Yet Cole’s concern now was no illusion, and his comment about the Uzi no joke. “What, you think a bodyguard?” she asked disbelievingly. “Just because the house was burglarized yesterday?”
“You’ve been through more than that. In fact, you’ve been drawing more trouble than a picnic draws flies.” Cole juggled another palmful of nuts, his dark gaze lasering on her face. “The only way that much trouble adds up—that I can see—is that somebody’s after your behind. And I think you’d have come to the same conclusion if you weren’t walking around...” He lifted a hand.
“What?”
He dropped his eyes. “Look, sweet pea. I’ve been around you for twenty-four hours. If you close your eyes, you’re out like the dead—for maybe an hour. Besides that, you apparently don’t sleep. And you sure don’t eat. You’re doing fine, and then suddenly your hands are shaking and you’re seeing double and your eyes get all sexy and dreamy. Dammit. What are you taking?”
“Cole.”
“What?”
“I’m not taking anything. I told you. It’s mental—”
“Bullcrap, it’s mental. You feel like hell, and every symptom you have is as real as daylight—but okay, forget the drugs. That’s none of my business.” He dug in the bowl, clearly seeking only the cashews, as if deliberately showing her how unemotionally involved he was. “None of this is my business, except that I have to leave. And I’d feel a lot less like a lowlife heel for taking off if you’d get realistic about the situation you’re in.”
Regan wrapped her arms around her knees. “You think I’m not realistic?”
“I think you’d feed a stray Doberman off the street if you thought he was hungry. And I think it has yet to cross your mind that you seriously need to protect yourself.”
“What do you think, that I have mafia boys and CIA and hit men running around my life? No one’s after me, for Pete’s sake.”
“I think there has to be. You told me this story about your apartment turning into a spook house—somebody switching on lights, moving things around. You think a ghost did that stuff? It sounds more like a human rat to me.”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Slugger, it was me,” she said softly. “No one else was around. Apparently I did those things, and then became confused, didn’t remember. And that’s the truth I have to face up and deal with. Imagining villains lurking in every dark corner doesn’t help. It’s just paranoid thinking.”
“Nothing wrong with a little paranoid thinking,” Cole said firmly. “I was raised a cop’s son, and all cops’ sons are raised with a healthy dose of paranoid thinking. If you want to survive, you have to learn to watch your back.”
She shook her head. “If you think I should doubt the people I know and love, you’re going to wait a long time. And come on, Cole. Can you think of a reason on earth why someone would come in my apartment at four o’clock in the morning for the sole purpose of turning on a Beethoven CD?”
“Only the obvious one.”
She blinked. “The obvious one?”
“It effectively scared the panties off you, princess.” Cole waited the count of a heartbeat, letting that sink in. “Damned if I know why anyone would want to scare your panties off. But then I’m just as damned trying to figure out the burglary you had yesterday. Ever heard of a thief who didn’t take anything before?”
“No, but—”
“The guy didn’t take anything. Nobody took anything in your Chicago apartment either, right? And that kept bothering me around three this morning—the similarities. It sounds to me like the same rat. Don’t you think it’s a tad coincidental that both places you live in have been targeted in the same short time period? And in the same way—by a fruitcake prowler who doesn’t take anything?”
A familiar anxiety thrummed trough her pulse. Cole sounded so logical, so rational, so sure of his reasoning. Regan knew he was trying to help, but nothing in her life this past month had been remotely logical, rational or reasonable.
“You think I haven’t thought about it? I have. But there’s no nice, handy villain lurking in the wings,” she said quietly. “I trust my friends. I’ve known most of the people I’ve worked with for forever. Some stranger—why would he pick on me? So there’s no one, and I can’t imagine any link between the things that happened in Chicago and the random thief in the house here.”
“I think there’s an obvious link.” Cole passed her the bowl, as if absently remembering that she might want breakfast, too. Not surprising Regan, there was nothing left but raisins. “Your grandfather’s the link. I kept thinking about that in the middle of the night, too—that your whole siege of trouble started when Jake died. Not to be crass, petunia, but your grandfather was a long way from the poor-house. And human rats have always come out of the woodwork when money’s involved—dammit, would you quit shaking your head?”
