Gift of Gold (36 page)

On his way back to the bedroom he wondered once more why Yarington would have sent someone to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. It didn’t make any sense.

In spite of the discussion he’d had earlier with Emerson, Jonas was still not convinced that the gunman had burst into the cabin intending only to terrorize his victim. The .357 had been aimed and was about to be fired before the man realized there was someone else in the room. Not the actions of a professional knee-crusher.

Jonas put the disturbing thought aside for later consideration as he slid back into bed. He reached for Verity, easing her into the curve of his body until her soft, rounded buttocks were cradled against his thighs. He intended to wallow in the luxury of being able to cuddle all night with her. After spending the entire day enduring her displeasure, it was a blessed relief to be able to hold her like this. She was sound asleep, but that didn’t matter. He’d been listening to her give orders all day long. There were occasions when silence was golden around Verity. This was one of them.

He was congratulating himself on her present state when Verity wriggled a little. Somehow she managed to shift her position so that his manhood was lodged in the soft cleft of her derriere.

“Jonas?”

“I knew it was too good to last,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.

“What was too good to last?”

“Never mind. Go back to sleep, Verity. We’ll talk in the morning.”

“About what?” she asked with a yawn.

“About whether or not you issued me an invitation tonight.”

“You mean whether or not I’m inviting you to sleep here on a regular basis?”

“Are you?” He was being gently squeezed between her buttocks and could feel himself getting very hard.

“Do you want to move in with me, Jonas?”

He groaned. “Yes.”

“I guess we could try it for a while,” Verity said slowly. “I don’t know how long it can last, though. We’ll probably be at each other’s throats within a couple of days.”

“Ever the optimist, aren’t you? Personally, I give us at least a week.” He stroked himself in the warm furrow and felt Verity stir again. Jonas leaned over and brushed his mouth across hers. “Hell, maybe two weeks if you intend to apologize the way you did tonight every time you lose your temper with me.”

“I did not apologize!”

“A matter of interpretation,” he assured her and deepened the kiss so that she could not argue.

Damon Kincaid scowled at the view outside his office window. Behind him on the desk lay a list of the guests who had been invited to bid on
Bloodlust.
Kincaid had studied each of the half-dozen names very carefully. Jonas Quarrel’s name was not on it.

Strange. Kincaid knew all the names on that list and he knew all of them did their own bidding.

If Tresslar’s discreet mercenary agency had done its job properly two nights ago, Kincaid wouldn’t have been bothered with Quarrel now. But things had gone wrong; disturbingly wrong.

The report of failure had arrived a few minutes earlier, delivered by Tresslar in that annoying hick accent. Kincaid had been furious.

“Is your man alive?” he’d demanded.

“He’s alive.”

“How much does he know?”

“The only thing he had was a description and location of his target. He does not know why the contract was issued or who issued it. I assure you our safety precautions are all in place and functioning. You are in no danger.”

“What happens to that idiot you hired to take care of Quarrel?”

“As I said, he knows nothing of importance. He’s on his own. It was part of our arrangement. My guess is he’ll tell the authorities he was merely looking for an empty cabin in which to spend a cold night and was startled to find it occupied. He thought he was being attacked. He panicked and tried to protect himself. As I said, it’s his problem. My agency is out of it and so are you. We are both protected by my precautions.”

“What about the down payment I gave you?”

“You have two options. We will be happy to refund your money, or you can give us the go-ahead to conclude the contract, in which case, I myself will do the job this time. We like satisfied customers.”

Kincaid had given that consideration. “I believe I’ll have you finish the contract, but this time we’ll do it my way. I want to give the instructions. I will be actively involved and I will be in charge in the field. Don’t worry, I don’t need to see your face. You’ll be working at night and out-of-doors. You can wear a ski mask or something.”

There had been a long pause on the other end of the line. “It’ll cost you a lot more to do it that way.”

“Never mind the cost. Can you guarantee the job this time?”

“You got it.” The phone was replaced on the other end of the line.

