All Night Long (12 page)

She filed the thought away for the moment, setting herself the welcome task of mingling with her guests, making sure that those with the most likely chance of hitting it off as a couple met each other.

Three hours later, footsore, talked out and stuffed to the eyebrows with frosted tea cakes, Susannah shut off the lights and went upstairs to figure out what accessories she was going to wear with her flapper dress—and wondering if she had time to fit in a trip to the shoe department at Neiman Marcus before Saturday rolled around.

* * *

"You're early," Heather said as she opened the front door at six forty-five the following Saturday evening. "Suse wasn't, like, expecting you for another fifteen minutes, you know?" She gave him a sly knowing grin, calculated to get under his skin. "Guess you, like, couldn't wait to get your hands on her, huh?"

"It's nice to see you, too, Ms. Lloyd," Matt said with exaggerated politeness, ignoring the deliberate provocation of her words. One encounter was all it had taken for him to realize that's what would bug her the most.

Everything about the girl was calculated with an eye toward its shock value, from the shaggy hacked-off hair to the storm-trooper boots to the collection of silver pentagrams and crosses hanging from the multiple holes in her ears. She was wearing a cropped cotton sweater tonight, in a drab olive green that did nothing for her delicate complexion, and a pair of cutoff denim shorts that looked as if they'd been rescued from the rag bin. The sweater appeared to be at least two sizes too big. The shorts were a size too small. "Is Susannah upstairs?"

"Uh-huh." Heather let the door swing closed behind him with a careless bang. "She said to, like, bring you up and give you a glass of champagne." She turned and trooped up the stairs ahead of him, her heavy black motorcycle boots clumping loudly on each tread, her slim hips swaying from side to side like a pendulum gone haywire.

It was like watching a cross between Marilyn Monroe in a scene from
Some Like It Hot
and Frankenstein's poor monster stumbling blindly around in the woods. Matt studied the movement as he climbed the stairs behind her, trying to figure out if she was doing it on purpose or if it was her natural walk.

Heather glanced over her shoulder. "See anything you like?" she said with a provocative pout.
 

"Give it ten or fifteen years, kid," he said dryly, his expression bored and deliberately patronizing. "By then you might have enough experience to make it interesting."

Amazingly, the pout shifted into a smile before she mastered her expression and turned away. "Hey, Suse," she hollered as they entered the upstairs apartment. "The ambulance chaser is here." She shot him another sly look to see how he reacted to the slur on his profession, but there was no real malice in her eyes this time.

Matt felt as if he'd passed some test he hadn't even known he'd taken.

"You, like, want some champagne?" Heather asked, reaching for the bottle on the counter as she spoke.

Matt crooked his fingers at her in a beckoning motion. "Give it to me," he said, "I'll open it."

"I can open it."

Matt shook his head, leaning across the counter to take it out of her hand. "It's not that I don't trust you...." He let his voice trail off.

Heather grinned and let him take the bottle.

He was just pouring champagne into a fluted glass when Susannah walked out of the bedroom. Matt sucked in his breath and stared.

Her hair was down, the way it had been the first time he'd seen her. Springy corkscrew curls framed the pale oval of her face and cascaded over her shoulders, a rich, lustrous mahogany red against the silky creaminess of her bared skin. Her dress was soft and pink and floaty, with thin straps made of sparkly beads and a U-shaped neckline that dipped just low enough to hint at the beginning swell of her breasts. The whole thing seemed to shimmer, catching and reflecting the light with her slightest breath.

Susannah hesitated just outside her bedroom door, her smile fixed and uncertain, waiting for Matt to react in a way she could interpret. Was his stunned silence good or bad? Was he bowled over with admiration for her elegant and sophisticated taste? Or wondering if she was really going to out in public dressed like a Las Vegas chorus girl?

"Tell her she looks nice," Heather hissed, just as Matt felt ice-cold champagne trickle over his fingers and onto the floor. He jerked the champagne bottle upright, setting it, and the overflowing flute, down on the marble counter with a sharp click.

"You look incredible, Susannah." He shook his head slightly, as if to clear it. "Absolutely stunning."

Susannah's smiled bloomed with relief and she let out the breath she didn't even know she'd been holding. Her self-confidence miraculously restored by his obvious admiration, she stepped out of the doorway and walked across the room toward him, slowly, never once taking her eyes from his. The heels of her new evening shoes clicked against the hardwood floor. The uneven handkerchief hem of her dress flirted with her slender calves, concealing and revealing them with every step. The hip-length beaded bodice sparkled around her slim torso, making her look as if she were surrounded by stardust.

She stopped in front of Matt, close enough for him to smell the exotic oriental fragrance she'd used in her bath, and reached up to straighten his perfectly straight black satin bow tie.

"So do you," she said softly. "Look incredible, I mean."

And he did. Most men looked a little uncomfortable in black tie, as if they weren't quite sure everything was on right. Matt looked born to it, as elegant and at ease as a royal Scandinavian prince. Tall, blond, broad-shouldered and almost icily remote, until he smiled and reached up to take her hands in his. He lifted them to his lips, one at a time, and the look in his eyes as he pressed his mouth to each of her sensitive palms in turn wasn't remote at all. It burned hot enough to melt glaciers—or a woman's foolish heart.

Heather's low whistle intruded into the taut silence. "It's, like, wow, Cinderella and frigging Prince Charming," she said admiringly.

