Millionaire M.D.

Four

Justin felt his heart stop, then start galloping at breakneck pace.

Winona wasn’t really asking to marry him. He realized that. Completely. Marriage had become a ritual tease subject between them, because he’d asked her to marry him so many times. She’d always assumed he was joking, so it was perfectly natural that she would joke back with him the same way.

There were just a few tiny differences in these circumstances, though.

He’d always meant those offers.

And the sudden advent of the baby in Winona’s life was obviously deeply affecting her. She’d never admitted that she needed help with anything-and for damn sure, she’d never given him the opportunity to come through for her in any way. Justin didn’t quite comprehend all the emotional ramifications for her with this baby, but he was dead positive of one thing. He’d been waiting for a chance-any chance-with her for years now. And he wasn’t about to let it go.

“Okay, let’s do it,” he said lightly.

For the first time all evening, the haunted tension left her eyes and she laughed. Really laughed. “Sure. Nothing to it, right? Just get a license and hit the Justice of the Peace. Just what you were dying to do this week.”

“Actually, it sounds like a lot of fun to me.” He leaned back, as if he could find nothing more important to do than stretch out his long legs.

She was still laughing. “I can just see the headlines in the social column on Sunday. Royal’s Most Eligible Bachelor Finally Cuffed By A Cop. And I’m sure there’d be some comments about the bride having to give up her six-year-old Jeep and suffer driving your Porsche-not to mention having to face up to all the trials of suddenly being filthy rich-”

“Shut up, Win. I know you were joking, but why don’t you think about it? You sounded really serious to me about wanting to keep this baby.”

“I was. I am…but holy mackerel, Justin, I never meant it about getting married. It was just a joke. It wouldn’t even solve anything, because Angel’s mother could show up at any time. Today, even. Or tomorrow-”

“And maybe she won’t ever show. But even if she knocks on your door in a matter of hours, the courts wouldn’t just let her have the baby back. Isn’t that what you were just explaining? That it’s not automatic that the mother would get Angel back-not after abandoning her the way she did.” It wasn’t hard for Justin to fill in the blanks when Win’s fears were right in her eyes giving him easy clues what to say. “So no matter what, Angel is going to be ‘housed’ somewhere for a while-and that could be a long while. Long enough to make a difference in her life, if she’s in a good situation. Or a bad one.”

“I know, I know. That’s exactly what’s driving me crazy.” She scraped a hand through her hair, making the curls spring up in tufts. She faced him, her eyes so fierce. Soft-fierce. “I can’t stand worrying that she’d be put in a bad place for her. All I really want is to be able to take care of her until we know for sure what’s what in her life. I know that I’ll love her. And that almost anything’s better than being thrown into the limbo of foster care. The overcrowding. The never knowing how long you can stay in one place or another. I can’t stand it. I know that’s irrational and emotional and stupid, but I’ve been there, Justin. And I hate it that that could happen to Angel, to this baby. I know it’s nuts, I-”

“Win, I don’t really give a damn if it’s nuts or not. If I understood what you told me earlier, they’d consider you for temporary guardian, if you were married. Is that true or not true?”

“True. Actually, it’s true that they would consider me anyway-but I’d almost certainly get turned down right now. I don’t know of any circumstances where a single woman’s been allowed to foster. Not here. It’s always a two-parent family-”

“So let’s get married.”

She tried to answer and ended up sputtering on another bubble of laughter. She laughed harder. Then quit. Then hiccuped.

He’d never seen Winona undone before. Had no idea she could be-at least by him.

When he lifted a hand, he knew he intended to kiss her. When his fingers touched her cheek, pushed back, so gently, into her hair, cupping her head toward him…he knew what he was doing then, too. Sort of. He sure as hell knew how to kiss a woman.

But he’d never kissed Winona before. Any kind of kiss. Any way. Possibly because he’d known that even one small kiss was never going to be simple. Not with her. Not for him.

She wasn’t expecting the kiss, because her forehead puckered in a frown and her eyes widened in surprise and confusion when he kept coming closer. But when his fingers laced in her hair, she didn’t move. When his mouth honed in on hers, she didn’t pull away. She went as still as a statue.

But nothing about Win resembled a cold statue. She tasted fragile. Soft. Warm. Alluring.

