by Anne Stuart
She was following behind him—he could hear the rattle of loose pebbles as she walked down the path. He made no effort to slow down, and she wasn’t about to catch up with him. They marched down the hillside to the villa, single file, and if he was half tempted to stop and turn, so that she’d have no choice but to barrel into him, he resisted the impulse. He’d pushed her enough for now.
No, she didn’t like him, and she didn’t like kissing. But there was definitely more to it than that. She was fascinated by him; he recognized that without any false modesty, though he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t straightforward sexual interest—he doubted if Charlie even knew what that was like. If she did, she kept it for her fiancé.
Maybe she simply saw through him. Knew him for a liar and a cheat, no insurance bureaucrat at all. But she’d asked him no leading questions, and she seemed to take him at face value. If she had any doubts that he was who he said he was, it would have been a simple enough matter to make a few phone calls and then kick him the hell out of the house. This whole intricate charade was going to collapse soon enough, and all that was needed to hurry it along was the hint of suspicion. And yet as far as he knew she hadn’t done anything to check up on him.
According to his early-morning phone call with Gregory, no one had seemed the slightest bit interested in the whereabouts of one Connor Maguire. He probably should have used a different name when he showed up at the villa, but he tended to find it easier to keep his lies to the absolute minimum. But if Charlie decided to start looking into her insurance consultant, it would be easy enough to track down the name of Connor Maguire among the registered aliens working in Italy. And it would lead her to the Starlight, not some nice, boring insurance conglomerate.
But apart from Gregory’s general antsiness about getting things done, there was nothing to suggest he needed to rush things. He had a few days’ grace. And despite his editor’s demands for information, he’d told him next to nothing. He’d learned early on that knowledge was power, and that no one could be trusted. He’d fill Gregory in when he was ready to, and not a moment sooner.
In retrospect, he realized he shouldn’t have kissed Charlie. He’d been wanting to ever since he’d first seen her—hell, he wanted to do a hell of a lot more than kiss her. And covered with plaster dust, trembling with panic, she’d been damned near irresistible.
But he’d almost overplayed his hand. She stood frozen in his arms like the ice princess he knew she’d be, and the panicked beating of her heart doubled when he put his mouth on hers. He should have pulled back then, feeling the iciness of her skin, but he’d given in to temptation, vaguely aware that she was too frightened to move.
Frightened of what, for Christ’s sake? She’d been married to a notorious womanizer. The old goat had gone through some of the world’s most beautiful women, including Charlie. And she had a fiancé. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been having it regularly.
Maybe he was just too rough and crude for her. Pompasse had been an elegant old man, and if he knew Charlie as well as he was beginning to, then she’d probably chosen another creature of refined tastes for her fiancé, someone just like her. Not a working-class bloke from the outback who…
Who what? Who was out to find out every bit of dirt he could about her marriage, her dead husband, and even about her if he thought it would sell books? Who was entirely willing to sleep with her, and just about anyone else in the household, in order to further his cause? Who could end up turning her over to the Italian police if it turned out she’d killed the old man?
He couldn’t see Charlie killing. She was so guarded she didn’t allow herself to feel that much of anything. Besides, she was probably the least likely suspect. She’d been in New York—and even if she had made a fast trip over to Florence to off her former husband, she would have left a paper trail. And besides, she had no reason to do it.
So then, who did it?
It didn’t matter in the slightest that the police didn’t seem to suspect a thing. Bestsellers were made of just such stuff. If he was going to present Pompasse’s death as a murder, then Gregory would be expecting a suspect. And he still wasn’t sure who he liked the best for the role of killer.
Charlie would be the most interesting, of course, but it would be far too easy for her to prove her innocence. He had to preserve the shreds of his so-called journalistic integrity. If he smeared her without reasonable proof, it would destroy what credibility he did have. Of course, he didn’t have to outright accuse her in the book—he just had to use enough innuendo to titillate the readers of highbrow trash. He could destroy a life without much effort at all. Not that he particularly wanted to, but he refused to allow sentimentality to get in his way.
