“Miss Sam, the—”
She turned around as Reinaldo tumbled into the room. Behind him, Wild Bill Toombs walked into the library and closed the door behind him, jamming a chair beneath the latch.
“Good morning,” he said, bowing.
Her heart lurched. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she snapped, striding over to check Reinaldo. He was out cold, but at least he was breathing. “And how did you get in here?”
The questions didn’t matter all that much, especially when he produced a sheathed daitu sword from behind his back. They might slow him down a little, though, give her time to figure out what he intended to do, and give Rick time to realize Toombs was in the house.
“Your gate was open. You seem to be doing some garden landscaping.”
“Yes, it was time for an upgrade. And hey, I know dinner last night was a little dull, but that wasn’t my fault.”
He nodded. “I think it was. I talked to August and Yvette last night, after you left. You wouldn’t steal it for me, so who convinced you to take it?”
“What?”
“The Minamoto Yoritomo armor and swords. The first shogun. The statute of limitations expired three years ago. The same time I discovered you.”
Toombs stepped farther into the room, and she backed away from Reinaldo. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you do. Don’t insult me. You know I’ve been…studying you, because you pursued my car. I let you see it last night.”
“Your car?”
“As I said, I’ve been studying you, Samantha Elizabeth Jellicoe. In our modern world, you are a samurai. You were a ronin, until I took the reins. Do you even know how many items I had you steal for me? I controlled where you went and what you did. And now when we finally meet face-to-face, I find that you’ve betrayed me.”
Why were all the raving lunatics attracted to her? “I think you have the wrong gal,” she said, holding out her hands, letting him know that she figured he was crazy. “Three years ago I was working for the Norton, doing art restoration work. And now I do security. You know that, Wild Bill.”
“I could accept that you retired. I kept watch, just in case, and I knew that you’d been keeping up your warrior’s regimen.”
“Wild Bill, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’re—”
“Don’t lie to me,” he hissed. “Samurai don’t lie. Especially not to their masters.”
“Okay, what do you want me to say, then?”
“I want you to tell me who you stole that armor for after you refused to deliver it to me.”
“I didn’t refuse to do anything, because you’ve never asked me to do anything—except visit your house for a tour, which I did.”
He drew the daitu out of its scabbard and whirled it slowly in the air, letting the sun through the windows catch the razor-sharp blade. “After disappointing his shogun, a true, virtuous samurai would take his own life. Since your crime is betrayal, I assume I will have to assist you in committing sepiku.”
“I am not fucking killing myself. And stay away from me with that.”
Toombs lunged. Whipping backward, she avoided the blade. Samantha grabbed a stepstool, holding it in front of her like a shield. He tapped it with the blade, testing her for weaknesses. Dammit. With hand-to-hand and even the occasional knife fight she could hold her own, but where swordplay was concerned, she had a lot of weaknesses.
The door latch turned. “Samantha?”
“Rick! Toombs is in here with a sword!” she shrieked, diving sideways as he came at her again.
The solid oak thudded and inched forward, caught by the chair. It thudded again, harder.
“I’ll slice him in half,” Toombs warned. “This is about us.”
Samantha reached over for a book and threw it at his head. He ducked it. While he was off balance, she hurled the stepstool at his legs. Toombs went down onto one knee. Immediately she swept around, catching him in the side of the face with her foot.
He moved, too, twisting her ankle and shoving her down hard on her bottom. The blade sliced out, catching her across the thigh. She kicked out again, recoiling and scrambling backward. Fuck, that hurt, but she didn’t take the time to see how badly she’d been cut.
The door and the chair splintered into the room. Richard dropped the thirty-pound iron mace he’d liberated from a German knight display and charged into the room, lifting one of his own swords as he did so. Reinaldo lay sprawled half beneath the work table. Across the room Samantha limped toward the window, throwing books at Toombs as she retreated. Blood trickled from a slice midway up her right thigh.
Toombs had hurt her. The fury that had been simmering inside him for the last two days erupted. Richard roared. “Toombs!” He swept forward.
Wild Bill swung around to meet him, Japanese daitu sword clanging against English saber. “This isn’t about you,” Toombs said, shoving out with his shoulder. “Stay out of it.”
