Читать книгу Cutting Loose - Susan Andersen - Страница 10

I will do a good job of this. Miss Agnes obviously thought I could-believed all three of us could-and nothing and NO ONE is going to stop me from doing my best.

“L OOKS LIKE you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Jane tensed, recognizing the voice. The fact that she did after only one meeting made her want to string several nasty words together. Instead she composed her expression and slowly turned.

Devlin Kavanagh, all hard-bodied male in a navy T-shirt, worn jeans and scuffed boots, lounged in the doorway to the Wolcott mansion parlor, his auburn hair gleaming beneath all the lights she’d turned on. Her heart started thundering in her chest and, propping her fists upon her hips, she slammed her mind closed against his appeal. “What do you want, Kavanagh?”

“Oh, that’s friendly.” Shoving away from the door frame, he tipped his head back, closed his eyes and with wide, sweeping movements touched first his right forefinger, then his left, then his right again to the tip of his nose. Snapping erect, he gave her a level look. “Look, Ma, I pass the sobriety test.”

“For now. It remains to be seen how long it will last, though, doesn’t it?”

Eyes narrowing to glints of golden green between dense dark lashes, he demanded, “What is your problem? I wasn’t kidding the other night when I said I was jet-lagged. Maybe I shouldn’t have knocked back those tequilas at the bar, but give me a break. I’d been up for a day and a half and they hit me harder than usual.”

Mortification suffused her. Because he was right: she was being a judgmental bitch and it wasn’t an attitude that set well with her. She didn’t know this guy-it was hardly her place to criticize his actions. “My apologies,” she said stiffly.

He made a skeptical sound. “Yeah, that sounds real sincere.”

What the hell did he want from her? Her spine ached from holding herself so rigidly against the temptation to get close to him. She didn’t understand this crazy attraction at all, but she knew one thing: she was stronger than a few stray hormones. Tipping her chin up, she looked him in the eye. “Then I apologize for that, as well. Your drinking issues are none of my business.”

“Jesus, you don’t give an inch, do you?”

“I said I was sorry!”

“In the most backhanded way I’ve ever heard. But you’re right about one thing, sister. If I had drinking issues they’d be none of your business.”

It was one thing for her to criticize herself and something else for him to do so. “Was there something you wanted, Mr. Kavanagh?”

“Dev.”

She gave him an “and?” look.

“Call me Dev. Or Devlin if you insist on being formal. Mr. Kavanagh’s my dad.”

“Okay. Is there something I can do for you, Devlin?” She stooped to fiddle with the collection of Columbia River basketry at her feet.

“I’m trying to locate updated blueprints for the mansion. A few of the rooms look off but the place is over a hundred years old and unfortunately I don’t have the originals, either. For all I know the joint is riddled with secret passages or other hidey-holes. I’d like to know what we’re dealing with before we start tearing things apart, though, because hidden spaces might actually be a selling point, which Bren tells me is your ultimate objective.”

The idea of a secret passage intrigued her, but she refused to be sidetracked. The sooner she got rid of Mr. I’m-too-sexy-for-my-boots the better. Yet instead of simply giving him a straight answer, she heard herself demand, “And you’re asking me because…?”

“You appear to be the go-to girl for all the odds and ends around here. So would you happen to know where the blueprints are?”

“No, I’m sorry.” And she truly was because the more information Kavanagh Construction had, the better the restoration was likely to turn out. And she’d love to see this old mansion fixed up the way it deserved to be. “I’m sure there’s more than one set, but I honestly don’t know where Miss Agnes kept them. All I know is that she told us Wolcott had been renovated several times. The last was when she had the interior done in 1985.”

He nodded. “The year the Wolcott diamonds were stolen by her construction foreman.”

Jane quit pretending to pay attention to the work she should be doing and rose to her feet to face Devlin squarely. “You know about that?”

“Babe.” He gave her a smile she’d bet her inheritance had gotten him into more than one woman’s silkies. “I’m a Seattle boy. Those diamonds are an urban legend in this town. Everyone knows about them.”

Well, she was a Seattle girl and-“I didn’t. Not until recently. Miss Agnes never talked about their theft or the murder of her man Henry.” She gave a shrug. “At least not before Poppy heard about it from someone and hounded her for the story.” Her lips crooked at the memory. “Poppy can be a bit of a pit bull when she gets her teeth sunk into a subject.”

He started to take a step into the room but must have noticed her stiffening, because he stopped where he was. Bracing a muscular shoulder against the doorjamb, he hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and studied her. “Henry, huh? Was that the business manager guy who was killed when the thief came back to recover the diamonds he’d hidden?”

“You’re the expert, Seattle Boy.”

