by Nora Roberts
“I might. Another fifty’d buy you an hour.” But she shook her head. “Slick, you don’t look like the type who pays to party.”
“Conversation,” he said again, and held out the fifty.
It only took her three seconds to reach out, nip the bill with the lethal tips of bloodred fingernails. “Okay, come on in.”
The room held a bed, a single chair, two flea market tables, and a metal clothes rack crowded with bright, eye-catching colors and cheap fabrics. He’d been right about the wig, he noted. Two of them, a long, curly blond and a sleek raven-black, sat on plastic foam heads.
A little desk held a dressing room mirror and a department store array of cosmetics.
While distressingly bare, the room was tidy as an accountant’s spread sheet.
“For fifty,” she told him, “you can have a beer.”
“Appreciate it.” While she moved toward the two-burner stove and midget refrigerator that constituted her kitchen, Ryan stepped up to a bronze dragon that guarded one of her flimsy tables.
“This is a very nice piece.”
“Yeah, it’s real art. Rembrandt did it.”
“He has talent.”
“I guess.” She moved her shoulders, didn’t bother to tug her robe back together. He was entitled to look at the merchandise, she thought, in case he wanted to invest another fifty. “I said how I liked it, and we worked out a trade.” She smiled as she handed him a bottle of Budweiser.
“You’re friendly with Mathers?”
“He’s okay. Doesn’t try to scam me for freebies. Once I had a john up here who wanted to use me for a punching bag instead of a mattress. Kid comes banging on the door when he heard I was in trouble. Yelled out how he was the cops.” She snickered into her beer. “Asshole went out my window with his pants around his ankles. Rembrandt’s okay. Gets a little down, smokes a lot of grass. That’s an artist’s thing, I guess.”
“He have many friends?”
“Slick, nobody in this building has many friends. He’s been here a couple years now, and this is the first time I’ve seen two people come around to his door in one day.”
“Tell me about the other guy.”
She fingered the fifty in the pocket of her robe. “Big. Ugly face. Looked like meat to me, somebody’s arm, you know. And you could tell he liked breaking legs. Said how he wanted to buy one of Rembrandt’s statues, but that creep wasn’t no art lover. Gave me grief when I said he wasn’t around, and I didn’t know where he was.”
She hesitated a moment, then moved her shoulders again. “He was carrying. Had a bulge under his jacket. I shut the door in his fat face, and got out my friend there.” She jerked her head toward the pie-plate-sized kitchen counter where she’d laid the .45. “You only missed him by a few minutes, that’s why I thought you was him.”
“How big was he, the other guy?”
“About six-four, maybe five, two-sixty easy. Gorilla arms and meat cleaver hands. Spooky eyes, like dirty ice, you know. Guy like that comes up to me on the stroll, I give him a pass.”
“Good thinking.” The description clicked very close to the man who’d attacked Miranda. Harrison Mathers was very lucky he wasn’t home.
“So, what do you want with Rembrandt?”
“I’m an art dealer.” Ryan took a business card from the case in his pocket, handed it to her.
“Classy.”
“If you hear from Harry, or he comes back, give him that, will you? Tell him I like his work. I’d like to discuss it with him.”
“Sure.” She rubbed a finger over the embossing, then lifted the dragon and set the card under its serpentine tail. “You know, Slick . . .” She reached out and trailed one of those scalpel-sharp nails down his shirt. “It’s cold and rainy out there. You want to . . . converse a little more, I’ll give you a discount.”
He’d once been mildly in lust with a girl from the Bronx. The sentiment of it had him taking another fifty out of his wallet. “That’s for the help, and the beer.” He turned for the door, giving the dragon a last glance. “You get tight for money, take that to Michael at Boldari here on the waterfront. He’ll give you a good price for it.”
“Yeah. I’ll keep that in mind. Come back anytime, Slick.” She toasted him with the beer. “I owe you a free ride.”
Ryan walked directly across the hall, finessed the lock, and was inside Mathers’s apartment before his second fifty had been hidden away.
