Windswept (28 page)

“Tell me,” Davis continued, “Do you think the professor’s accusations would hold any water in those circumstances? What chance would a professor have to retain his position in the light of such unethical, illegal conduct? Even tenured professors can be removed for cause. What would happen to his reputation under any circumstances? I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Browning didn’t have grounds to sue him for slander as well.”

“Tapes?” Glover squeaked, his usual boom completely busted, his face suddenly pale.

“Surely you don’t think I’m the type not to have excellent security,” Davis chided with a wave at the air duct at the end of the hall.

Glover glanced at the grillwork and lost even more color. “But . . . but that’s blackmail.”

“I prefer to call it ‘job security,’” Davis answered. “Did you drive yourself or come with your friends tonight?”

Glover looked befuddled by the change in topic, but replied, “I followed them.”

“Good. I suggest you tell them you don’t feel well and are going back to your hotel. Then you get the hell out of my house!”

With his last words, Davis yanked open the office wing door and, with a sharp gesture, pointed toward the front. And heard Barrett say, “Davis?” When he turned his head, she was standing right on the other side of the threshold, her hand out as if she were about to grasp the knob.

She took a step in before she saw Glover and the open conference room door. “Davis?” she repeated. “I saw a light back here and . . .” Her voice petered out as she looked from one man to the other.

“The professor was just leaving,” Davis said. He turned to Glover and pointed the way out again. “Your friends are in the living room.”

Glover drew himself up with, to Davis, a pitifully inadequate attempt at bravado. Scowling, he stalked past the two of them. Barrett stepped back quickly as if to avoid the man’s possible touch.

Gonzales appeared at the foot of the stairs and looked a question at Davis. He beckoned his major-domo and said, “If Glover isn’t out of this house in three minutes, let me know.” Gonzales nodded and followed the professor.

Davis drew Barrett into the office wing hall and shut the door. She glanced at the open conference room and asked, “What’s going on? What was Horace doing in here?”

Davis went to the door and took the wire out of the keyhole. It was a common paper clip. “The professor decided to ‘sneak a peek’ at the Windswept papers. He picked the lock and was about to walk in when I caught him. I just threw him out.” He studied her while he talked. Her expression went from incredulity to anger. He wondered how much she had heard before he opened the door.

“Why, the underhanded son of a bitch! I never thought he’d stoop so low as to break in. What on earth did he expect to find in a few minutes? To read carefully through the master list could take at least an hour.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Whatever it was, he didn’t have the chance to open so much as one box. And don’t worry. He won’t be back, I promise.” He made sure the conference door lock was activated and shut it firmly. “He did show me I need to have better locks than these flimsy ones if I want to keep the papers here.”

“Oh, Davis,” Barrett sighed and came over to put her hand on his arm, “I’m sorry this happened.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said, relieved she had probably heard none of the previous conversation. She surely would have said something if she’d heard those ugly threats of Glover’s. He didn’t want to discuss Horace now, so he put briskness and good humor into his next words. “Now, we have a party going on out there, and we need to get back to it.” He gave her a quick kiss and with his arm around her shoulders, led her back to his guests.

***

Eventually the party wound down, and the only people left were Davis, Barrett, Bill, Martha, and Peggy and Jim Murphy at the far end of the living room. His back to the fireplace and his tie loosened, Davis stood next to Barrett’s chair, and the rest sat on the other chairs and the sofa facing him. In the background, the caterers swiftly dismantled the bars and took care of the leftovers.

“How do you think the party went?” Davis asked the whole group after he and Peggy discussed the people with whom he or one of the staff needed to follow up on Monday.

“Better than last year,” Martha said, “until Sandra showed up, that is.”

“Yeah, but we took care of her,” Bill said, rubbing his hands together like a man who’d just made a million-dollar deal.

Davis shot a glance at Barrett, who returned his implied question with an “I don’t have the slightest idea” shrug. “Okay,” he said to Bill, “what did you do?”

