Tasting Fear (3 page)

“Right.” Nancy snapped her cell closed. “So,” she said. “My sisters and I are disposed to proceed, but we’re broke. Lucia had some money, I assume, but we don’t know how much, or when we’ll be able to access it. I can look into taking out a personal loan, but in the meantime…”

“I’ll just get started,” he said. “Pay me later, when you sort it out.”

She was startled. “Uh, are you sure that’s wise? I don’t even know when I can get the cash. I wouldn’t want to get you in a bind.”

His shrug was nonchalant. “I can cover the costs for a couple of weeks. It’s just me and Eoin to pay, for now. Then we’ll see how it goes.”

“On…on just my word?”

His eyes gleamed over his cup. “Your word’s good.”

“You just met me fifteen minutes ago,” she pointed out.

Knightly glanced at his watch. “Eighteen minutes,” he said. “Eighteen minutes are enough. For you, anyway.”

His eyes had a magnetic pull that wiped her mind clear of coherent thought. All thoughts but one.

Oh, Lord. She had no business getting all trembly thighed. She was grieving, wobbly, her judgment shot to hell. Probably imagining all these vibes flying right and left. Or maybe not, and that was worse. He was way too big, for one thing. Too much of him. She avoided men who sent out alpha-dog signals. Like the plague. And perfect though Knightly’s manners might be, mellow as he might act, there was no mistaking one of those men. She could spot one disguised in any costume: a suit, a military uniform, jeans and a work shirt. The force field of his machismo hummed against her skin, all the more dangerous for how subtle it was. Not that it was a bad thing. It was just the way he was, like having brown hair, or a nice ass. But even so. She had to run the show when it came to relationships, romance, sex. That detail was nonnegotiable. And a guy like him would definitely want to be on top.

Um. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Her eyes skittered around, fell on the plastic tablecloth. Something to do. She grabbed the package, ripped open the cover, and headed for the living room.

Knightly followed her, sipping from his mug in that leisurely way of his. Nursing the damn thing. She had long since nervously gulped her own tea down. He watched her unfold the tablecloth and shake it out. The sharp stink of new plastic overwhelmed even the scent of funeral flowers. She started to position it carefully over Lucia’s
intaglio
writing table.

“I know it’s none of my business,” Knightly said. “But why are you covering that table with that god-awful thing?”

Nancy paused and pulled the plastic away. “My sister and I are taking the smaller art pieces home, but none of us has a place for the table,” she told him. “I figured the tablecloth was camouflage, if burglars should come again. Worth a try, anyhow. Did Lucia tell you its history?”

“She told me the SS officers used it during the Nazi occupation,” he replied, “that they used her father’s palace for their headquarters.”

Nancy was startled. Lucia had not usually been so forthcoming about her family history. “The Nazi officers were the ones who made these graffiti,” she said, tracing some of the brutal scratches carved into the delicately carved tangle of flowers.

“Incredible,” he commented. “A piece of living history.”

“Lucia’s father was actually a count, you know?” she told him. “The Conte de Luca. Which means Lucia was technically a countess, even though she lived almost all of her life here, in New York.” She was babbling, but it felt good to talk about Lucia. Like a pressure valve opening, letting off a tiny bit of steam.

“I’m not surprised she was a countess,” Knightly said. “She looked the part. That lady was a class act.”

Nancy blinked back another rush of tears and shook the tablecloth into place with an angry little jerk. “Yes, she was.” She positioned the jade plant carefully in the center. “There. Who would guess?”

“It looks butt ugly,” he said judiciously.

“Thank you,” Nancy murmured.

Knightly laid his hand on the table, as gently as if it were a living thing. “I’d love to study it someday. Figure out how the guy did it.”

“Did what?”

“Made something that’s still intact and still so beautiful after four hundred years. That’s talent.” He turned, and took his cup back into the kitchen.

Nancy’s eyes fell upon Lucia’s shelf of photos as she gazed after him. She waited until he appeared again in the doorway. “How did you know who I was?” she demanded.

His subtle smile lit his eyes. “Lucia showed me pictures of you,” he said. “She told me all about you. Bragged you up.”

A dark suspicion dawned in her mind. “Bragged me up?” she repeated slowly. “What do you mean? What did she tell you?”

“That you work too hard, and let everyone take advantage of you. That you live in an apartment surrounded by Hells Angels, crackheads, and the criminally insane. That you come across as bossy and managing, but you’d give the shirt off your back to a stranger in need—”

Nancy winced. “Oh, no. I see where this is going.”

