The emerald ring was gone, too, but that was nothing. The bauble wasn't worth half what he’d given Blondie for her sick baby.
No, only his studs mattered and more than the studs, his mother's journal.
He and Claire hadn't known it existed until the past week. Lila's trusted secretary had died in her retirement home near Houston, and in sorting her things, her daughter had come across Lila's journal from twenty-three years earlier and wondered if the McIntyres would like to have it.
Would they ever. There was no telling what intimate family secrets it might—and did—contain.
Claire had delegated Cal, already scheduled for the Grand Tartan opening, to pick it up.
Which he'd done. Except now it was gone, along with the pages revealing all the details of Lila's rushed marriage to Tip.
He cursed for several minutes.
Why the hell had he been so willing to shoulder the responsibility? Everything he really wanted always fell apart when he went after it. He knew that. God, he knew that.
He should have destroyed the pages when he had the chance. Now the redhead could be reading them, could have read them while he slept.
Still in last night’s boxers, he went through the suite he shared with Sonny. Robert always made Sonny babysit him, but Cal was okay with it because Sonny was easy to get along with.
When he knocked at the other bedroom door, there was no answer.
He opened it to a neatly packed and closed overnight bag on the unmade bed.
How like Sonny. Efficient and punctual in his business persona, discriminating in his sex life. Everything that Cal was not.
Sonny would never cause a scandal by drinking too much or losing his temper and decking his rival. Sonny would never let some two-bit whore take him for a ride. Not Sonny.
Padding back through the suite, anger growing every second, Cal found Mr. Perfection seated on a sheltered outside patio with cigarette and coffee. Dressed in gray slacks and white shirt, Sonny leaned over an open newspaper spread on the table. A navy blazer hung on the back of his chair.
Robert's aide was showered, shaved, and dressed. Clear-eyed and ready for the morning ceremonies, Mr. Perfection reviewed news reports from last night's gala so as not to waste time while he waited for Cal.
Frigging paragon
.
Cal stepped out.
Don't be so damned petty. You're just jealous because he's good at his job.
Sonny saw him and crackled his paper before glancing toward the deserted pool below. “Shit. Don't you effing believe in clothes? All we need is some photographer snapping a picture of you in your skivvies.”
“When time did you get in last night?”
Sonny blinked. “What time did I get in? To Houston? About six, I guess. In time for the show. Why?”
“Not to Houston. What time did you get to bed?”
Sonny blinked again. A handsome man about Cal's age, he had a debonair air rivaling the movies’ James Bonds. Women liked Sonny, and Sonny liked women. Though he sometimes juggled two or three, he was always discreet.
A lot different from Cal and his messy affairs.
Now Sonny smirked. “Bed? Checking up on me, Papa? I'd think you'd be the one to do the explaining. We're having guests for brunch this morning, remember?” He blew smoke toward Cal.
“Was the girl gone when you came in?”
“Girl? Gone?” Sonny shifted a blank gaze behind where Cal stood as if expecting to see someone there. “The redhead? She didn't stay all night? Whassamatter, buddy? Losing your touch? Don't tell me I made an easy Benjamin after all.”
Cal clenched and unclenched his hands. “When did you get to bed, dammit.”
“Hey, don’t get your skivvies in a wad. It was about two-thirty, maybe three. Robert and the de Graffens wanted to go down to the pub. I figured I'd give you time to do your thing and get off to dreamland. What's wrong?”
“The bitch made off with my studs.”
“Your Antoinette diamonds? You’re kidding.” Sonny pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. “The redhead?”
At Cal's furious assent, he gawked. “I'll be damned,” he said at last. “She didn't look the type to me, Cal. I swear she didn't. How did she open your safe?”
“It doesn't matter how. I’ve got to find her.”
Sonny got up. “Of course, of course. The publicity will be awful, but we'll get the police in right away.”
“No police!” He couldn't let the contents of his mother’s journal be laid open to every two-bit tabloid reporter.
Sonny gaped. “No police? But what...?”
Cal ground his teeth.
Damn this splitting head.
“It's bad enough to be made a fool of without having the whole world know. Use hotel security and if they can't turn up anything on her, hire detectives. But keep it quiet, Sonny. No police.”
“Sure. I understand.” Sonny closed his mouth, obviously not understanding at all. “No police. Keep it quiet. Okay, if that's what you want.”
Should he confide in Sonny? No, Lila's journal was his and Claire's business. No need to bring more people than necessary into this, at least not until he'd talked with his sister. “Yes, keep it quiet.”
As Sonny whisked away to set things in motion, Cal forced himself to think.
The redhead had not only known exactly where to look for the valuables, but she must have known the combination. How the devil had she got it? Or could she be a safecracker?
That seemed pretty far-fetched, but it would be one explanation. She couldn't know that his family always programmed the same combination into all the safes they used so anything inside would be available in case of a business emergency.
Unless he'd told her the combination himself under the influence of whatever it was she'd used on him. Would he? He didn't think so, but he couldn't remember.
Damn, why couldn't he remember? Groaning, he sat down and dropped his head into his hands.
He'd been a fool, taken in by the oldest trick in the book. He'd let the pretty face and voluptuous body turn him on.
But this was worse than marrying some twit who cost the earth to get rid of or getting arrested for loitering while intoxicated. This was even worse than when the psycho football player coerced him into a fistfight at a crowded charity function and beat the shit out of him.
He cursed softly and vehemently. “I'll kill her with my bare hands. I'll grab that mane of red hair and yank it till she screams bloody murder. I'll take that pretty little neck and wring it till it breaks.”
He wouldn’t rest until he found her.
