The Setup

by Marie Ferrarella

  Things were going on inside of him. Things he was trying to recognize, to assess, even as he just wanted to lie there and steep himself in these delicious sensations.

  “About?”

  “Still waters running deep.” I owe you, Charlotte, Melanie and Renee. “I would have never thought, looking at you, that…” She didn’t finish. She didn’t have to. She could tell that he understood her meaning. Smiling, she repeated the sentiment she had uttered earlier this evening. “You are a man of many, many talents, Jefferson Lambert.”

  And no one was more surprised about some of them than he was, Jefferson thought. He was quite sure tonight had been much more of a revelation to him than it had to her.

  Very gently, he brought his hands to Sylvie’s sides and moved her so that her body was once more against his, this time fitting neatly on top.

  Jefferson saw the spark of pleasure entering her eyes. Less than a second later, he could feel excitement surging through his loins once again. Gathering her even closer, he splayed his hands across her buttocks as he felt himself hardening. She made him feel tireless, young. Eternal.

  “Many talents,” Sylvie murmured, bringing her mouth down to his.

  Within moments, she’d lost herself again in the powerful, vibrant, heretofore undiscovered country that he brought her to. Any thoughts of things that went bump in the night were all forgotten.

  AT THE OTHER END of the hotel and two flights up, Luc’s heart was pounding wildly in his chest, feeling as if it were going to burst right out at any moment. For a completely different reason.

  Leaning against the door, he stared unseeing into the darkness. He didn’t bother turning on the small flashlight he’d brought with him earlier. His gloved fingers were locked in a death grip around the small rectangular object he held close. At this moment, he wasn’t sure he could release it even if his life depended on it. It was as if his hands had become sealed to the painting, as much a part of it as the frame that surrounded it.

  For a moment, all he could hear was the sound of his rapid breathing. It agitated rather than soothed him, but he couldn’t seem to slow it down.

  Damn, he had no idea how he had managed to get away with this. The odds were astronomically against him, he’d been a fool to chance it. Yet, he’d succeeded. Somehow, he had managed to get into the art gallery—the only easy part of his plan—remove the painting and bring it all the way back up to this room without a single person crossing his path.

  Luck, that capricious femme fatale that had eluded his father in his later years, had seen fit to turn her beatific smile on him. She’d been at his side tonight, his only companion on the way from the gallery to this room.

  Turning the painting around, Luc stared down at it, trying to adjust his eyes to the faint light coming through the window. But for a moment he couldn’t see anything. Lights seemed to be flashing as frantic thoughts assailed him from all directions.

  Get a grip, damn it, he ordered himself.

  He glanced around the room. A broken pipe had stained the carpet, so the room would be empty until Monday, when the new carpet was installed. But where could he put the painting?

  This wasn’t right.

  Luc felt torn. He wasn’t some masked avenger, trying to right a wrong that had been done to his father by some faceless corporation. The Marchands were a family—his father’s family. Taking this painting was going to have repercussions. He was hurting people he had come to care about in a short time. People who were his blood. And making them lose the hotel wouldn’t bring his father back.

  His hands were shaking. Playing hide-and-seek with a priceless piece of art wasn’t right. He felt bad just holding the painting. He had to put it back.

  Taking a deep breath, Luc slowly opened the door. The sound of voices down the hallway had him shutting it again. His heart slammed against his chest and continued pounding. He’d been lucky so far, but how long would that luck hold out? The surveillance cameras within the gallery and the lobby had been disabled, but the power could come back on at any minute. As he had been taking the painting from the wall, he’d thought he heard a noise coming from the back room. He’d convinced himself it was just his imagination—or his guilty conscience. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  He had to stay calm. Think clearly. Not take any uncalculated risks. That had been his father’s mistake. Being reckless.

  His job now was to stash this painting and figure out what to do with it by Monday.

  The uneasiness he’d been experiencing all night intensified. Made him nauseated.

  SYLVIE SLOWLY OPENED her eyes, a dreamy expression on her face. Small pools of daylight were advancing along the gallery’s wooden floors, extending into the small back room through the open door.

  Morning.

  Oh, God.

  Sylvie bolted upright as the realization penetrated the soft fog around her brain. She bumped her head smack into Jefferson’s face. His presence next to her registered belatedly.

  “Ow!” she cried, rubbing the spot where they’d made hard contact. She looked at him accusingly. “What are you doing?”

  If his chin hurt, he gave no indication. “Watching you sleep.”

  Sylvie stopped rubbing her head and stared at him. “Why?”

  He was smiling. “Seemed like the thing to do.” Very gently, he ran his knuckles along her cheek. “It’s been a long time since I woke up beside someone.”

  He made her catch her breath. She longed to draw out this moment, to savor it and just lie beside him, talking until they both ran out of things to say. And then maybe make love again. And to savor that, too.

  But that was a life that belonged to the carefree woman she had once been, not to the responsible mother who not only had run this art gallery into the black, but was now also thinking about branching out to take over a second gallery, one that wasn’t affiliated with the hotel or her family. Something of her own. That woman didn’t have time to linger with a brand-new lover, didn’t have time to waste on something that had no future.

