Danger in a Red Dress (16 page)

“He’s in charge of security.” Mrs. Manly thoroughly looked Gabriel over. “Although I would have never guessed you were Eric’s son. You don’t look at all like him.”

“I think he does,” Carrick said.

“Maybe . . .” Mrs. Manly still stared. “He does remind me of . . . someone. I suppose it must be Eric.”

“Genetics are a funny thing,” Gabriel said in a low, hoarse voice. He had listened to a recording of his own voice as it came through the changer. It was higher than normal, with that nasal East Coast accent, and he had practiced it until he was satisfied he could fool Hannah—if he didn’t say too much.

Mrs. Manly drew back. “You have a cold?”

“Laryngitis,” he answered.

“That’s not contagious, is it?”

“Not this kind.” As long as he concentrated, he sounded pretty good. Like he belonged in the Northeast.

“Fine then. Enough of that. This is Hannah.” Mrs. Manly waved her hand at her nurse. “You’ve been talking to her on the phone. Stop drooling at her and take her out and dance.”

“Mrs. Manly!” Hannah looked everywhere except at him.

“Thank you, Mrs. Manly. I’ll do that,” Gabriel said at the same time. Reaching out, he presented Hannah with his outstretched palm.

She looked at it, then looked at him, refusing his silent demand.

He smiled, a slow curl of the lips that mocked her hesitation. “Mrs. Manly commands. We both obey.”

“Put like that . . .” She placed her hand in his.

His fingers closed around hers.

And the air around them sizzled.

SEVENTEEN

Hannah watched his smile fade. He looked down at their linked hands, then up toward her face.

She couldn’t see his eyes. His mask covered his forehead and cheeks, and slithered over his nose and down one side to his chin. Yet she knew he saw her better and more completely than any person had ever seen her before.

She waited, breathless, for him to speak, to flirt, to say the things he’d been saying all week on the phone—the things he had said last night.

“Dance?” he asked.

That was brief.

“Only because Mrs. Manly ordered me to,” she answered.

He chuckled, a slow rumble of amusement that mocked her hesitation, and tugged her, hard and fast, into his arms. “You like that.”

“What?”

“That you don’t have to make the decision, that she made it for you.” His voice sounded muffled. Muffled, and a little . . . off.

Laryngitis, she told herself.

“Do you flatter yourself I would dance with you without her command?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” He pulled her onto the dance floor and into a slow fox trot. “How big a coward are you?”

She took a quick breath at his clever, rapier-fast thrust, then thrust back. “It’s only a dance.” She waited, pleased with her clever reply.

“And a nuclear explosion is just a big display of fireworks.”

That was flattery . . . but it felt like the truth. “Okay. You won that round.”

“That’s better,” he murmured somewhere north of her head.

“What’s better?”

“You just relaxed.”

“How would you know?”

“You’ve been tense for days.”

He swung her in a half-circle, keeping her close, leading so firmly she followed intuitively. “Your voice.”

“My voice was tense?”

“Umm.” His breath warmed the top of her head.

“And now it’s not?”

“Not tense. Aware.” Slowly he swung her in a half circle. “Of me.”

Funny. She felt very tense as she asked, “And you?”

“Very aware. Last night . . .”

She tried to pull back.

He controlled her, kept her close. “Last night, after we spoke . . . did you think of me?”

“Speaking to you was very pleasant.” That sounded dry and cool. “I’ve enjoyed all our conversations.”

She felt his shoulders shake as if he suppressed laughter.

She leaned back and looked up at him. “What?”

“My reaction to our talk last night was more than pleasant. I was . . .”

“You were . . . ?”

“I desired to meet my mystery woman more than anything I’ve desired in my life.”

The way he said
desire
made her shiver.

He smiled at her, a half smile that told her he’d felt her shiver, and he knew why.

“Are you . . . ?” She paused.
Are you pleased with what you see?
But no, that wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. “Did I describe myself well enough?”

“I knew who you were as soon as I saw you.”

“Because I was standing next to Mrs. Manly.”

“No.” He hugged her close again, pressed her head against his chest, and said exactly the right thing. “I would know you anywhere.”

