by July Hall
He warmed the oil between his palms. It smelled of orange blossom. When he began to massage her shoulders, she gave a low sigh of delight. He smirked.
“How’s the rare trade world?” he asked as he rubbed. “I gather you didn’t get a chance to see the city.”
“That’s okay,” she mumbled into the pillow. “It’s been so interesting. The sort of stuff these people do, the clients they’ve worked with…they never give out names, but they did tell me one of their clients traded a thirteenth-century Flemish tapestry for a tank from World War I. A tank.”
“A house isn’t a home without one.” Charles pressed his thumbs beneath her shoulder blades and rubbed in firm, symmetrical circles.
“Uhhh. Oh yeah, that’s it.” She sighed again. “I never stopped moving today. It was great. They work out of an office really close to the HSBC building. The architecture blew my mind. I thought New York was dense, but this city is insane. Everyone’s stacked up on top of everyone else like a game of Jenga.”
“How was your escort?” Charles asked. “They assured me their security was very tight.”
“Well, yeah. When you’re moving that sort of stuff, it’s got to be. Although I guess the tank guards itself,” she added thoughtfully.
“I meant you,” he said. “This is a large city, very far from home, and I’m the only person you know in it. I made it very clear that you were not to be left at loose ends.”
She snorted. “Charles, everybody here speaks English. I would have been fine. But no, I didn’t wander off alone. There wasn’t time.” She turned her face to the side so he could see her smile. “Seriously, it’s been fascinating. I’d much rather do this than get on a tour bus.”
“What’s a tour bus?”
“Anyway,” Sandra said, “Meiling and I will be on point tomorrow for your three o’clock meeting with Mr. Zhou.”
“Are you enjoying working with Ms. Yu?” It would be good for Sandra to build an international network of connections.
“Yeah, she’s great. I…” Suddenly, Sandra went still, and then raised herself up on her elbows. She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Huh. I just realized something.”
“What?”
“You call other women ‘Ms.’”
“Yes?” Charles said, and then it hit him, what she was about to say. He felt his face heat.
“How come I’ve always been ‘Miss Dane’?” Sandra continued. She didn’t sound angry or accusing, just curious. “I thought maybe you were just old-fashioned or something. But nobody else in your family ever calls me that.”
True. Stephen called her Sandra, and Rosalie used other names Charles didn’t care to repeat. As for Charles, it wasn’t something he’d ever consciously decided on. Was it?
With difficulty, he said, “‘Ms. Dane’ strikes me as rather businesslike. If I’d met you in a professional context, I certainly would have called you that. But…” But it hadn’t even occurred to him. From the very beginning, Sandra had been Miss Dane.
An unmarried, available woman. Charles sighed. Sandra laughed. “Wow, how Victorian,” she said.
Charles glared at her. “I wasn’t trying to disrespect or insult you.”
Sandra shrugged. “No, but I think maybe you wanted to put me in my place a little bit.”
He raised his eyebrows.
She raised hers, too. “What? It’s okay. We were both kind of off balance. I didn’t know what to do with you, either.”
Then she blushed.
At the sight of it, Charles’s own embarrassment receded. His lips twitched. “But you had a few ideas?” he offered.
“Oh, shut up,” Sandra mumbled, and lay flat on her stomach again.
“Are you saying we immediately saw each other as sexual objects?” Charles continued. “I’m offended.”
Sandra reached toward a pillow with obvious threatening intent. He laid a hand on her shoulder, chuckling. Then he began to rub her again. She relaxed beneath his touch.
“Don’t stop calling me that,” she said. “I like it, since it’s just me.”
“Yes, miss,” Charles said obediently. She grinned. He put a little more oil on his palms and wondered why he’d ever thought there was more to life than this. “You were telling me about tomorrow’s meeting?”
“Oh! Right. What was I…” Sandra’s brow cleared. “Oh, yeah. Meiling says Mr. Zhou has a shortlist of items he’d like to discuss with you for a possible trade.”
“Any idea what’s on it?” Charles asked, more out of idle curiosity than anything else.
