French Twist

by Roxanne St Claire

  A touch on her chin surprised her as he turned her face toward him and tilted it up. “Then here’s another one. You cannot tell anyone that these are here. No one. Promise me that you will not.”

  The intensity in his eyes took her breath away. Her conversation with the minister of culture that afternoon had verified that Luc Tremont, and his unconventional security strategy, were a done deal.

  “I have spoken to Claude Marchionette,” she said. “I understand I have to follow your lead.”

  “Then we should celebrate.” He lowered his head toward her, and for one frozen second, she thought he was going to kiss her. A trace of his scent teased her. It wasn’t aftershave or cologne, it was…him. Refined, enticing, and intense. “We’ve made such progress today, Janine.” His gaze dropped down to her mouth.

  Good Lord, he was something. But the last thing she needed was a flirtation and fling with the security consultant. She was on shaky enough ground having stepped boldly into Albert Farrow’s difficult-to-fill shoes. Squaring her shoulders, she took a step back. “I appreciate your letting me in on your big secret.”

  His laugh was smooth as silk and sexy as sin. “I haven’t even begun to let you in on secrets. And, Janine, you must answer a question that has me burning with curiosity.”

  “What is it?”

  He lifted her hand and held it between them. “Where is the diamond ring that delayed your arrival in France?”

  Her heart flipped. “I flushed it down the toilet.”

  “I was thinking of having dinner at le Potager du Roy,” Luc said, kicking the Alpha Romeo into third gear as he drove away from the palace. It wasn’t as romantic as Les Trois Marches, but romance would lead to seduction. And although her obvious expertise had cleared her of suspicion, he knew better than to indulge in the temptation. If he did, she would deserve an explanation for his inevitable disappearance next week. An explanation she would never receive.

  Unless something went very, very wrong at the gala on Saturday night.

  “Letourneur is a formidable chef.” He glanced at her long, lean thigh, tanned and toned, just as he would expect from a California girl. He imagined how those legs would feel wrapped around him, how sweet her skin would taste to his tongue.

  “I’m sure I’ll love it,” she said.

  Yes, you would, ma belle. Yes, you would.

  “Did you grow up in Los Angeles?” He knew she hadn’t, but wanted to see how much she’d reveal.

  “A few hours away, in Porterville. It’s a small town not too far from Bakersfield. Have you ever been to California?”

  His memory flashed on one very lucrative assignment that had taken him to L.A., followed by a drive up the awesome coast highway to another job in San Francisco. “No,” he lied smoothly, and grinned at her. “But I understand they think they can make wine there.”

  She rewarded his humor with a light laugh and flipped her long hair over her shoulder. She’d abandoned the effort to keep it back before they left Versailles. The effect was stunning. Even in the darkness, her hair shimmered, falling damn near to her waist in varying shades of ivory and wheat.

  “You don’t look anything like an art historian,” he mused. “How did you pick such an unlikely profession?”

  “I went to UCLA to study theater, under the mistaken notion that I could be an actress.”

  He stole another glance. That piece of information hadn’t been in her file. “You certainly have the looks for the job. What was mistaken? You can’t act?”

  “Actually, I wasn’t bad. Not Meryl Streep, but I could deliver a line.” She crossed her legs, and he watched her thigh muscle flex.

  “So what happened? Why are you a curator of an art exhibit and not in the movies?”

  “Because delivering lines is such a tiny part of it. I hated the phoniness, the back-stabbing, the cutthroat competition. Then I took baroque art history as a mick and—”

  “A mick?”

  “A class so easy, even Mickey Mouse could pass.”

  “I like that.” He chuckled. “So, was it?”

  “No. But I discovered something I loved. Artists I respected. Dead ones, with no agenda.” She laughed. “So I moved down campus and found my calling with Sèvres porcelain and Dr. Albert Farrow.” Her voice dropped with a sad note.

  He nodded sympathetically. “His death was a real loss.”

  “You have no idea.” She stared out the window as he pulled into a side street near the restaurant.