  Even if she ached to do so.

  Sylvie reached out and touched his face. She had to go. The hotel would be recovering from whatever ill effects last night’s blackout had created. She would be needed, or at the very least missed. She didn’t want any search party to encounter her like this.

  With effort, Sylvie banked down the sadness that was trying to take hold. “I have a life to get back to.”

  Turning the hand that was against his cheek, Jefferson pressed a kiss to the center of her palm. He wasn’t trying to keep her. He, more than anyone, understood what it was like to have responsibility. It seemed ironic now to be losing what he’d just found because of it.

  “Yes, I know.”

  She felt a very real, very strong shiver up her spine. “You’re not helping.”

  “Sorry.” The look in his eyes told her that he really wasn’t. Temptation loomed, large and demanding, its fingers reaching for her.

  Sylvie dragged a hand through her hair. “What time is it?”

  Jefferson glanced at his watch, the only thing that hadn’t come off last night. “Almost seven.”

  That galvanized her. The gallery didn’t open until nine, but Charlotte was usually in her office by seven, if she’d even gone home last night. What if she decided to swing by the gallery for a spot check? The last thing Sylvie wanted was to be discovered like this, naked beside an equally naked hotel guest. Never mind that Charlotte had arranged all this. That wouldn’t be the part that her sister would remember.

  It had been very hard for Sylvie to live down her reputation, to get her family to take her seriously instead of just thinking of her as the wild one, the one who always screwed up. If any of them found out that instead of keeping vigil the way she was supposed to, she had spent the night making love with her “date,” she’d spend the rest of her life trying to atone for it.

  Shifting off the sofa that had narrowly accommodated them both, she got up and began getting dressed.
>
  Jefferson watched, fascinated. He could feel his body heating all over again. That made—what—three times? Four? He’d never been like this before.

  “Need help?” he offered.

  She glanced at his face, saw his expression. An image of a fox offering to feed a chicken flashed through her mind. She laughed, shaking her head. “Any help from you would be counterproductive.”

  “You might have a point,” he agreed.

  Swiftly, he hurried into his own clothes. Sylvie was already dressed and in the gallery proper as he was slipping on his jacket.

  Her cry of alarm had him rushing out to see what had happened.

  “What’s wrong?” Jefferson quickly scanned the area for the source of her distress. There was no one else there, and nothing, at first glance, looked to be out of place.

  It took Sylvie a second to find her voice. She felt shell-shocked, upset and angry, all at once. “It’s missing.”

  She looked about to fly off in two directions at the same time. He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her in place. “What’s missing?” he asked, enunciating slowly.

  “The Wyeth.” It was almost a sob. How could she have let this happen? When had it happened? Oh God, what was her grandmother going to say? What was her mother going to say?

  “The Wyeth,” he repeated.

  Sylvie pointed to the back wall.

  “My grandmother’s…” Her voice trailed off. She tried again. “The Wyeth was on loan from my grandmother, and now…” How could this have happened? And why on her watch, of all things? “And now it’s not here. It was here last night, and now…” She struggled not to let panic get the better of her. “That noise,” she said suddenly, turning to him, her eyes wide. “That noise I told you that I thought I heard last night…it must have been the thieves.”

  He wasn’t so sure. “The power failure had already hit the hotel by the time you got back here,” he reminded her. “Maybe whoever took the painting had already gotten it by then. If that’s the case, then it’s not your fault.”

  The old Sylvie would have jumped at the possibility. But she knew that the scenario he’d described was improbable. She thought for a moment, trying hard to remember if the painting had been there when she’d done a cursory check after they’d first walked in. But it had been dark, and all she’d been thinking about was her growing attraction to Jefferson.

  “I can’t remember if the space was empty or not,” she confessed. “I knew the other two paintings on that wall were gone—I loaned them to Maddy. So I didn’t pay much attention. I can’t say for sure if the Wyeth was there.” God did that sound lame, she thought, even to her own ears. What was it going to sound like to Mama and Charlotte?

  He hesitated for a moment, then slipped his hand down her back in a gesture of comfort. “Do you want me to call the police?”

  Her head jerked up, horror on her face. Police detectives coming into the gallery would do nothing to help the hotel’s reputation.

  “Oh, God, no.” She realized how panicky she sounded and tempered her tone. “At least, not yet. If it turns out to be one of the guests…” Her brain was beginning to hurt. “Maybe something can be worked out. The hotel doesn’t need any bad publicity, any kind of notoriety, especially right now.”

  “What’s so different about now?”

  Sylvie waved her hand at the question. She’d already said too much to an outsider. “I’d like to keep this quiet for a little while….”

  He read between the lines. “By ‘quiet,’ do you mean you want to keep this from everyone?”

  Her eyes met his, and although she had no idea how he knew, she realized that he understood how important this was to her. How important it was to make it right. She pressed her lips together ruefully. “Little Sylvie screws up again.”

  “We still don’t know it was your fault,” Jefferson told her. She made him want to do things for her, to make things right. “Want me to nose around a little?” Over the course of his career, he’d picked up some tips from the investigator his firm used. He could put them to use now.