“The Napoleon chess set,” Sandra said, “the Renoir, the…that car, what’s it called? Oh yeah, the Bugatti Royale.” Charles’s grip tightened on her for just a moment. “Ow. What’s wrong?”
He’d forgotten about that damn car. “Nothing,” Charles said. “I just haven’t thought about the Bugatti in a long time.”
“Do you want me to call Meiling and say it’s off the list?”
The 1931 Bugatti Royale. Only six had ever been produced. His father had spent a fortune on it, even as the fortune was running out. Mother had loathed it. “No,” Charles said. “I’d just as soon see it go.” Hell, maybe he’d sell it if Zhou didn’t want it.
He wondered how much Sandra knew about Leon Magister. Bradley probably wouldn’t have talked about him much. She seemed to have a positive relationship with her own parents. She wouldn’t understand—
“What is it?” Sandra asked.
He realized he’d stopped massaging her. “Ah, nothing.” She rose up on her elbows again and made to roll over. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “No, I want to keep going.”
She gave him a small smile as she settled back down. “Five minutes ago, you were all ‘No, Sandra, let’s get a hot girl up here,’ and now—”
“I’m just getting the hang of it.” Charles lightly slapped one of her ass cheeks. Sandra yelped and squirmed away. He rubbed her buttock and said, “So that doesn’t do it for you?”
“Um, not yet,” Sandra said. “I like it rough, but I don’t think I want to get hit.” He stroked her ass. She sighed. “You can keep doing that, though.”
Charles felt a swoop in his stomach. He wasn’t sure if it was arousal, apprehension, or both. But that was ridiculous; he wasn’t going to hurt her. He rubbed a little more oil over his palms to collect himself. Then he started again at her shoulders and worked his way back down.
She moaned softly, and he felt a throb of interest between his thighs. Today had been too long, they weren’t in the mood, but damned if some masseur was going to coax those noises out of her.
He lost himself in touching her. The massage oil left a sheen that made her gleam beneath the soft lights of the bedroom. Soon it absorbed into her skin, leaving it fragrant and even softer.
Charles went down her back, over her buttocks, her thighs, her calves. He wasn’t exactly doing deep tissue, but by now he was more focused on relaxing any little knots than he was on teasing her. He’d set himself a job, after all.
When he reached her feet and began rubbing her insteps with his thumbs, she moaned again in pure relief. He saw reddened imprints just beneath her ankles where her shoes had chafed her skin. “You shouldn’t wear high heels all day,” he told her.
He’d expected a retort, but instead she just mumbled, “Uh-huh.” He glanced up to see that she’d gone limp as a boiled noodle. Her nudity seemed no longer sensual but innocent, someone stripped bare of everything but the need to dream.
He smiled, rubbed each pretty toe, and murmured, “Do you like Hong Kong?”
“Mm-hm.” She added vaguely, “I wanted to have sex with you in it.”
He chuckled. “I think that’ll have to wait.”
“Mmm.”
Charles stroked her calf. The oil was nearly absorbed into his palms, but he wiped them against the terrycloth beneath her and urged her to roll off it. “Under the covers,” he said.
“’m I sticky?” she slurred.
He p
atted her thigh. Soft, but not slick. “No.”
“Okay,” she said. Charles watched in amusement while she moved as little as humanly possible to crawl beneath the sheets.
“What about you?” she said, eyes closed.
He took off his own bathrobe and slid in the bed naked next to her. Emilia had packed pajamas for him, but they were a waste of space. “I’m right here,” he said.
Sandra sighed. A little smile graced her features as she snuggled up next to him, and when he put his arm around her, she went straight to sleep. Charles turned off the lamp.
It seemed like only a few seconds later when he felt her light touch on his shoulder and the press of her lips to his forehead. Charles reached toward her side of the bed to find it cold. He opened his eyes, rolled over, and saw that she was fully dressed and smiling down at him.
“What time is it?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his face.
“Eight fifteen, lazybones.”
Charles propped himself up on his elbows and looked at the bedside clock in disbelief. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Do you have somewhere to be? There’s nothing on your schedule until noon.”
