Erin made a sound that could have meant anything from joy to despair. “Jeff?”
“Yeah, I know, it’s just too—”
“When did they call?” she asked, interrupting ruthlessly.
“Who?”
“ConMin.”
“I got the first call about an hour ago, some guy with a Dutch name, Hugh van Louk or something like that. He and Harry are thrashing out the details now.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t, or you’d be over the moon the same way I am,” Fisher retorted. “Remember that book you wanted to do years ago? Well, this is it. Diamonds, Grit to Glitz. This time ConMin will let you into a London sight. This time anything you want from them is yours, and they’ll pay you a queen’s ransom in the bargain. The timing is perfect for you. It will mean delaying your European book, but I didn’t get the feeling you were exactly tearing down doors in your eagerness to do that one.”
She forced herself to listen for a few minutes longer, and even managed a question or two. Then she looked at her watch and knew she’d run out of time. “Sorry, Jeff, my cab is waiting. I’ll call back as soon as I can.”
She hung up, grabbed her purse, and headed for the lobby. A cab appeared as soon as she stepped through the glass doors. She gave terse directions and settled back for the short ride.
She wanted to believe that her inheritance and Con-Min’s sudden interest were a coincidence. Nice try. Doesn’t fly. Which left her with an unhappy question. How did ConMin find out so fast?
Maybe her father would know. Or Cole.
Neither possibility made her feel good. She arrived at the BlackWing Building ready to push and push hard to get answers. Cole met her as she got off the elevator. As she looked at him, she realized they both were wearing the same clothes they had worn yesterday. Both shirts showed signs of having been put through a hotel’s laundry-room wringer, telling Erin that she and Cole traveled the same way—light. The thought was oddly reassuring.
Neither of them said a word until they were inside Cole’s office.
“Is my father here yet?” she asked.
“The guard hasn’t called up for him,” Cole said, neither lying nor telling the whole truth. His eyes narrowed as he noted the stark lines of tension around her eyes and mouth. “What’s wrong?”
“I won’t know until I get a few answers.”
Before Cole could say anything, the phone rang. He picked it up, listened, and hung up. “Your father is on his way up now. There’s a woman with him.”
“Nan Faulkner. She has something to do with diamonds.”
A few minutes later the guard returned with Matthew Windsor and Nan Faulkner in tow. Impassively the men introduced themselves and shook hands before taking seats in the conference room. Faulkner sat. Erin didn’t. She turned and looked at the three other people.
“Which one of the players benefits if the fact that I’m Abe’s heir gets out?” Erin asked.
“What do you mean?” Faulkner asked.
“Just what I said. Who benefits? The agency? Con-Min? Cole? Me?”
“ConMin,” Cole said.
Faulkner and Windsor looked at each other. “ConMin,” Faulkner agreed.
Erin turned to Cole. “They’re offering me a million. How much did they pay you?”
“Not a cent.”
“Erin, what the hell is this about?” Windsor demanded.
She answered without looking away from Cole. “Con-Min called my publisher and offered me the kind of access that most photographers would kill for. Just because I’m brilliant, they said, just because I’m the only button pusher in the universe capable of producing images for a definitive—no, the definitive—book on diamonds. Con-Min is so thrilled with the idea that they’re hinting they would underwrite a million bucks in advance.”
“Christ Jesus,” Windsor muttered.
“I doubt that he had anything to do with it,” Cole said. “Who called you?”
“Jeff Fisher, my editor. Harry Conner, the publisher, is hammering out the details right now. Old Harry is over the moon, and Jeff thinks he’s finally going to make publishing history.”
“What do you think?” Cole asked.
Erin made a dismissing gesture. “The idea’s a good one. I tried to interest Jeff in doing a grit-to-glitz book on diamonds five years ago. He couldn’t get me in the door at ConMin. Nothing personal. They’d turned down every other photographer and publisher in New York. Company policy.” She took a deep breath. “So why did they change their minds?”
