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  Never Trust A Lady

  Kathleen Creighton

  Appearances can be deceiving…THE MAJOR PLAYER: Embittered Interpol agent Tom Hawkins. He'd sworn off women and family – until he met a suspect he couldn't forget, maddeningly attractive Jane Carlysle…

  THE PAWN: Divorced small-town mom Jane Carlysle – known to complain that nothing exciting ever happened to her. But that was about to change – all because of an irresistible, enigmatic stranger whom she found captivating in more ways than one…

  THE GAME: Who Can You Trust?

  THE STAKES: Higher than either one of them could have imagined. They were playing for keeps – as far as each other was concerned!

  Kathleen Creighton

  Never Trust A Lady

  © 1997

  Dear Reader,

  It’s summer. The days are long…hot…just right for romance. And we’ve got six great romances right here, just waiting for you to settle back and enjoy them. Linda Turner has long been one of your favorite authors. Now, in I’m Havireg Your Baby?! she begins a great new miniseries, THE LONE STAR SOCIAL CLUB. Seems you may rent an apartment in this building single, but you’ll be part of a couple before too long. It certainly works that way for Annie and Joe, anyway!

  Actually, this is a really great month for miniseries. Ruth Wind continues THE LAST ROUNDUP with Her Ideal Man. all about a ranching single dad who’s not looking for love but somehow ends up with a pregnant bride. In the next installment of THE WEDDING RING, Marrying Jake, Beverly Bird matches a tough cop with a gentle rural woman-and four irresistible kids.

  Then there’s multi-award-winning Kathleen Creighton’s newest, Never Trust a Lady. Who would have thought small-town mom Jane Carlysle would end up involved in high-level intrigue-and in love with one very sexy Interpol agent? Maura Seger’s back with Heaven in His Arms, about how one of life’s unluckiest moments-a car crash-somehow got turned into one of life’s best, and all because of the gorgeous guy driving the other car. Finally, welcome debut author Raina Lynn. In A Marriage To Fight For, she creates a wonderful second-chance story that will leave you hungry for more of this fine new writer’s work.

  Enjoy them all, and come back next month for more terrific romance-fight here in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Leslie J. Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  Prologue

  Tom Hawkins hit the steering wheel with the heel of his hand as a silver Peugeot zipped around him on the right with barely inches to spare. “Idiot!” he snapped, adding his favorite filthy epithet in French.

  The traffic on the Comiche President John F. Kennedy had come to a halt once more, to the symphonic accompaniment of blaring horns and shouted insults. Hawk glanced at his watch and swore again, softly and this time in English. No way around it, he was going to be late for his meeting with Loizeau.

  He settled back with a resigned sigh and reached for his cigarettes, deliberately avoiding even a glance at the spectacular Mediterranean view on his left, where windsurfers’ sails swooped and darted like butterflies over molten copper breakers. It was just such scenes of almost searing beauty that made him hate this city so much. Marseilles reminded Hawk of New Orleans. It seemed to him that there was something false about both places… something sinister and treacherous lurking just beyond the raucous gaiety. The face of evil behind a Mardi Gras mask.

  Death riding on a carousel, smiling and waving to the children as she goes round and round, biding her time…

  Hawk’s cigarette broke in two as he stubbed it out in the car’s ashtray. He’d blocked the image almost before it had formed in his mind, but the lapse, however brief, left him shaken.

  It was full dusk when he pulled up in front of Loizeau’s antique and curio shop, inconveniently located in the labyrinthine quarter of old Marseilles known as Le Panier. The streets in The Basket were largely deserted at this hour, most of its presidents locked up safe and snug in their upstairs apartments, and all sensible tourists apparently heeding their guidebooks’ warnings against being caught in the area after dark.

  It was very quiet; he could barely hear the clanking of the masts in the harbor below. What sounds there were carried through the narrow, sloping streets on dancing tendrils of the mistral, along with the smells of fish, fuel and cooking. Somewhere a baby cried, a radio screeled Middle Eastern dissonances; rival cats sang threats to each other in a nearby alley. A lone car engine gunned, shifting gears, then growled away into silence.

