Xtraordinary (3 page)

What she hadn't been prepared for was the feeling of safety. That now that he was here, she was protected. Cared for.

Owned
.

The word, uttered by Ricardo during the last night they'd spent together, came unbidden to her mind, along with a stream of images that she'd done her best to bury, and the memory of sensations that had no place in her current frame of mind. The pressure of silken scarves being tied around her wrists…the teasing touch of the fringed suede flogger. Hot wax and cold steel…

“Hello,” she burst out, feeling her face flame with mortification.

“Chelsea.
Querida
.” He took her hand in his and the awkwardness slipped off of her like a satin cape falling to the floor as he pulled her upright. And then his mouth was on hers, a mere brush of his lips that set off a chain reaction of need.

Abruptly he released her.

She sat back down, hard, staring at the table, unable to meet her hosts' eyes. What must they think of her? Had he brought other women here…how did she compare to them? She'd seen the way women looked at him at an elegant party they'd attended together, their admiration and hunger barely concealed. She knew they all wished they could trade places with her, but it was her that he had taken to the little bungalow hidden high in the Hollywood hills…before abandoning her.

Maybe he was acting now, embarrassed to have broken his promise to be in touch. Except he hadn't really promised that. When he left, he'd said only that he would return as soon as possible. Chelsea had screwed up her courage and asked if he would call. His response was burned into her memory. He apologized and added, “It simply isn't possible.”

But she hadn't let herself believe he meant it. Some part of her hoped every day for word from him. Because if he felt even a fraction of what she felt for him, how could he not?

“Ricardo. You must be hungry,” Darya said, bustling among the pots on the stove.”

“No, no, Darya, please. I already ate.”

Darya nodded and smiled; apparently Ricardo's protests carried more weight than Chelsea's.

“Right now I need to take Chelsea somewhere she will be safe.”

All three Russians murmured their assent, and Chelsea allowed herself to be helped up once more. “I didn't bring anything—”

“There is no need,” Ricardo said, sharing a look with her. He didn't need to elaborate: the last time Chelsea had stayed the night, his driver had brought her an entire set of clothes that fit perfectly. At the thought that she might be spending another night with Ricardo—even under circumstances such as these—Chelsea's blood quickened.

But she tried to keep her emotions under control. “All right,” she said. She drew a shaky breath, then spoke to the entire assembled group. “Thank you, all of you. I—I don't know how I can repay your kindness.”

“It is nothing,” Alexander said kindly, but his father drew himself up to his full height, and his dark eyes flashed with fury.

“We do not let these pigs to scare us,” he fumed. “You are with Ricardo, and that makes you one of us.”

Even Darya was nodding, her eyes troubled as she touched Chelsea's arm. “You come back any time. Maybe if Ricardo must travel, you stay with us.”

This might be the time to ask the questions that had been in the back of Chelsea's mind during this entire evening: what exactly was it that brought these people together? Who was the threat—and why did they all seem to know without even asking the details of what had happened?

How had a family of immigrant café owners come to be so intimately involved with an art authenticator—and how could their worlds possibly intersect with dangerous men who thought nothing of threatening an innocent woman with murder?

“I…am so grateful for your help,” she said haltingly, wondering if it was wise to ask questions or whether it would be better simply to accept their kindness without looking too deeply at their motives. “I came here tonight because—well, because you have been so kind to me already. And because you know Ricardo, and, well—”

She knew so little about her lover, but she didn't want to admit that. It was clear that Ricardo trusted the Soloniks, and so she had blindly trusted them as well.

“But I don't understand how you all got mixed up in this,” she blurted, unable to find another way to ask.

Looks were exchanged; Ricardo nodded fractionally.

“Chelsea, we are lovers of art,” Boris said, and a little of the fierce pride left him and he looked like an old man again. “We come here from Russia when Alexander, he is just little boy. With us we bring few treasures, but we have some things we rescued when the Nazis came to destroying our village. They are worth some money, we think, but we never sell, is priceless to us.” He placed his hand over his heart as Darya dabbed at her eyes with a snowy embroidered handkerchief.

“Few years ago, men come. They too are Russian but they are criminals,
bratva
living in United States. They know we have paintings, they have spent great deal of time trying to find us. Two of them come one night to our house. They make a lot of noise, break our things…terrify my beautiful wife, threaten us with unspeakable acts.” He placed his hand on his wife's shoulder and Chelsea was left with little doubt that the old man would die protecting her if necessary. “They demand we give the paintings. They say they belong to them, their family was owner before the war, but we know this is not true. No one owns this art and everyone in our village does, is two sides of coin. But we will not give them to these
monstr
.”

“I was away,” Alexander said angrily. “I had a business in San Diego at that time. Importing. But when they threatened my family…I had met Ricardo, you see, in the course of business.”

“I was able to trace the provenance of the works back to the original owners,” Ricardo said gruffly. “That proved a blood connection to Boris. Then I was able to help him make a legal gift of the works.”

“Now they hang in State Tretyakov Gallery!” Darya said proudly, her eyes shining. “Ricardo, he pay all expense for us to travel to Moscow and see! I think I will never see my village again before I die, but Ricardo made it possible.”

Ricardo looked increasingly uncomfortable, but whether it was from the effusiveness of the old woman's gratitude or because of the obvious gaps in the story, Chelsea couldn't tell.

“And now
you
have nice gallery,” Boris said. “Who would think it! Beautiful girl like you with such good eye for art. You are helping the artists, just like my family did all those many years ago.”

“We need to go,” Ricardo said curtly. He shook hands with both men and stooped to kiss Darya. Chelsea accepted embraces from all three and did her best to thank them, promising to return soon for dinner as she was deluged with good wishes and compliments and blessings.

And then Ricardo practically dragged her out the door and into the night.

