Gideon nodded. “I could use one myself. Sleep as long as you need to, Aunt George.”
Gideon was about to follow Prue out the door, when the closet squeaked open and the cat came sauntering out, pausing to stretch before moving into the hallway.
“Your mother didn’t tell me you had a cat,” Georgette said. “What’s his name?”
“Ah…Drifter,” Gideon replied with a quick glance at Prue. “He’s a fairly new addition. Just moved in yesterday.”
“Really?”
“It was cold and windy, and he found the dog door.”
“You have a dog, too?”
“No, the door just came with the house.”
“Ah…well. See you in a bit.”
Gideon closed her door behind them just in time to see Prue try to pick up the cat. It scampered away from her, heading for the kitchen.
“Why don’t you feed him,” Gideon suggested, finding her another can of tuna. “He’ll come around.”
“I hope I have enough time,” she said, opening the can and turning it into the cat’s bowl.
Gideon preferred not to think about the brief amount of time he had to make this plan work. Every once in a while he was surprised by a promising turn of events, then Prue would look at him with that suspicion that made it seem hopeless.
Right now she was studying the cat with the same sense of helplessness he felt. “Drifter is a good name,” she said and yawned, putting a graceful hand up to cover her mouth.
“Come on,” he said softly. “A nap is a good idea. Neither one of us got much sleep last night.”
She closed her eyes and expelled an exasperated breath, as though she’d forgotten something.
“What?” he asked.
“I forgot to get bedding for the sofa bed.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to sleep with me,” he said, turning his back on her and heading for the stairs.
She caught up to him, apparently prepared to argue about it.
“But you have to stay on your side,” he stipulated as they began to climb.
She shushed him with a finger to her lips and a glance in the direction of Aunt Georgette’s room.
He cleared the top of the stairs and sat on the foot of the bed to pull off his shoes. “I remember how insatiable you can be,” he went on, tossing his shoes aside and standing to pull the coverlet back, “but that’ll have to wait. A coyote came through the dog door last night and I—”
A pillow whacked him on the back of the head. “Just shut up!” she snapped, climbing under the covers on the other side and curling up, facing away from him.
He smiled at the ceiling as he closed his eyes. He heard a very small sound, then felt a not-so-small weight land on his stomach. Drifter had joined them.
RITA ROBIDOUX at the Breakfast Barn looked Georgette up and down as she brought menus. Prue guessed Georgette could seem snooty and superior if you didn’t know her. Prue explained she was Gideon’s aunt, and she’d come to help Prue advertise her designs. “Rita ordered a cloak for her daughter,” Prue told Georgette.
“Smart woman,” Georgette praised, her glance bouncing off Rita’s burgundy-colored hair, then returning to her eyes with a smile. “Do you have wine?”
Rita poured water into their glasses. “We do— Chablis and Mountain Rhine,” she replied a bit defensively, as though expecting a complaint over the limited selection.
Georgette looked at her companions. “What’s your preference?”
Prue didn’t want to influence her decision, but Gideon said, “Prue’s into whites.”
Georgette smiled at Rita. “A bottle of Mountain Rhine, please.”
Rita nodded and disappeared. Prue was surprised at the lack of questions, then realized there were few people around who could match Rita for simple audacity and directness. But Georgette could.
“So the two of you are planning to stay here?” Georgette asked, taking a sip of water. “You don’t miss New York or politics?”
Gideon shook his head. “No. Politics is too much of a cooperative venture—and not always in a good way. It was frustrating trying to get things done when there’s someone opposed to everything you try to do, and many of those wanting to help you have ulterior motives.”
“Corporate life’s a lot like that,” Georgette sympathized. “It makes me insane. But I have an assistant who’s very geared to the battle and I often travel and leave him in charge. Now, I know Prue’s designing clothes, but what are you doing?”
“I work for a company that provides all kinds of services to homes and businesses. I’m developing a security model for them. You met my boss’s wife at the Yankee Inn when we dropped Bruno and Justine off. Her family’s owned it for generations.”
Georgette blinked. “Security? You mean…putting in alarms and things like that?”
He shook his head. “That, too. But mostly person-to-person security,” he said. “Security guards, bodyguards, some personal training.”
“That’s right. You have all that training from your days in the service. But is that really what you want to do with the rest of your life? I mean…it’s dangerous!”
“No, it’s not,” he assured her. “I’m not doing the guarding, I’m just developing the plan on how it should be done. I did a lot of that in the Gulf War.”
“You were a kid then.”
He pretended offense. “I’m hardly a geezer now.”
She laughed and patted his hand. “Of course you’re not, but this is the time of your life when you should be having babies and making yourself indispensable to your wife so that when you do become an old geezer, she’ll still want you.”
Gideon put an arm around Prue’s shoulders and leaned back with her as Rita arrived with a bottle, a corkscrew and three glasses. “No danger there,” he said with a theatrically weary sigh. “Prudie wants me all the time. It can be embarrassing. I’m sure if you weren’t here, we’d still be home and she’d be all over me right now.”
