Brilliant (16 page)

T  H  I  R  T  Y  -  F  O  U  R

Although, to my knowledge, Owen hadn’t called for a reservation, it seemed slightly suspicious to see two of Cliveden’s uniformed staff members waiting to greet us at the front door.

“Seems we’re expected,” I commented.

“This is what they do for everyone. When your car passes through the little laser at the far end of the drive, a bell goes off on the front desk, and everyone rushes out.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I’m telling you the truth. What do you think? That I had this planned all along? Take you and show you a project that could land me in jail for the rest of my natural life, then bring you to Cliveden’s and get you drunk and seduce you?” Owen’s breath was fogging up the windows while the two staff members shivered outside waiting for our “discussion” to end. “Goddamn it, Kick. You are the most unfriendly,
suspicious
, independent goddamn woman I’ve ever met. First you cast some sort of weird aspersion about Lady Melody and Tina—I won Lady Melody’s estate fair and square, and I won’t have you implying anything to the contrary—and now you’re bristling up because a couple of doormen are waiting by the goddamn door, which, just incidentally, in case you’re interested, happens to be their job. Why can’t you just lighten up for just a minute?”

“All right. All right,” I said. “Calm down. It just seemed a little curious, that’s all.”

“Well, it’s not. It’s goddamn
lunch
. And if you shrug one more time, it’ll be pow! Right in the kisser!” He smacked his fist into his palm and got me laughing hysterically.

This beautiful Buckinghamshire estate, Lady Astor’s magnificent country home with its famous and infamous past—this was where John Profumo and Christine Keeler conduced the affair that toppled the British government—had been converted into an exclusive hotel several years ago, and its kitchen, under the hand of a three-star chef, was renowned.

A young man in a severe navy suit escorted us into the living room. “Will you have an aperitif?”

“You bet,” Owen answered. He was still pretty riled up. “We’d each like a Bloody Mary. Extra hot. Extra vodka. No ice.”

“Excellent choice. Please make yourselves comfortable here by the fire, and I’ll return with your drinks.”

I excused myself to go to the ladies’ room.

“Do me a favor,” Owen said. “Come back with a better attitude. Put a goddamn smile on your face.”

I looked in the powder room mirror. My cheeks were rosy, and my eyes sparkled. I looked like a kid. “Stop it, Kick,” I said out loud. “Stop it.”

T  H  I  R  T  Y  -  F  I  V  E

“Talk,” I said, once Owen had approved the white burgundy I suggested he order, a 1989 Olivier Leflaive Corton-Charlemagne, and our glasses were poured. We were sitting by a window in the dining room, but, unfortunately, the famous grounds I’d read so much about were scarcely visible through thick fog.

“I came up with the plan years ago, but the timing wasn’t right until recently, for obvious reasons. For some time now, I’ve collected furniture and paintings at auction, and I’m not an expert on either, but the point is: neither are most of the people who are doing the buying. I don’t mean they’re ignorant, in fact they’re generally pretty savvy, but when it gets down to the extra fine points of confirming what’s authentic and what’s not, most of them don’t have the expertise. I’d never try to trick a dealer, or a museum expert, but face it, if you bought that Louis Quinze chest—and what you examined at the auction itself was the real thing—and if Jean’s reproduction were delivered to your house, would you be able to tell the difference?”

“No, actually, based on what I saw, I don’t think I could.”

“And you’re in the business.”

I resisted saying anything about my “eye,” and how fine it was, because in this case evidently it wasn’t. “So what you plan is, depending on who buys a piece, whether it’s furniture or a painting, you’ll swap it during delivery, then sell the original privately?”

“You learn fast.”

“Well, I’m sorry to break this to you, Owen, but it’s not exactly an original plan—our business has always been vulnerable to fraud. But I’m pretty sure the scale you’re contemplating is something new.” The two Bloody Marys had warmed and relaxed me. The soft cashmere of my sweater caressed my skin. I toyed with my pearls. Owen put his hand on mine, and I could feel myself responding, enjoying his touch.

The waiter and his aide arrived with a gold-rimmed tureen big enough to hold soup for thirty, and we suspended our conversation while he ladled out bowls of steaming lobster bisque, adding a dollop of sherry.

