by Nora Roberts
Pride flared. “You’re a liar. You wanted me.”
He gave her a smile calculated to insult. He had that much self-control left. “Babe, if I’ve learned anything in the past ten years, it’s to take what I want.” His hands curled into fists at his sides, but his eyes stayed lightly amused. “Weave your little fantasy around your pin-striped college boys. Now I’ve got things to do before the next show.”
He closed the door smartly in her face, then leaned heavily against it.
Close call, Callahan, he thought, closing his eyes. In more ways than one. Because his aches were demanding attention, he pushed away to search out some aspirin. He had to go see Cobb, and he would be armed with two thousand dollars and a clear head.
No one knew the value of timing better than Maximillian Nouvelle. He waited patiently through the second show, making no comment, voicing no criticism. He firmly overrode both Lily’s and Roxanne’s objections when Luke lowered himself into the iron box for the late audience. Max was in a position to know that if a man didn’t face his personal demons, he would be swallowed whole by them.
At home, he politely invited Luke into the parlor for a nightcap and moved inside to pour two snifters of brandy before the invitation could be accepted or declined.
“I’m not much in the mood for a drink.” Luke’s stomach swayed sickly at the thought of alcohol.
Max merely settled into his favorite wing chair, warming the bowl of the snifter in his hands. “No? Well, then you can keep me company while I have mine.”
“It’s been a long night,” Luke began, hanging back.
“It certainly has.” Max lifted one long-fingered hand, gesturing to a chair. “Sit.”
The power was still there, the same force that had once compelled a twelve-year-old boy to wait by a darkened stage. Luke sat, took out a cigar. He only ran it between his fingers as he waited for Max to speak.
“There are all manner of methods of suicide.” Max’s voice was mild, like a man settling back to tell a story. “But I have to admit that I consider any and all of them a form of cowardice. However.” Gesturing with one hand, he smiled benignly. “A choice of that nature is highly personal. Would you agree?”
Luke was lost. Since he’d learned long ago to be cautious with words when Max was laying a trap, he merely shrugged.
“Eloquently put,” Max said with the bite of sarcasm that had Luke’s eyes narrowing.
“If you contemplate the choice again,” Max continued after a sip of brandy and an “ah” of appreciation for its flavor, “I would suggest a quicker, cleaner method, such as the use of the handgun on the top shelf of my bedroom closet.” Before Luke could do more than blink in surprise, Max had lunged forward, one hand still delicately cupped around the glass bowl, the other dragging hard on the collar of Luke’s shirt. When their faces were close, Max spoke with a quietly intense fury that mirrored the look in his eyes. “Don’t ever use my stage again, or the illusion of magic, for something as cowardly as ending your life.”
“Max, for God’s sake.” Luke felt the strong, wiry fingers close around his throat, squeeze off his words, then release.
“I’ve never lifted a hand to you.” Now the control that had cloaked Max through the second show and beyond began to crack so that he had to rise and turn away as he spoke. “A decade now, and I’ve kept that promise I made to you. I’m warning you now, I will break it. If you ever do such a thing again, I will beat you sensible.” He turned back, measuring Luke with dark, gleaming eyes. “Naturally, I’d be forced to have Mouse hold you down while I did so, but I promise you I know where to strike to hurt a man most.”
The outrage came first. Luke sprang to his feet with it, furious dares and denials hot on his tongue. It was then he saw in the flash of the lamplight that Max’s eyes weren’t gleaming with temper, but with tears. It humbled him more than a thousand beatings would have done.
“I shouldn’t have done the bit tonight,” he said quietly. “My timing was off. I had problems I wasn’t able to push out of my mind. I knew it, but I couldn’t . . . I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, Max, I swear it. It was stupidity, and pride.”
“Amounts to the same, doesn’t it?” Max drank again to clear the thickness from his voice. “You drove Lily to tears. That’s difficult for me to forgive.”
For the first time in years, Luke felt that clammy fear—that he would be turned away. That he would lose what had become so precious to him. “I didn’t think.” He knew it was a weak excuse. Part of him wanted to pour out his reasons. But if he could do nothing else, he could spare them that. “I’ll talk to her. Try to make it right.”
