The Collector (15 page)

“The first part,” she qualified. “Maybe I'd have liked him. I think maybe I would have. I think, too, he'd have frustrated me because it seems like he wasted so much potential, so many opportunities. You don't, and that's another part of the answer. You don't waste anything, and that's important to me—not wasting things, or time, or people, or opportunity. You're going to stand up for him, even though you believe he did something not just stupid, not just dangerous, but wrong. But you'll stand up for him anyway. Loyalty. Love, respect, trust? All
essential, but none of them hold strong without loyalty—and that's the rest of it.”

She looked at him, dark eyes open, so full of feeling. “Why would I tell you to go?”

“Because you didn't know him, and all this complicates your life.”

“I know you, and complications
are
life. Besides, if I kick you out, you won't paint me.”

“You don't want me to paint you.”

“I didn't. I'm still not sure I do, but now I'm curious.”

“I already have a second painting in mind.”

“See, nothing wasted. What's this one?”

“You, lying in a bower, lush, green, at sunset. Just waking up, your hair spilling everywhere.”

“I wake up at sunset?”

“Like a faerie might, before the night's work.”

“I'd be a faerie.” Her face lit up at the thought. “I like it. What's the wardrobe?”

“Emeralds.”

She stopped stirring the pasta she'd just added to the boiling water to stare at him. “Emeralds?”

“Emeralds, like drops of a magic sea, looped between your breasts, dripping from your ears. I was going to wait awhile before telling you about that one, but now I figure it's cards on the table while you still have time to change your mind.”

“I can change my mind anytime.”

He smiled, stepped closer. “I don't think so. Now's the time to cut and run.”

“I'm not running. I'm making lunch.”

He took the pasta fork from her, gave the pot a quick stir. “Now or never.”

She took a step back. “I need the colander.”

He closed a hand around her arm, pulled her back. “Now.”

It wasn't like on the sidewalk—that light and casual brush of lips. It was a long, luscious, lingering possession with electric jolts of demand, shocking the system even as it seduced.

Had her legs gone weak in his studio when he'd looked at her? Now they simply dissolved, left her uprooted, untethered.

It was hold on or fall away.

She held on.

He'd seen it in her, the first time he'd looked in her eyes. Even through his shock, even through the layers of raw grief, he'd seen this. Her power to give. That glow inside her she could offer or withhold. He took it now, that dark, dreamy center inside the light, and let it cloak over him like life.

“You'll look like this,” he murmured, watching her eyes again. “When you wake in the bower. Because you know what you can do in the dark.”

“Is that why you kissed me? For the painting?”

“Is this—knowing this was here—the reason you didn't tell me to go?”

“Maybe it's one of them. Not the main one, but one of them.”

He brushed her hair back behind her shoulders. “Exactly.”

“I need to . . .” She eased away, stepped back to take the pot off the heat before it boiled over. “Do you sleep with all the women you paint?”

“No. There's intimacy in the work, and usually sexuality in the work. But it's work. I wanted to paint you when you sat across from me at that coffee shop. I wanted to sleep with you . . . You hugged me. The first time I came here, you hugged me before I left. It wasn't the physical contact—I'm not that easy.”

He caught the quick smile as she dumped the pasta in the colander.

“It was the generosity of it, the simplicity. I wanted that, and wanted you. Maybe that was for comfort. This isn't.”

No, not comfort, she thought. For either of them. “I've always been
attracted to strong men. To complicated men. And it's always ended badly.”

“Why?”

“Why badly?” She lifted a shoulder as she turned the pasta in a bowl. “They'd get tired of me.” She tossed in the pretty little tomatoes, some glossy black olives, chopped a couple of leaves of fresh basil, added some rosemary, pepper. “I'm not exciting, not especially willing to stay home and, well, cook and keep the home fires burning or go out and party every night. A little of both is just fine, but it always seemed not enough of one or too much of the other.

“It's lunch. I'm going to cheat and use bottled dressing.”

“Why is that cheating?”

“Forget I mentioned it.”

“I'm not looking for a cook or a fire tender, or nightly parties. And right at the moment? You're the most exciting woman I know.”

Exciting? No one, herself included, had ever considered her exciting. “It's the situation. Intense situations breed excitement—anxiety, too. Probably ulcers, though they poo-poo that now. Still, it would be a shame to waste the excitement and intensity.”

After tossing the salad, she opened the bread drawer. “I've got one left.” She held up a sourdough roll. “We share.”

“Deal.”

“I'm going to ask you for another deal. A little breathing space to think this through before the plunge. Because I'm usually a plunger, and usually end up going in too deep. Add the situation, because we have one. Your brother, that spectacular egg and what to do about both. So, I'd like to try inching instead of plunging.”

“How far in are you now?”

“I was already past my knees when you started sketching me. About hip-deep now.”

“Okay.” Her response—fresh, simple, straightforward—struck him as sexier than black silk. He needed to touch, settled for toying with the
ends of her hair, pleased she'd left it down. “Do you want to eat this on the terrace? Leave the situation inside for a little?”

“That's an excellent idea. Let's do just that.”

T
hey couldn't leave it for long, she thought, because the situation had weight. But she appreciated the sun, the easy food and the puzzle of the man who wanted her.

Other men had, for short sprints, even for a lap or two. But she'd never experienced a marathon. Then again, her life was a series of short spurts. Any sort of permanence had eluded her for so long she'd decided the desire for it was self-defeating.

