The Uneven Score (16 page)

Whitney started to laugh. Shocked, Harry muttered in disgust. He was a cantankerous, salty-tongued, lovable man, but if it weren’t for his arm, she’d have hugged him.

“You’re not dead,” she said.

“Not for anyone’s lack of trying, minx.” He attempted a feeble grin.

“What were you doing out here?” Paddie demanded. “You have much to explain, Mr. Stagliatti.”

“You want me to talk before or after I bleed to death?”

“Harry’s right, Victoria. We have to do something about his arm. I suppose I could go back to the cottage and get your car— She stopped and stared. So did Paddie. Harry cocked his head around and laughed gleefully. “Ha-ha! Here come your just desserts, ladies. Will the real Wyatt Earp please rise?”

Daniel Graham had stepped out from behind an orange tree, one rifle slung over his shoulder, tall, masculine, and not pleased. He clapped his hands three times. “Marvelous show, ladies,” he drawled sarcastically. “Marvelous.”

“He’s the other reason I wasn’t too worried about our poacher friends,” Harry explained. “Has a capable look about him, doesn’t he?”

“The three of you,” Daniel said darkly, “ought to be dead.”

 Paddie sniffed. “I suppose we just spoiled your fun?”

“No. You ran off two men, one of whom was armed, with a poker and an unloaded gun. Believe me, it was not fun to watch. I thought for sure I’d be forced to shoot one of them.”

“Shoot
...
” Whitney mumbled, suddenly feeling dizzy as the memory of the huge man with the gun came rushing back to her.

“I wouldn’t have let the bastard shoot you, darlin’,” Daniel said with his most seductive grin.

“Operas,” Paddie muttered.

Daniel ignored her. “I had my rifle pointed tight at ol’ Fats Gillibrew’s gut. Didn’t think he was the violent type, but you never can tell about poachers, especially when they’re cornered.”

Whitney gulped in air and fought the wave of dizziness. “Why didn’t you say something.”

If possible, his grin broadened. “Wanted to see if you could pull it off, sweetheart.”

The dizziness vanished, and in its place came an unreasoning, cold anger. “I could have been killed!”

“I’m a good shot, m’love.”

With that, Daniel ambled over and squatted down beside Harry.

“Well, Harry,” he said, “I guess we ought to get you to a doctor. In much pain?”

Harry’s answer was a series of expletives. Daniel informed him that a true Southern gentleman does not curse in front of women, but Paddie and Whitney were obvious exceptions to the rule. One couldn’t help cursing in front of them, with them, or at them. Harry responded that the last thing he wanted to be was a Southern gentleman; Daniel laughed and told them all to stay put while he

fetched his Jeep, which was parked on a narrow road about five minutes away. He chucked Whitney under the thin. “If Fats comes back, darlin’,” he said, “don’t tell him your gun isn’t loaded.”

He trotted off into the grove.

“Well, well,” Harry said, “I can see you have a lot to tell me, Whit.”

“Ditto for you, Harry,” she said.

He grinned valiantly, but the contrast of his teeth against his skin showed how pale he was. “My tale won’t be half so interesting. Paddie? You’re not going to faint or anything, are you?”

“Humph,” Paddie said, but wiped something out of the corners of her eyes. They couldn’t be tears; Victoria Paderevsky never cried.

Nearly three hours later they were back on Daniel’s front porch digging into what passed for breakfast. No one had felt like cooking, so on the way back from the hospital Daniel had pulled into a fast-food restaurant and ordered four coffees and four sausage-and-egg breakfasts. He hadn’t asked for anyone’s order. Whitney thought the sausage tasted like Styrofoam, but, then, so did the eggs. She also thought if Daniel had a full-time maid they could be eating a homemade breakfast. Daniel, it seemed, didn’t care about food any more than Paddie did. Both were wolfing down their Styrofoam. Whitney and Harry exchanged looks of empathy. They cared about food.

“You feel all right, Harry?” Daniel asked.

“I’ll live,” Harry responded ungraciously.

He had gotten the settee. Paddie took the rocking chair, and Whitney ended up sharing the porch swing with Daniel. She had expected him to take his chair, yesterday’s morning newspaper still folded under it, but- he had plopped down on the porch swing. So she had started to take his chair. He stuck out a foot, tripped her, caught her by the waist, and hauled her down beside him. Paddie started humming the prelude to Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro
.