“You threaten her, it’s about me,” Richard shot back, elbowing him in the face and twisting out of the way as the daitu sliced through air. He hadn’t dueled with a sword since his days at Oxford, but he didn’t mean for this to be a fair fight. “Sam, get out!” he growled, slicing at Toombs’s chest. Cut, parry, kick, punch—anything to move Toombs away from her.
The second she had the room to move, Samantha rushed forward and slammed a book across the back of Wild Bill’s head. Toombs staggered, and she did it again. “You sick fuck,” she yelled, swinging again.
“Back off!”
Toombs went down onto his face. Samantha swept in again—and Toombs twisted, shoving the sword up. Red erupted from Samantha’s side.
Richard’s heart stopped. Time stopped. Everything went white and ice cold. Shoving with all his strength, Richard propelled his sword through Toombs’s shoulder and into the bookcase behind him. With a high-pitched squeal, Wild Bill dropped the daitu and clutched at the pommel of the saber.
Richard ignored him. “God,” he muttered over and over, falling onto his knees beside Samantha. “Sam, don’t move. Don’t move.”
She pushed at him, gasping as she ran her own palms down her blood-soaked side. “It’s not me,” she rasped. “He missed.”
“You’re in shock. Don’t—”
“No.” Samantha grabbed his searching hands. “I’m okay.”
“There’s blood everywhere.” His voice caught.
“Look.” Freeing one of her red-streaked hands, she held up her jacket pocket. The sliver of a hole pierced it, and blood seeped through the opening to drip onto the floor. “It’s that blood pack from yesterday. I’m okay. Really. I’m okay.”
It took him a minute to absorb what she was saying. And then he grabbed her shoulders, pulling her against him. “Thank God,” he breathed, holding her tightly to his chest and rocking. “You scared me to death.”
“Me, too.”
“What the hell were you thinking, charging a man holding a sword?”
“I was thinking he might hurt you,” she returned, gripping his shoulders hard.
Toombs’s whimpering began to sink back into his hearing, and Richard stood, lifting Samantha up in his arms and setting her on the work table to look at her leg. “Its not too bad,” he said, relief now making his voice shake. “You’ll need some stitches, I think.”
“How’s Reinaldo?”
“Ay,” the housekeeper mumbled, rolling over and gripping the back of his head. “Ay ay ay, that hurt.”
Richard pulled the phone out of his pocket and dialed Frank Castillo’s number.
“Castillo.”
“Frank. It’s Rick Addison.”
“Funny you should call. I was just about to—”
“Frank, Gabriel Toombs is in my library, stuck to a bookcase with a sword. He tried to kill Samantha, and knocked out one of my people. I suggest you send someone to come and get him.”
“Christ,” the homicide detective muttered. “Is he alive?”
“Holy—Is she alive?”
“If she wasn’t, Toombs wouldn’t be, either.”
“I’ll get some units rolling. Rick, where were you this morning?”
Richard frowned. “Samantha and I slept in. Why?”
“Because I’ve been listening in to some calls. The fire department’s at Gabriel Toombs’s house right now. Something about a second-story room going up. Since you and Sam were so interested in him, I can’t help wondering if you know anything about it.”
Richard glanced at Samantha, but she’d been in bed for longer than he had. “I can’t say I’m sorry to hear it, but we had nothing to do with it.”
“No, you’re more the sword and bullet type. Don’t kill anybody until I get there.”
“Hurry.”
Reinaldo staggered to his feet, and Richard helped him into a chair. Then he buzzed security on the intercom. A minute later two guards were in the library, looking from the door to Toombs to the wreck of the room. Wherever the hell they’d been earlier, he’d worry about later. “Watch him,” he said, and picked up Samantha again.
“I can walk,” she protested as they left the library.
“I know. I’m feeling gallant.” He brought her into one of the upstairs sitting rooms and lowered her onto the couch. Then he ripped off his shirt and wound it around her thigh. “Better?”
“You just wanted an excuse to let me see your bare chest again,” she returned, sounding as cool as she always did—except for the hand she kept wrapped around his arm.
“Frank said he was about to call us,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Toombs is experiencing a second-story house fire at this very moment.”
“What?”
“Mm hm.” Very few people knew what covered the walls of that turret room, which narrowed down the list of suspects to four. He and Samantha were accounted for, which left Aubrey, or Walter. “Walter?” he said aloud.
“That’s not his usual style, but he was pretty mad about me being trailed around.” She rested her head against his shoulder. “Wow. Wild Bill’s going to lose a lot of really nice stuff.”
