She was as honest with him as she had been with herself of late. “He would have liked that, but the school closed for the summer and during the holidays, so I was brought home, and when I was old enough and presentable enough, he had me playing hostess whenever he threw an embassy ball—they were never parties, always balls, always stately.”
She’d tried hard during that time, trying to cull her father’s favor by being the perfect little hostess. She’d always been ahead of her years that way. But all she ever received was silence, not approval, and eventually she played the part for herself, not for him.
She shrugged casually. “I didn’t mind, I liked dressing up. And my father was generous with his money—why not? He has truckloads of it, parting with some to make his daughter appear attractive so that he could look better to the people he was dealing with presented no hardship.”
Looking at her, Reese hardly thought that she would have needed anything beyond the light in her eyes to make her attractive, but he kept the speculation to himself.
“It’s where I learned to network,” she continued. “So it wasn’t a total loss. I discovered that people didn’t mind parting with money when they were well fed, entertained and feeling just this side of tipsy.” She smiled, looking at her own glass of wine. “Fund-raising for charities seemed a natural jumping-off place for me.” Taking the bottle he topped off her glass. She twirled the stem in her fingers. “So, now you have my life story, what’s yours?”
He didn’t like talking about himself. “It’s not very interesting.”
Oh no, turnabout was fair play. “I’ll be the judge of that. Interest is in the ear of the listener.” The din around them was getting overwhelming. London leaned farther forward. “What made you want to become a doctor? It wasn’t the money.”
She said it as if she knew it for a fact. Her statement stirred his curiosity. “What makes you say that?”
She’d ordered prime rib and took a moment now to savor a bite. It all but melted on her tongue. “If it was the money, you wouldn’t be going off to the reservation to help people who can only pay you back with thanks, or in trade. With your skill, if making money was your prime concern, you’d be set up somewhere in Beverly Hills, tending the rich.”
“Bedford isn’t exactly a pocket of poverty,” he pointed out.
“No, but Blair Memorial is a strictly nonprofit hospital. That means they do take on patients who can’t pay, and perforce, when you’re the doctor called in, so do you. That doesn’t exactly smack of a man who’s out to enrich his retirement portfolio.”
He liked the way her mind worked and the fact that she wasn’t afraid to display her intelligence. “You’re pretty sharp.”
She took the comment in stride. “It’s my job to be able to size up people.” London winked at him. “See how much they can be coaxed to part with. By the way, you’re not sidetracking me. I still want to know why you became a doctor.”
Like her smile, the wink went straight to his gut, teasing him. He redirected his thoughts. “Didn’t that detective your father hired to investigate me cover that in his report?”
His expression was friendly enough, but she could tell that Reese resented having someone probe into his life without his permission. She didn’t blame him.
“He covered facts, not motives.” She leaned her chin on her fisted hand. “I’m interested in what makes you tick.”
That made two of them, he thought. “Not being particularly brilliant when it came to laboratory science, and having no knack for inventing things that people might want in their future, I figured being a doctor was the best way for me to make a meaningful contribution to society.”
Was he really that altruistic, or was he just saying something he thought she wanted to hear? “And that matters to you?”
“Yes,” he said honestly, then looked at her, watching the candlelight bathe her features. “Doesn’t it matter to you?”
As a matter of fact, it mattered a great deal to her. That was why she conducted fund-raisers for charities rather than for politicians who gave lip service to causes they cared about. It was also why she carefully researched and monitored the charities she was associated with.
But she already knew about herself. What she wanted to know about was the man sitting across from her. “Don’t try to wiggle out of this. We’ve already done me, now it’s your turn.” Her eyes sparkled as she looked at him. “Did you like to play doctor as a boy?”
He grinned at her. “Yes.”
And she bet the girls lined up around the block to play with him. “I see.”
It wasn’t what she thought. “With birds and animals.” That was how Jake had come into his life. Jake was a stray, a black Lab that some boys in the neighborhood had tortured. He’d tended to the dog’s injured leg and had a friend for life.
She didn’t quite get the connection. “Then why didn’t you become a vet?”
“Beyond being able to mend the obvious, like a broken limb, dealing with animals can be very frustrating. Animals can’t tell you where it hurts.” And that, he thought, was enough about him. He looked around, changing the subject. “I think your shadow decided to give you the night off after all. I don’t see him anywhere around here.”
After eighteen months London knew better. She took another bite of her dinner. It only succeeded in getting better with each taste. Too bad men weren’t like that, she mused. “Don’t let that fool you.”
“What?”
She made a circular motion with her fork to include the general vicinity. “Not seeing him. Just because you can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not there.”
She would have a point if the man they were talking about was slight instead of six-six and as solid as a brick wall. “Seems kind of hard to hide someone that big.”
A trace of affection came into her voice. Wallace did his best to make this as painless as possible for her. It was just that her frustration got in the way at times. “That’s what makes him good at his job.”
