She put her palette and brushes down then stretched her neck and rotated her shoulders, as if working out the kinks. His hands itched to reach out and massage them for her, to ease the taut muscles and replace her tension with something else. He fisted his hands and pushed them into his trouser pockets.
“Have you looked for it?”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded vigorously. “Dad kept the bills of sale for everything that he bought or sold over the years, together with full descriptions of each item—it makes up quite a history when you go through them all. But even with copies of the identifying marks and old photos, I haven’t been able to find a trace of it. I even set up message boards on several art and antiquities sites asking for help, but no luck.” She laughed. “Oh, except in finding a new gardener!”
“Gardener?”
“Long story,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I was talking with him about the statue this morning. And you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, Ted thought you might be able to use your contacts to help me find the statue. I’d be willing to pay anything to get it back.”
Marcus let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Rule one in negotiations, Avery. Don’t ever admit what you’re prepared to pay.”
A sweet stain of color lit her cheeks and she rolled her eyes. “I know that, Marcus. I’m not likely to say that to a prospective seller.” All of a sudden her face grew serious. “But will you do it? Will you help me find my angel?”
It took all of about three seconds for Marcus to reach his decision. He wanted her to owe him. Big-time. If she felt she owed him, if she trusted him enough, she’d release her father’s art collection. Then he could buy back Lovely Woman. He could just imagine his grandfather’s face when he put it back on the empty hook on his living-room wall. Marcus’s own private acknowledgment and heartfelt thanks for all the old man had sacrificed for him. One way or another, he was prepared to do whatever it took for however long it took. And, given how attracted he was to Avery Cullen, he looked forward to spending that time with her.
“Of course I’ll help you,” he said, taking her hands in his. “It’s the least I can do.”
And as her eyes began to shimmer with joy and relief, he forced back the conscience that told him he was nothing more than a heartless, ruthless bastard.
“You will? Really? Oh, you have no idea how grateful I am,” she gushed, tears spilling from her lower lids and tracking down her cheeks.
He wiped the moisture away with the pad of his thumb, telling himself that the end, in this case, totally justified the means. She’d have her precious statue back, somehow. And his family would get back what was rightfully theirs.
Five
“When can you start?” Avery asked, her heart beating double-time in excitement. She hadn’t expected Marcus to agree so readily to her request.
He gave an easy laugh that made something twinge deep inside her. She loved the way his whole face lit up when he smiled, but when he laughed it sent something tingling all the way to her toes.
“How about now?”
“Seriously? You have the time?” Avery couldn’t believe her ears.
“Sure, although if your father initiated an investigation soon after he sold it and didn’t come up with anything, I don’t know whether I’ll be successful.”
“I know,” Avery answered, feeling the edge of her excitement dull a little. “But maybe you can turn up something new?”
Even she could hear the desperation in her voice.
“I’ll do what I can, Avery. Why don’t you come in and have some lunch before Mrs. Jackson skins us both, and then you can show me your father’s records on the angel.”
“I can show you straight to his study. He kept everything there, with duplicates at our L.A. home. I wonder—”
“Avery,” he said, interrupting her enthusiasm. “I promised Mrs. Jackson I’d make sure you had something to eat. She tells me you haven’t had anything all day.”
“I don’t need—” Her stomach chose to grumble loudly at that exact point, making her laugh. “Okay, maybe I do need to have some lunch.”
“You think?” he said with a quizzical look on his face that rapidly dissolved into another of those killer smiles. He offered her his arm. “Come on, then, before Mrs. Jackson takes a contract out on me for not looking after her chick.”
Avery laughed and slid her hand into the crook of his arm. It was nice to know someone outside of her employment cared enough to follow up on her, even if this particular someone had already openly stated his wish to change her mind about selling her father’s collection. After they’d eaten in the kitchen under the censorious gaze of the indubitable Mrs. Jackson, Avery showed Marcus into her father’s study.
Even though the room had been aired regularly, she liked to think it still held a hint of her father’s favorite cigars combined with the unmistakable whiff of the old papers and books that he’d accumulated over the years and added to the generations of papers already resident. She leaned across the desk and turned on the computer, before opening a file drawer and extracting a folder crammed with paper.
“Here, this is all I could find,” she said, passing it to Marcus and gesturing for him to sit behind the desk in her father’s antique swivel chair. Once the computer had booted up she opened the discussion forums she’d posted on during her search. “And here are the message boards.”
“You’ve been busy,” Marcus commented, flicking through the printed information she’d given him. “And you say you haven’t been able to make any headway?”
“Nothing,” she admitted. “It’s been really frustrating. For a while there I thought I’d tracked her to a private collector near Lake Como but while he had another piece by the same sculptor, he didn’t have my angel.”
“Do you have electronic versions of this information?” he asked, waving his hand over the folder.
“Most of it. Certainly of the markings and details of the sculpture.”
