Scandal

He sent a pointed glance at the jumble of notebooks and folders on her desk. “Maybe it’s past time you cut your losses and moved on.”

“Cut my losses?”

“Maybe you should find another dissertation topic,” he said coolly.

“Dump my dissertation? Are you kidding?” First he blindsided her with this marriage stuff, and then he went totally off the deep end. “I’ve worked my butt off to get this far. And what I have is really good material. I’m not going to abandon it.”

He shook his head. “You still don’t have an ending, do you?”

No, she didn’t have an ending, which he very well knew. But that didn’t mean she was going to give up.

After a long pause, Daniel added, “I’ve been as patient as I can. But we had a plan, an agreement. I’m on schedule. You’re not.”

Jordan already knew the rest of it. If you don’t finish your dissertation, we can’t move on to the next step of the life we’ve so carefully planned…. Remember, full professor by forty…

It was the mantra he lived by, not just for himself, but for the two of them. Daniel wanted them to be the perfect faculty couple, brilliant in their own fields, moving toward the top of the academic ladder faster than anybody else. She’d thought that was what she wanted, too.

At some point, however, the whole idea had become suffocating. She thought of the scandalous women she’d studied and taught about. They would’ve laughed at a “full professor by forty” decree.

“Maybe I’m sick to death of living my life by a schedule,” she began, thinking things through as she spoke. It was a radical idea for her, not to have a plan set down, but this whole freedom and spontaneity thing was starting to sound really good.

Daniel just regarded her balefully.

“Maybe it’s time to rip up the schedules and throw away the rulebook,” Jordan said with more conviction than she felt. “Maybe it’s time for me to do what I want to do.”

“When have you ever done anything else?” Daniel scoffed. “I don’t know what’s going on with you, Jordan. Really, I don’t. I didn’t want to say anything, but, well, you’ve been acting strange for months. I’ve been trying to plan ahead for this new phase of my life, all the while wondering why my fiancée is dragging her heels.”

“I’m not dragging my heels. I’m just…” What? What could she possibly say to explain why she didn’t want to marry him now? And maybe not later. Because there was clearly something wrong with their relationship if the sex was way hotter with her dream lover than with her real one? “I have to point out that I’m not technically your fiancée. We agreed that we wouldn’t talk about marriage again until I was done.”

“But you may never be done.”

“I will finish, Daniel. You know I will.” She stopped, not sure what to say. “I love this project. Is it so wrong to hold out for the perfect ending?”

“I don’t think this has anything to do with the ending,” Daniel retorted. He turned away, muttering, “That’s a symptom, not a cause.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that yes, you’re a perfectionist. So am I. But…” He spun back to face her, pinning her with his gaze. “You know as well as I do that there are a million ways to finish the damn thing whether or not you know where the twit disappeared to. Hypothesize that she fell off a cliff or ran away to Mexico or her family got tired of her acting out and stuck her in a loony bin or sent her to a nunnery. Go with one, argue it and be done with it. See? Problem solved.”

“I can’t even believe you’re saying this!” She stood up, pacing back and forth in the small area behind her desk. Who did he think he was, ordering her around? And calling Isabella a twit? The two of them prided themselves on never arguing, but this seemed like a perfect time to start. “Actually, I do believe it. You never did respect anything except your own field. As if economics is next to godliness. Ha! Heaven forbid anybody else care about their own work.”

He looked shocked. He wasn’t used to being insulted. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

“Numbers aren’t everything, you know,” she said angrily. “I happen to think that Isabella and her arch say something very important about women and sexuality. I argue in my thesis that she was the first mainstream female artist to give women orgasms. Did you know that? Huh?”

His sneer was very unattractive. “And you really think that’s an appropriate topic for a real scholar?”

“Absolutely. Just because you’re not interested in whether Victorian women were completely repressed sexually and even denied the right to their own orgasms—”

“Oh, please!” he interrupted. “We both know the reason you’re not finished has nothing to do with Isabella or her pornographic arch or the repressed orgasms of Victorian women.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means…” His eyes narrowed. “It means that you’ll never find the right ending. Because you don’t want to.”

“Why? Why would I not want to?”

“Because that would mean being done with him .”