“Hey, I was a kid when it all went down. I was interested in murder and mayhem but mostly fascinated by the idea of a multimillion-dollar set of jewelry still floating around somewhere.”

“Yes, well, Henry was her man for all matters. He was her butler and secretary and advisor and I think probably her lov-” Jane cut herself off, appalled.

What was she doing? She’d already established she didn’t know Devlin. And while assigning him dependency problems might have been jumping the gun a bit, there was no reason to offer him blanket trust, either. So why had she almost blurted out that she and her friends believed Henry had probably been more to Miss Agnes than a simple employee? It wasn’t as if their mentor had admitted as much to them. But the way Agnes had looked when she’d talked about him and the fact he wasn’t even supposed to have been there the night it was popularly believed that Maperton had broken in to retrieve the diamonds that had gone missing the year before, they had all sort of assumed Henry had probably been her lover as well as the man who kept her home and affairs running smoothly.

But she certainly didn’t plan on cozying up to Devlin Kavanagh with the speculation.

“Well, listen.” She gave him her best businesslike smile. “I have work to do. As I said, I really don’t know where the blueprints may be. I’m not even sure any exist. But I will keep an eye out for them.”

He looked at her for a moment, then stepped back, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets. “Thanks. I’ve got a partial set from the kitchen addition that was put on in 1909. I’ll head downtown to see if King County records has the originals or any of the updates since then.” He gave her a brief head-to-toe once-over, licked his bottom lip and nodded. “See ya around, Legs.”

Legs? She stared from the now-empty doorway to the limbs in question, encased in plain old dark Levi’s that she’d paired with a black blazer and a white shirt. She had fairly long legs, but they were certainly nothing to write home about. She’d always thought they were on the skinny side herself, which hardly qualified them as showgirl material.

Then she gave herself a mental shake and a stern directive to forget about it. But good grief. The man was a walking, talking Hazardous to Women zone. She imagined that with his confidence and those eyes and that body, females had been dropping at his feet since the day he hit puberty. Maybe even before.

Well, not her. As far she was concerned, he was Mr. Invisible from this point on. She was keeping her distance. Putting him out of her mind.

Getting her butt back to work.

Putting Miss Agnes’s collections in order so she could start researching and cataloging them was a huge undertaking, and she was happy as a pig in a puddle at the prospect of getting her hands on them. At the same time she was a little daunted by the scope of the museum bequest, and she needed to get moving on it. She had never headed an undertaking of such scale before, and she was laboring under a deadline.

“So here the clock is ticking and I’ve been spinning like that Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil all day long wasting time just trying to figure out where to start,” she confessed to Ava when her friend dropped by to see how she was doing later that afternoon. “Then, too,” she added wryly, “I keep getting caught up in the nostalgia of so many of the pieces-upshot of which is that I haven’t actually started anywhere.”

“Jane, Jane, Jane.” Ava picked up a first-edition book, ran her fingers over the ancient leather binding, then carefully set the volume back on the shelf where she’d found it and looked up to pin Jane in place with her gaze. “It’s a no-brainer. When in doubt, start with the jewels.”

A startled laugh burst out of Jane and she gave her friend an impulsive hug. “You, Ms. Spencer, are a genius! I’ve been doing a bit of this and bit of that with all the collections, when I should be concentrating on the Met’s stuff. The jewelry is an excellent place to start, since that’s part of their haul.” Grabbing up her slim Apple notebook, she started for the stairs. “Come on. I’ve got the codes for the safe in here. Let’s go see what’s in the vault.”

I T WAS ALMOST 5:00 p.m. by the time Dev let himself back into the mansion. He probably should have called it a day and headed for the apartment his sister Maureen had rented for him in Belltown. But the skies had opened up, the place didn’t feel like home yet and he’d just as soon build a fire in the little study up on the second floor, drink his Starbucks drip and listen to the rain bouncing off the windows while he went over the information he’d gathered from the County Assessor’s office and the Department of Development and Environmental Services.

Not that it was much. Before 1936 the records that the Assessor’s Office kept for buildings had been compiled in longhand on four-by-six-inch cards with lots of revisions and cross-outs and not a single photograph. Pretty much useless, in other words.

But luckily he’d been able to get a Flexcar from the share-a-ride program he belonged to, and more helpful were the photos taken of the mansion from the late thirties on, which he’d run to ground at the Washington State Archives at Bellevue Community College. They weren’t as helpful as blueprints, but they’d at least help him get a handle on the timeline for the various so-called improvements that had been made to the Wolcott mansion.

