A Treasure Worth Seeking (4 page)

"Your father works at the same bank that Ken does?"

"He's the president and chairman of the board," Melanie commented absently as she turned the pages of the album.

Erin digested this piece of news as she nodded appreciatively while Melanie pointed out other pictures of Ken.

Erin would look at them more closely later in private.

Something about Melanie's father being such a top-ranking officer in the bank where her brother was employed bothered her. Would it have bothered Ken as well? Could that be the reason he had embezzled the money?

"Forgive me for being so nosy, Melanie. I want to learn as much about my brother as possible. You're several years younger then he, aren't you?"

"Yes," she admitted, lowering her eyes. "He's ten years older than I am. I was only twenty when we got married.

Mother and Daddy had a fit when we announced our plans to them. We had been dating secretly. I think I knew all along that they wouldn't be too happy with me for dating Ken. They wanted me to date the sons of their friends who play tennis and golf at the country club every day and go sailing on the weekends. I just wasn't interested in anybody. I fell in love the first time Ken kissed me and then begged my forgiveness for doing so." Her brown eyes were twinkling when she added, "I assured him, I didn't mind."

But your parents did,
thought Erin.

There was a light tap on the door before it opened and Lance walked in. "What would you ladies like for dinner?

I thought I'd go out for Chinese food if that's okay with everybody."

Erin couldn't believe his insensitivity. He was treating this bizarre situation like it was a family picnic.

"Chinese food sounds great to me," Melanie said happily. "Do you like it, Erin? If not, we can order something else."

"I thought prisoners were restricted to a diet of bread and water," she said directly to Mr. Barrett.

He glared at her a moment with those cold blue eyes before he growled„"Only the smart-assed ones." The door was shut with emphasis.

"Brute," Erin muttered when he had gone.

"Mr. Barrett?" Melanie asked in an astonished voice.

"Why, he's the nicest man I've ever met! Except for Ken, of course."

Erin looked at her in puzzled shock. "You can't be serious! He's practically taken over the control of your house and your life. He issues orders like a drill sergeant and expects everyone to scurry to obey them. He has invaded your privacy to the utmost extreme."

"He's only doing his job, Erin," Melanie said quietly.

"Ken is in a lot of trouble, you know. When Mr. Barrett came here, he was apologetic for his intrusion. During the long hours he questioned me, he was a perfect gentleman, and put me at ease when I was frightened and heartsick with worry over Ken and what he had done. He coaxed me into remembering things I never could have otherwise; things that might help them track Ken down. I'll do anything I can to help them. I want them to find Ken and bring him home. I want to know that he's safe."

Erin sympathized wi
th the young woman and even con
curred with her hope that Ken Lyman would soon be found. But she was stunned to hear Melanie describing Lance Barrett in such glowing terms. Words like "gentle-man," "apologetic," "coax" didn't fit the manner in which the man had treated her.

What made Erin a suspect in crime when he obviously didn't think Ken's wife was in collusion with him? He had abused her physically and verbally since her arrival. What had she done to provoke such harsh treatment?

MELANIE INSISTED
that, in spite of everything, Erin's appearance in the house called for a celebration. She cajoled Mike into allowing Erin to leave the study and help her set the dining room table. Using her best tablecloth, china, and crystal, Melanie set the table with the detail required for an important dinner party.

Her attempt was touching and somehow pathetic. She seemed far younger than her twenty-four years. Even though she gave lip service to the seriousness of Ken's theft, Erin doubted that Melanie really grasped it. Naivete and blind trust were readily apparent in everything she said and did.

The three of them were laughing at a recalcitrant napkin that refused to stand at attention in the china plate as Melanie wanted it to, when Lance came through the door of the dining room.

He wore a scowl of disapproval when he leveled his hard gaze on Erin. Leaving no question of his displeasure at seeing hereout of the room where he had sequestered her, he bore down on Mike.

