by Cindy Dees
And then all of a sudden, there was a third man. Dammit. I was hosed now.
Except this guy came roaring into the fray and slammed his fist in the face of the guy who had my neck. Both of my assailants let go of me and jumped to their feet to face this new threat. I took the opportunity to kick the guy who’d had my legs as hard as I could in his shins. He howled and jumped back from me. I leaped to my feet, my back to that of my impromptu rescuer.
“Keep screaming, lass!” the third man ordered me—in a Scots brogue.
Robert. What in the world was he doing here? No time to think about it, though, because my two assailants rushed us. I ducked as my guy grabbed for me and jerked my knee up hard and fast. The guy’d been ready for the move and got out of the way. But it made him step back. I heard the crack of knuckles on flesh behind me and prayed Robert was handling his guy all right. Then I felt the warm body at my back spin away. Crud. I hoped I hadn’t just lost my backup.
I watched my guy warily, my hands up defensively, and my weight on the foot I’d just lifted. I figured if I threw the other foot the next time, I might catch the guy off guard. But then my Italian attacker took another quick step back, pivoted and took off running. His buddy joined him, wiping at his nose, which was pouring blood.
Hands grabbed my shoulders again, but this time in concern, not aggression. “Are you all right?”
While heat flooded me from the shoulders outward, I did a quick body inventory. “I’m fine. Where did you come from?”
“I was following you.”
“Why?”
The wail of police sirens started in the distance and got louder quickly. “Later,” he bit out. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t stay to make nice with the coppers.”
Frankly, I was more interested in knowing why he’d appeared out of the blue to rescue me than I was in dealing with the police right now. “Did you get a good look at those men?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
I replied quickly, “Good, because I didn’t. Let’s get out of here. We can make a police report later.”
He stared at me in surprise.
I took a couple steps back toward the gate, but he put a restraining hand on my arm. “This way. There’s another exit from the park.”
I followed him as he walked toward the back gate. Why didn’t he run? Maybe it would draw too much attention? I trusted his experience as a criminal to best know how to flee the scene of a crime. Sure enough, just as the police cars drew up on the other side of the park, we slipped out of the park unimpeded and blended in to the flow of pedestrian traffic.
We walked for a couple blocks and then Robert swore under his breath. Without warning he grabbed my arm and yanked me down the steps to a Metro stop.
“Have you got a pass for the tube?” Robert bit out as we all but ran for the turnstiles.
I nodded. I bought a monthly unlimited usage pass for the Metro like most native Parisians did.
“Get it out.” He dug in his wallet and came up with a Metro ticket. We shoved through the iron posts and Robert grabbed my arm again. In a few seconds, we lost ourselves in the stream of people flowing through the dim underground tunnels. He checked over his shoulder every few seconds. Clearly he thought we were being followed. And given that he was the one who knew what my attackers looked like, it was up to him to spot these guys.
We stopped on a platform to wait for the next train, and Robert dragged me into a dark shadow behind a cement post. He backed me up against it and crowded close, using his body to shield me from view. At least that’s what I thought he was doing. It could be he was making a blatant pass at me and I was too dense to catch the hint.
His head tilted down toward me, and for all the world it looked as if he were about to inhale my tonsils in a blistering kiss. Except his gray eyes were nearly black with concern and there wasn’t the slightest hint of sex in them. Damn.
He murmured, “Your face is dirty. Let me wipe it off.”
His hands were gentle as he used his handkerchief to wipe off my cheek. Pleasure speared into me, and I caught myself swaying forward into his touch, as impersonal as it was. My eyelids wanted to drift shut so I could savor the moment. This was definitely turning into some sort of unhealthy obsession, but darned if I could do a thing to stop myself from reacting that way to him.
“You’ve got a few scrapes that could use more thorough cleaning. Where do you live?”
“Near the Opera.”
He nodded. “Good. Penny’s not far from there.”
