Ulterior Motives (2 page)

“How are you going to get home if I stay? Didn’t you come by bus this morning?” Wayne prodded.

“Oh. Yes,” she said. And at this time of day, the bus from downtown to her home on Mount Adams only ran once every hour. Furthermore, even if she felt like walking to the bus stop and waiting, she had left her coat at the Babel Language Center. It would take ten minutes to walk along the covered downtown skywalk to get back to the language center and grab her coat. Then she’d have to wait for the bus and sit through its circuitous route to Mount Adams. “I won’t get back to work until nearly closing time,” she said aloud in annoyance. The thought of paying for a taxi all the way home rankled her thrifty nature.

“There’s really no need for me to stay,” Wayne pointed out.

Shelley considered this for a moment. Wayne was the accountant at the language center, and talking with clients really wasn’t part of his job.

“No,” she said at last. “I want you to stay and keep an eye on that awful man. I don’t trust him.”

“Who?”

“Chuck.”

Wayne raised his blond eyebrows. “Charles Winston-Clarke?”

“Yes.” Shelley glanced about but didn’t see her competitor, the director of the Elite Language Center. “If he’s going to make one last-ditch effort to get a contract with Keene, he’ll do it today. And I want to know about it.”

“What makes you think they’d still be interested in Elite?”

“They invited Chuck to this party, didn’t they?” Shelley said. “Anyhow, I saw him about ten minutes ago, and he looked even more nervous than usual. I want to know what he’s up to.”

“Maybe he just hates parties.”

Shelley shrugged. There was something different about Chuck today. After all the underhanded, unprofessional, petty nonsense she’d had to put up with from her chief competitor, she had learned to keep a suspicious eye on him.

“Shelley, you’re dripping all over this plush carpet,” Wayne pointed out.

“And I’m freezing cold. I’ve got to get out of here,” she said distractedly. Something was missing... Her stranger. Her handsome stranger. The man who had put her in a catatonic trance in the first place, so that some rookie waitress wound up spilling bright red sangria all over her. Feeling eyes upon her, Shelley looked up from her whispered conversation with Wayne.

He was still there. He looked suave, immaculate, and very amused. Shelley scowled at him. He grinned back, and his smile was breathtaking. It was genuine and warm and disarmingly sexy, and it lit up his whole face. She stared at him while he walked to her side.

“I’ll take you home,” he said.

Shelley kept looking at him while Wayne asked the obvious question: “Who are you?”

“I’m a friend of...” He raised one gleaming black brow inquisitively as he paused.

“Shelley,” she supplied.

“Shelley,” he repeated.

Wayne looked at Shelley. She looked at her handsome stranger with some misgivings. Instinct told her he was the most fascinating man she’d ever seen. Common sense told her he could be a kidnapper, a white slaver, or even—God forbid—a sports fanatic. It would be foolish to get into a car alone with him. However, she might never see him again, and she didn’t want to let this moment slip by. After all, how often did life resemble a Frank Sinatra song?

“Well, perhaps...”

At that moment, apologetic waiters, doormen, managers, and businessmen descended on Shelley, who was still standing around in a wet, dirty blouse, courtesy of their mortified waitress. The attention was a bit overwhelming. After assuring them that she would indeed bill them for the damage, Shelley was more than willing to cooperate with her handsome stranger when he took her hand in his and led her away from the brouhaha.

They left the hotel’s reception room, rode the escalator to the ground floor, and walked through the plush lobby to the Fountain Square exit.

“Jacket?” he inquired before they left the building.

“No, I came on the skywalk.”

He opened the door for her, and they stepped outside. The April air was pleasant, but it was still too cold to be outside in only a blouse, and a wet one at that. She hoped he hadn’t parked far away. He noticed her shiver.

“Why don’t you go back inside and wait?” he suggested. “My car is parked in the garage under Fountain Square. I won’t be more than a minute.”

Shelley agreed readily. She was cold—and now she’d have one last chance to decide whether she was really going to get into a car with a total stranger who’d picked her up at a party, albeit a very respectable party.

He gave her an amused look just before he walked off, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking—and as if he knew she’d go with him anyhow.

He walked the way he spoke: confidently, smoothly. She’d noticed not so much an accent in his voice as a complete lack of one. As someone who had studied languages and linguistics for years, she tended to be instantly aware of such things. He spoke with what she considered a mid-Atlantic voice, neither American nor English, but somewhere in between. Often people who had been raised in two or more countries spoke that way, because they’d lacked a consistent colloquial speech model.

He disappeared into the underground garage, and she felt his absence. Curiously enough, she didn’t come to her senses and decide to call a taxi. She had never before been attracted to anyone at first glance like this, and she wanted to know what it was about him that fascinated her. Was it simply his impressive façade? Was she a pushover for dark good looks, sparkling blue eyes, and a well-cut suit over a well-developed body? Had she fallen for the old smoldering-gaze-across-the-room technique?

Somehow she doubted it. She might not have a good head for math and she might not have a natural fashion sense, but she was perceptive about people. From the moment she’d laid eyes on him, she had sensed an unusual man under that admittedly spectacular exterior.

And it seemed the only way she’d find out more was to let him drive her home to change her clothes.

True to his word, he pulled up momentarily outside the hotel. Upon seeing the car, Shelley probably would have gotten in even if he had been Jack the Ripper.

It was a red Porsche convertible.

She had wanted to ride in a red Porsche convertible her whole life. She
belonged
in one. She saw herself driving it along some curvy mountain road in the sunset, expertly negotiating the hairpin bends of the treacherous surface, like Emma Peel, like one of Charlie’s Angels, like the Girl from UNCLE...

