Destiny Bay Boxed Set vol. 2 (Books 4 - 6) (Destiny Bay Romances)

by Helen Conrad

  Now here he was in the jewelry department, stealing watches.

  At first glance, he certainly didn't seem like a thief. Tall and slender, he had the look of arrogance and privilege about him—just the sort of man she usually tried to avoid. She had a quick image of him casually strolling off his yacht, or mounting his polo pony at the green. Cultured, sophisticated, urbane—and yet just below the surface, a sense of suppressed strength and vitality, a barely leashed danger like that waiting in the shiny coils of a well-balanced bullwhip.

  Wow.

  She blinked at him as she came near. She didn’t usually get such a vivid picture in her mind by just looking at someone. What was there about this man that seemed to be so…so wickedly appealing?

  She stared for a moment, then shook herself. What was the matter with her? He was a thief, darn it all! She tapped him firmly on the shoulder to get his attention.

  “I think you'd better put that watch back, mister,” she whispered loudly, trying to look stern. “If you don't, I'm going to have to notify the floor manager.”

  He turned and looked down at her, his eyes an electrifying blue that seemed to cut the air between them like lasers. She didn't know exactly what she'd expected. Anger? Resentment? The need to flee? In her psychology practice she'd dealt with all those very human emotions, and many more besides. But his reaction surprised her.

  He chuckled. No mistake about it. She heard the low, rumbling sound distinctly. As she stood staring up into his face, her mouth agape with outrage, his hand shot out and the long fingers circled her wrist.

  “Hold on, sweetheart,” he told her in a low voice laced with some strange sense of urgency. “Just give it one more minute.” He winked again, and the slight traces of a smile edged his full, well-defined lips, but his eyes were busy glancing about the store as though he were looking for someone, searching for something.

  She stood frozen, not sure what to do. Her heart was beating wildly now. What the heck was he up to? His fingers were warm and strong and his hold on her was steel-trap unyielding. As he turned his head she caught a slight scent of aftershave mixed with a less identifiable masculine fragrance that sent shivers down her spine and made her gasp softly.

  He was so awfully handsome with those blue eyes gleaming between thick black lashes, his straight, dark hair combed casually, his collar crisp and white. His silk tie was stuck with a gold tiepin. The trench coat looked as smooth as if someone had ironed it just that morning.

  A wife? No, probably a valet. She bit her lip at the thought, knowing it was crazy. But somehow he didn't have the look of a man who would iron it himself.

  These thoughts flashed through her mind as she stood there, suspended in time. Somehow his touch seemed to have cast a spell on her. His tanned fingers gripped her wrist tightly and she couldn’t seem to gather the strength to do anything about it. She found herself staring at the contrast between his dark skin and her own creamier tone as though she was in a trance. Sensing that, he pulled her in closer, almost pressing her against his body.

  “Wait for it,” he murmured very close to her ear.

  She shivered.

  Then his eyes met hers again and something happened. She wasn't sure just what it was, but some sort of connection was made. It was as though he knew her and she knew him on some basic, nonverbal level. The moment quivered between them, and then his lip curled cynically and his attention rocketed to the other side of the floor.

  “Okay—now!” he ordered firmly, letting go with a shove. “Call out 'thief’ just as loud as you can. Make a scene.” He grinned. “Come and get me, baby.”

  She watched, stunned, as he turned and began to stride quickly toward the escalator. “Th…thief,” she whispered, then glanced around at the shoppers walking past.

  “Thief!” she called more loudly. “Stop that man! He's taking a watch!”

  People hesitated on all sides, looking about curiously, but no one made a move to stop him. Shelley stared at them all, astounded.

  “Isn't someone going to stop him?” she cried.

  The women merely gaped at her, and the nearest men began to avoid her accusing gaze.

  “Oh!”

  Shelley pulled in air and glared at them.

  “Then I'll do it myself,” she cried, and instantly she was running through the store in the direction the man had taken, golden hair flying out behind her. “Stop that man!” she shouted again as she thought she saw a flash of him just ahead. “Stop that thief!”

