Leigh Michaels – A Convenient Affair (страница 6)

“Why are you so sure I’ll take money for it? Maybe, if you tell me how Isobel got her hands on it, I’ll feel sorry for you and give it back for nothing.”

And donkeys will fly, he thought. He hadn’t intended to sit around with her long enough to explain it all, but he supposed there was no real reason not to tell her the Winston side of the story. It might be interesting to find out how it compared to whatever Isobel had told her. “All right, you asked for it. The Captain brought the box home from a trip to the Orient as a gift for his bride, and from then on it was passed down through the generations, given to the oldest child on his or her wedding day.”

“The Lovers’ Box,” she said softly. “Why not call it the Bridal Box?”

“Since I wasn’t there when the name originated, I have no idea. At any rate, the box became a sort of talisman, because through all the decades, none of those marriages failed.”

“And now I suppose you’re planning to get married, so you want it back. That will disappoint Kitty Stephens. You didn’t even give her a fair chance—”

“I have no intention of getting married.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Cooper eyed her warily. “Why’s that?”

“Oh, not because my mind runs along the same channels as Kitty’s does,” she assured him airily. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you get married. But you see, I’d have bet you weren’t the superstitious sort who would care about either a trinket or a legend—so it’s a relief to know my prophetic abilities haven’t gone completely on the fritz. You’ve left the question unanswered, of course. If you don’t want the box for yourself, why is it so important?”

“The Lovers’ Box should have gone to my mother on her wedding day. Instead, not long before my parents were married, Isobel persuaded my grandfather to take the name literally and give the box to her instead.”

Hannah’s eyes weren’t stormy anymore, but they were darker than Cooper had ever seen them before—like deep, still pools at the edge of a quiet lake. He could almost feel himself teetering on the shore. A man could drown in those eyes if he wasn’t careful.

She was frowning. “I don’t quite see—”

“They were lovers,” he said grimly.

“Isobel and your grandfather were—No.”

Cooper nodded. “Paramours. Hanky-panky partners. Cohorts in the horizontal waltz. My grandfather had a sweet tooth, and Isobel was the little cookie he chose to satisfy it. How many ways do I have to say it?”

“Cookie? Are you sure you haven’t got Isobel mixed up with someone like—oh, Kitty Stephens, say? Isobel was the farthest thing from a cookie that I can imagine.”

“You’re thinking of Isobel at eighty, and I admit it’s a little difficult to picture her inspiring a great passion.” He paused, and added thoughtfully, “Except perhaps for inciting someone to murder her. She could do that without even trying.”

“You didn’t, did you?” Hannah sounded suspicious. “Murder her, I mean.”

“You surely don’t expect me to dignify that with an answer.”

“I guess not,” she mused. “I probably wouldn’t believe you anyway.”

“Thanks,” Cooper said dryly. “At any rate, to get back to the story…Try to imagine Isobel at—your age, say. What are you? Twenty-seven?”

“Isobel was never my age.”

“When she was young, that tongue of hers probably seemed witty instead of sarcastic and callous. She’d have been exotic, slightly shocking—and never boring.”

Hannah shook her head, but Cooper thought it was more in resignation than denial.

“And I’ve seen pictures of her then,” he said softly. “If you can look past the crazy fashions and the strange hairstyles, she was really quite beautiful. Enormous eyes, widow’s peak, interesting cheekbones…rather like yours, as a matter of fact.”

Cooper didn’t realize he’d reached out till his fingertips brushed the hollow of Hannah’s cheek. He heard her catch her breath and told himself to stop. But his hand didn’t seem to get the message. His fingers slid slowly, barely touching the flesh, along her jawline and down her throat. “The long neck, the white throat, what they used to call a bee-stung mouth…” The pad of his thumb tingled as he brushed it ever so softly across her lower lip. “I can understand why my grandfather lost his head.”

The hell of it was, he really could understand. If Isobel had been half as appealing in her prime as Hannah was…

He watched the rise and fall of Hannah’s breasts under the trimly tailored green jacket as she tried to control her breathing, and he knew that his own was just as ragged. What in damnation had he been thinking? This woman wasn’t some cookie. She was dangerous—even more so, in her own way, than Isobel had been.

