Double Entendre

by Heather Graham

  Colleen leaned against his chest, trembling, smiling. “You’ll do in a pinch,” she told him.

  “In a pinch?”

  “For a lifetime?” Colleen whispered.

  He smiled at her, trying to dust the snow from her face. Her eyes were radiant, her face pale and delicate and lifted to his with wistfulness and love. He shuddered, realizing how much he cherished her, that she was his life and had been his life even when they were apart.

  “For a lifetime. Just try to get rid of me again!” he growled softly.

  “Never,” she promised.

  * * *

  Two hours later they were all at Rudy Holfer’s schloss, bathed and dry, sitting before a roaring fire and sipping blueberry schnapps. Carly was there, shaking his head each time he thought of how close his prized pair had come to being a victim of Sandy’s vengeance, smiling each time he realized that they were back together.

  Ben was there, too, enjoying the schloss, the fire and the schnapps. He was very quiet, his eyes darting back and forth, absorbing everything around him.

  Wilhelm stood by the fire, attending to his father.

  And Rudy Holfer—eighty if he was a day, but sharp and keen of wit and hearing—sat in a wheelchair, his legs covered by an immense plaid blanket. Arthritis had crippled him. The strength in Wilhelm’s face had come from his father. Lined and weathered, Rudy’s was still an arresting face, with fierce blue eyes and character etched in by years of reflection and sorrow.

  “I tried so hard to reach you without alarming you further,” he said sadly. His thin hands shook slightly in his lap. “So very hard, yet…” He sighed, and Wilhelm’s hand moved to his shoulder. “I had no way to assure you that it could not be me.” His English was heavily accented, but fluent and easy. “Who would have suspected that Tyrell’s granddaughter…?”

  He raised his hands. “Those accursed diamonds have caused so many deaths! Would to God that we had never seen them, never heard of them! Would to God that I could have done something in this wretched life to atone for that crime!”

  Colleen slid from the sofa to go to him, taking one of his trembling hands. “Herr Holfer, your determination to find the truth saved my life. Wilhelm helped to save both my husband and me tonight. I’m not sure what that’s worth compared with the past, but it is very precious to me, and I am very grateful. I’m sorry that we condemned you for so long without anything to go on but suspicion.”

  He smiled and drew a finger along her cheek. “Ah, but that is understandable, is it not? When one looks at that war, it is natural for the German to be the villain, ja?”

  She felt herself color. Behind her Bret laughed ruefully. “Ja,” he admitted to Rudy.

  “Well, perhaps we must bear the blame until all of my generation are gone. We were to blame. We fell for the promise of glory given to us by a madman.” He stared at Colleen again with eyes remarkably like his son’s. “It was a bad war, but all war is bad. There has not been a good war fought yet. War destroys youth and beauty, mows men down like flowers. But you must believe that we were not all bad men. We were soldiers, fighting for a crushed land. A land to which I may never return. Those diamonds…” His eyes grew rheumy with reflection, and he shrugged. “They were transferring me to the SS. I knew what the SS did, but I did not know how to combat it. I was through with war at that point. Through with the promises, through with the madman pulling our strings. The diamonds were a new promise, a promise of escape. I was tired of watching a storm of death I could not combat. For a few moments there the four of us proved that little men do not fight wars. We had no war between us. Why would I wish the death of a stranger? That is the cause of war, my friends. Strangers kill strangers. And when it is all over, they are allowed to be friends. For that one day in my life—a day that proved that enemies are created, not born—we all paid the penalty for a lifetime. There is no forgiveness. I hope only to make you understand that I wished none of the horror.”

  “Herr Holfer,” Colleen said, “good people do bad things. The world is not black and white. I believe you meant no harm.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I did intend to steal the diamonds. But I meant to be a thief, not a murderer.”

  “Father, they know that,” Wilhelm told him.

  “And we are eternally grateful,” Bret added. “You persisted, no matter how we condemned and fought you.” His voice was husky. Colleen turned back to him and caught his eyes on her, warm and glittering in the firelight.