  Faces blurred on either side as she dodged past the mannequins, but no one stepped out to help her. By now, she was motivated almost as much by her anger at the unhelpful bystanders as by the crime itself.

  This was what the world had come to, was it? No one ready to stand up for justice and fairness? All right. So be it. Shelley herself would become a one-woman vigilante committee.

  She bounded down the moving escalator two steps at a time, pushing past the standing riders. She caught sight of the man just below and her adrenalin surged.

  “You stop right there!” she cried as she raced up to him. He was almost to the heavy glass doors that led out onto the street and into the town of Destiny Bay. He turned back at the sound of her voice and she threw herself at him, “like,” she would tell her friend Robin later when the sting of the whole affair had dimmed enough to joke about it, “an angry Scottish terrier at a disinterested Great Dane.”

  Taking up handfuls of trench coat to keep hold of him, she managed to foil his escape. But now that she had him, what on earth was she going to do with him?

  “Someone call the manager,” she called to the crowd that was gathering. “Quickly.”

  Yes, quickly. She looked up into his eyes and found them disconcertingly amused. “What took you so long?” he murmured for only her to hear. “I thought I was going to have to come back and do all this over again.”

  She straightened, releasing one hand but holding on to him with the other. Blinking up into his sparkling blue gaze, she frowned. “I don't get it,” she began. “Do you mean to tell me you want to—?”

  “Shhh.” He put a finger to her lips. “Not now.”

  There wasn't time for explanations. Suddenly the store manager was there, along with two huge, uniformed policemen. Then Shelley's prisoner was emptying his pockets of the three watches, two fine calf leather wallets, and a small electronic device he'd picked up during his trip through the store.

  Shelley stood back, watching in confusion. Her part was over, but for some reason she couldn't turn away. She'd caught a thief, but only because he'd wanted to be caught. Now that she had time to think, she knew he could easily have pulled out of her grasp. He could have outrun her even more easily if he'd really been trying. Why would anyone want to be caught shoplifting?

  “It's Miss Carrington, isn't it? Hi. I’m Kurt.” One of the policemen smiled at her. She knew he might have seen her on one of her trips to the local station house. Her office partner did a lot of work with the department of probation, and she occasionally went along when he was called in to do psychological evaluations of prisoners.

  On the other hand and more likely, he knew who she was because everyone in town knew all the Carringtons. That was a fact she should have remembered before being so crazy as to move back here and try to create a career for herself in her old hometown. This wasn’t a place where she could go incognito.

  “Yes,” she answered, surprised to hear the tremor in her voice. She gripped her hands tightly together to stop the shaking. “Yes, it is. Nice to meet you, Kurt.”

  “And you're the one who nabbed this guy, huh?” He grinned at her. “You won't mind coming downtown to give us a statement, will you, Miss Carrington?”

  She looked at the prisoner, wincing as she saw the handcuffs being placed around his wrists. His face was casually unconcerned and she had a quick feeling that the sight of the shiny metal against his warm flesh hurt her more than it did him.

  But there was something wrong about a
ll this. She couldn’t just turn away and forget it had happened. There was more to this story and she was hoping she would find out what that was.

  “No,” she answered hoarsely. “No, I won't mind at all.”

  The next thing she knew, she was riding in the passenger seat of the squad car with one officer while the mysterious thief sat in the back with the other. Shelley sat stiffly, uncomfortably aware of the man just behind her. Why had he done it? And why had he entangled her in his plot, whatever it was?

  There was something compelling about him, about his elegant good looks, his casual sophistication, his incongruous crime. She'd love to get him on the couch.

  She had to bite her lip to hold back a quick surge of slightly hysterical laughter, knowing she'd made a definite Freudian slip. Hastily she corrected her observation: She would love to get a crack at analyzing his motivations. That's what she'd meant. But she had to admit she hadn't exactly been blind to his masculine charms.