Charles glared at her. Sandra crossed her arms. She wore the most businesslike attire he’d ever seen her in: a tailored blazer and matching pencil skirt, and a crisp white blouse. She’d pulled her hair back into a bun. She was a young woman who wanted to be Taken Very Seriously while making a deal.
Charles leaned over the side of the bed and scowled at her high heels. “I like them,” she said, before he could protest.
“I don’t suppose you have time for breakfast.”
“No, but there’s coffee. They’re picking me up in ten minutes.” She carded her fingers through his hair. “You didn’t even move when I got up. I thought you needed the sleep.”
“I can sleep any time.” He hadn’t meant to sound petulant. “I’d rather spend this particular time with you.”
“We’ll have the flight home.” Now she looked uncertain. “I did say I was coming here to work. I really want to make sure this goes smoothly, Charles. I need to be there.”
She was here because she’d wanted to do something for him. He suppressed his irritation. They would have the flight, and they would both be in a good mood after a successful deal.
“You said there was coffee?” he asked.
Relief lightened her eyes. “Yeah, I made plenty.”
“Kiss,” he grumbled. She grinned and bent down for a sweet, tender one. He purposefully smudged her lipstick. “Oops,” he said, and rubbed his thumb against the corner of her mouth.
She grinned. “I’ll live. Have a nice lunch with Mr. Huan. I’ll see you at three!” She actually quivered in place for a second. “Oh my God, I’m so excited. Bye!” She hurried toward the door, paused, reached for the bouquet, and plucked out a peony. Then she was gone.
Disgruntled—he’d massaged her until she fell asleep, and this was his reward?—Charles summoned room service, which brought him eggs Benedict and the Wall Street Journal.
Oh, well. By the end of the day, he would hopefully have swapped out a car for a cup (or a bowl, or whatever it was), and he and Sandra would be returning to New York. He already had a few ideas about how she could repay him for the backrub on the flight home. Most of them involved her begging and begging him to make her come.
Yes. As he turned the pages of the paper, Charles thought this trip was proving very satisfactory.
* * *
“So this is it?” Sandra asked.
“This is it,” Meiling confirmed.
Together, they peeked into the glass display case housing a brush-washing bowl that had survived for centuries in order to be traded to Charles Magister for some other ridiculously rare thing.
“Well…it’s pretty,” Meiling said.
“Yeah.” Sandra looked at the delicate blue color, so pale it was nearly white beneath the display lighting. “Jesus. Twenty-five million?”
“This business teaches you that there are no such things as universal human priorities.” Meiling said it so smoothly that it must have come straight out of some Employee’s Guide to Rare Trading. “An item is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. That’s all.”
She smoothed back her black hair. Like Sandra, she wore a business suit. At a guess, Sandra had put her in her mid thirties. She’d been a pleasure to work with so far: professional, resourceful, and very no-nonsense. They’d found time to grab lunch yesterday and had talked business nonstop. Sandra was grateful for it. No intrusive questions about her personal life. She’d done Meiling the same courtesy.
Now they stood in the library of Richard Zhou’s penthouse, where he kept his Ru ware bowl under glass. At least it probably had more visitors than the cup in Charles’s house. Sandra felt briefly sorry that it was going to be moved to a place where it would see fewer people. Then she wondered if she was suffering more from jet lag than she’d thought.
“Its authenticity has been confirmed by two consultants,” Meiling continued. “One of them is local, and we flew the other in from Hangzhou yesterday morning. It was already thoroughly vetted by Sotheby’s, of course, when Mr. Zhou purchased it.”
“I’m sure.” Sandra looked around the library. This whole acquisitions thing was fascinating, but she still couldn’t turn off her inner designer. The room was all wrong. Oddly, she couldn’t have said how or why—which made no sense. She could usually look at a room and tell right away what needed fixing. That was her job.
The colors all worked: shades of red, terra cotta, yellow, bronze. The dark accents of the furniture matched the coloring perfectly, and the style was contemporary without feeling impersonal. But something about Mr. Zhou’s huge, expensive, professionally designed apartment threw her off a little bit, and she couldn’t say what ‘something’ was.
