Читать книгу Heart Of The Hunter - Bj James - Страница 5

He watched. From his quiet lair, his hard stare never wavering, he looked down on the shore.

Down at her.

In this hour after dawn, as gulls glided like shadows against the horizon and waves spilled a froth of gold over glittering sand, there was the woman.

Only the woman.

As the sun lifted above the tree line, the sky was alight with a waiting promise of the white, searing heat of a windless day. But for now, as first light turned the massive window where he stood to a luminous canvas, morning clung doggedly to a fragile cool.

Morning on the island, a collage of contrasts. As was the woman who walked in solitude.

The island was Kiawah, a sultry emerald adorning the coast of South Carolina.

The woman was Nicole Callison.

Callison.

He must not forget.

A wordless mutter ruffled a calm steeped in luxury, the low sound of tempered fury and regret echoed hollowly from cavernous heights. In his stark face, rigid lips thinned to a grim line, mirroring a struggle for discipline that could mean his life.

There was no place for anger in this, nor regret. He was the hunter; Nicole Callison his snare. He would do what he must with no recriminations.

None.

Keeping field glasses trained on her, he lifted his first cup of coffee for the day to his lips. Forgotten in singular concentration, it was tepid, as black and oily as diesel fuel. He barely noticed. He waited for the moment when she would turn, when he would see her face. The face of his quarry.

Glasses clenched hard in one hand, nails scoring pebbled leather, he turned in place, moving only as she moved, tracking her path to the ruin hunkered in the sand. As she began climbing slabs of stone stacked helter-skelter like fallen dominoes, he went utterly still. No effort was needed, now, to keep her in sight. Perhaps not ever, for he’d known her ultimate goal. A sheet of broken marble that rested at its pinnacle, the last crumbling vestige of a ballroom where a dreamer called Foley and a woman of mystery danced through the fury of a hurricane as it swept his gift of love away.

What the ancient storm consigned to the sea on that night, the shore had been a half century reclaiming. Now the ruin and its legend stood on shifting sands, an abiding testament of the pomp and grandeur of another time, of courage and frivolity and unmatched devotion. Scoffed at and revered by the islanders and history alike, Foley’s castle became Folly’s Castle, as it was left as nature would have it.

Folly or masterpiece, there was magnificence in the weather-beaten ruin gleaming dully in the sun. As there must have been in the woman bound to it by love. As there was in the woman who stood drinking in the sight of sea and sky as if there were no more perfect place.

Drawn by the light, defined by it, the line and curve of her body was etched against the backdrop of vast, glittering blue. She was small, five feet two, perhaps three. Beneath the fall of a faded T-shirt her hips were slim, her breasts shapely and free. Legs, clad in tattered shorts just visible beyond the hem of her shirt, were strong and tanned. From bare toes to the battered straw hat tugged low over her forehead, she was the complete beachcomber.

Too complete? he wondered. Through narrowed eyes he studied the subtle sophistication in her bearing, the casual dignity in every move and stride. Was she innocent, or consummate actress? Was there purpose in the role she played? A reason for her quiet existence among the revelers of the exclusive island community?

Why was she the span of a continent from her home, walking the Atlantic shore not the Pacific? What circumstances brought her to trade West for East?

Was she running? Hiding?

Waiting?

Waiting for what? For whom?

The cup he’d forgotten thudded to the table at his knee. Only half aware he’d set it aside, or that he’d caught his breath again, he watched as she faced the shore at last.

There was no elegance now, no sophistication, only the naturalness of a woman at ease with her world. With a sudden fling of her hand, her hat was spinning over the sand, the flamboyant scarf tied at its crown fluttering like the tail of a playful kite.

A shake of her head sent her close cropped hair flying and shimmering in the sun, as iridescent as the wing of a raven. He saw then, as he knew he would, as he had before, that her features had been sculpted kindly by time. Hollows and shadows of maturity made real a beauty that had been a covenant of youth. Her full lips were parted in laughter. Her nose was straight, unmarred by the scar at its bridge. Her eyes were green, sometimes gray or blue, their hue changing with the color she wore.

Today her shirt was red, fading to pink. Her eyes would be green, and were looking directly at him.