He glanced back at her. Her head was down, and she was concentrating on the narrow path beneath her feet. She must have sensed his eyes on her, because she halted, looking up at him.
No, she definitely wasn’t happy with him. If he thought her eyes had been cool before, they were now chips of ice.
“It was only a kiss, sweetheart,” he drawled. “You act like I took a hammer to the Pieta`.”
“The subject is not open for discussion.”
“Not that I put you up there with Michelangelo. I mean, you’re pretty and all that, but you’re only a woman, not a masterpiece. Then again, you’ve been a masterpiece, haven’t you? What does it feel like to have your portrait worth millions of dollars? Must be flattering.”
She glared at him. “Don’t be an idiot, Maguire. The value of the paintings has absolutely nothing to do with me, and everything to do with Pompasse’s brilliance as a painter. Whether or not he was an admirable human being, he was certainly a great artist.”
“I suppose so. But why are his paintings of you so much more valuable than any of the others? Why are those the ones that were taken? Were you that inspiring? The work he did after you left him was shit and you know it. Doesn’t that make you feel guilty?”
Bingo. He’d touched a raw spot, an important one. For some crazy reason Pompasse’s artistic talent seemed to excuse everything in her mind. If he lost that, then all that was left was a selfish, degenerate old man.
“Not particularly,” she said after a moment. “He’d stopped painting me several years before I left.”
“Except for the last one. His so-called masterpiece.”
Her laugh was entirely without humor. “Are you talking about Charlie When She Left? Pompasse was an excellent manipulator of the media. You’re right—it was the final portrait of me. But he painted it two years before I left him, just as he was starting in on Gia. And he called it Charlie in a Bad Mood until he decided to show it. No, I don’t feel guilty.”
He really wanted to kiss her for that juicy little tidbit, but he wisely kept his distance. “So you left him because you were jealous? Someone else had taken your place?”
“I left him because he didn’t need me anymore.”
“You’re that easy? All someone has to do is need you and you’re his?” He didn’t bother to temper his disbelief.
“If I loved him.”
For a moment he said nothing. If she loved him? It was almost an alien notion. He wasn’t even sure if he believed in love. Lust, yeah, and affection. But not the kind of love she was talking about. Not the kind that required sacrifice.
“So you loved him?”
“I married him, didn’t I?”
“Sweetheart, people get married for thousands of reasons, and I doubt if love enters into it much. Besides, when you were eighteen you must have been starry-eyed and romantic. You couldn’t have been looking for an old man.”
“When I was eighteen I’d been married to Pompasse for over a year. And he was exactly what I needed.”
“An old man. Father figure, right? Whatever happened to Daddy?”
“My father died in a plane crash when I was young. But it wasn’t traumatic—I’d only seen him a couple of times in my life. Olivia goes through men rather quickly.”
�
��That was your mother?”
“She still is.” She didn’t sound particularly pleased about it. “You’ll have a chance to meet her soon enough. In the meantime, do you suppose we could get back to the house? I don’t know why you give a damn about my life, but it has very little to do with your job. The missing paintings, remember?”
“And those paintings were of you, remember?” he shot back.
“Pompasse did quite a number of paintings of me, and only three are missing. And my childhood has nothing to do with it, thank you very much. Are you going to move or am I going to go around you?”
The path was very narrow. She’d have to brush against him to get past, and while the thought was tempting, he decided to give her a break.
“Sure thing, sweetheart,” he drawled, turning back on the path. “We can continue this discussion later. First dibs on the shower.”
“We’re not sharing a bathroom anymore. If you really insist on sleeping in the studio then I’ll show you the shower down there. Pompasse frequently painted in the nude and then showered afterward.”
“I really didn’t want to know that,” he said.
