Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (2 page)

Quinn looked at his watch again, then at the mansion beyond the circular drive, and thought about the Phillies game he was missing. He crossed his long legs and more slouched than leaned against the side of the limousine. “Yeah. Big-time.”

The sun still shone on this early June evening, but the chandeliers inside the house were already blazing, the wide windows giving him a clear view of what looked to be a living room the size of the flight deck on an aircraft carrier.

He could see three men through the windows, each of them dressed in monkey suits much like his but undoubtedly with better labels sewn in the jackets. Each of them held a glass of something stronger than the Coke that had been all he’d allowed himself earlier, as he was working tonight. If anyone could call this working.

Okay, so maybe the idle rich needed protection. Maybe they got robbed once in a while. Once in a very long while. The rich didn’t really hire D & S for security. They hired them for the prestige, so that they could say things like, “Do you mind terribly if my personal security hides behind the flowers while we’re dancing?”

And, if Grady could be believed, to help carry them home after they got themselves thoroughly sloshed at their society parties.

Quinn frowned again, stabbing his fingers through his too-long black hair. Give him a suicidal Libyan terrorist any day.

He pushed himself away from the back door of the limousine and nodded to the driver as the three men seemed to turn as one and head out of sight. “Heads up, Jim. I think the exodus has begun.”

A few moments later the huge front door opened and an older gentleman carefully navigated his way down the few stairs to the drive. Uncle Alfred Taite, Quinn decided, mentally running down the list Grady had given him. Tall, sixtyish, silver-haired, and still with some claim to handsomeness. The obligatory black sheep, the hanger-on, the poor relation kept on an allowance and a stout leash as long as he was willing to be the extra, unattached gentleman so necessary to society parties. A lovable wastrel right out of Central Casting. Smiling, jolly, and always half in the bag.

Quinn nodded to the man as he watched him approach, held the door open for him. He’d already recognized Uncle Alfred’s too-careful, poker-up-his-ass walk, and decided that, if part of his job description was to keep the guy from drowning in the punch bowl, it was going to be a long night.

Next to make his appearance was a tall, painfully thin man with a head full of black hair that looked as if it had been cut with hedge clippers then blown-dry in a wind tunnel. He wore his tuxedo like a cadaver in a rented suit laid out for viewing. His shirt collar stood away from his skinny neck; his fat, flowing bow tie and cummerbund were both powder blue. The fellow didn’t walk. He pranced.

“Do hurry, Somerton,” the man Quinn was sure could only be Jeremy Rifkin whined as he minced along. “You know how Mrs. Peterson
grimaces
at latecomers. Ghastly! And are you sure, quite sure, this tie is right? I agonized, you know, but was assured color is all the rage this season.”

Still looking behind him, the man bumped into Quinn, giggled an apology, made a small
o
of his mouth as he patted Quinn’s muscled shoulder, and then climbed into the back of the limousine.

Quinn made a mental note to make Grady very, very sorry.

“My apologies—Mr. Delaney, isn’t it?” the man who, through the process of elimination, could only be Somerton Taite said, holding out his hand to Quinn. Had to be a relative; same poker-up-the-ass walk. Maybe it wasn’t booze; maybe it was genetic. “I made her promise, but that never means anything. Not to my sister, not when she’s forced to do what she doesn’t want to do when she doesn’t want to do it. Being tardy is her little rebellion, you understand. Oh, I’m Somerton Taite. Mr. Sullivan informed me that you’d be taking his place this evening. You shouldn’t have much to do. I’d forgo a bodyguard if it were up to me, but with the jewels my sister will be wearing—well, the insurance company rather insisted.”

“Yes, sir,” Quinn answered shortly. “My partner explained everything to me. Will Miss Taite be much longer, sir?”

The slam of the front door served as his answer, and Quinn turned around to see Miss Shelby Taite walking down the stairs, still threading a length of sapphire silk through her elbows. A shawl? Were they still calling them shawls? Sounded too old-fashioned to Quinn, too matronly, especially on her.

She was a vision of money and breeding: a sweep of sleek blond hair drawn back into a severe twist, a long, narrow-hipped body wrapped breasts-to-toes in white silk. She had a choker of diamonds around her slim throat, a matching bracelet on her left wrist, a pair of sapphires the size of robin’s eggs and wrapped in diamonds in her ears.

