Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Harlequin Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years, I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Harlequin Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Harlequin, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

DIANA PALMER

The prolific author of more than one hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A multi–New York Times bestselling author and one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.

Visit her website at www.DianaPalmer.com.

The Case of the Confirmed Bachelor
Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Diane, Sydney and my Roz

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

It was a lazy day in late spring. Nick Reed was feeling restless again. Working for Dane Lassiter’s Houston detective agency had been exciting at first, and he’d enjoyed the work. But wanderlust called to him through the open window from the park across the way.

He watched a particularly trim young woman strolling along with a small furry dog and he smiled, because her pert figure reminded him of Tabby.

Tabitha Harvey. Shades of the past, he mused, leaning back in his chair. He’d deliberately avoided thinking about her over the past few months, because of what had happened when he and his sister, Helen, had flown back to their childhood home in Washington, D.C., on business. The trip had been right before New Year’s, and Tabby had been around. That was natural, because she and Helen had been friends forever. They’d all been invited to a party together.

Nick had noticed that Tabby was watching him with unusual interest that night. She’d gone back to the punch bowl several times, as he had himself. But the punch had been spiked and Tabby hadn’t known. She’d cornered Nick in a deserted room and started kissing him.

He could still feel her fervent, if untutored, mouth trembling under his lips. For a few seconds, he’d returned her kisses with everything in him. But he’d stopped her then, and demanded an explanation.

Fuzzily she’d explained that she knew he’d come all that way just to see her, that she knew he was finally ready to settle down. They’d be so happy, she said dreamily, smiling through an alcoholic haze.

Nick had no idea where she’d come up with those wild statements. If he’d ever thought of Tabby romantically, it had been years ago. Her remarks had come right out of the blue, and he’d reacted with shocked anger. He’d said some cutting and sarcastic things about her confession, which had sent her running. He’d gone back to the house with Helen and packed to leave D.C. He’d never told Helen exactly what happened, but he imagined Tabby had. He and Tabby hadn’t had any contact since. Not that he wasn’t sorry for the things he’d said; apologies were just hard for him.

He was scowling over the memories when Helen tapped at his office door and let herself in.

“Have you thought it over?” she asked eagerly.

He glowered at her, swinging his chair back around with a long, powerful leg. His blond hair gleamed like gold in the light from the window. His eyes, as dark as her own, had a hard glitter. “Yes.”

“You’ll do it?” she asked with a grin, pushing her long hair back from her elfin face.

“Yes, I’ve thought about it, and no, I won’t do it,” he clarified.

Her face fell. “Nick! Please!”

“I won’t,” Nick said firmly. “You’ll have to get your information some other way.”

“Blood is thicker than water, remember,” Helen Reed persisted hopefully. “I’m the only sister you have. There’s only the two of us. Oh, Nick, you’ve got to!”

“Not really,” he said with maddening indifference and a grin.

There were times, she thought, when he’d look really good hanging from a long rope. But then she’d be alone in the world except for Harold, to whom she was engaged.

“You’re the only ex-FBI agent we’ve got at the Lassiter Detective Agency,” she reminded him. “You’ve got contacts in all the right places. All you have to do is make one little-bitty telephone call,” she persisted.

And she fixed her big brown eyes on him in their thin elfin face in its frame of long, straight brown hair. Except for his blond hair, they looked very much alike. Same stubborn chin, same elegant nose, same spirited dark eyes. But Nick was much more introverted and secretive than she was. He’d been that way all their lives, since they’d grown up in Washington, D.C.—where she attended college and he worked for the FBI.

Over the years, he’d done a lot of traveling, and she hadn’t seen him for months, sometimes years at a time, until he’d received the offer of work from Richard Dane Lassiter. He’d met Dane on a case just before the Texas Ranger had been shot to pieces. When Lassiter began his own private detective agency, he coaxed Nick away from the FBI and Nick volunteered Helen as a paralegal, with her two years of business college giving her an edge over the competition. She’d come hotfoot from Washington to be with her brother. Their parents had been dead for some time, and she’d liked the idea of being near the last of her kin.

She did miss Tabitha Harvey very much at first, because she and Tabby had been friends since they were children. They still corresponded, although Tabby was very careful not to ask how Nick was. Obviously her memories of Helen’s brother were painful ones.

“No,” he said again. “I won’t call the FBI for you.”

She grinned at him, her slender hands together. “I’ll tell.”

“You’ll tell what?”

“That you were out with that gorgeous blonde when you were supposed to be on stakeout for Dane,” she said.

“Go ahead and tell him. She was my contact. I don’t play around on the job.”

“You do play around, though,” Helen said, suddenly serious. “You never take women seriously.”

He shrugged. “I don’t dare. I’m not made for a pipe and slippers and kids. I like traveling and dangerous work, and the occasional pretty blonde when I’m not on stakeout.”

“Pity,” she sighed, smiling up at him. “You’d look nice covered in confetti.”

“Who’d have me?” He grinned.

She had to bite her tongue to keep from mentioning Tabby’s name. She’d done that once, and he’d gone right through the ceiling. He hadn’t seen Tabby since New Year’s Eve, when he’d gone with Helen to see about their parents’ house in a small Washington suburb called Torrington. Tabby’s father had died two years before, but she was still living in his house. It was next door to the Reeds. Nick had never discussed what happened when he and Tabby had talked one night while they were in Torrington, but it had caused him to bristle at the mention of her name ever since.

“The renters have moved out of Dad’s house, you know,” she said suddenly. “I can’t fly back there and take care of it this time. Can you?”

His face hardened. “Why can’t you?”

“Because I’m engaged, Nick,” she said, exasperated. “You aren’t. You’re due for a vacation anyway, aren’t you? You could kill two birds with one stone.”

“I suppose I could,” he said reluctantly, and his eyes darkened for an instant. Then he looked over his sister’s head and his brows shot up. “Here comes the boss. Better vanish, before you become another statistic on the unemployment rolls.”

“I wish you were on a roll. Filleted!” She chuckled.

He sauntered off, leaving her to Dane.

“Problems?” Dane asked, his eyes going from Nick back to Helen.

“Not a single one, boss,” she assured him. “Nick and I were only discussing food.”

“Okay. How about the Smart investigation?”

She grimaced. “I need one piece of information I can’t dig out,” she said miserably. “I can’t get anybody to talk to me about Kerry Smart’s brief stint with the FBI.”

