No Desire Denied Page 6

  THE STREET IN front of Piper’s apartment had returned to normal. Tourists and shoppers strolled along the sidewalks, some stopping to peer in windows. Nell noted that both Duncan and Reid were in full bodyguard mode, walking on the outside as they escorted the sisters across the street and along the sidewalk to the café.

  They stopped just in front of the table where she and Piper had sat earlier. Reid made sure that she was just a bit behind him and to his left. That way he could shove her out of the way with his left hand and draw his gun with his right. Perfect, Nell thought. She had to stifle the urge to stop and make a note of it on her pad.

  “Tell us what happened, Nell,” Reid said, “just as if you were writing it. And we’ll act it out.”

  Nell pointed to the street. “Piper, you were right there.”

  As Duncan and Piper moved into position between two parked cars, she said, “I heard the horn first and I glanced down the street to see this car holding up traffic. He was double-parked in front of the art store, and the driver behind him was getting impatient. I was about to join Piper when the woman came up to me with the book.”

  “And you signed it?” Reid asked.

  Nell shook her head. “No. I was reaching for it when the horn distracted me again. Then everything happened at once. I heard the motor, saw the blur of motion, and I just ran toward Piper.”

  Reid took her arm and drew her with him toward the art store. When they reached it, he glanced up and back down the street. Then he signaled Piper and Duncan to join them.

  “Nell says the car was stopped here blocking other cars when she first spotted it,” he explained. “But he couldn’t have been here long. Too much traffic.”

  “I bet he was illegally standing in that loading zone two stores down,” Nell said. He could have idled there until Piper stood up. Then he pulled out into traffic and waited. That’s the way I would have written it.”

  Reid glanced at her. “You could be right.”

  Nell heard something in his tone that she’d never heard before. Surprise? Admiration? Whatever it was, it sent a little stream of warmth through her.

  “I’m sure she’s right,” Duncan said. “The guy’s been watching her every movement since she arrived in town. He was watching her in Louisville, too.”

  “I’ll bet the loading zone offers a good view of the café,” Nell said.

  When they reached the empty space two stores down and stepped into the street, Nell continued. “From here, he could see Piper drop the money on the table.”

  “Then I just walked away,” Piper said. “I was totally focused on calling my boss to tell him I’d be late. Family emergency.”

  Reid could picture it very clearly in his mind—the driver pulling out and blocking the traffic. He should have seen it before. The problem was that his brain had been working in slow motion ever since he’d looked into Nell’s eyes again. He had to change that—and fast.

  “I’m about to join her when the woman comes up to me with the book,” Nell said. “If it weren’t for a driver who was heavy-handed with his horn, I wouldn’t have turned to look. He would have had a clear shot to hit Piper.”

  “Gutsy bastard,” Reid murmured. He pictured the acceleration, the collision. He frowned. “He wouldn’t have been able to build up much speed. He couldn’t have been certain he’d kill her.”

  “He didn’t have to. All he had to do was make me think he could kill her.”

  They all turned to stare at her.

  “He clearly intended to hit her. She could have been killed,” Duncan pointed out.

  “But hit-and-run is sloppy,” Nell said. “Especially in Georgetown traffic. I think his real goal is to make me believe he’s ready to pick off my family one member at a time so that I’ll find the sapphire necklace for him and hand it over. Which is what I’m going to do.”

  “I don’t think he’s quite as nice a guy as you’re imagining him to be,” Reid said. “My guess is that he had murder on his mind, but he wasn’t a professional.”

  “If he’s anything like Deanna Lewis, he’s not nice at all,” Piper said. “Nell, it’s too dangerous for you to go to the castle. You’ll stay here with me, and we’ll get protection. It’s going to be all right.”

  Nell took her sister’s hands. “You’ve been telling me that all my life. Now it’s my turn to tell you this. I’m going to fix this. He’s given me forty-eight hours. The clock is ticking. It’s the oldest plot device in the world. But it works. So I’m going to the castle, and I’m going to find Eleanor’s necklace. He’ll follow me up there, because the Stuart sapphires are what he really wants.”

  Piper looked from Duncan to Reid and back to Duncan again. “One of you has to talk some sense into her.”

  Reid glanced at his brother, then said, “The thing is, she’s making sense. At the very least, she has to go to the castle and go through the motions of looking for the necklace. That will buy us forty-eight hours to put an end to this. I’m going with her.”

  “In the meantime, we’ll beef up protection for the whole family,” Duncan added.

  * * *

  “IT’S GOING TO be all right,” Nell said as she checked her suitcase for the last time. She was beginning to really enjoy saying those words to her sister. What she wasn’t enjoying was the fact that Piper was so worried. Though there wasn’t much space in the small bedroom, Piper was pacing just as she always had when something was really bothering her.

  Nell glanced into the bathroom, checked the shelves one last time. The rest of her family would worry also. Duncan and Reid were filling them in on the plan right now. At least Aunt Vi wasn’t alone at the castle. Daryl Garnett, her fiancé, who headed up the domestic division of the CIA, was with her. He’d taken some time off when Adair and Cam had left for Scotland to help Vi run the wedding business and make sure she was safe.

