by Nora Roberts
CHAPTER
TEN
A well-mannered fire simmered in the grate of the Adam fireplace. It threw pretty, dancing lights over the Oriental carpet and silk-papered walls. A distinguished vermouth picked up the subtle lighting and sparkled in the heavy, faceted Baccarat glass. Van Cliburn played an elegant Chopin étude. Tasteful hors d’oeuvres had been offered on Georgian silver by the aged and discreet butler.
It was exactly the sort of room Jed had skulked through during his childhood, with the carefully placed bric-a-brac whispering of old money. But there was a subtle difference here. In this room, in this house, he had known some transient happiness. In this room he hadn’t been threatened or berated or ignored.
Yet it still reminded him, painfully, of the boy he had been.
Jed rose from the miserably uncomfortable Louis XIV side chair to pace his grandmother’s front parlor.
In evening clothes he looked the part of the Bester-Skimmerhorn heir. It was only his eyes, as he stared down at the flickering fire, that reflected the other paths he’d chosen, and the internal struggle to find his true place.
He wouldn’t have minded a visit. Of all of his relatives, Honoria was the only one he’d had generous feelings for during his youth. As fate would have it, she was the only relative he had left. But the command performance grated.
He’d refused to take Honoria to the Winter Ball, twice—directly and concisely. She had simply ignored his refusal and, using a combination of guile, guilt, and tenacity had wheedled him into dragging out his tux.
“Well, Jedidiah, you’re still prompt.”
Honoria stood in the parlor doorway. She had sharp New England cheekbones and brilliant blue eyes that missed little. Her snowy hair was softly coiffed around her narrow face. Her lips, still full and oddly sensuous, were curved. Smugly. Honoria knew when she’d won a match, whether it be a rousing game of bridge or a battle of wills.
“Grandmother.” Because it was expected, and because he enjoyed it, Jed crossed over to take her hand and lift it to his lips. “You look beautiful.”
It was quite true, and she knew it. Her Adolpho gown of royal blue set off both her eyes and her stately figure. Diamonds glittered at her throat, at her ears, at her wrists. She enjoyed the gems because she had earned them, and because she was vain enough to know they would turn heads.
“Pour me a drink,” she ordered, in a voice that still carried a hint of Boston from her youth. “That will give you time to tell me what you’re doing with your life.”
“We won’t need much time for that.” But he walked obediently to the liquor cabinet.
He remembered when she had caught him filching from that same cabinet nearly twenty years before. How she had insisted that he drink from the decanter of whiskey—and keep drinking while she watched, steely-eyed. And after, when he’d been miserably sick, she had held his head for him.
“When you’re old enough to drink like a man, Jedidiah, you and I will share a civilized cocktail. Until then, don’t take what you can’t handle.”
“Sherry, Grandmother?” he asked, and grinned.
“Now, why would I want an old woman’s drink when there’s good whiskey around?” Silks rustling, she sat near the fire. “When am I going to see this hovel you’ve moved yourself into?”
“Anytime you like, and it’s not a hovel.”
She snorted and sipped at the whiskey in a heavy crystal tumbler. “A drafty apartment above some seamy little shop.”
“I haven’t noticed any drafts.”
“You had a perfectly adequate home.”
“I had a twenty-room mausoleum that I hated.” He’d known this was coming. After all, it was from her he’d inherited the tenacity that had made him a good cop. Rather than face the chair again, he leaned against the mantel. “I’ve always hated it.”
“It’s wood and brick,” she said dismissively. “It’s a foolish waste of energy to hate the inanimate. In any case, you would have been welcome here. As you always were.”
“I know.” They’d been through it all before. But because he wanted to erase the concern from her eyes, he grinned. “But I didn’t want to interfere with your sex life.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “You’d hardly have done so from the east wing. However, I have always respected your independence.” And because she sensed some subtle lightening in him since the last time she’d made the offer, she let that part of the argument rest. “When do you intend to go back to your badge, and your work?”
His hesitation was brief. “I have no intention of going back.”
