Dance of the Crystal (5 page)

She rummaged in the little change purse she had on a belt around her waist and turned to him. “Here.”

She handed him an envelope, which usually contained fifty dollars. “Thanks again for your help. I’ll be in touch.”

Augie watched her sweet ass sway as she marched up the stairs, tossing his keys in the air as he debated whether to leave now or to follow her inside and cause more trouble for his father.

“Did you orchestrate this, Grandma?”

Crystal stormed into the elegant study off the front hall and tossed the newspaper onto the Louis Quatorze desk behind which Rowena sat. “Did you pay the photographer to take this kind of tabloid-trash picture?” She speared a glance at Courtland—or Trey, as everyone called him, since he was the Third—sitting on the brocade wing chair alongside the desk, one ankle crossed over his opposite knee. “And you, Trey. Were you part of this circus too?”

Her grandmother just smiled mysteriously, like a cat who swallowed a canary and had another in its sights.

Crystal leaned forward, slapped her palms down on the desk. Her hair fell forward into her eyes.

Impatiently she flicked it back with a toss of her head. Her shawl slipped off her shoulders and slithered to the floor.

“And that muscleman you hired. Where did you find him, central casting? Did you figure that since I didn’t like any of the trust-funders you keep setting me up with as blind dates, that I’d go for an uncouth brute with more muscle than brain?”

“And did you think I relished the idea of being bought like a slab of meat by a spoiled brat of a socialite?”

Crystal whirled around to see Soren rising from the sofa against the far wall. She’d been so focused on her grandmother’s face when she’d stalked in a moment ago, she hadn’t even glanced around the room.

“What are you doing here?”

The smile he showed was more like a snarl. “Your grandmother seems to have tentacles all over eastern Pennsylvania.” He pointed with his chin at Trey. “They staked out Thor’s Hammer and caught me running out the back door from a Channel Five reporter.”

She threw him a disparaging look. “And what, they overpowered you and forced you to come here?”

He took a few menacing steps toward her. “‘Forced’ me? In a way, yes, they did. Ms. D’Angelo suggested, very forcefully, that we get the ‘transaction’ completed as soon as possible.”

At the threat implicit in his approach, she instinctively took a step back. And caught her boot heel in the shawl lying in a tangle on the floor. Off balance, she flailed her arms, trying to get her feet back under her.

In an eye blink, Soren was at her side. He scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders.

Without conscious thought, Crystal wrapped her arms around his neck.

Time stopped. She looked into his fathomless blue eyes and felt the amulet pulsing warm against her chest through the soft wool of her sweater. The heat of his torso spread to her hip, her waist. She wanted nothing so much as to snuggle against the strength of him until the end of time.

“What the hell is this, a Grade-B movie?”

Crystal felt her feet slap to the floor as Soren let go of her. Augie stood in the archway, fists on his hips, glaring at the tableau before him.

“Augie, dear, how nice to see you again.” Rowena stood and walked around her desk, regal in a dark blue long-sleeved sheath with three strands of exquisitely matched pearls at her neck, her arms outstretched to him.

He suffered her handclasp while he glowered at Crystal.

“I tripped,” Crystal explained, nonplussed at the resentful look in Augie’s eye, as though he thought she’d willingly go into any man’s arms except his. “He saved me from another bruise.” To punctuate her statement, she bent forward to retrieve the shawl from where it had dropped when Soren rescued her.

“Well, at least it wasn’t Trey trying to play hero,” Augie sneered. “Father isn’t in any shape to physically pick up a woman. He can only do it with money.”

“Money always seems to loom large to those who have none.” Trey stood and shot his French cuffs from under his linen blazer as he glared at his son. “Perhaps that’s Fourth’s problem. I can see,” he said, turning to Rowena, “that it’s impossible to continue our discussion with so many interruptions.” He took the older woman’s hand and lifted it to his mouth. “Come walk me to the front door.”

“It will be my pleasure,” Rowena said. “And you, my strong, handsome Augie,” she turned her smile on the young man, “I would be much obliged if you would help me bring down a cumbersome package from the attic.”

Augie reluctantly pulled his glare away from Crystal and Soren and allowed himself to be nudged toward the pocket doors, carefully avoiding any contact with his father.