Prue accepted that he was playing the role and thought deflating his ego would be considered an appropriate response. “He’s a little full of himself,” she told Georgette with a wink. “I think because Bruno said I was short but Gideon was perfect.”
“You’re both perfect,” Georgette insisted, thanking Rita with a gracious smile as she poured the wine. “And I wish someone wanted me all the time. I miss Winston and his randy, old prep-school ways. Sometimes death seems to have an affinity for those particularly full of life.”
She grew sad suddenly, and Prue noted Rita’s quick glance at her as she put the bottle in the middle of the table. Even the most sophisticated and wealthy could feel lonely.
“Have you thought about coming home for a while?” Gideon asked with a gentle solicitousness Prue found touching. “I’m sure Mom and Dad would let you have the guest house on the vineyard. If you needed something to do, the holidays there are always very lively.”
Georgette turned her wineglass by the stem and sighed. “I’m all right in London for the most part. I just get melancholy sometimes.” She patted his hand again and smiled. “Like when I see my brother’s children as adults and realize how much time has passed. I was the one always looking for something, you know. The middle child who was never satisfied with what everyone else wanted, but longed for bigger and better things.”
“But you got them,” Prue pointed out. “You lived your dreams.”
“I did,” she agreed. “But every time I realized a dream, it was taken away. So I live in London, but my life’s not really there anymore. And I’ve been so busy living and working, that I seldom saw my siblings, so my life isn’t with them, either.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Gideon insisted. “I’ll bet the folks would be happy to have you spend some time with them. Then you’ll know if you want to come home or not.”
It occurred to Prue that Georgette might be undertaking this ad campaign as much for herself as for Prudent Designs. She’d wanted to come home and test
the waters, and this had been an excellent excuse to do it.
Georgette raised her glass. “Maybe. But that’s enough of that. Let’s toast Prudent Designs and your brilliant future. If Prue makes the fortune I think she’ll make when word gets out about her, she’s going to need a top-of-the-line bodyguard. How lucky that she has one built in.”
Prue smiled lovingly at Gideon as she knew she was expected to and, his arm still around her, he squeezed her closer. She was a little disappointed he didn’t kiss her as well, but instantly dismissed that notion as insane and self-destructive.
Though that had been some kiss last night.
Tonight she was sleeping on the sofa bed whether or not she had linens.
They ordered meat loaf, then dessert, though Prue declined. “I have a deadly red dress,” she explained to Georgette, “that shows every indulgence.” Then she teased Gideon with a grin as he ate hazelnut cheesecake. “If you have a gut hanging over your belt when we start shooting, you won’t be perfect anymore.”
“I can hold my stomach in,” he responded, “but you’ll still be short.”
She elbowed his arm and he cried out dramatically.
“Children!” Georgette chided them. “You have locations lined up for us to visit tomorrow?”
Gideon nodded. “I’ll just drive you around and we’ll make a list of where you’d like to shoot. If we need city permission for anything, we’re on good terms with the mayor.”
“Good. And I was thinking that cloak would be dynamite on a trail in the woods where the leaves are turning.”
Gideon nodded. “We can go up into the Berkshires if you have time.”
“I’ll make time. There’s some board business I should be back for soon, but I don’t imagine we’ll need too much.”
“The weatherman says the weather will hold out for us,” Prue said. “There’s a cold front keeping rain at bay all week.”
“Perfect.” Taking a last sip of coffee, Georgette collected her purse and gloves. “Shall we head home and get our beauty sleep?”
Gideon helped her on with her coat, then Prue with her jacket. He ushered them out to the car and was helping Georgette in when they heard a scream at the far edge of the lot nearest the stream. It was pitch-black, and though Prue turned toward the sound of the scream, her heart beating faster, she couldn’t see a thing.
“Stay here,” Gideon said, taking off in that direction.
“Gideon!” she called after him, trying to grab his jacket sleeve, but he was loping across the parking lot, already out of her reach.
She took her cell phone out of her purse, shoved her purse at Georgette and followed him.
The screams were now steady, and she could see a man and a woman apparently struggling over a purse. The man was determined to have it but the woman seemed to have no intention of parting with it.
“Hey!” Gideon shouted, stopping within several feet of them.
The man turned in Gideon’s direction, and Prue felt a cold shiver of fear run along her spine. His features were indistinct in the darkness, but his shadow was large. Prue blindly punched out 9-1-1 in the darkness.
“Drop it, buddy,” Gideon advised calmly.
“Mind your own business!” the shadow snarled at Gideon. Then there was an ominous click and the gleam of a blade in the dark.
There was a quick slash, the straps of the handbag were cut, and the shadow took off at a run.
Gideon followed and tackled him before he was halfway across the lot. The man fell with a thud and a lot of profanity. He turned, prepared to resist with everything he had.
Prue felt panic, wondering how the police would possibly get here in time to prevent Gideon from being hurt. She ran toward them, picking up a two-by-two from the back of a pickup in her path.
