The Highest Bidder

“Vance! Good. Have you talked to Roark?”

“Two days ago, why?” She’d brought him here to talk about his brother?

“Then you don’t know. Even better. I want to see your reaction. See if it’s anything like mine.”

He didn’t have time for games. He needed to get back to Charlie. Look at the emails from her blackmailer. Kiss her again. Scowling at the wayward thought, he focused on Ann. Confusion settled down in him and he didn’t like it. “What’re you talking about, Ann?”

“This.” She walked to him and held out the papers. He took them and swiftly scanned the few lines of text before concentrating on the pictures.

“Is this what I think it is?” he asked, lifting his gaze to hers.

“If you’re thinking it’s the Rayas collection, including the Gold Heart statue,” she whispered almost reverently, “then yes. It is.”

“But it’s been missing for more than a hundred years,” Vance murmured, gaze dragging up and down the photo of the statue.

“Roark found it,” Ann told him, with barely restrained glee. “Honestly, your brother can be hard to deal with and even harder to keep track of, but he makes some truly miraculous finds for the house.”

Miraculous. Exactly what tracking down this piece of art was. Stunned, Vance stared down at the photo of the famed statue. Everyone who lived and worked in the fine art world knew the story of the lost statue from the Middle Eastern kingdom of Rayas.

One of only three in existence, each of the statues was a woman, two feet high, her heart etched and inlaid in gold. The pedestal the female figure stood on was an inch-thick block of pure gold and stamped with a unique seal. Legend said that centuries ago, the king of Rayas commissioned three Gold Heart statues, one for each of his daughters, to bring them luck in love.

The daughters were lucky, as were all the generations to follow—as long as the statues remained in their respective palaces. One of the three matching works belonged to the family of Sheikh Raif Khouri, another still graced the palace of the original family to inherit it. And about a century ago, the third statue went missing—presumed to have been either stolen—or sold by a member of the family. Either way, without the statue in the palace, that branch of the family met with heartache, disaster and eventually died out altogether. Which made a man put a little more faith in the strength of a legend.

But for this Gold Heart to suddenly turn up as part of the collection was damn irregular. Where had it come from? How had his brother found it? And why hadn’t he told Vance?

They’d spoken only two days ago, so he must have had a line on the statue then. Why wouldn’t he have mentioned it? Frowning now, Vance asked, “Roark sent these photos to you?”

“Just got them this morning by fax.” She grabbed the top paper back and skimmed over the full-color picture. “Gorgeous. Just gorgeous. And Waverly’s has it.”

This was huge. Vance stared down at the paper she’d left him with and examined photos of three of the other items that would be included in the auction. He felt a satisfied, proud smile crease his face. Roark had done it. He’d secured the most sought-after auction items in the world at a time when Waverly’s really needed the good press. It was a gift, he thought. A damn timely one.

“Where’s the statue itself?” he asked.

Ann looked up at him and blinked as if she had to refocus her mind. And who could blame her? Things had been tense and ugly here for a couple of weeks and this news could change everything. For Ann as well as for the house.

“He locked it in his overseas vault. It’s safe until he can bring it back home. But he’s authenticated it, Vance. There’s no mistake. This is the missing Gold Heart.”

He nodded.

“I want to announce this to the press,” Ann said. “But before I do, I wanted your take on it. We can’t afford any mistakes about this. Once the Gold Heart acquisition is announced, we’re putting Waverly’s reputation on the line.”

Vance knew what she was talking about. If it turned out that the statue was a copy or something even worse, it would shatter the house. They were already under siege and couldn’t afford any more bad press.

Looking at Ann, he said, “You know as well as I do that Roark knows his stuff. No one else on this planet has his kind of instincts—or his knowledge of antiquities. If he says it’s real, then it is.”

His brother had the unerring ability to locate treasures that others either overlooked or missed completely. Roark had an encyclopedic knowledge of the weird and the unique. He had managed to acquire collections for the house that no one else would have been able to procure.

She let out a relieved sigh. “That’s exactly how I felt about it. I just needed that feeling verified. God, Vance. Do you know what this will mean for Waverly’s?”

