Kristin Hardy - Sealed With A Kiss

Kristin Hardy

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Ewa and Anna,

tack så mycket for all the help

and to Stephen kärlek

Dear Reader,

The stories I write are often influenced by my surroundings. When I found out I was going to go to Stockholm last autumn, I immediately began working on a way to bring that experience to my characters. I had great fun prowling Stockholm, searching out locations. Who knew they had a postal museum? And what a surprise to find in their collection a pair of post office Mauritius stamps, the very stamps featured in Her High-Stakes Playboy .

I hope you’ll drop me a line at Kristin@ kristinhardy.com and tell me how you liked reading a Blaze ®novel with an international location. Sign up for my newsletter at www. kristinhardy.com for contests, recipes and updates on my recent and upcoming releases.

Have fun,

Kristin Hardy

Cover

Title Page Sealed with a Kiss Kristin Hardy www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication To Ewa and Anna, tack så mycket for all the help and to Stephen kärlek Dear Reader, The stories I write are often influenced by my surroundings. When I found out I was going to go to Stockholm last autumn, I immediately began working on a way to bring that experience to my characters. I had great fun prowling Stockholm, searching out locations. Who knew they had a postal museum? And what a surprise to find in their collection a pair of post office Mauritius stamps, the very stamps featured in Her High-Stakes Playboy . I hope you’ll drop me a line at Kristin@ kristinhardy.com and tell me how you liked reading a Blaze ® novel with an international location. Sign up for my newsletter at www. kristinhardy.com for contests, recipes and updates on my recent and upcoming releases. Have fun, Kristin Hardy

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Chapter Twenty Four

Copyright

San Francisco, July 2005

“WHAT DO YOU THINK of this one, Brandon, sweetie?” The woman looked at her towheaded young son, who sat like a spoiled prince in his tall chair. “It’s got an airplane.”

Maybe seven or eight, he thumped down his Game Boy and poked bad-temperedly at the stamps she showed him.

“Please don’t touch them with your fingers,” Joss Chastain said sharply. “They’re easily damaged.”

“Oh, Brandon doesn’t mean anything by it, do you, sweetie?”

Brandon scowled. “I wanna play my Game Boy.”

“In a minute, sweetie. This is something special you can do with Grandpop.”

It gave Joss a twinge. She’d never collected stamps with her grandfather. Instead, while he’d been on vacation recently, she’d let a collection of the most valuable of his many rare stamps be stolen.

Giving her head a brisk shake, she laid a stamp collector’s kit on the counter. “This has all the basics he’ll need for collecting: an album, tongs, a perforation gauge, a magnifying glass and some nice starter stamps.”

“Oh, this is perfect. He’s got to join a club at school,” she explained to Joss. “We thought stamp collecting would be good for him.”

Meanwhile, Brandon’s sister sat quietly on a chair nearer Joss. She was maybe three or four, quiet and big-eyed in a way that reminded Joss of her own sister. Joss smiled to herself and used sleight of hand to make the pen she held disappear.

The little girl’s eyes widened. Her mother and brother bent over the merchandise, oblivious.

Joss winked at her. Enjoying herself, Joss made the pen reappear, then seemingly put it up her nose. She held her nose and blew, and brought the pen out of her ear and held it up.

The girl giggled.

“Don’t bother the nice lady, now, Sarah,” the mother said and the girl subsided obediently. Joss guessed she was often the quiet one in the background while darling Brandon got what he wanted.

Finally, the woman made her selection and Joss rang it all up. “That will be forty-three sixty-five,” she said, making a mental bet that the purchase went in the back of the closet for good as soon as Brandon got home.

The woman handed her three twenties and Joss made change. “Here you are, that’s ten, fifteen, sixteen ten and…hmmm, I seem to have lost the quarter somewhere. Do you see it on the ground?” Joss leaned over the counter and looked on the burgundy carpet. Sarah looked down, shaking her head.

“Nope,” Joss said, “it’s not here and it’s not on the counter.” She leaned toward Sarah. “I know, maybe it’s here.” Joss reached out and pulled a quarter from behind the ear of the little girl, who giggled delightedly. “Yep, that’s it,” Joss said, dropping it in the palm of the astonished Sarah.

She was still alternately staring at the quarter and looking at Joss over her shoulder as they walked out the door.

When the phone rang a moment later, Joss picked it up, still smiling. “Chastain Philatelic Investments.”

“It’s me,” said a leaden voice.

The pleasure over entertaining children vanished in a sharp wave of concern as she recognized her sister’s voice. “Gwen. My God, what’s happened? You sound like hell.” Gwen, who had spent the last three weeks in Las Vegas, as she tracked down the thief who’d stolen the rare stamps valued at four and a half million, and which represented their grandfather’s retirement.

“It’s done.” Gwen let out an audible breath.