  Piper stopped her pacing, sat on the foot of the bed and patted the space next to her. When Nell joined her, Piper said, “I just wish I could go with you.”

  “Your big trial starts on Monday. You need to be here. You’ll be safer here.”

  “So will you. There are so many ways to sneak onto the castle grounds. And there’s a wedding scheduled there on Saturday. A rehearsal tomorrow. Those will provide ample opportunity for someone to get close to you.”

  “I’ll have two agents watching over me. And I’ll know that Duncan will keep you safe.”

  Piper frowned at her. “Only because you’re drawing this person away. You’re making a target out of yourself.”

  “I’m also making a target out of Reid. I can’t believe whoever this is will be happy that I’m taking a Secret Service agent with me. Deanna’s partner will follow me to the castle, and I think he’ll keep a close eye on me.”

  “You’re not making me feel better,” Piper said.

  “I’m just thinking of their side of the story. Clearly they believe they have a right to those jewels, and if they turn out to be descendants of the Stuarts, they could be right.”

  “But we’re Eleanor’s descendants,” Piper said.

  “Exactly.” Nell beamed a smile at her. “It will all boil down to a classic case of conflicting narratives. You deal with that in court every day. The thing is, they may have a more powerful claim on the jewels. Yet we’ve always believed that they were Eleanor’s dowry.”

  “Well, the jury’s out on that one.”

  “Agreed,” Nell said. “But wouldn’t the possibility make you just keep turning the pages to find out?”

  Piper stared at her sister. “This isn’t some story you’re writing, Nell.”

  “No.” But it was certainly a story she was thinking of writing. The twist would fit well in the book she was working on—an adult thriller with a romantic subplot.

  There was a knock on the bedroom door and Duncan said, “You two ready in there?”

  “Yes.” Piper rose and took Nell’s suitcase. “The only reason I’m letting you go is because Reid’s going with you. N
o one could be more devoted to protecting you than he is.”

  True, Nell thought. Yet having a guardian angel along was going to make it difficult to find the necklace on her own without being protected by Reid. But that wasn’t her only problem. Difficulty number two was she wasn’t sure she wanted to be protected from Reid.

  But that was an entirely different story line, one she wasn’t quite ready to share with her sister. She had to plot it out for herself first.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, Reid found himself folded up like an accordion in the front seat of Nell’s sporty little Fiat as she shot it up a ramp onto the beltway that would take them out of D.C. Using the side-view mirror, he checked the cars behind them.

  “You think he’ll try to follow us?” Nell asked.

  “It’s a good possibility,” he said. “He’ll want to make sure you’re headed up to the castle.”

  “That’s what your work is like, isn’t it? Coming up with all the possibilities?”

  “Yes.”

  “Writers have to do that, too. Except that we can choose one of the possibilities, and you have to deal with what you get. Like getting stuck with me and going up to the castle.”

  “I wouldn’t call that getting stuck.” But he was definitely stuck big-time in her little car.

  The seat was pushed back as far as it would go, but he still felt as if he’d been stuffed into a shoe box. And he was listening to Bach or Beethoven or Brahms on the radio. He’d never been able to keep those classical composers straight.

  He had no one to blame but himself for the cramped conditions. Nell had made several arguments while they’d taken the short walk to where he’d illegally parked his sedan. That was something she hadn’t done when she was six. That summer she’d been willing and eager to do everything he told her.

  First she’d demanded they take two cars. In separate vehicles, it would be less obvious that she’d acquired a bodyguard. He’d countered by pointing out that, once they got to the castle, his presence would be clear to anyone. Then she’d gone for the emotional appeal—she’d feel more comfortable if she had her own vehicle. After all, it had been the only steady companion she’d had for the past year when she’d toured the country teaching classes and promoting her book.

  But if there was one thing he’d picked up on in the past two hours, it was that Nell was most interested in being a key player in recovering Eleanor’s necklace. Bottom line—she wanted her own car, because it would give her a certain amount of independence. It was that desire to operate independently that was going to make his job more challenging. His knees were bumping against the dashboard right now because he intended to indulge her need for independence on the less important issues so that he could successfully block it on the more important ones.

  That had always been his strategy with the VP. Nell was going into a dangerous situation at the castle. She’d put on a cheery act for her sister, and she might have an overly optimistic view on how everything was going to work out, but he didn’t doubt for a moment that she had a clear outlook on the situation.

  This couldn’t be easy for her. One minute she’d been signing her books and looking forward to spending another few days with her sister. The next, someone had tried to run down Piper, immediately followed by another written threat against her family.

  “We’re going to find a way through this, Nell.”

  “I know.”

  The confidence in her tone had him looking at her. It occurred to him for the first time that her attitude might be fueled by more than her overly optimistic nature. “Do you have some idea about where the necklace is?”

  “No.” She shifted to the center lane as traffic began to clog the right lane. “But I’ve been thinking about it ever since Adair found the first earring. There’s got to be a story behind the way Eleanor divided them up and hid them in different places.”

  “You think she had a method to her madness?” he asked.

