Knight In Blue Jeans

Val deliberately ignored it.

“Much as I’m sure you would have enjoyed rifling through Miz Greta’s private things.” Arden pushed his hand back down to his side, her own hands soft, her scent sweetly familiar. Thanks for the brush-off, Val. “I’d rather know why it’s your business whether I’m over my head, off my game or out of my mind. There’s a great deal I wouldn’t put past you, Smith. A great deal…” She widened her eyes to think of the enormity of things that included.

“Nice vote of confidence,” Smith muttered, to drag her back on track.

It worked. “But stalking? Why shouldn’t we call the authorities?”

None of them expected Greta to step in. “Because if we call the police, Mr. Donnell will miss the story he risked so much to hear. Let’s all return to the parlor to deal with the larger issue at hand. Mr. Donnell, would you like some iced tea?”

Val’s mouth dropped open in blatant amazement. Arden, being Arden, revealed her surprise with the barest of blinks—but Smith was pretty adept at reading the annoyance of those blinks, and he grinned in pure triumph. Maybe the old lady was crazy, maybe not. But he wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth…especially when he’d seen so few gift horses lately.

“Why, thank you, Miz Greta. I would love some tea…and maybe a slice of that delicious strudel?” As he accompanied his new favorite person and her gamboling, happy dog toward the front of the house, making the most of his status as a welcome guest, Smith caught Arden’s soothing murmur to Val.

“Just take deep breaths, and it will pass. He inspires almost everyone to kill him, sooner or later.”

She had no idea how right she was.

The question was, how could someone as perfect as Arden have inspired similar—and all-too-real—threats?

And why was someone with tinted windows parked just down the street, keeping watch on her?

Greta Kaiser was not crazy. Nor was she completely blind, physically or emotionally. The macular degeneration gave her central blindness. That meant if she looked directly at Smith Donnell, she saw no face at all, barely a head. But she could glimpse, with her remaining peripheral vision, how Arden Leigh snuck peeks at him when she thought nobody was looking. When Greta turned her old eyes on Arden, the beautiful socialite all but vanished—but Greta got a clearer impression of Smith Donnell beside her, a hint of strong profile and brown hair and blatant interest in—almost longing for—someone he had supposedly dumped. He’d managed to sink onto the love seat next to Arden before Val could.

Arden made an amusing show of ignoring his nearness completely.

Greta also noted Smith’s worn jeans and T-shirt, his cheap shoes. Put that together with the unlikelihood of Arden having dated someone from a significantly lower social caste—have known each other’s families since childhood—and Greta found far more truth on the couple’s periphery than anyone might by looking at their relationship straight on.

This man may have lost his chance to be Arden Leigh’s hero…but he might yet prove to be Greta’s.

“My family name,” she said, when everyone had finished their bickering and settled back in the parlor, Dido flopped happily between them, “is Kaiser. Does anyone know what that name implies?”

“It’s German,” offered Arden.

Greta turned expectantly to Smith, even if that meant losing sight of his expression.

“It means ‘emperor,’ right?” he asked. When Arden and Val stared at him, he seemed to square his shoulders. “What, you think I bought my way through college?”

“Yes, ‘emperor’.” Greta settled back in her favorite chair, comforted by Dido’s chin on her foot. “The name derives from the word ‘Caesar,’ because the Hapsburg dynasty professed direct lineage to the Roman emperors, themselves descendents of the epic hero Aeneas. Hence our claim to the Holy Roman Empire.”

“And you’re a Hapsburg?” Arden sat up. “Of the Austrian Hapsburgs?”

In periphery, Greta caught the suspicion that began to darken Smith Donnell’s strong profile. He was starting to figure this out already.

Clever. Arden had exceptionally good taste.

“Let us say we are a significant branch off that family tree. As you might guess, my father was a powerful man, descended from a seemingly unending line of powerful men. I was born in this house, back when Oak Cliff was the garden spot of Dallas society. I fully expected a life of private schools, debutante balls and eventual marriage into wealth. But instead…” She took a deep breath, bracing herself against the memories. “Even before my coming out, shortly after World War II, my father lost everything. Our fortune. Our standing. The house—I did not inherit it, only bought it back decades later, after the falling property values made it available for a fraction of its original cost.

