The Willful Wife

“You’re still alive.”

“I’m still alive.”

“Unscathed?”

There was a moment of hesitation. That was inevitably the question. Had he come out of it unscathed?

Mathis decided to give the socially acceptable answer. It was the only thing he could do. “Unscathed.”

Shrewd gunmetal gray eyes assessed him from beneath snowy-white eyebrows. “Good.”

It was time to get down to business. “What do you want me to do, Ambassador?” he inquired.

“I want you to check it out,” he replied.

“The hotel or your goddaughter?”

George Huxley was blunt. “Both. I hear you’re a pretty good businessman as well as an ex—” one hand drew random circles in the air “—whatever-you-are. I want you to find out if Desiree is getting in over her head, if she knows what she’s doing.”

There was more. Mathis could hear it in the cultured voice. “And...?”

The retired diplomat took in a deep breath and then slowly released it. “And...”

The infinitesimal hairs on the back of Mathis Hazard’s neck stood straight up on end. “And what?” he inquired, almost certain he didn’t really want to hear the answer.

There was another moment of hesitation, this time on the part of George Huxley. “There have been several incidents.”

“Incidents?”

“Unexplained occurrences.”

“Such as?” Mathis prodded.

The distinguished-looking man appeared almost embarrassed to say. “Furniture moving.”

“Furniture moving?”

“By itself.” He continued, albeit reluctantly. “Strange noises in the night. Glimpses of someone—something—but nothing is ever there.”

Mathis was amused. “Are you trying to tell me that the Hotel Stratford is haunted?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe in ghosts.”

“That makes two of us, because neither do I.”

“Then you’re just the man for the job. You’ll be a sane voice in an otherwise insane world.”

“Is there anything else?”

Huxley squirmed in his seat. “Well, now that you mention it, there is one more thing.”

Somehow Mathis had known there would be.

“My gut instincts tell me that this is an inside job,” the older man confided to him. “No one other than my goddaughter must know who and what you actually are. Otherwise, I’m afraid that we’ll never get to the bottom of it.”

He waited for George Huxley to get to the point.

“You’ll have to go undercover.”

Mathis made certain his voice was devoid of any inflection. “You want me to go in disguise.”

“Something like that.”

He arched a quizzical brow. “Any suggestions?”

Observant eyes glanced from the expensive black Stetson, with its hammered-silver hatband, resting on Mathis’s right knee down to his highly polished, hand-tooled black leather boots. “You could always go as a cowboy.”

Mathis didn’t crack a smile. “What would a cowboy be doing at the Stratford?”

“We’ll think of something.”

“We?”

“I’m certain that between the two of us we can come up with a suitable cover story.”

Mathis was certain they could, too. “When would you like me to start?”

“Today.”

Mathis gazed out the expanse of office windows toward downtown Chicago. He wanted—no, he needed—some information on the Hotel Stratford and its former and current owners before he presented himself to the lady from Boston.

“Tomorrow,” he finally proposed to his distinguished client. “There are a few details I want to check out before I drop in on Ms. Desiree Stratford.”

“Tomorrow, then,” the other man agreed.

Some fifteen minutes later they concluded their conversation and Mathis was personally escorted to the door of the elegant office.

George Huxley shook his hand in parting. “Good luck, Hazard,” the ambassador said to him.

The unspoken words hung in the air between the two men. You’ll need it.

The penthouse he was living in for the summer, courtesy of Hazards, Inc., was on the forty-second floor of a Chicago high-rise. It was glass on three sides and had a panoramic view of Lake Michigan.

The evening light was stealing across the unusually placid surface of the great lake. As far as the eye could see it was dark blue water dotted with white sailboats.