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Jack considered that for a moment. He made a point of never becoming too involved with a woman. He’d always told himself that it was because he was never in one place for long, and he had no business taking on the responsibility. But he didn’t have to go to a shrink to figure out that he didn’t trust long-term relationships. He’d lost his parents when he was five and his aunt when he was eighteen. Nothing lasted. Therefore, it was just…easier not to get involved. And he didn’t intend to get involved with Corie Benjamin. It was just that… “I’ve never met anyone like her before. She’s different. And she wouldn’t be coming out here to meet her father if I hadn’t called her.”
“Is she pretty?” Franco asked.
“How would I know? I’ve never seen her.” But he wanted to. For the first time, it occurred to him that he was looking forward to meeting Corie for reasons that had nothing to do with his pursuit of the truth surrounding his aunt’s disappearance. Suddenly, he frowned.
“Well, well, well. I never thought I’d see the day that a woman would tie you up in knots,” Franco said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Corie Benjamin is not my type.”
“Anything you say.”
“I’m just feeling a little guilty because I never told her about Benny’s early connections to the mob.”
Franco’s eyes widened. “That’s a biggie.”
“I kept telling myself that I’d do it as soon as she got out here. And now I feel responsible for her. If something should happen…”
“What could happen? You have labored under the suspicion that Benjamin Lewis had something to do with your aunt’s disappearance far too long. The man’s a pillar of the community, for heaven’s sake. Sure, he supposedly had past mob connections, but not since he moved his family out here almost thirty years ago.” Franco rose from the couch. “But just in case our little librarian is in any danger, I have the perfect backup plan. I thought I would store it here while my apartment is in use.” Rising, he strode to the hall closet and drew out a hanger. “This,” he gave the hanger a little shake and for a moment the black skirt hanging from it seemed to catch the light, “will protect her.”
Jack shifted his gaze from the skirt to Franco. “That’s a skirt.”
“Indeed, it is—but it’s a very special skirt. The fiber was woven from the lunua plant that grows only on this one island, and whoever wears the skirt has the power to draw men like a magnet. I’m trying to get in touch with the original owner, Torrie Lassiter. She lives here in San Francisco and I’m trying to track her down for an interview. Supposedly, she started everything by tossing the skirt instead of her bouquet at her wedding. Since then, this little skirt’s become an urban legend.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jack asked.
Franco raised his right hand, a solemn expression on his face. “I would never joke about this skirt. I’ve seen it in action. Since I’ve moved out here to San Francisco, I’ve given some thought to wearing it myself. Getting back into the dating scene is tough. It’s a real wasteland out there.” Franco shifted his gaze to the skirt. “Still…I’m not sure I’m ready. The skirt comes with a little catch.”
“Most things do.” Jack studied the skirt. It looked ordinary enough—simple, black, basic.
“Whoever wears this skirt will draw her true love to her,” Franco said.
Jack studied his friend. He’d known Franco long enough to know when he was joking. But he was serious. And he was sober. “Just how is a man-magnet skirt supposed to protect Corie Benjamin? She isn’t coming out here looking for a man.”
Franco held up a hand. “On the contrary. She is looking for one—her father. And the interesting thing about this skirt is that it has different effects on different men. It’s been known to get some of the women who’ve worn it out of very tough scrapes—including ones involving guns and knives.”
Moving forward, Franco spread the skirt out on one of the couch cushions. “I was going to talk Corie into wearing it anyway. Now I’ll just fit it into the makeover. The skirt is the hook I’m using in my screenplay.”
“Franco, I don’t know…”
“What can it hurt?”
Reaching out, Jack fingered the material. For a moment, he was almost sure he caught a scent that reminded him of the kind of exotic flowers that would only grow on a tropical island. That was almost as ridiculous as the feeling of being watched that he’d gotten on the pier earlier.
Outside on the street, there was a loud sound like a gunshot. Dropping the skirt, Jack whirled back to the window in time to see a large black car give one lurch, then, tires squealing, race toward the corner.
Franco patted him on the shoulder. “That car was just backfiring. You should take something to calm your nerves.”
But it wasn’t the car or the backfiring that bothered Jack. It was the man he’d caught a glimpse of in the front seat of the car. A man wearing a hat and sunglasses with a dog on his lap. For a second, he was almost sure that it was the blind man he’d seen walking his dog at Fisherman’s Wharf.
CORIE STEPPED OUT of the jet way and blinked at the bright sunlight streaming through the windows that ran along both walls of the airport. Well, she was here. Too late for regrets, she told herself as she pressed a hand against the mix of nerves and excitement bubbling away in her stomach.
