Smoke in Mirrors

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  He was afraid he might come then and there.

  She stirred against him, lifting herself away in an effort to shift her position. He realized she was fumbling with his belt.

  “No,” he got out. “Not yet.”

  “I only want to touch you.”

  “Touch me and I’m doomed.”

  She raised her head and looked down at him. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “Cool.”

  She went back to work on his belt buckle.

  He closed his hand over hers and pulled it away from the vicinity of his groin. He guided it to his shoulder instead. Then he raised one knee and pressed it tightly against her hip, pinning her there where he could savor the soft weight of her against his erection.

  She shifted urgently when he caressed her buttocks again.

  “Thomas.”

  He pressed his fingers into the damp crotch of her panties.

  “Thomas.”

  She twisted against him. He moved to maintain contact, rolling toward her. The sudden shift in their positions sent them tumbling over the edge of the sofa. He cushioned the fall with one arm. They landed on the rug, barely missing the coffee table.

  She made a husky sound, half laugh, half moan, and wrapped herself tightly around him, burying her face against his shoulder.

  He managed to get the green sweater up over her head. Slinging the garment out of the way, he went to work on the lacy, cream-colored bra. Usually he was good with hardware. But it seemed forever before the fastening came undone, releasing her breasts into his hands.

  They were the most beautiful breasts he had ever seen. Sweetly shaped, the tips taut and tight. He bent his head and drew one nipple gently between his lips, letting her feel the edge of his teeth.

  She stiffened beneath him. He heard her sharp intake of breath. She reached down between their bodies, fishing for his zipper. He caught her fingers and dragged them out of the danger zone.

  “I told you, do that and it will be all over for me,” he said. “I want to make this last.”

  She looked up at him, stark urgency blazing in her eyes. “Maybe you can wait. I can’t.”

  “Who said anything about you having to wait?”

  She looked bemused. “What?”

  “Nothing I like to tackle better than a little home improvement project.”

  He stripped off her trousers, slid between her legs and moved slowly down her body until he found her hot little button with his mouth.

  “Thomas.” Her hands clenched in his hair.

  He parted her with his fingers and kissed her intimately, absorbing the heady scent and taste of her body. When she sucked in her breath, he eased a finger into her, working her gently, searching for the magic spot.

  He knew when he found it.

  She gave a soft, startled, half-strangled shriek, tightening around him. Her climax flooded through her. He could feel the gentle contractions. He knew a rare sense of wonder and a kind of satisfaction that had nothing to do with a physical release.

  She continued to shudder long after the little convulsions had ended.

  He raised his head, suddenly uneasy. She had her face buried in a velvet sofa pillow. Her shoulders were shaking.

  His unease turned to alarm.

  “Leonora?”

  She pressed the pillow more tightly against her face.

  “Leonora? Are you okay?” He levered himself up higher and gripped her quivering shoulder. “Damn it, are you crying? What’s wrong? What did I do?”

  “I’m . . . I’m not crying.”

  He could barely make out the words.

  He yanked the pillow away from her face.

  She was laughing. Her eyes were brilliant with delight.

  “I’ve never been able . . . I’ve always assumed that I had a few things in common with Meredith when it came to sex,” she whispered. “I just found out for the first time that I don’t.”

  A long time later she stretched against him, then propped herself on his bare chest. In the shadows she looked quite smug. Very pleased with herself.

  “I may nominate you for Handyman of the Year,” she said.

  “Thanks. Want me to show you what else I can do with a set of tools?”

  “Oh my, yes.” Her hand closed over his erection. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do than play with your tools.”

  When he got inside her again he confirmed his initial conclusions. Everything fit perfectly.

  Like she’d been made for him.

  She could hear rain on the roof. She opened her eyes and found herself gazing at the pattern on the rug less than five inches away. Thomas was no longer sprawled alongside but she was warm, even though she was quite naked. She realized that he had put a blanket over her.

  He had also stoked the fire. It burned brightly, casting a golden glow over the carpet and sofa. She heard a cupboard door close in the kitchen. It was followed by the sound of the refrigerator being opened. A moment later silverware jangled.

  “You awake in there?” Thomas called over the top of the counter that divided the two rooms.

  “Yep.”

  “Hungry?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re in luck. I’m prepared to feed you.”

  “I’m not sure I can move.”

  “I managed it. So can you.”

  She sat up cautiously, holding the blanket close around her shoulders, and performed a quick, personal assessment of her various working parts.

  There was some tenderness in places and a bit of stiffness here and there. Only to be expected when you made love on the floor, she thought. She’d never tried that before.

  Correction. They hadn’t made love on the floor. They’d had sex on the floor. Proper terminology was important, she reminded herself. But she refused to dwell on semantics tonight. She felt good. Relaxed. Satisfied beyond her wildest dreams.

  She realized that Thomas was watching her with unconcealed amusement from the other side of the counter. He had put on his trousers and shirt, but he hadn’t bothered to button the latter.