  As he stepped out of the car and turned the key in the door lock, Hawk found himself discreetly, and out of old habit, checking to make sure his weapon, a nice Walther 9-millimeter pistol, was where it should be, nestled in its holster against the small of his back.

  He paused, fingers still curled around the car keys, to study the building in front of him. Gray stone and stucco, pocked with patches of decay like open sores, but fresh white paint, he noticed, on the wooden door and on the louvered shutters that flanked both second-story and street-level windows. A bedraggled red geranium bloomed in a warped wooden box right below a hand-lettered sign in the downstairs shop window that said, FERMÉ. The other ground-floor windows along the gently curving street were dark and tightly shuttered, while the second- and third-floor shutters stood open to the warm spring wind, spilling yellow light and looping ropes of softly swaying laundry across the darkening canyon below.

  Loizeau’s shop was dark, too, but the shutters were still folded back, open and welcoming, and above Hawk’s head the living quarters’ windows were closed up tightly, with not the faintest gleam of light leaking through the slats.

  Noting-even enjoying a tittle-the small frisson of unease that stirred across the back of his neck, Hawk stepped to the door of the shop and raised a hand to knock. For a moment more he hesitated, then tapped lightly on the thick, ageroughened wood. He listened, then, calling out, “Loizeau? Ouvrez, s‘il vous plaît,” tapped once more.

  He drew a breath, held it and closed his fingers around the doorknob. It turned easily. He froze, but only for an instant. His gun was already warm and heavy in the palm of his hand as he eased the door open and slipped silently through it.

  He knew at once. He could smell it. Death had been here, recently and almost certainly with violence.

  Every sense-including a well-developed sixth-on full alert, Hawk crouched low and waited. He listened with every nerve, every cell in his body, listened for the sounds of fear and menace, stifled breathing, adrenaline-driven heartbeats, the brush of fabric over gooseflesh, the trickle of sweat, the stirring of hackles. Nothing. But his instincts had already told him the room was empty. Whoever had brought Death into it was gone.

  But not long gone. If he needed more evidence of that fact, it came when his free hand, braced on the floor for balance, encountered a sticky warmth. He noted it automatically and without revulsion, while another part of his mind was on instant replay, reviewing every detail of every impression it had recorded from the moment he’d driven into that street. Crying baby, radio, fighting cats…a car shifting gears, driving away…

  Five minutes, he thought. If I’d been five minutes sooner…

  He stood, his movements brisk and efficient now, hitting the light switch with his elbow as he tucked his gun back into its holster. The shopkeeper, Loizeau, lay on his back near the door and stared sightlessly at the ceiling. He appeared to do so with three eyes; the one in the center of his forehead oozed a dark, congealing trickle. Other than that, oddly enough, his face was untouched. It was the back of his head and most of its contents that had splattered over the glass case immediately behind him. A glass case filled with lovely things gathered from the far corners of the world, trinkets made in cloisonné. beautiful
objects of ivory, jade and gold.

  Hawk didn’t bother to feel for a pulse. An easy death, he thought, gazing dispassionately at the iron-gray moustache that framed a mouth frozen in an 0 of eternal surprise. The man probably hadn’t even seen it coming. So the killer was a real pro-a thought that didn’t cheer Hawk. It meant that, in all likelihood, he wasn’t going to find what he’d come for.

