by Lauren Smith
He was starting to learn that Callie disrupted every single plan he made. He knew now that she’d likely be upset if he left her alone in her room. But it wasn’t just that. He wanted to be with her in his bed, too. Curling his body around hers each night had become a security he hadn’t predicted he would need. The emptiness of his arms without her left a hollow feeling inside him.
He laid her down on his bed and pulled the sheets back. She didn’t stir at all, not even when he shifted her beneath the comforter. The soft chatter of the birds from the other room distracted him. He strode back into her room and walked up to the elegant cage Michel had brought. The birds were tucked up in a preconstructed nest, something Michel no doubt thought was necessary.
Their little green beaks and peach-colored faces were attractive. The female lovebird was cuddled deep into the nest, eyes half closed as she chirped every now and then. Her protective mate hovered close by, singing softly as though to put her to sleep. Wes watched them in fascination. He’d never been allowed to have pets as a child, and over the years he’d locked that part of his dreams away. Even after moving out at eighteen, he’d never found an excuse to get a pet. Until he’d seen Callie’s face. The whirlwind of color in the lovebirds’ cage had caught her attention and the look of wonder on her face had been the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. And he had looked upon some of the most beautiful women the world had ever seen.
None of them compare to her.
Every time he looked at her, everything around him seemed to slow and fade out until there was only her. She was young and innocent of the dark parts of the world, but her soul was old, wise beyond her twenty years. She understood people on a deeper level than he did. The artist inside her saw the world through a lens he’d never imagined possible. When she drew things, he was able to see into her mind and heart. She transported him beyond his own body and into a world she created. And that was only the beginning. Her potential was unbelievable. He knew she was going to fight him on art school, but he wasn’t going to let her throw away her talent.
He lifted the cage stand and carried it into his room. The birds would need interaction with people. Since it seemed Callie would be spending more time in his room, the birds would need to be there as well. Michel had left a white cloth on a metal ring beneath the cage. Wes lifted it up and dropped it over the cage where it covered the bars fully. The birds quieted and Wes smiled, pleased that they would rest, too. He was responsible for the feathery little lovers now and he was growing fonder of them by the minute, and not just because they made Callie light up like the sun.
He started back toward his bed when his cell phone vibrated. He picked it up off the nightstand and answered quietly.
“Thorne here.”
“Wes, I have news about your Goya. Can you meet me at the Quartier Pigalle in half an hour?” Dimitri Razin asked.
Wes checked his watch. It was 11:30 PM. “Sure. I’ll be there soon.” He hung up and walked over to his closet. Dressing in one of his least favorite suits, in case it got damaged, he walked back over to the bed. Callie looked darling, sweet, and so tempting that he hated to leave her. He pressed a kiss to her hair, a tender gesture that filled him with surprise. She stirred at his touch and her lashes fluttered up.
“Wes, are you going somewhere?” She reached up to touch his white dress shirt and the heat of her hand seared him like a physical brand.
Fuck. He didn’t want to leave, but he had to see Dimitri.
“Sorry, darling. I’ve got to go out for a short while. Go back to sleep and I’ll join you when I return.”
That adorable little frown knit her brow and he brushed a fingertip over the little lines and smiled.
“Get some rest. We have a big day planned tomorrow.” Unable to resist the allure of her lips, he stole one kiss that ended all too quick. Then he was striding away from the bed. If he looked back now, he’d never be able to leave.
He caught a taxi to the Quartier Pigalle, or Pig Alley to the nonlocals. The quarter was located on the stretch of the Boulevard de Chichi from Place Blanche to Place Pigalle which was named after a famous sculptor from the eighteenth century named Jean-Baptiste Pigalle. In the past it was a den of inequity where wine was cheap and prostitutes freely roamed through the night. Now it was full of sex shops, peep shows, the Museum of Erotic Art, and, during the day, hot dog stands. At night it was different, almost like the red-light district in Amsterdam. It was an excellent place to meet Dimitri for a little talk, one he suspected could get interesting, given his friend’s tone. He sensed there might be more to this than just a conversation.
