by Nora Roberts
“Everything in its time, honey. Abby and Kevin would want to see some of the city on their first day, wouldn’t they?”
She imagined they looked exactly like American tourists—cameras, shopping bags, and guidebooks. He bought her an ice-cream cone as they walked. Because she decided it might help cool the hot ball of tension in her stomach, she licked at the tart, frothy lemon ice as he strolled along, pointing out buildings, statues, loitering at shop windows or over menus posted outside trattorias.
Perhaps there was a point to it all, she decided. No one would look twice at them, and if she concentrated, she could almost believe she was meandering through the city for the first time. It was a bit like being in a play, she thought. Abby and Kevin’s Italian Vacation.
If only she weren’t such a lousy actress.
“Fabulous, isn’t it?” He paused, his fingers twining with hers as he studied the magnificent cathedral that dominated the city.
“Yes. Brunelleschi’s dome was a revolutionary achievement. He didn’t use scaffolding. Giotto designed the campanile, but didn’t live to see it completed.” She adjusted her sunglasses. “The neo-Gothic marble facade echoes his style, but was added in the nineteenth century.”
She brushed at her hair and saw him smiling at her. “What?”
“You have a nice way with a history lesson, Dr. Jones.” When her face went carefully blank, he framed it with his hands. “No, don’t. That wasn’t a dig, it was a compliment.” His fingers brushed her cheekbones lightly. So many sensitive spots, he mused. “Tell me something else.”
If he was laughing at her, he was doing a good job of disguising it. So she took a chance. “Michelangelo carved his David in the courtyard of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.”
“Really?”
He said it so seriously her lips twitched. “Yes. He also copied Donatello’s Saint John for his own Moses. It would have been a compliment. But the pride of the museum, I think, is his Pieta` . The figure of Nicodemus is believed to be a self-portrait and is brilliantly done. But the figure of Mary Magdalene in the same sculpture is inferior, and obviously the work of one of his students. Don’t kiss me, Ryan,” she said it quickly, closing her eyes as his mouth hovered a breath from hers. “It complicates things.”
“Do they have to be simple?”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes again, looked into his. “In this case, yes.”
“Normally I’d agree with you.” Thoughtfully, he skimmed the pad of his thumb over her lips. “We’re attracted to each other, and that should be simple. But it doesn’t seem to be.” He dropped his hands from her face to her shoulders, skimmed them down her arms to her wrists. Her pulse was rapid and thick, and should have pleased him.
But he stepped back. “Okay, let’s keep it as simple as possible. Go stand over there.”
“Why?”
“So I can take your picture, honey.” He tipped his sunglasses down and winked at her. “We want to show all our friends back home, don’t we, Abby?”
Though she considered it overkill, she posed in front of the grand Duomo with hundreds of other visitors and let him snap pictures of her with the magnificent white, green, and rose marble at her back.
“Now you take one of me.” He walked over holding out his snazzy Nikon. “It’s basically point-and-shoot. You just—”
“I know how to work a camera.” She snatched it from him. “Kevin.”
She moved back, blocked and focused. Maybe her heart tripped a little. He was such a staggering sight, tall and dark and grinning cockily at the camera.
“There. Satisfied now?”
“Almost.” He snagged a couple of tourists who happily agreed to take a picture of the young Americans.
“This is ridiculous,” Miranda muttered as she found herself posing once again, this time with Ryan’s arm around her waist.
“It’s for my mother,” he said, then followed impulse and kissed her.
A flock of pigeons swarmed up with a rush of wings and a flutter of air. She had no time to resist, less to defend. His mouth was warm, firm, sliding over hers as the arm around her waist angled her closer. The quiet sound she made had nothing to do with protest. The hand she lifted to his face had everything to do with holding him there.
The sun was white, the air full of sound. And her heart trembled on the edge of something extraordinary.
It was either pull away or sink, Ryan thought. He turned his lips into the palm of her hand. “Sorry,” he said, and didn’t smile—couldn’t quite pull it off. “I guess I fell into the moment.”
And leaving her there with her knees trembling, he retrieved his camera.
He strapped it back on, picked up the shopping bag, then with his eyes on hers, held out a hand. “Let’s go.”
She’d almost forgotten the purpose, almost forgotten the plan. With a nod, she fell into step with him.
When they reached the gates of the old palace, he tugged the guidebook out of his back pocket, like a good tourist.
“It was built in 1255,” he told her. “From the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century it was a prison. Executions were carried out in the courtyard.”
