Faking It d-2 Read online

  “Have you had your shots?” he whispered to her as he rubbed his hand.

  She stayed under him, braced on one hand, gasping for breath as she fumbled for something in her pocket, the bill of her baseball cap shielding her face in the dark. He heard a whoosh and another gasp and leaned over her to see if she was all right, and she whispered savagely, “Touch me and I’ll scream.”

  “No you won’t,” he whispered. “If you were going to scream, you’d have done it already.”

  She exhaled hard and pushed herself up from the floor, a blur in the darkness as she knocked him back, and he caught her sleeve as he rolled to his feet.

  “Easy,” he whispered. “I can’t let you go yet I haven’t-”

  “I don’t care.” She was whispering, too, as she tried to tug her sleeve away from him. “Let go, I have to get out of here.”

  “No.” He pulled her arm closer and caught a hint of her scent, something sweet “The thought of you on the loose discussing this with the cops does not-”

  “Look, you idiot.” Her whisper was savage as she tried to pry his hand from her arm. “I don’t know who you are. I don’t even know what you look like. How can I possibly tell anybody about you?”

  “Good point.” Davy dragged her over to the window and pulled back the drape to let the street light in, keeping to the shadow so she couldn’t see him.

  “Hey.” She was wearing a sloppy Oriental jacket buttoned to her throat, and she glared up at him, her strange light eyes glowing behind huge hexagonal glasses that made her look like a bug. “Are you insane?” she hissed at him. “What if somebody’s out there?”

  She jerked away from him again, and he let go of her arm before she dislocated it. “What are you dressed for?” he whispered. “Chinese baseball?”

  She shoved past him, and he pulled off her baseball cap and held it above her head, feeling disappointed when her hair was too short to come tumbling down. She took another deep breath and turned back to him.

  “Has it occurred to you that this isn‘t a game?”

  “No.” Davy stared at her dark, loopy curls, standing up like little horns. “It’s always a game. Why else would you do it?”

  “Give me that hat,” she whispered, and when he held it higher, she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and glared at him.

  “No,” he said. “And that was a question. Why are you here?”

  She frowned at him, glaring harder.

  “What?” he said. “Speak.”

  She shook her head, clearly frustrated. “Oh, forget it. Keep it.”

  She headed for the door and he caught her around the waist and pulled her back against him. “Tell me what you’re up to, Mulan,” he said in her ear as she tried to squirm away. “I’d like to be a gentleman, but the stakes are high.”

  She stopped struggling so suddenly that he drew in his breath. Cinnamon. Her hair smelled like cinnamon and vanilla, like the rolls his sister used to make on Sunday mornings. Then she turned in the curve of his arm to face him, which was nice all on its own.

  “An old-fashioned gentleman,” she said, her voice low, and Davy felt a stirring of alarm. “I could use one of those.”

  “I’m not.” Davy loosened his hold and backed away toward the closet. “Twenty-first-century cad, that’s me.”

  She stepped closer, and he tripped over Clea’s shoes and stumbled backward.

  “I need a favor,” she whispered up at him as she backed him through Clea’s clothes and up against the wall, and her low, husky voice would have set up a nice hum in his blood if she hadn’t been so stiff as she pressed against him.

  You want to seduce me, you have to melt a little, he thought, but she smelled like the best mornings of his life, so he didn’t push her away.

  “I’m not good at this kind of thing,” she whispered, putting her palms on his chest, her hands trembling a little.

  No kidding, Davy thought. He’d held two-by-fours that were more yielding.

  “While you clearly are-” she clutched his shirt “-good at this.”

  “Okay, you really are no good at this,” he told her, keeping his voice low. “So cut to the chase. What do you want?” He heard her sigh in the darkness, and there was a tremor in it, and he realized she was afraid and put his arm around her. “It’s okay,” he told her, without thinking.

  “There’s a painting,” she said. “Eighteen inches square. A city scene with a checkerboard sky with lots of stars. It’s somewhere in this house.”

  “A painting,” Davy said, knowing what was coming next.

  “Steal it for me,” she whispered, and his hands tightened on her automatically, feeling all that warm softness under her slippery jacket.

  Okay, the chances of her delivering what she was promising were nil, and she was a thief which couldn’t be good, and she was asking him to steal which was worse than anything she’d done to him up until then including the bite and the shin kick. A smart man would say no and escape, dragging her with him so she couldn’t rat him out.

  But life had been so boring lately.

  And she was afraid.

  “Please?” she said, pressing closer, her lips parted.

  “Sure,” he said, and kissed her lightly, wanting her to taste like cinnamon, surprised to find her mouth cool like mint, even more surprised a second later to find her kissing him back, rising to meet him, the tip of her tongue touching his, and he tightened his arms around her and kissed her as if he meant it.

  “Vilma Kaplan,” he said when he broke the kiss, and she jerked back, and then he heard it, too, the step outside the door, and almost knocked her off her feet trying to get the closet door closed before someone came in.

  Okay, that’s an omen, he thought. Stay away from this woman and her tongue. Then a moment later she sighed beside him and he put his arm around her again.

  Thank God, she’s a brunette, he thought as he listened to Clea rustle out in the bedroom. It’s the blondes that screw up my life.

  FIFTEEN MINUTES earlier, Clea Lewis had been watching Gwen Goodnight slurp cheesecake and thinking of ways to permanently separate her from Mason, with an ax if necessary, when the caterer interrupted her.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Lewis?” he said from the doorway, and Clea turned to look at him, keeping her face pleasant because Mason liked it when people went out of their way to be nice to the help. Also, they might need a caterer again. You never knew.

  “There’s a telephone call for you,” the caterer said.

  “Thank you, Thomas.” Clea turned back to Mason and the threat from the gallery. “I’m so sorry,” she said, radiating graciousness.

  “Perfectly all right,” Mason said, happy because he was talking about art again. Mason wasn’t hugely attractive, but he was hugely rich, so the smile Clea gave him was genuine.

  Gwen Goodnight widened her pale blue eyes that couldn’t compare to Clea’s, which Clea knew because she’d compared them. “No problem,” Gwen said to Clea. “Tell whoever it is we said hi.”

  Clea nodded and slid her chair back, keeping her eye on Gwen. Gwen had crow’s-feet and her jawline was going, but she knew art, and more than that, Mason thought she was charming. “Gwen Goodnight,” he’d said when he’d taken her phone message. “Charming little woman. I’d almost forgotten her. I invited her to dinner.” And now here she was.

  Fortunately, Gwen looked her age, which was just careless of her.

  “Hello?” Clea said when she’d picked up the phone.

  “Clea? Clea, darling?” a man said.

  “Who is this?” she said, annoyed. The last thing she needed was Mason hearing some man calling her “darling.”

  “It’s Ronald,” the voice said, clearly hurt.

  “What do you want?” She stretched to see into the dining room. Mason was still leaning toward Gwen. Honest to God, she’d gotten the man a caterer for the evening -well, she’d hired the man who showed up at the door canvassing for odd jobs after she realized Mason expected her to ha