That seemed to surprise him, cutting off a protesting growl in midrumble, almost as if he’d expected her to lie and had come preloaded with the proper response. His mouth snapped shut and he stared at her for several seconds, no doubt regrouping, and then asked, “You’re not denying that you took it?”
She crossed her arms over her chest in a protective gesture, a move that showed the weakness she didn’t want him to see.
“No, why would I? We both know I took it. And you also know I didn’t use it. I could have, but I didn’t.”
His eyes filled with confusion, frustration, hope and a tinge of anger. “Why, Elle? Why did you take it? Make me understand.”
She wanted to do that, so much it hurt. She wanted to make the accusation in his eyes disappear. But there were no magical words, because he had every right to be upset with her.
Before he could react, the phone at his hip beeped and another voice filled the room. “Sir, she grabbed a banana and apple from the breakfast buffet, spent all day on the beach with a book and then went upstairs. No lunch, no dinner.”
Snatching the phone from his hip, he said, “Thanks,” before punching the end call button and replacing it. His eyes didn’t waver from hers at all.
“If you wanted to know what I did today, why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Because I wasn’t sure I’d get the truth.”
“Touché,” she said, a tinge of sadness coloring the word. She couldn’t argue with him, because she’d given him every reason to doubt her.
Plopping onto the bed, Elle was suddenly very tired. Tired of fighting with him, tired of the dance.
As if sensing her weariness and weakness, Zane pressed, “Why did you take it?”
“So I could access the private areas.” She looked up at him from across the room. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because I felt like shit for taking it.”
Some of the tension seemed to leak out of his body. He stared at her for several more seconds before taking another step toward her.
“What were you hoping to find?”
She knew it had been coming to this. She knew the minute she put that card back into his pocket that she’d have to tell him the truth. Was actually looking forward to telling him the truth. It would be a relief to not have secrets anymore.
Standing up from the bed, she walked around to his side of the room. She tried to ignore the way he shifted his weight out of her reach so that they wouldn’t touch as she scooted past him toward the dresser.
She picked up the piece of paper she’d left lying there. Holding it out to him, she said, “This.”
He grasped the page and studied it. Furrows of confusion etched deeper grooves across the bridge of his nose. “The magazine ad? What does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s the reason I’m here.”
Zane looked up at her, the glossy page crumpling beneath his fingers. “Marcy will be glad to hear the marketing campaign is working.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Elle fought the urge to move closer to him, knowing he wouldn’t want her in his personal space right now. Instead, she curled her fingers over the edge of the dresser behind her, using it as an anchor. The sharp edge pressed into her back, the biting pain a sort of penance for the sins she’d committed in the name of her grandmother’s painting.
“The painting.”
Zane returned his gaze to the page, the furrows getting deeper. “What about it?”
“The woman is my grandmother. The painting is mine. It was stolen from me four years ago.”
11
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, THE painting is yours?”
Zane watched as Elle sank onto the bed. Her seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy having deserted her, leaving her listless. Heartbroken.
“The artist was my grandmother’s lover before she met my grandfather. He gave the painting to her before they parted ways.”
Her fingers played in her lap, wrapping and unwrapping around each other as she stared sightlessly into the tangled mess.
“I don’t expect you to understand.” But she looked up at him beseechingly, her eyes filled with equal parts hopelessness and a blazing faith he wasn’t sure she should place in him.
“I’m not sure anyone can understand how important Nana was to me. My mom died when I was five. My father and two older brothers raised me. They’re all cops. They were controlling and exacting and unforgiving. They were hard to live with, especially for a precocious, creative child who just wanted the freedom to explore and experience life.”
Zane could hear the mingled frustration and affection in her voice as she spoke of the men who comprised her family.
“Nana was the only one who understood me. She…could identify with the little girl who wanted to dip her fingers in paint and rub them across her bedroom walls.” She laughed, a tiny explosion, at the memory. “My father just bellowed. I don’t even remember him actually saying any words.”
Her eyes raised to his again. “Don’t get me wrong. I love them. It was just difficult for us all to live together.
“Nana was my rock, the one person I could cry to. The one person who understood me when I couldn’t see through my anger and frustration to remember that I loved the big oafs who protected me even if I didn’t want them to.
“She died when I was sixteen. That painting—” she gestured to the paper still clutched in his hand “—is the only thing of hers that I had left. It was stolen several years ago, along with anything else valuable that I owned. The rest of the stuff was replaceable. Not that painting. I thought I’d lost it forever.”
Her eyes lifted to him once more, only this time they glistened with the sheen of unshed tears. She gritted her teeth, refusing to let the tears fall. She might not realize it, but she had more of her father and brothers in her than she probably wanted to admit. Their tenacity. Strength. Determination. Stubbornness.
Oh, yeah, he’d seen plenty of that over the past few days. Unfortunately, pairing those things with her impulsive nature could spell disaster.
He’d lived through disaster once. Shaking his head, Zane realized he wasn’t sure he could live through it again. The last time, that tragedy had been all his fault. He could have prevented it, should have prevented it. That knowledge gave him a small measure of comfort. If he’d played by the rules, then Felicity would be alive.
