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A.J. couldn’t help but admire Samantha’s quick uptake and no-nonsense style. “Nonsmoker. I’m in for two grand.”
“You’d get the big bedroom then.”
Perfectly in sync, they both looked at Claire.
“What’s your name?” A.J. asked.
“Claire Dellafield. Why?”
“Get with the program,” Samantha said. “We’re forming a rental coalition. You want in?”
Claire stood. “You mean we’d room together?”
“Mental functions seem to be intact,” said A.J. “Do you smoke?”
Claire shook her head. “But I can learn.”
Samantha laughed. “She’s in for the entertainment value alone.”
A.J. nodded her agreement. Plus, she guessed Claire needed this apartment as much as they did. “How much can you contribute to the rent?”
Claire drew in a deep breath. “Eight hundred.”
“That’s forty-six hundred. Surely the rent won’t go any higher,” A.J. said.
Just then, the door to the apartment swung open and two men entered.
“Tavish!” several blondes squealed as they ran towards him, arms outstretched.
“Let this play out,” A.J. suggested. Getting a handle on the opposition always paid off in the courtroom.
Samantha and Claire took her advice, but it wasn’t a pretty sight. The women were fawning all over the man in a sage-green faux leather vest—with fringe. A.J. knew the type well. He might dress a little less conservatively, but Tavish Mclain reminded her of all the rich, middle-aged, self-absorbed Mr. Perfects that her aunt had been setting her up with for the past year.
The dates from hell were one of her prime motivations for getting out of her aunt and uncle’s home. Aunt Margery’s mission was to marry her off before she disgraced the family the way her mother had. With that whole scenario off her plate, she figured she could concentrate all her attention on making her uncle take her more seriously at the law firm. For the past year, her assignments at Hancock, Potter and King had consisted of real estate closings and research. She was the only Potter woman to join the firm since it had been founded, and she definitely didn’t fit into the good old boy network.
But she was going to. And if she could prove herself at the law firm, maybe her aunt and uncle would stop worrying that she would follow in her mother’s footsteps and they would finally accept her.
She needed this apartment. But as she rose once more to her toes and saw the bevy of blondes waving checks in Tavish’s face, she feared the odds of getting it were slipping away. She remembered what Franco Rossi had said about this being the day Tavish Mclain lived the other 364 days for. She could see why. One woman was literally pawing his vest.
A.J. glanced at her two companions. No, they were definitely not the pawing types—which was why she liked them.
Hmmmm. Tapping her foot, she was desperately searching her mind for a different approach when Samantha said, “Stand in front of me.”
A.J. watched her tear the brown paper off the package she was holding.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked.
“I’ve got something in here that may convince Mr. Mclain to give us anything we want.”
“What?” A.J. asked. “A gun?”
“Even better,” Samantha replied, pulling out a wad of silky, black fabric. “A magic skirt.”
A.J. exchanged a skeptical glance with Claire. Then Claire cleared her throat. “Did you say a magic skirt?”
“I know it sounds crazy,” Samantha said as she shook out wrinkles, then began to pull it on over the skirt she was wearing. “But it’s a regular man-magnet. According to the legend, it’s woven out of a special fiber that will make men do anything for the woman who wears it. It’s even supposed to have the power to bring your true love to you…yada, yada, yada.”
“You’re kidding, right?” A.J. watched her shimmy out of the old skirt underneath. The “magic” garment was simple, black, basic. She could have sworn she had one just like it in her closet. She’d bought it at Bloomingdale’s right after Christmas. A quick look around told her that the only one paying any attention to Samantha’s quick change routine was the elderly lady with the poodle and the rock.
“Look, I don’t believe it either, but it can’t hurt,” Samantha said to A.J.
A.J. had to agree with her on that. Jumping up, she glimpsed a blonde with black lipstick, pulling out her pen, ready to sign on the dotted line.
“Follow me, ladies,” Samantha said. Then, leading the way, she cut a path through the sea of blondes toward the man in the fringed green vest.
A.J. looked at Claire and shrugged. “What can it hurt?”
“True,” Claire said. “And if it doesn’t work, we can always resort to Plan B.”
“What Plan B?” A.J. asked.
“We can hang Tavish out the window by his ankles until he agrees to sublet his apartment to us.”
A.J. grinned. “A regular win-win situation.” Then she turned her attention to Samantha as she advanced slowly on Tavish Mclain. With each step, she wiggled her hips. A.J. could have sworn the skirt caught the light and glimmered.
“I’m Samantha Baldwin.” One last step and wiggle brought Samantha within an arm’s length of the man in the green fringed vest.
“Tavish Mclain,” he said as he grasped her extended hand.
“You have the perfect apartment,” Samantha said, beaming a smile at him.
