Jayne Ann Krentz (31 page)

Turn the page for an excerpt from

SOFT FOCUS

by Jayne Ann Krentz

Now available in hardcover from G. P. Putnam's Sons

Six months earlier…

HE SAW HER COMING TOWARD HIM, AN AVENGING
warrior princess in a crisp black business suit and high heels. Her dark hair was swept up into a stern knot at the back of her head. The little scarf at her throat matched the diamond-bright fire in her blue-green eyes. One look at her and the white-jacketed waiters leaped out of her path. She strode through the maze of linen-and-crystal-set tables, her gaze never wavering from her target.

The movers and shakers of Seattle's business community sensed disaster, or, at the very least, excellent gossip, in the making. A hush fell across the club's formal dining room.

Seated in the leather-cushioned booth, Jack watched her approach.

“Oh, shit.” He spoke very, very softly. It was obviously too late to pray.

One look at the fury that etched Elizabeth Cabot's intelligent face told him that he had lost his gamble. She knew everything this morning. What had happened between them last night clearly made no difference to her now.

A heavy cloud of stoicism settled on him. He waited for her with the patience of a man who knows he is facing an inescapable fate.

She was almost upon him now, and he knew that he was doomed. It was not his whole life that flashed before his eyes in those final moments, however. It was the memory of last night. He recalled the sweet, hot anticipation and the hungry rush of desire that had flashed between them. Unfortunately, that was all they had shared. The concentrated excitement had taken him by surprise, probably because he had worked so hard to contain it for the past month. In the end it had swept away his self-control and the lessons of experience that any man his age was expected to know. He was well aware of his mistakes. Elizabeth did not believe in faking her orgasms.

She had been very nice about it last night. Polite as hell. As if her failure to climax was her fault and hers alone. Actually, she had seemed quite unsurprised, as far as he could tell. It was as if she had not expected anything more from the encounter and had, therefore, not been disappointed. He had apologized and vowed to make amends just as soon as physically possible. But she had explained that she had to go home. Something about an early-morning meeting for which she had to prepare.

Reluctantly, he had driven her back to the gothic monstrosity she called home on Queen Anne Hill. When he had kissed her goodnight at the door of the mansion he had assured himself that he would get a second chance. Next time he would get it right.

But now he knew there wasn't going to be a next time.

Elizabeth arrived at the booth, vibrating with a degree of passion that had been noticeably missing in the final scenes last night.

“You conniving, two-faced, egg-sucking son of a bitch,” she said between her teeth. “What made you think you'd get away with it, Jack Fairfax?”

“Don't be shy, Elizabeth. Tell me what you really think of rne.”

“Did you actually believe that I wouldn't find out who you are? Did you think that you could treat me like a mushroom? Keep me in the dark and feed me manure?”

There was no hope of defending himself. He could see that. But he had to try. “I never lied to you.”

“The hell you didn't. You never told me the truth. Not once during the past month did you give me any hint that you were the bastard who engineered the Galloway takeover.”

“That was a two-year-old business deal. It had nothing to do with us.”

“It had
everything
to do with us, and you knew it. That's why you lied to me.”

In spite of the hopelessness of the situation, or perhaps because of it, he started to get mad. “It's not my fault the Galloway deal never came up between us. You never asked me about it.”

“Why would I do that?” Her voice rose. “How was I supposed to guess that you were involved in it?”

“You didn't work at Galloway. How was I supposed to guess that you had a connection to the company?” he countered.

“It doesn't matter. Don't you understand? That takeover was as ruthless, as cold-blooded, as anything I've ever seen in business. The fact that you were the hired gun who tore that company apart tells me exactly what kind of scum you really are.”

“Elizabeth—”

“People got hurt in that takeover.” Her hand clenched very tightly around the strap of her elegant shoulder bag. “Badly hurt. I don't do business with men like you.”

Jack saw Hugo, the maître d', hovering uneasily at a nearby table, obviously at a loss to decide how to quell the escalating scene. The waiter who had been on the way to the booth with ice water and bread halted, unmoving, a short distance away. Everyone in the dining room, was listening now, but Elizabeth was oblivious to her audience.

Jack was morbidly fascinated himself, even though he was at ground zero. He would never have guessed that Elizabeth was capable of such drama. For the past month she had seemed so calm, so composed, so controlled.

