Second Chance Temptation

by Joss Wood

  Tanna didn’t blame Isla for being angry; the useless society girl survived when sweet Addy hadn’t. And Tanna’d not only survived, but in the hospital she’d fallen in love with the guy who’d been driving behind them, who’d held her hand while they waited for medical assistance to arrive. The same guy who also happened to be the son of a famous billionaire.

  And then Levi had slid a diamond onto her finger.

  She’d been told she was exceptionally lucky to be alive, even luckier her family had resources for her recovery.

  Because, as Isla had pointed out, she was the lucky one, the girl who’d cheated death, who’d come out of a terrible situation with a couple of scars and a gorgeous man on her arm.

  Hell, Isla was right...

  And that was why she’d run away from her privileged lifestyle and her wonderful fiancé ten years ago, because the only way she could deal with the guilt of surviving when Addy hadn’t was to be anything but that party-loving, credit card flashing trust fund baby. She owed it to Addy to be better, to be more, to contribute...

  To suffer.

  Tanna sighed, digging both sets of fingers into her hair. Her conversation with Isla had been brief and unpleasant but it was over. Now she needed to talk to Levi...

  He looked good, Tanna admitted. If she ignored his pale face and his dinged body, he looked...wonderful. At twenty-four he’d been tall and built and, sure, conventionally handsome with his deep brown hair shot with auburn and his ink-blue eyes. But somehow, and unfairly, Levi Brogan looked even better a decade later. He seemed a lot more muscular and more masculine, with heavy scruff on his face and messy hair.

  Unfortunately, her ex-fiancé, even battered and bruised and a little broken, was wildfire hot.

  So unfair.

  Tanna rubbed her hands over her face and tipped her head back to look at the wooden beams running across the ceiling. Running out on Levi, hurting him, still shamed her, it was her biggest regret.

  She’d left his engagement ring on the hall table of the house in Beacon Hill, along with a letter addressed to him in a sealed envelope. She could’ve explained she was debilitated with guilt, having second thoughts about getting married so young, that she wasn’t ready to be anyone’s wife.

  That she had a debt to pay, that she needed to do more, be more. For Addy.

  She could’ve said she was wondering if she was confusing gratitude with love...

  She could’ve written any or all of that, but she didn’t. Through tears, and with her heart breaking, she’d just said she was sorry and she couldn’t marry him.

  Tanna didn’t regret not getting married, didn’t regret, not for one moment, the last ten years, but she did regret hurting Levi, for running when she should’ve had the guts to face him.

  But she’d been scared...

  Scared she’d never be anything more than her brothers’ adored, overly protected sister, Levi’s wife, a socialite with ample funds who loved art and designer clothes.

  She’d wanted to be more...

  More grounded, more real. She’d wanted to be a person who gave rather than took.

  And, in time, she’d hoped to feel less guilty. But that had yet to happen.

  Tanna doubted it ever would. So, she would work at what she could control and that included facing the past, dealing with her PTSD and getting back to work...

  “Hell, Murphy, are you baking the damned bread? What’s taking so long?” Levi bellowed.

  ...and making Levi a damned sandwich.

  Two

  Standing in his light-filled office, Carrick Murphy, the oldest of the four Murphy siblings, looked across his desk to his two brothers. Finn, as per usual, was on his smartphone, occasionally sipping from his Nerd? I prefer intellectual badass coffee mug, a gag gift from their sister, Tanna, many Christmases ago. Carrick transferred his gaze to Ronan, who was staring out the window, his thoughts a million miles away.

  Carrick ran a hand through his dark hair and rubbed his hand over his jaw. He knew many Bostonians looked at them, three bachelor brothers—rich and reasonably good-looking—and their beautiful little sister, and thought they lived charmed lives. From the outside looking in it was easy to forget they’d lost their parents when they were young, that the brothers had jointly raised their younger sister and they’d all lived through Tanna’s near-fatal accident. Carrick’s marriage had imploded, Ronan’s wife died, Finn and Beah divorced, and Tanna left Boston...

  People seldom looked behind the wealth and success...

  Carrick, annoyed by his introspection when he had work to do, rapped his knuckles on the desk. Two sets of Murphy green eyes focused on him. “Before we get to work, let’s discuss Tanna.”

  “Something is up with her,” Ronan said, turning around.

  Carrick nodded. “I think so too.”

  “I have to wonder why she’s really back in town because Tanna doesn’t do vacations.” Ronan walked over to the coffee machine. He placed a cup under the nozzle and pushed the start button. Carrick drained his cup and passed it to Ronan for a refill. “And why does she have to live in London? She can save lives here as easily as she could there.”

  “We can’t pressure her to move back to Boston. That’ll just make her run in the opposite direction,” Finn said, placing his forearms on top of a stack of paper folders. “She’s more stubborn than all of us put together.”

  Stubborn and determined. Those two traits were the only reasons she was walking after the best specialists in the country had given her a ten percent chance of regaining her mobility. A decade later, nobody would suspect their fit and active sister had spent five months in the hospital after the ball of her right femur shattered her pelvis and her left ankle splintered into what they called a fountain break. The only clues to the hell she’d endured were a few livid scars and a barely there limp.

