Hidden Riches by Nora Roberts Page B

Dora had purchased at auction only the day before. “Do you think this would be suitable for the nursery?”
    â€œI think he’s charming. A nice, cozy watchdog.”
    â€œI believe I’ll take him along, too—an early welcoming gift for my newest grandniece or -nephew. You do take Visa?”
    â€œOf course. This will just take a few minutes. Why don’t you help yourself to some coffee while you wait?” Dora gestured to the table that was always set with tea and coffeepots and trays of pretty cookies before she carried both doorstops back to the counter. “Christmas shopping, Skimmerhorn?” she asked as she passed him.
    â€œI need a—what do you call it? Hostess thing.”
    â€œBrowse around. I’ll be right with you.”
    Jed wasn’t completely sure what he was browsing around in. The packed apartment was only a small taste of the amazing array of merchandise offered in Dora’s Parlor.
    There were delicate figurines that made him feel big and awkward, the way he’d once felt in his mother’s sitting room. Still, there was no sense of the formal or untouchable here. Bottles of varying sizes and colors caught the glitter of sunlight and begged to be handled. There were signs advertising everything from stomach pills to boot polish. Tin soldiers arranged in battle lines fought beside old war posters.
    He wandered through a doorway and found the next room equally packed. Teddy bears and teapots. Cuckoo clocks and corkscrews. A junk shop, he mused. People might stick a fancy name on it, like “curio shop,” but what it was was junk.
    Idly, he picked up a small enameled box decorated with painted roses. Mary Pat would probably like this, he decided.
    â€œWell, Skimmerhorn, you surprise me.” Framed by the doorway, Dora smiled. She gestured toward the box he held as she walked to him. “You show excellent taste. That’s a lovely piece.”
    â€œYou could probably put bobby pins or rings into it, right?”
    â€œYou probably could. Originally it was used to hold patches. The well-to-do wore them in the eighteenth century, at first to cover smallpox scars, and then just for fashion. That particular one is a Staffordshire, circa 1770.”She looked up from the box, and there was a laugh in her eyes. “It goes for twenty-five hundred.”
    â€œThis?” It didn’t fill the cup of his palm.
    â€œWell, it is a George the Third.”
    â€œYeah, right.” He put it back on the table with the same care he would have used on an explosive device. The fact that he could afford it didn’t make it any less intimidating. “Not quite what I had in mind.”
    â€œThat’s no problem. We have something for everyone’s mind. A hostess gift, you said?”
    He grunted and scanned the room. Now he was afraid to touch anything. He was back again, painfully back in childhood, in the front parlor of the Skimmerhorn house.
    Don’t touch, Jedidiah. You’re so clumsy. You don’t appreciate anything.
    He blocked off the memory with its accompanying sensory illusion of the mingled scents of Chanel and sherry.
    He didn’t quite block off the scowl. “Maybe I should just pick up some flowers.”
    â€œThat’s nice, too. Of course, they don’t last.” Dora was enjoying his look of pure masculine discomfort. “A bottle of wine’s acceptable as well. Not very innovative, but acceptable. Why don’t you tell me a little about our hostess?”
    â€œWhy?”
    Dora’s smile widened at the suspicion in his voice. “So that I can get a picture of her and help you select something. Is she the athletic, outdoors type, or a quiet homebody who bakes her own bread?”
    Maybe she wasn’t trying to make him feel stupid, Jed thought, but she was succeeding just the same. “Look, she’s my partner—ex-partner’s wife. She’s a trauma nurse. She’s