Billionaires Prefer Blondes (4 page)

“Just some—”

“Rick, congratulations.” Thankfully one of the other bidders interrupted before Samantha had to make up something that would hopefully sound less confused than she felt.

While Rick chatted with well-wishers and handlers brought in the next piece, Samantha flipped through the catalog. If Martin was here to make off with something, it would have to be a painting—none of the sculptures tonight were small or light enough for a snatch-and-run. But which painting?

She paused at the photo of the Hogarth again. The second
Hogarth, the one nobody here had set eyes on yet, wouldn’t be the most expensive sale of the night, but it would probably be the most noteworthy. If her dad had learned about it at the same moment the rest of the room had, though, it probably wasn’t what he was after.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Rick asked, bending sideways to look down at the page with her. “The Hogarth again? You do hate mysteries, don’t you?”

“I like them when they’re solved,” she returned. “When’s intermission?”

“After the Manet.” He gazed full at her, dark blue eyes curious. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged, refusing to let her eyes stray toward the figure in the shadows. “Okay, maybe I’m used to being more occupied at events like this.”

“Do you want to bid on the new Hogarth for me?”

Samantha blinked. “Christ, no. But are you sure
you
want to bid on it, sight unseen? What if you hate the look? Or what if it’s a scam?”

“I generally like Hogarth’s works. And don’t worry, I’m going to get a verified provenance for the other painting before I do anything.” He took her fingers in his. “Would you look at it, too? You’re faster and more accurate at spotting fakes than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

“Thanks, I think. Sure, I’ll take a look at it.” Crap. So much for spending the intermission talking with her dead father.

Rick brushed his thumb along the inside of her wrist. “Relax, Samantha. The only thing you have to worry about tonight is me. Have I mentioned that I find auctions rather arousing?” He kissed her earlobe.

Despite her distraction, she shivered. No matter what else might be on her mind, Rick Addison had the ability to make
her hot and horny every time she set eyes on him. When he was actually trying to turn her on, Jesus, everybody just get out of the way. “You made me wet,” she whispered, arching her neck to his mouth.

“Christ,” he muttered back. “Let’s forget the Hogarths and get out of here. I want to be inside you.”

Oh, God, she wanted to. But if they left now, she might never catch up to Martin again. And she needed some damned answers. “Keep your pants on, Brit,” she ordered in a barely audible tone. “You can have me later.”

“I intend to. Now give me the booklet back so I can cover my lap and keep some dignity.”

Samantha snorted. No, he wasn’t distracting at all. She handed him the catalog. “You’re so easy.”

“Only where you’re concerned.”

The Manet went for seven million and change, and as Ian Smythe called for a twenty-minute break, half the audience rose and headed for the covered display to one side of the room. Rick wasn’t the only one interested in a newly discovered Hogarth. As he took her hand and led her over to join the crowd, Samantha couldn’t help glancing in Martin’s direction once more. Her father hadn’t moved.

If not for the tapping of his fingers, he might have been another piece of modern art. It was an old, effective trick, though. Stand still in an inconspicuous place, and people tended not to notice you. And then if you suddenly weren’t there any longer, those same people thought they’d probably been mistaken about seeing you in the first place. Or at least they thought so until the alarms started going off and the cops showed up. You were long gone by then, of course.

Shock and disbelief still pushed at the back of her mind, but she shoved them out of the way. The how’s and what’s
could wait until she had time to consider them. The why’s were what mattered at the moment.

“Yes,” one of the Sotheby’s painting experts was saying, obvious excitement running just beneath the smooth saleswoman pitch in her voice, “it was about two weeks ago. Before auction we verify the authenticity and ownership of every item, and it was during that inspection that we discovered a second canvas tacked beneath the first. The first Hogarth had been passed down as an inheritance, and likely hadn’t been closely examined for better than fifty years.”

With a flamboyant twitch, she pulled off the sheet that covered the canvas. Samantha looked at it with the same interest as everyone else—with one exception. In addition to admiring the sure strokes and the pastels of an ocean at sunrise, a fishing fleet frothing across its surface, she also noted size and framing and deduced probable weight. Sotheby’s had known for two weeks. It would have been discovered after the sales catalog went out, which explained the lack of publicity, but she doubted everyone involved had kept quiet about it. The auction house could use some positive publicity, and hell, they made a percentage on every sale.

