“Really?” she asked in a tone that told him he’d revealed more than he wanted to. “Why’s that?”
He winced. “We have a lot in common. Parents who are in the art world. A love of Italy. The language.”
“Right. I knew that, Lane, before I picked up the phone.” Perceptive Madison Foreman. “Tell me more, quickly, please.”
“We communicate well.” Lane fought for a rational assessment of how well he and Bella blended beyond the bedroom. Searching for words to be objective, he wandered into Bella’s small colorful kitchen and put the wine bottles on the counter. “We understand each other without talking. The body language is—”
Bella appeared at the corner, fresh from a shower, her smooth olive skin dewy with water and utterly bare.
He swallowed. Hard. “Clear,” he managed as he snaked out an arm and circled it around her delicate waist, then buried his lips in that tempting spot at the hollow of her collarbone. “We talk with our minds.”
“Sounds kind of woo-woo to me, buddy,” Maddie concluded.
Bella snuggled against him, her hands to the button of his waistband. “It is,” she whispered, obviously having heard Maddie and prompting him to repeat her own words.
He did, not able to find another set that might be better considering Bella was busy brushing her fingers along the skin of his ribs.
“Ahh,” Maddie chuckled. “What do you say in those moments?”
Bella heard and rubbed her nose down his chest to lick one of his nipples and elicit a grunt. His nipple turned to fire as he groaned.
“Is that so?” Maddie laughed lightly. “I think I know this language.”
“Does she?” Bella paused to ask and look up at him with limpid onyx eyes.
He sank his fingers into the satin hair at her nape and pressed his lips to hers for only a second. Her mouth left his reluctantly, still open as he gathered his damn wits and responded to Maddie, “Perhaps you do.”
“Can I ask if the person you are really communicating with right now is Isabella?”
“You can,” he told her as he bent to capture Bella’s lush mouth once more with his own.
“Lane?” Maddie asked none too delicately.
“Hmm?” was all he could manage as Bella’s hands brushed his trousers down his hips and cupped his cock in one and his balls in the other.
“I’ve got a case I need to get started here.”
“I understand,” he replied like a drone while Bella sank to the floor and flicked her tongue over the slit of his cock. He growled. “I tell you Bella’s good. Very…good.” He shut his eyes, wanting to finish the conversation and get on with enjoying the woman who was tonguing his hardening shaft.
“I have to make her an offer, Lane.”
Against his skin, he felt Bella moan as she drew away with a pop and stared up at him. Her large, dark eyes hazy with lust, she said in her accented contralto, “Tell her to give it to you.”
“Give it to me,” he told Maddie and Bella as well, his fingers gripping the back of her head to lead her to take him inside her warm cavern once more.
Bella laughed, deep in her throat and did as he wished. He nearly came right there, his cock so erect, so thick, so full he could hardly bear Bella’s languid strokes.
“Ahhh. Okay. Hmm. One hundred forty thousand. Lane? Are you there?”
“Yes. Yes.” He was here all right. Where the hell else would he go with Bella’s expert mouth loving him like this? “One hundred and—” he began to repeat.
“Higher,” Bella crooned and sank over him with such a strong, long pull that he thrust his hips at her.
“It is!” he told her.
She pulled away, unable to stop a giggle.
“Pardon me?” Maddie inquired in her professional, no-nonsense voice.
“I want more,” Bella said when she heard Maddie and licked drops of his pre-cum from his seam with the delicacy of a woman devouring a rare treat. He wobbled on his feet and nearly went to his knees. “Tell her. I want more.”
He repeated it, his gaze fastened on her lips. Pink, rhythmic, lush. Her mouth serviced him with such sure-fire strokes he had no freaking idea what he was doing. Only knew what he wanted to do. Have done. To him.
“Okaaaay. More,” Maddie responded with consideration. “One fifty.”
“Bene. And assurance of one month’s vacation a year,” Bella paused, her lips wet with his essence.
Voice hoarse, Lane repeated her terms.
“Agreed,” Maddie shot back. “Of course, we have best health insurance, usually three weeks off between assignments, profit sharing, a 401K.”
Bella smiled up at him, hearing all of it because now he had lowered the phone to her ear. Hell. Why pretend any longer?
But Bella still spoke only to him, her gaze glued to his. “I want a trial period. One month.”
He frowned. Why, he asked her silently.
Her expression was as closed as that of a master’s Madonna. But her hands pleasured him like a sultry lover.
“Lane?” Maddie asked.
“A trial period. One m—”
“Got it,” Maddie shot back. “Agreed. Anything else?”
Bella shifted her gaze from him to his cock, then sank her lips over him to totally envelop his length.
He had to put a hand to the wall to remain standing.
She withdrew slowly. “I want assurance that for that month my only partner will be you.”
He thumbed her lower lip. “She wants—”
“I heard her, Lane. What do you say to that?”
“Maddie, I’d say,” he breathed as he set the phone on the kitchen table and hooked his hands under Bella’s arms to lift her into his embrace, “I need her. I want her. I’ll do my damndest to ensure no other man will do.”
