Hot Legs
Page 1
High praise for the novels of Susan Johnson
“Johnson delivers another fast, titillating read that overflows with sex scenes and rapid-fire dialogue.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A spellbinding read and a lot of fun . . . Johnson takes sensuality to the edge, writing smoldering stories with characters the reader won’t want to leave.”
—The Oakland (MI) Press
“Sensually charged writing . . . Johnson knows exactly what her devoted readers desire, and she delivers it with her usual flair.”
—Booklist
“Fascinating . . . The author’s style is a pleasure to read.”
—Los Angeles Herald Examiner
“Flat-out fabulous, sexy [novels] so textured they sometimes compare . . . to the phenomenal Judith Ivory.”
—All About Romance
Berkley Sensation Books by Susan Johnson
HOT PINK
HOT LEGS
HOT SPOT
TWIN PEAKS (with Jasmine Haynes)
FRENCH KISS
WINE, TARTS, & SEX
HOT PROPERTY
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2004 by Susan Johnson.
Cover photo by Getty Images.
Cover design by G-Force Design.
Interior text design by Kristin del Rosario.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
The name BERKLEY® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The BERKLEY design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
First Berkley trade paperback edition / June 2004
Second Berkley trade paperback edition / January 2009
The Library of Congress has cataloged the first Berkley trade paperback edition as follows:
Johnson, Susan, 1939–
Hot legs / Susan Johnson.—1st Berkley trade ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66689-0
1. Art museums—Employees—Fiction. 2. Divorced women—Fiction. 3. Bounty Hunters—Fiction. 4. Art thefts—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3560.O386458H675 2004
813’.54—dc22
2003069504
Version_1
CONTENTS
High Praise for the Novels of Susan Johnson
Berkley Sensation Books by Susan Johnson
Title Page
Copyright
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
ONE
DAMMIT, I COULD KILL THE SOB, CASSIE THOUGHT, scowling at the pile of bills on the card table. Not really, of course, but wishful thinking about payback for her lying, cheating ex-husband was front and center in her brain.
She was sitting on a card table chair in her very nice, very large, very empty kitchen because Jay had taken everything when he left. Okay, okay, the division of property had been agreed on months ago after much haggling, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t still be pissed in the echo chamber of her more or less stripped interior, trying to deal with the bills before her. Nor was she likely to mellow out until Jay and his irritating divorce lawyer stopped trying to fuck her over even now on every teeny, tiny detail of the settlement. He had nearly everything he wanted already. She wasn’t about to give him the painting she’d bought on their honeymoon, despite an apparent misunderstanding about the phrase “painting of the North Shore” in the settlement agreement. She’d given him the smaller landscape of Grand Marais, so screw him. Like he’d screwed anything that moved during much of their marriage, as she’d discovered much too late for a supposedly intelligent, twenty-first-century female.
And after apparently playing the field like a bachelor during their five-year marriage, he’d left her for the requisite bimbo—young, blonde, and richer than she could ever hope to be. Maybe if Tami Duvall could carry on a conversation without mentioning cute clothes and like the sweetest color of nail polish or the problem with keeping the white leather upholstery in her convertible, you know, really, really white, Jay would have less time on his hands to badger her. Cassie had enough problems trying to figure out how to make the house payment without any added pressure from Jay Sibley III, which should have been a warning flag when she first met him. What family from Biwabik, Minnesota, would name their son “the third,” for God’s sake? The main street in Biwabik was only four blocks long, after all.
Jay’s new girlfriend cum fiancée had a family estate on Lake Minnetonka—tennis courts, a putting green, a covered pool for the Minnesota winters or for those days when the lake was too choppy for morning laps—along with a couple extra “cottages” that alone had rated a spread in Architectural Digest. So Jay hadn’t wanted the house, understandably. He and Tami had decided on Swan Cottage, he’d said with a smug smile during the preliminary divorce discussions. And because he was leaving Cassie the house, he’d magnanimously settled for its contents to furnish the partially finished cabin up north he wanted—along with his car, motorcycle, four-wheeler, boat, and every other man toy they owned.
Theoretically, the division of property was fair enough. Cassie had the house she loved—a real plus.
Unfortunately, it was essentially unfurnished and much too expensive to maintain—definitely a minus. Along with the additional negative of having been left after five years of marriage for a woman she found so unbelievably shallow she felt as though she was in the center of a clichéd drama titled Every Aging Frat Boy’s Fantasy.