“I think you'd better cool down,” he said quietly.

“Give me one good reason.”

“I'll give you two. Number one, we've got an audience. Number two, when you finally do cool off you are going to regret this scene a lot more than I will.”

She smiled at him with such freezing disdain that he was amazed there were no icicles in her hair. She waved one hand in a wide arc that encompassed the entire dining room. He took that as a very bad sign.

“I don't give a damn about our audience,” she said in ringing accents that no doubt carried all the way into the kitchen. “The way I look at it, I'm doing everyone here a public service by telling them that you are a lying SOB. I won't regret a single thing about this scene.”

“You will when you finally remember that we've got a signed, sealed contract for the Excalibur deal. Like it or not, we're stuck with each other.”

She blinked once. He saw the jolt of shock in her eyes. In the heat of her outrage, she had apparently forgotten the contract they had both signed yesterday morning.

She rallied swiftly “I'll call the Fund's lawyers as soon as I get back to the office. Consider our contract null and void as of today.”

“Don't bother trying to bluff. You can't get out of our deal just because you've decided I'm an SOB. You signed that damned contract, and I'm going to hold you to it.”

“We'll see about that.”

He shrugged. “If you want to tie both of us up in court for the next ten or twelve months, be my guest. But I'll fight you all the way, and I'll win in the end. We both know it.”

She was trapped, and he was pretty sure that she was too smart not to recognize that simple fact.

There was a tense moment while he watched her come to terms with the realization that he had won.

Frustrated rage flared once more in her face.

“You will pay for this, Jack Fairfax.” She reached out and swept the pitcher of ice water off the tray held by the motionless waiter. “Sooner or later, I swear you will pay for what you did.”

She dashed the contents of the water pitcher straight at him. He did not even try to duck. The only escape route was under the table, and somehow that option seemed more ignominious than staying in his seat.

The icy water splashing in his face ignited the temper that he had been struggling to control. He looked at Elizabeth. She was staring at him, the first signs of shock and horror lighting her eyes. He knew that it was just beginning to dawn on her that she had made an almighty fool of herself.

“This isn't about the Galloway deal, is it?” he said softly. “This is about last night.”

Clutching her purse, she took a step back as if he had struck her. “Don't you dare bring up last night. This is not about last night, damn you.”

“Sure it is.” He swiped a chunk of ice off the shoulder of his jacket. “I take full responsibility, of course. It's the gentlemanly thing to do, isn't it?”

She sucked in her breath in a stunned gasp. “Don't try to reduce this to sex. What happened last night is the least important aspect of this entire affair. In fact, what happened last night was so unimportant and so unmemorable that it doesn't even register on the scale.”

Last night had meant nothing to her.
He lost what little remained of the control he had been exerting over his anger. His hands closed around the edge of the table. He rose deliberately to his feet, heedless of the fact that he was still dripping ice water. He smiled slowly at Elizabeth.

“On my own behalf,” he said with grave politeness, “I would like to say that I didn't know going in that I was dealing with the original Ice Princess. You should have warned me that you've got a little problem in that department. Who knows? With some extra time and effort, I might have been able to thaw you out.”

As soon as the words were uttered, he regretted them. But they hung there in the air above the table, frozen, glittering shards of ice. He knew they would never melt.

Elizabeth fell back another step. Her face was flushed. Her eyes narrowed. “You really are a bastard, aren't you?” Her voice was low and much too even now. “You don't care a damn about what happened in the aftermath of the Galloway deal, do you?”

He ran a hand through his hair to get rid of some of the cold water. “No, I don't. Business is business, as far as I'm concerned, I don't believe in getting emotionally involved.”

“I understand,” she said. “That's precisely how I feel about last night.”

She turned on one needle-sharp heel and walked out of the restaurant without a backward glance.

Jack watched her leave. He did not take his eyes off her until she disappeared through the door.

The twinges of impending fate that he had experienced when she had entered the dining room grew stronger. He knew that she must be feeling them too.

They both knew the truth.

She could walk away from what had happened between them last night, but she could not walk away from the business contract they had signed. For better or worse, for richer for poorer, it bound them together more securely than any wedding license could have done.

