by Anne Stuart
He turned it over to read the back. Charlie When She Left was the name of the painting, and it was quite recent. Only five years old. And according to Maguire’s expert sources, everything since then had been garbage.
Had the old man just let her go, or had he tried to get her back? Maybe he had hoped Gia would provide a suitable distraction and he wouldn’t miss Charlie. If so, it hadn’t worked. The last Maguire had heard, Pompasse had moved on to someone even younger, more innocent.
Charlie’s eyes still haunted him. The real ones, with their defenses in place. He wanted to spark some kind of emotion, and he’d been as obnoxious as he could be when she’d found him in the vineyard. Well, maybe he was capable of being even more obnoxious, but it would have been a stretch. She was the most self-contained ice princess he’d ever met, an anathema to him. She should have been a Nordic blonde, not a tawny cat.
He could exert considerable charm when he chose to, but he’d known instinctively that someone like Charlie would be immune to something as facile as charm. He wouldn’t be able to lie and flirt and flatter his way into her confidence—she was too well guarded. The best angle of attack was to act as if he didn’t give a shit.
He would have to walk a fine line if he was going to carry off his impersonation. He knew as well as anyone that he wasn’t the typical insurance type, and he had to remember to tone down his natural instincts just enough to keep her from throwing him off the property.
But he still wanted, needed, to keep her off guard. She was a strong woman, a survivor—he could tell by the way she carried herself, by the determination in her generous mouth. She had all her defenses and boundaries in place, and it was going to require a concerted effort on his part to break past them.
He hadn’t even been able to annoy her, though for some contrary reason he’d done his best. He’d annoy the hell out of her once she found out why he was really here. Of course, he expected to be long gone by then, so he wouldn’t have the pleasure of watching Madame Pompasse explode. He’d have to settle for his imagination.
Maguire stripped off his jacket and tossed it over his shoulder. It was October, for Christ’s sake. Why the hell was it so goddamn hot?
And why was he feeling guilty? Mrs. Pompasse could take care of herself—beneath that cool exterior he suspected that she was as tough as nails. But he’d looked into her remote golden eyes and suddenly felt like a piece of dog shit, forcing his way in here under false pretenses, lying, as he always lied. He’d looked at her and had wanted to tell her he was sorry. Tell her he wouldn’t use the dirt he’d been amassing so steadily. He’d wanted to…
He wasn’t going to think about the crazy things he suddenly wanted to do with the ice princess. He was staying put. No way would he miss the story of his lifetime. No way. Gregory would kill him. His old pal Molly would rise up in her grave and kick his sorry butt. He’d spent ten years moving from war zone to war zone, cataloging horrors and tragedy and disaster and the deaths of innocents. And then he’d turned his back on it, burned out so profoundly that he wasn’t sure he could even keep living. When what little money he’d saved had run out he’d hooked up with the first dirty job he could find, one that happened to be for Marc Gregory’s sleazy tabloid.
Dealing with the lives and deaths of the selfish rich was a walk in the park compared to the horrors of war, and he intended to use everything he could find and then get the hell out. Gregory had promised him the moon and more, and if there was one thing Gregory was willing to pay for, it was sleaze. He could see a book, excerpts in tabloids all over the world. He could see a bloody fortune coming his way.
And he told himself he didn’t give a rat’s ass if the way to riches was strewn with the bodies of Pompasse’s castoffs. Including the self-controlled, luminous widow who for some goddamned reason he wanted to touch.
He started back toward the house, taking his time. He had the perfect excuse for ferreting around the place. There were valuable paintings missing, as well as important records, and as a so-called insurance consultant it was his duty to find out what had happened to them. He already had a pretty clear sense of Pompasse’s financial picture, and it wasn’t good. The widow was going to be damned unhappy when she discovered what kind of mess the old man had left her. Too damned bad he wasn’t going to be around to comfort her in her distress.