When they were gone, Owen lifted his glass. Our eyes met. “
Bon appétit
,” he said. “Here’s to Project Caruso.”

The wine tasted like ambrosia.

“Owen, I know you think this is going to generate a huge amount of cash, and it might, but has it occurred to you that you need a financial fix that is not high-risk and labor-intensive? You need something conservative that generates a steady, dependable cash flow. What will you do if you get caught?”

“First, I’m not going to get caught.” He put down his glass and picked up his spoon. “Do you have any idea how much of a priority this sort of scam is for Scotland Yard? Zero. Plus, what I need is cash. Now. Plus, we can always say our experts’ assessments were wrong. We don’t have any liability. Caveat emptor.”

“You do have a reputation to protect,” I observed, and took a small sip of soup, but my appetite had vanished. Being in this beautiful spot with this dangerous man had filled me with unfamiliar sensations. Pure animal attraction. All I could think about was going to bed with him.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to happen.”

“I hope for your sake, it doesn’t. But I think you’re crazy.”

“I want to change the subject.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “You’re buying.”

“You look particularly beautiful today. I’m glad you agreed to have lunch.”

“Owen, I’m not one of your models. You don’t need to use your lines on me. I’m happy to be here. Let’s leave it at that.”

“Why can’t I just give you a simple compliment? Why do you turn everything into a federal case? It’s not a line. You do look beautiful.”

“Thank you.” The fact is, his comments flooded me with happiness. However attracted I might have been to Owen in the car that morning had multiplied itself times a thousand. The car was a turn-on, but nothing compared to grand larceny and fraud! It was just unbelievably sexy. Oh my, I thought, the things we could share. Of course, I never would, but the idea of it made the butterflies in my stomach churn up a storm.

“How are you going to work the money?”

We’d finished the soup and white wine, and started on grilled veal chops with perfectly prepared carrots, broccoli, gratinéed potatoes, and a perfectly selected burgundy—a 1989 Bouchard Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus—one of the most hard-to-find, sensual, beguiling wines on the planet, which could not have complemented the food more perfectly. I spotted it immediately on the wine list and told Owen to order it. The sommelier almost fainted with joy at Mr. Brace’s connoisseurship. And me? I was feeling perfectly relaxed.

“I set up a dummy corporation that will become a major investor in Panther. That’s what’s hemorrhaging the most at the moment.”

“Amazing.” I didn’t seem to be able to take my eyes off Owen’s lips. He seemed to be having the same struggle with mine.

It started to snow.

We had orange marmalade bread pudding for dessert. And cognac. We were both warm and comfortable, satiated. Owen reached over And put his hand on my cheek and stroked it along my jaw, and the touch ran through me like an electrical current. I held his fingers to my lips and kissed them. I touched them with my tongue.

“My car won’t go in the snow,” he said.

“I know.” I kissed his fingers again.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

Okay. I guess there’s something wrong with me. I don’t know. I suppose I could blame it on the Bloody Marys. The bottle of Corton-Charlemagne. The bottle of Beaune. The cognac. The fact that it started snowing during lunch and we all know the Panther Madrigan couldn’t make it out of the parking lot, much less down the drive and back to London. For that matter, with all the drinking we’d done, even if it were a summer’s day I don’t think Owen would have been capable of making the drive.

I could blame it on the laughter. Or the scheme. Or the passion that had been mounting all day. What difference does it make?

“Excuse me for a minute,” he said, and left me at the table.

I knew I was about to do something like I’d never done before, with a man I had no business doing it with. So what. I was a grown woman. I felt happy and excited. Everything would be all right.

Minutes later, Owen returned. “Come with me.” He put his hand on the small of my back and guided me out of the dining room. It was a familiar, intimate gesture, and it made me feel special, close to him. We went up the stairs and Owen put the key into the doors at the top of the landing. LADY ASTOR SUITE, a small plaque read. The room was spectacular. A fire blazed in the fireplace, and outside the wind whipped the snow into a frenzy. He locked the door and very slowly turned me around to face him and kissed me. His lips were warm and sweet, almost tentative, and then he kissed me more hungrily. I felt him hard against me and his tongue on mine.