  There was no denying he was a hunk and just exactly the sort of man she tried to avoid. The sort that could screw up your life and walk away without a second thought. Been there, done that. She was over needing a man to make her feel complete.

  “This will only take a few minutes,” the policeman assured her. “Then I’ll drive you back out to get your car.”

  She nodded and glanced back. A pair of bright blue eyes met hers, and the man smiled as though he knew every secret thought in her mind.

  She flushed and looked away quickly. There was something about him that had disturbed her from the beginning.

  She remembered the first contact she'd had with him that morning. It had been in the stationery department while she was looking for a birthday card for Jeff Kramer, the psychologist she shared a suite of offices with. She'd searched the rack, frowning with impatience, coming up with one cliched greeting card after another, and suddenly a hand appeared before her face, handing her a card she hadn't seen.

  “Birthdays are precious”, it said. “Each one deserves to be saved in a special place”.

  The picture showed a little boy hiding his pet frog under his bed—along with his slingshot and snail collection. It was perfect for Jeff.

  She whirled, looking for the man who'd given her the card, but he was disappearing around a corner, and all she saw was the expensive cut of his trench coat and the soft shine of his nearly black hair.

  She was sure, however, that it was the same man who came sauntering through Designer Fashions a bit later and caught her trying on an elegant, off-the-shoulder gown that she had no intention of buying. It cost at least a month's salary and was a direct contrast to the business clothes she usually wore. Even today, taking a morning off from office work, she was dressed in a plain plaid skirt and Kelly-green short-sleeved cotton sweater. No one would ever mistake her for a femme fatale.

  She’d come out to the full length tri-mirrors to get the full effect, and she’d smiled at her reflection, noting her own wide, honest brown eyes and slightly freckled nose, which still made her look like a bit of a tomboy for all her twenty-six years of age. Hardly the sort of face found at the fashionable watering holes where delicious things like this dress would show up. She had cousins who filled that role in Destiny Bay society. She was more the stay-at-home-with–a-good-book sort of Carrington.

  The saleswoman stepped off to help another customer, and Shelley was left alone with the gown and her reflection in the flattering mirrors. Tilting her head back, she narrowed her eyes until the picture before her faded into a gauzy fantasy, and she let her body sway slightly to the rhythm of a make-believe waltz.

  She could almost hear the band playing. “One two three—dum-de-de ...” she whispered to herself. Throwing caution to the winds, she began the slow box step, side to side and back, side to side and back, and then, ludicrously, right into the arms of the mysterious stranger.

  As she went limp with shock he continued the pattern, holding her up from behind like a giant rag doll. “La-la-la-lalala,” he hummed into her hair, the tune right out of a Vienna dance hall. “La-la-la-lalala ...”

  The humming was his, but that the gurgling sound of total confusion was all her own. Struggling to regain her balance, she flailed about like a girl who’d never been touched by a man before, embarrassing herself even further.

  His grip on her melted away and when she turned, not really sure if she should apologize to him for reckless waltzing or cry foul for his interference, he was already leaving.

  He looked back with only a quick, knowing smile and a murmured, “It's lovely on you. I say take it, by all means,” before disappearing around another convenient corner.

  And then she'd found him heisting watches in the jewelry department. Just who was this masked man anyway?

  The station house was long and modern in a utilitarian sort of style, with charcoal-gray walls and tall windows of tinted glass. The officer escorted Shelley in through the empty lobby. A telephone rang and a conversation ricocheted dizzyingly from wall to austere wall, but the place was hardly the busy clash of riotous confusion found in larger city police stations.

  Destiny Bay was more a small city than a proper little town on the California Central Coast as it had been only a few years before. There was still the bay, with its marina and its embarcadero filled with tourist shops and restaurants, and there was motel row and the state park and the Vina del Mar and La Bahia areas with their wealthy mansions, and then there was downtown, with two departments stores and a set of brand new gleaming concrete and glass buildings forming the business center—and the police station.

