Yet even though the conversation bored her to tears, she loved listening to Nat’s voice, and his low chuckle was enough to trip the switch on her libido. She didn’t focus on his words, but absorbed only his tone.
Maybe because she was lying in the dark, she began to think of how it had been lying with Nat in the dark. Gradually her mind replaced his talk about baseball with other words, polished gems from her treasure-house of memories. I could spend forever looking at you, Jess. And kissing you. Your skin tastes like milk and honey. Come here, woman. Come let me make love to you. For the rest of the night. Who cares about sleep when we can do this?
She hadn’t forgotten a minute of the time they’d been together. She wondered if he’d forgotten it all. But if he didn’t want anything more to do with her, why had he traveled to Franklin Hall the minute he set foot on U.S. soil?
Cautiously she wiggled over so she could see out the window. It wasn’t a great view, and the hump on the floor forced her to arch her back to an uncomfortable degree, but she’d be able to tell when they reached the city. She was more than ready to get there. The exhaust fumes were making her woozy.
“There’s the Franklin Tower,” the cabbie said. “They say Franklin’s office takes up the entire top floor. A huge office, they say, with a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of Manhattan.”
She knew that office. Jessica brought her attention back to the conversation in the front seat. Maybe the driver would finally try to get some gossip out of Nat.
“I’ve heard about his office,” Nat said.
He’d heard it from her. Nat had been the only person who knew about her background, and when he’d abandoned her, she’d lost more than a lover. She’d lost the one person she could talk to without constantly guarding her speech.
When she’d left New York, she’d severed all ties with friends because she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t somehow give her away and leave her open to the kidnappers her father spoke about endlessly, the ones waiting to snatch a rich man’s child. She’d heard his warnings for so long that she believed him. She’d just wanted to find a different way to avoid that fate.
She’d made new friends in Aspen, but none of them knew she had a famous father. Only Nat. Keeping the secret had been more of a burden than she’d planned on, and confiding in Nat had been a welcome relief.
“That Franklin, I guess he’s a real wheeler-dealer,” said the cabbie, obviously fishing for information. “I’ve also heard he’s tough to get along with.”
No joke, Jessica thought. Try having a different opinion from his and see what happens to you. The lights of the city were all around her now, with horns blaring and even more fumes coming up through the floor of the cab. Her head started to pound, and she closed her eyes to see if that might help.
“Someone did tell me that Franklin was hard to get along with,” Nat said. “But he seemed like a reasonable guy to me.”
Jessica’s eyes snapped open. Nat thought her father was reasonable? What sort of a turncoat was he, anyway? Her headache grew worse.
“So you two got along pretty well, then?” the driver asked.
“I think so,” Nat replied. “Anybody with that much power is bound to rub people the wrong way once in a while, and he makes for an easy target, but he struck me as a decent man who tries to do the right thing.”
Jessica couldn’t decide which was worse, the fumes or Nat’s praise of her father. Both of them were making her sick.
“And I also think the person who told me he was hard to get along with probably has some authority issues to work out,” Nat added.
Authority issues? What the hell did he know about it? Jessica’s automatic yelp of protest was halfway out before she remembered that nobody was supposed to know she was hiding in the back seat. She clapped her hand to her mouth, but it was too late.
“Jesus!” the driver cried. “Somebody’s in the—”
“You watch the road! I’ll handle it!” Nat climbed into the back seat and grabbed Jessica by the front of her jacket.
She was too stunned to speak.
Gasping for breath, he hauled her up to a sitting position, which knocked her glasses askew. She pushed them back into place and tried to keep from throwing up. The exhaust fumes had really made her nauseated.
“My God, it’s a woman,” Nat said in amazement.
“What’s a woman doing in my cab?” the driver babbled hysterically. “Is she armed?”
“I don’t know,” Nat said, breathing hard. “Are you armed?”
She shook her head, still trying to keep from tossing her cookies.
“She’s not armed,” Nat said to the driver. As his breathing slowed, he peered intently at her. Multicolored lights streamed in through the cab windows and slid across his face, making it difficult to read his expression. But he seemed to be studying her, as if trying to solve a riddle.
“I’m heading for the nearest cop shop,” the cabbie said.
“Don’t do that yet,” Nat told the driver quietly. “Let me see if I can find out what’s going on here.” He looked down at Jessica. “Where did you come from?”
She didn’t trust herself to open her mouth without losing her lunch, so instead she took off her glasses and gazed up at him.
He stared at her, stared at her hard. Then, while he kept his gaze locked on hers, he reached up with his free hand and hit the switch on the dome light.
She blinked in the glare of the overhead, but when she could once again meet his gaze, she saw the dawning recognition there.
“Jess?” he whispered.
She nodded. Then she scrambled for the window, rolled it down and threw up.
ENDLESS HUMILIATING moments later, Jessica was finally ensconced in the bathroom of Nat’s hotel room with the door locked. Swearing under her breath, she stripped down, pulled off her wig and stepped under the shower. In all the scenarios she’d played in her head about this meeting, none of them had included barfing.
Fortunately she’d only baptized the side of the cab and the sleeve of her coat. In the hullabaloo following her hurling incident, she’d been too embarrassed to be able to gauge whether or not Nat was happy to see her. It would have been difficult to factor out the vomit in that calculation, anyway. Not many men would be happy to see a woman whose first move was to spew all over the place.
Once in the shower, she gave in to the urge to wash her hair with the luxurious hotel shampoo. Much as it pained her to admit it, she missed the five-star treatment. In the years since she’d left Franklin Hall, she’d tried not to dip into her trust fund at all, but once she quit her job and went on the lam, so to speak, she’d had to draw some money out. She begrudged every penny she spent, because it was her father’s money.
Consequently, she could hardly describe her accommodations in the past few months as first-class. Maybe fifth-or sixth-class.
Knowing Nat and his lack of pretense, she’d expected him to opt for a low-to-medium-priced hotel while he was in New York, but for reasons she couldn’t fathom, he’d directed the cabdriver to the Waldorf. From the reaction of the clerk at check-in, she’d figured out Nat hadn’t made an advance reservation, so it was a spur-of-the-moment decision.
Maybe he’d done it for her, although she’d died a million deaths standing there in the glittering lobby in her bag-lady clothes decorated with barf. Now, however, as she rinsed her hair under the most