THE PRINCESS AND THE P.I.

by Donna Sterling

  How did his assignment from Hattie fit into the picture?

  And why hadn't those photos been published? I never meant to hurt you, he'd said. I didn't know you then.

  She'd been so sure of him, back at his cabin. She'd trusted him implicitly. Could she have been that wrong?

  Her head pounded with troubling questions; her heart spun with hopes, doubts and fears. But one truth gradually emerged as all important: she had to trust in her own judgment.

  She would do whatever it took to find the answers to her questions.

  Before she set out to do so, however, she summoned her uncle for another brief chat. "Uncle Edgar, am I to understand that you hired Tyce Walker to follow me because you were worried about my safety?"

  Though he flushed a subtle shade of red, he swore that her safety had been first and foremost in his mind.

  "Then I'd say Tyce Walker has done an excellent job, wouldn't you?"

  Nonplussed, he pursed his lips and looked as if he'd like to argue. He couldn't, of course.

  "Pull whatever strings are necessary to get justice for his friend Joe," Claire instructed. "New evidence has been found that must be considered."

  "But—"

  "If there's a problem, I'll look into the matter myself. I intend to support the politicians of my choice financially, anyway. Might as well learn the characters of the ones in office now, right?"

  He assured her he'd have someone look into Joe's case immediately.

  "Oh, and Uncle Edgar… Don't ever have me followed again."

  Curious faces peered out of office windows as the stretch limousine pulled into the parking lot beside the old brick building that housed the Global Gazette. Ensconced behind the heavily tinted windows in the very back of the limo, Claire gave instructions to her driver.

  She had no intention of walking into the lion's den, or allowing Hattie Pitts too much time to prepare for her visit.

  Per her instructions, her driver dialed a cell phone and informed the party at the other end that he was calling from the parking lot. His employer wished to see Ms. Hattie Pitts—alone. Now. He then hung up.

  It didn't take long for a barrel-chested young man wearing a security uniform and carrying a handheld radio to emerge from the building, approach the limo and tap on the driver's window.

  The driver lowered the window, but only to his eye level.

  "You the ones here to see Hattie Pitts?" the security officer asked.

  "Yes," the chauffeur replied. "Tell her we won't wait long."

  With a glance toward the back of the limo—a glance that could reveal nothing about the occupant behind the tinted windows—he asked, "Who should I say is here?"

  The chauffeur, a middle-aged man with Old World arrogance, replied coolly, "You may say whomever you'd like."

  The young guard flushed, muttered something into his handheld radio, then replied, "Can't see her unless you give a name."

  "Very well." The driver raised his window and started up the engine.

  The limo hadn't moved but a couple yards when the security officer thumped on the fender, yelling, "Hey! Wait a minute." With the engine idling, the chauffeur lowered the window again and merely gazed at the irate guard. Grudgingly, the guard muttered, "She says she'll be right down. But there better not be any funny business. I've got your plate number, pal."

  Claire had suspected that Hattie Pitts's curiosity might overrule other considerations.

  Within moments, a petite older woman emerged from the building and walked with a no-nonsense briskness toward the limo, her eyes shaded by heavy black sunglasses, a cigarette protruding from the side of her mouth. Her short black-and-gray hair stuck up in disorderly tufts, and her brown pantsuit looked as if she'd slept in it. She didn't waste time approaching the driver, but went directly to the back and rapped on the window.

  With a touch of a button, Claire lowered the tinted glass, bringing the woman's gracelessly aging face into clear view—at least, what she could see of it around the sunglasses. "Are you Hattie Pitts?"

  The woman blatantly gaped openmouthed at Claire, her cigarette precariously hanging on her bottom lip. "Well, if this don't beat all." Biting down on the cigarette, she said in a gravelly voice, "Yeah, I'm Hattie. What d'ya want?"

  "If you're interested in knowing," Claire replied in her most autocratic tone, "get in, Ms. Pitts."