Regan sighed, not without humor. “Cole, I can’t make it work like the plot in an Agatha Christie novel. I wish I could. Any ‘rat’ after my inheritance from Gramps would have to be incredibly stupid.”
“How so?”
“Because the biggest lump of Jake’s estate was in the Thorne Gem Company. And the four partners had a standard buy-out insurance policy, set up years ago in case any of them died. That has nothing to do with me.”
Cole’s eyes narrowed. “You telling me that Jake didn’t take care of you?”
“Slugger, I don’t need taking care of. I’m a grown woman. Which I must have told my grandfather a thousand times.”
“So he did take care of you,” Cole murmured. “And enough to put your chin in the air, Ms. Independence.” Regan looked away. The sun had long risen, and warm gold sunlight poured onto the patio. The water filling the pool glistened like diamonds. Or tears. “You don’t understand. Everyone wanted something from my grandfather. I wanted him to know that I loved him for himself. After his first heart attack he tried to talk to me about money, and I cut him off at the pass, told him I’d shoot him if he left me anything—”
“He knew how you felt about him, princess,” Cole’s voice turned throaty, gentle. “He talked about you all the time. And if bringing this up is going to make you cry—”
“I was never going to cry.” She snapped her head high.
“Hey, no one was accusing you of a federal crime.”
She swung her legs over the side of the chaise, pushed at her hair. “We were talking about money. And yes, there’s an inheritance—but not now, Cole. I don’t have anything now and I won’t for ages. Reed and Trafer kept trying to educate me about probate laws—I just couldn’t concentrate, but I picked up enough to know that the estate’ll be tied up for months. In fact, the only reason I’m in the desert home is because Jake put it in my name years ago, and never told me, mind you—”
“Why, that son of a gun,” Cole murmured sympathetically. “Probably he did it on the qt because he was under the misguided impression that you’re stubborn as a hoot owl.”
“Shut up, Shepherd.”
Cole reached into his back pocket and came up with a folded wad of Kleenex. As of yesterday, he had decided he needed to be better prepared than carrying around oily rags from his tool kit. Regan blew her nose, hard. Porcelain skin, eyes deeper and greener than a river, corn-silky hair that shone in the sun and legs that could make a man sink deep into immoral fantasies...but she did blow her nose with the strength of a Canadian Mountie.
It was sure better than her crying.
“The point I was trying to make,” she said, “is that there is no rat after my money. I don’t have anything anyone could want. It’ll probably be a year before that probate thing is over, maybe longer. In the meantime, all I have is a leased Chicago apartment, my clothes, a few antiques of my mother’s, a good slug of savings—but hardly enough to excite a thief—and my Austin Healey…” Her voice suddenly trailed off.
Cole had seen her red Austin Healey. On sight, he’d labeled the restored monster as a money pit that only a dreamer wo
uld buy, but somehow he suspected Regan’s blind obsession for the car wasn’t the reason for her sudden change in expression. “And—?”
“And nothing. That’s it.”
“Come on, come on. Something went through your mind just then. You have something? Something of Jake’s?”
“Not like you mean. Not that anyone knows about. It’s just…”
When Regan tucked a strand of hair around her ear, the sun reflected her pale face and the lines of fragility and exhaustion around her eyes. Cole knew he’d been pushing her too hard. Her whole concept of life was about love, loyalty, trust. It was easier for her to believe that her mind was blown than that anyone could possibly want to hurt her.
And she was looking at him with that same kind of blind trust—trust he knew damn well he hadn’t earned—when she answered his question. “Jake did leave me something else. Something private, separate from the estate. Legally separate,” she added hastily. “His lawyer handed me a sealed, locked box the night after my grandfather died. He had no idea what was in it—and told me that Jake didn’t want anyone to know. I asked if it shouldn’t be part of the estate being probated, but he said no—Gramps had already paid the estate tax on it so that I wouldn’t have to wait.”
