Night Whispers by Judith McNaught
Either way, Sloan was trapped. She couldn’t say anything that might impede Paul’s investigation, so she resolved to stick as closely to the truth as possible so that Paris would have fewer reasons to feel duped no matter what happened to Carter. “The truth is we’re just friends. I was . . . uneasy . . . about coming here. Paul convinced me I should, and he . . . volunteered . . . to come with me.”
“For moral support,” Paris concluded. “He’s so nice. He’s someone you just know you can trust.”
Sloan made a mental note never to rely on Paris’s judgment of men. “What about Noah and you?” she said, eager to shift the focus away from herself. “Carter told me the two of you are practically engaged.”
“Father is determined to make it happen. I’ve told him I don’t want to marry Noah, but he just can’t understand.”
“Why not?”
Paris flashed her a winsome smile. “Probably because Noah is gorgeous, brilliant, and incredibly rich, and women make fools of themselves over him. However, Noah doesn’t want to marry me either, and so we made a secret deal that solves the whole problem.”
“What sort of deal?”
“Noah isn’t going to propose,” she said with a laugh as she turned into the driveway. The gates opened automatically, without Paris stopping to press the call button or using any kind of electronic opener. Sloan’s attention switched to the house’s security system out of concern for Paris’s safety, and then because she realized the information might also be vital to Paul and her. “Aren’t you ever afraid here?”
“Of what?”
“Thieves. Prowlers at night. This place is the size of a museum. If I were a thief, I’d figure there were lots of things inside it worth stealing.”
“We’re very safe,” Paris assured her. “Besides the fence, we have infrared beams all around the perimeter of the property. They’re turned on automatically with the alarm system at night. Also, there are ten cameras positioned around the property. Are you afraid here?”
“I—I guess I always think about security and safety,” Sloan said, trying to stick as closely to the truth as possible for the sake of her future relationship with Paris.
“That’s why you took a self-defense course,” Paris concluded, and immediately tried to reassure her with more information. “If you get worried, you can turn on any television set in the house and see whatever the cameras are seeing. Tune to channel ninety, then go right on through to channel one hundred. That will show you all the camera views of the property. At least, I think those are the right channels, but Gary will know for sure. I’ll ask him. Father had Gary arrange for the new security system.”
“Thank you—” Sloan said lamely.
“Also, if you hear or see something that really scares you, you can pick up any desk-style phone in the house, press the pound key, and hold it down. But don’t try that unless you really think there’s a problem. I did it accidentally once when the system was first installed. I was trying to open the gates from the house, but I forgot to press the intercom button before I held down the pound key.”
“What happens when you do that?”
“Everything,” Paris said with a giggle. “An alarm goes directly to the police station, the sirens on the house start screaming, and all the lights on the property, inside and outside, turn on and start flashing.”
Sloan thought that sounded rather like the integrated telephone-security setups that had caused Karen Althorp and Dr. Pembroke so much embarrassment in Bell Harbor.
Paris drove around the side of the house to a six-car garage, and one of the garage doors opened automatically. “I haven’t seen you use a gate opener or a garage door opener,” Sloan said.
“There’s an electronic gadget hidden somewhere on our cars. When you drive up to the garage, the gadget on the car talks to the gadget on the correct garage door and opens it. The same gadget opened the gates for us when we turned into the drive just now.”
“It sounds like no one who shouldn’t be here can get in or out,” Sloan observed as Paris parked the car in her garage stall.
“Anyone can get out once Nordstrom has let them in. There are sensors under the pavestones that open the gates when the weight of a car rolls over them. Otherwise, Nordstrom would have to be on hand to open the gates every time a delivery truck or servant needed to leave.”
“You are truly part of the electronic age,” Sloan told her with a smile.
“Father is extremely security conscious.”
Sloan was afraid he probably had more than one reason for that.
21
Gary Dishler materialized in the hallway from a room by the stairs as soon as Paris and Sloan walked past it. “Mrs. Reynolds has been asking for you,” he told Paris. “She’s upstairs in her room.”
“Is she feeling all right?” Paris asked worriedly.
“If she’s suffering from anything, it’s boredom,” he reassured her.
While Paris confirmed that television channels ninety through one hundred showed the images from the security cameras, Sloan studied the butler, who was nearby. Nordstrom was well over six feet tall, with blond hair, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion and a muscular physique. On the way upstairs, she confided her thoughts. “He looks more like a security guard than a butler.”
“I know,” Paris returned with a smile. “He’s really huge.”
They were still smiling as they walked into Edith Reynolds’s bedroom. The old lady was seated on a fringed, maroon velvet sofa at the end of a room that was nearly the size of Sloan’s entire house and filled with so much dark, very ornate furniture that Sloan felt a little claustrophobic.
Mrs. Reynolds scowled as she took off her glasses and laid her book aside. “You’ve been gone all day,” she accused. “Well,” she said to Paris. “How was Sloan’s golf lesson?”
“We didn’t go to the club,” Paris said.