He knew it was illusion, a trick of the light. The house with the sun behind it would be no more than squares and angles in black relief against the sky. There was nothing to draw her attention to the sheets of glass that served as doors and windows for the multilevel house. Nothing that would betray him. She had no reason to suspect field glasses, carefully shielded from any telltale glare, tracked every minute detail of her morning ritual day after day. No reason to suspect this quiet routine was intimately familiar to an intruder who watched and waited.

An intruder who stared at her, lost in thoughts of another time, not truly seeing that her eyes were green, nor that the scar curved like a perfect half-moon at the bridge of her nose. For whom that which field glasses weren’t powerful enough to discern, and photos from a dossier couldn’t relate, memory provided.

This moment came each day, and always with the same effect. The measured beat of his heart thudded harder, his breath shuddered to a halt, and with a sense of déjà vu he stepped back into the past, staring into a face that time had turned to a soft, but perfect replica of another.

The face of Tony Callison, the man she’d worshiped. The man he had come here to kill, if he must.

“And now, Nicole?” The question shattered a pervasive silence. Hoarse from disuse, his voice echoed as before, a hollow sound ricocheting from towering ceilings and bare walls. “Do you worship your brother even now?”

White knuckled and grave, he moved the glasses from his eyes. He stared without seeing sea or shore or woman. His blinded sight turned inward, the coil of doubt he’d fought writhed down his spine. What if she did? What would he do if she knew what her brother had become and was a part of it? How would he deal with what must be done?

Would a split second of doubt cloud his perceptions? Would memory blunt his judgment?

“No!” Denial was fierce and low, more growl than word. Shaking aside an uncommon distraction, he turned from the window leaving the sea to break over the shore unwatched. Leaving Nicole Callison to wander in her solitude. He’d been a hunter too long for sentiment to interfere in his work. A hired gun did what was needed and walked away. This time would be no different.

Tossing the glasses on a chair, he crossed to a telephone. Stabbing out a number he waited for the gruff voice that would need no identification. One ring, two, a third was cut off in midring.

“I’ve seen enough.” He spoke without preamble, lifting his gaze to the window. All that was visible from this vantage was the horizon, where sea and sky blended into one. Listening to the voice on the telephone, he closed his eyes, imagining Nicole Callison sitting atop a tumbled castle by the sea. A siren, unaware, luring the hunted to the trap.

Taking the telephone with him, the coiled cord sliding over tile and carpet as he walked, he returned to the window. With his eyes still lifted to the horizon he nodded absently to reiterated instructions and cautions that needed no answer. When the voice with the hint of a Scots burr was finally silent, he nodded again. “I’ll make contact today.”

Another rush of instruction crackled over the line. More abrupt cautions. When they were done, the intruder smiled one last time. “Yes, sir, I’ll be careful.”

A flick of his thumb broke the connection. For a long while he watched the sea changing as the light changed, reflecting the mood of the day. When he looked again at the ruin, she was gone and the early morning had lost its innocence. The first of the promised heat was rising from the sand, marshaling its strength. Soon the temperature would soar, the air would turn sultry. But long before then, when countless sun worshipers dotted the beach with canvas chairs and gaudy umbrellas, she would be hard at work.

So would he.

The first sunbather appeared at the surf’s edge as he turned away to make ready for his day. An hour later, when the heat was an inescapable truth, and the shore a milling kaleidoscope of half-naked bodies, he stepped from the geometric extravagance that was his temporary home.

There was no uncertainty in his cold gray eyes, no smile on his lips when he slipped into the roadster parked in his drive. In that rare, unguarded instant he bore little resemblance to the typical islander, the image he’d carefully cultivated among the island inhabitants for weeks.

He was Jeb Tanner, the intruder. The hunter.

No misgivings.

No regret.

* * *

The drive to Charleston was uneventful. The bridge spanning the Ashley river afforded a spectacular view, but he was familiar with the coastal city and, today, was unmindful of it. Driving purposefully, and as swiftly as city ordinance allowed, in a matter of minutes he arrived at the entrance of a narrow cul-de-sac. Small shops lined the way, each charming and in complete harmony with the historic atmosphere of the old seaport.

Nicole Callison Galleries lay at the end of the winding pathway.

