She rewrapped the masks and stuck them back in her bag. “If you can stop with the sarcasm for five minutes, you might also cook up some way that you, Luke, and DiBartolo can all be in the same place when the kiln hits the critical point—the fire-tested, changed-for-all-time whatever. Luke almost broke free once, but he was within three feet of the asshole at the time, so he might need to be in visual range.” She slung the bag on her shoulder. “After spending ten minutes with your boyfriend, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was able to incinerate DiBartolo with his glare alone.”
She marched across the room, but before she left, she shook her hair and—it was weird—got lighter. While Peg had made the trip across the floor, Marguerite unlocked the door.
And that is how you do it. Stefan should have taken notes, because if he was going to spend the day lying to everybody he knew, he needed all the pointers he could get.
“Mr. D, what have I told you about your heart rate? It’s racing like a motorboat again today.” Rudy placed his hand on his chest, his skin contrasting nicely with his Sponge Bob scrubs. “Pitter-pat, pitter-pat. What’s upset you?”
Oh, nothing. Just that tonight I might lose my last chance to escape this prison.
“If Ms. A weren’t run to a frazzle downstairs with this show, I’d bring her up this minute to see if she can settle you down.”
Luke shook his head, patting his chest in what he hoped was an I’ll-be-good gesture. The last thing he needed was a visit by the potter from Hell. Especially if she took it into her head to check inside the armoire and discovered that a couple of critical items were MIA.
“That’s the ticket. Maybe a little chamomile tea? Some nice soothing music? We could—”
“Hey, Rudy.”
Luke’s heart bumped into his ribs at the sound of Stefan’s voice. He tried to hold it together, though.
Rudy planted his fists on his hips. “Steffie, my dearie darling love, you are not supposed to be in here. Mr. D is already a mite fussed today and if you make it worse—”
“Check out Signor DiBartolo, Rudy.” Stefan eased into the room, and Luke did his best to look like a guy welcoming a friend, not jonesing for a last touch from his lover. “That reaction happened one time. Don’t you think we might have misinterpreted it?”
Rudy glanced down at him. Calm. Calm. I am a feather on the water. Like hell. But he must have satisfied Rudy. “Okay. For a minute. But don’t let Ms. A know I bent the rules a little bit.”
“I wanted to talk to you both, actually.”
“Mm-hmm?” Rudy continued with his routine check of Luke’s vitals. Calm, damn it.
“You know how important the show tonight is, to Antoinette, to me, to the gallery.”
Rudy twinkled—absolutely twinkled—at Stefan. “You may have mentioned it once or twice.”
“I think it would mean the world to Antoinette if Signor DiBartolo could be there.”
Rudy’s twinkle disappeared into a frown. “You know I’m devoted to you, Steffie, but do me a solid and allow me to know my own job, ’kay? He’s not strong enough for an extended EVA.”
“It doesn’t have to be extended. But Signor DiBartolo was instrumental in planning the show. A lot of the high-powered people who’ve RSVP-ed are from his connections. Don’t you think he deserves to see the . . . uh . . . fruits of his efforts?”
God, Stefan, pouring it on a little thick, aren’t you? Luke was surprised Stefan didn’t flutter his eyelashes.
“Weeelll . . .”
“Surely a short jaunt in that cushy wheelchair—that you almost never use—can’t hurt. If he starts having a bad time, you can always bring him back up here.” Stefan stepped closer, and as tall as he was, Rudy still dwarfed him. “Why don’t you ask him? I mean, how often does he get a choice in his own care?”
Rudy blinked, obviously struck by Stefan’s wheedling. “You have a point.”
“Come on, Rudy.” Stefan gave him a playful tap on his massive biceps. “Let the guy have some fun.”
Rudy turned to Luke. “How about it, Mr. D? Think you’d be up for a little partying tonight?”
Luke nodded, trying his best to smile.
“All righty, then. If Mr. D wants a field trip, a field trip he will have. I’ll bring him down at about nine thirty, after things have settled down a bit.”
“No!” Stefan cleared his throat. “If you wait that long, he’ll miss the presentations and the silent auction. Make it eight.”
“Are you sure?”
