Smoke and Mirrors (6 page)

"Where were you just now, then? You were at least a million miles away, and from the look on your face, wherever you were is somewhere I'd like to go."

She looked him dead in the eye. "Why, I was thinking about you."

Surprise registered in the blue of his gaze, followed by amusement. Then challenge. "
Thinking,
or fantasizing?"

A blast of heat rushed through her. "Wouldn't you like to know?" she fired right back, ignoring the mental warning bells clamoring wildly.

Mansfield
arched a brow. "Only if you'd like to tell me."

"Dare!" Brent Ashford strolled down the hall, his neatly tailored, gray business suit a sharp contrast to the black double-breasted suit his brother sported. "Where did you hide Brooke? I heard she's back."

Mansfield
's smile became so warm and endearing it made Cass's heart turn over. "She was tired," he told his brother. "She's upstairs resting."

"Tired, huh?" The glib remark slipped out before Cass could stop it.

Both men swung toward her.

Swift move,
she scolded herself, then, because she had no other choice, widened her eyes in innocence. "Tired just seems like such an understatement. Something tells me after a few hours with
you,
exhausted is more likely the case."

Brent merely smiled and glanced around the lobby, obviously ignoring Cass's insinuation. But
Mansfield
's eyes narrowed. He knew what she meant, and he wasn't denying it, either. "Maybe you'd like to find out someday."

"Maybe I would." She reached over her shoulder and retrieved her long, dark braid, noting a few strands had worked themselves free. "Then again, maybe I wouldn't."

Part dare, part rebuff, her words hung between them. He didn't look away. Neither did
she
. Slowly Derek's hand journeyed over the counter and snatched the braid from her fingers. He drew it toward him, pulling her closer to him in the process, so close she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

He ran her twined hair along his lips. "You give as good as you get, don't you?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"No, but perhaps you should."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning a smart woman usually steers clear of a man like me."

Her lungs closed in on her. Ruth had not exaggerated. The man
was
lethal. Right here in broad daylight, in the middle of the lobby while his lover napped upstairs, he was coming on to her so strong, her legs threatened to turn to lava. Her insides already had.

"Steers clear?" she repeated a little more breathlessly than she liked. "Or perhaps you mean she's run off by a man who knows when he's met his match?"

The shocked expression on his face felt good, real good, until it faded, leaving only ashes of amusement, the promise of
wicked
challenge.

He laughed. "Ah, Cass. A man could go his whole life and never find a woman like you. Too bad I'm leaving in just a few weeks."

Leaving? That little tidbit of information resonated through her. In just a few weeks? The cop side of her went on red alert.

"Hey, Cass?" Brent asked, turning toward them.

Mansfield
instantly released her braid, freeing it to swing back behind her head. She found a smile, or some semblance thereof, and glanced at
Mansfield
's brother. She still couldn't get over the fact these two men were related.

One represented day while the other personified night.

"I'm still holding that rain check," daylight commented. A hopeful light gleamed in his eyes. "How about dinner?"

The temptation surfaced, to use one brother to spite the other, but the cop in Cass kept the naughty woman in check.

"Oh,
Brent,
thanks, but we've talked about this before. I don't think it's a good idea."

A mischievous light fired up in
Mansfield
's eyes. "Not a good idea to disobey the boss, either, is it, doll?"

"And just what do you deem disobedient?"

"Brothers have to look out for each other. I see no reason for you to turn Brent down." He grinned. "Unless, of course, you're holding out for me."

She laughed. "Now who's fantasizing?" She recognized a challenge when she heard one. She would go out with
Mansfield
's brother, more to get even with him than anything. Just to prove she could. She turned toward Brent.

"Vincent's. Meet you there at nine."

That said
,
she didn't stick around for postcoital banter. Instead she strode into the office.

Mansfield
's amused laughter shattered her perfect exit.

* * *

Brent eyed his brother. "What was that for?"

Because he was a fool, Derek grimly acknowledged. "Fair is fair, little brother. Encouraging Cassandra to go out with you is no different than a thousand other things I've done for you. Don't get your hopes up, though. We both know she's too much for a man like you."

Brent bristled. "Setting me up with a woman you obviously want is hardly the same as taking the blame for breaking the antique chandelier."

"Or the weed growing at the back of the estate?" Derek inquired. He'd been furious with Brent for his little experiment with marijuana, had threatened him within an inch of his life.

Then Brent's father had beaten Derek within an inch of his.

"Dad would have killed me," Brent groaned.

"No, he wouldn't have," Derek muttered. "He would have sainted you, thinking you were protecting me."
Af
ter all, once a bad seed, always a bad seed. They'd fallen into their roles easily, Derek the protector, Brent the baby, and no matter how many years passed, how many arguments, nothing changed the fundamentals.

"I saw the way you were looking at her," Brent said. "I know you want her. Why are you pushing her toward me?"

Because Derek didn't want to see anyone hurt. He glanced toward the door behind which Cass had vanished. "She's a beautiful, smart woman who deserves to be treated as such."

"And you've finally looked deep enough into the mirror to realize you can't treat her that way?" Brent quipped.

Derek skewered his brother with a pointed glare. "This has nothing to do with how I can, or can't, treat a woman. Your reflection is no more pristine than mine."

Brent narrowed his eyes. "That's all in the past, and you know it."

Derek's patience snapped. He loved his brother, but the innocent act was wearing thin. "Do I really? Last time I was in
Chicago
—"

"Leave it alone, Dare." Brent stepped closer. "Leave her alone, too. She's too good for you."

