The Perfect Gift Read online

  All through the drive across London, Maggie laughed at the convoluted antics of the two incorrigible men. She was still laughing when Anders stopped across the street from her hotel. “Thank you for everything.”

  He raised a dismissing hand. “Is nothing.”

  “Save Friday for me. I expect you to show me all the shops.”

  “And which shops would those be?”

  Maggie grinned. “The ones with back rooms where men like you and my father found all the really good stones.”

  “Who knows better than I?” He winked broadly. “Now go, go. To sleep with you, my dear. It is too late.” He wagged his finger. “No parties, remember. No wild dancing. Most of all, no men or your work suffers. I am like a father now, and this I do not permit.”

  Maggie was still chuckling as she watched his car disappear down the street. Through Anders, she had glimpsed an entirely new side to her father. She had never imagined him capable of wild escapades and reckless gaiety, until now. Yet there was a bittersweet quality to the discovery. She could only wonder why Daniel Kincade had never revealed that side of himself to his own family.

  She turned up the collar of her coat, feeling wind whip at her face. At least the rain had stopped. Otherwise, she’d be soaked before she reached the hotel’s front steps.

  Maggie heard a soft cough. Out of the shadows a car inched up beside her.

  Suddenly the street was too quiet, too empty. Before she could pull back, the door jerked open and she was caught tight. She searched vainly for someone to help her as cold fingers ground down over her mouth.

  Then she was dragged back into the shadows.

  TWISTING RIGHT TO LEFT.

  Grappling madly, fighting the relentless hold.

  Nothing worked.

  Maggie shoved blindly against the cold hands. Her foot hit a broken cobblestone, and she was flung sideways, slammed against a wooden barrier at one edge of the silent street.

  Cold eyes glittered behind a black wool ski mask. The man’s open palm moved along her hips. “What’s in that bag of yours?”

  Maggie thought of the ring that Anders had just given her. There was no way she would let her father’s last gift be taken from her like this.

  “I’ve got credit cards—money. I’ll get them,” she said breathlessly.

  He made a hard, mocking sound. The wooden barrier dug into Maggie’s back, and she felt the sweat on his palms.

  She wanted to scream. She wanted to dig her fingers into his eyes. Yet she waited, knowing she would have only one chance to catch him off guard.

  She sank slightly to one side while he ransacked her handbag. At the same time she eased her hand into her deep pocket.

  Loupe. Maglite. Polishing cloth.

  Then she felt the cold metal outline of her air canister. A full dose would blind him, at least temporarily. Silently she eased the metal tube into her palm.

  He clamped his hand over her mouth, and the sight of her pale face seemed to excite him. “What I want is money.” His eyes narrowed. “Or maybe something else…”

  Panic broke over her as she tried to speak against the suffocating pressure of his hand.

  He laughed softly. “Frightened, are you? Good. We’re just getting started here, love. It’s only the two of us now.” He shoved her flat against the wooden barrier, his hand still locked over her mouth.

  Then she felt him move behind her.

  Down went her heel, grinding into his instep. Wrestling the air canister from her pocket, she aimed it point-blank at his eyes.

  The force of the first spray sent him backwards, cursing and digging at his face. Maggie fled in the only direction open to her, toward a mound of broken flagstones that bordered a twisting alley. Beyond lay light, noise, and the traffic of a broader avenue. Her heart pounded in a sick rush as she lurched away from the hoarse curses and falling stones.

  He was coming.

  Desperately she veered toward a row of cement reinforcements before a wall of dirt. She pitched to her knees, then scrambled to her feet, clawing at paving stones and gravel as she fought her way toward the far side of the alley.

  Then he was behind her.

  He jerked her against the grimy brick wall, away from any hint of light. His breath was hot and sharp on her face as the knifepoint settled at her neck, then slowly pressed deeper, drawing blood. Through a wave of pain she heard him laugh.

  His eyes glinted behind the mask, seized with hot, flickering excitement.