  Rudy looked at Carly. “You will have a fine story for your magazine, I believe. The truth. I will do anything that I can to assist you with understanding the past.”

  “Thank you,” Carly said. “Yes, it will be a fine story.”

  “Father, you will sleep now,” Wilhelm instructed him.

  Rudy Holfer nodded. “Tyrell, Rutger, MacHowell and soon myself. We will be all gone. It will be history then.”

  “You mustn’t say that!” Colleen protested. “You’ve got years ahead of you.”

  Holfer shook his head. “My heart is weak, and it is weary, too. Forty years of guilt is too much to bear. There is this life. There is the next. When it is time, I will be ready.” He winked. “But we will get your story done first. Now, Guten Nacht!”

  Wilhelm nodded to them all as he began to push his father from the parlor. “Please, you will make yourselves comfortable? I will see that father gets to bed.”

  “Yes, yes, thanks,” Bret replied, standing. But before Wilhelm could leave, Bret caught his shoulder. The German turned to him, and their eyes met. “I mean… thanks.”

  Wilhelm studied Bret, smiled and nodded, then left.

  Bret walked back to Colleen, who was still in front of the fire. His arms enveloped her, and they embraced tightly. “I’ll never be able to thank him enough,” he whispered huskily.

  Carly cleared his throat. “Ben, let’s go up to bed, shall we.”

  Ben sighed unhappily. “For all there is a great ending! Except for me! Now you will send me back, and I will spend my days in a taxi cab again.”

  Carly chuckled. “What do you say, Bret? The boy seems to have a penchant for the States. Think we could manage to get him a job and work on the immigration department?”

  “Sure, we can try,” Bret said.

  Ben whooped with pleasure. He hugged Bret and Colleen together, then hugged Carly so fiercely that he cried out.

  “My dear boy, if you behave this way, I won’t survive to give you honest employment! Now, let’s leave these two alone.”

  Colleen and Bret noticed only vaguely when the other two left. They were too busy staring at one another, smiling. Bret slipped an arm about her, bringing them both down to the floor. The fire crackled around them; its warmth enveloped them.

  Colleen touched her knuckles to his cheek, suddenly frowning. “Bret, don’t ever leave me again.” He started to speak, but she shushed him with a finger on his lips. “I know you’ll have to go sometimes, just like I’ll have to go sometimes. We’re both still journalists. What I mean is…whatever happens, whether we’re angry, hurt or worried, please, let’s make sure we discuss it, that we never part the way we did before.”

  He caught the finger against his lip and kissed it tenderly. Then his teeth grazed over it, sending a delicious shiver of arousal streaking through her.

  “Whither thou goest, I will follow,” he teased her, but then he grew serious, leaning beside her and stroking her cheek while he warmed her with the loving heat of his eyes. “Colleen, I’ve spoken to Carly. We’re going to try like hell to work as a team. There are going to be some bad situations we won’t be able to avoid, but we’re both going to make promises. Neither one of us is going to run around jeopardizing our lives again.” He bent down to kiss her and spoke right above her lips in a husky tremor. “Tonight cost me years off my life! Our next story is going to be on the space program, and we’re going to report it from the ground.”

  Colleen smiled, arching her body against his and running her fingers
through his hair. “I’m not so sure about remaining on the ground.”

  “What?” he demanded with a frown.

  “I feel ten feet above it already, McAllistair!” she said with a low growl. “I’m not invited to stay in a castle that often. Especially not with an incredibly sexy pseudohero who just happens to be my husband. Will you please take me upstairs and make love to this body you claim to cherish so thoroughly?”

  He laughed and rose, pulling her to her feet and into his arms. “Claim to cherish! Just wait till you see how well I can cherish!”

  “I am waiting. I have eternal faith.”

  Bret started from the room, striding swiftly toward the great staircase. He paused only once. “Pseudohero?”

  “Perfect hero,” Colleen purred softly.