“I started it, I’ll tell it,” Martha interrupted. “I was in the dining room and overheard the Hendersons talking about Sandra and a derogatory statement the bitch made about Barrett. So I asked them about it. It seems Sandra, when she wasn’t with Milt, was telling everybody Barrett was a gold digger, a little nobody who’d latched onto you, Davis, for a meal ticket. The Hendersons said Dr. Glover had been in the group with them and
he
said Barrett wasn’t even a real professor, just out for what she could get, too green to be inventorying an important source like the family records. Oh, and
then
, Sandra informed them how much she pitied you and wondered how you could have lost your edge. After all, if you couldn’t see straight through Barrett, what did it say about your business abilities?”

Davis, instantly furious, clamped a wall around his temper. Before he could open his mouth, however, Bill held up his hand. “There’s more. Just wait for it, Davis.”

“So,” Martha continued, “I grabbed Bill and Peggy and Jim and we hatched a plan.”

“Yeah,” Bill said. “It was great. One of us was always with Sandra or Glover, refuting what they said. The others circulated, talking up Barrett and how good and smart she was and how well Jamison Investments are doing. And by the way, wasn’t it awful how Sandra had played on Milt’s good nature to persuade him to bring her tonight? Everybody knew your split was not the most amicable, so what could be her motives for coming here except to make spiteful trouble? We also asked--all very innocently, of course--what she was doing back here and what had happened to the guy she left you for.”

“A couple of people with Dallas connections had heard he kicked her out. The prevailing consensus is for cheating on him,” Martha interjected.

“By the time we finished,” Bill continued with a frown at his sister for interrupting, “Sandra was stymied. If she brought up Barrett’s name, either the people had already talked to Barrett and thought she was great. Or, if they hadn’t, they were primed not to believe anything Sandra said. It worked like a charm.” He leaned back on the couch and grinned at Davis.

“Is that why you made me recite all my academic credentials for you?” Barrett asked.

“Yep,” Bill answered, “we needed the facts to back us up.”

“Milt, bless his heart, caught the tail end of one of Sandra’s catty little remarks and hustled her out before she could do any more damage,” Peggy put in, “but by then, she didn’t have a friend in the place. You were out on the patio at the time, so Milt said to tell you he would call you to apologize. He was very embarrassed.”

“I kept after Glover,” Jim put in. “He has a grand scheme to bring in a herd of graduate students to do the inventory when you turn the papers over to him. I lost track of him for a while, but when he left early, I figured we had taken care of him, too.”

“So, what do you think, big brother?” Martha asked with a grin on her face. “Did we do good?”

Davis honestly didn’t know what to say to this turn of events. He simply sat down on the raised hearth and looked at each of the four plotters in turn. They all smiled back, obviously proud of coming to the rescue.

Another rescue.

Without his help or orders.

To protect him and, more important, Barrett from Sandra’s and Glover’s viciousness.

His anger faded away, replaced by feelings of humility and gratitude that, for a moment, he wasn’t sure how to handle. He was used to being on the giving, protecting side. He found it harder to be on the receiving end than he thought it would be.

“Thank you,” he said finally. “Thank you on my part and for what you did for Barrett.”

“Glad to be of help,” Martha said.

“It was fun.” Bill grinned.

“It certainly added some excitement to the evening,” Jim said.

“Just doing my job,” Peggy said. “We can’t have people losing confidence in us.” She rose and pulled her husband up. “Now it’s time for this woman to get some sleep. We’ll see you Monday, boss.”

Chapter Twenty

As Davis closed and locked the front door after the group left, Gonzales appeared and turned out the living room lights. Eva came in from the kitchen and announced, “The caterers have left, and everything is secure. We’ll give the rooms a good cleaning on Monday as usual. Will there be anything else tonight?”

“No, thank you both. Everybody loved the food and the party ran like clockwork. You did a spectacular job. Rest up tomorrow. You deserve it. I don’t even want to see your faces in this house. By the way, did you save any tamales for me?”

“Yes, sir. There’s at least two dozen in the refrigerator.”