“Penny?” Oh, God. He had a girlfriend. Jealousy and grief flared in equal parts in my gut, both of them white hot in their intensity. Sheesh! I’d just met the guy! He was authorized to have a prior life of his own. Nonetheless, I went rigid with regret and humiliation at the way I’d thrown myself at him.
“Yeah. Penny. My hog.”
Huh? “You have a pig?”
He grinned. Lord, I loved his dimples. “No. A motorcycle. Penny’s my Harley-Davidson.”
The slang term for the iconic American brand of motorcycles came back to me all of a sudden. I’d been living in France for so long that such euphemisms from my homeland were all but lost. I cannot describe how good the cool flood of relief rushing through me felt. It left me feeling almost limp.
A whoosh of cool air from the tunnel on my left and a squeal of brakes announced the arrival of the train. Robert’s arms caged me in place till the very last second before the train pulled out, and then we leaped for it. He yanked me down to a crouch beside him, well below the level of the windows. When the tunnel’s blackness had closed in around us, he finally let me stand up.
“Well, that was fun,” I commented.
I was rewarded with another flash of those delicious dimples.
We exited the subway near Notre Dame Cathedral. Robert kept a sharp eye peeled out around us but didn’t spot our Italian friends again. Nonetheless, we hurried quickly enough to where his bike was parked to leave me out of breath. The black-and-chrome chopper fit him. It was dark, and dangerous, and sexy.
“Hop on,” he said casually.
“I’m wearing a skirt!”
“So?”
“So, I’ll have to hike it practically up to my waist to ride that thing.”
He shrugged. “You’ve got great legs. What’s the problem?”
He thought I had great legs? Well, then. Not to mention I’d get to wrap them around his hips. Sign me up. I nodded, capitulating.
He swung a strong leg over the bike and kicked up the kick stand. He looked at me expectantly. My heart about to burst out of my chest, I hitched up my skirt—not quite to my waist but nearly to my hips—and swung my right leg over the back of the bike.
Oh, God. His buttocks nestled against my crotch, and my thighs tucked under the full length of his. He started the engine and I lurched straight up in the air. It vibrated against my loins and I nearly came apart on the spot.
Robert murmured over his shoulder, “Hang on to me.”
Weakly, I wrapped my arms around his waist. The leather of his jacket was cool to the touch, but the man beneath it burned me alive. I tried not to cling too tightly, but I probably failed. What little control I had left was completely finished off by the four-hundred horsepower vibrator between my legs. He steered the bike out into traffic while I descended into a nearly orgasmic state and stayed there for the entire—unfortunately short—ride to my house. It was all I could do to remember my address and shout it into his ear over the traffic noise.
At least the noise prevented him from hearing how fast I was breathing as I tried not to writhe around like some oversexed snake. It was a killer to sit still and let all those sensations of man and machine roll over me. But I managed. Barely.
Robert parked the bike across from my building and slid off from in front of me. He looked down at me. His eyes were black and hot as if he knew how his motorcycle had affected me. And I was too blown away to care. Silently, he held out a hand to me and helped me off t
he bike. I tottered across the street on shaky legs and managed to let us into my apartment without collapsing.
I stepped inside. Stopped. Stared. The place was a shambles. Drawers were pulled out and overturned, cushions were thrown off furniture, not a single book was on a shelf where it belonged, and even my clothes were strewn in the middle of the floor. Somebody had ransacked the place!
“I swear, I’m not this messy a housekeeper. Someone’s been in here.”
Robert went into the kitchen to pour me a cold drink while I called the police. Heck, after that motorcycle ride, a cigarette was probably more appropriate.
I got through to the detective I wanted, a guy I’d worked with a number of times before. And a big softie.
“Someone’s gone through my apartment, Victor. But here’s the thing. I don’t have time to stick around while you guys do your forensic thing on it. Can I just seal the place up and have someone come over here tomorrow? I promise I won’t touch anything vital. Please?”
