Honest illusions(BookZZ.org) (48 page)

Watching you and Rox onstage, it was like the years between never happened.”

“But they did.”

“Yes, they did.” He stood then, but kept her hand in his. “I don’t have an incantation to make them disappear. But there are things I can do that might set it right.”

“You still love her.”

When he only shrugged, she smiled, rose and cupped his face in her hands. “You still love her,” she repeated. “But you’ll have to have more than a pocketful of tricks to win her back. She’s not a pushover like me.”

His mouth grimmed. “I can push hard.”

With a sigh, Lily shook her head. “Then she’ll just push back. Max would say you catch more flies with honey than with a rolled up newspaper. Take it from me, a woman—even a stubborn one—likes to be wooed.” He only snorted, but Lily pressed on. “I don’t just mean flowers and music, honey. It’s a kind of attitude. Roxy needs to be challenged, but she also needs to be courted.”

“If I got down on one knee, she’d plant a foot in my face.”

Absolutely, Lily thought, but thought it politic not to agree. “I didn’t say it would be easy. Don’t give up on her, Luke. She needs you more than you could possibly understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just don’t give up.”

Thoughtfully, he drew Lily back into his arms. “That’s not the kind of mistake I’d make twice. I’ll do what needs to be done, Lily.” His eyes darkened as he stared at something hateful only he could see.

“There are scores to settle.”

“And there was a big dog in the park. A gold one. He peed on all the trees.”

Roxanne cuddled Nate in her lap, laughing as he recounted his adventures of the morning. “All of them?”

“Maybe a hundred.” He looked soulfully into his mother’s face with his father’s eyes. “Can I have a dog? I’d teach him to sit and shake hands and play dead.”

“And pee on trees?”

“Uh-huh.” He grinned, turning in her lap to wrap his arms around her neck. Oh, he knew how to charm, she thought. He’d been his father’s child since his first toothless grin. “I want a big one. A big boy one.

His name’s gonna be Mike.”

“Since he’s already got a name, I suppose we’ll have to look into it.” She twirled one of Nate’s glossy curls around her finger. Much like, she thought wryly, her son twirled her heart around his. “How much ice cream did you eat?”

His eyes widened. “How come you know I had ice cream?”

There was a telltale smear of chocolate on his shirt and a suspicious stickiness on his fingers. But Roxanne knew better than to use such pedestrian clues. “Because mothers know all and see all, especially when they’re magicians too.”

His lip poked out as he considered. “How come I can never see the eyes in back of your head?”

“Nate, Nate, Nate,” she sighed lustily. “Haven’t I told you they’re invisible eyes?”

Abruptly she dragged him up into her arms, holding him tight with her eyes squeezed shut against tears.

She couldn’t say why she felt like weeping, didn’t want to consider the reasons. All that mattered was that she had her child safe in her arms.

“Better go wash your hands, Nate the Great.” Her voice was shaky, but muffled against his neck. “I’ve got to get to my appointment.”

“You said we were going to the zoo.”

“And we will.” She kissed him, set him on his short, sturdy legs. “I’ll be back in an hour, then we’ll go see how many monkeys look just like you.”

He raced off, laughing. Roxanne stooped to gather the miniature cars, plastic men and picture books that were scattered over the rug. “Alice? I’m heading out. Be back in an hour.”

“Take your time,” Alice sang back and made Roxanne smile.

Soft-voiced, reliable, unshakable Alice, she thought. Lord knew she would never have been able to continue her work without the steady support of the ethereal Alice.

And to think she’d nearly turned Alice aside because of her frail appearance and whispery voice. Yet out of the legion of prospective nannies she’d interviewed, it had been Alice who had convinced Roxanne

that Nathaniel would be safe and happy in her care.

There had been something about her eyes, Roxanne thought now as she walked into the hallway. That pale, almost translucent gray and the quiet kindness in them. Her practical nature had nearly swayed her toward the more prim and experienced applicants, but Nate had smiled at Alice from his crib, and that had been that.

Roxanne still wondered who had done the hiring. Now Alice was family. That single smile from a six-month-old infant had added one more link to the Nouvelle chain.

Roxanne chose the stairs and walked one flight down to face another link. The missing link, she thought nastily and had her shoulders braced when she rapped on Luke’s door.

