Buch lesen: «The Willful Wife»

One

She was a looker.

Mathis Hazard handed the photograph back to the gentleman on the other side of the desk and told him as much. “She’s a good-looking woman.”

“Desiree is beautiful and we both know it,” George Huxley stated as he leaned back in his executive-style, ergonomically-correct leather chair. He steepled his fingers under his chin and studied the picture that occupied one corner of his desk.

No doubt former Ambassador Huxley saw in the black-and-white studio portrait what Mathis had seen: a young Grace Kelly type, right down to the long, lithe legs, the patrician features, the flawless complexion and the shoulder-length blond hair.

Yup, she was a looker, all right.

Mathis decided to concede the point. “She is beautiful.”

“To tell you the truth the photograph doesn’t do Desiree justice,” the older man claimed, running his hand back and forth along his chiseled jawline. It was some time before he added, almost as an afterthought, “She’s a Brahmin.”

Mathis managed to keep a straight face. “As in bull?”

“As in Bostonian.” George Huxley went on to explain. “Desiree was born and bred in Boston. She has the right pedigree. She attended all the right schools. She traveled in all the right circles. She traveled to all the right destinations—Paris, Florence, Venice, Rome. Naturally she studied all the right subjects.”

“Naturally,” Mathis echoed. He wondered exactly what constituted the “right” subjects for a Boston blue blood.

His companion turned out to be a mind reader. “Art history, classical music, foreign languages.”

Mathis grunted.

George Huxley continued. “Desiree lives at the right address, works at the right place, even wears the right designers. Nothing flashy, of course. Mostly Chanel or Armani.” The distinguished sexagenarian behind the rosewood-inlaid desk paused and drew a breath. Then he shook his head from side to side and admitted, “Damned, if she doesn’t do all the right things.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“According to her parents—and it’s her parents who contacted me—my goddaughter did all the right things.”

Mathis couldn’t help but notice the use of the past tense. “I repeat, what’s the problem?”

“The Hotel Stratford.”

His brow crinkled into a studied frown. “The Hotel Stratford here in Chicago?”

“The very one.”

Mathis had .only been in town a week but he’d heard of the Stratford. “It’s a landmark.”

“More like an albatross,” his client confessed. “The founder was Desiree’s great-grandfather, Colonel Jules Stratford, late of His Majesty’s Bengal Lancers. Colonel Stratford served King and country in India well over half a century ago. Apparently the gentleman felt if he could command a regiment, he could run a hotel. He retired from the military, emigrated to this country, bought an old hotel, which he refurbished, and named it the Stratford.”

“After himself?”

“Yes. Anyway, the Stratford was once the premier small hotel in Chicago. Then the Colonel got older and began to fade, as we all do, and the hotel did likewise. The gentleman passed away some twenty years ago. His widow—she was his second wife, his first preceded him in death—tried to keep up with the business, but it became more difficult with each passing year.” George Huxley paused for perhaps a quarter of a minute. “Anyway, Charlotte died a few months ago and Desiree inherited the Hotel Stratford, lock, stock and dilapidated barrel.”

Mathis waited. He was good at waiting.

“Desiree is an adult. She can spend her time and money any way she wishes to,” Ambassador Huxley declared. “That is her prerogative.”

Mathis agreed.

“However, her parents are concerned that she is allowing sentiment to override her usual practical nature. I’ve reminded them that their daughter is not only beautiful, but amply endowed with brams.” In an aside, the man said, “She graduated magna cum laude from my own alma mater, Harvard.”

Mathis was suitably impressed.

George Huxley picked up the thread of his conversation. “I have also pointed out to her mother and father that Desiree’s whole life has been spent preserving the past.” The one-time ambassador stroked his chin as if he were tugging on an invisible beard. “It’s no doubt the reason Desiree is so good at what she does.”

“Which is?”

“She’s a curator for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Her specialty is document preservation.”

Mathis stared at the black-and-white photograph again. Strange, the woman didn’t look boring.

“Anyway, my goddaughter has taken a leave of absence from the museum and is now here in Chicago, trying to find a way to restore the Stratford to its former glory. Frankly, none of us believes Desiree realizes what she’s let herself in for. That’s why I called on Jonathan and Hazards, Inc. for help.” It was another minute or two before the former diplomat said, “Your cousin once did me a great favor.”

“Jonathan was the special agent who smuggled you out of Beirut,” Mathis stated matter-of-factly.