Two weeks. In her experience that was more than enough time for someone to learn about it, decide he or she wanted to own what almost no one else even knew about, and make an arrangement for a delivery. Dammit. Martin had to be here for the Hogarth.

“It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” Rick murmured from her shoulder. “Better than the one that covered it.”

“I like the rendering,” she admitted. “They had to be companion pieces.”

He nodded. “I agree. Looks as though I’ll be acquiring both of them. They shouldn’t be separated.”

The expert started to cover the painting again. Samantha knew where it would go from there—back into a safe holding area until its turn for bidding. And she knew just how safe it was likely to be there. “Excuse me,” she said, using her naive, breathy voice, “would it be all right to leave it in view? I’d like a few more minutes to look at it.”

The crowd agreed with her, and after a quick conversation two employees carried the painting and stand over to one corner of the auction podium. When Samantha turned with Rick to take her seat again, she found Martin gazing at her. That answered that. He
was
after the Hogarth. And so was Rick.
Fuck
.

This was one nightmare she’d never expected to have. And she only had the space of three paintings to figure it out. After that the first Hogarth would go up for bids.

Okay. She was used to figuring things out quickly. Important things. Life-or-death things. What did she have, then, three options? One, tell Rick that Martin was not dead, that he was in New York, and that he was apparently looking to steal one or both of the paintings Rick had his eye on. Two, approach Martin, tell him hello and to lay off the Hogarths because her boyfriend wanted to buy them. Or three, get Rick to pass on the paintings, go home, and have sex with him until they both passed out and she could wake up and realize she’d just been dreaming about Martin.

Definitely option number three. He’d already suggested leaving early, anyway.

“Rick?” she said, edging up against his side.

“Mm-hm?” His gaze and his attention remained on the auction.

“I was just thinking about what you said earlier. Before intermission. You know, it was a pretty good idea.” She stretched, brushing her fingers along his thigh.

He glanced at her. “Beg pardon?”

“How direct do you want me to be, sweetie?” she breathed. “All these paintings, all this money—I’m getting a little hot and b—”

“No, you’re not,” he countered, a brief frown crossing his lean face. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing. I’m not up to anything, except trying to tell you that I want to be hot and sweaty and naked with you.”

He faced her. “Why do you want to leave right now, Samantha?”

Apparently she’d lost all of her mojo tonight, if Rick wanted an explanation for why she wanted to have sex with him. So was she supposed to be offended, then, or keep trying? “If you’re going to interrogate me, I’m not going to put out, bub.”

His expression eased a little. “Then you just lie there and watch, and I’ll go to work on myself while you decide whether you want to join in or not.”

Her mouth went dry. “Christ, Rick. Let’s get out of here.”

“Give me fifteen minutes, and we’ll have two Hogarths if you want to bring them home with us. They can watch.”

Okay. Option one had been telling Rick that Martin had reappeared. Crap. Rick hated that she stayed close to Stoney, and the fence had retired when she did. If he found out that an apparently escaped and not deceased felon who happened to be her dad was in the room and wanted the Hogarth, he’d go ballistic. He’d questioned her motives for being in New York as it was—and he was more than half right. Aside from that, she hated giving explanations when she didn’t know all the answers yet herself. She needed to talk to Martin. There was kind of a thieves’ honor code anyway, once they reached the level of skill that she and Martin had. When Rick began bidding, her father would acknowledge that the paintings
were her grab, legit or not, and he’d back off. At least until she could talk to him.

That made sense. And since there was nothing else she could do at the moment short of setting off the alarms and yelling, “Fire!,” it would have to do. She sank back against Rick’s side, and he slung an arm around her bare shoulders.

“Are you back to putting out again now?”

“Hoo yeah. Just hurry this up.”

“Your wish is my command, my love.”

