The Art Of Deception, Book Two, Stolen Hearts series, Romantic Suspense (14 page)

”No, that’s okay. Like you said, it’s late.”

“Right." She looked around the room. “Okay. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

He eased out his pent-up breath when she disappeared into the hallway. Apparently, he’d pushed this celibacy thing one day too long. The shape and feel of her breast and the softness of her skin still clamored at his senses.

He wanted more, and he wanted it now. Right here, on that big old bed of hers. He turned and left the room. All he had to do was make sure Sophie ate something, then finish checking the locks and leave. Ten minutes, and he’d be home free.

“Smells good." Gage tried to sound like the friendly next door neighbor as he pulled a chair out from the small kitchen table and sat.

Sophie’s sandwich lay untouched on her plate. “I tried to make a western with those eggs you left in the refrigerator, but...." She shrugged and poked at her sandwich with the tip of her finger.

“But what? Eat." He picked his own sandwich up and took a big bite. The taste didn’t register until he chewed a second time on his mouthful.
Dear sweet Jesus
.

Sophie jerked her head up as he dropped his sandwich on the table. “What’s the matter?”

“Drink,” he choked out, his eyes watering from the heat that scorched his mouth.

“I told you I couldn’t cook. Here." She thrust a glass of orange juice in his hand. “I thought I should spice the eggs up a bit. Ciro did earlier this week, and they tasted great."

He drank, shoved the empty glass toward her, and she filled it again.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah." His voice sounded burnt. “I wouldn’t eat that, though." He nodded at her untouched sandwich.

“No." She scooped up both sandwiches and chucked them into the compost container under the sink. “I should have stuck with peanut butter." Her voice quavered as she set the dirty plates in the sink.

As casually as he could, Gage stood and walked over to the doorway. If Sophie started crying, he was a condemned man. “I’ll remember to ask for peanut butter next time.”

One foot in front of the other, guy. That’s all he had to do. He stepped out into the hallway.

“I bet every damned woman who lives in the damned suburbs is a cordon bleu cook, and I can’t even cook a damned egg." Cutlery clattered into the sink.

Gage closed his eyes and wondered if praying worked after twenty odd years of abstinence. He wasn’t going to make it. Even as he told himself not to, he turned and stepped back into the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter, Sophie.”

She twisted around from the sink to face him. “What?” Tears clung to her eyelashes, and she had a yellow smear–was it mustard she’d put in the eggs?–on her right cheek.

Every part of him ached to take her in his arms. “That you can’t cook."

“I can cook." She turned back to the sink. “I just never gave it my full attention before." She pulled a plate out of the soapy water in the sink and scrubbed it.

“I can cook,” she said again, a thread of determination in her voice as she placed the plate firmly into the dish rack.

Gage barely managed to hang onto his chuckle. He backed into the hallway and started up the stairs to the workshop, a wide smile on his face. He had a feeling Sophie was about to take up the fine art of cooking just to prove to herself she could master it. Thank God he wasn’t the poor sap who would have to suffer through her cooking experiments. Another hurdle safely negotiated.

He found the light switch at the top of the stairs and flicked it on. At first glance the studio looked much the same as it had two weeks ago.

Second sweep took in the open door to the hallway.

Adrenalin surged through him. He forced himself to stand quiet instead of racing down the stairs to check on Sophie. Willing his heart to stop pounding, he strained to listen for any telltale noise that would indicate if the intruder was still present.

A full moon appeared from beneath the cloud cover, and the sky outside the large windows turned almost as light as day. Sophie’s easel stood empty in front of the windows, but the tables beside it were still cluttered with tubes of paint and tins of solvents.

The only place to hide in the large open room was the closet where Ciro had smoked a joint. The door to the closet was cracked open just enough for someone to see out–if anyone hid there. Gage heard nothing.

He pulled the Glock out of his holster, clicked the safety off and aimed the gun at the closet. He stood in the open, empty space stretching between him and the closet. God help him if someone was in there, and they were armed. Retreating down the stairs wasn’t an option. Not until he’d secured the studio.

Duck and roll was an option, however. He did a second’s visualization of safely traversing the space to the closet, then immediately dropped down to one shoulder and rolled across the floor to the closet, kicking the door open before he got to his feet.

“FBI. Come out with your hands up." He jack-knifed to his feet, his gun trained on the closet. Except for Sophie’s art supplies, the small room was empty.

His chest heaved as he dragged in a lung full of air and leaned against the doorway. It’d been a while since he’d had an adrenalin rush. Energy zapped across the old synapses so fast, his body vibrated with the electrical charge.

He had a lot of fond memories of vigorously working off that excess voltage after hours. Hot, sizzling memories.

“Gage?”

He wiped a hand over his face and tucked his Glock back into its holster to give himself a minute before he turned toward the top of the stairs where Sophie stood.

Oh yeah, he was pumped all right–and ready for action. It was embarrassing just how ready he was. What the hell was he supposed to do about this?

“The door’s been jimmied." Good move. Distract her away from his...condition.

