“You’re right. The ring needs to be worn or kept someplace secure. Come into my boudoir and we will unearth it from a pile of lovely but annoyingly unmanageable scarves. Frenchwomen really know how to accessorize with those things, but I am about as French as Midnight Louie.”
She took his hand to lead him away, thinking maybe it was time her Circle Ritz bedroom had a new sensuous adventure to record.
Matt hesitated at the threshold. Temple knew what he was thinking: this had been Max’s and her bedroom for more than a year. The bed was California king-length, for six-foot-four Max, and Matt sure didn’t need that.
She stepped close. “It’s all right. You know I’m all yours, anytime, anyplace. Ring or no ring.”
So they ended up ruffling the zebra-stripe coverlet, both of them the better for it.
“Where’s this fabled scarf drawer?” Matt asked finally. Temple guessed he’d never consummate anything with her in that bed.
“Over here, sir.” She got up and opened the top drawer of the small chest against the wall. “Every scarf I was ever given as a gift, and that I wronged with an inept knot, a careless twist, a hopeless loop, lies interred here, along with other odds and ends. It is yours to riffle as you please. As am I.” She finished with a curtsy.
Matt grinned at her presentation. “No one can oversell like you.”
“Thanks for the professional compliment.”
He began sifting through the frothy rainbow of scarves. “This should be good practice for violating your lingerie drawer in future. Aha! The significant clue. A ring box.”
He pulled out a plain white box and opened it to reveal something Temple didn’t recognize at first. When she did, her cheeks flushed.
“That’s not it. That’s just a tawdry cubic zirconia ring I bought somewhere.”
It was also oddly similar to the Tiffany opal-and-diamond ring Max had given her in New York City Christmas last, when she and he had thought his dangerous past was history and their glowing future was now.
She’d bought this cheap reminder of that lost ring for less than forty dollars in a weak moment, for which she’d been noted recently.
Matt tossed the box on the bed.
“Okay,” he said. “More scarves. Am I supposed to deduce something from this mass of scarves?”
He held up two, stretched out. Gave her all sorts of ideas. “Danny did give your bedroom a four-poster bed,” she said. Danny Dove was Temple’s dear friend and a noted Vegas choreographer. Nothing better than a gay choreographer for masterminding a straight guy’s bedroom decor.
There was a moment of prolonged silence. Matt had read his Joy of Sex book religiously. But at least now he’d forgotten the ersatz opal-diamond ring. Mission accomplished.
He lifted another cheap ring box with a quizzical look.
“Something I picked up somewhere, sometime. Don’t ask me what that is.”
Matt opened it. Stared. Looked up at her with real worry. “I do, Temple.”
“What?” The wedding vow answer had both startled and encouraged her.
“I know what this is, and it’s not good. This is the ring Kathleen O’Connor mailed to me.”
“No! What was that about? It’s a nasty snaky thing, no wonder it came from that vixen.”
“Not a snake.” Matt held up the sinuous gold circle between his thumb and forefinger, like a dissection specimen. “It’s a dragon, really, swallowing its own tail; an ancient symbol of eternity called the worm Ouroboros.”
“Ouroboro-what? Kitty the Cutter sent you a ring? I didn’t know about that.”
“I didn’t want you to. It was another of her sick stalking games. She said I had to wear it or she’d hurt someone near me. So I carried it in my pocket when I was out and left it on my living room side table when I was in. I never put it on my finger. Where did you get it?”
Temple thought. “I don’t know. I put everything I don’t know what to do with in that drawer.”
“Including this?” Matt lifted the gray velvet box containing his … her … ring.
“Yes, but only for safekeeping. Until I can, you know, reach Max.”
“What if you never reach him? Are we on hold until then?”
“No! I just want to do the right thing.”
“Temple.” Matt came to sit beside her on the bed. “I’ve spent all my life trying to do exactly the right thing and I’ve learned that can be paralyzing. Look. I’ll take this ring up to my safe for now. But I need you to think about when, and where, you got Kitty the Cutter’s ring, the one she made me carry as a sign of her power over me.”
“Good Lord! What an awful talisman! How did you lose it?”
“She loved to show that she could come and go in my place as she pleased. It disappeared one day. After … Vassar died. That’s all. I figured that meant she was finally disappointed in me. It disappeared. Just like she ultimately did.”
“Yeah, she died. Gee, Matt, I just can’t remember where I got that thing right now. But I did get it. It’s ended up here. You don’t think Kitty—?”
“I hope not, but she is dead now, at least.”
“Somehow I came across it, but where or when—?” Temple pushed her hands into the blond hair at her temples, warding off the headache that was sure to come.
Matt caught and removed her hands. “Take it easy, Goldilocks. You’ll never remember something trying that hard. Just let the question bounce around in your brain for a while.”
“What brain? I’m a blonde, haven’t you noticed?”
“Only temporarily, and I don’t mind. I’m a blond too, so dumb blond jokes are personal.” He leaned in and kissed her hair. “Besides, I think that’s what did it.”
“What did what?”
“Your bottle-blonde undercover makeover job. It made you look just different enough to make me think that I might have a chance with a BraveNewTemple.”
Of course he had to kiss her surprise away. Too bad she wasn’t brave, or very new. Just the same old bundle of chutzpah, humor, and hope a single girl had to be nowadays.
Not quite single.
“Matt, I’m sorry to be so neurotic about Max. It’s just that I’ve been worrying about him for so long.”
“I wouldn’t love you if you didn’t. What can I do?”
“Love me when I’m being a ditz.”
“Easy.”
“Safeguard our ring.” She closed her hands over his holding the box. “I’ll try to zen my way into remembering Kitty’s ugly offering. In fact, take that ugly ring thing up to your safe too. There might be fingerprints on it.”
“What good will that do us?” he asked.
“Molina can get it analyzed, if we figure out a good excuse.”
“I’m not sure she would—”
“I am. All we have to do is have you ask her.”
“I don’t have any pull with Molina.”
“Hmmm. We’ll see.”
Chapter 3
Riders of the Purple Rage
Matt had only been gone a few minutes when the phone rang.
Temple shook herself out of her meditation session on the sofa and dove for the receiver. It might be Max at last.
So far, she hadn’t a clue about when she could have gotten the wormy gold ring Matt was so concerned about. Maybe this was it: the first senior moment, a tendril of looming peri-menopause striking out at her fifteen years too soon. She was only almost thirty-one, God!
“Temple, dear,” said a well-known voice. “I’m in such a pickle and I really need your help.”
“Electra?” Temple sat up straight, jolted out of her meditations. Trouble would take her mind off a lot of personal issues. “I can run right up to the penthouse.““Don’t, dear. I’m not there.”
The landlady of the Circle Ritz was always somewhere about the place. When not in her fifth-floor penthouse digs she was running the Lovers’ Knot Wedding Chapel with Drive-by Window—Photo Shoots free—at the side of the condominium-cum-apartment building. Everything here did double duty, including the angst.