Bedroom Eyes (21 page)

She blinked.

And vanished.

To Penelope’s astonishment, the letter she’d placed on the altar disappeared along with her miniature houseguest. Not burned, not singed, not blown off the table by a puff of air; simply no longer there.

Unnerved by what she’d just witnessed, Penelope stared at the spot where Mrs. Merlin had been only a moment earlier. The white candle flickered and danced, bobbing in a circular motion, glowing more orange than blue. Then it suddenly sputtered and died as its wick drowned in the molten wax surrounding it.

Without knowing she was going to do so, Penelope lifted the still-glowing incense stick.

Gazing at the unlit cherry-red candle, she heard Mrs. Merlin telling her it was okay to be selfish.

Penelope licked her lips, then mated the glowing tip of the incense stick with the wick of the cherry-red candle. As she did, she called to mind her place of peace.

In her mind she walked along the riverbank, passing by a tree. To her delight, Tony lazed just beneath the spreading branches of the tree, kicked back on a blanket. With a happier smile in his eyes than she had seen in actual life, he patted the spot next to him.

Penelope blinked. The flame swayed, slow and sensuous. Following it with her eyes, listening to the wispy sighs of the candle’s song, Penelope forgot to worry about whether she was supposed to light that candle without Mrs. Merlin being present.

For several minutes she remained entranced with the beauty of the candle and the tender feelings the aromatic scent aroused in her. Penelope began to understand Mrs. Merlin’s fascination with the art of candle magick.

The flame shot higher, then dipped.

With a shake of her head, Penelope drew back. She walked a few steps away from the table and studied it, seeing this time the clutter, the jumble, and the melting candle wax she’d have to clean.

With a sigh, she smothered the flame of the cherry-red candle and started to gather the items Mr. Gotho had sent. The apartment was too, too quiet. Imagining Mrs. Merlin lecturing or asking to be fed, Penelope smiled and decided to leave the magick items exactly as Mrs. Merlin had placed them for at least a day. Who knew? Perhaps she needed the altar to guide her safely to wherever it was her spell had carried her.

Home.

That’s where she’d wanted to go and Penelope hoped she’d accomplished her desire, and that the next morning when the irascible magician awakened it would be in her own bed, all five feet four and a half inches of her.

Wandering around her apartment, reviewing the events of the remarkable day, Penelope found herself wishing she had a cat or a bird or even a hamster. Before tonight she’d never noticed how empty her apartment seemed.

Before Mrs. Merlin had entered her life, Penelope had been so busy working, working, working, she’d really only stopped in long enough to sleep, shower, and change one suit for another.

Only one annoyance clouded her mind, and that was the realization that she’d have to get up extra early to swing by the office to pick up another copy of the IRS Opinion Letter. What Mrs. Merlin had done with it, she had no idea. Penelope only hoped that in some way the original spell had also been successful, and that Mrs. Merlin’s dotty neighbor had been freed from the tax collector’s clutches.

But there was no way Penelope could appear at the meeting with the senior partner and the prospective client without a copy of the letter—and even more importantly, some suggestion to solve the man’s corporation’s tax dilemma.

Frustrated with herself for not having concentrated on it earlier, Penelope set her alarm for five a.m. and prepared for bed.

Instead of mulling over the various exceptions she might argue to the ruling, she let her mind drift as she slipped between the sheets.

Tony’s lips, warm, questing, yet tender and succoring, tugged at her mouth.

His arms, so strong and powerful, hugged her to him.

Penelope wriggled and clutched a pillow to her breast. “Oh, my,” she murmured, feeling the weight of him as he’d crushed her to the car seat, claiming her.

She ran her tongue over her lips and sighed. All thoughts of Raoul, her former fantasy man, had vanished as completely as Mrs. Merlin had disappeared from her dining table.

Raoul could not compete with the reality of Tony Olano.

Penelope’s breasts pushed upward, her back arching against the desire consuming her. Caught unawares by the out-of-control passion, she hovered between embarrassment and absolute rapture.

Finally, a smile on her face, Penelope urged herself to sleep, reassuring her rational mind she’d feel sane in the morning, and in almost the same moment promising the part of her mind that thrived on fantasies that she would dance with Tony in her dreams.

