Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (24 page)

“I can’t survive without them for ten minutes, and have the body to prove it,” Brandy said, drinking from her own bottle as she eyed her friend. “Gonna buy stock?”

Shelby lowered her head, blushing. “I should take control of my own money, shouldn’t I? I never really gave it much thought before, as there’s always been somebody to do it for me. But, yes, definitely, and if just for self-protection, I promise to buy stock in both companies. Happy now?”

“Getting there,” Brandy said, grinning. “So now that I have you all relaxed and off guard and everything—am I guessing right that you’ve just come from Quinn’s apartment, where you have been well and truly made love to for, oh, two or three hours?”

“Brandy!”

Brandy readjusted her legs under her, pulling down the pink-and-yellow-flowered nightie to cover her dimpled knees. “What? Are we friends or aren’t we? You know darn well what I was doing tonight, right? Now, fair’s fair. How was it?”

Shelby let her head drop against the couch pillows and closed her eyes. “It was… it was
wonderful.
More than I’d ever hoped, more than I’d ever imagined possible.” She lifted her head and turned to look at a grinning Brandy. “I think I love him, Brandy. Isn’t that wonderful?” She blinked back sudden tears. “And terrible.”

Scratching at her temple, Brandy winced a little as she considered Shelby’s dilemma. “Because you haven’t told him the truth, right?”

Shelby sighed and nodded. “Being rich is such a
trial.
”

“Yeah,” Brandy agreed sarcastically. “I can’t imagine how terrible it must be never to have to go to work, never to have to worry. Traveling, eating the best foods, shopping without looking at price tags. A real killer.”

“You’d get tired of it, Brandy,” Shelby said, rolling her head to the side as she lay against the back of the couch, pulling a fringed silk pillow with the words
Love is Better in Atlantic City
crocheted on one side.

“I suppose so, sweetcakes—in about, oh, fifty or eighty years. But I definitely could hack it that long. I could even buy Mama a palace in Spain, or Katmandu, or maybe even Hawaii. Yeah, Hawaii. I’ve never really wanted to go to Hawaii. Spain or Katmandu hold some appeal.”

“You’re crazy,” Shelby said on a giggle, squeezing the pillow to her, still able to feel Quinn’s arms around her, the warmth of his last, lingering kiss as he’d walked her across the hall, said his good nights.

“And you’ve really got a problem, don’t you?” Brandy said, looking at Shelby carefully. “Do you love him? I mean, if you don’t love him, then there’s not much of a problem. But I can’t see you climbing into the sack with anyone you didn’t love. Not because you’re rich, but because you’re such a… such a
lady.
Hmmm, guess I answered my own question. You love him.”

“I love him,” Shelby agreed quietly. “Brandy, do you suppose there really
are
happy endings?”

“Ha! Look who you’re talking to, sweetcakes. I’ve been engaged to Gary and his mama for twelve years now. I’m lucky to get a happy
middle,
yet alone a happy ending.”

Brandy’s only half-joking remark lingered in Shelby’s brain overnight, and she was almost glad when Quinn didn’t show up at Tony’s for the breakfast she’d shared with her friend before Brandy caught her bus and Shelby walked back to the apartment alone.

She was crossing the alleyway between the two long blocks separating Tony’s and the apartment building when, seemingly out of nowhere, a car screeched to a stop beside her.

There were two men inside, both strangers to Shelby, and the passenger jumped out, then approached her at a run. He took hold of her arm and tried to pull her over to the open back door of the sedan.

“Fire!”
Shelby screamed, quickly figuring that would get more attention than simply screaming. Still, she followed that shout with a scream anyway, the one she’d learned during that weekend retreat of her college sorority, the one where they had been taught some simple self-defense.

Somehow the lessons came back to her.
Tell the
aggressor
that you will
not
be a victim. Tell him, and yourself, by shouting “no” as loudly, as forcefully as you can.

“No!”
she cried out, as loud as possible.
“NO!”
She grabbed at the fingers holding tight to her forearm and began pulling back the man’s thumb, trying to break his hold, trying to hurt him enough that he would let go of her.

“Hey!” the man yelped, letting go, only to grab at her with his other hand. “That hurt.”

