No heavy lifting. Wasn’t that what Celeste had promised when she’d finagled Jack into taking this job? Then why had he spent the past five hours—with a twenty-minute break for pizza at noon—lugging literally tons of old school equipment from the Augusta House communal room out to a row of rented Dumpsters in the parking lot? In 40-degree weather.
Not that he minded the occasional blast of cold air that much. They kept the heat pretty high in the building, and it was brutal work, hauling all that crap outside. Even stripped down as he was to a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, he’d been soaked through with sweat by mid-morning.
Dragging yet another broken school desk over to a half-empty Dumpster, Jack took a deep breath, hoisted it overhead, and heaved it into the receptacle, where it landed with a clatter.
On his way back, he held the door open for Chantal’s brother Calvin, a New York City firefighter who had a battered old bookcase, a big one, balanced on his meaty shoulders. There were dozens of people helping out today—the Augusta House staff and most of the moms and kids who lived here—but Calvin and Jack were among an all-too-small handful of men who’d let themselves get talked into this gig.
“Hey, man,” Calvin panted on his way to the Dumpsters. “You know how chicks are always saying they’re so smart and we’re so dumb? You think maybe they’re onto something?”
“Strong backs and weak minds,” Jack said with a grin as he headed back inside. “That’s us.”
The cavernous, linoleum-floored communal room, book-ended by a curtained stage at one end and a kitchen at the other, buzzed with activity, as it had all day. Now that most of the debris had been cleared away and the usable furniture shoved to the perimeter of the room, it was time to break out the brooms, mops and buckets. Tomorrow they would decorate for Tuesday’s party, which the children, especially the younger ones, looked forward to with an almost frantic anticipation.
Through the open doorway to the kitchen at the opposite end of the room, Jack spied Kat scrubbing down a big steel table with a sponge. She looked about seventeen in her faded Bryn Mawr sweatshirt and jeans, her hair in a slapdash ponytail, her hands sheathed in bright yellow rubber gloves. She’d been cleaning and disinfecting that kitchen all day in preparation for Tuesday’s turkey dinner, her progress hampered by a parade of staff members, volunteers, and delivery men, each with some problem only she could resolve, some decision only she could make, some check only she could write, some paper only she could sign. It was a lot of responsibility on one person’s head; Jack admired her composure, although she was starting to look a little frayed around the edges.
Tugging off his left-hand work glove, he checked his watch. Just barely two o’clock. He’d give it a few more minutes, just to make sure.
“Yo, Jack!” Chantal called out as she crossed the crowded room on her way to the kitchen. “Those chairs still need to go out.” She pointed toward a cluster of cracked old stacking chairs.
“Yes, ma’am!” Jack saluted jauntily as Chantal rolled her eyes. “On the double, ma’am!”
He yawned twice while snugging the chairs together to lift as a unit. It had been almost dawn by the time he’d finally nodded off last night, after hours of lying there in the dark, grappling with his situation.
The message Celeste had left on his machine—you’ve got thirteen more days to, shall we say, close the deal—had served as a crude but necessary reminder of his true purpose in cultivating the acquaintance of Katherine Peale. He’d staged their initial meeting, lied to her face, charmed his way past her defenses—all for fifty thousand bucks.
That was shameful enough. What in holy hell had he been thinking last night, working up that elaborate security system for her? He hadn’t been thinking. So effortlessly had he fallen into his cover role—so pathetically eager was he not just to be with her, but to be who she thought he was—that he’d all but forgotten who he really was: an opportunistic PI who’d do just about anything for a buck.
And, oh, God, he’d almost kissed her. Not because of the job—that was the thing—but because he’d forgotten about the job. He’d forgotten he was just conning her and started to think maybe he was falling in—
“Damn,” he growled as he hefted the stack of chairs and headed outside. “Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.”
It was shame that had kept Jack awake last night. He wasn’t used to feeling like a devious sack of crap, and he didn’t like it one bit. But his long night of penitent insomnia had given him the opportunity to reflect on his situation and formulate a plan for extracting Kat from Preston’s clutches that might even redeem a little of his own erstwhile integrity—or at least not add to the sick sense of shame he’d been carrying around all week.
The only smart thing he’d done last night, he reflected as he muscled the door open with his burden and stepped outside, gulping cold air, had been to rat Preston out, or try to. Kat had to find out he was married. Jack’s sense of decency and righteousness—latent though it might be—demanded it, and although the news would shock her, it would be for her own good.
Thunking the stack of chairs down next to the emptiest Dumpster, Jack proceeded to hurl them in one by one.