"Uh . . . I . . . she .. . that is, Mrs. Lyman thought . . . " Mike stammered before Lance mercifully cut him off abruptly and said, "Let's eat this before it gets cold."

Mike breathed a visible sigh of relief and cast an eye toward Erin as if blaming her for his transgression. He was quick to hop to Lance's aid in relieving him of some of the cartons of Chinese food. The white pasteboard was incongruous with the fine linen tablecloth and shimmering crystal, but no one seemed to notice as they took their seats around the table.

Erin watched with stunned eyes as Lance helped Melanie into her chair. He was solicitous in manner, and his eyes softened discernibly whenever he looked at her." Erin graciously accepted Mike's help with her own chair. She smiled up at him and said, "Thank you," missing the hard, quelling look Mike received from his superior.

Melanie explained to Lance her reason for going to the trouble of using the best dishes and setting the table in the dining room. "It's not every day that one finds out they have a beautiful, sweet sister-in-law. If Ken were here,"

her voice quivered slightly, "I'm sure that he'd want to celebrate her sudden appearance."

"Did your husband ever mention having a sister that was separated from him?" Lance asked her softly. His tone was deceptive and for Melanie's benefit alone. When he looked at Erin, she shuddered under the glacial stare.

"No. If he knew about Erin, he never told me. He'll be delighted to see her. I know."

"Miss O'Shea." Erin jumped when Lance addressed her. "In this quest for your family, did you make any progress toward finding your parents?"

Coming from someone else, she would have considered that a reasonable question. But she knew that Lance Barrett was only baiting a trap he hoped she'd fall into.

"Unfortunately, no. The nun who told me about Ken remembered only that my mother brought us in together.

She didn't remember anything about her or why she . . . why she . . . " As usual when she talked on this subject, her vocal cords tightened, making it difficult for her to add the last words, "abandoned us."

There was a noticeable cessation of dining sounds. No silverware clattered against china, no ice cubes rattled in glasses, no one said a word. Finally Melanie broke the period of suspended animation when she said as sweetly as a child comforting a playmate, "She probably had a very good reason, Erin."

Erin composed her face and looked up at Melanie. Smiling, she said, "Yes, probably."

Conversation during the remainder of the meal was more subdued. Only once did Lance make Melanie laugh when he regaled her with an adventure that he swore was true, but which Erin considered to be highly implausible.

He had probably taken a mundane incident and embroid-ered it to make it seem more intriguing.

Erin conceded him a small amount of her admiration for entertaining Melanie and taking her mind off the problem that had toppled her world. She even grudgingly for-gave him for going out for Chinese food which Melanie had eaten with gusto.

"Mike, if you're finished, why don't you go across the street and relieve one of the boys so he can go get them something to eat. Then when they're settled in for the night, come back and check in with me."

"Sure, Lance. Ladies." Mike excused himself with his characteristic economy of words.

"What's across the street?" Erin's curiosity had gotten the best of her and she couldn't help but ask what she thought was a harmless question.

"Mr. Barrett's team has headquarters over there. They can watch this house, trace all the telephone calls, things like that. We mustn't ever answer the red telephone. All our calls on the regular house phone are being taped.

Wasn't it lucky that the house was vacant just when they needed to rent it?"

Melanie's eyes were wide with excitement, but Erin saw a flash of irritation in Mr. Barrett's. He was less than happy with Melanie's loquacious explanation.

"It's time for you to go back to the study, Miss O'Shea," he said peremptorily as he grasped her upper arm and virtually dragged her out of her chair.

"I think I should help Melanie with the dishes," Erin protested, as she tried to extricate her arm from his hand.

It was a futile attempt.

"I'll help her," he said.

She stumbled down the hall after him, barely able to keep up with his long stride. When they reached the door of the study, she jerked her arm free and faced him belligerently. "Do you have to manhandle me that way?"

"Did I hurt you?" he asked quickly. Was that a touch of genuine concern she heard in his voice? His hand came back to her arm, but this time when he touched her, it was almost a caress, as if he were soothing the place that may have been bruised by his fingers only moments before.

