by Alice Orr
He looked up at her, startled and maybe even a little defensive, as if she might be about to attack him. In a way she was, but not in the manner he probably imagined. She straddled his legs with her own and slid quickly onto his thighs. She could feel the rough denim of his jeans through the thin material of her tights. She tried not to be distracted by the heat that roughness sent coursing through her.
Her face was close to his. The apprehension in his gaze turned to bewilderment as she slipped her hands behind his neck. He opened his mouth to speak at the exact second she leaned forward to place her lips on his. Instead of the closedmouthed kiss she had planned, something very different happened. He responded instantly to her embrace by putting his arms around her and pulling her close. He hadn’t closed his mouth.
She felt his tongue between her lips and knew she should prevent it from moving farther. What she should do was lost, however, in the onslaught of sensations that suddenly overtook her. The heat that had begun in her thighs when they first touched his, exploded into flame in her loins.
She ground her body against his despite herself. All the while, their tongues moved and twined about each other with a hunger like nothing she had ever known. The only thing she could think of was how much she wanted to taste him, to smell him, to intrude herself as close as one person can be with another. He moved one hand from its urgent explorations of her back and waist to pull the front of his jacket open so he could press her more tightly against his chest.
Bennett did moan then. The whisper-thin lace bra she was wearing beneath her black tank top was no protection at all from the friction of his muscular chest across her aroused nipples. The tingling there was fast turning to an ache. Under other circumstances, she might have felt uneasy, even embarrassed to need a man so much and to be so obviously unable to hide that need. Right now, to her great surprise, she didn’t care about any of that. She cared only about how much she wanted him and how wonderfully alive that made her feel. At the tantalizing moment when she thought that needing and wanting would grow too intense for her to bear, he reached up and pulled her face away from his.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked in a husky voice that was also close to breathless.
Bennett didn’t comprehend his words at first. The strength of his arms held her maddening inches away from his lips. She longed to melt into those arms and never leave.
“I want to know what’s going on here,” he said.
I would have guessed that was fairly obvious.
That thought flashed through Bennett’s brain, but she was not yet quite able to speak. Then she remembered the less obvious reason for the kiss—why she had started it in the first place.
“The car,” she said. The words came out in a strangled breath.
“What car?”
She turned her head and looked toward the street. The dark sedan was nowhere to be seen. It had apparently already blended into the line of traffic headed downtown.
“I guess it worked,” she said, still in a daze.
“What worked?” Memphis was beginning to sound impatient though his eyes still gazed at her with a softness that melted her heart.
Bennett cleared her throat and willed herself to concentrate on the business at hand.
“I saw that redheaded thug from the hotel,” she said. “He was in a car headed straight toward us.”
Memphis was silent for a second. “Did he look like he was checking out the street?”
“Yes, that’s what he was doing.”
“Did he see us?”
“He may have looked at me, but I don’t think he would have recognized me.”
“Yeah.” Memphis swept his glance over her. “I don’t guess he’d know you now.”
“I don’t think he saw you, either,” Bennett added.
“So that’s why you did this?” He nodded toward the way she was still sitting, straddled across his thighs. “You were keeping Red from getting a good look at me.”
The way Memphis was staring straight into her eyes made Bennett suddenly ill at ease. She moved to raise herself from his lap, but he kept his hold on her arms too tight for her to get away.
“Yes. That’s what I was doing,” she said.
“Was that all you were doing?” he asked. He didn’t relax his stare.
She stood up more insistently this time. He let her go, but he slid his hands down her arms and slipped his fingers through hers.
“I asked you a question,” he said. “I want an answer.”
The pressure of his fingers threatened to set her tingling again. She took a deep breath.
“I don’t have an answer,” she said, and pulled her hands away from his.
Before he could touch her again, she had bounded down the steps to the sidewalk and was beyond his reach.
Chapter Fourteen
Memphis didn’t know how to figure her. Worse yet, he didn’t know how to figure himself. She had his head going places he had no business being, considering the fix he was in. With most other women he’d met, right now he’d be saying, “She kissed me. So what’s the big deal?” Except that, with this woman it was a big deal. Because what had happened to him on that stoop wasn’t just a kiss. It was more in the neighborhood of an earthquake.
Even thinking about it made him tense. He clenched his muscles against the feeling of being on the edge of out of control. He hated that. He might be a drifter in a lot of ways. At least, that’s what most people thought. Still, drifter or not, he kept a tight hold on himself, especially in rough waters. Even tonight, when he found that body and ended up taking Bennett hostage, he’d kept his head. He might not have known what his next move would be. He’d had to make up each step as he got to it. All the same, he’d been sure that he’d been the man in charge. Then she kissed him, and all that went out the window.