“Didn’t you ask your brother? He has contacts over at the FBI office.”

“That’s why I’d like him filleted on a roll,” she said sweetly. “He won’t call anybody.”

“Well, I can’t order him to,” he reminded her. “Nick’s very secretive about his FBI days. He never talks about that period of his life. Perhaps he doesn’t want any contact with the agency.”

“I guess. Well, I’ll trudge over to see Adams. He used to have one or two confidants.”

“Good.”

“How’s our Tess, and the baby?”

“She’s great, and the baby never sleeps. The doctor says he will one day,” he added wistfully. “Meanwhile, it’s just one more thing we can do together—sitting up with baby.”

“You know you love it,” she reminded him.

“Indeed I do. I could live without breathing much easier than I could live without my family.”

“And there you were, a confirmed bachelor.” She shook her head. “How are the mighty fallen!”

“Watch it,” he threatened, “before you become redundant.”

“Not me, boss. I intend to be even more valuable than Nick, if you’ll just give me a few days off to work for the FBI so that I HAVE SOME CONTACTS I CAN USE WHEN I NEED THEM!” she said loudly, so that Nick heard her. But it didn’t work. He made her a mocking bow and went out the door.

“One day, he’ll deck you, Reed,” Dane mused. “Sister or not, he’s all for woman’s lib. Equal opportunity, even in brawls, was how he put it.”

“That’s how I trained him,” she said, tongue-in-cheek, and got a laugh for her pains.

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

“God forbid!” she said with a mock shudder. “You can’t imagine what he told Harold the other day about what I did when I was two.”

“You’ll have to make sure he and Harold don’t meet too often.”

“That’s what Harold says!” she confided mischievously.

She got her things together and wished she had the time to go and see Tess and the baby. But now that Tess had married Dane and they had a child of their own, it had put some distance between the two women. They still had lunch together occasionally, but Tess was closer to her friend Kit than she was to Helen.

Helen went to see Adams, who actually did have a contact in the FBI office. He made one telephone call and got her the information she needed.

“Quick work! Thanks!” she said enthusiastically.

He cleared his throat. “If Harold isn’t treating you to pizza I’ll buy you a beer,” Adams offered. “Just casual, you know. I know you’re engaged.”

She smiled. He was nice. Big and burly and a little potbellied, but nice. “Thanks, Adams,” she said sincerely. “Rain check?”

“Sure,” he said easily. He grinned and went out the door. He always seemed to be by himself. Helen felt a bit sorry for him, but he was the kind of man who got attached to people and couldn’t let go. She was afraid of that kind of involvement. Well, with anyone except Harold.

“So, what did you talk to Adams about?” Nick asked from behind her as she went out the door.

She gasped and then laughed. “I didn’t hear you!”

“Of course you didn’t,” he said pleasantly. “I’m a private detective. We’re trained to sneak up on people with out being noticed.”

“Really?” she asked, smiling. “I didn’t know that.”

He glared at her. “Nice to know you love me. What were you doing over there,” he gestured toward Adams’s now-deserted desk. “Warding off Adams?”

“No! I like Adams.”

“Sure. I do, too, but he’s a tick. If you ever get him attached to you, you’ll have to stick a lighted match to his head to make him let go.”

She burst out laughing. “You animal!” she gasped.

“You know I’m right. He’s not a bad dude, all the same.”

“Neither are you, once in a while.”

“Get what you needed?”

She nodded. “No thanks to you,” she said.

He shrugged indifferently. “It’s no bad thing to teach you to be self-sufficient. I won’t always be around.”

The way he said that worried her. “Nick…” she began.

“I’m not dying of something,” he said when he saw her expression, and he smiled. “I mean I’m getting restless. I may be moving on sometime soon.”

“Wanderlust again?” she asked gently.

He nodded. “I get bored in the same place.”

“Go home,” she said. “Take a vacation. Relax.”

“In Washington?” His eyes widened. “Funny girl!”

“You’ll find a way. It’s a quiet street. No drug dealers, no shoot-outs. Just peace and quiet.”

“And your friend Tabby right next door,” he said icily.

“Tabby’s dating a very nice historian at her college,” she told him, enjoying the way his eyelids flickered. “I think it may be serious. So you won’t have to hide from her while you’re there.”

“She wasn’t dating anybody when we were there earlier in the year,” he said. He sounded as if he thought she’d betrayed him.

“That was then,” she reminded him. “A lot can happen in a few months. Tabby’s twenty-five. It’s time she married and had kids. She’s settled and has a good job.”

He didn’t answer her. He looked hunted. He felt hunted. So he changed the subject without appearing to be evasive. “Did you get your information from Adams?” he asked her again.

“Yes. I had to have it to finish my case,” she said. “Dane was just asking me how far I’d gotten earlier. The client needs the background information. He hopes it may help him avert a court case.”

“I see.” His fingers traced a teasing line down her nose. “I don’t suppose it occurred to you that I might have a damned good reason for not wanting to talk to people I used to know at the agency?”

Her dark eyes searched his curiously. Her handsome brother had bone structure an artist would love—from his high cheekbones to his straight nose and perfectly chiseled masculine mouth.

“You’re staring. And you haven’t answered me,” he said.

“I was just thinking what a dish you are,” she said with a grin. “You look just like Dad. No wonder women threaten to leap off buildings when you throw them over. You never talk about the time you spent with the FBI, and I never knew why. I thought maybe you missed it.”

“Sometimes I do,” he confessed. “Not often. But it’s never a good idea to open up old wounds. Sometimes they bleed.”

“Yes,” she said absently, “I suppose so.”

“All right. Have a sandwich with me and we’ll talk about what we’re going to do with the house. I’m tired of renting it out. Too much hassle. I want to talk to you about selling it.”

“Sell our legacy?” she burst out.

He sighed. “I figured you’d react that way. Come on. Let’s eat. We can fight over dessert.”

He took her to a nice seafood restaurant. She’d been expecting a hamburger, and she paused self-consciously at the door, nervous in her old black skirt and black-and-white checked blouse, her hair loose and unkempt.

“Now what’s the matter?” he asked impatiently.

“Nick, I’m not dressed for a place like this,” she said earnestly. “Can’t we go someplace less expensive?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A fast-food place,” she explained. “Plastic cartons? Paper sacks? Foam cups?”