The word him hung there in the air between them for a long moment. Jordan started, stopped, and started again. Finally, she hedged with, “Him who?”

“You know who! The brother. You’re obsessed with the brother.”

She backed away from her desk, shaking her head. Did he know? About her dreams? No, he couldn’t. Keeping her dignity, she declared, “My only interest in him is because he’s important to the project and hopefully to finishing the project.”

“Why?” he snapped. “Do you think he had something to do with her disappearance? What’d he do, kill her?”

“Are you kidding? Of course he didn’t kill her. Nick would never have murdered his sister!” But she broke off when she saw Daniel’s triumphant expression.

“You are completely obsessed,” he declared. He came around her desk, grabbed her laptop and spun it toward both of them. “See? You can’t deny it. He’s your freaking screensaver!”

There it was, Nick’s face, photoshopped from the picture with the car. Smiling, full of life, absolutely gorgeous…She gazed down at him. Nick…

“Jordan!”

She jerked back to real life. “Okay, yes, of course that’s him, but—”

“Don’t bother,” he said flatly. “You’ve been distracted for months. Drooling over his damn picture for months. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were spending all your days writing ‘Mrs. Nicholas Tempest’ and ‘I Love Nick T’ over and over in your spiral notebooks.”

Her mouth dropped open. “I don’t have any spiral notebooks.”

“I’m not stupid, Jordan. Or blind.”

She sat down in her chair with a thump, edging her laptop back to face her, then rolling the trackball so the screensaver would disappear. Too little, too late.

“I thought we were on the same page,” Daniel argued. “I thought we were so much alike. Both mature, responsible adults, crossing our t’s, dotting our i’s, getting the job done, making each other proud. But ever since you started this whole scandalous women kick…” He shook his head in disgust. “I just don’t understand why you ever got into it in the first place. You could’ve studied Lincoln’s boyhood or George Washington’s teeth like everybody else. You just don’t fit this scandalous women thing. You are the least scandalous person I’ve ever met.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Somehow, it didn’t seem like a compliment. Stubbornly, she avoided the whole subject, insisting, “I’m not giving up now. I just can’t. I need to know what happened to Isabella before I write the end.”

“And if you never find out? What then?” Reaching once more into the briefcase, Daniel pulled out a glossy trifold brochure, slapping it down on her desk, next to her hand. “This was stuck to your door. It looks right up your alley. Maybe you can even take your class to it. Looks like a real magnet for ridiculous, sex-crazed women.” And then he smacked his case closed and made a move for the door.

“You’re leaving?” She couldn’t believe he was pushing some silly ad for a campus film fest or rock concert into the middle of their first argument and then just walking out.

“I have things to do. Plans to make.” Daniel sent her one last quick look. “Push has come to shove, Jordan. I’m moving to New Jersey. You’re going to have to decide what you want.”

“I know what I want. And it’s not moving to New Jersey!”

But he was already out the door and stomping down the hall. Damn him, anyway. Was it so wrong to want to finish up her beloved project before deciding what to do with the rest of her life?

“I am not dragging my heels!” she announced to the empty room. “I’m just linear, that’s all. I want to finish this before thinking about that .”

Liar, liar, pants on fire, mocked a little voice inside. She ignored it.

“I am furious with you, Daniel,” she shouted, even though he was long gone. “You’re trying to make me sound like some irresponsible, juvenile, swooning nutcase, and I totally reject that. And I reject you! ”

Jordan Albright, irresponsible or juvenile? Not likely. She’d been valedictorian of her high school class. Her undergraduate degree came summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Everybody knew she was someone who could be counted on, who came through, who sweated the details and produced great work on time every time. Well, she saw through Daniel’s transparent attempt to bulldoze her into planning a wedding and leaving Chicago. So unfair. It was all because he was jealous of the attention she paid to Isabella and the arch. And Nick.

Okay, so probably the fact that he was jealous of Nick wasn’t so unreasonable, considering the steam factor of those dreams and the level of her obsession. But still…

Fuming, she glanced down at the brochure he’d left behind, noting the words “Sex Through the Ages” and “Now in Chicago!” swirling over an illustration of two marble lovers tangled in an intimate embrace. Hmm…

Not the normal college promo piece, that was for sure. Sex Through the Ages? What did that mean? Some kind of art exhibit, apparently.

