The Virgin And The Vengeful Groom

Another word to look up and add to her growing vocabulary.

She read a few more paragraphs and murmured, “Way to go, girl,” as she reached for another treat from her chair-side cache. At five before the hour, she reluctantly laid her book aside, dusted the crumbs from her fingers and untangled her feet from the ratty old velour bathrobe. Her agent, Davonda Chambers, had called that morning to say that the contract was ready for review.

“You know I won’t understand a word of all that legal mumbo jumbo, Davie. If you say sign it, I’ll sign.”

“Oh, you are my worst nightmare, girl. Look, it’s your career we’re talking about here, not mine. You’re going to read every word, and then I’m going to Mirandize you.”

“Okay, okay,” Lily had laughed. “Bring on your whereases and heretofores.”

Davonda had made a growling noise, but she’d laughed, too. She knew better than anyone about the great gaping holes in Lily’s education. Schooling had not been a priority in Lily’s youth. Thank God reading had.

She wished now she’d put it off until tomorrow. Even without the stress of the past week, with that nutcase ruining her life, playing lady for any length of time was exhausting. Here in the home she had made for herself, she could relax, think about her work in progress—or think about nothing at all. If she wanted to sleep all day and write all night, it was nobody’s business but her own. She did the tours and signings because her publisher had more or less mandated it—another new word—and because she knew for a fact that it had a direct bearing on her sales. The one today, for instance, would probably gain her a few new readers, and that would multiply exponentially, in the words of her publicist. Lily had come home and looked up exponentially to see if it was going to be good or bad. Given a choice, she’d much prefer to put on her oldest sweats, stock up on junk food and get on with the task of disappearing into the nice, safe world of fiction. She could write her way into all sorts of trouble, knowing that she could write her way out again. It was…exponential.

But even without the overeager fans and the few cranks, there’d been changes in her nice, comfortable lifestyle once she started showing up regularly near the top of the bestseller lists. Not all of them were to her advantage. Like luck, success was extremely fragile. One flop—one disappointing sellthrough, and it could all go up in smoke. So she juggled her career, dealt with her fans, most of whom were wonderfully supportive, and tried to ignore the few who weren’t. She listened with half an ear to the experts, afraid to trust in today or to look too far into tomorrow because she couldn’t quite forget yesterday.

The doorbell caught her halfway to her room to change into something presentable. Other than the police, the locksmith and the pizza delivery man, the only people who knew where she lived were her agent and her housekeeper.

“You’re—” Early, she’d been going to say, already reaching for the chain. Her first impulse was to slam the door. Her second was to scream bloody murder. She was still debating when the phone rang.

“The cops are already on the way,” she lied, shoving hard at the door that was blocked open by a big, water-stained deck shoe.

Behind her, the machine picked up, and she heard the familiar whispery voice. “Lily…guess what I’m doing right now. I’m in bed, and I’m not wearing nothing, and I’ve got your picture right—”

“Oh—damn!”

Confusion, impotent anger, frustration—embarrassment—it was too much. She closed her eyes and leaned against the door, never mind that his foot was still in the crack.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Curt pushed against the security chain, half-tempted to extricate his foot, walk away and forget he’d ever heard of Lily O’Malley. He didn’t need any more complications at this point in his life.

Trouble was, the officer-and-gentleman stuff had been drilled into him at an impressionable age. Regardless of the fact that she was either an outright thief or a conscienceless opportunist, she obviously needed help. “Open the door, O’Malley.” He made an attempt to sound reassuring.

She was not reassured. Glared at him, in fact. “Look, I don’t have time to play games,” he growled. His back was acting up again, thanks to yesterday’s long drive and a night of trying to sleep on a bed that was too short, too hard, in a room where the window was sealed shut. His left leg still hadn’t forgiven him for those three flights of stairs.

“Or maybe you enjoy dirty phone calls? Some people even pay for the privilege of crawling through that particular gutter.”

She closed her eyes. Her face, already pale without the war paint, grew a shade whiter.

“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll just state my business, you can hand over my property, and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Property?”

