by Nora Roberts
“Looking forward to it. . . . My galleries are for the display of art,” he began, keeping Miranda’s hand casually in his as she strode down the corridor to the next wing. “I know next to nothing about the science of it. Do you ever find yourself at odds merging the two?”
“No, without one there wouldn’t be the other.” Realizing her answer had been abrupt, she drew a careful breath. The man made her nervous, nervous enough to show. That would never do. “The Institute was built to house both, you might say celebrate both. As a scientist who studies art, I appreciate that.”
“I was a miserable student of science,” he said, with such a charming smile her lips curved in response.
“I’m sure you had other strong points.”
“I like to think so.”
He was an observant man, and noted carefully the flow of space between wings, the position of the stairs, offices, storerooms, windows. And of course, the security cameras. It was exactly as his information had indicated. Still, he would transcribe the observations into detailed notes later. But for now he simply filed them neatly in his mind while he enjoyed the subtle fragrance of Miranda’s perfume.
Nothing overt for Dr. Jones, he thought. Nothing obviously female. And the woodsy scent he imagined came from soap rather than a delicate bottle suited her, he decided, perfectly.
At the end of a corridor, she turned right, then stopped to slide her key card into a slot beside a gray metal door. A buzzer sounded, locks clicked. Ryan flicked a mild glance upward at the camera.
“Our internal security is tight,” she began. “No one passes into this department without a key or an escort. We often do independent testing for individuals and for other museums.”
She led him into an area much like Standjo, Florence, though on a smaller scale. Technicians worked at computers and microscopes or walked briskly into anterooms with a flap of their lab coat.
She noted a staff member working with a crusted pot, and guided Ryan toward it. “Stanley, what can you tell us about this?”
The tech scratched at his blond moustache, sucked air in through slightly bucked teeth. “Your father sent it from the dig in Utah, along with several other artifacts. This is probably Anasazi, twelfth century, and was used as a cooking vessel.”
He cleared his throat, shooting Miranda a quick glance, and at her nod continued. “The beauty is it’s nearly intact, with only this small chip on the lip.”
“Why a cooking vessel?” Ryan wanted to know, and Stanley blinked.
“The shape, size, thickness.”
“Thank you, Stanley.” Miranda turned back to Ryan, nearly bumped into him, as he’d moved closer when her back was turned. She shifted aside immediately, but not before noting that he had a good two inches on her in height. And that glint in his eyes of amused awareness took his face a step beyond sensual and straight into sexy.
She heard the damn ping again.
“We’re primarily an institute for art, but as my father’s interests are in archaeology, we have a section for artifact display, and do quite a bit of testing and dating in that area. It’s not my field. Now this . . .”
She walked over to a cabinet, opened a drawer, and flipped through until she found a small brown bag. She transferred the tiny bits of paint inside onto a slide, then loaded it onto an unoccupied microscope.
“Take a look,” she invited. “Tell me what you see.”
He bent over, adjusted his focus. “Color, shape, interesting in its way—rather like a Pollock painting.” He straightened and fixed those brandy-colored eyes on hers. “What am I looking at, Dr. Jones?”
“A scraping from a Bronzino we’re restoring. The paint is unquestionably sixteenth century. We take a sample for security both before we begin the work and after the work is completed. In this way there’s no doubt we’ve received an authentic work, and no doubt we return the same work to its owners upon completion.”
“How do you know this is sixteenth-century paint?”
“Do you want a science lesson, Mr. Boldari?”
“Ryan—then I can say your name. Miranda’s such a lovely name.” His voice was like warm cream over whiskey and made her itchy. “And I might actually enjoy that science lesson with the right teacher.”
“You’ll have to sign up for a class.”
“Poor students do better with one-on-ones. Have dinner with me tonight.”
“I’m a mediocre teacher.”
“Have dinner with me anyway. We can discuss art and science, and I can tell you about the Vasaris.” He had an urge to lift his hand and play with the messy curls escaping their confinement. She’d jump like a rabbit, he decided. “We’ll call it business if it makes you more at ease.”
“I’m not ill at ease.”
“Well then. I’ll pick you up at seven. You know,” he continued, slipping his hand over hers again. “I’d love to see that Bronzino. I admire the formal purity in his work.”
Before she could calculate how to free her hand, he’d tucked it comfortably through his arm and headed for the door.
six
S he didn’t know why she’d agreed to dinner. Although, when she thought back over the conversation, she hadn’t actually agreed. Which didn’t explain why she was getting dressed to go out.
He was an associate, she reminded herself. The Boldari Gallery had a glossy reputation for elegance and exclusivity. The single time she’d managed to carve out an hour when in New York to visit it, she’d been impressed with the understated grandeur of the building almost as much as the art itself.
It would hardly hurt the Institute for her to help forge a relationship between one of the most glamorous galleries in the country and the Jones organization.
He wanted to have dinner to discuss business. She’d make sure it stayed in the business arena. Even if that smile of his sent little sparks of undiluted lust straight to her gut.
If he wanted to flirt with her, fine. Ping or no ping, flirting didn’t affect her. She wasn’t some impressionable mush brain, after all. Men who looked like Ryan Boldari were born with fully developed flirtation skills.
