by Anne Stuart
It was going to take some time today. He had to track down the man who’d installed the alarm system at Carleton House and have him tie in two more windows that had been considered impregnable. Blackheart had good cause to know they weren’t.
And then he had another, more personal job to take care of. Miss Francesca Berdahofski could wait until after the Puffin Ball, but not long after it. Maybe an hour. And if he didn’t want to be tossed aside like—what was the kid’s name?—Tommy Popandopoulos or something like that, then he’d better be prepared. In more ways than one.
What had she called that expression that must be wreathing his face at the very thought? Rapturous. He had every intention of putting just such a look on her face as she lay underneath him, that mass of brown-black hair spread out around her.
Tomorrow night. The Puffin Ball was a fast job, worth a great deal of money and not an untidy amount of publicity and never had he wanted a job to end sooner. He had no choice but to put Francesca out of his mind for the time being, or a troop of Girl Scouts could march into the middle of the ball and carry off the emeralds under his nose. Business first. And then pleasure, he promised himself. Pulsing, pounding, delirious pleasure. For him, but most especially for her.
A wicked smile wreathed his face as he topped the hill and started down the other side. Most especially for her, he thought.
“ARE YOU SURE we ought to go through with this, Olivia?” Dale questioned with that well-bred whine that was one of his most irritating characteristics. “I mean, we’re taking a pretty big chance, and—”
“Don’t be tiresome, Dale. If you haven’t got any guts, don’t come bleating to me about it. We’re taking no chance at all—I’ve looked at it from every possible angle, taken care of any possible loophole.”
“What about our unwilling partner? Don’t you think Blackheart . . . ?”
“Blackheart, Inc., will go down the tubes once they’re implicated in the theft,” Olivia said coolly. “No one is going to believe their protests of innocence. The police will know someone had to be paid off. They simply won’t be able to find out who did the paying and who did the collecting.”
“But what if—”
“Enough ‘what ifs,’ Dale! It’s too late for cold feet. You wanted this as much as I did.”
“No one wanted it as much as you did, Olivia,” Dale said, with more force than he usually used with her. Her glare was enough to whip him back into servitude. “All right, Olivia. I won’t come up with any more objections. Just remember when they’re carting us off to jail that I told you so.”
“Don’t worry, darling. They’ll know at once I was the mastermind. You couldn’t think your way out of a paper sack. You’ll just face accessory charges, and you can always tell them I brainwashed you.”
“You are a cool bitch, Olivia,” he said slowly.
“Yes,” she said, “I am. Be thankful of that, or we’d be in real trouble right now, courtesy of your little habits.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “I suppose you’re right,” he said finally, unconvinced.
“Of course I am. Now why don’t you go downstairs and see what’s keeping our confederate? I don’t want cold feet to be catching.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dale muttered under his breath. Olivia watched him go with a cool smile on her pink lips. She’d have to get rid of him sooner or later—he was too great a liability. It was a fortunate thing divorce was now allowed in politics—even the President had been married twice. There was no way she was going to spend the rest of her life carrying his dead weight.
She stretched her small hands, shaking them slightly to release the tension. Tomorrow night, and then it would be over, and she’d be so very much richer. And someone, she didn’t really care who, would be in deep trouble. She smiled, quite pleased with herself, and lit another cigarette.
Chapter Twelve
THE APARTMENT was very quiet. For once Ferris hadn’t gone through her usual binge-and-purge cycle of house-cleaning. She hadn’t dropped her clothes all over the floor when she’d walked in early that afternoon, she hadn’t shoved her empty ice-cream dish under the bed. She hadn’t even had any ice cream. When she fed the demanding Blackie—she had to change his name!—his can of Savory Supper, she tossed the lid and the can into the almost empty wastebasket. Even her bed was made, with fresh sheets, and the dead panty hose and year-old magazines had been routed from under it. The rabbit warren of an apartment was close to spotless, and for a very good reason. Phillip was coming.
