The Phoenix

by Rhonda Nelson

  “Oh, no, Jasmine, this is plenty. Thank you, dear.” She quirked a delicate brow at her guests. “Refreshments?”

  “I believe I’ll have some tea, thank you,” the mystery woman said.

  Well, if they’d gone to the trouble to put together the sandwiches, then it would be rude for him not to select a wedge or two, Jay decided magnanimously. No doubt Kitty-Cat—he cast a glance in her direction—was watching her girlish figure or some such nonsense. In his experience, women were forever concerned about their weight, demurely picking through a salad as though it was a minefield, then falling upon the dessert at the end of the meal like starved hyenas. It boggled the mind.

  Jay laid a napkin across his knee and helped himself, eliciting a smiling nod of approval from his hostess. “A man with a hearty appetite,” she said. “I like that.”

  From the corner of his eye he perceived the slightest tightening of Kitty-Cat’s jaw. Intriguing. Who was this woman? Had she eaten Bitch Bran for breakfast this morning? Or had he, somehow, without having ever met her before, managed to offend her?

  He laughed softly. “Hearty is one way to describe it, I suppose,” he said. “My mother always said she thought I had an empty leg to fill along with my stomach.”

  “Oh, I had boys,” Ms. Aggie said knowingly. “I remember how much they could eat. I used to liken them to army ants, parading through the kitchen, stripping the fridge bare.”

  “Ms. Aggie, if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask you a few questions about Truffles’s disappearance,” Kitty-Cat quickly interjected.

  Though her tone was polite, Jay detected the slightest note of impatience. She withdrew a notebook and pencil from a bag next to her chair and flipped to a new page. A reporter then? That wasn’t good. He’d been under the impression that the family hadn’t planned to alert the media, that a host of false Truffles sightings would only muddy the waters and hinder the process.

  She smiled then and the transformation of her face, the mere rearrangement of muscles, was instantly breathtaking. “The sooner I can start looking for your dear pet, the sooner I can find her,” she said, her voice softening.

  It was a nice voice—a bit smokey and melodic. It was so nice, in fact, that it took a moment to process the words she’d uttered in that lovely voice, but once their meaning surfaced, he was immediately confused.

  And even more wary.

  She was looking for the dog? But how could that be? That’s what he was here to do. Clearly she was mistaken, but it wasn’t his place to correct her. He cast a glance at Ms. Aggie, whose smile had gone sad.

  The older woman nodded. “You’re right, of course,” she said, to Jay’s amazement.

  He laughed uncertainly. “With all due respect, ma’am, that’s what I’m here to do, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” she said, nodding. “That’s why I said your timing was fortuitous, dear. This way I won’t have to repeat myself.”

  Though he tried to disguise his confusion, he was convinced that Kitty-Cat saw through him because, for the first time since he’d walked into the room, she looked as if she was actually enjoying herself. Try as she might, she couldn’t quite squelch her cat-who-ate-the-canary smirk. At any moment he fully expected her to hack up a few feathers.

  Rather than continue to delicately mine the situation one confusing question at a time, Jay turned directly to Kitty-Cat and extended his hand. “Jay Weatherford, Ranger Security. I’ve been hired by the Betterworth family to find their abducted dog.”

  Her pointy chin lifted a fraction right along with her right eyebrow. Neat trick, that. “Charlie Martin, Falcon Security. I’ve been hired by Ms. Aggie to find her beloved pet.”

  She waited, presumably hoping he would ask about the redundancy of that. But if she thought he was stupid enough to point it out in front of their hostess, then Kit—er, Charlie Martin had another think coming. As the animal’s caretaker, whatever information Ms. Aggie had was bound to be considerably more significant than anything he was going to find elsewhere.

  He turned and offered the older woman a conspiratorial smile. “Two heads are better than one,” he said, complimenting the logic his competition was hoping he’d fault.