  “But it is our good fortune that his replacement is so qualified.”

  “You and Claude Marchionette seem to be the only two people in France who agree with that.”

  “But that didn’t stop you from going after the job.”

  “Nothing could have stopped me,” she said quietly. “I knew if I didn’t fight for the position, someone else would get it, and the vases could disappear into obscurity, victims of those who’d prefer they’d never been found in the first place.”

  “How did you convince the minister to let you have Albert’s job?” He remembered being surprised at the time of the announcement and immediately suspicious of the replacement.

  “I got on a plane, flew to France, and pleaded my case.” She shot him a narrow-eyed look. “I can be very persuasive.”

  “I bet you can.” He maneuvered the Alpha into a parking spot. “And you obviously know your way around a piece of porcelain.”

  “Thanks to Albert Farrow.” She stared straight ahead, her tone flat. “Really, I had total support from the minister. And as you know, his support is all one needs around here.”

  He smiled at the dig, and then asked, “Pardon me if this is a delicate subject, but why did Dr. Farrow kill himself?”

  “I don’t think he did.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It appears that I’m alone in that regard. It just…well, it just was so shocking to me.” She paused for a minute. “He’d spent a lifetime trying to prove the Plums existed, and then they were unearthed by a couple of rich New Yorkers who bought an old château and cleaned out the basement. He was joyous after all the years of defending an indefensible position.” She smoothed the material of her skirt. “But, he’d also been…sick. Forgetful. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s.”

  “Certainly scary enough to make a person want to give up.”

  “That’s what the police thought.”

  Luc filed the information as he turned off the ignition. “Why was his position indefensible?”

  “Everyone knows you can’t produce a color that rich and rare in soft paste, and hard paste deposits of kaolin weren’t found until 1768. These vases predate that by ten years, proving that Madame de Pompadour was responsible for one of the greatest breakthroughs in art history.” She paused for a moment, looking out the window. “If it weren’t for Albert’s firm beliefs, for his fanatical interpretation of ancient records from the Sèvres factory, no one would have ever known about the Plums. No one would have paid any attention to them when they were found, if Albert hadn’t paved the way. He not only fought to prove their authenticity, he was the driving force behind this entire exhibit.”

  The passion in her voice tugged at his heart when he thought of what would happen on Saturday night. “That’s the reason its success is so important to you.”

  “I wrote my doctorate thesis on the Plums and have dedicated my career to using them to establish a new and controversial time line for the history of porcelain making.” Her blue eyes flashed at him. “I have many reasons not to want them hidden from the public.”

  “I’m sorry that you dislike how I’ve arranged the exhibit.”

  “I hate it,” she stated simply. Then a little smile lifted the corner of her lips. “Plus, if I screw up, they’ll boot my behind back to L.A., and I really don’t want to go there until my ex-fiancé gets run over by a truck.”

  He laughed out loud. “Another noble reason.”

  He got out and rounded the front of the car, still smiling. O
pening her door, he offered his hand to help her out onto the cobblestone sidewalk, his gaze on those perfect legs as she climbed out.

  He didn’t let go of her hand. “You will be a great success in Versailles,” he said, lifting her fingers to his mouth. She would be; it just wouldn’t be immediately obvious to her. “I promise you will be the champion of the art world.”

  He almost wished he could tell her the truth, to save him from those moments when she would hate him in the next few days.

  She looked up with an enticing plea in her eyes. “Then put my Plums back in the Hall, Luc.”

  “I will,” he promised. “Eventually.”

  She started to say something, but he silenced her with a finger to her mouth. “It will be much better this way, believe me.” Her lips felt tender and warm under his finger. What would those lips feel like under his mouth? “I will not let anything happen to your vases.”

  “Would you please stop calling them that?” she asked.

  He slid his finger over her chin and under her jaw. He felt her swallow and touched a tiny vein tripping in her throat.

  “Luc.”