“Nonbiodegradable litter.” He frowned. “No way. Come on.” He took her arm and forcibly led her inside. He chuckled as he seated her, very elegantly, at a table. “I hope you aren’t really that mad for pizza. They don’t serve it here.”

She smiled. “Harold and I are sort of tired of it, if you want the truth,” she confessed as he sat down across from her. The table had a burning red candle in a glass chimney. The lighting was cozy, like the atmosphere with its classical music playing unobtrusively overhead.

“I like service,” he said. “Old-fashioned service, and good food. They have both here.”

Even as he spoke, a slender blonde paused beside the table and presented them with menus. Her eyes lingered on Nick’s face while he ordered coffee, to give them time to decide on a choice of entrée.

“Thanks, Jean,” he said warmly.

The woman smiled back and with an envious glance at Helen, went on her way.

“She likes you,” she said.

“I know. I like her, too. But that’s all it is,” he added, his face very serious as he met Helen’s curious stare. “Stop trying to play matchmaker. You only complicate lives.”

He sounded incredibly bitter. “Are you trying to tell me something?” she asked quietly.

“You threw me together with Tabby at that New Year’s Eve party the last time we were home. You didn’t mention that you’d told her I flew all the way from Houston just to take her out.”

He hadn’t talked about this before. She felt guilty and apprehensive at his tone. “I didn’t think it would hurt,” she began.

He cut her off. “She had some crazy idea that my feelings had changed and I wanted a relationship with her,” he said curtly, his eyes accusing. “I wasn’t expecting it and I overreacted. She cried.” His face went harder. “In all the years we’ve known Tabby, I’ve never seen her cry. It really got to me.”

Helen knew Nick well enough to guess what happened next. “You lost your temper,” she guessed.

“I told you, I wasn’t expecting it. One minute she was telling me about some new find they were studying in the anthropology department, the next she was off on a tangent about the future.”

“The punch was spiked,” she said. “I didn’t know. I poured her two cups of it.”

“I finally figured out for myself that she was three sheets to the wind, but that sudden burst of affection knocked me off balance,” he replied. He rammed his hands into his pockets and looked uncomfortable. “I panicked. Tabby’s a sweet woman, but she’s not my type.”

“Who is?” she challenged. “You make confirmed bachelors look like old married men. You could do a lot worse than Tabby.”

“She could do a lot better than me,” he countered. “A little cottage with a picket fence isn’t what I’m saving up for. I want to sail around the world. I want to go exploring. In the meantime, I like being an investigator, even if this job is beginning to wear on me.”

“Tabby’s an investigator, did you know? She searched for the solutions to ancient mysteries. That’s what anthropologists do—they discover the cultures of ancient civilizations and how they worked.”

“No two-thousand-year-old mummy is likely to sit up in his sarcophagus and pull a gun on her, either,” he argued.

“Probably not,” she conceded. “But digging for the truth is something you both like to do.”

He ran an angry hand around the back of his neck. “I didn’t like hurting her that way,” he said abruptly. “I said some harsh things.”

“Well, that’s all in the past now,” she reminded him. “She’s dating someone and it sounds serious, so you won’t have to worry about any complications while you’re deciding what we should do about Dad’s house.”

“I suppose not,” he said, but he wasn’t looking forward to seeing Tabby again. His treatment of her wore on his nerves, and she wasn’t going to be pleased to see him. Tabby, like Nick himself, deplored losing control. Her lack of pride was going to hurt her as much as Nick’s sharp words, and she wouldn’t like being reminded of their confrontation any more than he did.

“It will be all right,” Helen said gently.

“Your favorite saying. What if it isn’t?”

“For goodness’ sake, think positively!” she chided. “Buy a plane ticket and go to Washington.”

“I guess I will. But I still have my doubts,” he said.

Two days later, with Dane Lassiter’s blessing, Nick was on his way down Oak Lane to his father’s old house in Torrington.

It looked just the same, he thought as he wheeled lazily along in the rental car. The oaks were a little older, as he was, but the street was quiet and dignified, like the mostly elderly people who lived on it.

His eyes went involuntarily over the flat front of the redbrick home where he and Helen had grown up. There were blooming shrubs all around it and the dogwood and cherry trees were green now with their blossoms gone in late spring. The weather was comfortably warm without being blazing hot, and everything looked green and restful. He hadn’t realized before just how tired he was. This vacation was probably a good idea after all, even if he had fought like a tiger to keep from taking it.

It was Friday, and not quitting time, so he didn’t expect to see Tabby at her family’s house next door. But in his mind’s eye, he saw her—long brown hair down to her waist and big dark eyes that followed him everywhere as she walked by the house on her way home from school. She was tall, very slender, with curves that weren’t noticeable at all. That hadn’t changed. Her hair was in a bun these days, not long and windblown. She wore little makeup and clothes that were stylish but not sexy. Her body was as slender as it had been in her teens, nothing to make any man particularly amorous unless he loved her. Poor Tabby. He felt sorry for her, angry at Helen because she’d engineered that meeting at New Year’s Eve and made Tabby think he cared about her.

He did, in a sort of brotherly way, mainly because that was how he’d always interpreted Tabby’s attitude toward him. She’d never seemed to want a physical relationship with him. Not until New Year’s Eve, anyway, and she had been intoxicated. Perhaps this colleague she was dating did love her, and would make her happy. He hoped so.

Life in a garret wasn’t for him. He was already thinking about applying to Interpol or as a customs inspector down in the Caribbean. A tame existence appealed to him about as much as drowning.

He pulled into the driveway of his father’s house and sat just looking at it quietly for a long time. Home. He hadn’t ever thought about what it meant to have a place to come back to. Odd, with his need for freedom, that it felt so wonderful to be in his own driveway. Possession was new to him, like the feeling of emptiness he’d had since the Christmas holidays. Loneliness wasn’t something he’d experienced before. He wondered why he should feel that way, as if he were missing out on life, when his life was so full and exciting.

As he unlocked the front door and carried his suitcase inside, he drank in the smells of wood and varnish and freshener, because he’d had a woman come in and clean every week since the house had been vacant. His parents’ things were neatly kept, just as they’d been when he and Helen were children. Nothing changed here. The smells and sights were those of his boyhood. Familiar things, that gave him a sense of security.

He scowled, looking toward the banister of the staircase that led up to the three bedrooms on the second floor. His long fingers touched the antique wood and fondled it absently. Selling the furnished house had seemed the thing to do. Now, he wasn’t sure about it.