* * * *
She was almost home where she could finally rest.
About the time Cal woke up in Houston, Amanda Jane got off the bus shuttling her to a park-and-fly lot near the Atlanta airport. In blue jeans, dyed red hair hidden by a brown wig and gray eyes covered by sunglasses, the woman who threw her carryon into the back of the small sedan was a far cry from the temptress of the night before.
As she started her car, she sighed. Part of the sigh was for what she'd done, part for relief that it was over, but the biggest part was for the truth she had discovered about herself.
The old urges hadn't been vanquished. They still lay dormant. Twelve years she'd fought to eradicate the impulses that had led to Tommy's death but she’d failed. They’d emerged at the most inconvenient time to crow in triumph over her weakness.
If only Callaway McIntyre hadn't been so ingenuous.
From Noelle's description, Amanda had expected a spoiled, callous sophisticate. At the least, he should have looked jaded. But his unexpected small boy's smile had breached her detachment to let her in for that roller coaster ride of emotions she'd vowed never to climb on again.
Her impulses may have been contained, but at what cost?
On the expressway leading to her home and shop near Lenox Square, the past night played over and over in her head.
She was contemptible, not only for deceiving him but for allowing—no, encouraging—him to reawaken the unwanted sexuality inside her body. There should have been another way to help Noelle.
Wallowing in guilt, she was nearly home before noticing the smoke curling from the hood of her car.
Her heart sank. What now?
Maybe she could nurse the car a few more blocks.
No, it was getting denser. Better not try it. Ignoring angry horns, she pulled across two lanes of traffic into a strip mall at the side of the road and turned off the key.
At least it had happened near enough home for her to walk the rest of the way and call a tow truck. Grabbing her purse, she got her bag from the back seat.
Not twenty feet from her car, a tremendous
whoosh
erupted behind her. Heat lashed out. The force hit her so hard she stumbled and fell to one knee.
When she clambered up, she looked back in disbelief.
Her car was engulfed in flames.
“My car!”
People gathered to join her in watching the car burn.
“I got 911,” said an old woman, snapping her cell closed. “They on they way. That yo’ car, lady?”
“Yes,” Amanda said faintly. “My car is burning up.”
“No shit,” a scrawny African-American guy with earring and tattoos said. “Wha’ happened?”
“I don’t know. I pulled over because there was smoke coming up and after I got out, it exploded.”
“Some fire,” a Hispanic woman in spandex and tee said. “Lucky you got out.”
A police car pulled up, blue lights flashing. Amanda’s shoulders, drooping with fatigue and maybe shame from her charade of the past evening, needed squaring before she could go over and claim ownership.
The registration was in the dash of the fiery car, but she dug out an insurance card from her purse with a vehicle ID the policeman could run through his computer and prove the car was hers. After she got everything sorted out, which took far too long, the police officer didn’t offer her a ride home.
She felt safe, walking the three tree-lined blocks of the Lenox area in broad daylight, but the weather was warm and her legs trembled from the unexpected fire.
By the time she reached the old house that was her home as well as her place of business, she was cross, sweaty and happy to see the modest sign by the driveway that said
A. Jane, Dressmaker
.
Plodding through budding azaleas and monkey grass lining the flagstone path to the basement, she rang the bell three times to let Noelle know who it was, and then used her key. The cool tranquility of her apartment greeted her, soothed her. Every muscle in her body relaxed.
Pulling off her wig, she put her purse on the entry console and dropped the carryon bag onto the parquet hall floor.
How wonderful to be home safe and sound.
Well, safe and sound except for her car being totaled.
“Manda, is that you?” Noelle Parham, hair mussed but fully dressed in leggings and oversized tunic, rushed out from the back. One cheek had lines in it from where she'd been asleep on a pillow crease. In a childish gesture, she brushed back a blonde strand from one eye.
To Amanda, Noelle would always be nine years old, bewildered and scared after their mother abandoned the family. Because of an emotional disability, Noelle was the little sister who had to be looked after and kept out of trouble. Their father had been alive then, but it was still Amanda who'd dealt with the teachers, doctors and other people necessary to keep Noelle on track.
When Edward Parham had asked Noelle to marry him three years earlier, Amanda had explained about Noelle’s borderline personality disorder. He’d assured her he was prepared to assume responsibility for Noelle and had promised to look after her.
Amanda was thankful. And relieved Noelle had someone else to depend on.
After the wedding she had tried, not always successfully, to work herself to the periphery of her sister’s new life.
Then last week Noelle had showed up.
Edward had warned her to curb her gambling habits, but she’d taken one last trip to Las Vegas and lost her engagement ring that had belonged to Edward’s grandmother.
Begging for help, she'd expected Amanda to fix everything.
Amanda had wanted to turn her sister away but couldn’t. Though twenty-four and a mother for nearly a year, Noelle was mentally a child. So Amanda had agreed and now...
“Did it go all right?” Noelle sounded half-fearful, half-eager.
“I got it.”
Noelle screamed and fell on Amanda’s neck. “I knew I could count on you. I’ve been on pins and needles waiting here. Oh, Manda, if Edward ever found out, he'd divorce me. I know he would.” She frowned. “It's not a pretty ring, either. It's clunky and ugly.”
“Here, take it.” A bit of green flashed in the light as the emerald ring changed hands.
Noelle clasped her engagement ring to her heart. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I don't know what I would have done.”
A blonde, courtesy of her beautician, Noelle had delicate features that conformed to the classical notion of beauty. Despite the straight nose and pretty lips, though, Noelle managed to look like hundreds of other women. She’d never learned the knack of making herself unforgettable.