Protect Me, Love Page 7

  “What about all of those people over there?”

  Nick gestured toward the photographs on the claw-footed table by the window. Once again, she didn’t seem to comprehend what he was saying to her. She was apparently still more shaken than he’d thought, which would be natural for somebody who narrowly escaped death only an hour ago.

  “They’re all too far away,” she said after a moment, averting her eyes from the photos, as if she couldn’t stand to be reminded of the long distance she was from home. “Besides, I have no intention of leaving the city.”

  He could hear that she was refusing to let this guy run her out of town. Nick had to admire and respect the courage of that conviction.

  “Then we’ll move you somewhere else in Manhattan for a few days. Benno may cool down some in the meantime.”

  “What kind of move are you thinking of?”

  “Someplace where there’s good security, like a hotel.”

  Nick had lived in hotels himself for so long that it was almost automatic for him to think of them as a residence alternative. Delia didn’t say anything. She looked like she might be allowing the idea to settle in. At least, she didn’t start right off with a negative response as she had with his other suggestions. He shut his mouth and let her think quietly. She could be very stubborn. He’d already found that out about her. Now that the shock of Hester Street was wearing off and she was returning to normal, that characteristic stubbornness could pop up like a wall between them at any moment. If he pushed her too hard, he could make that happen, which was the last thing he wanted.

  Nick settled back against the couch cushions and watched her clasp and unclasp her hands in her lap. She had beautiful hands, pale-skinned and tapered and rather delicate. That thought caught in Nick’s investigative mind like a piece of silk on a snag. Were her hands about the same size as the prints on the windowsill? Was there any possibility she could have made those marks herself? If so, why would she do that?

  Nick shook himself mentally. Exactly. Why would she do that? She had no reason. His automatically suspicious mind, long trained to find deception everywhere, was working overtime again. This was a case of unrequited love gone haywire, with a jealous mate thrown in for good measure. The stalking lover angle was something of a different wrinkle on the theme but not by much. Stalkers were getting to be as commonplace as outraged spouses these days. Nick had no reason to read anything more than that into this case. Besides, now that he thought about it, Delia’s fingers were longer than the ones in the prints on the windowsill and window. He let himself dwell for a moment on how much he’d like to cover those hands with his own and what her reaction might be if he did. He was still thinking about that when she finally spoke.

  “A hotel might be a good idea,” she said. “One of the first-class ones where they keep a large security staff and a tight safety net because they have so many highpowered guests.”

  She seemed to be musing to herself as much as she was talking to him. Nick spoke quietly so as not to interrupt her thoughtful and, at last, calmer mood.

  “Did you have someplace specific in mind?” he asked.

  “The Waldorf,” she said with the finality of someone who has come upon the perfect solution to a problem.

  Nick was stunned into silence for a moment. He’d expected something a little less grand.

  “Wouldn’t that be a bit pricey?” he asked. She was only an office manager, after all. How much money could she make?

  “Pricey?” She seemed to come suddenly back from wherever her mind had been off to. “Oh, I belong to the Hilton Club. They give you free nights and special rates. The Waldorf’s a Hilton Hotel now.”

  She would know about hotels, of course. She had to put clients up in them sometimes. As for the Hilton Club, Nick knew about frequent traveler plans. He wondered where she’d traveled to get enough points for free nights in a place like the Waldorf. Most of all, he couldn’t help wondering who’d taken those trips with her. Could it have been this Benno character? He takes off on what he tells his wife is a business junket and sneaks his other woman along. Nick grimaced to himself at the thought. So far, he’d been doing a pretty good job of keeping himself from connecting Delia sexually with Benno. He didn’t want to start making those connections now.

  “The Waldorf it is,” Nick said.