As the day wore on, he became less sure. The power had been turned on earlier in the week, and the refrigerator and stove were in good working order. He found a coffeemaker stashed under the sink. He went shopping for supplies, arriving home just as a small blue car pulled in next door.

He paused on the steps, two grocery bags in one powerful arm, watching as a woman stepped out of the car. She didn’t look toward him, not once. Her carriage very correct, almost regal, she walked to the front door of her house, inserted the key she held ready in her hand, and disappeared out of sight.

Tabby. He stared after her without moving for a minute. She hadn’t changed. He hadn’t expected her to. But it felt different to look at her now, and it puzzled him. He couldn’t quite determine what the difference was.

He went inside and started a pot of coffee before he fried a steak and made a salad for his supper. While he was eating it, he pondered on Tabby’s lack of interest in his presence. She had to have seen the car in the driveway, seen him go to the door. But she hadn’t looked his way, hadn’t spoken.

He felt depressed suddenly, and regretted even more the wall he’d built between them at New Year’s. They were old friends. Almost family. It would have been nice to sit down with Tabby and talk about the old days when they’d all played together as children. He didn’t suppose Tabby would want to talk to him now.

After he’d finished his meal and washed up the dishes, he sat down in the living room with a detective novel. The television wasn’t working. He didn’t really mind. It was like entertainment overkill these days, with channels that never shut down and dozens of programs to choose from. The constant bombardment sometimes got on his nerves, so he shut it off and read instead. Nothing like a good book, he thought, to cultivate what Agatha Christie’s hero Hercule Poirot called the “little gray cells.”

He was knee-deep in the mystery novel when the front door knocker sounded.

Curious, he went to open the door.

Tabby stood there, unsmiling, her hair in a neat bun, her glasses low on her nose, her expression one of strain and worry. She was wearing a neat suit with a white blouse, and she obviously had worn it all day. It was nine in the evening and she hadn’t changed into casual clothes.

“Hello,” he said. His heart felt lighter and he smiled.

Tabby didn’t return the smile. Her hands were folded very tightly at her waist. “I wouldn’t have bothered you,” she said stiffly, “but I don’t really know any other detectives. It seemed almost providential that you came home today.”

“Did it? Why?” he asked.

She swallowed. “I’m under suspicion of theft,” she said. Her lower lip trembled, but only for an instant until she got it under control. Her head lifted even higher with stung pride. “I haven’t taken anything, and I haven’t been formally charged, but only I had access to the artifact that’s disappeared. It’s a small vase with cuneiform writing that dates to the Sumerian empire, and they think I stole it.”

Chapter Two

Nick’s dark blond eyebrows rose curiously. “You, a thief? My God, you walked two blocks to return a dollar old man Forbes lost when you were just sixteen. People don’t change that much in nine years.”

She seemed to relax. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I need proof that I didn’t do it. If you’re going to be in town for a few days, I want to employ you to clear me.”

“Employ for pete’s sake!” he growled. “Honest to God, Tabby, you don’t have to hire me to do you a favor!”

“It’s business,” she said firmly. “And I’m not a pauper. I don’t need to impose on our old friendship.”

“You can’t imagine how prissy you sound,” he mused, his dark eyes twinkling as they searched hers. “Come in here and talk to me about it.”

“I, uh, I can’t do that,” she said, glancing uneasily around her as if there were eyes behind every curtain. “Why not?”

“It’s quite late, and you’re alone in the house,” she reminded him.

He gaped at her. “Are you for real?” He scowled and leaned closer, making a sniffing sound. “Tipsy, are we?” he asked with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“I am not!” she said stiffly, flushing. “And I wish you’d forget that. I was drunk!”

“Absolutely,” he agreed. “I’ve never seen you with a snootful. Your mask slipped.”

“It won’t ever slip again like that,” she told him. “I hope I didn’t embarrass you.”

“Not really. Why can’t you come inside? I almost never have sex with women in suits.”

The color in her cheeks got worse. “Now cut that out!”

He shrugged. “If you say so.” He folded his arms across his broad chest. His shirt was unfastened at the collar, where a thick golden thatch was just visible. It seemed to disturb Tabby, because her eyes quickly averted from it.

“I thought, if you had time, we might meet for lunch tomorrow and I’ll fill you in.”

He sighed with mock resignation. “There’s not really any need for that.” He reached beside him and turned the porch light on. Then he escorted her down the steps and neatly seated her on the middle step, lowering himself beside her. “Here we are, in the light, so that everyone in the neighborhood can see that we aren’t naked. Is that better?”

“Nick!” she raged.

“Don’t be so stuffy,” he murmured. “You’re living in the dark ages.”

“A few of us need to or civilization as we know it may cease to exist,” she returned hotly. “Haven’t you noticed how things are going in our social structure?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Drugs, killer sexual diseases, streets full of homeless people, serial killers.” She shook her head. “Anything goes may sound great, but it brings down civilizations.”

“Most people don’t know about ancient Rome,” he reminded her. “You might start wearing a toga to get their attention.”

She glowered at him. “You never change.”

“Sure I do. I’d smell terrible wearing the same clothes over and over again.”

She threw up her hands. It was just like old times, with Nick cracking jokes while her heart broke in two. Except that now it wasn’t just her heart, it was her integrity and perhaps her professional future.

He touched her chin and turned her to face his eyes. The mockery was gone out of them as he asked, “Tell me about it, Tabby.”

She drew back from the touch of his hands, so disturbing to her peace of mind. “There was an old piece of Sumerian pottery that I was using to show my students while I lectured on the Sumerian Empire. It was a very unique piece with cuneiform writing on it.”

“You’ve lost me. It’s been years since I took Western Civilization in college.”

“Cuneiform was an improvement in the Sumerian culture, one step above pictographic writing,” she explained. “In cuneiform, each wedge-shaped sign stands for a syllable. There are thousands of pieces of Sumerian writings contained on baked clay tablets. But this writing,” she continued, “wasn’t on a tablet, it was on a small vase, perfectly preserved and over five thousand years old.” She leaned forward. “Nick, the college paid a small fortune for it. It was the most perfect little find I’ve ever seen, rare and utterly irreplaceable. I was allowed to use it for a visual aid in that one class. None of us dreamed that it would be lost. It cost thousands of dollars…!”

