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He circled the piano, stopped to run his fingers lightly and expertly over the keys. She recognized the opening of an old jazz standard, one of her dance favorites.
Damn, he could play the piano, too. Perfection was so annoying. Barrie felt a warmth spreading through her and was alarmed to find herself wondering what it would feel like to have him run those skilled fingers over her body.
All right, that has to stop now.
Townsend pushed back abruptly from the piano, grimacing. “The story’s already jumped the shark. It’s not enough that Mayo died of an OD at the Chateau Marmont. There’s some genius of a bellhop insisting that he checked into a bungalow with a young guy who was the spitting image of Johnny Love. Ghosts, for God’s sake,” he said, disgusted.
Now it was adrenaline Barrie felt racing through her, accelerating her thoughts.
A bellhop saw Johnny Love?
Phoenix said Johnny Love was one of Tiger’s favorite shifts.
Tiger had a powerful Hollywood client who paid big money for shifting.
Tiger’s body was moved from somewhere else into that alley.
She’d been right. There was a connection between Mayo and Tiger.
She was very still, letting none of her thoughts show on her face. In fact, she used a little glamour—a temporary illusion, a very unstable form of shifting that her father had taught her when she was just a little girl—to keep her expression neutral, a trick a shifter or shifter Keeper could do to make sure she wasn’t giving anything away.
It was a huge lead. What if Tiger had died here, with Mayo? What if—
Her breath momentarily stopped at the next thought.
What if they both had been killed here? Together?
She had to contact Brandt right away.
She swallowed to be sure her voice was steady and said, “That’s ridiculous. The ghost of Johnny Love? The hotel must be getting a kickback from the ghost tours.”
Townsend laughed, a rich, genuine sound that made Barrie’s face suddenly flush warm. “I bet they are.” Then he looked at her, a long look that made her even warmer. “I think we should have dinner and talk about it.”
She was caught totally off guard. “It’s almost two in the morning,” she pointed out.
“Breakfast, then,” he said. “Brunch. Cocktails. Whatever your body clock has in mind.”
She was itching to get to Brandt, which was why she responded without thinking. Really without thinking. “All I have in mind is bed.”
Townsend half smiled, but even his half smile sizzled through her whole body. “Even better.”
“I meant sleep,” she mumbled.
“Sleep is always good,” he said seriously. “Eventu-ally.”
Feeling completely out of control, Barrie said, “‘Eventually’ won’t work for me. Have a good night.” She turned and walked out of the lobby with whatever was left of her dignity, and immediately ducked into the ladies’ to avoid running into Mick again. She sat in front of one of the makeup mirrors and was extremely annoyed to see the red in her cheeks.
“You look like you’re in heat,” she muttered. But looking in the mirror gave her an idea. She put her hands flat on the top of the vanity, and as she stared into her reflection in the mirror, she slowed her breathing and concentrated on her auric body, the energetic field that a shifter manipulates in order to shift. As her eyes bored into the mirror, she began to see the faint outline of light around her own reflection. She pushed with her mind…and slipped on a different kind of glamour, what she thought of as a beauty spell, that would at least temporarily make her devastatingly attractive to anyone who looked at her. She closed her eyes, and felt the glamour float over her head and settle delicately over her entire body, like a gauzy dream of a dress, a sexy and intoxicating softness… .
She opened her eyes. …
The woman who looked back at her from the mirror had her features and coloring, but magically enhanced: a classic Hollywood goddess, too beautiful to be real. In this moment she could have given Lauren Bacall or Myrna Loy or Rita Hayworth a run for her money.
Barrie breathed in, feeling the pure power of that beauty. Then she stood and went out in search of the bellhop.
With the glamour on all she had to do was smile at the young male desk clerk and say she would just love to talk to the man who’d seen the ghost. The clerk pointed her toward the bell stand with a felled-by-lightning sort of look on his face.
The bellhop was in his late twenties but still had the gangly awkwardness of adolescence, and looked equally starstruck to see Barrie coming toward him.
“M-may I help you?” he stammered.
She gave him a dazzling smile. “I hope so. Did you really see the ghost of Johnny Love?”
“I’m not supposed to talk to any more reporters,” he said without much conviction.
“Good thing I’m not a reporter, then,” she said, and watched him waver, captivated by her false loveliness.
He glanced around to see if anyone could overhear them and then leaned toward her. “It wasn’t a ghost, it was a real person. He just looked exactly like Johnny.”
Not a ghost, then. A shifter, Barrie thought, and felt her pulse spike. Was it Tiger?
“And he checked in with Mayo?” she asked.
“I’m not supposed to say that,” the bellhop said, still enraptured.
