Читать книгу Receptionist Under Cover - C.J. Carmichael - Страница 12

THE NEXT MORNING, NADINE’S phone rang before it was light. She pulled herself out of her warm bedding and picked up the receiver she kept by her bed. Her mother loved calling her early on the weekend.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Ahh—this is Patrick O’Neil. I was trying to reach Nadine Kimble.”

Adrenaline pumped through her, waking her more effectively than any alarm clock. “This is Nadine.”

She swung her feet to the wool rug, still holding the receiver to her ear.

Patrick O’Neil. She’d given him her home number last night so he could call after he’d made their travel arrangements. But she hadn’t expected to hear from him this early. According to the digital display on the built-in media center across the room, it wasn’t even eight.

“I managed to get two tickets on a ten o’clock flight. I hope that leaves you enough time to pack.”

“Ten o’clock this evening? It’ll be tight, but I should be able to manage.”

“Ten o’clock this morning.”

Good Lord. Was he serious?

“I can arrange for a limo to pick you up in an hour. Is that enough time?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He was silent for a bit, then said, “I thought we agreed I would go for the first available flight?”

“Yes. But—”

“As long as you have your credit card and your passport, you’ll be fine.”

Holy crap. Adrenaline surging, Nadine ran to the bathroom and checked her hair. It needed washing, but she would never have time to dry it properly. She tried to remember where she’d put her passport after her last international trip to…

She thought it had been Belize. But it might have been that shopping trip to Paris.

“You really don’t waste time, do you?” she said, switching the phone to Speaker so she could squeeze toothpaste on her brush.

“I figured the faster we got on this the better.”

Sure. But giving her one hour notice? She started thinking of all the things she would need. A trip to Canada meant warm coats, boots and bulky sweaters.

“Oh, and try to limit your luggage to carry-on. We have to make a connection in Toronto and the timing is kind of tight.”

Hell.

“I have everything organized. All I need from you is your address.”

So he could pick her up in the limo. Only, she couldn’t let him do that. Her Upper East Side address would be sure to lead to questions she didn’t want to answer.

“I need to get my files from the office. How about you pick me up there?”

Thinking of all she had to do, in one short hour, made Nadine’s stomach swirl.

Find her ID, pack her bag, cancel Sunday dinner with her parents, let the people at the office know she was going away for a few days….

Oh, boy. That was going to be the hardest. Maybe she should just phone the office number and leave a message. But that would give Lindsay and Nathan zero notice that she wasn’t going to be at work on Monday.

After a quick shower, Nadine dressed in airplane clothes—no metal zippers, or belts, shoes that slipped off easily, layers in case the plane was too hot or too cold.

Who should she call—Nathan or Lindsay? She would feel extra guilty lying to Nathan, he was such a straight arrow himself. But Lindsay would give her a grilling, and she didn’t have time to come up with a great cover story.

In the end, she dialed the number for Nathan’s cell phone, because she was certain that he would accept her “need to go away for a few days on a personal matter” without any questions.

As she waited for him to answer—or, better yet, to be diverted to his message service—she started searching through her underwear drawer for her passport.

While she was there, she might as well pack her underwear, too.

Suddenly she heard Lindsay speaking. “Fox here.”

“Oh, hi, Lindsay. I thought I was calling Nathan.”

“He’s in the shower. What’s up?”

Nadine drew a deep breath and stopped looking for the passport. She needed one hundred percent concentration now.

“I was just calling to let you know that I have to go out of town on a personal matter. I’m not going to be able to make it into work on Monday or Tuesday. Wednesday might be iffy, too.”

“Wow. That personal matter sure came up quickly. You didn’t say anything about this yesterday.”

“I’m very sorry for the late notice.”

“Not a problem. Actually, it’s a good time for you to take some holidays as you won’t get many opportunities once Kate is on maternity leave.”

“Right. Well, I guess I’d better get going…”

“Where?”

Nadine had been hoping to hang up, but Lindsay spoke too quickly. “It’s—nowhere special.”

“Your voice sounds strange.”

Oh, she’d known Lindsay would give her a grilling.

“Does this have something to do with that man you were texting at work the other day?”

Nadine almost laughed with relief. Finally a question she could answer without lying. “Yes.”

“Well. That’s moving fast, isn’t it?”

Nadine had to admit that it was.

“I’m sure you know what you’re doing,” Lindsay said. “But be careful. You can’t always take people at face value.”

