by Nora Roberts
“My precious lab has provided you with training and employment, and with the potential for reaching the top of your field. Now, because of haste and stubbornness and ego, my professional integrity is in question, and your reputation may very well be ruined. The bronze is being transferred to another facility today.”
“Transferred?”
“We’ve been fired,” Elizabeth snapped, then snatched up the phone that rang on a table beside her. Her lips thinned, and her breath hissed through them once. “No comment,” she said in Italian, and hung up. “Another reporter. The third who’s reached me on my private number.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Though her stomach was jumping, Miranda spoke calmly. “Let them transfer her. Any reputable lab will only verify my findings.”
“That’s precisely the kind of arrogance that put us in this position.” Her eyes fired such icy temper that Miranda didn’t notice the strain or dark circles under them. “I’ve worked for years to reach this point, to build and maintain a facility that is without question among the finest in the world.”
“This won’t change that. Leaks happen even in the finest facilities.”
“They don’t happen at Standjo.” The silk of Elizabeth’s robe swirled as she paced. The matching slippers made no sound as they trampled the pink roses blooming on the carpet. “I’ll begin repairing the damage immediately. I expect you to avoid the press, and take the first available flight back to Maine.”
“I’m not leaving until this is finished.”
“It is finished, for you. Your services are no longer required at Standjo, Florence.” She turned back to her daughter, her face set, her tired eyes chilly and direct. “Your security clearance will be voided.”
“I see. A quick execution without a trial. I shouldn’t be surprised,” she said half to herself. “Why am I?”
“This isn’t the time to indulge in drama.”
Because her nerves were raw, Elizabeth indulged herself and moved to a cabinet for the brandy. There was a dull drumming at the base of her skull that caused her more irritation than pain.
“It’s going to take quite a bit of work to put Standjo back on an even keel after this. And there will be questions, a lot of questions.” With her back to Miranda, Elizabeth splashed two inches of brandy into a snifter. “It would be better for you if you aren’t in the country when they’re asked.”
“I’m not afraid of questions.” The panic was creeping in now, sneaking slyly up her spine. She was to be sent away, The Dark Lady taken from her. Her work questioned, her integrity shadowed. “I didn’t do anything illegal or unethical. And I’ll stand by my authentication of the bronze. Because it’s right. Because it’s real.”
“For your sake, I hope so. The press has your name, Miranda.” Elizabeth lifted her brandy in an unconscious toast. “Believe me, they’ll use it.”
“Let them.”
“Arrogance.” Elizabeth hissed out a breath. “Obviously you haven’t taken account that your actions will reflect on me, personally and professionally.”
“You thought of it,” Miranda shot back, “when you brought me here to verify and corroborate your own suspicions. You may head Standjo, but you don’t have the qualifications for this kind of work. You wanted the glory.” Miranda’s heart hammered painfully in her throat as she stepped closer. “You sent for me because I share part of your name, and your blood, however much we both regret that.”
Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. The accusation wasn’t inaccurate, but neither was it complete. “I gave you the opportunity of a lifetime, because of your qualifications, and yes, because you’re a Jones. You’ve damaged that opportunity, and my organization in the process.”
“I’ve done nothing but what I was brought here to do. I’ve spoken to no one outside the organization, and to no one in the organization who didn’t meet with your clearance specifications.”
Elizabeth drew a calming breath. Her decision had already been made, she reminded herself. There was no point in discussing it further. “You will leave Italy today. You will not return to the lab, or contact anyone who works there. If you don’t agree, I’ll be forced to terminate your position at the museum.”
“You don’t run the Institute anymore, and neither does Father. Andrew and I do.”
“If you want that situation to continue, you’ll do what I say. Whether you believe it or not, I’m trying to save you embarrassment.”
“Don’t do me any favors, Mother. We wouldn’t want to spoil your record.” Banished, was all she could think. Cut off from the most exciting work of her life, and sent away as powerlessly as a child ordered to her room.
“I’ve given you your choice, Miranda. If you stay, you’ll do so alone. And you will no longer be welcome at any Standjo facility, including the New England Institute of Art History.”
Miranda could feel herself begin to shake, from both fear and rage. Even as she heard the inner screams of that fear and rage echo in her head, she spoke quietly. “I’ll never forgive you for this. Not ever. But I’ll go, because the Institute’s important to me. And because, when this is over, you’ll have to apologize, and I’ll tell you to go to hell. Those will be the last words I ever speak to you.”
She took the snifter out of her mother’s hand. “Salute,” she said, and tossed back the brandy defiantly. Setting the snifter down with a crack of glass against wood, she turned and walked out. She didn’t look back.
four
A ndrew Jones was thinking of marriage and failure as he sipped Jack Daniel’s Black, straight up, from a short glass. He was well aware that everyone who knew him thought it was long past time for him to turn the page on his divorce and move on.