  “Want some help?” he asked.

  “I do believe I can get up all by myself.” She adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and managed to stand. She gave him a triumphant smile. “See?”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. Which way is the bathroom?”

  He folded his arms on the counter and angled his chin toward the hall behind her. “Thataway.”

  “Mind if I take a shower?”

  “Help yourself.”

  She shuffled down the short hall, opened the first door she found, groped for a switch and flipped it on. The lights came on, revealing floor-to-ceiling walls covered in gleaming blue-and-white tiles set in an intricate pattern.

  She turned on the water in the shower and let it run until the small room was filled with steam. When she was convinced that it was hot enough, she dropped the blanket, shoved aside the curtain and got beneath the spray.

  She stood there thinking about what had happened out there in the living room.

  Just good sex. It was important to keep things filed under the proper subject heading. Thomas had made his feelings on the subject of marriage and children very clear.

  Make that subject heading great sex.

  She suddenly understood how Alice had felt when she found herself on the other side of the looking glass. The world appeared very different now that she had experienced serious passion at the hands of Thomas Walker.

  She had no idea how much time had gone by until the bathroom door opened and closed, yanking her out of her deep thoughts.

  Thomas pulled back the curtain. Steam roiled around him. His gaze traveled leisurely from her head to her toes. “You okay?”

  She scowled at him through the billowing vapor. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “Just wondered. You’ve been in here quite a while.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” Hastily she turned off
the taps.

  “I brought you a robe. Probably a little on the large side but it’s clean. Deke gave it to me one year for Christmas. I’ve never worn it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He held out an oversized towel. She took it from him and wrapped it completely around her body. She cast about for something witty and sophisticated to say, the sort of comment a modern woman of the world made when she found herself showering in a man’s bathroom after hot sex.

  “Nice tile work,” she mumbled.

  “Thanks.” He gave the wall behind her a brief, critical look. “I thought it came out well. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Just ducky.”

  He nodded, looking somewhat dubious. “I’ll go see how dinner is doing.”

  She waited until he was gone. Then she turned to look at herself in the mirror over the sink, hoping she didn’t look beet red and straggly haired from the hot water.

  She could not make out her reflection clearly. It was lost in the mist of steam that covered the glass.

  But as she gazed at the enigmatic mirror, some possibilities materialized.

  Fifteen minutes later , feeling almost normal, she swathed herself in the thick, man-sized robe and ventured out of the bathroom.

  And stopped cold at the entrance to the main room when she heard the low rumble of masculine voices.

  “What the hell was it doing behind the old card catalog?” Deke asked.

  He was sitting on one of the counter stools, his back toward her. There was a bottle of beer in front of him. He had one hand stuck inside a box of crackers. Wrench was sitting on the floor next to the stool, watching the progress of the crackers, clearly ready to move in the event one happened to fall.

  “Damned if I know,” Thomas said.

  He lounged against the counter on the kitchen side. There was a second bottle of beer in front of him. His blatantly relaxed, sexually satisfied air made her feel warm all over again.

  She took a firm hold on her scattered emotions and went forward.

  “Under the circumstances, I think we have to assume that Meredith must have done some exploring while she was working up at Mirror House,” she said briskly. Trying for cool. “I was doing just that, myself, when I found the bracelet.”

  Thomas looked at her, his smile intimate and knowing. “Here comes our intrepid heroine. At long last.”

  Deke swiveled on his stool and saw her. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but she thought she could guess. He would have to have been dim in the extreme not to figure out what had happened here. Deke was definitely not dim.

  “Evening, Leonora,” he said. He kept his curiosity politely confined to his eyes, leaving it out of his tone. “Sorry to barge in like this. I walked over to talk to Thomas about a few things I pulled off the Net today. Didn’t know you were here.”

  She glanced toward the fireplace and saw that her clothes were neatly folded on the chair, bra and panties tucked discreetly out of sight. But that didn’t make the situation look any less risqué. It was obvious that she had stripped naked for some purpose and it wasn’t as if there were a large number of logical reasons why a woman would do that in a man’s living room.

  Well, the damage was done. Nothing for it now but to act worldly. Self-possessed. Like she did this kind of thing all the time.

  She managed a smile.

  “Hello, Deke. We were just about to have dinner.”

  “I know. Thomas invited me to stay. But I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Nonsense.” She walked forward, conscious of the overlong robe trailing on the floor behind her, and perched on a stool next to him. “Of course you’re welcome to stay. The three of us have a lot to talk about.”

  Wrench looked at her with melting eyes. She reached into the box, removed a cracker and fed it to him. He promptly abandoned his position near Deke’s stool and moved to sit beside her.

  She smiled at him. “Make that the four of us.”

  Wrench leaned closer and touched her leg with his nose. She gave him another cracker.

  “That’s outright bribery,” Thomas said. He set a glass of red wine in front of her.

  “No, it’s not. I’m repaying him for all the gifts he’s given me.”

