STOLEN MOMENTS

by Michelle Martin

  "But you were, Duncan, you were," Harley said. "You were in my blood. I sat down and started singing and those two men bolted, just like you said they would."

  He stared down at her. She could see the struggle he was waging to calm himself. "You sang?"

  "'When the Saints Go Marching In.' I got a very nice round of applause from the bystanders too."

  "Hey," Duncan said, hugging her again, but with less desperation, "talent stands out—or sits out—wherever you are. Mind if I assign some bodyguards to follow you around until this damn case is solved?"

  "I'd like a phalanx of bodyguards, thank you very much."

  That made him smile. "You've got it. I never thought Louis and Desmond would pull something like this on you."

  "But it wasn't them, Duncan."

  "What? Are you sure?"

  "Positive."

  Duncan considered a moment. "They may have brought in specialized muscle for the retaliatory measures they promised." His smile was chilling. "They're dead men when I find them." He kissed her hard, then rested his forehead against her forehead. "Come back to Colangco, Miss Miller, give Emma a description of those men, and then stay put."

  "Willingly."

  Leaving Harley in Emma's office to start creating computer-generated composite sketches of her two attackers while he walked back into his own office as if nothing had happened was the hardest thing Duncan had ever done. But now the stakes were much higher. Harley… He had to find Giscard's diamonds and he had to find them now. He turned the center video monitor back on and watched the Colangco cavalcade drive up to Giscard's Lear jet once again. The tapes were hiding the answer to this case and he was going to find it.

  It was the lights flashing into life all around him that finally dragged his gaze from the monitor. "What the…?" He looked around. The day had turned to night outside his office windows … and Harley was standing in the doorway.

  "Hi, there," she said amiably. She opened up her dark blue raincoat. She was wearing a black corset … and nothing else. "Dinner's ready. And dessert."

  The video monitor went black as Duncan lunged out of his chair. "You could put the alarm clock industry out of business," he said as he followed her out the door.

  "Thanks," she said, leading him toward the penthouse elevator.

  "Are you okay?"

  "I'm doing really well, Duncan. Honest. Everyone's been terrific."

  "What were you doing out of the penthouse this morning anyway?"

  "Trying to think." She stopped at the penthouse elevator. "If I'm not Jane Miller and I'm not Patti Smith, how about country harlot?"

  "Works for me."

  He held her close on the brief ride up to the penthouse, grateful that he could hold her. It seemed Harley had been right about this too. He was a passionate man, at least when it came to his work and to her. Kindred spirits, Duncan murmured to himself. Each of them bumping the other up against preconceived, and apparently fallacious, notions of who they were and what they wanted.

  He was touched to find that after everything that had happened today, Harley had actually made dinner for him. She hadn't even sent out for Chinese. A large bowl filled with Caesar salad and slices of grilled chicken, with bread on the side, was waiting in the middle of the dining table. He stared at the crusty baguette for a moment.

  "You baked?"

  "I had to do something to keep from going nutso," she said, the raincoat decorously closed as she sat down at the table.

  "Those men—"

  "No, no, no," she said with a sweet smile.

  He made himself relax. "Then what?"

  "You, of course. Home truths are a pain in the butt, Duncan."

  He grinned at her. How he loved that soft Sweetcreek twang. "Sorry."

  "No, you were right," she said, stabbing her fork into her salad. "It's just that I've had such a strong belief system about who I am that it was a little shocking to find that rock and roll is actually more of an avocation now and I've moved on to become something else."

  "How did you arrive at country harlot?"

  "Well, I just took my country roots, mixed them up with a little teenage rebellion and Princess sweetness, and voilà! It's not going to work, of course," she glumly concluded.

  "It's not?" This was disappointing. He liked the corset.

  Harley sighed heavily and leaned back in her chair. "Nope. Turns out I've got a base core of morality that doesn't believe in promoting a promiscuous bad-girl image on the impressionable minds of my younger fans."

  "That's tough."

  "Yeah."

