Karl and Viktoria met her at their door as usual, their arms wide, as if she didn’t come every morning for breakfast.
They had followed her to Long Beach soon after Karl retired from a long and prestigious career in the Swedish parliament. Moving to America had been entirely their idea, but she adored them for doing it, and was glad that they were happy in the ultimate American playland that was California.
She didn’t have a phone on the sailboat, so they kept a phone for her, a separate line with an answering machine. And because her relationship with them was so close, she didn’t mind that they knew her business and social doings. She led a simple life.
So she sat with them in their bright little kitchen, eating a very Swedish breakfast of pancakes smeared with jelly, not tasting the food, her concentration devoted to telling them an enthusiastic but G-rated account of the intriguing man who’d become her neighbor at the marina.
After a half-hour of nonstop talking in fluent Swedish, Tess realized that their cheerful expressions had gone dark. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
Her grandfather spoke first. “Why did you tell him so much about yourself so soon?”
Tess smiled drolly. “Farfar, only because the man asked. It could be that he likes me. I am likable, you know.” She squeezed Karl’s hand. “He’s not the kind of man who feels comfortable talking about himself right away. That’s the only reason he encouraged me to talk. It was innocent.”
Viktoria nervously twisted the hem of the colorful apron she wore over a housedress. “But he wanted to know so much about your work and your family.” She frowned. “You didn’t tell him that you keep diamonds on your boat, did you?”
“No, of course not.”
“And whatever you do, don’t tell him about the blue. Don’t wear it around him, either.”
“That’s right,” Karl agreed.
Tess stared at her grandparents in disbelief. “You know I don’t wear the blue. It’s worth too much. What’s going on with you worrywarts?”
“The diamond has been in the family for many years,” Karl said sternly. “We wouldn’t want it stolen.”
“Good heavens!” She propped her chin in one hand and looked from Karl to Viktoria slowly. “Why are you worried now, but never before? Why didn’t you worry when you gave the diamond to me? I was only eighteen. You didn’t even worry when I married Royce, the ultimate diamond fancier.”
“Royce was a friend of your father and mother’s. He was an honorable man. We trusted him,” Viktoria told her. “Since he’s been gone you’ve ignored all the men who’ve tried to get close to you. Now, suddenly, this Surprise person takes advantage of your loneliness.… ”
“Farmor, Royce has been gone for two years, and I’m lonely, I admit that. But Jeopard Surprise is very special. Besides, neither he nor anyone else knows that I have the blue.”
“Just you be careful,” Viktoria admonished, waving a finger.
“I could take it to the bank and put it—”
“No!” both Karl and Viktoria exclaimed.
“Don’t show it to anyone,” Karl said emphatically.
“It was your mother’s. It should stay close to you,” her grandmother added.
After a stunned moment, Tess sadly told herself that senility was making its first marks on her beloved grandparents.
“Good. I want to keep it close to me,” she told them gently. “A thief would have to tear my boat apart to find the blue. I never leave it outside its special safe. Don’t worry.”
“I think we’ll go down to the marina this morning and sit on your boat until we see this Surprise person,” Karl announced.
Smiling benignly at their whimsical fears, Tess got up from the table and gave them each a kiss. “You guys do that. I have some phone calls to make, so I’ll stay here.” She paused, feeling mischievous, and added, “If he cranks his yacht’s engine, run for your lives.”
SLEEPY-EYED, A cup of coffee in his hand. Jeopard glanced out his galley window a second time just to make certain that they were staring at the Irresistible.
Yep. Santa and Mrs. Claus were watching him from the deck of Tess’s sailboat.
They both had graying blond hair. Santa wore a Panama hat and didn’t have a beard, and their clothes were modern, but somehow the plump little red-cheeked pair evoked thoughts of elves and reindeer.
They sat at the umbrella-covered patio table, looking quite patient, as if they were just waiting for their binoculars to arrive.