  His name, even spoken in her throaty whisper, suddenly sounded so hollow. The need to have her call him by his real name suddenly kicked him in the stomach. He felt a voracious hunger, stirring his gut and making him hard.

  He opened his hand and cupped the narrow column of her neck, his thumb settling on the translucent skin that dipped between her collarbones. “So tell me, Janine Coulter. When you threw your diamond ring down the toilet, was it a broken heart or a change of one?”

  She attempted a valiant smile. “Both.”

  “Ah.” He took a deep breath, loving the sweet, clean fragrance of her, slowly moving his other hand to her shoulder, turning her into him. “Do you know what the French do for a broken heart?”

  She held his gaze as he traced the V neck of her silk top.

  “They kiss it and make it better.” Nothing, absolutely nothing, could stop him from taking his kiss. He placed his lips gently on hers, keeping his eager tongue at bay. The kiss was over in a few seconds. “For your broken heart.”

  He could feel her quivering just before she backed away. “I never said mine was broken. Just changed.”

  “Touché, ma belle,” he said with a laugh. He wrapped her under his arm and closed the car door behind her. “Now come and enjoy our French cuisine and wine, and tell me all your secrets.”

  He suddenly wished very much that he could tell her his secrets, too.

  Tristan Stewart watched the intimate exchange from a darkened car less than a block away and rolled his eyes. “Always the player. Ten minutes with a pretty woman and he’s kissing her in the street.”

  The other FBI agent sitting next to him laughed softly. “Ya gotta hand it to the bastard,” Paul Dunne said. “The guy’s got a pair.”

  Tristan nodded, watching Luc curl a possessive arm around the good-looking American curator.

  “I mean, shit,” Paul continued. “It took a major set of cojones to move those damn vases that quickly. He had to miss two walks of a guard and at least six cameras.”

  “Yeah. He avoided half the security in Versailles, hid the real vases, planted the new ones, and still managed to pick up a chick on the way.” Tristan watched Luc disappear into the shadows with Janine Coulter.

  “He’s the best there is,” Paul said. “That’s why you use him.”

  That was one reason. The other was that Tristan had made a pact with the devil five years ago.

  “So, we gonna stick around and see if the guy gets laid, or what?” Paul took a sip of cold coffee and spat it back into the cup. “Cause if we’re bettin’, I definitely have my money on Tremont to get some tonight.”

  Luc would never seduce an American girl; it would be too much like going home. And it would be against his code of ethics. Tristan bit back a bitter laugh. The most celebrated thief in recent history, and yet he had his code of ethics.

  He dumped his own cold coffee out the window. “Nah. Let’s go.”

  Chapter

  Five

  J anine stood in the center of the king’s bedchamber, surrounded by the ever-serious faces of her French colleagues as they stared at the stage designed to exhibit the Pompadour Plums.

  Henri shook his head and toyed with the frames of his glasses, scratched his palms nervously, then folded his hands and tapped his fingertips together.

  Janine didn’t know whether to laugh or scream as he fussed and fidgeted like a kindergartner who had to go to the bathroom. But every time she looked at the three splendid vases on their snow-white draping, she really just wanted to cry. The gala would start in two hours, and the wrong vases were on display.

  Henri had given her no indication he knew they were staring at forgeries. Her gut instinct told her to say nothing.

  But when, oh God, when would the switch be made?

  Simone de Vries barreled into the room, two security guards in tow. She was already dressed in a conservative navy gown for the gala, her helmet of hair looking as unyielding as ever. “Où est Luc?” she demanded of Henri. Then she glared at Janine and repeated in English, “Where is Luc?”

  Janine had been asking herself that for three days.

  “Je ne sais pas, madame,” she answered. “I have not spoken to him.” She’d last seen Luc after their dinner at Le Potager. He had taken her back to her hotel, walked her into the lobby, and air-kissed her cheek good night. Then he’d disappeared into the night.