“I expect you will.” Calmer now, Max reached out to lay a hand on Luke’s shoulder. There was comfort in that, and a wealth of understanding that needed no words. “Is it a woman?”
Luke thought of Roxanne, and how his hands burned to touch her. That had been part of what had clogged his brain, topped off by Cobb and too much drink. He could only shrug.
“I could tell you that no woman is worth your life, or your peace of mind. But of course, that would be a lie.” His lips curved now, and his fingers squeezed lightly. “There are some, and a man is both blessed and cursed to find them. Would you like to talk about it?”
“No,” Luke managed in a strangled voice. The idea of discussing his dark and driving desire for Roxanne with her father had him hovering between a laugh and a scream. “I’ve got it under control.”
“Very well. Perhaps you’d like to hear about the next job.”
“Yes. Fine.”
Satisfied the air was clear once more, Max sat again, settled back. “LeClerc has come across some interesting information. A certain high-ranking politician keeps a mistress in the rich suburbs of Maryland near our nation’s capital.” Max paused to drink. Interest caught, Luke reached for his own snifter. His stomach no longer felt like a mine field. “Our public servant is not above accepting bribes—a particularly foul way of making a living in my estimation, but there you have it. In any case, he’s wise enough not to use his bonuses to inflate his own life-style and cause speculation. Instead, he quietly invests in jewelry and art, and keeps his investments with his mistress.”
“She must be a hell of a lay.”
“Precisely.” Max inclined his head, brushed a finger over his luxuriant moustache. “It’s difficult to imagine why a man who would cheat on his wife and his constituents would then trust the woman who helps him cheat with nearly two million in trinkets.” Max sighed a bit, as always baffled and delighted with the capriciousness of human nature. “I would hardly admit this in front of the delightful ladies of our house, but a man is not led by the nose, but by the dick.”
Luke grinned. “I thought the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.”
“Oh, it is, dear boy, it is. As long as it’s by way of the crotch. We are, after all, an animal with intellect, but an animal nonetheless. We bury ourselves in a woman, don’t we? Quite literally. How many among us can resist that illusion of returning to the womb?”
Luke lifted a brow. “I wouldn’t say that was what was on my mind when I’m bouncing on a woman.”
Max swirled his brandy. It had been a roundabout way to get the boy to talk, but Max often preferred a circular route. “My point, Luke, is that at a certain stage—thank God—the intellect clicks off and the animal takes over. If you’re doing everything right, you’re not thinking at all. Thought comes before—in the attraction, the pursuit, the seduction, the romance. Once a man’s inside a woman, once she surrounds him, the mind turns off and control is forfeited. I suppose that’s why sex is more dangerous than war, and much more desirable.”
Luke could only shake his head. “It’s not that difficult to enjoy the experience, and keep your mind focused.”
“Obviously you haven’t found the right woman. But you’re young yet,” Max said gently. “Now.” He leaned forward. “About our trip to Washington.”
It took six months in the pla
nning. Details needed to be refined and polished as carefully as the stage show the Nouvelles would perform at the Kennedy Center.
In April, when the cherry blossoms were in rich and fragrant bloom, Luke traveled to wealthy Potomac, Maryland. Disguised with a pin-striped suit, a blond wig and a trimmed beard, he made the rounds with an eager real estate agent. With a clipped Boston accent, he assumed the identity of Charles B. Holderman, the representative of a wealthy New England industrialist who was interested in a home in D.C.’s elegant suburbs.
He appreciated the trip for what it was, and for the added benefit of distance from Roxanne. She’d taken her revenge in the sneakiest and most effective of ways. By acting as though nothing had ever happened.
Luke hadn’t fully relaxed in months, and looked on the trip as a kind of working vacation. There was the added benefit of having a suite of rooms in the quietly dignified Madison, indulging in tourism—he particularly enjoyed the Smithsonian’s array of gems—and simply being alone.
