Loe raamatut: «Glass Slipper Bride»

Chapter One

Two broad slices of potato bread, lightly toasted and slathered with honey mustard. Mesquite smoked turkey breast, sliced paper thin, and a slab of lean roast beef. Shredded iceberg and butter lettuce. Tomato, lightly salted. No cheese. A relish of white onion, kosher dill and pickled jalapeño pepper. And for the finishing touch, black olives cut into tiny rings and sprinkled liberally over the whole with just a dash of red wine vinegar.

Jillian pressed the second slice of potato bread carefully over the monstrous sandwich, neatly “diapered” it with waxed paper and a toothpick, wrapped it a second time and slipped it into the brown paper sack printed with the words Downtown Deli. To the sandwich in the sack she added a small bag of barbecue potato chips, a shiny red delicious apple and a single piece of dark-mint chocolate, which he would eat first instead of last. The lunch safely packed, she poured a large container of strong black coffee, capped it with a lid and placed both lunch sack and coffee container in a cardboard punch-out tray. Now it was time to look to herself.

She washed her hands at the far sink, removed her smudged white apron, smoothed the straight skirt of her pale-gray uniform, pushed her glasses farther up on her nose and patted the headband with the white paper decoration that declared her a Downtown Deli Delight and held back her wispy, caramel-colored hair. She sighed, knowing exactly what she looked like. At five feet ten inches and 130 pounds, she was a gangly, awkward excuse for a woman, with waiflike pale-blue eyes twice the normal size dominating a pointy face more suited to a gnome than a female. Ah, well, Zachary Keller, of Threat Management, Inc., wasn’t likely to notice the first thing about her.

She doubted that in the seven weeks since she’d come to work here behind the counter of the deli in his office building he had noticed her even once, despite the fact that she’d built him the same sandwich at least a dozen times. Now she needed his help. She was about to pass from the cipher behind the counter to supplicant and then intermediary. Soon, she suspected, she would be dismissed altogether. The important thing was to engage his interest on Camille’s behalf, and she could do that. She could.

So what if her knees went weak every time she saw him? Every tall, hunky, dark-haired, green-eyed, chiseled-faced man did that to her. If she couldn’t exactly remember any others, that signified nothing. They hadn’t noticed her, either, she was sure. Camille was the one who got noticed, petite, pretty, blond, successful Camille, the Camille who was all the family she had, her much admired, much loved elder sister.

Jillian waved at the counter manager and received his permission to leave in the nod of his balding head. Carrying the cardboard tray, she slid from behind the deli cooler and walked across the tiny dining space toward the bank of elevators across the lobby. Tess, one of her co-workers, paused while wiping down the hubcap-sized glass top of a tiny wrought-iron table recently vacated by two secretaries taking a late coffee break and called out encouragement.

“You go, girl! Get that good-looking man in your corner!”

Jilly laughed and held up crossed fingers. Every female in the building had a crush on the man. His quick smile, enigmatic green eyes and extremely fit, muscular build were the stuff of fantasies, but according to his secretary, Lois—fifty-something, divorced, pragmatic, efficient and talkative—he didn’t date much. Some of the girls suspected a deep emotional wound, perhaps even a broken heart.

Jillian stepped into the elevator and punched the seventh-floor button.

At the rap of his secretary’s knuckles upon his office door, Zach looked up from the notes from which he was dictating, switched off the recorder and cleared his throat before assuming “the position” by leaning back in his chair and propping one cowboy-booted foot negligently on the corner of his desk. “Yeah?”

The door swung open, and Lois’s long, thin face, piled high with too-dark hair, appeared. “Lunch!” she announced brightly.

Zach launched a normally straight eyebrow into an expressive arch as he sat upright and glanced at the black onyx face of his watch. “Bit early, isn’t it?”

As often happened, Lois wasn’t paying the least attention. Instead, she stood gesticulating at someone out of sight. Resignedly, Zach leaned back once more and lifted both legs to prop them on the corner of his desk, then crossed them at the ankles. Hands folded complacently over his belt buckle, he admired his reddish-brown, round-toed, full-quill ostrich boots and the stiff crease in his dark jeans for a moment, quite sure that whatever was up would soon be forthcoming. Sure enough, a tall, slender woman in a tacky, ill-fitting, gray-and-white uniform and large square glasses appeared in the doorway, holding a cardboard tray. He recognized the bag wedged into one end of the tray, and his mouth watered. The woman took a moment to place—behind the deli counter. She was a lot taller than he’d realized and willow thin, with an interesting, piquant face almost obscured by those huge, hideous glasses. He’d always figured that she was nearsighted, because her eyes could not possibly be that big; they must be distorted by the lenses.

