by Nora Roberts
“It’s a matter of fact and fantasy. I’m more comfortable with fact.”
“Too bad. I spent most of my life steeped in fantasy. You could say laboring over it.” She chose a radish rose from the buffet, crunched. “I prefer it to straight reality.”
“When you were an actress.”
Her laugh bubbled out, frothy as the wine. “Need I remind you, I’m a Conroy. I may not be on the legitimate stages these days, but I’m still an actress.” Leaning closer, she nipped teasingly at his earlobe. “If you ever decided to try the stage, I might be tempted to come out of retirement.”
The lance of heat arrowed straight down the center of his body. “Why don’t we just stick with who we are?”
“The world will never know what they missed.” She glanced down at his drink. “You don’t have to play designated driver, you know. We can cab back.”
“I’ll stay with this.” He reached out, cupped a hand under her chin. “I want a very clear head when I make love with you tonight.”
“Oh.” She lifted her own glass with an unsteady hand. “Well.”
He grinned. “Run out of lines, Conroy?”
“I . . . Ah . . .”
“Isadora!”
Jed saw a statuesque redhead poured into a glitter of green that slicked down a regal body, then frothed out in stiff fans from the knees to the ankles. As she bore down on them, she looked exotically like a ferocious mermaid.
Blessing Trixie’s timing, Dora let out a pent-up breath and turned to her mother. “Problem?”
“That caterer is a beast. God knows why I continue to hire him.” She aimed a look over her shoulder that could have melted steel. “He refused, absolutely refused, to listen to a word I said about the anchovy paste.”
Since it had been Will’s shift to keep their mother separated from the caterer, Dora took a quick glimpse around. Her little brother was, she decided, a dead man. “Where’s Will?”
“Oh, off with that pretty girl he brought with him from New York.” Trixie tossed up her hands. The movement sent the colored beads that dripped from her ears dancing. A catering crisis left her no time for remembering names. “The model.”
“Miss January,” Dora said under her breath.
“Now, the anchovy paste,” Trixie began. She drew in a deep breath, preparing to launch into an indignant speech.
“Mom, you haven’t met Jed.”
“Jed?” Distracted, Trixie patted her hair. Her face transformed when she took her first good look. Subtly, she angled her chin, swept her mink lashes and peered at Jed from under them. Flirting, in Trixie’s opinion, was an art. “I’m thrilled to meet you.”
Jed understood what was expected when he took her offered hand. He kissed her knuckles. “The pleasure’s mine, Mrs. Conroy.”
“Oh, Trixie, please.” She nearly crooned it. “Otherwise I’ll feel old and staid.”
“I’m sure that would be impossible. I saw you perform Hello Dolly last year. You were magnificent.”
Trixie’s smooth cheeks pinked with pleasure. “Oh, how very kind of you to say so. I do adore Dolly Levi, such a full, richly textured character.”
“You captured her perfectly.”
“Yes.” She sighed at the memory. “I like him, Dora. Tell me, Jed—my, you have very large hands, don’t you?”
“Mom.” Since he’d behaved so nicely, Dora took pity on him. “Jed’s the tenant Dad found for me.”
“The tenant—the tenant!” Instantly, maternal instincts outweighed flirtations. “Oh, my dear, dear boy!” Overcome with gratitude, Trixie threw her arms around Jed’s neck. She had a grip like a linebacker. “I am so completely, so irrevocably in your debt.”
Dora simply ran her tongue around her teeth when Jed shot her a helpless look.
“It was nothing,” he said, awkwardly patting Trixie’s back. “I just answered an ad.”
“You saved my darling Isadora from that horrible burglar.” Rearing back, Trixie kissed both of his cheeks. “We’ll never be able to repay you for chasing him away and keeping our little girl from being robbed.”
He narrowed his eyes at Dora over her mother’s heaving shoulders. Dora looked aside.
“I keep an eye on her,” Jed said meaningfully. “Don’t worry.”
“Worry is a mother’s lot, dear.” With a sad smile, Trixie sighed.
