A.k.a. Goddess

No, he wasn’t a vampire. He was just being sarcastic.

“You might as well.” I sighed. “Everyone else has tonight.”

So he did, casually touching my arm as he passed me…except that nothing Lex Stuart does is truly casual. He’s got a great poker face, but it’s more as if he’s eternally lying in wait for something, patiently still, ready to pounce.

I’ve only seen him pounce once. I didn’t enjoy it.

“Ouch,” he said, noticing my broken curio cabinet. I’d had to cruise every room before I saw it, but he took it in first thing. “They got the girls?”

“Thoroughly.” I watched him cross to the rubble. I’d been straightening, but I hadn’t gotten to that yet. Once I cleaned it up, I might as well throw it all away—nothing left to save. I wasn’t sure I felt ready for that.

“Bastards.” Lex picked up the round, faceless head of my Willendorfesque Venus—a piece he’d given me when I got my doctorate. We hadn’t even been dating at the time. But he’d sent me the statue for my collection anyway, managing in true Lex fashion to choose something that, despite my best sense, I couldn’t bear to return.

“Luckily none of it was original.”

“This was,” he said.

I gaped at him.

He shrugged, dropped the chunk of rock back onto the carpet, and brushed his fingers on his neatly pressed, thousand-dollar slacks. “You know my family collects antiques.”

Yes, I knew. Beyond last year’s corporate espionage trial, and his still-murky role, his family’s antique collection was one more reason to distrust the Stuarts. Considering my own family’s connection to certain relics, that is. Now this.

“You gave me an original piece of Paleolithic sculpture?” Not counting what something like that would fetch at auction, hadn’t it belonged in a museum? Was owning it even legal?

The Stuarts never had constrained themselves with something so mundane as legalities.

“So did they take anything?” Lex answered my question with his avoidance. “Or was it simple vandalism?”

They were looking for something. The dumped drawers, the gutted cushions, the carpet pulled away from the corners… It was the only logical explanation. I hadn’t cleaned enough of the damage for someone as smart as Lex to miss that, either. And they hated my goddesses. Any guesses?

“I haven’t found anything missing,” I said, noncommittal. “But it’s hard to tell, this early.”

We eyed each other, letting the silence stretch. Me, because I had theories I wanted to protect awhile longer. Him…who could tell? Maybe he had secrets, too. Or it could just be his love of a good competition.

Either way, neither of us ’fessed up to anything.

He turned away first—though it may have been a simple courtesy. “You really need a monitored security system, Mag. If you can’t afford one, I wish you’d let me—”

Blessedly, my phone rang to cut him off before he tried to buy me yet again. Even during the good times, we generally argued when he did that.

Another ring. He turned away to look at other damage, giving me an illusion of privacy. It wasn’t the best circumstance under which to take a phone call, but I didn’t want the answering machine to pick up and broadcast anything to him.

Too bad I’d already rehooked the machine. So I answered. “Hello?”

“How soon can you get to France?” Sure enough, it was my cousin Lil—likely on business Lex shouldn’t know about.

I used every bit of self-control to say, “I have company. Call you back?”

There was a long pause while she took that in. Then Lil asked, “Is it who I think it is?”

Maybe she’s psychic. Maybe she’s just really smart. Does there have to be a difference?

I peeked over my shoulder at Lex. He’d decided to make himself useful and was shelving some of my scattered books, scowling at the destruction.

“I think it is.”

“I’ll call you,” she said, and hung up. Quickly. I wondered if she’d gotten off the line before a trace could be run…assuming anybody was running a trace.

She would call back from a different phone, likely using someone else’s three-way dialing to confuse matters further. Just in case. We’re amateurs at the cloak-and-dagger stuff, but we learn fast. And as much as I hated bowing to that kind of paranoia…well, someone had broken in.

Lex turned back to me, solemn, as I set down the phone. His rich hazel eyes didn’t flinch. “You used to trust me.”

Did he purposefully choose the best way to wound me, or was he just expressing his own pain? I didn’t want to do this again. It had hurt both of us too much the last few times. Still, I couldn’t not answer. “You didn’t used to work for your cousin.”

He tried a wry smile. “I never said Phil isn’t an ass, Mag.”

“And yet you cover for him, despite last year’s trial.”

“In which the charges were dropped.” And they had been. Espionage. Perjury. Insider trading. Unfair monopoly.

Like magic.

“After an undisclosed settlement,” I reminded him. “That you won’t even talk about.”

He took a deep breath. “Because I signed a contract of nondisclosure.”

“Damned convenient, that. The ends don’t always justify the means, Lex. Sometimes the means are everything.”

“The stockholders seem happy enough.”

I said, “So marry one of the stockholders.”

His eyes narrowed. “I was just worried about an old friend, Magdalene. Don’t flatter yourself that there’s more. Marriage hasn’t been on the table for some time.”

I forced myself to say, “Good.”

That brought him up short. It hadn’t been my intention, whether he deserved it or not. And I still didn’t know, couldn’t possibly guess if he really deserved it.

That’s the part that really sucked. Not knowing. And he’d fixed things so I would never know.

“Oh, Lex, I didn’t mean it that way.” I crossed to his side, torn. An enemy I could fight. An ally I could love. But what could I do with him? “What I meant was, you deserve to be happy, and it clearly isn’t happening with me. I just wish—”

But he shut me up by kissing me.

I should probably have fought him off. Slapped his face, kneed him where it hurt, bit his searching tongue. I had my ways. That would teach him to be so damned proprietary.

But I’d missed him, and tonight I needed that kiss far, far too badly to risk any of it.