“Why not? You seem to have an avid fascination for everything involving Pompasse’s life. You have tabloid sensibilities, Maguire. You probably read those garbage newspapers for your view of the world.”
This was getting too close for comfort. “I don’t read newspapers, love. I don’t have time.”
“Stop calling me that!” she snapped. “You seem to have plenty of time to hang around here and bother me.”
“Priorities,” he said with a grin. “Simple priorities.”
She was going to kill him, Charlie thought, once she’d left him at the empty studio. Tomaso had already brought a double bed down from somewhere and set it up in the middle of the room. The windows were open to the bright sunlight, the dust had vanished, and there was even a vase of wildflowers on the small table beside the bed. The same as the flowers in her room. She wanted to spit.
His battered duffel bag was there, and fresh towels hung in the tiny bathroom off the back of the room. She had managed to escape before he annoyed her enough to do something about it.
She still wanted to kill him.
His unnerving curiosity shouldn’t have surprised her. The world had been fascinated with Pompasse—he’d cultivated his outlandish reputation with assiduous care. Never a month had gone by while Charlie had been in exile in New York that she hadn’t seen an article or heard a news story about the Great Artist and his eccentric ways. Once people knew who she was they would usually pelt her with questions. What was it like to be married to the great man? How had it felt with all his legendary womanizing? And worst of all, they always wanted to know why she’d married him in the first place. And she could never come up with an answer, not when she wasn’t sure of the reason herself.
She’d soon learned to stop telling people about her background. It was a lot easier if they simply thought of her as Charlie Thomas, owner of La Chance, and not the relict of a legend.
So Maguire’s incessant curiosity shouldn’t surprise her. And he was a man—a rough, no-nonsense type without the sensitivity to realize that there were some questions you shouldn’t ask, some subjects that shouldn’t be discussed. There was nothing unusual or suspicious about that.
But it didn’t feel right.
She needed a shower almost as badly as he did, but she detoured by way of the study. His laptop was still there, unguarded, and she slipped behind the desk and opened the lid.
Once more the cartoon figures raced across the screen, a touch of whimsy that was totally unlike Maguire. She tried a few buttons haphazardly, rebooting the computer to see if it would help, but it just returned to the demand for a password. Charlie groaned.
She typed Maguire. Too easy, of course. What was his first name? Connor, right? She went through the gamut of possibilities, meeting only with an invalid-password message. Why hadn’t she spent more time learning how to mess with computers and less time with solitaire and Free Cell, she thought grumpily. There was something that Maguire was hiding in this computer and she wanted, needed, to find out what it was.
But she wasn’t going to find out what it was today, that much was certain. Besides, she was dusty and dirty and starving—one always had better luck at spying if one was showered and well fed. Or maybe she could just sneak up on him again when he didn’t realize she was there. Have someone call him away and she could race back in. Except there was no one here she could trust.
The shower was a blessed relief, almost as wonderful as finding the door open to her empty room. At least Maguire wouldn’t be walking in on her—she could hog the hot water to her heart’s content. Despite the fancy improvements Pompasse had insisted on, the supply of hot water was limited, and no one was allowed to shower on laundry day, or when Lauretta had to do the dishes. But for now she could drain the tank and hopefully freeze Maguire in the process.
The windows were steamed up when she stepped out of the huge marble bathtub, and she pushed them open, letting the fresh air in. It wasn’t quite as hot as it had been—the air now had a hint of autumn in it, and she shivered in the huge, enveloping towel.
She pushed open the door to Pompasse’s old bedroom, only to find Gia sitting in the middle of the bed, pawing through her purse.
She looked up at Charlie’s approach but didn’t stop what she was doing. She was wearing shorts, and her long brown legs were folded under her. The bed was littered with Charlie’s possessions—her underwear, her toiletries bag, even her jewelry was spread out on the plain white coverlet.
“What are you doing in here?” Charlie had every reason to be proud of her calm tone—not an ounce of her fury showed.
