The Collector

by Nora Roberts

  Except I was afraid someone would come in and shoot me.”

  “You’re feeling better.”

  “Much.”

  “I’m going to call Alexi, just in case the cops didn’t get the transmission.”

  “Okay, I’m going to check my purse, the car. They had plenty of time to install a bug or a LoJack.”

  She found the tiny listening device inside the glove compartment, showed it to Ash.

  Saying nothing, he took it, dropped it, crushed it under his heel.

  “Oh! I wanted to play with it.”

  “I’ll buy you another.”

  “Not the same,” she muttered, then dug a mirror out of her purse. She crouched beside the car, angled the mirror. “If I trusted absolutely no one, and someone had one of my gods, I’d . . . and there it is.”

  “There what is?”

  “The tracker. A LoJack. I just need to . . . I told Julie white’s not practical.” She stripped off the jacket, tossed it inside the car. “Have you got a blanket in the trunk? I really like this dress.”

  Fascinated, he got the old bath sheet he kept in the trunk for emergencies, watched her spread it, then, armed with her multi-tool, scoot under the car.

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m just going to disable it. They won’t be sure what happened, right? Later, I can take it off, see how it works. It looks like a really good one to me. They work differently—or have different ones for classic cars like this. I’d say Vasin’s security team’s ready for anything.”

  “You want to change the oil while you’re at it?”

  “Some other time. There, that did it.”

  She scooted out again, sat up, looked at him. “He thinks we’re stupid.”

  “We’re not only not stupid, but I’m smart enough to have a woman with her own tools who knows how to use them.” Taking her hand, he pulled her to her feet. “Marry me.”

  She started to laugh, then revisited the head spinning when she realized he was serious. “Oh, God.”

  “Think about it.” He caught her face in his hands, kissed her. “Let’s go home.”

  Just an impulse of the moment, Lila assured herself. A man didn’t propose to a woman who’d just disabled a LoJack planted by an obsessed criminal with delusions of tsarist grandeur.

  An impulse, she thought again, because their part in this whole convoluted, bloody and surreal nightmare was essentially done.

  Undercover agents would keep the rendezvous in Bryant Park. As they took Jai Maddok and Vasin’s “representatives” into custody, Fine and Waterstone, in conjunction with a joint task force with the FBI, would arrest Vasin. Conspiracy to murder, murder for hire topped the bill.

  They’d managed to bring down an international crime organization, with hardly more than a scratch.

  Who wouldn’t feel a little giddy?

  And nervous, she admitted, pacing the bedroom when she should’ve been checking her web page, working on her book, updating her blog. But she just couldn’t settle down.

  People just didn’t go from meeting—and under horrible circumstances—to mutual interest, to sex, to love, to marriage all within a matter of weeks.

  But then, people didn’t generally work to solve murders, discover priceless objets d’art, fly off to Italy and back, and step into a vicious spider’s web to trap him in it.

  All while essentially finishing a book, creating paintings, having really great sex. And faux painting a bathroom.

  But then, she liked to keep busy.

  How would they deal together when things slowed down to normal? When they could just work and live and be?

  Then he walked in. He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie, rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Tousled hair and those X-ray eyes. He looked the artist again. The artist—what he was—who made her yearn for things she’d never believed she wanted.

  “It’s set,” he told her.

  “It’s set?”

  “They have the warrants. They’re going to wait until the scheduled meeting time, then move in simultaneously. The transmission was a little patchy in places, but they got enough.”

  “The bra transmitter was so totally Q.”

  “Q?”

  “We’re definitely scheduling a movie marathon. Bond, James Bond. You know, Q.”

  “Oh, right. Q. You’re not still wearing it, are you?”

  “No. I took it off, but I’m sort of hoping they forget to ask for it back. I’d love to play with it. The obvious pen recorder was a good distraction, but I really thought the glad-hand woman was going to cop to the wire when she was copping a feel.”

  “Even if she had, we’d still get Maddok. He was done with her.”

  As much as she despised the woman, Lila felt her belly clutch. “I know. He was done as soon as I told him she’d attacked me, called me—and didn’t tell him.”

  “The ad lib about her hoping to snag the egg for herself didn’t hurt.”

  “I got caught up. He’d have killed her, so we’re actually doing her a favor. Yes, that’s reaching,” she admitted. “But I honestly can’t wish Vasin on anyone. Even her.”

