“God knows I’ve been looking for weeks for a phantom solution so I could make you happy.”
A blast of hope that she could explain her actions so he’d understand caused her to smile and sway the tiniest bit closer to him.
“All I did was take the documents to a specialist for evaluation. I know he’ll verify my suspicions. You can’t be mad at me for this. Be glad. I wanted my discovery to be my gift to you. Like yours to me.”
His eyes still like green ice, he stared down at her. “It sounds good when you say it. But the truth is you don’t trust me. If you did, when you found some crucial piece of evidence I missed, you would have shown it to me, instead of lying to me. Trusted me to help you instead of sneaking around behind my back. Hell, Venus, you lied to me about your errand five minutes after we made love in my office. Is there nothing you won’t do in your need to prove your father’s innocence?”
Remembering how she’d stupidly planned to use him, she twisted a strand of hair around her fingers. “I’ll do whatever it takes,” she whispered, really afraid for the first time that she couldn’t make him understand.
“I thought as much.” His short laugh held no humor. “If it wasn’t for my colossal Clayworth ego I’d have realized your abrupt change from loathing me to making love with me had to be an act to get what you wanted.”
Before when he’d called her love it had melted her bones. Now the way he used making love froze her blood.
She saw in his eyes and the firm long line of his mouth that Connor had shut down. Realizing with real desperation that this had all gone terribly wrong she determined to right matters by falling back on the unvarnished truth.
“Connor, I may have lied to you. Maybe even pretended feelings I didn’t have at the beginning, but not for a long, long time. I…”
“No more lies between us, Venus.” His harsh words stopped her. “Your father is guilty. You saw the proof with your own eyes. Nothing you do can change the facts. That’s the truth and you have to accept it. Once you promised me that you would accept whatever we discovered. Do you remember?”
Shock ran like acid along her skin at the total loss of the tenderness she’d learned to expect from him.
“My father is not guilty. I’ll never accept the horrible things you are saying about him,” she whispered through her tight throat.
“So it was another lie, it seems.” He brushed past her to the door. “Then there’s nothing more to say.”
As he opened it, waves of fear and love drove her to call his name. “Connor, please wait. You don’t understand.”
He stopped, the tension across his wide shoulders evident in the way he held them. Very slowly, he turned, his hand still on the door.
Putting every molecule of her feelings in her eyes and in her voice, she pleaded with him. “You also promised to accept whatever we discovered. The truth I’ve discovered is that despite everything you’ve done to my father and continue to do, I’ve come to love you.”
Disbelief as clear as a diamond on his face, Connor turned and walked out the door.
Pain froze her, making it impossible for her to move, to cry out to stop him from leaving her. After months of weeping like a leaky faucet with high emotion because of her dad, and recently for Connor, Venus now felt arid, empty.
As if the flame of passion she felt for life, for those she loved, had been extinguished.
Is this how Connor feels when he shuts down to avoid pain?
She wanted to hide behind a facade of cool control, just as he did.
She tried, locked away in her town house. She went through the motions of living, breathing, and eating but feeling, tasting, nothing. She did her best to keep herself occupied during the day. But when she tried to sleep at night, her mind raced and try as she might, she couldn’t shut it off. What if she was wrong and her father was guilty, just as Connor thought? What if taking those papers from Connor’s office and destroying his trust in her had all been for nothing?
In her darkest hour she even thought if she accepted her father’s guilt then perhaps she and Connor could somehow find their way back to each other. In a blaze of pain she knew it couldn’t be so.
No! I’ll never believe it. There must be something we’re missing, and it’s probably right in front of our noses.
The next morning she stuck her biggest pair of dark glasses on her nose to hide behind when she went to meet her father at an estate sale where she’d been offered first look.
He was already there, carefully examining old books.
“Hello.” He greeted her with his normal tight, warm hug. She had to resist her need to stay in his arms for comfort.
“Did you find anything, Dad?” she asked as cheerfully as she could muster.
“Yes. This is a treasure trove, and I have two more shelves to explore.” He laughed.
“Fabulous. I’ll be in with the jewelry.”
Usually the thrill of an estate sale fired her imagination and energy. Today, finding a twenty-piece collection of Miriam Haskell jewelry produced barely a flutter of pleasure.
Half an hour later, her father found her drifting aimlessly around the jewelry cases.
“Are you ready to leave? I told your sister we would meet her for lunch.”
No way could she hide her misery from her baby sister. “Oh, no, I’m so sorry, Dad. I need to do some inventory at Pandora’s Box. Have fun.” She kissed his warm cheek and fled.
After the third nearly sleepless night even the fact she hadn’t heard from Dr. Potts barely registered.
Venus drank gallons of caffeine and put on more makeup than normal to hide the dark circles under her eyes when she dutifully arrived for her appointment at the newly built home Maxie shared with Ed on one of Taylor Street’s narrow lots. “Lean out the window and kiss your neighbors,” Venus had heard said of these close-set, thin houses with multiple levels to get maximum square footage.
Maxie flung open her front door and Venus stared at her, shocked. Her big hair looked smaller and her smile wobbled around the edges.
