The Art of Seduction (32 page)

“Why didn't he let me know he was alive?”

“He thought you never wanted to see him again.”

“Of course. After all those mean things I said to him. I have so much to make up for.”

Richard smiled. “That's funny. He said almost the same thing to me. That he had so much to make up for. Shall we go see him?”

“Richard…I'm stunned. This was…an
amazing
thing for you to do.”

He put his hand on her face. “Mason, I love you. I'd do anything for you. You told me I'd healed you, but I knew it would never be complete as long as the guilt you felt about your father was unresolved.”

She turned her cheek and kissed his hand, then looked across the lobby. Her father was standing there, hat in hand, looking smaller and more stooped than she remembered, but radiating a tranquility she'd never seen before.

She headed toward him, at first slowly, hesitantly. Then, seeing the welcome in his eyes as he recognized her, she ran to him.

 

Now, a week after her miraculous reunion with her father, Mason still couldn't get over what an extraordinary act of love it had been on Richard's part. As she tucked her arm through his, watching the sky erupt in a kaleidoscopic blaze of color, the voices raised in song all around them, she felt so close and grateful that her heart seemed to be overflowing.

As the voices died down, the bells finally ceased their jubilation, and everyone around them wiped their teary eyes, Richard asked, “So what do you think is next?”

“Next?” She wasn't quite sure what he meant.

“For us. Have you thought about it? As much as I should like to, we can't very well lounge about the hotel forever.”

“Why not?”

“Eventually, I have to get back to work.”

“You
do
enjoy your work, don't you?”

“I do. But I've learned something on this particular case. I enjoy it even more with a gifted and oh-so-alluring ally.” He gave the tip of her nose a playful kiss. “But you haven't answered my question.”

“Oh, sooner or later I want to start painting again. I have a few new ideas. But this time, I want to paint only to please myself…and you. I'm all out of torment to express. I just want to paint because I love to, because the doing of it makes me feel connected to something greater than myself.”

“Did you see the Morrel piece this morning?”

“No. Was it about me?”

“Not specifically. It was a general piece about the art on display at the Exposition. But he did mention you.”

“What did he say?”

He struck a pose and quoted, “‘As the tragic loss of the Caldwell oeuvre recedes into history, her name, if remembered at all, will likely be only a footnote to the story of Impressionism. But those of us privileged enough to have seen her works will never forget them…their genius, their virtuosity, their sweeping vision, their bold grasp of the medium…' Are you quite certain you're not going to miss that kind of adulation? The power to seduce the world with your brush?”

Mason laughed. “As long as I can seduce you, that's all that matters to me.”

He gave her a wicked grin. “That's a given. But what about your name? Won't you miss that?”

“No, I'm tired of it. Come to think of it, I'm tired of Amy, too. A fresh start needs a new name, don't you think?”

“Hmmm, I suppose you're right.”

“Good, we're agreed. Now we only have to come up with something. How about…Louisa May Caldwell?”

He shook his head. “Don't like it.”

“All right. How about…Lillie Langtry Caldwell?”

“You can't be serious.”

“My, you're picky. Then what do you think of…Elizabeth Barrett Caldwell.”

He considered it. “I rather like the Elizabeth. Without the Caldwell, though. If you're going for a new name, you might as well go full measure.”

“Then Elizabeth Barrett it is.”

He was still running it through his mind. “That's better, but it needs a little work. There's something about the ‘B' that's not quite right.”

Slowly, her gaze rose to his face. There was a decided twinkle in the depths of his dark eyes.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “if you were to substitute a ‘G' for the ‘B.'”

Her heart began to flit erratically in her chest. She forced herself to assume an insouciant air. “Elizabeth Garrett,” she mused. “Artist…garret…they do go together, don't they?”

He gave her a seductive smile. “Only this will be one instance in which the Garrett spends more time in the artist than the artist does in the garret.”

Overjoyed by the proposal and the delicious image he'd just tacked on to it, Mason jumped to embrace him just as he heard another skyrocket burst and stepped away to look. She missed him completely and her impact carried her careening over the rail.

As she felt herself helplessly falling, she could see the dark rushing waters of the Seine below her. In that terrifying instant, her life seemed to be coming full circle.