“There you are, passion flower.” In white tie and tails, Quentin swaggered up, still steady after keeping two bartenders hopping. He gave his wife a long, lingering kiss that had Jed’s brow raising. “I’ve come to claim my bride for a dance.”
“Of course, dear.” Trixie slipped her arms around him and they began to glide, tango style.
“Have you met the young man I picked out for Izzy?”
“Yes, just now.” On the turn, Trixie tossed back her head and beamed at Jed. He wouldn’t have been surprised if a rose had suddenly appeared between her teeth. “You have such excellent taste.”
“Izzy, show Jed around the theater. There’s more to our humble abode than a simple stage.” Quentin winked, dipped his wife, then tangoed her away.
“Passion flower?” Jed asked after a moment.
“It works for them.”
“Obviously.” He couldn’t remember ever seeing his parents exchange the most impersonal of embraces, much less a smoldering kiss. The only passion he had ever witnessed between them had been hurled insults and crockery.
“You never mentioned you’d been here before.”
“What?”
“To the theater,” she said, drawing his attention back to her. “Hello Dolly?”
“You didn’t ask.” He guided Dora away from the crowd near the bar. “You didn’t tell her, did you?”
“I don’t want to upset her. Don’t give me that look,” she snapped. “You saw how she acted when she thought about the break-in. Can you imagine what would happen if I told her some maniac held a gun on me?” When he didn’t respond, she tapped her foot. “I’m going to tell her, in my own way.”
“Your business,” Jed said, and took out a cigarette. “But if she catches wind of it from someone else, it’ll be worse.”
“I don’t want to think about it right now.” She snatched Jed’s cigarette, took one brisk puff, then handed it back. “I’ll show you around. The building’s mid-nineteenth-century. It used to be a popular music hall.” She headed away from the stage, down one of the narrow corridors. “It started getting run-down after vaudeville died, barely escaped the wrecking ball a couple of times. After—” She pushed open the door to a dressing room. Putting her hands on her hips, she watched Will untangle himself from a torrid embrace. “Desertion,” she said, “is a hanging offense.”
Will grinned and slipped his arm around a curvy woman in a tiny red dress. “Lorraine was helping me run lines. I’m up for a mouthwash commercial.”
“You were on duty, Will. I’ve had my shift and Lea doesn’t come on until after midnight.”
“Okay, okay.” With his date in tow, Will squeezed through the door. “Catch you later.”
Jed didn’t bother to disguise his admiration of Lorraine’s hips, which were swinging like a pendulum.
“Pop your eyes back in your head, Skimmerhorn,” Dora advised. “Someone might step on them.”
“In a minute.” He turned back to Dora when Lorraine had swiveled out of view. “His shift for what?” Jed asked.
“For keeping Mom out of the caterer’s hair. Come on, I’ll take you up to the fly floor. There’s a wicked view of the stage from there.”
As the evening wore on, Jed stopped questioning the fact that he was enjoying himself. Although he didn’t like crowds, had no use for parties and making conversation with strangers, he didn’t feel any impatient urges to leave early. When he ran into the Chapmans in the first balcony, he concluded that they were also enjoying themselves.
“Hey, Jed. Happy new year.” Mary Pat kissed him, then leaned on the rail again to watch the action below. “What a part
y. I’ve never seen anything like this.”
Jed checked out her view. A swarm of people, streams of color, blasts of noise. “The Conroys are—unique.”
“You’re telling me. I met Lea’s father. We jitterbugged.” Her face flushed with laughter. “I didn’t know I could jitterbug.”
“She didn’t have to do much more than hang on,” Brent commented. “That old guy can move.”
“He’s probably got enough fuel in him.” Jed caught a glimpse of Quentin below, with a party hat jauntily tilted on his head.
“Where’s Dora?” Brent asked. “I haven’t seen her since we got here.”
“She moves around. Indigo wanted to dance with her.”
“Indigo?” Mary Pat leaned farther over the balcony to wave back at strangers and toss confetti.
