Stolen Seduction (35 page)

“I think I found it,” she called to the others who had taken up searching as well.

Shane was at her side in a flash, crowbar in hand. He knelt next to her on the pristine floor and ran

his hand over the two-foot-square wooden crate at the bottom of the stack. He handed her the crowbar. “Here. Take this.”

Her pulse pounded as he and Billy worked to move the boxes stacked on top. Then she simply

watched as he took the crowbar from her again and pried the lid off the crate.

Shredded paper and stuffing filled the inside of the crate. A white envelope with her name written in

her father’s handwriting stared up at her.

Her fingers shook as she lifted it, slid open the flap and extracted a folded slip of paper. Shane rummaged around in the crate and seconds later pulled out the bronze sculpture that matched the one

Hailey had secured safely at home.

A man and woman, both nude, standing together, locked chest to knee. Her mouth at his throat, his

head tipped back in pleasure. It was roughly eighteen inches tall, six inches round at the base. Solid

and real. The immortalized image of ultimate seduction and the last moment of one man’s life.

She reached out a hand, ran it over the cold metal. Felt her skin tingle as her thumb brushed Shane’s

skin.

When Shane turned it, she saw Cellini’s name branded into the base.

“Shit,” Billy muttered. “Nicole, gimme that fancy phone of yours. Hold it up, cop.” He snapped a

picture of both the underside and the sculpture upright. “I’m sending this to Pete. He’ll know if it’s

real or not.”

“It can’t be real,” Nicole said in awe. “He had the original the whole time?”

Slowly Hailey opened the letter and stared down at her father’s slanted handwriting.

My Dearest Hailey,

If you’re reading this now, it means I’m truly gone. I know you have questions. About this letter.

This place. About the bronze in this box. I can only answer the most obvious ones. Stated simply,

this sculpture is yours. It has always been yours. Your mother gave it to me just before you were

born, and I’ve saved it all these years for the time when I could give it to you and you would finally

understand. Know that I loved her dearly. Still love her, even now, where I am. And that you were

never a mistake. I’ve made errors, the greatest of which was letting time and circumstances control

all of us. And I’ve carried the weight of those errors with me most of my life. I thought I was doing

what was right for you. I know now I wasn’t.

I can’t change the past. I can only hope one day you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me. You and

Nicole. Everything in this room, I’ve saved for both of you. It doesn’t make up for not being there

for you, but maybe someday you’ll understand. The greatest treasures I ever found are in this room,

save two.

The bronze is yours, Hailey. Roarke Resorts belongs to you and your sister. What you do with it is

up to you.

There’s one last thing I want you to do for me. You figured out the code on the replicas. There’s one

last place you need to visit. All your remaining questions will be answered there.

I love you.

—GR

Hailey stared at the numbers on the bottom of the letter. The ones that were very clearly another

longitude and latitude reading.

“Fuck me,” Billy muttered as Hailey handed the letter to Shane with shaking fingers. He was staring at a text message on Nicole’s high-tech satellite phone. “Pete says it could be real. The marking

—Cellini’s name branded into the base—that was his trademark. He’s going to send the picture to

Maria Gotsi at the art institute in Athens and have her take a look at it.”

“There’s something else in here,” Nicole announced, pawing though the box. Carefully, she pulled

out a rectangular piece of wood, brushed the shavings off and flipped it in her hand. “It’s a picture

of Daddy and some woman. It’s…oh, my God.”

“What?” Hailey asked, shifting to get a look at the frame her sister was holding. The photo was at

least thirty years old, a younger version of their father, standing on a beach flanked with palms. But

the woman in his arms wasn’t Eleanor Roarke. She was young and blonde, with sky blue eyes and a

face Hailey knew by heart. Because it was a face Hailey looked at in the mirror every single day.

“Oh, my—”

“It’s you,” Nicole said. “That’s…you.”

“No,” Hailey said, staring at the photo. “Not me.”