But then, she’d have her fiancé. He didn’t know why that annoyed the hell out of him, but it did. She’d left Pompasse years ago—a woman like that wouldn’t be long without a man to look out for her. He wondered what kind of man she’d chosen this time. A Euro-stud with rippling pecs and not much brainpower? A New York stockbroker dressed in Armani who’d made his first million by age thirty?
He was betting on the stockbroker. Someone young and ruthless, as Pompasse had been old and ruthless. A worthy adversary for someone like Maguire.
Though there was no damned reason why he’d have anything to do with Charlie’s fiancé. Charlie’s intended wouldn’t have had anything to do with Pompasse.
Maguire reached in his pocket for his cigarettes, only to come up with a crumpled, empty packet, and he began to curse with the fluid invective he’d learned on a thousand battlefields. The only one who could swear better than he could was Molly, his old photographer, and she was dead. She’d laugh if she saw the mess he’d gotten himself into, and a reluctant, wry smile curved his mouth.
It was a helluva time to give up cigarettes, right when he was in the middle of the story of his lifetime. He’d already given up drinking a couple of years ago, finding he couldn’t control it. It wasn’t fair that he had to fight still another addiction. On top of that, now he had Charlie Thomas floating in his subconscious, getting on his nerves as well. It was going to be one god-awful week.
He should be used to it by now. The best stories never came easy, and he ought to count his blessings. He was living, if not in the lap of luxury, at least in beautiful surroundings. Lauretta was a good cook, Tuscany was gorgeous, and something was making him feel more alive than he’d felt in years.
It was the promise of a good story, he told himself. It was the thought of all the money he’d make from it, after too many lean years.
And it was the challenge, the temptation of Charlie Thomas, shut off from everyone and everything. She held secrets even he couldn’t begin to guess at. Hell, he’d slept with women before for the sake of a story. Women liked to talk when they were in a postcoital daze, and he was very good at getting them into that place. With any luck, all he had to do was fuck Charlie’s brains out and she’d tell him everything she knew about Pompasse.
He could do it. He could rise to the occasion, he thought with a wry smile, and enjoy seeing if he could make the ice princess scream.
Hell, he ought to sleep with all Pompasse’s castoffs if he were going to be really thorough, though he drew the line at senile Madame Antonella. And he could probably get just as much information out of Lauretta if he simply complimented her cooking. That way he wouldn’t have to risk Tomaso’s ire.
He didn’t want to sleep with Gia, either. She’d already dismissed him as not being worth her time, but it wouldn’t take much to convince her otherwise. She was young and healthy, and it would be a piece of cake to appeal to her animal nature.
But the problem was, she didn’t appeal to his. And he doubted she’d know much, either—like most beautiful young women she was completely self-absorbed. Probably anything she knew about Pompasse would have only been in relation to herself.
And he doubted that she’d blurt out that she’d killed him when she came.
No, he had other ways of pumping Gia than the old-fashioned way. He didn’t think she was the one who killed Pompasse, but she might very well know who did. Or at least know something that could lead him to the killer, assuming one existed. He still had no proof other than his own sure instincts. It would be a damned shame if it were an accident, after all. Nothing sold books so well as murder.
He’d work on Gia if he ha
d to, and even sleep with her if it was necessary.
But in the meantime he was more interested in seeing what he could get from the widow.
He skirted the building, moving around back to the narrow path leading up to the abandoned church. He could hear voices from the studio, women’s voices, and he leaned against the back of the building, well hidden, trying to make out their words. It was too good a chance to miss. He recognized Gia’s strident tones even through the thick stone walls, and the soft responses could only belong to Charlie.
But a moment later he heard the slamming of the studio door, and then nothing but silence. A missed chance, but there would be others. It was Wednesday—by Saturday Pompasse’s ashes would be buried and Maguire would be out of there. Much longer and he’d be caught, and Charlie Thomas wouldn’t be the sort to take kindly to a viper in her midst.
If he couldn’t find out who killed Pompasse and why in the next four days, then he wasn’t the reporter he thought he was.