Right now, all he could be sure of was that what had happened didn’t strike him as any masquerade kiss, only meant to keep him from being seen. She hadn’t been able to say it was, either, probably because she was too much of a straight shooter to lie when she was asked a simple, up-front question. That was one of the things he liked about her, the way she had to say exactly what she was thinking or say nothing at all. Some people could twist the truth this way and that, but not her. Like he said, that was one of the things he liked about her—one of the too many things.
They’d been walking down the street without talking to each other for almost a block now. She had her head down as if she were afraid she would trip over something. He had a feeling it was him she didn’t want to fall over. Memphis was glad she wasn’t looking at him. Otherwise, she might see in his eyes just how much he didn’t want to keep his hands off her. He wanted to feel her move against him again and hear those soft sounds she made and smell the sweet, wild scent of her. He was thinking he’d have to do a sprint around the block to stop himself from grabbing her right there in public. She turned toward the corner as if to cross the street.
“We should go this way,” she said, still not looking at him.
“Why?” Memphis was glad of the distraction from the heated tension he was beginning to feel.
“Because they might decide to search this street again.”
“I’d guess they’d figure us to be long gone from here by now.”
“You could be right, but I would feel safer off Ninth Avenue all the same.”
The light changed, and Memphis followed her across the wide avenue. He’d lifted the collar of his leather jacket to hide his face from view. No telling who else might be on the lookout for him. Maybe those two hoods, Nick and the other one, had some friends. Maybe the cops were in the mix now, too. Memphis hurried across the street without looking toward the cars lined up to his left waiting for the light to change. She continued along the cross street in the general direction of midtown. Memphis glanced up at the green and white street sign. It said West Thirty-sixth.
“Where are we headed?” he asked. She’d been the one to ask that before. H
e could see they’d traded places since then.
“Penn Station,” she answered, scurrying along the walk as if rushing to get in from the cold, though it was a warm night.
“What are we going to do there?” he asked.
“That’s up to you. We can catch a subway there, but you have to decide which one.”
“Can we get a subway to the Seaport?”
She nodded her head, but her spiky hair didn’t move out of place from where it stood up straight and cute on top of her head. Memphis figured she must have put something on it to make it do that.
“You can get a train that will take you to the Seaport with a transfer. I’m hoping you won’t choose that one though.”
“Why not?” he asked, stretching his stride to keep up with her. He’d noticed before how fast women in New York City walked, as if they all had someplace really important to go.
“Because I think you should do what we were talking about before and see what you can find out about that poor woman and who may have killed her. I have an idea our redheaded friend may have something to do with it.”
“You could be right about that.”
“He’s not in charge, of course,” she said. “He’s obviously a hireling. Maybe Mr. Falcone hired him to kill her just as he hired him to kill us.”
“But who is Mr. Falcone?”
She stopped so suddenly that Memphis walked a step beyond her and had to turn around to face her.
“That’s precisely the question we need to answer,” she said. “Who is Mr. Falcone? He is the key to everything.”
She was animated again, looking straight at Memphis instead of marching along studying the sidewalk the way she had been doing. He longed to ask her why she was so damned interested anyway. Was it just because she thought her own hide was in danger, or did she care about what happened to him, too? Asking that might send her marching off again, so he didn’t.
“I suppose you have a plan,” he said, “about where we should take this subway to other than the Seaport.”
“The matchbook,” she said, stepping toward him close enough to start him feeling jumpy again. “Give me the matchbook you found on the body. What was her name?”
“Pearlanne Fellows.” Memphis fished the matchbook out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Bennett.
“‘The DownTown Lounge,’” she read off the cover. “It’s on the Lower East Side,” she said, pointing out the address at the bottom.
Memphis had heard enough about New York City to recognize that as one of the tougher parts of town. Bennett had to know that, too, but she didn’t seem to mind as she took him by the sleeve and hurried him off toward what he guessed must be Penn Station. Right now, he didn’t much mind where they were headed, either. Like the saying went, he’d follow her anywhere.
NEEDLESS TO SAY, Bennett St. Simon had never spent much time on the Lower East Side, not socially anyway. A couple of the children’s shelters she worked with were down there, but closer to Chinatown. And she had never visited them after dark. It occurred to her that she probably should be scared, but she wasn’t. Instead, she was excited. She knew enough about downtown nightlife to be aware that a place like the DownTown Lounge was considered very cool. She remembered enough about her young, wild days to understand exactly what cool meant.
Bennett went out to clubs herself back then. There’d be that moment when she was just about to enter a place. She’d wonder who was going to be there, what was going to happen. The excitement would charge higher as she got closer to the door, when she first heard the music. She’d check out her outfit one last time and quicken her step in anticipation. She quickened her step now and wished for a second that Forth could see her here, so far out of what everybody thought to be her element and ready to fit right in.
She could tell from the number of people spilling out the front door that this had to be a hot place. A big man with a handful of bills appeared to be the doorman. He checked everybody over before letting them in. Bennett couldn’t tell what he might be looking for, because he didn’t appear to be turning anybody away. Of course, they all looked like they belonged here. The crowd was young, hip—which meant they looked like they couldn’t care less about being here—and almost all of them were wearing black.
