“Parkinson’s,” Gemma said. “She’s been bedridden for a few years. The doctor says eventually she’ll get pneumonia, but for now she’s holding on.”
“How long—” Steve wasn’t sure how to frame the question.
“She was diagnosed almost a decade ago. But it got much worse after she fell.”
He nodded as though that made sense, but of course it didn’t. “When did she write The Lake? Or Highway Four? Or Last Light?”
Gemma’s mouth twisted. She shook her head, then led him by the hand back to the sitting room.
When they were seated together on the sofa, she said, “Bethany didn’t write those. I did.”
“But they’ve got her name on them. B. J. Robison. Everyone assumes she tried to mask her identity by losing the hyphen.”
Gemma’s eyes filled with tears, which spilled over one by one. “It’s my name. I was named for her. Bethany Jane Robison. My parents never married, but Mum didn’t like the double-barreled name. Too English. So she just went by Robison, which we get from our New Zealand side anyway. When she got pregnant, she wasn’t young but she and Gran had been on bad terms for a long time. She named me for Gran, I think so Gran would forgive her for running away from home.”
“Did it work?”
She shrugged. “Must have helped, because Gran emigrated the following year. We moved in with her when I was six.”
“Why are you called Gemma, then?”
“Mum said when they put me in her arms at the hospital, she looked up at my dad and said I was a little gem. It stuck.”
He hesitated, but he had to know for sure. “So you wrote The Lake?” That made a lot of sense, but why wouldn’t she want anyone to know?
Gemma nodded, staring at her hands again.
He kissed her knuckles, first one hand then the other. “It’s so good, your writing. Why haven’t you told anyone?”
“I didn’t know I wasn’t telling people. But when it got snatched up by a New York publisher and everyone assumed it was Gran’s work, well, what could I do? If I said it was me, I’d look like I was trading on her fame. Or worse, people would think I’d just stolen some unpublished essays of hers and published them to make money. Which is the last thing I’d do.”
He leaned forward to wrap his arms around her shoulders, one hand cradling her head so it rested on his shoulder. She was weeping now, letting out years and years of pain and pretense.
He knew how she felt. Poor girl. As alone as he’d been.
*
He must think I’m an idiot.
Gemma sniffed, took the handkerchief he offered, dried her eyes and blew her nose, then tucked the hanky in her skirt pocket.
“Sorry about getting your shirt wet.” She nodded at the dark patch on his shoulder.
Steve pressed a kiss on her lips. “You can cry on me any time you want.”
“But you’re leaving.”
“I don’t have to. Or if I go, I can come back as soon as I’ve closed up my apartment.”
“You’d live here?”
He sat back. “I’ve found my heart here. I can’t leave it behind.”
She couldn’t stop the tears, even with the hanky as a dam. “I could move to the States. Not right away, but after Gran…” She let the thought trail off, her eyes imploring him to understand.
“We can figure it out.”
Something occurred to Gemma, something she hadn’t thought about for years. “You know, Gran wanted someone to do her biography. She mentioned it the last time a journalist came to interview her. After she sent him away, she told me she didn’t mind being written about, but she couldn’t stand the actual questions and answers. I think her solicitor has her papers saved someplace.”
Steve frowned. “Are you suggesting I—that I be the one to write it?”
Gemma smiled a little. “You seem like a good choice. She wouldn’t want a heavy scholarly tome. She didn’t think Sins for Breakfast was terribly good, just popular. You’d probably do a great job explaining why it’s both.”
He continued to gape at her, so she explained the real reason. “And I suspect the New Zealand immigration officials would look more kindly on your stay if you had a proper job to do. You’d get to live in,” she offered.
“Here?”
She nodded.
“Can I see the accommodation before I decide?” His eyes gleamed with lascivious intent.
She nodded again.
He read the shy eagerness in her eyes. “Then it’s a deal. Let’s go check out this room of ours.”
“Sex in the afternoon? How naughty,” Gemma said as they climbed the stairs, arm in arm.
