That loss aside, Harry could think of one good reason why. That the martyr was actually guilty. But he wasn’t about to say that to Georgia now.
He headed for the closet. “Then I guess we should get ready and go.”
“Go where?”
“To General Duggin’s estate.”
6:00
P.M.
Georgia thought Harry wanted the two of them to pose as members of the auction house cataloging team. Else, why the research he’d ordered her to do? The research he’d told her he’d done himself?
It seemed he’d changed his mind while she’d been gone from the room, shopping, working out, trying to dig up anything she could on who he was. Because now she was posing as his assistant.
And he was posing as the buyer for a historical conservation consortium interested in the home furnishings the General’s estate was anxious to sell.
They’d left the hotel in the sedan Harry arranged to rent for the day. More of the planning he’d done when she’d been out of the room. She was beginning to wonder if he’d slept at all while she’d been gone.
Or if he was one of those ex-military types who was used to sleeping on his feet, used to existing on nothing but the air that he breathed.
Once on their way, they’d gone shopping. Again. This time, however, he’d driven them to a department store where the evening’s outfits had not cost an arm or a leg.
She was going to wind up this weekend with a better wardrobe than she’d had in years—and none of it she’d paid for herself.
Harry had bought a navy sports coat, white dress shirt, and khaki pants. He looked very casually debonair.
She’d picked out a slim skirt in a charcoal pin stripe and a soft pink twin set with pearls. She looked very properly uptight. The low-heeled, gray suede pumps didn’t help.
Neither had the way Harry wiggled his eyebrows and laughed.
She’d decided then and there, as they’d walked out of the store wearing their new clothes and carrying their old ones in bags, that he’d been having way too much fun at her expense since they’d met.
He’d reminded her that her end of the deal hadn’t been exactly raw. She had new clothes, new hair, and a new face to show for it.
She’d countered that letting herself be bought equated to being his whore—and that she would feel a whole lot better about the situation if she got to be the consortium’s buyer and he assisted her.
He’d shaken his head, told her he’d give up his pimping ways after the weekend, but until then she’d have to get used to calling him daddy.
All of that had happened on the drive from the store to the general’s estate. Now that they were here, she couldn’t even find a comeback. She was cold, and she was starting to shiver, and she so hated this about herself.
Especially since she hadn’t discovered what felt like a massive character flaw until this weekend, when finding herself in the middle of this mess.
Harry nosed the car up against the gated entrance and stopped. He handed her the leather portfolio, the fountain pen, and the pair of clear-lensed reading glasses he’d bought just for her. Then he grabbed her icy fingers and squeezed. “Don’t flake out on me now, sweetheart.”
“I’m fine,” she said, putting on the glasses before clutching the portfolio to her chest.
“Good.” He squeezed again. “Because this car’s not big enough for all the sex we’d have to have to calm you down. We’d need Morganna for that.”
“Morganna?” she asked, because otherwise she was going to start thinking about how good his sex suggestion sounded. The warmth. The closeness.
“The Buick.”
She pulled the glasses down her nose and stared at him over the rims. “You named your car Morganna?”
He shrugged, winked. “She put a spell on me, what can I tell you?”
“You can tell me what we’re going to do if we walk out of here with the dossier in hand.” She glanced through the railings of the monstrous gate. “All this planning and preparing and posing getting us closer is great. But it would be nice not to head into the endgame flying blind.”
“I’ll tell you. I will. As soon as I nail it down,” he said, pushing the call button at the gate to the general’s estate.
She deflated in her seat. “So you are flying blind.”
“More like by the seat of my pants.”
“Is there a difference?”
“Sure. Hold on,” he said, telling the disembodied voice who’d answered his call that he had an appointment with the law clerk working for the General’s attorney.
The gate began to roll open, and Harry looked over. “If I was blind, I wouldn’t be able to see where I was sitting.”
The seat of his pants. She got it. It was dumb, but it did make a twisted sort of sense. She stared out the side window as they made the short winding drive to the front of the Highland Park house.