  "So, who are you going to be?"

  Harley sighed again and returned to stabbing at her salad. "My country-rockabilly self, once I figure out exactly who that is and what it all means."

  Oh God, he wasn't going to be around for any of that. Duncan forced himself to take a breath. "What does this do to the last album you owe Sony on your contract?"

  "I don't know." She stared into space a moment, shook her head, and returned to her salad. "If worse comes to worse, I can produce a greatest hits compilation. They'll be satisfied."

  "Will you?"

  She looked up, blue eyes puzzled, not so much by the question, Duncan thought, as by him, as if she still didn't understand that her happiness and satisfaction were as necessary to him as air. "No," she said, "but then, I don't know about anything that satisfies me anymore … except you, of course."

  "Thank you," Duncan said, surprised at how happy she'd just made him.

  "I have managed to adequately convey that to you these last few days, haven't I?"

  Memories of Harley arching beneath him flooded his body. "Oh yeah," he said.

  She smiled sunnily at him and returned to her salad. "Good. How did your day go?"

  He had meant to only provide a brief sketch of his activities, but Harley kept interrupting with questions, which led to further elaborations and the rather startling realization, halfway through the conversation, that she was sincerely interested in what he did and thought and felt about all of that. He had never let that realization sink in before this. It was too disconcerting. It made him think he might not be the man he had believed himself to be most of his life, because Harley Jane Miller wouldn't have been interested in that man, and she was clearly interested now. And the realization hurt too much, because acknowledging her interest made him hope that she would stay when her holiday ended, and that wasn't going to happen.

  She was moving at light speed away from the prison she and Boyd had manufactured these last nine years, and here he was cramping her broadening wings. She needed to be independent and taste freedom fully, and instead he had pulled her into his life, into an increasingly dangerous case, into his bed, and into his temporary home.

  Where was the freedom in that?

  He gazed across the table at Harley, candlelight shimmering on her raincoat. She had to fly free and he wouldn't stop her, couldn't stop her, because he had lived too long not knowing himself to deny Harley her own flight of self-discovery.

  His gaze blurred. Duncan blinked back sudden tears, amazed that he could care so much in so little time. Amazed that he was so determined to let go of what his soul wanted so much.

  Still, he had tonight, and the certainty of waking up beside Harley tomorrow morning. He would hold on to that. And he would try to find a way to steel himself for the end. Somehow he would have to prepare himself for what couldn't be withstood. But there was tonight. He had tonight to drink her in fully and give as deeply to her in return. He would find his courage tomorrow. Right now, need and desire were twisting inside him.

  He stood up and walked around the table to where Harley sat. "Ready for dessert?"

  She gazed up at him, turquoise blue eyes knocking the wind out of him. "Yes, please."

  Without another word, he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

  * * *

  Somewhere, far, far away, a phone was ringing. With a groan, Duncan dredged open his eyelids and stare
d blearily at the bedside clock. Three-twenty. He and Harley had been asleep for less than an hour.

  "Tell it to go away," she complained from deep within the cocoon he had made around her.

  His hand fumbled across the bedside table and finally collided with the phone. "This had better be good," he mumbled into the handset.

  "I guess it depends on your point of view," a man's voice replied.

  Duncan was suddenly wide awake. "Carmine?"

  "You told me to call the minute I found something," the bookie said by way of apology.

  "I meant it. You got something on Boyd Monroe?" He felt Harley come awake.

  "No, nothing on him," Carmine Bellini replied. "But something just surfaced and I thought you'd better know."

  Duncan had never heard this note of anxiety in his old friend's voice before. "I appreciate that, Carmine. What have you got?"

  "It's about your brother."

  Duncan sat bolt upright, unaware of Harley, or the tangled covers, or even the bed. "Brandon?"

  "I'm afraid so, amico. There's no good way to do this, so I'll just say it right out: Brandon owes the Maurizio family a little more than eight hundred grand."

  The taste of cold metal soured Duncan's mouth. "Why?" he managed.

