Hot Legs

by Susan Johnson

Not a good choice of words, he realized, when she was close enough to touch, when his brain was segueing small and pink into a totally inappropriate image. “That small bead there,” he quickly amended, pointing again. “Do you see it now?”

  She blew out a breath. “Yes.”

  He half smiled. “It’s not an exam.” Picking up the minute object, he came to his feet, his priorities back in order. “Take it.” He held out his hand, the pink bead centered on his palm.

  She hesitated for a moment, the thought of touching him suddenly unnerving. When it shouldn’t be. When this was strictly business. When whether she touched his very large, tanned hand or not was incidental to her life.

  “Maybe you could find an envelope to put it in,” he prompted. The flush on her cheeks was damned provocative, along with all the rest of the provocative package from the top of her tousled curls to her painted toes in her spiky heels. But he purposely didn’t make eye contact. He had no plans to stay a minute longer in Minneapolis than necessary.

  As she raised her hand, he found himself anticipating her touch.

  Telling himself not to be stupid, he plucked the bead from his palm and dropped it into her outstretched hand. “Now all we have to do is see if someone in Minneapolis is missing a bead and whether they have an interest in the Rubens,” he quipped.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Probably.” He shrugged. “But you never know. We’ll check it out.”

  “Check out what?” Arthur inquired, reentering the workroom.

  “Show him.”

  Cassie held out her hand.

  “It’s probably nothing,” Bobby said. “I’ll need the names of the flower and delivery people, though. Whenever you get the names, send them along. You’ve added extra security?” With Arthur back in the room, Bobby found himself able to concentrate once again.

  Arthur pursed his mouth. “Too late, but yes.”

  “When does the exhibit open?”

  “Friday. Tomorrow, the trustees have an evening preview.”

  “I’ll begin with the employee interviews.”

  “The police have already questioned many of them. My assistant doesn’t have all the names of the temps yet, but she will soon.”

  “I’ll take the list of regular employees first.” Bobby looked at Cassie. “Bring the list to lunch. Palomino. One-thirty. Make reservations. I’m going to run a quick survey of the premises.” With a last glance around the workroom, he walked out.

  “You must have impressed him.” Arthur’s brows arched faintly. “He didn’t want you onboard.”

  “It must have been my witty conversation.”

  “No doubt.” Arthur wondered if the unbuttoned button had been deliberate.

  Cassie recognized sexual innuendo when she heard it, but she didn’t give a damn what Arthur thought so long as he paid her a consultant fee. “I’ll get the list from Emma and go over the names before lunch.”

  SEVEN

  CASSIE ARRIVED AT PALOMINO FIRST.

  When Bobby walked in, he surveyed the room, caught sight of her, and turned to speak to the maître d’. The maître d’, in turn, spoke to a waiter, who spoke to another waiter, who spoke to another, and a scurry of activity ensued as though Bobby Serre bore some intrinsic authority beneath his casual attire.

  The other diners—mainly businesspeople—looked up at the commotion, trying to gauge the importance of someone dressed in shorts who commanded such overt truckling.

  Seemingly unaware of the intense scrutiny from every diner in the room as he moved toward Cassie, Bobby smiled on reaching her. “I forgot to say I like corner tables.” He nodded toward the staff moving another party from a corner table.

  “You attract attention.” Although tall, dark, handsome movie-star types tend to do that.

  Bobby surveyed the room, and gazes shifted away. “Must be the shorts,” he casually said, helping her up from her chair. Waving her before him, he followed her to the table that was quickly being reset. After pulling out her chair, he took a seat opposite her—one with his back to the wall. He glanced at the blinds, and a waiter jumped to shut out the sun.

  She looked at him from under her lashes. “I’ve never been in the presence of royalty before.”

  “Drink?” Ignoring her comment, he crooked a finger at the hovering waiter.

  She shook her head.

  “Belvedere,” he said to the young man gazing at him with the awestruck expression of a rock star fan. “Four ice cubes.” He turned back to Cassie. “Don’t you drink?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But not today?”

  “I’m on my best behavior.”

