Set Up (36 page)

A safety deposit box.

Think, think. God, why can't I think?

Okay, Sonny had gone on to Las Vegas after the theft. Could he have stashed the journal in the bank there? Could Noelle be retrieving it? He had to find out what Noelle had got from the bank and where she was going with it.

He told the agency to make sure they had enough men to cover any contingencies. “I don't care what it costs. Don't lose her.”

When he disconnected, a welcome thought struck. With Noelle tucked away in Las Vegas till tomorrow, Amanda would be alone.

He'd go home, get some clothes, and then spend the night with her. Keep her from staying by herself. Check on whether or not the glass company he'd called had put in a new sidelight.

* * * *

Leaving his car out in front of his cottage, Cal went in to change into Hawaiian shirt and jeans. When he came out, Tip caught him on the porch. “Claire isn't here, and I need some help.”

“Will it take long? I'm on my way in to Atlanta.”

“Just take a moment. I was talking to R.T., the outside auditor, this afternoon, and he said something I don't understand. About the employee bonus account?”

Cal slung his hanger bag over his shoulder. “Do we have an employee bonus account? I seem to recall some discussions about starting one a few years back, but I also seem to recall Mother felt profit-sharing for everyone was a better incentive than giving bonuses to a few. And Mother always prevailed.”

Tip ignored the sting in the last sentence. “I remember. Lila was emphatic about it. That's why I thought it strange when the auditor said the bonus account's built up to over three million dollars.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“That's what I thought. Unless Robert's instituted some changes I haven't heard about. Of course,” Tip added neutrally, “he may very well have done so. I don't pay as much attention as I should to goings-on at the company.”

Callaway folded the garment bag over his arm. “If that's the case, he never brought any such action up before the Board.”

“You look almost pleased.”

“If Robert's gone against policy and set up this account on his own, we have cause to confront him. Why, something this bad might make the Board force him out. Three million dollars, you say?”

“Then Claire could assume responsibility for the company's future. She’d make a good CEO.”

Cal clapped Tip’s shoulder. “She would. She's calm, practical, and a born compromiser. And a much better leader than Robert ever could hope to be.”

“Do you think this might be related to Sonny and his scam?”

Cal blinked. “I don't know. The amount of money’s right, but what would Sonny have to do with a bonus account? He doesn't write checks or approve vouchers. No, Robert would have to be the one to instigate a new account.”

Still, this new information was as puzzling as the missing bonds. As he drove toward Atlanta, Cal tried to put the pieces together but couldn't think of anything except getting to Amanda.

Hell, let his subconscious work on it.

He drove past the small sign that said
A. Jane, Dressmaker
and parked beside the locked garage leading to her basement apartment. The plywood boarding, he was satisfied to see, had been replaced with new stained glass. Though the draperies were drawn, a welcoming light shone out from the windows.

After he rang the bell and heard her quick step, he grinned at the peephole and held up the Chinese takeout sack. “It's me.”

There was a second when the wild thought came to him that she wasn't going to let him in—that she knew he was suspicious of Noelle and had chosen her sister over him.

Then the door opened and she stood before him, backlighted from the subdued glow of a lamp on a desk where she'd been working. A pink cotton robe wrapped and tied round the waist, and her brown hair fell in loose curling clusters specially arranged for his hungry hands.

He stepped inside and set down the wine and paper bag, and took her in his arms where, for a while, he sloughed off worries about Claire, Noelle, and everything else.

* * * *

Amanda forgot Noelle when she held Callaway. He absorbed her, made her cares vanish. At least while they made love.

Later, they sat across the kitchen table covered in the cheerful blue and fuchsia tablecloth from Mexico, and grinned at each other like kids who'd just discovered sex.

Amanda’s body ached, but the ache was a good one. No matter what happened afterward, she’d have this.

She savored his nimble handling of chopsticks. “I'm glad Noelle decided to spend the night in Birmingham.”

His fingers froze, and then recaptured the rhythm.

She didn't miss the falter. “What's wrong?”

“I'm out of practice.”

She didn't miss his evasion, either.

“Callaway. What is it?”

He looked at his food, at his chopsticks, at his bright fuchsia and blue napkin. Everywhere but her. “Noelle didn't go to Birmingham.”

“Where did she go?”

“Las Vegas.”

Her mind went blank. “Las Vegas? Why?”

Finally, he looked at her. “I don't know but she's coming back tomorrow.”

“Damn! Damn, damn, damn.” Flinging herself out of her chair, she paced back and forth. “What is wrong with her? I can’t believe she lied to me again. I can’t believe I couldn’t tell she was lying. I thought…” She stopped short. “Noelle didn't have any money. I had to loan her money for plane fare to Birmingham. She wouldn’t have money for gambling. Why would she go to Las Vegas? Oh.”

Wheeling, she went into her bedroom and checked a decorative pot set up on a high shelf by her dresser. “I had a couple of thousand here strictly for emergencies,” she told Cal who had trailed in after her. “It’s gone.”

Her bureau was old, with one central mirror and two smaller panels on either side that needed resilvering. In the muddied glass, she saw him approach, sympathy etched on the dark face. When he put his arms around her, she could only stand stiff and unbending.

He didn't give up but kept holding her, murmuring endearments under his breath meant for her ear alone, kneading the tension out of her neck and shoulders. At length, she allowed her head to loll against him while she thought how right their distorted reflections looked, with his arms around her and her hand against his chest. If only they could forget Noelle and his sister's diary and stand together this way forever.

