Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (3 page)

Private schools. Private life.

Cosseted.

Smothered.

Do the right thing, Shelby
. Stand here. Smile. Remember that you’re a Taite. Guard your privacy, guard your honor, never betray your family name.

Marry well.

Marry now.

Marry? Why?

“Miss Taite? Will there be anything else?”

Shelby sighed, turned to face her young maid. “No, thank you, Susie. And you really didn’t have to wait up for me.”

“Yes, miss. Well, then, if there’s nothing else?”

“Go, go,” Shelby said, turning back to the window, to the view of nothing. She stood there for at least five minutes more, watching as a cloud passed over the full moon then drifted on, leaving the gardens washed in silver.

Below her a door opened, and a shaft of yellow light spilled onto the kitchen patio. She watched as Susie, now dressed in shorts and a knit top, crossed the patio and ran down the steps to the lawn.

Shelby pushed the drape back further and rolled open the large casement window in time to hear a man’s voice call out to Susie. The young girl broke into a run as a shape separated from the shadow of the trees. Within moments Susie was in the man’s arms, being swung around in a circle, being held, being kissed.

She could hear their laughter, feel their joy.

What would it feel like to have Parker wait in the moonlight for her? Pick her up, kiss her madly, carry her off into the trees, lay her down on the ground, make mad, passionate love to her?

Sure, like that was going to happen…

D & S Security took up the entire sixteenth floor of a
large, modern office building on Market Street in the center of the city. Grady had wanted the twentieth—and top—floor, but Quinn had put his foot down, reminding his rather flamboyant friend and partner that the rents rose with each floor the elevator traveled. D & S was successful, but that didn’t mean Quinn wanted to throw money around just so he could share a roof with some Philadelphia pigeons.

But Grady had been born to money—earning it the old-fashioned way: he’d inherited it. If it had been left to him, not only would D & S occupy the penthouse offices, but those offices would be furnished in antique carpets, real leather, and with original paintings on the walls. As it was, Grady’s office looked like something out of a private men’s club—with Quinn always expecting to walk in and see some white-haired old geezer snoring in one of the burgundy leather wing chairs.

Quinn had grown up in the typical middle-class family, if it could be considered typical to move from state to state every few years, following his father’s job. He’d been college age when they’d moved to Ardmore , outside Philadelphia , and when they moved on to Florida , Quinn had stayed behind, still in his sophomore year at the University of Pennsylvania .

His sister had done much the same thing four years earlier, and still lived in Chicago , while his parents had now retired to Arizona . They all called each other weekly, visited on holidays, stuff like that, but for the most part Quinn considered himself to be pretty much on his own. At thirty-two, that suited him just fine.

He’d allowed himself the privilege of arriving late at the offices the morning after the Taite assignment, figuring he’d earned a few hours of combat pay for having put up with the Rich and Repulsive. Not that it had been all that bad. Somerton and his little wifey had behaved themselves quite well, and Uncle Alfred had gotten himself quietly tanked and spent most of the evening propping up a pillar in the ballroom, leering down the necklines of all the passing ladies.

Only Shelby Taite had bothered him, and Quinn was still smarting at her deliberate refusal to acknowledge him, to, for crying out loud, at least take the trouble to
look
at him, remember his name.

And then there was that arrogant, brain-dead jerk she was engaged to marry. Quinn tried to imagine the two of them in bed together.

Talk about your sterile procedures.

Although Shelby Taite seemed to have some hint of fire behind all that ice. She’d pretty much thrown herself at old Parker, trying to get a rise out of him, pressing that long, sinfully lush body against him, asking him if he ever felt he’d die if he couldn’t be kissing her.

She’d probably have had more luck if she’d whispered stock quotes into the jerk’s ear.

Quinn really, really disliked the rich, Grady being one of the few exceptions. They had everything dumped right into their laps, and none of them seemed all that damn happy about it. Most of them had shrinks on retainer, divorced with the change of seasons, and spent their time saying they were helping the economy by buying three-million-dollar yachts because that kept the laborers in the shipyard employed. Scary. That was what the rich were.