  She beamed at him. “That’s what I thought,” she said. “I’d hire another person, too, if I thought it would help me get my dog back. But as I explained to Ms. Martin only moments before you arrived, the family is only concerned with my dear Truffles inasmuch as the inheritance is concerned. Naturally, they weren’t happy with the terms of Goldie’s will and, to a degree, I even understand that.” Her brow knitted. “But, particularly in Goldie’s final years, that little dog—and the staff, of course—were more a family to her than anyone who shared her last name.” She frowned thoughtfully.

  “When her health started failing, they began circling like vultures, with their fake concern and solicitation.” She looked up, a tinge of bitterness poisoning her smile. “They’d exhausted their trust funds, you see, and were actually having to work at the company that had afforded them their extravagant lifestyles.” Ms. Aggie paused to take a sip of her tea. “Goldie saw through them, of course. It pained her that she hadn’t a single relative who was interested in contributing to their heritage. It was her grandfather who’d started the company, you know,” she added as an aside. “Even in her sickest, weakest moments, she still managed to give the company her best effort. She worked right up until the day she died. Most people don’t know that. They just hear her name and think, ‘Oh, that’s that crazy old woman who gave her fortune to her dog.’”

  She gazed unblinkingly at the fire. “She was so much more than that. And she appreciated hard work above everything else. She was generous to those of us who had served her well. She bought homes and provided extremely generous retirement packages to Susan, her personal secretary, to Horace, her gardener, and to Beatrice, her cook.” She smiled again. “She gave me her most prized possession—Truffles. And a ridiculous salary as her caretaker, and this house.” A soft laugh, then “She said I’d taken such good care of it over the years that I’d earned it. I don’t know about that, but I do know that she was one of the kindest, most interesting and hardworking people I’ve ever known. She was never too good to do anything that needed doing, and never made anyone feel beneath her. We were happy to work for her, wanted to work for her.”

  Jay swallowed, touched by Ms. Aggie’s description of her former boss. “She sounds like a remarkable woman,” he said.

  Aggie released a small sigh. “She was.”

  “A pity that her children were such a disappointment to her,” Charlie remarked, evidently irritated on behalf of the late Marigold Betterworth.

  Unnecessarily, though, as she was about to find out.

  Aggie blinked, evidently baffled. “What children? Goldie didn’t have any children. She never married.”

  Charlie’s eyes widened in confusion. “But the family—I just assumed—”

  “It’s Marigold’s niece and nephew—her late brother’s children—who stand to inherit beyond Truffles,” Jay told her, taking quite a bit of pleasure in it, too.

  The look she slid him could have curdled milk.

  Clearly she had not done her homework. And if she thought she was going to find the dog before he did, then she was very sadly mistaken. This was his first assignment for Ranger Security. Allowing himself to be bested by a rival agent from a rival firm was about as likely as rainbows and butterflies shooting out of his ass.

  It wasn’t going to happen.

  And the sooner she figured that out, the better.

  It was actually kind of cute, really, that she thought she could get the job done before he could.

  4

  “MR. WEATHERFORD IS quite right, dear,” Aggie confirmed, much to Charlie’s mortification.

  “Jay, please,” the object of her irritation demurred humbly.

  Charlie seethed.

  Aggie beamed approval at him, before turning her attention back to Charlie
. “Goldie’s father left a sizable amount of money to his son, Peter, but it was to Goldie that he entrusted the business. Peter was amiable enough, but a bit…dim, if you get my meaning. Anyway, Peter originally owned forty-nine percent of the company, but sold his shares to Goldie to help finance his son’s auto-racing career. It never took off, of course.” She grimaced. “Neither did his daughter’s country-music career, for that matter, but it didn’t keep Peter from trying, bless his heart. He died six years ago. Pancreatic cancer. He made Goldie promise to take the kids under her wing, to take care of them, and though Goldie tried, they wanted no part of her. They were too busy burning through what was left of their father’s estate.”

  Given everything she’d just heard, Charlie was eternally thankful that she wasn’t the one working for the Betterworth family after all.

  She cast an arch look at Jay. “Your clients sound quite charming.”