He frowned as he took the stairs two at a time. Because whoever was responsible for the additions on this grand ole dame ought to be stuffed and mounted. He’d seen some bad do-it-yourself jobs in his day, but he’d never seen a place butchered quite as badly as this one. Few of the structural changes added over the years had been made with the original architecture in mind. And rooms that once must have been spacious and full of grace had been divided to the point they had conceded all personality.

So deep was he in thought about how to undo the damage that he’d nearly reached the study before he realized that feminine voices drifted out of it. He faltered to a stop.

Well…shit. So much for a little time to nurse his coffee in front of a fire.

He was turning away to head back to his apartment after all when the murmur of voices gave way to a woman’s deep, raucous belly laugh. The sound cut through him like a hot sword and he found himself following it back to the doorway as if he were one of those old-time cartoon characters wafting in the wake of a beckoning scent.

Since it never occurred to him that little Miss Bug Up Her Butt Kaplinski could be the woman laughing like she’d just heard a deliciously dirty joke, his gaze zeroed in on the voluptuous redhead seated in profile to him across the room. Unless Ava was a ventriloquist, however, the sound wasn’t coming from her. A slight smile curved her lips as she sat looking at her friend across the delicate oval coffee table. Dev turned his attention in that direction, as well.

Then he simply stood there feeling as if he’d just taken a roundhouse kick to the head.

Jane sat on a velvet love seat perpendicular to the crackling fire, her high-heeled ankle boots tumbled in a heap on the floor and her argyle-stocking-clad feet crossed at the ankles and propped amidst a tumble of velvet boxes and bags on the little coffee table. More neatly arranged containers surrounded her and her left hand curled over the top of an open notebook computer, preventing it from tumbling off her lap while she laughed with her head thrown back as if she’d just heard the raunchiest, most amusing story ever.

It was the first time he’d seen her with her spine fully unbent since stumbling into her table at the bar the other night. Not that he had seen her more than three times total, but on the other two occasions her posture had been rebar rigid, as if she were some secret princess wondering how the hell she’d gotten cast into this world of commoners.

As he watched her start gaining control of herself, a corner of his mouth ticked up. Because the royalty analogy wasn’t half-bad, considering she was wearing a queen’s ransom in jewels.

She’d removed her blazer and rolled up her shirt sleeves, and ropes of emeralds and pearls adorned her wrists, looped in strand after lustrous, glittering strand from her neck. A diamond tiara perched at the fore of her listing bun, a cascade of some jewel he didn’t recognize swung from her ears and each finger sported a gem-encrusted ring.

Ava was similarly decked out, but he barely spared her a second glance. Adorned with only a couple of select pieces, she had the look of someone who’d been born wearing this stuff. Jane looked like a little girl playing dress-up. And given her sober-puss personality he’d bet a position on the next America’s Cup yacht-which, okay, he didn’t actually have to wager-that she hadn’t played a lot of little-girl games even when she’d been one.

“Your turn,” she said, and Ava bent forward to pick one of the velvet containers from the table between them. The redhead’s hand suddenly halted midreach, however, and she turned her head in his direction. He had a nanosecond, as their gazes connected, to wish he’d stepped out of sight while he’d still had the chance.

Then she inclined her head and said easily, “Hey, Dev.”

Jane’s head whipped around and she yanked her feet off the table so fast that several boxes and bags tumbled to the floor. Swearing beneath her breath, she bent to pick them up and her tiara tipped over one eye. She snatched the little crown from her head as hot color flowed up her throat. A minuscule comb that still anchored the tiara on one side ripped a hank of slippery hair free and it unfurled down to the corner of her mouth.

Blowing it off her face, she snapped upright to perch with that ramrod posture on the edge of the velvet seat. Raising her chin, she met his gaze. “Devlin.”

He clicked his boot heels together and gave her a clipped bow. “Your highness.” Okay, it was a cheap shot. But when the universe handed you an opportunity on a silver platter it was practically kicking karma in the teeth to ignore it. He swallowed a grin.

“What can we do for you, Devlin?” Ava asked.

“Huh?” He pulled his gaze away from Jane’s flushed face and looked at her friend. “Oh. Nothing. I was going to build a fire and go over some photos of the mansion that I picked up at the state archives today, but I didn’t realize the room was already occupied.”

Straightening, the redhead extended an imperious hand. “Let’s see them.”

He crossed the room and handed her the manila envelope. Taking it, she patted the love seat next to her with her free hand. “Sit.”

“Stay,” Jane said in the same commanding-the-dog tone, and Dev looked at her in surprise. What the hell-did the woman have a sense of humor after all?

She returned his searching look with a bland one of her own and, rolling his shoulders, he sat down next to Ava. Nah. Probably not.

