Two Lives in Waltz Time

by Vivien Dean

  Ava’s eyes shot wide. “You’re kidding! Why would you do that?”

  Beefy fingers ran through his cropped hair, and he couldn’t quite meet her gaze. “The way I figure it, better me to be the one sitting here in my underwear than you. A dame like you shouldn’t be in that kind of situation.”

  He sounded so sincere that Ava didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d been put in far worse scenarios before. Different era, different mindset, she told herself. And Gino was a gentleman, through and through.

  “Where’s Maddy and Cash?”

  Gino shrugged. “Still sleeping. I haven’t heard a peep out of them since I woke up.” Leaning over, he began picking up his sock and shoes, glancing at her shyly out of the corner of his eye. “You want me to give you a ride home? There’s no telling how long the lovebirds are going to be.”

  Though she didn’t really like the idea of leaving, Ava knew he had a point. Besides, Maddy and Cash knew how to get hold of her if they found out something new before work that night.

  She grimaced at the thought of going back to the nightclub. As lovely as the company was here, her job made her eager to return home. It wasn’t only that she was stuck in a role where she was expected just to look pretty and make change for the men buying the cigarettes. That part wasn’t any different from when she’d waited tables in college. It was those damn high-heeled shoes that turned the job into torture.

  Gino mistook her obvious annoyance for something else.

  “If you’re worried about facing the music with Lombardi, I can pick you up. Be there when you get in. It’s always good to have somebody watching your back.”

  Though he wasn’t looking at her, there was no denying the hope in his voice. Impulsively, Ava leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his cheek.

  “I’d like that. Thanks.”

  His blush and answering smile were all she needed to know she’d done the right thing.

  Aaron stared at the phone on his desk, twirling the pen nervously between his fingers while he sat and debated whether calling Kate Beckstrom was a good idea or an invitation for her to cut his balls off. It had been over twenty-four hours since he’d last heard from her, and with the situation now gone from bad to phenomenally terrible, he was eager to start getting some answers. He just wished he didn’t have to go running after Kate like a pathetic puppy hoping for a scrap under the table.

  He had picked up and set down his phone for the third time when he heard voices in the hall. Frowning, he rose to see what the disturbance was, but before he reached the door, it opened inward and the object of his anxiety came strolling in, a security guard arguing behind her.

  “Ms. Beckstrom,” Aaron said. “Just the woman I was thinking about.”

  She turned so quickly to face the guard that the potbellied man almost ran into her, skidding to a halt that had him stumbling backward in order not to collide with her. “I told you Mr. Keating would be expecting me,” Kate said, a triumphant smile on her face. “Now, go away. Our business is private.”

  The guard looked to Aaron for confirmation, only backing away at Aaron’s nod. He watched Kate shut the door with a hint of amusement on his lips.

  “The man’s got a heart condition, you know,” he teased. “You could have been a little bit nicer to him.”

  “Then he shouldn’t have tried to stop me from seeing you. I have news.”

  He waited until she had settled her long limbs in his sole chair before resuming his seat behind the desk. “Should the fact that you’re not calling it bad or good mean something? Because I’ve got my own news to share, and mine’s definitely on the far side of crappy.”

  Kate frowned, her eyes growing even more penetrating. “You haven’t lost the painting, have you?”

  A shiver ran through his body at the implied menace in her tone. He wondered if she would notice. “No, no, it’s not quite that bad.” Taking a deep breath, Aaron stood and crossed to his locked storage cabinet, pulling his rattling keys from his pocket to open the doors. “Ava’s gone missing too,” he explained, carefully extracting the box in which he’d stored the painting from the bottom of the cabinet. “When she didn’t show up for work yesterday, I checked to see if she was inside it like Cash and Maddy. She was.”

  Kate rose and came to his side as he opened the box to reveal the painting inside. “Maybe you need to have a talk with your employees about the proper way to handle artwork.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was teasing him or not. “I brought it here to keep anybody else from falling for the same thing. Now, what’s the news you’ve brought? Because now my entire restoration team is stuck in there. If they’re gone for much longer, I’m going to have to do some emergency hiring to cover their workloads.”

  Folding her arms across her chest, pulling taut the already tight cotton of her blouse, Kate glared at him. This time, there was no mistaking her intention. “I’m sorry my brother’s peril is inconvenient for you. If you’ll let me take the painting back to my hotel, I’ll see what I can do to help your little museum here.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that—” Aaron stopped, realizing she’d suggested a solution to the problem. “Did you figure out the loophole to this H’whatsit business? Is that why you’re here?”

  Her lips were thin. Any camaraderie they might have had had just been demolished by his attention to work rather than the people, and it was clear she didn’t want to talk about it any longer with him. He was about to apologize for being so callous when she finally spoke again.

  “There is a loophole,” Kate said stiffly, “but it’s not something Cash will be able to figure out on his own. To my knowledge, he’s not even aware that H’rovens even exist. He’s been out of the magic loop longer than H’roven has been doing business. I’m going to need to take the painting so I can go through it and tell Cash what he needs to do.”