*
O Is for One More Night
By Ginny Glass
Santa Marta, Brazil
February
Winnie smelled rain. She hated rain. The hot ozone edge that the coming storm lent to the air gave her impetus to take the last few steps in the seemingly infinite set of stairs in front of her. Not that you could differentiate singular notes in the surrounding atmosphere—the scents of a thousand households cooking, damp earth and decaying wood and the acrid smell of burning oil all assaulted her as she consulted her crude map. She turned right, groaning as she faced another set of stairs that appeared endless.
It was getting dark. She needed to find Silas soon. Taking a deep breath, she started upward again, her feet and lower back aching. As she ascended, the sound of thunder rolled dully in the distance.
A pair of boys, ten or twelve at the most, burst out of the doorway of a shanty that flanked the stone steps. They were dressed in loincloths, their faces hidden under bizarre streaks of bright face paint. They flew past Winnie, surefooted on the stairs, animals native to the landscape. As night fell, the favela would crowd with similar figures. Bodies would flow through the streets, revelers in rainbow garb swamping the hillsides.
The rain wouldn’t dampen the festivities that would soon explode in similar corridors all around her—the slum villages of Brazil were certain to be overflowing with Carnival excess. She’d come to find someone among the revelers, and she wondered if this was the perfect time to stalk a bounty or the worst.
Winnie was sweltering in the summer heat, disgruntled that the threatening sky didn’t just open up. As much as she hated rain, it was preferable to the humid misery that came before the downpour.
She should have stayed in D.C. She shouldn’t have jumped at the chance to track down Silas Quinn. After their…interlude in Dubai and the debacle of the Smithsonian’s charity gala just two months ago, she should want to stay as far away from the artifact forger as possible.
You’ve already been as close as two people can get. She shook off the intruding thought, but couldn’t help the sudden memory of that last night in the small apartment she’d sublet in Dubai’s Jumeirah Beach district, humble in the shadow of the many luxury resorts that sprawled along the coastline. Silas Quinn had made the otherwise unremarkable bedroom a place Winnie would never forget. And then he had disappeared without a word.
She’d been confused, hurt, and more than a little angry. As she’d sat at a corner café nursing an espresso the morning after, it had hit her that karma was, indeed, a bitch. The situation was eerily similar to when she’d turned her ex-boyfriend Alex over for international drug smuggling. Alex was supposed to have been her happily-ever-after, her white knight, her ticket to post-graduate suburbanite bliss. She’d slipped out and stood holding her shoes in his driveway as the police had swarmed his house. He’d still been sleeping, looking more angelic in slumber than he was in reality.
Winnie found that it was pretty crummy when you were the one getting left alone in bed. At least she wasn’t in police custody. But Alex was an entire other life, an entire other set of lies, both things Winnie had worked hard to forget.
Silas had been the first man since Alex she’d felt anything for, and it was only after their one-night fling that she’d discovered he was a renowned forger.
Great. She had a knack for falling for criminals.
Still, somehow, she was now chasing him. She needed Silas to help her track down a missing figurine—the piece had been stolen during a breakin last week at the Smithsonian’s Museum Support Center in Maryland. Though it was heavily insured, it was part of a collection that was on loan. The museum wanted to avoid the messy claims process, not to mention the bad press and the ire of the figure’s owner.
Winnie’s boss, Harriet, Director of the Collections Care department at the Smithsonian Archives, had persuaded her to take the trip to Brazil. Convince Silas Quinn to help find the stolen figurine. Winnie had been a little irritated at the sparkle in her friend’s eye as she’d made the request.
“Tell them to send someone else, Harri, I’ve had enough adventure over the past year to last a lifetime. Besides, why not send someone from Maryland?”
“He’ll listen to you. He likes you.” More of the sly smile that had made Winnie regret confiding in Harri when she’d returned from Dubai.
“Exactly why I am saying no. No. Double no.”
The older woman hadn’t relented, resorting to bribery. “You know that British textiles project that you wanted in on this summer? I’m not sure how much help we’ll really need with it…”
“You’re the devil. I want an open-ended expense account.”
