“I didn’t talk to her,” Dennie said. “I haven’t said a word.”
“No, but you stared at her all the way through some speech this morning,” Taylor said. “I told you—”
“You told me after that speech,” Dennie said. “You’re about a beat behind here. I sat in the back and I didn’t say a word to anybody. I’m innocent.”
“Stay away from her,” Taylor said. “Because I do not enjoy getting these damn phone calls. One more, and you’re fired, Banks, I mean it. I don’t give a damn how good you are at weddings.”
“Thank you, Taylor,” Dennie said, and hung up.
If she went near Victoria tomorrow and Janice saw her, she was dead. She should call and cancel now. After all, she had the Bondman story.
Dennie looked at the phone as if it were a snake. If she called, she’d never get to hear Janice talk about risking and marriage and what it all meant. She’d never get to ask her the questions she’d found in Janice’s writings. She’d never get to write the interview.
The smart thing to do would be to call Victoria and cancel.
The risky thing to do would be to have breakfast.
The clock clicked over a number, and Dennie saw she had only fifteen minutes to set up Bondman.
The hell with smart. She shoved the phone away and went to find her second story.
Bond sat in the bar and thought about the brunette and the dweeb professor he was about to meet. Why the hell a babe like that would prefer some teacher to him was a mystery, since she was obviously no dummy. She’d almost blown it for him, right there. Thank God the dweeb was clumsy.
He felt somebody slide into the seat beside him, somebody brunette, his peripheral vision told him before he turned, hoping for a split second that it was Dennie before he saw who it really was.
“Sherée?” He practically goggled at her, and she smiled, obviously pleased to have the upper hand.
“Thought you’d lost me forever, huh?” she said, and snuggled a little closer.
Oh, great. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her around so much as he didn’t want her around now. “Sherée, you’ve got to get out of here,” he said, moving away a little. “I’m meeting a mark, and I don’t want to have to explain you. He’s ready to buy. Get lost, and I’ll see you later.”
“He,” Sherée repeated with suspicion. “You’re not after some other girl, are you?”
Bond closed his eyes. It had been a good ten years since anyone could have referred to Sherée as a girl, but she hadn’t caught on yet. “It’s a guy. Now get out of here. He’s coming in anytime.”
“What’s your room number?” Sherée asked. “Give me the key. I’ll wait up there.”
Bond thought about saying no, but knowing where Sherée was had its advantages, not the least of which was that he wouldn’t have to sleep alone that night. “814,” he said, handing the card over. “I’ll be there by one. Now get lost.”
Sherée kissed his cheek and slid off the stool, and he watched in the mirror as she headed for the door. She stepped back to let another woman come through, and Bond clutched his drink tighter as he saw it was Dennie Banks.
Sherée kept going, and he relaxed again until Dennie came and sat beside him. “Mr. Bondman?” she said, and he turned, intending to be cool and remote. That plan died a sudden death when he saw how close she was and how lovely she was.
“Miss Banks,” he said, and she smiled regretfully and shook her head.
“Dennie, please,” she said. “Alec has just been reading me the riot act about how I behaved at dinner so I wanted to slip down and apologize before you met him. He explained the Washington fix to me, and I see now how wrong I was.”
Bond didn’t want to believe her, but she looked so imploring, and she was so charming.…
“Sometimes I get a little protective of Alec and his aunt because they have so much money,” Dennie went on. “And I am very attracted to Alec, although he’s not really, well, smart.” Her smile deepened. “I like clever men, but Alec has a lot going for him too.”
Yeah, like a lot of money, Bond thought, and cheered up. If Dennie Banks was a gold digger, she’d be a lot easier to handle. “Alec could make a lot of money on this deal,” he told her. “Double his investment easily.”
Dennie leaned a little closer and licked her lips. Greedy, he thought. Greedy with a great mouth. Things are going nicely.
“Could I talk with you tomorrow afternoon?” she asked. “Maybe here in the bar? I’d really like to know all about this investment and the money.”
“Certainly,” he found himself saying.