“We were wholly ruined, and I never knew why.”

Arden leaned forward to take Greta’s hand, offering sweet comfort. Greta smiled directly at the black-haired beauty, effectively erasing Arden from her vision but allowing her to glimpse Smith’s sudden, wary stillness.

“Well…” He paused, then continued, not quite hiding the sympathy in his tone. “That would be terrible.”

He, she felt increasingly convinced, should know. If he didn’t, she was endangering herself and perhaps Arden and Val—even Dido—by continuing. But life was risk.

“Astute as ever.” Arden’s poise had degenerated into dry sarcasm. Interesting.

“College,” Smith reminded her amiably. But, observing the contrast between his current apparel and the upper-class confidence of his posture, Greta felt sure he’d spoken from firsthand experience.

“Our family never wholly recovered.” She could not admit her childish resentment, nor how long into adulthood it had followed her. A foolish marriage, for all the wrong reasons. A bitter divorce, for the right ones. So many lost years. Instead, she cut to the significant part of the story. “But when Papa developed Alzheimer’s, someone had to care for him. My mother was gone by then, and my brother, and I’d bought back the house, so I took him in. And that’s when Papa began to explain.

“At first, I thought him delusional.” Greta’s laugh came out harsh, startling her spaniel. “He was delusional, or he never would have spoken of such things. When I asked him, during sentient periods, he denied everything with such vehemence that I stopped asking. But when he confused me with others, with men from his past, I became curious and encouraged his stories.

“He admitted to having joined an ancient secret society of powerful men.

“And he admitted to ruining us by crossing them during the War.”

Arden had heard much of this story once already. So, while Greta told how her father had challenged the Comitatus and their precious status quo, Arden found herself watching Smith.

Carefully, though, so nobody would notice.

She’d generally avoided him during their youth, despite their fathers’ friendship. Smith had been too full of himself, too loud and boylike—trouble on two feet. Only when they began moving in the same post-college circles did she really start watching him, still more annoyed than intrigued. His cocky immunity to her charms—and she wasn’t foolish enough to deny them—had bothered her. The more caustic the run-ins they had, the more she assumed their dislike to be mutual. They couldn’t seem to spend ten minutes in each other’s company without finding something to disagree about…which eventually proved downright fascinating. By the time he’d bitten out a sudden invitation to a party, like a dare in the middle of a fight over nothing, she’d been so surprised that she’d stuttered out agreement. And then…

Then the attraction that flared up between them, no longer held back by their pretense of mutual enmity, had almost consumed her.

How long had she already been in love by then?

It wasn’t just that he was handsome, though he was. She noted the long line of his back now, the pull of his shoulders under his faded brown T-shirt, worn to a softness she could only imagine under her fingers. She noted the defined muscles of his tanned, bare arms, his elbows on his jeaned knees as he leaned nearer Greta to hear the story. The brush of his too-long brown hair across his neck. That action-hero profile. The stubborn, uncompromising jaw—far more recalcitrant than his daring grins let on—which she could remember kissing the tension out of one night, while his hands had done sinful things across her…

She shifted uncomfortably in the love seat, crossing her ankles, her feet still bare. Smith’s gaze slanted momentarily in her direction, dancing with mischief as if he knew just what she’d been remembering, before returning to Greta.

Oh…sugar. They should have slept together and gotten it out of their systems, but she was a six-month-minimum girl and they’d kept breaking up at five-and-a-half months, then starting over. Maybe she’d been afraid to surrender that last bit of control, or afraid the reality couldn’t match the anticipation, which—good God in heaven! That last time, they were a day from six months and she’d honestly looked forward not just to making love, but to planning a future with him.

And then the phone call.

She should have dated more seriously since their breakup, but none of her gentleman callers had, well…challenged her. Not like Smith. Which should have been a good thing, but apparently was not.

He claimed to want to protect her, which shouldn’t make her feel quite as gooey inside as it did. The warmth of his body, so close to hers in this un-air-conditioned home, was bad enough without her mistaking stalking for affection. He’d come back—which, as far as reasons to like him went, was even worse.