She could feel the warmth of his hand through her silk sleeve as he stroked her arm. Tentacles of sensation radiated from his fingers and ran up her arm and curled around her heart, swelling it, expanding her chest. His hand was so comforting as he continued to gently rub her arm, that Erin had the strange impulse to lean against that hard, strong chest and seek even more comfort.

Wasn't there some study on the extraordinary relationship that developed between captives and captors? Didn't captives often come to depend upon their captors to the point of love?

That possibility seared her brain and shook the foundations of her soul. She stepped away from him, suddenly afraid of the very real physical threat he posed. She must have imagined that momentary gentleness on his part, for when she looked into his face, it was hard and set in the grim lines she had come to recognize.

She heard him mutter a curse as he turned around and stalked down the hall.

Erin was leafing through photograph albums when Lance came back into the room several hours later. It was not quite eleven o'clock, but her body was working on Houston time, and in light of the events of the day, she was exhausted. Somehow though, she couldn't lie down on the sofa and seek the oblivion of sleep.

She pored over the pictures in the albums, searching each one for revealing traits of her brother's personality.

Melanie had brought her the albums when she had carried in an armload of blankets and pillows.

"Mr. Barrett asked me to bring these things to you. I offered to let you sleep in the guest bedroom upstairs, but he said no."

"That figures," Erin grumbled.

"I remembered these albums were stored in our bedroom closet. Would you like to look through them?"

"Thank you, Melanie. I can't tell you how boring these four walls have become. Besides, I want to learn all I can about Ken."

Displaying an understanding that surprised Erin, Melanie said, "I'd love to stay and talk to you, but I think I should leave you alone. There are over thirty years of Ken's life that you need to catch up on."

Impulsively Erin went toward her sister-in-law and kissed her on the cheek. "Thank you for accepting me. I know that when they find Ken, everything will work out for the two of you. I'll be available if you need any help."

"Oh, Erin, Ken is going to love you. I know he is." She sounded like an innocent child again.

Erin took her shoes off and curled her feet under her as she sat in the corner of the leather sofa and began studying the photographs. There were pictures of Ken with a nice-looking couple whom Erin supposed to be his adoptive parents. She laughed over one photograph featuring a Ken about nine years old wearing an enormous pair of Mickey Mouse ears standing outside the gates of Disneyland. For the next brief hours, his whole life kaleidoscoped before her eyes. She reached out and touched a recent photograph taken on Fisherman's Wharf. Ken's dark hair was windblown, his smile rakish, his long legs in the ragged cutoffs were tanned and muscular.

Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids as she prayed that soon she would see this man who was the only person on earth she knew of with whom she shared a bloodline. With the back of her hand, she whisked away the tears as the door opened and Lance walked in.

He stood in the doorway for a moment and allowed himself the luxury of staring at the woman folded into the corner of the couch.
Either she
's
who she says she is, or she'sone hell of an actress,
he thought grimly when he caught her brushing away the tears.

Her fatigue was all too evident as she looked up at him, but he thought the hollows under her cheekbones added a waifish quality to her face that was beguiling. The faint lavender shadows under those wide, fathomless eyes made them even more haunting. Any man with an ounce of sense would run as far and as fast as he could from them.

He swallowed the lump that unexplainably formed in his throat when he noted the slender legs tucked under her hips. Her skirt had ridden up over the knee and accom-modated him with an unrestricted view of a smooth, slim, silk-encased thigh.

Hell!
he thought. If he didn't know the muscles of his face were frozen into that implacable mask, he'd be making a fool of himself. He felt like a schoolboy seeing his first copy of
Playboy.
He wished he didn't remember how her mouth tasted.

"Mr. Barrett?"

Her hesitant question brought him to the surface again.

Maybe his face hadn't been as unreadable as he imagined.

"I thought you might already have been asleep," he said, closing the door behind him.