Life returned to Venus with a twinge of concern for her. “Maxie, are you all right? Should we reschedule our appointment?”
“No, dear Venus. Please come with me.”
Venus followed Maxie, who was dressed in a red silk caftan and high-heeled slippers with matching marabou feathers.
Passing the living room, Venus glimpsed Maxie’s stunning copy of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy painting over the white marble fireplace.
They hurried down a long, narrow hallway lined with painted canvases of Monet’s Water Lilies, which appeared to be original, down to the artist’s signature, but again she knew it was Maxie’s amazing talent at work.
At the end of the hall Venus saw a large sunny great-room.
“That is where I paint. It’s the best light. Come this way to my closet.” Maxie walked up a short flight of steps and Venus followed.
Finally, they arrived in the master bedroom, an opulent rectangle with an enormous brass bed over which hung Rubens’s painting The Toilet of Venus.
A fizzle of humor returned to Venus as she gazed at the lush curves of Rubens’s “Venus,” which were once the ideal.
“Maxie, your talent truly is amazing.”
“I fear my little paintings must go the way of my jewelry,” Maxie said with a deep sigh. “The situation is grim.”
Now truly concerned with the high flush on Maxie’s round face, Venus walked to where she stood, flinging open double doors.
The wide, deep closet was large splashes of color like a piece of modern art. All blacks together, be they fur coats or transparent black silk nightgowns. So it went with reds, purples, blues, greens, and yellows.
“Most must go,” Maxie declared with feeling.
Walking slowly down the long racks, Venus picked out a few pieces. “The fur coats will sell in Pandora’s Box, but we don’t carry any clothes after the 1980s.”
“I know. I’ve prepared my jewels for your inspec
tion.” She opened two built-in drawers, lined in felt. Organized by colors, hundreds of pieces of jewelry sparkled up at them.
The emerald-hued jewelry struck a memory.
Venus picked up a cocktail ring of pavé diamonds and tiny emeralds. The picture she’d seen on Connor’s desk of an emerald surrounded by mounds of diamonds flickered through her mind.
Like the ring Maxie showed me at the gala. Like the ring stolen from Clayworth’s.
“This isn’t the ring you showed me at the gala. I’d love to examine that one,” Venus said carefully.
“I’m very sorry, Venus. Edward has liquidated all my most expensive pieces, including the ring and its matching emerald and diamond necklace.”
Her overactive imagination flickered to life. Connor had a picture of a matching emerald and diamond necklace that had been stolen in the same heist as the brooch.
Oh, my God, stop it!
The image of pudgy Ed as a jewel thief like Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief was utterly ludicrous. She knew she must stop looking for clues to solve the burglary. Just as she needed to stop searching for anything that might help her dad. Anything to make it possible for her to totally surrender to her feelings for Connor. Letting her imagination run riot had led to disaster and heartbreak.
She wasn’t imagining the teary, anguished note in Maxie’s voice. Sympathetic to her unhappiness, Venus patted her shoulder. “I know these are difficult times for many people.”
“The worst. Edward has completely cleaned out the safe.” She motioned to the home safe, much like the one Venus had in her own closet. “Edward always said he’d never do such a thing because it was our nest egg for the future. He says he did it so he’d have a future.”
Something isn’t adding up.
Unable to control her pesky imagination and downright curious, she probed more than she should, hoping that if she knew more, she could help more.
“I always thought the insurance business was recession-proof.”
Maxie glanced toward the door and with a sigh leaned closer. “I believe there are certain gentlemen to whom Edward owes money and they can be difficult if not paid promptly.”
“The bank?” Venus asked, knowing foreclosures were happening everywhere.
“No. Much worse,” Maxie whispered.
Studying Maxie’s frightened face, Venus thought of her feeling in the poker room of sensing the desperation of another time.
Venus gasped before she could stop herself. “Oh, my God, is Ed in debt to the mob?”
“Venus, in Chicago we call such gentlemen the Outfit.” Visibly wilting, Maxie dropped to the zebra-patterned long bench in the middle of the closet. “I fear there are also a few men in Vegas eager for payment.”
Trying to be rational about the images and possibilities tumbling through her head and the notion that Ed could have been involved in the heist, Venus sat down carefully on the bench beside her.
“Where does Ed gamble?” she asked gently, realizing Maxie had every right to tell her to mind her own business.
“Usually Vegas. He’s a high roller. They fly us out and put us up in the most fantastic suites. And he gambles here at his private club.”
“On Taylor Street at the restaurant where I dropped you off for dinner with Ed?” Venus asked, trying to find the pieces that fit together, as she did in her designs. “The casino under the parking lot?”
Again, Maxie looked around as if the closet had ears. “It’s been around for decades. Very exclusive. Everyone must be very discreet.”
“Have you ever been there?” Venus asked, still struggling to understand how this all fit together without giving too much away.
“I don’t gamble.” Maxie sat up straighter. “The odds always favor the house. In Vegas I spa.”
She felt guilty for prying when Maxie seemed so vulnerable but she truly believed there might be something here to reunite Bridget and Tony. Even solve the whole mystery of the mermaid brooch.
“Have you ever heard of the Saint of Taylor Street?”
