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“You don’t have to do that.” Jan made no move to take it. “I was glad to be of help.” After a slight hesitation, “Did it help?”
“I’ll never have to worry about his bothering me again.”
“You must be the only woman in the world who wouldn’t want to be bothered by him.”
“Yes, well, you can stop salivating because beneath that gorgeous Spanish physique lurks a Machiavellian brain. He’s part Italian you know. Greer didn’t trust him the second we went on board the Piccione last June. I hate to admit it, but her instincts about that three-tongued Don Juan were right.”
“Three-tongued?”
“Yes. He can make love to a woman in French, Spanish and Italian.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Not at all. To my knowledge he speaks half a dozen romance languages fluently. Among his other, shall we say ‘nonsensual’ activities, he owns the Spanish-Portuguese Bank of Iberia, he’s a brilliant scholar of Latin and Arabic, and he has written several esoteric books on primogeniture and heraldry.”
“I didn’t think a man like him really existed.”
“Yeah, well, he’s an original all right.”
“What did he do that made you so furious?”
“He asked me to marry him.”
“You’re kidding!” Jan cried out again. “You lucky thing…”
“Before you get too excited, let me explain he’s in love with a woman who doesn’t love him. I think it’s a lie. I bet it’s a titled woman who can’t get out of her marriage.
“Anyway, he needs to find another woman quick so he won’t have to marry the sister of his dead fiancée. He just emerged from a year’s official mourning.”
“You mean people actually do things like that anymore?”
“Apparently the Pastrana family does. Now Don Juan is on the loose again. Since he had to come to New York on business, he picked on the last Duchess triplet to help him out of his latest scrape. Oh—and get this—” Piper let out an angry laugh. “He said it could be dangerous!”
“Maybe you shouldn’t laugh. What if the sister of his dead fiancée is the jealous type? Remember when Jim and I went to see Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera last month? She was a scary, fiery woman. Maybe this sister is so possessive, she’ll try to scratch your eyes out. What’s her name?”
“Camilla.”
“It doesn’t sound good.”
“Yeah, well, like I said, he won’t darken our doorstep again so none of it matters. Go enjoy your lunch!”
“Thanks. Can I bring you something to eat?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
She expected Jan to leave, but she still hovered. “What’s the matter?” The subject of Don Juan was officially closed.
“Could I have my ring back? I’m afraid for Jim to see me without it.”
Piper felt the blood drain out of her face.
Slowly she staggered to her feet. “I—I don’t have it.” Jan looked stunned. “Nic does. What did he say to you on his way out?”
“He thanked me for my help and left.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
Oh no. “Jan—”
Her assistant studied her for a moment. “I guess he didn’t like being turned down.”
“I’ll get your ring for you. I swear it,” Piper said through gritted teeth. She grabbed her purse. “Before you leave for lunch, will you tell Don I’ve gone home for a bite to eat? When I get back to the office I’ll have your ring with me.”
Piper stormed out into the freezing cold to start up the car.
But of course, Nic had said when she’d told him to return Jan’s ring. Machiavellian tendencies didn’t begin to cover his list of sins.
Nic parked in front of the house where Piper lived in the basement apartment. He had no idea how long his wait would be. A devilish smile broke the corner of his mouth. It all depended on when Jan asked for her ring back.
Suddenly he spotted the car Piper was driving in the rearview mirror of his rental car. Good. He’d wanted to get her away from the office before delivering the coup de grace.
She pulled directly behind him and got out. Through the side-view mirror he watched her start toward him.
Like his cousins who’d lived around dark-haired, dark-eyed Mediterranean women all their lives, he too had been captivated by the golden radiance of the Duchess triplets. He loved the way her hair swished around her flushed face like fine gold mesh. Even without the sun shining, it had a brilliance that drew his gaze.
He loved this particular triplet with her slender curves and jewel-like eyes. The first time he’d looked into them, he’d compared them to the shimmering blue-green waters of the Cinque Terre coastline where he and his cousins enjoyed sailing.