  DELIA KNEW she’d almost blown her cover with that question about the Waldorf. So much was going on that she’d forgotten for a moment to watch out for the details of her daily life cover story. She was generally careful to keep her spending habits realistic for her alleged salary level, which wasn’t difficult for her. She was content with a small, simple apartment. She no longer wore jewels like the ones she’d taken with her when she’d fled Colorado. She’d used those expensive trinkets to set herself up in business and begin a modest investment portfolio. Not bad for Becky Lester, a flighty twenty-something who wasn’t supposed to have a brain in her head. As Delia Barry, she’d taught herself to manage those investments wisely to build a solid financial foundation. Most of all, Delia had worked. The result was that she could well afford the WaldorfAstoria Hotel.

  On the other hand, for Delia Marie, office functionary, such accommodations would be more than a pinch. Considering that, she’d resisted the impulse to take a two-bedroom suite and booked them into two regular, but adjoining rooms.

  “We’re all set,” she said as she dashed around her apartment, throwing things into one duffel and a single suit bag.

  “Good. I want to get out of here tonight.”

  “What about your things? Or do you travel with what you can carry on your back?” Like some ancient vagabond or Old West cowboy, she couldn’t help thinking.

  “I’ll stop back at my place later to pick up my kit.”

  Delia decided he might be the modern day version of a high plains drifter after all, which gave her even more reason to want him installed in that adjoining room. She needed a hired gun on her side right now. More than she would have admitted out loud to him or anyone else, she was afraid.

  She remembered this kind of fear as a version of what she’d experienced that morning five years ago. Her breath came high in the back of her throat, and she could barely swallow over the dryness there. At some moments the fear would rev itself up to panic pitch, as if she were in the middle of a nightmare not knowing which way to run since every direction led to disaster. All of her will and determination had to be pressed into service to wrestle that frenzy back under control. Otherwise chaos could break through onto the surface. Then she was actually likely to go darting off, this way and that, and back again. Even with all of her control instincts engaged, she could feel her breath high and shallow, as if she’d been doing that furtive dashing about in more than just her imagination.

  Nonetheless, she hated leaving her apartment, being chased out of the home she’d made for herself. She’d felt safe there till now, tucked up in her cozy nest of three warm rooms. Unfortunately she wasn’t safe there any longer. She understood that even more clearly than Nick did. Whoever was after her had strong reasons for wanting her dead. A pile of money was at stake, multiples of her tidy investment portfolio and PEI’s profit margin combined. Working for rich clients these past five years made her very aware of how far some people will go to get their hands on that kind of money and what lengths they will take to keep from losing it. She had no doubt at all that her pursuers, as soon as they wangled a clear opportunity to do so, would kill her, and maybe Nick, too. Delia was not too proud to admit that thought terrified her.

  So she’d packed her bags to go into hiding. Her heart saddened as she took one last look at the blue spruce still standing bare-branched in her living room. She’d so looked forward to arranging colored lights and draping garland. She’d also looked forward to doing that with some company this year. She could see Nick, in her mind’s eye at least, disentangling the light strings while she unpacked glass Christmas balls from their tissue storage wrappings. She imagined his chis
eled silhouette in the halo of twinkling tree lights and could almost hear the carols she played each Christmas Eve. She’d played those carols all by herself for several seasons now. In the last twenty-four hours she’d come to remember what it was like not to be by herself any longer. She’d been lonely these past five years, sometimes desperately so. No amount of hard work and keeping busy could cover up that reality. Before yesterday, she might have been able to tell herself she was settled into her hermit’s life and resigned to staying there. Tonight, she understood how untrue that was. Thus, trimming the tree had taken on even more importance for her than usual.

  FORTUNATELY, the Waldorf had gone out of its way to make the season bright. The grand chandelier in the foyer sparkled with light. This already majestic cascade of twinkling glass prisms had been left free of holiday festoonery, but the rest of the foyer made up for that one concession to simplicity. Sculpted shrubs in pots were wound around with burgundy velvet and gold net sashing. A tableau in motion depicted an eighteenth-century street scene, circa the era of the original Waldorf-Astoria. Huge poinsettia plants in brass tureens lined the railing above the marble entrance stairs. Delia stopped for a moment and turned almost full circle in the middle of the famous Wheel of Life mosaic. There it was—up on the balcony near the lobby piano lounge—a lovely tree so tall it barely cleared the ceiling. The tree had been draped in more velvet sash, hung with large gilded pinecones, then twined the full length in woven vines of winter brown.

