License to Thrill (a romantic mystery)

by Stephanie Bond

  After a heartbeat’s hesitation, she nodded and opened her mouth to accept his kiss. Within moments they were on her bed, tearing at each other’s clothes. James told himself to wait, to love her with steeping slowness, a memory to savor in the months to come. But when she lay bare against him, beneath him, astride him, his restraint fled. Her mouth, hands, and silken passage tore the energy from his body with staggering speed and intensity. He gathered her against him and gasped, “Kat… Kat….”

  She quieted and was soon breathing evenly beside him, her head tucked beneath his arm. Exhausted, but wide awake, he stared at her incredible breasts rising and falling until he felt the beginning of another erection and decided to get a drink of water.

  After easing from the bed, he padded across the room, retrieving his clothing on the way back to his room. There he tossed the garments on the bed, ran a glass of water in the bathroom, and drained it. When he emerged, he decided it would be a good time to call Lady Mercer and tell her of his plans to leave the city. He felt sure she would agree there was little more he could do.

  Squashing the nagging thought that he was running away from Kat more than the investigation, he punched in her number and waited for the connection.

  “Lady Tania Mercer’s residence.”

  James recognized the sleepy voice of Tania’s personal assistant. “Mary, this is James Donovan. I’m sorry to call at this hour, but I need to speak with Tania���is she available?”

  “She left for the London cottage, sir, and she has yet to install a phone there. You can try her cell, but she rarely has it turned on. “

  “I know,” he said. “When you talk to her, please tell her I’ve left the matter of the missing letter in the hands of the San Francisco police and I’ll be traveling to New York Monday evening. I’ll call her when I get settled.”

  “Fine, Mr. Donovan, I’ll tell her.”

  James ended the connection and briefly wondered if he were letting Tania down by not trying to locate that damned silly love letter. Glancing toward Kat’s room, James wondered at what point his mission had shifted from solving the crime to seeing her cleared.

  When she’d asked him to get her father’s humidor, he decided. He would never forget the panic in her eyes when she thought she might lose something so precious to her. James walked over to his closet, then knelt and dialed in the combination of the wall safe. The door popped open, revealing a cavity not much larger than the humidor itself. The rich scent of the mahogany tickled his nostrils as he carefully withdrew the box.

  Since he’d be leaving tomorrow, he would check the water one last time and place the humidor in Kat’s room. He lifted the lid and noted on the barometer that the moisture level had dropped just below the proper level of seventy percent He removed the soapsize sponge from a vented cavity and wet it under the faucet. That done, he couldn’t resist fingering the wonderful cigars again.

  He chose one and twirled it between thumb and forefinger, loving the feel of it, the flash of the gold band, the colorful label. Which seemed to be loose, he noticed, then stopped when something fluttered to the carpet.

  James bent over to pick up the tiny square of paper, realizing when he turned it over that it was a stamp. A very old stamp. And he recalled Guy Trent’s words when the man had implied that Kat was responsible for items disappearing from the gallery.

  Katherine’s father found the stamp… bought it for fifteen dollars, and it was worth around fifteen thousand… then a few weeks after he died, it vanished.

  Chapter 12

  Kat stirred, feeling a delicious sense of contentment. The sheets were warm, the pillow was comfy, James was���she opened her eyes and glanced toward his pillow… James was gone. As she stared, the digital clock on the nightstand went from two-twelve to two-thirteen.

  Frowning, she sat up in near complete darkness, holding the sheet to her breasts. “James?” she whispered.

  “I’m here.” His voice came from the direction of the armchairs.

  She squinted until she discerned his outline, black on black, sitting with his long legs propped on the ottoman. “Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  “I’m asking myself the same question,” he said, his voice low and rumbling. “Considering I’m not the one who should have a guilty conscience.” She heard a click, then the bulb of a small reading lamp illuminated him in a yellow haze. He had donned his slacks, but they gaped unzipped around his waist, revealing his pale underwear.