“So you really have no idea what he’s going to ask for?” she asked Meiling. “On the shortlist?”
Meiling shook her head. She said in a very low voice, “I suspect he doesn’t know yet. People like that…well, he wants to meet Mr. Magister first. I think that’s what really interests him—trying to land the deal, not so much the item itself.”
Charles himself had suggested as much. “What do you mean, ‘people like that’?” Sandra asked.
Meiling shrugged. “I deal with them every day. That’s how they are. It’s not the things. It’s not the money. It’s the power.” She lowered her voice even more. “He’ll find the thing Mr. Magister wants to give up the least and negotiate for it.”
Good luck with that. Charles wasn’t attached to anything on the list, although he’d seemed taken aback when she’d mentioned the Bugatti Royale. He hadn’t said why, though.
“Um, if Mr. Magister is okay with trading everything, what will Mr. Zhou do?” Sandra asked. “I mean, that’s the whole point of the list. Stuff he’s willing to let go of.”
Meiling shook her head and smiled. “Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
Sandra’s face heated. Meiling was right. Charles wouldn’t want to get out negotiated. It wouldn’t be just about the item with him, either. So she’d traveled halfway across the world for a pissing contest. Great.
Well, it was up to him, she thought. She’d done her job and fulfilled her promise to him. If measuring his dick against Mr. Zhou’s was more important than righting a childhood mistake—or however he was looking at this—that was his problem. No, his issue. No, his decision.
She shouldn’t take any of this personally. That would be childish.
“Where’s the tooth?” she whispered.
“I’ve been wondering,” Meiling admitted. “I wouldn’t dare ask.” She glanced at Sandra with her eyebrows raised. “I hear it’s got a cavity.”
Sandra wrinkled her nose. Meiling nodded in agreement.
They heard the sound of footsteps behind them, and turned as one to meet the mysterious Richard Zhou.
Sandra had been picturing him in a suit. It see
med like everyone in Charles’s circle wore suits all the time. But in his own home on a Saturday, Mr. Zhou was casually dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. He was not quite as tall as Charles, but he was broader in the shoulders.
His dark hair showed no hint of gray, but she knew he had to be older than Charles. He had two sons who managed his casinos, and they were in their early thirties. It was easy for Sandra to forget that Charles was actually on the younger side of the men in his set, and yet he’d occupied his seat of power for twenty years.
She’d had absolutely nothing to do with any of that, but at the thought, Sandra felt a fierce surge of pride in him.
Meiling gave Mr. Zhou a short bow. He shook her hand and spoke in Chinese. Sandra couldn’t understand, but it was clearly a greeting. Then he turned to Sandra.
Taking her cue, Sandra also offered a bow and remained silent. He gave her a thin smile and extended his hand toward her. “Good afternoon,” he said. “You are working with Ms. Yu?”
“Yes, Mr. Zhou.” Sandra smiled and took his hand. “My name is Sandra Dane. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
Mr. Zhou looked into her eyes. His own eyes were dark and…really cold. They reminded her of Charles on the night they’d met, when they’d been formally introduced. Charles had been Mr. Magister then, with no hint of the passionate man beneath the frozen surface.
Sandra wondered if any such man lurked beneath Mr. Zhou’s surface. Somehow she doubted it. Even when Charles had been at his most intimidating, she hadn’t wanted to crawl under a table and hide from him.
Now she realized what was wrong with this warm, stylish apartment. Mr. Zhou didn’t match anything in it. It was like unfolding a soft pashmina scarf to find a dagger wrapped inside.
He let go of her hand. “You’re looking at me most intently, Ms. Dane. Are you trying to work me out?” His lips twitched.
Sandra’s breath caught. She almost said, Sorry, I guess I’ve gotten used to doing that, but stopped herself just in time. Instead, she repressed her urge to stammer and squirm. She’d stepped up to the mark with Charles, and she could do it with Zhou, too.
“That wasn’t my intention, Mr. Zhou,” she lied. “I apologize if I’ve given offense.”