“Listen, Grace,” she said. She moved closer to the other woman and conspiratorially slipped one of her Somers Private Inquiry Agency cards from her purse. She watched in silence as Grace speed-read the words on the beige card. “I’m here on a case, you see – there’s a guy that some people think may not be all he’s cracked up to be, and he’s at the Tara Bay Hotel at a jewelers' convention….” She let the words trail off; hoping that she could make her escape while Grace digested the information. Fat chance.
“You’re on an undercover assignment? Never did have much truck with jewelers, so I hope you get him dead to rights. Me wedding band turned me finger green, it did, and my Joe, God rest his soul, had to go in and threaten to knock the jeweler down before he’d replace it with something proper, and for the same price, too. A bunch of feckin’ crooks, they are.” Grace paused, her eyes widening with excitement. “If you wait a minute, I can be ready and come with you – backup, like they say on the TV. It’s not right for a young girl like yerself to be on a nasty job like this unprotected….”
Cíara gulped and quickly assured Grace that she would be in crowded public places at all times and there was no question of danger. She had to leave right now or she’d be late. Then she whizzed out the door and literally ran to the Beast to make her getaway before Grace could come up with any further arguments. Not that she would have the last word.
“You make sure you wear a coat over that dress, young lady – you’ll catch yer death.” Grace’s voice rang out over the roar of the Beast, the lecture trailing her down the bumpy driveway like exhaust fumes.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Tara Bay Hotel had lots of style, lots of class, and lots of very wealthy, beautiful people gliding around its marble-floored foyer. Cíara hovered on the edge of the crowd, wondering how to slip unnoticed in to the ‘Get to Know You’ social evening that the jewelry trade convention was hosting.
Grace had been right about one thing – her outfit was a problem, but not in the way the outspoken landlady had meant. The sexy little dress was missing one vital accessory – a wealth of genuine jewels that seemed obligatory. The women here were walking showcases for the jewelry trade and she felt positively naked by comparison.
But her momentary pang of jealousy was followed by a big gust of relief not to be walking around with thousands of Euros around her neck, wrists, ears, and anywhere else expensive jewelry could be displayed. She grinned as she imagined strolling along to her favorite pub in North Dublin, dressed like that – she wouldn’t get five yards before all that lovely shiny stuff was in someone else’s greedy paws!
Still, the difference in dress code was going to make it a little harder for her to blend in and sashay into the main room where the social event was taking place – especially as she had to cross the broad foyer under the watchful eyes of the desk staff and, she suspected, a crowd of gimlet-eyed security people. She stood out like a sore thumb without all those shiny baubles.
“Dah-rling! Where have you been all my life!”? Cíara jumped as a big, bear-like young man threw his arm around her as if they were long-lost lovers. Exclaiming in a decidedly foreign accent, he risked his life as he pinched her bottom and breathed whisky into her face. On the brink of a Vesuvius-type explosion, she held in check her impulse to punch him on the nose as she realized that here was her ticket to the ball.
Despising herself but saying it was just this one job, after all, she gushed: “Oh, honey, I’ve just been waiting around for you!” Then she firmly linked her arm with his, grinning to herself at the slightly bemused expression on his face as they strolled towards the party.
His companions proved to be a good-natured enough crowd, if well on the rocky path to inebriation. She sat with them for a few minutes, gracefully accepting the champagne the young man toasted her with. But when he seemed to think that theirs was the budding romance of the century instead of a two-minute stand, she worried that he would be too hard to dislodge when her real prey showed up.
So she announced that she simply had to visit the little girls' room. He stood up politely as she left and, with a good-humored shrug, turned to chat to the woman on his other side, leaving her just a little peeved at being so quickly replaced in the dating game. A game that was beginning in earnest for her.
Over by the bar she caught a flash of rich blond hair, shoulder length on a dark, silk-mix dinner suit. The price of the suit alone would have provided multiple exhaust transplants for Cíara's sporty little car. She opened her purse and took a surreptitious look at the photograph, fixing the face again in her mind, before gliding closer and closer to her quarry.
Slender, almost delicately built, the young man was shorter than she had imagined but his face was every bit as attractive as in the photograph, with an intense, green-eyed sensuality. Seeing the pretty girl to whom he was chatting, she thought perhaps Serena McLaughlin was a lot shrewder than she’d given her credit for in wanting to know how the man she loved might cope with a barrage of temptation. Watching Anton Wallace flirt with the wide-eyed redhead at the bar, she reckoned his temptability quotient was pretty low.
She signaled the barman and ordered a mineral water with lemon, keeping a beady eye on her prey from beneath sedately lowered lashes. She was close enough to see the fine lines around his mouth and appreciate the impact his green gaze was having on the woman. Not much resistance there, she thought, wondering if she shouldn’t just let nature take its course. If the couple left together, she could follow them, see if they went to his or hers, or if they parted very formally at the foot of the stairs.
Yeah, and maybe you could shin up the ivy outside and take photographs of them in flagrante delecto, a mocking voice piped up in her head. ‘Cos, short of actually being in the room, there was no way she could prove that anything other than a business discussion took place between the two. And Walters had stressed it had to be concrete proof, or firsthand testimony of intent….
