by Jenn Bennett
“You,” her father said, his face red with emotion. “You and your petty anger. Your mother would be ashamed.”
As shouts and animated conversation blew through the hall, Lowe narrowed his eyes and shifted a suspicious gaze between her and her father.
God only knew if her father’s pronouncement of shame was on the mark—she didn’t remember much about her mother. But he was right to be angry. She’d nearly killed him. And Lowe. And other guests. She glanced around at the chaos. No one seemed to be injured, but the poor staff was in a panic.
Tears threatened. Before her father could spit out another word, before Lowe could decipher her father’s accusation, Hadley turned and marched out of the house.
EIGHT
HEAVY FOG CLUNG TO the rooftops lining Broadway. Her father’s driver had taken her to the party, a small detail she remembered once she made it outside. It was also nippy, and not only had she forgotten her gloves, which she’d removed for dinner—they’d likely fallen from her lap during the fiasco—but she’d also failed to collect her coat. Now what? Go back inside with her tail tucked between her legs?
“Hadley.”
She turned to see Oliver striding down the sidewalk.
“Are you all right?” he asked in a calm, businesslike voice as he slipped into his greatcoat, which looked warm and tempting to Hadley’s chilled body. Maybe he’d be a gentleman and offer to return to the house and collect hers. “I think we should talk about what just happened.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nothing shocks me when it comes to matters beyond this realm.”
So he had seen the Mori. Rare that she encountered anyone who did. Very rare.
“I happen to have a lot of knowledge about the underworld,” he said.
Funny way to put it, but, yes, she supposed that was as good a label as anything, though she really didn’t know for certain where the Mori came from. She’d researched it over the years herself, but only found bits and pieces of information, nothing practical or definitive. It was like picking at a sweater: before long, the whole thing unraveled and one was left with a useless pile of yarn.
“A man of your wealth and stature?” she said. “I thought your obsession was Mexican ruins. When do you have time to research the underworld?”
“You’d be surprised what I’ve had time for over the years,” he said. “Why don’t we talk about it, yes? Maybe I can help you. Come back inside and let me—”
“I do appreciate your concern.” He’d always been kind, since the moment he’d first introduced himself. Kind, handsome, interested in her work—supportive. And though she was quite sure by the way he stared at her that he wanted more from their relationship than the occasional shared luncheon or tea, she just wasn’t sure if she did.
Silly, because she should. It wasn’t as if men threw themselves at her every day. She hadn’t even so much as kissed anyone since college. And, her personal touching issues aside, Oliver was probably the right sort of man for her, practically speaking. Yet the elusive spark that fueled a new romance seemed to be missing.
Maybe the fault was hers. Maybe she was broken and damaged. Wired incorrectly. Because instead of being interested in the right man, she was still thinking about the man who’d just conned the museum position away from her. The absolute wrong man.
The man she’d very nearly killed in a moment of poor impulse control.
“Let me help you, Miss Bacall,” Oliver said. “Put your trust in me. You won’t be sorry.”
She let out a long breath and gathered her wits. “I don’t know what you think you saw. But right now, I prefer to be alone.”
“Come now,” he said in a sharper tone that took her aback. “You’re hysterical. You’ve been agitated since before dinner. Let’s go somewhere and talk about it.”
Hysterical. No, that was one thing she never was. Angry, yes. Depressed. Cold. Aloof. Cursed. But not hysterical. And that single word soured her mood even further.
“You may call on me at the museum next week. Good night.” She began to walk away, but he blocked her path.
“That’s enough, now, Hadley. I’m—” He stopped mid-sentence when a shadow darkened his face.
“I believe she said good night.” Lowe stepped from behind her and menacingly towered over Oliver. “And now I’m saying the same. Go on back to the party or go home. Just go.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“Did you escort the lady to the party?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then you aren’t leaving with her, either.”
Oh my.
Oliver stuck his finger out, but seemed to have second thoughts about whatever he’d intended to argue. His forced smile seemed to mask whatever he was feeling. “It was enlightening to meet you, Mr. Magnusson. I look forward to crossing paths with you again. Good evening, Miss Bacall.”
She watched Oliver march down the sidewalk until he got inside a parked car, unsure whether she was relieved or angry. She threw a mental die and decided on angry. “You didn’t need to chase him off. He was only concerned about my well-being.”
“Didn’t sound that way to me. Here. It’s cold as hell out here.” Lowe held out her black mink. Why did he have to be the considerate one of the two men? Still, no sense in turning it away. She quickly slipped her arms inside the silk-lined sleeves.
“Is this your hat?” He held out an elaborate feathered thing. Garish red.
“Good God, no.”
“Didn’t think so, but wasn’t going to waste time arguing with the doorman.” He hung it on a nearby fence post bordering someone’s yard and shrugged into his own coat. “If it makes you feel better, the staff lost my hat, too.”
“No, what would make me feel better is if you just hadn’t lied to my face with all your seductions in the courtyard before you colluded with my father to steal my damn job!”
