The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy

by Jennifer Griffith

  He then favored her with a condensed version. The insurance payout had been meager, but enough to set him up for a year outside Juneau, during which he worked as a wilderness guide for a big game hunting outfit, a job he hated, but was really glad for when he stumbled across a place he was sure had gold.

  “You’ve seen those reality TV shows where they’re gold mining in Alaska? Their ‘glory hole’ is nothing but a shovel and pail compared to what my find ended up being.”

  “You mined it out yourself? Shovel and pick and all?” They were walking alongside a babbling stream now. Happy splashes fell over rocks beside her feet.

  “For a few months. I sold the rock by the wheelbarrow-ful and truck-bed-ful to a nearby copper processing plant. They gave me the values for it, which I invested in heavy equipment, and was able to dig more out of the ground. A lot more. Which I invested in a few other places. Good places, it turned out. Then one of the corporate mining execs of the place where I was selling my ore got gold fever and offered to buy me out. It was a good windfall for me. I was twenty years old.”

  Ava wondered what, in his estimation, he’d consider a good windfall.

  So he hadn’t been a trust fund kid with no morals. He was a kid who’d spent his youth scratching for a living and then took a couple of years of a break just doing nothing.

  “Did you go to college at that point?”

  “Actually, I went back to high school. It’s weird, I know, but I hadn’t ever finished, and it was something that bugged me. I came to Arizona as a contrast to the cold of Alaska, enrolled in Buena High, met your buddy ‘Rick’ Ford, who let me in their social group even though I was old as the hills to them, and the rest is history.”

  “What ‘rest’ are you meaning?” She’d still never gotten from him the details on why he and Riccardo were on the outs now, after having been so close. But Kellen didn’t answer. The sun had lightened the sky, and they rounded a bend in the path, and a clearing opened up before them.

  Just as Ava and Kellen arrived, the first sunbeam pierced the air, illuminating a greenery-filled oasis and creating a rainbow in the mist of the falls.

  “Oh!” Ava’s feet stopped working. Splendor accosted her every sense. The veil of the waterfall undulated between transparent and white. Its spray billowed outward and evaporated in the morning air. Warmth from the first sunbeam caressed her face.

  “It doesn’t have the same powerful thunder as Niagara Falls, but it’s got its own untamed beauty.”

  Sure enough, it couldn’t compare in size to Niagara; Kellen was right. But its perfection came in its setting, with the towering walls of the Grand Canyon surrounding it, the red rocks, the vibrant greens against the desert stone, and the face of the pool below reflecting the blue of the morning sky. The proportions and ratios of the scene were textbook ideal. Fibonacci would salivate.

  Ava stood a long time drinking in its beauty.

  Until her stomach growled. Darn that foible.

  “I brought us some breakfast.” Kellen had set the cooler down, and he pulled from it fruit and cheese and a very good loaf of bread, which they shared. He let her sit on the closed cooler while he took a rough fallen tree trunk for his chair. A few yards off, rustling from campsites signaled that other hikers were up and starting their days. Smoke from a campfire wafted past.

  “I could stay here forever. It’s incredible.” The breeze on Ava’s skin cooled her, now that the sun’s blaze took control of the day. She pulled off Kellen’s jacket, a little sorry to lose that scent.

  “You seem like you’ve been to this place a few times before.”

  “A lot of adventures here.”

  “Oh, really? Like what?” Please don’t say wild parties with loose women, she plead.

  “Well, one time there was a middle-aged hiker who hadn’t trained for the strain of Havasupai well enough. He went down. Right over there.” Kellen leaned back and pointed to a grove of trees not far from the falls.

  “Scary. What happened?”

  “My buddy and I had to help.”

  “What’d you do, carry him out on your back?” Ava could imagine Kellen’s broad shoulders being able to hoist almost any burden on them. But hiking out? Sounded like a tall tale in the making.

  “Naw. We just did CPR until the helicopter pilot could get there with his gurney. Flew him out to a hospital in Flag.” Flagstaff. Locals called it Flag. Huh. Kellen had saved a man’s life?

  “Did he make it?”