Harry had looked to be in more pain than he had any business being in. The doctor had said he’d just suffered a graze and stitched him up. He got painkiller, but no enzymes. Fortunately the doctor was a friend of the Grahams and believed whatever story Daniel told him. In any case, the incident wasn’t reported to the police.

When they’d finished their breakfasts and deposited the nonbiodegradable remains into the biodegradable bag in which they came, Daniel gave the swing a little push with his foot. “These ladies are going to bust a gut if we don’t start explaining. Harry.”

“Would serve them right.”

“You’ve no room to talk,” Daniel pointed out mildly. “You had no business taking on a couple of poachers.”

“I didn’t take them on, mister,” Harry countered. “They took me on.”

“Be that as it may, shall we explain?”

Harry shrugged. “Suits me fine, but they’re not going to like it”

“They’ve done a few things I haven’t liked, either,” Daniel said dryly.

“Paddie, my dear, I’ve known since the beginning that you’re in some kind of trouble,” Harry said. “I intercepted one of your threatening phone calls and didn’t like what I heard—not one damn bit.”

 Paddie turned purple. “And so what business is it of yours!”

Harry calmly scratched his cheek. “I decided to make it my business.”

Whitney suppressed a laugh.

Knowing Paddie as he did, Harry went on, he knew she would never go to anyone for help—and knew if he offered his help she would only refuse, get all insulted, and become even more closemouthed.

“You are already on a very thin and frayed rope with me, Mr. Stagliatti.”

“Good,” Harry said.

 Paddie folded her arms, and Whitney thought she looked embarrassed, and perhaps a little bit pleased.

“So what I decided to do,” Harry said, “was to get out from under this damned tyrant’s schedules and demands for a few days and see what I could find out.”

“What you did was humiliate me by walking out of my orchestra,” Paddie grumbled. “You’re a big help, Mr. Stagliatti.”

“It’s Harry, you ungrateful wretch.”

“Humph,” Paddie said.

Daniel rubbed his chin and mouth, but Whitney could see the edges of the smile he was trying to hold back. Even as exhausted as he had to be, he maintained his sense of humor. And, she thought, his irresistible and powerful sensuality.

“And my resignation humiliated me, not you,” Harry went on with feeling; like Whitney; he said what he pleased to Victoria Paderevsky. “I’m the one who walked out.”

 Paddie folded her arms and rocked viciously in her chair. “So you could get yourself killed.”

“My, my,” Harry said with a sudden grin, “so the woman does care.”

Whitney was losing patience and started humming the prelude to Mozart’s
Don Giovanni
; Daniel looked at her as though she were some kind of lunatic, but Paddie at least stopped rocking.

Harry resumed his explanation. Since he didn’t expect to stay with the CFSO beyond the opening series of programs—

At this point Paddie interrupted once again, letting loose with the sort of bellow one would expect from a wounded hippopotamus. “You agreed to stay with me one year!”

“And you believed me?” Harry laughed.

“I could sue you!”

“So? Sue.”

He resumed. He had brought only the few necessities to Florida with him and set himself up in a residential hotel with what he referred to as blue-haired pastel widows.

“They all had cats,” Harry said.

Harry Stagliatti was not a cat lover. For years he had called Whitney’s parade of cats unspeakable names. Wolfgang, he maintained, was the worst of the lot.

Daniel stretched his arm over the top of the swing and said in a low voice of warning, “Get on with it, Harry.”

Whitney missed Harry’s rejoinder because she was thinking about the forearm brushing against her shoulder. She didn’t think she had moved, and she hadn’t noticed that Daniel had moved, but somehow their hips had come into contact.

“I took a change of clothes,” Harry said, “bought necessary gear, and camped in the grove, close enough to Paddie’s cottage to keep an eye on her, but far enough away so she wouldn’t trip over me—and, of course, I knew my way around the auditorium, so there was no problem watching her there.”

He had expected to trap whoever was harassing Paddie within a day or two and return to his position in the orchestra, but the “crafty devil” was elusive. He did not expect Whitney to show up as his replacement—“I thought this close to opening night Paddie would show some sense for a change and promote from within”—nor did he expect to run into poachers.

“Victoria thought you’d been kidnapped,” Whitney said.

Harry grinned. “Did she?”

Daniel’s arm stayed comfortably stretched across the back of the swing. “I’m glad you all think this is amusing,” he said dryly.

