Free Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You (v1.2) by Kasey Michaels Page B

although his meandering steps did eventually lead him to the small table in the corner—the one with the cut-crystal whiskey decanters on it. He immediately lifted the lid of the ice bucket, smiling when he discovered that it was full.
    And then there was Parker J. Westbrook III. He arrived last, still stuffing papers into a briefcase, and barking out orders to Ruth that had a lot to do with getting him some coffee—black, two sugars—and perhaps a stenographer.
    Just as Quinn thought the gang was all there, another man slipped into the room, staying very close to the open door and looking as if he’d really rather be somewhere else. Anywhere else.
    “Hello, Jim,” Quinn said, bypassing the Taites and the “Third” to shake hands with the nervous chauffeur. “Why are you here? No, let me guess and see if I’m right. You drove the getaway car, didn’t you?”
    Jim Helfrich nodded miserably and wiped at his perspiration-dotted forehead with a big red and white handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “I didn’t know,” he said plaintively. “I honest to God didn’t know.”
    “Wrong. You didn’t think,” Parker bit out peevishly, setding himself on the couch and opening his briefcase once more, pulling out papers and photographs and carefully arranging them on the coffee table. “A bus station. Christ! If you were mine you’d be history.”
    “Yours, Westbrook?” Quinn asked, stepping in front of Jim. “Into owning people, are you?”
    Parker’s handsome face darkened. “You know what I mean, Delaney. The man’s incompetent, and we’ve already wasted enough time,” he said, slapping down a last pile of typewritten pages. “Now shall we get on with it? I have a meeting down the street in twenty minutes.”
    Quinn took another step in the man’s direction. “Real worried about your fiance, aren’tyou? Tell me, which chart is she in? Have you run a cost analysis as to how much time you’re willing to expend finding her, compared it to how much money you’ll lose every minute you aren’t out wheeling and dealing? You have, haven’t you? God, you really are a pr—”
    “Quinn!” Grady interrupted, knowing his partner was about to insult the paying customers. Then he remembered that Westbrook wasn’t the customer. “Sorry, old man. Didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying?”
    “Never mind, it’s not worth my trouble,” Quinn said, rubbing at the back of his neck as he wondered, not for the first time, what Shelby Taite saw in this stiff-backed horse’s ass. Not that he cared, of course.
    Somerton Taite delicately cleared his throat from his seat beside Jeremy Rifkin, who was still weeping softly into his handkerchief as he moaned something that sounded very much like, “Our poor little girl.” It was a nice touch, lent a certain softness to the moment, having someone cry over the missing socialite.
    “As I informed you when I telephoned earlier, Mr. Sullivan,” Somerton began carefully, “my sister has gone missing as of yesterday morning. We, of course, do not wish the police involved, or the press, as the last thing we want is for Shelby to be out there somewhere with the whole world looking for her as if she were the prize in some contest. Which is why we first thought to conduct our own investigation. However, we soon realized we were not equipped for what we finally decided must be done.”
    “That was so wonderfully succinct of you, dear Somerton,” Jeremy complimented from his chair, beaming at the assembled company. “Wasn’t that wonderfully succinct of him?”
    “Thank you, Jeremy. Now, as you can see by the fax I sent you after our phone conversation, Mr. Sullivan, my sister’s farewell note was not especially helpful to us, nor was my uncle Alfred, who seems to believe Shelby is simply off having the adventure of her life, as he calls it, and we should all just… just…”
    “Butt out, Somerton. I told you all just to butt out, let the girl have her head