“Good. I’m looking forward to them.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jamison. Good night,” Gonzales said.

“Good night,” Barrett and Davis said together.

Davis watched Gonzales turn out the dining room lights and the two disappear into the kitchen. The hall sconces offered their usual shadowed illumination as he drew Barrett into his arms.

She came eagerly, and he contented himself for a while with simply holding her. She seemed to find the embrace as comforting as he did because she wound her arms around his waist under his coat and held on tight.

After enjoying the feel of her against him for a few moments, he drew back and gazed down into her eyes. She smiled up at him.

“What did you think of my party?” he asked.

“It was fun, but I didn’t expect a conniving woman or a thieving scholar among the guests. Are your gatherings always this exciting?” she asked with a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

“God, I hope not.”

She turned sober. “Davis, what happened between you and Horace back in the office? If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed he could stoop so low as to break into the conference room.”

He turned her and, with an arm around her shoulders, started her walking toward the stairs. “The ‘good’ professor, and I use the term advisedly, is evidently jealous of you and wants to get his hands on the papers in the worst way. When I wouldn’t agree to let him in, he made a number of false, malicious, and disparaging accusations about your work and you personally. What Martha and the others heard was just part of it. He even threatened to work against your appointment to tenure.”

She gasped, stopped in her tracks, took two steps away from him, then swung back. “Conniving bastard! What a two-faced, pusillanimous, sorry excuse of a human being!” She raised and brandished her fists as if she wanted to hit something but didn’t have a target. “Mmmmmgh!”

“Barrett.” He clasped her fists in his hands and shook them gently to get her attention. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I took care of him.”

“How? How can you stop his innuendoes and downright lies?”

“Blackmail.”

“What?” Her voice went up a couple of octaves with the question.

“I threatened to reveal all to the university--backed up, by the way, with audio and video recordings of him breaking into the conference room and bad-mouthing you afterward.” He couldn’t help letting a little smugness seep into his tone.

“What recordings?”

“There aren’t any, of course, but I led Glover to believe I have state-of-the-art security all over the house.” He shrugged. “And he’s afraid now that not only will I shred his vaunted reputation, but you will sue him for slander.”

She stared at him for a moment, then her eyes started to twinkle and a smirk played on her lips. She shook her head slowly from side to side. “Oh, Davis. Oh, no.”

“Oh, Barrett, oh, yes,” he mimicked, but nodded just as slowly. “You should have seen the look on his face. I only wish I really had a camera.”

“Oh, me, too.”

“He looked like this . . . and then . . . and then . . .” Davis made Glover-like faces of shock, innocence, and anger. She started laughing, he joined in, and by the time he portrayed anger, they were howling, holding on to each other to stay upright.

“My hero,” she gasped when they came up for air and climbed the stairs. “You saved me and the papers from the evil Dr. Glover.”

“Ah, but you’re my heroine. How you handled Sandra was absolutely beautiful. I’ve never seen her speechless before.”

“And I
did
see the look on
her
face.” She skewed her face into a more-than-passable imitation of Sandra at her most snooty.

Her mimicry set them off again, but with an arm around each other, they managed to stagger up the remaining steps to the point where the hall led in two directions--to his bedroom or hers.

As they turned to face each other, their laughter subsided. She raised her head, and he felt her breath catch as their eyes met and their gazes locked. In a heartbeat, he felt them come to the crucial question. Tonight?

He placed his hands on her shoulders and took a deep breath as her scent--subtle perfume and something uniquely Barrett--worked its way into his every cell. Even in the shadowed light, he could see her pupils expand until only a small rim of blue showed. She smiled, a slow, very feminine smile. He felt his cock grow hard, then harder still.

God, how he craved this woman.

When she stepped closer and he felt her soft breasts against his chest and her belly against his erection, desire dealt him such a fierce blow, it almost took him to his knees. A violent need to take her right here, against the wall, on the floor, rampaged through him and tightened his muscles to the point of pain. Clamping down on the primitive urge, he assuaged it some by wrapping his arms around her and pulling her tighter to him.