Dial M for Mischief

“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 of the circular brick driveway, just in front of the arched wooden door that, Jolie knew, was so thick it could probably withstand a battering ram…or a bazooka. “No. He just couldn’t keep up his grades. Probation for one semester, and then he lost his eligibility and dropped out. But we kept in touch.”

“More than can be said for you and some other fellow grads of good old Temple U. Not that we attended the same years. All I got to hear about back then, though, was Sam Becket, the scholar, the quarterback, the legend.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning nothing,” Jolie said, unbuckling her seat belt. “I’m saying all the wrong things. I just buried my father, for God’s sake. Forget I said anything.”

He put his hand on her forearm to keep her in her seat. “I’ve missed you, Jolie.”

She looked down at his hand, willing him to remove it, wishing he had put his arms around her. “Not enough, Sam.”

He moved his hand. “Let’s go inside and find you something to drink. Find us both something to drink.”

She didn’t wait for him to come around and open the door for her but stepped out into the now warm June sun to stand looking at the house she’d visited a hundred times. They’d made love in most of those rooms. Twenty-three of them. Including one memorable interlude in the barrel-vaulted formal dining room that had involved the genuine Tudor-era table, a pair of sturdy, low-hanging wrought-iron chandeliers and the cream puffs that were supposed to be their dessert.

Which they were. Sort of…

Her cheeks had been flushed with embarrassment the entire next evening as she’d sat at the bottom of the table, playing hostess, while Sam had entertained the mayor and his wife to help launch the man’s reelection campaign. Especially when dessert had been served. Cream puffs. Sam had winked at her as one was set in front of her on a Rosenthal dessert plate. He’d then told the mayor how the chandeliers in the room were rumored to have been an acquisition of his notorious ancestor Ainsley Becket in the late 1700s, back when privateering was an acceptable way of life.

And why did she have to think about all of that now?

Her cell phone rang, shaking her out of her uncomfortable thoughts, and she rummaged in her bag, glad for the interruption.

“Hello?” She looked at Sam, mouthed Jade. “You and Jessica want to what? I know nobody knows about him, but what does that have to do with—I don’t know, I’ll have to ask him. But won’t you be followed?” She listened a moment and then rolled her eyes. “Mea culpa. How could I ever even think the great Jade Sunshine couldn’t elude a—hey, Secret Squirrel, I said I’ll ask him. Give me a minute, all right? Munch on a walnut or something.”

She pressed the open phone to her chest and looked at Sam, who was smiling at her in a way that told her he still enjoyed listening to the Sunshine sisters bicker like little children. “Jade and Jess want to come here, talk, maybe spend the night until the last of the press takes a hike from our front yard. I’ll tell them no.”

“No, don’t do that. If the press is still bothering you at the house, it seems logical to bunk here, at least overnight. I’ve got plenty of room.”

Jolie put a second hand over the phone. “But I don’t want them to come here. Say no, Sam. Be a beast.”

He reached for the cell phone, and since she was holding it between her breasts and the contact was a little too intimate, she let him take it from her.

“Jade? Hi, it’s Sam. Good to hear your voice again, too. No problem, somebody had to do it. Hysterical?” He grinned at Jolie, who glared daggers back at him. “I wouldn’t say exactly hysterical. But you know how she is…yeah, right. Sure. See you then.”

“You know how she is what?” Jolie demanded, following him up the three shallow steps to the front door. “How is she, Sam?”

He placed his thumb against a small, discreet panel cut into the woodwork of the doorjamb, and the door swung open soundlessly. “How she’s prone to be a bit dramatic at times,” he said as Jolie stared, bug-eyed, at the panel. “But that probably comes with the territory with actresses, right?”

Jolie pointed at the panel. “It beats being paranoid, Chester. And why not a retinal scan? Or didn’t you want to be seen as going overboard? Jeez.”

“Ah, that brings back memories. I haven’t been Chester for a long time. And I took the security system in exchange for a pair of Ming-dynasty floor vases I’d been trying to unload for two years. I don’t even need to key in a code once I’m in the house, thanks to the thumb pad. Clever, yes?”

“Uh-huh,” Jolie muttered vaguely as she entered the large flagstone-floored foyer, mentally throwing away the key to Sam’s front door that she’d refused to part with for five long years. She stopped to take a look around, wondering what else had changed in her absence.

But she should have known. Furnish your house in antiques and you don’t exactly go running out to JCPenney every couple of years for a new pseudo-suede lounge chair with built-in cup holders and a pocket for the TV remote.

She removed her sunglasses and walked straight ahead, into the living room that stretched nearly across the entire rear of the house. A person could bowl in Sam’s living room, which he sometimes called “the lounge” or “the salon.” But only when trying to impress somebody who wanted to be impressed, as she recalled. “How long before Jade and Jessica show up?”

“Two hours or more, I guess. They’re going to go out for lunch once they can get shed of the aunts—Jade’s words, not mine—and then they have to give the reporters the slip. That reminds me—I have to call down to Bear Man and alert him that they’re coming. Why do you ask?”

He asked the question from only a foot or two behind her, so that Jolie found herself beating a retreat to one of the sets of French doors that led out to the flagstone terrace and the Olympic-size reflecting pool that stretched lengthwise away from the house between two rows of slim, tall Italian something-or-other evergreens. We made love in the pool, too…more than once…

When she turned around, it was to see that Sam had also removed his sunglasses. And loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button of his crisp white dress shirt. How she longed to feel his arms around her, to feel something other than grief.

Distance. She needed to put some distance between them. Fast.

“I just…I feel grubby. Do you mind if I take a shower?”

Sam bowed his head slightly and waved her toward the foyer and the wide circular staircase that led upstairs. “Be my guest. You know where everything is. Oh, and I think there’s still a few pieces of your clothing in a bottom drawer in my dressing room.”

“You think?” she asked, her heart beginning to do its pounding-too-hard thing again.

“All right, Jolie, I know. I had the bathroom and dressing room remodeled last year, and Mrs. Archer asked me what to do with a few things.”

“And you told her to put everything in a bottom drawer? Why, Sam?”

He looked at her levelly, a muscle working in his cheek. “Just go take your shower, Jolie, all right? I’ll find Mrs. Archer and have her make up some sandwiches for us before she leaves for her sister’s anniversary party.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she nodded. It took everything she had not to run from the room but to only walk away and not look back.

But that wouldn’t work. It hadn’t worked then, it wouldn’t work now. She’d been looking back for five long years…

Chapter Two