STOLEN HEARTS

by Michelle Martin

  "And what about us?"

  "Us?" Tess faltered. "Are we an … us?"

  "The term 'lovers' tends to imply some form of coupleship," Luke informed her.

  "Ah."

  His fingers caressed her soft cheek. "Having second thoughts?"

  "A hundred and second thoughts," Tess retorted.

  "That beats me by about seventeen."

  Tess guffawed. "Oh my, we are royally tangled up together, aren't we?"

  "Royally," Luke agreed. "So what about us?"

  She looked up at him, blue eyes solemn. "Luke, I have no idea what tomorrow will bring, let alone the next day. Things are going very fast, the world is spinning around on a new axis, and I'm a little … befuddled."

  "That makes two of us."

  Tess shocked Luke by impulsively hugging him. "Good," she said, her arms wrapped around him, her cheek resting against his chest. "I don't want to be in this alone."

  She was such a miracle! He kissed the top of her head, and then one sensitive ear, her cheek…

  "Um, Luke?"

  "Hm?"

  "We are being watched."

  "By whom?"

  "By your Baldwin surveillance team, of course."

  Luke stared down at her for a moment and then grinned. "You are very good at what you do. As it happens, though, I know of a certain arbor that not even the strongest lens can pierce."

  "Oh my," Tess sighed as his mouth caressed the creamy skin of her arched throat.

  "Have you ever fantasized about making love in a rose garden?"

  "We are definitely out of our minds," Tess moaned as she melted into him.

  * * *

  Luke had meant to be sensible the next morning. Making love with Tess was one thing, but trusting her wholeheartedly?

  Then she walked into the breakfast room, the shadows under her blue eyes making them seem huge, the fragility lurking in their depths clearer today than ever before, and he didn't have a chance.

  He grabbed her, hauling her into his arms, and kissing her with all the fire their night passion had inspired. He didn't stop kissing her until his wristwatch alarm went off. Even then, it was hard to let her go.

  "One of us," she gasped, "has got to come up with some self-control."

  "I am beginning to feel like a lemming rushing to the sea," Luke confessed.

  She laughed then and Luke realized just how much he relished her laughter, how much he loved making her laugh, how much he loved drinking her laughter into every hollow cranny in his soul. It was real, like her kisses, and wonderfully addictive.

  An hour later he walked into his office with the sweet taste of Tess still on his mouth and a song in his heart that did not skip a beat when he met Carol, a pencil behind each ear, her arms loaded with law books as she staggered into her office, nor when he encountered Harriet, his grim fifty-eight-year-old secretary, waving dozens of phone messages in his face. He took the pink slips with a smile and a compliment about the new plant she had added to her already overburdened desk. Then he walked into his office, sat down in his office chair, and released a sigh of utter contentment.

  He opened a desk drawer and pulled out the two eight-by-ten photographs he had shown Barbara Carswell. The first was an enlargement of a mug shot taken of Tess when she had been ten and arrested for shoplifting. Her face was hard, sullen, her eyes terrified. Those eyes were real, not her face. Then, as now. Her face could mask anything, but occasionally her eyes could not, as when he kissed her. Everything was revealed there, at least for him.

  He looked at the second picture that Leroy's surveillance team had taken. She stood at Elizabeth's bedroom window, supposedly staring out at the grounds of the Cushman estate, but in truth her eyes saw nothing of the lush lawn or woods. They saw something darker, something haunting, within her heart or within her memory, it was hard to say. She seemed utterly transfixed and absolutely … lost.

  Luke knew that feeling well. He had been lost from himself for so many years that it was a shock to finally reclaim the man he had been, or should have been, it was hard to tell which at this late date. Whatever con Tess was running, however carefully she conducted herself every minute of the day, she couldn't hide these brief moments of truth, not staring out Elizabeth's bedroom window, not when she kissed him, not when they made love.

  Luke shivered with delicious memory. Oh no, when Tess was in his arms there was absolute honesty between them. Only now when he had shared in such honesty could he fully admit to himself the extent of the wound he had carried in his soul these last twelve years. He had even enlarged it, increasing the pain tenfold by blaming himself for Jennifer, and then Ellen, and finally Margo.

