The Willful Wife

Ninety-nine-point-nine percent certain that the culprit didn’t have any intentions of returning to the scene of the crime for a second time that night, Desiree had gone back to bed. First, however, she had securely wedged a sturdy chair under the brass doorknob, since there were no locks on the doors in the family wing. Despite this precaution, it had been nearly dawn before she had managed to fall asleep again.

Rashid Modi repeated his initial offer. “I can send the cowboys away, Ms. Stratford, if you don’t have time to see them.”

“I can spare a minute or two,” she said.

“Shall I show them in?” The manager indicated the confines of the small, once elegant and now somewhat threadbare, office.

Desiree politely shook her head and inquired, “Where are the two men?”

Another concise reply was supplied by Mr. Modi. “The lobby.”

Desiree pushed her chair back, reached for the tailored jacket to her suit and rose to her feet. “I’ll see them in the lobby, then.”

The heels of her pumps clicked on the marble floor as Desiree pulled on her jacket and started down the hallway. Once she reached the lobby she paused for a moment, put her head back and gazed up at the ornate ceiling high above her.

The lobby ceiling was done in the grand Victorian style, with intricately carved cornices and molding, and with a second mural by the same artist who had painted the guest room. This time he had chosen to depict mythical creatures of flight from the six-winged angels of the seraphim to round-cheeked cherubs, from exotic birdmen to a snow-white Pegasus.

The piece de resistance of the front lobby, however, was the chandelier. It was Austrian crystal, weighed more than a ton, dated from the turn of the century when it was originally a gaslight and, since its conversion to electricity, was said to be comprised of more than two thousand individual lightbulbs.

In the hotel’s heyday there had been a full-time employee whose job had been to clean and change the bulbs in the lighting fixtures, including the Stratford’s prized chandelier. There had also been an attendant who polished, on a daily basis, the brass balustrades on the staircase. And another whose sole duty was to set and wind the clocks, all ninety-seven of them.

That was no longer the case. The ninety-seven clocks were long gone, and the cleaning and polishing were done by a small, independent business firm that had won the job by quoting Charlotte Stratford the lowest bid.

Nevertheless, the myriad stories about the Stratford, its architectural and social history, its famous guests and its somewhat more humble yet interesting employees, had fascinated Desiree when she was a girl. They still did.

Her gaze returned to ground level. There were her early-morning visitors standing in the middle of the lobby. Mr. Rashid was correct, as he usually was. They were cowboys. Both of them.

The next thing Desiree noticed were the white hats. Not on their heads, thankfully, but held at their sides. At least they were gentlemen enough to remove them indoors.

The disparity between the two men was immediately apparent. One was quite short. The other was very tall. The smaller, slightly rotund cowboy was facing her. His features were craggy. His skin was wrinkled and leathery and tanned to the color of toast. Obviously he had spent a lifetime outdoors in the elements. In Desiree’s estimation he was the older by a good thirty or forty years, and he was also the more animated of the pair.

The second man was in profile. From this angle Desiree put his age as mid-thirties. He could have been younger or older. She decided he was probably older.

Her eyes swept his appearance from the ground up. He was dressed in cowboy boots, faded blue jeans, a Western-style leather coat and a white dress shirt. He had shunned a traditional tie, as had his sidekick, in favor of a bolo, complete with obligatory gold nugget.

Still, it wasn’t the man’s conspicuous bolo or his spit-polished cowboy boots or his pristine white cowboy hat that caught and held Desiree’s attention. It was something far less tangible. It was something in the way he stood there, motionless, quietly assessing the front entrance, the registration desk, the sweeping staircase, in fact, the entire lobby. It was almost as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

That’s when Desiree suddenly realized that he knew she was watching him.

A tingle of awareness tiptoed along her spine. She took in a sustaining breath and discreetly blew it out again. Now she understood why the hotel manager had referred to her visitor as intimidating. The man was more than intimidating. He was dangerous. In fact, he positively reeked of danger. It was tightly held-in-check, controlled danger, but it was danger, nevertheless.

Desiree didn’t doubt for a moment that this was a man who could take care of himself wherever he was, that this was a man who knew who his enemies were and who his friends were, and regarded both with equal suspicion. She found herself wondering where in the world Mathis Hazard had been and what he had been called upon to do.

Mr. Hazard was dangerous for another reason, as well, Desiree acknowledged to herself. With those broad shoulders, muscular arms and that chest, with that lean waistline and long legs, he was dangerous to women.

Even she wasn’t immune, Desiree recognized, although she had never been interested in the “man’s man” type before. Her personal preference in the opposite sex was a well-educated, erudite, witty and socially accomplished escort who would accompany her to concerts and plays, gallery showings and charity events.

Yet she couldn’t help but notice that Mathis Hazard’s hair was luxuriously thick and a rich dark brown in color, that it was a little too long in the back and around his ears, and that it bad a tendency to curl at his nape.

Even in profile she could see that his forehead was high and his dark eyebrows were arched. His nose bordered on the patrician, but a telltale bump on the bridge meant it had been broken at some point in his life. His mouth was taut, the lower lip was fuller than the upper. His chin was square and jutted with determination. His ears were slightly small, nicely shaped and tucked close to his head. His hands were large and masculine, yet graceful.

Then he turned his head—just his head, nothing more, nothing less—and she saw his eyes, dark, intelligent, somewhat mysterious, piercing and definitely predatory.

Desiree Stratford had met many men in her life, from temperamental artists to affluent collectors, from the homeless on the streets of Boston to wealthy philanthropists, from heads of state to leaders of industry, even those who claimed royal blood or who were, indeed, royalty. She had known men with that implacable air of self-confidence, men who wore the mantle of power as though they were born with it, men with a core of inner strength that seemed to defy logic.

This was one of those men.

She was suddenly tempted to turn tail and run just as fast and just as far as she could.

“Don’t let your imagination run away with itself, Desiree Marie Stratford,” she chided herself under her breath.

She was no lily-livered female, no fainthearted damsel in distress. She was a modern woman with her own career, her own money, her own apartment and her own life.