by Katie Allen
“You’re going to be my constant accessory, then?” Despite the serious situation and the pain in her head, she couldn’t help but tease him. “The Chihuahua in my purse?”
His arm tightened around her as he pulled her closer into his side. “Exactly. Wherever you go, I go.”
Although she winced a little at the idea of never having another moment alone, she let it go for the time being. There were more urgent things to discuss than whether they were going to be constantly handcuffed to each other for the rest of their lives. Also, the thought of having Louis with her at all times—especially right now, when she was feeling scared and vulnerable and in pain—wasn’t the worst idea she’d ever considered.
“We’ll discuss that later.” She patted his leg. “Tell me what happened. I heard the police sirens right before I went into the back room. Did they catch whoever did this? And you never answered; did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine.” He flipped his free hand as if brushing off that information as unimportant.
Annabelle wanted to protest that his safety was one of the most critical things as far as she was concerned, but she kept her mouth shut, knowing that she’d never get to hear all the details if they kept taking conversational detours.
“I cut my run short when I realized I’d forgotten my phone. I didn’t want to be unreachable if you needed something.” His mouth drew down in a grimace. “The one time I leave my phone at home, and someone breaks in. If you hadn’t gotten the alert about the alarm, you wouldn’t have gone into the gallery and gotten hurt.”
She gave his leg another pat. “You can’t blame yourself. I was dumb by wandering in there, but I was pretty sure that it was just a false alarm, and I wasn’t thinking that clearly after being woken up at 3:00 a.m. Next time, I promise to at least bring a baseball bat or gun or something in there with me when I go chasing intruders.”
Although she was joking about the last part, he didn’t laugh. In fact, his expression grew even tighter with anger. “There will never be a next time, since I’m never going to be more than five feet away from you at all times, remember?”
Once again putting that topic to the side to discuss later, she made a noncommittal sound before pressing for more details. “So you came back from your short run and saw I wasn’t in bed anymore?”
“No.” He clenched and unclenched his jaw, making the muscles in his neck tense. “I got back to find a couple cops out front. They told me about the alarm being tripped, so I let them in. They told me to wait by the door while they searched the gallery. I was beginning to think that you’d slept through the whole thing when I heard one of the cops talking on his radio, saying they needed an ambulance. As soon as I heard that, I just knew it was for you, that you’d been hurt. I ran over and saw you lying there...” His voice grew tighter and hoarser until his words stopped altogether.
He gripped her shoulder so tightly it pinched, but she didn’t even care about the slight pain. In some strange way, it made her feel better, distracting her from the way her stomach clenched at the thought of how scared he must’ve been for her. She imagined finding Louis sprawled on the gallery floor, not knowing if he was alive or dead, and her chest immediately felt like a huge weight was pressing down on it.
“I’m sorry,” she said, knowing it wasn’t enough, that it wouldn’t erase that image he’d carry around with him or the memory of his dread and fear when he’d seen her unconscious body. “Did the cops find out who did it?”
“Not yet. They said they’d be by later to get your statement, too.” Looking grim, Louis rubbed his head with his free hand, mussing his hair into his usual bedhead style. “Looks like they entered and left through the back. Nothing seems to be stolen except for one of Velvet’s paintings. When you’re released and up for it, you can take a look around and see if I missed anything that was taken. You’re better at noticing things like that than I am.”
She huffed a dry laugh. “If the whole studio was sucked up by a UFO vacuum, you’d still be painting away, oblivious.”
“Would not.” The corner of his mouth tilted upward, and she inwardly congratulated herself on lightening his mood. “Probably. Depends on what I was working on at the time the studio got hoovered.”
Her laugh was louder that time, and it made pain thunder through her skull. “Ow.” She grabbed her head with both hands, as if holding it still would stop it from hurting. “I’m guessing I have a concussion?”
“Yeah, although no skull fracture, so that’s good.” Despite the words, he was scowling. “No more laughing until your head is better.”
Contrarily, she wanted to snicker at his serious order. “You’re the one who keeps making me laugh.”
“Sorry. I’ll stop being funny.” He sounded so contrite that she instantly melted, leaning against him and rubbing his thigh.
“Which painting was stolen?” she asked after they sat in silence for a few minutes. She hadn’t noticed anything missing when she’d walked through the gallery, but it had been dark and she’d been distracted by eerie shadows and, ultimately, getting knocked unconscious.
“Park Scene I.”
Frowning, Annabelle tried to remember where that specific painting had been located, but her mind was fuzzy. Closing her eyes, she attempted to picture where each piece had been placed for the show, but concentrating so hard was making her head hurt worse, so she just opened her eyes again and asked, “Where was that one displayed?”
“It wasn’t. That was the one that needed the canvas to be reattached to the stretcher bar, remember? It was on one of the tables in the back room.”
“That’s right.” She felt a surge of impatience for her spacy state. Normally she was the one who reminded Louis of details like that. “Of all the pieces in the gallery, why take the damaged painting?”