They had to be the morföräldrar, the grandparents, Tess had mentioned the night before. Karl and Viktoria. The Iceman was under the surveillance of Swedish gnomes.
Jeopard leaned back in his chair and cursed softly at the new wrinkle in what should have been a simple case. Cute little overprotective grandfolks didn’t jibe with the background he’d been given about Tess Benedict. Of course, she could be a worthless piece of scum and still evoke love from her family—he’d seen that situation many times in his work.
Sure. Tess was scum. That was why he’d enjoyed every minute of the seven hours they’d sat talking at Zanzi Bar. That was why he’d resisted the urge to seduce her the night before, and had left hen at her boat with no more than a quick kiss on the cheek and a joke about being too tired to aim for her mouth.
Sure. He didn’t want her. He didn’t want to breathe, either. The night before, he’d felt himself permanently slipping over the line that separated professional interest from personal interest.
Hell, maybe it didn’t matter. He’d get the job done, regardless.
Where did she go every morning about seven? Work? No, she was dressed too casually to call on diamond wholesalers. A lover? The kid who’d delivered the flowers? Jeopard would rent a car and follow her the next day. It might be important.
Sure. Finding out if she had lovers was crucial to recovering the Kara diamond.
Suddenly he didn’t feel like hanging around the marina to be gaped at by cute old people who made him feel dirty for deceiving their granddaughter.
TESS WAS LITERALLY floating on air as she boarded the Lady. The two grinning, muscular college boys swung her between them on a seat made of their latched arms.
“You may put me down now, serfs,” she ordered, laughing. They set her carefully atop the deck and bowed.
“Anything for you, my queen.”
“Anything for a beer, my queen.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, serfs. Wait here. My castle is a mess, and much too small for a queen and two brawny rugby players.” Smiling, Tess went to her cabin. When she came back she carried two bottles of beer and a thick leather scrapbook.
“Oooo, imported brew,” one boy crooned.
“Would you expect the king’s wife to drink domestic?” the other boy asked.
Tess handed them the beers and the scrapbook, brushing her fingers over the book in a loving goodbye as she did. They assured her that they’d be careful when they photocopied the prized collection of memorabilia and newspaper clippings from the two years Royce had coached a city-sponsored rugby team.
“No hurry about returning it,” she called as they tromped away. “But be careful with it.”
They blew her kisses out the window of their van as they left the marina parking lot.
Humming, Tess ran back to the cabin and quickly changed from her shorts outfit into sandals, white slacks, and a colorful tank top. She pulled her sleek, chocolate-colored hair back from her temples with white combs.
She went to a jewelry box where she kept her less-expensive items and got a pair of one-carat diamond studs for her ears. She put them on, then slipped a thousand-dollar Lady Rolex onto her wrist.
Next she fastened the antler amulet onto a slender gold chair and proudly hung it around her neck. When she checked her appearance in the mirror of her tiny bathroom, the amulet was all she noticed.
She couldn’t wait to tell Jeopard what she’d learned on the telephone that morning.
When the buzzer sounded, Tess bur
st out of the cabin, looked up the stairwell to the deck, and waved cheerfully.
“Hey, Sundance, I heard that you encountered my grandparents. They said you took the yacht out and didn’t hit my boat or the dock even once.”
He nodded and tipped a finger to his dark sunglasses in jaunty salute. “I wouldn’t dare, as long as they were here. You might say that I was gnomed.”
Tess laughed giddily as she locked the cabin door and began punching a numbered panel that activated her sophisticated security system. What a perfect day this was going to be!
She glanced up the stairs and sighed at the soul-stirring sight of him. This man probably didn’t own a pair of jeans, she decided. He was wearing belted khaki trousers with a blue polo shirt.
But Tess liked his fashionable yet understated style. He had a sexy kind of elegance to him—like a blond James Bond, she thought.
Behind his sunglasses. Jeopard shut his eyes and wished he could do anything but spend the day with Tess; He’d witnessed her exuberant affection with the two college-boy types, and it only added to his troubled emotions.
