STOLEN MOMENTS

by Michelle Martin

  "I wasn't sure I did either."

  "And now?"

  Harley slowly stirred her soup. "Now I'm beginning to believe I do."

  "But you're not convinced?"

  "I think … I think it's the real reason I took this holiday in the first place. The Cowardly Lion in search of his courage."

  "As the Wizard pointed out," Duncan said, taking another bite of calamari, "the Lion always had courage, he just didn't know it."

  "Your point being?"

  "That Annie Maguire is right: you are a very strong and courageous woman and even Boyd couldn't kill that in you."

  "You spoke to Annie today?" Harley said in surprise.

  "Just doin' my job, ma'am."

  "What did you find out?"

  "I don't know yet. I'll let you know when I do."

  That puzzled Harley. But then, a lot of things about this man puzzled her. He was a lot more complex than he appeared on his very attractive surface. "But you're taking me back to Boyd tonight. Isn't that the end of the story?"

  "Only for some," he said after a sip of wine. "My curiosity has been piqued. I intend to do some more digging."

  "You don't make any sense."

  "Tell me about it," Duncan said, starting on his salad. "Your mother thinks you've been kidnapped by white slavers, you know."

  Harley choked on her mussel soup. "She would," she gasped. "Mama always figured that a female's life was like a Hitchcock film—danger around every corner. I'd better call her again."

  "It's okay. I spoke with her a few hours ago and reassured her that you're hale and hearty with innocence intact. She thought at first that I had kidnapped you, but I was finally able to allay even that fear. Isn't she a little high-strung for a store clerk?"

  Harley chuckled as she cut into her salad. "Mama's had a lifetime of hard knocks. That sort of thing makes some people nervous."

  "The last nine years can't have been hard on her. Why is she still working? From everything I've read, you've built her a new home, you buy her a new car every two years, you give her enough money for a family of twelve to live on luxuriously, but there she is, selling hair ribbons and frozen dinners at the Sweetcreek General Store."

  Harley shrugged. "She likes to feel useful."

  Duncan leaned back in his chair, balancing his wine goblet in one hand. "And how do you like to feel?"

  "I don't know anymore," Harley said, staring at her salad. "That's one of the things I hoped to figure out on my holiday. Couldn't I—"

  "No."

  It sounded cold and final and not at all like a black sheep who believed life was to be enjoyed and chances were there to be taken. Talk about mixed messages. She couldn't figure him out at all.

  Harley sighed as her right hand fiddled with her pendant. "You really are the most annoying man."

  "So I've been told. Why do you always wear that? It's in every picture I've ever seen of you."

  "This?" Harley said, holding up the gold musical note. "It's my good luck charm. I bought it the day I cut my first single. You've got to admit that, careerwise at least, it's worked pretty well. I'd feel jinxed without it."

  "I'm amazed Boyd didn't make you wear a cross instead."

  "He tried," she wryly informed him.

  To her surprise, Duncan spent the rest of the meal keeping their conversation very much away from the personal. He talked about the lunacy of the Rio de Janeiro Mardis Gras. He succinctly summarized a highly colorful scene thrown by an Australian matriarch at the Sydney Opera House that had even stopped Luciano Pavarotti in mid-aria. He described Italian villas he had known and loved.

  "I get the feeling you did not have a working-class upbringing," Harley said as their waiter placed a bowl with scoops of hazelnut, vanilla, and chocolate ice cream before her.

  "Hardly. I led the usual sheltered life of the young and rich: private school, prep school—I should say schools. I was thrown out of three before I graduated," Duncan explained as their waiter placed a duplicate bowl of ice cream before him. "Then on to Harvard, which asked me to leave, and finally Columbia, where I actually managed to earn a degree."

  "And that made you a trained investigator," Harley said doubtfully.

  "Anyone joining the family firm has to take courses at the Police Academy along with some follow-up college courses in computer science, criminology, and psychology."

  "Hence Colangco's sterling reputation?"

  "We always hire the best people," Duncan modestly replied. "Eat your gelato."