Cole hadn’t heard such idealistic naïveté in a long time. The old man could hardly have paid taxes on something no one had seen to lay a value on, but Regan would likely shoot anyone who accused her grandfather of a little larceny. The lawyer, doubtless, had been well paid to keep his mouth shut, and Cole didn’t give a particular hoot what was legal, anyway. “So what was in this sealed box?”
Regan hesitated. “A black velvet case. Holding five gems.”
Hell. Cole’s anticipation deflated faster than a punctured balloon. He’d hoped they were headed in the direction of some answers—answers that would pin down a reason and motivation for Regan’s siege of trouble—but gems were no help. Stones were the old man’s business. An inheritance of candy from a candy man was hardly a surprise.
“Cole...no one else knows about them. But since I told you...would you like to see them?”
“Sure,” Cole said. A white lie. Looking at a bunch of diamonds was not going to accomplish getting one small blonde protected...but snakes of guilt were coiling in his stomach. He’d grilled Regan to the point of tears. Now there was a luminous sparkle of life in her eyes again. Obviously these stones were personally important to her.
Seeing them, though, turned into a major production. Regan claimed the light was ‘all wrong’ in the courtyard, so he followed her into the house, where they picked up her purse in the kitchen and then moved into the library.
The room showed no sign of the burglar, which told Cole what Regan had been doing prowling around the house at three in the morning. He was tempted to shake her for tackling the mess alone...but she was all excited, bouncing around like an exuberant kid. First she unfolded a piece of velvet, then fussed several minutes adjusting a jeweler’s lamp just so, then finally—with the reverence of a bishop at high mass—carefully unfurled the five stones from the black velvet pouch.
Cole bent over and gave them a look. There were five of them, all right. One green, one yellow, one blue, one red and one pink. The red one was kind of bitsy, but the others would have made good-sized rings. For women. “Real pretty,” Cole said heartily, because Regan seemed anxious to hear his reaction.
“Pretty?”
Cole slugged his hands into his back pockets. Truthfully, he was a little shocked that the old man hadn’t sprung for diamonds. And what was he supposed to say about five bits that looked like colored glass? “The red one’s a ruby, right?”
“Yes.”
She was still waiting. Cole scratched his chin, and Regan suddenly laughed.
“Slugger,” she said gently, “the green stone that looks like an emerald is a tsavorite. Tsavorites are a rare branch of the garnet family, and this particular stone is one of a kind. On the open market, I’d guess it’s value around three thousand dollars a carat, but to a collector it’s priceless. Green garnets have a long history of magic and healing powers, and this one, of this size, is as rare as they come.”
Cole dismissed the ‘magic and healing powers’. All he heard was the money. His hand swept to the back of his neck.
“The yellow sapphire is another talismanic stone, and a good yellow can be more valued than the more common blue-colored sapphires. This is a good one. A rare one. The blue stone is a tanzanite, and you’ll likely never see another one in your lifetime. They were just discovered in this century, and the only deposit on the planet is near Hemingway’s Mount Kilimanjaro. And the pink stone is a topaz. A true topaz, not the quartz they sell at the average jeweler’s. She’s an antique. She’s engraved. She’s pink. She’s perfect. There is magic associated with topaz like you can’t believe. She’s my favorite—and there isn’t another one like her anywhere on earth.”
“Princess?”
“Yes?”
“If you were to sell these stones, what would they be worth?”
“I’d never sell them, Cole.”
“But just for the sake of conversation, if you had to come up with a straight dollar figure...”
She thought, then whipped out a six-figure digit. “But these stones aren’t important because of money. They’re one of a kind, totally unique, irreplaceable. I—good heavens, what’s wrong?”
Cole called his brother at ten. “It looks like I’m not going to make it home by mid-afternoon. In fact, I’m going to be stuck here a little longer.”
“Okay. For how long?”
