Homeport (19 page)

“Okay, get dressed.”

“Why?”

“We'll go to the lab—you can test it again, in front of me, satisfy the first level of business.”

“It's two in the morning.”

“So we won't be interrupted. Unless you want to go in your pajamas, get some clothes on.”

“I can't test what I don't have.”

“I have it.” He gestured toward the leather bag he'd set just inside the door. “I brought it with me, with the idea of ramming it down your throat. But reason prevailed. Dress warm,” he suggested, and sat comfortably in her armchair. “The temperature's dropped.”

“I'm not taking you into the Institute.”

“You're a logical woman. Be logical. I have the bronze and your reputation in my hands. You want a chance of getting the first back and salvaging the second. I'm giving it to you.” He waited a moment to let that sink in. “I'll give you the time to test it, but I'm going to be right there, breathing down your neck when you do. That's the deal, Dr. Jones. Be smart. Take the deal.”

She needed to know, didn't she? To be sure. And once she was sure, she would toss him to the police before he could blink those pretty eyes of his.

She could handle him, she decided. The fact was, her pride demanded she take the opportunity to do just that. “I'm not going to change clothes in front of you.”

“Dr. Jones, if I had sex on my mind, we'd have dealt with that when we were on the floor. Business,” he said again. “And you're not getting out of my sight until we've concluded it.”

“I really hate you.” She said it with such loathing he saw no cause to doubt her word. But he smiled to himself as she shut herself into the closet and hangers began to rattle.

 

She was a scientist, an educated woman with unimpeachable breeding and an unblemished reputation. She had had
papers published in a dozen important science and art journals.
Newsweek
had done an article on her. She'd lectured at Harvard and had spent three months as a guest professor at Oxford.

It wasn't possible that she was driving through the chilly Maine night with a thief, intending to break into her own lab and conduct clandestine tests on a stolen bronze.

She hit the brakes and swung her car to the shoulder of the road. “I can't do this. It's ridiculous, not to mention illegal. I'm calling the police.”

“Fine.” Ryan merely shrugged as she reached for her car phone. “You do that, sweetheart. And you explain to them what you're doing with a worthless hunk of metal you tried to pass off as a work of art. Then you can explain to the insurance company—you've already made a claim, haven't you?—how it happens you expected them to pay you five hundred grand for a fake. One you authenticated, personally.”

“It's not a fake,” she said between her teeth, but she didn't punch in 911.

“Prove it.” His grin flashed in the dark. “To me, Dr. Jones, and to yourself. If you do . . . we'll negotiate.”

“Negotiate, my ass. You're going to jail,” she told him, and shifted in her seat so they were face-to-face. “I'm going to see to it.”

“First things first.” Amused, he reached out and gave her chin a friendly pinch. “Call your security. Tell them you and your brother are coming in to do some work in the lab.”

“I'm not involving Andrew.”

“Andrew's already involved. Just make the call. Use whatever excuse you like. You couldn't sleep, so you decided to get some work done while it's quiet. Go on, Miranda. You want to know the truth, don't you?”

“I know the truth. You wouldn't know it if it jumped up and bit you.”

“You lose a little of that high-society cool when you're pissed off.” He leaned forward, kissed her lightly before she could shove him back. “I like it.”

“Keep your hands off me.”

“That wasn't my hands.” He took her shoulders, caressed. “Those were my hands. Make the call.”

She elbowed him aside, and jabbed in the number. The cameras would be on, she thought. He'd never pass as Andrew, so they were finished before they began. Her security chief, if he had any sense at all, would call the police. All she'd have to do was tell her story, and Ryan Boldari would be cuffed and penned and out of her life.

“This is Dr. Miranda Jones,” she slapped out as Ryan patted her knee in approval. “My brother and I are on our way in. Yes, to work. With all the confusion of the last few days, I'm behind in my lab work. We should be there in about ten minutes. We'll use the main door. Thank you.”