Maybe she should go. At least it would get her out of the office and she wouldn’t have to think about Daniel and his outrageous insults anymore. Besides, the picture on the cover was reminiscent of some of Isabella’s work.

Jordan always followed up on any exhibit, any museum show that had anything remotely like Isabella’s work. You never knew when you might stumble over a small statue or a sketch. In fact, she had a piece of sculpture, a man’s hand, sitting in her living room at home. She felt sure the object was Isabella’s handiwork, even if she hadn’t exactly proved it yet. There was just something about the power and the passion in those elegant fingers that cried “Isabella Tempest” to her.

Although “Sex Through the Ages” sounded like a theme Isabella’s sculptures would fit, a lot of late Victorian artists had worked with nudes, and the chances that this show had anything of Isabella’s weren’t good. “Highly unlikely,” she reminded herself as she peered at the pamphlet.

“‘Many periods and cultures,’” Jordan read aloud off the front. “‘Lingerie, lacing and leather. Fertility icons and totems. Erotic paintings, drawings, pottery and sculpture.’”

She scanned the rest of the flyer, looking for any details about the specific sculpture in the exhibit, about ninety percent sure there wouldn’t be anything of interest to her. Maybe more details on Victorian nudes, but she already had plenty of sources on that, so…

“Wait a minute,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

But it was.

There, on the inside panel of the tri-fold brochure, was a small picture of an arch.

An arch just like Isabella’s.

4

How to Be a Scandalous Woman, Rule 4:

Leap before you look.

T HE PICTURE WAS TINY , and there wasn’t a lot of detail, but it was definitely an arch. Could it be Isabella’s?

“Too small to tell for sure,” she decided, peering at the picture. Her eyes swept over the poster-size reproduction on her wall, and then back at the tiny illustration in the brochure. They looked the same, but…

Stunned, Jordan took a deep breath. It couldn’t be Isabella’s arch! Not in some crazy advertisement stuck to her door. That was too easy, too weird, too coincidental. Her arch? The one that might provide the missing piece of the puzzle she needed so desperately? Showing up out of the blue?

Jordan had done all the research, looked high and low for references to the arch in every collection, every museum, every estate, leaving no stone unturned. How could it turn up like this?

It would almost be insulting if it were her arch.

“Okay, this is no time to stand on pride,” she chided herself. “If there’s even a tiny possibility it’s the right one, I have to go. I have to find out. If this is it, there could be a paper trail to tell me where it’s been all the time. Maybe all the way back to Isabella. Oh, my God.” She gulped. “That would be huge .”

Even without a paper trail, the arch would be a crucial, dramatic addition to her dissertation. Exactly what she needed to finish and prove to herself and to Daniel that she was a serious scholar.

“Art Institute, opening Friday,” she read aloud.

Damn. It was only Tuesday. Maybe if she grabbed a cab and got to the Art Institute right now, she could talk her way into the gallery where they were setting up the exhibit.

Deciding quickly, Jordan pulled open her yellow messenger bag and stuffed the slim brochure in there, alongside her wallet, cell phone, PDA, keys, an umbrella, a package of gum, a small notebook, several pens, aspirin, a lip balm and all the other things she usually carried. She liked to be prepared.

But then she looked down at her outfit. It’d been blazing hot and humid all week, and she’d planned to be in the office with no appointments for most of the day, so she hadn’t exactly dressed professionally. In fact, she’d thrown on clothes that made her feel more free and saucy, in the hope of sparking enough creativity to get around her dissertation impasse. Which meant she was wearing a too-short jeans skirt, a slinky camisole with a bold red-and-black print on it, and her favorite high-heeled sandals, the ones that made her taller and more confident. For a woman who believed in emphasizing brain over body, it was actually kind of a shady outfit. One not likely to convince museum officials that she was a trustworthy academic type.

She briefly considered going home and changing into something more businesslike—at least throw a jacket over the cami and change into a longer skirt—but she was too impatient. This might be the arch. Her arch. It might be a breakthrough. Finally!