That brought a raised eyebrow from the man behind the desk. “Yes.” It was no more than ten seconds before George August Huxley’s curiosity obviously got the better of him. “Although it was a long time ago, I can’t imagine Jonathan telling anyone, not even his own family, about the mission.”

“He didn’t.”

“Then how did you know?”

Mathis shrugged his shoulders. “I used to know a lot of things back in the old days.”

His companion thumped his knee and laughed out loud. “Back in the old days?” Robust laughter filled the office. “How old are you? Thirty-five? Thirty-six?”

Mathis gave a semblance of a nod. The renowned emissary to several of the world’s trouble spots had hit the nail neatly on the head. Mathis had turned thirty-six on his last birthday.

“You Hazards are all alike.” Despite his many years of diplomatic experience, and nearly as many as the driving force behind the Kemet Museum in Chicago, George Huxley evidently couldn’t make heads or tails of the Hazard clan.

The ambassador wouldn’t be the first person who had found his family, with its assortment of brothers, half brothers, cousins and nephews confusing, Mathis acknowledged. Confusing and intimidating, if the truth be known.

“I assume that’s a compliment,” he said.

The white-haired gentleman came forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the edge of the desk. “Of course it is. There isn’t a man I admire, or trust, more than Jonathan Hazard. Hell, if push comes to shove, I want Jonathan on my side.”

“He was.” Mathis absently brushed at the brim of the hat he was holding in his left hand. “He still is. But I’m sure he considers the debt long repaid, especially since the ‘situation’ involving the Egyptologist and the Egyptian antiquities.”

“Marryng Samantha Wainwright was an added benefit of that assignment,” the older man offered up with a delighted smile. “I understand that Jonathan is on paternity leave.”

Mathis returned the smile. “He’s taken several months off to spend with Samantha and their new baby.”

“Where’s Nick?”

“On his honeymoon with Melina.”

“And Simon?”

“Simon was never really part of the agency. Besides, he just got back from Thailand.”

“With a wife, I hear.”

“He married Sunday Harrington.”

George Huxley leaned back again, raised his eyes toward the ceiling and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair, keeping tempo with his own words. “Sunday Harrington? Sunday Harrington? The name sounds familiar.”

“Sunday was a model. Sports Illustrated. Now she’s a successful fashion designer.”

“So while the others are out of the office, you’ve been left in charge of Hazards, Inc.?”

“Let’s just say I agreed to come to Chicago for a couple of months and keep an eye on things,” Mathis said, crossing one leg over the other and plucking a nonexistent speck of lint off his jeans. His jacket was weathered brown leather. His shirt was starched and white. His tie was a southwestern bolo with a gold nugget the size of a thumbnail. His cowboy boots were polished to a mirror sheen.

All dressed up and no place to go.

“I hear you’re pretty good.”

Mathis shrugged his shoulders and made a noncommittal sound. Since his reputation always seemed to precede him, he rarely found it necessary to mention his credentials..

The former ambassador sought confirmation of his facts. “Army Rangers.”

Mathis nodded.

“Border patrol.”

He nodded a second time.

“A few covert operations for the government.”

Mathis lifted his shoulders and then lowered them again. Appropriately, it was neither a confirmation nor a denial of the gentleman’s statement.

“Then private surveillance and security for some of the leading heads of state.”

Another movement of his head.

“You get around.”

“I get around.”

“You’re still alive.”

“I’m still alive.”

“Unscathed?”

There was a moment of hesitation. That was inevitably the question. Had he come out of it unscathed?

Mathis decided to give the socially acceptable answer. It was the only thing he could do. “Unscathed.”

Shrewd gunmetal gray eyes assessed him from beneath snowy-white eyebrows. “Good.”

It was time to get down to business. “What do you want me to do, Ambassador?” he inquired.

“I want you to check it out,” he replied.

“The hotel or your goddaughter?”

George Huxley was blunt. “Both. I hear you’re a pretty good businessman as well as an ex—” one hand drew random circles in the air “—whatever-you-are. I want you to find out if Desiree is getting in over her head, if she knows what she’s doing.”

There was more. Mathis could hear it in the cultured voice. “And...?”

The retired diplomat took in a deep breath and then slowly released it. “And...”

The infinitesimal hairs on the back of Mathis Hazard’s neck stood straight up on end. “And what?” he inquired, almost certain he didn’t really want to hear the answer.

There was another moment of hesitation, this time on the part of George Huxley. “There have been several incidents.”

“Incidents?”

“Unexplained occurrences.”

“Such as?” Mathis prodded.