With a bit of luck and good timing, he captured a newly vacated parking space in an unpaved lot. Sliding the powerful roadster into the narrow space, he was out of the car as the snarl of the engine died. Loose gravel crunched and scattered beneath his feet, roughing the leather of his shoes, but his step was deliberate and sure. The beginning was finally at hand and he was ready to have done with it.

As he passed them by, he squandered no glances on shop windows with ware displayed as works of art. He’d walked the street before. He’d passed them by before. Each time, as now, his attention was riveted on the shop that had only a door of dark wood and leaded glass. A massive door, the final barrier. And Jeb Tanner knew beyond question that when he stepped through it, neither his life nor Nicole Callison’s would ever be the same.

At the doorstep, before the nameplate with the gallery hours listed in curling script, he paused. His thoughts drifted to the past as he pondered what he’d been, what a life immersed in secrecy and subterfuge had made of him. And what he would be when this was finished.

A look of irritation crossed his face. He was annoyed with himself, with his questioning. The time for questions was over. He’d come to do a job that must be done, no matter what harm might come to the woman.

The woman. He’d struggled to think of her as no more than that. A warm body, a means to an end, and only incidentally female. She wasn’t Nicky. The coltish young girl, who’d tagged along behind her brother and his friend like a lonely puppy, no longer existed.

None of them did, not as they were. The girl had grown into a beautiful woman. Her brother was a brutal murderer who killed as much for pleasure as for greed.

And he had come, bringing the skills he’d been years learning, to end a rampage of terror.

“Whatever the cost.”

The brass handle curved against the palm of his hand, bits of glass glinting like rainbows darkened in his shadow, wood swung silently on oiled hinges. A bell jangled a warning peal as he took the step that set into motion a plan months in the making. The door closed at his back and in the cool interior he saw her seated at a desk a little distance away.

The gallery lights were still down. A lamp at her desk spilled a wreath of light over her wrists and hands. For an instant, with her half-averted face bent toward the glowing circle, the years were swept away, and the polished woman was the guileless girl he’d known.

With a rustle, she laid one small canvas aside and another was taken up. He watched as her gaze moved over a mélange of color, recalling a memory of the unwavering concentration of a gifted student ahead of herself in time and place. An innocent, for all her astonishing intelligence, lost and a little confused and with only her brother to cling to.

“Don’t stand there by the door rehearsing excuses I won’t believe, come on in.”

Her voice calling out to him was low, the rich, lilting contralto of a mature woman. He heard the assurance, the throb of stifled laughter, and illusion faded.

“You thought I’d forgotten you, didn’t you?” she continued. “I haven’t, so stop dawdling and come tell me what you think of these.” Intent on the canvas in her hand she seemed unconcerned that her greeting had gone unanswered. “By the way—” her laughter became a chuckle “—good morning.”

Wondering who merited the affection he heard in her scolding, Jeb crossed to the desk. As fifteen years slipped firmly back into place, his step became a stalker’s step. Light, quiet, undistinguished. The distance was short, a half pace behind her chair he stopped.

She didn’t glance away from the simple paintings. “Ashley left these on the doorstep this morning. Before you say it, I know the display is set and including them means rearranging a whole wall. But he’s finally agreed to trust us with something of his.” Laying a canvas aside, she took up another, tracing the rough edge thoughtfully, as if she would immerse herself in the sun-dappled sea drawn there. “When what he’s done is as wonderful as this, how can we not?”

Jeb’s cursory glance dismissed the paintings. Not because they weren’t moving, or beautiful, but because he couldn’t think of paintings now. Not when the woman who had fascinated and intrigued him for weeks was a touch away.

Only a touch.

With her back to him and her head bowed, her close-cropped hair fell in ringlets against the nape of her neck. Like an ebony fringe, it brushed the collar of the fawn colored jacket. Jeb wondered how it would feel to brush away cloth and ringlet and twine his hand about that fragile column. How satisfying to touch her, to capture the warmth of her flesh in his palm, taming the throb of her pulse beneath his fingertips? The need to unravel and understand every facet of this woman was so powerful his arm had lifted, his hand outstretched before he realized what he’d done. For an interminable time his fingers hovered an inch from the curve of her throat.