  “Thanks. That’s much better. That will get you ravished straight through to morning.” He lowered his head for a quick kiss that became longer. When they broke apart, breathless and laughing, he rephrased his statement.

  “That, Mrs. McAllistair, will get you divinely ravished, absolutely cherished and deeply, deeply loved—for a lifetime.”

  “That’s all I’m demanding. And everything I promise to give in return.”

  Bret grinned, then hugged her closer and continued quickly up the staircase, two steps at a time.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for a special preview of the next thrilling novel

  in the New York Confidential series,

  A PERFECT OBSESSION

  Coming soon from

  New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham

  and MIRA Books

  Join FBI agent Craig Frasier and criminal psychologist Keiran Finnegan as they track a madman who is obsessed with perfect beauty.

  A serial killer is striking a little too close to home

  In the second novel in the New York Confidential series,

  A PERFECT OBSESSION

  Coming soon from

  New York Times bestselling author Heather Graham

  and MIRA Books.

  A Perfect Obsession

  Heather Graham

  Chapter 1

  “Horrible! Oh, God, horrible—tragic!” John Shaw said, shaking his head with a dazed look as he sat on his bar stool at Finnegan’s Pub.

  Kieran nodded sympathetically. Construction crews had found the old graves when they were working on the foundations at the hot new downtown venue, Le Club Vampyre.

  Anthropologists found the new body among the old graves the next day.

  It wasn’t just any body.

  It was the body of supermodel Jeannette Gilbert.

  Finding the old graves wasn’t much of a shock—not in New York City, and not in a building that was close to two centuries old. The structure that housed Club Le Vampyre was a deconsecrated Episcopal Church. The church’s congregation had moved to a facility it had purchased from the Catholic Church—whose congregation was now in a sparkling new basilica over on Park Avenue. While many had bemoaned the fact that such a venerable old institution had been turned into an establishment for those into sex, drugs, and rock and roll, life—and business—went on.

  And with life going on….

  Well, work on the building’s foundations went on, too.

  It was while investigators were still being called in following the discovery of the newly deceased body—moments before it hit the news—that Kieran Finnegan learned about it, and that was because she was helping out at their family establishment, Finnegan’s on Broadway. Like the old church/nightclub behind it, Finnegan’s dated back to just before the Civil War, and had been a pub for most of those years. Since it was geographically the closest establishment to the church with liquor, it had apparently seemed the right place at that moment for Professor John Shaw. They’d barely opened; it was still morning, and it was a Friday, and Kieran was only there at that time because her bosses had decided on a day off following their participation in a lengthy trial. She’d just been down in the basement or cellar, fetching a few bottles of a vintage chardonnay for her brother, ordered specifically for a lunch that day, when John Shaw had caught her attention, desperate to talk.

  “I can’t tell you how excited I was, being called in as an expert on a find like that,” the professor told Kieran. “They both wanted me! They, I mean in Henry Willoughby, president of Preserve our Past, and Roger Gleason, owner and manager of the club. I was so honored. It was exciting to think of finding the old bodies—not the new body. But then…opening a decaying coffin and finding… Jeannette Gilbert! And the university was entirely behind me, allowing me the time to be at my site, giving me a chance to bring my grad students here. Oh, my God! I found her! Oh, it was….”

  John Shaw was shaking as he spoke. He was a man who’d seen all kinds of antiquated horrors, an expert in the past. He fit the stereotype of an academic, with his lean physique, his thatch of wild white hair, and his little gold-framed glasses. He held doctorate degrees in archeology and anthropology, and both science and history meant everything to him.

  Kieran realized that he’d been about to say once again that it was horrible, like nothing he’d ever experienced. He clearly realized that he was speaking about a recently living woman, adored by adolescent boys—and heterosexual males of all ages—a woman who was going to be deeply mourned.

  Jeannette Gilbert. Media princess. The model and actress had disappeared two weeks ago after the launch party for a new cosmetics line. Her agent and manager, Oswald Martin, had gone on the news, begging kidnappers for her safe return.