“Good thing you didn’t, then.” She twinkled at him. “It will be our little secret.”
As she was turning away from him, she heard footsteps and an already achingly familiar voice speaking behind her. “Ah, there you are…darling.”
Darling? And what’s with the British accent?
As she turned, Mick Townsend was at her side, taking her hand, lifting it to kiss her fingers.
Whoa!
Even as desire rushed through her bloodstream at the feel of his lips on her skin, Barrie was reeling with confusion. What is this?
Mick gave her a look that sizzled through her to her toes as he spoke. The British accent was perfect, one of her perpetual downfalls, as intoxicating as catnip to a kitten. “I’ve just been telling this gentleman about our dilemma, and he’s been kind enough to find us a suite for the night.”
Barrie realized that the desk clerk was hovering behind him, and from the look he gave her it was clear the glamour she’d put on was still working.
She tried to focus and sort out what was going on. Our dilemma? A suite? Even as she wanted to rip into Townsend for whatever game he was playing, her intuition was telling her to go along with him, at least until she knew what was going on.
“It’s a bungalow, darling,” Mick said pointedly, and stroked her cheek, making her pulse skyrocket. “Pool-side.”
Bungalow. Mayo died in one of the bungalows. Her eyes widened, and although she kept her thoughts to herself, she saw Mick give her the barest nod. Can he really have talked his way into Mayo’s suite?
“That’s so very lovely of you,” she told the desk clerk, smiling as sweetly as she could. “We were—”
“—not looking forward to spending our wedding night at the airport,” Mick finished for her smoothly, his fingers now tracing an erotic pattern on her forearms.
Wedding night? Now, that’s just too much. She shot Mick a blistering look, and he smiled at her with mock adoration. “I explained all about the flight delay, our bags being held hostage. But none of that matters tonight. We have this beautiful place, we have each other… .”
He bent suddenly and kissed her. A lingering, promising, maddening touch of that full, firm mouth. Barrie felt the ground cartwheel beneath her.
Mick drew slowly back, his eyes on hers…then slid his fingers down her arm to take her hand and turned her so they both faced the desk clerk. “May we see it?”
Mick steered her after the desk clerk, and Barrie followed along in shock, down an abbeylike hall toward a set of heavy wooden doors. “He’s really putting us in Mayo’s room?” she whispered to Mick. It was a crime scene, or at least under investigation. She couldn’t imagine how he’d managed it.
“Not exactly,” he said, barely moving his lips.
She opened her mouth again, and when he put a finger on her lips to silence her, she could feel the tingle start from somewhere in her core. He nodded toward the desk clerk, and she went along in silence.
The clerk held the door open for them and they stepped outside into the junglelike plaza. The landscaping of the Chateau was lush and tropical—with tiny lights sprinkled in the trees for a fairy-tale glow—and designed for maximum privacy; as they followed the clerk, Barrie could barely see the outlines of the bungalows down the paths that curved off into the foliage. She was hyperconscious of Mick’s hand closed warmly around hers, his thumb stroking her fingers with a light, sensual touch…and hyperconscious that he was one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen. He carried himself like a rock star. She might have put on an artificial glamour, but there was a natural glamour about him that was almost hypnotic. She felt like the mistress of some exotic celebrity, suddenly transported into a Hollywood fantasy.
Ahead, the shimmering water of the pool glowed blue and inviting in the center of the buildings. The lights, the softly rippling water, the light breeze on her skin, the heat coming off the gorgeous man beside her…Barrie was having all kinds of ideas she didn’t want at all. Mick glanced at the pool and then at her face, and she suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling he knew exactly what she was thinking.
They had turned down one of the pale curving paths, and the desk clerk stopped in front of a bungalow that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. There was an arched door with windows on either side completing the curve, white roses and lilies in the planters beside it wafting an intoxicating scent. “Here we are,” the clerk said, and glanced at Barrie. Mick nudged her, and she gave the clerk a big smile.
“Gorgeous,” she said. “We’re so very grateful.”
The clerk opened the door, and she and Mick stepped into an elegantly retro cottage, low lights revealing clean lines and lots of windows with gauzy curtains, and everything impeccably decorated in old Hollywood style: Art Deco mirrors and tile, low curved couches, a small kitchen. Through a half-open door, Barrie caught a glimpse of a bedroom with a four-poster bed.
To her mortification, Mick caught her look and held her eyes before he turned to the desk clerk.
“It’s perfect, my man. We’re going to name our first child after you,” he declared, whipping out what Barrie was sure was a hundred-dollar bill, even as she was blushing as crimson as the desk clerk at the idea of a first child.
“There are robes in the closet, and…well…” The clerk cast around for something safe to say. “Enjoy.”
