Heart of the Hunter (2 page)

Like a dash of cold water, reason intruded. To touch her as a stranger would frighten her, and she must not be afraid of him. Not now. Not yet.

Moving back, he listened without hearing. As she rambled on, the scent of jasmine drifted to him. As soft as her voice. As subtle. As lovely.

There was the throb of passion in her, a kindness and innate tenderness. In the half-light he could almost believe she was too guileless to be what he feared. Innocent enough to be the Judas goat he would make of her.

“Look!” she insisted. “Tell me what you think.”

Each miniature was accentuated by the lamplight spilling over them, but their glowing colors were only a blur at the edge of his vision. As she waited, silence fell like a heavy curtain.

Sounds of a street coming lazily to life began a distant, whispered chorus. A vendor passed, the wheels of his cart clattering in rhythm with the song of his wares. Soon the life of the street would spill into the gallery and this moment of first meeting would be lost. With an effort, he forced himself to look away from her to the work she offered for inspection. To begin what he must.

“I think you're right.” His voice was as low, as husky as hers. “They're very beautiful.”

An indrawn breath was cut short. A canvas fell to her desk as she spun to face him. Her hand at her throat and the widening of her eyes spoke her shock as eloquently as her gasp. “J—?” The incipient recognition was cut short and rejected in disbelief. With an adamant shake of her head, she struggled to recover her composure. “Gracious! You startled me.”

“I'm sorry,” Jeb said. “The sign by the door says the gallery is open.”

“It does. We are.” A flush rushed over her cheeks. “I'm sorry. We are open, but it's rare that anyone comes in this early. Except by appointment, of course, and I was expecting my assistant. So, naturally, when I heard the bell I assumed...”

“That I was he, or should I say she?” Jeb finished for her. He smiled down at her. Beneath the fawn colored jacket, she wore a lavender frock. A tailored concoction, fitted like a glove. Her eyes were as gray as a stormy sea.

“She.”

“Pardon?” Jeb realized he hadn't been listening.

“She. Annabelle Devereaux. I was expecting Annabelle,” Nicole explained distractedly, her face drawn in a puzzled frown.

“So, naturally, you assumed...”

“That you were...” Her voice drifted to a whisper as she lost the thread of her conversation. With another exasperated shake of her head, she began again. “Annabelle works for me and usually she comes in like clockwork, nine minutes late.”

She was babbling. Nicole Callison never babbled—it wasn't allowed. Except, perhaps, she amended, when attractive blond men stood smiling down at her as if she were the most amusing creature on earth. Which was ridiculous. The island and Charleston were filled with attractive blond men. Yet there was something about him, something about his smile.

With a start, Nicole realized she was staring at him. At the smile that seemed oddly familiar.

“I'm sorry, ahh...” She looked away from his mouth and from his captivating gaze. In an uncommonly nervous gesture, her hand lifted to her throat again, to the pulse that fluttered at its base. “I'm sure you didn't come to hear any of this.” With a visible effort, her gaze returned to his. “Perhaps there's something I can help you with, something specific I can show you?”

“No.” As she had begun to rise he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. The contact was electric and startling and over almost as it began, yet the memory would linger. Drawing away, he smiled again. A tighter, less amused version than before. “I only came to browse. I'd prefer to wander about, see what you have to offer.” His look ranged over the gallery and returned, deliberately, to her. “Then I'll know how you can help me.”

She heard an inflection in his voice she couldn't interpret and saw a subtle difference in the way he looked at her. He was waiting for a reaction, a response to something she didn't understand. Which was as absurd as the entire encounter had been from the beginning. He was simply a customer, albeit from the handsome cut of his clothing and the way he wore it, one of impeccable taste. But, only a customer, nevertheless.

“As you wish.” She struggled for the friendly professionalism that was her trademark. Using it as a shield, she brushed her fingers over a panel of digital switches at the side of her desk and the gallery was ablaze with light. A sweep of her hand gave him permission to wander where he would. “Please, look as long as you like. If you have a question, or see something that interests you, my associate should be in shortly and can assist you.”

With that, Nicole Callison spun her seat back to her desk, ending any conversation. When he moved away, she gathered up a ledger and to her dismay discovered the entries might be gibberish for all the sense they made.