  He quirked a brow.

  “Arthur said you didn’t want my help. I’m more polite sober.”

  “You need money, he said.”

  She nodded. “Although Arthur has trouble understanding the concept of financial need.”

  “He’s led a privileged life.”

  “I’d say you have, too. The waitstaff is practically bowing.”

  “I know the owner.”

  “Is she a woman?”

  He almost smiled. “Your husband left you, I hear.”

  “Arthur just left his second wife. Perhaps it’s a virus in town.” She could avoid answering questions, too.

  This time he did smile. “Are you in decline?”

  Facetious or not, she knew what answer he wanted. “No, just poorer.”

  “Can you handle the work?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t like tears.”

  What man does? she wanted to say. “I’m fine, okay? My husband just turned out to be a jerk. Nothing serious.”

  “Good enough. You brought the list?” He took his drink from the waiter and set the offered menus on the table.

  She tapped the papers beside her plate. She could do impersonal and businesslike—even efficient on occasion.

  “Why did you marry him?” he suddenly asked.

  “Do you really care?”

  He shrugged. “Consider it your employee interview.”

  “I was naive and stupid.” The last person she wanted to talk about was Jay. She couldn’t afford to lose whatever slight inner poise she aspired to. “How about you? Are you married?” Didn’t they say a good offense is the best defense?

  “No.”

  “Ever been?” Blatant curiosity couldn’t be entirely discounted.

  “Why?”

  “A yes, then. Did you get the house or did she?” She’d never met a James Bond type up close. She was allowed.

  “We didn’t have a house. I traveled. She traveled.”

  “What about the apartment, the toaster, the wedding album? I’m an expert on division of property.”

  “We had two apartments, so it was painless. She kept hers. I kept mine.”

  “You must have left her if it was painless.” All men are the same, she thought with disgust. James Bond types included.

  “It was mutual. Look, let’s change the subject. We’re not going to sleep together. We’re just going to work together.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Excuse me. Did I miss a segue?”

  “Whenever women start asking you about your personal life . . .” He shrugged.

  “You asked first.”

  “My mistake.”

  “Can I say ‘screw you’ and still keep my job?”

  His mouth quirked into a grin. “Yes, but no thanks.”

  “It was a figure of speech.”

  His expression went bland. “Gotcha. Let’s order and then take a look at that list of employees.”

  She forced herself to respond to his casualness with equanimity because a substantial sum of money was at stake, and she had no intention of sleeping with him anyway. But the indignity of being rejected before she could reject him was galling. With effort, she overcame her irritation by visualizing her checkbook balance growing, her bill pile diminishing, and her freezer filled to the brim with pints of Edna Mae’s ice cream. D
efinitely a soothing image.

  Glancing up from his menu, Bobby took note of Cassie’s half-smile. He was tempted to ask why she was smiling. But he wasn’t in town for long; he didn’t want to be in town long. He asked instead, “Have you had the sea bass?”

  Over lunch, while Bobby ate not only the sea bass, but a side of grilled rib eye, Cassie resentfully questioned the fairness of the world when he could eat like a linebacker and every leaf of lettuce she consumed potentially turned to cellulite. Not that she was precisely calorie-free in her choice of dessert. Maybe she wouldn’t eat it all though—maybe she’d just taste a very little of the chocolate torte with raspberry ganache. And the small scoop of house-made vanilla ice cream that accompanied it was almost minuscule. Really. Not to mention the fact that chocolate was supremely healthful, she’d read.

  Their conversation was restricted exclusively to the list of employee names. He asked questions about personalities, job duties, and lifestyles, and she answered with a brisk competence, offering up thumbnail sketches of the museum staff.

  Finally setting aside the list, Bobby pushed away the remnants of his tiramisu and met Cassie’s gaze. “Do you have any ideas on who may have stolen the Rubens?”

  “I’d like to say Arthur. He’s such a jerk. But he doesn’t need the money even a Rubens would fetch on the black market.”

  “How do the rest of the staff feel about Arthur?” He was suddenly looking at her differently.

