Whirlwind Romance: 10 Short Love Stories

by Alicia Hunter Pace

  Lucy rolled her eyes. “I know where the notes are.”

  “You do? How? No matter. Anyway, can you get them without anyone knowing?”

  “Of course!”

  “Great. Text me when you have them, and we’ll arrange to meet. The thing is I’m asking you to do something risky, so I’d understand if you—”

  “No problem. So, how did that old billionaire Taurel find out about the forgery?”

  Lord, was there no end to this girl’s information-gathering skills? “You know about that? I never said—”

  “Sometimes you’re so slow, GG. I overheard John Allen talking to Margot in her office. She always leaves the door open. That’s when she told me to get lost,” she explained, then snorted in disgust.

  “You absolute darling. So what else did you hear?”

  The waitress set Lucy’s cappuccino on the table, so Gemma had to wait patiently while Lucy stirred her coffee, sipped, emptied two packets of sugar into the cup, and stirred again. How the girl managed to stay bean-thin was anyone’s guess.

  “Actually, not much. John was going on about Big Mack investigating, that’s all.”

  “Did John say who Big Mack—I mean Mack Buchanan—works for?”

  Lucy chewed on a nail while she thought. “Um, no ... nothing like that. But Cruella kicked me out right about then, so I missed the rest.”

  “You have to keep this quiet, Lucy. You understand that, don’t you?”

  “Oh sure, but Jamie knows.”

  “How?”

  “I told him, silly. Actually there is something I want to ask you, GG.” Lucy worked a loose curl into the corner of her mouth and gnawed, always a sign that something was wrong in her world. “The thing is ... ”

  Oh, hell. She’d blabbed. Who else would she have told about the painting? Another dumb question. Everyone.

  “Go on,” Gemma prompted, bracing herself for the bad news.

  “Well, here’s the thing ...” Lucy paused, so Gemma reached over and gave her fingers an encouraging squeeze—although what she really wanted to do was shake the girl’s brains out.

  “It’s okay. Just tell me.”

  Lucy smiled weakly and released the curl from her mouth. “Do you think I should ask Jamie on a date?” she blurted out, her face turning bright pink. “He’s gorgeous, but he won’t ask me. I know he likes me.”

  For the first time since her nightmare began, Gemma found herself laughing. Poor Lucy. All gone to pieces over a boy. A very cute boy at that. “Oh, Lucy, of course you should. He’s just shy.”

  Lucy’s brown eyes flashed relief. “Really? He hasn’t got a girlfriend, and he’s not gay. I checked.”

  “How did you ... ?” She stopped, deciding she really didn’t need to know. “You are amazing.” She laughed again when Lucy frowned as if hearing the obvious. “Anyway, ask him out. Of course he’ll say yes.”

  “Okay, I will! Actually, I have to go. I promised to make tacos tonight.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll text you as soon as I have the notes. My first real assignment. This is, like, sooo cool.”

  Despite the seriousness of the situation, Gemma couldn’t help but see the humor in having Agent Lucy on the job. Never mind that Gemma’s reputation was all shot to hell and her career practically over. As far as Lucy was concerned, this was one big, exciting drama.

  “A regular Veronica Mars, that’s you. But please, keep this quiet. I mean it, Lucy. Promise me.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

  The trouble was Lucy didn’t get it. Gemma sighed as she watched her enthusiastic recruit weave her way between the tables to the exit, her ponytail bouncing higher than usual in her excitement. Of course Lucy would get her notes, and, with a bit of luck, she might be able to keep quiet about it, at least until the investigation was over. If McCallister’s found out, both of them would be fired without a moment’s notice and the police called. But Lord knows she had to do this. Her technical analysis notes held every detail about the Bonvalet. There might be something she’d missed in her carefully documented annotations. Something to put to rest the nagging, worrying thought that, despite her reassurances to Maxim Stonebridge that the painting was genuine, it could be a fake after all. One thing was for sure. There was a forgery out there, and it was either with Philip Taurel or somewhere in Italy. If nothing else, knowing which was which would give her closure.

