Running Scared

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Not quite,” she said, clenching around him again.

  His breath broke. “Learn anything new?”

  “Did I mention that each position is demonstrated not by a single carving of a man and a woman but rather by interlocking carvings?”

  “Interlocking?” He smiled slightly. “How?”

  “Guess.”

  He moved.

  “Good guess,” she said. “Now let me show you an interesting variation on that theme. First I turn this way.”

  “Here, let me help.” He lifted her just enough to give her wiggle room.

  “Perfect,” she said, half facing him. “Now this leg goes here, and that one goes up there, and then I pull up your leg and lean this way and . . .” Sensation shot out from the pit of her stomach, taking her to the edge of climax in a single instant.

  He sucked in a breath past the raw lust exploding inside him. “Bloody hell, but that feels good. How many figurines are there?”

  “Enough to kill us.”

  His eyes gleamed. “What are we waiting for?”

  Chapter 25

  Las Vegas

  November 3

  Late morning

  Shane sat in Risa’s office, going through museum catalogs and art books that featured Celtic gold artifacts. Just to watch her cheekbones get red, he had brought in a popular magazine with a breathlessly misinformed feature about the fabled Druid hoard. The article was on the bottom of the stack of material to be reviewed, but he was working his way down to it quickly.

  Yanking her chain kept his mind off the overbright, undermoral Cherelle Faulkner.

  “Now, take this torc,” Shane said, pointing to one catalog.

  “I’d love to,” Risa shot back, wanting to pull on her hair. Or his. “But then the British Museum would raise hell with Uncle Sam. The Snettisham torc you’re lusting after is considered one of the finest examples of Iron Age British Celtic gold working. It is a bona fide cultural treasure.”

  Though her voice was sarcastic, the fingertip tracing the outline of the torc in the photograph was almost reverent. Shane watched and wondered if she would touch a man like that, awe and appreciation combined. The thought had an immediate effect on the fit of his pants. Because of that, he was more impatient than usual.

  “In case you forgot,” he said coldly, “I’m holding the Druid Gold catalog cover for something this spectacular.”

  Risa’s dark blue eyes narrowed. She decided she would rather pull his hair than her own. Definitely.

  “Let’s go over it again,” she said. “Nice and slow. I’ll try to keep the words short so I won’t lose you. Ready?”

  He was more than ready, which really irritated him. He nodded curtly.

  “Goods like that torc are cultural treasures along the lines of, oh, the Liberty Bell,” Risa said with fierce calm. “No one sells cultural treasures like that unless he steals them first. If you buy a stolen cultural treasure, you can’t show it in public and you damn well better never show it to me. Are you with me so far?”

  Shane watched her mouth. As always, it was worth watching. Lush. Female. Made for pleasure.

  Damn, but he was tired of wanting her from a distance.

  “Treasures like this torc are kept at home, wherever home might be,” she continued with teeth-gritting restraint. “That’s why there are great exhibits in national museums like the British Museum and the Hermitage and the Louvre. And they aren’t for sale!”

  “That’s your problem,” he said. “Mine is to get a centerpiece for my show before it opens. So far all I have is one good torc on the way and a million bucks in artifacts that will take a lot of explanation before the average person can appreciate them. As a show to compete against Fabergé, it’s a nonstarter. I’m holding the cover of the catalog for you. Don’t let me down.”

  “What about your sharks?” she asked, exasperated. “Go chew on them instead of me.”

  Shane looked at her oddly. “Sharks?”

  “The other, less scrupulous people you have scouring the gutters for you.”

  He smiled almost lazily. “The thing about sharks is they’re so hard to chew on. You’re much more tender.”

  The way he was looking at her and the slow, almost drawling quality of his words made Risa feel like she’d been stroked. Her thoughts fragmented. With something close to desperation, she started thumbing through the next catalog. Nothing in it inspired her. Nothing in it made her forget the look in Shane’s beautiful jade eyes.