She made a small sound when his mouth touched hers, tasted, came back for more. Win rarely wore perfumes, yet he suddenly felt surrounded by her scents. Her tongue still carried the echo of the vanilla cappuccino he’d made her. Her hair was a tumble of springy, unruly curls, threaded with that hint of strawberry shampoo she used. And she was always slathering cream on her face and hands because her skin was so dry, and that was the other scent. Almonds. Vanilla. Strawberry. All edible stuff.

Like her.

She made another sound, and her fingers suddenly clutched his arm, as if to push him away. Only she didn’t push him away, and beneath his mouth, her lips were suddenly moving, trembling like a whisper, her eyelashes swooshing down as if the light in the room were suddenly too bright. The TV flashed on a news interruption, which technically they’d both been rabidly interested in earlier. Now, he didn’t look up, and neither did she.

Those first exploring kisses turned deeper, silkier, sexier. The fingers clutching his arm suddenly wound, tight and hard, around his neck. Tongues tangled, tangoed. He kissed and kept on kissing, but now he could feel her skin heating, feel her body yielding, bowing to his on an angry groan of a sigh. He heard the anger in that groan, and a thousand years from now-when he had time-he’d want to smile. Win had had no idea she’d feel desire with him.

Neither had he. He’d been pretty sure, for years now, that his panting after her had all been one-sided. Yeah, there was a kind of love. The way you could love a brother at the same time you smacked him upside the head. The way you loved an old friend who knew your childhood secrets. It was good love. All love was good love. But it wasn’t man-woman love.

It wasn’t heat like a volcano, and a hurricane rush, and wanting that could claw you from the inside out, if you let it.

He wanted to let it. He wanted to peel that big sweatshirt off her and bow her back into the couch cushions, into the shadows, and dunk her in sensuality so deep, so hot, that neither of them could get up until it was over. He wanted to see her naked. To touch her naked. To have her naked.

But there was a sleeping baby only three feet away. And these few potent kisses were suddenly raising questions that Justin never thought he’d get the chance to ask. Fire or no fire, need or no need, he was afraid of losing the answers he wanted if he moved too fast.

So he eased up on that last kiss. Tried to remember how to breathe normally. Smoothed his hand back up above her neck. Pressed his forehead to her forehead, eyes closed, loving how she was huffing like a freight train, too.

And that helped him relax. And smile. “Hey, Win…I’m richer than Croesus. You did know that, didn’t you?”

Her eyes were still more liquid than a lake, but she gave him a short frown, expressing confusion. “Am I supposed to care about that?”

“Yeah. Because it matters. It matters because I can put a marriage together faster than most people. And get those temporary guardian papers going through the legal system. You want this baby? We can make it happen.”

“Justin…” She swallowed, hard, when he lurched to his feet.

He’d already heard the baby stir. He pushed into shoes, glanced around for his jacket, but then he met her eyes again. Those soft, liquid-as-a-lake-blue eyes. Liquid for him. For the first time in all these years, liquid for him. “I don’t know about you and me. But we’ve known each other forever, Winona. And again, I’ve got the money, the resources to put this together fast. The resources to make it easy for both of us-to get in, to get out, to do whatever we both want to do. There’s no woman in my wings. Is there a man in yours?”

She blinked. “No.”

“Come on. I need you to be frank with me. There has to be some guy-”

“No.”

Well, hell. He couldn’t hold back a grin. He ruffled her curls, grabbed his jacket and let himself out. And yeah, he’d left the proposal hanging between them. But there was no way Winona Raye would ever-in this life-give him a yes on the spur of the wild moment like that.

By his leaving right then, he’d given her no chance to say no.

That wasn’t just progress. As far as Justin was concerned, it was damn close to manna from heaven.

Snuggling the baby more securely on her shoulder, Winona paced the house from window to window. Justin’s satin-black Porsche had disappeared from her driveway an hour ago, but she kept looking out anyway. Maybe his visit had been a mirage. Or maybe he’d put a drug in her coffee-because something had dropped her off in Oz for a few hours, for darn sure.

Angel let out a sleepy burp, making Winona smile. Still, she kept on pacing and patting, pacing and patting. Really, her brief sojourn into Oz was downright funny. She’d actually imagined Justin seriously asking her to marry him. Not joking this time. But low-down serious.

Boy, was that funny.

So funny that even after the baby fell asleep big time-for the night, she hoped-Winona still couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep. She was as tired as a worn-out hound, yet still pacing the floors in the dark.

He’d asked if there was a man in her life. And simply couldn’t seem to credit her avowal that there wasn’t.