If Grant could manage to hide himself, that made him excellent at his job. “How long has he been your bodyguard?”
“Eighteen months.” Her plate empty, she retired her knife and fork.
She was right, he thought, she really could pack it away. Looking at her, his first guess would have been that she ate nothing but fruits and vegetables and sparingly at that.
“Is this a permanent arrangement?”
London rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh, God, I hope not. Not that I don’t like the man,” she qualified quickly, “but I was almost rid of him and the others a few months ago—”
“And then what happened?”
She shrugged indifferently, looking down at her plate and the single parsley sprig that was left behind. “A white rose was delivered to my apartment.”
Did that have some kind of significance he was unaware of? “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
She was getting ahead of herself. Pausing, she debated just letting the whole thing slide. And then something prompted her to share this piece of her life with this man. This piece no one else knew about except for her bodyguards and her father.
“It was from a secret admirer. Wallace instantly took it to mean something else.”
It wasn’t a stretch for him. He thought of Monica, a beautiful dark-haired girl he knew in his freshman year at college. “Stalker?”
The speed with which he came to the correct conclusion startled her. “Why would you think that?”
“Was it?” he pressed.
Despite everything, she’d still rather not think that way. “That’s what Wallace and my father think, but why would you?”
Then he was right, Reese thought. He felt instantly protective of her. The way he should have been of Monica. She’d been his study partner in bio lab and had poured out her heart to him one evening. She was afraid her ex-boyfriend was stalking her, refusing to accept their breakup. He’d counseled her to go to the campus police. It was the last conve
rsation they ever had.
“I knew someone in college who was stalked.”
There was something in his tone that chilled her. She blocked it, the way she did every thought she didn’t like, every emotion that came too close.
“And?”
But he shook his head. Monica had a right to rest in peace. “You don’t want to know.” But he wanted to know something. “Was there a note?”
“Yes.” More than one. There was even a poem. A bad one, but she found it almost touching in its attempt. “I think it’s all pretty innocent, really. If we weren’t all so paranoid these days, it would have been just a sweet note, nothing else.”
He’d done some reading on the subject since then, educating himself. With stalkers, there were never just one event. “Were there more notes, more flowers?”
She debated saying no, then shrugged. Reese was sharp enough to see through a lie. “Yes.”
He appreciated freedom as much as the next person, maybe more, but he found himself shifting sides. Because he’d been the one to find Monica’s body behind the library. “Then maybe your father and Wallace have the right idea. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Did you tell the police?”
Her father and Wallace had very little faith in the powers of the local police. “Tell them what? That someone sends me white roses occasionally? That his notes are always respectful, almost sweet in nature?”
The waiter appeared just then, a small, black leather folder in his hands that held the bill for their dinner. “Will there be anything else?”
Reese looked at her questioningly. London had already turned down the idea of dessert. She shook her head. “I’m fine.”
Reese turned back to the waiter. “That’ll be all.” The waiter placed the leather folder on the table. Reese took out his credit card and tucked it into the folder. Picking it up, the waiter slipped off to the cash register artfully hidden behind the hostess’s desk.
Reese focused on what London had said before the waiter had interrupted them. “He doesn’t threaten you, say he wants you for himself, that you belong to him and no one else?” He repeated the gist of the notes that Monica had received.
London shook her head. “No, nothing like that. Personally, I think it’s someone who’s very shy, that’s all, and this whole thing is being blown out of proportion. I deal with a great many people in my profession, Reese. Who knows? Maybe my ‘secret admirer’ is one of the caterers I work with, or someone in the shop I use to send out engraved invitations. I just don’t see the harm—”
He cut her off, a note of passion entering his voice. “The harm is that this can get out of hand. The harm is that one night this guy might decide that the flowers and the notes have gone on long enough and that it’s time for you to make a commitment to him—”
He’d managed to press one of her buttons. She raised her voice to match his. “Well then, he’s out of luck because I’m not in the commitment business, and if he knows anything at all about me beyond my address, he’s probably figured that out.”
London’s answer wasn’t what he would have expected. “Why?”
She thought he was asking how the person who sent her roses could figure out that she wasn’t into commitments. “Because I’m not with anyone.”
He waved that away. “No, I mean why aren’t you in the commitment business?”
He brought her up short with his question. She raised a brow. “Getting personal, are we?”
“You raised the point,” he reminded her. “I’m just following it.”
She had already made up her mind about him and the part he was going to play in her life. They might as well get this out of the way so he’d know the ground rules. “I’m not in the commitment business because commitments don’t last. Promises don’t last. Nothing is permanent.” She raised her glass. There was just the slightest bit of wine left in it. “Here’s to enjoying the moment while it’s here and letting the future take care of itself.”
There was still a drop left in his own glass. He raised it. “To the moment,” he echoed.