“And I would know you.” She listened to his heartbeat, to the rush of breath in his lungs. “Anywhere.”

Beneath the veneer of talk and motion, something was happening . . . to them.

The sounds of the music, the talk and the laughter died away, leaving them alone together in a place where warmth shimmered between them and light made her close her eyes. She leaned her head against his chest. The cool, wild scent of him made her dizzy, and the exercise made her breathless.

Surely it was the exercise.

But how to explain that she seemed to be melting into him? All the parts that touched him grew warm and pliable, and all the parts that touched those parts were losing tension, like steel heated by flame.

She looked off to the side, afraid of what he’d see if she gazed into his masked face. Afraid he’d somehow know what she’d done last night after she’d hung up the phone, that he’d know what she’d imagined . . .

That dance ended, and another began, a swift-moving blare of a fifties tune. She stepped away from him and smoothed her hair, almost relieved to be away from the intensity of dancing with the man who was both stranger and lover. He’d held her close, far closer than was necessary, and she could now testify that her speculation about him was completely off. He wasn’t old or bald or plump. He didn’t wear a corset; that was all him under that suit.

Yet at the same time, she still hadn’t
seen
him. The dim light of the faux castle concealed far too many details, while his mask hid his upper face and distorted even his jawline.

He placed his hand against the small of her back to lead her from the dance floor, and that was too intimate, too commanding, and yet she welcomed his guidance. To have someone of her own, someone to lean against, and to know that someone would walk with her through the loneliness and the danger to a place of safety . . . that had been more than she could ever hope.

They had barely met, and already she trusted him. Already they had been lovers . . . not really, but the sound of his voice had brought her to orgasm.

And he didn’t know.

“I feel like I know you.” He had a quirk in his cheek, like a guy who had already heard the joke—a joke that she didn’t get.

“We have been talking for a while,” she said.

“Am
I
what
you
expected?” The quirk deepened.

“Exactly what I expected.” In her best and wildest dreams.

He stopped her at the far end of the dance floor close to the dining room. “I’m going to fill a plate for us to share. All right?”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

He brushed her cheek with his fingertips, turning her face up to his. “You’ll wait here?”

“I’ll be here.”

He left, and she turned toward the queen’s throne, wanting to make visual contact with Mrs. Manly, to make sure she was as well as she claimed to be.

Mrs. Manly wasn’t there.

Hannah jumped as if someone had stuck her with a pin. She walked toward the dais, threading her way through the dancers, using her elbows when necessary to clear the way. The crowd parted, and Hannah spotted Mrs. Manly, standing on the edge of the dance floor, gripping the back of a chair, talking to her son.

No, not talking to her son. Their body language made that clear. She was reading her son the riot act.

Hannah sped up. What had he said to get her up off that throne and standing by herself? And smiling? Mrs. Manly was smiling at her son in a most unpleasant manner. What had he said to make her look at him and
smile
?

By the time Hannah made it to Mrs. Manly’s side, she was breathing hard from exertion and worry. “Mrs. Manly, how can I assist you?”

Carrick cast her one loathing glance and walked away, striding like a man caught in a passion of fury.

Mrs. Manly sagged against the chair.

Hannah caught her under the arm. Mrs. Manly was drenched in sweat and trembling from the effort of remaining upright. Hannah whispered, “Let me call Nelson. He’ll bring your wheelchair. It’s behind your private exit—”

“I am not leaving this ballroom in a wheelchair. I’ll walk, thank you.” Mrs. Manly’s voice was scathing.

At least she had agreed to leave, even if she insisted on doing it with her pride intact. Hannah estimated the distance to the black velvet drapery that hid the door. “Twelve steps. You have to hang on for twelve steps.”

Mrs. Manly nodded genially at the guests milling nearby. “I will not fail.”

She made it, of course, and if Hannah hadn’t been holding her arm, she wouldn’t have known the effort Mrs. Manly exerted. Mrs. Manly even stopped to gossip with one of the preeminent Washington, D.C., columnists about the latest vice presidential scandal.

But once behind the door, her knees collapsed.

