Thigh High (21 page)

The next morning, in the Garden Suite, Nessa drank her coffee and enjoyed a heady sense of satisfaction.

The night had been long, full of heated caresses, long explorations, husky laughter—her own—and one brief, desperate, betraying moan (his). Altogether, a fabulous experience that left her sitting in his robe, smiling lazily at the undercounter TV as it played the morning news. Political scandal, war, the latest crime on the streets…this morning, to her, it all sounded warm and fuzzy, a world as blissful as she was.

Jeremiah came downstairs, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, computer in hand. With no preamble, he announced, “I've written a prenup.”

“A prenup?” She smiled at the man who had made her feel warm, pleasured, sated. “For whom?”

He put the computer in front of her. “For us.”

She still smiled, not comprehending for a long, long moment. Then, gradually, her smile slid away. “What do we need a prenup for?”

“It's practical for a man in my position, and it also safeguards your interests in case of my death, or in case the marriage fails.” He spoke slowly, articulating each word. “However, I'd like to assure you that that's not my intention. When I enter into a deal, I work the deal to the best of my ability.”

“Of course.” In a daze, she thought he had missed his calling. He shouldn't be an investigator. He should be someone who negotiated contracts, ordered people around, overwhelmed opposition with his shock tactics. A general, maybe, or a CEO.

He continued, “Should we have children, I made it clear to my lawyer that after you and I discuss our beliefs and preferences in child rearing, the prenup will include the basics of our agreement. Whether or not the marriage is a success, I will not abandon my child and/or children.”

She stared at the print on the computer screen, and it swam before her eyes. “I…can we stop for a minute? I'm not tracking here.” She put down her coffee cup. “You want us to get married?”

“It seems logical.” He manipulated the touchpad and brought up a different screen with two columns and numbered lists. “As you can see, I've created a list of pros and cons for marriage between us, and the pros far outweigh the cons.” He pointed to the first item. “My business is based in Philadelphia, and I think you'll agree a long-distance affair between us is unsatisfactory.”

Gee, just that morning, she'd been thinking a long-distance affair sounded pretty good.

“But it doesn't make sense for you to relocate unless you can hire help for your great-aunts, and if I understand your character—and I flatter myself that I do—that kind of monetary commitment from me wouldn't be acceptable unless we were legally bound.”

“You want me to live with you?”

“My next point.” He pointed again. “Your aunts are older, and I believe you care a great deal about their sensibilities. You wouldn't feel comfortable living with me without marriage.”

She said nothing. How could she? Her mind was empty of coherent thought.

“Would you?” he prompted.

“Would I what?”

“Be comfortable living with me unless we were married?”

“No, I…No, living with you isn't an…option.”

“Exactly.” He looked satisfied, a businessman pleased to know his analysis was correct. “Now, point three—”

She put her hand over his. “Wait. Please.”

He turned to her, his brows raised in question, but she saw the intensity in his eyes. Yes, he approached the idea of marriage as a deal, but a very serious deal.

“When did you have a prenup made up?”

“I called my lawyer the day of the robbery and asked him to put together a mutually satisfactory contract.”

“No. I mean…” She meant, when did he emotionally decide only marriage would do? But he sidetracked her. “Why the day of the robbery?”

“Until that day, I believed you to be a suspect.”

He delivered that bomb with a phlegmatic attitude that sent shivers down her spine. “Wh-why? Why would you think that?”

“The robbers have someone on the inside at the bank, someone who's feeding them information about the operations and the personnel. Because of the mistake on your record and your lack of advancement with the bank, I believed you had reason to carry a grudge.”

“That's right. Mr. MacNaught told you. That bastard.” She stared at her hands as she clenched them into fists on the bar.

He paused, cleared his throat, and said, “He's actually not so bad.”

“I'm sorry if he's a friend of yours, but he has screwed me over so badly, I will never forgive him.”

“Actually, he kept you on on the advice of his HR department, who believed that firing you over what would be perceived as a minor violation would play badly with the public, should you bring suit against the bank. It never occurred to him that he was doing you a disservice.”

“What a pile of”—remembering that Jeremiah and MacNaught were friends, she finished—“nonsense. What is he even doing getting involved in something so far below his notice? The teller walked out with five hundred dollars! Doesn't he have anything better to do?”

“You'd be surprised at how often those kinds of errors aren't errors, but are deliberate. Mr. MacNaught does not like to be robbed.” Jeremiah sounded a little clipped.

“Yeah, well, he should suck it up. After that teller incident, I don't like to be lied to, either, but people do it every day.” An ugly realization scratched at her consciousness. “So you were investigating me.”

“Mr. MacNaught believed, and I concurred, that you were a suspect, but I realized almost at once you were innocent. But yes, I was investigating you.”

She didn't like that one bit. “In the vault? Were you investigating me there?”

