by Nora Roberts
“It’s just a few blocks that way. It’s not late. You can see the work space, relax in it. I’m not going to hit on you.”
“Now my evening’s ruined. Sarcasm,” she said quickly when she saw the change in his eyes. “Julie’s going to hound me until I agree to let you at least do some sketches, and once I do, you’ll see you’re wrong about the whole thing.”
“Come see the space. You like seeing new spaces, and it should help adjust your really crappy attitude.”
“That’s so sweet. But I do like seeing new spaces, and it’s not very late. And since I know you’re not interested in hitting on me, I’m safe so why not?”
He turned at the corner, toward his building, away from hers. “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested in hitting on you. I said I wouldn’t. How’d you meet the cheating bastard? The one you shared with Julie.”
She was still working on not not interested. “It sounds inappropriately sexy when you say it that way. We shared a cab, in a rainstorm. It was romantic, just one of those New York things. He wasn’t wearing a ring, and definitely indicated he wasn’t married or involved. I ended up having a drink with him, then we went out to dinner a few days later, then, then, then. What could’ve been a really horrible thing turned around and gave me my best friend, so the bastard was good for something.”
She turned topics on a dime—a particular skill. “When did you know you had talent?”
“Don’t like talking about yourself, do you?”
“There’s not that much to talk about, and other people are more interesting. Did you do fabulous and insightful finger paintings in kindergarten which your mother has framed?”
“My mother’s not that sentimental. My father’s second wife framed a pencil sketch I did of her dog when I was about thirteen. Nice dog. It’s this place.”
He walked up to a three-story building, old brick, big windows. One of the old warehouses, she thought, converted to lofts. She loved spaces like this.
“I bet you have the third floor, for the light.”
“Yeah, I’ve got the third floor.” He unlocked the big steel door, stepped in, dealt with the alarm code while she walked in behind him.
Dazzled, she turned a circle. She’d expected some small common space, one of the old freight elevators, maybe, walls and doors of first-level apartments.
Instead she walked through a huge open space made fluid with arches of old brick. Wide-plank floors, scarred but gleaming, spread over a living area, rich colors against neutral walls, jewel-toned chairs arranged for conversation, the charm of a double-sided fireplace built into the leg of an arch.
The ceiling soared, opening the space for the second floor and its sleek rails and turned pickets of copper gone to verdigris.
“This is amazing.” Since he didn’t stop her, she wandered, studying the long stretch of kitchen, all black-and-white tiles, polished concrete counters and a dining area with a generously sized black table, a half dozen high-backed chairs.
The neutral walls throughout served as the backdrop for art. Paintings, sketches, charcoals, watercolors. A collection, she thought, any gallery would swoon for.
“This is yours. All yours.”
She stepped into another area, a sort of den/library/sitting room with its own little fireplace. A cozier spot, she decided, despite the open floor plan.
“It’s all yours,” she repeated. “It’s big enough for a family of ten, easy.”
“Sometimes I am.”
“You— Oh.” She laughed, shook her head. “I guess that’s true. Your spreadsheet family visits a lot.”
“Now and then, off and on.”
“And you kept the old elevator.” She walked over to the wide, grated lift.
“It comes in handy. But we can use the stairs if you’d rather.”
“I’d rather because then I get to be nosy about the second floor. It’s a wonderful use of space—color, texture, everything.” Because she was serious about the nosy, she walked to the angled stairs with their old copper rail. “I spend time in some spaces, and wonder what people were thinking. Why they put this here instead of there, or why they took out that wall—or didn’t take it out. Not here. Anytime you need a house-sitter, you’ve got my number.”
“Yeah, I think I’ve got it.”
She glanced up at him, a quick, easy smile. “You’ve got my phone number, the rest could still surprise you. How many bedrooms?”
“Four on this level.”
“Four, on this level. How rich are you—and that’s not because I plan to marry you for your money. It’s the nosy again.”
“Now you’ve ruined my night.”
She laughed again, started toward what looked like a pretty guest room with an open canopy bed, and more compelling, a large painting of a field of sunflowers simply saturated with color.
Then she stopped, eyebrows drawn together. “Wait,” she said, and followed her nose.
She walked quickly, heading away from the stairs, stopping again at what she assumed was the master bedroom with its big iron bed of steel gray and rumpled navy duvet.