He didn’t deserve a second—or was that a fifth?—chance. She couldn’t respect herself if she gave him one. Not that he’d even asked. What if he didn’t?

Arden felt far more threatened by Smith’s return than by any supposed Comitatus.

Val’s voice cut through her thoughts. “So you think he told you all these supposed secrets because of the Alzheimer’s?”

“I’m sure of it,” agreed Greta. “To hear him speak of it, the Comitatus were once a society of honor. A society formed by heroes of history and legend. But he finally faced that they’d lost their way, and he was well rid of them. His only regret, in speaking out against their interests, was how his exile harmed the rest of us.”

Again, Arden took the older woman’s hand. She could only imagine how similar ruin would pain her own father. “Daddies want to take care of their little girls.”

Did she imagine something odd in Greta’s expression at that? She must have, because all Greta said was, “My only regret will be if one of you is hurt doing a kindness for an old woman. As you said, Arden—the attack on you last night confirms that my father’s story was true. That is enough.”

“Enough?” repeated Arden, more unwilling than unable to understand.

“You must leave the matter alone.” Greta patted Arden’s hand and released it, then petted Dido’s head before sitting back. “Let it go, just as you were asked. If you pose no further threat to this society’s secrets, they may pose no further threat to you.”

“And let them win?” Arden looked from Greta’s faded, pleading eyes to Val’s pragmatic agreement. “They ruined your family, Greta! And they think they can threaten me with a knife to get their own way? If we let it go, they’ll think that’s appropriate behavior!”

“Seems like they already believe that,” noted Val drily.

“But it isn’t!” In desperation, she turned to Smith. Smith was nothing if not a rebel. Surely he would—

But even Smith, she could see by his wince, agreed with the others. Arden felt as betrayed as she had when he’d called to dump her, no explanation offered, the night they would have…

“It’s not just that it’s dangerous.” At least he knew that argument didn’t stand a chance against her. “But Greta’s the one who asked you to look into this, Ard. Now Greta’s asking you to stop. How polite is it to ignore her?”

Arden rarely scowled—it encouraged wrinkles—but she felt her eyes narrow at how easily Smith hit her weak spots.

“Greta’s not just being nice, Ard,” insisted Val. “This isn’t like, ‘You take the last cookie,’ ‘No, you take the last cookie.’ We don’t want to have to worry about you!”

“Exactly—” Smith cut himself off long enough to exchange a suspicious glance with Val, both surprised to find themselves on the same side of an argument. “Going after the Comitatus won’t just draw attention to you. What makes you think it won’t draw attention to Greta, as well? Or your rec center? For all you know, someone could have followed you here.”

“Obviously,” noted Arden, glaring daggers.

“Someone else.”

“If there’s any chance of danger to Greta, then I certainly can’t just leave.”

“Remember what I used to do for a living?” Used to? For the first time, Arden noted how Smith’s jeans weren’t artfully worn—they were well and truly worn. Gone was his expensive diving watch. His overlong hair couldn’t possibly be a fashion statement. Not without any product.

“You worked in security,” she admitted softly, trying to grasp the concept. Smith hadn’t just left her. He must have left Donnell Security—a business he’d built himself. Smith was…poor.

But he was a Donnell of the Fort Worth Donnells. That simply made no sense.

“If it’ll put your mind at ease, I’ll set up a security system for Greta,” Smith continued. “Will that make everyone happy?”

Val stared at him. “Not me. Why should we trust you?”

But Greta said, “Any friend of Arden’s, dear.” So that was that.

Then Smith just had to go and smile—no, smirk—at Arden, as if he’d won something.

“Friend? We weren’t that close,” she insisted, slipping her feet into her pumps and standing.

If only she could make that true.

Chapter 4

Smith tried not to flinch from Arden’s casual dismissal. “Hey now, sweetness—you aren’t ashamed of me, are you?”

She arched an accusing eyebrow.

“Oh,” he said, not quite as cocky. “You are, huh?”

“As delightful as this has been, what with the history lesson and the stalking, I really do have to go,” Arden insisted. Then she actually smiled.

A warm, real smile.

Smith’s traitorous heart leaped.