He backed out with one last furtive look at Barrie as he closed the door behind him.
“Beautiful,” Mick said, looking straight at her with a heart-stopping intensity, and for a moment she wondered if he meant the success of their ruse—or her. She was suddenly regretting changing into jeans and a hoodie. And then she realized where her thoughts were going and ordered herself to focus.
“Was this Mayo’s suite?” she demanded, moving farther inside, partly to get some distance from Mick, who was radiating way too much…everything. In every way.
“No. Two bungalows down,” he said, and she was infuriated to see he was holding back a smile that seemed all-too-knowing in the circumstances. “I saw the crime scene tape,” he added.
“What are you planning to do, break in?”
He turned his hand over and displayed a key in his palm. “Grabbed it from behind the desk while he was ogling you.”
Damn the man, he thought of everything.
“You can drop the accent now, you know,” she told him. It was making her want to sink into that four-poster bed and do unspeakable things to him. Or let him do unspeakable things to her. Or…
Stop that.
She had to keep her head.
“Oh, of course,” he said in his normal voice. “If you insist. Let’s see what we’ve got.”
He stepped to the front door and opened it a wedge to look out onto the dimly lit walkway, then nodded to Barrie. She moved past him through the door, a little too close for comfort. It seemed anytime she got within three feet of him her whole body started to melt down.
Mick came after her. “This way,” he said, and reached for her hand; she pulled away and stopped on the shadowed path. “Why bring me along?” she demanded. Journalists weren’t big on sharing scoops; the whole setup was highly suspicious.
He half smiled in the dark. “Because I needed to get out to the cottages and that clerk was so obviously smitten with you, I knew he’d bend over backward to help if you were involved.”
Barrie had to admit the glamour had done its work. In fact it even seemed to be affecting Mick a little; he kept looking at her in a way that was making it hard to concentrate on rooting out a story or even breathing.
“Are you coming or not?” he asked, and started down the path again.
She stood for a moment, then followed. “And what do you think you’re going to find in Mayo’s bungalow?” she said too crossly as she caught up with him.
The smile disappeared from his face; he looked serious, even grim. “I have no idea, but don’t you want to see?”
She had to admit she did.
She felt a thrill of the illicit as she followed him under the crime scene ribbon, stretched discreetly back from the main walkway. He gallantly held it up for her to slip under, and then they both moved down the path toward the door of the dark bungalow. It was bigger than the one the desk clerk had given them. Two bedrooms, Barrie thought, and higher ceilings.
Mick inserted the key in the lock, and she found herself holding her breath as the door swung open.
They stood for a moment letting their eyes adjust to the dimness.
The bungalow was even more luxurious than the clean-lined and pretty one they had just left. Here there was dark wood, velvet couches and stained glass in the arched windows, with thick Persian rugs on the hardwood floors. The lights from outside were an eerie glow through the colors of the stained glass.
Barrie looked around her in the dark, and even though she knew it was mostly her imagination, she felt a chill, a dark heaviness to the air. Did Tiger die here? Tiger and Mayo both? What intruder was here with them?
Mick moved forward slowly, stepping silently on the luxurious rugs. “Feel anything?” he asked her, his voice low and tense. She was unnerved, wondering what he could possibly mean.
“Creepy,” she said softly, surprising herself.
“Yeah,” he answered, and moved into the bedroom. She stood for a moment in the pools of red and blue and amber light, and then followed him.
The bed, like the one in the other suite, was four-poster, but this one was massive, with heavy and intricately carved posts, and the window screens were covered with iron filigree. There were standing candelabra lined up beside the bed; the whole setup had a medieval look that gave Barrie another shiver. Tiger, what did you get yourself into? she thought, her heart wrenching with sorrow. And then she felt a surge of blistering anger at the middle-aged mogul who had deliberately, maliciously brought a teenage boy into this kind of gilded prison to use for his narcissistic pleasures.
“The Prince of Darkness,” Mick said, his voice taut, almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, and Barrie heard the same strange bitterness in his voice that she’d noticed when he spoke of Mayo in the newsroom.
Why is that? she wondered. And what does he think he’s going to find here that the cops wouldn’t have already taken away?
Even as she thought it, Mick pulled something dark and metallic from his jacket pocket. Barrie’s heart constricted in fear.
Oh, my God…a gun… .
And then she went limp as she realized it was a small flashlight.
He turned it on and shielded the beam with his hand to keep the light away from the windows, then stepped to the bed where he ran the flashlight beam up the post closest to him.
Barrie watched, mystified. Mick stopped the light on the wooden post about a foot above the mattress and leaned in to examine the wood. She could see by the tightening of his body that he’d found whatever it was he was looking for.