  “I didn’t do it. Okay? Although, I admit, I did consider how the sale of the painting would set me up in style. And my dislike of Arthur is shared by the other staff members—their resentment only exceeded by their annoyance with his arrogance and stupidity.”

  “Everyone feels that way?”

  He spoke softly, but his eyes gave her a sense of unease, as though he could see inside her brain. She scrambled to cover up her private observations on his movie-star good looks. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a single advocate for him on that list,” she said, honesty tres simple in this case.

  “I’ve known Arthur a long time.”

  “Oh, damn, you’re friends. Although, if you know him well, his lack of staff support can’t come as a complete surprise.”

  “We climb together. He’s dependable—a necessary quality on an ice cap at fifteen thousand feet. But I’m aware of his shortcomings.”

  “How diplomatic.”

  “No one’s perfect.”

  She thought of Bobby Serre leaving his wife. Men liked that platitude; it made them blameless.

  “But we both know Arthur didn’t take the painting.” He leaned back in his chair, his scrutiny suddenly relaxed, as though she’d passed some internal litmus test. “We’ll begin interviewing the staff tomorrow. You can serve as liaison.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Smooth ruffled feathers.”

  “Definitely not my strong point.” At his lifted brows she thought of her bills. “But I’m willing to learn.”

  “Good.” He drained his espresso. “Meet me in the conference room tomorrow morning at seven-thirty. I’m an early riser.” Aware of the sudden flaring shock in her gaze, he said, “Set your alarm. I want to get through as many interviews as possible tomorrow.” His blue eyes took on a sudden coolness. “Don’t be late. I hate excuses.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His mouth lifted in a faint smile at her sarcasm. “Go to bed early.”

  “I’m a night person.”

  “You’ll have to change.”

  “I do so enjoy having a man tell me what to do.”

  His gaze was amused. “I don’t see any problem then.”

  She felt a completely incongruous sensual jolt as though some dominant/submissive sexual interchange had just occurred. “For you,” she muttered, feeling the need to guard herself against sudden danger.

  “For both of us, I hope.” He smiled. “I’ve some phone calls to make right now. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Had his smile been flirtatious? And what was with that casual “both of us” reply? But he was gone a moment later, and she was left contemplating the faux Matisse mural on the wall. She’d misunderstood, of course. His smile hadn’t been flirtatious, nor was there any innuendo in his remark. He was being polite, that’s all. Her fleeting moment of lust must have been induced by the rich chocolate torte. Besides deterring cavities, chocolate had aphrodisiac properties. Right?

  Taking a deep breath, she warned herself to get a grip. Obviously, it had been too long since she’d had sex. Not an excuse for what had happened, but a reason. Although there was no point in following this totally ridiculous train of thought.

  Bobby Serre had said he wasn’t interested.

  EIGHT

  ONCE MORE IN CONTROL OF HER FEELINGS—the drive to the museum offered sufficient time to rationalize away any further aberrant emotions—Cassie stopped to collect the list of temps from Arthur’s assistant, Emma. Bobby Serre hadn’t asked her to, but then he hadn’t told her not to, and curious after their discussion of the staff and robbery over lunch, she felt like drawing up a list of possible suspects on her own. It was pretty clear he thought someone inside the museum had copped the Rubens.

  “I don’t know if I should give you this,” Emma equivocated. “No one said anything to me.”

  “I’m helping Serre. I’m his liaison.”

  “I’ll have to think about it.” Emma had been a temp herself before deciding she could stand Arthur’s rudeness—the defeat of a dozen assistants before her. Over six feet tall, built like a female Viking, Fridley’s best volleyball player in the intermural league didn’t take any crap from Arthur.

  “I’ll introduce you to the great Bobby Serre if you give it to me.”

  “Hmmm.” Emma looked down at the list on her desk and then back at Cassie. “I can introduce myself. He’ll be back.”

  “I could tell him something nice about you. I hear women who spend the night with him are always smiling in the morning.”

  “Hell, as if you and I stand a chance,” Emma said with a grin, flicking the sheet of paper toward Cassie. “I don’t think we’ve done any international modeling lately.”