The structure itself, a two-story colonial, wasn’t overly large, especially not when compared to the monstrous ranch house in Waco. But the manicured lawn and gardens tucked inside the property’s boundary ring of thick woods and the size of the lot earned it the designation of estate.
Harry parked the car in the circular drive. She slung her new satchel over her shoulder and opened her door before he’d even turned off the car.
He grabbed her by the wrist, keeping her from climbing out. “You get overanxious, you’re going to blow this, you know.”
“I’m fine. I’m sorry. I promise I’m fine.”
“You sure? We can make the block.” He wiggled both brows. “Park and swap spit for awhile.”
The man deserved every bit of grief she gave him. “If anyone is going to blow this, I’d say it’s the person using the head in his pants instead of the one on his shoulders.”
His answering smile was so wide, his teeth so white, and his dimples so deep, she almost gave in and called him daddy. But he broke the spell when he said, “That’s my girl.”
She growled. She wasn’t anyone’s girl. She scrambled out of the car to let him know it, but stopped as the front door to the house opened and the law clerk stepped out onto the wide, white brick porch.
“Mr. van Zandt?” The man walked toward Harry without acknowledging her at all. Obviously she blended into the scenery even better than she’d hoped.
“I’m Bob Franken.” The two men shook hands. “I have to say, even out of the blue, your call could not have been more timely. The general was adamant about disposing of all the property not bequeathed in his will before the reading. And I think your consortium will be more than interested in the pieces we have available.”
Georgia, still invisible, frowned as she followed Harry and Bob into the foyer, swearing her next gig as an underling would be to a bigwig rather than a pimp who wanted her to call him daddy. But she quickly pushed that thought aside to make room for something Bob had said.
The general wanted all of his material possessions disposed of ASAP. She’d thought from the very beginning there was something strange about the rush to auction his memorabilia and distribute his library items. And added to that now was selling his things.
It was as if he were wiping away all evidence of his existence. He had no family, having never married and outliving his two older siblings. The instructions with regard to the auction proceeds reflected his lifelong commitment to higher education.
She wondered if the money from the sale of his homes and furnishings would be similarly allocated. And then she wondered what in the world he had left to bequeath to anyone. Pondering the development, she followed the two men who had yet to stop talking as they left the foyer for the living room.
“As you can see,” Bob was saying, “the General’s formal pieces are primarily French antiques.”
All Georgia heard was blah, blah, blah, and proceeded to write down the same.
While Harry and Bob stood near the fireplace, Bob pointing out the intricate scrollwork on the feet of the protective screen, she made her way around the room, jotting notes when Daddy Harry lifted a finger to indicate Bob had said something worth noting.
If the purpose of the visit had not been so vital, the outcome so critical, she would have enjoyed working the room with Harry. She felt as if she were playing in an episode of
Alias
, complete with the conservative assistant costume and the hot operative for a costar.
The men moved from the formal living room to the formal dining room, again with more formal French antiques.
It was a gorgeous home, a showplace, but she hardly paid attention to the salon
canapé
or the matching
fauteuils
or even their Aubusson tapestry and pierced aprons. There was only one thing she was looking for, only one thing capable of holding her interest.
And just as she’d done in the living room, checking out the coffee and end tables, the shelves and glass-fronted cabinets flanking the fireplace, she snooped in the dining room’s buffet, in the drawers of the
enfilade
, recording details of each piece as if she were truly interested in the hardware and the integrity of the interior woodwork.
Every once in a while she’d catch Harry’s eye. And for the life of her she didn’t know what to make of his expression. He was enjoying himself way too much, but this time it seemed less at her expense and more a case of laughing with her, of sharing a private joke, just the two of them.
She liked that, the intimacy of it, the fun of a secret that only the two of them had the code to unlock. It lifted her spirits. Harry lifted her spirits. And coming to that realization brought a hitch to her chest.