Jordan had never believed in karma or fate or anything crazy like that. Never. But maybe this was the time to start.

“It can’t just be a coincidence that something so close to my arch showed up in that brochure. It was meant for me,” she said with determination. “It’s the message I’ve been waiting for.”

Hefting her bag over her shoulder, she took two steps toward the door. But at the last minute, she turned back and scooped up her lucky Columbian Exhibition half-dollar out of the cup, sticking it in her pocket. And then she leaned over far enough to edge open the drawer, grab the two photographs of Nick Tempest in their plastic sleeves, and carefully slide them into the bag next to the “Sex Through the Ages” brochure. It didn’t make any sense to take Nick with her, but she didn’t care. She wanted him along for the ride.

Jordan stewed all the way to the Art Institute on the “L”, wishing the train would move faster, pulling out Nick’s pictures to make sure she hadn’t lost them, rubbing her coin for luck, and then checking the “Sex” flyer one more time to be sure she’d really seen what she thought she’d seen.

“It sure looks like my arch,” she whispered.

But what would she do if it was? Actually locating Isabella’s arch would change everything. How far back into the dissertation would she have to go if it was the right arch and it had a paper trail? What if it wasn’t as magnificent as she thought from the sketches and not a masterpiece at all? What if Isabella was just a mediocre artist with a smutty arch that didn’t mean anything to anybody?

What if it did provide the answer and she could now write the ending and that was it? Over? Done? No more Nick haunting her dreams?

Jordan closed her eyes and tried to stop herself from coming up with more questions and driving herself even crazier. “If it changes everything, maybe it’ll be in a good way,” she said out loud, getting a strange look from the person across from her on the train.

Finally, she hit her stop and practically ran over to Michigan Avenue, hustling down the sidewalks and then huffing and puffing up the stone steps of the Art Institute. Luckily she was a member of the Institute, so she didn’t have to wait to pay. Still, she stopped at the information desk.

“‘Sex Through the Ages,’” she said impatiently to the woman behind the desk. “Which way?”

“Well, it will be in the Beckwith Gallery, southeast side of the second floor,” the clerk responded, “but that exhibit isn’t open yet.”

“Yes, I know. Thank you!” Jordan called back, already dashing for the stairs.

If she’d been anxious before, she was practically humming with impatience by the time she ran up one flight of stairs, down two long halls and into an elevator, until she was finally standing in front of the tall, imposing doors to the Beckwith Gallery. Unfortunately, the doors were closed, with a chain fastened between the handles, and a sign placed in front of them that said No Admittance During Installation Of New Exhibit.

She stopped for a minute, testing the chain, noting that it wasn’t tied or secured, just dangling there. She bent closer to the crack between the doors, squinting. There wasn’t much to see. It was dark and quiet on the other side.

Quickly, she made up her mind. Jordan wasn’t exactly the breaking-and-entering type, but she could at least try to get in there. After sending a quick glance around, seeing no one, hearing no one, she drew back carefully on the chain.

It jangled loudly, surprising her, making her drop the end, which caused even more of a racket when it banged against the brass handle. She jumped away, all ready to act innocent if a guard came running.

But no one came. Thank goodness. After waiting for one long minute and then two, Jordan gathered her courage and sidled up to the door again. This time she pulled the chain all the way through to one side, with a fast yank, ignoring the noise. And then she grabbed the handle, tugging, expecting the doors to be bolted, wondering how she was going to jimmy the lock.

But…Her eyes widened and her hand trembled around the knob. She couldn’t believe it. There, under her fingers, the handle was turning. It wasn’t locked .

The massive wooden door creaked as she dragged it open enough to sneak through, and the sudden sound almost gave her another panic attack. She figured at this point she should be immune. She would have plenty of time later to reflect on just when she’d decided to break and enter and become a criminal. It wasn’t like her at all. The usual her, anyway. So she was acting like somebody else, somebody wilder and more reckless. Too bad. For now, she was going to get into that gallery and find the arch come hell or high water.

Once the doors closed behind her, the air felt hot and stuffy. Or maybe it was fear making her overheat. It was also shadowy and dim, but she didn’t dare search for light switches. She crept along, as quiet and careful as she could manage. The only thing she heard was her own heartbeat, pounding in her ears.