  He was barefoot, his legs crossed at the ankles. On the tip of his large forefinger dangled a stamp. Her father’s stamp.

  Her heart jumped to her throat. “What do you mean?”

  His mouth tightened. “I mean Guy Trent told me a valuable stamp disappeared from the gallery shortly after your father was killed���he implied that you had taken it, but I didn’t believe him.”

  She pulled the sheet higher, covering herself from his incriminating gaze. Her mind raced. Would he understand why she had taken it? He seemed to dodge emotional involvement but if he had been close to his parents���

  “Say something!” he barked, pounding his fist on the padded arm of the chair.

  Kat jumped, inhaling sharply. Then anger sparked within her, and she pushed herself up and walked across the bed on her knees. “Don’t you dare speak to me like I’ve done something to you! Those jackals at the gallery never gave my dad credit for anything!” Her voice and hands shook violently. Hateful, bitter words that had been festering in her stomach for years bubbled up and out of her mouth, like a cleansing regurgitation.

  “For years, my father begged Mr. Jellico to build a restoration center, only to be told it was a foolish idea. Then Guy Trent arrives and reads an old memo my father wrote and presented it like it was his sudden inspiration. Not only was it built, but Guy received national recognition for his innovative concept of assembly-line-style restoration teams���an idea he stole from my father’s notes.”

  She stepped to the floor and walked closer to him, leaning forward, shaking her finger. “My father bought that stamp one day on his lunch hour���I had convinced him to leave Jellico’s and he said we’d use the money to start our own antique furniture business. Instead, Guy told him he’d bought it on the gallery’s time, and bullied my dad into giving it to him.”

  To her horror, tears blurred her vision. “My dad was so naive, he just… handed it over.” She stopped and straightened, taking a deep breath and forcing herself to calm down. “After he died, I actually forgot about it until I went into Guy’s office to fetch something he was too lazy to get for himself, and there it was, lying on his desk in a mailing case, next to a sales order. The bastard had sold it for eighteen thousand dollars.” Her laugh tasted bitter on the back of her throat. “I couldn’t let him do it, so I stole the stamp.” She sniffed mightily. “Go ahead and call the police if you feel like you have to.”

  Except for his eyes, he had barely moved during her outburst. Setting her mouth, she refused to drop her gaze, refused to back down.

  He pressed his lips together and held up the stamp. “So this is why you failed the polygraph?”

  She nodded, wary.

  “And you had nothing to do with the disappearance of the letter?”

  She shook her head no.

  “So why didn’t you simply sell the stamp and pay off your debt to the gallery?”

  “Guy would have been suspicious,” she said. “Besides, just having it gives me more satisfaction than the money it would bring.”

  James nodded slowly, then studied the stamp for several long moments.

  “So,” Kat said, trying to keep her voice steady, “are you going to call the police?”

  When James looked up, a frown carved deep lines in his face, pulling down the corners of his eyes. “How can I do that without admitting I removed the humidor in the first place? Besides, perhaps what you did was wrong, but it was for the right reason.”

  His mouth twisted into a sad smile as he closed h
is fingers around her wrist and gently tugged her toward him. At first, Kat resisted���the fact that he was leaving today was the worst reason to succumb to him… and the best, she decided with a sigh, allowing herself to be pulled down on his lap. She settled into his body like floodwater searching for low ground, oozing into his crevices and leveling off.

  He grabbed the end of a sheet she’d dragged onto the floor, whipped it above them with a flip of his wrists, and allowed it to float down around them. Then he clicked off the light and tucked her head beneath his neck. Relieved, spent, and a little frightened of the strong feelings coursing through her, she felt herself drifting off almost immediately, lulled by the cadence of his heart beneath her cheek.

  *

  James started awake and blinked, not sure what he’d heard. A dull sound���a distant knock perhaps? From the direction of his room came the sound of a faint scrape and a swishing noise, as if someone had slid something under the door to his adjacent room.