On Thursday night, while Harry was debating how to trap Paddie’s harasser and get back to leading a reasonably civilized life, he heard a horn playing and recognized his very own warm-ups. “Thought I’d gone bonkers,” he explained. That was when he realized Whitney was camped out up the grove a piece from him.

“Daniel said I sounded like a dying cow,” Whitney put in, at which point Daniel playfully squeezed the curve of her shoulder.

“You did,” Harry said.

Whitney sniffed. “It had been a long day.”

Paddie rose to her defense. “Warm-ups are not to show off the skill of the hornist,” she remarked with her finest grandeur.

“Be glad he found you first, Whit,” Harry said. “Thought the crazy son-of-a-bitch was going to blow my head off.”

Daniel laughed, totally unrepentant. His laugh made Whitney even more aware of their seemingly innocent physical contact. Her pulse was beating faster, and it had nothing to do with Harry’s tale. “Two horn players in one night was more than I could handle,” Daniel said.

Their words sunk into Paddie’s consciousness  before Whitney’s. “You knew!” she shrieked, leaping to her feet.

The words sunk in, and Whitney glared at Harry and then up at Daniel. “Daniel Graham, you knew all along that Harry hadn’t been kidnapped!”

“That’s right,” he replied evenly, “and if you two sweet ladies had told me you suspected he was in danger, I’d have reassured you.”

“But you knew what we suspected!”

“Idiots!” Paddie wailed. “I am surrounded by idiots!”

“Sit down, Paddie,” Harry commanded, “before you give yourself a heart attack. Haven’t you figured out by now no one listens to your rantings and ravings? We all know you’re just a big pussycat. Now sit.”

“No one likes me,” she stated firmly, but sat.

Whitney was still glaring at Daniel, although his devilish smile and the feel of his hard body against hers didn’t help. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

It was Harry who replied. “Because I had asked him not to. Before I left the Orchestra, I explained my position to him, told him what I intended to do, and he agreed.”

“This is outrageous!” Paddie fumed.

“You mean he knew from the beginning”‘

“Well, yes, of course,” Harry said. “I said I was going to keep an eye on Paddie. I don’t think he expected me to camp out in the groves, but I had to contact him when I ran out of clothes—”

“Then that explains the hotel!”

“Ah,” Daniel said.

Harry looked blank. “What’s this?”

“Victoria saw Daniel coming out of your hotel room with some of your things and assumed—concluded, I mean— that he’d kidnapped you.”

“I merely entertained the possibility,” Paddie clarified.

Daniel laughed. “So that was it.”

Whitney pursed her lips. “You could have told me everything, Daniel, but you didn’t trust me.”

“That’s right, darlin’.”

His hand slipped around her shoulder, and he twirled a stray curl on one finger. Whitney noticed that Harry was watching with great interest. He would, she thought sourly.

“Mad?” Daniel asked in such a delicious drawl that Whitney could feel her insides melting.

“Furious,” she replied, but her grin gave her away.

Harry continued. Daniel had agreed it wouldn’t do any harm to have someone looking out for Paddie—at which Paddie humphed—but warned Harry to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble. As with Whitney, however, trouble had a way of finding Harry. On Friday, he was lurking about in the auditorium, keeping an eye on things, when his star pupil sneaked in.

“She was going to see me,” he said, and floundered.

Whitney kicked the swing back. “Harry! That was you?” The swing hit the wall, but Daniel stopped it with his foot. “Temper, darlin’,” he said languidly.

“You stay out of this, Daniel Graham! Harry Stagliatti, you threatened me with a gun and knocked me down.”

“It was not a gun,” Harry replied, almost sheepish. “It was a mouthpiece.”

Daniel burst out laughing. Even Paddie looked amused. Whitney, however, crossed her arms and blew-the hairs on her forehead. She would have kicked the swing again, hut Daniel had it anchored with one foot. The other foot rested on his knee, a position which seemed to require his hip and thigh to push more firmly against Whitney’s hip and thigh.

“As for pushing you,” Harry went on, “I didn’t mean to push so hard—didn’t think you’d lose your balance quite so easily, but I suppose Daniel has that effect on you. In any case, I knew he’d take care of you.”

“So you slunk off.”

“As quickly and as adroitly as I could manage.”

She huffed.

“Look, Whit, it just wouldn’t do to have had you see me just then.”