The distinguished-looking man appeared almost embarrassed to say. “Furniture moving.”

“Furniture moving?”

“By itself.” He continued, albeit reluctantly. “Strange noises in the night. Glimpses of someone—something—but nothing is ever there.”

Mathis was amused. “Are you trying to tell me that the Hotel Stratford is haunted?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“That makes two of us, because neither do I.”

“Then you’re just the man for the job. You’ll be a sane voice in an otherwise insane world.”

“Is there anything else?”

Huxley squirmed in his seat. “Well, now that you mention it, there is one more thing.”

Somehow Mathis had known there would be.

“My gut instincts tell me that this is an inside job,” the older man confided to him. “No one other than my goddaughter must know who and what you actually are. Otherwise, I’m afraid that we’ll never get to the bottom of it.”

He waited for George Huxley to get to the point.

“You’ll have to go undercover.”

Mathis made certain his voice was devoid of any inflection. “You want me to go in disguise.”

“Something like that.”

He arched a quizzical brow. “Any suggestions?”

Observant eyes glanced from the expensive black Stetson, with its hammered-silver hatband, resting on Mathis’s right knee down to his highly polished, hand-tooled black leather boots. “You could always go as a cowboy.”

Mathis didn’t crack a smile. “What would a cowboy be doing at the Stratford?”

“We’ll think of something.”

“We?”

“I’m certain that between the two of us we can come up with a suitable cover story.”

Mathis was certain they could, too. “When would you like me to start?”

“Today.”

Mathis gazed out the expanse of office windows toward downtown Chicago. He wanted—no, he needed—some information on the Hotel Stratford and its former and current owners before he presented himself to the lady from Boston.

“Tomorrow,” he finally proposed to his distinguished client. “There are a few details I want to check out before I drop in on Ms. Desiree Stratford.”

“Tomorrow, then,” the other man agreed.

Some fifteen minutes later they concluded their conversation and Mathis was personally escorted to the door of the elegant office.

George Huxley shook his hand in parting. “Good luck, Hazard,” the ambassador said to him.

The unspoken words hung in the air between the two men. You’ll need it.

The penthouse he was living in for the summer, courtesy of Hazards, Inc., was on the forty-second floor of a Chicago high-rise. It was glass on three sides and had a panoramic view of Lake Michigan.

The evening light was stealing across the unusually placid surface of the great lake. As far as the eye could see it was dark blue water dotted with white sailboats.

The scene somehow reminded Mathis of the view from his adobe casita at sunset, watching the Sangre de Cristo Mountains turn blood red in one of New Mexico’s strangely transcendental landscapes.

That New Mexico was all about light was something he had discovered several years ago. Maybe it was why he had picked the location he did when he had started to buy up land in anticipation of the day he would retire from the business.

Mathis raised a can of ice-cold beer to his mouth and took a drink. There was no sense in getting maudlin about his past. No sense in brooding about it. The past was the past. His past was like anyone else’s in that it couldn’t be changed. And since no one was promised a future, that left only the present. So he concentrated on living in the here and now.

Besides, as he had reassured George Huxley during their meeting that afternoon, he had emerged from his past unscathed...or pretty damned close to it.

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades , son,” came the words of Argos Hazard, one-time rancher, one-time soldier and lawman, sometime husband and father.

Maybe his father had been right, after all.

There were certainly those who would say Mathis Hazard had always been a loner and that’s why he was so good at what he did. Mathis knew his past set him apart, made him different from other men, made him alone, made him a loner.

He hadn’t thought it odd to buy a ranch in the middle of New Mexico, located between a range of isolated mountains and a secluded lake, away from civilization, his nearest neighbors a good forty miles in any direction. Lord knows, he’d had enough of so-called civilization to last him a lifetime.

It wasn’t that he had been around too many people. It was the people he’d been around and the world he’d lived in, a world most people were unaware even existed.

It was a world where a man acquired eyes in the back of his head if he wanted to survive. It was a world where nothing was what it seemed to be, where no one was who they appeared to be. It was a world where a man learned to trust only one person—himself—where experience, gut instincts and sheer bravado sometimes saved a man when intelligence alone never would, never could.

He’d always essentially been alone, Mathis recognized. He always would be. At least in New Mexico there was no pretense about it.

He took another swig of his beer.

Female companionship...well, that, as they said, was another matter altogether.

Mathis rubbed the icy can across one cheek, along his jawline and halfway down his neck. He felt rather than heard someone come up behind him. He spoke without turning around: “Know anything about women, Beano?”

