Page 2 of Two Hearts

Shaking his head slowly, Jack got the room number and went to the elevator.

At the sixth floor, he got off again. Jack was not usually the kind of man who worried too much about his appearance, and even less about what other people thought of him.

Yeah, he had cleaned up for the old guy some, but he would have done the same for anybody.

Now, though, that he knew who the guy was, he also knew he wasn’t up to snuff.

The suit was clean, in good shape, but even brand-new it wouldn’t have fooled anyone into thinking it had any designer’s name on the label—unless the designer was named JCPenney.

Jack decided he’d keep his coat on. It was slightly more impressive looking.

Nowhere near up to Phelps-style snuff, but it had cost a few bucks.

It was a black trench coat, long enough to cover up most of the cheap suit.

Glancing at the numbers on the doors, Jack spotted the one marked 621, and tapped on it. The old man’s voice called, “Come in,” so he opened the door, stepped through, and got hit right between the eyes with the blinding light of an angel.

She was sitting in a chair beside Harry’s bed, holding his hand in both of hers.

And hers were long and strong and elegant, her nails short and neat.

Jack’s gaze slid up her arm to her shoulder, which was bared by the sleeveless dress she was wearing.

It was pale blue, that dress, simply cut but elegant somehow.

It came down to the middle of her thighs and from there on there was nothing but leg.

She had long, long legs, and they ended in shoes that had pointy little toes and dainty little heels.

Jack swallowed hard, sliding his focus up her body again, knowing better, but somehow unable to do anything different.

Her waist was small and her chest was small, too.

Jack usually went for buxom babes with cleavage to spare—most of whom would come only up to this woman’s shoulders—but there was something about her… .

She wore pearls…tiny, perfects pearls around her long, slender neck.

Her auburn hair was tugged back into a smooth knot.

Her skin…it was like cream. Her cheekbones made her seem born of royalty.

And finally Jack looked at her eyes, and thought a goddess must have given birth to her.

Big, almond-shaped eyes, sizzling electric-blue, gazed back at him, and they were damn near as busy as his own, looking him over.

“About time you got here,” Harry was saying. “This is him, Gracie. This is Jack McCain.”

The girl blinked, and the next thing Jack knew she was out of her chair and in his arms. Tall, long and lean, she wrapped her arms around Jack’s neck and hugged him close to her. “Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you for saving my father’s life.”

Jack blinked, pretty much bowled over at this point and trying real hard to keep in mind that this was a lady, a real lady, and not the type of girl he usually warmed his nights with.

She was class personified. She was grace…

they had certainly named her right. His hands were on her back, but not too hard, and he didn’t dare move them.

He felt as if he were holding something too clean to touch.

She smelled good. Like sunshine and wildflowers.

A throat cleared very slightly. Grace gently backed away, her blue eyes wet as she smiled up at him.

Jack got the sense of other people in the room.

It hadn’t been Harry’s throat-clearing just then.

But for the life of him, he couldn’t look away from the woman whose hands still rested slightly on his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But when I think how close we came to losing him…”

“It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“Nonsense!” Harry boomed. “This young man saved my life. The killers had weapons!”

“They were muggers, Harry, and all they had was a pocketknife—”

“You should have seen him, Mitsy,” Harry went on. “On-lookers actually applauded!”

Jack felt his brows pull together and for the first time he got that little niggling feeling at the back of his neck that told him something wasn’t quite right. Gently, his hands resting at Grace’s waist, he moved her to one side. “Harry, what are you—”

“I can’t tell you how grateful we are, young man,” a woman said. Jack looked her way, met her eyes and saw an older, shorter version of Grace. She had to be the girl’s mother.

“I was only doing my job, ma’am,” he said.

The woman moved toward him, thrust out her hand. Jack took it. “Mitsy Phelps, darling,” she said. “And exactly what do you mean, you were doing your job?”

“Ah, that’s the same line he fed me, Mitsy!” Harry gushed from the bed. “His duty as a citizen, and all that!”

