Читать книгу Knight In Blue Jeans - Evelyn Vaughn, Linda Winstead Jones - Страница 11

Smith tried not to flinch from Arden’s casual dismissal. “Hey now, sweetness—you aren’t ashamed of me, are you?”

She arched an accusing eyebrow.

“Oh,” he said, not quite as cocky. “You are, huh?”

“As delightful as this has been, what with the history lesson and the stalking, I really do have to go,” Arden insisted. Then she actually smiled.

A warm, real smile.

Smith’s traitorous heart leaped.

“Jeffie’s coming home from camp today,” she explained. So the smile was for her half brother, not for Smith. “I’m picking him up at the airpo—”

“Too much information,” Smith interrupted. How many times had he warned her that the fastest way to be victimized was to let down one’s guard? In light of that, it was probably just as well she didn’t trust him. Dammit.

Arden waved him away like an annoying bug as, with a quick hug for Greta and pat for Dido, she headed out.

“Too much information?” he heard Val demand as the younger women left, the dog whining from her exile at the door. “It’s not like you said you’d been on the toilet all morning or anything.”

He had to imagine the expression on Arden’s face.

Smith’s expression might have rivaled it as he watched the women reach the sidewalk. Greta Kaiser said, “You love her.”

It wasn’t a question.

Spinning to face the old woman, Smith pretended it had been. “Me? No. Sure, we were dating when…” When I lost everything she might have wanted from me. He grinned to reinforce his position. “No love. Maybe some like, if you squint at it and turn your head just right.”

Oh, great job. Make sight jokes to a near-blind woman.

“I’ll just call a friend of mine to bring over the supplies we need for that security system,” he said.

“Help me with these dishes when you’ve a moment, please?” asked Greta mildly, and vanished into the kitchen.

No, Arden was definitely not the only too-trusting woman involved in this latest problem.

As he sat in his car, waiting for Arden and her “friend” to leave the run-down old house they’d come to visit, Prescott Lowell used his laptop to pull up the area tax records.

The house was owned by someone named Greta Lorelai Kaiser.

It didn’t sound familiar, but he made note of it all the same. No surprise that she was a single woman home owner. From what he knew of Donaldson Leigh’s stuck-up bitch of a daughter—opening a recreational center especially for girls, supporting a woman for governor—Lowell figured them for feminazis. Throw in the Mexican woman, who’d almost spotted him as he tailed them from the train station, and there was probably enough estrogen in that house to lower a guy’s IQ by fifty points.

Not that Lowell didn’t like women! But they had their place.

He loved that about the Comitatus. Everyone had their place. And the place of Comitatus members was on top of everyone else.

That was the only reason he’d kept himself from fighting back when Leigh had humiliated him last night, when he’d really wanted to knock the old geezer’s teeth in. There was an order to things—at least within the social sanctuary that was the Comitatus. The younger members of the outer circles respected the older members of the inner circles, because someday they would be part of those inner circles themselves. They would run things the right way.

With strength.

Leigh and his cronies seemed annoyingly tolerant of the threat posed by Arden’s interference. What the hell had Will Donnell meant about womenfolk having suspicions, and “ways to divert them,” anyway? If women stuck their noses into men’s business, as far as Lowell was concerned, you smacked them back so they wouldn’t do it again. That was how to divert them.

But there was no reasoning with Leigh about his precious little girl. So it was up to Lowell to uncover the truth for those inner-circle powermongers, and…

Ah. Here came Arden and her brown-skinned friend now. The friend, clearly low-class, scanned the area around them. For a moment, her eyes paused on Lowell’s car, well down the street. Seeing nothing more suspicious than a luxury vehicle in a cesspool of a neighborhood, she scowled but moved on. Arden, in contrast, looked deceptively refined in a full-skirted sundress and a large, shady hat. She acted as if she had no need of monitoring her surroundings, she was that confident in her place of the world.

Idiot.

