Paper Rose

by Diana Palmer

  He chuckled. “Okay. But only on the condition that you let me know if you find yourself in danger.”

  “I’ll call Colby Lane if I do,” she said. “He’s not Tate, but he comes pretty close.”

  He searched her eyes. “Are you sure you want to take such a risk?”

  She nodded. “So what’s the plan?”

  “I want you to find an excuse to go to Wapiti Ridge and keep an eye on Tom Black Knife. I want to know why he’s cooperating with these people and exactly what they’re trying to do out there. Try to find where those missing tribal funds are going while I try a few political maneuvers here. You stay with Leta from time to time, and everyone knows that you’re involved with the new museum. You won’t attract attention while you’re snooping around. If I can discover exactly who these people are and where they are, I can get to them before they start publishing my past sins.”

  “Good thinking,” she agreed. Then she hesitated. “What do I tell Leta?”

  He studied his linked hands on the edge of her desk. “Good God, I haven’t the slightest idea. She had my child, and she never told me.” He closed his eyes, as if in anguish. “I had a son, and I didn’t know. I guess I’d never have known if this hadn’t come up. No wonder Jack Winthrop was so cruel to her, and to Tate.” He drew in a steadying breath. For an instant he looked defeated. Then his head lifted. “The hell of it is that my son, my only child, has to turn out to be,” he added with a return of his old spirit, black eyes flashing, “the one man in Washington, D.C. who hates my guts!”

  “You weren’t too fond of him, either, if you recall,” she pointed out.

  He glared at her. “He’s hot-tempered and arrogant and stubborn!”

  “Look who he gets it from,” she said with a grin.

  He unlinked his hands as he considered that. “Those can be desirable traits,” he agreed with a faint smile. “Anyway, it’s nice to know I won’t die childless,” he said after a minute. He lifted his eyes to her face. “Leta can’t know any of this. When and if the time comes, I’ll tell her.”

  “Who’s going to tell him?” she ventured.

  “You?” he suggested.

  “In your dreams,” she said with a sweet smile.

  He stuffed his hands back into his pockets. “We’ll cross that bridge when the river comes over it. You’ll be careful, do you hear me? I’ve invested a lot of time and energy into hijacking you for my museum. Don’t take the slightest risk. If you think you’ve been discovered, get out and take Leta with you.”

  “She’s afraid to fly,” she pointed out. “She won’t get in an airplane unless it’s an emergency.”

  “Then I’ll come out and stuff her into a car and drive her to the airport and put her on a plane,” he said firmly.

  She pursed her lips. He was very like Tate. “I guess you would, at that.”

  He started back toward the door. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Since this is my fishing expedition, I’ll have my secretary arrange for your tickets to be sent over.”

  “You’ll be in front of an investigating committee for sure…”

  “I’m paying for them, not my office,” he interrupted. “I’m not about to take advantage of the travel budget. After all, I don’t want to tarnish my halo.”

  “That’ll be the day, when you wear a halo,” she murmured dryly.

  He chuckled with amusement. “I’ll be in touch. See you.”

  “See you.”

  He closed the door and Cecily sat back in her chair and stared blankly at the mass of unfinished paperwork on her desk, sharing space with some of the cultural handiwork she was acquiring for the lifestyle exhibit.

  Holden was taking it for granted that he could solve this problem without ever telling Tate the truth of his parentage, but Cecily wasn’t sure he could. It would come out sooner or later, regardless of what happened with the syndicate, if the press got wind of even a hint of impropriety. That would hurt Tate, lower his mother in his estimation and give him another reason to hate Holden. It would, also, give him a reason to hate Cecily, because she knew the truth before he did, and she hadn’t told him. He hated lies as much as she did.

  She hoped she could live with the contempt he was going to feel for her. She’d share it, she was certain, with both his parents. Leta didn’t even know that Holden knew. What a tangled web!

  But meanwhile, she was going to help Senator Holden solve his little problem and she hoped she could do it before the nasties went to the media with their show-and-tell story. She’d spent enough time around spies to know the ropes, at least. Colby had told her plenty about covert ops. She wished he wasn’t away. He’d be the very person to help ferret out the bad guys and discover the extent of their plans.

  Senator Holden sent her tickets over the next day, following a staff meeting with the curator of the museum, Dr. Phillips.

  Jock Phillips was a tall, balding man with Cherokee blood, a gentle personality and a genuine reverence for Native American culture. Everything they added to the collection fascinated him. He had to touch the objects, as if by making physical contact he could almost absorb them through his fingertips. He was an old bachelor with plenty of friends, and Cecily adored him.

  “Matt says you’re going out to South Dakota on another acquisition trip, but this time he’s got something specific in mind,” Phillips told her with wide, bright eyes. “Care to tell the old man what it is?”

  “Something unusual,” she said, hoping she could fill that order. “And you’re going to love it.”

  He grinned from ear to ear. “How much is this unusual thing going to cost me?” he asked.

  “Cheap at the price, I promise,” she said with a smile. “I’ll make the trip worthwhile.”

