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“Now, what did you do to piss off your sister?”

He very nearly lied, made up some idiotic sibling spat. Ego and manhood aside, he couldn't manage to lie to those quiet, assessing eyes. “It might have been getting stinking drunk and humiliating her in front of her new boyfriend.”

“Miranda's got a guy?”

“Yeah, sort of sudden. Nice enough. I entertained him
by falling down the stairs, then throwing up part of my stomach lining.”

Sympathy fluttered in her stomach, but she only cocked her head. “You've been a busy boy, Andrew.”

“Oh yeah.” He tossed the bag of peas into the sink so he could pace. He had jitters tangled around his jitters. Couldn't keep still. His fingers patted at his thighs, at his face, at each other as he prowled. “Then this morning, I decided to round things out by jumping all over her about work, family problems, her sex life.” He traced his fingers over his cheek, remembering the jolt of shock when she'd slapped him.

Because she caught herself taking a step toward him, Annie turned and rooted out antiseptic from a cabinet behind her. “It was probably the sex life crack that did it. Women don't like their brothers poking into that area.”

“Yeah, maybe you're right. But we've got a lot of trouble at the Institute. I'm under a lot of stress right now.”

She pursed her lips, glanced down at the piles of papers and forms, the envelopes of receipts, the worn-down stubs of pencils, and the reams of adding machine tape. “If you're breathing, you have stress. You drink yourself blind, the stress is right there when your vision clears up.”

“Look, maybe I've got a little problem. I'm going to deal with it. I just need to take a little time, give my system a rest. I—” He pressed his fingers to his eyes, swayed.

“You've got a big problem, and you can deal with it.” She crossed to him, took his wrists and tugged his hands down so he would look at her. “You need a day, because it's only today that has to count.”

“So far today sucks.”

She smiled, rose on her toes to kiss his cheek. “It's probably going to get worse. Sit down. I'll doctor those knuckles, tough guy.”

“Thanks.” Then he sighed, said it again. “Thanks, Annie.”

He kissed her cheek in turn, then rested his head against hers just for the comfort of it. She still held his wrists, lightly, and her fingers felt so competent, so strong, her hair
smelled so fresh and simple. He pressed his lips to it, then to her temple.

Then somehow his mouth was on hers, and the taste of her was flooding his ragged system like sunlight. When her fingers flexed in his, he released them, but only to frame her face with his hands, to draw her into him, hold her there while the sheer warmth of her soothed like balm on a wound.

So many contrasts, was all he could think. The tough little body, the soft sweep of hair, the clipped voice and generous mouth.

The strength and the softness of her, so endearing, so familiar. And so necessary to him.

She'd always been there. He'd always known she'd be there.

It wasn't easy to break free. Not from his hold—she could have easily stepped away. His hands were gentle as bird wings on her face. The mouth both needy and tender.

She'd wondered, had let herself wonder once, if it would be the same. The feel of him, the taste. But that was long ago, before she'd convinced herself that friendship was enough. Now it wasn't easy to break free of what that one long quiet kiss stirred, what it asked, what it took out of her.

She needed all of her strength of will to step back from the slowly kindling need he'd brought back to life. A need, she told herself, that wouldn't help either of them.

He nearly pulled her back, was already reaching out blindly when she held up her hands, palms out, in warning. He jerked back as if he'd been slapped a second time.

“Oh Christ. I'm sorry. Annie, I'm sorry.” What had he done? How could he have ruined the single friendship he didn't think he could live without? “I didn't mean to do that. I wasn't thinking. I'm sorry.”

She let him wind down, let the miserable guilt settle on his face. “I bounced a two-hundred-pound man out of my bar last night because he thought he could buy me along with a beer and a bump.” She clamped her hand around Andrew's left thumb and gave it a quick twist. His eyes
widened, his breath hissed as she held it. “I could have you on your knees, pal, whimpering if I gave this one little digit a good yank back. We're not seventeen anymore, not quite so stupid and a hell of a lot less innocent. If I hadn't wanted your hands on me, you'd have been flat on your back, checking out the cracks in my ceiling plaster.”