Edith’s white brows snapped together, but before she could say anything Sloan spoke up. Trying to simultaneously shield Paris from the old woman’s displeasure as well as improve her mood, Sloan deliberately made a joke of her refusal to play golf. “Paris tried to make me play golf, but I begged her for mercy; then I refused to get out of the car. She tried to drag me out of it, but I’m stronger than she is. She tried to clobber me with a putter; then I reminded her that you do not approve of public spectacles, and she had to give in.”
“You are being impertinent,” Edith declared, but she was having trouble maintaining her dark scowl.
Sloan let her amusement show. “Yes, ma’am, I know, but I just can’t seem to help it.”
“I told you to address me as Great-grandmother!”
“Yes, Great-grandmother,” Sloan quickly amended, sensing that yielding on that point would accomplish her goal. She was right. Edith Reynolds’s lips were twitching with reluctant laughter.
“You are also outrageously stubborn.”
Sloan nodded meekly. “My own mother has said so.”
On the brink of losing their battle of wits, Edith saved face by dismissing Sloan with a flip of her hand. “Go away. I’ve had enough. I want to talk to Paris privately.”
Satisfied that Paris wouldn’t be reprimanded for the aborted golf lesson, Sloan did as she was told, but not before she noted Paris’s dazed expression.
When Sloan was gone, Edith nodded to the chair in front of her. “Sit down. I want to know what you did and what you talked about.”
“We had lunch at Le Gamin and we talked about everything,” Paris said as she sat down. For over an hour, Paris tried to repeat what Sloan had said, but she was interrupted constantly by her great-grandmother’s probing questions. “It was wonderful,” Paris said when the inquisition was finally over. “I could have stayed there all day and all night. Sloan felt the same way. I know she did.”
“And now,” Edith said coolly, “I suppose you want to go up to Bell Harbor and meet your mother?”
Paris braced for a storm of opposition, but she did not back
“You have known Sloan for less than two days, and you are willing to take her word over theirs, is that it?”
Paris concentrated on her words so she wouldn’t stutter. “I’m not taking anyone’s word. I simply want to make my own decision.”
Instead of verbally flaying her as Paris expected, her great-grandmother leaned back in her chair and stared at her. After a prolonged, tense silence, she said, “It appears that Sloan’s defiance and stubbornness are remarkably contagious.”
“I hope so,” Paris said, lifting her chin.
“If you are still interested in anyone else’s advice on anything, I suggest you refrain from sharing your new opinion of your mother with your father.”
Paris nodded and stood up. “May I go now?”
“By all means,” Edith replied.
Edith Reynolds watched her leave, and for several minutes she was perfectly still, lost in thought; then she reached for the telephone beside her chair and dialed a private unlisted phone number. “I have some work for you to do, Wilson,” she told the man who answered. “It must be done very discreetly and very quickly.” Then she told him what she wanted.
22
“How was your day?” Noah asked as he walked into the family room, where his father was watching an ancient John Wayne movie and Courtney was slouched in a chair, thumbing through a magazine, with headphones over her ears. Courtney tugged off the headphones, and Douglas looked up.
“My day has been boring,” he complained in the aggrieved tone of an invalid who thinks everyone should suffer his confinement with him. “I read and I took a nap. Where were you all afternoon?”
“I took some papers over to Carter’s house this morning; then I ran a few errands and met with Gordon Sanders.”
“I don’t trust Sanders,” Douglas said; then he asked eagerly, “Did you see Sloan when you were at Carter’s?”
“As a matter of fact I did,” Noah replied with amused irony. “I got there just as he was challenging her to a match to prove what she’d learned in some self-defense class she’d supposedly taken.”
“It’s a sorry state of affairs when women have to take self-defense courses before they feel safe on the streets! Poor little Sloan. She’s as sweet and gentle as a dove.”
“Your sweet little dove tossed Carter on his ass. Twice.”
Douglas was momentarily dumbstruck. “Really? Well, I still feel sorry for today’s women. Imagine living in fear of being mugged.”
Noah chuckled. “Save your pity for her mugger. If Sloan doesn’t have a black belt in karate or whatever it was she used on Carter, then she’s damned close to it.” He glanced at his watch. “I have a phone call to make.”
“Are you going out tonight?” Douglas said, belatedly noticing that Noah was wearing a suit and tie.
When Noah said he was, father and daughter both looked at him as if he were abandoning them to an unspeakable fate by leaving them alone with each other. Courtney even sounded bitter. “So, who is the lucky lady tonight?”
“I’m having dinner with Paris and Sloan—”
“The man has no shame!” Courtney announced to the ceiling. “He’s hitting on sisters. It’s incestuous!”
“—and Paul Richardson,” Noah added, ignoring her and speaking to his father.
“Who is he?”
“Sloan’s friend.”
“Poor guy,” Courtney mocked as she pulled her headphones back over her ears. “He’s about to lose his girlfriend to Palm Beach’s most eligible, most devastatingly handsome bachelor.”