Elle, he couldn’t control. Hell, no one could.
The methodical agent with an inherent need to gather the details surfaced, a guy he’d been suppressing for months. Questions, angles and possibilities began to swim around inside his head. “So why don’t you file paperwork and ask for it back?”
Her lips began to tremble. She pressed them together to hide the weakness.
“I can’t prove that it’s mine. My lawyer said without documentation, a bill of sale or a will or something, then I don’t have a leg to stand on. The painting was a gift to Nana. The artist wasn’t anywhere close to famous at the time. She never thought to get anything saying it had been given to her. Nana didn’t have a will. The only thing of value that she owned was that painting and it was already hanging on the wall in my father’s home since she lived with us after my mother died. My father simply handed it to me so that I could hang it in my room and remember her. The only thing I have is a police report the night it was stolen listing it as various wall art.”
Zane looked at her. He wanted to help. What warm-blooded man wouldn’t? He could see how important the painting was to her. But he couldn’t make any promises…not yet. He couldn’t get her hopes up, only to see them dashed again. He needed more information.
“Why didn’t you contact Simon?”
“I tried!” she exclaimed, hopping up from the bed. For the first time since she began her story, he saw her frustration. He also saw the sparkle of life that he’d come to associate with Elle, that glistening intent in her eyes that said she was up to something, something reckless and probably dangerous.
“He ignored my emails. My letters went unanswered. Even my phone messages weren’t returned.”
Yep, that sounded like Simon, who’d probably had his nose buried in the keyboard and didn’t even realize he’d ignored Elle’s attempts at communication.
“I assumed he was fully aware that the painting was stolen and was ignoring me on purpose.”
More likely, his best friend hadn’t looked very closely at the paperwork—or lack thereof—that had come with said painting. Simon was brilliant at what he did, but he had a tendency toward tunnel vision.
Zane cringed at the thought of the paperwork he might or might not have attached to the painting.
“Elle, I’m sorry, but I can’t promise you anything.” And he wanted to. He wanted to gather her in his arms and tell her everything was going to be okay. But at this moment, he couldn’t do that. He needed to talk to Simon, figure out how the painting had gotten on his wall and the details that went along with the sale.
Elle looked back down at her hands. The fingers were twisted together again, but they’d gone still in her lap. She gulped—he could see her throat undulate as she fought to control her emotions. But despite her efforts, a single tear plopped down onto her entwined fingers.
In a thick voice, she said, “I didn’t think you would.”
SHE’D WATCHED IN SILENCE as he walked out her door. The night had not ended the way she’d hoped. Instead of sharing the bed with Zane, she was sitting alone in the dark, the center of her chest aching from an unproductive bout of tears and a pain she was deeply afraid meant she’d let him break her heart.
It shouldn’t hurt as much as it did. She hadn’t expected him to believe her. She’d given Zane Edwards every reason
not
to believe her. She’d broken into guest rooms. She’d stolen his key card. She’d lied to him repeatedly.
And she’d fallen in love with the man.
She realized that the deck—and laws—were stacked against her. Ultimately, that was the reason she’d come here with the intent to “reacquire” the painting in the first place. She knew there was no other choice. She couldn’t prove the painting belonged to her, so she couldn’t blame Zane—or Simon—for not volunteering to hand it over.
They had no reason to believe her.
That painting belonged to her, damn it. She wanted it back, although a certain amount of heat had disappeared from her conviction. It hurt to think that she might leave the island empty-handed—no painting, no Zane. But she feared that was exactly what was going to happen.
She’d never really had Zane to begin with. How could she have? They’d just met. Yet her heart had plummeted straight into choppy seas without her even realizing it.
At the end of all this, she would go home and he would stay here, buried in a tropical paradise that was choking him to death.
She might not be able to take the painting home with her, but she would like to see it one more time. Was that so much to ask? Elle didn’t think so.
But she was done taking the difficult approach.
She didn’t want to ask Zane. She didn’t want to put him in a position where he felt he’d have to tell her no. That would be painful for them both. Instead, she thought of Marcy, the woman who’d been friendly, accommodating and infinitely knowledgeable about what went on around her.
Elle picked the magazine ad up off the dresser where Zane had left it. Hadn’t Zane told her Marcy was the one behind the ad to begin with? There was no doubt she’d know where the painting hung.
Elle turned to leave, but stopped when her sad and sunken eyes caught her own reflection in the mirror. She looked like a bedraggled rat. Not a very flattering visual in the least.
She took a few minutes to cover up the evidence of her crying jag. She couldn’t completely hide the bloodshot eyes and red-tinged nose, but some concealer, powder and blush made it look as if she’d spent a little too much time in the sun and at the bar instead of sprawled across her bed, losing her mind.
Full of resolve, she marched down to the front desk and asked for Marcy.
The director came out of the back with a fake smile on her face that turned genuine when she saw Elle waiting for her. Marcy crossed to the far end of the desk, pulling them both out of earshot of the woman working there. The same one who’d been on duty when she and Zane had trooped in soaking wet.