Stefan smiled hugely. Seriously, Stefan? Everybody on the planet can tell you’re up to something with that shit-eating grin. “Allow me to know my own job. ’Kay?”
Rudy clearly bought it though and giggled, an incongruous sound emerging from that towering body. “Touché, Steffie. Touché. Eight o’clock it is.”
“You’re invited too, of course. We can trade off shepherding Signor DiBartolo around.”
Rudy turned to Luke with an expression of exaggerated surprise. “Did you hear that, Mr. D? We both get to party! Let’s get you all spiffy for your grand entrance, shall we? Get ready to spend some quality time in Rudy’s Spa and Salon.”
From the doorway, Stefan shot Luke a thumbs-up, and Luke could have sworn he heard I love you as plain as day.
So he nodded. Me too.
Stefan’s eyes widened, and he took a half step forward, mouth opening as if to say something. But then he clamped his lips together and stared at Luke with fierce intensity.
I’ll see you tonight.
As Stefan disappeared down the hall, Luke realized that thought had not been his own.
When Stefan left his studio that evening, dressed in as formal an outfit as he possessed—gray slacks and a blue shirt Luke had given him that he’d said matched Stefan’s eyes—he was certain his act would fool precisely no one. His smile was forced, his movements as jerky as a marionette with tangled strings. With every step down the stairs, he prayed that Rudy hadn’t changed his mind, that his impromptu mask sabotage would succeed, and that Luke would be able to bear up and stay downstairs long enough for the damage to occur.
And that our solution will actually work. That too.
He’d nearly panicked this afternoon—or rather his panic had escalated, since he hadn’t been truly calm since he’d had that freaking doomseer presentiment the day Luke had been attacked. When he’d realized that Antoinette had fired the kiln, though, and that the critical point would hit in the middle of the reception? Yikes. Thank God Rudy had accepted the show as an excuse to bring Luke downstairs.
It still lacked a few minutes to the official opening at eight, but a few people were already wandering around, the wine in their hands a sign that the caterers were on deck. Katrina, at the door greeting guests, waved to Stefan with a grin as he hit the floor. She didn’t look at him strangely, nor did any of the early arrivals, so maybe he was managing his everything-is-normal disguise better than he thought.
He peered through the archway into the second room but didn’t see Antoinette or DiBartolo anywhere.
“Excuse me, are you the artist?” A silver-haired woman in a teal pantsuit smiled up at him. “Stefan Cobbe, am I right?” When he nodded, she held out her hand. “Natalie Alexander. I’m on the board of the Winterborne Gallery in Miami. I’d very much like to discuss doing an exhibit of your work there later this summer.”
“That’s . . . extremely flattering, Ms. Alexander.” He forced himself to focus on her. After all, that’s what this show was supposed to be about—making connections, getting his life back on track, establishing his independence. Why did that seem so trivial now? “What did you have in mind?”
Evidently, Ms. Alexander was in no hurry—she’d finished her first glass of sparkling wine and accepted a second from a passing caterer before she finally pressed a business card in Stefan’s hand and wandered off.
The crowd had quadrupled since he’d gotten sidetracked, and although the AC was cranked up to the arctic setting to offset the additional bodies, pe
rspiration trickled down his temple. That might not have anything to do with the temperature.
He snagged a napkin off the hors d’oeuvres table, and as he was blotting his forehead and upper lip, he spotted Antoinette standing in the doorway to her office, eyes wide and mouth agape.
Three guesses what she’s looking at, and the first two don’t count.
He crumpled the napkin, tossing it into a trash can as he hurried to her side. “Antoinette—”
“Has Rudy run mad?” She pointed a shaking finger to where Rudy was wheeling Luke around the edge of the gallery while Luke peered up at the exhibits.
At the moment, they were parked in front of Stefan’s series of nudes. Luke turned his head, and although it was difficult to read the half-immobile face, he definitely winked at Stefan.
Stefan couldn’t suppress a chuckle, and Antoinette glared up at him. “You find this amusing?”
“Well, apparently he does. He seems like he’s having fun for a change.”
