Pink Topaz Read online

  PINK TOPAZ

  JENNIFER GREENE

  Synopsis:

  FIVE SMOOTH STONES...

  They were Regan Thorne’s legacy—and the key to the dark mystery swirling around her. It looked more and more as if those five glorious jewels might just cost her her sanity—and maybe her life.

  Regan was used to handling problems on her own, but this time she had to have help. She found what she needed—and a whole lot more—in the unwilling person of Cole Shepherd. But the cynical, hard-bitten man made a practice of never, ever, getting involved.

  He wanted her to believe she’d be better off without the likes of him in her life. But Regan Thorne wasn’t in the jewel business for nothing. She knew a diamond in the rough when she saw one.

  CHAPTER ONE

  A polished black Bentley glided past the chain-link fence and the paint-peeling sign, Shepherd Brothers, Air Freight. The car’s fresh coat of wax shone like a mirror in Chicago’s early morning sun. It drove past the hangar, and with all the arrogance of royalty rolled down the middle of the tarmac.

  Cole wasn’t expecting a regal vintage Bentley, but there could be only one excuse for its existence on the private airstrip.

  His cargo had arrived.

  Suppressing a grin, he grabbed his mug of coffee and threaded his way from the cockpit to the open exit door. The cabin of the old Beechcraft King Air had no claim to elegance, but the windows gleamed and the tiny galley was spotless. More relevant, Cole had already mechanically checked his baby stem to stem and belly to tail. There was nothing left to do but enjoy watching the action below.

  Apparently all three of Thorne’s partners had showed up to deliver their baggage. The front passenger door opened first, and out heaved Dorinsky. Cole figured him for about 225 pounds and ballpark-aged sixty, with a hefty paunch, a bulbous nose and a booming voice that threatened the eardrums. In spite of the fat diamond winking from his tie clip and the fancy suit, Dorinsky was always going to look like a boxer gone to seed.

  The driver stepped out second, and Cole had to stifle another grin. Reed was the same general age as his cohort, but gaunt as a tree stalk and towering tall. April sunshine glinted on his balding head. Dark suits and dignity suited Reed. Cole always figured he’d missed his real calling as an undertaker.

  The right rear car door opened then, and the third Thorne partner climbed out. Trafer had fifteen years on the other two and the ballast of a puff of wind. In elevator shoes, he might reach five foot five. A pair of round glasses perched on Trafer’s wizened features, making him look like an aging absentminded professor. His tailor, though, was Italian; he checked the time on a Rolex, and Cole would bet money the gentleman’s toothbrush handle was sterling.

  Just your average good old boys, Cole thought wryly, and stole another sip of coffee. Although he was too far away to hear distinct words, he noted without surprise that the guys were bickering. When old man Thorne died six weeks ago, Cole had idly wondered which partner would jockey for top-dog position. He never lost sleep over the problem—he never lost sleep over any problem—and his entire involvement with the Thorne Gem Company was making nice, regular, shamelessly exorbitant cross-country hauls for the boys. If anyone should have asked him, though, he’d have said Jack Thorne had been worth ten of his cronies any day of the week.

  Nobody was likely to ask him, and Cole didn’t give a hoot about their company’s management. All he wanted was a look at his cargo.

  Dorinsky fetched a powder blue leather case from the trunk; Reed and Trafer converged on the left passenger door. Like magic, the boys turned all smiles the instant the blonde was released from the car. Solicitous as baby-sitters, the old codgers flanked her walk to the plane. Cole had to scratch his whiskered chin. The last he knew, Regan Thorne had a really low tolerance for being treated like fragile fluff.

  A Cessna taking off created a backdraft of wind, whipping her shoulder-length blond hair across her face. Although Cole couldn’t see her features, Thorne’s granddaughter was—predictably—unpredictably dressed. This day’s outfit looked fresh from a rummage sale—a blouse with a lot of old lace, jeans snuggled tight to one of the finest fannies he’d ever seen, wild, garish earrings dangling to her neck, and a patchwork shoulder bag that probably weighed more than she did.