“You disappoint me, Jedidiah. And, I think, you disappoint yourself.” She rose, regally. “Fetch my wrap. It’s time we left.”
Dora loved a party. One of her favorite ways to reward herself for a hard day was to primp, dress up and spend an evening in a crowd. It didn’t matter if she knew a single soul, as long as there were plenty of people, chilled champagne, music and interesting food.
As it happened, she knew a great many people attending the Winter Ball. Some were friends, some were customers, some were patrons of her family’s theater. She was able to entertain herself by mingling, moving from group to group to exchange pecks on the cheek and fresh gossip. Though she’d taken a chance wearing the strapless white gown, the press of bodies heated the room and kept her comfortable.
“Dora, darling, you look fabulous.” Ashley Draper, a social climber of the first order who had recently shed her second husband, swooped down on Dora in a cloud of Opium.
Because Ashley fell slightly below the borders of friendship, Dora was amused by the quick air kiss. “You look radiant, Ashley.”
“You’re a dear to say so, even though I know I’m a bit washed out. Right after the first of the year, I’m going to spend a week at the Green Door. The holidays are so fatiguing, aren’t they?”
“God knows how we get through them.” Dora popped a stuffed olive into her mouth. “I thought you’d be in Aspen.”
“Next week.” Ashley waved a fuchsia-tipped hand toward another couple. “What a ghastly dress,” she murmured through her smiling lips. “It makes her look like a stuffed eggplant.”
Because it was a killingly accurate statement, Dora laughed and remembered why she tolerated Ashley. “Are you here stag?”
“Lord no.” Ashley scanned the crowd. “My escort’s that amazing hunk of beefcake with the Samson locks.”
Once again Ashley’s description was on the money. Dora picked him out quickly. “My, my.”
“An artist,” Ashley purred. “I’ve decided to be a patron. Speaking of the men in our lives, I heard that Andrew broke off your business association.”
“Did you?” It only amused Dora that Andrew, or more likely his mother, had twisted the facts. “Let’s just say I’m looking for someone a bit more substantial to stand between me and the IRS.”
“And how is your little shop doing?”
“Oh, we manage to sell a trinket now and again.”
“Mmm, yes.” Finances didn’t interest Ashley, as long as the alimony check came on time. “We missed you the other night at the Bergermans’. Christmas Eve?”
“I was . . . unexpectedly detained.”
“I hope he was worth it,” Ashley purred, then grabbed Dora’s hand in a crushing grip. “Look, here.” She lowered her voice to confidential tones. “It’s the grand dame herself. She rarely puts in an appearance here.”
“Who?” Curiosity piqued, Dora craned her neck. She lost the rest of Ashley’s hissed explanation the minute she saw Jed. “Surprise, surprise,” she murmured. “Excuse me, Ashley, I have to go see a man about a tux.”
And he did look fabulous in it, she mused as she circled the ballroom to come up behind him. She waited until he’d procured two glasses of champagne.
“I know,” she said at his shoulder. “You went back on the force, and now you’re undercover.” She caught his soft oath as he turned. “What is it, an international jewel thief? A ring of insidio
us pâté burglars?”
“Conroy. Do you have to be everywhere?”
“I have an invitation.” She tapped her beaded evening bag. “How about you, copper?”
“Christ. It’s bad enough I have to be here at all without—”
“Jedidiah!” Honoria’s authoritative voice halted any complaints. “Have you lost whatever slight degree of manners I managed to teach you? Introduce your friend to your grandmother.”
“Grandmother?” On a quick laugh, Dora took Honoria’s narrow-boned hand. “Really? I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs. Skimmerhorn, even though it destroys my theory that Jed was hatched from a very hard-shelled, very stale egg.”
“His social graces are lacking.” Honoria studied Dora with growing interest. “And it’s Mrs. Rodgers, my dear. I was briefly married to Walter Skimmerhorn, but rectified the matter as soon as humanly possible.”
“I’m Dora Conroy, Jed’s landlord.”
“Ah.” There was a world of expression in the single syllable. “And how do you find my grandson as a tenant?”