"No. I'm tired, but the day has been too tumultuous, I guess. I don't seem to be able to relax." The sight of him hadn't done anything to calm her. If she gave credence to her senses, his presence in the small room had increased her anxiety.

"Would you like something from the kitchen?"

"No. Thank you." His civility was as unnerving as his former hostility.

She watched him warily as he took off the necktie that had been loosely knotted all day. He draped it over the back of a chair. Then he put both his palms to the small of his back and stretched, expanding his chest out in front of him. The play of muscles under his shirt was awesome.

Finally, he released his breath in a long expulsion of air, and the muscles returned to their normal state.

"Which blanket do you want?" he asked as he sat down in a deep overstuffed chair. With the toe of one foot, he pushed the heel of his loafer off the other foot.

Staring at him, disbelieving his intention, Erin stammered, "You can't mean—I—you're not—this is—"

"Could you be a little more specific, Miss O'Shea?" he asked sardonically.

His teasing made her furious. "You're not thinking of sleeping in that chair?"

He looked at the chair he was sitting in as if weighing its merits. "Well, I was planning to. But if you'd rather I join you on the couch—"

"You stay where you are," she commanded, pointing an imperative finger at him as he moved to get out of the chair. "What are you trying to pull?" she demanded as she stood and took two steps toward him with her balled fists planted on her hips. "You must have a James Bond hang-up, thinking you can bully a woman all day and then seduce her at night. Well, I'm informing you now, Mr.

Barrett, that unlike those libidinous females in the movies, I
can
and
will
resist you."

"You're making far too much of this, Miss O'Shea," he said quietly and reasonably. Her tirade sounded ridicu-lous. "Rest assured that my reasons for sharing this room with you are strictly professional. Believe me, I'd rather be across the street stretched out on the bed I've been using for the past ten days than sleeping in this chair."

"I don't require constant surveillance," she flared.

Again his voice was annoyingly calm. "Probably not, but until I can confirm your identity, you stay under my watch. I wouldn't want to allow a gunrunner or drug dealer to escape into the night."

"Oh, for Pete's sake!" she groaned, rolling her brown eyes heavenward.

She flopped down on the couch in irritation and sulked for a moment while he began sorting through the blankets and pillows. His every movement attracted her attention and she couldn't help but stare. If she would admit it, the idea of spending the night in the same room with him was exciting. She wasn't nearly as irritated with him as she was with herself for the outrageous pounding of her heart and the murmurs of arousal that stirred her as never before.

When he had divided the linens equally, he turned around to face her. Her disparaging expression was well-known to her employees. It usually portended bad news for someone who had made a stupid mistake. "I would like to take a shower."

"Forget it."

"I need to go to the bathroom!" she exclaimed.

"That
I'll allow."

"How kind," she cooed. She pushed past him, picked up her two bags, and marched toward the door. "Lead the way, warden," she said.

His golden eyebrows lowered menacingly over the

piercing blue eyes, but he didn't remark as he opened the door and showed her down the dim hallway to a tiny half-bath under the stairwell.

"Feel free to put on something more comfortable," he said. He was standing close and they were almost in total darkness. Without the benefit of her high-heeled shoes, he loomed over her, and Erin's knees suddenly seemed to lack the strength to support her. They trembled with the exertion.

In defense of her own uneasiness she said, "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" She had intended her words to sound like an accusation, but to her dismay, they came out like a suggestion.

He took one step closer and she could feel his breath sweeping her upturn
ed face, though the darkness ob
scured his features. He continued to incline toward her until he trapped her between him and the wall. His body was as rigid and tense as hers. It was like being pressed by a statue.

But the statue came to life.

The clay had not yet been baked to its rock hardness.

Instead, it was still being molded—against her. It took shape by adjusting its form to hers until it was a perfect, complementing fit.

From the corner of her eye, she saw him raise his arm, and she thought that he was about to embrace her. But his outstretched hand flicked on the light switch in the bathroom behind her.

The sudden brightness dispelled the moment that

seemed to have lasted for a small eternity. She turned away quickly and maneuvered her bags through the door of the bathroom.

