The Secret Thief

by Nina Lane

  The college art library, an architectural firm, the high school. Anything to keep me in the art history field so I can find a way back to my career. Given what happened, it won’t be easy, but all I need is a chance to prove myself.

  Heartened by the possibilities, I leave the library and walk to a modern art gallery. A woman with a narrow, Picassoesque face glances up from a sleek computer.

  After introducing myself, I extend my CV. “I recently moved to Castille and am looking for an arts-related job. I have a PhD in Art History with a specialty in nineteenth-century European art, but I’ve taught classes on everything from ancient Greek to American art. I’d love to find out if you have any openings.”

  She scans my qualifications without expression. “One moment, please, Dr. Perrin.”

  After rising from the desk, she walks back to where a tall, slender man is directing the installation of an abstract painting. She hands him my CV and gestures toward me. The man glances in my direction. They converse.

  Something about their interaction unsettles me. Raised eyebrows, narrow glances, a sudden laugh. The woman grabs my papers from the man and strides back to me.

  “I’m sorry.” She extends the papers. “We’re not looking to hire anyone.”

  Well, then, what the fuck was that about? They hadn’t had time to do an internet search on me.

  I smile tightly and take my papers back. “Thanks for checking.”

  Straightening my shoulders, I walk to another gallery specializing in nineteenth and twentieth century East Coast artists. The owner, a woman with a streak of blond cutting through her gray hair, introduces herself as Sarah Ellington.

  “Impressive credentials,” she says after perusing my CV. “We could use another person on the floor. Can I get back to you tomorrow?”

  “Yes, of course. Thanks so much.”

  We exchange goodbyes, and I leave with a heightened sense of hope. Access to local art and artists could lead me to a new subject for a paper or presentation. Something that will put me back on the damned map—because I’m an astute, perceptive scholar, not because I’d spread my legs for a married business professor.

  Shame, old and fetid, surges through me.

  Oh, Uncle Max. I wish you were here but I’m also glad you’re not. Does that make me the terrible person so many people think I am?

  I push those thoughts aside. First, I cover all the art galleries, receiving “no, thank yous” at three of them, and an “I’ll give your resume to the owner,” at two more.

  Next, I stop at a French Provencal design and antique shop, where two elegantly dressed older women—nametags reading Vivian and Lucy—are organizing a display of silver jewelry.

  “How may we help you today?” Vivian asks pleasantly.

  “I see you have a Charles Calderon painting.” I gesture to a landscape of Venice situated on the wall behind them. “His use of color and light is lovely. I believe it was inspired by his trips to Turkey.”

  “Why, yes.” Vivian smiles at me. “Are you interested in nineteenth-century French art?”

  “I’ve studied it quite a bit. My name is Eve Perrin.” I extend my CV. “I’m an art historian currently living in Castille. If you’re looking for either a buyer or consultant, I’d love to help you.”

  “How nice to meet you, Eve.” Vivian scans my credentials. “We’re always looking to partner with experts.”

  Lucy, who is scrolling on her phone, nudges her colleague in the side. “Can I speak to you privately?”

  Though Vivian throws her a vaguely irritated look, she nods. “Excuse us a minute, please, Eve.”

  They walk a short distance away and begin consulting over my resume. Lucy shows Vivian something on her phone. My stomach knots with unease again. I’ve been on guard ever since that mess with David went down, but I hadn’t expected to be ostracized in a small Maine town.

  “I’m sorry.” Vivian returns, her expression bland as she hands me my papers. “We’re not looking for anyone at the moment.”

  They glance at each other, lips pursed. A sudden “you’re not welcome here” force radiates from both of them. I stuff my CV back into my satchel and walk back outside.

  As I return to Lantern Street, I catch sight of the Seagull Inn and Restaurant. The other night, a few people clearly overheard parts of my conversation with Juliette—or rather, her tongue-lashing of me—but that couldn’t have anything to do with this odd treatment.

  Could it?