Still, she tried. Finally, counting it wasted effort, she admitted defeat. Leaning back in her chair, she yielded to impulse and watched him.

As he moved among the displays or paused to study a painting, he appeared quite ordinary. Granted, with broad shoulders and a body that was lean and fit, he was attractive. But no more than others of his sort who had wandered through her gallery. The sea port and the resorts, on islands that dotted the coastline like sandy jewels, drew them like magnets. They came in multitudes, handsome and charismatic, sailors and athletes. Until, by virtue of their number, their uniqueness became ordinary.

Her initial unease, if her reaction could be called that, was simply that he'd caught her unaware. Towering over her as he had, the advantage had been his.

“Advantage,” she murmured, not unduly disturbed by her choice of words, or considering it unusual to think of a customer as having a controlling edge. Mollified by the rationalization, Nicole felt a bit foolish when she thought of the hard-bitten look of danger she'd imagined when she first saw him.

First opinions weren't always right, were they? It had to be imagination. Right? If not, why hadn't it occurred to her to be afraid? If he was truly dangerous in his quiet way, why wasn't she afraid now?

Annoyed by the direction of her thoughts, she meant to resolve her nagging questions and dismiss him. Seeking whatever answers had eluded her, her covert stare ranged over him. From shaggy, sun-bleached hair that looked as if it wanted to curl but dared not, to the tips of his leather deck shoes, she inspected him as thoroughly as one would a stallion at auction.

Except she wasn't buying. Not today, and not this one.

As if she'd spoken her disavowal, he looked up from a lithograph. A thoughtful smile teased the corners of his mouth, changing the planes and angles of his features, making them more than pleasant, and much, much more than attractive. And if it destroyed the myth that he was no different from so many others, it strengthened the conviction that any perception of danger in that look and that smile could only be the delusion of a mad woman.

Disconcerted that he'd caught her staring, she nodded curtly. As she resisted the temptation to sink farther into ignominy, a vague frisson of recall tugged at her memory, then flitted away.

Perhaps she was mad, after all, for there was still something about him. Something she couldn't dismiss so easily.

“Nonsense!” The exasperated grumble accompanied a stubborn jut of her jaw as she returned to the work that waited. But work was a poor match for him. As she catalogued paintings and entered them into the ledger, a part of her resisted as another argued he was perfectly innocuous and just a customer. Summoning an elusive discipline she tried to quiet the notion there was anything familiar about him, and attend to the last details of the sale.

Five long, unproductive minutes later Annabelle Devereaux bustled in, her usual good-humored apology and bawdy explanation bursting from her before she realized Nicole was not alone.

“Oops!” She clapped a hand over her mouth, hiding a grin as she looked from one to the other. “Sorry!” she said, and was obviously anything but sorry. “The French libido isn't exactly a proper topic with business afoot, but I didn't realize there
was
business afoot already this morning.

“Wow!” She interrupted herself to lean over the desk. “What are these? No!” She warded off an answer. “Don't tell me.” Canvases were shuffled slowly and her grin grew wider.

“Ashley!” Rising on tiptoe to shift a haunch onto the edge of the desk, she rested a stack of canvases on her knee. “You did it! Nicole Callison, you did it! Ashley Blackmon painted these, and somehow you've accomplished the impossible and convinced him to let us show them.”

“No,” Nicole demurred. “Ashley convinced himself.”

“Whatever. I don't care, so long as we have them.”

“I'd like to include them in this showing.”

“You mean to sell?” Annabelle lifted an incredulous brow.

“Not this time.” Nicole shrugged. “Maybe never. Still, I'd like to include them.”

“Which means we'll burn the midnight oil to change the exhibit.”

“One of us will.”

“Wrong!” Annabelle slipped from the desk and straightened her skirt. “Two of us will.”

Nicole laughed. “I knew I could count on you.”

If Annabelle's grand entrance and conversation commanded Jeb's attention, Nicole's laughter stopped him cold. Before, it had been self-conscious and mechanical. But beyond that, he couldn't remember ever hearing her laugh with such abandon and delight.