  Over his five-year association with Jake Thorne, Cole had met Regan a dozen times. Never for business—she had nothing to do with Thorne’s company—but the old man had a terror of flying. When Regan couldn’t accompany him, she never failed to see him off. Cole had thoroughly enjoyed every one of their encounters. He also kept the same careful distance he’d give a nuclear reactor. Respect for the old man’s wishes was part of that—Thorne undoubtedly wanted his granddaughter to marry class—but Cole had an even better excuse for staying clear.

  At thirty-one, his instincts for survival were as finely honed as a coyote’s. He didn’t have Vowed Coward printed on his coffee mug for nothing. So far, he had yet to find a fight he wasn’t happy to walk away from.

  Cole didn’t tango with trouble and sometime, somewhere, Regan Thorne was going to give some poor unsuspecting man a lot of trouble. What amused Cole most was that she looked so sweet. Straight, fine, wheat-pale hair swung softly to her shoulders. Her big eyes were set in a dreamer’s face—fine-boned cheeks, straight nose, ethereally pale skin, and an angel’s sugar-soft mouth.

  She was a dreamer, all right, but the angel image was a joke. Those big eyes were a clear vixen green; she was quick as a whip and chock-full of irreverent sass. No one was going to tell Regan Thorne anything in this lifetime. She’d inherited all of her grandfather’s bulldog stubbornness without a whit of his common sense. She was a card-carrying idealist—worse, a romantic—and some man was going to have his hands full getting her head out of the clouds, much less settling her down.

  Imagining Regan giving some man hell usually made Cole chuckle. Truthfully, though, she’d surprised him when she called four days before to arrange this flight—she’d never chartered with him before. Cole never asked questions of a customer whose checks didn’t bounce. Hell, she was Thorne’s granddaughter—for that alone, he’d have done her a favor. At a nice inconsequential level he was looking forward to teasing the hell out of her...assuming he ever got the chance.

  The entire group was ascending the steps to the plane, with Regan’s face hidden behind Reed’s gaunt frame. Cole still hadn’t caught a look at her when Trafer reached the top.

  “Mr. Shepherd.” The wizened little man extended a gnarled hand. “We’re just getting on to see Regan settled.”

  “Sure.” Cole switched his coffee mug to be able to offer his hand in return. He hadn’t expected the amenity. Thorne was the one who’d hired him. The others had gone along, but Trafer usually looked over his scuffed L. A. Gear shoes, disreputable jeans and lucky black T-shirt as if he were afraid bad taste was catchable.

  “Shepherd.” Dorinsky’s beefy pumping handshake followed Trafer’s. Apparently he was bosom buddies with everybody today. “How long is the flight going to be?”

  “We should land in Arizona early this afternoon—here, let me take that.” By the time Cole had stashed the blue suitcase and turned back, the undertaker—Reed—was blocking the aisle and the rest were swarming ahead.

  That didn’t exactly leave a lot of room to party. The Beechcraft only had two seats behind the cockpit; passengers were a rare charter, and the space had been modified for hauling light cargo. Cole cocked his head—all this sudden friendliness was really nice, but somehow he kept missing his only passenger—and Mr. Dignity suddenly wanted words with him, too.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d see her safely in the house when you get there.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard.” Cole raised his eyebrow
s. The request was nominally silly. Regan’s destination was her grandfather’s desert home, where there was a landing strip long enough for the turboprop right on the property. Even if the partners had never been to the old man’s retreat, they surely knew the setup.

  “I’d also appreciate your calling when you get there so we know she’s all right.” Reed, his voice deliberately low, handed him a small card with three telephone numbers on it. “Call any one of us. It doesn’t make any difference.”

  Cole pocketed the card with another curious look at Reed. “It would seem pretty easy for Regan to just call you herself.”

  “Normally, yes.” Reed hesitated. “We think this trip of hers is ill-advised. She’s had a difficult time since her grandfather passed, and since we’re the closest thing to family she has now, we’re trying to look out for her. It would simply be easier on all of us if you would—”

  “Call. Fine, no problem.” The request still struck him as odd, but then Reed was odd. Cole couldn’t imagine anyone else using ‘ill-advised’ and ‘passed’ in casual conversation. He had a sudden picture of the three Dutch uncles hovering over Regan for the past six weeks, smothering her with all this heavy-duty concern, and thought it was no wonder she wanted to get away alone. “We were scheduled for takeoff about five minutes ago,” he told Reed.