Kincaid reran the conversation several times in his head and then reran his own blossoming plans. After a moment he got up and went to the wall to take down a handsome rapier. Dropping into fencer’s crouch, he made a few quick feints before sliding skillfully into a long, deadly thrust that buried the blade in the stuffed dummy.

He was looking forward to the night he would be spending at the house. It was a long time since he’d had an excuse to do his own dirty work. But an old lust that he’d kept under control for a long time was stirring deep within him.

There had been little problem satisfying his superficial sexual needs in the past few years. Women were drawn to power and money the way moths were drawn to flames. But he’d been forced to suppress this other need, obliged to dampen and conceal it in the darkest part of himself.

The prospect of personal involvement in violence was enough to draw aside the veil that had covered this other lust for far too long. He discovered that the dark, thrilling passion was still there within him, as strong as it had ever been. Now that he had awakened it once more, it would not be hidden again until it had been satisfied.

Kincaid thrust the rapier into the helpless dummy again and felt the sensual tension that pulsed in his groin.

Chapter
Sixteen

The
sea appeared deceptively calm from the windows of Caitlin Evanger’s house. Verity stood in the bedroom she had been assigned, the same one she’d had last time, and gazed down at the cliffs. She noticed that from this angle she could see the broken safety fence where it sagged precariously at the edge. Caitlin really ought to get that fixed.

Verity wondered what the view was like from Jonas’s window and smiled to herself as she recalled the annoyance in his eyes when he discovered he’d been given a separate bedroom.

Moving into Verity’s Sequence Springs cottage had wrought an interesting change in the man. Jonas had become fiercely territorial in the past few days.

Verity was still trying to decide how to adjust to this new, possessive side of her dishwasher-waitperson-handyman. She was also trying to decide how to deal with her reaction to having a lover under her roof. Her emotions were still jumbled in some ways, but diamond bright in others. She spent a lot of time warning herself that the situation was temporary at best and that she shouldn’t allow herself to invest too much emotion in the man or the situation.

Jonas had a talent for reading the past but he obviously preferred to ignore his own future.

But Jonas showed no signs of wanting to leave Sequence Springs yet, and the more settled in he got, the more Verity began to think in terms of permanence. She was wondering what would happen if Jonas ever found another woman with whom he could “anchor” himself, when the door opened almost silently behind her. Verity spun around at the faint creak and saw who stood there.

“Oh, hello, Tavi. You took me by surprise.” Verity summoned up a bright smile. She got no response. “I was just admiring the view.”

Tavi looked at her with unhappy, anxious eyes. “I want to talk to you.”

“Of course. Have a seat.” Verity indicated a black leather chair.

Tavi ignored it. Her hands twisted together as she spoke. “What’s going to happen here is wrong, but I don’t know how to stop it. I have done a great deal of thinking about it and I have come to the conclusion that only you can do something about it. You’re the key, just as Caitlin says. That’s why I want to talk to you.”

Verity stared at her. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Tavi. Does this have something to do with Caitlin’s decision to sell
Bloodlust?
”

“It has everything to do with it,” Tavi whispered fiercely. “She must not sell it. It will be the end of everything. I think it will kill her.”

“Oh, Tavi, no.” Verity sighed and sank down onto the chair Tavi had ignored. “I was afraid of something like this. The morning she told me of her plans, I wondered why she was so obsessed with selling this one last painting and then not painting again. Do you think she means to kill herself?”

“I don’t think she has thought about anything, including life or death, after the sale of the damned painting.” Tavi looked at her pleadingly. “You could stop this whole thing.”

Verity jerked her eyes up in astonishment. “I could stop it? What on earth are you talking about? What could I possibly do to stop her from selling
Bloodlust?
”

“You could take your lover and leave and never come back,” Tavi whispered.

Verity recoiled from the plea in the other woman’s eyes. “What good would that do?” she managed to ask in a reasonably steady voice.

“If you leave she will be forced to cancel all her wild plans.”

