Caught
Caught
Kristin Hardy
His fling with Julia was supposed to be over, but gorgeous bachelor Alex is determined to win her back.When the pair end up trapped in a museum together he has forty-eight hours – and some seriously saucy tactics – to reclaim his lover.
Caught
Kristin Hardy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Kathryn, for efforts above and beyond
the call of duty
and to Stephen
for being pure of heart
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud654ce76-027c-50a9-bb73-2811a49b0324)
Title Page (#u3d670e74-a5c8-5b1f-8111-c7fc241463b0)
Dedication (#u77a97738-96f2-5719-aded-dfb4eb6d47c9)
Acknowledgements (#u78c88f9a-954c-54b6-b448-58b801bc4df6)
Prologue (#uc5a5a284-b0dd-522f-9393-c750c1fbaac8)
Chapter One (#u24372355-1bb7-5c9f-9f86-dd60c621ce73)
Chapter Two (#u4bd671c9-0bd1-5fa0-bc5b-8d0d310846fb)
Chapter Three (#u46745f5c-9e19-57bf-8919-b4383b8788bd)
Chapter Four (#ua1bf8c04-e7ed-5a8a-b448-b40a07c5ad8d)
Chapter Five (#u6781101d-478d-5cb4-8c0d-799e324ebc2d)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Pamela Hatchfield, conservator, and
Rita Freed, curator of Egyptian art,
Boston Museum of Fine Arts;
and to Robert Burnham,
editor of the Napoleon Series.
The Legend Continues
The drums and cymbals sounded. The heavy, muskyscent of incense filled the air. Despite the heat outside,the Hall of A Thousand Pillars remained cool withits heavy stone roof and carved columns. It was theNaming Day.
Batu walked along behind her older sister Anan,slowly, matching the pace of her footsteps to the beatof the drums. The cloth of Anan’s garments shonewhite in the flickering torchlight; the gold-and-colored-stonebracelets on her arms gleamed.
Anan had to be exhausted, Batu knew, thinkingof the week of ceremonial cleansing, the fasting, theprayers. That morning they’d risen before dawn to gothrough the rituals, the bathing, the adornments, thedressing of Anan’s hair with precious pearls, broughtfrom afar.
It was not every day the ruler of the kingdom waspromised her consort.
A throng packed the Hall of A Thousand Pillars,waiting to see the shape of their future. For Anan wasnot to take merely a husband, but the man who wouldrule by her side, and from his strength would fl ow theprosperity and security of the realm.
Batu felt sympathy for her sister, for she knewthat Anan’s duty was a difficult one. Hers was a lifeconsecrated to the kingdom. How fearful it would be tobe in her spot, left without choice, forced to marry theone the priests chose for her.
For Batu was in love.
As she walked, she stared at the dais ahead, at therich, golden throne, so that she would not look to herside at the line of soldiers guarding their path, so thatshe would not meet the eyes of the one man she desiredabove all others.
Egmath. Even the whisper of his name in herthoughts felt like a stolen pleasure. Soon they wouldtell of their love, soon. But for now, it was theirs tosavor, still new in its full flower. When they informedthe priests and Anan, it would be a public thing; theywould be held separate until they’d married.
And Batu did not think she could bear it.
From the corner of her eye she saw the gleam of thegold cuff around his upper arm. She saw the strongmuscles of his chest, the proud carriage of his head. Andher heart swelled at the knowledge that this warrior,this man of honor, was hers.
Batu couldn’t help it—her eyes fl icked towardhim to meet his gaze. The rush of it stole her breath. Itseemed hardly possible that the love she’d always feltfor him had transformed into this tremendous emotionthat took her over. This was not the simple affection ofchildren for children.
This was the love of a woman and a man.
Batu followed Anan up the stairs to the dais andmoved to stand behind the golden throne as her sistersat. From there, Batu could stare out into the hall,looking at the torchlight flickering off the richly coloredpillars. Looking out at the throng that packed the hall.
Looking at Egmath.
On the steps stood Hortath, the eldest priest. At thefoot of the dais stood Lagash, the leader of the army,with his soldiers arrayed beyond him. And Egmath byhis side.
The music ended, and the silence of the hall wasbroken only by the rustling of the throng.
Hortath cleared his throat. “May all the gods of thisland give strength and health to our ruler, Queen Anan.Let great joy and celebration mark this day, the day theQueen will stand before you with her consort, a greatwarrior to keep the realm safe and bring forth heirs.”
But it wasn’t Anan’s choice. The priests made thedecision, as they did in so many things. Anan wouldfind out at the same time as the rest of the kingdom.She would take Lagash, they’d speculated, though shebore him no love and he was two score harvests olderthan she. She would take him into her life, take himinto her bed.
Batu ached for her sister.
Hortath raised his hands. “Let stand forth theconsort whom the gods have chosen.” He waited amoment for silence. “Let stand forth Egmath.”
And the hall erupted with cheers.
Let stand forth Egmath. The impossible wordsreverberated in Batu’s head. She felt stunned, asthough the knowledge held the force of a blow. It wasimpossible, unbearable. Egmath was hers, her destiny.But the priests wished to control his power and they’dsworn him to Anan.
At the foot of the dais Egmath looked frozen,unable to move. And she who knew him better than all,she who could read every nuance in his expression, sawpure agony in the liquid dark eyes. He looked at herand for a moment they locked eyes, not caring, finally,about the multitudes around them. For a moment,words, feelings flowed through his gaze.
My beloved…
My only…
My lost one…
My duty…
And Egmath stepped forward and strode up to thedais.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Prologue
Upstate New York Saturday, April 29
“I AM SO DONE WITH THIS,” Julia Covington said to herself.
And stepped out the door into thin air.
Not surprisingly, she dropped like a rock. That was why smart people knew enough to stay inside the airplane.
They’d lied when they’d said it was like flying. It wasn’t a bit like flying. Or floating. What it was like was falling, strapped to a jump instructor, her stomach up her throat, the wind flapping around her, nothing to hold her as she watched the distant—and really large, really hard—earth come inexorably closer.
And her mind, analytical to the last, couldn’t stop processing. Acceleration due to gravity was thirty-two feet per second squared, which meant every second she fell thirty-two feet per second faster. Until terminal velocity, of course, a mere hundred and twenty miles an hour, which she should be reaching shortly. On the ground she’d get thrown in jail for going a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Up here she just got charged a lot of money for the privilege. A hundred and twenty miles an hour—more than sufficient to make a nice little splat when she hit the ground.
She really hoped she’d packed the parachute right.
She glowered at her old college roommate Sasha, who’d come up with the whole extreme-sports idea. It’ll be good for you. Live life on the edge. Grinning giddily, Sasha waved.
“How did I let you talk me into this?” Julia shouted, words that were ripped away by the wind.
Sasha cupped one hand to her pressure helmet. “Whaaat?”
Julia shook her head. It didn’t matter. She knew why she’d done it—the same reason behind nearly every absurd thing she’d done over the past eight months. Since her divorce. Since her emancipation from Edward Cleary, her controlling, disillusioned Svengali of an ex-husband. Edward, who’d loved her as the naive student he could mold and instruct. Edward, who wasn’t at all prepared for a Julia with a mind of her own.
And she’d been demonstrating that mind of her own since the papers had been signed by trying every foolish thing she could think of that would make Edward turn purple with disapproval. So okay, maybe the incident on the balcony at Mardi Gras hadn’t been well thought through, but she’d crash the Miramax party at Cannes again any day.
It had been a pretty fun eight months.
And it was time to end it.
Too bad she hadn’t come to that decision before she’d leaped from the airplane. Timing, as they said, was everything.
She felt the tap of the jump instructor on her shoulder and she swallowed. The minute of free fall had whipped by astonishingly quickly. Now came the moment of truth, the moment she pulled the rip cord. A feather light landing or…splat?
Julia grasped the toggle. She stared at the ground, at the squares and circles of green rushing toward her. What was the saying—God protects fools and drunks? Well, she certainly wasn’t drunk, more was the pity, but she was the champion of all fools.
Holding her breath, she tugged—
And with a whispering rush, the chute unfolded smoothly, dragging her vertical. Suddenly, she was floating, with the world spread out below her. Okay, now this part wasn’t so bad. This, she could do. Now she had time to think, time out from the world to figure out what came next. Because she was going to be hitting ground eventually, and when she did, it was time for a change. Most women had transitional men after divorces.
She’d had a transitional life.
Time to move on. Of course, she’d had a transitional man, too—or at least a transitional purely sexual, as-often-and-outrageous-as-possible affair. She sighed wistfully.
Time to move on there, too.
Because when you came right down to it, she wasn’t wild Julia, skydiving, sex-in-public party girl. She was serious, practical, collected Julia. Anything else was temporary, a pose.
The past five minutes had graphically demonstrated that to her.
It was time to get her life back in order. When she hit the ground, she’d get started. When she hit the ground, it was time to make some changes.
1
Manhattan Friday, May 5, 1:00 a.m.
“GOOD LORD.” Alex Spencer rolled onto his back, gasping for breath, heart hammering against his chest. “No more Asian sex manuals for you, woman. You’ve ruined me.”
“I’ve ruined you?” Julia Covington managed through her own heavy breathing.
With her dark hair tumbled loose and wild around her shoulders and her skin gleaming pale in the light from her entryway, she looked like some odalisque in a seventeenth- century painting—beautiful, tempting and thoroughly addictive. Even now, looking at her made him dry-mouthed with desire.
If he’d been thinking straight, he’d have been worried.
Then again, he’d hardly thought straight once since that evening she’d appeared at the museum fund-raiser in a flame-hot red dress that had left nothing to the imagination. The dry, serious Ms. Covington, who never appeared in anything but utterly simple garments in shades of taupe, charcoal and cocoa, was suddenly a siren. He couldn’t have said what had shocked him more—the dress or the fact that she’d left with him.
And every moment since had pretty much been a toss-up.
“Yes,” he murmured against her mouth, “you’ve ruined me, milked me dry, left me a worn-out husk, old before my time.”
He could feel her smile. “I had some help with that, I think. Some very enthusiastic help.”
He worked his way down her throat, feeling the first faint stirrings of arousal yet again. “Come on, what do you expect a guy to do when you show up at the door in nothing but a robe?”
“What was I supposed to be wearing at eleven-thirty at night?” she said and caught her breath. “You were lucky I let you in at all.”
He smiled beatifically. “I got lucky, all right.” He moved his hands and felt her quiver in response. “And if you give me a minute or two, I just might be in a position to demonstrate my appreciation.”
“Well, you’d better do it quickly, Lothario,” she said— a little unevenly, he noted in satisfaction. “I have to get to sleep. I’ve got work tomorrow—today,” she corrected after a glance at the mantel clock. “Something you might want to think about, also.” She shifted away from him.
Alex calculated and tried for pitiful. “I spend four days in D.C. fighting the sharks for NEA funding, and you’re throwing me out?”
It didn’t work. “You told me last week it was going to be a schmoozefest where the most challenging thing you’d have to do was drink champagne and eat crab claws.”
“And you think that’s easy?” he demanded.
Julia just snorted and rolled to her feet, plucking her Chinese silk robe off the living room carpet as she rose. “Nobody made you come here, you know. You didn’t even call to warn me.”
And, as always, the minute they stopped touching, brisk, matter-of-fact Julia came back.
“I thought you women thought spontaneity was romantic.”
“We’re not having a romance,” she reminded him firmly as she tied the belt of the robe. Too firmly.
“Oh yeah, right. No relationship, no talking, just sex.” Alex reached for his trousers, pushed down the little surge of annoyance.
“Exactly. You sales types should know better than to try to renegotiate as you go along.”
“Marketing, not sales,” he corrected. “We don’t sell antiquities at the museum.” He stopped in the act of buttoning his shirt. “Unless you’ve got a sideline I don’t know about. In which case, we’ll have to find out whether they give conjugal visits to lovers.”
She frowned. “We’re not lovers.”
“Right. If we were lovers, I’d be going to your bed right now instead of getting kicked out into the hall.” Even he could hear the edge in his voice. “I came here because I missed you.” He’d come because he couldn’t make himself wait until the next day to see her. “You were off with your skydiving thing last weekend and then I was gone. It’s just been a while. I thought you might miss me.”
Julia got that countess look he’d learned she put on when she felt she was losing control of a situation. She handed him his shoes. “Alex, it was nice to see you, really. But it’s late.” Her voice was brisk. “We’re getting together tomorrow night anyway.”
“Good, because I think we should talk about this.”
Relief flashed into her eyes, a relief that made him wonder. “Good. I want to talk, too. But it’s late and I’m tired and husks like you need your sleep. You should go.”
And then he was standing out in the hall, garment bag and jacket in his hand, staring back at the door that was closed to him.
Like Julia.
JULIA SATIN HER OFFICE at the NewYork Museum of Antiquities, staring out the window past the enormous pillar that obscured half her view of Fifth Avenue beyond.
Alex Spencer. The good-looking charmer, the golden boy who succeeded at everything he touched, always a nice word for everyone. Always somehow sensing when she’d been down during the worst of times with Edward, making her laugh with a joke even though she’d said nothing to anyone about how she was feeling. It had been temporary insanity the day of the museum gala six months before when she’d bought that outrageous dress purely because it would have appalled Edward. It had been temporary insanity that had made her wear it to the gala and definitely temporary insanity that had had her leaving with Alex Spencer.
She’d quite clearly been out of her mind.
That was probably why the sex had seemed so amazing, just as the skydiving might have been amazing if she’d been in the right mood.
Or maybe not.
All right, bad example. Luck, that was it. It was just pure luck that Alex happened to have an instinct for how to touch her. It was just that charm monster thing he had going that always made her feel so good around him. After all, it wasn’t as though they had a relationship or anything. They had zero in common except sex.
Anyway, they’d rarely managed to get out even basic pleasantries before ripping one another’s clothes off most times, which suited her to a T. If she had to talk to Alex Spencer, she’d be forced to face how wrong, how ridiculous, how brainless she’d be to think of them as a match. The way she’d been with him, that wasn’t her. That was the artificial post-divorce giddiness. The real Julia was quiet, sedate and studious.
The real Julia was someone Alex Spencer wouldn’t give a second glance.
Which was fine with her, she thought quickly, because he wasn’t her thing, either, any more than public indecency at Mardi Gras was. She wanted a man who was serious, focused, someone who was an achiever, not a fun-loving, slick G-boy with no sense of propriety. Thinking of the chances the two of them had taken together made her squeeze her eyes closed.
Thinking of the chances the two of them had taken left her awash in lust.
She made an impatient noise. It was time to end their little arrangement, no matter how much fun it was. She was ready, finally, to go forward with her life, and that life didn’t—couldn’t—include Alex Spencer.
Putting Alex firmly out of her mind, Julia flipped through the latest issue of American Curator. A major auction of early Roman pieces was scheduled for fall, she saw, making a note to herself. Some recent reports of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian forgeries. And a story about the heist of the Zander collection from Stanhope’s Auction House. No leads there.
Reading the list of items taken was enough to make Julia’s eyes cross well before the end. A shame, but having met Zoey Zander at a few of her mother’s society dos, Julia would have laid even money that the “antique” items weren’t even authentic. The jewels, perhaps, but as for the rest of it, Zoey was more about flash than substance. Having it look right was more important than having it be right.
Julia had never understood that. To her, it was the history of a thing that mattered, the story she felt when she touched it. Absently, she rubbed a finger over the bit of scrimshaw that sat by her telephone, a personal treasure that she knew she shouldn’t touch with bare hands but was helpless not to. She could imagine the whaler who’d spent long, windblown days working at the ivory, setting it aside at the cry of “Whale ho.” If she closed her eyes, she could smell the salt tang of the sea, feel the motion of the ship, imagine the distant blue horizon and the pale vault of the sky overhead.
It had always been like that for her, since she’d been a child. She remembered going to the Metropolitan and staring at a pale blue glass cup in the antiquities wing, a glass that had been in the ground so long it had turned iridescent. It fascinated her so much she’d relentlessly pestered her mother, her nanny, her great-aunt Stella to take her to the Met over and over. An artifact from anancient desert kingdom, she’d read on the identification card and imagined a little girl like herself who might have drunk from it. And at night, she’d dreamed that she was the little girl, a princess whispering in the desert dusk with her favorite friend, a young boy who dreamed of becoming a great warrior.
She hadn’t had that dream for a long while.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
No matter how wrong for her he might be, something about Alex’s voice always sent a warm shiver through her, whatever she was thinking, whatever she was doing. Julia opened her eyes and gave her visitor a bland look. “Well, if it isn’t the infamous Alex Spencer.”
He leaned against her doorway, looking like some GQ model in his expensive suit and hand-dyed silk tie. “Miss me?”
She rolled her eyes. “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?”
“I can’t go away. I have to stick around to keep you from falling asleep at your desk.” He clicked his tongue at her. “Maybe if you got to bed at a decent hour, you’d be more awake.”
“Sometimes I get pestered by late-night callers,” she said.
“You shouldn’t answer the door, then.”
“I’ll remember that next time.” She folded her hands in front of her. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Spencer?”
“A favor.” He stepped into the office and her lungs took a breath of their own accord. Honestly, there was nothing the man could do that wouldn’t look good. He had a gift for it, from his cropped dark hair spiked with just a bit of gel to his glossy Italian leather shoes. And she knew from personal experience that he looked just as effortlessly handsome in shorts and a polo shirt.
Or in nothing at all.
Maybe it was the thousand-watt smile, the square jaw, those green, green eyes. Eyes currently glimmering at her in humor, making her realize she’d been staring far too long. “Making notes for a portrait?” he asked.