  “Isn’t it all so very beautiful,” she breathed, hardly aware that at the moment she sounded about eight years old.

  “Yes, it is,” Nick answered.

  The stillness of his tone prompted her to complete her circling in his direction. He wasn’t extolling the splendor of the foyer. He was looking directly at her, and she suspected he’d been doing so all along. Delia dropped her glance and felt her cheeks warm in a blush that would have suited the bonneted young lady in the nearby Victorian tableau. Delia had noticed Nick admiring her before but never so openly as now. Her long winter overcoat was suddenly too warm beneath his gaze. She fumbled to undo the buttons as she walked toward the main lobby with more haste than might have been usual for a place as genteel as the Waldorf.

  The events of the past twenty-four hours had consumed her mind so completely that she’d had little time for pondering the present much less the past. Even in their few tranquil moments she’d kept herself from thinking much about the fact that she’d once been infatuated enough with Nick to want him for her lover. Now she had to stifle an impulse toward panic, as she realized how difficult it might be to continue suppressing that past desire with the two of them staying in the same hotel together, only a door’s width apart.

  Chapter Eight

  All the time the bellman was fussing about to get Delia settled, she couldn’t take her eyes off the door to the adjoining room. She let the bellman open her bag and hang up her clothes. She always did that kind of thing for herself, but the longer he stayed here, the longer it would be before she had to deal with that door and the man on the other side of it. In the confined space of the elevator on the way up to this floor, she’d found Nick more attractive than ever against the rich glow of mahogany and polished brass. She’d reacted exactly this same way to him five years ago. She’d hoped she would have outgrown that by now, especially since she prided herself on being an in-control person these days. Yet, there she was in that elevator, in such an intense state of agitation she had to step backward out of his visual range in case her discomfort might show. She’d greeted the arrival of their floor with profound-relief. Now, being in the same room with that adjoining door promised to make the elevator ride seem like child’s play.

  A tune danced through her head. “I’ve been lonely too long.” Not exactly a holiday carol, but apropos to the moment to be sure.

  Meanwhile, the bellman had finished hanging her clothes from the suit bag and was unzipping her duffel.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll take care of those.”

  She couldn’t have a stranger unpacking her underwear, no matter how much she needed the company. She went to the bed where she’d left her shoulder bag and fumbled for her wallet and a tip big enough to guarantee good service during her stay here but not so big as to appear ostentatious. Where had she learned to make that distinction? Her hand froze on the smooth leather of her wallet. Her father taught her that.

  “Are you all right, miss?”

  The bellman’s concerned tone brought Delia back to the present scene. She could all but see herself, freezeframed still as a statue, staring into space with her hand stuck in her bag.

  “Fine,” she said, though that definitely was not true. She pulled a bill from her wallet and handed it to the bellman. “Thanks for your help.” She tried her best to arrange her face into what would be considered an appropriate expression. Unfortunately at the moment she couldn’t quite recall what that appropriate expression might be.

  The bellman glanced surreptitiously down at his palm and said, “Thank you.”

  His tone made Delia wonder about the size of the bill she’d given him. At least Nick Avery had managed to make one person happy today. As for herself, Nick ap peared to be turning her into an airhead more decidedly by the minute. In direct contradiction to what she’d been thinking only moments ago, she was now relieved when the bellman walked out the door and left her by herself. It occurred to her that she’d handled Nick’s presence better when they were about to be run down by a car. When they were in peril, she was out on the edge of her nerve endings without time or inclination to think about what the rest of her psyche, not to mention her hormones, was doing. The mistake was to allow herself to feel relatively safe as she did now. That put her in a different kind of danger.