“And that you’re definitely not married,” he concluded. “She also told me you’d be here for her birthday. She wanted to introduce us.”

“Oh, God.” Nancy turned pink. That manipulative schemer.

Lucia would never have done this to her if this guy was taken. A swift glance at Knightly’s left hand confirmed that he wore no ring.

A glance that he intercepted. His subtle eye smile deepened. Her mortification deepened, too. “I’m, ah, sorry about that. You being put on the spot, I mean. Lucia couldn’t stand it that I’m single.”

“Yeah, that was my impression. It is really strange, though.”

She covered her hot cheeks with her hands. “What’s strange?”

“Strange that you’re single. You’re not what I expected.”

Don’t ask it. Don’t ask it. Don’t.
“Ah…what did you expect?”

“Well, she told me you were beautiful. I could see that from the pictures. But she didn’t tell me how beautiful. Photos can’t show that.”

Beautiful?
Oh, God. Strange, wild energy crackled through her nerves, as if he had touched her.

Out of nowhere, she started to imagine how it would feel if he did.

She started to vibrate. Strange that she was single? Whoo-hah. Little did he know. She forced her voice not to shake. “Don’t flatter me.”

“Who’s flattering?”

She looked away, flustered. She had no idea what to say to him.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly after a long moment. “I can’t believe I just said that to you, right now. It’s a bad time. Please forget I said it.”

“Um, it’s okay,” she murmured. Right. Like she could.

The easy, unexpected intimacy she had felt with him before was gone. Knightly’s face was cool and distant as they exchanged numbers. He and his assistant, Eoin, would unload supplies that day and start the kitchen tomorrow, though she had to clean stuff out of it first. They set a time to meet for the following morning, and that was that.

It gave Nancy a pang to hand over Lucia’s house keys to a man she’d only just met, but the thought of having someone in the place was obscurely comforting. She hated the thought of the house lying empty and bereft.

After that exchange, there was no good reason to hang around. She put the carefully wrapped bronze sculpture into the car and took off. She felt uncomfortably guilty for being irritated with Lucia for setting her up. At the same time, she was missing her desperately. She felt so raw, so shaky. Desperate to glom on to something else to think about. And God knows, she’d been twitchy about the whole issue of dating and romance even before Lucia’s death. It occurred to her that Lucia had probably filled Knightly in on her daughter’s string of romantic disasters. The thought made her cringe.

The first time her fiancé had dumped her had been bad. The second time, worse. The third time, she’d gotten philosophical about it.

Maybe she would have to resign herself to never having children. Content herself with a series of cats. Or do what Lucia had done. Adopt some half-grown kids who needed a home. There was more than one way to have a family. The center of a woman’s life did not have to be a man. And men didn’t seem to enjoy being in the center of her life. By all accounts, it was a prickly, uncomfortable place to be.

Nancy’s sisters and Lucia had despised Freedy, Ron, and Peter. But was it their fault they’d fallen out of love? You loved someone or you didn’t. She didn’t want to be married to a man who didn’t.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She must lack some innate womanly skill. She should have practiced gazing up through fluttering eyelashes, hanging on their every word. Puffing up their egos.

But she’d always been too busy managing their careers, making them take their vitamins, making sure their socks matched.

Freedy had said that she was too controlling. Ron had told her that she was too driven. Peter had told her that she was too prosaic, that she just couldn’t join him in that place full of dreams where he needed to live in order to make the magic happen. She lived in another world, he had explained.

Huh. He sure hadn’t minded her finding lucrative gigs for him from that other world. Too bad watching her scurry around to do the scut work for his career had been such a turnoff. Prosaic Nancy, the detail freak. And that damn cell phone of hers, ringing all the time, shattering his precious creative trance. Oops. So sorry.

Not that she was bitter or anything.

The strange, raw mood fostered brutal honesty. She stared, hot-eyed, out the windshield. The problem with her fiancés had been sex. Sex had always been problematic for her. She did not like feeling vulnerable, squished, or squeezed. Being overwhelmed in any way, physical or emotional, made her run away in her head. She became unreachable and detached. Instant Popsicle.

Her lovers, not surprisingly, had gotten impatient with this.

The thought of having one of those tense conversations about intimacy issues with Liam Knightly made her cringe.

