Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Temple shut the door behind them.

They stood and stared at each other for a few moments.

“You must have come from the radio station,” Temple said, waking up enough to get self-conscious. “And I must look a mess.”

“Love the bunny slippers. The robe’s a wash but it makes me wonder what’s under it.”

“Then it’s a successful robe,” Temple said, running the end of a pink satin tie through her hand.

Conversation stopped. He found himself content, as he often was nowadays, just to stand and look at her. Her sleek new blond hair was uncombed, but even he knew from TV commercials that was a greatly desired look. He took a mental snapshot of her appearing sleepy enough to pick up and take somewhere like a child who’s been up way too late. Somewhere not childish at all. It was a shame to spoil that tousled innocence with other people’s wrangles.

“Matt? What is it? Why are you here so late?”

“It’s all bad,” he said. “I’ve talked to Molina and just now to Max.”

“You saw Max? Must have needed an appointment with his secretary.”

“He found me. Things are . . . a mess. A duel of the Titans is coming and you’re going to be squashed between them.”

“What do you mean?” Temple yawned as she settled into her computer desk chair, letting the slippers fall off and tucking her bare feet under her on the seat.

Matt paced away, not wanting to say what he had to say. “I can’t stop ‘em. Molina is going after Max for sexual harassment and stalking. Max . . . you know him. He has too many irons in the fire bigger than his own self-defense.”

“Max? Stalking?” She was sitting up, feet on the floor again. “Who? Shangri-La?”

“Molina herself.” Matt stopped to take in Temple’s reaction, which was incredulous and heated.

“Max stalking her? I thought Molina was wired lately, but is she completely crazy?”

“I can’t make him take this charge seriously.”

“Maybe because he’s seriously innocent.”

Matt nodded. “Carmen has a hope chest of evidence for the stalking charge, but only one piece of it damning—”

“Damn her , then!”

“I can’t. She believes it.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t think she’s crazy,” he said.

Temple snorted indignantly.

Matt knelt beside the chair. “No, I don’t think Max is her stalker. That makes what I think completely contradictory. It doesn’t mean a thing.”

Temple leaned back in her chair, away from him. “You’re neutral, then?”

“I suppose so . . . if you can believe that two people telling the truth adds up to somebody else’s lie? Temple, the only thing I know is that I don’t want you to be hurt.”

“The only thing I know is that you can’t ever stop anyone else from being hurt.”

“Okay. I’ll take a position.”

“Which is?”

“For Max. Can you believe it?”

She smiled at him, leaned nearer, put her palm on his cheek.

“Yeah. You always give everyone but yourself the benefit of the doubt. If you do think Max is innocent, it means a lot. Are you sure you’re not doing this just for me?”

“I’d do almost anything ‘just for you.’ But . . . I’ve got that Catholic conscience. No. It’s not for you, or me, but for what I believe. God help me, in this case, I believe in Max Kinsella.”

“So do I. So did I, well past the point when I looked like a stupid woman.”

“Not stupid. Loyal. But now that he’s in Molina’s sights again—”

“What?”

“It’s going to bother you.”

“What?”

“Us.” He’d said it, put his selfish insecurities out on the table for Temple to see.

Her gray-blue eyes stared into his for a long moment. Then she stroked her forefinger across his lips, a tender gesture recalling their recent intimacies. Was it hello, or good-bye?

“Max will always be in trouble with someone,” she said finally. She produced a wry, sad smile. “Maybe me this time, if he’s been playing head games with Molina.” She frowned. “I may be conceited, but I just can’t see him stalking her under any circumstances.”

“She wouldn’t be convinced he was, though, without some grounds.”

“So. You understand what he’s up against.”

“I understand what he’s always been up against.” And that’s why you loved him , Matt thought. Love him.

It’s hard to compete with a martyr. To win Temple, Matt figured, he couldn’t do it over Max’s dead body, over his disgrace and fall. Somehow, he’d have to absolve Max and disprove Molina’s deepest convictions.

Or this ugly suspicion about Max, so wounding to a loyalist like Temple, would always lie between them.

Miracle Worker

“Is it all right if Aldo picks me up here?” Kit asked Temple at about six P.M. the next evening.

Her aunt was shifting her weight from foot to foot in her zebrawood-soled brocaded stiletto sandals like an antsy twelve-year-old.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, you’re used to thinking of the Fontanas as a flock. Seeing just one at a time might be . . . overwhelming and confusing.”

“ I ’m not the one who has to be very sure about not confusing Fontanas,” Temple pointed out. Pointedly. “Where are you going tonight?”

“The Bellagio.”

“For dinner? That’ll cost Aldo a well-tailored Zegna arm, and probably a leg.”

“I’m worth it,” said Kit, ducking back into Temple’s office and its attached bathroom to finish her makeup.

Temple hoped that she would be that self-confident when she was sixty . . . in thirty years. Right now, the outlook was glum on all fronts.

The idea of Max was bitter in her mind. At best, he was brushing her out of his life. At worst, he was coming on to her , their relentless enemy. Maybe there was some ulterior reason for the good of mankind behind it. Even that idea left a sour taste in her mouth. She wished she’d kissed Matt last night. He’d looked so torn and worried and his mouth was always as clean and bracing as springwater to her.

At work, everyone connected with the White Russian exhibition was being regarded as an apparent thief-in-training. Temple’s guilty knowledge that innocents were suspected when she knew Max was the culprit was twisting her usually wrought-iron stomach into queasy knots. The media was all over the hotel and her and Randy. In fact, to avoid them snooping into their PR plans to accentuate the positive, Randy had ordered Temple to work from her home computer for a while.

Now, she’d barely settled in to craft totally unworkable press releases—how do you defuse a fatal fall and a stolen artifact in 150 words or less?—and Kit was preparing to exit, way too excited about her fling with Aldo to even notice that Temple was running on emotional empty, six quarts shy of hope.

Temple forced her depleted energy up forty revolutions per minute when the doorbell rang.

“Would you get that, hon?” Kit yelled from the bathroom. “I haven’t finished unpacking the bags under my eyes.”

“Hi!” Temple greeted Aldo, checking out his smooth, swarthy Italian hide for forty-something wrinkles. He didn’t look a day over thirty-two, but Mediterranean types aged well. “Kit’ll be right out.”

God! She felt like her own mother. She was the young chick here; Kit was, well, not acting her age.

“How is the family?” Temple inquired as she led tall, dark, and Fontana into the living room. The cappuccino color of his suit matched her sofa exactly, although the material was far better.

“Uh, do you mean the family, or the Family, Miss Temple?”

She felt like she’d never been trapped into making small talk with a single Fontana for so long before.