After Midnight

by Diana Palmer

  She stopped dancing. The memories were painful. “Let’s sit down.”

  He restrained her. “Tell me.”

  “He didn’t want any part of me, Kane,” she said wearily. “He found me totally undesirable. So undesirable that I never had the nerve or the confidence to let another man that close. Until you came along,” she added bitterly, her green eyes accusing. “And look what happened.”

  “Yes,” he mused. “Look what happened,” he agreed, glancing back toward the dance floor. “You’re very sexy.”

  “You’re just looking for a good time.”

  “It wouldn’t be, for you,” he remarked.

  “I believe some women actually have a very easy time of it,” she countered.

  He thought about that and began to nod. “Yes, if you wanted me enough, you might.” He smiled slowly. “And you did. My God, you did, Nikki.”

  She dragged her eyes away. “I need to sit down.”

  “Thank your lucky stars that what you feel isn’t noticeable,” he said with dry humor.

  She cleared her throat, refusing to look at him as he escorted her off the floor and toward the refreshment table.

  Clayton and Bett were glaring at them. Kane didn’t even acknowledge Clayton. He lifted Nikki’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it with flair and seductive grace. He left her, striding back toward a livid Chris.

  “Did you have to embarrass me on the dance floor?” Clayton demanded petulantly. “You were practically devouring each other.”

  “We most certainly were not!” Nikki said. “We were talking.”

  “That’s a new name for it,” Bett mused. “He’s very attractive, but he does have a mistress, Nikki. I hardly think you’ll displace her. An acquaintance of mine says that she’s been with him since even before his wife was killed.”

  Nikki searched the other woman’s face. “He isn’t that sort of man.”

  Clayton was very still. “How do you know?”

  “I just do. I’m going to circulate, Clay. You’d better, too.”

  “Could you manage not to make love to my worst enemy on the dance floor for the rest of the evening?” he asked sarcastically.

  “It doesn’t help the campaign, you know, Nikki,” Bett added her piece.

  “Neither does slinging mud,” Nikki said flatly.

  She avoided Clayton and Bett for the rest of the evening, which was just as well. She’d made an enemy there, she thought, watching Bett cling to Clayton. And now Bett would have the inside track. She’d be able to influence Clayton all over again, just when Nikki had almost made him see the error of his ways. She regretted that Derrie had left. The younger woman had always been able to reason with him before Bett came along. But it was too late for that now. Mosby and Bett had spun a nice web around Clayton.

  Derrie was enjoying her new job, but she missed Clayton terribly. It had been like cutting out her heart to leave him. Every time he appeared on television, he had Bett with him. Her place in his life was obvious now. Not that Derrie could have competed, even so. She was a repressed prude, after all.

  She was leaving the office, on her way to catch the bus, just behind a junior aide to the candidate for whom she now worked. She watched him cross the next street over, and suddenly she spotted Senator Torrance’s man, Haralson, standing on the curb talking to a dark man in an even darker suit, wearing sunglasses. Haralson didn’t see Derrie, who’d come out the side door. He was watching Curt Morgan, Sam Hewett’s junior legislative counsel, and when the aide got past him, Haralson said something to his companion and gestured toward Curt’s retreating back. The man nodded and began walking. There was a stealth in what they were doing that disturbed Derrie.

  Haralson knew her on sight, but the other man wouldn’t. She waited for Haralson to get into a cab and for it to drive away. Then she dashed down the street after the mysterious man.

  He was trailing someone. She knew it instinctively. Clutching her purse close, she tried to remember all the things she’d heard and read about following people. Don’t be seen was number one. Get lost if you’re discovered was number two. Somewhere after that, there were other rules of thumb that she’d already forgotten.

  She pushed back her blond hair and moved a little closer, pretending to be looking for an address. She held an old grocery list from her coat pocket in her hand and pretended to compare it with street numbers. Meanwhile, she was moving right along with the crowd, behind the strange man who went from one street to another, waiting for traffic lights to change.

