Running Scared (2 page)

Los Angeles

Friday, October 31

Morning

E
ven though Risa Sheridan
was only an occasional consultant to the international firm of Rarities Unlimited, she didn’t resent flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles for a few hours of work. She never knew what treasures a client might have brought to the company’s headquarters so that Rarities could “Buy, Sell, Appraise, Protect.” All she could be certain of was that whatever she would be inspecting was at least four hundred years old—and usually much older—because ancient jewelry was her specialty.

Risa’s feeling of anticipation flattened when she looked through the double glass doors that led to Rarities’ offices; Shane Tannahill was already on the other side of the bulletproof glass. Despite the fact that she had left Las Vegas before he did, her boss had beaten her to Los Angeles.

Shane had one of his hands tucked into a pocket of his black slacks. The other hand anchored the soft leather jacket he had slung over one shoulder. A visitor’s badge hung on a chain around his neck. Angular face impassive, jade green eyes narrowed, dark hair neatly trimmed, he lounged against the guard desk. Waiting for her.

He wasn’t a patient man.

Bloody L.A. traffic,
she said silently.

It wasn’t her fault that her plane had been held on the ground in Vegas for a security check. Then in L.A. a semi truck hauling gasoline had turned over on Sepulveda, blocking the easiest exit from the airport and thoroughly screwing up the city’s already overburdened surface streets.

And making her late.

Risa’s pulse might have kicked with more than irritation when she spotted Shane, but her steps didn’t hesitate or quicken. Nor did she check that her short black hair was smoothly in place and her unstructured blue jacket was hanging straight. Other women might have licked their lips for that extra shine or sucked in their belly or stuck out their chest to look their best for Shane Tannahill.

Not Risa.

She had fought to get where she was. She loved her job as curator of gold objects for the Golden Fleece, Shane’s Las Vegas entertainment complex. She wasn’t going to lose everything she had worked for simply because of his handsome face and killer grin. Better that she rub her boss the wrong way than the right.

Shane’s work ethic was simple and inflexible: no lying, no cheating, no stealing, and no sex. He didn’t touch the female employees. End of subject. But if a woman didn’t want to accept that, and he was interested in an affair, he would find her another job. Only then would a good time be had by all.

No matter how intelligent, appealing, rich, and maddening Shane might be, Risa wanted her job more than she wanted to do laps around the sex track with any man. Even one of the few who had ever really interested her.

It’s the forbidden fruit thing,
Risa told herself briskly.
No man is that sexy after you wake up with him. Or without him, more likely.

The guard released the automatic locks for Risa. The door swung open.

She gave the uniformed man a bright smile. “Good morning, Jersey. How’s the thumb?”

Jersey, who was about seven feet of muscle and bone, blushed. “Who told you?”

“Mmmm” was all she said. She didn’t want Shane to know how often she and S. K. Niall chatted. Shane was friendly with the two heads of Rarities, but that friendship didn’t slop over into business. Shane wouldn’t be pleased knowing that his curator talked several times a week with Niall—
Rhymes with kneel, boyo. I’m not a bloody river.
At the moment the Golden Fleece didn’t have enough business with Rarities to justify such frequent communications. But Risa was lonely, and Niall was safely involved with Dana Gaynor, the other head of Rarities.

“I can’t believe I slammed my thumb in the desk drawer,” Jersey muttered.

“Yeah, Dana really ought to wear a warning bell when she walks around,” Risa sympathized, fighting a smile.

Shane didn’t bother to fight it. He flashed the kind of grin that made men and women alike blink and draw closer, as though to a fire.

Jersey’s blush deepened.

“You’ll get used to Dana’s walk,” Risa said. She tossed her purse on a moving belt like those at an airport checkpoint and strolled through the metal detector’s field without setting off a single buzz. “All the men do. Eventually.”

“Uh, yes’m.” But Jersey was shaking his head while he watched the screen that displayed the contents of Risa’s purse. Nothing but the usual. The metal alarm didn’t quiver. The nitrate alarm didn’t go off. Neither did any of the other chemical alarms. Not that he expected anything like that to happen—not with a consultant. But he wasn’t paid to make personal judgments. He was paid to put everyone who walked in those doors through the scanners, and that included Dana Gaynor and S. K. Niall.