Tightening her grip on her duffel bag, she glanced at the overhead signs and followed the arrows toward baggage pickup. Jack Kincaid would be there, and her San Francisco adventure would begin. She was determined to make the seven days count.
Eagerly she studied people around her, noting the tiny Chinese woman in the slim black pants and sandals, the Indian woman in a colorful sarong, a luxuriously built redhead in pencil-thin heels and a blue silk business suit that Corie bet cost more than she made at the library in a month. Only by force of sheer willpower did she keep herself from glancing down at her shapeless navy dress and serviceable shoes. In Fairview, she fit right in. In San Francisco she was a walking, breathing 9-1-1 fashion emergency.
Straightening her shoulders, she stepped onto the escalator that promised to take her to baggage claim. She was going to change her image as soon as she could, but for now, she had to focus on meeting Jack Kincaid and his friend with the unusual wardrobe. As she scanned the heads popping into view, she spotted the man who had to be Jack’s friend.
Skimming her gaze over the lime-green walking shorts, orange polka-dot T-shirt and orange-rimmed sunglasses, Corie couldn’t prevent a smile. The whole outfit seemed to work somehow. Then she shifted her attention to Jack Kincaid who was taller than his companion and dressed more conservatively in jeans and a tan linen sport coat. The two men made a very odd couple indeed. The shorter man placed a hand on Jack’s arm, and Jack leaned closer to listen.
For the first time, it struck her that they might be just that—a couple. Jack had said he was bringing a “friend” to the airport, and this was San Francisco, after all. As she watched, Jack grinned at something his companion was saying. Then the dimple that she hadn’t been able to keep from touching on his book jacket was there, too, appearing and disappearing as his grin deepened or faded. What would it feel like to press her finger into that dimple?
The thought had her stopping dead in her tracks.
It wasn’t wise to be thinking about touching Jack Kincaid. Especially since it appeared that he already had someone to touch his dimple. Besides, hadn’t she decided that Jack was just the kind of man her mother had warned her about? “He will lie to you, and you will believe him.”
Well, she wouldn’t believe him—not entirely. In the two days since she’d made her decision to use the plane ticket Jack had sent her, Corie had clarified her goals, and she had a notebook full of doodles to prove it. The library had given her one week off, and she was determined to make the most of it. Not only was she going to meet the man who might be her father and find out why her mother had run away to hide, but she was also going to live it up while she was in San Francisco. She was going to do things she might never have the opportunity to ever do in Fairview—not with Muriel Ponsonby and the quilting circle hovering over her. One thing she was sure of. When she returned, no one was ever going to even think of her in the same sentence as Harold Mitzenfeld again.
Moving forward, she caught what the two men were saying.
“You’ve got to tell her,” the man with the green shorts was saying.
“I’m going to just as soon as I find the right time—after she settles in a bit,” Jack replied.
Corie saw the other man’s brows rise above the orange-framed sunglasses. “There’s a right time to find out your family has a lurid past?”
Corie stepped forward. “Why don’t you tell me right now?”
For a moment, the two men stared at her, and Corie had the sensation that she was being studied as thoroughly as a biologist might study a smear on a slide. No one had ever looked at her quite this closely back in Ohio. It made her wonder it she’d put her dress on inside out.
And then she made the mistake of looking into Jack’s eyes directly. They were steel-gray, cool and very intent. Where in the world had she gotten the idea that he was charming? Without the dimple and the smile to distract her, she could see that this was an intense and driven man who watched and measured everyone. He reminded her a little of a Brontë hero—Rochester right after he’d nearly run Jane Eyre down with his horse.
Jack’s friend was the first to recover. Holding out his hand, he said, “Franco Rossi, at your service. I’m Jack’s landlord and yours, too. Welcome to San Francisco.”
Pulling her gaze away from Jack’s took some surprising effort, but Corie managed it, then beamed a smile at Franco. “Thank you, Mr. Rossi.”
“Franco, please. We’re going to be neighbors.”
The moment Franco released her hand, Corie extended it to Jack. “What is it that you should have told—” The minute his hand clasped hers, her heart felt as if it had turned right over in her chest. Perhaps it was because she was drowning in those eyes. The longer she stared into them, the more they reminded her of fog hanging thick and dark over the cornfields in Ohio. It wasn’t until he released her hand that she felt the weakness in her knees.
“Are you all right?”
It took her a moment to realize that Franco had asked the question, and another minute to grab on to a thought. Those Brontë heroes might have been short in the charm department, but she was sure her mother would have included them in her first commandment.
Gathering her scattered wits, Corie managed to drag her gaze away from Jack’s and smile at Franco. “It must be jet lag. I felt a little dizzy there for a minute. But I never faint.”