Why here? Why now? Why not a month down the road when this was behind her and she had the time to fully appreciate the possibility of having him as a permanent fixture in her life?
Because this is when you need him, you goon.
And that was the truth. If not for Harry, she would’ve barged into last night’s preview reception without a clue or a plan. She would’ve come here today equally unprepared. And that was assuming she would have thought to come at all.
She certainly wouldn’t have returned to the general’s ranch house in the middle of the night, sneaking in, bypassing the alarms and the security guards to search behind his desk drawer’s hidden panel.
Yeah, she needed Harry all right. Needed him to point out exactly how her full-steam-ahead approach was as welcome in this situation as a bull in a china shop. Obviously, her three-year obsessive search had left her with no social graces and very little common sense.
The entourage moved then from the dining room into the library where Bob immediately showed off the massive carved oak, uh, library. She followed the tea party of two closely, wondering how Harry managed to know so much about Louis the XV, XVI, and XVII when she wasn’t even sure she was writing the Roman numerals correctly.
She of no social graces. He of many. Then there was his counter-diving ability, his knife-wielding skills, his bottomless bank account, his affinity for blending in, fitting in, playing a part. And she didn’t even want to get started on the marble statue body, killer smile, and hands that had her panting like a dog for his touch.
She did not pant after men. It was not her personality, not her style. And the only reason she forgave herself the behavioral lapse was because she’d never met a man like Harry van Zandt. She had no experience dealing with his kind. No textbook to study. No files to pull. No history to use as a guide.
The man had actually asked if she wanted to make out in the car!
She knew that he had been teasing, but that hadn’t stopped her from coming way too close to saying yes. Circumstances, again. And nerves. Excuses that were both growing stale and tired.
It would be so much easier to admit that her attraction for him was no longer just lust, that it had grown into something real, something more—
There it was! Oh God! The lockbox!
The one she’d seen in the study at the ranch, now buried amidst stacks of papers on a Louis XV partner’s desk pushed up against one wall.
Blood surged hot and fast through her veins. Her fingers shook; she gripped her pen so tightly she thought her knuckles would crack.
Staring down at the portfolio’s legal pad, she furiously scratched line after line after line on the paper to get Harry’s attention. She needed to get his attention before her heart exploded in the center of her chest.
She glanced over the rims of her glasses. Harry caught her gaze, gave a sharp nod, and asked Bob to continue with the tour. Once the men were out of the room, Georgia went to work.
The plan, if they found the lockbox, was first to check that it was indeed locked. She tried the lid. It was. Step two was to see if she could find a key or pick the lock. If neither effort bore fruit, it would be up to Harry to find a way to try—meaning she would have to distract Bob.
They’d discussed the possibility of walking out with the box, then nixed the idea as reckless. It was in the auction brochure. If they didn’t find the dossier today, they’d get their hands on it tomorrow night along with the rest of the documents labeled miscellaneous.
Today would be better. Today would be free. But Harry had insisted she not worry about the outlay of cash. She was trying not to. She was, however, worried about being caught as she lifted the backside of the box, slipped her hand beneath, felt along the bottom and then in the handle on top for a key.
She came up empty, and so scrambled around in front of the desk, pulling open and digging through drawers—all of which had been cleaned out—then dropping to her knees. She searched the bottom of the table, the legs, every stick of freakin’ wood that Louis had glued together.
Nothing. And she was growing short on time.
She had also just run out of luck.
Because when she finally reached over the stacks of papers and turned the box around, she realized the bobby pins she’d pushed into the hair at her nape weren’t going to do her a damn bit of good as a pick.
The lock didn’t take a key. It took a combination.
And unless Harry was a closet safecracker, today was well and truly screwed, and tomorrow was going to cost them—uh, cost Harry—dearly.
She briefly visited the idea of loading the lockbox into her satchel, but knew if she got the metal box shoved all the way in, she’d never get the big bag closed. She’d certainly never make it to the car without being seen.