“Can’t miss him. He’s a giant, bald black guy in red leather.”
“Oh. Oh,” she repeated after her quick scan located him. “God, I wish I could dance like that.” She propped her elbows on the rail and moved her hips gently to the beat.
“Anything turn up yet?” Jed asked Brent.
“It’s early.” Brent nursed a beer. “We’re sending the picture around. If he’s got a sheet, we’ll have something after the holiday. I did some legwork myself, looking for a matchup on known sex offenders or B and E men. Nothing yet.” Brent looked down in his empty glass, adjusted his horn-rims. “Let’s go get a beer.”
“Oh, no you don’t.” Mary Pat popped up from the rail and grabbed Brent’s arm. “You’re going to dance with me, Lieutenant. It’s almost midnight.”
“Couldn’t we stay up here and neck?” Brent dragged his feet as his wife pulled him along. “Listen, Jed’ll dance with you.”
“I’m getting my own woman.”
By the time the three had managed to elbow and squeeze their way down to the orchestra level, the lead singer was shouting into the mike, holding up his hands for silence.
“Come on, everybody, listen up! We got one minute until zero hour, so find your significant other—or a handy pair of lips—and get ready to pucker up for the new year.”
Jed ignored the din and a couple of interesting proposals from solo women and cut through the crowd.
He saw her, stage right, laughing with her brother as they poured champagne into dozens of outstretched glasses.
She set down an empty and picked up another, turning to see that the band had full glasses to toast. And she saw him.
“Will.” With her eyes on Jed’s, she pushed the bottle at her brother. “You’re on your own.”
“There’ll be a stampede!” he shouted, but she was already walking to the edge of the stage.
“Get ready, people!” The singer’s voice boomed out over the theater. “Count with me now. Ten, nine . . .”
It felt as though she were moving in slow motion, through water, warm, silky water. Her heart beat hard and high in her chest.
“Eight, seven . . .”
She leaned down, put her hands on Jed’s shoulders. His gripped her waist.
“Six, five . . .”
The walls shook. She stepped off into the air, into the colorful rain of confetti, felt his muscles ripple against her as she combed a hand through his hair and hooked her legs around him.
“Four, three . . .”
Inch by inch she slid down his body, her eyes locked on his, her breath already quickened.
“Two, one . . .”
Her mouth opened to his, hot and hungry. Their twin sounds of pleasure were drowned out in an explosion of cheers. On an incoherent murmur, she changed the angle of the kiss and dived deeper, both hands fisted in his hair.
He continued to lower her from the stage to the ground, certain that something in him would explode—head, heart, loins. Even when she stood, her body remained molded to his in a way that gave him painful knowledge of every curve and valley.
She tasted more dangerous than whiskey, more effervescent than champagne. He understood that a man could be drunk when he had a woman in his system.
He took his mouth from hers but kept her firmly against him. Her eyes were half closed, her lips just parted. As he watched, her tongue slipped out to skim lightly over her lips, as if she wanted to absorb the lingering taste of him.
“Give me another,” she murmured.
But before he could, Quentin bounded up and swung an arm around each of them. “Happy new year, mes enfants.” With a tilt of his head, he pitched his voice so that it flowed like wine over the din. “ ‘Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.’ ”
“Tennyson,” Jed murmured, obscurely touched, and Quentin beamed at him.
“Quite right.” He kissed Dora, then Jed, with equal enthusiasm. Before Jed could adjust to the shock, Trixie descended on them.
“I love celebrations.” There were more kisses, lavishly given. “Will, come here and kiss your mother.”
Will obliged, leaping dramatically off the stage and catching his mother up in a theatrical dip. He kissed his father, then he turned to Jed.
Braced, Jed held his ground. “I don’t want to have to punch you.”
Will only grinned. “Sorry, we’re a demonstrative bunch.” Despite the warning, he gave Jed a hard, tipsy hug. “Here’s Lea and John.”