In a moment of clarity she remembered every unkind word Eleanor Roarke had said to her over the

years, the way she’d belittled Hailey from the time she was a child, the cold shoulder, the disgusted

looks Hailey had never understood. The way she’d coddled Nicole. She saw Eleanor’s face in her

mind—her perfect Italian complexion and dark looks. And heard her cultured voice screaming at

her father in the middle of the night that she’d never been the love of his life.

All this time she’d thought Eleanor had been jealous of the company. Now she knew…

“That’s…my mother.” She looked from the framed photo to the image of seduction cast in bronze.

“He had an affair.”

“Details,” a voice echoed from behind. They all turned and looked toward the door, where Paul

McIntosh stood with a superior expression on his face and a 9mm in his hand. The barrel of which

was pointed right at Hailey. “None of which matters much to me. Now be a good girl and hand over

the bronze before someone gets hurt.”

C HAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The cell phone on the edge of Eleanor’s desk in the study of her Palm Beach home vibrated, dragging her attention away from the computer screen she’d been studying. She glanced down only to

realize Nicole was sending a picture.

She lifted the phone—the one with the special software her assistant Melvin had loaded for her that

hacked into Nicole’s phone—and narrowed her eyes as the picture slowly loaded. It had been easy

enough to get Nicole’s phone when she’d been here, to make the switch so she didn’t notice. It’s

how Eleanor had been tracking her daughter; how she knew Nicole had been in Puerto Rico; how

she knew now Nicole was somewhere in the Keys.

The fact Nicole was with Hailey sent Eleanor’s blood pressure skyrocketing, and she breathed deep

to keep it in check. She didn’t know Hailey’s exact location, but the Roarke jet had a GPS tracking

device, and right now it was parked in Marathon. The signal from Nicole’s phone was coming from

a small island in the Keys. What on earth were those two doing together? And why did she get the

feeling nothing from this could possibly be good for her?

Her eyes slid back to the computer screen as she focused on the small aerial photo of the island. A

beep indicated the picture on the phone had downloaded and she glanced over, only to feel the muscles in her chest squeeze so tight it was hard to get air.

She pushed back from her antique desk quickly. Stood with the phone in hand. And stared down at a

photo of The Last Seduction. The text message accompanying the picture read simply, Pete—we

found #6. Real or fake? The second picture was of the artist’s imprint in the bottom of the base.

The pressure beneath her breastbone was so great, Eleanor’s hands shook and the phone fell from

her hands to land against the carpet with a thud. It couldn’t be. They’d found it? After everything

she’d done to make sure neither one of them ever learned the truth?

Slowly, as the panic mounted, she moved through the elaborate house she’d decorated all on her

own. She reached her bedroom—a place Garrett hadn’t stepped into for a year before his death—

and opened the safe she kept hidden behind the Warhol painting. Her fingers shook as she turned

the combination and pulled the door open. The private investigator’s report was hidden in the back,

secured in a folder a quarter inch thick. Every year he updated it, because knowing Stella Adams’s

location was the only way Eleanor had been able to sleep at night.

God, how she hated Jamaica. The heat. The people. The smell. The pressure in her chest eased and

she stared down at the most recent report with a mixture of revile and disgust. Thirty-five years

she’d kept her secret safe. Now it was about to come out. There was only one thing left to do.

“Give it to him, Hailey.”

Hailey’s eyes snapped Shane’s in direction, and he didn’t miss the shock that flared in their blue

depths. “Are you crazy?”

“Listen to the man, whoever he is,” Paul said. “He’s obviously smarter than you are.”

Shane’s gaze ran from the gun in McIntosh’s hand to the slim blonde hanging in the shadows behind Roarke Resorts’ chief financial officer. Lucy Walthers. He recognized her from the night he’d

questioned her at the Roarke house in Chicago.

His blood ran hot, but he played it cool. His hands were at his side, his eyes watching everything.

The gun in the holster at his side had never felt so heavy before.

“What do you think you’re doing, Paul?” Hailey asked.

“Taking what’s mine.” Paul’s beady eyes shifted from Shane to Billy, then finally to Hailey. And in

them? Nothing but contempt.