Not that he was eager to blow his cover to accomplish that goal; the prospect of Kat’s discovering his own duplicity made his stomach clutch. But at around three in the morning, Jack had thought up a way to break the news to her that would leave him entirely in the clear.
Now to execute his plan. She would end things with Preston when she found out. And she would do it without Jack’s having to seduce her into it, either physically or emotionally, thereby allowing him to salvage a shred of honor in this murky mess.
What then? he wondered as he returned, empty-handed, to the communal room. The right thing would be to walk away from her then. Otherwise he’d only be prolonging the fiction that he was just some affable security consultant who’d saved her from a mugging . . . only to fall for her, hard, once he’d gotten to know her.
Well, that last part wasn’t a lie, but it was the only thing she knew about him that wasn’t. How could he possibly pursue a relationship with her under those circumstances?
He’d blown it. Bad.
And then there was that fifty grand, which would be legitimately his once Kat dumped Preston. The right thing would be to turn it down and thereby free his conscience from the grip of Celeste Worth’s coral-tipped talons. Did he have the moral fortitude for that? Last night, he’d decided he did, and he’d set about mentally unraveling all the plans he’d made for that money. But Grady, who’d phoned him this morning for a briefing—good thing, too, or Jack would have overslept for this gig—had argued vehemently against turning it down. After all, Grady had reasoned, Jack will have saved Kat from Preston without having taken advantage of her himself, thereby, in essence, having performed a good deed. Didn’t that deserve some sort of reward?
Just promise me you’ll think about it, Grady had begged.
Jack, in the process of racing out of the house unshowered and unshaved, had promised.
He took off his gloves, checked his watch again: 2:09.
Show time. Detouring to where he’d dumped his parka, he fished out his cell phone and the folded-up page he’d printed off the Internet at around 4 A.M.
When he entered the kitchen, he found Kat talking to a burly fellow in coveralls that had the name Gus Hamm embroidered on the chest; he was leaning on a handcart loaded with boxes labeled “Young Tom Turkeys” and shaking his head. Chantal, watching from the corner, caught Jack’s eye and gazed heavenward.
“Look, lady,” Gus said as he lifted a box off the cart and slammed it onto the table, “you ordered ’em, they’re yours.”
“But I’m telling you they weren’t supposed to come today.” Kat snapped her rubber gloves off. “I specifically said tomorrow. The refrigerators haven’t even been turned on yet, and they’re filthy. I’ve got no place to keep them.”
“It’s cold outside.” Gus unloaded another box. “Keep ’em there.”
“What, so every dog in the neighborhood can tear into them?”
“That ain’t my problem, lady.”
“No, I’m your problem.” Jack shoved the cell phone and printout in his back pocket as he stepped forward, freeing his hands. “And trust me,” he said, placing himself between Kat and Gus so that he had the man’s full attention. “I’m a problem you don’t need.”
“Is that right?” Gus sneered, but the uneasy way he checked out Jack’s build in the sweat-dampened T-shirt, the heft of his fists curled at his sides, gave him away. “Take it easy, Tarzan. I’m just messin’ with her.”
“Then you won’t mind loading those turkeys back on that cart and bringing them back tomorrow, say around . . . ?” He turned to Kat.
“Uh . . . sometime in the morning?”
Jack said, “Have them here by twelve noon, Mr. Hamm. Otherwise I’ll have to come looking for you, and I get cranky when I’m inconvenienced.”
“Sure, no problem,” Gus said with blustering nonchalance. It took him about twenty seconds to reload the turkeys and beat a hasty retreat.
Chantal let out a low, impressed whistle. “Who’s the man?” She gave Jack a playful punch on the arm, then paused to test the solidity of his biceps. “Kat, honey, check this out. This is how a man’s supposed to feel.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Kat said, a faint wash of pink staining her cheeks. “Gosh, Jack. I didn’t realize you’d be so handy to have around. If you could only solve all my problems that way. It’s been one thing after another today.”
“Speaking of which . . .” Chantal looked chagrined. “I’m sorry to add to your troubles, honey, but Calvin wanted me to tell you he’s not gonna be able to—”
“I can’t hear you!” Kat clapped her hands over her ears.
“I’m sorry, Kat.” Chantal patted her friend on the shoulder. “He just found out he’s got to work a full shift on Christmas.”
Kat collapsed wearily onto a chair. “Great. Now, on top of everything else, we’ve got no Santa. The kids’ll be crushed.”
“I’ll find someone else,” Chantal promised.
“Someone else who’s willing to give up his Christmas morning on such short notice?” Kat asked. “You had a hard enough time roping Calvin into it.”