"Don't take too long or I'll come in there and get you."

"Aren't you going to leave?" she asked in horror as he leaned against the doorjamb.

"Un-huh," he said, shaking his head.

Her lips compressed in fury, and she deliberately slammed the door in his mocking face.

She dropped her luggage on the floor and supported herself against the lavatory with stiff arms. Drawing several deep breaths, she closed her eyes and tried to wipe out the vision of his face. It swam before her and she continued to tremble even as she turned on the cold water faucet.

He was a brute. Obnoxious. Unfeeling. Yet here she was, acting like an idiot, shaken and disoriented after one brief contact with him. She had actually wanted him to kiss her again. God forbid!

Still, she couldn't help but wonder what his lips would feel like in a tender kiss. The one he had given her earlier today had been a test. He had wanted to see how far she would carry her "brother" story. The kiss had been fierce and hard. But for one millesimal of a second, when his tongue had ceased to lash the hollows of her mouth, paused, and then merely touched the tip of her tongue, hadn't she discerned an instant of sweet tenderness?

No!
she thought as she brushed her teeth with a vigor hopefully strong enough to rid her mouth of every lingering trace of him.

She creamed her face and brushed her hair. It was no small task to open out her larger suitcase in the small space, but she managed to open a narrow wedge wide enough for her hand to explore its contents.

By feel, she located a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. The jeans weren't the designer brand she usually wore starched and stiff. This pair was old and faded and laundered into softness. With much twisting and turning, she managed to get out of her wrinkled suit and pull on the jeans.

For a moment she deliberated about taking off her bra.

She hated to sleep in one all night, so she unclasped it quickly before she could change her mind and sighed in relief at the freedom. Even though she had crossed the
c
onfidence-shattering line from her twenties on her last birthday, she knew that her model's figure was still firm enough to forsake a bra now and then. Tonight it wouldn't matter.

When she pulled the T-shirt over her head, she saw that since its recent washing, it was slightly tighter. It
did
matter that she hadn't left on her bra. Her breasts looked far too impudent and eager to go without one. Sighing, she grasped the hem of the shirt and was about to take it off when Lance knocked on the door.

"Time's up," he said tersely.

"I'll be out in a minute. I'm almost fin—"

Before she could complete the sentence, he opened the door. For a moment, with her arms crossed over her chest and the bottom of her shirt raised, he caught a glimpse of the smooth expanse of her stomach and the merest hint of two crescents under soft pink cotton.

Erin pulled down the T-shirt. As though drawn by. a magnet, his eyes riveted on her breasts. She could feel her nipples, hard and tingling, straining against the fabric. For years, before she was married to Joseph Greene and working as a house model, she had stood practically nude for hours at a time while designers and seamstresses made alterations. Never had she felt this self-conscious, this aware of her own body.

Forcing down her sudden attack of modesty, she cried,

"You are unbelievably rude! I told you that I needed a few more minutes."

Lance was finding it difficult to talk. His brain didn't seem capable of transmitting the correct message to his tongue. He gulped and said with as much severity as he could muster, "And I told you that time was up."

"Will you at least let me take a pill? I missed one today." She was fishing in her makeup bag, willing her hands not to shake so visibly. She found the package of penicillin and pushed a tablet out of the foil backing.

There was no glass, so she tossed the pill down her throat and then cupped several handfuls of water into her mouth, swallowing the tablet with difficulty. When she straightened, she saw Lance in the mirror, staring at her hips as she leaned over the sink. He hurriedly averted his eyes and mumbled, "You can leave your things in here if you want to. No one will bother them." He walked softly down the hallway in his stockinged feet.

His suggestion was accepted without a comment from her. She'd leave her suitcases in the bathroom. He wasn't gentlemanly enough to offer to carry them for her, and she felt drained of the energy or will to carry them herself. It was easier to not argue with him, to switch off the light, and to simply follow him meekly down the hallway to the paneled study.