Like a dash of cold water, reason intruded. To touch her as a stranger would frighten her, and she must not be afraid of him. Not now. Not yet.

Moving back, he listened without hearing. As she rambled on, the scent of jasmine drifted to him. As soft as her voice. As subtle. As lovely.

There was the throb of passion in her, a kindness and innate tenderness. In the half-light he could almost believe she was too guileless to be what he feared. Innocent enough to be the Judas goat he would make of her.

“Look!” she insisted. “Tell me what you think.”

Each miniature was accentuated by the lamplight spilling over them, but their glowing colors were only a blur at the edge of his vision. As she waited, silence fell like a heavy curtain.

Sounds of a street coming lazily to life began a distant, whispered chorus. A vendor passed, the wheels of his cart clattering in rhythm with the song of his wares. Soon the life of the street would spill into the gallery and this moment of first meeting would be lost. With an effort, he forced himself to look away from her to the work she offered for inspection. To begin what he must.

“I think you’re right.” His voice was as low, as husky as hers. “They’re very beautiful.”

An indrawn breath was cut short. A canvas fell to her desk as she spun to face him. Her hand at her throat and the widening of her eyes spoke her shock as eloquently as her gasp. “J—?” The incipient recognition was cut short and rejected in disbelief. With an adamant shake of her head, she struggled to recover her composure. “Gracious! You startled me.”

“I’m sorry,” Jeb said. “The sign by the door says the gallery is open.”

“It does. We are.” A flush rushed over her cheeks. “I’m sorry. We are open, but it’s rare that anyone comes in this early. Except by appointment, of course, and I was expecting my assistant. So, naturally, when I heard the bell I assumed...”

“That I was he, or should I say she?” Jeb finished for her. He smiled down at her. Beneath the fawn colored jacket, she wore a lavender frock. A tailored concoction, fitted like a glove. Her eyes were as gray as a stormy sea.

“She.”

“Pardon?” Jeb realized he hadn’t been listening.

“She. Annabelle Devereaux. I was expecting Annabelle,” Nicole explained distractedly, her face drawn in a puzzled frown.

“So, naturally, you assumed...”

“That you were...” Her voice drifted to a whisper as she lost the thread of her conversation. With another exasperated shake of her head, she began again. “Annabelle works for me and usually she comes in like clockwork, nine minutes late.”

She was babbling. Nicole Callison never babbled—it wasn’t allowed. Except, perhaps, she amended, when attractive blond men stood smiling down at her as if she were the most amusing creature on earth. Which was ridiculous. The island and Charleston were filled with attractive blond men. Yet there was something about him, something about his smile.

With a start, Nicole realized she was staring at him. At the smile that seemed oddly familiar.

“I’m sorry, ahh...” She looked away from his mouth and from his captivating gaze. In an uncommonly nervous gesture, her hand lifted to her throat again, to the pulse that fluttered at its base. “I’m sure you didn’t come to hear any of this.” With a visible effort, her gaze returned to his. “Perhaps there’s something I can help you with, something specific I can show you?”

“No.” As she had begun to rise he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. The contact was electric and startling and over almost as it began, yet the memory would linger. Drawing away, he smiled again. A tighter, less amused version than before. “I only came to browse. I’d prefer to wander about, see what you have to offer.” His look ranged over the gallery and returned, deliberately, to her. “Then I’ll know how you can help me.”

She heard an inflection in his voice she couldn’t interpret and saw a subtle difference in the way he looked at her. He was waiting for a reaction, a response to something she didn’t understand. Which was as absurd as the entire encounter had been from the beginning. He was simply a customer, albeit from the handsome cut of his clothing and the way he wore it, one of impeccable taste. But, only a customer, nevertheless.

“As you wish.” She struggled for the friendly professionalism that was her trademark. Using it as a shield, she brushed her fingers over a panel of digital switches at the side of her desk and the gallery was ablaze with light. A sweep of her hand gave him permission to wander where he would. “Please, look as long as you like. If you have a question, or see something that interests you, my associate should be in shortly and can assist you.”

With that, Nicole Callison spun her seat back to her desk, ending any conversation. When he moved away, she gathered up a ledger and to her dismay discovered the entries might be gibberish for all the sense they made.