“I wasn’t thinking company when I—”
“No.” She held up a hand, walked straight into the room. “Boudoir.”
“Guys don’t have boudoirs, Lila-Lou. They have bedrooms.”
“No, no, the perfume. Julie’s perfume. Don’t you smell it?”
It took him a minute, and made her realize his senses had been caught up in her scent—something fresh and flirty. But he caught it, the deeper, more sensual tones lingering in the air.
“Now I do.”
“This is crazy, God, it’s crazy, but you were right.” Heart thumping, she gripped his arm. “You were right about the break-in at Julie’s, because whoever broke in there, they’ve been here. Maybe they still are.”
“Stay right here,” he ordered, but she not only tightened her grip, she grabbed his arm with both hands.
“Absolutely not, because the big brave man who says to stay right here is the one who gets cut to ribbons by the crazy slasher who’s hiding in the closet.”
He went straight to the closet with her still latched on, flung it open. “No crazy slasher.”
“Not in this closet. I bet there are twenty closets in this place.”
Rather than argue, he took her with him as he systematically searched the second floor.
“We should have a weapon.”
“My AK-47’s in for repair. There’s no one up here, and no one on the first floor, since you went pretty much everywhere down there. Plus the scent’s strongest in my bedroom.”
“Wouldn’t that mean she was in there last? Or longest? She, because I can’t see a killer-slash-burglar-slash-potential slasher who wears stolen Boudoir perfume being a man.”
“Maybe. I need to check my studio. Look, lock yourself in the bathroom if you’re worried.”
“I will not lock myself in the bathroom. Did you read The Shining?”
“For Christ’s sake.” Resigned, he went back to the stairs, started up with her gripping his belt.
Ordinarily, the big, cluttered and colorful work space would have fascinated her. Now she looked for movement, braced for attack. But she saw only tables, easels, canvases, jars, bottles, rags, tarps. One wall held a massive corkboard crowded with photographs, sketches, the odd scribbled note.
She smelled paint, what she thought was turpentine, chalk.
“A lot of scents here,” she commented. “I don’t know if I’d find the perfume through it.”
She looked up to the big dome of the skylight, over to a cobbled-together sitting area with a long leather couch, a couple of tables, a lamp, a chest.
She relaxed enough to let go of his belt, stepped away enough to get a better sense of the room.
He’d stacked canvases against the walls, dozens of them. She wanted to ask him what inspired him to paint them, then stack them up that way. What he did with them all, if anything. But it didn’t seem like the right time for
questions.
Then she saw the mermaid.
“Oh God, she’s beautiful. And terrifying. Terrifying in the way real beauty can be. She won’t save them, will she? She’s no Ariel looking for love, wishing for legs. The sea’s the only lover she needs or wants. She’ll watch them drown. If one makes it to her rock, it might be worse for him than drowning. And still the last thing he’ll see is beauty.”
She wanted to touch that sinuous, iridescent tail, had to put her hand behind her back to stop herself.
“What do you call it?”
“She Waits.”
“It’s perfect. Just perfect. Who’ll buy this, I wonder? And will they see what you painted, or just see the beautiful mermaid on the rocks over a stormy sea?”
“It depends on what they want to see.”
“Then they’re not really looking. And that distracted me. No one’s here anymore. She came, she’s gone.” Lila turned back to see Ash watching her. “We should call the police.”
“And tell them what, exactly? That we smelled perfume, which will have faded before they get here anyway? Nothing’s out of place, not that I can tell.”
“She took things from Julie’s. She probably took something. Just little things. Souvenirs, the prizes in the box, however she thinks of it. But that’s not as important, is it?”
“No. She wasn’t looking for you here, but she was looking for something. What did Oliver have that she wants? She wouldn’t have found it here.”
“Which means she’ll keep looking. I’m not the one who needs to be careful, Ash. You are.”
Seven
Maybe she had a point, but he still walked her back to the apartment, went through the apartment room by room before he left her alone.
Then he walked home half hoping someone would try something. He was in the mood to give a hell of a something back—even if it was a woman, as Julie claimed, wearing designer shoes and sporting an ankle tat.
Whoever had killed his brother—or had, at least, been an accessory to the murders—had come into his home, past his pretty damn good security, walked through it much, he imagined, as Lila had.
Free, clear.