And he had no illusions. He was a ruthless bastard, a heartless user when it came to people. He cared about no one and nothing, but he was a damned good reporter, whether it was dealing with international conflicts or Euro-trash. He already knew a great many of Pompasse’s dirty little secrets, his obsession with young girls, the disturbing number of suicides and disappearances among his former models and lovers, the games he’d played and the astonishing amount of money he’d squandered.
But he still didn’t know where the missing paintings were. And of equal importance, who killed Pompasse and why. Once he discovered the answers he could leave, with or without nailing the repressed Charlie Thomas.
Hell, maybe she wasn’t repressed, he thought, climbing up the narrow, twisting path by the olive grove. Maybe she just hated him at first sight and didn’t mind showing it. He was used to rubbing women the wrong way when they first met. He was hardly the lady’s type—he was brash, working-class, no-bullshit and no-charm. She probably saw him as some kind of lower-class oaf.
And he saw her as the lady of the manor. Just the sort of thing to incite his distrust of class issues. He wondered whether her old man had given her a good time in that bed upstairs. Or whether her new one did.
He knew he could. She’d tell him about Pompasse, once he had her underneath him. She’d tell him anything he wanted to know. She was that kind of woman—she held everything in reserve, wary, protected, until she finally gave in. And then she’d give it all.
And he would be a right bastard to take it. But take it he would, before she even realized what she’d lost.
It wasn’t the first time he’d climbed up the hillside to the ruins of the old church. Tuscany, and indeed, all of Italy, was littered with churches, from huge cathedrals to tiny little wayside chapels. The chapel had served the farmhouse that was now La Colombala, as well as the surrounding countryside, but World War Two bombing had put an end to most of the building, including a good portion of the roof and two of the walls. There were still remnants of the place left—some underground storerooms, a couple of hallways, and half the sanctuary sheltered under the remains of the old roofing, while the rest of the building was open to the stars.
He liked the place, particularly at night. For a lapsed Catholic he had a curiously sentimental attachment to the ruins, and it had nothing to do with the strict Jesuit education he’d had in Australia.
No, stretched out on the remnants of a battered old pew that had somehow survived the bombing, Maguire could tilt his head back and look at the stars and remember the lost smell of incense and the lost faith that had once been a false comfort. The car crash that had killed his bickering parents had ended all that, though his kid brother still believed.
Except for his brother, Dan, Maguire had been alone in the world since that day, and the only one who’d ever gotten past his shell was Molly, with her tough talk and her soft heart. She’d been his best friend, his mother, his sister, his lover, until the day he’d seen her blown to pieces by a land mine in Kosovo.
But lying back on the hard wooden pew, he could almost see her up there in the stars. That’s where she’d be—not in some traditional heaven wearing white robes and playing a harp. For one thing, the lady was tone deaf. For another, she didn’t believe in that sentimental crap.
No, she’d be up there in the stars, looking down at him, telling him what an asshole he was for being sentimental about her. Telling him what a bastard he was for even thinking about using someone like Charlie Thomas. Telling him to stop wasting his life with trashy tabloids and get back to work on a real paper.
He wouldn’t listen, of course, but then, she’d been used to that in life. It wouldn’t come as any surprise in death. But she’d still be watching, nagging at his conscience. And maybe once he managed this final, monumental score, maybe he’d leave Europe, go back home, find himself a small-city newspaper and a plump wife and forget all his demons.
Maybe.
In the meantime he was going to do one more search of the church ruins. There were all sorts of nooks and crannies, hidden places where someone might stash a fortune’s worth of paintings. Finding out where those paintings had gone was at least as important as finding out how Pompasse really died. Given the monetary value, it was probably even more important to his pragmatic public.
One thing, though—Maguire needed to concentrate on the task at hand and keep his mind off the widow. There’d be time enough to deal with her.