Cíara briefly wondered if she wouldn’t be happier in another line of work. Any other line of work.
Then her cheeks warmed as she realized Wallace and his companion were looking right at her, returning her stare. There was nothing else for it but to lower her lashes delicately and flutter them around a little in a minor come-hither way. Maybe she could report that her advances had been ignored, not mention the other woman who had her claws into the man, collect her check and walk away?
But you were hired to get the truth….oh, would you ever shut up! She snapped at her conscience, and wondered if holding two-way conversations with one’s self was a sign of stress or an indicator of incipient madness. Either way, when she raised her eyes again it was to see Wallace smiling at her and raising his glass, while the woman next to him had lost her pretty pout as she glared daggers at this unwanted competition.
Then the woman’s glare turned murderous as her companion, without a word in her direction, smiled winningly at Cíara and strolled the short gap that divided them to come to rest directly in front of her.
“Surely you’re not here all alone?” he asked, his voice a soft purr with a distinctive South African roll to it. She lowered her eyelids again as indecision flooded through her - everything was happening faster than she’d expected and with a lot less effort on her part. Should she cool things off or, as her Granny Somers often advocated, go with the flow?
She looked up again to see her beau was quite charmed by her apparently modest confusion and lowered eyes. Chauvinist bloody pig, she thought, all the while smiling shyly. “Yes, I’m all alone. I guess my date didn’t show,” she improvised, mentally promising to drop some hard cash into the church poor box by way of contrition for all her lies.
Sometimes it disturbed her that she could lie so easily.
“Well, I guess his stupidity is my good fortune.” Her new companion smiled sexily.
Ooooh, this one was a smooth one, a real charmer.
“Shall we see if we can find a seat away from this mob?” Anton asked, grasping her elbow
and maneuvering her towards a table in a shadowed corner of the room. As she allowed herself to be pulled in his direction, she caught a quick glimpse of the face of the woman he’d abandoned. If looks could kill, Cíara would be knocking on the pearly gates right about now.
Wallace stepped behind her to pull out a chair and seat her, his fingers lingering momentarily against the bare skin of her shoulders, just long enough to communicate his interest but not long enough to cause offence if he were barking up the wrong tree. He probably didn’t bark up the wrong tree very often.
“Can I get you another drink?” She shook her head, holding up the spring water and lemon she’d just ordered.
“Ah, now, that’s not a real drink. Let’s see, a lady like yourself should be drinking good champagne.” Cíara suddenly decided that maybe she could like this guy. After all, any guy who recognized that she was a lady deserving of good champers couldn’t possibly be all bad…smack yourself on the side of the head, Cíara my girl! a voice in her head that sounded remarkably like Granny Somers gave her a wakeup call. With a start, she realized that this was probably how a rabbit felt, transfixed in the glare of a snake’s seduction…
The champagne arrived. Richer, smoother champagne than she could ever remember tasting. The bubbles teased her nose rather than launching an all-out tickle and sneeze campaign. Wallace was a pleasant companion, eager to talk, mostly about himself with a little judicious, wide-eyed encouragement from her, giving her an earful about his wealthy family, the jewelry business branch he was planning to open in Ireland. They were South African, Boer, she learned, and he found the strict ethical business rules by which his family played old-fashioned and restricting.
“This is a whole new world compared to the one my grandfather knew,” Wallace declared. “These days it’s no longer desirable to earn your wealth steadily and slowly. These days you’ve got to always be on the lookout for the main chance, and seize the opportunities life hands you.”
“Like a wealthy marriage,” Cíara muttered, and was gratified to see a quick, guilty startle cross his face.
“What? Er, yes” – But then he chose to deliberately misinterpret her remarks. “Is that what you are looking for, my dear? A wealthy marriage – or a rich lover?”
She swallowed the nervous lump in her throat. She was in the game now, may as well play all the leads. “I think a rich lover gives a girl much more freedom of choice,” she said in what she hoped was a voice loaded with sexual innuendo but which was in reality probably more a high-pitched squeak.
“Ah, I knew the moment I saw you that you were a woman who valued her freedom of choice,” he said, and his handsome looks suddenly assumed a satyr-like cast. The first ripple of unease slithered across her skin.
“Are you cold, my dear?” Wallace asked, seizing the opportunity to pull her closer to him.
“Er, no, just rather tired. I think it’s probably time I left.” She was being a coward but she’d got all she needed and there was just something wrong about Wallace. He stood when she did, crowding her, and his mouth – they were about the same height – found her ear lobe, tickling it wetly before he whispered: “I think that’s an excellent idea – your room or mine?”
That’s when she knew she’d lost control of the situation. Disastrously.
“I’m not actually staying at the hotel,” she stammered, feeling frantic now that she was faced with the full implications of her assignment.
“All the better, my dear – cuts down on the wagging tongues in the morning….”
The next thing she knew they were outside and Wallace was pulling her to him, his mouth on hers, his tongue making frantic efforts to insinuate itself into her mouth, his hands making inroads into forbidden territory under the smooth fabric of her evening gown. As she removed one wandering palm from her breast, another found the rounded mound of her buttocks, and there was nothing else for it but to jam her knee up into his tender areas as her Granny had often advised.