There was a diamond on her third finger, left hand, that could have choked an elephant.

She was beautiful. Stunning. Skin like warmed cream. Facial bone structure any supermodel would envy. A body that went on and on and on.

And brown eyes as lovely, and as vacant, as an empty church. But then, everyone had to have a flaw, didn’t they?

“I’m here, Somerton,” she announced wearily as her brother stood back to allow her to enter the limousine ahead of him. Her voice was rather low, faintly husky, and Quinn began to rethink his coming revenge on his partner. Looking after Miss Taite for the next five hours suddenly didn’t seem like such a chore.

“And only twenty minutes late,” her brother said, smiling at her. “My compliments, Shelby . Allow me to introduce Mr. Delaney, who will be taking Mr. Sullivan’s place this evening.”

Shelby didn’t really care. She merely glanced in Quinn’s general direction, then returned her attention to her slipping wrap, not really having registered him in her mind as being more than tall, dark, and in her way. “Drew the short straw, did you? How unfortunate for you, Mr. um, Mr. Clancy,” she said coolly in that whiskey-over-velvet voice, then ducked her head and entered the limousine, giving him a fleeting view of a jaw-dropping, silk-clad derriere.

“That’s Delaney,” Quinn corrected before Somerton Taite followed his sister and he could close the door on the whole motley crew. Who did this Taite dame think she was? People
liked
him, damn it. They looked into his face when they spoke to him. They remembered his name. “Whoever said it was right, Jim,” he grumbled as he took his place in the front seat beside the driver, the glass divider between employee and employer firmly in the up position. “The rich damn well
are
different.”

Shelby stood on the balcony, looking out over the gardens, looking out over the night. She and Parker had been there for over ten minutes, standing under a romantic full moon, and all Parker had talked about was the stock market and the rumor that Merilee Throgmorton had just had her second nose job.

When Parker finally paused in his monologue, she spoke up, hoping to change the subject. “It’s beautiful out here, in a stodgy, uptight sort of way, isn’t it, Parker? Everything so neat, so orderly.
Too
neat and orderly. Don’t you just wish there were a dandelion or two?”

“Hardly, darling.” Parker Westbrook III leaned a hip against the wrought-iron railing, folded his hands across his chest. Tall, thin, but sleekly muscular, Shelby’s fiance had blue eyes to her brown, his hair an even lighter, sun-bleached blond. Dressed in his custom-tailored tuxedo, he could have been posing for a liquor ad, one of those with the hidden phallic symbol somewhere in the background.

Sleek, handsome, subtly sexy. Shelby used to be impressed. Lately she wasn’t quite so sure, and actually wished Parker could sprout a dandelion or two himself, just to make him look more human.

“Do you really think we should be out here, darling?” he said at last, barely able to keep the boredom out of his voice. “I mean, those diamonds are shining like beacons. Insured or not, they’re around your neck, and I don’t like feeling as if I am now in charge of protecting both.”

Shelby ran a finger along the heavy choker. “What, these old things?” she teased, referring to her grandmother’s diamonds. “You really think someone would go to the trouble of climbing through all of this considerable security for the chance of stealing these few pieces, when it would be so much easier to break into our house and scoop up the entire Taite collection? I know the combination to the safe, Parker,” she told him, leaning close, wishing the man would relax, be spontaneous, just this once. “Do you want to know it? Twenty-three right, sixteen left—”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Shelby,” Parker interrupted, looking around as if he expected to see half a dozen masked thieves standing there, pens and scratch pads at the ready. “Is that why you insisted on coming out here? To be ridiculous?”

Shelby could have cheerfully strangled this man she was marrying. Not that she’d say so, because that would cause a scene, and Taites never caused scenes. Except for Uncle Alfred, but that was rather expected of the man.

Still, she decided maybe it was time to be at least a little bit daring.

“Actually, no,” she told Parker, twining her arms around his shoulders, “I came out here so we could neck. Don’t you want to neck, Parker? I want to neck.”