  Kellen shrugged. “Far as I know. They still send me a Christmas card, so yeah. He was all right. Scary moment, though.” He took it all in stride. Like lifesaving was all in day’s work.

  “Where’d you learn CPR?”

  “Boy Scouts.”

  “You’re a Boy Scout?” Of course he was. Nothing about Kellen McMullen should surprise her at this point. She relaxed against the bank. Work was far away. Stolen paintings didn’t exist. The sun shone on them, almost hot now. It was just the two of them and the sun and the water.

  “Just a Star. Never made it to Eagle. I bet my dear, departed mother rolls over in her grave whenever she thinks of it.”

  “They wanted the best for you.”

  “Yes, they did.” He tossed a pebble in the water, and its ripples spread. “How about your parents? What are they like?”

  “Good. The best. Married nearly forty years.”

  “Forty. Wow.”

  “I know. It seems like a big number.” And it probably alerted Kellen to how old she had to be if her parents had been married that long. She rubbed her shoulders and neck. They ached from the CPR. “And for the record, I’m not quite thirty, but I am their oldest child. Only, too.”

  “I was too.”

  “Was it lonely?”

  “Sometimes. Not always. Sometimes I didn’t like being the sole recipient of their attention and worry and discipline. Then, when they were gone, I couldn’t think of anything else for a while.”

  “Except skinning bears.”

  “Well, there was that.” A twinkle decorated Kellen’s eye, and he slung an arm over her shoulder. “That pilot won’t be back for a few hours. Can you think of anything you’d like to do? Because if not, I can think of something.” That twinkle in his blazing blues danced, and Ava got a zinging feeling all over her skin. Up to now, the attraction for Kellen had been pretty superficial. Blazing blue eyes, scads of money, super flirtatious, all that. But now, he had some real substance, she saw, and it made her mouth tingle to kiss him.

  “I’m thinking we could swim.”

  She did not expect that. The weather wasn’t Phoenix hot, but the day was warming up. It was still summer in Arizona.

  “I’ve only got these jeans and t-shirt.” She’d ridden in cars with wet clothes. Helicopters couldn’t be much better.

  But Kellen thought of everything. Beneath the bread and fruit in the cooler, he’d packed a dry bag with swimsuits for both of them. Ava changed in the restroom. It was a two-piece aqua blue suit, but not a bikini. How did he know she’d be too shy to parade out in a bikini? But it was the first time she’d put on a swimsuit since her CBTAS took hold, and looking down at herself, she had to admit, it was a lot more of an impressive sight than her beach body had been in summers gone by.

  Then they spent the balance of the morning in the pool at the base of the waterfall, disturbing the perfect blue surface of the water with splashes and jumping off boulders and little cliffs. The cold water numbed her toes, but when she kept moving they were fine. Or else it didn’t take much to get Kellen to take her in his arms and warm her, at which point she had a chance to get an up close glimpse of those upper arm muscles she’d seen outlines of last night. They didn’t disappoint. Nor did the abs, which hadn’t been airbrushed, Zoe would be glad to know.

  And could she just say? Making out while swimming was fantastic. How had she never tried this before? She really hadn’t lived. That was all there was to it. Kellen never let it get dull. The guy knew a lot of different ways t
o make her mouth happy. And her ears. And occasionally her neck.

  The helicopter touched down about the time Ava’s core started an uncontrollable shiver from the cold water, and they made a run for it, Kellen grabbing their things on the way.

  “I’m amazed. Thank you, Kellen,” she said when they were airborne again and soaring over the canyon’s splendor. “I’ve always wanted to go there but never dared. You gave me a gift today.”

  “No, you gave me a gift.” He eyed her in her swimsuit, which she still wore. Despite his incredible awesomeness that she’d recently discovered, he maintained a bit of the Neanderthal. She bumped her shoulder against his.

  The helicopter banked to the right, which made Ava lean into Kellen’s warm skin even more. “It’s an impressive place God made. Were you impressed?”

  “Did you really want to impress a girl on this trip?”

  “What am I going to have to do to get through to you, Ava Young? Arrange for elephants to ride? Hire a sky-writer? Dedicate a song to you on the radio?”