Except that he now had her pressed against the rough stone of the wall, the length of his body smooth and hard against her own, robbing her of any room to maneuver.
Panic began to pound at her temples, and she had to move to Emergency Plan B. Protestations of no, don’t, didn’t seem to get her very far, so the next time she was able to free her mouth, she pulled crisp sea air into her lungs and screamed bloody murder.
* * *
“What the hell was that?” Jonathon Winters jerked upright in his seat, the remains of a grand steak dinner forgotten as he reacted to the sound of screams.
“Probably just some bird or something in the trees.” Alison Wilson, Winters' dinner companion, literary agent, and one-time lover, replied.
But the cop DNA in him was too ingrained. He knew it was a scream he heard and he couldn’t ignore it. He sprang to his feet, wincing as pain streaked up his wounded leg, and strode from the restaurant. Outside, the air was cool and damp, and he paused to listen. Another scream erupted, and he pinpointed the location. Moving as fast as he could but keeping his back to the wall, he ran in the direction of the sound to see a couple struggling in the shadows. He weighed up the possibilities, reminded himself he had no weapon – and then waded in anyway.
Grabbing the man by the shoulders, he tore him away from the woman who was struggling to free herself. The man turned on him in fury and raised his fists but Winters got in the first punch. The man staggered, rallied, then seeing they were no way well matched if it came to a fight, he backed off. Tossing a contemptuous insult at the woman who was hidden in the shadows, the assailant stalked off.
Winters stepped forward to get a better look at the woman he'd rescued – and then his world dissolved in pain….
* * *
Cíara issued another shrill scream, hating the helpless feeling as Wallace's hands roamed over her and his body pinned her to the wall. Couldn’t anyone in that crowded hotel hear her? Suddenly her screams were answered - Wallace was dragged off her. A hefty smack resounded as he was punched in the face.
She wished the light was better; she’d have liked to have seen that punch. Or better still even administered it.
“I think the lady’s trying to tell you to back off,” a deep, North American accented voice drawled dangerously.
“What the hell has it got to do with you?” Wallace asked, his voice muffled by the trickle of blood from his swelling nose.
“Just call it my good deed for the day.”
“Good deed of the day be damned! She’s just a hooker trying to blackmail some cash out of me without coming across with the goods!”
“That’s enough!” But Cíara knew her savior was giving her a re-assessing glance, taking in the skimpy, clinging dress made even more revealing because Wallace had torn the neckline, and the silver sandals with their sex-kitten four inch stiletto heels, all of which glowed in the light filtering through a window on the floor above where they stood. She couldn’t see his face, but knew the kind of male judgement she would see there, and her hands knotted into fists.
“Maybe she'll be grateful enough to give you a freebie,” Wallace said petulantly and stalked away, pressing a handkerchief to his injured nose.
Cíara turned to her rescuer, wondering how to explain with dignity, but a bright yellow blur hurtled around the corner of the building and a sharp ‘swap’ sounded as a blunt object connected with the side of the man’s skull. He let out a disgruntled oomph! and backed against the wall. The light fell across the shadowy face of his attacker and she gasped in mortification, and then struggled against the giggles that bubbled in her throat.
“Mrs. Muldoon! What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t I tell you it wasn’t safe for a young lass like yourself, out dressed like that amongst these men! Animals, they are, animals,” she said, advancing again on the tall, dark shape of Cíara's erstwhile rescuer, who backed up further against the wall as the umbrella once more descended towards his scalp.
Cíara grabbed for the weapon jus
t in time, “You’ve got it all wrong…”
“Wrong! And wasn’t I watching the main doors for you, and didn’t I hear a scream and recognize your voice, and that scream one of fear?”
“Well, yes, but this wasn’t the man…?”
A moment’s silence passed, and then Grace slowly lowered the umbrella: “It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“Then. how many…?”
“How many men are the two of you terrorizing? That’s a good question…I don’t know what kind of scam or blackmail game you're playing, but you’ll not get a penny out of me, and think yourselves lucky I don’t call the police.” With that, the tall figure stalked away, albeit a little stiffly, with one hand on the wall to steady himself. Cíara thought perhaps she should run after him, see if he needed some help – after all, Grace looked as though she packed a mean umbrella – but thought better of it.
She might just scare him to death if she chased him!
With a grin, she turned to her landlady. “Grace, let’s go home. I’ll try and explain what was happening…”
“I’ve a nice bottle of Powers whisky in the press. I think it might make the explaining more understandable,” Grace said, shaking her head.
“Yep, I think it just might,” Cíara agreed. “I think it just might.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“So, if we boil it all down, you were hired to go out and prove if this man could be led off the straight and narrow by a pretty face? But girl, everyone knows that any man can be led like that – your boss must have a barrow-load of money to throw it away re-inventing the wheel.”
Cíara began to protest, but clamped her mouth shut. Grace might be cynical about the male species but maybe she had a point. And, in truth, perhaps Serena McLaughlin was simply looking for a reason not to continue the relationship. After all, what kind of love was this that her first instinct was to find out the man’s faults?
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