She leaned over him to reach for the computer mouse and as she did so her breast brushed against his arm. It was as if a shock wave shot through her. A shock wave that made her skin sensitive, her breasts feel swollen and heavy, her nipples tight and begging for…something, anything, him. She shifted slightly, breaking the contact but it did little to lessen the desire that had caught her in its grip. Her fingers trembled as she grabbed the mouse and flicked open the file that held the data she referred to. Once she had it open, she stepped aside, keeping a good twelve inches between them as she explained the various diagrams he had begun to scroll through.
Thankfully, her voice remained steady, but that was where her equilibrium began and ended. What on earth was it about him that made her so responsive to even the slightest touch? She wasn’t some shrinking virgin, although she lacked the experience of many of her peers. She’d been around attractive men before, but she’d never felt as out of control as she felt right now.
Marcus’s voice dragged her concentration back to their quest. “Do you mind if I transfer these files onto a flash drive so I can work through them back at the hotel? My laptop is linked to the Waverly’s server and I can probably better process some of the data that way and see if I can’t explore some of these dead-end trails a bit further.”
Avery chewed her lip thinking for a minute before giving in to her instincts. She may live to regret it, but the words spilled from her mouth before she could consider them a moment longer.
“Why don’t you bring your computer here? In fact, why don’t you let your hotel room go and just stay here? I mean, I don’t know how long you’re planning to stay in England but, seriously, I have more rooms than I can use and I’d welcome the company. You are helping me after all.”
He hesitated before answering, and Avery felt about as gauche as a schoolgirl meeting her crush face-to-
face for the first time. She’d been ridiculously overeager. After all, hadn’t she just been trying to avoid the guy for the past several months? Now she was inviting him to come and stay in her home?
“Sure,” he said, and her heart gave a crazy little skip in her chest at the simplicity of his answer.
“You will?”
He looked at her and she found herself captured by his stare. “Yeah,” he answered, smiling. “I will. I have appointments I’ll need to attend but I have some time off owed to me, as well. I don’t see why I can’t take it here. Let me clear it with the office but in the meantime, I can move my things here tomorrow morning if that suits you?”
If it suited her? She filled with a combination of delight and anxiety. Oh, it suited her all right. And if he could help her recover the angel statue, it would suit her a whole lot more.
* * *
Marcus checked out of his hotel after breakfast and tossed his suit carrier in the trunk of the Jag. He’d only expected to be in London a few days, but if he was going to stay here a little longer he’d probably need to add to his wardrobe. He was all clear to stay for a couple of weeks, though, on condition he did a very specific job for Ann Richardson, the CEO of Waverly’s. She’d been cagey about why she hadn’t asked anyone actually working in-house to do the research she’d requested, and she’d asked Marcus to forward his findings direct to her personal email.
With that charter in mind he knew this represented another opportunity to shine. Ann was the kind of boss who encouraged growth in her staff and rewarded it in kind. And he knew just the level of reward he wanted. It was his goal to be Waverly’s youngest partner and this opening, hopefully coupled with securing the Cullen Collection for representation, would see him realize his dream before his approaching twenty-eighth birthday.
Ann’s request had intrigued him on several levels but mostly because she wanted it done on the quiet—making the most of the fact that he wasn’t working from his New York office. Waverly’s rogue collector, Roark Black, had gone to Dubai to procure a collection that included treasures that would incite the avarice of even the most parsimonious sultan. One piece in particular, an ancient statue inlaid with pure gold, was expected to bring in upward of two hundred million dollars and it was this item that Ann had asked him to research further.
The publicity surrounding the auction was anticipated to be huge and Waverly’s reputation, not to mention Ann’s, was on the line. If the statue turned out to be stolen, as an unsubstantiated rumor currently circulating had suggested, the fallout would be irreparably damaging. It had also been suggested that perhaps Roark Black’s methods hadn’t been entirely aboveboard in securing the piece for auction, and, by association, Ann Richardson was being tarred with the same brush. While his track record on finding treasures was impeccable, and he’d personally authenticated the piece that was the jewel in the crown of the upcoming auction, Black himself had dropped off the radar and was unavailable for further comment. But Ann trusted the man, and that was enough for Marcus.
He smiled to himself as he negotiated the route toward Avery’s home in Kensington. It was a good thing research was one of his strong points because between the two statues, the Gold Heart and the angel, he had a whole lot of work ahead of him.
* * *
“Are you sure it’s okay that I help you with researching the Gold Heart statues?” Avery asked later that evening as they settled in her father’s study after dinner.
“I checked with Ann and explained the resources you have here in your library, and she okayed it,” Marcus said. He himself had been surprised that Ann had approved his request for an assistant and his suggestion that it be Avery Cullen had met with a moment’s silence before Ann had agreed on condition he could trust Avery implicitly to keep any information confidential. “Besides, who knows your father’s system better than you? Right? We’re lucky he has such an extensive collection of reference materials. We may as well make the most of the resources available to us.”