Jordan sneaked farther into the gallery, peering into corners, her eyes adjusting to the dim surroundings as she tried to figure out if there was any rhyme or reason to what was where. There were no guards, no museum staff puttering around, just paintings and pottery here and there, some unopened crates and boxes, and quite a few placards already in place on brass stands, detailing the exhibits to come. She saw parts of “The History of the Condom” in one room, and a display of phallic-shaped household items recovered from the ancient city of Pompeii in another.

“Who knew Pompeii’s patron god didn’t wear pants?” she asked out loud. Every piece of art devoted to him was all about his huge, erect penis, right out there in the open. It seemed the citizens of his town celebrated his amazingly large asset with all sorts of things shaped in its image. There were spoons, cups, vases, jewelry and more penis-shaped wind chimes strung up than seemed reasonable. They tinkled when she walked by, as if they were happy to see her.

Jordan backed away from the Pompeii exhibit, only to find herself up close and personal with a series of gorgeous Japanese woodcuts depicting women having sex with sea monsters.

“I guess I’m in the right place,” she murmured uneasily. This was definitely all about sex. Everywhere she looked. Sex, sex, sex. It was making her a little dizzy.

Under other circumstances, it might’ve been a fascinating exhibit and she might’ve been able to switch gears into Jordan Albright, Academic, so she could look at it objectively, without all the funny feelings. Hot, lightheaded, starting to perspire…

“They really need some air conditioning in here,” she muttered. Sure, blame it on the lack of AC.

She raised a hand to swipe at the moisture on her forehead, reminding herself fiercely that she was on a mission, a professional mission, and she needed to block out all the salacious etchings and naughty bits of pottery if she was going to find the elusive arch before anybody noticed she was there.

As she turned into a larger room, she noticed tall statuary shrouded in white drapes. It created an eerie mood, with giant, looming figures casting deep shadows into the rest of the space. She reached out to test the edge of a drop cloth.

And a hand touched her elbow.

Jordan jumped about a foot, shrieking something indecipherable, as she spun around to face the intruder. She raised two fists in the air, prepared to act menacing.

But all she saw was a small, older man in a uniform, with wisps of silver-gray hair escaping from under a smart military cap. He sort of looked like Captain Kangaroo in that uniform. He was even smiling kindly. Nobody scary. She set her hand over her pounding heart.

“So sorry to frighten you,” he declared. “I’m the curator of this exhibit. May I help you find something in particular?”

What? It took her about two beats to get the sense of that. He wanted to help her? She was expecting him to kick her out or have her arrested for breaking and entering and skulking suspiciously around a museum full of priceless objets d’art.

She inhaled, trying to get her breathing back to normal. If only the air weren’t so hot and heavy in this place. Her silk camisole was sticking to her skin, and she felt as if she were suffocating. “I’m so sorry. I know I’m not supposed to be here, but I—”

“No, please, don’t worry.” His smile widened, and there was a definite twinkle in his bright blue eyes. ‘“Sex Through the Ages’ is a very unusual collection, and not everyone’s cup of tea. So it does my heart good to run into someone so eager to see it that she couldn’t wait for the official opening.”

“That’s true, I suppose,” Jordan managed. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“I’m here to help,” he said in a conspiratorial tone.

“Okay, well, there’s one piece in particular I need to find.” She scrambled to pull her bag around to the front, quickly tugging out the flyer for the “Sex” exhibit and opening it to show him the tiny picture of the arch.

“Oh, that’s a spectacular piece,” he said with hushed awe. “One-of-a-kind.”

“Do you know who the sculptor is?” she asked quickly, but he didn’t answer.

Without another word, he turned and marched from that room, motioning for her to follow. She did. She didn’t have much of a choice.

Down the hall, around a corner, passing several dark rooms, he led her into a narrow hall lined with statues. If possible, it was even more stifling and confining in this small space, even harder to breathe. The curator was wearing a long-sleeved jacket over a shirt and tie and he had set a brisk pace to get to this corridor, yet he looked immaculate, without a hint of perspiration. It was freaky.