“Do feel free to, my dear,” he replied cordially. He watched her sit down and observed her face for several moments in a disconcerting way. The man who had approached her in the street had followed them silently into the room, and he posted himself at the other side of the door. His presence, so superficially unobtrusive and totally ignored, made her look at him in speculation. He was like a piece of furniture, James accorded him as much attention, and must have been with him for some time to be treated with such implicit trust.
James moved to a comfortable chair and seated himself with a flick to his immaculate slacks. With barely a glance to the dark man, he said carelessly, “Mike, pour us a drink, will you? What will you have, Katherine?”
She answered promptly, “A rum and Coke, please, with a lime twist.”
Her father added to this, “And I’ll have a gin on the rocks.”
He turned his head to look at Katherine. “I find Michael a delight, my dear. He’s been amazingly resourceful, you know, and has been watching you from the moment you left this house.” A slight clatter accompanied his words and she looked at the man who had impressed her as being so deft, as he bent to pick up the lid to the ice bucket that he’d dropped. His eyes met hers intently. For some bizarre reason she felt he was trying to send her a wordless message.
“Really?” she murmured, with a delicately raised brow. The man called Mike dropped his eyes, and she turned her gaze to her father. He had been busy watching her and had not seen the exchange. For some odd reason she refrained from mentioning that she had seen him before and contented herself with saying, “You’ve been busy.”
“Yes,” said James with perfect satisfaction. Mike, behind his back, gave her a very slight nod. She took this in with absolutely no change of expression, not even the bat of an eye, and when the dark man came forward to place her drink in her hands, she didn’t even raise her eyes to his, receiving the drink in silence.
After sipping their drinks for a few minutes, their light conversation was interrupted by Mike interposing a quickly whispered message into James’s ear. Pausing to nod at him, James spared him a quick glance and a brief, “Good, but be quick about it and come right back.” The man left the room, moving like a panther stalking its prey, with infinite grace. When he had left, James said lightly, “I believe that Elizabeth will have supper ready by seven, so that leaves us with just enough time to have a good talk, don’t you think? We have a few things to get straight between us, just a few points, pet, and then with the air sufficiently cleared we should be able to enjoy a nice meal.”
Her attention caught in the graying light by the sight of a man loping off down the driveway had him turning his head and looking out briefly. “Mike has turned out to be a veritable treasure. He is indispensable, and, I hope, willing to be of some use to me in the future. I hired him shortly before you left. At the time I had no idea that he would prove to be so valuable. He’s gone to check on the electronic gates—his own idea—to make sure everything’s secure for the night, and should be back any moment.”
Katherine had been puzzling over in her mind the events of the afternoon and had many uneasy questions to ask, so she brushed this aside quickly. “Tell me,” she asked, “did you lure Marian and Jana out of the house this afternoon?”
“Yes,” he said calmly. “Don’t worry, pet, they should be getting home any minute now. We took the housekeeper when she left the house this afternoon, and deposited her some distance away and made her phone, er, Jana to tell her precisely what we wished her to. With no idea of subterfuge, Jana took off to pick up her precious housekeeper and to see about getting a tow truck for the ‘flat tire’. They were both quite busy, while Joss tinkered with Dalton’s car. It was all amazingly simple, but rather impromptu as I decided to move only this afternoon. Joss and Mike have had quite a busy time of it. They had no idea that they were to have such a diverting couple of hours. I must say, they make quite a team.”
“I see.” During this willingly given explanation, Mike had once again slipped into the room to stand against the inside wall, just by the cocktail cabinet. Katherine, in spite of herself, had begun to feel something close to panic.
“Now, then,” said James after a moment, “let’s start talking about the future. I see a beautiful ring on your left hand, pet. Take it off. It should be quite an expressive message to Dalton.”
“No,” she said, clenching her hand into a tight fist.
“Mike,” James ordered calmly, “take the ring off her finger.” Mike started obediently forward and halted just before her. His dark eyes once again stared into hers intently. She got that same feeling: What, she thought in great perplexity, is he trying to say to me?