Avery nodded carefully but he could still see the faint lines of worry on her face. Could she sense his urgency, his relief that they could conduct this research without taking it into the public domain?
“It’s okay,” he reiterated, as much for himself as for her.
“But what if I’m useless at this?”
For all her money and poise she lacked even the most fundamental level of self-confidence. It was a combination that spoke to his basest male instincts and was intensely appealing.
“Seriously,” she insisted. “I do charity work and I dabble in painting. I’m no research assistant.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he answered firmly. “You are a great deal more than a dabbler and even I’ve heard about what you’ve achieved through your charity work. You’re exactly what I need.”
He let the double entendre hang on the air between them, noting the instant his words struck home in all their contexts.
“Well,” she said, drawing in a swift breath, “when you put it that way, how can I refuse?”
He settled into the chair behind the desk while Avery thoughtfully perused her father’s card catalog for anything on the Gold Heart statues. He’d been meticulous in his cross-referencing and before long she’d pulled a stack of books from the shelves and, curling up on the padded corner window seat, began to flick through them while Marcus scanned international internet sites for any recent articles. They worked in relative silence for nearly an hour before a soft sound from her dragged his attention from the computer screen.
“What is it?” he asked. “Did you find something?”
Avery shifted so she was sitting upright and paged through the book in her lap until she found the right spot. “Well, there’s an awful lot of data about the statues and what they look like, when they were created and all that. But did you know the legend attached to them?”
Marcus got up from his chair and sat next to her on the window seat. As he did so, her soft sweet fragrance wafted around him. Right now, as interested as he was in what she’d found out about the statues, all he wanted to do was bury his face in her hair and inhale the goodness of her.
“Tell me,” he said, forcing his hands to remain at his sides when his every instinct begged him to reach out and touch her. To trail his fingers through her silky white-blond hair. To taste her lips and see if they were as enticing as they’d been on Saturday night when their date had ended and he’d had to be content with a chaste kiss good-night.
“This book has the most information on the Gold Heart statues of Rayas. It says here that three statues were originally commissioned by the country’s ruler. They sound exquisite. Look, here’s a photo of one of them.”
She turned the book to face him, leaning in to him a little as she did so. It seemed only natural to put his nearest arm behind her. She fit just under his shoulder—perfectly so. Too perfectly. Marcus forced his concentration on the page before them. The photo, while in color, probably didn’t do the statue justice.
Standing on a plinth of inch-thick gold, and boasting a pure golden heart inlaid on its breast, the two-foot-high figure of a woman was breathtaking.
“Do you think it was modeled on a real woman?” Avery asked.
“She was very beautiful, if it was. Although probably a bit short for my tastes,” he teased.
Avery elbowed him in his side. “Oh, stop it, you’re being disrespectful. I thought you had to take this seriously.”
Even though she scolded him, he could see the reluctant smile pulling at her enticing lips. And she was right. All joking aside, this was very serious. Ann had been contacted by a sheikh from Rayas accusing her of selling stolen property—specifically, his stolen property. If the statue Roark Black had procured was stolen, it cast everyone associated with it in a very bad light. Loss of industry respect and clientele notwithstanding, the legal ramificati
ons were damning. Waverly’s would go down, and, as captain of the ship, Ann Richardson would be totally sunk with it.
“Okay, I apologize. Tell me more,” he coaxed.
“The statues were originally commissioned for the king’s three daughters to bring them luck in love for as long as the statues graced the palaces they lived in. According to the legend the daughters were lucky in love, as were several generations after them. It seems that a century ago, one of the statues went missing—some say it went down with the Titanic but I can’t find anything to substantiate that. Correspondingly, that particular branch of the family met with ill health and bad luck—in both love and money. They say there isn’t a surviving member of that branch of the family still living today. Isn’t that just so terribly sad?”
“Tough to think your life hangs on the balance of whether you have a statue,” Marcus said, suddenly struck by Avery’s deep-seated need to recover her angel statue.
Did she somehow think the carved block of marble was somehow linked to her own happiness and well-being? Surely not. But he knew exactly what it meant to lose a family heirloom, and how that loss remained a gaping hole in a family’s life afterward. Maybe the old legend extended beyond Rayas’s sandy borders.
Six
When Marcus woke early the next morning, it was still mostly dark outside although the hint of dawn could be seen streaking long apricot-tinged fingers through the clouds he spied through his open bedroom window. Getting to sleep last night had been near impossible—the difficulty born of dual frustrations. One, that Avery Cullen slept, alone, about three doors down the same corridor along which he’d been shown last night.
The other was that, despite him and Avery spending two more hours scouring for further information, all they’d found was one dead end after another.
A Silken Seduction Page 5
