Don't Look Down (15 page)

Right. The damned Patty’s Pack gossip brigade. They’d commiserate with her, obviously—or she wouldn’t be so keen on living there—but they wouldn’t fund her new life. Apparently that was his job. “What if I asked you to settle somewhere else?” he suggested. “What if I offered to pay for it?”

For a moment she didn’t say anything. “Is that American mutt of yours afraid of the competition?” she finally snapped, the smooth veneer coming off her tone.

“Samantha’s not afraid of anything,” he returned. “I’m trying to do
you
a favor. Not her. And she’s not a mutt, darling,” pride goaded him into saying. Samantha might not have a pedigreed bloodline, but she was probably the purest person he’d ever met.

“Whatever helps your fantasy life, darling,” she returned, then audibly drew a breath. “Please help me, Richard. I don’t have anywhere else to turn. Peter betrayed every man I know, including you, and you’re the only one I can still…count on.”

Even when he was aware of it, he still couldn’t help what Samantha termed his “knight in shining armor” tendencies. “Tom’s looking into it. I’ll have him call you tomorrow.”

“Oh, thank you, Richard.”

Rick tightened his grip on the phone. “If you want to thank me, Patricia, stay away from Samantha.”

“Tell the mutt to stay away from me. It’s certainly not my idea to be seen with her.”

The phone clicked dead, and he hung up. Surprisingly, he wasn’t as angry as he was bemused. His girlfriend seemed in pursuit of his ex-wife, who wouldn’t leave
him
alone. He certainly led a strange life, these days.

At the knock against his open office door, he turned around.
Speak of the devil
. “Hi.”

Samantha eyed him for a long moment before she stepped into the room. “Are we still fighting?”

“I don’t know. Are we?”

“In a way, I hope so. Somebody just told me the two best ways to make a man forget an argument are food and sex.”

Richard closed the proposal file. “That’s interesting,” he said, standing to approach her. “Because you do look very hot in that dress.”

She grinned. “Thanks. I was actually thinking about Hans’s chocolate pie, though.” Slipping backward, she retreated down the hallway.

For a moment he stood in the doorway, watching the soft sway of her hips as she retreated and feeling the blood leave his brain to head downward. So they weren’t arguing. Nothing was settled, but neither did he intend to spend the night sleeping alone. “I like pie,” he said, catching up to take her hand.

“I thought you’d still be pissed off,” she noted, sending him a sideways glance.

“I’m a big boy. Besides, I like to keep you on your toes.”

“You’re good at it.” At the head of the stairs she stopped. “I grew up not being able to tell anyone what my father and I did for a living,” she said unexpectedly. “I’m used to secrets. And in all honesty, I knew you’d get mad if you found out I was talking to Patricia. So I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”

Slowly, Rick drew her toward him. “I married her. Denying that would be abysmally stupid. And I loved her for a time, as well.”

She started to pull away. “Rick—”

“I know, I know.” He smiled. “I just wanted to say that my scope of experience is wider now, and that I’d like to think I’m wiser and more cautious.” He leaned forward, tipping her chin up with his fingers, and kissed her. “You may think it’s a weakness to admit certain things, but I happen to think it’s a strength. And so I’ve decided that you’re just going to have to get used to hearing it. I love you, Samantha.”

“You—”

He stopped her protest or whatever it was going to be with another kiss, deep and slow. “I love you,” he whispered, nudging her backward until her hips came against the balcony railing, “I love you.”

She didn’t answer, and he didn’t expect her to, but from the way her arms swept around his shoulders, fingers digging into muscles as she met his mouth hungrily, she felt something. More than something. Whatever it was that prevented her from saying the words, he understood the emotion.

“Mr. Addison?”

With a stifled curse Richard tore his mouth from Samantha’s and looked around her down to the foyer where his housekeeper stood. “What is it, Reinaldo?”

“Sorry, sir, but dinner is ready.”

Samantha licked his ear. “Mm, and I’m so hungry,” she murmured.

Christ
. “Have everything set out in the dining room, and then give everyone the rest of the night off.”

The Cuban gave a quick grin. “Right away, sir.”

“My, aren’t you generous?” Samantha murmured.

He ran his hands down her back, stopping to cup her bum and pull her against him. “Not in the least. Do you know how much I want you?”

Her responding moan made him hard. “I have a good idea,” she breathed, shifting her hips against him.

“Good. Now just walk in front of me to the dining room so I can keep a little dignity.”

Samantha laughed. “If you weren’t so generously endowed, you wouldn’t have that problem.”