“May I have the ring, Miss Farlough?” he asked her, again as polite as before. “Don’t make me have to use force.”
She said grimly, “You’ll have to break my hand to get it off. I came with you this afternoon because I could see no choice in the matter: you would have had me in that car with or without my consent, and I preferred to be alert instead of knocked unconscious. Don’t estimate me by that incident. This is something I won’t allow! You’ll probably have the ring sooner or later, but I won’t give in.” She saw him briefly close his eyes and on inspiration, on a crazy, unfounded hunch, she held out her clenched fist to him as if in invitation. “Here, try it. You may be stronger, but I promise you, nobody beats me for stubbornness!”
The man called Mike didn’t move.
Chapter Ten
After just a second, James said disdainfully, “Hold on a moment, Mike. She means what she says, and I don’t have the time or the inclination to put up with this nonsense.” The big man before her relaxed slightly, his face clearing almost imperceptibly of its cloud. Katherine watched him quietly as he took his place back against the wall. James had not noticed anything out of the ordinary. With a contemplative stare at her rather white face, he leaned back in his chair in an attitude of ease, saying lightly, “There are other methods of persuasion, I’m sure, that will get us farther along, with very little fuss. Pet, you’ve become fond of the people you have stayed with, have you not?”
Her gaze moved warily from Mike’s impassive face to her father’s. “They’ve been good to me,” she replied without expression. A thread of apprehension shot through her; James wore a particularly speculative look as he perused her immobile face. It was a look she’d seen before, the look of a snake about to strike its victim, the look of a hunter inspecting its prey.
“You must feel some measure of, ah, affection for Dalton,” he mused slowly. “I’m persuaded that although you are a foolish girl you are not quite stupid. Do you know what could happen to someone on an empty road at night if a tire blows? People have died in such accidents. Or perhaps a tragic accident at home, maybe a faulty electrical wire bursting into flames in the middle of the night, when everyone is asleep. Do you understand what I am saying, pet?”
Those animal-like eyes watched her as if she were some pathetic insect squirming feebly at the end of a pin.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked him quietly, with the same deadly calm as before. There was a subtle difference now, though. There was a quality of violence in her eyes that had not been evident throughout the encounter.
“Why?” he asked, as if puzzled by the question. “Yes, indeed, why? Because Dalton took something I wanted. I am referring to the choice warehouse property a few months ago, in case you hadn’t remembered. But that has nothing to do with this; he’ll be taken care of later on this evening by a few well-placed items in those warehouses, illegal, of course, and a quiet anonymous phone call to the police. That will take care of my business score with him. It might even be the catalyst for the quiet sale of the buildings in dispute, who knows? But as far as you’re concerned, why, he took something of mine without asking—you, pet—and I find that I want you back. And you will stay, for if you don’t, as sure as if you had signed their death warrants, your friends will die.”
&nbs
p; Such a feeling of revulsion and rage swept over her at these dispassionate words that she sat, a blaze kindling and growing in her mind at this speech. This was such evil, she thought, such unadulterated venom that it just can’t be borne… With no warning, with incredible speed and surprising accuracy, she stood swiftly and in one fluid motion threw her heavy glass right at her father’s smiling face. Neither he nor Mike had time to react before the half-empty glass smashed across his left cheekbone with a painful-sounding thump. Liquid was spilt all over the plush, off-white carpet. The glass fell in three pieces, a thin trickle of red slid down James’s whitened face, and then he launched out of his chair and came for her with the most terrifying expression of rage she had ever seen.
She had time to back several paces away, shrinking from his cruel, furious, biting hands which fastened on her slim shoulders, when suddenly a very large object catapulted into the room through the French windows, splintering glass flying everywhere in a glittering shower of light, and hurtled toward James.