  She caught a fleeting scowl of agreement before he could stop it and something about that one moment of shared opinion pleased her more than anything in recent memory. It was ridiculous, of course. He was The Enemy. And yet she couldn’t deny the insane burst of pleasure, the warming of her heart, the sudden spike in her pulse any more than she could deny the air moving in and out of her lungs.

  “We share the same goal, Ms. Martin,” he said smoothly, then turned his attention back to Aggie. “I have every confidence that I’ll find your dog before anything terrible happens to her,” he said. So sincerely, in fact, that it took Charlie a moment to be annoyed at his gall.

  She worked for Ms. Aggie. If anyone should be reassuring the older woman, it was her.

  Charlie leaned forward. “Finding dear Truffles is my top priority, Ms. Aggie. I promise to have her back to you by the end of the week.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Jay’s especially sexy mouth twitch with repressed humor. So she amused him, did she? Well, he wouldn’t be laughing long, the overconfident, unfortunately good-looking ass. He was so assured of his own success he didn’t consider her a threat at all. She was so wearily used to this sort of mentality that she should be immune to it by now, and yet she found that she wasn’t, that being discounted still stung. Particularly by him, which was as annoying as it was baffling, but there it was.

  Ms. Aggie’s face blossomed into another smile, her eyes crinkling predictably at the corners. “I am certain that, between the two of you, Truffles will be home where she belongs in no time at all.”

  Charlie’s answering grin froze again. She sincerely hoped that Ms. Aggie wouldn’t insist that she work with Jay Weatherford, though technically, as her boss, the woman was within her rights to do so.

  “Of course she will,” Jay said, managing to say the right thing without exactly agreeing with Ms. Aggie.

  That was a nice skill. One that, admittedly, she’d never mastered. If she’d ever had a brain-to-mouth filter, it must have malfunctioned long before she learned to talk. Though she possessed enough tact to see her through social situations, constant effort was required to keep from saying precisely what she thought. Prevaricating didn’t come naturally to her and, while she could recognize various shades of gray, her world—with her own personal code of ethics—was primarily viewed in black and white. She wasn’t so stubborn that a well-reasoned argument couldn’t make her change her mind, but those instances had been few and far between. She frowned.

  Perhaps she needed more intelligent company, she thought, momentarily struck by the sudden notion. She blinked, forcing herself to focus. That was a thought for another day. Right now she had more pressing issues.

  Like how to get some important answers out of Ms. Aggie.

  “Ms. Aggie, I know that you went over the details of the abduction quite briefly with my boss, but I wondered if I might get you to recount the incident to me.”

  “I’m quite interested in that, as well,” Jay remarked. “In fact, that’s the reason I came to see you today.”

  “Of course,” Ms. Aggie said. “I want to help in whatever way I can and am completely at your disposal.” She paused, seemingly collecting her thoughts. “Truffles isn’t exactly on a schedule around here, but I do let her out for a little while in the afternoon so that she can play. She likes to annoy the cat and frighten the birds and is forever digging holes in the flowerbeds, which annoys Mr. Hanover to no end,” she added as an aside. “She’s a tiny little thing, but is still a dog and enjoys doing the things dogs do. I let her out about two o’clock yesterday afternoon—it was right after her snack—and I had forgotten my knitting. I went back into the house, was only away for a couple of minutes, and when I returned to the backyard, she was gone. Vanished. I marshaled all of the staff and we searched for an hour before I finally admitted to myself that someone had t-taken her.” Ms. Aggie’s voice quavered.

  “There’s no way she could have wriggled under the fence?”

  Ms. Aggie collected herself and shook her head. “The entire back of the property is surrounded by a brick wall. It’s eight feet high and there are no gates. The only way in is through the front entrance and there are security cameras scanning that area all the time. In addition to having Burt man the front gate, an alarm sounds here in the house each time someone enters the driveway.”