As Hannah maneuvered her into the chair, she cursed Mrs. Manly’s pride, her insistence that no weakness be shown, and most of all, the empty corridor. Hannah took her pulse. It was racing. “Chest pain?”

“Yes.”

“Hang on.” Hannah pushed Mrs. Manly into the elevator and pressed the button for the second floor. “We’ll get you to your room and I’ll give you an injection.” And call an ambulance, although Hannah didn’t tell her that.

“That . . . little . . . twit,” Mrs. Manly gasped. “He dared—”

Hannah wanted to wring Carrick’s aristocratic neck.

“What did he say?” Hannah should have never left Mrs. Manly alone. What was she thinking, going off to dance and flirt with some guy she’d never met?

“Carrick said I knew where . . . the . . . money . . . is.”

Come on. Come on.
The elevator had never been so slow. “Never mind. You can tell me later. Save your breath.”

Mrs. Manly paid no heed. “He said the . . . government knew . . . I knew.” The doors opened, and Hannah hurriedly pushed the raging Mrs. Manly out and down the corridor. “I asked how they had found out, and he . . . that little brat!”

It wasn’t a stretch for Hannah to guess. “He told the government that you knew about the fortune?”

They entered Mrs. Manly’s bedroom.

Hannah glanced at the bed. Someone had placed a red rose on Mrs. Manly’s pillow. Great gesture. Bad timing.

“He did it to . . . smoke me out.” Mrs. Manly tried to get a long breath.

Hannah hurried toward the medications tray. “But you didn’t admit it was true.” When Mrs. Manly didn’t answer right away, she stopped and slowly turned. “Mrs. Manly, you didn’t tell him you knew? Did you?”

“Yes. I told him. And told him . . . he was
never
getting . . . it. Never getting a . . . dime!”

“Oh, no. Mrs. Manly.” Hannah collapsed against the desk and stared in horror at the defiant Melinda Manly. “How could you?”

“It’s too late . . . for reproaches. It’s . . . done.” Mrs. Manly was still angry enough to lift herself out of her chair and stagger to the bed.

Hannah leaped to help her. Together, they rolled her onto the mattress.

Mrs. Manly’s head crushed the delicate rose. She sprawled there in her wicked queen costume, and her hands shook as she ripped off the headdress. “He made me so . . . angry. Just . . . like his father.
Just
like his father. Betraying . . . me at every . . . turn.
What the hell is poking me?
” She pulled the flower out from under her head, stared at crushed petals, then flung it to the floor and sucked at the wound on her hand.

Hannah pushed up her sleeve and took her blood pressure. It was one seventy over one ten. She checked her blood sugar. Mrs. Manly was headed for a stroke or heart attack. Now.

Picking up the phone, Hannah called nine-one-one for an ambulance.

It was a measure of how badly Mrs. Manly felt that she didn’t object.

Hannah brought the tray with the neatly arranged medications and their syringes. She gave Mrs. Manly a nitroglycerine tablet to stabilize her heart. “You need to calm down. Take big breaths.”

Mrs. Manly paid no heed. In a rush, she said, “Hannah, I want you to go down there right now and send the money off.”

“The government will put you in jail.” Hannah prepared the injection of insulin and another of the tranquilizer diazepam.

“The government’s going to send me to jail anyway, thanks to my Judas of a son. And besides . . . you have to do it tonight.” For a flash of a moment, Mrs. Manly looked defiant and ashamed . . . and sorry. “I told him you knew.”

Hannah froze, syringe in hand.

“I know. I know. That was stupid. I was in a rage. I said too much. But he’s just like his father, and I couldn’t . . . By God, that kind of betrayal twice in one lifetime is too much for any one person to stand.”

Hannah couldn’t feel sorry for Mrs. Manly. She was too busy feeling sorry for herself. And frightened. When she remembered how much money was involved, and the way Carrick had looked at her, she was scared to death.

But a glance at Mrs. Manly convinced her to tend to the business at hand. “I’ll go down and send the money, but first, let’s deal with keeping you alive another day. First the insulin.” Hannah gave the injection efficiently, quickly.