  “I’ve sworn off men, anyway.” There was no need to mention that Bobby Serre had already shot her down. Picking up the sheet of paper, Cassie quickly perused the score or so of names.

  “A cheating husband is the pits.”

  “And I was too stupid to notice. Can you believe weekends visiting his parents? And evenings with coworkers on Minnetonka?”

  “Hey—everyone wants to believe marriage is forever. You were into optimism and silver linings.”

  “More like castles in the air. I kept overlooking Jay’s personality change when his company started making money. We’d had a pretty good marriage before that; we laughed a lot in the beginning, went places, did things. Had fun. Jay was a great date. He just started getting a big head. After that, he decided he wasn’t in for the long haul.”

  Emma shrugged. “And there’s always bimbos.” She’d seen Tami once. “Men can’t resist them.”

  “I expect there are men who can.”

  Emma wanted to say she could have told Cassie that Jay wasn’t one of them the first time she’d met him and he’d looked at her in a totally inappropriate way. “You’re way too nice. That’s your problem.”

  “I don’t know about that. I’m currently fantasizing about Jay’s murder-that-looks-like-suicide.”

  “Good for you. I scared the shit out of my last boyfriend when I found out he was cheating on me.”

  “You’ve got six inches on me and biceps I’d die for. I can only scare Jay by threatening to tell Tami about his mother.”

  “Have you?”

  “Not yet. But it kept him from pushing me to sell the house.”

  Emma raised her fist and grinned. “Female power.”

  “It seems to be working for you with Arthur.”

  “You bet. I can out-press him, and he knows it.”

  Vow
ing to dust off her weights, begin her workouts first thing tomorrow, and get on the female power track, Cassie thrust the sheet of paper into her hand-painted carryall with Marilyn Monroe’s portrait outlined in sequins. “Thanks for the list.”

  “You ever need anyone—Jay, for instance—intimidated, you let me know.”

  Cassie smiled at the gratifying image. Not only did Emma stand eye to eye with her ex-husband, but Cassie was pretty certain she could out-press Jay as well. “I’ll keep it in mind. I may need you if he threatens to take me to court over that last painting.”

  Emma winked. “You know my number.”

  The temp list was long—a reflection of Arthur’s personality flaws. No one worked for him any length of time, which didn’t say much for those on the staff who were, like herself, either committed to the museum or the city or perhaps more flawed than Arthur. This was an ongoing personal debate she’d not yet satisfactorily resolved.

  But Cassie had an uncommon independence in her position, thanks to a grant from Isabelle Palmer specifically tailored to her expertise and person. Trusts and grants offered to museums could be dictated in general-use terms or for specific application—those applications often cited in the most definitive legalese. In Isabelle’s case, her trust named Cassie as its sole curator so long as she chose to remain at the museum. Should she leave, the trust would be renegotiated—always a scary thought with possible heirs preferring to put their inheritance elsewhere. Bringing in Isabelle’s fifty-million-dollar windfall had been a definite coup—even Arthur didn’t step on Cassie’s toes when it came to acquisitions for the Palmer collection. And the exhibit she’d prepared two years ago had garnered worldwide acclaim. The Role of Women as Subject and Artist in Narrative Painting had traveled to the Los Angeles County Museum, the Met, the Tate, and the D’Orsay. Cassie had felt as though Isabelle had overseen it with a smile on her face, a martini in her hand, and a dozen men friends surrounding her in her comfortable loggia on the Elysium Fields.

  Back in her office, Cassie studied the temp names, profiling each one in a few short sentences, conscious now of what Bobby Serre would be looking for in terms of information. Did they need money? Did they have family obligations? Wives and children? Ex-wives and children? Contacts or family outside the city or outside the country? Drinking, drugs, gambling habits? Not that she was familiar with all their personal lives, but one learned a great deal in the coffee room over lunch or breaks. People bitched and grumbled. Everyone had some trauma in their lives. If you put enough people together in a room day after day, the soap opera of life eventually unfolded.