“Only the one artifact?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “It was on my desk. I had to tutor a student in the classroom and I was going to put it back under lock and key afterward. I wasn’t gone more than five minutes, but when I came back, it was missing. There was no one around, and I can’t prove that I didn’t take it.”

“Can’t the student vouch for you?”

“Of course, but not about the artifact. She never saw it.”

He whistled. “No witnesses?”

She shook her head. “Not a one.”

“Anyone with a motive for stealing it?”

“A find like that would be worth a fortune, but only to a collector,” she admitted. “Most students simply see it as a minor curiosity. Only a few members of the faculty knew its actual value. Daniel, for one.”

“Daniel?”

“He’s a colleague of mine. Daniel Myers. We…go out together. He’s honest,” she added quickly. “He has too much integrity to steal anything.”

“Most people who steal have integrity,” he said cynically, “but their greed overrides it.”

“That’s not fair, Nick,” she protested. “You don’t even know Daniel.”

“I guess not,” he said, angered by her defense of the man. Who was this colleague, anyway? His dark eyes whipped down to catch hers. “Tell me about Daniel.”

“He’s very nice. Divorced, one son who’s almost in his teens. He lives downtown in Washington and he’s on staff at the college where I work.”

“I didn’t ask for his history. I said tell me about him.”

“He’s tall and slender and very intelligent.”

“Does he love you?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think you need to know anything about my personal life. Only my professional one.”

He sighed. “Well, you don’t have anyone to look out for you,” he reminded her. “I always used to when you were in your teens.”

“That was then. I’m twenty-five now. I don’t need looking after. Besides, you’re only five years older than I am.”

“Six, almost.”

“Daniel wants to marry me.”

“What do you get out of it if Daniel doesn’t love you?”

“Will you take the case?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.

“Of course. But Daniel had better not get in the way.”

“Oh, he won’t,” she said, but with unvoiced reservations. Daniel tended to be just the least bit superior. He wouldn’t like Nick, she decided. Worse, Nick already didn’t like him. It was going to be a touchy situation, but she was sick with worry. She had to have someone in her corner, and who better than Nick, who was one of the best detectives in the world according to his sister Helen.

“I’d like to come around to the college tomorrow and get a look at where you work.”

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” she stammered.

“Classes won’t be in session,” he reminded her.

“Daniel was going to take me shopping…”

“Daniel can buy his clothes some other time.”

“Not for clothes, for an engagement ring!”

His eyes narrowed. He hated that idea. Hated it, for reasons he couldn’t put a finger on. “That will have to wait. I’m only going to be in town until next Friday.”

“I’ll phone him tonight.”

“Good.”

She got up, smoothing her skirt, and Nick rose with her, his face solemn, concerned. “Don’t they know you at all, these colleagues?”

“Of course. But it does look bad. My office was locked at the time. Nobody else has a key.”

Nails in her coffin, he was thinking, but he didn’t say it. “Try not to worry. We’ll muddle through.”

“Okay. Thanks, Nick,” she said without looking at him.

“No need for that. I’ll call for you about eight in the morning. That too early?”

She shook her head. “I’m always up at dawn.”

“Just like old times,” he recalled. “I hope you don’t have plans to climb the drain pipe, just like old times, and climb in a bedroom window.”

She caught her breath. “It was only once or twice, and it was Helen’s room I climbed into!”

“You were such a tomboy,” he mused. “Hell with a bat in sandlot baseball, the most formidable tackle we had in football, and not a bad tree climber. You don’t look much different today.”

She grimaced. “Don’t I know it.” She sighed. “No matter what I eat, I can’t put on a pound.”

“Wait until you hit middle age.”

“That’s a few years away,” she said with a faint smile.

“Yes. Quite a few. Get some sleep.”

“You, too. Good night.”

He returned the sentiment and watched her walk to her front door. Old times. He thought back to warm summer evenings when he’d bring his dates home and they’d all sit on chairs on the lawn and watch Helen and Tabby, who were a few years younger, chase fireflies on the lush lawn. He supposed Tabby would watch her own children do that very thing one day.

He didn’t want to think about that. He went back inside and tried to pick up his mystery novel again, but he’d lost his taste for it. He put it down and went to bed, hours and hours before usual.

Tabby was dressed in a floral skirt and white knit blouse when he called for her the next morning just at eight. He wasn’t much more dressed up than she was, comfortable in slacks and a red knit shirt. He scowled down at her.

“Must you always screw your hair up like that? I haven’t seen it long in quite a while.”

“It’s hot around my neck,” she said evasively. “I only let it down at night.”

“For Daniel?” he asked sarcastically.

“Do we go in your car or mine?” she asked, ignoring the question.

“Mine, definitely,” he said with a disparaging glance at hers. “I like having room for my head.”

“The seat lets down.”

“I can’t drive lying on my back.”

“Nick!”

“Come on.” He led her to the big sedan he’d rented and helped her inside. “Direct me. It’s been a long time since I’ve driven here.”

“Not so long,” she replied. “You didn’t leave until you quit the FBI. That’s only been about four years ago.”

“It seems like forever sometimes.”

“I guess Houston is a lot different.”

“Only when it floods. Otherwise, it’s a lot of concrete and steel and pavement. Just like every other city. It’s Washington with a drawl.”

She laughed softly. “I suppose most cities are alike. I haven’t traveled much. And when I do, it’s to places that seem pretty primitive by modern standards.”

“To digs, I gather?”

“That’s right. I went out to the Custer battlefield in Montana a few years ago to help archaeologists and other anthropologists identify some remains. Then I had a stint in Arizona with some Hohokam ruins and once I flew down to Georgia where they were excavating an eighteenth-century cabin.”

“How exciting.”

“Not to you,” she conceded. “But it’s life and breath to me. I want to investigate aboriginal sites in Australia and explore some of the Greek and Roman ruins they’re just beginning to excavate. I want to go to Machu Picchu in Peru and to the Maya and Toltec and Olmec ruins in Mexico and Central America.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “I want to go to Africa and to China… Oh, Nick, there’s a world of mysteries out there just waiting to be solved!”

He glanced at her. “You sound like a detective.”

“I am, sort of,” she argued. “I look for clues in the past, and you look for them in the present. It’s still all investigation, you know.”

He turned his attention back to the road. “I suppose. It depends on your point of view.”

She studied him briefly. “You aren’t smoking. Helen said you’d quit.”

“Five weeks now,” he replied. “I only had the jitters once Lassiter asked us all to give it up, to help him. Tess made him quit,” he said with a grin. “Imagine, old Nail Eater being led around by a woman.”