He hauled her up, crushed her to him, loving every inch of her marvelous mouth, feeling every sinuous curve of her breasts and belly and thighs wrapping around his. He kissed her once. “What do you say, Bella? Are we a team?”
“We are. One month.”
He couldn’t wait to begin and bent to scoop her into his arms.
Bella managed to pick up the phone and say, “Mille grazie, Maddie. You have yourself a deal.” She listened for a minute, then said, “Sì, ciao, Maddie.”
“She wants you to call her later so she can tell you more about the new client.” Then she clicked off the phone and put her lips to his. “Show me, Mr. Hallowell, how good a partner you will be.”
“Now that I’m not in a rush,” he grinned and strode back to her bedroom, pretending to be so fucking cavalier when he really felt like King Kong the Conqueror, “I have a few things I’d like to do all night long.”
She laughed, hair thrown back, as he set her down on the rumpled bed. “We’ll need more than wine.”
“I cook.”
“Superb!” She clapped her hands together and rolled away from him as he climbed on the bed. “I think I will be ravenous.”
He grabbed her ankle to pull her toward him. His mouth on her musky cunt, he nuzzled her, then licked her diamond-hard little clit. “God knows I am.”
Panting with his rapid-fire attention to her pussy, Bella blessed the concrete walls of her old building as she began to keen while he ate her. “I cannot bear this!” she yelled at him and fisted his shoulders.
“I must taste you. Again. Often.”
“You will!” She sank back to the bed, her arms out like a slave. And was she not? To him?
Oh, dangerous, Bella.
But his mouth was so sweet as he sucked her. And his tongue was so fast, so hard as he tickled her. And his hands, so commanding as he held her ass to lift her to his delicious mouth.
“Lane.” She fought for reason. “We are now one!”
He lifted his head, his jaw set, his gaze sensuous green and brown heat. “For only a month. I must hurry.”
“Hurry?” She tried to close her thighs. Impulsive, demanding man, he would not let her. “I will not ha
ve a man who hurries!”
“My thought, exactly.” He fumbled around on the nightstand and produced a condom, then tore it open and slipped it on. “I hurry to convince you to stay with me. Beyond the month.”
“You must prove—”
He circled her legs up, her ankles around his neck as he slid in deeply, totally filling her. “I will.”
She shuddered at his size, his heat. “I think I believe you.”
He began to move, a rhythmic dance that took her mind away.
And her house phone rang.
“No,” they both objected to the intrusion in unison.
“Maddie again?” she asked as the two of them halted, paused in mid-stroke.
“Calling on your phone?” He winced and shook his head once. “I doubt it. She knew what was happening here. So who?”
She gave his cock an internal massage. “I must answer. It might have to do with the Bargello again. Or another emergency.” As the preferred explosives expert in Italy she was on call with all the police departments as well as major institutions when a threat occurred. But at the moment she could barely put one thought in front of the other. Lane felt too marvelous to let him go. But she must. “We will return to this.”
He sank over her, his arms shaking, and kissed her lips.
The phone was ringing over and over. Not relenting.
She rolled to the side and struggled to her feet. In her hall, she picked up the receiver. A man began a flood of information. The Bargello’s director. “Sì, sì, Signore Silvestri. I understand. Where did you find it?”
“Beneath Donatello’s David,” he answered, his voice shaking with fury and fear.
“I see. Like this morning. And it looks the same as the little purse from earlier today?” This could hardly be coincidence. It just wasn’t possible that all American female tourists had the same taste in purses. And why leave another exactly like the first in the exact same spot? “Leave everything just the way you found it,” she said to him, regretting that her “interview” with Lane had to end. “Have you called the polizia again?”
Sometimes she was the first call even before law enforcement agencies were alerted. This would be an excellent opportunity to see how well she and Lane worked together, and access to Nemesis if the situation proved too much for La Guardia di Finanza or her to handle. Which was a distinct possibility. But she needed to get the panicked museum director under control. “Calm yourself, Signore Silvestri. The pack this morning was not lethal in any way. The polizia tell me the forensics prove what I detected.”
“No matter, I do not care what they say!” the young director pressed her. “They will return. My precious children, my priceless treasures, are in danger. Come at once. At once.”
“Sì, sì, I will come. I will examine this one. Not to fear.”
Lane came to stand in front of her and took her in his arms. His lips in her hair, he kissed her sweetly. But against her belly, she felt the strength of his very erect cock. She let him caress her back in tender strokes, her breasts beading against his strong warm chest, while trying to concentrate on what she was hearing. But she froze at Silvestri’s next words.
“What do you mean the Uffizi has the same purse?” How could the palace museum of the de’Medici along the river and more than ten blocks south of the Bargello have the same purse? What was going on here?
The young director of the Bargello was clearly upset, racing along in Italian, spilling out his information so quickly, she had to make him repeat his words.
“It is the same manufacturer as this morning’s, Signorina Sebastiani. L.L. Bean. American. Brown. As was this morning’s pack. But this time the person has left it beneath the oil by Artemisia Gentileschi.”
The Florentine woman known for her rare achievements in oil painting in an age dominated by male artists. “Which one?”
“Judith slaying Holofernes.”