“Fun? To see what he cannot do? Cannot have? What if the strain brings on another stroke?” Spots of color flew on otherwise pale cheeks, like poorly applied rouge.
“Granted I’m not a doctor, but he spends all day staring at the walls. I’d think a different view, a little variety, would be beneficial rather than harmful.”
“That is not the—”
“Hellooo,” Rudy caroled, pushing Luke over to them. Rudy must travel prepared to party—he’d traded his SpongeBob scrubs for narrow black trousers, a silk shirt in a tiny black check and a skinny red tie. “Look who’s here and drooling over Steffie’s pictures of naked men, the naughty boy.” He grinned at them, teeth dazzling in his dark face.
Antoinette grabbed his arm. “He is not strong enough for this. You must take him back at once. At once!”
“Aw, now, Ms. A, have a heart. This was Mr. D’s choice. And as Steffie pointed out, we spend way too much time making decisions for him, so he was due. Besides . . .” He fluttered his eyelashes. “We haven’t even gotten to my pictures yet, which I know will be the hit of the show. Nobody else in the world has my ass.”
Luke raised a finger and pointed at Stefan. “Me?” Stefan laughed. “I don’t think so. Rudy’s butt is a work of art.” He squeezed Luke’s shoulder.
Beside him, Antoinette sucked in a breath.
Ah shit. So much for the element of surprise. Stefan looked down at her as her stricken gaze flicked from Luke to him and back again.
“You know?” she said in a broken whisper.
Rudy didn’t seem to have noticed anything odd—yet—so Stefan took her elbow. “Could you excuse us for a minute, Rudy, Signor DiBartolo?” He nodded in the direction of Antoinette’s mask exhibit, where Peg, in full Marguerite regalia, was talking animatedly with a rather glassy-eyed businessman. “That’s my client, Marguerite Windflower. Why not go introduce yourself? You’ll get a kick out of her.”
“Only if she tells me where she got that skirt, Steffie. It’s divine.” Rudy spun the wheelchair smartly and headed toward Peg, chattering brightly to Luke all the way.
“Come on.” Stefan towed the unresisting Antoinette toward the office, dodging patrons as if he was the star of a Fast and Furious movie. “We need to talk.”
He closed the door behind them and flicked the lock as she sank into the wingback chair in the corner, eggshell pale against the crimson damask. Everything about her drooped—her shoulders, her salon-styled hair, the fragile skin around her eyes.
“How did you manage it? Years of kidnapping, of murder.” Stefan’s tone was implacable, and she winced, half raising a hand as if to deny it, but Stefan didn’t relent. “Yes, murder. How, Antoinette?”
She shrugged, listing to one side. “There are places in the world even now, places where few questions are asked if one more desperate person disappears. Our last—” She closed her eyes for a moment as if she wanted to hide the ugliness of her actions from herself. “The last time was in Italy, before we came to America. I told Jacques that America would be different, that the times are different now, but he wouldn’t listen.” She opened her eyes, but stared down at her fingers, laced together tightly in her lap. “He never listens.”
“What was his name? The man whose body you stole. The man whose body is sitting out there in a wheelchair with my boyfriend inside him?”
She flinched. “I don’t know.” Her whisper cracked like broken pottery. “I never asked.”
“You killed him, and you didn’t bother to learn his name? Christ, Antoinette. What kind of a monster are you?”
She raised her chin, meeting Stefan’s gaze with a show of defiance. “I’m the kind of monster that he made, as if I were the clay in his hands, to be shaped to his will.”
“Easy to say you were only following orders. He wasn’t the only one who benefitted. You got to recycle yourself into a new body too. How many times?”
“I’ve lost count.” She sighed, leaning her head against the chair wing. “The first time, I was dying. The exposure to the materials— It had affected my lungs. When he suggested that I make my own soul-anchor, that I should jump too, I was grateful. Flattered.” She smiled wanly. “How could I not be? He wanted me with him. And I, like so many stupid women before and since, loved him enough to turn a blind eye to his faults. The rebirth—”
“You’re not being reborn,” Stefan snapped. “You’re hijacking someone’s life, a life they deserve to live on their own, to give yourself new youth, new experiences, new—”
“New death. Every time, a new death. When we move on, when we hop to a new soul, our old body doesn’t let go easily. It wants to fight, to hold on to life. And in that fight, that struggle, there is a . . . what do you call it? . . . a rush. For Jacques, despite the pain, it is intoxicating. He revels in it.”