“You won’t regret this. I’m sure it will be helpful. After all, you’ll be in Rio one night. What can one night matter?”
And so Winnie ended up in Brazil, tracking a man who copied history for a living. She stopped near a bright blue wooden door, the color a startling contrast to the grainy gray of the concrete building around it.
A horseshoe hung above the doorway, and, in Portuguese, the expression that marked the end of her journey. A beleza da criação—the beauty of creation. The short, smiling man who kept shop at the base of the favela had laughed and said these words when she’d asked after Silas.
Scrawling the map on the back of her hand with dark ink, finishing with one word up each of the backs of her fingers, he’d said in more fluid English than she’d expected, “Crazy American tells everyone he’s here to teach, but I know different. I expected someone to show up for him. I didn’t expect you.”
“Oh? Why?” Winnie had handed the man some money, tucked away the bottled water and dried fruit that he passed back.
“Pretty ones are never brave enough to come here. I can see why he’s pining away, though.”
Winnie knew that her answering snort was indelicate. “Silas isn’t the type to pine away. Thank you for the map.” Pulling the straps of her backpack tighter, she’d headed up the first staircase on her climb, discomfited by the signs of the approaching storm.
Now, she was here, at the blue door and the expression that Silas had painted in strong, blocky letters above the frame—and suddenly she was nervous. It was getting dark, and he might not be all that happy to see her. Who was to say that he wasn’t inside, in the middle of some shadowy black market deal?
As she reached a hand out to knock, Winnie wondered briefly if the man she was about to entreat for help and the figurine’s abductor might be one and the same.
*
Silas was not engaged in any shadowy black market deals when someone put their knuckles lightly to his front door. He was actually asleep, or near it, drowsy in the weight of the humid air. He heard the knock and sat straight up, instantly on alert, one hand sliding between the small metal-framed cot where he’d been lying and the bare concrete wall, fingers closing on the butt of the small handgun tucked there.
Silas wasn’t expecting anyone, but Carnival brought out not only partygoers, but also the less well-intentioned criminal element of the favela. He debated calling out, but waited. No second knock came. The door handle rattled and turned.
Damn it. He’d forgotten to lock it before he’d drifted off. He was up and off of the cot in a flash, melting into a shadowy corner of the two-room shack’s main space, putting his back to one of the heavy rough-hewn beams that supported the outer walls.
He was barefoot, so that was a disadvantage, but he had a full clip and the element of surprise. He flicked the safety off the gun as the door swung open, and raised the barrel to mid-torso, his elbow tucked close in to his side. He held his breath.
“Hello?”
The voice was one that he knew, but it was so out of place in this primitive context that it took him a moment to register it. Warm, slightly husky, it was a voice he’d heard moaning his name in varying volumes. It was a voice he’d heard berate him just as passionately. Winslow Caesar.
He turned the safety back on and tucked the gun into the waistband of his cargo pants at the small of his back. He paused. Half of him wanted to step into the room’s center and send her packing back to D.C., the other half selfishly ached for a few minutes to just look at her, without their usual contention to spoil the experience. What had it been, at least two months since he’d seen her?
Winnie looked tired, which was understandable, if she’d hoofed it up all the way up the morro on those stems. The beige safari shirt and olive drab skirt she wore were rumpled. But the shirt was tight in the right places, and the skirt hit just above the knee, sparking the memory of how perfectly the curve at the back of that exact spot fit into his palm when he hauled her leg around his waist. He felt a sharp stab of lust in the pit of his stomach.
There was another option of what to do with Winnie, now that she was closing his door behind her, cutting off the remaining outdoor light. The only illumination in the room came from the one small window over the sink, which let a hazy slice of waning sun in to spill across the floor. Silas had to catch his breath when Winnie walked over to the meager kitchenette in the far corner and, stepping into the beam, turned to survey the room.
