Sharp Edges (13 page)

And he was definitely not in full control.

He stared straight ahead through the windshield. "You were right when you said that the last time I had the Hades cup, the security sucked. The next time I get my hands on it, I intend to take very good care of it. When I'm finished with March, I will return it to my old client. The Leabrook has no claim on it."

"I understand that you're concerned about your business reputation, but I think this is a matter for the lawyers to hash out."

Very deliberately, he removed his sunglasses and met her eyes. "I have some more free advice for you, Eugenia. Don't get in my way."

She stilled. "I could give you the same advice."

She was not going to back down, he realized. She would go toe-to-toe with him until one of them hit the mat. He had never met a woman like this one. She would drive him crazy before it was over.

"Cyrus?" She frowned. "Are you all right? You look a little strange."

The roaring in his ears exploded into flames that leaped through his veins. He had just enough common sense left to recognize that he could no longer distinguish between the sexual and the personal challenge she offered. The dangerous part was that he was not sure he even cared about the difference.

"No." He reached for her. "I'm not all right."

He pulled her close and kissed her hard.

Eight

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W
ithout warning, Eugenia's insides turned to molten glass. She suddenly realized that if she had not been sitting down, she would have learned the true meaning of the phrase
weak in the knees
.

Hormone city.

And to think she had been wondering lately if she should take more vitamins or start drinking ginseng tea.

"Good grief." Her words were muffled because Cyrus's mouth was crushed against her own.

No man had ever kissed her this way. There was a sense of overwhelming heat. A great torrent of it rolled toward her. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.

As if she would even want to escape, she thought. A strange euphoria sang in her veins. She wanted to throw herself into the powerful, onrushing tide. As far as she was concerned, it was not moving fast enough.

She clenched one hand in Cyrus's hair.

"Son of a—" The words ended in a hoarse groan as he tightened his grip on her.

This was probably a blatant attempt to control her with cheap sex tactics, Eugenia thought. If so, it was a ruthless maneuver. Just the sort of thing she should have expected from Cyrus. She was outraged. He should know that she was far too intelligent and too mature to succumb to this approach.

On the other hand, she was hotter than the inside of a glassmaker's furnace.

She wrapped her arms very tightly around his neck. The curiosity factor was kicking in fast. No man had ever before tried to control her with tawdry sex tactics. Or, if he had, she had been unaware of the effort, which, in turn, was overwhelming testimony to the failure of the attempt.

Cyrus flattened one hand on her back and held her securely against his chest. His other hand clamped around her upper thigh.

She would chew him out later, she vowed.

Much later.

Right after she sampled a few more degrees of the sexual heat he gave off in waves. Why should she deprive her hormones of the only real stimulation they had enjoyed in ages?

"Damn," Cyrus muttered when he finally came up for breath. "I should have known better than to do this."

"Don't think it will change anything."

"Trust me, I'm not thinking at all at the moment," he said with heartfelt conviction.

"And don't get the idea that you can use sex to control me."

"I should be so lucky." His mouth closed over hers again, hot and deep and demanding.

Apparently he did nothing in a hurry, she thought. But he was certainly thorough.

She flexed her fingers on his broad shoulders, savoring the sleek, muscled feel of him. He was as solid as a rock. Stubborn as a brick, perhaps, but definitely solid. The kind of man who did not bend or waver or run from a woman who was as strong as himself.

Cyrus muttered something unintelligible, then twisted and eased her against the back of the seat. He leaned into her.

Eugenia's head swam. He was big. With shoulders that blocked out the sun when he bent over her. She moved one hand to his leg. Her groping fingers curved over a very hard object that bulged beneath the fabric of his chinos.

"Christ." He sucked air.

"Sorry." She shifted again, and this time her arm struck another hard object.

The Jeep horn blared loudly.

"Oh, shit." Cyrus raised his head. "I don't believe this."