  “Have a seat right here,” the patrolman offered, pointing out a collection of bedraggled couches grouped around a small coffee table covered with torn magazines. “I'll have a clerk come and take your statement.”

  She turned to watch where they were taking the shoplifter and saw him disappear down a corridor, flanked by the other officer who'd been in on the arrest and two men in business suits.

  Collared by the long arm of the law, she thought irrelevantly. A shiver tickled her spine as she wondered what they were going to do to him. Would they put him in a holding cell? Just the sound of the words was so dehumanizing.

  “What…what will happen to him?” she asked the patrolman, catching him just as he was turning away.

  He looked in the direction she was staring and shrugged. “He’ll get what’s coming to him,” he said in a voice that was more growl than conversational. “That type usually breaks pretty easily.”

  “Breaks?”

  He left without another word and she chewed on her lower lip. Breaks? What on earth…?

  But she really had nothing else to do with that end of the case. She took a deep breath and turned away. As far as she was concerned, it was all over. She would make her report and get back to work.

  Her cell buzzed and she pulled it out and glanced at the screen. Her cousin, Lisa Carrington, was on the line. She picked up.

  “Hey,” she said. “I guess you heard about the great jewelry department robbery.”

  Lisa was a manager at the department store, hoping to take over the whole operation someday.

  “I sure did. I couldn’t believe it when they told me you’d been the one to catch him. Good going, cuz. Next time I see you at Mickey’s, the cheeseburger will be on me.”

  They chatted for a few minutes and then Lisa claimed a heavy workload and rang off. Shelley glanced at the silver watch on her slender wrist and grimaced. Jeff would be steaming by now, wondering what was keeping her. She'd taken the morning off in an unusual fit of restlessness. But it was Tuesday, the day she set aside for studying professional journals and working on papers. She had no appointments to rush back for. She had all the time in the world. So she pulled out her cell phone again and sent her partner a text.

  “Hi Jeff. Stuck @ police station. Will call l8r.”

  And then she sat and waited.

  And waited and waited. And the longer she waited, the more she worri
ed about her thief.

  That was the way she thought of him now. Her thief. After all, she was the one who'd made sure he was arrested. Never mind that he seemed to have wanted it that way.

  What were they doing to him now? She knew strong-arm tactics were supposedly passé and she'd spent enough time here to know that most cops were just as professional as anyone else, but for some reason old scenes from Jimmy Cagney movies kept floating into her mind.

  Giving them the third degree, they used to call it. She shuddered. No way. They wouldn’t do that. Would they? But pictures of snarling faces, blinding lights, blackened eyes, and swollen jaws kept surfacing in her mind.

  She got up and paced. After two cups of stale coffee from the office machine and three trips to the front desk to see what was holding things up, she’d had it. If something had gone wrong—if they were doing something to her thief that they shouldn’t be—she was going to find out about it. There was no hope. She was obsessed.

  She looked around the room. No one was paying any attention to her. Rising quietly, she headed for the door he’d disappeared through and found herself in a long hall filled with doors to various rooms, some with windows.

  “Authorized Personnel Only Beyond This Point,” said a sign. That made her hesitate. She didn’t usually break laws or even minor rules, if she could help it. But she lifted her chin, gave herself a quick pep talk, and started down the hall, trying to look like she knew what she was doing, checking out every room that had a window.

  It worked. She passed a clerk along the way. The woman didn’t even look at her. But she didn’t see anything in any of the offices—anything other than someone busily doing paperwork at his desk. But not the man she was looking for.

  Disappointed, she frowned and looked toward a set of imposing double doors with the sign “No Entry” in huge red letters.

  Should she? Could she? Sure. Why not?

  Setting her shoulders, she started toward the doors. And suddenly, she heard an eerie sound coming from behind them. She stopped in her tracks, listening hard. What the heck was that? Fear? Hysteria? The sounds of some sort of torture? Her heart began to beat so hard, she could barely breathe. They couldn’t be hurting him to get information. Surely not! But if not, what was that sound?