As a favor to her, maybe the high-performance fuel injection in Jay’s new red Porsche would fail as he crossed some railroad tracks as it did in cartoons. Nobody ever actually got hurt in cartoons—even if they fell off a cliff—so she could daydream without freaking out. Let’s face it though, he was more likely to live a totally perfect life with darling Tami behind the security gates of the Duvall estate.
On the plus side, her voice of reason reminded her, the divorce was final and she was no longer obliged to deal with Jay or his annoying lawyer.
There. Consolation.
Sort of.
Because she was still facing a pile of bills unlikely to be paid with the meager balance in her bank account, and no matter how she scratched out or rearranged the numbers in the two columns on the legal pad, the sizeable deficit in her budget remained. Damn. Where was a magic voodoo chicken when you needed one? Or that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow she’d actually believed in as a child? Even her lottery tickets were useless; she didn’t have one number that matched, despite the fact that she’d splurged and spent twenty bucks this week. How abjectly unlucky was that?
Her homicidal impulses rejected as impractical, not to mention illegal, and her financial straits acute enough to require a large bottle of Prozac, Cassie turned to the only consistent, tried-and-true, handy-dandy lifeline of consolation in her world gone mad.
Pushing herself up from the card table that served as desk, kitchen table, and makeshift computer stand, she slid across her beautiful inlaid maple floor in her Tasmanian devil slippers, reached for the freezer door handle of her Sub-Zero refrigerator, and fervently hoped she still had enough double fudge, extra nutty, Rocky Road ice cream to see her through her really devastating crisis of faith.
There it was like a secular Lady of Fatima—perhaps even a slight glow emanated from the frost-covered container—the cylindrical equivalent of perfect love, eternal friendship, and God’s goodwill.
One last pint of Edna Mae’s handmade ice cream stared back at her.
Perhaps there were silver linings after all.
TWO
WHEN THE PHONE RANG SEVERAL MINUTES later, Cassie hesitated, torn between the last glob of chocolate-covered almonds buried in gooey marshmallow at the bottom of the container and the call. She scanned the caller ID. There were people who would lose in a contest with chocolate-covered almonds.
But not Liv! Cassie lunged for the phone. “Where have you been?” she shrieked. “I’ve been trying to call you all night! You didn’t leave a message on your machine! I’ve been going nuts! I just finished a pint of Rocky Road ice cream because of you!”
“I’m in Memphis, waiting for a connecting flight home. I had to fly to Atlanta this morning to cover my boss’s meeting when he called in sick. And don’t blame me for your ice-cream consumption when you know damn well it’s Jay’s fault.”
“You must be psychic.”
“I don’t have to be. I’ve been listening to your marriage woes for months—and you eat ice cream every time anything goes wrong. I strongly suggest you buy stock in Edna Mae’s.”
“Don’t bring up money. I’m bummed. I need a shoulder to cry on.”
“Cry away. And tell me what Jay did now.”
“He didn’t leave me enough money, that’s what he did.”
“He didn’t leave you any money. You were too nice. Didn’t I tell you going for the jugular is normal in divorces?” Liv specialized in labor law, but she’d gone through a divorce the past year so she understood of what she spoke.
“I know, I know. Can I help it if I wanted to be fair?”
Liv snorted. “With Jay? Hello. He wouldn’t recognize the word if it hit him over the head with his favorite nine iron.”
Cassie sighed. “I really didn’t want to be beholden to him, either.”
“As if he’d notice.”
“Well, his teenybopper fiancée might, and I don’t feel like looking like a shrew to a millionaire’s daughter. Call me crazy or insecure—okay, insecure is the right word—but it’s the pits to be left for a younger woman. It makes me feel old when I’m not.”
“Damn right you’re not. If you were, I’d be, and thirty-two’s not old.”
“I know. But little Tami Duvall is twenty-two. Christ, she was twenty-one when Jay met her.”
“And he was thirty-eight. Idiot.”
“As if you or I are going to change the centuries-old tradition of men marrying women young enough to be their daughters. And I’m not trying to. Each to their own, blah, blah, blah.”
“You still should have made him pay more than you did.”
“In hindsight, you’re right. But it’s too late, so just tell me everything’s going to be all right. Tell me the sun will rise tomorrow on a brand-new shiny day and my money troubles will be over.”