  The offer caught her off guard. Sylvie stared at him, bemused despite the gravity of the situation. “You’re going to tell me that you’re a closet private investigator, as well?”

  He was good at looking beyond the obvious, and he was good at blending in and listening. Those might not seem like very sexy or stimulating traits, but they did serve their purpose. “People tend to talk when I’m around,” he admitted. “They don’t see me as a threat and they don’t think I’m paying attention.”

  Though in a hurry, and feeling the tension building within her, Sylvie still stopped to stare at Jefferson. He made himself sound so bland, so average. Nothing, as far as she was concerned, was further from the truth. He was a distinguished, good-looking man with a brain, who knew how to treat and please a woman. How could he describe himself in terms that made him sound like wallpaper?

  “Have people always made a habit of underestimating you like this?”

  He liked the way she’d phrased that. Liked, he thought, pretty much everything about her. He knew that whatever was between them didn’t have a prayer of going anywhere, but he wanted to help. “I’d better get up to my room and change if I’m going to be any use to you.”

  “Change,” she echoed. Sylvie looked down at what she was wearing. Definitely not daytime wear. That reminded her—she had yet to check in on her daughter. There would be questions to answer, mainly from Grand-mère. She braced herself. “Oh, God, me, too.”

  Even her mother was going to wonder about her being out all night, Jefferson guessed. In the eyes of a parent, a child was always a child, no matter how many candles burned on the birthday cake.

  “Relax. You were supposed to spend the night in the gallery, remember?”

  Her eyes twinkled. “Not the way I spent it,” she countered.

  He leaned his head closer to hers. “Power was down,” Jefferson whispered conspiratorially. “More than likely, the local news stations won’t have time to carry the story of what happened in the back room of a hotel gallery.”

  She laughed and picked up her purse. As she led the way out, her heels clicking on the parquet floor, she could have sworn they kept repeating, Gone, gone, gone.

  Hopefully, not for long, she prayed, locking the doors. Locking the barn door after the horses are gone, she mocked herself. But if there were looters, she didn’t want to take any chances on their making a return appearance. The Wyeth had been the most costly item in the gallery, but there were paintings and jewelry from local artists, and their work was important to them.

  “I’ll call you later,” Jefferson promised.

  About to hurry down the corridor, Sylvie looked at him quizzically.

  “To let you know if I hear anything,” he added, gently reminding her of his offer to keep his eyes and ears open about the missing painting. That he wanted to call her because of last night was something he needed to quietly explore himself before he admitted it to her. He doubted that she’d be receptive anyway. Women like Sylvie had to beat men off with a stick.

  “Right.”

  At this moment, Sylvie felt as if there were a thousand random thoughts swimming around in her head at the same time. As soon as she tried to focus on one, something else came flying at her. She needed to get hold of herself, to think clearly about one thing at a time.

  She took exactly two steps before she swung around and doubled back. Jefferson stared at her as she grabbed him by the lapels, raised herself up on her toes and kissed him on the mouth, hard.

  The next moment, she was off and running again.

  Jefferson ran his index finger along his lips. The woman did leave an impression. For a moment, he thought of hurrying after her and walking with her as far as the elevator, but then he decided that maybe Sylvie could use a little time alone to pull herself together.

  So could he.

  Last night had been a page out of someone else’s book, not his. It w
as more like something Blake would have experienced.

  Blake. He realized that he’d lost track of the man. If he knew Blake, his friend had probably made the most of the situation.

  Well, hadn’t he done the same himself?

  And then Jefferson reconsidered. Last night hadn’t been about making the most of an unexpected opportunity, it had been about discovering himself. About discovering life. He hadn’t felt this alive, this vibrant, this—okay, happy—in years.

  And confused. Definitely confused. But when it came to knowing Sylvie Marchand, he had a strong feeling that being confused kind of went with the territory.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “YOU SEEM FLUSTERED, Sylvie,” Anne observed, following her daughter into her bedroom. Sylvie had come sailing into her apartment, practically at a dead run, and dashed into the bedroom, saying she had to get back to the hotel as soon as she showered and changed. “Is everything all right at the hotel?”

  In the other bedroom, Anne’s mother and granddaughter were still sleeping the sleep of the very young and the very old. Stuck in the middle with more pent-up energy than she was allowed to use these days, Anne had been awake for over an hour, puttering in the kitchen, when she heard the front door open. One look at Sylvie’s face and she was concerned. It wasn’t often that her daughter appeared so harried.

  Anne became more concerned when Sylvie hurried by her, not stopping to give any straight answers to her questions.

  Grabbing the first fresh blouse and skirt she came to in her closet, Sylvie paused only long enough at her bureau to pull out a bra and panties, tossing everything on her bed before rushing off to the bathroom.

  “As fine as they can be, Mama, given that there was a power failure and everyone gets a little nervous in the dark.”

  Raised in an unselfconscious atmosphere that Anne had done her best to foster, Sylvie had no qualms about changing in front of her mother. She quickly stripped off her clothing without bothering to close the bathroom door in case there was some other question she needed to answer. Or evade.