  In Los Angeles, no one cares about other people’s conversations. Well, they might listen and smirk, maybe store the info away to include in their next screenplay, but then they go about their business because everyone has their own lurid story to tell. More than likely, a lurid sex story involving restraints, if not restraining orders.

  You’re not in LA anymore, Eve.

  No, but this isn’t Mayberry either. Aunt Bea isn’t running around spreading gossip about the new girl in town with the slutty past.

  Is she?

  Shit.

  I sink down on a bench. There’s no way I can hide from my past. News stories and pictures of me are accessible on the internet with a little digging, but I’d hoped that people clear across the country from LA wouldn’t care enough to bother searching for my name.

  But if Juliette’s caustic lecture had filtered into certain corners of town, and people were then curious enough to look me up… well, they’d find out renowned business professor David Landry had accused me of stalking him.

  That he’d taken out a restraining order against me. That I’d been fired from a prominent, tenure-track position at UCLA. That there were naked slut pictures of me plastered on internet sites.

  Even if all that had taken place on the moon, people would find it salaciously gossip-worthy, no matter where they live.

  I close my eyes. I can’t let this thwart my efforts. I need a damned job. I need to jumpstart my career again. I need people to believe me, not the stories. Not what they can read on the internet.

  I have nowhere else to go.

  Tomorrow I’ll start fresh with the chair of the Art History department at Ford’s College. I’d made the appointment with him last week. Though the Ford’s professors will know all about the scandal—everyone in art history does—maybe I can deflect the speculation first. Own the story. Hope people will respect me for being upfront.

  I have to try. I have no other choice.

  Deflecting a stab of loneliness, I start back to my car. Countless fairy tale heroines transform themselves, shedding the tattered clothes of their former lives and becoming the women they were meant to be all along.

  If only I could do the same thing.

  In the dusk, the sky shimmers gray-blue like a marble. I visit a hardware store to get whatever I need for the Toilet of Antiquity.

  The white-haired proprietor gives me a lecture about plumbing assemblies. I dutifully make notes in my organizer, noting that a “ballcock” is the mechanism for filling the water tank. I leave with a bag full of contraptions, one of which I hope I can properly install.

  On my way back to my car, I stop in front of a bookstore café called Jabberwocky whose window display showcases books about monsters, puzzles, and alternate worlds. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Eleventh Hour, the Mirror Mirror series, The Maze Runner, The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, Where the Wild Things Are.

  I pull open the door and step into a cozy space that smells like coffee and chocolate. Wooden shelves stuffed with books sit beside a café area of round tables, and a fire in a stone fireplace warms the room.

  Pleased at having found what looks like a town gem, I peruse the bookshelves. A tall, husky man with a neatly trimmed gray beard, in his mid-fifties, is studying the fiction section. He glances in my direction when I take A Tree Grows in Brooklyn off the shelf.

  “Old favorite.” I gesture to the book. “I haven’t read it in years.”

  “My number one old favorite is As I Lay Dying.” He turns his attention back to
the shelves. “Hemingway was a master.”

  “Er, William Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying.”

  He gives me a sideways smirk. “Faulkner’s Of Human Bondage is also exceptional.”

  “That was Somerset Maugham.”

  His eyes narrow. “Stendhal’s Madame Bovary.”

  I shake my head, smiling. “Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.”

  “James Fenimore Cooper. House of the Seven Gables.”

  “Nathaniel Hawthorne.”

  “A Wrinkle in Time by E.L. Konigsburg.”

  “Madeline L’Engle.”

  “Pride and Prejudice.” He furrows his brow. “Charlotte Brontë.”

  “Seriously? Jane Austen.”

  “The Master and the Margarita. Dostoevsky.”

  “Bulgakov.”

  “What are you, a bluestocking?” He peers at me, a smile curving his lips.

  I grin at the old-fashioned term. “Just a quiet girl who used to spend all her time at the library.”

  He arches an eyebrow and taps his finger on a book spine. “Reading Bulgakov and Flaubert?”

  “Harry Potter and Sweet Valley High, but I’ve picked up a few things over the years.”

