Love Unlocked (13 page)

“How long have you been gone?”

“Ten years.”

He whistled. “You never set foot in America in all that time?”

“Once,” she said. “For my father’s funeral.” Then she drained her wine glass and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make us some decaf and then it’s time to turn in. We have to pack tomorrow and Friday is going to be a long day.”

***

Two days shy of the solstice, the sun was still in the sky when Hudson headed back down the hill. He was keyed up from the download of information he’d gotten from Eve, and from the force of will that had kept them within arm’s reach of one another without touching all evening. He needed to burn off some energy with a run on the beach before he went back to his big empty house.

His brain swirled, thinking about Eve, wondering about her past. He had a hard time accepting this side of her, that she was a woman not only of mystery, but of danger. She had a very real bad guy who might kill her if she didn’t get him what he wanted. She had a past that could catch up with her even in a sleepy seaside town. She’d done things, explicitly illegal things, morally wrong things, for money.

He admired that she wasn’t apologetic about it. What was done was done. She had gotten out of it, was trying to start over.

He’d seen enough Hollywood movies to know how that usually turned out.

Still, he couldn’t help but think that she was as much victim as perpetrator. John, as charming as he was, was clearly a born and bred criminal. It sounded to him like he’d used her from day one, planting ideas into her head about art and excitement and money that an impressionable teenager could be forgiven for buying into. Once you were in, it must be hard to get out.

He contemplated the scam John and Eve had perfected. They must have had someone talented to do the forgery of the paintings. Before he’d dropped out of the art institute, Hudson had taken a class on the art of forgery. Part history class, part technical instruction, it covered the modern history of art forgery and some of the techniques used by modern forgers to fool authenticators. The class was meant to be a fun alternative to yet another studio class, and as some of his classmates would go on to work in galleries, museums, perhaps become authenticators themselves, the information would be valuable.

Once home, dripping with sweat, he detoured to his office on the way to the shower. It took only a few taps and clicks to find an image of the Mondrian they were supposed to steal. The small canvas, about the size of his computer monitor, was an abstract geometric painting with bold colors and clean lines, what the artist himself called Neo-Plasticism, on the other end of the spectrum from Hudson’s own free-flowing abstract style.

He wondered if he would be up to the challenge of reproducing it. Besides having the right canvas, the correct medium, using the right techniques to create something that would stand up to careful scrutiny and maybe even chemical testing, did he have the artistic chops to make it look like the real thing?

Not that Eve had asked him to, not that they even had the time to do it before they were supposed to steal it.

It should have bothered him how quickly he was thinking of them as a “we” and this lunatic mission as their project. He’d agreed to follow her instructions and not ask questions. He trusted her not to put him in a position that might be dangerous or illegal. She told him that the less he knew the better, because deniability was everything.

She was right on that score, so he searched for a few other artists on his computer, then deleted his search history, so it wouldn’t be obvious he’d been searching for the painting in question. He was already starting to think like a criminal.

It would take them about three hours to drive to their destination, a swanky resort hotel located less than a mile from the house that held the Mondrian. Eve had provided him with a very specific list of items to pack. Hudson marveled at her meticulousness. He wondered if she was so attentive to detail in all her endeavors, his mind rocketing to a vision of them in bed, her paying scrupulous attention to him, him driving her so crazy she had no room in her brain for details. His fantasies had been hard to tamp down this long week. As agreed, he’d refrained from putting his hands on her while they prepared for their escapade. He kept his word, always, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t rehearse a few scenarios for when the time came to end the ban on sex.

She’d taken the lead in every instance, telling him when to be ready so she could pick him up for the drive south. He’d offered to drive her in his pickup, but she’d politely declined.

“I might let you drive my car, though. Can you drive a stick?”

“Your car isn’t a stick,” he’d said.

“The one we’ll be using Friday is.”

There she went, being mysterious again.