The room mirrored the one he’d just been in as to size. Ryan doubted the tanks for welding metal were approved by the landlord. There were several pieces in varying stages of work. None of them showed the insight or talent of the dragon he’d given a whore for sex. His heart was in bronzes, Ryan decided when he studied the small fluid nude standing on the stained tank of the toilet.
A self-critic, he thought. Artists could be so pathetically insecure.
He managed to search the entire apartment in under fifteen minutes. There was a mattress on the floor with a tangle of sheets and blankets, a cigarette-scarred dresser with drawers that stuck.
Over a dozen sketch pads, most of them filled, were stacked on the floor. Miranda had been right, Ryan mused as he flipped through, he had a good hand.
The only things in the apartment that appeared well cared for were the art supplies, which were arranged on army-gray metal shelves and stacked in plastic milk cartons.
The kitchen held a box of Rice Krispies, a six-pack of beer, three eggs, moldy bacon, and six packages of frozen dinners. He also found four neatly rolled joints hidden in a jar of Lipton tea bags.
He found sixty-three cents in change and a long-forgotten Milky Way bar. There were no letters, no notes, no stash of cash. He located the final disconnect notice for the phone crumpled in the trash along with the empties for another six-pack.
Nowhere was there a clue where Harry had gone or why, or when he intended to return.
He’d be back, Ryan mused, giving the room one more scan. He wouldn’t abandon his art supplies or his stash of dope.
And when he came back, he’d call the minute he had his hands on the business card. Starving artists could be temperamental, but they were also predictable. And every mother’s son or daughter of them hungered for one thing more than food.
A patron.
“Come home soon, Harry,” Ryan murmured, and let himself out.
twenty-six
M iranda stared down at the fax that had just hummed out of her machine. This one was all in caps, as if the sender was screaming the words.
I HAVEN’T ALWAYS HATED YOU. BUT I WATCHED YOU. YEAR AFTER YEAR. DO YOU REMEMBER THE SPRING YOU GRADUATED FROM GRAD SCHOOL—WITH HONORS, OF COURSE—AND HAD AN AFFAIR WITH THE LAWYER. CREG ROWE WAS HIS NAME, AND HE BROKE IT OFF, DUMPED YOU BECAUSE YOU WERE TOO COLD AND DIDN’T PAY ENOUGH ATTENTION TO HIS NEEDS. REMEMBER THAT, MIRANDA?
HE TOLD HIS FRIENDS YOU WERE A MEDIOCRE FUCK. I BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW THAT. WELL, NOW YOU DO.
I WASN’T VERY FAR AWAY. NOT VERY FAR AWAY AT ALL.
DID YOU EVER FEEL ME WATCHING YOU?
DO YOU FEEL IT NOW?
THERE ISN’T MUCH TIME LEFT. YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE WHAT YOU WERE TOLD. YOU SHOULD HAVE ACCEPTED THE WAY THINGS WERE. THE WAY I WANTED.
THEM TO BE. MAYBE GIOVANNI WOULD BE ALIVE IF YOU HAD.
DO YOU EVER THINK OF THAT?
I DIDN’T ALWAYS HATE YOU, MIRANDA. BUT I DO NOW.
CAN YOU FEEL MY HATE?
YOU WILL.
The paper trembled in her hands as she read it. There was something horribly childlike about the big block letters, the schoolyard-bully taunts. It was meant to hurt, humiliate, and frighten, she told herself. She couldn’t allow it to succeed.
But when the buzzer on her intercom sounded, her breath caught on a gasp and her fingers clenched and crumpled the edges of the fax. Foolishly she laid it on her desk, smoothing out the creases precisely as she answered Lori’s page.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Boldari is here, Dr. Jones. He
wonders if you have a moment to see him.”
Ryan. She nearly said his name aloud, pressed her fingertips to her lips to keep the word in her mind only. “Would you ask him to wait, please.”
“Of course.”
So he was back. Miranda rubbed her hands over her cheeks to bring color back into them. She had her pride, she thought. She was entitled to her pride. She wasn’t going to rush through the door and throw herself into his arms like some moonstruck lover.