  And there was a lovely wrought-iron fence all around the front of the house, Charlie remembered. She’d noticed it when she’d approached the estate because it was very elaborate, with curved branches and leaves and strange podlike features she’d never seen before. It had belatedly occurred to her that it was meant to look like cocoa trees. It was quite lovely and quite secure.

  “So no one goes in or out except by the front gate?” Jay asked.

  “That’s right. Goldie liked her privacy.”

  And by controlling the access and limiting the points of entry, she could better monitor who was allowed in and who wasn’t. She’d built her very own fortress here, Charlie thought. Modern-day, of course, and there was no moat, but it was a fortress, nonetheless.

  So how in the hell had someone managed to snatch the dog in less than two minutes from a place that was seemingly impenetrable? Charlie imagined that scaling the wall could be done from the other side to avoid detection, but then how to get back over carrying the dog? Especially in such a short amount of time? She needed to get a look at that fen—

  “I’d like to inspect the property, if you don’t mind, Ms. Aggie,” Jay told her, beating Charlie to the punch.

  The older woman nodded her approval.

  “Afterward I have a few more questions I’d like to ask you, provided you can spare the time.”

  “Of course, dear. Meanwhile why don’t I have Smokey take your things up to your room?”

  Charlie watched his affable smile atrophy and knew a moment of fiendish glee. There you go, Boy Genius, she thought. Wiggle off that hook. He cast a fleeting glance in her direction and, though she realized it was impossible, she had the distinct impression that he knew precisely what she was thinking, knew that she was relishing his discomfiture.

  “That’s most kind of you,” he said, to Charlie’s near slack-jawed amazement. She’d been certain that he’d refuse, that he’d insist on getting his own accommodation. “It will certainly make investigating a much simpler affair if I’m here instead of somewhere in town.”

  “That’s exactly what I told Ms. Martin,” Ms. Aggie said, evidently glad to have her logic validated once more.

  Wonderful, Charlie thought, stifling the urge to groan. Now she looked ungracious. She aimed a slightly sick smile at him and noted the smug twinkle in those especially blue eyes. They were unpolluted by any other shade and reminded her of the morning glories that grew on the trellis next to her front porch in the summer.

  Too late Charlie realized she’d made another tactical mistake—she shouldn’t have looked at him. Because she couldn’t seem to make herself look away. She was too busy puzzling out the various incongruities she saw there. Curly eyelashes in such a dramatic face, the almos
t lush mouth above his sharp chin. It shouldn’t fit…and yet it did.

  He was truly extraordinary.

  Not the best-looking man she’d ever seen, but definitely the most appealing. At least, to her. Unbidden, an insidious vine of desire snaked through her, curled around her nipples and tightened deep in her womb. The sensation was so intense it stopped just short of being painful, left her shaken but hypersensitized, as though something long dormant had suddenly awakened.

  With dawning horror Charlie realized it was her libido.

  Oh, hell.

  JAY WAS USED TO QUICKLY changing circumstances and was accustomed to having to modify his plans in a split second, so adjusting to being pitted against a rival agent and staying in the same residence as said rival agent barely registered on his radar.

  If only he could say the same thing about her.

  Somehow, in the mere span of fifteen minutes, she’d managed to become the most intriguing and most infuriating woman he’d ever met. To complicate matters even more, there was a constant sizzling awareness of her, a low hum of attraction that vibrated annoyingly along his nerve endings and, much like sonar, continually pinged his groin. His very blood itched, for lack of a better description, making him briefly wonder if he was allergic to her, but considering it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant sensation, he didn’t think that was the case.

  He’d be better off if it were, that was for damned sure.

  Being anything more than professionally interested in her was unforgivably stupid, insanely reckless and just plain ignorant. In truth, though he’d originally thought staying at the Betterworth estate was a bad idea, he was quickly able to isolate the advantages.

  Furthermore, she’d expected him to balk, and simply thwarting that smug little notion of hers held entirely too much appeal. She’d been waiting for him to object, had practically scooted to the edge of her seat in anticipation of it, the she-devil. The look on her catlike face when he’d done the exact opposite was something he’d likely enjoy for days to come.