He heard the car before he saw it, a throaty roar that sounded nothing like her sensible sedan. He’d been waiting, a little nervous, to tell the truth, on the front porch, his suitcase at his feet. Then a silver sports car whose shape he seemed to recognize from an old Bond movie shot around the last bend in the road and pulled into his driveway.

The sight of Eve unfolding herself from the driver’s seat, wearing skintight jeans, a black leather jacket, and red driving shoes did nothing to calm his nerves, or his libido.

“You ready?” she called, lifting her sunglasses to peer at him.

He could but nod.

“Then hop in.”

He hoped she wasn’t paying attention to how hard he was clutching the armrest as she accelerated onto the highway at what seemed like warp speed. He glanced over, and Eve looked exhilarated. She laughed at something she saw in his face, and took her foot off the gas, notching the gear up one as she settled into a straight.

“Where did you learn to drive like that?” he asked.

“
To Catch a Thief
.”

“Ah.”

She laughed again. He relaxed his grip; he was glad she was having fun.

Hudson let himself enjoy the view. With the wind at their backs and the ocean glittering to their right, they could have been two people out for a drive in one of the most spectacularly gorgeous natural settings on the planet. They could be heading to Montecito for a weekend escape; lovers who wouldn’t leave their hotel room the entire time.

He shouldn’t lose sight of the business they had to attend to. “Do we need to go over anything else? John’s meeting us there?”

“I think so. I haven’t heard from him in a couple of days. But the plan hasn’t changed.” She lost some of the lightness on her face. “Can we forget about all that for a little while?”

“Sure.” He leaned back in his seat, happy to oblige. “Where did you acquire this death trap, and when do I get to drive?”

The smile twitched around her mouth. “I rented it in San Francisco, and it’s not a death trap, it’s a Lotus Evora. How about we switch in San Louis Obispo?”

“Fair enough.”

“Tell me about your work at the nursing home,” she said.

Eve asked questions so she wouldn’t have to answer any. He’d been looking forward to having her all to himself on this car ride so she couldn’t get out of answering a few about herself. He still didn’t know anything about her life before she’d moved to Europe and become an international art thief. She never talked about her childhood or her family, except for that one mention of her father’s funeral. He was curious.

You catch more flies with honey
. “I go in two or three times a week. I spend time with the people who live there, reading to them, talking to them, helping them write letters sometimes. I’ve gotten to know some of them pretty well.” He thought of Mrs. Sinclair and hoped her kids were going to visit this weekend.

“That’s so great. Have you ever thought about doing art therapy?”

“The idea has come up once or twice. Just because I used to paint doesn’t make me a qualified art therapist.”

“True, but don’t pretend that’s all in the past.”

His voice softened. “It could have been.” He thought of the promise Eve made to pose for him in exchange for his help getting her into the fundraiser tonight. He intended to hold her to it. Repeatedly, if he had his way. He was dying to see how far he could crack his creative brain open, using her as a crowbar. Maybe not the prettiest metaphor, or the most selfless motive, but his art needed her.
He
needed her.

A flush stole over her cheeks. Was she thinking along the same lines as he? Maybe he could dig a little deeper.

“So why Chelsea?” he asked, finally turning the conversation around on her.

Eve pressed her lips together, but finally answered. “My father and I used to come here in the summers when I was a girl. He never took much time off from the office, but he’d always take a week in July or August. We’d rent a beach house and I’d swim and he’d read all the John Grisham thrillers he never had time for the rest of the year.

“When I got older, I wanted to go to the fashionable places, like Marin or Carmel. So we stopped coming here.” She was silent for a minute. Hudson waited her out.

“I think he liked it here because it wasn’t pretentious. Also, he and my mother honeymooned here. She died when I was five. Someone told me about that at his funeral. Wouldn’t you have thought it would make him sad to come back?”

He took a few seconds to reply. “Maybe he felt closer to her memory there.”