The taxi driver pulled up in front of a black building with flashy red lights that said “peep show.” Wes shook his head at the sight and slipped the driver his money before he climbed out of the car. A small alley split the two buildings, and Dimitri stood at the entrance, one shoulder propped against the stone building. He checked his watch, nodded at the alley where a car was parked. Wes followed Dimitri into the shadows.
“What did you find out?” he asked as he joined the other man at the back of the car. It was a nondescript sedan that held little attention for anyone who might pass by.
Dimitri smiled, but it was a grim expression. “I have discovered a most interesting connection to the Goya.” He fished out a pair of car keys from his suit pocket and opened up the trunk of the car. In the dim light of the distant streetlamps, Wes could just make out the shape of a body. With anyone else he would have been surprised, but Dimitri could be a little cavalier.
“Umph!” A muffled shout echoed up from the deep confines of the trunk.
“This is a man named Rudolph Giennes. He deals in art, don’t you, Mr. Giennes?” Dimitri shoved a small penlight into the man’s face, allowing Wes to get a better look at the man. Beady eyes, a face made of all angles and planes, he silently snarled when Dimitri ripped a strip of gray duct tape off his mouth.
Wes crossed his arms and scowled down at Giennes.
“What’s his connection to the Goya?” Wes asked his friend.
Dimitri laughed. “A fairly solid one. He had the piece hanging in his private gallery where he does back-door dealings. Wouldn’t tell me his fence for the piece. I thought you wouldn’t mind getting better acquainted with him on the subject.” Dimitri flashed Wes a knowing grin and Wes could read the other man’s mind.
“I’m not telling you a damn thing,” Giennes snarled.
Dimitri struck fast, smacking Giennes across the face. Neither he nor Wes liked art thieves or those who associated with them.
“Mr. Giennes, please,” Wes said, sighing heavily. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. I wore my least favorite suit tonight and can burn it later if the blood gets too much for my dry cleaner to handle.”
Giennes’s eyes nearly popped out of his skull.
“No!” the bound man hissed. “You’re not going to…” He stifled a yelp as Wes lunged for him, dragging him bodily from the car. Since Giennes’s legs were free, he struggled to run away but Wes dug his hands in Giennes’s shirt and spun him around, using the man’s momentum to throw him against the nearest building. Giennes groaned in pain.
“Listen to me,” Wes growled, shoving his face close to Giennes’s. “I don’t like to torture anyone for information, but my friend here, he’s Russian. Old school. He’ll cut you to pieces with a cigar cutter. Do you want that? Because if you do, I’ll stand by and watch.”
“Why the fuck do you care so much about a painting?” Giennes gasped, his eyes near black in the dark alley, but they glittered with rage and greed.
“Because art matters. It matters more than you and me. More than anything in this world.” Wes slammed the man back into the wall again. “I’m not letting some piece of shit like you steal and destroy something precious like that.”
Giennes still didn’t speak and that was it. Wes shot a glance over his shoulder at Dimitri, who was lounging back against his car, legs crossed at the ankles and looking bored
.
“Dimitri, your cigar cutter please.” Still gripping the thief with one hand, he held out his other hand, palm up, toward the Russian.
“Of course.” Dimitri fished a small cigar cutter out of his trouser pocket. “Start with his fingers. He’ll bleed a lot, but he won’t die too fast.”
“Duly noted.” Wes took the cutter and jerked one of Giennes’s hands toward it.
“Wait!” Giennes thrashed about. “Fuck! I’ll talk!”
Wes relaxed, but only enough to pocket the cigar cutter. “Then talk.”
“The Goya came from an American. Someone out of Long Island. That’s all I know.”
Wes’s entire body went rigid. Someone from Long Island?
“Give me a name!” He let loose a shout and slammed his fist right into the wall beside Giennes’s head. Pain exploded through his knuckles and shot up his arm, but he held on to his control, barely. If he didn’t, he’d slam his fist into Giennes’s face.
