if she was any good as a fortune hunter, she’d soon work out that he was a better target than Wainwright. He’d then have to endure the tedium, and the disappointment of listening to her simper and coo as she tried to draw his interest. Just another mosquito….
“Don’t,” she begged, in answer to his impulsive demand, and he was surprised out of his complacent remorse when he heard the real anguish in her voice.
Also, for mercy’s sake, what was happening to those big brown eyes? Were those actually tears making them glisten?
“Please don’t,” she went on, her voice shaky. “I mean, I assume you’re connected somehow with the council or the zoning authority, or whoever, but…but…Oh, damn, why am I begging?”
She dropped her head so that her mass of gorgeous hair fell forward like an avalanche of silk and screened her emotion-filled face.
“As if begging is going to do any good!” she muttered. “If you’re serious about that bargain of yours, of course I’ll spend two hours with you. To think you’d ruin or spare people’s lives on the basis of some faint interest in my company!”
“Actually, I’m viewing you more as a kind of insect repellent,” he drawled, masking his true reaction to her dramatically changed mood.
“Insect repellent?”
“Here comes another mosquito now.”
“Patrick!” squealed Tiffany de Saint. “Patrick Callahan! It’s been a hundred years!”
She minced up to the table on impossible heels and bent to kiss him, offering a deliberate glimpse of breasts that had been professionally inflated to more than generous size. When she straightened again, Patrick noted that not a hair on her blond head had moved, it was so stiffly styled.
He didn’t know what favor she’d called in to get a ticket this evening, but she certainly wasn’t here on the strength of service to charity, public profile or talent. He only knew her because she’d worked as the personal assistant to Anna Tarrant, a publicity consultant he’d dated for a while. She’d lost that job after sleeping with one too many of Anna’s married clients.
Running into people like Tiffany was one of the things that made Patrick regret the litany of short-lived relationships with interesting women that formed his past. He now found that he knew too many people, and too many of those people he didn’t like.
“Hi, Tiffany,” he said. “Meet Lady Catrina Willoughby-Brown.”
He slid an arm around Lady C’s shoulders and saw Tiffany’s face tighten. Her baby-blue eyes narrowed and went as hard as two diamonds above a rectangular smile that she couldn’t sustain.
“Lady Catrina,” she echoed. To her credit, she recognized defeat at once. “I’m just so utterly thrilled to meet you.” Her voice was like damp cardboard. Seconds later, she had moved on.
“See,” he said to Lady C. “Mosquito repellent.”
“Yes, I see,” she answered at once. “But if you think that makes it any better, I—I don’t agree. Just because you have your own agenda. What are you doing? Selling your silence? It’s…it’s…just wrong!”
The phony accent had disappeared completely, replaced by pure, native Philadelphian, and either she hadn’t even noticed or she didn’t care anymore. It appalled Patrick to see how upset she was. Hell, she was shaking! He could see it and feel it, beneath the arm that he still had draped lightly across her shoulder.
“Hey!” he said urgently, straightening and taking his arm away. “Hey, Lady C!”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What should I call you then?”
“Just Cat, okay? No…” She shook her head, quickly changing her mind, and he saw the Wainwrights returning with their steaming supper plates. “Can you stick to Lady Catrina, please, as if you believed me? Please! Or else, if this means anything to you, five of us will lose our home.”
“What?”
“Grindlay won’t leave my cousin alone. He’s trying to trick her into selling so that when the rezoning goes through he can get in first and develop the land. She’s vulnerable and often gets confused. We can’t ever trust that he won’t find a way to get to her. This was the only thing we could think of, and now…I need the bathroom,” she finished abruptly and hurried off before the Wainwrights reached the table.
Patrick sat back in his seat in stunned silence, his neck and face burning and his hands ice-cold.
What was that about? Sheesh! Who was talking about anyone losing their home? She had truly called his bluff just now, and she was too upset even to know it.
Clearly, he’d gotten something majorly wrong. She wasn’t here, like Tiffany de Saint, to catch herself a rich boyfriend at all. She had targeted Earl P. Wainwright for another reason entirely. His mind made rapid, accurate leaps of logic. Councillor Wainwright. She’d talked about a rezoning…
The puzzle fell into place in a sketchy sort of way. She had used this ball to gain access to Wainwright and influence his vote on the local council over a zoning issue that affected her home, and evidently she was sure she’d succeeded after her dance with the affable councilman. Patrick remembered the sweet relief on Cat’s face a few minutes ago when she’d returned to the table.
Without knowing the full story, he nevertheless approved. He knew a little about the workings of the local council in this particular obscure corner of Greater Philadelphia. In his opinion the council was way too fond of rezoning at the drop of a hat, making a mockery of sensitive city planning and development.
But the success of the plan, he calculated, had to depend on Wainwright continuing to fall for that British aristocrat thing, and this was why Lady C had been so upset to think of Patrick blowing her cover.
She’d fled to the bathroom to repair her makeup, while he was left feeling like a complete heel. He’d pictured her as a brazen gold digger, and he’d enjoyed the idea of exposing her. To him, it had been a bit of unusual entertainment for the evening, while clearly to her it was anything but.
Who was she? She had guts, imagination and flair, that was for sure, to attempt such a flamboyant scam. He was the only person who suspected she wasn’t who she said she was, and that was only because—
Wham! The realization hit him in the guts.
It was only because from the moment he saw her he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her. This had made him a witness to her occasional slips. And now that he understood her a little better, his interest was stronger than ever. He hadn’t felt so immediately and totally fascinated by a woman for a very long time.
He sat there, toying with the rest of the food on his plate, impatient in every cell of his body for her to get back so he could learn more.
In the bathroom, Cat cooled her reddened eyes with wet tissue then set about patching up her makeup. She didn’t do a good job, but maybe it didn’t matter now. Maybe nothing mattered. She’d thought earlier that she had won the gamble of this saucy scheme, and instead she was hanging by a thread that Patrick Callahan could snip any time he chose.