Damn, he was stubborn, but on the upside he was the smartest guy she’d ever met and sexy as hell, to boot. If she couldn’t talk him out of bidding, she would have to hope Martin would remember—and would abide by—the honor thing. But she needed to be certain, and she still needed to talk to him.

She dug into her purse for a scrap of paper and a pen as bidding began on the first Hogarth. Only for a second did she consider that her first—well, second—reaction to seeing her supposedly dead father was concern that he might make trouble for Rick and for her. She’d never claimed, though, to come from the Brady Bunch or the Cunninghams or whatever passed for a normal family these days.

“M,” she scratched out, while Rick’s attention was on the rising price of Hogarth number one, “Meet me at the Balto statue at tee-2/devil.” She had a great deal more she wanted to say, but time, space, and a well-honed paranoia made her keep it short and to the point. No names, no dates—even the “M” was pushing things a little. She had no doubt that he would remember the code for two a.m. Night was safer, though she badly wanted to see him in daylight.

The gavel pounded at the front of the room, making her jump. For a second she had no idea who’d won the painting,
until the man seated behind them patted Rick on the shoulder. “Well done, Addison.”

“Thanks.”

As Rick faced her, Samantha leaned in to give him a soft kiss on the mouth. “You buy things better than anybody I know,” she breathed.

He chuckled against her mouth. “Five million is a bit low. The fight’ll be for the second one. What are you writing?”

“I thought of something I need to tell Stoney,” she lied smoothly.

“Did y—”

“Our next lot,” Ian Smythe announced right on cue, “is 32501A. I have an opening commission bid of…two million seven hundred thousand. Do we have eight anywhere?”

A dozen hands, fingers, catalogs, eyebrows, and chins went up. Obviously Rick and Martin weren’t the only ones after the Hogarth. As she spied one of the CEOs of Mobil Oil waggling his fingers, Samantha hoped for a moment that someone besides Rick would end up with the painting. Then Martin could do whatever he wanted with it—which didn’t answer the question of how the hell he was still alive, but it did mean he and Rick, and he and she, wouldn’t be in direct conflict.

“Ah, I can see we could just skip ahead a little,” Smythe said, to a murmur of laughter. “Let’s go with five million, then, shall we? Anyone care to join me here?”

The same dozen bidders answered, plus another four or five. “You’ve got about fifteen competitors,” Samantha murmured, surreptitiously looking around.

To her surprise, Rick lowered the catalog. “I’ll wait, then,” he returned in the same tone. “I hate to be just one of the crowd.”

“That’s one of the things I’m best at.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.” He took her hand, squeezing her fingers gently. “Who’s that sitting about two rows straight behind us? Smythe keeps glancing that way, but I have no intention of turning around.”

“Bill Crawford,” she answered without looking.

“Great. The Getty buyer.”

“Yep. Does he have more money to play with than you do?” she asked, as the bidding went up to seven million, with about a quarter of the bidders falling out.

“I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?” He grinned; not the soft, sexy one he had for her, but the dark, predatory one where he practically bared his fangs. Sam was glad she wasn’t Bill Crawford. Her Great White was about to glide into the feeding frenzy.

At nine million eight hundred thousand, only three others remained in the game, and Rick joined in again. Somebody behind them swore in response, the sound nearly buried beneath the excited murmurs and louder speculations of the onlookers. Samantha couldn’t be certain that the guy cursing had been Crawford, but she wouldn’t bet against her hunch, either.

She glanced in Martin’s direction. He wasn’t looking at the podium any longer, but rather half faced the audience, no doubt trying to assess who would walk off with the win and what that person would do with the painting. Most bidders, even the ones present, would probably have it shipped by Sotheby’s, which meant it would still be vulnerable in the depths of the building for a few hours after the auction. Or during it.

Rick wanted the paintings to go to his estate in England, as well. That could be a problem. They were up to ten million six now, just Rick against one phone bidder and Crawford. If
he was frustrated at not being able to see either of his opponents face to face, he didn’t show it. In fact, for a guy who was probably going to spend something in the neighborhood of thirty million dollars in one night, he looked as cool as a proverbial cucumber. He might have been playing nickel slots in Vegas, for all the concern he showed. Oh, yeah, he’d come to play.