  A solution was good, but the fact that she wanted to take away his only link to his staff was not. Aaron opened his mouth to say so, and then decided to choose a more diplomatic approach before he made things worse.

  “They’re my friends too,” he said. “If you’re going to touch it, I will too.”

  Surprise made her brows lift, and Kate tilted her head as she regarded him more closely. “It’s dangerous. Cash is already in mortal danger, and it’s likely that anybody else who enters that dimension gets placed directly into its path. There’s a chance you could be seriously hurt.”

  He grinned. “I played football for too many years to count. Trust me. Pain and I are old friends.”

  But she wasn’t done. “There’s also the chance this won’t work. According to my sources, H’roven has a safety within each of his paintings on the off chance the wrong person gets sucked in. If we don’t find it, we don’t come back.”

  “A safety? What is that? Some switch we have to throw?”

  “A person. We have to kill him.”

  “Whoa there.” Aaron threw up his hands and backed off. “You’re talking about murder, and the last time I checked, that was illegal. Not to mention creepy.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be staying here after all,” she said matter-of-factly.

  When she reached to take the painting, Aaron’s arm shot out to block her. “I didn’t say that. But…killing a guy? Is that really necessary?”

  “If we want any of them to get home alive, yes.”

  Her gaze never wavered, but neither did she seem as confrontational as she had earlier. There almost seemed to be sympathy lurking in her brown eyes. He wondered why.

  “Nobody is asking you to do anything that would make you uncomfortable, Mr. Keating,” she said. “But you have my word that this is the only way to get Cash and the others back.”

  The woman was too blunt to lie to him. Sighing, Aaron rubbed his face as if that would make a difference to the headache he was getting.

  “Do you at least know who the guy is?” he asked.

  Kate shook her head. “But he’ll have H’roven’s
mark on him somehow. A tattoo, probably. That’s how we identify him.”

  I am crazy to even consider this.

  Before he could change his mind, he stuck out his hand. “Then it looks like you have a partner.”

  The sunshine was brilliant and golden, burning through Maddy’s closed eyelids as she drifted awake. Her face was warm, both from the morning light and the firm chest she currently had her cheek pressed against, and she couldn’t help her satisfied smile as she opened her eyes.

  Unlike her last drinking adventure within the painting, this time there were no awful aftereffects to suffer through. Every event from the moment she had invited Cash into her bedroom to when he had spooned behind her after their shower was etched in sharp clarity in her mind, with little regret attached to any of them. There had been the brief interlude when she’d woken him from his nightmare, when he had refused to tell her what had terrified him and Maddy was convinced she had made a huge mistake in trusting him, but that had quickly disappeared as soon as he uttered that four-word confession.

  I couldn’t save you.

  She hadn’t dwelled on the importance of his fear. Though Cash didn’t volunteer any more details from his dream, Maddy found she didn’t want to know. Knowing what she knew now about his past, she realized it wasn’t necessary. He had suffered through years of guilt. She wouldn’t add to it by forcing him to dredge up events that weren’t even real anyway. It was enough to know she mattered to him in that capacity.

  As her fingers trailed over his muscled abdomen, Maddy listened to the steady thud of his heart, breathing in the fresh scent of his skin as she mulled over the events of the past few days. They agreed that things were going to be different now, but how would that translate once they got home? For that matter, were they even going to make it back to their own world? Cash was putting a lot of faith into his sister’s diligence, but Maddy didn’t have that luxury. All she had was her trust in Cash’s experience. She hoped it was enough.

  When she realized he wasn’t going to wake, Maddy carefully rolled out of his embrace, doing her best not to disturb the mattress as she turned to get out of the bed. Her feet had just touched the floor when his hand reached out and stroked her hip.

  “Where are you going?” Cash murmured, his voice thick with sleep.

  Twisting, she looked back to see him gazing at her through heavy lids. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered. “I’ll pull the curtains so it’s darker for you.”

  She was stopped from rising by his fingers curling around her arm.

  “I already woke up one morning without you in my bed. I don’t want to do it again.”

  Something warmed in Maddy’s stomach, and she leaned to brush a soft kiss across his mouth. His arm snaked around her waist, drawing her back to lie on top of him.

  “Stay,” he breathed into the kiss.

  How the hell was she supposed to ignore that? When Cash deepened the caress, the answer came through loud and clear.

  She wasn’t.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The day passed in a blur. There was more sleep, and more sex, and long conversations in between that erased any sense of time until the call came announcing the car’s arrival. Both Maddy and Cash had to make a mad dash to get ready, moving in circles around each other as they pulled clothes blindly from the rails. At least they didn’t have to worry about getting Ava to work. The note she had left explaining her and Gino’s absence had freed them of that responsibility.

  Maddy stood in front of the full-length mirror, assessing her appearance one last time. The dress had been an easy choice, a strapless white confection complete with a full tulle skirt embellished in rhinestones and rosettes. Satin elbow-length gloves rested on a nearby chair to accompany it, while a wide choker of emeralds and pearls finished the ensemble. She didn’t have time to fuss with her hair and settled for letting it fall in waves around her bare shoulders, but when she whirled on her heel to head out to the living room, she collided directly with Cash.