“His temperament’s a bit unreliable.” Dora shot a look at Jed, pleased by the fire in his eyes. “But he appears to be neat enough, and he’s certainly not rowdy.”
“I’m relieved to hear it. There were times, you know, during his youth, that I feared his landlord would be a warden.”
“Then you must be pleased he chose the right side of the law.”
“I’m very proud of him. He’s the first and only Skimmerhorn to amount to anything.”
“Grandmother.” Very deliberately, Jed took her arm. “Let me get you some hors d’oeuvres.”
“I’m capable of getting my own.” Just as deliberately, she shook him off. “And there are several people I must speak to. Dance with the girl, Jedidiah.”
“Yeah, Jedidiah,” Dora said as Honoria swept off. “Dance with the girl.”
“Go find somebody else to harass,” he suggested, and turned toward the bar. He was going to need something stronger than champagne.
“Your grandma’s watching, pal.” Dora tugged on his sleeve. “Five will get you ten she’ll lecture you if you don’t escort me onto the dance floor and exude some charm.”
Setting the champagne aside, Jed took her arm. If his fingers dug in a bit hard, she was determined not to grimace. “Don’t you have a boyfriend around here?”
“I don’t see boys,” Dora said, grateful when Jed had to shift his grip into dance position. “If you mean do I have a date, then no. I don’t usually like to bring a date to a party.”
“Why?”
“Then I’d have to worry if he was having a good time, and what I prefer doing is having one myself.” The orchestra was playing a silky version of “Twilight Time.” “You’re a nice dancer, Skimmerhorn. Better than Andrew.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“Of course, it would be a nice touch if you looked at me, instead of glaring at the other dancers.” When his gaze lowered, she tilted her head and smiled. “What about you? Are you having a good time?”
“I hate these things.” It was a shame, a damn shame, he thought, that she felt so incredibly good in his arms. “You probably love them.”
“Oh, I do. You’d like them more if you accepted them for what they are.”
“Which is?”
“A chance to show off.” She lifted a finger from his shoulder to tease his hair. “I’m terrific at showing off.”
“I’d already figured that out.”
“Astonishing deductive powers. Comes from being a police captain.”
He slid a hand up her back, encountered bare skin. “Do you ever go out at night in anything that doesn’t glitter?”
“Not if I can help it. Don’t you like the dress?”
“What there is of it.” The song ended and another began, but he’d forgotten he didn’t want to dance with her. Honoria glided by in the arms of a distinguished-looking man with a silver moustache. “You look okay, Conroy.”
“My.” She widened her eyes. “Feel my heart pound.”
“If I feel your heart, I’ll do it in private.”
“Are you exuding charm for your grandmother’s sake?”
He looked down at her again. Something in her smile encouraged one of his own. “She liked you.”
“I’m a likable person.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a pain in the ass.” He stroked his hand up and down her bare back where the silk of the gown gave way to the silk of her flesh. “A very sexy pain in the ass.”
“I’m getting to you, Jed.” And her heart was pounding, just a little, as she trailed her fingers along his neck.
“Maybe.” Testing them both, he dipped his head, brushed her mouth with his.
“Absolutely,” she corrected. She felt the quickening in her stomach spread to a fluttering. She ignored the curious heads turned their way and kept her mouth an inch away from his. “We could go home tonight and tear each other’s clothes off, jump into bed and relieve some of this tension.”
“An interesting image, Conroy, but it sounds like there’s an ‘or’ coming.”
“Or,” she said, and tried to smile, “we could get to be friends first.”
“Who said I wanted to be your friend?”
“You won’t be able to help yourself.” She touched a hand to his cheek, as much in compassion as arousal. “I can be a pretty good friend. And I figure you need one.”
She moved something in him, no matter how hard he tried to stand against it. “How do you figure that?”
“Because everyone does. Because it’s hard to be alone in a room full of people, but you are.”