“I didn’t order lunch today,” he said, pleasant but dismissive.

Her small, plump, bow-shaped mouth trembled slightly above her delicately pointed chin. “I know,” she admitted breathlessly. “It’s a bribe.”

He almost laughed, but the seriousness of her expression somehow quelled the impulse. “Policemen can be bribed,” he pointed out, “but I’m not a cop any longer, Miss—?” He made it a question.

Lois took over then, saying, “Waltham. It’s Jillian Waltham. Jilly, this is my boss, Zachary Keller. Jilly has a problem, Boss, just the sort you manage best. I promised her you’d help.”

So that was it, another charity case. For some reason, that irritated him when it never had before. He turned away no one who really needed his help—women, usually, whose mates battered and berated them. Most of his paying clients were celebrities of some sort who needed protection or just “buffering,” someone to stand between them and the public. Occasionally, if business was slow, he worked standard security for corporations and organizations, seminars, private banquets and such, but he much preferred helping individual clients remove themselves from danger and dead-end lives. And yet, for some reason, he didn’t want to deal with this woman. He didn’t want to, but he would.

Zach dropped his feet and leaned forward, reaching for the bag with a smile on his face, as if to say he’d save the world for a Downtown Deli sandwich. “Have a seat, Jillian Waltham, and tell me how I can help you.”

She handed over the tray and practically collapsed into the small armchair opposite his desk. “I know I should have made an appointment, but I was afraid it would be weeks before you could see me.”

.Business was good, but not that good. Thankfully. He waved away the statement with one hand while unfolding the top of the bag with the other. “No problem. We try to be accommodating.”

“It’s just the way you always order it,” she said helpfully, meaning the sandwich.

He shot her a look and moved on to the coffee, lifting the container from the tray and carefully removing the lid before tossing it into the trash basket under his desk. Settling back into his chair once more, he sipped the strong black brew and contemplated the woman opposite him. He was surprised to find that behind those hideous glasses and beneath that laughable headband was an arrestingly pretty face. It was almost elfin. In fact, if her ears were pointed she’d look just like the drawing of a fairy princess in his nephew’s book of fairy tales. And, by golly, those enormous eyes were just that. Upon closer inspection, he rather doubted that she really even needed those glasses and their seemingly flat lenses. For some reason that irritated, too. What was she hiding from? Who was she hiding from? Or was it something more sinister?

Zach had learned from sad experience that the more controlling, abusive husbands and boyfriends typically belittled the very objects of their desire to the point of self-hatred. It was as if such men could not bear for the world to see what attracted them. Women so beleaguered tended to see themselves as unattractive, humpy, even ugly, and to present themselves accordingly. He wondered who had convinced Jillian Waltham that she was unattractive.

“Are you married?” he asked, taking a peek at her bare ring finger.

She seemed surprised by the question. “Ah, no.”

“Ever been married?”

She frowned. “No.”

“It’s a boyfriend, then,” he surmised authoritatively, “someone who tells you that you don’t deserve him and then won’t let go. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

She pushed her glasses up on her short, sharp nose and studied him. Suddenly enlightenment softened her face, and she laughed, a light, chiming sound that seemed to make magic. In that instant she wasn’t pretty at all. She was beautiful, breathtakingly so. Zach set his cup down with a muted plunk, hot coffee splashing over the rim onto the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He shook his hand and rubbed it against his thigh, mesmerized, and suddenly he knew what it was about her that bothered him.

Serena.

Jillian Waltham reminded him of Serena.

He immediately squelched the spurt of emotion that thinking of Serena inevitably brought him. It had been almost five years, and the thought of her senseless death still enraged and pained him. Desperately, he pushed the thought away and tried to listen to Jillian Waltham.

“It isn’t my boyfriend,” she was saying, leaning forward. “It’s my sister’s.”

“Sister’s,” he echoed dumbly.