Events after that seemed to jumble in Katherine’s mind like clips from a newsreel catching separate, unconnected scenes of a momentous occasion. She remembered her surprise at Mike’s smiling stillness at the intruder’s attack, after he had jerked involuntarily her way when her father had grabbed her; she remembered Luke’s incredible, wrathful onslaught at James’s unprepared back, and how her father had gone down like a ton of bricks; she remembered after being pushed back and told unceremoniously to get out of the way how she sank into a corner chair, shaken and bruised, to watch the proceedings. She couldn’t seem to get a clear image of what was happening between Luke and James, for they were thrashing about far too much for that, but she very definitely had time to wonder at Mike’s marked lack of participation when Joss and an apparently hastily summoned groom crashed into the room. After a stunned moment, Joss picked up a large brass ornament like a club and bore down on Luke, who was momentarily on top of James presenting an exposed neck, and there was a sudden crack that made her jump as if she had been lashed with a whip.
She watched Joss drop the brass ornament with a cry and clutch at his shoulder. The groom, extremely bewildered, made a quick, unrestrained movement as he stared across the room in astonishment, and she turned her head to see Mike’s smiling, warning shake of the head as he pointed a hand gun straight at the other man. She stared, much like the groom had done, with her pretty mouth hanging open at this unexpected sight.
Luke stood up from her father’s inert figure, breathing heavily, and brushed his tousled hair off his forehead to grin at Mike’s unruffled appearance. “You sure know how to exert yourself,” he commented acidly, making Mike’s own smile widen. Luke turned to Katherine and said to her placidly, “Shut your mouth, love, you’re catching flies,” which had the effect of making her mouth close with a decided snap. He turned to survey the ruined room with a raised eyebrow, just as in the far distance a few sirens could be heard wailing. “I was perhaps a bit precipitate, but I think under the circumstances, it was understandable. The police should understand, don’t you think, old boy?” This was addressed to Joss, who was by now crouched on the floor and inspecting the red on his fingers.
Katherine’s calm, which had not deserted her through the whole unbelievable scene, quite fled at the sight of the small amount of blood, and with a hiccup she buried her face in her hands and started to cry. There were exclamations, and quickly snapped-out orders, and Luke was pulling her out of her seat to lead her gently from the room. In the hall, he sternly admonished a small cluster of the household staff to disperse until otherwise notified and he took her to the bottom of the stairs where she sank down gratefully. He sat beside her and put his strong arm round her, making her lean against his shoulder. After a shuddering moment, she pushed his arm away and sat up straight.
“I’m fine—no, I really am,” she said to his unbelieving stare, “It’s just the sight of the blood, it—sort of sparked off some memories and I felt a bit queasy for a minute.” Uniformed men were coming through the front door and moving with precise efficiency into the other room, but neither Katherine nor Luke paid them any heed. “What I am is very confused,” she told him and watched him smile. “Who is Mike?”
“He’s a private investigator who I hired the week of the dinner party,” Luke told her with a thread of amusement in his voice. “I—let’s say I just had my suspicions about your father’s good intentions, and I knew he couldn’t do anything legal to harm me, so I was left with some rather uneasy apprehensions.”
She stared. “I don’t understand,” she stammered. “How did you get suspicious? Why did you think that James would do anything illegal? How do I fit into all this? I’m sorry, maybe I’m just feeling a little slow, but I’m not understanding this much.”
“Eli Parson, a tired and thoroughly honorable old gentleman, had a long talk with me when he privately sold me those choice waterfront warehouses,” Luke told her patiently. “He knew that I wanted to convert the site into a large, exclusive hotel complex, and yet was unable to bid as high as your father was prepared to go for the property. He told me that he would far rather that I had the property than James, because he’d had a suspicion for some time that your father was dealing in illegal drug activities, and Parson emphatically told me that he didn’t want any property of his to go for that purpose.”
She raised her two hands to cover her mouth, feeling sick. “Oh, no,” she whispered, “I had absolutely no idea.”
