An Irresistible Bachelor (14 page)

She shook her head with a series of jerks, worried that if the man were any nicer to her, she might burst into tears.

“So go now, go and do what you have been trained to do. And know if you call me, I will come.”

He squeezed her hands again and then went back into his museum, a slight man with the bouncing walk of a child.

Later, as they waited for a break in traffic, Jack said, “You've got a hell of a glow going.”

She glanced over at him. “What? Oh—Gerard. He's just so amazing. And surprisingly humble.”

“The great ones always are,” Jack murmured as he put the car into gear and eased them into traffic. “What were you two whispering about?”

“He was just giving me some advice.”

“Good man to take advice from.”

She nodded and tilted her head toward the back of the car. “Generous, too.”

His brows tightened. “Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disabuse him of the notion that my portrait is going to hang next to Paul Revere. Damn it, my mother's ability to commit the assets of others is unequaled, at least now that my father is dead.”

Callie waited, hoping he would continue, and was disappointed when he didn't. She shifted her gaze to his hands on the steering wheel. She wanted to ask him to elaborate, but then he changed the subject.

“By the way, I was wondering if I could introduce you to a friend of mine.”

She looked at him with surprise, thinking that taking on another private client after she finished the Copley conservation would be great. “Of course. But are you sure you don't want to wait until after you've seen some of my work?”

“This isn't about work.”

The Aston Martin darted out in front of a truck and Callie gripped the door again.

“Gray was my college roommate and he's an all-around good guy. He lives in New York, but he's going to be here for the next couple of weeks. I think you two might get along.”

Jack wanted to set her up on a date?

“No pressure, of course,” he said, glancing across the seat at her. “I just thought maybe we could invite him out to Buona Fortuna. You could meet him, see if you like him.”

Callie told herself this was normal. This was how people met other people. Through friends. Contacts.

Business
associates.

And it proved how serious he was about keeping things between them . . . out of the closet, as it were.

“Er—okay.”

Jack focused on the traffic again. “Good. That's just great.”

The next morning, Callie had just settled in front of the painting when the garage door opened down below. She got up and went to a window, just in time to see the Aston Martin shoot down the driveway. She was watching the taillights disappear when Arthur came over and nudged her thigh with his head.

Work, she thought. She had work to do.

But it was hard to think about the job.

Yesterday, when she and Jack had returned from the museum, he'd helped her set up the microscope, and after it had arrived, the light as well. In the course of getting her workplace organized and removing the portrait's massive, gilded frame, he'd asked her innumerable questions about the project. He wanted to know what the process for cleaning the painting was going to be. What kinds of solvents she would use to remove the dirt and old varnish. What type of new varnish she would apply at the end to protect the fragile, original oil paint.

Given what had happened that morning, she was surprised by how comfortable she'd felt around him. He was witty and charming and had smiled at her with respect as she answered each of his queries. And the best part had been the sense that he was hitting her with all the questions simply because he was curious, not because he didn't trust her.

He'd been on his way back to the house when she'd asked him how to work the complicated stereo system. In the process of showing her how to turn the thing on, he'd discovered that it wasn't working, and that had led to him going up into the shallow crawl space over the room. She'd played nurse to his electronic surgeon as he'd banged and crashed around overhead, trying to get the speakers to receive a signal.

The cursing that had drifted down through the ceiling had been priceless and when he'd reemerged, cobwebs hanging from his hair, his beautiful business shirt and slacks covered with dust, she'd had to laugh.

Still, he'd got the damn thing working.

By the time they'd gone back to the house, dinner had been served and cleared. Jack had parceled out some leftovers and overdone it with the microwave, and they'd laughed as they tried to chew through the rubberized chicken. Neither of them had wanted to take a shot at the flaccid, weary green beans.

As much as she'd tried not to, she'd thoroughly enjoyed his company.

Callie shook her head and went back to the painting. She really needed to get started.

Positioning the microscope over the top right-hand corner of the painting, she brought the paint surface into focus by twisting a pair of knobs. Her eyes sought out the craquelure, memorizing the pattern of fissures, their direction, their depth. Inch by inch, she surveyed the surface of the portrait and meticulously recorded the status of the varnish, paint, and canvas support. This documentation, as she'd explained to Jack, was the first step in any conservation.

When she got to the mirror Nathaniel was holding, she frowned and cranked the microscope closer to the canvas. The paint layer was thicker in this area, suggesting an extra coat had been applied. The craquelure was different as well, the pattern tighter and the direction subtly dissimilar. She told herself she was imagining things, but further inspection only confirmed what had gotten her attention. There was something faintly inconsistent about the paint layer over the glass portion of the mirror, a slight change in the texture of both the brushstrokes and the cracks across the surface of the painting.

Callie pulled back and looked at the portrait with her naked eyes, telling herself not to get worked up. The difference was very subtle and it could be explained by a function of the paint itself. The mirror was one of the few pale parts of the painting, aside from Nathaniel's face and hands. Maybe Copley had used a different kind of oil base for the lighter hues.

She bent down and checked the forehead, cheeks, and chin of the face. The cracks were all consistent with the rest of the painting, which kept her suspicions running instead of slowing them down.

She retrained the microscope on the depiction of the mirror.

