Читать книгу All-American Baby - Peg Sutherland - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

San Francisco, California

ASH THORNDYKE FELT the first stirring of lust as his gaze lingered on the diamond-and-emerald pendant pointing the way to the perfect breasts of the Hollywood agent’s young bride.

The breasts were clearly faux and interested Ash not in the least.

But the diamonds and emeralds were the real thing. Magnificent specimens. Ash could almost feel them in the palm of his hand, their cool ice, their weighty heft. His breath grew a little quicker and he forced himself to look away.

“A lifetime of training doesn’t vanish overnight,” he muttered to himself.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

The black-tied waiter balancing the silver tray of champagne flutes paused, a questioning expression on his young face.

“Oh. I... Nothing.”

The young man gave Ash a quizzical smile, then seemed to remember that it wasn’t his job to analyze this mob of well-dressed, well-heeled, well-known revelers. “Champagne, sir?”

Training. “Not for the moment, thank you.” Not while working. Ash had learned that at his father’s knee. Never drink on the job.

Ash scanned the crowd. He no longer even had to school himself to look as if his perusal of the gala gathering was casual. It wasn’t, no matter how blasé he managed to look. As always at this kind of bash, Ash Thorndyke was working.

Tonight, however, he wasn’t on a mission for the kind of expensive baubles worn by the agent’s trophy wife. Tonight, Ash Thorndyke had been hired to kidnap Melina Somerset.

Ash’s stomach cramped. Maybe he should have that champagne after all. Maybe he should get the heck out of Dodge. Kidnapping beautiful young heiresses wasn’t his cup of tea, as Grandfather Thorndyke would say. Cat-burglary—safecracking, pulling off heists that always made the papers but never made the court dockets—was Ash’s specialty. It was all a part of the family business. Each member had a specialty. Counterfeiting was what his dad, Bram Thorndyke, did—a skill he’d passed on to Ash’s brother, Forbes. Confidence games targeting the sinfully rich, that was Grandfather Thorndyke’s forte. For four generations, the Thorndykes had been running their circumspect little family business.

Kidnapping, however, didn’t sit right with Ash. The very idea violated his moral code. In this instance, however, family was more important than anybody’s moral code.

“Anything for family,” he said quietly to the canapé he snagged from a passing silver tray. His payoff for tonight’s distasteful little caper was his father’s freedom. And Ash was prepared to do anything to ensure that his dying father didn’t spend his final days in prison.

The men who had hired Ash promised him that much. They worked for the government, at least that’s what their identification said. And Ash had surely been around enough phony papers in his day to recognize a fake when he saw it. Of course, there was always the chance that he was being fooled, but it was a chance he was willing to take. Anything for family.

His quarry had not yet made her appearance. When she did, Ash was certain, she would be hard to miss, even though he couldn’t recall having seen a picture of her since a family funeral more than a decade earlier. The family was reclusive, everybody knew that, which made their sudden appearance in California all the more intriguing. Somerset was apparently developing some new technology for the film industry and was here to network and to research the project. Of course, the national media vultures had managed to catch the Somersets’ arrival in San Francisco, but Ash made it a policy never to watch television. Now, he just needed to be patient. The rich, headstrong heiress was waiting until a fashionably late hour to make her grand appearance at the gala in her father’s honor. Ash would know her from the stir she would create in the crowd.

“Rich women,” he said. “A pain in the backside.”

Another young waiter was at his elbow. “Champagne, sir?”

Ash’s mouth felt a little dry. His nerves were beginning to get the better of him. Bubbles rose lazily to the top of the elegant crystal flute. He could taste them, a sweet, tart explosion against his tongue.

He could also imagine those delightful little bubbles fuzzing his brain and slowing him down just as the time came to execute his plan.

He shook his head.

At midnight, when he turned over Melina Somerset to the government agents who had hired him to confiscate her, he would find a bottle of the finest bubbly in the city by the bay and relax in style. Then, tomorrow, he would be on his way East, to retrieve his father. At last. It had been a long four years since his father’s incarceration, far too long.

Ash sidled through the crowd, engaging in only the briefest of conversations with the people he passed, making sure he didn’t stand out from the crowd. In fact, his appearance was one of Ash Thorndyke’s greatest assets in his line of work. He was nondescript. Average-looking. Tall but not too tall. Average build, with a slight tendency to be too lean. Light-colored hair a shade past blond but not quite brown, worn too long to be called short and too short to be called long. Eyes that might be described as gray. Or green. Or hazel. Depended on who you talked to. Ash looked like the young attorney who drew up your will or a representative of the investment company that managed your finances. He looked like your daughter’s best friend’s husband, whose name you never can remember.

There was no doubt that Ash Thorndyke’s ability to blend in with the crowd was one of the things that had made him so successful.