Sweat began to pearl on his forehead. “Ah, could you let go?”

“Sure.” Obligingly, she released his thumb, and kept her eyebrows arrogantly cocked. “Want a Coke? You look a little sweaty.” She turned and stepped to the refrigerator.

“I don't want to ruin things,” he began.

“Ruin what?”

“Us. You matter, Annie. You've always mattered.”

She stared blindly into the refrigerator. “You've always mattered too. I'll let you know when you ruin things.”

“I want to talk about . . . before.”

He waited while she popped the tops on two bottles. Grace in economy of motion, he thought, a steel spine in a well-toned body. Had he noticed those things before? Noticed the little flecks of gold in her eyes? Or had he just stored them up so they'd all come to him in a flood in a moment just like this?

“Why?”

“Maybe to face things—something I didn't realize until lately was stuck inside me.” He flexed his fingers, felt the ache. “I'm not in the best shape right now, but I have to start somewhere. Sometime.”

She set the bottles on the counter, forced herself to turn, to meet his eyes. And hers were swimming with emotions she'd struggled to keep locked in for years. “It's painful for me, Andrew.”

“You wanted the baby.” The breath he released hurt his chest. He'd never spoken of the baby before, not out loud. “I could see it in your face when you told me you were pregnant. It scared the hell out of me.”

“I was too young to know what I wanted.” Then she closed her eyes because it was a lie. “Yes, yes, I wanted the baby. I had this idiotic fantasy that I'd tell you, and
you'd be happy and just sweep me up. Then we'd . . . Well, that's as far as it went. But you didn't want me.”

His mouth was dry as dust, his gut raw. He knew one drink would smooth it all away. Cursing himself for thinking of that at such a time, he snagged one of the bottles off the counter and gulped down soda that seemed sickly and sweet. “I cared about you.”

“You didn't love me, Andrew. I was just a girl you got lucky with on the beach one night.”

He slammed the bottle down again. “It wasn't like that. Goddamn it, you know it wasn't like that.”

“It was exactly like that,” she said evenly. “I was in love with you, Andrew, and I knew when I lay down on the blanket with you that you weren't in love with me. I didn't care. I didn't expect anything. Andrew Jones of Jones Point and Annie McLean from the waterfront? I was young, but I wasn't stupid.”

“I would have married you.”

“Would you?” Her voice went chilly. “Your offer didn't even hit lukewarm.”

“I know it.” And that was something that had eaten away at him slowly, a nibble at a time, for fifteen years. “I didn't give you what you needed that day. I didn't know how. If I had, you might have made a different choice.”

“If I'd taken you up on it, you would have hated me. When you offered, part of you already did.” She moved her shoulders, picked up her own Coke. “And looking back, I can't blame you. I'd have ruined your life.” The bottle froze halfway to her lips as he stepped toward her. The hot glint of fury in his eyes had her bracing against the counter. He snatched the bottle out of her hand, set it down, then took a hard grip on her shoulders.

“I don't know how it would have been—and that's something I've asked myself more than once over the years. But I know how it was. Maybe I wasn't in love with you, I don't know. But making love with you mattered to me.” And that, he realized, was something else he'd never said aloud, something neither one of them had faced. “However badly I handled things afterward, that night mattered. And
damn it, Annie, damn it,” he added, giving her a brisk shake, “you might have made my life.”

“I was never right for you,” she said in a furious whisper.

“How the hell do you know? We never had a chance to find out. You tell me you're pregnant, and before I can absorb it, you had an abortion.”

“I never had an abortion.”

“You made a mistake,” he said, tossing the words she'd once heaved at him back in her face. “And you fixed it. I would have taken care of you, both of you.” Pain, long and shallowly buried, cracked through the surface in pummeling fists. “I would have done my best for you.” His fingers tightened on her arms. “But it wasn't good enough. Okay, it was your decision, your body, your choice. But goddamn it, it was a part of me too.”

She'd lifted her hands to push him away and now curled them into his shirt. His face was sheet-pale under the bruises, his eyes burning dark. The ache around her heart was for both of them now. “Andrew, I didn't have an abortion. I lost the baby. I told you, I had a miscarriage.”

