Suzanne Forster - The Private Concierge

She got his voice mail on the first ring, but the message had been changed. His voice was tight and furious. “If this is Priscilla Brandt, your show is as good as dead. And if I had my way your career would be dead, too. Don’t. Call. Back.”

Pris gasped and dropped the phone. How could he do that? Everyone who called him was going to hear that message. She felt her knees buckling and was afraid she would end up on the floor. It was all over. Tomorrow’s papers would have the shots of her collapsing after Skip McGinnis rejected her via voice mail.

She pressed her palms to the counter and hung on. No, she wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction. No way! In an act of symbolic defiance, she upended her wineglass and drained the entire thing. When the wine was gone, she banged the glass on the bar, shaking, but grateful that her nerve was coming back. No one was going to talk to her like that. There was only going to be one career in need of life support when this was over and that was his. Skip McGinnis, that pipsqueak excuse for a talk-show producer, was finished.

Rick Bayless was struck by two things as he listened to the woman who called herself Lane Chandler dictate information about her clients—the moody rhythm-and-blues track playing in the background and the tension crackling in the air. From his vantage point at the door of her office, he had a three-quarter view of her stretched out in the chaise. She was facing away from him, holding what looked like a high-tech cell phone, and he’d made a mental note of the names she mentioned, some of whom he recognized as VIPs of one stripe or another. Her comments were candid, as was her obvious annoyance with certain clients. But it was difficult to concentrate on what she said when his mind kept screening the image of a frighteningly seductive fifteen-year-old, who turned out to be as challenging as any street criminal he’d ever dealt with.

He’d taken her for older, eighteen at least. She’d stared right through him with her chilly azure eyes. They were as blue as jewels, and she was as bold and wary as any professional streetwalker he’d ever come across. She’d promised him his money’s worth, anything he wanted, things he’d never dreamed of, whatever that meant. As he’d moved closer, he’d spotted her lean, wiry frame and gamine features—and realized he was dealing with a kid.

A kid? It had hit him like a bucket of cold water. He’d thought she was legal. And worse, maybe he’d wanted her to be legal because if he was being honest, he’d felt a flash of desire that was almost painful. Jesus, no kid should be out on the street having that effect on grown men. That could be why he’d been a little rough on her when he put her in the cuffs.

When she’d realized she was going to jail, the color had drained from her face. She’d begged him not to take her. She’d even tried to make him believe her sad story about a sick friend. Sad because they all had a sick friend. When she realized she couldn’t talk her way out of it, she’d put up one hell of a fight. Ferocious didn’t cover it, all the time shrieking that her friend was going to die. He used Tasers only to disarm kids with weapons, but he wasn’t sure a Taser would have contained her.

Lane Chandler had grown up, but Rick’s brain had no trouble making that transition. She’d been thirty-five at fifteen. The changes he saw now were all physical. He remembered a lean, starved, ready-to-spring body and a thick mop of dark brown hair that completely covered her face when she looked down. She could have set up housekeeping under that curtain of hair. But when her head came back up and the curtain opened, her gaze had scorched him.

Now, the mop had been brought under control. Sleek and glossy with mahogany hues, it curved toward her face like a whip, but it was still abundant enough that she had to comb it off her face with her fingers.

He wondered what she looked like these days. Still as cold and forbidding as a mountain fjord? Swim at your own risk? Or had the icicles been reserved for him, her persecutor? And what was that music about? “Unchained Melody,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Everybody Hurts” by REM? She didn’t strike him as the type that would be heavily into heartbreak music, but those were the songs playing softly in the background. Did some guy just dump her?

He closed the door on the personal questions, concerned where they were taking him. The only one that mattered was whether or not she could have pulled off the gruesome alleged murder-suicide at Ned’s place and escaped with the package. Rick had been working on a theory of his own about how Ned and Holly had actually died, and he couldn’t imagine a woman like Lane Chandler accomplishing what he had in mind. Too much physical force required, especially in dealing with a man as big as Ned…unless she had an accomplice.

Lane’s chin came up, and she scanned the office windows the way an animal sniffs the air, sensing another presence. He could see her profile, and the beauty that had been nascent then was evident now. The contours of her face had filled out, softening the angles and hiding the raw bones, the desperation. Her lips were parted, glistening. He wanted to think he’d done her a favor by getting her off the streets. That had been part of his goal. But now it forced him to consider another question. What a grim twist of fate it would be if by saving her, he’d somehow allowed her to cross Ned’s path and be the instrument of his destruction. The thought made him ill.

He must have moved because she sprang up from the chaise.

“Who’s there?” She spotted him in the doorway and began stabbing at the buttons on her cell. One of them lit up, flashing.

A panic button, Rick realized. She’d alerted security. The male voice coming from the phone’s mouthpiece confirmed his suspicion.

“Ms. Chandler? Are you all right?”

Rick was on top of her before she could respond. He grabbed the phone out of her hand and fired instructions at her. “Tell the security guard you hit the panic button by mistake. Tell him everything is fine.”

“Fuck off,” she snarled under her breath. “Give me that phone.”

He caught her as she lunged at him, spun her around and put her in an armlock. “Do it,” he warned, applying just enough pressure to make sure she cooperated. “Or I’ll tell him who you really are. I’ll tell everyone, Lucia.”

“What?” She craned around, as if she didn’t know what he was talking about. Apparently, she didn’t recognize him, either. But when he released her, she didn’t hesitate. She took the phone from him and pressed the panic button.

“Sorry,” she told the security guard. “I hit the button by mistake. Everything’s fine.”

“You sure, Ms. Chandler?” the guard said. “We found an exit door ajar down here on the first floor. The alarm didn’t go off, which means there could be a problem with the system. Should I run up there, take a look around?”

She assured him that wasn’t necessary, turned off the phone and tried to slip it into her jacket pocket. Rick took it away from her again, aware of the treasures it must contain.

“Who are you? And why did you call me Lucia?” Haughty and unflinching, she seemed determined to brazen it out. The years had softened her facial features, but little else. Inside, she was probably still as tough as a wire cutter, but that had to be mostly facade. A woman who’d built a successful concierge service from the ground up knew what people needed, inside and out. She played on those needs, had to. She personified the private concierge. Lane’s early clients gushed her praises on the Web site, giving testimonials with the passion of religious converts. Apparently she’d saved them all in one way or another. Rick wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d delivered some babies.