“And as for you, my dear, remember, a D’Angelo always honors a commitment.” She gave Crystal one of her imperious stares. “I suggest you and Mr. Thorvald stay in the study and work out the details of your agreement. In fact,” she pushed down a lever as she slid the doors closed, “I’m locking you in until you do.”

When the doors met, the lock mechanism clicked loudly. Retreating footsteps, muffled by the oriental runner on the parquet floor, faded into silence.

Crystal barely held back the smile that threatened to twitch the corners of her mouth. She knew, although Soren probably didn’t, that the door couldn’t be unlocked from the hallway, but only from inside the study. Grandma had truly given them privacy.

The thought sent her pulse racing. She reached for the talisman at her throat. The crystal now lay silent and inert in her hand, as if in tacit approval.

They stood no more than two feet apart. Crystal had the strongest urge to reach out to him, to run her fingers through his wavy blond hair. Hers. This man was hers. Did he know it too?

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m sorry I—”

They had spoken simultaneously. Crystal thought he looked as hesitant as she herself felt.

“Ladies first.”

She cleared her throat. “You’re really not a brute. And…and you’re not uncouth, or any of the other horrible things I said. I was just…I mean, when I saw that front-page photo, it made me pretty upset.

The paper could have been merciful and said ‘unknown woman’. But to see my name in the caption and have it linked to that huge derrière, well, I never realized my butt was so big, and the—”

Soren raised his hand in a stop-sign gesture. “Your butt isn’t big. It’s—” he cut himself off before he could say
It’s perfect the way it is
— “It’s not big,” he repeated. God, how lame was that?

“Oh, heck.” Crystal waved a hand in the air. “I don’t really care how big my butt is. It all has to do with camera angle, anyway. What I do care about is the image created by that photo. Poor Grandma. She’s always tried to remind me of the decorum expected of, well, the upper class, and I came across looking like an exhibitionist on one of those tell-all, bare-all television shows.”

Soren tried to keep his thoughts pure. He really did. But having seen Springer when his patrons clamored for it on the bar’s big-screen TV, his long-dormant imagination had Crystal ripping her sweater over her head and baring her lush breasts to an audience before launching herself at the “other woman”

with claws unsheathed, and him being one of the bouncers keeping the combatants apart, having to put his hands on her soft skin to hold her back and maybe, just maybe, copping a surreptitious feel…

Jesus. He spun on his heel and flopped down on the wing chair that Trey had so recently occupied, shut his eyes tight and gripped the brocade arms until his knuckles showed white.

“Are you all right?” Crystal’s soft, concerned voice sounded right at his ear.

Cautiously he opened his eyes. Mistake.

She was bent toward him, breasts at his eye level. He could see the slight difference in color where the white bra pushed against the white sweater. He could also see—God, the lump in his throat felt like a fist—her nipples poking twin tents in the fabric.

“Soren?” Her warm palm grazed his cheek. “Can I get you something? Brandy? Water?”

His groan came out like a growl. As if of their own volition, his hands reached out to cup her firm ass cheeks and draw her in between his outspread thighs. He pillowed his head between her breasts and inhaled the aroma of her, a flower-and-orange scent along with a subtle musk that was definitely female.

He felt her lean down and put her cheek on the crown of his head, hands resting lightly on his shoulders.

Oh man, he was a goner.

With great delicacy he ran his palms up and down her ass, explored the contour of her hips melding into the curve of her waist. His thumbs caressed her rib cage, circling higher and higher until he reached the heavy weight of her breasts. He moved his head until his mouth grazed one nipple. The feel of that hard nubbin through the sweater made hot blood surge to his cock. He closed his lips around the tip of her breast.

She drew in a halting breath and whispered his name.

Taking that as encouragement, Soren increased the pressure, alternately suckling and lightly raking it with his teeth. She snuggled him closer into her embrace, her hands cupping the back of his head, her breath coming in shorter gasps.

He tilted his head back, slid his hands beneath her sweater and shoved the material up over her breasts.

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” he murmured as he flicked his thumbs back and forth over the silky bra enclosing what surely had to be the most glorious tits he’d ever seen in or out of a magazine.