He looked his fill. Same devastating curves, same beautiful oval face, same woman who had so scathingly insulted him even after they’d shared that incredible night. She was facing him, and he tensed when her eyes swept the deep darkness where he hid, relaxing only when she turned her back to examine the kitchenette. She slid open one of the few drawers beside the sink.
Silas slipped behind her, lifting a hand to let it hover over the messy knot of hair at the nape of her neck. Hair not meant to be put up, as far as he was concerned—a heavy, rich mass of burnished dark brown that he’d fantasized about so many times. He knew what it looked like down, spilling over his hands, clenched in his fingers. He was so close that he could see the little wispy tendrils that curled damply out from her temple. She didn’t even know that he was so dangerously near.
Winnie, Winnie, for someone so brilliant, you sure get yourself into some stupid situations. Silas was suddenly angry that the petite archivist would show up in a Brazilian slum alone, traipsing through the dark maze of hillside shacks without any sort of protection. Santa Marta was a far cry from the civilized order of Washington, D.C.
The anger spiked, made him swallow against an unfamiliar sense of panic, and then simmered to an uncomfortable heaviness in his chest. Why did he care if something happened to her? After their last interlude, at a Smithsonian charity auction where she’d excoriated him in front of her musty group of peers and then rejected him on a much more personal level, he shouldn’t give two shits if she got a little reality scared into her.
Sure, he’d been less than gentlemanly after their night in Dubai. He’d slipped out without saying goodbye, but Winnie had been an unplanned, if delicious, distraction from his work there. He’d had meetings to attend, deals to strike that the naïve little historian shouldn’t—couldn’t—be a part of.
“Mr. Quinn, I have no doubt that your interest in tonight’s gala lies only in the opportunity to catalog, and not to contribute,” she’d said.
Silas liked to think that his painstaking replicas of ancient artifacts were homage, and here was this scrap of a woman practically calling him a forger. The startling jewel blue of her formal gown had made her skin seem even paler
, had made those deeply amber eyes almost glow.
“Ah, Winslow, I believe I contributed generously to your cause last time we met.”
The innuendo hadn’t escaped anyone within earshot. The blush that had covered her high cheekbones was exceedingly attractive. Silas had regretted embarrassing her as she’d stalked off. But they were like two opposite poles on a magnet—even after their harsh encounter, they couldn’t keep apart.
He had found her alone at one of the exhibits, looking intent, an untouched glass of wine in her hand.
“Ms. Caesar, I never knew you were so interested in thirty-six views of Mount Fuji.” It had been intended as an olive branch.
“Do you want me to move aside so you can figure out which brush strokes they used?”
Ouch.
He had taken the wineglass from her hand and drained it. She had straightened his tie before using it to pull his mouth to hers. The kiss was a microcosm of aggressive sex, a power struggle. He’d been the one to break loose, to whisper an invitation back to his hotel room.
Her reply wasn’t what he expected.
“Fool me once, shame on you…” She was still breathtaking, even as she’d been denying him. Her refusal sent him away fuming, flinging the empty wineglass behind his shoulder to shatter musically on the museum’s polished floor. The image of her flushed face and décolletage stuck with him long after, spoils of a very petty war of words.
And here she was again.
Brazil was hot and steamy this time of year, and he’d bet that her skin would be damp if he slid his fingers under her collar. He’d bet that the soft curve where her neck met her shoulder would sting his lips with salt if he dipped his mouth to taste her there.
He lifted a hand, his lips parting to say her name. He didn’t get the chance. There was a swift flash of motion and then she was against his chest, his one good kitchen knife in her hand. In her hand and pressed against his throat.
All the air rushed out of him. Adrenaline surged. Silas reached up and wrenched the blade away, divesting her of it with neat motions as quick as her own attack. There was a brief moment when she didn’t recognize him, and those sultry dark eyes flew wide in panic. Silas relished the flash—it was a small consolation, even though what he wanted was to bend her over his knee and give her a good spanking for her foolishness.
Love Letters Volume 4: Travel to Temptation Page 8