What the rich needed was a good kick in the ass. What Shelby Taite needed, in the crudeness of an expression from Quinn’s misspent youth, was to have her clock cleaned. She needed some hot, sweaty, steaming sex. Someone to rip dthe pins out of her too-perfect hair, strip her of her designer virgin robes, and make mad, passionate love to her until those damned dead eyes rolled back in her head.

Not that Quinn was volunteering for the job.

He rocked on his heels as the elevator climbed to the sixteenth floor, then stepped out onto the black and white marble floor Grady had called a necessary expense, as first impressions can be made only once.

Maisie sat at her large, semicircular desk in the reception area, the white marble wall behind her displaying the words
D & S Securities, Inc.
in large brass letters. Very impressive, for diose who felt the need to be impressed. Many of their clients did.

Maisie had a portable telephone headset clamped over her riot of artificially red, artificially curled hair. The receptionist was short, a bit pudgy, and with a round, round face that might have been drawn by Charles Schulz. She was murmuring, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” into the mouthpiece as she filed her French-manicured nails.

When she saw Quinn she smiled at him, pointed to the headset, then pulled a face that made her look like a cherub with dyspepsia. She leaned forward, hit the mute button, and said, “Morning, honey. You’re late, but the crazies were all up bright and early this morning. A question for you. Does D and S want to ride shotgun on a couple dozen elephants while the circus is in town? Nah, didn’t think so. I’ll get rid of this bozo. Bozo—get it? Oh, and wait until you see Grady!”

Quinn waited for her to explain, but she grimaced suddenly and hit the mute button once more, reopening the line. “No, honey, free peanuts won’t make us reconsider. Uh-huh, yeah, I can assure you that D and S are animal lovers from way back. But that’s just the point, honey— they want to be
way back
from them. But thank you for calling. Have a nice circus.”

Maisie was their first line of defense, and she had exactly the right attitude for her job: Quick, sharp, with a very necessary sense of humor for the wackos, and definitely ballsy enough to handle their most demanding clients.

Quinn laughed, shook his head, and headed through the glass doors into the large, square, windowless room that functioned as the nerve center of D & S Securities. Five secretaries serving the two dozen bodyguards who made up the staff sat at their desks, all of them busy enough to warm the cockles of Quinn’s heart—and pocketbook.

Hallways to the left and right led to five offices each, shared by the associates when they weren’t in the field. On another morning, Quinn would have visited each office, checked on his employees’ cases, shot a little bull, lingered over some bad coffee. But not today, not when he still wanted to make Grady pay for badgering him into a night with the R&Rs.

Smiling his hellos to the secretaries—executive assistants all, at least in their politically correct job descriptions— he made his way to the opposite end of the room and the large hallway that ended at the double doors to the conference room, with his and Grady’s private offices flanking it on either side. All three rooms had window walls, glass from floor to ceiling, and a great view of the evolving skyline of Philadelphia —at least at sixteenth-floor level.

His secretary, Selma , was out on maternity leave, and had been for nearly two weeks, so Quinn gave himself a moment to grimace at the stacks of paperwork sitting on her desk, knowing he’d have to wade through them sooner or later. Preferably later. Definitely later.

Right now all he wanted to do was check his phone messages, then go choke Grady until his tongue turned purple. It wasn’t much, but he believed it would satisfy him.

Quinn’s own office was modern and more functional than fashionable, all chrome and glass and white paint and rugs with gray and navy accents and outfitted with two, count ‘em, two state-of-the-art computers. A locked cabinet held his fairly extensive arsenal of shoulder holsters and nightscope rifles, as well as a flak jacket his mother had given to him for his thirtieth birthday. You could grow up, you could move away, but you could never really cut through that cast-iron umbilical. You could even tell yourself that you’d retired from fieldwork because it was time, and not because Mommy worried.

He checked the phone messages written in Maisie’s large, looping scrawl, decided none of them were earth-shatteringly important, then took off his suit jacket and slung it over his gray leadier swivel chair. It was Grady time.

“Good morn—
afternoon,
Quinn,” Ruth, Grady’s secretary, said a few moments later when he entered her office. Ruth had been with them from the beginning, a matronly woman of more than fifty who considered herself to be right-hand man and surrogate mother to both of them.

