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Authors: Robin Wells

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BOOK: How to Score
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“Oh, no!” Her free hand flew over her mouth. “Are you all right?”

His family jewels were parboiled, but aside from that, he was just peachy. Chase yanked the steaming shorts away from his skin. “I’m fine,” he said through clenched teeth.

Sammi set down the coffeepot, grabbed a dish towel off the sink, and dropped to her knees. “I’m so, so sorry,” she said, wiping at his crotch, her fingers working up the leg of his shorts as she mopped the wet fabric.

He looked down at her, kneeling in front of him, her hands on his groin, and felt a surge of heat unrelated to the spilled coffee. Apparently the scalding hadn’t permanently wilted his spinach. Stifling a groan, he grabbed her hands, stilling them. “I’ll take it from here.”

“Oh.” Her face was the color of a radish. “Sure. I, uh—” She rapidly thrust the towel at him and backed away on her knees. “I-I’m so, so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do you need some ice?”

Yeah, but not for the coffee burn. What he needed was to get out of here, ASAP. “No. No, thanks. I’d better get going.” He handed her back the towel. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“But you haven’t even had any!”

“That’s all right. I didn’t realize how late it’s gotten. I’d better run.”

Away. Fast.
What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He’d intended to just get a glimpse of her in the park, not come to her house. This had been a bad idea—a very bad idea. One thing was for sure: she wasn’t kidding about being a hazard to men.

“I’m mortified.” Her eyes were twin hazel tortes of distress. “I just can’t apologize enough.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s no problem.” But it would be, if he didn’t get the heck out of Dodge. He bobbed his head and backed toward the exit. “It was nice meeting you.”

With that, he turned and hauled his burning crotch out the door.

Chapter Four

A
t precisely 8:15, Arlene Arnette parked her white Ford Taurus next to a yellow patrol car emblazoned “Guardian Security” in the staff parking lot behind the Phelps Mansion and Art Deco Museum. The night security officer inside the vehicle flashed a jack-o’-lantern smile and rolled down his window as she climbed out.

“Mornin’, Miss Arlene.”

“Good morning, Ernie,” Arlene said, extracting the keys to the mansion from the side pocket of her black leather purse. “Did you have a quiet night?”

Ernie bobbed his lightbulb-shaped head. “Yes, ma’am. Downright boring.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re ready to get home and get some sleep.” Although he’d probably gotten a good portion of his night’s rest while he was on duty, Arlene thought wryly. She’d pulled up more than once to find him snoring in his front seat.

“Have a nice day,” she said, giving him a little wave as she started toward the house.

“You, too, Miss Arlene.”

Arlene pressed her lips together as she crossed the parking lot. It was hard to remember the last time she’d had a day that qualified as nice. Most days were simply to be gotten through, and others were full of problems. Ever since Sammi had arrived—and what kind of ridiculous name was that for a woman, anyway?—the problems had multiplied exponentially.

But she wasn’t going to think about that now. Early mornings, when she had the mansion to herself, were her favorite time of day. She walked up the stone steps to the service entrance, inserted her key into three separate locks, and opened the door, then punched a code into the gray security box on the wall. She waved to Ernie—she’d instructed him to always wait until she made it safely inside before he left—then closed the door and locked it behind her.

The mansion greeted her with stony silence. She’d been the curator for twenty-seven years, but every time she entered the place, it felt cold and unwelcoming—just like the reception she’d received when she’d first come here for a Phelps Oil Christmas party forty-seven years ago.

Only now, Arlene thought with satisfaction,
she
was the woman who belonged here. She walked to the butler’s pantry and proprietarily adjusted the thermostat on the wall. She did that every morning, and every morning she received an inordinate amount of pleasure from it. Her lips curving in satisfaction, she turned and headed down the hallway that led to the grand foyer.

She saw it every day, but it still dazzled her. Rumor had it that a famous Hollywood director had modeled the set of a Cary Grant movie after it, and although she couldn’t confirm it, Arlene was convinced it was true. The floor was white marble, inset with a dramatic black marble starburst in the center. Above the inlay hung a monolithic starburst chandelier sparkling with fifteen hundred triangular crystals. Just beyond, two staircases gracefully curved upward. Black wrought-iron banisters that replicated the starburst pattern rimmed the marble stairs. The left staircase held portraits of the elder Chandler Phelps and his wife; the right side, Chandler Junior and Justine.

As always, Arlene veered to the right. The metal banister chilled her palm as her soft-soled Easy Spirit shoes squished on the marble steps. She deliberately avoided looking at the painting of Justine but paused in front of the portrait of Chandler Jr., as she did every morning. The painting didn’t do him justice. Oh, it captured his physical form—his dark hair, his broad shoulders, his neatly trimmed mustache—but it didn’t capture the sparkle in his eyes, or the sensuality of his mouth, the mouth that had fit so perfectly against her own. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to recall it. She used to be able to almost taste him when she thought about it hard enough, but more and more, she couldn’t really conjure it up. The memory was like a rail station fading in the distance as a train carried her farther and farther away.

At the top of the stairs, Arlene turned right and headed down the long hallway of the master wing. Most visitors to the mansion headed straight for Justine’s suite at the end of the hall. It was the opulent room, the one that drew all the oohs and ahs. Filled with gilt furniture and covered in yellow floral chintz from the walls to the elaborate canopy bed, the room was dramatic, glamorous, and ultrafeminine.