“And, if it’s all right with you, we just won’t tell Alec about this,” Dennie went on. “He’s just a little jealous, you know?”
“Right.” Bond glanced uneasily over his shoulder. If Prentice was jealous, he didn’t want to get caught moving on something the dweeb was interested in. “Tomorrow.”
Dennie smiled at him and slid off the stool. “Tomorrow,” she said, and moved out of the bar, her sway hypnotic even beneath the severe black dress she was wearing.
Prentice showed up only minutes later, looking a little grim, and Bond had a moment of panic that he’d been seen with Dennie and the deal was off. Then Prentice smiled his usual dweeb smile, and Bond relaxed.
“Hey, thanks for meeting me,” Prentice said, offering Bond a limp handshake. What a wuss. Bond faked a hearty greeting.
“My pleasure, Alec. Sure hated to see you leave like that at dinner.”
“Well, covered with wine, you know.” Prentice fumbled with a coaster and knocked an ashtray off the bar. “Sorry.”
Bond put the ashtray back. “No problem.”
“Sorry about Dennie too,” Prentice said. “Speaks before she thinks sometimes, but a good heart.”
“Fine woman that Dennie,” Bond said. “Glad you could tear yourself away to meet me.”
“She sent you her best,” Prentice said. “Said she jumps to conclusions sometimes. Sorry about all that.” Bond nodded, and the bartender appeared. “Rum and Coke,” Prentice said. “Oh, and make that a diet Coke, please.”
“Make that two,” Bond said, beaming. And then he thought, Getting this guy’s money and his woman will be a piece of cake.
Upstairs in his room, Harry fumed over his third bourbon from the minibar. If anybody was going to put Vic in a condo, it was going to be him, not Donald—
No, he wasn’t. He must be losing his mind. He was not going to put Vic in a condo. He wasn’t going to put Vic anywhere.
Unbidden, images of where he could put Vic rose before him.
Oh, hell, he thought, I should have stayed in Chicago.
Alec called Harry at midnight, as soon as he was finished with Bond.
“It’s sewed up,” he said. “We’re having dinner with Bond tomorrow night to celebrate the deal and that’s when I’ll sign the papers. We’ve got him.”
“Wait till the checks come in tomorrow,” Harry said. “We don’t have him until we have him.”
“You’re right,” Alec said. “You’re always right. You were right about the Banks woman too. She was talking to him at the bar right before I got there. I had to duck out of the way or she’d have seen me. And they were pretty cozy considering she’d just been spitting at him at dinner.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and the regret in his voice knocked Alec off stride.
“Thanks,” he said, after a moment. “No offense, but that’s not like you, Harry. Why aren’t you gloating that you were right?”
“Sometimes being right is lousy,” Harry said. “You okay?”
“Hey, she meant nothing to me,” Alec said. “Get some sleep.”
“Right,” Harry said, as if that were the last thing in the world he’d be doing, and hung up.
“Harry?” Alec said, and then hung up, too, and stretched out on his bed. It was a lonely bed, and he remembered the one he’d been in a couple hours earlier with more regret than he’d thought possible.
r /> So he’d lied to Harry. Dennie mattered. But she was a crook, so it was all just too bad.
Alec rolled over and put the pillow over his head and did his damnedest not to think about Dennie Banks.
Chapter 6
Harry had given up not thinking about Victoria. He’d been wrestling with his thoughts all night, trying to shove everything about her away, and it wasn’t working. Even though he knew it was a dumb thing to do, he was going to have to go see her. Never a man to agonize over a foregone conclusion, Harry headed for the nineteenth floor.
Harry got to Victoria’s door at the same time as room service. Room service was carrying a bottle of Champagne and two glasses.
“I’ll take those,” Harry said, and signed the check, tipping the waiter lavishly. Then he knocked on Victoria’s door, trying to keep his heart from pounding through his chest.
When she opened the door, she was in her lace robe.
“I just took these away from room service,” he said. “Who’s the Champagne for? I’m warning you, if you’ve got Donald Compton in there, there’s going to be blood on the carpet.”
