* * * *
Keeping his lust under control was getting to be a problem.
Amanda Jane, when her eyes darkened to slate and the corners of her mouth turned up, was way more tempting than Scarlet Smith.
He liked her calm gaze and gurgling laugh, the way the aquamarine dress clung to the tiny waist and the way she’d stood up to him despite her fear.
Yeah, he could tell she’d been afraid.
But most of all, he admired her loyalty to her sister, who didn't deserve it.
He tried to whip up outrage with thoughts of Noelle, but Amanda's smile kept intruding.
The short upper lip, the plump bottom lip. Begging to be kissed.
I'm a fool for thinking of her, he told himself. You're a fool for wanting her, he told his prick. She'd have you for an hors d'oeuvre and lick the toothpick if it would get her damned sister off the hook.
And on that titillating thought, he chuckled and drifted off to sleep.
* * * *
On Wednesday, Amanda went to work. As he'd promised, Callaway tagged along.
“You'll scare away all my customers,” she told him crossly when he took up a position in a chair beside the entrance and made as if to become a permanent lounger. “For heaven's sake, come back to my office and try and stay out of the way. And don't you dare light a single cigarette.”
He scowled. “I can't smoke?”
“You're a big boy. If you want to get lung cancer, you know where the smoking lounge is.” When he hesitated, she added in a maternal tone, “Need me to go with you? Does walking down that long hall alone frighten you?”
He sulked, but put away his cigarettes. Then he sat in her office and sulked some more. His actions were so like those of a small boy, Amanda had all she could do not to smile at him and coo the way she did with baby Teddy.
It's all in how you handle him.
Under other circumstances, she could have handled Callaway McIntyre. Oh, yes indeedy. Under other circumstances, he would have been eating out of her hand.
What nonsense. Why would she want an inconsiderate hedonist like Cal McIntyre eating out of her hand? Even if he did have a dimple that asked to be kissed.
She spent the morning making sure imminent deadlines were being met by suppliers and seamstresses, and calling to apologize personally for canceled appointments and to rebook them.
In her office, Cal took a seat at the drafting table where, bored, he turned magazine pages or talked on his cell. She saw him on it through the glass once, and later came in from the sewing room to hear the end of another conversation.
“…break-in could be connected. When will Robert... Yes, her apartment, but we're at the shop.” He caught sight of Amanda. “Nicer than the exotic dancer and that water skier. But she isn't a redhead, so I don’t know if it'll last.”
Amanda drew herself up.
He listened and burst out laughing. “You're not fooling me. You just want to get a discount.” He lowered his voice, turned his back to Amanda. “Don't, Claire. We'll manage.”
After he hung up, his somber expression vanished beneath a wide grin. “My sister approves.”
“Of you spending the night with me?” Her bitterness surfaced. “She must have a strange sense of values.”
His jaw became rigid. “Claire's one of the finest people in the world. I don't think, after what your sister's done, that you have much room to criticize mine.”
She had earned his rebuke. “No, I don't. I'm sorry.”
The jaw loosened. “I am, too. Claire thinks you’re nice, despite everything.”
“In spite of Houston?” Her hands balled up. So Claire Winslow knew the whole sordid story. It was bound to happen.
“She thinks the thief is your sister.”
“You didn't tell her about me?”
He made a lazy gesture with sun-darkened fingers, sleepy eyes falling to her fists and narrowing in amusement. “I thought her knowing would make all of us too uncomfortable.”
She looked at him skeptically but left it for weightier matters. “You were talking about my apartment being broken into, weren't you? Why do you think that's connected to your diamonds?”
“It may not be. But if something had happened to you, there'd have been nothing to lead me to Noelle.”
Ice encased her at visions of her small car bursting into flames.
He picked up on the change. “What's wrong?”
Sometimes, damn him, the brown eyes could see her every thought as soon as it formed.
She told him about the explosion that had totaled her car.
He heard her out. “Begins to sound more like someone intended to do away with you, doesn't it?”
“We don't know that.”
His silence screamed at her.
“Noelle would never hurt me. Not Noelle.”
“What about her boyfriend? Robert picked Sonny up at the airport around three that morning. Sonny could've flown in early, come here, and gone back to the airport in time to meet Robert. Would Sonny have been as concerned about your health?”
Her hands involuntarily wound together in the childish gesture she'd broken herself of. She separated them.
“When Sonny got to Fair Meadows,” Cal went on, “he discovered I knew who you were. You being dead wouldn't do him any good. He decided to collect what money he could and leave for wherever Noelle was waiting. Maybe she's still waiting there.”
She put up her chin. “If he's the one who broke in, Noelle didn't know. Noelle would never do anything to hurt me.”
His expression said he believed otherwise.
“She wouldn't.”
* * * *
Cal fumed. Amanda refused to see the truth about her damned sister.
At noon they ordered from a deli across the street. While they ate on Amanda's desk, Copland's
Rodeo
played in the background and Amanda offered excuses for Noelle's behavior.
Cal ate his sandwich.
After relating how she'd had to fill in for their dead mother, she ended, “You’re right. Noelle calls me when she needs help. I tried to teach her that life is more giving than taking but she’s never been able to understand. She’s able to lead a mostly normal life, but sometimes she does idiotic things that don’t make sense even to her. I shouldn’t have dumped her on Edward when they married. I should have stayed in the picture.”
Cal knew all about feelings of inadequacy. Too bad he couldn't say something, do something to banish that disheartened air about her. The severe navy dress should have turned him off but didn't, not with her breasts mounding the knit fabric at each gesture of her arm. “When Sonny doesn't show up, she'll call.”