  He had internalized more of his parents' teachings than he had feared. A Mansfield never shows weakness. A Mansfield never acts inappropriately. A Mansfield never lives.

  But he had been living. Ever since he had met Tess, he had been vibrantly alive and as that life swirled within him, he found an unexpected compassion for himself, and for the man he had been. He should have gotten help for all the pain and guilt and fear and rage he had carried for too many years. But he hadn't. So apparently the universe had sent Tess Alcott to take care of things properly.

  Luke stared down at the pictures of what most people would consider a hardened criminal. But he knew better. Tess Alcott had a very hard exterior, it was true, but inside she was all luscious whipped cream. A wry smile touched his mouth. Despite every appearance, the man absolutely devoted to self-preservation might just have found the right woman at last.

  He blinked.

  Good God. For the first time in five years his heart had overruled his very obstinate head. He loved Tess.

  "Well, of all the stupid—" he began.

  Leroy had called late yesterday afternoon to announce that he was on the point of proving Weinstein a fraud and if Weinstein was a fraud then Tess was a fraud, no matter what Jane said.

  And he loved Tess. With all of the reasons not to staring him in the face, he loved her! What would happen when he and Leroy finally dug out all the truths of her past? Would he still want her kisses then? Would he still love her? Would his heart still be intact?

  "Dammit," Luke muttered. How on earth had he gotten himself into this mess?

  He remembered Tess's rich laughter, a mind that would concede to no man, however superior he thought himself, her haunted blue eyes, her blazing anger, her heated kisses.

  "She is the other half of your soul," his heart whispered.

  "Oh well, that explains it," he muttered. Then he suddenly grinned. "Oh, what the hell." He was in love and this time was the right time. In spite of themselves, they were right together, they were good together, a perfect fit, yin and yang. One.

  Luke leaned back in his chair. Having finally admitted that he loved Tess, that he had loved her from the start, his heart cracked open and he could see clearly now, see the man he truly was. He could actually feel compassion for his parents, for the difficult, narrow lives they had chosen. He could even acknowledge that he loved them. Her lack of a family had taught him how blessed and grateful he was for his own imperfect clan. For all their differences, they were a family, something Tess had never known.

  He could feel the fondness he had long carried for Harriet and Carol and even Roger, his habitually gloomy office manager. He could even feel the pride he took in his work, a pride he had held at bay because he wasn't doing the "right" work. He could feel laughter in his soul. After so many years, he once again knew what joy looked like, felt like, tasted like.

  At thirty-five, Luke Mansfield finally knew who he was and what he wanted.

  And Tess was first on the list.

  Before he could reclaim any semblance of sanity and begin going through his phone messages, as his conscience insisted he do, Harriet buzzed him on the intercom to announce that a Mr. Leroy Baldwin wished to see him, despite his lack of an appointment.

  A moment later Leroy strode into the office. He was a tall, heavily muscled African-Am
erican in his late thirties, casually dressed in gray slacks, polo shirt, and sports jacket. He held a VCR tape and briefcase in one hand as he held the other out to Luke.

  "Leroy, it's a pleasure to see you again," Luke said with a smile. "Have a seat and tell me what brings you from bucolic Boston to my humble abode."

  Leroy groaned as he sat in the chair before Luke's desk. "Oh man, I wish you weren't so happy because I don't like raining on someone's parade, particularly when that someone pays my exorbitant bills so promptly."

  Luke sat back down behind his desk and studied the security man, his heart beginning to freeze in his chest. He had the most awful feeling that history was about to repeat itself.

  "What's up?" he managed.

  "You want this undiluted?"

  "If there's good news and bad news, I'll take the good news first."

  Leroy sighed. "I'm afraid it's mostly all bad. We haven't found your Hal Marsh yet, but we did trace Violet. Real name Anna Mae Smith. She is very dead."

  "How?"

  "Murdered fourteen years ago. Police suspected her pimp, but they could never get anything on him. Physically he was more than capable. She was strangled by someone's bare hands."

