go of his leash!”
“Jade has him,” Sam said as he moved into the passing lane, one eye on the rearview mirror. “Hold on, we’ve got a tail.”
“No, you have a tail. You’re Underdog, remember?” Jolie turned around on the seat and looked out the rear window. “So can this thing outrun a news van with a honking-huge satellite dish on top?”
To answer her question, Sam put the pedal to the metal, so that Jade had to hold on as she tried to turn around in her seat once more and buckle herself in tight. “How could I have forgotten what a show-off you are?” she asked him, leaning her head back against the headrest as he cut in and out of traffic, the speedometer edging past eighty in the thankfully thin late-morning traffic.
He was all concentration now, and Jolie took the opportunity to look at him more closely. His profile was still sharp, his nose straight and perfect, his cheekbones high, his brow smooth and unlined, his chin rock-solid as he edged past the sunny side of thirty. Thirty-three? Thirty-four? She should probably remember that, but she didn’t.
What she remembered was the thick, dirty-blond hair he wore shorter than the last time she’d seen him, and rather tousled—the kind of tousled that probably cost two hundred bucks a haircut. His fine, unblemished skin was a golden tan, although his right hand was a bit more pale, proving that he’d found time to get in a few rounds of golf while running Becket Imports, one of the many holdings of the embarrassingly rich Becket family.
Mostly what she remembered was how her body fit so well against Sam’s long, lean frame, the top of her head coming up to his chin, when she seemed to tower over most men. The way his hands had moved over her skin, the taste of his mouth, the intense, soul-exploding look in his green eyes as their two bodies merged…
“Where…uh, where are we going?”
“It would be rather senseless to lose the press and then go straight back to your father’s house, don’t you think?”
She nodded, biting her bottom lip. “True. So where are we going?”
“My place,” he said, dipping his head and looking across at her above the silver rims of his sunglasses. “Do you mind?”
Jolie shook her head, ignoring another quick stomach flip. “I don’t think I’m ready to go back home yet, so, no, I don’t mind. You know, I was so busy trying not to look at anybody that I didn’t even see you this morning. Were you at the church?”
“Sorry, no. I was out of the country until late last night and only saw the newspaper clippings my secretary put on my desk when I got to the office this morning. And since I haven’t said it yet, I’m really sorry about Teddy. He was a hell of a guy.”
“He always liked you,” Jolie said, blinking back tears again.
“Not always.”
She turned to look at him. “Excuse me? It was always Sam this and Sam that and ‘Sam is a helluva guy, Jolie.’”
“That probably was before he warned me to stay away from you or he’d rearrange my face.”
“He—oh, he did not. Did he? Omigod, he did! When did he do that?”
Sam looked at her, doing that head-dip thing again so he could hit her with those green eyes of his above the sunglasses. “Do we really want to go into ancient history right now, when we’re getting along so well?”
“No, I suppose not,” she said as she slid down onto the base of her spine and watched the scenery that consisted mostly of enormous cement sound barriers erected to protect the mansions on the other side from the sights and sounds of the highway.
Ten uncomfortably silent minutes later Sam eased onto the Valley Forge exit, and she knew they were now only minutes away from his home in Villanova. Too soon, he turned onto the familiar long, winding lane leading toward his house. His mansion. His humungo—ridiculously humungo for one person, in any case—house that stood at the rear of a cul-de-sac, behind high stone walls, huge wrought-iron gates. And a gatehouse, for crying out loud. Sam’s house made ninety-nine percent of the mansions in Beverly Hills look both insubstantial and faintly tacky.
That was one of the differences, Jolie had decided, between old money and new money. New money shouted. Old money whispered.
“Again, I’m sorry I got to the cemetery so late, although it turned out I got to park close enough to do my Underdog-to-the-rescue bit. I’d expected more of a crowd.”
Jolie was grateful for the change of subject. “There was a crowd, lookie-lous outside of the church. But only the press followed us to the cemetery. And,” she added, sighing, “I guess you really know who your friends are when you’re accused of murder. I can think of at least two dozen faces I should have seen there today and didn’t. They’ll not be welcome once Jade and Jess and I figure out who killed Teddy and that woman, let me tell you.”
He stopped in front of the closed gates. “You’re kidding, right?”
She looked at him levelly, which wasn’t easy to do as she’d raised her chin a good three inches higher into the air. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“No. I remember that determined look. I think I still get nightmares, as a matter of fact. But we’re not going to talk about any of that now, right?”
Jolie knew what he was saying without really saying it, and since the last thing she had energy for was a five-year-old fight, she sat up straight as the gates swung open. Sam eased the Mercedes through the opening and stopped.
“Isn’t that—”
“Carroll Yablonski, yes. Although the last person who called him Carroll is probably still in traction,” Sam said as the human fireplug lumbered toward the window Sam was lowering. “Bear Man? No visitors, okay? I’m not home to anybody. Oh, and if any reporters show up and try to give you a hard time, you have my permission to eat them.”
“That’d be fun. Got the choppers for it now, thanks to you.” Carroll grinned, showing off a too-large set of obvious dentures. Then he leaned his head in low and looked across the interior of the car at Jolie. “Hullo, Miz Sunshine. Love your movies. Seen ’em all. Tough break about your daddy.”
“Thank you Car—Bear Man. I appreciate that.”
Bear Man stepped back a pace, banged the flat of his hand on the roof of the car to give the all-clear, and Sam continued up the curved driveway.
“Well, I’m waiting,” Jolie said quietly.
“He needed a job.”
“I thought he was a professional wrestler in one of those W-W-W-W thingies. And a star, too.”
“He was—until he had his head run into the turnbuckle a few too many times. They may fake that stuff, but people still do get hurt. Bear Man needed a job that didn’t tax his scrambled brains too much. He needed somewhere to live. I just happened to be able to help him out, that’s all.”
“The quarterback taking care of his offensive linemen,” Jolie said, smiling at him. “Did Carroll—Bear Man—ever graduate? I don’t remember.”
Sam stopped the car at the top
