Not the Marrying Kind (Destiny Bay Romances - Forever Yours) (15 page)

He didn't look like a crook. But then, who did? She smiled mechanically, acknowledging the introduction and shaking the man's hand, but her gaze kept straying to the top of his head. If that was a hairpiece, they were making them strangely these days.

Don't even mention hair
, Michael had said. That seemed a little extreme. Why would she be likely to mention hair anyway?

“Lathe and plaster,” Mr. Stickler was saying, marching them through the rooms. “You can see the quality in every inch of the place.”

They were nice units. There was a complex of ten of them, grouped around a common courtyard and built so that every one of them had a nice view of the bay, and even of the jetty, looking out to the open sea, from the two best ones. They were newly built and still unfurnished. Two bedrooms with loft. Just right for upper-level corporate executives from Los Angeles who wanted a weekend retreat at the beach. The whole complex was obviously an ideal investment if the money was right.

Mr. Stickler was still selling like crazy. “Look at this workmanship. Look, look here at these built-in shelves. We had real craftsmen working here, not your regular construction crew that someone hires out of the local bar. These men were imported from Europe. Every man was a master in his field.”

“No women?” Shelley saw Michael glance at her in surprise, but she didn't care. He wanted a real Julie Daniels, he was going to get one. Why couldn't Julie be a homegrown feminist?

“Women?” Mr. Stickler was looking at her as though she'd asked how many Martians had been represented.

Shelley smiled a bright, Julie Daniels smile. “Yes, Mr. Stickler. Women.”

A cloud passed over his face, then his hustler-style charm took over again and he bristled his mustache at her, giving her what he would have called a smile. “Call me Harry, little lady. No need to be formal.”

“H-Harry?”
Don't even mention hair
, Michael had said, and now the man's name turned out to be Harry? For just a second she smelled a rat.
 

She stuttered over the name, glancing sharply at Michael, but his face was all wide-eyed innocence. There was no time to think it through. Maybe he hadn't known the first name the man was using. She'd still avoid saying the word hair, and she'd avoid looking for the hairpiece that didn't seem to be there. And in the meantime she'd better push on ahead with the feminist persona she'd started and ignore the rest.

“There are a lot of women in construction these days, H-Harry. And I say, more power to them. After all, who would know better about how to lay out a house than a woman?”

Harry didn't like feminists. That much was clear. He'd lost his smile, and his mouth had taken on almost a sneer. “There's more to a house than the kitchen,” he said, obviously still trying hard to be jovial and finding it very difficult.

Shelley wasn't sure why she'd gotten into this discussion, but she'd started it and now she couldn't think of a graceful way out. All she could do was go on with it.
 

“Oh, come on now, you're splitting hairs,” she said, then blanched. She hadn't said that. She couldn't have said that. It wasn't a phrase she'd ever used before in her life. She swayed slightly, staring at Mr. Stickler, and there was Michael behind him, waving at her furiously, as though to remind her not to mention hair.

I didn't
, she wanted to shout.
That wasn't me
. But all she could do was gape at Mr. Stickler, wondering about his hairpiece, and finally Michael stepped in and saved the moment.

“You’ll have to excuse Julie,” he said smoothly, coming alongside her and taking her arm. “She does get on her soapbox when she gets the chance.” He hugged her and gave her a nauseatingly condescending kiss on the forehead. “She's so cute when she gets worked up over something.” Then he dropped her like a hot potato and turned back to Harry.

“I can see that the place is a beauty. What I want to study now is the paperwork. Give me some facts and figures, man.”

He took them into the den, where he had books and files full of charts and graphs and an expensively printed prospectus. He and Michael went over interest rates and rates of return on investment and escrow fees and tax credit potential and all the other details while Shelley tried not to notice how the ceiling lights reflected off the top of the man's head.

Michael was so very good at this. He looked so eager and happy, just like a man who'd found the perfect way to make his fortune. She could hardly hold back a smile as she watched him. She wanted to reach out and touch his face. Everything he did seemed to grab at her heart. If this was love, so far it felt great.