“Apt under the circumstances,” she muttered. “And I know the history.”
“Dr. Jones knows the history.” He gave her butt an affectionate pat. “Abby, honey.”
The minute they were inside the principal ground-floor room, he dug out his video camera. “Great place, isn’t it, Abby? Look at this guy—he’s knocked back a few, huh?”
He aimed the camera at the glorious bronze of the drunken Bacchus, then began to slowly pan the room. “Wait until Jack and Sally see these. They’ll be green.”
He swung the camera toward a doorway where a guard sat keeping an eye on the visitors. “Wander around,” he told her under his breath. “Look awed and middle-class.”
Her palms were sweating. It was ridiculous, of course. They had a perfect right to be here. No one could possibly know what was going on inside her head. But her heart pounded painfully in her throat as she circled the room.
“Wonderfully awful, isn’t it?”
She jolted a little when he came up beside her as she pretended to study Bandinelli’s Adam and Eve. “It’s an important piece of the era.”
“Only because it’s old. It looks like a couple of suburbanites who hang out at a nudist colony every other weekend. Let’s go see Giambologna’s birds in the loggia.”
After an hour, Miranda began to suspect that a great deal of criminal activity involved the tedious. They went into every public room, capturing every inch and angle on camera. Still, she’d forgotten that the Sala dei Bronzetti held Italy’s finest collection of small Renaissance bronzes. Because it made her think of the David, her nerves began to twitch again.
“Haven’t you got enough yet?”
“Nearly. Go flirt with the guard over there.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“Get his attention.” Ryan lowered the camera and briskly undid the top two buttons on Miranda’s crisp cotton blouse.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Making sure his attention’s focused on you, cara. Ask him some questions, use bad guidebook Italian, bat your eyes and make him feel important.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing if you can’t hold his eye for five minutes. Give me that long, ask him where the bathroom is, then head there. Meet me back in the courtyard in ten.”
“But—”
“Do it.” He snapped it out, with a flick of steel. “There’s just enough people in here that I should be able to pull this off.”
“Oh God. All right.” Her stomach tilted down toward her shaky knees as she turned away to approach the guard.
“Ah. . . scusi,” she began, giving the word a hard American accent. “Per favore . . . ” She watched the guard’s eyes dip to the opening of her blouse, then skim back up to her face with a smile. She swallowed hard, then spread her hands helplessly.
“English?”
“Sì, signora, a little.”
“Oh, wonderful.” She experimented with fluttering her lashes and saw by the warming of the guard’s smile that such pitiful ploys actually worked. “I studied up on Italian before I left, but it just gets all jumbled up in my mind. Such a scatterbrain. It’s terrible, isn’t it, that Americans don’t speak a second language the way most Europeans do?”
The way his eyes were glazing, she deduced she was speaking much too quickly for him to follow. All the better. “Everything’s so beautiful here. I wonder if you could tell me anything about . . .” She chose a sculpture at random.
Ryan waited until he saw the guard’s focus fix on Miranda’s cleavage, then slipping back, he took a thin pick out of his pocket and went to work on a side door.
It was easy enough, even dealing with it behind his back. The museum hardly expected its visitors to come armed with lockpicks or to want entrance to locked rooms in broad daylight.
The floor plan of the museum was on a disk in his files. As were dozens of others. If his source was to be trusted, Ryan would find what he wanted beyond the door, in one of the jumbled storerooms on this level.
He kept one eye on the security camera, biding his time until a group of art lovers shuffled in front of him.
Before they’d gone by, he was through the door and closing it softly behind him.
He took one long breath of appreciation, tugged on the gloves he’d tucked in his pocket, then flexed his fingers. He couldn’t take much time.
It was a rabbit warren of little rooms crowded with statues and paintings, most of which were in desperate need of restoration. Generally, he knew, those who made their living through or around art weren’t the most organized of souls.
Several pieces caught his eye, including a sad-eyed Madonna with a broken shoulder. But he was looking for another type of lady altogether—
The sound of tuneless whistling and clicking footsteps sent him searching quickly for cover.
• • •
She waited the ten minutes, then fifteen. By twenty she was wringing her hands on the bench where she sat in the courtyard and imagining what it would be like to spend some time in an Italian prison.
Maybe the food would be good.
At least they didn’t kill thieves these days, and hang their corpses from the Bargello’s windows as a testament to rough justice.
Once again she checked her watch, rubbed her fingers over her mouth. He’d been caught, she was sure of it. Right now he was being interrogated inside some hot little room, and he’d give up her name without a qualm. The coward.