• • •
Courtney’s prediction was far from accurate. In fact, as far as Noah could tell, Sloan Reynolds barely knew he was part of the foursome at the Ocean Club, which wouldn’t have bothered him except that she was beginning to intrigue him. For one thing, it was difficult to assimilate that the delicate, golden-haired beauty seated across from him in a sexy black cocktail dress was the same disheveled athlete who’d thrown Carter on his ass that morning.
When he listened to her chatting with Paris or Paul Richardson, Noah couldn’t imagine how he’d mistaken her for being boring or witless last night, but if he asked her a direct question himself, she seemed unable or unwilling to piece together a long sentence. If he didn’t address a comment directly to her, she avoided looking at him altogether.
Richardson was another enigma. Although he’d come with Sloan, he was paying as much attention to Paris, and Sloan didn’t seem to mind. Paris was full of surprises, too. Noah had known her for years, but tonight she was more animated with two strangers than she’d ever been with him or anyone else he’d ever seen her with. Moreover, Noah had the impossible impression that Paris was developing a genuine fondness for her sister’s boyfriend.
If he hadn’t been being made to feel like an outsider, Noah would have found the evening completely fascinating.
The dance floor at the Ocean Club was separated from the dining room by a trellis covered with tropical plants, and while they were waiting for dessert to be served, Noah decided to get Sloan on the dance floor, where she couldn’t ignore him as easily. He actually anticipated that she’d decline if he gave her the opportunity, so he got up and walked around to her chair before he asked her to dance.
Her head jerked up and she stared at him in surprised dismay. “Oh, no. Thank you. I don’t think so.”
Caught somewhere between amusement and annoyance, Noah looked at Richardson. “Do you have trouble getting her on the dance floor, or is it just me?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted with a relaxed grin; then he looked at Sloan and jokingly said, “Noah is going to look like a wallflower if you leave him standing there. Men have feelings, too, you know. Have a heart and dance with him.”
Noah noticed how slowly and reluctantly she stood up, and he noticed that she seemed unaware that every man she passed on the way to the dance floor stared at her. In his experience, beautiful women were always conscious of their appeal, and the fact that she either didn’t care or didn’t know, further added to her allure. When he took her in his arms on the dance floor, she held herself as far from him as possible and focused her gaze on the third button on his shirt.
Sloan was so tense that her body felt like a piece of plywood. Noah Maitland had been watching her like a hawk all evening, and now she was forced to dance with him. He made her so nervous that she couldn’t come up with a coherent sentence when he asked her a direct question. He was so incredibly good-looking that women had given her envious looks on the way to the dance floor, and the men stared at her, too, wondering what possible attraction she could hold for someone like him. He was Sara’s dream, but he was Sloan’s nightmare.
She realized that the more she ignored him, the more interested in her he seemed to become; therefore, she thought it was logical that the best way to turn him off would probably be to act interested in him. Except Sloan couldn’t do that, because that would require flirting with him or at the very least looking straight into those mesmerizing silver eyes of his, and she couldn’t make herself attempt either thing.
Noah moved automatically to the music, trying to remember the last time he’d danced with anyone who acted as distant as Sloan, and he gave up when he got as far back as prep school. He decided to loosen her up with a little flirtatious conversation. “What do the men in Bell Harbor do to impress you?”
Startled by the new, slightly intimate note in his baritone voice, Sloan said the first thing that came to mind. “They don’t.”
“That’s a relief.”
“What is?”
“It’s a relief that they don’t impress you either. That way, I can soothe my wounded pride with the knowledge that I’m not the only one who can’t get anywhere with you.”
For a second, he thought she wasn’t going to bother answering; then she finally focused those rem
Noah abruptly abandoned the rules of sophisticated repartee by which he normally lived and took a direct approach. “Tell me something?”
“I’ll try.”
“Why is it you’re perfectly able and willing to carry on a conversation with everyone but me?”
Sloan felt as stupid as she knew she sounded. “I can’t explain it.”
“But you do notice it?”
She nodded.
Noah looked down into those long-lashed eyes that she finally raised to him, and he forgot how frustrated he’d been a moment before. He smiled. “What can I do to help you relax?”
Sloan heard something distinctly sexual in that, and it completely unnerved her. “Are you flirting with me?” she asked bluntly.
“Not very successfully,” he replied just as bluntly.
“I wish you wouldn’t try,” she said honestly. Softening her tone, Sloan added, “But if you ever come to Bell Harbor, I have a friend I’d like to introduce to you. Sara would be perfect for you.”
She was trying to fix him up with a girlfriend, Noah realized with disbelief, and that was as unprecedented as it was insulting. “Let’s revert to silence. My ego can’t handle any more of this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he said curtly. He took her back to the table the instant the dance was over, and Sloan knew he never intended to bother with her again. She should have felt very relieved. She felt . . . let down. He asked Paris to dance, and the moment they were away from the table, Paul turned on her with a frown. “What is your problem with Maitland?”