  “Does Levi know she’s back?” Finn asked.

  Carrick raised his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  “Should we give him a heads-up?” Ronan asked, thinking of their close friend.

  Levi and the Murphy brothers had stayed friends after his breakup with Tanna, but Levi never spoke about their vibrant and gorgeous sister, refused to look at the many pictures of her in the Murphys’ Beacon Hill house. By the way he now acted, nobody would suspect that, at one time, Levi had loved Tanna.

  While they were all tight with Levi, he and Carrick had the closest relationship. And as Carrick was the eldest, being the bearer of news, both good and bad, was his responsibility. “I’ll tell him.” He picked up his phone and dialed his friend’s number. Putting the call on speaker, he waited for Levi’s terse greeting.

  “Yo.”

  Carrick exchanged a wry smile with Ronan. Levi was taciturn and abrupt and never used three words when one would do.

  Carrick opted to shoot from the hip, the way Levi preferred. “Just a call to let you know Tanna is back in town and she’ll be here for about six weeks or so.”

  Levi waited a beat before he responded. When he did, his tone was colder than an Arctic blizzard. “Too late. She’s here.”

  Carrick heard the call disconnect and shook his head. He took the coffee Ronan held out to him and sighed. “Levi should really stop wearing his heart on his sleeve.”

  Ronan smiled at Carrick’s sarcasm. “Yep. And he really shouldn’t be so open and forthcoming.” Ro leaned back against the credenza and crossed his foot over his ankle. “Well, he’s been told. That’s all we can do.”

  “I have news...” Finn stated after a moment’s silence. “And it’s big.”

  Happy to get off the subject of his sister’s and best friend’s nonrelationship, Carrick turned his attention to Finn. His younger brother was normally the definition of cool and collected, so the excitement on his face was strange to see.

  “As you know, Isabel Mounton-Matthews left her e
ntire estate to Keely Matthews and to Joa Jones, whom she took in when Joa was fourteen. Keely and Joa have decided to sell most of Isabel’s extensive collection to raise funds for Isabel’s foundation and we are handling the sale.”

  The company they’d jointly inherited, Murphy International, was one of the most exclusive auction houses in the world, renowned for the quality and rarity of the pieces of art passing through their hands. The sale of Isabel’s well-documented art collection would be one of the biggest in the past decade and the items were causing a stir in their wealthy art and auction circles. “I’ve been cataloging the collection and I’ve come across three paintings I think might be sleepers—”

  Carrick exchanged a quick, excited look with Ronan. A “sleeper” was an artwork whose real value or attribution had been missed by either the owner or art dealers.

  “Keely said that Isabel thought it was painted by Winslow Homer. Two are iffy but there’s one that makes me think it might be.”

  “Provenance?” Ronan asked. In their world, provenance was everything.

  Finn shook his head. “There’s nothing but Isabel’s suspicions. But, damn, the painting I saw, stylistically, looked like it might be one of his depictions of African American rural life.”

  “A lost Winslow Homer?” Homer was one of the country’s most revered artists and a lost painting by him would set the art world on fire. Carrick would get excited but he also knew fraudsters loved to fake Homer. And they were good at it. “It sounds too good to be true.”

  Ronan looked at Finn, who was their resident art historian. “Are you going to chase this down?”

  “I’d love to but I’m slammed. And I think we need an expert in nineteenth-century American painters.” Finn gestured to Carrick’s phone. “If the paintings are by Homer, it would have to be authenticated by you-know-who.”

  You-know-who, she-who-should-not-be-named, Satan’s Bride.

  Also known as his ex-wife.

  Tamlyn had written the catalogue raisonné, the definitive work detailing all of Winslow Homer’s work. If Tamlyn didn’t believe the paintings were by Homer, the canvas wouldn’t be worth diddly-squat.

  “We need a specialist art detective, preferably someone Tamlyn trusts, to run the tests, to track down any provenance,” Finn stated. “Tamlyn takes every opportunity to smear your name, Carrick. She’s vindictive enough to dismiss these paintings just because you brought them to her attention. But if we hire someone she respects, someone she works with regularly, we might have a shot of getting a decent result.”

  Carrick and Tamlyn’s marriage had been brief. It was a relationship he now deeply regretted. They’d both been ridiculously unhappy and when, after a year, he’d asked for a divorce, Tamlyn punished him by dragging his reputation through the court of public opinion. Since he’d never, not once, publicly defended himself, Carrick, in certain social circles, was still considered to be a bad husband at best, an adulterer at worst.

  Good thing he didn’t give a crap what people thought.

  At least his reputation as an honest art dealer and auctioneer was still intact, and that was all that mattered.

  “Okay, point taken.” He looked at Finn. “Find me an art detective whose opinion Tamlyn Smith respects.”

  “I’ll find someone,” Finn told him and then his mouth curved into a smile. “And that’s Tamlyn Smith-Murphy to you, son.”