He picked up his glass and tossed down the rest of his wine. He could smell the musty scent of her perfume on his hand, as if simply touching her had marked him. “Anyway, that’s how Isobel got the box. Along with a whole lot of other things—the condo, the pension fund…”

“How do you know Isobel demanded all those things? Maybe your grandfather was so besotted with her that he’s the one who insisted on setting her up for life.”

“Maybe you’re right—about the condo, at least,” Cooper said deliberately. “From his point of view, it would have been pretty clever to put the love nest right downstairs from his own place, so he didn’t even have to put on an overcoat to go visit his charmer.”

Hannah frowned. “He lived at Barron’s Court, too?”

“In the penthouse I inherited from him. Now that I think about it, perhaps Isobel was the inspiration for his whole scheme to turn the old Barron’s Hotel into condos in the first place. Before that, my grandparents lived in one of the big old mansions south of Grand Avenue—and he could hardly have installed Isobel in the guest room without Gran noticing. But we’re drifting from the point.”

“The Lovers’ Box.” Hannah touched it with a fingertip.

“I want the box so I can put it back where it belongs, Hannah—in my mother’s hands. I’m willing to pay good money for it, just as I was willing to pay Isobel.”

“Oh, really?” Skepticism dripped from Hannah’s voice. “Then—if Isobel was so mercenary—why didn’t she sell it to you?”

He’d thought until then that he was making progress. She’d been softening, he was sure of it, until he’d gotten careless and made a misstep. What was wrong with him, to make him forget that she was a demon of a negotiator?

“Because it wasn’t a matter of money to her, by then,” he said irritably. He knew even as he said it that he was handing Hannah a weapon. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself; once he’d opened the wound his pain seemed to overflow.

“She liked the feeling of power she got from keeping me dangling,” he went on bitterly. “She liked knowing that even though my grandfather had been dead for years, she could still remind his family that she hadn’t gone away. She liked being a thorn in the flesh—cashing her pension check every month, still living just one floor down from the family home, running into me in the elevator from time to time and politely asking how I was doing, as if she were an old friend of the family. And she liked keeping that box where she could look at it now and then and smile.”

And what about you, Hannah? he asked himself. Are you going to be just like her? Are you going to use all that against me?

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said. “I imagine Isobel was always like that. But whatever she did really has nothing to do with me.” She toyed with her wineglass and said casually, “So how much did you offer her for the box?”

He stared at her for a long moment. Well, he thought, he had his answer. She was going to hold him up for everything she could get. “Surely you don’t think I’m going to tell you.”

“You mean you won’t pay me as much as you’d have given her?” She shook her head sadly.

“I’m sure as hell not going to make you a free gift of the information.” His voice was hard-edged. “At least you’ll have to do that much on your own. Isobel did everything else for you. Not only did she give you the box, but she handed you complete instructions on how to bargain with it. She made sure, from the way she wrote her will, that you’d know it was worth more than anything else she could leave you. And by dangling my name, she told you precisely how to cash in on it.” Cooper snapped a bread stick in half. “So I suppose the only question remaining now is how much you’re like her.”

“What?”

“It’s quite apparent you’ve inherited Isobel’s sadistic nature,” he said deliberately. “The unknown is whether you’ve developed it into a fine art, as she did. How much am I going to have to pay to get back what’s mine?”

Hannah stared at him. Cooper put the bread stick between his lips like a cigar and waited to see if the strategy would work. Whatever figure she named, of course, he had no intention of paying it. But once she’d set a price, no matter how outrageous, he could force her into a final compromise. Asking leading questions hadn’t succeeded in getting her to name an amount; would goading her to fury work any better?

“Nothing.”

Her voice was so quiet that he almost thought he’d heard wrong. “What did you say?”

“I mean no amount of money would be enough,” she said. “You’re not getting the box—no matter what.” She fumbled in her bag and tossed a handful of cash onto the table. “That should cover my half of the bill.” She stood, picked up the Lovers’ Box, and stepped away from the table. Then she turned toward him again. “One more thing, Mr. Winston. Since I’ve just paid for a glass of wine that I never intended to drink, I might as well get some good out of it.”