Victoria leaned on the door, looking better than any woman had a right to. “I ordered the Champagne,” she told him, and there was a quiver in her voice. “I had plans to call you up here for a conference and seduce you, but now that you’re yelling at me again—” Harry swallowed, stuck on the word “seduce,” so Victoria kept going, her nervousness as plain as her exasperation. “Listen, you big galoot, I’m getting tired of opening and closing this door around you. If you come in here again, you’re staying the night.”
“Oh, yeah,” Harry said, finding his voice at last. “And how are you going to stop me if I try to leave?”
Victoria untied her belt with one swift pull and shrugged the lace robe to the floor.
“That should do it,” Harry said, and moved toward her, kicking the door shut behind him.
Alec spent the night staring at his ceiling, trying to dislike Dennie for being a crook and ending up trying to figure out ways to save her, instead. It was definitely time he got out of fieldwork permanently. He’d never thought about letting a bad guy get away before, but now all he could think about was getting her out of the picture before they arrested Bond. Well, not all he could think about. There were those eyes and those lips and that body and that laugh and the heat he’d seen in her eyes when he’d wrapped himself around her. Think about the job, he told himself, and then he thought about Dennie some more.
The thing about Dennie was that she was the kind of woman he could spend the rest of his life with and not get bored. He’d never tripped across that kind of woman before, and he had an idea they were few and far between so he’d better hold on to this one. If Harry was right, and she was a crook, he had less than forty-eight hours to convince her to change careers. Then he’d have to convince her to move to a strange city so they could get to know each other better. And along the way his hormones would appreciate it if he could talk her into bed too.
“No problem,” he said out loud, and then rolled over and tried to go to sleep again.
Dennie spent the night staring at the ceiling, trying to figure out how she was going to survive if Taylor fired her, trying not to think about Alec but thinking of him obsessively anyway. This is purely physical, she told herself, and she knew she lied and wondered when Alec had become more than great kisses and juvenile banter over dinner. Forget him, think of the stories, she told herself, think of Walter and his dog biscuits, but she thought of him again anyway, and finally fell asleep in the thin light of dawn, thinking of his smile, and his hands, and his lovely long body, and how much she was going to miss him when he was gone.
* * *
Harry watched the dawn come up through Victoria’s window as she nestled warm against him. When she started to stir, he kissed the top of her head where it rested against his chest.
“I’ve got to go, love,” he whispered. “I don’t want Bond to see me leaving your room.” He thought for a moment. “Or Alec for that matter. He’d probably beat me up for seducing you.”
Victoria laughed sleepily. “Who seduced who?”
He grinned into her curls. “I think we both did pretty good.”
“I think we were both phenomenal.” She held him tighter. “Don’t go yet.” She kissed him on the chest, laughing a little when he drew in his breath.
“Stop distracting me,” he said. “You know, we have a decision to make here.”
Victoria sighed, and moved back to her side of the bed. “Is this about Bond again?”
“No.” Harry drew her back. “Pay attention. This is about us.”
Victoria sat up. “Us?”
Harry looked at her with alarm. “Don’t you think there’s an us?”
“Of course I think there’s an us.” Victoria swallowed. “I just didn’t think that you’d think there was an us.”
Harry looked at her in outrage. “What do you think I am, nuts?”
“Yes,” Victoria said, relaxing against his chest again. “But I’m crazy about you anyway.”
Harry sighed, and tried again. “I live in Chicago. You live in Columbus. This is not going to work.”
“We could see each other on weekends,” Victoria offered. “It’s only a forty-five-minute flight.”
Harry scowled at her. “No, we couldn’t. We have maybe twenty years left together. Less if you drive me crazy, and I kill you. We are not going to see each other on weekends.”
“Could you get a transfer?” Victoria asked.
“The fraud department doesn’t do a lot of work in Columbus,” Harry said. “Cows don’t do much investing.”
“What cows?” Victoria asked, and then went on without stopping because she knew what was coming. “You want me to quit, don’t you? You want me to give up my career. You want me to give up forty years of work.”