  She stopped these inane ideas with her mouth on his. And she kept them at bay for the rest of both the helicopter and plane rides back to Phoenix.

  * * *

  When they landed, and she’d gotten the sundress shimmied over her swimsuit, and her feet back in yesterday’s sandals, they stood on the tarmac in the waves of vision-blurring heat. They’d been too busy to eat lunch on the plane, and now it was getting on toward dinner time. Going away from Kellen this time was harder than it had been before. Kissing messed with her head. Logic and a physical return to reality said stay away from him. He was a major sower of wild oats. He might even be a major stealer of important paintings, for all she knew. But despite what logic said, her lips and body and heart said he was a guy who’d built himself from nothing, using a wheelbarrow, and knew how to shoot a bear and save a man’s life.

  Kellen pressed a hand to the small of her back and kept kissing her mouth, while playing with her long hair with his free hand. Yes, saying goodbye felt close to impossible. Even leaving his side felt like losing part of herself.

  She needed to listen to her head. This guy had a string of girlfriends. He’d even dated the ex-girlfriend of the second-in-line Prince of England. Ava could not let herself take his flattering words seriously. She’d get herself hurt.

  A sound chimed. Oh, she hadn’t heard it in so long she’d nearly forgotten its meaning—the ring tone for Mr. Phelps. “I was just complying with your request from yesterday to appease Mr. McMullen.” She looked up at Kellen. “You’re no longer considering pulling funding for the exhibit, are you?” He shook his head and nuzzled her hair. “He’s all set, sir.” Which reminded Ava that this trip had been on the clock—necessary for the museum and for her job. And she’d done it with all her heart.

  “Good,” said Mr. Phelps, sounding relieved, and he signed off.

  She deserved an award for the acting job she’d done. So believable she’d almost fallen for it herself.

  When she tried to tuck her phone back into her purse, it jostled off her shoulder, and the contents spilled onto the ground. “Oh, no.” She bent to pick up the Trident gum and the floss picks and the credit cards and other debris that skittered on the pavement. Kellen knelt to help. They got everything picked up, but Kellen’s hands stopped when he grasped a yellow slip of paper and read what it was.

  “Can I ask why you have a dry cleaning ticket for this place?”

  Ava’s stomach turned in a knot. “Uh,” was all she could eke out. It was the pick up order she’d swiped off Rick’s desk when she’d been in his office yesterday.

  “Look. I don’t care that you’re dropping off ‘Rick’s’ dry cleaning for him. I don’t care what your relationship has been with him up to this point. That doesn’t matter even an itty bitty speck.”

  It didn’t?

  “I haven’t been dropping off his clothes anywhere.” She didn’t want Kellen to get the wrong idea about her. “I promise.”

  “Because the truth is, this is one fight I do not intend to lose. He may have won when it came to Natalie, and he might have had her for a few years, heaven rest her soul, but I’m not going to back off again. Not this time. I’ve seen what I want, and I’m going to go for it. He won’t get in my way.”

  It took Ava a few moments to process this rant. Rick was standing in the way of what Kellen wanted. Huh. And he’d stood between Kellen and Natalie, presumably Rick’s late wife. Oh, so that was the bad feeling between them in days gone by. But what did Kellen want now that Rick wouldn’t roll over on?

  The painting. It had to be Niagara. Ava felt the blood drain from her face.

  As an FBI agent assigned to the case of the missing painting, Rick was standing in Kellen’s way of getting the thing he’d orchestrated the theft of. She shook her head and stumbled backward, walking away from him as fast as she could.

  “Ava. Wait. What’s the matter?” Kellen jogged after her.

  “I can’t. I just can’t be involved in it, Kellen.”

  “But you’re already involved.” He clapped a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m taking a cab home. Or back to the office. It’s hot out here. You should get some shelter.” She squirmed out of his grasp and resumed walking. “I didn’t think you would do something like that, Kellen.”

  “Like what? Like tell you I was going to fight for you? Like say I would trounce the competition? Sure, he’s a widower. He deserves our sympathy. He’s been through a lot. But that doesn’t mean I have to be that generous.”