He released her, motioning her to precede him down the stairs. “Yes, but then we’d have another problem entirely.”

“True. I’d rather have the first one.”

As they reached the first floor he moved up behind her, shifting her hair forward on her shoulders so he could kiss the back of her neck. “Maybe I am generous,” he conceded, welcome heat running just under his skin, “because I intend to give you my entire endowment.”

She gave a near silent, shaky breath. “You just made me wet,” she whispered.

If they didn’t stop this, he’d never make it to the dining room. And Reinaldo had best have gotten everyone out of there.

The dining room was thankfully deserted, with two places set opposite one another at one end of the long table. Tonight’s dinner had apparently been entirely in honor of Samantha and her tastes, because a steaming pot of chili sat midway between the settings, with piles of nachos on both plates. Farther down the table a chocolate pie topped with whipped cream sat awaiting dessert.

“Oh, yes,” she crowed, dropping into one of the chairs. “Hans is a genius.” She crunched into a nacho, turning to look up at him with half-melted cheese strung down her chin.

With a smile he leaned around to nibble the straying
cheese. While she stood up to spoon chili onto her chips and cheese, he grabbed his own plate and moved it to the place beside her.

“Here,” she said, cupping her hand under a generous load of chili and nachos.

It was spicier than he expected, but as she shifted to undo his shirt buttons while he chewed, he wasn’t about to comment. He fed her the next chip, using the moment to squat down and pull off her yellow sandals. His shoes came off next, and then she stood so he could unzip the back of her Chanel dress, kissing the warm skin of her shoulders as he exposed it.

“It occurs to me that nachos aren’t the most fragrant of foods,” he said, lowering the dress to her feet. Oh, my. She’d worn her pink bra and panties with the lace around the edges.

“We’re both eating them,” she returned, arching her back as he ran his fingers down her spine.

He turned her to face him, kissing her deeply. She was right; she tasted like chili and peppers—which was actually quite fitting for her. Shifting his attention to her throat, Richard slid his hands around to the fastening of her bra. All the teasing at lunch and then the argument—in a sense, Samantha knew what she was talking about. It wasn’t difficult to channel all that frustration into arousal.

He pulled the bra straps from her shoulders. Laughing a little unsteadily, Samantha fed him another chip. Denied a better use of his mouth for the moment, he ran his fingers across her nipples, relishing the sound of her gasp. Good God, she turned him on.

Moving back a step to unfasten his trousers and drop his shirt to the floor, he still couldn’t take his eyes off her. She consumed him, and only at times like this, when he was about to be inside her, to hear her moan with pleasure and to
make her come, did he feel like she belonged to him. When she ran her palms slowly along his abdomen and then leaned in to lick his left nipple, he nearly lost control. “Jesus,” he managed, shuddering.

Samantha chuckled, the sound reverberating into his chest. “You’re so easy.”

Richard slid a hand into her cute underwear, moving his fingers upward to feel the damp warmth inside her. “I’m not the only one.”

“Okay, that’s enough teasing, buddy,” she moaned, writhing against him. “I want the main course.”

“I’m not through with the appetizer,” he returned, lifting her onto the edge of the table and pulling her panties down in the same motion. He flung them somewhere over his shoulder.

“Hey! I’ve lost track of the number of pairs of underwear I’ve lost since I met you,” she protested in a voice thick with passion and amusement.

“I’ll buy you a store.” Rick sat in her vacated chair and leaned in to kiss the insides of her thighs.

Samantha shoved the plates aside and lay back. Moving in, he licked along her soft folds. Abruptly she jumped, sitting up to grab his hair and yank his face away from her. “Jesus Christ!”

He blinked. “What? Did I—”

“Those peppers sting, man,” she panted, laughing breathlessly. “Do it again.”

So there was an unexpected benefit to spicy foods and sex. Richard went to work again with his fingers and his mouth, ruthless and relentless as she squirmed beneath him.

“All right, enough, enough,” she finally begged. “Come up here and fuck me, Rick.”

He wanted to; the wait was killing him. But he wasn’t fin
ished with torturing her yet. It was payback time. “I haven’t had dessert, yet,” he murmured, reaching over to hook the pie and slide it closer.

Two fingers of whipped cream plopped onto each of her breasts, and he leaned along her body to lick them clean, one finger still pressed inside her. She bucked and came, crying out his name. That nearly did him in.
Not yet
, he commanded his cock, taking deep breaths and striving for control.

Samantha hammered her fists on the tabletop and gasped for air. “You’re killing me, you British bastard.”