She believed she'd crafted her life around the temporary in a very productive, interesting way.

She could do exactly the same in a relationship with Ash.

“If we'd met through Julie—maybe at a show of your work—all of this wouldn't be so strange. Then again, if we'd met that way, you might not be interested.”

“You're wrong.”

“That's nice to hear. Anyway, we didn't.” She looked across to the window, still boarded up. “You've got a lot going on, Ash.”

“More all the time. You didn't push me out when you had the chance, so you've got the same.”

“I'm the queen of multitasking. In a couple of days, I'll have a view of the river, a little dog, orchids to tend and a personal gym that'll either intimidate me or inspire me to exercise. I'll still have a book to write, a blog, a present to buy for my mother's birthday—which I think is going to be one of those little lemon trees because how cool would it be to grow your own lemons inside in Alaska? And I'll still have what
may be a stolen Imperial egg worth more than I can fathom to figure out, the low-grade anxiety that I may have a killer watching me and the puzzle of potentially really good sex with a man I met because he lost his brother.

“That takes some juggling,” she decided. “So I'll try to be nimble.”

“You forgot the painting.”

“Because it intimidates me more than the personal gym or the sex.”

“Sex doesn't intimidate you?”

“I'm a girl, Ashton. Getting naked in front of a guy for the first time is monumentally intimidating.”

“I'll keep you distracted.”

“That could be a plus.” She drew a tiny heart in the condensation on her glass of lemon water. “What are we going to do about the egg?”

And so, he thought, the situation was back. “I'm going to show it to Oliver's uncle—the one he worked for. If Vinnie can't identify and verify, he'll know someone who can.”

“That's a really good idea. Once he does . . . Because either way it's valuable. Either reasonably valuable given the craftsmanship or scary valuable. So once he does, what are you going to do with it?”

“I'm going to take it with me tomorrow, to the compound. The security there rivals the U.S. Mint. It'll be safe while I deal with the rest.”

“Deal with how?”

“I'm working that out. Vinnie's bound to know collectors—big collectors. Or again, know someone who does.”

She had an excellent imagination, and put it to work trying to imagine someone with countless millions to indulge a hobby. She house-sat annually for a gay couple who collected antique doorknobs. And had house-sat over the winter for a twice-widowed woman who had a fascinating collection of erotic netsukes.

But multiple millions? She'd have to work harder to imagine that.
She needed a picture, she decided, a face, a background, even a name to give her a boost.

“There has to be something about this client in his files, in his correspondence, somewhere.”

“I'll go through it.”

“I can help with that. I can,” she said when he didn't respond. “Sometimes clients pay me an additional fee to organize their home offices or paperwork while they're away. In any case, she had to know. Oliver's girlfriend, Sage, had to know about this. All those intense conversations,” Lila continued, staring at the boarded-up window, remembering. “All the arguments, the excitement, anxiety. I took them as personal relationship stuff, but now . . . It had to be about the egg, the client, what he, or they, were trying to pull off.”

“She knew some,” Ash agreed, “but not enough. You said she was crying, pleading, terrified. I think if she'd known where Oliver stashed the egg, she'd have given it up.”

“You're probably right. She knew what it was, what he planned, but maybe not where he kept it. So she couldn't tell, and he was out of it, so he couldn't. Whoever killed them made a mistake, drugging him that way, assuming the woman would be the easier mark, would tell once she was scared or hurt enough.”

She rose, picked up dishes. “You've got things to do, people to see.”

He stood with her, took the dishes out of her hands, set them down again. Then closed his hands around her arms. “He'd have told her it was to protect her. ‘Listen, beautiful, what you don't know can't hurt you. I'm just looking out for you.' Part of him would've believed it.”

“Then it was partly true.”

“He didn't tell her because he didn't trust her, and because he didn't want her to have as much control as he did. His deal, his way. And she died for it.”

“So did he, Ashton. Tell me this.” She closed her hands around his
arms in turn—contact for contact. “If he could have, would he have told, would he have given it to this client to save her?”

“Yes.”

“Then let that be enough.” She rose to her toes, pressed her lips to his. Then found herself caught against him, sinking again, heart quivering as he took her under.

“I could distract you now.”

“No question about it. But.”

He skimmed his hands down her arms. “But.”

They went back in. She watched him set the leather box in the shopping bag, lay the tissue over it and the envelope, the money. “I need to leave tomorrow. There are some arrangements I have to finalize in person. Since I'm cornering you into the funeral, why don't you see if Julie will come on Sunday, if you'd be more comfortable.”

“It might be awkward for her and Luke.”

“They're grown-ups.”

“A lot you know.”

“Ask her. And text me the address where you're staying next so I'll have it. You said Upper East?”

“That's right. Tudor City.”

He frowned. “That's a haul from my loft. I'll get a car service for you when we schedule sittings.”

“Subways—you might have heard of them—run right through the city. So do cabs and buses. It's a miracle of mass transit.”

“I'll get the car service. Do me a favor. Don't go out again.”

“I wasn't planning on it, but—”

“Good.” He picked up the bags, started for the door.

“You should take a cab or a car rather than walk with that thing in that stupid bag. You should take an armored car.”

“My armored car's in the shop. I'll see you in a couple days. Call Julie. Stay in.”

Pretty free with the orders, she thought as he left. And he had a smooth and clever way of making them seem like favors or just good sense.