Captivating In Love

by Bella Andre

Had Karmen had even an inkling of the painting’s worth? “Why would she have given it to me?” he asked in a hollow voice.

  He didn’t need more money. The truth was he had more than he knew what to do with. He’d banked all his re-up bonuses, invested the money. He’d lived on practically nothing since he got out, everything going into investments that he could someday use to help Ari. The truth was he could already afford a fancy car, even a fancy house. Nothing on the scale of Matt’s place, but a damned fine home.

  “Maybe she didn’t know what it was worth. Or…” Rosie looked fit to burst as she said, “maybe she knew how many people you could help with it. You could set up scholarships for people who can’t afford to go to college, or build homes for people who need them.” She held her arms wide as if she were holding all the possibilities in the world.

  He remembered Karmen’s words: You’ll know when it’s the right time to pass it on.

  For so many years, he’d been waiting for a sign. Now, he wondered if what he’d really been waiting for was Rosie. Not only to see the painting and recognize the artist, but more important, to fill him with the kind of hope he hadn’t thought he’d ever feel again.

  “I need to call Evan,” he said. “Since art is probably part of a lot of rich people’s investment portfolios, he’ll likely know who to contact to find out if Correa really painted this.”

  And if this truly was a Miguel Fernando Correa painting, that would mean Gideon could help foster kids like Ari and Rosie and Chi had once been. He could provide aid to returning vets with terrible injuries, or those who couldn’t seem to fit in anymore, the ones with PTSD. He could help the families of the soldiers who’d never come back.

  You’ll know when it’s the right time to pass it on.

  Maybe the right time was now, if the painting was worth fifty million freaking dollars.

  * * *

  Rosie prayed she wasn’t getting Gideon’s hopes up for absolutely nothing. But her gut felt the rightness of it.

  She hadn’t wanted to blindside him with the information. But she’d been so over-the-top ridiculously excited about the painting—and all the possibilities it could lead to—that she could barely sleep last night.

  Of course, there’d also been the fact that she was lying in Gideon’s bed. The touch of his lips crept into her dreams when she’d finally fallen asleep. And boy oh boy, were they erotic dreams.

  Snuggled into his bed, she’d given more thought to how she’d steered clear of men after Jorge was born. She hadn’t wanted Jorge to become attached to a man only to have him turn out to be a creep or a liar or unreliable or lacking in staying power and integrity.

  But Gideon was different from any man she’d ever met. He was like the Mavericks—good, strong, caring. So while it had felt right to hit the pause button after their kiss last night, she wasn’t at all sure that she needed to keep holding the button down.

  She was sure of one thing. Right at this very moment, Gideon had the look of a man who’d been hit with a stun gun, his eyes a soft blue in his surprise—and budding hope.

  “So…you had something to tell me too?” she prodded gently.

  He nodded, his eyes changing color again, this time to a cross between faded and stormy blue. “I looked up Archie. I hope you’re not upset with me.”

  “If you hadn’t looked him up, you wouldn’t be the man I—” She broke off before she could blurt out the enormity of her feelings for him. Feelings that ran far deeper than just desire or friendship. Feelings that might very well freak him out if he knew just how strong they were. “The man I’ve come to know these past months,” she finished. “Now, tell me what you found.”

  The boys were still in Noah’s room, working on their Lego surprise, and breakfast could wait a few more minutes.

  “The deadbeat opened another Impressions in Las Vegas. It’s in the Forum Shops at Caesars. He doesn’t have much of a web presence—just a website with one page for contact information. And he doesn’t seem to do much to promote any of his artists. From what I could find, everything he’s sold has been auctioned off for huge amounts of money. And he’s all over the society pages, going to galas and openings. I can’t quite put together why he’d have a gallery in a mall in Vegas, instead of in LA on Rodeo Drive?”

  Rosie had no clue why Archie had gone to Vegas. She’d just been glad he’d left the Bay Area. “Did you see the clip of that TV interview with his wife?”

