Hidden Riches (22 page)

“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 party. 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.

T
he 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.

“Do you want a drink?” She didn’t turn, but headed straight for the brandy.

“No.”

“No?” Her fingers hovered over the decanter, fell away. “I don’t either.” She crossed to the stereo, switched on the CD changer without any idea what music she’d left inside. Bessie Smith picked up where B. B. had left off.

“I’ll have to take the tree down in a few days.” She
reached out and touched a bough. “On Twelfth Night. Pack everything away, burn a few sprigs of pine in the fire. It always makes me a little sad.” She jolted when Jed’s hands cupped her shoulders.

“You’re nervous.”

“Me?” She laughed and wished she’d poured something, anything that would wash away the dry heat in her throat.

“I like it.”

Feeling foolish, she turned and managed a small smile. “You would. It makes you feel superior.”

“There is that.” He lowered his head and kissed the corner of her mouth. “It also lets me know you’ll remember this, for a long time. Come with me.”

He kept her hand in his on the short walk to the bedroom.

He wanted to move slowly, discovering her inch by fascinating inch, savoring those nerves even as he was exploiting them. Until she was helpless, and his.

He switched on the bedside lamp, and looked at her.

Her breath shuddered out when he touched his lips to hers. Tenderness was the last thing she’d expected from him, and the most devastating gift he could give. Her lips parted beneath his, accepting, even as her heart jammed like a fist in her throat.

Her head fell back, a gesture of surrender that had need twisting sharp in his gut. But he continued to play her lips delicately, letting the moment spin out.

“You’re shaking,” he murmured, trailing his lips down her jawline, sliding his tongue over warm, smooth skin, wallowing in the flavor of flesh.

“That’s you.”

“You could be right.” He brought his mouth back to hers, deepening the kiss until pleasure swam giddily in her head. Now there were sighs, and breathless murmurs, the hard thud of racing hearts.

“Let me turn down the bed,” she whispered. But when she turned, shifted aside, he drew her back against him,
nuzzling his lips at the nape of her neck.

“That can wait.”

His hands were spread over her midsection where the pressure was coiled taut as a rattler. “I don’t think I can.”

“It’s not going to be quick.” He slid his hands up her sides, down again. “It’s not going to be easy.”

“Jed—” His name ended on a moan. His hands were over her breasts now, caressing, thumbs skimming, circling lightly over the peaks while his tongue did outrageous things to the back of her ear. Eyes closed, she relinquished any thought of control and arched back against him.

He used his teeth now, satisfying his own primitive need for the taste of flesh while he undid the tiny buttons that ranged from her throat to the juncture of her thighs. Her breathing slowed, deepened, like a woman in a trance. The side of his thumb barely brushed her skin as he moved with tormenting laziness from button to button.

“I’ve had all night to wonder.” He spoke softly, close to her ear, and fought to keep his hands from taking too greedily. “All night to imagine what was under here.”

Slowly, he spread the material open, skimmed his fingers down her center. There was nothing but woman.

“Sweet Christ.” He buried his face in her hair as desire ripped through him. Her skin was hot and soft, the muscles quivering helplessly under his hands. Each tremor rippled from her into him as they stood pressed close in the lamplight.

He hadn’t known a need could be so outrageous, or the desire to give and take so brutally keen, like a blade honed and waiting for its mark. He only knew he wanted every inch of her and the satisfaction of having her crave every bit as desperately as he.

Dreamlike, she lifted an arm, hooked it around his neck. It was almost like floating, she thought. And the air was polished like silver. Then he would touch again, and that softly glowing air took on an edge, like a sword turned in the sun.

Her eyes half closed, she leaned back against him, absorbing both the pride and the wonder as his hands roamed over her skin. She turned her head so that her mouth could find his again. Her lips clung, wet and hungry, urging him to take more. She could no longer pinpoint the focus of pleasure. There were too many sensations sprinting and careening through her. His mouth, yes, there was pleasure in that, the firm pressure of lips, the scrape of teeth, the tangle of tongues.

There was more in the rock-hard press of his body against hers, the faint tremors that whispered of a violence held rigidly under control. The heat that shimmered around him that spoke of dark and desperate needs.

And there were his hands. God, his hands that stroked and molded and possessed, just a few degrees shy of rough until she was afraid she would lose all sense of self and beg for more.

Her breath came in whimpers, in low, throaty groans, and her body pressed back against his, rocking in a quickening rhythm that demanded. To please her, and himself, he ran his hand down the center of her body until he cupped her. She was already damp and heated. With fingertips only he sent her hurtling over the edge. Her body went rigid, arched back against him. She cried out as the fast, hard orgasm rammed her. When her legs buckled, he slipped deeper into her, groaning as she gasped out in stunned delight.

“More?”

Her head reeled. To keep her balance she locked her other arm around him. “Yes.”

He drove her up again, arousal spurting inside him each time she moaned out his name. He understood a man could be drunk and on the edge of control without sampling a swallow of liquor. And that a woman could slip into the blood like a drug. As the greed welled inside him, he spun her around to drag the snug material over her shoulders.

There was a fierceness on his face, a violence in his eyes that should have frightened her. Though her heart gave a
wild leap, it had nothing to do with fear.