He did a quick countdown, trying to hang onto his temper. “I believe I mentioned before that you’ve got something that belongs to me?” He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the lady in the process of sneaking out with all six boxes, after the way she had tried to elude him at the mall. He had let her get away, just to see what she was up to, but the game was over.

“Look, just hand over the boxes and we’ll call it even. I won’t prosecute and you can get back to your—”

“You won’t what?”

“Uh…prosecute?” Indignation wasn’t precisely the reaction he’d expected.

“Look, for your information, I don’t have one damned thing that belongs to you, and what’s more, I’m tired of jerks like you who won’t give up!”

“You’re tired? Well, that’s just tough, lady!”

Jerks like him? By the time he had tailed her here, nearly losing her twice in rush hour traffic, found a parking space a block and a half away, jogged the distance on concrete sidewalks and then climbed three flights of stairs, what little patience he might have been able to scrape up had eroded down to bedrock.

“If you want your friend to quit calling, sic the cops on him. The advice is free. Now you can hand over my personal property. I won’t even press charges.”

“Charges! What charges? You’re crazy, you know that? I’m going to call 911 right now and report—”

“Fine. Then you can explain how you came to be in possession of six boxes of my personal, private property!”

Gray eyes. Clear as rainwater. You’d think a woman with eyes like that couldn’t hide a damned thing, but she was hiding something, all right. Guilt, obviously, because if she’d been innocent, she wouldn’t have run away. “I’m waiting. Want to make the call or shall I make it for you? I’ve got a cell phone in my truck.”

She was leaning against the door now, one hand gripping the edge so hard the tips of her fingers were white. She wasn’t anywhere near as cool as she would like him to believe, not by a long shot.

He shoved his foot another inch through the crack and hoped to hell she didn’t throw her weight against the door. His metatarsals were about the only bones that hadn’t been busted at one time or another in his colorful career. He would kind of like to keep it that way. “You going to call the cops?”

“The cops,” she repeated numbly.

“Right, O’Malley. The men in blue. So I can reclaim my boxes and you can get your boyfriend off your back. That is, if you want him off your back?”

Heavy sigh. Her fingers slid down the edge of the door. They both knew she was fighting a losing battle—evidently fighting it on two fronts. Hell, even the U.S. armed forces had trouble doing that in these days of military cutbacks. “Miss O’Malley? You want to talk about this?”

Somewhat to his surprise, a few protective instincts kicked in. It was part of the code every SEAL team operated under, only this was no team operation. If there were rules to cover a situation like this, he’d never heard of them. With his back on the verge of spasms, his left leg giving him fits and his gut complaining about the pastrami and horseradish he’d had earlier, he had to reach deep for patience. “Look, there’s obviously something going on here. You need to call 911. I can wait out here, or I can wait inside. Either way, I’m not leaving.”

Small gasp. Could’ve been a sob, but he didn’t think so. And then the chain fell and she opened the door. Roughly 110 pounds, swathed in a shapeless velvet tent, hair spilling over her shoulders like a dark waterfall, not a speck of color in her face except for those wide gray eyes…and she was mad as hell. Ready to knock his head off.

Ignoring an inappropriate and totally unexpected sexual response, he held up both hands. “Unarmed, see?”

She backed down half an inch but still had that pit-bull look on her face. He couldn’t blame her. Evidently there was more going on here than six boxes of stuff he owned and she was trying to claim. “You want to make that call now or shall we get our personal business done first?”

“Personal business.” She was stalling, trying to come up with a good story, so he pushed a little harder.

“We can do this the easy way, or we can fight it out in court. Your choice.”

“You’re still upset about those papers? I’ve got this fruitcake who won’t let me alone—someone breaks into my apartment, meddles in my underwear drawer, and you’re worried about some papers?”

Oh, boy. “You want to run that by me again? Your underwear?”

“It probably wasn’t you, because you were right here at the door when he called, but…but—oh, dammit, I am so tired of this…this harassment!”

“It’s happened before?” He was inside her door now, automatically sizing the place up. A few nice pieces—way too much clutter. Potted plants, books, papers—bottom line, it looked like a cross between one of those house-and-garden spreads and a city dump.

“It happens almost every day. Not the…the flower and the awful underwear, but the calls.”