“They’re more trouble than they’re worth, boss.”

Beano should know. He’d been around the corral a few times in his day. He had married and divorced three women—maybe it was four—and had had a few flings in between that had never made it as far as the altar. He was currently footloose and fancy-free.

William “Beano” Jones had hired on at the old Circle H at the age of nine. He’d spent the next half-dozen years working on a chuck wagon for Mathis’s grandfather before being promoted to bunkhouse cook. Eventually he had been moved into the kitchen at the “big house.” Somewhere along the way he had started to keep an eye out for the “boy.” Now Beano was seventy if he was a day, and he still considered it his personal duty to look after Mathis.

Only the boy, of course, had become a man, a man who had been around the corral a few times himself. He’d never officially been roped, hog-tied and branded, Mathis mused, reflecting on his own marital state ... or the lack thereof.

He had imagined himself in love once, a long time ago. He’d been nineteen. She had been eighteen, pretty, blond, wild like the wind. It had been a typical summer romance—hot and fast and furious. And then it had been over just like that.

Mathis gazed out on what he knew was a sweltering Chicago night. “What about a lady from Boston?”

“Worst kind of all, boss.”

“Why?”

He could sense Beano shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “A woman like that can make a man feel dis-com-bob-u-lat-ed.” The word was broken up into its separate syllables. “A woman like that can make a man feel like he’s meetin’ himself comin’ and goin’. She can make him forget.”

Mathis was curious. He turned his head. “Make him forget what?”

Beano flashed his trademark grin, the one that drew his mouth up into a bow and sent sparks flying in his dark chocolate-brown eyes. “I’ve plumb forgot.”

Mathis laughed out loud, spilling cold beer onto his bare chest. “I walked right into that one, didn’t I?”

“You always were easy pickin’s, boy.” It was a minute or two before Beano added another pearl of masculine wisdom. “Women,” he muttered under his breath, “can’t live with them...”

“Yes...?”

Beano left it at that.

Mathis couldn’t have agreed more. Knowing that the older man wouldn’t ask, he volunteered where he had been that afternoon. “I interviewed a client today.”

“Did you?”

“George Huxley.”

Beano made a sound in the back of his throat. Mathis knew he wasn’t uninformed, just unimpressed that the security agency’s latest client was a well-known American diplomat.

“He wants me to look after his goddaughter.”

“She the lady from Boston?”

“Yes.”

“Smells like trouble to me.”

It smelled like trouble to Mathis, too.

“I have to take the case on behalf of Hazards, Inc.,” he said, reaching up with the T-shirt in his hand and wiping it across his chest. “I don’t have any choice.”

“S’pose not.”

Mathis put the can of beer down and tugged the damp T-shirt on over his head. He stood there staring out at the lake—was that mist or steam rising from its surface?—and blew- out his breath expressively. “She’s a real looker.”

“They always are.” Beano finally spoke up. “If you need any help...”

It was the opening Mathis had been waiting for. “As a matter of fact, I do.”

Apparently his cook-cum-self-appointed guardian angel was in his official mode. “What do want me to do, boss?”

“Tomorrow morning I’d like you to shave extra close and put on your best bib and tucker.”

Beano glanced down at his well-washed shirt and jeans, then lower to his well-worn everyday boots. “S’pose that means my best cowboy boots, too.”

“And your best hat.”

“The white Stetson?”

“Yup.”

“You wearing white, too?”

He nodded.

Beano raised one eyebrow. “Out to impress the lady.”

Mathis watched his own reflection in the wall of glass. There was a flash of white teeth against tanned skin. “We want to make sure she recognizes right off that we’re the good guys.”

Beano grinned from ear to ear. “We could just tell Miss—?”

“Stratford. Desiree Stratford.”

“We could just tell Miss Stratford that we’re the good guys;” he suggested.

Mathis absently rubbed his hand back and forth along his nape. “She might not believe us.”

The longtime cook made a face. “I said it once and I’ll say it again. It smells like trouble.”

He had and it did.

The old man’s weathered brow crinkled into a dozen distinct frown lines. “Where we goin’?”

Where were they going? How could he explain the situation to Beano without saying too much or too little? How could he make the other man understand?

Mathis raised the can to his mouth and finished off his beer. Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood himself.

Then the words of an old and familiar American folk song started running through Mathis Hazard’s head.

Froggy went a-courtin’, he did go.

Froggy went a-courtin’, he did go.

“We’re going a-courtin”’ was his answer.