  Hattie promptly waved her glowering security guard away, opened the door and slid in. Claire raised the tinted window and gave her driver a nod. The limo pulled smoothly out of the parking lot and into the gridlocked streets of Los Angeles. At another touch of a button, a Plexiglas partition hummed into place to separate Claire and her guest from the driver.

  "To what do I owe the honor, Princess?"

  Holding out her hand, Claire demanded, "Give me your glasses, please."

  Hattie's graying brows shot up above the heavy black frames. "You want my glasses?"

  "Immediately."

  With the hint of a grudging smile, Hattie whisked off her glasses and plunked them into Claire's waiting palm.

  Just as she'd suspected, they felt a little too heavy. No doubt they'd been loaded with a film cartridge. Slipping them into her purse, Claire murmured, "You are a cagey one, aren't you?"

  "I'll take that as a compliment." Hattie assessed her with keen, dark, squinty eyes. The squint, Claire deduced, was probably caused by the smoke from her cigarette. She'd taken a long, hard draw and now exhaled an acrid haze.

  "Don't happen to have a stocked bar in this limo, do you?" she asked. "Wouldn't mind a stiff one right about now."

  "Sorry, no bar." As the limousine inched its way through downtown traffic, Claire added, "And please … lose the cigarette."

  Her passenger scowled as she stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray. "You have more in common with T.K. than I thought."

  The mention of "T.K." caused an extra-hard thumping in Claire's heart. Hattie had addressed Tyce as "T.K." in her note. The very thought of him infused Claire with an astounding ache. "Why haven't those photos of me been published?"

  "Hmm. Celebrities usually ask why I did publish photos, not why I didn't." She lounged back against the seat as leisurely as a queen holding court, yet studied Claire with intense interest. "T.K.'s got 'em."

  "Tyce has them? All of them?"

  "Every last one. Even the negatives."

  "Why?"

  "He took 'em, that's why. Broke into my office and stole everything I had on you. Should have known he'd do something like that," she grumbled. "Forgot how good he was at breaking and entering."

  Claire bit back a sharp retort about honor among thieves. As far as she was concerned, the tabloid had stolen her privacy to take the pictures in the first place. Turnabout's fair play. She was glad Tyce had stolen them. At least, she thought she was. Then again… "What's he going to do with them?"

  "Knowing T.K., nothing worthwhile. I had to blackmail him into taking them in the first place."

  "Blackmail!"

  "So to speak. I knew he had inside contacts with your uncle, and figured he might have access to information I couldn't get. Even if he didn't have inside info, I knew he'd find you quicker than anybody. So I bribed him with the only clues I did have about your disappearance … and threatened to give them to one of my reporters if he didn't take my case." Hattie shrugged. "A management technique worth learning, Princess. Bribery with a hint of blackmail."

  The woman might be unscrupulous, thought Claire, but at least she admitted it. "How did you know which flight I was taking and what my assumed name was going to be?"

  "Secrets of the trade."

  Vexed, Claire narrowed her eyes. "Did someone in my household spy for you?"

  "I wasn't that lucky. Had to go high-tech."

  "High-tech? Some kind of electronic surveillance?"

  "You don't really think I'd admit to that, do you?"

  Thoroughly incensed that she'd been spied upon, Claire sucked in an angry breath, her nostrils flaring
. Her voice shook slightly as she inquired, "Did Tyce help you with that, too?"

  "Hell, no. Don't ask me why, but he's real touchy when it comes to you. Always has been. He broke a photographer's telescopic lens to keep him from taking candid shots of you through a hotel window." Hattie shook her head disparagingly. "I couldn't imagine what had gotten into that boy."

  "When was that?" she asked, highly curious. She hadn't known he'd even seen her, at least in person, before they'd met.

  "The night before your debutante ball."

  "My debutante ball! That was years ago."

  "Seven, to be exact. He quit my tabloid that night, and ratted on his fellow journalists, too. Told your uncle about every stakeout position he knew. That's how he first got hooked up with your uncle."