  Closure that could see the end of her career.

  • • •

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Gemma stepped back from the door, too dazed by the question to even attempt an answer. She watched dumbly as her ex-fiancé strode into her apartment, his face thunder. Whatever he had to say, it wasn’t anything she wanted to hear.

  “Well?” he continued, glaring around her apartment as if the very walls hid some national secret.

  She couldn’t stop her irritation. They hadn’t spoken for weeks, but here he was, bursting in without so much as a hello.

  She put a hand on her hip. “Well, what?”

  “Some guy came to my office late this afternoon. Big, solid guy—around six foot three. Early thirties. Said he was investigating a matter at McCallister’s. You’d better start explaining what the hell you’re mixed up in.”

  Mack Buchanan. Could her worst nightmare get any worse? He had actually gone to Kyle’s office, probably around the same time she’d met Lucy at the café. The man really intended to follow through on his threats. But digging into her personal life to the extent of questioning Kyle at his work? That she didn’t need on top of everything else.

  Damn him.

  Kyle thundered on, not waiting for an explanation. “Just walked straight into my office while I was with a client, acting like a cop or something! What’s going on?”

  She felt a pang of guilt. Kyle didn’t deserve this, even though he was glaring at her like she’d just hit number one on America’s Most Wanted. Truthfully, she couldn’t blame him for being pissed. A top-ranked lawyer with the most prestigious law firm in New York didn’t need that jerk paying him a visit.

  “So, what did he say?”

  “Told the client to excuse us, said his name was Buchanan, then started throwing a lot of questions at me about Venice. Why I’d been there with you. How long I’d known you. It was liked some cross-examination. I told him to get out or I’d call security, but he couldn’t have cared less. I’ll tell you this much: the guy looks like he can handle himself.”

  Nothing like a brutal reminder. He’d handled her all over.

  Gemma sank down on the sofa, trying to think through the situation.

  “So what did you tell him?”

  Kyle dragged his fingers through his fair hair. “I told him we’d been on vacation.” He walked across to the sofa and sat beside her. “Venice? Why the hell would he want to know about that?”

  Because he thinks I met an art forger there.

  Venice. A relationship-repair vacation, that’s what the trip had been about. In one of the most romantic cities in the world—except not even Venice couldn’t fix her falling out of love. Strange to think that she would be married to Kyle by now if things had gone according to plan. She’d be living in his plush Manhattan apartment instead of her tiny studio.

  A fine man from a good family, just thrown away, her snobbishness-prone mother still reminded her whenever she got the chance. As far as her mother was concerned, if Gemma had paid more attention to Kyle instead of working 24/7 to finish her PhD in record time, he wouldn’t have gone off in desperation and had an affair.

  Desperation? As far as she could see, there hadn’t been anything desperate about Kyle’s cheating. She’d met Kyle at a gallery opening two years ago. She had been there with her mother, who recognized Kyle from the news. He’d been the lead defense counsel in a high-profile trial involving a congressman accused of murdering his wife. The case had been the talk of New York for months. Kyle had won the case and become famous. As far as her mother was concer
ned, money and fame made him perfect husband material. Within minutes, they’d been introduced.

  You can’t do better than a lawyer, her mother had enthused all the way home, especially one who’s going places—to the top, from what I hear. Until Kyle, her mother had always dismissed Gemma’s boyfriends as too unambitious. And the next day, Kyle called Gemma to invite her to dinner.

  Yes, she had loved him. And he was ideal husband material—no one could deny that. Stylish. Wealthy. And nice.

  She stared down at Kyle’s long, slim fingers holding hers. He had nice hands. A nice body from his regular gym workouts. Everything about Kyle was nice: from his fair hair and blue eyes to his immaculate business suits. Maybe that had been the trouble. He was too nice.

  She briefly closed her eyes, trying but failing to prevent the inevitable comparison with the man who’d been in her bed yesterday. That brute was more rough edges than nice. What her mother would think of him, Gemma couldn’t begin to say. But it wouldn’t be much, in all likelihood.

