Mountain Heiress: Mountain Midwife (8 page)

Chapter Eight

If Gabby had been alone, she would have been terrified.
Get rid of them?
Those words sounded nasty and much too lethal for her to deal with. Luckily, Zach was here. She grabbed his jacket and tugged. In her opinion, it was time to bolt.

But he had a different idea. He shuffled his feet to make the sounds of footsteps on the hardwood floor. Loudly, he said to her, “I think he came back this way.”

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Making them think we didn’t overhear.”

When he strode across the dining room, she followed, making sure to keep his large, muscular body between her and the threat. In the kitchen, Osborne stood behind a marble-topped island. The man leaning against the countertop had the thick neck and heavy shoulders of a bodybuilder. His dark hair was cut military style. This was the guy who said that he wanted to get rid of them, but Zach stepped right up to him, introduced himself and asked, “Is that your truck out in front?”

“That’s right.”

She remembered the clean red truck with a logo stenciled on the door, and a name she didn’t recall.

Zach’s memory was better. “Ed Striker.”

“Right, again.”

“We’ve met before.”

“About four years ago,” Striker said. “I delivered a couple of horses to your ranch for Adele Berryman.”

“I remember.” Zach grinned. “Mrs. Berryman had some strange ideas.”

Striker didn’t grin back, but he nodded. “Yeah, she did.”

“Well?” Osborne opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water and took a long drink from it. “Aren’t you gentlemen going to tell us what these strange ideas were?”

“She had a pair of remarkable horses,” Zach said, “thoroughbred Arabians, a male and female. Mrs. Berryman called them Angelina and Brad. By all rights, they should have been producing pretty little colts and fillies, but they didn’t have an interest in each other. I told Mrs. Berryman that there were a number of places she could go for an insemination procedure, but she had it in her head that there needed to be a natural attraction. And she thought I could help.”

Gabby couldn’t believe it. “You did sex therapy for a horse couple?”

“I’m not taking credit,” Zach said, “but Brad and Angelina have produced two sets of twins in the past four years.”

“I’ll be damned,” Osborne said.

Zach confronted the other man. “What are you doing here, Striker?”

“He does handyman work for me.” Osborne took another sip of water and held the bottle to his forehead. Though it wasn’t hot, he was perspiring. “Packing and shipping these artworks, especially the sculptures, is difficult, and Striker has a knack for it.”

With a body like Striker’s, heavy lifting was a given, and she wondered what other skills he might have. She was still having trouble reconciling the neatly organized portfolio with Osborne’s flighty personality. “Is Ed also an accountant?”

“Why would you think that?” Osborne asked.

“The catalog of my great-aunt’s work is so precise. I expected you to have someone who handled those details.”

“I handle all the records myself.” Osborne stuck out his skinny chest and preened. “I’m an MBA and trained accountant, which is why my clients stick with me. I make them money.”

She revised her first impression of him. The baggy clothes and sandals were a costume he wore to make people think he was artsy-fartsy. Osborne was, in fact, a raging capitalist. “So it’s not all about the art?”

“Aren’t you a sweet, naive, little thing.” He reached over and patted her cheek. “I appreciate the talent, but this is a business.”

“Is that what your spirit guide told you?”

“Ouch.” He yanked his hand back and looked toward Zach. “She bites.”

“Yes, she does.”

Actually, she was more comfortable with the MBA version of Harrison Osborne, even if he did want to get rid of her. “Let’s skip the tea and go back in the other room. I have some questions.”

Striker was already heading for the door. Before he left, he glanced back over his shoulder at Zach, who was still watching him. For a moment, they stared at each other, communicating on a primal male level as though they were a couple of chimps warning each other off. She wanted to believe that Zach won that confrontation, but she wouldn’t forget Striker’s hostility. The handyman seemed like the most obvious person to stage a break-in at the Roost.

In the display room with the portfolio in front of her on the coffee table, Gabby sat on the sofa. “Mr. Fox said the inventory wasn’t complete. Why is that?”