As she was finally able to hang up the phone, Nadine thought that Lindsay didn’t know just how right she was.

NADINE WISHED HER FATHER could see how economically she’d packed for the trip to Canada. He would have been proud.

She’d limited herself to one jacket—the Versace convertible down ski jacket she’d worn on the family’s last trip to the Swiss Alps. She’d be wearing that on the plane, of course. In her leather carry-on she’d managed to compress black ski pants and trousers, several turtlenecks—which were warm but didn’t take up as much room as a sweater—and just one dress, which she could vary with an assortment of tights, scarves and jewelry.

In her briefcase she packed her laptop, phone, camera and the file of notes she’d accumulated so far. She was seriously tempted to also pack her copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating. But that would be a dead giveaway if Patrick happened to see it.

Finally, she locked up her apartment and took a taxi across the park. She arrived at the office two minutes before the limo. Her father would probably have been more amazed than proud.

Patrick didn’t seem impressed with her accomplishment, though. She supposed he got ready for trips at a moment’s notice all the time. He gave her a casual hello as he climbed out of the backseat, then took her bag.

“Thanks. Be careful. It’s heavier than it looks.”

He raised one eyebrow at her, then picked it up as if it was filled with down feathers. He set it into the trunk next to his carry-on bag which looked beaten—if not tortured.

“I guess you travel a lot,” she said once they were in the car, heading for LaGuardia. She’d visited many countries with her family, but she imagined her parents’ idea of a vacation differed significantly from the kind of trips Patrick made.

“It’s my job to travel. It’s been my job for almost twenty years.”

“Do you ever get tired of being on the road all the time?”

“I’ve never thought about it, so I guess not.”

His expression was grim as he turned his gaze to the street ahead of them. She got the feeling that he would have been more comfortable driving than being the passenger.

She felt uneasy sitting next to him, and wished again that she could have gone on this trip without him. He was far too observant for her liking. She would have to be on her guard every instant of every day.

Soon they were dropped off at the airport, and since Patrick had their boarding cards downloaded to his BlackBerry, they just had to clear customs then go to the gate. She didn’t realize until they were being seated that they were traveling executive class.

“How nice,” she said, taking the window seat and stowing her briefcase under the chair in front of her. “I guess when you fly as often as you do, you deserve the little luxuries.”

“I almost always fly economy,” he corrected her. “But when I ask someone to leave their home to take care of my personal business, then I figure I owe them the courtesy of making the trip as comfortable as I can.”

“Well, I am comfortable. So thank you.”

“Good.” He leaned back into his seat and let out a long sigh. Then he turned to her. “I’m sorry if I’ve been a little tense this morning. I’m unbelievably nervous.”

“That’s totally understandable.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to meet my son. It could even happen tonight.”

Nadine felt obliged to lower his expectations. “But it probably won’t be tonight. We have three resorts to check, and no guarantee that he hasn’t changed his mind about working in Canada for the winter. For all we know, he met someone who suggested they apply for a job at Club Med so they could spend the winter on the beach.”

“Good God.” Patrick sounded appalled by that.

“There’s something else you need to prepare yourself for,” she added. “We won’t know for certain that Stephen Stone is your son until we get the results from a DNA test.”

He frowned. “Who said anything about DNA testing?”

“It’s standard procedure in a case like this,” she assured him.

He shook his head firmly. “If there was any chance at all that Stephen wasn’t my son, June wouldn’t have written that letter.”

“You trust her that much?”

“I do.”

How very strange, Nadine realized. I’m actually feeling a little jealous of this June. “You must have loved her very much.”

“I loved her,” he agreed.

She waited for him to say more and, when he didn’t, sighed with frustration. Then she immediately chided herself.

Lindsay had talked to her, over and over, about the importance of not getting emotionally involved in a case. And here she was suffering some sort of mild crush on her very first client.

But that aside, she had to deal with his expectations about this boy. She figured he would probably be willing to offer financial assistance to Stephen even if he wasn’t his biological son.

“I don’t want to insult June. You obviously thought very highly of her. But you’re paying me to be objective. It strikes me as possible that she might have seen that you’d enjoyed a degree of success, and if she was worried about her son’s future, she might be tempted to capitalize on a past friendship.”

“But that’s the whole point. We were friends. All she would have had to do is ask. Preferably before she died.”

“Maybe she felt too many years had drifted by with no contact.”

“She has only herself to blame for that. Those Christmas cards were the only time I heard from her.”