“Easy,” Cole said. “They know you’re Abe’s heir.”
“Brilliant, Mr. Watson,” Erin retorted. “Of the four of us in the know, who the hell tipped ConMin?”
Nan Faulkner’s chuckle was soft, almost inaudible. Erin shot her a narrow look.
“Matt, you worry too much about your little girl,” Faulkner said. “She’s smart enough to come in out of the rain. The good news is that the leak didn’t come from the agency. Matt and I are the only ones who know, and we aren’t talking.”
“It didn’t come from me, either,” Cole said.
“Prove it,” Faulkner said coldly.
He shrugged. “I knew where Erin was. ConMin had to waste at least two days trying to contact Erin through her publisher, which means ConMin didn’t know where she was. If they did, they would have skipped the middleman and made their offer in person. In addition, I want to buy the mineral rights Erin inherited. So does ConMin. I wouldn’t give them a handful of spit.”
Erin thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Then who did?”
“I don’t know.” Cole looked at Faulkner, then looked back at Erin. “Who made the approach?”
“A man named Hugh van Louk, or something like that.”
Faulkner’s breath hissed out. “That’s Hugo van Luik, ConMin’s number-one badass. Director of Special Operations for DSD—that’s Diamond Sales Division—and a half-dozen ambiguous titles, all of which boil down to one job—troubleshooter. When the cartel has trouble, he shoots it dead.”
“You know him?” Erin asked curiously.
“I butt heads with him every fifth Monday, all year round. As a matter of fact, I’m flying to London from here.”
Cole looked at Windsor. “How long has Ms. Faulkner worked for ConMin?”
“Never, babe,” Faulkner shot back. “I represent the U.S. diamond industry’s interests at the advisory level. There are a shitload of people in the business who’d like to have ConMin’s seat on the diamond tiger. We just haven’t quite figured out how to pull it off.”
“Every fifth Monday,” Erin said, remembering her research for the diamond book her editor hadn’t been able to sell to Harry Conner five years ago. “The sights, right?”
Faulkner’s sharply penciled eyebrows rose. “Right.” She struck a match and held it to the tip of a narrow cigarillo. “Ten times a year, always on Mondays, the world diamond industry assembles in London and receives its marching orders from DSD in the form of allotments of rough.” She blew out a pungent stream of smoke. “At my end, on the advisory level, the producer countries are informed of DSD’s needs, how much rough they will buy. At the other end, the cutters and brokers—there used to be three hundred; now there are only a hundred and fifty—are shown the goods and quoted a price.”
“Tell her about the negotiations,” Cole said ironically.
“What negotiations?” Faulkner asked.
“That’s what I meant.” Cole looked at Erin. “There aren’t any negotiations. It’s all take it or leave it, on both sides. The diamond producers are told what ConMin’s Diamond Sales Division will buy and how much they’ll pay, and the cutters and brokers are told how much rough they’ll buy and at what price. If they agree, they pay cash. If they decline more than once, they’re never invited to a sight again, which is about the same as being cut out of the diamond business in its entirety.”
“If that’s how ConMin does business,” Erin said, “they’d
be smart to keep it a secret instead of inviting me to do a book about them.”
Faulkner dismissed the suggestion with a wave of her hand. “They’re so powerful they don’t have to apologize or hide. As long as they stay outside the United States, beyond the reach of the Sherman Antitrust Act, ConMin can do business any way it wants.”
“Sounds like OPEC,” Erin said.
“Close,” Faulkner said, nodding. “ConMin is just as high-handed as OPEC ever thought of being. The difference is that the world can get by without diamonds a hell of a lot longer than it can get by without oil. We had no choice but to break OPEC. The diamond cartel is a different matter. Diamonds are a luxury, not a necessity, or we’d have busted ConMin as fast as we cracked Sheikh Yamani’s brainchild. There would have been no other choice.”
“If ConMin is that powerful, why are they bothering with this charade about the book?” Erin asked.
