Worth the Trip (6 page)

She laughed, instantly relieved. “He’s conning you. He made a vow to see that everything gets back where it belongs. All of the partners are dead, so it’s up to him.”

“And you believe that? Maybe you’re the one he’s conning.”

“He swore on my mother’s grave.”

That shut Trip up, which didn’t mean he was convinced. “You don’t think there’s any chance he’s playing you?”

“He wouldn’t lie to me. Not about that.”

“How about we go ask him?”

“Sure,” Norah said, not believing for an instant that Trip would take her to see her father, and grateful for it. Lucius MacArthur was her only living relative, but she’d spent her entire adult life trying to live down his crime. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what she’d say to him, but she had three weeks left to figure it out, and she wanted those weeks. “Have a nice trip. Let me know how it turns out.”

“MIND IF I TURN ON THE TELEVISION?” TRIP
asked Norah that evening.

They’d had dinner, which had taken less time to eat than to agree on where to order it from since he’d wanted real food, and she’d wanted something without grease, calories, and, apparently, taste. They’d settled on pizza—Chicago-style, of course, since he didn’t get to the city all that often—with a side of antipasto salad which she’d stripped of meat and cheese and ignored the dressing completely.

Immediately after cleaning the kitchen to within an inch of its life, Norah holed up in her office, and left him to wander the tomblike depths of her house. It didn’t take him long to work his way back to her.

“Television,” he repeated because she hadn’t looked up from her book, or even acknowledged his presence, and he’d been lurking in the doorway for at least a half hour. “It’s that antique box sitting in your living room—”

“Parlor. And it’s not antique.”

“It’s not plasma or flat screen.”

“Yes,” she said, not looking up but sounding huffy about being interrupted.

It was just too irresistible—childish, maybe, but irresistible. “Yes, I can turn on the television or yes, you mind?”

She looked at him over the tops of her glasses, black rimmed, cat’s-eye glasses that gave her face a whole other character, one he found sexy, the way her eyes zeroed in on his, focused and intent, one eyebrow inching up along with the corners of her mouth because he was staring, he realized, and it was no longer comfortable or about poking fun at her because she was being so stuffy. And he’d completely forgotten what they’d been talking about, so instead he rattled around the room, lined with bookshelves that were filled with biographies, textbooks, and reference manuals. No fiction. “What do you read for enjoyment?”

“Shampoo bottles, road signs, cereal boxes,” she said, poker-faced.

“Let me guess, wheat germ, granola, and fiber.” He grinned at her. “Lots of fiber.”

“What’s wrong with fiber?”

“You’re too young to eat fiber.”

“No one’s too young to eat fiber.” And she went back to her book, stopping to type a note into her laptop.

“What are you doing?”

She sighed and looked at him, taking her glasses off first, to his disappointment. “I’m researching a new book.”

He circled the room again, checking the titles on the spines of her books, and just as she turned back to work he said, “What’s it about?”

“Attention deficit. I have a perfect research subject in mind.”

“There’s nothing to do,” he said.

“There are eleven other rooms in this house.”

“I know. I’ve been in them all. I peeked in your closets, snooped in your medicine chests, and poked around in your bedroom.”

“You forgot to mention my underwear drawer.”

“I resisted that urge. The house is depressing enough. Getting a look at your unmentionables would kill the last bit of mystery, and if I found white cotton I’d have to shoot myself before I dropped dead from sheer boredom.”

She smiled. He figured it was the mental picture of him with a bullet hole in his head.

“Some of those rooms you snooped through have televisions. With cable. No porn channels, but you can probably find some gratuitous nudity. Or maybe a Victoria’s Secret commercial.”

Trip shrugged. “I’m not really a TV watcher.”

“What do you do for entertainment?”

“Solve crimes, catch bad guys, rescue damsels in distress.”

She opened her desk drawer and rooted around, saying, “I think I saw some kryptonite in here.”

His grin widened. “No Lois Lane complex?”

She rolled her eyes. “Go away and let me work.”

“What do you expect me to do? This house is like a museum. You probably haven’t moved a stick of furniture in fifteen years.”

“Twenty,” she said, “since my mother died. It’s comforting to keep things they way they were. Everyone clings to something from their childhood, good or bad. For me, it’s my home, and it’s not hurting anyone, including me.”

Trip kept his expression flat, but the way she was studying his face told him he wasn’t good enough to fool her. “I don’t like pity.”

“It’s not pity. I’m sorry about your parents, that’s all.”

He didn’t like talking about his parents. He didn’t even like remembering them, but it gave him something in common with Norah—or rather it gave her something in common with him, and he wasn’t above using it. “Don’t psychoanalyze me,” he said, intending to do exactly that to her, in reverse.

“All business now, huh?”

“You better hope so, because the people coming after you, the ones who are serious, will be all business.”

She laughed a little, but there was an edge of nerves. “Why do you feel a need to set boundaries for me? You kissed me.”

“It seemed like the best course of action.”

Norah shook her head. “There was any number of ways you could have gotten your message across. Just walking out on that stage and claiming to be my boyfriend would have been enough.”

“It was impulse.”

“You don’t do things by impulse.”

“Not very often.” And he couldn’t tell her he took one look at her in that ugly suit, all cranky because of Hollie, and all his protective instincts rose, along with some not-so-protective ones. Norah MacArthur got to him in a way he didn’t want to understand, let alone explain to her. “I like to make a big entrance,” he said.

“I guess I should be grateful you didn’t pull your gun.”