At midnight, she prowled to the refrigerator for some milk-poured out a half a cup, all she had in the house-and carted it back to her bedroom. She climbed in between the cobalt-blue sheets and mounded the pillows behind her head, sipping, staring out the windows at a lover’s moon and a sky full of stars.

There’d been men. But not in a while. Once she’d realized that she’d been the one screwing up the relationships, she’d backed off from trying. She wasn’t any good at getting close-not in the sack or out of it. Sex wasn’t the only problem, but it was a nuisance of a big one. She had no objections to intimacy, getting naked, big inhibitions, nothing like that.

She’d just figured, a long time back, that her sweat with intimacy was about abandonment. Being abandoned once in a lifetime was enough. If you had your soul ripped out once, most sane people didn’t volunteer for a repeat experience. But when that translated into a relationship…well. She could lie there beneath a guy. Smile. Make the right movements. Make the right groans.

In fact, she had.

Frankly, she thought she was pretty good-if not downright outstanding-at faking it. But there didn’t seem much point. She wasn’t that unhappy alone. She liked her job, her life. She had friends, respect in the community. She liked feeling contained. Safe. So maybe she had a hard time trusting others at a gut level. So what?

But she hadn’t liked that kiss from Justin. Her lips still felt bee-stung, her nerves sharp-stung even more. She didn’t let go like that. Ever. She never went loopy, dizzy, spinning high with any man-and certainly not for a few ridiculous idiot kisses.

What the Sam Hill did Justin think he was doing? Kissing her? Offering to marry her?

Something was wrong with him, she concluded. Bad wrong. Seriously wrong. The idea soothed her. She set down the empty milk cup and curled up under the covers, immediately starting to relax. She simply should have thought this through earlier. If Justin was acting bananas, there had to be a reason for it. Whatever it was, she’d talk to him. Help him. Like the friends they were.

And she’d reassure him, of course, that she realized he’d never meant that offer of marriage.

Two mornings later, as Justin drove to the site of the Asterland plane crash landing, his mind was on Winona, not business. Weddings, not plane crashes. Love, not problems. But the closer he got to the scene of the accident, the faster his mood turned grave.

As of hours after the crash landing, the sheriff had set up a roadblock, both to protect the evidence and to discourage strangers and gawkers. The cop immediately recognized Justin’s black Porsche, though, and waved him on.

The road ran out within yards, and turned into a desertlike hard pan surface. After spring rains, possibly the land was more forgiving, even decent grazing ground, but right now it definitely wasn’t the most hospitable spot in Texas. Most vehicles could undoubtedly traverse the hard surface, but with his baby, Justin had to slow to a crawl. Finally, the plane loomed in sight. And when Justin finally stopped the car and climbed out, a witch-bitter wind bit his cheeks and stung his eyes.

“Justin!”

He’d already recognized the other two members of the Texas Cattleman’s Club-and their practical, sturdier vehicles-but for a second, the look of the private jet had stunned him into staring. At the sound of his name, though, he promptly pivoted and hiked toward his friends. Typically, Dakota Lewis didn’t seem to notice that the January morning was mean-freezing; his jacket was gaping open. At least Matthew Walker had a red nose and cheeks like his own.

“I’m sorry to be late,” he grumped. “I started out early enough, but the Porsche does what the Porsche wants to do. One of these days, I’m going to turn into a grown-up and get a serious car.”

“We’ve only been waiting a few minutes,” Dakota assured him.

Again, Justin looked around. “Hell. If this isn’t enough to put chills up your spine.”

Just like the others, he’d hightailed it to exactly this site when the plane had first gone down, but it wasn’t dark now; there were no flames, no crying passengers…there was no sound at all but the shriek of a winter wind. Acres of Texas flatland stretched in all directions, bleached of all color and life at this time of year, and in the middle of that ice-gray desert was the mirror-silver of the plane, just sitting there. She was listing a bit, but she didn’t look as if she’d crashed or had an emergency landing. She just looked like an alien vehicle in the middle of a Star Trek episode. Big. Silent. A scream of high technology in a land of rattlesnakes and coyotes. And the door to the small jet gaped open like a mouth waiting for a dentist’s probe.

“I’m still surprised that the cops called us.” Matthew brought up the rear as they all strode toward the metal plane stairs.