  “Did he ask about anything else? A forgery, for instance?”

  “No, nothing like that,” Kyle answered, his head dropping a little while he thought. He looked up. “What forgery?”

  Telling Kyle everything would be another risk. A whiff of scandal would scare the hell out of Cooper & Forney’s top criminal lawyer, especially now that he’d just made senior partner. Any suggestion that he was involved in an art fraud would be enough to send him into a panic. But Kyle wouldn’t leave without an explanation, so she might as well tell him everything. Except for one detail. That wasn’t for sharing.

  “McCallister’s sold a Frank Bonvalet landscape a month ago. Dreaming Atlantis. I authenticated it. Except, it’s ... ” Gemma scrunched a breath, still unable to say the word without her stomach curdling, “a fake.”

  “Oh, good Lord. How the hell did that happen?”

  Kyle asking the obvious didn’t help her anxiety.

  “That’s just it—I don’t know. Maybe I did get it wrong. The thing is McCallister’s thinks I deliberately verified the fake as genuine and that I was in Venice to meet with the forger.”

  She closed her eyes against Kyle’s huff of irritation. “You’d better tell me everything. From the beginning.”

  Gemma paused to organize her explanation; every word needed to be clear and straightforward for Kyle’s legal mind. He always got impatient when she dithered.

  Taking a deep breath for steadiness, she started. “The Bonvalet went to that billionaire businessman—you know the one—Philip Taurel. Anyway, yesterday I was called to Maxim’s office, and Philip Taurel was there with John Allen. Maxim told me Taurel’s painting is a forgery. Of course, I told him it wasn’t possible. That I did every test to ensure its authenticity.” She stopped, realizing she was gabbling.

  Kyle nodded. “Go on.”

  “Well, anyway, the guy who came to see you, Mack Buchanan, was there as well. I don’t know who he is or who he works for. He said it wasn’t McCallister’s, but it must be. Well, he ... ” She stopped again to work through her next words. No way must anyone know about her indiscretion, especially her ultraconservative ex. It wouldn’t matter that they’d broken up months ago; he’d still be disgusted at her leaping into bed with a total stranger. She didn’t feel up to defending her actions.

  “He asked me about why I’d been in Venice, that’s all,” she finished.

  Kyle’s eyebrows went up. “In that case, why does he think I’m involved?”

  “I suppose because we were there together, he thinks you’re mixed up in it, somehow.”

  “Have you gone to the police?”

  Gemma shook her head, although she was starting to wonder if she should. Maybe they’d help her with a protection order against Mack Buchanan. Although that wasn’t likely, given she didn’t know who he was, where he lived, or who he worked for.

  “I guess McCallister’s will bring the police into this, eventually,” she said, gnawing at her lip. “They must be terrified of this coming out. It would mean every painting I’ve authenticated would have to be checked.”

  “Can’t you meet with Stonebridge to explain?”

  “I’m banned from the office until further notice.” She frowned. “Does Miranda know you’re here?” Miranda being the stunning colleague who had consoled him while Gemma was working so hard on her PhD. Of course, it wasn’t necessary to bring Miranda into the conversation. Kyle hardly mentioned her, but even so, her name still hung between them whenever they talked.

  Oh, he’d had plenty of excuses for having an affair with the firm’s newest, prettiest intern. Miranda meant nothing to him, he’d insisted, as if that somehow made it okay. He’d even tried to guilt-trip her: Miranda wouldn’t have happened if Gemma had spent more time with him. If she’d been more available, instead of working on her dissertation every night. Then, after he wore out those excuses, the apologies came. The affair was all his fault. He was a fool. It would never happen again. Let’s go somewhere romantic to work things out, Kyle had pleaded, and she’d agreed. But by the time they’d stepped off the plane in Venice, she’d known it was too late to make it work. Too much water under the bridge, she’d thought, not missing the irony that they’d landed in a city of canals.

  Still, none of that mattered now. If she’d had a single lingering thought about giving their relationship another try, it had gone out the window the instant Mack carried her into her bedroom and gave her the best orgasm of her entire life.