The sudden revving of an engine broke into his befogged brain and he realized where he was. Where they were. He dropped his hands to her hips. “Crystal, we have to stop.”

“Mmmm, why’s that?”

“Your grandmother’s likely to come barging in any minute to see what’s going on.”

Crystal laughed, a slow sultry sound. “She can’t.”

“No, really, we have to—”

“Soren, read my lips. Grandma didn’t lock us in. She locked herself and everyone else out.”

Soren blinked. “Huh?”

“The door unlocks only from the inside. We can stay here until tomorrow if we want and nobody will interrupt us.”

Soren’s focus sharpened. “So she actually expected us to do…what we’re doing.”

“I think she was hoping.”

Abruptly he stood. “I can’t compromise you like that. She’ll know. It’s not right.”

Crystal stood toe to toe with him, fists on her hips. Having to look up at him, however, took some of the sternness out of her reply. “I’m old enough to make that decision for myself.”

“I can’t do it. It shows a lack of respect to do…anything under her roof, knowing that she knows what we’re doing.”

She rose on tiptoe, snaked her arms around his waist and gave him a kiss that nearly blew his ears off.

“You’re so sweet, Soren, but I want more.”

“No. You only think you do. You’re reacting to your grandmother’s subliminal suggestion, that’s all.

You’re a…a…what did the newspaper call you? A socialite. You’ve got money, class, a pedigree. I’m a bartender, for God’s sake.”

She gave him a meltingly soft look. “I want you, Soren.”

His teeth clenched. He could feel the panic building. Oh boy, was he out of his element. Why hadn’t he had more practice with women in general? What the hell was he supposed to do now?

“But I’ll wait.” With that simple declaration she turned and walked to the pocket doors. A flick of a lever and she pulled the doors ajar an inch. “Happy?”

Soren swallowed. Or tried to. His mouth felt dryer than the Sahara at noon. “That’s not quite the word I would use, but yes, that’s better.”

“So,” she said primly, strolling to the Louis Quatorze desk and sitting in the plush leather chair, “let’s do the other thing Grandma is expecting us to do.”

He gave her a blank look.

“Where would you like to have dinner? I’m buying.”

“Okay, Soren, out with it.”

Magnus guzzled half the bottle of iced tea he’d pulled out of the cooler then looked at his younger brother. Soren’s T-shirt was plastered to his back and chest from sweat, just like his own. They were taking a break from cutting a slab off a valuable black walnut log with a two-man saw.

“Huh? Out with what?”

“I can’t remember the last time you took an afternoon off from Thor’s Hammer to help me. Yet you’ve been slaving away for three hours without saying a word. What’s bugging you?”

Soren leaned against the tree stump and rolled a frosty bottle against his forehead. It did little to cool the hot blood pumping in his veins. Hell, Magnus was in much better shape than he, hauling slabs of wood around his atelier while Soren himself only wrestled with a keg now and then.

He set down the bottle and pulled out a red handkerchief from his jeans pocket. Swiping it over his face and neck, he squinted into the woods surrounding Magnus’ barn. “You ever think about Mom?”

He’d caught Magnus unaware, Soren saw, if the breath whooshing out of his brother was any indication.

Magnus settled himself on the forest duff away from the pile of sawdust and stared into the distance, much as Soren was doing.

“Yeah. She’s living in Alaska. Did you know that?”

It was Soren’s turn to take a sharp breath. “No, I didn’t. How did you find out?”

“Kat. She’s an Internet whiz.”

Kat. Soren still couldn’t get over the fact that his big brother was marrying Kat Donaldson in a few weeks. They’d started out as such antagonists—Kat a sexually active, aggressive art gallery owner, Magnus a reclusive sculptor with a big stick up his ass—that he wondered if it would last. But then, what did he, Soren, know about relationships with women? His view had been tainted by the woman who’d up and walked out on three young boys and a heartbroken husband.

“Kat kept asking me questions about her,” Magnus continued. “I told her what little I knew about her after she disappeared. At least, we think it’s her. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to contact her yet.”

After twenty-some years, Soren wasn’t sure he’d have the nerve to, either. What would he say?
Why
did you leave? Who was the guy that made you carry on so?