Thinking about Michael, she glanced absently at Harry's head just in time to find his gaze on her, a slight frown showing that he'd noticed her obsession with his dome. She looked away quickly. That man wasn't wearing a hairpiece. He couldn't be.

“Well, Harry,” Michael said at last, rising from his chair. “I think you and I have got ourselves a deal here.”

“Wonderful.” The man fairly oozed satisfaction. “That's just wonderful. All we need to do is meet at my office in town to draw up the final papers and— heh-heh—exchange funds. And you two will be set to see your money go right out and make money for you, just like it was getting itself a job. Heh-heh-heh.”

They all laughed at his little joke, and he began to usher them through the house again, heading toward the front door.

“I'll call my bank in Tulsa,” Michael was saying. “I've already made arrangements to have my money available at a moment's notice. I can meet you in town by two o'clock.”

“Wonderful!” Harry fairly bounced with glee. “You'll find this to be a wonderful investment. People are lining up already to buy into the individual units. They're the best on the bay.”

Shelley found the man utterly annoying, and his joy set her teeth on edge. She couldn't resist saying something to deflate him a little.

“I guess people out here don't have much choice, do they? I mean, there are so many people and such limited housing available.”

He stiffened and she smiled sunnily. “These places are nice, of course, but hardly perfect. Why, look at this, H-Harry.” She was never going to be able to say that name again without stuttering and thinking of hairpieces and con men. She walked over to the window that looked out over the water. “The sun coming in through here is going to ruin this hardwood floor in no time.” She scuffed her foot along the polished surface. “You ought to get yourself a little rug and put it down. . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and she turned beet-red, looking out of the corner of her eye at where a nice little rug might have added some fur to Harry.
 
She hadn't said that. Oh, please, why couldn't she stay away from the subject?

Now she was thoroughly ashamed of herself as she saw the poor man, looking puzzled, slowly lift his hand and pat the top of his head, wondering, no doubt, just what it was she kept staring at.

She'd been a complete failure at this undercover work, that was for sure. Michael had wanted a nice, suburban housewife and he'd gotten a feminist agitator. He'd warned her not to mention hair and she hadn't been able to stay away from the word. He must be really sorry he'd brought her along. This undercover work was a real strain, and she was incompetent at it.

She couldn't take any more. Mumbling something unintelligible that she meant for good-bye, she whirled out the front door, walking quickly down the path toward the car. But she hadn't taken many steps before she heard clearly what Michael said to the man, even though she was past the bushes that shielded her from sight of the doorway.

“Don't mind her. You know how women are.” She could hear the grin in his voice. “Hair today,” he said as clear as a bell. “Gone tomorrow.”

Shelley stopped in her tracks. She'd only suspected it before, but now she knew she'd been taken. How could Michael have done that to her?
 

“Why you . . . !” She turned on him furiously as he came up behind her.

“Not now,” he said through a clenched smile. “Save it up for when we're out of sight.”

She wanted to belt him in the jaw, and she'd never hit another human being in her life. She got into the car next to him and stared straight ahead.

“Let me know when we're out of sight,” she said evenly. “I want to know when it's safe to kill you.”

“Just hold on to that thought,” he teased, “until we're totally out of the complex. I know a place where we can go to talk.”

She sat as tight as a coiled spring, furious. He'd set her up from the very beginning. Why on earth had he done that?

Michael drove them quickly through the security post and out onto the highway, then turned the car into a 50’s style drive-in. “I need a drink. How about you?”

She nodded slowly, lips pressed together. “I think I could use one,” she admitted, still holding back her slow simmer.

“Two super-size chocolate malts,” Michael told the girl on roller skates who came to the window of the car to take their order. “With a shot of chocolate syrup on the side.”

Shelley felt as though she were about to explode. She waited until the girl left the window before she asked the question she'd been waiting to ask for a very long time, speaking with careful, strained precision. “That man didn't have on a hairpiece, did he?”

Michael was forthright in his answer. “No, he didn't.”