She could just imagine his fastidious horror if he ever looked under her bed. Not that he’d been anywhere near her bed. But assuming that she was going to marry him, and the discreet diamond on her left hand suggested that she was, and assuming they would sleep together, sooner or later he’d find out her deep dark secrets. She often wondered which would bother him more—her haphazard approach to housecleaning or her less-than-patrician background?
Of course, with Phillip’s inherited money she wouldn’t have to worry about housecleaning. Someone could follow her around and pick up the clothes as she dropped them, someone could whisk away the ice-cream dishes when she finished them, even bring them to her in the first place. It would be sheer, luxurious heaven. Why did the thought depress her?
If she had the energy after her grueling week, she could summon up worry about his reaction to her background. But she knew she’d be manufacturing problems. Phillip Merriam was no snob. He might be disappointed that she hadn’t been frank with him, but even he would admit she had never told him an outright lie. As for her Italian-Polish background, Phillip was a suave enough politician to know that would aid rather than hinder him in garnering votes. Once she told him, he might very well want to move the wedding ahead a few months. Though he’d probably insist she change her name back.
Well, that wouldn’t be too great a hardship. She’d chosen “Ferris” off the top of her head, and she had come to dislike the cool, distant sound of it. Recently “Francesca” had taken on a certain charm. It was probably only coincidental that it was Blackheart’s soft, compelling voice wrapping around it that had made it suddenly appealing.
She’d had too much coffee and Diet Coke that day—the caffeine was giving her an uncustomary case of the jitters, and there was absolutely no need for it. Everything was in order, everything in place—all the committees had proved responsible. The Puffin Ball was set to begin in a few short hours, preceded by an elegant dinner, and there was nothing left for Ferris to do but enjoy it in the company of her fiancé. She simply had to avoid Blackheart’s knowing eyes as she’d been avoiding his presence the last two days.
Everything was set for Phillip’s arrival. The Brie was at the perfect stage of ripeness, the imported British wafers exactly the ones he liked. She had his favorite Scotch, the Dubonnet she’d affected early on in her transformation and had since grown to hate, and everything was in readiness.
Ferris controlled the temptation to take one last look at her reflection. There was no way she was going to improve on coolly calculated perfection. She was exactly what Senator Phillip Merriam expected to see, she was a work of art created by a master. Even if she was no longer so proud of her efforts, she could at least appreciate the results.
The dress was a slight departure from her usual boring good taste. When she went shopping, everything she tried on looked like something a republican would wear, and there was a limit to how far she would go in her quest for upper-class anonymity. Looking like a republican was beyond that limit. Her final choice was a deceptively simple white sheath, as demure as she cared to make it, which was very demure. It was made of a clingy, silky material, with cunning drawstrings that could raise the side slit from below the knee to halfway up her thigh, could move the neckline from somewhere near her waist up to the polite vicinity of her collarbone. She had opted for the most coverage available, piled her silk
y hair atop her head and put on strategic gold museum jewelry copies. An Egyptian collar from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, an Abyssinian slave bracelet from a small college museum in the Northwest and round gold-disk earrings from the Roman collection at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. She had deliberately not taken a raffle ticket for the emeralds. The last thing she wanted to do was parade around in priceless jewels in front of Blackheart’s avaricious eyes. He might well find her irresistible, and then where would she be? In deep trouble.
Carefully, Ferris reclined on her camelback love seat, the closest thing to a sofa that would fit in her tiny apartment. Phillip was late, an almost unheard-of circumstance, and for a moment she considered sneaking into the kitchen and pouring herself a neat glass of his Scotch. Her nerves were on the screaming edge, and sitting around waiting didn’t help matters.
Five minutes passed, with her longing for a drink and Blackie weaving his fat gray body around her crossed ankles. At one point he looked up, uttering a plaintive “mrrrow?”