But this time, Richard's strong hands grabbed her around the waist just as she cleared the railing and pulled her into his sheltering arms.

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T
ap-tap-tap.

“What the hell
is
that?” Jared muttered, getting up and crossing the room. He had a flashback to one of his literature classes. “Who is that tapping, tapping at my chamber door?” he boomed, pulling back the curtain and expecting to see…he wasn't sure. A branch, rasping across the glass? A pigeon? Instead, he found himself gazing into a face ten inches from his own. “Aaiiggh!”

It was her. Crouched on the ledge, perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet, she had one small fist raised, doubtless ready to knock again. When she saw him, she gestured patiently to the lock. He dimly noticed she was dressed like a normal person instead of a burglar—navy leggings and a matching turtleneck—and wondered why she wasn't shivering with cold.

He groped for the latch, dry-mouthed with fear for her. They were three stories up! If she should lose her balance…if a gust of wind should come up…the latch finally yielded to his fumbling fingers and he wrenched the window open, grabbing for her. She leaned back, out of the reach of his arms, and his heart stopped—actually stopped, ka-THUD!—in his chest. He backpedaled away from the window. “Okay, okay, sorry, didn't mean to startle you. Now would you please get your ass in here?”

She raised her eyebrows at him and complied, swinging one leg over the ledge and stepping down into the room as lightly as a ballerina. He collapsed on the cot, clutching his chest. “Could you please not ever,
ever
do that again?” he gasped. “Christ! My heart! What's going on? How'd you get up there?”

“Quoth the raven, nevermore,” she said and helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot set up next to the window. At his surprised gape, she smiled a little and tapped her ear. “Thin glass. I heard you through the window. ‘While I pondered, nearly napping, suddenly there came a rapping, rapping at my chamber door.' I think that's how it goes. Poe was high most of the time, so it's hard to tell. Also, the man you saw me bludgeon into unconsciousness dropped a dime on you today.”

“He what?”

“Dropped a dime. Rolled you over. Put you out. Phoned you in. Wants to clock you. Wants to drop you. Made arrangements to have you killed, pronto. Sugar?”

“No thanks,” he said numbly.

“I mean,” she said patiently, “is there sugar?”

He pointed to the last locker on the left and thought to warn her too late. When she opened it (first wrapping her sleeve around her hand, he noticed, as she had with the coffee pot handle), several hundred tea bags, salt packets and sugar cubes tumbled out, free of their overstuffed, poorly stacked boxes. She quickly stepped back, avoiding the rain of sweetener, then bent, picked a cube off the floor, blew on it, and dropped it into her cup. She shoved the locker door with her knee until it grudgingly shut, trapping a dozen or so tea bags and sugar packets in the bottom with a grinding sound that set his teeth on edge.

She went to the door, thumbed the lock with her sleeve, then came back and sat down at the rickety table opposite the cot. She took a tentative sip of her coffee and then another, not so tentative. He was impressed—the hospital coffee tasted like primeval mud, as it boiled and reboiled all day and night. “So that's the scoop,” she said casually.

“You're here to kill me?” he asked, trying to keep up with the twists and turns of the last forty seconds. “You're the hitman? Hitperson?”
Who knocked for entry?
he added silently.

“Me? Do wet work?” She threw her head back and pealed laughter at the ceiling. She had, he noticed admiringly, a great laugh. Her hair was plaited in a long blond braid, halfway down her back. He wondered what it would look like unbound and spread across his pillow. “Oh, that's very funny, Dr. Dean.”

“Thanks, I've got a million of 'em.” Pause. “How did you know my name?”

She smiled. It was a nice smile, warm, with no condescension. “It wasn't hard to find out.”

“What's
your
name?” he asked boldly. He should have been nervous about the locked door, about the threat to his life. He wasn't. Instead, he was delighted at the chance to talk to her, after a day of thinking about her and wondering how she was…who she was.

“Kara.”

“That's gorgeous,” he informed her, “and I, of course, am not surprised. You're so pretty! And so deadly,” he added with relish. “You're like one of those flowers that people can't resist picking and then—bam! Big-time rash.”

“Thanks,” she said, “I think.” She blushed, which gave her high color and made her eyes bluer. He stared, besotted. He didn't think women blushed anymore. He didn't think women who beat up thugs blushed at all. He was very much afraid. His mouth was hanging open and he was unable to do a thing about it. “Dr. Dean—”

“Umm?”