Chapter 16

Penelope dreamed she overslept for her breakfast meeting. Tossing and turning, she watched in dismay as Hubert Humphrey Klees, most senior of the firm’s senior partners, dressed her down in front of the entire wait staff of the Windsor Court’s Grill Room, including her mother, who burst into tears at her daughter’s downfall. The client, of course, had already stormed off, bouncing away on a version of Mrs. Merlin’s magick pole-vaulting stick.

She came to wakefulness with a start, pushing her hair from her face and breathing rapidly. Thank goodness it had only been a nightmare. Penelope prided herself on never oversleeping. Each morning when her alarm sounded, she rolled out of bed without dawdling.

Her alarm . . .

It hadn’t gone off.

Penelope grabbed her bedside clock. The digital numbers blinked rapidly. Sometime during the night, her power had failed.

She literally sprang from the bed to the dresser to check her watch. Staring at the dial, she clutched her tummy. She had fifteen minutes to make it to the Grill Room or the expression “dreams come true” would take on a whole new meaning for Penelope Sue Fields.

There’d be no time to pick up another copy of the Opinion Letter. She called a cab while she twisted her hair into a knot; jumped into her stockings and suit while reviewing the client’s profile in her mind; grabbed shoes, purse, and briefcase; and made it to the ground floor just as the cabbie blew the horn.

She arrived at the stroke of eight to find Hubert already settled at a window table with the patrician Fitzsimmons. The prospective client wore a flinty expression that looked as if it had the effusive Hubert unnerved. Everyone liked Hubert—his charm had won him as many clients as his sharp legal mind—but Fitzsimmons appeared to be a tough nut to crack.

Her heart sinking, Penelope followed the maître d’ across the lush carpet. Having dressed in such a rush, she felt a need to tug at her skirt, smooth her jacket, check to see whether she had on a pair of shoes that matched.

Resisting the temptation, she approached the table, hand extended to Clarke Fitzsimmons, president and majority shareholder of a company worth a quarter of a million in billable hours per year.

“Ms. Fields,” Hubert said, rising slightly and glancing at his watch.

She smiled. She must have overdone the expression, because Hubert blinked twice before he introduced her to Fitzsimmons. But it was Hubert who’d criticized her only last month, telling her she needed to loosen up a bit, not always approach a client meeting with her brief-case open and her calculator in hand. “Give ’em a good time,” he’d urged, practically ordering her to act more sociably.

Penelope knew how to handle herself when she dealt with law and facts and figures. But she didn’t play golf or tennis or understand the art of chitchat over cocktails. Even one drink sent her off into the giggles, a most inappropriate behavior for a lawyer seeking to impress a client.

So Penelope stuck to business.

She held out her hand to Clarke Fitzsimmons, the same wide smile appearing on her face. “Mr. Fitzsimmons, what an honor to finally meet you.”

Surprise flicked across his high-cheeked face. Frosty blue eyes, remarkably similar to the blue marble Mrs. Merlin had placed on last night’s altar, regarded her steadily. Then he half-rose from his seat and leaned over to pull out her chair.

“Thank you,” he said, settling back and lifting his menu.

Whew! Penelope risked a glance at Hubert, who’d taken to gnawing on the inside of his right cheek, a sure sign he knew they were in trouble with Fitzsimmons. He wanted to reel in this client badly. Hubert’s brother had recently been appointed to a federal judgeship. Firm gossip said the two had always been competitive and Penelope figured he wanted this coup to balance out his brother’s achievement.

Sensing the tension mounting, Penelope almost started chewing on her own cheek. Instead, she surprised herself by reaching over and touching Fitzsimmons on the fine wool covering his forearm. “I am simply dying to hear about your new yacht.”

Hubert blanched.

Fitzsimmons put down his menu. His face defrosted by about three degrees. “Oh, you know about
Melodee
?”

“Oh, yes.” She removed her hand from his sleeve, ever so slowly. “I adore boating. Don’t you, Hubert?” Penelope didn’t know where her words were coming from; her voice, all sugary and slow, didn’t even sound like her own.

Her secretary, bless her soul, had scoured the Internet for every fact she could find about Fitzsimmons and come up with the gem that he was crazy over yachting and had just slipped his latest man-sized toy into the waters off Hilton Head.