“Prompt as always,” Luke commented when he opened the door.

“I only have an hour, so let’s get down to business.” She sailed past him, leaving a faint trace of wildflowers to torment his system.

“Hot date?”

She thought of her son and smiled. “Yes, and I don’t like to keep him waiting.” She chose a chair, sat and crossed her legs. “Let’s hear the setup, Callahan.”

“Whatever you say, Nouvelle.” He saw her lips twitch, but she conquered the smile quickly. “Want some wine before lunch?”

“No wine, no lunch.” She gestured, a regal flick of the wrist. “Talk.”

“Tell me how you played the press conference.”

“Where you’re concerned?” Arching a brow, she sat back. “I told them I was bringing someone into the act who would dazzle them. A sorcerer who’d been traveling the world learning the secrets of the Mayans, the mysteries of the Aztecs and the magic of the Druids.” She smiled faintly. “I hope you’re up to the hype.”

“I can handle it.” He picked up a pair of steel handcuffs from the coffee table and toyed with them as he spoke. “You weren’t all that far off. I learned a number of things.”

“Such as?” she asked when he handed her the cuffs for inspection.

“How to walk through walls, vanish an elephant, climb a pillar of smoke. In Bangkok I escaped from a trunk studded with nails. And walked off with a ruby as big as your thumb. In Cairo it was a glass box dropped into the Nile—and emeralds almost as green as your eyes.”

“Fascinating,” she said and yawned deliberately as she passed him the cuffs. She’d found no secret catch.

“I spent nearly a year in Ireland, in haunted castles and smoky pubs. I found something there I’d never found anywhere else.”

“Which was?”

“You could call it my soul.” He watched her as he snapped the cuffs to his wrists. “I recognized Ireland, the hills, the towns, even the air. The only other place I’ve been that pulled me that way was New Orleans.” He tugged his wrists apart so that the metal snapped. “But that might have been because you were there. I’d take you to Ireland, Rox.” His voice had softened, like silk just stroked. “I imagined you there, imagined making love to you in one of those cool, green fields with the mist rising all around like witch smoke and the sound of harp strings sobbing on the air.”

She couldn’t take her eyes off his, or the image he so skillfully invoked. His magic was such that she could see them, tumbled on the grass, blanketed in fog. She could all but feel his hands on her skin, warming it, softening it as those old needs crackled like dried wood to a hot flame.

She dug her nails hard into her palms, then tore her eyes away. “It’s a good line, Callahan. Very smooth.” Steadier, she stared back at him. “Try it on someone who doesn’t know you.”

“You’re a hard woman, Roxy.” He held the cuffs up by one end and dropped them into her lap. There was a small sense of satisfaction when she smiled.

“You haven’t lost your touch here, either, I see. Odd though. If you’ve been plying your trade so successfully all these years, why didn’t I hear about you?”

“I imagine you did.” He rose to answer the knock on the door and spoke casually back to her. “You’d have heard of the Phantom.”

“The—” She bit her tongue as the room-service waiter wheeled in a tray. Rubbing her palms together she waited while lunch was set up and Luke signed the check. Naturally, she’d heard of the Phantom, the strange, publicity-shy magician who appeared in all corners of the world, then disappeared again.

“I ordered for you,” Luke said as he took a seat at the table. “I think I remembered what you like.”

“I told you I don’t have time for lunch.” But curiosity had her wandering over. Barbecued chicken wings.

Her lips thinned even as her heartbeat thickened. She wondered how he’d managed it when she knew very well it wasn’t on the hotel’s menu. “I lost my taste for them,” she said and would have turned away but he grabbed her hand.

“Let’s be civilized, Rox.” He flicked a rose out of the air, offered it.

She took the bud, but refused to be charmed. “This is as good as it gets.”

“If you won’t eat with me, I’m going to think it’s because the menu reminds you of us. And I’m going to think you’re still in love with me.”

She wrenched away, tossing the rosebud onto the table. Without bothering to sit, she snatched up a piece of chicken and bit in. “Satisfied?”

“That was never a problem with us.” Grinning, he handed her a napkin. “You’ll make less of a mess if you sit.” He lifted his hands. “Relax. Nothing up my sleeve.”

She sat and began to wipe sauce from her fingers. “So, you worked as the Phantom. I wasn’t sure he really existed.”