“I want you.” Her voice was low and thick, like honey poured over flame. The hands that tugged the shirt over his head were far from steady. But her eyes, nearly level with his, were strong and sure. She unsnapped his jeans, tossing back her head as she moved closer. “I want you inside me. Now.”

In response he gripped her hips and tumbled with her onto the bed.

They rolled twice, tearing impatiently at each other’s clothes until damp flesh pressed to damp flesh. But when she would have locked herself around him and taken him into her, he shifted, sliding down her body. While she writhed and moaned beneath him, he feasted on her, suckling her breasts so that the answering contractions low in her belly were all but unbearable.

Panting, she gripped his hair, her body curved in desperate invitation. “Now. For God’s sake, now.”

He caught her nipple between his teeth, tugging until her nails dug into his shoulders. “This time I want more.”

But the more he took, the more he needed. She gave, completely, unrestrictedly, abandoning herself to the flood of sensations. Still, it wasn’t enough.

As he had promised himself, he explored every inch of her, tasting, touching, possessing. Whatever he asked, she gave. Whatever she offered, he took.

He could watch her. The light sheened over her damp skin, making it gleam like one of her porcelain figurines. But she was flesh and blood, her hands as curious as his, her mouth as avid.

Beneath them the spread was as slick and smooth as water. The music drifted in, all crying sax and throbbing bass.

When he slipped inside her, her low throaty moan shuddered from her lips into his. Slowly, savoring, he slid deeper, deeper, swallowing her frantic gasps, inciting more with the play of his tongue over hers.

He braced himself over her, desperate to see her face, to watch those flickers of mindless pleasure. She came again, tightening convulsively around him so that he sucked in his breath at the storm of sensation.

Her eyes flew open, glazed and huge, to fix on his face. Her lips trembled as she tried to speak, but there was only another shuddering moan. He was all she could see, all she could feel, and all she wanted. Each slow stroke shivered through her so that her body was a mass of sparking nerves and tearing needs. He ignited them again and again until she could do nothing but wrap herself around him and let him take her where and how he chose.

She cried out again. Jed buried his face in her hair and let himself follow.

The music had changed. Elton John was singing his ode to Marilyn. Dora lay sprawled crosswise on the bed, her numbed body barely aware of Jed’s weight. She did feel his lips pressed lightly to the side of her breast, and his heartbeat, still raging. She found the strength to lift her hand, to run it over his hair and down to his shoulder.

Her touch, somehow both maternal and loverlike, caused him to stir. He felt as though he’d just tumbled down a very tall mountain without skis and had landed in a deep, warm spring. Going with the urge, he kissed the curve of her breast and watched her smile.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“No. I can’t see anything.”

It was his turn to smile. “Your eyes are closed.”

“Oh.” She opened them and sighed. “Thank God. I thought I’d been struck blind.” Turning her head on the rumpled spread, she looked down at him. “I don’t think I’ll ask how you’re doing. You look entirely too pleased with yourself.”

He levered himself up to kiss her. Her hair had tumbled down, as he’d imagined it would, and was a riot of curls around her face. Her lips were swollen, her eyes sleepy.

He felt something stir—not the rekindled desire he’d expected, but something else. Something he didn’t recognize as contentment. “Ask anyway.”

“Okay.” She brushed the hair away from his forehead. “How’s it going, Skimmerhorn?”

“It’s going good.”

“Your gift for words stuns me.”

He laughed, kissed her again, then rolled over, gathering her close to his side. “It’s too bad I can’t think of any Tennyson.”

The idea of him quoting poetry made her smile grow misty. “How about Shelley? ‘I arise from dreams of thee in the first sweet sleep of night, when the winds are breathing low, and the stars are shining bright.’ ”

She humbled him. “That’s nice.” He tipped her face up for a kiss that was both sweet and dreamy. “Really nice.”

Content with that, she nuzzled closer. “As a Conroy I was raised on bards and playwrights.”

“They did a good job with you.” She only smiled as he continued to study her, his hand still cupped under her chin, his eyes dark and intent as they scanned her face. “I want you again.”

“I was hoping you would.”

“Dora, you look terrible.”

“Lea, what would I do without you around to boost my ego?”

Unfazed, Lea fisted her hands on her hips as she studied her sister’s pale face and shadowed eyes. “Maybe you’re coming down with something. That flu’s still going around, you know. I think you should close the shop for the day.”

Dora walked around the counter as a customer came in. “That kind of thinking is why you’re the employee and I’m the boss.” She put on a sunny smile. “Good morning. May I help you?”

“Are you Dora Conroy?”

“That’s right.” Dora held out a hand. She knew she looked pale and wan from lack of sleep, but the woman who was currently clutching her hand looked near collapse. “Would you like some coffee? Some tea?”

“I . . .” The woman shut her eyes and pulled off her blue ski cap. “I’d love some coffee, but I’m not supposed to drink it.” She laid a hand on the gentle mound of her belly. “Tea would be nice.”

“Cream? Lemon?”

“No, just black.”

“Why don’t you sit down?” Taking charge, Dora guided the woman to a chair. “We’re all starting a little slow this morning. After-holiday fatigue.” When a young couple strolled in, Dora gestured for Lea to see to them. She poured two cups of tea.

“Thanks. I’m Sharon Rohman,” she told Dora as she accepted her cup.