“Give me a break,” Osborne said. “It’s only been a few weeks, and it’s time-consuming to track these things down. Some of the paintings are on display in museums or at schools. Others are in other galleries and haven’t sold.”

She watched Zach saunter through the gallery and take a position beside one of the front windows. From there, he could see the parking lot and make sure that Striker got into his red truck and drove away. Having Zach on her side gave her the confidence to believe that she might just find her way through this mess and come out the other side in one piece.

She opened the portfolio to the front pages that listed paintings that had been sold and their sale price. “This goes back twenty-five years. There are hundreds of listings.”

“That’s not an inventory I threw together overnight,” Osborne said. “Sales figures need to be updated every year for accounting and for taxes. Michelle had copies.”

Gabby made a mental note to search Michelle’s office for these records. “How do you keep track of it all?”

Osborne sat cross-legged on the rug opposite her. “When Michelle completes a painting, I fill out a single-page Certificate of Authenticity, signed by her and by me. After the work is purchased, I send the certificate to the new owner and keep a copy for my files as a record.”

She flipped through the portfolio to the pages for unsold artworks. Each painting had a photograph and a brief description, including details such as size, title, date and asking price. “Is this the certificate?”

“It’s the same information. The original signed certificates for unsold paintings are valuable, and I have them locked away in my safe.”

Zach left the window and sat beside her. “You’re supposed to turn all that stuff over to the lawyer, right?”

“When I have everything completed, yes.”

Leaving the portfolio open on the coffee table, she thumbed through page after page, amazed by her great-aunt’s output. “There’s a lot in here.”

“Michelle was prolific.”

Gabby stopped on a page that had information about the painting but no photograph. “Why isn’t there a picture?”

Osborne toyed with his necklace and licked his lips. “Michelle told me about these paintings, but I never saw them.”

Zach asked, “How do you know they exist?”

“Read the descriptions,” he said. “They’re very specific, and she wanted a record.”

When she leaned forward to read, Zach did the same, moving closer so he could see the page. His thigh brushed against hers. The rough fabric of his jeans rubbed against her skirt and the bare skin above her knee.

With an effort, she concentrated on the written description. Her voice was only a little bit breathless when she said, “This painting is titled
Tarot Arcana VI.
It’s only three inches by five—a little bit larger than a playing card.”

“I never saw these last five Tarot paintings, numbered VI to X.” Osborne scowled at the book. “It’s a shame. She did others in the series, and they’ve acquired a reputation. I know at least three collectors who would bid on these paintings.”

“But you haven’t seen them,” Zach said.

“If I had, I would have insisted on bringing them here. I have a secure storage area, temperature controlled with no windows. That’s where I’m holding the rest of Michelle’s paintings.”

“The ones you took from her studio,” Gabby said. “That was probably a good idea.”

“It was necessary. You’ve already had a break-in at the Roost. I shudder to think what might have been stolen.” He untangled his legs and got to his feet. “Are we done here?”

“For now, we are.” Gabby dug in to her fake Birkin and took out her cell phone. “I have to call to see if my car’s ready.”

When she turned the phone on, she saw that she had four messages, which she checked, figuring that the car mechanic might have already called. The last name on the message list surprised her. It was Daniel Rousseau. Her brother had finally gotten in touch with her.

* * *

D
RIVING
BACK
TOWARD
home, Zach kept his eyes trained straight ahead through the windshield, staring at the beginning of sunset and trying not to listen to Gabby’s phone conversation with her brother. She was hard to ignore. In the space of five minutes, she’d gone from squeals of laughter to a furious tirade.

He didn’t want to be distracted by her family issues when they had more pressing problems, mainly the break-ins at the Roost. That threat was tangible but didn’t worry him as much as the unspoken danger he’d felt when they talked to Fox or at their meeting with Osborne. It was clear to Zach that Michelle’s estate represented a significant amount of money, and these men wanted to stake their claim.