Whether friends or lovers, they were obviously close to her heart. He hoped they were lovers—he needed some harsh reality to restore his defenses.
She ran up the steps, looking delicious and cool, her white smile beautiful against the fawn hue of her skin. She grasped his hands and smiled at him until he couldn’t help smiling back.
“I’m dragging you up to Los Angeles,” she announced. “More specifically, to the library at the UCLA campus in Westwood.”
“I’m game. What are we researching?”
She was trembling with excitement. Her voice hoarse, she told him, “I spent the whole morning talking to a woman at the Cherokee Cultural Center in Oklahoma. She told me about a biography written by a business associate of my great-grandfather Gallatin—the one who owned the shipping company in San Francisco.”
She laughed with delight, threw her arms around Jeopard’s neck, and hugged him hard. “And UCLA has a copy!”
Jeopard grimaced as the soft length of her body pressed against him and her delicate perfume filled his senses. Something tore apart inside him, and he was shaken by an all-encompassing desire simply to tell her the truth about his work and his mission there, then do his best to make her not care.
It didn’t matter whether she was hoarding a diamond stolen from one of the royal families to Europe, whether she might have married her husband simply to get that diamond and everything else he had, or whether she had a dozen lovers under the age of twenty-five.
Jeopard knew only that he’d been waiting all his life to feel her arms around him.
TESS GOT TEARS in her eyes when a librarian handed her several envelopes of microfiche that contained Silas Gallatin’s biography. She and Jeopard found a display machine on a nearly deserted floor of the UCLA library building and sat down at it side by side.
Tess stared at the envelopes as if they were sacred. “It doesn’t look like a very long biography,” she murmured in disappointment. “Maybe it’s just about his shipping business. With a title like Portrait of a Leader it could be very impersonal.”
“We won’t know until we read it.”
She looked up at Jeopard, her eyes wetter than ever. “Forgive me for being so sentimental. It’s just that I feel as if several important aspects of my life are converging all at once. As if nothing is ever going to be the same again.”
Jeopard was very close to her. She saw another odd, unreadable emotion darken his eyes. The man was difficult to decipher, a fact she enjoyed.
“What aspects?” he asked gently.
Tess shivered inside at the effect of his voice. “Meeting my cousins, learning about my Indian heritage.” She paused. “Meeting you.”
A stillness dropped over him, making him seem poised on the edge of some monumental decision. His gaze went to her mouth. She felt his breath quicken against her face. If he leaned toward her just a few inches, he could kiss her.
But he didn’t move.
Tess couldn’t stand it. She tilted her head, parted her lips, and kissed him quickly on the mouth. Sensation sleeted through her as his lips responded with a skill that put a world of promise in the brief contact.
“We could get kicked out of the library for doing that,” he joked in a gruff tone.
Tess struggled for enough air to speak. “At UCLA? We’d have to do something a lot more shocking.”
She took a deep breath and reminded herself why they were there. Her fingers trembling, she put the first sheet of microfiche into the machine and watched her great-grandfather’s life reach out to her from the past.
“TAKE DEEP BREATHS. That’s it. You’re just hyperventilating. Let’s sit down over here on the grass.”
His arm around Tess’s shoulders. Jeopard led her to a small park not far from where they’d left the car.
She clutched the thick handful of photocopied microfiche pages to her chest and kept clutching them even after he’d grasped her by the arms and helped her sit. He sat down beside her, tugged the manuscript away and laid it on the grass, then rubbed her neck gently.
“S-sorry,” she managed to say. “We were in there for hours. Everything just hit me as we walked out into reality again. Great-grandmother owned a saloon. And probably a brothel. I never knew the Cherokees allowed such things. I expected Pocahontas, not the Happy Hooker.”
She bent her head into her hands and began to laugh.
Jeopard reminded her solemnly. “The writer only said that she ran a house of entertainment in the Oklahoma Territory not long after the Civil War. Maybe she had the historical equivalent of a video arcade.”