A steadying hand clasped her shoulder. “I’m afraid so, love,” he murmured sympathetically. “That’s why James was so furious at not being allowed to purchase the waterfront property. The location would have been ideal for shipments, and he had been waiting for years to get his hands on just such an exclusive bit of property. And when I found you, a present that heaven dropped into my lap, and was told by you in no uncertain terms that James had unsavory plans for me, I decided to keep Mike on the job. Your father then made some nasty threats to me the day you left home, and he made some, ah, shall I just say unhappy comments about you that had me a touch on the lookout for trouble.”
She asked him curiously, “Why does Mike seem so familiar to me? It seems fairly easy for he and I to have just missed paths, since he was coming and I was going.”
“He probably looked familiar to you because the night of the party, he was playing bartender and handed you two whiskeys,” Luke replied whimsically. “And I was never sure if you had seen us one day when you and I took a walk. Remember? You did manage to get a glimpse of his back as he hurried away, and I told you that he was a neighbor.”
Comprehension dawned. “Of course! How could I have been so stupid?” she asked herself disgustedly. “I’ve been racking my brain as to why he looked so familiar, and couldn’t for the life of me remember!”
“And a good thing it was, too!” an emphatic voice spoke beside them feelingly. “We were counting on you not remembering.” They both looked round at Mike, who was leaning against the staircase railing. People milled about and voices were trying to talk over each other, but the commotion was completely outside the little world composed of the three. “You gave me a few bad moments this afternoon,” he continued in his pleasant voice, shaking his dark head. “When you looked at me so coolly this afternoon as if you were trying to decide whether or not to put my threat to the test, I was breaking out in a sweat for fear I really would have to knock you in the jaw, to look authentic in front of Joss! And when you told me I’d have to break your hand to get your ring, I was literally trembling! I couldn’t have brought myself to do that and was afraid that my cover was to be blown too soon. Your father unexpectedly saved us from an uncomfortable situation. I had just tensed myself to jump on him and knock him out when he told me to forget it for the time being.”
“Did you really tell him that?” Luke asked her with a soft laugh. “I think I’ve got more than I bargained for when I asked you to marry me! You have, my love, a frightening accuracy and a powerful t
hrowing arm. Do you throw things often when you lose your temper?”
“Actually,” she murmured, blushing furiously, “this is the first time I’ve ever done it. I quite surprised myself.”
“And everyone else,” Mike said with admiration. “I was about to pull him off you when Luke burst onto the scene with such a dramatic entrance. I was a bit disappointed in my thwarted intentions! I had wanted to rescue the damsel in distress, you see.”
“Huh!” Luke snorted. “She’s my damsel, and I’ll thank you to remember that I do the rescuing for her and no one else. By the way, why didn’t you get hold of me sooner? Kate wasn’t supposed to be involved in any of this.”
Mike looked embarrassed. “I didn’t find out that we were to execute an abduction until about half an hour before we had to set everything up. James sent Joss and me after your housekeeper, and I wasn’t alone all afternoon to phone you. Sorry about that.”
“Forget it,” Luke told him. “I at least had the satisfaction of knowing that she wasn’t in real danger.”
“That’s rich!” she exploded in a surprising burst of anger. “And I was left in the dark to imagine all sorts of things. I must thank you for that, mustn’t I?” She glared at the two men with such ferocity that Mike blinked and Luke’s smile straightened immediately. “Why couldn’t you have let me in on the secret? You could at least have told me that the person trailing me was a friend and not a foe! It’s no wonder that I’m a nervous wreck.”
“You could have fooled me,” Mike muttered, at which statement she turned and glared him into silence. Luke’s grin had started to deepen again.
“But, love,” he said to her gently, “we were planning on scotching at the beginning any plans your father was to put into action. You were to have been quite unaware of the situation. Besides, what would have happened if James had decided to have someone else instead of Mike make a move on you? We had to leave you alert and suspicious for your own safety. I was,” he continued at her determined glare, “trying to save you any further pain at your father’s hands.” This had her eyes misting with unexpected tears, and she put out a hand to have it grasped tightly.
The Gift of Happiness Page 16
