Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) (8 page)

“I can…
today?
But… but you don’t even know me.”

“Brandy vouched for you. That’s good enough for me.” Then he turned away and made a shuffling beeline for Tabby, already telling her that Texas French toast and regular French toast were two different things and when in hell was she going to figure that out, damn it.

“Um… charming man,” Shelby said, swallowing hard on a very large lump of nervousness.

“He’s all bluster,” Brandy told her, grabbing the check Tabby had thrown onto the table as she ran by, muttering under her breath about how she didn’t need to be insulted, she had better things to do with her life than be insulted. “They all love him, really. And so do the customers. To tell you the truth, I think it’s all an act. Otherwise they’d run all over him. He paid Thelma’s way to Oklahoma , you know, not that he wants anyone to know that. Just stand up to him, don’t take any guff, don’t take anything he says to heart, and you’ll be fine. Just fine.”

“Just fine? Brandy, I don’t have the faintest idea what a hostess
does
in a place like this. Do you?”

Brandy led the way out of the restaurant. “Nope, not really. But you’ll manage. Of course, you probably should have asked him how much he’s going to pay you, but then you’ll probably be fired by tonight anyway. Ah, there’s my bus, right on time—only ten minutes late. Here’s the key to the apartment. I’ll be home before six. In fact, Gary and I will come by for dinner, let you seat us, hand us our menus.”

“That’s all I have to do? Seat people?” Shelby walked to the bus with Brandy. “That doesn’t sound too difficult.”

“Made in the shade, babe,” Brandy told her, patting her arm. “Have fun, you grand adventuress, you!”

Shelby stood at the corner until the bus was out of sight, then slowly walked back to the apartment. She’d been on her own for only a day and she had friends, a place to live, and now a job.

Now she was going to discover what it was like to be a normal person living in a normal world. She was having an adventure, being a
real
person. She could do this. She
would
do this.

“Made in the shade,” she repeated to herself as she kicked at a stone with the toe of her Gucci loafer, not having the faintest idea what that meant.

“I said no.
N,
as in not hardly, and
O,
as in it’s out of the damn question.”

Grady sat back in his desk chair, deliberately wincing as his shoulder made contact with the plush leather, and looked up at his hovering, glowering partner. “It wasn’t an either or question, Quinn,” he pointed out calmly. “It was more of a ‘So when can you start’ question.”

“And the answer is never,” Quinn told him. “And you can stop playing the wounded warrior, because I don’t give a damn. The Rich and Repulsives are yours, remember? Besides, we’re nearing the end of the fiscal year, and I’m up to my ass in paperwork. I’ve already fired two temps, and if Selma doesn’t come back soon we’re all in trouble.”

“True enough. But I can’t do this one, and you know it. For one, I’m injured, not in the line of duty, granted, but injured just the same. Two, she knows me. I’ve been squiring the Taites around town for three years, while you’ve already told me you’re willing to bet she wouldn’t recognize you again if she tripped over you. By the way, that really pulled your chain, didn’t it—that she didn’t even notice the great Quinn Delaney—or was that Clancy? Anyway, we can’t take the chance of spooking her, sending her running again before we can get her home. Oh, yeah, and three, the Taites always insist on a partner in the firm, remember?”

“Fine,” Quinn spit. “Promote Maisie; she’s all but running the place anyway. Because I’m not doing it, Grady. I’m not playing Chase the Heiress. As far as I’m concerned, the woman wanted to get lost. Let’s all do her a favor and let her be lost. Besides, she’s probably on the French Riviera with some gigolo and having the time of her life.”

Grady shifted in his chair. “Are you sure? The note could have been written under duress, you know. Maybe she was actually kidnapped.”

Quinn stopped pacing, considered this for a moment, then retrieved the faxed note from Grady’s desktop. The fax had arrived an hour earlier, more than twenty-four hours after the Taites had discovered Shelby’s disappearance. It was short, and more than a little obscure:

“Call it a wild hunch, Grady, but I’d say she wasn’t kidnapped. She’s just gone AWOL. Did anyone talk to Uncle Lush?” he said, replacing the note. Not that he cared, not that he was interested. So the Taite heiress did a flit. So what. Maybe she’d get lucky, come back with a little bit of life sparking in those empty brown eyes. Those lovely, perhaps sad brown eyes.
Damn.
He’d always been such a sucker for sad eyes.