“The, uh, awful underwear?”

“Some creep left a rose and a pair of really disgusting panties in my underwear drawer day before yesterday, and then he had the nerve to call me and brag about it. I just want it to stop!”

“Have you reported it?”

“Well, of course I’ve reported it, what do you take me for, an idiot?”

He didn’t think she really wanted him to answer the question, and so he didn’t. “What did they advise?”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Change my phone number, change my lock—go on an extended vacation until the creep loses interest.”

“And?” Curt prompted. He needed to get on with his own business, but no officer who called himself a gentleman would walk away, leaving a lady in this much distress. Not that he was much of a gentleman—in name only, maybe.

And not that she was that much of a lady.

“Oh, I did it all—the works. The caller missed one day, and then he started in again. I hope he fries in hell. I hope he catches an awful disease and rots from the toes up. Slowly!”

“Remind me never to tick you off,” he said dryly. “Uh, about the other. My boxes?”

She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her small but definitely feminine chest. “Look, whether you like it or not, I bought those boxes. They’re mine, along with whatever happens to be inside them, end of argument.”

“End of defense argument,” he corrected smoothly. “Now it’s my turn.”

“I’m expecting my lawyer at any moment. If you have anything further to say, you may take it up with her.”

“All prepared, huh? Lawyer already on the hook. I’d say that’s a pretty good indication of guilt.”

“Just what is your problem, Mr. Powers? Hearing or understanding?”

“My problem? I think I stated it pretty clearly, but for the record those papers you took from my storage unit are my property. I lost them through no fault of my own.”

“The sale was perfectly legitimate. I have a receipt to prove it.”

He could have told her what she could do with her receipt, but he had better manners. Marginally. Instead, he gave her a smile that would have done credit to a barracuda and deliberately allowed his gaze to move over her, from the crown of her head to her bare toes.

She was tall?

He was taller.

She was tough?

He was tougher.

Two sets of arms crossed over two chests. Full battle stations.

Lily did her best to stare him down, but her best wasn’t working. There was a crude name for this kind of contest. Little boys—and even big ones—were equipped for it. Women weren’t. Even so, if it weren’t for this other thing that had her nerves so ragged that all she wanted to do was run and bury her head under a blanket, she could have taken him, easy. At least she could have run.

Only she had nowhere left to run. It was all she could do when she thought about that creepy voice not to cry, and she had never been a crier, not even in the bad old days. So she took another deep breath and offered him the smile she had perfected in front of her bathroom mirror. Lily the Diplomat. Lily the Gracious Lady. “Tell you what, Mr. Powers, why don’t you leave your card and I promise I’ll let you have anything I don’t need, once I’ve had time to go through it. Is that acceptable?”

Smile still in place, she looked him directly in the eye. She knew better than to look a strange dog in the eyes, but as a last resort it occasionally worked on bullies. Having come up through a tough school, she had seen her share of both, including her mother’s so-called boyfriends, one of whom had locked her in the basement and tried to starve her into letting him teach her “a new game.”

“My card,” he repeated, sounding as if he might actually be considering it.

Way to go, girl! She lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug, something else she’d practiced in front of a mirror. “Or you can jot down your address and I’ll mail them to you.”

“Or we can look through them now and I’ll save you the bother of shipping them. My truck’s parked just down the street.”

Behind her the phone rang again. She froze. “You going to get it?” he asked.

“The machine will pick up.” It was probably only Davonda, telling her she wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. The creep almost never called twice in the same evening.

The answering machine cut in. They both listened as the familiar voice began to whisper his filthy insinuations. Lily bit her lip to keep from screaming. She grabbed her cocoa mug and would have hurled it at the phone, but Curt moved swiftly past her and picked up the receiver. “You want to run that by me again, sir? I’m not sure our technician caught that last phrase.”

Waiting until he heard the dial tone, he softly replaced the receiver. “How long has this been going on?”