Still, she tried. Finally, counting it wasted effort, she admitted defeat. Leaning back in her chair, she yielded to impulse and watched him.

As he moved among the displays or paused to study a painting, he appeared quite ordinary. Granted, with broad shoulders and a body that was lean and fit, he was attractive. But no more than others of his sort who had wandered through her gallery. The sea port and the resorts, on islands that dotted the coastline like sandy jewels, drew them like magnets. They came in multitudes, handsome and charismatic, sailors and athletes. Until, by virtue of their number, their uniqueness became ordinary.

Her initial unease, if her reaction could be called that, was simply that he’d caught her unaware. Towering over her as he had, the advantage had been his.

“Advantage,” she murmured, not unduly disturbed by her choice of words, or considering it unusual to think of a customer as having a controlling edge. Mollified by the rationalization, Nicole felt a bit foolish when she thought of the hard-bitten look of danger she’d imagined when she first saw him.

First opinions weren’t always right, were they? It had to be imagination. Right? If not, why hadn’t it occurred to her to be afraid? If he was truly dangerous in his quiet way, why wasn’t she afraid now?

Annoyed by the direction of her thoughts, she meant to resolve her nagging questions and dismiss him. Seeking whatever answers had eluded her, her covert stare ranged over him. From shaggy, sun-bleached hair that looked as if it wanted to curl but dared not, to the tips of his leather deck shoes, she inspected him as thoroughly as one would a stallion at auction.

Except she wasn’t buying. Not today, and not this one.

As if she’d spoken her disavowal, he looked up from a lithograph. A thoughtful smile teased the corners of his mouth, changing the planes and angles of his features, making them more than pleasant, and much, much more than attractive. And if it destroyed the myth that he was no different from so many others, it strengthened the conviction that any perception of danger in that look and that smile could only be the delusion of a mad woman.

Disconcerted that he’d caught her staring, she nodded curtly. As she resisted the temptation to sink farther into ignominy, a vague frisson of recall tugged at her memory, then flitted away.

Perhaps she was mad, after all, for there was still something about him. Something she couldn’t dismiss so easily.

“Nonsense!” The exasperated grumble accompanied a stubborn jut of her jaw as she returned to the work that waited. But work was a poor match for him. As she catalogued paintings and entered them into the ledger, a part of her resisted as another argued he was perfectly innocuous and just a customer. Summoning an elusive discipline she tried to quiet the notion there was anything familiar about him, and attend to the last details of the sale.

Five long, unproductive minutes later Annabelle Devereaux bustled in, her usual good-humored apology and bawdy explanation bursting from her before she realized Nicole was not alone.

“Oops!” She clapped a hand over her mouth, hiding a grin as she looked from one to the other. “Sorry!” she said, and was obviously anything but sorry. “The French libido isn’t exactly a proper topic with business afoot, but I didn’t realize there was business afoot already this morning.

“Wow!” She interrupted herself to lean over the desk. “What are these? No!” She warded off an answer. “Don’t tell me.” Canvases were shuffled slowly and her grin grew wider.

“Ashley!” Rising on tiptoe to shift a haunch onto the edge of the desk, she rested a stack of canvases on her knee. “You did it! Nicole Callison, you did it! Ashley Blackmon painted these, and somehow you’ve accomplished the impossible and convinced him to let us show them.”

“No,” Nicole demurred. “Ashley convinced himself.”

“Whatever. I don’t care, so long as we have them.”

“I’d like to include them in this showing.”

“You mean to sell?” Annabelle lifted an incredulous brow.

“Not this time.” Nicole shrugged. “Maybe never. Still, I’d like to include them.”

“Which means we’ll burn the midnight oil to change the exhibit.”

“One of us will.”

“Wrong!” Annabelle slipped from the desk and straightened her skirt. “Two of us will.”

Nicole laughed. “I knew I could count on you.”

If Annabelle’s grand entrance and conversation commanded Jeb’s attention, Nicole’s laughter stopped him cold. Before, it had been self-conscious and mechanical. But beyond that, he couldn’t remember ever hearing her laugh with such abandon and delight.

As he saw her now, in an element she’d created, speaking with this irrepressible woman who was clearly a trusted friend, he knew he’d never seen her as happy.

When this was finished, when he’d done what had to be done, he wondered what would be left of her life.