“I call…it…home,” Tavish stuttered as he pumped her hand.
For a moment neither of them said a thing. They just stood there, hands clasped and staring at each other.
“I’d like to call it home, too, for the summer,” Samantha finally said.
“Well, I…Well, I’m sure—” Tavish began.
Then Roger Whitfield and another broker crowded forward, introducing themselves, but Tavish didn’t relinquish Samantha’s hand.
Eyes narrowed, A.J. took a minute to size up the situation. The three men had their eyes locked on Samantha. Even the other women were beginning to notice it.
The blonde in black lipstick waved her check. “Just a minute. I’ve given you a check for forty-five hundred.”
“Roger, give Meredith back her check,” Tavish murmured, never taking his eyes off Samantha.
“So I’ll give you another for six thousand,” the blonde said.
Quickly, A.J. scribbled out a check and tucked it in Samantha’s free hand. Two thousand for the first month would match the blonde’s offer.
“Here you go…” Samantha glanced at A.J.’s check. “Two thousand dollars.”
Tavish smiled. “So you did want to pay all the rent up front after all?”
All the rent? A.J. glanced at the skirt. Had they just rented a Central Park West apartment for the summer for two thousand dollars?
Tavish stuck the check in his vest pocket. “The perfect tenant, wouldn’t you say, Roger?”
“I’d…say…so.”
A.J. tore her eyes from the skirt to check out the broker. Any minute now, Roger was going to drool. The other broker was doing that already. It was time to make her move. “Gentlemen, which one of you has the papers we should sign?” She was pretty sure it was Roger, but at the moment she’d settle for someone who wasn’t catatonic.
“Papers?” Roger asked.
A.J. snapped her fingers in front of his face. “An indemnity clause? Terms of lease? Liability release?”
To her relief, Roger blinked, then fumbled in his pocket for papers. Ruthlessly, A.J. pulled him aside, and made him focus on the lease agreement. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Claire take the other broker by the arm. “You and I are on crowd control. Thanks for coming, everybody.”
The only ones in the room who hadn’t moved were Samantha and Tavish. They were still gripping hands, still staring into each other’s eyes. But Samantha seemed to be perfectly all right as she explained to Tavish that she had two roommates. A.J. glanced once more at the skirt before she focused her entire attention on the lease agreement.
“It’s standard, although I should probably mention Cleo,” Roger said, his gaze drifting back to Samantha. “Could you introduce me?”
“To Cleo?” A.J. asked.
“No,” Roger said, gesturing vaguely toward the woman with the bouffant hair and the rock on her hand. “Cleo’s the poodle, lives in 6B. You’re expected to walk her. It’s part of Tavish’s arrangement with his neighbors.”
“No problem,” A.J. said. She’d see to it that it wasn’t. She wanted signatures on the bottom line before Tavish Mclain could come out of his skirt trance and change his mind.
And she got them! An hour later when A.J. stepped out into the bright sunlight on Central Park West, she gave a little jump of pure pleasure. Not only did she have a new place to live, but she had two new roommates—women she’d seemed to click with immediately. She hugged the knowledge to her.
Not bad for the day that she’d chosen to build a new life for herself.
And then there was the skirt. Samantha had put it in her bedroom closet before she’d taken off for work. If A.J. hadn’t seen it, she never would have believed it.
There was definitely something about that skirt—something that might come in handy if she couldn’t solve the problem of being taken seriously at Hancock, Potter and King by herself.
Pushing the thought out of her mind, A.J. strode toward the corner. She preferred solving things by herself.
1
SHE WAS LATE.
The fact that the pretty, petite and very punctual blonde had not burst through the door of her apartment building at seven-fifteen sharp had Sam Romano’s fingers tingling, and that was a sign that something bad was about to go down. In his ten years as a P.I., his fingers had never failed him.
Nerves. He couldn’t afford them now. Nor could he afford to be thinking about that tiny little blonde with the initials A.J.P. embossed on her handbag. She had nothing to do with the case he was supposed to be focusing on.
Rubbing his hands on his threadbare jeans, Sam shifted his gaze to the Grenelle Museum across the street. He’d had it staked out for five days, ever since the Abelard necklace had gone on display. The museum had hired Sterling Security, the firm he worked for, because they’d wanted to take some extra precautions with a five million-dollar necklace on display.
They’d made a wise decision. Sam knew from the two assistants he’d stationed at the side and back of the building that someone had climbed up the back of the building at 6:30 a.m.
What he hadn’t known until he’d seen for himself was that the man was none other than his godfather, Pierre Rabaut, a prominent New York jazz club owner and retired jewel thief. Sam had gotten a good glimpse of Pierre through his binoculars just before he’d seen the thin, wiry man disappear through the skylight at six-thirty-five.