  “She made her choices, Lila. The cops want our full statements tomorrow. Even if Maddok doesn’t turn on Vasin, they have enough to charge him. For Oliver, for Vinnie, for Oliver’s girlfriend. Fine says the authorities are talking to Bastone.”

  “Good, that’s all good. I really liked them. I like knowing they’ll get justice, too.”

  “Alexi’s staying at the compound tonight. The Cherub with Chariot goes to the Met tomorrow. We’ll hold the announcement until the cops clear it, but it’ll be where it belongs. Where it’s safe.”

  So straightforward now, she thought. All the steps neatly in place. “It’s really done.”

  “Essentially,” he said, and made her smile. “They asked if we’d stay in tonight, stay low in case Vasin’s still having us watched. It might look off for us to go out.”

  “I guess that’s right, considering. I’m too wired—ha ha—anyway.”

  “We’ll have that celebration with Luke and Julie tomorrow, as planned.” He crossed over to take her hands. “Anywhere you want to go.”

  Anywhere, she thought, and he meant it literally.

  “Why?”

  “I’d say because we earned it.”

  “No, why? Why did you ask me what you asked me? We’d just spent an hour pretending to be people we aren’t, and the stress of that had me so twisted up I was afraid I’d lose it all over your classic car. Then I’m under your car, for God’s sake, because Vasin would probably be just as happy to see us dead—the people we are or the people we pretended to be. I don’t think it matters.”

  “That’s a good part of the reason.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. We didn’t even know each other existed on the Fourth of July, and it’s barely Labor Day and you’re talking about . . .”

  “You can say it. It won’t burn your tongue.”

  “I don’t know how this happened. I’m good at figuring out how things work, but I don’t know how this happened.”

  “Love’s not a faulty toaster. You can’t take it apart and study the pieces, replace a part and figure out how it all fits back together. You just feel it.”

  “But what if—”

  “Try what is instead,” he suggested. “You crawled under the car in your blue dress. When I was grieving you gave me comfort. You told my father to go to hell when he was unpardonably rude to you.”

  “I didn’t exactly—”

  “Close enough. You fix cabinets, paint bathrooms, ask the doorman about his family and smile at waiters. When I touch you, the rest of the world goes away. When I look at you, I see the rest of my life. I’m going to marry you, Lila. I’m just giving you time to get used to it.”

  Everything that had softened while he spoke stiffened again. “You can’t just say ‘I’m going to marry you’ like ‘I’m going out for Chinese.’ Maybe I don’t want Chinese. Maybe I’m allergic. M
aybe I don’t trust egg rolls.”

  “Then we’ll get pork-fried rice. You’d better come with me.”

  “I’m not finished,” she said when he pulled her from the room.

  “I am. The painting. I think you need to see it.”

  She stopped trying to tug free. “You finished the painting? You didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m telling you now. I’m not going to pull the ‘Picture’s worth a thousand words’ to a writer, but you need to see it.”

  “I’m dying to see it, but you banned me from your studio. I don’t know how you finished it when I haven’t sat for you in days. How did you—”

  She stopped, words and motion, in the doorway of his studio.

  The painting stood on its easel, facing her, centered in the long ribbon of windows with the early-evening light washing over it.

  Thirty

  She walked toward it slowly. She understood art was subjective, that it could—and should—reflect the vision of the artist and the observer.

  So it lived and changed from eye to eye, mind to mind.

  From Julie she’d learned to recognize and appreciate technique and form, balance or the deliberate lack of it.

  But all that went out the window, whisked away on emotion, on amazement.

  She didn’t know how he’d made the night sky so luminous, how he could create the light of his perfect moon against the dark. Or how the campfire seemed to snap with heat and energy.

  She didn’t know how he could see her this way, so vibrant, so beautiful, caught in that spin, the red dress flaring out, the colors of the underskirt defiant against her bare leg.

  Bracelets jangling at her wrists—she could almost hear them—hoops flashing at her ears while her hair flew free. Rather than the chains she’d posed in, she wore the moonstone. The one he’d given her. The one she wore even now.

  Just above her lifted hands floated a crystal ball, one full of light and shadows.

  She understood it. It was the future. She held the future in her hands.

  “It’s . . . it’s alive. I expect to see myself finish that spin. It’s magnificent, Ashton. It’s breathtaking. You made me beautiful.”