But Arlene had no use for it. She marched straight to the bedroom next to it. Compared to Justine’s room, it was stark and plain and almost severe. The furnishings were oversized style moderne—angular and unornamented rose-wood, with clean lines and sharp corners. The bed was draped in dark red wool, as were the floor-to-ceiling windows. Two club chairs upholstered in a red and blue cubist print sat across from the simple marble fireplace.

Arlene took off her shoes, unhooked the burgundy velvet rope across the door that kept the tourists at bay, and stepped into the bedroom. She closed her eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply; sometimes when she first stepped in here, she thought she smelled the ghost of Chandler’s aftershave or caught the faintest hint of his cigar smoke. Not today. She hadn’t smelled either in quite some time.

With a sigh, she headed for the nightstand beside his bed and picked up his chrome alarm clock, made in France in 1925. It still kept perfect time. Winding the key, she pulled out the alarm button.

And then, as she did every weekday morning, she turned to the bed, pulled back the covers—and crawled between the sheets.

Sammi’s brow furrowed as she punched the buzzer at the service entrance for the sixth time. This was weird. Ms. Arnette’s car was in the parking lot, so she must be inside, and yet the door was locked and she wasn’t answering.

Maybe she was down in the basement, sorting through Justine Phelps’s clothes. While Ms. Arnette was recovering from her heart attack, Sammi had discovered trunks and trunks of Justine’s designer clothing, and as far as Sammi could tell, they hadn’t been opened in nearly thirty years. Almost all of the female visitors to the mansion wanted to know more about Chandler Jr.’s beautiful wife, so Sammi had gotten approval from the museum’s board of directors to put together a collection of her gowns.

When Ms. Arnette had returned to work and learned about it, she’d thrown a hissy fit. She’d ordered Sammi to stay away from the trunks and then gone to the board and protested the project. “We don’t have the time or the space for a display.”

“We could put it in the basement,” Sammi had argued. “And I’ll handle all the work. I would love to go through the trunks and catalogue the contents.”

“That’s a task I would need to perform myself,” Ms. Arnette had said in a prickly remember-your-place tone. “I know what’s valuable and what isn’t.”
And you won’t.
Ms. Arnette clearly viewed her as incompetent, even though Sammi held a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s in museology. Ms. Arnette’s credentials consisted solely of having worked as Chandler Phelps’s personal assistant for twenty years, but in her mind, that trumped formal education.

Sammi brushed a strand of hair from her eyes and pulled her cell phone out of her purse. Ms. Arnette might not be able to hear the doorbell from the basement, but the basement had a phone extension.

Through the door, she could hear the phone ring, unanswered.

Sammi’s chest tightened. Ms. Arnette was sixty-eight—older than Sammi’s father had been when he’d died of a heart attack—and she’d already had one massive coronary. What if she’d suffered another?

Sammi closed her phone and pulled her keychain out of her purse. The board had given her a key to the museum when she’d first been hired, but when Ms. Arnette had returned to work, she’d requested it back. “The more people who mess with the locks and the alarm, the greater the margin of error,” the woman had said.

Sammi had politely refused to return it. “I won’t use it unless I have to, but the board wants me to have it in case of an emergency,” she’d said.

For all Sammi knew, this was an emergency now. She inserted the key and unlocked the first deadbolt, then saw Mrs. Arnette on the other side of the window, scurrying around the corner. The older woman unfastened the remaining locks and opened the door, her face pruned into a scowl. “Sammi! What are you doing here at this hour?”

The scowl was nothing new, but she seemed out of breath, and her usually carefully coiffed white hair had a strand sticking out on the left side. Sammi looked at her curiously. “I’m just twenty minutes early.”

Ms. Arnette looked at her wristwatch. “Twenty-five minutes. That’s almost half an hour. And why are you using a key? I’ve told you not to.”

What was the deal? Most bosses would be glad to have their employees show up early—and Ms. Arnette definitely considered Sammi an employee. “I wanted to put up the new exhibit descriptions in the kitchen before our first tour arrives.”

“Hmmph.” Her lips pursed in displeasure, the older woman put her hand on her chest and drew a deep breath.

Sammi leaned forward, concerned. “Are you feeling okay?”

“Of course. I’m perfectly healthy.” Ms. Arnette’s hand fingered the top button of her blouse. “It’s just that you startled me, that’s all. Practically scared me to death. And I don’t like our security compromised.”

Using a key hardly constituted a breach of security, but apparently it had startled the older woman. “I tried to call when you didn’t answer the door.”

“Yes, well, I was down in the basement.”

“Do you need any help down there?”

“No, thank you. I’m perfectly capable of handling it myself.”

Sammi wasn’t so sure. She’d checked the clothing Ms. Arnette was discarding on the very first day and discovered that the older woman was throwing away some very valuable pieces. Sammi had subsequently directed the janitor to quietly bring all the clothing in Ms. Arnette’s discard pile to her office.

Sammi nodded. “Okay. Sorry to have disturbed you.”

Mrs. Arnette turned and clumped down the hall. She’d always been aloof, but she was getting more standoffish, Sammi thought as she headed to the kitchen to put new exhibit descriptions on the displays in the glass shelves.

Five minutes later, a faint ringing sound pulled Sammi’s attention from the green glass collection. She cocked her head and listened. It seemed to be coming from upstairs. That was odd; she knew for a fact that the alarm system sounded throughout the building, not just upstairs. Maybe the janitor had left his cell phone.

BOOK: How to Score
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