  He gives a wry “young people today” chuckle and turns back to studying the books.

  Feeling better at having had an amusing encounter with at least one person in this town, I make my way through the labyrinth of shelves to the front counter. A crossword puzzle book on a spinning rack display catches my eye. When I was a girl, I’d loved doing crossword puzzles.

  I set the book on the counter alongside A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

  “Anything else for you?” A young man in his early twenties with a nametag reading Alex punches a few keys on the cash register.

  “I’ll have a coffee.” I study the chalkboard menu behind the café counter. “Café latte, please. For here.”

  “Ma, café latte for here,” Alex calls to a blonde woman in her forties who is putting cookies into the cold case.

  “Coming up.” The woman waves me toward the counter. “Two percent okay?”

  “Sure.” I pay for the books and hitch myself onto a stool. “You wouldn’t happen to be hiring by any chance, would you?”

  “Sorry.” She turns on the machine to steam the milk. “We’re a family operation, just me, Ned, and Alex when he doesn’t have classes at Ford’s. In the summer we sometimes hire another college kid or two, but we’re heading into our slow time of year.”

  She sets the coffee in front of me. “Did you try over at Seagull Inn? They sometimes start looking for holiday hires right about now.”

  “I’ll look into it,” I reply evasively. As if I’ll ever set foot in the inn or restaurant again. “I’m Eve, by the way. Just moved here about ten days ago.”

  “Welcome to Castille, Eve.” She extends her hand for a shake. “I’m Carol. What prompted your move?”

  “I inherited my uncle’s house over on Sparrow Lane,” I explain. “So does the job market pick up around here over the holidays?”

  She shrugs. “Depends. We used to get more people in town for winter, but tourism has dropped off a lot lately. What kind of job are you looking for?”

  “Anything I can get,” I admit.

  “There’s usually jobs over at the Hillman ski resort,” Alex calls from the cash register area. “When winter sports pick up, at least. Snowmobiling, ice fishing, snow-shoeing.”

  Given that I know nothing about winter sports, except that they’re cold and involve things like blades and poles, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be at the top of a hire list. Then again, beggars can’t be choosers.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I say. “Thanks for the tip. And the coffee.”

  I pick up my books, slide off the stool, and head toward the door. Buttoning my coat, I push it open. Just as I step outside, my body comes up against something rock-solid and strong.

  I stumble backward, my heel tilting off-balance. My bag of books falls to the sidewalk. Two large hands close around my arms, steadying me. Though the touch is one of mere polite assistance, my reaction is totally disproportionate as my heart crashes against my ribs and shock floods my veins.

  “Easy.” His voice is deep and all-encompassing, like the roots of an oak tree spreading beneath the earth.

  Easy? The word sounds odd, incongruous to my life. Nothing has been easy of late.

  I struggle to regain my composure and pull away from his grip. Aside from a few brief handshakes, I haven’t touched, or been touched, by a man in close to a year. I’ve smothered all my desire and physical urges, blaming them for instigating my downfall. If I hadn’t been attracted to David, if I hadn’t let him do what he did, none of it would have happened.

  Now I don’t know what to make of my reaction to a stranger. Even with a foot of space between us, my pulse is racing and my skin is hot.

  Trembling, I reach for the books I’ve dropped. He bends at the same time and picks them up before I do. He straightens and hands them to me. Our fingers brush, sending a shiver clear up my arm.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  I nod. He’s big, well over six feet tall, his presence blocking the street, his shoulders broad and his chest wide beneath a charcoal button-down shirt. I force my gaze from his shirt front up to his face.

  A hot sensation breaks open inside me, melting the ice lodged inside my chest. Gray eyes, the color of a granite wall, regard me from beneath thick black eyebrows. His features are strong and bold, the angles of his cheekbones sloping down to a square jaw dusted with stubble and a well-shaped mouth. His dark hair, long enough to brush the back of his collar, is messy in an unintentional way, as if he’s been dragging his hand through it.