  “Eleven million dollars is very generous. Couldn’t you just pay for it? Arrange with the Glastonbury?”

  Kellen now raced in front of her and blocked her way. She had to stop. “The Glastonbury? What are you talking about?”

  “The museum that loaned Niagara in the first place. In New England? It’s the home of the whole exhibit, which you financed. If you can finance it, why not just commission a whole new painting. Frederic Edwin Church’s rendition is stellar, but it’s not the only possible good painting of the falls. You’ll see. Find someone who’s alive. Get him or her to paint it just how you like. Give back the masterpiece. Your conscience will thank you. Don’t let is slip out of the public eye just so it can hang next to the bear skin in your den.” Suddenly she wondered if the bear’s head were still on the rug.

  “Please, Ava. I don’t have the painting. I love it, sure, just because I love waterfalls. But I don’t have it and didn’t take it. I swear. In fact, it makes me a little irritated that you’d accuse me of it.” His brow clouded and he looked stern for the first time since she’d met him. A stab of worry made her wish she hadn’t stirred this emotion in him. And not just because of her job security.

  “But you said you weren’t going to let Agent Ford stand in the way of what you wanted.”

  Kellen rolled his eyes. “Look. Just tell me why you have this dry cleaning ticket.”

  “I swear to you, I had nothing to do with his clothing.”

  “Fine.” Kellen frowned. “Whose is it?”

  “It’s Rick’s. I mean, Agent Ford’s. I, uh—” It mortified her to admit she’d stolen it. “I saw it on his desk yesterday and took it.”

  Kellen cocked his head. “Okayyyy.” Then he huffed. “What you need to know, Ava, is that this dry cleaning place isn’t just a dry cleaning place.”

  It wasn’t? How many varieties of dry cleaning places could there be?

  “It’s used for cleaning a lot more that synthetic fabrics that shrink in the washer.” He gripped her by the elbow. “It’s the Chicago Outfit’s.”

  Surely, there were a lot of “outfits” that got dry cleaned in every cleaners in America. She still didn’t see what made this place any different. When she didn’t give him anything but a blank stare, he explained.

  “The Outfit is the Chicago name for the mob.”

  Chapter 15

  Kellen’s words made Ava’s knees go all watery.

  “The mafia? How on
earth—?” Her words died in her throat. Suddenly, the threat Enzio made against her—and against Zoe—last night seemed a lot more menacing. If he was the messenger for the mafia, he could have been much more violent with her, and a bead of sweat trickled down her temple when she considered how narrow her escape was by just being dumped in the desert.

  “They are interested in art.” Kellen said, once he had her safely in his car and they were sailing down the 202.

  “That seems unlikely.” It was hard to imagine thugs and killers standing there contemplating the beauties of an oil painting, even one as gorgeous as Niagara.

  “Not for art itself, most of the time.” Kellen passed any slower cars so fluidly it felt like she was on a waterslide. There was no compunction to grab the door handle, like there’d been with Enzio Valente, who apparently was a mafia stooge jerk. “For its ability to wash money.”

  Speaking of washing, there was the dry cleaners to consider. Why did Agent Ford have a ticket to the place, anyway? Basically, it could be one of three reasons. One, he was unaware of the mafia ties of the establishment and just got his shirts done there because it was close to his house. Two, he was working undercover by taking his clothes there and snooping around.

  Or three, and most troubling, he was dropping off something of greater value than a white oxford shirt for a fresh cleaning and starching. Highly improbable, of course.

  By far the most likely scenario was number two. Riccardo was doing his job. He was checking out the bad guys’ lair, on the sly.

  But then again, his own name had been on the ticket. Wouldn’t the boys in the Outfit, as Kellen called it, know the name of all the FBI guys in town? They’d make it their business to know.

  Ava leaned her head against the seat and shut her eyes. The sunburn across her nose and cheekbones stung, as it did along the stripes where her swimsuit straps had been. She needed a nice hot shower, a bunch of aloe vera, and a good nap. After she’d slept, she could consider all this jumble of facts more reasonably.