  "My God," Luke breathed. She drove me out of Miami in a very lurid Cadillac, dumped me in his Charleston condo, and disappeared. End of story. Disappeared. Bert the pimp had seen to that. Definitely the end of Anna Mae Smith's story. And Tess had lived with and been trained by that monster? "What else?" he managed.

  "I've been able to break Weinstein's story."

  Luke sat up in his chair. "How?"

  Leroy's smile was weary. "The wonders of modern technology. I faxed some of the pictures my team has taken of him, along with a full set of fingerprints we lifted from the car he drives, to a variety of federal and international police agencies. We got a positive ID from three of them. As it happens, there really is a Dr. Maxwell Weinstein, he's just not your Max Weinstein. They look alike. Or at least enough alike to fool most of the people most of the time."

  Leroy opened his briefcase and tossed a couple of pictures onto Luke's desk.

  "The real doctor was flown into the Antarctic a few weeks ago on a very hush-hush secret government mission. It seems some of the scientists on a three-year assignment at the base down there are going crackers and Weinstein is quietly trying to put all the crumbs back together. No one is supposed to know he's down there, not even his wife. While she's vacationing with her son and daughter-in-law in Minnesota, she thinks he's in Europe attending some sort of secret conference with the Russians. That's how your guy has been able to use Weinstein's apartment and office."

  "My God," Luke said. "Whoever my Weinstein is, he's got to have some pretty amazing connections to find that out."

  "Oh, he does, he does," Leroy said, pulling several eight-by-ten color photos from his briefcase and handing them to Luke. "Your man is one Arnold Clifton. He goes by lots and lots of aliases and he's a very bad boy. He has been involved in his long and far-from-illustrious career in everything from major con games to prostitution rings to cocaine smuggling. There have even been hints of a murder or two. The man is so good at what he does, that he has never been arrested for those deeds. Never. He's big league, Luke. Very big league."

  Ice covered Luke. "What is he doing with Tess?"

  "I was afraid you'd bring that up," Leroy said, glancing around the office. "Can I use your VCR?"

  "Sure. What have you got?"

  "I've had my people tailing Mr. Big this last week, keeping him under surveillance, that sort of thing," Leroy said, inserting the tape cassette into the VCR. "He's been very circumspect in his actions, very innocuous. Yesterday morning he had a visitor and for the first time he didn't close the blinds. My people were able to get everything on tape." Leroy looked at Luke. "You aren't going to like it."

  "Tess?"

  Leroy nodded. "I'm sorry, man. She's pulling a Margo."

  Pain sliced through Luke's heart like shrapnel. His mind emptied of everything except fear. "Let's see it."

  Leroy turned the VCR on and returned to his chair. Luke remained behind his desk, nausea beginning to roil in his stomach as he watched on the monitor Arnold Clifton, alias Max Weinstein, pacing a very expensively furnished apartment. There was a triple knock on the door, a pause, and then a double knock. Clifton stalked to the door, his face tight with anger as he opened it.

  There was Tess.

  Clifton grasped her arm and jerked her into the apartment, slamming the door shut behind them.

  "You stupid, blundering bitch!" Clifton shouted at her.

  Luke winced.

  But Tess stood calmly. "What's wrong, Bert?" she said.

  Bert? Arnold Clifton was Bert? Her mentor? Violet's pimp and probable murderer? Tess was still working with that monster?

  "Wrong?" Bert screamed. "I'll tell you what's wrong! I leave town for a few days to attend to some business and you deliberately try to ruin this job, that's what's wrong!"

  "I thought things were going well," Tess replied, not flinching in the face of so much fury.

  "You are not in this job to think!" Bert bellowed as he raged up and down the living room. "Every time you think we get in deeper and deeper. What the hell do you mean by trying to seduce Luke Mansfield?"

  "What?" Tess said.