“Deniability,” Faulkner said. “The folks who run Con-Min are powerful, not stupid. If you were Tiffany Anyone instead of Matt’s daughter, I suspect you’d have died before you got a chance to count old Abe’s diamonds. But you’re Matt’s daughter, so ConMin has to use titty-fingers. They aren’t preventing discovery of a new diamond deposit, they’re sponsoring an art project. They aren’t threatening your little ass, they’re offering to put it in mink-lined luxury.”
Erin wasn’t impressed.
Faulkner sucked hard on the dark cigarillo.
“Hell, babe, by the time they’re done wining and dining and waving money,” Faulkner continued, “you’ll hand over the mineral rights and kiss their corporate cheeks for caring. You don’t know there’s a mine out there, right?”
Erin nodded.
“And even if there is, there’s no guarantee you’ll find it,” Faulkner concluded. “So ConMin comes into the game with a sure million and a career-making book versus whatever Blackburn is offering.”
“Three million,” Cole said.
“Presuming you’re good for it,” Faulkner said scornfully. “I’d get a Dun and Bradstreet, a Standard and Poor’s and every other kind of check on this character. He looks like trouble to me, even if his suit coat is silk and fits him like a lover.” She waved her cigarillo at Erin. “Let ConMin romance you around a little. What can it hurt? It will give your daddy and me time to get a team into Crazy Abe’s station and vet the place for you.” She pinned Erin with a dark glance. “What about it? It makes everybody happy, except maybe Blackburn.”
The silence in the room was so complete that Erin could hear the distant sound of a jet plane lifting from LAX. She looked at her father and then at Nan Faulkner. Their motives were clear and understandable. She looked at Cole, who was as mysterious as the diamonds he’d brought to her. Then she looked back at her father.
“Is Cole ConMin’s man?”
“I can’t be certain,” Windsor said.
“Best estimate,” Erin said coolly, using language her father understood.
“He’s not ConMin’s.”
“Is Cole a diamond prospector?” Erin asked.
“Yes,” Windsor said.
“A good one?”
Windsor nodded.
For a moment there was silence while Erin reviewed the options that had been outlined by her father. She still didn’t like any of them.
So she chose none of them.
She reached into her purse, pulled out the worn bag, opened it gently, and shook out the stones onto her palm. She admired their shifting, mysterious light for a moment, then returned all but the deep green stone to the velvet prison. Silently she looked from the diamond to the man who had handled the stone long enough to leave his taste on its time-polished surface.
“I won’t sell you the mineral rights,” she said to Cole, “but I’ll give you one half the output of any diamond mine that you—”
“Erin, for the love of—” began Windsor.
“—help me discover on my claims,” she continued relentlessly, ignoring her father’s interruption. “Nobody will make you a better offer, because nobody will be willing to give up half the mine and the power it represents. To seal the bargain, I’ll give you this.”
She held out the green diamond, letting it shimmer and glisten on her palm.
Cole whistled softly through his teeth. His eyes focused on Erin with an intensity that was almost tangible. “‘Help you discover,’” Cole repeated. “That means you’re coming with me.”
She nodded. “The will requires it.”
“How good are you at taking orders?”
Windsor’s hard laughter was all the answer anyone needed.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Cole said. “That’s not good enough, Erin. There will be times and places where I’ll give orders and I’ll give them once because there won’t be time for explanations.”
“I can live with that.”
Cole smiled slightly. “Then pack for London.”
“Why?”
“It will make ConMin feel better.” Cole didn’t say that it would make Faulkner and the agency feel better, too. “If they think they’re going to co-opt you, they won’t be as eager to reach for more drastic measures.”
Erin didn’t like it, and it showed, but she said, “All right.”
“Second order. We’re roommates from now until the mine is discovered or you sell out your interest, whichever comes first.”
Silence stretched and stretched while Erin measured the big man who was watching her with eyes as hard and beautiful as the diamonds he loved.