  Over dinner he had deftly kept the conversation light and easy, letting Janine tell him about her classes and students and her whirlwind preparations to come to France after Albert died. No discussion of her failed engagement. Much to her relief, there was no more kissing her broken heart to make it better. At least, she thought she was relieved. What else would she call the flutter in her stomach every time she turned a corner at the palace and thought she might see him…and he wasn’t there? Good thing she wasn’t counting on his protection from threats, real or imagined.

  “He has something very important to do,” Simone announced.

  Oh yes, he does, Janine thought with a rueful glance at the woman. He has to switch the vases. No doubt she knew that, too.

  “Please find me the minute he arrives.” Simone swept out of the room.

  Henri ran a hand through his hair and tugged at a stray whisker of his mustache. “There’s nothing more to be done in here, madame,” he finally said to Janine. “We have to hope for the best.”

  She gave him a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, Henri. Everything is ready.” Except the centerpiece of the exhibit. She looked at her watch. The doors opened in less than two hours. She had just enough time for one more check of the Hall of Mirrors before returning to her hotel room to change.

  She paused in the main entrance of the Hall, under the massive banner that proclaimed the name of the exhibit: Pompadour! Mistress of the Enlightenment!

  Blinking back an unexpected rush of emotion, Janine took in the beauty of the room. A thousand lights shimmered off the endless wall of mirrors. Through the graceful curve of the Palladian windows, the sun set over the gardens of Versailles, shooting fingers of scarlet and gold over the greenery and casting a celestial glow over the magnificent art.

  No doubt the room looked exactly like this the evening Jeanne-Antoinette had been presented to Louis’s court. Only on this night, instead of a king and hundreds of courtiers, the palace would host the president of France and hundreds of dignitaries, historians, diplomats, and the upper crust of French society.

  Janine might not have as much at stake as Pompadour, but she had plenty to prove. Although she had no king waiting to take her to his bed to celebrate the triumph, no lover anticipating the thrill of a first tryst.

  An unexpected face flashed in her mind—one with penetrating dark eyes and an alluring smile—and a shiver slid up her spine.

  Driving to the hotel, she indulged in remembering the kiss Luc ha
d stolen. The way he wrapped her up in that incredible voice, as smooth and sweet as hot caramel. She frowned as she parked in front of the Hôtel Trianon and handed her keys to a valet. Mr. Smooth better get the flippin’ vases in place before the president showed up. That’s all that mattered.

  An undercurrent of excitement buzzed through the elegant lobby of the Trianon. Dignitaries and guests lounged at tables in the bar and gathered in small groups under a massive chandelier. Stiletto heels clicked along the black-and-white marble floor, and a potent mix of perfumes permeated the air. Beside men in stark formal wear, France’s A-list women posed Vogue-like in an array of stunning gowns.

  Her own selection was a black floor-length dress, professional but attractive. Not nearly as attractive as the amazing strapless column of white silk with a daring slit that she had chosen for her wedding, though. In a fit of self-pity, she’d thrown it in her suitcase when she’d left for France. Maybe sometime in the next year she’d have the desire to wear it for a formal event. But not tonight. Not yet.

  Janine stuck the card key in her lock with a determined push, but the door swung open before the card made contact. It hadn’t been latched. She blinked at the late-afternoon sun shimmering through sheer curtains.

  Taking one tentative step inside, her hands rose to her mouth to trap the scream that threatened. The bed was stripped to reveal a slashed mattress. The armoire doors hung open, every drawer yanked out, their contents dumped onto the floor. Cosmetics and toiletries were strewn and smashed by the bathroom door. On the closet door, her black gown hung exactly as she had left it that morning.

  Except for a scarlet shadow across the bodice.

  Mesmerized, she took a few steps closer. It was almost impossible to see on the black silk, but it was there. A red pattern of some kind, made with paint or a marker. A long streak with slashes of lines coming out from it and…a tail. An animal? A bug?

  At the double ring of the room phone, she let out a little shriek. Leaning into the doorway, she managed to see most of the bathroom. It looked empty.