  “Exactly. With characters, motivation is always key. One of Eleanor’s reasons for hiding the jewels had to be that she didn’t want to pass them on to members of her own family. That has to be why she didn’t hide them inside the castle. I think that once it was discovered that they were missing, the surviving children must have searched every inch of that place.”

  “Yet Cam believes that whoever is behind this believed that either she hid the sapphires or some kind of clue in the library.”

  “That’s a very logical theory,” Nell conceded. “If I were Eleanor, I’d want to leave behind something to point the way. Yet my sisters came upon the earrings without any clue at all.”

  Reid shifted to study her a moment. “Do you have a theory about that?”

  “It’s more of a story idea.”

  “Tell me.”

  She shot him a quick look. “Promise you won’t laugh.”

  Intrigued now, he said, “I won’t. Cross my heart.”

  “That’s what you always used to say to me whenever I got scared that summer we played together. All those days when it was your job to get me up to the cave in the cliff face so that I could wait around to be rescued, you’d say, “You’ll be safe, Nell. Cross my heart. Remember?”

  Reid could hardly forget. Hands down, his brothers’ favorite game that summer had been pirates hunting for treasure—the treasure being Eleanor’s sapphires. Of course, any pirate had to kidnap and hold a fair damsel captive. After the first game, it had been Reid’s idea that Nell should have the permanent role of kidnapped damsel. It had been the only way to keep her off the cliff face and safe. “I never lied. And you’re stalling. Tell me your story idea.”

  She passed a truck, shifted back into the right lane and said, “Okay. First, Eleanor wanted to leave proof behind that the jewels existed and had been in her possession. That’s why she wore them in the portrait. And she wanted the sapphires to eventually be discovered. She didn’t just throw them away. The two earrings were very carefully wrapped in leather pouches and hidden in places built to survive time and weather. So far the jewels have been found in the places we played as children—in the stone arch and the cave.”

  “Correct.”

  “So—and this is the ‘don’t laugh part.’ She hid each piece separately—so maybe she wanted them to be found now, and by my sisters and me.”

  “You’re implying that she had some insight into the future.”

  “Something like that.”

  For a moment, Reid considered. “That idea might work very well for a children’s story.”

  “But it’s not a possibility that a Secret Service agent would entertain.”

  “No. We work in much more concrete scenarios.”

  “Hypothetical or concrete, we’re both after the same thing,” Nell said, easing the car into the center lane again.

  “With one important difference. You want to discover the story about the sapphires, why Eleanor hid them, figure out who they belong to and why someone else believes they have a claim on them. My goal is much simpler. I want to catch a would-be killer and write ‘the end’ on the story.”

  She shot him a grin. “Works for me. And thanks for not laughing.” Then she turned her full attention back to negotiating her way through traffic.

  By the time they’d cleared the D.C. area and had entered Pennsylvania, Reid became aware that he had a bigger problem than the cramp in his leg. He’d been trained to use all of his senses, and sitting in the tiny space with Nell, he’d found that he was definitely using all of them.

  First, there was no escaping her scent. He still hadn’t come up with a description. But he’d smelled it before, perhaps in the gardens at the White House at night. He’d kept his eyes on the road, but he had excellent peripheral vision, and he’d been trained to use it. Therefore, in the space of thirty miles, he’d become very aware of the soft curve of her lips when she smiled, and that the sun lightened the color of her hair. He’d also had time to study her hands. They were small, the fingers slender. She w
ore her nails short with just a sheen of pink polish. A lady’s hands. And twice so far, he’d caught himself imagining what they might feel like on his skin. He’d found out when they’d both reached to turn the radio station at the same time. Her fingers had just brushed lightly against the back of his hand, but the burning sensation had shot right to his loins.

  “Sorry.” They’d both spoken at once.

  She’d laughed and held up one hand with her little finger extended. “Pinkie wish.”

  “Pinkie what?”

  “We both said the same word at the same time. Now we’re supposed to link our little fingers and make a wish. C’mon.”

  “Okay.” He linked his pinkie finger with hers and felt the arrow of heat shoot through him again.

  It gave him some satisfaction that her hand trembled just a little as she placed it back on the wheel. But he shouldn’t be hoping she might be feeling even some part of the attraction he was feeling. Because he shouldn’t be feeling this way; he shouldn’t be wanting Nell MacPherson.

  The problem was, like it or not, he did. And the desire to have her was growing with each passing mile.

  “Well, are you going to do something about it or should I?” Nell asked him.

  Everything in his body went hard as he turned to stare at her. “Do something about what?”

  “The static on the radio. What did you think I was talking about?”

  Not going there, Reid thought. “What do you like?” But even that question had his mind wandering beyond her taste in music. How did she like to be touched? Tasted?

  “I have pretty eclectic tastes.”

  Good to know.

  “But Piper’s been listening to that classic station for three days now. I need a change. Do you like the Beatles?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  This time he kept his hands to himself as she punched some buttons and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” blasted into the small car. Listening to it didn’t solve his problem. He wanted to do a lot more than hold Nell’s hand.

  She lowered the volume. He tried to do the same with the desire that was thrumming through him. He had only briefly touched the woman, not yet kissed her on the lips. His hormones hadn’t run this hot since he was in college.