  Harley ate her dessert as she tried to puzzle out the man seated across from her. Youthful rebellion and adult debauchery did not lead to the dedicated detective now demolishing three very delicious scoops of ice cream. He'd said he had something to prove. What was it and to whom?

  And why was she spending so much energy thinking about Duncan Lang when in a few short hours he'd be returning her to Boyd Monroe's clutches? She made as little sense as he did. All of the pleasures of the day rolled through her—even the surprising pleasure of Duncan's company—and coalesced into a despair that robbed her of further appetite.

  "Finished?"

  Harley looked up from her melting ice cream to find Duncan regarding her with veiled black eyes. She hadn't even been through Central Park or seen the Empire State Building. Her music had just started coming back. An hour in Boyd's company and it could disappear forever. "Yeah, I'm finished."

  "You've got three hours left before you have to get back into your pumpkin. Where do you want to go now?" he asked, dropping money onto the table to pay for their meal.

  "Brazil?" she asked hopefully.

  He smiled. "Try again."

  "Okay, okay." She thought for a moment. "It's nighttime in Manhattan. Let's hit the clubs."

  * * *

  The Surrealistic Pillow—named after one of rock and roll's classic albums—resided in a three-story dark red brick building and announced itself with a pink neon sign that matched Harley's dress.

  "Where are we?" she demanded as she stepped out of the taxi.

  "At one of the best clubs in town," Duncan replied.

  They walked through a simple wooden door and into a foyer that led down three steps to a horseshoe-shaped level with nearly a hundred small wooden tables and discreet lighting. Five steps below that was a large wooden dance floor, already crowded, with a small stage rising up a few feet at the far end. A six-piece Latino band had everyone moving enthusiastically to its intoxicating combination of rock-and-roll and salsa rhythms. Every age, color, and type of humanity was either dancing or talking at the small tables. Harley was in love.

  "How on earth did you find this place?" she demanded.

  He smiled down at her. "I live just around the corner."

  "You live in Chelsea?"

  "Yep."

  "Why?"

  "I like it."

  He liked it. The boss's son liked living in unglamorous Chelsea. The man seemed determined to avoid all pigeon-holes.

  Duncan managed to claim a table on their right. Feeling practically effervescent, Harley ordered a mineral water and lime from the tattooed waitress and settled back in her chair to soak in everything.

  The band's music bore no relation to the material she had dutifully written and performed these last nine years. It thrummed through her veins and heated her cheeks and lightened her heart. She forgot all about Boyd and midnight and the recording studio in Los Angeles.

  "Great group," Duncan said as the band started to leave the stage.

  "They have real possibilities," Harley agreed.

  "They remind me a little of the Miami Sound Machine, with just enough hard-ass rock and roll to give it some edge."

  Harley's jaw fell open. "You like hard-ass rock and roll?"

  "Of course I do," Duncan replied as he leaned back in his chair. "It's primal and sexy and energizing, everything my parents loathe."

  Harley laughed. "What albums do they have in their CD collection? Engelbert Humperdinck?"

  "Jane Mil
ler."

  Harley gasped and then dissolved into laughter, nearly sliding off her chair. "You're awful!"

  "That's what they always say," he woefully replied. "All right, this looks interesting!"

  A multiethnic group, announced as Meat-Grinder, had taken the stage: five young men dressed in black leather pants and boots and nothing else. "They leave nothing to the imagination, do they?" Harley murmured. Their tattoos and pierced earrings were copious. Their music exploded into the club as almost every female in the audience rushed the stage to stand in hyperventilating adoration before the group.

  "What do you think?" Duncan asked when Meat-Grinder had finished its first song.

  "Hot music, lousy diction," Harley pronounced. "What's the point of writing lyrics if the audience can't understand a word you're singing?"

  "Purist," Duncan charged.

  Harley grinned at him.