“Good morning,” a cheerful voice boomed out. “The boss lady suggested that there might be something I can show you.”

Jeb turned automatically toward the woman who had appeared at his side. In his millisecond of distraction she’d moved with an astonishingly quiet step after her boisterous entrance. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

“I can understand that. The wolf is beautiful.”

“The wolf?”

A dramatic gesture indicated the massive head of bronze where his clenched fist rested. “Since you’re two of a kind, it’s natural he would be one of your favorites.”

At a bit less than five feet, the woman called Annabelle was a foot shorter than he, but what she lacked in height was compensated for by unrestrained flirtation. As their gazes met, hers was flashing, unrepentantly appreciative. His was as aloof as an autumn mist. “I beg your pardon?”

“Honey.” Annabelle’s eyelids drooped in speculative appraisal. “Any man who looks as good as you, or as bad, has no need to beg anything from me.” A hearty laugh bubbled somewhere in the depths of her bosom as her shoulders shook. “At least, not too hard.”

“Good and bad?” Jeb mused. “An interesting if peculiar analogy.”

“Interesting, maybe. But not peculiar,” Annabelle declared. “Not peculiar at all. On the surface you’re good-looking in a rugged sort of way, but you can’t fool me. Underneath it you’re as wild and wily as the wolf, and twice as fascinating.”

“Wild and wily?” Jeb was chuckling now. The woman was outrageous and loved every minute of it. “Just an off-the-cuff analysis, huh? And if you had more time, you could delve a little deeper?”

“I wouldn’t mind the delving, but it isn’t necessary. Any woman worth half her salt can take one look at you and she knows.”

“But what does she know?”

A bold look moved over him again. “She knows everything.”

His chuckle turned to laughter. “I hope not. Sounds dangerous.”

“Only for the woman, sugar. But taking a crack at taming you would be worth it.” Abruptly her thoughts hopscotched in another direction. “Now that we’ve settled that, is there something special you wanted to see? Besides the wolf and me, of course.”

“Nothing, yet.” The words were hardly spoken before he recognized he’d made a tactical error. If he needed to establish himself as a regular and welcome client, he must play what was evidently a game greatly relished by this small person. Play it he would. Teasing her with a look as lecherous as her own, he grinned a lazy grin. The cool gray of his eyes became warm silver. “When I do...need help, that is, should I ask for...?”

As his voice trailed into another tantalizing pause, he saw delight flash in her eyes. Though she was short, shorter than Nicole, and much heavier, the weight was solid and perfectly distributed. With flawless, copper-hued skin and a Gypsy’s black mane tousled to perfection, she was a handsome woman. Clearly no stranger to masculine attention.

Indeed, she was handsome, but not beautiful, he decided. Not as Nicole was beautiful.

Keeping his attention focused on Annabelle, he didn’t need to glance at Nicole to make comparisons. How she looked had been burned into his brain in his study of her dossier and by weeks of surveillance.

He didn’t need to look at her to remember, nor to know that she had abandoned the pretense of working and watched him openly.

“I need to know your name,” he reminded Annabelle. “To be sure I get the right woman.”

Annabelle’s laugh set her bosoms struggling to be free of whatever superstructure confined them. “You are a devil. But you Californians usually are. Always ready to give a woman her comeuppance by reminding her there’s other fruit on the tree.”

“What makes you think I’m from California?” Jeb was a little alarmed by her astute deduction.

“I don’t think, I know. It’s the accent. You’ve been away from it long enough and trained enough that there are only little nuances of it left.”

Her allusion to his training was so perfectly on target that Jeb’s escalating alarm flickered for a moment in his eyes. For once the little woman seemed blithely unaware and chattered smugly on. “The average person wouldn’t hear it, but people come from all over the world to visit Charleston and the islands, and more than a few of them find their way to this gallery. After a while one learns. To be less than modest, I have an exceptional ear for accents and,” she added drolly, “it doesn’t hurt that I work for a former Californian.”

“I’m beginning to think there’s a lot about you that’s exceptional, Annabelle.”

“Annabelle! You devil!” She wagged a finger at him. “You’ve known my name all along. But how?”

“The boss lady mistook me for you when I came in.”