  * * *

  Five years in jail had dimmed none of Margo Holloway's beauty, Tess glumly noted as she sat down opposite the woman. No wonder Luke had wanted her. No wonder he hadn't been able to see behind the façade. She was all feline grace and sensuality, from the way she styled her hair, to the way she crossed her legs beneath her. But her eyes … those big brown eyes that had looked so innocent and vulnerable in the newspaper photos were now hard and cold. Deception was not necessary here.

  "You don't look like a writer," Margo said.

  "You don't look like a murderess," Tess calmly replied.

  Margo smiled, a very unpleasant, self-satisfied smile. "You should be devoting your entire book to me, not one measly chapter."

  "I may," Tess said. "Or rather, I may devote the sequel to you, if this interview goes well. You fascinate me, Miss Holloway. You were acquitted of your father's murder, and then you turned around and got yourself convicted for the double murder of your half brother and sister. What went wrong?"

  "Luke Mansfield," Margo venomously ground out.

  * * *

  "Don't play games with me, little girl," Bert growled, his hand knotting in Tess's golden hair and jerking her head back, "or so help me I will kill you here and now."

  "You've got it all wrong, Bert."

  "The hell I do, you stupid little slut!" Bert raised one large hand and Luke flinched, anticipating the coming blow.

  "Don't," Tess said, her voice cold and sure as she punctuated each word. "Don't damage the merchandise, Bert."

  Miraculously that stopped him. He glared at her a moment and then, his hand still tangled in her hair, he threw her across the room as if she were no more than a rag doll.

  Luke's hands went white gripping the arms of his leather chair.

  Tess fell to the living room floor in a heap. For a moment there was silence. Then she shook her head, stood up, straightened her clothes, and looked directly at Bert.

  "My seduction of Luke Mansfield," she said, her voice hard with carefully restrained anger, "is simply the most expedient means of keeping him off balance until the old lady comes through with the necklace!"

  Luke died in that moment. This woman on the television screen—her blue eyes cold and vicious—was a stranger.

  "There are safer ways!" Bert roared.

  "He showed an interest," Tess said flatly. "I decided to use it. You always taught me to use every angle that presented itself on a job, Bert. You want me to forget all those valuable lessons you passed on to me?"

  * * *

  "What happened?" Tess asked.

  Margo shrugged. "He didn't like being used."

  "And how did you use
him, Miss Holloway?" Tess said, feeling cold inside.

  Margo's smile was decidedly catlike. "How do you think?"

  "You seduced him," Tess said flatly. "You made him fall in love with you so he would defend you and get you acquitted."

  "Very good. You should be a detective."

  "But did you have to make him your lover?"

  Margo regarded Tess with amusement. "I like to live well. And Daddy's twenty million dollars said I was going to live very well, indeed. That meant getting acquitted and that meant getting Luke to believe I was as innocent as a newborn babe. I figured he couldn't make love to me and doubt me at the same time. Besides, seducing him was no hardship. One thing I'll give the Boy Scout, he's a great lay. I was kind of sorry to cut him loose after the first trial."

  "Then why did you?"

  Margo laughed. "Honey, I'll take twenty million dollars over Mr. Mansfield's performance in bed any day of the week."

  * * *

  Bert ripped the leonine wig from his head and threw it across the room. "Sex can blow up in your face, you know that!"

  "Yes, of course I do," Tess said impatiently. "That's why I kept him dangling for so long. Didn't your surveillance team mention that, too?"

  That startled the behemoth. "How did you—"

  "Give me some credit, Bert. You trained me, remember? Of course you don't trust me. Of course you're having me watched. But you can relax now. The old lady is almost ready to call me Granddaughter and clasp me to her aged bosom. We'll have this honey of a deal all sewn up in another week or so."

  Bert's massive fist pounded the wall. "What the hell is taking her so long? This job should have been finished by last weekend!"

  Now it was Tess who was surprised. "What? Come on, Bert, we never had that timeline! Look, the old lady is tough, she's smart, she's cautious, but she is coming around. Just like Mansfield. You always said he was the biggest hurdle. He's still in the ring, but he's lost his punch. I'll have him neutralized soon enough. I tell you what: I'll push a bit harder and see if we can't wrap things up sometime next week. Okay?"