  They listened to the music and compared notes on their favorite rock groups, singers, and songs, finding a surprisingly strong similarity in tastes and appreciation. Harley found it invigorating to finally talk about the music and performers she loved with someone who didn't disparage her tastes, like Boyd, or shrink back like her mother when she discussed Grace Slick in a five-minute monologue of superlatives. During the Meat-Grinders' set, Duncan made her forget that to all intents and purposes she was his prisoner. But that didn't last long.

  Their conversation was interrupted by the thunderous applause and shrieks and whistles all around them as Meat-Grinder took its final bow and left the stage. The band was replaced by a man in his late forties, perhaps early fifties, with an enormous black waxed mustache. A white sweatshirt covered a small potbelly. His bald head gleamed under the stage lights.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he bellowed into a cordless microphone, "this is your last chance to sign up for our weekly open mike sets tomorrow night. Groups, duos, and solo artists can perform two or more songs as long as they don't add up to more than ten minutes of material. We've still got some time slots left, so if you're interested, come see me over by the bar."

  Harley stared at him as he left the stage.

  "What are you thinking?" Duncan demanded. "Harley?"

  "I've always loved rock and roll and I've always wanted to sing it in front of a rock audience."

  "Harley—"

  "Boyd says I can't, that I'm no good at it. He says no one would want to listen to anything I sing outside of Jane Miller's comfy little niche in the music world."

  "Harley—"

  "Duncan, I have to know!" she cried. "I have to know if he's right. I have to know if I've been wanting something these last nine years that I really can't have because I'm not good enough. I have to know if I should just settle for being Jane Miller."

  Duncan propped his elbows on the table and rested his head in his hands. "You have no idea what you're asking of me. My father will gleefully boil me in the biggest vat of oil he can find. Then he'll fire me. And as for your devoted manager—"

  "All I'm asking for is just one more day. What's one day out of a lifetime? It's nothing. It's not even spare change. It can't be an accident that we came here tonight. Fate must be pushing me to that open mike performance tomorrow. You don't think a mere human being can stand in the way of fate, do you?"

  "Stop it, Harley," Duncan said in a tightly controlled voice. "Just stop it."

  "You don't understand what that open mike performance means to me!"

  "Yes," he said quietly, dark eyes burrowing deep inside her, "I think I do."

  Meeting that gaze was like being pulled into the vortex of a frantic whirlpool. "I'd give you twenty-four more hours if you asked me to," she said quietly.

  "I know," he said, turning to stare at the stage and the Latino band that began to set up again. For a moment he looked almost haunted.

  Oh, what was she doing to the man? "Life is to be enjoyed and chances are there to be taken, Duncan."

  He turned back to her. "Damn you, Harley Jane Miller."

  Her heart was racing. "Is that a yes?"

  "Of course it's a yes!" he yelled and then hurriedly lowered his voice. "Walk yourself over to the damn bar and sign yourself up to sing tomorrow night before I change my mind."

  "Really?"

  He looked right into her. "Really."

  Tears filled her eyes. That he should risk his job and things she knew nothing about to help her do this. She had just discovered the antithesis of Boyd Monroe, and he was making the pulse throb in her wrists.

  "You're an angel," she said, standing up on shaky legs. "I'm insane, you're insane, and I'll never forget this, Duncan Lang. Never."

  She was more than scared as she threaded her way through the club tables, walked up to the dark wooden bar and the bald man with the handlebar mustache sitting on a red leather bar stool, and signed herself up for the nine forty-five slot.

  Dazed and more than half blind, she stumbled back to her table, where Duncan was finishing off a double whiskey.

  "Am I causing you trouble?" she asked tentatively as she sank back down onto her chair.

  "Untold amounts of trouble."

  "Oh. Sorry."

  "Think nothing of it," he said bitterly.

  "Why is this case so important to you?" she asked, her hand covering his on the table. It was a shock how good that felt.

  He stared at their hands as if suddenly confronted by a bug-eyed creature from outer space. "I took a chance of my own a few years back," he said slowly. "It didn't pan out. I thought I'd found a way to make it work. Looks like I was wrong."

  "Even though you'll be turning me over to Boyd after my set tomorrow night?"