That, and a sharp wit, unflappable nerves and fingertips that could feel the tumblers working in a safe lock. Ash Thorndyke could romance a safe the way some men could romance a woman. He was the best.

Had been the best, he reminded himself. After tonight, it was all over. That was the deal. His deal with himself.

He kept moving. Kept listening. Kept watching. He saw Tom Somerset, who looked as anxious as Ash felt. Ash overheard the excited chatter as the cream of California society anticipated Melina’s appearance. No one knew quite what Tom Somerset had in mind, finally bringing his cloistered daughter out into society. But they were greedily excited to be a part of it. Ash could smell their agitation.

He backed against a wall near the corridor leading to the kitchen and continued to survey the room. He registered every detail. Bits and snatches of conversation floated in and out of his mind.

“... to marry her off, and I personally am convinced that the only man in Hollywood worthy of her...”

“...career as a model. Have you seen that bone structure? Darling, she’s a natural.”

“... get our hands on her and get her out of the country, half our problems will be over.”

“...say she runs away about twice a year. Can you imagine? Everything one could ever want and all she can think to do is behave like a spoiled...”

Ash frowned. What was that? A snippet of conversation about getting our hands on her? Getting her out of the country? He began to cast about in the din of gossip for that particular conversation. He located it and realized it was coming from the corridor behind him.

“...a plane is waiting.”

“And then?”

“Then she disappears for a while.”

The voices goaded Ash’s memory. He strained to place them, but he’d heard too little. More disturbing, however, than their faint but unidentifiable familiarity, was what they were saying.

“For a while?” the second man said. “But not for good?”

There was a silence. Ash could almost see the first man shrugging and it was then he pinpointed their voices.

He was listening to the two men who had hired him. And the scheme they were discussing sounded alarmingly unlike the innocuous plan they’d outlined for him. A headstrong young woman, a worried father who wanted nothing more than to keep her safe during her stay in the U.S., and government officials with orders from way up the food chain to do anything to keep Tom Somerset happy. That’s the way it had been explained to Ash, by the two men claiming to be government operatives.

Something wasn’t adding up and Ash couldn’t decide exactly what it was. Was the government pulling a fast one on Tom Somerset? Was Somerset the one with the extra card up his sleeve? Was the government playing Ash Thorndyke for a fool?

“Hard to say,” the first man replied. “We can’t anticipate every eventuality.”

“Can we trust this Thorndyke character?”

“To get the job done? Sure. We’ve got what he wants, tight?”

The two men laughed. There was little humor in the sound.

They began to move away then, their voices retreating. Ash remained still. Never act rashly, Grandfather Thorndyke always said. Make a plan. Then execute it.

Maybe the men who’d hired him were feds and maybe they weren’t. Maybe Tom Somerset knew what was happening and maybe he didn’t. Maybe Melina Somerset was in danger and maybe she wasn’t.

All that really mattered to Ash was the one thing he did know for sure. He’d been duped. Nobody duped Ash Thorndyke.

He located Tom Somerset again and began to make his way through the jungle of dueling perfumes and clashing voices. Somerset, when Ash reached him, was encircled by fawning men, men who rarely fawned over anyone, movers and shakers in business and entertainment and government. But Tom Somerset had more money than Hollywood had phonies and that meant everyone loved him.

Ash eased up behind the circle of people, planning his approach, knowing that getting the man alone long enough to ask about his daughter and her safety would be one of Ash’s more difficult heists. But as he studied the problem and formulated a plan, two gray-suited men whom Ash pegged instantly as private-security types came up behind Somerset and captured his attention. Ash moved in closer.

“... insists she’s coming down.”

Somerset looked like a man with dwindling patience. “Then lock her up. God knows what she’ll say if we let her out. I won’t have her exposing...”

A peal of laughter drowned out the rest of it, but the tenor of that exchange curdled Ash’s guts. For someone labeled America’s princess, Melina Somerset was not receiving royal treatment at anyone’s hands. Something was wrong with this picture, and Ash didn’t have enough information to figure out what it was.

He told himself the best thing he could do was walk away.

Then he remembered his father. What if those men who’d hired him really could help his father?

Thinking of his father made him think of something else, too. Honor. Both Grandfather Thorndyke and Bram Thorndyke had taught Ash and his brother a code of honor. And Ash was fairly certain there was something in that code about damsels in distress.

Shrugging it off as not his problem, Ash headed for the foyer. He would walk away. He reached the foyer about the time the two men who’d spoken to Tom Somerset reached the top of the marble stairway leading to the second floor.

“...break her pretty little neck.”

The words echoed in the cavernous foyer. Both men laughed. Ash told himself it was just the kind of flippant remark that family employees would make. Not a serious threat at all.

But after what he’d heard tonight, could he really be sure of that?