“I doubt she’s leading him around. He probably loves her and wants to make her happy. He’ll live longer if he doesn’t smoke.”

“We’re all going to die eventually,” he reminded her. “Some of us might do it a little quicker, but we don’t have much choice.”

“The law of entropy.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

“That’s what scientists call it—the law of entropy. It means that everything grows old and dies.”

“As long as we’re scientific about it,” he said mockingly.

She adjusted her glasses, pushing them back up on her nose. “No need to be sarcastic. Turn here.” She pointed.

He drove into the parking lot and pulled into a space marked Visitors. “Why here?”

“You don’t have a sticker that permits you to park here,” she reminded him. “If you park in a student’s spot, you’ll be towed. I know you wouldn’t like that.”

“It’s not my car,” he reminded her.

“You rented it. You’d have to liberate it.”

“I love the way you use words,” he chuckled as he got out of the car and helped her out.

“Nice manners,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

“You opened the door for me back when I broke my leg in your senior year of school. Drove me back and forth to work every day, too, on your way.”

“Wasn’t I sweet?” she asked wistfully. “Ah, those good old days.”

“You were less irritating then.”

“So were you,” she tossed back. She cocked her head and studied him. “Footloose Nick,” she murmured. “I suppose you’ll end up in a shoot-out with spies somewhere and they’ll mount you on a wall or something.”

He grinned. “Lovely thought. How kind of you.”

She gave up. “My office is on the second floor.”

She led him into the big brick building, past the admissions office and up the staircase that led to the history and sociology departments.

“I’m down the hall. The historians have this wing. The sociology department here is rather small, although we offer some interesting courses.”

“Anthropology is sociology,” he remarked. “I took one course of it in college myself. Sociology and law go hand in hand, did you know?”

“Sure!” she said, unlocking her office. “That’s the biology lab down the hall. They’re only up here temporarily while their facilities are being remodeled. They have snakes in there,” she said with a shiver.

A primal scream echoed down the hall with its high ceilings. “Is that one of them?” he asked.

“Snakes don’t scream,” she muttered. “No, that’s Pal.”

“Who? Or should I say what?”

“Pal’s a what, all right. He’s the missing link. That’s what we call him up here. Australopithecus insidious.”

“Greek.”

“Latin,” she corrected. “Pidgin Latin. What I mean, is that Pal is too smart to be a monkey. We have to lock him up. He likes to rip up textbooks. And if you ever leave your keys lying around when he’s on the loose, you’ll never see them again.”

“Isn’t he caged?”

“Usually. He picks the lock.” She laughed. “The last time he got out, the administrator and several members of the board of trustees were having a catered meeting in the conference room. Pal got in there and started pelting everybody with melon balls and rolls.”

“I’ll bet that went over well with the guests.”

“Guest,” she corrected. “It was a senator from Maryland. We never did get that funding we needed for a new research project.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Out of idle curiosity, what were you going to research?”

Her eyes brightened. “Primate social behavior.”

He burst out laughing. “It seems to me that you’re doing enough of that without funding.”

“That’s exactly what our president said. Here.” She opened the door to a Spartan office with a desk, a chair, and a bookcase jammed full of reference books. On her desk were stacks of paper and a college handbook. “Like most everyone else here, I’m a faculty advisor. In my spare time, I teach anthropology.”

He stood looking down at her with open curiosity. “You were always a brain. I used to feel threatened by you sometimes. No matter what I knew, you seemed to know more.”

“Brains can be a curse when you’re a young girl,” she replied with faint bitterness. “But they last a lot longer than a voluptuous figure and a pretty face,” she added.

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” he mused. “Except that you need feeding up.”

“Oh, I’ll spread out one day. This is where the artifact was lying when it vanished.”

She pointed to a central spot on the desk.

“How long ago did it walk off?”

“Yesterday afternoon.”

He nodded and pulled a small leather-bound kit out of his pocket. “Go and read a book or make a telephone call for a few minutes while I do a little investigating.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Dust your desk for fingerprints and look for clues, of course. Has anyone been at this desk except you since the artifact was taken?”

She shook her head.

“Good. That narrows it down a bit.”

She started to ask him more questions, but he was knee-deep in thought and investigation. She shrugged and left him there.

Minutes later, he straightened, irritated by the lack of fingerprints. The desk had a rough surface, which made it hard to find a full print. But a tiny piece of what looked like hair lay on a white sheet of paper, and that he took with him, securing it with a pair of tweezers and sticking it in a tiny plastic bag that he then sealed. It wasn’t much, but if it was human hair, the lab over at the FBI could tell them plenty about it. It was amazing how much data one strand of hair could provide. It was strangely coarse. He dismissed it instantly when Tabby came in the door, his eyes watchful as they skimmed over her. She made him feel as if he’d only just come back from a long journey. It was a very pleasant sensation. When he was with her, his restlessness seemed to go momentarily into eclipse.

“Anything?” Tabby asked hopefully.

Her question diverted him. “Not much,” he said. “I couldn’t get a full print….”

He stopped as a tall, unsmiling man appeared in the doorway behind Tabby.

“This is Dr. Daniel Myers,” she introduced the new comer, who was wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt and conventional tie. On a Saturday, he was dressed like a preacher, which gave Nick a pretty accurate picture of his meticulous personality.

“Nick Reed,” Nick said, introducing himself. He didn’t offer his hand. Nor did Daniel, he noticed with some amusement.

“You must be discreet,” he cautioned Nick. “I’m sure you understand what a theft like this could do to the image of Thorn College.”

“Certainly,” he agreed. “As aware as I am of what it could do to Tabby’s future.”

“Tabby?”

“Her family and mine have been close all our lives,” Nick told the man.

“It sounds like something one would call a cat, don’t you think, darling?” he asked Tabby, and slid a long arm over her thin shoulders.

Nick just stopped himself from leaping forward. Incredible, he thought, how his mind reacted to the sight. Tabby was like a sister to him. Perhaps he only felt protective. That had to be it.

He pocketed the sealed plastic envelope. “I’ll run this over to the lab. I have a friend there.”

“Will he be at work on Saturday?”

“Since I phoned him at home last night and asked him to meet me there, I do hope so,” he replied.

“That was kind of him,” she said.

“I’ll drop you off on my way to FBI headquarters,” he offered.