Her shouted words bounced around the quiet street. He should be grateful her specters had already exhausted themselves for the time being, or she might have been tempted to give them a second shot.
Lowe held up an index finger. “First of all, I told you I wouldn’t lie to you tonight, and I meant it. Second”—another finger joined the first—“I did not ‘collude’ with your father. He’d mentioned something about the department head position when I met with him at his office, but that was the last I’d heard of it.”
“A likely story.”
“Look, I was just as shocked as you. He didn’t even ask if I wanted a desk job.”
“You didn’t stand up and protest.”
“I didn’t have a chance!” Lowe shook his head, as if to clear it, then held up a third finger. “Lastly, you were the one seducing me.”
Her jaw dropped. “That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever—”
“You touched me first. You gave me all those amorous looks.”
“I did no such thing! You pulled me into a shadowed corner. And half an hour later you Judased me in front of my peers! You humiliated me.”
“Your father humiliated you.”
“You both did.”
His head cocked. “And you . . . tried to kill us with that chandelier?”
Oh, God. She spun around and strode down the sidewalk. He followed.
“Helvete, you did!”
“That’s ludicrous.”
“Is it? Because I heard what your father said. And I caught some of Mr. Moneypants’s conversation just now. I know a quake when I feel one, and this, Miss Bacall, was no earthquake. Hell, now that I’m thinking about it, I never could figure out what happened with those windows that broke on the train when that thug was chasing us. And then in the baggage car.”
“You’re mad.”
“But not stupid.”
“Please just leave me alone.�
�
“I’m not abandoning a woman on a dark street in the middle of the night.”
“It’s eight o’clock and we’re in a perfectly safe neighborhood. I told you when we met, I want to be treated like a man. Equal. Not like some frail doll with the brain of a pea. Not hysterical.”
“Hey, that was Moneypants’s word, not mine. But all right, I’m game. You’re a man. Fine. Makes things a bit confusing for me when I consider all the lurid thoughts I’ve been entertaining about the two of us, but what the hell—I’m worldly. Suppose I’m open to new experiences.”
Lurid thoughts. About her? A renewed thrill wove through her erratic thoughts. God, why did she even care? All she needed to focus on was the fact that her bastard of a father had betrayed her, after months of praising her work in front of the board. After years of telling her how smart she was, how capable.
Well. Not capable enough to dig in Egypt. He’d made that clear on numerous occasions. Women had no place in the desert. And when she’d argued that her mother had accompanied him, he said allowing her that liberty was the biggest mistake of his life. No amount of discussion changed his mind. So she gave up on that dream.
Now this one was crushed, too?
But Lowe swore he hadn’t known. Did she believe him? And really, when she stopped to think about it with a clear head, wasn’t the more important question why? Her father was getting what he wanted from Lowe already—the djed. And it’s not as if Lowe had been on his radar before the amulet’s discovery. She’d only heard the Magnusson name in passing.
Father had been so secretive about the djed, refusing to tell her why he wanted it so badly and what he was going to do with it. Did he really think the amulet had magical properties? It certainly gave off a strange energy, that much she knew for certain.
Osiris’s Backbone supposedly opened up a door to the underworld. To the Egyptian Land of the Dead: Duat. But even if the djed’s powers were real, Lowe had only found a fragment of the amulet. Why would her father suddenly welcome Lowe into the museum with open arms—?
“Where are you going?”
Hadley halted and swung around to find Lowe standing on the opposite corner. She’d walked the entire block and crossed the street without realizing. “I’m looking for a taxicab.”
Lowe surveyed the dark residential street. They’d long passed the line of parked limousines waiting on guests at the Flood house. A single car sped by. It was so quiet, she could practically hear the fog rolling in. “Might be hard to find a cabstand around here. If you’d like a ride home, our driver can take you. We’re only two blocks from my home. I walked here.”
She groaned.
He shoved his hands in his coat pockets and crossed the sloping side street. “My family’s probably finishing dinner, so it’s not like I’m hustling you into a secluded house to have my wicked way with you.” He stopped in front of her, his gaze sliding down her coat. “Besides, you may or may not have just attempted to crush my body under two tons of glass. How, I really don’t know. But I suspect I should be wary of you, not the other way around.”
He suspected right.
“Truce?”
“Fine,” she agreed. “On one condition.”
His head lolled on a sigh. He stared at the foggy sky for a moment, muttering something in Swedish before answering, “Why the hell not. Go on. Name your condition.”
“You tell me exactly why my father is bending over backward to let you have your wicked way with him.”
NINE
LOWE LAUGHED IN SURPRISE. A fleeting playfulness softened the angry slant of her eyes, and this made him want to throw her behind the bushes and roll around on the grass with her.
God. He really had no business chasing after this woman. He promised her father he’d see her home when she left the party, but he frankly couldn’t give less of a damn about Dr. Bacall at the moment. He did, however, care about Dr. Bacall’s money. So he needed to tread carefully here. Think with his brain instead of his cock.