She disconnected, sniffed. She had him now, she decided, and he'd turned the key himself. “They're expecting me, and will switch off the alarm when I get there.”

“Fine.” He stretched out his legs as she pulled onto the road again. “I'm doing this for you, you know.”

“I can't tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“No thanks necessary.” He waved them away, grinning while she snarled. “Really. Despite all the trouble you've caused me, I like you.”

“Why, I'm all aflutter.”

“See? You've got style—not to mention a mouth that just begs to be savored over long hours in the dark. I really regretted not having more time with that mouth of yours.”

Her hands tightened on the wheel. The hitch in her breathing was fury. She wouldn't allow it to be anything else. “You'll have more time, Ryan,” she said sweetly. “This mouth of mine is going to chew you up and spit you out before we're done.”

“I look forward to it. This is a nice area.” He made the comment conversationally as she followed the coast road into town. “Windswept, dramatic, lonely, but with culture and civilization close at hand. It suits you. The house came down through your family, I take it.”

She didn't answer. However ludicrous her actions, she
wasn't about to add to them by holding a conversation with him.

“It's enviable,” he continued, unoffended. “The heritage, and the money, of course. But beyond the privilege it's the name, you know? The Joneses of Maine. Just reeks of class.”

“Unlike the Boldaris of Brooklyn,” she muttered, but that only made him laugh.

“Oh, we reek of other things. You'd like my family. It's impossible not to. And what, I wonder, would they make of you, Dr. Jones?”

“Perhaps we'll meet at your trial.”

“Still determined to bring me to justice.” He appreciated her profile almost as much as the shadows of ragged rocks, the quick glimpses of dark sea. “I've been in this game for twenty years, darling. I've no intention of making a misstep on the eve of my retirement.”

“Once a thief, always a thief.”

“Oh, in the heart, I agree with you. But indeed . . .” He sighed. “Once I clear my record, I'm done. If you hadn't messed things up, I'd be taking a well-deserved vacation on St. Bart's right now.”

“How tragic for you.”

“Yeah, well.” He moved his shoulders again. “I can still salvage a few days.” He unhooked his seat belt, and turned to reach into the backseat for the bag he'd tossed there.

“What are you doing?”

“Nearly there.” He whistled lightly as he took out a ski cap and pulled it down low over his head until his hair was concealed. Next came a long black scarf of cashmere that he wrapped around his neck and over the lower part of his face.

“You can try to alert the guards,” he began, flipping down the visor to check the result in the vanity mirror. “But if you do you won't see the bronze, or me again. You play it straight, go in, head to the lab just like you would normally, and we'll be fine. Andrew's a little taller than I am,” he considered as he unrolled a long, dark coat. “Shouldn't
matter. They'll see what they expect to see. People always do.”

When she pulled into the parking lot, she had to admit he was right. He was so anonymous in the cold weather gear that no one would look twice at him. More, when they got out of the car and started toward the main entrance, she realized she might have taken him for Andrew herself.

The body language, the gait, the slight hunch in the shoulders were perfect.

She yanked her card through the slot with one irritable flick of the wrist. After a pause, she punched in her code. She imagined herself making wild faces at the camera, tackling Ryan and pounding her fists into his smug face while the guards scrambled. Instead, she tapped her key card lightly against her palm and waited for the buzzer to sound and the locks to open.

Ryan opened the doors himself, laying one brotherly hand on her shoulder. He kept his head down, muttering to her as they walked in. “No detours, Dr. Jones. You don't really want the trouble, or the publicity.”

“What I want is the bronze.”

“You're about to get it. Temporarily at least.”

He kept his hand on her shoulder, guiding her down the corridors, down the stairs, to the lab doors. Again, she keyed them in. “You won't be walking out of here with my property.”

He turned on the lights. “Run your tests,” he suggested, peeling out of his coat. “You're wasting time.” He kept his gloves on to take out the bronze and hand it to her. “I do know something about authenticating, Dr. Jones, and I'll be watching you closely.”

