Читать книгу The Rebel Tycoon's Outrageous Proposal - Abby Gaines - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

JARED COMMITTED to his plan without taking even a moment to weigh it up. Weren’t his best initiatives the product of pure gut instinct?

He parked around the corner on a quiet side street. Within seconds he was heading for the wrought-iron gate of the communal garden typical of these fancy complexes.

He tugged at the gate—locked. A card swipe mechanism on the brick wall blinked a red light, telling him he wasn’t welcome. Jared took a closer look at the wall. It really wouldn’t be too difficult to scale. He threw his jacket over—the need to retrieve it would be added incentive for success—and hoisted himself up. He went right on over the other side before any of Holly’s neighbors could look out a window and alert the police to an intruder.

To his disgust, each condo had a small, private backyard, also walled. Holly must be raking it in to afford this. Unless, of course, she really had stolen her clients’ money. No doubt the thought had crossed the Feds’ minds.

As he judged the height of this second barrier, Jared considered the wisdom of what he was about to do. This wasn’t just a wall he was about to breach. It was the boundary between his strictly business relationship with Holly and something…irregular. A degree of involvement in her problems that he didn’t want. He dismissed the thought. No way was he chickening out.

He hauled himself over the smaller wall and started across her immaculate patch of lawn. He’d bet the Feds hadn’t set the condo’s alarm, so their people could come and go easily. But the back door and downstairs windows had more yellow tape across them. Best not to disturb it.

Jared climbed the fire escape to reach the largest upstairs window, which he guessed was Holly’s bedroom. He draped his jacket over his elbow and smashed the glass. Too late, it occurred to him she was the sort of woman who would have dead bolts on her windows. He fumbled in the darkness to find the window catch. Yep, a dead bolt.

With the key in it. Suppressing an exclamation of triumph, he unlocked the window and slid it open. He stepped gingerly into the room, partly to avoid the broken glass, partly out of the crazy notion that the more carefully he moved the less likely he would be to trigger an alarm.

When he was sure the only sound he could hear was the thudding of his heart—surely breaking and entering hadn’t been this stressful the last time he tried it?—he pulled the heavy draperies shut behind him and snapped on the bedside lamp.

Holly’s bedroom was as neat as he would have expected. If the FBI had searched it, they’d done a good job of tidying up afterward. The white damask counterpane on the double bed was unwrinkled, with two square pillows propped carefully on single points against the light-colored wood of the headboard.

Twin matching nightstands flanked the bed, both surfaces clear of clutter. Next to the tallboy dresser, a small armchair was upholstered in a light-blue check. The walls, he guessed in the dim lamplight, were cream or off-white.

It could have been sterile. But it felt simply… honest.

On the wall opposite the bed hung framed photographs of two teenagers, a boy and a girl.

On the other wall, directly above the bed, hung something so out of place it had to be important.

An oil painting, unframed, in bold oranges and reds, measuring about a foot square. Behind all that color was a green-blue swirl of background, cold where the rest was warm.

With difficulty, Jared tore his gaze from it. He wrapped his jacket around his right hand so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints.

Ten minutes later he was done. He switched off the bedside lamp and opened the draperies. Light from the three-quarter moon provided almost as much illumination as the lamp had. As he prepared to exit through the window, a scratching sound froze him in place. Was it inside? A cat, maybe? After a moment he heard it again. He stepped out of the bedroom into the hallway, then moved to the top of the stairs.

The sudden wail of a burglar alarm almost sent him into cardiac arrest.

“Damn.” Jared raced back into the bedroom, picked up his load and headed out the window. Clambering down the fire escape was much faster than his ascent—every second he expected to be confronted by an angry neighbor or an unusually vigilant security company, the kind a woman like Holly would hire.

Holly’s back gate wasn’t locked from the inside, thank goodness. He sprinted across the communal area, praying all the way that the gate to the road would have a release button, rather than another card swipe. It did.

He threw the bundle into the car, hurled himself in after it and drove off, remembering to slow down as he hit the arterial road. Two hundred yards later, a security company vehicle passed him going the other way. A half mile farther on, a police car passed, lights flashing but siren off out of respect for the quality neighborhood.

The blood pounding in his ears, Jared drove all the way home right on the speed limit. He must be getting old.

BECAUSE SHE’D BEEN wide-awake since before six o’clock, contemplating her first day at Harding Corp with mingled dread and anticipation, Holly was first to the front door when the pounding started at six forty-five.

“Quiet,” she muttered as she scrambled for the dead bolt key that, to AnnaMae’s amusement, she’d hidden under the clay pot that held her friend’s umbrellas. “You’ll wake the neighbors.”

She glared at the man on the doorstep. “Special Agent Crook. How are you this morning?” A thought struck her. “Is it Dave? Have you found him?”