“Good to know,” Jack murmured.
She risked a quick look at him and was pleased to note that this time her heart stayed right where it belonged. “What was it that you were going to tell me, Mr. Kincaid?”
“Jack, please.” He smiled at her. “It’s just some of the evidence that I told you about. We can talk about it over lunch.” He glanced at the nearby beltway that had begun to move. “If you’ll just point out your luggage, we’ll be on our way.”
Very smooth, Corie thought but she knew it was a lie. She was almost sure that Franco had been pressing him to tell her about Benny Lewis’s past.
“This is my luggage,” she said, indicating the duffel she was carrying.
Franco took it from her. “Then we’re off to lunch and after that to Lorenzo’s. He does my hair.” He gave her a little shove into the revolving doors.
When Jack joined her on the street, he said, “Franco says Lorenzo is the top choice of the Hollywood starlets when they come to town. And I told him that if you end up with spiked hair, I’ll have to kill him.”
She couldn’t prevent the laugh. And this time when she met his eyes, it was her stomach that seemed to lurch and then tighten. She threw all her effort into dragging her gaze away from his, and that was the only reason that she saw the man with the gun.
Later, she would recall the other details—that the man holding it was standing by the open door of a car, that he wore a hat and dark glasses and a dog sat patiently next to the white cane he was holding in his left hand. But, at the moment, all that fully registered in her mind was the gun.
A woman screamed. “He’s got a gun!”
“A gun!”
There was another scream and people at the curb began to scatter. As they cleared, Corie had enough time to see the man raise his hand and point the gun into the air. Then someone pushed her into Jack. It was like colliding with a brick wall.
“Get down,” she said.
The sound of the shot split the air, drowning out her words, but Jack was already shoving her to the ground.
3
“LORENZO WILL SQUEEZE YOU IN AT TWO,” Franco announced, closing his cell phone and signaling a waitress. “When Cameron Diaz was late for an appointment, he made her wait three days before he rescheduled.” Pausing, he leaned closer to Corie. “Thank heavens I knew him when he was Billy Lawrence from Trenton.”
Jack leaned back in his chair as a waitress slapped down three menus.
“Three Irish coffees,” Franco ordered before anyone could speak. Then he turned to Corie. “It’s the house specialty. They claim credit for originating the drink here in the U.S., and a shot of strong Irish whiskey will do us all good after that unfortunate incident at the airport.”
Unfortunate incident? Jack studied the two people at the table and stifled the urge to pinch himself. Franco punched more numbers into his cell phone, and Corie stared out the window of the café, looking for all the world like Eliza Doolittle getting her first glimpse of Henry Higgins’s world. Was he the only one who was worried about the “blind” gunman who had shot at them at the airport?
Both Franco and Corie had gotten a look at the shooter. Franco had noticed that the shooter had been wearing a fedora and a tan trench coat. Corie had described the gunman as an older man wearing sunglasses with a white cane and she’d caught just a glimpse of a small, fluffy dog.
The moment she’d spoken the words white cane and dog to the policeman, the hairs on the back of his neck had sprung to attention. Could it have been the same man he’d seen earlier at Pier 39—and later in the car that had backfired in front of his apartment building? That was the question that had been plaguing him as Franco had bundled them into his SUV and driven them to Fisherman’s Wharf. Jack wished that he’d gotten a look at the shooter, but he’d been so focused on getting Corie out of the line of fire, he hadn’t been any help at all. What were the chances of seeing two older men with sunglasses, white canes and dogs in one morning? Ordinarily, Jack didn’t believe in coincidences, but in this case the incident was so…bizarre.
And it had all happened so fast. Even now, his memory of the shooting came in flashes—the deafening sound of the shot, the fear he’d felt when Corie crashed into him, screams and then the screech of tires. He hadn’t seen the gunman at all.
Was he crazy to think that the “blind” man had been shooting at Corie? She’d told the police that the man had fired straight into the air, and several other witnesses had corroborated her account. However, his instincts—the ones that seemed to be operating overtime when it came to Corie—told him not to exclude the possibility that Corie might be in danger. But he didn’t have one shred of evidence, and the police were going with the theory that the gunman was a crackpot who’d fired blindly over the heads of the crowd. That was the slant that Jack had taken when he’d phoned the story into the Chronicle. The afternoon headline would read Blind Gunman Causes Havoc At Airport.
Franco flipped his cell phone closed with a flourish. “Mission accomplished. Marlo, my friend at Macy’s, is rescheduling your fashion consultation for five. That will put a little pressure on Lorenzo, but he’s a genius.” He beamed a smile at Corie. “By tonight, you won’t recognize yourself. We’ll go out on the town to celebrate. There’s a great new place in the neighborhood, Club Nuevo. Lots of singles hang out there.”