Annabelle’s rollicking laugh soared. “That would be a little hard to do.”

“Not when there are Ashley Blackmon paintings to distract one.”

“That would tend to distract her. At least until she got a good look at you.” She leaned closer, lifting her round face to his, to whisper. “Now that she has, she can’t take her eyes off you. She’s been watching us, you know.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“Unusual,” Annabelle declared succinctly. “She rarely pays even the handsome ones more than cursory attention. Now.” She was hopscotching again. “Are you going to be fair?”

“How so?”

“Running to type, I see.” She clicked her tongue and sighed. “Playing the rogue to the hilt.”

Jeb grinned. “Comes with the territory.”

“I’m sure it does, but are you going to tell me who you are? Or is it that you’re a man of mystery on a dark, secret mission?”

The woman was uncanny. He wondered if she weren’t the dangerous one. “Sorry to disappoint you, but there’s no mystery. As you guessed, I’m a Californian. My name is...”

“Jeb?” Nicole had risen from her seat. Her palm rested on the top of her desk to steady herself. “Jeb Tanner?”

His heart skipped a beat and Annabelle was forgotten as he lifted his head and his gaze met the recognition in hers. She took a step, then stopped. He saw the need to believe warring with the disbelief written on her face. Gently, surprising himself at how gently, he said, “Hello, Nicky.”

“Jeb! It’s really you!” Then she was in his arms. Neither would remember later how she got there, only that she had, and that he’d held her close without speaking.

When she drew away at last, her face held a look of wonder. “I thought I’d lost my mind, or that I was dreaming. Then Annabelle said you spoke like a Californian, and everything began falling into place.”

She touched his face, brushing his hair with her fingertips. “Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me when you came in?”

“Maybe I wanted to see if you remembered,” he murmured.

“How could I forget? I had a horrendous crush on you when I was fifteen.”

“But that was also as many years ago.”

“Time doesn’t matter, a girl never forgets her first crush. Not even a girl who was a nerd.”

Jeb caught her hands in his and lifted her fingers to his lips, brushing a kiss over their tips. “You were a smart kid, ahead of herself in time and place. But never, ever a nerd.”

“That would’ve been open to debate.” Keeping her hand in his, she looked up at him in unconcealed delight. “Tell me, what on earth brought you here?”

The bell by the door jangled, a trio of chattering women paused only long enough to locate them. “Nicole, my dear, there you are.” The eldest of the trio spoke, a haughty summons in her tone. “And Annabelle, how are you, dear?”

“Never fails,” Annabelle grumbled under her breath. “The gargoyle always shows up the day before a sale, with her cronies in tow, hoping to get the scoop on everyone else. You two continue as you are, I’ll handle her.” She patted Nicole’s shoulder leaning so close their noses nearly touched. “Don’t think I’m not going to hear about this. Every little detail of it. You just don’t have a rogue like this tucked in your past and keep him hidden. Not without an explanation.

“I’ll be back,” she promised, and with a swish of her skirt, went to do battle. “Mrs. Atherton” they heard her say, as she waded into the fray. “What secrets have you come to pry out of us today?”

Nicole grimaced at her pointed jab, then smiled a half smile and stepped out of Jeb’s arms. “I’m afraid Annabelle misinterpreted this.”

“Did she?”

“You know she did.”

“So, let her enjoy herself while it lasts.” He kissed her hand again, his lips lingering longer than one kiss needed. “We’ll set her straight later. In the meantime, I’ll let you get back to work.”

The bell chimed in another customer.

Jeb lingered, her hand still in his. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Yes.” Nicole agreed and could think of nothing else to say.

“I could call after the sale.”

“I’d like that.”

Releasing her, he tugged at a lock of hair that fell over her forehead. “Luck,” he whispered as he had when she was fifteen and facing a crucial exam. Leaving her, he went to the door, catching it as a patron entered, sparing them another tinny symphony.

“Nicole?”

“Yes?”

She looked at him with the same unquestioning trust of the coltish fifteen-year-old, and the weight of betrayal crashed down. He could walk away from her and from his mission before that trust was destroyed, but he knew he wouldn’t.

“It’s good to see you again,” he said softly.

As he returned to the street he knew that, no matter what lies he might tell, that much was true.