  "Even though."

  She felt as if his eyes were dragging her into that dark whirlpool again. She pulled her hand from his, sat back in her chair, and that seemed to help a bit. "There are probably options you haven't even thought of yet," she said a little breathlessly.

  "Perhaps," he said, middle finger tapping frenetically on the table. "For now, though, I get to look forward to the dubious pleasure of babysitting you all day tomorrow."

  "What?" Harley sputtered. "You are not going to shadow me all day tomorrow!"

  "Oh yes I am."

  "Oh no you're not!" Harley retorted.

  "Have you noticed that we can't have a single conversation without arguing?"

  "I am an honorable woman. I am twenty-six years old," Harley snapped. "I don't need a babysitter. Do whatever it is you do when you aren't harassing me and then you can pick me up after my set tomorrow night."

  "I will pick you up tomorrow morning, make sure you don't fly off to Brazil and that none of your fans discover you and claim the reward your devoted manager has offered for your safe return, and then I will bring you here before taking you back to Boyd."

  "I did just fine on my own yesterday and today. No one mugged me. No one kidnapped me. No one recognized me. I'll do just fine on my own tomorrow."

  "What you fail to understand, Princess, is that by taking this case, I have become responsible for you," Duncan grimly stated. "That means sticking close and making sure you return to Boyd Monroe safe and sound."

  Harley mulishly returned his glare. "Well, I hope you like visiting Central Park and the Empire State Building and Chinatown, because that's where I'll be tomorrow."

  "Whoa, Nellie! Mama didn't raise no tourist."

  Harley chuckled, surprised at the sudden emotional shift. "If I'm stuck with you, then you're stuck with my itinerary."

  He stared into her eyes for a moment. "All right, but on one condition," he said slowly.

  "What's that?" she managed.

  "That you lose the brown contacts."

  She felt suddenly weightless and light-headed. "Deal."

  Silence for a moment.

  "Then I'll try to survive playing tourist tomorrow."

  * * *

  Duncan dropped her off in front of the Hilton just after midnight. She watched as his cab carried him away, then she rode an elevator b
ack up to the seventeenth floor, wondering what it would feel like to spend an entire day with the man. In her room, she slowly began to undress, feeling very different from the prison escapee who had left the Hilton that morning. In only a little more than twelve hours, she had bought her fantasy guitar, reclaimed her music, and survived a night on the town with the Playboy of the Western World.

  She gratefully removed the contact lenses, put them in their case, and stared at herself in the bathroom mirror. She was shining, there was no other way to describe it. Not glowing or beaming, but shining. Even her eyes looked different, or maybe it was her mouth. It seemed fuller, softer than she remembered it from this morning.

  She walked back into her bedroom and saw the black guitar case lying on her bed. Music from the Manhattan streets and parks and restaurants and her unnamed feelings thrummed in her soul. Sleep could wait.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FIVE

  « ^ »

  There were five messages from Colby Lang on Duncan's home voice mail, each one more infuriated than the last. There were two messages from Brandon, one warning him about their father's growing wrath and begging him to bring Jane Miller in, and the second reminding him that Brandon needed the transportation plans for the Giscard diamonds on his desk first thing in the morning.

  The calls did a good job of deflating what had felt almost like happiness these last several hours in Harley Miller's company. It was probably for the best. He shouldn't let himself be happy in her company. It interfered with important things like his job, and toeing the line, and remembering who he was.

  After all, when you came right down to it, the woman was a major headache. She had screwed up his chance to make his father see him for the competent man he was. Jane Miller returned to the fold after thirty-six hours was an impressive accomplishment even Colby Lang couldn't ignore. Jane Miller returned to the fold after seventy-two hours had none of that cachet.

  Worse, he had promised both Boyd and his father that he'd have Harley back at the Ritz tonight, and he was not honoring his promise. He had never broken his word to anyone before. He could easily hate Harley for that. She was messing with his honor, with his emotions, with his hormones, and with his plans. There was nothing to like in any of it.