few hours ago she’d been “practically” engaged to an industry insider who looked like a walking fashion ad. Now she had a two-timing boyfriend facing at least three years in jail.
No sense feeling sorry for her. Duke knew from experience how women from her world operated. The darlings of New York’s social pages could shake off a bad relationship. By noon tomorrow she’d probably be ready to have a power luncheon with her rich girlfriends to pinpoint the next ideal candidate for engagement.
Duke had been taken in by pearls and good breeding at one point in his life. He’d been left with the retreating tread marks from the designer high heels, too.
Steeling his libido for the next round with those sheer pink stockings, he approached the wingback chair. “Excuse me, Ms. Matthews?”
She started at the sound of his voice. One hand flew from her lap to her chest, as if to still her heart. Or perhaps to clutch that damn coat more tightly to her neck. What on earth was she wearing under that trench coat anyway?
As if in answer to his question, the bunched coat fabric on her thighs slid slightly open, revealing two more inches of stocking and no sign of a skirt hem.
For one riveting moment, Duke thought he spied the top of a stocking. His body stirred in wholly inappropriate ways, even after she secured the folds of the trench coat in her lap again.
Damn. Just how short was her skirt?
“Yes?” She looked up at him with wary hope in her dark brown eyes. “May I go now?”
“I’m afraid not. I need to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Victor Gallagher.” Of course, any information she wanted to volunteer about Gallagher’s business or her father’s mob connections would be helpful, he thought, taking a seat on the couch across from her.
“He’s in serious trouble?” Concern knitted her brows.
“Felony charges with a penalty of three to ten. I’d call it serious.” Did she really care after discovering him in such a compromising situation? The notion bugged Duke. Amanda had a gentle air about her, despite the killer outfit she must be wearing under that trench coat. She seemed too refined to be connected to a criminal like Gallagher. Despite his gangster reputation, her infamous father had obviously sheltered his only daughter.
She rubbed her upper arms as if to ward off a chill. “What exactly did he do?”
“A number of things. He’s been helping to import drugs into the States, using his fabric business as a cover.” He tried to keep the explanation simple, not wanting to dissuade Amanda from cooperating. What if she still carried a torch for the guy?
She looked surprised. And frightened.
“I had no idea.” She worried the fullness of her lower lip with straight, white teeth. “He seemed so…cultured. He doesn’t seem like a street thug.”
Duke wondered if she knew the extent of her father’s business dealings. He’d be willing to bet the elder Matthews didn’t seem like a street thug, either, but he rubbed elbows with the oldest—and toughest—gang in the city. “You’re a window dresser, Ms. Matthews?”
“I create windows for my father, but I’ve started my own design business as well,” she corrected him, then smiled. “I make the distinction so my father doesn’t slip back into thinking I’m his personal maid and secretary. How did you know what I do?”
“You’re a line item in Gallagher’s file. I only checked into the basics though.” Her ritzy address, her perfect education, her relationship with Victor—which had seemed fairly superficial from the reports Duke had received. Now that Duke had met Amanda, he couldn’t imagine why Gallagher wouldn’t have claimed her already. The guy had made a colossal mistake as far as Duke could see.
“You were planning to arrest him from the moment I first saw you this morning, weren’t you?”
Duke thought it wise not to reveal the exact nature of his thoughts when he’d first seen her this morning. Purely carnal. “Sorry I couldn’t have spared you the inconvenience, but—”
“It’s Amanda. Please.” She smiled at him in a way that managed to be both warm and distant. She apparently couldn’t shake her boarding school manners even in the event of police questioning, no matter how much the proceedings disrupted her day—her life.
Duke would have preferred to maintain as many social barriers between them as he possibly could—especially with his mind straying back to that tantalizing glimpse of stocking every other minute. He wasn’t about to be rude, however. “Amanda.” The name pleased him as it rolled off his tongue. “Could you tell me why you were visiting Victor Gallagher today?”
She blanched. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She might as well have shouted through a megaphone that she was about lie to him. “It was just a simple…social call.”
Duke hadn’t suspected Clyde Matthews’s daughter of anything save poor judgment in boyfriends, but now he began to wonder. She looked as guilty as a sinner on Sunday. “Apparently you were going to surprise him…?”
She adjusted the coat over her lap for the tenth time. “What makes you say that?”
“If he knew you were on your way over, don’t you think he would have showed his lady friend to the door?”
Her cheeks grew as pink as her stockings. “Then it’s a good thing I didn’t tell him I was on my way, isn’t it? I never would have known.”
God knew he could relate to how she felt. He’d learned quickly that the cop groupies he’d dated when he first arrived in New York weren’t picky about which detective they slept with. Duke’s attempts to be selective since then had left him with long dry spells. In fact, his current dry spell had him drooling over Amanda Matthews’s trim calves beneath those sheer stockings, and wreaking havoc on his concentration.
Duke squelched his sympathy, needing to focus on his job. “So your visit today was social?”
She nodded, looking a bit calmer now.
Duke moved on, filing away her reactions along with her answers. He would uncover Amanda’s secrets sooner or later, even if he had to keep her and her very short skirt here for another hour.
Heaven help him.
He withdrew a pen and paper to give himself something to do, a way to distract himself. “And how would you characterize your relationship overall? Is it mostly social, or do the two of you discuss business when you spend time together?”
Amanda heard the detective’s question, but she didn’t want to answer it. She watched his pen seesaw back and forth over his thumb, mesmerized, and tried to think of a way around the question. She didn’t need another cop nosing into her family’s business. Her father might look like a favored son of the mob, but he only made suits for them. The association had troubled her for years, but she had yet to talk her father out of his bigwig clients.
“Victor and I rarely discussed business,” she replied, shifting her position in the gray leather wingback chair.
Her limbs were stiff with the tension of her rigid posture, but she refused to unveil another millimeter of stocking. Had it been her imagination,