  The rest of the world fades into black and white, all color distilling into the gray of his eyes.

  A sense of unreality washes over me, as if I’ve seen him before, but through a dream blistered with eroticism, the kind I used to wake from hot and aching.

  He steps away, then stops. His gaze arrows in on my face with a perception that is shockingly intimate, as if he can penetrate right down to my core. That look arcs into me like a shooting star, exploding heat through my blood.

  What the…?

  I can’t move, can’t break my gaze from his. Sudden tension laces through his body, tightening his shoulders.

  “I… I need to go,” I stammer.

  “Wait.” He moves forward, closing his hand around my wrist.

  I should be alarmed, but his grip is warm and tight, his fingers resting against the pulse beating wildly under my skin. Rather than controlling, his hold is steadying, the way an anchor keeps a boat from drifting. I catch his scent—all things I like. Salt and citrus, autumn leaves, the faintly bitter smell of ink.

  “What’s your name?” Urgency threads his voice, like he not only wants to know my name, he has to know. Is compelled to know.

  “Eve.” Why am I telling him?

  “Eve.” He says my name as if he’s tasting it, rolling the letters across his tongue, over the surface of his teeth, before swallowing them whole.

  I have the sudden sense he can do the same to me, like Red Riding Hood and the wolf.

  I drag in a breath and twist my arm from his grip. The loss of contact, the sudden cold, reminds me who I am and why I’m here.

  “I have to go,” I repeat.

  He backs away, one hand up as if he doesn’t want to scare me. Not that he could. I’m afraid of men who wear tailored suits, of lawyers, consultants, administrators, board members. He doesn’t seem like any of those things. With his dark, messy hair and whiskered face, his storm-gray eyes, he’s like a force of nature, untamed and unkempt.

  Move, Eve. Walk back to the car. But moving would require breaking eye contact, dissolving the hot sensation melting inside me, letting the cold back in.

  My God. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to feel.

  I tighten my grip on the books. “Who are you?”

  His mouth
compresses, a shutter coming down over his gray eyes. “No one you want to know.”

  Stepping back, he breaks the spell holding us together. He walks away, his long stride taking him to the end of the block in seconds. He turns a corner and is gone.

  I pull in a breath. A surreal feeling washes over me, as if I’d imagined that whole encounter. Dreamed it up from some deep part of me that still longs to be touched.

  I look back at the corner. The air shimmers, almost as if his absence has left a hole in the atmosphere. My skin still tingles from his tight grip.

  Oh, don’t, Eve. That path led you to destruction.

  I’ve changed, grown up, faced the punishment of my mistakes. I can’t get all wistful about a random encounter with a stranger, no matter how captivating he is and how unreal the sense that I’ve seen him before.

  Not to mention, he all but warned me away.

  In stories, nothing good ever comes from failing to heed an overt warning, no matter how great the temptation.

  Don’t go into the woods. Don’t unlock the door. Stay away from the castle. Don’t open the box.

  Above all, don’t even look at the beautiful, tantalizing apple.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I’m aroused.

  Three hours after my encounter with the stranger, my blood is still hot. It’s a strange feeling, almost foreign. I haven’t experienced sexual feelings in months. My memories of sex with David are all discolored with guilt and humiliation.

  Even before him, I hadn’t been intimate with a man in ages. I’d once enjoyed sex with a few undergrad and grad school boyfriends, but as a new professor at UCLA, I’d been so involved with work, research, and keeping up with my tenure-track position that I hadn’t had the time or the interest in dating. And during the year-long downward spiral of Max’s diagnosis and death, I’d fought just to keep my balance.

  Which was part of the reason I’d crashed into the affair with David. I’d lost my footing, and he’d been in the right place at the right time to catch me. It had been such welcome relief to focus on something else besides Max’s brutal illness, my mother’s tyranny, the pressures of work, my own exhaustion. It had been so nice to have a man focus on me. To lose myself in physical desire. I found myself craving the intimacy, his touch, his reassurances that everything will be all right.