“You’ve found them? What happened? Did Jerry have them hidden in his room where you thought?” Jerry was the slick little hustler they’d hired to help Joss at the store while Gwen had traveled to some stamp auctions. It still made Joss burn in impotent anger to remember the way he’d conned her and broken into the safe to steal the stamps while her back had been turned.

“Brace yourself. Jerry wasn’t working on his own. He was hired by Stewart.”

“Stewart Oakes?” Joss repeated in shock. “How can that be? He worked for Grampa. He was Grampa’s friend.”

“He’s not anyone’s friend,” Gwen said flatly. “Joss, he shot Jerry. I saw him do it. He was going to shoot me, too.”

Joss groped for the chair behind her and sat. She swallowed. “Let me get this straight. Stewart pulled a gun on you?” On her little sister? She was going to hurt him, Joss vowed grimly. She was going to find him and wring his neck. He’d been like a big brother. No wonder Gwen sounded so shattered. “What was he thinking?” Joss demanded.

“I don’t think he was thinking at that point. They said he owed money to some leg breakers and thought he’d pay them off with the commission fee he got from a collector who wanted some of Grampa’s stamps. Only Grampa said no sale, and Stewart had already spent the money.”

“He couldn’t explain and pay the guy back over time?”

“I don’t know. He won’t say who the collector is but he sounds scared spitless.”

Joss shook her head. “God, Gwennie, I just can’t believe… I’m so sorry you had to go through this.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “And I’m just sitting here being a lump. You could have been killed.”

“I wasn’t, though.”

“As long as you’re safe, that’s what’s important. And you got the stamps back.”

“I didn’t get them all. Stewart already sent one of the stamps to the collector.”

“Not the Blue Mauritius?” Joss whispered, her hand tightening on the phone. The Blue Mauritius, their grandfather’s prize. It was one of the most valuable stamps in the world, worth some one million dollars at auction.

“I got the Blue Mauritius back okay.”

Joss closed her eyes in trepidation. “I hear a really big ‘but’ coming.”

“The stamp that’s missing is its companion, the one-penny Mauritius.” Gwen hesitated. “If anything, it’s worth even more.”

1

San Francisco, two weeks later

“HEY, GWEN, I’m going to have wild sex on a jetliner today.” Joss announced. She was sprawled on one of the chairs in the back office of the store, coffee in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

Gwen, blond and poised behind her desk, merely raised an eyebrow as she sat on hold. “And here I didn’t even know you were going on a trip.”

“It says so, right here,” Joss said, pointing to her horoscope. “‘Love and romance are in the air. Travel likely. Big dreams will come true if you leap for the stars.’ And yours says, let’s see, oh, yeah, ‘Hunky, adoring sportswriter will sweep you out for dinner and wild sex in his marina condo afterward.’”

“You don’t say.” Gwen’s tone was dry. “Horoscopes have gotten a lot more interesting, lately.”

“So has your life,” Joss observed, pointing to the photo of Gwen’s new boyfriend smiling out at them from the sports page of the newspaper.

Gwen grinned, then snapped to attention as someone apparently came on the line. She cleared her throat. “Yes, this is Gwen Chastain of Chastain Philatelic Investments. I’m calling to check on the progress of the investigation of my grandfather’s stamps.”

Joss listened for a few minutes, then abandoned the effort. Better to wait until all was said and done and Gwen could fill her in. In the meantime, she took a sip of coffee and stared at the print on the paper.

Big dreams will come true if you leap for the stars .

Or maybe not. After seven years of leaping for the stars in pursuit of a career in music, she’d finally fallen to earth with a resounding thud. Four bands, four breakups, a résumé dotted with gigs at bars and small clubs around the Pacific Northwest. Along with doing street theatre magic shows, it had paid the bills, but not much more than that. At twenty-six, she wasn’t a single step closer than she’d been as a nineteen-year-old with big dreams. She had nothing, no career, no money, not even a car. Maybe it was time to admit that she wasn’t going to find the lucky confluence of circumstances that was going to let her perform for a living.

At twenty-six, maybe it was time to look for something else.

All things considered, she was probably fortunate that the most recent band implosion had taken place in San Francisco, home of her sister and her grandparents. After all, it had been a place to stay and a place to work while her grandparents went on their three-month tour of the South Pacific. For a few weeks, she’d pitched in without complaint, trying for once to fight off the inevitable restlessness and get on her feet.

And then everything had gone to hell in a handbasket.

“Dammit!”

Joss jumped at the sound of Gwen slamming down the receiver in the cradle. “You’ve gotten louder since you came back from Vegas, that’s for sure. What’s up?”

“Interpol,” Gwen said, investing the word with an immense amount of disgust. “They’re dropping the investigation of the one-penny Mauritius.” Her voice vibrated with frustration. “A million dollar stamp, one of the rarest in the world, and they’re just giving up.”

“How can they drop the case? I thought you knew who had the stamp.”