Reckless

“You know, Cherie, it is not a nice thing to try to entrapper a gentleman by threatening to go to his wife.” Madame Dubonnet made a clucking sound with her tongue and shook her head from side to side, before pronouncing, “This, I do not approve of.”

Tracy’s eyes widened. Boy, Jeff must have laid it on thick.

“Madame. I assure you, you are mistaken. For one thing Monsieur Graham, as he calls himself, is no gentleman. For another, he has no wife. Although you may be right about the bee thing,” she conceded, thinking back to what Sally Faiers had told her about Hunter’s endless string of lovers. “In any case I am not his lover, as my ‘friend’ Mr. Bowers knows all too well. The truth is”—Tracy lowered her voice—“I’m working for American intelligence.”

Madame Dubonnet smiled patronizingly. “Vraiment? Le CIA?”

“That’s right,” said Tracy, relieved to have cleared up the misunderstanding. “I work for the CIA.”

“And I am working for NASA, mademoiselle.” The old lady cackled at her own joke. Then the lips pursed again for the last time. “As I said before, I do not discuss the private lives of my patrons. Marianne will see you out.”

JEFF CALLED TRACY JUST as she stepped out of Madame Dubonnet’s apartment building onto the street.

“Darling! How’s your head?”

Tracy exploded. “Don’t ‘darling’ me. You told that old witch I was sleeping with Hunter Drexel!”

Jeff chuckled. “Ah, dear Madame Dubonnet. You’ve been to see her then?”

“Of course I have. You knew I would.”

“Now don’t be mad, angel. I didn’t say you were sleeping with him. Not exactly.”

“Well, whatever you said ‘exactly’ it was enough to get me kicked out of there. So what ‘exactly’ did she tell you? That you were so eager to hide from me?”

“Nothing!”

“Pull the other one, Jeff. I’m serious. She obviously knew Hunter. She’d met him. What do you know? When was he last there?”

“I have no idea.”

“You’re lying.”

“Tracy darling, what is the point of this conversation? If you refuse to believe a word I say?”

“Good point,” Tracy said furiously, and hung up.

JEFF RANG BACK IMMEDIATELY.

“I see you’re fully recovered then?”

Tracy bit her lip. The urge to hang up on him again was almost overpowering, but she wanted to know what he knew.

“Yes, thanks. Nice of you to come visit me,” she added caustically.

“I wanted to.” Jeff sounded genuinely hurt.

“So why didn’t you?”

“Something came up.”

“Something always does,” said Tracy bitterly.

“Hey, hold on,” Jeff protested. “It doesn’t help when your boyfriend guards th

e hospital like a Rottweiler and then spirits you off to his tower in the woods like bloody Rapunzel!”

Tracy took a deep breath and counted to three. “Where are you?”