“A-about a week. Maybe eight days?” She was doing her best to hide the tremor in her voice, but her best wasn’t good enough. “The police are working on it, but evidently crank calls aren’t a high priority. They couldn’t even do anything about…about the stuff in my drawer. When I told them I would never in this world buy anything so disgusting for myself, they only looked at each other—you know, the way men can do. Besides, there was no evidence of a break-in.” She lifted a pair of stricken eyes. “Which means somebody—some horrible pervert—has a key to my home.”

Something inside him shifted, coming dangerously close to sympathy. Being threatened by an unseen, unsuspected enemy was nothing new for someone in his line of work, but for a woman—a civilian—

He had to remind himself that he had a legitimate beef with her. He would do well to leave her and her problems to the Norfolk PD and get out before she undermined his mission.

“Lily—Miss O’Malley—I happened to be out of the country when the rent on my storage locker came due.”

As he’d hoped, the diversion pulled her back from the edge. “Tough. That’s your problem, not mine. Besides, I was told they gave you notice.”

“Unfortunately, I was delayed. Still haven’t caught up on all my mail. It’s possible I might have missed a payment, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Try three payments.”

“Three? That many, huh. Well, the fact remains, the stuff’s morally mine. I can understand why you might think otherwise, but now that we understand each other, I don’t see why we can’t settle things now, and then I’ll just get out of your hair and leave you in peace.” He figured she was bluffing about the lawyer, but if he had to, he could deal with it. One way or another, he needed to settle this business and get out of town. Back to where he could breathe, where he could do his own thing—or not. Where he could damn well sleep in his own bed until he was ready to move on.

Gnawing on her lower lip, she appeared to be considering his offer. Leave your lip alone, dammit. If it needs chewing, I’ll chew it for you!

She smelled of wildflowers. Once on a training mission he’d crawled on his belly through a whole field of the things. He would never forget the scent. “Well?” he prompted when she seemed reluctant to respond.

“I’m still thinking.”

“There’s nothing to think about. The stuff belongs to me. I’ll pay you whatever you paid—double it, for your trouble—but one way or another, I’m taking those boxes with me.”

“Who was Bess Powers to you?”

“What?”

“I’ve been reading her diaries. She was a writer, too. Actually that’s only one of the things we have in common. She wrote novels and travel pieces for a newspaper under the name E. M. Powers, but I know it was Bess, because she covers some of the same material in her diaries. Did you know that back in those days women weren’t allowed to do much of anything? But she did it, anyway. Did you know she was raised at sea aboard her father’s ship? Well, of course you did—after all, she had to be kin to you if your name really is Powers.”

If his name really was Powers? “What the devil—you think I’m lying about my identity?”

“Not necessarily. I don’t have any proof, though, do I? That you’re who you say you are.”

Easy, man—no matter how tempting that elegant neck of her looks, you probably can’t get away with strangling her. “I believe she might have been my, uh, great-great-aunt or something.” He’d been too young when he’d heard his father talking about his seafaring ancestors to remember much about them. His father had been merchant marine, off and on. After they’d split up, his mother claimed his father had walked out on them, but they’d been the ones to leave—she’d told him at the time they were going on an adventure. When he’d cried to go home again—a hotel hadn’t seemed like a great adventure once the novelty wore off—she’d said they weren’t going back, she didn’t want to hear any more about it, and that she knew best. After that she’d refused to allow his name to be mentioned. Hurt, angry and bewildered, Curt had simply wanted his father back. Wanted his old life back. Not until years later had snatches of the old stories he’d heard as a child come back, usually triggered by some experience in his own life. By then he wasn’t sure how much was true and how much was a combination of wishful thinking and imperfect memory.

Now, figuring it would be to his advantage to claim kinship with anyone mentioned in any of the papers, he said, “Sure she was kin to me. They all were—all the people in those papers. That’s why I want them back, they’re the only record I have.”

“What about the Black Swan?”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you know about the Swan?”

“I’ve been reading. Mostly Bess’s things, but some of the other stuff, too. It’s not easy reading. I mean, sure, your ancestors were literate and all that, but I’ve got to tell you, except for Bess’s stuff, it’s pretty heavy going.”

“Why waste your time and effort? I’ll reimburse you and take the boxes off your hands and you can get on with your life.” He waited. “Best offer. Take it or leave it.”

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