“I don’t believe it was the cops’ idea that we were called in. I suspect it was Princess Anna’s family. No one in Asterland or Obersbourg has any real contacts in America except for the Texas Cattleman’s Club, so I think it’s pretty natural they’d want us as part of the investigation. They know us. They trust us.” Dakota led the way inside the plane. “It’d be different if some clues had surfaced as to the cause of the emergency landing. Of course, a fire’s the best way in hell to destroy evidence. But right now, I think everyone’s still worried about sabotage. If some answers don’t surface real soon, I’d be surprised if Asterland doesn’t send over its own team of investigators.”

“Well, I hear you, but you’re retired from the Air Force,” Matthew said to Dakota. “If anyone belongs here, you do. God knows, I’m willing to help, but I can’t imagine anything I can really do.”

“Same here,” Justin said. “But I think the point is to get a fresh pair of eyes on the site. Experts have already been over the place with a fine-tooth comb, but we’re the only ones who knew all the people on board. I think they’re hoping we’ll find something that no one else had any reason to notice.” He frowned. “But I thought Aaron and Ben were going to join us?”

Dakota nodded. “Ben is. In fact, he should be here shortly. He cell-phoned a few minutes ago just to let us know he’d been tied up. Not Aaron, though-Aaron took off for Washington a couple days ago and he isn’t back yet.”

“He went to Washington? Related to this problem?” Matthew asked.

Dakota shook his head. “I don’t really know what Aaron’s doing there, but when he was home over the holidays, I knew there was some problem with his job. I understood that he’d taken a leave of absence from his diplomatic work, so I figure he’s at the embassy in Washington-but all I really know was that he was really unhappy and worried about something.”

“I had the same impression,” Justin agreed. “In fact, I tried to talk to him at our Texas Cattleman’s Club shindig.” But then he’d gotten caught up watching Winona dance. Watching Win smile. Watching Win breathe. And that fast, she stole into his mind all over again. Memories snapped into his mind, of her holding the baby, and then of her holding…him. Kissing him. Coming alive in his arms in a way he’d never believed could happen.

The plane-crash scene, though, slapped him back to reality. And Matthew was still talking about Aaron Black.

“I tried to talk to him the night of the party, too, but then he got dancing with that plain-faced teacher with the sweet smile. What’s her name? Pamela?”

“Pamela Miles,” Justin affirmed. He remembered her, not from the night of the party so much, but from treating her the morning after the plane’s emergency landing. “She was on this plane flight, in fact. Headed to be an exchange teacher in Asterland-at least before the crash.”

“Well, she sure didn’t have her mind on teaching that night. I’d never guess that Aaron would go for that kind of gal, but they were sure glued closer than peanut butter and jelly for a while there. Anyway, I never got a chance to ask him anything about his job. He left early the night of the party. And in the meantime…”

In the meantime, all three of them fell abruptly silent as they slowly walked through the plane. Justin glanced at the other two men, but the view seemed to disturb all of them the same way. The whole group had been here the morning of the crash landing. Justin remembered it well. He’d gotten the phone call, driven here like a bat out of hell, saw the smoke billowing out, hurled out of his car and started working. He’d been a doctor that morning. Nothing else. Trauma medicine used to be his adrenaline flow, his heartbeat.

It wasn’t anymore.

He couldn’t let it be.

But the morning of the crash, for damn sure, all he’d seen were the passengers, their injuries, their frightened faces. Now the silence was eerie and the devastation inside the plane as frightening as a bomb site.

“Hell. What a mess,” Matthew muttered.

“It could have been worse.”

“A ton worse.” Dakota’s gaze riveted on the cockpit, with which he was obviously more familiar than either of the others. “You saw more of this than any of us, Justin.”

“Because I was inside right after the crash? Yeah, I suppose. But I only saw people. Patients. It’s all I was looking for or looking at. I never gave a second look to anything about the plane.”

“Well, let me fill you both in on what I know. This is where the fire started…” Dakota motioned, and then motioned again, “Robert Klimt was sitting here. And Lady Helena across the aisle there. Not surprisingly, those two were hurt worse than anyone else on the flight.”

The three of them had a passenger list and a diagram showing where each person had been seated, but Justin couldn’t keep his eyes off the plane’s interior. The overhead compartments were all yawning open, debris spilled all over the aisles and seats. No one had been allowed to recover their personal belongings yet. The fire had left a gaping hole with black char climbing the walls and the carpet still seeping and stinking from the water and extinguisher chemicals.

