right in front of the Clover Street Hotel in the middle of downtown Clover’s busiest street. A most shocking breach of good judgment and common sense!
She’d been lucky it was the Polk children who had interrupted them and not the Reverend Mr. Smith or Father Peterson or, worst of all, Jeannie Potts, who would’ve promptly reported what she’d seen to everyone who set foot in the Beauty Boutique.
“Do you know any of the Polks?” Matthew persisted.
He couldn’t stop himself from seeking information from the only person he’d met in town who seemed to hold a nonjudgmental attitude toward his birth father’s family. Or perhaps she was merely indifferent? Perhaps a highborn Farley did not bother to have an opinion about the downtrodden Polks. Matthew didn’t mind. Indifference was preferable to the scathing indictments served up by everybody else.
“I know some by sight,” Hannah replied, puzzled by his interest. Where was this conversation leading? She couldn’t begin to guess. “I went to school with some, although by high school we were on different academic tracks.”
“You were headed toward college. They were headed toward prison,” he said flatly.
“Something like that. The Polk girls tended to get pregnant and drop out. The Polk boys tended to drop out and get in trouble with the law.”
“What about the adults? Surely not everybody in that family is stupid or lazy or amoral. Don’t some of them work for an honest living?”
“I don’t know,” she replied uncertainly.
“Of course you don’t. Nice girls from good families are taught to assiduously avoid the town pariahs.”
“You sound bitter. Did you—” Hannah took a deep breath. She simply had to ask him. “Did you grow up in a family like the Polks, Matthew? Is that how...is that why you ended up—” She paused, her gaze meeting and holding his. “Is that why you do what you do?”
He made no reply but she watched his expression turn guarded and tense.
She was anxious, but there could be no turning back now. Confirming the information she’d gathered about him, no matter how painful, was preferable to this pretense they were maintaining between them. “Matthew, it’s time to drop the subterfuge, to stop dancing around the truth. I know what you are and what you do. On some level, you probably already know that I know.”
She was so very serious, so earnest. Her lips were slightly parted, her gray eyes shining with concern. Matthew gazed at her. She almost took his breath away.
“You know who I am and what I do?” he rasped.
“Yes. No more games, Matthew. I know. I—I looked in your bag yesterday.”
His face hardened. “What did you see?” He stepped behind the counter and caught her shoulders with his hands. “Tell me.”
Hannah refused to cower. She would not be bullied by anyone. “I saw the book about the first families of South Carolina. And I saw the map marking the Wyndham chapters, where you circled the location of their estate with red ink.” She squared her shoulders, no easy task under his heavy hands. “I know you’re either a jewel thief or a cat burglar, Matthew. I know you’re in town to hit the Wyndham estate and pull a—a heist.”
She flinched, dreading his reaction. What if he turned violent? Fear gripped her.
“A heist?” Matthew echoed. “A cat burglar?”
; The one thing she did not expect him to do was burst into laughter.
But he did. He dropped his hands from her shoulders and leaned against the counter, laughing long and loud. He laughed so hard that tears filled his eyes and he had to clutch his aching middle because the force of his laughter had strained his stomach muscles. Hannah watched, her face flushing, her expression growing more mutinous the longer and harder he laughed. She didn’t need him to tell her with words that she had spectacularly misinterpreted the evidence in his bag; his unrestrained peals of laughter said it all. Even more embarrassing, as she thought back to the evidence on which she’d based her theory—the books, the map, the Wyndham clues—was how ridiculously flimsy it all actually was. She was silently grateful that she hadn’t gone running to Sheriff Maguire with her suspicions. He would’ve never let her forget it!
Finally, Matthew calmed down, his laughter subsiding, though he grinned widely every time he looked at her. “I guess I should be flattered.” His dark eyes still gleamed with mirth. “In movies and on TV, jewel thieves and cat burglars are usually romantic figures, the suave, sophisticated Cary Grant or Robert Wagner types. Basically good guys with a charming flaw or two. I’m glad you didn’t cast me as a serial killer since I had books on—”
“I know,” Hannah muttered. “I saw them.”
“Did you share your suspicions with anybody else or did you plan to stop my...heist all by yourself?”
“I didn’t tell anybody or make any plans.” She folded her arms across her chest and glared at him. “I was mulling things over. And I still have a few unanswered questions about—”
“By all means ask. I can’t wait to hear them.” He looked ready to succumb to another fit of laughter.
Hannah fumed. “Why did you mark the Wyndham estate on that map? Why did you write Alexandra Wyndham’s name at the bottom of the page in the book? And what are you doing with a gun? I saw it when I got your shirts from the closet.”
The Engagement Party Page 9