Tess grasped his shirtfront and chortled loudly into his shoulder. “Pack-saddle Man.”
Jeopard’s throat contorted with restraint. She made it so easy to laugh. “Wide-Open-Spaces Invader.”
When she squealed and thumped his chest with unrestrained mirth, he gave up. They both laughed wildly. She leaned against him and he put both arms around her. They rocked back and forth, gasping for breath.
Tess finally slumped in his embrace, wiping her eyes and reaching up to wipe his. They shared a droll look.
“I really think it’s fascinating that my great-farmor was a madam,” Tess admitted. “She may have done it out of desperation—she was only twenty-two when Silas took her away from her business. It’s obvious that the Civil War devastated the Oklahoma Cherokees, and she probably had lost her family. Silas seemed like the kind of man who wouldn’t care if he scandalized society, as long as he married the woman he loved. He sounds rather wonderful.”
“See? No need to hyperventilate. And think of the other tidbits you picked up.”
“It means a lot to me to know that the three gold medallions were willed to Silas and his brothers by their parents. It’s a starting point.”
“Katherine Blue Song. Now you know your great-great-grandmother’s maiden name.”
“Katlanicha Blue Song. Katherine was her white name,” Tess reminded him. “I can’t wait to call my cousin Kat. She’s named after her—Katherine. I’m sure she’ll want to know that her name has a fascinating background.”
“We should fly up to San Francisco this week and find your great-great-grandparents’ graves.”
Tess grasped his hand excitedly. “I can’t believe they spent their last years in California. Right in my home state! And I have to call my cousin Erica and tell her that Justis Gallatin was described as having ‘burnt-red hair, like a chestnut horse.’ That’s the color of Erica’s hair!”
She shut her eyes. “Oh, I don’t mind hyperventilating over this. I feel like Sherlock Holmes after a successful case.”
“Without the pipe and tweed hat, thank God.”
Jeopard stroked her back and laughed with her again.
“Jep, I’m very glad you’re sharing this with me.”
He looked down at her laugh-flushed skin and happy blue eyes for several long seconds. Jep. She had unknow
ingly chosen the nickname used by his brother and sister, the only two people who loved him and kept him from losing his humanity. Maybe it was a good sign. “I’m glad too,” he murmured.
He kissed her, kissed her hard, and felt light-headed when she kissed him back with a skill and passion that matched his own. He kept kissing her until a group of students strolled by and hooted at them cheerfully.
“We can’t get kicked out of a park for smooching,” Tess told him when he scowled after the group.
He looked at her, frowning. “I’d like an older audience, at least. How about dinner?”
She was trembling desperately in his embrace. “If we do this in a restaurant, we’ll get kicked out for certain.”
“Very funny. How about dinner aboard my yacht?”
“Can you cook?”
His heart was pounding in his chest. This was stupid, dangerous, and he was in way over his head. He pulled her more tightly against him. “Does it matter?”
She shut her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, they were peaceful. “No. Not at all.”
CHAPTER 4
JEOPARD KNEW THAT she wanted him badly, and his intuition told him that there was something special in the wanting, something that made him unique. His age, he assumed grimly. She was accustomed to kids. Bedding a full-grown man would seem like a novelty to her.
That thought, that he might be nothing more than a change of pace for her, didn’t stop him from needing her more than he’d ever needed a woman in his life. Whatever her ugly truths—and he would learn them all before he was through—she hypnotized him with her trusting eagerness.
For another thing, he couldn’t resist her cheerfulness. Lord, how many boys had lost their hearts while she perfected her innocent charm?
Nor could he resist her gentle sophistication. No matter how promiscuous she was, there was nothing coy or cynical about her intention to go to bed with him; just a sweet, silent admission in every touch, every look, and every inflection of her beautiful voice.
As they walked hand in hand down the dock toward his yacht, she smiled at people aboard neighboring boats, called to them by name, and swung his hand as if she and he were long-time lovers, not two people who’d known each other only a couple of days.