  Gideon nodded. “He’s smooth. So smooth that my instincts are screaming there’s something else going on beneath the surface.” The same way his gut had told him to hold his team—and Karmen—back that fateful day in Ramadi. He would never ignore his gut again. “Something shady.”

  Rosie opened her iPad again. “Do you remember any of the artists’ names? The ones you said he sold a painting for?”

  He rattled off a name she didn’t recognize, and Rosie tapped it in. “See, that’s really odd.”

  “What?”

  “So there’s this one huge sale.” She pointed to the brief article that came up. “But nothing else. Give me another name.” The same conclusion came up. “It’s just one sale. And it’s weird that he didn’t have a show for either of these artists.”

  “Very shady,” Gideon agreed as he angled his body, looking at her now, not the iPad. “We don’t know for sure if these calls you’ve been getting are from him. But we need to watch out.” He reached out with one finger, tipping her chin toward him. “You’ll tell me if he calls again, won’t you?”

  Of course she could take care of herself. She had for years now. But she loved that Gideon was looking out for her too. Just as she loved the sweet sensation of his touch.

  “I’ll tell you,” she promised.

  Just then, the boys flung open Noah’s door and blew like a mini tornado into the kitchen. “What’s for breakfast?” Noah said.

  Jorge echoed, “I’m starved.”

  “And when can we call Mommy?” Noah asked. “We made a huge Lego tower. I want to show her on FaceTime.”

  “It’s for you too.” Jorge smiled up at Rosie.

  “Gideon can help you call while I’m making breakfast,” Rosie suggested. “How about some waffles?”

  As she cooked, though everything in her life seemed up in the air, Rosie’s heart felt lighter for the first time in a very long time. Not only would Gideon never allow anything bad to happen to her son, but at last, the two of them were forging a relationship that felt more real than any she’d ever had before.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After devouring the best waffles Gideon had ever tasted, the four of them dropped the painting off with Evan. He promised to make a few calls regarding a valuation while they went to a Triple-A league baseball game featuring the Santa Clara Rockets versus the Saratoga Stallions.

  Not surprisingly, the boys went wild. They cheered whenever someone crossed home plate, even though Gideon tried to get them to pick a team to root for. They ate hot dogs and popcorn and drank soda.

  The lady in the seat in front of them said they made such a happy family. And that was how it felt—like they were a family, like they were happy, like nothing else mattered but the afternoon they spent together having fun.

  Even with Rosie’s ex and the worth of the painting still hanging over them.

  For so long, darkness had shrouded everything in Gideon’s life, even his longed-for homecoming with Ari. But when he was with Rosie, Jorge, and Noah, light was determined to shine through.

  The only downside to the day was that Rosie didn’t try to kiss him again, even though he couldn’t help wishing she would. Just as he couldn’t help wishing that he was worthy enough to kiss her himself.

  They were just leaving the game when Evan called. “Can you swing by the house after the game?”

  “Sure thing. It just finished, so we’ll head there now.”

  “Great. Paige is making cookies for the kids. I think she’s eating more dough than she’s putting on the cookie shee
t, though.”

  When Gideon first met Evan last year, the guy had been married to Paige’s sister. Evil sister, actually. A more miserable guy than Evan, Gideon had never seen. But his divorce from Whitney was final, and with Paige, Evan was a new and extremely happy man.

  Gideon shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Evan wants us to come by.”

  “Did he say anything about the painting?” Rosie asked as the boys raced ahead to the car, while he and Rosie kept their eyes trained on them.

  “No. He was pretty casual, said Paige was making cookies for the boys. Doesn’t sound like he’s got big news. Maybe it’s not what we thought.” A part of him would be glad not to give up Karmen’s painting just yet and thereby lose his last thread of connection to her. Yet at the same time, he’d feel a great disappointment to lose the chance of making a difference in so many lives with the proceeds from the painting’s sale.

  “I guess we’ll know when we get there,” Rosie said mildly, as though it was no big deal.