  He lifted his head, and winced at the needles shooting through one arm and both legs. Kat lay snuggled up against him, her breath fanning across the hair on his chest. She hadn’t stirred, and he hated to wake her. The clock read only five-thirty, and her sleep had already been interrupted once.

  By him���because he’d been so shaken that she’d lied to him. But even as a small part of him hoped Kat had lied so he’d have a reason to forget her, he’d wrung from her a soul-baring confession that triggered all kinds of protective feelings in his chest. Now as he watched her sleep, he wondered how he’d ever thought she would have committed a crime for her own personal gain. In his mind, the stamp rightfully belonged to her, and he had a new lead suspect���Guy Trent. Perhaps he and Beaman were in cahoots.

  He bent his arm and made a fist, then wriggled his toes to get the blood flowing again. When he trusted his strength, he scooped her up and walked to the bed, then deposited her gently among the mussed covers, shushing her back to sleep when she roused. A thick strand of hair had escaped the haphazard side ponytail, and as he swept it away from her face, emotion ballooned in his chest.

  He’d never experienced blood-boiling lust in tandem with this intangible thing whose growth accompanied every thought of Katherine McKray. Whatever it was, it heightened lovemaking to near staggering proportions. But he recognized the danger in the euphoria because, like a potent drug, this thing gave him false confidence that he could handle obligations he knew he couldn’t���mind-boggling obligations like being a husband, and a father. And the only way he had managed to survive a twenty-year career in the British Intelligence Agency was by following one commandment: Know thy limitations. It seemed like an applicable rule for civilian life too.

  Clearing his head with a shake, James rubbed his eyes, then stumbled to his room in the predawn light. Indeed, a blank envelope lay on the slightly worn traffic area just inside the door. Knowing the messenger was long gone, he checked the hall anyway. Stepping back into the room, he picked up the note, then withdrew a single folded sheet of white paper. The message was printed in neat, slanted letters. A man transacted sale of item to broker via phone; seller is reliable provider of authentic pieces; item sold to unknown third party.

  A man. Which could be a man working at the gallery���one of four security guards, including Ronald Beaman, plus Andy Wharton, Guy Trent, and two dozen or so volunteers, ticket takers, and maintenance men���or an acquaintance of a female employee. He grunted in frustration���so Kat was the only one who could be excluded.

  James scanned the note again. Not much more to go on, except that the person regularly provided stolen items to the underground market. Which didn’t fit Guy Trent’s assertion that only a handful of items, and small-ticket items at that, had been taken from the museum over the last several months. Unless the fellow who did the brokering was being fed items smuggled from more than one gallery.

  A man…. He hadn’t given the Wharton guy much thought after Kat said he was harmless. Now they had more impetus to check into everyone who worked at the gallery, particularly the men. James frowned. And especially Guy Trent, whom he now thoroughly despised. Then he stopped.

  Well, they wouldn’t be checking, but Tenner would be, of course. He’d make rounds with him today to follow up on Beaman’s alibi, and pass him the information from the note, then the detective could take over. What mattered most was clearing Kat’s name. Finding the thief, and perhaps the letter, would simply be a bonus.

  James peeked in on Kat, glad to see she was still sleeping. Having cast aside the sheet, she lay with her back to him, providing an unobstructed and tormenting view of her round derriere. His fingers twitched to touch her, but halfway to the bed he stopped and looked back to his room. He really should shower���Tenner would be expecting him to call. Then he glanced back to Kat and exhaled in appreciation. Kat, Tenner, Kat, Tenner… he stopped.

  There was a decision here?

  Within two seconds, he had reached the bed, then took another half second to shed his slept-in slacks and underwear. He slid in next to her warm body with his head at the foot of the bed, vice versa her position, and said good morning by covering her exquisite ankles with kisses, then traveling north from there. She roused instantly, with a surprise of her own that wrung a gasp of satisfaction from him.

  From zero to sixty-nine in two and a half seconds. Even his Jaguar couldn’t do that.

  *

  Kat extracted a wide gold belt from the tangled nest on her bedroom floor and turned to Denise. “Give away or throw away?”