After Freedy’s defection, she’d sworn off romance. Celibacy was less painful. No bikini waxing, scratchy lingerie, or contraception.

But the intensity of Knightly’s gaze made her feel as if he’d seen something in her she’d never imagined she could be. She wanted to see him again, to see if it was a fluke. A trick of the light. A passing spasm.

An experiment doomed to failure, of course. The guy was way too big. And he exuded an aura of controlled power that made her feel vulnerable even when she was fully clothed and an entire room away. She could only imagine how that vibe would feel if they were naked. Skin to skin. And oh,
shit
—

She screeched to a stop at the red light.

She, Nancy D’Onofrio, the born multitasker, couldn’t even think about the man while driving.

L
iam followed Nancy’s car with his eyes. Her taillights were a thread of connection until the car turned. He wanted to sprint to the end of the block, catch another glimpse. He didn’t. He had that much self-control.

Though that was about as much as could be said for it.

He let his breath out. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, he hadn’t seen that one coming. He ran down the steps, and got into the truck. Eoin, the Irish kid fresh from County Wicklow who worked for him, gave him a questioning glance. “So? What are we doing?” he asked.

He shrugged. “We’re getting on with it.”

Eoin’s blue eyes widened. “The daughter wants to go ahead?”

He nodded, squeezing his hand around the sense memory of Nancy D’Onofrio’s cool, slender fingers. Eoin caught the vibe, the sensitive, curious little bastard, and shot him a sidelong glance.

“Daughter’s a looker, eh?” he commented.

“She just put her mother in the ground yesterday,” Liam snarled.

Eoin mumbled something apologetic that made Liam feel like hypocritical shit. Like he had a right to scold, after what he’d said. What the fuck was he thinking, coming on to a woman who’d just buried her mother? Still wearing her funeral dress? Red-eyed from crying? She probably took him for one of those slimy opportunists who preyed on grieving women. Idiot words, popping out of his mouth like they were spring-loaded. Telling her how beautiful she was. Christ, his tongue had probably dangled out of his head like a slavering hound while he said it.

Lucia D’Onofrio had been a classy old lady. Funny, smart, with a sharp, cutting sense of humor. She’d reminded him of Mom. He’d known Lucia for only a few weeks, but even so, her death made him feel as if something had been taken from him. A fucking burglar? What a stupid, offensive shame. It made him restless and furious.

“Ah…what are we doing?” Eoin asked cautiously.

“Waiting for the goddamn rain to ease off,” Liam retorted.

Eoin flinched and averted his face.

Liam cursed, softly. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just…it pisses me off. About Mrs. D’Onofrio. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s okay.” Eoin’s voice was long-suffering. “Don’t worry about it.”

Liam felt Nancy D’Onofrio’s business card in his pocket and pulled it out. Her name was printed in bold, curvy letters that stood out sharply from the creamy paper. Just like the woman. Bold. Curvy.

He stuck the card in his pocket before Eoin could catch him fondling it. Usually he didn’t care for women who dressed in black. He found it affected. Nancy didn’t look affected. Her tight tailored black dress made her skin look pearly pale and her red-brown hair redder. That tight bun showed off every finely molded detail of her face. Only a woman with amazing bone structure could get away with a look that severe. The secretly sensual governess look. And he wanted to play her horny, unscrupulous lord of the manor. Sign him up for that.

He could have looked at her face for hours, always finding something new to admire. And her cheek looked so fine, so soft.

Not affected. Sharp, elegant, to be reckoned with. A female ninja assassin. The perfectly formed girl who undulated in the opening credits of a Bond movie. A fantasy woman.

Yeah, and paying the crew out of his own pocket for an undetermined interval, that was a fucking fantasy, too.

But he couldn’t let a chance to see her again slip away. She was so elusive. So wounded and wary. Going after her would be like catching fish with his hands. Christ, what an idiot he was. He scared himself.

He flung the car door open. “Let’s get started,” he growled.

Eoin peered up at the rain running down the windshield, started to say something, thought better of it. He sighed and followed him out.

Liam gave himself the grim mental lecture while they unloaded. Pursuing a woman like Nancy D’Onofrio would be a waste of time. He didn’t want a citified, high-strung workaholic for a lover. He’d thought long and hard about what he needed in a woman. No, a
wife
. Enough dicking around. He wanted someone in line with his lifestyle. He didn’t need to look further than his own parents to see what happened when you messed with that rule.