She let out her breath in a long, angry sigh. “Then why did you tell me he did?”

He shrugged, all innocence. “I thought he might have bought one by now.”

“Michael Hudson, that is no answer! Why did you do that to me?”

“For fun. Wasn't it fun?”

“Not for me!”

“Well, it was for me. Did you see his face when you told him to get a rug?”

“Michael!” She leaned over as though to shake some sense into him and he took hold of her shoulders and kissed her, hard and long, until her anger faded and her response to him came seeping back into the forefront of her consciousness.

“Oh, Michael.” She snuggled into his arms, sitting on the brake and not caring a bit. “You really shouldn't have done that.”

“You're right.” His arms tightened around her, and he buried his face in her hair. “Actually I should never have taken you with me at all. It's against department policy to involve civilians in these things. And rightly so.” He sighed. “And I wouldn't have taken you if I'd thought there was any chance at all of danger. But I knew all about Harry. He's a slimy little weasel, but he doesn't like rough stuff.”

“So why did you take me?” she asked curiously.

He kissed her nose. “Because I didn't want you out of my sight. Now, sit up straight. Here come the malts.”

She sat up straight and drank her malt, but something lacking in his explanations still troubled her. “Why did you take the chance of setting me up that way about the hairpiece? What if the whole goofy affair had put Harry off, made him suspicious?”

He grinned at her like a boy in a baseball cap, hiding the ball that had just broken the plate-glass window behind his back. “It was a tame setup. It needed something to liven it up.”

“What?” She still wasn't sure she understood.

“It's a habit I've sort of fallen into lately. I do things like that when the going gets too routine. Makes life a little more exciting.”

A cold chill was working its way down her spine. “Do you always consider it boring unless you're getting shot at?” she asked.

His grin was as wide as a devil's swath. “Sometimes even then,” he admitted. “Come on, drink up. I've got to get to that meeting in town.”

She sat very still as they drove back to the hotel. Michael Hudson was a wonderful, sexy, thrilling man, Shelley told herself. She was a little bit in love with him. More the fool she. A man like this, a man so hooked on excitement that he even upped the ante when he didn't have to, was never going to settle for a tame psychologist to round out his life. She felt a very empty hole where happiness had warmed her only hours before. It had been a wonderful vacation, but it seemed the holiday was almost over.

“I can't take you with me to the final meet in town,” he told her as they left the elevator for his room. “The boys from the department will be there when it goes down, and even a slimy weasel like Harry can get mean when he's cornered.”

“You mean, you're going to be arresting him?”

Michael nodded, inserting his key in the door. “We've got enough on this character to put him away for a long time. He didn't own that condo he was trying to sell us, and now I've got proof.”

Shelley walked slowly into the room and looked around. The maid had been in, and every bit of evidence of the night they'd had together—and the morning—had been obliterated. The bed was made up and looked square and uninviting. All the clothes were hung carefully in the closet. And the air conditioner was on full blast, chilling the room that had been so warm before.

Maybe that was why she felt cold. But somehow Shelley was afraid it had to do with more than the temperature. She walked to the sliding glass door that opened onto the balcony and stood looking out, arms folded tightly across her chest.

Michael was making calls on his cell phone. Shelley didn't pay much attention to them. She knew he was calling his department and coordinating with the police officers who were in on the operation. She watched the sailboats on the bay and tried not to think at all.

That, of course, was impossible. She was a thinking woman, after all. “Relationships don't exist,” he'd told her when they'd first met. “I can't afford to get too close to anyone.” He'd said his time was too short in any one place. That letting down emotional barriers would make him vulnerable.

She'd thought he needed counseling to confront his rationalizations of an avoidance syndrome. Now she was afraid that she was the one who was going to need help. But she was sure of one thing: This was the last she would see of Michael Hudson.

Michael's arms slid around her from behind and he pulled her back against his broad chest. “Let's go sailing tomorrow,” he said softly against her hair. “We'll take a picnic lunch and find a deserted beach somewhere.”