Eugenia opened her eyes and came back to reality with a sickening thud. Sunlight danced on the hood. She blinked against the glare. That was when she noticed the handful of grinning spectators who had stopped to watch the activities taking place in the front seat of the Jeep.

"Good lord, this is insanity." She straightened quickly and yanked at her shirt, which had come out of the waistband of her trousers. "I haven't been this embarrassed since I accidentally spilled champagne over one of the Leabrook Foundation board members at last year's annual reception."

"Nice to know where I rank on the spectrum of embarrassing incidents in your life." Something dangerous still burned in his eyes.

"You've got a nerve, acting as if I've offended you."

He picked up his sunglasses and put them on with a deliberate, economical movement of his hand. "Should I be flattered to know that you're humiliated because you were seen kissing me?"

An odd little chill went through her. She gazed at the impenetrable mirrored shields that concealed his gaze. The futuristic lawman was back.

"What did you think you were doing just now, anyway?" she demanded.

"I was about to ask you the same thing."

"You started it."

His mouth twisted. "Now that's a real adult comment. I could have sworn that what happened here a minute ago was a mutual effort."

That brought her up short. He was right. She always accepted responsibility for her own actions.

"Yes. It was mutual. Not real smart, but mutual." She found her sunglasses and shoved them onto her nose with a sense of relief. At least they were more evenly matched now. "For heaven's sake, let's get out of here."

"Just as soon as I find the keys."

"What happened to them?"

"In all the excitement, I must have dropped them." He leaned down to grope around on the floor of the Jeep.

"Some security expert." She tried to ignore the amused stares of those passing by the car. "Can't even keep track of car keys."

"Has anyone ever told you that women who refrain from slashing a man's ego to ribbons generally get more dates?"

"An ex-boyfriend once said something to that effect."

"But you didn't pay any attention, right?"

"Let's just say that since I didn't particularly want to date him anymore, I saw no reason to restrain myself."

"I think I could almost feel sorry for him." Keys jangled. "Ah, here we go." Cyrus sat up and reached toward the ignition.

"Hurry. I feel like we're on display in a zoo."

She was reaching for her seat belt when she saw the framed picture in the window of the art gallery across the street. Shock doused the sparks of embarrassment, anger, and sexual impulse.

"My God.
Cyrus
."

"Now, what is it?" The lenses of his sunglasses gave him a look of well-chilled menace. "I'm trying to start the damn Jeep."

"That painting. Over there."

He scowled at her abrupt change in mood. Then he turned to gaze out his own window. "Which painting? There are two of them."

"The one with the sixteenth-century Venetian goblet set against a backdrop of green-tinted glass." She glanced at the sign painted on the window of the shop. "In the Midnight Art Gallery. See it?"

"Okay, okay, I see a picture of a fancy-looking bowl with a little pointy thing on top of the lid. What about it?"

"Nellie Grant painted that picture. I would stake my life on it."

Cyrus snapped his head around. "How the hell can you tell that?"

"Because I've seen her work. I'm in the art business, remember?"

"I thought you were an expert on glass."

"I am." She shrugged impatiently. "But the feeling I get when I'm looking at an artist's work is pretty much the same, regardless of the medium."

"What do you mean?"

She frowned, uncertain how to explain. "There's a sense of identity. It's sort of like someone's voice. Once you've heard it, you recognize it."

He watched her closely. "You're sure that painting was done by Nellie Grant?"

"If it's not one of hers, it's one heck of a forgery. Why would anyone bother to forge the work of an artist whose paintings were not yet considered valuable? To my knowledge, Nellie hadn't even sold any of her work before she died."

"Is that a fact?" Cyrus took another look at the picture in the window.

Eugenia leaned around him, studying the painting with a mounting sense of urgency. "I've got a picture hanging above my fireplace that Nellie gave me the day after Daventry died. She told me it was one of a series of four she called
Glass
. I'd be willing to bet every piece of Venetian glass in the Leabrook that the picture in that window is another in the same series."