“It’s not standard procedure, you know.”
“I know. But you’d be doing me a huge favor,” I wheedled.
He sighed. “All right. But leave right away. And don’t put anything back where it belongs. Just leave the mess.”
“No cleaning. Got it. Oh, and I was assaulted in a park a little while ago.”
“And I suppose you fled that crime scene, too,” he commented sarcastically.
“Well, yes. But it’s really important. I’m investigating something huge and my bosses are breathing fire down my neck to solve the problem yesterday.”
“What happened, in which park, and what did your assailant look like?” Victor asked heavily.
I gave him a quick report of the assault and relayed Robert’s descriptions of my two attackers. The detective said he’d enter it in the crime reporting system for me.
I went into the bathroom, which was relatively undestroyed, and washed off my face. The scrape on my right cheek wasn’t too bad. It was red and angry, but there were only a few scratches deep enough to bleed. In a day or two, it would be mostly gone.
I stepped out into the living room. Robert was looking over the mess with a critical eye. “They were looking for something. Too many valuable items were left behind for this to be a robbery.”
And he ought to know.
Robert asked, “Why did those men in the park jump you? Is it related to this?”
“I have no idea.”
He shot me a skeptical look. “Two middle-aged, well-dressed men don’t just randomly attack a woman in the park in broad daylight. Don’t you have any clue who they might be?”
“Well, I might have a vague notion of who they are.”
He stared at me expectantly.
Where to begin? I couldn’t tell him about the power grid. Montrose had sworn me to secrecy on that one. I dared not tell him about my weird dreams, or the ghost I’d seen. He’d think I was nuts. Although on second thought, he probably already thought I was crazy. I mean, how many women would sit in a morgue and make goo-goo eyes at some guy they’ve barely met?
“It’s complicated.” I sighed and plowed on. “There’s this woman. Something was stolen from her recently and I’m trying to help her get it back.”
“What was stolen?”
“I’m not sure. I think it may be a statue.”
He frowned. “You don’t know what was stolen? Why don’t you ask her?”
“She won’t tell me.”
Sure enough, he stared at me for a moment, as if he were weighing my sanity.
I blurted, “I know it sounds bizarre. But she made a vow never to talk about whatever was stolen. I do know that it’s very old and probably a human figure wearing simple robes. Catrina Dauvergne—you met her at the Cluny—guesses it’s around eighteen inches tall.”
“How did you know about me and René?” he demanded.
The abrupt shift of topic startled me. It took me a moment to figure out he was talking about my earlier reference at the morgue to him and René working together. I thought fast. I ought to lie. Tell him that René had mentioned it. Although, thieves took their code of silence nearly as seriously as they took their code of nonviolence. Robert wouldn’t buy it for a second if I told him René had spilled the name of one of his old partners to me.
And so, I told him the truth. “When you entered France, a message was generated by the Immigration service and sent to my office.”
“And you work for?”
I winced. “I’m not a police officer. I’m an art historian.”
He stared at me expectantly. He was going to make me say it. And it wasn’t hard to guess how a convicted art thief was going to react to it. So much for having met a man who fired my soul. I exhaled heavily. “I work for Interpol.”
Air sucked in between his teeth and his eyes narrowed.
For lack of anything else to say that might diffuse the sudden tension permeating the space between us, I said, “I also know you helped MI-6 with several other investigations, you did your time, and you got out early for good behavior. As far as I’m concerned, your slate with society is clean.”
“It’s one thing to say the words. It’s another to believe them,” he retorted with a touch of bitterness in his voice.
I suppose I couldn’t blame him. In general, if I met someone I knew to be a convicted felon, I’d feel a definite caution where that person was concerned. However, the few genuine art thieves I’d actually met were not bad sorts at all. What really made me suspicious was that both of us were suddenly tracking down old religious statues. I’m just not a believer in that big of a coincidence. Was I looking for a Black Madonna, too? His Black Madonna, maybe?