  He didn’t want her money. He didn’t want credit cards or her passport. His hand moved over her wrist, then twisted sharply. Maggie gasped at the sudden wrenching pain.

  “Fine little hands, so nice to touch. So easy to break.” His mouth settled at her ear. “What would you do to make me stop? Say what you’d do, love. Maybe I’ll stop now, while you’re still pretty.”

  She wouldn’t answer. He was toying with her, baiting her.

  He dug at her body, and her father’s ring spilled onto the ground. “Diamonds?” The man froze, staring at the muted glint against the gloom. “What other surprises are you hiding?”

  A newspaper fluttered up the alley, and somewhere behind them a car horn blared twice. Her captor swung about with a curse, giving her time to recover her ring.

  The movement was enough to bring Maggie within reach of an acetylene torch balanced on a sawhorse with the remains of a workman’s lunch. She grabbed the cold metal, raising it with a shaking hand, and the torch flared to life in a blue roar of heat. “Stay back,” she said hoarsely, rage beating down her terror. “This flame burns at about 500 degrees. It will sear the skin off your face in seconds.”

  He stopped, but only for a moment, circling slowly to her left. “Clever woman. But you can’t hope to get past me, now can you?”

  In her hands the torch hissed, and the flame flickered sharply.

  The cold eyes narrowed behind the mask. “Losing fuel. Too bad for you.”

  Maggie’s hands tightened. He was right. She had at most a few more seconds. With a wild heave, she hurled the canister at his face, then ducked through a narrow hole in the wooden barrier.

  She was nearly through when his hands circled her ankle. Maggie cried out as his nails dug into her skin with cruel force.

  Over the thunder of her heart she heard the crack of cobblestones. Wind rushed past her face, and suddenly her foot was free. A shout echoed dimly as she scrambled forward into the darkness.

  Only then did she see her attacker twist against the wooden wall, moonlight playing over his black mask as a second figure crouched on the rutted earth.

  Her attacker struck the wall and swayed.

  Maggie watched, dazed, while the figure in black was tossed across the paving stones, then heaved facedown against the dirt, where he lay gasping and twitching.

  A step behind her.

  A hand at her back.

  Then Jared’s familiar voice with its low, rolling accents of the north. “So here I find you,” he muttered. “Sweet Lord, I thought I’d never track you down.”

  “You followed me?”

  “I was at the hotel waiting for you to cross the street. Then you disappeared.”

  She felt an overpowering urge to lean on those strong shoulders and hold on tight, but she fought it down.

  He touched her hair gently. “Okay?”

  When she nodded, he swept up her bag and slid it over her shoulder. “How did you hold him off?”

  “With a discarded acetylene torch. I threatened to burn off his face if he touched me again.”

  “We’d better get him to the police,” Jared said grimly. “Then I’ll be wanting to ask him a few questions myself.” He raised Maggie’s face to the dim, filtered light, and his voice tightened. “Did he hurt you?”

  “He scared a good ten years off my life. Otherwise, no.”

  “Fortunate for him or I wouldn’t let him forget it.” The look on his face made Maggie certain he meant exactly what he said. “Come on.”

&nb
sp; As Jared turned back to the face of the alley, a car loomed into view, blocking their exit. “Better not risk that way out,” he said tightly. “We’ll have to go across.”

  “What about him?” Maggie frowned at the motionless man on the damp earth.

  “We’ll send an official car around once we’re clear. Right now I don’t like the feel of things.” He pulled her up a slippery slope of mud and broken roof tiles, his face grim as they passed her attacker.

  Maggie guessed Jared hated the idea of leaving him behind. She wasn’t thrilled about it herself.

  A dozen paces brought them to a barrier of discarded truck tires. “Hurry,” he said. “There will be more of them back that way.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Call it a hunch.” They were at the far edge of the alley. The dim border of a streetlight cast jagged shadows over the ground.

  Tiles clattered behind them, and they turned to see Maggie’s attacker stumbling back toward the alley and the waiting car.