  Carrick resisted the urge to punch his youngest brother. Finn was yanking his chain and he’d learned not to respond. But he wished Tamlyn would stop using his surname, dammit. Yeah, she was an art appraiser and in the art world using the name Murphy added gravitas. But surely, when you’d screwed a guy six ways to Sunday—physically, emotionally, financially and mentally—you forfeited the right to use his name?

  Carrick looked at Finn and ignored his building headache. “Find someone with impeccable references and unimpeachable references. The sooner we establish provenance, the more publicity we can generate for the sale.”

  Ronan nodded. “This sale is going to be huge.”

  Carrick agreed. “And profitable.”

  * * *

  Tanna put the plate holding two thick sandwiches on the small table next to Levi’s chair and picked up a state-of-the-art tablet to make way for his large mug of coffee. Levi immediately lifted the cup to his mouth, his low groan reminding her of the sound he’d made the few times they kissed.

  For two people who’d been about to legally and morally bind themselves to each other for the rest of their lives, they hadn’t indulged in a lot of public displays of affection. Or even private displays of affection.

  For the first few months of their relationship, she’d been in too much pain, and when she started to feel better, Levi had treated her like spun sugar. On leaving the hospital, she’d still needed time to recover and when she regained most of her mobility, she was so confused about what she was feeling she’d asked Levi if they could wait until their wedding night to make love.

  He’d gently teased her for being old-fashioned and she’d felt guilty because her morals had nothing to do with her decision. She was having enough doubts about her future without sex complicating her thought processes.

  Not making love to Levi, not having him be her first, was one of her most profound regrets.

  Pulling her attention off the past—she’d have to address that soon enough—she looked around the room.

  She’d visited this house a few times between leaving the hospital and running out on Levi. His parents—lovely Callie and charismatic Ray—had lived in it back then and Tanna had fallen in love with the open plan, light-filled, spacious mansion.

  Callie had filled the rooms with a mishmash of contemporary and family pieces, effortlessly combining old and new into rooms that felt both lived in and cozy, comfortable and sophisticated. While this was now Levi’s home, it still held traces of his mom’s creative flair.

  Tanna couldn’t help thinking that if she’d stuck around, this might’ve been her home too, stamped by her style. There would be photos of her siblings on the walls along with his, artwork she’d loved and bought, pieces of furniture she’d inherited from her parents. But everything she owned was in her flat in London, Levi’s stuff was here and they hadn’t had the chance to combine their lives and possessions.

  Because she’d run...

  “I like this room,” she said, ignoring his deep scowl.

  “It’s not filled with priceless pieces of artwork like your childhood home but it’s okay.”

  As auctioneers and fine art dealers, her family, going back generations, had amassed an incredible collection of art, most of which adorned the walls of the house in Beacon Hill. Her bedroom held a sketch by Degas and a watercolor by Georgia O’Keeffe.

  She’d grown up surrounded by incredible art, textiles and ceramics, and had planned to follow her brothers into the family business at Murphy’s, joining the auction house’s PR and publicity department. But she hadn’t been back to Boston in years and hadn’t, not since her accident, been back to Murphy’s. She’d avoided it because it had once been her second home, a place she adored...

  Murphy’s was the one place in Boston where she’d felt completely at ease and happy. She adored art, in all its forms, loved talking about it and promoting it, and being around people who loved it as much as she did. On every visit home, Tanna knew that if she stepped into Murphy International she’d start questioning her decision to become an EMT. So she avoided the family business. And, as much as she could, Boston.

  Tanna sighed. “I should’ve just stayed in London,” she said, mostly to herself.

  “I absolutely agree. Feel free to go back.”

  She would if she could but that wasn’t possible until she had her PTSD symptoms under control. And who knew how hard she’d have to work or how long it would take her to achieve that goal? Tanna’s stomach clenched and the mus
cles in her neck contracted.

  Relax, Tanna.

  Concentrating on her breathing, she pushed away her negative thoughts.

  She’d just hit a bad patch and she needed a little time to get her head sorted. Her accident had been a long time ago and she was fit and healthy. She was done being hostage to her fears. She liked emergency medicine, and the notion of helping others as she was once helped was important to her.

  She owed those paramedics for saving her life—her heart had stopped twice en route to the hospital—and the only way she could show her gratitude for walking away from the crash with nothing more than a few scars was to pay it forward.

  Unfortunately, paying that debt came with panic attacks, flashbacks and cold sweats. She just needed to control her reactions at work. She’d live with her PTSD symptoms if she could save lives. The symptoms wouldn’t, after all, kill her. Sometimes it just felt like they would.

  They couldn’t sit here in silence, so Tanna attempted to initiate conversation. “I’m sorry about your dad, Levi. I know it happened years ago, but I’m still sorry.”

  “As you said, it was a long time ago.”

  Okay, then. She’d try again. “And I read somewhere your family sold your dad’s company when he died. It must’ve been difficult losing your dad and the company.”

  “Not really.”

  She hoped he was referring to the loss of the company and not his father’s death. The Levi she remembered was private and reticent but he’d never been a jerk.

  “Is there a point to this inane conversation? Since you walked out on me, I didn’t think you particularly cared about my life. And I, in turn, don’t care how you’ve spent the last ten years, Tanna.”