“Stealing from us won’t get you anything,” Hailey said, taking a step around Shane that royally

pissed him off. Was she brain-dead? “You’re not a Roarke. You still won’t get the company.”

“Eleanor will get it for me.”

“You think that,” Nicole piped in. “But you’re not so sure. She could be using you.”

Fire flashed in Paul’s eyes as they darted to Nicole and back to Hailey. “She’ll come to her senses.”

He laughed, but the sound held absolutely no humor. “I’ve earned this.”

The way he was suddenly looking around, waving the gun and taking steps farther into the room set

Shane’s nerves on instant alert. He stepped in front of Hailey slightly, saw Billy do the same with

Nicole. Out in the hall, Walthers was pacing, like the entire scene had her nervous as a whore in

church.

“Stay behind me,” Shane mumbled so only Hailey could hear him.

“Funny thing is,” McIntosh said. “If you had just married me like your loony father wanted, none of

this would have happened. We wouldn’t be here, and he’d still be alive.”

Hailey’s fingers dug into Shane’s upper arm, and then she was in front of him, moving so fast he

barely had time to grab her around the waist and pull her back before she launched herself at McIn-tosh. “You son of a bitch! You killed him?”

“Hailey!”

A smug expression crossed McIntosh’s face.

“Did you kill Bryan, too? Did he find out what a bastard you are!”

Shane’s grip tightened around Hailey so hard, he knew he was leaving bruises, but goddamn she

was strong, and so fired up he knew if he let go she’d sail across the room and claw the man’s eyes

out without a second thought. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he hissed in her ear.

McIntosh chuckled, watching Hailey struggle as if it amused him. Out of the corner of Shane’s eye

he saw Billy take two steps to the man’s left. Nicole inched toward a stack of crates. “Bryan was

dumb as a post and so pussy-whipped he didn’t even see what hit him. You have Lucy to thank for

that.”

In the hallway, Lucy stopped pacing and shot a worried look their way.

“I’ll see you rot in prison for this.” Hailey’s tone turned to ice, and she stopped struggling, but the

venom Shane felt pumping through her was worse than the way she’d lashed out. Because it meant

she was unpredictable. And if there was one thing he needed her to do right now, it was stay calm.

“You and my mother for what you’ve done.”

“Your mother? She’s as stupid as you are. So worried about her own secrets she didn’t even realize

what was going on around her. But she was a good fuck. I will give her that. Even at her age.” His

eyes ran down the length of Hailey’s body in a way that sent the blood roaring to Shane’s head.

“Not as good as you, though, right? I mean, look at you. You’ve got to be one spicy little slut in

bed.”

He glanced over her shoulder at Shane. “Is she? I bet she is. C’mon, man to man, you can tell me.

Miss Ball-buster here never gave it up for me, but I bet she did for you.” His licentious gaze ran

back to Hailey. “Yeah, I bet for him you’re a regular Jenna Jameson.”

Shane heard the click in his brain, the one that told him he was going from stable to dangerous; the

one he’d heard in Chicago just before he’d ended up with a knife in his side.

“Too bad I won’t get to compare,” McIntosh went on. “But you and you friends here are going to

have a nice long time to get to know one another when we’re gone. You can bone your brains out

then.” He looked up and around. “How long you think the oxygen will last in here, Lucy?” he asked

over his shoulder. “Think they’ll make it three days?”

Mumbling came from the hallway, but McIntosh only smiled. “In three days I’ll be sitting pretty at

RR. And hiring the worst private investigator in the city to look for the missing Roarke sisters.”

His smile faded. And the gun in his hand gleamed under the lantern’s bright light. “Now give me

the bronze. Lucy and I are really fucking tired of chasing you two around, and I’ve had it with her

complaining.”

Billy had reached the far side of the room, and because McIntosh was intent on Hailey and the

bronze she’d picked up, he didn’t notice Shane take one step forward or Billy move in from the

side.

“You want it?” Hailey asked. “This? This piece of metal?”

“Yes, I do. Bring it here.”

“Hailey,” Shane warned under his breath. “Don’t you dare move.”