“Wondering if I maybe saw you on the post office wall,” she replied. “So what’s the favor?”
“Someone I want you to see today. My sister’s got a friend who wants to bring in something for you to look at. She thinks it might be valuable—”
“Alex, no,” Julia was groaning before he’d even finished. “No, no, no. You know how it works. They’ve gone to a flea market or on holiday to Morocco and they’ve got some piece of trash they’re convinced is the real thing.”
“Maybe it is,” he suggested.
“And maybe it’s a tourist tchotchke. Do you have any idea how often I’ve looked at those kinds of things?” she pleaded. “They’re never real. Trust me, antiquities don’t just fall in a person’s lap.” But he had that gleam in his eye that he always got when he proposed something outrageous, she saw sinkingly, that look that always seemed to get her to do what he wanted.
“Look, it’s a favor for my sister. Why don’t you just give it a look and see what you think?”
“I have a better idea,” Julia said silkily. “Why don’t you look at it?”
“I’ve got to leave for lunch with a big donor—” he glanced at his sleek Bulova “—like, right now.”
“And I’ve got meetings all afternoon.”
“Then it’s good she’s coming this morning, isn’t it?”
That stopped her for a moment. “Well, aren’t we sure of ourselves,” she said tartly.
“Oh, come on, Julia, it’s five minutes. It’s for my sister. Family.”
And if she didn’t watch it, she’d cave to him yet again, just as she had the night before. With everyone else she was intelligent, self-possessed, in control. It was only with Alex that she lost the ability to say anything but yes. “I don’t have time,” she lied. “I don’t know what made you think I’d agree.”
Alex stepped inside and closed the heavy wooden door. “Maybe I could offer you something in return.” He ambled across the room looking amused, as though he could read her like the Sunday Post.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked uneasily, already feeling the treacherous flutter in her stomach.
He didn’t answer, just leaned on the corner of her desk. “You know that your eyes always get a little darker when I come close?” he asked conversationally, reaching out to take her hand. “And they definitely get darker when I do this,” he added, touching the tip of his tongue to her palm.
And lust just exploded through her. For an instant, all she wanted was to have him naked, against her, on top of her. In her. Outside in the hallway, voices passed by the door, chattering about the weekend.
Inside, Julia froze, mesmerized by a touch, staring, boneless. And she’d just sat there and let him do it, she thought in annoyance. She wasn’t the type to just melt because some good-looking guy stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, stroked it and stared at her and made her think of what else those hands could do….
“Stop it.” She rose hastily. “We’re at work, remember?” And if she didn’t get at least a few feet away from him, she wouldn’t care.
“Forget it.” Alex stood and circled around the desk toward her, easy, relaxed, making her think of one of those clever, nimble border collies. Which, she supposed, made her the sheep. “Look, the door’s closed. And it’s not like I’m planting one on you, as much as I’d like to,” he added, approaching her. Julia took a few wary steps away. “Anyway, who’s going to care? It’s not like we work in the same department.”
“Wait a minute. I care.” She held on to the sudden flare of anger like a shield. “I’m not going to be the latest watercooler topic.”
He grinned. “Sweetheart, if people haven’t figured out there’s something between us by now, they’re blind.”
Sweetheart. He had no right to use the word to snatch the breath from her lungs. “Well, they’re behind the times, because there’s nothing between us,” she snapped. “It’s over, all right? Done.”
Alex blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Us. This…thing we’ve been having,” she said, throwing her hands in frustration. “I was out of my mind to start it, I’ve been out of my mind to keep it going and now I’m finished. Want me to be any clearer? I want you out of my life.”
She’d never seen Alex in anything but easy good humor, so it took her a moment to realize he was angry. “Where’s this coming from? You don’t just come out of nowhere and cut it off.”
“I’ll do whatever I want to.”
“You said we were going to talk tonight.”
“I’m done talking,” she flared.
He rounded on her. “That’s right, you don’t talk, do you? No talk, just sex. Don’t get to know each other, don’t find out about each other’s lives, just get together to scratch an itch. Well you know what, Julia? That’s a crock of—”
A knock on the door interrupted his furious words. For a breathless instant neither of them moved. Then Julia smoothed her trim claret suit and walked over to open the door. “Yes?”
She saw a couple outside, the woman looking tense, the man clasping her hand protectively. “Are you Julia Covington?” the woman asked.
Julia nodded.
“I’m Marissa Suarez. This is my…boyfriend, Jamie Wilson. Alex Spencer said you’d be expecting us.”
Alex stepped up behind Julia and the hairs on the back of her neck rose as though in a field of static electricity.
“I’m Alex,” he said, stepping around her to put out his hand to shake. “Nice to meet you both. Unfortunately I’m late for a lunch appointment, so I’ll have to leave you in Julia’s hands.” Only Julia would have seen the spark in his eyes. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to talk with you. Julia’s always happy to talk with anyone.”
JEAN LUC ALLARD walked into the museum, sneering inwardly at the guard who stood at the front door. So tall, so cocky in his uniform, with his gun. Pathetic. He could no more block a professional like Jean from his desires than could a child.
It was always so. Those who were robbed were the weak. He was one of the strong. No one bullied him, not since he’d become a man. Not since he’d left his whoreson of a father crumpled and bleeding in that Marseilles alley, maybe dead, maybe alive. Jean neither knew nor cared, as his father had never cared all the times he’d treated him like so much filth beneath his feet. It was a debt paid, nothing more.
Jean took what he wanted and prospered. After all, there was always a market for a man with certain…talents. His clients knew how to find him, and he knew how to get them what they wished.
Like the White Star amulet.
So beautiful, so alluring, a treasure that demanded to be touched. A seductive beauty that did not easily release the mind. When he’d sat across from his contact in the dark corner of that Parisian tavern, he’d been given only a description, a location, a name. Now that he had seen her, he knew what she could drive a man to do. He knew what a man might do to possess her.
And he knew his client would pay more.
All he needed to do was retrieve her from the foolish Suarez woman. Perhaps she had been lucky since he’d been forced to place the amulet in her bag to avoid detection, but it was of no matter. He had been punished for his foolishness, and now it was at an end. The White Star was his to take.
He walked down the hallway with its echoing marble walls. Friday midday and all the little people had scuttled out of their cramped offices for lunch before their afternoon of meaningless rote work, like rats on the wheel. Pah. Fools, all of them, laboring their lives away for nothing, telling themselves they had control, deluding themselves they had security when he could move among them at will and take whatever he wanted.
And what he wanted, he thought, listening to the voices inside the open office door, was his White Star.
2
Friday, 11:00 a.m.
“PLEASE, SIT DOWN,” Julia said, waving Marissa and Jamie to seats before she crossed to her own chair.
“Thank you for agreeing to see us,” Marissa said. “I’m sorry we interrupted you.”
“It was nothing.” Julia welcomed the distraction. It let her heart level. It kept her from thinking about the look in Alex’s eyes. Instead, she studied the couple sitting across from her. For they were a couple—she would have known it before Marissa had said a thing. It wasn’t the clasped hands, but something that hummed between them, something that tied them as surely as a physical bond.
She wouldn’t have put them together at a glance. Marissa looked too polished, too fiery for Jamie’s slightly rumpled, abstracted air. They seemed…glowing, somehow, though. Connected.
Shrugging the thought aside, Julia folded her hands. “So,” she said briskly, “what have you got?”
The two of them exchanged glances. Marissa moistened her lips. “I was just on vacation,” she began. “I wound up with something, and…”
Ah, the dreaded vacation find, Julia thought in resignation, but then she realized there was a tension about Marissa, a strain in her liquid dark eyes that didn’t bespeak a flea-market tchotchke. “And?” she prompted.
“Look,” Jamie broke in. “How about if we don’t tell you anything about it. Just…look at it. Tell us what you think. Tell us if you think it’s real.” He turned to Marissa. “Okay?”
She nodded and opened up the leather bag she wore strapped across her chest. Reaching inside, she brought out an object wrapped in cloth and laid it carefully on the desktop before unwrapping it.
And Julia felt the unholy punch of excitement in her gut. This wasn’t a vacation find brought in by some poor, deluded soul. This was the real thing. Where it had come from or how it had gotten there, she couldn’t say, but she could sense the power of its age as though it were radiating waves of antiquity.
It wasn’t colored as so many of the pieces of that time were, and yet she was as certain as she was of her own name that it was ancient. Thin veins of gold chased around the carved ivory, an ivory so white despite the years that it seemed to radiate somehow. It was shaped like a star, with a hole through the center. Looking closer, she saw shallow etching, so faint and small as to be almost invisible, worn away, perhaps, by the years. Gods, designed to carry the bearer to the afterlife?
Julia rummaged blindly in the desk drawer for the wooden box that held her loupe, unable to take her eyes off the piece. Who had carved it long ago, sitting in some dusty desert workshop, never guessing that his handiwork would leap across centuries, millennia? What had it meant? What power had he believed it held? Slipping the loupe in place, she looked closer.
Only to be astounded by the detail. The figures stood facing one another, hands clasped. A man, a woman, staring into each other’s eyes. In each of their breasts a tiny dot of embedded carnelian flamed red, seeming almost to pulse before her eyes. And the hairs prickled on the back of her neck.
Not gods. Lovers.
A ribbon had been strung through a faceted hole that pierced the amulet just below the joined hands. “Have you been wearing this?” Julia asked, glancing up.
Only to see Marissa’s cheeks tinting. “Only once,” she said, refusing to look at her boyfriend. “Before I realized it might be valuable. Is it?”
“At a glance I’d say it’s possible, but I’d have to spend more time looking at it.” Caution was the way to go. As certain as Julia felt, she’d seen the best and brightest fooled by clever forgeries. The article in her magazine just that day had detailed more than a few instances where shady dealers had profited. Something else nibbled at the edge of her memory. “Could you leave it here with me for a day or two?” she asked impulsively.
“But we—” Marissa objected.
“Hold on,” Jamie said to her. “It might be the safest place for it. Keep anything unexpected from happening to it.” He stared at Marissa intently and some message passed between them. “How is your security here?” he asked, turning to Julia.
She blinked. “The best. Why?”
“Just want to be sure it’s protected,” he said affably.
“We’ve got twenty-four-hour guards, electric eyes, motion detectors, the whole deal. The amulet will stay locked in my office safe unless I’m working with it. It looks familiar. I’ve got some source texts downstairs I want to consult.”
“We think it might be the White Star amulet,” Marissa blurted.
That was it. Stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection, Julia realized. But that heist had been carried out by professionals. She frowned. “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
Marissa flushed. “We wanted to be sure it was real,” she explained. “You have to admit, it seems pretty unlikely.”
Certainly they looked like the unlikeliest of thieves. Then again, the best thieves did. “How did you come by it?”
“The guy who stole it might have dumped it in Marissa’s bag at the airport. We think we’ve seen him,” Jamie added.
Which explained the questions about security. And the strain. Then again, the strain could have stemmed from taking a criminal risk.
“What do you think?” Marissa asked.
Julia looked down at the amulet, the lovers frozen hand in hand. The White Star. There were legends, she remembered vaguely, something fanciful about true love. “It’s possible,” she allowed. “But you have to understand, even if it is the Zander piece, it may not necessarily be the real White Star. It’s very difficult to authenticate antiquities, especially if the forgery itself is an antique.”
“But it was being auctioned off,” Marissa protested.
“Even the best experts aren’t infallible,” Julia said wryly. “We can all be taken in. Leave it with me for a few days. I’ll take some time to look it over, check to see if I can find anything definitive to authenticate it.” And if it were the real White Star, she could get the police involved.
“Whatever you can do,” Jamie said and rose.
Marissa stood and reached out a hand longingly toward the amulet but stopped short of touching it. “It’s so beautiful,” she murmured. “I don’t care if it’s real or not.”
“If it is the White Star, it’s not ours,” Jamie said gently, putting an arm around her shoulders. “We only got to borrow it for a little while.”
And to Julia’s everlasting shock, Marissa laughed and threw her arms around Jamie’s neck and gave him a kiss hot enough to vaporize metal. “And honey, we made the most of it.”
FOOLISH WOMAN, to boast of security. As though motion detectors and pressure plates could keep him out. As though a mere office safe could block him from his prize. The White Star was his in all but actual fact. It was but a matter of time.
He itched to hold her again. It was maddening to have her so close, yet out of his grasp.
But he was a patient man.
For now, hovering in the gallery near the entrance to the office wing held the most promise. He could linger, invisible to the imbecile guards, and watch. It was, after all, a museum, a place designed for lingering. He would bide his time, learn what he could. He could wait as long as he needed.
And when night fell, he would strike.
HELL, JULIA THOUGHT wearily at day’s end, probably bore a lot of resemblance to the twelve-person, three- time-zone telecon she’d just suffered through. There was nothing like trying to pull off a tricky negotiation with a host of stakeholders, none of whom you could see. Foolishly, naively, she’d assumed that because everyone stood to benefit from the multimuseum traveling exhibit she was hoping to pull together for early 2008, they’d all cooperate. Ha. Throw in egos, tempers and language barriers, and you had a recipe for chaos.
Meanwhile, she’d been almost entirely unable to keep her mind from drifting back to the amulet. And to Alex. Things with Alex were over, she reminded herself. She should put him out of her mind. The amulet, however…
The shadows outside had grown long by the time she spun the dial of her safe and drew out the unadorned wooden instrument box that held the amulet. It was the box that usually cradled her loupe, but she’d switched it for the Suarez woman’s piece earlier that day. Her loupe would do just fine unprotected for a short while. A three-thousand-year-old ivory amulet—if it was indeed the White Star—wouldn’t.
Julia put down a padded mat on her desk and laid out the amulet. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of it as the White Star, not until—unless—she demonstrated its provenance. That was her task. That was her challenge. But for a moment, just a moment, she let herself look. And with her hands freshly washed to remove all possible contaminants, she gave herself guilty permission to touch.
Power, warmth hummed up her arm.
She was a scholar, an educated woman with a disciplined mind. Hocus-pocus made her impatient, but her secret, the thing she told no one, was that she could feel something in the truly ancient objects, something beyond what her trained eye could see, beyond what her educated mind could know. There was some connection she made with the past.
And she could feel it in the amulet, stronger than she’d ever felt before. She felt age, hot desert air, the whisper of sand. And a bittersweet mix of love and sadness that had her jerking her hands away.
After a moment she shook her head. That was what she got for being ridiculous. She knew what she needed to do, Julia thought, snapping on gloves. Characterize, compare, research, document.
The fundamental steps to authentication all began with a physical record, of course. Digging out her digital camera, she began snapping photographs of the piece from every angle. Annie Leibovitz, she wasn’t, in oh so many ways. The very paleness of the ivory foiled her every effort; even with the light dimmed, she couldn’t capture the carvings. So she got out a pencil and paper and began to make a set of careful, painstaking drawings, studying the amulet through the loupe, front and back, from every side, recording every possible detail. Okay, so she wasn’t da Vinci, either, but at least she finished up with a detailed record.
Finally, she put the amulet into the box and rose. Characterize, compare, research, document. She already knew the museum had nothing precisely like it, which eliminated the need to compare. Time to get on to part three.
In the hall, she heard the familiar end-of-day sounds of people closing up shop and going home. For her, it was time to get to work.
“Hi, John,” she said to a passing security guard as she exited the office wing into the Mesopotamian gallery.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “It’s quitting time. Time to go home.”
“Is that why everyone’s been leaving every night?” She laughed and took the unobtrusive door that led down the stairs to the basement level, headed for the conservation lab and its rare-book repository, her favorite place in the whole museum.
She’d always loved books, from the time she’d been little. The day she’d seen her first truly old book, though, she’d felt a deeper excitement. There was something magical about holding a volume that had been labored over a thousand years before or a scroll written by a man long since dust, something that fascinated. There were secrets in the leather-bound tomes from centuries gone by, mysteries in the scrolls of papyrus and parchment. And now, she was on the ultimate bigger-or-better hunt, hoping to find a trail of clues that would lead her back through the ages.
Hoping to find the story of the White Star.
She had help. An indexing project a decade before had produced an electronic card catalog of the materials in the library, with summaries, chapter heads, even main topics covered. There was no substitute for the real thing, though, for the rich gleam of illuminated manuscripts, the careful script of the Greek codices, the writings of Pliny, Clio, Herodotus.
As she hit the crash bar of the door to the basement level and turned into the hall, she heard the tread of feet above her. Someone doubtlessly headed home from upstairs, she thought. Friday night, the time to meet friends for drinks, go to a club, relax. The museum was quieting, all the visitors gone and the staff quick to follow.
It was her favorite time.
The rapid tap of her heels rang in the hall. The museum’s Gilded Age founders had spared no expense in the construction of the building, even down here. Veined marble walls soared up to nine-foot ceilings. The ornate locks and hinges on the solid-oak doors made collectors salivate. The “modern” bronze light fixtures that had replaced the original gaslights sometime in the 1920s had become antiques themselves.
Julia stopped before one of the dark, heavy doors. Hefting a five-inch skeleton key, she fit the complicated head of it into the keyhole. And jiggled and fiddled with it the way she suspected people had jiggled and fiddled with it for the last hundred and forty years. Though they may not have cursed the locksmith in quite as creative terms as she did. Antique and still unpickable—that was what they told her every time she complained. Forget about unpickable; the damned thing was almost impossible to open when you did have a key.