Again, Jack felt his brows pull together and his warning bells go off. He was not liking this.

“What line of work are you in?” Mrs. Phelps asked.

“I’m a—”

“Jack’s in law,” Harry said.

“Oh? A lawyer?”

“Not exactly,” he told her.

“Jack’s a…uh, security expert. I’ve been trying to lure him away from his current employer. I’d like him working for me.”

“And who is your current employer, Mr. McCain?” Mitsy asked.

“Mother, really,” Grace cut in, and Jack thought her voice sounded a lot like the bell ringing just before the champ went down in the tenth round. “Mr. McCain didn’t come here to be given the third degree.”

“It’s all right,” Jack said, amazed that he actually managed to get a word in.

But when he said it, he looked at Grace again, and his vocal cords seemed to stop working.

Her sparkling blue eyes had some kind of laser-beam force, or electromagnetic grip that just wouldn’t let his go.

And they made him shiver with…something that was both terrifying and delicious.

“Jack works for the government, Mitsy. And, uh, I’m afraid that’s all I can say on the subject, if you get my meaning.”

Jack heard the man, but vaguely. Then he heard his wife’s swift intake of breath, followed by her slow and awestruck, “Ooooh.”

Blinking, Jack realized that Harry was making him sound like some kind of government intelligence expert instead of a plain ordinary cop, and he wanted to know why. But he decided to give him a minute on that. It was obvious he was making a huge effort here, and he may very well have his reasons.

“Jack…you don’t mind if I call you Jack, do you?” Mitsy Phelps said, reaching out to give Jack’s hand a friendly squeeze. “You simply must come by the house, and let us thank you properly.”

Yeah, right. And you might as well invite a jackass to the Belmont, Jack thought. Out loud, he said, “Well, I don’t, uh, know if that would be—”

“Please say you will,” Grace said.

Jack looked into those eyes. Laser beams. “Okay.”

“You can come tomorrow night, for the party! I told you about the party, didn’t I, Jack? For Gracie’s graduation from college?”

Jack looked at her. God, she was gorgeous. “Ph.D.?” he asked her, hoping like hell for a brief insane moment. Then realizing it didn’t make a damn bit of difference how old she was.

Her smile was bright and dazzling. “Just a B.A.”

Jack swallowed hard. That would make her…twenty-two or so. He was thirty-five. Not that it mattered, because she was so far out of his league it wasn’t even funny.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Will you come to my party?”

“I…thought it was tonight.”

“It was…but that phone call of Daddy’s kind of broke it up. Everyone will be back tomorrow night to pick up where we left off.”

Jack looked at Harry again. “You think you’re going to be ready for a party so soon?”

“I’m going home, son! Just as soon as my doc gets back in here with the paperwork. It wasn’t a heart attack.”

“But it soon will be if you don’t start taking care of yourself,” his wife said.

The older man shook his head. “Why don’t you two beauties go and see what’s taking Doc Emerson so long? Jack and I need to discuss a few things, anyway.”

“Of course, dear.” Mitsy went to the bed, leaned close and kissed her husband’s cheek. “Fifteen minutes?”

“I couldn’t stand a second longer,” he told her.

Grace went and kissed his other cheek. “We’ll be right outside if you need us, Daddy,” she told him. Then she went to Jack. She paused, staring at him, and then she kissed his cheek as well.

Jack tingled all over, from his cheek to his toes, and he figured there ought to be a law against the feeling, and he ought to be doing time for feeling it.

She left. Jack watched her go, turning around fully, unable to stop himself. The door swung closed behind her, and the deep laughter from the bed made the blood rush into Jack’s face.

He turned slowly, eyed the man. “Just what do you think you’re doing, telling them all that bull?”

Harry stopped laughing, dabbed at his eyes with the corner of the sheet. “Come here and sit down, son. I have a little proposition for you.”

And every warning bell Jack’s hard-knock life had built into him started ringing like crazy. But for some reason, he went, and he sat, and he listened.