Something flickered deep in his eyes. His grip relaxed on her shoulders, and he stepped back. “You lost it?”

“I told you, when it happened.”

“I always thought—I assumed you'd. . .” He turned away, walked to the window. Without thinking he yanked it open, and resting his palms on the sill, dragged in air. “I thought you told me that to make it easier on both of us. I figured that you hadn't trusted me enough to stand by you, to take care of you and the baby.”

“I wouldn't have done that without telling you.”

“You avoided me for a long time afterward. We never talked about it, never seemed to be able to talk about it. I knew you wanted the baby, and I thought—all this time—I thought that you'd terminated the pregnancy because I hadn't stood by you the way you needed.”

“You—” She had to swallow the hot ball in her throat. “You wanted the baby?”

“I didn't know.” Even now he didn't know. “But I've
never regretted anything more in my life than not holding on to you that day on the beach. Then everything drifted, almost like it never happened.”

“It hurt me. I had to get over it. Over you.”

Slowly, he pulled the window down again. “Did you?”

“I made a life for myself. A lousy marriage, an ugly divorce.”

“That's not an answer.”

When he turned back, his eyes very blue and level on hers, she shook her head. “It's not a fair question just now. I'm not going to start something with you that's based on what was.”

“Then maybe we'd better take a look at where we are, and start from there.”

twenty-one

M
iranda went back
to work on the computer, revising charts, making new ones. It kept her mind occupied, except for the times she caught herself looking out the window, willing Andrew's car to come up the hill.

Ryan had settled in the bedroom with his cell phone. She imagined he didn't want several of the calls he was making to pop up on her records. That was something she wasn't going to worry about.

He'd given her a whole new line of worry. If he was right, the quick and rough daylight robbery hadn't simply been a matter of chance, hadn't been some itinerant thief looking for fast cash. It had been a well-planned, carefully orchestrated part of the whole. She'd been a specific target, the motive behind it nothing more than delaying her trip to Italy and her work on the bronze.

Whoever had stolen it, copied it, had already decided to discredit her. Had that been personal, or the luck of the draw? she wondered. She believed, as she had few genuine friends, she had few genuine enemies. She'd simply avoided becoming close enough to anyone to create them.

But the messages coming over her fax were very personal.

The attack had been personal, she thought, designed to terrify. The silence, the little nick at the throat with the knife. Had that all been routine for the attacker, or had he been given instructions to leave his victim frozen in shock and fear?

It had cost her a large slice of her confidence, her sense of safety, certainly her dignity. And it had delayed her trip by almost a week. The delay had put her at odds with her mother before the project even began.

Layers, she mused, very cleverly applied layers that coated the core. Yet it hadn't begun with the attack, but with the forgery and theft of the
David.

What had been going on in her life then? What was she missing that tied the one to the other?

She'd been working on her doctorate, she remembered. Splitting her time between the Institute, her studies, her thesis. Her social life, never a glitter ball of events, had been nil.

What had been going on around her? That, she realized, was harder to pin down. Paying attention to the people around her wasn't her strong suit. That was something she intended to change.

For now, she closed her eyes and tried to bring the time span, and the people in it, into focus.

Elise and Andrew had been married, and still by all appearances deeply in love. She could remember no fights or squabbles. Andrew's drinking had been routine, but nothing she'd worried about.

Then again, she'd done her best to give him and Elise as much privacy as possible.

Giovanni and Lori had entertained each other with a brisk, friendly affair. She'd known they were sleeping together, but since it hadn't interfered with the quality or quantity of their work, Miranda had kept out of that as well.

Her mother had come into the Institute briefly. A day or two, Miranda thought now. No longer. They'd had a
handful of meetings, one stiff family dinner, and had parted ways.

Her father had stayed only long enough to see the bronze through initial testing. He'd only sat in on a portion of the meetings and had made some excuse to avoid attending the family meal.

Vincente and his wife had come in her father's place, but even their vivid personalities hadn't brightened the event. If memory served, Gina had come into the lab only once.