Since last June when she’d appeared on the Piccione, he’d only been able to look, not touch. It had taken every ounce of self-control to tamp down the ache that had leaped to life deep inside him.
Now that he’d flung the mourning band away, he felt reckless and so consumed with the need to hold and love her, he was trembling with that desire.
The object of his thoughts approached and knocked on the driver’s window without hesitation. He pressed the button to lower it.
A faint flowery fragrance from her skin and hair wafted past him. Much like an ember that unexpectedly bursts into flame, her scent ignited every primitive male yearning.
The voluptuous mouth he longed to devour was taut with anger, yet was no less beautiful to him.
“You had no right to drive away with Jan’s ring.”
“I agree. That’s why I gave it to your business partner to return to her. I told him to wait until you’d left the office.”
Her eyes set off a flash of incandescent color that rivaled the Northern Lights.
Ready for her next move which was to either return to her car or lock herself in her apartment, Nic levered himself out of the driver’s seat and caught up to her. Sheer need drove him to grasp her shoulders and pull her back against his chest.
The only other time he’d had this much physical contact with her was one evening last June when he and his cousins had kidnapped the girls during their attempt to escape on bikes.
Piper had been forced to sit on Nic’s lap in the back seat of a car. With the girls’ bikes on top of the car, the six of them piled inside for the half hour drive from the countryside beyond Genoa to the harbor.
Thirty minutes of ecstasy to feel her softly rounded warmth against his body. A lifetime of agony because he hadn’t been able to do anything about his needs.
Right now she was holding herself rigid, but he could feel her trembling. Because it was freezing out, he had no way of knowing if there wasn’t another reason for her condition.
“Please let go of me. People are watching us.”
“Let them. There’s a lot more I have to say to you, but we need the kind of privacy your office couldn’t afford us. You have two choices. Either we talk in your apartment, or my suite at the Kingston Hotel.”
“Not the hotel—” she fired.
“Very well. Let’s go inside your place then.” Her instinct for survival demanded she face him on her own turf. Since he’d always wanted to see where she lived, Nic couldn’t be more pleased.
After relishing the feel of her upper arms for one more moment, he removed his hands so he could follow her to the side steps leading down to her apartment.
She undid the lock. “I only have a few minutes before I have to get back for an important meeting with Don.”
“It’s been canceled. I already explained to him you wouldn’t be coming back today.”
Before she could slam the door in his face, he made a quick move inside the warm, inviting living room. Almost at once he came to a standstill in front of a large oil painting which could only be Piper’s parents in their latter years.
A long time ago he’d stashed the samples of her calendars in his library at Marbella. When he found himself wanting her too intensely, he would take them out of the drawer and examine her fabulous artwork to feel closer to her.
Yet looking at the painting on the wall, he realized she was a superb portrait painter too. It was a revelation to study the attractive faces and bodies of the two people responsible for bringing the Duchess triplets into the world.
He cleared his throat. “Odd how some couples in love grow to look like each other over the years. I can see many of their traits in you.”
She stood next to the coffee table with her arms folded like an adorable schoolteacher waiting for her kindergarten class to come to order.
“It’s déjà vu being pursued by one of the Varano cousins again. You’ve got me trapped, so let’s have it. Why have you really come, and what do you really want? Up until now it’s all been a bunch of gobbledygook.”
He couldn’t help smiling as he turned to face her. “Gobbledygook?”
“Don’t tell me one of Europe’s most renowned etymologists hasn’t heard that expression before.”
“I can’t say I have, but you’re right. I’ve been dancing around you until I could get you where I wanted you.”
Actually she wasn’t exactly where he wanted her yet, but being alone with her in this apartment constituted a major miracle and would do for starters.
“Certain information about the jewelry theft gleaned in New York has unearthed a startling new discovery.”