And this, he told himself, was one of the biggest risks of his long career. Coming here, with her. He'd boxed himself in, and was damned if he could rationalize the reason. Oh, coming back was one thing, he thought as he watched her take a pair of wire-rim glasses out of a drawer and slip them on.

He'd been right about that, he mused. The sexy scholar. Tucking that thought away, he made himself comfortable
while she took the bronze to a workstation for an extraction.

His reputation, his pride—which were one and the same—were at stake.

The job, which should have been a nice, tidy, and uneventful close to his career, had ended up costing him a great deal of trouble, money, and loss of face.

But what he should have done, and had intended to do, was confront her, threaten her, blackmail her into offsetting his losses, and walk away.

He hadn't been able to resist outwitting her. He had no doubt in his mind she intended to slant the tests in her favor, to try to convince him that the bronze was genuine. And when she did, it was going to cost her.

He thought the Cellini would be fair payment for his indulgence. The Institute, he decided, slipping his hands in his pockets as he watched her work, was about to make a generous donation to the Boldari Gallery.

It was going to kill her.

Her brows were knit as she straightened from the microscope. There was a twist in her stomach that no longer had anything to do with anger or with irritated arousal. She didn't speak at all, but made notes in a steady hand.

She took another scraping from the bronze, both the patina and the metal now, put it on a slide and studied that in turn. Her face was pale and set as she placed the bronze on a scale, took additional notes.

“I need to test the corrosion level, take X rays for the tool work.”

“Fine. Let's go.” He moved through the lab with her, imagining just where he would display the Cellini. The little bronze Venus she would give him would go into his own collection, but the Cellini was for the gallery, for the public, and would add a nice splash of prestige to his business.

He pulled a slim cigar out of his pocket, reached for his lighter.

“No smoking in here,” she snapped.

He merely clamped it between his teeth and lighted it. “Call a cop,” he suggested. “How about some coffee?”

“Leave me alone. Be quiet.”

The twist in her stomach was sharper now, and spread like acid as the minutes ticked away. She followed procedure to the letter. But she already knew.

She heated the clay, waiting, praying for the flash of light from the crystals. And had to bite her lip to hold back the gasp. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

But when she held the X ray up, saw her instincts confirmed, her fingers were icy cold.

“Well?” He arched a brow, and waited for the con.

“This bronze is a forgery.” Because her legs were weak, she sat on a stool and missed the flicker of surprise in his eyes. “The formula, as far as I can tell with preliminary tests, is correct. The patina, however, has been recently applied, and the corrosion levels are inconsistent with those of a bronze of the sixteenth century. The tool work is wrong. It's well done,” she continued, with one hand unconsciously pressed hard against her churning stomach. “But it's not authentic.”

“Well, well, Dr. Jones,” he murmured, “you surprise me.”

“This is not the bronze I authenticated three years ago.”

He tucked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. “You screwed up, Miranda. You're going to have to face it.”

“This is not the bronze,” she repeated, and her spine snapped straight as she pushed off the stool. “I don't know what you thought you could prove, bringing me this forgery, taking us through this ridiculous charade.”

“That's the bronze I took from the South Gallery,” he said evenly, “and one I took on your reputation, Doctor. So let's cut the bullshit, and deal.”

“I'm not dealing with you.” She snatched up the bronze and shoved it at him. “You think you can break in my home, then try to pass this obvious fake off as my property so that I'll give you something else? You're a lunatic.”

“I stole this bronze in good faith.”

“Oh for God's sake—I'm calling security.”

He grabbed her arm, shoved her roughly against the
counter. “Look, sweetheart. I went through this little game against my better judgment. Now it's done. Maybe you weren't trying to pass anything off. Maybe it was an honest mistake, but—”

“I didn't make a mistake. I don't make mistakes.”

“Does the name Fiesole ring a bell?”