Chantal brightened. “Hey, maybe Jack’ll do it. You wouldn’t mind giving up your Christmas morning, would you, Jack? Christmas means nothing to you.”
“Which is exactly why he shouldn’t do it,” Kat pointed out. “Even if we could talk him into wearing the costume.”
“Which I’ll be more than happy to do,” Jack said cheerfully, “when hell freezes over. But I might actually know someone who would do it—my nephew. He loves Christmas.” Jack mentally kicked himself as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Grady had snatched Kat’ s purse just a week ago today. She would recognize him . . . except he’d have a beard on, right? And a hat. He could pull it off, Jack decided, as long as he kept a fairly low profile.
“Is he used to dealing with children?” Kat asked.
“He’s an O’Leary,” Jack said with a grin. “There are nine kids in his immediate family alone. And he’s crazy about them.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Chantal said as she headed for the door. “He’ll need the costume we rented. You can take it with you when you leave today.”
The kitchen seemed smaller after Chantal had left and Jack found himself alone with Kat. “Pretty big job, huh?” he asked as he withdrew the printout from his pocket and unfolded it. “Getting this party off the ground?”
“You could say that,” she muttered, burying her face in her hands.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, just . . .” Kat uncovered her face. “I feel like I’ve done nothing but put out one fire after another all day. I’m that close to just . . .” She flexed her hands in an explosive gesture.
“Seriously? You always seem so . . . unflappable.”
“Yeah, my doctor says I’m gonna get an ulcer from internalizing stress. What’s that?” she asked, nodding toward the printout.
“Um . . . oh.” Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all, at least right now. “Nothing,” he said, starting to refold it.
“It’s something about Aspen,” she said. “What is it?”
He unfolded it and handed it to her. “It’s the Web site for a hotel called the Inn at Aspen. I did a little surfing last night. This is the only lodging at the base of Buttermilk Mountain where you can ski in and ski out.”
Her brows drew together as she looked up at him. “I don’t get it. Why did you—”
“It gives their phone number,” he said, pointing. Of course, he’d had it all along, but he could hardly tell her that. “You can call Preston now.”
“Why do you want me to—”
“So you can ask him point-blank if he’s married.”
She groaned. “Jack . . .”
He stepped closer, gentled his voice. “Tell me you haven’t been wondering if I might not be right. Tell me you haven’t had doubts.”
“But if what you think about him is true—and I don’t think it is—wouldn’t he just lie to me?”
“Listen for a telltale pause, or any strain in his voice. See if he dances around the question or just comes out and denies it. Pay attention, and you’ll know right away if he’s lying.”
She stared at the printout.
He withdrew the cell phone, held it out to her.
She took it. “If I’m satisfied with his answer, you let the matter drop. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Kat punched out the number, held the phone to her ear. Jack heard it ringing on the other end, having cranked the volume all the way up so he could effectively listen in. A woman’s muted voice said, “The Inn at Aspen. How may I direct your call?”
Kat said, “Preston Worth’s room, please.” With a glance at Jack, she added, “He probably won’t even be there.”
No, but Celeste would. Jack stepped back and crossed his arms, resisting the urge to snatch the phone out of her hand.
The call was answered on the first ring. “Hello?” Celeste must have been waiting by the phone.
Kat blinked. “Um . . . I think I might have the wrong room. I’m looking for Preston Worth.”
“I’m his wife. If this is the masseuse, he’s on his way there now.”
Kat stared blankly for a moment. “I’m sorry. Did you say . . . you’re his . . .”
“His wife. Celeste Worth.” There came an ominous pause. “Who is this?”
Kat opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The color had leached from her face.
Celeste’s voice turned hard. “I know who you are, Miss Peale. Preston really should have known better than to give you this number.”
“I . . . he . . .”
“Enjoy those diamond earrings, ’cause they’re the last thing you’re getting from him in a tiny little velvet box. Underneath it all, you’re just another high-priced whore. You weren’t his first, and I’m sure you won’t be his last.”
Click.
“Kat?” Jack said softly, lifting the phone from her hand.
She continued to stare into middle distance. Her eyes were shiny, too shiny. The printout was balled up in her fist.
“Oh, Kat, I’m sorry. I . . .” He closed a hand over her shoulder.
She flinched at his touch, sprang off the bench. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
He followed behind her as she grabbed her trench coat off another chair and bolted toward the back door. “I’ll come with—”
“No, I’d rather you didn’t,” she said, her voice quavering as she pulled open the door. “I just need some fresh air. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
But, of course, she wasn’t.