“As bad as it is, it’s still like looking at a miracle,” Matthew said soberly. “I don’t know how anyone walked away from this. It’s too damn easy to imagine everyone being killed, the whole thing up in flames.”

“Yeah. If this was the act of a terrorist, I hope to hell we get him. And soon.”

For a moment Justin couldn’t speak. His fingertips went ice cold, the way they did when he woke up from nightmares sometimes, memories of Bosnia still moaning through his mind. This kind of crisis was exactly why he’d accepted the Texas Cattleman’s Club’s invitation to join their group. Maybe outsiders thought they were a male bastion social club, but Justin knew how committed the men were to saving innocents. Too damn often, neither the law nor any government could protect innocents. Not in any country.

He sucked in a breath, forcing those old nightmare memories to fade. At least there’d been no small children involved in this plane flight.

His gaze swept and reswept the plane’s interior. He saw an overturned romance paperback on the floor. A woman’s red high-heel shoe lying on its side. A black driving glove. A small carry-on had upended, revealing a spill of lingerie that looked like a bride’s trousseau-Matthew muttered something about Jamie Morris and what he’d heard about her marriage to some higher-up dignitary in Asterland’s government. Down the aisle a little farther was a snakeskin purse, also lying open, with lipsticks and combs and what all strewn down the aisle. There was a sweater here, a coat there. The acrid after-smell of burned plastic and chemicals.

The door to the pilot’s cabin stood ajar, the cold morning sun streaming through the windows. It seemed crazy to notice the dust spinning in the sunlight, as if anything about this scene were remotely normal.

But then a sharp, bright glint caught his attention. On the carpet, near where Lady Helena had been sitting on the flight, Justin hunkered down, frowning.

“Matt. Dakota.”

“What?” Matthew bent down, too, but Justin raised a cautious hand to prevent him from touching anything.

Dakota pushed closer, sensing from the sudden excitement and seriousness of the other two that they’d found something important. He looked over Justin’s shoulders. “That can’t be what I think it is,” he breathed.

The two stones were just lying in the carpet, not noticeably separable from all the other debris. A handkerchief wasn’t far. The black driving glove. Ash and messes from the fire. But the two stones were a startling contrast to everything else.

One was a black harlequin opal.

The other, a three-carat emerald.

Justin exchanged glances with Dakota and Matthew. Matt’s face had bleached white. Probably his own had, too.

None of the men could give a holy hoot about gems-but all of them recognized these two stones. The jewels were too rare and distinctive to be mistaken for anything else, even by lay people such as them.

The whole town knew the legend of the Texas Cattleman’s Club’s three jewels. And Justin distinctly remembered the old story being retold at the last Texas Cattleman’s Club party- Riley Monroe recounting the old yarn to one of the Asterlanders. The townspeople never seemed to get tired of the jewel tale, even if they never believed it was true. It just didn’t matter. It was a great story, and specifically a story with a message about the values of leadership, justice and peace-the Club’s motto.

Two of the stones in the old legend, of course, were a black harlequin opal and a great big green emerald.

Just like these two.

Amazingly like these two.

Exactly like these two.

Matthew wildly shook his head. “I don’t get this. Someone tried to steal our stones? But I didn’t think anyone really believed they existed-much less that anyone had a clue where we had them locked up all these years.”

“Neither did I. In fact, none of this makes any sense. If there’d been a break-in at night, Riley Monroe would have immediately contacted one of us. And obviously nothing happened during the day, when people are around, or we’d have easily known about that, too.” Justin was already lurching to his feet. So was Dakota. “But the frightening thing is…if those two gems were stolen-then where is our red diamond?”

All three men swore at the same time, even as they were pawing and prowling around the plane, searching every nook and cranny and sifting through all the debris. All three stones were priceless, but the red diamond was so rare it was literally beyond price, beyond even a collector’s dreams. “It doesn’t make sense that anyone would have taken the other two stones and left the diamond,” Dakota grumped.

“It doesn’t make sense that any of them could have been stolen to begin with,” Justin shot back, and then sucked in a swear word.

“What?” Dakota demanded. “Did you find it? The red diamond?”

No, he hadn’t found the stone. He’d found a creased sheet of paper that would never have drawn his eye if the word emerald hadn’t been written on it in a big, slashing scrawl. Frowning, he noted the Asterland stationery. “I don’t know what this is,” Justin told the others. “It’s not a letter. It doesn’t seem to be written to anyone specific-at least there’s no name on the stationery. But someone jotted down the town legend about the jewels. The whole history. The Texas soldier who found the stones on a fallen comrade in the War with Mexico, took the stones home to Royal, then made it rich on oil before there was any reason to spend them…”

“What else?” Matthew couldn’t see at the same time as the other two men.