Thinking of survival, Jed stepped back, but found himself blocked by the stage. He gave up, accepting it philosophically when he was kissed by Lea and embraced by John—whom he’d yet to meet.
Watching it all, and the various reactions that flickered over his face, Dora laughed and found a full glass of champagne.
Here’s to you, Skimmerhorn. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
It took DiCarlo a long, agonizing time to die. Winesap had waited patiently, while doing his best to block out the thin calls for help, the delirious prayers and the babbling sobs.
He didn’t know how Finley had handled the servants. He didn’t want to know. But he had wished, several times during the interminable three-hour wait, that DiCarlo would do the decent thing and simply die.
Then, when dusk began to fall and there were no more sounds from outside the solarium, Winesap wished DiCarlo had taken longer, much longer.
He didn’t relish the task at hand.
Sighing, he went out of the house, past the sprawled body and across the south lawn toward a stone-sided toolshed. He had inquired, meekly, if a drop cloth or sheet of plastic might be available.
Following Finley’s instructions, Winesap located a large painter’s cloth, splattered with white. His back creaking from the weight, he shouldered the roll, returned to the garden and his grisly task.
It was easy to block the routine from his mind. He had only to imagine it was he who lay staring sightlessly at the deepening sky, and the entire process didn’t bother him overmuch.
He spread the cloth over the white stones. They were stained liberally with blood, sticky with it. And the flies . . . Well, all in all, Winesap mused, it was a gruesome bit of business.
Crouching, breath whistling through his teeth, Winesap rolled DiCarlo’s limp body over and over until it was nicely centered on the cloth.
He took a rest then. Physical labor always made him sweat profusely. He unfolded a handkerchief and mopped his dripping face and neck. Wrinkling his nose, he tossed the handkerchief down and rolled it under the body.
He sat again, careful to avoid bloodstains, and carefully removed DiCarlo’s wallet. He held it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger and decided to burn it, money and all, at the first opportunity.
With the resignation of the overburdened, he meticulously checked the rest of DiCarlo’s pockets to be certain he’d removed any and all forms of identification.
Faintly, from a second-floor window, he heard the strains of some Italian opera. Finley was preparing for his evening out, Winesap mused.
After all, tomorrow was a holiday.
CHAPTER
; SEVENTEEN
The night was clear as glass, the air brittle. A thin layer of frost on the T-Bird’s side window sparkled like an icy spiderweb in the beam of streetlamps. Inside, the heater hummed efficiently, adding another bass note to B. B. King’s “Blue Monday” from the radio.
The warmth, the blues and the slow smooth ride might have lulled Dora to sleep. If her nerves hadn’t been snapping. To combat the tension, she kept up a nonstop commentary on the party, the people and the music that required little or no response from Jed.
When they pulled up behind her building, she’d nearly run dry.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Is what all right?”
Her fingers vised over her evening bag. “The guards Brent put on.”
“Is that what’s got you so wound up?”
She studied the building, the stream from the back-door light, the glow in the window from the lamp she’d left burning. “I did a pretty good job of blocking it out for most of the night.”
“It’s all right.” Leaning over, he unsnapped her seat belt himself. “They were both there.”
“Good. That’s good.” But her nerves didn’t settle. In silence they climbed out of opposite sides of the car, started to the stairs, up.
She didn’t like being jumpy, she thought as Jed unlocked the outside door. At the moment it had nothing to do with intruders and guards. It had everything to do with what was going to happen once they were inside, and alone.
Which made absolutely no sense at all, she decided. She stepped into the hallway and dug out her keys on the way to her door. She wanted him, wanted very much to finish what had started between them.
And yet . . .
Jed took the keys from her rigid fingers and unlocked the door himself.
It was a matter of control, she realized as she slipped out of her coat, laid it over a chair. Always before she’d made certain that she held the wheel in a relationship, that she steered it in the direction of her choice.
But she wasn’t in the driver’s seat with Jed, and they both knew it.
She heard the door close at her back, lock. Fresh nerves scrambled into her throat.