“Now, Shelby . The night has eyes, remember?” Parker smiled, and Shelby thought, not for the first time, that when he smiled he was really quite handsome, in a sterile sort of way. She liked that he was tall, at least four inches taller than her own five feet, nine inches. His hair was getting just a little bit thin on top, but he used one of those hair-restoring formulas now, and she knew better than to try to run her fingers through his hair, mussing up the careful arrangement meant to cover the more sparsely populated areas. He played enough squash to keep himself trim, and he was quite intelligent, having taken over his father’s investment firm three years earlier when the old man had died.

In short, he was perfect. Perfect Parker.

Shelby grimaced, still hearing the echo of that “the night has eyes” ridiculousness.

Perfect Parker picked a peck of picayune platitudes.

But he
was
perfect, at least as far as prospective mates went. Good family, solid financially, handsome enough to sire handsome children. Socially accepted. He was her perfect match, as Somerton had pointed out to her, as Parker had pointed out to her the night he had proposed.

It hadn’t exactly been a whirlwind courtship, as they’d known each other for years. In fact, Parker had paid very little attention to her over those years, until a few months ago, when he seemed to have “discovered” her much in the way Columbus discovered America . Everything was suddenly “Hello, Shelby , how are you, Shelby , I would be honored to have this dance, Shelby .”

Somerton had thought all of this wonderful. Somewhere in the back of her brain, Shelby thought all this new attention had a bit of a smell to it, but Parker was handsome. She’d always give him that. He showered her with flowers and poems and treated her as if she were made of glass.

When he proposed their “merger,” she tried to see that proposal wrapped up in pink ribbons. She’d been trying hard to keep seeing it that way, and their marriage as well.

Then he went and came out with “the night has eyes.”

This trying to be wrapped up in the romance of the thing was getting more difficult to pull off every day.

“Come on, Parker, be a little naughty,” she pursued now doggedly, rubbing up against him, hoping to feel some sort of spark, see some flash of fire in his eyes. She had to know, needed to know—was something wrong with Parker, or with her? Was he a passionless stick, or was she still the Ice Maiden?

She touched his cheek with her hand, stroked its smoothness. “We’re engaged to be married, remember? Forget where we are. Forget everything. Kiss me. Don’t you want to kiss me,
need
to kiss me? Don’t you ever think you’ll just
die
if you can’t kiss me, hold me? Don’t you want to go a little mad—right here, right now?”

Parker reached up and disengaged her arms from his neck, placed kisses on the back of each hand as he lowered them to her sides. “How much have you had to drink, Shelby ?” he asked, smiling indulgently.

“Not enough, apparently,” she shot back at him, pushing past him as she all but ran down the length of the balcony, intent on returning to the ballroom—and bumped into a tall wall of well-tailored muscle.

“ ‘Evenin’, ma’am. I was just coming out to check up on you, doing the bodyguard thing and all of that.”

“Yes, yes. Whatever.” She kept her head down, refusing to look at him, concentrating instead on the shine on the tops of his shoes. How dare the man have been here to witness her embarrassment! Didn’t the fool know the meaning of the word
discretion?
She
sailed past him, mortified, hating to hear the man’s soft chuckle as she stepped inside the ballroom once more, then immediately forgot him.

In vino veritas.
“In wine is truth.” And, for once in her life, Shelby had drunk enough to see all the truth wine I
held.

She’d come to a few conclusions.

The movies lied. The books lied. There was no such thing as romance. Happy endings were a crock. Maybe she . was crocked, or cracked, or whatever the word was.

These were Shelby’s profound if wine-fogged conclusions as she stood at her window, staring out at the darkness.

She was always at a window, always looking out. Even when she was outside, she was looking out. Looking, never doing. Seeing, never being a part of anything.

But well dressed. Well groomed. Well protected.

Cushioned.                                  Cocooned.

Trapped.

She was twenty-five and still as close to a virgin as some body could be after having a single one-night disappointment her second year of college. She’d been in love; she swore it. Until the next day. Until she found out that her “lover” was bragging about “bagging the Ice Maiden” to anyone who would listen.

And Parker? The man treated her as if she were made of imported crystal. He said he respected her and, respecting her, he would wait for their wedding night. What a prince…