The change was so slight that, if it was an alteration, it had been made a long time ago. Or by an expert. And the varnish across that part of the painting was consistent with the rest of the work's surface. She'd just read in a book on Copley's work that the Walker portrait had last been conserved and revarnished some seventy-five years ago. The change, therefore, could be no more recent than that.

Callie sat back and stared off into space, wondering why the inconsistency hadn't been noted during that prior conservation. The book had mentioned details about the condition of the painting back then, but there had been no reference to any discrepancies in surface texture.

And Gerard Beauvais had seen something, she thought.

She recalled what he'd said about where the painting had been placed in the Blankenbakers' home, over a working fireplace. Such temperature fluctuations could have been the catalyst that revealed the retouching. Which would explain why the last conservationists didn't mention anything.

Maybe it was something as innocent as a repaint by Copley himself. Painters, even great masters, did that frequently. Not liking a shape or a tone, they would paint over what work they had done. Over time, as the paint layer aged, these changes could become more obvious, appearing as shadows in pale backgrounds or as pockets of disruption in the craquelure just like the one over the surface of the mirror.

Thinking perhaps the explanation was as simple as that, she recalled one of the things Professor Melzer had drilled into her. When you see hoofprints, don't think zebras.

It was good advice, she told herself. But damned if she wasn't skeptical anyway.

She spent the rest of the day on her preliminary review of the painting, going over every square inch of the canvas, searching out areas of chipping or flaking, discoloration or fading, changes in brushstroke. Her notes were as copious and objective as she could make them.

When she finally had to stop because her back ached from stooping over the microscope, she stood up feeling pleased. The painting was in good shape and she'd confirmed that there was no extensive work that had to be done. A removal of the old varnish and a cleaning, followed by an application of a new coat of varnish to protect the surface would be all Nathaniel would need.

She felt better able to complete the project and figured she'd probably need only another day to finish the documentation. And then the real fun would begin.

As she left the garage, she decided not to tell Jack about her suspicions. The chances of her making a neophyte mistake and jumping to a wrong conclusion were very real. And you didn't tell a man who's just spent five million dollars on a painting that it might have a flaw, based on a single inspection done before the thing was even cleaned. You waited until you were 100 percent sure and backed up by half a dozen other professionals in the field.

Wearing hockey pads was probably a good idea, too.

 

On Saturday, Jack hung up the phone on his desk and stretched in his chair. He was doing a deal with Nick Farrell, the renowned corporate raider. The guy was off-loading his interest in an international conglomerate and Jack was happy to take the shares off his hands. The company owned various European wireless and fiber-optic networks and would fit in perfectly with Jack's private portfolio of international broadcasting and TV stations. Farrell was going to realize a hefty profit and Jack was positioning himself to be one of the largest providers of electronic media and Internet service on the European continent. It was a good deal for them both.

Except at the moment, Jack was feeling nothing of the triumph he usually did when an acquisition came together. He leaned back and listened as the grandfather clock across the room began to chime.

Five o'clock. Which meant he could have a bourbon.

He walked over to the wet bar, poured himself a good portion of Bradford's best, and sat back down behind the desk. The liquor burned his throat as it went to his gut.

In spite of his success, he was feeling unsettled and vaguely aggressive and he knew precisely the cause.

When his phone had rung an hour ago and his caller ID had spelled out Blair's cell phone number, he'd let it go into voice mail. He'd done that a lot lately and he'd gotten into the habit of calling her back at her hotel when he knew she wouldn't be there. The decision not to tell her what had happened with Callie was harder to stomach than he'd thought and he knew he couldn't put off talking to her indefinitely.

After another hit of bourbon, Jack lifted the phone and his fingers punched out a familiar pattern.

Blair's voice was sharp when she answered. “Hello?”

“Sorry I missed your call.”

“Finally, it's you! Hold on—Listen, Joey, I need those light fixtures now. Karl wants me to show him this suite at the end of the week. I don't care if you have to gold leaf them yourself. It can't wait.” She let out a laugh. “Sorry about that, Jack. Things are pretty crazy here.”

“So Graves is as demanding as I've heard.” He brought up his glass again.

“But not impossible. He has high standards, but if you meet them, he lets you know it.”

Jack moved his chair around and looked out the window behind his desk. The light was just beginning to fade from the sky. “So how're you holding up?”

“Other than the not sleeping? I'll get through it somehow—Here, wait a second. No! No, I want the dark green in velvet. The gold is the brocade,” she yelled to someone in the background.

“You sound busy.”

“I am,” she said, sounding tired. “I knew going in that redecorating the Cosgrove Hotel was going to be a big project, but Graves has moved up the date of when he wants to reopen. I've only got a couple of months to do what would normally take a year.”

“If he drives you too hard, let me know and I'll take a hunk out of him. Me and a couple of my buddies could do a hostile takeover of his company and bounce him out on his ass in a heartbeat.”

She laughed. “Thanks.”

“When are you coming home?”

There was a hesitation. “Actually, I was thinking I would stay in the city for the next couple weeks, even through Thanksgiving. We're picking colors and fabrics and I've got to get to Karl whenever I can. His schedule's ridiculous, but he insists on being the decision maker about everything. He's offered me an old suite in the hotel.”