  Thomas rested his elbows on the counter, the beer framed between his big hands. “I was just telling Deke about your little adventure this afternoon. But I don’t know all the details myself. If you will recall, we were interrupted before you told me how you found that old door off the servants’ stairs.”

  Interrupted was as good a word as any, she decided.

  She cleared her throat. “I followed Roberta Brinks’s student assistant, Julie Bromley, and her boyfriend, Travis, up to the third floor today.”

  “Thought that floor was closed to the public,” Deke said.

  “It is.” Leonora munched a cracker. “Nothing like labeling something forbidden to make it absolutely fascinating to a couple of nineteen-year-olds. Meredith must have found the staircase at some point also. It’s in the wall on the other side of the library office.”

  Deke’s brows bunched together. “Think she went exploring out of sheer curiosity?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. Certainly within character for her to do that kind of thing. If she found that staircase she would have climbed it just to see where it led. She wouldn’t have been able to resist. It’s quite possible that when she came back down she noticed the second door, just as I did.”

  “And opened it?” Deke asked.

  She recalled the bracelet sticking out from beneath the door and nodded. “I think so, yes. She didn’t work in the library so she might not have known that the card catalog had been shoved up against the wall on the other side. The bracelet must have snagged on something. A nail or a splinter, perhaps.”

  “Bethany spent a lot of time in the library,” Deke said quietly.

  She looked at him and then at Thomas. She thought about the possibilities that had occurred to her when she looked in the steamy mirror a few minutes ago.

  “Did you take a good look around the library after Bethany’s death?”

  Deke’s lips disappeared into a thin line. “No. I went through her office desk and her files with a fine-tooth comb and I took her laptop apart. I always figured that if Bethany had left any clues behind they would show up on her computer. But I didn’t search the library. Never saw any reason to do so.”

  “It occurred to me,” Leonora said carefully, “that the reason Meredith lost her bracelet was because she saw something when she opened that servant’s door. Something that maybe had slipped off the top of the card catalog and gotten wedged between it and the wall.” She waggled her fingers. “I can see how, if she pushed her hand between the catalog and the wall to retrieve the object, the bracelet could have snagged and snapped. Maybe she didn’t even notice at the time.”

  Deke sat unmoving, his hand locked around the beer bottle.

  “Oh, shit,” he whispered. “The envelope? You think maybe she found that envelope stuffed with the Eubanks murder clippings behind the card catalog?”

  “Maybe the book, too,” Leonora said. “The catalog of antique mirrors in the mansion’s collection. Maybe they were both there.”

  There was a short silence while they all contemplated those simple facts. Leonora took a sip of wine. Deke and Thomas both drank some beer.

  “The night Bethany died, everyone assumed she had been in her office on campus,” Deke said. “She often worked there until very late. Sometimes stayed there all night, working. But what if she was at Mirror House that evening?”

  “The place would have been locked up at night,” Thomas reminded him.

  Deke brushed that aside. “Bethany had a key. They gave her one because she liked to go to the library at odd hours.”

  Thomas drew the bracelet toward him across the counter. “Okay, say she was there that night. Why would she have hidden the clippings and that book?”

  Deke’s hand clenched aroun
d the bottle. “Because the killer had followed her. Maybe he cornered her in the library.”

  There was another brief silence.

  “This is all wild speculation,” Leonora said after a while.

  “Not entirely.” Thomas looked at the bracelet. “Whatever else we can say, we know that Meredith opened that door behind the card catalog.”

  “What made you decide to go exploring today?” Deke asked.

  “I was playing detective,” Leonora said. “I’ve noticed that Julie and Travis have a habit of disappearing together at lunchtime. I followed them today. They’re using one of the empty rooms on the third floor as a, uh, trysting spot.”

  Thomas cocked a brow. “Trysting?”

  “I believe that would be the correct technical term for it, yes,” she murmured.

  He whistled softly. “I do admire you academic types,” he said. “Must be nice to have such a wide-ranging command of the English language.”

  She glared. “What would you call it if a couple of healthy young people disappeared at lunchtime for the purpose of having sex?”

  “A nooner,” Thomas said.

  Deke grinned fleetingly. “Gotta love the English language. Such nuance. Such subtlety.”

  Leonora blinked, startled by the flash of humor. Deke’s amused smile brought home the family resemblance between him and Thomas as nothing else could have done. The grin was gone in the next moment but not before it gave her a whole new insight into the real Deke.

  “Something else happened today,” she said. “I’m not sure what it means, but given that we are all trying to weave a conspiracy theory, it may be important. Then again, it might mean absolutely nothing.”

  “What’s that?” Thomas asked.

  “I have reason to think that one member of our trysting couple went through my satchel. Julie, to be precise.”

  Thomas and Deke both looked at her.

  “She was in the library office while I was in the stairwell on the other side of the wall. I could hear her opening drawers. When I went back into the office I checked my things. It was obvious she had gone through them.”

  “She take any money?” Thomas asked. “Credit cards?”