  “I know that. You’re quite a bonus to us, you know. You have a knack for Paleo-Indian archaeology. You’d have been wasted in forensics, Cecily,” he added solemnly. “That sort of thing kills the soul.”

  “Why, Dr. Phillips,” she said, surprised, searching for words.

  “I was a forensic scientist in my youth,” he said in a grim tone. “I thought it would be like detective work. It was. But one of the first victims I had to identify turned out to be a missing friend. I gave it up and went into archaeology.” He smiled sadly. “It’s much more rewarding.”

  “Yes, it is to me, too,” she assured him. “I love working here.”

  “So do I,” he confided with a smile. “Go to South Dakota and bring me back something that will make us famous. We’re very young, remember. We have to be able to compete with the big guys.”

  “I’ll do my best,” she promised.

  She packed that evening after she finished dinner. She was sipping coffee when the doorbell rang. Perhaps Colby had come back early!

  She was thinking what a godsend that would be when she opened the door and found Tate on the other side.

  He was wearing jeans and a black turtleneck sweater with a silk jacket. He looked very sophisticated, and she was very aware that she was barefooted in tattered jeans with a blouse that had been washed until the red had faded to a tie-died sort of pink. She stared up at him without speaking.

  “Do I get to come in?” he asked.

  She shrugged and stood aside. “I’m just packing.”

  “Moving again?” he asked with faint sarcasm. “You used to be easier to keep track of.”

  “Because I was living in a nest of spies!” she threw at him, having only recently gleaned that bit of information from Colby. “You got me an apartment surrounded by government agents!”

  “It was the safest place for you,” he said simply. “Someone was always watching you when I couldn’t.”

  “I didn’t need watching!”

  “You did,” he returned, perching on the arm of her big easy chair to stare at her intently. “You never realized it, but you were a constant target for anyone who had a grudge against me. In the end, it was why I gave up government work and got a job in the private sector.” He f
olded his arms over his broad chest, watching surprise claim her features. “There was a communist agent with a high-powered rifle one day, and a South American gentleman with an automatic pistol the following week. You were never told about them. But you had two close calls. If you hadn’t been living in a ‘nest of spies,’ I’d have buried you. Funerals are expensive,” he added with a cold smile.

  She stared at him blankly. “Why didn’t you just send me back to South Dakota?” she asked.

  “To your stepfather?” he drawled.

  That was still a sore spot with her, and she was certain that he knew it. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of arguing. He seemed to be spoiling for a fight. She turned away to the kitchen. “Want a cup of coffee?”

  He got up and took her by the shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a low blow.”

  “Another in a long line of them lately,” she said without meeting his eyes. “I seem to do nothing except rub you the wrong way.”

  “And you don’t know why?” he asked curtly, letting her go.

  She moved one shoulder as she went about the business of getting down a cup and saucer. “At a guess, you’re mad at somebody you can’t get to, and I’m the stand-in.”

  He chuckled. “How do you see through me so easily? Even my mother can’t do that.”

  If he thought about it, he’d know, she thought miserably. “Who pulled your chain today?” she persisted.

  “Holden,” he bit off.

  She was proud that she didn’t flinch. “Oh?” she asked nonchalantly.

  “He’d contracted with me to do a freelance security update on his offices. Today he phoned and said he’d reconsidered.”

  “You can’t be missing the check,” she mused, remembering that he drove a new Jaguar sports car, and frequently wore Armani suits. It hurt to remember that her college fees had probably been little more than pocket change to him. He not only had money from his job with Pierce Hutton, but he also had money everywhere from freelance covert work in his pre-intelligence service days.

  “I’m not. It’s the principle of the thing. He did it deliberately, even if he won’t admit it. Holden is a guy who carries grudges. I suppose he was still steaming from the talk we had at his birthday party.”

  She bit her lower lip. Matt Holden had put her in a terrible position by swearing her to secrecy.

  “You didn’t talk at his birthday party,” she pointed out. “You yelled at each other.”

  He changed the subject. “Just where are you going, if you’re not moving again?” he asked abruptly.

  She put the fresh cup of black coffee on the coffee table in front of the sofa. She knew that he didn’t take milk or sugar. She curled up in the armchair as he moved to sit on the sofa. “Actually I’m going back out to see Leta,” she told him, which was partially true. “I’ve got a line on an ancient artifact I want for the museum.” Which wasn’t true.

  There was a long pause. “Ancient artifacts have a sacred meaning for our people,” he told her irritably. “They don’t belong in museums. They’re part of our culture.”

  He didn’t know yet that he had only a partial claim to that culture. He was so proud of his ancestry. The truth was going to hurt him badly.

  “It’s not that sort of artifact,” she lied. In fact, she had no idea what she was going to come up with that would satisfy Dr. Phillips and Tate both as well as justify her spying trip for Senator Holden.

  “You were just in South Dakota a couple of weeks ago,” he pointed out. “Why didn’t you get it then?”

  “It wasn’t available then.” She brushed back a tiny strand of loose hair. “Don’t cross-examine me, okay? It’s been a long day.”

  He ran a hand around the back of his neck, under his braid of hair, and stared at her own hair in the tight bun at her nape as she replaced the errant strand. “I thought you took it down at night.”