  "Gambling debts."

  He was trembling inside. "That's impossible. There must be some mistake. Brandon doesn't gamble."

  "Yes, my friend, he does. Big time. In fact, he's one very high roller. It turns out to be one of the best-kept secrets in town. But I've got it from Dante Maurizio himself, Duncan, and you know he manages all of the Maurizio gambling interests. Your brother has been dealing directly with the Maurizios for years. That's why they let him run up such a big tab. But Angelo's called it due. They're very confident about getting payment in full, Duncan."

  Awful ideas were burning in Duncan's brain even as his heart screamed and screamed that they weren't possible. "The Maurizios are playing hardball?"

  "Si, molto hardball."

  "God," Duncan said with a shudder.

  "If I hear anything else, I'll let you know."

  "Grazie," Duncan said from somewhere outside his body.

  "I'm sorry about this, amico."

  "No, I'm in your debt, Carmine."

  Duncan watched himself hang up the phone. He couldn't think. He could scarcely move. Brandon?

  "Duncan, what's wrong?" Harley asked. She was kneeling on the bed, pressed against his thigh and ribs and shoulder. But he couldn't feel her.

  Jagged shards of thought were piercing his brain. If it was Brandon, if he had really… No, it was impossible. He couldn't have. It would drive a stake into their parents' hearts and then twist it for greater effect. It wasn't in Brandon to do that. It wasn't. And there was the company to think of. His birthright. He was next in succession. Brandon wouldn't do anything to endanger Colangco. It was insane to even think it. And disloyal and cruel and ugly.

  "Duncan," Harley said, her voice urgent, her arms around him holding him tight, "is Brandon in trouble?"

  The metallic taste in his mouth jeered at his desperation. Eight hundred thousand dollars. Eight hundred … thousand … dollars. Brandon would put the barrel of a gun in his mouth before he'd let their father find out. Or would he? After all, Brandon had never accustomed himself to self-sacrifice. It really wasn't even in his vocabulary.

  Duncan pulled free from Harley's arms and slid from the bed.

  "Duncan?"

  "I have to go to the office," he said, pulling on the jeans Harley had peeled off him only a few hours ago. "There's some work I need to do."

  "Tell me what's wrong," she said.

  He wouldn't let himself look at her. He wouldn't let himself seek, let alone take in, the comfort and support he knew were just inches away. It was no good leaning on them now when they would be gone so soon. "It may be nothing," he said, pulling on his shirt. "It may be everything. I have to go."

  He slid his bare feet into his loafers and walked out of the bedroom. Alone. More alone than he'd ever felt in his life. Hating himself more than he had ever hated anyone in his life.

  He refused to let himself think as he rode the penthouse elevator down to the office, walked down the hall past his father's and Brandon's offices, and into his dark office. He stood there for a moment, staring at the partially lit skyscrapers outside his windows. God, he really was going to do this. He threw on his office lights and sat down at his desk.

  He turned on his computer, numb through and through except for a tiny pocket of terror shaking inside his heart. Then he swiveled his chair around, turned on a video monitor, and popped the airport surveillance tape into the VCR. He fast-forwarded through the Lear jet's landing and taxiing to the private hangar, then stopped just before Brandon got out of his black Aston Martin parked in front of the Colangco limousine.

  Duncan watched, as he had watched nearly two dozen times before, as Brandon—his tall, golden, beautiful brother—walked across the few feet of tarmac between the car and the Lear jet's narrow staircase. He watched Brandon walk up the steps, greet the Giscard courier, identify himself, and take the black briefcase from the courier's hand. He watched Brandon thank the courier, turn around, walk back down the steps and across the few feet of tarmac to the limo. He watched Brandon hand the briefcase to the two guards waiting in the back seat. He watched Brandon get back into his Aston Martin and lead the limousine out of the private airport.