He gave her a peculiar look, as if he didn’t believe Dave actually existed. “Can I come in?”

That being a purely rhetorical question, Holly stepped back and tugged AnnaMae’s tight spare robe, a satin concoction with a delicate floral pattern, closer around her. She followed Crook into the living room.

“Where were you at eleven o’clock last night?” he asked, accepting her offer of a seat.

“Right here, listening to a David Gray CD and having a cup of coffee with my roommate while my…blouse soaked in the tub,” she said with careful precision that nonetheless omitted to mention she’d also washed her underwear.

“I’ll need to confirm that with your roommate.”

“I can vouch for her,” AnnaMae said from the doorway. “She came in at ten-thirty, which I know because I asked her to wait a moment while my TV show finished. Then we had coffee, as Holly said. We both went to bed at eleven-thirty.”

“Where were you before you came home?” he asked.

“I had dinner at the Green Room with a client,” Holly said. “Is this about Dave? Is he all right?”

“Someone broke into your condo last night.” Crook rolled his eyes when she gasped. “Your alarm went off at eleven. The security company got there five minutes later, but whoever did it was long gone. It doesn’t appear anything was taken—TV, DVD and so on. I need to know if you had any valuables.”

She shook her head. “Nothing, since you confiscated my laptop. Is there any damage?”

He ignored the question. “Did you keep any work files at home that someone might have tried to retrieve for you?”

“You think I organized someone to break into my own home?” Appalled, she stared at him. “I thought you already searched the place.”

“We did. We cleaned out your home office.”

She winced.

“But maybe there’s a safe we didn’t find.” He scowled at her. “We will find it, so you might as well tell me now.”

“There’s no safe.” Holly was still trying to absorb the news. “It must have been kids fooling around. How did they get in?”

“They broke an upstairs window, managed to get it open.”

“I always lock my windows and hide the key.”

Crook had the grace to look shamefaced. “One of our guys left the key in the lock.”

“I’ll expect you to compensate me for any loss or damage,” Holly said, outrage overriding her instinctive respect for an officer of the law.

Crook grunted, a sound that could have meant either yes or no. Or more likely, Get off my back, lady. He hauled himself up off the sofa. “Call me if you think of anything else that might be relevant. We’ll dust for fingerprints this morning.” He looked her in the eye. “We don’t think this was kids, Ms. Stephens. We think this is about whatever you’re mixed up in.”

When he’d gone, Holly sank into the spot he’d vacated on the couch. “Can things get any worse?”

“You need coffee.” Her friend bustled out of the room.

Holly shut her eyes, clamped a hand to her forehead to ward off an incipient headache. She breathed deeply—in, out, in, out. A tap-tapping at the window jolted her out of her attempted trance. She screamed, and AnnaMae came running.

“What is it?”

Holly pointed a trembling finger at the window where a stick topped with a white lace-and-chiffon bra tapped on the pane.

A minute later she snatched her bra off the end of the stick that Jared proffered from the living room doorway.

“Where did you get this?” She clutched the bra to her chest, then realized how suggestive that looked. She whipped it behind her back. “That’s my bag.”

“Nothing wrong with your eyesight.” He advanced into the room and dropped the canvas overnight bag. “You’ll find a few of your things in there.”

“It was you! You broke into my home last night—for a panty raid?” She heard the beginnings of a shriek in her voice and clenched her teeth.

Uninvited, Jared sat on the couch. AnnaMae, agog with curiosity, propelled Holly to an armchair. She was about to take the space next to Jared herself, but Holly’s glare deterred her. With visible reluctance, she left the room.

“You needed some clothes. I got them,” he said.

She’d have to be stupid to believe he’d done it to help her.

“No need to thank me. The look on your face when I knocked on the window was all the reward I need.”

That was the real reason. He’d derived puerile pleasure from her embarrassment. “How dare you break in—that place is a crime scene.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And you had me convinced you’re innocent.”

“You know what I mean. The FBI taped it off. And how did you get into my complex? The gate’s always locked.”

He opened his mouth to answer, but she held up a hand. “I don’t want to know. I’d probably feel compelled to report it to Special Agent Crook.”

He snorted. “You can take law-abiding too far, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. This is exactly what I’ve never liked about you—”

“You’ve never liked about me?” His voice had gone dangerously quiet. “You hadn’t met me before yesterday, but you never liked me?”

When he put it like that, it sounded unreasonable. “You’re twisting my words. I said I never liked one thing about you, that you’re known to deal on the fringes of the law.”

“So much for your promise to suspend judgment,” he snapped. “Since we’re clearing the air, is there anything else you’ve ‘never liked’ about me?”

Well, he’d asked for honesty, her personal strength. “I don’t like the deals you make that infringe on the rights of small shareholders. I don’t like the way you mislead the market, distracting people from your shadier deals by feigning an interest in a legitimate one. I don’t like the way you leak confidential information to the press when it suits you.”