But damn if she wasn’t twice as intriguing now that she’d tried to kill him.
He suspected she had some intense kind of passion bubbling inside her. Now, what drove that passion to rip a fixture off the ceiling with her mind? Well, God only knew how she’d done it, but he’d seen it happen with his own two eyes. It was as if invisible hands from the heavens had torn the chandelier from the ceiling.
Maybe he was crazy.
But as best as he could tell, the world was filled with two kinds of things: boring and interesting. And Hadley Bacall was not boring.
He fell in step with her as they strolled down the sidewalk. “I wouldn’t say your father is bending over for me. He’s offered to pay me for goods received, nothing more.”
“I thought you were taking the night off from lying.”
“That’s not a lie.”
“It’s not the whole truth, either.”
“Are you psychic? A mind reader?”
“If I were, I would’ve steered clear of you in Salt Lake City.”
“Touché.”
Their footsteps fell together, the clop of his shoe, the click of her heel. The darkness obscured her face and the shapeless fur of her coat hid the curves and planes of her body, but her presence beside him held his attention as sharply as a half-clothed burlesque dancer’s would.
“Apparently, your father thinks I’m Howard Carter,” Lowe said. “He’s impressed by the amulet find. He wants to hire me to hunt other artifacts.”
The scent of her Siberia lily wafted his way when she glanced up at him. “He wants to fund an excavation? In Egypt?”
“Not exactly.”
“Just speak plainly.”
“Look, he made me promise not to get you involved, all right? He’s offering me a lot of money to find something for him, and he specifically warned me not to breathe a word to anyone in general, you in particular.”
“Me? Why?”
“No idea. And you probably won’t understand this, but I need the money your father’s offering. Badly. I’ve got debts you can’t imagine, and don’t say it—I can see it on your lips already. I can’t mooch off my family. And I’d just as soon saw off my other pinky finger than work for Winter. It’s a matter of pride. I need to be my own man.”
She didn’t answer for several steps. “We aren’t that different, Lowe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, to be judged fairly. That job is everything to me. I’ve worked so hard to be worthy of it.”
“I truly didn’t ask your father for it.”
After a few seconds she said, “I believe you.”
Small miracle. The ironic thing about being a professional liar was that it was far more difficult to convince people to believe you when you were actually telling the truth.
“What does Father want you to find?”
“Hadley,” he pleaded. He thought of Adam and Stella. Thought of his debt to Monk.
A cool wind ruffled her hair as she turned to face him, clutching her coat closed. “Tell me and you have my solemn oath that I won’t run to my father and tattle. I can keep a secret.”
“Give me your word, and I also want to know how you ripped out the chandelier.”
“I can’t do that.” He almost said “no deal,” but she added, “I barely know you.”
Not an “I will never tell you” or “go to hell.” No, not that. Perhaps his translation of her words was merely wishful thinking, but in his glass-half-full mind, she was saying, “I might tell you once I get to know you better.”
Only a chance, yes, but one he wanted. Not more than her father’s money, of course. But after the stunt the old man pulled at the dinner, Lowe felt more certain he’d get it. Because no way in hell did Dr. Bacall want Lowe to have that job. He only announced it after Lowe requested something “tangible” before dinner, and Bacall wasn’t thickheaded. He damn
well knew Lowe wanted money. But the job offer was a better move—for Dr. Bacall, that is. Without spending a dime, the offer kept Lowe tied to Bacall in a very public way. The old man might as well have pissed on his leg.
Bacall wanted the amulet crossbars very, very badly, and he was giving everything he had to Lowe in order to get them. Which put Lowe in the excellent position of being needed.
So, yes, Lowe felt more confident about Bacall paying out. He wasn’t too worried that telling Hadley would mess that up for him. But something else was urging Lowe to tell her.
He remembered back to when Volstead passed, and his own father had thrown every chip on the table to trade fishing for bootlegging. From the beginning, Lowe had been disinterested in helping his father, while Winter enjoyed it—was good at it. And Pappa had groomed Winter to take over. If Pappa was still alive and retiring, and if he’d handed the reigns to someone else without telling Winter first . . . well, that wouldn’t ever happen. Because Lowe’s father would never have done that to one of his children.
Never.
Thinking of all this made Lowe a little angry on Hadley’s behalf. Bacall truly had screwed her over. So because Lowe was softhearted—and maybe because he wanted to improve his chances of making his way up Hadley’s skirt—he finally relented.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you, but only on your word that you won’t tell your father.”
“I promise,” she said as they walked together into the wind. “Let’s hear it.”
“The short story is that your father knows the approximate location of the remaining pieces of the djed amulet, and he wants me to find them and sell the base to him.”
She made a low noise of surprise, but her stride didn’t falter. “And the long story?”
“The long story is this . . .”
With her gaze trained to the sidewalk in front of them, she listened intently until he got to the part about calling up her mother’s spirit. “Pardon?”
