Sealed With A Kiss
John “Bax” Baxter is stunningly hot and the best private eye in the business. Joss, Gwen’s feisty sister, knows he’s her last chance to find the missing multimillion-dollar stamp.Bax wants nothing to do with the corrupt case. But could a saucy encounter with Joss change his mind?
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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
Table of Contents
Prologue
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.”