“Do it,” Windsor said to his daughter. “If you’re going to be so stupid as to go through with this, you’ll need someone like Blackburn around.”
“Suite-mates,” Erin corrected, her voice clipped.
“Only if the connecting door stays open,” Cole said. “All the time, Erin. Every damned minute.”
She nodded curtly and without warning flipped Cole the stone. He caught it, his hand moving so quickly it was a blur.
“Done,” Cole said.
Faulkner slanted Cole a bleak, furious look. “Mazel und broche, babe. I hope you step on your cock.”
12
Los Angeles
Erin sat in the window seat of her new hotel room, watching darkness descend on the Los Angeles basin. She sensed the crowded streets and sidewalks around her like a heavy weight. The hotel suite, with its two bedrooms and comfortable sitting area, was easily twice as big as her other room. She still felt confined.
She wasn’t used to sharing her living space with another human being, especially one as large and plainly masculine as Cole Blackburn. His presence in the other half of the suite was both a lure and an irritant.
Abruptly Erin stood up, giving in to her restlessness. She paced the room without seeing the luxurious fabrics with their Jacobean design or the indigo richness of the carpet. Pacing wasn’t enough. She felt like she’d been caged inside buildings forever. What she wanted was the vast, isolated sweep of the arctic. She would settle for the Pacific Ocean’s far horizon.
When Erin appeared in the open door of Cole’s bedroom, he looked up from the desk, where he’d been working over the maps he’d brought from BlackWing.
“Could we…?” Erin began, only to have her voice fade.
The husky contralto of her voice made Cole’s body quicken. She sounded like a woman with a little loving on her mind, yet she was standing in the doorway like she was poised to flee at the first sign of masculine interest. It had been that way from the beginning, conflicting signals that kept him aware of her all the time.
Not that he needed any help keeping her on his own internal radar. His body had decided after one look that it wanted to get as close as it could to Erin Shane Windsor. If it hadn’t been for her obvious nervousness at having to share a suite with him, he would have sent out some signals of his own. But he didn’t. She wasn’t acting like a woman who wanted a man.
Yet she was looking at him as though she wanted him.
“Co
uld we…?” Cole asked.
“I need to get out. To walk. On the beach. I know it’s dark, I know you’ll tell me it’s not safe, but I have to get out and I’m going to. With or without you.”
There was no mistaking the staccato urgency in Erin’s voice. For an instant Cole ticked off the possibilities. If he’d been certain that danger was imminent, he would have tied Erin to her bed. But he wasn’t certain. ConMin was a business, not a government or a criminal clan. ConMin would try to co-opt Erin before they tried to kill her.
And he had to admit that her presence was giving him cabin fever. If he stayed in the hotel room with Erin while she was putting out all those restless signals, he’d have a hell of a time keeping his hands in his pockets. Making a pass at her wouldn’t be smart. If she wanted him, she would have to hand out a clear invitation.
She hadn’t even come close to that yet.
“I could use some fresh air myself,” Cole said.
“Three minutes,” Erin said instantly.
She headed back into her room, moving fast.
A bit less than three minutes later, she reappeared just as Cole was grabbing a black windbreaker from the closet. Without waiting for him, she headed toward the hallway door.
“Erin, wait!”
She didn’t even pause.
Cole crossed the room in a silent rush. Just as she opened the door a few inches, his hands shot over her shoulders and pinned the door. She made a choked sound. His powerful arms were braced on either side of her. He was all around her, surrounding her.
Trapping her.
Erin froze, remembering another time, another door, another big man trapping her. Memories welled up in a choking black tide, threatening her control.
“What the hell are you thinking of?” Cole demanded. “You don’t just open a door and walk through like a—”
With an incoherent cry Erin turned and attacked, the side of her palm slashing toward his throat. He barely blocked the blow in time. He deflected her knee with his thigh even as her head slammed into his jaw. Off balance, reluctant to hurt her, he went in low, scissoring her feet out from under her, pulling her down until she was flat on the rug beneath him.
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