Was it hot in there or was that just me? And yeah, that whole just me scenario was a real possibility.
But, crap! Hugh knew!
Despite Elizabeth’s reassurances that he only had eyes for certain assets—which I’m beginning to believe was more wishful thinking on her part than anything else—her husband had definitely pegged Dylan and me from the Cuddle Club.
But he continued to smile. That is, until he turned his attention once more to the bickering in front of him.
I watched the back and forth. So did Dylan and Mrs. Presley.
Tammy was going on about maternal affection. Elizabeth was asserting her place as the new Mrs. Drammen. Allen was being a dick. Seriously. At that point, he wasn’t even speaking anymore, but he just had that total dick vibe.
That went on for a few minutes, until Hugh finally said, “My dears, you’re upsetting Humphrey.”
Humphrey was still down the hall, no doubt sleeping off the Guinness. But that had to mean something significant in Drammen-speak, because the argument silenced at once.
And believe it or not, not ten seconds after that, near normal conversation ensued.
Soon Caryn came back into the parlor smelling like that pine-fresh scent. I thought she’d been gone an inordinate amount of time for such a small task as cleaning up after Humphrey, but hey, what do I know about such things? Okay, yes, I do clean. Just...quickly. Infrequently. Frankly, the whole idea of having a dog around to lap up spills was looking pretty damned attractive.
Caryn offered another round of drinks. Everyone declined. That signaled the party was over. Which was fine with me. I wasn’t getting anywhere here.
It was apparently fine with everyone. They scattered without another word to one another and barely a nod to Dylan, Mrs. P, and me.
Caryn sighed relief. She smiled. “I’ll show you to your rooms.”
“Stairs or elevator?” Caryn asked. Then she quickly added, “Actually, do you mind if we take the elevator?”
“Elevator’s fine,” I answered quickly. And not just out of consideration for Caryn and her bad back. Not that I was opposed to stairs and getting a little bit of cardio, but I’d never been in a house with an elevator before. I was kind of curious.
“Almost forgot,” Dylan said suddenly. “I’ll go get the bags.”
Of course! We’d left them on the step when we’d raced into the house.
“Taken care of.” Caryn pushed the elevator call button. “They’re already up in your rooms.”
“You didn’t carry them, did you?” Mrs. P asked.
“No, I didn’t. Morris must have gotten them.”
“That was good of him,” I said. “Morris seems very handy around here, don’t you think?”
Emphasis on the handy. Yes, I was searching for gossip. A titter. A tee hee. A hint of anything...
“Very handy.” Caryn answered without a flicker of emotion.
“I’m sure Elizabeth finds him particularly handy.” Hint, hint...I all but elbowed her in the ribs.
“We all do.”
Again, nothing. Not a conspiratorial lowering of voice or provocative lift of eyebrow, despite my let’s-share-a-secret wink.
“You really should get that eye looked at,” she said.
Beside me, Dylan laughed.
We took the elevator up to the second floor. I thought it would be tight with the four of us, but it was quite spacious. It lulled more than zipped its way up and stopped with a definite little bounce. As the doors whispered open, I caught a glimpse of Hugh and Elizabeth slipping into the room at the far end of the hall.
Caryn stopped our party at the first door on the left. “Magnus, this is your room.” She opened the door.
"Thank you, Caryn, and good night." Dylan moved past her. “Night, Nanny Jane. You too, sweet cheeks. Sweet dreams.”
Yeah. He meant me. Blech. Pet names.
“Sleep well, honey,” I answered. “Try not to stay up too late reading.”
He acknowledged me with a nod. But not just any old nod—he’d definitely gotten my drift.
Reading. Yes, he’d meet me in the study later on.
Caryn stopped at the next door down the hall. “Okay, I’m opening the door now,” she said looking directly at me and Mrs. Presley. She kept staring but didn’t move.
“Um, great,” I said. “Open away.”
Smiling still, she opened the door slowly and poked her head inside. Then, seemingly satisfied with whatever she saw or didn’t see inside, she opened it all the way. She reached to a panel just inside the door, and the room was suddenly bathed in warm light. “This room doesn’t get much use.”
I looked around in dismay. The “disused” room was equipped with two double beds. You didn’t often see that outside of a hotel room. But that’s where the similarity to a hotel ended. Or at least any hotels I was familiar with.
The beds were elegant but looked sturdy enough. The night table between them was exquisite. Probably not Dix-proof. The vanity and matching chair at the end of the room were definitely not Dix-proof. They looked incredibly delicate. And valuable. As did the lamps and the artwork on the wall. Oh, the havoc I could wreak there...
Mrs. Presley walked over to the nearest bed, hiked her butt up on it, and did the sit-bounce comfort test on the mattress. “Dibs on this one.”
