Looking at him now, she rapidly revised that innocuous mental image. Something in his expression made her pulse race a bit faster. She told herself it was only nerves.
He glanced her way, and she watched him make a deliberate effort to summon one of his easy smiles. But it was too late—she would never view him in quite the same way as she had before. She’d seen the menace in him when he’d taken out the big man who’d grabbed her, and the determination in him when he’d all but dragged her to his car and then efficiently evaded the men who’d pursued them from the gallery.
She knew now that there was much more to Blake than the smiling charmer she’d known on and off for the past couple of years.
“You—er—can’t reach your client?” she asked.
“No. The number he gave me has been disconnected.”
“What’s going on, Blake?”
He sighed. “I don’t know.”
That wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear.
He picked up the phone again.
“Who are you calling now? The police?” she asked hopefully.
“No. Not yet. What’s your phone number, Tara?”
“My number?”
He nodded patiently, his finger hovering above the number pad.
Though she couldn’t imagine why he wanted to hear her answering machine, she recited the number for him.
He dialed it, waited a moment, then scowled and slammed the receiver into the cradle. “Damn.”
“What?” she asked warily.
His eyes held an apology when he answered. “A man answered.”
She went cold. A strange man was in her apartment, going through her things, rummaging through her life, monitoring her calls. The feeling of invasion was sickening.
“Call the police,” she insisted. “Tell them there’s someone in my apartment who has no right to be there. Damn it, Blake, do something!”
He stood and caught her forearms in his hands, looking steadily into her eyes. “Calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down?” She gaped at him in disbelief. “We were supposed to be going out for dinner. That’s all, dinner. And now a man has been shot, someone grabbed me and tried to smother me, someone else tried to shoot us, and we’re stuck hiding out in this dingy motel in Marietta while some strange guy helps himself to whatever he wants in my apartment. You tell me that you don’t know what’s going on, but you won’t call the police. And you want me to calm down?”
“It was only a suggestion,” he answered mildly. “Feel free to get hysterical if it will make you feel better.”
That brought her chin up. “I’m not going to get hysterical.”
“Good choice.”
“Don’t start patronizing me, Blake,” she warned him quietly. “Considering everything, I think I’ve handled this evening very well.”
“Tara, you’ve handled this evening beautifully, considering everything. And I’m not patronizing you. I’m trying to apologize for getting you into this mess in the first place.”
His blue eyes turned dark with self-recrimination. “If I’d had any suspicion that things would go this badly, I’d never have taken you with me to the art gallery. All I was supposed to do was to meet someone in the men’s room, accept an envelope from him, and then leave. I thought you could provide me with a good cover during the evening, make me look less suspicious for being there, and then we could have a nice dinner afterward. I never anticipated the rest of this.”
For some reason, she believed him.
“Was the man with the toupee the one you were supposed to meet?” she asked. “The one named Botkin?”
Blake grimaced. “I really hate to keep saying this, but...I don’t know. My guess would be that he was.”