But he didn’t feel like moving on. Not when it was so comforting to wallow.
Marriage had been an enormous step for him, and one he’d considered carefully even though he’d been wildly in love. Making that commitment, turning an emotion into a legal document, had given him many sleepless nights. No one on the Jones side of the family had ever made a successful run at marriage.
He and Miranda called it the Jones curse.
His grandmother had outlived her husband by more than a decade and had never—at least in her grandson’s hearing—had a good word to say about the man she’d lived with for thirty-odd years.
It was hard to blame her, as the late and unlamented Andrew Jones had been infamous for his affection for young blondes and Jack Daniel’s Black.
His namesake was well aware that the old man had been a bastard, clever and successful, but a bastard nonetheless.
Andrew’s father preferred digs to home fires, and had spent most of his son’s childhood away from home, brushing ancient dirt from ancient bones. When he was in residence, he’d agreed with everything his wife said, blinked owlishly at his children as if he’d forgotten how they came to be in his line of sight, and locked himself for hours at a time in his office.
It hadn’t been women and whiskey for Charles Jones. He’d committed his adultery and neglect with science.
Not that the great Dr. Elizabeth Standford-Jones had given a shit, Andrew thought as he brooded over what he’d intended to be one friendly drink at Annie’s Place. She’d left the child-rearing to servants, run the household like a Nazi general, and ignored her husband as sublimely as he had ignored her.
It always made Andrew shudder to imagine that at least twice, these cold-blooded, self-absorbed people had tangled in bed long enough to conceive a couple of children.
When he was a boy, Andrew had often fantasized that Charles and Elizabeth had purchased him and his sister from some poor couple who’d wept copiously when they traded their children for rent money.
When he was older, he’d enjoyed imagining that he and Miranda had been created in a lab, experiments conceived out of science rather than sex.
But the sad fact was that there was too much Jones in him for it not to have come down naturally.
Yeah, he thought, and lifted his glass
, old Charles and Elizabeth had tangoed one night thirty-three years ago and conceived the next generation of assholes.
But he’d tried, Andrew told himself, letting the whiskey slide down his throat in a hot caress. He’d done his best to make his marriage work, to make Elise happy, to be the kind of husband she wanted and break the Jones curse.
And had failed all around.
“I’ll take another, Annie.”
“No, you won’t.”
Andrew shifted on his stool, sighed gustily. He’d known Annie McLean most of his life, and knew how to get around her.
In the sweet summer when they were seventeen, they’d tumbled together onto a rough blanket over rougher sand and had made love by the crashing waves of the Atlantic.
He supposed the stumbling sex—which had turned out to be a first for both of them—had as much to do with the beer they’d consumed, the night itself, and the foolishness of youth as the licks of heat they’d sparked off each other.
And neither of them could have known what that one night, those few hot hours by the sea, would do to both of them.
“Come on, Annie, let me have another drink.”
“You’ve already had two.”
“So one more won’t hurt.”
Annie finished drawing a beer, slid the mug gracefully down the length of the cherry wood bar toward the waiting customer. Briskly, she wiped her narrow hands on her bar apron.
At five-six and a hundred thirty well-toned pounds, Annie McLean gave the impression of no-nonsense competence.
A select few—including a two-timing cheat of an ex-husband—knew there was a delicate-winged blue butterfly on her butt.
Her wheat-colored hair was worn short and spiky to frame a face more interesting than pretty. Her chin was pointed, her nose listed slightly to the left and was splattered with freckles. Her voice was pure Down East and tended to flatten vowels.
She could, and had, tossed grown men out of her bar with her own work-roughened hands.
Annie’s Place was hers because she’d made it hers. She’d sunk every penny of her savings from her days of cocktail waitressing into the bar—every penny her slick-talking ex hadn’t run off with—and had begged and borrowed the rest. She’d worked day and night transforming what had been little more than a cellar into a comfortable neighborhood bar.
She ran a clean place, knew her regulars, their families, their troubles. She knew when to draw another draft, when to switch to coffee, and when to demand car keys and call cabs.
She looked at Andrew and shook her head. He’d drink himself blind if she let him.
“Andrew, go home. Make yourself a meal.”
“I’m not hungry.” He smiled, knowing how to put his dimples to work. “It’s cold and rainy out, Annie. I just want a little something to warm the blood.”
“Fine.” She turned to the coffee station and filled a mug from the pot. “This is hot and fresh.”
“Christ. I can go right down the street and get a goddamn drink without the hassle.”