Derek could only laugh. "After all I've done to bail your ungrateful butt out of
trouble,
you've got a hell of a way of saying thank you."

Brent's face reddened. "Back off, Dare."

"What's the matter?" he teased. "Hit a nerve?"

"I mean it. Back off." With one last glare he turned and stormed away.

Derek watched him vanish up the staircase,
then
glanced back at the door to the office. Cass was in there, alone and furious. He could stroll through the door, and they'd pick up right where they left off.

Maybe even go further.

Derek stilled, jarred by the direction of his thoughts. Brent was right. He needed to leave Cass alone. It would be simpler that way, safer for everyone. But he was having a damn hard time staying away. She was like a smooth, fine wine. One sip and a man wanted more.

Derek curled his hand around the doorknob. A woman like Cassandra LeBlanc didn't come along everyday, and he'd been alone for too long. She was the kind who could make a man like Derek forget the hard lessons the world had drilled into him since the day be was born. She could chase away the dark clouds that followed him everywhere.

She could erase the scars on his soul.

Derek swore under his breath and released the cool brass as though it had burned him. Any thought of the sultry
New Orleans
beauty and erasing scars on his soul was reason enough to steer clear. He knew that wasn't possible. He knew better than to let himself hope, dream. He'd returned to
Chicago
to settle a score, fry a bigger fish.

There was no room, no time, for a woman in his plans.

* * *

"I thought we'd never get everyone settled," Cass commented to Ruth later that afternoon. "I ask you,
where's
the cavalry when you need them?"

"Cavalry, hon? What century are you living in?"

"Not this one, that's for darn sure." Dumb analogy, but after the way Derek had swaggered to her rescue, that's how she'd come to think of him. "I was referring to our illustrious owners, Sir Max's dashing grandsons."

Ruth let out an unladylike snort. "You must be out of your mind if you think Brent Ashford is going to lift a finger to—wait a minute. Now that I think about it, Brenty-boy
has
been much more solicitous since you came on board."

Cass picked up a pencil and gnawed on its end. She smelled something, and leaped at the opportunity to gain more insight. "I would have thought Brent eager to follow in his grandfather's footsteps."

"The high life, yes. The responsibility, no. That was always Derek." Ruth's expression grew far-away as though she could once again see the boy Derek had been when she had begun her employment twenty-five years ago. "When he was a kid, Derek followed his grandfather around every spare minute he could find. I used to think it was so sweet, that the kid's birthright really meant something to him." Her eyes focused. "Heck, maybe it did, but then I found out why he spent so much time here, and it darn near broke my heart."

Pencil in mouth, Cass stilled. "Oh, yeah? Why's that?"

"Dare and Brent aren't full brothers. And Dare didn't have the greatest relationship with Brent's dad. Sir Max tried to compensate by making him welcome here. Dare, well, he ate up the attention like a kid does an ice cream cone."

"Then how did he end up straying so far off course?"

"Max traveled a lot, too much to take a little boy along with him. He was only in
Chicago
a few months a year, and those months weren't enough for a kid like Dare."

Cass looked away. Unwanted images flashed before her, of an eager little boy following his grandfather around like a devoted puppy. Research had taught her much about
Mansfield
's life, but Ruth humanized the facts in a way Cass found unsettling. "Freud could have a field day with that, couldn't he?"

"It doesn't take Freud, Cass. A moron could see what Ted Ashford did to that poor kid."

"He isn't a kid anymore," she pointed out, too aware of the fact herself. "He's a full-grown man with a track record for making trouble."

Ruth waved her hand through the air. "Ah, posh. You can't take everything at face value, sweetie. You're way too literal."

Cass almost choked. Literal? Not even close. She knew better than anyone the importance of digging beneath the masks people presented to the world.

"Something tells me
Mansfield
gets by just fine. Where is he? I haven't seen him in a while."

"And you won't. When he and Brooke get together, you can just tuck away all your secret hopes of seeing him lounging around the hotel. She'll occupy every second she can steal."

"I just bet." Occupy was such a plain, clinical word for what a woman would do with a man like Derek. Feast came much closer. Indulge. Savor. Sin.

"Have they come up for air yet? Or are they still upstairs?"

Ruth's blue eyes sparked with amusement. "Oh, Cass. You do have a way with words. But no, they're not upstairs. They cut out of here a while back. We won't see Dare again until Brooke decides she's had enough."

Enough. Somehow Cass didn't think there could be such a thing with a man like Derek Mansfield.

Thirty minutes later Cass stood on the diving board of the Manor's Olympic-size swimming pool. Ashford and Mansfield weren't expected back for hours, Gray was on his way to the penthouse, and she had an hour or so to unwind. Nothing like a good swim followed by a deep-muscle massage. Just the thought of it had her body humming in anticipation.

Her racing suit clung to her body as she dove into the water. She broke the surface and began a freestyle stroke. One lap, two laps, three laps, four. That was considered her warm-up,
then
the fun started. Back-to-back individual medleys. Fifty meters of butterfly, followed by fifty of backstroke, then breaststroke, concluding with freestyle.

Only a moment was allowed for catching her breath before the whole routine started again.

When it came to physical exertion, Cass knew no limits. Not only was it imperative to her job, but crucial to her sanity. On more than one occasion she had lost herself there, snapping up the endorphins of physical release and using them as a natural narcotic. She supposed it only normal to consider her exercise the way she thought of illegal substances. The drug subculture consumed her life, and it had for a long time. Too easily she related to the junkies and the escape they sought.