  Her friend looked up and squinted. “Hmmm. Circa nineteen eighty-eight… nice buckle… it could work.”

  “Then I’m adding it to your pile.” Kat tossed it on the growing mound of clothes that were either too small or too hip for her.

  “Ooh, I’ve never seen you wear these.” Denise held up a pair of stretchy, black-and-white striped pants Kat had bought two years ago during a moment of insanity.

  “I wonder why.”

  “Can I have them?”

  “They’re yours.”

  “Gloria has these cool shoes���” Denise stopped, then bit her bottom lip.

  Kat shrugged. “Denise, it’s okay. You should have told me earlier.”

  Her friend took a deep breath. “I didn’t know how to tell you without you thinking that I’ve been your friend all this time because I had a crush on you or something.”

  Surprise and embarrassment jolted Kat, stilling her movements. “That thought hasn’t entered my mind.”

  “Not that I don’t think you’re attractive,” Denise added, “it’s just that I don’t find you attractive.”

  “Thanks… I think.”

  Denise threw up her hands. “Now I’ve really made a mess of things���which is why I didn’t tell you in the first place.”

  “Relax,” she urged her friend with a laugh. “I know what you meant. Are you going to help me sort these clothes or not?”

  Denise nodded and smiled.

  Kat sighed in relief, glad the awkwardness had passed. She certainly had no right to pass judgment on Denise’s love life, considering the fact that her own was a case study in insanity. She inspected a dress two sizes too small that still had the tags on it���inspiration for the cabbage soup diet, January 2007. “One of these days, I’m going to lose weight.”

  Her friend scoffed. “You have a big bone structure.”

  “A big bone structure? Denise, bones do not spread across the front of a chair when you sit down.”

  “So you’ve got curves���you look great.” A naughty expression crossed Denise’s face. “James Donovan seems to agree with me.”

  Kat’s heart contracted. “Don’t go there.” She’d managed to go nearly thirty seconds without thinking about him and the fact that he was leaving tonight.

  “I can’t believe you’re not spending every minute with him until he boards that plane.”

  “He’s spending the morning wit
h Detective Tenner, and I had things to do here.” Kat tried to force lightness into her voice. “He said he might stop by on his way to the airport.”

  “Well,” Denise said, adopting an innocent look, “that should give you time to recover from last night���or is he a morning man?”

  Kat shook her finger at her friend. “Nice try, but I neither confirm nor deny that I had relations with Mr. Donovan.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Kat, you’re walking bowlegged.”

  “Denise!”

  “So does he wear his holster to bed?”

  Kat laughed. “You’re nuts.”

  “Oh, come on, Pussy-Kat, what’s he like?”

  Folding a T-shirt with slow, precise movements, Kat savored the images of James’s lovemaking, all of them bundled tightly in her heart. She couldn’t explain it, but she was afraid if she shared them with someone, the images might escape. The day would come when she would be eager to exorcise the memories, but for now, she wanted to keep them locked away. “Let’s just say he’s a perfect gentleman.”

  Denise frowned. “Oh, that’s too bad. Do you think you’ll see him after he leaves San Francisco?”

  Kat shook her head, now accustomed to the pang of longing she felt every time she thought of the future. “No.”

  Denise walked over and gave Kat’s shoulders a comforting squeeze. “You never know���he could show up some day with roses and a ring.” She frowned in thought. “So would that make you Mrs. Agent James Donovan?”

  Kat shook her head, smiling sadly. “Even if there were such a title, I don’t think the position is available, and I’m not so sure I’d want it anyway.”

  “Really? God, Kat, I can tell you’re crazy about the man���you wouldn’t marry him?”

  Pursing her lips, she struggled to put her jumbled feelings into words. “Being with James is so powerful, it’s almost overwhelming, and a little scary.”

  “Wow.”

  “And as G-rated as it sounds, I want a stable man who is just as crazy about me and who could see himself being a father someday.”