delicately sculpted in green glass. Even in that odd light, the tiny ornament had so much brilliance that the plant almost seemed alive.
“You can overwater that one to your heart’s content and it still won’t die on you,” he remarked. He glanced over at her. “Good Lord, Kay, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s absolutely beautiful.”
Tears trembled in her eyes. She reached over to give him a swift hug, but when she tried to move back, his arm tightened around her shoulder. She felt the brush of his lips in her hair. “Aren’t you silly?” he whispered.
“I don’t cry in a real crisis, you know. When the chips are down, I remain cool and levelheaded. I just have this problem, with weddings, and old movies-”
“And presents.”
“It’s ridiculous, and embarrassing.”
“It is not,” he denied.
She glanced up at him, her lips curving in a smile. “You’re in an argumentative mood, aren’t you?”
“I am not.”
They both chuckled, and ended up laughing the rest of the drive and afterward, even during the tedious hour they waited for the late plane, carrying paper cups of cold coffee as they wandered around the Spokane airport. “When are you going to tell me what kind of business dinner this is?” Kay asked wryly. “I mean, do you do this often? Pick up people at an airport, take them to dinner and then just send them back on a plane again?”
“Not often, exactly.” Mitch cleared his throat suddenly. “Hemerling,” he admitted, “is a character. Actually, he’s sort of a fly-by-night crook.”
“A legal crook,” Mitch corrected himself promptly, and shot her a sidelong glance. “And if you don’t enjoy this dinner, I’m going to be disappointed. The first hour will be boring for you, Kay, but the rest…”
The loudspeaker announced the arrival of the flight they were waiting for. Kay watched the passengers deplane, expecting…what? Someone who looked like Mitch?
When the palm at her back urged her forward to greet Stan Hemerling, she nearly gaped at the man whose hand was stretched out to hers. Stan was short, with stiff gray hair and slits for eyes. His suit was rumpled, and he clutched a worn briefcase under his arm as if it held gold. His eyes shifted everywhere, lighting once with masculine appraisal on Kay-she stiffened furiously-before blinking at everyone else in sight. He resembled a gangster in a B movie.
This was the kind of man Mitch did business with?
Kay rearranged her coffee cup for the seventh time. When the handle on the cup was perfectly aligned with the spoon, she glanced up on the off chance that she would catch Mitch looking her way.
Their eyes didn’t meet, which was definitely good news for Mitch. Sooner or later he’d have to give in, and when he did, she was going to murder him. Nothing fancy, no thrown knives or judo chops. Lethal eye darts were all she had in mind.
“So, like I was telling you, Kay,” Stan said earnestly, “half the people live underground in sandy-clay houses. It’s the only way they can bear the heat. There isn’t a tree for hundreds of miles, and men have made fortunes selling drinking water-it’s that hard to come by.”
“Fascinating,” Kay murmured. “Southwestern Australia, you said?”
“Coober Pedy,” Stan clarified.
The waitress stopped to refill their coffee cups, which would have been the ideal time for Kay to catch Mitch’s attention. If Stan hadn’t been
“A dust storm’ll howl for days in that part of the world, it will,” he told her. “Dust’ll rise up to fifteen thousand feet. You can’t see sky nor anything in front of you. When it’s all over, the whole town looks like it’s covered in ash.” Stan leaned back, rubbing his slightly protuberant belly as he picked up his coffee cup again. Kay had long since erased the gangster image. Stan’s rather sleazy appearance was only the result of living on a plane for three days. That he liked to clutch his briefcase-well, to each his own. And as for the slitted eyes-it wasn’t his fault he was born looking shifty. “And the temperatures-Lord, the temperatures at the height of the season’ll reach a hundred and thirty, day after day, and a man’ll work for months in that sun for nothing more than a promise of potch.”
“Potch?” Kay questioned.
Stan glanced at her with surprise. “The common stuff. No fire.”
“Ah.” She nodded. It would be nice if she had the least idea what he was talking about.
Stan hadn’t said so much as two words until Kay had asked him where he was from. He hadn’t shut up since.
Mitch had greeted the man with a firm handshake and introduced him to Kay. From then on, aside from ordering dinner from wine through dessert, Mitch had said very little. Twice she’d caught an amused half smile on his face, but there was no smile in his eyes for his colleague-or whatever Stan Hemerling was.
And while Stan had more moves than a nervous cat, Mitch remained totally laid back and relaxed.
Kay was as strung up as barbed wire. What
“We’ve been working together going on five years now, I’d say, right, Mitch?”
“Around that.”
“Really-” Stan turned again to Kay with another of his off-center smiles “-we’ve been more friends than business partners. His father brought me home one time to…uh…liven up Mitch’s life, and I sure enough did that. Took him for a ride on one flawed stone, but after that I taught him everything I knew and then some. Mitch took a while to forget that feathered culet, though, didn’t you, Mitch?”
Mitch smiled. “There’s nothing you taught me that I’ve forgotten,” he said dryly.
After the third cup of coffee, Stan rose with polite excuses and headed for the men’s room. Kay whirled in her chair with lips parted, prepared to cannon out four thousand questions, when Mitch said a quietly appreciative thank-you.
So much for the wind in her sails. As if she hadn’t just listened to an hour of incessant prattling on a subject she couldn’t fathom, she felt a soft quiet steal over her. Mitch’s eyes were warm. And as provocatively intimate as naked skin. Mitch gave her the feeling he could see through to bare flesh, at will. Like now.
“I thought you’d like the stories about Australia,” Mitch said quietly, “but I’d forgotten the way he takes for granted that everyone’s in the business. I’ll fill you in on the lingo later, Kay-but right now I just want to tell you I appreciate your patience with him. Not that I don’t like the old devil myself. But I find it almost impossible to concentrate, with his incessant talking, and a few minutes from now I’ll need every ounce of concentration I can beg, borrow or steal.” Mitch signed the check, handed it to the waitress and rose. “I’ll be a bit disappointed if he didn’t at least whet your curiosity,” he murmured as he steered her through the crowded restaurant lobby to the motel entrance.
She simply tossed Mitch a glance, as Stan ambled back into view. Why on earth should she be curious? Simply because a man flew in from a few thousand miles away just to have dinner? Simply because that same man rambled on about Cooper Pedy and potch and feathered culets as if such things should be familiar to her? Simply because the man didn’t seem to have two figs in common with Mitch? Simply because the men were now getting a key to a motel room?
“In for a dime, in for a dollar,” Kay muttered darkly as she felt Mitch’s palm at the small of her back, leading her inexorably toward room 114. Even the number had a sinister sound.
“Same room as last time,” Stan mentioned, as if that thoroughly satisfied him.
Kay smiled happily.
She continued to smile happily as Mitch opened the door to a bedroom, done tastefully in blues and greens. When the three of them were inside, Stan closed the drapes while Mitch locked the dead bolt. Kay couldn’t think of anything equally clever to do. She set down her purse. That took less than half a second. Not that she felt uncomfortable because the double bed took up eighty percent of the available space, but she just wasn’t used to business meetings in these particular surroundings. Now, with just Mitch alone, she might not have minded.
By the time she turned around, the standard motel desk was covered with a white velvet cloth. Mitch was