Too bad the conservators weren’t still there to let her in. If it hadn’t been for the telecon from hell, she’d have gotten down to the lab earlier. Instead, she stood juggling the amulet box and folder of photos while she fought with the lock. Then again, Paul Wingate and his staff of conservators were known for keeping eccentric hours. There was no guarantee they’d have been around. Temperamental? Sure. Eccentric? Yep. Skilled? Beyond all doubt. And when you were dealing with history, skilled won the day.
With a snick the lock turned. “Thank God,” Julia muttered and swung the ponderous door open into blackness. She’d extended a hand for the switch when she heard a faint metallic sound behind her. A quick glance at the deserted hall, gleaming with a soft gray luster, showed no one in sight. The hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Probably an echo from the stairwell around the corner, she told herself firmly. The hard marble walls magnified sounds, made them travel farther than they normally would. Security, she decided, flipping on the lights. Probably doing their rounds.
Fluorescent bulbs flickered to life, gleaming anachronistically in a workshop that was a blend of nineteenth-, twentieth-and twenty-first-century technologies. Heavy wooden tables, smoothed from years of use, sat side by side with white-metal-and-Plexiglas fume hoods more suitable for a chemistry lab. On one table, someone was laboriously reconstructing a terra-cotta statue of three stone figures sitting side by side. By the door, a stone sarcophagus lay on blocks, underneath the railed gantry that they’d used to hoist it; the actual mummy lay draped on a wheeled table nearby. A tank held some pottery recently acquired from a dig outside of Luxor, soaking in a bath of deionized water.
Nearby lay a section of an Egyptian bas-relief from the museum’s permanent collection. Flaking pigment, Julia saw. Setting down the wooden box and the folder absently, she walked forward to study the work. The conservation staff appeared to be laboriously reattaching the flaking pieces fragment by fragment.
Five minutes of it would have had Julia’s eyes crossing. The conservators, she decided, deserved to be as eccentric as they liked. After all, it wasn’t everyone who could—
She jolted, whipping her head around to stare at the door. A sound. She’d heard a definite, distinct sound that wasn’t just her imagination and wasn’t just far away. It was here, right outside, coming down the hall. Not a snick of metal, this time, but the quiet pad of footsteps.
Footsteps where no one should be. It wasn’t a guard—they jingled and clanked from a mile away. This was someone else, walking down a basement hallway in a museum, an hour after closing, at a time everyone should have been long since gone.
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. The Zander heist had been carried out by a master thief. And if her nervous visitors actually had somehow gotten the White Star from the thief and passed it along to the museum, well, that thief might just be looking for it.
And that thief might just be here.
Quietly, Julia slipped out of her heels and closed her hand around one of the heavy lead weights that sat on the table next to the bas-relief. Holding her breath, she stole forward.
Out in the hall, the footsteps halted before the door. For a moment, everything was so silent she could hear the pulse thudding in her ears. Then with a creak the doorknob shifted.
Her heart jumped into her mouth. Swiftly, she raised her weapon. The door opened—
And in stepped Alex.
3
Friday, 6:50 p.m.
THE BREATH EXPLODED out of her lungs.
“Jesus, what are you doing down here?” she demanded, knees weak.
He eyed the weight she held. “Clearly, taking my life in my hands.”
“It would have served you right if I’d brained you, you idiot. You scared me to death.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, taking the weight out of her hand and setting it on the nearest workbench, “you look pretty lively to me.”
She glared at him as he shut the door, willing her system to level, not wanting to admit the relief she felt. Not wanting to admit how good he looked. “How did you find me?” she asked instead.
He shrugged. “I went by your office and saw you walking out of the office wing. I figured I’d follow you.”
“No one’s supposed to be down here now.”
“You’re here.”
“I’m working.”
He made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “Six fifty-four? You didn’t tell me you’d switched to swing shift.”
“It’s your fault.” She slipped her shoes back on and walked over to the entrance to the rare-books repository.
“My fault?”
“You brought those people in.” The modern door to the climate-controlled room opened with a little hiss of escaping air.
Alex fought a smile. “I take it the flea-market find turned out to be more exciting than you thought?”
“Possibly.”
“Where is it?”
Julia turned to point at the wooden box on the table by the bas-relief.
Alex ambled over. “I guess you can get high quality junk in Moroccan bazaars, if you’re a choosy shopper.” He picked up the box and cracked it open. “Why, I’ll bet that—” And then he just stared. “Good Lord,” he said slowly.
When his gaze met Julia’s, his eyes glowed green with wonder. The quick jolt of connection took her by surprise.
“What is this?” Alex gazed at the amulet, brushing a finger over it.
“Don’t touch it,” she said, but it sent a shiver through the pit of her stomach. She felt a vibration, as though it were making a sound at some frequency too low to be heard. She swallowed. “I don’t know what it is for sure. It could be nothing. It could be an antique forgery. Or it could be a three-or four-thousand-year-old amulet. Take your pick.”
He whistled. “Not bad for a flea market. So you came down here to poke around?”
“Exactly. Now, if you’ll just give me some privacy….”
“Not a chance.” He set the box aside. “Forget about the doodad for a minute. You said last night that we were going to talk, and that’s what we’re going to do. I think you owe me that, especially after the routine you pulled this morning.”
“There’s no need for it. Especially after this morning.” Julia stepped into the book repository. She just had to remember that it was time to break up with him and get her life in order, not time to fall back into bed with him, despite the little warm flare of arousal that had begun to radiate through her. This was nothing new, it was the same effect he always had on her.
It didn’t mean anything.
“I think we got things settled already,” she added, busying herself with the computer.
“Oh, I don’t think so at all,” Alex said easily, pushing the door back to follow her inside. “If you wanted to break up, then what was last night about?”
“Last night was a lapse.”
“A lapse? Is that what you call it when you put my—”
“A lapse,” she said firmly, struggling to push away the sudden vivid memory of straining naked against him. “It’s over with.”
“So you’ve said. I’d just like to be clear on why that is.” His voice was reasonable, his expression open.
Julia eyed him warily. She knew this Alex. This was the Alex who almost never walked away from a negotiation without getting what he came for. The Alex whose face said “trust me,” even while he was leading his victim down the garden path. This was the Alex who was exceptionally good at getting people to say yes.
People like her.
“We said from the beginning it was going to be casual, that when one of us decided things should be over, they’d be over,” she reminded him. That was good. Clear and indisputable.
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“I’ve had some time to think,” she said as carefully as though she were picking her way through the jungle, looking for booby traps, watching for the loop that might tighten around her ankle and whip her up to leave her dangling headfirst from a tree. “What I think is that it’s best for both of us to end this.”
“For us?”
“For me,” she amended, flushing.
“And when did you decide that? This morning?”
“I decided it last weekend. I’ve just been waiting for you to get home.”
“Last weekend, huh?” He rested an elbow against the shelves and scrubbed the other through his hair. “But now, here’s what I don’t get. You let me in last night, right?”
“Yes, but I—”
“And you came to the door in your robe, which didn’t stay on very long.”
“That’s because you—”
“And then you took off my clothes and dragged me down on your living room floor and let me touch your—”
“Skip it.”
“All of this after you supposedly decided we were finito.” His eyes sparkled. “So why was that?”
Because he had a way of making her forget her own name, let alone anything she wanted except him? “It was late, I was tired.”
“You seemed pretty frisky to me. Incidentally, did you find a button on your living room floor? Because you ripped one loose when you were taking my shirt off.”
“Well, if you’d gotten it off faster, I wouldn’t have had to—”
He grinned at her. “Yes?”
Dangling headfirst from a tree. Julia ground her teeth. “I got distracted.”
“I don’t know, you seemed pretty focused to me. I like those noises you make when you’re focused.”
Her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.” He reached out to touch the strands of hair that dangled from her chignon.
Julia jerked her head away. “You’re not listening either.”
“That’s because so far nothing you’ve said has made sense.”
Because he’d talked her in circles to where she couldn’t remember her points anymore. Her very valid points. Back to basics, she decided. “You’re not my type, Alex. And I’m not yours. This was just an…anomaly.”
He shifted. “And when I touch your anomaly, some very interesting things happen.” He reached out to stroke a finger down her throat.
Julia shivered. “I’m down here to work,” she said unsteadily.
“Go right ahead with what you’re doing,” he told her. “I’ll stay out of your way.” But his fingertips continued down, into the deep vee at the front of her jacket.
And her muscles weakened. How had he managed to get so close? She could smell a hint of his aftershave, spicy and clean. She could see the gold flecks in the green of his eyes. And she knew what came next, could already feel the tendril of heat curling between her thighs. It was the wrong thing to do, she knew it.
It was nothing she could stop.
“You’re not the kind of guy I go for,” Julia said, oddly breathless as she leaned into him.
“I can see that,” he answered, sliding his hands down over her hips.
“I like serious men.”
“I’ll buy some glasses.”
“This isn’t going to change my mind,” she warned him, but she’d already slipped her arms around his neck, her fingers up into his hair, because if she didn’t have him inside her, soon, she was going to die.
And then he crushed his mouth into hers.
It shouldn’t have overwhelmed her. For over six months, they’d been sleeping together. Kissing him wasn’t new. She should have been accustomed to it. It shouldn’t have started butterflies whirling in her stomach. It shouldn’t have made her react.
But she caught her breath and shivered at the taste of him.
And he was smiling, dammit, she could feel his lips curve against hers. He pressed her back against the shelves. “I always have had this librarian fantasy,” he murmured, nipping at her lips, dropping his hands down to unfasten the top buttons of her suit jacket. “Papyrus always gets me hot.” Then he filled his hands with her lace-covered breasts.
She couldn’t stop the moan.
She felt the shelves digging into her back, she knew they had no business doing this here, doing it at all. But his body was so hot against hers that she didn’t care. He was hard, she could feel it through his trousers and she twisted against him, wanting more contact, more friction, wanting to dispense with the infuriating barrier of clothing.
With an expert flick he unsnapped the front clasp of her bra, and slipped his hand up over her breast.
The heat, the quick friction was shockingly intimate in the midst of their surroundings. So forbidden. So arousing. Just the night before she’d lain naked against him and yet somehow here in this staid and sedate place, every touch felt like the first. The air was cool against her skin but his hand was hot, so hot. The raw silk of her jacket rubbed against one nipple; his fingers sent bolts of arousal from the other with every brush and squeeze.
It made her feel wild, wanton. It made her ravenous for more.
“God, you drive me crazy,” Alex breathed against her neck, inhaling her scent. What would she do if he told her just how much it turned him on that he could make her lose that calm composure of hers? That with mouth and hands he could turn her wild in his arms despite herself. He’d never guessed back before they’d gotten involved just how much heat was there, how much excitement. He’d never thought that she’d make him dry- mouthed with wanting. Now, just the taste of her throat, the feel of her pulse under his lips had his cock straining for release.
He felt her shiver, felt the rise of goose bumps as he worked his way lower, tasting the hollow at the base of her throat, the fragile skin on the tops of her breasts. Then he went lower still, desire rushing through him as he took her nipple into his mouth, heard her strangled gasp for air as he swirled his tongue around and over the hard little bud, feeling it furl and tighten.
Julia leaned back against the heavy wood shelves feeling only the slick heat of Alex’s mouth, his tongue on one breast, his hand tormenting the other. And oh, he knew what she liked, the rough scrape of teeth amid the slick caresses.
And the tightness, the growing tightness between her thighs where she knew she was growing wet, where she could feel the pulse of blood thudding.
“So just what do you have on under this?” he murmured, sliding his palms down her hips and up under her narrow skirt, using both hands to slide the fabric up, trailing along the silky hosiery beneath until he hit the tops of the thigh-highs she’d begun wearing habitually since they’d been involved. “Oh, honey,” he said explosively.
And then his fingers journeyed higher, slipping under the edge of the silk and lace she wore. He stroked her with a touch that shot through her like fire.
And oh, his hands were persuasive, fingers moving, circling, teasing her clit. She couldn’t get her breath. She clutched him against her because the heat and the pressure and the friction were tightening and tightening and carrying her along in a mad rush of sensation. She burst into orgasm, shaking against him, gripping him as the only solid thing in the universe.
It left her weak and gasping, half dizzy with reaction. With all that they’d done in the past, it had never been as intense as this. But it wasn’t enough, because he was still kissing her, and to her shock, need built afresh even as the orgasm receded.
Sudden compulsion flowed through her. She had to touch him. She fumbled for his zipper and he groaned as she brought him out, hard and heavy. They might not know each other at all but she knew how he liked it. She knew how to make him shudder and jolt. She knew how to take him so close to the edge, push him so far that he was grinding his teeth to maintain control.
Sinking to her knees, Julia breathed on the swollen head of his erection. She teased it with the tip of her tongue, licking first one side, then the other, quickly, experimentally. And then she slid his cock into her mouth in one quick rush, taking it as deep as she could, ripping a helpless moan from his throat.
It intoxicated her, as it always did. It aroused her. Maybe she was a little out of her depth with Alex, but when she was tasting him, feeling him hard against her lips, feeling his body quake with her every movement of her tongue, she was the one in control. She could play him, speeding up the motion, slowing it down. She could stroke him with hand and mouth and do everything she could to bring him to the edge because she knew he wouldn’t want to come that way. She wanted to tease him. She wanted to push his self-control to the limit until he had to beg her to stop.
And she smiled when she felt his hands on her shoulders, dragging her up.
“Let’s go down here to the reference desk,” Alex said huskily, leading her through the stacks to the row of reading tables against the wall.
“You know, when I was in high school, I had this thing for our librarian.” He walked Julia back until she felt the seat of one of the wheeled chairs against the backs of her knees. “She was fresh out of school, so she used to wear her hair up like yours and these tidy little suits, I guess to make herself look older. I used to fantasize about her, about what she had on underneath. Maybe I should check that out before you check out my books, Miss Covington.” He slid Julia’s skirt up and pressed her into the chair.
Shrugging off his jacket, he knelt before her. Strong and warm, his hands parted her thighs. His eyes were hypnotic. She was dissolving she was so wet, so ready for him to touch her.
“Look at you, so prim in your suit, with all these books around,” he breathed, leaning in to lick her thigh above the stocking, sliding his hands up over her breasts. His breath was warm as a touch, sending little shivers through her, all of it focused on that spot where she ached for him. “Oh, yeah, you’re better than any fantasy.”
He draped her legs over his shoulders, then hooked the scrap of silk out of his way. Helplessly Julia let her head drop back. She felt him trace one finger, then the tip of his tongue through those soft, private folds, making her shudder. And then the time for teasing was done and he found her with his mouth in a slick caress that had her crying out and arching against him.
If he’d tantalized before, now he was relentless, driving her up, eyes hot and intent. He didn’t keep to a rhythm but changed his speed and touch continuously until she could only quake and gasp, waiting for the next touch, waiting for the next taste that would send her over.
She heard a high-pitched gasping and she realized that it was her, and her world focused down to the heat of his mouth, the torment of his hands on her breasts and the want, the want, the want that dragged her closer, always closer as every muscle in her body tightened into the ultimate arousal. So close, teetering on the edge.
When he pulled away, she cried out, until she realized that he’d dragged out his wallet to get at his emergency condom, sheathing himself and thrusting into her with a slick, hot rush that had her crying out again. Then he was moving in her, hot and hard and relentless, using the chair to slide her on and off his cock, teasing her with little strokes and then thrusting himself home hard. And giving her that sweet, good friction that took her up and made everything he’d done with his mouth seem inconsequential next to this hard, insistent reality that dragged her up and up until she was balanced on the edge. And then with another stroke she went over, so that she was falling, shuddering and clenching around him. It was that, finally, that sent him surging against her for a handful of hard, quick strokes to spill himself even as she still shook.
And then Julia heard the noise through the still open door.
She tensed. “What was that?”
“What?” Alex asked hoarsely.
“That noise. Outside.” She scrambled away. Heart hammering, she dragged down her skirt, buttoning her jacket and fighting a growing sense of embarrassment and horror.
Someone was there, and heaven only knew who. What if they’d heard? What if they’d seen? What if she and Alex were busted? Catching her breath, expecting the worst, she hurried out the open door into the main conservation lab.
Only to find it empty. No one there, she saw with a rush of gratitude. No guards, no conservators, no staffers wondering what was going on in the stacks. Just a quiet, empty conservation lab. They hadn’t gotten caught, despite taking an absurd chance. Relief flooded through her.
And then she saw.
“Alex. The box.”
“The box?”
“The amulet,” she almost wailed. “Oh, my God. Did you move it?”
“I put it right back where it was. Right there.” He pointed to the table with the bas-relief, but where the open box had been now sat…
Nothing.
Anxiety swept through her. She couldn’t stop staring, blinking as though the box would magically appear.
But it didn’t. No box, no amulet, just the folder of photographs and drawings, with the smooth table behind it.
The White Star was gone.
4
Friday, 7:30 p.m.
ALEX STARED AS JULIA rushed over to the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Someone took it,” she said, practically vibrating with tension. “It was here and they took it. It wasn’t an accident, they had to know what it was. We’ve got to catch them.” She clutched at the knob.
“And what then? Say, ‘Give it back pretty please’? No way. We call the guards.” Alex spun around to grab the nearest phone.
Only to hear silence. “It’s dead,” he said just as she said, “It’s locked.”
“What do you mean?” They spoke at the same time, stopped at the same time.
And stared.
Alex answered first. “The phone line’s dead. Did you hear anything about them taking the phones down this weekend?”
“I don’t recall, but we’ve got a bigger problem than that.” Julia twisted the black knob in her hand. “The door won’t open.”
“Try it again. It’s an old door. It’s probably stuck.”
“It’s not stuck.”
Impatiently, he strode over to give it a careless tug. He was surprised to feel it solidly unmoving. His eyes narrowed and he took a better grip and pulled.