Unhappy lips caught the straw. Iced tea made her throat ripple. “You're very confident.”
“I am. She'll call.” He felt his prick shift, pretended to be fascinated by the wall sketches.
She wasn't a redhead, she wasn't sexy, and she wasn't his type. Maybe he felt sorry for her, but this time primitive lust would
not
overwhelm common sense. He was through being some woman's pawn.
She put down her tea. “Thanks for not telling your sister about me.”
“No problem. Are you going to eat your dill pickle slice?”
“No.” She held it out for him to take.
“Tell me something.” He considered the briny slab, knowing he shouldn't ask, shouldn't become any more involved with her. “I have a dossier on you.”
“A dossier?” She dropped her napkin and bent to pick it up. “How flattering.”
“It's very interesting.” He wanted to laugh, as she sat looking for all the world like a woman threatened with the unspeakable, ready to defend herself to the death. Worse, he wouldn't mind doing the unspeakable, damn his rutting soul.
Except it wasn't his soul that wanted her.
“It's hard enough to live one's life without having someone else examine it through a microscope,” she snapped.
“I wanted to ask why you changed,” he said mildly. When he bit the pickle, he pretended he was biting her ear.
The erect back slumped. The thin mouth relaxed and the uneaten portion of her sandwich was pushed away. “Everyone changes.”
“Not as fast as you. Cheerleader, homecoming queen, various club offices. But in your third year of college, you raised a 2.6 average to a 3.5 before you dropped out without graduating. No more social life, no more Miss Personality.” He waved what was left of the pickle. “Your yearbook pictures changed, too. When you started college, you looked like a movie star. Like a real Scarlett O'Hara.”
She flushed.
“Afterward, you looked like a librarian.”
“Looks have little to do with a person's abilities.”
“Most people make the best of their appearances. You did once. You proved you still can if you want to. What made you not want to, Amanda?”
Her attempt to evade his questions didn’t hide the pain. “Isn't it in my dossier?”
“No.” His urge to understand was too strong to spare her memories. “What happened?”
Unwilling words came out, stilted. “I was engaged when I was twenty-one. At a fraternity party one night, my fiancé paid too much attention to another girl and I flirted with one of his friends to get even. Flirted a lot. Like, sat on his lap and let him feel me up. Tommy and his friend had words, and it ended up in a shoving match. Tommy hit his head on the corner of a marble mantle. He was dead before he got to the hospital.”
Pity welled.
Her stoic veil returned. “It was my fault. All mine. If I hadn't been playing stupid games, Tommy would be alive.”
“So you stopped playing games altogether.”
How about that? Amanda had her failures, too. She atoned by retreating from the world into her career, just like he retreated from his career into his diversions.
He longed to pat her shoulder and tell her that life would go on.
She didn't give him a chance. “Games aren't worth anyone's life.” Her chair lurched back from her desk. “I have to go. I have a fitting at one-thirty.”
He watched her go, back straight and chin up.
* * * *
She felt his eyes on her as she left.
Damn him, damn him. What had possessed her? She hadn't talked to anyone about Tommy's death since it happened and had never intended to. Certainly not to a sardonic playboy like Callaway McIntyre. He wouldn't understand. He couldn't. All his life, he'd been given everything. His future had never turned from gold to rust in one quick instant. No one he loved had ever died because of his foolish mistake.
Why had she told him? Because of his imagined empathy? She didn't want his commiseration or his pity. All she wanted was to be rid of him.
After bathing her face in cold water, she inspected it in the mirror.
A librarian, he had labeled her. That stung, though such vanities ought to be long buried. Stupid, stupid. What did it matter how he thought of her? Smoothing her hair into place, she tidied the discreet knot at the nape of her neck.
Some librarians were very attractive, but she was pretty sure they weren’t what Cal had in mind.
A librarian.
Chapter Fourteen
Toward the end of the afternoon, Amanda's office phone rang.
On the other end, Noelle sounded hysterical. “Manda, oh, Manda, I'm in such trouble.”
“Noelle! Thank God. Where are you?”
Callaway threw down his magazine and closed the glass door leading to the outer shop. Though he didn't rush, he was back in an instant to turn on the speaker and stand, every muscle alert, beside Amanda.
“Manda.” Sniffling and crackling filled the room as Noelle hiccupped. “Manda, I, I-I just found out…Amanda, I…” her voice broke, “Sonny's dead.”
Amanda's heart sank. Everything Callaway had said was true. Noelle was Sonny's accomplice. Noelle had tricked her.
Oh, Noelle, how could you?
At her side, Callaway's eyes glittered. He squeezed her elbow.
Noelle's fierce weeping filled the office. “I'm stuck here by myself with no money. I c-can't buy a ticket home and I c-can't speak the language and it's so awful. Oh, Manda, I'm in such trouble.”
Years of habit kicked in. “I know, honey. But I'll help you, you know I will. Where are you?”
Noelle snuffled again. “Have you...talked to Edward?”
That note of withdrawal was familiar. Whenever Noelle did anything wrong and wanted to hide it from Amanda, she belatedly turned cautious. Noelle had behaved that way after getting her ring back, but Amanda had ignored the signs. She should have known better.
“Yes, I've talked to Edward.” She had never lied to Noelle, would not start now. Callaway, thank heavens, made no effort to control the conversation.
“He t-told you. About the divorce.”
“Noelle, it's all right, whatever you've done, it's all right. Do you hear me?” Amanda wanted to scream. “But I can't help you unless I know where you are.”
Callaway nodded approvingly.