And don't miss

LOST AND FOUND

The exciting new novel by Jayne Ann Krentz
Coming soon in hardcover from G. P. Putnam's Sons!

THE RANKS OF MEDIEVAL WARRIORS, FOREVER FROZEN IN
their steel carapaces, loomed behind him in the shadows. Mack Easton's face was as unreadable as that of any of the helmed figures standing guard on the other side of the office window. There was something about Easton that made him appear locked in time, too, Cady thought. A quality of stillness, perhaps. You had to look twice to see him there in the shadows. If it hadn't been for the glow of the computer screen reflecting off the strong, fierce planes of his face and glinting on the lenses of his glasses, he would have been invisible.

Not a youthful face, she thought. Definitely mature. But not
too
mature. Thirty-nine or possibly forty, a good age. An interesting age. At least it looked interesting on Mack Easton.

The weird thing was that, even though she had never been able to imagine an exact image of him with only the telephone connection to go on, now that she was actually face-to-face with him she could see that he fit the voice perfectly. Take the serious, dark-rimmed glasses, for example. Never in a million years would she have thought to add that touch if she had been asked to draw a picture of him based on their long-distance conversations. But when he had removed them from his pocket a few minutes ago and put them on she had decided they looked absolutely right on him.

“We have a photograph,” he said. “It was found in the museum's archives.”

Museum
was not the word she would have used to dignify Military World, she thought. What was she doing here? She must have been temporarily out of her mind last night when she took Easton's call. She was at home in hushed galleries, art research libraries, and the cluttered back rooms of prestigious auction salons. She mingled with connoisseurs and educated collectors.

Military World, with its low-budget reproductions of arm and armor from various wars was very much as she had envisioned it; tacky. Then again, maybe that was just her personal bias showing. She had never been overly fond of armor. To her it symbolized all that was brutish and primitive in human nature. The fact that the artisans of the past had devoted enormous talent and craftsmanship to its design and decoration struck her as bizarre.

The office in which they sat belonged to the two owners of Military World, a pair that went by the names of Notch and Dewey. They hovered anxiously in the shadows, having surrendered the single desk to Easton and his laptop computer.

Mack occupied the space behind the desk as if he owned it. She got the impression that was the way it was with any place he happened to inhabit at any particular moment. Something that just sort of happened to him; something he took for granted.

She wished that she could get a better look at his eyes but the reflection on his glasses concealed them as effectively as the steel helms hid the features of the armored figures beyond the windows.

He pushed the photograph toward her across the battered desk and reached out to switch on the small desk lamp. She watched, unwillingly fascinated, as the beam fell on one large, powerful-looking hand. No wedding ring, she noticed. Not that you could be sure a man was unmarried just because he didn't happen to wear a ring.

With an effort she tore her gaze away from his hand and focused on the photo. It featured a horse and rider garbed in flamboyantly styled armor that looked as if it had been designed for a video game or dreamed up by an artist for the cover of a science fiction fantasy novel. She recognized it as a fairly accurate reproduction of the elaborately embellished armor crafted during the Renaissance. Such impractical styles had never been intended for the battlefield. They had been created for the sole purpose of making the wearer look good in ceremonies, festivals and parades.

“Fifteenth century, judging from the helm and breast plate,” she said. “Italian in style.”
In style
was a polite way of saying
reproduction.

“I'm aware of that, Miss Briggs,” Easton said with icy patience. “But if you look closely, you can see a portion of another display behind the horse's, uh, rear.”

She took a closer look. Sure enough, if she looked past the tail of the fake horse she could just make out the dimly lit image of a standing figure garbed in heavily decorated steel.

“Half-armor,” she murmured. It was always good policy to impress the client, even if you weren't particularly interested in the job. Word-of-mouth was important. “In the style of the Northern Italian armorers of the sixteenth century. Looks like part of a garniture meant for jousting at the barriers. Suits of armor from this era often consisted of dozens of supplementary and interchangeable pieces that allowed the set to be modified for specific uses. Sort of like a modern all-in-one tool kit.”

“It's the helm that we're interested in here,” Mack said.

She peered at it. The bad lighting made it difficult to see much detail. “What about it?”

“It's the only piece that was stolen.”