He toured the listed houses with the real estate agent, hemmed and hawed over building lots and locations. The questions he asked as the representative of a perspective buyer paralleled what he needed to know as a potential thief.
Who lived in the neighborhood and what did they do? Were there any loud dogs? Police patrols? What company would be recommended for installing a security system? And so on.
Later that day Luke approached Miranda Leesburg straight on. He strolled up her flower-lined flagstone walk and knocked on her oak and stained-glass front door.
He already knew what to expect. He’d studied the pictures of the sharp and sleek thirty-something blonde with a killer body and blue ice eyes. With resignation, he heard the high-pitched barking of a pair of dogs. He’d known she had two Pomeranians, it was just too bad they were yappers.
When she opened the door he was surprised to see the sleek blond hair pulled ruthlessly back in a ponytail and the sharp-featured, canny face damp with sweat. There was a towel around Miranda’s neck. The rest of that lush, boldly curved body was snugged into a scant, two-piece exercise suit in vivid purple.
She scooped up both dogs, soothing them against breasts that rose like snowy white moons above the thin swatch of spandex.
Luke didn’t lick his lips—but he thought about it. He began to understand why the good senator kept this little prize tucked away.
In photographs she was lovely in a cool, detached and obvious way. In person she shot out enough sex appeal to strike a man blind at sixty paces. Luke was much closer than that.
“I beg your pardon.” He smiled and spoke with Charles’s Yankee accent. “I’m sorry to disturb you.” The dogs were still yapping and he had to pitch his voice over the din. “I’m Holderman, Charles Holderman.”
“Yes?” She looked him up and down, much as she might if he were a sculpture she was contemplating in a gallery. “I’ve seen you around the neighborhood.”
“My employer is interested in some property in the area.” Luke smiled again. Holderman’s proper maroon tie was beginning to strangle him.
“Sorry, my house isn’t on the market.”
“No, I realize that. I wonder if I might have a moment of your time? We could speak out here if you’d be more comfortable.”
“Why would I be more comfortable outside?” She arched one delicately sculpted brow as she sized him up. Young, well built, repressed. She bent down to set the dogs on the polished hardwood—the movement put a marvelous strain on the spandex—and gave them both a little pat on the rump to send them skittering off. With her lover out of town for nearly two weeks on a fund-raising tour, she was bored. Charles B. Holderman looked like an interesting diversion. “What did you want to speak to me about?”
“Ah, landscaping.” He managed to keep his eyes from skimming down to the slopes of her breasts. “My employer has very specific requirements for grounds and gardens. Yours comes quite close to meeting them. I wonder, did you construct the rock garden in your side yard yourself?”
She laughed, patting the towel to her breasts, her gleaming midriff. “Darling, I don’t know a pansy from a petunia. I use a service.”
“Ah. Then perhaps you could give me a name, a number.” The ever efficient Holderman took a slim, leather-bound book from his breast pocket. “I’d appreciate it very much.”
“I suppose I could help you out.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Come on in. I’ll dig up the card.”
“That’s very kind of you.” Luke put the book away and filled his mind instead with the details of the foyer, the front stairs, the size and number of rooms off the hallway. “Your home is lovely.”
“Yeah, I had it redecorated a few months ago.”
It was all pastels and floral prints. Restful, feminine. The lush body in the vivid slashes of purple added a shock of sex. Like passion in a meadow.
Luke paused to distract himself and admired a Corot painting. “Exquisite,” he said when Miranda looked questioningly over her shoulder.
“You into paintings?” She pouted a little as she turned back to his side to study it with him.
“Yes, I’m quite an admirer of art. Corot, with his dreamy style, is a favorite of mine.”
“Corot, right.” She didn’t give a damn about the style, but she knew the value of the painting to the last cent. “I can never figure out why people want to paint trees and bushes.”
Luke smiled again. “Perhaps to make people wonder who or what is behind them.”
She laughed at that. “That’s good, Charles, very good. I keep a card file in the kitchen. Why don’t you join me for something cold while I find you your landscaper?”
“It would be a pleasure.”