Certain he knew where they were going—public transit, again—Lowell waited until the women had almost reached the end of the block before turning the key in the ignition. It wasn’t like they would hear the purr of his finely tuned engine. Shifting into gear, he eased forward….

Tried to ease forward.

A thumping lurch dragged his attention from his quarry to his car. He pressed harder on the gas, forcing the sedan to move, and the thumps sped up.

Braking, Lowell cut the engine and climbed out into the heat to face a flat tire on the driver’s side front.

And the driver’s side back.

Circling the car, he found the other two tires equally flat. A piece of toothpick, still extending from the valve of one tire, explained how someone had sabotaged the car without him hearing it, or even noticing the slow sinking of the vehicle. Instead of puncturing the tires, someone had arranged for a slow leak in all four.

But—the girls had been in the house the whole time!

Lowell glanced quickly around him, his eyes narrowing at some teenaged boys of mixed ethnicities playing basketball not far down the street. They had worse ways, he supposed, of trapping a fine automobile in this slum, maybe to steal its hubcaps, maybe to do worse.

Narrowing his eyes in warning, Lowell slipped quickly back into the car to phone for auto-club service. But first he pressed the button to lock all his doors and made sure he knew where his gun was, as opposed to his knife.

None of the bloodlines around here deserved an honorable fight!

Grinning from one of Greta’s windows at his automotive handiwork, Smith quickly finished dictating which security system to pick up. “No, let’s not go with the base level—and yes, I’ll pay you back. Let’s go for deluxe. If certain parties figure out who she is—”

“Who is she?” demanded Trace over the prepaid cell phone.

“I’ll explain later. ’Bye.” Then, pocketing the phone, Smith carried the last of the dishes into the kitchen after his elderly hostess, careful not to trip on the dog. Living hand-to-mouth as he now did, he’d gotten pretty skilled at bussing tables.

Descended from heroes of history and legend, huh?

Even as he set down the dishes, the older lady asked, “How well did you know Arden before you and she began dating?”

“Not that well—”

“I can ask her, too,” Greta reminded him, turning the faucet on in her deep old sink. The pipes made a hollow clunk as the water began to run.

“Our families were close, but we didn’t see each other much,” Smith admitted guiltily. Especially not as he’d entered his rebellious teen years, when he might have found her something other than “icky.” Back then, he’d avoided all social obligations like the plague. “Not until after college. I just…That is, she…”

She’d seemed so perfect, he’d thought she would never look twice at him. So he’d pretended disinterest.

Familiarity breeding contempt, she’d met his disinterest and raised him some exasperation.

He’d matched her exasperation and added some scorn. This had gone on for years.

It was Mitch who’d finally called Smith on his behavior. For two people who can’t stand each other, you two sure do end up in the same place a lot.

Thus began their equally turbulent, on-again off-again attempts at dating without killing each other. He’d never had so much fun. Never felt so much frustration.

Just nail her and get it over with already, Trace had insisted.

But Arden had this old-fashioned six-month rule, and they never made it past four without one blowup or another, until finally…

Wait. Why was it any of the old bat’s business? “It was complicated.”

“You loved her,” Greta repeated, adding dish soap.

“No man who loves a woman would dump her, drunk, over the phone.”

“Unless he was protecting her.” She turned to fix her seemingly sightless eyes on him. “Just as you’re trying to protect her now.”

Smith stared back. Silence seemed his best option here.

“You were well-off and respected. Suddenly you had nothing. Meant nothing—at least to the world the pair of you knew. My father’s story must sound familiar.”

This was getting uncomfortable. “So why don’t I do a walk-through of the house, start prepping for when Trace gets here with the security equipment?”

“Quite the dilemma,” murmured Greta. “You took a vow of honor not to speak of it, yet your own honesty won’t let you deny it. Don’t worry. That’s all the proof I need or will ask of you.

“You are Comitatus. Of the blood. Of the tradition. This is how you know exactly what dangers Arden faces. And you, Smith Donnell, were exiled—just like my father.”