“Jeffie’s coming home from camp today,” she explained. So the smile was for her half brother, not for Smith. “I’m picking him up at the airpo—”

“Too much information,” Smith interrupted. How many times had he warned her that the fastest way to be victimized was to let down one’s guard? In light of that, it was probably just as well she didn’t trust him. Dammit.

Arden waved him away like an annoying bug as, with a quick hug for Greta and pat for Dido, she headed out.

“Too much information?” he heard Val demand as the younger women left, the dog whining from her exile at the door. “It’s not like you said you’d been on the toilet all morning or anything.”

He had to imagine the expression on Arden’s face.

Smith’s expression might have rivaled it as he watched the women reach the sidewalk. Greta Kaiser said, “You love her.”

It wasn’t a question.

Spinning to face the old woman, Smith pretended it had been. “Me? No. Sure, we were dating when…” When I lost everything she might have wanted from me. He grinned to reinforce his position. “No love. Maybe some like, if you squint at it and turn your head just right.”

Oh, great job. Make sight jokes to a near-blind woman.

“I’ll just call a friend of mine to bring over the supplies we need for that security system,” he said.

“Help me with these dishes when you’ve a moment, please?” asked Greta mildly, and vanished into the kitchen.

No, Arden was definitely not the only too-trusting woman involved in this latest problem.

As he sat in his car, waiting for Arden and her “friend” to leave the run-down old house they’d come to visit, Prescott Lowell used his laptop to pull up the area tax records.

The house was owned by someone named Greta Lorelai Kaiser.

It didn’t sound familiar, but he made note of it all the same. No surprise that she was a single woman home owner. From what he knew of Donaldson Leigh’s stuck-up bitch of a daughter—opening a recreational center especially for girls, supporting a woman for governor—Lowell figured them for feminazis. Throw in the Mexican woman, who’d almost spotted him as he tailed them from the train station, and there was probably enough estrogen in that house to lower a guy’s IQ by fifty points.

Not that Lowell didn’t like women! But they had their place.

He loved that about the Comitatus. Everyone had their place. And the place of Comitatus members was on top of everyone else.

That was the only reason he’d kept himself from fighting back when Leigh had humiliated him last night, when he’d really wanted to knock the old geezer’s teeth in. There was an order to things—at least within the social sanctuary that was the Comitatus. The younger members of the outer circles respected the older members of the inner circles, because someday they would be part of those inner circles themselves. They would run things the right way.

With strength.

Leigh and his cronies seemed annoyingly tolerant of the threat posed by Arden’s interference. What the hell had Will Donnell meant about womenfolk having suspicions, and “ways to divert them,” anyway? If women stuck their noses into men’s business, as far as Lowell was concerned, you smacked them back so they wouldn’t do it again. That was how to divert them.

But there was no reasoning with Leigh about his precious little girl. So it was up to Lowell to uncover the truth for those inner-circle powermongers, and…

Ah. Here came Arden and her brown-skinned friend now. The friend, clearly low-class, scanned the area around them. For a moment, her eyes paused on Lowell’s car, well down the street. Seeing nothing more suspicious than a luxury vehicle in a cesspool of a neighborhood, she scowled but moved on. Arden, in contrast, looked deceptively refined in a full-skirted sundress and a large, shady hat. She acted as if she had no need of monitoring her surroundings, she was that confident in her place of the world.

Idiot.

Certain he knew where they were going—public transit, again—Lowell waited until the women had almost reached the end of the block before turning the key in the ignition. It wasn’t like they would hear the purr of his finely tuned engine. Shifting into gear, he eased forward….

Tried to ease forward.

A thumping lurch dragged his attention from his quarry to his car. He pressed harder on the gas, forcing the sedan to move, and the thumps sped up.

Braking, Lowell cut the engine and climbed out into the heat to face a flat tire on the driver’s side front.

And the driver’s side back.

Circling the car, he found the other two tires equally flat. A piece of toothpick, still extending from the valve of one tire, explained how someone had sabotaged the car without him hearing it, or even noticing the slow sinking of the vehicle. Instead of puncturing the tires, someone had arranged for a slow leak in all four.

But—the girls had been in the house the whole time!

