Chapter Eighteen #2
Marius held me a little tighter. “Those notes in the book you showed us… Were they his?”
I nodded, tempted to tell him everything. But I lost my nerve and pointed to a different artwork instead.
“That sketch of a horse by the window is a Toulouse-Lautrec.”
Marius did a double take at it. So, whew. Change of subject achieved.
“A real one or a forgery?”
I laughed. “Real. But it’s just a sketch, and it has some water damage, so it’s not super valuable.
” I sighed, thinking of the blank walls of the lower hallway.
“Apparently, my great-great grandparents had quite an art collection, but that’s all that’s left of it.
Everything was sold over the years to pay for upkeep. ”
I looked at a crack in the plaster ceiling, then thought about loose roof tiles. Was I fighting a losing battle?
“Hey.” Marius stroked my cheek.
I swallowed hard and looked at him.
“You’ll find a way,” he murmured.
I bit my lip. Who knew the cover boy for Bikes, Booze & Tattoos magazine would turn out to be such a sweetheart?
I took a deep breath, then faked a smile. “Yeah. As soon as I get back from Mallorca.”
His lips quirked, but then his mood grew somber. “About that. What are my chances of convincing you to stay here?”
I patted his chest. “Close to zero. But given that I’m in a fairly…er, agreeable mood…”
He cracked a grin. “Agreeable, huh?”
I nodded. Two mind-blowing orgasms would do that to a girl.
“…I would listen to what you had to say,” I finished. “That doesn’t mean I’ll change my mind, though.”
His eyes drifted over my body as he thought that over.
“What makes you so interested in the Van Gogh?”
My eyes drifted to the cluster of framed photos on the dresser. The one in the middle showed my family at the last Christmas we’d shared with my father, although we hadn’t known it at the time.
When Marius followed my gaze, I jerked my eyes to the window.
How much to tell him? Why make a secret of it at all?
Because memories of my father were too precious to share with just anyone, and even a man I trusted enough to sleep with didn’t automatically meet that bar.
“Let’s just say, I have a passion for art,” I said.
“Passion enough to risk your life?” His voice was flat. Dead flat, one might say.
“Maybe not that passionate,” I admitted a little weakly.
“So why not leave it to the experts?”
I made a face. “Sorry, but I doubt you guys are experts in post-Impressionist art.”
“No, but we’re experts in other things.”
I did my best not to imagine what that entailed.
“And expert enough to know you have no place on this mission,” he added — gently, to his credit. Or maybe he was just buttering me up for more sex.
“Right. The mission.” I made quote marks in the air. “A mission that doesn’t ensure that the painting — if it’s genuine — ends up in the right hands. It will just change hands, from one private collection to another.”
He shrugged. “You don’t know that.”
I made a show of tapping my lips. “Let’s see.
The person who wants this painting and knows where it is doesn’t contact the current owner or the special commission responsible for such things — and believe me, there are several that would be delighted to unearth a long-lost Van Gogh — such a person doesn’t exactly scream generous philanthropist, does he — or she? ”
He raised then dropped a shoulder. “I wouldn’t know. Not a lot of generous philanthropists in my line of work.”
I frowned at the photos on my dresser. Gordon appeared in the one taken at my college graduation, one arm around my shoulders and one around my sister’s. My mother was out of frame, behind the camera. My gratefully debt-free mother, and us, her debt-free children, thanks to Gordon’s generosity.
For the tenth time that morning, I prayed Marius and the others were wrong about him. And for the tenth time that morning, I seriously doubted it.
But how could we have missed the dark side of his business dealings in all our years of close contact?
“Let’s pretend for a minute that going after that painting doesn’t come with any risks,” Marius said. “You come with us, we get the painting, and you have a close look. It turns out to be the real deal…”
I nodded along, loving that version of events.
“…and we hand it over to Gordon, who hands it over to his client.”
I frowned.
He touched my chin gently, and I met his eyes. “Still no happy end. Not for you anyway. Could you live with that?”
“How can you live with it? Doing deals like that, I mean?”
His eyes clouded over. “Better not to ask about my morals, Mina. You’ll only be disappointed at what you find.”
“Would I?”
Of course you would, his stormy eyes promised. Stubbornly, almost.