“Well,” Harry said, drawing away a little. “One of us is going to have to. If not you, me.”
“You’d hate not working,” Victoria said. “Alec says you’ll never retire. I can’t ask you to quit.”
“One of us is going to have to,” Harry said. “Which one?”
“Don’t make me make that decision,” Victoria said, close to tears. “That’s not fair.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “I’ll make it. You quit.”
“Dammit, Harry.” Victoria sat up, and this time Harry did too.
“Like I said, it’s a decision.” He rolled until his feet were on the floor and then he picked up his pants. “And it’s probably one we shouldn’t make naked. We can talk about this later.”
Because you have work to do, Victoria thought. But all she said was, “You’re right. Let me think about this.”
When he was gone, she fell back into the bed and closed her eyes. If she quit her job, would she even know who she was? She’d just met Harry; it would be really stupid to throw away everything on the basis of a one-night stand with a man who had the personality of sandpaper. She thought of Harry, rasping his way through life, and smiled in spite of herself. Harry or her career.
Oh, hell, she thought, and buried her head under her pillow.
At roughly the same time, Sherée woke up and peered half asleep at Bond, who was completely asleep next to her. Thank God he slept like the dead. It was the only way she’d ever kept one step ahead of him. She slid quietly from the bed and picked up his jacket from the chair next to the desk. His appointment book was where it always was—inside front breast pocket—and she flipped through it, scouring the past two days. Appointments with the marks he’d told her about last night, the Compton guy and the Prentice woman. Both of them real old-timers, Brian had said, although he’d said the woman had probably been something once. Now she was half gaga, the perfect mark.
Sherée turned to the page for today, Saturday. Dinner with Compton and Prentice again to celebrate the deal, just as he’d said, but who was “Dennie, one, in bar”? He hadn’t mentioned a Dennie. Sherée’s ey
es narrowed. One of Brian’s many problems as a significant other was his interest in all women. If this Dennie was somebody he was chasing …
Brian stirred, and Sherée shoved the book in the jacket pocket and crawled back into bed. “What are you up so early for?” he muttered, trying to focus on her.
“I’m worried,” Sherée said, stalling. “I can’t sleep. What if we get caught?”
“I told you,” he mumbled, rolling away from her, “we can’t get caught. This time we’re legal.” He fell silent then, and in a few minutes he began to snore softly and Sherée relaxed.
He was doing something legal? Maybe he was going straight. Maybe everything would be all right, after all. The problem was, it just didn’t sound like Brian. He was never legal or innocent or truthful. She thought about the appointment book again. One thing for sure, Sherée told herself as she punched her pillow and prepared to go back to sleep, she was going to check out Dennie in the bar at one. Compton and Prentice might be dupes, but she wasn’t going to be.
At ten, Dennie headed for the Ivy Room a little light-headed from lack of sleep and more than a little nervous from what she was going to do. She’d rehearsed several different approaches to convince Victoria to help her with Janice, but when she sat down across from her, she took one look and forgot them all. Victoria’s usual amiable smile was gone, and she looked troubled instead.
Dennie picked up the heavy red damask napkin by her plate. “What’s wrong? You look upset.”
Victoria blinked at her, as if she’d appeared out of nowhere. “Good morning, dear.” She focused on her, and her smile came back. “No, I’m not upset. Just … puzzled. Things to work out.” Her smile was full wattage now. “I ordered coffee and juice and a basket of muffins to start us out. Too hungry to wait.”
“Works for me,” Dennie said. “What are you puzzling? The Prentice compound?”
Victoria beamed at her. “Isn’t it a wonderful idea?”
“No,” Dennie said. “It stinks on ice. That man is a crook, and you are not dumb, which means you know he’s a crook.” Victoria looked slightly stunned so Dennie patted her hand. “I really want to know all about it, but I can wait on that. But I need to convince you to do me a huge favor, and I’m not sure how to go about it. What’s a good way to convince you to do something?”