“Good!” Shelby declared, following up her thumb bending with a quick, sharp kick to the man’s shins, making him yelp once again.

She’d never know, and didn’t care to know, if she would have been able to keep fighting until the man gave up, because just then Quinn came running down the street, his wash basket flung onto someone’s lawn, his face a mask of blackest fury.

“Get in! Get in! He’s coming!” the driver called out, and Shelby’s attacker looked up the pavement, then said something strange: “About damn time.” He threw himself into the car and it sped off just as Quinn reached her.

“Pennsylvania plate, partial reading, Adam, thirty-eight-something. Tan Toyota sedan, 1999. Probably a rental,” Quinn said quickly as he skidded to a halt, mostly to himself, and almost, to Shelby’s mind, as if he was accustomed to quickly committing such information to memory.

Then she was in Quinn’s arms, and he was asking her if she was all right, was she hurt, had she recognized the man who’d tried to kidnap her.

“Kid—
kidnap
me?” Shelby pushed herself out of his arms, looking up into his face in delayed shock. “Is that what happened? Someone was trying to kidnap me? Why?”

Quinn knew one possible answer to that question.

Shelby knew the same possible, probable answer to that question.

That answer had a
lot
of zeros behind it.

But neither of them said so out loud.

“I don’t know, Shelley,” he lied quickly. “But I’m going to call this in to the police. Maybe there’s even been a rash of attempted abductions in the area. I haven’t seen anything in the paper, but sometimes the cops keep stuff like this hushed up so as not to scare the bejesus out of everyone. I got a partial on the license plate, though, and that could help.”

“I… I suppose so,” Shelby said, and then she noticed that she’d begun to shake, to shiver. Her teeth were actually rattling. She’d almost been kidnapped, Parker’s worst fear! She had fought, just as she’d always told herself she would fight, never give in, never just say “please, don’t,” and let something terrible happen to her.

But she had touched him. Felt his hot, sour breath next to her head. Bent his thumb. Kicked him.
God!
Had she really done all of that? And what would have happened if Quinn hadn’t shown up when he did? “I think… I think I’d like to sit down now.”

Quinn put his arm around her waist, turning her toward the apartment, but she resisted.

“No, I’d like to sit down
now,”
she said, and collapsed on the curb running along the corner of the alley. She felt Quinn put his hand on the back of her neck, push her head between her knees.

“Slow, deep breaths, sweetheart,” he told her. “In through the nose, out through the mouth. And don’t close your eyes or you’ll get dizzier.”

“Too… too late for that advice, I’m afraid. Sorry,” she heard herself mumble as the lights behind her eyelids exploded a time or two in rather dazzling fireworks, right before her entire world went dark.

She resurfaced a while later, to find herself lying on the couch in Brandy’s apartment and wondering what happened, how she had gotten there. Looking up, wincing as her stomach tried to revolt, she saw Quinn standing over her, the apartment key in his hand. She touched a hand to her skirt pocket, realized that he was holding her own key, and then wondered why she wasn’t quite as thrilled to see Quinn as she’d been as she fought off her abductor.

And then she remembered.

“Get in! Get in! He’s coming!”

“About damn time.”

The men had
known
Quinn? Recognized him? And what did that mean:
“About damn time ?”
It was almost as if they’d been expecting him, and he’d been late. But late for what? To help them kidnap her, or to pretend to save her?

“I—I think I’d like a glass of water, please,” she said, averting her eyes from his concerned face. If that
was
a truly concerned face. How could she know, how could she tell? Could she say he was honest and true because he had taken her to bed? Lord, that was what all the silly, inane victims said…

“Here you go,” Quinn said, returning from the kitchen with half a glass of water, then lifting her head so that she could sip it “You went in and out a couple of times, you know, not that I objected to carrying you home. Although I’d better go back and pick up my laundry, I suppose.”

“Your…? Oh. Oh, yes, I remember now. You were at the Laundromat, weren’t you? You weren’t at breakfast” She sat up against the pillows. “Why don’t you go get your laundry, then, before somebody else does?”

“I already phoned the police, Shelley,” he told her, “and since I saw everything you saw, he said it was all right if I just came down to the station later to give him a report. Unless you want to talk to him? Recognized either of them or could describe them?”