“Maybe Corie would like to rest,” Jack said.
“Nonsense.” Corie and Franco spoke in unison and then grinned at each other.
Jack found that the exchange made him feel like an outsider. More than that, it made him feel…jealous?
That was ridiculous. But perhaps not as ridiculous as the fact that he was attracted to Corie Benjamin. The moment that he’d taken her hand and looked into her eyes, he’d felt the pull—basic, elemental. And he’d wondered what it might be like between them. Hell, he was wondering what it might be like to make love to her right now. And that was more than ridiculous. It was impossible. He was responsible for her now that he’d gotten her to come to San Francisco. And she might be in danger. He was definitely not going to act on any attraction he felt for Corie Benjamin.
“Look, Corie.” Franco pointed to the bar. “You don’t want to miss the way they make the Irish coffees here.”
Corie turned in the direction that Franco was pointing. The bartender had a row of glass cups in front of him. With one hand he added whiskey to each and with the other a dollop of whipped cream. She might have enjoyed watching the ritual more if she hadn’t been so aware of Jack sitting next to her. Every time he looked at her, prickles of heat raced along her skin and triggered a strange and rather pleasant tightening in her stomach. The sensations were even stronger now than when she’d first looked into his eyes at the airport. She’d never experienced anything like this before.
Jet lag. That had to be it. But she couldn’t help remembering what it had felt like to lie beneath him for those few moments on the sidewalk at the airport. The press of his body against hers, as impersonal as it had been, had set her mind wondering and her body wanting.
Definitely jet lag. He’d never given her any indication that he was attracted to her. As a ripple of applause began at the bar, she stole a quick look at Jack. Up close, he was much more attractive than he’d been on his book cover. Though it shocked her, she found that she couldn’t look at that longish dark hair without wanting to run her hands through it. And she had to clasp her hands tightly in front of her to control the urge to touch that lean, tanned face.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. His lips were thin, masculine, and set in a grim line. Something tightened inside of her, and she could almost feel what it might be like to have those lips pressed against hers. They would be hard, demanding…
Wrenching her gaze away, Corie stared out the window until her heart slid back out of her throat and stopped beating like a bass drum. If she’d been alone, she would have taken out her notebook and tried to doodle her way to some understanding of what she was feeling. Then again, if she were alone, she wouldn’t be feeling this way, and she was beginning to like it. The man she’d had an affair with in college hadn’t even once made her feel the way she did when she just looked at Jack Kincaid. She risked another quick glance, but Jack was looking at Franco. Her heart sank. Could Jack be having the same thoughts about Franco that she was having about Jack? When a strange bitter-tasting flavor filled her mouth, Corie blinked.
Could it be jealousy she was feeling? Ridiculous. There wasn’t a chance in the world that Jack Kincaid could be attracted to her. Besides, hadn’t she read somewhere that all the best men were gay? So it was hopeless anyway.
“Enjoy,” the woman said as she delivered their coffees and hurried on to the next table.
“To Corie’s San Francisco adventure,” Franco said, raising his glass.
Jack didn’t lift his. “We have to talk.”
Corie and Franco both turned to him.
“Am I the only one who’s at all worried about the shooting incident at the airport?”
Franco’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
“I don’t like the timing.” Pausing, Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve been thinking it over, and it’s possible that the shooter was aiming at Corie.”
Franco whipped out his notebook. “A blind hit man. What a plot point!”
Corie set down her coffee. “He fired the bullet into the air. I saw him and so did several other witnesses. The police concluded he was just some crazy person.”
Jack gave Franco an annoyed look before returning his gaze to Corie’s. “I have a feeling—the same one I get whenever something I’m working on is about to go bad. And I just want to cover all the possibilities so that we can take precautions. It’s possible that someone in the Lewis family might not be too thrilled that you’re here.”
Corie’s expression became thoughtful as she considered it for a moment. “True. But how did the Lewis family know I was arriving today?”
“The person who e-mailed me your whereabouts could also be feeding the Lewises the same information,” Jack said.
“Okay. But if they’re so worried, why did they send a blind hit man to shoot at me?”
“Good point,” Franco said and made a note.
“Okay,” Jack raised both hands, palms out. “You’ve got logic on your side there. But what if the white cane and the dark glasses were a disguise? Maybe he could see perfectly well, and he just dressed that way to get close to you or to make sure that he couldn’t be identified.”
“He’s got a point,” Franco remarked as he scribbled on the page.
“Let me get this straight. He could see perfectly?” Corie asked with a smile. “So perfectly that he aimed his bullet into the air and completely missed me.”