“Tonight it's a good thing that you left your finery in the closet,” he said, leading her to a motorcycle parked at the curb.

“You expect me to get on that thing?” Chelsea said, balking. She did her best to ignore the dig about her clothes, despite wishing she had worn something else, anything else.

“It is fast, and it will get us where we are going.”

“To the apartment? Or the house?” These were the two locations he had taken her before, not counting a party in a luxurious old downtown building. The apartment was sleek, modern, and luxurious; the house was small and humble and hidden in a lush garden like a little gem in the hills above Hollywood.

“The house. But we are taking a different route. I don't think I was followed from the airport, but…I want to be sure.”

He handed her a helmet from the metal storage box bolted to the back of the motorcycle and took her purse from her and stowed it away. The bike was sleek in design, luxuriously appointed with a comfortable seat.

And yet she hesitated. “I hate motorcycles,” she mumbled.

Ricardo paused in the process of strapping his own helmet on. She couldn't see his eyes behind the streetlights reflecting off the eye shield. When he spoke his voice was slightly muffled.

“Have you ever ridden one?”

She shook her head. “My…the man who married my mother after my father's death.” Her stepfather, Ray, but she wouldn't say the name aloud. “He rode one. I could always hear him pulling into the drive and there was never time to get away fast enough. It…I can't forget that sound.”

“This motorcycle is very quiet,” Ricardo said, taking her hand. Without warning, he pressed her palm flat to his chest, covering his heart. “And the ride is very smooth. I promise you that I will be cautious. And you are with me,
querida
. With me, you are safe. Do you trust me?”

“I—I guess so,” she faltered. The truth was that she did. In fact, she had trusted him with her life already once this night. How much did she really have to lose?

He climbed onto the bike and turned the key, and true to his word, it purred to life with no more noise than a hybrid automobile. Chelsea tugged the helmet on, put one hand on his shoulder and stepped up on the footrest, swinging her other leg over. She could feel the vibration traveling through her body as she settled herself. Her chest pressed against Ricardo's back, and her legs encircled him. She could feel his warmth through their clothes. He turned his head slightly and spoke over the sound of the engine. “Hold on to me. It is perfectly safe, but that will help your fears.”

As soon as she wrapped her arms around him, they were off.

If someone had told Chelsea a month ago that she would be riding through Los Angeles on the back of a motorcycle, she would have thought they were out of their mind. Despite the fact that a pair of worn and scuffed motorcycle boots were among her most cherished possessions, and she'd even attended an exhibition of early motorcycle design as part of an exploration of outsider art, she thought she had closed herself off from that world forever, just as she had tried to protect herself from everything that reminded her of the past, after her father's death.

But as Ricardo rode through the streets of downtown, emptied out now that the business day was over, she realized what she had been missing.

The air was cool and gentle on her body. All of her senses were engaged as the bike purred smoothly over the streets, easily absorbing the irregularities in the pavement. The lights of the shops and buildings seemed more vibrant, almost magical, sparkling in the darkness. As they reached the edge of downtown and crossed over into University Park, the scent of grilled meat from a taco truck mixed with the sounds of conversation and music from cars. Ricardo took a turn and her body thrilled to the swaying movement of the bike as she instinctively held him tighter, pressing her cheek to the linen of his jacket and inhaling his faint scent.

She felt alive, connected with the night in a way she never could be in a car or even on foot, and her body responded eagerly to the gentle swaying of the bike as it navigated turns and lane changes. When Ricardo spoke over the sound of traffic to ask if she was doing all right, she surprised herself by answering, “Faster. Go faster.”

He was taking a long and circuitous back route to the Hollywood Hills, through the dense low-income neighborhoods to the south, the roads challenging and less well maintained. The bike absorbed the broken pavement and heavy traffic without complaint, but as Ricardo neared Franklin Canyon and traffic thinned, the engine's sound changed. Its purr turned to a powerful buzz, as though the bike itself was thrilled to be breaking free, as though it wanted to show Chelsea what it could do.

Faster, faster they drove through the night, and Chelsea felt the vibration of the engine and the pavement racing by beneath the wheels. She was learning to lean into the curves along with Ricardo, as though their two bodies were one, responding together. She was becoming aroused, but unlike some coarse joke about the vibration between her legs, her body was responding to the stimuli of all of her senses, none more powerful than the feeling of Ricardo's strong, broad back and splendid ass between her legs. She clenched her thighs more tightly around his, hoping he wouldn't notice, wanting to feel the press of him against her cleft, to imagine the heat of his bare skin against her own as they climbed faster and faster up a hidden road that rose up out of the neighborhood and over the rocky terrain of the hill.

But he did notice. How else to explain the fact that he accelerated again or shifted against her so that her pussy was jammed up against the back of him? If she had any doubt, his hand on her leg a second later would have stilled it. She was afraid enough of crashing that she wanted him to put his hand back on the handlebars, hyper-attuned to every oncoming car, every rock and branch that had fallen on the roadside. One mistake and they would go hurtling over the side, with no guardrail to protect them from a fall that could easily be fatal, and yet she stayed silent, choking back her protests only to have them interrupted by the moan that escaped her lips and was swallowed by the wind.

His hand moved up her calf to the inside of her knee, his strong fingers kneading, moving higher. Her pussy unleashed its hot flow, her legs clamping spasmodically against him.

When they reached the top of the hill and entered the neighborhood perched high above the city, he slowed and took his hand back, steering them onto a narrow, tree-lined street past houses where televisions flickered behind the windows, where people sat down to dinner and corrected homework and tucked children into bed. Chelsea was filled with a sense of rightness, of being exactly where she needed to be, and then she chided herself for forgetting that she was still in very real danger…and not all of it had to do with the threatening note left in her apartment.

The man in front of her was dangerous too.