“I don’t know.” His grim look was back, making her stomach tighten with apprehension. He seemed to be more upset than a simple, mostly unsuccessful burglary in the gallery warranted. Sure, she’d been knocked out, but she was mostly unharmed, except for a hellish headache.
Turning her head, she gave him a steady, no-nonsense look, the one she hoped told him that she wasn’t going to back down until he’d spilled the whole story. “What else is there that you’re keeping to yourself?”
His mouth flattened in a grimace, but she kept her narrowed eyes on his until he huffed out an impatient breath. “Don’t you think it’s a pretty big coincidence that the only thing that was taken was the exact painting Max was shrieking about at the show yesterday?”
“Oh.” She blinked, absorbing that information. If her thoughts hadn’t been so foggy, she would’ve made the connection earlier. “Oh! That park scene! That’s right. I was so preoccupied with trying to get him to quiet down and then enjoying watching you toss him out on his butt that I didn’t even pay attention to which piece he was throwing a fit about.”
“I didn’t toss him out on his butt, really. I politely escorted him out of the gallery.”
She waved her hand, brushing off his correction. “Do you think Max was the one who broke in and stole the painting?” As much as she disliked Max, the idea of him burglarizing the gallery seemed so crazy and illogical. After all, he’d been Louis’s friend and was a good dad to Velvet; he’d just been a bit of a pretentious jerk to her. That didn’t make him criminal. “I can’t imagine him doing something like that. And why would he break in to get that painting back? It wasn’t even sold. All he’d have to do was ask Velvet for it if he wanted it so badly.”
“I don’t know why he’d do it. All I know is that he was demanding that specific painting, and then not even twelve hours later, that very painting is stolen. It’s fishy.”
“It is fishy.” Her head was pounding even more dramatically, so she closed her eyes and leaned her head against Louis’s chest. The heat radiating off him and the steady thump of his heart helped relax he
r, and the pain eased slightly. “But it’s also illogical to think that Max was the one who burglarized the gallery and knocked me over the head.”
She felt his chest expand as he took a breath, but before he could say anything else, a woman in scrubs walked into the room. Annabelle lifted her head off Louis’s chest and smiled at the woman, who was very tall and elegant, with cat eyes and impossibly high cheekbones and flawless dark brown skin. She looked like she was modeling those scrubs, which, as Annabelle knew from her college job at a nursing home, was not an easy thing to accomplish.
“Mr. Dumont,” she said in a scolding tone with that underlying indulgent tone that almost everyone used when attempting to reprimand Louis. Annabelle really couldn’t blame her. It was nearly impossible to be truly annoyed at him. “What are you doing on your wife’s bed?”
Annabelle flicked a sideways glance at Louis, not at all surprised that he’d prematurely “married” them again.
His face was a picture of innocence as he turned a charming smile toward the woman. “I’m just helping speed Annabelle’s recovery with some touch therapy, Dr. Carmen.”
“Touch therapy,” she repeated flatly, although she couldn’t hide her amusement. “Off the bed, Mr. Dumont, so I can examine my patient.”
Giving her shoulders a final squeeze, he lifted his prosthesis and rotated so he was sitting sideways. Dr. Carmen offered him a hand, but he waved it off politely and stood. He shifted out of the doctor’s way but didn’t go far, which Annabelle appreciated. After everything that had happened, especially with her muzzy thoughts and aching head, his presence was reassuring.
The doctor offered Annabelle a gentle smile. “You have your hands full with this one, don’t you?”
Her disobedient thoughts immediately flashed to the evening before, when she literally had her hands full of Louis, and she felt her cheeks heat as she snuck a glance at him. From the cheeky twitch of his mouth to his narrowed and smoldering eyes, she was pretty sure he knew exactly where her mind had gone.
Tearing her gaze away from his, she smiled back at Dr. Carmen. “Yeah. I really do.”
Chapter Fifteen
He was driving her crazy.
When she’d first gotten home from the hospital and Louis had rushed around, trying to anticipate her every possible need, she’d thought it was sweet. After three days of that, however, it was starting to get old. He was acting like a nurse who also happened to be a dictator, and his insistence that she stay in bed and not do anything was getting on her nerves. To make it worse, he refused to touch her except for grandma-like pecks on the forehead. Frustration and inactivity were not a good mix.
She woke up on Friday morning determined to stand up to him. If she had to lounge around doing nothing for one more day, she was going to scream. After showering, she dressed in office-appropriate slacks and a blouse, twisted her hair up into a severe bun, stiffened her spine, and sailed into the kitchen, ready for a fight.
Louis was at the stove, spatula in hand, monitoring a skillet holding what looked like French toast. He turned when she emerged from the bedroom, and his welcoming smile dropped as soon as his gaze ran over her professionally attired self.
“No.” His eyes narrowed, and she tried very hard not to think of how sexy he looked when he made his stern face.
Stay strong. “Yes. I’m working today.”
“No. Dr. Carmen said no concentrating for at least a week. There’s no way you can work without concentrating. Go back in there and put some pajamas on. It’s supposed to get colder today, so go with something flannel.”