“Maybe you’ve heard of her, Camille Waltham, Channel 3 News.”

Camille Waltham. Channel 3 News. Sister. Something familiar swam around the edges of his mind and then suddenly dove into its center. He saw a trim, effervescent, conventionally pretty blonde with smartly styled hair and perfect makeup. The sound of her voice came to him: “This is Camille Waltham, Channel 3 News, thanking you for watching. Because we’re YOUR news station.” Reality snapped into focus. Not Jillian Waltham. Not someone who reminded him of Serena. And not a charity case, thank God. Camille Waltham, newscaster. He opened a drawer and took out a pad and pen. After flipping open the pad, he began to write.

“Let me get this straight,” he said, “someone is threatening your sister.”

A brief silence alerted him, and he looked up. Jillian Waltham sat with a pensive expression on her face.

“Not threatening, really.”

Zach laid down the pen, feeling seriously exasperated.

“It’s more like he’s stalking her.”

Ice slid through his veins. Zach picked up the pen, all business now. “Any idea when this started?”

“Oh, yes. When she broke up with him. And it’s just like him, too. Janzen never could take no for an answer. It’s like putting up a red flag, issuing a challenge. Even if he doesn’t want it, he’ll go after it just because you told him he couldn’t have it.”

With a sigh, Zach laid down the pen again and reached for patience. “I really need a date.”

“A date?”

The squeak in her voice confused him. “Yes, please.”

“Well, all right,” she said, “but we have to take care of my sister first. She’s all the family I have.”

He stared at her for several long seconds before all became clear, and then he didn’t know whether he was amused or appalled. “Uh, you, um, misunderstand me, I think. What I need is the date your sister broke up with this boyfriend.”

“Oh! That date!” She laughed, but it was nothing like before, and the red flags of color rose in her cheeks. “I thought...but, I should have known better! You sounded a little desperate there, and a man like you wouldn’t...” She laughed again, the sound so strained and false that it made him want to shake her. She must have sensed his mood, for she took a deep breath then and said solemnly, “It was almost two months ago when they broke up. Say, May 8 or 9. Camille would be able to tell you exactly, of course.”

Of course. He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the knowledge that she considered herself beneath him. But that wasn’t his problem. He tried to concentrate on business. Question number one. “Why, exactly, am I talking to you about this instead of your sister?”

“Oh, Camille’s scheduled for every moment,” Jillian said. “You know how it is, the station’s always sending her out on public relations stuff. It’s that local celebrity thing.”

He knew too well the demands made on and by celebrity types. “Okay, then, let’s take it from the top, Miss Waltham.”

“‘Jillian,”’ she said.

He nodded.

“Or ‘Jilly,’ if you prefer.”

He didn’t prefer, actually. The sobriquet seemed to further trivialize her somehow, but again, it wasn’t any of his business. He made himself nod and smile. “Could you start from the beginning, please, and explain exactly why you’re here?”

She slid to the very edge of her seat and confided, “It was the broken window.”

He opened his mouth to elicit an explanation, then closed it again, hoping that he would do better to let her tell it in her own way. The fallacy of that notion quickly became obvious.

“Camille says it was an accident,” Jillian went on. “and it probably was. He’s not all that coordinated. I mean, you’d think someone who’s involved with music, even if it is just advertising on the radio, could at least dance, you know, but not Janzen—not that he knows it. He doesn’t. He thinks he’s the world’s greatest dancer, just as he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. So maybe he broke it when he was trying to paint it.”

Zach realized he was grinding his teeth and relaxed his jaw to ask, “The window, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“He was painting a window?”

“With words,” she confirmed.

“Words. Ahha. And what words would those be?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. We couldn’t read them after it broke.”

“The window, you mean.”

“Yes, of course.”

Of course. Zach contemplated the container of coffee growing cold on his desk and wondered if it was possible to drown in it. He rejected that particular avenue of escape and sat back again, elbows propped on the arms of his chair, fingers templed. “So your sister broke up with her boyfriend, Janzen, and he tried to write words on her window and probably broke it that way, so no one knows what he was writing.”

“Except you.”

“Me?”

“No, you. The word you. That part was written on the brick next to the window.”

Zach swallowed something hot and acrid that tasted strangely like anger, but he couldn’t have said just with whom he was angry at that moment. He rubbed a hand over his face and said, “So he wrote something that ended in the word you.”