“I heard a loud thump." Instead of crossing the room to inspect the door, she moved toward him. “It sounded like something fell. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m, uh...I’m fine." He sidled into the narrow room, keeping his back to her. Another minute and he’d be back to normal–if Sophie didn’t get too close and do something stupid like touch him.

With his body supercharged for action, he couldn’t guarantee what would happen if she so much as brushed accidentally against him in passing. Normally, he had the control thing down pat, but this was Sophie, and all bets were off.

“Someone broke in?” She hesitated at the door to the walk-in closet.

Gage wiped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve and pretended to study the far end of the storage space. “Looks like it.”

“What are you looking for?”

“I, uh...I thought someone might be hiding in here. I didn’t know.”

“But there’s no one here.”

“No.”

“And you checked it out all by yourself.”

What the hell was she getting at? Gage glanced at her. She looked like she couldn’t make up her mind whether to be angry or curious.

Feed the anger
. Sophie’s curiosity would drive him wild in two seconds flat.

“What? I’m supposed to call for back up?”

“What if there’d been someone in the closet? What if they had a gun?”

“Didn’t happen." The vibrations in his body had slowed to a pleasant hum, and he felt more cocky than cocked.

“You better have a look, though." He nodded at her supplies. “I’ll check the lock on the door.”

He had to give Sophie credit. As if picking up on his heightened state, she backed out of the doorway and gave him a comfortable margin of escape. He walked to the studio door, more interested in putting space between them than checking the lock. Even a pro can get sloppy jimmying a lock if no one was home.

“What am I looking for?” Sophie’s muffled voice came from the depths of the closet.

“I’m not sure. If anything’s missing, or something’s there that wasn’t before." He ran a finger over the gouged wood surrounding the lock. “You have any valuable paintings here at the moment?”

“No, I have one coming in next...oh.”

Gage jerked his head up. “What?”

“It’s, ah.... Who would do this?”

Gage streaked across the room and shouldered his way into the closet. “What is it?”

Sophie stood before a shelf, her hand trembling as she shuffled through a stack of sketches. “They’re not mine." She looked at him, pushed another sketch aside. “None of them.”

“Let me see." He leaned in close and looked at the pencil sketches. The one on top was an incomplete drawing of a still life, as if whomever had drawn it was practicing and had stopped three quarters of the way through. The sketch reminded him of something he’d seen recently.

Using the clean, white rag he grabbed from the plastic bin on the floor, he picked it up by a corner. “Why does it look familiar?”

Sophie aligned the rest of the sketches into a neat pile and shoved them back on the shelf. When she spoke, her voice had a dreamy quality to it. “I bet I can guess which painting was in Raphael’s bag at the airport.”

He tore his gaze from her carefully guarded expression to study the sketch. “It’s the same one.”

He placed the sketch on top of the small stack and followed Sophie out of the closet as she slipped past him and drifted over the large windows to gaze down at the empty street below.

“My fingerprints are all over them.”

He shoved a hand through his hair. “Maybe we’ll find another set.”

“You won’t.”

“I’ll have them tested anyway." He suspected she was right, but it always paid to be thorough. Whoever left the sketches in her closet wanted Sophie to be found guilty of painting forgeries. Unless.... Gage backpedaled away from the thought that Sophie and Raphael were guilty and had manipulated him into ignoring the evidence to make him believe in their innocence.

What did he have, but Chance Spencer’s original suspicion the Pascotto family was somehow involved with the Matisse forgery, the second painting that showed up in Raphael’s luggage tonight, and the damned sketches, found right here where he’d started the investigation?

He turned his back to Sophie and paced the length of the room in an effort to work off the jittery energy that twisted his stomach muscles into a knot. Sophie’s claims of someone putting drugs in her refrigerator were exactly that, claims. She could easily have sent those threatening notes to herself.

Everything pointed to both brother and sister being guilty of creating and transporting art forgeries. Any other time, any other case, he’d slam both of them in jail without a doubt. The facts all fell into place with an almost gratifying order. And yet....

“You think I’m guilty." Sophie’s accusation sliced through his frantic reasoning.

He turned to face her. She looked so small and defenseless standing in front of the windows, he had to steel himself from going to her and pulling her into his arms.

He felt a huge wrench inside him as if something had come apart or joined together. It was impossible to tell which, except everything felt different, and nothing added up the way it should.

Except for one very clear thought in his head. He was falling in love with Sophie Pascotto.

Sophie wrapped her arms around her middle and watched Gage’s eyes widen as if part of a missing puzzle had just fallen into place. Her stomach dropped in a dizzy swoop. He thought her guilty of painting the forgery.

She turned away, her shoulders drooping with defeat. He had no choice but to come to that conclusion, she admitted as she stared blindly out the window. The preliminary sketches for the Matisse discovered in Raphael’s bag were found right here in her studio.

Except she didn’t paint the forgery or do the sketches. Which meant she wasn’t dreaming all this stuff up. Someone really was trying to get her into trouble. Raphael, too. Maybe even her mother. As Gage had pointed out, her family wouldn’t win any prizes for communication. For Raphael’s sake as much as her own, she had to convince Gage they were both innocent.

She dropped her arms to her side and straightened her spine. It took more nerve than it should have to turn and face the accusation she knew she’d find in Gage’s eyes.