  Still, he had to be sure. Regretfully aware of what he was doing to someone else’s crime scene, he began a careful search of the body and its vicinity. After giving the same attention to the cluttered desk, with as much success, he paused, fingers drumming restlessly on the blotter. Hawk didn’t suffer defeat well. His mind was once again on rewind, zapping back to this afternoon’s telephone conversation with Loizeau…

  “Oui, monsieur, I can have the information for you, but you understand, the time difference in the United States-”

  “I understand. You are absolutely certain the item I am interested in was shipped-”

  “Oh, yes, yes, quite certain. I remember that consignment very well. The seller insisted it was to go to Rathskeller’s and to no one else. But there will be no problem, monsieur, no problem at all. I have here the shipping receipt, I am certain they will have no problem tracing it. Perhaps you wish to make a telephone bid-”

  “I might just do that. I’m interested in the one painting, as I believe I mentioned. My wife-you understand, she has her heart set on it. I’d like to surprise her. If you can get me the lot number-”

  “Yes, yes, of course, monsieur. I understand very well. If you would care to call again after sieste…shall we say, four o’clock? I will have the information for you by that time.”

  “I’d rather come by the shop, if that’s okay. How late are you open?”

  “Until six, monsieur. Bon…bon…I look forward to being of service…”

  Hawk stared down at his restlessly drumming fingers and at the thick paper blotter beneath them, willing his mind to methodical processes.

  “I have here the shipping receipt.” Okay, if the shopkeeper had had it, where was it now? Gone, of course, having almost certainly left with whoever had left the man’s blood and brain tissue congealing on the glass display case. Why? Because the information the killer-and Hawk-needed was written on it.

  Hawk’s fingers stopped drumming and began instead to stroke the surface of the blotter, slowly, delicately, like a lover’s caress. He could see Loizeau, picture him sitting here in this very spot, pulling the phone closer as he checked the telephone number on the shipping receipt. Picking up a pen, poising it over that same receipt while he waited for the overseas connection. Smiling, nodding as he jotted down the lot number. That piece of paper, the shipping receipt, was gone. But the blotter…

  It took him longer than he would have liked. He kept having to remind himself to go slowly. Be careful. Take it easy, Hawkins… don’t blow this. He even felt a little silly doing it, painstakingly rubbing graphite over a small piece of white paper, like making leaf rubbings in kindergarten.

  Silly? There was a dead body cooling at his feet. And maybe a lot more lives-uncounted thousands of lives-at stake.

  So he kept at it, while darkness crawled like a villain through the streets outside the shop and tension cramped his hand and coiled around the back of his neck, and in the end his hunch and his patience paid off. It was there, all right, imprinted in the blotter where Loizeau’s hand would have rested as he sat at his desk with the telephone cradled between his ear and shoulder, busily making notes. Hawk’s rubbing produced a perfect negative in the shopkeeper’s neat, if somewhat prissy, hand: Rathskeller’s -Lot #187, 3/22, Arlington, Virginia.

  He sat for a moment, looking down at the piece of paper in his hand. Then, releasing his breath with a soft hissing sound, he folded it once and tucked it away in his shirt pocket. Like it or not, it looked as though he was going home.

  Chapter 1

  The evening air was soft and smelled of lilacs. It flirted with the draperies at the long, open windows, played around the edges of the ballroom like a maiden too shy to join in the dance. Out on the glittering dance floor, laughing couples dipped and whirled to the strains of a waltz, in breezes of their own making.

  “Jane? Dear, are you coming?”

  With regret, Jane Carlysle allowed herself to be pulled out of the eighteenth-century Viennese ballroom and back to the foyer of the West Arlington Community Center, where her friend Connie Vincent was waiting for her with, it appeared, some impatience.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, drawing her fingertips once more across the silky surface of the ornately carved baby grand piano she’d been leaning against. “I was just…coming.”

  “Do you think this is for sale at this auction?” she asked Connie, who was peering at her over the tops of the half glasses she wore perched on the very tip of her nose-glasses that were kept from jeopardy only by virtue of the chain that was attached to the earpieces and looped around her neck.

  “The piano? I should imagine so. It has a tag and a lot number, hasn’t it? Here, dear, why don’t you queue up for registration while I go and grab us a couple of catalogs.”

  “How much do you think it’ll go for?” Jane persisted with faint hope, although she was sure she knew the answer.

  Connie shot her an amused look as she confirmed it. “Oodies.”