“You couldn’t be hungry again, you pig!” Ferris said. “You scarfed down all of the Savory Supper and got into the Brie besides. You’re just lucky Phillip wasn’t here. He barely tolerates you as it is, and if he knew you’d been munching on his precious cheese you’d be in big trouble.” Blackie replied with another plaintive “mrrow,” and Ferris rose to her feet.
“All right, I’ll give you some more. I may not be back till very late, and God knows what you’ll do to the apartment if I don’t leave you enough food.” She kept up the conversation as she followed Blackie’s chubby form into the pocket-size kitchen. “But no more Brie. You’ll have to make do with Seaside Surprise and be grateful. I don’t—” Raising her head, she looked directly into John Patrick Blackheart’s amused eyes.
“Merciful Mary in heaven!” Ferris said, falling back against the refrigerator. “You scared me half to death! You’ve got to stop sneaking up on me like that. And what—”
“—are you doing here?” he chanted in unison with her. “Really, Francesca, you’re going to have to think of something more original to say every time I break in. It’s getting redundant.”
“Your breaking in is getting redundant. Don’t you know there’s a law against . . . against . . . ?”
“Breaking and entering is the legal term for it, remember?” he supplied politely. “Or B and E, as they call it in the trade. Who says I broke in? There’s no sign of forced entry.”
“You’re too smart for that. I bet Blackie let you in when I wasn’t looking.”
“No, but I could always train him. He knew I was here long before you did.”
“Damn it, Blackheart, you have to get out of here. Phillip’s due any minute.”
“Good. I haven’t seen the senator in months, apart from talking to him on the phone about you.”
“About me?” she squeaked, horrified.
“You remember,” he said kindly. “He called and told me you’d take good care of me.”
“God, Blackheart, you scared me!” she breathed, the panic never leaving her body. “You’ve got to get out of here,” she said again. “I don’t want Phillip finding you here.”
“Why not?” He was leaning against the kitchen counter, in no mood to move, and his arms were crossed over his chest. A very elegant chest it was, in perfect evening dress, obviously tailored just for him. There was nothing prettier, Ferris thought with an absent sigh, than a gorgeous man in well-cut evening clothes. Unless it was a gorgeous man in nothing at all.
She shook herself, trying to regain a semblance of sanity in the face of incipient disaster. “Have pity on me, Blackheart. I don’t want Phillip suspecting anything.”
“What would he have to suspect?” Blackheart countered mildly, and the simple words made a tiny dent in her panic. “I mean, what have we done that’s so awful? Shared a kiss or two?”
“Four,” she corrected.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Four kisses,” she elaborated, and then flushed in the face of his delighted grin.
“Bless your heart, Francesca, I didn’t know you were counting.”
“So I happen to have a photographic memory,” she said defensively. “Anyway, how would you like it if someone kissed your fiancée once or twice, not to mention four times?”
“I wouldn’t like it one tiny bit. But then, I wouldn’t have left her in the first place with prowling wolves like me around.”
“Alley cats,” Ferris corrected him in a dulcet tone.
He grinned. “And I wouldn’t have left her a virgin for so long.”
“Come on, Blackheart.” She grabbed his wrist and started dragging him toward the door, ignoring the little thrill that ran through her at the feel of his warm flesh against her fingers. “I really don’t want Phillip to find you here. Be kind for once.”
He stopped in the arch that separated the living room from the tiny dining alcove, and she couldn’t budge him any farther. “I’m always kind, Francesca,” he murmured, his voice a sinuous thread. “To you, at least. You just don’t recognize it.”
She gave a useless yank on his arm. “Please, Blackheart. You have to leave.”
He was as still as a statue, his eyes alight with mischief. A moment later the wrist that had been so lifeless in her hand twisted around, capturing hers. Slowly, inexorably he drew her body toward him. She could have fought him, might have twisted away, but she didn’t. She was mesmerized by those devilish eyes, that smiling mouth, and a wanting that all the sense in the world couldn’t banish. When his mouth reached hers she met it hungrily.
