Dance of the Crystal (10 page)

At the bottom platform he forced his attention to the problem at hand. Held his breath. Listened.

Nothing.

When he’d earlier swooped Crystal up in his arms and marched to the bath, he remembered, he hadn’t stopped to turn off any lights in the living area. That light spilled over into the hallway, dimming to shadows at the bottom of the stairs. Soren noticed a Chinese-looking umbrella stand in the hall. It held a couple of umbrellas and what looked like a cane.

Senses on high alert for an intruder, he crept to the stand. His hand closed on a thick, heavily knobbed cane. Silently he lifted it out and, holding it to his shoulder in a two-fisted grip, with the hefty knob as the business end, moved carefully toward the light. He’d broken up any number of fights at his pub with a baseball bat. He hoped the shaft of the cane wouldn’t break if he had to use it on whoever might still be inside.

At the door to the garage he saw the deadbolt in its place and the chain still in its slot. Good. One less place for someone to hide.

Standing at the archway of the living-dining room, he saw that the blackness of the night made mirrors of the four windows he could see. The empty living room reflected back at him. No one hid underneath the round dining table.

Adrenaline sharpened every one of Soren’s senses. He could hear the hum of the electric clock on the stove. Some sort of frogs croaked intermittently—and loudly—outside.

No wonder. The kitchen window was shattered, he saw as he gingerly edged up to the half-wall separating the work area from the living area. Glass shards lay strewn across the tile floor and on their discarded clothing. Otherwise, the kitchen was empty.

Relief flooded him. His grip on the cane relaxed.

Until he heard a sound behind him. Whirling around, his arms cocked to swing his makeshift weapon, Soren saw the flash of a gun.

“Are they gone?” Crystal’s voice was a mere whisper.

“God, you shouldn’t creep up on a body like that. I almost swung at you!”

“I didn’t want them to hurt you.”

Soren’s heart settled down from blocking his throat to where it belonged, inside his chest. Only then did he notice she’d slipped into some jeans, a sweatshirt and sneakers. “What are you doing with a gun?”

“It’s a water gun. Keeps the stray cats from digging in my garden.” Tucking the toy into her back pocket, she came up behind him. And gasped. “Oh, no!” She darted into the kitchen, pieces of glass crunching under her sneakers.

“Be careful,” he said, a little too sharply. “Don’t cut yourself.”

She stooped down to where his loafers lay. Lifted them, turned them over and shook out the glass pieces. Came back to him. “Here.”

“Thanks,” he said quietly, chagrined that he’d snapped at her for thinking of him. Slipping his bare feet into the loafers, he joined her in the kitchen. “Look. There’s what did the damage.” He walked to an object at the base of the corner cabinet, stooped for a closer look, decided not to pick it up. “We should call the police. Looks like someone sent you a message.”

He looked around for switches then started turning lights off. “Someone might be watching,” he explained. “Let’s get out of sight.”
And out of range
, he thought but didn’t say.

He grabbed her hand, eyes darting from window to window as he pulled her back into the hallway and to the stairwell. “Where’s your phone?” he whispered.

“We don’t need the police. It’s probably just a teenage prank.”

Soren put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. Light from a streetlamp glimmered dimly through the hall window and made her eyes look dark and huge. “There was a piece of paper wrapped around a rock the size of a baseball. That’s more than a prank. It shows premeditation.”

“No, really. There’s a couple of rowdy teens down the street. I don’t want to get them into trouble.”

The lightbulb went off in Soren’s head. She was a rich society girl. He was a bartender. It was okay for her to walk on the wild side where her friends couldn’t see her, but God forbid someone should think she would actually invite a lowlife into her home. “You’re ashamed to have anyone see me here.” His voice was flat, emotionless. “I’ll get my clothes and just fade away into the night. But don’t worry. I’ll hang around outside until the cops get here to make sure whoever tossed that rock doesn’t come smashing through the hole he made.”

With that, he shrugged off the hand she’d placed on his arm, ignoring the fleeting look of hurt in her expressive eyes, and stalked back into the darkened living room. He remembered exactly where each piece of his clothing lay on the kitchen floor. Snatching his jeans and shirt, he shook them vigorously to dislodge any shards then strode to the hallway so he could shuck his shoes and get into his jeans. And the hell with his boxers. Let her explain
them
to the cops.