It made no difference. Okay, not humorous. Alex twisted the handle, listening. “The knob’s moving. Maybe something’s out of whack with the linkage.”
Julia shook her head. “There shouldn’t be. They take good care of it. It’s hard to get the key in the right spot, but once you do, it turns smooth as—” She broke off.
“What?” Alex asked, but she was already leaning in to stare at the lock.
“I always leave the key in the lock when I come down here because it’s so hard to get it in the right spot on the tumblers.” She put her eye to the keyhole. “And it’s still there.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
She didn’t answer and he saw the familiar air of abstraction on her face. She could say all she wanted to that he didn’t know her, but he could see when her mind was vaulting along one of its lightning chains of thought.
She just wasn’t always good about clueing anyone else in.
He watched her cross to the tool bench and search its surface. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Julia? Help me out here.”
“I just want to check and see if…aha!” She held up a piece of thin wire triumphantly. “Here.” She came back over and threaded the wire between the door and jamb, then slid it up and back down along the edge of the wood. “The crack’s too narrow to see into but—” The motion of the wire stopped. “See? Something’s blocking the wire. It’s the bolt, thrown over. This door is locked.”
“So we unlock it.” It seemed simple enough, until he realized there was no thumbscrew below the knob for unlocking it from the inside. “What kind of damn fool locksmith doesn’t put a manual latch on the inside?” he growled.
“One who wanted things to be really safe.”
“Well, I’m feeling a little too safe. Let’s figure out how to unlock it.”
“I’m not sure it’s that easy,” she said slowly. “The key’s still in it.”
He felt the first flickers of frustration. “So? It’s an antique. How hard can it be? We get some tools and we pick it.”
“You can’t pick it. The key’s in the way. You can’t reach the tumblers.”
Alex reached for her wire. “Then we push the key out.”
“You can’t,” she said faintly. “Once it’s locked, you’ve got to turn the key back a full revolution to get it out of the keyhole. The end of the key has these flanges….”
He eyed Julia. “You’re not being very helpful.”
“It’s an incredibly complex but an incredibly good lock. That’s why they left it in place during all the renovations. There’s a line of safes over in the UK that are based on this design.”
“Well, we’ve got to figure out a way to get out.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re not going to get out through that door without help.” She swallowed. “We’re locked in.”
ALLARD WALKED DOWN the street in the gathering twilight, sleek and satisfied as a cat with a dish of cream. She was his again, his. The days and nights of frustration meant nothing. Now he had only to slide his hand into his pocket to feel her, warm and smooth against his fingers.
It had been laughably easy to stay in the museum undetected, to watch, to wait. He’d expected to break into the woman’s office once night had fallen and the guards retired to their control room. Who’d have guessed she would make it so easy for him, walking out of her office with a box that so obviously held something precious?
Instinct had told him to follow. And there, his impatience had nearly betrayed him, when he’d almost found himself stumbled upon by the lovesick fool on her heels. Idiot, he could hear his father’s sneer. Amateur. Only quick reactions had let Jean whisk out of sight in the stairwell to pursue the woman’s pursuer.
Ultimately, it had been to his advantage, for he’d seen the cameras as the young fool had opened the door to the basement. Of course, a clever man carried a small, telescoping steel rod for just such occasions, a rod that could nudge a camera a crucial fraction of an inch, enough to leave a small area unmonitored without making a change large enough to alert the guards.
Once he’d done that, it had been easy to move down the hall undetected, to find them. Of course, taking the amulet had been almost no challenge at all with the two so absorbed in one another. Bah. Only a weak man lost sight of the world because of a woman. And weak men made mistakes—mistakes that could help him.
He’d listened as their discussion had quieted, crept into the outer room as they’d touched one another among the books. And he’d watched a moment, as any man would, savoring the gleam of the woman’s bare breasts and feeling his body tighten as she moaned.
But he had not come there for pleasure. He’d come for the amulet, and when he’d opened the box to see the glowing ivory of the White Star, he’d nearly shouted aloud in triumph. He hadn’t, though. Instead, he’d tucked the box into his jacket and stolen to the door, turning the key behind him. He’d already taken a moment to provide them with a few…challenges.
And now, he was on the street in the growing darkness, the place he had always felt most strong. And he was strong. He’d recovered his prize. She would bring him pleasure, she would bring him respect.
And she would bring him rewards beyond measure.
JULIA’S FISTS ACHED from hammering the heavy oak door. Tired and hoarse from yelling, she tucked her little fingers in her mouth and blasted a shrill whistle.
Alex paused in what he was doing to give her a startled glance. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Summer camp.”
“Not just another nice society girl,” he observed.
She hammered at the door again, cursing a blue streak. Alex raised his eyebrows. “Definitely not another nice society girl.”
“I can’t believe no one’s coming.”
“It’s Friday night,” he said mildly. “Everyone’s long gone.”
“Did you try the other phones?” she asked.
“Dead,” he said.
“How can every single phone in the place be out?” she fumed, picking up a receiver only to slam it down.
He snapped his fingers. “Not every phone,” he said, spinning toward the book repository.
“Wait.” Julia scampered after him.
Alex snatched his jacket from the floor. “I am such an idiot. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.” Digging into the breast pocket, he pulled out a slim silver cell phone. “Ladies and gentlemen—” he flourished it “—we bring you rescue, courtesy of your local wireless network.”
“That’s not your regular phone.”
“I upgraded,” he said with relish. “I’ve got half of my CD collection loaded in this baby, plus it’s got a high- res camera and it’s Web-enabled.”
She gave him the same look his mother had given him in fourth grade when he’d listed the many attributes of a new Transformer he absolutely required. “Does it tie your shoes for you, also?”
“When I need it to.” A succession of images flowed across the screen as it booted up. “But the best part is that it gives me serious connectivity.” He punched up the number and held the phone to his ear.
“For a mover and shaker like yourself, a must.”
“Hey, you never know when Blaine Trump will be calling to donate a few hundred grand.” His brows drew together as he studied the screen.
“What?”
He walked out into the main lab, holding the phone in front of him and watching the display. “Just trying to get a signal.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get it,” he said, trying different areas of the room.
“And security’s going to be by any minute.”
“They might,” he said reasonably. “Sometimes the signal comes and goes.”
“And right now it’s mostly going, right?”
They stared at each other.
“Maybe in a little while,” he said, setting it down on one of the tables.
“Don’t set that down and forget where you put it,” Julia said. “We might need it later. Why don’t you have a belt clip?”
He sent her a revolted look. “You’re joking, right? Only tech-support dweebs at Computers R Us wear belt clips.”
“Which you are not.”
“Which I, most definitely, am not. My phone’ll be just fine here,” he said, setting it on the table. And then he stared beyond it. “What is that?” he asked warily.
“Where?”
“There. On the table.” He pointed to a long form lying on a wheeled table behind the sarcophagus and shrouded in translucent plastic.
Enjoyment glimmered in her eyes. “That’s Felix.”
“Felix?”
“Our new mummy.”
Alex pressed his lips together and walked over closer to it. “A mummy. You mean like a four-thousand-year-old dead-guy mummy?”
“Thirty-five hundred in this case, we think, but yes. We just got him in a few days ago.”
“Can I look at him?”
“You might not want to,” she cautioned, but he’d already pulled up the plastic.
“Jesus. You didn’t tell me he was unwrapped.”
“Only partially. Felix has had some challenging times.”
“So I smell.” It was faint but distinct. Now that he’d lifted the plastic, there was the sweet scent of decay. Still, curiosity overcame his initial surprise, prompting him to raise the sheet again. “Dressed for casual Friday, huh, Felix?” He dropped the sheet back down and focused on the problem at hand. “Okay. So let’s see…locked door, no windows, no phones, no one coming when we call, and a thirty-five-hundred-year-old mummy. This is beginning to get entertaining.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Julia tucked the plastic back in place. “Personally, I’ve got plans for this weekend. I can’t stay here.”
“Not even to keep Felix company?”
“No.”
“Not even to keep me company?” He stepped up behind her to rest his hands on her hips, those deliciously slender, surprisingly flexible hips, and leaned in to nibble on her earlobe.
“Alex.” She twisted away. “This is serious.”
His mouth curved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said easily. “The only place people get locked in for days is the movies. Security will be by in a while to let us out.”
“Let’s hope it’s soon.”
“Anyway, there’s got to be another way out of here.” He began to prowl the room. “No extra doors in the book room, right?”
“Right.”
“What’s this room in here?” he asked, opening the door next to the repository.
“The scientific lab.”
He reached inside to flip on the lights and blinked. “Christ. What are all these gadgets?” The room was as modern as the rest of the lab was retro, with shining white walls and gleaming chrome-and-black equipment.
“Oh, a scanning electron microscope, a laser, a Fourier—”
“Okay, I get it.” He scanned the room and ducked back out. “If we’re bored later, you can teach me how to use them.”
“We’re not going to be here later, remember?”
“Exactly.”
The main conservation lab was in the shape of a thick sideways L balanced on its short leg. To the right of the main door lay the inner wall that formed the library and the scientific lab; combined with the rest of the L, it formed a rectangle maybe fifty feet deep by a hundred feet long.
“What’s down here?” Alex asked, skirting the outer wall of the scientific lab to follow the long arm of the L.
“More workspace. The supply room. The chemical shower. The bathroom.”
“Thank God for small favors. What’s behind this door?” He twisted the knob with no more success than the front door.
“Oh, that’s the head conservator’s office. Paul Wingate. It’s just a nook, though. No way out.”
“Let’s not rule anything out sight unseen.” He studied the modern lock on the door. “That one we might have a chance at.”
“For all the good it will do you. And there aren’t any ways out of the supply room, either, so I guess that means we’re stuck.”
“Not for long. I’m telling you, security will find us.”
Julia paced across the lab. “What if they don’t?”
He couldn’t help watching her. “We get out Monday morning when everybody comes to work.”
“I can’t wait that long. I can’t miss this thing tomorrow night.”
“What is it?”
“The New York Performing Arts Institute gala. My mother’s pet project. She’s been working on it for four months and if I’m not there, I’ll be hearing about it for at least that long.” She moved restlessly across the lab, scanning the walls and ceiling, picking up the phone again, only to shake her head.
“What about a computer?” Alex asked suddenly.
“A computer?”
“Sure. E-mail. The Internet. We ought to be able to get a message to someone, even just to ask them to call the cops for us.” He looked around. “Don’t they have one in here?”
“I don’t know,” Julia said dubiously. “There’s a computer in the rare-book repository but it’s off-line, just for indices and electronic research.”
“Nothing out here?”
She shook her head helplessly. “Too much dust from all the stone. It’s not the greatest environment. Most of the staff have cubes upstairs. Paul’s the only one with an office down here.”
“And his is locked.” Alex walked over to the workbench.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for some wire.”
“And that would be because…?”
“I’m going to try to pick that lock.”
“Oh, of course. Got experience at it, do you?”
“I’m a man of many talents.”
She watched as he located some stiff wire and used pliers to bend the top quarter inch to a right angle. “Did you apprentice with a second-story man in your youth?”
“Hey, I got my Boy Scout merit badge in B and E.”
Julia snorted but watched with interest as Alex nudged his ersatz picks into the lock on Paul’s door. “I should object, you know. You’re violating the privacy of a staffer.”
He flicked her a glance. “Duly noted. I’ll lock up again when I’m done, and if you want to stay in here as penance when they come to let me out, feel free.” He closed his eyes as he manipulated the tools, completely focused on the hidden workings of the lock.
And somehow, she found herself completely focused on him. This was ridiculous. Quite aside from the fact that she’d already decided their…arrangement was history, she had far more important things to worry about than the length of his lashes and the way his five- o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.
She made herself look away. “I don’t see what good it’ll do you if you get in, anyway. You don’t know his password.”
“It might be scribbled down somewhere. It might be something common. Mine’s set to remember so that all I have to do is hit Enter.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re not supposed to do that.”
He flicked her an amused look. “Uh-oh, are you going to tell?”
“Alex—”
“Look, it’s a long shot, but we might get lucky.”
“We’ll be lucky to even get through the door.”
“When have I not been lucky?” Alex grunted. “Got it!” Rising, he stuck a hand inside to turn on the light, swinging the door wide and stepping into the familiar chaos that was Paul’s world.
Alex stared, hands on his hips. “Man, how does he get any work done in here?” he asked in disgust.
“People who break and enter don’t have a whole lot of room for complaint,” Julia pointed out, but she didn’t blame him.
The eight-by-ten office was crammed with books, papers and tools, cast-off silicone molds of carvings and a host of other things Julia couldn’t identify. The desk nudged against the far wall was nearly covered with papers and books. The spare chair merely provided a resting place for still more. A chemical-stained lab coat hung from a hook on the door.
Not for the first time Julia wondered how the irascible conservator ever managed to find anything. Brilliant, he might be, but neat was not his strong suit.
“How does he rate a laptop?” Alex demanded in an injured tone. “I begged for six months and they wouldn’t give me one.”
Julia bit her lip to cover a smile. “He travels to a lot of conservation conferences.”
“I travel.”
She drew up the extra chair. “I guess he’s cuter than you are.”
“Hard to believe,” Alex muttered dusting the computer off. He reached beyond it to pick up a coffee mug stuffed with metal rods. “What is this stuff?”
“Oh, scalpels, dental tools, glass stirrers…” Julia reached over to pull out a hollow brown rod that looked like a paintbrush without the brush. “And African porcupine quills.”
“African porc—” Alex gave her a suspicious look. “You’re joking.”
“Nope,” she said serenely. “They make great probing tools.”
“And the bags of dirt?”
“Excavation dirt. We save everything. You never know when you might need it.”
“You’re all nuts,” he muttered, staring at a jumble of small stone and plaster blocks at the back of the desk. He stacked some books on one of the piles and reached for the laptop.
“Oh, don’t put those there.” Adroitly, Julia shifted the books away from the wooden box Alex had set them on. “That’s an artifact box.”
“And it’ll protect whatever’s inside. Isn’t that the point?”
“The last thing we need is for it to fall over or something.” Julia glanced more closely at the box and made a noise of annoyance.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.
She blew out a breath. “Paul. He’s got this little problem with following procedure. This is still supposed to be in inventory storage. It’s still got the pull slip on it.” Julia cracked open the top to reveal a stone figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead.
“Maybe he’s trying to clean or do conservation stuff or whatever.”
“He still should have done his paperwork. He didn’t even notify me.”
“‘Your rules mean nothing to me’?”
“More like ‘My work is too important for me to worry about your stupid bureaucracy.’”
“Sounds like a charmer. So why don’t you lay down the law to him?”
Julia sighed. “It’s not my place. He doesn’t report to me. And, anyway, he’s really, really talented. Last summer, we cleaned up our inventory. We get lots of bits and pieces of things in here from digs, stuff that we don’t know where it belongs. Paul found the nose of Xerxes.”
Alex’s mouth twitched. “The nose of Xerxes?”
“A marble bust we’ve had for forty years. For forty years, it’s been missing its nose and Paul recognized it at a glance. He’s got this amazing sense for the shape and form of things. When someone’s that good, you cut them a lot of slack.”
“So he’s sloppy. Nobody’s good at everything,” he observed. “Except me, of course.”
“Except you,” she said drily. “Although you might wait to congratulate yourself until you’ve gotten the job done.”
He gave her a look that shivered into her bones. “I always get the job done, darlin’,” he drawled.
“Big talk.”
“It’s not just talk. You of all people should know that. Anyway, sloppy isn’t always a bad thing,” he said cheerfully. “Our boy slapped his computer shut a little too quickly, before it finished closing down.”
“So?”
He gestured at the e-mail application on the screen. “So everything’s still running. That means we’ll still be online.”
Despite herself, she was impressed. “That’ll help. Good job.”
“Feel free to shower me with all the affection you like,” he invited.
Julia rolled her eyes. “Just send the e-mail, will you? We’ve got to get out of here and notify someone that the amulet is gone.”
“Long gone, at this point. It’s not like the cops are going to find them.”
“I hope they do. That amulet might be the White Star, stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection.”
“The Stanhope heist?”
“Yes.”
Alex’s fingers flew over the keys. “What is it, Egyptian?”
“I don’t think so. A neighboring kingdom. There’s some sort of a superstition about it, that it brings good luck to the pure of heart.”
Alex made a noise of irritation at the computer. “It didn’t bring good luck to us.”
“You’re hardly pure of heart.”
“But I’m pure in other places.” He frowned and tapped some more keys. “So what happens with Marissa?”
“Don’t remind me,” Julia groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “How am I going to tell her? She brings the amulet here to me, I tell her I’ll take care of it and it winds up stolen. It’s going to reflect terribly on the museum. And me.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a bigger problem than that,” he said grimly.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to the screen. “The network’s down.”
5
Friday, 7:45 p.m.
“WHAT?” Julia stared at Alex.
“The network’s down. Look.”
Network not available. The black letters on the screen seemed to vibrate, taunting her. “How can it be down?” she demanded. “I don’t believe this. No phones, no cell phone, no Internet. What the hell’s going on?
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Kristin Hardy
His fling with Julia was supposed to be over, but gorgeous bachelor Alex is determined to win her back.When the pair end up trapped in a museum together he has forty-eight hours – and some seriously saucy tactics – to reclaim his lover.