Susannah laughed softly, shakily, and slipped her hands out of Matt's in an effort to regain the equilibrium he'd stolen with just a smile and a heated look. Matt let her slide her fingers from his without protest, his look telling her
—promising
her—that she wouldn't get away so easily next time and that if it hadn't been for Heather standing there watching them and the people waiting for them at the hotel, she wouldn't have gotten away this time.

Susannah shivered with a combination of instinctive feminine fear and delicious anticipation and turned away from the look in his eyes. "Do we have time for a glass of champagne before we go?" she asked, already reaching out for one of the delicate fluted glasses on the marble counter. She turned her head, glancing over her shoulder when he didn't answer immediately. "Matt?"

Matt answered with a strangled syllable that sounded suspiciously like a curse.

Heather giggled.

Susannah raised a delicate eyebrow.

"Good God, woman," Matt demanded, "do you want to start a riot?"

Susannah's eyebrow rose higher. "Excuse me?" she said, although she knew exactly what he meant.

The back of her dress dipped considerably lower than the front, coming to a V just above her waistline. Three strands of pink crystal beads draped across her spine, filling in the opening and holding the dress in place.

Matt made another inarticulate noise and gestured at the back of her dress.

Susannah shrugged, making the beaded strands shimmy over her skin, and turned back to the counter. She nonchalantly reached for the champagne, secretly pleased to be getting some of her own back. He'd disconcerted her with a smile and a heated look. She'd evened the score with a little discreetly bared flesh. "Do you think it's too much?" she asked innocently, and winked at Heather.

"I think it's—"
the sexiest thing I've ever seen
"—too damned little," he groused. "You're going to catch pneumonia if you go outside in that thing."

"My evening wrap is very warm." She turned back to face him. "Champagne?" she said, and held his glass toward him with a bright smile of feminine challenge.

Matt looked at her for a long second, consideringly, fighting the twin urges to wring her neck and kiss her senseless at the same time. He decided that neither one was a viable option at the moment. He reached out and took the glass from her, draining half of it with one gulp. "We'd better get going if we don't want to be late," he said, handing the glass back to her.

Susannah took it and set it on the counter. She looked at the teenager who stood silently, watching them. "Heather? Don't you have something you want to say to Matt before we leave?"

Heather twisted her hands in the hem of her sweater, pulling it all out of shape, and shrugged noncommittally.

Susannah gave her a sharp look, tilted her head toward Matt, and then turned to get her wrap, leaving the two of them to talk privately.

"Suse thinks I should, like—" she looked at the floor, her mouth screwed up in a rueful grimace "—apologize, you know?"

"And what do you think?"

She shrugged again.

Matt waited.

Heather sighed and dug into the pocket of her shorts. "Here." She handed him a wad of bills. "What I owe you." The next words she uttered could have been
I'm sorry
but they were mumbled so low Matt couldn't be sure.

He smoothed the bills out, wondering if he should make her say it again, and then decided to let her off the hook. This time. "Thanks." He folded the bank notes neatly in half and slipped them into his pocket.

"Everything okay here?" Susannah asked as she came back with her wrap over her arm.

Heather looked at Matt.

He nodded.

"Did she ask your advice about her legal problem?"

"Suse!"

"What legal problem?" Matt asked warily. There was no end of legal trouble a teenager could get into these days, especially one with a go-to-hell attitude and no discernible parental influence.

"I've got it covered," Heather said, shooting a fulminating look at Susannah. "Legal Aid assigned me a lawyer yesterday afternoon. I forgot to tell you, is all."

"A lawyer?" Susannah huffed delicately. "Some first-year law student, right?"

"Second year," Heather said. "And all he has to do is, like, file some stupid papers is all. It's no big deal."

"What legal problem?" Matt demanded in a quiet tone that nevertheless had both females turning their heads to look at him.

"I'm petitioning the court to be declared an emancipated minor," Heather told him.

"That involves more than just filing a few papers," he said.

"Yeah, well..." Heather shrugged again, as if she really didn't care.

Both adults could see clearly that she did.

Matt sighed. "All right, look. I haven't got time to go into it with you right now, but later in the week the three of us can get together and talk about it."

"What's to talk about?" Heather mumbled.

"Before I can help you, I need to know what I'm helping you with. You answer a few questions for me and I'll check into it and see what I can do. Maybe light a fire under your lawyer at Legal Aid. Maybe something more. Okay? But only if I think your case warrants it," he added sternly, trying to avoid raising false hopes. "The courts grant emancipated-minor status only in very rare cases," he warned, "and I'm not about to add to an already overburdened system just because you don't get along with your parents. Is that clear?"

"Yeah, sure," Heather said with another unconcerned shrug, but her eyes were shining with hope.

Matt glanced at Susannah, expecting her to reinforce his statement of caution. She smiled back at him as if he were St. George about to slay the dragon. He sighed again, knowing when he was licked.

"Come on, Cinderella," he said, reaching for the wrap over her arm. He shook the deep-wine-colored velvet cape out and swirled it behind her, settling it on her shoulders. "Time to go to the ball."

Chapter 6

A dark-eyed, balding man with an affable smile and an intense manner swooped down on them the minute they entered the Peacock Court of the Mark Hopkins hotel. Or swooped down on Matt, rather. He didn't appear to notice Susannah at all.