“We had good times there. So when I decided to move back the States, Chelsea was the first place that popped into my head.”

“I’m glad,” he said, a hardness forming in his chest at the idea that they might never have met.

“Me, too.”

They were approaching the hotel when Eve’s cell phone rang. Hudson was acquitting himself admirably in the driving department if he did say so himself as the traffic got thicker the closer they got to Montecito and the 101 narrowed to two lanes.

She glanced at the screen and accepted the call. “Hi John, we’re almost—”

Hudson kept one eye on the road and the other on Eve. She’d grown very still, listening to the caller on the line.

“I understand,” she said in a clipped, cool voice. “Let me talk to him. Now.”

There was a pause. He had a bad feeling about whatever was happening on the other end of that phone call.

He managed to make their exit as Eve started talking again.

“John, stay safe, you promise me? I’ll take care of everything. You do your part, I’ll do mine. I promise.”

Even though she had ceased navigating, there were signs directing him to their hotel, so he followed them. Anxiety permeated the sports car’s tiny cabin.

Eve’s cool voice returned. “I understand. Be there and I’ll bring the painting.”

She held the phone away from her ear, frozen in silence as they drove. The pink towers of their destination appeared over a grove of palm trees. Montecito’s Mediterranean climate didn’t disappoint at a perfect 72 degrees with a sky as bright a blue as his eyes could handle. Eve was rigid in her seat, oblivious to their surroundings. He was scared for her; he wanted to be able to take all of this badness away and replace it with beauty, light, to keep a smile on her face always, to protect her from the evil people she’d dealt with in the past.

As they glided to a stop at the valet stand in front of the hotel, the spell seemed broken and she unfroze, swearing violently and startling a poor valet who looked about twelve years old. She threw open the door to her car, grabbed her purse and phone, and waited impatiently for Hudson to turn over the keys.

He pulled her in close as they approached the lobby. “What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

“Deacon has John.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s got him. Locked up. Holding him as insurance to make sure I get the painting.”

“Fuck.”

“The man is insane, Hudson. John tried to sound calm on the phone, Deacon let me talk to him, at least, but I could tell he was scared. Who knows what Deacon might do, even if I can get the painting? This is all my fault.”

“Hey, John’s going to be fine. You have a job to do, and I’m going to help you do it.”

“This makes things more complicated. John was going to be my driver when we go back for the painting tonight.”

“Then let me take over for John. We can get Deacon what he wants and then it will be over.”

“You would do that?”

“Eve, you don’t always have to do everything alone.”

She didn’t answer, but pasted what Hudson knew was her fake society smile on her face to greet the concierge.

They were silent on the way to their room. A king-sized bed was the main feature of the beautifully appointed one-bedroom suite. Hudson hadn’t exactly envisioned the sleeping arrangements. The only agreement in place was the no-sex rule, but the invisible rope that had bound them together since they met was growing shorter by the hour.

Even with the danger they faced, and his ambivalence about what it all meant, he’d still existed in a state of semi-arousal all day, the throb of the car’s engine stoking his need for the woman who always seemed out of reach. Everything about her made him regress to a caveman version of himself where things like propriety and decorum went out the window and were replaced by the intense need to claim, to devour, to mate with the object of his desire. Eve. She was the first woman who’d reached him on so many levels. She made him look at things a different way, stoked his creativity. She made him laugh. She was a goddess to look at, a dream to touch. He felt protective of her in a way that was both selfless and selfish. He needed her in his life, even after their brief acquaintance. He would not feel complete until he could claim her on the most intimate of levels, until he knew what it looked like and felt like and tasted like when he was buried inside her and she was climaxing beneath him.

The damn bed seemed to mock him and his futile thoughts.

Eve plopped down her suitcase. “I’m going to freshen up.” She sailed into the bathroom.

His fantasy came to life when she emerged a few minutes later, clad in a short wine-colored robe that showed off her slender legs and accentuated the curves of her glorious breasts.