He nearly snorted. God help him if he ever got that look on his face in the presence of a woman.
“Yes. Please, if that’s all right with you, Mr. van der Bloest?”
“What? Oh, yes, of course,” he stammered.
Claire disappeared out the door, and moments later returned with Fiona. Both men rose from their seats—van der Bloest, whose jaw nearly dropped to the floor at the sight of both women in close proximity, and Gideon, who felt his whole body tighten when he saw how damn good she looked in jeans and a vintage Nirvana t-shirt.
It was skin-tight.
Then he saw her face and knew something was terribly wrong. When he turned to release his client from their meeting, and saw the man’s eyes fastened on the very well-defined breasts under the blue-gray shirt, Gideon could do nothing but pity the man.
“Thank you, Claire,” he said to his assistant, and reminded himself to give her another raise.
As soon as he shut the door behind them, he crossed over to Fiona, who’d begun to pace around the room. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Her face was white, and lines of worry etched around eyes that seemed dazed and lost.
“There’s a body in the shop.” Her voice came out rough and uneven, and her hand shook as she pushed a thick curl out of her face.
“What?” He caught her on one of her paces, taking her gently by the arms. “A body? Someone is dead? Someone broke in—”
“She’s definitely dead,” she said, shuddering. “All that’s left of her is a skeleton.” She took a deep breath and pressed her hand over her mouth.
“Why don’t you sit down.” He propelled her into a chair, then turned to his desk and jammed a finger into the intercom. “Helene, please, I need some—uh—sparkling water?” he glanced at Fiona to be sure, and she nodded absently. “Sparkling water, and…why don’t you bring a small brandy too.”
“I found a skeleton under the stairs—where that big desk used to sit,” she explained rapidly, as though it was a relief to get the words out. “It was boarded up under there—and when I pulled the wood away and looked in there, I saw a skeleton on the floor.”
“How—this is stupid that I’m asking this, but how do you know it’s a woman?”
“Her clothes are still on her.” Fiona shuddered once, hard. Then she seemed to lose the rest of her control and suddenly she was out of the chair and into his arms all at once. “I didn’t know what to do or who to call…so I came here.”
“You…drove all the way here from Wicks Hollow?” he said. Something inside him gave a little pittypat.
She came tome.
He smelled her hair and held her close, his mind working rapidly even as his body leapt and sizzled at the feeling of her against him.Feels so right.“Did you call Captain Longbow? What about Carl? Does he know?”
She shook her head against his shoulder, her curls tickling his chin. “No,” her voice was muffled. “I—I just got in the car and drove here.”
“All right, then. Let me wrap up a few things here and I’ll drive you back down. Then I can be there when you call the police.”
* * *
White bones glowed in the dim light, easily visible in the small closetlike room.
Gideon didn’t consider himself a squeamish person, but the sight of the skeleton, still clothed, collapsed against the wall, sent an uncomfortable ripple through his middle.
Her skull tilted back, empty sockets and gapping mouth yawning at the ceiling. One of her knees was somehow still propped upright and the other had fallen to the side, stretching her skirt like a canopy between them. Judging from the style of her dress, she appeared to have been there since the mid-fifties. A hat lay fallen to one side and its decoration of pale yellow feathers matched the trim on some other type of garment sitting in a crumpled heap next to it.
Gideon jumped slightly when something touched him from behind, but it was Fiona, coming to stand next to him at the gaping hole in the wall.
“Did you talk to the police?”
“Yes. Captain Longbow is on his way. I asked them not to use their sirens—it’s going to be bad enough having a cop parked in front of my shop so soon after my reopening.”
Fiona was calmer than she’d been when she first came to his office. Still, there was grief and shock in her eyes.
He started to reach for her, but she stepped away, putting distance between them. “Gideon.” Her voice was a soft warning, and she shook her head slightly.