Even with the heavy damask cover stripped from her bed, the old room still brought Charlie almost suffocating memories. The windows, wide open to the warm autumn air, did nothing to make the room inviting—it felt both cold and claustrophobic.
She swept the makeup and perfume into the trash, not even hesitating, and by accident some of the scent spilled, filling the room with its cloying fragrance. Pompasse had had it blended especially for her on her eighteenth birthday, and it had never suited her. It was too heavy, too sophisticated a scent for the child that Charlie had never really been, and now it was too strong and melodramatic. She put the waste bin in the hall and closed the door, then moved to the window to breathe in the fresh air.
The perfumer who’d made the scent had been one of Pompasse’s lovers, she remembered. A thin, secretive woman who’d watched her out of dark, hungry eyes. Pompasse had insisted she accompany him to Rosa’s shop. “How else will she know what will be the right scent for you?” he’d said, and Charlie had already known it was useless to argue. Pompasse had always gotten his own way.
So his former mistress had blended a fragrance for the cherished wife, and Charlie used to dream that Rosa had put poison in it, to eat into her skin and her soul. Not that Rosa would have hesitated, had she had the ability, but she was no medieval poisoner, and the thick scent of her perfume was the only revenge she could take.
Charlie was jet-lagged and worn-out. And she really didn’t want to lie down on that bed. It was a huge, carved affair, brought from some castello in the north. She pushed against it with all her might, but it wouldn’t budge—it might as well have been nailed to the floor.
On impulse she walked through the adjoining bathroom and knocked on the door that had once led to Pompasse’s bedroom. It now housed the unsettling Mr. Maguire, but she hadn’t heard or seen him come upstairs, and she expected the room was abandoned.
She knocked again, then pushed it open, wondering what she’d do if Maguire were standing there.
The room was deserted. But that wasn’t what surprised her. If the studio had been a shock, the bedroom was even more so. It had been stripped of everything—including the paintings that Pompasse had surrounded himself with. His own, of course. Pompasse had firmly believed that no artist even came close to his own talent, and he insisted he found other painters boring.
He’d even done a mural on the far wall, one of delicate charm. It was gone, painted over with a flat white paint, as were all the walls. Pompasse’s bed was gone as well, replaced by a utilitarian double bed with plain sheets a
nd blankets. All the antique furniture had vanished, and in its place were cheap IKEA knock-togethers. Pompasse would never have slept in such a place.
But Charlie would. It looked cool and peaceful and entirely new, and she would have given anything to stretch out on that bed and sleep.
But she was no Goldilocks, and Maguire had more of the makings of a Big Bad Wolf than a displaced bear. She could just imagine his reaction if he walked into the bedroom he was occupying to find her asleep in his bed. It would seem like an invitation.
She started to back away when something caught her eye. The duffel bag under the window was hardly the type of luggage she would have expected an insurance adjuster to use. As a matter of fact, Maguire hadn’t seemed like any kind of insurance official she’d ever met. Maybe things were different in Italy, but she didn’t think so. Bureaucrats and businessmen were the same the world over, and Maguire didn’t strike her as either.
She didn’t hesitate, didn’t think twice. She went straight to the duffel bag and unzipped it, looking for answers.
She only found more questions. Jeans and T-shirts and denim—not the sort of clothing she connected with business consultants. He wore briefs instead of boxers. Typical. There were a couple of books about Pompasse—that was understandable since he was here to catalog his works. If he could ever find them, of course.
She zipped the bag closed again. It wouldn’t do any good to be caught pawing through his belongings. It wasn’t as if she really doubted he was who he said he was.
Except that she did. Something about Maguire didn’t ring true. He was far too brash, too argumentative, too…earthy to be an expert on artworks and dead men’s estates. Henry was much more the type. Maguire should be out doing something physical, not chasing ghosts.
And she was letting her imagination run away with her, seeing conspiracies where none existed. Maguire was an insurance consultant, nothing more, nothing less. Even if he seemed just a bit like a pirate.