Shane took Risa’s purse as it popped out the other end of the scanner. He tossed it to her with a quickness that had caught more than one person off guard.

She snagged her purse with a deceptively lazy movement of her arm. He wasn’t the only one with good reflexes. “Thanks.” She turned to Jersey. “Anything else?”

“Just this.” He handed her a staff pass dangling on a long neck chain. “New rules.”

She put on the chain and the colorful bit of plastic that stated she was a consultant. “Since when?”

Shane answered before Jersey could. “Since someone threatened half of Rarities Unlimited.”

“Dana was threatened?” Risa asked, startled.

“No. Niall.”

“Whew,” Risa said, blowing out a breath. Besides being a friend, Niall was half owner and head of security for Rarities Unlimited. Dana owned the other half and ran the “Fuzzy” or Fine Arts side of Rarities. “Remarkably stupid of whoever made the threat.” She gave her boss a speculative glance out of eyes that were a clear, dark blue. “When?”

“Three days ago.” Shane started toward the elevator at the end of a wide, short hallway. “They’re waiting in the number-two clean room.”

Without missing a beat, Risa matched her boss’s long-legged stride. If it strained the hem of her knee-length fitted skirt, too bad. No way a man was going to have her at a disadvantage. “What was the guy mad about?”

“He had a tray of Roman cameos he wanted appraised,” Shane said. “Turned out most were pretty good forgeries. He didn’t like it, so he started yelling and cursing. Niall showed up real fast and escorted the client out. The client didn’t like that either. Said he was going to send someone to teach Niall some manners.”

“Dumb, dumber, dumbest.” She shook her head at the client’s lack of insight. Not to mention simple smarts. “Niall isn’t as big as Jersey, but he’s a lot tougher.”

The corner of Shane’s mouth kicked up, and his eyes gleamed with sardonic humor. “Meaner, too. And I’ll bet on mean every time.”

“No argument here.” Risa knew better than most people just how far mean could go. Growing up cockroach poor taught you all about the difference between mean, tough, and merely big. You learned to size up men and situations fast—and accurately—or you paid in pain.

Shane slanted a speculative glance at his curator. She was very businesslike in her dark tailored skirt and loose, jewel blue jacket, her hair a sleek black cap, her makeup understated, her curvy figure all but hidden, and the kind of mouth that could make a man forget all the reasons he shouldn’t bite it. He almost hadn’t hired Risa because of her body and those sin-with-me lips. Then he had measured the unflinching intelligence in her eyes and remembered the ambition that had fairly radiated from her résumé.

Risa was everything he had wanted and more than he had bargained on getting when he asked Niall to help him find a trustworthy gold curator who would agree to live in Las Vegas. Niall had sent Risa.

Knowing that he would probably regret it, Shane had hired her. Then he had kept as much distance as possible from his new curator.

Given the nature of her work, it wasn’t enough space for comfort. Getting ready for his upcoming “Druid Gold” show had had them stepping on each other’s shadows for months. More than once he had thought about finding another curator so he could have sex with this one. But he needed Risa’s expertise and her fierce intelligence more than he needed an affair, so they just kept circling each other like strange dogs that didn’t know whether to bite or lick.

Most of the time Shane was thankful that Risa put up as many go away signs as he did. The rest of the time it irritated him that she was every bit as wary of him as he was of her. He couldn’t help wondering why she kept backing up. Certainly not out of fear of losing the only good job around. In the past year a well-known private museum and two wealthy collectors had offered Risa employment. He knew because he had bettered their offers in order to keep her.

And his common sense told him that he should have let her go. She was the kind of trouble he really didn’t need.

Risa tapped on the door of the number-two clean room, so called because it was a safe, neutral territory where buyer could meet seller and not fear fraud or outright robbery. In this case Shane was the designated buyer. At least that was what Rarities’ client hoped.

“Sorry I’m late,” Risa said to Dana and Niall, who were going over some papers on the long metal table that ran down the center of the room. “Security hold in Vegas, and then a gas tanker truck flipped on Sepulveda.”

“You two should be honored,” Shane said.

“Why?” Dana asked, looking up.

“I’m her boss, and she didn’t apologize to me.”

Risa’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t say a word.