Reese touched his glass to hers and watched her eyes as she sipped the last bit of wine. Had she been in love and been bitterly disappointed? He couldn’t imagine someone walking out on her, breaking her heart, but then, he couldn’t envision his father walking out on his mother, either. But it had happened.
The waiter returned, murmured a thank-you and went off. Reese wrote in a tip and signed the slip. Tearing off the bottom sheet, he pocketed it and his credit card.
Setting down her empty glass, London raised her eyes to his and asked, “Well, we’ve toasted this moment. What would you like to do with the next one?”
He knew what she was asking and she knew his answer before it was given.
Taking her hand in his, they left the table.
Chapter 11
Wallace found a parking space directly across the street from the apartment building where London lived and eased his vintage beige Nissan sedan into it. The remainder of his dinner from Malone’s almost slid off the seat beside him. He managed to catch the container at the last moment before it fell.
He swallowed an oath as he shut off the ignition and settled in.
London and the man she was with had left without warning, their body language giving nothing away about their imminent departure until they’d stood up. He’d only had time to hastily throw the contents of his plate into a container he’d brought with him—the job had taught him to be prepared. He’d spent too many hungry nights on surveillance.
Rising to his feet as London and the doctor left the restaurant, Wallace didn’t have time to wait for a waiter to bring the bill. Instead Wallace had tossed money that he knew would more than cover the meal and a small tip down on the table. He would have liked to have had a drink to go with the rest of his meal, but there was no time for that.
Didn’t matter, he told himself. His comfort took a back seat to his job.
He glanced at his watch and suppressed a sigh as he leaned back in his seat. It looked as if it was going to be a long night.
But that—he tried to be philosophical—was what the ambassador paid him for.
London stepped into the empty elevator car. Reese joined her, and the door slowly eased closed, locking them away from the rest of the world.
Looking up, she watched the floor numbers change. As they approached her floor, an excitement tingled through her body, leaving nothing untouched.
Her eyes met his.
The excitement increased.
Without any vanity, London thought of herself as sophisticated, a woman of the world. Due to the nature of her life, she had been one for a long time. Women of the world didn’t feel their nerve endings jumping in anticipation because of what they hoped might happen between them and a man who might not be part of their world tomorrow.
And yet she did.
And gloried in it.
London couldn’t remember the last time she had felt this alive.
Reese walked with her to her apartment. Instinctively she glanced down at the floor before the door, unconsciously bracing herself.
There was nothing there.
The sense of relief was immediate.
“Looking for something?”
London felt a little foolish, reminding herself of her own theory. That the man who left the roses and notes was harmless. She’d allowed Wallace and her father to spook her.
“Just checking. My ‘admirer’ leaves flowers on my doorstep. Or rather, the doorman does. He brings them up whenever a delivery is made.” The descriptions of the delivery boys varied and according to Wallace, they were all legitimate when he checked them out.
“Have you had him checked out? The doorman,” Reese clarified when she looked at him. There’d been that moonstruck look on the man’s face when he’d complimented her earlier this evening. Maybe the doorman had gotten this job at the apartment just to be close to her. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities.
Sh
e smiled, taking out her key. Her bodyguard was way ahead of him. “Wallace already did that. He’s very thorough, very good at his job.” Her smile deepened. “The man leaves no suspect unturned.” Inserting her key into the lock, she turned it, then looked over her shoulder at Reese. “Did you want to come inside?”
The question was a formality. They both knew he did. And would.
Still, he glanced behind him toward the elevator. It had gone down to the first floor again and remained there. No one was coming up.
“Isn’t this about where Grant comes bursting in, whisking you behind the door and slamming it in my face?”
“His job is to protect me from kidnappers and stalkers, not people I choose to be with. I still have some say in my own life,” she assured him. “And he knows better than that.” She walked inside the apartment, flipping on the light switch. Reese followed her in. “I made it very clear to him that he’s to perform his ‘duties’ tonight at a great distance. Besides—” turning around, she watched Reese close the door “—I told him that I would be safe with you around.”
He wasn’t altogether sure about that.
Reese picked up a strand of her hair. The softness unsettled him. Aroused him. “And what’s to keep you safe from me?”
She raised her eyes to his, the invitation clear. “Who says I want to be safe from you.”
He didn’t need to hear any more than that.
Very slowly he took her purse from her hand and tossed it onto the table by the door with only his peripheral vision to guide him. He realized only a beat later that he’d come close to knocking over a vase that was there.
His eyes were on her face.
He could feel adrenaline pumping through his veins, could feel his heart rate increasing.
Taking her face into his hands, Reese lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. Very, very slowly.
It was like having some kind of hallucinogenic drug injected into her blood stream. The reaction was immediate. And intense.
She could feel the effect spreading through her, taking possession of all of her. Hunger sprang into her loins, her limbs, aching for release, for fulfillment. For him.
M.D. Most Wanted Page 12