  He had an odd walk. He seemed to glide as he went along, as if he were used to long distances and knew how to navigate them with the least effort. He looked foreign. She wondered if he was.

  At the next corner, just when she thought she was getting close, she lost him.

  She stopped looking at the paper in her hand and began looking all around, her blue eyes curious and wary. The wind blew her soft blond hair from its bun in wisps around her oval face, and she felt exposed, standing there in her close-fitting pale gray suit and white blouse.

  She was attracting attention, too, worse luck. Well, she’d lost him. But it was very curious. Why would Haralson have someone following a man who worked for her new boss?

  Chapter Thirteen

  Derrie made a mental note that she’d have to tell Sam Hewett about the strange occurrence. She wondered if Clayton was behind the snooping. She’d seen him stoop pretty low lately. But why would he be interested in the comings and goings of Sam’s staff?

  She walked back the way she’d come, toward the bus stop. As she got on the bus, she felt a strange tingling at the back of her neck. She laughed at her own suspicious nature. She’d been watching too many detective shows.

  But when she got off at her apartment house, she had the same odd feeling. She couldn’t shake it. As she started to use her key in the apartment building door, she suddenly turned and came face-to-face with the dark man in the suit. At close range, he was very tall and fit, and there was something quite intimidating in the untamed look of him. Her first thought, uncoordinated, was that he might be a mugger. She dropped the key and fell back against the door, ready to defend herself if she had to.

  “Don’t scream,” he cautioned.

  He sounded whimsical. She stilled. “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because I don’t want to have to show my credentials to a police officer. I’m supposed to be on vacation.” He bent and picked up the key, handing it to her. “Here. I need to talk to you.”

  “You were with Haralson,” she said, accusingly. “I won’t tell you anything. I don’t work for Clayton Seymour anymore.”

  “Neither do I, in the sense you mean.” He lifted his hand and took off the dark glasses. His eyes were large and very black, like coal. The shape of his face up close was clearly American Indian. She stared at him, fascinated and realized he must be the mysterious stranger her niece Phoebe had encountered recently.

  “Yes, I’m a Native American,” he said with exaggerated patience, as if he’d grown weary of repeating it. “I don’t have a tomahawk. I don’t speak Sioux. I never hunted buffalo in my life. I don’t take scalps except on Saturday. This is Friday.”

  She smiled. She liked him. “Okay. Do you drink coffee?”

  “Only if I can’t get firewater or peyote…”

  “Will you stop?” she muttered. “Honest to goodness, you’d think I didn’t even know what an Indian was.”

  “Native American. Indigenous aborigine, if you prefer,” he said smoothly. “Do you have many in South Carolina?”

  “I don’t think we have any. North Carolina has some Cherokee people.” She glanced back at him. “I really don’t want to do the laundry and wash dishes. Do you take prisoners?” she asked hopefully.

  “Sorry.”

  She sighed with resignation. “You win some, you lose some,” she said.

  She led him into the small apartment. There was a framed photo of Clayton, in color, smiling at her from th
e mantel. She turned it facedown. “Traitor,” she muttered at it, and went to make coffee. She felt proud of herself for doing that until she realized that she’d only put it back up later. She was such a wimp.

  “Still mad at your ex-boss?” he asked, leaning against the door to watch her.

  “Yes,” she said, glancing back at him. He seemed to know all about the reason Clayton was her ex-boss. But then Phoebe had told her that he was a government agent. She had to hide a smile, remembering the odd light in her usually calm niece’s eyes.

  “Make yourself at home while I fix the coffee,” she invited.

  He smiled, taking her at her word. He slid off his jacket, tossed it on the sofa, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and took the rawhide tie out of his ponytail. His thick, jet-black hair fell into clean, graceful strands all around his shoulders.

  “You said to make myself at home,” he pointed out. “This is how I relax at home.”

  Derrie paused with the coffeepot in one hand, laughing. “Fair enough. I’ve never seen hair like yours,” she said. “It’s very thick, isn’t it? Why do you wear it in a ponytail?”