“And?” she prompted in a bored tone of voice. He could almost hear her tapping her foot, waiting for this to be over so she could boot him out the door. He had news for her…
“It turns out the accident that killed my fiancée in Cortina was no accident. I have every reason to believe the killer wanted both of us dead, but because of a quirk of fate that afternoon, Luc happened to be the one on that tram instead of me.”
CHAPTER THREE
PIPER had been trying hard not to look at him for fear he’d see the hunger in her eyes. But what she’d just heard caused her averted head to lift so they were staring at each other.
“Nina was murdered?” she whispered incredulously.
“She, along with several other innocent victims,” came the grim response.
Without being aware of it, Piper’s hand went to her throat. “How did you find out?”
“The surveillance cameras trained on the area where Christie’s receives merchandise caught a picture of the courier who delivered the jeweled comb. As soon as the CIA agents ran it through a routine check in the international database, one of the Interpol agents tracking an art crime ring recognized him.
“He’s a dark-blond Dane in his mid-twenties who uses several aliases. One of the names he goes by is Lars. This is the man.”
Piper studied the half dozen copies of photographs Nic took from his pocket. The blond, fit-looking Scandinavian type reminded her of men who spent their time in a gym working out.
“A few months ago some Monet paintings were taken from a private collection in Giverny, France, during a daring armed robbery that left two people dead. This Lars turned out to be one of the hit men they caught on tape. Though the police captured two individuals, he managed to escape and has been on the loose ever since.”
“That’s horrible,” she muttered.
“I faxed my cousins the pictures to apprise them of the new development in the case. The second Luc saw the man, he positively identified him as the person he saw Nina kissing so passionately the day she was killed.”
Piper tore her eyes from the pictures to stare at him in disbelief. “Your fiancée was unfaithful to you with an armed murderer?”
Nic took the pictures back and put them in his pocket. “It appears that way, though I had no knowledge of it at the time. My purpose for taking Nina skiing that weekend was to tell her I wanted to end our engagement.”
Shock upon shock.
“End it? I don’t understand. I thought your engagement was binding.”
“It should have been, but as the time grew closer to our wedding, I realized I couldn’t go through with it.”
With every utterance that came out of his mouth, Piper’s mind reeled a little more. “If you felt that way, why did you get engaged in the first place?”
“From the time I was little, our families were close. At thirty-three I still hadn’t found my soul mate, and she was an attractive, eligible woman. Knowing how my father and Señor Robles desired an alliance of our two families, I bowed to the pressure and became engaged to her. I reasoned that at least there would be no surprises in our marriage.
“Unfortunately as the time grew closer to the wedding, I realized I’d only been lying to myself. A union without passion wasn’t to be considered. With my mind made up, I decided to plan a ski trip to Cortina where I could break our engagement and we would talk things out.
“After a few ski runs, we left Max and Luc on the slopes, and went back to the chalet where I finally expressed my feelings. I expected tears and anguish from her. Instead she said she needed to be alone to think, then she rushed out of the chalet.
“That’s when Luc saw her join up with the other man. He followed them and witnessed their embrace. After they parted, she got in line for the tram. Instead of waiting for Max, who’d gone in the ski shop for a minute, Luc followed her to confront her.
“An hour later Max reached me on his cell phone to tell me there’d been a horrendous tram accident involving a group of skiers, among them Nina and Luc.”
Incredible. All of it. “I—I don’t know what to say. It’s ghastly.”
“You’re right. Naturally I suffered over her death the way I would have done for any close friend, but I was never in love with her. In light of what I learned in New York this trip, Luc’s positive identification of the man named Lars has shed a whole new light on the accident.”
“Of course it would.” Piper felt chilled and rubbed her hands along her arms to keep the circulation going.
“More than ever it makes sense why the police never could prove the tram suffered a mechanical failure. After talking it over with Luc and Max, we believe Nina may even have played a role in the theft.”
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