She chuckled as she looked at him. “What’s the matter, sweetie? Rough night on the baby-sitting squad? Did Uncle Alfred jump in the pool again? Grady says he swears he’ll let the old lush drown next time. He’s ruined three tuxedos in the last year, jumping in after him. Not that replacements don’t go right on the old expense account. Oh, and wait until you see your partner. He won’t tell me what happened, but I’ve got some really great ideas, all of them having to do with Miss October. And maybe a trapeze or something.”

Quinn’s eyebrows rose on his forehead. “Trapeze? What are you trying to do, Ruth? Corrupt me?”

“Any way I can, sweetie,” she told him with a wink, then pointed to the door leading to Grady’s office. “Make him suffer, Quinn. I’m pretty sure he’s been a bad, bad boy.”

Quinn entered Grady’s inner sanctum, stepping onto a plush Oriental carpet, instinctively halting just inside the dim room until his eyes adjusted to the relative absence of light, reflexively checking behind him as he closed the door. Maybe he was mostly a desk jockey now, but habits were habits, and good habits could someday keep a guy alive to crunch numbers another day.

Grady wasn’t behind his oversize cherry desk with its protective glass top, having chosen instead to recline on the burgundy leather sofa that had enough deep tucks in it to look as though it had been sucking three dozen lemons.

His rangy frame filled the couch from end to end, his shaggy, sandy head propped up on a tapestry pillow, his laughing green eyes shining bright in his tanned, aristocratically handsome face. He wore a stark white dress shirt open at the neck and rolled at the cuffs, a pair of midnight blue pleated slacks, handmade loafers, and a color-coordinated blue sling on his left arm.

“What happened? She forgot to mention that she was ticklish,
and
a black belt?” Quinn offered as he walked over and sat down on the edge of the cherry wood coffee table in front of the couch.

Grady carefully jackknifed to a sitting position, glaring at his friend and partner. “Very funny—
not.
But then, you didn’t have much time to rehearse, did you? Do you want to go out, think up a better line, then come back in to torture me?”

“No, not really,” Quinn answered, grinning. “But I’ll give you a quarter if you tell me what happened. A dollar if you’ve got photos. Videotape, and price is no object.”

Grady reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded square of snow white linen bearing his initials in navy thread. “Here,” he said, extending his arm, “drool on this.”

“No, seriously, Grady, what happened? Is it broken or just sprained?”

“Separated shoulder,” he told him, grimacing as he got up, walked over to his desk, and threw two pills into his mouth, washing them down with a sip of water. “It was the damnedest thing, Quinn. One minute we’re rolling quite happily on the bed, and the next I’m stuck between the bed and the nightstand, my shoulder on fire. Miss October fainted, which wasn’t much of a help, and I had to get my own self up after pushing her off me—stop laughing, damn it!—then call the hotel doctor. Ever try pulling on your pants with one hand, Quinn? I don’t recommend it. And let me tell you, it wasn’t easy boosting Miss O back up onto the bed and getting her lovely little fanny under the covers before the doctor showed up.”

By the time Grady was finished Quinn was doing a little rolling of his own, rocking on the edge of the coffee table, laughing until tears rolled down his cheeks. Then, with a suddenness that nearly had
him
falling on the floor, he sobered, glared at his partner. “How long will you be out of commission? Two weeks? Four? And before you answer that,
no,
I’m not going to take over any more of your R and R gigs. Got that?”

“No sweat, old son,” Grady promised. “There’s nothing pressing on either of our schedules for weeks and weeks. In fact, maybe you should think about picking up some sort of hobby, just to fill the time.”

“Yeah, right, Grady,
old son.
That would be between running this place, doing the end-of-year reports, and spoon-feeding my invalid partner his gruel so that he doesn’t slop all over his designer suits. I’ll be in my office,” Quinn ended, and headed out the door.

Behind him, he could hear Grady chuckling.

After charity balls, Shelby rated garden parties second on her list of her least-favorite things to do. Yet here she was, the afternoon after the ball—and with only a slight headache to remind her of the previous evening—sitting in the back of the limousine in her uniform of the day, her full skirts carefully arranged on the seat, a huge straw picture hat jammed onto her head. Wouldn’t be a proper garden party without that damn picture hat.