Shotgun Daddy. Harper Allen

was supposed to look that way. “I love the silver cuff you’re wearing, handsome. It’s Apache, isn’t it?”

      At the far side of the room an open set of polished wood stairs swept in a large curve to a second floor. Kanin had to be upstairs.

      Gabe shook his head. “Navajo.”

      It was an effort to make even that much conversation. He tried to tell himself that what he was feeling was jet lag, or exhaustion from going the past three days without sleep, but he knew it wasn’t either of those. These people and their world meant nothing to him. He was here only to settle an account.

      He put his foot on the bottommost stair. He looked up and saw the woman, and for half a heartbeat all else fell away.

      She was like ice and snow and crystals, he thought, his chest feeling suddenly too tight. Her eyes were the color of an alpine lake, her hair a silvery blond pulled back from the creamy oval of her face and coiled at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a white sweater, white slim-fitting ski pants, small white boots with heels. A full-length coat of some kind of white fur hung from her shoulders.

      Even as she swept down the staircase toward him, Larry Kanin appeared at the top of the stairs behind her.

      Oxygen slammed back into Gabe’s lungs.

      “For God’s sake, Caro, you’re overreacting.” Kanin’s well-cut lips tightened. “So Jinx and I were having a little fun. It didn’t mean anything.”

      The woman stopped halfway down the stairs. “This is what doesn’t mean anything anymore, Larry.”

      Swiftly she removed a blazing diamond from one finger and flung it over the heads of the guests below. The ring sparkled over the buffet table and landed in a bowl of salmon mousse.

      But the woman Kanin had called Caro didn’t wait to see it fall. Gabe just had time to step aside before she moved by him, her head held high and those starry eyes not registering his existence. The fur of her coat brushed coldly against his arm, the faint scent that enveloped her—it smelled like small white flowers, he thought disjointedly—touched him briefly, and then she was past. He heard the front door open and close.

      Kanin had followed Caro part of the way down the stairs, and for a moment Gabe thought he meant to go after her. Then Larry shrugged, the anger in his eyes quickly concealed.

      “I promised entertainment, didn’t I?” he drawled to his assembled guests. “Whichever one of you ladies finds that ring first gets to keep it.”

      There was a chorus of surprised laughter from the females in his party and a general rumble of amusement from the men. The buffet table was instantly surrounded.

      “Hi, Larry.”

      Kanin had been watching the stampede that his announcement had started. At Gabe’s greeting, his gaze swung away from his guests.

      “God—Riggs! What the hell are you doing here?”

      “The same thing your woman just did.” Gabe mounted the steps that divided them. “I’m breaking up with you, Larry.”

      Kanin frowned. “This isn’t the time or the place, Riggs. We’ll talk at the office on—”

      “They weren’t asking much in the first place. When I reported in by phone I told you I was pretty sure we’d be able to get it down to a quarter-mill, tops.” Gabe looked over at the buffet table. “I don’t get it. You just turned close to that amount into a party favor.”

      “For Christ—” Kanin’s jaw tightened. “I recommended Tech-Oil draw a line in the sand, all right? They do a lot of business in volatile regions, and if they got the reputation of being patsies for every guerrilla leader looking to fund his war chest, they’d be out of business in a month.”

      “So instead of advising Tech-Oil to increase security for its people, you told them to stall on delivering the good-faith payment to the kidnappers.” Gabe nodded. “I just needed to hear you confirm it. Like I said, we’re through. And since I don’t have a diamond to throw over this banister—”

      The buffet table broke Kanin’s fall before tipping completely over, and the last sight Gabe had of him was of a chafing dish of tiny meatballs upending itself over Kanin as he lay among the debris.

      Outside, the baby Nazi he’d decked was nowhere to be seen. He opened the door of his rental vehicle and smelled small white flowers.

      “I need a ride into Aspen.” She was sitting in the passenger seat, her hands clasped tightly in her lap and her gaze fixed straight ahead. “I want to leave now.”

      The baby Nazi might be out of the picture, Gabe thought, but any minute now, reinforcements would arrive. He didn’t have time to argue with her. He slid into the driver’s seat.

      “No problem, lady,” he said tersely. “I don’t want to hang around here any longer, either.”

      The spell he’d fallen under when he’d first laid eyes on her had been broken, he noted in relief. She was still beautiful, still a snow princess, and he didn’t mind helping her out by giving her a ride. But breaking off her engagement to Larry couldn’t change the fact that she belonged in his world of wealth and arrogance. The coolness behind her demand just now was proof of that.

      Being able to breathe around her made things easier, he told himself as he negotiated the litter of broken wood that had once been the gate at the bottom of the slope. He turned to her when he was safely past it.

      “I’ve got to turn on the heat. You might want to take off that fur.”

      All he could see of her was the back of her head as she stared out of the side window at the gathering darkness. “I’m not cold.”

      “I am.” He reached forward and switched on the heater, jacking the fan to full speed. “I haven’t acclimatized yet.”

      She turned to frown at him before opening the coat and slipping her arms from its sleeves. “When I saw your vehicle parked and running in the drive, I assumed one of Larry’s guests was leaving early—but you weren’t at the party, were you.”

      Her question sounded faintly accusatory. He kept his face expressionless.

      “The name’s Gabriel Riggs. You’re right, I wasn’t invited, but I showed up anyway. You walked past me after you tossed your engagement ring into the salmon mousse. Larry landed in the same general vicinity a couple of minutes later.”

      The four-wheel drive corrected itself on a curve. Gabe exchanged the high-beams for the regular headlights to cut down on the hypnotizing dazzle of the now-swirling snow.

      “You threw him off the stairs? Why?”

      “Because of a man named Leo Roswell. Your ex-lover let him get his throat cut, honey.” He glanced at her. “It was a Recoveries International situation that went real bad, real fast, but I was the negotiator on the spot. I should have guessed Larry might think it was a good idea to pull the plug.”

      “A man got his throat—” She didn’t finish the sentence. He heard her indrawn breath. “That’s horrible.”

      Gabe didn’t know why he’d put it so bluntly. He didn’t even know why he was talking to her about it. “Yeah, it was horrible. So did you walk in on Larry with Jink, or whatever her name was?”

      “Jinx. I don’t want to discuss it.” The frosty tone was back in full force. Gabe took the hint, and for the better part of the next hour there was nothing but silence between them—a silence that was finally broken by Caro herself when his arm accidentally brushed against hers as he reached for the stick shift. She stiffened. “How long before we get to Aspen?”

      The lady might as well have posted No Trespassing signs, Gabe thought. It was obvious not only that she wasn’t interested in having a conversation, but that she was having second thoughts about being in his company at all. To be fair, he couldn’t really blame her for her show of nerves just now. He had