  Duncan stopped the tape and rewound it to the moment just before Brandon first got out of his car. Brandon walked across the tarmac, up the steps, greeted the courier, identified himself, took the briefcase—

  Duncan froze the tape. His brother held the briefcase by its handle, but in front of him, not at his side. It wasn't visible on the tape. Brandon could have planned it that way. Hand shaking, Duncan advanced the tape in slow motion. "No!" he whispered.

  The courier had turned away first, back into the jet, before Brandon turned and started back down the narrow stairs.

  "Brandon, no," Duncan pleaded.

  A terrible memory assaulted his brain. Stiff and nauseous, Duncan turned to his computer and brought up the Giscard case report. He scrolled through the report quickly, knowing exactly what he would find.

  There. Brandon had contacted Giscard. Brandon had convinced Giscard to loan the diamonds to the Bartlett Museum, even though Giscard had been turning down the museum's requests for nearly a year now. And Brandon had convinced him that Colangco was the right company to protect those diamonds.

  He had even given Giscard the security briefcase to hold the diamonds during transport.

  Numb, Duncan turned back to the video monitor and rewound the tape in slow motion to the moment when Brandon stood at the top of the stairs, briefcase before him, and the courier turned away back into the jet. Then he ran the tape in real time, stopping it as Brandon completed his turn to start back down the stairs.

  Three seconds. Plenty of time for a talented amateur magician like Brandon when he had the right tool in hand.

  He had just lost his brother and with him a world and a self Duncan thought he had known all of his life.

  Mingled horror and fury constricted Duncan's throat. His brother… The good son… The Golden Boy… The Paragon he had both rebelled against and tried to emulate… His brother had stolen a million dollars' worth of diamonds to pay off his gambling debts, threatening his family's honor, Colangco's reputation, and—by asking him to come up with the transport plan—setting Duncan up to take the fall for him.

  He had deliberately betrayed his own family.

  It took a moment for Duncan to realize that tears were sliding down his face. He hastily brushed them away, still not quite able to take it all in. Brandon… His brother had not only stolen the Giscard diamonds, he had calmly held Duncan out to their parents, the French mob, and the New York police as the most likely suspect for the robbery.

  Duncan surged out of his chair, pain and anger and despair rioting within him. He wanted
to hit someone, throw something, do anything to relieve this pressure cooker boiling within his soul. He spun around … and saw Harley seated quietly in a guest chair in front of his desk. She was looking up at him, quiet and still.

  He gasped from the sudden shift in emotion within him. "How long have you been here?"

  "I got here about a minute after you did," she said softly. "Did Brandon steal the Giscard diamonds, Duncan?"

  The question left him bloodless. The rage drained out of him. There was only pain. "Yes," he said, that one word stark and ugly in the room.

  "And he set you up to take the fall for him?"

  "Yes."

  "And he's not the man you've always believed him to be."

  "No."

  Harley stood up, walked around the desk, and took his hand in hers. "Come here." She led him over to the green leather sofa. He sat down sideways on the couch, knees drawn up, numb with shock and disbelief and certainty. She surprised him by insinuating herself between his knees, sitting cross-legged, her arms around him. "Tell me."

  The words poured out of him. It felt like the Hoover Dam had suddenly been blasted wide open. He told her how Brandon had stolen the diamonds and why Brandon had stolen the diamonds. He told her other things too. He told her about being five and worshiping his seven-year-old brother as he watched him play with his second-grade classmates on the private school playground. He told her about being fourteen and jealous as all the prep school girls swarmed around his golden brother.

  He told her about turning sixteen and being stunned and thrilled when Brandon gifted him with his very first sexual experience: a high-priced and talented call girl Brandon had found in the little black book he had lifted off of one of their father's best friends. He told her about graduating from prep school convinced he could never match Brandon's brilliance and success. He told her about returning home after nearly five years determined to try once again to mold himself in his brother's image.

  When Duncan finished, the world outside his office windows was gray, not black, and the pain had been reduced to a dull throbbing in his heart.

  "What will you do now?" Harley asked into the quiet.