Jared’s admiration for Holly grew. She was smart enough to sift through the business gossip, the newspaper articles extolling his successes, and figure out exactly what he was up to. Panic momentarily suffused him. Would she realize the role he’d set her up to play in this current deal?

With that extraordinary perception she seemed to have where he was concerned, she said, “In light of all that, I want you to promise me one thing.”

“You’re in no position to make demands,” he reminded her.

“Promise you will give me an honest answer to any question. I won’t work with you otherwise.”

He briefly considered agreeing, then lying to her when he had to. But contrary to the low opinion Holly had of his personal integrity, he didn’t break his promises. And he only lied when really necessary, which was seldom. “If I answer a question, you’ll know it’s the truth,” he said. “But I reserve the right not to answer every question.”

Because why he wanted this deal so badly was none of her business.

Holly nodded. “Now,” she said briskly, “is there anything you don’t like about me?”

For an incredulous moment he stared at her. Anxious to play fair, she was giving him a chance to insult her the way she’d just done him. He laughed loud and long.

“I mean it.” Pink tinged her cheeks. “It’s only fair.”

Her steady gaze held his, but her tongue moistened those full lips—how could he ever have thought her plain?—in an anxious gesture.

“You’re uptight.”

“I know.” She looked relieved that he’d stated the obvious.

He thought back over what he’d heard people say about her. It was human nature not to give unqualified praise, so those who admired her creativity, her technical precision, her intelligence, usually found something bad to say, as well. “You’re stubborn and inflexible.”

She was actually nodding, as if these were compliments. He had to play hardball. “You’re condescending to those you consider your intellectual inferiors.”

“I am not!”

Now he had her. Though the hurt in her gray-blue eyes made him feel like a heel.

“I admit I’m not a great people person,” she said, “but I would never—”

“Hey.” Jared cut her off. “You asked. You don’t have to justify yourself to me. If it’s any consolation, I’ve discovered one thing I really like about you.”

“What’s that?” she said suspiciously.

“Your taste in lingerie.” He gestured to the bag between them. “For a lady who likes to dress so shapeless and dull, you’ve got some pretty hot stuff in there.”

Holly felt her face flame. To hide her embarrassment, she leaned forward and pulled the bag toward her. She unzipped it and looked through what he’d brought. Most of her lingerie, and beneath it some clothes.

But not her clothes.

“I don’t believe it.” She rummaged through the bag again. “These are my sister’s things—none of these clothes are mine.” He’d obviously gone into the bottom drawer of her tallboy, where the overflow from the spare bedroom found a home. “I have a whole wardrobe full of suits and blouses. Why didn’t you bring those?”

“I only chose stuff I liked,” Jared said airily. “None of the rest came close. Besides, my office is casual.”

“But I don’t—” Holly counted to five. There would be plenty else to stress about in the weeks to come. At least she had fresh underwear and no need to spend a fortune on new clothes, assuming she was still around the same size as her sister.

“There’s more,” he said. “In the zip pocket on the end.”

She felt the outline of something hard through the bag and opened the pocket. “Oh.” Carefully, she pulled the painting out. Its bright colors shone in the dull of the living room. She blinked back tears. “I… How did you…?” She swallowed. “Thank you.”

He dismissed her thanks with a wave of his hand. “It looked like it might be important.”

“It is.” She clasped it to her chest. “It’s my father.”

“You mean, he painted it?”

“My mother did. It’s a portrait of my father.” Holly’s shaky laugh held equal measures of frustration and puzzlement. “I have no idea what Mom meant by it, but it’s all I have left of him.”

Jared narrowed his eyes. Could Holly not guess the meaning of a painting under whose warm, colorful surface lurked a cold, blue heart? Chances were, she couldn’t. Abstract representations would be beyond this woman who lived her life in black and white.

Holly had no idea how many shades of gray there were in this world.

“Did your father die?” Dammit, he didn’t want to get personal with her. He’d never have asked the question if he hadn’t been in this bizarre situation, sitting opposite a woman whose underwear drawer he’d enjoyed riffling through far too much. Now she sat in front of him in the thinnest of satin robes, showing a tantalizing hint of creamy cleavage where the lapels met. He dropped his gaze to her bare feet, only to find they were—with their pale pink-tipped toes—troublingly, innocently erotic. Jared dragged his eyes back up to her face, which was no hardship.

Thankfully she didn’t want to get personal, either. Her expression cooled as she laid the painting on the table. “No,” she said briefly.

Fine by him. He got to his feet. “No need to thank me for getting your clothes.” He grinned. Nothing was as much fun as pushing Holly off the moral high ground. “I’ll see you at work. You’d better get moving, if you want to be on time.”

He sauntered from the room, savoring the way she ground her teeth at his implication she might be late.