“Okay.” She could figure out how to handle what she’d promised when the time came. Hudson’s mouth relaxed into a smile and she lost her train of thought. Those lips are off limits. She cleared her throat. “Let’s go over the schedule, then. I’ll make sure we have all the gear we need and make the travel arrangements.”
“Eve,” he interrupted. “That all sounds fine and I have no doubt that you have everything beautifully arranged, but do we have to go into details now? I’m starving.”
“Oh, sure.” Plates loaded with sandwiches and fries arrived as if on cue. Hudson’s appetite didn’t seem to be affected by stress, or perhaps this all seemed like a game to him. Eve was jittery and picked at her meal. Things were moving so quickly. She’d barely processed Hudson’s reasons for his artist’s block when he’d stunned her with the painting of herself. He was born to make beautiful pictures with his hands, and she was thrilled to see him on the cusp of such new territory, but it scared her to be so invested in him, to be working with him side by side. Not only because she wanted to literally be physically near him, bodies entwined, but because she felt connected on a different level, souls united, fates locked, and quite simply, she couldn’t believe he was meant for her. She was terrified that she would let him down.
“I have to get to the nursing home,” he said. “Let’s meet up later and you can give me the full download.”
She should embrace his help, maybe even use his expertise, but she needed space.
“I think I’m going to go up to San Francisco for a night or two, get some things I need,” she said casually. “Why don’t we do it later in the week?”
“All right,” he said.
They walked out to the street together, and Hudson held her arm to prevent her from walking away. “Be careful.”
Eve swallowed the lump in her throat. She was way past that. “I will,” she lied.
Chapter Twelve
Hudson stuffed his phone back into his pocket and picked up the wheelbarrow handles. He guided the load of rich brown compost from the storage area to the raised vegetable beds where a handful of middle schoolers were harvesting early cherry tomatoes and watering the soon-to-be enormous zucchini plants.
“Hey, buddy, watch the green ones. Let’s leave those on and we can pick them when they’re ripe,” he called out to a gangly boy who was indiscriminately picking anything round off the bush.
He was relieved that he’d finally heard from Eve. She’d waited until Wednesday afternoon to text him to confirm dinner at her place, where they’d go over the plan for Friday. She’d messaged him yesterday to say she was in San Francisco, and that she’d heard from John and everything was still a go. But that was it. He tried not to worry about her, but it was apparently a permanent condition. At least worrying about her safety kept his other worries at bay, like what had he been thinking telling her about Stephanie and his artist’s block. He’d agonized over showing her the painting he’d done of her, but she seemed to like it, which gave him hope. Not that he’d been able to do any more work since Eve had left. Her energy seemed to be the only thing giving him the strength to paint. Which was ridiculous. He didn’t really believe in the idea of a muse. Besides, she wasn’t exactly clamoring for the job.
Still, they had a connection. He knew she knew it. Which was maybe why she was making herself scarce. He had to admit he appreciated her taking temptation away from him, since he’d agreed to that no sex rule. What a great idea that was turning out to be. He poured the load of compost out with so much force the wheelbarrow flipped over, too.
“Woah!” Rue, Eve’s neighbor and one of the other adult volunteers, appeared and knelt to help him right the barrow. “Watch it, Hercules.”
“Sorry.” He didn’t need to take his frustration out on defenseless gardening tools.
“One more load ought to do it,” she said, waving off the apology. “Hey, I wanted to let you know that Jess and I are having a few friends over for Sunday Supper this week and I thought you might want to come. Maybe bring our mutual friend, Eve?”
“Sunday?” By Sunday, he’d have helped Eve commit at least one felony and hopefully severed her ties to her old life for good. By Sunday, maybe life would be returning to normal. Except normal was the last thing he wanted since he’d met Eve. “I’ll do my best to make it.”
***
“And then we’ll hand off the painting and head home. Barring unforeseen circumstances.” Eve finished outlining the plan and pushed away the rest of her Cobb salad.
“What kind of unforeseen circumstances?” Hudson asked. He’d already finished his second portion.
“Well, that’s sort of the idea. I don’t know. So we stick to the plan but stay flexible.”
“It’s a solid plan. I can see why you were so good at this.”
“Really?” Why did his compliments always blindside her? “Well, it’s the best I could come up with on such short notice. Normally, I’d have a lot more lead time than this.”
“What would you do if you had more lead time?” He seemed genuinely curious.
She poured herself another half glass of wine and moved to the living room. “It depends on the kind of job. A basic smash and grab requires a little reconnaissance, maybe two weeks of staking out the locations, figuring out the weaknesses in the security system, whether it’s a museum or a private home. For a switch, we had to have access to the original so we could have a duplicate made, then we had to plan a time to make the switch. Those were more delicate operations, but ultimately less dangerous.” She settled into a corner of the sofa.
Hudson followed her, but took up residence a safe distance away in an armchair, leaving the entire sofa to her.
“Because the owners wouldn’t know for a while that they had a copy?”
“Right. It gave us time to distance ourselves from the scene. Sometimes, they never figure it out.”