“We’re sharing a room?” I asked.
Caryn nodded. “Hope that’s all right.”
“Perfectly all right,” Mrs. P said. “I like to keep this one close...keep an eye on her. Her being such a wild one and all.”
Okay, I had asked her to roll with the role...but come on!
“The bathroom is right through there.” Caryn directed our attention to one of the doors off to the side. “Feel free to use the dressers and the closet, of course. If you need anything laundered, just let me know in the morning. I’ll see to it.”
Caryn turned back around with the satisfied smile of someone who really knew her job and enjoyed it.
“You’ve thought of everything,” Mrs P said.
Caryn smiled. “I try to. And I’m just two doors down the hall on your right if you need anything in the night.”
That surprised me. Not that Caryn would volunteer to assist us with any problems we might have, but that she was on this floor with the family. Before I could frame a discreet question on the matter—because let’s face it, I’m not exactly the queen of discreet—Caryn supplied the answer.
“I used to have a room downstairs, in the housekeepers’ quarters. But I’m the only full-time, live-in staff, and Hugh likes us all close. So I moved up a short while ago.”
“Was that when you hurt your back?”
Caryn didn’t blink as she looked at me. But her lips thinned, and her confident smile dimmed.
“Yes,” she said. “When I hurt my back.”
“Slipped a disc or something?” I fished for more information.
She nodded. “Something like that.”
She wasn’t volunteering any information, and I would be indiscreet to ask how she’d done it.
“How did you do it?”
Long live the queen of indiscreet.
Caryn drew a tight breath as she walked toward the door. “Accidents happen.”
“What was the accident?”
“Nothing really.”
“But how—”
Slam. She was out the door.
"Geez, why the big mystery over how she hurt her back?" I plunked down on the empty bed across from Mrs. P and stared up at the ceiling.
“Get off your butt and give me a hand, Dix.”
I turned to see what she was talking about. “Help you with what?”
Mrs. Presley was moving furniture. Specifically, that very spindly looking nightstand between the beds.
“Hell,” she said. “Rich people don’t know how to decorate. This room is atrocious. Come help me.”
That nightstand wasn’t the only thing we moved. It was just the first. There was a delicate tall lamp in the corner. I guessed the Drammens hadn’t just run down to Costco to pick that baby up. Following Mrs. P’s direction, I put it in the closet. There was a fancy swag lamp over my bed. It was hung there by a solid-looking iron rod. Yeah, did not want that coming down on my head.
“Well, that’s got to go,” Mrs. Presley said. Apparently she wasn’t in favor of me cracking my head either.
She probably didn’t want to be woken up by the noise.
A pair of framed prints was the next to go into the closet. Next, the ever-vigilant Mrs. Presley suggested we roll up the small Persian rugs on the floor. She didn’t want either of us taking a midnight slip and slide.
“But if I did go ass over kettle, you’d break my fall like Elizabeth did Hugh’s, right Dix?”
“Sure, Mrs. P,” I said, slowly and with as much sarcasm as I could muster. “Sure I would.”
Well, truthfully, I would.
I bent, pulled up the first mat, and laughed.
Mrs. P was folding her ironed undies into the top dresser drawer. “What’s so funny?”
“Look,” I said. “Toilet seat covers for your troll dolls?”
“What are you talking about?”
I flipped the mat over to show her. Round rubber rings had been glued to the back of the mat—one at each corner, and a couple more in the center.
“Huh. Rubber washers.” Mrs. Presley grabbed one up, examining the handiwork. “Wonder why Caryn used these?”
“Well, I’m guessing so the mats wouldn’t slide around.”
“Of course. And it’s a pretty good idea, actually. Economical too. I just would have expected some kind of non-slip underlay or something.”
We finished rolling up the rugs, and I stashed them under my bed.
Now that Mrs. Presley was seemingly done giving me orders, I looked around the large bedroom. Perfect. If my REM sleep disorder kicked in and I started thrashing around, the most valuable stuff had been stashed or moved out of range. Nothing would be falling on me. There wasn’t anything that I could possibly destroy if I flailed around in bed. And if I were to swing at the wall in my sleep, well, it would have to be with one hell of a reach to connect. We’d moved the bed away from the wall.
Mrs. Presley had jumped in and done it for me without having to be asked.
“Thanks, Mrs. P.”
She looked at me as if I were crazy.
“For what?” she asked. “For taking up your end of the lifting?”
“Right. That’s exactly what I meant.” There was no way in a million years she’d admit to actually helping me out. Yet again.
The sudden blare of Elvis singing “Jailhouse Rock” jangled in the momentary silence. The King himself? No, Mrs. P’s cell phone.