Caught
Kristin Hardy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To Kathryn, for efforts above and beyond
the call of duty
and to Stephen
for being pure of heart
Table of Contents
Cover (#ud654ce76-027c-50a9-bb73-2811a49b0324)
Title Page (#u3d670e74-a5c8-5b1f-8111-c7fc241463b0)
Dedication (#u77a97738-96f2-5719-aded-dfb4eb6d47c9)
Acknowledgements (#u78c88f9a-954c-54b6-b448-58b801bc4df6)
Prologue (#uc5a5a284-b0dd-522f-9393-c750c1fbaac8)
Chapter One (#u24372355-1bb7-5c9f-9f86-dd60c621ce73)
Chapter Two (#u4bd671c9-0bd1-5fa0-bc5b-8d0d310846fb)
Chapter Three (#u46745f5c-9e19-57bf-8919-b4383b8788bd)
Chapter Four (#ua1bf8c04-e7ed-5a8a-b448-b40a07c5ad8d)
Chapter Five (#u6781101d-478d-5cb4-8c0d-799e324ebc2d)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Pamela Hatchfield, conservator, and
Rita Freed, curator of Egyptian art,
Boston Museum of Fine Arts;
and to Robert Burnham,
editor of the Napoleon Series.
The Legend Continues
The drums and cymbals sounded. The heavy, muskyscent of incense filled the air. Despite the heat outside,the Hall of A Thousand Pillars remained cool withits heavy stone roof and carved columns. It was theNaming Day.
Batu walked along behind her older sister Anan,slowly, matching the pace of her footsteps to the beatof the drums. The cloth of Anan’s garments shonewhite in the flickering torchlight; the gold-and-colored-stonebracelets on her arms gleamed.
Anan had to be exhausted, Batu knew, thinkingof the week of ceremonial cleansing, the fasting, theprayers. That morning they’d risen before dawn to gothrough the rituals, the bathing, the adornments, thedressing of Anan’s hair with precious pearls, broughtfrom afar.
It was not every day the ruler of the kingdom waspromised her consort.
A throng packed the Hall of A Thousand Pillars,waiting to see the shape of their future. For Anan wasnot to take merely a husband, but the man who wouldrule by her side, and from his strength would fl ow theprosperity and security of the realm.
Batu felt sympathy for her sister, for she knewthat Anan’s duty was a difficult one. Hers was a lifeconsecrated to the kingdom. How fearful it would be tobe in her spot, left without choice, forced to marry theone the priests chose for her.
For Batu was in love.
As she walked, she stared at the dais ahead, at therich, golden throne, so that she would not look to herside at the line of soldiers guarding their path, so thatshe would not meet the eyes of the one man she desiredabove all others.
Egmath. Even the whisper of his name in herthoughts felt like a stolen pleasure. Soon they wouldtell of their love, soon. But for now, it was theirs tosavor, still new in its full flower. When they informedthe priests and Anan, it would be a public thing; theywould be held separate until they’d married.
And Batu did not think she could bear it.
From the corner of her eye she saw the gleam of thegold cuff around his upper arm. She saw the strongmuscles of his chest, the proud carriage of his head. Andher heart swelled at the knowledge that this warrior,this man of honor, was hers.
Batu couldn’t help it—her eyes fl icked towardhim to meet his gaze. The rush of it stole her breath. Itseemed hardly possible that the love she’d always feltfor him had transformed into this tremendous emotionthat took her over. This was not the simple affection ofchildren for children.
This was the love of a woman and a man.
Batu followed Anan up the stairs to the dais andmoved to stand behind the golden throne as her sistersat. From there, Batu could stare out into the hall,looking at the torchlight flickering off the richly coloredpillars. Looking out at the throng that packed the hall.
Looking at Egmath.
On the steps stood Hortath, the eldest priest. At thefoot of the dais stood Lagash, the leader of the army,with his soldiers arrayed beyond him. And Egmath byhis side.
The music ended, and the silence of the hall wasbroken only by the rustling of the throng.
Hortath cleared his throat. “May all the gods of thisland give strength and health to our ruler, Queen Anan.Let great joy and celebration mark this day, the day theQueen will stand before you with her consort, a greatwarrior to keep the realm safe and bring forth heirs.”
But it wasn’t Anan’s choice. The priests made thedecision, as they did in so many things. Anan wouldfind out at the same time as the rest of the kingdom.She would take Lagash, they’d speculated, though shebore him no love and he was two score harvests olderthan she. She would take him into her life, take himinto her bed.
Batu ached for her sister.
Hortath raised his hands. “Let stand forth theconsort whom the gods have chosen.” He waited amoment for silence. “Let stand forth Egmath.”
And the hall erupted with cheers.
Let stand forth Egmath. The impossible wordsreverberated in Batu’s head. She felt stunned, asthough the knowledge held the force of a blow. It wasimpossible, unbearable. Egmath was hers, her destiny.But the priests wished to control his power and they’dsworn him to Anan.
At the foot of the dais Egmath looked frozen,unable to move. And she who knew him better than all,she who could read every nuance in his expression, sawpure agony in the liquid dark eyes. He looked at herand for a moment they locked eyes, not caring, finally,about the multitudes around them. For a moment,words, feelings flowed through his gaze.
My beloved…
My only…
My lost one…
My duty…
And Egmath stepped forward and strode up to thedais.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Prologue
Upstate New York Saturday, April 29
“I AM SO DONE WITH THIS,” Julia Covington said to herself.
And stepped out the door into thin air.
Not surprisingly, she dropped like a rock. That was why smart people knew enough to stay inside the airplane.
They’d lied when they’d said it was like flying. It wasn’t a bit like flying. Or floating. What it was like was falling, strapped to a jump instructor, her stomach up her throat, the wind flapping around her, nothing to hold her as she watched the distant—and really large, really hard—earth come inexorably closer.
And her mind, analytical to the last, couldn’t stop processing. Acceleration due to gravity was thirty-two feet per second squared, which meant every second she fell thirty-two feet per second faster. Until terminal velocity, of course, a mere hundred and twenty miles an hour, which she should be reaching shortly. On the ground she’d get thrown in jail for going a hundred and twenty miles an hour. Up here she just got charged a lot of money for the privilege. A hundred and twenty miles an hour—more than sufficient to make a nice little splat when she hit the ground.
She really hoped she’d packed the parachute right.
She glowered at her old college roommate Sasha, who’d come up with the whole extreme-sports idea. It’ll be good for you. Live life on the edge. Grinning giddily, Sasha waved.
“How did I let you talk me into this?” Julia shouted, words that were ripped away by the wind.
Sasha cupped one hand to her pressure helmet. “Whaaat?”
Julia shook her head. It didn’t matter. She knew why she’d done it—the same reason behind nearly every absurd thing she’d done over the past eight months. Since her divorce. Since her emancipation from Edward Cleary, her controlling, disillusioned Svengali of an ex-husband. Edward, who’d loved her as the naive student he could mold and instruct. Edward, who wasn’t at all prepared for a Julia with a mind of her own.
And she’d been demonstrating that mind of her own since the papers had been signed by trying every foolish thing she could think of that would make Edward turn purple with disapproval. So okay, maybe the incident on the balcony at Mardi Gras hadn’t been well thought through, but she’d crash the Miramax party at Cannes again any day.
It had been a pretty fun eight months.
And it was time to end it.
Too bad she hadn’t come to that decision before she’d leaped from the airplane. Timing, as they said, was everything.
She felt the tap of the jump instructor on her shoulder and she swallowed. The minute of free fall had whipped by astonishingly quickly. Now came the moment of truth, the moment she pulled the rip cord. A feather light landing or…splat?
Julia grasped the toggle. She stared at the ground, at the squares and circles of green rushing toward her. What was the saying—God protects fools and drunks? Well, she certainly wasn’t drunk, more was the pity, but she was the champion of all fools.
Holding her breath, she tugged—
And with a whispering rush, the chute unfolded smoothly, dragging her vertical. Suddenly, she was floating, with the world spread out below her. Okay, now this part wasn’t so bad. This, she could do. Now she had time to think, time out from the world to figure out what came next. Because she was going to be hitting ground eventually, and when she did, it was time for a change. Most women had transitional men after divorces.
She’d had a transitional life.
Time to move on. Of course, she’d had a transitional man, too—or at least a transitional purely sexual, as-often-and-outrageous-as-possible affair. She sighed wistfully.
Time to move on there, too.
Because when you came right down to it, she wasn’t wild Julia, skydiving, sex-in-public party girl. She was serious, practical, collected Julia. Anything else was temporary, a pose.
The past five minutes had graphically demonstrated that to her.
It was time to get her life back in order. When she hit the ground, she’d get started. When she hit the ground, it was time to make some changes.
1
Manhattan Friday, May 5, 1:00 a.m.
“GOOD LORD.” Alex Spencer rolled onto his back, gasping for breath, heart hammering against his chest. “No more Asian sex manuals for you, woman. You’ve ruined me.”
“I’ve ruined you?” Julia Covington managed through her own heavy breathing.
With her dark hair tumbled loose and wild around her shoulders and her skin gleaming pale in the light from her entryway, she looked like some odalisque in a seventeenth- century painting—beautiful, tempting and thoroughly addictive. Even now, looking at her made him dry-mouthed with desire.
If he’d been thinking straight, he’d have been worried.
Then again, he’d hardly thought straight once since that evening she’d appeared at the museum fund-raiser in a flame-hot red dress that had left nothing to the imagination. The dry, serious Ms. Covington, who never appeared in anything but utterly simple garments in shades of taupe, charcoal and cocoa, was suddenly a siren. He couldn’t have said what had shocked him more—the dress or the fact that she’d left with him.
And every moment since had pretty much been a toss-up.
“Yes,” he murmured against her mouth, “you’ve ruined me, milked me dry, left me a worn-out husk, old before my time.”
He could feel her smile. “I had some help with that, I think. Some very enthusiastic help.”
He worked his way down her throat, feeling the first faint stirrings of arousal yet again. “Come on, what do you expect a guy to do when you show up at the door in nothing but a robe?”
“What was I supposed to be wearing at eleven-thirty at night?” she said and caught her breath. “You were lucky I let you in at all.”
He smiled beatifically. “I got lucky, all right.” He moved his hands and felt her quiver in response. “And if you give me a minute or two, I just might be in a position to demonstrate my appreciation.”
“Well, you’d better do it quickly, Lothario,” she said— a little unevenly, he noted in satisfaction. “I have to get to sleep. I’ve got work tomorrow—today,” she corrected after a glance at the mantel clock. “Something you might want to think about, also.” She shifted away from him.
Alex calculated and tried for pitiful. “I spend four days in D.C. fighting the sharks for NEA funding, and you’re throwing me out?”
It didn’t work. “You told me last week it was going to be a schmoozefest where the most challenging thing you’d have to do was drink champagne and eat crab claws.”
“And you think that’s easy?” he demanded.
Julia just snorted and rolled to her feet, plucking her Chinese silk robe off the living room carpet as she rose. “Nobody made you come here, you know. You didn’t even call to warn me.”
And, as always, the minute they stopped touching, brisk, matter-of-fact Julia came back.
“I thought you women thought spontaneity was romantic.”
“We’re not having a romance,” she reminded him firmly as she tied the belt of the robe. Too firmly.
“Oh yeah, right. No relationship, no talking, just sex.” Alex reached for his trousers, pushed down the little surge of annoyance.
“Exactly. You sales types should know better than to try to renegotiate as you go along.”
“Marketing, not sales,” he corrected. “We don’t sell antiquities at the museum.” He stopped in the act of buttoning his shirt. “Unless you’ve got a sideline I don’t know about. In which case, we’ll have to find out whether they give conjugal visits to lovers.”
She frowned. “We’re not lovers.”
“Right. If we were lovers, I’d be going to your bed right now instead of getting kicked out into the hall.” Even he could hear the edge in his voice. “I came here because I missed you.” He’d come because he couldn’t make himself wait until the next day to see her. “You were off with your skydiving thing last weekend and then I was gone. It’s just been a while. I thought you might miss me.”
Julia got that countess look he’d learned she put on when she felt she was losing control of a situation. She handed him his shoes. “Alex, it was nice to see you, really. But it’s late.” Her voice was brisk. “We’re getting together tomorrow night anyway.”
“Good, because I think we should talk about this.”
Relief flashed into her eyes, a relief that made him wonder. “Good. I want to talk, too. But it’s late and I’m tired and husks like you need your sleep. You should go.”
And then he was standing out in the hall, garment bag and jacket in his hand, staring back at the door that was closed to him.
Like Julia.
JULIA SATIN HER OFFICE at the NewYork Museum of Antiquities, staring out the window past the enormous pillar that obscured half her view of Fifth Avenue beyond.
Alex Spencer. The good-looking charmer, the golden boy who succeeded at everything he touched, always a nice word for everyone. Always somehow sensing when she’d been down during the worst of times with Edward, making her laugh with a joke even though she’d said nothing to anyone about how she was feeling. It had been temporary insanity the day of the museum gala six months before when she’d bought that outrageous dress purely because it would have appalled Edward. It had been temporary insanity that had made her wear it to the gala and definitely temporary insanity that had had her leaving with Alex Spencer.
She’d quite clearly been out of her mind.
That was probably why the sex had seemed so amazing, just as the skydiving might have been amazing if she’d been in the right mood.
Or maybe not.
All right, bad example. Luck, that was it. It was just pure luck that Alex happened to have an instinct for how to touch her. It was just that charm monster thing he had going that always made her feel so good around him. After all, it wasn’t as though they had a relationship or anything. They had zero in common except sex.
Anyway, they’d rarely managed to get out even basic pleasantries before ripping one another’s clothes off most times, which suited her to a T. If she had to talk to Alex Spencer, she’d be forced to face how wrong, how ridiculous, how brainless she’d be to think of them as a match. The way she’d been with him, that wasn’t her. That was the artificial post-divorce giddiness. The real Julia was quiet, sedate and studious.
The real Julia was someone Alex Spencer wouldn’t give a second glance.
Which was fine with her, she thought quickly, because he wasn’t her thing, either, any more than public indecency at Mardi Gras was. She wanted a man who was serious, focused, someone who was an achiever, not a fun-loving, slick G-boy with no sense of propriety. Thinking of the chances the two of them had taken together made her squeeze her eyes closed.
Thinking of the chances the two of them had taken left her awash in lust.
She made an impatient noise. It was time to end their little arrangement, no matter how much fun it was. She was ready, finally, to go forward with her life, and that life didn’t—couldn’t—include Alex Spencer.
Putting Alex firmly out of her mind, Julia flipped through the latest issue of American Curator. A major auction of early Roman pieces was scheduled for fall, she saw, making a note to herself. Some recent reports of ancient Egyptian and Babylonian forgeries. And a story about the heist of the Zander collection from Stanhope’s Auction House. No leads there.
Reading the list of items taken was enough to make Julia’s eyes cross well before the end. A shame, but having met Zoey Zander at a few of her mother’s society dos, Julia would have laid even money that the “antique” items weren’t even authentic. The jewels, perhaps, but as for the rest of it, Zoey was more about flash than substance. Having it look right was more important than having it be right.
Julia had never understood that. To her, it was the history of a thing that mattered, the story she felt when she touched it. Absently, she rubbed a finger over the bit of scrimshaw that sat by her telephone, a personal treasure that she knew she shouldn’t touch with bare hands but was helpless not to. She could imagine the whaler who’d spent long, windblown days working at the ivory, setting it aside at the cry of “Whale ho.” If she closed her eyes, she could smell the salt tang of the sea, feel the motion of the ship, imagine the distant blue horizon and the pale vault of the sky overhead.
It had always been like that for her, since she’d been a child. She remembered going to the Metropolitan and staring at a pale blue glass cup in the antiquities wing, a glass that had been in the ground so long it had turned iridescent. It fascinated her so much she’d relentlessly pestered her mother, her nanny, her great-aunt Stella to take her to the Met over and over. An artifact from anancient desert kingdom, she’d read on the identification card and imagined a little girl like herself who might have drunk from it. And at night, she’d dreamed that she was the little girl, a princess whispering in the desert dusk with her favorite friend, a young boy who dreamed of becoming a great warrior.
She hadn’t had that dream for a long while.
“Hey, gorgeous.”
No matter how wrong for her he might be, something about Alex’s voice always sent a warm shiver through her, whatever she was thinking, whatever she was doing. Julia opened her eyes and gave her visitor a bland look. “Well, if it isn’t the infamous Alex Spencer.”
He leaned against her doorway, looking like some GQ model in his expensive suit and hand-dyed silk tie. “Miss me?”
She rolled her eyes. “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?”
“I can’t go away. I have to stick around to keep you from falling asleep at your desk.” He clicked his tongue at her. “Maybe if you got to bed at a decent hour, you’d be more awake.”
“Sometimes I get pestered by late-night callers,” she said.
“You shouldn’t answer the door, then.”
“I’ll remember that next time.” She folded her hands in front of her. “So what can I do for you, Mr. Spencer?”
“A favor.” He stepped into the office and her lungs took a breath of their own accord. Honestly, there was nothing the man could do that wouldn’t look good. He had a gift for it, from his cropped dark hair spiked with just a bit of gel to his glossy Italian leather shoes. And she knew from personal experience that he looked just as effortlessly handsome in shorts and a polo shirt.
Or in nothing at all.
Maybe it was the thousand-watt smile, the square jaw, those green, green eyes. Eyes currently glimmering at her in humor, making her realize she’d been staring far too long. “Making notes for a portrait?” he asked.
“Wondering if I maybe saw you on the post office wall,” she replied. “So what’s the favor?”
“Someone I want you to see today. My sister’s got a friend who wants to bring in something for you to look at. She thinks it might be valuable—”
“Alex, no,” Julia was groaning before he’d even finished. “No, no, no. You know how it works. They’ve gone to a flea market or on holiday to Morocco and they’ve got some piece of trash they’re convinced is the real thing.”