  Even though they both knew it was a huge deal.

  The drive to Evan’s home in Los Altos didn’t take long, and the boys were soon piling out of the car and racing up the front walk. As he and Rosie followed, Gideon desperately wanted to hold her hand. As though they truly were a happy family.

  And Rosie was truly his.

  Paige threw open the front door and gathered the boys into her arms. She was a pretty woman with auburn hair, and her face glowed as she hugged Noah and Jorge close. At the scent of freshly baked cookies wafting through the air, the boys raced into the kitchen, with Paige following, leaving Evan to invite Gideon and Rosie inside.

  Like the other Mavericks, Evan was tall, fit, and good-looking, but he’d always struck Gideon as the quiet one in the bunch. Maybe it was the glasses that made him seem more studious. He was the finance guy who likely had a whole host of art appraisers on speed dial, which was why he’d felt like the best choice to bring the painting to, even though Sebastian and Charlie were both artists.

  Evan shook Gideon’s hand, then gave Rosie a quick hug. “Come on in.”

  The house Evan had lived in with his first wife had been a bona fide mansion. This place, however, was more a home than a showpiece. The rooms were big enough for entertaining, but not overwhelming. Evan took them into the living room, which had been remodeled into a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Artwork, Chinese vases, and small porcelain figurines were scattered here and there, but mostly it was books—hardbacks to paperbacks, finance tomes to mysteries, coffee table art books to biographies.

  “Can I get both of you a drink?” he asked.

  “Not for me, thanks,” Gideon said. Whatever they learned about the painting, he wanted to have his wits fully about him.

  Rosie shook her head with a smile.

  They took the sofa, while Evan sat in a comfortable wing chair obviously used for reading, if the stack of books on the table beside it was any indication. The painting, sitting in the middle of the coffee table, was now wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

  “As both of you know, people like to invest in art,” he began. “It makes them feel good to think they’ve not only got beauty, but also an appreciating asset.” Evan pulled the string out of its bow and opened the flaps of the paper. “My art appraiser looked at it. He had a buddy of his look at it too. And that guy had a guy as well.”

  “You haven’t been rushing all over town for this, have you?” Gideon hadn’t meant to put Evan out, or interrupt his busy work schedule.

  “Nope, all I did was make a couple of calls. Once the appraisers saw the painting, they were more than willing to drop everything for it.”

  Gideon’s stomach did a backflip. Next to him on the couch, Rosie was as still as a cat hunting a gopher.

  Evan pushed his glasses up his nose. “As far as those three experts are concerned, this is an original Miguel Fernando Correa.”

  “Oh my God,” Rosie said on barely more than a breath.

  While Gideon felt the air sucked out of his lungs, without being able to drag in a single breath.

  Evan went on, “When Correa was in his seventies, he entered a period where he painted only religious subjects. That lasted exactly two years, almost to the day. No one quite knows why. But that makes his religious works extremely rare.”

  “And even more valuable,” Rosie added.

  “Exactly.”

  Gideon heard Evan and Rosie as if their voices were coming down a long tube. He saw their mouths moving. He heard the boys’ voices drifting in from the kitchen as they begged Paige for another cookie. But it was all from a long distance. It wasn’t that he hadn’t believed Rosie. But he hadn’t accepted the possibility of the painting being a Correa, not truly. It had been more like a weird dream. A crazy, no-way-this-could-ever-actually-happen-to-me-in-a-million-years possibility.

  “As I believe both of you also know, the last one of these paintings went for fifty million dollars.” Evan smoothed the paper down around the painting, as if he were afraid to actually touch it. “That was last year. As this appears to be the ninth in the series that everyone always hoped existed but could never actually prove, the interest for it is going to be huge. They think this might go for even more. Of course, they still need to do a technical authentication. But in a situation like this, it will get priority and shouldn’t take too long. At which point, they can take it to auction almost immediately after it’s been authenticated.”