“I do. It’s an amazing find and right when we need it the most.”

Ann sent him a quick look. “It’s been rough, I know. But this will turn things around.”

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed. “But why the hell did Roark leave something this valuable overseas? Why not bring it home right away?”

Ann waved that question aside, but said simply, “He didn’t have time. After his stop in the Middle East, he was on his way to the Amazon, for some top secret meeting with another one of his contacts. If he’d taken the time to bring the Rayas treasures home, he might have lost out on the next acquisition.”

Vance still didn’t like it. The Gold Heart was legendary. Collectors all over the world had been looking for this missing statue for more than a century. Leaving it in a vault, no matter how safe, was taking a risk. “When will he be back?”

“I’m not sure,” Ann said, still smiling down at the photo she held in her hand. “He said he might run into some trouble with his latest quest.”

“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

“He didn’t say.”

His brother didn’t say much, dammit. If he was expecting trouble, then Vance wanted to know about it. “Well, what the hell is he after in the Amazon?”

“He didn’t tell me that, either.” Lifting her gaze to his, Ann said, “Roark doesn’t exactly keep us in the loop when he’s on one of his trips. You know that yourself, Vance. And you just admitted that no one is better than Roark at what he does.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Forget about everything else for a second, Vance. Don’t you see what this means for us? At auction, the Gold Heart could bring in as much as 200 million. Maybe more. And that’s not even taking into account the rest of the collection, which is pretty extraordinary.”

“I know, Ann.” Still, he had a bad feeling. Maybe it was the fact that he’d been steeped in a morass of suspicion for the past couple of weeks. But his internal alarms were ringing. Oh, not about the statue. As he’d told Ann, he had no doubts about its authenticity. If Roark gave his approval, that was good enough for Vance. But why now? Didn’t it seem just a little bit coincidental that the one thing that could pull Waverly’s out of this mess just happened to show up at the perfect time?

“It isn’t just the sale itself that will do a world of good for us. With all that’s going on right now,” Ann was saying, “this is just the big news we needed. The fact that Waverly’s acquired this statue to sell at auction is the kind of cachet you can’t buy.

“We’ll be above reproach and no rumors will be able to touch us. Any of us. This will push all speculation out of the paper. When word of this gets out, no one will be talking about anything beyond the fact that Waverly’s is the top auction house in the world. Let’s see Dalton try to pull something now.” She whispered that last part and Vance shot her a look.

Was there more to the rumors about Ann and Dalton than she was saying? She’d denied it all to the board, but that didn’t mean she was telling the truth. Of course she would lie to save her ass—the question was, would she sell out Waverly’s to do it?

He didn’t think so, but the woman was clearly on the raw edge of emotional meltdown. Her usually cool, dispassionate gaze was fired with an excitement he hadn’t seen in her before.

Maybe it wasn’t only Charlie dealing with threats from an unknown source. Maybe Ann was doing battle with a few demons of her own.

“That’s all of them?”

Charlie turned her head to look at Vance. He was crouched beside her office chair, studying the emails she’d pulled up on her computer screen. The heat of his body, so close to hers, went straight to her head and clouded all rational thought. It was a wonder she remembered to breathe.

He glanced at her and must have seen something in her expression because his brown eyes darkened and those gold flecks seemed to shine more brightly. “You keep looking at me that way and we’re not going to get anything done.”

“Sorry,” she said and unbelievably enough felt a blush burst onto her cheeks. At least, she assumed she was blushing. Her face felt hot and she was mortified. Idiot, she told herself firmly. He’s trying to help you. The least you could do is remain coherent. “Yes, that’s all the emails. Well, except for the one I got this morning.”

“You got another one?” His tone was as sharp as a knife. “Pull it up.”

She hadn’t wanted to show him this one, which was just stupid, since she’d told him everything else. But this email was darker. Scarier. Heck, she didn’t want to read it again herself. But she clicked on the message and when it popped open, her gaze went right to the bold-faced type.