"Okay, okay. Take it easy. Maybe the Midnight Gallery handled Nellie's paintings here on the island."

"I'm sure Nellie would have told me if she had started selling her work through a local gallery." She reached for the door handle.

"Eugenia, wait, let's talk about this before you go rushing off…"

She had opened the door and got out before he could finish the sentence. "I want to know when and how that gallery got her painting."

Cyrus muttered something that she did not catch. It had not sounded helpful or encouraging. She slammed the door and started around the Jeep.

The onlookers who had been enjoying the show went back to browsing in shop windows as Eugenia slipped between parked cars.

Cyrus got out from behind the wheel. He took two long strides and managed to grab her arm before she reached the middle of the street. She tried to shake him off but was not surprised when she failed to do so. It would take a lot to get rid of him, she reflected.

"The first rule in the detective business is to be cool," he growled in her ear.

"Don't try to stop me. I'm on to something here. I can feel it."

He tightened his grip, slowing her headlong rush to a more casual pace. "We have a deal. If you want my help in finding out what happened to Nellie Grant, you'll have to do things my way."

"Okay, I'm cool, I'm cool." She made herself stop straining at the manacle that was his hand.

"Smile," he ordered softly. "Try to look like a typical gallery browser who's spotted something of interest in a shop window."

"Got it." She made herself smile. "Any other tricks of the trade I should know?"

"Don't head straight for the painting that you think Nellie Grant did. Show some interest in the one next to it, first."

"Why should I waste any time on it?" She broke off as his logic sank in. "Oh, I get it. We don't want to appear too obvious, right?"

"That's the general idea."

When they reached the sidewalk, he drew her to a halt in front of the Midnight Gallery window. Out of the corner of her eye, Eugenia studied the painting she was certain had been done by Nellie. She frowned when she realized she could not read the signature. The name was a small, indecipherable scrawl in the lower left-hand corner.

"We're supposed to be looking at the other picture, remember?" Cyrus muttered.

"I'm looking at it." She turned away from Nellie's to contemplate the other painting in the window.

It was an underwater ocean scene featuring whales and dolphins frolicking beneath the surface of an impossibly blue sea.

"Generic, trivial, and completely uninteresting," Eugenia said.

"You don't like whales and dolphins?"

"I love whales and dolphins. I just don't like pictures of them that look as if they've been mass-produced."

"Are you always this critical?" Cyrus said.

"For heaven's sake, I can't show real interest in that picture. I'm sure the gallery owner will know who I am. Everyone else on the island does after what happened last night. Whoever owns this shop will expect me to have more demanding tastes, to say the least."

"All right, let's try it another way," he said patiently. "I'm the one who doesn't know anything about art, and because you're sexually obsessed with me, you've decided to educate me."

She whirled around to stare at him. "I beg your pardon? Sexually obsessed?"

"After that little exhibition in the front seat of my Jeep, I think it's safe to say it's a believable story. Given the fact that no one inside this gallery could have missed the show, we'd better go with it. Besides it fits in nicely with our basic cover."

It was all she could do not to grab him by the collar of his pineapple print shirt and shake him. The only thing that stopped her was the knowledge that he was too big to move in any direction he was not already inclined to go.

"I am
not
sexually obsessed with you."

"Whatever you say. But I don't think you have to worry about no one buying our new cover story."

"What. Do. You. Mean?"

"Earlier, you were worried because you didn't think anyone would believe that you and I were a couple. You said it was obvious I wasn't your type." His mouth curved with lethal amusement. "Now everyone on the island knows exactly what you see in me."

This time she did take hold of his collar. With both hands. "Don't get any ideas about playing out some version of
Lady Chatterley's Lover
here."

He looked down. "You're wrinkling my shirt."

Eugenia did not trust herself to speak. Without a word she released him, turned on her heel, and strode toward the door of the gallery.