“I'm tired, Callaway,” she whispered into his shirt. “I don't want to worry about Noelle anymore, or have to watch out for her all the time. I don't want to be responsible anymore.”

“No,” she heard him murmur. “I know, sugar. I know. And you shouldn't have to be. You've done enough for Noelle. More than enough.” She felt his kisses, butterfly-light, grazing her forehead, her cheekbones. She reached out blindly to him, squeezed back the tears. He held her tenderly for a long while, trying to overcome her grief with his caresses.

She was the one who initiated the lovemaking, when her body tired of his gentle stroking and began to clamor for more. She was the one whose lips became urgent, whose need rose to a fever pitch, who begged for his body to slide inside hers.

He was the one who joined her in the flight, who took her over the edge with him, and who held her tightly as they descended, sated.

Sometime near dawn she awakened, feeling that some word, some detail concerning Noelle had slipped by her. “There must be something in Las Vegas she needs,” she murmured. “She must have forgotten something when she was out there before.”

Callaway gave a sleepy sigh. “What?”

“I don't know.”

He tightened his grip around her waist. “Stop thinking about Noelle. Think about this.”

She nestled back against his warmth, pressing her hip against his erection, allowing his hands free play over her body until they orchestrated her need to near-delirium before they rocketed upward in unison again.

* * * *

As she got ready for work, Callaway, bathed and dressed in navy suit pants and white dress shirt, prowled the apartment. When she came out of the bedroom, putting the last modest pearl in her ear, he was scowling at a note beside the telephone in the living room.

“Was last night that bad?” she asked, and was rewarded by emergence of the dimple.

He took two steps and enclosed her in his arms. “Last night was perfect. I could get used to sleeping with you.”

“Don't muss me,” she said, unable to keep from laughing. “Half my clientele already suspect I went away last week on some kind of orgy. They'll be convinced of it if I come in all wrinkled with my hair falling down.”

He kissed the tip of her nose. “Why don't we go away on some kind of orgy and let them say,
Aha, I knew it all the time!
”

She slipped out from his arms. “I can't. I have a business to run and you, you have a job to go to.”

His smile faded.

“Don't be so sensitive.” Sooner or later his problem would have to be dealt with. “You could work at something besides the hotel business if you hate it so much.”

“I don't hate it.”

“No?” She put a hand up to touch his clean-shaven cheek. “I'm tired of tiptoeing around when I talk about my shop. If you don't like your life, change it. But for heaven’s sake, stop making me feel guilty every time I mention my business.”

He was taken aback. “Me? Make you feel guilty?”

“Yes, babe,” she said patiently. “I don't know how you do it, but you do.”

“Sorry.” He looked as if he wanted to say something.

She waited.

“I've never... When I got out of school, I went to work for Mother in accounting and, to make a long story short, I screwed up, forgot to get some papers back to the company attorneys because my wife, my first wife,” he qualified, “was about to leave me and I was distracted no end. Anyway, my carelessness cost us a lot of money and Mother was pissed. She put me in Future Growth Projections, a department that does absolutely nothing. A good place for a useless member of the family. I hate it.”

“Of course you hate it,” Amanda said with quick sympathy. “That kind of job would be all wrong for you. Don't call yourself useless. You're one of the most efficient people I've ever known.”

“Efficient? Me? Hah!”

“You are. You trapped me, carried me off to Birmingham, got us to Las Vegas, back to Atlanta, and then Cancun and back here. All without turning a hair. The only bobble was the separated seats coming home when you couldn't sit with us on the plane.”

“That wasn't a bobble. I had to bribe someone to take a later flight to get that seat, I'll have you know.”

She wrinkled her nose at him. “If that isn't efficiency, I don't know what is. And anyone with half an eye could see you belong in public relations.”

His eyes narrowed. “That's what Claire keeps telling me.”

“Then listen to her.”

The man simply needed someone to point him in the right direction, and he'd be fine. The only question was whether the person to point him would end up being Amanda. Once he found his journal, interest in her might fade as suddenly as it had grown.

She shivered, refused to think of it.

He didn't notice. “Hmm,” he said, sunk in thought. “Maybe.”

They looked at each other and burst into laughter. Amanda felt as though she were in love for the first time. How had she managed all these years by herself?

How can I manage again if he leaves?

I don't care, she said to herself. At least I'll have something of him to remember.

“I've got to go open the shop,” she said.

“I've got to leave, too,” he said regretfully. He reached over, picked up the paper he'd been holding when she came out. “I found this by your phone. Is this your writing or Noelle's?”

She took the paper, turned it over and saw it was an itinerary with a telephone number scribbled on its back. “Noelle’s. Why?”

He took the itinerary back and looked at it. “She left for Cancun Tuesday morning.”

“Is that important?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t meet her eyes.

Wondering what he was hiding, she followed him as he took his necktie to the foyer mirror. “What are you thinking?”

He turned up his collar. “The phone number. I recognize the sequence. It belongs to one of the offices in our Roswell office. I don't know whose it is, but it’s a company number.”

“Probably Sonny's, don't you think?”

“Well, duh. Am I dense or what?”

“You're not dense. Stop putting yourself down.”

He looped, pulled, and finally knotted his tie. “Look, I'm meeting Claire in Roswell this morning. If we get through by lunch, do you want to go out to eat?”

“I won't have time.” It was her turn to be regretful.

“All right. Dinner for sure, though, okay?”

“Okay.” Happiness rushed through her, then dimmed. “Noelle may be back.”

“I thought you were through worrying about Noelle.” He moved away from her and picked up his suit coat, putting distance between them.