Smith opened his mouth to protest—he could so be dishonest! But Greta silenced him with a raised, gnarled hand. “This is why I believe you should have this.”

“Have…?”

She stooped, pressed on a piece of the built-in shelving—and a panel suddenly swung loose from the wall.

She had an honest-to-God hidden compartment.

No wonder she’d bought the house back!

Smith watched as she swung the panel back on a hidden hinge and claimed a slim, velvet-wrapped bundle, not a yard long. She laid her treasure on the kitchen table and slowly, reverently, folded back its rich purple wrapping to reveal—

Smith stared.

It was a sword. A double-edged short sword, to be precise, and yet, somehow…more. It caught the summer shadows as if it glowed.

But swords didn’t glow. Especially not seriously old swords—and this one was seriously old…or, more likely, a replica. It looked like something from some gladiator movie, Troy or Spartacus. The blade, extending out of a hilt studded with green gemstones, expanded into a swell at the tip that gave the oddly gold-colored metal a faint leaf-shape.

An impression of sand and salty wind swirled into Smith’s mind for just a moment before he blinked it away.

“The sword of Aeneas,” Greta explained softly.

Smith stared at the sword. Then at the old woman he’d just met. Then back down at the sword.

Well, that was unexpected.

“The what of which?”

“Woo hoo!” exclaimed fourteen-year-old Jefferson Leigh, sliding his leather backpack across the front foyer like a bowling ball. “I’m home!”

“Yes, you are,” agreed Arden as she closed the door behind him, taking pleasure from her baby brother’s high spirits. She’d needed a distraction from the return of Smith Donnell into her life, and Jeff, as always, did the job. His cheeks glowed with health under dark hair even curlier than hers. Camp in Switzerland had energized him. “Which is why we do not throw luggage.”

“Arden!”

“Jeffie!” she parroted back his long-suffering moan, eliciting another grin. “Carry your bag to your room and I’ll make sure Esperanza has a snack for us, all right?”

He saluted. “Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” As if it had been some kind of military camp, instead of a training ground for sons of privilege.

She couldn’t believe how he’d grown in two short months, all feet and elbows. Then their father came in from the backyard—from his detached office—and she believed it after all. Donaldson Leigh was no small man, himself.

“Jeff!” he bellowed. “Let the help take care of your bags and come tell me about camp! Arden, you’re staying the night to spend time with your brother, aren’t you?”

When Jeff turned his big eyes on her, Arden was lost. Heaven knew she could ignore Smith’s warnings of possible danger to her. She could even dismiss Val and Greta’s concern as paranoia. She could resist her father’s paternal pushiness. But Jeffie…?

And what could be safer than her father’s house?

“Of course I am. Go on to the kitchen, I’ll meet you there.” She watched her father sling a burly arm over Jeff’s narrow shoulders, too pleased to force the issue of the backpack. Instead, after they’d vanished, she grabbed the pack and carried it upstairs herself.

She saw no reason why perfectly healthy boys should abandon even their carry-ons. But her stepmother, Jeff’s mom, hadn’t been gone for a year yet.

Today, it was enough to see her brother smile.

Some men, at least, didn’t hide secrets behind every jibe and grin. Some men…

But she’d meant to forget Smith. Sugar.

Leaving Jeff’s backpack on his bed, she felt the unlikely roughness of its leather straps as it slid from her palm. Intrigued, she looked closer.

The good quality of the leather had been nicked and carved, as if by a boy playing with a knife.

Jeff hadn’t etched anything disturbing, really—his name, a frowning face, the symbol of his favorite band. Still, the idea of her baby brother playing with even a Swiss Army knife disturbed her, and not just because of the memory of last night’s blade.

Arden reminded herself that she had to let him grow up sometime. He’d turn fifteen in a few weeks. In a year, he would have a learner’s permit….

Arden trailed her fingers across the nicked leather—a perfectly good backpack, mutilated—then curled them into a fist. No. Not her business.

Wondering why she had such trouble understanding males in general, Arden left Jeff’s room and shut the door.