  “Because people stare less,” he said simply.

  “Sorry,” she said with a rueful smile. “But it suits you.” She averted her eyes away from his handsome face and the powerful lines of his tall, muscular body. She could see why Phoebe was attracted to him. If Derrie hadn’t been crazy about her ex-boss, who knew how she might have felt?

  “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said. “I’m used to women throwing themselves at me because of my hair.”

  She laughed. “Do they?” She spooned coffee into the crinkly paper lining of the filter cup and inserted it in the coffeemaker. She missed it the first time, muttered, and finally maneuvered it into the slots. She glanced back at him. “It must be terrible for you sometimes, though, all kidding aside,” she said.

  “What, trying to act white?” he asked bluntly.

  “Yes.” She started the coffeemaker and busied herself getting down cups and saucers and put them neatly beside the coffeemaker. “What do you do, when you aren’t tracking down people?” she asked, just to see how much he’d tell her.

  “I belong to the Justice Department.”

  She whistled, glancing back at him. “Weren’t you just in a movie with Val Kilmer?” she teased.

  “Nope, I’m not FBI.”

  That was interesting, she thought, because he’d told Phoebe he was. “You look like a younger version of him. He’s very handsome.”

  “I look like a younger version of Val Kilmer?” he asked, aghast.

  “You look like a younger version of Graham Greene, who is one of my favorite actors,” she replied.

  He liked the face and the sense of humor. She reminded him of the archaeology student he’d met, but she was older and more mature. He’d always been drawn to blondes, although he fought the attraction these days; fiercely when he’d caught himself staring at the archaeology student. Besides, he was here on business.

  He pursed his lips. “I don’t know if I like smart-mouthed blondes or not,” he said, thinking aloud.

  She poured coffee into cups. “We’re even. I’m not at all sure that I like indigenous aborigines.” She sat down and motioned him into a chair. He turned it around and straddled it, his hand idly smoothing over the coffee cup. It was hot.

  “Why were you watching Sam’s aide?” she asked.

  He traced around the rim of the coffee cup. He had long fingers, flat-nailed, very dark and quite immaculate. Her eyes followed the movement. “Haralson asked me to. He’s a casual friend of mine.”

  “That isn’t a reason, really.”

  He lifted his dark eyes to hers. The humor was gone. He was serious. “Can you keep a secret, or are you too much in love with Clayton Seymour to keep things from him?”

  She felt her breath catch “What do you know about me?”

  “I did a check on Seymour. You’re one of his executive administrative people, so naturally you came under scrutiny. Your name is Deirdre Alexandra Marie Keller, but you’re called Derrie. You have a degree in political science with a minor in sociology. You worked for Seymour from the time you graduated high school all the way through college, attending classes at odd times and different colleges when you could until you got your degree, a little later than your old classmates. You lived in Washington until just recently, and now you’ve been named executive administrative assistant to Sam Hewett. Not only that,” he added with a curious smile, “but for the first time your intellectual capability is actually being fully utilized.”

  She flushed and averted her eyes to her coffee cup. She didn’t like being reminded that Clayton had never thought her capable of much besides designating tasks to secretarial staff.

  “My, what one can learn about people.”

  “My, yes,” he mocked. “Come on. Can I trust you or not?”

  She met his eyes. “I don’t carry tales. Not even for men I’ve been in…been fond of,” she amended.

  “Which says a lot. Okay, here’s the lowdown. Haralson thinks he has me in his pocket. He’s letting a lot of things slip that he’s going to regret. One of them is that Curt Morgan is directly connected to Senator Mosby Torrance, and is feeding him secret information about Hewett’s campaign to be passed on to Haralson.”

  “Oh, my God!” She was aghast.

  “What do you know about the boy?”

  “Nothing,” she stammered. She pushed back her blond hair. “Well, not much,” she amended. “He’s very handsome, and rather nice. He left a paid position as a senate intern to work for Sam’s campaign. He came highly recommended…”

  “By whom?”