Since we were being honest here, I fired off a salvo of my own. “What are you doing here in Paris? And where did you get that picture of the Black Madonna?”
He stared at me for a long time. Long enough that I figured he’d decided not to answer. Hence, I was surprised when he actually spoke. “It’s a legit job. I’ve been hired to trace the provenance of the statue in that picture, and I’m in town to see what I can find out about it.”
Provenance, eh? I had a fair bit of experience at tracing works of art, myself. “How’s your search going?” I asked with genuine interest. Okay, so I was officially an art geek. I could stand in the middle of the carnage of my house and get caught up in an interesting provenance search.
He answered animatedly, “I’ve hit a dead end. I need to find out more about the cult of the Black Madonna in southern France. But the medieval Catholic Church destroyed most of the records about it.”
He was an art geek, too, apparently.
I had a sudden thought. One that made my heart race and my body tingle. “I know someplace where the Church doesn’t destroy its records on anything.”
“Where?”
“The Vatican archives.”
He frowned. “Don’t you have to have some sort of letter of introduction and permission to get into those?”
I nodded. “I work for Interpol, remember? I’ve got access. And furthermore, I’m going to Rome tomorrow.”
Disbelief flickered in his gaze. “Are you offering to take me with you?”
“I guess I am.”
“I don’t have a plane ticket, and flights these days book up pretty solid.”
I grinned. “I happen to know there’s an extra seat on the plane I’m taking.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Well, then. I guess I’m going to Rome tomorrow. When does the flight leave?”
“First thing in the morning. We can go together.”
He nodded. And then he smiled. The sort of slow, sexy smile a man gives a woman whom he’s anticipating seducing in the very near future.
And my heart nearly stopped. Apparently, he’d already overcome his objections to the identity of my employer. Who’d have thought when I got that phone call from the morgue this morning that I’d end up jetting off to one of the most romantic cities in the world tomorrow with the se
xiest guy I’d ever met?
The morgue.
René.
My house.
My hormone-charged daydreams finally gave way to a burst of logic. “Do you have any idea where René might be hiding? I have reason to believe the same men who attacked me today and did this—” I gestured at the mess at our feet “—might be after him.”
“Why’s that?” Robert asked.
“The stolen statue I told you I’m looking for? I asked René to poke around a bit and see what he could find out about it. I think the men who jumped me did so because I’m investigating that statue. And if René’s been asking questions about it, too…I’m worried about him. I need to find him. Warn him that he could be in danger. Maybe I can arrange for Interpol to take him somewhere safe for a little while.”
Robert shrugged. “If René knows he’s in danger, he’s probably safer on the loose in Paris. He knows this city better than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Do you have any idea where he might go to hide? I still want to warn him if I can.”
Robert added dryly, “And, if someone’s after him, he obviously poked the right nerve. You’ll want to find out what he’s learned, too.”
Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about that. But as soon as Robert mentioned it, it made sense. “Good point.”
“I might have an idea where he went. He had one particular hidey-hole that was his favorite. He called it his refuge of last resort. Said nobody would ever find him down there.”
“Down where?” I asked eagerly.
“I don’t even know if I could find it again. I’d have to show it to you myself.”
“Let’s go, then!”
Robert’s gaze raked down my body. “You’ll need to change clothes. Put on slacks you won’t mind getting dirty. And walking shoes. If you have a flashlight and chalk, bring them, too.”
Flashlight and chalk? It sounded as if we were going on an expedition of some kind. I went into my bedroom and, disturbing as little of the mess as I could, located appropriate clothes for our expedition. I certainly had no shortage of utilitarian clothing and slipped into rugged khaki pants, a cotton turtleneck and a sweater vest. I grabbed a rucksack and picked my way into the kitchen for the flashlight and chalk. I also grabbed matches, candles, a couple bottles of water, a tube of crackers and a can of almonds I happened to have in the cupboard.