“You won’t catch me weeping about that,” he returned. That was Samantha, though, sympathizing with the treasures she spent so much time studying and passing from owner to owner. “Did he find out that we broke into his house?”
“No. He’s here because I apparently refused to steal Yoritomo’s armor for him, but I did it for someone else. I’m his samurai, and I betrayed him.”
“I think when Frank gets here we’ll just go with the he’s-nutty-as-a-fruitcake story,” Richard decided.
“It’s pretty much the truth.”
He sank back on the couch, settling her against his side. Last night he’d thought they’d gotten through this fairly unscathed. The passions Samantha engendered in people continued to amaze him. And he couldn’t bear the thought of ever letting her get away from him. His heart accelerating all over again, he took a deep breath.
“I have a question for you,” he said quietly.
“I didn’t set the fire. I was busy getting sliced up.”
Richard smiled a little. “Different question.”
“Okay.”
“A statement too, I suppose.” Quit stalling, Rick. “I think I fell in love with you the moment you dropped through my skylight last year. But that was mostly physical. Now, it’s…everything. We just fit. Our faults, our virtues, whatever it is, I love you. All of you. And I always will. So, now comes the question part.” He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out the Harry Winston box, then slowly opened the lid. The blue diamond in the center caught the light from the window, splintering it into rainbows and dancing across the smaller diamonds encrusting the platinum band. “Will you marry me, Samantha Elizabeth Jellicoe?”
She didn’t answer. He tilted his head to look more closely at her expression, and a tear ran down her cheek. At that moment he felt the stark terror and devastation of knowing he’d made a mistake, that he’d just slammed the door on his own happiness. He should have left it the way it was. Now he’d ruined it, because she wouldn’t stay after she refused him.
“Yes,” she whispered.
His heart stopped. “Yes?” he repeated shakily.
“Yes, Richard William Addison. I just…I just hope you know what you’re getting into.”
“That’s the fun,” he said unsteadily, slipping the ring onto her finger and then kissing her softly, over and over. “Not knowing.”
Epilogue
Monday, 10:20 a.m.
A figure dressed in golf clothes stood with the other onlookers who gazed at the fire blazing through the roof of the house just down the block from the green. A half dozen fire trucks were stopped around the perimeter, hoses turning fire and smoke to steam. They’d have it out in a few minutes, but the turret room would never be salvaged.
“You’re up, Aubrey,” Dr. Harkley’s voice came from farther out on the green.
Aubrey Pendleton swung his five iron up over his shoulder and rejoined the rest of his foursome. “I have the sudden urge,” he drawled with a smile, “for a nice, cool glass of lemonade. Care to join me in the clubhouse when we’re finished here, gentlemen?”
About the Author
A native and current resident of Southern California, SUZANNE ENOCH loves movies almost as much as she loves books. She once appeared on an E! special, Star Wars Is Back, as an expert on the romance in the Star Wars movies. Other highlights include winning her third-grade spelling bee, receiving an E.T. poster and T-shirt in an alien-inspired poetry contest, and submitting a script for The A-Team (which was not why the series was cancelled).
When she is not busily working on her next novel, Suzanne likes to contemplate interesting phenomena, like how the three guppies in her aquarium became 161 guppies in five months.
Suzanne loves to hear from her readers, and may be reached at: c/o Lowenstein-Yost Associates 121 W. 27th Street, Suite 601 New York, NY 10001 Or send her an e-mail at [email protected]. Visit her website at www.suzanneenoch.com.
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By Suzanne Enoch
Contemporary Titles
A TOUCH OF MINX
BILLIONAIRES PREFER BLONDES
DON’T LOOK DOWN
FLIRTING WITH DANGER
Historical Titles
TWICE THE TEMPTATION
SINS OF A DUKE
SOMETHING SINFUL
AN INVITATION TO SIN
SIN AND SENSIBILITY
ENGLAND’S PERFECT HERO
LONDON’S PERFECT SCOUNDREL
THE RAKE
A MATTER OF SCANDAL
MEET ME AT MIDNIGHT
REFORMING A RAKE
TAMING RAFE
BY LOVE UNDONE
STOLEN KISSES
LADY ROGUE
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A TOUCH OF MINX. Copyright © 2007 by Suzanne Enoch. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition August 2007 ISBN 9780061754661
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