  “Jared, he’s—”

  Her sentence was drowned out by the roar of a motor. The car backed up sharply and a door slammed.

  Then they were left alone in the night.

  Maggie’s hands shook. Her knees were bleeding, and the gash on her throat burned. Suddenly the enormity of her danger struck home. She stood rooted to the cold pavement, staring blindly at the mouth of the alley. She might have cried here, bled here. Died here.

  If not for Jared.

  Something that had been drifting at the edge of her mind swam into sickening focus. Something she had barely heard in her terror. A word her attacker had muttered in the darkness.

  Her name.

  Dear God, had the man whispered “Maggie” just before he’d pressed his knife against her throat?

  Jared’s hands slid around her shoulders. “What is it?”

  She bit back the words she’d been about to say. There was no reason to make things more complicated. In her confusion and panic, she must have misunderstood that single, muttered word.

  She managed a low laugh. “Nothing that a long, hot bath won’t cure.”

  He stared at her in silence, eyes narrowed. Then he pulled her toward the bright lights beyond the alley. “That can be arranged, I believe.”

  Maggie didn’t ask how or when. Suddenly she didn’t care where he took her, as long as it was away from this place. Her mind shut down, frozen and insensible.

  Yet even then a sense of violation persisted, making her stare into every shadowed doorway.

  Maggie opened her eyes to the slap of water and a wall of unrelenting black. Memory returned at the same moment as wakefulness, and she sat forward with a gasp, only to relax at the feel of Jared’s shoulder against hers.

  His hand settled impersonally on her shoulder. “Relax.”

  Maggie felt a pitch and roll beneath her feet and realized they were rocking up and down. “I must have dozed off.” She peered out at the darkness. “Where in the world are we?”

  “Someplace safe.”

  Light flickered through a wall of trees. “Not the abbey, surely.”

  “Closer. My place on the Thames.”

  “An odd place for a home.”

  A lonely place too, she decided as a steel-and-glass structure loomed out of the trailing mist. Was home a rundown warehouse in sore need of paint?

  Only up close did she see that the building had signs of recent renovation. The metal doors were new, and the cement steps from the narrow wooden dock were freshly painted.

  “Do you always come and go by boat?”

  “Mostly.” He laughed shortly. “Nothing better to keep persistent salespeople from the door.”

  “And everyone else, I imagine.”

  “I manage to find company when I need it.”

  The door opened with a well-oiled hiss, and he steered her through a narrow corridor of steel girders. They climbed two flights before he keyed a number into what appeared to be a high-tech security keypad and pushed open a metal door.

  Maggie had a sudden impression of red and black against walls of brushed steel. In the sudden glare of overhead lights she saw towering squares of white with slashing brushwork of almost Oriental simplicity. “Are these yours?”

  “A friend made them.”

  With a hushed sound of surprise, Maggie moved closer, reaching out to the rich, textured paper bordered by a frame of exquisite silk tapestry.

  “Careful. That one is still drying.”

  Maggie turned slowly. “They’re yours, aren’t they?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  Maggie watched him slide a kettle of water onto a gleaming electric cooktop, then flick on a laptop computer perched nearby on a granite countertop. There was competence in every movement, just as there was competence in the hands that had laid paint in such slashing, beautiful lines of color.

  The pictures were good, Maggie thought. In fact, they were marvelous. But she still couldn’t believe that he had painted them.

  Her gaze was captured by a long gash of crimson and black. Mountains in mist? A river twisting through low hills? “Where have you exhibited?”

  “Nowhere. Nicholas keeps trying to harass me into a show, but I’m not interested.”

  “You should be. They’re—well, marvelous comes to mind.”

  He set two stoneware mugs on the counter as the kettle began to hum. “Not interested. I paint for myself and no one else. If some musty critic started in on me, I’d probably shoot him in the head.”

  Maggie started to argue but was distracted by a glimpse of the far wall. Hinged cabinets of intricately inlaid cherry framed floor-to-ceiling windows before an unbroken expanse of night sky and restless water. “It’s…beautiful,” she said softly.