  When she looked up, he was still watching her like a man with tasting on his mind. Nervously she wet her lips, saw his eyes narrow, and knew she was getting in way over her head.

  And it wasn’t nearly as deep as she wanted to be.

  She had to ask Niall about another job. Soon. Really soon. Like the instant Shane left her office. She could only pray that would be soon enough. She had never seen that particular smoky quality to his eyes. They burned.

  So did she.

  “What about this?” Shane asked, sliding the magazine out from the bottom of the pile.

  She stared blankly down at an artist’s rendering of life among the Druids. The Druid in the picture was imposing, dark-haired, dressed in white robes, wore a gold gorget that covered most of his chest . . . and he had eyes the exact color of Shane’s. He was looking at her, into her.

  And he was Shane Tannahill.

  She had a dizzying feeling of something turning under her feet like loose stones, throwing her off balance.

  “Risa?” His hand waved in front of her face. “Where are you?”

  She shook her head sharply. “Guess I shouldn’t have drunk that second Cosmopolitan last night. I feel a little odd. So, what about this Druid?”

  “Not this Druid, the Druid hoard.”

  “Have you taken up smoking crack?” she asked impatiently.

  “No. Just a little light reading. The Druid hoard—”

  “Doesn’t exist,” she cut in. “There is no treasure hoard of sacred golden objects buried by Merlin in sixth- or seventh-century Wales or Cornwall just before Druidic learning was finally and forever trampled into the mud by Christianity. There are other hoards that have been found and melted and sold and hidden and buried and found and kept and passed from family to family. But—listen closely, this is important—there is no Druid hoard.”

  “It would be a great casino attraction,” Shane pointed out, deadpan. “Just what I need for the show.”

  “If it existed, it would be wonderful.” She took a breath and spoke with great care. “If. It. Existed. It doesn’t.”

  “It does.”

  “Shane—”

  He talked over her. “A guy just offered to sell some of it to me. Two million. Cash. And that’s a minimum bid. Plus my ten thousand reward, no questions asked. For that I get first look and last bid.”

  She put her head in her hands. “Please, God. Not again. How many times have you been offered Druid sacred objects in the last year? Three? Five? Eight?”

  “Nine, but who’s counting?” he said. “Given the fact that I’m rich, collect gold artifacts, have a Celtic name, and am opening a whole new gold gallery based on Celtic gold, I’m offered Celtic objects more often than I’m offered sex.”

  “Bullshit,” she muttered into her hands.

  She wasn’t quiet enough.

  “It works better if you look at me when you tell me you think I’m sexy and irresistible,” he said.

  Her head snapped up. “I didn’t say that!”

  “Sure you did. Think about it.”

  “But—”

  He kept on talking. “And while you’re thinking about that, think about this: I’ve got a feeling about this tenth offer. A Druid hoard kind of feeling.”

  She thought he was jerking her chain. Then she took a better look at his eyes.

  He wasn’t teasing her.

  “Oh, shit,” she said on an outrush of air.

  He smiled. “Now you�
�re getting it.”

  She thought fast. She was good at that. It had gotten her out of trouble in the past. Maybe it would keep Shane out of trouble in the future.

  “Okay. Great,” she said quickly. “I’m not going against your gambler’s instincts. Hell, who would?” It was the truth. Those instincts had made Shane a millionaire many, many times over before he was thirty. “But consider this. Are you listening? Really listening, gambler’s instincts and all?”

  His smile shifted and warmed. “I love it when you go all big-eyed and appealing.”

  “You aren’t listening.”

  “Right now I’d have to close my eyes to listen to you.”

  “Stop,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air. “I’m not trying to jerk your chain, so stop yanking mine and listen to me.”

  He closed his eyes.

  She let out a soundless, relieved breath and asked bluntly, “Does the word ‘provenance’ mean anything to you?”

  “Yeah.” He opened his eyes. “It means you have your work cut out.”