“—I'm not sure you understand the seriousness of the situation—”

“Long, tall, and ugly is out to get me,” he said, sitting down opposite her. He shoved a pile of charts aside; several clattered to the floor and she watched them fall, bemused. “But since you're not the hitman, I'm not too worried.”

“Actually, I'm your self-appointed bodyguard.”

“Oh, well, then I'm not worried at all,” he said with feigned carelessness, while his brain chewed that one…
bodyguard?
…over.

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“I
want to talk about tonight,” she said. “What happened here.”

“I don't.” He picked up a sandwich, bit into it.

“What
do
you want to do?”

“Eat this sandwich.” He took another man-sized bite and another drink of wine, then added, “And go to bed.”

“Here?”

“Here.”

“And you want to stay here because…”

“My daughter asked me to. I promised her I'd be here when she woke up.”

“You can do that by going to your motel and coming back early in the morning,” she said, trying on some logic that something in her hoped he'd ignore.

“True. But that would mean leaving you.” His gaze drifted over her face. A face she knew was drawn and tired. A face that warmed under his scrutiny. “I don't intend to leave, Camryn.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. Stayed there. “And I don't think you want me to.” He lowered his head, looked at her across his wineglass. “Do you?”

With that two word question, Camryn's kitchen shrank in size; its oxygen depleted by half, and its perimeter blurred. All that remained was a man, a woman, and a razor sharp awareness. A high-voltage sensual jolt that caught Camryn wildly off guard. She hadn't planned on this, hadn't seen it coming—hadn't seen Dan Lambert coming; over six feet of man and muscle, who turned into mush when he looked at the little girl who called him Daddy, and somehow turned into a potent, seductive male when he looked at her. A male who left
everything
to the imagination.

“I repeat, do you want me to go, Camryn?”

Her breathing, uncertain under his steady gaze, leveled off. She told herself not to forget he had an agenda, like Paul Grantman…like Adam. She told herself she was a fool for feeling anything, sensual or otherwise, for a man who'd come here solely to take his “daughter” from her. All these rattling emotions were aftershocks from the evening's events, nothing more. Perhaps he was as opportunistic as Adam and saw her weariness as weakness, a chance to shorten that straight line he was so keen on. She told herself all of that, looked into his quietly waiting eyes, and said, “No. I think you should stay.” She swallowed, rose from the table, and picked up her plate and glass. She gave him another glance when she added, “After tonight, Kylie needs all the reassurance we can give her.”

“Is that a
but
, I don't hear at the end of that sentence?” He stayed seated, following her with his eyes as she walked to the dishwasher.

When she'd put her dishes away, she rested her hip against the counter. Her gaze, when it again met his, was level. “Yes, and what follows that ‘but' is this—your staying here, doesn't mean I want you messing with my head—or my hormones.”

He stood, and wineglass in hand, walked toward her. When he was solidly in front of her, he reached around her and set his glass on the counter. He was so close the scent of his clean skin, the lingering hint of his aftershave, musk and cedar, drifted up her nose. All of it man scent, strong and primal. Even though hemmed in by his size and strength, she had no desire to cut and run.

He trailed the back of his hand along her cheek and followed its path with a reflective, focused gaze, finally smoothing her hair gently behind her ear. “You were right, you know, about my ulterior motives.” His eyes met hers, dark and intense, faintly sorrowful. “I'd do anything to keep my daughter. And I did consider the idea that seducing you might be the way to do that.” His lips curved briefly into a smile, but it left his face as quickly as it had come. “I thought it would be less time-consuming, a way to avoid a messy and complicated legal battle, that Paul Grantman wouldn't stand a chance against the two of us.” He rested his hand on her shoulder, caressed her throat with his thumb. The gesture both heated and idle. “But now…”

When he didn't go on, Camryn waited, then raised a brow. “Now?”

“Now all I want to do is mess with those hormones you mentioned—without a base motive in sight.” He leaned toward her and kissed her, a lingering kiss that touched her lips like a shadow, an inquisitive kiss that slammed those hormones she was so worried about into overdrive. “Well, maybe a little base,” he whispered over her lips.