Hubert nodded.

Fitzsimmons launched into an animated description of the love of his life. Every so often Penelope nodded, swinging her knee gently under the table, leaning forward, looking entranced.

The waiter came by and Hubert waved him off.

Finally, Fitzsimmons wound down. Fingering his menu, he bestowed a slight smile on Penelope.

Hubert quit chewing on his cheek.

Tony didn’t have any cousins in the kitchen of the Grill Room. Even if he had, the keepers of New Orleans’ only five-star hotel wouldn’t have let him in, even at the employee entrance. He’d been up all night and the stubble on his cheeks gave him the air of someone who slept on the streets, rather than a man sworn to preserve and protect their safety.

He practically had slept on the streets last night. Hinson had been summoned to a rare inperson meeting with his boss, which is why Tony had dropped Penelope at the door of her building and raced off.

Exactly at midnight, Hinson had stepped from a cab in front of the Mid-City all night grocery and restaurant where his boss liked to conduct business.

It never failed to occur to Tony as he passed by the location that its similarity to Olano’s Seafood at the Lakefront was startling. He considered it one of the more poignant ironies of his life that several generations earlier, before any of his forebears had come to America, the trunk of his family tree had split. One branch had followed the path of corruption, the other had clung to the sweat and toil of the restaurant business.

And so it remained to this day.

Except for Tony, who pursued the fallen element with a vengeance even his own family didn’t understand.

Last evening he’d parked his car on a quiet side street, then made his way on foot to the surveillance van housed in a car repair shop across the street from the twenty-four-hour grocery.

The night owls of the neighborhood loitered in front of the store, many with bottles of beer dressed up in brown bag finery. The store stuck to the right side of the law, at least on the surface, careful to check ID to weed out any minors foolish enough to think they could buy a beer at this comer market.

Inside the van, Steve and Roy, two members of the hand-picked federal task force surveillance team, were tossing dice at the small work-table behind the front seats. Despite their casual attitudes, the two had earphones tight to their ears and Tony knew both were listening carefully. Recording equipment lining the sides of the cargo van whirred quietly.

Tony nodded at the men and picked up an earphone. All he heard at the moment was the sound of dishes clattering. He cocked a brow. “So what did I miss?”

One guy laughed. “A pretty good joke. It seems the old man personally picked out a wife for Hinson, some favor he promised an old friend in Chicago to look after his daughter bom on the wrong side of the bedspread.”

Tony tensed. Forcing a casualness he didn’t feel, he said, “Keeping it in the family, huh?”

“I guess. Not that the girl knows who her father is. Anyway, the joke is—” he slapped his knee then paused to cast the dice, “the real joke is Hinson’s asking what he did to be punished. Seems the girl’s colder than a nectar snowball.”

In one swift motion, Tony knocked the guy’s chair out from under him. The dice and cup clattered to the floor.

Both officers stared at Tony as if he’d gone nuts.

Which he had.

From the floor of the van the other officer said, rubbing his jaw, “I take it you’ve gotten to know the bride-to-be.”

Tony nodded, then offered the guy a hand up. “Sorry, Steve. No hard feelings, I hope.”

Steve shook his head and righted the chair. Staring curiously at Tony, he said slowly, “Even Boy Scouts who play with fire can get burned.”

The other officer pointed to his earphones. “Knock it off, guys. Take a listen to this.”

“All right, so I’ll marry her.” Hinson.

“I’ll dance at your wedding.” His boss.

“That’ll take her firm out of action. So when that’s done, for good service, what about an annulment?” Hinson, ending with a nervous chuckle.

Tony clenched his fists. He’d been right about the law firm. With Penelope compromised, the firm would no doubt pull out of representation of the other side in the biggest legal battle the old man had fought to date. The client might even give in.

In a simpler world, Penelope only had to tell Hinson her heart wasn’t engaged and he’d go away, his tail between his legs. But this twist about her unknown father could have an unexpected impact on her decision.

“One more thing.” Hinson’s boss.

“Yes, sir.” Hinson, not having lost his manners completely.

“You lift one finger, even your pinkie, against this girl, and I’ll have your throat.”