Ava started to pour the envelope’s contents into her lap, but he clamped his fingers over the opening to stay her. “Don’t dump ’em-reach in and pull them out,” he directed when she bent a queenly look of her own on him. “I’d just as soon not go to the trouble of putting them in order twice.”

She did as he bid and a soft sound of pleasure escaped her when she looked at the topmost photograph. “Oh, this is wonderful. Janie, come see what the place looked like before that awful sunroom was added.”

Somewhat to his surprise, Jane complied, setting aside her computer and rising to her feet. He felt Ava shift and once again she patted the cushion next to her. “Scoot over here,” she commanded him. “We’ll put you in the middle so we can all see.”

He felt rather than saw Jane hesitate. But perhaps that was his imagination, because a second later she lowered herself next to him.

On a really small love seat. Now, normally he’d say being sandwiched between a couple of babes on a piece of furniture built for two was a good thing. For some damn reason, however, this was making him edgy as hell. “Uh, I don’t think this love seat was designed with three people in mind.” Aware of Jane’s warmth all along his left side, he added, “Especially when one of us has such impressively curvy hips.”

Okay, that didn’t come out real suave, even though Ava did indeed have killer hips that cut down on the seating space. Still, he wasn’t prepared for both women to freeze on either side of him. And he sure as hell wasn’t prepared for the redhead to turn an expressionless face his way and demand with chill civility, “Am I taking up too much room, Devlin?”

“What? No! That’s not what I meant at all. I just-” What, genius? The truth was, he hadn’t been using his head at all, he’d simply rattled off the first excuse that popped to mind in order to get out from between the two. And now his brain, normally facile and quick around the opposite sex, was drawing a big, fat blank.

Jane’s breast flattened against his biceps as she craned around to see her friend. “He said ’impressively curvy,’ Av. Curvy. Not fat.”

He jerked in shock and stared down at her for the first time since she’d squeezed in next to him. “Of course I didn’t say fat! Jesus. No man in his right mind is going to look at her and think that. Hell, she’s built like a walking wet dream.” The blue eyes he was staring into widened and he felt like smacking himself in the head. What the fuck is the matter with you, Dev? You had more savoir faire when you were nine.

Except it appeared he’d actually said something right, because he felt Ava relax next to him even as Jane smiled slightly and said, “Damn straight she is. And it’s your shoulders, Slick, not Ava’s hips, that are taking up all the space.”

“No, it’s probably my hips.” Ava handed him the photos with a rueful smile. “I apologize, Dev. I didn’t mean to freak on you. I was a fat kid, and I still have a few issues with my weight.”

You think? With three sisters, one might reasonably imagine he had an inkling into the female mind, but he didn’t have a clue. So he merely said, “Well, you shouldn’t. There’s not a man I know who wouldn’t kill to get his hands on a body like yours.”

Yet it wasn’t Ava who commanded his awareness as the three of them pored over the photographs. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but it was Jane who kept capturing his attention.

She might have a chilly personality, but as he’d already noted, the girl pumped out some serious body heat. He felt it radiating along his entire left side and had to peel himself free for a moment to set his coffee on the table. It was hard juggling the cup and the photos in these cramped quarters anyhow, and at this point he didn’t need any additional heat from the inside, as well. He was plenty hot.

Plenty. Hot.

Shit.

He focused on Jane’s unvarnished fingernails. They were bitten to the quick. It wasn’t very big of him, but it gave him a little surge of pleasure all the same. Hah. Maybe she wasn’t as aggressively confident as she appeared.

But she had skin like a baby. Not that he could see a hell of a lot of it-she was buttoned up from stem to stern. Still, he couldn’t help but notice its soft texture when their fingers brushed as they exchanged photographs. Or how her bared forearms shone more luminous than the pearls twined around them.

He shifted uncomfortably. What the fuck was going on here? This was so not like him. He’d had more women over the years than you could shake a stick at, and he was a sailor and a carpenter, for cri’sake-he didn’t think in words like luminous.

“Well, hey.” He pried himself from between the two females and rose to his feet. “My eyes are starting to cross-I think I’m going to take off. I still haven’t caught up with the jet lag. I need to hit the sack.”

More like hit a bar and pick up a woman, he thought as he gathered his pictures, said his goodbyes and dashed through the rain to his car a few moments later after letting himself out of the mansion. Someone with cleavage, smiles and red lips. And nails long enough to drag down his back. Someone who’d look at him like he was the hottest stud to swagger down the pike, instead of a lush who was one drink away from oblivion.

Only…

Instead of heading out to one of Belltown’s night spots when he reached his apartment house, he took a shower and went to bed.

Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow night he’d go out and find himself a woman. Because clearly if he was getting all hot under the collar over uptight, disapproving little Jane Kaplinski, it had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.