And didn’t that mean someone was watching him? Didn’t the woman have to know her way was free and clear? And more, hadn’t she known to get out again? She’d been there literally minutes before he’d come in with Lila. The perfume would have faded, wouldn’t it, with a little more time?
The tally to date? Two murders, two break-ins, and certainly some sort of surveillance.
What the hell had Oliver gotten himself into?
Not gambling this time, not drugs. Neither fit. What once-in-a-lifetime deal, what big score had Oliver wrangled?
Whatever it was, it had died with him. This woman, whoever she worked with or for, could watch him all she wanted, could search all she wanted. She’d find nothing because he had nothing.
Nothing but a dead brother, a grieving family and a world of guilt and fury.
He let himself back into his loft. He’d change the security code—whatever good that would do. And he supposed he’d have the company come back in, beef it up.
But for now, he should spend some time trying to figure out if his unwelcome visitor had taken any souvenirs.
He stood a moment, dragged both hands through his hair. A big space, he thought. He liked having a big space, plenty of room to spread out, to designate purposes. And to accommodate various members of his family.
Now he had to go through it, knowing someone had slipped through the locks.
It took him more than an hour to come up with a short, strange list of missing items.
The bath salts his mother particularly liked, the earrings his sister (half sister, mother’s second marriage) left behind when she and their mother had stayed for a night a few weeks earlier, the little stained-glass sun catcher his sister (stepsister, father’s fourth marriage) made for him one Christmas, and a pair of hammered silver cuff links, still in their little blue box from Tiffany.
She hadn’t bothered with the cash, which he imagined she found in his desk drawer. Just a few hundred, but why wouldn’t she take cash? Bath salts, but not cash.
Too impersonal? he considered. Not as appealing?
Who the fuck knew?
Restless, unsettled, he went up to his studio. He couldn’t work on the mermaid—his mood was all wrong—but he studied it, thinking how Lila had expressed his thoughts, his feelings about the painting almost exactly. He hadn’t expected she’d see what he did, much less understand it.
He hadn’t expected to be fascinated by her. A woman with gypsy eyes who pulled out a hefty multi-tool like another might a tube of lipstick—and who used it just as casually. One who shared his own vision of an unfinished painting and offered comfort to a stranger.
A woman who wrote about teenage werewolves and had no place of her own—by choice.
Maybe she was right, maybe he didn’t quite have her number.
But he would, once he painted her.
Thinking of that, of her, he set up another easel and began to prep a canvas.
Lila stood outside Ash’s loft, studying it in the bright light of day. It looked ordinary, she thought. Just an old brick building a few steps above street level. Anyone passing it might think, as she had, that it held maybe a half dozen apartments.
Nice ones, you might think, snapped up by young professionals after the downtown flavor.
In reality, it was nothing of the kind. In reality, he’d created a home that reflected exactly who and what he was. An artist, a family man. One who combined those two parts, and could create the room to seamlessly accommodate both exactly as he wished.
That, to her mind, took a clear eye and considerable self-awareness. Ashton Archer, she thought, knew exactly who he was and what he wanted.
And for reasons that made no sense whatsoever, he wanted to paint her.
She walked up, pressed the buzzer.
He was probably home. Didn’t he have to work? She should be working, but she just couldn’t focus. Now she was very likely interrupting his work, and really, she could’ve just sent him a text to—
“What?”
She literally jumped at the terse syllable—a very clear accusation—snapping through the speaker.
“Sorry. It’s Lila. I just wanted to—”
“I’m in the studio.”
“Oh, well, I—”
Something buzzed, something clicked. Carefully, she tried the tongue knob on the big door. When it opened, she assumed it equaled invitation.
Carefully she stepped in, closed the door behind her. Something clicked again, definitely. She started toward the stairs, turned and walked to the big grate of the elevator.
Who wouldn’t want to ride in it? she asked herself. Stepping in, she dragged the gate closed, then punched three, and grinned as it groaned and creaked its way up.
She could see him through the grating when the elevator clunked to a stop. At an easel, sketching on a canvas.
No, not a canvas, she saw as she muscled the grate open. A really big sketch pad.
“I had to go out. I’ve got errands to run. I brought coffee. And a muffin.”
“Good.” He didn’t spare her a glance. “Put it down, stand over there. Right there.”