Then she saw him, strolling across the courtyard like a man without a care in the world and no shadow of larceny in his heart. Her relief was so great that she sprang up, threw her arms around him.
“Where have you been? I thought you’d been—”
He kissed her as much to stop her babbling as to take advantage of the situation. “Let’s go get a drink. We’ll talk about it,” he said against her mouth.
“How could you just leave me out here like this? You said ten minutes—it’s been nearly half an hour.”
“It took me a little longer.” They were still mouth to mouth, and he grinned at her. “Miss me?”
“No. I was wondering what was on the menu in jail tonight.”
“Have a little faith.” He clasped hands, swinging arms with her as they walked. “Some wine and cheese would be nice right now. The Piazza della Signoria isn’t as picturesque as others, but it’s close.”
“Where did you go?” she demanded. “I fiddled around with the guard as long as I could, and when I looked around, you were gone.”
“I wanted to see what was behind door number three. That place might have been a palace once, and a cop shop later, but the interior doors are child’s play.”
“How could you take a chance like that, breaking into an off-limits area with a guard not three yards away?”
“Usually that’s the best time.” He glanced in a shop window as they passed and reminded himself to carve out some more time for shopping. “I found our lady,” he said casually.
“It’s irresponsible, foolish, and nothing more than an egocentric . . . What?”
“I found her.” His grin flashed like the Tuscan sun. “And I don’t think she’s too happy being tucked away in the dark to gather dust. Patience,” he told her before she could question him. “I’m thirsty.”
“You’re thirsty? How can you think about wine and cheese, for God’s sake? We should be doing something. Planning out our next step. We can’t just sit under an awning and drink Chianti.”
“That’s just what we’re going to do—and stop looking over your shoulder as if the polizia were on our tail.”
He pulled her toward one of those wide awnings in front of a bustling trattoria, maneuvered her through the tables to an empty one.
“You’re out of your mind. Shopping, buying souvenirs, scouting out leather jackets for toddlers, wandering around the Bargello as if you’ve never been there before. And now—”
She broke off, shocked, when he pushed her into a chair. His hand closed hard over hers as he leaned across the table. The smile he sent her was as tough and chilly as his voice.
“Now, we’re just going to sit here awhile, and you’re not going to give me any trouble.”
“I—”
“No trouble at all.” The smile turned easy as he glanced up at the waiter. Since the cover seemed absurd at the moment, he rattled off a request for a bottle of local wine and a selection of cheeses in perfect Italian.
“I’m not tolerating your feeble attempts at bullying me.”
“Sweetheart, you’re going to tolerate what I tell you to tolerate. I’ve got the lady.”
“You’re laboring under— What?” The color that had rushed into her face faded again. “What do you mean you’ve got the lady?”
“She’s sitting under the table.”
“Under the—” When she would have scraped her chair back and dived under, he simply tightened his grip on her hand until she had to muffle a yelp.
“Look at me, cara, and pretend you’re in love.” He brought her bruised fingers to his lips.
“Are you telling me that you walked into a museum in broad daylight and walked out with the bronze?”
“I’m good. I told you.”
“But just now? Now? You were only gone for thirty minutes.”
“If a guard hadn’t wandered into the storage area to sneak a wine break, I’d have cut that in half.”
“But you said we had to check the place out, to tape it, to take measurements, get the feel.”
He kissed her fingers again. “I lied.” He kept her hand in his, kept his eyes dreamily on hers while the waiter set their wine and cheese on the table. Recognizing lovers, the waiter smiled indulgently and left them alone.
“You lied.”
“If I’d told you I was going in to get it, you’d have been nervous, jumpy, and very likely have screwed things up.” He poured wine for both of them, sampled and approved. “The wine from this region is exceptional. Aren’t you going to try it?”
Still staring at him, she lifted her glass and downed the contents in several long swallows. She was now an accessory to theft.
“If you’re going to drink like that, you better soak some of it up.” He sliced off some cheese, offered it. “Here.”
She pushed his hand away and reached for the bottle. “You knew going in that you were going to do this.”
“I knew going in that if the opportunity presented itself, I’d make the switch.”
“What switch?”
“The bronze we bought earlier. I put that in her place. I told you, most people see what they expect to see. There’s a bronze statue of a woman sitting in the storeroom. Odds are no one’s going to notice it’s the wrong bronze for a bit.”
He sampled some cheese, approved, and built some onto a cracker. “When they do, they’ll lo
ok for the right one, likely