Maybe. But something made me think there might be a rainbow hidden behind that tempest. Something to believe in. To trust. Maybe even to love.
Naive? Probably.
Definitely, the back of my mind warned. But I still couldn’t help believing in him.
“Anyway, it’s likely to be a forgery.” I forced myself to hit a lighter tone.
“Do you know enough to spot a fake?”
“I’m a…a very expert amateur,” I said truthfully.
My father had an entire dossier on lost artworks of World War II and the forgeries that had surfaced since, and I’d been over the details countless times.
I’d used that dossier for everything from a tenth-grade art project, to my college thesis, to designing an interdisciplinary unit for my school district.
At least half of the forgeries my father catalogued had been easy to spot, even for me.
I’d also interned at a Boston auction house, and everyone there, including the most highly regarded veterans, declared I had a sixth sense for discerning genuine art from forgeries.
So maybe a little ancestral magic had trickled down to me after all.
“Let’s say we quickly decide it’s a fake,” I said. “Then I’ll know not to care about it, right?”
“And if it is real?” Marius challenged. “You realize you can’t tell Gordon, right? He can’t know you know. And if we fail in this job…” He trailed off, then shook his head. “We can’t fail, Mina. That painting might be worth a lot, but what about us?”
So far, he’d been pretty cavalier about…
well, everything. His past, his present, his future.
Bene had done most of the talking when it came to how much was riding on their bargain with Gordon.
But for the first time, Marius communicated that too.
Not in words, but in the scratch in his voice, the anxious flicker in his eyes.
They could not afford to fail. Period.
So, shouldn’t I help them — and find a way to save that painting?
“I’ll think of something,” I bluffed.
He chuckled dryly. “That’s what scares me.”
I bit my lip. It scared me too. Bringing that painting into the public eye would be the ultimate way to honor my father. But what was one painting compared to the lives of four good men?
I caught myself there. What made them good? What proof did I have? Was I just being fooled by Bene’s charm, Roux’s sincerity, and Marius’s bad-boy appeal?
(I left Henrik out of the equation. No need to skew the curve with him.)
No, I decided. They were good at heart. I could sense it.
“Listen, if you want to succeed—” I started.
“We have to succeed,” he cut in.
“If you want to succeed, I can help. Bene said as much.”
Marius grimaced. “You need to take everything he says with a grain of salt.”
I ran my hand over his shoulder. “Is he wrong? About me improving your odds of success, I mean?”
Marius considered for a long time before answering.
“No. He’s not wrong.”
“Then it’s in your own interest for me to join in.”
He huffed. “No, it isn’t. Not when I’d worry about you every step of the way.”
“Hey! Do I seem so incapable?”
He snorted. “Of lying? Of sneaking around? Of anything illegal? You’re hopeless.”
“Gee, thanks.” I pouted.
He caressed my shoulder. “That was a compliment.”
I sighed. It was. What was wrong with me?
Marius went back to drawing circles on my shoulder. Gently, making it hard to keep up the pout. And, er…making him hard, as a stray glance told me.
“If anything happened to you…” he murmured.
My heart leaped. He cared. He really did!
“You’re not going to get all sappy on me, are you?” I teased quietly.
He huffed. “Sappy, no. But I might change the subject.”
He skimmed his hand down my ribs and across my stomach, leaving fire in his wake.
I drew in a sharp breath and snuck in another quick peek.
All systems go, from the look of it. I licked my lips.
“You just planning to look?” His grin was pure sin.
“I’m considering my options.” I did my best to sound prim. Then I looked at the clock, eliciting a deep, husky laugh.
“You got enough time to pencil me in?”
“You want sex? You’d better be nice.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, turning on his inner Boy Scout.
A very big, very sexy Boy Scout who moonlighted as a dragon.
I pictured huge teeth and wings, bursts of fire… Bad idea, because that only turned me on more.
“What about you?” I turned the question around. “Are you planning to just look?”
He shook his head solemnly, but his eyes danced over my bare body. “No, ma’am. Planning to make you forget how to breathe.”
I opened my mouth, only to discover he’d already proven true to his word. I was already breathless, dammit. And when he snuck a hand over my ribs, every thought scattered like ash on the wind.