His mother’s cherished dream had been for a big, noisy family, but his father had been driven by ambition. He’d had no time to spend with Liam, was never there for meals, was always gone for holidays.

Liam’s mother had begged, schemed, and nagged for years until she realized that he would never change. She’d made him leave at last, keeping Liam with her. He hadn’t seen his father since that day. Not that he’d seen that much of him before. He’d been eleven years old.

His mother eventually did find the kind of man she wanted, but Liam never forgot her disappointment. He’d taken the lesson to heart. When it came time, he knew what to look for. He was a settled person. Ambitious, in his own small way, but he liked living in the country, running his business, keeping his own hours. He liked playing seisìun in Irish pubs with his fiddle and flutes, downing a few pints with his friends now and then. Growing his garden, tending his orchard of walnuts and apples. Someday he’d like to buy a couple of horses, when he could afford a bigger piece of land and had kids to ride them. He’d like to build his own house on that land. A big, comfortable, rambling place. Full of kids, noise, color. Life.

He’d thought a lot about the woman who would fit into his perfect life. She didn’t have to be a raving beauty. He wasn’t hung up on that. It was more important that she be kind and good-natured. Maternal and craftsy. That she like cooking, canning. Baking her own bread.

But his balls didn’t give a damn about his long-term contentment. They wanted what they wanted, and they wanted that slim, spicy ninja girl with those big, mysterious eyes behind her trendy glasses and the ridiculous high-heeled, pointy-toed boots on her tiny feet.

No way did Nancy D’Onofrio know how to make bread. He’d be surprised if she could boil an egg. Her type lived on carrot sticks and sushi. The result was nice, though. He liked how her back was so straight, head high, chin up. He liked the jut of her shoulder blades, the smart way her short jacket fit. The delicate shape of her upper lip, the lush swell of the lower. He wanted to smooth away the anxious crease between her brows. Those shadowy hazel eyes were full of sadness. Secrets.

Problems
. Sadness, shadows, secrets, those equal problems. The voice of reason shouted at him from a distance, but he was too lost in his fantasy to listen. She could use more flesh on her bones. He would love to see ten more pounds on her.

Crash. Thud.
He’d knocked over flower arrangements with his boot. Bruised white lilies scattered across the floorboards. He laid his boxes on the pile that was forming in the middle of the floor, gathered the flower heads up, and threw them away. The sweet, heavy smell of lilies reminded him of Mom’s funeral.

It didn’t matter how alluring Nancy D’Onofrio was. By her own mother’s admission, she was a compulsive workaholic. Genetically engineered to make him angry and miserable. But his gonads weren’t thinking about the lecture. They were too busy thinking about her ass in that tight skirt. The tits were nice, too. Small, but with a personality all their own. Nipples that poked audaciously through the fabric of her dress. No bra. Wow.

Aw, Christ, enough. He was thirty-seven years old, and he still hadn’t found his mellow earth mother. He was looking around, in a relaxed sort of way, hoping destiny would kick in. He didn’t want to force it, but time was wasting, if he wanted a big family. And he did not have the energy for a casual affair. He hated the flat, dull feeling when one of those scratch-the-itch flings had to end. Too fucking depressing.

The morning passed, in grim, sweaty, wordless silence. Two trips, back and forth to Latham, loading and unloading. It was late afternoon by the time they were through, and when they got back to his place, they were exhausted and ravenous, having skipped lunch.

He put on a kettle to make a pot of tea for himself and Eoin, who boarded in his basement. Eoin got busy cooking some hamburgers, or so it seemed. Charred as they were, it was hard to tell, but the sliced tomatoes, ketchup, cheese, and bread on the table were all clues. Liam lunged for the gas and turned it off. “Making lunch?”

“I made one for you, too, if you fancy it,” Eoin said timidly.

“Keep the flame a bit lower,” Liam advised.

Eoin’s freckled face flushed. “Sorry.”

“Speaking of stoves, I found you a secondhand electric range. After we eat, maybe you can help me haul it down into the basement.”

“Great,” Eoin said. “Now I can make myself a cup of tea without bothering you.”

Liam grunted. “It was never any bother.”

“Thanks anyway,” Eoin said earnestly. “For the place, the work, the stove.” He laid the shriveled burgers on the table. “Are you going to the seisìun at Malloy’s on Saturday night?”

“I might. You keen to go?”

“God, yes,” Eoin said. “I’ve been working on that new tune of yours all week. I want to try it out with the lads.”