No more stalling. Give me what I want or you lose the kid. I know where you live. I know your secrets. I’m through screwing around with you. Contact me by five p.m. tomorrow.

“Son of a bitch,” Vance muttered through gritted teeth. “Have you answered him?”

“Yes,” she said. “Right after the first threat came in, I tried to make him tell me who he was. Naturally, he wouldn’t. And when I got this note this morning, I sent him an email trying to stall for time. I didn’t hear back from him. But I don’t know what to do. I can’t steal from Waverly’s and if I tell him that, I might lose my son—”

“You won’t lose Jake.”

“I can’t risk it,” Charlie said and even the distraction of having Vance’s face so close to hers wasn’t enough to ease the panic inside her. “I have to do something.”

He nodded, his gaze fixed again on the email. “He knows where you live.”

“Yeah, I saw that.” She rubbed her hands up and down her forearms in an attempt to ease back the chill snaking through her. It didn’t help. It was creepy enough to get emails. To know that he could show up at her apartment was downright terrifying. “It’s scary to think he’s watching me.”

“Yeah, well, he’s done watching you.”

“I don’t know how I can stop him.”

“I do,” Vance said, his voice low and dark. “You and Jake are moving in with me for a while.”

Charlie just stared at him. Impossible, her mind was shouting. Woo-hoo, her body screamed. And somewhere in the middle Charlie tried to make sense of what he’d just said. But nothing came to her.

“I can’t let you do that.” She shook her head firmly, coming down on the side of reason instead of listening to her body’s urging.

“You’re not letting me do anything,” he told her. “Decision’s made.”

“Excuse me?” Her spine went as stiff as a poker and her chin lifted. Locking her gaze on his, she didn’t back down an inch from the steel she saw shining in his eyes. “I don’t take orders from you—” She caught herself and thought about that for a second, then amended, “Well, all right, I do, since you’re my boss, but you can’t order me to do this.”

An impatient sigh shot from his throat. “Charlie, do you want Jake to be safe?”

“Of course I do. What a ridiculous question.”

“Then you’re moving in with me, because this guy—” he stabbed one finger at the computer screen “—knows where you live. That means neither you nor Jake is safe.”

She didn’t want to be Vance Waverly’s good deed for the year. Didn’t want to be so pathetic that she needed a big, strong man to come riding to her rescue, for pity’s sake. Then she silently admitted that she also didn’t want to go home alone and worry about some nameless, faceless threat. She could stay with Katie, but her friend’s apartment was smaller than Charlie’s and she didn’t want to risk endangering Katie, either.

Should she do it? Should she risk moving in with her boss? Even to keep her son safe, was it the smart thing to do? She looked into Vance’s eyes and read the grim determination there. Mistake, she told herself. This was probably a huge mistake. But try as she might, she couldn’t think of a logical reason to say no.

Nine

Vance insisted that they take part of the afternoon off and move her and Jake into his condo. With the baby at Waverly’s day-care facility, Charlie got them both settled at Vance’s place.

Her first look at his home was enough to convince her that this was a bad idea. She could have plopped her entire apartment into just the living room of Vance’s penthouse and still have room left over. One entire length of the condo was a wall of tinted glass overlooking the Hudson River. Pleasure crafts and bright yellow kayaks, looking like fallen crayons, floated on the deep-blue water, and Charlie could only guess that the view of city lights at night would be stupendous.

The great room had been decorated by an expert so that it was starkly beautiful and about as kid-friendly as a set of steak knives. There were black leather chairs and couches gathered into a conversation area and another set of matching pieces in front of a now-empty hearth. Black lacquered tables stood on tile floors dotted with what looked like expensive rugs. Lamps that looked more like modern art than anything else were staggered around the room.

“See,” he said, spreading his arms wide, “plenty of room.”

“For me and an army,” she whispered as she followed Vance down a hallway that led to three bedrooms. She glanced in at the master suite as they passed, and her heart did a quick jolt when she saw his bed, huge and inviting, with a dark blue duvet and a mountain of pillows stacked against a black headboard.

“You really like black, don’t you?” she commented.