“Tavi, be reasonable. There’s nothing to stop her from carrying out the auction without me. At least if I’m here, I’ll be able to talk to her afterward. We’ll know then just how much the sale is going to affect her. You must see there’s no point in forcing me to leave. I can’t do anything for her if I’m not around.”

“It all hinges on you,” Tavi rasped. “Can’t you see? Why do you think she invited you here? You and that man who watches you as if you were gold he must protect at all costs. You don’t really think that under normal circumstances Caitlin would have made friends with someone like yourself? She has no friends except me. She has seduced you in ways you don’t even comprehend. But your lover knows. I can tell by the way he acts around her. He knows she’s dangerous to you but he doesn’t know what to do about it. Only you can do something about it. Take him and leave. Now.”

“Tavi, I don’t understand any of this. You’re not talking rationally. What is it you think Caitlin wants to do to me?”

The door opened again before Tavi could respond. Jonas stood on the threshold scowling at both women. Tavi glanced at him, turned, and walked swiftly out of the room. Jonas watched her go and then shut the door behind her.

“What was that all about?” he asked, raising dark eyebrows as he scanned the bedroom.

“I don’t know,” Verity admitted. “I think Tavi might be slightly unbalanced, Jonas. She was acting very strange. The one thing that was clear is that she’s concerned for Caitlin. She worries about what Caitlin’s going to do after she sells the painting.”

“So what?” Jonas began to prowl the room. “You’re worried about Caitlin, too. Hell, everyone seems to be worried sick about the poor, eccentric artist who’s obsessed with selling one last painting. Let me tell you something, honey. Evanger is no fool and she’s no innocent eccentric. She’s got something up her sleeve. I can feel it. If you had any sense you’d see it.”

“Is that right? What do you think she’s up to?” Verity snapped, irritated.

He shrugged his graceful, courtier’s shrug. “Who knows? It’s probably got something to do with jacking up the price of
Bloodlust
until it’s high enough to keep her in cocaine for the rest of her life.”

“Jonas! That’s enough. I don’t want to hear you say anything like that again. Caitlin is no druggie and you know it.”

“How do I know it?” He stopped by the bed and stood staring at it with great intensity. “I’ll tell you something else I don’t like. I don’t like the way she’s split us up tonight.”

“We’re guests in her home and we’re not married,” Verity said stonily. “It’s only natural she’d give us separate rooms. We had separate rooms last time.”

“This time it’s different between us. You should have told her to put us together,” he insisted, his attention still on the bed. “Hell, we’re lovers now. It’s official. We’re even living together.”

“We’ve been living together for all of a few days. That hardly constitutes a long-term relationship,” Verity pointed out dryly. “Be reasonable, Jonas. It would have been embarrassing for me to ask to have you moved into my room, especially when all the arrangements have been made for us to have separate rooms.”

“You’re embarrassed about having me for a lover?”

Verity pleaded silently with the heavens for forbearance. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. It’s one of those social situations, Jonas. One does the polite thing. There are still certain proprieties, even in this day and age. One doesn’t contradict the sleeping arrangements provided by one’s hostess. Can’t you understand that?”

“Don’t lock your door tonight”

She eyed him warily. “Why not?”

“Because after the party I’m going to sneak down the hall and slip into this room. The same way I did the last time we were here,” he added with satisfaction.

“You didn’t exactly come tippy-toeing down the hall last time. You showed up half-naked with a big sword in one hand. When the lightning lit the room I thought I was about to be stabbed to death by a madman.”

“You have an overactive imagination.”

“Hah. You’re the last person on the face of this earth who should be lecturing someone else about an active imagination. Jonas, why are you staring at that bed?”

“I don’t know. Something about it is…” he broke off, searching for the word. “Disturbing.”

“Now who’s showing signs of an overactive imagination? What do you mean, disturbing?”

“It’s disturbing in the same sense the dagger in Kincaid’s office was disturbing. I’ve never picked up vibrations from modem stuff until I met you, Verity. But things seem to be changing. First the dagger and now this bed.”