Niall cleared his throat. Shane and Risa had been at sixes and sevens from the first day they met, but lately the air was beginning to smoke whenever they were in the same room. With a mental sigh he decided to start looking for a new opening for Risa; if she didn’t quit pretty soon, Shane would fire her. On the plus side, Shane was noted for his generous severance packages. Maybe she was holding out for that.

“Why should she apologize to you?” Dana asked, stacking the papers with brisk motions. “Rarities is paying for her time at the moment, not you.”

“Ouch,” Shane said.

“One day you’ll learn, boyo,” Niall said, grinning. “The lady could teach cutting to a sword.”

Shane cocked a dark brown eyebrow at Niall, who was kicked back in his chair as though he didn’t have a worry in the world. “Voice of experience, I presume.”

“Bloody right.” His low-voiced growl was at odds with his amused blue-green eyes and clipped brown hair. He shifted his broad shoulders and reached for his shirt buttons. “Want to see my scars?”

“I don’t think his heart could stand it,” Dana said. “And Risa is far too young for such a manly display.”

“Hey, y’all, I’m thirty-one,” Risa drawled, letting her Arkansas upbringing pour through her smoky voice. “That’s old enough to know better than to let some male show me his, um, scars.”

Dana’s laugh made her look much younger than Risa suspected she was.

“Right,” Niall said. “If you’re not interested in a manly striptease, how about a look at some old gold jewelry?”

Without waiting for an answer, he pushed back and walked to a long, spun-aluminum case at the far end of the table. The box was about the size that a professional pool player might use to protect his favorite cue. There was a similar, smaller box on the opposite end of the table.

“Recorders on,” Dana said to no one in particular.

“Running,” answered a disembodied voice from a ceiling grille.

“Is that Factoid?” Shane asked, gesturing toward the grille.

“No,” Niall said. “Our research guru is off today.”

“With Gretchen?” Shane asked, smiling. Joe-Bob McCoy, aka Factoid, had a permanent lech for his boss, the head of research. Gretchen Miller was twice his age and half again his weight. A real Valkyrie.

“At the moment she’s working with Ian Lapstrake and Lawe Donovan,” Dana said. “The Rutherby inheritance.”

“Too bad,” Shane said. “I’ve got a great menu for Factoid to try out on his next date with Gretchen, assuming he ever talks her into another one. Food guaranteed to make the woman of his dreams lust for him.”

Niall snickered. “What is it—oysters twelve ways?”

Dana rolled her dark eyes. When it came to matters biological, men were such simple creatures.

“A bit more elaborate,” Shane said. “First, a bunch of candles surrounded by agates.”

“Why?” Niall asked.

“Guaranteed, time-tested aphrodisiac.”

Dana snorted softly.

Shane kept talking. “Shrimp cocktail, celery soup, endive salad, halibut with paprika and juniper. Wine, of course. Benedictine and chocolate for dessert. Then the night of your dreams awaits.”

“For that I’d even eat endive,” Niall said.

Dana cut him a glance that said she would remember his words and use them against him. He hated endive.

Without realizing it, Risa let out a soft moan at the thought of Benedictine and chocolate. “You’re killing me. All I get for lunch is carrots and celery.”

“Why?” Shane asked, startled.

“The usual reason. I can’t afford new clothes if I eat my way out of these.”

“Are you hinting for another raise after the one that I was forced to give you to—”

“Argue on your own time,” Dana cut in. Then she said to Risa, “The client’s request is that you do a ‘cold’ appraisal. Visual inspection only.”

“Cold appraisal for hot goods?” Shane suggested.

Dana gave him a look that could have frozen fire. “The provenance on these goods is above reproach. The collector is merely reluctant to invest in a full appraisal if, after a quick look, the goods seem to be less than they were advertised to him.”

Shane smiled and tugged on his forelock like a peasant standing before his lord.

Dana ignored him, though her lips twitched around what might have been an answering smile. She had a weakness for men who were smart, easy on the eyes, and hard on the opposition.

Niall opened the first aluminum box and lifted the lid. Inside, each within its own individually cut nest, pieces of gold jewelry gleamed.

Instantly Risa forgot everything else in the room. She went to the open case and simply stared at the contents. After a long, silent minute, she began talking.