He looked down at her and shrugged. “It goes with everything. Or so the decorator told me.”

“Right,” she said, nodding. “Decorator.”

Just one more way that they were different. Even if she could have afforded a professional, Charlie never would have paid someone to furnish her home. The place that would be both haven and refuge. She would want to put her own stamp on this place. For example, she thought, in the great room, she would have had overstuffed furniture, less expensive but softer rugs and tables you could put your feet up on without having a bottle of Windex handy to wipe off the smudges. And she would have brought color into the place—blues, greens, even a sunshiny yellow. Anything to relieve the black and white and gray monochrome feel.

Oh, boy. Stop it, she told herself. This isn’t your home. You ‘re not staying. You ‘re a guest and probably a short-lived one, so just smile and be nice.

Vance opened the door to a guest room and Charlie was actually relieved to see pale blue walls, dark blue chairs drawn up in front of another fireplace and a bed done in pale blue and green. It was so different from the rest of the place, she could hardly believe it. “It’s lovely.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, it’s not what I was expecting.” She’d been thinking, of course, more black. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. The bathroom’s through here,” he said, showing her a palatial space with sky-blue tile, white sinks and tubs with what looked like teak wraparounds. The back half of the bathroom was a glassed-in shower space that looked big enough for—all kinds of things, she thought before she ruthlessly shut down that thought.

Like the rest of his home, the bathroom was stylish and elegant and intimidating.

“There’s a connecting room through the bathroom and it should work great for Jake. I can have a crib up here in an hour.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said, glancing around the third bedroom, another study in blues and greens. Apparently, his decorator had run out of ideas when it came to the guest rooms. “In fact, Vance, you don’t have to do any of this. Jake and I will be fine.”

“Yeah, you will,” he agreed. “Here.”

He laid both hands on her shoulders and she felt the heat of his hands sliding through her system. Seductive. That’s what he was. God, how had she ever believed he was cold and closed-off? In the past two weeks, he’d shown her more care and more attention than she could ever remember receiving from anyone.

Now, he’d even opened his home to her. Why? She had told him the truth about who she was. He had to know that whatever it was that sizzled between them when they were close couldn’t last. Wasn’t real. Wasn’t anything that should even have gotten started. So why hadn’t he turned his back on her?

He said he believed that she wasn’t trying to undermine Waverly’s. So was it something a lot simpler? Was he simply planning on using her for sex and then firing her later? No. She refused to believe that. Vance Waverly wasn’t that kind of man. He was being kind, and she wasn’t going to second-guess that. But oh, it probably hadn’t been a good idea to move in here, however temporarily.

“This guy knows where you live, Charlie,” Vance said as if he were reading her mind and knew that she was regretting the decision to come here. “What if he gets tired of email and wants to make a personal visit. Then what?”

She actually shivered at the thought. “I know, but I feel guilty. You’ve already been so nice, Vance….”

“Dammit, Charlie, you don’t have to go this alone.” He pulled her in to him until she had to tip her head back to look into his eyes. “I’m not being nice. I want you here where I know you and your son are safe. You can see I’ve got the room. What’s the problem?”

She reached up and laid her hands on his. “Vance, I appreciate it, I do. But you’ve never lived with a baby and I just don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”

“Let me worry about that, okay? Let me help.”

His features were tight, his eyes blazing as he looked down at her, practically willing her to agree. And though she knew she might one day come to regret this decision, Charlie knew she would be staying.

“Okay,” she said softly, admitting at least to herself that there was nowhere else she wanted to be.

“Good. Now,” he said, taking her hand, “drop your stuff. I’ll show you around.”

The tour of the rest of the condo had Charlie shaking her head in amazement. Vance’s house was lush and beautiful and she would never be comfortable there. Even the kitchen was set up more for a professional chef. It was like a model home. Meant to intrigue buyers and seduce them with clean lines and elegant furnishings.

But it wasn’t homey. It wasn’t comforting.

In fact, the only thing it had that appealed to her was Vance.

“I don’t want you to worry about bringing Jake out here to the garden,” he was saying now. “It’s perfectly safe for him.”