He grinned. “What a way to go, though.”

Sitting up, she kissed him, licking cream from his chin. “I believe in fair play, you know,” she murmured, dipping her hand into the pie.

Richard eyed her warily. “Samantha, might I remind you—”

She grasped his hard cock, smearing chocolate and whipped cream along its length. “Uh-oh. We’ll have to clean that up, now.”

Oh, boy
. Pushing him back down into the chair, she slid off the table to kneel between his thighs. He lost the power of speech as her warm mouth closed around him. All he could do was tangle his hands into her hair and try to force himself to breathe and not ejaculate until he was bloody ready to do so. And that meant not until he was inside her.

Her darting, caressing tongue along his length was too much. “Stop, stop,” he groaned when he couldn’t stand the torture any longer, pulling her away. He snagged a napkin to swipe off the remains of the chocolate, then knelt to face her. Pushing her backward off balance onto the marble floor, he half fell on top of her, taking her mouth and adjusting himself to push inside her.

With no time for finesse, he simply pinned her to the floor
and thrust madly until he came with a rush. Growling her name, he collapsed on top of her.

Her arms tightened around his shoulders and then slowly relaxed again. “I told you we’d probably kill each other,” she gasped.

He kissed her again, more slowly and gently this time. “And I told you I liked pie.”

Tuesday, 2:21 p.m.

S
amantha hated funerals. She’d attended only three in her life—one for Stoney’s mom, another for an old colleague of her dad’s who’d retired to a country without extradition, and the third for her dad, himself—though that had been a tiny service just outside the prison where he’d been doing time, and she’d watched from a nearby hill through binoculars while a few Feds and the prison padre stood around and a quartet of fellow prisoners dug the hole and dumped the casket in.

This one was unlike any of those, but at the same time it was exactly the same. A good two hundred mourners stood under white tent canopies or sat in white wood chairs, accompanied by several thousand dollars’ worth of mourning bouquets and wreaths, and attired in several million dollars’ worth of suits and dresses and jewelry. But just like the others, it was too quiet, and for someone like her, who counted on knowing what to say and to whom to speak, there weren’t any words to use.

“You okay?” Rick whispered, his arm close around her shoulders.

For once she didn’t mind the confining contact. In fact, she welcomed it, and snuggled closer into the circle of his arm and chest. “Yes. I mean, I barely knew him.”

“You knew him better than some of his friends, I’d wager,” he returned in the same low tone, nodding toward the loose group of mostly older gentlemen who sat at one end of the grave site. From what Aubrey had told her, they were probably Kunz’s poker buddies.

The police were keeping the press a respectful distance away, but in the murmuring quiet she could still hear the click of shutters. Again this time she didn’t mind. Though she recognized a great many of the fellow mourners, a few were unknown. And odds were that at least a few of those would have their faces and names in the local papers tomorrow. At this moment they were all suspects, and she wanted to know everything about them.

“Laurie’s looked better,” Rick commented, as the central group of mourners disembarked from their limousines and made their way to the site through the scattering of tasteful gravestones and mausoleums.

“Black’s not her color,” Sam agreed, watching the brother and sister approach arm in arm.

“That’s a tad catty, don’t you think?”

“Her nose isn’t even red. How do you mean she’s looked better?”

He shrugged against her. “I don’t really know. I guess it’s just a thing you say at funerals.”

Sam twisted her head to look up at him. “I’m serious. Does she look like someone who’s lost a parent, when they were apparently close enough that they lived in the same house? Yesterday was the first time I’ve seen her.”

“I don’t know, Samantha,” he whispered back. “And it’s a big house. Sharing it with a family member doesn’t necessarily mean they were close.”

“Speaking from experience, are we?”

“Shh. We can delve into my private closet another time. But I told you, Charles doted on both his children.”

“Right. I just don’t see that from looking at the two of them.” She scanned the growing crowd again, trying not to linger on the coffin being carefully set onto its lowering mechanism. “I’m missing something,” she grumbled. “I know I am, and I have no idea what.”

“Rick, Sam,” Castillo’s voice came from behind them.

“Hello, Frank,” she answered over her shoulder. “Anything new?”

She felt the tug on the back of her chair as the detective pulled himself forward. “Nothing. I’ve got guys checking pawnshops and fences between here and Miami. We’ve run all the prints in the house, and they all belong to family and staff and friends.”

“So you’re figuring it was family, staff, or a friend who did it,” she returned, for the moment setting aside the fact that she wouldn’t have left prints if she’d done the robbery.