  She stared at him. “I don’t know by whom. Mr. Hewett said he was. I didn’t double-check because I didn’t have a reason to.” She frowned. “Listen, if Haralson’s a friend of yours, then you’re no friend of ours. That man is dirty. Really dirty.”

  “No kidding?”

  She glowered at his exaggerated surprise. “Come on, what are you really trying to do, get us to throw out an essential staff member on the word of somebody from the enemy camp?”

  “That’s the problem. That’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it?” He leaned back in his chair and his dark eyes studied her with a rather unnerving, unblinking scrutiny. “I can’t help noticing that you very much resemble a young woman I met in Charleston recently…an archaeology student named…”

  “…Phoebe?” She laughed at his look of surprise. “Yes, she told me. It’s very natural that she’d have made a beeline for you. She’s fascinated by Native Americans.”

  “So I noticed.”

  “I hope she didn’t embarrass you. She doesn’t mean to insult people. She’s only eager and enthusiastic about her studies.”

  “How do you know her?”

  “She’s my niece,” she said, smiling.

  He snapped his fingers. “You’re the aunt!” He shook his head. “I must not have been listening. She said her aunt worked for a politician, but I never made the connection.”

  “She told me all about you,” she returned. “She’s my brother’s only child. He was killed in Lebanon a few years ago. Remember the Marine barracks that was bombed during the Reagan administration?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “So were we. My parents are still alive. They live in Georgetown. My sister-in-law remarried, so Phoebe comes to see me fairly often. We do resemble each other, don’t we? But she’s very pretty…”

  “She’s very young,” he said, smiling back.

  “She’ll mature.”

  He didn’t want to think about the college girl. He crossed one long leg over the other. “If you know anything about Haralson, you’d better tell me.”

  “Said the fox to the chicken.”

  “I’m not directly involved in this,” he said. “And I don’t want to be. But if Haralson’s mixed up in something illegal, I’m not going to be caught holding any bags. I did him wh
at I thought was a simple favor. I found a toxic waste dump. But I didn’t know he was going to use it to destroy a local businessman. That wasn’t a civic duty, it was an assassination attempt. Lombard isn’t a polluter, for God’s sake, he’s a card-carrying environmentalist.”

  “I didn’t know that, but I never approved of what Clayton did. In fact, that’s why I’m working for Mr. Hewett.”

  “I know,” he returned. “I work for the government.”

  “The Justice Department, you said. What part of the Justice Department?”

  “I’m a spy.”

  “Right.”

  “No, I am.”

  “Go on,” she said, turning her head slightly away from him. “Spies aren’t real. They’re figments of Ian Fleming’s imagination.”

  A corner of his mouth tugged up. “Sorry to disillusion you. They’re not.” He took out his wallet, opened it, and tossed it across the table to her.

  She read the credentials, her eyes softening as they lifted back to his. “Jeremiah Cortez.”

  He shrugged. “My mother was studying biblical history when I was born. I have a brother named Isaac.”

  She handed the wallet back. “If Haralson is your friend, why are you checking up on him?”

  “Force of habit. Even friends aren’t exempt. I think Haralson set the thing up. I can’t prove it, but that’s what I think.”

  “Wouldn’t it make more sense to tell Kane Lombard?”

  He made a disgusted sound, deep in his throat. “Right. I tell him and he tells his father and the next day I read in the tabloid, Comanche Spy Accuses Senate Aide Of Desecrating Ancestral Burial Ground.”

  Derrie almost fell out of the chair laughing.

  He glared at her. “That’s right, chuckle, but that’s what they’d say. I’m not going to be a human interest story. Don’t you know anything about spies? We’re supposed to keep a low profile.”

  “That’s why you wear your hair long and dress in a suit in Charleston in midsummer.”

  He pursed his lips and one eye narrowed. “If I cut my hair and wore jeans, do you really think I’d fit in any better here?”