Lowell glanced quickly around him, his eyes narrowing at some teenaged boys of mixed ethnicities playing basketball not far down the street. They had worse ways, he supposed, of trapping a fine automobile in this slum, maybe to steal its hubcaps, maybe to do worse.

Narrowing his eyes in warning, Lowell slipped quickly back into the car to phone for auto-club service. But first he pressed the button to lock all his doors and made sure he knew where his gun was, as opposed to his knife.

None of the bloodlines around here deserved an honorable fight!

Grinning from one of Greta’s windows at his automotive handiwork, Smith quickly finished dictating which security system to pick up. “No, let’s not go with the base level—and yes, I’ll pay you back. Let’s go for deluxe. If certain parties figure out who she is—”

“Who is she?” demanded Trace over the prepaid cell phone.

“I’ll explain later. ’Bye.” Then, pocketing the phone, Smith carried the last of the dishes into the kitchen after his elderly hostess, careful not to trip on the dog. Living hand-to-mouth as he now did, he’d gotten pretty skilled at bussing tables.

Descended from heroes of history and legend, huh?

Even as he set down the dishes, the older lady asked, “How well did you know Arden before you and she began dating?”

“Not that well—”

“I can ask her, too,” Greta reminded him, turning the faucet on in her deep old sink. The pipes made a hollow clunk as the water began to run.

“Our families were close, but we didn’t see each other much,” Smith admitted guiltily. Especially not as he’d entered his rebellious teen years, when he might have found her something other than “icky.” Back then, he’d avoided all social obligations like the plague. “Not until after college. I just…That is, she…”

She’d seemed so perfect, he’d thought she would never look twice at him. So he’d pretended disinterest.

Familiarity breeding contempt, she’d met his disinterest and raised him some exasperation.

He’d matched her exasperation and added some scorn. This had gone on for years.

It was Mitch who’d finally called Smith on his behavior. For two people who can’t stand each other, you two sure do end up in the same place a lot.

Thus began their equally turbulent, on-again off-again attempts at dating without killing each other. He’d never had so much fun. Never felt so much frustration.

Just nail her and get it over with already, Trace had insisted.

But Arden had this old-fashioned six-month rule, and they never made it past four without one blowup or another, until finally…

Wait. Why was it any of the old bat’s business? “It was complicated.”

“You loved her,” Greta repeated, adding dish soap.

“No man who loves a woman would dump her, drunk, over the phone.”

“Unless he was protecting her.” She turned to fix her seemingly sightless eyes on him. “Just as you’re trying to protect her now.”

Smith stared back. Silence seemed his best option here.

“You were well-off and respected. Suddenly you had nothing. Meant nothing—at least to the world the pair of you knew. My father’s story must sound familiar.”

This was getting uncomfortable. “So why don’t I do a walk-through of the house, start prepping for when Trace gets here with the security equipment?”

“Quite the dilemma,” murmured Greta. “You took a vow of honor not to speak of it, yet your own honesty won’t let you deny it. Don’t worry. That’s all the proof I need or will ask of you.

“You are Comitatus. Of the blood. Of the tradition. This is how you know exactly what dangers Arden faces. And you, Smith Donnell, were exiled—just like my father.”

Smith opened his mouth to protest—he could so be dishonest! But Greta silenced him with a raised, gnarled hand. “This is why I believe you should have this.”

“Have…?”

She stooped, pressed on a piece of the built-in shelving—and a panel suddenly swung loose from the wall.

She had an honest-to-God hidden compartment.

No wonder she’d bought the house back!

Smith watched as she swung the panel back on a hidden hinge and claimed a slim, velvet-wrapped bundle, not a yard long. She laid her treasure on the kitchen table and slowly, reverently, folded back its rich purple wrapping to reveal—

Smith stared.

It was a sword. A double-edged short sword, to be precise, and yet, somehow…more. It caught the summer shadows as if it glowed.

But swords didn’t glow. Especially not seriously old swords—and this one was seriously old…or, more likely, a replica. It looked like something from some gladiator movie, Troy or Spartacus. The blade, extending out of a hilt studded with green gemstones, expanded into a swell at the tip that gave the oddly gold-colored metal a faint leaf-shape.