“It’s a man, midthirties. He had a nickname, the Illusionist.”
“The Illusionist?”
“Yes. He puts forgeries in the place of the paintings he steals. He creates an illusion that the real art was never taken. Most people never know they’ve been robbed. He’s a right dangerous bastard. You’d never see him coming.”
Dimitri burst out laughing. “The Illusionist? Oh, that’s rich. We’re dealing with a dramatic thief.”
Wes didn’t see the humor in this. This was serious. Someone from his island was stealing art and selling it on the black market. Art sold on the black market was mistreated, often ruined, and usually never seen again. There was no honor among thieves and no respect for masterpieces either.
“That’s all I know,” Giennes insisted. “He’s rich, wore sunglasses the whole time we talked. Brown hair…” Giennes added these last few details, but that seemed to be the end of his usefulness.
“Dimitri, I trust you can assure me that Mr. Giennes finds a suitable way out of France in the next few hours? I’m sure he has friends in other countries to visit and that coming back to Paris wouldn’t be wise.”
“What?” Giennes stared at both of them, confused.
The Russian sauntered over and gripped Giennes by the throat, lightly squeezing. “My friend is much more polite than me. At home in Russia, I would have simply said, ‘set foot in France ever again and I’ll kill you.’”
“Kill?” Giennes’s voice shot up an octave in pitch, whether from fear or from being deprived of oxygen Wes wasn’t sure.
“A strong word, but an apt one. No one would ever find you when I’m through,” Dimitri growled. He continued to squeeze until the thief’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped forward unconscious.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of him.” Dimitri dragged the limp body back to his car and shoved him into the trunk. Wes nodded. He didn’t usually resort to such dark tactics, but he knew there was only one way to handle this and Dimitri had known best how to go about it. There was no sense in paying men like Giennes for information. He’d still hold back until the price was high enough. A little death threat was just as effective and a hell of a lot cheaper.
“Here, you don’t want to forget this.” Dimitri retrieved a white tube from the back seat of his car and placed it carefully into Wes’s hands. “The Goya. Take care of her, my friend.”
The relief at having such a piece back in his hands was intensely overwhelming, like he could breathe again.
“Thank you.” He shook Dimitri’s hand and left the alley, where he hailed a passing taxi. He didn’t want to think about a traitor on his island or what that meant for his friends like the Mortons who collected pieces and were willing to share them with the world. Art was meant to be shared, but also protected. In the hands of thieves, it was only a matter of time before it was destroyed. Knowing that some fool calling himself the Illusionist was stealing paintings made a veil of red descend over Wes’s vision. He would have to call the Mortons tomorrow and get hold of the FBI to let them know he’d recovered the painting.
Holding the tube with the rolled up Goya inside, he set it across his lap in the back of the taxi and gave the driver his address. The bed back in his apartment with a warm and willing woman was the place he wanted most to be in that moment. With Callie in his arms, he’d be able to touch her and soothe the raging fires inside him.
Chapter 15
Callie covered her mouth, stifling the scream that would have shattered the robust activity on the streets of the place the taxi driver called Pig Alley. She’d had him trail Wes’s cab and she’d been afraid to get out and follow him on foot. This was stupid. She shouldn’t have gone after him in a foreign city close to midnight. But she’d rationalized it by promising to stay in the taxi if things looked bad. She just had to know if he was meeting someone else. Part of her still believed she wasn’t enough for Wes and he’d see other women. Logically, her mind told her Wes wasn’t that kind of man, but late-night phone calls and leaving? What was she to think? That was how she’d ended up at Pig Alley.
The flashing lights and the questionable atmosphere had been one thing. Her father would have called this place a knife-fight magnet, since all manner of seedier things were going down. Sex shops, peep shows, toy shops, and women wearing very little and patrolling the streets with one goal in mind.