The kitchen carried through the soft, female charm of the rest of the house he’d seen. Potted African violets sat in sunbeams on mauve and ivory tiled counters. The appliances were streamlined and unobtrusive. A round glass table with a quartet of padded ice-cream-parlor chairs stood in the center of the room on a pale rose rug. Incongruously, the hard-edged pulse of Eddie Van Halen’s screaming guitar spouted through the kitchen speakers.
“I was working out when you knocked.” Miranda moved to the refrigerator for a pitcher of lemonade. “I like to keep in shape, you know?” She set the pitcher down and skimmed her hands over her hips. “That kind of music makes me sweat.”
Luke rolled his tongue inside his mouth to keep it from hanging out and answered as Holderman would. “I’m sure it’s stimulating.”
“You bet.” She chuckled to herself as she took out two glasses and poured. “Sit down, Charles. I’ll find that card for you.”
She set the glasses on the table with a quick chink of glass to glass, then brushed lightly against him as she walked over to a drawer. Her musky scent went straight to his grateful loins. Loins, he thought now, he hadn’t been able to put to good use since he’d passed out courtesy of Jack Daniel’s on top of Roxanne.
Down boy, he thought and straightened the knot of his tie before reaching for his drink.
“Beautiful day,” he said conversationally as she rummaged through the drawer. “How fortunate that you can be home to enjoy it.”
“Oh, my time’s pretty much my own. I own a little boutique in Georgetown. Keeps the wolf from the door, you might say, but I have a manager that handles the day-to-day nuisances.” She took a business card from the drawer and stood flipping the end against her palm. “Are you married, Charles?”
“No. Divorced.”
“Me too.” She smiled, pleased. “I discovered I like having the house, and my life, to myself. Just how long will you be in the area?”
“Oh, only a day or two longer, I’m afraid. Whether or not my employer purchases property here, my business will be completed.”
“Then it’s back to . . .”
“Boston.”
“Hmm.” That was good. In fact, it was perfect. If he’d been staying longer, she would have dismissed him with the drink and the landscaper’s card. As it
was, he was the answer to a long and frustrating two weeks. Every so often—every so discreetly often—Miranda liked to change partners and dance.
She didn’t know him, and neither did the senator. A quick, anonymous fuck would do a lot more for her state of mind than an hour on the damn Nautilus.
“Well . . .” She slid her hand down to rub it lightly over her crotch. “You could say you’ll be—in and out.”
Luke set down his glass before it slid out of his hand. “In a manner of speaking.”
“Since you’re here now.” Watching him, she slipped the business card down into the triangle of her spandex bikini. “Why don’t you take what you need.”
Luke debated for nearly a heartbeat. It wasn’t going precisely the way he’d imagined. But, as Max was wont to say, an ounce of spontaneity was worth a pound of planning. “Why don’t I?” He rose and, moving much faster than she’d given him credit for, hooked a finger under the slanted line of spandex. She was hot and wet as a geyser.
Even as she arched back in shock, the first lusty cry tumbling from her lips, he’d dragged the material down. In two quick moves, he’d freed himself and plunged violently into her. The first orgasm took her by surprise. Damned if he’d looked that clever.
“Oh, Christ!” Her eyes popped wide with pleasure. Then his hands had cupped her hips and had lifted her up in surprisingly strong arms so that her legs were wrapped around his waist. She managed a few gargled gasps and held on for the ride of her life.
He watched her. His blood was pumping hot and fast, his body was steeped in the velvet lightning that was sex. But his mind—that was clear enough so that he could see the faint lines around her eyes, the quick darts of her tongue. He knew the dogs had scrambled in, nervous and curious at the sounds their mistress made. They were crouched under the glass table, yapping.
Van Halen was wailing on the speakers. Luke set his rhythm to theirs, down and dirty. He could count her climaxes, and saw that the third he gave her left her dazed and limp. It was his pleasure to gift her with another before he succumbed to his own. But even as he reached flash point, he had enough control to keep her from rapping her head back against the white oak cabinet door—and enough to prevent her from snatching at his hair and dislodging the wig.