Women. He’d lived fine without them up to last week, but no, he had to go like a lamb to slaughter and offer himself up to auction, never mind that it was for a good cause. What the
hell
had he been thinking?

So she was slumming. So what? She was a good lay, once he got over the guilt that he’d taken her cherry.

He was pissed about that too. Why on God’s green earth she’d ever chosen him to be her first, he’d never be able to guess. She’d acted like he was hers for the taking. And him, like a dumb schmuck thinking with his cock, he’d played right into her hands. But a lowly bartender in her home at three in the morning? Uh-uh, that wouldn’t do for Miss Rich Bitch and her high society reputation.

Still, he had enough male in him to want to protect her. He’d slip out the front door, make a quiet circuit around the house and find a vantage point to keep watch over the shattered window.

“Here.” Crystal’s timid voice came from the stairwell as she crept down the steps. Her eyes held a wariness so at odds with the warmth he’d seen in them not so long ago.

Okay, so he had to shift gears. What was that saying about women changing their minds? With little grace, he took the phone she thrust at him, dialed 9-1-1 and tersely explained their situation. When the dispatcher said a unit would be there within fifteen minutes, he dialed another number.

The sleepy voice mumbled a hello. Soren barked, “Got an emergency. I need a big piece of plywood, something to cover a shattered window. About three feet by seven. How fast can you get here?”

“Where’s here?”

“Uh, wait.” He turned to Crystal. “What’s the address?”

She told him.

“Okay, how do you get here from Route 611?”

Crystal reached for the phone. Without preamble, she gave explicit directions, then said thank you and goodbye. She looked up at him. “And thank you too. Who’s our white knight?”

“My brother.”

“I still don’t understand. Who would want to do this?” Crystal felt the back of her throat tighten. She’d changed her mind about teenagers after she’d seen the ugly message. The police had come and gone, taking with them the rock and the paper, promising to check them for fingerprints, although they’d treated it as a teenage prank, too. She tried to get a grip while she poured herself another cup of coffee.

“A jealous boyfriend?” Soren speculated.

“No. That’s quite impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?” He looked at her with such an intense gaze that she had to lower her face to her cup and take a too-hot sip.

“I haven’t dated much.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

Her chin lifted. “Why? Because I’m a rich society girl?”

A look that might have been disbelief flitted briefly across Soren’s face. “Because you’re such a looker, you’re nice and you’re fun. I can’t believe men aren’t lining up three deep to take you out.”

She fingered the ever-present crystal at her throat. “I’m just too busy. I have my consulting work, my charities. I spend a lot of time looking after my grandmother.” She wasn’t about to tell him she’d been waiting—the crystal had been waiting—all these years for him to enter her life, so she hadn’t been interested in fleeting relationships with men.

“Seems to me there can only be one interpretation of that message.”

Crystal shuddered.
Whore
, the message said, in headline-size letters cut from a newspaper and pasted on a sheet ripped from a student notebook.

“Someone took exception to my spending the night with you,” Soren continued relentlessly. “Sounds like someone thought he had you to himself.”

She turned a troubled gaze to him. “But I don’t
know
anyone who feels that way. I’m telling you, I rarely date.”

“What about your job? Give me an example of your working day.”

She shrugged. “It varies. I go to estate sales. Sometimes to auctions where several estates are lumped together. I know most of the auctioneers and antique-store owners in a wide radius. Either my circle of acquaintances—mostly Grandma’s friends—ask me to keep an eye out for a specific piece or I find a sleeper that no one else is bidding on, so I buy it on spec. I can’t think of anyone who’s ever been overly friendly.”

“Boyfriends from college?”

“No. No one I spent a lot of time with.”

“Okay. You buy and sell antiques for others. Give me a for instance. Tell me how you went about your last purchase.”

“I found a terrific two-piece cherry corner cupboard at an auction that went for a fourth of its value. I bought it with no buyer in mind and took it to Time Treasures. The owner, Jack Healy, has a standing offer to buy anything I come across, because he trusts my judgment. He pays me a thirty percent commission and then sells it for up to twice his cost.”