  The older man glanced at his watch. “The rest of us should be leaving, then?”

  Cole thought his hint was broader than a baseball bat, but apparently not. The three all collected kisses and hugs from Regan, and it was another ten minutes before he could herd them down the steps again. Then there was the business of rolling up the carpet and battening down the hatches, so to speak. When he finally shut the door and felt the tiny pressure pop in his ears, he was whistling under his breath. Within minutes they’d be in the air.

  “I can have some heat on as soon as I get the engine running,” he called to Regan. “Couldn’t believe the frost out there. Nobody seemed to tell Chicago it was April this morning. Do you want something hot to drink before we go?”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine.”

  “I have sandwiches for later.” He automatically checked the overhead compartments to make sure they were closed tight before striding up front. One of them—Dorinsky or Trafer—had parked Regan in one of the front seats. He could see her blond head turning toward him over the teal upholstered back. “Pretty hard to catch a word with you before—much less give you a hard time—with your grandfather’s cronies around. Still holding out for a hero, princess?”

  “Been in bed recently with anyone with an IQ over three, slugger?”

  Cole chuckled—the response was so typically Regan—at the same time he remembered his coffee mug by the door. He fetched it. “I told you before. If you’ve got your mind on an IQ when the lights go out, you’re picking the wrong man. Now if you want some advice—”

  “Heavens, I certainly do. You know how I value your advice, Cole.”

  He grinned again. God, she was sassy. “Then you’re just going to have to sit up front with the hired help. Come on, I need a copilot, and I can’t give you a good dirty lecture on sex if you’re sitting all the way back here.” He turned at the partition between cockpit and cabin, and was lifting the mug of cold coffee for a last sip when he froze.

  It was the first time he’d had a look at her. A good look. Reed had said she’d had a rough time since the old man died, but that was like saying water was wet. There was no way Regan couldn’t have had a rough road last month—she thought the sun rose and set on her grandfather; Cole saw it every time they were together. He’d expected her to look worn out and tired.

  She didn’t look worn out and tired.

  She looked wasted.

  The lace blouse dipping at her throat showed fragile collarbones. She’d dropped ten pounds, maybe fifteen. Her face was whiter than paper and all eyes—big green eyes with bruised-purple smudges beneath them. The pupils were dilated, the irises a fever-brilliant green. She still had the most wicked sweet mouth on a woman he’d ever seen, but her smile was more reflexive than real. So, he understood now, was the sass.

  Since the coffee mug was still suspended in midair, Cole forced down a gulp. It tasted like sludge, but by the time he swallowed he could force a fake grin. He cupped his fingers and motioned. “Come on, come on. What’s all this hesitation? You’re sitting up with me.”

  “It’s not that I’m against it. It’s just that I’m likely to be bad company. I’m a little tired—”

  “So? You can nap just as well in the copilot’s seat as back here.” It didn’t take that much coaxing to urge her out of the seat, but his mouth tightened as he watched her maneuver to the front. She used a hand on the side wall as if her legs were too rubbery to trust for balance.

  Cole no longer wondered why she’d chartered a flight instead of taking a commercial airline. She was so damn beat she couldn’t see straight. If she had the right kind of man in her life, she wouldn’t even be on a charter flight. She’d be shuffled off to bed so fast it would make her head swim. Not for sex. For about forty-eight hours of straight Z’s, the curtains drawn, the phone unhooked, and strapped down if that’s what it took to get her prone.

  Cole had never doubted that there were ample males in her life. When she wasn’t looking as if she’d been mowed down by a Mack truck, she had a sexy little sparkle that was always going to catch a man’s attention. Her soft, demure smiles had a stroke of the devil. Some men were going to fall for the sweetness, some for the devil. Whichever way, Cole figured that the boys she allowed close enough to chase her—she was open about her opinions—were gentlemen with standards and ideals.