  She wondered if screaming would help. A single look at his level, too-intelligent eyes told her that she should save her breath for the discussion that was coming.

  Discussion. She almost laughed out loud. Lord, what a neutral word for the verbal donnybrook that was shaping up between them. No matter how dubious the provenance of an artifact or how regularly Shane ended up very quietly returning the wrongly purchased artifacts to the country or person who had a better legal claim than mere possession, she had never talked her boss out of anything he really wanted.

  But she had to win this time. She couldn’t let him smear his reputation—and hers—by buying something whose ownership wouldn’t be legally defensible even if you had all nine Supreme Court justices lined up on your side.

  What a pity Shane was so rich. Anyone else would have been stung badly enough by returning stolen artifacts in the past not to keep on buying dubious ones in the present.

  The man simply had too much money.

  “Let’s assume that the Druid hoard exists,” she said. “Just for the sake of . . . discussion.”

  “Sure.”

  The careless tone of his voice made her want to grind her teeth. Yet when she looked into his eyes, they were serious and utterly focused on her. It was unnerving to most people to be the center of such intensity, but she was used to it. Besides, she’d caught herself with the same look on her face when her brain was fully engaged, focused to the maximum on some project.

  “Let’s assume that the Druid hoard was buried in the sixth century and the secret of its location kept for fifteen centuries,” she said.

  “It could happen,” he said easily. “Oral knowledge is passed down through families and secret societies all the time.”

  “Uh-huh.” Not bloody likely. “Now we assume that someone recently—”

  “Why recently?” he cut in.

  “Because if it wasn’t recent, the hoard would already be in someone’s museum.”

  “Or private collection.”

  “Possibly,” she conceded. “Just barely. I can’t imagine it being kept a secret. Collectors are a gossipy, rumormongering lot.”

  “Which is why we keep hearing about the Druid hoard.”

  She abandoned that line of argument. It wasn’t getting her where she wanted to go, which was the hell away from having to watch while her boss bought a stolen national treasure.

  “All right,” she said carefully. “We have a Druid hoard recently discovered—”

  “I’ll concede the recent part,” he interrupted, “but I reserve the right to revisit it.”

  Her teeth clicked together. He should have been a lawyer. “Fine. You have revisiting privileges. May I continue?”

  His smile said he was enjoying the color that flared along her cheekbones when she was angry. Lately, around him, that was about 99 percent of the time. She really had to look for another job before she killed him. Or jumped him.

  Right now she wasn’t sure which she would enjoy more.

  “Sure, go ahead,” he said. “I love watching you talk.”

  “If you make a crack about my mouth, I’m walking out.”

  “Your mouth?” Shane hoped he pulled off the feat of looking surprised. A lot of men must have told her that she had a mouth that made them think of the kind of sex that left everything it touched hot and wet and totally sated. “What about your mouth?”

  Risa decided she would enjoy killing him more than jumping him. Definitely.

  “We have a recently discovered Druid hoard,” she said with outward calm. “Chances are said hoard came from Wales, Ireland, or the south of England, possibly northwest Scotland. Agreed?”

  “With revisitation privileges, yes.”

  “To speed things up, I’ll assume that unless you reject something outright, you agree. With revisiting privileges, of course.”

  “Good idea.”

  His tone of cool reason made more heat burn along her cheekbones. All that kept her from walking out was his eyes. They were as serious as death.

  She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be the center of such intense concentration . . . and then to make those same eyes go blind with pure passion.

  A hot thrill curled out from the pit of her stomach.

  Tonight, she vowed silently.

  She would call Niall just as soon as she reached her apartment. No more putting it off.

  The time to get out was now.

  “So we have a recently discovered Druid hoard,” she said huskily.

  “Solid gold.”

  Her eyes narrowed briefly, but in speculation rather than anger. “Anything else?”

  “Sacred objects. Possibly votive offerings, more probably objects used in high rituals. Fantastic etched designs. Merlin’s private collection.”