  “I doubt she’d care.”

  What? She’d almost forgotten Kyle was there. “But I thought you two were happy?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t when his expression turned hopeful.

  “It’s not working, Gem. You know how I feel ... ” He shifted toward her, his hand reaching for hers.

  She jumped to her feet, almost tripping on the coffee table in her rush to escape him. “Please don’t do this now.”

  He followed her, stopping close, running a finger down her arm before taking her hands in his before she could back away. “I’m not giving up on us, you know. Can’t you forgive me?”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

  He quirked his mouth up in that warm half-smile she’d always liked, although right now it had a lot less appeal beneath his pleading gaze. “I haven’t forgotten a thing, my love. We were good together.”

  “I mean your girlfriend,” she clarified patiently, pulling her hands from his. “The one living in your apartment.”

  Kyle’s cheeks turned pink. “Oh, right. Actually, she’s talking about moving out,” he mumbled.

  That had to hurt. Being ditched by the firm’s junior intern would be pure hell for Kyle. The whole office would buzz over that one for weeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, although she didn’t feel very sorry. Or glad. She just felt fed up with the situation.

  “Look, why don’t we—”

  “Not now,” Gemma snapped. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sorry things aren’t working out with Miranda, and I’m sorry he went to your office.” She crossed her arms in defense at his frown. “With everything that’s going on, it’s just too much at the moment.”

  Kyle stepped back, his frown replaced by surprise. “Well, the partners weren’t impressed, that’s for sure. Look, if Buchanan comes into the office again, I’ll have to call the police. You do understand that I’ll have no choice?”

  Gemma nodded at the floor. “I understand.”

  “Does your mother know about this?”

  Gemma’s head flew up. Oh, hell. She’d completely forgotten about her mother. The last thing she needed was her mother on the doorstep, reproaching her that none of this would have happened if only she’d married Kyle. In her mom’s mind, everything that went wrong—even the smallest thing—was always connected to her broken engagement.

  “No, and she’s not to know under any circumstances. Besides, she’s on a cruise until next week.”

  Kyle grunted. “Und
er the circumstances, that’s good. Right, we need to deal with this quickly, before it goes any further. Come into the office tomorrow, around four.”

  She nodded again, thankful to have at least some support. He might be her cheating ex, but right now he was her only lifeline. “I will. Thanks.”

  Kyle squeezed her hands. “And get some sleep. You look like hell.”

  Gemma forced a smile through her misery. “You’re the second person to tell me that today.”

  She closed the door after him and poured herself a large glass of wine for comfort. Kyle was right. She needed to deal with the problem. Mack wasn’t going to give up on this, so she might as well meet him head-on.

  But how and where?

  Then it hit her. She knew exactly what to do.

  Walking through to the bedroom, she picked up his card, still lying on her nightstand, and pulled her phone from her bag. He answered after the second ring, but she didn’t wait for him to speak.

  “Mr. Buchanan. I’m ready to talk.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  No way was Dr. Gilmore ready to talk. Not in that tease of a dress and “do-me” shoes.

  But at this exact moment in time, Mack couldn’t say he was bothered about whether she uttered a single word. That short, low-cut pink sundress was bother enough. No sane man walking along Madison Avenue beside the mouthwatering Gemma Gilmore could ignore all that cleavage and the way her skirt flipped up around her thighs at every step. He damned well couldn’t. Just looking at any part of her body was enough to heat him. Hell, why not just yank the sexy pink princess into a side alley and have his wicked way with her? Get it over and done with. Then talk.

  Get a grip, Buchanan.

  She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “We’re here.”

  Where the hell was that, apart from Madison? “Here?”

  “Yes, here. The Enright Museum of American Art—and my favorite place in the whole of New York,” she explained with a sigh, starting up the steps of a brick building flanked by two massive columns. He almost tripped on his own feet as he followed, totally preoccupied with the sight of her hips swaying seductively in front of him. That had to be deliberate. She was good at it, for sure. Working her cute butt for all it was worth, her trim legs total perfection in hot-pink heels.