“Exactly.”

Zach waited, but she didn’t say anything else; so he thought perhaps he would offer some suggestions. “What do you think he wrote? I hate you? I want to kill you?”

She shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes.

“But it was a threat of some kind,” he pressed impatiently.

She sighed. “I think so.”

He floundered helplessly. This obviously was getting them nowhere. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to speak with your sister.”

Jillian closed her enormous eyes in obvious relief. “Oh, thank you! I’m so worried about her.”

He nodded, “Right. So, um, shall I call her?”

“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Jillian said. “Just show up around six o’clock.”

“Show up?”

“At Camille’s.”

“You want me to come by her house at six o’clock this evening?”

Delicate, wispy brows drew together. “Is that a problem?”

It wasn’t, actually. He often made calls to women’s shelters, private offices and police stations, and he could make this one on his way to dinner at his brother’s. Why, then, was he looking for excuses not to go? He shook his head. “Just tell me where, exactly, I should show up.”

She rattled off an address in North Dallas between the Park Cities and LBJ Freeway. He grabbed the pen and wrote it down in his notebook.

“And your sister—will she be expecting me?”

“Absolutely.”

He closed the notebook and laid the pen atop it. “I’ll see her, then.”

Jillian got up from the chair and attempted to smooth her wrinkled skirt, saying, “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Keller.”

“No problem.” He stood and thrust back the sides of his pale, tweed sport jacket to place his hands at his waist. “Thanks for the lunch.”

“My pleasure.”

He nodded and forced his mouth into a semblance of a smile until she’d maneuvered around the chair and turned toward the door. Then for some reason, without even planning to, he heard himself calling her back. “Jillian.”

She turned and blinked owlishly at him. “Yes?”

“About that, um, date thing.”

Her cheeks immediately flamed pink. “Oh, don’t worry about that. It was a silly misunderstanding.”

“I know, but it’s not that I wouldn’t... That is, I have a policy about getting involved with clients. It’s not wise. Emotions tend to run high in situations like these, and I can’t let myself take advantage of that.”

“Of course,” she said. “You’re a professional.”

“Exactly.”

She smiled wanly. “I understand.”

“Good.”

Still smiling, she pushed her glasses up on her nose and went out the door. It had barely closed behind her before he remembered that she wasn’t a client at all. Her sister might be, but Jillian Waltham was not. No reason really existed why he couldn’t ask her out on a date if he wanted to. Not that he wanted to. He just didn’t want her to think that he didn’t want to, which didn’t really make any sense even to him.

It was the Serena thing, no doubt. Funny that she should put him in mind of Serena, though. She didn’t look like Serena—well, other than that tall, model’s build—and she certainly didn’t behave like Serena, who had been quietly confident and well-spoken. No, it was something else. Something he couldn’t quite put his finger on just yet.

He sat down and contemplated the brown sack containing the lunch he hadn’t ordered, but it was Serena’s face he saw. A perfect oval framed by long auburn hair, expressive green eyes, straight, slender nose, a full lush mouth. That face had sold everything from mascara to opera tickets. But as lovely as it had been, it was nothing compared with the loveliness of her soul. Serena had been that rare, true beauty who was as pretty inside as out. And she was gone, killed by a crazed, obsessive fan who had fancied himself somehow rejected by her. As was that naive, cocky young policeman who had fed the threats and complaints into the system, believing that would be enough to protect her. He knew better now.

The system was hamstrung by minutiae and overburdened by the sheer volume of similar cases. The average policeman’s hands were literally tied by what seemed to Zach to be nonsensical laws and the unscrupulousness of the criminal population. Law enforcement was an honorable profession, one embraced wholeheartedly by his family, but Serena’s loss had convinced him that he could do more by working the system from the outside than the inside, and he had done a lot of good since then. He admitted that without vanity or ego. It was the balm that made old pains bearable.

So why did he recoil from this case? Jillian Waltham wasn’t even the target. He probably wouldn’t even see her again. Even if he found cause for concern and took the case, he would be protecting Camille Waltham, not her sister—and for pay. Talking news heads tended to make good money, even if they were only local. So it was settled, not that it had been in question, really. He would stop by Camille Waltham’s neighborhood and see what she had to say about this broken window and her former boyfriend. If he did take the case, he’d be dealing with Camille. It should be simple enough to stay clear of Jillian’s path.