BY TWO A.M. NORAH WAS WISHING SHE HAD TRIP’S gun. Shooting herself in the head was probably the only way she’d get any rest. He’d insisted on sleeping in her bedroom, with her or without her.
With
wasn’t an option, especially if she expected to get any sleep.
Without
was no better. The bed in the spare room was comfortable enough, the room was dark and cool, and the blankets were a warm, cozy weight on her, and the house was quiet, secure. And she was still awake. She could all but feel the bags under her eyes growing.

She’d tried several different relaxation exercises, she’d meditated, and she’d run case studies—boring case studies—and there she was, still wide awake, still staring at the ceiling and thinking she’d give just about anything to shut her brain off for an hour, to stop thinking of James A. Jones, III, sleeping right down the hall. In her house. And she wasn’t doing anything about it.

As if she could.

He refused to leave voluntarily, and it wasn’t like she could physically remove him. And if she called the cops he’d probably get some FBI connection on the phone and have them all fired, and honestly? It was comforting having him there, and, okay, no matter how much she’d like to believe otherwise, her attempts to get rid of Trip were half-hearted at best. It wasn’t all about that kiss, though.

Lucius wanted to get the loot back to the original owners, but if the day she’d just had was any indication, he wouldn’t get the opportunity, not with all the kooks coming out of the woodwork. Bill Simonds and Hollie Roget were no real threat, but the guy in the Lexus was a different story. Having Trip—having someone—in the house helped make her feel secure. And left her mind free to obsess about him, in her bed . . .

She heard a sound, just a whisper, really, then another and another, footsteps moving softly down the hallway outside her bedroom door. Her heart began to pound, but not because she suspected it was the man from the Lexus. Her brain took her in a whole other direction, led there by her body, and she heaved a sigh because she’d just managed to forget about Trip and there he was, creeping to her room in the dead of night. Except it couldn’t be him. He was trying to win her trust; sneaking into her bedroom would be counterproductive.

That meant it was someone else.

She sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest, battling through the first wave of blinding terror, which didn’t take that long because under the terror was anger. There was another stranger, in her house, uninvited, because of that stupid robbery. How much was she expected to take? she wondered, tossing off the covers and flouncing out of bed, pushed to action by the frustration pent up in her—all kinds of frustration, but this was one place she could let it out.

She eased her door open and peeked out, of course in the direction of Trip’s—her room—which was how she spotted the shadowy figure inching open that particular door so he—or she—could tiptoe through. She probably ought to do something, but what? Yelling might wake up Trip, but she’d become the Primary Target, which didn’t seem prudent. Rescuing Trip was nice and all, but putting herself in harm’s way didn’t seem like the best way to go about it. She couldn’t call Trip because she didn’t have his cell phone number, and it didn’t feel like the police would be all that much help, seeing as they were miles away and the intruder wasn’t.

She wasn’t feeling all that threatened. Maybe it was the tiptoeing. Tiptoeing was a lot like mincing. She doubted the guy driving the Lexus would mince around if he broke in to kidnap her, and Trip definitely wasn’t a mincer. Trip was the kind of guy who’d sneak up on you using every inch of his size twelve’s without making a sound, and catch you totally unaware. Heck, he was the kind of guy you saw coming and never realized he was trouble until it was too late. And she was stalling.

She ducked back into her room, grabbed the first thing that came to hand, and before she could talk herself out of it, she raced down the hall, burst through Trip’s door, and swung, two-handed, whacking the figure bending over him across the back of the head. The guy grunted and whipped around. He was wearing some sort of mask, but she got the distinct impression he wasn’t happy with her. The impression was confirmed when he barreled by her, swiping an arm out and knocking her sideways on top of Trip.

“Son of a—” Trip dumped Norah off him and onto the floor, struggling free of the bedclothes and taking off after the intruder.

She got to her feet and raced down the stairs in time to see Trip fling himself at the intruder, tackling the man before he could get to the front door. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, and in the complete darkness of her foyer, the only way to tell them apart was Trip’s bare chest reflecting what little light there was. Norah raised her weapon, but they were rolling around so much that she missed.

Trip apparently felt the whiff of air and traced it back to her. “I swear—” he said before he had to duck a punch from the bad guy, “if you hit me”—another punch ducked—“with that, I’ll”—the intruder got in a punch to Trip’s ribs. Norah swung and hit Trip square in the chest because he’d chosen that moment to Hulk out. His breath whooshed out, the intruder scrambled up, knocking Trip ass over teakettle, and made his escape out the front door.

Norah went to the door and watched him run through the pool of illumination under the nearest streetlight, glancing back toward her house as he did. “Was that guy wearing a Robin costume?” she asked Trip.

“Robin?”

“Robin. As in Batman’s sidekick.”

Trip peered over her shoulder just as the guy hit another streetlight. “Yellow cape, green jockeys, orange top with a big yellow
R
on it. Not to mention the mask. Definitely Robin.”

“Huh,” Norah said, thinking it was appropriate since the rest of his face was chubby and pasty, and she got the impression he was just a kid, late teens, early twenties. “I wonder if Batman is around here somewhere.”

“Why don’t you and your book take a look around the house and let me know if the coast is clear.”

Uh-oh.
Norah shut the door and flipped on the foyer light.

Trip scowled at her, eyes narrowed, jaw locked, no smoke coming out of his ears, but she still took a step back when he came at her. She wasn’t fast enough to evade him completely, but he only reached out and disarmed her.

“
The Gender Bridge
,” he read off the front cover, his eyes already glazing over. “This thing only causes unconsciousness if you read it,” he said.