“Maybe it is,” he suggested.
“And maybe it’s a tourist tchotchke. Do you have any idea how often I’ve looked at those kinds of things?” she pleaded. “They’re never real. Trust me, antiquities don’t just fall in a person’s lap.” But he had that gleam in his eye that he always got when he proposed something outrageous, she saw sinkingly, that look that always seemed to get her to do what he wanted.
“Look, it’s a favor for my sister. Why don’t you just give it a look and see what you think?”
“I have a better idea,” Julia said silkily. “Why don’t you look at it?”
“I’ve got to leave for lunch with a big donor—” he glanced at his sleek Bulova “—like, right now.”
“And I’ve got meetings all afternoon.”
“Then it’s good she’s coming this morning, isn’t it?”
That stopped her for a moment. “Well, aren’t we sure of ourselves,” she said tartly.
“Oh, come on, Julia, it’s five minutes. It’s for my sister. Family.”
And if she didn’t watch it, she’d cave to him yet again, just as she had the night before. With everyone else she was intelligent, self-possessed, in control. It was only with Alex that she lost the ability to say anything but yes. “I don’t have time,” she lied. “I don’t know what made you think I’d agree.”
Alex stepped inside and closed the heavy wooden door. “Maybe I could offer you something in return.” He ambled across the room looking amused, as though he could read her like the Sunday Post.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked uneasily, already feeling the treacherous flutter in her stomach.
He didn’t answer, just leaned on the corner of her desk. “You know that your eyes always get a little darker when I come close?” he asked conversationally, reaching out to take her hand. “And they definitely get darker when I do this,” he added, touching the tip of his tongue to her palm.
And lust just exploded through her. For an instant, all she wanted was to have him naked, against her, on top of her. In her. Outside in the hallway, voices passed by the door, chattering about the weekend.
Inside, Julia froze, mesmerized by a touch, staring, boneless. And she’d just sat there and let him do it, she thought in annoyance. She wasn’t the type to just melt because some good-looking guy stroked his thumb over the back of her hand, stroked it and stared at her and made her think of what else those hands could do….
“Stop it.” She rose hastily. “We’re at work, remember?” And if she didn’t get at least a few feet away from him, she wouldn’t care.
“Forget it.” Alex stood and circled around the desk toward her, easy, relaxed, making her think of one of those clever, nimble border collies. Which, she supposed, made her the sheep. “Look, the door’s closed. And it’s not like I’m planting one on you, as much as I’d like to,” he added, approaching her. Julia took a few wary steps away. “Anyway, who’s going to care? It’s not like we work in the same department.”
“Wait a minute. I care.” She held on to the sudden flare of anger like a shield. “I’m not going to be the latest watercooler topic.”
He grinned. “Sweetheart, if people haven’t figured out there’s something between us by now, they’re blind.”
Sweetheart. He had no right to use the word to snatch the breath from her lungs. “Well, they’re behind the times, because there’s nothing between us,” she snapped. “It’s over, all right? Done.”
Alex blinked. “What are you talking about?”
“Us. This…thing we’ve been having,” she said, throwing her hands in frustration. “I was out of my mind to start it, I’ve been out of my mind to keep it going and now I’m finished. Want me to be any clearer? I want you out of my life.”
She’d never seen Alex in anything but easy good humor, so it took her a moment to realize he was angry. “Where’s this coming from? You don’t just come out of nowhere and cut it off.”
“I’ll do whatever I want to.”
“You said we were going to talk tonight.”
“I’m done talking,” she flared.
He rounded on her. “That’s right, you don’t talk, do you? No talk, just sex. Don’t get to know each other, don’t find out about each other’s lives, just get together to scratch an itch. Well you know what, Julia? That’s a crock of—”
A knock on the door interrupted his furious words. For a breathless instant neither of them moved. Then Julia smoothed her trim claret suit and walked over to open the door. “Yes?”
She saw a couple outside, the woman looking tense, the man clasping her hand protectively. “Are you Julia Covington?” the woman asked.
Julia nodded.
“I’m Marissa Suarez. This is my…boyfriend, Jamie Wilson. Alex Spencer said you’d be expecting us.”
Alex stepped up behind Julia and the hairs on the back of her neck rose as though in a field of static electricity.
“I’m Alex,” he said, stepping around her to put out his hand to shake. “Nice to meet you both. Unfortunately I’m late for a lunch appointment, so I’ll have to leave you in Julia’s hands.” Only Julia would have seen the spark in his eyes. “I’m sure she’ll be happy to talk with you. Julia’s always happy to talk with anyone.”
JEAN LUC ALLARD walked into the museum, sneering inwardly at the guard who stood at the front door. So tall, so cocky in his uniform, with his gun. Pathetic. He could no more block a professional like Jean from his desires than could a child.
It was always so. Those who were robbed were the weak. He was one of the strong. No one bullied him, not since he’d become a man. Not since he’d left his whoreson of a father crumpled and bleeding in that Marseilles alley, maybe dead, maybe alive. Jean neither knew nor cared, as his father had never cared all the times he’d treated him like so much filth beneath his feet. It was a debt paid, nothing more.
Jean took what he wanted and prospered. After all, there was always a market for a man with certain…talents. His clients knew how to find him, and he knew how to get them what they wished.
Like the White Star amulet.
So beautiful, so alluring, a treasure that demanded to be touched. A seductive beauty that did not easily release the mind. When he’d sat across from his contact in the dark corner of that Parisian tavern, he’d been given only a description, a location, a name. Now that he had seen her, he knew what she could drive a man to do. He knew what a man might do to possess her.
And he knew his client would pay more.
All he needed to do was retrieve her from the foolish Suarez woman. Perhaps she had been lucky since he’d been forced to place the amulet in her bag to avoid detection, but it was of no matter. He had been punished for his foolishness, and now it was at an end. The White Star was his to take.
He walked down the hallway with its echoing marble walls. Friday midday and all the little people had scuttled out of their cramped offices for lunch before their afternoon of meaningless rote work, like rats on the wheel. Pah. Fools, all of them, laboring their lives away for nothing, telling themselves they had control, deluding themselves they had security when he could move among them at will and take whatever he wanted.
And what he wanted, he thought, listening to the voices inside the open office door, was his White Star.
2
Friday, 11:00 a.m.
“PLEASE, SIT DOWN,” Julia said, waving Marissa and Jamie to seats before she crossed to her own chair.
“Thank you for agreeing to see us,” Marissa said. “I’m sorry we interrupted you.”
“It was nothing.” Julia welcomed the distraction. It let her heart level. It kept her from thinking about the look in Alex’s eyes. Instead, she studied the couple sitting across from her. For they were a couple—she would have known it before Marissa had said a thing. It wasn’t the clasped hands, but something that hummed between them, something that tied them as surely as a physical bond.
She wouldn’t have put them together at a glance. Marissa looked too polished, too fiery for Jamie’s slightly rumpled, abstracted air. They seemed…glowing, somehow, though. Connected.
Shrugging the thought aside, Julia folded her hands. “So,” she said briskly, “what have you got?”
The two of them exchanged glances. Marissa moistened her lips. “I was just on vacation,” she began. “I wound up with something, and…”
Ah, the dreaded vacation find, Julia thought in resignation, but then she realized there was a tension about Marissa, a strain in her liquid dark eyes that didn’t bespeak a flea-market tchotchke. “And?” she prompted.
“Look,” Jamie broke in. “How about if we don’t tell you anything about it. Just…look at it. Tell us what you think. Tell us if you think it’s real.” He turned to Marissa. “Okay?”
She nodded and opened up the leather bag she wore strapped across her chest. Reaching inside, she brought out an object wrapped in cloth and laid it carefully on the desktop before unwrapping it.
And Julia felt the unholy punch of excitement in her gut. This wasn’t a vacation find brought in by some poor, deluded soul. This was the real thing. Where it had come from or how it had gotten there, she couldn’t say, but she could sense the power of its age as though it were radiating waves of antiquity.
It wasn’t colored as so many of the pieces of that time were, and yet she was as certain as she was of her own name that it was ancient. Thin veins of gold chased around the carved ivory, an ivory so white despite the years that it seemed to radiate somehow. It was shaped like a star, with a hole through the center. Looking closer, she saw shallow etching, so faint and small as to be almost invisible, worn away, perhaps, by the years. Gods, designed to carry the bearer to the afterlife?
Julia rummaged blindly in the desk drawer for the wooden box that held her loupe, unable to take her eyes off the piece. Who had carved it long ago, sitting in some dusty desert workshop, never guessing that his handiwork would leap across centuries, millennia? What had it meant? What power had he believed it held? Slipping the loupe in place, she looked closer.
Only to be astounded by the detail. The figures stood facing one another, hands clasped. A man, a woman, staring into each other’s eyes. In each of their breasts a tiny dot of embedded carnelian flamed red, seeming almost to pulse before her eyes. And the hairs prickled on the back of her neck.
Not gods. Lovers.
A ribbon had been strung through a faceted hole that pierced the amulet just below the joined hands. “Have you been wearing this?” Julia asked, glancing up.
Only to see Marissa’s cheeks tinting. “Only once,” she said, refusing to look at her boyfriend. “Before I realized it might be valuable. Is it?”
“At a glance I’d say it’s possible, but I’d have to spend more time looking at it.” Caution was the way to go. As certain as Julia felt, she’d seen the best and brightest fooled by clever forgeries. The article in her magazine just that day had detailed more than a few instances where shady dealers had profited. Something else nibbled at the edge of her memory. “Could you leave it here with me for a day or two?” she asked impulsively.
“But we—” Marissa objected.
“Hold on,” Jamie said to her. “It might be the safest place for it. Keep anything unexpected from happening to it.” He stared at Marissa intently and some message passed between them. “How is your security here?” he asked, turning to Julia.
She blinked. “The best. Why?”
“Just want to be sure it’s protected,” he said affably.
“We’ve got twenty-four-hour guards, electric eyes, motion detectors, the whole deal. The amulet will stay locked in my office safe unless I’m working with it. It looks familiar. I’ve got some source texts downstairs I want to consult.”
“We think it might be the White Star amulet,” Marissa blurted.
That was it. Stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection, Julia realized. But that heist had been carried out by professionals. She frowned. “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
Marissa flushed. “We wanted to be sure it was real,” she explained. “You have to admit, it seems pretty unlikely.”
Certainly they looked like the unlikeliest of thieves. Then again, the best thieves did. “How did you come by it?”
“The guy who stole it might have dumped it in Marissa’s bag at the airport. We think we’ve seen him,” Jamie added.
Which explained the questions about security. And the strain. Then again, the strain could have stemmed from taking a criminal risk.
“What do you think?” Marissa asked.
Julia looked down at the amulet, the lovers frozen hand in hand. The White Star. There were legends, she remembered vaguely, something fanciful about true love. “It’s possible,” she allowed. “But you have to understand, even if it is the Zander piece, it may not necessarily be the real White Star. It’s very difficult to authenticate antiquities, especially if the forgery itself is an antique.”
“But it was being auctioned off,” Marissa protested.
“Even the best experts aren’t infallible,” Julia said wryly. “We can all be taken in. Leave it with me for a few days. I’ll take some time to look it over, check to see if I can find anything definitive to authenticate it.” And if it were the real White Star, she could get the police involved.
“Whatever you can do,” Jamie said and rose.
Marissa stood and reached out a hand longingly toward the amulet but stopped short of touching it. “It’s so beautiful,” she murmured. “I don’t care if it’s real or not.”
“If it is the White Star, it’s not ours,” Jamie said gently, putting an arm around her shoulders. “We only got to borrow it for a little while.”
And to Julia’s everlasting shock, Marissa laughed and threw her arms around Jamie’s neck and gave him a kiss hot enough to vaporize metal. “And honey, we made the most of it.”
FOOLISH WOMAN, to boast of security. As though motion detectors and pressure plates could keep him out. As though a mere office safe could block him from his prize. The White Star was his in all but actual fact. It was but a matter of time.
He itched to hold her again. It was maddening to have her so close, yet out of his grasp.
But he was a patient man.
For now, hovering in the gallery near the entrance to the office wing held the most promise. He could linger, invisible to the imbecile guards, and watch. It was, after all, a museum, a place designed for lingering. He would bide his time, learn what he could. He could wait as long as he needed.
And when night fell, he would strike.
HELL, JULIA THOUGHT wearily at day’s end, probably bore a lot of resemblance to the twelve-person, three- time-zone telecon she’d just suffered through. There was nothing like trying to pull off a tricky negotiation with a host of stakeholders, none of whom you could see. Foolishly, naively, she’d assumed that because everyone stood to benefit from the multimuseum traveling exhibit she was hoping to pull together for early 2008, they’d all cooperate. Ha. Throw in egos, tempers and language barriers, and you had a recipe for chaos.
Meanwhile, she’d been almost entirely unable to keep her mind from drifting back to the amulet. And to Alex. Things with Alex were over, she reminded herself. She should put him out of her mind. The amulet, however…
The shadows outside had grown long by the time she spun the dial of her safe and drew out the unadorned wooden instrument box that held the amulet. It was the box that usually cradled her loupe, but she’d switched it for the Suarez woman’s piece earlier that day. Her loupe would do just fine unprotected for a short while. A three-thousand-year-old ivory amulet—if it was indeed the White Star—wouldn’t.
Julia put down a padded mat on her desk and laid out the amulet. She wouldn’t allow herself to think of it as the White Star, not until—unless—she demonstrated its provenance. That was her task. That was her challenge. But for a moment, just a moment, she let herself look. And with her hands freshly washed to remove all possible contaminants, she gave herself guilty permission to touch.
Power, warmth hummed up her arm.
She was a scholar, an educated woman with a disciplined mind. Hocus-pocus made her impatient, but her secret, the thing she told no one, was that she could feel something in the truly ancient objects, something beyond what her trained eye could see, beyond what her educated mind could know. There was some connection she made with the past.
And she could feel it in the amulet, stronger than she’d ever felt before. She felt age, hot desert air, the whisper of sand. And a bittersweet mix of love and sadness that had her jerking her hands away.
After a moment she shook her head. That was what she got for being ridiculous. She knew what she needed to do, Julia thought, snapping on gloves. Characterize, compare, research, document.
The fundamental steps to authentication all began with a physical record, of course. Digging out her digital camera, she began snapping photographs of the piece from every angle. Annie Leibovitz, she wasn’t, in oh so many ways. The very paleness of the ivory foiled her every effort; even with the light dimmed, she couldn’t capture the carvings. So she got out a pencil and paper and began to make a set of careful, painstaking drawings, studying the amulet through the loupe, front and back, from every side, recording every possible detail. Okay, so she wasn’t da Vinci, either, but at least she finished up with a detailed record.
Finally, she put the amulet into the box and rose. Characterize, compare, research, document. She already knew the museum had nothing precisely like it, which eliminated the need to compare. Time to get on to part three.
In the hall, she heard the familiar end-of-day sounds of people closing up shop and going home. For her, it was time to get to work.
“Hi, John,” she said to a passing security guard as she exited the office wing into the Mesopotamian gallery.
“Where are you going?” he asked. “It’s quitting time. Time to go home.”
“Is that why everyone’s been leaving every night?” She laughed and took the unobtrusive door that led down the stairs to the basement level, headed for the conservation lab and its rare-book repository, her favorite place in the whole museum.
She’d always loved books, from the time she’d been little. The day she’d seen her first truly old book, though, she’d felt a deeper excitement. There was something magical about holding a volume that had been labored over a thousand years before or a scroll written by a man long since dust, something that fascinated. There were secrets in the leather-bound tomes from centuries gone by, mysteries in the scrolls of papyrus and parchment. And now, she was on the ultimate bigger-or-better hunt, hoping to find a trail of clues that would lead her back through the ages.
Hoping to find the story of the White Star.
She had help. An indexing project a decade before had produced an electronic card catalog of the materials in the library, with summaries, chapter heads, even main topics covered. There was no substitute for the real thing, though, for the rich gleam of illuminated manuscripts, the careful script of the Greek codices, the writings of Pliny, Clio, Herodotus.
As she hit the crash bar of the door to the basement level and turned into the hall, she heard the tread of feet above her. Someone doubtlessly headed home from upstairs, she thought. Friday night, the time to meet friends for drinks, go to a club, relax. The museum was quieting, all the visitors gone and the staff quick to follow.
It was her favorite time.
The rapid tap of her heels rang in the hall. The museum’s Gilded Age founders had spared no expense in the construction of the building, even down here. Veined marble walls soared up to nine-foot ceilings. The ornate locks and hinges on the solid-oak doors made collectors salivate. The “modern” bronze light fixtures that had replaced the original gaslights sometime in the 1920s had become antiques themselves.
Julia stopped before one of the dark, heavy doors. Hefting a five-inch skeleton key, she fit the complicated head of it into the keyhole. And jiggled and fiddled with it the way she suspected people had jiggled and fiddled with it for the last hundred and forty years. Though they may not have cursed the locksmith in quite as creative terms as she did. Antique and still unpickable—that was what they told her every time she complained. Forget about unpickable; the damned thing was almost impossible to open when you did have a key.
Too bad the conservators weren’t still there to let her in. If it hadn’t been for the telecon from hell, she’d have gotten down to the lab earlier. Instead, she stood juggling the amulet box and folder of photos while she fought with the lock. Then again, Paul Wingate and his staff of conservators were known for keeping eccentric hours. There was no guarantee they’d have been around. Temperamental? Sure. Eccentric? Yep. Skilled? Beyond all doubt. And when you were dealing with history, skilled won the day.