  Idiots.

  Hell, her hands were even shaking as she sank into the copilot’s chair. Cole couldn’t believe that even a royal idiot would let her travel alone in this shape.

  “I seem to be clumsy today,” she said with a laugh.

  “What can you expect from a Monday?” He hooked a blanket from a shelf before dropping into the pilot’s chair. Once the King Air was up and leveled, maybe she’d nap. At least up here, next to him, he could keep an eye on her.

  “Cole...I never thanked you for taking me on. I know I didn’t give you much notice—”

  “No sweat.” A fib. Sam, his brother and partner, had given him holy hell for all the rearranging this single job had taken. They were making money these days, but the bank still owned a slice of their souls. “I billed you at a bandit’s rate. As long as that was okay by you, it worked out fine.” Another fib. He’d billed her half what he should have, but Sam never had to know about that. Cole had survived on a peanut butter diet before. “I’m sorry about your grandfather,” he said gruffly.

  She turned her head. “Gramps thought a lot of you.” Her eyes rested on his face. “I saw you at the funeral. At least I think I did. There was a good-looking stranger in a navy blue suit, but for some reason he slipped out before anyone could say a single word to him.”

  “It sure wasn’t me.” Cole strapped in and reached for his headphones.

  “No?”

  “Hell, no. First off—and meaning no disrespect to you—I had enough funerals as a kid to last a lifetime. I don’t even plan on attending my own. Second off, someone would have to rope me down to get me in a suit. Have you ever seen me in anything but jeans?”

  “Shepherd?”

  “What?”

  “It was you. Thanks very much for coming.”

  There was no point in arguing with her. She never listened to anything a man said, and she’d probably find kindness in the devil himself. One of these days she was going to get hurt with that total trust in the goodness of human nature.

  Maybe she already had been.

  The look of her had him reaching back to massage a crick in his nape. He had a football-player friend who could forecast the weather by the condition of his arthritis. Cole could sense a woman who was trouble—every time—by that crick in his neck. Regan had been through a siege of grief
, but that alone didn’t explain why she looked as if she’d been sleeping with nightmares. Her eyes were too bright, too brilliant, green fire against skin that had no more color than alabaster. She looked...wounded. As if some bastard had taken her for a ride through hell, as if pride was the only glue holding her together, as if she was going to smile or die trying.

  Something was wrong. Really wrong.

  And whatever it was, Cole didn't want to know.

  “Strap in,” he told her.

  Suddenly he was in a hurry to get this buggy up in the air. He’d been well paid to protect his blond cargo until delivery in Arizona, which he would do. But after that, plain and simple, Regan Thorne wasn’t his problem.

  It had taken him years to hone an instinct for trouble. The instinct had not come naturally, because he had been raised with the ridiculous values of honor, integrity and valor. Cole had paid all the prices he was going to pay in this life for the expensive values. Selfishness had had to be ruthlessly developed, refined, taught, beaten into his brain...but he’d done it.

  Sir Galahad he was not.

  And Ms. Thorne was about to be dumped in Arizona just as fast as he could fly her there.

  Cole hadn’t noticed anything was wrong, Regan thought with a rush of relief.

  The plane engines turned over with a muffled roar of noise and vibration. While he was distracted, getting final approval for takeoff, she quickly reached for the blanket he’d tossed between the seats. She wasn’t cold, but the flannel covering would conceal how badly she was shaking. The spell would pass. It always did, but following the shakes would come a heavyweight exhaustion, as if someone had punched her and she was going down. Her eyelids would close, her limbs would turn to jelly and the sweet promise of sleep would overtake her. For a few minutes. Never more than a few minutes. Her mind simply refused to rest.

  “For heaven’s sakes, Regan,” the doctor had said. “You want everything to be business as usual, when you’ve just had a blow. People handle grief in different ways. The physical symptoms of the stress you’re suffering are not at all unusual. Knowing how you overreact to medication, I understand why you’d rather avoid sleeping pills. At the very least, though, give yourself a break and take it easy.”