  Revitalizing hope pumped through Claire, and she had to remind herself that not everything Hattie Pitts told her could be trusted. But the need to dig into Tyce's motivations drove her like a compulsion. "You hired Tyce to find me, follow me and take pictures, right?"

  Hattie nodded.

  "Then why did he pose as my bodyguard? He could have simply tailed me like any other private investigator would have."

  A ponderous look came over Hattie's weathered face. "Now there's a good question. Not that it wasn't a splendid ploy. If he had worked it right, we could have gotten some great shots."

  Claire stiffened.

  Hattie's eyes twinkled unapologetically. "The point is, he didn't. Not one inside photo out of the whole bunch. The only really good ones we got were taken by Sam. And we had to steal the cartridge out of T.K.'s glasses just to get the ones he did take." Looking somewhat disgusted, she grumbled, "When I saw the two of you on that dance floor, I knew he wouldn't be giving me them photos."

  A blush warmed Claire's cheeks. "How could you know that?"

  Hattie merely uttered a gruff "Ha," as if she had asked a stupid question.

  Claire gripped the armrest and looked away, fighting an urge to shake the woman.

  "Let's go back to your earlier question." Hat-tie's face didn't come anywhere near softening, but it somehow lost its harder edges. "There's only one reason I can think of that T.K. posed as your bodyguard. Well, two, actually. The most obvious is to guard you. He's always been the protective sort, and you were definitely in need of protecting. The second reason … well…" She paused, and one end of her mouth kicked up. "I think he made the most of a good opportunity."

  Perplexed, Claire held out her hands. "To do what?"

  "To be close to you."

  Claire stared at her as hope rushed to her head.

  Was she crazy to think that this hard-nosed tabloid reporter could possibly have true insight into Tyce's feelings? Afraid of the hope that had kindled in her, she remarked hesitantly, "You seem to know Tyce pretty well."

  "As well as anyone does, I guess. I took him in from the streets when he was sixteen. He'd been headed for serious trouble. It was either me or juvenile detention. He chose me."

  Curious, Claire couldn't help but ask, "You call him T.K. What's his middle name?"

  "Don't know that he has one."

  "Then why—"

  "My grandfather's name was Theodore Keene, but everyone called him T.K." Hattie's voice softened, almost beyond recognition. "Thought I'd pass down the family name."

  Claire's gaze dropped to her hands in her lap. Hattie's relationship to Tyce had become quite clear. She was the closest he had to a mother.

  Hattie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her rumpled suit jacket and tapped one from the pack. "I think I know the question you really want answered, Princess, and it doesn't have anything to do with me." She stuck a cigarette into her mouth and squinted at Claire. "It has to do with T.K. and how he feels about you. Problem is, plain talk won't prove a damn thing to you." Flicking a lighter into flame, she tilted her face, lit her cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Looks like we're going to have to go high-tech."

  * * *

  11

  « ^

  The call, which Tyce had received a week ago, had come as a complete shock. Joe's case would be reexamined. Edgar Richmond had lived up to his promise after all. Tyce couldn't imagine why. Edgar had told him in no uncertain terms that hell would freeze over before he'd help Joe

  Something had changed his mind.

  Tyce had immediately hired a high-priced attorney to present the evidence he'd found on Joe's behalf. The second shock came at the speed in which the wheels of justice finally turned. By the end of the week, a judge had overturned the conviction.

  Joe would be released from prison next Tuesday.

  The gut-wrenching relief that the announcement brought Tyce was inherently bittersweet. Joe would finally have his freedom—thank God!—but he'd wasted fourteen years of his life in a prison cell.

  The highs and lows left Tyce feeling more or less drained.

  He'd decided to take Joe to his cabin in Ohio and let him ease into society at a slower pace than he'd find in Los Angeles. Which meant, of course, that they'd be leaving Los Angeles in a few days' time.

  Why, wondered Tyce, should that bother him? This little rented house near his L.A. office never had appealed to him much, especially in the stifling heat of early July, when the smog hung low over the crowded urban streets. Yet, he hated to leave.