  At that time, no one knew if she actually had been kidnapped. One reporter speculated that she’d disappeared on purpose, determined to get away from the very man begging kidnappers for her release, her agent and manager, Oswald Martin.

  Kieran hadn’t really paid much attention; she’d assumed that the young woman—who’d been made famous by the same Oswald Martin—had just had enough of being adored and fawned over and told what to do at every move and decided to take a hiatus. Or it might have been some kind of publicity gig; her disappearance had certainly ruled the headlines. There were always tabloid pictures of Jeannette, dating this or that man, and then speculation in the same tabloids that her manager had furiously burst into a hotel room, sending Jeannette Gilbert’s latest lover—gold-digger, as Martin referred to any young man she dated—flying out the door.

  In the past few weeks the “celebrity” magazines had run rampant with rumors of a mystery man in her life. A secret love. Kieran knew that, but only because her twin brother, Kevin, was an actor—struggling his way into TV, movies, and theater. He read the tabloids avidly, telling Kieran that he was “reading between the lines,” and being up on what was going on was critical to his career. There were too many actors—even good ones!—out there and too few roles. Any edge was a good edge.

  While all the speculation had been going on, Kieran couldn’t help wondering if Jeannette’s secret lover had killed her—or if, maybe, her steel-handed manager had done so.

  Or—since this was New York City with a population in the millions—it was possible that some deranged person had murdered her, perhaps even someone who wasn’t clinically insane but mentally unstable. Perhaps this person felt that if she was relieved of her life, she’d be out of the misery caused by being such a beautiful, glittering star, always the focus of attention.

  It was fine to speculate when you really believed that someone was just pulling a major publicity stunt.

  Now, Kieran felt bad, of course. From what she knew now, it seemed evident that the woman had indeed been murdered.

  Not that she any of the facts other than that Jeannette had been found in the bowels of the earth in a nineteenth-century tomb, but it was unlikely that Jeannette Gilbert had crawled into an historic coffin in a lost catacomb to die of natural causes.

  “It was so horrible!” John Shaw repeated woefully. “When we found her, we just stared. One of my silly young grad students screamed, and she wasn’t the only
one. We called the police immediately. The club wasn’t open then, of course—except to us, those of us who were working. I was there for hours while they grilled me. And now…now, I need this!” His hand shook as he picked up his double-shot of single malt scotch to swallow in a gulp.

  He was usually a beer man. Ultra-lite.

  It was horrible, yes, as Shaw kept saying. But, of course, he realized he’d be in the news, interviewed for dozens of papers and magazines and television, as well.

  After all…

  He’d been the one to find Jeannette Gilbert, dead. In a coffin, in a deconsecrated church now turned into the Le Club Vampyre. Well, that was news.

  The pub would soon be buzzing, especially since it was on the other side of the block from Club Le Vampyre.

  The whole situation, aside from the grief of a young woman’s untimely death, was interesting to Kieran. In her “real” job, she worked as a psychologist and therapist for psychiatrists Bentley Fuller and Allison Miro during the week. But, like her brothers, she often filled in at the pub; it was kind of a home away from home for them all. The pub had been in the family—belonging to a distant great-great uncle—from the mid-nineteenth century. Her own parents were gone now, and that made the pub even more precious to her and her older brother, Declan, her twin, Kevin, and her “baby” brother, Daniel.

  So, while Declan actually managed the pub and made it his life’s work, she was employed by doctors Fuller and Miro, Kevin pursued his acting career, and Danny strove to become the city’s best tour guide. And they all spent a great deal of time at Finnegan’s.

  The tragic death of Jeannette Gilbert would soon have all their patrons talking about this latest outrage regarding Le Club Vampyre. They’d been talking about it now and then for six months, ever since the sale of the old church to Dark Doors Incorporated. The talk had become extremely glum when the club had opened a month ago. A club! Like that! In an old church!