With a snick the lock turned. “Thank God,” Julia muttered and swung the ponderous door open into blackness. She’d extended a hand for the switch when she heard a faint metallic sound behind her. A quick glance at the deserted hall, gleaming with a soft gray luster, showed no one in sight. The hairs prickled on the back of her neck. Probably an echo from the stairwell around the corner, she told herself firmly. The hard marble walls magnified sounds, made them travel farther than they normally would. Security, she decided, flipping on the lights. Probably doing their rounds.
Fluorescent bulbs flickered to life, gleaming anachronistically in a workshop that was a blend of nineteenth-, twentieth-and twenty-first-century technologies. Heavy wooden tables, smoothed from years of use, sat side by side with white-metal-and-Plexiglas fume hoods more suitable for a chemistry lab. On one table, someone was laboriously reconstructing a terra-cotta statue of three stone figures sitting side by side. By the door, a stone sarcophagus lay on blocks, underneath the railed gantry that they’d used to hoist it; the actual mummy lay draped on a wheeled table nearby. A tank held some pottery recently acquired from a dig outside of Luxor, soaking in a bath of deionized water.
Nearby lay a section of an Egyptian bas-relief from the museum’s permanent collection. Flaking pigment, Julia saw. Setting down the wooden box and the folder absently, she walked forward to study the work. The conservation staff appeared to be laboriously reattaching the flaking pieces fragment by fragment.
Five minutes of it would have had Julia’s eyes crossing. The conservators, she decided, deserved to be as eccentric as they liked. After all, it wasn’t everyone who could—
She jolted, whipping her head around to stare at the door. A sound. She’d heard a definite, distinct sound that wasn’t just her imagination and wasn’t just far away. It was here, right outside, coming down the hall. Not a snick of metal, this time, but the quiet pad of footsteps.
Footsteps where no one should be. It wasn’t a guard—they jingled and clanked from a mile away. This was someone else, walking down a basement hallway in a museum, an hour after closing, at a time everyone should have been long since gone.
The hairs rose on the back of her neck. The Zander heist had been carried out by a master thief. And if her nervous visitors actually had somehow gotten the White Star from the thief and passed it along to the museum, well, that thief might just be looking for it.
And that thief might just be here.
Quietly, Julia slipped out of her heels and closed her hand around one of the heavy lead weights that sat on the table next to the bas-relief. Holding her breath, she stole forward.
Out in the hall, the footsteps halted before the door. For a moment, everything was so silent she could hear the pulse thudding in her ears. Then with a creak the doorknob shifted.
Her heart jumped into her mouth. Swiftly, she raised her weapon. The door opened—
And in stepped Alex.
3
Friday, 6:50 p.m.
THE BREATH EXPLODED out of her lungs.
“Jesus, what are you doing down here?” she demanded, knees weak.
He eyed the weight she held. “Clearly, taking my life in my hands.”
“It would have served you right if I’d brained you, you idiot. You scared me to death.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, taking the weight out of her hand and setting it on the nearest workbench, “you look pretty lively to me.”
She glared at him as he shut the door, willing her system to level, not wanting to admit the relief she felt. Not wanting to admit how good he looked. “How did you find me?” she asked instead.
He shrugged. “I went by your office and saw you walking out of the office wing. I figured I’d follow you.”
“No one’s supposed to be down here now.”
“You’re here.”
“I’m working.”
He made an elaborate show of checking his watch. “Six fifty-four? You didn’t tell me you’d switched to swing shift.”
“It’s your fault.” She slipped her shoes back on and walked over to the entrance to the rare-books repository.
“My fault?”
“You brought those people in.” The modern door to the climate-controlled room opened with a little hiss of escaping air.
Alex fought a smile. “I take it the flea-market find turned out to be more exciting than you thought?”
“Possibly.”
“Where is it?”
Julia turned to point at the wooden box on the table by the bas-relief.
Alex ambled over. “I guess you can get high quality junk in Moroccan bazaars, if you’re a choosy shopper.” He picked up the box and cracked it open. “Why, I’ll bet that—” And then he just stared. “Good Lord,” he said slowly.
When his gaze met Julia’s, his eyes glowed green with wonder. The quick jolt of connection took her by surprise.
“What is this?” Alex gazed at the amulet, brushing a finger over it.
“Don’t touch it,” she said, but it sent a shiver through the pit of her stomach. She felt a vibration, as though it were making a sound at some frequency too low to be heard. She swallowed. “I don’t know what it is for sure. It could be nothing. It could be an antique forgery. Or it could be a three-or four-thousand-year-old amulet. Take your pick.”
He whistled. “Not bad for a flea market. So you came down here to poke around?”
“Exactly. Now, if you’ll just give me some privacy….”
“Not a chance.” He set the box aside. “Forget about the doodad for a minute. You said last night that we were going to talk, and that’s what we’re going to do. I think you owe me that, especially after the routine you pulled this morning.”
“There’s no need for it. Especially after this morning.” Julia stepped into the book repository. She just had to remember that it was time to break up with him and get her life in order, not time to fall back into bed with him, despite the little warm flare of arousal that had begun to radiate through her. This was nothing new, it was the same effect he always had on her.
It didn’t mean anything.
“I think we got things settled already,” she added, busying herself with the computer.
“Oh, I don’t think so at all,” Alex said easily, pushing the door back to follow her inside. “If you wanted to break up, then what was last night about?”
“Last night was a lapse.”
“A lapse? Is that what you call it when you put my—”
“A lapse,” she said firmly, struggling to push away the sudden vivid memory of straining naked against him. “It’s over with.”
“So you’ve said. I’d just like to be clear on why that is.” His voice was reasonable, his expression open.
Julia eyed him warily. She knew this Alex. This was the Alex who almost never walked away from a negotiation without getting what he came for. The Alex whose face said “trust me,” even while he was leading his victim down the garden path. This was the Alex who was exceptionally good at getting people to say yes.
People like her.
“We said from the beginning it was going to be casual, that when one of us decided things should be over, they’d be over,” she reminded him. That was good. Clear and indisputable.
“I’m just trying to understand.”
“I’ve had some time to think,” she said as carefully as though she were picking her way through the jungle, looking for booby traps, watching for the loop that might tighten around her ankle and whip her up to leave her dangling headfirst from a tree. “What I think is that it’s best for both of us to end this.”
“For us?”
“For me,” she amended, flushing.
“And when did you decide that? This morning?”
“I decided it last weekend. I’ve just been waiting for you to get home.”
“Last weekend, huh?” He rested an elbow against the shelves and scrubbed the other through his hair. “But now, here’s what I don’t get. You let me in last night, right?”
“Yes, but I—”
“And you came to the door in your robe, which didn’t stay on very long.”
“That’s because you—”
“And then you took off my clothes and dragged me down on your living room floor and let me touch your—”
“Skip it.”
“All of this after you supposedly decided we were finito.” His eyes sparkled. “So why was that?”
Because he had a way of making her forget her own name, let alone anything she wanted except him? “It was late, I was tired.”
“You seemed pretty frisky to me. Incidentally, did you find a button on your living room floor? Because you ripped one loose when you were taking my shirt off.”
“Well, if you’d gotten it off faster, I wouldn’t have had to—”
He grinned at her. “Yes?”
Dangling headfirst from a tree. Julia ground her teeth. “I got distracted.”
“I don’t know, you seemed pretty focused to me. I like those noises you make when you’re focused.”
Her eyes narrowed. “This isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not laughing.” He reached out to touch the strands of hair that dangled from her chignon.
Julia jerked her head away. “You’re not listening either.”
“That’s because so far nothing you’ve said has made sense.”
Because he’d talked her in circles to where she couldn’t remember her points anymore. Her very valid points. Back to basics, she decided. “You’re not my type, Alex. And I’m not yours. This was just an…anomaly.”
He shifted. “And when I touch your anomaly, some very interesting things happen.” He reached out to stroke a finger down her throat.
Julia shivered. “I’m down here to work,” she said unsteadily.
“Go right ahead with what you’re doing,” he told her. “I’ll stay out of your way.” But his fingertips continued down, into the deep vee at the front of her jacket.
And her muscles weakened. How had he managed to get so close? She could smell a hint of his aftershave, spicy and clean. She could see the gold flecks in the green of his eyes. And she knew what came next, could already feel the tendril of heat curling between her thighs. It was the wrong thing to do, she knew it.
It was nothing she could stop.
“You’re not the kind of guy I go for,” Julia said, oddly breathless as she leaned into him.
“I can see that,” he answered, sliding his hands down over her hips.
“I like serious men.”
“I’ll buy some glasses.”
“This isn’t going to change my mind,” she warned him, but she’d already slipped her arms around his neck, her fingers up into his hair, because if she didn’t have him inside her, soon, she was going to die.
And then he crushed his mouth into hers.
It shouldn’t have overwhelmed her. For over six months, they’d been sleeping together. Kissing him wasn’t new. She should have been accustomed to it. It shouldn’t have started butterflies whirling in her stomach. It shouldn’t have made her react.
But she caught her breath and shivered at the taste of him.
And he was smiling, dammit, she could feel his lips curve against hers. He pressed her back against the shelves. “I always have had this librarian fantasy,” he murmured, nipping at her lips, dropping his hands down to unfasten the top buttons of her suit jacket. “Papyrus always gets me hot.” Then he filled his hands with her lace-covered breasts.
She couldn’t stop the moan.
She felt the shelves digging into her back, she knew they had no business doing this here, doing it at all. But his body was so hot against hers that she didn’t care. He was hard, she could feel it through his trousers and she twisted against him, wanting more contact, more friction, wanting to dispense with the infuriating barrier of clothing.
With an expert flick he unsnapped the front clasp of her bra, and slipped his hand up over her breast.
The heat, the quick friction was shockingly intimate in the midst of their surroundings. So forbidden. So arousing. Just the night before she’d lain naked against him and yet somehow here in this staid and sedate place, every touch felt like the first. The air was cool against her skin but his hand was hot, so hot. The raw silk of her jacket rubbed against one nipple; his fingers sent bolts of arousal from the other with every brush and squeeze.
It made her feel wild, wanton. It made her ravenous for more.
“God, you drive me crazy,” Alex breathed against her neck, inhaling her scent. What would she do if he told her just how much it turned him on that he could make her lose that calm composure of hers? That with mouth and hands he could turn her wild in his arms despite herself. He’d never guessed back before they’d gotten involved just how much heat was there, how much excitement. He’d never thought that she’d make him dry- mouthed with wanting. Now, just the taste of her throat, the feel of her pulse under his lips had his cock straining for release.
He felt her shiver, felt the rise of goose bumps as he worked his way lower, tasting the hollow at the base of her throat, the fragile skin on the tops of her breasts. Then he went lower still, desire rushing through him as he took her nipple into his mouth, heard her strangled gasp for air as he swirled his tongue around and over the hard little bud, feeling it furl and tighten.
Julia leaned back against the heavy wood shelves feeling only the slick heat of Alex’s mouth, his tongue on one breast, his hand tormenting the other. And oh, he knew what she liked, the rough scrape of teeth amid the slick caresses.
And the tightness, the growing tightness between her thighs where she knew she was growing wet, where she could feel the pulse of blood thudding.
“So just what do you have on under this?” he murmured, sliding his palms down her hips and up under her narrow skirt, using both hands to slide the fabric up, trailing along the silky hosiery beneath until he hit the tops of the thigh-highs she’d begun wearing habitually since they’d been involved. “Oh, honey,” he said explosively.
And then his fingers journeyed higher, slipping under the edge of the silk and lace she wore. He stroked her with a touch that shot through her like fire.
And oh, his hands were persuasive, fingers moving, circling, teasing her clit. She couldn’t get her breath. She clutched him against her because the heat and the pressure and the friction were tightening and tightening and carrying her along in a mad rush of sensation. She burst into orgasm, shaking against him, gripping him as the only solid thing in the universe.
It left her weak and gasping, half dizzy with reaction. With all that they’d done in the past, it had never been as intense as this. But it wasn’t enough, because he was still kissing her, and to her shock, need built afresh even as the orgasm receded.
Sudden compulsion flowed through her. She had to touch him. She fumbled for his zipper and he groaned as she brought him out, hard and heavy. They might not know each other at all but she knew how he liked it. She knew how to make him shudder and jolt. She knew how to take him so close to the edge, push him so far that he was grinding his teeth to maintain control.
Sinking to her knees, Julia breathed on the swollen head of his erection. She teased it with the tip of her tongue, licking first one side, then the other, quickly, experimentally. And then she slid his cock into her mouth in one quick rush, taking it as deep as she could, ripping a helpless moan from his throat.
It intoxicated her, as it always did. It aroused her. Maybe she was a little out of her depth with Alex, but when she was tasting him, feeling him hard against her lips, feeling his body quake with her every movement of her tongue, she was the one in control. She could play him, speeding up the motion, slowing it down. She could stroke him with hand and mouth and do everything she could to bring him to the edge because she knew he wouldn’t want to come that way. She wanted to tease him. She wanted to push his self-control to the limit until he had to beg her to stop.
And she smiled when she felt his hands on her shoulders, dragging her up.
“Let’s go down here to the reference desk,” Alex said huskily, leading her through the stacks to the row of reading tables against the wall.
“You know, when I was in high school, I had this thing for our librarian.” He walked Julia back until she felt the seat of one of the wheeled chairs against the backs of her knees. “She was fresh out of school, so she used to wear her hair up like yours and these tidy little suits, I guess to make herself look older. I used to fantasize about her, about what she had on underneath. Maybe I should check that out before you check out my books, Miss Covington.” He slid Julia’s skirt up and pressed her into the chair.
Shrugging off his jacket, he knelt before her. Strong and warm, his hands parted her thighs. His eyes were hypnotic. She was dissolving she was so wet, so ready for him to touch her.
“Look at you, so prim in your suit, with all these books around,” he breathed, leaning in to lick her thigh above the stocking, sliding his hands up over her breasts. His breath was warm as a touch, sending little shivers through her, all of it focused on that spot where she ached for him. “Oh, yeah, you’re better than any fantasy.”
He draped her legs over his shoulders, then hooked the scrap of silk out of his way. Helplessly Julia let her head drop back. She felt him trace one finger, then the tip of his tongue through those soft, private folds, making her shudder. And then the time for teasing was done and he found her with his mouth in a slick caress that had her crying out and arching against him.
If he’d tantalized before, now he was relentless, driving her up, eyes hot and intent. He didn’t keep to a rhythm but changed his speed and touch continuously until she could only quake and gasp, waiting for the next touch, waiting for the next taste that would send her over.
She heard a high-pitched gasping and she realized that it was her, and her world focused down to the heat of his mouth, the torment of his hands on her breasts and the want, the want, the want that dragged her closer, always closer as every muscle in her body tightened into the ultimate arousal. So close, teetering on the edge.
When he pulled away, she cried out, until she realized that he’d dragged out his wallet to get at his emergency condom, sheathing himself and thrusting into her with a slick, hot rush that had her crying out again. Then he was moving in her, hot and hard and relentless, using the chair to slide her on and off his cock, teasing her with little strokes and then thrusting himself home hard. And giving her that sweet, good friction that took her up and made everything he’d done with his mouth seem inconsequential next to this hard, insistent reality that dragged her up and up until she was balanced on the edge. And then with another stroke she went over, so that she was falling, shuddering and clenching around him. It was that, finally, that sent him surging against her for a handful of hard, quick strokes to spill himself even as she still shook.
And then Julia heard the noise through the still open door.
She tensed. “What was that?”
“What?” Alex asked hoarsely.
“That noise. Outside.” She scrambled away. Heart hammering, she dragged down her skirt, buttoning her jacket and fighting a growing sense of embarrassment and horror.
Someone was there, and heaven only knew who. What if they’d heard? What if they’d seen? What if she and Alex were busted? Catching her breath, expecting the worst, she hurried out the open door into the main conservation lab.
Only to find it empty. No one there, she saw with a rush of gratitude. No guards, no conservators, no staffers wondering what was going on in the stacks. Just a quiet, empty conservation lab. They hadn’t gotten caught, despite taking an absurd chance. Relief flooded through her.
And then she saw.
“Alex. The box.”
“The box?”
“The amulet,” she almost wailed. “Oh, my God. Did you move it?”
“I put it right back where it was. Right there.” He pointed to the table with the bas-relief, but where the open box had been now sat…
Nothing.
Anxiety swept through her. She couldn’t stop staring, blinking as though the box would magically appear.
But it didn’t. No box, no amulet, just the folder of photographs and drawings, with the smooth table behind it.
The White Star was gone.
4
Friday, 7:30 p.m.
ALEX STARED AS JULIA rushed over to the door.
“What are you doing?”
“Someone took it,” she said, practically vibrating with tension. “It was here and they took it. It wasn’t an accident, they had to know what it was. We’ve got to catch them.” She clutched at the knob.
“And what then? Say, ‘Give it back pretty please’? No way. We call the guards.” Alex spun around to grab the nearest phone.
Only to hear silence. “It’s dead,” he said just as she said, “It’s locked.”
“What do you mean?” They spoke at the same time, stopped at the same time.
And stared.
Alex answered first. “The phone line’s dead. Did you hear anything about them taking the phones down this weekend?”
“I don’t recall, but we’ve got a bigger problem than that.” Julia twisted the black knob in her hand. “The door won’t open.”
“Try it again. It’s an old door. It’s probably stuck.”
“It’s not stuck.”
Impatiently, he strode over to give it a careless tug. He was surprised to feel it solidly unmoving. His eyes narrowed and he took a better grip and pulled.