“The whole thing about the jewels. That red diamonds were traditionally called the stone of kings because they stood for leadership. There’s a scrawled history of black opals here, specifically black harlequin opals, and how, symbolically, they were credited as being healing gems as well as allowing their owners to ‘bring justice’ to those around them. And the emerald is described as a symbol of peace and peacemakers.” Justin looked up.

“Leadership, justice, peace,” Dakota echoed. Again, the men exchanged quiet glances. They all knew why those words had been chosen as the Texas Cattleman’s Club motto-and what each man had vowed to protect when he’d been asked to become part of the group.

“I still don’t understand any of this,” Matthew said irritably. “The whole world knows about the legend. But who could possibly have known that the stones were real, much less know where we had the jewels locked up? Where’s the damn red diamond? And…for God’s sake…do you two think the jewel theft had anything to do with the crash landing of this plane?”

Justin lifted a hand helplessly. “I don’t know how it could. But the coincidence is pretty hard to ignore.”

Dakota said swiftly, “We need to get together-as soon as we can get hold of Aaron and Ben. But even sooner than that, at least one of us needs to get to the Club. Find out if the red diamond is still there. Talk to Riley Monroe. And find out what happened to our safe.”

Justin pushed a hand through his hair. “I’ll volunteer to do anything you want…but to be honest, I’ll have a hard time meeting until later tonight-say, eight o’clock, earliest. I have patients back-to-back until then. I realize how critical this is, and I can cancel patients if I have to, but-”

“No, it’s all right, Justin. I’d rather wait until after dinner tonight, too,” Matt concurred. “We’ve got a better chance of Ben joining us. And if Aaron isn’t back, we could at least have consulted with him by phone before then. Because of his diplomatic connections and knowledge, I really think Aaron should be brought into this before we make any decisions.”

“Yeah. Agree.” Dakota nodded. “But I’ll hit the Club this afternoon-or as fast as I can. I have to cancel a meeting to get freed up-but I’ll try, because I think we’ll all go nuts worrying whether the red diamond’s been stolen until we know for sure. But as far as a meeting time for all of us to get together, I agree with you, too. Let’s aim for tonight. Justin?”

He’d already turned toward the plane door, as the other two had. “You want to take the emerald and the opal back with you?” Justin asked, assuming that was why Dakota had signaled him out.

“No. Hell. If the safe’s been broken into, we all need to decide together what to do with these two stones for security in the meantime. But you hold them until then. No, that wasn’t the issue. I was going to suggest that you be careful what you say to Winona Raye.”

Justin’s expression had to reveal his astonishment. “Why on earth would you think I’d be seeing Winona?”

“Because we all saw the way you were looking at her at the party.” Dakota slapped him on the back, then hiked past him. So did Matt. “Far as I’m concerned, you couldn’t get involved with a better lady. I think the world of her. Far as I know, so does this whole town. So mostly I was just trying to get a rise out of you-but it does keep occurring to me that this situation is getting seriously complicated. Right now, the police don’t know about the jewels or the theft-much less that there could be any connection to the problem with the Asterland plane. Maybe that information has to come out? There may be no choice.”

Justin nodded. “But we all know what’s at stake-the reason we’ve guarded our privacy all these years.” The Club members could hardly have taken off on their private causes across the world if their comings and goings were regular headline news.

“Hell, doc, I’d trust you with my life. You already know that. For that matter, I couldn’t think more of Winona. It just crossed my mind that we could be putting her on the spot if she knew something that was being kept from the local cops. At least until we know more facts about the jewel theft and decided what we need to do.”

Justin had no trouble agreeing. The three split up swiftly. Everyone had their own lives and work to attend to. But as Justin headed for his car, the wind whipping a burn on his cheeks, his plan to see Winona for an early dinner went on a front burner.

He’d left her alone for two days now-except for phone calls-to consider marrying him. He’d known she needed time to think. More than likely, she’d had enough time to have a cow and a half over his proposal.

He never intended to put her on the spot about the jewels. He only wanted to put her on the spot about a relationship between them. And nothing as annoying as some priceless stolen jewels was going to keep him from her. Not today. He’d waited as long as he could stand.