“Tell me about Healy.”

“He’s owned that shop for about twenty years. He’s, oh, I’d say mid-fifties. Really nice guy. Very knowledgeable. High-quality merchandise, stands behind everything he sells.”

“How do you get the stuff to him?”

“I usually ask Augie to help me. He has muscle and time, and a beat-up truck that he doesn’t mind getting dirty on rutted farmland or dirt roads. I think he does grunt work to get his father upset.”

“Is that the father-son pair I met at Rowena’s home?”

“Yes.”

“Either of them ever put the make on you?”

She frowned at the thought of the young man who had done just that in his truck, but dismissed it as simply a combination of opportunity and testosterone. She couldn’t see Augie making the effort to stalk her in the middle of the night.

“Crystal? You’d never make a good poker player. Which one of them bothered you?”

“It was nothing.”

“Let me put it another way. Would you spend the day alone with either of them looking for treasures at an abandoned farmhouse?”

“Well…Augie did try to kiss me after we dropped off the corner cupboard, but I think it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. You know, male hormones running amok.”

“He ever try anything like that before?”

“Never. I wouldn’t have asked him to help if he had.”

“What about the older man? Trey, was it?”

“To hear Augie tell it, Trey’s interested in my grandmother.”

“Fortune hunter?”

“No. They’re old money. Trey owns a fairly large estate. I think they’re merely of like minds.”

The growl of a heavy engine in the driveway sent a shaft of unease through Crystal. Until she remembered. Soren’s brother. Plywood. She glanced at the clock. Four-ten in the morning. She had to admire the family loyalty of the Thorvalds.

Soren was already off his chair and striding to the front door. She followed him, but stayed on the porch as the two men wrestled a piece of plywood out of the truck bed and disappeared around the side of the garage.

Crystal turned on the outside patio lights then decided on a way to thank them properly.

By the time they sized and nailed the plywood to the window frame and clomped into the kitchen, she had nuked some bacon slices, made a fresh pot of coffee, set the table for three, and stashed a pile of freshly made French toast in the warming oven.

Soren introduced them. She reached out a hand to a taller, earthier version of Soren. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your coming here in the middle of the night.”

Magnus shook her hand with, she noticed, nicked and calloused fingers. “He’s my brother. He needed my help.”

“As did I. Please. Sit down and have a cup of coffee.”

“That I will. Thanks.”

She filled an earth-toned mug and set it before him then set the warm plate of French toast on the table.

She was gratified to see Soren’s eyes light up. She wondered how often the bachelor who ate lunch and dinner at the pub made himself a hot breakfast.

As she poured warm maple syrup into a small pitcher and set it alongside the toast, Magnus looked up at her and said, “You’re the lady in the newspaper picture?”

Heat bloomed in her face. “Yes.”

Magnus gave his brother a sly look. “Amazing. Two cataclysmic events occurring on the same evening.”

She cocked her head, a quizzical expression on her face.

“Not only did Soren wear a tie to the auction,” Magnus explained, “but he also did something totally out of character.” He raised his mug in a toast. “Here’s to the woman who got Soren to make a memorable exit.”

Soren’s ears turned red. “I thought she was grandstanding.”

“So you outdid her.”

Saying nothing, Soren studiously cut his French toast into small pieces.

While they ate, conversation revolved around the incident, Magnus asking similar questions to what the police had. When Magnus had polished off four slices of French toast and two cups of coffee, he politely thanked her and stood up to leave. She stood as well, thanking him again for coming to her rescue in the middle of the night.

“Mags, could I hitch a ride?”

Crystal’s attention had been focused on Magnus’ goodbye. She saw him do a double take at his brother’s question. Heck, she felt the same way. How could Soren simply leave? Didn’t he want to finish what had been interrupted?

Magnus cleared his throat, obviously trying to read the situation and come up with a suitable response.

“This was our Buy a Bachelor Dinner night,” Soren said, looking uncomfortable. “Crystal picked me up at Thor’s Hammer. And, uh, after all she’s been through tonight—” his ears turned red again, “I mean, the police and all, she’s probably tired. She shouldn’t have to cart me around at the crack of dawn.”