The hand on her wrist pulled her arm around his lean waist, her other arm followed of its own accord, and suddenly she was clinging to him as if he were the only safety in the world, the only reality that existed. A reality that was promptly shattered by the intrusive shrill of the doorbell.
“Damn!” She tore herself out of his arms in sudden panic. “Get out, Blackheart. I don’t care how you do it. You managed to get in here without using the front door, you can leave the same way. I don’t want Phillip seeing you.”
“Don’t you think he’ll notice?” Blackheart said lazily, not moving from his perch against the arched doorway.
“Notice what?” she demanded, harried, as the bell rang again.
“That you’ve just been thoroughly kissed. If I were him and found my fiancée looking like you look, with your cheeks flushed and your eyes shining and your hair coming down, I’d be very suspicious.”
“Damn,” she said again. “I’ll get you for this, Blackheart. I swear I will. At least wait on the terrace until we leave. He’s late, we shouldn’t be here long.”
“Sorry. I told you I wanted to see the good senator. That’s just what I intend to do.” He moved then, striding past her horrified eyes, straight for the front door.
“No!” she gasped, diving for him in a vain effort to stop him. She may as well have been trying to tackle a quarterback. He merely proceeded to drag her the rest of the way, opening the door before she could do more than moan in despair.
Trace Walker smiled down at them with impartial benevolence. “Sure took you long enough, Patrick. Are you guys ready?”
If her cheeks had been flushed before, it was nothing compared to the scarlet mortification that washed over her then. Slowly she detached her stranglehold from Blackheart›s neck, slowly she tried to right her dress and brush the tumbled hair away from her face.
“Hello, Trace,” she managed serenely, and Blackheart burst out in unrepentant laughter. “What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t Patrick tell you? The Senator was delayed in Santa Barbara—he’ll meet you at the dinner. He asked Patrick and me to pick you up. Didn’t you tell her, Patrick?” Trace’s handsome face creased in confusion.
“I didn’t get around to it,�
� Blackheart replied innocently.
“You—you unspeakable piece of garbage,” Ferris said in a low voice. “You miserable, slimy piece of crud. You—” His hand caught her wrist just as she was about to hit another human being for the first time in twenty years.
“I know a very good way of stopping your mouth, lady,” he said lightly. “And I don’t mind if I have an audience.”
“You two got something going?” Trace inquired curiously. “Kate told me you did, but I thought that Ferris was engaged to the senator.”
“We have nothing going,” Ferris said icily. “Apart from dire enmity. I’m glad to know Blackheart, Inc., is so sure of themselves that they can leave the place they’re supposed to be guarding with easy minds. You haven’t bothered to wonder whether someone might not break in ahead of time, or any other mundane consideration, have you?”
“Not to worry, Ferris,” Trace said jovially. “Patrick and I have got it all under control. The general security staff is watching things right now, Kate is sitting on the emeralds with three large men surrounding her, and the alarm systems are fully operational. Everything’s fine. You ready?”
Blackheart was still holding on to her hand, but the iron grip had softened, the thumb absently stroking the inside of her wrist and sending melting little tremors up and down her spine. And she was standing there like a fool, reacting to it.
Quickly she snatched her hand out of his loose clasp. “I’ll be ready in five minutes. I have to repair my makeup.”
Blackheart grinned. “I guess you do. I’ll feed the cat for you.”
As long as Trace was such an interested observer, Ferris had to content herself with an answering glare. Without another word she disappeared into the bathroom, determined to stall as long as possible. She didn’t care if she jeopardized the Von Emmerling emeralds, the Puffin Ball or her engagement. She needed time to compose herself before she had to face Phillip’s trusting blue eyes. Especially when she knew the greatest betrayal wasn’t Blackheart’s, it was the gnawing longing in the pit of her stomach, the ache in her heart, the hunger in her loins. And she wasn’t leaving that bathroom until she conquered it. At least temporarily.