Clutching her coat around her, she remained in the back seat of the taxi, peering across to the street where she’d just witnessed Wes throw a man into a wall. The moonlight wasn’t bright enough to see everything in the dark alley clearly, but there was no mistaking Wes and Dimitri accosting a man. A man who had been stuffed in a car trunk…A chill rippled through her and she shivered.
“Oh my God,” Callie whispered. Fear sizzled like sharp electricity beneath her skin, frazzling her control until her body shook with the force of it.
Wes was a bad man. A very bad man. And she was all alone in Paris with him. This wasn’t good. What could she do? If she ran, he’d follow her. He’d made that clear enough. But if she stayed, who knew what would happen.
Was he involved in the Russian mob with Dimitri? Was that how he’d accumulated all of his wealth? His love of art was likely a front. Her stomach became a hollow pit.
What the hell was she going to do? There wasn’t an easy way to get home. She’d flown here on Wes’s jet. While she and her father were now out of the woods financially, it didn’t change the fact that she didn’t have the money to buy a ticket home. Even if she did, there was no guarantee that Wes wouldn’t come after her and stop her from boarding the plane. In fact, she was sure he would. The night’s dinner worked its way up her throat. She had to get back to the apartment before Wes did. She didn’t want to think about what he’d do if he found out she knew about his double life.
“Where to, mademoiselle?” the driver asked her.
“Back to my apartment.” She told him the address in the Rue Cler neighborhood and he pulled out onto the street. Callie ducked down as they drove past Wes. In his hands he held a white tube. He hadn’t had that when he left the house. Was he carrying drugs? Or money? Or something else? Callie didn’t want to know. People who knew probably ended up dead.
By the time the taxi pulled up by the door, Callie swore she had aged a decade from the panic and stress. The doorman recognized her and he hit the button to let her in. She shot him a strained smile and ran straight for the elevators. There was no telling how soon Wes would get back. When she got into the elevator, she leaned back against the wood paneling and focused on slowing her breathing. Panting like a spent racehorse was a dead giveaway that she hadn’t been sleeping. If he was heading back, too, he could be only minutes behind her and she couldn’t take the chance he’d find out.
When she got inside the apartment she rushed into his bedroom and stripped out of her jeans, sweater, and shoes. The terry cloth robe lay across the rumpled sheets and she jerked the robe back on. She was just settling back into the bed when she heard the distant open
and close of the front door of the apartment. The feel of the soft robe on her naked skin made her shudder. The last thing she wanted was to be bare skinned around a man who would likely kill her if he found out she knew his dirty secrets. But he’d sense something was off if she was suddenly wearing clothes.
The creak of the stairs from Wes’s footsteps shot her heart into her throat. She couldn’t breathe. Her head pounded hard against her skull and behind her eyes. Despite the cool sheets against her legs, her body was hot with building panic.
Please God, please, she silently prayed, her hands clenched into fists on the blankets and her eyes squeezed shut.
Relax, have to relax. She tried to calm down, focusing on counting her breaths, but knowing he was coming made her body rigid. Every muscle coiled tight and was ready to snap.
The bedroom door eased open with a slight squeak on the metal hinges. Wes entered the room as silent as a cat. Her ears strained to pick up on the sounds of him rustling as he kicked off his shoes and slid out of his clothes. The covers were pulled back and the bed dipped as he joined her. She flinched out of sheer instinct when he grabbed her, hauling her back against his body.
“Callie?” he whispered, voice full of concern. “Are you awake?”
She wanted to lie, but she couldn’t. He sensed she was awake.
“I heard you come in.” That was the truth. He tugged her so she lay flat on her back.
“You’re trembling. Are you cold? I can warm you up.” His voice was husky, soft, so perfectly seductive. So dangerous. One hand parted her robe a few inches, and he stroked a fingertip along her collarbone as he leaned over her, studying her.
“I couldn’t sleep while you were gone.” Not a lie.
“Well,” he said, chuckling, “since we’re both awake…” He trailed off as he dipped his head to kiss her.