Grady told his secretary to enter when she knocked, then sat forward, saying, “Yeah, Somerton told me he talked to the uncle. He said something about Shelby wanting to find out how the other half lives, be normal, and make herself a few memories. You know, all that stuff that sounds so good in theory, then hits the fan in a big way when someone like our pampered runaway hits the real world and it hits back, hard. So yes, I agree, Quinn. She’s run away from home, and now she’s a target for any nut out there. Or do you really think this woman knows the first thing about survival outside of her expensive glass bubble? She’s a babe in the woods, Quinn, a rich, pampered, spoiled, probably clueless and most definitely exploitable babe in a big, dangerous woods. If we both know nothing else, we know that the rich need keepers like us. What is it, Ruth?”

“The Taites are here, boys,” she told them, then pulled a face. “And a Mr. Parker Something-or-other the
Third.
That one’s really got his shorts in a twist, let me tell you. You want I should show them in? Oh, and it might be a good idea to keep your discussion a little under the shouting match you’ve been at for the past ten minutes. These walls are thick, but they aren’t soundproof.”

“Quinn?” Grady asked, looking up at his partner, noting the thundercloud expression in his friend’s eyes. Smiling as he saw that his last words had hit home. Quinn had two dogs, mostly because he couldn’t say no to a pair of sad eyes. And if Grady knew nothing else, he knew the sad look he’d seen in Shelby Taite’s brown eyes the last few times he’d guarded her.

Quinn could ignore physical beauty. He could ignore wealth and position, and usually did so, with a vengeance. But he never could pass on a pair of soulful brown eyes. In fact, if Shelby Taite had four legs and a tail, Quinn would have been on the job an hour ago. “So, partner? What do we do? Send them away, lose a cushy account and probably a dozen more once Somerton tells his friends how unhelpful we’ve been? Let that poor, helpless little rich girl fend for herself out there in the big, bad world?”

“Oh, shut up,” Quinn gritted out, then waved in Ruth’s general direction, so that she retreated to the waiting area to gather up the Takes and the fiance.

The Taite menagerie didn’t just walk into a room; they made an entrance, sailing into Grady’s office like a small fleet of very expensive sailboats with the wind at their backs.

Somerton Taite entered first, his rather prissy walk still filled with determination, although his pinched features showed obvious signs of distress and probably a sleepless night. He was followed hard by a shuffling Jeremy Rifkin, whose eyes were suspiciously red as he held a large white handkerchief to his mouth, stifling a sob. Somerton immediately led his friend to a chair, patted his shoulder.

Quinn waited for him to say, “Sit; stay,” but it didn’t happen.

Uncle Alfred seemed to have lost his rudder, as his progress into the office was far less direct, although his meandering steps did eventually lead him to the small table in the corner—the one with the cut-crystal whiskey decanters on it. He immediately lifted the lid of the ice bucket, smiling when he discovered that it was full.

And then there was Parker J. Westbrook III. He arrived last, still stuffing papers into a briefcase, and barking out orders to Ruth that had a lot to do with getting him some coffee—black, two sugars—and perhaps a stenographer.

Just as Quinn thought the gang was all there, another man slipped into the room, staying very close to the open door and looking as if he’d really rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.

“Hello, Jim,” Quinn said, bypassing the Taites and the “Third” to shake hands with the nervous chauffeur. “Why are you here? No, let me guess and see if I’m right. You drove the getaway car, didn’t you?”

Jim Helfrich nodded miserably and wiped at his perspiration-dotted forehead with a big red and white handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “I didn’t know,” he said plaintively. “I honest to God didn’t know.”

“Wrong. You didn’t
think,”
Parker bit out peevishly, setding himself on the couch and opening his briefcase once more, pulling out papers and photographs and carefully arranging them on the coffee table. “A bus station. Christ! If you were mine you’d be history.”

“Yours, Westbrook?” Quinn asked, stepping in front of Jim. “Into owning people, are you?”

Parker’s handsome face darkened. “You know what I mean, Delaney. The man’s incompetent, and we’ve already wasted enough time,” he said, slapping down a last pile of typewritten pages. “Now shall we get on with it? I have a meeting down the street in twenty minutes.”

