“Let’s just see you find it,” she said, her voice sharp and nasty.
He smiled. She was back with him.
It took him at least three minutes to dig all the way to the bottom of the six-inch pot filled with bright purple pansies to find that damned key, which he then had to wipe on his once-very-nice black wool slacks. He’d pulled them out of the back of his closet for his first date in a good two months. June Canning, a very nice woman, a stockbroker for the Pacific Stock Exchange. He sighed. Oh well, who wanted to spend time between dinner courses outside with a woman who still smoked? And in California?
No alarm sounded when he unlocked the door. Big mistake, he thought. He went back to his Audi, a car that was a bit on the small side for a man his size, sure, but he could park it just about anywhere in the city, even in the narrow alley beside his cleaners. He hauled her out and held her against his side.
Once inside, he found the hall light and flipped it on. He gawked, couldn’t help it. He’d never been in such a spectacular house in his life. Truth be told, he’d visited quite a few beautifully restored homes in Pacific Heights over his last four years in San Francisco, but none of them had been on this magnificent scale. But he didn’t pause, he simply guided her straight up the wide maple staircase with ornately carved pineapples atop the two newel posts. It wound to a wide landing on the second floor and looked back down into the large entry hall. The ceiling over the entry hall was three stories high, cathedral tall, with an antique gold and crystal chandelier hanging down at least eighteen feet. He wondered how much that sucker weighed, and what you had to do to clean it. “Which way?”
“To the left.”
“Which bedroom is yours? Oh, isn’t this a lovely thought—is there a husband lurking around?”
“Not anymore,” she said, her voice as flat as the wet hair on her head. “All the way to the end of the hall.”
The hallway was wide, its lovely polished maple planks gleaming alongside an antique carpet that ran the hall’s full length. He supposed he should have been prepared when he turned on the bedroom light, but he wasn’t. He stopped in his tracks for a full second. It was big, bigger than his living room, with impossibly high ceilings and intricately carved hundred-year-old moldings. He saw another door: it wasn’t the bathroom, but an immense walk-in closet. The next door did lead into a mammoth bathroom laid with creamy yellow tile with an assortment of colorful Italian country-scene squares set at random on the floor and up the walls. He set her on the closed toilet seat and turned on the shower. Tested it. When it was nice and hot, he turned to see her slumping forward again. He stripped her to her underwear, sensible stuff, no fluff and lace, opened the shower stall door, stopped, and eyed her. If he put her in the shower, she might fall on her face and drown. The fact was, he was cold, too.
He set her down again. “Don’t fall over, you got me?”
“No, I won’t,” and he watched her list to the left until her cheek rested against the toilet paper roll fastened to the side of the long marble counter.
He stripped down to his boxers and undershirt, set his SIG, his cell, and his wallet on the counter, looked at his once-beautiful sports coat in a heap with the old leather jacket and the rest of her clothes on the floor. As he stepped with her into the large shower, Cheney wondered if showering with a just-rescued stranger was in the Quantico manual. He pulled the glass door shut and set her directly under the spray of hot water.
She yelled and tried to pull away from him.
Actually, he felt like yelling right along with her when sharp needles of hot water struck his flesh.
He held her tight until she stopped struggling, then rubbed his hands up and down her arms and her back. She was thin, too thin, but she wasn’t small-boned, she wasn’t fragile. Was she naturally thin or was it because of something else?
Julia slowly felt herself getting warm, this time from the outside in, and she was getting stronger too. She said against his neck, “I can stand up by myself now, thank you.”
He let her go. “How much longer will the hot water last?”
“It’s probably getting near the end of its run.” She pushed open the door and stepped out, knowing his hand was there to catch her.
He turned off the water and followed her. He looked at her closely and was reassured. She was with him, strong again, and alert. A large bruise was blooming on her jaw, along with many other smaller bruises and abrasions on her arms, ribs, and legs from hitting the rocks in the bay on her way down.
She looked him up and down and smiled. “Thank you for saving me. Nice boxers.”