“You’re screwed, sweetie, but it’s not too late. Let me sic Jack Donnelly on Jay, and your troubles really will be over. How does the phrase ‘IRS audit’ sound to you?”
“Jeez, Liv, I couldn’t be so brutal and sleep at night.”
“Suit yourself. Believe me, you’d never make it in the dog-eat-dog world of adjudication. Look, if it’ll help,” Liv added, “I can lend you some money to tide you over.”
“Thanks, but I’ve been thinking I probably should jack up my courage and ask Arthur for a raise.”
“Something you should have done a long time ago,” Liv observed in her smooth-as-silk client tone.
“Easy for you to say. You only have to deal with lawyers who think the sun rises and sets on them. Arthur holds the strong belief that he is the sun—which makes him blithely unaware that he’s actually a monumental ass.”
“You still have to deal with him, sweetie, if you want a raise. On the other hand, he’s only a man,” Liv added with the sardonic edge she used—postdivorce—when referring to the opposite gender.
“Unfortunately, he’s a man who doesn’t understand there are people in the world without trust funds. I’ve been avoiding his lecture on frugality and thrift that he trots out every time one of the museum staff asks for more money. This from a director who spends more on travel each year than some third-world nations. Asshole prick.”
“Atta girl . . . now you have the right attitude.”
“If he’d curtail even a fraction of his international meetings and museum tours”—Cassie’s voice took on a rising heat—“every curator could have a lavish raise and perhaps aspire to a modicum of his Sun King lifestyle.”
“You go, girl.”
“Everyone knows his quote unquote research trips to Istanbul last year had nothing to do with research unless a Topkapi intern who was young enough to be his daughter counts.”
“Whoa—perfect . . . casually mention that. I doubt his newest wife will appreciate a rival so soon after their marriage.”
“Get real, Liv. I can’t bring that up. I want a raise. I don’t want to get sacked for libel.”
“You could say you were doing him a favor—you know . . . making him aware of the gossip. Tell him you don’t believe the sordid rumor, but you thought he’d like to know what was being brooded about.”
“Would that be like—I don’t know—say . . . blackmail?”
“Such an unsavory word; I like to think of it as negotiating.”
Cassie slid down on her spine and stared at the leering Tasmanian devils on her slipper toes. “Which is why they pay you the big bucks,” she said with a sigh, knowing she could never be so brash, “and I’m eking out a living.”
“Doing what you like—don’t forget that, Curator of the Year.”
“That was two years ago, and you like what you do, too, for a lot more money.”<
br />
“Believe me, I have my days when I wonder if the word ethics has disappeared from the language. But then I remind myself that I wasn’t the one to coin the phrase ‘life isn’t perfect.’ So buck up, kid, there’s no reason Arthur can’t pay you more. Be a grown-up, and go ask him.”
“I guess I have to, don’t I,” Cassie muttered. Liv was an in-your-face kind of woman, while Cassie only aspired to that degree of testosterone. “Okay. I’ll do it. First thing tomorrow.”
“If you need some money to get you through in the meantime, just ask.”
“I might. But I’d prefer getting it from Arthur’s tightwad grasp.”
“I wasn’t as nice as you in my divorce, sweetie. I’ve enough to lend you whatever you need in case things don’t work out—hey—they’re calling my flight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
And the phone went dead like it often did with Liv.
She could have been a man with her style of good-bye.
THREE
WHEN NEWS OF THE MISSING RUBENS WAS released to the press, Bobby Serre was already on the first leg of his flight from Budapest to Minneapolis. With Bobby’s reputation as the best bounty hunter in the rarefied world of mega-priced art, Arthur Northrup had tracked him down within hours of discovering the theft. Nominal friends like so many in the incestuous world of art, Arthur had been able to coax Bobby from his vacation villa overlooking the Danube with the practical assessment that solving an art theft in Minneapolis shouldn’t be too time-consuming.
“Nothing ever happens in this provincial city. You should be in and out of here within the week.”
Bobby had grumbled because he’d only just settled in, but he agreed in the end because Arthur’s assessment was probably right. In his experience, outside the major metropolitan areas of the world where professionals operated, thievery in the hinterlands wasn’t rocket science. This was probably a quick cut-and-snatch done by some wacko who didn’t have a clue how to fence the canvas once he had it. Bobby had already alerted all his contacts in the art underworld to be on the lookout for an oddball trying to market the Medici panel. But he still had to go and have a look for himself. Fortunately, amateurs always left a trail a yard wide.