First, he had to deal with the break-ins. The best way to make sure Gabby and Charlotte were safe was for him to stay overnight at the Roost as a bodyguard. But that solution had dangers of its own; sleeping down the hall from Gabby put him in a precarious position. He couldn’t deny that he was attracted to her. Just the thought of her stretched out in her bed started his imagination rolling. What if she heard a sound and called for him, and he responded by running into her bedroom, and she threw her arms around his neck, and he kissed away her fears?

He shouldn’t even think about making love to her. They were different people from different worlds, opposite ends of the spectrum. Even if she ended up spending three years at the Roost to fulfill the terms of the will, she’d still be a city girl who hated horses. The idea of them having a relationship was like thinking a coyote might cozy up to a jackrabbit without anybody getting hurt.

“No way, Daniel.” She held the phone in front of her face and yelled at it. “I’m not giving you my credit card number. You need to be here. Figure out how to do it by yourself.”

When she ended the call, she let go with a curse, one of the few he’d heard from her. Her cheeks flamed bright red as she glanced over at him. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I love my brother.”

“I can tell.”

“Here’s the part that really makes me mad. He didn’t call me because of the ten million messages I’ve left for him with people who might have been able to find him. He knew I was looking for him, but did he care? No way.”

“Why did he call?”

“He had a message from Fox that said the magic word—
inheritance.
Daniel called me because he thought he could get something for nothing.”

“Did Fox tell him the terms?”

“Daniel doesn’t care. He told me to take care of the details. Can you believe it? ‘Deal with it, Gabby.’ And then I should send him his money. Does that sound fair to you?”

“Nope.”

She continued, “I don’t know why I should expect him to be different. Family means nothing to him. He wasn’t there when Aunt Rene died, and he doesn’t even remember Michelle’s name. All he wants is to grab the money and run.”

That description sounded much like Zach’s first opinion about Gabby, but he’d come to understand there was more to her. Instead of being solely motivated by greed, she was curious about Michelle and had regrets that they hadn’t known each other better. “Is your brother coming here?”

“I hope so.” Her gaze dropped to the phone in her lap. “I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Why’s that?”

“He took off with some girl. Then he was in Alaska. Then something else, there was always something else.”

Zach was familiar with the pattern. When he first left home, he’d done his share of aimless drifting until he discovered rodeo. For a long time, his family had been the other bronc busters and bull riders.

“We used to be so close,” she said. “After my parents died, he sat at the foot of my bed every night until I fell asleep. If he hadn’t been there with me, I might never have stopped crying. It was silly, really. I was thirteen and shouldn’t have been such a baby.”

“It’s not childish to miss the people you love.”

“I still miss them, especially my mom.” She lifted her head. Though she smiled, her dark eyes reflected a deep sadness. “Today has been tough.”

“Yep.” He knew she hated his one-word responses, but he didn’t have anything to add. Leaving his parents was one of the smartest things he’d ever done.

“But it’s not all doom and gloom.” She forced a smile. “The mechanic said the repairs to my car won’t be expensive. He has to send to Denver for a part and will keep the car for a couple of days, but it’s fixable and cheap.”

He liked the way she always found a way to focus on the positive. With what he’d seen today, she was going to need that attitude. “We should talk about Osborne.”

“He’s a strange one. Under the weird clothes and ponytail, he seems to be a sharp businessman. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, Michelle was no fool, and she stuck with Osborne for over twenty years.”

“Those missing Tarot paintings worry me,” Zach said.

“Me, too. According to Osborne, there are buyers lined up for those pictures. They’re valuable. And they’re small enough to hide in the Roost. Those Tarot paintings could be the
real
hidden treasure and the
real
reason for the break-ins.”

“That means the threat is
real.
” Hidden artwork made more sense than the mythical Frenchman’s Treasure, but Michelle’s little paintings weren’t something that could be easily turned into cash. “There aren’t many people who’d know what to do with the art, even if they found it.”

“Osborne would,” she said. “He even knows the buyers. Maybe, after all these years, he’s gotten tired of making only a commission on Michelle’s work. Maybe he wants the whole enchilada for himself. And he could send his friend Striker to do the dirty business of breaking in and stealing.”