Hidden Riches

always made him sweat profusely. He unfolded a handkerchief and mopped his dripping face and neck. Wrinkling his nose, he tossed the handkerchief down and rolled it under the body.
    He sat again, careful to avoid bloodstains, and carefully removed DiCarlo’s wallet. He held it gingerly between his thumb and forefinger and decided to burn it, money and all, at the first opportunity.
    With the resignation of the overburdened, he meticulously checked the rest of DiCarlo’s pockets to be certain he’d removed any and all forms of identification.
    Faintly, from a second-floor window, he heard the strains of some Italian opera. Finley was preparing for his evening out, Winesap mused.
    After all, tomorrow was a holiday.

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
    T he night was clear as glass, the air brittle. A thin layer of frost on the T-Bird’s side window sparkled like an icy spiderweb in the beam of streetlamps. Inside, the heater hummed efficiently, adding another bass note to B. B. King’s “Blue Monday” from the radio.
    The warmth, the blues and the slow smooth ride might have lulled Dora to sleep. If her nerves hadn’t been snapping. To combat the tension, she kept up a nonstop commentary on the party, the people and the music that required little or no response from Jed.
    When they pulled up behind her building, she’d nearly run dry.
    “It’s all right, isn’t it?” she asked.
    “Is what all right?”
    Her fingers vised over her evening bag. “The guards Brent put on.”
    “Is that what’s got you so wound up?”
    She studied the building, the stream from the back-door light, the glow in the window from the lamp she’d left burning. “I did a pretty good job of blocking it out for most of the night.”
    “It’s all right.” Leaning over, he unsnapped her seat belt himself. “They were both there.”
    “Good. That’s good.” But her nerves didn’t settle. In silence they climbed out of opposite sides of the car, started to the stairs, up.
    She didn’t like being jumpy, she thought as Jed unlocked the outside door. At the moment it had nothing to do with intruders and guards. It had everything to do with what was going to happen once they were inside, and alone.
    Which made absolutely no sense at all, she decided. She stepped into the hallway and dug out her keys on the way to her door. She wanted him, wanted very much to finish what had started between them.
    And yet . . .
    Jed took the keys from her rigid fingers and unlocked the door himself.
    It was a matter of control, she realized as she slipped out of her coat, laid it over a chair. Always before she’d made certain that she held the wheel in a relationship, that she steered it in the direction of her choice.
    But she wasn’t in the driver’s seat with Jed, and they both knew it.
    She heard the door close at her back, lock. Fresh nerves scrambled into her throat.
    “Do you want a drink?” She didn’t turn, but headed straight for the brandy.
    “No.”
    “No?” Her fingers hovered over the decanter, fell away. “I don’t either.” She crossed to the stereo, switched on the CD changer without any idea what music she’d left inside. Bessie Smith picked up where B. B. had left off.
    “I’ll have to take the tree down in a few days.” Shereached out and touched a bough. “On Twelfth Night. Pack everything away, burn a few sprigs of pine in the fire. It always makes me a little sad.” She jolted when Jed’s hands cupped her shoulders.
    “You’re nervous.”
    “Me?” She laughed and wished she’d poured something, anything that would wash away the dry heat in her throat.
    “I like it.”
    Feeling foolish, she turned and managed a small smile. “You would. It makes you feel superior.”
    “There is that.” He lowered his head and kissed the corner of her mouth. “It also lets me know you’ll remember this, for a long time. Come with me.”
    He kept her hand in his on the short walk to the bedroom.
    He wanted to move slowly, discovering her inch by fascinating inch, savoring those nerves even as he was exploiting them. Until she was helpless, and his.
    He switched on the bedside lamp, and looked at her.
    Her breath shuddered out when he touched his lips to hers. Tenderness was the last thing she’d expected from him, and the most devastating gift he could give. Her lips parted beneath his, accepting, even as her heart jammed like a fist in her throat.
    Her head fell back, a gesture of surrender that had need twisting sharp in