She stepped through the sliding-glass doors from the great room to a rooftop terrace oasis and gasped. They were at least thirty stories high and the views were incredible—as long as she didn’t look straight down. Potted plants and summer flowers burst from dozens of containers along the wall. A glass-topped table and chairs were set up at one side of the terrace and several lounge chairs, covered in white fabric, were gathered around one of those outdoor portable fire pits.

“No worries on the fire pit, either. It’s gas and it’s not as if Jake could turn it on.”

“Oh, I don’t think Jake needs to be out here,” she said, moving closer to the wall so she could take one very brief glance all the way down to the street below. Her head swam and she closed her eyes. “Yeah. He’ll be fine inside.”

Vance laughed. “Charlie, it’s perfectly safe.”

“It’s a long drop.”

“And we’re surrounded by a three-foot-high stone wall that is then topped by four feet of Plexiglas. There’s no way he could fall.”

Just the thought of that made her stomach sink. “I’m sure it’s safe, but we won’t be here that long anyway.”

Vance was at her side in an instant. He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her in close. Looking down into her eyes, he said, “Stop doing that. Stop talking about leaving.”

“I’m not,” she argued, even though a small voice in her head was urging her to do just that. Pull away before it was too late. Before her heart was even more engaged than it was already.

Before she did something so stupid as to fall in love with Vance Waverly.

“Yeah, you are.” He laughed shortly. “Mentally, you’ve got one foot out the door already and you’ve been in the house maybe ten minutes. So stop it, Charlie. You’re here now. With me. And I’m not letting you go.”

She should have argued with him. Should have told him that she came and went as she pleased. That he didn’t have the right to order her around or make demands or anything else outside of her job at Waverly’s.

But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she gave in to what her heart and body were demanding she do. Charlie simply leaned into him and whispered, “Good.”

He grinned, fast and sharp, then bent his head to hers and, once more, Charlie was swept up in the rush of sensation that only Vance could cause. Every cell in her body sparkled into life. Every square inch of her skin buzzed in anticipation of more, and deep inside her, something opened, as if it had been waiting for just this moment. She was seriously afraid that it was her heart.

He pulled her closer still, hands running up and down her back, molding her body to his, caressing her until she moaned and pressed herself into him. Good. It felt so good to have him hold her, touch her. It felt … right.

Her fingers raked through his hair and skimmed across the back of his neck. He wasn’t wearing his suit coat, so she felt the strength of his shoulders beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. And she wanted to feel more.

The sun shone down on them. A breeze dove over the top of the Plexiglas wall and stirred the flowers until their scent was overwhelming, drowning Charlie’s senses as completely as Vance was taking over her body.

“I feel as if I’ve been waiting years for this,” he admitted.

Charlie knew just what he meant. His hands swept up and down her back, caressing, exploring. And every touch was fire. Magic. Her skin felt flushed and sensitive. As if she’d been waiting for his touch to come suddenly, almost painfully, alive.

He kissed her again, like a man starved for what she alone could give him. Their tongues met, tangled together in a frantic exchange of passion. Desperation, need, fueled every move, sighs lifted into the air and seconds ticked into minutes.

Charlie’s heart was pounding so hard she could hardly breathe and she didn’t care. All she cared about was the next touch, the next kiss, the next sweep of his tongue against hers.

Her mind splintered and all thoughts dissolved. Her body roared into life, hungering as it never had before. Her blood raced and desire was nearly strangling her. This was so much more than she’d expected. So much bigger than anything she’d ever felt before.

“You’ve been driving me crazy for days, Charlie,” Vance murmured when he tore his mouth from hers. “I can’t stop thinking about you.”

She laughed, feeling a rush of pure, feminine power at his confession. Reaching up, she pulled at his dark red tie, loosening the knot, then slid it free of his collar. “How? What have I been doing?”

“Your hair,” he admitted, tearing off the clip she wore so her long hair spilled down around her shoulders and lifted in the wind. “I’ve been wanting to see your hair down since that first day I saw you. It was worth the wait.”