“That was the beauty.” Luke settled back, cocking one foot on his knee. “I wore a mask, did the gig, took a bit extra if something appealed and moved on.”

“In other words . . .” The sauce was damn good. She licked a bit from her thumb. “You went on the grift.”

That put the fire in his eyes and, she hoped, in his gut. He shot her a look that could have smelted iron.

“It wasn’t grifting.” Though he had made a few dollars early on with Three Card Monte and the Cups and Balls. “It was touring.”

She gave an unladylike snort and went back to her chicken. “Right. Now you’ve decided you’re ready for the big time again.”

“I’ve always been ready for the big time.” His only outward sign of annoyance was the tapping of his fingers on his ankles. But she knew him, knew him well, and was delighted to have scored a hit. “You don’t want any explanations on where I went or why, so let’s just say I was on sabbatical.”

“Great word, sabbatical. Covers so much ground. Okay, Callahan, your sabbatical’s over. What’s the deal?”

“The three gigs hinge together.” He poured the golden wine for himself and left her glass empty. “The performance, the auction and the hit. All the same weekend.”

She raised her brows. It was the only reaction she chose to give him. “Ambitious, aren’t we?”

“Good is what I am, Rox.” The smile was a dare, the sort Lucifer might have aimed toward heaven. “As good as ever, maybe better.”

“And as self-effacing.”

“Modesty’s like tact. It’s for wimps. The performance is the diversion for the auction.” He showed his empty palm, then turned his hand and danced a Russian ruble along his fingers. “The auction draws the eye from the job at Wyatt’s.” The ruble vanished. After snapping his fingers, he poured three coins into her glass.

“An old trick, Callahan.” Willing to play, she dumped the coins into her hand. “As cheap as talk.” With a flourish, she turned her palm up to show that the coins had turned into small silver balls. “This doesn’t impress.”

Damn it, he hadn’t realized that disinterest could stimulate. “Try this. You join the luminaries for the auction after our performance. You’re an honored guest, anxious to bid on a few baubles.”

“And you are?”

“Attending to a few details at the theater, but I’ll be joining you. You bid spiritedly against a certain gentleman on an emerald ring, but he outreaches you.”

“And what if other attendees covet that ring?”

“Whatever the bid, he’ll top it. He’s French and rich and romantic and desires that ring for his fiancée.

Mais alors.
” Luke slipped into French so smoothly, Roxanne blinked. “When he examines the ring, as a

practical Frenchman might, he discovers it to be paste.”

“The ring’s a fake?”

“That and a number of other items.” He linked his hands together, resting his chin on them. Over them, his eyes glowed with that old amused excitement that nearly tricked a grin out of her. “Because, my only love, we will have switched the take in those soft, dark hours before dawn. And while Washington and its very fine police force are abuzz with the daring theft of several million in jewels, we will quietly slip over to Maryland and relieve the aspiring senator of the philosophers’ stone.”

There was more, a very important more, but he would time the telling as carefully as his staging.

“Interesting,” she said in a voice like a yawn, though she was fascinated. “There’s just one little detail I don’t understand.”

“Which is?”

She funneled her hands and poured his coins next to his plate. “How the hell we break into a heavily secured art gallery in the first place?”

“The same way we break into a house in the ’burbs, Roxy. Expertly. It also helps that I have what we could call a secret weapon.”

“Secret weapon?”

“Top secret.” He took her hand before she could avoid it and raised it to his lips. “I’ve always been a sucker for the taste of barbecue sauce on a woman’s skin.” Watching her, he traced his tongue over her knuckles. “Especially if it’s your skin. Do you remember the day we had that picnic? We lay on the rug and listened to the rain? I think I started nibbling on your toes and worked my way up.” He turned her hand over to scrape his teeth along her wrist. “I could never get enough of you.”

“I can’t recall.” Her pulse jumped and scrabbled. “I’ve been on a number of picnics.”

“Then I’ll refresh your memory. We shared this same meal.” He rose, drawing her slowly to her feet.

“There was rain running over the windows, the light was gloomy. When I touched you, you trembled, just as you’re trembling now.”

“I’m not.” But she was.

“And I kissed you. Here.” He brushed his lips over her temple. “And here.” Along her jaw. “And then—” He broke off with an oath as a key turned in the lock.