  “At bedtime,” she corrected.

  His eyes narrowed. “Lucky Colby,” he said deliberately.

  She wasn’t going to give him any rope to hang her with. She just smiled.

  He glared at her. “He won’t change,” he said flatly.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Tate, but my private life is my own business, not yours.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to talk to me.”

  “That works both ways,” she replied, eyes narrowing. “What gives you the right to ask questions about the men I date?”

  Her words made him mad. His lips compressed until they made a straight line. He looked like his father when he was angry. He finished his coffee in a tense silence and got to his feet. He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go. I just wanted to see how you were.”

  “You just wanted to see if Colby was here,” she corrected and smiled mirthlessly when he blinked.

  “You know I don’t approve of Colby,” he told her.

  “Like I care!” she said.

  He took a step toward her. His black eyes glittered with conflicting emotions. She aroused him more lately than any woman he’d ever known. Just looking at her sent him over the edge.

  On some level she recognized the tension in him, the need that he was denying. He was upset about Matt Holden pulling him out of the security work, not because of the money, but rather because it seemed nothing more than spite. Actually Holden was saving them both from a political upheaval because he could have been accused of nepotism. But deeper than that was a frustration because he wanted a woman he couldn’t have. Cecily knew that at some level. He was trying to start a fight. She couldn’t let him.

  “Colby is a sweet man,” she said gently. “He’s good company and he doesn’t drink around me, ever.”

  “He’s an alcoholic,” he said quietly, trying to control the anger.

  “I told you before, he’s in therapy,” she said. “He’s trying, Tate.”

  “So you expect me not to worry about you? After what my own father put me and my mother through?”

  Chapter Five

  She saw the hurt as if it were visible on his expressionless face. She got out of the chair and stood just in front of him. “People aren’t basically cruel,” she said in a soft, sympathetic tone. “Sometimes they just hurt so much inside that they can’t bear the pain. They can’t cope with the ordinary pressures of day-to-day life, and they turn to drugs or alcohol for comfort.”

  “What reason did my father have to hurt inside?” he demanded harshly.

  That his son wasn’t his son and his wife loved another man, she thought. She looked at him, seeing plainly how the years of torment and anguish had formed the man he’d become. His face was like granite, but every line, every furrow, concealed an emotional wound from years past. “Steel tempered by fire,” she said aloud, without thinking.

  “Am I?” he asked.

  She smiled sadly. “Aren’t you?”

  He let out a long, slow breath and some of the tension drained out of him. He looked at her quizzically. “You give me peace,” he said unexpectedly. “The only time I ever feel it is when I’m with you. God knows why, when you set me off like a bomb.”

  She searched his eyes. “Tate, Senator Holden has a reason for what he did,” she told him seriously. “I don’t pretend to know what it is, but I know him. He’s not like some politicians who lie when the truth would suit better. He has integrity. He doesn’t hold grudges and he doesn’t backstab. You know that,” she added with conviction.

  He scowled. “Yes, I do.” His narrow eyes searched hers. “What do you know, Cecily?”

  “I know archaeology,” she replied.

  He reached out and touched her firm little chin with hard fingers. “You’re keeping something from me,” he said in a low, deep tone. “I’m not sure why I sense that, but I do.”

  “You think you know all about me,” she replied, trying to draw back. “Don’t…do that,” she muttered, reaching up to catch his hair-roughened wrist in her warm fingers.


  His breath caught. “Fatal error, Cecily,” he said huskily, moving in, giving in to the hunger that had really brought him to her apartment at this hour of the night. “You shouldn’t have touched me…”

  Before she could ask what he meant, his mouth was hard on her lips. He groaned and backed her up against the wall while his lips did unspeakably erotic things to her open mouth. She felt his powerful thigh parting her legs, felt his lean, fit body press itself hungrily to hers as he crushed her sensuously into the wall behind her.

  She had no defense whatsoever. She was on fire for him. Her nails dug into the long, hard muscles of his back and she moaned harshly against his demanding mouth. There was a rhythm that she didn’t recognize. It made little darts of pleasure run up into her body from some secret recess of joy. One lean hand was at her hip, teaching her the rhythm. His whole body was an instrument of delicious torture, taking her far beyond any small pleasure she’d had in her life. She sobbed under his mouth as her body began to swell with it. And at the same moment, she felt the change in him as well, a physical change that was all too noticeable given their proximity.

  He knew they were getting in over their heads. He pulled back, despite the intense pain it caused him to stop. His eyes were dazed, ferocious as they met her own from a space of inches. He exhaled roughly, unsteadily, at her swollen mouth. He looked down to find her body so close that barely a breath could get between them. He was aroused and she knew. He’d let her know, for the first time.

  He looked back up into her misty eyes. “You have to stop letting me do this,” he bit off, half-angrily.

  “If you’ll stop leaning on me so that I can get my hands on a blunt object, I’ll be happy to…!”

  He kissed the words into oblivion. “It isn’t a joke,” he murmured into her mouth. His hips moved in a gentle, sensuous sweep against her hips. He felt her shiver.