“In the vault, for the first time in my life, I behaved with a total lack of professionalism.”

That appeased her a little, as did his slight smile, and the care with which he slid his robe off her right shoulder.

He used one finger to trace her collarbone, sending a chill over her skin. When her nipples tightened, he smiled. “I couldn't resist you, and I flatter myself that you couldn't resist me. Because you behaved with a total lack of professionalism yourself.”

“Maybe that's what I do in the vault. I mean, if I steal money and direct robberies—”

“You hadn't been with a man for months. Years.”

“What?” She was trying to find out what he really thought of her, get to the bottom of this investigation thing, and he was trying to distract her.

“You were so tight that I barely held myself back long enough to give you pleasure.”

Okay. She was officially distracted. “Is that such a big deal?”

“Giving you pleasure? I think so.”

“No. I meant—maybe some women are just tight.”

“I learned a few things working my way through college, and one of them was how to tell—”

“All right!” She put her hand over his mouth. “I concede to your experience.”

He spanned her wrist in his fingers and kissed her palm and her fingertips. “Am I right about your lack of recent experience?”

“Yes,” she said between her teeth.

“I like women, and I've been with a lot of them, both during college and afterward. Does that bother you? Because I promise you, from the moment I walked into the bank and saw you, I knew there would never be another woman for me.”

Time to drop the indignation about being investigated. She had lost control of the conversation, not that she'd ever had it, and he had her on the run.

But this was about more than sex. Unfortunately. “Is that why you want to marry me? Because you saw me and…and…”

“Fell in love? Yes.”

She lost the ability to breathe. When her head started to swim, she took a gasping breath. “You love me?”

“I have always had a poor opinion of the possibility of maintaining a relationship for the length of two lifetimes. It seems impossible for the passions that set a relationship in motion to be maintained.” He smiled ruefully. “Yet I have seen it done. If it's possible for other couples, then I believe the two of us, who are reasonable, mature, educated adults with common interests and even some factors of our background in common—we can also succeed.”

He had in no way answered her question, but she wouldn't stop asking it. “You love me?”

He smiled ruefully. “I can't live without you.”

“Then…would you like to propose marriage?”

He actually looked startled. “I did!”

She shut his laptop. “No. You showed me a prenup and pro/con list. As romantic as I find that, I would like my marriage to start with something more than a business proposition.”

He look a long breath.

Oh, this was hard for him. She was so glad—proposing marriage was supposed to be hard.

Taking her hand, he slid to one knee, removed a ring box from his pocket, opened it, and asked, “Ionessa Dahl, will you marry me?”

She looked into his beautiful green eyes, inscrutable no more, but open and alive with passion.

Right now, she was the richest woman in the world.

He slid the ring on her finger.

She examined it. “Wow, it's so…big.” The diamond was huge, the gaudiest thing she'd ever seen, set in platinum and surrounded by littler diamonds of merely a carat or so. The whole concoction was so big it could choke a hippo. It was so bright, she could signal commercial airliners with it. It was so shiny, she could use it as a skating rink.

And he was very proud of it.

“It's beautiful.” Leaning over, she kissed his mouth and whispered, “Yes, I will marry you.”

He kissed her back, his mouth hungry and possessive, and broke away only when she pulled back with a laugh. “My back is breaking.”

“We can't have that. I have uses for you.”

She wound her fingers around his neck. “And would those involve the big bed upstairs, or even the steps on the way up?”

He stood, dragging her up with him. “Let me show you.” He took her hand and led her toward the bedroom.

And two words from the television caught her attention.

Bank robbery.

She stopped so quickly he almost jerked her off her feet.

“What's wrong?” He hadn't heard. His voice was still soft, indulgent.

“Sh!” She gestured roughly at him and turned toward the TV.

Local newscaster Arlanna Ramos stood inside the Premier Central Bank at the corner of South Villere and Cleveland, spewing facts at the camera as quickly as she could. “The Beaded Bandits have struck again, but what a change! This morning's robbery was brief and brutal—”

Vaguely, Nessa heard the phone ring.

Jeremiah walked across the room and answered, his voice low and intense.

Arlanna continued, “And while bank officials won't confirm the amount, an inside source has indicated over twenty thousand dollars was taken at gunpoint. Shots were fired, and while no one was hurt—” The camera panned back to show a teller sitting on a chair, crying and visibly shaking.

“My God.” Nessa tore herself away from the television, ran for the bedroom, grabbed her clothes. “My God.”

The aunts had struck again, and this time…this time, they had ruined them all.

“As near as we can tell, $20,942 was taken—”

The bank manager's voice trembled as he imparted the news to Mac, but Mac wasn't really listening. His cool brain clicked the pieces together.