“Fine, then. Malloy’s on Saturday,” Liam promised.

Malloy’s was a good seisìun, from ten until two Saturday night in an Irish pub in Queens. A motley but talented group of regulars got together every week to mainline Irish tunes. Liam almost always went with his fiddle and flutes, unless he was too worn out from work, but young Eoin was religious in his zeal. And he was damn good on his Uilleann pipes. Liam had never heard anyone better. The kid should go pro.

But people had to work, so the tunes and the Guinness had to wait. Which reminded him that Saturday followed Friday, the day he was starting work on the D’Onofrio house. He would see her tomorrow.

Maybe he would go early and help her. He could lift boxes for her. Wrap dishes in newspapers. Eoin could come later. Excitement swelled at the idea of being alone with her.

“Are you okay? You look a bit off,” Eoin said.

Liam swallowed with difficulty. “Nah, just remembering something that I have to do. Ready to haul that stove down?”

“Sure thing,” Eoin agreed.

Liam kept himself busy, hooking up the stove in Eoin’s lair, washing up the kitchen, sweeping debris out of the bed of the truck. Cleaning rain gutters. Soaping the squeaky bottoms of his underwear drawer.

That was what clued him into the stark truth. He sat there on his bed, the drawer on his lap, his underwear scattered around himself, and contemplated it.

He was so fucked.

Beep. Beep. Beep
. John Esposito rolled over on the couch and punched the button to silence the alarm. Yes, fuck you very much, it was five to midnight, and the big guy was about to check in. He’d set the alarm to be sure he was alert. He had to be razor sharp to deal with Haupt.

Truth was, he almost never slept when he was on the job. He didn’t miss it, either. Stalkings, interrogations, punishments, executions, they stoked him like petroleum fuel. He loved his work. When the gig was over and the fee was safely tucked into his offshore account, he slept two weeks straight.

He peered out the window, across the street. A glance at the monitors of the vidcams he’d installed the other day while the Countess was gasping her last on her living room floor confirmed that nothing was happening in the empty house. Eight vidcams. Living room, kitchen, bathrooms, basement, and three upstairs bedrooms.

He stood up, stretched out his shoulders. Any second, Haupt would call. John knew very little about the man. Only that he paid well, and that job failure would be very dangerous for John’s health. John could live with that. He held himself to high professional standards. That was why he charged the big bucks.

The terms of this job were complicated. Not a cut-and-dried hit. John preferred to have half up front, but Haupt had only given him a third, plus expenses. The rest of his fee was contingent upon a successful outcome, but the promised sum was so large, he’d decided it was worth it. He hadn’t factored in what a pain in the ass Haupt was going to be. It was worse than dealing with his own mother.

His employer had been unimpressed with John for letting the Countess slip away, but was it his fault the old bitch croaked on him before he questioned her? Was that a reflection on his professionalism? In his line of work, he’d never bothered to learn CPR. Wily old hag. He wanted to punish her. Women did not thwart him, ever.

His only consolations were the Countess’s three extremely fuck-able daughters. He couldn’t decide which one he liked the best. They might try to thwart him, too, in the course of this job, if he was lucky.

And if they did, oh, man. He was so very ready for them.

He’d video-streamed a segment of last night’s drunken henfest in the kitchen to Haupt, but the humorless had prick been unamused. All that had interested the boss last night had been the jeweled pendants.

The three identical letters that John had taken from the Contessa’s house made cryptic references to some necklaces, but had offered no clear explanation. John had studied every piece of jewelry he had taken from Lucia D’Onofrio’s bureau, to no avail. None of it relevant to the fucking letter. He’d had the stuff delivered by courier to Haupt, but the old bastard hadn’t made any more sense of the jewelry than he had.

It seemed logical that this new delivery of pendants was significant. Goddamn letter, full of cryptic clues designed to annoy the shit out of a straightforward professional.
“Music will open the door.”
What the fuck did that mean?
“It’s up to you three to decipher the key together,”
the stupid hag had written.
“Consider beauty, faith, and knowledge, and above all, love—the key to all secrets worth knowing.”

Fucking drivel. Beauty, faith, knowledge, and love? Not his field of expertise. He’d faxed the thing to his employer, who had been unable to make anything of it, either. But John hadn’t exhausted all possibilities yet. Given incentive, the daughters could probably figure out their batty old mother’s letter. And he had all the incentive necessary in the black plastic box under the bed.