That had been forty minutes ago. The museum’s alarms would be turned off at seven-thirty to allow for a shift change in the security staff, and Sam was banking on the fact that Pierre would choose that moment to make his escape through the front doors.
Always do the unexpected.
It was one of the mottoes that Pierre Rabaut lived by. And because he had shared that piece of advice and more with the youngest son of an old friend, Pierre Rabaut was going to be caught with the Abelard necklace in his possession…but he was not going to be arrested. Sam wasn’t going to allow that to happen.
For the first time in his life, he was about to betray a client to save an old friend. Pierre Rabaut had been like a second father to him, especially during the days after his mother had died and then again later when his father had met and fallen in love with Isabelle Sheridan, a woman who hadn’t been willing to become a part of his father’s life. Pierre had always been there for him, and Sam was going to see that he didn’t go to jail.
If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well.
Sam’s lips twisted wryly. That piece of advice had come from Pierre, too. But this was the first time that doing his job well had put him between a rock and a hard place. He’d been hired to make sure the Abelard necklace wasn’t stolen. He intended to do just that. But making sure that Pierre Rabaut wasn’t arrested—that might cost him his job.
Flexing his fingers to ease a fresh wave of tingles, Sam stifled the urge to glance at his watch. His disguise as one of New York City’s homeless would be worthless if Pierre happened to glance out of one of the museum’s windows and catch him checking the time.
Instead, Sam shifted his gaze down 75th Street. Two taxis, horns blaring, squeezed their way through the intersection. Halfway down the block a delivery man dropped a case of soft drinks on the cement and then let out a stream of curses. Over them, Sam caught a snatch of lyrics from a rap song pouring out of the open window of a pickup truck double-parked across the street.
And there was still no sign of the tiny blonde.
Not that he should be even thinking about her. He needed to keep all of his attention focused on Pierre. But for the life of him he hadn’t been able to get the woman out of his head. She just didn’t…fit.
He could recall in great detail that first time he’d seen her walking toward him. He’d pegged her for a rich socialite—the kind of woman he always steered clear of. Still, she’d been worth a second glance and the stakeout was proving to be long and boring. A nice fantasy always made the time go faster. So he’d begun to indulge in one.
The easy way she’d swung her briefcase had told him she worked out regularly in a gym. He’d pictured that compact little body of hers in designer workout clothes that clung to every curve, her fair skin slick with sweat. He hadn’t a doubt in the world that she would attack each and every piece of equipment in the gym, one by one, with the same energy and concentration that she exuded when she left her building and headed toward the subway each morning.
Would she make love with that same intensity and passion? The question had barely slipped into his mind when she’d stopped and tucked a twenty-dollar bill into his cup. Startled, he’d glanced up and met her eyes, and for one moment he could have sworn his mind had gone blank. By the time he’d recovered, she’d been halfway down the block, and he’d nearly gotten up and gone after her. Sam shook his head at the memory. He’d nearly blown his cover and gone running down the street after her! No one—man or woman—had ever made him forget he was on a job.
The second day she’d stopped, he’d had his wits about him until she’d surprised him again by speaking to him. She’d asked him if he was interested in getting a job. When he’d said yes—hell, he’d felt compelled to when he was staring into those eyes of hers—she said she’d look into it. Then she’d dropped another twenty into his cup. Thoroughly bemused, he’d gazed after her wondering if she were some kind of blonde, violet-eyed guardian angel sent down from on high to look after the homeless.
The last two days had followed the same pattern. She’d stop, tuck money into his cup and give him little updates on how her job search was going.
Sam frowned as he switched his gaze back to the museum doors. He just couldn’t figure her out. Rich socialites didn’t stop to chat with homeless people, and they certainly didn’t try to find jobs for them.
“Any sign of movement, Mr. Romano?”
Luis Santos’s voice, carrying clearly through the wireless device in his ear, had Sam ruthlessly reining in his thoughts and focusing on the museum. He had two young men, Luis and Tyrone Bass, stationed at the back and side doors of the building Pierre had entered. Luis and Tyrone were P.I.s in training, or so he’d told the judge when he’d arranged to supervise the community service they’d been sentenced to. He hadn’t told either of them yet what he intended to do today.
If he did it right, he would never have to tell them. But the timing had to be perfect.
“Everything’s quiet here,” he said. Except for the rap song, he thought as he glanced at the pickup truck. The driver was reading the morning paper and sipping coffee, seemingly oblivious to the racket his radio was making.
Once more Sam flexed his fingers to ease the tingling. “You got the time?”
“Seven-twenty,” Luis said. “He’s been in there fifty minutes.”
“He’ll be walking out the front door in ten,” Sam predicted.
