Triple Dare. Candace Irvin
this hour?
She swallowed her disbelief. Nutcase or not, she did not want the man leaving until she was sure he wouldn’t pass out in the elevator—whether he was headed the one floor up or seventeen down. She tried teasing again. “Let me guess, you turn into a pumpkin at midnight.”
This time, his lips didn’t quirk. If anything, he became more guarded. “Something like that.”
Disappointment seared in—so swiftly, she was forced to admit she was attracted to the man. But even if he was attracted to her, time limits meant only one thing. A woman. Wherever his apartment was located, there was a woman waiting inside it. Girlfriend, fiancé, wife—it didn’t matter. She had no intention of playing second fiddle to anyone or anything ever again. Abby held fast to her resolve as Dare retrieved his jacket. She followed him out of the kitchen and around the boxes she had no idea how she was going to get rid of once they were empty and joined him in the apartment’s tiny foyer. She unlocked both security bolts and opened the door.
Dare stepped into the dimly lit hall—and hesitated.
To her surprise, he turned back.
That haunted looked was not a figment of her imagination. It was real and it had returned. But damned if she could figure out what was causing it, much less the resignation that had crept in as well. Dare retrieved an ivory-colored business card from the inner pocket of his tux and held it out. “Put the boxes in the hall when you finish unpacking. Then call and leave a message on my machine. I’ll have them removed.”
She reached out, instinctively taking the card and skimming it. Two lines in, she stopped. Forced herself to reread. Not the phone number…the address. Dare lived upstairs all right. All the way up. She snapped her gaze to his, not even bothering to disguise the fury blistering in.
“You live in the penthouse?”
The haunting in his eyes intensified.
She didn’t care. She no longer wondered what was behind it, either. She was too busy absorbing the shock. Two days after Greta Laurens had offered to sell her the apartment—and the very morning after she’d brought her brother by to make sure Brian also loved it—an unnamed resident had decided to exercise an obscure clause in Tristan Court’s antiquated homeowners’ agreement, one originally scripted by blue bloods at the turn of the century to keep so-called common folk from buying in. Abby received a formal, humiliating summons to appear before the building’s residents’ board, ostensibly to determine if she was suitable neighbor material. Though the board hadn’t come out and said it, she knew darn well the color of her blood hadn’t been the issue, but the genetic makeup of the rest of her cells.
Or rather, her brother’s.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
This man—who hadn’t even bothered to show up for that humiliating meeting—had instigated the entire, ugly mess. She didn’t care if Dare had withdrawn his reservations by the time the board met, she should have left him clinging to the side of their building where she’d found him. Unfortunately, it was too late to rectify her mistake now. She did the next best thing. She slammed the door in his face.
Chapter 2
Zeno Corza pocketed the compact binoculars he’d lifted from a pawnshop the night he’d hit town. Though his mark had already entered the apartment building, Zeno didn’t cross the darkened street. Nor did he retrieve his cell phone and call in. It wasn’t that he had nothing new to report.
He did.
But for all the boss’s big words and bigger ideas, the guy wouldn’t understand a change in plans, even a small one. He was too stuck on things going down his way. Well, the boss was also supposed to be big on results, too. Zeno was about to grab a couple of those. The brilliance of it was that he didn’t have to stick out his own hand. All he had to do was tap an old acquaintance on the shoulder. Remind a certain someone that in the end, everyone’s dirty little secrets leaked out.
Zeno clenched his fingers. The boss was wrong. He had brawn and brains.
Finesse.
Hell, after that fiasco in Chicago a couple of months ago, it wouldn’t be hard to prove. Especially since New York was Zeno Corza’s turf. Sure, he’d been busted while distributing his white-powder wares in the projects across town a couple years back—but he’d been smart enough to develop and then cash in a lucrative marker before his case even went to court, hadn’t he? Zeno craned his neck toward the upper floors of the Tristan, grinning as the bank of windows he’d spent the better part of the past few days casing lit up. Time to retrieve his cell phone. Put his new and improved mission into motion. Prove to the boss for once and for all he was ready to move up in the organization.
And if the boss was right and he didn’t have a way with words?
Well, there was always Sally.
Anticipation hummed in Zeno as he fingered the meticulously honed blade sheathed at the waist of his trousers. He’d named the old knife after the faithless bitch who’d once sworn to stick with him for life. In a way, she had. Part of her. After all these years, the blade’s wooden handle still carried the stain of Sally’s blood. Ironic when he thought about it.
That’s all the boss had ordered him to get this time.
A single drop of blood. The rest was his to amuse himself with. Another reason Zeno knew he was smart—he’d come up with a lot of ways to amuse himself over the years….
Abby gently hung her brother’s latest masterpiece on the wall and scrambled off the couch to admire the results of her handiwork. Not bad. The painting—a depiction of her new apartment building at sunset—was absolutely gorgeous.
She wasn’t surprised.
For all her brother’s difficulties with numbers and directions, Brian was an amazing impressionist. Tristan Court’s stately turn-of-the-century facade was awash in soft reds, warm golds and a soothing burnt orange. Brian had even sketched in the impression of the doorman with a few strategic strokes of dark gray, highlighted with white. The phone rang as Abby reached out to adjust the bottom of the frame. Sighing, she turned to thread through the empty cardboard boxes still cluttering her living room, wondering if her uptight upstairs neighbor would revise his opinion of her brother if she showed him the painting.
She knew the answer before she reached the kitchen counter. She’d spent years dealing with the prejudices of strangers regarding Down’s. Heck, getting to know Brian one-on-one for six months the year before hadn’t even put a dent in her ex’s carefully concealed, holier-than-thou bigotry.
And speak of the devil.
Abby glared at the name and number in her phone’s caller ID window. It was Stuart Van Heusen, in the flesh—or rather, in her ear. If she picked up. Abby spun around and waded back through the boxes to retrieve her hammer. By the fourth ring she was tempted to send the tool sailing across the room and onto the phone. Her own prerecorded voice kicked in on the fifth shrill, only to cut out in mid-hello as Stuart decided against leaving a message and hung up.
Smart move.
She’d yet to return his first three calls.
Frankly, she still couldn’t believe he’d had the nerve to show up at the concert hall that afternoon. Fortunately, she’d been onstage, halfway through rehearsal along with the other 105 members of the Philharmonic. By the time they’d finished, Stuart had given up and left. She’d been tempted to dial his cell number then, if only to tell him that the next time he stepped foot in her dressing room—assistant district attorney or not—she was going to have security escort him out. But then Marlena had arrived and her thoughts of Stuart had vanished as her friend practically bounded toward the stage.
At first Abby hadn’t been able to tell if Marlena was heading for the violin or cello section—much less why. A cellist with the Philharmonic, Marlena’s husband, Stephen, had taken Abby under his wing a decade ago when he learned the gangly new violinist had a