She merely lifted her eyebrows. “Drink your coffee and stop whining.” With this, she began to work her way down the bar.
The rain was keeping most of her customers home. But those who had braved the storm were glued to their seats, sipping beer, watching the sports channel on TV, huddled in conversations.
There was a pretty fire burning in the little stone hearth and someone had plugged in quarters and Ella Fitzgerald on the juke.
It was her kind of night. Warm, friendly, easy. This was the reason she’d been willing to risk every dime, to work her hands raw and lie awake in bed worrying night after night. Not many had believed she could succeed, a twenty-six-year-old woman whose only business experience had come from serving mugs of beer and counting tips.
Seven years later, and Annie’s Place was a Jones Point standard.
Andrew had believed, she remembered with a tug of guilt as she saw him stomp out of the bar. He’d lent her money when the banks wouldn’t. He’d come by with sandwiches when she’d been painting walls and staining wood. He’d listened to her dreams when others had ignored them.
He figured he owed her, she thought now. And he was a decent man who paid his debts.
But he couldn’t erase the night sixteen years before when, lost in love with him, she’d given him her innocence, taken his. He couldn’t make her forget that in doing so they’d created a life, one that had flickered only briefly.
He couldn’t make her forget the look on his face when, with joy leaping under terror, she’d told him she was pregnant. His face had gone blank, his body stiff as he sat on the rock on the long stretch of beach and stared out to sea.
And his voice had been flat, cool, impersonal when he offered to marry her.
Paying a debt, she thought now. Nothing more, nothing less. And by offering to do what most would consider the honorable thing, he’d broken her heart.
Losing the baby only two weeks later was fate, she supposed. It had spared both of them overwhelming decisions. But she’d loved what had been growing inside her, just as she’d loved Andrew.
Once she accepted the baby was gone, she’d stopped loving. That, she knew, had been as much a relief to Andrew as it had been to her.
The hum of friendship, she thought, was a lot easier to dance to than the pluck of heartstrings.
Damn women were the bane of his existence, Andrew decided as he unlocked his car and climbed behind the wheel. Always telling you what to do, how to do it, and most of all how you were doing it wrong.
He was glad he was done with them.
He was better off burying himself in work at the Institute by day and blurring the edges with whiskey at night. Nobody got hurt that way. Especially him.
Now he was much too sober, and the night ahead was much too long.
He drove through the rain, wondering what it would be like to just keep driving. To go until he just ran out of gas and start fresh wherever that might be. He could change his name, get a job in construction. He had a strong back and good hands. Maybe hard, manual labor was the answer.
No one would know him, or expect anything of him.
But he knew he wouldn’t. He would never leave the Institute. It was, as nothing else had ever been, home. He needed it every bit as much as it needed him.
Well, he had a bottle or two at the house. There was no reason he couldn’t have a couple drinks in front of his own fire to lull him to sleep.
But he saw the lights winking through the rain as he drove up the winding lane. Miranda. He hadn’t expected his sister home, not for days yet. His fingers tightened on the wheel as he thought of her in Florence, with Elise. It took him several minutes after he’d stopped the car before he was able to relax them.
The wind whipped at him as he shoved the car door open. Rain slapped at his face and streamed down his collar. Directly over the peaks and gables of the house, the sky exploded with sharp forks of lightning.
A wild night. He imagined Miranda was inside enjoying it. She loved a good storm. For himself, he would take peace, quiet, and oblivion.
He dashed toward the door, then shook himself like a dog the minute he was inside the foyer. He hung his wet coat on the old oak hall rack, dragged a hand through his hair without glancing in the antique mirror. He could hear the funereal tones of Mozart’s Requiem coming from the parlor.
If Miranda was playing that, he knew the trip hadn’t gone well.
He found her curled up in a chair in front of the fire, bundled into her favored gray cashmere robe, sipping tea from their grandmother’s best china.
All of her comfort tools, he noted, neatly in place.
“You’re back early.”
“Looks that way.” She studied him. She was sure he’d been drinking, but his eyes were clear, his color normal. At least he was still marginally sober.
Though he wanted a drink, he sat down across from her. It was easy to spot the signs of simmering temper. But he knew her better than anyone, and
could also see the misery under it. “So, what’s the deal?”
“She had a project for me.” Because she’d hoped he would come home before she went to bed, Miranda had brought two cups. She poured tea into the second now and pretended she didn’t see Andrew’s wince of distaste.
She knew very well he’d prefer a glass of whiskey.
“An incredible project,” Miranda continued, holding out the cup and saucer. “A bronze was discovered in the cellar of the Villa della Donna Oscura. Do you know the history of the place?”
“Refresh me.”