He’d been gone nearly two weeks, and not once had he called her. Oh, there’d been contact, she thought as she hunted up her compact and used the stingy mirror to smooth her hair, to add lipstick. Memos and telexes and e-mail and faxes, all sent by some office drone and signed in his name.
He hadn’t bothered to ease away kindly when he was done with her. He’d had his office staff do it for him.
She wouldn’t make a scene. They still had business, on several levels. She would see it through.
He wouldn’t have the satisfaction of knowing she’d needed him. Had needed him every day and night of those two weeks.
She steadied herself, unlocking a drawer to lay the latest fax on a pile of others. They’d been coming in daily now, some only a line or two, others rambling like the one today. The printout of the e-mail was with them, though Lost1 had never contacted her again.
She locked the drawer, pocketed the key, then went to the door.
“Ryan.” She sent him a polite smile. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Please, come in.”
At her desk, Lori shifted her eyes from face to face, cleared her throat. “Should I hold your calls?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. Would you like some—”
She never finished. As she closed the door behind them, he pressed her back against it and crushed his mouth to hers in a fiercely hungry kiss that battered against the wall she’d so carefully built.
Fisting her hands, she kept her arms at her sides and gave him nothing back, not even the passion of resistance.
When he drew away—his eyes narrowed in speculation—she inclined her head and shifted aside. “How was your trip?”
“Long. Where did you go, Miranda?”
“I’ve been right here. I’m sure you want to see the final design. I have the drawings. I’ll be happy to take you down and show you what we’ve finished so far. I think you’ll be pleased.”
She moved to the drawing board and began unrolling a large sheet of paper.
“That can wait.”
She looked up, angled her head. “Did you have something else in mind?”
“Entirely. But obviously that can wait as well.” His eyes remained narrowed as he crossed to her, as if he were seeing her for the first time and taking in all the details. When they were eye to eye, he cupped a hand under her chin, slowly spread his fingers over her cheek.
“I missed you.” He said it with a hint of puzzlement in his voice, as if he’d just solved a complex riddle. “More than I intended to, expected to. More than I wanted to.”
“Really?” She stepped away because his touch left her shaken. “Is that why you called so often?”
“That’s why I didn’t call.” He dipped his hands in his pockets. He felt like a fool. And there was a nervous flutter in his stomach that warned him a man could experience emotions more alarming than foolishness. “Why didn’t you call me? I made certain you knew how to reach me.”
She tilted her head. It was an odd and rare sight, she thought. Seeing Ryan Boldari uncomfortable. “Yes, your various assistants were very efficient in giving me your whereabouts. As the project here was proceeding on schedule, there wasn’t any reason to bother you about it. And since you seem to have decided to handle the other area of business on your own, there was little I could do about it.”
“You weren’t supposed to matter quite so much.” He rocked back on his heels as he spoke, as if trying to find his balance. “I don’t want you to matter this much. It’s in my way.”
She turned aside, hoping she was quick enough to keep him from seeing the hurt she knew flashed into her eyes. Anything that potent, that keen, had to show. “If you’d wanted to end our personal relationship, Ryan, you could have done it less cold-bloodedly.”
He laid his hands on her shoulders, then tightened his grip, spun her angrily around when she tried to wrench away. “Do I look like I want to end it?” He dragged her toward him, covering her mouth with his again, holding her there as she struggled for freedom. “Does that feel like I want to end it?”
“Don’t play with me this way.” She stopped fighting, and her voice was shaky and weak. She could despise herself for it, but she couldn’t change it. “I’m not equipped for this kind of game.”
“I didn’t know I could hurt you.” As his anger drained, he rested his brow against hers. The hands that had gripped her shoulders gentled and skimmed lightly down her arms. “Maybe I wanted to see if I could. That doesn’t say much for me.”
“I didn’t think you were coming back.” Desperate for distance and the control she hoped came with it, she eased out of his arms. “People have a remarkably easy time walking away from me.”
He saw now that he’d damaged something very fragile, and something he hadn’t recognized as precious. Not just her trust in him, but her belief in them. He didn’t think or plan or calculate the odds, he just looked at her and spoke. “I’m halfway in love with you. Maybe more. And nothing about it is easy.”