  “I like looking out at the water. It invariably seems to put things into perspective.” He offered her a steaming cup. “I hope you like tea with your brandy.”

  “Strong, is it?”

  “Fair warning.”

  Maggie took a sip, coughed, and was glad he’d given her advance notice. The hot mixture seared her throat but created a very pleasant afterburn.

  “Why don’t you get some rest? The guest room is across the hall.” Jared was already bent over the humming screen fast filling with animated images. They appeared to be some sort of architectural designs.

  She looked closer, only to find his hands closing over her shoulder.

  “I can’t see? Don’t tell me it’s top secret.”

  He turned her around and aimed her toward the first door beyond the kitchen. “The guest room’s that way. You’ll find extra towels in the bathroom and whatever else you need in the closet.”

  Maggie realized he hadn’t chuckled at her comment. He was serious about the screen contents’ being secret. At that moment she realized how little she knew about the man who had just rescued her.

  Distant thunder.

  Rain pattering on the window.

  The sound of horses at the gallop and angry, shouting voices.

  Can’t stay.

  Have to leave. Not too late—please, not too late, too late.

  Maggie sat up with a start, a cry on her lips and fear clawing at her chest. Nothing moved around her and the night was silent, save for the slap of water and the distant rumble of a foghorn. As memory returned, she lay back. Her legs were twisted in a blanket, and one hand was trapped in the sleeve of the oversized pajamas she’d found in Jared’s closet.

  No wonder she felt suffocated. With a shaky laugh, she eased free and padded to the window.

  The view was beautiful, a swirl of black and pearl gray. It had to be nearly dawn, judging by the light just beginning to touch the horizon where the river snaked east. Maggie could understand why Jared loved this place. There was an unbroken serenity in being surrounded by such water views.

  Idly she checked the bookshelves. Computer books by the dozens. An original play script with notes of Olivier and Leigh performing Macbeth. Sun Tzu’s Art of Wa
r in Chinese with an English translation and scribbled comments in the margin.

  She stopped at a highlighted phrase.

  All warfare is based on deception.

  Frowning, Maggie moved to the broad table running along the window, where half a dozen canvases were turned to face the wall. Works in progress.

  She itched to look, but the artist in her balked. Looking unasked would be an unforgivable violation. A studio was not just where your hands worked, but where your soul worked. Curious or not, Maggie had no right to peek without an express invitation.

  Still, it was strange to think of the man with the hard jaw and the careful eyes as an artist capable of the emotion she’d seen captured on those great, flaring canvases.

  She peered along the corridor to the kitchen, where a single light burned above the cooktop. Jared was asleep beside the computer, his head on his arms and cold electric light flickering over his face. His shirt was open and he was barefoot, long legs encased in frayed, well-worn denims. He looked exhausted, Maggie thought. Yet even in sleep there was a power to his body that made it hard for her to look away.

  An odd heat filled her face. She tried to pull her gaze from the long lean legs and the open button at his waistband. There was no reason to stare. There was no reason for her pulse to spike and her body to feel heavy with sensual awareness. He was just a man and she had seen men before, hadn’t she?

  None like this one, a voice whispered.

  Abruptly a phone rang softly down the hall.

  Maggie hesitated, waiting for Jared to wake. When he gave no sign of hearing, she padded down the hall and picked up the receiver warily. “Hel-lo?”

  “Jared?” A woman’s voice poured silkily over the line. “I tried your main number and only got your machine. Why didn’t you call?”

  Maggie stared at the receiver.

  “Jared, are you there?” Petulance warred with the warmth in the unknown voice. “No, don’t answer. Let me apologize first. I was—well, completely off the other night. You have your job and I understood how it would be. But I’m lonely, so come over, won’t you? It’s so lovely and warm here in bed.” Sheets rustled softly. “And there’s nothing but me. I want you in the most appalling way, Jared.”