When she arrived, the man had his arms on Gideon’s, but Gideon freed himself with an upward swing of both arms, blocked a blow with one arm and struck the man a ringing right cross with the other. The attacker landed like a felled tree.
Prue stared at him in stupefaction, the two-by-two still riding her shoulder, ready to be swung.
Gideon, hardly a hair out of place, grinned at her as he readjusted his jacket. “Where you going with that?” he asked, indicating the lumber with a jut of his chin.
“To your defense,” she replied, sounding distracted. In the four years they’d been married, nothing like this had ever come up. He’d occasionally shown her some moves, wrestled playfully with her, but those incidents usually broke down into something else entirely. She’d never really seen him in a serious situation.
She was a little stunned.
“You want to call 9-1-1?” he asked.
“I already did,” she replied.
A young woman in her early twenties materialized out of the dark. She grabbed her purse off the pavement and clutched it to her chest, the cut straps dangling. Her eyes were wide with fear and disbelief.
“You all right?” Gideon asked her.
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“You know, you shouldn’t fight an attacker like that,” he said gently. “If that ever happens again, let the purse go and call the police. Your money isn’t worth your life.”
She tightened her grip on the purse. “It has my son’s inhaler in it.” She pointed to an old gray import. The back door was still open, the interior light picking out the frightened face of a child about four sitting in the back in a car seat. “I don’t have insurance.”
Gideon was taken aback for a moment. “That was very brave of you,” he said finally, “but he had a knife. There’d be some way to get another inhaler. You wouldn’t be that easy to replace.”
The police arrived, took control of the purse snatcher, then an officer followed the young woman home.
The other officer gave Gideon a lecture similar to the one he’d given the young woman. “You should never interfere with a crime in progress. Call 9-1-1 and let us handle it.”
Prue expected Gideon to tell the officer his qualifications, but he simply thanked him for coming so quickly, answered all his questions about what had happened, then when he was told they were free to go took Prue’s arm and turned her toward their car.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, taking the two-by-two from her.
She pointed to the pickup whose bed was filled with lumber. He replaced the wood, then caught her hand and headed back to the car.
“That was amazing,” she said.
He bobbed his head from side to side. “Well, when you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”
“I didn’t know you were that good.”
“There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”
She didn’t want to touch that subject, curiously invigorated by the frightening events. “Were you scared?”
“No.”
“I was scared.”
“With that big stick over your shoulder?”
Georgette came toward them, meeting them in the middle of the parking lot. She wrapped her arms around Gideon. “My goodness!” she exclaimed. “Are you okay?”
“I am. He didn’t touch me.”
Georgette freed him and turned to Prue. “And you, young lady. Taking off after him like Sundance after Butch Cassidy!”
“I thought he was going to need backup,” she explained. “I didn’t realize he was Stallone in disguise.”
They reached the van, and Georgette climbed into the front while Gideon pushed the sliding door open for Prue.
“Thank you,” he said, stopping her as she prepared to climb into the middle seat. “But I told you to stay.”
She looked up into his suddenly grave expression, remembering the strong response that had risen in her when she’d watched him take off after the purse snatcher. He was her man and he’d been in danger.
It shook her to the core as she realized what that response meant.
She was still in love with him.
CHAPTER TEN
“I HEARD YOU,” she said, covering that
heavy discovery with a casual smile, “but I’m not a poodle you can point into a corner. I thought you were in trouble and I wanted to help.”
“Well, that’s interesting,” he said as he drove out of the parking lot. “But I believe it’s customary in times of physical danger for the person with the least acuity in self-defense to accede to the instructions of the one with the most.”
She knew he was taking advantage of the fact that Georgette heard everything and thought all was well with their marriage. She might think him within his rights to challenge her failure to listen.
“It’s a marriage, sweetheart,” she said, taking advantage herself, “not a government operation. If I want to run to your aid with a two-by-two, I’ll do it. Live with it.”
“So there,” Georgette added. But Prue caught his eye in the rearview mirror and suspected she hadn’t heard the end of it.
Georgette excused herself and went right to her room. Prue went upstairs while Gideon locked up.
She opened out the love seat and took the bedspread as she had last night and folded it. Then she went into the bathroom to put on her pajamas.
Gideon was standing near the bed in sweat bottoms when she came out, the top halfway over his head. She watched with breathless admiration as his abdominal muscles rippled with the action of pushing his arms through the sleeves. He yanked the hem down and his face emerged, his eyes tumultuous and dangerous.
GIDEON WATCHED PRUE cross the room to the sofa bed with its folded bedspread held in place by Drifter. It amazed him that just an hour ago she’d been prepared to come to his aid with a piece of lumber from the back of a pickup.
She gave him the same defensive look now she’d given him then. It was proof that she still cared.
He’d have preferred to learn this by being pinned to the bed while she kissed him passionately, but this would do for now.
“Have you forgotten everything I taught you about self-defense when we were married?” he asked, turning off the overhead light. All that remained was the small pool of light cast by the lamp near the love seat.
The Man She Married Page 12