  Settling down on the sofa wearing only an old pair of cutoffs, he set an icy cola on the table beside him and tried to concentrate on the televised ball game instead of his reason for wanting to stay.

  It made no sense.

  Just because she lived in L.A. didn't mean he'd bump into her on a street corner or at a local grocery store. He had a better chance of finding a designer suit in a Value Village. Even if he camped out on her lawn, chances were he wouldn't see her. According to his inside sources, Claire barely left her private suite within her Beverly Hills mansion, let alone stepped foot outside it. Yet he had this compulsion to stay close at hand.

  She doesn't need you anymore. She doesn't want you.

  But, God help him, he wanted her. He couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, for wanting her. Everywhere he looked, he saw her face, her eyes, her smile. Every time he closed his eyes, the memory of her kiss branded him again with its heat.

  She probably despised him now. When she'd needed someone to trust, he had double-crossed her. When she'd run away to find privacy, he had invaded it. If that weren't bad enough, he'd made love to her under a false pretext. She had no reason on earth to forgive him.

  He would certainly never forgive himself. He'd hurt her more deeply than the stalker had. He knew this because he knew the way she loved—with her whole heart and soul.

  He snatched up the remote control and changed the television channel. The ball game wasn't helping. Maybe the evening movie would distract him. No, hell no … a love scene! He couldn't take that. How about the news? Lord, that could be worse. With his luck, they'd show her picture.

  Just as he settled for a documentary about African iguanas, the doorbell rang. As much as he needed a distraction, he didn't want to answer it. The only person he wanted to see right now wouldn't be standing at his door.

  The bell persisted, and with a soft curse, he trudged across the living room to answer it. Probably one of his investigators anxious to discuss a case.

  He opened the door to find Hattie with a six-pack of beer in one hand, a bag of pretzels in the other, and a cigarette in her mouth. "Came to watch the ball game," she muttered as she pushed her way past him and into the living room.

  "I'm not watching the ball game, Hattie," he said, remaining at the door, holding it open in hopes that she'd go back through it. "And I'm not in the mood for company."

  She set the six-pack and pretzels down on a side table, then plopped herself into the armchair nearest the ashtray he always kept for her. "Okay, we won't watch the ball game. How about a beer?"

  "No, thanks." Reluctantly he closed the door and joined her in the living room. "If you think you're going to talk me into giving you tho
se photos of Claire Richmond," he warned, settling down onto the sofa, "you're wasting your time."

  She leaned forward in the chair, and he recognized the glint in her eyes. Something big was up. "I've been offered good money for those photos, T.K. Eight million dollars."

  "Eight million! By whom?"

  "A private individual—not a tabloid."

  "The photos aren't for sale."

  "This individual is willing to sign an agreement that they won't be published anywhere."

  He frowned. "Why does this individual want them, then?"

  "What difference does that make? Think about it, T.K. Eight million dollars, split down the middle, you and me."

  "Forget it."

  "Okay, you get sixty percent, I get forty."

  "I'm not negotiating."

  "Take it all, then. The whole eight million. I'll settle for the first year's interest."

  "The photos are gone, Hattie. Gone. I burned them."

  Silence descended between them. Tyce felt as if her gaze were examining his soul. "Oh, c'mon, T.K.," she finally chided, her voice unusually quiet. "We both know you didn't burn them."

  He stared at her, perplexed by the sudden thickness in his throat. He hadn't destroyed the photos.

  "You didn't burn them," she said gently, "because they're of her."

  He sucked in a deep breath, rested his elbows on his outspread knees and rubbed his hands wearily over his face. He hated it when she was right. "You can't have the photos, Hattie," he told her in a bleak, hoarse voice. "For any price. Ever."

  She leisurely smoked her cigarette and watched him. "Why not?"

  Because they're all I have left of her. He swallowed the words to stop himself from saying them. "I don't want to take the chance that the photos will end up in some newspaper."

  "So what if they do? That's why we took them, ain't it?"

  "I won't do that to Claire. She'd be hurt all over again." Quietly, fervently, he added, "And I'd rather cut my heart out."