“A woman with a sword,” Bella said immediately, her first thought of the similarities between the bronze statue of David the Goliath slayer and Judith the slayer of a nefarious Assyrian. Was there something symbolic about that?
“Sì. Sì,” he said. “Violent. Bloody.”
“The painting is, yes. But the David is almost sweet, were it not for the sword and the fact that David has his foot on the severed head of the giant.”
“Crafted nearly a century apart,” Silvestri told her, but he did not have to. Her years in Florence, her childhood listening to her parents and their friends discuss the lives and works of hundreds of artists had left her with a storehouse of information in her brain. “Donatello did his own version of Judith slaying Holofernes,” he added.
“So did Caravaggio,” she added.
Lane whispered, “And Titian, Rembrandt.”
“So many others,” said Silvestri.
“With few other similarities,” she narrowed her gaze, recalling one of her father’s friends who had told her of artworks which had been noted for the quotations ascribed to them—and political messages attached to them. “Donatello’s David stands for the freedom of man.” Again she tried to discern if there was a hidden meaning here.
Lane’s voice wafted over her. “While Artemisia and this work in particular stand for the liberation of women.”
She stared up at Lane. “Signore, I will be there in a few minutes. I bring with me my associate.” Then she hung up. “You will come with me, won’t you?”
Lane hugged her close. “You and I are now inseparable.”
Chapter Four
The Bargello was alive with activity when they arrived. Tourists had been evacuated and herded to one side of the sidewalk behind the Guardia’s blue and gray barricades. Bella smiled at the efficiency of La Guardia di Finanza, the police force of Italy responsible for customs and therefore protection of all artworks. The Finanza law enforcement were carefully chosen men and women of whom she herself had been one before she became an independent consultant last year.
Museum workers stood to one wide with some of the museum’s security guards. And beyond them, the local Florentine uniformed polizia wove another line of security. Standing with the agitated director, Silvestri, were two men in dark suits. Detectives of the Finanza. Isabella had worked with them just that morning.
“I would like to say it’s nice to see you again, Signorina,” the taller one said, advancing toward them. “But not under these circumstances.”
“I agree, Cappi. Let’s see what we’ve got. I’m going to assume this one isn’t another false alarm.”
“Only you can tell us that.” He looked over her shoulder at Lane.
“He is with me.”
Cappi frowned. “With you?”
She huffed impatiently. “Lane, show them your credentials.”
He flashed his Nemesis wallet at them and she tapped her foot in irritation while the detective examined the document closely.
“All right,” he said at last. “Scusi, but you know how careful we must be.”
“I would think his being with me would be enough, but fine. Let’s go inside.”
As she approached the door, Silvestri hurried up to her. “Signorina Sebastiani, you must help me. They are going to destroy my beautiful museum. These irreplaceable works of art.”
She took a moment to place a calming hand on his arm. “I am not going to let that happen. Now I must go inside to do my job.” She looked at Cappi as he opened the door. “My equipment is here?”
He nodded. “I brought it myself as soon as the call came in. I still had it in my car from this morning.”
The bomb disposal equipment made an ugly contrast to the marble bench it was sitting on. She sighed, handed her purse to Lane and took off her shoes. In seconds she was encased in what she called her “alien suit”, headgear in place, hands clamping onto long rods with claws on the end.
Lane noted that a lead shield had been rolled into place in front of the purse, but it had to be low enough that Bella could reach over it. Despite the fac
t that he was well aware she knew what she was doing, his stomach knotted with anxiety for her safety.
When everyone had removed themselves to safe distance, she strode slowly forward until she was standing at the shield. She extended the rods over the top and began working the claws. Meticulously she lifted the flap of the purse until its contents were exposed.
Lane held his breath for a long moment until she turned her head slightly.
Through the plastic in the front of her head shield he saw her lips moving.
“What did she say?” he asked the suit standing next to him who was talking into a lapel mic.
“That she believes the bomb is TATP and she needs a lead box with dry ice in it.”
He’d just bet she did. Triacetone triperoxide (TAPT) was stable only as long as the environment around it didn’t become hot. Then it could blow at any minute. He had a lot of questions, such as how it had gotten past the museum security with their visitor inspection policies. How the bomb maker or makers had kept it stable until they placed it and left, although the museum temperature was kept low of necessity because of the fragile condition of many of the artworks. And if there was a timer attached to it.
He found himself sweating while two other men suited up exactly like Bella rolled a sizeable lead box over next to the purse and opened the cover. The smoke rising from the box indicated it already had dry ice inside. He began counting the seconds to himself as she slowly lifted the purse with the claws and transferred it to the box. That done, she dropped the rods and closed the lid, then removed her headgear and turned to Lane.
“Three small vials that look like perfume,” she told him. “The white crystalline powder that is TATP travels better in solution.”
“The Mother of Satan,” he muttered.
She nodded. “Current choice of suicide bombers. But that’s not the case here. Obviously.”
“What now? And what about the purse at the Uffizi?”
“This box goes into the bomb disposal van while you and I run like hell to the Uffizi. Then I’ll defuse them both at the same time.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You can leave this one that long?”
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