  “I paint what I see. I saw you like this almost from the beginning. What do you see?”

  “Joy. Sexuality, but a delight in it rather than, I don’t know, smoldering. Freedom, and power. She’s happy, confident. She knows who she is, and what she wants. And in her crystal, everything that can be.”

  “What does she want?”

  “It’s your painting, Ash.”

  “It’s you,” he corrected. “Your face—your eyes, your lips. The gypsy is a story, the setting, the costume. Dancing around the fire, the men watching her, wanting her. Wanting that joy, that beauty, that power, if only for a night. But she doesn’t look at them—she performs for them, but doesn’t see them. She doesn’t look in the crystal, but holds it aloft.”

  “Because knowing isn’t the power. Choosing is.”

  “And she only looks at one man, one choice. Your face, Lila, your eyes, your lips. It’s love that lights it. It’s in your eyes, in the curve of your lips, the tilt of your head. Love, the joy and power and freedom that comes from it. I’ve seen it on your face, for me.”

  He turned her. “I know infatuation, lust, flirtation, calculation. I’ve seen all of it go in and out of my parents’ lives. And I know love. Do you think I’ll let it go, that I’ll let you hide from it because you, who’s anything but a coward, is afraid of what ifs?”

  “I don’t know what to do about it, with it, for it. For you.”

  “Figure it out.”

  He lifted her to her toes, took her mouth with his in a long, smoldering kiss suited to campfires and moonlit nights.

  He ran his hands, molded them from her hips, up her torso, to her shoulders, before easing away.

  “You’re good at figuring things out.”

  “It’s not a faulty toaster.”

  He smiled at the use of his own argument. “I love you. If you had a dozen or so siblings you’d find it easier to say, and to feel, under every possible circumstance. But this is you and me. It’s you,” he said, shifting her to face the painting again. “You’ll figure it out.”

  He touched his lips to the top of her head. “I’ll go pick up some dinner. I feel like Chinese.”

  She tilted her head to look over her shoulder, sent him a look martini-dry. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really. I’ll stop by the bakery, check in with Luke if he’s around. Either way, I’ll buy you a cupcake.”

  When she said nothing, he gave her shoulders a squeeze. “Do you want to come with me, get out, take a walk?”

  “Actually, that would be great, but I think I should start figuring things out. And maybe try to sneak in some work.”

  “Fair enough.” He started out. “I told Fine to call, no matter what time it was, when they have them both in custody. Then you’ll be able to sleep.”

  He knew her, she thought, and for that she could be grateful. “When she calls, when they’re in custody, prepare to be ridden like a wild stallion.”

  “That’s a definite date. I won’t be long—an hour tops.”

  She walked to the door of the studio, just to watch him walk down.

  He’d get his keys, check his wallet, she thought, and his phone. Then he’d walk to the bakery first, talk things over with Luke. He’d call in the dinner order so it would be waiting when he got there, but he’d take a few minutes, talk to the owners, the delivery guy if he was there.

  She walked back to the painting. Her face—her eyes, her lips. But when she looked in the mirror, she didn’t see the brilliance.

  Wasn’t it amazing he did?

  She understood now why he’d waited to paint her face, her features. He’d needed to see this look on it—and he had.

  He painted what he saw.

  She glanced at another easel and, surprised, went over for a closer look. He’d pinned dozens of sketches to it—all of her.

  The faerie in the bower, sleeping, waking, the goddess by the water—wearing a diadem and thin white robes. She rode a winged horse over the city—Florence, she realized—legs bare, one arm raised high. And over her upturned palm a ball of fire shimmered.

  He gave her power, she realized, and courage, and beauty. He put the future in her hands.

  She laughed at sketches of her at her keyboard, eyes intense, hair tumbled—and best of all her body caught in mid transformation to sleek wolf.

  “He has to give me one of these.”

  She wished she could draw so she could draw him as she saw him, give him that gift. Inspired, she ran downstairs, into the little bedroom. She couldn’t draw, but she damn well knew how to paint with words.

  A knight, she decided. Not in shining armor because he used it—not tarnished because he tended it. Tall in stature and demeanor. Both honorable and fierce.

  A short story, she mused—something fun and romantic.

  She set it in the mythical world of Korweny—he’d enjoy the anagram—a world where dragons flew and wolves ran free. And he, warrior prince, defended home and family above all. He gave his heart to a gypsy who rode beside him and spoke the language of