Not only was he acting like a nurse/dictator, but he was fussing more than her mom had whenever Annabelle had been sick as a kid. “I’ll do something that doesn’t require concentrating. Has the gallery been cleaned since the police finished up with their crime-scene stuff?” She knew it hadn’t, since Louis had been hovering over her every second since she’d been bonked on the head. The sulky way he refused to answer, pushing that full bottom lip out just a hair in a way that made her want to bite it, confirmed that the gallery still needed a scrub-down. “Good. I’ll do that, then.”
“You can’t clean with a concussion!” By the agitated way he was waving the spatula around, she would’ve thought she’d suggested running a marathon instead.
“Dr. Carmen said that light exercise is okay.” She kept her voice even, reminding herself that his worry was sweet when she just wanted to growl at him that he wasn’t the boss of her. Besides, he technically was her boss, so that line wouldn’t work very well, anyway. “I’m just going to be vacuuming up fingerprint dust and scrubbing the bathroom. I won’t even work up a sweat.”
He studied her, and she could almost see the wheels in his head turning as he tried to figure out how to get her to go back to bed. “Fine. I’ll help clean. You will not be doing any heavy lifting or concentrating or aggressive wiping or anything that would cause additional head trauma, understand?”
Annabelle smiled at him as she settled onto one of the island stools. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but there’s no way I’m cleaning with you. You’re going to go for a nice, long run.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. You’d better check your French toast before it burns.”
He flipped it absently, still focused on scowling at her. “There’s no way in hell I’m leaving you in the gallery while I go for a run. It’s not happening.”
When she’d hatched her plan for the day, she hadn’t realized how closely it mirrored the burglary, with him out running while she’d been alone in the gallery getting knocked unconscious by a burglar. Even though it was daylight with clusters of tourists wandering past the place, it wasn’t fair to expect him to take such a giant step, not when he was still in nurse/dictator/mom mode.
“How about this. You paint, I’ll clean the gallery, and then we’ll go to the gym. You’ll get to run while I do a nice sedate walk on the treadmill next to yours.”
He muttered under his breath, poking angrily at the French toast even though it’d never done anything to deserve such rough treatment, but he finally nodded. “I get to check on you as much as I want to, though.”
“You can just holler, and I’ll answer.” She grinned at him, the thought of having a productive day out of bed making her positively giddy. “We’ll leave the door between the studio and gallery open.”
“Fine.” Although he still sounded grumbly as he arranged the French toast on two plates, his expression looked lighter than it had when she’d first appeared dressed for work.
“What’d Velvet say about her painting being stolen?” she asked as she accepted one of the plates. “Thank you. This looks great.”
He even placed a bowl of sliced strawberries on the island between them, as well as syrup and a shaker filled with powdered sugar. Deciding to enjoy the good parts of recovering from a concussion, she put both strawberries and syrup on her French toast. She felt positively decadent until she noticed that Louis had both toppings, plus powdered sugar on top. She was a little surprised he didn’t pull out the whipped cream and add a dollop of that, too.
“You’re welcome, and she was excited.”
“Excited?” Annabelle paused with her fork halfway to her mouth. “Why is she excited about her painting being stolen?”
He grinned at her, apparently fully recovered from his growly mood earlier. “She feels like she’s in the big time now that art thieves are targeting her paintings. She said it made her feel like Picasso.”
With a short laugh, Annabelle shoved a bite of French toast into her mouth and chewed a bit more aggressively than necessary. Since she was the one with the sore head and Louis was in nurse/dictator/mom mode, she wasn’t as excited about the whole ordeal. “Did she have any idea who might have done it? Any fans who showed signs of potential criminal behavior?”
“Nope. I st
ill think that Yuri did it.”
“He did not.” Over the past few days since the burglary, they’d been tossing around possible theories and trying to figure out who the culprit was, but Yuri, another local gallery owner, was one of Louis’s more far-fetched guesses. “He’s a sweet guy.”
“He’s shifty. I’ve never trusted him.”
If her eyes rolled any harder, she’d be able to see her brain. “You liked him until he accidentally insulted one of your paintings.”
Narrowing his eyes, he jabbed his empty fork in the air as if emphasizing his point. “There was nothing accidental about it. He asked if it was part of the student exhibition we were having. He’s always resented me, and this was his way of getting back at me.”
Rather than arguing for the fiftieth time, she changed the subject. “Is Velvet upset about Max being banned?”
Louis groaned. “Yeah. I got an earful about that, although she understands why I did it. She’s just sick of him bugging her to come get the painting he wants to buy, especially since she’s still sick. Bonn’s kid must’ve been carrying some mutant superbug.”
Confused, she asked, “The painting he wants? I thought that Max wanted the park scene. Wasn’t that the one that was stolen?”
“Apparently not.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Max had a meltdown and ended up getting kicked out of the gallery because of a painting he didn’t even want?”
“Yep.” Louis smirked, looking devilishly amused. “And now the painting he does want—the second park scene—is hanging in the gallery, just out of his reach. All he can do is press his nose to the glass and stare longingly at it. He can’t even send someone else in to buy it, since we’ve been closed since the burglary.”