  This time she didn’t bother to muffle her response. “Bullshit.”

  “Which part? Solid gold, sacred, possibly—”

  “Merlin’s private collection,” she cut in. “Can’t swallow it. Did the items come with a bloody label: ‘Made in Wales for Merlin’?”

  “He didn’t say.” Shane’s voice was bland.

  Risa’s voice wasn’t. It was cold enough to freeze alcohol. “The Druids couldn’t—wouldn’t—write. That’s how they kept their secrets secret.”

  “That doesn’t prevent a well-traveled court scholar who is also the adviser of a fifth-century Welsh king from knowing how to write Latin or Greek or even a version of the local Celtic language using the Greek or Latin alphabet, or even runic symbols.”

  “Granted. With—”

  “Revisitation privileges,” he interrupted. “Gotcha.”

  “Not yet,” she shot back. “Assuming this well-traveled, scholarly adviser was a Druid—”

  “Safe assumption,” he cut in again. “The Druids were advisers to kings and chiefs. That was their job. No revisitation privileges on that one. It’s as close to established fact as it gets about the Druids.”

  Maybe she wouldn’t bother calling Niall. Maybe she would just kill Shane now and be done with it.

  He lifted his dark eyebrows in silent query. “Something wrong?”

  “Is anything right?” she retorted. “Oh, the hell with it. I’ll grant it all. That still doesn’t mean you can legally own the Druid hoard, much less show the damn gold on New Year’s Eve! Unless you have a previously concealed desire to spend time in jail?”

  “Nope. Finished?”

  Her mouth opened, then shut. She licked her lips and knew she had to talk fast. Really fast. “Look, if it exists, the Druid hoard is the legacy of a time and a place when magic was real. Supposedly it was gathered and/or held by the greatest Druid of all—Merlin. No!” She held up her hand to prevent Shane from interrupting. “Supposedly the hoard was composed of solid gold objects inscribed with supernatural designs. Some sources say the objects magically vanished at Merlin’s death. Others say they went into the Druid hoard, which had bee
n passed down from the head Druid priest to the next leader for a thousand years or more.”

  “You read the article,” Shane said, lifting the magazine.

  “I read its source material in Latin when I was on my way to a Ph.D. I read pretty much the same thing in a translation from a seventh-century Welsh poem. I read it in a precursor to English so old it couldn’t be told from ancient French or ancient German. I read it in a scholarly text from Chaucer’s time. Ditto for the Shakespearean era. And I read reams of codswallop from the end of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Something about ending a hundred-year cycle brings out every nut in the fruitcake.”

  “I’m impressed. I didn’t find the reference from Chaucer’s time.”

  She blinked, absorbing the fact that for all his careless manner, he had researched the subject thoroughly. “It’s in a locked collection at UCLA.”

  “I’ll get a copy.”

  She didn’t doubt it. “No need. I kept copies of all the information I ever came across about Merlin’s gold or the Druid hoard.”

  Even as his instincts shivered up and down his spine, Shane became unnaturally still. “Why?”

  “I wanted to find it,” she said simply. “I went to Wales and the south of England and northwest Scotland and spent months . . .”

  Her voice died. She wondered how she could describe it to him, the time-deep silence of standing stones, the elusive whisper of hidden springs, the unbearable beauty of a crescent moon balanced in the arms of an ancient oak.

  “I chased legends,” she said. “It was great for my dissertation, but all I found were some places that made the hair on my arms stand up.”

  “Stonehenge?”

  “No. Oh, it was impressive and all, yet . . .” She shrugged. “It excited me intellectually but not here.” She held her fist against her belly. “Other things I found went straight to my gut. They were more real than my own memories.” Her hand opened as though to hold or to share something that no words could describe. “There were hill forts in Wales, standing stones, burial platforms, grave markers. All of them were too old to have been built by the people whose artistic style we call Celtic, but these places had been used by Celts. By Druids. These places were . . . different.”