  First of all, she was being assaulted by the past, by pieces of the personal history she’d taught herself to keep under wraps so she wouldn’t have to feel the pain. Her father was one of those painful memories she kept carefully compartmentalized. That way, she didn’t have to think about how much she’d loved him and what a joy it would be to have him with her now as she felt her own strength wobble beneath her like legs after a sea voyage. He’d been the rock the sea smashed against but never budged. He would know what to do in this situation. That thought stopped Delia in her tracks yet again. What would he have told her to do here? What did she remember him telling her to do, time and time again from when she was barely tall enough to see over his knee till the day his helicopter made its final take-off?

  “Lead with the truth, and you’ll walk a straight path,” he would say.

  The past five years had hardly been a straight path for her, dodging off at a tangent into the shadows whenever anyone came too close, giving crooked answers to what for other people were simple, forthright questions. Now she was hip-deep in a lie to Nick. She needed his help desperately. Yet she couldn’t be truthful with him about why she needed his help. Even more frustrating, was the impossibility of letting him know how she really felt about him. Most women had to worry about wearing their hearts on their sleeves for fear the men in their lives might run for the hills. Delia’s fear was that, if Nick knew the truth about who she was, he might run to the police. Nonetheless, all of a sudden she was struck by the impulse to charge over to that adjoining door, knock on it until he appeared, then tell him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. To her credit, she still had just enough brain cells functioning to know what a bad move that kind of full disclosure would be. She headed for the exit into the hallway instead and almost made it there.

  If Delia had been less upset by the presence of the door into Nick’s room, she probably wouldn’t have jumped and screamed when it opened just as she was passing. Unfortunately, for the status of her dignity at least, jump and scream was precisely what she did. Even more unfortunately, she jumped straight into Nick’s arms. Then, as if she must be totally intent upon making herself look like an utter fool, she began struggling like mad to esca
pe his grasp. He’d clasped her by the shoulders, maybe to keep her from knocking him down when she leapt upon him. She twisted her body furiously back and forth, as if trying to extricate herself from a tight place. The harder she twisted, the harder he gripped.

  “Delia, it’s me,” he said.

  If he meant that to be reassuring he was having the opposite effect.

  “Let go of me,” she said, and struggled on.

  “Delia, it’s Nick.”

  The awareness was dawning that he thought she’d mistaken him for the alleged psycho boyfriend or his outraged wife and believed she was being accosted. She might have corrected that misapprehension, but he didn’t give her the chance. He clamped his arms around her, pulled her close to his chest and began stroking her hair.

  “Calm down,” he said. “You’re safe here with me.”

  He obviously intended to soothe her with those words and his ministrations to her hair. Even she understood how bewildered he had to be when she reacted as she did.

  “Get your hands off me. I know who you are, and I want your hands off me.”

  Between that vehement cry and his releasing her, a few seconds lapsed during which he was most likely attempting to figure out what particular bee she might have in her bonnet now. Then he let her go and stepped back, almost into the door that was still ajar to the next room. He lifted his palms at arm’s length between them, either as a placating gesture or to protect himself against what must have seemed to him the unaccountable fury that had her trembling visibly in front of him.

  “See?” he said, spreading his extended arms wider. “My hands are off. Will you calm down now and tell me what has you so rattled? Did something happen?”

  The confusion in his eyes was probably what brought Delia back to terra firma. He hadn’t a clue what was going on here. Not a breath of an intimation of a hint of what she was feeling about him had entered his mind, which made her want to laugh. If she hadn’t bitten her lip at that very moment, so hard she could almost taste her own blood, she would in fact have broken into peals of hilarity on the spot Thank heaven she had her wits sufficiently about her to understand that there would have been more hysteria in that laughter than she wanted Nick, or even herself, to hear. Also, at the same instant, she was being moved toward tears. If he hadn’t guessed how attracted she was to him a good deal of the reason could be because he felt no such attraction to her, which made her want to cry.