She liked to think she’d been born with an innate immunity to such shallow talents.
He had the most incredible eyes. Eyes that looked at you as if everything but you had simply melted away.
When she realized she’d sighed and closed her own, she muttered under her breath and yanked up the zipper in the back of her dress.
It was only a matter of pride and professional courtesy that she chose to be particular about her appearance this evening. The first time she saw him she’d resembled a scruffy student. Tonight he would see she was a mature, sophisticated woman who’d have no problem handling a man over a meal.
She’d selected a black dress in thin, soft wool scooped low at the bodice, low enough so that the swell of her breasts rose firmly over the straight edge neckline. The sleeves were long and snug, the skirt narrow and fluid to the ankles. She added an excellent, and unquestionably sexy, reproduction of a Byzantine cross. Its ornate vertical stem rested cozily at the hollow of her breasts.
She yanked her hair up, jamming in pins at random. The result was, if she said so herself, carelessly sexy.
It was a good look, she decided, a confident look, and a far cry from the too tall, socially inept nerd she’d been all through college. No one who glanced at this woman would realize she had nerves in her stomach over a simple business dinner, or that she worried she’d run out of intelligent conversation before the appetizers were served.
They would see poise and style, she thought. They—and he—would see exactly what she wanted to be seen.
She grabbed her purse, craned her neck to study her butt in the mirror and assure herself the dress didn’t make it look too big, then headed downstairs.
Andrew was in the front parlor, already into his second whiskey. He lowered the glass when she walked in, and raised his eyebrows high.
“Well. Wow.”
“Andrew, y
ou’re such a poet. Do I look fat in this?”
“There’s never a correct answer to that question. Or if there is, no man has ever found it. Therefore . . .” He raised his glass in toast. “I abstain.”
“Coward.” And because her stomach was far too jittery, she poured herself half a glass of white wine.
“Aren’t you a little slicked up for a business dinner?”
She sipped, let the wine cruise down to dampen some of the butterfly wings. “Aren’t you the one who lectured me for twenty minutes this afternoon on how beneficial a relationship with the Boldari Gallery could be to us?”
“Yeah.” But he narrowed his eyes. Though Andrew didn’t often see his sister as a woman, he was seeing her now. She looked, he thought uncomfortably, staggering. “Did he hit on you?”
“Get a grip on yourself.”
“Did he?”
“No. Not exactly,” she amended. “And if he did, or does, I’m a grown woman who knows how to block the blow or hit back, as the choice may be.”
“Where are you going?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“The roads are still pretty crappy.”
“It’s March in Maine—of course the roads are crappy. Don’t go big brother on me, Andrew.” She patted his cheek when she said it, more relaxed now because he wasn’t. “That must be Ryan,” she added when the doorbell rang. “Behave.”
“For three Vasaris, I’ll behave,” he muttered, but his brow creased as he watched Miranda walk out. Sometimes he forgot how outrageous she could look if she took a little time on it. The fact that she’d obviously taken the time gave him an itch between the shoulder blades.
The itch might have become a burn if he’d seen the way Ryan’s eyes flashed, the way the heat in them simmered, when Miranda opened the door and stood framed in it.
It was a solid punch to the gut, Ryan thought, and one he should have been better prepared for. “You look like something Titian would have painted.” He took her hand, but this time stepped in and brushed his lips over her cheeks—one, then the other, European-style.
“Thank you.” She closed the door and resisted the urge to lean back against it to catch her balance. There was something powerful and unnerving about the way her heeled boots made them of a height so that their eyes and mouths were lined up. As they would be, she thought, in bed.
“Andrew’s in the parlor,” she told him. “Would you like to come in for a moment?”
“Yes, I would. You have a fabulous home.” He scanned the foyer, flicked a glance at the staircase as he followed her toward the parlor. “Dramatic and comfortable at the same time. You should commission someone to paint it.”
“My grandfather did an oil of it. It’s not very good, but we’re fond of it. Can I get you a drink?”
“No, nothing. Hello, Andrew.” He offered his hand. “I’m stealing your sister away for the evening, unless you’d like to join us.”
Ryan had played the odds all of his life, but he cursed himself now as he saw Andrew consider the invitation. Though he was unaware that Miranda was making narrow-eyed, threatening faces behind his back, Ryan was relieved when Andrew shook his head.
“I appreciate it, but I’ve got some plans. You two enjoy yourselves.”
“I’ll just get my coat.”
Andrew saw them off, then dragged his own coat out of the closet. His plans had changed. He no longer felt like drinking alone. He preferred getting drunk in company.
Miranda pursed her lips as she slid into the back of the limo. “Do you always travel this way?”
“No.” Ryan slipped in beside her, took a single white rose out of a bud vase and offered it. “But I had a yen for champagne I couldn’t indulge if I was driving.” To prove it, he lifted an already opened bottle of Cristal from an ice bucket and poured her a flute.
“Business dinners rarely start with roses and champagne.”
“They should.” He poured his own glass, tapped it to hers. “When they include women with arresting looks. To the beginning of an entertaining relationship.”