  His hair was still damp from where he must have dunked it under the tap, and his tux jacket was nowhere to be found. Maddy’s gaze was instantly drawn to the way the white fabric of his shirt was pulled taut across his shoulders, so that by the time she lifted her chin to look into his face, her mouth was watering from the cascading memories of their day of decadence.

  “Wow,” he said, his gaze sweeping over her. “You look absolutely beautiful tonight.”

  She smiled, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to tease him. “Are you saying I don’t always look beautiful?”

  Something dangerous flickered in his eyes. Before she could react, his hands slipped around her waist while his head lowered to press his mouth to hers, dancing across her lower lip for a fraction of a second before sliding his tongue past her minimal defenses.

  Maddy melted against Cash, crushing the rosettes on the bodice of her dress while her hands sculpted over his strong shoulders. Already she was learning the planes of his body like her own. Here was a little dip where sinew met bone. There was a muscle that always twitched with a life of its own when she touched it. She was particularly fond of the small, soft curls at the nape of his neck and how Cash groaned when she tugged at them.

  “Let’s send the car away,” he murmured, peppering her jaw with tiny bites. “Tonight’s going to be bloody murder waiting for you.”

  As tempting as the thought was, Maddy knew it was impossible and pushed at his hands to extricate herself from his embrace. “We don’t need Lombardi after you too.” Her breath was short, her skin vibrating from desire, but the possibility of even greater danger to Cash was enough to douse her more reckless inclinations. “You need all the friends here you can find. That means behaving yourself.”

  With a dramatic sigh, Cash stepped back into the bedroom, grabbing his coat from where it was draped on the bed. “I forgot who it was I was kissing for a second there,” he said wryly. “Can’t say that I’ve missed that stick up your gorgeous ass.”

  Her jaw dropped in fury. Maddy only stopped from physically lashing out at him after she saw the teasing glint in his eye.

  “Someone around here needs to be responsible,” she replied, affecting the haughtiest air she could manage. With her chin held high, she marched from the room as Cash’s laughter trailed after her.

  “I’ll remember that when you’re begging me to shag you senseless later,” he called out. “Maybe I’ll be the responsible one then.”

  Her lips twitched. She had a strong feeling that Cash was the type of man who didn’t let go of anything he really wanted, and if his earlier actions were any indication, he wasn’t anywhere near being sated by her. Before she could get the last word in, he was there, draping her coat over her shoulders. Smoothing the fabric with his palms, Cash leaned down and slid his lips upward along her neck, his warm breath skimming over her skin.

  “It’s your own fault, you know,” he said. “If you didn’t drive me so mad, I wouldn’t act like such a git all the time.”

  Reaching up, Maddy tangled her fingers in his hair, holding him to her. “Then remind me not to change. I’m getting rather attached to this git.”

  Cash hugged her against him. “You’re not the only one attached.” Entwining their fingers, he lifted her hand to brush a kiss across the knuckles. “Now let’s get out of here before I lose what little self-control I have.”

  Gino’s heels clicked across the tile floor, dark head low as he headed for the door to the back. Gotta find Ava. She’ll know what to do. As he reached the exit, he stood back, allowing the musicians to come filing in, taking their places on the bandstand, his impatient hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, itching to just grab the door and shove them all away. He couldn’t, of course. Mr. Lombardi would have his hide if he laid a finger on any of them. Especially since the new torcher was supposed to debut in less than an hour.

  When the last of the band filtered through, Gino bolted into the back, almost bumping into Lola. “Where’s Av
a?” he demanded.

  She jerked her head toward the dressing room. “But she’s not ready—”

  He was moving before she could finish, brushing past and knocking at the door. When it opened, Gino had to fight the impulse not to push his way inside.

  “What’s wrong?” Ava asked.

  He glanced at the high-heeled shoe dangling from her hand, then over her shoulder at the empty room. “You alone?”

  Her concern deepened into a frown, and she nodded, stepping aside to let him enter. “What’s going on?” she said when the door was closed behind him.

  “We got trouble. Well, actually Maddy and Cash got trouble, but seein’ as they’re not here yet and I’m the one out front having to answer all the questions, it’s partially my trouble too.”

  He knew he must look a mess. His face felt like it was on fire, and nothing he did could control the nervous clenching of his hands. When Ava took his arm to lead him to one of the chairs, pushing him gently into it, it was all he could do not to pull her onto his lap and bury his face in her shoulder. He wanted to pretend they were back at Maddy and Cash’s, and Ava was sound asleep, stretched out on top of him. It had been the best night of his life.

  To be followed by what he was convinced would be one of his worst.

  Ava crouched down in front of him, meeting him at eye level. “What kind of trouble are you talking about?”

  Gino took a long, steadying breath before speaking. “Mack’s here. And he’s asking about Maddy. And seein’ as how he hasn’t been around since she and Cash made their little announcement, I don’t know what to say that’s not going to get me in dutch, because you know his boys always pack.” He looked up, alarmed that he must look like a coward to her now. “Not that I’m scared of shooters or anything,” he rushed, “but Mr. Lombardi doesn’t let me carry, so it puts me at a serious disadvantage if something happens, know what I mean?”