The polite notes that demanded money and offered advice…

The female voices that sounded so familiar…

The costumes that looked so real…

The Beaded Bandits weren't men. They weren't transvestites.

They were tall old women. They were Nessa's great-aunts.

And Nessa
knew.

No wonder she'd slept with him. She'd been playing him like a fish, pretending reluctance, yet all the while, she hooked him and reeled him in.

What a fool he'd been. What an incredible fool.

He cut right through the manager's flow of words. “It's all right. I know who's doing it. They'll be arrested within the hour.” He hung up while the manager was stammering his astonishment.

He flexed his hands. They were cold, his fingers icy.

He picked up the phone to call Chief Cutter, and call waiting beeped in.

Gabriel Prescott.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Gabriel didn't wait for an answer. “I'll be there this afternoon.”

Mac glanced at the TV, where the meteorologist expounded on a storm front moving in. “Unlikely. Come in tomorrow. Today I need you in contact with the police and the bank.” He didn't know why, but he felt driven to confess, “I know who they are, Gabriel. I have them now.”

“Really?” Gabriel sounded cautious. “Don't leave me hanging.”

Cool, good sense blew across Mac's heated mind. Gabriel hadn't believed Mac's theory that Nessa had been the mastermind of the operation, and today Mac had seen the shock and horror on her face. Certainly, she hadn't known about this robbery. Nor, if her performance last week had been any indication, had she known about that robbery before it occurred.

But once she saw her aunts in action, she had known—and that's when she started seeing him at night, smiling at him across restaurant tables, asking leading questions about his investigation, winding him around her little finger. And when he told her he was leaving, she screwed him senseless, not realizing he was already so blind and stupid in love he'd bought a ring and sweated over a marriage proposal.

Rage and humiliation clawed at his gut. He'd poured his heart out to Nessa Dahl.

All the while, she'd been laughing at him.

So he needed proof to convince Gabriel, and proof to convince Chief Cutter and the whole NOPD that the old ladies they adored had set them up. “You'll know soon enough.”

Hanging up, he stared at the phone. What he wanted most was to call Chief Cutter and rage at him for missing what was right before his eyes. But that wouldn't get Mac what he wanted. First, he needed to utilize the impeccable logic for which he was famous.

He called his secretary. “I need to know everything about the finances of the Dahl family in New Orleans, first names Hestia, Calista, and Ionessa.”

“Yes, sir.” Mrs. Freytag sounded cool and unflappable as always. “You do realize this is illegal?”

“I want it within the hour.” He hung up, knowing without a doubt that she would have the information within thirty minutes. He strode into the bedroom to shave and dress—black suit, white shirt, red tie.

Today he would lose whatever anonymity he'd been able to achieve. The press would cast him in the role of ruthless invader—and he wanted to look the part.

Mrs. Freytag's call came as he finished tying his tie.

“Calista and Hestia Dahl have an account with Manhattan International Investments,” she said.

“The amount?”

“One hundred and forty-two thousand, and seventy-six cents.”

His temperature dropped another degree.

His breath was freezing in the air.

The Dahl girls had not a fortune, but a sizeable sum of money. Their whole helpless, disadvantaged act was just that—an act. They stole from his bank and invested the money. To collect that sum, they probably stole from other banks, too, in other guises.

And even now, he had hoped it wasn't true. Because some idealistic sliver of his soul still lingered, wanting to think Nessa was naive and wholesome, and her aunts were dotty and delightful.

But he had trained himself to look at the ugly truth straight on.

Those women were calculating thieves and skilled con artists—and they would be sorry they had caught Mac MacNaught in their nets. “Thank you. Mrs. Freytag, do we hold a mortgage on the Dahl House?”

He heard the keys click on her computer. “No. But we have their credit report from eleven years ago…. They applied for some kind of loan and were refused as a bad risk.”

Nessa's school loans. “Find out if there's any kind of mortgage or loan using the house as collateral. Acquire it.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

“Notify Radcliffe. I'll need him and a team down here tomorrow morning.”

“The lawyers?” The keys clicked again. “If I may ask, Mr. MacNaught, did you catch the Beaded Bandits?”

“No, but I identified them. It is almost over. I'll be in contact with you later.” He hook-switched and dialed Chief Cutter.

He didn't get through at first. It took a minute of plain, cold language before the officer who guarded the chief's privacy connected them.

Chief Cutter spoke quickly, a man caught in a vise between duty and annoyance. “I know there was another robbery. I'm on the scene right now—”

“You're in the wrong place. Get in the car and drive to the Garden District.”

“Why?” Chief Cutter sounded cautious.

“Because that's where the criminals live.”

“You figured it out?” The chief's voice clearly doubted.

“Without a doubt.” Mac's voice dipped below freezing. “You're going to arrest Miss Hestia and Miss Calista Dahl for the robberies at all the Premier Central banks.”