“I don’t know.” Cole washed his face with a rough hand. “If it comes down to more than a couple days, Wilson can fly down the little Piper, take the King Air home. Right now I can’t tell you for sure.”
Sam had long been coached in a laid-back attitude toward life. “No sweat. I can easily juggle your runs for a few days. You’ve been clocking a lot of air time. Some time off would do you good.” His tone turned annoyingly amused. “Truthfully, I kind of anticipated that you’d stick around. You always had a thing for Thorne’s granddaughter—”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“No? Last I noticed she had an endless set of legs—”
Cole repeated irritably to the receiver, “I never had a thing for her, and it’s nothing like that.”
“Okay,” Sam said amiably. “You sound crabbier than a pole-axed bear. Whatever’s wrong, I’m not asking. But if you need some help, sing out.”
“Thanks.” Cole hung up the phone a few minutes later, wishing he’d laid the whole story on his brother. Unfortunately, he couldn’t explain to Sam what he was doing here when he wasn’t sure himself.
Tigers were afraid of nothing, yet most breeds were on the endangered species list. Coyotes were renowned gutless cowards and thrived on every continent. Cole never wanted to be the tiger. It didn’t take major brains to figure out that danger was bad for your health.
And every instinct warned him that Regan was in danger. Until a few minutes ago, the warning had been more whisper than roar, because nothing had added up in her situation. She had the symptoms of a drug user, yet he doubted she was. Some prankster was playing ghost in her Chicago apartment, yet with no apparent goal. Two thousand miles away in Arizona her house was ransacked by a thief, yet nothing was taken.
When Regan mentioned the six-figure value of those itsy-bitsy stones, though, Cole had his missing puzzle piece. He also nearly had a heart attack. And every time—every time—she turned those winsome, beguiling, trusting green eyes on him, he felt a responsive slug in the stomach.
She was beautiful. Too beautiful for her own good. If he had a brain in his head—or a moral in his conscience—he’d be making fast tracks to the door. Maybe Regan was in danger, but he wasn’t her answer. He couldn't stay.
Only he’d be damned if he could leave her completely alone here, either.
“Cole? Are you ready?”
He saw h
er smile, coming at him from the open doors of the courtyard. He saw the short shorts she’d changed into, which showed off the long curves of calf and thigh. He saw the shadow of her breasts in the low V of her loose green top; he caught the drift of her perfume, and he thought, shut it off, Shepherd.
Regan didn’t have the self-preservation instincts of a newborn. She simply had no sense of danger—not from life. And not from him.
She’d thought it was wonderful that he had the time to ‘vacation’ for another day or two.
Cole kept thinking he should be doing something for her—stockpiling weapons, calling the Green Berets, something that would make her safer once he left. He intended to leave. He wanted to leave. He would leave, but he couldn’t do it until he got through to Regan that someone obviously knew about her ‘secret’ stones.
“Slugger?”
“I’m coming.” Cole thought dryly that there was no time to call the Green Berets. The lady was determined to hit a grocery store this morning. Fallout all around her. Hell coming at her from every direction. She’d had no sleep and couldn’t walk a straight line, but she had to have her fresh yogurt.
More humorous yet, she actually thought he’d let her drive.
CHAPTER SIX
Regan had been all right for hours. Not sharp—she was too exhausted to be mentally sharp—but for whole stretches of time she’d felt as sane and normal as anyone else.
This morning, she knew, Cole had been totally convinced she was a dimwit. From his viewpoint, ghosts didn’t break and enter. Men did. And she’d been traveling with five excellent motivations for someone to want to search both places she lived. It was a miracle the gems hadn’t been found, and even more of a miracle that in the process she hadn’t been hurt—so far.
Regan had heard him out. Although she had assumed Gramps’s legacy was a secret, the rest of Cole’s reasoning sounded logical. Slugger was always logical, but he seemed to expect some instantaneous reaction from her at the threat of danger. That wasn’t possible. She already had an enemy that terrified her far more than any living, breathing human variety. The sniper in her mind confused her ability to separate truth from illusion and attacked her whole sense of self.
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