Richard Hawthorne she remembered only as a vague presence buried in books or hunched over a computer.

John Carter had been a constant presence, overseeing projects, worrying over reports. Miranda rubbed her temples as she struggled to pull in details. Had he been a little off his stride, sluggish, out of sorts? A touch of the flu, she remembered. He'd had a touch of the flu, but had worked through it.

How was she supposed to remember? In disgust, she dropped her hands. It had been routine, simply routine with her work as the driving force. Everything else was blips once she had that small, lovely statue in her hands.

She'd seen the acquisition of the
David
as another step in her career, and had used the authentication as the basis for one of her papers. She'd gotten quite a bit of attention for that, she recalled, in the academic and scientific worlds. She'd been invited to lecture on it and had won a considerable amount of acclaim.

It had, she supposed, been the true beginning of her rise in her career. That little bronze had lifted her out of the pack and put her solidly in the lead.

She stared blindly at the words on her screen, heard a dim buzzing in her ears.

The Fiesole Bronze would have sent her reputation rocketing. It would have cemented her as one of the top archeometrists in the world. Not just academic acclaim this time, but the lay press as well. We were talking Michelangelo here, romance, mystery, money. She shut her eyes and struggled to think it through.

Both pieces were hers. Both pieces had offered her a
solid boost up the reputational ladder. And both pieces had been forged. What if they hadn't been the target at all?

What if she was?

She folded her hands, waited for her insides to settle. It had logic, it had reason. It was more than plausible.

But where was the motive?

What other pieces had she authenticated that could be retested without too much speculation or comment within the Institute? The Cellini. Her stomach twisted painfully at the thought of it. The statue of Nike, she thought, forcing herself to be calm and thorough. There was the paperweight-sized bronze of Romulus and Remus nursing at the she-wolf.

She would have to get back into the lab. She would have to be sure none of those had been replaced with forgeries.

She jerked as the phone rang, stared at it for several long seconds before she picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Miranda. I have some difficult news.”

“Mother.” She rubbed a hand over her heart.
I think someone's trying to hurt me. I think they're trying to destroy me. It was real, the bronze was real. You have to listen.
But the words only raced in her head. “What is it?”

“Sometime on Thursday night the lab was broken into. Equipment, records, data were destroyed.”

“Destroyed?” she said dully.
Yes, I'm being destroyed.

“Giovanni . . .” The pause was long, and for the first time in too long to remember, Miranda heard raw emotion in her mother's voice. “Giovanni was killed.”

“Giovanni.”
You cared. Oh God, you cared.
She shut her eyes as tears began to swim. “Giovanni,” she said again.

“From all appearances, he must have decided to come in and take advantage of the holiday quiet in the lab to work. We've been unable to tell what project he was dealing with. The police—”

Again that hitch in rhythm, and though the voice was stronger, it remained uneven. “The police are investigating, but they have no leads to date. I've been attempting to assist them for the last two days. The funeral is tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I thought it best that you hear it from me. I trust you'll inform Andrew. I realize you were fond of Giovanni. I believe we all were. There's no need for you to fly in for the services. They're to be simple and private.”

“His family.”

“I've spoken with his family. Though we've made arrangements to have donations to charity made in his name, I believe they would appreciate flowers. This is a very difficult time for all of us. I hope that you and I can put our professional differences aside and agree to send an arrangement as a family.”

“Yes, of course. I could fly out tonight.”

“That's neither necessary nor wise.” Elizabeth's voice was brisk again. “The press is well aware that you worked together on the Fiesole Bronze. This has already been rehashed in the media. Your presence here would only stir it all up again. For Giovanni's family's sake, the services should be kept quiet and dignified.”

She remembered the words of the last fax again:
His blood's on your hands. Can you see it?
“You're right. There's nothing I can do there but make matters worse.” She closed her eyes, the better to concentrate on keeping her tone even. “Do the police know why the lab was broken into? Was anything stolen?”

“It's difficult to tell, but it doesn't appear that anything was taken. A great deal was destroyed. The alarm was shut off, from inside. The authorities believe it's possible he knew his assailant.”

