LITMIR.BIZ

      3

      “CASS, DID YOU HEAR what I just said?”

      “Huh?” Cass raised her chin, looking up from the antique Christmas plates she’d been sorting in the basement of her older sister’s quaint and cozy antique shop in Fairfield, Connecticut. She wiped the dust off Ten Lords a Leaping with a damp cloth—wondering quite incidentally what all the leaping was about—and blinked at Morgan.

      “Is something the matter? You’ve been distracted all morning.”

      “Just thinking about that fall I took off the eighth- floor window ledge.”

       And about Sam’s big masculine hand on my fanny.

      Damn, the sexual drought she’d been in was wreaking havoc with her imagination. Truth was she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him. That low, steady, horse-whisperer kind of voice he possessed made you feel as if you could trust every single word he said.

      Morgan shuddered. “I’d think you’d want to forget all about that. Isn’t that why you volunteered to help me out this weekend? To get away from the city and being reminded of what happened.”

      “Yes, yes, you’re right. So what was it that you just asked?”

      “Are you still seeing Marcos? I’m having a dinner party Friday week and…”

      “Dumped him,” Cass said quickly.

      “Really? Already? You’d only been going with him what, a month?”

      “Believe me, a month was enough.”

      “But he seemed so nice and his family is in the social registry and he’s so good looking and so…”

      “Clingy.”

      “You think any man who wants to be exclusive is clingy.” Morgan took a box cutter, slit the tape on a large cardboard box, pushed back the flaps and began carefully taking out rare antique books.

      “He was talking the m word after less than a month of dating and we’d never even slept together. Now that’s moving way too fast for me.”

      “He asked you to marry him?” Morgan looked up in surprise.

      “No, not that m word. He asked me to move in with him.”

      “I see why you had to dump him. Can’t have a guy who’d actually want to be with you.”

      “Ha, ha. And this is going to make you feel bad for making fun of me, but after the news coverage of my unfortunate window ledge episode, Bunnie Bernaldo told me Marcos has been spreading rumors up and down Long Island that he dumped me and I was so distraught I would have thrown myself off the Isaac Vincent building over the breakup if Sam hadn’t intervened. Of course anyone who knows me knows what a crock of bull that is. But can you believe that? I would never throw myself off a building over a man. The loss of a great pair of shoes, now maybe.”

      “Sam?” Morgan arched an eyebrow.

      “The cop that helped me down from the ledge the hard way.”

      “You’re on a first-name basis?”

      Cass shrugged. “Well, that’s how he introduced himself. As Sam.”

      “You like him,” Morgan teased.

      “Come on. I saw him once and that was under duress.”

      “Still.” Morgan nodded. “You like him.”

      “Not that much. He was kind of a smart aleck when he heard about the Hermès.”

      “Is he cute?”

      “Children don’t scream in horror when he walks past if that’s what you mean.”

      “Cass’s got a new boyfriend.”

      “Shut up, I do not.”

      She wanted out of this conversation. The sooner the better. Cass spied a very old, ornately carved wooden box perched on a highboy in the corner. She got up, dusted off her hands and crossed the room to pick it up.

      “What’s this?”

      Morgan swiveled her head in Cass’s direction. “Intriguing, isn’t it. I found it hidden in a secret drawer of an antique dresser I bought along with the shop.”

      The box was intricately hand-carved with various patterns. Cass traced a finger over the carvings. They may have been symbols, she wasn’t sure, though they looked as if they were some kind of ancient hieroglyphics.

      Was it a code? The idea excited her.

      From the box emanated the faint scent of some rich, exotic spice. She held the box to her ear and shook it but neither heard nor felt anything inside.

      “What’s in it?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “Let’s open it.” Cass loved secrets and surprises and encrypted code games and this was just the thing that she needed to take her mind off sexy Detective Sam.

      “We can’t.”

      “Oh, Morgan, don’t be such a party-pooper. It belongs to you. Why can’t we open it?”

      “There’s no key.”

      “Let’s jimmy the lock.” She turned the box over and realized there was no keyhole at all.

      Strange. A box with no opening.

      “Don’t you think I’ve tried? In fact I’ve developed a fascination with it. Who it belonged to, what happened to them, what’s inside. Adam says I’m obsessed.”

      “Are you?”

      Morgan shrugged, didn’t admit to anything. But Cass saw how her eyes gleamed when she looked at the box. “We could jam a screwdriver into it, pop it open like a clam.”

      “The box is really old. Hundreds of years, maybe even more. I don’t dare risk doing anything that could destroy it.”

      “Bummer.” Cass sighed, put the box back on the highboy and returned to sit cross-legged in front of the knickknacks she’d been cataloging.

      They worked in companionable silence for a few minutes and then Morgan said, “You do realize that your longest relationship was with a guy who lived in London and you only saw him a few times a year.”

      Cass smiled. “Oh yes, Nigel. He was the best of the lot.”

      “Because he didn’t get in your hair. That’s the way you like them, tall, dark and absent. Admit it, Cass. You’re commitmentphobic.”

      “Why do you consider me commitmentphobic simply because I’m not lining up to get married and have babies?” Cass asked. “I’m not commitmentphobic. I just haven’t found the right guy.”

      “What was wrong with Gregory Henderson? He was really nice and smart enough to keep up with you.”

      Cass waved a hand. “He had a high-pitched voice. Come on, could you face ‘til-death-do-you-part’with a guy who sounds like he’s constantly inhaling helium?”

      Morgan tried not to smile. “What about Ross Roosevelt?”

      “The man wore a size twenty-two shoe. And before you ask, no, the myth about men with big feet having other big

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