As he saw her now, in an element she'd created, speaking with this irrepressible woman who was clearly a trusted friend, he knew he'd never seen her as happy.

When this was finished, when he'd done what had to be done, he wondered what would be left of her life.

“Good morning,” a cheerful voice boomed out. “The boss lady suggested that there might be something I can show you.”

Jeb turned automatically toward the woman who had appeared at his side. In his millisecond of distraction she'd moved with an astonishingly quiet step after her boisterous entrance. “I'm sorry, I didn't see you there.”

“I can understand that. The wolf is beautiful.”

“The wolf?”

A dramatic gesture indicated the massive head of bronze where his clenched fist rested. “Since you're two of a kind, it's natural he would be one of your favorites.”

At a bit less than five feet, the woman called Annabelle was a foot shorter than he, but what she lacked in height was compensated for by unrestrained flirtation. As their gazes met, hers was flashing, unrepentantly appreciative. His was as aloof as an autumn mist. “I beg your pardon?”

“Honey.” Annabelle's eyelids drooped in speculative appraisal. “Any man who looks as good as you, or as bad, has no need to beg anything from me.” A hearty laugh bubbled somewhere in the depths of her bosom as her shoulders shook. “At least, not too hard.”

“Good and bad?” Jeb mused. “An interesting if peculiar analogy.”

“Interesting, maybe. But not peculiar,” Annabelle declared. “Not peculiar at all. On the surface you're good-looking in a rugged sort of way, but you can't fool me. Underneath it you're as wild and wily as the wolf, and twice as fascinating.”

“Wild and wily?” Jeb was chuckling now. The woman was outrageous and loved every minute of it. “Just an off-the-cuff analysis, huh? And if you had more time, you could delve a little deeper?”

“I wouldn't mind the delving, but it isn't necessary. Any woman worth half her salt can take one look at you and she knows.”

“But what does she know?”

A bold look moved over him again. “She knows
everything.
”

His chuckle turned to laughter. “I hope not. Sounds dangerous.”

“Only for the woman, sugar. But taking a crack at taming you would be worth it.” Abruptly her thoughts hopscotched in another direction. “Now that we've settled that, is there something special you wanted to see? Besides the wolf and me, of course.”

“Nothing, yet.” The words were hardly spoken before he recognized he'd made a tactical error. If he needed to establish himself as a regular and welcome client, he must play what was evidently a game greatly relished by this small person. Play it he would. Teasing her with a look as lecherous as her own, he grinned a lazy grin. The cool gray of his eyes became warm silver. “When I do...need help, that is, should I ask for...?”

As his voice trailed into another tantalizing pause, he saw delight flash in her eyes. Though she was short, shorter than Nicole, and much heavier, the weight was solid and perfectly distributed. With flawless, copper-hued skin and a Gypsy's black mane tousled to perfection, she was a handsome woman. Clearly no stranger to masculine attention.

Indeed, she was handsome, but not beautiful, he decided. Not as Nicole was beautiful.

Keeping his attention focused on Annabelle, he didn't need to glance at Nicole to make comparisons. How she looked had been burned into his brain in his study of her dossier and by weeks of surveillance.

He didn't need to look at her to remember, nor to know that she had abandoned the pretense of working and watched him openly.

“I need to know your name,” he reminded Annabelle. “To be sure I get the right woman.”

Annabelle's laugh set her bosoms struggling to be free of whatever superstructure confined them. “You are a devil. But you Californians usually are. Always ready to give a woman her comeuppance by reminding her there's other fruit on the tree.”

“What makes you think I'm from California?” Jeb was a little alarmed by her astute deduction.

“I don't think, I know. It's the accent. You've been away from it long enough and trained enough that there are only little nuances of it left.”

Her allusion to his training was so perfectly on target that Jeb's escalating alarm flickered for a moment in his eyes. For once the little woman seemed blithely unaware and chattered smugly on. “The average person wouldn't hear it, but people come from all over the world to visit Charleston and the islands, and more than a few of them find their way to this gallery. After a while one learns. To be less than modest, I have an exceptional ear for accents and,” she added drolly, “it doesn't hurt that I work for a former Californian.”