  Shuddering, Jane muttered. “I thought so. I have fatally expensive tastes. As you know.”

  Jane knew Connie had good reason to be familiar with her tastes, since Connie’s shop was directly across from the bank where Jane worked, and right next door to Kelly’s Tearoom and Bookshop where she usually ate lunch. She and the antique shop’s new owner had hit it off right away, although Jane wasn’t quite sure why. The truth was, they had very little in common. Connie was originally from London, unabashedly middle-aged. unmarried and childless, though Jane had an idea there had been a Mr. Vincent somewhere in a rather murky past. Now, though, Connie’s life seemed to be her business-antiques, a subject upon which she seemed to be something of an expert-and travel.

  When Connie wasn’t out of town on one of her buying trips she and Jane had lunch together several times a week at Kelly’s Tearoom. What someone as well traveled and sophisticated as Connie found in the relationship, Jane couldn’t imagine. She, on the other hand, thought the English antiques dealer was the most interesting person she’d ever met. She particularly enjoyed hearing about all the exotic places Connie had traveled to. Vicarious adventures, after all, were probably the only kind she would ever experience. With the exception of the couple of years encompassing her divorce, Jane’s life had been notably uneventful, and she saw very little likelihood that things were going to change much in the future.

  While Connie went in search of catalogs, Jane joined a small knot of people loosely bunched in front of the registration desk. While she waited her turn-and for Connie to return-Jane studied the crowd that had gathered in the community center’s carpeted foyer, awaiting the opening of the auditorium doors. People-watching was an occupation she’d always enjoyed, and this gathering of veteran auction-goers seemed an interesting and varied bunch. Male and female in almost equal number, rather quirky in their dress, most of them. Quirky, but prosperous-antiques were expensive. Mostly middle-aged, or older.

  Jane suddenly had to hide a smile. She was remembering what her daughter Tracy had said to her on the phone when she’d mentioned she was going to an auction with Connie.

  “Mom, antiques? You’re never going to meet any decent men at an antique auction. Trust me-they’re all these wimpy old gray guys with glasses on the ends of their noses. Mom, listen, the best place to meet cool guys is at a car auction-better yet, trucks. What you do is, you act really helpless, like you don’t know which one to bid on…”

  Honestly. Sometimes she just had to laugh at Lynn and Tracy’s efforts to set her up with male companionship-like worried mamas with a spinster daughter on their hands. But the truth was, she’d accepted
long ago that she would likely spend the rest of her life without a partner. She’d accepted it when she’d made the decision, at nearly forty, to end her marriage of twenty-one years. The idea seemed to distress the girls when she pointed it out to them, but Jane knew that the odds were against her finding anyone, given her age and a lifestyle that included mostly other women, retirees and college students. And especially given that she had no intention whatsoever of going out and looking.

  Not that she hadn’t thought about it…having a man in her life again. Not that she didn’t miss some aspects of male companionship. She missed sex, of course. She really did. It made her very sad, sometimes, to think that she was never going to feel that particular tingle again, never going to feel a man’s hands touching her in intimate places, never feel the weight of a man’s body, the smell of him…the warmth… Oh, dear. Okay, she missed it a lot.

  But the rest-the companionship and the sharing, reaching out to take someone’s hand walking down a rainy street, reading aloud from the paper over breakfast coffee, laughing over some silly private joke, finding each other’s eyes across a crowded mom-those were things she’d never known, even when she was married. She couldn’t very well miss something she’d never had.

  Could she? And if not, what was this misty, achy feeling all of a sudden? Bother.

  She was normally a positive, optimistic and upbeat person. She wasn’t sure what had made her thoughts take off in such unexpected directions, unless it had something to do with Lynn going off to Europe in a couple of months and Tracy choosing a college clear out in California.

  She was glad when Connie returned with her arms full of catalogs and a combative gleam in her eyes. The last person ahead of Jane in the registration line was just moving aside. Thrusting the stapled pages of auction listings at Jane, Connie snatched two information cards and moved quickly to an adjoining table.