IN HER SECOND-FLOOR SUITE, Melina Somerset stood at the bank of windows overlooking the city of San Francisco. The city was built on hills, and this mansion was obviously atop one of them, for the view was panoramic and spectacular. To her left was the Golden Gate Bridge, shrouded tonight in fog and the mystique of legend. As her gaze swept right, she saw Coit Tower, then the lights of the city.

It had been more than a dozen years since Melina had set foot in America. After her mother and sister were killed, she and her father had moved to Europe, moving from one isolated town to another. Eventually, he’d placed her in private school under an assumed name. Then another. And another. Melina had missed the country of her birth. She had missed having a home, any kind of home.

She tried to imagine all the fun that was to be had beyond these walls if she could only make her way from this elegantly appointed suite—one more in a long line of luxurious prisons—to the places where all those lights twinkled.

Out there somewhere were hamburgers and French fries. Stores where blue jeans could be bought. Friendly coffeehouses where people wore those jeans and talked about movies and music and the baseball season. And somewhere, beyond all the lights, were split-level brick houses in the suburbs. Although Melina had missed all that went with being young and free, and regretted that, she now had different priorities. She was ready to grow up.

“Someday I’ll get a station wagon,” she said wistfully to the faint reflection of her own face in the window. “I’ll eat at McDonald’s every day and have my chauffeur drive me to aerobics class in my very own station wagon. I’ll be just like normal people.”

But tonight, she was still a prisoner to her father’s success, hostage to his fears. Tonight, she’d been locked in her room because she’d wanted to attend the party below. She’d wanted to dance and meet people and take just one sip of champagne, not enough to hurt anything, just enough to feel the bubbles on her nose.

Instead, she was locked away from life, as she had been locked away almost her entire life. Under guard and incognito, that’s how Melina had lived her life.

But no more.

Melina had run away before, and they’d always found her. But this was America, a country so sprawling that a person could vanish and never be heard from again. Here, millions of people lived their lives without a lot of fanfare.

This time, she wouldn’t fail. This time, there was more at stake than Melina’s own happiness. There was even more at stake than her father’s happiness. Yes, leaving this way would cause him pain. But he’d left her no choice. She’d tried reasoning with him, threatening him, pleading with him.

He was adamant.

Well, now, so was she.

Forcing a smile, Melina took a halfhearted spin around the room in her evening dress, trying to recapture the pleasure she’d had a few hours earlier in the feel of the silky fabric swirling around her calves and ankles. She knew she looked pretty in the dress and she regretted no one would see her in it. She unzipped the dress. Maybe she would take it with her. Surely even average American housewives wore evening dresses sometimes.

She thought she heard little snicks of noise at the door to the adjoining bathroom, but of course there would be no one there. She would have been delighted to find someone there, to invite a little adventure into her deadly dull life, but that was never going to happen. Not as long as her father treated her like a priceless family jewel instead of a living, breathing human being with a life of her own.

She slipped off her shoes. First, she would change into street clothes. Then—

A hand covered her mouth. A strong arm pinned her arms to her side. Fear shot through her. She fought. Kicked. Flailed about as best she could. But she was small. And the arms that bound her to a hard chest were strong. She struggled, panting behind the hand that covered most of her face.

Her assailant took her to the bathroom door. Soon she would be beyond rescue. If she could manage a sound, the guards right outside her bedroom door would hear her, would save her. She kicked, aiming for the bedside lamp. Missed. The strap of her gown slipped off her shoulder.

“Hold still,” he whispered into her ear, his voice a soft rasp. He slid the strap back into place on her shoulder. “They aren’t on your side.”

That stopped her, froze her in his grasp. He was right, of course. Who was he, that he knew that?

They entered the dark bathroom. Melina grew still and they moved quickly beyond the small room into another adjoining bedroom, also dark.

“Nobody’s going to hurt you,” he said. “I’ll explain. But first we have to get somewhere safe.”

A trick, of course. But there was something in the voice.... And there was the promise of escape. He might have something else in mind, but in her heart a notion of her own stirred to life. This stranger would help her escape from them, then she could escape from him.

The thought gave her courage. She drew the deepest breath possible, picking up the scent off his hand.

Something stirred to life in her mind. A memory, a feeling...

He shifted his grip on her. “I’m going to zip your dress. Then I have to gag you. Cover your mouth. I don’t want to, but...”

He stuffed something in her mouth. Something soft and silky but still unwelcome. She growled a protest as she felt him slide the zipper snugly into place.

“Sorry.”

Her nose was free now. She inhaled deeply. Recognition struck her. The soft voice. The distinctive scent of cypress on his flesh. Adrenaline gave her strength.

She burst free of his grasp and turned to face him, snatching the silk out of her mouth in the same instant. It was dark, but she could see the faint outline of his face. The square jaw, the slope of forehead, the fullness of the lower lip.

“You!”

He froze for an instant, then dragged her to the window, threw up the shade and let moonlight into the room.

He looked as stunned as she felt. “You!”