“Heard of him.” Maxie sat up straighter, even her hair seemed to puff higher in attention. “He paid for my great-grandmother’s wedding after her parents died of cholera, and he helped pay for my uncle Franco’s surgery last year.”
Calculating the span of years, Venus understood at last. “The Saint has been many different people.”
“On Taylor Street, all over the city’s Twenty-fifth Ward, they say the Saint passes it on when he finds someone worthy of the task. But no one ever knows who he is. Some kind of blood oath of secrecy. They say it started back in Italy or Sicily or some such place. I don’t care who he is, I could use a visit from him at the moment,” Maxie said wistfully.
Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. This one gave her goose bumps of admiration.
“Well, I’m certainly not the Saint, but I’m here to help you.” She glanced back into the open drawers. “There are quite a few pieces I can purchase outright for the store and the others I’ll take on consignment.”
“Thank you.” With a deep sigh, Maxie pulled open two more drawers. “There is more.”
The first drawer brimmed with parures of brooch, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces, sets in every color of stones imaginable from bright pink to deepest ruby red, from citrine to amber. The second drawer was half filled with creature pins, from birds, to butterflies, to lobsters to elephants. The other half housed a neat arrangement of calligraphy pens.
“I’ve never seen so many beautiful pens.” Intrigued, Venus picked up two, examining their different tips.
“I use them for the writing games Ed and I play with names. Once he got a copy of the Declaration of Independence and he asked me to copy every signature on it and then he couldn’t tell the difference between the original and my own. I must say I did admire John Hancock’s fluid strokes.”
Maxie must have seen the hot shock burning through Venus. For the first time wariness flickered across Maxie’s face. “I have revealed too much personal business, haven’t I?”
“What are friends for?” Venus shrugged nonchalantly even though her pulse pounded with excitement.
Maxie was a world-class art forger, down to the signature. What else could she duplicate perfectly? Another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“What other writing games do you play, Maxie?”
She shrugged. “I told you I took advance classes in handwriting anaylsis. Sometimes we do that. Edward is fascinated by my little hobby, too.”
Looking into Maxie’s limpid eyes, Venus wished as never before that she possessed Diana’s gift.
“Will you take the furs and jewelry now?” Maxie changed the subject, bobbing up in her high-heeled slippers with amazing energy. “I have cases for the jewelry.”
Left no choice at the moment, Venus packed up the best pieces of jewelry and the fur coats to carry to her car.
She might not be psychic like Diana, but even she saw that the pieces created a mosaic of possibilities she needed to show Connor and somehow convince him to believe her.
Surely if she was honest, trusting him with what she’d discovered would bring them back together.
It was more difficult to go back to his old ways of concealing his emotions than Connor thought possible.
He’d think of Venus and the deep ache would still even his breathing.
Walking into his office, Bridget caught him. He saw it in her sad eyes.
“Connor, I’m more sorry than I can say. I know how hard it is to accept that Venus took the documents and lied to you.”
Not understanding, he blinked. He hadn’t been thinking of the papers at all but of Venus pretending while they made love to get what she wanted.
She hadn’t faked everything.
The sheen of her skin growing warmer under his touch, her trembling in his arms, her soft sounds were all real.
Those thoughts brought another kind of ache.
“Connor, what can I do to help you?” his aunt aske
d, patting his arm.
“Talk to Tony,” he said quietly. “I want the two of you to be happy.”
She nodded. “I understand. I’ll do my best to work through all the mistakes Tony and I have made. I don’t want you to be makin’ another mistake by not talkin’ this out with Venus.”
She walked out of the office, he hoped, to do as he asked. He wasn’t strong enough yet to talk to Venus. As Bridget hadn’t been ready to talk to Tony.
A few minutes later Bridget came back in, carrying a large legal-size envelope.
“Dr. Potts had this sent by messenger. Since these are Clayworth documents, he returned them to us and will send an opinion to Venus, since she asked for one.”
Quickly, Connor ripped open the envelope and read slowly.
The words sealed any lingering hope for a way to clear Alistair.
“What does Carl say?” Bridget asked, peering over his shoulder.
“He has no opinion that would stand up in a court of law. The use of a different pen could account for any minute variations. On a personal note to me, he says if these two signatures are forgeries they are the best he’s ever seen.
“This is no surprise.” Connor let the paper drift to his desk and stared at it, realizing he’d give anything to make it different. “This will be a blow to Venus.” Even he heard the emotion in his voice.
“Connor, I’m so sorry. What will you do now?”
Unseeing, he stared at his aunt, letting the question and answer sink in. “What will I do now? Nothing. It’s up to Venus to finally accept the truth.”
Driving to Clayworth’s, Venus trembled with excitement and resolve. Nothing would stop her this time. She wouldn’t keep anything from Connor. She’d tell him everything and somehow convince him to believe her. Never again would she allow him to leave with that look on his face, a look that haunted her day and night.
Yes, she was as stubborn as a mule, as he’d once said. She would write a different ending for their tragic love story.
Unannounced, she walked into his office.
He sat at his desk, his hair falling across his forehead, while he stared down, apparently studying a sheet of paper.
All I Want Is You Page 22