“Really?”
“You have no idea how many reproductions are hanging in museums, being passed off as the real thing. Not only copies of well-known works, while the originals sit in a warehouse somewhere or in some rich guy’s castle, but fakes in the style of a certain artist, which can sometimes sell for as much as a real one, if they’re good enough to pass authentication. Our forger was the best.”
“So, if you had the time, you’d rather make a copy of the Mondrian and somehow change the real out for the fake?”
“It’s not a perfect system, but yeah, it usually keeps the heat off for a while. Also, fewer people get hurt that way. The owner of the original is none the wiser and the buyer is happy because the item isn’t considered hot, and it won’t raise eyebrows if he’s associated with it. He tells people his is a fake, and everyone is happy.”
“Then why not sell the buyer the fake and skip the hassle of stealing the painting in the first place?”
“The kind of people who want to buy real artwork are not to be trifled with. They want the originals, and they have no scruples.”
“So what kind of guy is Deacon?”
“He’s the worst. An ambitious thug with delusions of grandeur. He fancies himself a gentleman thief but he’s really hardly more than a gopher. Unfortunately, the people he gophers for are very unpleasant, the Italian Mafia. Plus, he’s kind of crazy. He’s got it in his head that I owe him, and he’s not rational enough to take a payoff and be done with it.”
“Do you owe him?”
“Of course not! That’s why this amounts to blackmail. If I don’t deliver what he wants, he’s going to tip off my location to Interpol. Not that he or they have a shred of evidence against me in any open investigations, but the reason I came back to America was to leave all that behind. I wanted to start over.” Eve was desperate for this episode to be behind her. Then maybe she wouldn’t have to keep Hudson out of reach.
“How long have you been gone?”
“Ten years.”
He whistled. “You never set foot in America in all that time?”
“Onc
e,” she said. “For my father’s funeral.” Then she drained her wine glass and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make us some decaf and then it’s time to turn in. We have to pack tomorrow and Friday is going to be a long day.”
***
Two days shy of the solstice, the sun was still in the sky when Hudson headed back down the hill. He was keyed up from the download of information he’d gotten from Eve, and from the force of will that had kept them within arm’s reach of one another without touching all evening. He needed to burn off some energy with a run on the beach before he went back to his big empty house.
His brain swirled, thinking about Eve, wondering about her past. He had a hard time accepting this side of her, that she was a woman not only of mystery, but of danger. She had a very real bad guy who might kill her if she didn’t get him what he wanted. She had a past that could catch up with her even in a sleepy seaside town. She’d done things, explicitly illegal things, morally wrong things, for money.
He admired that she wasn’t apologetic about it. What was done was done. She had gotten out of it, was trying to start over.
He’d seen enough Hollywood movies to know how that usually turned out.
Still, he couldn’t help but think that she was as much victim as perpetrator. John, as charming as he was, was clearly a born and bred criminal. It sounded to him like he’d used her from day one, planting ideas into her head about art and excitement and money that an impressionable teenager could be forgiven for buying into. Once you were in, it must be hard to get out.
He contemplated the scam John and Eve had perfected. They must have had someone talented to do the forgery of the paintings. Before he’d dropped out of the art institute, Hudson had taken a class on the art of forgery. Part history class, part technical instruction, it covered the modern history of art forgery and some of the techniques used by modern forgers to fool authenticators. The class was meant to be a fun alternative to yet another studio class, and as some of his classmates would go on to work in galleries, museums, perhaps become authenticators themselves, the information would be valuable.
Once home, dripping with sweat, he detoured to his office on the way to the shower. It took only a few taps and clicks to find an image of the Mondrian they were supposed to steal. The small canvas, about the size of his computer monitor, was an abstract geometric painting with bold colors and clean lines, what the artist himself called Neo-Plasticism, on the other end of the spectrum from Hudson’s own free-flowing abstract style.
He wondered if he would be up to the challenge of reproducing it. Besides having the right canvas, the correct medium, using the right techniques to create something that would stand up to careful scrutiny and maybe even chemical testing, did he have the artistic chops to make it look like the real thing?
Not that Eve had asked him to, not that they even had the time to do it before they were supposed to steal it.
It should have bothered him how quickly he was thinking of them as a “we” and this lunatic mission as their project. He’d agreed to follow her instructions and not ask questions. He trusted her not to put him in a position that might be dangerous or illegal. She told him that the less he knew the better, because deniability was everything.
She was right on that score, so he searched for a few other artists on his computer, then deleted his search history, so it wouldn’t be obvious he’d been searching for the painting in question. He was already starting to think like a criminal.
Chapter Thirteen
It would take them about three hours to drive to their destination, a swanky resort hotel located less than a mile from the house that held the Mondrian. Eve had provided him with a very specific list of items to pack. Hudson marveled at her meticulousness. He wondered if she was so attentive to detail in all her endeavors, his mind rocketing to a vision of them in bed, her paying scrupulous attention to him, him driving her so crazy she had no room in her brain for details. His fantasies had been hard to tamp down this long week. As agreed, he’d refrained from putting his hands on her while they prepared for their escapade. He kept his word, always, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t rehearse a few scenarios for when the time came to end the ban on sex.