It occurred to him that the whole thing might be blown out of proportion by a nervous sister; Jillian had said that Camille considered the broken window an accident. He’d reserve judgment until he’d heard the whole story. Then, even if Camille did need and want his services, he could see no reason for Jillian to be overly involved.

He felt slightly foolish now. Talk about overreacting! He pictured Jillian Waltham’s pixie face behind those big, clunky glasses and laughed at himself. What was he thinking? She was nothing like Serena, really, and she wasn’t the target, so he wouldn’t have to see her even if he did take the case.

He began to unpack the lunch sack, his stomach growling in anticipation of the treat to come. With Jillian Waltham and her arresting eyes tucked firmly out of mind, he leaned back, propped his feet and dug in.

When she opened the door and smiled at him, his stomach dropped. The baggy khaki shorts and oversized red camp shirt were not much improvement over that awful deli uniform, and yet she had definitely improved somehow.

“Jillian. I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, trying not to study her too closely.

“No? Didn’t I tell you that I live here?”

He shook his head. “I thought your sister lived here.”

“She does. It’s her house. She took me in after my parents died.”

Great, he thought. Now how do I keep you out of this? He lifted a hand to the back of his neck. She stepped back and pushed the door open wider.

“Come on in and have a seat.”

He could think of no way to refuse and gingerly stepped past her into a cool gold-and-white entry hall with a twelve-foot ceiling and an impressive glass-and-brass light fixture that looked as though it belonged in an ultramodern office building. He followed Jillian down the hall and through a wide doorway on the right. The formal living room was done in shades of white, cream and pale green. It had an unused air about it. She waved him down onto a pristine sofa covered in cream-colored linen and decorated with pale-green fringe before opening a cabinet in one corner, revealing a small bar.

“What can I get you to drink?”

“Nothing, thanks. I’m not much for alcohol.”

“Me, neither,” she said, opening the door of a tiny refrigerator to reveal rows of canned colas. “But I do like a jolt of cold caffeine on a hot evening.”

“In that case, I’ll have what you’re having.”

She removed two cold cans and popped the tops. “Want a glass?”

“Nope.”

She carried the colas over to the couch and sat down, offering one to him. He took it carefully, avoiding contact with her fingers.

“Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said. “You’re easy. I don’t even have to wash a glass.”

“Stays colder in the can,” he said, taking a sip.

She nodded and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Camille’s not here right now, but she’ll be along in just a minute. The TV station’s got her going out to some charity gala tonight, so she had to get a dress.”

He filed that away for future reference and turned the conversation to a subject that had been bothering him since she’d mentioned it. “You said that she took you in after your parents died.”

Jillian nodded. “That’s right. My mom and dad were killed in a boating accident when I was eleven. Camille was only seventeen, but she insisted her mother take me in.”

“I thought Camille was your sister.”

“She is. My half sister, anyway. We had the same father but different mothers.”

“I see.”

Jillian nodded and curled one long leg up beneath the other. Her feet were bare, and he couldn’t help noticing that they were long and slender with high arches, her second toe longer than the first, the nails oval and neatly trimmed. He wondered irrationally if she would appreciate a good foot rub as much as Serena had after a long photo shoot. To block that train of thought, he searched for something else to say and came up with, “It must seem like you’re full sisters if Camille’s mother raised you from the age of eleven.”

“She didn’t,” Jillian said, then she seemed surprised that she’d said it. “I mean, Camille was more a second mother to me than Gerry—that is, Geraldine.” She grimaced and went on. “Don’t misunderstand me. Gerry’s been great. It’s just that my father left her for my mother, who was his secretary at the time, so naturally she doesn’t look on me as another daughter, just her daughter’s half sister.”

Zach lifted a brow at that. “Must’ve been awkward, living with your father’s ex-wife.”

She shrugged. “We’ve gotten used to it over the years.”

“You mean you all still live together?”

“That’s right. Only it’s Camille’s house now. After Gerry’s last husband died she moved in with us.” Jillian leaned forward then and confessed, “There have been three—husbands, I mean—including my father, who was number one.” She sat back. “Anyway, it’s a big house.”