After a violent inner struggle, he rested his brow against hers. “Goddamn it, Dora. I don’t want to care about you. I don’t want to care about—”
“Anything?” she finished for him. When she looked up into his eyes this time, her heart broke. “You’re not dead,” she murmured.
“Close enough.” He pulled himself back. “I want a drink.”
She went with him to the bar, ordered champagne while he chose scotch. “Tell you what.” Her voice was light again. “We’ll try something new. I won’t give you a hard time—and vice versa. I won’t make suggestive comments or clever insults.”
He rattled the ice in his glass while he studied her. “What’s left?”
“We’ll both be agreeable and have a good time.” At his lifted brow she laughed, hooked her arm through his. “Okay, I’ll have a good time, and you’ll make the best of the situation. Hungry?”
“I could be.”
“Let’s go check out the buffet. If you have a plate in your hand, none of the women who are ogling you will expect you to dance.”
“Nobody’s ogling me.” But he went with her.
“Sure they are. I’d ogle you myself if I didn’t know you.” She debated between the salmon mousse and the stuffed mushrooms, settled on both. “I don’t believe I’ve seen you at the Winter Ball before, and I’ve attended the last three years.”
He’d always been able to use work as an excuse, Jed remembered. He plucked a cube of cheese from her plate and said nothing.
“This conversation thing is tough for you, isn’t it?” She kept a smile on her face as she heaped more food on her plate, then generously held it out to share. “I’ll give you a hand. I say something, then, depending on the content, you laugh, look bemused, annoyed, intrigued, and say something back. Ready?”
“You’ve got an awfully smart mouth, Conroy.”
“Good. Good start.” She sampled a thumb-sized spinach pastry. “Tell me, is your grandmother the Honoria Rodgers who purchased the Qing dynasty cloisonné enamel candle holder, in the form of an elephant, at Christie’s a few months ago?”
“I don’t know about elephants, but she’s the only Honoria Rodgers I’m aware of.”
“Gorgeous piece—at least it looked terrific in the catalogue. I couldn’t get up to New York, but I put in a couple of telephone bids during that aucti
on. Not on the Qing, though. Out of my range. I’d love to see it sometime.”
“If you’re wrangling for an invitation, you should talk to her.”
“Just making chitchat, Skimmerhorn. Try one of these,” she invited with her mouth full, and picked up another pastry. “Incredible.”
Before he could accept or refuse, she had it up to his mouth and in. “Great, huh?”
“I don’t like spinach.” Grimacing, he washed it down with scotch.
“I used to be the same way, but my father got me hooked on it by singing ‘Popeye the Sailorman.’ I was twenty,” she said earnestly. “And naive.” When his lips quirked, she lifted her glass in toast. “There now. And you look so pretty when you smile.”
“Dora, darling.” With her young artist in tow, Ashley glided up to the buffet. “How do you manage to eat like that and stay so slim?”
“Just a little agreement I have with Satan.”
Ashley laughed gaily and gave Jed one long sweeping glance—what Dora would definitely term an ogle. “Isadora Conroy, Heathcliff.” She presented her date as though he were the prize stud at a thoroughbred farm. “I discovered him in this marvelous little gallery on South Street.”
“Oh?” Dora didn’t bother to remind Ashley that her shop was on South. “I’ve always wanted to discover something—like Christopher Columbus. Or Indiana Jones.” Because Heathcliff only looked baffled, she took pity on him. After passing her plate to Jed, she offered a hand. “Ashley tells me you’re an artist.”
“I am. I—”
“He does the most sensual life studies.” Ashley stroked Heathcliff’s arm, as a woman might a favored pet. “You simply must see them sometime.”
“Top of my list.”
“I don’t believe you’ve introduced us to your escort.”
“I don’t have one. That’s an odd term, don’t you think? It sounds as though you’d need someone along because you couldn’t find where you were going yourself. Personally, I have an excellent sense of direction.”
“Dora.” Ashley gave another quick, tinkling laugh. “You’re such a wit.”
“Only half,” Jed said under his breath.
Dora spared him even the mildest of glances. “Jed Skimmerhorn, Ashley Draper and Heathcliff.”