Bennett had the outfit and the hairdo and the makeup to fit in. She concentrated on projecting the attitude. She lifted her chin at a slightly belligerent angle and flattened the expression on her face to no expression at all. She wished she had a piece of chewing gum to crack offensively loud and maybe a pair of extradark-lensed glasses to complete the picture. What she did have was the perfect guy on her arm. She noticed several attractive young women giving him a once-over glance. Just a flicker of an approving smile altered their impassive faces for a moment. Bennett wondered if Memphis noticed, too.
The doorman was collecting money from everybody who went inside. Memphis handed him a bill as they were nodded in. Bennett wondered how much money he had with him. She had none, and no credit cards, either. All of that was in her handbag in the car back at the Stuyvesant Club. She didn’t like carrying a purse around with her most places. Her car keys and comb and a tube of lipstick were in her coat pocket in the checkroom of the club. She had left with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. Memphis had been the one to pay for her purchases at the all-night drugstore, their meal at the diner and the subway ride downtown. He’d even bought her a shoulder bag at one of those late-night variety stores to hold what was left of her cocktail dress and shoes and other odds and ends she’d picked up along the way tonight.
Memphis said he’d been after Falcone to pay the money Memphis was owed. That could mean he’d needed that money, which, in turn, could mean he was close to penniless now. Bennett had her pearl heirloom earrings in the shoulder bag. They were wrapped in a piece of tissue paper and stuffed into the toe of one of her pumps. She could always sell those earrings if need be. Any number of jewelry stores uptown would be happy to have the sale. This part of the city would probably have pawnshops, as well. She wasn’t sure exactly how a pawnshop worked, but she could figure it out if she had to. They were valuable pearls, but not worth as much to her right now as getting through tonight. Besides, they weren’t the only pair of heirloom earrings in her jewel case, and jewelry didn’t matter much to her anyway.
The music was even louder inside than it had been in the street. It sounded like a live band, but Bennett couldn’t see far enough down the long room to tell. The lighting had not been designed for seeing at much of a distance. The light was, in fact, a deep and shadowy shade of purple that seemed to puddle in the air like pockets of gloom. Punctuating this purple haze were bright spots of white beaming down from round, recessed fixtures in the black ceiling. The bright beams shone like polka dots on the otherwise purple crowd. In order to be noticed, all anybody had to do was step into one of those spotlights. Several club types had done just that, striking attitudes that were most advantageous to show off their tuned-in outfits and their tuned-out looks.
Memphis and Bennett avoided the spotlights. As her eyes adjusted to the purple gloom, Bennett saw that the front of the room nearest the door was lined with couches along the walls. The couches were full. The coffee tables were covered with glasses and snack bowls. The conversation level was high as everybody shouted over the band. Despite their vacant facades, Bennett could tell that these people were having a good time. They might look bored, but they really weren’t, not the way she had been bored back at the Stuyvesant. Many of them were her age, but she had felt much older than this crowd for some time now. She didn’t feel old right now. She must not look it, either, judging from the number of male stares directed her way, easily as much attention as the women were giving Memphis.
“Let’s check out the back,” he shouted over the noise.
“Okay,” Bennett shouted back. When he took her hand to lead her through the crowd, she couldn’t help feeling a surge of happiness at being here with him no matter what the cir
cumstances.
The back of the room was even more packed with partygoers than the front. The band was dimly lit. Bennett guessed that might be some kind of anti-stardom thing. These downtown places prided themselves on being anti this or that, especially anti-fashion, while ending up to be as much into trend as anybody else, maybe more. The crowd stood in front of the bandstand, sometimes swaying a little, but mostly listening. Conversation wasn’t much of a possibility here. Bennett had hoped to question somebody about Pearlanne Fellows. That wasn’t going to be feasible back here. Bennett pulled on Memphis’s hand and gestured in the direction they had come from. He followed as she threaded her way toward the bar.
“Nobody’s dancing,” Memphis shouted just as the final crash of the song ended, leaving his final word to be yelled out. Several people turned to glance his way. “How come nobody dances?” he asked more quietly.
“My guess is that it isn’t considered hip to dance, at least not in this place.”
Memphis nodded and smiled. “I guess I’d better not ask you to dance then,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to be unhip.”
“We also wouldn’t want to be conspicuous.”
“You’re right about that,” he said as his smile faded, as if he had just been unpleasantly reminded of what was really going on with them tonight.
A long-legged woman in faded jeans vacated one of the bar stools. Bennett beat two other contenders to the space. The bartender working this end was a woman. Bennett recognized that as a lucky break and gestured for her to come over.
“I’m looking for a girlfriend of mine,” Bennett said when the bartender finally made her way past the three people she’d been serving when Bennett sat down. “Her name is Pearlanne Fellows.”