She looked up. “Is there a better photo around?”

One of the two men who hovered near the far end of the desk, the individual who went by the name Dewey, edged closer with a crablike movement.

“Lucky to have that one,” he said, sounding apologetic.

She could only guess at Dewey's age. His face was a worn and weathered map that could have belonged to a man of fifty or seventy. He was dressed in military surplus complete with camouflage fatigues, battered boots and a wide leather belt. His graying hair was caught in a scruffy ponytail secured with a rubber band. She would not have been surprised to learn that he commuted to and from work on a very large motorcycle.

It was hard to imagine that he was representative of Lost and Found's typical clientele. How in the world had he and his partner managed to find the very-hard-to-find Mack Easton? More to the point, why had Mack agreed to help them? Surely he was too expensive for this pair. If he wasn't, she certainly was.

“I was going for a shot of the fifteenth-century display,” Dewey explained. “We had just finished setting it up, you see. This was maybe two years back, right Notch?”

The other man nodded vigorously. “Right.”

Dewey returned his attention to Cady. “I wanted to get a picture for our album. Lucked out and accidentally got a bit of the other exhibit in the shot.”

“Never would have guessed that the helmet on the sixteenth-century suit was the real thing.” Notch spread his hands. “Like, who knew, man?”

Cady cleared her throat. “How did it come into the, uh, museum's collection?”

“I found it right after we bought Military World from old man Belford. He had it stashed away in the back room. I polished it up and added it to the rest of the outfit. Seemed to match, y'know?”

“I see.” She tapped one finger against the photo while she considered her options. As much as she wanted to take on another assignment for Lost and Found, she had a reputation to maintain. One had to draw the line somewhere. She did not trace reproductions.

Surreptitiously she glanced at her watch. She might be able to catch the one o'clock flight if she left Military World within the next forty-five minutes. She could be home in time for dinner.

She turned back to Easton. Something in the way he was watching her told her that he had noticed her checking the time. She summoned up what she hoped was an expression of professional interest. “What did the insurance people say when you notified them about the theft?”

Notch and Dewey exchanged uneasy looks.

Mack did not move. “There's a slight problem with the insurance situation.”

She sighed. “In other words, the helm was uninsured?”

Notch made an awkward sound deep in his throat. “Things have been a little rough lately, financially speaking. Dewey and me had to economize and make some cutbacks, y'know? Sort of let some of the insurance go.”

“Not that the insurance company would have covered the helm for anything like its true value, anyway,” Dewey said quickly. “If we'd had coverage, it would have been for a reproduction, not the real thing on account of we didn't know it was genuine, if you see what I mean.”

“I don't want to be rude,” Cady said gently, “but what makes you think the helm is a genuine sixteenth-century piece?”

Dewey and Notch stared at her, open-mouthed.

“You're supposed to be an expert,” Dewey said. “Can't you tell from looking at it?”

She made a bid for patience. “This is only a photograph. There is no way I or anyone else can use it to determine whether or not the helm is genuine.”

Notch looked stricken. “But Mack here said that you knew your stuff.”

“Old armor is very popular right now,” she explained. “A lot of the well-heeled early retirees in the software industry are collecting it like mad. Guess it reminds them of all those sword-and-sorcery video and computer games they love to play. Prices are going through the roof. Unfortunately, antique armor is fairly easy to fake. Bury a piece of steel in the ground with some acidic substance for a while and, presto, you get aged armor.”

Notch bristled. “Are you sayin' our helmet is a forgery?”

“I'm saying that is an extremely likely possibility.” Cady spread her hands. “Even the experts get burned a lot when it comes to armor. And the business of creating counterfeits isn't exactly new. A lot of the best reproductions of antique armor were made in the nineteenth century. By now, the steel has taken on the patina of genuine age and can easily pass for the real thing.”

“I still say our helmet is the real thing,” Notch declared.

Cady slanted a quick, searching glance at Mack. He moved his head in the smallest of negatives. He was staying out of the argument; letting her handle the clients.

Summoning up her best professional expression, she turned back to Notch and Dewey. “Why are you convinced that the helm is genuine when every other piece in your collection is a reproduction?”

“Simple.” Dewey rocked triumphantly on his heels and looked shrewd. “Someone stole it.”