She’d taken the lead in every instance, telling him when to be ready so she could pick him up for the drive south. He’d offered to drive her in his pickup, but she’d politely declined.
“I might let you drive my car, though. Can you drive a stick?”
“Your car isn’t a stick,” he’d said.
“The one we’ll be using Friday is.”
There she went, being mysterious again.
He heard the car before he saw it, a throaty roar that sounded nothing like her sensible sedan. He’d been waiting, a little nervous, to tell the truth, on the front porch, his suitcase at his feet. Then a silver sports car whose shape he seemed to recognize from an old Bond movie shot around the last bend in the road and pulled into his driveway.
The sight of Eve unfolding herself from the driver’s seat, wearing skintight jeans, a black leather jacket, and red driving shoes did nothing to calm his nerves, or his libido.
“You ready?” she called, lifting her sunglasses to peer at him.
He could but nod.
“Then hop in.”
He hoped she wasn’t paying attention to how hard he was clutching the armrest as she accelerated onto the highway at what seemed like warp speed. He glanced over, and Eve looked exhilarated. She laughed at something she saw in his face, and took her foot off the gas, notching the gear up one as she settled into a straight.
“Where did you learn to drive like that?” he asked.
“To Catch a Thief.”
“Ah.”
She laughed again. He relaxed his grip; he was glad she was having fun.
Hudson let himself enjoy the view. With the wind at their backs and the ocean glittering to their right, they could have been two people out for a drive in one of the most spectacularly gorgeous natural settings on the planet. They could be heading to Montecito for a weekend escape; lovers who wouldn’t leave their hotel room the entire time.
He shouldn’t lose sight of the business they had to attend to. “Do we need to go over anything else? John’s meeting us there?”
“I think so. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. But the plan hasn’t changed.” She lost some of the lightness on her face. “Can we forget about all that for a little while?”
“Sure.” He leaned back in his seat, happy to oblige. “Where did you acquire this death trap, and when do I get to drive?”
The smile twitched around her mouth. “I rented it in San Francisco, and it’s not a death trap, it’s a Lotus Evora. How about we switch in San Louis Obispo?”
“Fair enough.”
“Tell me about your work at the nursing home,” she said.
Eve asked questions so she wouldn’t have to answer any. He’d been looking forward to having her all to himself on this car ride so she couldn’t get out of answering a few about herself. He still didn’t know anything about her life before she’d moved to Europe and become an international art thief. She never talked about her childhood or her family, except for that one mention of her father’s funeral. He was curious.
You catch more flies with honey. “I go in two or three times a week. I spend time with the people who live there, reading to them, talking to them, helping them write letters sometimes. I’ve gotten to know some of them pretty well.” He thought of Mrs. Sinclair and hoped her kids were going to visit this weekend.
“That’s so great. Have you ever thought about doing art therapy?”
“The idea has come up once or twice. Just because I used to paint doesn’t make me a qualified art therapist.”
“True, but don’t pretend that’s all in the past.”
His voice softened. “It could have been.” He thought of the promise Eve made to pose for him in exchange for his help getting her into the fundraiser tonight. He intended to hol
d her to it. Repeatedly, if he had his way. He was dying to see how far he could crack his creative brain open, using her as a crowbar. Maybe not the prettiest metaphor, or the most selfless motive, but his art needed her. He needed her.
A flush stole over her cheeks. Was she thinking along the same lines as he? Maybe he could dig a little deeper.
“So why Chelsea?” he asked, finally turning the conversation around on her.
Eve pressed her lips together, but finally answered. “My father and I used to come here in the summers when I was a girl. He never took much time off from the office, but he’d always take a week in July or August. We’d rent a beach house and I’d swim and he’d read all the John Grisham thrillers he never had time for the rest of the year.
“When I got older, I wanted to go to the fashionable places, like Marin or Carmel. So we stopped coming here.” She was silent for a minute. Hudson waited her out.
“I think he liked it here because it wasn’t pretentious. Also, he and my mother honeymooned here. She died when I was five. Someone told me about that at his funeral. Wouldn’t you have thought it would make him sad to come back?”
He took a few seconds to reply. “Maybe he felt closer to her memory there.”
“We had good times there. So when I decided to move back the States, Chelsea was the first place that popped into my head.”
“I’m glad,” he said, a hardness forming in his chest at the idea that they might never have met.
“Me, too.”
They were approaching the hotel when Eve’s cell phone rang. Hudson was acquitting himself admirably in the driving department if he did say so himself as the traffic got thicker the closer they got to Montecito and the 101 narrowed to two lanes.
She glanced at the screen and accepted the call. “Hi John, we’re almost—”
Hudson kept one eye on the road and the other on Eve. She’d grown very still, listening to the caller on the line.
“I understand,” she said in a clipped, cool voice. “Let me talk to him. Now.”
Love Unlocked Page 10