Gia shrugged. “I was bored. I figured you would have brought the latest styles from America, and I wanted to see what you were wearing. But it’s just the same stuff you had before. Pompasse was right—you have no interest in dressing for men, do you?”
Charlie took a shallow breath, trying to control her anger. A deep breath would have made her towel fall off, and the last thing she wanted was to appear naked in front of Gia’s avid eyes.
She’d forgotten how incredibly intrusive the girl could be. In the time they’d both lived at La Colombala Charlie would come down to find Gia wearing her clothes, her jewelry, her perfume. And she’d smile at Charlie, taunting her, daring her to make a fuss.
And Charlie had never said a word, simply because she knew how much Pompasse had wanted her to.
But Pompasse was dead, and Gia was wearing her canary diamond ring. Despite its value, she was welcome to it, as well as the chaste pearl ring that Henry had given her.
But the plain silver ring that had been her father’s was a different matter.
With one hand she clutched the towel together. She strode across the room to the bed, yanked the purse out of Gia’s slender hands and tossed it across the room. And then she held out her own hands, much larger, paler than Gia’s. “Give them back.”
She sounded very calm. A foolish woman might not realize she was shaking with rage, and very dangerous indeed, but Gia had never been a fool. She looked at her with a speculative expression, as if considering the merits of a full-blown catfight. Charlie was taller, stronger than Gia, but she was hampered by the towel. At that moment she was mad enough not to care.
With a lazy shrug Gia stripped the rings from her fingers and dumped them in Charlie’s outstretched hand. “You never used to mind when I borrowed your things,” she murmured.
“I minded. I just didn’t say anything. Would you leave me alone? I need to get dressed.”
Gia leaned back against the pillows she’d piled high. “We’re just girls here. When did you become so prudish? Half the world has already seen your naked body, me included. Pompasse used to insist we swim naked in the pool, remember. No bathing suits allowed. So you have no secrets from me.”
“You and Maguire would make a perfect pair,” Charlie mu
ttered, heading for the top drawer of the dresser and dropping her towel. She kept her back to Gia as she pulled on the plain cotton underwear, determined not to let her know how angry she was. Gia would only see her anger as a sign of weakness.
“Why do you say that?” Gia asked in a lazy voice. “Not that I disagree with you. He’s sort of rough around the edges, but that can be very…pleasant if you’re in the right sort of mood.”
“Then go for it, with my blessing,” Charlie said, reaching for a clean pair of jeans.
“When did you start wearing underwear? Pompasse…”
“I know. Pompasse didn’t want me to wear underwear, or a bathing suit, or a nightgown, even though he kept buying them for me. Pompasse didn’t want me to eat or breathe or speak unless he approved of it. But I left him, Gia. I don’t have to answer to him anymore.”
Gia looked as if she’d been slapped in the face. “You didn’t love him enough—”
“I wanted to be free. Didn’t you?”
She looked horrified at the notion. “Never.”
“Then you got your wish,” she said, reaching for the sweater.
“You’ve gotten fat,” Gia said.
Charlie only shrugged. “Maybe by Pompasse’s standards. But I don’t live by them anymore.”
Gia had a desperate expression on her face, and Charlie could see her mentally searching for something to replace it with. “Maguire thinks you’re fat, too,” she said.
Charlie made the mistake of laughing. “I don’t care what Maguire thinks. I told you, have him.”
“He isn’t yours to give. He doesn’t want you, he wants me….”
“Wonderful. Then maybe he’ll leave me alone.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she realized what a mistake they were. Gia had wanted everything of Charlie’s, whether it was precious to her or not. She wanted Pompasse, she wanted Charlie’s clothes and jewelry and bedroom, she wanted the attention of any man in the vicinity. For her to realize that Maguire had expressed any kind of interest in Charlie was to seal his fate.
Though why the hell should she care if Gia attached herself to Maguire? If anything, she should encourage her. The two of them deserved each other, and that way maybe she’d get some peace.