“Yeah, well, being in the cop business, I kind of need some proof, and that leaves a lot of people to look at,” Castillo noted. “You notice anything screwy here?”

“Laurie’s nose isn’t red,” Rick contributed, tightening his hand on her shoulder. “Can we do this elsewhere? It’s not seemly.”

Her chair bumped as Castillo released it. “Right.”

She wasn’t sure if the admonition was snobbery or Rick’s British sense of decorum or something else entirely, but it surprised her into silence. “Are you okay?” she murmured.

“Bad memories,” he said quietly. “Let’s just pay our respects and go.”

“I need to go to the wake,” she put in after a moment. “But if you don’t want to, I’ll hook up with Fr—”

“I’m going with you, my love.”

She leaned in to kiss his cheek, then settled back as the ceremony began. Casting her gaze around the crowd, she looked for…something. It seemed stupid that somebody might show up and do a tapdance over Kunz’s grave, but she knew she could read people, and someone had done this. Someone had killed Charles.

As her eyes reached Daniel Kunz, she was surprised to see that he was already gazing at her. He looked tired, more so than his sister, but his eyes were dry as well. Maybe the family just weren’t criers. He held her gaze steadily, and she looked away first.

She’d seen that look in men’s eyes before, most notably Rick’s. Daniel was interested. And that brought up something else she’d practically forgotten: Patricia. Where was she? Was she so obsessed with looking available and vulnerable in Rick’s estimation that she’d forgone the opportunity to make good with Daniel?

Then she spotted Patty, seated toward the front but so swathed in black hat, black netting, black sunglasses, and black Vera Wang that she looked nearly unrecognizable. The charitable, honorable thing for Sam to do, she knew, would be to keep her mouth shut about the Ex’s presence.

“Patricia’s here,” she murmured, indicating the direction with one finger.

“I wonder who invited her?” Rick said.

“It’s kind of the place to be today. She is in the good seats, though.”

The testimonials began, led by a series of Charles’s poker
buddies and fellow Everglades Club members. She wondered why they hadn’t done this in a church, but the fashionable clothes and surrounding pack of press answered that. Somebody wanted publicity, or at least a photo op. Which meant one of the family, since they would have been the ones to make the arrangements. Then again, everybody in Palm Beach society liked publicity. It didn’t make anyone a killer, but everything meant something.

Finally Laurie moved to the front and spoke for a few minutes about her father’s contributions to the community, and then how he’d supported her in her decision to go into real estate and how proud he’d been of both her achievements and Daniel’s, including the yachting trophy Daniel had brought home last year. Then the priest came forward again with the final benediction, and the reminder that the wake would be at Coronado House. Daniel never spoke.

As the mourners began dispersing, Rick stood. “It was a nice service,” he said, pulling her up beside him.

“It was sad.”

With a small smile, Rick put his hands on both her shoulders and kissed her forehead. “Charles is lucky he spoke with you that night.”

She kissed him back, this time on the lips. “Why do you say that?”

“Because now he can be certain that one way or another, someone will find out what happened.” Wrapping her hand around his jacket sleeve, he headed them toward the waiting stretched Mercedes-Benz S600.

“Does this mean you’re on my side now?”

“I want whoever killed Charles to go to prison. I maintain my position that the police can handle it without your assistance and that they’ll solve this before you do. And I wish you would limit your participation to chats with Frank.”

“Frank and I exchange information.” She knew why he’d made the wager and why he was sticking to his guns, but she couldn’t sit around and do nothing. She wasn’t wired that way. And he liked the way she
was
wired. “Honestly, what would you be saying if I did what you wanted? If I kept my hands completely out of the cookie jar? If I never had cookies again?”

“I’d say, ‘Thank God, I can rest a little easier because I know she’s safe,’” he answered promptly.

“Sure. And with my new free time I could knit you turtlenecks and learn to play the piano. What a hoot I’d be. You’d probably retire so you wouldn’t have to miss a second of my exciting company.”

For a long moment he gazed at her. “I think you should try living a normal life before you dismiss it as mundane.”

Mundane
. That was the thing she never wanted to be. And that was what Rick didn’t get, that if she totally gave up her old life, it would change everything in her and everything between them. She’d be just another of the women in his life, nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary. Mundane.

“I’m not sure I know what normal is,” she said, because he would expect her to answer with something flip.
He
was the one who needed to imagine her in a normal life before he tried to force it on her.