“Maybe she needed to move on. Or maybe she was worried you would find out about your son.”

“Yeah. She seemed pretty determined to keep that secret. I suppose I should feel grateful that she allowed me to pursue my dream career. But somehow all I feel is resentment.”

“It’s only natural that you’d wonder about the road not taken. You know…a wife and kids…”

“…and a beautiful home in Brooklyn Heights? Not my dream. At least it never was.” He turned to look at her in that special way of his that made her feel as if he was seeing her inner thoughts.

“Is personal counseling included with your fees?” he asked.

She felt herself blush. “Sorry. I should mind my own business, huh?”

“I have a feeling that’s something you wouldn’t be very good at. And I’m not suggesting that’s bad. It’s probably your curiosity about people that led you to this career.”

His smile changed, shifted into something intimate. She swallowed and realized she was breaking Lindsay’s rule again. No emotions. No personal involvement.

Heavens, this was so much harder than she’d expected.

PATRICK THOUGHT THE P.I. HE’D hired was the most feminine woman he’d ever met. Maybe it was because he was used to being with women who had similar interests to him. Women who enjoyed extreme sports, who climbed mountains, who skied out-of-bounds searching for that perfect, untouched bowl of powder.

The women he knew, the women he dated, had rough hands and sun-beaten skin—like him. They didn’t wear heels because they were too impractical. The same went for makeup and perfume. They dressed in Dri-Fit because it was comfortable and fleece because it was warm.

They talked about their sports, and the weather, their training regimes and…all too often…their injuries.

Nadine was nothing like those women and definitely not his type. But she kept drawing his eye and making him smile.

He couldn’t believe how slender her fingers were, or how gracefully her hands moved when she talked. Her teeth were perfectly white, and her eyelashes curled in the most adorable way.

And the way she dressed…

A few times when he’d been flicking through channels on TV, he watched bits of Sex and the City. He’d never met anyone who dressed like those women, until Nadine. Just look at what she had on for this trip. Fur-lined boots with heels, jeans so blue he’d swear they’d never been washed, and a ski jacket that looked way better than any ski jacket he’d ever seen before.

Every detail about her fascinated him, and he had to keep reminding himself that she was a legitimate P.I., a woman with her feet on the ground, who worked hard for her living. A woman who deserved his professional respect, not his secret, lustful desire.

In Toronto they changed planes and once again they were seated in executive class, with Nadine by the window. For this longer leg of their trip, he pulled out his laptop and started organizing his notes for the revisions.

Nadine opened her laptop, too. He noticed she was making case notes—his case notes—and he was tempted to ask if he could read them.

Then she switched documents and a map popped on the screen. He leaned over for a look, but a whiff of her softly sweet perfume momentarily distracted him. Damn, she smelled good.

“We’ll go to Sunshine first,” she said, clearly thinking he was looking at the map. “It’s about a two-hour drive from the airport.”

“We don’t have any rooms booked,” he realized belatedly.

“Don’t worry. The season hasn’t really kicked off yet. We shouldn’t have a problem getting something. They have units right on the ski hill. That’s probably the smartest place to stay, though we will need to leave the car in the parking lot and take a gondola.”

“How long do you think you’ll need in each place?”

“One day, tops. Maybe less.”

“Okay. Should be a short trip, then.”

“Really short if we get lucky and find Stephen at the first ski hill.” She smiled at him hopefully, and he actually got the sensation of something fluttering in his gut.

Was it nerves about the possibility that he might meet his son as early as tomorrow?

Or was it excitement at the idea of spending the next few days with this intriguing woman?

JUST BEFORE LANDING, the pilot came on the intercom to tell them it was snowing in Calgary. A chorus of groans rose up from the passengers. Nadine wondered anxiously about the roads.

Sure enough, once they’d deplaned and picked up the Subaru Patrick had reserved for their trip, visibility was getting to be an issue.

“I’ve driven in worse than this,” Patrick assured her, but as they left the city lights behind, Nadine was spooked by the utter darkness around her. It was only six-thirty, but at this time of year, this far north, the sun was long gone.

“I never thought I’d say this, but I wouldn’t mind a few streetlamps and neon signs.”

“You’re in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, sweetheart, and those words are blasphemy here.”

Maybe so, but between the blackness of the night and the hypnotic pummeling of snowflakes, there were times she couldn’t see the lines on the highway. Meanwhile cars were still traveling at speeds exceeding the posted 110 kilometers per hour limit.