Quinn took another step in the man’s direction. “Real worried about your fiance, aren’tyou? Tell me, which chart is she in? Have you run a cost analysis as to how much time you’re willing to expend finding her, compared it to how much money you’ll lose every minute you aren’t out wheeling and dealing? You have, haven’t you? God, you really are a pr—”

“Quinn!” Grady interrupted, knowing his partner was about to insult the paying customers. Then he remembered
that
Westbrook wasn’t the customer. “Sorry, old man. Didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying?”

“Never mind, it’s not worth my trouble,” Quinn said, rubbing at the back of his neck as he wondered, not for the first time, what Shelby Taite saw in this stiff-backed horse’s ass. Not that he cared, of course.

Somerton Taite delicately cleared his throat from his seat beside Jeremy Rifkin, who was still weeping softly into his handkerchief as he moaned something that sounded very much like, “Our poor little girl.” It was a nice touch, lent a certain softness to the moment, having someone cry over the missing socialite.

“As I informed you when I telephoned earlier, Mr. Sullivan,” Somerton began carefully, “my sister has gone missing as of yesterday morning. We, of course, do not wish the police involved, or the press, as the last thing we want is for Shelby to be out there somewhere with the whole world looking for her as if she were the prize in some contest. Which is why we first thought to conduct our own investigation. However, we soon realized we were not equipped for what we finally decided must be done.”

“That was so wonderfully succinct of you, dear Somerton,” Jeremy complimented from his chair, beaming at the assembled company. “Wasn’t that wonderfully succinct of him?”

“Thank you, Jeremy. Now, as you can see by the fax I sent you after our phone conversation, Mr. Sullivan, my sister’s farewell note was not especially helpful to us, nor was my uncle Alfred, who seems to believe Shelby is simply off having the adventure of her life, as he calls it, and we should all just… just…”

“Butt out, Somerton. I told you all just to butt out, let the girl have her head for a while, not that you’ve ever listened to me,” Uncle Alfred supplied from the corner, lifting his glass to Quinn in a mock salute before circling it beneath his nose. “Ah, pure ambrosia. Don’t you just love the smell of good whiskey in the morning?”

“The bus,” Jeremy whimpered from his chair, shuddering in very real horror. “She traveled on the
bus.”

Quinn’s head pushed forward on his neck as he looked at Jeremy, then turned to the chauffeur. “He’s kidding, right? You really took her to the bus station, Jim?” he felt forced to ask, knowing he was upsetting the man. “How did she explain that one to you?”

Jim ducked his head. “How did she explain it? She didn’t, sir. She just had me load the luggage, and then told me where she wanted to go. I figured she knew where she wanted to go.”

“Of course, of course,” Quinn said, pattingjim’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.”

“The dirt, and the
smells,
and the
humanity,”
Jeremy said on a groan. “All those people, shoved in together like cattle, cheek by jowl. Oh, I don’t think I can bear thinking about it another second, Somerton, truly I don’t.”

“I told you to stay home,” Somerton reminded him, gratefully taking a cup of coffee off the tray Ruth was now passing around and handing it to Jeremy. “You aren’t going to be ill again, are you?”

Jeremy lifted his chin and gave his head a shake. “No, Somerton, I am not. I am going to sit here and support you in your time of trial. It is the very least I can do.”

“And the most,” Uncle Alfred commented, winking at Quinn. “Tell you what, Jeremy, how about we pour a splash of whiskey in that cup? Make a man of you, put some hair on your chest. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, boy?”

“You’re not helping, Uncle Alfred,” Somerton said sternly as Jeremy sank back against the cushions, folding in on himself, hugging his misery to him.

Quinn shot a look at Grady, who smiled at him and purposefully patted his sling. “Yeah, right,” Quinn said at last, knowing he’d have to handle this one without any help from his friend—his friend who was enjoying himself way too much. “She hasn’t been gone all that long, gentlemen, although it would have been better if you’d contacted us yesterday. Still, if you’ll just answer a few questions for me, I tthink I can guarantee I’ll have her home safe and dry by tonight, tomorrow night at the latest. Figuring con servatively, as I don’t think Miss Take has read any books on how to disappear without a trace.”