In silence they joined the train of vehicles, mostly chauffeured, entering and exiting the gates of Coronado House in an unending circle. “We don’t have to stay long,” she said, drawing a hard breath as she patted Rick’s knee. Nothing unusual here. Just the same old nonmundane Sam. “I just want to look around and see who’s talking to whom.”

“From what you told me about the other day, you may not be all that welcome, Samantha.”

“I will be if you’re here, sweetie.”

“Wonderful. Now I’m your passport to larceny.”

Samantha wandered out of the foyer and front sitting area and made her way toward the courtyard at the center of Coronado House. As far as she could tell, there’d never been much difference between an upper class wake and a straight party, and this wasn’t any different.

Rick was out of sight somewhere behind her, but he could take care of himself. Hell, he schmoozed people and shit for a living. She schmoozed their possessions—or rather, she used to. It would have been an easy gig today.

The open air courtyard was nearly as crowded as the inside, but it gave her a view through Charles’s office window without actually having to barge into the room. She leaned against a palm tree to take a good look. None of the windows were broken or cracked, which didn’t surprise her, but the thin lines of molding were all even and slightly sun-faded to the same degree. Whoever’d gotten into the office hadn’t gone through those windows.

A hand brushed her bare arm. “Hi.”

She jumped, leaning around the palm tree.
Shit
. “Daniel. Hi. That was a nice service.”

“Thanks, I guess. I’m glad you’re here.”

“You are?”

Daniel nodded. He’d shed his jacket, but still looked like a model straight out of
Hunk
magazine in his dark blue shirt and gray tie and slacks. “Laurie was a little hard on you yesterday,” he said with a disarming smile. “She’s having a rough time with all this stuff going on.”

“Well, you found a caterer, anyway,” she returned, gesturing at a passing plate full of crackers and paté.

“Luckily she’s got a lot of connections through her business.” Daniel reached out and flicked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “So I wanted to apologize.”

“That’s not necessary.”
As if apologizing was what he was doing
. “You both have a lot on your minds.”

“Yes, we do.” Moving closer, he wrapped a hand around her arm. “Hey, you like art and antiques, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Come and take a look at this.”

For a brief moment she weighed her instinct to stay clear of Daniel against what she might find out if she went with him. The opportunity was too good to pass up.

He didn’t take her hand, but his guiding grip on her arm made it clear that they were together. The presumed possession annoyed her, though the same gesture from Rick in most instances gave her warm, fuzzy feelings that led to all kinds of worries about the future and her independence.

To her surprise, they didn’t go to a secluded poolside cabana or anything like that, but straight to Charles’s office. Okay, it was either really good luck on her part, or kind of freaky on his. Not under any circumstances would she consider making out in the office of someone they’d buried an hour earlier.

“What do you think?” Daniel asked, gesturing at a small glass case that stood on a long mahogany credenza.

She relaxed a fraction. He wasn’t going for a full frontal assault, anyway. Shaking herself, she went forward to take a closer look, noting the large Renoir over the right-hand wall. A fake Renoir, she decided after a second. Normally it would have taken her a little longer to make that determination, but the overlarge painting, together with the thick division between the office and the bathroom on the other side, yelled “safe.” Nobody with any taste put a genuine painting
somewhere it would have to be taken on and off the wall or set into a panel with hinges. Skin oils, fingerprints, and general banging around were all terrible for resale values.

She bent down to look into the four-sided case Daniel had indicated. “It’s nice,” she said after a moment, taking in the thin, elongated, featureless bronze woman encased within.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked, leaning in to look at her through the right angle of the glass.

“Do
you
?”

He straightened when she did. “Not a clue. I couldn’t find it on any inventory or insurance list.”

“Has it been here long?”

“I never noticed it before last week. Dad had just gotten back from Germany, so I thought maybe he bought it there. He’s always—was always—doing that.”

So Charles’s love of art wasn’t shared by his son. “Well,” she said, bending briefly to look at it again and thinking that he’d probably grab her ass if she lingered in that position, “it’s not an antique, and it’s really not from a medium that I follow.”

“Shit. So you don’t know wh—”

“But I would guess it’s probably a Giacometti, maybe a prototype for one of his full-size works.”

He took a step closer, brushing the line of her wrist with his thumb. “How much is something like that worth?”

So he figured he needed to flirt to get information. Normally—prior to three months ago—she wouldn’t have hesitated to follow the same game plan. Now, though, she had a very jealous Brit in the other room and his ex-wife lurking somewhere around. She shrugged. “A couple of years ago one of his full-size sculptures went for somewhere over three million.”