In any case, she certainly couldn’t refuse her first chance to ride in one.

He got out of the car and came around to open the door for her, a pleasing and old-fashioned courtesy she had forgotten about.

“I don’t suppose we could let the top down?” she asked after he slid into the driver’s seat.

He smiled at her again. The effect really was devastating, like being hit in the solar plexus. The sheer sexuality of it took her breath away. And his teeth were so white that his mother must be awfully proud.

“It’s just that I’ve always wanted to ride in one of these with the top down”

“Yes, I can tell,” he said dryly.

“And I’m afraid this will be my only chance.”

He studied her enthused expression for a moment before saying simply, “I don’t think this will be the last time, do you, Shelley?”

At a loss for a neutral answer, she instead asked a question. “What’s your name?”

He nodded, as if glad she’d finally remembered to ask. “Ross. Ross Tanner.” He pulled away from the curb, entered the stream of traffic, and asked, “Where do you live?”

“Mount Adams. Do you know how to get there?”

“Haven’t the faintest.”

“Turn right up here. Why did you offer to drive me home?”

“Because I didn’t want you to leave without me. Now what?”

“Go to the bottom of the hill. Why not?”

He risked a brief glance at her, then turned his attention back to the traffic. His look had been challenging. “Why were you staring at me? Do I turn at the light?”

“No, the second light.”

“Which way?” he asked.

“Left.”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I’m not sure. Why were you staring at me?”

“Because you’re a beautiful woman who was staring at me.”

That left Shelley at a loss for words. He was right: she had started it. But she didn’t think of herself as beautiful. Terminally cute, perhaps, and that was a look she did her best to minimize so she would be taken seriously at work. She was five feet two inches, with high, full cheeks and big, round, gray eyes. Her shoulder-length coppery hair was deplorably frizzy. She had tried cutting it once, but the effect was too chipmunklike to be borne; now she usually wore it in a high ponytail, since it gave her some illusion of height. She came dangerously close to being pleasingly plump, and now that she had an office job, only infrequent and frantic exercise kept her tummy flat and her curves in place.

She had left her adolescent insecurities about her looks behind and could accept that a number of men found her attractive. But “beautiful” was going too far. Did he need glasses or was he making a casual pass?

“Bear right,” she said, aware he was about to go the wrong way. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“No, I’ve only just arrived,” he said.

“Do you work for Keene International?”

“No. But I may do some business with them.”

“I see. Oh, it gets a little complicated here,” she cautioned. She spent the next few minutes guiding him through the circuitous route to the slope of Mount Adams.

“In all of Cincinnati, you couldn’t find a place easier to get to?” he asked.

“It’s worth the effort,” she assured him. “Turn right. This is the beginning of the neighborhood.”

They drove up the steep, narrow street, passing tall, turn-of-the-century townhouses with long staircases descending the sloping hills to the road. Most of the buildings were newly renovated, and their ornate ironwork, careful craftsmanship, and solid carpentry were complemented by spanking new paint and well-tended yards. In addition to homes, the area was teeming with coffee shops, wine bars, antique shops, florists, and craftsmen.

“But unfortunately, there’s no grocery store,” Shelley explained as they drove along. “And it’s hard to get up and down here on bad winter days.”

“I can imagine. Still, it’s a beautiful area.”

“Stop here. I live in there.” She pointed to a tall yellow townhouse with a large verandah on the first floor and a small balcony overlooking the Ohio River Valley. “The apartment on the second floor. I pay more for the balcony, but I just saw myself on that balcony, you know?”

“Yes, I see you there, too.”

She looked at him. Charismatic or not, he
was
a total stranger, and there was no way she was letting him into her apartment while she changed her clothes. She had seen too many TV shows where women who did things like that disappeared forever.

He seemed to sense her anxiety, and for the first time that day, the amusement faded from his eyes. His expression grew soft and serious, and she saw then just how strong his face was, how much character resided there.

“Listen, Shelley, I know your mother told you not to accept rides from strange men. And she was right.”

“That’s
exactly
what my mother said. How did you know that?”

“Everyone’s mother says it. Mine said it, too. But I was just standing around at this party full of nervous people all trying to have a good time, anxious businessmen trying to impress each other, and harried waiters trying to make everyone comfortable. Then I looked up and saw you. You seemed beautiful and interesting and smart, and you were looking at me as if you thought I might be all of those things, too. And you never turned away, which made you seem more interesting, because most people are so afraid to be caught staring at someone.” He glanced away for a moment, as if gauging his next words carefully. “I wanted to talk to you. I still do. When it became obvious you’d have to leave, I was unwilling to let the opportunity slip by.”

His deep blue eyes met her gray ones, and she felt herself sinking into their depths. He had stated his case plainly and wanted to know where she stood. What was it about this man that made her feel she knew him, when, in fact, she didn’t know him at all? The thought of getting to know him excited and intrigued her.

“I’m going to go upstairs to change, and then you can drive me back to work,” she said. :Maybe you’d like to have a cup of coffee with me in my office?”

“I’ll be waiting right here,” he replied.

Something about his smooth voice, vibrating deep in his chest, went straight through her. She could listen to him talk all day. She could stare into those clear eyes fringed by thick black lashes till the cows came home. She could run her fingers through that gleaming black hair... Shelley took a deep breath and got out of the car.

She let herself into her one-bedroom apartment, a small, friendly place that had high ceilings, wooden floors, and big windows. It was haphazardly furnished with things she’d either bought on sale or managed to get secondhand from her mother before any of her siblings claimed them. The rooms were cheerfully cluttered with favorite souvenirs from her many trips in Europe, as well as with photographs of friends overseas and her family in Chicago.