She shook her head, then regretted it, as now she had one killer of a headache. “I’ve never fainted before,” she said, looking up at him, wishing she knew him, really
knew
him. “That’s what I did, isn’t it? Fainted?”

Quinn smiled at her. “You went out like the proverbial light, honey,” he told her. “But you were very ladylike about it, even apologizing before you suddenly sort of slid into my arms. I rather like that part,” he said, bending down to kiss the tip of her nose. “Me and my Hanes will be right back, okay?”

“Okay,” she told him, smiling weakly. She watched him go to the door, and saw the stack of mail he must have put on the table. Once he was gone, she stood up— slowly—and walked across the room to gather up the mail. Two magazines, the telephone bill, a credit card bill, three pieces of obvious junk mail.

No letter addressed to her in block letters. She didn’t know if that was good or bad. If one letter had been the first warning; if the near abduction this morning had been the second… ?

What on earth would be the third?

How she longed to tell Quinn. But what would she tell him? Could she tell him that the man seemed to recognize him, seemed to have been waiting for him to make an appearance? Because, now that she thought about it, really thought about it, she realized that she probably wasn’t quite the master of self-defense she initially thought herself to be. That man could have had her into the car if he’d really wanted to.

Had he really wanted to kidnap her? Or had he been told just to frighten her?

And why?

She carefully put the mail back down the way Quinn had placed it, and returned to the couch. And thought…

Quinn had certainly shown up in East Wapaneken very opportunely, hadn’t he? Had it just been coincidence that they both had come to town within a day of each other? Or had it somehow gotten out that Shelby Taite, the heiress, was on the run, out in the world, unprotected?

Somerton, now that she thought about it, had been rather quiet for someone who would radier see his sister locked in the velvet cage of marriage to Parker than out on her own, trying her wings. He’d shown that by cutting off her access to money, hadn’t he?

But what else would he have done? If she, in his place, had learned that he had run off to find himself or have an adventure or whatever, what would she do?

“I wouldn’t cut off his money,” she grumbled to herself. “That was mean.”

She took a sip of water and thought some more. She would not go to the police. She knew that. After all, Somerton was of age, wasn’t he? He could go where he wanted, when he wanted. Certainly it wasn’t a matter for the police.

But would she have left it at that? Just wished him well and hoped that he had a marvelous time and came home happy?

No. No, she wouldn’t. Not Somerton, whom she loved dearly but believed to be about as capable of living in the real world as Princess would be able to survive in a real jungle. She closed her eyes and sighed. So she would have done
something.
Definitely. She would have phoned D & S Security and asked them to find him, that was what she would have done. Not to haul him home like some truant, but just to find him, tell her he was all right.

And then possibly watch him until he got whatever he wanted out of his system and come home.

That was what she would have done.

And then, like a quarter dropping into one of those bubble gum machines that sent the colored gum ball round and round down a clear spiral chute to land at the bottom, a proverbial gum ball dropped inside Shelby’s brain and she balled her hands into fists and beat them against her knees.

She remembered the slightly mocking smile, the lift of a dark eyebrow. Her embarrassment as she had brushed past him, without really looking at him, without allowing herself to recognize him. He’d been a one-night replacement for Grady Sullivan, not worth more than a glance as she spent yet another evening in misery, wishing herself home and in bed. Anywhere but where she was.

Grady Sullivan. Quinn Delaney. D & S. Somerton always demanded one of the partners. It was all so obvious now.

“Delaney!” she gritted out from between clenched teeth. “D and S. It wasn’t a coincidence,” she said, her bottom lip beginning to tremble. “And you’re not the man of my dreams. That’s not why you seemed familiar to me. Damn you, Somerton, and damn you, Quinn Delaney. And damn me for a fool for not recognizing you, not paying attention to names, faces. You’re my bodyguard. Damn you to hell, Quinn, you’re my
bodyguard.”

Tears running down her cheeks, she jumped up and went to turn the dead bolt so that Quinn couldn’t just march back into the apartment as though he belonged there or something. She heard the bolt click into place just as Quinn turned the door handle.