Daniel seemed to grow two feet. “That’s hardly necessary,” he said stiffly, and his arm drew Tabby closer. “Tabitha must have told you that we’re to shop for an engagement ring today.”

“Yes, I hear you’re planning to be married,” Nick said.

“A very sensible move, too,” Daniel said carelessly. “I live alone and so does Tabitha. She had that huge house and lot, where we can live, and her car is paid for.” He hugged her close. “She likes keeping house and cooking, so I’ll have plenty of time to work on my book.”

Nick was going to explode. He knew he was. “Book?”

“Our book,” Tabby inserted with a glare at Daniel. “It’s a new perspective on what I found at the Custer battlefield after the fire.”

“And includes information I dug out about its history,” Daniel added quickly. “Tabitha could hardly do it without my help on the grammar and punctuation.”

Nick’s eyebrows jerked up. “You think Tabby needs help with those? Are we talking about the girl who was school spelling champion in seventh grade and won a scholarship to Thorn College?”

Daniel shifted on his feet. “I have a master’s degree in English.” His watery blue eyes made mincemeat of Nick. “What was your field of study, Mr. Reed?” he asked with pleasant sarcasm, as if he considered that a detective probably had less than a high school education. In fact, an FBI agent was preferred to have a bachelor’s degree in accounting or a law degree. Nick had a law degree. It wasn’t something he’d ever boasted about. He wasn’t going to now, either, if that careless, mocking smile he gave Daniel was any indication.

“Oh, I know a little about the law,” Nick said. “I am, after all, a trained detective.”

“Like a police officer.” Daniel nodded, looking superior. “They’re only required to have a high school education or its equivalent, I believe?”

Nick stiffened. But before he could explode, and he looked close to it, Tabby stepped in.

“We really have to go, Daniel,” she said. “Thanks again, Nick. I’ll talk to you later.”

He murmured something and Tabby moved Daniel out into the hall with unusual dexterity.

“I don’t like that man,” Daniel said angrily as they walked down the hall.

“I know,” she said, soothing him.

A loud screech sounded as they passed the temporary biology lab. “I don’t like that monkey, either.”

“Yes, Daniel. Let’s go.”

A door opened at the end of the hall and a small man with a moustache came out, pausing as he saw Daniel and Tabby. He looked uncomfortable for an instant. “Uh, the missing artifact,” he said to Tabby. “Found it yet?”

“No. But I’ve engaged a private detective to look for it,” she began.

Dr. Flannery stood very still for a moment. “Detective?”

“Just to look for the pottery,” she said.

“Of course. Of course.” He turned and moved off down the hall, stopped suddenly, turned and went back the other way with a mumbled goodbye.

“Flannery is a flake,” Daniel muttered as they left the building. “He spends too much time with those monkeys. He’s beginning to act like them.”

“Primates,” she corrected. “They’re very nice when you get to know them. Even Pal. He’s intelligent, you know, that’s why he gets into so much trouble.”

“Maybe Flannery took that piece of pottery,” he said speculatively. “Did you know that his house was repossessed just recently? He’s in financial trouble. Some collectors would pay anything for a find like that.”

“Yes, I know. But it couldn’t have been Dr. Flannery,” she said stubbornly. “My goodness, he’s a biologist, not a thief!”

“Desperate men do desperate things,” he said. He slid his hand into hers. “You are going to marry me, aren’t you? We’re very compatible, and this will certainly be a successful book. Probably the first of many.” His eyes had a faraway look. “I’ve always dreamed of being in print.”

“Daniel, you aren’t marrying me so that we can write a book together, are you?” she teased.

He cleared his throat. “Of course not. Don’t be silly.”

She wasn’t being silly. Daniel kissed her only when he had to, and not very enthusiastically. He’d never tried to step over the line, to be amorous. He never sent her flowers or phoned her at midnight just to talk. He only ever talked about writing. She sighed. Marriage was what she’d always wanted, but this wasn’t how she’d envisioned it. Not at all like this.

Her dreams had been passionate ones, full of Nick. Dreams died hard, and hers never had. Now that he was back in her life, she’d have to start all over again forgetting him. Perhaps, she thought, it would be easier when he left. Meanwhile, all she had to do was live through the next week, and hope that he could clear her name. If he couldn’t, she thought with real fear, she might not even have a job much longer!

Tabitha couldn’t find a ring she liked. Honestly, she wasn’t that interested in marrying Daniel at all. He seemed bent on using her, while she was hitting back at Nick in the only way she knew. It was ridiculous to promise to marry one man just to show another that someone found her desirable. As if Nick was fooled! He’d seen right through Daniel’s motives for the engagement. Probably through Tabby’s, too. She flushed.

Daniel had taken her to a nice restaurant for lunch. She was nibbling dessert while he went to the bathroom.

Her mind was far away from the strawberry shortcake she was eating. It was on that fatal New Year’s Eve party.

She’d felt as if anything was possible that night. She’d been wearing a black dress with spaghetti straps, her long hair around her shoulders. She’d left her glasses off—despite the fact that she was nearly blind without them—and put on much more makeup than usual. Helen had told her that Nick was finally ready to settle down and that it was Tabby he really wanted. That bit of encouragement had been just enough, along with the alcohol, to make her act totally out of character.

Nick, gloriously handsome Nick, had been leaning against a door frame sipping punch. Tabby had stared at him with her heart in her eyes, drowning in the sight of him. She’d loved him for, oh, so long!

Putting her punch on a nearby table, she’d walked a little unsteadily to where he was standing in the shadows of the room while sultry blues music played from the stereo nearby.

“All alone, Nick?” she’d asked, with pouting lips.

He’d smiled indulgently. “Not now,” he mused. “You look nice, Tabby. Very grown-up.”

“I’m twenty-five.”

“That wasn’t what I meant. You aren’t very worldly.”

“I’m working on it,” she purred. “Want to see?”

She noted the faint surprise on his face as she suddenly stepped close to him, smoothing her slender body completely against his.

“Tabby!” he exclaimed.

“It’s all right,” she’d whispered nervously. “I only want to kiss you, Nick. And kiss you…and kiss you…!”

She’d reached up while she was speaking and looped her arms around his neck to draw his shocked face within reach. She knew little about men and less about kissing with her mostly academic background, but she loved him and she put her heart into it.