“Oh, my God,” he whispered, pressing his lips to my neck. “You are so magnificent.”

He kissed me again. His strong fingers stroked me gently through the cashmere, just the way I’d imagined. My knees weakened. My breath ran out.

From that first touch, Owen brought me to a new world. I can safely say I’d never been made love to before.

I melted like platinum.

T  H  I  R  T  Y  -  S  I  X

The snowstorm wasn’t a blizzard. In fact, it had stopped and was melted, for all intents and purposes, by six o’clock that evening. But it was dark and might have been icy, and so we stayed all day Sunday, too. We stayed until five o’clock Monday morning, just to be safe.

“See you at the office,” Owen said, when he dropped me off at home. His mind was back at work, and mine, I’m sorry to say, was filled with complications. And exhaustion. Plus, I had a huge, red, bruiselike sore on my neck. I had a hickey.

“I can’t believe you did this,” I said. I was angry and embarrassed, and embarrassingly thrilled. “I haven’t had this happen since tenth grade.”

“Yeah. Well, there it is. It’s like a sexual badge of honor.”

Just what I needed.

I took the morning papers in and, while I waited for the coffee to brew, searched for news of the theft. There it was, a tiny article in the city news section:

WHAT? I could not believe my eyes. Had the Samaritan taken back his card and kept the painting and let me take the blame? Where was the Samaritan-ness in that? I guess he was sore, literally and figuratively, that I’d whacked him on the head, and this was his way to get even. What a mess. That was definitely the end of Mayfair for a while—I’d have to move down the park to Kensington. Oops. I just remembered, I’m not doing this anymore. Old habits are hard to break.

I left a message for Commander Curtis apologizing for not returning his call earlier. “I was away for the weekend,” I said. It was the truth. The other part of the truth was that, until I checked my messages, I’d completely forgotten he’d called.

Later, as I sat on the bus on my way to work—an animal-print chiffon scarf wrapped high around my neck to conceal the hickey—eating my warm cruller, and watching the city creep past, I reflected on what had happened to me over the last two days. I was filled with self-recrimination. What a terrible mistake I’d made falling into Owen’s trap and bed. It was the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, not just because it put me on the same level as all the other silly girls who panted after him, but because I’d had such a good time, and now I was sorry. More than anything, I felt ashamed. And embarrassed. And I was getting angry about the hickey. You can make up all the lies, stories, and explanations about something like that you want, and you can’t fool anyone. If I’d had any idea what he was doing, sucking on my neck like that, I would have stopped him. And by the time I figured it out, it was too late. At the time, I’d laughed and laughed, like a love-struck teenager. What a fool I am. A hickey is a hickey and there’s only one way to get them and everyone knows what that is. And FYI: Miss Kathleen Day Keswick of Ballantine & Company Auctioneers does not get hickeys. Oh, hell.

I adjusted the scarf higher.

Also, while I’m not a total sophisticate about men, I do know a few things about them and I knew as well as I knew my own name that, in spite of his declarations of affection for me:
Men will say anything to get into your pants.
Okay, so he’s had his little conquest, and now he’s over it, no doubt fed up at his lack of self-control, his inability to keep it zipped, and trying to figure out a way to extricate himself and not jeopardize his business, because he knew as well as I did, I now knew as much about his business as he did.

I got myself so stirred up, for a second, I thought my brain was going to blow a gasket—that I’d keel over of an aneurysm right there on the bus.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Kick, get ahold of yourself,” I said out loud making my busmates lift their heads from their papers and look at me. “Sorry,” I mumbled, and returned to my cruller and window. But the fact of the matter was, in a forty-eight-hour whirlwind of an orgy, our business relationship, which had been so ideal, was now ruined by a few expeditious (and exhilarating—oh, my God, just the thought of him made me tingle) collisions. Our world had flipped: We’d gone from friendly friends, boss and secretary, not only to being lovers, but also partners in a major confidence scheme.

We’d gone from sailing along the surface to twenty thousand leagues beneath the sea.

I pulled my little book out of my purse and made a note to pick up some boxes and start shipping a few things to France. The idea seemed to calm me down.