“And you?”
“I want to surrender. Every time, I want it to be the last, for me to be the one who loses the battle.”
“But you never do. You let him keep using you.”
“Perhaps, but it makes no difference, don’t you see?” She leaned forward, gripping the chair arms with fingers like claws. “Our time together goes back to days when an aristocrat like Jacques could order a peasant like me to lie down in a rutted road, so his carriage would have a smoother ride. We meant nothing.”
“Oh, you mean something now all right.” Stefan pushed away from the door and paced in front of the cluttered desk. “You’re the only reason this whole nightmare works, and he fucking knows it.”
“Of course he knows it. I am the potter, not him. But if he chose, he could find another to work the Sicilian clay—”
“No. He couldn’t. And the clay doesn’t always matter any more than the form it takes. You’re the magic, Antoinette. Your will. Your intent. Your focus. He couldn’t have claimed his first victim—his own son, for God’s sake—with anyone but you.”
She paled further. “Non. It was only chance that Niccolo chose me from the workshop. He could have picked any of the other girls—”
“Whoever he was, knew what he was doing, and probably gave DiBartolo the inside scoop too. All those people, those nameless victims, did you stop to think about the loved ones they left behind?”
“You don’t understand. Those people, the first ones, their lives were scarcely called living. They had health, but nothing else. They would have died before long anyway, in poverty or disease. We did them a favor.”
“Do you hear yourself? You’re not doing Luke a favor. You’re not doing me a favor. I don’t know how I could have been mistaken in you. I thought—” To Stefan’s horror, his voice broke. He cleared his throat. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are. I only intended to . . . to borrow a body for a short time. At first . . .” Her gaze flickered to his face and then down again. “I thought to use you, because you offered to help.”
Stefan sucked in a breath. “You’d have done that?”
“Forgive me, but because we are friends, I convinced m
yself that you would understand. But then I could not, and Monsieur Morganstern was there, as if in answer to my prayers. And I hoped it would teach him perhaps to cherish you a bit more—”
“He cherishes me just fine,” Stefan said through clenched teeth.
“But you fight.”
“We fight because we’re both stubborn SOBs, but we’re equals. Neither one of us has to bow down to the other. All relationships require work, but the alternative . . .” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “You’re asking me to spend the rest of my life without him. How can that be good? What lies do you have to tell yourself to justify that?”
“I’m sorry. Stefan, I’m so sorry. I told Jacques to make another choice, but he will not.”
He had to clench his fists to keep from shaking her, to get her to think. “You can try to lay it on the whole aristo-peasant dynamic, but when it comes down to it, this is all on you.” He jabbed his finger at her face. “You started it and you keep it going. Don’t you think it’s time to stop it?” She shook her head, bunching her skirt in her fists. Had he gotten through to her at all? “Christ. Regardless of who they are or what their status is or how much money they have or don’t have, people matter, Antoinette, all of them. Their lives matter. If you won’t stop killing them, the least you could do is remember their fucking names.”
He pivoted and stalked away from her.
“Marie,” she whispered, as he opened the door. “Her name was Marie.”
God, the gallery was packed, and Luke hadn’t seen crowds from this low an angle since his first days after the accident. Even then, he’d had control of his wheelchair. Now, he was at Rudy’s mercy, and although Really Big Nurse was as careful as possible in this crush of bodies, Luke had to keep himself from clenching his eyes shut, anticipating an incipient crash.
Between that edge of alarm and the jacket and tie Rudy had manhandled him into, Luke was sweating bullets. It didn’t help that he’d lost sight of Stefan after he’d blown their cover to Antoinette.
“You doin’ all right there, Mr. D?” Rudy leaned down, thankfully fanning Luke’s face with a gallery brochure. “Not too much for you, is it? Because all you have to do is say the word, and I’ll whisk you back upstairs.”
Tested in Fire Page 15