She seemed to shock him. His body froze for a few seconds. Then his dark eyes closed and his mouth hardened, and all at once, it was Nick who was doing the kissing. His steely arm clenched around her and jerked her into his body, one powerful leg moving just enough to let her slim figure intimately close while the kiss went on and on. His lips lifted while he breathed unsteadily.

“Is this what you want?” he asked roughly.

“Yes,” she breathed, coaxing his mouth back to hers. “Do it again,” she whispered against his hard lips.

He obliged her. The glass of punch found its way onto a table. They were hidden from the rest of the party goers by a large potted plant and an alcove, but Tabby was beyond knowing where they were. She let her hands slide up and down his long back, gave her mouth to him totally even when he deepened the kiss far beyond her meager experience. She began to moan softly when she felt Nick’s thighs against her.

That was when he jerked back and pushed her away with a vicious motion of his lean hands.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded harshly, his dark eyes blazing. “You’re no drunken floozy out for a cheap roll in the hay, are you? Or is that what you do want?” he added with an insolent laugh. “Do you want me, Tabby? There’s probably a room upstairs that we could use. Or as a last resort, we could go out on the patio into a dark corner and pull up your skirt…”

She’d cried out at his remarks. “No! Nick, I want to marry you,” she’d blurted. “I know you’re ready to settle down. I want to have children with you. Isn’t that why you came back?”

His face had actually paled. “I came back to check on my father’s house. Nothing more.”

“But… But I thought…” She swallowed and went deathly pale. “I thought you wanted me.”

“A dried-up spinster with a computer for a brain and no breasts to speak of?” he asked arrogantly. “My God, did you really?”

She ran. She turned and ran out the door and went straight home—blind and deaf to the turmoil she’d created in the face of the man she’d left behind. Helen had come after her and she’d cried on her friend’s shoulder until dawn, only then swearing Helen to secrecy about her anguish.

She hadn’t touched a drop of liquor since, and the shame lingered. But Nick would never know how badly he’d hurt her. All she required now was his help to clear her name. And then maybe she would—and maybe she wouldn’t—actually marry Daniel.

Having Nick come back was slowly clearing away the desperation and madness of the past few empty months. She could see what she’d been doing, trying to substitute Daniel for the man she wanted. She couldn’t have Nick, but she didn’t need to make herself and Daniel miserable by trying to replace him with someone who would never be more than second best.

That decided, finally, she smiled at Daniel when he came back and managed to keep the conversation on just a friendly level for the rest of the afternoon.

Chapter Three

Nick had always been fascinated by the forensics lab at FBI headquarters. It had a reputation second to none for being able to put together evidence from almost nothing. A human hair with its DNA structure could yield a pattern as individual as a fingerprint. The tread of a tennis shoe involved in a murder could be traced to the person who purchased it. A scrap of cloth could yield an incredible amount of information about its owner. And the FBI boasted the largest file of fingerprints on record anywhere. It was an agency to which Nick had been proud to belong. Leaving it had been a wrench, too. A woman with whom he’d been involved had been killed while he’d worked there. She, too, had been a special agent, infiltrating a counterfeiting ring. She’d been spotted and eliminated. That was how the supervisor had put it. Nick had been inconsolable and he’d quit the agency.

He wondered now if it hadn’t been a case of simple loneliness and pity. The woman had needed someone at a time in Nick’s life when he was feeling hopelessly alone. He’d almost turned to Tabby. But at that time, she’d been shy and introverted and he’d been sure that she would back away from any advance he made. She’d seemed to see him in only one light—that of a protective, affectionate older brother.

Obviously she hadn’t seen him like that at the New Year’s Eve party. His blood still ran hot at the memory of how eager she’d been for him. Now, having had time to adjust to seeing her in this unexpected way, he’d regretted pushing her away.

But years ago, he’d wanted Tabby. It had been because of that that he’d pursued the woman at work in the first place, out of a need to prove to himself that any woman would do. He didn’t need a shy, nervous young woman who didn’t even see him as a man.

Sometimes he thought Tabby was a bit afraid of him. The first move she’d ever made toward him had been at that party, when she’d had too much to drink. Apparently he was only palatable to her if she was too tipsy to think properly, and that was hardly flattering. If she’d ever wanted him in the old days, it had never shown. He was defensive toward her because it hurt his pride to think that he couldn’t even attract a backward egghead like Tabby. Good God, she wasn’t even pretty, and her figure left plenty to be desired. Why, then, he wondered angrily, did the memory of her body against his keep him awake at night? Why did her kisses haunt him?

Momentarily diverted when the elevator stopped, he strolled into one of the huge laboratories that peppered the building and grinned at the elderly form bent over a microscope. That familiar sight had greeted him every time he’d come here during his tenure as a special agent.

“Hello, Bartholomew,” he greeted.

The old man looked up, and smiled with delight. “Nick! How nice to see you! Can you stay a while?”

“At least long enough to let you identify something for me,” Nick teased. He shook hands with the amused laboratory chief. “How are you, Bart?”

“I’ve been better. When you get to my age, even arthritis is encouraging. It means you’re still alive enough to feel pain!” He chuckled. “Why are you in town? Come home, are you? We could use a good special agent…”

“No. I’m on vacation. I’m working as a private detective these days. It’s a little less fraught than working for the agency,” he added with a chuckle.

“You look as if it agrees with you. What can I detect for you?”

“This.” Nick pulled out the small plastic bag with the strand of hair. It looked odd now that he was out of the influence of Tabby and her snobbish boyfriend, and he scowled as he handed it over to Bart.

The older man lifted an eyebrow as he opened the bag and took out the sample. “Losing your touch, aren’t you?”

Nick let out a sharp breath. “I must be. My God, that isn’t human hair!”

“Bingo.” Bart studied it and shrugged. “Animal fur. Someone has a dog, right?”

He wasn’t sure if Tabby had one or not, but she’d mentioned going into the biology lab on the way over to the college. Probably she’d picked it up there, where they kept rats and mice and dogs and cats and such, and it had come off on her desk.

Nick took the sample back. “A dog or a rabbit or some such thing,” he agreed. “Funny I didn’t notice that it wasn’t human.”

“I can run it for you and tell you exactly what it is, if you like.”

He shook his head. “No need. I’m getting careless, I guess,” he said with a rueful smile.

“Something on your mind?”

“Yes. A lady,” Nick replied. His broad shoulders rose and fell. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. There’s been a theft. Nothing major, to my mind, but I’m trying to help a friend catch the culprit.”

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