  His words hung in the air, beating like wings over Gideon’s head. “Why would Karmen give it to me?” he said aloud, more to himself than to Rosie or Evan.

  Karmen had carried the painting to the Middle East in her duffel, for God’s sake. And he’d been hauling it all over the country in his pack, appreciating that it was a beautiful painting from a close friend. Not a priceless work of art.

  And though he knew how much good he could do with the proceeds from an auction, he suddenly wasn’t sure he could part with everything the painting symbolized. His life prior to that awful day when so many of his friends had died. The man he’d been but wasn’t anymore. And his feelings for Karmen, unexpressed and intangible.

  “There are so many possible reasons for giving it to you,” Rosie said softly. They’d discussed that Karmen might not have known the worth of the painting—or if she did, that she’d wanted him to sell it and do good with the money. “But all I can think is that most of all, Karmen wanted you to have it because it was special to her. And so were you.”

  * * *

  Until now, Rosie hadn’t really thought beyond the worth of the painting—and all that the sale of it could do for people in need. Last night the thought of fifty million dollars had seemed so exciting, so amazing, so unbelievable.

  But from the look on Gideon’s face, it was blindingly obvious that the painting wasn’t just an artifact to him. It wasn’t just a nearly priceless wonder of the art world. It didn’t just carry with it all his pain, all his turmoil, all his heartache. And it wasn’t simply Karmen’s final gift to him either.

  The painting was Karmen.

  And no matter how much money it was worth, or what he could do with that money, or how many people it could help, for Gideon, selling it would still feel like letting Karmen go.

  Rosie wanted so badly to wrap her arms around him and tell him everything would be okay. It was an instinct she had to give in to, and she was reaching for him when her phone rang. She’d been so intent on Gideon and the painting that the sound jarred her so badly, she almost jumped right off the couch.

  Not wanting to disturb Gideon’s train of thought in such an intense moment, she pulled her phone out of her purse and walked across the room to answer it. She didn’t recognize the number, but sometimes her boss asked potential new accounting clients to contact her directly so they could discuss her methodology. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Rosie. It’s been a long time. Have you missed me?”

  Her stomach froze. Her teeth chattered. She w
as suddenly so cold, her hair might break off in icicles.

  “I’m in town and I thought we could get together for a nice cha—”

  She stabbed End before he could finish.

  Archie had found her.

  * * *

  Something was wrong. Dead wrong.

  Rosie stared at her phone as though she were in a horror movie where she was the only one who could see the spiders crawling out of it.

  “Excuse me a minute.”

  Gideon didn’t hear Evan’s reply. He was only vaguely aware of the boys running into the living room. When they would have raced to Gideon, Evan called them over, saying something Gideon couldn’t hear, something that was enough to have them flopping down on the sofa.

  Then Gideon was by Rosie’s side at the far edge of the room. “What’s wrong?” he asked softly, wanting to gather her up in his arms and make it all better.

  “He’s in town,” she whispered as the phone fell to the rug from nerveless fingers. “He wants to get together to talk.”

  Gideon picked up her phone and shoved it in his back pocket. “We need to call the cops.”

  “And tell them what? That my ex wants to talk to me?”

  “He’s been threatening you.”

  “Only he hasn’t—not directly, anyway. I don’t even know if those calls were from him. This was a different number. And those calls were on the landline at the house, not my cell phone.”

  The phone call was like a one-two punch. First the painting and now this. She was in shock. Maybe they both were. But though Gideon knew Rosie was right about the cops not being able to do anything with the information they had, he still needed to make sure neither of them were hiding from the truth. Especially one that put either Jorge or Rosie at risk.

  “One thing we know for sure. He’s tracking you. Just like you figured, you can’t assume he’s going to leave you or Jorge alone the way he has for the past seven years. And even if his name isn’t on the birth certificate, which I’m assuming it isn’t—” She nodded. “—it’s still all too easy for him to get a DNA test. Which means we’ve got to fight him head on to make sure he doesn’t dare try to claim his parental rights.”