Her eyes went dark, her cheeks went pale. She laid a hand on the edge of her desk as she felt her balance shift. “I—Ryan . . .” No amount of effort could catch any of the words spinning around in her head and form them into coherent thought.
“No logical response for that, is there, Dr. Jones?” He stepped to her, took her hands. “What are we going to do about this situation?”
“I don’t know.”
“Whatever it is, I don’t want to do it here. Can you leave?”
“I . . . Yes, I suppose.”
He smiled, brushed his lips over her fingers. “Then come with me.”
They went home.
She assumed he’d want to go somewhere quiet, where they could talk, sort through these emotions that were so obviously foreign to both of them. Perhaps a restaurant, or the park, since spring was dancing prettily into Maine.
But he’d driven up the coast road, and neither of them spoke. She watched the land narrow, the water, quietly blue in the midday sunlight, close in on either side.
On the long rocky beach to the east, a woman stood watching a young boy dance in the playful surf and toss bread crumbs to greedy gulls. The road curved just close enough for Miranda to see the wide, delighted grin on his face as the birds swooped down to snag the feast.
Beyond them, the soft red sails of a schooner held the wind and cruised snappily southward.
She wondered if she’d ever been as innocently happy as that young boy, or as confidently peaceful as the schooner.
On the sound side, the trees were dressed in that tender green of April, more haze than texture. She loved that look the best, she realized, that delicate beginning. Odd that she’d never known that about herself. As the road climbed, the trees stirred, swaying under a soft spring sky laced with white clouds as harmless as cotton.
And there, on the edges of the hill where the old house stood, was the sudden ocean of cheery yellow. A sea of daffodils, a forest of forsythia, both of which had been planted before she was born.
He surprised her by stopping the car and grinning. “That’s fabulous.”
“My grandmother planted it all. She said that yellow was a simple color, and it made people smile.”
“I like your grandmother.” On impulse he got out, walked to the verge, and picked her a handful of the yellow trumpets. “I don’t think she’d mind,” he said as he climbed back inside and held them out.
“No, she wouldn’t.” But she found herself wanting to weep.
“I brought you daffodils once before.�
� He laid a hand on her cheek until she turned her head to look at him. “Why don’t they make you smile?”
With her eyes closed she pressed her face to the flowers. Their scent was unbearably sweet. “I don’t know what to do, about what I feel. I need steps, I need reasonable, comprehensive steps.”
“Don’t you ever just want to stumble, and see where you fall?”
“No.” But she knew that’s exactly what she’d done. “I’m a coward.”
“You’re anything but that.”
She shook her head, fiercely. “When I step into emotional territory, I’m a coward, and I’m afraid of you.”
He dropped his hand, shifted position so he gripped the steering wheel with both of them. Arousal and guilt churned in his belly. “That’s a dangerous thing to tell me. I’m capable of using that, taking advantage of that.”
“I know it. Just as you’re capable of stopping by the side of the road and picking daffodils. If you were only capable of one of those moods, I wouldn’t be afraid of you.”
Saying nothing, he restarted the car, drove slowly up the curved lane and parked at the front of the house. “I’m not willing to shift back and make it only business between us. If you think that’s an option here, you’re mistaken.”
She jolted when his hand whipped out, gripped her chin. “Badly mistaken,” he added, and the silky threat in his voice had her pulse pounding with panicked excitement.
“However I feel, I won’t be pressured.” She put her hand to his wrist and shoved. “And I keep my options open.”
With that said, she pushed the door open and got out of the car, missing his lightning grin. And the heat in his eyes.
“We’ll see about that, Dr. Jones,” he murmured, and followed her up the steps.
“Whatever our personal relationship, we have priorities. We need to go over the plans for the exhibit.”
“We will.” Ryan jingled the change in his pocket as Miranda unlocked the front door.
“I need you to give me more details on what you expect to happen when we have everyone together.”
“You’ll get them.”
“We need to talk all of this through, step by step. I need to have it organized in my mind.”