“I'd like you to keep me informed of the progress. He mattered very much to me.”

“I know you had a personal relationship.”

“We weren't lovers, Mother.” Miranda nearly sighed it. “We were friends.”

“I didn't intend to—” Elizabeth stopped, remained silent for several seconds. “I'll see that you're kept up-to-date. If you go out of town, you might see that Andrew has your location this time.”

“I plan to stay home,” Miranda said. “And garden.”
She smiled a little as there was no response. “An enforced leave of absence gives me time to develop a hobby. They're supposed to be good for the soul.”

“So I'm told. I'm glad you're making productive use of your time rather than brooding. Tell Andrew I want an update on the investigation there as soon as possible. I may be coming in for a short time, and would appreciate having everything dealing with the matter of the
David
recorded in a cohesive fashion.”

I'll warn him.
“I'll be sure he understands.”

“Good. Goodbye, Miranda.”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

She replaced the receiver neatly, then sat staring at it until she realized Ryan had come in and stood behind her. “She had me fooled for a minute. I started to believe she was human. She sounded genuinely grieved when she told me about Giovanni. But before it was over, she reverted to her usual self. I'm to stay away because my presence at Giovanni's funeral would be disruptive.”

Her instinct was to stiffen when his hands came to her shoulders. That alone infuriated her. She shut her eyes and willed herself to relax under his hands. “I'm instructed to inform Andrew of my location, should I choose to leave town again, and to tell him to give her an update, at the soonest opportunity, of the burglary investigation.”

“She's got a lot on her mind, Miranda. Everyone in your family does just now.”

“And when your family has a crisis, what do they do?”

He crouched, turned her swivel chair around until she faced him. “Your family and mine aren't the same, and can't be expected to react in the same way.”

“No. My mother remains, at all times, the director. My father maintains his distance and general apathy, and Andrew drowns himself in a bottle. And what do I do? I ignore all of it as long as it's humanly possible so it won't interfere with my routine.”

“That's not what I've seen.”

“You've seen a blip on the screen, not the usual sweep.”
She nudged him aside so she could stand. “I'm going for a run.”

“Miranda.” He caught her arm before she could hurry out of the room. “If you didn't care, if they didn't matter to you, you wouldn't be so sad.”

“I'm not sad, Ryan. I'm resigned.” She shook free and walked out to change her clothes.

She didn't often run. She considered walking a more efficient and certainly more dignified method of exercise. But when events and emotions built up to a high inside her, she ran.

She chose the beach below the cliffs because the water was close and the air fresh. She headed north, digging into the shale while the waves gleefully attacked the rocky shore and spewed droplets of water into the sunlight. Gulls swooped, letting out their eerily feminine screams.

As her muscles warmed, she tugged off the light jacket and tossed it aside. No one would steal it. Crime, she thought with a giddy lurch in her stomach, was low in Jones Point.

Orange buoys bobbed on the surface of the dark blue water. Others, tall, gray, and weathered, swayed and spoke in hollow, mournful bongs. A short pier lay drunkenly askew in the water, ignored because neither she nor Andrew sailed. Farther out, boats skimmed and sailed as people took advantage of the hint of spring and a Sunday holiday.

She followed the curve of the beach, ignoring the burning in her calves and chest, the trickle of sweat between her breasts.

A lobster boat swayed on the current while the waterman in his bright red cap checked his pots. He lifted a hand and waved, and the simple gesture from a stranger made her eyes burn. While her vision blurred, she waved in return, then stopped, bending over, hands on knees, while her breath screamed out of her laboring lungs.

She hadn't run far, she thought, but she'd run too fast. She hadn't paced herself. Everything was happening too fast. She couldn't quite keep up, yet she didn't dare slow down.

And sweet God, she didn't even know where she was going.

There was a man in her house, a man she'd known for only a matter of weeks. A man who was a thief, likely a liar, and undoubtedly dangerous. Yet she'd put a part of her life in his hands. She'd become intimate with him, more intimate than she'd ever allowed herself to become with anyone.