“That’ll be one of the boys,” she said. “I was supposed to call as soon as I got here. They’ll both be all shook up. Get it, Dix? All shook up?”
Why yes, it does go beyond her wearing of blue suede shoes. She rummaged through her purse, extracted her phone, and told Cal to wait while she waved me out the door.
“Get going. You’ve reading to catch up on, don’t you?”
Indeed I did.
As Mrs. P consoled a lonesome Cal, I slipped out into the hallway. All doors were firmly shut, and only dim lighting from three pot lights overhead illuminated the way. The elevator? Though I had no less than ten “going down” lines I was dying to try out on Dylan, I decided on the stairs. As quiet as the elevator was, it did make a slight gear-whirring noise and probably generated vibration in the floors. I did not want anyone alerted that I was up and about, sneaking around Drammen House like some cat burglar.
Yeah, that’s it. Like some drop-dead gorgeous, stealthily inclined, sexy, Spandex-wearing burglar who’d stop at nothing to get what she wanted.
Okay, so I wasn’t wearing Spandex—that was for twenty-year-old butts—but the rest of it was apt. Ish.
When I reached the first floor, I made a beeline to Hugh’s study. With any luck...yes! The door wasn’t just unlocked, it was ajar. I did a mental fist pump. Hugh Drammen was a very trusting soul.
I peered around the dim study.
Ah, there was the reason for the unlocked door. Humphrey. I could make out the outline of the dog comfortably ensconced on a plush dog bed by the patio doors. I could also hear him gently snoring. Draped in cozy moonlight, he was doubtlessly still sleeping off the soporific effects of the stout he’d lapped up. Everything in the room was where it should be again. Almost everything. The mat that had slipped out from under Hugh’s feet was draped over a small drying rack.
I probably could have turned on a low lamp. The whole household seemed to have called it a night, so there wasn’t much risk of being discovered. No, the real reason I wanted to leave the light off was that Dylan was still in training. Yes, yes, we were partners. But I was the senior partner. Senior as in more experienced! Not as in get your card out at the local diner for ten percent off any meal before four o’clock.
I wanted to surprise Dylan in the dark. Sneak up on him when he entered the room. Yes, that’s right—teach him to be on the lookout for surprises. On guard at all times.
You guessed it...that whole competitive thing I’ve got going on.
However, Dylan Foreman can be just as competitive.
I had planned to hide under the desk in that hee-hee-hee-I’m-so-clever way I have of doing …well, okay, of doing everything. Hugh’s desk was huge, one of those wrap around ones under which you just know every executive with a lockable office door keeps a sleeping bag.
Oh, and Doritos.
I got down on my hands and knees and started to crawl in but stopped. It was not quite as spacious as I imagined it would be, so I decided to back in rather than get in there and try to turn around. It just about killed me not to make those beep beep, beep backing up noises.
And maybe I should have. Because I bumped into something—or rather someone—almost immediately. My heart jumped. Then a pair of hands landed on my butt. A pair of unmistakeable hands that began doing wonderful things to me. I froze in place as a pair of arms came around me, finding other sensitive places. Any minute now, I’d feel the brush of that fake moustache on my neck...
“Oh, Allen, we’ll have to be quiet. My boyfriend might hear us.”
“Oh, your boyfriend, huh?” Dylan said. “What’s he got that I haven’t got?”
“Chaps.”
“Huh?”
“Chaps. I love ’em.”
“Only chaps? That’s it?”
“Well, he is very tall and handsome, virile…”
On virile, I felt his hands tighten on my waist. I grabbed one of those hands and planted it on my left breast. “Tell me, Allen, what do you think of this substandard breast? Would you call it unremarkable?”
Dylan snorted. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
“Let it go?” I scoffed. “It’s like you don’t even know me.”
“Say,” he said. “I never did give you that Valentine’s Day gift.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You didn’t. You owe me. Big time.”
Oh, how I hoped it was time for Big Time! And yes, that is a pet name for a certain part of his anatomy.
Honestly it had been awhile since we’d had sex. I mean since we’d had down-and-dirty, grind-one-out sex. I so wanted to jump him.
“What did the hot-blooded PI in the elevator say to his ultra-sexy girlfriend on their three month anniversary, which happens to coincide with Valentine’s Day?”
I gulped. “Out of service?” He was doing remarkable things to that breast with his hand.
“Nope, not even close.” He pulled back so I could turn around and stretch out on the carpet.
“Next stop, plumbing and heating?”
“Sorry.” On hands and knees, he moved up my body to nuzzle my neck.
“Penthouse?” I guessed, my voice high and thin.
“Penthouse?” He lifted his head. “No, Dix. That lucky guy said time to go down.”
Damn, he'd beat me to the elevator punch line. Except as he started to slide back down my body, I somehow didn’t care about losing that one.