It made no difference. Okay, not humorous. Alex twisted the handle, listening. “The knob’s moving. Maybe something’s out of whack with the linkage.”
Julia shook her head. “There shouldn’t be. They take good care of it. It’s hard to get the key in the right spot, but once you do, it turns smooth as—” She broke off.
“What?” Alex asked, but she was already leaning in to stare at the lock.
“I always leave the key in the lock when I come down here because it’s so hard to get it in the right spot on the tumblers.” She put her eye to the keyhole. “And it’s still there.”
“So what’s the big deal?”
She didn’t answer and he saw the familiar air of abstraction on her face. She could say all she wanted to that he didn’t know her, but he could see when her mind was vaulting along one of its lightning chains of thought.
She just wasn’t always good about clueing anyone else in.
He watched her cross to the tool bench and search its surface. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Julia? Help me out here.”
“I just want to check and see if…aha!” She held up a piece of thin wire triumphantly. “Here.” She came back over and threaded the wire between the door and jamb, then slid it up and back down along the edge of the wood. “The crack’s too narrow to see into but—” The motion of the wire stopped. “See? Something’s blocking the wire. It’s the bolt, thrown over. This door is locked.”
“So we unlock it.” It seemed simple enough, until he realized there was no thumbscrew below the knob for unlocking it from the inside. “What kind of damn fool locksmith doesn’t put a manual latch on the inside?” he growled.
“One who wanted things to be really safe.”
“Well, I’m feeling a little too safe. Let’s figure out how to unlock it.”
“I’m not sure it’s that easy,” she said slowly. “The key’s still in it.”
He felt the first flickers of frustration. “So? It’s an antique. How hard can it be? We get some tools and we pick it.”
“You can’t pick it. The key’s in the way. You can’t reach the tumblers.”
Alex reached for her wire. “Then we push the key out.”
“You can’t,” she said faintly. “Once it’s locked, you’ve got to turn the key back a full revolution to get it out of the keyhole. The end of the key has these flanges….”
He eyed Julia. “You’re not being very helpful.”
“It’s an incredibly complex but an incredibly good lock. That’s why they left it in place during all the renovations. There’s a line of safes over in the UK that are based on this design.”
“Well, we’ve got to figure out a way to get out.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We’re not going to get out through that door without help.” She swallowed. “We’re locked in.”
ALLARD WALKED DOWN the street in the gathering twilight, sleek and satisfied as a cat with a dish of cream. She was his again, his. The days and nights of frustration meant nothing. Now he had only to slide his hand into his pocket to feel her, warm and smooth against his fingers.
It had been laughably easy to stay in the museum undetected, to watch, to wait. He’d expected to break into the woman’s office once night had fallen and the guards retired to their control room. Who’d have guessed she would make it so easy for him, walking out of her office with a box that so obviously held something precious?
Instinct had told him to follow. And there, his impatience had nearly betrayed him, when he’d almost found himself stumbled upon by the lovesick fool on her heels. Idiot, he could hear his father’s sneer. Amateur. Only quick reactions had let Jean whisk out of sight in the stairwell to pursue the woman’s pursuer.
Ultimately, it had been to his advantage, for he’d seen the cameras as the young fool had opened the door to the basement. Of course, a clever man carried a small, telescoping steel rod for just such occasions, a rod that could nudge a camera a crucial fraction of an inch, enough to leave a small area unmonitored without making a change large enough to alert the guards.
Once he’d done that, it had been easy to move down the hall undetected, to find them. Of course, taking the amulet had been almost no challenge at all with the two so absorbed in one another. Bah. Only a weak man lost sight of the world because of a woman. And weak men made mistakes—mistakes that could help him.
He’d listened as their discussion had quieted, crept into the outer room as they’d touched one another among the books. And he’d watched a moment, as any man would, savoring the gleam of the woman’s bare breasts and feeling his body tighten as she moaned.
But he had not come there for pleasure. He’d come for the amulet, and when he’d opened the box to see the glowing ivory of the White Star, he’d nearly shouted aloud in triumph. He hadn’t, though. Instead, he’d tucked the box into his jacket and stolen to the door, turning the key behind him. He’d already taken a moment to provide them with a few…challenges.
And now, he was on the street in the growing darkness, the place he had always felt most strong. And he was strong. He’d recovered his prize. She would bring him pleasure, she would bring him respect.
And she would bring him rewards beyond measure.
JULIA’S FISTS ACHED from hammering the heavy oak door. Tired and hoarse from yelling, she tucked her little fingers in her mouth and blasted a shrill whistle.
Alex paused in what he was doing to give her a startled glance. “Where’d you learn that?”
“Summer camp.”
“Not just another nice society girl,” he observed.
She hammered at the door again, cursing a blue streak. Alex raised his eyebrows. “Definitely not another nice society girl.”
“I can’t believe no one’s coming.”
“It’s Friday night,” he said mildly. “Everyone’s long gone.”
“Did you try the other phones?” she asked.
“Dead,” he said.
“How can every single phone in the place be out?” she fumed, picking up a receiver only to slam it down.
He snapped his fingers. “Not every phone,” he said, spinning toward the book repository.
“Wait.” Julia scampered after him.
Alex snatched his jacket from the floor. “I am such an idiot. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.” Digging into the breast pocket, he pulled out a slim silver cell phone. “Ladies and gentlemen—” he flourished it “—we bring you rescue, courtesy of your local wireless network.”
“That’s not your regular phone.”
“I upgraded,” he said with relish. “I’ve got half of my CD collection loaded in this baby, plus it’s got a high- res camera and it’s Web-enabled.”
She gave him the same look his mother had given him in fourth grade when he’d listed the many attributes of a new Transformer he absolutely required. “Does it tie your shoes for you, also?”
“When I need it to.” A succession of images flowed across the screen as it booted up. “But the best part is that it gives me serious connectivity.” He punched up the number and held the phone to his ear.
“For a mover and shaker like yourself, a must.”
“Hey, you never know when Blaine Trump will be calling to donate a few hundred grand.” His brows drew together as he studied the screen.
“What?”
He walked out into the main lab, holding the phone in front of him and watching the display. “Just trying to get a signal.”
“Tell me you’re joking.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get it,” he said, trying different areas of the room.
“And security’s going to be by any minute.”
“They might,” he said reasonably. “Sometimes the signal comes and goes.”
“And right now it’s mostly going, right?”
They stared at each other.
“Maybe in a little while,” he said, setting it down on one of the tables.
“Don’t set that down and forget where you put it,” Julia said. “We might need it later. Why don’t you have a belt clip?”
He sent her a revolted look. “You’re joking, right? Only tech-support dweebs at Computers R Us wear belt clips.”
“Which you are not.”
“Which I, most definitely, am not. My phone’ll be just fine here,” he said, setting it on the table. And then he stared beyond it. “What is that?” he asked warily.
“Where?”
“There. On the table.” He pointed to a long form lying on a wheeled table behind the sarcophagus and shrouded in translucent plastic.
Enjoyment glimmered in her eyes. “That’s Felix.”
“Felix?”
“Our new mummy.”
Alex pressed his lips together and walked over closer to it. “A mummy. You mean like a four-thousand-year-old dead-guy mummy?”
“Thirty-five hundred in this case, we think, but yes. We just got him in a few days ago.”
“Can I look at him?”
“You might not want to,” she cautioned, but he’d already pulled up the plastic.
“Jesus. You didn’t tell me he was unwrapped.”
“Only partially. Felix has had some challenging times.”
“So I smell.” It was faint but distinct. Now that he’d lifted the plastic, there was the sweet scent of decay. Still, curiosity overcame his initial surprise, prompting him to raise the sheet again. “Dressed for casual Friday, huh, Felix?” He dropped the sheet back down and focused on the problem at hand. “Okay. So let’s see…locked door, no windows, no phones, no one coming when we call, and a thirty-five-hundred-year-old mummy. This is beginning to get entertaining.”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” Julia tucked the plastic back in place. “Personally, I’ve got plans for this weekend. I can’t stay here.”
“Not even to keep Felix company?”
“No.”
“Not even to keep me company?” He stepped up behind her to rest his hands on her hips, those deliciously slender, surprisingly flexible hips, and leaned in to nibble on her earlobe.
“Alex.” She twisted away. “This is serious.”
His mouth curved. “Don’t worry about it,” he said easily. “The only place people get locked in for days is the movies. Security will be by in a while to let us out.”
“Let’s hope it’s soon.”
“Anyway, there’s got to be another way out of here.” He began to prowl the room. “No extra doors in the book room, right?”
“Right.”
“What’s this room in here?” he asked, opening the door next to the repository.
“The scientific lab.”
He reached inside to flip on the lights and blinked. “Christ. What are all these gadgets?” The room was as modern as the rest of the lab was retro, with shining white walls and gleaming chrome-and-black equipment.
“Oh, a scanning electron microscope, a laser, a Fourier—”
“Okay, I get it.” He scanned the room and ducked back out. “If we’re bored later, you can teach me how to use them.”
“We’re not going to be here later, remember?”
“Exactly.”
The main conservation lab was in the shape of a thick sideways L balanced on its short leg. To the right of the main door lay the inner wall that formed the library and the scientific lab; combined with the rest of the L, it formed a rectangle maybe fifty feet deep by a hundred feet long.
“What’s down here?” Alex asked, skirting the outer wall of the scientific lab to follow the long arm of the L.
“More workspace. The supply room. The chemical shower. The bathroom.”
“Thank God for small favors. What’s behind this door?” He twisted the knob with no more success than the front door.
“Oh, that’s the head conservator’s office. Paul Wingate. It’s just a nook, though. No way out.”
“Let’s not rule anything out sight unseen.” He studied the modern lock on the door. “That one we might have a chance at.”
“For all the good it will do you. And there aren’t any ways out of the supply room, either, so I guess that means we’re stuck.”
“Not for long. I’m telling you, security will find us.”
Julia paced across the lab. “What if they don’t?”
He couldn’t help watching her. “We get out Monday morning when everybody comes to work.”
“I can’t wait that long. I can’t miss this thing tomorrow night.”
“What is it?”
“The New York Performing Arts Institute gala. My mother’s pet project. She’s been working on it for four months and if I’m not there, I’ll be hearing about it for at least that long.” She moved restlessly across the lab, scanning the walls and ceiling, picking up the phone again, only to shake her head.
“What about a computer?” Alex asked suddenly.
“A computer?”
“Sure. E-mail. The Internet. We ought to be able to get a message to someone, even just to ask them to call the cops for us.” He looked around. “Don’t they have one in here?”
“I don’t know,” Julia said dubiously. “There’s a computer in the rare-book repository but it’s off-line, just for indices and electronic research.”
“Nothing out here?”
She shook her head helplessly. “Too much dust from all the stone. It’s not the greatest environment. Most of the staff have cubes upstairs. Paul’s the only one with an office down here.”
“And his is locked.” Alex walked over to the workbench.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for some wire.”
“And that would be because…?”
“I’m going to try to pick that lock.”
“Oh, of course. Got experience at it, do you?”
“I’m a man of many talents.”
She watched as he located some stiff wire and used pliers to bend the top quarter inch to a right angle. “Did you apprentice with a second-story man in your youth?”
“Hey, I got my Boy Scout merit badge in B and E.”
Julia snorted but watched with interest as Alex nudged his ersatz picks into the lock on Paul’s door. “I should object, you know. You’re violating the privacy of a staffer.”
He flicked her a glance. “Duly noted. I’ll lock up again when I’m done, and if you want to stay in here as penance when they come to let me out, feel free.” He closed his eyes as he manipulated the tools, completely focused on the hidden workings of the lock.
And somehow, she found herself completely focused on him. This was ridiculous. Quite aside from the fact that she’d already decided their…arrangement was history, she had far more important things to worry about than the length of his lashes and the way his five- o’clock shadow darkened his jaw.
She made herself look away. “I don’t see what good it’ll do you if you get in, anyway. You don’t know his password.”
“It might be scribbled down somewhere. It might be something common. Mine’s set to remember so that all I have to do is hit Enter.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You’re not supposed to do that.”
He flicked her an amused look. “Uh-oh, are you going to tell?”
“Alex—”
“Look, it’s a long shot, but we might get lucky.”
“We’ll be lucky to even get through the door.”
“When have I not been lucky?” Alex grunted. “Got it!” Rising, he stuck a hand inside to turn on the light, swinging the door wide and stepping into the familiar chaos that was Paul’s world.
Alex stared, hands on his hips. “Man, how does he get any work done in here?” he asked in disgust.
“People who break and enter don’t have a whole lot of room for complaint,” Julia pointed out, but she didn’t blame him.
The eight-by-ten office was crammed with books, papers and tools, cast-off silicone molds of carvings and a host of other things Julia couldn’t identify. The desk nudged against the far wall was nearly covered with papers and books. The spare chair merely provided a resting place for still more. A chemical-stained lab coat hung from a hook on the door.
Not for the first time Julia wondered how the irascible conservator ever managed to find anything. Brilliant, he might be, but neat was not his strong suit.
“How does he rate a laptop?” Alex demanded in an injured tone. “I begged for six months and they wouldn’t give me one.”
Julia bit her lip to cover a smile. “He travels to a lot of conservation conferences.”
“I travel.”
She drew up the extra chair. “I guess he’s cuter than you are.”
“Hard to believe,” Alex muttered dusting the computer off. He reached beyond it to pick up a coffee mug stuffed with metal rods. “What is this stuff?”
“Oh, scalpels, dental tools, glass stirrers…” Julia reached over to pull out a hollow brown rod that looked like a paintbrush without the brush. “And African porcupine quills.”
“African porc—” Alex gave her a suspicious look. “You’re joking.”
“Nope,” she said serenely. “They make great probing tools.”
“And the bags of dirt?”
“Excavation dirt. We save everything. You never know when you might need it.”
“You’re all nuts,” he muttered, staring at a jumble of small stone and plaster blocks at the back of the desk. He stacked some books on one of the piles and reached for the laptop.
“Oh, don’t put those there.” Adroitly, Julia shifted the books away from the wooden box Alex had set them on. “That’s an artifact box.”
“And it’ll protect whatever’s inside. Isn’t that the point?”
“The last thing we need is for it to fall over or something.” Julia glanced more closely at the box and made a noise of annoyance.
“What’s wrong?” Alex asked.
She blew out a breath. “Paul. He’s got this little problem with following procedure. This is still supposed to be in inventory storage. It’s still got the pull slip on it.” Julia cracked open the top to reveal a stone figure of Anubis, the jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead.
“Maybe he’s trying to clean or do conservation stuff or whatever.”
“He still should have done his paperwork. He didn’t even notify me.”
“‘Your rules mean nothing to me’?”
“More like ‘My work is too important for me to worry about your stupid bureaucracy.’”
“Sounds like a charmer. So why don’t you lay down the law to him?”
Julia sighed. “It’s not my place. He doesn’t report to me. And, anyway, he’s really, really talented. Last summer, we cleaned up our inventory. We get lots of bits and pieces of things in here from digs, stuff that we don’t know where it belongs. Paul found the nose of Xerxes.”
Alex’s mouth twitched. “The nose of Xerxes?”
“A marble bust we’ve had for forty years. For forty years, it’s been missing its nose and Paul recognized it at a glance. He’s got this amazing sense for the shape and form of things. When someone’s that good, you cut them a lot of slack.”
“So he’s sloppy. Nobody’s good at everything,” he observed. “Except me, of course.”
“Except you,” she said drily. “Although you might wait to congratulate yourself until you’ve gotten the job done.”
He gave her a look that shivered into her bones. “I always get the job done, darlin’,” he drawled.
“Big talk.”
“It’s not just talk. You of all people should know that. Anyway, sloppy isn’t always a bad thing,” he said cheerfully. “Our boy slapped his computer shut a little too quickly, before it finished closing down.”
“So?”
He gestured at the e-mail application on the screen. “So everything’s still running. That means we’ll still be online.”
Despite herself, she was impressed. “That’ll help. Good job.”
“Feel free to shower me with all the affection you like,” he invited.
Julia rolled her eyes. “Just send the e-mail, will you? We’ve got to get out of here and notify someone that the amulet is gone.”
“Long gone, at this point. It’s not like the cops are going to find them.”
“I hope they do. That amulet might be the White Star, stolen from Zoey Zander’s collection.”
“The Stanhope heist?”
“Yes.”
Alex’s fingers flew over the keys. “What is it, Egyptian?”
“I don’t think so. A neighboring kingdom. There’s some sort of a superstition about it, that it brings good luck to the pure of heart.”
Alex made a noise of irritation at the computer. “It didn’t bring good luck to us.”
“You’re hardly pure of heart.”
“But I’m pure in other places.” He frowned and tapped some more keys. “So what happens with Marissa?”
“Don’t remind me,” Julia groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “How am I going to tell her? She brings the amulet here to me, I tell her I’ll take care of it and it winds up stolen. It’s going to reflect terribly on the museum. And me.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve got a bigger problem than that,” he said grimly.
“What do you mean?”
He pointed to the screen. “The network’s down.”
5
Friday, 7:45 p.m.
“WHAT?” Julia stared at Alex.
“The network’s down. Look.”
Network not available. The black letters on the screen seemed to vibrate, taunting her. “How can it be down?” she demanded. “I don’t believe this. No phones, no cell phone, no Internet. What the hell’s going on?
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Kristin Hardy
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: His fling with Julia was supposed to be over, but gorgeous bachelor Alex is determined to win her back.When the pair end up trapped in a museum together he has forty-eight hours – and some seriously saucy tactics – to reclaim his lover.