“Association,” she corrected, and sipped. “I’ve been in your New York gallery.”
“Really? And what did you think of it?”
“Intimate. Glamorous. A small polished jewel with art as the facets.”
“I’m flattered. Our gallery in San Francisco is airier, more light and space. We focus on contemporary and modern art there. My brother Michael has an eye and an affection for it. I prefer the classic . . . and the intimate.”
His voice rippled softly over her skin. A telling sign and, Miranda thought, a dangerous one. “So Boldari is a family enterprise.”
“Yes, like yours.”
“I doubt it,” she muttered, then moved her shoulders. Make conversation, she reminded herself. She was a confident woman. She could make conversation. “How did you become involved with art?”
“My parents are artists. For the most part they teach, but my mother’s watercolors are glorious. My father sculpts, complicated metal structures no one but Michael seems to understand. But it feeds his soul.”
He kept his eyes on hers as he spoke, directly on hers with a quiet intensity that had insistent sexual jolts dancing over her skin. “And do you paint or sculpt?” she asked.
“No, I haven’t the hands for it, or the soul. It was a huge disappointment to my parents that none of their six children had a talent for creating art.”
“Six.” Miranda blinked as he topped off her glass. “Six children.”
“My mother’s Irish, my father Italian.” He grinned, quick and charming. “What else could they do? I have two brothers, three sisters, and I’m the oldest of the lot. You have the most fascinating hair,” he murmured, twirling a loose lock around his finger. He was right. She jumped. “How do you keep your hands off it?”
“It’s red and unmanageable and if I wouldn’t look like a six-foot azalea, I’d chop it off short.”
“It was the first thing I noticed about you.” His gaze slid down, locked on hers again. “Then it was your eyes. You’re made up of bold colors and shapes.”
She struggled to repress the fascinating image of grabbing his lapels and simply yanking their bodies together until they were a tangle of limbs on the backseat. And despite her fight for control, she fidgeted. “Like modern art?”
He chuckled. “No, too much classic practicality for that. I like your looks,” he said when the limo pulled to the curb and stopped. When the door opened, he took her hand to help her out. His mouth nearly grazed her ear. “Let’s see if we like each other’s company.”
She couldn’t say when she started to relax. Perhaps it was sometime during her third glass of champagne. She had to admit he was smooth—maybe just a tad too smooth—but it worked. It was a long time since she’d sat across a candlelit table from a man, and when the man had a face that belonged on a Renaissance portrait, it was impossible not to appreciate the moment.
And he listened. He might claim to have been a poor student of science, but he certainly asked questions and appeared interested in the answers. Perhaps he was simply putting her at ease by steering the conversation onto professional ground, but she was grateful for the results.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spent an evening talking about her work, and talking of it, she remembered why she loved it.
“It’s the discovery,” she told him. “The study of a piece of art, and finding its history, its individuality, its personality, I suppose.”
“Dissecting it?”
“In a way, yes.” It was so pleasant to sit like this, in the cozy warmth of the restaurant with a fire blazing nearby and the cold dark sea just outside the window. “The paint itself, then the brushstrokes, the subject, the purpose. All the parts of it that can be studied and analyzed to give the answers.”
“And you don’t feel, in the end, the answer is simply the art itself?”
“Without the history, and the analysis, it’s just a painting.”
“When something’s beautiful, it’s enough. If I was to analyze your face, I’d take your eyes, the bold summer blue of them, the intelligence in them, the hint of sadness. And the suspicion,” he added with a smile. “Your mouth, soft, wide, reluctant to smile. Your cheekbones, sharp, aristocratic. Your nose, slim, elegant. Separate the features, study, analyze, I’d still come to the conclusion that you’re a stunning woman. And I can do that by just sitting back and appreciating the whole.”
She toyed with her scrod, struggling not to be overly flattered or charmed. “That was clever.”
“I’m a clever man, and you don’t trust me.”
Her gaze lifted to his again. “I don’t know you.”
“What else can I tell you? I come from a big, loud, ethnic family, grew up in New York, studied, without a great deal of enthusiasm, at Columbia. Then because I’m not artistic, shifted into the business of art. I’ve never married, which displeases my mother—enough that I once considered it seriously, and briefly.”
She arched a brow. “And rejected it?”
“At that particular time, with that particular woman. We lacked a spark.” He leaned closer, for the pleasure of her, and because he enjoyed the cautious awareness that came into her eyes when he did. “Do you believe in sparks, Miranda?”
Sparks, she imagined, were cousins to pings. “I believe they fuel initial attraction, but sparks die out and aren’t enough for the long haul.”
“You’re cynical,” he decided. “I’m a romantic. You analyze and I appreciate. That’s an interesting combination, don’t you think?”
She moved her shoulder, discovering she wasn’t quite so relaxed any longer. He had her hand again, just playing with her fingers on the table. He had a habit of touching she wasn’t used to, and one that made her all too aware of sparks.
Sparks, she reminded herself, made a pretty light. But they could also burn.
Being this quickly, and outrageously, attracted to him was dangerous, and it was illogical. It had everything to do with glands and nothing to do with intellect.
